• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Flinx finally forced himself to disengage. Lightly touching a forefinger to the tip of Clarity's pert nose, he murmured tenderly, “If we keep this up I won't be in any condition to attempt the contact.”

Her lips bonded briefly with his finger. “If we keep this up I won't let you.”

A last hug and he turned away, heading purposefully for the dais. She knew he had to do it, and the inexorableness found her hating the universe entire. She forced herself not to cry, not to call out. Why Flinx? Why not Bran Tse-Mallory, or Truzenzuzex? They were older, their lives were already on the downside of the inescapable slide to eternity. Why not them, or some other, instead of the only man she had ever loved? She knew the answer, of course, just as she knew it could not be any other way.

As for the universe, it did not care.

Unwittingly, she found herself edging closer to Sylzenzuzex. Did the female thranx feel this same kind of affection for a mate? What emotions emerged from larvahood that allowed one of them to bond with another of the same species? For all their common sense and sympathy, their goodwill and intrinsic kindliness, their gentle touch and exquisite body fragrance, one could not escape the fact that thranx still resembled giant bugs. Inside, deep inside, did they really feel anything like a woman did for the man she loved?

She felt something touch her. Looking around, she saw that the security officer had inclined both of her antennae to the right so that they could make contact with Clarity's bare left arm. It was like being caressed by a pair of fine-quality feather dusters. It also answered her question.

Flinx had approached to within a couple of meters of the raised platform when a subtle vibration in the floor reached him through his boots. At the same time the largest and outermost of the four domes came to life, turning translucent as light the color of thick cream washed over and through it. Flinx halted immediately. Never before on the three previous occasions when he had utilized such platforms had any luminescence manifested itself until he was within the outermost dome. Simultaneously alert, Pip raised her head off his shoulder and stared. The tension in the minidrag's coils pained him as they tightened around his shoulder.

This was new. What it portended neither he nor anyone else could tell. Was the preflux radiance a warning to keep away? Reaching out with his Talent, he felt, sensed, perceived nothing. The dais awaited. Behind him, Clarity and his friends looked on anxiously but said nothing. They were leaving him to his deliberation. Leaving him, as usual, to make the decision alone on how or whether to proceed.

Nothing to be gained by standing and dithering, he knew. There never was.

A voice finally sounded behind him—the august soldier-sociologist Bran Tse-Mallory. “Get a move on, boy. Apocalypse waits for no man.”

Flinx nodded and resumed his advance. As he drew close to the dais, tiny sparks of ashen lightning began to jump from the whitened outermost dome. One landed on his bare left wrist. It burned and left a small scar as he hastily brushed it away. Not an auspicious beginning.

Get under the domes and lie down, he thought sensibly, and you'll be shielded from such discharges.

Climbing up onto the platform as the flickering intensified, he wasted no time in turning his back to the slab and lying down. As soon as his head made contact with the smooth surface Pip contorted and lunged upward. Contracting into a series of tight concentric coils, her body came to rest against the top of his skull.

An instant later a numbing electric shock tore through Flinx. His body spasmed and went still. Sight, sound, touch—all sensation vanished. It happened so quickly he did not even have time to think he might be dying, or to be scared. Yet he found he was not frightened. He felt completely at peace.

What transpired beyond ken of his now deadened senses was rather less pacific.

Tse-Mallory and Clarity threw up