The Valiant - Michael Jan Friedman [22]
The womans cheeks, he couldnt help noticing, were flushed a striking shade of red. Her full lips had pulled back from her teeth, endowing her with a strangely wolflike appearance, and her ice-blue eyes burned with an almost feral intensity.
And the way she moved it took Greyhorses breath away. She punched and kicked and spun her way through one complex maneuver after another, her skin glistening with perspiration, her long, lean muscles rippling in savage harmony.
Harsh, guttural sounds escaped her throat, occasionally devolving into a simple gasp or grunt. But they didnt signal any pause in her routine. Despite whatever fatigue she might have felt, she went on.
In the presence of such passion, such vigor, Greyhorse felt oddly like an intruder. He experienced an impulse to go back the way he had come, to retreat to his safe and familiar world of scientific certainties.
But he didnt go. He couldnt.
He was mesmerized.
The woman, on the other hand, didnt even seem aware of the physicians presence in the room. Or if she was aware of it, it didnt appear to faze her. She pursued her regimen with uninhibited energy and determination, pushing her finely tuned body to levels of speed and precision that few other humans could even contemplate.
Then she did what Carter Greyhorse would have thought impossible. She turned it up a notch.
As the doctor watched, spellbound, the woman attacked the air around her as if it were rife with invisible enemies. She whirled, struck, gyrated, and struck again, faster and faster, until it seemed her heart would have to burst under the burden.
Then, suddenly, she stopped and in a spasm of triumph and ecstasy, tossed her head back and howled at the top of her lungs. The sound she made was more animal than human, Greyhorse thought, more the product of the womans blood than her brain.
Finally, her chest still heaving, sweat streaming down both sides of her face, she fell silent. Only then did she turn and take notice of the doctor standing by the door. Their eyes met and he could see the raw emotion still roiling inside them.
He felt he should say something, but speech escaped him. All he could do was stare back at her like an idiot.
The woman drew a long, ragged breath. Then she went to the wall, pulled a towel off the rack there, and stalked past him. A moment later, Greyhorse heard the hiss of the sliding doors as they opened for her. Another hiss told him they had closed again.
Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that the woman was gone. A wave of disappointment and relief swept over him.
The doctor was new on the ship, so he didnt know many people outside of Ruhalter and his command staff. Certainly, he didnt know the woman he had just seen not even her name.
But he would make it his business to find out.
Lieutenant Vigo was sitting in the Stargazers mess hall, staring at his plate of sturrd , when his friend Charlie Kochman sat down next to him and lowered a tray of food onto the table.
Now that, said Kochman, who was the ships secondary navigator, is what I call a replicator program.
Vigo glanced at Kochmans tray, which featured a large wooden bowl full of hard, gray mollusk shells with dark, rubbery tails emerging from them. Steamers? he asked.
Steamers, his colleague confirmed with a grin. It took a while, but the replicator finally got them right. He glanced at Vigos plate. Youve got some more of that Pandrilite stuff, I see.
Sturrd . It is the signature dish of my homeworld, Vigo noted.
Kochman held up a hand. Dont get me wrong, buddy the last thing I want to do is keep a big blue guy like you from eating what he really likes. I just figured you might want to try something else sometime.
Vigo glanced at his friends mollusks, which he didnt find the least bit tempting. Sometime, he echoed.
Kochman chuckled. To each his own, I guess. And with unconcealed gusto,