Page 21 of Adrift!
“Love,” Felicity said softly. “It means the anomaly manifests around something that might become love.”
The word hung in the air like the impossible rainbow fractals.
“We can’t say that,” Suvan objected, shoving his pet under his chin while it squalled as if in agreement. “We’re measuring fundamental frequencies, not feelings.”
“Why not both?”
At the amused voice from the salon doorway, they all swung around.
The captain thrust Felicity behind him as claws lashed out from his hands. “Stop right there.” His angry command rattled the bottles arranged behind the bar. “Who are you?”
Remy let out a squeak as Ikaryo shouldered ahead of her too, his body a shield of flesh and shining hardware.
But when she peered around his broad shoulders, the new arrival who slowly stepped forward from the dim outer corridor didn’t seem like a threatening monster.
The man looked like he was from Earth, or close enough to it, slender and stylish in a knee-length tunic suit, one hand braced on an unadorned cane. Not that a cane couldn’t be a laser gun, of course, and he wasn’t anyone who had been among the passengers or the crew, to judge by the captain’s furious bristling. But the man was smiling with such pure enthusiasm, as if delighted to see them.
“I call it the resonark,” he said. “And it is what we’ve all come to discover.”
Remy blinked, and when no one else spoke, she hazarded, “Sorry, the what?”
The man took another step forward but stopped at a Kufzasin growl. “Ah, Ms. McCoy. I was so pleased you accepted this cruise prize. I suspected you’d serve quite well as a control variable. Yet paradoxically, of everyone aboard, you have the most experience with the invisible forces that might bring us together. You use the power of song just as the resonark uses its power—the power of love.”
In the even silenter silence following those words, Remy said, “I repeat, the what?”
Ikaryo kept his augmented arm braced in front of her. “And I’ll repeat, who are you?”
“Eoyen Ikaryo,” the dapper man said. “We didn’t have the chance for formal introductions before launch. But I hoped those eyes of yours would have special insight into the resonark.”
The captain’s voice was edged with exasperation. “Evens, what are you doing on my ship?”
“Technically, Captain Nehivar, the Love Boat I is my ship. I have the acquisition receipt to prove it.” He patted his back pocket. “Somewhere.”
Felicity cleared her throat. “Mr. Evens. We had no idea you were aboard.” Though she didn’t growl like Nehivar, her tone flattened. “Or did I miss your name on the manifest?”
He smiled at her. “My dear Felicity, you never missed a thing when we were planning this cruise. Probably all those to-do lists you kept. Which is how I knew you’d be such a special help to our captain.”
“I didn’t see this resonark listed,” she shot back. “While it seems you know a lot about it.”
Evens tilted his cane to one side in a coy little half bow. “Well, Ididdiscover it. It’s why I bought this haunted ship.”
Nehivar’s mane bristled, his ears flat back. “You knew there was a possibly fatal flaw in the ship’s systems and you let us launch anyway?”
“It’s not a flaw. It’s an elemental particle, like a quark.” He frowned, twisting the cane back to center again. “Or maybe more like a universal law. Or a hitherto unknown atomic isotope?” When he noticed them all glaring at him, he waved his hand. “The specifics don’t matter.”
Nehivar rumbled again. “The nonspecifics hijacked the ship and have left us adrift.”
“And you ate all the chocolate we had aboard,” Ikaryo added. “I’m guessing that was you, anyway.”
Finally the man looked abashed. “Stowing away is hungry work. And since chocolate is also a basic building block of the universe, it seemed appropriate to celebrate finally identifying the resonark. Now that we know there’s more to it than a wayward energy glitch we can—”
“You can tell us how to nullify it,” Nehivar said, “so we can restore power without risk and leave the Zarnax Zone immediately.”
Evens recoiled. “Nullify it? I told you I just found it.”
“And it’s left us all in danger,” the captain snarled.
Felicity put a hand on Nehivar’s elbow, and though her usual effortlessly soothing smile was absent, her blue eyes were steady with a different kind of control. “Let’s sit down and talk this through again, from the beginning. Ikaryo, would you please find us something to drink? Mr. Evens, this way.”
