Kaspar's Box

"We are the Arm of Gideon. On Balshazzar. Make sure that Balshazzar is in your sky before you try again. The kind of power required to go through the big planet would fry your mind. Someone, often many, are always on duty. We will be watching for you. We've been wondering how long it would take before this happened. Now go if you can. If the storm will not kill you, you must go into it. Even with help, I'm losing it. Go!"

She backed out of the cave even as she felt first a sudden release in her mind, then almost immediately a return to a building attack on her last emotional defenses.

The rain was still falling but the worst of it was past, and the electrical activity was now intermittent even though occasional claps of thunder, echoing against the barren landscape, could still deafen her.

She started to run. Not in any particular direction, just away, away from the cave. She didn't think, she couldn't think. It was as if her mind was totally blank leaving only emotion, a desire to flee, to just go anywhere but there. She ran through the rain, wild-eyed, more animal than human, until finally slipping, falling, she lost consciousness altogether in the remnants of the storm.

* * *

She came to, rather than awoke, trembling, and she looked up into the concerned face of Jerry Nagel. "Randi! Come on! Snap out of it! Are you all right?"

Slowly her senses flowed back into her mind, but they didn't make things any easier. She trembled as if she had contracted a serious palsy for several minutes, then choked on something, began having a coughing fit, and eventually she threw up over and over until there was nothing left for her stomach to give.

She felt-weird. That was the word that came to mind, and it fit, even though she was having trouble defining it further. She felt detached, as if her mind, the thinking part, the personality, was somehow disconnected from her body but floating just beyond it. She could barely feel the body, nor did it fully respond to her commands. Still, when she could, she gasped, "Jerry!" And then for some reason she just began to break into uncontrollable sobs, grabbing and holding on to him with a viselike grip.

He let her go for a little bit, but when he finally tried to break free and get her some water she couldn't release him.

"Please! Please!" she managed, breathless. "Just-humor me for a little bit. Just hold me. I need-I need to bring myself back."

So, for as long as he could, he just held her there and let her calm herself and gather her wits.

Lucky Cross came up with a boot in her hand. It was one of Randi's, and it was last seen on the woman's foot. Now it was not only not being worn, it seemed to have been yanked, pulled apart, ripped half to shreds. "Pack's back there as well," the pilot commented. "Straps are broke but it's still okay. We can probably mend it. She's barefoot from now on, though. Musta been real wild to have had the strength to rip them things like that. Them boots are rated for industrial units!"

Nagel looked down at Randi, who seemed half lost in some other mental place, but she was still awake, still staring at him.

"You want to tell us what happened?" he prodded gently.

"I-I needed to get out of the storm. The cave I picked had the rocks."

He gave a low whistle. "You're lucky you didn't go Li's route," he noted. "All comes clear now. I wonder just how common those damned things are?"

"Very, I think. And there's more, but even I can't tell you if it was real or not." Slowly, between gasps and occasional reflexive gags, she managed to tell the other two about her ethereal conversation with John Robey up on Balshazzar.

Lucky cross-checked the sky, which was already clear after the storm. "Yep, it's up there, all right. See it? 'Bout two hands up from the horizon to the west and maybe, oh, five o'clock."

They had discovered almost from the start that the other moons were readily visible when all were in the same part of the sky, and that Balshazzar, being so relatively close, was quite prominent. A blue-white world about the size of a gaming token in one of the bars back on Marchellus, it would have dominated any sky it was in save for the even larger gas giant that loomed over them and trapped them both.

Kaspar, much farther out and smaller than either of the other two, was harder to spot, but hardly invisible in the night sky. There was just too much of a light source for reflection for anything of any size to remain hidden out there.

"You think it was real?" he asked Randi.

"I-I think it might have been. I think you and I both had an idea it was more than just a mineral. I wonder, though. Do they also have outcrops of them on the other two moons?"

He smiled. This was the old Randi coming back, slowly but surely. "I think they might. At least on Balshazzar. Who knows about Kaspar?"