Pilgrim [antikvár]

Prologue The lieutenant pushed his fork back and forth across the table, back and forth, back and forth, his eyes vacant, his mind and heart a thousand galaxies away. Scrape . scrape . . . scrape. "For heaven's sake, Chris, will you stop that? It's driving me crazy!" The lieutenant gripped the fork in his fist, and his companion tensed, thinking Chris would fling it across the dull, black metal table towards him. But Chris' hand suddenly relaxed, and he managed a tight, half-apologetic smile. "Sorry. It's just that this . . . this " "We only have another two day spans, mate, and then we wake the next shift for their stint at uselessness." Chris' fingers traced gently over the surface of the table. It vibrated. Everything on the ship vibrated. "I can't bloody wait for another stretch of deep sleep," he said quietly, his eyes flickering over to Commander Devereaux sitting at a keyboard by the room's only porthole. "Unlike him." His fellow officer nodded. Perhaps thirty-five rotations ago, waking from their allotted span of deep sleep, the retiring crew had reported a strange vibration within the ship. No mechanical or structural problem the ship was just vibrating. And then . then they'd found that the ship was becoming a little sluggish in responding to commands, and