Worlds Away Read Online Free Page B

been on Lucis Observatory, she’d been able to
recharge herself just by being close to dormant Kinemet. The new presence gave
off enough radiation that some of it leaked into her. It wasn’t enough for her
to quantize herself, but she regained some of her ability to see, though
in a severely diminished capacity.
    It was as if someone had turned on a very dim spotlight.
Outside the confines of her cell, at least twenty feet away, a form took shape
in her mind’s eye.
    Just as her hopes started to rise, they plummeted as the
presence came closer.
    What she saw made her stomach clench.
    It was not human.
    The creature had a large, bulbous head that bore the rough
shape of a spade. Two protuberances on either side of its head held large eyes.
Instead of a torso, eight long tentacle-like arms, connected at their base by a
membranous web, extended out. The alien resembled a cephalopod.
    From the top of its head to the end of its arms, it was less
than half the height of an average human. She had no way of figuring out what
gender the Kulsat was, or even if it had a gender, but in her mind, she thought
of it as male.
    So this is a Kulsat…
    At first, she thought the creature was hovering, or floating
somehow. Then his arms expanded and contracted, propelling the alien closer to
her prison cell, and she realized he was swimming.
    The Kulsat must have a water-based physiology. Was the
inside of the alien ship completely filled with water?
    That meant that if she were to break the glass of her
terrarium, water would pour in and drown her.
    In her mind, she’d been preparing for a bipedal alien
species, but the realization of how different the Kulsat were from humans came
as a shock.
    The alien swam closer to Justine’s tank, and as he did so,
her sight grew marginally stronger. While her prison was a perfect cube,
the room in which it was situated was far more complicated.
    It looked like a complex laboratory, with dozens of
open-faced cupboards on the walls. She couldn’t identify several large
constructs. Tubes extended from them into the ceiling.
    There were three long tables. Various objects that could
have been tools, containers, or other scientific apparatuses were strewn over
their surfaces. Short vertical walls lined the edges, and Justine realized that
they were there to prevent anything on the table from falling off—when the
alien moved past, his motion created a wake in the water. A number of items
shifted position.
    When the alien reached Justine’s prison, he extended one
tentacle to what looked like a control panel attached to the outside wall of
the cell.
    Though Justine had not absorbed enough Kinemetic radiation
to quantize herself, or manipulate any electric current in the area, her sight was enough for her to start making out details, rather than seeing rough
shapes.
    At the end of the Kulsat’s tentacle were several wormlike
fingers. With these, he touched the control panel in a pattern.
    A moment later, a mechanical voice spoke, the sound coming
through the glass muted and partially distorted.
    “Hello.”
    Justine flinched, then got hold of herself. She looked at
the Kulsat.
    “What do you mean, ‘hello’?” She slapped her hand against
the glass wall, all the anger and fear she’d been suppressing coming out. “Who
the hell are you? Why did you kidnap me? What have you done with my friends?”
When the alien did not respond, she asked, “What are you going to do to me?”
    The alien extended his arm to the control panel again, as if
typing.
    “What do you mean hello who the hell are you why did you
kidnap me what have you done with my friends what are you going to do to me.”
    Justine took a step back. The alien had mimicked her words.
    She asked, “How do you know my language?”
    The alien typed. “My do not have language. My have to do language.”
    He motioned to a spot between his eye and one of his arms,
and Justine put her hand on her neck near the corresponding area. Her fingers
felt