Excerpt

In the next moment, an ear-ripping blart of a klaxon rang out, a noise made up of layered sounds and different frequencies. It cut through the cognitions of multiple races, ensuring it could not be ignored. Security had designed it to get your attention and elicit an immediate response. You couldn't live on the station without hearing it every ten days as part of an emergency drill. Only… we weren't scheduled for a drill, which meant this was a real emergency. All up and down my residence corridor each door instantly locked. Every apartment sealed itself against potential decompression because that klaxon meant some portion of the station had been breached.

I pounded on the door to my apartment to no avail. I'd been locked out. My heart raced but all those drills helped me push down my own dread and I settled for repeating "Holy crap!" under my breath a dozen times.

I looked at the Ersommerey, wanting to both blame them but also get them to safety. They very possibly had just solved my money woes and I doubted they knew their way around the station. "Okay, don't panic, but we need to get to a secure space."

The bearlings looked oblivious to the danger, and merely pawed at their ears in annoyance.

"What is that obnoxious noise?" said Blichael.

"How long have you been on station?" I said.

"Mere days," said Strichael.

"How many days?"

"Counting today? Just one."

"How are you even roaming the station then? There's a mandatory orientation training."

"Oh, that," said Blichael. "We were excused from it."

"No one gets excused from orientation." The klaxon continued to sound, suggesting the breach hadn't been resolved yet, which meant it was probably a big hole and the situation more dire than I could imagine. I grabbed each of the Ersommerey by a paw and began hauling them down the corridor. Owing to the conservatism of Glamorkan design, there were emergency alcoves at several spots along the way that would be safer if the hallway itself lost containment.

"We were," said Strichael. "The people in charge were convinced we already knew everything we needed to know."

Blichael nodded. "We passed several written tests on our way here and had the results transmitted in advance to the station's authorities."

"It's mandatory. Do you understand what that word means? It's so you know what to do in emergencies. Like when this klaxon sounds."

"Could you turn it off now?" Strichael winced. "It's hurting my ears."

"What kind of emergency does it portend? Is it predictive or descriptive?" asked Blichael.

"Oh, those are good points," said Strichael.

"Well, thank you," said Blichael.

"The worst kind," I said as I hurried them along. "The station's been breached."

The bearlings stopped and turned to one another.

"Somebody really ought to do something."

"Somebody who knows more about stations than we do."

They turned back to me, gazing up with the innocence of terrestrial bear cubs. "We're not good at emergencies."

"Keep moving. It's not much farther."

"Thank you for your assistance. Do feel free to go ahead and emerge."

"What?"

"Isn't that what one does in an emergency? Emerge?"

I wanted to scream at them. How could alien physicists be so stupid? "Do you not not understand what's happening? There's nowhere for me to emerge, to or from, this corridor has been sealed off. I'm trying to get us to an emergency alcove that will offer some protection if the corridor is blown out."

"Blown out? That doesn't sound good," said Strichael.

"This is one of those situations where the inadequacy of English as a language for interspecies communication really comes through."

"How so?"

"Well the word good. It's profoundly vague and relativistic. Not to mention, judgmental. What we find to be good could conceivably be vastly different from what the Human Melody Wilder finds to be good."

"I see," said Strichael. "That's remarkably insightful."

"Isn't it though?"

"So what you're saying is, in addition, something that is good today might be perceived as more or less good tomorrow, as a function of intervening experiences of the parties involved."

"You understand it completely," said Blichael.

"Thank you. Apparently this noise, despite being quite annoying, has not impaired my cognitive function."

"Well, surely that's good," said Blichael.

"Both of you, just shut up!" And to my surprise the bearlings did, but only after regarding me with the most wounded of looks.

In a perfect world, I'd be safe and secure in my apartment. In an emergency, it had its own atmospheric integrity because that's just the way the Glamorkan overbuilt. But I wasn't in my apartment so I had to settle for the next best option. I'd never heard of one of their stations losing containment on any scale, big or small. The Glamorkans are sticklers for safety, with double and triple redundancies built into every system. Which is why, even in a residential corridor there were emergency alcoves and communication pads along the wall after every five apartment doors. I raced ahead of the babbling Ersommerey to finally reach the nearest of them, two doors beyond my apartment.

I tapped the main panel to activate containment, and an emergency forcefield flickered into existence, sealing us off from the rest of the corridor. I tapped again, sending a query to security, when a second ripple of energy popped into existence just behind me. The Ersommerey were within the safety of the first forcefield but several steps behind me. They bumped into the new energy curtain, face first. It flickered at the contact with a staticky violet flash that shocked their snouts and caused them to stumble backward. I could see them rubbing their noses and speaking to one another, but I couldn't hear them. The field permitted light to pass, but not sound.