Read Star Rigger's Way for Free Online

nagging , never letting him rest for a moment without conforming to the quarm. Share, merge, unite, never leave a thought untouched. Here: become a plant, become an alien (he had never even seen an alien!). Broil-dammit! Was he strange, just because he alone could not stand it?
    Ooh, to be free of them! That's why he had fled! But he'd never meant to make it permanent.
    (Did the others offend? Is that why you do not wish company?)
    (Whass?)
    Now he was stalled, stalled! Why would the thing not fly? Seated in his sunken dais, he grilled the riffmar on their findings (though he had not been tending them, so how could they have found anything?). He hurled abuse at the quivering creatures, and finally he leaped screaming, scattering them in fright. Odomilk! he shrieked, and when it was brought he sucked on the pods with a vengeance, while the riffmar huddled in their nutrient beds. Nothing like pungent odomilk—but still, there were the riffmar to be attended to. Certain chores they could perform by rote, but hardly what he was demanding now. And he had best be careful; there were only six of the sluggards left. Here, an idea: perhaps there was a maintenance recorder.
    Humming, he set the riffmar to locating the memory cube and then, once they found it, to obeying the cube's silent recitation. Hey-now, the thought-flow amp seemed to be working, so maybe it was just the controls out of kilter. That was more like it—a pity he hadn't thought of the recorder sooner, but after all he was a forest-singer and not a flight-crafter. Corneph—that sot-rotted nuisance would be unbearable if he knew of this. His bloody arrogance could drive anyone from home. Corneph, with his stinking empathic whistle, diving like a fool into the quarm and dragging you off on a mindlark whether invited or not. Lord-o-lord, to be rid of him was worth even this!
    A riffmar peeked shyly at him, awaiting recognition.
    Useless plants! He recognized it with a powerful swat. Hah! Two with one blow!
    Oh damn, now, he needed those two to fly!
    Alarmed, he prodded the limp ferns—but it was no use; they were dead. He sprang to all fours, whiskers curling and twisting. What had they been meaning to tell him?
    The four living riffmar huddled at the control tree, so obviously paralyzed with fear that he approached with unusual caution. What had they learned?
    Ssss. They quivered, struggling to coordinate a reply. Hssshell ffly . . . h-need more uss. One of them collapsed, strained beyond its limit, and the others lifted it gingerly and carried it to the nutrient bed. Ssssss.
    That was it, then; he was finished. He had caught the image before it faded. The controls had been upset by a passing storm; now, with the help of the maintenance memory cube the problem had been corrected, and all he needed to fly again were six riffmar to operate the controls. And all he had left were four.
    Rage boiled in his stomach. He could not fly with only four, and there was no way to speed the growth of the young buds. He could switch on the distress beacon, but there would be no one to hear it; he was far beyond cynthian space. So that was it; he was finished.
    He was also embarrassed beyond description.
    A groan erupted from his throat, and through a deepening haze he saw the riffmar shrinking from him. Damn them! Wailing, spitting, he leaped at the control tree—rebounded with a crash of breaking elements—and launched himself at the riffmar. Two of them fell to his claws, but in his madness he lost his thought-control, and the other two fled shrieking to safety behind the nutrient bed. He forgot them and bounded back over his dais; he skidded, and slammed broadside into the wall. He staggered away, stunned, and hurled himself yowling into the control tree again, where with a smashing of splinters he tumbled, battered, to the deck.
    Later, on awakening, he tore savagely into his stock of bramleaf, and he gorged himself on odomilk. He ignored the riffmar, ignored the broken