The audio-visor hummed. "We're waiting, ICARUS. Go ahead."
They were waiting. Waiting on him. This was the moment—the moment he had hoped to avoid—when other men depended on him to put them into a safe harbor in space. His father was testing him. He was supposed to show the superiority of the breed—the special gifts that made the Jemson men apart.
He closed his eyes for a moment and began to decelerate.
"Careful of the flagship!" Kennedy's voice was low, but tense. "You're cutting in on him."
Dirk forced himself to open his eyes. The universe spun and whirled in a confused circle before him and in the center of that gyrating mass was the flagship. Somehow he missed it.
"Steady on your course, ICARUS!" This was the crisp instruction on the audio-visor.
Caliban rushed toward them, but all space between was a twisting, writhing spectrum of color. Dirk's mind was a pinwheel, spinning in reckless abandon toward oblivion. He couldn't keep his eyes open. He was sick. Really sick. A sob tore through his clenched teeth. He slumped over the controls.
"Lieutenant!" That was Allen's voice, and then, something shoved him to the floor. There was a wrenching, tearing of metal, and a sickening lurch. Resolutely, Dirk kept his eyes tight shut against what he might see when he opened them.
There was a murmur of voices—Kennedy, Allen, Tabor—and then, gradually, a deceleration as the ship settled into Caliban's atmosphere.
It had happened again—only not in an isolated training ship with a fish-faced instructor, but before the entire Armada. They all knew now, and Dirk was almost relieved. It was as if he had relinquished a role that he had been ill-suited to play.