Tau zero by Poul Anderson

the ship, a metal groan, a rip and a crash. She was not meant for stresses like these. Her safety factors were small; mass was too precious. And she rammed hydrogen atoms swollen to the heaviness of nitrogen or oxygen, dust particles bloated into meteroids. Velocity had flattened the cloud longitudinally, it was thin, she tore through in minutes. But by that same token, the nebulina was no longer a cloud to her. It was a well-nigh solid wall.
    Her outside force-screens absorbed the battering, flung matter aside in turbulent streams, protected the hull from everything except slowdown drag. Reaction was inevitable, on the fields themselves and hence on the devices which, borne outside, produced and controlled them. Frameworks crumpled. Electronic components fused. Cryogenic liquids boiled from shattered containers.
    So one of the thermonuclear fires went out.
    The stars saw the event differently. They saw a tenuous murky mass struck by an object incredibly swift and dense. Hydromagnetic forces snatched at atoms, whirled them about, ionized them, cast them together. Radiation flashed. The object was encompassed in a meteor blaze. During the hour of its passage, it bored a tunnel through the nebulina. That tunnel was wider than the drill, because a shock wave spread outward—and outward and outward, destroying what stability there had been, casting substance forth in gouts and tatters.
    If a sun and planets had been in embryo here, they would now never form.
    The invader passed. It had not lost much speed. Accelerating once more, it dwindled away toward remoter stars.

    Chapter 9
    Reymont struggled back to wakefulness. He could not have been darkened long. Could he? Sound had ceased. Was he deafened? Had the air puffed out of some hole into space? Were the screens down, had gamma-colored death already sleeted through him?
    No. When he listened, he made out the familiar low beat of power. The fluoropanel shone steadily in his vision. The shadow of his cocoon fell on a bulkhead and had the blurred edges which betokened ample atmosphere. Weight had returned to a single gee. Most of the ship's automata, at least, must be functioning. "To hell with melodrama," he heard himself say. His voice came as if from far off, a stranger's. "We've got work."
    He fumbled with his harness. Muscles throbbed and ached. A trickle of blood ran over his mouth, tasting salty. Or was that sweat? Nichevo. He was operational. He crawled free, opened his helmet, sniffed—slight smell of scorch and ozone, nothing serious—and gusted one deep sigh.
    The cabin was a mare's nest. Dresser drawers had burst open and scattered their contents. He didn't notice particularly. Chi-Yuen hadn't answered his queries. He waded through strewn garments to the slight form. Slipping off his gauntlets, he unlatched her faceplate. Her breathing sounded normal, no wheeze or gurgle to suggest internal injuries. When he peeled back an eyelid, the pupil was broad. Probably she had just fainted. He shucked his armor, located his stun pistol, and strapped it on. Others might need help worse. He went out.
    Boris Fedoroff clattered down the stairs. "How goes it?" Reymont hailed.
    "I am on my way to see," the engineer tossed back, and disappeared.
    Reymont grinned sourly and pushed into Johann Freiwald's cabin half. The German had removed his spacesuit too and sat slumped on his bed. "Raus mit dir," Reymont said.
    "I have a headache like carpenters in my skull," Freiwald protested.
    "You offered to be in our squad. I thought you were a man."
    Freiwald gave Reymont a resentful glance but was stung into motion.
    The constable's recruits were busy for the next hour. The regular

    spacemen were busier yet, inspecting, measuring, conferring in hushed tones. That gave them little chance to feel pain or let terror grow. The scientists and technicians had no such anodyne. From the fact that they were alive and the ship apparently working as before, they might have drawn happiness . . . only