There walks a lady we all know Who shines white light and wants to show How everything still turns to gold And if you listen very hard The tune will come to you at last When all are one, and one is all, yeah To be a rock and not to roll. From Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven
The boulder blocked the gap, sucked hard against the bulkhead by the pressure difference between the vacuum here and the still-breathable air on the other side of it.
“Go! Go! Go!” He ‘heard’ the crewmaster in the still intact part of the ship bully her charges into the emergency boats through the comm and sensor band on one of his rocky projections.
There was another rupture in the bulkhead. The boulder broke off a piece of his mass with a grunt and threw it to where it stuck and covered the rupture. “Stay, rock,” he ‘said.’ Another gap was filled, adding to the network of the other pieces of him plugging the leaks of atmosphere in the bulkhead. This was going to hurt like hell when he transformed back to flesh.
“Comms, are you still there?”
The boulder answered, “Yeah. Another one plugged.” Comms didn’t usually turn boulder, but you do what you have to do. He sent the data requested by the crewmaster’s own comm and sensor band.
“Why aren’t you gone yet?” he groused.
She ignored him. “Go into hibernation. I’m coming back.”
“Don’t,” he ordered. Maybe he could actually command her now? Were all her other superiors dead or incapacitated?
“Hibernation,” she repeated.
His scans followed the emergency boats as far as he could, and then he remained, alone, on the abandoned ship. In this form, he could stay alive for several cycles. If he went into hibernation like this, he was good for years. Centuries, even, some said. No one knew exactly what the upper limit was. The problem was, ending hibernation took outside intervention. He wouldn’t be able to reverse it by himself. It might be worth it for a few weeks, in case someone really did get back here. But what if it was one of Them who revived him?
No need to decide quite yet. He began to sing. In this form, he had full control of all kinds of digital data. He could manipulate many voices to play an orchestra, and sing as many parts as he wished, but he just stayed with his human baritone and … trumpets were good. Lots of horns. Drums. A screeching guitar. He didn’t compose his own music, but he did well with the library of pieces he had.
Time passed. He extended the time he had before making the hibernation decision by calling all the pieces of him he had used to plug the whole back to his main mass. Yes, that would hurt like hell if he took a human body again. But why would he? The remaining ship atmosphere leaked out.
From time to time, the ship was pummeled by debris, or the occasional attack barrage. But it didn’t matter. A large section of the bulkhead was gone now. There was no differential pressure to keep him stuck to what was left of it, so he attached himself to it instead.
He had only a few hours left to go when he picked up the life signs. He was prepared to self-destruct if it was one of Them, but as the space suit came within range, his sensor band ‘saw’ the crewmaster’s face.
“Galla!” he said. “You came back!”
The boulder transformed into a man-shaped rock, with the sensory band around his forehead like a third eye.
But his smile turned to a frown as he scanned. “No ship?”
“Sorry, Famus. Lost it on the way. But the area is cleared of Them. We’ll just set up a beacon until our people come get us.”
“So they’ll be here in a couple of hours?” he asked doubtfully, his sensory band reading her suit’s life support.
“More like a couple of weeks,” she said. “I blew it. But you can go into hibernation – you’ll make it. Speaking of which, why aren’t you already in hibernation – it must be past time ….
“Decided I’d rather stay awake,” he said. “And yes, it’s too late. I’ve run down too many resources to start hibernation now.”
“Then I’ve failed,” she said. Ship lost. So many of the crew. And now him as well.
The tone of her voice and the look on her face struck him to the core.
He transformed the entire remaining resource layer of the boulder to walls, merging it with her gold-tinted spacesuit, to create a space with atmosphere. Finally, he endured the pain to transform himself back to flesh.
And then he sang to her.
Polyphemus was a cyclops blinded by Odysseus. That is one story. But there are many stories about Polyphemus, the cyclops whose name means ‘many voices.’ One relates that he loved a nymph called Galatea, and being ugly, wooed her with his music. Their three children, Celtus, Illyrius, and Galas, were said to be the ancestors of the Celts, the Illyrians, and the Gauls.
But of course, that is just a story.
Excellent!