'Maybe someday J.D. will decide to change, too,' Zev said.
A spinner crept from a fold. Nerno's tentacle snapped out and grabbed it and teased it into spinning and urged it in a tight circle and started to weave another pouch.
'Can we look around?' Stephen Thomas said.
'You would like to see other parts of me.'
'Yes.,,
'The attendants will take you to what you wish to see.,,
Three lifeliners crept into the chamber.
The lifeliners led Victoria, Satoshi, and Stephen Thomas out of Nemo's chamber through the same path. At the first split in the path, two went one way and one went another.
'See you guys later,' Stephen Thomas said. He strolled after the spinning creature and disappeared between two curtains.
Victoria started to call after him.
'He'll be all right,' Satoshi said.
Victoria stepped back, took a shallow breath of the fetid air, and blew it out abruptly.
'I know,' she said. 'But I'd feel easier if our guides didn't look so much like scorpions.'
Intellectually she understood all the reasons for believing they were safe with Nemo. Emotionally, she had a harder time. She was very glad Nemo had not offered them all decorative food.
I wonder how you turn it down if you don't want it? she said to herself. Maybe you say, Thank you very much, but I don't care to be decorated. Satoshi grinned. 'They do look like scorpions, don't they? Not as mean, though, or they'd be beating the hell out of each other right now.'
The other two lifeliners scuttled down the path. At the next fork in the corridor, they diverged.
Satoshi grabbed Victoria in a quick, fierce hug, then hurried after his lifeliner.
Victoria descended through twisting tunnels, curving tubes of watered silk that spiraled steeply downward. The color-shot patterns quivered beneath her footsteps, and the lifeliner scuttled drunkenly along the shifting floor.
Victoria jumped, experimentally, cautious because of the low gravity. She hit the ceiling, pressing into the warm, slightly sticky fabric. She broke away from it with a faint ripping sound, bounced to the floor, and rebounded. By the time she came to a sprawling halt she
was laughing at the position she was in, and even at her fear.
Above her, the ceiling darkened where she had hit it. A shape passed over the bruise. The silk dimpled from the other side as one of Nerno's attendants stepped lightly across the upper curve of the tunnel. It was like being underwater during rain. The brief shadow of the cloud, the quick touch of raindrops sweeping delicately across the surface. The shadow faded; the bruise disappeared.
Victoria continued down the tunnel.
The air grew sharp and clear. Ozone tinged it. When she touched her hair, static electricity crackled.
And the gravity grew stronger.
At first she thought she was imagining the gradual effect, but it was real. It makes sense, she thought. Grade-school physics. I knew there had to be something inside Nerno's ship at least as dense as neutronium. And I'm getting closer to it.
The LTM sensors registered a slight increase in the radiation level.
Nothing dangerous yet. Victoria knew she should not stay long, but curiosity drew her on.
The lifeliner scrambled onward and downward, leading her toward a lambent glow.
Victoria followed the creature around a bend in the tunnel.
The creature stopped. The tunnel ended its spiral and curved abruptly straight down.
Victoria glanced back. Her escape route was open and clear. She crossed the last few meters to the sharp curve of the tunnel, passing the lifeliner.
A thick panel of transparent webbing covered the end. She knelt on the floor and gazed down through the clear surface. It was like looking into a well, a well lit from below, or through a pane of old, wavery glass.
A shining sphere lay in the center of Nerno's planetoid. A curving pattern of pale cables suspended it and held it in place-held the planetoid in the proper relationship to it. Here and there, more of Nemo's creatures crept about. They looked like the lifeliners, but they had much heavier carapaces, shorter spinners, legs nearly invisible. They picked their way across the suspension cables. In front of them, the white cables flexed in response to the spinners' motion and the faint occasional vibration of Nerno's sphere. Behind them, they left dark metallic rope of twisted wire.
Victoria ignored the faint scratching noise behind her. She wished she could see into the sphere, but she knew it was protecting her from radiation and energy flux that would kill her, and all her colleagues, and probably Nemo as well. The sphere hid the engine that powered Nemo's voyaging.
The lifeliner scratched persistently at the floor. Victoria finally noticed the sound and glanced over her shoulder.
The creature huddled over a tangled tracery of silk. It scratched again, ran a little way up the tunnel, stopped, and ran back toward her. It did not turn; it ran both directions with equal ease. Wherever it moved, it trailed a line of silk. Its scorpion tails twitched, fore and aft. ,,Okay,' Victoria said. 'You're right. It's time to get out of here.'
She rose, glanced one last longing time into the center of Nemo's starship, and followed the lifeliner back toward the surface.
'Thank you for showing me,' she said aloud to the creature and silently to Nemo, using her internal link.
'You are welcome,' Nemo said.
Satoshi followed the small scuttly creature spinning black silk before him. He wanted to get close to the lifeliner, to pick it up and inspect it, to subject it to the electronic gaze of the LTM clinging to his shirt. J.D. had asked him to be careful, and he approved of her caution. But he wanted to see and understand every facet of the environment surrounding him.
The wide, low corridor narrowed, the deep-fissured
walls smoothed, and the firm, springy floor dropped into a slope. Satoshi climbed downward. The light began to fade. The slope ended in a tall, cylindrical chamber hung with heavy, fibrous curtains and pierced with two more tunnels slanting up and out, like the one through which he had descended.
The lifeliner stopped and huddled against the wall.
Satoshi sat on his heels beside the creature. The lifeliner rubbed against the wall, severing the silk.
'Is this the end of the road?' Satoshi said softly.
He walked around the edge of the chamber, touching the long bright swaths of drapery.
They open, he thought.
He looked up.
Long-lidded glittery eyes looked back.
Satoshi started and spun around.
At the top of each set of curtains, a creature clung to the vaulted ceiling. If Satoshi had not met Nemo, he might not have recognized them as creatures, or the circular fissure as their eye-slits. The creatures hugged the wall, arching long legs overhead till they touched at the center of the ceiling. The legs pressed upward and outward like an arch, holding the creatures in place.
The mouth parts of the creatures, tremendously enlarged, formed the curtains.
One of the sets of curtains suddenly billowed wetly outward. A blast of oily, pungent air swept over Satoshi, knocking him down and slapping him to the floor. The pressure pushed the hot fumes up his nose. He sneezed convulsively, three times, four.
The curtains fell back and the tempest vanished.
Satoshi lay flat, catching his breath, breathing shallowly. His eyes and throat stung. A second set of curtains quivered. He ducked and buried his head beneath his arms as the curtains billowed and a second blast crashed over him.
He looked up and around just in time to see the third set of curtains quiver. He watched long enough to see them open, pulling apart in the center, remaining closed at top and bottom. Beyond the curtains, acid
dripped down color-striped stone, dissolving it, releasing roiling clouds of gas.
