Bowl of Heaven

humidity freezing out as it expanded. Cliff shouted “Stay together!” and was first through the opening.

The big Bird Folk, third variety, were twenty meters away. The Mediums and Bigs were edging back, giving them plenty of room. Cliff aimed the laser at the trees nearby and blew hot spots in them. They burst into licking, hungry flame.

The Bird Folk backed away, all of them, arms up in defensive gestures, legs stuttering in fast, short paces. Aybe helped the fire along with dried brush he snatched up. The rest of the crew copied him, moving to their left, behind Cliff. Irma was pulling Howard along.

The trees crackled and gave off plumes of oily smoke. Cliff heard high-pitched calls that he guessed came from the Bird Folk, but there was no time to think, only to run and shoot at the trees, keeping as many burning trunks between them and the Bird Folk as he could. Bowers in the trees exploded with muffled bangs, showering the air with sparks.

The aliens did not move fast. A breeze whipped down from the muggy sky and slid down the butte wall. It gushed out at the base, pushing the flames toward the Bird Folk. Cliff and Aybe formed a team, Cliff watching to be sure they did not get flanked, Aybe shooting at more trees, the others staying close. Inside their suits, they did not have to fight the smoke. Cliff could see legions of the Bird Folk staggering away from them, into the safety of the forest.

They kept on the move long after the Bird Folk had vanished in the growing firestorm. The land began to rise and they pushed on up it, getting enough height to see. The forest ran to the fuzzy distance. Nowhere were there any signs of a town or even a tall building. The fire had gathered momentum and now surged away from the butte wall. They had created a disaster.

Cliff was elated. Panting, the others grinned … except Howard, who sat like a sack of potatoes as soon as the rest stopped moving. Cliff finally had a chance to look at him. A three-inch sliver of metal protruded from Howard Blaire’s arm, through a slashed sleeve. Nasty and bloody — shrapnel from the attempt to block the closing hole.

Given his ripped suit, Howard was breathing local air already. Tananareve got his suit peeled down, extracted the metal shard — Howard refused even to wince — and stopped the bleeding. She had him patched within minutes with a “walking anesthetic” that would not impair his ability to move. Howard stayed silent through it all, looking at the many odd details of the flora and fauna, still doing his job. He even caught something like an insect with his free hand and held its buzzing body for inspection. “Big wings, eyes I don’t understand. It seems — ouch!” The creature shot away.

Cliff gave a hand signal and they gingerly opened their suits to the outside air. Fragrant with odd odors, thick, a bit sour — but the first natural air any of them had breathed in years.

Victory, of a sort. Cliff savored the moment.

He took time to pull the metal spar out of Howard’s arm. It stuck in the bone, then jerked loose. Irma had her medkit open; she handed him antibiotic gel, then superskin spray. They all pooled their medkits and made a selection. Howard asked, “Painkiller?”

Irma asked, “Could you still run? Wait, here’s a local anaesthetic.” She rubbed white cream generously over the bleeding wound.

Beth and the others were back there, probably captured by now. He tried not to think about that.

They pushed on. Howard was able to run with them, but he didn’t speak. He sweated a lot and seemed in shock. He’d been one of the last to be warmed up from the sleep. Cliff suspected he’d been hit with too much strangeness. Just like them all.

TEN

Beth’s team took positions to cover all directions. Tensely they waited and watched. Things were moving. They crouched at the edge of the great bare plain, their backs to the closed air locks.

The space above the Star Pit had become dusty, vague. Dust motes don’t behave that way in vacuum, floating, sparkling, drifting up in currents. Beth never noticed. She and the others were watching Cliff and his team in the air lock, still trapped, still trying to find controls they could work. Then — outside the pressure box, above the tremendous pit in the floor of the butte — space came alight.

All the motes were aglare, lighting Eros and the bottom of the butte and the line of air locks. Through the Star Pit rose a building, a skyscraper, a tremendous hexagonal prism festooned with coiled gray snakes. Metallic snakes. They began uncoiling. Some of them glared white at the head end. Others ended in grabbers, mechanical hands, clusters of nostrils that might be little rockets or sensors.

Beth and three others were inside the pressure box, up against the air lock wall. Tananareve was outside. A huge boxy thing was descending on them. “Look out!” Beth had time to call. “Get away from the Big Box!”

A look and a gasp, and Tananareve ran. Behind her the Big Box settled carefully. A wall in it split. A smaller wedge-shaped thing rolled out on tractor treads.

Consternation blared in her earphones. Beth turned around to see that the hole they’d burned through the aliens’ air lock was closing. The Wickramsinghs and Lau Pin were trying to jam stuff into it, blocking Cliff from climbing through. Shit! Howard Blaire started to try anyway, then pulled his arm and head out and hurled himself backwards as some of the blocking struts bent, then exploded.

A snaky arm from the tractor plucked Tananareve from the shadow of Eros and set her inside the Big Box. Another, much larger grab reached out of the bigger vehicle and closed around the human-built pressure box. Air puffed in momentary frost, and Beth felt the pressure change. She looked for the chance to escape, to run.

The crumpled pressure box had already risen too high. If she let go, she’d be killed. Like Beth herself, Mayra and Abduss and Lau Pin were clinging hard to whatever they could reach. The pressure box descended into a much larger cargo bin in the larger vessel.

Many of the walls in the alien ship were transparent, like thick, murky glass. Beth and the rest rolled or crawled out of the wrecked pressure vessel in time to see grapplers close on Eros and lift it against the Big Box’s hull. The thing was immensely strong.

The Big Box rose fast. In sudden hard and tilting thrust, Beth eased herself against the floor of the cargo bin, a smooth transparent surface covered with wedge protrusions so big that she had to wrap both arms around one.

Lau Pin’s voice rose above the general sounds of dismay. “Tananareve? Tana — Oh, shit.”

“Lau Pin? Where are you?”

“She rolled. We’re over … up against a wall. She’s out cold. Her arm’s broken, I’m pretty sure.”

Thrust eased. Vanished. They were falling. They clung to the tie-downs and waited.

ELEVEN

Beth shook herself, trying to keep track of time, at least.

She didn’t believe her in-suit displays. Days had passed.

Beth wrenched around, feeling sluggish. Bile slid up into her throat. She clenched, swallowed, forced it back down. Not the time to get sick.

She blinked at the passing scenery. Beneath her feet lay deep space, yawning vacuum. To the sides, slabs and beams and walls stretched away.

The back of the cup was sliding past. Occasional grapplers and other machinery came into view, some of it working. No living things, just robotic arms and, in the distance, locks. A weird, stressing vision.

She moved slowly. Her body felt numb, as though senses came through a filter. It took hours to get her crew together and make them work.

Fred recovered early. He watched passing scenery, mumbling notes to himself.

They spent the time taking care of Tananareve, and tying harnesses onto the lockdowns available on the