«Ferngal hasn't the imagination,» Potria protested.
«Its lovely,» Plenna said, admiring the smooth lines.
Iranika sputtered. «Lovely but useless!»
«How do you know?» Potria snapped.
While her servos were taking care of Keff, Carialle kept vigil on the mountain range to the south. No rain was falling, so where had that lightning, if it was lightning, come from? An electrical discharge of that much force had to have a source. She didn't read anything appropriate in that direction, not even a concentration of conductive ore in the mountains that could act as a natural capacitor. The fact that the bolt had fallen so neatly at Keff's feet suggested deliberate action.
The air around her felt ionized, empty, almost brittle. After the bolt had struck, the atmosphere slowly began to return to normal, as if the elements were flowing like water filling in where a stone had hit the surface of a pond.
Her sensors picked up faint rumbling, and the air around her drained again. This time she felt a wind blowing hard toward the mountain range. Suddenly the scarlet bolts struck again, two jagged spears converging on one distant peak. Then, like smithereens scattering from under a blacksmiths hammer, minute particles flew outward from the point of impact toward her.
She focused quickly on the incoming missiles. They were too regular in shape to be shards of rock, and also appeared to be flying under their own power, even increasing in speed. The analysis arrived only seconds before the artifacts did, showing perfect spheres, smooth and vividly colored, with one sector sliced off the front of each to show a lenslike aperture. Strangely, she scanned no mechanisms inside. They appeared to be hollow.
The spheres spiraled around and over her, as if some fantastic juggler was keeping all those balls in the air at once. Carialle became aware of faint, low-frequency transmissions. The spheres were sending data back to some source. She plugged the IT into her external array.
Her first assumption—that the data was meant only for whatever had sent each—changed as she observed the alternating-pattern of transmission and the faint responses to the broadcasts from the nontransmitting spheres. They were talking to each other. By pinning down the frequency, she was able to hear voices.
Using what vocabulary and grammar Keff had recorded from Brannel and the others, she tried to get a sense of the conversation.
The IT left long, untranslatable gaps in the transcript. The Ozran language was as complex as Standard. Keff had only barely begun to analyze its syntax and amass vocabulary. Carialle recorded everything, whether she understood it or not.
«Darn you, Keff, wake up,» she said. This was his specialty. He knew how to tweak the IT, to adjust the arcane device to the variables and parameters of language. The snatches of words she did understand tantalized her.
«Come here,» one of the colored balls said to the others in a high-pitched voice. «. . . something) not . . . like (untranslatable).»
». . . (untranslatable) . . . how do . . . know . . .» Carialle heard a deep masculine voice say, followed by a word Brannel had been using to refer to Keff, then another unintelligible sentence.
». . . (untranslatable).»
«How do you know?»
An entire sentence came through in clear translation. Carialle perked up her audio sensors, straining to hear more. She ordered the servo beside the weight bench to nudge Keffs shoulder.
«Keff. Keff, wake up! I need you. You have to hear this. Aargh!» She growled in frustration, the bass notes of her voice vibrating the tannoy diaphragms. «We get a group of uninhibited, fluent native speakers, situated who knows where, and you're taking a nap!»
The strange power arcs that she had sensed when they first landed were stronger now. Did that power support the hollow spheres and make them function? Whoever was running the system was using up massive power like air: free, limitless, and easy. She found it hard to believe it could be the indigenous Noble Primitives. They didn't have anything more technologically advanced than beast harness. Carialle should now look for a separate sect, the «overlords» of this culture.
She scanned her planetary maps for a power source and was thwarted once again by the lack of focus. The lines of force seemed to be everywhere and anywhere, defying analysis. If there had been less electromagnetic activity in the atmosphere, it would have been easier. Its very abundance prevented her from tracing it. Carialle was fascinated but nervous. With Keff hurt, she'd rather study the situation from a safer distance until she could figure out who was controlling things, and what with.
No time to make a pretty takeoff. On command, Carialle's servo robots threw their padded arms across Keff's forehead, neck, chest, hips, and legs, securing him to the weight bench. Carialle started launch procedures. None of the Noble Primitives were outside, so she wouldn't scare them or fry them when she took off. The flying eye-balls would have to shift for themselves. She kicked the engines to launch.
Everything was go and on green. Only she wasn't moving.
Increasing power almost to the red line, she felt the heat of her thrusters as they started to slag the mineral-heavy clay under her landing gear, but she hadn't risen a centimeter.
«What kind of fardling place is this?» Carialle demanded. «What's holding me?» She shut down thrust, then gunned it again, hoping to break free of the invisible bonds. Shut down, thrust! Shut down, thrust! No go. She was trapped. She felt a rising panic and sharply put it down. Reality check: this could not be happening to a ship of her capabilities.
Carialle ran through a complete diagnostic and found every system normal. She found it hard to believe what her systems told her. She could detect no power plant on this planet, certainly not one strong enough to hold her with thrusters on full blast. She should at least have felt a twitch as such power cut in. Some incredible alien force of unknown potency was holding her surface-bound.
«No,» she whispered. «Not again.»
Objectively, the concept of such huge, wild power controlled with such ease fascinated the unemotional, calculating part of Carialle's mind. Subjectively, she was frightened. She cut her engines and let them cool.
Rescue from this situation seemed unlikely. Not even Simeon had known their exact destination. Sector R was large and unexplored. Nevertheless, she told herself staunchly, Central Worlds had to be warned about the power anomaly so no one else would make the mistake of setting down on this planet. She readied an emergency drone and prepared it to launch, filling its small memory with all the data she and Keff had already gathered about Ozran. She opened the small drone hatch and launched it. Its jets did not ignite. The invisible force held it as firmly as it did her.
Frequency analysis showed that an uncapsuled mayday was unlikely to penetrate the ambient electromagnetic noise. Even if she could have gotten one in orbit, who was likely to hear it in the next hundred years? She and Keff were on their own.
«Ooooh.» A heartfelt groan from the exercise equipment announced Keff's return to consciousness.
«How do you feel?» she asked, switching voice location to the speaker nearest him.
«Horrible.» Keff started to sit up but immediately regretted any upward movement. A sharp, seemingly pointed pain like a saw was attempting to remove the rear of his skull. He put a hand to the back of his head, clamped his eyes shut, then opened them as wide as he could, hoping to dispel his fuzzy vision. His eyelids felt thick and gritty. He took a few deep breaths and began to shiver. «Why is it cold in here, Can? I'm chilled to the bone.»
«Ambient temperature of this planet is uncomfortably low for humans,» Carialle said, brisk with relief at his recovery.
«Brrr! You're telling me!» Keff slid his legs around and put his feet on the ground. His sight cleared and he realized that he was sitting on his weight bench. Carialle's servos waited respectfully a few paces away. «How did I get in here? The last thing I remember was talking to Brannel out in the field. What's happened?»
«Brannel brought you in, my poor wounded knight. Are you sure you're well enough to comprehend all?» Carialle's voice sounded light and casual, but Keff wasn't fooled. She was very upset.
The first thing to do was to dissolve the headache and restore his energy. Pulling an exercise towel over his
