I left Pirraghiz to try to placate him. I could hear Beert in his own room, talking to the robot, but I didn't want to see Beert just then, so I explored. What I was really looking for was some small additional bits of Horch technology to add to the store in my bag, but there wasn't much of that. I did find a nifty zero-G toilet-luckily, because the need was getting acute. Whether the technology was Horch or Beloved Leader, I couldn't tell, but it was kilometers better than anything on Starlab. I would have been glad to take that along if I could. Since I couldn't, I made do with another couple of the glitter-tape books.
When I got back to my room, Beert's Christmas tree was relieving the Wet One of his weapons and gadgets to stow away.
Then it came to me, a branch extended meaningfully. I hesitated, but Pirraghiz commanded, 'Give the weapon to it,' and I passed over my twenty-shot. When it had put the gun away I marked the place, but it was as well there as in my pocket, for the time being.
Then the Christmas tree ordered us into Beert's room. I found him nervously rubbing at a stain on his tunic, his long, supple neck dancing all around his body as he checked his outfit-like a debutante about to be presented to the queen, I thought, and found out how close I was. 'It is the Greatmother of this nest,' he told me. 'She is actually coming here herself to see us! Be very respectful to her, Dan-and when she has gone, you and I have much to talk about.'
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Greatmother did not travel alone. First came a couple of new Christmas trees, dexterously scrambling along the cables and bearing gifts. One had a variety of capsules and clumps of what appeared to be the food Beert had requested, the other a rubbery ovoid the size of a pig. That contained water, and when the Wet One found that out, he begged to have some of it sprayed on him. There wasn't time for that, for the next to enter was the Greatmother herself.
This one was even fatter than the Greatmother of Beert's nest, and a lot more fashionably dressed. She wore silvery body armor that covered not only her belly but nearly her whole torso. It struck me that that had to be uncomfortably heavy. Garments and all, the creature had to mass at least a quarter of a ton.
But not, of course, here. She came floating weightlessly into the reception chamber, towed by a pair of glass robots to save her the bother of swarming along the cables herself. Her long neck was covered with bangles like a Ubangi's, and it was dancing a hula of greeting. The Greatmother gave the most cursory of glances at the clutch of us lesser species, and addressed herself directly to Beert. 'I welcome you, Djabeertapritch of the Two Eights,' she declared, touching her nose almost to his. 'We are glad to have you in our nest, but how does it happen that you come?'
It was clear that Beert was the one she was welcoming. I was sure that if Pirraghiz and I had turned up without a live Horch as company, our reception would have been a lot less hospitable. For Beert, she was different. The Greatmother was thrilled to meet a conspecific who had endured the vile captivity of the Others. She wasn't disposed to question Beert's stumbling explanation of his nest's history and the rapidly invented mix-up that had brought him here, either. Actually his rather creative description of the blunders that had made it happen amused her. She had a superior kind of tolerance of one planet in the Horch federation for another, reminding me of the way Canadians talked about New Zealanders in the British Commonwealth. 'Well, what do you expect of a bunch of Eight Plus Threes?' she asked jovially. She cast a mildly disapproving eye at the amphibian and me. 'It is odd, however,' she added, 'that Horch should concern themselves with the problems of lesser species.'
'They are more worthy than they seem, Greatmother,' Beert said humbly. 'Permit me to introduce them-'
She shrugged that idea away impatiently, neck and arms all twisting at once. 'My least of grandsons is interested in such other organisms. I am not. But tell me of your captivity, Djabeertapritch. You were allowed no machines at all? But how did you live?'
I am sure Beert had more urgent things to talk to her about than his nest's tribulations, but he was not capable of denying the request of a Greatmother. 'We were Horch,' he said simply. 'We used what we had or could make. For building materials we took clay from the ground and long, thin shoots from the local vegetation-'
I didn't want to hear it all again, so I took a chance. 'Excuse me,' I said deferentially, addressing Beert. 'The Wet One needs water, so if we may withdraw-?'
The Greatmother answered for him; it was the first time she had spoken to me directly. 'Go, go,' she said irritably. 'But leave food for Djabeertapritch; the poor thing must be hungry.'
We all crowded into one of the other rooms, or all but Beert and his personal robot, which remained behind to serve him his meal. I had two things on my mind. For one, I knew I was going to have that little talk with Beert before long, and I wasn't looking forward to it. I was definitely looking forward to the other, though. However much I tried to warn myself that there were many hurdles still to get across, I could almost taste the nearness of my escape to Earth. While Pirraghiz was taking charge of the food we had carried away with us, sniffing and tasting each item, I looked around the room for things that might be useful when I got back. By the time she had approved a few things for my meal, I decided there weren't any. But there might be information worth having.
Pirraghiz handed me a collection of fruits and spoke doubtfully to the amphibian. 'I do not know if any of this is suitable for you, Wet One.'
The Wet One waved a flipper at her. The robot with the sack of water was carefully spraying his rubbery skin, a squirt at a time, like Spanish peasants taking wine from a goatskin, while a second robot was busy mopping up the droplets that splashed away. The Wet One was wriggling with pleasure as his skin welcomed the damp, but it did not distract him from his purpose. 'I do not need to eat now,' he grumbled, in that thick, muddy voice. 'I will eat well when I have been transmitted to my own planet. When will that happen?'
His bath boy-robot answered him. 'The channels are being prepared. The Greatmother will give the order to transmit you when she wishes.'
I thought that was a good opportunity to try to get some information, so I interrupted. 'Can you tell us what kind of a place we're in?'
The spraying robot did not respond, but the one on mop-up detail stopped what it was doing and extruded a glittering branch of twiglets in my direction. 'This is a nest of the Four and Ones, formerly occupied by the Others,' it said.
That wasn't informative. I said, 'I mean, what is it?' That was no better. The robot stood silent and impassive, only the glittering ball at its top flickering unhelpfully. Pirraghiz sighed, put down the loaf of something she was breaking into pieces for me and issued an order.
'Display the appearance of this artifact we are in,' she commanded the Christmas tree.
It worked. The thing immediately went to the video bowl, fussed with the controls for a moment and did as commanded. An image sprang up in the bowl. It was obviously a space station of some kind, but what it looked like was a child's impromptu building-block construction, all jagged angles and bits and pieces tacked on. It gleamed of metal, though not very brightly. At first I thought it was a kind of engineering drawing, since it was displayed against a background of solid black, like the images I'd seen of other species in the helmet.
But then Pirraghiz said, 'What are those things?' and I saw that the blackness was not quite complete. It was a sky, and not a kind of sky I had ever seen before. It was certainly nothing like the brilliant globular-cluster display of the prison planet. It wasn't even like a starry night on Earth. There were no stars at all. Instead there was a scattering of fuzzily glowing little scraps of light, hard to make out. Most were white, some bluish, one or two a ruddy orange in color. And apart from them there was nothing but blackness-total, unrelieved, unfriendly blackness.
I had not been in love with an astronomer for nothing. 'My God,' I said, 'those are galaxies!'
Ever since the five of us found ourselves on the prison planet, I had been aware that we were far from home. Not this far, though. Not in intergalactic space! Even the globular cluster of stars that surrounded us could have been somewhere within that fuzzy whirlpool of stars that was our own galaxy, but now-
No. We weren't even that close anymore.
I know it's silly. If we had been close enough to see Earth as a star in the sky, say marooned on the surface of
