prey.
The feelers pick up magnetic and electric vibrations from hidden muck crawlers, he recalled.
Electromagnetic … I’m being scanned!
Each time he panted breath through a leg vent, another dura passed. The lake swelled, and he knew the ship must be almost directly below by now. What were they waiting for?
Then a new thought occurred to Blade.
I’m being scanned … but can they see me?
If only he had studied more science at the Tarek Town academy. Although grays tended to be better at abstractions — the reason why they took real names — Blade knew he should have insisted on taking that basic physics course.
Lets see. In human novels, they speak of “radar”… radio waves sent out to bounce off distant objects, giving away the location of intruders, for instance.
But you only get a good echo if it’s something radio will bounce off. Metal, or some other hard stuff.
Blade quickly pulled his teeth back in. Otherwise, his bottom was his softest part, featuring multifaceted planes that might deflect incoming rays in random directions. The gasbag, he figured, must seem hardly more dense than a rain cloud!
Now, if only the urrish altimeter would wait awhile longer before adjusting the balloon’s height, shooting hot flame with a roar to fill the night …
The tingling peaked … then started to diminish. Moments later, coolness stroked Blade’s underside and he sensed the allure of water below. Tentative relief came accompanied by worry, for cold air would increase his rate of sink.
Now? Shall I pull the cord, before the flames turn on and give me away?
Water beckoned. Blade yearned to wash the dust from his vent pores. Yet he held back. Even if his sudden plummet from the sky didn’t draw attention, he would land in the worst lake on Jijo, deep inside the Jophur defense perimeter, presumably patrolled by all sorts of hunter machines. Perhaps the robots had missed him till now because the possibility of floating qheuens had never been programmed into them. But a swimming qheuen most certainly was.
Anyway, the water gave him a strange feeling. There were flickerings under the surface — eerie flashes that reinforced his decision to hold back.
Each passing dura ratified the choice, as a separation slowly increased between Blade and the giant dreadnought, reappearing behind him as a dark curve with glimmering highlights, divided about a third of the way up by a rippling, watery line. It made him feel distinctly creepy.
Abruptly, a pinpoint of brilliance flared from the side of the globe ship, seeming to stab straight toward him.
Here it comes, Blade thought.
But the flaring light was no heat ray. No death beam, after all. Instead, the pinpoint widened. It became a glowing rectangular aperture. A door.
A mighty big door, Blade realized, wondering what could possibly take up so much room inside a mammoth star cruiser.
Apparently — another star cruiser.
From the gaping hangar, a sleek cigar shape emerged with a low hum, moving gradually at first, then accelerating toward Blade.
All right then. Not extinction. Capture. But why send that big thing after me?
Perhaps they saw his obscene gesture, and understood better than he expected.
Once more, Blade readied the rip cord. At the last moment, he would plummet from their grasp … or else they’d shoot him as he fell. Or hunter robots would track him, underwater or overland. Still, it seemed proper to make the effort. At least I’ll get a drink.
Again, night vision gave him trouble. Estimating the corvette’s rate of closure proved futile. In frustration, Blade’s thoughts slipped from Anglic and into the easier grooves of Galactic Six.
This specter of terror — I have seen it before.
This thing I saw last — as it burned down a city.
A city of felons — of sooners — my people.
His legs flexed spasmodically as the ship rushed toward him without slowing…
What the—
… and kept going, sweeping past with a roar of displaced air.
Blade felt hooks of urrish steel yank his carapace at all five suspension points. One anchor broke free, tearing chitin armor like paper, then flinging wildly as the balloon was sucked after the skyship’s wake.
The world passed in a blur, teaching him what real flying was about.
Then the Jophur vessel was gone, ignoring balloon and passenger with contempt, or else indifference. He glimpsed it once more, still climbing steadily toward the Rimmer peaks, leaving him swirling in a backwash of confusion and disturbed air.
Vubben
AFTER A TIME, VUBBEN FINALLY SUCCEEDED IN quelling his busy thoughts, allowing the tywush resonance to pervade his soul, washing away distractions and doubts. Another midura passed, and another prayer circuit, while his meditation deepened. After Loocen set, a vast skyscape of constellations and nebulae passed overhead. Twinkling abode of the gods.
As he rounded back to the west side, another kind of winking light caught one of Vubben’s eyes — a syncopated flash unlike any gleaming star. Still wrapped in his trance, Vubben had to labor just to lift a second stalk and recognize the flicker as coded speech.
It took more effort, and yet a third eye, to decipher it.
JOPHUR SMALLSHIP/DEATHSHIP IN MOTION, flashed the lantern on Mount Ingul. HEADING TOWARD EGG.
The message repeated. Vubben even glimpsed a distant sparkle, echoing the words on a farther peak, and realized that other semaphore stations must be relaying the message. Still, his brain was tuned to another plane, preventing him from quite grasping its significance.
Instead, he went back to the sensory phantasm that had been drawing him inward — an impression of being perched atop a swaying ribbon, one that slowly yawed and pitched like some undulating sea.
It was not an unpleasant feeling. Rather, he felt almost like a youngster again, growing up in Dooden Mesa, zooming recklessly along a swaying suspension bridge, feeling its planks rattle beneath his rims, swooping and banking without a safety rail while lethal drops gaped on both sides. His taut spokes hummed as he sped like a bullet, with all four eyestalks stretched wide for maximum parallax.
The moment came back to him whole — not as a distant, fond memory, but in all its splendor. It was the closest thing to paradise he had ever experienced on Jijo’s rough orb.
Amid the exhilaration, part of Vubben knew he must have crossed some boundary. He was with the Egg now, sensing the approach of a massive object from the west. A deadly thing, complacent and terrible, cruising at a leisurely pace uphill from the Glade.
Leisurely — according to those aboard, that is.
Somehow, Vubben could sense gravitic fields pressing down, tearing leaves from trees, scraping and penetrating Jijo’s soil, disturbing ancient rocks. He even knew intuitive things about the crew within — multiringed entities, far more self-assured and unified than traeki.
Strange rings. Egotistical and driven.
Determined to wreak havoc.
Blade
THE BALLOON’S ALTIMETER MUST BE MALFUNCTIONING, he realized. Or else the fuel tank was running low. Either way, the automatic adjustments were growing more sporadic. Unnerving sputtering sounds
