The gray qheuens squatted while others unstrapped supplies from their chitin backs. Given enough time, the big fellows might widen the corridor with their digging claws and diamond-like teeth, but Lark felt better sending them back. Who knew how much time they had, with plague spreading on Jijo’s winds? Was it a genocide bug? Ling had found supporting evidence on decoded data wafers, though Rann still denied it could be of Rothen origin.
The glowering starman was obsessed with a different wafer-gleaned fact.
There had been a spy among the station’s staff of outlaw gene raiders. Someone who kept a careful diary, recording every misdemeanor performed by the Rothen and their human servants.
An agent of the Terragens Council!
Apparently, Earth’s ruling body had an informant among the clan of human fanatics who worshiped Rothen lords.
He wanted badly to quiz Ling, but there was no time for their old question game. Not since they fled the Dooden disaster along with Lester Cambel’s panicky aides, plunging through a maze of towering boo. New trails and fresh-cut trunks had flustered the breathless fugitives until they spilled into an uncharted clearing, surprising a phalanx of traeki who stood in a long row, venting noxious vapors like hissing kettles.
Galloping squads of urrish militia then swarmed in to protect the busy traeki, nipping at ankles, as if the humans were stampeding simlas, driving Cambel’s team away from the clearing, diverting them toward havens to the west and south.
Even after finally reaching a campsite refuge, there had been no respite to discuss far-off Galactic affairs. Ling spent her time with the medics, relating what little she had learned from the spy’s notes about the qheuen plague.
Meanwhile, Lark found himself surrounded by furious activity, commanding an ever-growing entourage of followers.
It goes to show, desperate people will follow anyone with a plan.
Even one as loony as mine.
Hoonish bearers took up the grays’ burdens, and the caravan was off again. Half a dozen blue qheuens took up the rear, so young their shells were still moist from larval fledging. Though small for their kind, they still needed help from men with hammers and crowbars, chiseling away limestone obstructions. Lark’s scheme counted on these adolescent volunteers.
He hoped his farfetched plan wasn’t the only one at work.
There is always prayer.
Lark fondled his amulet. It felt cool. For now the Egg was quiescent.
At a junction the earlier zealot cabal had veered left, carrying barrels of exploser paste to a cave beneath the Rothen station. But Lark’s group turned right. They had less distance to cover, but their way was more hazardous.
Jimi the Blessed was among the burly men helping widen the path, attacking an obstruction with such fury Lark had to intervene.
“Easy, Jimi! You’ll wake the recycled dead!”
That brought laughter from the sweaty laborers, and booming umbles from several hoonish porters. Brave hoons. Lark recalled how their kind disliked closed places. The urs, normally comfortable underground, grew more nervous with each sign of approaching water.
None of them were happy to be approaching the giant star cruiser.
The Six Races had spent centuries cowering against The Day when ships of the Institutes would come judge their crimes. Yet, when great vessels came, they did not bear high-minded magistrates, but thieves, and then brutal killers. Where the Rothen and their human stooges seemed crafty and manipulative, the Jophur were chilling.
They demand what we cannot give.
We don’t know anything about the “dolphin ship” they seek. And we’d rather be damned than hand over our g’Kek brothers.
So Lark, who had spent his life hoping Galactics would come end the illegal colony on Jijo, now led a desperate bid to battle star gods.
Human literature has been so influential since the Great Printing. It’s full of forlorn causes. Endeavors that no rational person would entertain.
He and Ling were helping each other descend a limestone chute, glistening with seepage and slippery lichen, when word arrived from the forward scouts.
“Water just ahead.”
That was the message, sent back by Jeni Shen.
So, Lark thought. I was right.
Then he added—
So far.
The liquid was oily and cold. It gave off a musty aroma.
None of which stopped two eager young blues from creeping straight into the black pool, trailing mulc-fiber line from a spool. Hoons with hand pumps kept busy inflating air bladders while Lark steeled himself to enter that dark, wet place.
Having second thoughts?
Jeni checked his protective suit of skink membranes. It might ward off the chill, but that was the least of Lark’s worries.
I can take cold. But there had better be enough air.
The bladders were an untested innovation. Each was a traeki ring, thick-ribbed to hold gas under pressure. Jeni affixed one to his back, and showed him how to breathe through its fleshy protrusion — a rubbery tentacle that would provide fresh air and scrub the old.
You grow up depending on traeki-secreted chemicals to make native foods edible, and traeki-distilled alcohol to liven celebrations. A traeki pharmacist makes your medicine in a chem-synth ring. Yet you’re revolted by the thought of putting one of these things in your mouth.
It tasted like a slimy tallow candle.
Across the narrow chamber, Ling and Rann adjusted quickly to this Jijoan novelty. Of course they had no history to overcome, associating traekis with mulch and rotting garbage.
“Come on,” Jeni chided in a low voice that burned his ears. “Don’t gag on me, man. You’re a sage now. Others are watchin’!”
He nodded — two quick head jerks — and tried again. Fitting his teeth around the tube, Lark bit down as she had taught. The burst of air did not stink as bad as expected. Perhaps it contained a mild relaxant. The pharmacist designers were clever about such things.
Let’s hope their star-god cousins don’t think of this, as well.
That assumption underlay Lark’s plan. Jophur commanders might be wary against direct subterranean assault. But where the buried route combined with water, the invaders might not expect trouble.
The Rothen underestimated us. By Ifni and the Egg, the Jophur may do the same.
Each diver also wore a rewq symbiont to protect the eyes and help them see by the dim light of hand-carried phosphors. Webbed gloves and booties completed the ensemble.
Ling’s tripping laughter made him turn around, and Lark saw she was pointing at him as she guffawed.
“You should talk,” he retorted at the ungainly creature she had become, more monstrous than an unmasked Rothen. Hoons paused from laying down cargo by the waterline, and joined in the mirth, umbling good-naturedly while their pet noors grinned with needlelike teeth.
Lark pictured the scene up above, past overlying layers of rock, in the world of light. The Jophur dreadnought squatted astride the mountain glen, thwarting the glade stream in its normal seaward rush. The resulting lake now stretched more than a league uphill.
Water seeks its own level. We must now be several arrowflights from shore. That’s a long way to swim before we get to the lake itself.
It couldn’t be helped. Their goal was hard to reach, in more ways than one.
Bubbles in the pool. One qheuen cupola broached the surface, followed by another. The young blues crawled ashore, breathing heavily through multiple leg vents, reporting in excited GalSix.
“The way to open water — it is clear. Good time — this we made. To the target — we shall now escort
