“I’m beginning to respect old Quantook-LOU,” Joshua said. “He’s been pretty linear with us. Coming straight to a Tyrathca civilization is a good indication he genuinely wants to get the almanac for us.”
“I wouldn’t attribute his behaviour entirely to fair play,” Syrinx said. “Our appearance gave him a simple choice. Go for the number one position, or see Anthi-CL be absorbed by someone else’s unifying alliance. He doesn’t want the almanac data, he needs it desperately.”
“You never used to be this cynical.”
“Not before I met you, no.”
Joshua chuckled, wishing for the first time ever that he had an affinity bond. Not that he needed to check his own crew. Liol would be covering a grin, while Sarha would be casting a sly look his way and Dahybi would pretend it was all going way over his head.
“Trains are moving again,” Beaulieu said. “The ELINTs are tracking five; they all started in the last ten minutes.”
“So tell us why that’s bad.”
“They are all within a hundred and fifty kilometres of the Tyrathca enclave, and are heading towards it.”
“Jesus! Wonderful. Ione, did you get that?”
“Confirmed. I’ll tell Quantook-LOU, not that we can speed things along much at this point.”
The serjeants were now climbing along a tube directly underneath the end of the cylinder, an uncomfortable position. The gap was gradually narrowing as they approached the hub, and the cylinder’s monstrous inertia had become terribly apparent. Ione knew if she was fully human she’d be having constant memory recall of the day when she got her hand caught in her bicycle wheel (six years old, and she’d reached down to try and move a jammed brake block before Tranquillity could stop her). As it was, she could just appreciate the associative link.
“We will enter here,” Quantook-LOU announced. The Mosdva stopped around an airlock hatch in a web junction. One of them placed an electronic module over the rosette keypad on the rim. After a moment, the module’s green LEDs displayed a string of figures. They were tapped into the keypad, and the hatch locks disengaged, allowing it to swing down into the airlock chamber.
“We will go first,” Quantook-LOU said.
Ione waited until the cycle had run, then both serjeants pushed down into the chamber. The inner hatch opened into the junction. Her suit sensors had to disengage filter programs to adapt to the light inside. It was white. She wondered how the Mosdva would cope with that—if they could actually see colour. Not that the question was high on her agenda.
The junction was a sphere thirty metres across, with seven hatchways set into it. Ten soldier-caste Tyrathca were standing around it at conflicting angles, their hoofs wedged deep into the sponge indentations, holding them perfectly still. They were pointing thick maser rifles at the Mosdva group.
Chittering and loud agitated whistles rang through the air as Quantook-LOU talked insistently to the single Tyrathca breeder who was standing among the soldiers. The distributor of resources had taken his suit helmet off.
“What are they?” the breeder asked, its hazel eyes had locked on the serjeants.
“Proof of what I say,” Quantook-LOU replied. “They are the creatures who have come from the other side of the nebula.”
“What Quantook-LOU says is true,” Ione said. “We are happy to meet you. I am Ione Saldana, one of the crew from the starship
Several of the soldiers rustled their antennae when she spoke. The breeder was silent for a moment.
“You speak as us, yet your shape is wrong,” it said. “You are not a caste we know. You are not a Mosdva either.”
“No, we are humans. We learned your language from the Tyrathca who came to our domain on the flightship Tanjuntic-RI. Do you know of it?”
“I do not. The memories of that age are no longer passed on.”
“Bloody hell!” Ione exclaimed over the general communication band. “They’ve junked their records.”
“It doesn’t mean that at all,” Parker said. “The Tyrathca pass useful memories down the generations via their chemical program glands. The details from fifteen thousand years ago are hardly likely to be relevant enough to be maintained in that fashion.”
“He’s right,” Joshua said. “We’re after their electronic files, not family legends.”
“I would like to mediate with the family that governs the electronics of Lalarin-MG,” Quantook-LOU said. “That is why we are here.”
“Tyrathca and Mosdva do not mediate,” the breeder said. “It is the separation agreement. You should not have come here. We do not come to your dominions. We maintain the separation agreement.”
“What about the humans?” Quantook-LOU said. “Should they be here? They are not a part of the separation agreement. The universe outside Tojolt-HI has changed for Mosdva and Tyrathca. A new agreement must be mediated. I can do this. Allow me to mediate. All will benefit, Mosdva, Humans and Tyrathca.”
“You may mediate with Baulona-PWM,” the breeder said. “Two of your escort may accompany you, and the humans. Follow me.”
The tube which the breeder led them down was six metres in diameter, with a cable stretched along the centre supporting clusters of lights at regular intervals. All the Tyrathca walked along the walls as though they were in a gravity field. Their whip-like antennae were waving about with vigorous sweeping motions, like undersized wings. Ione realized the breeder’s antennae were much longer than those of the Tyrathca she was familiar with.
“We always believed them to be balance aids,” Parker said. “It would appear low gravity has encouraged their reuse.”
Her sensors swept over the breeder. It was about ten per cent smaller than Confederation breeders, although it appeared fatter. A smattering of the scales on its sienna-coloured hide had turned pale grey, and there were small lumps on its leg muscles. Its breathing seemed to be mildly erratic, almost as if it was wheezing. When she checked the soldiers, they had similar blemishes. Two of them were also running a temperature.
“They haven’t come through the isolation as well as the Mosdva,” she said.
“Small population base,” Ashly said. “They’ll be running into inbreeding problems. Couple that with the kind of medical difficulties which you get from exposure to freefall, and they’ll probably have a high number of invalid eggs. Considering they don’t have a research base to examine and counter the problems, they’ve done well to survive this long.”
The last tube opened out into the rotating airlock. It was a layout remarkably similar to the one in Tanjuntic-RI, a long cylindrical chamber with three large airlock hatches at the far end leading into Lalarin-MG and a pressure seal halfway along. A low rumbling sound vibrated through the atmosphere as the giant cylinder revolved.
The flightship design was carried over on the other side of the airlock. A waiting freight lift was flanked by archways leading directly onto spiral ramps.
Everyone crowded into the lift together, and it started to descend. Gravity built slowly, causing trouble for the three Mosdva. They had to remove their spacesuits entirely to free their hindlimbs, allowing them to stand on them and their midlimbs. It wasn’t easy; their club-like hind feet were evolving away from dexterity, while their midhands were almost too delicate to carry half of their body weight. When the lift reached the base of the cylinder, gravity was fifteen per cent Earth standard. The Tyrathca were perfectly comfortable with it; Ione reprogrammed her suit actuators to take it into account, making sure the serjeants didn’t go power leaping and compensating for the coriolis factor. Quantook-LOU staggered slowly, moving his limbs with painful unfamiliarity. His two bodyguards were a little better off; they had prosthetic midlimbs to take the weight. Servo mechanisms whined loudly with their every movement. Ione wondered what kind of strain weight was putting on their organs and heart.
The lift doors opened, revealing the interior of the cylinder. Ione had to bring more filters on line to compensate for the glare.
Lalarin-MG was a single open space enclosed by a cyclorama of aluminium alloy. The floors were fully occupied by rank after rank of buildings, the standard tapering towers of all Tyrathca settlements. Here, though,
