Starrigger

'Do you still record news feeds whenever you can?'

'Every chance I get, just like the program says. I even got the six o'clock on Goliath. Why?'

'How long do you keep 'em?'

'Thirty Standard days, then I pitch them.'

'Merte. Okay, listen. I want you to fetch anything from your news file with these tag-words. 'Corey Wilkes,' 'intelligence,' 'Colonial Assembly,' 'Reticulan,' 'Militia,' and.. um, let's see, what else…'

''Roadmap'?'

'That's a long shot, but go ahead.'

'Why 'Colonial Assembly'?'

'A hunch.'

'Right. Wilkes should turn up like a bad penny. He loves hobnobbing with the great and near-great, makes the feeds all the time. Okay, then, let me go down to that dusty basement where I keep old newspapers. Want me to start now?'

'Yeah,' I said, 'but hold off reading it out until I tell you. Meanwhile, I'm due for a shower.'

Everyone was out of the stall by then, all fresh and scrubbed and settled down to eat. I went to the ordnance locker, got out the liter of Old Singularity, and had a jolt. The tidal forces were terrific. Then it was into the locker- size stall for a steam treatment followed by a fog bath. Standing in the swirling mist, I shut my mind off and the pattern of the last few days emerged crisp and clear. The fine detail was missing, but the overall view was enough. I was beginning to see things, understand things. With a little luck, I'd soon know more. The biggest unknown was still Darla, but even she was slowly taking shape like a wraith in the mist. The fog had parted fleetingly back there on the beach. What had I seen? Could her vulnerability have been grief, her passion the widow's consolation?

After a shave and a change of clothes ? and a second shooter of Old Singy ? I had evolved up to human form again. I went forward.

We spent another twenty minutes in line before we got down near the row of fare-takers. I was in the wrong line if I wanted to see Krause, the sociable sailor, again, so I jockeyed for position and cut somebody off in the next line over. An alien warning signal buzzed angrily behind me.

'Hi, there!'

Krause was looking down, shuffling tickets in his hands. Glancing up he said, 'How's it going, kamr?' Then the recognition. 'Oh. Thought you… uh, had a breakdown.'

'Fixed her up real good. Now, about those fares. You were about to tell me about how we can exchange metal for currency aboard ship, weren't you?'

'Yeah. Forgot to mention it. Sorry.' He took a red disk out of his pocket, attached it carefully to the front port, and smoothed it over. 'Sure, you just drive right in, park, then go up to the — purser's office and make the exchange. He'll give you a chit, and you hand that over when you debark. Oh, and the sticker won't come off.. um, without a special chemical.'

'Wouldn't think of trying to remove it. What d'you think the fare'll be for this rig?'

'Uh, wouldn't know offhand, sir.'

'Guess.'

'About fifty consols.' He thought about it. 'Maybe less.'

'Lots of bodies in here. What about those extra charges you mentioned?'

He looked away. 'Not this trip. Only special runs.'

'Uh-huh.' I pointed to the gaping throat. 'Gee, do you mean we're actually supposed to drive in there?'

He chortled, his manner turning suddenly chummy. 'Yeah, it's a shocker, isn't it? Naw, we're in our fifth year with this boat and we haven't digested a passenger yet. You'll get used to it.' *

'Through there?'

He turned and pointed. 'Yes, sir, that big opening over?'

I took his hat. 'Nice hat,' I said.

'Hey.'

'Here you go ? whoops! Sorry.' When he bent over to get it, I grabbed a handful of greasy yellow hair and fetched his face up against the hatch. He kissed it hard.

'Jake, you shouldn't have,' Susan said as we moved away.

'I know. I did enjoy it, though.'

I drove into the mouth of the beast.

15

The throat was a yawning cavity that narrowed into an esophageal tube tunneling downward into the bowels of the island-beast. The walls of the passage were pale and sweaty, heaving with peristaltic motion. It was slippery going, but the rollers handled it fairly well. After a quarter klick or so the tube opened onto a vast dark chamber. There were hundreds of vehicles already parked here, many others in the process, their headbeams moving in the darkness a long way from the entrance. I followed the line of buggies heading toward them.

'I'll be…' Sam began. Then he said, 'I can't think of anything that fits the occasion. I'm speechless.'

We all were. It took a good while to get to the parking area, and we spent it in silence. Finally we could see sailors in white tops with red and white striped bell-bottoms directing traffic, slicing the gloom with powerful torches. I pulled alongside one of them, a skinny, baby-faced kid, and cracked the port. A faint odor of decayed fish came through, plus a whiff of brackish stagnant water, but the overall smell of the place wasn't hard to deal with. It simply smelled like the sea.

''Where to, sailor? Looks like you're running out of room.'

'Over against the wall, starrigger!' the sailor yelled, playing the torchbeam against a glistening area of greenish-white tissue.

I eased the rig forward until the front of the engine housing kissed the wall. The tissue quivered and drew back slightly, then slowly came back to meet the rig and began oozing over the housing, then stopped.

'Drive into it!' the kid shouted over the din of engine sounds. 'Push it back!'

I did. The wall receded before us, billowing out like a giant curtain. Before long I felt it resist, and I hit the brake.

'Go ahead,' the kid told me in a high voice. 'It'll stretch a klick before it tears a c-meter. C'mon, move that punkin' pigmobile!'

'Aye, aye, Cap'n!' I gunned it, and the wall shivered and yielded. I rammed the rig forward until I heard 'Ho-o-o!'

'Are we the main course, or just the appetizer?' John wanted to know.

'There must be five hundred vehicles in here,' Roland said.

'More,' I ventured.

Somebody rapped smartly on the hatch. I turned to have a torchbeam stab my retinas. 'Hey, swabbie!' I growled. 'Want me to show you how that thing doubles as a suppository?'

'Take it easy, truckle.' It was the same sailor who'd directed us. She was young, very young ? no more than sixteen or so. Antigeronics can't give you that kind of baby-skin. She wore her hair cropped short under a traditional Dixiecup hat, but the hat was gold, not white. And she wasn't all that skinny, either. She was blooming under that deckhand outfit.

'You can't stay here, you know,' she said.

Blinking, I looked around. 'What about non-oxy breathers?'

'Them we don't care about, but all humans go topside. Insurance regs.' She started to leave.

'Wait a minute,' I called after her. 'Don't get testy, now. Just a few questions.'

'Make 'em short. We're way behind schedule.'

'Consolidated Outworlds ? is that a human-occupied maze?'

'Mostly.'

'Hmm. Okay, now, are we actually in the stomach of this thing?'