guards seemed bathed in a bright-orange glow, then faded out. There was nothing left of them but some burns in the ship’s carpet and an extremely unpleasant odor.
“Close the hatch! Let’s get out of here!” Trelig shouted, and Yulin needed no more urging. There was a shudder and a whine, and the clunking sound of docking equipment being jettisoned, and then, almost before the other two were seated and strapped in, Yulin took off.
“Hold it, you idiot!” Trelig snapped. “You don’t want to kill us! We’re away! They can’t get to us now!”
Yulin seemed to stare at the man and at the controls for a moment, as if in a daze. Then, with a little quiver, he snapped out of his trance.
The robot sentinels shot their challenges, and Trelig gave the codes needed to get past them.
“Where to?” Ben Yulin asked Antor Trelig.
“Might as well take a look at this incredible planet,” the boss replied. “I’m kind of curious about it myself.”
Yulin brought the ship around, and eased slowly back toward the strange-looking orb.
Trelig turned to the figure of Nikki. “Gil Zinder!” he called. “Come to the fore and join us!”
There was a slight, subtle change in the manner of the fat girl, and she slipped off the straps and came up to the screen.
Gil Zinder was fascinated in spite of himself. “Incredible!” he said in his daughter’s voice.
“But why are there two completely different halves?” Trelig wondered. “Look—you got all those jewel faces on the south, but you can tell it’s lots of green and ocean and stuff like that. Our kind of world. Then you got that great dark-amber strip around the equator, and then a whole different kind of world up top.”
“The poles are interesting, too,” Gil Zinder noted. “See how dark and thick they are, and how huge. Almost like great buildings hundreds, maybe thousands, of kilometers across.”
“Let me swing down around one of those poles,” Yulin suggested. “Look at the center of them.”
They looked, and saw what he meant. In the center was a great, yawning hexagonal shape composed of absolute darkness. “What is it?” Trelig wondered aloud.
Gil Zinder thought a moment. “I don’t know. Perhaps something like our big dish, only much more sophisticated.”
“But why hexagons?” Trelig persisted. “Hell, they’re
“The Markovians were in love with the hexagon,” Yulin told him. “Their ruins are full of them; their cities are built in that shape. I saw one as a child.”
“Let’s take a look at the north,” Trelig suggested. “It’s so wildly different. There must be a reason for it.”
Yulin applied power, and the image swirled and whirled on the screen. “Kind of tricky,” the pilot told them. “Ships like this weren’t built to go this slow except in landing and docking modes.”
They crossed the equator, a true barrier they saw—strange, imposing, and opaque.
“I wish we had some instruments,” Zinder said, genuinely interested in something again. “I would love to know what makes those strange patterns. Methane, ammonia, all sorts of stuff, looks like.”
They crossed the terminator and went into darkness.
“Somebody’s living there, though,” Trelig noted, pointing. Some of the areas in some of the hexes were lit, and there were a few clear major cities down there.
“A pity we can’t get a little closer,” Zinder said sincerely. “The atmospheric distortion is really intense.”
“Maybe a little lower,” Yulin answered. “I’ll try to skim just over the top of the stratosphere. That’ll keep us high enough to be effectively in a vacuum, but low enough to see some detail.”
Hearing no dissent, he cautiously took the ship down. They crossed the terminator once again and went into blinding sunlight.
And then the engine seemed to give a start, and the lights flashed.
“What’s the matter?” Trelig snapped.
Yulin was genuinely puzzled. “I—I don’t know.” It happened again, and he took over manual helm and started to fight it. “Sudden losses of power, very intermittent.”
“Take us up!” Trelig commanded, but, at that moment, the lights really went out.
“We’re dropping like a stone!” screamed Yulin. “My God!”
Trelig reached over, threw two switches. Nothing happened. He threw a third. Still nothing. They were in almost total darkness in the cabin, and even these actions were made more by feel.
And then everything came on again. There was a whining noise from the rear and in front.
Ahead, a panel rolled back, revealing a nasty landscape only ten or so kilometers beneath them. Trelig reached out, grabbed a wheel-shaped device depressed into the copilot’s panel.
Lights and power went out again, but now it was a rocky trip, the ship banged and buffeted by strange forces. Trelig grabbed the wheel and started fighting for control of the ship.
The view, Yulin realized, was a real one—they were looking out some sort of forward window.
“This thing was designed for in-atmosphere work as well as shuttle,” Trelig said between clenched teeth, fighting for control with the weakened muscles of Renard. “The wings finally deployed. Even if power cuts out again, I think I can dead-stick it in.”
Yulin watched the landscape approach with horrifying suddenness. Trelig fought to keep the nose up, yet he had to be cautious or he would miss seeing the ground at all.
The power was out again now, and Trelig had managed to slow the craft, but not enough.
“Find me a level spot with about twenty kilometers to roll in!” he yelled.
“This thing’s got wheels?” Yulin managed, peering out.
“Don’t be funny!” snapped the boss. “Both of you get strapped in! I don’t think we’ll get power again long enough to get her up, and this will be a real wallop!”
“There! A flat area ahead! See it?” Yulin screamed.
Trelig saw, and aimed for it, the ship rocking this way and that. They hit. What saved them, they decided later, was the much denser atmosphere, which slowed the craft enough. Just enough.
They hit with a tremendous bang, and Yulin cried out in pain as the cracked rib and other bruises were suddenly fully activated once again.
They skidded over barren rock, seemingly forever, and they had to ride it out. Finally, they struck an upward incline that almost turned them over, but managed to spin them around and finally halt them instead.
Trelig groaned, undid his straps, and looked around. Yulin was out cold. For the first time he noticed the torn clothing and bruises and gashes. He wondered where Mavra Chang had come by them.
Zinder fared little better. The bouncing and straps had caused some deep depressions and gashes and cut off the circulation in a few places, but he now seemed to be all right, just dizzy from shock.
Trelig tried to get up and discovered that he, too, was dizzy. He fell down twice, and his head pounded. His arms ached horribly from the effort of the landing. But he’d made it. He’d brought them in.
He looked out at the bleak landscape. A lot of barren, blackish rock against a dark and dense atmosphere of—who knew? Nothing they could breathe, anyway.
They were alive—but for how long?
South Zone
“We detected the energy burst in our routine monitoring of the satellite,” Gol Miter’s artificial voice told him through the interzone embassy communications system. “At first we had some trouble locating them, but we managed a plot thanks to their taking their time. Careful orbit, nice survey techniques. What I wouldn’t give to see this planet from space!”
Ortega joined in that sentiment. “But they went down anyway? I didn’t get any reports.”
“Finally clipped it a little low, got within the Well’s influence, and got nonteched, same as the first one. The reason you haven’t heard is that they had swung up North for a look. Near as we can tell, they went down in 1146
