The Reaches

past or into a neighboring residential tower.

I took the cage in my left hand and shook it to test the structure. The bars were grown as a unit, not tied together where they crossed. They were finger-thick, hard and obviously tough; but my bar would go through them like light through a window.

'Ho! Federation dog!' I snarled. I pitched my voice low though loud enough for the prisoner to hear. I could still brazen out my presence if I had to. 'Come close to me or it'll be the worse for you!'

'I don't think he can move, Jeremy,' Piet said from behind me. 'We'll have to carry him.'

I turned, my mouth open and the tip of the bar sliding from beneath my cape. Piet was indistinguishable from a Chay in his gray cape, but his voice was unmistakable.

'Yeah, well,' I said. I switched my bar on. 'I'll drag him out, then.'

The blade zinged across the bars. I cut up, across and down, then bent to slash through the base of the opening. I wondered how the Chay had created the cage to begin with, since it didn't appear to have a door anywhere. I couldn't believe they'd simply grown it around their prisoners.

Piet caught the section as it started to fall. He held a cape to me as I hung my bar. I'd brought an extra garment myself, so Piet tossed his spare onto the cage floor to be rid of it.

My boot skidded on the slimy surface. I had to grab the frame to keep from falling. One of the prostrate figures moaned softly. I raised his torso, tugged the cape around him, and lifted him in a packstrap carry.

The cut section now hung from the hinge of tape Piet had wrapped around it. When I ducked out, he taped the other side so that our entry wasn't obvious.

The prisoner was a dead weight, though a modest one. It was like carrying an articulated skeleton, more awkward than heavy. Piet took the man's other arm and we strode back the way we'd come.

'Do Chay get drunk, do you suppose?' I said.

'Let's hope so,' Piet said. 'We're a couple of fools to do this.'

The few remaining pedestrians scurried along with their heads down. 'If the Chay have a curfew. .' Piet said, speaking my thought.

'The dome wall isn't very thick except where the door is,' I replied. 'I can cut a way out if the gate's closed. We can.'

The tunnel was open. A Chay in a violet garment entered as we neared it. We passed him in the other direction. He called out in his language. We ignored him. I walked on my toes to approximate the mincing Chay gait until we were around the first bend in the gateway.

The sunlight outside was as faint as my hope of salvation. I drew a great breath through my filter and said, 'So far, so good.'

The crews of the airships on guard didn't challenge us. Some of the Chay were eating beneath their veils. The mat of vegetation rolled underfoot, absorbing high-frequency ground shocks and smoothing them into gentle swells.

A tall figure strode toward us from the shadow of a translucent brown dome. 'I'll carry him, if you like,' Stephen offered in a low voice.

'He's not heavy,' Piet said.

We walked on. Stephen fell into step behind us and a little to Piet's left, where he could watch our front as well as guarding the rear. This final part of the route was over an organic causeway crossing scores of circular fields only ten or twenty meters in diameter.

The ground rumbled. A line of dust lifted in the distance, kicked into motion by the quake. The causeway swayed gently. Beneath us, plants waved their zebra-striped foliage at us.

'I hadn't expected that the two of you would do this together,' Stephen said in a pale voice. We hadn't spoken during the trek, but we could see that now there were no Chay between us and the edge of the mat.

'We weren't, Stephen,' Piet said. 'Jeremy made a foolish decision quite independently of me.'

'I jumped out of a year's growth when he spoke to me,' I said.

My voice sounded almost normal. That surprised me. I'd just learned that Stephen thought I'd supplanted him in Piet Ricimer's friendship. I'd known there were a lot of ways this jaunt could get me killed, but that one hadn't occurred to me.

'Tsk,' said Stephen. 'I don't lose control of myself, Jeremy.'

I stumbled, then stared at him past the sunken form of the man we carried. 'Do you read minds?' I demanded.

'No,' said Piet. 'But he's very smart.'

'And a good shot,' Stephen said with a throaty chuckle.

I laughed too. 'Well, nobody sane would be doing this,' I said aloud.

Though the mat felt like a closely woven carpet to walk on, it was actually several meters thick. The edge was a sagging tangle of stems, interlaced and spiky. There were no steps nor ramp off the island of vegetation; the Chay never walked on bare soil. The ground beyond bounced the way tremors shake the chest of a sleeping dog.

Stephen hopped down ahead of us. 'Drop him to me,' he said, raising his arms. 'I'll take him from here.'

I looked at Piet. He nodded. 'On three,' he said. 'One, two, three-'

Together we tossed the moaning prisoner past the border. Stephen caught him, pivoting to lessen the shock to the Fed's weakened frame. The landscape heaved violently. Stephen dropped to his knees, but he didn't let his charge touch the ground.

My cape tore half away on brambles as I clambered down, baring my legs to the knee. There was no longer need for concealment, only speed.

Stephen strode onward with the Fed held lengthways across his shoulders like a yoke. Small shocks were incessant now. I had to pause at each pulse to keep from falling when the ground shifted height and angle.

'I should have allowed more time,' I muttered. The Oriflamme was still out of sight beyond the rim of the bowl in which we'd landed.

'You were there before I was,' Piet reminded me.

'Don't worry,' Stephen said. 'They aren't going to leave without us.'

Piet laughed. 'I suppose not,' he agreed.

'I'd thought. .' I said. 'Maybe I'd just put him out of his misery. But I couldn't do that.'

Stephen gave an icy chuckle. 'We've brought him this far,' he said. 'We may as well take him the rest of the way.'

We reached the lip of the bowl. The center of the depression was only twenty meters or so lower than the rolling plain around it, but that was still enough to conceal a starship. Sight of the Oriflamme warmed my heart like the smile of a beautiful woman.

A squeal similar to that of steam escaping from a huge boiler sounded behind us. It was more penetrating than a siren and so loud that it would be dangerous to humans any closer than we were.

I turned. Three cannon-armed dirigibles lifted above the city.

'Here,' said Stephen, swinging his burden to Piet as if the Fed were a bundle of old clothes. 'I'll watch the rear.'

He locked a separate visor down to protect his eyes. A full helmet would have been obvious even under his cowl. Stephen parted his cape and threw the wings back over his shoulders, clearing his flashgun and the satchel of reloads slung on his left side.

I seized the Fed's right arm. 'Run,' Piet said, and we started running.

The Oriflamme was three hundred yards ahead of us. The ground had been still for a moment. Now On Chay shook itself violently. I stumbled but caught myself. The prisoner's legs swung like a pendulum to trip Piet and send him sprawling.

As Piet picked himself up, I glanced over my shoulder. The Chay dirigibles were a hundred meters high. Stephen walked sedately twenty meters behind us, watching our pursuers over his shoulder. The alarm still screamed from the Chay city.

Piet and I ran on. We'd taken only three strides when the bolt from a plasma cannon lit the soil immediately behind us into the heart of a sun.

The shock wave flung us apart. I smashed into a waist-high bush that might have been the ancestor of the mat on which the city was built. It clawed my chest and my legs as I tore myself free.