A Deepness in the Sky

"Take a last look, Sherkaner. Your handiwork." The certainty was gone from Unnerby's voice. Amber Nizhnimor was a soldier; Unnerby had done his duty by her. Now he seemed to be out of combat mode, and so tired that he barely held his belly clear of the airsnow.

Underhill looked out. They were standing a couple of hundred feet above the level of the Tiefer depot. The aurora had faded; the moving points of light, the sky flashes—all were long gone. In that faded light, the depot was a field of splotchy black amid the starlit gray. But the black wasn't shadow. It was the powdered dye they had blasted all across the installation.

"Such a small thing," said Unnerby, "a few hundred pounds of dye-black. You really think it'll work?"

"Oh yes. The first hours of the New Sun are something out of hell. That powder black will make their gear hotter than any design tolerance. You know what happens in that kind of a flash." In fact, Sergeant Unnerby had managed those tests himself. A hundred times the light of a middle-Brightness sun shining on dye-black on metal: In minutes, metal contact points were spot-welded, bearings to sleeves, pistons to cylinders, wheels to rails. The enemy troops would have to retreat underground, their most important outreach depot on the front effectively a loss.

"This is the first and last time your trick will ever work, Sherkaner. A few barriers, a few mines, and we would have been stopped dead."

"Sure. But other things will change, too. This is the last Dark that Spiderkind will ever sleep through. Next time, it won't be just four cobbers in airsuits. All civilization will stay awake. We're going to colonize the Dark, Hrunkner."

Unnerby laughed, obviously disbelieving. He waved Underhill toward the cleft in the rock, and the deepness below. Tired as he was, the sergeant would be the last one down, the setter-of-final-barriers.

Sherkaner had one last glimpse of the gray lands, and the curtains of impossible aurora hanging above.So high, so low, so many things toknow.

NINE

Ezr Vinh's childhood had generally been a protected and safe one. Only one time had his life been in real jeopardy, and that had been a criminally silly accident.

Even by Qeng Ho standards, the Vinh.23 Family was a very extended one. There were branches of the Family that hadn't touched hands for thousands of years. Vinh.23.4 and Vinh.23.4.1 had been halfway across Human Space for much of that time, making their own fortunes, evolving their own mores. Perhaps it would have been a better thing not to attempt a synch after all that time—except that blessed chance had brought so many of all three branches together at Old Kielle, and all at the same time. So they tarried some years, built temps that most sessile civilizations would call palace-habitats, and tried to figure out what had become of their common background. Vinh.23.4.1 was a consensual demarchy. That didn't affect their trading relations, but Aunt Filipa had been scandalized. "No one's going to votemy property rights away," little Ezr remembered her saying. Vinh.23.4 seemed much closer to the branches Ezr's parents knew, though their dialect of Nese was almost unintelligible. The 23.4 Family hadn't bothered to track the broadcast standards faithfully. But the standards—even more than the blacklists—were important things. On a picnic, one checked the children's suits, and one's automation double-checked them; but one didn't expect that "atmosphere-seconds" meant something different for your cousins' air than for your own. Ezr had climbed around a small rock that orbited the picnic asteroid; he was charmed by the way he could make his own little world move under his hands and feet, rather than the other way around. But when his air ran out, his playmates had already found their own worlds in the rock cloud. The picnic monitor ignored his suit's cries for help until the child within was nearly flatlined.

Ezr only remembered waking in a new, specially made nursery. He had been treated like a king for uncounted Ksecs afterward.

So Ezr Vinh had always come out of coldsleep in a happy mood. He suffered the usual disorientation, the usual physical discomfort, but childhood memories assured him that wherever he was things would be good.

At first, this time was no different, except perhaps gentler than usual. He was lying in near zero gee, snug in a warm bed. He had the impression of space, a high ceiling. There was a painting on the wall beyond the bed...so meticulously rendered; it might have been a photo.Trixia loathedthose pictures. The thought popped up, fixed some context on this waking. Trixia. Triland. The mission to the OnOff star. And this was not the first waking there. There had been some very bad times, the Emergent ambush. How had they won over that? The very last memories before this sleep, what were they?Floating through darkness in a crippled lander. Park'sflagship destroyed. Trixia...

"I think that brought him out of it, Podmaster." A woman's voice.