Infinity's Shore

The purple ring oozed a clear fluid from pores near the plate. Clickety sounds followed, as the door mechanism seemed to consider.…

Then, with a faint hiss, it opened!

He hurried through with Ling, ignoring bitter Jophur curses that followed them until the portal shut again.

“Where now?” Ling asked.

“You’re asking me?” He laughed. “You said Galactic ships are standardized!”

She frowned. “The Rothen don’t have any battlecruisers like this beast. Neither does Earth. We’d be lucky to glimpse one from afar … and even luckier to escape after seeing it.”

Lark felt spooky, standing half-naked in an alien passageway filled with weird aromas. A Jophur might enter this stretch of corridor at any moment, or else a war robot, come to hunt them down.

The floor plates began vibrating, low at first, but with a rising mechanical urgency.

“Just guess,” he urged, trying to offer an encouraging smile.

Ling answered with a shrug. “Well, if we keep going in one direction, sooner or later we’re bound to reach hull. Come on, then. Standing still is the worst thing we can do.”

The hallways were deserted.

Occasionally, they hurried past some large chamber and glimpsed Jophur forms within, standing before oddly curved instrument stations, or mingled in swaying groups, communing with clouds of vapor. But the stacks rarely moved. As a biologist, Lark could not help speculating.

They’re descended from sedentary creatures, almost sessile. Even with the introduction of master rings, they’d retain some traeki ways, like preferring to work in one place, relatively still.

Lark found it bizarre, striding past closed doors for more than an arrowflight — then another, and a third — using their passkey ring to open armored hatches along the way, meeting no one. Asx must have taken this into account, giving us even odds of reaching an airlock and…

Lark wondered.

And then what? If there are sky boats or hover plates, Ling might understand their principles, but how will she operate controls made for Jophur tentacles?

Maybe we should just head for the engine room. Try to break some machinery. Cause some inconvenience before they finally shoot us down.

Ling picked up the pace, a growing eagerness in her steps. Perhaps she sensed something in the thickness of the armored doors, or the subtly curved wall joins, indicating they were close.

The next hatch slid aside — and without warning they suddenly faced their first Jophur.

Ling gasped and Lark’s knees almost failed him. He felt an overpowering impulse to spin around and run away, though it was doubtless already too late. The thing was bigger than Ewasx, with component rings that shimmered a glossy, extravagant health he had never seen on a Jijoan traeki.

The way Rann compares to me, Lark thought numbly.

During that brief instant, his companion lifted the purple ring, aiming it like a gun at the big Jophur.

A stream of scent vapor jetted toward the stack.

It hesitated … then raised up on a dozen insectoid legs and sidled past the two humans, proceeding down the hall.

Lark stared after it, numbly.

What was that? A recognition signal? A forged safeconduct pass?

He could imagine that Asx — wherever the traeki sage had concealed a sliver of self — must have observed all the chemical codes a Jophur used to get around the ship. What Lark could not begin to picture was what kind of consciousness that implied. How could one deliberately hide a personality within a personality, when the new master ring was in charge, pulling all the strings?

The Jophur rounded a corner, moving on about its business.

Lark turned to look at Ling. She met his eyes and together they both let out a hard sigh.

The airlock was filled with machinery, though no boats or hover plates. They closed the inner door and hurried to the other side, applying the trusty passkey ring, eager to see blue sky and smell Jijo’s fresh wind. If they were lucky, and this portal faced the lake, it might even be possible to leap down to the water. Surviving that, their escape could be cut off at any point, once they passed into the Jophur defense perimeter. But none of that seemed to matter right now. The two of them felt eager, indomitable.

Lark still cradled the injured red ring, wondering what the sages were supposed to do with it.

Perhaps Asx expects us to recruit commandos and return with exploser bombs, using these rings to gain entry.…

His thoughts arrested as the big hatch rolled aside. Their first glimpse was not of daylight, but stars.

An instant’s shivering worry passed through his mind before he realized — this was not outer space, but nighttime in the Rimmers. A flood of bracing, cool air made Lark instantly ebullient. I could never leave Jijo, he knew. It’s my home.

A pale glow washed out the constellations where a serrated border crossed the sky — the outline of eastern mountains. It would be dawn soon. A time of hopeful beginnings?

Ling held out her free hand for Lark to take as they strode to the edge and looked down.