Resurgence

He occupied the inevitable delay doing what he had earlier declined to do, and examined the contents of the Shroud. The nets held ships of all sizes, shapes, origins, and ages, in dizzying variety and numbers for as far as the eye could follow. One nearby vessel caught his eye, from its strange yet familiar outline. He had seen that design, like a hammer with a head at both ends, only once before. On that occasion he had been far out in Zardalu Communion territory, where the outpost world of Bridle Gap orbited its neutron star primary, Cavesson. And Hans had at the time confirmed that the alien ship had been manufactured nowhere in the local arm: it was something built in a far-off time and place, by the species known as the Chism Polyphemes.

What was such a ship doing here? Was it intended to provide proof of the boast made by the Miranda Port sales staff, that you could find in the Upside Shroud examples of every ship ever made?

The slow rotation of the station was bringing what he wanted to look at into view, and that pushed consideration of the alien ship to the back of his mind. Visual inspection of the glowing band of light that was now appearing would tell him nothing, and he stared at it for only a few moments. The Milky Way shone brighter without the diffusing effects of a planetary atmosphere, but the spiral arms beyond the local arm were still shrouded by interstellar dust and gas clouds. He had known that in advance, and already selected the observation wavelengths that he wanted. He switched to them. The chamber had been designed so that a viewer need not be aware that the “windows” now displayed the readings of radiation and particle monitors in spectral and energy regions far beyond what human senses could experience directly. Suddenly, Hans could “see” through the obscuring veils of dust and gas.

See to the edge of the local arm. See across the Gulf. See the Sag Arm, looking no different now from the way it had appeared at other times when he had done deep galactic viewing. And see, beyond the Sag Arm, the galactic center itself, with the million-star-mass black hole lurking at its hidden heart.

Hans brought his attention back to the Gulf. It appeared empty, as it had always been empty. It offered no sign of the pinpoints of light provided by the giant display he had walked through inside the station. So those bright points did not represent stars. They were a creation of the display itself, not something visible in nature.

But what were they? Hans had no idea. He lay back in the swivel chair and selected visible wavelengths, so that he was once more seeing by the natural light that came in through the chamber’s transparent walls.

The view was familiar and relaxing. The chair was comfortable, more comfortable than most beds that he had slept in.

As the heavens turned slowly about him, Hans decided that although he had learned little, it was all that he was likely to get tonight.

There was always tomorrow. Which would take care of itself.

When you have nothing to do, sleep.

Within seconds he was drifting off. In his final moments of consciousness, he imagined he was walking out along the staggered line of lights that lay like stepping-stones across the Gulf.

CHAPTER FIVE A cry from the grave

It had been Darya’s intention to be early to the meeting and take a place as close to Julian Graves as possible. That way there could be no accusation that any new disruptions had anything to do with her.

Her plan changed abruptly when she came to the corridor leading to the chamber where they were due to meet. Someone—something—was ahead of her. She smelled an ammoniac odor, and saw a huge midnight-blue form wide and tall enough to block the corridor.

A shiver passed through her body, at the same time as her mind told her to turn and run. Thirty meters ahead of her, standing more than four meters tall on its thick, splayed tentacles, was an adult Zardalu. The bulbous head was twice the width of a human body. The creature was—thank Heaven—facing away from Darya, but she knew that the front of the head bore two great lidded eyes of cerulean blue, each as big across as her stretched hand. Beneath the eyes was a cruel hooked beak, more than big enough to grasp within it a human body.

The Zardalu had been the bogeymen of a dozen different species and a thousand worlds, monstrous land-cephalopods believed extinct for eleven thousand years but still the living nightmare of myths and legends. Darya knew that the Zardalu were again a presence in the local arm—she had been on their homeworld of Genizee, and considered herself lucky to escape—but she had never expected to encounter an adult Zardalu here. No Zardalu should be free to move without watchful guards ready to annihilate it at the first sign of trouble.

Darya took a couple of steps backward—and was grasped firmly from behind.