Resurgence

The planet that the pinnace was drifting down to had an atmospheric haze that concealed detail. Only when they were below two thousand meters could Louis Nenda and Sinara Bellstock make out the rough terrain of jagged rocks and, lower still, mounds of purple and gray plant life. The spaceport was little more than a long cleared area, next to four low buildings with beyond them a great body of dark water.

“It doesn’t look much like Pleasureworld to me.” Sinara was staring out of the forward port with the enormous curiosity of one who had never visited worlds beyond her native regions of the Fourth Alliance. “Are you sure your Hymenopt understood what they were saying and translated it right?”

“Quite sure.” Nenda brought the pinnace in close to the line of buildings at the end of the landing area. “Kallik heard it in Polypheme talk. I heard it myself in a language of the Zardalu Communion, once they found somebody down here who’d traded in the Orion Arm.”

“Pleasureworld. That name is ridiculous.” Sinara was wearing a heavy leaded oversuit and hat, opaque to both ultraviolet and X-rays. She wore dark goggles, and all exposed skin was coated with a thick yellow cream. She looked grotesquely unattractive. Nenda regarded it as protective garb in more than one sense of the word.

“The name isn’t ridiculous at all—if you happen to be a Chism Polypheme or cater to them. There’s a huge colony of Polyphemes here, according to Kallik, even though they are not native to Pleasureworld.”

“Where are they native to?”

“A Polypheme never tells. But they’re great travellers, and one of them here says he’s totally fluent in human universal. In a few minutes we’ll find out if he’s telling the truth.”

“If they’re not born here, why do they come to such an awful place?”

“For the radiation. That’s why At and I picked a neutron star as target. The UV intensity on the surface of this planet is a hundred times what our eyes and skin can stand, but the Polyphemes love it. If you went for a walk by the water’s edge—which I don’t recommend—you’d find hundreds of them out there, sunning themselves. Of course, it makes them drunk.”

“Doesn’t the radiation hurt them?”

“That’s a matter of opinion. Does alcohol harm a human?” Nenda opened the hatch of the pinnace. Reflected radiation poured in and the air took on a smell of ozone, as though a continuing electrical discharge was going on. “We have to go outside, but we won’t be there for long. Kallik has arranged for our contact to meet us in a shielded setting. Come on, let’s get this over as quick as we can. Even with protection, enough radiation gets through to give you a burn in a few minutes.”

Sinara took a quick look around as she moved between pinnace and building. Close up, the plants between the buildings wore lethal-looking spines. The flowers at their tips were gray to human eyes, but in the hard ultraviolet region where the native pollinators of Pleasureworld lived, those flowers must glow and dazzle in a whole spectrum of colors.

She followed Nenda through a stone doorway and tunnel, and found herself after a few more paces in a chamber so dark that she was forced to remove her goggles to see anything at all. As her eyes adjusted, she found herself facing a green thing—alien? plant? animal?—perched on a slab of stone and balancing itself on a long curled tail.

The creature weaved slightly. It said in a croaking growl, “Here at last. What kept you? You brought me in out of a good hot sun-wallow, so this had better be good.”

“We’ll make it worth your while.” If Nenda found the alien at all peculiar, he didn’t show it. “I am Louis Nenda, and this is Sinara Bellstock. We are both from the Orion Arm.”

“I can see that.” The blubbery lips of a broad green mouth turned down in a scowl. “Humans, eh? My name in your talk is Claudius. I’m a Master Pilot, and I’ve travelled all the Orion Arm. Make it worth my while, you say? How? Backward, primitive place. Nothing there worth having.”

“I think I can change your mind about that. I’ve worked with a Chism Polypheme before. Do you know Dulcimer? He’s a Master Pilot, too, and he can vouch for us.”

“I know Dulcimer. Master Pilot, he calls himself? Pah! Dulcimer is a hopeless amateur. Do you both know Dulcimer?”

Sinara shook her head, then, not sure that the gesture would be understood, said, “I don’t know him.”

“Lucky you.” Claudius sniffed and bobbed up and down on his thick tail. The alien was a three-meter helical cylinder, an upright corkscrew of smooth muscle covered with rubbery green skin and with a head as wide as his body. One huge eye, bulging and shifty, peered out from under the wrinkled brow. The slate-gray organ was almost half as wide as Claudius’s head. The mouth beneath it was wide and seemed to be fixed in a permanent sneer. Between the mouth and the big eye, a tiny gold-rimmed scanning eye, no bigger than a pea, continuously moved across the scene.