Resurgence

The Zardalu had raised himself to his full height and glared down on Claudius with open maw, while Nenda said to Claudius, “I’ve told him he can eat whatever of you he can still see one minute from now.”

That had taken care of the suit problem, but it hadn’t ended the moaning and groaning.

“Such discomfort! Such pain! Such anguish! That a distinguished being of noble lineage should be subjected to treatment like this . . . Never should I have agreed to suffer such degradation. Never should I have left the haven of Pleasureworld!”

With his suit open Nenda was trying to talk pheromonally to Atvar H’sial, but doing it while Claudius made such a racket in the back seat made Louis’s head ache. Claudius was loud, and he was shrill.

Finally Nenda set the controls to automatic and turned in his seat to face the Polypheme. He said pleasantly, “We are cruisin’ at seventeen thousand meters. The temperature is a hundred and eleven below. There’s hardly any air outside, and nothin’ but solid ice beneath us. The seat you are in, Claudius, has an ejector mechanism, and it’s controlled from the pilot’s seat. If you don’t stop jabbering, I’m goin’ to use it.”

Sinara, sitting next to Claudius, said, “Louis, do it! Do it!”

“I may. My finger’s on the button. One more squeak and that’s it.”

Claudius subsided. At last Louis was able to concentrate on the scene below and could again send pheromonal messages about it to Atvar H’sial.

“We might as well go the distance and make a full circuit of the planet, but I’m not optimistic. The cold hemisphere is as bleak and bare as Archimedes said. The sun provides a fair amount of light, but only a dribble of heat.”

“High civilizations have thrived on worlds colder than this.”

“They have. I suspect they did here. But the Marglotta were right to be scared enough to call out for help. Something came along, and it zapped them. Question is, is it on the surface now, still doin’ its thing?”

“I would suggest that whatever malevolent influence was present, it is, for the time being at least, somewhat inactive. I assume that the suit signals from the surface continue to indicate living occupants?”

“They do, though Ben Blesh ain’t in good shape. Hold on a minute, At. We’re approaching one of the major boundaries. We are still on the daylight side, but we’re near the edge of the cold hemisphere. I think I see open water below us—an’ greenery. Maybe I ought to take us down as soon as we get where the surface is a bit warmer. If we’re going to do that we should act pretty quick, because in another hour of flight we’ll be at the day/night divider.”

“Take us lower, Louis, but land only if you observe one of the structures noted by Archimedes as possibly indicative of a city or an industrial site.”

“I don’t need to look for one. We took every location that Archimedes spotted and stuck ’em in the pinnace navigation system. There’s a place about two hundred kilometers ahead and almost on our flight path.”

“Then we should indeed take a look. And if you are able to descend to the surface so that we may exit this craft, I personally will, in truth, actually be able to look with my own sensory apparatus.”

“An open suit?”

“Unless you note clear evidence of danger, that is a risk which I am willing to undertake.”

The comment confirmed it in Louis’s mind. Atvar H’sial was as averse to unnecessary risks as he was, but she was going stir crazy. They had been cooped up in a confined environment for far too long—ever since the arrival of the summons to Miranda when they were working on Xerarchos. That felt like a million years ago.

“Hold it in a bit longer, At. I’ll have us on the ground in twenty minutes.”

Having said that, Nenda was still not ready to take risks. He reduced their height and speed in the final ten kilometers, and when their target was in sight he flew a slow circle all around it.

What he could see was unimpressive. Seven broad gray strips—roads, or rail lines—converged. Where they met, and for about half a kilometer around that point, a narrower grid of intersecting strips formed a ruled pattern on the surface. All the gray strips were dotted with dark, rectangular objects, scores of them. They looked to Louis to be about the right size to be ground cars, but he didn’t want to tilt Atvar H’sial’s opinion before she’d had a chance to make her own assessment. Louis could see no sign of buildings or of people. The only thing that moved in the whole silent scene was some kind of flag or banner, fluttering in the breeze at the top of a tall metallic spindle marking the meeting of the seven roads.

“See anything to worry about?” Louis said over his shoulder to Sinara and Claudius; and, at her silence and the Polypheme’s disdainful grunt, “Right, then. I’m taking us in.”