Звезда Пандоры

“No, sir,” Tunde said. “But judging by the strength of its quantum distortion, I’d say several hundred light-years. Where they get that much power from I don’t know, there’s no corresponding neutrino emissions which would indicate fusion sources.”

“Have they reached inside the Commonwealth?” Wilson asked sharply.

“It won’t extend that far. Four hundred light-years, possibly, maybe five.”

Wilson wanted to feel relief. It should have been there, knowing the aliens hadn’t reached home behind him. But the sensation eluded him completely. What they’d seen was too worrying. Even for a civilization this size, the giant wormhole was too obviously a crash project: an act of desperation. He was sure he knew where it would take them eventually. The why of it, though, he couldn’t understand. What could they possibly want with the Commonwealth?

…

It was an astonishing landscape. Nothing you couldn’t find on any H-congruous world, but scaled up twenty percent. Higher mountains. Deeper valleys. Wider rivers. Broader plains. Even the sky seemed bigger, though that might have been due to the absence of clouds during the (long) daytime.

All of which made Ozzie worry about what kind of animals they might encounter. Rats the size of dogs? Dogs the size of horses? What might the elephants be like, or the dinosaurs?

They’d been here for eight days now, though, and hadn’t seen so much as a gnat so far. The plants didn’t quite match up to the scenery; they were all bland. Grass that was like a sheet of moss. Bushes that were globes with slender little leaves that were woven together so tightly that from a distance they looked like a single membrane. Trees that had a simple conical symmetry with dark green finger-sized leaves. Botany at least wasn’t adventurous here. In fact, he hadn’t seen a single flower since they arrived. Maybe evolution had bypassed the whole concept of pollination. Or maybe there were no insects to pollinate.

That made Tochee the most colorful thing on the planet. The big alien had recovered quickly from its frostbite as they wandered along the paths after escaping the Ice Citadel planet. Its rubbery locomotion ridges had almost completely healed up now after weeks of sliding along through temperate grassland and loamy forest floors. Of the three planets they’d progressed through, one of the paths had been in a tropical zone. Tochee had really liked that. The little shriveled fronds sprouting from wrinkles in its brown hide had sprouted into colorful life. They now resembled feathery ferns whose vivid pigmentation acted like a silky flowing cloak; ripples of scarlet, tangerine, turquoise, and emerald swayed along its body with every motion and gust of wind.

“It looks like a furry rainbow,” Orion had said when the fronds began to grow again.

The boy was a great deal happier now as well. A lot of his former chirpy confidence had returned, strengthening with every additional step they put between themselves and the Ice Citadel.

Ozzie was half expecting him to start asking: “Are we there yet?” Which given their circumstances was just about impossible to answer. The Silfen paths had been reasonably obvious on the worlds they’d visited so far, and the little friendship pendant had helped a couple of times when Ozzie was uncertain. But to date they’d found themselves in areas where the forests were close together, with just a couple of valleys or hills separating their boundaries.

This big world was different. They’d emerged from a tree line to see a vast undulating plain stretching away ahead of them. The forest behind filled a V-shaped valley; there was only the one path through it, leading straight out alongside the swift stream that gushed down the valley floor. So they simply carried on walking, keeping close to the stream. It was one of many tributaries feeding the river that cut across the plain.

In five days’ continuous hiking they’d found plenty of similar woods hugging steep valleys, not one of which had a Silfen path leading out. The trees did have edible fruit, globes the size of melons with a fibrous pap that tasted similar to bland apples. That seemed to be a constant on the worlds linked by Silfen paths: nothing edible had a strong taste.

Orion would knock the fruit down with a big stick, sometimes with Tochee holding him aloft in its tentacles so he could reach the ones dangling on higher branches. Every time Ozzie watched the laughing boy flailing away at the fruit, he would think of curries and chili burgers.