"Perhaps," interrupts another. "But gravities cannot be fooled so easily. If there are six sixes of ships, they cannot be larger than hull type sixteen. No match for us, then. We can annihilate the entire squadron, forthwith,"

"Is that why they operate in stealth?" inquires the Captain-Leader, puffing pheromones of enforced calm into the tense atmosphere. "Might they be lingering, just beyond line of sight, while awaiting reinforcements?"

It is a possibility we cannot ignore. But, lacking corvettes, we must go investigate ourselves.

Reluctantly, gracefully, the Polkjhy turns her omnipotence around, heading toward the ghostly flotilla. If they are scouts for an armada-perhaps the Soro or Tandu, our mortal foes-it may be necessary to act swiftly, decisively. Exactly the kind of performance that best justifies the existence of master rings.

Others must not be allowed to win the prize! As we move ponderously eastward, a new thought burbles upward. A streak of wax, secreted by our oncerebellious second torus-of-cognition. What is it, My ring?

You recall how the savage sooners called to our corvette, not once, but twice, using minute tickles of digital power to attract our attention?

The first time, they used such a beacon to bribe us with the location of a g'Kek hideout.

The second time? Ah, yes. It was a lure, drawing the corvette to a trap.

VERY CLEVER, MY RING!.

Ah, but the comparison does not work.

There are many more sources, this time.

They are stronger, and the cognizance traces have spoor patterns typical of starship computers.

But above all, My poor ring, did you not hear our detection officer stack?

These signals cannot come from benighted sooners.

THEY FLY!.

Sara GRAVITIGSS!"

The detection officer thrashed her flukes. "Movement signs! The large emitter departss its stationary hover position. Jophur battleship now moving east at two machsss. Ten klickss alt.i.tude."

Sara watched Gillian Baskin absorb the news. This was j according to plan, yet the blond Earthwoman showed' hardly any reaction. "Very good," she replied. "Inform me of any vector change. Decoy operator, please engage swarming program number four. Start the wrecks drifting upward, slowly."

The water-filled chamber was unlike any "bridge" Saa had read about in ancient books-a Terran vessel, controlled from a room humans could only enter wearing breathing masks. This place was built for the convenience of dolphins. It was their ship-though a woman held command.

A musty smell made Sara's nose itch, but when her hand raised to scratch, it b.u.mped the transparent helmet, star-i tling her for die fiftieth time. Fizzy liquid p.r.i.c.kled Sara's bare arms and legs with goose b.u.mps. Yet she had no mental s.p.a.ce for annoyance, fear, or claustrophobia. This place was much too strange to allow such mundane reacl tions.

Streaker's overall shape and size were still enigmas. Her ' , one glimpse of the hull-peering through a viewing port : while the whale sub followed a searchlight toward its hurried rendezvous-showed a mysterious, studded cylinder, like a giant twelk caterpillar, whose black surface seemed to drink illumination rather than reflect it. The capacious airlock was almost deserted as Kaa and other dolphins debarked from the Hikahi, using spiderlike walking machines to rush to their a.s.signed posts. Except for the bridge, most of the ship had been pumped free of water, reducing weight to a minimum.

The walls trembled with the rhythmic vibration of engines-distant cousins to her father's mill, or the Tarek Town steamboats. The familiarity ran deep, as if affinity flowed in Sara's blood.

"Battleship pa.s.sing over Rimmer mountains. Departing line-of-sight!"

"Don't make too much of that," Gillian reminded the crew. "They still have satellites overhead. Maintain swarm pattern four. Kaa, ease us to the western edge of our group."

"Aye," the st.u.r.dy gray pilot replied. His tail and fins wafted easily, showing no sign of tension. "Suessi reports motors operating at nominal. Gravities charged and ready."

Sara glanced at a row of screens monitoring other parts of the ship. At first, each display seemed impossibly small, but her helmet heeded subtle motions of her eyes, enhancing any image she chose to focus on, expanding it to 3-D clarity. Most showed empty chambers, with walls still moist from recent flooding. But the engine room was a bustle of activity. She spied "Suessi" by his unique appearance-a torso of wedgelike plates topped by a reflective dome, encasing what remained of his head. The arm that was still human gestured toward a panel, reminding a neo-fin operator to make some adjustment.

That same arm had wrapped around Emerson after the Hikahi docked, trembling while clutching the prodigal starman. Sara had never seen a cyborg before. She did not know if it was normal for one to cry. Emerson and Prity were also down there, helping Suessi with their nimble hands. Sara spied them laboring in the shadows, accompanied by Ur-ronn, the eager young urs, fetching and carrying for the preoccupied engineers. Indeed, Emerson seemed a little happier with work to do. After all, these decks and machines had been his life for many years. Still, ever since the reunion on the docks, Sara had not seen his accustomed grin. For the first time, he seemed ashamed of his injuries. These people must be hard, up to need help from an ape, an urrish blacksmith, and a speechless cripple. The other youngsters from Wuphon were busy, too. Running errands and tending the glaver herd, keeping the creatures calm in j strange surroundings.

I'm probably the most useless one of all. The Egg only knows what I'm doing here.

Blame it on Sage Purofsky, whose cosmic speculations justified her charging off with desperate Earthlings. Even if his reasoning holds, what can I do about the BuyurpW. Especially if this mission is suicidal- The detection officer squealed, churning bubbles with her flukes.

"Primary gravities source decelerating! Jophur ship nearing estimated p-position of mobile observer."

Mobile observer, Sara thought. That would be Diver.

She pictured him in that frail balloon, alone in the wide sky, surrounded by nature's fury, with that great behemoth streaking toward him.

Keep your head down, little brother. Here it comes.

Dwer WITH THE RIMMERS BEHIND HIM AT LAST, THi' storm abated its relentless buffeting enough to glimpse some swathes of stars. The gaps widened. In time Dwer spied a pale glow to the west. Gray luminance spread across a vast plain of waving scimitar blades.

Dwer recalled slogging through the same bitter steppe months ago, guiding Danel, Lena, and Jenin toward the Gray Hills. He still bore scars from that hard pa.s.sage, when knifelike stems slashed at their clothes, cutting any exposed flesh.

This was a better way of traveling, floating high above. That is, if you survived searing lightning bolts, and thunder that loosened your teeth, and terrifying brushes with mountain peaks that loomed out of the night like giant claws, s.n.a.t.c.hing at a pa.s.sing morsel.

Maybe walking was preferable, after all.

He drank from his water bottle. Dawn meant it was time to get ready. Dormant machines would have flickered to life when first light struck the decoy balloons, electric circuits closing. Computers, salvaged from ancient starships, began spinning useless calculations.

The Jophur must be on the move, by now.

He reached up to his forehead and touched the rewq he had been given, causing it to writhe over his eyes. At once, Dwer's surroundings shifted. Contrasts were enhanced. All trace of haze vanished from the horizon, and .he was able to look close to the rising sun, making out the distant glimmers of at least a dozen floating gasbags, now widely dispersed far to the east, tiny survivors of the tempest that had driven them so far.

Dwer pulled four crystals from a pouch at his waist and jammed them into the gondola wickerwork so each glittered in the slanted light. A hammer waited at his waist, but he left it there for now, scanning past the decoys, straining to see signs of the Gray Hills.

I'm coming, Jenin. I'll be there soon, Lena. I've just got a few more obstacles to get by. He tried to picture their faces, looking to the future rather than dwelling on a harsh past. Buried in his backpack was a sensor stone that would come alight on midwinter's eve, if by some miracle the High Sages gave the all clear. If all the starships were gone, and there was reason to believe none would return. By then Dwer must find Lena and Jenin, and help them prepare the secluded tribe for either fate destiny had in store-a homecoming to the Slope, or else a life of perpetual hiding in the wilderness.

Either way, it's the job I'm trained for. A duty I know how to fulfill.

He found it hard to settle his restless mind, though. For some reason Dwer thought instead about Rety, the irascible sooner girl who had chosen to stay with the Streaker crew, No surprise there; she wanted nothing in life more than to leave Jijo, and that seemed the most likely, if risky, way.

But Dwer's mind roamed back to their adventure together-as captives of the Danik robot, when Dwer used to carry the machine across rivers by wearing it like a hat, conducting its suspensor fields through his own throbbing nervous system. . . .

All at once he realized. The recollection was no accident.; No random a.s.sociation.

It was a warning.

Creepy shivers coursed his spine. Eerily familiar. ; "Dung!" he cried out, swiveling to the west-just in time to spy a tremendous object, blue and rounded, like a demon's face, soar past the Rimmer peaks and hurtle silently toward him, outracing sound.

It was like watching the onrush of an arrow, aimed i straight at your nose. In moments the starship grew from a' mere speck, burgeoning to fill the world Dwer shut his eyes, bracing for erasure. ... l Kiduras pa.s.sed, two for each racing heartbeat. After twenty or so, the gondola was struck by a wall of sound, shaking him like thunder But sound was all. No impact.

It must have missed me!

He forced an eye open, turning around . . .

. . . and spied it to the east, bearing toward the decoy balloons.

Now he could tell, the behemoth moved at a higher alt.i.tude. The imminent collision had been a mirage. It never came within a league of him, or gave Dwer any notice.

But it can't miss the decoys, he thought. They're in open view.

Blade, his childhood qheuen playmate, had reported that balloons seemed transparent to Jophur instruments, But that was at night. It's almost broad daylight now. Surety they see the gasbags by now.

Or maybe not. Dwer recalled how excited the balloon concept made the Niss Machine, which understood a lot about Jophur ways. Perhaps Gillian Baskin knew what she was doing.

The idea was to get the Jophur confused. To send them searching around for supposed enemy ships they could detect only vaguely.

Sure enough, the s.p.a.ce t.i.tan decelerated ponderously, descending in a long spiral around the general area. An aura of warped air seemed to bend all light pa.s.sing within half a radius of the tremendous globe. The rewq made clear this was a shield of some sort-apparent grounds for the Jophur a.s.sumption of invincibility.

Dwer reached for the hammer at his waist . . . and waited.

L^an WE WANTED TO MAKE LOVE AGAIN. Who wouldn't, after the way Ling had writhed and clutched at him, with animal-like cries that belied her background as an urbane sky G.o.d? He, too, had felt a seismic quake of pa.s.sion. Ardor that reached out of something wild within . . . followed by a release that was blissfully free of any sapient thought.

Despite their dire circ.u.mstance, trapped in a ship filled with mortal enemies, Lark felt fine. Better than he had since- Since ever. Somehow, this climax did not leave him in a state of la.s.situde, but filled with energy, a postcoital animation he had never experienced before. So much for my vow of celibacy, he thought. Of course, that vow had been for the sake of Jijo. And we're not on Jijo anymore.

He reached for Ling. But she stopped him with an upraised hand, sitting up, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s still glistening with their commingled sweat.

Ling's eyes were distant. Her ears twitched, listening. A jungle surrounded them-supported by lattice scaffolding that filled a chamber larger than the artificial cave of Biblos. A maze of fantastic, profusely varied vegetation nearly filled the cavity. In this far corner, apparently illtended by the maintenance drones, the two fugitive hominids had built a nest. Ling, the trained spatiobiologist, had no trouble spotting several types of fruits and tubers to eat. They might live weeks or months this way ... or perhaps the rest of their lives. Unless the universe intruded.

Which it did, of course.

"They've turned on their defensive array," she told him. "And I think they're slowing down."

"How can you tell?" Lark listened, but could make out no difference in the mesh of interlacing engine sounds, more complex than the verdant jungle.

Ling slipped into the rag of a tunic that was her sole remaining garment. "Come on," she said.

With a sigh, he put on his own torn shirt. Lark picked up the leather thong holding his amulet-the fragment of the Holy Egg he had chipped off as a child. For the first time in years, he considered not slipping it on. If the ship had left i Jijo, might that make him free at last from the love-hate

burden?

"Come on!" Ling was already scooting along the lat-' ticeway, heading toward the exit. In a torn cloth sling, she carried the wounded red torus-one of the traeki rings i provided by Asx.

He slipped the thong around his neck and reached for the crude sack that contained the purple ring and their few other possessions.

"I'm on my way," he murmured, clambering out of the nest, wondering if they would ever be back.

Ling had her bearings now. With Lark to sniff scent indicators at tunnel intersections, and the purple ring serving as a pa.s.skey, they had little trouble hurrying "north" up the ship's axis. Twice they sped along by using antigravity drop tubes. Lark's stomach did somersaults as his bodyi went careening up a jet-black tunnel. The landings were always soft, though. Even better, they did not meet a single Jophur or robot along the way, "They're at battle stations," she explained. "Here. Their control room should be just below this level. If I'm right, there should be an observers' gallery. ..."

Lark smelled an oddly familiar aroma, much like the fragrance traeki used when they referred to Biblos.

Ling pointed to a rare written symbol inscribed on the wall. She crowed. "I was right!"

Lark had seen the glyph before-a rayed spiral with five swirling arms. Even Jijo's fallen races knew what it stood for. The Great Galactic Library. Symbol for both patience and knowledge.

"Hurry!" Ling said as he applied the purple ring to the entrance plate. The barrier slid open, giving access to a dim chamber whose sole illumination came through a broad window, directly opposite the door. It took just a few strides to cross over and stare through the gla.s.s at a bright gallery below. A chamber filled with Jophur.

There were scores of the tapered stacks. Taller and more slickly perfect than any Jijoan traeki, they squatted next to instrument stations, many of them surrounded by flashing panels and lighted controls. At the very center, one gleaming torus pile perched on a raised dais, surveying the labors of the crew.

"A lot of big ships have observation decks, like the one we're in," Ling explained in a low voice. "They're for when legates from any of the great Inst.i.tutes come aboard-say on an inspection tour. Most of the time, though, they just contain a watcher."

"A what?"

She gestured to her left, where Lark now saw a roughly man-sized cube with a single dark lens in the middle, looking over the Jophur control room.

"It's a WOM ... or Write-Only Memory. A witness. Any capital ship from a great clan is supposed to carry one, especially if engaged in some major venture. It takes a record that can then be archived in deep storage so later generations may learn from the experience of each race, after a certain time period expires."

"How long?"

Ling shrugged. "Millions of years, I guess. You hear about watchers being sent for storage, but I've never known of a WOM being read during the present epoch. I guess when you put it that way, it kind of sounds like a contradiction in terms. A typical Galactic hypocrisy. Or maybe I don't grasp some subtlety of the concept."

You and me, both, Lark thought, dismissing the watcher from his mind, like a slab of stone.

"Look," he said, pointing toward one end of the Jophur headquarters chamber. "Those big screens show the outside! Seems we just pa.s.sed over the Rimmers."

"Toward the sun." Ling nodded. "Either it's morning or-"

"Nothing on the Slope looks like that prairie. That's poison gra.s.s. So it is morning and that's east."

"See the clouds," Ling commented. "They're breaking up, but it must've been some stor-" She stopped, blinking. "Hear that? The Jophur are excited. Maybe I can adjust these k.n.o.bs and-"

Sound abruptly boomed through the observation deck. A screech and ratchet of accented GalTwo.

". . . COMMANDED TO CORRECT THE DISSONANCE, DISAGREEMENTS BETWEEN YOUR VARIED REPORTS,JUSTIFY THIS PATTERNED SEARCH! EXPLAIN REASONS WW , WE SHOULD NOT RETURN TO OUR PRIMARY MISSIONSIFTING FOR THE WOLFLJNG CRAFT.'"

Lark saw the Jophur on the central dais gesticulate along with these word glyphs, so perhaps that one was in command. If only I had a weapon, he mused. But the gla.s.slike barrier was probably too strong for anything as crude as a Jijoan axe or rifle.

"We/icannot recommend departing this area until w verify,rebuke the possibility of foe ships,smallships, "replied a nearby stack, using a less imperious version of the same dialect. "Starship cognizances hover nearby, undetectabk on any other band! But how can that be? Flight without gravities? The Jophur, great and mighty, must have,pierce this secret, for safety's sake,"

Another ring stack edged forward, and Lark felt a shiver of recognition. That awkward pile of ragged toruses had once been the former traeki High Sage, though its speech held none of the una.s.suming gentleness of Asx.

"I/we offer this wisdom-that the scent indicators we pursue have all the stink of an elaborate ruse! Recall the flame-tube weapons that the savage sooners used against our corvette, Now our comrades in the captured Biblos Archive report they have identified the wolfling trick as 'rockets.' Contradicting the tactics officer, I/we must point out that these rockets flew quite successfully without gravities! I/we further maintain that-"

Another stack interrupted.

"Localization! One of the nearby cognizance sites has remained active long enough to verify its location."

The commander vented compact clots of purple vapor.

"PROCEED ON ATTACK VECTOR,PREPARE A CAPTURE BOX FOR SEIZURE OF SOURCE, WHETHER IT IS A SOPHISTICATED STAR ENEMY OR ANOTHER SOONER RUSE, WE SHALL SECURE IT FOR LATER INSPECTION, THEN RETURN TO OUR PRINc.i.p.aL OBJECTIVE."

The ring piles reacted more swiftly than Lark had ever witnessed traeki move, setting to work in a whirl of base feet and flailing tendrils. Soon the outside monitors showed clouds and prairie rushing by in a blur, depicted in many spectral bands. On some displays, flashing concentric circles closed in.

"Targeting brackets-" Ling explained. But the circles seemed to contain nothing. Only open s.p.a.ce.

Lark's right hand drifted under his shirt, stroking the sliver of the Egg. "I feel ..."

Ling tugged his arm. "Look at the far left screen!"