A flickering green light shone from an aperture in the body of the demon and illuminated Hans and Darya. The inside of the great chamber shimmered with its reflection. Darya turned off the flashlight.
Human form… human… human. Too soon… soon… soon… The weary voice came echoing across to them. Who… who… who… who…
Hans and Darya turned to look at each other.
He shrugged. “What do we have to lose?” He faced into the chamber and spoke at normal volume. “Can you understand me? We are humans. We were brought against our will into this planetoid. We do not know how to leave it.”
The flower head was nodding toward them. The light from the being’s body modulated in color and intensity as it bobbed up and down in the middle of the chamber.
“It’s no good,” Darya said. “You can’t expect it to understand a word.” But while she was speaking the voice began again.
Brought inside… inside. Yes, we understand human… human… human… You were brought inside to be… others, in case others were needed… you may not be needed. You were to stay there… near the outside… not come here…
Darya stepped closer to the edge. “Who are you? Where did you come from? What is this place?”
“One question at a time,” Rebka said softly, “or it won’t have any idea what you’re asking.”
But the demon figure in front of them was already speaking again, and more fluently. I am The-One-Who-Waits… The one who waited in the heart of the double world, in the Connection Zone… I came from the heart of that world, when it opened to the signal…
“From inside Quake,” Darya said. “At Summertide! It must have come in the big silver sphere, the one that grabbed the Have-It-All.”
…for which I had waited long. In human time, one fortieth of a galactic revolution. I waited…
“That’s six million years! Are you a Builder?”
“Don’t keep interrupting, Darya. Let it talk!”
— waited long for the Event. I am not a Builder, only a servant of the Builders. I am The-One-Who-Waits. Who seeks the Builders?
“I do!” Darya moved dangerously close to the edge. “All my life, ever since I was a child, I have studied the Builders, wanted to know more about them. The Builders have been my life’s work.”
The Builders are not here. The ones who fly outside are not true Builders. This is the Connection Zone… the testing place, where we wait for the question to be answered. Wait.
The green light was extinguished and the chamber plunged again into darkness. Darya was teetering on the edge of the drop until Hans Rebka seized her arm and pulled her back to safety.
She shook herself loose; she did not feel even a twinge of nervousness. “Did you hear that, Hans? The Connection Zone! The Builders aren’t here, but there’s access to them from inside Glister. I knew it. They can be reached from here!”
“Maybe they can. Darya, calm down.” Rebka grabbed her again, pulled her close, and spoke with his mouth next to her ear. “Did you hear me? Cool off, and think before you jump to conclusions. You’ve been in communication for about two minutes with something that says it’s at least six million years old, and you’re willing to take everything it says at face value. What makes you think you understand what it means, or it understands you? Lots of what it said makes no sense — ‘the ones who fly outside are not true Builders.’ That’s not information, it’s gibberish. More than that, where did it learn to speak our language? How did it even recognize the human shape, if it’s been locked away inside Quake for six million years? There were no humans anywhere that long ago.”
But the green light was pulsing again, illuminating them and the whole of the domed chamber.
The testing proceeds. The rusty voice spoke again. It comes close to completion… close enough to be sure that the modified one is a true human, and acceptable. It is not necessary for you to be here…
“Then take us back to the surface,” Rebka said.
“No!” Darya moved in front of him. “Hans, if we go back now we may as well never have come here at all. There are so many things we might be able to find out here about the Builders. We may never have as good an opportunity.”
You seek the Builders, the creaking voice went on, as though neither human had spoken. I am not a Builder, and I cannot guarantee the result. But if it is your desire to encounter the Builders—
“It is!”
Then, GO.
“No. Darya, will you for God’s sake wait a minute! We don’t know—”
Rebka’s shout was too late. They were standing on the brink of the tunnel as the edge turned suddenly to vapor.
Free-fall!
Rebka looked down to his feet. They were accelerating at a couple of gees along a featureless vertical shaft that ended half a kilometer below them in a darkness so total that the eye rejected its existence.
“What is it?” Rebka heard Darya’s despairing cry beside him.
“It’s Glister’s gravity field — whatever creates it — maybe a…” He did not finish the phrase. If they were falling toward the event horizon of a black hole they would know about it soon enough — know it for maybe a millisecond, before tidal differential forces reduced their bodies to component elementary particles.
“Hans!” Darya screamed.
Two hundred meters to go, still accelerating, faster than ever. Maybe a second left. And now the darkness possessed a structure, like a roiling whirlpool of black oil, curling and tumbling onto itself. They were heading into the churning heart of that dark vortex.
Rebka’s empty stomach was churning, too.
A fraction of a second to go.
Childhood on Teufel had taught him one thing above all others: there was always a way out of every fix — if you were smart enough.
You just had to think.
Think.
Apparently he was not smart enough. He was still thinking, unproductively, as he dropped into the depths of that writhing blackness.
CHAPTER 14
The unmanned Summer Dreamboat had arrived in one piece and in working order.
That was the good news. The bad news was that it had been touch and go.
Five grazing encounters with Phages had delivered hammer blows to the Dreamboat’s hull, one strong enough to dent and puncture the top of the cabin. The repair was not difficult, and Birdie Kelly was already half finished. But the significance of those five near misses was not the damage that they had done. It was what they revealed about the state of the Phages. Steven Graves and E. C. Tally had monitored the ascent of the Dreamboat and were agreed for once: the little ship’s survival, even with all collision-avoidance systems active, had been mainly a matter of luck. The Phages were more active than ever, all the way down to the surface of Glister. A descent with accelerations that humans could stand had less than a one-percent chance of success.
The Summer Dreamboat had been moved for repairs into the capacious ore hold of the Incomparable. Graves and Tally were floating free in the air-filled interior, talking and talking.
And watching me work, Birdie thought. Same as usual. The other two were long on talk, but when anything calling for physical effort came along they managed to leave all the doing to him. And they lacked a decent sense of danger. Birdie hated to work with heroes. He had listened to Steven and E. C. Tally casually talk odds of a hundred to one against, and shuddered. Fortunately, Julius Graves seemed to have more rational views.