“I agree. It was also a leading item on my own list. Do you know its mass?”
“I can lift it, that’s all I care about. Then for number-two choice, I liked that cubical box on gimbals three chambers back, the one with the open top and a blue haze over it.”
“Indeed? I observed that object. But I found nothing remarkable about it.”
“That’s because you don’t see using light. When I looked down into the open top I could see stars. But when I turned the box on the gimbals, I was looking at Gargantua, right through the planetoid. It’s an all-direction see-through — let’s you look at distant objects and not be bothered by near ones. It’d be marvelous for ship navigation in dust clouds.
“My number-three choice is harder to justify. The sphere, the one that was floating, not attached to anything, in the room we just left.”
“To my viewing it appeared entirely featureless.”
“To me, too. But it was a lot cooler than everything around it.”
“Which should be physically impossible.”
“That’s why we want it. Impossible gadgets are always the most valuable. I’ve no idea how it works, an’ I don’t care. But I can tell you a dozen places that would pay a lot for it, looking to maybe find a closed infinite heat sink. Number four—”
“Enough. I am persuaded. I accept your list. but there is one more thing that I would like to do, before we collect the items of choice and seek egress from the planetoid.” Atvar H’sial motioned in front of her with one forelimb. The yellow horns faced ahead, open as wide as they would go and scanning slowly from side to side. “There is another chamber ahead; a huge, open one, possessing anomalous acoustical properties. At certain frequencies, it appears completely empty. At others, I detect a spherical object at its center.”
“You think we might find something specially valuable? No point taking risks, just to be nosy.”
“I cannot estimate the value. I will only say that an object transparent at certain acoustic frequencies is as potentially valuable to Cecropian society as glass, transparent to certain frequencies of light, is to humans. I know exactly where we could sell such a discovery. To me, it might be the most precious thing on this world.”
Atvar H’sial was advancing slowly as she spoke, to a place where the tunnel ended in a blind drop. Nenda moved to her side and took a look down. After one startled glance he swore and stepped back. She had an indifference to heights that came from her remote flying ancestors, but he did not share it. They were on the brink of a twenty-meter drop, slowly curving away below to a bowl-shaped floor.
Atvar H’sial was pointing to the middle of the chamber. “There. Do you sense anything with your eyes?”
“Yeah. It’s a silver sphere.” Nenda took another step back. “I don’t like this, At. We oughta get out of here.”
“In one moment. To my senses, that sphere is changing. Do you observe it, also?”
Nenda, set to retreat, stood and stared in spite of himself.
Atvar H’sial was right. The sphere was changing while he watched. And in a way that tricked the eye. The whole surface began to ripple, like oscillations on a ball of mercury. Those vibrations became a pattern of standing waves, growing in amplitude until they changed the whole shape. A five-sided flowerlike head was sprouting above, while a slender barbed tail extended down toward the floor of the chamber.
Ahh. A sighing voice echoed through the whole chamber. Ahhh. At last.
A green light flickered from an aperture in the deformed sphere’s center. It shone on Atvar H’sial, lighting up the crouched, insectile form and the great blind head. Louis hid away behind her.
At last, the voice said again. It sounded as old as time itself. A strange, pungent aroma came drifting across the room. At last… we can begin. You are here. The testing is complete. The duties of The-One-Who-Waits are ending, and the selection process can begin. Are you ready?
The creature poised in the center of the chamber was unlike anything that Louis Nenda had met in thirty years of travel around the spiral arm. But what was Atvar H’sial seeing? The Cecropian seemed frozen, her long antennas unfurled and bristling. The being in the middle of the chamber had been partially invisible to her sonar. Did she see it at all now, and recognize the danger?
“At!” Nenda sent the pheromonal signal with maximum urgency. “I don’t know if you’re getting the same message as I am from that thing, but believe me, we’re in trouble. It wants us. Don’t reply to me, just back up.”
You are the form, the voice was saying, and the green light had focused on the Cecropian. The third awaited form. Do not move — Atvar H’sial had finally taken a step backward, bumping into Louis Nenda — the transition is ready to begin.
Louis Nenda reached forward, grabbing one of the Cecropian’s forelimbs. “At! No messing about. Let’s get out of here!” He turned and took one step.
Too late.
Before his second step the floor vanished. He was falling freely, plummeting down a vertical shaft. He looked down. Nothing, only darkness that baffled the eye. He looked up. Above him was Atvar H’sial, wing cases fully extended, vestigial wings wide open, all six legs tensed. She was poised for a hard landing — on top of Louis Nenda.
He looked down again, seeking the bottom of the shaft. He could not see a thing, but given the small size of the planetoid, the end of the fall had to be no more than a second or two away.
And then what? Nothing pleasant, that was for sure.
Nenda fell and swore. Hindsight was wonderful. They had been a little bit too greedy. He and Atvar H’sial should have left when they could, as soon as they had picked out all they needed.
He stared down into a rolling, viscous blackness and had time for a final thought: They would have been better off staying with Julius Graves. At the moment, a formal trial for lethal assault seemed positively inviting.
CHAPTER 17
When Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial went scurrying into the darkness, Birdie Kelly was not at all sorry to see the back of them. Graves might want to arrest the pair, but the Karelian human Nenda had always struck Birdie as crude and violent, and the silent, winged Cecropian gave him the creeps.
Good riddance to both. Birdie pushed Julius Graves off him, struggled to his feet, and looked around.
Things were a mess. He was not sure where to begin.
Graves was winded and gasping for breath, but otherwise he seemed all right. Birdie ignored him. Kallik was unconscious, lying on the floor halfway to the center of the room, and Birdie could do nothing for her.
The body of E. C. Tally, a little closer, was in the worst shape. It lay motionless, with the cable trailing from the bleeding head and ending in a bare plug a few feet from where Birdie stood. There was nothing to be done for Tally, either, because his body was deep in the Lotus field.
Birdie looked for J’merlia. The Lo’tfian was lying on the curved floor, just inside the pattern of concentric rings, and he was still holding E. C. Tally’s disconnected brain firmly in two of his forelimbs. If he had been knocked out, too, or affected by the Lotus field…
But as Birdie watched, J’merlia began to move, crawling out toward the perimeter of the outer circle. Birdie took the loose end of the neural connect cable and went around to meet him.