"A dome. You were right," Gabriel said. "I was wrong."
Enda waved one hand. "As if such things matter. That is what we seek, I think. Helm, we must go down there. We have some slight introduction to them, if a shaky one, but you have none such. I would be afraid you might be fired upon."
"Might be fun," Helm drawled, "but never mind, I'll stay up here." " 'Riding shotgun,' " Gabriel said.
"A good enough name for it. I'll be here. Better off-load your little egg to me. No point in taking it down there with you; you may need the room to bring something back up. Meanwhile, shout if you need me. I'll keep comms open."
"Believe it," Gabriel said. "We'll take handhelds with us if we leave the ship. Any sign of anyone else around here?"
"Neither hide nor hair. Go on." They made their way down.
The atmosphere proved not to be as thin as had been reported. There was much more oxygen in it than Gabriel expected, and Sunshine reported wing bite more quickly than she should have. Gabriel spoke to the computer, directed it toward that one source of even heat, and told her to take them down. He would hold himself ready to take over if necessary.
But it was a standard landing, as straightforward and uncomplicated as if they were landing on a paved field. Rhynchus's surface here was actually pumice or some other kind of light, porous stone. When Gabriel got up and headed into the lift and the door opened, he saw that Sunshine's landing skids had scraped the stone about an inch deep where she had sideslipped a little on landing. Then, even in the dimness, he saw the other, much older skid-marks there too. Around them were scorchmarks from landing jets-various people's landing jets-and he understood that this was indeed a landing field, of sorts.
And then, hearing a faint humming in the air, he looked up- very slowly, not wanting to alarm anyone- and saw the sesheyans with the guns. All of them held the guns rock steady with sights trained on him. "The Wanderer walks strange ways," he said, "and company finds, unlooked-for: but hospitality's laws say feed the guest ere you kill him."
The guns did not lower. But the sesheyan holding the biggest of them, the one who had appeared atop a boulder not far from the edge of the landing field, looked at Gabriel with a long, cold, thoughtful look. "You are not from VoidCorp," he said in perfectly serviceable human idiom.
The lift activated again. Guns lifted all around. "Just my friend," said Gabriel, "a fraal. She isn't armed and she's pushing three hundred, so please don't frighten her. No, we're not from VoidCorp." "Not at all," said Enda as she came out of the lift to stand beside Gabriel.
"Prove it," said the sesheyan on the boulder, in a tone of voice that clearly said to Gabriel, "leader." Gabriel started to become exasperated. "That's going to be a little tough to prove, don't you think? Look, it was Ondway who sent us-or rather, he didn't send us. He tried every way he could think of not to send us, including not telling us anything about you, or even that you were here. He was very careful about it." "That is possibly what we call a 'negative proof,' " Enda said demurely. The leader's eyes pinched down narrow at her.
''We've brought you everything we could think of that might be of help to you, considering that no one would tell us anything outright," Gabriel said. "Electronics supplies, mostly. What I don't understand is what you're doing here! This is not supposed to be an inhabited planet."
"Not supposed to be," said the leader, and dropped his jaw in that sesheyan grin, possibly responding to Gabriel's aggrieved one, similar to that of a tourist complaining that the colorful native dancers were not going to perform today, even though the brochure had said that they would. "No. You have come a long way, and we thank you for it, even though you should not have come. But we must get your ship out of sight very quickly. Things happen here at night."
Gabriel looked around him at the scared looks on the faces of some of the sesheyans, at the way they looked up at the sky as if it might suddenly rain knives. "Tell us where to put it," he said, "then we need to talk."
Chapter Seventeen
IT TOOK ABOUT half an hour to get everything squared away. Sunshine was tucked into a cave just big enough to take her, and the cave's opening was sealed over with such care that Gabriel might have thought the locals were expecting a police search. Then he and Enda were led through caves and tunnels into a large dim space. The heat they had detected from orbit and assumed to be a dome was actually a substantial network of caves that the sesheyans had very carefully joined and sealed off over the years. The interior was carefully and sparingly lit by powered lights and much subdivided into "apartments" and private areas. The main area, under the highest arch of a huge natural dome of stone, was left open with many wildly assorted pads and blankets and coverings scattered around. Gabriel thought of the encampment on Grith, the floor of the main clearing having been carefully scattered with branches and plant needles gathered for the purpose, and saw here a faint sad echo of the forest. Food was served out to them with the great care of people who have not been expecting visitors and have little to spare, but are pleased to give them the best they can manage. There were no questions while they were eating. But when the bowls were taken away and the drink was brought out-mostly chai of a vile Phorcyn kind that Gabriel had had too much of while awaiting trial-many sesheyans gathered around them in a circle, and Gabriel got the sense that there would be grilling now. There was some, conducted politely enough in human idiom. Names and ship registries were demanded, along with details about how Gabriel and Enda had come to meet Ondway and what had happened afterwards. The sesheyans sitting closest to them, many with guns nearby, listened to every word intently. Gabriel got the very strong feeling that had their story diverged at all significantly from what the sesheyans' own sources must have told them, Helm would have had to make his way home alone.
When they were finished, and Gabriel and Enda had detailed what they had brought in the ship and why, the adult sesheyans in the circle began visibly to relax. Gabriel seized the moment and said, "All I want to know is: what are you doing here? How did you get here? And how is it that no one knows?" The colony leader, Kaiste, replied a little wearily, "I would not say that no one knows, alas for that. Since you have been kind enough to have come all this way, we will gladly tell you our history, or as much of it that matters. We cannot tell you all of it. That might be an unnecessary burden on you some day."
If VoidCorp got to hear about it, yes, I just bet, Gabriel thought.
"Obviously we have not been here for very long," said Kaiste, "about twenty standard years. We were originally a large subcontracted work crew who were transshipped here as what we think must have been a very early venture of the Company to investigate or perhaps even colonize this part of space. Certainly they sent us out with full colonial packs, though we were told that we would be executing a subcontract, doing subcontracted non-suited mining work." " 'Ditchdigging,' " Enda said.
"Yes, but something happened. There was an accident in transit. We came a long way-many starfalls- and after perhaps twenty of them, the ship in which we were being transported suffered an explosion that either caused or was the result of some kind of stardrive failure. The explosion may even have been sabotage. The Company"-again he would not say its name-"was not popular on the world from which we had just been removed. I am not an expert and cannot describe the nature of the failure accurately, but the ship came out of drivespace after the failure and could not locate itself. There was a problem with its navigational systems as well, probably due to the explosion-one of the computers involved in the control of both systems was affected."