Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5 (47 page)

“See?” she demanded. “Can you see how it shines? This necklace has recognized me as a member of my clan.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “And you can tell this Mandalon emptor that if he wants my cooperation then he return this stone to my clan upon termination of contract.”

Grace nodded. “I will tell him,” she promised. “But will you wear it, in the meantime?”

“I will wear it. It will protect me, and the meritocrat, through me.”

Grace let out her breath silently. For one moment she had thought Petra would walk out.

“But tell him to change the shoes to flat, and to make the dress into a tunic!”

“Very well. I will put those things as your conditions.”

“Do that!”

“But will you wear them for today, for the presentation?”

Petra inclined her head. “I will, but only because I promised Maestra Cimma that I would go through with this.”

Grace smiled. “Thank you. I am sure that your clan would be proud of you.”

The girl’s head lifted. “My clan members are always proud of me. I am Namuri.”

Together they walked into the orthogel bubble waiting to take them to the 1st skyrise, where one of the guards was ready to be transported, in turn, to Kwaide.

DIVA BROUGHT THE shuttle down carefully onto the planetary surface. She went through the engine shutdown protocol, and then joined Tallen and Bennel as they struggled into bodywraps. While in orbit above the planet they had decided that the bodywraps would give them extra protection, just in case, and that they would use mask packs at first, although the initial readings indicated a breathable atmosphere.

Bennel opened the hatch and then motioned to Diva to step down. “You should go before us,
Valhai
Diva,” he said. “You will be the first person ever to step on this planet.”

Diva jumped down onto the planet’s surface and they looked around them curiously. There was the dark silhouette of a mountain range some distance away and the damp sand seemed to run along a flat plain towards it. The sand was marked with small patterns due to the prevailing wind, little waves which suggested that it must be from the east.

From time to time over the landscape, which was flooded by an eerie silvery light, they could see small bumps in the sand, perhaps where geysers had erupted in the past, perhaps where falling meteorites had caused craters. From their standpoint, they couldn’t be sure.

And more than anything else, they could see dozens of bright stars, so close that the colours were clear. The darkness of the sky showed them the black hole off to the north. It dominated the sky, thought Diva. She held her hand out at arm’s length, but the dark sphere was bigger than that. And surrounding it, through lensing, they could see pairs of stars, the light being bent around the deep well of gravity so much that two images of each star shone just outside the white aura. All in all, the phenomenon seemed to take over all that quarter of the night sky, and was enthralling. They stared and stared.

Then the sound of the heavier shuttle began to vibrate through them. Six was bringing her down about a hundred yards away, to the south of their position. Diva turned to her companions, and made a gesture in that direction. They nodded, and they all began to take supplies out of their own shuttle, and place them around their bodies. Then Diva closed the hatch, and they started to make their way over to the heavy-duty shuttle, all rather worried that the canths might not have survived the journey.

Long before they arrived, Six had sprung down from the cabin. His bodywrap was unfastened, and although he had a mask pack hung around his neck, he was not wearing it. He took a few breaths of the atmosphere, and pulled a face.

“Smells a bit of sulphur and brimstone,” he informed the sand around him. But he resisted putting on the mask pack. “If the computer says we and the canths can breathe it, then so we can.” He took several more breaths, and found himself gradually becoming used to the slightly acrid taste and odour.

He walked around to the large doors on the shuttle, and was in the process of opening them as the others came up. They pulled their own mask packs off when they saw Six without his, and all gagged for a few moments as they became acclimatised to the air.

Then a soft whicker from the canths brought them back to their surroundings. Both Diva’s seal brown and Six’s dapple grey had survived the journey with no side effects, and the equines were looking around them expectantly.

“Now what?” Diva asked Six.

He stretched out one hand to stroke his canth. He backed it carefully out of the stall and down the ramp. Then he bridled and saddled it. The dapple grey animal immediately lowered its head and went down on one knee.

Six stopped only long enough to write something in the greyly lit sands, before he obediently swung himself onto the canth. “I think they want us to let them find the way,” he told Diva.

Diva had copied him, hoisting herself on her canth’s back. From that lofty position it was easy to see what Six had scrawled on the sand.

‘Six and Diva were here.’

Diva laughed out loud. What could you do with a no-name like that? She leaned down to give a hand to Bennel, who hauled himself up behind her on the saddle which had been adapted for two. Six did the same for Tallen.

The two canths started, snorting a little with excitement, and then set off towards the distant mountains with their firm and comfortable canter which ate up the miles.

As they traveled they found it hard to tear their eyes away from the black hole which hung overhead. It dominated all of the sky, like an eye staring down at them, wondering when it could engulf them.

For a strange moment Tallen felt a connection with his sister. Even though she was 26,000 light years away, he was filled with an intense conviction that she was sharing this sight, that she was watching him, and participating in this adventure with him. It was a strange sensation, but he welcomed it. It made him feel stronger, more at home in this bizarre place.

Six and Diva were exultant, loving every minute of this new adventure. They let their canths settle into a long stride level with each other, and Six turned to look in Diva’s direction, edging his canth closer to hers. Her hair was blowing out behind her, and her eyes, as they met his, were shining. He stretched out his hand towards her, and she took it. They laughed together as the animals swept across the plain.

THEY SOON FOUND out that the journey was to be anything but safe. The bumps in the sand were definitely not quiescent. Without warning what seemed to be geysers erupted, but these sent towering jets of volcanic lava into the air, instead of water. Anybody too near one of these would be fried immediately. As the lava fell to the ground red-hot rocks at hundreds of degrees spattered down over a wide area.

Luckily, the canths seemed able to tell which were safe, and which were about to erupt. Without slowing their pace, they swerved from one side to another, a bending race in between the small vents which indicated the lava fountains. As they went, the canths stretched to their fullest long-term pace, and began to breathe heavily.

Six looked about him as he realized the dangers of the jets. This was no benevolent water fountain! This was volcanic lava spurting out and catapulting rocks almost as big as his canth on top of them! The black hole began to lose its fascination suddenly, and he let go of Diva’s hand. He didn’t want to risk pulling her off her mount. The volcanic vents were too closely spaced. Unless you knew which ones were going to blow, and which ones not, there would be no way of surviving this frantic dash for the mountains.

Behind him, clinging desperately to the saddle, he could hear Tallen, who was shouting out in alarm. Beside him, tucked behind a Diva impervious to all danger, was Bennel, whose eyes were showing white.

Diva gave a whoop, and urged her canth on faster, thoroughly enjoying the journey. Six thought how magnificent she looked; a true amazon fiercely hoping for a fight. At that moment she looked over, and laughed. He gave a yell of exhilaration and her eyes lit up. She knew there was nobody else in the whole of the galaxy who could appreciate this like Six could.

The mad race went on for two hours, without any sign of the canths slowing down. The dark skyline of the mountains gradually drew closer, but the quality of the light was changing too, as the large planet twisted in the clutches of the black hole. Although there was no night and day differential, the light did change from a bright silver to a more overcast platinum grey, depending on which part of the sky it was facing.

At the same time, the stars around the singularity seemed to pop out, until the black hole was the only thing their eyes were drawn to. Even Diva seemed to feel sombre at its enormity, at its ability to distort the sky into such strange patterns.

FINALLY THE CANTHS, flanks shuddering with fatigue, drew to a halt. They had reached the foothills of the mountains, and they appeared to feel themselves safe at last, for they stood still, letting their riders slip stiffly from their backs.

Six and Diva took care of the canths, while Bennel and Tallen quickly surveyed their surroundings. The canths gulped down some of the water which they had brought with them, ate some concentrated cubes of food which the canth keeper had provided, and then they both folded their legs underneath them, sank down, rolled several times on the sandy floor, and then appeared to fall asleep, legs stretched out.

The bipedal part of the party had a nutripack and a waterpack each, and then settled themselves on the sand too, two to each canth, tucking themselves behind the hump of the belly and between the legs which were sticking out. It was warm there, and slightly protected from the wind, but both parties covered their canths with a lightweight foil sheet weighted down with stones at the edges. Inside, the body heat of the canths made for a comfortable place to lie propped up.

Seated with their backs against the dapple grey canth, Bennel and Tallen eyed each other with some constraint. Neither of them felt completely happy at the new bedfellow fate had given them.

“If you choose to sleep first,” said Bennel to the Namuri, “I will keep watch. I don’t think we should leave the
Valhais
without any protection, do you?”

“You need not bother yourself with that.” Tallen sat up straight. “
I
will take care of the
Valhais
. You may sleep all you like.”

Bennel pressed his lips together. “We will take turns,” he said, reasonably. “Otherwise our ability to react will be affected.”

Tallen considered which was the worse of two evils; he could allow himself to sleep while dependent on Bennel’s competence for their safety, or he could refuse to sleep now, and perhaps be derelict in his duty sometime in the future. He frowned.

“You sleep first,” he insisted. “You are older than me. You will be more tired.”

Bennel smothered a smile. “As you prefer,” he said. “It is a matter of complete indifference to me. Wake me in two hours.” With that, he turned his whole body slightly away from Tallen, hugged his knees under his chin, leant into the warm body of the canth, and fell deeply asleep.

Tallen glared at the man’s back, and then struggled to poke his head up through a slit in the material covering them. Stonily, he began his lonely vigil, eyes peering wearily out across over the foothills. By the time he had spent two hours examining the horizon he might be quite ready to awaken Bennel, he realized.

Tucked cosily behind the seal brown canth, Six put his arm around Diva’s shoulders. “Never thought I’d see somewhere like this,” he said happily.

Diva nodded, feeling rather sleepy after all the excitement. “This is the most incredible planet of them all,” she said. “Even Dessia was nothing compared to this. How long do you think it has existed?”

Six tugged at one of her curls idly. There were still some occasional traces of the blue-green colour that her hair had turned after the last battle for Kwaide. He twisted the lock of her hair in his fingers as he thought about his answer.

“I suppose it could have been circling the singularity for billions and billions of years. This planet was probably lucky to be caught up by the black hole; there was no star to progress along the main sequence, and destroy its attendant planets. I read somewhere that the oldest planet found is 13 billion years old. This might even rival that. It may have existed since the beginning of time. Even if it has no sun, there is quite a lot of light from all the circling stars, and tidal heating seems to have kept the atmosphere stable until now by outgassing.”

“So we have just come along at the one time in all its billions of years when it may be about to be destroyed? That seems unlikely, doesn’t it?” She closed her eyes, and felt an unusual calmness take over.

“Perhaps everything has a reason.” Six was not normally given to such philosophical considerations, but even he had to admit that to come here the one day the planet might start throwing out lava in a big way was only one chance in hundreds of billions. “How are you feeling?”

Diva smiled, quite content to be huddled behind a canth, nearly thirty thousand light years from home. “Good. You?”

He grinned. “Never better. I wouldn’t be anywhere else in the universe right now.”

Although it was almost dark in the refuge they had made under the foil he thought he caught the flash of Diva’s teeth. “Me neither.”

She rested her head on his shoulder, and they both slept soundly.