Convergent Series (43 page)

Not good enough. And she should have thought it through before she left the ship. Darya waited for Rebka and Kallik to catch up with her.

"I've changed my mind." She outlined the problem. "It will take us too long. I think we ought to go back inside and use Nenda's ship; he doesn't need it at the moment. And we should do a low-orbit traverse of Glister, a few hundred meters up, and use every sensor on board to explore the surface. Anything odd that we find—cracks, openings, hatches, markings, whatever—we'll have the ship's computer make a note of it, and then later we take a closer look ourselves. On foot. Can you fly the
Have-It-All
, Hans? If not, we can go back and use the
Dreamboat
. Though I'm sure the equipment there isn't as good."

"It isn't. As you saw, Nenda travels first-class. I can fly his ship. And I bet that Kallik can fly it at least as well as me."

"I have flown it often, on both planetary and stellar missions," the Hymenopt concurred.

"So let's go back inside." Darya was turning toward the ship when she noticed an odd effect on the horizon behind Hans Rebka. It was as though she were suffering slight vertical double vision, with a thin brighter layer added above the sphere's original curved boundary. As she watched, the region thickened and solidified; faint sparkles appeared within it as random points of light. Part of Glister looked the way it had when she first saw it, from far out in space. Darya halted for a closer inspection.

Increased intensity added color. The cloud became a gauzy orange patch, lying close to Glister's uniform horizon, and extended over more than a quarter of the circle. As Darya watched the nimbus grew in size. The twinkle of interior lights became brighter.

"Hans!" She pointed. "Look there. Did you see anything like that before, when you were out on the surface?"

He stared, and at once took her arm to begin pulling her toward the
Have-It-All
.

"We sure didn't. Come on. And hurry."

"What is it?"

"Damned if I know. I've never seen anything like it in my life. I think maybe me and Kallik weren't too smart when we banged on the surface to learn more about the interior structure. Bit like knocking on the door to say, hey, we've arrived." He was still holding her arm. "Come on, both of you, get moving. I prefer to watch that thing, whatever it is, from inside the ship—with the shields up. Close your suit completely, just in case. And
don't look back
."

Darya at once felt an irresistible urge to look behind her. The orange shimmer was bigger, spreading more than a third of the way across the horizon and perceptibly closer. Kallik had not moved, but that did not mean she would be left behind. When she decided to travel, the Hymenopt's eight wiry legs could carry her a hundred meters in a couple of seconds.

"It has a discrete structure." Kallik's calm voice came through Darya's suit phone. "The points of light are reflections of incident radiation from Gargantua on individual small components, each no more than a few centimeters across. Their angles change constantly, which is why they sparkle like that. To appear as bright as they are, those components must be almost perfect reflectors. I can see no sort of connection between the parts."

The leading edge of the cloud was within twenty meters of the Hymenopt when Kallik finally turned. The thin black legs became a blur, and a second later she was by Darya's side. "I concur with Captain Rebka. This is a phenomenon outside my experience."

"Outside anyone's." The
Have-It-All
was only forty meters away. Darya could not resist looking back again. The cloud was not gaining. They could crowd inside the airlock and have it closed before the twinkling fog arrived. With the ship on standby, there was a good chance they could even take off from Glister before the leading edge touched the hull.

"Ahead!" Kallik spoke at the same moment as Hans Rebka began to swear.

Darya turned. A gauzy light was in front of them, rising like a sparkling vapor up through Glister's impervious surface. It thickened and spread as she watched, forming a tenuous barrier between them and the starship.

Rebka jerked to a halt, and they stared around them. The cloud behind was still moving forward. It had become opaque, and its edges were spreading wider. In a few more seconds its borders would meet with those of the fog ahead, to encircle the three completely.

Kallik was already moving forward. Rebka shouted at her. "Kallik! Come back. That is an order."

"Ck-ck." The Hymenopt kept moving. "With apologies, Captain Rebka, it is an order I cannot obey. I must not risk the life of a human when perhaps that can be avoided. I will report my experiences for as long as I am able."

Kallik was entering the cloud. It swirled up around her thin legs and tubby body. She was quickly reduced to a sparkling outline of light.

"I am not able to see the structure of individual components." The voice was as calm as ever. "They appear to be unconnected, and each one is different and has independent mobility. They have a definite crystalline nature. In their appearance I am reminded of water-snowflakes—there is the same diversity of form and fractal structure. I feel them pressing against my suit, but there is no sensation beyond simple external pressure. And now . . . they are
within
my suit—despite the fact that it is set for full opacity! Apparently they penetrate our protective materials as easily as they move through the planetoid's surface. I question whether a ship's shields can offer any obstacle or protection.

"The flakes are now in contact with my thorax and abdomen. They are touching me, sensing me, as though in examination of my structure. They are
inside
me, I feel them. Their temperature is difficult to estimate, but it cannot be extreme. I feel no discomfort."

Kallik had vanished from sight. Her voice briefly faded, then came back to full strength. "Can you hear me, Captain Rebka? Please reply if you can."

"Loud and clear, Kallik. Keep talking."

"I will do so. I have now taken seven paces into the cloud, and it is tenuous but quite opaque. I can no longer see the sky or the surface of the planetoid. I also register a power drain from my suit, but so far I am able to compensate.
Eleven paces.
There is minor resistance to my forward progress, although not enough to impede my movements. The surface beneath my feet feels unchanged. I am having no trouble breathing, thinking, or moving my limbs.

"
Eighteen paces.
The resistance to my motion has lessened. Visibility is improving, and already I can see the outline of Master Nenda's ship ahead of me.
Twenty-two paces.
I can see the stars again. Most of the cloud is behind me. I am standing on the surface of the planetoid, and I appear to be physically unaffected by my passage through it.
Twenty-seven paces.
I am totally clear.

"Captain Rebka, I humbly suggest that both of you proceed through the cloud at once and join me here. I will prepare the
Have-It-All
's lock for multiple entries and the controls for takeoff. Can you still hear me?"

"I hear you. We're on our way, we'll see you in a couple of minutes." Hans Rebka was pulling at Darya's arm again, but she needed no urging. Together they stepped into the sparkling orange glow. Darya began to count steps.

At seven paces the view around her faded. The stars overhead clouded and dissolved. She saw delicate crystals, hundreds of them, a handbreadth from her face. She heard Rebka's voice: "Seven paces, Kallik. We're almost a third of the way."

Eleven steps.
Small points of pressure were being applied directly to her body,
within
her body. Like Kallik, Darya could not say if their touch was hot or cold. She felt that the crystals were touching her innermost self, measuring her,
evaluating
her. She found herself holding her breath, reluctant to inhale the cloud of crystals. She plowed on. There was a definite resistance to her forward motion, almost like walking underwater.

"Fourteen paces," said a gargling and distorted voice. That was Rebka, and he
sounded
as if he were underwater.

Eighteen steps.
According to Kallik, she should start to see something more than the sparkling mist. Darya peered ahead of her. She could see only foggy points of light. Resistance to her progress was increasing.

It was not supposed to happen this way!

She struggled to force herself ahead, but the surface beneath her feet afforded less traction. She felt it becoming spongy, giving beneath her weight.

She wanted to sink to her knees, lean forward, and explore that insubstantial ground with her hands. But instead of releasing her, the sparkling points of light were holding her more and more tightly. She could barely move her arms and legs.

"Darya?" She heard Hans Rebka's voice faintly in her suit phone. It was the thinnest thread of sound, miles and miles away, the signal full of static.

She made a final effort to push herself forward. Her limbs would not move. She was fully conscious but fixed in position, as firmly as a fly in amber.

Keep your head!
she told herself. Don't let yourself get panicky.

"Hans!" She tried to call to him, struggling to keep the fear from her voice. That concern was unnecessary, for no sound came from her throat. And now no sound was reaching her ears, not even the faint static that was always present with suit phones. The touch of the crystals on her body was fading, but still she could not move. The sparkling mist had given way to an absolute blackness.

"Hans!" It was a soundless scream. Fear had taken over.
"Hans!"
 

She listened, and she waited.

Nothing. No sound, no sight, no touch. No sensations of any kind. Not even pain.

Was this the way that life was to end, in universal darkness? Had the death that she had escaped so closely on Quake followed her to claim her here?

Darya waited. And waited.

She had a sudden vision of a personal hell that lay beyond death itself: to be held fully conscious, for eternity, unable to move, see, speak, hear, or feel.

Kallik had walked unscathed through the crystal fog. She had no reason to think that Darya Lang and Hans Rebka would fare any differently.

She heard his voice say, "Seven paces, Kallik. We're almost a third of the way." That was satisfactory. She listened for the next progress report, at twelve or fourteen steps.

It did not come when she expected; but before there was time to be alarmed, the barrier of sparkling mist in front of her changed, to form a series of swirling vortices that were sucked back into the hard surface. She waited, eagerly watching for the other two to appear out of the wreaths of fog.

The mist thinned. No familiar human outlines emerged. In another few seconds the fog had vanished completely. The surface ahead of Kallik was bare.

She ran forward, at a speed that only those who threatened a Hymenopt with deadly violence would ever see. Two seconds and a hundred and fifty meters later she stopped. Given the snail's pace of human movement, there was no way that Hans Rebka and Darya Lang could have traveled so far in the time available.

Kallik reared up to her full height and employed every eye in her head.

She saw Gargantua, looming on the horizon. She saw Louis Nenda's ship, and beyond it the
Summer Dreamboat
, almost hidden by the tight curvature of the planetoid.

And that was all.

Kallik stood alone on the barren surface of Glister.

The hierarchy was clear in J'merlia's mind: humans were inferior to Cecropians, but they were well above Lo'tfians and Hymenopts, who were in turn vastly superior to Varnians, Ditrons, Bercia, and the dozens of other ragtag and marginally intelligent species of the spiral arm.

That hierarchy also defined a command chain. In the absence of Atvar H'sial or another Cecropian, J'merlia would obey the orders of a human without question. He did not have to
like
it, but he certainly had to do as he was told.

So J'merlia had not complained when he was ordered to remain on Dreyfus-27 while the other three went off to look for Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial on the
Have-It-All
. All the same, he was desperately envious of Kallik. The Hymenopt was on her way to seek her master, perhaps to help him, while J'merlia stayed here making Dreyfus-27 a more habitable habitat. Suppose that Atvar H'sial needed help? Who would provide it, if J'merlia was not there? Who could even
communicate
with a Cecropian, via pheromonal transfer? Not Darya Lang, or Hans Rebka, or Kallik.

The cleanup operation had been given no particular starting time, so J'merlia did not feel obliged to begin at once to improve the living quarters of Dreyfus-27. Instead he remained in his suit on the rocky surface, close to the communications unit that Hans Rebka had removed from the
Dreamboat
.

His experiences would have to be vicarious ones, gleaned from the verbal and occasional visual messages sent back to him. That was still better than nothing, and J'merlia possessed strong interspecies empathy. He had exulted when Kallik reported the first image of the
Have-It-All
on the
Dreamboat
's sensors. He had waited in agony when all signals suddenly became garbled during the dive to the surface of Glister. He had rejoiced when the report came of their safe landing, and when he learned of the apparently undamaged condition of Louis Nenda's ship. He had puzzled over the anomalous physical parameters of the planetoid itself, and the presence of a swarm of energetic Phages surrounding it. And he had nodded agreement at Darya Lang's suggestion that Glister must itself be an artifact.

The
Dreamboat
's final message for the record indicated that Darya Lang was placing the ship on remote-controlled status, while she went out onto the surface of Glister to join Hans Rebka and Kallik in their direct inspection of Louis Nenda's starship.

J'merlia shivered with excitement and anticipation. The next communication would be the crucial one. The
Have-It-All
seemed undamaged, and that was wonderful. But were Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial alive or dead? J'merlia waited six hours for an answer, crouched unmoving by the com unit.