The Light-years Beneath My Feet (25 page)

There were three, just as Walker had insisted upon and Jhanuud-tir-yed had promised. Though not nearly as massive as the Sessrimathe ship that had rescued him and his friends from Vilenjji captivity, they were large enough to inspire awe. Burgeoning clusters of conjoined propulsion components and living quarters, illuminated by if not quite ablaze with internal lights, they floated in orbit awaiting the arrival of the transfer craft.

It was half an hour longer before Walker was convinced that their motion relative to that of the three waiting starships had ceased. Concerned, he went in search of Sobj-oes. He found the astronomer forward, chatting with one of the officers who had volunteered to be a part of the expedition. To the human’s relief, and somewhat to his consternation, she had a ready explanation for the apparent delay in docking.

“It the media,” she informed him. “All those assigned to this voyage clamoring for best position to make first recordings.” She indicated the image on the nearest monitor. “This the beginning, an important moment. Each individual desires compose best possible imaging, most dramatic lighting.” She inhaled breathily, her red- and-black-painted mouth contracting to a tiny opening. “Is not science. But is necessary.”

“My friends and I could do without it,” he confessed. “We’re pretty tired.” He found himself wishing Viyv-pym was aboard, to intercede with the media on his behalf. But Viyv-pym was gone for good, back on Niyu.

I have been away from home for a very long time,
he reminded himself firmly.

“I’m glad you’re coming with us,” he told her. Sobj-oes was not Viyv-pym, but she was at least a sympathetic and familiar face.

“I would not miss it.” The astronomer was a taut bundle of anticipation and excitement. “We will be visiting a portion of the galaxy far outside familiar boundaries. Opportunities should abound to observe previously unrecorded phenomena, visit new civilizations.” Her luminous eyes caught the light as they stared back at him. “What scientist worthy of the designation not leap at the chance to experience such things?”

“This is as much a leap into the unknown for you and the rest of the Niyyuu on this voyage as it is for my friends and I. We’re going because we have no choice but to keep going. You have something to return to. Doesn’t it bother you that you might not come back?”

A two-fingered hand reached out to stroke his right arm. “Any scientist embarking on long journey knows they might die before end of journey is reached. If no one willing to take that chance, no science ever get done.”

A new voice interrupted them. “It is always encouraging to hear a mature understanding of the nature of understanding Nature voiced by one of the lesser orders.” Sque arrived in what had become her favored fashion: born aloft on one of Braouk’s tentacles, her scorn preceding her. “I myself look forward to the acquiring of new knowledge.”

“And I sing,” the Tuuqalian rumbled, having to bend low as usual to avoid banging the upper part of his body and his stalk-mounted eyes on the ceiling, “of new spaces encountered, rarely seen.”

As well he should, Walker knew, since his homeworld was the one they were heading for, and the only one thus far of the three that the displaced travelers desperately sought whose location was even feebly surmised. He steeled himself inwardly. If only one of the four of them made it home, that would be an impressive accomplishment in itself. Guided only by a faint perception of distant possibilities, they were flinging themselves into the unknown.

Three of them were, anyway. Where was George?

He found the dog curled up among piles of last-minute loaded supplies in the transfer craft’s storeroom, sound asleep. Kneeling, he gently stroked his friend’s back until George awoke. The dog yawned, stretched, and quivered, pushing out his front legs as he looked up at Walker.

“What’d you wake me for?” he asked irritably.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Walker sat down beside his friend. “Maybe because we’re about to embark on a journey into deep space that even our crew has never attempted before. Maybe because we may never see a civilized world again. Maybe because this is yet another pivotal moment in our lives. God, what I wouldn’t give for a double latte right now. With nutmeg. And cinnamon.”

“You’ve managed to get hold of three starships. Don’t get greedy.”

Walker shrugged and smiled. “I’m a commodities broker. It’s my nature to always want to trade up.”

George rolled over onto his back and began contorting his spine in ways few humans could match, scratching his back against the oddly tactile surface of the package he had chosen for a temporary bed. Walker looked on with envy.

“Doesn’t any of this bother you, George? The fact that we’re heading out into a part of the greater galaxy unknown even to the Niyyuu? That we’re going beyond the bounds of what they consider to be known civilization?”

Ceasing his twisting and scratching, the dog rolled over onto his belly. Panting contentedly, he looked up at his friend and companion. “You know what they say, Marc. ‘Knick-knack, hyperwack, vector a dog a zone, this old mutt goes spacing home.’ Better wandering infinity with a full fridge, even if it’s an alien one, than stumbling around cold and starving in the snow in a dirty alley back home.”

A glance at one of the transfer craft’s omnipresent monitors showed that they had at last resumed forward motion again and were finally about to dock with one of the three waiting starships. Walker straightened.

“I wish I had your casual sangfroid, George. I guess no matter what happens, I’ll always be the nervous type.” He sighed. “Sobj-oes says there’s no getting away from it: for the duration of the voyage we’re going to have to tolerate the Niyyuuan media who’ve been assigned to this excursion.”

George rose to all fours. “No problem. If they get too pushy, I’ll just start barking at them. Their translators can’t handle that.”

Walker’s smile widened. On the monitors, beyond the starships, several thousand worlds beckoned. With luck, one of them was small and blue and gauzily streaked with gossamer white. But first they had to see home a very large poet.

“I’m glad you’ve been with me through all this. I don’t know how I could’ve gotten through it all without your company. You’re a good dog, George.”

“And you’re a tolerable human, except for the usual odor.” Shaking himself, the dog started for the main hatch. “Let’s go deal with the media. They’re going to be with us for a long time. Make them no promises, or I’ll pee on your leg.”

“Canine eloquence,” Walker quipped as he matched the dog’s pace.

“I’ll believe humans have a better way of communicating,” the dog countered, “when I see the evidence of it in the way they run their civilization.”

“Maybe,” Walker mused as they exited the storage area and turned toward the center of the transfer craft, “things will have changed for the better by the time we get home.”

“Don’t hold your breath.” The dog snorted. “Regarding either possibility.”

About the Author

Alan Dean Foster
has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of the
New York Times
bestseller
Star Wars: The Approaching Storm
and the popular Pip and Flinx novels, as well as novelizations of several films including
Star Wars,
the first three
Alien
films, and
Alien Nation
. His novel
Cyber Way
won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work ever to do so. Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from an early-twentieth-century miners’ brothel. He is currently at work on several new novels and media projects.

By Alan Dean Foster

Published by The Random House Publishing Group

The Black Hole

Cachalot

Dark Star

The Metrognome and Other Stories

Midworld

Nor Crystal Tears

Sentenced to Prism

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye

Star Trek
Logs One–Ten

Voyage to the City of the Dead

.         .         .         Who Needs Enemies?

With Friends Like These         .         .         .

Mad Amos

The Howling Stones

Parallelities

The Icerigger Trilogy:

Icerigger

Mission to Moulokin

The Deluge Drivers

The Adventures of Flinx of the Commonwealth:

For Love of Mother-Not

The Tar-Aiym-Krang

Orphan Star

The End of the Matter

Bloodhype

Flinx in Flux

Mid-Flinx

Flinx’s Folly

The Damned:

Book One: A Call to Arms

Book Two: The False Mirror

Book Three: The Spoils of War

The Founding of Commonwealth:

Phylogenesis

Dirge

The Taken Trilogy:

Lost and Found

The Light-Years Beneath My Feet

The Light-Years Beneath My Feet
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2005 by Thranx, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon
is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

www.delreybooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-46129-2

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