“Up there, At,” Nenda continued. “The singularities have gone. They just vanished, a couple of minutes ago.”
“Why?”
“Damned if I know. Or care. But we’ve got to get over to the Indulgence, and take her up.”
“And if we are returned once more to the surface, as we were before?”
“Then we’re in deep stuff. But we’re in that anyway if the interior tunnels are closing.”
“Everywhere. As far as my signals could penetrate, the interior constructions of Genizee are vanishing. It is as though the work of the Builders there never existed.”
While Atvar H’sial was still speaking, she acted. Without asking for approval from Louis Nenda, she picked him up and curled him tightly in a pair of forelimbs. She went springing away across the surface in long graceful bounds, her vestigial wing cases wide open behind her. Louis had his breath knocked out of him at every leap, but he did not complain. A Cecropian in full flight was much faster than any human.
The Indulgence lay midway between a twisted thicket of gigantic moss plants and five jutting towers of sandstone that formed homes for the senior Zardalu. Nenda rubbed his aching ribs as Atvar H’sial placed him on the ground — Didn’t she realize her own strength? — and glanced across at the towers. At this time of day most of the Zardalu should be working in the ocean or the interior tunnels. Just his luck, if today they had decided to take a vacation.
At least the Indulgence was intact. But the ship was useless, as it had been for the past two months. Nenda had checked the engines every day. They were in perfect condition, with ample power. There was just one problem: they refused to carry the ship up from the surface of the planet. Something — the annular singularities themselves, or more likely the Builder constructs who controlled them — had inhibited every attempt at take-off.
“Quickly, Louis Nenda. This is no time for introspection.”
It hadn’t been more than two seconds since Atvar H’sial dropped him on the ground with his chest half crushed.
“Get off my back, At. Gimme time to breathe.” Nenda swung the hatch open. “If the engines don’t work this time, it’ll be the last shot of introspection we’ll ever get.”
The lift-off sequence had been waiting in the computer for two months. The navigation system was primed and ready. Louis was in the pilot’s seat two seconds after the hatch opened. Unfortunately, the power build-up of the Indulgence’s engines took a minimum of three minutes, and it was far from silent.
Three minutes. Three minutes of sitting, staring at the screens, wondering when the first head of midnight blue would peer curiously out of one of the towers, or lift from the calm sea.
“What do we do if the engines don’t work this time, At?” Was that the curling end of a long tentacle, or just a ripple on the blue water?
“We will chastise the Zardalu, blaming them for the inadequacy of their assistance to us in refurbishing the ship.”
“Right. Lots of luck.” It was a tentacle. And now a head had broken the surface. The Zardalu were swimming rapidly for shore, four of them, and now half-a-dozen more. They must have felt the vibrations, and known that they came from the engines of the Indulgence.
Still over a minute to go. Was it time to send Atvar H’sial to man the ship’s weapons system? Maybe they could swing it one more time; persuade the Zardalu that another day or two was all it would need to give them access to space. But that persuasion would have to be done outside the ship, without weapons…
“Has it occurred to you, Louis Nenda, that if we do achieve orbit, and depart Genizee, we will once again be leaving empty-handed?” Atvar H’sial was crouched by his side, her echolocation vision useless to see what was happening outside the ship. “We did not have the foresight to stock the Indulgence with samples of Builder technology. We do not even have Zardalu trophies. I blame myself for a major lack of foresight.”
Thirty seconds to go. The ship was vibrating all over as power build-up hit sixty percent. Zardalu were boiling up out of the water and whipping themselves along the shore toward the ship. The nearest was less than forty yards away. Others were appearing from the sandstone towers. And Atvar H’sial was bemoaning the lack of mementoes!
Nenda gripped the controls, a lot harder than necessary. “At, you can have my share of trophies, every one of ’em. I’ll be glad to get out of here with my ass and hat. Hold on tight. I’m going for a premature lift.”
The nearest Zardalu was reaching out long tentacles toward the ship. Power was less than seventy-five percent, below the nominal minimum. The Indulgence shuddered at Nenda’s lift-off command and rose three feet off the ground. It hovered for a moment before sliding lazily sideways and down to the soft earth.
Too soon!
Forty seconds were recommended between engine power pulses. Nenda managed to wait for a quarter of that, until he heard something slap at the hatch and begin to turn the handle. He gritted his teeth and hit the lift-off sequence again.
The Indulgence shivered and began a wobbling, drunken ascent. Nenda watched the ground as it drifted past on the viewscreens. They were at six feet — ten feet — still within reach of questing tentacles. The shoreline was approaching. The ship was crabbing sideways, slowly lifting. Engine power was nearing eighty percent.
“We’re going to make it, At. We’re lifting, and nothing aloft is stopping us.” Nenda glanced at a viewing screen. “Hold on, though. We got a problem. There’s a whole line of Zardalu, right at the edge of the beach. We might be low enough for them to grab us.”
“What are they doing?”
Nenda stared hard. He didn’t speak the Zardalu slave tongue all that well, and the body language was even harder to read. But the splayed lower tentacles and the upper two raised high above every Zardalu head, together with the wide-open gaping beaks, were an easy signal.
“You won’t believe this, At. But they’re cheering.”
“As they should be. For are we not demonstrating to them that, as promised, we are able to leave the surface of Genizee and go to space?”
“Yeah. But they won’t cheer so loud when they find out we’re not coming back. They were relying on us to get them off the planet and back into the spiral arm. They’re going to be mad as hell.”
“Perhaps so.” The ship was rising steadily, and the waving Zardalu were no more than blue dots on the gray-brown beach. Atvar H’sial settled into a more comfortable position at Nenda’s side. “But they ought to be most grateful.”
“Huh?” The Indulgence was moving faster, above the thick haze of Genizee’s lower atmosphere. Louis gave the Cecropian beside him only a fraction of his attention. Already he was beginning to worry about the next step. They might be off the planet, but they were still deep within the convoluted space-time of the Torvil Anfract.
“I assert, they should be grateful.” The pheromonal message carried with it an overtone of sleepy satisfaction. There was no hint that half a minute earlier Atvar H’sial had been facing possible death. “Think about it, Louis. We have been very good to them. We did not exterminate them, although the very name of Zardalu strikes terror through the whole spiral arm. We did not kill or mutilate them, although that is their own habit with slaves. We have not taken their most prized possessions — a short-sighted omission on my part, I admit, and one for which I take full responsibility. And we have even left them their planet.”
“You’re all heart, At.”