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.
CHAPTER 9
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.