The twin craft went slowly, tentatively down it.
“This bit is fractionally dangerous,” Djan Seriy told her brother, reaching back to touch his suit with hers again as the two little craft dropped down one of the minor tubes within the Tower. “The ship will be working the Surface systems to keep us clear, but not everything is handled from there. Matrices further down and even on individual scendships might take it into their own little circuits to send something up or down here.” She paused. “Nothing so far,” she added.
The two craft flitted from one Tower to another over the next two levels. The next one down was Vacuum Baskers territory, the home of creatures of several different species-types which, like the Seedsails, absorbed sunlight directly. Unlike the Seedsails they were happy enough to stick roughly where they were all their lives rather than go sailing amongst the stars. Apart from the occasional surface glint, there wasn’t much to be seen there either. Another dark transition took them to another Tower and across the perfectly black and completely vacant vacuum-level below the Baskers.
“Still all right, brother?” Djan Seriy asked. Her touch on his ankle was oddly comforting in the utter darkness and near total silence.
“A little bored,” Ferbin told her.
“Talk to the suit. Get it to play you music or screen you something.”
He whispered to the suit; it played soothing music.
They ended up on another mid-level Tower balcony similar to the one they’d left from, abandoning the two little craft tipped on the floor beside some already occupied cradles. One corridor, several doors and many ghostly images later they stood by the curved wall of a scendship tube while Djan Seriy and Hippinse both carefully placed the palms of their hands on position after position on the wide wall, as though searching for something. Djan Seriy raised one hand. Hippinse stepped away from the wall. A short while later Anaplian also stepped back from the wall and a little later still the wall revealed a door which rolled up, releasing creamy purple light from beneath like a flood that lapped round feet, calves, thighs and torsos until it reached their masked faces and they could see that they were facing a scendship interior full of what looked like barely solidified glowing purple cloud-stuff. They stepped into it.
It was like walking through a curtain of syrup into a room full of thick air. The suit masks provided a view; the partially solidified cloud and the everywhere-purple light inside it made it impossible to see past the end of one’s nose on normal sight. Djan Seriy beckoned them all to stand together, hands resting on shoulders.
“Be glad you can’t smell this, gentlemen,” she told the two Sarl men. “This is an Aultridian scendship.”
Holse went rigid.
Ferbin nearly fainted.
It was not even to be a short journey, though it might be relatively quick. The scendship hurtled down the Tower past the level of the Cumuloforms, where Ferbin and Holse had been transported over the unending ocean by Expanded Version Five; Zourd, months before, past the level beneath where Pelagic Kites and Avians roamed the airs above a shallow ocean dotted with sunlit islands, past the one beneath that where Naiant Tendrils swarmed through a level pressured to the ceiling with an atmosphere from the upper levels of a gas giant, then past the one beneath that where the Vesiculars — Monthian megawhales — swam singing through a mineral-rich methane ocean that did not quite touch the ceiling above.
They went plunging past the Eighth.
They were sat on the floor by Djan Seriy, who stood. The feet or hands of their suits all touched.
“Home proper, we’re passing, sir,” Holse said to Ferbin when Djan Seriy relayed this information.
Ferbin heard him over some very loud but still soothing music he was having the suit play him. He had closed his eyes earlier but still could not keep out the unspeakable purple glow; then he’d thought to ask the suit to block it, which it did. He shivered with disgust every time he thought of that ghastly purple mass of Aultridian stuff stuck cloyingly all around them, infusing them with its hideous smell. He didn’t reply to Holse.
They kept going, flashing beneath their home level.
The Aultridian vessel didn’t even start to slow until it had fallen to a point level with the top of the atmosphere covering what had been the Deldeyn’s lands.
Still slowing gradually, it fell past the floor of that level too, coming to a halt adjacent to the matrix of Filigree immediately beneath. It jostled itself sideways, the floor tipping and the whole craft shuddering. Djan Seriy, one hand attached to a patch on the scendship’s wall near the door, was controlling its actions. Her knees flexed and her whole body moved with what looked like intensely practised ease as the craft shook and juddered beneath her. Then they felt the craft steady before starting to move smartly sideways and up, gradually levelling off.
“Moving into the Filigree now,” Hippinse told Ferbin and Holse.
“The Aultridia have spotted all is not well with one of their scendships,” Djan Seriy told them, sounding distracted.
“You mean this one, ma’am?” Holse asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“They’re following us,” Hippinse confirmed.
“What?” Ferbin squeaked. He was imagining being captured and peeled from his suit by Aultridia.
“Precautionary,” Hippinse said, unworried. “They’ll try and block us off somewhere ahead too, once we’ve narrowed our options a bit, but we’ll be gone by then. Don’t worry.”
“If you say so, sir,” Holse said, though he did not sound unworried.
“This kind of thing happens all the time,” Hippinse reassured them. “Scendships have brains just smart enough to fool themselves. They take off on their own sometimes, or people get into them and borrow them for unauthorised excursions. There are separate safety systems that still prevent collisions so it isn’t a catastrophe when a scendship moves without orders; more of a nuisance.”
“Oh really?” Ferbin said tartly. “You are an expert on our homeworld now, are you?”
“Certainly am,” Hippinse said happily. “The ship and I have the best original specification overview, secondary structure plans, accrued morphology mappings, full geo, hydro, aero, bio and data system models and all the latest full-spectrum updates available. Right now I know more about Sursamen than the Nariscene do, and they know almost everything.”
“What do you know they don’t?” Holse asked.
“A few details the Oct and Aultridia haven’t told them.” Hippinse laughed. “They’ll find out eventually but they don’t know yet. I do.”
“Such as?” Ferbin asked.
“Well, where we’re going,” Hippinse said. “There’s an inordinate amount of Oct interest in these Falls. And the Aultridia are getting curious too. High degree of convergence; intriguing.” The avatoid sounded both bemused and fascinated. “Now there’s a pattern for you, don’t you think? Oct ships outside clustering round Sursamen and Oct inside focusing on the Hyeng-zhar. Hmm-hmm. Very interesting.” Ferbin got the impression that — inhuman avatar of a God-like Optimae super-spaceship or not — the being was basically talking to itself at this point.
“By the way, Mr Hippinse,” Holse said, “is it really all right to wet oneself in these things?”
“Absolutely!” Hippinse said, as though Holse had proposed a toast. “All gets used. Feel free.”
Ferbin rolled his eyes, though he was glad that Holse, probably, could not see.
“Oh, that’s better…”