A shining sphere lay in the center of Nerno's planetoid. A curving pattern of pale cables suspended it and held it in place-held the planetoid in the proper relationship to it. Here and there, more of Nemo's creatures crept about. They looked like the lifeliners, but they had much heavier carapaces, shorter spinners, legs nearly invisible. They picked their way across the suspension cables. In front of them, the white cables flexed in response to the spinners' motion and the faint occasional vibration of Nerno's sphere. Behind them, they left dark metallic rope of twisted wire.
Victoria ignored the faint scratching noise behind her. She wished she could see into the sphere, but she knew it was protecting her from radiation and energy flux that would kill her, and all her colleagues, and probably Nemo as well. The sphere hid the engine that powered Nemo's voyaging.
The lifeliner scratched persistently at the floor. Victoria finally noticed the sound and glanced over her shoulder.
The creature huddled over a tangled tracery of silk. It scratched again, ran a little way up the tunnel, stopped, and ran back toward her. It did not turn; it ran both directions with equal ease. Wherever it moved, it trailed a line of silk. Its scorpion tails twitched, fore and aft. ,,Okay," Victoria said. "You're right. It's time to get out of here."
She rose, glanced one last longing time into the center of Nemo's starship, and followed the lifeliner back toward the surface.
"Thank you for showing me," she said aloud to the creature and silently to Nemo, using her internal link.
"You are welcome," Nemo said.
Satoshi followed the small scuttly creature spinning black silk before him. He wanted to get close to the lifeliner, to pick it up and inspect it, to subject it to the electronic gaze of the LTM clinging to his shirt. J.D. had asked him to be careful, and he approved of her caution. But he wanted to see and understand every facet of the environment surrounding him.
The wide, low corridor narrowed, the deep-fissured
walls smoothed, and the firm, springy floor dropped into a slope. Satoshi climbed downward. The light began to fade. The slope ended in a tall, cylindrical chamber hung with heavy, fibrous curtains and pierced with two more tunnels slanting up and out, like the one through which he had descended.
The lifeliner stopped and huddled against the wall.
Satoshi sat on his heels beside the creature. The lifeliner rubbed against the wall, severing the silk.
"Is this the end of the road?" Satoshi said softly.
He walked around the edge of the chamber, touching the long bright swaths of drapery.
They open, he thought.
He looked up.
Long-lidded glittery eyes looked back.
Satoshi started and spun around.
At the top of each set of curtains, a creature clung to the vaulted ceiling. If Satoshi had not met Nemo, he might not have recognized them as creatures, or the circular fissure as their eye-slits. The creatures hugged the wall, arching long legs overhead till they touched at the center of the ceiling. The legs pressed upward and outward like an arch, holding the creatures in place.
The mouth parts of the creatures, tremendously enlarged, formed the curtains.
One of the sets of curtains suddenly billowed wetly outward. A blast of oily, pungent air swept over Satoshi, knocking him down and slapping him to the floor. The pressure pushed the hot fumes up his nose. He sneezed convulsively, three times, four.
The curtains fell back and the tempest vanished.
Satoshi lay flat, catching his breath, breathing shallowly. His eyes and throat stung. A second set of curtains quivered. He ducked and buried his head beneath his arms as the curtains billowed and a second blast crashed over him.
He looked up and around just in time to see the third set of curtains quiver. He watched long enough to see them open, pulling apart in the center, remaining closed at top and bottom. Beyond the curtains, acid
dripped down color-striped stone, dissolving it, releasing roiling clouds of gas.
He ducked again as the hot, polluted air filled the chamber and billowed out through the tunnels. The curtains fell closed with a wet slap.
He pushed himself cautiously to his feet. He felt damp and greasy. The curtains hung motionless.
"Nerno!" he said through his link. "What's going on down here?"
"Fresh air," Nemo said.
Satoshi started to laugh. "That's more fresh air than I can handle all at once," he said. "This place is amazing -but do you mind if I leave before the next storm?"
"I'll wait till you're safely away."
"How long do I have? Can I look around?"
"I must hold my breath."
"Oh. Okay, I'll hurry."
As he headed for the exit tunnel and the silken guideline, he took one last look around, at Nemo's lungs, at the symbiotic creatures who not only pumped air through Nerno's body but created the air as well.
Stephen Thomas strolled after his lifeliner. When he was well out of sight of his partners, he stopped at the intersection of several tunnels. The creature beetled on and disappeared around a curve.
Stephen Thomas deliberately turned down a different tunnel.
He made it about a hundred meters. The lifeliner's carapace scraped the floor behind him as the creature scuttled after him, spewing thread. "Think you're going to stop me, huh?" Stephen Thomas said. "Just how the fuck are you going to do that?"
It closed the gap, spinning out a lifeline of increasing slenderness and delicacy.
"Stephen Thomas," Nemo said directly to the internal link.
Stephen Thomas stopped. J.D. had adapted easily to
direct communication. But Stephen Thomas wished he had brought a portable radio headset.
"I hear you," he replied.
"It's hard to follow you when you go so fast."
"That's all right," Stephen Thomas said. "I won't get lost, I don't need a babysitter."
"You do not wish to study genetics."
"I-What?"
"My attendant will take you to where you can study genetics."
"Can I take samples?"
"You have a sample."
Great, Stephen Thomas thought. A few alien bacteria off a shred of string. They probably have as much relation to Nemo as E. coli does to human beings.
"Thanks a lot."
"You are welcome."
"Oh, fuck it," Stephen Thomas muttered aloud.
When the lifeliner went into reverse and trailed a thread parallel to the one it had left coming in, Stephen Thomas shrugged and followed the creature wherever it wanted to,take him.
"Suppose I'd kept going," Stephen Thomas said to Nemo through the link.
"I suppose you'd kept going," Nemo said.
Stephen Thomas waited. Finally it occurred to him that Nemo had done exactly what he had suggested.
"If I'd kept going," Stephen Thomas said, "what would you have done?" "Nothing."
"Would you let me go anywhere I wanted?"
"I'd warn you of dangerous spots."
The lifeliner stopped in a gap among several curtains. Light shined out into the corridor, brighter than the light from the optical strands woven into the walls. The new light shimmered, like reflections from water.
The lifeliner leaped, trailing silk, and disappeared.
Stephen Thomas moved forward curiously. Warm, pungent air flowed toward him. Sulfur and hydrogen sulfide and other, more complicated chemicals made
him breathe shallowly through his mouth. If the air got much worse, he would have to turn back. He tapped into the analysis of the LTM clinging to his pocket, and scanned the chemicals. None of them would kill him in their current concentrations. Not immediately.
The curtains created a spherical chamber around and above a water-filled depression, and trapped the heat and the stench. Stephen Thomas stood on the bank, inspecting the place curiously. Sweat beaded on his forehead, on the back of his neck.