Suddenly she stood up and left.
Louis said, "Well?"
"She must have become bored," said Nessus. "She gave no warning."
"I'm dying of thirst. Could I have that thrumb?"
"Thrumb is the color of the peel, Louis." He edged his 'cycle alongside Louis and handed him the fruit.
Louis was only just desperate enough to free one hand. That meant he had to bite dumgh the thick peel and tear it away with his teeth. At some point he reached real fruit and bit into it. It was the best thing he had tasted in two hundred years.
When he had quite finished the fruit, he asked, "Is she coming back?"
"We may hope so. I used the tasp at low power that it might affect her below the conscious level. She will miss it. The lure will become stronger every time she sees me. Louis, should we not make her fall in love with you?"
"Forget it. She think I'm a native, a savage. Which brings up the question: what is she?"
"I could not say. She did not try to hide it, but it did not come across, either. I do not know enough language. Not yet."
CHAPTER 20 — Meat
Nessus had landed to explore the dimness below. Cut off from the intercom, Louis tried to watch what the puppeteer was doing. Eventually he gave that up.
Much later, he heard footsteps. No bells this time.
He cupped his hands and shouted downward. "Nessus!"
The sound bounced off the walls and focused itself horrendously in the apex of the cone. The puppeteer jumped to his feet, swarmed aboard his 'cycle and took off. Cast off, more likely. No doubt he had left the motor going to hold the 'cycle down against the trapping field. Now he simply cut the motor.
He was back among the hovering metal when the footsteps stopped somewhere above them.
"What the tanj is she doing?" Louis whispered.
"Patience. You could not expect her to be conditioned by one exposure to a tasp at low power."
"Try to get it into your thick, brainless heads. I can not keep my balance indefinitety!"
"You must. How can I help?"
"Water," said Louis, with a tongue like two yards of flannel rolled up.
"Are you thirsty? But how can I get water to you? If you turn your head you may lose your balance."
"I know. Forget it." Louis shuddered. Strange, that Louis Wu the spacer should be so afraid of heights. "How's Speaker?"
"I fear for him, Louis. He has been unconscious for uncomfortably long."
"Tanj, tanj -"
Footsteps.
She must have a mania for changing clothes, Louis thought. What she wore now was all overlapping pleats in orange and green. Like previous garments, it showed nothing at all of her shape.
She knelt at the edge of the observation platform, coolly watching them. Lows clutched his metal raft and waited for developments.
He saw her soften. Her eyes went dreamy; the corners of her small mouth turned up.
Nessus spoke.
She seemed to consider. She said something that might have been an answer.
Then she left them.
"Well?"
"We shall see."
"I get so sick of waiting."
Suddenly the puppeteer's flycycle was floating upward. Up and forward. It bumped against the edge of the observation platform like a rowboat making dock.
Nessus stepped daintily ashore.
The girl came to greet him. What she held in her left hand had to be a weapon. But with her other hand she touched the puppeteer's head, hesitated, then ran her fingernails down his secondary spine.
Nessus made a sound of deftht.
She turned and walked upstairs. Not once did she glance back. She seemed to assume that Nessus would follow like a dog; and he did.
Good, thought Louis. Be subservient. Make her trust you.
But when the oddly matched sounds of their footsteps faded away, the cell block became a tremendous tomb.
Speaker was thirty feet away across the Sargasso Sea of metal. Four padded black fingers and a puff of orange face showed around the green crash balloons. Louis had no way of getting near. The kzIn might be dead already.
Among the white bones below were at least a dozen skulls. Bones, and age, and rusted metal, and silence. Louis Wu clung to his 'cycle and waited for his strength to give out.
He was dozing, not many minutes later, when something changed. His balance shifted -
Louis's life depended on his balance. The momentary disorientation sent him into rigid panic. He looked wildly about him, moving only his eyes.
The metal vehicles were all around him, motionless. But something was moving …
A distant car bumped, screeched like tearing metal and went up.
Huh?
No. It had grounded against the upper ring of cells. The whole Sargasso was sinking uniformly through space.
One by one, noisily, the cars and flying packs docked and were left behind.
Louis's 'cycle smacked jarringly into concrete, turned half around in the turbulence of electromagnetic forces, and toppled. Louis let go and rolled clear.
Immediately he was trying to get to his feet. But he couldn't get his balance; he couldn't stay upright. His hands were claws, contorted with pain, useless. He lay panting on his side, thinking that it must already be too late. Speaker's flycycle must have landed on Speaker.
Speaker's flycycle, easily recognizable, lay on its side two tiers up. Speaker was there — and he wasn't under the 'cycle. He must have been under it before the 'cycle fell on its side, but even then the balloons would have protected him to some extent.
Louis reached him by crawling.
The kzin was alive and breathing, but unconscious. The weight of the flycycle had not broken his neck, possibly because he didn't really have a neck. Louis clawed the flashlight-laser from his belt, used its green needle beam to free Speaker from his balloons.
Now what?
Louis remembered that he was dying of thirst.
His head seemed to have stopped spinning. He stood, wobbly-legged, to look for the only functional water source he knew.
The cell block was all concentric circular ledges, each ledge the roof of a ring of cell blocks. Speaker had grounded on the fourth ring from the center.
Louis found one 'cycle with tattered crash-balloon fabric draped across it. There was another, one tier down and across the central pit, equipped with a human-style saddle. The third — Nessus's 'cycle — had grounded a tier below Speakees.
Louis went down to it. His feet jarred him as they hit the steps. His muscles were too tired to absorb the shock.
He shook his head at the sight of the dashboard. Nobody would be stealing Nessus's flycycle! The controls were incredibly cryptic. But he did identify the water spout.
The water was warm, tasteless as distilled water, and utterly delicious.
When Louis had quenched his thirst, he tried a brick from the kitchen slot. It tasted very strange. Louis decided not to eat it yet. There might be additives deadly to human metabolism. Nessus would know.
He carried water to Speaker in his shoe, the first container he thought of. He dribbled it into the kzin's mouth, and the kzin swallowed it in his sleep, and smiled. Louis went back for another load, and ran out of stamina before he could reach the puppeteer's flycycle.
So he curled up on the flat construction plastic and closed his eyes.
Safe. He was safe.
He should have been asleep instantly, the way he felt. But something nagged at him. Abused muscles, cramps in hands and thighs, the fear of falling that would not let him go even now … and something more …