t only released him once he was inside what he though of as the orifice, a mouth-like slit in what he assumed was the hull of the craft, with fleshy, vegetable labia. When the orifice closed behind him, Slide was momentarily in darkness again, and this time he made no pretense at reaching for the blaster when the disembodied voice came out of some soft and sightless nowhere.
"Remove your helmet, Yancey Slide."
"Forget about it."
"You will find the air quite breathable."
"I'd rather confirm that for myself."
"As you wish."
Some inner portion of the orifice opened, and Slide found himself in a high cathedral place of grey mists, and blue and green light. A sudden return to gravity caused him to stumble slightly as he found himself on a floor that was covered in a thick carpet of lush moss. He walked carefully ahead until he reached what looked to be a path that wound between the moss-banks, and revealed that the moss flourished on a floor of yellow brickwork. He halted and looked around. Distances were hard to judge, but the lack of an horizon, and the way the floor curved up, until it was lost in some high distance, led him to believe that he was on the inner surface of some vast and hollow spheroid.
"Follow the yellow brick road? I don't think so."
The disembodied voice was back. "You could do worse, Yancey Slide."
"Would you care to explain?"
"The swiftest way to the Orchids."
"What?"
"The yellow brick road is the swiftest way to the Orchids."
"The Orchids?"
"The Orchids are."
Slide suspected that whatever intelligence controlled the voice was not much smarter than a talking clock. A simpleminded verbal transfer.
"The Orchids are all round us."
"Where?"
"The Orchids are all round us."
Slide looked up. What he'd though of a jungle style tree canopy was in fact a complexity of huge petals that rose, dipped, and shivered, inflated and deflated with what Slide read as a languid vegetable ecstacy. Insects and humming birds danced constant attention and, at regular, perhaps even timed intervals, puffs of heavy vapor gasped into the upper air and then drifted down as a localized drizzle.
"Remove your helmet, Yancey Slide." The voice sounded as though it had come back to where it had started. "You will find the air quite breathable."
Slide hesitated. He knew to remove the helmet made sense. The air in this part of the bio-craft looked maybe high in carbon dioxide, but by no means harmful, and if he continued to be stubborn he would only deplete his own reserves.
"I won't argue."
His hands went to the ring fastening, and as he was twisting the helmet lock he heard another voice. "You can take off the helmet, but I'd keep the suit on." "What?"
The new voice came from a distance, but was certainly not disembodied. Something was moving in the mist beyond the moss. At first Slide couldn't distinguish it as anything but a hunched form. Only when the thing was a matter of fifteen or twenty yards away did it cease to be a thing, and was revealed as a man in the most complicated mechanical wheelchair that Slide, as far as he could remember, had ever seen.
"I said you can take off the helmet, but keep the suit on. That's if you don't want to end up like me."
Slide unlocked the helmet and lifted it over his head. He took an experimental breath and found that the atmosphere in this part of the bio-craft was heavy with humidity and stank of cloying perfume and chronic plant decay, but was, at the same time, perfectly breathable. "And who are you?"
"I am Sternwood."
To say that the figure in the wheelchair was a man might have been considered by some as an exaggeration. In fact, this creature who called himself Sternwood was barely half a man. His right arm, right leg, most of the right side of his body, and the lower right side of his face had seemingly been dissolved away, as though by a powerful acid. Slide could see that this Sternwood was human, but how he could have survived such a devastating chemical attack was a total mystery. The motorized chair with its feeder tubes, gleaming chrome, and hardwired circuitry clearly kept him alive, to the point that he and the chair were practically integrated as one.
"I am Slide."
"I already know that."
"Then you have the advantage of me."
The half face attempted a grotesque smile. "I would hardly say that."
Slide looked the creature in the chair up and down. "You might be right."
"At least you're honest. Many try not to look at me."
Slide placed the helmet under his arm. "Maybe I value honesty over delicacy."
"You're doubtless wondering what happened to me?"
"Obviously."
"It was the Orchids."
Slide looked up at the canopy of fleshy petals. "The Orchids?"
"I was half digested before I could convince the Orchids that I'd be of use to them, and they spat me out again."
"I'm not sure I completely understand."
"Never been on an Eloi ship before?"
Slide shook his head. "No, not me."
"You want a drink?"
Slide shrugged. "Why not, now I'm here."
Sternwood slapped a control on the chair with his remaining hand. "I can't drink myself, but I like to watch a man who can."
"I'm not a man. I'm Idimmu."
"I know that, but you'll pass."
Three figures emerged from the mist. Two girls and a boy, if that was the right term for the ever-young species. All three wore lipstick, sultry eyeshadow, alien jewelry of plant-like inter twining gold curves, and filmy capes of sheer gauze that left them functionally naked. Slide's body took notice of the near-nudity, as they responded to Sternwood in near-chorus
"Master Sternwood?"
"Master Sternwood?"
"Master Sternwood?"
"Give Master Slide a drink, my children."
Slide frowned. "These are your children?"
Sternwood approximately shook his head. "No, but I treat them as such. You can really do what you like with them."
The male Eloi stepped forward and whipped a silk wrap from what turned out to be a chilled bottle of Dom Perignon '52. "Does this please new Master Slide?"
How the hell a bottle of Dom Perignon '52 came to be aboard an Eloi biocraft presented something of a puzzle, but Slide was in no mood to ponder details when there was so much else to consider. "Sure, and totally unexpected."
The Eloi male popped the cork, with an accustomed skill that, in itself posed another how-the-hell question, and handed Slide the bottle along with a long spun silver drinking straw. Slide declined the straw. Apparently the Eloi didn't know everything about serving vintage champagne. He look a swig straight from the bottle, and, only then, realized that he had been extremely thirsty ever since he had materialized in deep space.
The three Eloi spoke in chorus again.
"Any one, two, or all of us would be most happy to engage in sexual congress with you, new Master Slide."
"Any one, two, or all of us would be most happy to engage in sexual congress with you, new Master Slide."
"Any one, two, or all of us would be most happy to engage in sexual congress with you, new Master Slide."
The body became extremely enthusiastic at the prospect, but Slide brought its hormones to heel, and glanced at Sternwood. "But that would involve removing my armor?"
Again the half-face smile. "The Orchids have taken quite a few that way."
"I'm not sure I get this. These Orchids feed on humans and Eloi?"