More tentacles boiled in the water around at least a quarter of the island's perimeter, slithering up on shore and coming inland to join the battle.
"It looks big enough to give the mega trouble," I said.
He shook his head. "They're big, but not big enough to take down a mega. It's after the Arfies."
The Arfies were sustaining casualties. We could see struggling forms wrapped in tentacles being dragged over the edge. I heard a beeping sound and turned to see Pendergast take a small communicator out of his vest pocket.
"Port battery reports ready, sir."
"Very well. Hold your fire." He looked at me, noticing my surprise. "We don't like to intervene unless we have to," he explained. "It's a natural check on their population."
I'm sure the Arfies are all for ecology, I thought, but…
We watched for about five minutes. The Arfies fought the gorgon to a standstill for a short period, but slowly the monster gained the upper hand, even though hundreds of severed tentacles lay everywhere, twitching and leaking dark ichor. Finally, a gargantuan head rose from the water a short distance from shore, and then a polyhedral eye surfaced, its facets fired with reflected moonlight. Pendergast lifted the communicator. "Take it out," he said quietly.
"Aye aye, sir!"
An exciter bolt sizzled from the ship, coming from above us and to our left. The eye steamed, then exploded, its liquid humors gushing out and running viscously down the side of the head. A high-pitched gurgling yell split the night. The monster began to withdraw, dragging its mass of limp tentacles away from the horde of defending Arfies. Within a minute, the last of it had retreated into the water.
When it was all over and we were back inside, relaxing over brandy and cigars, I remarked to Pendergast, "I'd say there was no question that the Arfies are sentient. They're tool-users."
"Many species use tools," he said, sounding a little defensive, "even have language abilities ― Terran apes, for example, if you remember the old experiments in which they were taught sign languages ― but no one accuses them of being truly sentient. After all―"
"I wasn't making a political statement. Captain," I said to soothe whatever sore point I had touched. "It's also apparent that the Arfies have a definite niche here which humans can't compete for. No, I merely meant that it's hard to understand why the Skyway goes through here at all. It would seem that the Arfies have at least the potential to evolve into a technologically advanced race. Whoever built the Skyway seemed to want to avoid linking up worlds populated by advanced tool-users. None of the races we know have direct access to the Skyway from their homeworlds. The access portals are usually more than half a solar system away."
"I understand," Pendergast said, sipping brandy from a huge snifter. "But I can't give you a satisfactory answer."
"Which brings up another point," I went on. "To whom does this maze belong?"
Another sensitive area, if the strained expressions around the table were any indication.
"We think it may be a part of the original Terran Maze," Dr. Gutman said. "A lost part. I take it you've noticed we can breathe here unaided."
"So can some aliens. What makes you think it's a lost section of the Terran Maze?"
"What makes you doubt it?" Gutman riposted. "Surely not because it's so far removed from most of the Maze."
"I don't doubt it. I was merely asking." Gutman was right, but why was he being so touchy? It's true that as far as Euclidean space is concerned, mazes ramble all over the place, with some planets as much as a thousand light-years away from the home system.
"There is only one portal on Akwaterra," the Captain intervened. "However, there is another stretch of Skyway, also submerged, that leads to a dead end. No portal. We think it was the proposed site of the double-back portal to Seven Suns. You may be aware that there is an ingress spur on Seven Suns that no one seems to use."
"Could the portal be underwater?" I asked.
"No. It was never installed. Why not, is anyone's guess."
"Ran out of funds, no doubt," Gutman quipped, eyes atwin-kle. "The bond issue didn't pass."
"You seem to be all questions tonight, Jake," the Captain observed.
"I have one more, possibly more important." I gestured around the room. "Where does all this come from? You said the brandy is domestic. Does that imply that you can sometimes get imported? Imported from where, and by whom?"
"Congratulations," Pendergast said. "You've asked a question that never occurs to most luck-throughs. They see we have some home industries here, and they assume that all goods must be homemade. Take the titanium this ship is made of, as an example. We have domestic steel here, but we haven't been able to locate any rutile deposits. No doubt they're submerged. We lack many things here. But what we can't make, the Ryxx sell to us."
"The Ryxx?" John gasped. "You mean there's a way back to Ryxx Maze from here?"
"Not by Skyway. But through normal space, yes."
John looked at him blankly. "Normal space?"
I said, "Do you mean that the Ryxx haul goods here by Skyway and return by starship?"
"Yes." Pendergast lit a slender, bright-green cigar. "A remote world of theirs happens to lie only twelve light-years from one of ours, which makes it a hell of a long trip at sublight speeds, but they don't seem to mind." He smiled. "Nobody thinks much of space travel on the Skyway, not when you can get in your vehicle and drive ten parsecs without leaving the ground. But the Ryxx never gave up their development of interstellar travel. Gives them a competitive edge."
"What do they take back?" I asked.
"In the mood for riddles?" he asked with am impish grin. "What's yellow and looks like gold and is worth going a long way for?"
"I see." It made sense. Gold and a few other precious metals are always worth the trouble. "You have gold here, I take it."
Everybody laughed. "Yes," the Captain said, looking around at the lustrous walls. "You'd never know it, would you? Yes, we've plenty of it, but we can't eat it. Perfectly useless substance, which makes it a perfect medium of exchange, even among alien races."
A steward came in and whispered something into the Captain's ear. Pendergast looked at me.
"Seems there's a call for you at the desk, Jake."
20
On the way to the desk I was worried. Only Lori would be calling, and that possibly meant trouble. I had received her code-note just before leaving to shop. I was worried for other reasons too. I'd come away from the dinner with the vague impression that Pendergast was in on everything. That meant we could be prisoners on this ship. I was concerned for the Teelies especially. I had told them to get lost after dinner, get out into the nightlife, go to the casino, go dancing, anything. Keep to public places. But where were they to go now?
The clerk on duty put a phone in front of me, a boxy affair made of a coarse-grained wood, like the ones in the room. I picked up the receiver.
"Yes?"
"I have your jacket," a male voice said. "Want to come and get it?"
"Who is this?"
"The guy who owns the car you stole."
The pill made my mouth work before I knew what I was saying. "The guy who owns the car I stole. Well, well. No fooling. What can I do for you?"
"You can come up to my cabin and get your jacket, and let me take a poke at you."
"Least I could do. Right? Let me ask you this. How do you know I stole your vehicle, or that I stole anything?"
"A little birdie told me."
It was an expression I hadn't heard in a long while. In fact, something about his accent rang bells all the way back along my lifeline. He had a true American accent, and to me he sounded like what most people accuse me of sounding like ― an anachronism. I remembered what he had yelled at us as we had pulled away in his vehicle: lousy bastards.