“They’re thanking you,” Maggie said.
Up close, the rosy plumage turned out to be a silky nap of cobweb-fine hairs, that split and branched at the tips, like dandelion down. There was an almost irresistible impulse to plunge your hands into it and feel the softness. It was the down that fluffed them out to give an illusion of even moderate bulk. Underneath there was nothing to them—just a pliant, willowy frame with hardly any flesh on it. Wherever the fairy silk rippled and parted in response to stray air currents, they were all skin and fine bones and tendon. On Earth they wouldn’t have weighed more than fifty pounds apiece.
They bounded ahead like mischievous children, then stopped and looked back to see if the humans were following. Jameson grinned and picked up his bundle.
“Nocturnal species,” Dmitri said. “Notice the eyes? And it gets cold at night where they come from. The divaricated follicles of their coats provide good insulation, with a layer of trapped air next to the skin. I wouldn’t be surprised if the tips open and close to regulate temperature—much more efficient than the erectile follicles of terrestrial mammals.”
“They look so human!” Maggie squealed. “Like little elves!”
“Only superficially,” Dmitri said, watching the two beings scamper ahead of them. “See those butterfly hips? And the articulation of the shoulder joints? And they’re not mammals.”
“Even so,’ Jameson said, “their resemblance to people is amazing. A coincidence…”
“Not amazing,” Dmitri said. “And no coincidence. There’s a limited number of efficient forms available to quadrupeds who become bipeds. The Cygnans must have collected thousands of life forms. They probably lumped their handful of humanoids together.”
He nodded toward the cage they were passing. The squat green troll within, with its knee-length beard and arms hanging to the ground, was obviously not intelligent. As it caught sight of them, the top of its head lifted like a lid and emitted a bellow; then it scampered away, upright but on all fours.
They were out of the Hall of Bipeds and beside the towering glass cliff that contained the Jovians. Maggie gasped, and Dmitri lagged behind like a small boy.
There was a vast churning within the cloudy liquid, and one of the enormous pancake shapes came hurtling toward them to flatten its quarter acre of surface against the glass. The floor beneath their feet shook with the impact.
“One crack in the glass and it would be all over—for them and for us,” Ruiz said. “If the liquid hydrogen didn’t instantly freeze us solid, the explosion when a creature that size depressurized would blow us to bits.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Maggie said nervously.
The Jovian, its scalloped outer mantle curled around the shaft of its hundred-foot harpoon, was hammering on the glass with the butt.
“It’s angry,” Jameson said. “I don’t blame it. It can’t imagine how it ended up in this—goldfish bowl.”
“This goldfish bowl is all there is in the universe for them now,” Ruiz said gruffly. “I wonder if it thinks we’re responsible.”
Dmitri was staring entranced at the living mountain of flesh. “No skeleton—very sensible for a creature that lives at a pressure of a hundred thousand atmospheres. And the ratio of surface area to volume—”
Jameson pushed him along and got him, still talking, out of the mammoth aquarium. The two humanoids waited impatiently for them ahead. They seemed to know where they were going. They threaded their way among the empty cages and drained tanks of the empty exhibition hall toward the warehouse section that Jameson had intended to head for. Had they been to the zookeepers’ living quarters too?
They set up a shrill chattering, and Jameson hurried to catch up. He stopped when he saw what they were excited about.
A dead Cygnan lay sprawled in a pool of orange blood next to the tank it had been caulking. The back end of its body was a glistening hash. It must have been trying to run away when the stream of explosive splinters caught it.
Some of Klein’s handiwork.
“When the Cygnans find this corpse, they’ll be hunting us down like vermin,” Jameson said.
“That’s what we are, aren’t we?” Ruiz said. “Rats in the walls.”
The door to Tetrachord and Triad’s quarters had been blown open. Jameson sniffed the air.
“They must have had plastic explosive,” Jameson said.
“They did,” Dmitri said. “I heard Gifford say that Klein had it molded to look like the soles of his boots.”
“Those heavy boots that were so out of place in space,” Jameson said. “Nobody ever thought to question them.”
“How could you?” Maggie said. “I mean, something like that is too far out.”
The cramped interior of the zookeepers’ apartment had been torn apart. Objects had been swept off the spoon-shaped shelves and trampled underfoot. The graduated set of miniature resting perches had been wantonly smashed. Jameson recognized their special poignance now. Nursery furniture.
The Moog was still where he’d left it, but it had been hammered into junk. “The son of a bitch!” Jameson flared. “He didn’t want anyone talking to the Cygnans after he was gone!”
He searched the litter. The cupboard that had held the little arsenal of neural weapons was empty. Klein’s party was armed to the teeth now.
“If we do catch up with Klein, what do you expect to do?” Ruiz asked tartly.
“We’ll worry about that when we catch him,” Jameson said and kept on looking.
He found what he wanted among the litter on the floor. Klein had overlooked it, or hadn’t realized what it was.
One of the two-pronged electric prods the Cygnans had herded him with.
“It doesn’t have any reach,” Maggie said. “It’s no better than a knife or a club. You can’t get near someone with a gun.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Jameson said, sticking the implement in the waistband of his shorts.
He poked his head out the other door to make sure there were no Cygnans in the warehouse section, then led his troops outside. The two little humanoids scampered along beside them, their silky fur bouncing.
He knew the worst even before he reached the stacks of looted human artifacts. Why had he ever led Klein here?
The junkpile had been thoroughly picked over for anything useful. Spacesuits, of course—enough to outfit Klein’s whole party. The ones that hadn’t been taken were slashed, faceplates smashed, hoses pulled out.
Maggie held up a slashed suit, tears running down her face. “Why? Why didn’t they leave the rest of us a chance? Just a chance!”
“They don’t want us to have a chance,” Ruiz said, his face grim. “The people they left behind are a complication in their plans. I’ll tell you what I think. I think the first missile they intend to fire will be targeted for this pod.”
“No!” Jameson cried. “Not even Klein or Chia would do a thing like that! Disable the spine of the ship, they said! They wouldn’t slaughter their own people!”
“Types like that always start with their own people,” Ruiz said.
Dmitri was rummaging in the piles of goods. He came up with a fire ax that had been overlooked and stuck it in his belt. Maggie collected a bottle of alcohol and some cotton and, after she had explained their use, then said: “Don’t look shocked. I come from a family of rebs.” Ruiz found a kitchen knife and tied it to the end of a fiberglass pole that had been part of a stretcher. Jameson armed himself with an eighteen-inch crescent wrench and then, in the same tool locker, found a six-pound maul and an assortment of chisels. After some thought he tied a nylon cord around the handle of the maul and stuffed a coil of twenty or thirty feet of line inside his shirt.