Gambiel was the first to appear from her right, with his weapon at the ready. He saw the mirror in the tree and slowly strapped the rifle back over his shoulder. He touched the surface and did not draw back at the chill. “That’s it, alright,” he said.
Jook and Cuiller appeared from the left. They, too, examined the alien artifact.
“If that thing’s a billion years old,” Jook asked, “how did it get up in a tree? It should have been buried under layers of geological strata, then turned over two or three times by plate tectonics.”
“We’ve already figured out that this world doesn’t have ‘em, Hugh,” Gambiel said. “Plate tectonics, that is,”
“This rainforest ecology must be very old,” Krater observed. “As old as the Bandersnatchi and the other Slaver biota. The Bandersnatchi will have been tending this planet for a long time.
“It’s just possible,” she went on, “that the stasis-box was picked up by a young, growing tree. Those saplings back there looked strong enough to do it-if whatever’s inside the box isn’t too heavy Then the box was absorbed into the tree trunk as the branches sprouted and spread out. Eventually, when the tree died, the box fell to the forest floor. And the next tree to rise in that place took it up again. Maybe the stasis-box did spend a million years or so underground, pulled down by the root structure. But sooner or later it always comes up.”
“Why?” from Cuiller.
“Because roots and other burrowing life turn the soil over. And in any scatter of small, loose stuff, the larger and heavier objects tend to rise… Have we seen any sign of streams yet, let alone rivers or lakes? Those are the forces that make sedimentary rocks-what you call ‘geological straw.’ But we haven’t seen them.”
“Well, not around here,” Jook said.
“And around here is where the box is, right?”
“I give up,” the navigator said. “You found it in a tree, so it must be possible.”
“We’d better get it out of the tree if we want to keep it,” Cuiller said. “Daff, can you cut it out with your rifle?”
“Not if you mind the top of this tree coming down.”
“Alternatives?”
“None I can see.”
“Start cutting.”
The Jinxian unslung his rifle and took aim two centimeters from the side of the mirror. The others, dancing on their monofilament tethers, swung back from the tree trunk.
Nyawk-Captain pulled the three claws of his left foot free from the firm wood as he touched the ground again. He shook them instinctively before remembering that it was sap, not blood, on his toes. Then he arched his foot in the special way that retracted the steel hooks into their sleeves. No sense in clogging them with dirt as he walked around.
He angled the navigational tool up into the trees again and pressed the improvised trigger. The tiny readout screen blossomed with a solid return. Somewhere above him was the Thrintun artifact, but his locator-modified from a missile’s ranging warhead-was too powerful for this close work. Nyawk-Captain sighed and turned toward his third and final tree trunk for climbing.
Both times before, he had gone up as fur as the first heavy branchings. Then he had released his hold on the trunk and stepped out into the green world of the elevated rainforest.. The foliage beneath him had been uniformly limber, sagging fearfully under the weight of his body and armor. He had made his way a few cautious steps in this treacherous environment-so unlike the rolling veldt of his ancestors. Every step bad required careful placement of all four paws on a firm bough, to avoid falling through. When he was fully clear of the trunk, he had raised his torso, balanced, and aimed his locator in the four cardinal directions.
By gauging the strength of the various returns, he bad determined the general direction of the artifact. And by keeping his path down the last tree all along one side, without deviating around the intervening branches, he had maintained his sense of that direction. He was reasonably sure that the way to the artifact was up the tree he now addressed.
And if it was not, then he would start over again-right up until the time his crew had the Cat’s Paw repaired and he must continue with his mission to Margrave.
Nyawk-Captain extended the powered claws and began climbing. In his previous forays up into the canopy layer, he had perfected the technique, digging in with his hind claws for lift and using his front claws for balance. It was easier going up than coming down.
A stutter of blue-light pulses, of short and penetrating wavelength, flashed from the muzzle of Gambiel’s weapon. In a second, their original impact point in the tree trunk was obscured by smoke and steam.
“Don’t worry about touching the box’s perimeter;” Cuiller advised.
“I’m riding on it,” Gambiel replied. “The reflection helps.” He swung the rifle in a slow circle, keeping ahead of the billow of steam.
After about thirty seconds, he had made two circuits of the mirror’s face, going deeper each time. After the third pass, he shut off the weapon.
“We can pull it now.”
Gambiel gripped the outer circumference of the box, which was shaped like a keg with its flat end facing them.
At first, Krater expected Gambiel to draw back his hands from the residual heat, but of course the stasis-box absorbed the laser energy into another dimension. The Jinxian did, however, try to keep his knuckles away from the charred and smoldering wood surrounding it. He worked the box left, then right He drew a slender knife and began digging around it Krater saw the blade make along drag against the side when his knife slipped, but it left no scratches and made no sound. Like cutting against glass with a feather He worked on swinging the end with his hands again. It came free suddenly, like a stopper from a bottle.
“Light,” he said, surprised. “Must weigh about ten kilograms.”
“Empty?” Jook asked.
Gambiel started to shake it, then stopped in mid-motion with a frown.
Jook stifled a laugh. Whatever the box held, it held in stasis. The contents would not be rattling around in this time-frame.
“Not much mass, anyway,” the Jinxian said. He had been staring at the box in his hands, but in a flash his attention shifted to the tree trunk at the point his knee rested against it. He stuffed the keg under one arm and placed his free palm against the bark.
Krater tried to read his face and couldn’t. She swung closer to the tree and felt it, too.
A dull, rhythmic pounding was transmitted through the wood. She looked up, expecting to see the weakened top section bending over, dragging against branches as it started to topple on their heads. But, despite the deep wound in its side, the trunk wasn’t falling.
Still the pounding came.
“Kzin One has found our tree,” Gambiel whispered hoarsely.
“That’s him climbing?” asked Cuiller, who had also put a band on the wood.
“Yeah. But slowly. Methodical.”
“Right. Daff, you keep the box. Sally, stay with him. The two of you go east.” Cuiller pointed to establish direction. “Hugh, you and I go west to provide a diversion for them. Everybody try to keep out of the kzin’s way for at least a full day. Reassemble at noon tomorrow by Callisto’s hull-or, if the kzinti are still around, one kilometer south by the sun. Questions?”
They shook their heads.
“Go!” he hissed, pushing Krater’s shoulder.
The reel motors whined as they each rose away from the burn mark, toward the scattered anchor points of their own grapples.
Once he was inside the lowest levels of the green layer, Nyawk-Captain boosted the gain on his aural enhancers. He was listening for anything that might attack. On the ground, he could trust his senses of sight and smell to detect an enemy at great range. And his armor could deal with anything short of another rampaging Whitefood. Up in the foliage, however, screened by leaves and baffled by random breezes, those senses were next to useless. Only his steel ears would save him now.