Across what? Hans Rebka heard a scuffle of claws. He stood motionless. After half a minute the pale light of an illumination disk cut through the darkness. It was in Louis Nenda’s hands, ten meters away and pointing down. Rebka followed the line of the beam and flinched. Between that light and his own feet was nothing, an open space that dropped away forever. Atvar H’sial was towering at his side. Before he could move, the Cecropian had seized him in her forelimbs, crouched, and glided away across the gulf in one easy spring.
She set Rebka down a step or two away from the far edge. He took a deep breath. Louis Nenda nodded at him casually and pointed the beam again into the abyss.
“At says she still can’t sense bottom, an’ I can’t see it. You all right?”
“I’ll manage. You might have kept that light off until after I was over.”
“But then Kallik couldn’t have seen what she was doing.” Nenda nodded across the gulf, to where the Hymenopt was hanging upside down, holding on to the spiraling stairway by one leg. “She has the best eyes. Anything down there, Kallik?”
“Nothing.” She swung herself onto the upper side of the stair and launched casually across the ten-meter gap. “If there is another exit point it is at least a thousand feet down.” She moved to the very edge and leaned far out to stare upward. “But there is good news. The lights of the Zardalu are no longer approaching.”
Good news. Hans Rebka moved a few steps away from the sheer drop and leaned on a waist-high ledge of solid green, an obviously artificial structure. Good news was relative. Maybe they were not being pursued, but they were still thousands of feet below the surface of an alien world, without food or water. They could not return the way that they had come, without surely meeting Zardalu. They had no idea of the extent or layout of the underground chamber where they stood. And even if — unlikely event — they could somehow find another way to the surface, the chance was slim that the seedship was there to take them away from Genizee. Either J’merlia had left, as ordered, or he had been captured or killed by Zardalu.
Kallik and Nenda were still standing at the edge of the shaft. Rebka sighed and walked across to them. “Come on. It’s time to do some hard thinking. What next?”
Nenda dismissed him with a downward chop of one hand and turned off the illumination disk. “In a minute.” His voice was soft in the darkness. “Kallik can’t see any lights up there anymore, nor can I. But At insists there’s something on the path — a long way up, but coming this way. Fast.”
“Zardalu?”
“No. Too small. And only one. If it was Zardalu, you’d expect a whole bunch.”
“Maybe this is what we need — something that knows the layout of this place.” Rebka stared up into the darkness. He was useless without light, but he imagined he could hear a rapid pattering on the hard surface of the spiraling tunnel. “Do you think Atvar H’sial could hide quietly on this side, and grab whatever it is as it comes by?”
There was a moment’s silence for pheromonal contact. The scuffling above became clearer. Rebka heard a grunt of surprise from Louis Nenda, followed by a laugh. The illumination disk again lit the chamber.
“At could do that,” Nenda said. He was grinning. “But I don’t think she’s going to. She just got a look at our visitor. Guess who’s coming to dinner?”
There was no dinner — that was part of the problem. But Rebka did not need to guess. The beam from the disk in Nenda’s hand was directed upward. Something was peering out over the edge of the stairway, eyestalks extended to the maximum and worried lemon-yellow eyes reflecting the light.
There was a whistle of pleasure from Kallik, and a relieved hoot in reply. The pipestem body of J’merlia came soaring across the gulf to join them.
Lo’tfians were one of the underprivileged species of the spiral arm. The use of their adult males as interpreters and slaves of Cecropians was seldom questioned, because the male Lo’tfians themselves never questioned it; they were the first to proclaim Cecropian mental and physical superiority.
Hans Rebka did not agree. He believed that male Lo’tfians, left to themselves, were as bright as any race in the arm, and he had said so loud and often.
But he was ready to question it now, on the basis of J’merlia’s account of how he came to be deep inside Genizee. Even with not-so-gentle nudging from Louis Nenda and direct orders from Atvar H’sial, J’merlia didn’t make much sense.
He had repaired the seedship, he said. He had flown it up to altitude, to make sure that the air seal was perfect. He had decided to bring the ship back close to the buildings that Hans Rebka and his group were exploring. He had seen them near the building. He had come lower. He had also seen Zardalu.
“Very good,” Louis Nenda said. “What happened next? And where’s the seedship now? That’s our ticket out of here.”
“And why did you come into the building yourself?” Rebka added. “You must have known how dangerous it was, if you saw the Zardalu follow us in.”
The pale-lemon eyes swiveled from one questioner to the other. J’merlia shook his head and did not speak.
“It’s no use,” Nenda said. “Look at him. He’s bugger-all good for anything just now. I guess Zardalu can do that to people.” He walked away in disgust to the edge of the great circular hole and spat over the edge. “The hell with all of ’em. What now? I could eat a dead ponker.”
“Don’t talk about food. It makes it worse.” Rebka walked across to Nenda, leaving Atvar H’sial to question J’merlia further with pheromonal subtlety and precision, while Kallik stood as a puzzled bystander and close observer. The Cecropian could read out feelings as well as words, so maybe she and the Hymenopt would do better than the humans had.
“We have a choice,” Rebka went on. “Not much of one. We can go up, and be torn apart by the Zardalu. Or we can stay here, and starve to death. Or I suppose we could plow on through this cavern, and see if there’s another way up and out.” He was speaking softly, almost in a whisper, his head close to Louis Nenda’s.
“There must be.” The cool, polite voice came from behind them. “Another way out, I mean. Logically, there must be.”
Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda swung around in unison with the precision of figure skaters.
“Huh?” said Nenda. “What the hell—” He stopped in mid-oath.
Rebka said nothing, but he understood Nenda perfectly. “Huh?” and “What the hell—” meant “Hey! Lo’tfians don’t eavesdrop on other people’s private conversations.” They didn’t interrupt, either. And least of all did they stand up and walk away from their dominatrix when she was in the process of questioning them. And Nenda’s sudden pause meant also that he was worried about J’merlia. Whatever the Lo’tfian had been through on his way to join them, it had apparently produced in him a serious derangement, enough to throw him far from his usual patterns of behavior.
“Look at the way you came here,” J’merlia continued as though Nenda had not spoken. “Through a building by the seashore, and down a narrow shaft. And then look at the extent of these underground structures.” He swept a front limb around, taking in the whole giant cavern. “It is not reasonable to believe that all this is served by such mean access, or even that this chamber itself represents a final goal. You asked, Captain Rebka, if we should go up, or stay here, or move through this cavern. The logical answer to all your questions is, no. We should do none of those things. We should go down. We must go down. In that direction, if anywhere, lies our salvation.”
Rebka was ready for his own “Huh?” and “What the hell—” The voice was so clearly J’merlia’s, but the clarity and firmness of opinions were a side of the Lo’tfian that Hans, at least, had never seen. Was that what researchers meant when they said a Lo’tfian’s intellect was masked and shrouded by the presence of other thinking beings? Was this how J’merlia thought all the time, when he was on his own? If so, wasn’t it a crime to let people near him? And if it was true, how come J’merlia could think so clearly now, with others around him?