Destroyer of Worlds (11 page)

Soon enough, the inner hatch opened into a long, dim, curving corridor. Two immense creatures, disturbingly asymmetrical in all but one plane, waited within. They towered over him. Somehow they balanced on two limbs. Loose coverings obscured most of their bodies, which glowed in far-red.

One of the humans stepped forward. A slit opened and closed in its top/central mass (some sort of sensory pod?). Er'o felt low-pitched, unintelligible sound. With his amplifiers set at maximum, he heard without understanding what the alien was saying.

Sound rumbled from a device grasped by an alien limb. “Welcome. I am . . .”

A translation device of some sort. No wonder they spoke so poorly. Er'o knew seven languages and was about to learn an eighth. He wondered why anyone would bother with a translator. The untranslated noise burst, Sigmund, might be a name.

So: introductions. Er'o modulated his voice to the frequency range
Sigmund had used. The sound would not carry far through water, but it did not need to: A transducer in his suit captured his speech and an external transducer repeated it. If need be, the speech would be routed to his suit radio.

“I am Er'o. Welcome.” For now that exhausted his vocabulary of humanish, so he let the humans' translator deal with, “Thank you for answering our call.”

The other, Eric, introduced itself. Together they moved deeper into the ship. Er'o chose a tripedal gait, bearing two tubacle tips aloft, the better to observe ahead and behind. Somehow the humans managed to move on two curiously rigid lower limbs.

They came to a large interior chamber. At Eric's self-explanatory upperlimb gesticulation, Er'o climbed onto a four-limbed structure (another untranslatable term, chair) and from there up to the table. The humans folded onto chairs and Er'o did not feel quite so tiny.

And so it began.

 

BEHIND THE LOCKED DOOR OF HIS CABIN
, Baedeker listened over the intercom. He observed via security cameras. Through Jeeves, he monitored life-support sensors for subtle treachery. And he trembled, plucking at his mane.

The procession finally reached the relax room. Er'o, wearing a transparent, mechanically assistive suit, sprawled across the table. Inexplicable instruments hung from its harness. Eric and Sigmund, seemingly without a care in the universe, took seats on either side of the table, inches from the Gw'o.

How did they do it? How could they bear it?

Baedeker permitted himself for the first time to marvel: How did Nessus and the very few like him bear to scout for Hearth?

 

HALF AN HOUR WITH ER'O
and Sigmund had begun to feel dim-witted.

Within a day Er'o could be speaking English like a native. The Gw'o never needed to hear a word or a conjugation more than once. It caught on immediately to grammar rules. Every so often it would get into a heated argument with Jeeves, speaking through Sigmund's comm, about fine points of translation. Within minutes Er'o had been teaching Jeeves more than the other way around.

“We can begin,” Er'o said abruptly.

Sigmund had just been thinking that. “All right. Why did you contact us?”

“For most of our history, the roof of the world was ice. Then we discovered that the universe is a much bigger place. Ever since, the sky has fascinated us, and we have put considerable effort and resources into”—quick consultation with Jeeves in Tn'hoth—“astronomy. Perhaps we would watch less if, like you, we could travel faster than light.”

Eric blinked. Sigmund hoped with little conviction that Er'o would be slower to master body language than the spoken variety.

“How do they know?” Baedeker yelled from the safety of his cabin. “We must find out!”

The howl went straight to Sigmund's earplug speaker. He put a finger up to his ear, pretending to scratch. The pressure cranked down the amplification.

How
was a good question, and Sigmund would follow up. First, though, he wanted an answer to his own question. “And what have your astronomers seen?”

“Something unusual moving through space, more or less toward us. At sublight speeds, but fast.”

“The Fleet?” Baedeker asked, loud despite the lowered setting of Sigmund's earplug.

Maybe, Sigmund thought. Five worlds accelerating through space looked scary enough to him. “Can you describe it, Er'o? Better, are there images we can see?”

“Images would be best,” Er'o said. It unclipped one of the devices that dangled from its harness. “This is at the limits of resolution of our instruments.” A hologram appeared, ghostly faint. “My apologies. This projector is designed for use under water, not in air.”

Sigmund dimmed the relax-room lights nearly to off. His eyes adapted and details emerged. Stars, all in shades of red. Lurid dust clouds. Here and there, momentary sparkles. The projection was some sort of time-lapse graphic, because the clouds seemed to change.

Whatever this was, it wasn't the Fleet. It wasn't New Terra.

“I don't recognize the starscape.” Eric rapped once on a leg of his chair, addressing his comment to Jeeves, then twice more in quick succession.

The double tap signified Kirsten, sitting unhappily on the bridge at the launch controls. And at the weapons console. Sigmund didn't trust Baedeker
to use the laser if a reason arose—or not to run for home without reason.

“Me, either,” Kirsten said, sounding embarrassed by the admission.

“I'll see if I can match it,” Jeeves said into Sigmund's earplugs. “It may take a while.”

Meanwhile, Sigmund thought, there were other things to clarify. “Er'o, you said, fast. How fast?”

The Gw'o had flattened itself on the table, and Sigmund guessed it must miss the effective weightlessness of the ocean. It raised a limb tip and wiggled it about. “There is no single answer, Sigmund. Local variations span the range from rest to four-fifths light speed.”

“What about overall?” Baedeker asked in Sigmund's earplugs.

Sigmund repeated the question.

The Gw'o waved the tentacle tip again. “In the short time we have been watching, the overall phenomenon has been propagating at about two-fifths light speed. Modeling of the turbulence is inconclusive.”

Sigmund was feeling dim-witted again, like Dr. Watson to an alien Sherlock Holmes, when Jeeves interrupted.

“I've matched stellar configurations,” Jeeves announced via earplug. “As for why the image looks so odd, Gw'oth appear to be blind across most of what humans consider the visible spectrum. I'll send an adjusted version.”

Gw'oth cities hugged the hydrothermal vents. Life on their world sought heat, not light. Sigmund guessed the aliens were sensitive mostly to infrared.

An image formed on his contact lenses. Stars shifted color. Dust clouds, and the turbulence within them, took clearer shape. The phenomenon, whatever it was, loosely suggested a rippled, steep-sided cone. The tip of that cone was truncated, lost in the distance.

Jeeves, helpfully, had superimposed grid lines in the coordinate system learned by Puppeteer and New Terran pilots.

Baedeker made no comment. Rolled into a tight ball, comatose, Sigmund guessed.

Something
was erupting from the galactic center. The disturbance was light-years deep, light-years across, and spreading.

Before reaching the Gw'oth, it—whatever
it
was—would overtake the Fleet of Worlds and New Terra.

 

Sealing his pressure suit, preparing to exit the dubious protection of an inflatable emergency habitat, Baedeker groped for reasons to venture onto the ice. He tried logic: The Gw'oth had no reason to harm him. And the greater good: What he might accomplish here could safeguard the herd. Even cowardice, after a fashion, helped: He would die painlessly, his hearts stopped by autonomic conditioning, if the Gw'oth used coercion to obtain Concordance secrets.

Mostly, though, an epiphany propelled him forward. He finally understood how Nessus, and other scouts like him, did it. One quivering step at a time.

Kirsten exhibited neither doubts nor rational prudence. She was fairly bouncing with impatience. Of course bouncing took little effort here. The Gw'oth home world—Jm'ho, Er'o had called it—massed less than a quarter what Hearth or New Terra did.

Bending his necks this way and that, Baedeker gave his pressure suit a final front-to-back, top-to-bottom inspection. Everything looked proper. A small, flickering light reported that the suit's sensors were active and recording. He tongued an electronics self-test.
All systems functional
, his heads-up displays declared. Clearing the HUDs brought up
Me, too
. As uneasy as artificial intelligence made Baedeker, he would not forgo an onboard translator. That had meant downloading a Jeeves subset into his suit computer.

Finally, Baedeker checked the shelter's external radiation sensor. It barely registered. This moon generated enough of a magnetic field to shield against the radiation belts of the nearby planet. The local field originated in the currents in the salty ocean just beneath his hooves.

“Ready,” Baedeker declared reluctantly.

“About time,” Kirsten said. “They're waiting for us.”

As though he had not known. What Citizen on an unknown world would
not
monitor all available surveillance sensors? He tongued a mike control. “We're coming out.”

“Excellent,” a Gw'o responded. “We have much to do.”

Er'o
, Baedeker read. So the AI, too, could identify Gw'oth from auditory cues. That made sense. Clearly Jeeves recognized humans and Citizens from their speech.

The Gw'oth who spoke English—more by the hour—had personalized their voices. Baedeker had noticed emphases on different harmonics and slight variations in pitch. Whether he could rely on the Gw'oth to maintain consistent auditory cues remained to be seen.

The shelter air lock accommodated only one person at a time. Baedeker let Kirsten precede him, as a favor more than from caution. He activated intrusion alarms. Then his turn came and he stepped onto the icy, vacuumcloaked surface.

Eight Gw'oth waited in a semicircle beyond the air lock. Despite their transparent protective suits Baedeker could not tell them apart. One stood on all five limbs, the rest on three. The freed limbs coiled around unfamiliar devices or were merely held aloft (for a better view, perhaps).

The gas giant hung overhead, at nearly full phase, luminous with an eerie blue light. Blue because methane in its upper atmosphere absorbed red. The distant sun could not compete. Baedeker raised his suit heater against a chill he knew was psychological.

Most directions offered only rippled ice out to the unnaturally close horizon, but a mountain stood a short walk away. Tall structures all but hid its slopes. Solid, aboveground land was exceedingly scarce on this world. Baedeker looked at the peak in vain for a flat, unused expanse where he and Kirsten might relocate their shelter.

The Gw'o standing on all fives scuttled closer. “Hello again,” it said. “Shall we proceed to the observatory?”

Er'o
, Jeeves commented unnecessarily.

Baedeker gestured at the shelter. “If used improperly, our equipment can be dangerous.” Such as the self-destruct charge rigged to the intrusion sensors. “For your safety, no one should attempt to enter when we are away.”

Er'o waggled a limb side to side. (An acknowledgment? A dismissal?) “Thank you for the warning.”

“Er'o, would you introduce us to your companions?” Kirsten looked unhappy, and Baedeker supposed she was changing the subject.

“They are not important,” Er'o answered, repeating that side-to-side limb gesture. He started toward the mountain without turning; the two closest of the unnamed Gw'oth accompanied him. The rest took up positions around Kirsten and Baedeker.

Guards, Baedeker decided: They grasped weapons. Protecting Er'o from Kirsten and Baedeker, or protecting all of them from some external enemy? With a mind of its own one of Baedeker's forehoofs pawed the ice, spraying ice slivers.

An escort edged closer, and Baedeker's radio offered a burst of hums and chirps.
Come with me
, Jeeves translated on the HUDs.

They set off together after Er'o.

An elevated tram went up the mountainside. Its cars were far too small for Baedeker or Kirsten. They proceeded on foot, single file, up a narrow switchback road apparently vacated for their use. Tall buildings to both sides closed off Baedeker's view. Bare limb tips—thousands of them!—pressed against the windows. Gawkers? Bubbles behind the glass proved what logic had foreseen: water-filled habitats.

Baedeker peered down cross streets as they passed. Everywhere, Gw'oth in protective suits rushed about on their unknowable business. Some stopped and raised a limb or two, staring, as the entourage passed. He and Kirsten might even have inspired a vehicle crash.

He was winded as they approached the summit, but also oddly comforted. It was the gapers, he decided. Water dwellers living above the ice were probably the elite, but they gave no evidence of dangerous genius. Er'o was dangerously perceptive, but you
would
send your best mind to a first contact.

“This is a fascinating city,” Kirsten was saying. “How many Gw'oth live here?”

“This is more a research center than a regular city,” Er'o said.

Not an answer, Baedeker noticed. Was the population a secret?

“A
large
research center,” Kirsten persisted. “What types of research?”

“Many kinds,” Er'o answered vaguely. “But I see we have arrived. For now we will concentrate on astronomy.”

They rounded a corner and their way forward was in shadow. Baedeker looked upward at the metal dish of a radio observatory. Behind a sturdy (but only knee-high) fence, a squat building served as the antenna's base.

“We are here,” Er'o announced, adding something unintelligible in his own language. (
A security code
, Jeeves guessed.)