Daybreak found them speeding along the outer edge of the fringing lagoon, Fawn guiding the skimmer just inside the line of marching breakers. It took awhile to half circumnavigate Torrelau, but within the hour they were approaching the Vounea Peninsula.
Moving inshore, she cruised back and forth while Pulickel studied the terrain in search of the ideal place to land. With the aid of survey maps they found it in a tiny, rock-walled cove too shallow for fishing and too strewn with silicate and stone rubble to serve as a play pool for Parramati young. The inlet's slick wave-worn walls offered little in the way of hand or foot grips, and the crumbling rim overhung the water.
Fawn held the skimmer level with the top of the nearest cliff while Pulickel tossed his pack into a clump of obliging bushes. In addition to map and locator gear, he carried three days' worth of concentrated rations; a backup communicator, first-aid pack, wet-weather attire, shoe and clothing repair kit, and several padded sacks for carrying and concealing-stones.
"I expect I have everything." He put one foot on the edge of the skimmer and prepared to step over the slight gap between the craft's outer edge and the heavily vegetated stone parapet against which it floated.
"Just one more thing." Leaving the controls, Fawn walked back to him. Standing on the side of the skimmer put his face level with hers, so she didn't have to bend to kiss him. It was a straightforward and chaste peck on the lips, no more lubricious than a handshake held long, but his mouth burned as if he'd gargled with sambal sauce.
Before he could react or say anything, she'd pivoted and returned to the controls. "Watch your step. And by that I don't mean look at your feet all the time. I don't want to go back to running the station solo."
The fire on his mouth lingered, and he wanted to say a great many things. What he said instead was "I will endeavor to keep myself intact." Though he commanded a large army of words, in the presence of women the ones he wanted to use always seemed to be AWOL when he was most in need of them.
After backing the skimmer out of the inlet, she threw him a perfunctory wave as she headed for the distant reef line. She'd find a sandy islet with shade and make herself comfortable until it was time to return and pick him up. It was how he'd first encountered her; exposing her nakedness to Senisran's tropical sun, blissfully indifferent to potential onlookers. Combined with the lingering taste of her on his lips, it kept him from concentrating on the task at hand.
He allowed himself to remain distracted for approximately four minutes. Only then did he put the delightfully unsettling farewell out of his mind and get to work.
A quick check of his equipment revealed that all was as he'd stowed it. Activated, his handheld showed the skimmer moving steadily out to sea. Disabling the unit's integrated vorec, he used silent manual controls to call up a detailed map of his present position. It indicated that it was a short but rugged hike to the small village housing the nearest sacred stone.
He eyed the steep, thickly vegetated slope in front of him and sighed. Better get going, he told himself. The sooner he obtained a couple of good specimens and had Fawn pick him up, the sooner he would be able to relax. At his request the handheld mapped out the easiest route up the ridge. Among other functions, the compact device could pinpoint his position, Fawn's, and that of potential specimens; compose a respectable weather prediction onsite; translate all known Parramati terminology; let him communicate with his colleague, the base station, or Ophhlia; access the small but rapidly growing Encyclopedia Senisran; and run a fairly thorough health check on human, thranx, or native. But it could not walk for him.
Keeping an eye peeled for dangerous animals and toxic plants, he slipped the pack onto his back and started up. In hopes of avoiding unwanted attention, he had selected a route that would take him to the most isolated stone repositories first. Only if these attempts failed would he risk borrowing from the larger villages. With luck, his first couple of tries would be successful, and he and Fawn would be back at base in time for lunch.
He encountered no one in the jungle. The rocky, heavily eroded terrain where the skimmer had touched shore was not conducive to terrace farming, and the vegetation was too tangled for good hunting. He welcomed it as an ally since it would slow communications when astonished stone masters began to spread the news to the rest of the island of stones gone missing.
Some of the plants and forest dwellers he encountered in the course of his climb were familiar to him. Others, being endemic to the Vounea, were new. Ignorant of their properties and capabilities, he treated anything unfamiliar with the greatest respect.
One who assumes that everything bites or stings is less likely to get bitten or stung, he knew. It would be worse than ironic if he were to effortlessly make off with a couple of prime stones and not be seen at all, only to be laid low through careless confrontation with a ravavuaa or tesamau. Incapacitation from natural causes would do nothing to protect him from Parramati wrath if they found him with the missing stones in his possession.
So he checked every burrow, every overhanging branch, every coarse leaf and stem, while his sweatcap struggled silently to cool his head and the back of his neck. In the rugged terrain the humidity seemed magnified. Acclimated he might be, but his body was less persuaded than his mind.
He could have chosen an easier route to more accessible targets, but the same topography that was presently making him curse under his breath would help to conceal him when he fled. Occasionally he was forced to change direction when confronted by a grade too steep to ascend or ground too broken to cross, but the handheld always brought him back on line.
The first stone was kept in a well-built but that was located slightly upslope and isolated from a community of less than a dozen buildings. As he crept toward the back of the structure, he could hear the villagers' gentle barking speech rising from below. From its tone he inferred the presence of only infirm elders and immature cubs.
Vegetation grew right up against the hut, ideal for his purposes. He searched for a tractable section of wall, careful to watch where he put his feet. Seeking shelter from sun and weather, aggressively large arthropods with disagreeable demeanors often made their homes beneath the shady undersides of raised native dwellings. Neither querulous native nor inimical fauna materialized to interdict his efforts, however.
The back wall being high and well made, and having heard not a sound from within, he decided to try around front. The typical traditional wooden porch was likewise deserted. Still, he advanced with caution. Might be someone sleeping late inside, he knew, or an enfeebled oldster, or a sickling at rest.
With a glance in the direction of the village, he whispered a generic Parramati greeting. No response was forthcoming. Stepping through the open portal, he took note of sleeping quarters off to the left, living space in the center, and storage to the right. Hygienic facilities would be located elsewhere, somewhere deeper in the forest. It was a standard floor plan, repeated with minimal variation throughout the archipelago.
Heading to his right, he found himself in the family storeroom. There was no food. Dried seafood, meat, flour, fruits, vegetables, and other comestibles were kept in special communal storage buildings. What he did find were personal effects, fancy attire and accouterments carefully hung or laid out for use on ceremonial occasions, fishing gear, eating utensils, and cooking ware. There were no cabinets or drawers, everything being neatly placed on intricately woven Parramati floor mats.
Only at the far end of the room near the back wall did the building differ from those he frequented in Torrelauapa.
In stunning contrast to its simple surroundings, a meterhigh wooden pedestal shone with the skill and craftsmanship of which only the best Parramati carvers were capable. Light brown and black-banded, every centimeter of the solid piece of toka root had been carved in relief. Bending close, Pulickel saw representations of village life, ancient clan battles, landscapes, seascapes, and wonderfully detailed portraits of unknown but obviously revered individual Parramati. The pedestal was a testament not only to the proficiency of its carver but to the shining spirit of the Parramati themselves.
To their kusum, he thought.
Resting atop this rousing work, which would have commanded a fortune from any of the many crafts dealers in Ophhlia, was-a rock. A distinctly green-hued, irregularly shaped, singularly uninspiring lump of what appeared to be volcanic glass. It was not fastened, glued, or otherwise attached to the pedestal.
Nor was it especially heavy, he found when he plucked it from its stand and slipped it into one of the empty sacks in his backpack. As he did so he found himself wondering what kind of stone it was. Externally, except for shape there was nothing to distinguish one sacred stone from another. His prize might be a healing stone, a growing or drying stone, or even a stone called upon to aid in resolving domestic disputes.
He checked the porch and its immediate environs carefully before fleeing the hut. Hastily he dashed to his right, cleared the edge of the porch, and disappeared into the jungle behind the building. As far as he could tell, no one had seen him arrive or depart. He was much pleased with himself. Whatever it was that he'd just added to the weight of his pack, it wasn't a burglar-alarm stone.
One more, he decided firmly. One more and he'd be away. After only his first try he was already ahead of schedule.
He held the tracker out in front of him and checked it frequently. There was no sign of any pursuit or indeed that the theft had been discovered. With luck it might be evening before the stone was even missed.
A passing shower was welcomed. Rain could not increase the humidity but did somewhat alleviate the oppressive heat. Of course, it was worse when the rain ceased and the sun came back out, but he enjoyed it while it lasted. Disdaining the best efforts of his tropical cap and clothes, perspiration poured off him in thin, salt-rich rivulets.
Despite his caution he did encounter a tesamau, hunting alone, and had to fire a couple of bursts from his pistol to discourage it. Later he thought he heard a party of female Parramati berry-picking close by but couldn't be certain of it. Nevertheless, he waited until the distant murmur had faded completely before resuming his march.
The second stone proved much more of a challenge. For a long moment he considered passing on it and continuing on to the third of the six locations he had preselected. But there was no guarantee the next locale would be any easier, nor the ones after that. If he waited until he was down to the last one, he'd find himself trying to snatch a stone from the middle of a good-size village.
At first glance it didn't appear that difficult. There was no formal community, only three huts. Two of them were situated some distance from the house of the stone master. This sat on a small plateau that overlooked the sea. Hard as he strained, he couldn't hear a soul: not elders, not cubs at play, not females attending to domestic tasks.
The problem was the lack of cover for his approach. Thinned by the wind, the forest in which the huts sat was full of gaps where a strolling human could easily be spotted. Furthermore, the stone master's residence could be reached only by a series of a dozen or so steps cut into a rocky slope. The steps were wide and easy to negotiate. They would have to be, to accommodate the long seni foot. But they were completely exposed. Anyone ascending would be visible over a broad area.
A comfortable place to live, Pulickel thought as he tried to sketch out an approach. The same wind that thinned the foliage would cool the houses. On Senisran, any breeze was a welcome one.
Clearly he couldn't use the front steps. Even though there was no one around at the moment, it would take only one returnee to spot him leaving the house to ruin everything. Sacrificing some skin, he forced his way up the steep back of the plateau. Half the time he was tree climbing instead of hiking. Branches and thorns ripped at him.
It was with considerable relief that he arrived at the level rear of the building. Since it caught the ocean breeze from the front, it had not been raised very high on supporting posts. Almost immediately, he found a frayed section of back wall and set about enlarging it until it was big enough for his purpose. The weathered fibers came away easily in his hands.
Crawling through the opening he'd made, he found himself in the familiar central living quarters. These were more spacious than the one he had visited earlier, this but having been built to a larger floor plan. But the layout and design were the same. A curving bench fronted the cooking area, and thick, intricately patterned sleeping mats were piled outside the entrance to the bedroom.
Rising and moving to his left, he found a storage room that, like the rest of the structure, was larger than the one he'd previously explored. The usual utensils, bowls, and hand-carved household goods lined the walls or were piled on the floor.
The stone pedestal at the rear of the room was short, almost stumpy. Instead of wood, it had been hewn from the bone of some unknown creature. From the size alone Pulickel knew it had belonged to some large ocean= dweller. From base to top it was inlaid with highly polished strips of wood and the Senisrani equivalent of mother-of-pearl. It was another remarkable piece of Parramati craftsmanship, completely different from the one he'd seen earlier but executed with equal skill and love.
He allowed himself a moment to admire it before reaching down to pluck the fist-size stone from its apex. Into an empty sack this went, carefully placed alongside the first stone in the top of his pack.
Finished, he thought with satisfaction, and well ahead of flee schedule he'd set for himself. He turned to depart the way he'd come.
Perhaps he shouldn't have spent so much time admiring the inlaid pedestal. With his mission nearly accomplished it was possible that he let down his guard, or that after the difficult climb he was more tired than he realized and not as aware of his surroundings.
Whatever the reason, he nearly knocked down the young female Parramati who entered the storeroom just as he was leaving. The seni of the Vounea Peninsula might have encountered Fawn once or twice before, but this was their first exposure to another human.
"Hey!" he blurted in involuntary counterpoint to her startled "sarkk!"
She started to twist forward; head bending, snout aiming for the floor, the powerful hind legs contracting preparatory to boosting her into the familiar forward flip that served as a formal greeting among her kind. Before she could follow through with the gesture it suddenly smack her who, or rather what, she was confronting.
"Pardon me." By this time his mastery of the local dialect was as complete as it was possible for any human to manage. "I did not mean to startle."
Not yet mature, unsure of herself, and fascinated by the bipedal apparition that she had encountered unexpectedly, she had yet to notice that the stone was missing from its place of honor atop the pedestal. Shifting his stance to block her view, he used an arm to gently ease her out of the room.
Realizing that any attempt to explain himself would only further incriminate his presence while consuming valuable time, he departed in haste. If he hadn't been so rattled by the collision/confrontation, it might have occurred to him that in leaving by the way he'd entered he damned himself more thoroughly than he could have with any number of words. Had he fled via the unbarred front portal, it was just possible that she might have considered him an invited guest, however unusual. That chance vanished when he took off through the hole he'd made in the rear wall.
He could hear her shrill, staccato yips of alarm as he plunged back the way he'd come, throwing himself heedlessly into the tangle of branches and bushes behind the house. Was she sounding the alert over the presence of an intruder, or had she discovered that the stone was missing? If he had shoved tier bodily back into the living area, would it have gained him enough time to set the stone back on its pedestal?
None of that mattered now. He could hear the voices of other seni joining that of the young female. They were full of uncertainty, concern, and something else. Something new. Something that until now he hadn't heard in a Parramati voice. It took him a moment to identify it.
Anger.
He tried to put it out of his mind as he concentrated on the difficult descent. All he had to do was retrace his path back to the inlet. Shoving and striking at obstructing branches as he ran, he forced himself to ignore the rising chorus behind as he concentrated on following the route laid out by the tracker.
He'd make it easily, he told himself. By the time any kind of formal pursuit was organized he'd be halfway back to the inlet. Brush crashed behind him but he heard no voices. Surely they wouldn't just connect the missing stone with his unannounced presence? It would be most un-Parramatilike to account a visitor a thief without some sort of proof.
It struck him that he'd left many voices in his wake. More than would normally be found inhabiting three isolated huts. A fishing or hunting party come to pay their respects, perhaps, or a clutch of visiting relatives. Bad luck for him. He tried to increase his pace, wishing he had Fawn's stride.
Better contact her while he still had enough breath to do so, he thought. The sensitive autocontext had her on line in less than a minute.
"Well, that was quick." Her tone confirmed that she was blissfully unaware of the sudden downturn in his present fortunes. "How did it go?"
Panting hard, he tried to maintain his pace while replying. It was a good thing he was in decent shape. He gave silent thanks for all the marathons he'd competed in.
"The first stone was no problem." He cleared a small creek in a single leap.
The handheld was of excellent thranx manufacture. It conveyed every nuance of his speech, including his labored respiration. "Pulickel, what's wrong with you? You sound like you're out of breath."
"Not yet, but I'm going to be. I need you to meet me at the pickup point. Right now"
"What the hell's going on? What's wrong?"
He ducked an overhanging branch, pleased that he was able to do so without either slowing or decapitating himself. "What makes you think anything's wrong?"
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe the fact that you sound like a diver sucking his last lungfull of air. So you got the first stone okay. Then what?"
A protuberant buttressing root appeared and threatened to send him sprawling. He escaped it with only a minor bruise, one of many that had begun to festoon his lower legs.
"Nobody saw me get the first stone, nobody heard me, and I didn't see or hear anyone, either. Same thing on the second attempt-except that in leaving I all but ran over an adolescent female. She must have entered the building while I was concentrating on acquiring the stone. Without thinking, I left the same way I'd entered-through a hole I made in the back wall. Stupid. I should have simply walked out the front, hands tucked in my suspenders, looking like I belonged."
"You don't have any suspenders," she snapped.
"If you're not waiting for me at the rendezvous, I may not have any fingers to tug them with, either." He stole a quick glance back over his shoulder. Nothing untoward disturbed the forest behind him.
"I think they're after me, but I don't see anyone yet."
"Keep moving. You may be able to outdistance them. On a beach or other open flat you wouldn't have a chance. I've seen competing young adult males clear ten meters with every bound, but in dense jungle those big feet slow them up and it's harder for them to hop. They're not so good at dodging trees, either. Maybe you can shake them."
"I don't have to shake them. Just beat them to the inlet."
"So they saw you." Seaforth's voice was resigned.
"Only the one adolescent. Given time, maybe we can cast doubt on her story. Insist in the face of all accusation that both of us have been back at the station all the time. Try to convince the local big persons that what she saw was a spirit and not a visiting human."
"But the stone is missing."
"She didn't see me with it. Unless they catch and search me they can only suspect. They have no proof."
"Then you'd better not let them catch up with you."
"What do you think I'm trying to do here?"
Understandingly, she ignored his angry retort. "I'm on my way."
Severing the connection, he returned his attention to the handheld's readout and the forest ahead. He was making good time, his small stature allowing him to dart around and under obstacles that would have slowed a larger man. His body was insisting that he rest, but he continued to push himself. Just because he couldn't hear or see any pursuers didn't mean they weren't a literal hop, skip, and jump behind him. If so, they were certainly conserving their voices.
On the handheld, the location of the inlet was coming up fast. He allowed himself to feel a measure of confidence. They could make up some kind of story, express their outrage at being accused of the crime, call on the influence and friendship of the Torrelauapan big persons they knew well, and generally do everything possible to cast doubt on the aspersions of the adolescent female. It would be his word against hers.
And in a few days, when they'd completed the lab work on the stones and had built up sufficient computer models for further research, both missing stones would mysteriously reappear at the appropriate venues. With the stones returned, any rising anger among the Parramati in general would dissipate before it could reach dangerous proportions. Polite as they were, they would probably point the finger of blame at one another before formally accusing the visiting humans.
Such a theft would make even less sense to them than if the stones had been taken by one of their own kind, for what use had an alien for a sacred stone? For example, no human knew how to manipulate the stones to locate roads. The whole idea was absurd.
There was a flash of color and light behind him and he nearly stumbled, but it was only a pair of harmless oronai darting through the trees. Always curious, they remained by his side, pacing him as he ran. As long as they remained relatively silent and didn't cry out, he welcomed their company. They would alert him to the presence of any truly dangerous predators. One turned in midair and continued flying on its back, bringing a smile to his face despite his increasing exhaustion.
His attention on it, he overlooked the hole and went down hard, his left leg plunging into the opening, his head slamming sideways into the dirt. The impact jarred his teeth and shook colors loose behind his eyes.
Rolling over, he sat up and took stock of his stunned form. Nothing broken. His left foot throbbed a little and he tested it gingerly, putting more and more weight on it until he was standing without pain. He thought he might have pulled something, but the leg was just sore.
Something was warming his back. It didn't feel like liquid. Not blood, then. Looking over a shoulder, he saw the glow. Pale green tinged with blue, it was strong enough to penetrate the tough material of his backpack, emanating strongly from within.
The stones, he realized quickly. In falling he'd twisted, and in twisting he'd landed partly on his back. Both sacks must have snapped open, throwing their contents together. His backpack had become an unintended incubator for the offspring of stone fusion.
Hurriedly he slipped free of the shoulder straps. The heat from within now verged on the uncomfortable. His hands hovered over the top flap of the pack, hesitating. What could he do to terminate the reaction? What was the accepted procedure for dealing with stones that had been unintentionally melded? Could he pry them apart manually? He unfastened the flap.
So intense was the green-blue light that spilled from the interior that he could barely stand to look directly at it. He could just make out the source of the light and heat: a single uneven mass where earlier there had been two. The individual specimens had melted into one, duplicating the reaction Fawn had described previously.
To what end? Aside from the heat, which might be nothing more than a residual by-product of the commingling, he felt nothing. His health was unaffected, as was the color of the sky and the pungent odor of the rain forest. Nothing sprouted dramatically from beneath his feet-or died, either, he noted with some relief.
He had a flash of inspiration. Maybe the bright light itself was the intended end product of the accidental conjoining. Perhaps this combination of stones was designed to illuminate the interior of caves, or long night-time walks through heavy jungle, or to attract nocturnal sea creatures to a fisherman's net.
His fingers hovered over the lambent mass. The heat was substantial but not unbearable. How did one separate commingled stones? Squint as he might, he saw neither seam nor crevice nor cleavage plane. How did the stone masters do it? Or did they simply wait until the reaction exhausted itself, at which time the stones would separate of their own accord?
Exactly how much control did the stone masters have over these devices anyway?
He felt he had to at least try. Maybe a good, strong, old-fashioned tug on both ends simultaneously, he speculated. Grabbing one side of the composite mass in each hand, he tried pulling. No luck. Interestingly, the heat seemed to dissipate through his palms rather than burn him. A twist, then, in opposite directions. As he worked his hands and wrists he thought he felt something give within the mass.
The stone exploded.
No, he decided, aware that he had not lost consciousness. The glassy mass had not blown up. In fact, he and the conjoined stones were the only things that had not exploded. They remained intact and unaltered.
It was the universe that had detonated.
Well, come apart, anyway. Disintegrated, dissolved, shattered,; When eventually it reconstituted itself, he was someplace else.
The only constant in this mental and physical transposition was the stone, which continued to pour forth its intense, unrelenting radiance. Deciding to chance the heat, he slipped the pack back over his shoulders.
Odd sort of explosion, he reflected, during which the cosmos had seemed to disintegrate and re-form around him. Only, the process had produced some changes. Significant changes.
For one thing, there was no sign of pursuing Parramati. There was nothing to even suggest the presence of Parramati. He was still standing on a moderate slope in the midst of dense forest, but the foliage was not of the kind he had come to associate with the Vounea Peninsula. In fact, it was not of a kind he recognized at all.
There wasn't a sane trunk in the lot. Trees took the, form of sharp curves, right angles, berserk spirals: anything but straight. Instead of leaves, the majority sported tiny red pustules. Some were no larger than the tip of his little finger while others were a meter and more across. Nor were these singular growths stable. They twisted and writhed as if in pain beneath a pale red sky in which hung suspended an orb of deepest crimson, whether sun or moon Pulickel couldn't tell.
There were other lights in the sky, but he balked at calling them stars. For one thing, most were purple, except for those that blinked lavender. Within arm's length of his right hand a cluster of narrow, blue-striped shoots quivered in the still air. As they trembled, they hummed.
Their murmuring resonated in time to the humming that was intensifying inside his head. It felt and sounded as if he'd been locked inside a steel cylinder full of bees. Stumbling to his left, he saw something thick and ropy slither out of sight below the surface of a tangerine stream. Glistening wetly as it moved, it resembled animate yellow slime.
A flock of flying creatures appeared, keeping less than a meter off the ground. Showing no sign of changing direction or swerving, the V -shaped formation headed straight for him. At the last instant he threw up his arms to ward them off.
Most sailed past on either side. The several that did not, penetrated his skin and passed completely through his body. No ghosts they, he could feel every centimeter of their passage. Gasping at the sickening sweetness that filled his belly, he bent double and grabbed his midsection. Only after the sensation had passed was he able to straighten and look behind him. The flock continued on its way, oblivious to the ineffectual human blockade it had so effortlessly ignored, penetrating anything that stood in its path with lugubrious ease. Hasty inspection revealed that the incident had left not a mark on him. Not a hole, scratch, bruise, or puncture. Atomic structures had been momentarily rearranged. His, or theirs? he wondered.
The scarlet orb that dominated the heavens was sinking rapidly toward the distant horizon. Much too rapidly, he thought. The purple sky-points brightened. They were stars then, he decided, but arrayed against the red-tinged firmament in no pattern he recognized. Certainly these were not constellations discernible from anyplace on Senisran.
Several of the energetic stellar formations resembled nothing in the canon of known celestial features. Riding in the pack on his back, the luminescent stones continued to radiate steadily.
Taking a couple of hesitant steps in the direction of the peculiar stream, he saw that it ran not with water but a much more viscous liquid that had the consistency of orange syrup. With each step the surface underfoot let out a quavery moan, as if he were treading the spine of some enormous, somnolent being. Those tortuous, serpentine growths he'd assumed were forest: were they trees-or hair? Was his presence here disturbing enough to make the earth complain?
His throat dry from running, he dipped an uncertain hand toward the orange current. It twisted away from him, retreating like a live thing. Insistent, he shoved his fingers sharply downward. The fluid flowed over and around his hand and forearm, never touching the skin. Whatever it might be, it was repelled by his humanness:
Defeated, he straightened. There was nothing inherently inimical about the place he'd been dumped. It simply didn't like him. Where was he, and where was Fawn Seaforth? For that matter, where was Senisran? The questions led him to an answer. He knew now what kind of stones he'd stolen. Not growing stones, or healing stones. Not stones for filling nets or imparting wisdom.
They were transportation stones. But transportation to where?
Roads. Stones and spaces and roads. That was the core of Parramati kusum, brought home to him now in a manner as overwhelming as it was unexpected. He'd accidentally opened a road, only to find himself catapulted down its length utterly ignorant of his destination. As a demonstration of unfamiliar alien science, it was several orders of magnitude greater than enhanced garden growth.
The world on which he found himself resembled nothing he'd ever heard about, read about, or researched. Certainly it wasn't in the Commonwealth catalog of known systems.
His orgy of speculation was interrupted by the appearance of a puffy pink fuzzball laced with delicate blue veins that materialized among the growths just in front of him. It was roughly half his size. After a moment's hesitation, it began rolling toward him. Wary, he drew his pistol and held it ready.
As it neared, the creature slowed. Halting, it exuded a strong pseudopod that terminated in a pair of impressively thick yellow lips. Approaching to within a meter, this flexible organ proceeded to scrutinize him intently, the lips making soft sucking sounds every time they altered position. His feet, legs, torso, arms, and head were all carefully inspected.
When he took a sudden step forward, the limb retracted completely into the round body. Avoiding him, the fuzzball rolled into a clump of dancing spines and vanished.
One faint hope was dashed when his communicator responded to his terse entreaties with the expected silence. He would have been shocked if Fawn had replied. Clipping the unit back onto his belt, he tried to decide what to do next. What could he do? He had been transported to a very elegant nowhere. Everything was off, outlandish, and unnatural, from the stream to the stars to the sun that had abandoned the alien sky with deviant precipitousness.
At that point the orange liquid inhabiting the creek bed began to flow out of its banks and head toward him. As he backed away warily, the whole stream lifted itself up and started looping in his direction like some gigantic candy-flaked sidewinder.
Having no intention of being strangled by a stream, he turned and ran, hoping as he did so that he wouldn't run smack into something worse. Swinging the backpack around in front of him, he half closed his eyes as he searched the surface of the pulsating stone for a significant depression, a crack, anywhere it might make sense to place a manipulative organ. A glance back showed that the perambulating tributary was closing on him.
A couple of the larger growths twitched and leaned in his direction. If the stream didn't get him, it seemed increasingly likely that the forest would.
Twisting the stone had brought him here. There was nothing for it but to try again.
Reaching into the pack, he secured a firm grip and wrenched hard with both hands. His greatest fear was that the mass would separate back into its component halves, marooning him here for what promised to be a very brief if spectacularly educational future.
How far was he from Senisran? A light-year or half a galaxy -away? Not that it mattered. When nothing happened, he twisted hard against the mass a second time. The ambulatory orange tide was quite close now. When it caught up, would it try to choke him, or drown him?
For a second time, the cosmos fragmented on the fringes of his consciousness. When he could again focus and cogitate, he found himself once more transported. There was just enough time for him to breathe the proverbial sigh of relief before realizing that, while liberated from hostile rivers and neurotic woods, neither was he back on Senisran.