Though they were being sucked into the very heart of the emerald radiance itself, the light outside actually dimmed slightly. While the composition of the transparent material encasing them did not appear to have changed, the potent efflorescence no longer fully penetrated their sanctuary.
As the ovoid continued to be absorbed into the pulsating mass, their window on the outside world shrank proportionately. Soon only a small circle of visibility remained through the forward tip of their enclosure, and then that, too, was gone.
It was black outside the ovoid. Black, but not threatening in the manner of the darkness Pulickel had experienced previously. Unlike that abomination, the current absence of light did not carry with it the flavor of evil. Within the device, the lambent fog beneath their feet provided enough pink-hued illumination for them to see one another without straining.
There was also the slightest sensation of movement. Fawn found this especially interesting, because if the original pace of absorption had been maintained, they should long since have come out the other side of the main green mass. That they had not yet done so suggested that they had either halted somewhere in its depths or else moved on-somewhere else.
The impression intensified. Nor was it restricted to the two humans, for Ascela and Jorana felt it equally. There was a definite sense of being impelled forward, though in what direction no one could say.
Something gave them a sharp jolt, the ovoid rocked, and Pulickel instinctively grabbed for a handhold. There were none available, unless one counted his companions. Sound once more began to reach them, steady and unvarying. Only mildly surprised, he recognized it.
The stones were howling afresh.
Just when he didn't think he was going to be able to take it any louder, the whine leveled off. Beneath his feet and posterior, the ovoid vibrated like a well-tuned violin string. It was impossible to escape the feeling that they were going somewhere.
Ascela confirmed it. "We are set upon a road-though by my grandmother's tail I cannot say what road that may be, or where it may lead." She rested back on her haunches in a position that would have painfully cramped any human but that the seni found most relaxing.
Jorana tried to lighten the atmosphere within the ovoid. "I know this road. It is the road to wherever."
"To wherever the howling stones lead," Ascela agreed.
With nothing to see, nothing to do, and no control over either, Pulickel saw no reason why he should not emulate the attitude of their nonhuman fellow travelers. Shifting his body, he put his hands behind his head and leaned back against the pale red transparent wall. This was now slightly warm to the touch. Fawn attempted to do likewise, but the length of her limbs made it difficult for her to find a comfortable position. She was expectant, but not particularly happy.
"So you have no idea where this `road' leads?" she queried their companions.
"No," Jorana confirmed. "But I think we are going to find out."
"Look here." Pulickel held out his wrist. "My chronometer's stopped."
Fawn glanced down at herself and nodded. "Mine, also." She checked her other wrist. "Recorder's not working, either. Readout says the cell is drained, but I. put in a fresh one before I joined the rest of you."
"Mine read half charged before I climbed in here." Removing the protective backplate, he slipped a fresh cell from his belt into the appropriate receptacle and snapped it shut. The readout did not change. "Dead, also. I have a feeling they've all been drained, or discharged, or Tesla knows what else."
She nodded confirmation after checking her own inventory. "Then we'll just have to rely on the only recorders left to us." She pointed two fingers at her eyes.
He nodded. "Let's hope nothing drains that power source."
Tune passed without measure. They were still discussing the mystery of the depleted power cells when it happened-so suddenly no one had time to react or prepare. Subsequently, they were too overwhelmed to remember the exact moment when everything changed.
Gone was the all-pervasive darkness as the ovoid burst out into a gigantic tunnel composed of brilliant streaks of excited plasma. Yellow, red, and blue flares darkening to deepmost purple twisted and writhed around there, raw energy disciplined and held in check by immense unseen forces. It was an electric pipe, a piece of hollow lightning, down which they were being sucked at inconceivable speed. The ovoid was channeling an aurora.
It wasn't straight, their chosen course. It bent and looped, and, given the radical twists, they should by rights have been sick all over themselves. But while the universe outside went mad, something unseen maintained their internal equilibrium. No one upchucked, though Pulickel was about ready to throw out everything he'd ever learned about physics.
And as if the astonishing road down which they were flying wasn't wonder enough, beyond the flaring walls of the tunnel could be seen dozens, hundreds of others of equally impossible brilliance, coiling about each other like mating pythons or flaring off in a thousand different directions. Awed, they could only stare. Numbed, Pulickel could only wonder how many ovoids like their own were racing along those improbable lengths at impossible velocities to unknown destinations. Fawn speculated aloud on who or what might be riding in them.
Strands of a rope, threads of a weave, the tunnels were not inviolate. Occasionally a burst of sheer radiance would jump from one tunnel to another. The travelers looked in vain for signs of another voyaging ovoid similar to their own but saw none. It left them to wonder if they simply didn't know how to look, or if they were truly alone, the only ones abroad on the immense network.
Within the speeding ovoid the air stayed pleasant and fresh, the temperature agreeable. Hearts, however, raced.
"I wonder if we're traveling along some kind of natural structure," Fawn speculated, "or if someone actually built all thus."
Pulickel stared at the web of plasma tunnels, thoroughly entranced. "If the latter, it would qualify as the most impressive piece of engineering in our part of the galaxy."
She laughed softly, a sound that always made him think of fired brandy. "What makes you think that we're still in `our part of the galaxy'?"
He smiled back. "Figure of speech. Everyone needs a reference point to start from."
"Roads." Jorana was speaking. "There are an infinite number of roads leading to an infinite number of spaces."
"Yes," Ascela agreed. "This one chose us. We did not choose it. We are not the masters of the howling stones."
"Well, somebody must be." Fawn tried to stretch, had to settle for a half. "Roads have builders. And destinations."
Pulickel recalled the naked, overpowering, soulcrushing evil he had encountered. Did one of these roads lead to that? Did the one they were on? But if anything, they continued to suffer from a surfeit of light and not its absence.
Fawn was right. They had no idea where they were. Perhaps not even in the same galaxy or, for all he knew, in the same universe. What, after all, did roads of such magnitude and wonder connect? Different dimensions, parallel universes? He would have given a great deal to see just one star-one ordinary, everyday, spherical bail of thermonuclear fire. But there were none; there were only the roads.
The two transportation stones he had taken and inadvertently activated had sent him careening wildly from place to place, with no control over direction or destination. This was different. This was controlled travel down a designated route. To where, neither human nor seni could say. But Fawn was right: a route implied a destination. He wondered what would happen when they reached it.
If they reached it, he corrected himself. They knew nothing of the lifespan of the beings that had fabricated the network, nor of their tolerance for long-term travel. Perhaps a real-time journey of a century or more was like a week to them. In that event, when it finally slowed to a halt the ovoid would bring forth a load of desiccated corpses.
He felt of his field pack. They had a few concentrates with them, a little juice and water. It wouldn't last very long and, consequently, neither would they. If they didn't stop fairly soon, they would have to try to turn the ovoid around or find another way back.
He smiled sardonically to himself. Might as well try to reverse the spin of a pulsar. Which, though he did not know it, was an evaluation not far off the mark. Senisran, Earth, the whole Commonwealth seemed very far away. In that view he was completely correct.
Eventually the maze of fiery, flaring plasma tunnels began to thin out until less than a hundred remained, twisting and coiling like emancipated Aztec deities in the vastness of empty space. As the ovoid sped on, showing no signs of slowing, this number was reduced until only a handful remained, then less than a dozen. Finally there was only the one, a cascade of explosive red and lambent purple, coruscating yellow and throbbing blue. Their tunnel. Their road.
The notion of comparative velocity had long since lost any relevance. With nothing to measure themselves against, they had no way of estimating their speed. Faster than fast was the best description Fawn could come up with. No one was foolish enough to propose an actual number.
Without warning, the plasma tunnel began to constrict around them, until it was no wider than the ovoid itself. This must be how a corpuscle in a capillary feels, Pulickel imagined. And then, as the tunnel walls drew tight, so at last did the cosmos.
They were surrounded by stars. Ordinary, normal looking, unremarkable stars. Sol-types and red giants, white dwarfs and binaries, they were clearly visible through the blazing walls of the tunnel. They swam in a sea of coruscating nebulae, and Pulickel wanted to reach out and kiss each and every one of them. Instant conflagration aside, it would have taken him quite a while.
More stars were visible than any of them had ever seen at any one time in a crystal-clear night sky or from an orbiting platform. So many stars that they crowded the nebulae for living space and threatened to eliminate the blackness of space in which they swam. Enough stars to make the middle of the Milky Way look empty and unpopulated. You could skip from star to star, hop from system to system, Fawn thought. Or such was the impression the sight created.
A new sensation rippled through them: one of progressive deceleration. Curving to their right, the attenuated plasma tunnel carried them toward a yellow sun surrounded by a ring of matter and energy that coexisted in a state foreign to either xenologist's experience. Out past this striking system they flew, curving sharply above another star that boasted an entourage of no less than twenty planets plus assorted moons and comets and asteroids. Half these worlds were linked by lesser versions of the energy tunnel through which they were traveling.
Still another system, arrayed around a black hole orbited by strange fan-shape objects whose mouths pointed toward the gravitational monster in their midst, drawing upon its energy, sucking up collapsed matter and feeding it to a world the size of Jupiter. There it was molded and shaped, energy bending energy into a bridge that spanned a galaxy. This galaxy.
Pulickel and Fawn had already decided that they had abandoned one in favor of another, but they didn't know the half of it.
Proceeding down the tunnel at speeds that had dwindled from the impossible to the merely incredible, they passed structures so immense and overawing as to leave them bereft of superlatives. How could they be expected to relate to an entirely artificial world built, as it were, from matter up?
There was one individual fabrication so grandiose in the conception, so breathtaking in its execution, that it was difficult to believe in its existence. As the tunnel passed through a portal the size of lo, they found themselves confronted by a star that had been entirely englobed by an artificial structure. On its inner surface lived unknown beings in their quadrillions, warmed and nurtured by their captive star. The ovoid passed quickly through its orbit and out an opening on the far side of the englobement.
New tunnels hove into view, passing close to a pulsar to boost their cargoes between the multitudinous stars at ever more incredible velocities. Here were suns enough, planets enough, for individuals who might desire it to have a whole world unto themselves. Desire company, and the plasma tunnels could bring it to you in less than a -day.
Above one world someone or something was tracing abstract designs in the planet's upper atmosphere, using its ionosphere for a canvas. Elsewhere stellar winds were focused through hollow moons, resulting in true music of the spheres. It was a universe of wonders and enchantments.
It was also very far from home.
Once, a ship passed close. Or was it a planet, fitted out with engines and powered out of orbit, vacationing from one sun to the next? Pulickel couldn't be sure and size gave no clue. The scale of values and comparisons on which he relied for such things had long since crumbled to dust.
A smaller speeding artifact came near enough for astonished faces to be seen staring back at the occupants of the ovoid. Anything but godlike visages of authority and power, they conveyed a certain shyness rather than omnipotence. Black and gray wraiths, hairless and wide eyed, they left in their wake a sense of startled surprise at the nature of the ovoid's passengers.
Fawn felt a wrenching dislocation, as if they had suddenly reversed direction and picked up speed. Sooner than they had left them behind, they were once again surrounded by hundreds of the dazzlingly effulgent tunnels. She fought to recover her internal equilibrium.
"What happened there? It felt like someone pulled the floor out from under us!"
Pulickel swallowed several times, working to clear the rising gorge from his throat. "Maybe somebody did."
"The gods saw us." Having long since resigned herself to whatever fate had in store for them, Ascela wasn't overly concerned. Jorana gestured agreement.
"They didn't look much like gods to me," Pulickel countered. "They were small, and kind of skinny. Builders yes, engineers certainly, perhaps miracle-workers even, but gods? I don't think so."
"I know what happened." Fawn squeezed her eyes shut, blinked once, and shook her head. "Somebody just pulled our superstring."
He summoned up his usual subdued smile. "I wouldn't doubt it. I wonder what they're going to do with us now that they've seen us?"
It didn't take long to find out. There was a renewed sense of slowing. Their tunnel took a sharp turn away from the mass of fiery filaments, which vanished rapidly behind them. This was followed by an interval of utter blackness.
Not long thereafter, the ovoid stopped. Light slowly returned to the interior. Not light from a million stars, or a thousand blazing plasma tunnels, but a softer illumination. Moonlight, supplemented by the flickering dance of torches and lanterns.
The ovoid was oozing its way out of the green mass. They were back.
Through the transparent walls they could see a joyous mob of Parramati leaping and hopping toward them. And when the far end of the elliptical capsule evaporated, they could hear them, as well.
Behind him, Fawn Seaforth was speculating on their unexpected return., "They sent us back. Reprogrammed the egg, or threw us into reverse, or whatever was necessary. But they sent us back." Rolling onto hands and knees, she prepared to exit in Pulickel's wake. "I have a feeling we weren't supposed to be where we were, sort of like a kid who borrows the family transport and goes for a run without first asking permission."
"I disagree." Emerging from the ovoid, he fought to make sense of what they'd seen. "I think the process was automatic from beginning to end."
Pushing past him, the jubilant Parramati surrounded Ascela and Jorana, embracing them exuberantly. There was much clasping of hands and rubbing of snouts. Ears bent forward to catch the travelers' every bark while sensitive nostrils sniffed for signs of foreign roads. Swallowed by the howling stones, the two big persons had been given up for lost. Their return, alive and in apparent good health, was cause for more than ordinary celebration.
Congratulations were passed on to the humans, as well. Pulickel dimly heard Jorana explaining that they had visited the abode of the gods, seen many wonders, and traversed the preeminent road. It was a miraculous place, the Torrelauapan big person avowed, but not for Parramati. Torrelau, Mallatyah, and the rest of the islands were better. None disputed him, there being little merit in trying to remonstrate with an eyewitness.
What it ultimately proved, of course, was that those who hewed to the ways of kusum would always have miracles and wonders at their beck and call, to enhance their lives and confound their enemies.
A hand clutched at Pulickel's shoulder, one with five familiar fingers instead of three long, double-jointed ones. Fawn was looking down at him and smiling.
"How did that compare to the trip you made with the transportation stones? At least this time nobody came back comatose."
"Completely different. This time I felt like something was in control, that it wasn't random jumping from place to place." He looked past her, to the glowing green bulk. Its radiance had not diminished. "These howling stones assemble themselves into some kind of station or terminus. It's one tiny part of the incredible transportation system we saw. Those hundreds of tunnels-many if not all of them must begin and end with terminals just like or similar to this." Excitement shone in his eyes.
She was nodding slowly. "Tunnels or highways, it's all the same. Thousands of them, all leading ... where?"
"We can find out." His tone was urgent, eager. "Make a map, learn the routings."
Her eyes widened. "Whoa, let's back up a step. We still don't know for certain that someone built these."
"Of course we do. We even saw some of the builders."
"We saw aliens. We don't know that they were the originators of the tunnel system, or that the builders even still exist. You don't have to be an engineer to find your way around on public transport."
"No, but somebody keeps those tunnels functional. Somebody lives on that spherical artificial platform facing the enclosed sun, and somebody builds and operates starships the size of worlds. Or planiforms worlds into starships. If not the original builders, then who?"
She made a face. "Ask me another simple one."
"Leap of faith, remember? Sometimes you just have to accept, even in science." He was puzzled by her tentativeness. "These beings englobe stars and tap black holes for power. They string tubes of supercharged plasma between star systems, probably between galaxies, and maybe between adjoining universes. They're for real, and we have to make contact with them."
She smiled wanly. "Excuse me if I don't feel up to monkeying with anything like that. I'm a field xenologist; not a philosopher, metaphysician, or theoretical physicist."
"Same here," he retorted. "I just like to see what lies over the next mountain." He was looking past her now. "All those stars, all those systems! There could have been a thousand intelligent races out there."
"A million," she added somberly.
"Yes, a million-and we only saw the one. Don't tell me you didn't get the feeling that they reacted to our presence."
"Reacted to it," she murmured, "by turning us around and getting rid of us."
"The engineers." Pulickel was insistent. "The builders. I know they didn't look like much, but that doesn't mean anything."
"So I've been told."
He missed her sarcasm entirely. "But why a terminus here? And why abandon it who knows how long ago, along with the other stones? It's almost as if they wanted to break connections with this system, or this part of the galaxy, permanently."
Extracting a drink cylinder from her pack, Fawn snapped the tip open. It chilled immediately and she downed half the contents in a series of long swallows, then looked long and hard at her colleague. "A reasonable interpretation of the evidence. Think about it."
He turned away to eye the perfect, unpolluted night sky of Senisran. "But that still doesn't explain why this world?"
She brooded. "Maybe Senisran isn't the only one with connections. Maybe if you know where and how to look, howling stones can be found on other worlds within the Commonwealth."
He gestured sharply at the amorphous structure from which the cryptic emerald radiance continued to emanate powerfully. "Nobody's ever found anything like this."
"You mean nobody's ever reported finding anything like this," she corrected him. "That's not the same thing as knowing for a fact that nothing like it has ever been found." She waved at the star-speckled but uninformative heavens. "There could be howling stones scattered across half the Arm without humans or thranx or AAnn or any of the other sentient races knowing about them." After draining the drink cylinder, she tucked the empty container back in her pack.
"There are a lot of tribes and clans right here on Senisran, and of them all only the Parramati have access to and knowledge of the stones. And that probably by accident. Who knows? This may be the beginning of the discovery of sacred stones throughout the Commonwealth."
His voice fell. "You're mocking me."
"Nothing of the sort. Just being realistic." She looked back at the glowing green terminal, or whatever it was. "Maybe I'm just not ready to rethink everything I know about natural law."
Before he could respond, Ascela hopped in between them. The Torrelauapan big person regarded them both. "We have made a decision. All the big persons of all the islands, resolving together. Jorana and I have told them of what we have seen and experienced, and a conclusion has been reached."
Fawn brightened at this return to reality. "You mean you're going to accept the treaty?"
Ascela peered up at her. "You have already been told: we make no treaties with anyone. This is not about treaties. Our kusum has just proven its superiority to all other ways of knowing and of acting. Commanding such knowledge frees us from any need to concern ourselves with your technology or that of the shiny-skinned AAnn.
"There will be no treaties. No one will be allowed to come and dig in our islands. We readily forgo any benefits this might have brought to us." The seriousness of her pronouncement was confirmed by her careful inflection.
"You have seen how the stones are tied to our kusum and how kusum relies for support on the stones. There will be no more demonstrations. The howling stones will be removed and returned to their places of rest throughout the islands."
"No, you can't do that!" Seeing the look in the eyes of the two big persons and interpreting it correctly, an agitated Pulickel struggled to compose himself. "I mean, you need to think this through carefully. If the howling stones are disassembled, next time they may not fit together properly. Or the source of their energy could disappear."
"It does not matter." Ascela was unyielding. "The Goggelai is ended. We have seen the meaning of the howling stones, and that is enough. It opens the road that does not heal, or make the heart grow, or bring happiness. A road that gives questions but not answers holds nothing for us. Closing it will keep kusum pure." She put her face close to the xenologist's. "It was to try to show you the importance of this that the Goggelai was held."
At a gesture from Jorana, several big persons stepped forward. It was obvious to both visiting humans what the Parramati intended to do next. They had assembled the remarkable terminal stone by stone, and they were going to break it down by employing precisely the same procedure.
Ignoring Fawn's warning, Pulickel rushed to place himself between the advancing big persons and the green mass. His words were hurried and so his enunciation of the alien words and phrases not as polished as usual.
"Please, you cannot do this!" He indicated the edifice behind him, the protruding cone of the ovoid. "I cannot explain its importance unless you give me some time. There are concepts that are difficult to render in your language. But I can tell you, with every fiber of my being, that this is more important than mining rights, than any treaty, than my life, or yours, or the supposed sanctity of kusum.
"Your traditions will not be harmed by leaving this as it is, to be examined and studied. Indeed, I promise you that they will be enhanced by the knowledge that is to be gained."
Jorana had joined the gathering line of big persons. His reply was flat. "We will begin by removing the largest stone from the top. One by one, the stone masters will take their stones back home. This is the way of kusum."
Ascela was less brusque. "We have learned what the Goggelai had to teach us, friend Pu'il. You should have learned it, too."
Pulickel didn't move. "You can't just destroy something like this, just take it apart and throw away its promise!" Behind him, the front end of the ovoid still gaped temptingly, beckoning to long-vanished passengers.
Standing off to one side, Fawn spoke gently. "I think we ought to listen to them, Pulickel. This-this is almost too big."
He shot her a challenging look. '`What are you talking about? Are you siding with these aborigines?'
She stiffened. "Put it that way if it makes you feel more comfortable. We have no conception of the possible ramifications of continuing to use this device. Neither do the Parramati. We're dealing with something more than mere science here. This is a door to a technology we can't begin to understand. Maybe, just maybe, we're not advanced enough, not mature enough to deal with it."
His gaze narrowed. "Don't be oblique with me, Fawn. You know I can't stand that. What are you trying to say?" The Parramati held their ground, watching the two humans, listening to their strange speech.
"You had a bad experience with the transportation stones. Just two stones." She nodded in the direction of the softly lambent terminal. "We were lucky this time. Next try might be different. A photo-trap is a wonderful piece of technology. They're placed all around the station to secure specimens for study. But the fauna they catch probably don't think they're such a wonderful piece of technology. They don't even know what's happened to them, or how. If we're not careful, we could find ourselves in a similar position."
He shook his head sadly. "This is a modus for travel, not a trap! I am sorry, Fawn, but your analogy fails me. I cannot believe what I am hearing-and from a fellow scientist, no less." He spared a quick glance for the terminal, as if to assure himself it was still there.
"This discovery may change our view of the entire cosmos. It's fundamental. The tunnels may give us access not to a few new worlds but to millions. It will alter humankind's entire future."
"Yes," she murmured, "but how? New physics are one thing. New ways of thinking are harder to cope with. We can't even keep a lasting peace with the AAnn or maintain psychological peace among our own kind. What makes you think that we're ready to deal with hundreds, maybe thousands of new sentient species, at least one of whom is not just more advanced than we are but inconceivably more advanced? Beings who push worlds around like cookie crumbs."
"There's nothing magical about this." He indicated the terminal. "Once the principles are understood, we can manufacture our own and access the tunnel network with them. I have yet to hear of a piece of engineering that dedicated research couldn't break down."
"As easy as that," she muttered.
"Yes," he replied defiantly, "as easy as that. We'll use the tunnels to travel wherever we wish. I'm not saying that the process will be simple, or immediate, but it will happen."
"I'm not so sure." She took a step toward him. "I really think maybe it would be better to let the Parramati take charge of these stones. They'll keep them safe, and someday the humanx will discover the secrets of the tunnels on its own. When we're ready."
"We stand on the threshold of the discovery of the ages and you stand there spouting Luddite cliches. " He eyed her pityingly.
She was not to be moved. "I just believe in taking existence one universe at a time."
He backed up until he was standing next to the ovoid "Come with me, Fawn."
"Come with you? Come with you where?" She watched him warily. "What are you thinking now?"
"We'll go back. Instead of racing about aimlessly we'll find some way to make contact. Draw attention to ourselves. It is the right thing to do. You'll see. I have so many questions ... "
"Too many questions. I'm sorry, Pulickel, but you're wrong about this. Let the Parramati dismantle the terminal. Then we'll talk. I'm having enough trouble trying to deal with this one world without having to worry about thousands. Let's see if the humanx can get a proper handle on this one comer of this one galaxy before we expose it to a few thousand others we know nothing about and may not be able to handle. Somehow I don't think that we and the thranx are the only intelligent species with an agenda for advancement."
He stared at her in disbelief, tight-lipped and quivering with anger and frustration. Had she lost her mind or just gone troppo? She'd been too long alone in this place.
Finally he would get the recognition he deserved. Government-wide, society-wide recognition; not just piddling little promotions in the aftermath of each assignment successfully carried out. He would have anything he wanted. This would make him the most famous scientist in the Commonwealth, placing him on a level with Newton and Einstein and Kurita. And his colleague, his friend, wanted to consign it all to the care of a group of heavy-legged aboriginal aliens, who in their turn would reduce it to a pile of useless, inert green rocks.
Absurd, unthinkable, mad. He would not be denied.
He had only once used the pistol that was part of his field kit. It was intended for defense against Senisran's less benevolent species. But he'd carried similar devices on other worlds and was no stranger to their function. They were tools, nothing more. With-careful deliberation he removed it from its holster.
"... and that's why we-" Fawn was telling Ascela and Jorana when she saw the gun. She stopped in midsentence, her eyes widening. Pulickel had seen her surprised before, but never shocked. A first time for everything, he told himself.
"What ... do you think you are doing?"
"You know, Fawn, a man waits all his fife for one big chance, one real opportunity to rise above the crowd, to distinguish himself from the herd. To take it and fail is bad, but not to take it at all is a hundred times worse." It felt good to give voice to his feelings. He might not convince her, but he was certainly convincing himself.
"Most people never get that chance. I've spent a career toiling for the Department, doing good work but not great work, receiving commendations but not accolades. When the media want comments on the division's inner workings, I'm never the one they interview. When procedural decisions are made, I'm not the one consulted. I'm a valuable functionary, but nothing more. Well, I'm tired of being a cog."
She did her best to reassure him, but she wasn't smiling. "Take away one cog and the whole machine stops."
"Nice try. Please don't come any closer, Ascela." The big person had taken a short hop toward the diminutive xenologist. Now she retreated. Fawn had demonstrated the effectiveness of modern weapons for the Torrelauapans on several occasions. Ascela herself had seen a pistol cut a revavuaa in half. She passed a warning along to the increasingly restless big persons nearby.
Retreating slowly, Pulickel used his left hand to feel behind him for the entrance to the ovoid. "Please keep back. It would distress me greatly if I had to shoot anyone."
Fawn just stared at him. "Don't do this, Pulickel. You're not feeling well."
"On the contrary, I feel fine. Very much alive, thank you. Exhilarated, even. I'm going back, Fawn. By myself, it seems. I'm going to try to make contact, to learn as much as I can, and then I am returning. I will see that you receive due credit for your degree of participation in this seminal exploration."
Watching the weapon, she chanced a couple of steps in his direction. "You need to come back to the station with me, Pulickel. You need to rest. I'll take care of you." Striking a pose, she bestowed on him the most inviting, sexy smile in her considerable but infrequently unveiled arsenal. "Come with me, and we'll talk it over."
"Just stay back, Fawn." The pistol didn't waver. "Tell everyone to keep away." This wasn't as difficult as he feared. Unable to see over the heads and ears of their tightly packed brethren, most of the Parramati were unaware of what was going on.
Still pointing the gun, he climbed backward into the ovoid and sat down. It was easier now. They could only come at him from one direction. As he tried to watch Fawn and the nearest big persons simultaneously, it occurred to him that he was going to look very foolish if this time the device didn't react to his presence and nothing happened.
Her expression a mix of hurt and anger, Fawn moved to converse with Ascela. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but they glanced frequently in his direction. Let them look all they wanted, he thought grimly. He was snug and secure within the ovoid.
It was all bluff, of course. He couldn't shoot anyone. But the Parramati did not know that, and Fawn didn't know him well enough to count on it. Especially if she thought he'd gone off the deep end. By the time she reached the conclusion that he was incapable of harming another intelligent being, he would be long gone. Or so he hoped.
As he sat pondering, the pistol positioned loosely between his knees, the entrance sealed over. The sensation of movement returned and the outside world darkened as for the second time the ovoid slid backward into the terminal. Outside, he could see Fawn shouting at him and gesticulating. No sound penetrated his shelter.
He smiled to himself. Throughout his career, his official reports had been models of precision and organization. The one he intended to file from Torrelau would top them all. It had to, since it was destined to be filed alongside On the Origin of Species, A General Theory of Relativity, and Proposals for a Special Gravitational Algorithm for Space-Plus Routing.
For a second time that night blackness enveloped the ovoid. Vibration increased.
He was on his way.