Hans and Darya turned to look at each other.
He shrugged. "What do we have to lose?" He faced into the chamber and spoke at normal volume. "Can you understand me? We are humans. We were brought against our will into this planetoid. We do not know how to leave it."
The flower head was nodding toward them. The light from the being's body modulated in color and intensity as it bobbed up and down in the middle of the chamber.
"It's no good," Darya said. "You can't expect it to understand a word." But while she was speaking the voice began again.
Brought inside . . . inside. Yes, we understand human . . . human . . . human . . . You were brought inside to be . . . others, in case others were needed . . . you may not be needed. You were to stay there . . . near the outside . . . not come here .
. .
Darya stepped closer to the edge. "Who are you? Where did you come from? What is this place?"
"One question at a time," Rebka said softly, "or it won't have any idea what you're asking."
But the demon figure in front of them was already speaking again, and more fluently.
I am The-One-Who-Waits . . . The one who waited in the heart of the double world, in the Connection Zone . . . I came from the heart of that world, when it opened to the signal .
. .
"From inside Quake," Darya said. "At Summertide! It must have come in the big silver sphere, the one that grabbed the
Have-It-All
."
. . . for which I had waited long. In human time, one fortieth of a galactic revolution. I waited .
. .
"That's six million years! Are you a Builder?"
"Don't keep interrupting, Darya. Let it talk!"
—waited long for the Event. I am not a Builder, only a servant of the Builders. I am The-One-Who-Waits. Who seeks the Builders?
"I do!" Darya moved dangerously close to the edge. "All my life, ever since I was a child, I have studied the Builders, wanted to know more about them. The Builders have been my life's work."
The Builders are not here. The ones who fly outside are not true Builders. This is the Connection Zone . . . the testing place, where we wait for the question to be answered. Wait.
The green light was extinguished and the chamber plunged again into darkness. Darya was teetering on the edge of the drop until Hans Rebka seized her arm and pulled her back to safety.
She shook herself loose; she did not feel even a twinge of nervousness. "Did you hear that, Hans? The
Connection
Zone! The Builders aren't here, but there's access to them from inside Glister. I knew it. They can be reached from here!"
"
Maybe
they can. Darya, calm down." Rebka grabbed her again, pulled her close, and spoke with his mouth next to her ear. "Did you hear me? Cool off, and think before you jump to conclusions. You've been in communication for about two minutes with something that says it's at least six million years old, and you're willing to take everything it says at face value. What makes you think you understand what it means, or it understands you? Lots of what it said makes no sense—'the ones who fly outside are not true Builders.' That's not information, it's gibberish. More than that, where did it learn to speak our language? How did it even recognize the human
shape
, if it's been locked away inside Quake for six million years? There were no humans
anywhere
that long ago."
But the green light was pulsing again, illuminating them and the whole of the domed chamber.
The testing proceeds.
The rusty voice spoke again.
It comes close to completion . . . close enough to be sure that the modified one is a true human, and acceptable. It is not necessary for you to be here .
. .
"Then take us back to the surface," Rebka said.
"No!" Darya moved in front of him. "Hans, if we go back now we may as well never have come here at all. There are so many things we might be able to find out here about the Builders. We may never have as good an opportunity."
You seek the Builders,
the creaking voice went on, as though neither human had spoken.
I am not a Builder, and I cannot guarantee the result. But if it is your desire to encounter the Builders—
"It is!"
Then, GO.
"No. Darya, will you for God's sake wait a minute! We don't know—"
Rebka's shout was too late. They were standing on the brink of the tunnel as the edge turned suddenly to vapor.
Free-fall!
Rebka looked down to his feet. They were accelerating at a couple of gees along a featureless vertical shaft that ended half a kilometer below them in a darkness so total that the eye rejected its existence.
"What is it?" Rebka heard Darya's despairing cry beside him.
"It's Glister's gravity field—whatever creates it—maybe a . . ." He did not finish the phrase. If they were falling toward the event horizon of a black hole they would know about it soon enough—know it for maybe a millisecond, before tidal differential forces reduced their bodies to component elementary particles.
"Hans!" Darya screamed.
Two hundred meters to go, still accelerating, faster than ever. Maybe a second left. And now the darkness possessed a structure, like a roiling whirlpool of black oil, curling and tumbling onto itself. They were heading into the churning heart of that dark vortex.
Rebka's empty stomach was churning, too.
A fraction of a second to go.
Childhood on Teufel had taught him one thing above all others: there was always a way out of every fix—if you were smart enough.
You just had to
think
.
Think.
Apparently he was not smart enough. He was still thinking, unproductively, as he dropped into the depths of that writhing blackness.
The unmanned
Summer Dreamboat
had arrived in one piece and in working order.
That was the good news. The bad news was that it had been touch and go.
Five grazing encounters with Phages had delivered hammer blows to the
Dreamboat
's hull, one strong enough to dent and puncture the top of the cabin. The repair was not difficult, and Birdie Kelly was already half finished. But the significance of those five near misses was not the damage that they had done. It was what they revealed about the state of the Phages. Steven Graves and E. C. Tally had monitored the ascent of the
Dreamboat
and were agreed for once: the little ship's survival, even with all collision-avoidance systems active, had been mainly a matter of luck. The Phages were more active than ever, all the way down to the surface of Glister. A descent with accelerations that humans could stand had less than a one-percent chance of success.
The
Summer Dreamboat
had been moved for repairs into the capacious ore hold of the
Incomparable
. Graves and Tally were floating free in the air-filled interior, talking and talking.
And watching me work, Birdie thought. Same as usual. The other two were long on talk, but when anything calling for physical effort came along they managed to leave all the
doing
to him. And they lacked a decent sense of danger. Birdie hated to work with heroes. He had listened to Steven and E. C. Tally casually talk odds of a hundred to one against, and shuddered. Fortunately, Julius Graves seemed to have more rational views.
"Those odds are totally unacceptable," he was saying. "When you and Steven are in agreement, I am forced to listen. We cannot afford to take such a risk."
"May I speak?"
"Which means we have a real problem," Graves continued, ignoring Tally's request. "J'merlia is on Dreyfus-27. Probably deep inside it, since he does not answer our calls. So he can't help. And everyone else is on Glister. And we have no safe way of getting to them." He paused. "Did you say something, E.C.?"
"Steven and I agreed on the probability of survival if the
Summer Dreamboat
simply makes a direct descent to Glister. Or rather, we disagreed in the third significant digit of the calculated result. But there are other options. It depends on the probability level which one uses to define 'safe.' For example, there is a technique that would raise the probability of a successful landing of the
Summer Dreamboat
on the surface of Glister to a value in excess of zero-point-eight-four."
"A five-out-of-six chance of getting there in one piece?" Julius Graves glared at Tally. "Why didn't you mention it earlier?"
"For three reasons. First, it came to me only after a review of analogous situations, of other places and times. That review was completed only thirty seconds ago. Second, the technique should provide a safe landing, but the odds of a safe subsequent ascent are incalculable without additional data concerning the surface of Glister. And third, the procedure would probably lead to the loss of a valuable asset: the
Incomparable
."
"Commissioner Kelly." Graves turned to Birdie. "The
Incomparable
is the property of the government of Dobelle. As the representative of the government, how would you view its possible loss?"
Birdie had finished the patch on the
Dreamboat
's hull and burned his thumb doing it. He pushed himself off and glared around the
Incomparable
's hold as he floated up to grab a support beam at Tally's side.
"It's a filthy barrel of rust and rot, it stinks like a dead ponker, and it should have been thrown on the scrap heap fifty years ago. If I never see it again, that's too soon."
Tally was frowning at him. "Am I to take it, then, that you would sanction the potential loss of the
Incomparable
?"
"In one word, matey, yes."
"Then if I may speak, I will outline the technique. It is something that can be found in the older parts of the data banks. In old times, when human individuals wished to accomplish an objective that certain other guarding entities sought to prevent, they often employed a method known as
creating a diversion
. . ."
Agreement in principle did not guarantee agreement in practice. E. C. Tally and Steven Graves had argued endlessly about the best method. Should the
Incomparable
be sent in well ahead of the
Dreamboat
, passing through the periphery of the cloud of orbiting Phages and seeking to draw them away from Glister? Or was it better to fly the old ore freighter on a trajectory that would impact Glister, and take the
Dreamboat
in not far behind, relying on its being ignored in the presence of the freighter's larger and more tempting target?
Tally and Steven Graves had finally agreed on one thing—that they had insufficient data.
"Since there is not enough information to make a reasoned choice," Tally said apologetically to Birdie Kelly, "the only thing I can suggest is that we resort to aleatoric procedure."
"What's 'aleatoric' mean, when it's at home?" Birdie was reaching into his jacket pocket.
"An aleatoric procedure is one that contains chance and random elements."
"Why, that's just the way I was thinking myself." Birdie produced a deck of cards and shuffled it expertly. He held it out to Tally. "Pick a card, E.C., any card. Red, and the ships fly a long way apart from each other. Black, and we tuck ourselves up the old
Incomparable
's tailpipe."
Tally selected a card from the spread and turned it over. "It is black." He had stared in great curiosity when Birdie shuffled the deck. "What you did just then—it was difficult to see, but is it designed to randomize the sequence?"
"You might say that." Birdie gave E. C. Tally a thoughtful glance. "Didn't you ever play cards?"
"Never."
"If we get out of this alive, why don't I teach you?"
"Thank you. That would be informative."
"And don't you worry," Birdie patted Tally on the shoulder. "We won't be playing for high stakes. At first."
"That could have been us." Julius Graves was staring straight up. "Not a comforting thought."
They had finally decided that since the
Dreamboat
needed time and maneuvering space to land on Glister, it would be a mistake to have the
Incomparable
fly in all the way to the surface. Instead, the bigger ship had been programmed to zoom down to ten kilometers and then veer away from the planetoid, with luck luring the cloud of attacking Phages with it.
As the
Dreamboat
increased the power level of its drive for the last hundred-meter deceleration to the surface, the
Incomparable
could be seen skirting the northern horizon of Glister. The old ship was at the center of a dense cluster of marauding Phages. Already it had sustained a dozen direct hits. The drive was still flaring, but Phage maws had gouged great chunks from the body of the freighter. About twenty Phages clung to the flanks of the
Incomparable
, like dogs worrying an old bull.
"They'll be back," Julius Graves went on. "The way they're going, they'll have swallowed the freighter completely in another half hour. And Phages don't get indigestion, or lose their appetite, no matter what they ingest."
Birdie had chosen an approach trajectory to bring them no more than fifty meters from the
Have-It-All
, on the side of the ship away from Kallik's field inhibitor. There had been no time to examine that installation during their descent, and would not have been even if the
Dreamboat
's evasive movements from a handful of isolated Phages had been smooth enough to permit it. Now they had to hurry over to the inhibitor and decide what to do before any Phages returned to harass them.
The two men and the embodied computer had their suits set to full opacity. Kallik, Darya Lang, and Hans Rebka had certainly been able to breathe the atmosphere; and just as certainly, they had disappeared from the surface of Glister. Their vanishing and failure to reappear was unlikely to be the result of Glister's air—but it could be. As E. C. Tally pointed out, quoting from the most ancient part of the data banks, "Taking a
calculated
risk
, sir, does not oblige one to act
rashly
."