But now, after all that build-up, Quintus Bloom had apparently decided not to supply an answer. He rose to his feet, brushed off Glenna's hold on his sleeve, and strode out of the boudoir.
"Use your tiny mind, and work it out for yourself," he snapped over his shoulder.
"Quintus!" Glenna wailed, and ran out after him.
"Most interesting." The drift of Cecropian pheromones came in more strongly. "I assume that you made the same deduction as Quintus Bloom?"
Nenda did not move, not even when the pheromonal question was followed a moment later by the stately entry of Atvar H'sial's crouched form. The Cecropian's yellow horns turned to face him, then Atvar H'sial shook her head and just as slowly departed.
There was no need for words. She knew that Louis had made no deductions at all. He couldn't see what there was to be deduced.
He remained brooding on the divan. Live Zardalu only on Genizee. Dead Zardalu discovered on Labyrinth. Labyrinth a new artifact. So what? All that might say something to Bloom and to Atvar H'sial, but it didn't offer one syllable to Louis. Anyway, with power restored the ship needed his attention. So maybe he had his own question: When there were so many smart-asses around, why was he only one who knew how to fly the Gravitas?
He was still asking himself that when Glenna returned. Her chin was up and her manner jaunty as she circled the room blowing out the candles.
It didn't fool Louis for a second. She was upset as hell. He felt unexpected sympathy. "Hey, take it easy. You'll get another shot at him. You know Quintus. He's too wrapped up in his godawful Builders to take notice of anything."
"It's not just that." Glenna sat down next to Nenda. She lifted the hem of her dress and dabbed at her eyes with it. "I was hoping we'd have a really pleasant evening, something to make us feel good. It started so nicely. And then it all fell apart."
"Yeah. It just wasn't your night. But don't let it get to you. I've had nights like that. Lots of 'em." Louis patted her warm shoulder consolingly, and flinched when she leaned back into the crook of his arm.
Glenna snuggled closer. "You know, you were the only one who even tried to tell a scary story, the way I wanted." She reached up to put her hand over his. "I think that was really nice of you."
Louis edged away along the divan. "Yeah, well. I dunno. Not that nice. We were stuck in the hiatus, we all had nothing to do. Might as well tell stories to each other. Now we're clear, though, and I have to get busy. Gotta start figurin' out how we make it through the Anfract."
He was pulling his hand free of hers when all the lights went out again. There was a dying groan from the ship's electrical system.
"Damnation!" Louis sat through a long, waiting silence. Finally he heard a giggle from the darkness next to him.
"Back in the hiatus! Oh, dear. Not my night, Louis. And not your night either, it seems." Glenna lowered her voice, changing its sad overtone to a more intimate one. "But you know, this could be our night."
It didn't need an augment to pick up the message of her pheromones. He heard a rustle of fabric falling to the floor. A warm bare foot rubbed along his calf, and he stood up abruptly.
"You're not leaving, are you?" She had felt him jerk to his feet.
Leaving. He certainly was.
Wasn't he?
Nenda made a sudden decision. The hell with it. In the middle of a hiatus, what else should he be doing?
"No, I'm not leaving. Definitely not leaving. I just thought it might be nice to make sure the door was closed. Tight."
Atvar H'sial was an alien without the slightest interest in human sex. All the same, Louis didn't want snide pheromonal comments as an accompaniment to what he was going to do. He didn't have much faith in his skills as a lover in the best of circumstances.
It was a side benefit of staying, he decided, as he groped his way back toward Glenna. She was a very experienced woman. She would be used to sophistication. One night together, and chances were she would never come near him again.
Chapter Twenty
The Builders had made things to last. The exteriors of their free-space structures might bear minor pitting from meteor collisions, and the interiors always collected dust, but the overall artifacts remained as hard and indestructible as the day they were fabricated.
Hans Rebka knew all this. So it was absolutely astonishing to tug open a wall cabinet as he was examining the chamber's food supplies, and feel the cabinet itself move a fraction as he did so.
He braced himself, gripped the sides of the cabinet, and pulled harder. The whole cupboard ripped away from the wall. Hans went rolling away across the chamber, holding on to a cabinet without a back. Not only that—when he returned to look at the wall, he found that part of it contained a big crack.
That started a whole new train of thought. He could not travel outward, toward the surface of Paradox, because of the one-way field. He could not travel directly toward the center, because the inner wall of the chamber was smooth and impenetrable. But maybe he could break through a side wall, and so progress around the circumference of the torus. Even if he found no way to escape, at least he could look for E.C. Tally.
Smashing through walls might be possible, but it surely wouldn't be easy. Before he began, Rebka went once more to the opening through which he had originally entered. A brief experiment told him that the one-way field was still in operation. Also, unless his suit's instruments were not working correctly inside Paradox, the outer boundary of the artifact had moved much closer. For as long as humans had known of its existence, the radius of the artifact had always been measured as twenty-five kilometers; now the boundary was no more than five kilometers away. Paradox was shrinking. More evidence of profound artifact changes.
Rebka returned to the inside of the chamber. At the back of his mind he couldn't help wondering how small Paradox might become—and what would happen to the central region and its contents if the outer boundary came all the way in to meet it.
Well, he'd either discover a way to escape, or find out the hard way the consequence of the final shrinkage. Meanwhile . . .
He went across to the wall and wondered about the best way to attack it. His suit tools contained fine needle drills, but nothing intended for major demolition work. One way might be to pull a massive cabinet free, and propel it with his suit thrustors at the weak point of the wall.
Rebka went across to the damaged section from which he had pulled the food cabinet and thumped it experimentally with his gloved fist. He was hoping to gauge its thickness. He was astonished when his fist went right in, the whole surface crumbling away to flakes under the blow.
He moved in close and examined the material. The wall was about four inches thick, but impossibly weak, so soft and friable that he could powder it between his thumb and forefinger. It had not been like this when he first entered the room. Just to be sure, he went back to the exact place where he had hit the side wall earlier. One punch now, and his hand went completely through.
He leaned forward and found that he could see into the next chamber. From a superficial inspection, it was no different from the one he was in. There was no sign of E.C. Tally.
Hans Rebka enlarged the hole until it was big enough for him to pass through it, and headed for the far side of the new room. This time he did not pause to select any special place. He drove feet-first at a space on the wall between two gas supply lines, and was not much surprised when it disintegrated under the impact.
He went through and stared around him. Another empty chamber. At this rate he was going to destroy every room in the torus looking for E.C. Tally. Unless the whole place crumbled to dust by itself, with no help from him. It seemed to be heading that way, weaker by the minute.
One more time. Rebka launched himself forward. Again the wall collapsed beneath his impact. Again he drove on through, and found himself in still another room.
But here, at last, was something different. Radically different. He emerged amid a cloud of powder and wall chips, and ran stra
ight into something solid.
He heard a startled grunt, and felt a sudden grip on his arms. Right in front of his face and staring into his visor was a thin, fair-haired woman. She was not wearing a suit, and her face and hair were covered with chalky dust.
She sneezed violently, then glared at the wall behind him in disbelief. "I've bashed that wall a hundred times in the past week, and never made even a dent in it. Who are you, some kind of superman?"
"No, indeed." A familiar voice spoke from behind Hans. "This is not a superman. Permit me to perform the introductions. This is Captain Hans Rebka, from the planet Teufel, and lately of Sentinel Gate."
The three women were sisters, from the salt world of Darby's Lick. Rebka had never been there, but he knew its reputation and location, in the no-man's-zone of dwarf stars between the Phemus Circle and the Fourth Alliance.
"So you're from Teufel," said Maddy Treel, the oldest, shortest, and darkest of the three. "We've all heard of that. ' What sins must a man commit, in how many past lives, to be born on Teufel?' "
Those words threw Hans back at once to his childhood. He was on water duty again, a terrified seven-year-old, waiting for the night predators to retreat to their caves; five and a half more minutes, and the Remouleur, the dreaded Grinder, would arrive. Margin of error on water duty: seven seconds. If you are caught outside when the Remouleur dawn wind hits, you are dead . . .
Maddy Treel went on, jerking Hans back to the present: "But I believe Darby's Lick can give Teufel a run for its money, at least if you're a woman. I guess I don't have to tell you why we came to Paradox. We wanted a better choice than the ones women have, salt-mining or breeding. When they asked for volunteers, we jumped at it."
They were sitting around the makeshift table. Hans Rebka had been persuaded to remove his suit, but only after he had been back to the hole through which he had entered and examined it. He remained mystified. There was an atmosphere on the other side, but it was pure helium. Something was able to keep gases contained within each chamber, even when the wall between them had been partly destroyed. Impossible. But no more impossible than the diamond-shaped entrance to the chamber, which somehow did the same thing. Air within did not escape to the vacuum outside.
"I've done a bit of salt-mining," Rebka replied absently to Maddy. "On Teufel. It wasn't all that bad."
She snorted. "Uranium salts? The good news was, after a year of that no one talked about breeding any more."
"I never had to handle uranium. Maybe Teufel's not so bad after all. I couldn't wait to get out, though. Nobody wanted to breed me, but a lot of things wanted to kill me. Anywhere else looked better. But I don't know if I was right." Rebka gestured around him. "The future here doesn't seem too promising. Did you know that Paradox is shrinking?"
"You mean, the whole thing's getting smaller?" Lissie Treel, the tall skinny blonde who had caught Rebka on his arrival, stared at him in disbelief. "How can it? It's always been the same size."
"Sure. And it's always had a Lotus field inside, and it never stopped anything from getting out before." Rebka shrugged. "Paradox is changing—fast. Don't take my word for it. Go have a look for yourself."
Lissie frowned at him, stood up, and headed across to the diamond-shaped entrance. She was back a few seconds later.
"Shrinking, and changing color. No reds any more. What's going on?"
"It is not Paradox alone." E.C. Tally was sitting cozily between Maddy and Katerina Treel. After he had explained to them who and what he was, the three sisters had assured him that they liked him a lot better than if he had been a real man. "According to a new theory back on Sentinel Gate, changes should be occurring in all the artifacts. It is evidence that the purpose of the Builders has at last been accomplished."
"So what is the purpose?" Katerina asked.
E.C. Tally stared at her unhappily and blinked his bright blue eyes. It occurred to him that this was one feature of the Quintus Bloom theory which remained less than wholly satisfactory. "I have no idea."
"It may not make much difference to us what the purpose is." Lissie came back to sit across from Hans Rebka. "If Paradox keeps shrinking, we'll get squished out of existence. Since it's down to two kilometers, instead of twenty-five—"
"Two!" It was Rebka's turn to jump up. "It can't be. It was close to five less than an hour ago."
"Don't take my word, to quote you. Go see for yourself."
Everyone rushed for the entrance, with E.C. Tally bringing up the rear.
Maddy Treel got there first. "It sure as hell looks closer." She stood there, head tilted to one side. "Hard to judge distance when you can't be sure the fringes haven't changed."
"They have not." This, unlike the purpose of the Builders, was something about which E.C. Tally could be completely confident. "My eyes are unusually sensitive, enough to see reference stars within the rainbow fringes. Refraction has been changing their apparent positions. The outer boundary of Paradox is indeed shrinking. Assuming that the present rate of change is maintained, it will achieve zero radius in"— he paused, not for calculation but for effect. He had remained completely still to make his observations, and in the first millisecond after that he had performed all necessary data reduction —"in twelve minutes and seventeen seconds."
"Achieve zero radius?" asked Katerina.
"That's E.C.'s polite way of describing what Lissie called getting squished out of existence." Rebka was on the point of asking Tally if the embodied robot was sure, until he realized that would be a total waste of what little time they had left. E.C. was always sure of everything. "We've got twelve minutes."
"To do what?" Maddy had adjusted to the facts as rapidly as Hans Rebka.
"Four things. First, we all put suits on again. Second, we board your ships." Rebka scanned the two small exploration vessels. "Just one of them, for preference. Might as well stick together. Which one has the stronger hull?"
"Katerina's our engineering expert. Katie?"
"Not much in it. The Misanthrope's a little bigger, and a little faster. My guess is it's also a bit tougher." Katerina turned to Rebka. "What are you planning on doing? Neither hull was built for strength."
"That will be our third action." Rebka was already half into his suit, but he paused and gestured at the inner wall of the chamber. "Once we're aboard we send the ship full tilt at that."
"No way. We'll be flattened!"
"I don't think so. Paradox isn't just shrinking—it's falling apart around us."
"But suppose we do break through the inner wall?" Katerina was in her suit, and leading the way to one of the scout ships. "We'll be just as badly off. We'll still be inside Paradox."
"Did you notice what was at the center of this torus of chambers when you came in?"
"You mean that black whirlpool thing?" They were inside the Misanthrope, and Lissie was already at the controls. She turned to Rebka. "We saw it all right—and we stayed well clear of it. We may be wild, but we're not crazy. I hope your head's not going the way I think it is."
"Unless one of you has a better idea. I say we have no real choice. If we don't go there under our own power, we'll finish by being squeezed into it. I'd rather enter in this ship, with some say in how we fly."
"He is crazy." Katerina turned to Maddy for support. "Just like a man. All they want to do is order us around."
"I am not a man," E.C. Tally said quietly. "Yet I am obliged to concur with Captain Rebka. I also saw the center of Paradox as I entered, and I suspect that he and I have information unavailable to you. That vortex strongly resembles the entry point for a Builder transportation system."
Lissie abandoned the controls and spun around in the pilot's chair. The other two sisters moved alongside her.
"Go on," Maddy said softly. "You can't stop there. How would you know what a Builder transportation system looks like? So far as I know, there isn't any such thing."
"You pretend you know what you're doing," added Katerina, "but you did no better than us at steeri
ng clear of Paradox. Worse, because you told us you knew things were changing here."
"We maybe weren't too smart." Rebka glanced at his suit's clock, then toward the chamber entrance. "Four more minutes. The outer boundary of Paradox is squeezing in. Look, you've either got to believe us, or it will be too late to do anything. E.C. and I know what a Builder transport system looks like because we've been through a few of them."
Lissie and Katerina turned to look at Maddy. She glanced at the shattered wall of the room, where Rebka had broken in. "What does a Builder transport system do to you? And where does it take you?"
"You survive, if you're lucky, but you don't enjoy it. As for where it takes you, I don't know how to answer that." Rebka shrugged. "Wherever it wants to."
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