Nor Crystal Tears

by Foster, Alan Dean;

"Lead the way. We'll be right behind you." The captain was tall even for a human, Ryo noted.

  As they emerged silently into the corridor, Ryo noticed the aliens had armed themselves with pieces of furniture. He said nothing about this because there was no time for arguing.

  Ryo staggered slightly as they passed one of the door­ways he'd hurriedly sealed. Sleep gas was seeping from be­hind it despite his work. His head cleared as they rushed past. The monsters did not seem to notice it at all. A much stronger dose was required to affect them.

  Another couple of turns, up two levels, and They were at the emergency exit. They met no one. Blessed be the celebrants, Ryo thought gratefully, for they shall remain pure in spirit and devoid of knowledge.

  It took him a minute to bypass the warning unit. He could only hope that no backup alarm sounded a warning on the central security console as the first was discon­nected.

  The hatch flipped up and out. There was a soft flume as it landed on accumulated clith. Then the party was on the eerie treeless surface that roofed the base. In the distance the treeline was visible, its ghostly ranks marching silently away in the half light. Only a single shadow marked his emergence. Clith crystals sparkled like gems in the light of Omuick.

  Ryo marked their position and pointed the way. The monsters said nothing as they started for the correct exit marker. The hangar lay a modest distance away.

  They were perhaps halfway there when the obvious sud­denly intruded on Ryo. They had prepared for so many things; speed of progress, the sleep gas, the holiday night, the phases of the moons he'd forgotten only one thing. His cold weather gear!

  He slowed, the numbness already beginning to overcome him. "You go on," he told Bonnie and Loo as they hung back with him. "You know where the hangar entrance is now and I've told you how to program the cover. I'll wait here."

  "Permanently? Not a chance, Consultant," Loo said.

  "We need you, Ryo," Bonnie added.

  The two massive creatures bent and lifted him between them; they ran with an extraordinary jouncing motion, and he thought for certain he would be sick. His body felt like a vibrating spring by the end of the short run.

  They set him down next to the hangar exit. Despite the increasing numbness in his hands he managed to set the second bypass.

  If the alarm had been raised it had not yet reached above ground. No high intensity lights swept the frozen surface in search of them. The hatch cover clicked and flipped open. With the monsters flattened against the ground and watching him, he started down.

  The smaller hangar was dimly lit. Ryo paused at the bot­tom of the ramp and let his dangerously chilled body soak up the warmth. When he was comfortable again he moved forward and peered cautiously around the opening at the end of the ramp. Nothing moved inside the hangar, but he thought he could discern voices far away. They must be on the far side of the hangar, he thought. That meant they could not see anything at this end.

  Ahead of him stretched ranks of planetary defense craft. The hangar was a miniature of the vast cavern located in the main base. Armed shuttlecraft were visible farther away. To his right, just beyond the first of the aircraft, was a bulky, awkward shape that had to be the monsters' shut­tle.

  Hurrying back up the ramp, he confronted a circle of anxious alien faces.

  "There are guards about, but so far away I can only hear them. Your shuttle is close by. From what little I could see it seems intact."

  "Be our luck," grumbled one of the monsters, "we'll get down safely, get aboard and be all set to blow, and find out they've defueled the engines."

  "Relax," Loo advised him. "You said they broke the chemical makeup of the solid fuel components a month ago. They know the stuff's inert until ignition. They've no reason to disassemble anything."

  "I'm not talking about reason," the pessimistic monster continued, "I'm talking about luck.. We're going to need both to get out of this."

  "Let's move," Bonnie said sharply. She started down the ramp.

  Ryo caught up and passed her, halted once more at the bottom. There was still no one in sight, but he fretted be­cause the idle voices seemed slightly louder. "I will go first," he announced. He noticed how tightly the monsters were gripping their makeshift weapons. One carried Eush's energy rifle. "And please, no violence."

  "Did you tell that to the guard in the corridor," said the engineer named Alexis, "before you clobbered him?"

  "It was a careful blow, intended only to incapacitate, not to kill." His tone was sharp, but the engineer was not offended.

  Ryo stepped into the open and walked around the single aircraft. Up close, the monsters' shuttle was clearly larger than a comparable Thranx craft, but not unduly so. It fit with room to spare beneath the vaulting ceiling of the hangar.

  At first he could find nothing amiss. It was near the end of his check that he discovered a large metal plate dangling from the vessel's stern. Returning to the rampway, he re­lated what he'd seen.

  "Sounds like they've been studying the coordinated feed and firing controls," said Javier the engineer. She was a diminutive female not much taller than Ryo.

  "We'll just have to fix whatever's been tampered with," Elvira added huskily. "Hopefully it's not serious. We've come this far." She eyed the hangar opening hungrily. "We're not going back to that cage."

  Murmurs of assent rose around her.

  "I concur. We must take our chances now," Ryo agreed. He led them silently onto the floor.

  The boarding ramp was down. Most of the monsters started up but a few technicians, led by Javier, hurried to­ward the stern where they began working inside the open hatch.

  Ryo nervously stood guard nearby. The voices came nearer still, then began to fade again. After what seemed like an eternity a loud metallic click sounded from behind him. The monsters had finished their work and were clos­ing up the hatch. Loo and Bonnie waited to greet them at the base of the entry ramp.

  "All set," Javier whispered softly. "It looked like they'd just been testing. Nothing seemed out of place." She shrugged, another gesture Ryo had come to recognize. The monsters were incorrect in stating they communicated only with their voices. "We'll have to try it anyhow. We don't have the time to run a detailed inspection."

  "Right. Get aboard."

  The three monsters climbed the ramp. Loo turned un­comfortably to Ryo. "We don't know how to thank you. You know that. There's really nothing appropriate any of us could say."

  "You haven't even reached your ship yet and you're a long way from jumping to Space Plus. It's premature to think of thanking me."

  "No, even if this is as far as we get we owe you more than can be put in the words of either language. We'll be standing by for the overheads to open. Are you certain you won't be harmed? You told me it would take them a while to determine for certain that it was you who reset the sleep­gas cannisters, but that guard recognized you."

  "It doesn't matter anyway," Ryo replied. "I'm coming with you. The overhead doors have already been pro­grammed. I did that when I first checked your ship for damage." He indicated a nearby computer terminal. "There's no lock or guard on them. No one would expose himself to the air here without orders."

  Loo and Bonnie were momentarily speechless.

  "Why should I not go with you?" He fought hard to con­tain his excitement and his nervousness. "My entire life something has pushed me onward, to seek extremes, to learn the unknown. It pushed me into extending friendship to the both of you and then to your companions. It has pushed me to commiting an act of Eint denial. Why should I not carry it to its next extreme as something inside is forcing me to do?"

  "I don't know." Loo looked uncertainly at Bonnie. "'I don't have the authority. I ..."

  "Talk to your captain, Elvirasanchez. It will take only a moment. We have no formal contract, but it might be said that you owe me this."

  "I'm still not sure "

  A piercing whistle punctured the resulting silence. Single and multiple lensed eyes turned. Three gu
ards stood between an air defense ship and a shuttle. They were ges­turing frantically while whistling and clicking at the top of their range.

  Lights winked on inside the monsters' shuttlecraft, blinked several times. A slow whine started from its stern. Somewhere a horn hooted violently and confused whistles rose from all around the hangar.

  No time remained for argument. Loo made a gesture Ryo did not recognize, then shouted, "Come on! We'll argue about it later!"

  Even as they hurried up the boarding ramp, it was start­ing to retract. Inside, everything was confused and out of place to Ryo's eyes. Monsters moved rapidly around him, through corridors far too high and narrow. Everything seemed backward, distorted, an imager's nightmare vision of what a real ship should look like.

  He stayed close to Loo and Bonnie, afraid of losing him­self in that distorted interior. Loo threw himself into one of the tiny saddles and began exchanging complex words with another monster seated nearby. Despite months of study the phrases' meaning eluded Ryo.

  "They've just seen us," the other monster told Loo after concluding the barrage of technical talk. "What about the hangar doors?"

  "No timel" came the word from over the internal com­municator. Ryo recognized the captain's tone.

  Alien words flew around the chamber. "What's the bug doing here? ... Wants to come with us ... What, but why? ... Wants to ... worry about it later ... No time ... How do we get out of here? ... One way, hang on! ... Open and closed! ..." And other exclama­tions Ryo had neither the wherewithal nor the time to translate.

  Thunder rattled the shuttle and Ryo found himself thrown to the deck. The sudden movement was not taken out of disregard for his safety, several monsters were like­wise dumped on their abdomens.

  Something under Ryo's feet went rhooom! and for a mo­ment every light in the chamber went out. He fought to regain his balance. It sounded like the ship had been hit. In fact, the opposite was true.

  The guard in the fringe tower had reacted to the base ­wide alarm, but no one had bothered to tell him what the alarm was about. He thought it likely to be another drill.

  This illusion was violently and unexpectedly dispelled by the geyser of metal and plastic fragments that erupted from the far side of the base. Without warning, a ship hung in the center of the falling shower of splinters. It was big­ger than any shuttle he'd ever seen and showed only two wings. A bright glow emanated from one end.

  Then the roar reached him and that at least was famil­iar. The ship jumped as if kicked, rising skyward at an extreme angle. So stunned and enthralled was he by the sight that he forgot to activate his own alarm. Sometimes it is not planning but inspired confusion that is the best aid to escape.

  The light of half a moon shining down on it, the Seek­er's shuttle rapidly accelerated into the cold, cloudy night air of Hivehom.

  Chapter Twelve

  There was nothing aboard like the ac­celeration saddles he'd lain in on the shuttles that had lifted him from Willow wane and dropped him down to Hivehom. Human saddles were short and angled in on themselves. He could not possibly straddle one.

  The monsters were hastily strapping themselves into their own units except for one who staggered forward. For­gotten, Ryo chose a place on the deck where two walls joined and spread himself as flat as he could. With foot­hands he grasped the support pylons of two monsters' sad­dles.

  He worried overmuch. No radical maneuvers were per­formed and the steady acceleration was not difficult to bear. Soon the shuttle was coasting in free space.

  That did present some problems. The monsters' shuttle­craft was not large enough to retain artificial gravity, so Ryo went floating past several of the securely strapped in crew. Loo unbuckled his upper torso and reached up to grab one of Ryo's flailing hind legs, then pulled him down to where he could obtain a grip on the back of the mon­ster's saddle with all four hands. From there he was able to, manage reasonably well.

  The voices of the pilots reached them via the communi­cators. Again Ryo recognized that of the captain.

  "I don't see a thing," she said. She paused, then, "There's nothing up here. Not a damn thing, not even a shuttle."

  "What about the Seeker?" an unseen questioner asked.

  "Coming up on her." A longer pause, broken by a third voice.

  "She looks untouched. I don't think they've tried taking her apart."

  "Why should they?" Elvira responded. "For all they knew it could be booby trapped."

  "I don't know," the second voice began. "They don't strike me as a suspicious people. Though I don't see how they could be anything else after years of sparring with the AAnn." A brief silence. "God, she's beautiful. I never thought I'd call her that."

  "I never thought you'd call anything that if it wasn't female," Elvira responded. This was followed by human laughter.

  I must begin thinking of them as "humans" and not as monsters, he told himself firmly. Diplomacy must be done.

  "Hey, I wonder if any of them are on board?"

  "I don't know," the third voice commented. "We'll find out soon enough. In any case, we've got our weapons sys­tem back now. I'm sure as hell not going peacefully back to that hellhole. If they try and stop us there'll be bug juice over half the stellar objects between here and Centaurus space."

  Ryo stiffened mentally, forced himself to shrug the com­ment off. The speaker doubtless did not know Ryo was on board. Nevertheless the viciousness in the human's state­ment unsettled him. He began to wonder if he might not have overreached himself. Perhaps these creatures were as duplicitous as the AAnn. Morally he was still confident he'd done the right thing. However, there were a few con­cerns that overrode even morality.

  There was a dull thump. Hanging as he was, Ryo could not obtain a decent view through one of the indecently rounded ports, but humans were unstrapping themselves. Using guidelines, they pulled themselves toward the rear airlock. With his four hands Ryo was able to maneuver on the guidelines even better than his companions. Bonnie complimented him on his agility.

  "I've only been in space twice before," he told her as they pulled themselves down the narrow, circular docking tube toward increasing gravity and the alien mother ship, "but I've always been dexterous."

  "I've often wished for an extra pair of hands," Loo re­marked from ahead of them, "but I think I'd settle for a few more brains and a lot more luck."

  "There is no such thing as luck, according to the philoso­phers," Ryo replied. "They insist it is an outmoded mythological concept."

  "We'll debate that one later," Bonnie said, interrupting them. "We're still not out of it."

  " `Out of it'?" Ryo murmured. "I misunderstand."

  "Safely away. I don't think your presence on board would be enough to prevent your government's attacking us if they decide on that course of action, do you?"

  "Most certainly not. The contrary might be true."

  Then he was in the alien ship. The humans were vanishing to different posts like so many mina bugs. Someone called from a distance, "Detection reports nobody on board. Not a guard in sight."

  "Why should there be?" another, more distant voice yelled. "Who's going to try and steal it? Besides, they haven't been able to figure out how to run it yet."

  The final checks Bonnie had spoken of took even less time than Ryo had expected. Then all of a sudden he was standing in the corridor all by himself. Loo and Bonnie had rushed to their stations. In the haste to complete final re­pairs the crew of the Seeker had forgotten there was an alien in their midst.

  That was fine with Ryo. He strolled around the peculiar vessel unchallenged, touching nothing because nothing was familiar. The corridors were generally identical; high, narrow rectangles instead of the comforting low triangles or arches. It was most disconcerting, as if his whole world of perceptions had suddenly been squeezed from both sides.

  Some of the chambers he inspected were evidently living quarters. Their contents remained a mystery to him. All except a single item of furniture tha
t, save for being higher and longer, closely resembled a proper lounge. He won­dered if they were intended for sleeping or some as yet unknown function.

  Since no one was around to stop him he tested one ­overly soft with a slightly irritating mushy movement to its insides, but otherwise quite suitable for resting. He had to haul himself onto it. Once there and as soon as he got used to the rolling sensation, he succeeded in making himself comfortable for the first time since they'd boarded.

  "What do you think, Captain?" The cocontroller was studying the activated screens that showed the green white mass of Hivehom and the space surrounding it. Several moons appeared as graphic representations, as did moving points of light too large to be dust and too near to be satel­lites.

  "Ships," Sanchez noted tersely. "Have to be. Orbital. No, there's one moving." She checked a readout, announced with satisfaction, "Moving away from us. Standard com­mercial traffic. It squares with what the bug told us. This is a busy world."

  "His name is Ryo," Bonnie announced from the other side of the cabin.

  "All right it squares with what Ryo told us. This is their capital world. Traffic's to be expected. I don't think we could mask ourselves with it, though. Ship signature is too different."

  "I'm sure they're marking us right now," said Taourit, the cocontroller. "They've kept us well away from the other ships. Probably a restricted area."

  Sanchez nodded, spoke toward her pickup. "Engineer­ing? Status?"

  The speaker replied. "Engineering checks okay."

  "Thanks, Alexis. We're set, then."

  Bonnie leaned a little closer to one screen. "Lights com­ing up," she declared. "Small mass, moving fast. Too small for a ship. Military shuttle maybe."

  "That was fast," Taourit murmured. "Somebody down there's good at deduction."

  "And so we bid farewell to the vacation world of Hive­hom," Sanchez muttered. "Our stay was pleasant but over­long, I think. Let's get out of here."

  A slight vibration ran through the room and the Seeker began to move. It was still too close to the world below for the Supralight drive to be engaged. In normal space the tiny shuttle coming up behind would be just as fast. For a while it seemed to be gaining.