“And suppose you don’t stop? You’re not going to try anything like that. Are you sinking now?”

“Don’t seem to be. I’d say I’m right about where I started. Question is, where do we go from here?”

“Tarb, can you let go with one hand without sinking?”

“Only one way to find out.” He released his left-hand grip, increasing the force on Chrissie’s other arm until she could feel her shoulder socket creak. “Seems all right. Don’t seem to be moving.”

“Good. Can you work your suit controls one-handed?”

“I can.” He lay in silence for a few seconds, his actions invisible to Chrissie as she sprawled at full length. “There we are. I’ve got the gauntlet pad working. Now what?”

“Use the controls to seal your suit at the waist, so the top and bottom halves can be independently pressurized. Then inflate below the waist — hard.”

“Will do.” After a few seconds of silence he said, “Ouch. That hurts. How hard?”

“As hard as you can stand. We want the lower half to inflate like a balloon. Then its natural buoyancy might help lift you out.”

“I know what you’re trying to do. But I’m inside that balloon, and there’s things down there below my waist that I’m very fond of.”

“I’m fond of them, too. But I value what’s in the upper half of your suit a whole lot more. Increase the pressure, Tarb. The suit can take it, so can you.”

“The suit doesn’t feel it like I do.” He gave a series of grunts, then a final, “I’m going to pull now. If that isn’t enough, I’m stuck here forever.”

Chrissie flattened her face into the mud for extra traction, gritted her teeth, and hung on. Tarbush had her hands in his. He gave a monstrous heave that had her skidding forward, and then suddenly the force on her arms was less.

She raised her head. In front of her she could see Tarbush, flat on his back. Beyond him, rising up beyond his waist, was a great misshapen hemisphere of mud. It was his suit, grossly inflated below the waist.

“I’m half out,” he said. “But what now? I can’t move my legs, and I can’t look any way but up.”

“Hang on.” Chrissie wriggled backwards a few inches. She pulled, as hard as she could. After a moment when nothing happened, Tarbush’s inflated figure slid a few inches toward her. She did the same thing over and over, until she could see from her own boot marks that they were past the danger point.

“You’re all right,” she said. “You can deflate the suit if you want to.”

“If I want to!” There was a huge hiss of escaping air. After a few seconds Tarbush gave a matching sigh and sat up. Chrissie crawled to his side. Together they stared at the innocent-looking stretch of mud in front of them.

“I guess that we won’t be using the gully any more,” Chrissie said. She stood up and stretched high, trying to peer over the edge of the bank. “So what’s our alternative?”

Tarbush remained seated. He stretched over to the pack and pulled out Elke Siry’s map. “We do it the hard way. We go due east. It won’t be fun. The land is all ups and downs, a mixture of steep cliffs and deep valleys, plus some things that Elke couldn’t identify at all from the space images. Hmm.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing we can do anything about. But I notice that according to Elke’s notes on the map, we’re still a kilometer short of the area that she marked as Badlands.”

34: NEGOTIATION AND BETRAYAL

Chan had been itching to get ashore since the ship’s arrival in the ocean of Limbo. Now, following Friday Indigo across an open wilderness of seared rock, he had too much on his mind to take much notice of his surroundings.

Back on the Hero’s Return he had decided, quite deliberately, that he must act completely alone. If others of the crew knew what he had in mind they might have offered useful ideas; but with the Malacostracans clearly able to turn any human into a robotic slave who would tell everything, more people in the know meant more risk.

Unfortunately, the person most likely to become such a slave was now Chan himself. Chrissie and Tarbush had escaped, so if Friday Indigo collapsed Chan was the logical next in line.

They were passing a line of strangely shaped aircraft, familiar from Bony Rombelle’s description and the images taken from orbit. Chan forced himself to concentrate on them, and even more on the two huge and ungainly oval shapes that floated beyond them. According to Dag Korin those must be the mother ships, the vehicles used to bring everything else through the Link from the Mallies’ home world and home universe.

Chan studied the alien outlines, hovering above the ground with no sign of support. His conviction strengthened that no human or Stellar Group member would be able to fly one of those without either a Malacostracan pilot or a few weeks of trial-and-error experimentation. The ships were simply too different from anything he had ever seen. According to Friday Indigo, the Malacostracans held precisely the same view: a human might direct the Mallies in making a Link transition, but stealing their ship and flying it home to the human universe was out of the question.

Friday Indigo led him past the line of ships and aircraft, toward a jumble of low buildings. Half a dozen dark figures stood guard outside the nearest one. Indigo walked confidently to and past them. Chan hesitated for half a second, then did the same. He stared at them as he walked by. The crustacean shapes were familiar from Deb and Danny’s description, but nothing could prepare you for the strange forward hunch of the flat carapace, or the click of pincers and whistle of breathing tubes.

They find you every bit as strange as you find them.Chan stared straight ahead and followed Friday Indigo into the long dark archway, almost like a tunnel, that led into the building. But he remained very aware of the short black canes carried by two of the Malacostracan guards. According to Deb, those innocent-looking sticks were the weapons that had felled and paralyzed Chrissie Winger and Tarbush Hanson.

The floor of the tunnel descended. Daylight faded. Chan kept his gaze on Friday Indigo, but he felt and heard the splash of dark liquid. They were walking in water — if it was water — that rose steadily to the level of his knees. A right turn, another archway, and he saw light ahead. They emerged into a domed chamber illuminated by the diffuse gleam of melon-sized globes in the ceiling. More water, still knee-deep. In the center of the room, on a flat surface like a low table, sprawled a miniature version of the Malacostracan guards with its many jointed legs spread over the edges.

Friday Indigo paused.

“The One?” Chan said hesitantly.

Indigo gave him a scornful look. “Of course not. This is just Two-Four.” To the creature, “Here is the negotiator. Permission to enter?”

The little Malacostracan raised its black cane and emitted a series of clicks and clatters.

“ Permission is granted by The One. She is within.” The words came from a translation unit — a human-built translation unit, from the look of it — on the front part of the table.

Friday was walking forward. Chan said, “That translator. Won’t we need it?”

“Unnecessary.” Friday did not break stride. “All we need with The One is present in me.”

Chan’s tension increased. Here was direct proof of the Angel’s assertion: Friday Indigo could say anything that The One wanted said, and in gaining that capability he had ceased to be human. To the Malacostracans, humans were expendable.

He followed Friday Indigo, up a gently inclined ramp to still another room. This one was smaller, dry, and apparently deserted. A huge lumpy rock sat at its center. Its lower part was riddled with fist-sized holes. It looked like an ugly and primitive sculpture.

“We have permission to advance,” Indigo said. “Walk forward. Follow me.”