But what was down there? Rebka would have given a lot to see Quake through Max Perry’s eyes.

Quake had no sea-sized water bodies, but it did have plenty of rivers and small lakes. All around them grew the characteristic dark-green and rust-colored vegetation. Most of it was tough and prickly, but in certain places there flourished a cover of lush ferns, soft and resilient. One of those areas was on the biggest lake’s shore, not far from the foot of the Umbilical. It was a natural place for a person to sink down and rest. Or for two people to find other pleasures

Amy was talking, her voice breathless in his ear. “You’re the expert, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know about that.” He sounded lazy, relaxed. “But I probably know as much about this place as anyone.”

“Same thing. So why won’t you bring me here again? You could, Max, if you wanted to. You control the access.”

“I shouldn’t have brought you here at all.”

The feeling of power. He had done it originally to show off his new authority, but once on the planet there were other and better reasons. Quake was still safe, still far from Summertide, yet already there was volcanic dust high in the atmosphere. The evenings, flaming in every eight hours, were an unspeakable beauty of red, purple, and gold. He knew of nothing like it in the rest of the universe — nothing he had read, nothing he had heard rumored. Even with his eyes closed, he would still see those glorious colors.

He had wanted to show it off to Amy — and he did not want to stop looking himself, not just yet. He lay on his back, gazing up past the shattering sunset to the brightening disk of Opal. By his side, Amy had broken off one of the soft fronds of fern and was tickling his bare chest. After a few moments she moved over him, blocking his view of Opal and gazing down at him with wide, serious eyes.

“You will, won’t you? You will, you definitely will. Say you will.”

“Will what?” He was feigning incomprehension.

“Will bring me here again. Closer to Summertide.”

“I definitely won’t.” He rolled his head from side to side on the soft ferns, too lazy to lift it fully. He felt like the king of the world. “It wouldn’t be safe, Amy. Not then.”

“Not at Summertide. I get out well before that, while it’s still safe. Nobody stays here then.”

“So I could leave with you, when it’s still safe. Couldn’t I?”

“No. Not near Summertide.”

Amy was moving her body down toward him, as the last light bled from the air of Quake. He could no longer see her face. It had faded with the dying light.

“I could.” Her lips were an inch away from his. “Say I could. Say yes.”

“No,” he repeated. “Not close to Summertide.”

But Amy did not reply. She was busy with other arguments.

CHAPTER 5

Summertide minus thirty

Darya Lang had a terrible sense of anticlimax. To come so far, to steel herself for confrontation and danger and exciting new experiences… and then to be left to cool her heels for days on end, while others decided when — and if — she would be allowed to undertake the final and most crucial part of her journey!

No one in the Alliance had suggested that her task on Quake would be easy. But also no one had suggested that she might have trouble reaching Opal’s sister world once she got to the Dobelle system. So far she had not even even seen Quake, except from a distance. She was stuck on Opal’s Starside for an indefinite period, with nothing to do, only short-range transportation available to her, and no say in what happened next.

Perry had given her a whole building to herself, just outside the spaceport. He had assured her that she had complete freedom to wander as she chose, talk to anyone she liked, and do anything that she wanted to.

Very kind of him. Except that there was no one else in the building, and nothing there but living quarters — and he had told her to be available to meet as soon as he returned. He and Rebka were sure to be away for days. Where was she supposed to go? What was she supposed to do?

She called maps of Opal onto the display screens. To anyone accustomed to the fixed continents and well-defined land-water boundaries of Sentinel Gate, the maps were curiously unsatisfying. The ocean floor contours of Opal were shown as permanent planetery features, but they seemed to be the only geographic constants. For the Slings themselves she could find no more than the present positions and drift rates of a couple of hundred of the largest of them; plus — an unsettling set of data — the approximate thickness and estimated lifetime of each Sling. At the moment she was standing on a layer of material less than forty meters deep, with a thickness that changed unpredictably every year.

She turned off the display and sat rubbing her forehead. She did not feel good. Part of it might be the reduced gravity, only four-fifths of standard here on Opal’s Starside. But maybe part of it was disorientation produced by rapid interstellar travel. Every test insisted that the Bose Drive produced no physical effects on humans. But she recalled the inhabitants of the old Arks, who permitted themselves only subluminal travel and claimed that the human soul could travel no faster than light-speed.

If the Ark dwellers were correct, her soul would be a long time catching up with her.

Darya went to the window and stared up at Opal’s cloudy sky. She felt lonely and very far from home. She wished that she could catch a glimpse of Rigel, the nearest supergiant to Sentinel Gate, but the cloud layer was continuous. She was lonely, and she was also annoyed. Hans Rebka might be an interesting character, and interested in her — she had seen the spark in his eyes — but she had not come so far to have all her plans thwarted by the whim of some back-world bureaucrat.

The way she was feeling, it would be better to walk around the Sling than to remain cooped up inside the low, claustrophobic building. She went outside, to find that a steady drizzle was beginning to fall. Exploration of the Sling on foot in those conditions might be difficult — the surface was uneven clumps of sedges and ferns, on a light and friable soil bound by a tight-rooted and slippery tangle of ground vines.

But she went barefoot all the time at home, and her naked toes could catch a good purchase on the tough vines. She bent down and slipped off her shoes.

The ground became more uneven outside the controlled area of the spaceport, and it was tough going. But she needed the exercise. She had traveled a good kilometer and was all set to walk for a long time when a dense clump of ferns a few meters in front of her produced an angry hiss. The tops of the plants bowed down and flattened under the weight of some large, low-slung, and invisible body.

Darya gasped and jumped backward, sitting down hard on the wet soil. Barefoot walking — or walking of any kind — suddenly seemed like a very bad idea. She scurried back to the spaceport and requisitioned a car. It had a limited flying range, but it could take her past the edge of the Sling and permit her a look at Opal’s ocean.

“You didn’t have to worry,” said the engineer who gave her the car. He was insisting on showing her how to use the simple controls, though she was quite sure she could have worked them out for herself. “Nothing bad ever makes it shoreside here, an’ people didn’t bring in nothing dangerous when she was first settled. Nothin’ poisonous here, neither. You was all right.”

“What was it?”

“Big ole tortoise.” He was a tall, pale-skinned man with a filthy coverall, a gap-toothed smile, and a very casual manner. “Weighs mebbe half a ton, eats all the time. But only ferns an’ grasses an’ stuff. You could ride on his back and he’d never notice you.”