Which was probably, to a Zardalu, a wholly reasonable position.

Louis gave up any attempt to understand aliens.

Or humans. Quintus Bloom had narrowly escaped death. He was standing within six feet of a creature who at Nenda’s command would tear him into small pieces and swallow the fragments. And he was scowling at Louis.

“I did not authorize lift-off from Genizee. What about my evidence of Builder activities there? Return me to the surface at once.”

The temptation was very great. Pop the hatch open for a second, and say the right word to the Zardalu. Then Nenda would have revenge for all Bloom’s put-downs and insults. Bloom would have his own put-down, one that went a long, long way. He would be returned to the surface all right — just as he had ordered.

It was Glenna Omar who saved Bloom. But not by siding with him. She released her hold on Nenda and turned angrily.

“How dare you talk to Louis like that! I’m sure he did what was best for us. He took off because he had to. Didn’t you see them? Hundreds of things like — like that thing” — she waved at the Zardalu, but averted her eyes from it — “waiting down there for us.”

Louis was beyond confusion. In his experience — and he had plenty — no one had ever jumped forward to defend him, as Glenna was defending him. And Quintus Bloom seemed equally amazed. Glenna Omar had been allowed on the expedition specifically to admire and report back in glowing terms everything that Bloom did. But now she was criticizing him — and approving the unauthorized actions of some squat, swarthy barbarian from the middle of nowhere.

It was at this tense, intense, and incomprehensible moment that the alarm system of the Gravitas sounded. The ship’s remaining sensors were warning of a major emergency.

Too many crises, all different, and one right after another. Louis was fairly sure that he was in the middle of a long sequence of alternating dreams and nightmares. He had reached another piece of the dark side. Close your eyes, relax. Unfortunately he dared not take the risk.

The first information came from the viewing screens that showed what lay ahead of the ship. They once more displayed the pattern of singularities that had prevented escape from Genizee during Nenda and Atvar H’sial’s last visit. Now, however, the singularities looked a good deal more ominous, dark bands with sudden lightning flashes across them mixed in with the pale wash of a gently wavering aurora. There were other differences, too. No saffron beam of light was stabbing out from the artificial hollow moon of Genizee, ready to return the ship to the planet’s surface.

Good news. Except that a beam of vivid purple from the same source had locked on to the Gravitas. It was pulling them directly toward the hollow moon, at a steadily accelerating pace.

Nenda inventoried the ship’s interior. The big Zardalu was lying quietly on the floor, inspecting the ends of its two clipped tentacles.

Fair enough. Louis couldn’t think of one useful thing to tell it to do in an emergency. No allowance had been made in the Gravitas’s design for strapping in a body that size. If it didn’t move, that was a blessing.

Atvar H’sial, who couldn’t see the screens, presumably had no idea what was happening unless she could smell it from Louis’s natural pheromones — he had found no time to send a message to her, but he must stink of fear. Anyway, no help there.

Quintus Bloom was turning accusingly toward Louis, but his mouth was still only half-open when the lights went out. All the screens turned dark. A moment later, Glenna’s arms went round Nenda from behind and ran like starved animals down his body. “Louis!” Her whisper was right in his ear. “It’s another hiatus!”

It wasn’t, though. It was more serious than that, and Louis knew it even if no one else did. He jerked forward, away from Glenna’s embrace. As he did so the lights came back on and the screens flickered again to life.

He reached for the controls, guessing that anything he did would make little difference. In the couple of seconds that the lights had been off, the hollow satellite of Genizee had vanished. In its place stood a spinning ball of darkness.

Louis swore aloud. He knew exactly what that was, and he wanted nothing to do with it. The Gravitas was being drawn, willy-nilly, into the black tornado of a Builder transportation vortex. He had enough time to wonder where and if he was likely to emerge. But in the middle of that thought the vortex seemed to reach out, grip him, and mold its fierce embrace like a great animal constrictor around his whole long-suffering body.

Louis probably screamed. He was not sure. A scream was certainly justified.

Glenna all last night, then the Maw, and now the vortex. Hadn’t he been assigned more than his fair share of out-of-this-world squeezing?

Chapter Twenty-Three

Two more days, and still no sign of J’merlia. With or without him, Darya had to decide how she and Kallik proposed to escape from the interior of Labyrinth.

It went beyond concern over suit supplies of air and food. Darya felt the breath of change, like an invisible wind all around her within the artifact. Hour after hour, the chamber moved. A haze in the air came and went. The walls themselves drifted and tilted to meet at slightly different inclinations. The effect was most noticeable at the wedge-shaped end. When Darya had first examined it the angle between the walls had been acute, no more than a few degrees. Now she could place her gloved hand down into the broad gap, far enough to touch the end with her fingertips.

The final decision, like all major turning points in Darya’s life, seemed to make itself. One moment she was crouched near the end of the chamber, wondering what could have happened to J’merlia. The next, she was heading for the dark funnel of the entrance.

“Come on, Kallik, we’ve learned all we’re going to learn in this place. Time to get out.”

Don’t stop to wonder about the condition of the outer chambers, or of the ship that she had left behind there. Logic was good, but too much logical analysis inhibited action. Darya had heard it seriously suggested that the original human cladeworld, Earth, had degenerated to an ineffectual backwater of a planet because computer trade-off analysis had increasingly been used as the basis for decision making. On purely logical grounds, no one would ever explore, invent, rejoice, sing, strive, fall in love, or take physical and psychological risks of any kind. Better to stay in bed in the morning; it was much safer.

If you were lucky enough to have a bed. Did the Builders sleep, eat, laugh, and cry? Did they feel hope and despair? Darya paused at the narrow exit from the innermost chamber. Follow the streaky white lines. The Myosotis, complete with beds and bunks and all the other niceties that she had not seen for days, lay in that direction.

“With respect.” Kallik had come up close behind and was edging ahead of Darya. “My reactions are faster than yours. It is logical that I lead.”

Logic again. But Darya found this point difficult to argue. With Hymenopt reaction times, Kallik could be fifty meters away while Darya was still wondering if there might be a danger.

“Be careful. Things in here are changing.”

As if Kallik needed to be told. Her senses were more acute than Darya’s, her reasoning powers in no way inferior. She was already away, shooting along the tunnel to the next chamber. Darya followed, expecting when she arrived to see Kallik far ahead and fighting her way through the moving maze of vortex singularities that they had faced on the way in. To Darya’s surprise she found that the Hymenopt had not progressed beyond the end of the tunnel. Kallik was floating with folded limbs, obviously waiting.