And something else boomed down from the vault above.

He and Toby got Shibo down the steepest slope. They were making for the shelter of a dry wash when Killeen felt rather than heard the hammering sound of pursuit. A massive thing bore down on them. He barely had time to turn and glimpse the crusted, warty hide.

It loomed even larger this time. The barrel-chested trunk had a glazed ceramic cast. Great shanks of carbo-alum worked noisily to carry the thing forward. He could not clearly see the head. Encrusted antennae and projectors sprouted like gleaming weeds on the wrinkled, fertile hide. A shimmering protection enveloped it. It moved to block shots coming toward them.

Then it was upon them.

A hurtling jolt. Scrabbling haste. Many-ribbed fingers snatching at them.

They slammed into resilient webbing. Jostling shadows heaved them roughly. Oh no, Killeen thought. Again.

They were inside the Cyber. A cutting reek swarmed in his nostrils. Again he felt the mucous-moist compartment close about him. Shibo’s grasp eased and she lay back into the foamy stuff. A blur of mad acceleration took them away.

Killeen saw that Shibo was bleeding. It hadn’t been only a tech hit, then. He cursed himself.

Her eyelids fluttered and her system indices rolled meaninglessly, so her internals were damaged as well. He ignored the thumping progress of the Cyber and slapped a quick patch on her belly where the rich blood oozed forth.

“Toby! Got a stim bulb?”

“No… no, I—”

“Damn!” He had used his last on Besen.

“You… hang on. I’ll get…” He could not finish because he had no idea what he could do.

Shibo heard him and turned. She could not speak. Fresh light broke across her dazed features.

Killeen turned to find that the entire wall of the Cyber’s body had gone transparent.

The Cyber covered ground with lurching strides. They were already beyond the frantic running forms of the battle. It carried them jolting down the ridgeline. He saw Tribe members fire at the Cyber but the shots had no impact. The Cyber reached the tree line and plunged into the cloaking shelter.

Killeen saw now that the apparently glassy wall was in fact a projection, an image. He watched the forest shoot by. His sensorium still functioned, though it was fuzzed by errant stripes and flecks. He reached out—and felt something high and massive.

“Damn,” he said, disbelieving.

“What?” Toby asked. He held on to the moist webbing that enclosed them.

“Something above us. In the air. The Cyber’s ’fraid.”

“Mech?” Toby braced himself against the fast, rocking pace. The Cyber’s many legs came slamming down in a strong, rippling cadence.

“Naysay—” Killeen’s throat tightened, squeezing off his breath.

He could speak no more. Swelling anxiety reached him, punching through all insulation between his mind and the other’s.

The Cyber was terrified of what it had to do next. Yet a sense of duty propelled the thing swiftly forward.

They suddenly swerved. The wall scene of rushing emerald veered upward. The trees’ symmetrically spreading limbs crisscrossed the blue above like cabling. And in that deep blue a dark spot grew.

The great long stripe came down the sky like a plunging rod. Out of the west the slim shape swept, poking at them like an enormous pointing finger. Now they could see that the Skysower had the color of ancient wood. Along its length carbon-dark veins laminated the deep mahogany. Vines wriggled over the great stretched slabs that gleamed like polished teak.

All this Killeen took in in an instant as his Aspects cried out. Grey said:

It moves… around the equator… so comes down… different spot each time… sowing…

Killeen felt the Cyber gathering itself around them. He held Shibo and whispered to Toby, “Lie down.” He worked himself flat on the spongy cushion.

So large… a third of the planet’s radius… although is spinning… looks to us… as though… it falls straight down… and lifts off… nearly vertically…

Killeen caught the tightwound anxiety that permeated the Cyber, its struggle to quell an ageold terror. The conflict seemed like a babble of separate voices at cross-purposes. Ancient alarms rang and reasoned tones urged caution, while others adamantly urged the Cyber to do what it knew it must. A cacophony beset it.

No, not it—she. He intuitively sensed that the thing was female. Yes—but in a strange, dry, mechanical sense of the term.

He sent blunt encouragement to her. She faced a challenge, he knew.

Go, he sent. Do it.

And in the quick-swimming thoughts of the Cyber he felt its victory over its own primordial fears. One solemn, clear voice towered above the mad crosstalk.

Her triumph over herself was announced by a throaty roar that burst under their compartment. Thrust pressed them deep into the folds of foam. The Cyber was flying.

The wall showed a swooping view of trees as great thick trunks rushed past. The Cyber rose through them on its flaring jets. In a moment they banked and soared across a broad leafy plain that was the top of the forest. Killeen looked down on the huge platter of the world below, scarred and stained and cut. The treetops were bare. Their thick branches curled over to form the familiar umbrella effect.

The view tilted again, veering around to peer upward. The stubby nub end of the Skysower came rushing toward them.

But no seeds popped forth. Instead, long ropy vines curled out. They descended with blurring speed.

Killeen watched one flash past the Cyber. It was close enough for him to glimpse smaller black strands that coiled helically around each other, like the strong ropes he had known in the Citadel.

Dozens of these tendrils shot toward the forest below. The Skysower’s downward speed flung them into the tree-tops. Some snagged in the bare branches there. Along these a reflexive tension ran. They suddenly tightened.

Killeen watched great undulations ripple down the snagged vines. He sucked in his breath as he saw what was about to happen—and before he could breathe again it was done.

Each caught vine heaved upward. Simultaneously, alongside the Cyber, the Skysower’s tip reached its lowest point. For a prolonged instant of popping strain the great broad nub hung in the air, drifting eastward. Then it began to rise with gathering momentum.

At this instant the whiplash effect sent a surge along the extended vines. They yanked the trees upward. Some upper branches split and gave way. But others held. With a sudden lurch the trees came free of the soil.

They shot up from the forest, trailing their root systems. As if shaking themselves free of their planet, the trees lashed at the end of their tethers, spraying clods of dirt. Retracting vines brought the trees into a herd below the Skysower’s blunt end.

As this happened Killeen felt a solid thunk. The wall screen veered again. They were attached to the side of the Skysower. The Cyber’s legs extended grapplers and clung to the surface.

Killeen could see bushes and shrubs nearby. The Cyber grabbed these tufts. It also quickly bored shafts into the knotty surface.

He felt immediately the reason why. The air in their cramped compartment seemed to gain a weight of its own, pressing them down. His Arthur Aspect said:

You should be prepared for substantial acceleration. Grey calculates that we must endure over two normal gravities within a few more seconds.

A vast hand mashed Killeen into the floor. It grasped his chest and would not let him breathe. Toby lay pale and drawn on the other side of the compartment. “Shibo…” he got out, but no more. She lay still and white.

Time slowed to a plodding succession of painful heart thuds. Killeen’s sensorium seemed filled with wet sand.

Hollow, drawn-out thumps and pops reverberated through the compartment. He tried to reach for Shibo’s hand. Even with his motored right arm his fingers could not crawl across the slight space between them.