Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [138]
Standing alongside Clarity, Sylzenzuzex clicked in symbospeech. “That's the tallest artificial structure I have ever seen. I don't think there is anything like it even on human worlds—and your people adore tall buildings.”
“I assure you, dear Syl,” Truzenzuzex clicked, “that its height, sili!!ppk, is the least of its extraordinary characteristics.”
Passing swiftly over the remnants of what must have been a spaceport of immense size, the little shuttlecraft set down cleanly at the base of the bluff dominated by the tower of the Krang. The airstream outside read thirty-four kph. On either side of the shielding bluff it rose to a steady hundred and twenty, with gusts as high as two hundred. Even that constituted nothing more than a stiff breeze compared to the shocking gales that ripped around the planet's equator.
Prior to disembarking, Flinx made sure that Clarity donned a pair of protective goggles. Tse-Mallory had his own, and Tru looked after his young relative Sylzenzuzex. Collecting daypacks filled with basic supplies, they filed through the Teacher and into the skimmer waiting in the holding bay.
Following the irregular layers and ledges the ceaseless wind had cut into the bluff, they rode the skimmer up to the base of the Krang. Sheltered in the lee of the massive structure, they set down directly in front of a vitreous, dull gray, thirty-meter-high metal door.
An all-too-familiar dull pounding had started up at the back of Flinx's skull. Not now, he cursed himself. Not here. But there was nothing he could do about it except try to rest—and he had no intention of resting here and now.
Clarity was staring out the front of the skimmer's transparent dome at the gargantuan doorway. “How do you get inside? How did you open it the last time?”
The throbbing at the back of his head kept Flinx from smiling. “We didn't. It sensed us and opened for … there it goes now!”
He was more relieved than he cared to admit when the two halves of the colossal portal began to part in front of them. If the doorway had not opened of its own accord, he and his companions would have been obliged to try to find an alternate means of entry. Forcing their way into the Krang was not a prospect he would have looked forward to with delight.
He was worrying needlessly. They were in.
Rising, they moved cautiously through the portal. Once they were inside, the twenty-meter-thick metal barrier commenced to slide silently shut behind them. Clarity looked uneasily at Flinx. When he did not react to the blocking of their exit, she quite rightly assumed the action had been anticipated. Returning her attention forward, she got her first view of the interior of the Krang—and sucked in her breath sharply. Resting nearby on all six legs, Sylzenzuzex let out a long, low whistle.
Remembering his own first sight of the Krang's core, Flinx smiled to himself. The headache was not worsening and the pain was manageable—for the moment. Behind him, in the center of the skimmer, Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex were reminiscing aloud as they identified salient points of the alien edifice's extraordinary interior.
Though viewed this time through the eyes of a world-weary adult instead of those of an awestruck child, the sight that spread out before the skimmer was every bit as remarkable to Flinx as it had been the first time he had seen it. Visible through the intensifying but still diffuse blue-green artificial light that was concentrated in wavelengths intended for nonhuman eyes, wisps of cloud hovered near the impossibly distant ceiling of the colossal structure's hollow heart. Soaring a hundred meters high and more from the floor and extending downward toward the core of the planet itself, arcane machinery and alien instrumentation lined all four inner walls. Above that rose