• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“There are some unusual trace gases here,” Flinx informed his companions, “but it's essentially the same atmosphere we breathed on Booster. The Tar-Aiym may have looked nothing like us, but they sucked the same air.”

Truzenzuzex fixed his inflexible gaze on his young associate. “How do you know what the Tar-Aiym looked like, Flinx?”

“I found out last year. On Repler. It was an awkward time for me. Part of my journey to learn about my fellow man and to find myself. Turned out I found out about some other things as well.” He shrugged. “That always seems to be the way of it.” As he spoke he was careful not to look in Clarity's direction.

“Ah,” murmured Tse-Mallory, “you came across some sort of hypothetical reconstruction of the Tar-Aiym themselves.”

“Something like that.” Uncomfortable with the line of questioning, Flinx indicated their immediate surroundings. “I don't know if this is the same portal I entered through the last time I was here, so I don't know how soon it narrows down, but we should be able to set down close to one end of the landing area. After that there should be corridors and then …” His words trailed off as he remembered.

“And then?” Clarity prompted him.

He finally looked over at her. “Then we have to find another operator's platform like the one I utilized on Booster. So I can try and make contact.”

They touched down without incident. Outside the shuttle, the vast empty expanse of the landing deck seemed to reverberate ever so slightly with the echoing roar of hundreds of long-vanished craft. When the shuttle's AI announced that the atmospheric pressure outside had reached normal levels, they shouldered daypacks stuffed with supplies and disembarked via the ship's unloading ramp.

Standing together at its base, Clarity and Sylzenzuzex marveled at the distant metal sky. The airlock was spacious enough to accommodate every ship in the Commonwealth with plenty of room to spare. It was big enough to hold its own weather. There was none because, as with every other aspect of the artifact, conditions within were carefully programmed.

As Sylzenzuzex confronted her Eighth and Tse-Mallory, Clarity joined Flinx. “You told Tse-Mallory that you know what one of the beings who made this looked like.” She hesitated. “I'm going to hazard a guess that they didn't resemble mammalian bipeds.”

He nodded in agreement. As he studied the nearest of the multiple, branching, high-ceilinged corridors that led away from the landing deck and into the bowels of the alien craft, he was already reaching out with his Talent. He sensed nothing, but that did not mean they had landed in an area devoid of accessibility. They would just have to don packs and commence a physical search. At least this time when he found himself in unfamiliar passageways and tunnels he would be able to proceed safe in the knowledge that he was in the company of friends and not fleeing from those who wished him dead.

“They were bigger than us,” he told her. “Impressively but not monstrously big. Much tougher of body and build, too.” Remembering the survivor Peot with whom he had worked to defeat the Vom on Repler, he tried to build an image for her. “Cross a giant super-intelligent crab with a bear, give it four eyes and silvery fur, projecting tusks, and a permanent air of melancholy, and you have a Tar-Aiym.”

“Sounds intimidating,” she commented when he had finished.

“When evaluating another sentient you always have to get past appearance.” Settling on a corridor, he shouldered his pack and started forward. “That's what humankind had to deal with when we first made contact with the thranx.”

“Not to mention,” Sylzenzuzex observed dourly as she followed behind him on all six legs, “the shock and disgust we had to overcome subsequent to our first encounters with human beings.”

The passage Flinx had chosen was high and wide enough to accommodate several large cargo skimmers traveling in tandem. Despite Flinx's assertion that the Tar-Aiym themselves had not been all that much bigger than humans, Clarity found herself