Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [181]
“Something is not as it appears. Chondrites don't have built-in avoidance systems,” he muttered.
“These do.” Truzenzuzex was studying a floating image close by his right shoulder that supplied a view astern. “They'd better.”
Bearing down on them was a rectangular cliff face twice the size of the Teacher. Even if Flinx had given a command to do so, there was no time to move out of the oncoming monster's course. A moment later, when it was less than a dozen ship-lengths distant, it changed course. They could follow its progress easily as it shot past. Braking at the last possible instant, it rotated forty degrees and with incomparable delicacy slipped into a notch in another drifting planetoid even bigger than itself. The hurtling cliff face fit the empty notch as perfectly as a tooth fit its socket. The massive merge was accompanied by a blinding but brief burst of intense greenish lightning.
Only when exhaustion finally overcame fascination did they withdraw, one by one, to their cabins to rest.
When Clarity awoke, Flinx was no longer beside her. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she gathered up Scrap and tracked him back to Control. Sylzenzuzex was standing nearby. For the most ephemeral of instants Clarity recognized and shamefacedly cast aside a flicker of irrational jealousy.
“Where are your mentors?” she asked as she came up beside him.
“In the lounge,” he told her, “noisily disputing statistics while toying with irreconcilable data among the ornamental flora.” He nodded forward. “Have a look.”
At first she thought the object floating in front of the Teacher was nothing more than the consequence of a great many stones large and small coming together to make one big one. Peering harder, she saw that the fused rocky debris now formed a shape with a distinctly regular silhouette. Vaguely conical in shape, it flaunted an enormous dark maw at one end while the other tapered to a blunt, somewhat indistinct tip. Though more and more rocky detritus continued to arrive and add additional bulk to the drifting mass, the surge of material had markedly diminished. She found herself gazing at a massive, stark, simplistic configuration that radiated a subdued but steady green light from somewhere deep within. A tapering cone large enough to accommodate every starship in the Commonwealth. Simultaneously.
“Okay,” she heard herself murmuring softly to the man standing beside her, “as Syl said yesterday, you've definitely gone and activated something. It was made aware of your presence, and it's aware of our presence. But what is it?”
“That's one of the things Bran and Tru are arguing about.” He put his arm around her, forcing both minidrags to shift position. “It's beautiful, though, isn't it?”
Though glad of the comforting arm, its gentle grasp did not change her opinion of the enormous unidentifiable structure. “I don't know if I'd go that far. Dark green's not my favorite color, anyway.”
Voices sounded behind them, coming closer and growing louder. Tse-Mallory made himself heard before he and the philosoph entered the bridge.
“Tru and I have spent hours pondering the possible nature and function of the object. We think we know what it is.”
Flinx turned immediately. “What is it, then? What does it do?”
Truzenzuzex flicked the tip of one antenna in his direction. “Bran said that we know what it is. He said nothing about knowing what it does.”
“We believe that it is,” the sociologist-soldier declaimed importantly, “the receptor of the occasional transmission from Horseye. Your ship has checked and rechecked the relevant readings for us. There is no mistaking the confluence. The signals pass directly through the point in space now occupied by the assembled contrivance.”
“That's most interesting, esteemed Eighth,” Sylzenzuzex observed. “I confess, however,