Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [189]
Flinx nodded. He had already reached the same conclusion. But it didn't hurt to hear Tse-Mallory confirm it.
“We're wasting time, and the more I think about it the less of a mind I have to want to do it.”
They took turns helping him to suit up. There was no atmosphere, breathable or otherwise, inside the plasma bubble. In fact, as near as the Teacher's instruments could tell, there was nothing at all within the sphere that kept untold forces at bay except for the claret-colored hemisphere. They were surrounded by the most perfect vacuum imaginable, devoid even of a hint of interstellar hydrogen. Beyond, the plasma container seethed and churned enough energy to shred the electrons from their orbits around the nuclei that composed their bodies, and then reduce the resultant basic particles to the subatomic equivalent of dust. Inside the ship inside the bubble, everything remained scandalously normal.
Pip went with him, of course. Pip almost always went with him, whatever the circumstances, whatever the danger. The flying snake was as much a part of him as an arm or a leg. The minidrag had been crucial to his contact with the Krang and with the Tar-Aiym weapons platform. It was impossible to know whether she would or could perform a similar function here, but to Flinx that was not what was important. What mattered was that he had his friend with him. There was plenty of room in the survival suit.
It was more than a little disconcerting to be traveling in a survival suit through a spatial vacuum that was pure white instead of jet-black. As he jetted away from the Teacher he spared only occasional glances at the curved, enfolding walls of force that held total annihilation at bay. The greater part of his attention was focused on the reddish-purple hemisphere looming steadily larger in his vision.
Halting his forward momentum within arm's length of the artifact, he commenced a circumnavigation, examining it closely from all sides, underneath, and from above. Tse-Mallory's distanced assessment proved accurate: there was nothing visible in the way of a control or any kind of instrumentation. Just the three encircling gold wires, if wires they were. The future of his civilization, of his galaxy, might depend on his ability to make this incredibly ancient relic respond in some way. But how?
Only one way to find out, he told himself unenthusiastically.
Skillfully manipulating his suit's thrusters to avoid the floating wires, he eased himself over the upper edge of the hemisphere and down toward its midpoint. Lowering himself carefully, he eased downward until he made contact with the half-moon-shaped indentation in the center. The object seemed to exert a very slight gravitational pull. Turning off his thrusters, he let it draw him in until he was lying on his back. Encased as he was in the survival suit he had no way of ascertaining the composition of the material beneath him, other than that it exhibited no give. Relaxing as best he could, he gazed out through the pure whiteness of his surroundings at the protective arc of the plasma bubble. At least, he thought to himself, there was one thing about his present condition he knew for a certainty. He knew exactly where he was.
He was alone. Again.
Except for Pip. Slithering up his left side, she stretched herself out between the inner lining of the survival suit and his chest, her iridescent emerald-green head facing his chin. Raising up, he looked down at her. Did the tenets of convergent evolution allow for the presence of an alien snake in an alien Garden of Eden? If that was where he had fetched up, where then the tree, where the apple? He was certainly no Adam, but he knew exactly where Eve was. Back on the Teacher, waiting for him to come back to her. Waiting for him to do—something.
He closed his eyes, tried to concentrate, struggled to reach out with his Talent as he had so many times before. He reposed like that for minutes, for half