Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [50]
But something—something—had been strong enough and dangerous enough to have smashed one of the robots to pieces. Something here.
Davlin swallowed hard. Sinister monsters were already following him in the dark, and now the sight of the dismembered Klikiss robot made him put on another burst of speed, though he did not know where he was going.
Close behind him, he heard a sound of cracking stone, and part of the wall crumbled away. Sharp, furry arachnid legs pushed forward, questing, widening the hole.
He rushed into the next opening, trying to put distance between himself and the pursuing things. To his dismay, the new chamber was a dead end, a large room with no exits.
He skidded to a halt, turned to see if he could run back into another passage, but the predatory creatures were closing in. From a nearby tunnel came the odd shuffling, clumping sounds of winged jellyfish-things dragging themselves along the floor. Other creatures clattered and hissed from the shadows.
Davlin shone his light around the enclosed chamber, looking for some exit hole. There was no place to run.
Then, like a magician’s trick revealing a surprise, the handlight shone upon another flat stone surface and a trapezoidal ring of controls. A second transportal! Many Klikiss cities had more than one of the instantaneous transportation gates. He only hoped this one was still functional.
Davlin hurried through the familiar activation sequence. His eyes skimmed the icons on the tiles and rapidly identified the one he recognized as the address for Rheindic Co.
Sluggishly, as if crawling to wakefulness, the ancient Klikiss machinery began to hum. Davlin tried to concentrate.
At the chamber doorway, one of the jellyfish-things hauled itself forward on the elbows of bent wings, reaching out with glassy tentacles.
Davlin heard the familiar buzz of transportal machinery, and his knees went weak with relief as the flat stone turned fuzzy. Four of the winged jellyfish had crawled into the chamber now, trailing slime. Whiplike tentacles quested across the stone floor.
But Davlin gave them only a cursory backward glance before he jumped through the transportal—back to a world he could understand.
Chapter 24—ANTON COLICOS
Anton devoted his private time to deciphering the epic Ildiran narrative for later publication on Earth. He spent his every waking hour reading or telling stories that no human being had previously heard. What could be better than that?
Still, the constant study made even him restless. Anton liked to stretch his legs and walk along the boulevards of the resort. The oddly skewed structures with their multicolored crystals reflected the blazers that hung from domes overhead. The colors, lights, and exotic flavor had always reminded him of the Arabian Nights. Here, during the darkness season, he and Vao’sh were each like Scheherazade, providing a nightly entertainment of storytelling in the central plaza to whichever workers could take time from their activities to listen. The rest of the domed city was virtually empty.
Now Anton whistled as he strolled along, brushing down his lank brown hair—as if he had to make himself presentable for anyone. He’d never been able to carry a tune, but he attempted to hum the ancient folk melody of “Greensleeves,” which was one of his mother’s favorite songs. He recalled her unusual display of delight when once he’d given her a small wind-up music box that played the tune, even though Margaret had never been a woman much interested in collecting trinkets…
He descended into the lower levels, where Maratha Prime kept its generators, ventilation pumping systems, and power-distribution grid. Now a heavy racket echoed through the chambers under the domed city. Unlike the pristine and