Lost and found_ a novel - Alan Dean Foster [93]
When the K’eremu, with a boost from Braouk that enabled her to reach the relevant instrumentation, caused the heavy outer and inner doors to spiral shut behind them, Walker felt as if he had just surmounted Everest solo sans supplementary oxygen. If everything went for naught from now on, they had at least in some small way struck back at their abductors. The nature of the triumph was delicious: The abductees were themselves now engaged in the process of stealing from those who had stolen them. Tit for tat, far out among the stars. He wondered if the Vilenjji, when they discovered what was happening right under their olfactory orifices, would feel mortified. He hoped so.
George was running around the interior of the secondary craft, sniffing and exploring. The voluminous central chamber was lined with what looked like giant ice cream scoops: seats or lounges for a couple of dozen Vilenjji forced to abandon ship. With Sque beckoning them onward, they passed through the chamber and into a smaller one beyond. Though it boasted the same customary high ceiling, it overflowed with tiny projection devices and other arcane instrumentation whose purposes Walker did not even attempt to grasp. There were also two more of the archetypical body scoops. As the escapees studied their surroundings, several projection devices winked to life. Bits of dense light, like floating kanji characters mated with exotic flowers, appeared in the air around them. The majority were concentrated forward of the portal through which they had just entered.
“Up,” Sque commanded impatiently. For once, an energized Braouk responded without comment, poetical or otherwise. Placing two tentacles next to each other, the Tuuqalian provided a sturdy pedestal for the much smaller K’eremu. Effortlessly, Braouk lifted her up into the web of hovering light-shapes. Gripping his tree-trunklike supportive limbs with half a dozen of her own much smaller ones, she launched into an intense study of the softly glowing, evanescent structures that now surrounded her like so many curious pixies.
That left the two Terrans free to explore the corners of the craft’s forward chamber. So elated were both of them at their success in having coming this far that Walker took no offense at Sque’s patronizing directive, “Do not touch anything the function of which you do not understand. Which is to say, do not touch anything.”
“We’re still a long ways from getting free of the Vilenjji,” George reminded him, trotting alongside. “We’re still a long ways from anywhere.”
“But we have a chance,” Walker told him. “It might be no more than a minuscule chance, but that’s more of one than we had squatting in our enclosures like so many—”
“Dogs in a pound?” George finished for him.
Walker looked down at his friend. “I wasn’t going to say that,” he replied somberly.
“Doesn’t matter. I wanted to. Remember it the next time you find yourself comparing degrees of freedom.” The black nose rose and dipped to indicate a nearby patch of luminous alien imagery. “Wonder what that does?”
Walker eyed the cluster of carmine and orange lights that formed an eye-catching basket of floating photons in front of them. Unlike similar luminosities that hovered above their heads at Vilenjji limb-level, this out-of-the-way mass of drifting radiance was practically resting on the deck. Head down, George approached it with his usual caution.
Walker added to it. “Sque said not to touch anything.”
“Doesn’t smell.” The dog raised its head. “It’s just light. Why does she get to give all the orders? Why does she get to do everything?”
“Because she knows how,” Walker reminded him. “Because she’s a representative of the high and mighty all-knowing, all-seeing, all-stuck-up but inarguably ingenious K’eremu. Because if anyone’s going to get us out of this,