Bigfellow’s hand as they caught up with him, and there was light—it blinded.
And suddenly guns fired and Bigfellow went down in the doorway with a smell of
burning. He cried and shrieked horribly, and Bluetooth whirled and hit the other
door button, his hard arm carrying her with him as the door opened and wind
surged about them. Man-voices bellowed over a sudden wail of alarms, silenced as
the door closed. They hit the ladders and ran, ran blindly down and through the
darkways, deep, deep into the dark. They dragged their breathers down, but the
air smelt wrong. They finally stopped their running, sweating and shivering.
Bluetooth rocked and moaned with pain in the dark, and Satin searched him for a
wound, found his fingers locked on his upper arm. She licked the sore place,
which was hot and burned, soothed it as best she could, hugged him and tried to
still the rage which had him trembling. They were lost, both lost in the
darkways; and Bigfellow was horribly dead, and Bluetooth sat and hissed with
pain and anger, muscles hard and quivering. But in a moment he shook himself,
lipped at her cheek, shivered as she put her arms about him.
“O let us go home,” he whispered. “O let us go home, Tam-utsa-pitan, and no more
see humans. No machines, no fields, no man-work, only hisa always and always.
Let us go home.”
She said nothing. The disaster was hers, for she had suggested, and Bigfellow
had wanted her and Bluetooth had risen to the challenge of his daring, as if
they had been in the high hills. Her disaster, her doing. Now Bluetooth himself
spoke of leaving her dream, unwilling to follow her further. Tears filled her
eyes, doubts for herself, loneliness, that she had walked too far. Now they were
in worse trouble, for to find themselves they must go up again to the man-places
and open a door and beg help, and they had seen the result of that. They held
each other and did not stir from where they were.
ii
Mallory looked tired, a hollowness to her eyes as she paced the aisles of
command central, countless circuits of it, while her troops stood guard. Damon
watched her, himself leaning against a counter, hungry and tired himself, but it
was, he reckoned, nothing to what the Fleet personnel must be feeling, having
gone through jump, passing from that to this tedious police duty; workers, never
relieved at their posts, looked haggard, muttered timid complaints… but there
was no other shift for these troops.
“Are you going to stay here all night?” he asked her.
She turned a cold look on him, said nothing, walked on.
He had watched her for some hours, a foreboding presence in the center. She had
a way of moving that made no noise, no swagger, no, but it was, perhaps, the
unconscious assumption that anyone in her way would move. They did. Any tech who
had to get up did so only when Mallory was patroling some other aisle. She had
never made a threat—spoke seldom, mostly to the troopers, about what, only she
and they knew. She was even, occasionally and before the hours wore on,
pleasant. But there was no question the threat was there.
Most residents on-station had never seen close up the kind of gear that
surrounded Mallory and her troops; had never touched a gun with their own hands,
would be hard put to describe what they saw. He noted three different models in
this small selection alone, light pistol; long-barreled ones; heavy rifles, all
black plastics and ominous symmetries; armor, to diffuse the burn of such
weapons… that gave the troops the same deadly machined look as the rest of the
gear, no longer human. It was impossible to relax with such among them.
A tech rose at the far side of the room, looked over her shoulder as if to see
if any of the guns had moved… walked down the aisle as if it were mined. Gave
him a printed message, retreated at once. Damon held the message in his hand
unread, conscious of Mallory’s interest. She had stopped pacing. He found no way