with pain but making no attempt to snap or strike. The next door opened, on the
flare of light and armed men, and the Downer started within the circle of his
arm, snarled and spat, yielded to a reassuring hug. Elene was there, breaking
through the troops, holding her hands out to help.
“Get the troops back,” Damon snapped, light-blinded and unable to distinguish
Vanars. “Out of the way. Quit waving guns at them.” He urged the Downer to sit
on the floor by the wall, and Elene was ordering the medic over. “Back these
troops out of here!” Damon said again. “Leave us to it!”
An order was passed. To his great relief the India troopers began to pull back,
and the Downer sat still, with some persuasion yielded his injured arm to
examination as the medic knelt down with his kit. Damon tugged his own mask
down, stifling in it, squeezed Elene’s hand as she bent down beside him. The air
stank of sweating, frightened Downer, a pungent muskiness.
“Name’s Bluetooth,” the medic said, checking the tag. He made a few swift notes
and began gently to treat the injury. “Burn and hemorrhage. Minor, except for
shock.”
“Drink,” Bluetooth pleaded, and reached for the kit. The medic rescued it and
quietly promised him water when they could find some.
The lock opened, yielded up a near dozen Downers. Damon stood up, reading panic
in their looks. “I’m Konstantin,” he said at once, for the name carried
importance with the Downers. He met them with outstretched hands, suffered
himself to be hugged by sweating, shock-hazed Downers, gentle enfoldings of
powerful furred arms. Elene welcomed them likewise, and in a moment another
lockful had spilled out, making a knot which filled the corridor and outnumbered
the troops who stood in the end of the hall. The Downers cast anxious looks in
that direction, but kept together. Another lockful, and Bluetooth’s mate was
with them, chattering anxiously until she had found him. Vanars came among them,
quite without swagger in this brown-furred flood.
“You’re requested to get them to a secure area as quickly as possible,” Vanars
said.
“Use your com and clear us passage via the emergency ramps via four through nine
to the docks,” Damon said. “Their habitat is accessible from there; we’ll escort
them back. That’s quickest and safest for all concerned.”
He did not wait for Vanars’s comment in the matter, but waved an arm at the
Downers. “Come,” he said, and they fell silent and began to move. Bluetooth, his
arm done up in a white bandage, scrambled up not to be left, and chattered
something to the others. Satin added her own voice, and there was a general and
sudden cheerfulness among the Downers. He walked, hand in hand with Elene, and
the Downers strode along about and behind them with the peculiar accompaniment
of the breather-sounds, moving gladly and quickly. The few guards along their
route stayed very still, suddenly in the minority, and Downers chattered with
increasing freedom among themselves as they reached the end of the hall and
entered the spiraling broad ramp which led to doors on all the nine levels. An
arm snaked about Damon’s left as they descended; he looked and it was Bluetooth,
and Satin was with him, so that they came four abreast down the ramp, bizarre
company… five, for another had joined hands with Elene on the right. Satin cried
something. A chorus answered. Again she spoke, her voice echoing in the heights
and depths; and again the chattering chorus thundered out, with a bounce in
steps about them. Another yelled from the rear; and voices answered; and a
second time. Damon tightened his hand on Elene’s, at once stirred and alarmed at
this behavior, but the Downers were content to walk with him, shouting what had
begun to sound like a marching chant.
They broke into green nine, and marched down the long hall… entered the docks
with a great shout, and the echoes rang. The line of troops which guarded the
ship accesses stirred ominously, but no more than that. “Stay with me,” Damon
ordered his companions sternly, and they did so, up the curving horizon into the