“I’ll tell you about it later,” he replied. What they did might have been unconventional, but it had certainly worked, he told himself with grudging admiration. In those first few minutes the Ganymeans had obtained and verified more information than they could have in days of talking. If it was that important, he could hardly blame them after the way they had been messed around by the UN at Farside. He wondered if Caldwell and the others saw things the same way. It wouldn’t be long before he found out, he saw as he looked ahead of them. They seemed to have arrived at their destination.
They were walking down a shallow, fan-shaped ramp that was taking them through a final arch out into the open. They emerged into a descending arrangement of interlocking geometric forms, terraces, and esplanades that formed one side of a large circular layout echoing the same theme. The lowermost, central part, directly ahead of them, consisted of a forum of seats set in tiers and facing one another from all four sides of a rectangular floor. The whole place was a vast composition of color and form set among poois of liquid fluorescence fed by slow-motion rivers and fountains of shimmering light. A number of figures were assembled on three sides of the floor, all Ganymean. They were standing and seemed to be waiting. At the front and in the center of a raised section of seats on one side was Calazar, recognizable by his dark green tunic and silvery cape.
And then Hunt saw Caidwell’s stocky frame emerge from another entrance on the far side of an open area to his right, accompanied by a Ganymean . . . and beyond Caidwell, Heller and Packard appeared with another Ganymean, Heller walking calmly and with assurance, Packard staring from side to side and looking bewildered. Hunt turned his head the other way in time to see Danchekker walking through an archway, waving his arms and remonstrating to a Ganymean on either side; evidently it was taking two of them to handle him. The arrivals had been synchronized perfectly. It couldn’t have been accidental.
Suddenly Lyn gasped and stopped, her face raised to stare at something overhead. Hunt followed her gaze . . . and stopped
then gasped.
From three sides beyond the raised rim of the place they were
in, three slim spires of pink ivory converged upward above their heads for an inestimable distance before blending into an inverted cascade of terraces and ramparts that broadened and unfolded upward and away for what must have been miles. Above it-it didn’t make sense, but above it, where the sky should have been, the scene mushroomed out into a mind-defying fusion of structures of staggering dimensions that marched away as far as the eye could see in one direction, and fringed a distant ocean in the other. It had to be the city of Vranix. But it was all hanging miles over their heads, and upside down.
And then the realization hit him. They had walked out into the sky. The three pink spires “rising” from around them in fact surmounted an enormous tower that projected upward from the city, supporting a circular platform that held the place they were in. But they had come out on the underside of it! Their senses had become sufficiently disoriented in the Ganymean labyrinth for them to have inverted without realizing it, and they had walked outside in some locally generated gravity effect to find themselves gazing down over the surface of Thurien stretching away over their heads.
Caldwell and the others had seen it too, and were just standing, staring. Even Danchekker had stopped talking and was looking upward, his mouth hanging half open. It was the Ganymeans’ final trump card and master stroke, Hunt realized. Even if any of his companions had been harboring any lingering resentments, they would be too overwhelmed by this-timed precisely to hit them minutes before the meeting was due to begin-to protest very strongly. He liked these aliens, he decided, strange though the thought seemed in some ways at that particular moment. He always enjoyed seeing professionals in action.
One by one the dazed figures of the Terrans came slowly back to life and began moving again, down toward the central forum where the Ganymeans were waiting.