“That’s much better!” said a she’un’s voice behind him, and he lowered reflexively as Thilling swarmed down an adjacent branchway with, as ever, her image-fixer at the ready. “Maybe now I’ll get the chance to cut a few new lenses! I’ve lost count of how many got spoiled when a wave disturbed me while I was trimming them, and I do so want to catch everything that happens when we go ashore … And what’s wrong with you, young’un? You seem worried.”
“I never saw a coast so dark before!” Awb blurted.
“Hmm! I did! Once I was sent to cover an epidemic on Blotherotch— went in with a medical team looking for the causative organism, assigned to picture the victims for future reference. Some of the folk there had turned so dreamish, they imagined they could prolong their lives by eating luminants, and they’d absolutely stripped the area. It was ghastly. Still, we got away safely, and now we’re all immune against that disease. On the other claw…”
She hesitated. Greatly daring, he prompted her.
“Oh, I was only going to say: we’ve discovered cures for so many disorders including infertility, it seems incredible there should be a brand-new one, least of all one that can afflict an entire countryside— people and animals and plants as well!”
“Is that really what we can look forward to finding?”
“You’re asking me? I never set pad here, haven’t even had a sight of the nervograp messages that got through before the link failed. Phrallet must know more about those than I do; doesn’t she tell you anything?”
“As little as possible,” Awb muttered. He was always embarrassed when someone mentioned his budder, who flaunted her five bud-scars in a manner most people regarded as indecent and seemed to think that because Axwep only had four she had the better claim to be Voosla’s mayor.
“Well, you should pester her more,” Thilling said, loading a sensitive sheet into her fixer. As much to herself as him, she added, “I wish I’d had tune to graft a new lens on this thing, because I’m sure there’s a saltwater blister somewhere, but with dawn so close I’ll have to make do … Keep your eye skinned, young’un. If what I’ve been told is reliable, we should be in for a treat. Look yonder, where I’m pointing.”
Awb complied, but still all he could make out, even with his telescope, was a vague patch of black-on-blacker. In the south-east the first hint of dawn was coloring the air, not nearly enough as yet to dun the Arc of Heaven, let alone the Major Cluster. There was a bank of dense cloud to the north, veiling any aurora there might be, and that surprised him, for visibility in this region was reputed the best in the hemisphere; why else choose it for the World Observatory?
On the other claw, no place on the planet was immune from what happened next. A streak of yellow light slashed out of the east, and at its tip a fireball exploded, scattering trails of luminance across a quarter of the welkin. Caught by surprise, Thilling uttered a curse.
“That’s spoiled my leaf good and proper! Young’un, keep looking, and warn me if I’m apt to miss anything!”
Hastily she threw away the sheet she had been mounting in the fixer, and peeled another from the stack.
By this time Awb was beginning to guess at what she meant. The flash of the meteor had revealed something outlined against the northern clouds. He had had too brief a glimpse to make out details, but there was only one thing it could be: Fangsharp Peak, on top of which the observatory was being grown. Of course, since it was so much higher than the surrounding land, it was bound to catch the sun’s rays first. So—
“Quick!” he cried, suddenly aware that all about them the branchways were alive with folk scrambling to seek a vantage point and watch the unique spectacle. Barely in time Thilling leveled her fixer.
The sky grew brighter, though the land and sea remained virtually featureless. The world paused in expectation. And there it came!
On the very crest of the mountain, so high above them that it looked as though a huge and jagged rock were floating in mid-air, a single shaft of sunlight rested.