Yull began to pad meditatively downslope, and the others fell in alongside her.
“Quelf was right in one thing she said to us today,” she went on after a lengthy pause. “Our ‘costly toy’ did fall out of the sky. What served us well when we were only launching spores and spawn and automatic systems designed to fend for themselves in orbit has turned out to be much too risky when it comes to a piloted mission. For a long time we’ve been seeking an alternative to wetgas-bladders as a means of lofting spacecraft. We even went so far as to consider using giant drivers directly from ground level, or rather from a mountain-top. But the life-support and guidance systems would burst under the requisite acceleration. As for what would happen to the crew—!
“Have you, though, padded across standing-sparkforce repulsion?”
“Of course,” Albumarak replied, staring. “But it’s a mere laboratory curiosity, with about the power of one of those seeds young’uns put under a burning-glass to watch them leap as their internal gas heats up.”
“You do that here too?” Yull countered with a smile. “I guess budlings are pretty much the same everywhere, aren’t they? But, as I was just saying to Omber, if one could grow sufficient of these new loss-free circuits … Do you see what I’m getting at?”
Albumarak was momentarily aghast. She said, “But if you mean you want to use that method to launch spacecraft, you’d need laqs and craws of them!”
“I think we’re less daunted by projects on such a scale than you are; the skein of gas-globes that lofted Karg was already more than a padlonglaq in height. And we don’t waste our resources on private luxury the way you do on Prutaj. Excuse me, but it is the case, you know.”
“It’s often seemed to me,” said Albumarak meditatively, “that most of what we produce is designed to keep us from thinking about the ultimate threat that hangs over us all.”
“You’re very different from most of your own folk, aren’t you?” Omber ventured. Albumarak turned to her.
“If Quelf is to be taken as typical—and I’m afraid she is—then I’m proud of the fact!”
“You’d be quite at home in Slah, then,” Yull said lightly. “But before we wander off down that particular branchway: do you think we might reasonably, in compensation for what’s been done to Karg, ask how to grow a loss-free sparkforce circuit?”
Albumarak pondered for a long moment. Eventually, clenching her claws, she said with barely suppressed glee, “Yes! Yes, that’s exactly what you should ask for!”
And if they refuse to part with it—well, then, I’ll go to Slah with you and bring the knowledge in my memory!
She did not speak it aloud, but the moment she reached her decision, she felt somehow that it was far more right than waiting for her turn to be made Jingfired.
On the morrow Yull and the rest of the Slah delegation were bidden to attend a Full Court of Council, held in a huge and handsome bower in the most ancient quarter of the city. Albumarak tagged along, though on arrival she was quite ignored. It pleased her to see her “superiors” in such a plight; the atmosphere was stiff with the reek of embarrassment, and the welcome offered to the visitors, though correct, was a hollow one.
Sullen, Quelf had been obliged to put in an appearance, and perched with a few of her closest colleagues on one side of the bower. At the center was Ingolfine, old, excessively fat, but the senior of the living Jingfired, to whom all others must defer when matters of high policy were debated.
“Were there not once Jingfired at Slah?” Albumarak asked Omber in a whisper.
“Oh yes! Indeed, they still exist. But ours are mostly scientists who do not make their rank the excuse for show and pomp. They regard it as the greatest possible honor to be elected, and they are charged never to boast about it. Yull may be one; I’d rather lose a claw than ask her.”
The more she learned about the way of life at Slah, the more Albumarak approved of it.