Downbelow Station

“Station’s got a crisis alert. I thought sure it was Q. Shuttle called station central.”

“Better get to Operations then and cancel it” He drew her about; they walked down the slope in the direction of the dome. His knees were water.

“I wasn’t up there,” she said.

“Where?”

“On the ridge. By the time we arrived up there, there were just Downers and Q.”

He swore, marveling then that he had won that bluff. “We’re well rid of Bran Hale,” he said.

They reached the trough among the hills, walked the bridge over the water hoses and up again, across to Operations. Inside, the boy was submitting to the medic’s attention and a pair of techs was standing armed with pistols, keeping a nervous watch on the Q folk who had brought him in. Emilio motioned a negative to them. They cautiously put them away, looked unhappy with the whole situation.

Carefully neutral, Emilio thought. They would have gone with any wi

“You all right, sir?” Jim Ernst asked.

He nodded, stood watching, with Miliko beside him. “Call station,” he said after a moment. “Report it settled.”

ii

They nestled in together, in the dark space humans had found for them, in the great empty belly of the ship, a place which echoed fearfully with machinery. They had to use the breathers, first of what might be many discomforts. They tied themselves to the handholds, as humans had warned them they must, to be safe, and Satin hugged Bluetooth-Dahit-hos-me, hating the feel of the place and the cold and the discomfort of the breathers, and most of all fearing because they were told that they must tie themselves for safety. She had not thought of ships in terms of walls and roofs, which frightened her. Never had she imagined the flight of the ships as something so violent they might be dashed to death, but as something free as the soaring birds, grand and delirious. She shivered with her back against the cushions humans had given them, shivered and tried to cease, felt Bluetooth shiver too.

“We could go back,” he said, for this was not of his choosing.

She said nothing, clamped her jaw against the urge to cry that yes, they should, that they should call the humans and tell them that two very small, very unhappy Downers had changed their minds.

Then there was the sound of the engines. She knew what that was… had heard it often. Felt it now, a terror in her bones.

“We will see great Sun,” she said, now that it was irrevocable. “We will see Be

Bluetooth held her tighter. “Be

“We will see the spirit-images of the Upabove,” she said.

“We will see the Sun.” There was a great weight on them, a sense of moving, of being crushed at once. His grip hurt her; she held to him no less tightly. The thought came to her that they might be crushed u

This waited for them. It was now the spring, and the heat had begun in her and in him; and she had chosen the Journey she would make, longer than all journeys, and the high place higher than all high places, where she would spend her first spring.

The pressure eased; they still held to each other, still feeling motion. It was a very far flight, they had been warned so; they must not loose themselves until a man came and told them. The Konstantin had told them what to do and they would surely be safe. Satin felt so with a faith which increased as the force grew less and she knew that they had lived. They were on their way. They flew.

She clutched the shell which Konstantin had given her, the gift which marked this Time for her, and about her was the red cloth which was her special treasure, the best thing, the honor that Be

Not wholly. He dug in one of the pouches he carried, brought out a small bit of twig, on which the buds had burst… moved his breather to smell it, offered it to her. It brought with them the world, the riverside, and promises.

She felt a flood of heat which turned her sweating despite the chill. It was u

The motion of the ship changed; they held each other a moment in fear, but this men had warned them of, and they had heard that there was a time of great strangeness. They laughed, and joined, and ceased, giddy and delirious. They marveled at the bit of blossoming twig which floated by them in the air, which moved when they batted at it by turns. She reached carefully and plucked it from the air, and laughed again, letting it free.

“This is where Sun lives,” Bluetooth surmised. She thought that it must be so, imagined Sun drifting majestically through the light of his power, and themselves swimming in it, toward the Upabove, the metal home of humans, which held out arms for them. They joined, and joined again, in spasms of joy.

After long and long came another change, little stresses at the bindings, very gentle, and by and by they began to feel heavy again.

“We are coming down,” Satin thought aloud. But they stayed quiet, remembering what they had been told, that they must wait on a man to tell them it was safe.

And there was a series of jolts and terrible noises, so that their arms clenched about each other; but the ground was solid under them now. The speaker overhead rang with human voices giving instructions and none of them sounded frightened, rather as humans usually sounded, in a hurry and humorless. “I think we are all right,” Bluetooth said.

“We must stay still,” she reminded him.

“They will forget us.”

“They will not,” she said, but she had doubts herself, so dark the place was and so desolate, just a little light where they were, above them.

There was a terrible clash of metal. The door through which they had come in opened, and there was no view of hills and forest now, but of a ribbed throatlike passage which blasted cold air at them.

A man came up it, dressed in brown, carrying one of the handspeakers. “Come on,” he told them, and they made haste to untie themselves. Satin stood up and found her legs shaking; she leaned on Bluetooth and he staggered too.

The man gave them gifts, silver cords to wear. “Your numbers,” he said. “Always wear them.” He took their names and gestured out the passage. “Come with me. We’ll get you checked in.”

They followed, down the frightening passage, out into a place like the ship belly where they had been, metal and cold, but very, very huge. Satin stared about her, shivering. “We are in a bigger ship,” she said. “This is a ship too.” And to the human: “Man, we in Upabove?”