Ring

“What war?”

Louise dropped her faceless, helmeted head. “A war against the Xeelee, Spi

“In the final war, the human facilities — and any people here — were destroyed, all save a few scraps. But — ”

“But the Xeelee nightfighter survived,” Spi

Louise smiled. “Yes. The Xeelee built to last. Whatever happened was enough to melt Callisto’s ice. But the nightfighter sank into the new oceans, and was trapped in there when Callisto froze again.”

Spi

“And they never came back,” Louise said. “The people, I mean. The humans. They never recovered, to return here to rebuild. Perhaps that really was the war to end all wars, as far as Sol was concerned…

“Here’s the pilot cage, Spi

Spi

She felt a prickly cold spread across her limbs.

17

A simple metal stepladder rested against the side of the cage; the ladder looked incongruously primitive, amid all this alien high technology.

Spi

Louise, bulky and anonymous in her environment suit, stood close beside her. “Well, that’s the general idea. Look, Spi

Spi

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you before bringing you down here, Spi

“I don’t get a choice, do I?”

Louise’s face, through her plate, was hard. “You’re the best candidate we have, Spi

Without letting herself think about it, Spi

She looked into the pilot’s cage. It was an open sphere made of tubes of construction material. The tubes were arranged in an open lattice which followed a simple longitude-and-latitude pattern. Inside the cage was a horseshoe-shaped console, of the black Xeelee material. Other devices, made of dull metal looking crude by comparison, obviously human — had been fixed to the Xeelee console.

A human couch had been cemented into the cage, before the console. Straps dangled from it. To fit into the cramped cage, the couch had been made small too small for any human from the Decks but a child… or a child-woman from the forest.

“I’m going to climb in, Louise.”

“Good. But for Life’s sake, Spi

Spi

The couch fitted her body closely — as it should, she thought resentfully, since it had obviously been made for her — but it was too snug. The couch — the straps across her chest and waist, the bulky, crowding console before her — devoured her. The cage was a place of shadows, crisscrossing and mysterious, cast by the Jovian ring and the ice below her. It pressed around her, barely big enough for the couch and console.

She looked out through her murky faceplate, beyond the construction-material cage, to the ice plains of Callisto. She saw the blocky forms of the Northern’s ’bots, the pod that had brought her here, the shadowy figure of Louise. It all seemed remote, unattainable. The only reality was herself, inside this suit, this alien craft — and the sound of her own breathing loud in her ears.

Spi

Spi

The life of the forest people carried on much as it always had done — despite the end of the Northern’s journey and the discovery of the death of the Sun. Because of her greater awareness — her wider understanding — Spi

Isolated by age and by her own extraordinary experiences, she had tried to grow accustomed to the bizarre Universe outside the walls of the ship. And, over the years, she’d learned a great deal; Louise Ye Armonk, despite the ghastly way she had of patronizing Spi

But now, she longed to be away from this bleak, threatening place — to be naked again, and moving through the trees of the forest.

“Spi

“Shut up, Mark.” Louise Ye Armonk walked up to the Xeelee cage and pressed her body against the black bars, peering in; she’d turned on the light behind her faceplate, so Spi

Spi

“Okay.” Louise lifted her hands and stepped back from the cage. “As far as we can tell, the cage you’re in is the control center of the nightfighter. You can see, obviously, that it’s been adapted for use by humans. We put the couch in for you. You have waldoes — ”

“I have what?”

“Waldoes, Spi

There were three of the boxes, each about a foot long, one before Spi

“Don’t touch, damn you,” Louise snapped.

Spi

With audibly strained patience, Louise said, “Spi

“All right.” Spi

Beyond the cage, Louise held up her hands. “No. Wait. It’s not as simple as that. We reconstructed the waldoes from clues left by the original human researchers. We believe they are going to work… But,” she went on drily, “we don’t know what they will make the nightfighter do. We don’t know what will happen when you touch the waldoes.

“So we’ll have to be patient. Experiment.”

“All right,” Spi

Mark said, “Not necessarily. After all, if they’d been able to figure out Xeelee technology, maybe they wouldn’t have lost the war — ”