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"How," Jaxom asked, "did G'lanar realize that Ruth and I rescued Ramoth's egg?"
"Have you been timing it much lately?" Lessa asked bluntly.
Jaxom tried to shrug the question away. "Not often."
Lessa raised her eyebrows in resignation. "I keep telling you that timing it is dangerous. It was bloody sure dangerous for you. Lamoth would have known. He would have told G'lanar. G'lanar was misguided but not stupid. I know that all the Oldtimers at Southern have puzzled over who rescued the egg. In spite of our precautions, they all know Ruth's abilities and might have suspicions."
"G'lanar's the only bronze rider left from that group," Jaxom said, after a quick mental review.
"We have a more important task to perform today than to fret over this incident," F'lar said, rising to clear the table of his bowl and cup. "That is, if you feel up to it, Jaxom..."
Jaxom regarded F'lar scornfully. "I've been waiting on you. Let's do it."
"From here, or the Yokohama?" Lessa asked.
"The Yokohama," Jaxom said, grabbing his riding gear from the bench beside him. "We don't have the space suits down here."
"You're sure there's one to fit me?" Lessa asked, shrugging into her leather jacket.
Jaxom gri
Lessa quirked her eyebrow, gri
Tucks had to be taken in the arms and legs and waist of the smallest of the suits, which caused some amusement to F'lar and Jaxom but none to Lessa. They contacted Aivas when they were ready to proceed. He brought up their objective, the immense long scar on the Red Star, on the screen in the cargo bay.
F'lar frowned at it again, not so much in order to imprint the scene firmly into his mind as to rationalize what he was seeing.
"When F'nor made his flight to the Red Star, he said there were roiling clouds..."
"There probably were," Aivas replied easily. "In orbiting so close to Rukbat, the planet's surface would have become heated, hot enough to melt rock and certainly causing steam from the ice that coats Thread ovoids. It can be posited that the planet itself is coated with the debris of the Oort Cloud. Steam or dust clouds of considerable density are entirely possible. That is undoubtedly what F'nor saw, not the actual surface. His memories of the event, even the abrasive injuries he and Canth sustained, bear out the supposition, At this point in its orbit, the surface has cooled, that phenomenon has subsided, and you see a sterile planet, its surface slowly freezing again."
"Well, let's do it!" F'lar vaulted to Mnementh's shoulder, grabbing the riding straps to swing himself to his customary position between neck ridges.
Despite free-fall, Lessa moved more clumsily.
"How anyone can be expected to move anywhere in this sort of gear..." she muttered, finally settling herself in place. She had a bit of trouble snapping the riding straps onto rings lost in the folds about her middle. "Can't see what I'm doing, trussed up like a wherry for the spit, and this helmet obscuring my sight..."
Jaxom gri
Something like a growl came over Jaxom's helmet com and he chuckled.
"Do our dragons know where we're going?" Lessa asked. She held her suited arm up high above her head, looking first to the left at F'lar and then to the right at Jaxom; all three were concentrating on the image of that tremendous fault. "Very well, then, let's go!" And she dropped her arm.
Jaxom counted as Ruth shifted them between. He remembered to continue breathing, an exercise he frequently suspended on such trips. He didn't think of the blackness or the frightening cold of the familiar oblivion: he thought only of where they were going...
I know where we're going, Ruth assured him patiently .
...and how long it was taking them. Jaxom had counted twenty-seven slow seconds, seconds that seemed an eternity. He wondered if Lessa had counted when she had gone back four hundred Turns to-
And then the three dragons emerged simultaneously over a chasm that made Ruth extend his wings uselessly in an attempt to slow his entry in the light gravity and thin atmosphere.
"Aivas?" Jaxom cried, though in the next second he knew that they were too far from Aivas for any contact.
"Shards! Jaxom, we can handle this without his supervision!" F'lar roared. He moderated his tone as he went on. "There are times when I think we've gotten too dependent on Aivas. Slow your descent, Jaxom! We want to land on the edge, not in that bloody rift."
Just beyond Ruth, the rift widened into a crater more immense than the Ice Lake. Jaxom's body gave a massive shudder, and he had the most incredible feeling that he had expected to see that crater all along, though the detail had not been on the visuals. To center his wandering attention, he concentrated on the rim below him, and in the next breath, Ruth obediently glided to the hard-packed surface of the planet, his wings fully extended. Mnementh and Ramoth, necks stretched out and eyes whirling in a brilliant rainbow expressing their consternation, landed gracefully beside him.
"Quickly, now, mark those boulders..." F'lar pointed to the huge stone shafts that made a rim, like so many immense jagged teeth, across the mouth of the huge aperture.
"That crater's a fine landmark," Jaxom commented.
This place is strangely familiar, Ruth said, walking forward to peer over the edge.
Watch it! Jaxom warned his dragon as Ruth's feet sank into what appeared to be a mass of oval shapes. "Look, F'lar! Thread ovoids."
F'lar peered over Mnementh's shoulder while the big bronze dropped his head to examine the surface under his feet. He didn't appear particularly concerned.
"I don't like this place," Lessa commented. Ramoth seemed to share her distaste, placing her feet with extreme care as if she were walking through putrid mud.
"And watch that edge, too, Jaxom," F'lar added.
Ramoth was looking straight ahead, trying to see to the other side of the gorge. Jaxom could not see the far side in the dim light available. When he looked over his shoulder toward Rukbat, he had no trouble looking directly at the dim sun, but it did give sufficient light for him to pick out details of the terrain beyond the canyon. Not that there was much to see. The surface of the Red Star was pocked and slagged, minor fissures and fractures spreading out from the immense fault across what looked more like bare rock than sand. The black chasm stretched in both directions into the tenebrous distance. Jaxom looked behind him. There were some jagged projections, from small terraces to great sheets that would have taken up most of Benden's Bowl. An appallingly sterile landscape. Jaxom could almost feel sorry for the battered planet.
It's a long way across, isn't it? Ruth remarked.
You can see across it? Jaxom asked, squinting in the dismal gloom at the shadowy far edge.
There isn't much to see but more of the same.
"See how those levels are situated?" F'lar said, peering down. "We could settle the engines along them."
"Are they stable enough to hold that sort of weight?" Lessa asked.
F'lar shrugged. "I don't know why not. Don't you feel how much lighter we are here? The engines should weigh less, too. And look at the size of the slabs! Gigantic."
"Like teeth. You know, this looks as if some force broke the planet's surface as you or I would open a redfruit," Lessa said, her voice awed.
Ruth, can you drop down to that first level of rock? Take it easy now. We want to see how stable the protrusion actually is.