"COPERNICUS!" BANDICUT CRIED.
Ik joined him, dropping into formation with a silver flash. Copernicus shot past Ik and rocketed ahead of them all down the shaft, hugging the wall. "What is the meaning of this?"
"I wish I knew!" Bandicut watched in helpless despair as Copernicus dwindled in the distance. He spun to look at Napoleon. "Nappy, are you out of your mind? What's all this about? Why did Coppy just run away?"
"John Bandicut, we must be vigilant!" screeched Napoleon.
"Yes! But for what?"
"Betrayal!" cried the robot. "It's all around us!"
Bandicut stared at Napoleon in disbelief. "What are you talking about?" He peered fretfully down the endless power-connector. /Charlie, can we keep a lock on Copernicus?/
/// Trying.
He's moving awfully fast. ///
Ik interrupted his efforts at comprehension with a staccato bark: "We must!—move!—on!"
"I know," Bandicut said hoarsely.
"I am picking up further explosions ahead of us. We must investigate. Is Napoleon functional?"
Bandicut assumed that Ik meant, was Napoleon trustworthy, and he didn't know the answer. "Nappy, can you follow us without veering off?"
Napoleon's voice was slow but clear. "I am able to follow, John Bandicut."
"We don't have time to screw around. If you're going to have problems, tell me now."
"I will remain vigilant."
Bandicut grunted. "All right, let's go! Let's see if we can catch Li-Jared and Coppy."
"Rakh!" said Ik, and shot away.
Keeping formation with Ik was easy enough, but Copernicus was well out of visual sight now, moving at reckless speed. The tiny marker in the tracking window that was Copernicus disappeared periodically into the wall of the power-connector, then reappeared further on. He seemed to be flying evasively. Because of the explosions the scanners were picking up even further on? Or because he was afraid of Napoleon?
"Nappy," Bandicut asked, profoundly disturbed not just by Copernicus's flight, but by Napoleon's behavior. "Why did you say that about Copernicus? What has he done to you? And why did he run?"
"I felt great disruption!" Napoleon rasped. "Great disruption all around, and fear!"
"You said he was trying to contaminate your programming!"
"Fear!" echoed the robot. "Fear for our mission! And for your safety!"
"But Nappy." Bandicut could find no words to convey his bewilderment, and his fury at the turn of events.
/// This might not be a good time
to press the question. ///
/Why not?/
/// He's flying stably, holding formation.
But he may be having personality problems,
trying to integrate changes in his
programming. ///
Bandicut frowned, not answering.
/// And we must at least consider— ///
/What?/ Bandicut asked, though he knew exactly what Charlie was going to say.
/// Just—the possibility of
interference with his programming. ///
/"Contamination," you mean?/
/// Well, the boojum does seem to function
quickly and unexpectedly,
causing mischief but not exposing itself long.
We should consider that
Napoleon might have been meddled with,
when he was repaired. ///
/Charlie, do you really think that's what's happened?/
/// I think it's possible.
That doesn't necessarily mean probable.
He was, after all, under the care of
the shadow-people. ///
/Yeah, and so was Copernicus. So why do you think Copernicus ran away?/
To that, Charlie offered no comment. Bandicut dizzily imagined reporting this dialogue, and all of the possibilities it was fraught with, to Ik. And he could imagine Ik's answer. Get rid of the robots.
Which was not at all an unreasonable suggestion, objectively speaking. It was also a suggestion he would not dream of taking.
He watched the endlessly streaming landscape of the shaft as they arrowed down its middle. It was dangerously hypnotic. He began to wish that he had something to eat or drink. A moment later a tube appeared at the corner of his mouth. He took a sip of a clear, sweet liquid, which revived him somewhat.
Still, he nearly jumped out of his skin when Ik yelled, "Hraahh!" and decelerated sharply.
"Uh!" he grunted, feeling a modest shift of his weight, as his suit decelerated at what had to have been about a hundred gees.
/// We just passed something. ///
/Coppy?/
/// I don't think so. ///
The suit gave him a series of rapid-fire scans to the rear, and he saw Ik practically colliding with a shiny bipedal figure that had emerged from the side of the shaft. They had flashed by so fast, Bandicut had completely missed it. Now they were spinning around each other in quick circuits. As he slowed, Ik and the other accelerated to rejoin him. He became aware of Ik jabbering on the comm. "Are you safe? We feared for your life!"
The answering voice—Li-Jared's?—was oddly metallic, perhaps because of his suit comm, perhaps because Bandicut's translator-stones didn't know what to do with it. Bwang bwang. Bandicut's wrists tingled for a moment, before he heard, "Terrible . . . terrible attacks! Destructive overloads . . . great wave! Nodes ahead already destroyed . . . may have passed . . . can't be sure."
Ik's voice overlaid Bandicut's strained efforts to understand Li-Jared's words. "Very near thing, indeed! The shadow-people warned us of your danger and sent us after you."
Bwang! "They are no longer angry, then? Good." The chromed being suddenly pointed at Bandicut and Napoleon, as they matched speeds and began to accelerate again. "Who?"
"My new friend John Bandicut—and his robot, Napoleon. John Bandicut, Li-Jared! We have found him at last!"
Bandicut cleared his throat, as they flew down the shaft at blinding speed. "Nice to, uh, meet you," he said to the mirror-silvered figure, which in its suit looked like a chrome gorilla. Li-Jared's suit appeared less bulky than theirs.
Bwong. "Friend of Ik's, I should be willing to meet."
Bandicut blinked, uncertain whether to consider that a friendly greeting or an expression of reticence.
Ik continued, "Another of our party—a robot, Copernicus—has fled ahead of us. It has been accused by this one of possible contamination."
Li-Jared made a sweeping gesture. "Then let us—" bwang-ang! "—stay as far from it as possible."
Bandicut grunted. No way, he thought.
"Hraah, Li-Jared, that robot saved my life not long ago," said Ik.
Bwuhh.
Bandicut waited for a translation, but none came. When Ik spoke again, it was in a firm voice. "We must pursue it. We do not know that it is contaminated, and something else altogether may be going on. Can you fly faster?"
In answer, Li-Jared rotated slightly. The back of his suit sparkled with red fire, and he accelerated smoothly into the lead. "John Bandicut," said Ik. "Let us see if we can catch Copernicus."
As quickly as he could form the thought, Bandicut accelerated to keep up with Li-Jared. Ik kept pace on one side, and Napoleon on the other.
*
The landscape of the shaft gradually changed, almost like mountains giving way to river valleys and plains. Bandicut watched the ribs and crenelations of the shaft open up to form basins with huge, mysterious structures etched into their sides. Like sprawling river-confluences, the basins seemed to branch off to the sides, but where they led was impossible to tell. They sometimes passed those basins for minutes at a time, at whatever dizzying speed they were making, which gave Bandicut some sense of the size of the things. He envisioned a vast web of these power-connectors, joining wings of the metaworld from all directions.
/// A reasonable image, I think.
It is a very large world,
no question. ///
/How large is it really, Charlie?/ He was feeling a little faint from the sheer sense of magnitude.
/// As large as your solar system,
I would guess.
Or larger.
With all of the n-space connectors,
it's hard to say. ///
/Oh,/ Bandicut whispered.
The tiny point in his scanner that was Copernicus continued to draw away, with occasional zigzags. Napoleon remained quiet. Bandicut wondered if he dared trust either robot now. He called out to Copernicus repeatedly, but there was no answer. Whatever had frightened him, had frightened him to the core.
The quarx seemed to become lost in his own thoughts, perhaps occupied with his gradually emerging memories. The flight down the shaft began to seem endless.
*
Bandicut woke from a doze to the sound of Ik and Li-Jared talking.
"If your information is correct—"
"—may be able to seek help from the Maksu—"
"If it is correct. But it is from a connection that the boojum might have—" rasp "—infiltrated."
"Only after I found the reference," Li-Jared was saying. "That is why—" brrr-k-dang "—it is so angry. I am certain that it wants that information kept hidden."
"But why?"
"—does not wish us, or anyone else, to learn—"
"Or to escape?"
"—or to interfere."
"Then," Ik said slowly, "we should try very hard not to interfere. It is not the boojum we want, but freedom."
"Amen," Bandicut murmured aloud. He hadn't understood much of what he'd just heard, but he understood that last part, and he was all in favor of it.
Ik and Li-Jared fell silent for a moment, perhaps startled to find him a part of the conversation. Li-Jared broke the silence by saying, "But do not forget . . . many innocents stand to be harmed by the boojum, as well."
"I do not think that we have forgotten," Ik said dryly. To Bandicut, he added, "Li-Jared found a connection point such as you and I discussed. The kind that—" he paused a moment, perhaps to convey emphasis indirectly to Li-Jared "—you yourself are quite familiar with."
Bandicut blinked, as Li-Jared made a sound of apparent puzzlement. A datanet. Li-Jared had linked with a datanet?
"And he learned much about the place where the sort of knowledge we seek flows in streams and waves—"
"But not its precise location," Li-Jared broke in. "Ik, we should not be discussing—" Li-Jared was interrupted by a bright flash of light ahead, followed by another.
"What was that?" Bandicut asked nervously.
/// Electrical activity? ///
Charlie's speculation was punctuated by a spectacular arc of lightning across the shaft in front of them. Bandicut held his breath, as the arc was followed by another ahead, and several behind. A heartbeat later, they were speeding through a raging electrical storm. /What is this? Has it found us?/
/// I'm not sure, but— ///
WHAAAMM!
A blast knocked him into a head-over-heels tumble. As he struggled for breath, his suit righted itself and steadied its course. It took him a lot longer to stop shaking. Lightning continued to flash around him. "Ik—what—?" he panted.
Through a hiss of static, he heard Ik's voice, but he couldn't make out words. Another arc blazed directly in front of him, and as his eyes swam and watered, he was almost certain that for a moment he saw a small ball of lightning inside his suit.
"—through it soon—"
/// John, hang on.
I think your suit can protect you.
That was a direct hit we took a minute ago. ///
Bandicut stared ahead in terror as they flew through the dazzling eruptions. After a few seconds, the lightning subsided, but a bluish light continued to ripple and squirm along the walls of the shaft, all around them.
"John Bandicut, are you still there?" Ik called.
"Yeah—I'm okay!" Bandicut wheezed. He peered and saw Napoleon still in formation. "What the hell was that?"
"Energy flux. It did not seem directed. Perhaps caused by the boojum's random destruction."
Bandicut muttered as the rippling light faded along the walls. They were now zooming through a glass tube, and he thought he could see dim stars or galaxies through the walls. Ahead, he could just make out a vague, but enormous, dark shape. The next section of Shipworld? He hardly dared hope. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the blurred patch of the Milky Way.
He shivered and looked ahead again. He'd lost the tracking lock on Copernicus. "Ik—do you have Copernicus on your scanner?"
"No longer."
Damn. Bandicut watched several glittering arches sail over his head. His suit began to decelerate.
"John Bandicut, look!" Ik was pointing with a silvery crab's claw out the left side of the shaft.
There was a definite structure out there now, far too vast for a single glance. Tiny spots resolved into marker lights along the thing's edges and lines. They dwindled out of view in all directions, except down. Below was the emptiness of intergalactic space.
Bandicut glimpsed a flicker of light ahead. "Energy flux approaching," Ik cautioned.
"Follow me," Li-Jared said suddenly. "Silently, if possible." He decelerated sharply and veered left toward the shaft wall. Bandicut did not manage even a silent ulp! before his suit followed. Ik and Napoleon kept pace perfectly. The shaft wall blurred past them at dizzying speed, very close now.
He wanted to cry, What are we doing? but his voice caught as they executed a sharp pitch-up, another deceleration, and a left sweep, straight toward an outward bulge in a section of the wall that looked like cut crystal. Unh! he started to say—and then the glass wall revealed an opening right in the middle of the bulge, and they shot through it into space.
Bandicut found himself breathless at the sudden clear view. Not that he could make out the overall shape of the Shipworld structure; it was much too large. But its surface seemed stark and bright compared to the section they'd left behind. As he scanned across the expanse, he saw several moving lights. Spacecraft in flight? They were all quite distant, and widely separated from each other. Nonetheless, his heart raced. Images of L5 City bubbled up. Was that commerce he was seeing? Normal life? For someone, anyway? His mind filled with visions of civilization—people working and living and traveling in space, people who could tell him where he was and how things worked. People, yes!
But humans? As quickly as his heart had inflated with hope, he felt a draining despair. He would be a fool to expect humans. But his spirits began to rise again when he spotted a series of converging strobe lights that looked for all the world like the approach lights to a spaceport on Earth. "Ik," he muttered, "where are we going?"
"We may be in danger. Silence, please."
Bandicut realized suddenly why they had taken this evasive course out of the power tube. The boojum might have used up its firepower in the connector, blowing up all those power nodes, but that didn't mean it wasn't waiting for them at the endpoint.
Did Shipworld have outer defenses? Could the boojum fool the defenses into thinking that the four of them were orbiting debris—or even an enemy to be destroyed?
And where was Copernicus?
They flew straight away from the power-shaft, then veered inward again, toward the outer edge of Shipworld. Every few seconds, they made new, abrupt course changes, but always drawing closer to Shipworld. Bandicut endured the jolts in silence, wishing they could just fly over to that landing port etched in strobes.
And then he understood, as a thread of green fire rippled out toward them from somewhere on the perimeter of that landing zone—and Ik and Li-Jared plunged them into further violent maneuvers. For a moment, his forward view was filled with bright green flashes, and he felt something like a body blow, insulated by his suit. His suspicions were right, then; the boojum had subverted the defensive systems. And he had just felt—
"Near miss!" Ik cried, and veered again.
/// John! ///
He blinked and realized that the suit had just put up new tracking information. He tried to focus on it: a point of light weaving against a station-shaped grid.
/// It's Copernicus, yes? ///
He stifled an outcry, while he tried to eyeball outside what the scanner view was showing him on the grid. Was that a silver flicker, close to the station wall?
/// He is flying evasively, too. ///
/Yes, but evading us? Or the boojum?/
Charlie's answer, if he had one, was interrupted by another jarring maneuver, and an emerald blaze—
—and a rocket-crackle in his ears—
His vision turned to a sheet of fire, and he began tumbling. He heard Ik's voice, full of static, and Li-Jared's. And he was suddenly very hot and prickly inside the suit, and he wondered if this was where he was going to die.
/// That was—really—bad— ///
THUD. THUD. Two much smaller impacts, and he felt the tumbling stop, and then a course change. The fire in his eyes slowly faded, and his vision began to clear. Ik was holding him on one side, and Napoleon on the other. They had stopped his tumbling and were physically carrying him through their evasive maneuvers.
"—John Bandicut?"
He began to croak an answer, but the words were taken from his throat by the view. The surface of the station was much closer now, and he could see a series of small, reflective domes on its surface, like soap bubbles. /What—?/ He saw Copernicus flicker across the surface, darting one way, then the other. Before he could draw a breath to speak, the robot zipped into one of the soap bubbles and winked out of sight. "Coppy!" he shouted.
"Stay tight!" Ik snapped, and they veered twice more, and then were flying dizzyingly close to the outer hull. A crackle of green fire thumped another near miss. Ik veered left, left again, then right, and down—wrenching Bandicut by the arm. One more twist—an emerald haze—and a huge silver bubble loomed before them. He caught a reflection in the bubble of a fiery bolt behind them, then they flashed through the bubble and it was gone.
"HRAAH!" Ik boomed. "Is everyone here?"
Bandicut was still trying to get his breath. "Yah—" he gasped "—but I saw Copernicus go into a different—"
"I know," Ik said. "We must find out where we are now." His silver-crab suit held fast to Bandicut's as they jetted inward toward a great, solid surface.
They were inside a huge, palely lit dome—probably a forcefield of some kind. Ahead, in the watery light, Bandicut expected an airlock entrance. Instead, he was stunned to see that they were dropping headlong into a wooded park.
He felt a pull of deceleration and an attitude rotation. For a moment, he lost all vision in front of him. Then, abruptly, they were standing together in a small clearing, surrounded by trees.