Diane Duane - Storm at Eldala

The fraal, a mindwalker as well as a scientist, had gone to the authorities and explained that they had a problem. The riglia were fully aware that their planet was being colonized — or from their point of view, invaded — and were furious. The Alaundril and Regency authorities were annoyed but also sensible enough to be cautious. There was no chance of reversing their own plans and removing the colonies. That would have constituted an unacceptable loss of status for both nations, but they stopped further colonization, citing concern about the local ecology.

Gabriel, during his investigations, had reason to smile at that. It was not the Rivendale ecology that was in danger. Humans and fraal who lived on that world literally had to hang on by their nails, suspended more or less between heaven and earth in a realm where air pressures could range from near vacuum to nearly three bars down in the deepest canyons.

The one city, Sunbreak, perched precariously on a nine-kilometer high col between two fourteen-kilometer high mountains. There, two thousand people lived — breathing deeply, Gabriel thought, and being very careful where they put their feet. Some intrepid homesteaders had struck out into the surrounding mountain range to make themselves small farms, terracing some of the less intractable, lower reaches and collecting water from the warmweek mists with condensers. It was a dangerous life. The riglia regarded any damage to their environment, no matter how minimal, as damage to them and were likely enough to attack solitary humans simply out of pique. There were other creatures, like spidermist, that would strip the flesh off you right down to the bones without pique being involved. "Hey, Sunshine! Everything all right over there?" Helm's voice came over comms. "No problems at all," Gabriel said. "You two have a quiet time?"

Helm chuckled. "When Delde Sota is around, you wouldn't ever describe anything as 'quiet.' She reprogrammed my entertainment system somehow—"

"Correction: did no such thing," came a sharp voice from the background. "Augmented gamma correction for imagery player. Long overdue."

"All the colors of every thing are strange now," Helm muttered. "I liked my playback the way it was." "You have brought this on yourself, Helm," Enda said, unstrapping herself from her seat beside Gabriel. "It is a mechalus's business to seek perfection in the machinery around her, as well as the machinery which is her, unless you desire the doctor to reshape her personal ethics while riding with you." "Don't start with me," Helm said, though there was humor in his voice. "Got a hail from Terivine control down in Sunbreak. They've got a spot ready for us at the port."

"Good," Gabriel said and checked his coordinates. "Not a big place, that. Are they going to warehouse us somewhere else after we land? They can't have more than a few acres of active space down there." "I know. It's like landing on a dinner plate. No matter. You just follow me down." "Helm, have you been here before?" Enda said.

"No," said Helm, "but I'm here to ride shotgun, which means I go down first and impress everybody. Stay back a couple kilometers."

They rode their system drives in toward Terivine then let the planet's gravity well pull them in. This was one of the few parts of piloting that still made Gabriel nervous: waiting for the feel of the air to make a difference to Sunshine's flight characteristics. It was not that she was a tricky or difficult ship to manage in atmosphere, but the speed with which atmospheric densities varied sometimes made for a rocky ride until Gabriel could work out which attitude the ship preferred on the way in. Terivine, with a "sea level" pressure much higher than most worlds', could produce problems during landing if the sequence wasn't carefully managed.

The problems did not materialize, and Gabriel followed Helm down through the banks of mist — almost too thin to be thought of as cloud — which layered the upper atmosphere. After a few minutes, they broke out of these and into an intermediate layer of clear air above the highest mountains. Gabriel shook his head at the broad, jagged, green and cream streaked landscape below them, all warm-tinged from Terivine's orange-yellow light. On the milky, misty horizon lay wave after wave of fiercely jagged mountains, like a frozen sea. Fog lay far down between them in most of the valleys, hiding greater depths. "Forbidding" was one word that immediately occurred to Gabriel at the sight of the place. Too much vertical and not enough horizontal!

It was a beautiful place as well. Gabriel liked mountains and mountainous worlds. He liked to stand and look up at a landscape that was far too big to be conquered, a kind of reminder that humans might be a great power among the worlds, but single beings still had to fight their own battles with the physical universe. And the physical universe sometimes had them completely outclassed. From Longshot, Helm grunted and said, "Deep valleys down there. Full of those. . what did they call them. . Rigla?"

"Riglia," Gabriel replied. "Very annoyed people, if I got the right impression. I wouldn't waste my time trying to have a friendly chat with the natives."

"Wouldn't normally have been on my list anyway," Helm said. "All they've got are little cilia, if I remember what you told me before we left Grith. Can't pick things up, except with their minds. . Don't think they'd go in big for arms sales."

Gabriel gave Enda a sideways look as they dropped deeper into the atmosphere. "Think you might make some sales down here?" he said.

Helm chuckled deep. "There are humans here," he said. "No matter where they live, these days, what human ever feels really secure?" Gabriel had no quick answer to that one.

"There's our port," Helm said. "About ten degrees to starboard. Watch your approach as you come in. We've got to follow this valley, and it twists."

He dropped into a broad valley that wound between two huge mountain walls. Gabriel nosed Sunshine down after him. There was less striation among the mountains here and more volcanic rock. Here and there, you could pick out a peak that had clearly once been a volcano, now shattered or undermined by the pressures of other local formations against it. The colors were darker — browns and blacks, mostly, old basalt, faulted in massive square or hexagonal blocks, or shattered to pinnacles by millions of years' worth of lateral pressure.

Away ahead of them two great peaks soared up, high and narrow, angling away from each other like the horns of a bull. There was a pale patch on the yoke of stone that connected them. "That's it?" Gabriel asked.

"That's the spot. Five degrees to the right at the back of the settlement—"

"I see it," Gabriel said. His 3D display crosshaired the spot for him. As spaceports went, Sunbreak's was nearly nonexistent— you could have dropped the whole of it into one of the service yards that surrounded the port at Diamond Point.

Helm led them down, the golden light of Terivine on Longshot's hull going out like a snuffed flame as he dropped between the mountains and descended toward the spaceport. It was still warmweek, but not for long. There would be no direct sunlight on the city for another ten days, until coldweek was past and the new warmweek was coming.

If city is the word I'm looking for, Gabriel thought. The pale patch had resolved itself into a scatter of buildings, some large, some small, a jumble of locally quarried stone and caststone edifices. The place certainly could not house more than a couple thousand people.

In front of them, Gabriel saw Helm skirt around the high back of the yoke between the two mountains, coming at the port beacon from the back side. He came to a halt in midair, hanging on his system drivers, not even engaging his attitudinals as yet. Showoff, Gabriel thought, getting ready to cut in his own landing systems, but he had to admire the featherlike way Helm settled himself down on exactly the tiny scrap of light-bounded tarmac. He came down so slowly that there was no way that anyone could have missed the size, orientation or number of his gun ports.