Donald Moffitt - Second Genesis

Bram shuddered at the thought of the mighty energies that once had been dispensed by that distant forest. In operation, it would have been a microwave inferno that would have sizzled a man to a crisp in milliseconds. No wonder a healthy stretch of no-man’s-land had been left—and not just to get past the gravitational edge effects.

Bram inched farther out on the gantry for a better look. Jao was going to insist on a full description. Too energetic a toe push sent him doing a handstand, and he walked a few steps on his hands before his boots settled down, holding on for dear life and being careful not to let go with one hand before he had a firm grip with the other. The asterioid-strength gravity was deceptive, he knew. He still had all his mass, and it was a long way to fall. Already, though he was no more than fifty yards over the edge, he knew that the horizontal component of the diskworld’s complex gravity was tugging every atom of his body toward itself in a complicated vector. He would have had to crawl out another million miles or so to feel anything, of course, but it was there nevertheless. But if he were to fall past reach of a handhold, he would be accelerated inexorably—at the dreamlike rate of about one thirty-millionth of a foot per second to start—until, at an unknown fraction of the distance to the center, the reaching forces of the disk would slam him into the tilted wall-scape at a velocity sufficient to abrade him into a long, wet smear.

It didn’t help a whit to realize that he’d have been long dead of suffocation, thirst, or boredom before that happened.

Bram stopped his balloonlike four-limbed outward prowl and wrapped himself securely around a thick strut with an arm and a leg while he surveyed the cliff face from his improved vantage point.

There was movement beside him, and then Ame was pressed up next to him, peering past his shoulder into the abyss.

“I thought I told you to stay put,” Bram said.

“Don’t be silly, Bram- tsu. I’m perfectly able to take care of myself. What could possibly happen?” She leaned out alarmingly. “Do you think we have enough time to climb down there for a look at some of those caves?”

“ No! ” he said, hearing himself sputter. In a more reasonable tone of voice, he said, “We’ll come back later with ropes and proper climbing equipment and a team of trained outside workers. Maybe we’ll round up a few tame climbers from Yggdrasil’s vascular system and ride them. And the climbers will wear safety lines, too!”

“It was just an idea,” she said mildly.

She unclipped her torch from her belt and played it over the vertical surface below. Seen up close, Jao’s “smooth face” was pocked with great pits and hollows. Looking at this cross section of a world, Bram could see where the crust began, a few miles below, like frosting on a slice of cake. The artificial material beneath was thinly covered with dust, and all sorts of domes, bulges, and the craters of burst bubbles poked above the rubbish of the sundered planet that had been used as a starter.

Closer at hand, vacuum welding over the eons had cemented a rocky cliffside in place. But here, too, even the languorous stresses that the diskworld was heir to had from time to time torn great chunks of material loose and left a pattern of cracks and cavities.

Ame’s beam found one of the holes. “I wonder bow deep—” she began, and stopped.

A pair of animal eyes shone in the beam of light for a startled second, then whisked out of sight.

“Oh!” Ame squeaked. She dropped the torch. It seemed to hang in space beside her; the light beam revolving in lazy circles. Ame recovered before the torch had drifted down more than an inch or two, caught it by the wrong end, and got it pointed at the cave again.

“Did you see it, too?” she whispered.

“Yes,” Bram said.

There was life in this place. And it was shy.

They stayed clinging to their dizzy perch until Lydis’s radioed warnings about their reserve air supply became too impatient to ignore. But the beady, luminous eyes never reappeared.

“It’s hunkered at the back of the cave, waiting for us to go away,” Ame said.

“Or there’s a way out through the rear,” Bram suggested. “There may be a whole system of burrows.”

She had tried the light in every opening it would reach. Far below, at the limit of the beam, they thought they saw a pair of pinpoints of reflected light for the briefest flash, but it was impossible to be sure. Finally, when Lydis began making threats, they gave up and hauled themselves back along the gigantic crane arm to the security of the rim.

They had left the walker parked a short distance away in a square at the intersection of two avenues of raised gravel. As they approached it, there was an explosion of movement around it, and dozens of small furry forms streaked away into hiding.

Bram gave a start. The little beasts were gone in an instant, before he had time to react.

“We scared them off,” he said.

“They must have been watching us the whole time, everywhere we went,” Ame said. “The ones here got up the courage to investigate the walker when we were gone so long.”

A wary little face peered out from around a block of stone, then jerked back as Ame’s light beam found it. Bram had a quick impression of huge round eyes, button nose, tiny mouth, and the flash of a bushy tail.

He found himself laughing. “They’re curious,” he said.

“They’re descended from terrestrial life,” Ame said. “That’s for certain. Like every picture I’ve ever seen. Everything in pairs—eyes, ears, limbs—just like us! And they’re furred—they’re not only vertebrates but mammals, too!”

“But how do they breathe vacuum?”

“I wonder … they’ve had millions of years to adapt to this place. Have you ever heard of whales?”

“I know the word. Stands for something big.”

“It was a real animal once. It adapted to a new environment, too. It learned to go for long stretches without breathing.”

They were at the walker now. The biovehicle was in the same kneeling position they had left it in. Bram gave Ame a boost, and she hoisted herself up to the passenger bubble. Then she froze.

“Bram -tsu! Look!”

He levitated to a position beside her, and she grabbed his arm. One of the little animals was trapped inside the bubble, scurrying about frantically, looking for a way out.

He stopped her as she as about to insert herself into the bubble. “Wait. Let’s see if we can shoo that thing out of there first.”

“Why? What harm could it do?”

“I don’t like the look of those little teeth.”

“It’s more afraid of us than we are of it. Oh, look at it, Bram -tsu! It’s so small ! It’s just a little baby ! It must have gotten separated from its mother. It’s terrified.”

Without waiting for a response, she swan-dived through the lips of the bubble. Bram followed, letting out at least a pound of air pressure in his haste.

“The poor thing,” Ame said, reaching for the small creature. It cowered against the far side of the transparent bubble, chittering at them. It was a little roly-poly thing, a ball of soft brown fluff with enormous golden eyes that were mostly round pupil.

“Ame, don’t touch it.”

“Nonsense! It couldn’t bite me through my vacuum suit even if it tried.”

She picked the creature up. It squirmed in her grasp, then seemed to give up. A moment later it was in the crook of her arm, clinging to her with four tiny grasping paws.

“It wants its mother,” Ame said. “Look, Bram -tsu, there’s a third eyelid for when it’s outside.”

He bent closer and saw the transparent nictitating membrane flick across the golden eye when the creature blinked at him.