Captives of the Flame Part 26

CHAPTER IX

The green of beetles' wings ... the red of polished carbuncle ... a web of silver fire, and through the drifting blue smoke Jon hurled across the sky.

Then blackness, intense and cold. The horizon was tiny, jagged, maybe ten feet away. He reached a metal out and crawled expertly (not clumsily. Expertly!) across a crevice, but slowly, very slowly. The sky was sharp with stars, though the sun was dim to his light-sensitive rind. Like a sliding cyst, he edged over the chunk of rock that spun somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. Now he reached out with his mind to touch a second creature on another rock. _Petra_, he called. _Where is he?_

_His...o...b..t should take him between the three of us in a minute and a half._

_Fine._

_Jon, who is the third one? I still don't understand._

Another mind joined them. _You don't understand yet? I was the third, I always was. I was the one who directed Geryn to make the plan in the first place for the kidnaping. What made you think that he was in contact with the triple beings?_

_I don't know_, Jon said. _Some misunderstanding._

There was the laughter of children. Then Tel said, _Hey, everybody, we're with Arkor._

_Shhh_, said Alter. _The misunderstanding was my fault, Jon. I told you that Geryn talked to himself, and that made you think it was him._

_Get ready_, Petra said. _Here he comes._

Jon saw, or rather sensed the approach of another spinning asteroid, whirling toward them through the blackness. But it was inhabited. Yes!

The three of them threw their thoughts across the rush of s.p.a.ce.

_There...._

Roaring steam swirled above him. He raised his eye-stalks another twenty feet and looked toward the top of the cataract some four miles up. Then he lowered his siphon into the edge of the pool of pale green liquid methane and drank deeply. Far away in a beryl green sky, three suns rushed madly about one another and gave a little heat to this farthest of their six planets.

Now Jon flapped his slitherers down and began to glide away from the methane falls and up the nearly vertical mountain slope. Someone was coming toward him, with shiny red eye-stalks waving in greeting.

"Greetings to the new colony," the eye-stalks signaled.

Jon started to signal back. But suddenly he recognized (a feeling way at the back of his slitherers) who this was. He leaped forward and flung the double flaps of leathery flesh across his opponent and began to scramble back up the rocks. Jon had his tight, but was wondering where the h.e.l.l were....

Suddenly his eye-stalk caught the great form that he knew must be Arkor coming down over the rocks (with Alter and Tel. Yes, definitely; because the creature suddenly did a flying leap between two crags that could have only been under the girl-acrobat's control), and a moment later that Petra had arrived at the other sh.o.r.e of the methane river. Using her slitherers for paddles, she struck out across the foaming current.

Think at him, concentrate.... _There...._

The air was water-clear. The desert was still, and he lay in the warm sand, under the light of the crescent moon. He was growing, adding facets; he let the pale illumination seep into his transparent body, decreasing his polarization cross-frequencies. The light was beautiful, too beautiful--dangerous! He began to tingle, to glow red-hot. His base burned with white heat and another layer of sand beneath him melted, fused, ran, and became part of his crystalline body.

He stepped up the polarization, his body clouded, and cooled once more.

Music sang through him, and his huge upper facet reflected the stars.

Once more he lessened his polarization, and the light crept further and further into his being. His temperature rose. Vibrations suffused his transparency and the pulsing music made the three dust particles that had settled on his coaxial face seven hundred and thirty years ago dance above him. He felt their reflection deep in his prismatic center.

He felt it coming, suddenly, and tried to stop it. But the polarization index suddenly broke down completely. For one terrific moment of ecstasy the light of the moon and the stars poured completely through him. Chord after chord rang out in the desert night. Back and forth along his axis, colliding, shaking his substance, jarring him, pommeling him, came the vibrations. For one instant he was completely transparent. The next, he was white-hot. Before he could melt, he felt the crack start.

It shot the length of his forty-two mile, super-heated body. He was in two pieces! The radio disturbance alone covered a third of a galaxy.

Twelve pieces fell away. The chord crashed again, and the crack whipped back and forth vivisecting him. Already he was nearly thirty-six thousand individual crystals, all of which had to grow again, thirty-six thousand minds. He was no more.

_Jon_, the voice sang through drumbled silicate.

_Right over here, Petra_, he hummed back. (The note was a perfect quarter tone below A-flat. Perfect! Not clumsy. _Perfect_!)

_Where's Arkor?_

To their left the triple notes of an E-flat minor chord (Arkor, Tel, and Alter) sounded: _Right here._

Just as they had made contact, before the music stopped (and once more their thoughts would become separate, individual, and they would lose awareness of each other and of the hundreds of other crystals that lay over the desert, under the clear perpetual night)--just then a strident dissonance pierced among them.

_There_, sang Petra.

_There_, hummed Jon.

_There_, came the triad in E-flat minor. They concentrated, tuned, turned their thoughts against the dissonance. _There...._

Jon rolled over and pushed the silk from his white shoulders and stretched. Through the blue pillars, the evening sky was yellow. Music, very light and fast, was coming from below the balcony. Suddenly a voice sounded beside him: "Your Majesty, your Majesty! You shouldn't be resting now. They're waiting for you downstairs. Tltltrlte will be furious if you're late."

"What do I care?" Jon responded. "Where's my robe?"

The serving maid hastened away and returned with a sheer, shimmering robe, netted through with threads of royal black. The drape covered Jon's shoulders, draped across his b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and fell to his thighs.

"My mirror," said Jon.

The serving maid brought the mirror and Jon looked. Long, slightly oriental eyes sat wide-s.p.a.ced in the ivory face over high cheekbones.

Full b.r.e.a.s.t.s pushed tautly beneath the transluscent material, and the slender waist spread to sensual, generous hips. Jon almost whistled at his reflection.

The maid slipped clear plastic slippers on his feet, and Jon rose and walked toward the stairs. In the lobby, the throng hissed appreciatively as he descended. On one column hung a bird cage in which a three-headed c.o.c.katoo was singing to beat the band. Which was difficult to do, because the band was composed of fourteen copper-headed drums. (Fourteen was the royal number.)

Across the lobby wind instruments wailed, and Jon paused on the stairs.

"Don't worry," the maid said, "I'm right behind you."

Jon felt the terror rise. _Hey_, he called out mentally, _is that you, Petra?_

_Like I said, right behind you._

_Incidentally, how did I come up with this body?_

_I don't know, dear, but you look devastating._