"Leave it, my friend, it is an experiment—they seem content to let me go to hell in my own way; notice that no trace of smoke or even of the odor remains—and the sergeant and I have been watching that wrapper creep toward the wall at a rate of about fifty centimeters per hour."

  "What?"

  "In an otherwise seamless surface, a fine line runs about the room a centimeter up the curve where floor turns into wall. This is what caught my eye: subduction, as on Earth, one tectonic plate flowing under another. The surfaces are self-sweeping, dust and litter carried by the `current' to disappear into the crack. The same mechanism provides a certain tackiness, allowing firm footing in almost nonexistent gravity. You, too, would slowly slide across the room if you stood motionless. Unless, like this nightstand, you wore small spikes which penetrate the surface, placing you in contact with the substrate. The surface then flows around you. Fascinating."

  The general shrugged. "Ven Kamanov draws final breath," he intoned in a theatrical accent, "he vill dictate notes about it." He turned to the little sergeant, bestowing an imperative glance on Empleado, as well. "Take ten, Pulaski." She jittered out into the relative sanctuary of the corridor, perhaps unaware of the four awaiting her outside. There had been some kind of trouble between her and one of Empleado's men earlier in the voyage, although Major Reille y Sanchez had taken care of it and he didn't know the details. The KGB man gave his head a microscopic shake, intending to stay through Gutierrrez's conversation with the Russian. The American let out an exasperated breath and, despite the fact it had never been raised, changed the subject. "Glad to see you looking well. Rosalind said you'd pulled your arm out of the socket trying to rescue the major."

  Kamanov grinned. "What man with testosterone in his blood would not?" His eyebrows suggested he excluded Empleado from that category—and that, if no one else did, he'd hold the man responsible for the behavior of his underlings. Assuming a frozen expression, Empleado sat in the seat vacated by Pulaski, feet flat on the floor, arms folded in front of him. The general remained standing.

  "Trying to rescue myself, as well," Kamanov continued. "It was the Hatch that did the pulling. You know, the sound of a shoulder separating is worse than any pain." He shivered, shaking his head. "It's like the idea of sliding down a fifty-meter razorblade into a barrel of vodka." Across the room, Empleado squirmed. "Thanks to the dextrous manipulators of our esteemed hosts, however, I now feel fit and hale. I wish they would find it in whatever they use to encourage circulation to let me out of this place." He brushed the blanket from his shoulder. No scar or inflammation could be seen. "We have arrived, Horatio. I have work. And many, many questions to ask."

  "Like everybody else aboard Earth's three best—and only—spaceships!"

  "Except," Kamanov glanced at Empleado to observe whether he'd caught the general's unpatriotic complaint, "that everybody else, tovarich, has had the advantage of seeing all that has happened so far with his own eyes. While I have been occupied thus far—what is the expression? Making zees?"

  Grinning, Gutierrez told Kamanov about the major's return. "The landing went pretty much as planned. Instead of mooring to the rings Corporal Owen manufactured, we used RCS thrusters, sinking into the surface as you did. Our hosts had suspended docking cradles to support the shuttles—made up in advance! That's something I want to know more about, Pete. We were expected, as soon as we left Earth under strict secrecy and radio silence. Like everything else about this place, it gives me a creepy feeling."

  "And the colonel?" Kamanov asked. "I am told she is not here, in the infirmary, where they might help her."

  "You're told correctly. Your multilegged doctors are afraid they'll drive her down even deeper, and I think they may be right. She's limp as a dishrag now, has been since you took her gun away—with one exception. She threw another fit when the shuttles were settling through the roof. Bloodied several noses, including mine, broke one wrist, not her own, and damned near ruined a couple of the crewmen for life."

  "This reminds me, Comrade Doctor Kamanov." It was Empleado, speaking up for the first time. "Whatever became of Col. Richardson's weapon after you took it away? And the silencer? I haven't seen it since."

  "An excellent question, Comrade Political Officer, but you ask it of the wrong individual. You tell me where they took my trousers, which I would like very much to have, and I will tell you where Col. Richardson's gun has gone." The Russian dismissed the KGB man and let his head swing from side to side. "I have seen this sort of thing before, Horatio. After a great fire or an earthquake. So have you, I suspect, in combat."

  "It's like she's asleep," Gutierrez nodded, "only we can't wake her up. Rosalind says it's a simple retreat from reality, because she can't stand talking to Big Bird out there, or the sight of giant bugs with guns, or something."

  "Possibly the worst case of culture shock on record, my friend. Our first contact with a nonterrestrial intelligence. Some will be affected worse than others. Some, like you and I, may even be immune. How is the rest of our little party standing up to it?"

  The general shrugged. "Certainly no more reactions as bad as Vivian's, but there's something like a flu bug, ugliness at both ends, going around. I suspect it's partly relief after being cooped up for so long, and partly tension on account of what we've found here. Or what's found us. We've already had to break up a couple of fistfights."

  "You may eventually have to restrain me, if they will not let me out of here. You have seen everything. I missed by passing out like a schoolgirl. What is it like outside?"

  "You've seen sequoia forests in California." Gutierrez shrugged. "It's like that, moist without feeling humid. Somber, but not depressing like you'd expect. The asteroid's covered with huge plants, Pete. I'm not sure they're trees. Thousands of them, a kilometer tall and the same distance apart, not arranged in any regular pattern. Remember the redwoods tunneled out for Model Ts? Some of these could accommodate a freight train. They spread at the top, fusing into an airtight, self-repairing canopy that forms the artificial upper surface of this place. It fills the area below with a diffuse yellowy-green light, and retains, probably even manufactures, oxygen and water vapor for a worldwide shirtsleeve environment."

  Kamanov nodded again. "This much I managed to learn from Rosalind and Toya. As I understand it, even yet we are not on the surface?"

  "Within a dozen meters. They use more than the surface of this world, Pete. The hanging baskets—they're down with us now, by the way—weren't invented for our benefit. This area of the asteroid's full of platforms, catwalks, what you might call `treehouses,' all the way to the canopy. A dozen living and working environments for use by at least as many species."

  Again Kamanov glanced at Empleado, but for what reason, besides polite acknowledgement of his existence or an unconscious effort to include him in the conversation, Gutierrez couldn't guess. "Tell me about them."

  "You saw Aelbraugh Pritsch, a kind of bird or reptile. And the lobsters, soldiers of some kind. The place reminds me of a cross between a paleontology exhibit and a cartoon where the animals wear trousers."

  "White, three-fingered gloves." Kamanov chuckled. "In cartoons, trousers are optional. I have seen the insect folk, the ones who fixed my shoulder."

  "Okay, so far I've seen a big rubber flower, yellow and red, and a walking quilt made of gray plastic covered with a half-invisible film that's silvery at an angle. I wouldn't have known it was intelligent, except that it was pushing a cart with wheels roweled like a vaquero's spurs. Now I know why—the creeping floor. It offered me a cup of coffee in perfectly unaccented Spanish."

  "Coffee?" Kamanov's expression was almost greedy.

  "Something that smelled like coffee, and a doughnut! I turned it down, politely as I could, until Dr. Nguyen tests a sample. It wasn't easy. I could use a cup of real coffee. Have you eaten?"

  Kamanov made a sour face. "Rations, from the ships."

  "Probably all to the good. I asked this blanket creature why—call it `she'—with all the mechanized wonders surrounding us, she was stuck pushing a cart. She replied that in convalescent circumstances, the `human' touch was more to be desired than efficiency. That's what she was providing."

  "Hmmm."

  "Hmmm, indeed." Gutierrez was reluctant, but needed his friend's advice. "There's more. While I had her attention, I asked after the Proprietor, what he's like, what species he belongs to. A long pause, during which I'm sure she stared at me with an expression of profound pity and amazement, although I don't know how I know it. I certainly didn't know what part of her to watch in order to see it. She said, in words approaching religious awe, that the Proprietor's one of the `Elders.' Pete, I've got a bad feeling—"

  "One bad feeling at a time, Horatio. What happened after you docked?"

  "The Dole was last. We were met at the platform by a squadron of wingless aircraft like the one that brought you here."

  The icy blue eyes twinkled. "Tell me what that was like. I missed it."

  Gutierrez sighed. "Like an amusement-park ride, flattened spheres four meters in diameter, each a different color. Open tops, padded floors and walls. No controls, no seats, either, I suppose because they accommodate a variety of species with equal discomfort. I thought they had antigravity, but they turned out to be fanless hovercraft, operating, so Aelbraugh Pritsch said, by ion exchange. I didn't tell him I don't know what that means, but I asked him other questions. He gave up and told me I should see his boss, which I'm planning to do in about twenty minutes."

  "I see." The Russian scratched his chin thoughtfully. "We could always send Arthur in your place." He grinned at Empleado, who ignored him.

  Gutierrez shoved his hands in his pockets, looked first at Empleado, then at Kamanov. "Aelbraugh Pritsch told me an odd thing before he shut his beak and referred further inquiries to the Proprietor. I thought I'd figured it out. Despite how well they're established here, the place has a new feel to it, as if they'd just arrived themselves. Having read some science fiction, I figured it was sort of an advance base for an interstellar expedition. You know, a galactic federation of races from many different worlds?"

  "And?" Kamanov raised bushy white eyebrows.

  "I offered my deduction to Aelbraugh Pritsch," his friend told him, "who replied, `But General, we're all from the planet you call Earth.' "

  FIVE The Proprietor

  "Take my side arm, sir," the major offered. "I can always draw another from the armorer."

  The redheaded Marine officer pulled her Witness from the synthetic Webb weapons belt slanting across her hips, let the muzzle roll backward, past her extended thumb as the pistol pivoted about her trigger finger, and executed a practiced, casual wrist-snap which ended with the automatic's broad backstrap thrust toward her superior.

  "Careful, sir, there's one up the spout."

  Irritable with preoccupation, and a little short of breath, Gutierrez shook his head. He and Reille y Sanchez hastened down a maze of identical roofless corridors, trying to keep up with Aelbraugh Pritsch, who was faster on those parrotlike feet of his than he looked. Overhead, beyond a screen of overhanging foliage, for the first time since they'd arrived on 5023 Eris, they could have seen the yellow "sky" darken as the asteroid rotated into night—corridor walls glowed to make up the deficit—but neither of them looked up to see the change.

  "Thank you, Estrellita," he puffed. "I understand that you're paid to be paranoid. I'll even grant that paranoids live longer. But I don't think going armed to this meeting would be a very auspicious way to start official relations with the Proprietor. Do you?"

  Life was difficult enough, he thought. Nothing about this expedition was going according to plan. Their shuttlecraft were parked inside the asteroid, more or less, instead of out, which saved on valuable consumables, but involved them with an advanced technology they didn't understand, meaning that they required local cooperation to get back outside, which placed them at the mercy of their hosts.

  Vivian Richardson, his vice-commander and captain of one of the three shuttles, had become, well, not a vegetable, exactly, since she appeared to be subject to unpredictable outbursts of violence. The fact that, over the many months the voyage had lasted, he'd come to believe the colonel was a covert KGB observer (in a manner of speaking Empleado's second-in-command, as well as his own) made things nice and complicated. Hell, maybe Empleado was her second-in-command.

  Worst of all, any claim they made here would now be disputed. One item of news he hadn't discussed with Kamanov, and not just because Empleado had insisted on hanging around, was the detailed report he'd radioed Earthward soon after his three spacecraft had been bedded down, via the antenna provided by their hosts. Also the resulting orders he'd received from Washington, and certain conspicuous differences between them and the equivalent orders Moscow might have issued.

  "I guess not, sir." With reluctance she didn't bother disguising, she flipped the grip of the pistol back into her palm in a maneuver known for two centuries in her part of the country as the "road agent's spin," shucking the 11.43x23mm Lenin into its Kevlar holster and refastening the flap. As Gutierrez struggled to remember what it was he'd asked her, he realized the holster was balanced neatly by the big wire-cutting Bowie she wore at the offside of her waist in a matching scabbard. "But it might be a good deal safer, sir," she added, earning her pay. "Isn't anyone going with you, sir, not even our political officer or one of his four—?"

  "Hoods? I had that out with Art not five minutes ago." The general dropped his heels, out of breath and suddenly heedless of how the dinosaurlike bird-being outdistanced them. "I won't repeat the same argument with you. Thanks, Estrellita, for caring, but I was invited to this party by myself. I'll go by myself and fill Arthur in later, for the edification of his bosses. He needn't worry about my leaving anything out. The crime that got me sent here was saying too much, not too little."

  He resumed his forward motion, but not the previous pace. Beside him, Reille y Sanchez nodded, but offered no immediate reply, first of all, he suspected, because he was correct in his assessment of the political realities, and she knew it. Second, because she probably didn't wish to contemplate whatever crime had gotten her volunteered for this expedition. Third, he thought, there was always the possibility that even Estrellita had bosses outside the normal chain of command to report to. Instead, she seemed to wait for what felt to him like the regulation decent interval for changing the subject in conversations with a superior officer.

  "As you will, sir. I'll be back at the Dole." She tossed him a salute and turned to go.

  "You do that, Major. On your way, look in on Dr. Kamanov. He's restive in durance vile and considers you decorative."

  For that matter, he thought, watching the rakish slant of her pistol belt as she retreated down the corridor, her fighting knife slapping at her thigh, so do I. Enjoying a reflexive moment of guilty feelings about his wife, he began taking longer strides, pivoting to follow the Proprietor's assistant around a corner. That obviously impatient individual now awaited him at the end of a passage where it T-junctioned with yet another.

  "You mustn't be late, General," the avian fussed when twenty such strides had brought him even. The man resisted an urge to rub his eyes, seeing motion, or thinking he saw it, near the base of the birdlike being's neck, a flash of turquoise and perhaps the slender whip of a reptilian tail. "At the end of this passage a pressure door and a flight of stairs lead to the Proprietor's quarters. Don't be alarmed to find them awash with a colorless, odorless liquid."

  Gutierrez stopped again. "What?"

  "Oxygenated fluorocarbon. Some of our staff here substitute it for the marine environment they're naturally adapted to. My security party, for example, the individuals you call `lobster people'?" The bird entity gave the flapped holster an unconscious pat where it hung at his belt. Gutierrez experienced a momentary doubt about having rejected Reille y Sanchez's side arm. Hadn't officers and diplomats once worn ceremonial swords on occasions like this?

  "Yes?" the man asked, struggling to gather up loose ends of thought and recapture the subject at hand. Maybe Vivian wasn't the only victim suffering from culture shock. "What about them?"

  "You may have noticed the protective membrane they all wear," replied Aelbraugh Pritsch. "In some respects, it's like your own spacesuits, I'd venture to guess, devised to retain moisture, temperature, and pressure necessary for their survival. Off duty, they inhabit quarters similar to those of the Proprietor."

  Gutierrez hadn't noticed, now he mentioned it, and couldn't blame Pete or the major for failing to take in this minor detail earlier. There was just too much here, all at once, to see and wonder about. What did Aelbraugh Pritsch do, for instance, about the way his gun belt seemed to crush the feathers at what should have been his waist? Pressure, too? That hinted at an even more advanced technology than he'd imagined. It did explain the silvery appearance of the quilt-thing he'd seen himself. "I take it your boss isn't one of these lobster people?"

  "Dear me, no!" The creature actually clucked like the barnyard fowl he resembled. "Great Egg, the Proprietor's no crustacean! Like them, he simply happens to have evolved in a saline medium. The artificial liquid I referred to permits him to remain comfortable, while others, land-evolved organisms such as you and I, may confer with him under more convenient circumstances than water would afford."

  More confused than ever, Gutierrez shook his head. "I don't get you."

  "You will, General, here we are."

  This passageway terminated in a dead end. The oval panel before them was the first real door Gutierrez had seen in this place, and fifteen centimeters thick. At Aelbraugh Pritsch's touch it swung aside on heavy hinges, allowing a faint scent of iodine to waft outward. Within a well-lit roofed-over chamber, a steep flight of plastic-coated stairs disappeared into a clear, mirror-surfaced liquid.