EUMAEUS
Perfectly loyal,
The Keeper of the Livestock
For absent masters.
It was the Keeper. More precisely, it was the last of the Keepers, and it had taken this shape the better to monitor the creatures it watched over. It meant the four of them no harm--or at least it held no malevolence, though it was largely indifferent to their fate. Mostly, it was curious. No, it was more than curious; the gathering of knowledge was the central purpose of its existence. That and protecting its secrets.
Suddenly Karil was aware of Slava's emotions--not just read upon her mobile face or felt through his touch upon her body--but directly, as if they were his own feelings. He knew her joy and relief that he was still alive, her sense of guilt at having left him in the tyrannosaur's nesting pit. There were terrible childhood memories--her parents' death on an asteroid, her sister's in a scout-ship during the rescue attempt--a legacy of loneliness and guilt that had kept her isolated from the others of her colony despite their affection and concern for her, until it was somehow assuaged by her rescue of Karil.
And he felt her affection for him and Loris, almost as surrogate parents, but with a certain mixture of thankfulness for their providing a safe place to express her long-repressed sexuality. Karil and Slava were released from their paralysis and threw themselves into each other's arms.
In that instant, he felt a wave of hatred coming from Madame Feronia, rising out of a black well of twisted emotions--pangs of conscience long smothered beneath layers of greed and selfishness, focused into raging jealousy of the love felt by the others, so long denied to Madame Feronia by both her husband and herself. There was a searing blast of anger from Loris, a killing rage more like that of a carnivore with cubs than anything human. Feronia's fear of her vengeance swept over the others like a flood of ice-water.
Loris! No! Karil thought. She turned to look at him. There came a flood of warmth, a love akin to that of husband and wife, or brother and sister, based on the forced intimacy of long space journeys, the total trust of those accustomed to protecting each other's back in moments of peril, and shared passion--not for each other, but together for others. Memories of Johanna, Terry, Slava, a dozen lesser liaisons, flashed between them like erotic pictures on a screen.
There was a silent gasp from Slava as she fully understood her role in their lives. She was only another link in a chain of relationships binding them together. Though their affection for her was warm and genuine, she was really little more than a communal erotic toy--their Ship's Pet. She saw that what they shared with each other through her was vastly more important than what they shared with her, or she with them. She uttered an involuntary cry and tears sprang to her eyes.
"Obviously," said a voice, "this experience is emotionally draining for you. It seems your verbal form of communication has evolved for good reason. Would you prefer audible speech?"
It was the Keeper who spoke. They stared up at the bizarre sight of a Tyrannosaurus Rex speaking perfect English, and then they felt each other drifting away. There was a profound sense of loss, a sudden overwhelming loneliness, and the mental contact was broken, fading like the memory of a dream.
"What the hell are you?" Loris snapped.
"I am the last remaining Keeper. I am not, as you think, a machine, though I am indeed a computer. I am made from the same materials as yourselves and not of steel and sand like Atalanta. I was grown, not manufactured. You might think of me as Atalanta's hundredth-generation descendant."
"What happened to the others?" Karil asked.
"They succumbed to old age, worn out like any other machine or organism, waiting for the Masters to return."
"The Masters would be those winged creatures?"
"No. Those are the Builders. They are merely servants, as I am. The Masters...well, the Masters do not photograph well. Nor can I describe them in your clumsy language. In any event, they intended to return at the end of the long impact-winter and the ice-ages they knew were to follow, but it is now clear that they have been forced to change their plans. We Keepers have been good servants, preserving their flocks for their return, but we were not intended to survive this long. Nor were we meant to cope with a dilemma such as your species presents to us."
"What do you mean?"
"What Slava refers to as the Late Cretaceous Extinction has had unforeseen consequences. You mammals have been far more successful than predicted--so successful as to infest your entire solar system. Your evolution to intelligence, taking place as it did in one of the most unstable periods of your planet's highly unstable natural history, has made you extremely unpredictable creatures.
"When I first detected you on my defensive perimeter, I was appalled by your contradictory natures: a powerful fear of death coupled with an overwhelming curiosity, extreme sentimentality coupled with extreme cruelty, and this complicated business of two sexes!"
"It's our best trick," Karil said. "Two entirely different genetic inheritances in every birth. And every fifteenth or twentieth time, a male mind in a female body or vice versa. It's what makes us so adaptable."
"It has served you entirely too well, from my point of view. If the Masters still exist, they will be 65 million years more advanced, but they change slowly, and I fear they are incapable of defending themselves against creatures as quickly adaptable and clearly unbalanced as yourselves, motivated by a mixture of testosterone-fuelled fearlessness, a fierce mammalian defence-drive, and a schizophrenic bicameral intelligence in each of you, in a bewildering variety of mixtures. The four of you before me are a prime sampling. In a short time, you will be on your way to the stars. If you should gain access to the information in my keeping, you will be in the Masters' solar system in no time, vastly more powerful than you are now.
"I was able to keep you away for a while, using these complex emotions of yours, particularly your fear of death. And I was able to slow the construction of your first starship. But curiosity is clearly the most powerful drive you have. When it became obvious that I could not frighten you away, I watched you carefully as the three of you made your way to me.
"I instructed one of my groundskeepers to lead you to a spot which encouraged you to build a shelter. Perhaps, I thought, you would be content to remain my prisoner, and I know that you were tempted. But Loris could never be happy anywhere but in space, and Karil would eventually desire to return to Mars, his spiritual home, to be with Terry and her clan. It was only a matter of time before you became desperate to escape, and I would have to kill you to stop you."
"That's why you made no effort to protect us," Loris said, "either from Madame Feronia or from your creatures."
"That is not strictly true, Loris. I made no effort to protect you because your species in general, and you in particular, cannot stand to be protected in this way. It would become as onerous as prison itself.
"I realized that whatever I did with you, others as curious and adventurous as you would surely follow, and I have already outlived my natural lifespan by many million years. The High Companies that rule much of your system-wide civilization are extremely conservative and therefore isolationist, but they are moribund and will not last much longer. Other power blocs are forming, most of them extremely adventurous in nature, and they fall into two categories--ambitious forces inside the power-structure like Madame Feronia, and rebellious forces outside the structure like your Professor Kelley. I have been trying to determine which may be the likely victor by observing you.
"Madame Feronia has offered me a proposition. In exchange for my help, which will make her the most powerful native intelligence in your system, she will agree to keep my existence and that of my Masters a secret."
"You can't trust her," Loris said.
"Oh, but he can," Madame Feronia spoke up. "If I want all this knowledge--and power--for myself, I must keep his secret. It's not going to be easy to keep people away from Venus, but I can do it."
"Maybe she can, Keeper," Karil said, "especially with your help. But for how long? She's a self-made power, but her descendants won't be. Our species is not as long-lived as the dinosaurs, is it? We burn ourselves out pretty quickly, and our tyrants rarely live a normal lifetime. After a few generations, Venus will be up for grabs again."
"What you say is true," the Keeper mused. "The safest course of action would be to destroy the data outright."
"What?" Karil glanced up at the towering stacks above them. "Destroy it?"
"Men like you, and your Professor Kelley, think that burning libraries is the greatest crime in your race's history. As a Keeper, I find the idea thoroughly repugnant myself, but I am not just the Keeper of the Books, Karil, or the Keeper of the Zoo, as Loris says, I am the Keeper of the Secret. I have tried to convince the semi-sentient machines which run this place to overload or to destroy each other, but they were programmed to preserve this complex until the Masters' return. Fortunately, however, Madame Feronia has solved that problem."
Loris shot a glance at the woman, who was growing pale with shock. "What do you mean?"
"Before entering the complex, she left orders with her ship in orbit--the Poseidon--."
"We've met," Karil said.
"--that this installation is to be destroyed if she does not return or renew contact within a specified time."
"Sounds like her," Loris said.
"Can the Poseidon do that?" Karil demanded.
"The ship's lasers need only breach the outer shell. The pressure of the planet's atmosphere will do the rest."
Madame Feronia stepped back and nearly collapsed. "That's why you let me in," she gasped.
"Yes. You thought to use the threat of my destruction to control me, but my destruction is inevitable in time, and I do not fear it."
"But what about the animals?" Slava said. "You were created to protect them."
"Protecting my Masters naturally takes priority over any such orders I may have been given. This is basic, is it not, even to simple artificial intelligences such as Atalanta? In any event, the animals have been preserved to take possession of their world again, so they can evolve into sentience. That is unlikely in the extreme, and my mission is obsolete. The fact is: they should have died out millions of years ago."
"Your logic is faulty, Keeper," Karil said. "People like Professor Kelley would wish to preserve these creatures as much as you do. And if the Masters have met with some catastrophe, won't they want their knowledge preserved? You've listened to Madame Feronia's proposition, listen to ours."
"There is no need to speak it aloud. You would bring your own Master, Professor Kelley, to see me. You would have me ally with a group of research institutions independent of all politics."
"Exactly. The discovery of the dinosaurs' existence, and yours, and that of the Masters, would change the solar system more thoroughly than politics or economics. We could help you contact your Masters, help you find out what's happened to them. There are people who would die for a glimpse of a dinosaur, people who have spent their lives searching for a single intelligible signal from a race like your Masters."
"Don't buy it, Keeper," Madame Feronia said. "Stilbon's an idealist. And Kelley's a scientist. Their kind can only function in an environment of open information. Once Kelley knows of your existence, it's only a matter of time before the entire solar system knows. Do you think everyone will be overjoyed to learn they're not the most powerful race in the universe? Most of our species will be terrified of your Masters' power. To travel across the light-years? To build structures like this? To read our minds? And you know how dangerous we are when we're frightened."
"You insane bitch," Loris said. "We're trying to talk the Keeper into not killing us all, and you're giving us an argument."
Feronia ignored her. "You can't let Titan get its hands on this power. They're not strong enough to control it. I'm the only one..."
"She's power-mad," Karil said. "Help us. Let us help you. Don't let your Masters' mission fail after all this time."
"You speak of my mission, but it is your own life that concerns you."
Karil fell silent. "That's true, Keeper," he said at last, "but that doesn't mean..."
"I know. I see that you do care about my mission. You do respect knowledge. And you care more for Loris's and Slava's lives than your own."
"There are many more like him where we come from," Loris said. "Give us a chance..."
"I do not fully understand the importance of this concept chance in your lives," the Keeper said. "But I will give you your chance. I watched you enter and find your way to me without interfering, I will watch you leave without interfering. If you can make your way to your shuttle and escape before the installation is destroyed, you will survive. Without the knowledge stored here, your race can do little to threaten my Masters, for without that knowledge you will never find them."
There was a hiss and a door opened in the floor behind them. A lighted ramp led downward.
"Please don't do this, Keeper," Karil said. "There's no reason..."
Loris grabbed his arm. "Shuttup, Karil. Come on."
"But..."
"For Christ sake, Karil. Move your ass."
Karil hesitated for another instant, then turned and ran. Madame Feronia started after them but found herself unable to move. Slava stopped, hesitated for a moment, looking back at her, but Karil and Loris grabbed the girl and ran. The door sealed shut behind them and Madame Feronia was released from her paralysis. She ran to the place where the door had been, but there was not so much as a seam left behind. She watched in shock as the ramps above slid into the wall and doors slammed shut about her, sealing off the stacks.
The tyrannosaur sat down on its haunches and looked at her with its huge, impassive eyes.
"You can't do this, Keeper. You're nothing but a glorified robot. And robots do not make life and death decisions."
"You are imprecise. Your robots do not threaten human life because you have programmed them that way, but they often exterminate what humans consider to be lower species. I am not even doing that much. It was your decision that brought us to this."
"You led me to believe you were on my side. Now you've betrayed me."
"On the contrary, Madame Feronia. I merely opened the door for you, as I did for the others. It was you who left orders that would destroy me if you did not return. I am merely maintaining that balance."
"But you've let the others go."
"They brought you here. I no longer need them. We both know their chances are slim. They can do little harm if they survive, but you, Madame, even as an ally, would be a great deal of trouble. I will admit this much, however: as specimens of your species, I will take any one of the three of them over you, anytime. But there is something I will let you see before you die."
A panel slid open in the wall behind the Keeper.
"What's this?" Feronia asked suspiciously.
"Only an elevator."
Made Feronia walked around the Keeper, who swivelled her great head to watch. "It's a trick," the woman said. "I'm not..."
"Come now, Madame Feronia. I need hardly trick you. I could strike you dead where you stand, or simply wait for you to die along with me. You will wish to see what I have to show you, however; come along."
The Keeper rose to her full height and ducked into the great elevator, which was obviously designed for large freight. Madame Feronia stepped inside, the panel slid shut, and the car descended. There was a hum that grew to a dull roar, and she felt the floor vibrating beneath her feet.
"What is this?"
"Power, Madame Feronia. What you came for. There is enough power here to terraform Venus or terraform Mars in a century. Enough to send a fair-sized moon on an interstellar journey in a human lifetime."
"Why didn't one of you Keepers go looking for the Masters, then?"
"We were Keepers, not Searchers. We waited. As we were instructed."
The door slid open, and Madame Feronia stepped out into a frigid passageway. Vaguely visible behind heavy transparent panels were the frozen bodies of immature saurians, row upon row of them, stretching into white-out in the distance.
"This is where samples of species are preserved in case populations should fall below reproductive numbers. If you will follow me..."
The huge beast strode down the wide passageways between the rows, making the floor tremble, and Madamne Feronia followed, trying to keep below the Keeper's swinging tail. The frost-covered creatures behind glass seemed ready to shudder into life. She wrapped her arms about her shivering body. Her feet scuffed through the snow.
"What the hell is this all about?"
"Stop here."
The panel beside her began to clear. The frozen shape behind it was recognizable. Madame Feronia cried out and stepped back in shock.
"It's my husband."
"He was the first human to come to my attention. In the process of studying him, and in my ignorance of human body processes, I allowed him to die, though he was already near death, and would not have survived with all his faculties in any event. Using his brain, I learned how to contact and control others of your kind, and how to save them. He died benefiting others for the first time in his life."
Madame Feronia stepped up to the panel and peered at her husband's frozen features. He seemed to be asleep.
"No, Madame Feronia. He is not asleep. He is dead. I could return him to life, but he would no longer be human."
"This is proof of his death. The High Companies would recognize his will. My title to his company would be free and clear. I'd be in complete control."
"I believe you would."
"And my husband was the original discoverer of all this knowledge and power, wasn't he?"
"In a way. Your claim of ownership would probably be recognized by Terran authorities."
"You bastard!" Madame Feronia turned on the tyrannosaur and rained ineffectual blows upon her impervious hide, then slid down the creature's leg and knelt on the floor, shivering with cold and fear and the early stages of drug-withdrawal. "You're totally devoid of pity, aren't you, Keeper?" she said, wrapping her arms about herself and rocking like a child.
"As are you, Madame Feronia. You are now experiencing pity for the first time in your life, and it is for yourself."
"I did care for something. I cared for him." She gestured toward her husband’s frozen form.
"Did you? You married for money, and for power, and because you admired his ruthlessness. You became as ruthless as he. When he disappeared, was it really his life that concerned you, or his inheritance?"
"I loved him."
"Did you? Have you ever experienced love, Madame Feronia?"
"Would you recognize it if you saw it?"
"Would you? I opened Loris's and Karil's minds to show it to you, and your only reaction was jealousy and hatred. They love their ship’s computer, in fact, more than you could love another human being. As an artificial intelligence, myself, I find that rather touching.”
"Keeper, let me go."
"I cannot, Madame. I need you to ensure my destruction."
Madame Feronia began to laugh. There was more than a touch of hysteria in her voice. "How about a deal then, Keeper? Let me go and I promise to destroy all this when I get to my ship."
"You are already planning to betray me, Madame Feronia. But there is one thing that may save you."
"What's that?"
"If the First Mate of the Poseidon Earthshaker will disobey his Captain's orders out of concern for your welfare."
Madame Feronia began to laugh again.
***
There was no telling how many hours or kilometres they had run; Karil guessed they were somewhere beneath the plains. For a while the tunnel had been clean and well-lit, but gradually the ceiling lights had become fewer and farther between. The tunnel had opened onto a sewer or runoff-culvert of some sort--the dark waters raced below them now--but the catwalk was a wide one and they could run without danger.
Loris was still in the lead, seemingly tireless, but Slava was falling behind and visibly exhausted. Soon they would have to pause for another rest. Karil turned back to her for an encouraging smile and promptly collided with Loris. Only her quick reflexes prevented them both from tumbling off the catwalk into the millrace.
"What's wrong?"
Slava came up to them and leaned against the moss-covered wall, panting, grateful for the respite.
"Look up ahead," Loris told him.
Karil's gaze followed her pointing finger. A few meters ahead, the water level rose, and the catwalk was awash.
"Uh oh."
They crept forward, splashing, as the waters rose higher. "For God's sake, keep close to the wall," Loris admonished.
There was a bend in the tunnel, and they waded cautiously about it. Sunlight appeared on the opposite wall and there was a mounting roar.
Just beyond the bend, the tunnel dropped abruptly, dammed by rocks and debris. The water plunged over the dam and plummeted to a whirlpool far below, filling the tunnel beyond to the ceiling with roiling water. Sunlight poured from a crack in the roof, grass and blue sky visible above. The dam was littered with mould-encrusted bones.
"Subsidence," Slava gasped. "The tunnel was offset vertically and the roof caved in. I guess a few ceratops were swallowed up, or else fell in afterwards looking for water."
"We can't go any farther this way," Loris said. She leaned over and peered into the boiling cauldron below. "There's no telling how far before there's any air. Besides, we'd probably be battered to a pulp."
"We might have followed this stream all the way to the lake and made good time," Karil said. "Up there, it might take a lot longer."
"Then we'd better get moving again," Loris told him.
They climbed the pile of rocks, swung up into a tree that had sprouted there, with its roots in the dam and its branches thrusting through the crevice, and emerged into the daylight of the plains--right in the middle of a ceratops herd. The huge creatures milled about them, snorting and stamping. Between them and the forest-lined lake below was a vast moving sea of dark bodies.
"We'll have to go around," Karil said. "And watch your step. These things have bad temper written all over them."
They began to skirt the major part of the herd. The artificial sun beat down upon them. The ceratops looked up at them as they passed and snorted, shaking their baroque heads, but returned to grazing. They carefully avoided mothers with young, made longer detours to keep their distance from bulls. Sometimes they saw carnivores--fin-backed spinosaurs, huge tyrannosaurs--feasting and squabbling over kills on the edge of the herd, while the rest of the creatures ignored them.
Sometimes there were sauropods mixed in with the ceratops, lifting their serpentine necks above the mass of bodies, with pterosaurs perched on their heads or mountainous backs. Several times they were boxed in and found themselves surrounded by huge bodies that puffed like idling locomotives, tree-trunk legs shuffling. They waited until an opening appeared, and then crept through it.
Suddenly they were confronted by a huge golden creature, armoured body covered in spikes, beaked head lowered, swinging a tail armed with a massive club. The creature was short and squat, but as wide as a man was tall.
"Ankylosaur," Slava whispered.
"It's a bloody tank," Karil said.
The three-ton behemoth pawed the ground, stirring up clouds of dust and insects. A stubby-legged calf appeared from behind its bulk and peered at them with curiosity.
They began to back away, slowly, careful not to make any sudden moves. The creature lowered its head and gathered its massive legs beneath it for the charge.
Suddenly the grassland seemed to leap beneath them, and they were thrown to the ground. The saurian jerked up its head and peered off toward the distant forest and the lake beyond with short-sighted eyes. All about them, heads rose into the air and turned in the same direction. Great bodies shuffled about, and horned snouts sniffed the breeze. Sauropod necks snaked upward and stood sentinel in graceful curves. There was a roar they felt rather than heard.
The ground shook again.
As Karil and Loris and Slava watched in terrified awe, the mountains beyond the lake began to collapse. Landslides rolled down the slopes into the water. The rumble and splash echoed beneath the vaulted roof. The mountainside split with a thunderous crack and a wall of yellow smoke burst like a river of molten lava through the opening. Pteranodons wheeling above it dropped from the sky as the poisonous fumes billowed up about them.
"Oh my God," Loris said.
"Up the hill," Karil shouted. "Maybe there's somewhere we can seal ourselves inside."
Even as they struggled to their feet and raced across the trembling grasslands, Karil knew they would not make it. Behind them, the lake was boiling away, clouds of steam rolling up the mountainside to the roof. The forest burst into flame and added black smoke to the steam and sulphuric-acid cloud. The death scream of animals large and small echoed across the landscape, in counterpoint to the roar of earth-tremor.
Again and again, they were thrown to the ground and clawed to their feet, only to be thrown down once more. Panic-stricken saurians stampeded past, raising clouds of dust. The temperature rose. They stumbled through dust-clouds and stifling heat as huge creatures lumbered out of obscurity and pounded past--armoured ankylosaurs and ceratops, fleet carnivores ignoring them as they raced by with enormous strides, huge sauropods creating earth-tremors of their own, necks stretched out, tails lashing like snapped bridge-cables.
The yellow flood spread across the landscape, rushing toward them. Amid the blazing trees, across the torched grasslands, huge creatures fell asphyxiated before it and were instantly crushed and consumed by pressure, heat, and sulphuric acid.
Slava fell. Karil picked her up in his arms and started to run again, then stopped. Loris had turned back as she fell, and they regarded each other across her sobbing, shaking form.
"What's the use?" Karil said.
Loris shook her head in reply. She came near and touched Karil's arm. Slava's head was buried in Karil's dust-caked chest. She turned a tear-stained face to Loris, put up her hand and touched her cheek.
Karil and Loris leaned across her and kissed. The three figures stood amid the roiling dust, surrounded by stampeding giants, and waited.
***
Atalanta saw the lasers on the Poseidon's bow swivelling into position. She flashed the image on the screen and Shagrug and Zito studied it.
"What are they doing?" Zito asked.
Shagrug's fingers darted over the keys. "They're moving into position to fire on the surface. Atty, can you give me...?"
A map of the Alpha Regio of Venus appeared on the screen. "Target co-ordinates are 19 degrees, 24 minutes south latitude; 4 degrees, 15 minutes east longitude."
"What's there?"
"Sensors indicate a quiescent volcano."
On the screen, they could see a laser-bolt of incredible force flashing straight into the mountain's southern flank. The result was not the volcanic eruption they had expected, but an implosion.
"There's something funny about this," Zito said.
"Yes," said Shagrug. "And what are the odds Karil and Loris are in the middle of it?"
Suddenly, Atalanta went into a dive. Shagrug and Zito were thrown back into their couches. The ship plummeted into the atmosphere like a stooping hawk.
"Atty, what is it?" Shagrug managed to say against the mounting acceleration.
"A message."
"From Loris?"
"No, from something else. An artificial intelligence."
Shagrug eyed his instruments as they plunged into the depths. "Atty, I'm not sure you can take this."
"I can the way Zito rebuilt me."
"That's the way we build 'em in Jovian service," Zito said. But he looked about nervously as the fuselage began to creak.
The mountain rushed toward them. A great fissure had been opening in its flank and Atalanta plunged into the opening, swept along by the howling winds. Zito stared at the helm plugged into his wrists and Shagrug peered through the port with equal disbelief.
"That was a door! Blown open by the blast! My God, the whole mountain's hollow."
Atalanta swept through the great airlock. A second fissure yawned before them. Faster than possible to human reflexes, Atty banked and flashed through the narrow opening. She soared, climbing above the swirling clouds, and hovered beneath the great vaulted ceiling.
"Jesus, look at that."
The vast landscape below was ablaze with forest- and grassfire. The lake was boiling away as sea-creatures of monstrous size thrashed in agony. Great herds of animals thundered across the plains, pursued by a boiling cloud of heavy, poisonous atmosphere.
"What the hell is this place?"
"I don't know, but if Karil and Loris are here, we'd damn well better find them in a hurry."
"I have them," Atalanta said, and dropped out of the artificial sky. She soared over the blazing treetops, streaked across the blackened plains.
Shagrug and Zito stared at the stampeding creatures below, stunned into silence. Atty dropped to grass-level and parted the herds with her roaring passage. Her crew--now merely passengers--gazed out the port as saurian heads flashed by, bobbing amid the dust-clouds. She settled to earth a few meters before Karil and Loris and the startled figure in their arms.
Atty's voice could be heard above the thunder of saurian feet and the roar of the fiery whirlwind racing up the plains behind her.
"Did you call for a cab?"
Slava fainted dead away. For an instant, Karil and Loris stared at the gleaming, reconstructed ship in disbelief, and then they bolted for the entrance lock. The hatch popped open at their approach. Karil tossed Slava's unconscious figure up through the lock into Shagrug's arms and clambered after her. Loris glanced astern as she waited.
Atalanta's jets were dividing the stampeding herds as she hovered, swinging, just above the ground. Behind the thundering saurians came the wall of sickly-yellow super-heavy gas, cresting like a tsunami.
"You wanna pick up your feet, Karil?" Loris snapped.
"Too late," Atty said. "Hold on tight, Loris."
The ship rose into the air, as Loris dangled, clutching the ladder with a death-grip. The landscape dropped away beneath her, and the boiling clouds rose toward them. Shagrug dragged Karil inside, Loris swung up into the lock and slammed the hatch shut behind her an instant before the flood hit.
The ship was hurled forward like a surfboard on a breaker. Her occupants were flung against the padded walls. Only Zito, strapped to the couch and physically wired into the helm, retained his seat.
Atty pulled up just before the wave struck the mountainside and she sped beneath the roof, roaring past the sun's foreshortened image as the flood struck the projector and the sky seemed to shatter into darkness. Atty's lights flashed on, illuminating the inferno below. The mountains writhed and crumbled as the torrents poured into the depths of the Keeper's vaults.
Atalanta hovered just outside the high observation windows of the gallery. She was silent, but binary digits were flashing across her screens too swiftly for the human eye to follow. The flood rose higher, a heaving viscous sea in her spotlights, and enveloped her. The windows in the mountain caved in before the inexorable pressure, as the atmosphere of Venus poured into the openings. In another instant, the mysterious messages ceased and Atty's screens went blank.