Bandicut chafed. "But isn't there--"

A Neri sped into view from over his shoulder. "The lander has200 * *

been spotted upcurrent, moving deeper and higher! Two swimmers have gone after him."

"Toward the room of madness?" cried a Neri named S'Cali, with alarm in his voice.

"Room of madness? What is that? Is that the reactor? A place :.

where you think there's radiation?" Bandicut turned around, his own fear growing.

"I don't think so," said L'Kell. "At least, there's no warmth in the current there, and no glow. We don't know what it is. But--"

"What?" asked Bandicut.

"Two of our people ventured there when we first started ex~ ploring--and it drove them--" rasp "--mad. Not like the radiation ......,,,,.

sickness. It was their minds. They died--crying and babbling."

L'Kell looked around among his companions. "Why would the lan- ::?..'.

der go there?"

ii: "Maybe he doesn't know," said Bandicut. "Maybe he has no idea, or he's gone crazy. But if he's trying to hide, and that's a place your people are staying away from--"

i.'..

"We'd have to swim in after him," S'Cali said, and there was fear in his voice.

i.

Bandicut drew a breath. "Can you take me that way?"

{':ii : As they approached the expanding end of the corridor, where the....... , room of madness was said to be, the Neri grew increasingly appre- .

"I:' hensive. Bandicut met Ik's gaze flickering through the hood, and could practically read his thoughts: John Bandicut, do nothing foolish.

" "/That is good advice.

WThy are we doing this?"/ ::;i /I'm not sure. A hunch. He might have gone somewhere else, and maybe they'll find him. But if he's gone to this room, Char, we've got to go after him. That lander might be crucial. The first chance for contact, for communication. We can't let him go. And we might save his life./ The quarx hesitated a moment.

"/Okay.

I just wanted to be sureyou had a reason."/ /I'll need you and the stones to help me./Bandicut took sev- I eral deep breaths. /They're sure they can stop radiation with that ' forcefield?/ "/For a time.THE INFINITE SEA * 201 It might put a drain on their reserves.

And they might not be able to stop everything."/ /Okay. And the rest?/ "/Well, we don't know what to expect, do we?"/ /No. But if this is a starship--well, I have some memories of "spatial transformation" on the way from my home star out to Ship-world.

It was really, really weird--but the stones helped pull me through it. But the Neri, now--it would be even more alien to them--and without stones, it might well kill tem./ "/You're making a pretty big guess here."/ /I know. You ready if we have to go in?/ The quarx said nothing. She was ready.THE MA !SS ROOM Two NERI WF. RF. waiting near the entrance to the room, and they both looked nervous as h.e.l.l. They reported that they had lost sight of the lander, but thought it had come this way.

..... You don't know if it's in there?" asked L'Kell.

"We think it is. We saw something move in there. But we didn't want to go in," murmured one of the swimmers. "We didn't know what might happen--"

"Very well," said L'Kell, with a glance at Bandicut, who thought, /This is it, Char./ With L'Kell, Ik, and S'Cali, Bandicut moved cautiously past the swimmer and peered into the chamber opening.

The room was oval and about the size of a small gymnasium, and completely flooded. It was hard to see clearly, with only the Neri lanterns for light--and one other, tiny light source visible on the far side of the room. The lander, with a stolen Neri lantern? If so, it wasn't moving. Bandicut and his friends hovered just outside the entrance, taking a careful look. In the center of the egg-shaped room, a dark ma.s.s hung suspended like a petrified yolk; there was nothing but water where the white would have been. Bandicut could not tell, in the dim light, what supported the yolk. But there were definitely invisible forces active in the room. Even at the entrance, he could feel an indescribable tingle somewhere at the edges of his senses. He couldn't put a name to it, or even say which sense was affected, but it made him jittery in a physical way, like the effects of too much caffeine.THE INFINITE SEA * 203 He took a slow breath to steady himself, and surveyed the perimeter of the room--the inner surface of the eggsh.e.l.l. It was not smooth, he realized, but festooned with spiky, spiral-shaped structures that looked almost like antennas. Was the whole thing some kind of s.p.a.ce-time transformer? It was possible he was completely wrong; but it seemed to him that there was more visual distortion than could be accounted for by the water alone.

"/I feel resonances--"/ /Of--?/ "/Ancient memories.., transformations...

long voyages, before I knew you."/ Bandicut held his breath./So you think--?/ "/Yourguess may be right."/ With a grunt, Bandicut turned in the water to face the others.

'TI1 go in. I think the quarx and I can handle it."

L'Kell's huge eyes peered at him. "That would be very dangerous.

I question whether--"

"I know, but I think it's worth the risk. L'Kell, if that's the lander over there, I might be able to bring it out, save it." He turned to Ik. "Can we use your rope as a lifeline?"

Ik's voice was weak and distorted without a comm. "Hrahh." He began stretching out the rope, attaching it to Bandicut.

When the rope was secure around his waist, Bandicut called to L'KeI1. "I can't swim very fast, so I need all of you to give me a good, solid push, straight toward that light. Okay?"

"John Bandicut, I don't know--"

"Let's just do it, okay?"

"Very well," said L'KeI1, waving to S'Cali and another Neri to help. "Be careful, my friend."

Bandicut nodded, double-checked the rope, then caught Ik's eye and raised a circled thumb and forefinger. The Hraachee'an returned the gesture, and Bandicut turned to face the open chamber. He stretched his body so that he was floating horizontally, arms straight ahead. His heart pounded. "Ready!"

The Neri, with a long thrust, propelled him forward. "Let go!"

he cried, then realized that they already had. He held himself rigid, stretching his momentum as he sailed through the water, across the open s.p.a.ce, to the left of center. The tingling grew stronger around his head and shoulders and waist. As he felt his momentum failing,204 * .

he gave a breastkick stroke and raised his head to check his posi- tion.

At least, that was what he'd intended. But instead of confirming his long, smooth glide, he found himself tumbling. /Wait--that's not right--/ Where he'd expected to see the central ma.s.s, he glimpsed a spinning array of spines, rapidly drawing closer. With a m.u.f.fled cry, he tried to tuck, to change direction.

"/Don't make any sudden movements.""

the quarx cried, applying just enough inhibition to slow his ac- tions.

/What are you doing? We're going to hit--/ .... ,.

"/I don't think so./ I;,. .

It's an illusion/ .... "':".

Try turning your head--slowly."/ i, He swallowed hard, turning. A spinning dizziness came over !;i him, the world flipping.., flipping again. Something was disrupt- ing his equilibrium. He caught a sharp breath, reaching for his I i', flight skills in spatial disorientation: when feelings contradict real- ity, ignore the seat-of-the-pants, suppress the instinct, follow the in- struments. But there were no instruments here--just vision, and Ik's ::.,.. i:.

rope to pull him back. Ik's rope! He felt it slithering loose from his waist, and grabbed for it--too late. Gone! The spines and spirals were growing before his eyes. It was like silence-fugue, bad--but....... '"'

it wasn't silence-fugue, it was real.

/Charlie, help me!/he whispered.

"/Working-- the stones--"/ The answer was breathless, but the quarx was true to her word, :".

and an instant later, he saw a spidery grid superimposed over his vision./What's that--?/ "/The stones are tracking your course changes.

1'1l interpret--"/ He tried to answer, but his breath went out and he couldn't do anything except let go and allow the knowledge of the stones to flow through the quarx into his muscles.

He rotated slightly and stroked once, hard, with his arms.

The 'I.

deadly outer sh.e.l.l of the room ballooned and distorted, and opened !.

up like a billowing curtain. In the center of the opening was the .

central ma.s.s, the egg yolk quivering like gelatin in zero gravity.

ATHE INFINITE SEA * 205.

wave of dizziness pa.s.sed through him. And along with it a feeling of another kind, a feeling that something or someone was nearby.

The lander?

The feeling was indistinct, reminding him of the neurolink. But there was a sense of disconnectedness, as if a gulf of s.p.a.ce, or wavelength, or phase separated the someone-else from him, like a silent wall. He probed the surroundings with his thoughts, as he might have probed a neuro, trying to find the source of the feeling.

He felt a stirring in response, but couldn't identify it as animate or inanimate. He was losing his visual connection to this place, as if the dark ma.s.s had softened and surrounded him; he felt as if he were probing, falling through a wall of smoke, or something wispier yet firmer, light as smoke but solid, like an aerogel. He felt a boundary layer between where he was and where the something-else was.

There was nothing humanlike about it; but it was aware of him, reacting to him, making ripples through some level of s.p.a.ce-time to which he was sensitive.

"/I feel a sense of something long...

very long."/ /Long, like in local terms?/ "/Long, like.., cosmic.

Like a thread, or a tunnel stretching to infinity."/ Bandicut shivered, suddenly wishing that he had not come here, had not made this connection. He felt utterly impotent, and ignorant, in the face of these forces. What did he think he was going to do, remake them? He thought he knew what this was now, thought it was a kind of reactor--or no, not really a reactor, it was a-- "/Stardrive,"/ the quarx murmured.

/Yes,/ he answered. And maybe it was disabled, or broken, maybe it no longer had the power to move a s.p.a.cecraft--but it was not dead, not yet. He vividly remembered "threading s.p.a.ce" with Charlie-Two aboard Neptune Explorer, and though it had seemed mind-bogglingly strange at the time, he suspected that this thing was more exotic, perhaps more like the "spatial transformation" that had propelled him from the solar system to the cold darkness of intergalactic s.p.a.ce.206 * .

"Possibly. Possibly true.

But..."/ The quarx was uncertain, and he knew she was trying to piece together his old memories with her old memories, trying to weave in whatever understanding the stones were able to give her.

"/The tunnel I feel here is more like...

the star-spanner, I think.

Not driving you, exactly, but firing you through the light-years."/ Char's words gave him a sudden, cold fear./This thing is a star- spanner?/Was it about to hurl him across interstellar s.p.a.ce, ripping him from his friends and his last vestiges of--?

i: "/No, I don't think so.

It doesn't seem on the verge of that.

:ii, But if it is a star-spanner, i r,'

the stones think it's not from Shipworld. "/ /Then--/ "/And here's the other thing: <7.", you're="" not="" actually="" in="" its="" presence--="" not="">

It's nothere with you."/ (i. i Not in its presence? Bandicut thought. Then whose presence was he in?

He felt himself rotating slowly in the water, and had a vision {iiii.:.

of the room's core, the central ma.s.s, curved around him like a doughnut.

There was some serious bending of s.p.a.ce-time hap- pening here, and he didn't know whether to be fascinated or terri- fied.

"/John, ltl'nd this very confusing- ..

and yes, terrifying.

I.

don't want to stay here any longer than we have to."/ Bandicut peered around anxiously, remembering with a jolt that he had come in here looking for the escaped lander. But his eyes were wavering, and he wasn't sure he would recognize the lander !i even if he saw it.

"/John, whatever we're directly in the presence of is connected to something far more powerful, and dangerous."/ Bandicut drew a breath of dank air--and suddenly knew what the quarx was referring to./The Maw of the Abyss? Are you telling me that this s.p.a.ceship is connected to whatever's down there in the bottom of the ocean?/He reeled at the thought.THE INFINITE SEA * 207 Char didn't answer, didn't have to.

/I will be b'joogered,/he whispered. And his thoughts began spiraling off in a way that might have led to silence-fugue or worse, but somehow stayed controlled. Maybe it was Char's influence, but whatever the reason, his thoughts were spinning in an uncanny convergence of rationality and intuition. He was coming to an understanding, and not by the usual route; it felt like speeding in an airplane around racing pylons, and scooping up words and data and clarity in a whirl that left no time for breath or articulation of thought.

He came to, with a shivering intake of breath--and a realization that he was rotating physically. He was peering down the barrel of a long, faintly glowing tube, and moving slowly toward it.

That was what Char feared. He was not in the Maw, but he was close to it in some terrifying fashion; this thing surrounding him was intimately connected to the Maw, and had been since its arrival on this world.

/That's it,/he whispered.

"/What's it?"/ The quarx had been trying to keep him together all this time, and she was dazed.

/That's what happened to the ship--I think./ "/You mean... ?