puppeteer walked off the rectangle in the direction he was facing. Three paces brought him to a disc. And he was gone.
“What a layout!” Louis said admiringly. He was alone, for the kzin had already followed Nessus. “You just walk. That’s all. Three paces takes you a block. It’s like magic. And you can make the blocks as long as you like!” He strode forward.
He wore seven league boots. He ran lightly on his toes, and the scene jumped every three paces. The circular signs on the corners of buildings must be address codes, so that once a pedestrian reached his destination he would know it. Then he would circle the discs to get to the middle of the block.
Along the street were shop windows Louis would have liked to explore. Or were they something else entirely? But the others were blocks ahead. Louis could see them bickering at the end of that canyon of buildings. He increased his pace.
At the end of a footstep the aliens were before him, blocking his path.
“I feared you would miss the turn,” said Nessus. And he led off to the left.
“Wait—” But the kzin had vanished too. Where the blazes was Teela?
She must have gone ahead. Louis turned left and walked—
Seven league boots. The city went by like a dream. Louis ran with visions of sugarplums dancing in his head. Freeway paths through the cities, the discs marked in a different color, ten blocks apart. Long-distance discs a hundred miles apart, each marking the center of a city, the receiver squares a full block across. Paths to cross oceans: one step to an island! Islands for stepping stones!
Open transfer booths. The puppeteers were fearfully advanced. The disc was only a yard across, and you didn’t have to be entirely on it before it would operate. One footstep and you were stepping off the next receiver square. It beat the tanj out of slidewalks!
As he ran, Louis’s mind conjured up a phantom puppeteer hundreds of miles tall, picking his way delicately along a chain of islands; stepping with care lest he miss an island and get his ankles wet. Now the phantom grew larger, and his stepping stones were worlds…the puppeteers were fearfully advanced…
He was out of stepping disc, at the shore of a calm black sea. Beyond the edge of the world, four fat full moons rose in a vertical line against the stars. Halfway to the horizon was a smaller island, brilliantly lighted. The aliens were waiting for him.
“Where’s Teela?”
“I do not know,” said Nessus.
“Mist Demons! Nessus, how do we find her?”
“She must find us. There is no need to worry, Louis. When—”
“She’s lost on a strange world! Anything could happen!”
“Not on this world, Louis. There is no world as safe as ours. When Teela reaches the edge of this island, she will find that the stepping discs to the next islands will not work for her. She will follow the discs around the shoreline until she finds one that does work.”
“Do you think it’s a lost computer we’re talking about? Teela’s a twenty-year-old girl!”
Teela popped into place beside him. “Hi. I got a little lost. What’s all the excitement?”
Speaker-To-Animals mocked him with a dagger-toothed grin. Louis, avoiding Teela’s puzzled/questioning eyes, felt heat rising in his cheeks. But Nessus said only, “Follow me.”
They followed the puppeteer where stepping discs formed a line along the shore. Presently there was a dirty brown pentagram. They stepped onto it…
They stood on bare rock, brilliantly lit by sun tubes. An island of rock the size of a private spaceport. In its center stood one tall building and a single spacecraft.
“Behold our vehicle,” said Nessus.
Teela and Speaker showed disappointment; for the kzin’s ears disappeared into their flaps, while Teela looked wistfully back toward the island they had just left, toward a wall of light formed by miles-high buildings standing shoulder to shoulder against interstellar night. But Louis looked, and he felt the relief loosening overtight muscles. He had had enough of miracles. The stepping discs, the tremendous city, the four tributary worlds hanging, pumpkin-colored, above the horizon…all were daunting. The ship was not. It was a General Products #2 hull fitted into a triangular wing, the wing studded with thruster units and fusion motors. Familiar hardware, all of it, and no questions asked.
The kzin proved him wrong. “This seems an odd design from the viewpoint of a puppeteer engineer. Nessus, would you not feel safer if the ship were entirely within the hull?”
“I would not. This ship