white eyebrow and a dark pupil. White of cloud, blue of distance. As if it were part of the sky itself.
“Louis!” Teela screamed. “Do something!”
It isn’t happening, Louis told himself. His throat was a column of solid ice. His mind ran about in his skull like something trapped. It’s a big universe, but some things really are impossible.
“Louis!”
Louis found his voice. “Speaker. Hey, Speaker. What do you see?”
The kzin took his time answering. His voice was curiously flat. “I see a great human eye ahead of us.”
“Human?”
“Yes. Do you see it too?”
The word Louis would never have used made all the difference. Human. A human eye. If the eye were a supernatural manifestation, then a kzin should see a kzinti eye, or nothing at all.
“Then it’s natural,” Louis told himself. “It has to be.”
Teela looked at him hopefully.
But how was it drawing them toward itself?
“Oh,” said Louis Wu. He moved the steering handle hard right. The ’cycles curved away to spinward.
“This is not our route,” Speaker said instantly. “Louis, bring us back. Or put the fleet under my command.”
“You aren’t thinking of going through that thing, are you?”
“It is too large to go around.”
“Speaker, it’s no bigger than Plato crater. We can circle it in an hour. Why take chances?”
“If you are afraid, drop out of formation, Louis. Circle the eye and meet me on the other side. Teela, you may do the same. I will go through.”
“Why?” Louis’s voice sounded ragged even to him. “Do you think that—accidental cloud formation is a challenge to your manhood?”
“My what? Louis, my ability to procreate is not at issue. My courage is.”
“Why?”
The ’cycles fell across the sky at cruising velocity, twelve hundred miles per hour.
“Why is your courage at issue? You owe me an answer. You’re risking our lives.”
“No. You may go around the Eye.”
“And how do we find you afterward?”
The kzin considered. “I concede the point. Have you heard of the Kdapt-Preacher heresy?”
“No.”
“In the dark days that followed the Fourth Truce with Man, Mad Kdapt-Preacher headed a new religion. He was executed by the Patriarch himself in single combat, since he bore a partial name, but his heretical religion survives in secret to this day. Kdapt-Preacher believed that God the Creator made man in his own image.”
“Man? But—Kdapt-Preacher was a kzin?”
“Yes. You kept winning, Louis. For three centuries and four wars you had been winning. Kdapt’s disciples wore masks of human skin when they prayed. They hoped to confuse the Creator long enough to win a war.”
“And when you saw that eye peering over the horizon at us—”
“Yes.”
“Oh, boy.”
“I put it to you, Louis, that my own theory is more likely than yours. An accidental cloud formation. Really, Louis!”
Louis’s brain was working again. “Strike accidental. Maybe the Ring engineers set up the Eye formation for their own amusement, or as a pointer to something.”
“To what?”
“Who knows? Something big. An amusement park, a major church. The headquarters of the Optometrist’s Union. With the techniques they had, and the room, it might be anything!”
“A prison for Peeping Toms,” said Teela, suddenly getting into the spirit of the thing. “A university for private detectives! A test pattern on a giant tridee set! I was as scared as you were, Speaker.” Teela sounded normal again. “I thought it was—I don’t know what I thought. But I’m with you. We’ll go through together.”
“Very well, Teela.”
“If he blinks, we’ll both be killed.”
“‘The majority is always sane,’” Louis quoted. “I’m going to call Nessus.”
“Finagle, yes! He must have gone through it already, or around it!”
Louis laughed harder than he ordinarily would have. He had been very frightened. “You don’t think Nessus is breaking trail for us, do you?”
“Huh?”
“He’s a puppeteer. He circled around behind us, then he probably slaved his ’cycle to Speaker’s. That way Speaker can’t catch him, and any danger he’s likely to meet, we’ll meet first.”
Speaker said, “You have a remarkable ability to think like a coward, Louis.”
“Don’t knock it. We’re on an alien world. We need alien insights.”
“Very well, call him since you and he seem to think so much alike. I intend to face the Eye, and learn what lies behind it, or within it.”
Louis called Nessus.
In the intercom image, only the puppeteer’s back was visible. His mane stirred slowly with his breathing.
“Nessus,” Louis called. Then, louder, “Nessus!”
The puppeteer twitched. A triangular head rose in enquiry.
“I was afraid I’d have to use the siren.”
“Is there an emergency?” Both heads came up, quiveringly alert.
Louis was finding it impossible to return the vast blue stare