Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

that’s unlikely.’
    ’Why?’
    ’Because the effective gravity rises away from the equator. So the
sphere isn’t much of a honey trap, because we can’t inhabit most of
it. Humans here are clearly incidental to the sphere’s true purpose.’
His Virtual voice was without inflection, and she couldn’t read his
mood.
    They passed the five-gravity latitude before they even glimpsed
Bicansa’s car. It was just a speck in the high-magnification sensor
displays, not visible to the naked eye, thousands of kilometres ahead
on this tabletop landscape. It was clear that they weren’t going to
catch Bicansa without going much deeper into the sphere’s effective
gravity well.
    ’Her technology is almost as good as ours,’ Pala gasped. ’But not
quite.’
    ’Try not to talk,’ Dano murmured. ’You know, there are soldiers,
Navy tars, who could stand multiple gravity for days on end. You
aren’t one of them.’
    Pala was lying down, cushioned by her suit, kept horizontal by her
couch despite the cabin’s apparent tilt upwards. But even so the
pressure on her chest was immense. ’I won’t turn back,’ she
groaned.
    ’I’m not suggesting you do. But you will have to accept that the
suit knows best.’
    When they passed six gravities, the suit flooded with a dense,
crimson fluid that forced its way into her ears and eyes and mouth.
The fluid, by filling her up, would enable her to endure the immense,
unending pressure of the gravity. It was like drowning.
    Dano offered no sympathy. ’Still glad you didn’t take the flitter?
Still think this is a romantic adventure? Ah, but that was the point,
wasn’t it? Romance. I saw the way you looked at Bicansa. Did she
remind you of gentle comforts, of thrilling under-the-blanket nights
in the Academy dormitories?’
    ’Shut up,’ she gasped.
    ’Didn’t it occur to you that as she was only a Virtual image, that
image might have been edited? You don’t even know what she looks
like.’
    The fluid tasted of milk. Even when the feeling of drowning had
passed, she never learned to ignore its presence in her belly and
lungs and throat; she felt as if she was on the point of throwing up,
all the time. She slept as much as she could, trying to shut out the
pain, the pressure in her head, the mocking laugh of Dano.
    But, trapped in her body, she had plenty of time to think over the
central puzzle of this star-world - and what to do about it. And
still the journey continued across the elemental landscape, and the
astounding, desolating scale of this artificial world worked its way
into her soul.
    They drove steadily for no less than forty days, and traversed a
great arc of the star sphere stretching from the equator towards the
pole, across nearly a million kilometres. As gravity dominated the
diminishing centrifugal forces, the local vertical tipped back up and
the plain seemed to level out.
    Eventually the effective gravity force reached more than twenty
standard.
     
    The car drew to a halt.
    Pala insisted on seeing for herself. Despite Dano’s objections she
had the suit lift her up to the vertical, amid a protesting whine of
exoskeletal motors. As the monstrous gravity dragged at the fluid in
which she was embedded, waves of pain plucked at her body.
    Ahead of the car was another light lake, another pale glow,
another splash of dimly lit green. But there were no trees or mirror
towers, she saw; nothing climbed high above the sphere’s surface
here.
    Bicansa appeared in the air.
    She stood in the car’s cabin, unsuited, as relaxed as Dano. Pala
felt there was some sympathy in her Virtual eyes. But she knew now
without doubt that this wasn’t Bicansa’s true aspect.
    ’You came after me,’ Bicansa said.
    ’I wanted to know,’ Pala said. Propped up in her suit, her voice
was a husk, muffled by the fluid in her throat. ’Why did you come to
the equator - why meet us? You could have hidden here.’
    ’Yes,’ Dano said grimly. ’The Navy’s careless scouting missed
you.’
    ’We had to know what kind of threat you are to us. I had to see
you face to face, take a chance that I would expose’ - she waved a
hand - ’this.’
    ’You know we can’t ignore you,’ Dano said. ’This great sphere is a
Xeelee artefact. We have to learn what it’s for.’
    ’That’s simple,’ Pala said. She had worked it out, she believed,
during her long cocooning. ’We were thinking too hard, Dano. The
sphere is a weapon.’
    ’Ah,’ Dano said grimly. ’Of course. And I