There was a small sealed chamber with a thick window, and beyond it
was a circular space, not too large, walled with triple walls of glass
with a vacuum between. The air was full of darkbirds, moving without
hindrance through the walls or hovering where they chose, above the
thing that slept inside.
Durham blinked and turned his head away, and then looked back again.
And Karlovic said softly, "Beautiful, isn't it? But sad, too, somehow,
I don't know why."
Durham felt it, a subliminal feeling without any reason to it, like
the sadness of a summer night or of birth and laughter or of gull's
wings white and swift against the sky. The Star shone, palely, gently.
He tried to see if it was round or any other shape, if it was solid or
vaporous, but he could not see anything but that soft shining, like
mist around a winter moon.
Durham shook himself and wondered why, when he was already so sure of
death, he should be so afraid. "All right," he said. "How is it freed?"
"The darkbirds do that. Watch."
He spoke to them, one word, and in the glass-walled prison there was
a stirring and a swirling of shadows around the soft shining of the
Star. Durham saw a disc set in the metal overhead. One of the darkbirds
touched it. There was an intense blue flare of light, and Durham felt
the throbbing of hidden dynamos, a secret surge of power. The glass
walls darkened and grew dim, the low roof turned and opened to the sky.
And through the barrier window, Durham watched the waking of a star.
He saw the frosty shining brighten and spread out in slow unfurling
veils. There was a moment when the whole building seemed filled with
moonfire as cold as the breath of outer space and as beautiful as the
face of a dream, and then it was gone, and the darkbirds were gone with
it.
"Come on," said Karlovic, a harsh incongruous voice in the stunned
darkness that was left behind, and Durham came, up the ramp and out
into the parklike space beyond, and all the tall lichens were standing
dead and sheathed in ice.
High above, burning cold over the city, a new star shone.
They followed it, through a silence as deep as the end of the world.
Everything had taken cover at the rising of that star, and only the
two men moved, the thermal units of their suits turned on high,
through streets all glazed with ice and cluttered here and there with
the wreckage and the dead of the rioting. The darkbirds were forcing
the Star to stay high, but even so nothing could live long without
protection in that sudden, terrible winter.
The road to the port lay blank and bare. They found one of the smaller
vehicles, its driver dead beside it. Karlovic got it going, moving the
great levers with Durham's help. After that they rushed faster through
the empty night. Durham shut his eyes, thinking.
He opened them, and the spaceport of Senya Dik lay black and deserted
around him, and Karlovic was gasping to him for help. Together they
pulled down the lever that stopped their conveyance. They scrambled
down and ran out toward the small lifeboat, slipping and stumbling,
dying inside their suits. They fell into the airlock, and Durham
slammed the door and spun the wheel, waiting out the agonizing seconds
while the tiny chamber cleared and then refilled, and they could tear
off their helmets and breathe again. They looked at each other and
laughed, and hugged each other, and laughed again, and then went in to
the cabin.
The communicator was flashing its light and burring stridently.
Durham switched it on. Jubb's face appeared in the tiny screen. "You
are safe? Good, good. For a moment I thought--! Listen. I have word
from my patrol that Morrison has other ships with him now, spread out
to catch you if by chance you get through. That is what decided me to
use the Bitter Star. I am angry, Karlovic. I am tired of mockery and
lies and secret violence. I am tired of peace which is only a cloak for
another man's aggression."
A darkbird came into the cabin and hung over Durham's shoulder. "It
will carry your messages," said Jubb. "I am leaving now for the port,
and my own flagship. We go together. Good luck."