Footfall

Herdmaster Pastempeh-keph felt the tiny thrust decrease further as he made his way to the bridge.

Matters there ran over smooth trails. Koothfektil-rusp turned to say, “The Foot is on target. The Defensemaster may break us loose at any time.”

“Do it,” said Pastempeh-keph. “Defensemaster, you lead now.” He settled himself on his pad and set his claws on the recessed foothold bars.

A recording bellowed for attention throughout the huge ship. “Take footholds! Take footholds! Thrust in eight breaths.”

The Herdmaster’s claws tightened on the bars. What can go wrong? The drive won’t fail us; we’ve been running it steadily for many eight-days. The prey can’t possibly stop the Foot now. If they could harm Message Bearer, they would have acted earlier. Message Bearer surged steadily, smoothly backward, swinging round to face outward from Winterhome.

As the pitted and gouged mass of nickel and iron moved away, a magnificent blue-and-white crescent moved into view. Thrust built up, and the Herdmaster felt himself sagging into the pad. His muscles, grown slack in low gravity, protested. He welcomed the feeling of gravity.

At a thrust higher than homeworld gravity, acceleration peaked. Then the motors on the digit ships began to fire, and thrust rose again. The crescent was dead aft, growing tremendous. Message Bearer was accelerating outward and backward from Winterhome.

The Foot would strike ahead of Message Bearer. The impact point would still be in view.

The Herdmaster summoned a view of the humans’ quarters. They’d reached the restraint cell safely; they were on their bellies on the padding. It looked uncomfortable.

Thrust dropped in increments as pairs of digit ships left their moorings around the aft rim. The Herdmaster watched their pulsing drive flames curve away. They must decelerate more drastically to take up orbit about Winterhome. The last four merely took up station alongside the mother ship. If something deadly rose from Winterhome, they might be of help.

But nothing broke the curdled clouds. The terminator swung round until half the disk was lighted, and the Foot was invisible against the night side. There, just inside the shadow, a red pinpoint flare! The pinpoint glowed orange, then white, then blinding white, all within the fraction of a breath. Herdmaster Pastempeh-keph contracted his pupils. It wasn’t enough. He turned away. The lurid light on the walls of the control complex flared, and held, and dimmed. He turned back.

A white flare was dimming, expanding, reddening. Rings of cloud formed and vanished around an expanding hemisphere of flame. Clouds spread outward through the stratosphere, hiding what was beneath.

Fistarteh-thuktun spoke formally. “Our footprint is on their sea bed.”

“Attackmaster, it’s right in the middle of that stretch of water. Is that where you wanted it?”

“Exactly on target,” said Koothfektil-rusp.

“Well done.”

Message Bearer was passing Winterhome at sixty makasrupkithp per breath; but Winterhome’s rotation kept the Footprint in sight. A fireball stood above the planet’s envelope of air. It clung to the mass of the planet like a flaming leech.

Light reflected orange from a solid stretch of cloud cover. The fireball stood in a ring of clear air. A ring-shaped ripple beneath the cloud sheet expanded outward at terrible speed. The ripple picked up distortions as it traveled.

“The shock wave through the ocean distorts the cloud cover,” Koothfektil-rusp said. “Like bulges moving beneath a fallen tent. Our experts will be able to pick out the contours of the continents and ocean floor by the way they retard the wave.”

It was mysterious and horrible. It only suggested the millions of prey who would drown beneath the clouds and the seawater.

“Thus we achieve equality with the Predecessors,” said Fistarteh-thuktun.

The Herdmaster was jolted. “Are you serious?”

“I don’t know. What horror lies beneath that fortunate shroud of water droplets? How many of the prey will we drown? How much terrain do we bar to the use of any living thing? What was our own world like when the Predecessors were dying and our fithp were brainless beasts?”

The layer of cloud was now flowing backward, into the fireball. Another layer formed above, high in the stratosphere, beginning to spread. Waves of blue light formed and dispersed. Pretty pictures, abstracts, but on an awesome scale…

One may hope that we have not invented a new art form. Awe and horror: the Herdmaster trampled them deep into the bottom of his mind. “We came to take Winterhome. Do the thuktunthp hold knowledge to help us understand this?”

“Perhaps. We accept, do we not, that the Predecessors altered the natural state of a world? Their world, our world. Now Winterhome is our world. Look how we distort its natural state. What did their meddling cost the Predecessors? Have we done better?”