VI

As the shuttle descended Ryo stared avidly out the long port. Hivehom was a beautiful world. Not so beautiful as Willow-wane perhaps, but then his own home was a paradise.

Hivehom had 20 percent more surface area than Willow-wane, but only a little more habitable territory because it was a cooler world. As they dropped lower Ryo could make out white smears at the northern pole—solid water, he knew from his studies. It was hard to imagine a place where there was little vegetation, where the air was cold and yet so dry that your breath seemed to crackle in your lungs.

Then the shuttle fell too low to see that far north and there was only green, green and brown like on Willow-wane. Air began to scrape the little craft and it skipped nimbly through the atmosphere as they dropped through the rain clouds above Daret, the capital city of the Thranx.

Fifty-five million citizens claimed the Hive Daret as their home. The capital city extended hundreds of kilometers in all directions, plunged two hundred and fifty levels toward the center of the planet Low hills flanked the valley beneath which the city had been cut. A great river, the Moregeeon, meandered over the metropolis. Long barges plied its surface and for forty levels beneath its rocky bottom an intricate complex of artificial aquifiers soaked up water to slake the city’s enormous thirst.

Air intakes rose a half-kilometer into the damp sky. They vibrated slightly from the drag of immense suction pumps pulling air down to the lowest levels. The forests of intakes and ventilators resembled a city of windowless silver towers.

Six shuttleports ringed the valley of the Moregeeon, the smallest dwarfing the shuttleport serving Willow-wane’s capital of Ciccikalk. The shuttle banked sharply to avoid a cluster of cloud-spearing ventilators.

Wuuzelansem pointed out the port as they leveled off slightly in preparation for landing. There, to the northwest, shone sunlight on the towers of Chitteranx, a satellite city of six million particularly wealthy Thranx. Still farther north lay the important metropolitan complex known collectively as Averick, famed for incredibly ancient temples raised by some pre-Thranx intelligence. Both lay hard by the base of the vast frigid plateau that loomed like an island in Hivehom’s sea of clouds and was rarely, even at this modern date, visited or explored.

Daret itself was close to Hivehom’s equator. Its surface boasted a mean temperature of 33° C and average humidity ranging from 90 to 95 percent With such ideal climatic conditions it was no wonder the valley of the Moregeeon had become the center of Thranx civilization.

The little craft leveled off and soon bumped slightly as its landing gear contacted pavement They were down and taxiing toward a dock. Ryo tried to count the shuttles, lighter-than-air transports, and sleek aircraft as they eased toward disembarkation, but soon lost track of types and numbers.

The wonders of Hivehom from the air had fully occupied his attention during the descent. Now that he and Wuu were on the ground, his early worries returned. Slipping into Daret was likely to prove more difficult then leaving Ciccikalk had been.