“Frozen,” Ryo echoed, not savoring the modulation of the strange term.

Little white flakes continued to beat and smear themselves against the module window, reminding Ryo of nothing so much as white blood falling from a cracked and bleeding sky. Cracked wide open like the body of an unwary traveler such as himself, much as he might be if he were trapped outside in such a region for more than a few minutes.

The frozen rain continued to fall. Once the immediate novelty wore off, Wuu rushed to dictate into his recorder, to record several lines that he intended to incorporate into a long narrative poem of delicious horror, to be completed and refined after their return to Willow-wane.

The climb leveled off and soon they were descending. As they did so the frozen rain thinned and blue sky showed through—not the familiar pale blue of home or Ciccikalk or even Daret, but a sharp, terrifyingly brilliant blue that seemed only one step removed from the blackness of empty space.

Oddly enough, Ryo was more afraid of such Deep Cold here, on the surface of the mother world, than he’d been while traveling from Willow-wane to Hivehom. Deep Space was supposed to be deadly. But to see rain—ordinary, friendly lung-moistening rain—falling in hard little chunks on the surface of the center of the Thranx race was far more horrifying than the cold of interstellar space ever could be.

The scraper trees continued to grow tall but not quite as thickly as they had on the other side of the hills; undergrowth was dense and dark. Clinging to branches and accumulating in mounds and drifts was the omnipresent white, frozen rain.

Ryo stood back from the window. Surely, he thought, even if the rumors are true, even if there is something to the tale of alien monstrosities being held at Sed-Clee, nothing could be more alien or frightening than this awful, sterile, white land.

VIII

VIII

The fourth hive in the chain of six was well behind them and they soon hummed through the fifth. Then they were alone save for a couple of passengers in the single small module ahead of them.

Eventually, with the frozen rain still falling slowly from the sky, the module mercifully dipped underground again. Ryo was unreasonably thankful for the familiar warmth of confining earth. Lights soon intensified around them and they pulled into the dirtiest terminal he’d ever seen.

Every carrier station he’d ever passed through had centered on a switching circle, a nexus of repulsion rails that fanned out in different directions. Not in Sed-Clee. The track simply curved up against an unloading platform before arcing back the way they’d come.