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eldren way?
"Game time is running." Roxane's voice was quick and tight. "We've no time to
quarrel."
"We'll take the time." Bolivar grinned out of his breather bubble, his voice a
mocking drawl. "If your starman wants to fight."
"Don, don't!"
Benn looked at her and saw her anxious headshake. His pulse was still
throbbing. Opposing Bolivar, she had thrilled him with elation. Yet that did
not mean her world had changed. He bit his quivering lip and swung back to
Bolivar. It took him a moment to get his breath.
"Remember what the game is for." He made his clenched fists relax. "To let us
prove we can learn the eldren way. We must try to keep our peace."
"Okay, Starman. If you won't fight." Bolivar shrugged, with a nod to Roxane.
"You play your crazy game. Chee and I, we live the human way."
"Let's go on." Roxane glanced at the servos waiting on the bright pavement.
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"If you know where to go."
Bolivar squinted at the ring and led them into the tunnel. Its walls ran
straight, slick and bright as black glass, with no marks of whatever tool had
driven them. Benn thought it must be newer than the ruins, cut perhaps to
complete this course for the game.
A kilometer along it, they came out again into a narrower cave that twisted
like a dark gut through the crust of Stone. Railed here, the high path clung
to the winding wall. Sometimes the roof dropped near, but all he could see was
empty dark beneath them. He felt a cold wind blowing, and heard the rush of a
stream he could not see. Flowing water, carving out the cave, had sliced deep
here.
Ahead of him, Roxane had murmured some question.
" so Nebo told me." He caught Bolivar's reply. "All the air and water left on
Stone have drained into the caves, but they still make weather. Deep down, the
planet is still hot. Radio-activity in the core. Water there evaporates. Vapor
rises. Con-denses near the surface, where it's cold. The water runs back."
He touched the wall and Benn saw his glove wet with dew.
"Krongsblood River." He gestured into the black abyss be-low. "That's what the
translator makes of the Delver name."
A few hundred meters farther, the path forked again. One branch climbed away
along the winding wall. The other veered into another narrow black tunnel that
ran straight as far as Benn could see. Bolivar stopped there as if for another
jeering challenge.
"Trust me, Starman?" His voice, instead, was almost apol-ogetic. "Really?"
"We're here together," Benn said. "We have to trust."
"So we do."
Bolivar frowned at his ring and turned very soberly to Rox-ane.
"This is it." He bent his helmet close to hers. "We play our game together,
you and I, and we'll get the skyweb back. You'll be the new Sun Tycoon." He
paused to peer into her face, oddly intent. "Or else "
He jerked his thumb toward the far roar of the unseen river.
Watching, Benn saw her hand slide toward her knife. She made no other
response. Bolivar looked into her face for another moment and then turned to
lead them past the tunnel mouth and on into the cave. Here the path changed.
Barely a meter wide, it had no railing. Sometimes cut into an overhanging
wall, it was sometimes carried through the darkness on slender arches of gray
Delver concrete.
Condensation glistened everywhere, gathering into rivulets that trickled down
the cliffs. The muffled thunder grew louder, but Krongsblood River still ran
far below. Pausing now and then to look over the brink, all he ever found was
some rounded jut of water-worn stone looming out of the thundering dark.
"Game time!" Bolivar urged them, pushing fast ahead. "Game time running!"
"Please, Don! Not so fast!" Roxane called after him. "The walk's too slick."
He ignored her. The narrow path had lit for them, but it was slick with
trickling water and it quivered to the roaring below. It sometimes sloped
sharply up, sometimes sharply dropped. Benn's boots, not designed for
traction, slipped on one wet slope. He slid down it and sprawled so near the
brink that he crawled away before he tried to rise.
"Benn?" Roxane was suddenly back beside him. "Are you hurt?"
"Thanks!" he whispered, breathless from the fall. "Only shaken up."
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