Free Jaydium by Deborah J. Ross Page A

hard and smooth, like gemstone. It was slightly cool, but warmed almost instantly. He jerked his hand away.
    â€œWhat is it?” Kithri asked.
    Eril shook his head. “Damned if I know. It’s not like any substance I’ve ever seen before.” His right hand went automatically to the hilt of the force whip as he began searching for a door. There was none he could identify.
    After a few minutes, they gave up looking and went on. Several blocks southward, they spotted a squat lavender pyramid with a curious fuzzy surface that contrasted sharply with the smooth exteriors of the other buildings.
    A few buildings later they came to a single-storied cylinder of light, clear blue, like blue topaz. A doorway gaped before them, wide enough for all three to pass abreast. They went in, cautiously picking their through the piles of splinters that had fallen from the causeway overhead. The doorway was slightly elevated from street level but there were no steps, only a smooth ramp.
    Inside they found a single central room, about twenty feet in diameter and ringed with delicate fluted columns of the same pale blue. With the exception of some multicolored dust piled up along the curved wall, it was completely empty.
    Eril took a few steps on the unexpectedly spongy floor. When he prodded it with one heel, it didn’t give perceptibly although it effectively muffled his footsteps. He glanced up and saw the blurred outlines of nearby buildings through the translucent roof. Kithri and Lennart spread out, examining the walls.
    â€œWhat would you do in a place like this?” Kithri murmured. She wiped her hands on her dun-colored overalls, which looked even dingier than before.
    â€œSpace only knows,” he answered. “Hold a tea party?”
    â€œNobodd home,” said Lennart. “Nafor lon tie. Whoover bill thiss playz grayon dezih buh litt shor onth upkee.” He held up his hand, his fingers coated with rainbow-colored sparkles.
    Eril nodded, getting the general idea that Lennart didn’t approve of the current standard of housekeeping. I hope we understand each other better before some crisis lands on us. Most of the time I’m only getting one word out of three, and it’s probably the same for him.
    Beyond the blue cylinder they found a series of spacious, interconnected courtyards, lined with opal-tinted benches and abstract sculptures. The street slanted down into a broad trough lined by knee-high curbs. At regular intervals, round openings appeared in the lower part of the walls. They looked to Eril like water pipes rather than drains. He knelt to inspect them, but could discover no trace of liquid or other contents. Nor were there any discernible seams in the paving material.
    Here, near the center of the city, the buildings stood closer together, their shapes and vibrant colors clashing. Eril thought them the visual equivalent of the Academy banquets he’d been forced to sit through, getting more glazed in the eye and queasy in the stomach with each passing course. The red of rubies, the purple of amethysts, the blues of sapphire and turquoise formed a riotous mixture of color, with only narrow corridors separating the towers.
    Kithri pointed to the tiny tracks skirting a pile of grit-fine dust. “Something lives here.”
    â€œSomething the size of a lizard,” Eril commented.
    â€œYou’d think there’d be something more,” she said. “Weeds poking through cracks, the local version of cockroaches.” She grimaced. “Believe me, you never get rid of them.”
    Eril ran his hands over the seamless paving material. He glimpsed something moving at the far end of the dust pile and bent to examine it further. He saw what it was and chuckled. Not one of Kithri’s cockroaches, but an ant. Every planet he’d ever been on had them. This one had eight legs and bright red antennae. It seemed to be a lone scout, quite uninterested in the dust