Free Halfling Moon by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee Page B

and so close that it seemed it might crush them all
were one wrong move made by the pilot.
    Sounds came randomly: booms of lightnings
from planet to moon, echoes of the winds, crackling noises as small
portions of the moonlet were shed in puffs of dust. Surebleak had
few birds, but they all appeared to have gathered in welcome, the
preternatural light of a setting star bounced off a descending moon
giving the birds' shadows the length of an avenue.
    The word from the city was that all was
quiet; which was good -- the news that Boss Conrad was in charge
was unreasonably accepted as evidence that there would be no
problem, no matter the appearance of a moon falling ever so slowly
on the upcountry tilt of land that supplied the city with food.
    Boss Conrad himself stood in a crowd of cats -- several
dozen by his estimate. He'd been warned that the proximity of the
Clutch drive might have unexpected effects, and certainly the
sudden appearance of so
many
cats, streaming from the fields, from the sheds,
from the rocks -- was unexpected.
    Also unexpected was the absolute calm Yulie
Shaper exhibited, as if whatever demons he usually had to deal with
were exorcised by the drive's beneficent fields.
    Pat Rin, for his part, was well-traveled; as
passenger and pilot he'd been shipboard many times when approaching
foreign worlds, satellites, and stations, and he found the
experience just barely containable: there were no walls, no
comforting calls of station managers, nothing ordinary whatsoever
about this vision. He knew more than most what the size of things
were and the size and expanse of this was beyond his knowledge.
Something that size should not move, that was what he knew. The
moon nearly touched the planet's surface, the wind rushed and
carried odors of space and time and strangeness with it.
    Whatever downward progress had been made, it
all paused at once, though stones and ice, dust and clouds
continued to fall. Something very strange was happening now, as the
bottom surface of the moon appeared to vibrate and -- but there was
no human word for the process, which occurred within their sight
over the yawning chasm of the place they both now called World's
End.
    An earthquake's worth of sound beat at them,
the ground shook, trembled, bellowed, vibrated -- and was calm.
    For a moment or two the only sound was that
of cats, huddled now near the people in as much awe as they were,
and then a hiss, and more wind, and the surprisingly familiar odor
of wood and leaf.
    Almost imperceptibly, the moon-thing that
filled their vision and covered the land rotated, spinning very,
very slowly on an axis and then it was rising . . . rising, rising,
the sounds of falling dust and noisy birds and earth trembles
giving way to a rush and almost a thunderclap as the moon,
disgorging the impossible thing within it, lifted, and spinning
more strongly, wafted away.
    Amid the haze and winds stood a massive new
tower of green, the upper fronds of the tree catching the failing
light as the base was in shadow, the whole seeming now to have been
too big to have landed within the moon, far too alive to have come
through space. The birds, still alight from the rising of the moon,
swirled toward it, their calls echoing from the land and sky.
    Pat Rin yos'Phelium, Clan Korval, bowed to
the clan's still astounded new neighbor.
    "The tree's roots grew with the bounds of
the house, you see, and so we brought both. Necessity, sir,
necessity."
    Using his chin, Pat Rin indicated the low
structure beneath the branches . . . "The house is there, where the
dust settles even now."
    Pat Rin sighed, waved his hand toward the
lip of World's End, now full to within paces of Shaper's land.
    "I believe that, if we start walking now, we
can explain the rules of the contract to my kin very soon. As a
clan, we're somewhat familiar with contracts."
     
     
     

 
     
    About the Authors
     
    Sharon Lee and Steve Miller are the celebrated co-authors
of the best-selling Liaden