The Long War

61

AS JOSHUA AND Bill’s journey wore on fruitlessly, just for a break, Bill lingered more often in what he said the comber community called ‘Diamond’ worlds – the opposite of Jokers, worlds with some unique attraction.

Earth West 1,176,865: this world came before they reached the Valhallan Belt, the American-Sea worlds, but here the Grand Canyon was drowned by a risen river: a truly spectacular sight, as Joshua saw from above, which drew tourists who camped along the canyon’s elevated rim.

Earth West 1,349,877: a world dominated by a strange, even unearthly ecology, in which familiar terrestrial creatures were surrounded by groves of green, twisted living things that crawled and spread, defying classification, neither animal nor plant – like slime moulds grown huge, perhaps, of many diverse forms. No biologist had studied this world. Visiting combers whispered of a Huge God, a hypothetical alien monster that had crash-landed here hundreds of millennia ago, leaving layers of flesh, bones and fat from which these organisms, descendants of parasites or some equivalent of stomach bacteria perhaps, had evolved. Joshua found the crowded variety of strange life on this world startling and in some way satisfying. As if something had been missing and he’d never even known it.

And somehow that train of thought led him to the answer.

It came to him while he was asleep. He sat bolt upright, in the dark, in his cabin in the gondola.

Then he ran out to the galley cum lounge observation deck, and stared at a blank piece of wall.

‘I’ve got it.’ When there was no reply he hammered on the thin partition that separated this room from Bill’s cabin. ‘I said, I’ve got it!’

‘Got what, yer mad eejit?’

‘I know where Sally has to be. She’s left me a clue, whether she meant to or not. It wasn’t what she left behind, but what she took away.’

He heard Bill’s muffled yawn. ‘And that is?’

‘The ring, Bill. The ring. Gold, set with sapphires. The one I brought with me and hung on this wall. It’s gone, Bill. When and how she sneaked on board to get it I don’t know. And how long it’s been gone – Sally will be laughing her head off.’

‘A ring. Ring-a-ding-ding. It’s only taken you three weeks to figure it out, Joshua. So where do we need to head?’

‘To Earth West 1,617,498 . . . To the Rectangles.’

‘Fine. We’ll start in the morning. Be there in three days. Now can I go back to sleep?’