Final Inquiries Read Online Free PDF Page B

Jamie had no idea what the machines did, but they looked businesslike enough. Some hummed, one generated a static field powerful enough to set Jamie's hair on end, and several threw a fair amount of heat, while another was cold enough for frost to have formed on it. It struck Jamie that they were in a place meant for machinery, not for people.
    Brox led them out into a central open space, with what was obviously a pilot's station at the exact center of the sphere. Standing by the controls was a--a being of some sort.
    Since they were aboard a Vixan ship, with two simulants that had been created by the Vixa, the xeno in front of them had to be a Vixan as well--but it didn't look like any sort of Vixan Jamie had ever seen or heard tell of.
    The Vixa he had seen resembled giant nine-legged or twelve-legged starfish, though some said they looked more like a cross between a spider and an octopus.
    That sort of Vixa looked enough like certain Stanlarr Consortia components that Jamie wondered if the Stanlarr had borrowed some Vixan genetic material to make them. But, for all Jamie knew, the Stanlarr might have visited Earth, captured some starfish, and used those instead. Radial symmetry was far from an unusual feature of biological design in the galaxy. It had evolved many times, in many places.
    But Stanlarr components, spiders, octopi, and starfish, did not have internal skeletal structures. Vixa were simply too big to get along with just muscle power holding them up. Jamie had seen diagrams of Vixan skeletons. Each limb was supported by a central core of hinged-together bones that resembled a super-flexible human spinal column. On a nine-limbed Vixa, the front three limbs served as arms, shorter and more flexible than the side and rear legs. Each arm ended in a three-fingered hand capable of very fine manipulation. On a twelve-legger, the front four limbs served as arms, and had similar three-fingered hands.
    Vixa were also well equipped with eyes: There was one just above the point on the body where each leg joined to the central body--on the shoulder, if Vixa had had shoulders. There was another eye on the upper surface of each limb, more or less where the knees or elbows would have been. There were also eyes in the manipulator arms, in what corresponded to the wrists.
    According to BSI's briefing books on the Vixa, the eyes on the shoulders and midjoint were barely more than light sensors, able to distinguish light and dark, but not much more than that. It would be very hard for anyone to sneak up on a Vixan, but the Vixan wouldn't be able to give a very good description of the attacker. The eyes in the wrists of the manipulator arms were much more acute, but were really best suited to close-in work. Vixa did not have particularly good distance vision.
    The twelve-leggers were generally stronger and less graceful than the Nines, and their hands seemed better suited to heavy lifting than fine work. Sixes were the social betters of the Nines, an arrangement that both subspecies accepted completely.
    But virtually none of all that general description applied to the being they now faced. It was as if someone had fished around in a bin full of standard Vixan parts and used them to build something else. At first Jamie thought it was three three-legged Vixa standing one on top of another, until he realized that it was all one creature, with a columnar central body core that sprouted three sets of three limbs each. The upper surfaces of the body were all a deep purple or violet, while the lower surfaces were all a pasty bluish white.
    The lower three limbs were short, squat, and muscular, plainly dedicated to locomotion. The middle three were longer and more flexible, with much more developed three-fingered hands. The three upper limbs were shorter, but highly flexible, with the hand-eye structure modified into little more than oversized eyes on tentacles, the fingers short, stubby, almost vestigial. If on a "standard" Vixan the