The ball-shaped pin-joints of the geodesic dome were sixty thousand feet in the air, but to the wildlife of the upper troposphere, they looked like perches.
Within forty-eight hours of closing Sector One, swarms of surviving Void-Leeches had begun returning to the silver-steel lattice.
The beasts were not attacking the sky-barges now.
Instead, they were roosting by the thousands on the warm, shaking ball-and-socket housings.
Attracted by the forty-degree warmth of the load-bearing alloy and the gentle spark hum of the force-field, the twelve-foot parasites curled their barbed tails around the slanted struts.
They excreted thick streams of acidic, violet bile that dripped down the silver-steel tubes, slowly etching the protective lacquer and gumming up the care four-thousandths-of-an-inch joint clearances.
Before boarding the flagship sky-barge, Giles Croft had spent two hours in the sound testing lab at the base of Mount Granite-Spur.
He had gathered Toby Karr, Master Borin Bronze-Lung, and three instrument makers around a heavy granite workbench.
