 
# Elliptical Galaxies

### Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords

### Copyright 2020 Philip Bosshardt

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Introduction

In Plutonian Seas

Cloudchasers

Marooned in Voidtime

The Rain Queen of K-World

Upload Incompatibility

The Battle of the Gauntlet

Test to Destruction

Second Sun

Statehood in Space

Introduction

My first collection of short fiction was called _Colliding Galaxies_. Continuing this theme, I have named this second collection _Elliptical Galaxies_. The usual definition of 'elliptical' is something along the lines of 'having to do with an ellipse.' However, a little digging uncovers a deeper meaning: something that is indirect, oblique or cryptic. I think these definitions fit the overall purpose of _Elliptical Galaxies_. Not to be cryptic, but to emphasize there are deeper meanings here than what you see on the surface.

My introduction to the first collection said this: _When galaxies collide in outer space, nothing much happens for a very long time. Surely, when the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies merge in about four billion years, as astronomers insist they will, it will be one of the most epochal events in our cosmos. Yet you'd probably fall asleep watching it, if you could live long enough to witness the whole event._

That's because galaxies are mostly empty space.

Yet when galaxies collide, and dust gets stirred up, strange and violent things do occur, given enough time. Dust clouds collapse. Gravity builds up. Matter gets compressed. Before you know it, the thing ignites. A star is born. And it burns hot and bright for billions of years.

Words are like that too...whether on a piece of paper or arrayed as bits on a disk. When put together the right way, words get compressed. They ignite. Light and heat follow. Readers exposed to all this find new ideas, like new elements, bubbling to the surface. Illumination follows, if the writer did his job and pushed the words together the right way.

Galaxies are composed of stars and planets and bits of matter floating around. However, astronomers still don't know what holds them together. There isn't enough visible matter to keep them from flying apart. Enter a mysterious thing called 'dark matter.' No one knows what it is. No one has detected any such thing. But, if the laws of physics are to mean anything, it _must_ be there...and so it is, as a sort of bookkeeping entry until we think of something else.

I like to think of the stories that follow in these terms. What you see is not all there is. Oh, the stories have all the usual parts...characters, a setting, some kind of plot. But it's what you don't see that gives them the impact they have.

Editors and agents often call this _narrative tension_. Let's face it: the basic structure of story hasn't changed in ten thousand years, since the time of Og and Grog, sitting around a campfire, swapping lies about the big hunt that day.

Picture Og and Grog sitting around the campfire one evening after a dinner of mammoth meat and tree roots. Og is sharpening his spear points. Grog is skinning a hide. Og grunts and gestures at Grog: "If you had followed my orders, you wouldn't have been injured by that mammoth, you stupid dolt." After some loud arguing back and forth, and few threats, Slamdok intervenes and, using more gestures and grunts, recounts the events of the day that led to Grog's injury and tonight's dinner. Some modifications are made to the account and after awhile, after everyone is stuffed with enough mammoth meat and some fermented berries that Slamdok's wife made, everybody agrees that this is what happened. The day's hunt goes down in the annals of the tribe as "the way things happened."

It becomes a legend. Later, maybe a myth.

Man is preeminently a storytelling animal. We don't know if this is how stories began but we do know, from research, that stories have for generations served a profoundly important evolutionary purpose.

All good stories have an underlying structure. I'm indebted to the website Storysci.com for the following list:

Include a beginning, middle and end

Show, don't tell

One word: conflict

Make your protagonist proactive, not reactive

Have a central core to your story

Know what your story is about

It's better to be simple and clear, rather than complicated and ambiguous

Say as much as possible, with as little as possible

Get in late, get out early

Characters, characters, characters

All great ideas. I'm pretty sure I've violated every one of these guidelines in the stories that follow. The stories of _Elliptical Galaxies_ run the gamut, with a variety of characters, settings and conflicts. There are explorers in a sub-surface ocean on Pluto. Explorers trapped in a storm on Venus. There are time-traveling soldiers and a married couple arguing over memories, which in 'Upload Incompatibility,' can be created and edited at will. There is an elderly father, suffering from a sort of dementia from his years as a time-traveling soldier, and his daughter just trying to please him and make him comfortable. There are engineers testing a new subterranean vehicle beyond its limits and a saboteur on a mission, who encounters something he never expected, causing his mission to change completely.

I've said before that I'm not a fan of big over-arching themes, but perhaps we could say there are some common elements in the stories included in _Elliptical Galaxies_. Many of the stories deal with explorers and soldiers. One definition of an explorer is one who seeks the unknown, one who seeks to discover and explain the unknown. One definition I have seen of 'soldier' is one who seeks to impose his will on the unknown, usually an enemy.

Man can be well defined between these two pillars of discovering and imposing his will on the unknown. Genesis 28 says "... _be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it."_ It seems like expanding into unknown lands and subduing them is a critical part of our nature. Can we subdue the entire Universe? I doubt it. Can we subdue our own nature? That's what _Elliptical Galaxies_ attempts to find out.

Perhaps that is our real future. To range across eons of time and lightyears of cosmos only to eventually discover ourselves and our true nature. That's my hope for _Elliptical Galaxies_. Maybe you'll be the one who finally uncovers the true secrets of dark matter, the thing that holds all of us together.

Read on, my friend. And do keep the lights burning tonight....

Philip Bosshardt

Atlanta, Georgia

January 2020

I first wrote this story in October 2017. The genesis for this story was an old Twilight Zone episode from the early 60s, called 'Death Ship.' It still gives me the chills. In that old story, an American ship lands on a distant planet, after detecting something on the surface from space. The target turns out to be the wreckage of their own ship, with their own dead bodies inside. Believing this to be just a hallucination, the ship captain orders them to take off again. Once more, the target is detected and they land. Same discovery. The ship takes off again and despite the crew's protests, the captain orders them to land and investigate again and again, each time finding the same thing, like an infinite loop. Is it real? Is it a hallucination? Is it something completely inexplicable?

_The crew of FCS_ Trident _discovers something in the subsurface ocean of Pluto (subsurface oceans on Pluto are suspected but not yet proven), something they can't explain. Is it a lifeform? Is it just a case of long-mission nerves, jitters, fatigue and human irritability? A waking nightmare? Bad medicine? Or all of these?_

_Neurologists tells us that human memory is a malleable thing. It doesn't exist in any one place in our minds, but is spread out across our brains like a pattern and must be reconstructed and even re-edited each time we recall something. The more we recall an event, the stronger the synaptic connections. The less we recall, the weaker the connections. That's the biology of human memory. For the poor crewmembers of FCS_ Trident _, each effort to recall things they had tried to forget only makes the memory worse. And when the local lifeforms can template what you recall into something explicitly physical, a voyage in Plutonian seas can truly become a never-ending nightmare...._

In Plutonian Seas

" _It is better to conquer yourself than to win a hundred battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or demons, nor heaven or hell."_

Buddha

" _For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one."_

Khalil Gibran

Aboard FCS _Trident_

Pluto, Sputnik Planitia

Two hundred meters below the ice surface

June 15, 2144 (EUT)

0400 hours (local)

Alicia Yang Lifelogger File #30:

It was Marta Sepulveda's idea to quarantine Commander Skellen in his quarters, for his own good. And for ours. It was hard but it was the right thing to do...even Marta the Bitch Goddess said if we didn't, the skipper would be driving _Trident_ right back to the Wreck again.

Nobody wanted that.

I've taken the liberty of downloading and synchronizing everybody's lifelogger files for the last few days, so as to put together some kind of chronological report on what happened. Win Blakely calls it CYA or maybe self-justification but we all have a responsibility to make factual reports during the mission. If we don't, Frontier Corps could easily send another unsuspecting crew right into the very same trap.

As it stands now, the vote is three to one, in favor of boring back through the ice, getting to the surface, somehow driving back to the lander and returning to orbit. From down here, comms with Fort Apache in orbit are pretty spotty, so they don't have a clue as to what we've run into here.

I just hope they can figure out a way to treat us, all of us, before this thing, this infection or whatever it is, gets worse.

Here's the first of the lifelogger files I patched together...

Joe Skellen Lifelogger File #27 (appended):

I was looking over some old maps and sea charts when the sonar contact alarm sounded. Okay, so I like old maps. The Corps psychs tried to convince me, after _Trieste_ and Europa, that hanging out with old maps was symbolic of me wanting to run away from Kristen, from my boy Tyler and all that. Can you believe that? Really, I just happen to like old maps.

_Trident_ had been cruising serenely at thirty knots, in level trim, when that first alarm sounded. I guess I had dozed off because it startled me.

I realized as I startled myself awake that it was the sonar alarm. _Trident_ had detected something ahead, something big from the looks of it. Auto-helm was engaged and she had already begun slowing.

I came fully awake and rubbed my eyes. I studied the sonar plot. Whatever it was, it was a large object, some ten thousand meters dead ahead.

_Probably a chunk of ice from the surface crust...broken off_ , I surmised. From the nav console, I could see _Trident_ had just about made her first waypoint coordinates, hundreds of meters below the ice at Sputnik Planitia. I got on the intercom.

"STO 1 to the command deck...Marta, get up here to the command deck at once...."

I disengaged autohelm and took the controls myself, slowing the ship to a crawl. I didn't want to run _Trident_ into something this big without studying it first.

Sepulveda's head popped into the compartment a few moments later.

"What gives, Captain?"

"Take a look at the plot."

Marta Sepulveda—our STO 1 and chief engineer-- slid into the second seat and studied the sonar return. "What is it, Skipper...one of your shipwrecks? Can we get a little closer?"

"We can try," I said. I ignored the jibe. It's no secret Marta and I don't get along but that's for later.

Slowly, _Trident_ closed on her target, dead ahead. The subsurface ocean below Pluto's ice surface was completely devoid of light, black as night. But the returns from _Trident's_ sonar indicated that the object could be something worth investigating.

Marta studied the plot. "Doesn't look like ice to me...too convoluted."

Eventually, I brought us to a complete stop, five hundred meters away.

We discussed our options. Alicia came up too. She's an astroglaciologist and she said it didn't look like ice to her either. Both Doll-Face and the Bitch Goddess concurred. "We need to check this out. What about _Uncle_?"

"This is about as well as our sonar can resolve the target," I agreed. "From the returns, it seems to be a large platform, with some kind of structures on top. I'm getting faint returns around the main one, too, smaller objects of some type. Get _Uncle_ ready, both of them. Win can help you. And Alicia, get back to the galley and get me some of that amunofen...I've got a splitting headache."

Marta disappeared into the main gangway and headed aft to G deck. That's where we kept _Uncle One_ and _Two_ ...our little robotic ships that often did initial recon on objects and sites of interest. Alicia came back a few moments later.

"You too, Skipper? My skull's been about to crack all morning." We both washed down several pills and concentrated on getting the feed from _Uncle._

As soon Marta called up and said the drones were ready, I started inching us forward, cranking up our spot and floodlights, trying to bring as much illumination to bear on the targets as possible. It was like shining headlights through a dense fog.

"Launching _Uncle One_ and _Two_ ," came Marta's voice. Presently, the murmur of their jets could be heard nearby.

"Got 'em," Alicia said. "I have full control...both bots...steering straight ahead...you want sonar, Skipper?"

"Sound away," I said. "I've got nothing but scrambled eggs on my scope."

"I'm calling up _Uncle One_ ," I told everybody. By now, even Win Blakely had come up to the command center. "Let's see what the drones can find out." I pressed a few keys on my wristpad and the underwater bots surged forward, their jets whirring gently. They both plunged into the murk and were soon lost to view. Blakely patched in to the bot's sensors. Soon, the whole team was getting sonar, EM and visuals back from _Uncle_ _One._

What we saw made my throat go dry.

It was some kind of shipwreck. No one could deny that. In fact, it looked like a smashed-up, crumpled version of _Trident_ herself. You could see the borer lens up front...it looked like a broken dinner plate. And the rest of the ship—you could only call it a ship—was broken into a misshapen hulk. Treads along her hull had mostly come untracked. Her stern pod was stove in like a beer can. The hull had been breached in several places, like some kind of flooding casualty, like--

" _What the—"_ said Marta.

"It's a ship...like us--? Blakely muttered. "I don't—"

"Hey, just keep it down, will you?" I warned everybody. "Everybody stay cool." Even as I said it, I could feel my own heart jackhammering in my chest. And my head was about to split in two.

Maybe I should pause here— _unintelligible noises in the background—_ okay...that's better. Looks like we lost _Uncle Two_ ...Win's checking to see what happened but _One's_ still with us. At this point, Alicia and Marta started arguing about our mission and I had to tell them to pipe down. The mission parameters were simple enough to list...we all know 'em by heart: land on Pluto at Sputnik Planitia and bore through the ice layer, penetrate subsurface ocean and conduct cruise science ops for ten Earth days, take samples, measure gross ocean properties, map currents, temperature profiles, chemical, salinity, brine...all that stuff. Then we return safely to the surface. Return to orbit and dock with Fort Apache. Transmit all the raw data and experimental results on high-band to UNISPACE Gateway Station at Earth-Moon L2.

That's it. It was after I had recited all that to Marta, Alicia and Win for about the millionth time that Marta pointed out something on _Uncle One's_ vid. I looked. It was some kind of lettering along the side of the sunken ship's hull. When I realized what it said—it was partly obscured by some kind of barnacle-like growth—my blood ran cold and my heart skipped about ten beats.

T-R-I-E S-T-E. _Trieste_. The submersible I had nearly died in on the Europa Explorer mission in '43.

No way. It couldn't be—

Marta Sepulveda Lifelogger File #41 (appended):

(Voice Note from Alicia here: " _I had to really bargain with Marta to get this. She didn't want to give up any files...too personal, they're not for publication, Doll—but I told her the mission report needed them...I guess her headaches were pretty bad at that point. She was weak and I just took the pendant from around her neck.")._

We got Skellen—the Skipper—back to Berthing on C deck right after he collapsed. Win gave him something. I don't know what, but he was calmer after that. I guess seeing something that looked like his old _Trieste_ ship just made him snap. Maybe I would have too. I feel like some kind of bug has infected the whole crew. We all have these terrible headaches and even Win...rock-solid _Win_ ...said he was having trouble concentrating. Plus we're about out of amunofen and we don't have anything else.

I was trying to maneuver _Uncle One_ inside one of the hull breeches in the side of that ship-thing out there when the lockout alarm light and siren came on. That meant someone was trying to use the lockout chamber and airlock to exit _Trident_. Win and Alicia and I were all on the command deck. It had to be Skellen.

By the time Alicia and Win got back to G deck, the lock had already been cycled and Skellen was already outside—against all protocol, against all procedure and common sense.

Alicia got on the comm circuit. "Skipper...Commander...Joe Skellen... _get back in_. This violates P-1. Nobody goes outside without all P steps taken and verified by another—"

Skellen's voice was weak, but you could hear the determination. We could see the shadow of his suit sliding across the deck porthole. He was heading forward. Toward that ship-thing.

"Gotta know...for sure—" his breath was ragged. Sounded like the beginning of convulsions. Probably his gas mixture was all wrong. He hadn't taken time to dial it in. "Gotta see...I did everything I could—I can't run from this any more."

Alicia practically screamed in her comm. We all knew what he was talking about "Commander...Commander Skellen...listen to me. Don't leave _Trident_ ...we don't know what that is out there...let _Uncle_ do the recon...Command—"

Okay, just slow down here. For the record, I said we all knew what Skellen was up to...or we thought we did, great psychiatrists that we all are. Back in '39, there was this mission called _Europa Explorer_. The idea was to land a ship on Europa's ice surface and bore into the ice, just like us. The submersible was _Trieste_ , a sister to _Trident_ , from what I've been told. One week in, _Trieste_ suffered a catastrophic flooding casualty. Lots of onboard casualties...most of the crew, in fact. She was able to make it back up to the borehole on the underside of the ice surface but then she sank. They couldn't hold buoyancy anymore. Only Skellen and some electrician's mate—I think it was Thielen—survived. They crawled and scrambled their way up through the icehole and somehow made it back to the lander.

For this, the Corps gave Skellen an Order of Merit. Can you believe that? I mean the man lost his ship, for God's sake. The mission was a failure. And inquiry boards sprouted like mushrooms.

I suppose it didn't help that I was on the crew of the _Yangtze-Benthic_ mission that followed...successfully I might add. The _Benthic_ was able to complete the mission that had been assigned to _Trieste_. And for this, I'm known as the Bitch-Goddess.

See, Joe Skellen is actually a Grade A sourpuss and he's also consumed with jealousy at me for completing the original mission and just aches to find a way to get back at me. That's what this is all about. I'm sure of it.

"Somebody's got to go out there and get the Skipper," Alicia said, wringing her hands around the porthole. "He'll freeze out there. He could die out there."

_About time_ , I didn't say, but then I felt bad and did what was right. I volunteered because I was the only other crewmember qualified in hypersuits.

Suit-up took an hour. The hypersuits had been rigged out for deep diving in Pluto's sub-ice ocean. All us troopers had been respirocyte-treated; our bloodstreams were thick with nanobots shuttling boosted amounts of oxygen back and forth. But the Plutonian ocean was cold and dense and we needed pressure and temperature protection, as well as personal propulsors. So...hypersuits.

I entered the lockout chamber and cycled through.

My first impression was cold, with a capital C. Numbing, penetrating cold. I switched on my suit lamps, saw only a fuzzy blur. _Too much sediment, too much_ something _in the water._ I dialed down the light intensity, and kicked off under one-quarter propulsor, sounding ahead.

I gently felt my way forward along _Trident's_ underhull, until I came at last to the borer head.

"End of the line, here—"I remember muttering. I checked my own sonar scan. The Wreck was out there somewhere, giving off intermittent returns. There was a fuzzy patch near the center of my scope.

_That has to be Skellen_.

"Alicia...SP, this is STO 1...can you move in just a little closer...put more light on the target?"

Yang obliged. As soon as I was clear, the sub inched forward, cranking up her spot and floodlights, trying to bring as much illumination to bear on the target as possible. It was like shining headlights through a dense fog. And it _did_ look like a smashed-up mirror-image of us...like _Trieste_ , but I figured that was just the light and the ice dust playing tricks.

I found Skellen clambering all over the hull of the Wreck, trying to find a way in.

"Come on, Skipper...come on, Joe...let's get you back. Your gas mix is all hosed." Inside his helmet, I could see his lips turning blue...somehow the respirocytes either weren't working or they'd gone bad. I had to get us back inside as fast as I could. And I wasn't feeling so hot myself...I checked my own mixture, checked my respirocyte settings...looked okay, but I didn't want to take any chances,

Skellen fought me for quite a while and the Commander is a physically strong man. But they don't call me Iron Lips for nothing. I'm a fitness junkie and I was finally able to wrestle the man away from the Wreck and started up my propulsors, trying to keep the squirming, shaking mass close enough to me to keep us on course. _Trident's_ lights helped me to home in through the dark but it was what Skellen kept saying over my comms that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

"I saw him, Marta...it was Tyler...inside that wreck. His body, just floating right by...right by the porthole. I'm telling you it was Tyler in there...we've got to go back...get in there."

Sure it was. And all the King's horses and all the King's men, not to mention Frontier Corps psychs and some pretty advanced medicine, couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again.

That's when I saw something floating just aft of the Wreck that brought me up short. It was the little rover from Hellas Basin... _Oscar_ , we called him...the Promontory Plunge...five days buried in a landslide of dust and rock...God, I thought I'd put that memory behind me for good—

Winston Blakely Lifelogger File #88 (appended):

Alicia and I argued for quite a while about what order to put these files in. Even now, I'm not sure this sequence best captures the reality of what happened...what nearly happened.

I was listening to Marta on Comm 1...she was describing the Wreck, what she could see of it, and the Commander's condition, when she just sort of started trailing off...just gibberish, after that.

Marta saw something. Nobody doubts that. Even _Trident's_ sonar was already picking up multiple contacts. But what she saw...ah, now that's the key.

Somehow, some way, we coaxed her back into _Trident's_ lockout and cycled the locks. She and Skellen fell out onto the deck, shivering, shaking, flopping about. I helped Alicia get their helmets off and, because I'm supposed to be the med guy on this mission, I made myself sound like a chief medical officer and ordered them both to bed. I prescribed the rest of the amunofen and then decided to set up a bioweb in Berthing to isolate them from everything else. I also made sure the web was flooded with oxygen and over-perfused with nitrogen to boot, to take care of any decompression problems.

Once I was sure the two of them were stable, I told Alicia I needed to check and probably turn off everybody's respirocytes. "Something's happened...maybe I can reset the buggers. But I just have a suspicion...."

Alicia wasn't so sure. "That's something the Captain should decide."

"It can't wait," I told her. My own headaches had gotten worse in the last few hours as well. I didn't tell her I was also starting to hallucinate a little...there were moments when I thought I was back on that HAVOC airship at Venus and I didn't want to re-live that again.

Alicia went up to the command deck while I poked around in the galley med cabinets for the coupler, the device we use to communicate with the 'cytes. Eventually, I found it. I knew I had some training on the thing but I also knew I was rusty, so I went through the manual for a few minutes, to familiarize myself with the critters.

Back at Gateway before the mission got underway, we all got respiratory boost—the respirocyte injections. Normally that means alveolar pumping. Mechs were inserted with a program to boost the efficiency and capacity of our oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange...the alveolar sacs. When it's done right, you get a sizeable increase in anaerobic range...and the stamina of a racehorse. The docs said it would help us in our pressurized environment aboard _Trident_ and give us additional lung capacity if we had to leave the ship for any reason. Nobody argued at the time.

With the coupler, you could use rf and acoustic signals, depending on mode, to talk to the bots. They were like a little swarm buzzing around inside your chest; they weren't supposed to be able to go anywhere else.

I got the coupler working and had every intention of sending the OFF command to the bots inside Commander Skellen and Marta, and later me and Alicia, but I saw something with the coupler that gave me pause.

I was getting unusual EM spikes from both of them, and from outside their pleural cavities, outside their chest. The signals were intermittent, first there, then not there, but some signals seemed to be coming from their heads. _That shouldn't be_ , I told myself. I studied the returns, checked the manual, couldn't find anything that said this was normal, so I sent the OFF signal to shut down respirocyte activity in both Marta and the Skipper. I got the proper acknowledgement back, I thought, but the curious EM spikes from their heads continued for awhile. I wondered about it and the barest hint of a suspicion began to nag at me.

Joe Skellen Lifelogger File #29 (appended):

After I felt semi-human again, I had Win shut down the biowebs and Marta and I got up. I sent the Bitch Goddess to E deck, where we keep our life support system controls.

"Check everything: pumps, valves, seals, accumulators, reservoirs, the whole smash. There may be something in the air, in life support, that's giving us these headaches. Something driving us crazy."

She left, but I could see in her face that she thought I was the only crazy one aboard. And maybe she was right. I had violated about two dozen safety and procedure protocols by venturing outside _Trident._ I was going to have a hard time explaining it to the crew if I couldn't explain it to myself.

Win and I went to the galley to get something to eat. And drink.

Winston Blakely is about as bald as a cue ball, with high cheeks, a big nose and the eyes of a five-year old at the county fair. Some people call him a clown. There is some resemblance, I'll have to say. He's also the geek of all geeks and as serious as the plasma torch engines that got us to Pluto in the first place. He sniffed at his mug of tea and gave me that hangdog look.

"Skipper, you said you saw something...inside the Wreck. Something moving, floating about. Your words: ' _it looks like a body_.'"

I had seen something. For a moment, I thought----well, I toyed with the idea of scoffing at Win's notion but that look on his face told me it wouldn't fly. Win's like my old pet cocker spaniel Prissy. She could sniff out a fib in an instant.

So I shrugged. I mumbled. I prevaricated. I sighed, took long sips of my coffee. Finally, I said, "I did see something. There seemed to be a sort of face on it...maybe it was the light. Or maybe ice. Sediment. Who knows? But it reminded me of my son...Tyler. I haven't seen him in like...I don't know...like forever?"

Gradually, unwillingly (I told myself) but because Win is Win and wouldn't let it go, I spilled the whole story. See, I always liked diving, especially wreck diving. I met Kristen while we were both working in the trades. Hewitt and Mitchell Industries. She was an electrician. I was a sort of journeyman carpenter. My best friend at the time was Cory...Cory Haley. The three of us palled around quite a bit, from job to job. Houston, Wichita, OK City, Tulsa, you name it. Wherever there was work, we went. But I also wanted to dive, had the bug, you know. Like Prissy with an old rag.

Anyway, we all wound up in Houston. Cory and I applied for and became commercial divers for the oil industry...Neely-Jones, that was the company. Worked deep rigs, pipes, that stuff. Great work. We loved it. There's nothing like being down five hundred feet, just you and the wellhead and some big fat tuna schooling by. But that's when Kristen became pregnant. And nobody knew...was it mine? Was it Cory's? That great time turned sour and tense pretty quick. We all argued. We wouldn't talk to each other. Kristen got sick, had some complications.

I was way weaker about all this than I thought. Yeah, I could handle deep dives and helium mixtures and wrestling with two tons of wellhead pipe and stuck valves and barnacles and things. But I couldn't handle Kristen being pregnant. I skipped out. Ran out. Went south, all the way to Brazil...Petrobras and the Espinoza Two rig, about a hundred miles east of Recife. I wasn't even thinking straight either, nearly died in an accident there back in '28. So I kept running...sure, I'll admit it...all the way to Frontier Corps.

When I got word that Kristen had given birth to a boy—she named him Tyler—and I still didn't know if it was mine or Cory's, I signed up with the Corps and joined a cycler crew...the _Archimedes_. You know about them. It's like riding a big bus for years on end, looping around Earth, Mars and Venus. Just trying to get away...from myself, I guess. As far away as I could. I re-invented myself as an astronaut. That's what the psychs said, anyway.

Eventually, I wound up on _Europa Explorer_ , and the _Trieste_. I was in command because I had all that diving experience and we were going under Europa's ice, into that sub-surface ocean. I don't need to go into what happened with _Trieste_ ...but that's what I saw out there. Or thought I did. When we came up to the Wreck, I saw _Trieste_ ...we all saw the lettering. And then...the face. And I swear on my mother's grave—God rest her soul—that I've never in my life laid eyes on my boy...if he _is_ mine. So where did that face come from?

Winston Blakely Lifelogger File #89 (appended):

The Skipper and I finished our drinks and our talk and he went up to the command station on B deck. Me, I went to my berth compartment and dug out an old slate where I store articles and stuff I like to keep. I'd seen or remembered a study done at Mariner City several years ago, about how it might be possible for nanoscale bots to be inserted into a human brain, bots designed with certain detecting sensors. If done right, this article speculated, the bots might be able to locate and sniff their way along certain trails of glutamate concentration in the brain. According to the theory, if paths of equal glutamate concentration could be detected and followed, then it might be possible to trace the path of an actual memory engram, crudely of course, but the possibility was there, even if the technology wasn't. Like following the marker stripes of a highway. And if an actual human memory engram could be detected and followed, maybe it could be reconstructed. That could lead to all kinds of interesting possibilities.

My headaches had come back and I had already turned off my own respirocytes, or I thought I had. I went rummaging through the med lockers for anything that might help. We were now out of amunofen. We didn't have any real med scanners on board and I wasn't trained in them anyway. My head felt like it was in a vise and it was about to burst. Somewhere outside the med lab, I must have collapsed and fallen unconscious.

And the hallucinations came again...this time, I was back on the HAVOC ship, serenely plying the upper stratosphere of Venus, when that lightning bolt hit and all hell broke loose. I tried to—

Marta Sepulveda Lifelogger File #45 (appended):

When I saw the residue on the inside jamb of the airlock door, I was so startled, I nearly tripped backward over some loose conduit. I steadied myself and gave myself a stern talking to: _girl, you're an engineer, you've got a Physics and Quantum Systems background, you've got mission responsibilities in propulsion and maneuvering systems, buoyancy control, life-support, airlock and escape systems, the fab/machine shop and systems maintenance. You can figure this out._

It wasn't quite dust. And it wasn't quite something slimy, though it definitely was moving. Maybe ice melting...ice residue. Or sediment? I blinked hard to shut off every image I was having of horror and sci-fi movie monsters...like the Blob, you remember...and concentrated on studying it for a moment, then getting some kind of sample. Win needed to see this. He's the bio-guy among us and we did have a mission objective of sampling anything alive and indigenous in Pluto's ocean, though nobody really thought there would be anything down here. But, as Win said, extremophile bacteria and organisms have a way of turning up where you least expect them.

So I got a scraping and stuck it in a small capsule, sealed it and headed up the gangway. That's when I found Win on the gangway deck, flopping about like a flounder.

Between Joe Skellen and me, we got Win into our little sick bay and decided to set up a bioweb for good measure. That's what protocol called for and at this point, I was for following the book to the letter on everything.

While Win was thrashing about and mumbling about getting up into the ascent capsule... _go.go, go, the cabin's breached, we're descending fast!—_ oh, we got all of it recorded for later, we heard the Master Alarm sound throughout the ship again.

The skipper looked up—he was running some kind of diagnostic on Win using the bio-web—I didn't even know it had that capability—and swore.

"I'd better see what this is about...Marta, keep the diagnostic going. It may turn up something—"

Skellen disappeared up the gangway and headed up to B deck, muttering something about Alicia and her nerves.

I stayed with Win and a few moments later, he came to. His eyes were weak and runny and he tried to sit up but I said no and gave him something to drink.

Then he sank back and gave me the particulars.

"Marta, I was back on Venus. October '35. The HAVOC mission...High Altitude Venus Operational Cruise. Lightning had hit the gas bag and we were going down fast. I was pushing, pulling, shoving and kicking to get everybody into the ascent vehicle...it was like cramming your family into a coat closet. Two didn't make it. Three of us did. It was—" He closed his eyes and I saw the sweat beading up on his face.

"Win...Win...take it easy. Just lie there, here...sip some of this." I wasn't trained for med, didn't have a real clue if we had anything I could give him. So I gave him water and made him lie still. He had his eyes closed but he was still mumbling something---I couldn't make it out. That's when Alicia...Doll-Face...showed up at the door.

Alicia Yang Lifelogger File #34:

I left Commander Skellen on B deck, and went aft to see about Win...we were all worried about Win. Marta was there. Normally, B-G and I don't get along too well and we tend to avoid each other as much as you can in a ship the size of _Trident_ , but nothing happened. We were too concerned about Win.

"That thing...the Wreck.. it changed, somehow. Like it morphed," I told them. "One minute, it looked like a ship, like us, maybe like _Trieste_ , if you listen to the Skipper. Then it seemed to sort of shift...shadows and all...and it looked like—"

"Like what?" Marta asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know...maybe like a balloon. A deflated balloon. There was some kind of lettering on the side...I couldn't make anything out but the first letter. I'd swear it was a kind of stylized 'H'."

Win clearly heard what I said and sat up abruptly. "HAVOC...it has to be that. I need to—" He started to get up but Marta and I both pushed him firmly back into the bed. His head hit the bioweb and the critters buzzed at him and that helped send him crashing back into the pillow. "You don't understand...I need to see—"

Marta wouldn't hear of it. "You need to stay right where you are."

Now Win seemed completely calm and lucid, though it only lasted for a minute. "I think I know what it is...I was reading. Some kind of bugs...not ours. Our respirocytes...I turned them all off. But I was still getting some kind of reading, some kind of EM spike from your head, Marta, and Commander Skellen too. There's something there...in all our heads...that's reading our memory engrams somehow. Making us re-live some of our memories."

That's when I remembered the capsule with the residue.

It took a few moments, but with Win's instructions, we got the quantum imager up and humming. It's sort of glorified microscope...don't ask me how it works. I stuck the capsule inside the scan platform and we tuned the thing to high resolution. That's when we first came face to face, sort of, with the Bugs.

Winston Blakely Lifelogger File #89 (appended):

My head felt like grenade had gone off inside but somehow, I convinced Bitch Goddess and Doll-Face I could get up, so they turned off the bioweb. The three of us studied the imager screen. All of us had our mouths open.

The first thing we couldn't agree on was whether the damn things were alive.

"Is it some kind of virus?" asked Alicia.

"Looks like a bot to me," Marta said and I felt she was closer to the mark. Plus the scraping Marta had made had captured a whole swarm of the Bugs—as we had started to call them—there seemed to be thousands. I increased the imager resolution to the max.

"Look at them!" Marta marveled.

The imager screen was at first murky, crowded with the spikes and cubes of dissolved molecules. Lumpy, multi-lobed sodium molecules darted across our view like shadowy ping-pong balls. I studied readouts from the imager...something was there, hidden in the data traces on the scope. I fiddled with the gain on the imager, tweaking it, subtracting foreground clutter.

Something approximately sixty nanometers in one dimension, narrow with a globe structure at one end...and scores of probes, effectors, cilia, whatever. Incredible mobility...triple propulsors beat an idling rhythm as we closed in....

Alicia let out a whoop. "Will you look at that?"

I came closer, squinting at the vague, fuzzy outlines on the screen. "I'd say they're bots. A whole colony of them. A welcoming committee, it would appear. Come to see what we're about."

Despite my lingering headaches, my fingers flew over the interface controls. "We're about to check this joker out..."

It was Alicia...she had a penchant for military history...who remembered a line from Sun Tzu....

He who is skilled hides in the most secret recesses of the earth.

Delicately as I could, I maneuvered among the jostling molecules of chlorine and sodium and potassium. A huge kinked snakelike cluster of more molecules drifted by.

Gradually, the shape and size of the Bug we were examining became clearer. Bristling with effectors and arms, it looked like a miniature Apollo Lunar Module. The head was a multi-lobed cluster of spheres and hexagons; inside the churning electron cloud dimmed out any detail.

Below the head was a cylindrical sheath, covered with pyramidal facets and undulating beads of proteins - the assembler's probes and effectors. Marta was frankly awed at the sight.

"It's an assembler, Win...that's one hell of a lot of gear for this little bastard," she said.

"Maybe he's programmed to evolve somehow," Alicia suggested. She had positioned herself to study the image too.

"And to take control of its environment," Marta said. "It might explain some things--"

"So many different kinds of effectors," I marveled.

Indeed, the horde of Bug assemblers were rigged out like battleships, with devices for every conceivable mechanical or chemical action. A flatplane baseplate capped one end of the sheathed body. The tail structure was dense thicket of fibers, each tipped with penetrator clusters. The penetrators enabled the thing to attach to and enter any structure.

I brought the imager to a complete stop. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled. Something wasn't quite right, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Alicia...what do you make of this?"

She was really just a geologist, a rockhead, but she often had good ideas. Alicia was amazed at the images coming back. "It's the basic assembler structures we've seen for decades, from the time of the original autonomous assemblers, the first ANADs. But it's enhanced, somehow. Changed or evolved. I've never seen so many effectors. Amazing. _That_ probe for instance--" she fingered a dark, indistinct structure to one side of the nearest device--"looks just like a saw. And that--I believe I recognize...I'll be damned--"

I had seen that too. "Sorting rotor?"

"That's what it looks like." At her request, I fiddled some more with the resolution, managing to tweak the view even sharper. Dim outlines became clearer. "A segment of a sorting rotor. Cam-driven with carbene grabbers and--" I squinted down at the imager, adjusted my glasses "--looks like--yep, diamondoid follower rods. "Probably process upwards of several hundred thousand molecules per cycle." I shook my head with grudging respect. "Neat workmanship. But I'd bet my aunt Emma's life savings that bugger's not indigenous to Pluto. Something like this couldn't just appear here, could it? Somebody would have had to leave it here, seed the ocean...or the ice, with these Bugs."

"If they're really assemblers," Marta said, "they might be able to replicate things. Structures."

We all looked at each other.

"You mean...like ships? Like rovers...balloons?"

"Like things that resemble bodies."

That gave everybody a chill. Nobody said what really needed to be said, for several minutes. Finally, I had to say it.

"Guys, I think these Bugs might be inside us somehow...inside our heads. We've all had several days of bad headaches. Maybe even working with the respirocytes...."

That's when we all felt _Trident_ start moving again.

Alicia Yang Lifelogger File #35:

When I realized the ship was underway again, I knew it could only mean one thing. I headed up toward B deck, Marta and Win right behind me. Sure enough, the Captain was at the controls, maneuvering _Trident_ closer to the Wreck. He had that look...and it was a look that scared all of us.

"Did you see this?" he asked. "It was moving, breaking down...so I decided to move us in a little closer. This is—"

"Captain—" I said. I plopped my butt into the second seat. I'm nominally Surface Pilot, but I can operate the ship if I have to. "Captain...stop...don't get any closer. We've got to get away from this...it's not what it seems,"

Skellen was all business. "It just started morphing...first, it looks like _Trieste_ , or like us. Then it looked like an airship, then something else...it's incredible. What the hell is it?"

"We know what it is," Marta said. "Win, tell him—"

So Win told Skellen what we had found. At first, the skipper stared at us in disbelief.

"Marta found some residue," Win went on. "We examined it...this stuff is made of bots. Nanobots."

"And we're all infected," I added. "It's everywhere around the ship. Captain, it's even inside us."

Marta begged, "Commander Skellen, we have to get back to the surface, back through the ice. We need to vent _Trident_ to vacuum, so we can get rid of these bugs. Examine every surface. Scour everything. It's the only way."

I had known Joe Skellen for about two years by this time. I first met him when I was assigned to the mission. Sure, I was second team. I came in as a replacement for Heike Sjalmersson, the original SP. Heike went and got herself injured skiing. The Board like my glaciology and geology background and my China doll face, I guess. In all the time I had known Joe Skellen, I had never seen the look of determination, the look of grit on that face that he showed now. His face looked like a mask, frozen in time, as if it were a fossil set in stone...and I know a thing or two about stone. That's when I wondered if the bots in his head could somehow affect skin tone. Or facial appearance. Who, really, was now in control here?

Skellen went back to his controls. "Guys, we've got a mission here. You know that. Remember the briefings...do I have quote Paragraph Number Four to you all again: search for biosignatures and investigate. Sample if possible."

"Skipper," I practically blurted out. "that's true but not if it endangers the ship or the crew. Marta's right...we need to secure the ship first...before we do any more investigating."

Skellen said nothing and I looked back, at Marta and Win. We all knew the mission rules. In the book, there's a paragraph about who takes over when the Mission Commander is incapacitated. I hadn't read it in months, but I knew the gist: ' _When the Mission Commander is unable to perform his duties, responsibility for mission ops and ship and crew safety shall fall to the SP.'_ The Surface Pilot. That's me.

I nodded to Win and mimed with my fingers: _go get the med kit...hypodermic. Sedative S-1. Quick, man...go now._

Win blinked but he understood. He vanished and came back about a minute later, cradling the needle in his palm. He hovered behind the control deck for a moment, unsure of what was next. I gave him the look. _Go on! Do it!_ He knew what to do and quickly, expertly jammed a capsule full of S-1 right into Skellen's neck.

The Captain jerked as if stung. He twisted around as if to protest but already the compound was doing its job and his hands flapped and fluttered as he slumped in his seat.

"Come on," I ordered, assuming command though the Mission Rules weren't always quite so clear about what happened next. I worried how Marta would take this but she seemed consumed by the necessity of the moment. Or maybe the bots in her head were acting up and she had suddenly become more pliable...for that, maybe I should give the damned Bugs thanks.

I didn't feel so hot myself but I told them to get Skellen aft and secure him on D deck. There were some storage closets we could lock him into. When that was done, we had a big pow-wow in the galley.

It was Marta who voiced our deepest concern. "I'm still having...I guess you'd call them hallucinations. I see things...in the gangway, in my berth space, everywhere...that I know can't be real. An hour ago, I was somehow back driving that rover _Oscar_ across Hellas Basin and plunging right over the promontory into the dust...just like it happened this morning. Just like it always happens. I could see and hear and talk just like before, like it was a script...played over and over again. I can see the faces staring at me, accusing me, wishing I would just get in the airlock and open it and be done with it..." here, Marta shuddered. "Makes me sick to think of it."

"It _is_ a script," Win said. "A memory trace...probably being activated and strengthened by the Bugs in your head. I'll bet if you left _Trident_ and went outside, you'd bump right into that rover...somehow the Bugs in our heads are templating certain memories."

"And communicating with their pals outside, in the water"" I added. "How is that even possible? Templating memories and replicating or fabricating things from that template. That's what spooked the Skipper."

"It spooked me too," Marta admitted.

It was past time for me to do what SPs are supposed to do...be a pilot. "I'm getting us out of here. We're going back to the borehole and going topside...all the way to the surface. After that, we'll vent the ship and try to make it back to Fort Apache."

"What about us?" Win asked. "The Bugs inside us?"

I shrugged. "Unless you've got an idea, we'll have to hope Doc Wilks has something in his little black bag at Fort Apache. For now, secure the ship. And check on the Skipper. We're getting underway in five minutes."

Marta Sepulveda Lifelogger File #47 (appended):

When you drive off a cliff and plunge into about forty meters of dust and Martian regolith, and stay there for a week, your mind plays strange tricks on you. As I was going about my duties cleaning up the ship for transit, I kept thinking about Alicia up there on the command deck, now running _Trident_. How well did I really know Doll-Face anyway?

I know she's a stuck-up hardass, that's what I know. Most of us felt that Heike—our first SP—got a raw deal. Sure, she was injured in that skiing accident, but with modern surgery, she would have been able to make the mission by launch date...our launch was set by orbital positions anyway. We all thought the Corps was just looking for some way to get an Asian crewmember on the team.

Alicia's a perfectionist and we call her Doll-Face, even to her face, because her expression never changes: she looks like a porcelain figurine. She's tiny and doesn't eat enough to fill a squirrel. What's her favorite dish? Oh yeah...that Indonesian crap called _kiyuva_ ...some kind of guava-lime-mango thing that nobody else can stomach.

I knew Alicia was qualified to run _Trident_ and I knew she would get us out of here, away from the Wreck that had so spooked the Skipper. As I went from deck to deck, compartment to compartment cleaning up the ship for transit back through our ice borehole, I was getting a little spooked myself. It seemed like every closet or locker or hatch I opened, I saw a face...and they were all faces from the rover. First, it was Jaime...his nose half torn off from the impact when we finally landed, on our sides, at the bottom of that dust pool. I slammed the locker door on F deck and got the hell out of there as fast as I could. Our power cells on that deck would just have to do the best they could without me.

Then it was Ramses Shelton, our rover driver...poor Ramses, with a broken shoulder and cracked ribs, practically screaming his head off. I found him in a utility closet on E deck...or maybe it was just a hallucination. Or maybe it was the Bugs, replicating something from my brain. I didn't stick around to find out.

Somehow, I wound up on D deck. I heard a door rattling, some muffled voices. After what I'd already encountered, I wasn't too keen on finding out what that was. Probably Commander Skellen, coming to after the sedative wore off. Or maybe something else the Bugs had replicated. In spite of myself, I came up to the closet door and listened more closely, dreading what I would find.

It _was_ Skellen, only he seemed to have the voice of Ramses Shelton.

"Thank God...Marta, is that you?...get me out of here. We've got to get the ship in position for another dive...."

"Skipper, we're trapped here, remember? Forty meters of dust and regolith, remember?"

"What! What the hell are you talking about? Open this closet right now! This is a mutiny...the Corps'll have your head if you don't let me out."

When I thought about it later, I realized that Skellen was right. We did have a mission to explore, measure and sample. It was in our charter, written in all our Mission Rules.

And Doll-Face was right too. The skipper had become a danger, to himself and to all of us. If I let him out, he'd just drive us right back to the Wreck. The Mission Rules were clear: nothing could be allowed to endanger the ship or her crew.

We needed to get the hell out of there as fast as we could. But we were still trapped. Forty meters of dust and regolith. He kept banging on that closet door, just like Jaime and Ramses and I kept banging on that rover hatch, hour after hour, day after day, hopelessly trapped.

It was the Bugs that had done this. They had scrambled our brains, fried our minds so we couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't.

I unlocked the closet door.

Winston Blakely Lifelogger File #91 (appended):

Okay, so maybe I wasn't paying attention like I should have been. I happened to be up on A deck, checking out the borer lens and the bots we use to carve our way through the ice, just checking, you understand. Just making sure we didn't have a containment breach. Back in training, we ran this scenario a number of different ways. The borer bots get out somehow, a stray cosmic ray hits one and it mutates into something nasty and starts eating the ship. Nobody ever believed that could really happen. It was something the simulator techs liked to throw at us just because they were sadistic sons of bitches.

Or not. Maybe it was just me remembering what happened aboard _Neptune_ , when we lost power investigating those deep hydrothermal vents that became known as the Juneau Vents. We were offshore of panhandle Alaska and it was close, but we made it to the surface without casualties.

We all heard the lockout alarm. It blared like a trumpet... _wah, wah, wah, wah_ —all over the ship. I scrambled into the gangway, colliding with Alicia coming out of B deck and we both hauled our asses back to G deck, where the airlock was. Marta was already there, staring in horror at the lock, as it finished its cycle.

Skellen—Commander Joe Skellen—had somehow gotten out of his closet, grabbed a hypersuit and cycled himself through the lock. He had gone outside, while _Trident_ was underway. We were heading back to the borehole and were only a few hours away, according to Alicia's last read of the sounder data.

Marta was wringing her hands. "I know what it's like to be trapped! You don't know...you just can't imagine--!"

"What the hell!" I yelled. " _Get him_ ...we have to get him back--!"

I started to pull open the lock, but it was Alicia who grabbed my arm. "Let him go, Win. He's a dead man, anyway."

I looked at Alicia like she had just grown two heads. "What! What are you saying...we've got a man overboard."

Alicia gripped my arm more firmly. "We can't help him now, Win. We've got to save the ship...and the rest of us. We've got to make that borehole and get back to the surface, so we can get back to Fort Apache...and get treated. You know that. Now go back to A deck and make sure the borer's ready to get us up through the ice."

I glared at her and Marta, incredulous. Bitch Goddess and Doll-Face. Never had I felt the names were more appropriate. But never let it be said that Winston Blakely doesn't follow orders. I took a deep breath, peering out the nearest porthole. Pluto's ocean was black as night. I don't know...maybe I had hoped to catch a glimpse of Skellen, in his hypersuit, banging on the hatch to be let back in. I wanted to be vindicated that way. I had seen the Bugs close up in the imager scope. I knew perfectly well what they were capable of. But still I hoped.

I didn't see anything. I left G deck and went forward, now feeling sick to my stomach.

Alicia Yang Lifelogger File #38:

Somehow, some way, we found the borehole and headed up. Riding a ship like _Trident_ up through a narrow borehole through Pluto's ice crust isn't for the faint of heart. It's sort of like some of the caving I did on Mars, researching what eventually became my claim to fame...the paper with the title nobody can pronounce: ' _Creep, Flow and Ablation Historical Models of Subsurface Basin Moraine Provinces.'_ My ticket to _Trident_ and the Sputnik Planitia mission.

Win Blakely was with me on B deck when the chime sounded in the compartment. Win turned to the ice profiler. "Detecting pressure drop...surface must be near. I'll slow down the borer—"

He tapped a few keys, twisted a small joystick on the side of his seat. The vibration dropped off noticeably and _Trident_ slowed her upward ascent. A jostling rattle threw us into some left to right oscillations, until I could trim out the flutter. "Happens when I change borer speed—"Win explained. "She's biting into some kind of different ice...maybe some rock too."

Breaching came a few minutes later. _Trident_ surged forward and there were more squeals and shrieks, until we could secure the borer. She came up at a nearly twenty-degree up angle and settled with a resounding crunch back to the surface as she eased out of her tunnel. Immediately, I unshackled the treads and secured the borer completely. Within moments, the ship was now a giant cylindrical tractor, waddling and rocking from side to side, trundling across the icescape like a drunken pig.

"Let's check out the view, Win," I said.

Through the starboard porthole, the view of Hilary Montes was fantastic...a jumbled pile of every conceivable shape, cubes and pyramids and smashed polygons piled on top of each other like some giant child had dropped a big ice tray. Dead ahead of _Trident_ , the canyon floor was a maze of ice blocks and boulders, while towering ice cliffs loomed overhead on either side, several thousand meters over them.

Win eyed the cliffs warily. "I'm hoping we don't run into any landslides...or maybe I should say iceslides. That's probably what's littering this canyon floor."

I steered us carefully between boulders, as the ship pitched and heaved over the rough frozen ground. "You could be right...maybe navigating this canyon isn't such a hot idea after all. We could bore our way through those canyon walls and see if the going is any better up top."

"Your call, Captain," Win said, without really thinking. We looked at each other. "Sorry...old habits. I'd better get back aft. Help Marta with our hypersuits, so you can vent the ship to space."

"Call me when you're buttoned up." I grabbed both arms of my seat as _Trident_ careened up and over a ledge in the ice and slammed down hard on the other side. "Eastern Chaos...what a great name for this hellhole...I think I _will_ look for a way out of this canyon. _Trident'll_ be beat all to hell before we get anywhere if I stay down here—" I checked my board...still twenty kilometers to the lander platform. "I'll try to raise Apache while you're aft."

Win Blakely went back down the gangway and stopped outside G deck, where Marta was readying our hypersuits for the big blow.

"Alicia's venting the ship to space in half an hour. Get into your hypersuit and button up good."

"Gladly." Marta replied.

My voice went out over the crewnet. "Detachment, this is Yang...listen up. The ship's going to be vented to space in half an hour...hopefully the vacuum will pull any Bugs out of _Trident_ for good. Suit up and buddy-check every connection."

There was a flurry of activity up and down the gangway as the Marta and Win made ready. Win brought a suit up to the command deck, and helped me get into it.

"Okay...it's time. I've found a smoother run through the canyon here, but I'm slowing us down for a few minutes. On my count, I'm cycling the lockout on G deck...that whole compartment will be exposed first...hold on to something...there'll be a bit of a breeze...five...four...three...two...one... _mark_! Lockout valves to open... _NOW_!"

The ship had settled down on her tractor treads as I guided them along the canyon floor beneath the ice cliffs of Hilary Montes. There was a short sharp shriek, then popping sounds as _Trident's_ interior bulkheads flexed in the pressure drop. Then came the hurricane—

Win had positioned himself with Marta just outside G deck.

"Watch your head, Marta—" Something long and sharp—it turned out to be a broken piece of cargo skid—went whistling by their heads, banging into the access hatch to _Trident's_ tailpod, where her powerplant was located. Soon, the gangway was enveloped in a gale of debris, mostly pieces and particles, now flowing toward the lockout, steadily being sucked out into space.

"Hold on—" Win grabbed a stanchion by the hatch. The force of the evacuation wasn't all that great, but you could easily lose balance, if you weren't careful...or get a piece of equipment in your faceplate. _Jeez, I told Doll-Face to wait until we had everything lashed down_ —

Any Bugs still inside the hull had to be already shredded by the pressure drop. The faint shimmer of remaining bots looked like a big hand had crushed it on one side. By the trillion, bots streamed toward the open lockout and out into space, an undulating flickering line in the air, thinning steadily as the ship's air vented. The swarm darkened and shrank visibly with every passing moment. Soon, only a few twinkles and sparkles drifted in the air.

_Got to get every last one of those bastards_ , Win told himself. _Then, we'll have to go over every friggin' surface in the ship to make sure_. _If these buggers can replicate like I think they can, even one bot could, in time, replicate the whole swarm all over again_ _._

The venting lasted ten minutes and, in that time, we finally made the lander platform, nestled right where we had left it in a rugged ice valley. Home sweet home.

I drove _Trident_ up onto the platform, rocked her back and forth a bit, then made fast the mooring jaws and we were ready to go.

Win and Marta both came up to the command deck.

"Anything on high-band? Anything on comms from the Fort?" Win asked.

I shook my head. " _Nada_. Maybe our own comms are fried. Bugs could've done it. Get to your stations. I'm doing a quick count and, as long as OSCAR concurs, we're out of here."

Everybody got buttoned up and I consulted with _Trident's_ master computer—we call him OSCAR—and got mostly green across the board. The few anomalies weren't worth worrying about.

When the timer hit zero, OSCAR lit our fuse and _Trident_ lurched off the surface like a startled bird. I took a deep breath—not easy under 3-g acceleration, but it felt good and I sank back in my seat, licked some sweat off the end of my nose and closed my eyes. I figured I'd let OSCAR do the driving today.

Fort Apache, here we come.

That's when I heard Marta's cry from behind me.

Winston Blakely Lifelogger File #95 (appended):

I had been looking out a nearby porthole when I heard Marta's voice erupt. She was sitting right next to me, but looking out another window.

"My God! It's— _look down there._ Look at it--!"

I unstrapped, wobbling around in _Trident's_ lurching ascent as she rolled to the correct azimuth for climbout to orbit—and peered over Marta's shoulder.

I didn't even realize I had been holding my breath until my face about turned blue.

Normally, Pluto's surface from altitude is a sort of icy brown and tan color. Some kind of chemical reaction between the nitrogen and extant solar and cosmic radiation...I'm no chemist. Blocks and valleys of nothing but tawny ice, surrounded by hills of more ice. But what Marta had seen immediately caught my eye too.

There scattered across the surface were piles and heaps of some kind of debris. Some kind of ruins smashed and littered across the icescape like a child's toy thrown down in anger.

I swallowed hard. "Alicia, do you see this? There's some lettering...some symbol I can't make out—"

Marta swallowed so hard we all heard it. "It's a logo...it's the Corps' logo, for God's sake. Is that—what I think--?"

Alicia took a quick look. "Maybe. Could be shadows."

We all knew that was bullshit. We were staring down at the wreckage of Fort Apache. The damn thing had dropped out of orbit and crashed on the surface of Pluto. There couldn't be any other explanation. We all saw it: pieces of cylindrical structures. Pieces of trusses. Scattered debris...hoses...more girders...something that looked like an engine bell.

"It's the damned Bugs," Alicia decided. "Got to be. That's all it _can_ be. Don't look at it. It's not real. Get back to your stations."

On one level, it's fair to say we were all suspicious, each in our own way. After what we had been through, after what we had seen, losing our mission commander, anyone would have understood. The Corps' Board of Inquiry would surely understand.

The wreckage— _this_ wreckage—wasn't real. Any more than the other wrecks were real. It was a replication of something—somebody's memory, maybe all of us harboring this nagging fear and it became literally real—created by the Bugs. But you couldn't help wondering.

"Any luck on comms?" Marta blurted out. Her voice had picked up a noticeable quaver.

Alicia shook her head. "I'm trying..." she triggered the speaker for 1MC, so we could all hear the static and hiss. "Apache Control, this is _Trident_ , on approach. Do you copy?"

Nothing. Hiss and static, with a few chirps and whistles.

"Any station, any station, this is FCS _Trident_ ...we are on approach to station FCP, Fort Apache. Do you copy, over?"

Nothing.

" _They're not there."_ Marta practically sobbed. Bitch Goddess was cracking up and it wasn't pretty. I laid a hand on her shoulder and she grabbed it and held on. I felt a catch in my own throat.

"Alicia, keep trying."

"I am. I've got something on radar...it's long-range, some kind of intermittent signal, I'm not really sure—"

Marta looked over at me and blinked. "Win, what if that signal isn't real? Maybe you and I, all of us...maybe we're—"

"Any station...any station, this is FCS _Trident_ ...we're on emergency approach to Station FCP...is anybody there? Does _anybody_ copy?"

END

This story is a fairly straight-forward extrapolation of a dicey rescue attempt in the atmosphere of Venus, a research mission that goes horribly wrong. Science can't yet tell us whether there are or ever have been avian lifeforms in that atmosphere. On balance, the odds are against it, but then life seems to find ever more marginal niches to exist and thrive in right here on Earth. Who can really say?

I enjoyed detailing a fairly strong, in-your-face female character in this story too. Emily Blakely is like a force of nature that won't quit and loves nothing better than showing up her skeptical brother and all the other disbelieving males.

Sometimes we want to achieve something so bad that our minds seem able to will the accomplishment into existence. Emily is a lifelong birder, one who loves birds, loves to photograph them, study them, catalog them. Perhaps her own stubborn willfulness 'created' the avian lifeforms thay may or may not exist in the Venusian atmosphere.

On the other hand, common sense and the laws of physics say you could never effect a rescue like the one described here. Only a stubbornly willful person would even think to try.

Sometimes, seeing and imagining possibilities that others scoff at, that don't seem to be even remotely possible, can have good results.

Cloudchasers

" _Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."_

Carl Jung

" _A delusion is something that people believe in, despite a total lack of evidence."_

Richard Dawkins

" _The world in general has meaning, deep meaning at times. This cannot be dismissed as a delusion, an artifact of chemicals."_

Deepak Chopra

Aboard FCS _Geronimo_

High Altitude Venus Operational Cruise

Fifty-two kilometers above the surface of Venus

August 15, 2186 (EUT)

0400 hours (local)

On Venus, there are only clouds...to the naked eye. Cloud cliffs and cloud valleys. Cloud ravines and cloud canyons. Cloud bergs, buttes, badlands. Cloud continents. Above the clouds is the vacuum of space. Below the clouds is Hell itself, an inferno of heat and sulfuric acid rain. And don't forget the occasional storm.

In the late summer of 2186, as people on Earth reckon time, _Geronimo_ had been on auto-cruise for several days when Doug Fremont and Walt Blakely were both startled out of their sleepy daze by the insistent beeping of the wind shear alarm.

"Emily named this one _Estelle_ ," Blakely noted from his anemometer display. "Sisters are like that. Properly known as VS-8...looks like this one's going to be a doozy."

"Hey, your sister lives for these clouds...what an imagination. Unicorns and castles everywhere. Any chance we can steer clear?' Fremont proposed. "The last one turned my insides into scrambled eggs."

"Checking Doppler now..." Blakely scanned his instruments. "Jeez, this is one big sucker...covers almost all of Theia and Rhea Mons. I'll try to steer around it."

Blakely grasped the joystick and swiveled _Geronimo's_ props to starboard. The huge airship responded sluggishly, buffeted and shuddering from stiff cross-winds. "It's like driving into a hurricane."

Fremont nodded grimly. Outside, sulfuric yellow clouds were thick and impenetrable. "It's worse than that...anemometer shows wind speed nearly a hundred meters per second. I can feel the cross winds."

A bright flash lit up the tiny cabin, followed by a crescendo of roaring, rolling thunder. Veins of lightning arced across clefts and gaps in the clouds dead ahead.

"Are we turning?" Fremont asked. "I don't feel anything. I don't like the looks of that cloud bank up ahead."

"Not enough to make a difference. _Estelle's_ a monster, and she's sucking us right in...I've got no yaw and not much pitch either. We're caught in her outer bands...but I think we can ride her out. We did it before."

"Yeah but not with lightning like this. Every time we pass over Theia Mons, those volcanoes light up the clouds like a Christmas tree."

"Hang on...I'm going to try to--"

But Blakely's words were interrupted by a terrific flash, bright enough to blind both crewmen. The thunder came an instant later, followed by the smell of rotten eggs...sulfur...and the cabin was quickly thick with smoke and electrical arcs and discharges. The shock wave knocked Fremont and Blakely out for a few seconds.

It was Fremont who came to first. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, thankful for the seat harness that had kept him upright, then his blood ran cold.

It was clear, viscerally as well as by instrument, that _Geronimo_ was in trouble. The whole cabin was canted down, at the wrong angle. Displays flashed nonsense and garbage right in front of his eyes. He sat up abruptly, ascertained the panel was safe to touch and shook his commander roughly.

"Walt...Walt, wake up!"

Blakely sniffed groggily. "What...what happened?"

"We got struck...lightning. Direct hit. Look--" He pointed to the panel. "Main bus A and B undervolt. Caution and warnings all over the place. Master alarm going off. It was a direct hit, Walt."

Blakely was mission commander for HAVOC 1 but he felt like someone had just slammed the side of his head with a sledgehammer. "What's with our attitude...we got no instruments. Everything dropped out at once?"

"Most of the instruments are fried. Why are we in down pitch like this?"

Blakely released his harness and pressed his nose against the forward porthole. Outside, he didn't have to watch for long to notice the outer fabric skin of the balloon envelope flapping like mad, torn and shredded like so much confetti, shedding Teflon and polypropylene and scorched gear off into the wind.

"Here's your answer." He indicated the massive and expanding tear. "Looks like starboard cells A and B, maybe C. We're holed. Lightning ripped a big gash. Can you check helium pressure?"

"I got _nothing_ on the panel, Walt," Fremont complained.

Blakely sat back in his seat. "We're going down. Can't you feel it? I don't need instruments to feel it. Butt logic tells me we're in a descent...and it's picking up. We can't go below forty kilometers. She won't hold up."

Fremont and Blakely stared at each other for a long moment. Fremont reached for the comm button first, praying that it hadn't been fried. He selected High-Band A and keyed the mike on his helmet.

" _Fort Bliss_ , _Geronimo_ ...do you copy? _Fort Bliss_ , _Geronimo,_ do you copy. We've got a major emergency here...Emily, Alicia, come back!"

There was a staticky crackle, followed by chirps and whistles--"whistler waves," mouthed Blakely. A clear indicator of lightning in the area. More gusty crackles, then a faint, scratchy voice came through. It was Emily Blakely, aboard _Fort Bliss_ , several hundred kilometers above them in orbit.

"Copy, _Geronimo_ ...say status again. I couldn't...copy ...last trans--"

Fremont explained, carefully, word for word, what had happened. "We're hit by lightning...holed bad. Maybe more than once. Everything's toast down here. And the envelope's leaking...big tear, starboard side forward. I can see the shredded fabric."

Now Walt Blakely got on the comm. "Em, we're going down. I'm pulling the plug...we'll have to powerup _Pinocchio_ and abandon ship. Fast. We've got no instruments but my sense tells me we're headed down in a hurry."

Emily Blakely, safely ensconced in her couch aboard _Fort Bliss_ swallowed hard. "Copy that. Walt, get out of there. Light off _Pinocchio_ and get the hell away now. Don't waste any more time. Grab what you can, squirt the rest up to me and get your thick skull out of there."

"Already underway," Win came back. "We'll re-contact when we're away on ascent."

"Copy that."

Blakely motioned for Fremont to grab whatever data he could, tapes, drives, disks, _Geronimo_ was packed with instruments for research: spectrometers, nephelometers, radiometers, thermocouples galore.

"Here," he pushed Fremont aside, as the Mission Pilot fumbled with some gear. "I'll do it. Get your butt into _Pinocchio_ and start powering up. I don't know what our altitude is but it feels like we're dropping fast. Crush depth may not be too far off."

Fremont acknowledged and squeezed past the Mission Commander, then into the narrow access tunnel leading aft to the ascent vehicle, nicknamed _Pinocchio_. Once powered up and checked out, she would detach from the gondola and drop away, then her LOX/RP-1 rocket engine would fire and the ship would arc upward out of the deep troposphere and into a low-altitude orbit around the planet. A few hours' maneuvering would put the small ship into position to dock with _Fort Bliss_.

Fremont was deep into his switch settings and system startups when more lightning flashed outside.

" _Wow_ ," he muttered. "That was close." He called up to the habitat. "Walt, better get buttoned up quick. That lightning's getting worse."

A voice came back through the short tunnel. "Almost done here. Just a few—"

The flash was blindingly bright and it seemed to last for an eternity. Fremont felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up. _Pinocchio's_ cabin glowed an unearthly spectral blue-white for a split second, then the shock wave hit, battering the entire airship like a rogue ocean wave.

That's when Fremont heard something he hoped he would never hear.

It was a sound of tortured metal, a screeching, groaning, wrenching, scraping sound of metal being rent and torn. _Pinocchio_ shimmied and shook like a wet dog. Then Fremont's blood ran cold. He stared at the smoking rim of the access tunnel, seeing the first puffs of yellow sulfuric acid fog seeping into the cabin. He craned forward to inspect the adapter and held his breath, sucking his teeth.

The inside of the transfer tunnel was a smoldering pile of wreckage. Completely blocked from _Geronimo_. Worse, the outer skin of the tunnel was ripped open butterfly style in multiple places, still smoking and the air of Venus' deadly atmosphere was already filling in...a deadly toxic mist of sulfuric acid and hydrogen chloride.

Instinctively and by training, Fremont slammed the hatch shut and fired the latches. Then he got on comms back to Blakely.

"Walt...listen. That last bolt...it was bad. The transfer tunnel was hit. I just checked inside...it's wrecked. Impassable. Worse, it's tearing away from _Geronimo_. The atmosphere's leaking in at a high rate."

For a few moments, Blakely said nothing. Fremont's heart skipped a few beats.

"Walt...Commander Blakely--?"

"I heard, I heard. Okay, Doug...listen up carefully. We drilled on this. We trained for this. Make sure the hatch is secure. Once you're sure, separate _Pinocchio_. Do you understand me? Press the SEP button, light off the rocket and get out of here."

" _What_? Are you nuts? I'm not leaving you up there!"

"Doug, don't argue--" He stopped when a fierce wind gust yawed them roughly to one side, then whipped the ship hard to the opposite side. More groaning metal. More screeching in the tunnel between them. "Doug, we can't have this argument. You know what Mission Rules say. If one crewman can't make into the ascent vehicle--"

"I don't care! I'm not leaving you behind."

"Hey, I can ride this out. I've still got some lift to maneuver with."

"Bullshit!"

After a few agonizing moments, with lightning and storm conditions getting steadily worse, Blakely practically yelled into his mike. "Doug, we can't lose both of us. You've got the data with you. Now _GO!_ Leave! Get away! At least one of us has to survive. Launch now...that's an order!"

Fremont planned to argue more... _we can make this work, I can clear the wreckage away, I think there's enough room_ ...but a click on his comm made up his mind for him. Blakely had cut off comms.

"Asshole!" he muttered. He dove into the last of his checklist, ripping through the startup sequence, flipping switches and stabbing buttons angrily. "Always got to be a hero!" Just for good measure, he opened his own mike again, not knowing if Blakely was still on line and yelled. "I'm not giving up, you know! I'm coming back...one way or another, I'm coming back and rescuing your sorry heroic ass in spite of you."

Then, when the whole panel in front of him was green and there were no more caution and warning flags, he blinked and shrank back from another flash of lightning, waited for the shock waves to dampen out, sank back in his seat, eyeing the fierce swirling gusts of yellow and orange outside, and reached out for the SEP button.

His stomach lurched up into his throat when _Pinocchio_ dropped. Automatically, after two seconds, the rocket lit off. Doug Fremont was slammed back into his seat by the five-g acceleration and closed his eyes.

In his mind, while all around _Pinocchio_ , the massive cyclone churned and heaved and the rocket bore him upward toward the relative safety of space, he could still see Walt Blakely's grizzled face, full of week-old stubble, his big dog ears sticking out like airplane flaps, grabbing data tapes and disks left and right, eyes blazing with determination as _Geronimo's_ porthole glass cracked and burst inward in a shower of splinters and shards.

He was never sure if _that_ had really happened or if he had just imagined it.

Emily Blakely's face was a mask of incredulity. She angrily swiped back the ornery hair swirl that was always dropping into her right eye.

"You did what...you _left_ him... _abandoned_ him?"

Fremont winced, not from Emily's words but from the swab that Alicia Morelos was using to dab at cuts and lacerations and burns on his face.

"Look...I didn't want to...I refused...I told him no way. But it was an order. And the transfer tunnel...go see for yourself. It's toast. It got fried by that bolt. I was lucky to get away at all."

Emily just glared at Fremont. "Really, you abandoned the Mission Commander...and my brother. Doug, so help me--" Her fists balled up and she looked at them as if they might act of their accord. Then she brushed past Morelos and Fremont—they were all crammed into the tiny sick bay compartment—and headed up the gangway to the command deck, swearing, muttering to herself, slamming a fist into the palm of her other hand. In the weightlessness that pervaded _Fort Bliss_ in Venus orbit, her gestures only sent her bumping and scraping up the gangway. She banged her forehead on the hatch climbing into the command deck and growled at her own awkwardness, then furiously strapped herself into Walt's seat.

"Let's try some comms...see if I can raise him," she swore at herself. She selected High-Band A and keyed the mike.

" _Geronimo_ , this is _Fort Bliss_ , come back." Nothing but static and an eerie hiss, then a warbling whistle that sounded just like the Canadian Stellars' jay she'd just gotten onto her birder's life list last year. No, not quite. That had more notes to it.

_No birds down there, girl_ , she told herself.

" _Geronimo_ , _Fort Bliss_ , do you read, over?"

Nothing. More static. Lightning 'whistler' waves. And something that sounded like laughter.

Emily bit her lip. _This can't be happening. Not to the great Walter Blakely_. Fremont's words hung like rusty nails in her mind's eye: _Geronimo headed down...the envelope torn...helium leaking out fast...no maneuvering...._

One number flashed across her mind: forty kilometers. That was crush depth. _Geronimo_ couldn't hold up below that altitude. The massive Venusian atmosphere would crush the ship and the balloon like crumpled paper below that.

She tried again, keying the mike again and again. "Hey, wise guy...anything you can do I can do better." That had been their standing joke for years. Even when Frontier Corps had inexplicably selected her for the HAVOC mission too--can you imagine the public relations possibilities, the PR people said, with brother and sister on the same mission?

Walt had almost had a hernia trying to explain it all.

Then...a burst of static and a scratchy voice...fragments.

"...like hell, Em... _Geronimo_ ...-ending through forty eight klicks...you...--ead me?"

Emily's heart went into her mouth. "Walt... _Geronimo_ ...say again. You're breaking up. This is _Fort Bliss,_ _Geronimo_ ...Walt, say again!"

Hiss and static, some warbling and a few chuckles...some clown down there in that thick poisonous soup. "...good data now. Seen dark patches to my star--...hear some--...outer hull...just shedded something—"

"Walt!"

But after a few more chuckles came an ear-splitting screech. Maybe more lightning. Maybe the outer bulkhead...maybe....

_No, I won't consider that._ "I'm coming down there, fathead. I'm not leaving you. You don't get to check out without me. Anything you can do, I can do better...keep saying that. It's true and you know it. I'll find a way and then I'll enjoy rubbing it in your face." The prospect of pulling off a rescue in spite of all the odds, the Mission Rules, the physics and the pressure and the toxic air and Fremont's lame explanations brought a faint smile to Emily's face. She'd love to rub that in his thick-headed face and see his reaction.

Even girls can do the impossible, when they put their minds to it.

The rest was just details.

They gathered in the crew's mess, the three of them: Morelos, Fremont with bandages and gauze pads all over his face, and Emily Blakely.

Alicia Morelos was brusque, no nonsense, munching on one of her weird fruits. _Kiyuva_ , she called it. Some kind of guava-mango-lime thing from Indonesia. Alicia loved them, ate them all the time. Nobody else loved them.

"As I see it, we don't have any real options. We can't get to _Geronimo_ , not from here, not with what we have left."

Emily looked at Fremont. "What about _Pinocchio_?"

"She's fried," Fremont told them. He winced, experimentally touching a bandaged spot on his cheek. "Ascent vehicle is intact structurally, but her systems need a thorough going-over before she could be used again. And there's no fuel left."

Emily considered that. "The station uses the same blend...LOX and RP-1. We could transfer fuel to _Pinocchio_."

Morelos shook her head. " _Geronimo_ doesn't have that much time. By the time we can get her checked out, the tunnel repaired, systems tested and rig up some kind of fuel transfer device, it'll probably be too late. Emily, that's just physics. Last telemetry we got from Walt showed the ship descending at a rate of two kilometers every ten minutes."

"What about _Cinderella_? The ERV?"

Morelos looked at the STC1 like she was from Mars. "Are you nuts? Earth Return Vehicle is for...you know, _Earth return_. We use _Cinderella_ and we don't have a way to survive the trip through Earth's atmosphere."

"And, not to belabor the obvious," Fremont said, "but she's got no real fuel supply...just a small engine and some maneuvering thrusters. Out of the question. Walt would have a cow if we did that."

"My brother's about to die! Let him have a cow. Who cares what he thinks?" Emily wanted to sock the both of them. She was about to stalk out of the mess compartment when the Message Alarm beeped.

Morelos reached over to rip off the sheet stuttering out of the printer. The one-way comm time to Earth was now over ten minutes, with Venus and Earth approaching conjunction positions in their orbits. Morelos had already apprised Mission Control about _Geronimo's_ situation.

The station commander read the sheet silently, her thin lips tightening with each word. She handed it to Emily when she was done.

Emily's face blanched. She crushed the paper. "They can't do this. It's not right. We can still reach _Geronimo_ ...there _has_ to be a way."

"It doesn't matter, Emily." Morelos was already headed out of the crew's mess. There were about a million things to be done to prepare _Fort Bliss_ for a trans-Earth injection burn. "Mission Control has spoken. The best launch window's coming up in three days and we've got a lot to do, including you. There won't be another launch window for a year and we'll run out of supplies before then. We've got to save the mission."

Emily bit her lip hard, earning a little blood. No, she would _not_ allow tears now, not in front of Morelos and Fremont. "I don't care what Mission Control says. We've still got three days. We can get to _Geronimo_ ...I know it can be done. We just need to think some more...come up with some more options."

Morelos pulled Fremont along with her. " _You_ think, Emily. I don't have time for thinking. We've got work to do on the command deck. So do you. That's an order. I want your systems checked out and buttoned up by this time tomorrow...we still have an all-ship inspection to do before Flight okays the burn and confirms our numbers."

Emily said nothing. Morelos and Fremont headed out into the gangway and disappeared. They went up to the command deck. Emily undid her lap harness and drifted over to the cupola on the other side of the crew's mess.

Below the station, the upper ionosphere and troposphere churned and heaved like a boiling pot of soup...all yellow and orange and beige and tan, streaked with dark patches that were still the subject of endless debates. Venus was a salmon-hued world, mottled and banded with reds, browns and ambers, a cauldron of clouds, storms and majestic seething turbulence. Alternating strips of light and dark wrapped the planet in a calico shroud and several small dark spots boiled away in the north tropical zone, companions to larger cyclonic disturbances in the south, centuries-old hurricanes churning since the time of Cromwell and King Charles.

The dark patches had fascinated Venus researchers for a hundred years. Emily Blakely had written papers on their possible origins, studied and measured their compositions, speculated on what they might be, been laughed and hooted down at conferences for some of her more outlandish ideas. Words from her most infamous paper scrolled across her mind's eye. She had co-authored several papers proposing novel ideas about atmosphere circulation, storm formation and even the possibility of extremophile lifeforms in the atmosphere; the title of the most famous paper was " _Carbonyl Sulfide Reservoirs on Venus and the Possibility of Micro-Organic Origins."_

'Several observations indicate that the cloud deck of the Venusian atmosphere may provide a plausible refuge for microbial life. Having originated in a hot proto-ocean or been brought in by meteorites from Earth (or Mars), early life on Venus could have adapted to a dry, acidic atmospheric niche as the warming planet lost its oceans. The greatest obstacle for the survival of any organism in this niche may be high doses of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Here we make the argument that such an organism may utilize sulfur allotropes present in the Venusian atmosphere, particularly S8, as a UV sunscreen, as an energy-converting pigment, or as a means for converting UV light to lower frequencies that could be used for photosynthesis. Thus, life could exist today in the clouds of Venus.'

Emily snorted, remembering some of the comments she had heard at the last conference in Barcelona. _Totally implausible...without any believable evidence...teen-aged science fiction...not worthy of a second's attention...._

Yeah, right. Life on Venus. Avian extremophiles swooping like flocks of condors through sulfuric acid clouds. A true birder's wet dream, for sure. You could win some big awards and a lot of notoriety with a discovery like that.

_Damn it, there is life on Venus. And it's trapped down there aboard a stricken airship called_ Geronimo _and it's slowly but steadily falling into that caldron of death and asphyxiation._

She watched the ceaseless roiling and churning of the world below. When the idea had actually come to her, she couldn't say. Maybe it just formed full-blown, like so many of her wacky ideas. Maybe it just appeared like the flock of Peale's falcons— _Falco peregrinus pealei—_ she had seen several years ago off Vancouver Island. Out of nowhere, glorious with its smoky-white breast and broad malar stripe and full dark cap.

Morelos and Fremont were wrong, both of them. _Cinderella_ was a viable option. True, the Earth Return Vehicle was designed to carry HAVOC's four-person crew through the heat and fire of reentering the Earth's atmosphere when the mission was over. True, she had only limited maneuvering ability and limited fuel supply. But damn it! She was designed to plunge into an atmosphere and survive. She had an ablative heat shield, phenolic resin. She had some maneuvering ability. She had plenty of room.

The more she thought about it, watching the clouds churn below the cupola, seeing in her mind the stricken _Geronimo_ sinking every minute deeper and deeper into that hellstorm, the more sense it made.

Emily sucked in her breath, forced a smile she didn't really feel and headed out of the mess compartment. She didn't head to her sleep cubicle. She didn't head up to the command deck. She headed aft, toward Fort Bliss's F deck. _Cinderella_ was docked there, her conical hull just barely visible through the gangway portholes.

Cinderella, girl, you've got one hot date to get ready for.

Emily made sure no one else saw her as she cycled the hatch and pushed onto F deck. She closed the hatch and secured it. Then, whistling softly to herself, powering up a slate crammed with checklists, she set about getting her ride to the dance ready for its big moment.

Walt Blakely, you know it's true...anything you can do I can do better.

Alicia Morelos and Doug Fremont were deeply engrossed in their own checklists up on _Fort Bliss's_ command deck when a pronounced shudder rumbled through the station.

Morelos looked up. "What the hell--?"

Just then, the Master Alarm siren went off.

Fremont was the first to see the cause. Staring out a forward porthole, he cried, "Look!"

The stubby cone of the _Cinderella_ ERV was just nosing ahead of _Fort Bliss's_ forward module. She was moving away smartly and descending.

Morelos swore. "Crap! Damn it, Emily...I should have known. You didn't secure _Cinderella_?"

"I didn't think...I never thought."

"Yeah, that's the problem. You didn't think." As soon as she said it, Morelos was sorry she had. Fremont had suffered enough with _Geronimo_. "Sorry, Doug. Try to raise her on High Band, try any channel."

Fremont switched to the right channel. " _Cinderella, Fort Bliss_ ... _Cinderella_ , this is _Fort Bliss._ Emily, come back."

For a few moments, there was nothing, only the ever present static. Then, a scratchy voice.

"Sorry for this, guys. _Cinderella's_ got a hot date down below. Be back in a jiffy--"

"Emily Blakely...STC1, this is _Fort Bliss_ ...return to the station at once. That's an order. You hear me, Emily? Bring _Cinderella_ back at once!"

There was no reply. Alicia Morelos didn't really expect one. _And they say teenagers are headstrong._ The station commander watched the ship disappear to a bright speck, soon lost in the banded swirls of Venus' atmosphere. She took a deep breath.

"What now?" Fremont asked.

Morelos half laughed. "Not much we can do. We lost _Geronimo_. Now _Cinderella_. Must be something in the air around here. Raise Mission Control. Tell 'em everything. They're going to have to put on their thinking caps for this one."

Emily Blakely had run her rescue scenario multiple times through ISAAC, the ERV's onboard computer. Trajectories, descent angles, burn times for her tiny de-orbit motor, roll rates during the descent, atmosphere circulation models, storms, all of it chewed on by ISAAC to come up with a time and duration for the de-orbit burn. She had run the numbers several dozen times, taking into account the retrograde super-rotation of Venus' atmosphere, the angular speeds of its Hadley cells, pressure gradients, adiabatic cooling rates in its convective storms.

Now as she watched the timer count down the last few seconds to de-orbit, she felt a lump in her throat. The burn, once started, initiated an irrevocable chain of events. Once out of orbit, _Cinderella_ would be completely at the mercy of the planet's atmosphere and gravity. Emily hoped ISAAC was right in all his calculations and that she really understood the dynamics of the atmosphere as well as she tried to convey in all those conferences and papers.

There would be no turning back.

"Three...two...one... _mark_!" Emily mouthed the final seconds. The de-orbit motor kicked in on time and she felt it as a strong shove in her back. _Cinderella_ lost several dozen meters per second in forward velocity. Automatically orienting itself blunt-end forward, the ship angled downward and began its steep plunge into the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

Soon, an orange glow began to envelop the outer hull. She could feel the ship slowing as it plummeted into the soup, pieces of ablative shielding shedding off as the fiery heat burned and ablated her heat shield. Flames licked the portholes and Emily shut her eyes, feeling the ship as it lurched ever downward. She could feel _Cinderella_ shuddering in auto-roll, taking advantage of her offset center of gravity to make slight maneuvering adjustments, clinging to the trajectory that would lead her a point only a few kilometers from _Geronimo_ , if all went well.

This should have been Earth's atmosphere, she told herself. But crap happens and now she was going to twist and turn and para-glide the tiny capsule to a mid-air rendezvous with the stricken _Geronimo._ The thought of seeing Walt's incredulous face as she opened the docking hatch and dragged him into the capsule was more than worth the insane risk she was taking.

ISAAC pinged out a warning tone and Emily reacted instantly. By the numbers, if the descent trajectory was right and final telemetry from _Geronimo_ had been analyzed properly, she was descending below sixty klicks and it was time to pop the wing. She took a peek out of the porthole, flinched as a dark shadow passed by right overhead.

_What the hell was that?_ she wondered. Probably a streaker, an isolated cloud bank passing nearby. She was momentarily between cloud decks, still descending and the clouds look like a saffron-hued lake in a thunderstorm, with massive cumulous banks and towering columns twisting and flexing like snakes all around her. The air was thick, dense and light refracted crazily. Fifty kilometers and still going down. The charts said the pressure here equaled sea-level pressure on Earth. And it was rising rapidly.

Time to fly, she muttered to herself. Emily stabbed a button, releasing _Cinderella's_ para-wing. The drogue came out, reefed properly, then the wing jerked free and unfolded like a baby chick trying to fly. The sudden deployment jerked the capsule hard and Emily banged her forehead on the porthole.

_Ouch_! She rubbed the bump, found a thin trickle of blood, then bent to the task of steering _Cinderella_ across the cloud deck, aiming for ISAAC's computed rendezvous point, some seventy kilometers ahead and, if the computer was right, twenty kilometers below.

For the first few minutes, Emily concentrated on just getting the feel of the wing. She had trained for this very task countless times on Earth; it would have been the STC1's duty to guide the HAVOC crew to a safe landing after plunging through Earth's atmosphere. Now she had a much more critical mission and there couldn't be any delays. She would have one pass, one chance, at rendezvous. If ISAAC was wrong, if _Geronimo_ wasn't there--

Nope, not thinking about that, she told herself. Grimly, doggedly, she pressed on.

Winds were picking up fast. _Cinderella_ had the flying qualities of a brick, but with her wing deployed, each gust twisted and tossed the ship in every direction at once. In time, she gained a fair sense of how to steer the ship and managed to ride a few thermals up and down, like surfing an ocean wave, diving here, lifting there, steering this way, then that, all the while still descending, riding the gusts forward, ever forward, skimming the cloud deck as a surfer would track a big one off the north shore of Oahu. For a time, she even imagined herself riding on the back of a short-tailed albatross, swooping over the sea, hovering and flicking its black-tipped wings, then diving into the water for a tasty morsel of some unfortunate crustacean.

Momentarily in a pleasant daze, she was startled when ISAAC chirped with the first radar signal.

Geronimo?

Emily held her breath as she closed the distance. Then, slowly materializing out of the orange murk, _there!_ _Right there!_

She swooped and rolled and dove and careened closer. The airship looked like an oblong smashed eggshell, with most of its balloon envelope crushed out of shape. The gondola seemed intact. The habitat didn't seem to be breached. The whole ship was rotating slowly, caught in cross-gusts, spinning out of control. Emily decided to try comms.

" _Geronimo_ , this is _Cinderella_ ...on approach your seven o'clock, do you copy, over?"

Nothing.

" _Geronimo_ ...Walt Blakely, you stuck-up mother...it's Emily...come to rescue your sorry ass. Do you read me?"

Now, some chirps and whistles. Weird keying sounds. Something banging. Then: " _Cinderella_ ...how the hell? Wait. Don't tell me...I don't want to know. Is that really you, Em?"

"Live and in person, brother of mine. I'm on wing, about two thousand meters behind you. I'm diving below. I'll try to come up right in front of you."

"I don't think you can time the rotation that—"

"Just shut up, okay? I'm saving your ass. Just make sure the docking adapter's not damaged."

For the next few minutes, Emily ignored the clearly flabbergasted and still scratchy voice of her brother and concentrated on maneuvering _Cinderella_. Lightning flashed nearby--they must be over some volcanoes--and the shock wave slammed the ship sideways, but Emily countered with more yaw and straightened out. She descended carefully beneath the gondola, eyeing the scorch marks from earlier lightning strikes with a concerned eye, then waited for the next gust, timed it perfectly and rode the swells right up until the blunt forward end of _Cinderella_ slammed right into _Geronimo's_ docking collar.

"Jeez, Emily," came Walt Blakely's voice, now a bit clearer as ISAAC cleaned up the signal. "Watch it down there...you may have just crushed the docking ring,"

"You wish," she teased. There would be no capture latches in this docking attempt. No hard dock. No secure connection. Just slam and bang, hold her hard against the ring, and open the hatches. "Get your suit buttoned up. Hell of a storm out here."

"Hey, sulfuric acid rain, hydrogen chloride sleet, gale force winds, pressure rising fast enough to crush me to pulp, what's not to like? Just another beautiful day in the neighborhood." A few moments of silence. Then: "Hey, Em, don't get me wrong when I say this...but today, I really am glad Frontier Corps assigned you to the HAVOC mission."

"Why's that?"

"'Cause only my baby sister would even _think_ of trying a stunt like this...okay, here comes the hatch."

The heavy pressure hatch squeaked and groaned—there were clearly bent parts inside—then with a loud grunt, Walt forced the thing open.

Emily concentrated on keeping _Cinderella_ pinned against the hatch, not easy as they corkscrewed in a slow-motion tailspin deeper and deeper into the troposphere. It was like riding the crest of a Sabine's gull just after it spotted dinner below the sea surface.

First, came Walt's white helmet with the big red stripe. Then his shoulders. He grabbed the edge of _Cinderella's_ outer hatch flange and with loud grunts, curses, sounds she couldn't identify and one mighty last heave, he was able to yank and jerk himself across the gap, fall into the egress bay and kick-slam _Cinderella's_ hatch shut. He lay heavily on his side for a moment, breathing hard, then twisted his helmet off and poked his head up into the cockpit, right at Emily's feet. A cock-eyed grin split his bearded, sweaty face.

"I see you somehow managed to swipe the ERV, sis. Wonder how well that went down at _Fort Bliss_?" With more grunts, he hoisted himself up into the cockpit and strapped himself into a seat nearby.

Emily smirked in spite of herself. "About as well as you would think. I'm sure they'll be thinking of all kinds of ways to tie me up when we get back."

Walt was grim. " _If_ we get back. And how exactly were you planning on doing that? We've got no real propulsion...no way to get back to orbit. Were you just planning on gliding around the planet forever?"

Emily sniffed. "Give me credit for at least half a brain, Walt. I didn't exactly do this on impulse, you know." She shushed him for a moment, waited until she could feel the next gust coming on, then lifted her left wing and caught the gust. It caught and jerked _Cinderella_ quickly away from _Geronimo_ , just in time to avoid being struck by the end of a spinning envelope spar.

The two of them debated options for several minutes. Walt watched solemnly as the corkscrewing carcass of the airship drifted lower and soon vanished into churning yellow clouds.

He shook his head sadly. "She was actually a good ship. But another ten klicks lower and she'll be a wad of paper tissue." He reached over and put a hand over her fist, still clinging to the joystick. "Don't take this the wrong way, Em...but thanks. I mean that."

"I know you do, you jerk. Girls are always pulling guys' butts out of the fire. Let's get out of here."

"How, exactly, o' great sailor?"

Emily had studied the meteorological problem intensely the night before. "Last night, radiometers on _Fort Bliss_ caught another cyclonic disturbance forming just west of here...VS-9. ISAAC gave it the name 'Mike.' We're in a Hadley cell right now, smack in the middle of the troposphere. Generally, the air at this latitude is cyclostrophic...a zonal flow. Goes east to west. But with super-rotation, the winds at the equator rotate more slowly than the Waltds at mid-latitudes, like where we are. There's a strong vertical gradient too, which creates a series of lifting columns. Hadley circulation mixed with super-rotation. If I can sniff out these columns, and maybe use 'Mike's' thermals and updrafts the right way, we should be able to rise up to a pretty good altitude in the atmosphere, maybe even to the top of the troposphere."

"How high?"

"Sixty, maybe seventy kilometers, if we're lucky."

Walt looked over at his sister. "That still won't put us in orbit."

"I know. We'll have to have help from _Fort Bliss_. I haven't been responding to their hails...I don't really know how to put this to them."

Walt smiled a faintly victorious smile. "In other words, you really didn't think this all the way through, did you?"

Emily was about to blast her brother right back, but a dark shadow passed in front of them, momentarily blotting out some of the murky orange light.

" _Wow_! What was that?" Walt said. He craned forward to press his face against the porthole. "Something big, dark...see? Two o'clock low...just between those clouds!"

Emily looked. Her eyes blinked. _I'm not seeing this. It's a dream. It's wish fulfillment_. _What did the psychs call it...delusional apprehension of unconscious or imaginary perceptions...._

A thousand meters in front of _Cinderella_ , the flock wheeled and dove and careened on dancing thermals, into and out of cloud banks. A flock. As in avian lifeforms. Birds. On Venus.

"Oh...my God...."

The flock seemed to extend for kilometers in every direction, above them, below them, everywhere they looked. Indeed, _Cinderella_ appeared to be in the middle of the vast formation.

Walt blinked hard and rubbed his eyes. "It's the light. Has to be. Some kind of weird refraction."

"Walt, look, for God's sake! They're _birds_. Flying creatures."

Even as she said that, a small group of them careened near the capsule, swooping by the portholes with curious eyes and chattering beaks. The roar of the wind drowned out any sound but Emily gasped at the sight.

" _Pterodactylus_ ," she whispered. "Or something similar...Evolution worked out the same result on two different worlds. See those gray wings...collagen fiber, with keratin bone support. All those conical teeth, look at them! And how long is that beak?"

Walt just shook his head. "I'm not seeing this. I am _not_ seeing this."

"Look with your eyes, stupid! Shut off your brain and look with your eyes. See the big black and blue crest on top...and what the hell is that protrusion at the top? It's fantastic...it's a birder's dream come true. White breast bleeding into a dark blue neck...."

For a few moments, they followed the swoops, dips, dives and turns of the flock. Then Emily had an idea.

"Walt, see what they're doing? Watch 'em. They're riding the winds. Surfing thermals, just like the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii. Look at those wings...must be twenty meters at least. Hey...I've got wings too. Maybe--"

Closely studying the flock's maneuvers, Emily banked and turned, dove and spiraled in unison with the flock. Left and down, then right and up, twisting and turning, riding the air, feeling the wind, massaging the currents. She was exhilarated, euphoric, even light-headed, free as a--

Walt cut in. "We'd better try to raise _Fort Bliss_ , Em. We're still descending."

"No...no, we're not. Feel it? We're flying. We're soaring. I can almost taste the wind!"

"It's a mirage...it has to be. _Fort Bliss_ , this is _Cinderella_ , do you copy, over? _Fort Bliss_ , _Cinderella_ , come back."

Born on her slender para-wing, _Cinderella_ coursed through the Venusian skies, embedded in a flock of avian lifeforms that seemed to stretch to infinity. Emily was in another world, an exalted state of mind.

Walt was just concerned about their comms. Sooner or later, he knew their luck would run out, lightning or wind shear would tear the para-wing and the rest would be simple physics. Straight down through gusty orange and yellow murk at eight-point-nine meters per second squared. They be dead long before impact, however slow that might be, due to the crushing pressures at lower altitudes...he knew well that at the surface of Venus, the air pressure was like being a thousand meters below the surface of Earth's oceans.

Then the radio crackled and whistled with a faint voice. It was Alicia Morelos. _Fort Bliss_.

" _Cinderella_ , _Fort Bliss_ , reading you faintly. You're dropping out...sporadic comms...."

Walt clung to his mike like the lifeline it was. " _Fort Bliss_ , ah...we're going to need a little help down here--"

Morelos barked or laughed or coughed, he couldn't tell from the screech. "No shit, Sherlock," she said, loud and clear. "We're ten steps ahead of you. Doug's already rigged up a pump and we're siphoning _Fort Bliss's_ fuel to _Pinocchio_. Got the tunnel repaired too. ISAAC's running the numbers now."

"How the hell did you--"

"We got a telemetry signal as soon as _Cinderella_ hit the atmosphere. It's automatic. We've been tracking you the whole time."

Now Emily cut in. "Alicia, you won't believe what we're seeing down here...avian life...birds, for God's sake, cruising through the troposphere of Venus. Just like I always dreamed."

"Yeah, you're dreaming all right," Morelos said. "Standby for ISAAC's numbers. _Pinocchio's_ de-orbiting in about two minutes."

The rendezvous was a matter of geometry, not so simple geometry but calculating the dynamic effects of _Pinocchio's_ orbital speed and _Cinderella's_ wind-borne maneuvers to arrive at a point of intersection somewhere seventy kilometers above the surface of the planet. ISAAC spat out the de-orbit burn duration and plotted the probable point of intersection between a descending _Pinocchio_ and an erratic, barely maneuverable _Cinderella_ caught up in cyclostrophic wind flow and unpredictable pressure gradients. The ship's computer labelled the intersection Point Alpha, an imaginary spot in the sky seventy-two kilometers above the rugged highlands of Aphrodite Terra. The error box was ten kilometers on a side, which meant that _Pinocchio_ and _Cinderella_ had to find each other in a space of a thousand cubic kilometers. At Fremont's calculated rate of ballistic descent, they would have only a few minutes.

If _Pinocchio_ didn't find the ERV somewhere in that imaginary box when it transited through, Doug Fremont would have to light off _Pinocchio's_ rocket and hope he had enough fuel to limp back into orbit and rendezvous with _Fort Bliss_.

And the HAVOC mission would offer yet another example to the history books for how not to run an exploratory mission.

Fremont closed his eyes as _Pinocchio's_ rocket engine fired. The ship slowed by less than thirty meters per second, hardly enough to be felt, but his course was now irrevocable. For better or worse, _Pinocchio_ was now committed to free fall, plunging head first into the upper ionosphere of this strange, even bizarre alien world.

Long minutes passed. Emily continued to parallel the maneuvers of the flock, which seemed now to be thinning out, moving off. wind gusts buffeted and pounded them, a reminder of the storm named 'Mike', building behind them, bearing down on _Cinderella_ from the west.

"Where are they going?" Emily asked herself.

Walt had noticed the flock thinning out too. "Maybe they have better sense than we do."

Emily pointed to the nearer birds. "I'm labeling them _thermosaurs_ ...do you like that? I get to name a new species. Won't that look great on my life list?"

"That's not all that's on your list."

"That knob in front of their crests...I've been wondering about that. Maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking these creatures can echo-range. Like bats."

"Sure, whatever you say."

Call it instinct. Call it a hunch. A feeling. A guess. Sixth sense. "I'm wondering if they're moving off because they've detected something. Food, maybe. Or mates or another flock. Or something unexpected...like a rocket ship."

"That's insane."

Emily didn't answer. Instead, she banked to follow the flock, wondering, hoping, maybe praying a little. _Anything you can do_ \--

Walt Blakely was already composing a final epitaph in his mind, something he planned to dictate to a log, when it became apparent that all hope was lost and Fremont's little stunt, not to mention his sister's hijinks, finally did them all in.

He felt more than heard Emily's shout. "LOOK! Walt, _look!"_

Against all odds and reasonable notions of probability and luck and common sense, the faint glint off of _Pinocchio's_ hull was clearly visible, backdrop against spiraling wind devils, caught like a fly between cloud decks, descending like a meteor flash from the bottom of one cumulous stack to the top of another.

Fremont's strained voice crackled through their headsets. "I'm through...enty klicks now... _Pinocchio_ to _Cinderel_ \--broadcasting in the clear... _Pinocchi_ \--"

" _Pinocchio_!" screamed Emily. " _Pinocchio, Cinderella_ ...we're two kilometers off your port side...maybe nine o'clock. See the birds...see the big flock...thermosaurs."

Fremont said, "I see some dark patches...can you reach me, Emily!"

"I'm maneuvering now...still got a wing, still got some lift...just hang on, Doug! Don't you dare leave without us!"

With a skill and nerve born of several hours' practice and maybe a little chutzpah too, Walt Blakely watched with his heart in his mouth as his baby sister—she was always shadowing him, taunting him, pestering him—flew _Cinderella_ through gusts and thermals and spiraling, corkscrewing banks, until he abruptly closed his eyes when the little capsule slammed hard right into the side of Fremont and his rocket ship. The shroud lines of the para-wing were quickly entangled around the circumference of _Pinocchio_ , a development that brought a loud groan to Walt and a "oh, great, now what..." to his lips.

It took Emily to see the possibilities inherent in what any rational person would have called a disaster.

"Get your helmet on and your suit buttoned up."

Walt looked at her. "Have you lost your mind completely? We'll be blown a hundred kilometers before we get completely outside."

"No, we won't, silly. Use the shroud lines. Hang on to the lines and walk your way to the hatch...come on. We can do it."

A part of Walt's mind assumed this was really some kind of bizarre cartoon animation, for only fictitious creatures born of an animator's feverish brain would even think of such a stunt. Even as he assured himself that none of this was real, Emily was already opening _Cinderella's_ hatch and the swirling yellow fog was already grabbing and shaking them with invisible fingers.

One after another, they exited the capsule, clung for dear life to the tangled shroud lines, with _Cinderella_ banging and slapping against _Pinocchio's_ hull in fierce sideways gusts and worked their way forward. Walt moved ahead of Emily, and managed to wrestle the hatch open, not terribly surprised to see the wide-eyed astonishment on Fremont's face--"hey, just a walk in the park, my bewildered friend,"--and half fell inside. He reached out and grabbed Emily's arm and yanked her inside behind him, then leaned out one last time to sever the last shreds of the shroud lines so _Cinderella_ could fall free. He shoved the hatch closed with his shoulder.

There was no room inside _Pinocchio's_ crew cabin, or more accurately, only room for two crewmen, for that was all it had been designed for. Emily took the second seat, while Walt wedged himself in between the seats. He wound up helmet to helmet with his sister, facing Emily through her faceplate, as Fremont swallowed hard and counted down a hasty checklist and lit off the ship's engine.

The acceleration pushed Emily and Walt even closer together. Walt grunted. Emily had a faint smile on her face.

_Pinocchio's_ LOX/RP-1 closed-cycle rocket felt reassuringly solid behind them as they climbed out on her last remaining wisps of fuel, into low orbit around Venus.

Rendezvous was touchy. Docking was a nail-biter. _Pinocchio's_ tanks were dry the last few minutes. Only proper approach alignment and momentum enabled the ascent vehicle to have any shred of hope in making contact with the docking adapter. When Fremont, Emily and Walter Blakely squeezed out of _Pinocchio's_ hatch and drifted out into the lockout chamber and then into F deck, now cluttered with hoses and drifting parts, Alicia Morelos sucked in her breath and nearly cried. In spite of hairbrained stunts and arguments and all the pointless disputes over nothing and weeks of sulking while they approached Venus, she loved these people.

They all shared in a group hug for long minutes, then moved almost as one entangled organism, out into the gangway and forward to _Fort Bliss's_ crew's mess. Radio contact, scratchy comms, mission rules and dictates from Houston, none of that was needed as much as pure physical contact, rancid hot breaths, farts, gurgling stomachs and all.

Alicia did waitress duty, breaking out everything she could find from the lockers: entrée pouches, drinks, candy and gummy cookies, water, grape juice, orange drink, something else that smelled like thermo-stabilized elephant crap. They strapped themselves in around a table and dug in.

"What...no medicinal brandy for the intrepid explorers?" Walt joked. He squeezed grape juice free of its tube and scarfed down each little droplet and bubble as it floated free.

"We used it all...to fuel up _Pinocchio_ ," Morelos told them. More seriously, she added, "You know, we have nothing left for the station. Doug siphoned every last drop from our tanks. We're sort of stuck here for awhile." She indicated a nearby cupola, filled with swirling banks of orange and yellow. "Hope you like the view. You'll be seeing Venus up close and personal for quite a while."

"What does Houston say?" Walt asked. "Are they going to prosecute us before they fire us...or after?"

"Oh, nothing so dramatic as that," Morelos said. She chewed off a seal on some kind of entrée pouch, examined the contents and then thought better of it. Instead, she sucked on a candy bar. "Okay, so we're marooned in Venus orbit for awhile and we'll have to go on short rations for the duration. Mission Control's already working on the rescue mission. They're saying six months after she's checked out, maybe nine months from now."

Fremont felt his stomach paunch happily. He rubbed week-old stubble and loosened his restraining belt a little more. He swore silently; already the belt was too tight as it was and he was on the last notch. _Too many pancakes,_ he muttered. "Zero-g's all fine and good as long as you don't have to button your pants. I for one could stand to lose some weight."

Walt said, "Not to worry. I plan to binge-watch every last episode of _Quantum Troopers_ in the onboard library...all twenty-two of them. And sleep late every day on top of that."

All eyes turned to Emily. She shrugged, looking up from a slate she had been pecking notes on. "Huh? Me...oh, I'll stay busy. I'm adding those thermosaurs to my birding life list...can't wait to present that to the Society. They'll never believe it."

"None of us believe it, Em," Walt said. "Face it...what you and I saw was some light refraction. Some odd cloud formation. Maybe, if you're lucky, an airborne mat of algae or something."

Emily smiled sweetly. "If you say so. I was just making sketches here, making notes, for my paper, you know. I've got lots of time to do that."

"You don't have any evidence."

"I know what I saw. I can describe it in detail. And I've got two observational data points...you and me. Nobody can take that away."

"You should add something else to your life list," Walt told her.

"Yeah? What's that?"

Walt turned serious. "Legitimacy. As a scientist. As a crew member. As my sister. The press made fun of you when Frontier Corps picked you for HAVOC 1. Brother and sister going to Venus together. Splashed all over the news. The PR people had an orgasm over the possibilities. God, the tabloids had a field day. Probably still are. But after all this...I'm thinking the snide remarks and the racy photos and the smarmy articles and posts may just fly away...kind of like your thermosaurs."

Emily made a face at her brother, though she knew there was more than a little sting of truth to what he said.

"Go on and eat something, girl," Morelos told her. "You'll feel better."

Emily selected a pouch from the tray, examined the label and chuckled softly.

It read: _Turkey Spam, with Applesauce._

END

_In the 29_ th _century, soldiers' lives haven't really changed all that much. Yes, technology has created ever more bizarre domains in which conflict and warfare rage on, but the the nature of a soldier's life is still one of boredom, fatigue, and occasional bouts of terror, with the shadow of sudden, violent death constantly at his or her shoulder. In each domain of conflict, be it land, sea, air, space or in the case of this story, time travel, there will certainly be threats and concerns unique to each environment._

What pressures, fears, risks and hazards will time-traveling combatants face? What effect will flitting across time streams and into and out of that nether-world beyond time that I call 'voidtime' have on the poor warriors of the future and how will they deal with it?

_The mission of 1_ st _Time Displacement Battery is to install and serve a weapon called a Time Twister. This story is an outgrowth of my series of novellas called_ Time Jumpers _. Like many a soldier or sailor in the past, the time jumpers of 1_ st _TD are assigned by Headquarters to a god-forsaken outpost of a world at the ass-end of the Alliance and left to themselves to make their strange device work, and hold off an implacable, unknowable enemy._

_This story implies that our time jumpers are really wounded warriors, veterans of countless battles in this strange space called_ voidtime. _In some ways, they are already casualties, of the Time Wars alluded to, of the strange effects of voidtime, of the battles and the harsh life they've led after being 'accelerated,' and also casualties of the separation and loneliness that warriors always feel for their loved ones back home._

Perhaps the memory of a former love is all that casualties of war ever really feel...maybe that's what sustains them in battle. They cling desperately to anything that feels like home and family, even if it's a mirage...or a memory.

Marooned in Voidtime

I.

" _Time is an illusion."_

Albert Einstein

Storm

Kinlok Island

Time Stream T-001 (2814 CE)

T-date: 001-01-22

It was foggy, misty, and wet when _Cygnus_ finally touched down on the world that all the time jumpers called Storm. The ship settled down to a rattling landing on the edge of a rocky precipice, overlooking the ocean. Ice and sleet flecked the portholes. Wind gusts rocked the ship. Back on E deck, Alicia Liu looked over at Acth:On'e and just shook her head.

"Just another beautiful day in the neighborhood, Toonie."

The TM1 said nothing back, just focused on his console.

Jump Captain Monthan Dringoth's voice crackled over the 1MC. "Secure all vanes and planes. Rudder amidships and locked. Make sure the core's safe."

His second in command, Jump Commander Nathan Golich studied his board. "Singularity core at ten percent, just ticking over. Planes and vanes secure."

After all the vibrations had subsided, Dringoth checked with the TS1, Evelyn M'Bela.

"How close to our target coordinates, Evelyn?"

M'Bela, sitting behind the two command consoles, studied her board and its plots and displays. "Best I can make out, we're within a few decades of the temporal focus, based on your maneuvers and our physical landing point is here—" she pointed to a map. "Southeastern edge of this little rockpile of an island, about six hundred forty kilometers from the polar ice pack. _Cygnus_ will auto-confirm once she takes sky sightings." M'Bela peered out the porthole at the ice fog enveloping the ship. "If she can even take sightings in this crap."

Dringoth pronounced himself satisfied. "Okay, then, that's it." He got on the comm. "First Time Displacement Battery, get your asses in gear. We've got work to do."

_Cygnus_ had come to Storm with a critical mission, so said Time Guard and Battalion Ops. The planet was nothing but ocean, save for a scattering of islands. Scouted and mapped a decade ago by the Survey Service, Storm had been left alone until the enemy Coethi had begun to make a major move into this sector. Storm may have been a dreary backwater of a place, but she was strategically located right in the face of the Coethi advance. Newton's Jaw itself was behind Storm and her star-sun Sigma-Albeth B, only a few light months away. The great lens of gravimetric instability was likely the Coethi's first target if their advance continued along this vector. That and the small system around 40 Omicron 2—Gavrilon and Nanjiang, principally—non-Alliance worlds but Uman nonetheless. The intel people at T2 had theorized that the Jaw would make a tempting target to the Coethi advance, owing to the fact that if a jumpship entered the zone, she could take shortcuts to whole bag of time streams, without having to risk popping into and out of voidtime.

Storm was right in the middle of a vast arc of space centered on Newton's Jaw. The dreary backwater was now a place of high, maybe even critical, strategic significance. And it was 1st TD's job to install and operate the Time Twister on this rockpile.

Dringoth gathered the entire crew in the wardroom on B deck.

"We'll do the job the way we trained. Acth, you and Golich will break out the skimmer and get going on the foundation and the main structure. Liu and M'Bela, unship all the chronotron pods and bag 'em up. Once the structure's solid, you'll be installing those. URME, you and me will stay with the ship for the time being. I want an all-sector scan up and operating at all times. Get with Alicia on that. The Bugs are nearby, I can feel it. They may be somewhere out there in voidtime, just waiting to pounce."

URME 101—the Unit Reserve Memory Entity—nodded and said, "Yes, sir. Copy that." The head of the para-human swarm entity nodded, just slightly out of phase. Everybody saw it—after days and days underway, they were used to it by now—and when Dringoth frowned at the roughness of the configuration—Liu straight away jumped in and said, "I've already got a patch for that config, Skipper. I can download it tonight...better tracking, for sure."

"Do that," Dringoth growled. "Every time URME shakes his head, I get dizzy."

The crew moved out, donned their hypersuits and, one by one, cycled through _Cygnus_ ' lockout on F deck.

The first order of business was to set up some kind of defensible perimeter around the ship, out to a distance of several hundred meters. This was done by Alicia Liu, the Defense and Protective Systems tech.

Liu plopped down through thin ice into the shallow lake they had landed in and was immediately brushed by a large lizard-like creature undulating its way across the surface. " _Cyclops_ doesn't even have a name for it." She adjusted her headgear slightly to get more annotation in her eyepiece. "Some kind of sauropsid reptile...probably can move at high speed land or water."

The rest of the team followed Liu across the shallow lake, sloshing their way up a low bank to drier ground. The DPS1 extracted a small capsule from her web belt and thumbed its control stud on top. Instantly, a fine mist issued from the capsule, flickering slightly over their heads. Liu waved it about her head in a circle.

"Launching ANAD sensorbots now," she announced.

The mist dispersed and vanished from view. But now, 1st TD had eyes and ears to probe their surroundings and warn them of approaching danger.

The Survey Service had named this little rockpile Kinlok Island. It was nothing but a big claw and tooth-shaped spit of rock and hills, barren except for a few forlorn and very prickly trees, and small swipe of beach along the southwest coast. Rough surf, driven by gale-force winds, smashed and hissed against the promontory below the ship. Spray and ice chips were everywhere, stinging faces not yet covered by hypersuit helmets.

"At least it's breathable," muttered Golich, twisting a handle to release the skimmer. The sled dropped down on its cradle, slid off onto the ground and began automatically unfolding into operating position. "Grab those bags and we'll load up."

"Smells like Telitorian eggs...that somebody left out too long." Acth:On'e opened a small compartment alongside one of _Cygnus_ ' landing gear and scooped up an armful of small containers. Each one contained a small replicant swarm, complete with master bot, configged when opened to begin assembling the seabed footings, foundations, support cables and upper dome of the Twister. Two kilometers in diameter when fully replicated and outfitted, the Twister would resemble an inverted dish, with its surface studded by small polyps, the chronotron pods. Controls and processor gear stood at the apex of the dish, in a small housing that looked like puckered lips.

Golich sniffed, checking the skimmer for seaworthiness. "Oh, well, ours not to reason why—"

They slid the skimmer down a nearby slope, loaded her up and set off through heavy chop and spray for a position marked on their eyepieces, several kilometers out to sea. The Survey Service had identified the coordinates as just above a small trench in the seabed, some three hundred meters below. It would make for a good solid ground for the Twister's foundations.

Acth:On'e was content to let Golich do the steering, while he counted down the distance to the drop site. "How long do we have to stay here?" he wondered out loud. "Smells like a sewer I once fell into on Telitor when I was a boy. It was outside Kasala, just before my V3. I had that memory wiped in the upload."

Golich shrugged, squinting through the sleet. "Wish I could do that. Wipe bad crap from my head. As to how long we're here, that's up to the Captain. Battalion says get the Twister up and operating and then sit tight. T2 thinks the Bugs will make a move pretty soon."

Acth:On'e called bingo when his eyepiece said they had reached the coordinates. "Right here. Mark and anchor. Isn't this gadget the Mark I version? Untested and all? How do we even know it'll work like they say?"

"Hey, Toonie...when you're in the Guard, jolts like you and me don't get to actually _know_ anything. We just do things, like whatever the brass says. Get buttoned up. We've still got to go down there and find the right spot."

The two of them sealed their hypersuits, buddy-checked all fittings and seals and dropped overboard into the freezing water.

Once completed, the Time Twister itself would be moored to the seabed with stout anchors and surmounted with hemispherical caps, which were the chronotron pods. Fully operational, the entire apparatus would be linked by thick ganglia of cables to the island itself, for power and command and control. A hut, still to be erected, where most of the controls were located also would house tracking instruments.

Many skimmer trips would be needed to tow sections of the Twister's outer casing, the vast dish-shaped structure that rode along the surface like a breaching whale, partially exposed to the icy air and partially submerged. It was upon this huge dish that the chronotron pods would be mounted. And before that could happen, the dish would have to be made fast to her foundation, itself to be buried in the muck and ooze at the bottom of the trench.

Much work remained to be done.

After some discussion and perusing of survey results, the crew had decided to use a shallow valley just beyond the surf line of the island as a staging place for pods, foundation and main structure elements, and all the mooring, tensioning and cabling that held the entire assembly together.

On their descent, just to satisfy his curiosity and keep Acth:On'e from pestering him with doubts, Nathan Golich pressed a button on his wristpad. Moments later, a sultry voice from Training began a theoretical explanation of this huge contraption they were assembling....

"... _The Time Twister contains a naked singularity at the core of its field. Over fifty terr ago, Uman engineers learned how to use existing stars and their extreme gravitational fields to compress matter enough to create such a singularity. The distorted space-time field around this singularity core of the Twister is known as a twist field._

" _Uman engineers developed a way of creating, maneuvering and regulating the effects of the twist field. This is done through a screening field and a series of buffers, known as twist buffers, or just T-buffers._

" _Like a nuclear power plant with its core always on, but regulated by control rods, the Twister is also always on. The singularity engine at the core, once created and activated, can't be turned off. But it can be regulated through a series of T-buffers. These moderate the twist field..."_

A chime sounded in Golich's helmet. The seabed came up fast and Acth:On'e said, "We're here, Commander. The index point."

Golich took a deep breath. "Let's get cracking and get the hell out of here. I don't like the looks of some of these creatures around here."

Back on the island, Evelyn M'Bela and Alicia Liu sorted out the chronotron pods on the beach. Once the Twister's foundation was laid, Golich and Acth:On'e would return in the skimmer and the four of them would set to work. On their eyepieces, both crewpersons studied the intricate diagrams instructing them how to activate and test the pods. M'Bela shook her head and wiped her helmet faceplate to clear sleet freezing on the front.

"Just another wonderful day in paradise," she muttered to herself. On her eyepiece, she saw the schematic of the entire Twister installation in varying animated stages of completion... the sections of the Twister laid out like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle on the seabed, slings and nets full of chronotron pods, mooring cables, foundation pads, all the parts that somehow, they had to put together.

Not to mention lifting the singularity engine out of its crate in _Cygnus'_ tailpod, the thing that powered the Twister. That was sure to be a lot of fun.

Straight away, the two of them set to work. Neither of them was particularly thrilled about being on this hellhole sewer of a planet.

Moments later, Liu's voice interrupted M'Bela's less than pleasant thoughts.

"Hey, Queenie...what the hell is that?"

"What's what?"

" _That._ "

Beyond the surf line off the tiny beach, a creature had just emerged from the waves, a seemingly bipedal creature, covered in what looked like armored plating, shuffling and trudging through the waves toward them. Behind it, a second creature, somewhat smaller, also had emerged and had joined the first one.

"Must be that dinner we had last night," said M'Bela. Her hands reached for the beamer on her web belt and she withdrew the weapon and flipped off the safety, automatically. Liu did the same.

"What the hell are they?"

M'Bela shrugged, a useless gesture in a hypersuit. "Beats me. But they need to stay back..."

The creatures reached the end of the water and struggled for footing in the loose sand. Their outer skin resembled suits of some kind. But their heads, if they had heads, were invisible behind the upper part of their suits.

" _Stay back_! Stay back...they're still coming—get back there!"

M'Bela crept forward, her gun still in firing position. The nearer creature was moving, it sounded like squeals or clicks or something, thrashing about in the sand and water, flinging up dirt as it writhed. The farther one was mostly in the water, smaller in size, but still--

Liu came up beside her. _What in the name of all the craters on the--_

The taller beast—for that was what she had started calling it in her mind—was not a dolphin. It wasn't a shark. It had legs and arms and what looked like armor plating. It had holes in the armor and water was spouting out of the holes. The beast squealed some more. And the smaller one down by the waterline actually seemed to be whimpering.

Liu heard the words first, muffled but distinguishable and nearly cried out. _God Almighty... the thing's talking!_ Accented, it sounded like a faucet running, but the damn thing was talking! She started forward but, in that moment, the taller creature withdrew a weapon of its own and opened fire.

The jolt knocked M'Bela and Liu flat on their backs. For what seemed like hours—time had congealed to a crawl—Liu couldn't feel or hear anything. She couldn't hear anything. Nothing would move. She could breathe, more or less. But her legs and arms...nothing.

M'Bela was out cold.

Then a face appeared, sort of a face.

_I must be dreaming_ , figured Liu. The face was behind a helmet or shield of some type. She saw a beak. Like a dolphin's face, maybe wider. A mouth moving. But it was the eyes that caught her attention. Eyes of curiosity. Eyes of intelligence.

Then she passed out again.

Liu was the first to regain consciousness. M'Bela stirred groggily nearby, rolled over and groaned. Both were covered with a thin dusting of snow and sleet.

"What the hell—?" M'Bela sat up, then got to her feet. Wind knocked her sideways and she reached out for a rock outcrop to steady herself. Her suit fingers knocked something off the rock. A small cylinder fell to the hard-packed sand and rolled against her boot.

Liu saw it too. "What's that?"

M'Bela bent down as far as she could, carefully picked up the device, for it was clearly a manufactured object. She examined it, handed it to Liu, while she collected herself.

Liu turned the object end for end. It was vaguely cylindrical, made of some kind of hard keratin-like composite, like a sea shell. Fist-sized, it was tapered top and bottom. Bumps lined one side.

"Be careful with that," M'Bela said. She was counting with her fingers the array of chronotron pod containers. "Could be explosive."

"The creatures must have left it. Maybe it's a recording device."

"Or a camera so they can spy on us...hey, we're missing something here...the count's not right."

Liu looked up, the strange device still in her hands. "What do you mean 'the count's not right'?"

"I'm counting off all the containers. Inventory's off. I think those creeps must have taken one...maybe more. I count seventeen...there should be eighteen containers. Seventy-two pods in all."

Liu started kicking sand and searching around the beach and out into the shallow but rough surf. "Maybe waves pulled it out to sea. It could have drifted off."

M'Bela was just shaking her head. "Cripes, this is bad, Alicia. The Twister needs seventy- two pods to operate. We've got spares back at the ship but not four. Captain's going to chew my head off."

Liu was still studying the cylinder. Now the thing felt faintly warm through her gloves, vibrating slightly. Alarmed, she dropped the thing and it went clattering onto the rocks. "We'd better get back and let the Skipper know what's happened."

They clambered up onto the rocky shelf overlooking the beach. But before they left, Liu had retrieved the cylinder and secured it to her web belt.

Dringoth and URME were on F deck when Liu and M'Bela re-entered _Cygnus._ Acth:On'e and Golich were still out with the skimmer, assembling the Twister foundation. Dringoth had his hands inside the remote manipulator grips, gingerly extracting the singularity core from its containment enclosure one deck below, in the ship's tailpod. URME was studying the core carefully with instruments, noting on a log its temperature, decoherence wake output, quantum state levels, everything needed to assure the thing would work when inserted into the Twister.

M'Bela explained what had happened on the beach: the creatures, their strange suppressor weapon, the missing pod containers. Liu showed Dringoth the cylinder too.

Jump Captain Monthan Dringoth just took a deep breath, leaving his hands inside the manipulator, but they could both see the little vein on his forehead quivering. That usually meant an explosion was coming. He had sandy gray sideburns to go with a gray-white buzz cut. Hard blue eyes, a stone face. The TS1 and the DPS1 both cringed at the same time. He bit off every word.

"You counted accurately, Queenie? You're sure of this?"

M'Bela had long been known as Queenie among the crew; her ancestors claimed descent from Igbo royalty back on Urth, though M'Bela herself hailed from Douala, a small township on Keaton's World. The TS1 shook her head sadly. "Several times, Captain. Either it washed out to sea or the creatures took it. I—"

Now Dringoth carefully pulled his hands free of the manipulator gloves and waved her quiet. "Never mind. Doesn't matter. We'll have to make some adjustments...URME, figure out what, if anything, the Twister can do with only seventy pods."

The Unit Reserve Memory Entity hovered nearby, mostly intact, though occasionally his hand ran right through the edge of a control panel. Liu still hadn't patched his config properly and this made Dringoth even more sour and impatient. "Aye, aye, sir...I'll run the calculations now and have an answer in less than an hour."

Dringoth spied the cylinder, still clutched by Liu. "What _is_ that thing...your lunch bag?"

Liu put the cylinder on a foldout table by the hypersuit lockers. "We're not sure, sir. It was next to Queenie when we came to. Could be a small surveillance device. Maybe a recorder."

"Maybe an explosive or a bot container too," Dringoth said. "Keep your hands away. URME...?"

The Temporal Fire Director (TFD1) drifted over and lowered a hand over the device. Straight away, a small mist of bots sloughed off his palm and descended over the thing, eventually enveloping the cylinder in something like looked like fog, with flickering lights going off inside. URME's way of examining something. After a few moments, URME looked up and the mist began to clear, bots returning like wafting smoke back to his palm.

"Unknown structure, sir. Keratin-like, a matrix of fibrous protein-like molecules, filamentary in layout, with unknown composition. I detect superhelical monomers with disulfide bridges...calcium, hydrogen, sulfur and phosphor molecules in a highly unusual structure."

"But what is it?" Dringoth asked.

"Function is unknown," URME said. "Possibly a processor of some kind...thermal readings indicate electron transport activity inside. I cannot determine function any more precisely without invasive penetration."

"Put it in containment, right away," Dringoth decided. "And make sure it's secure. Set injectors to maximum. We've got bigger concerns right now."

"At once, sir." URME hoisted the cylinder delicately, enveloping the thing with a small field of protective bots he sloughed off his hand and headed up the gangway to C deck. Hazardous Stores was located there, well shielded by a nanobotic barrier.

Liu watched URME leave with the device in his hand and wondered: _after my shift, when they're all sleep...._

Dringoth didn't give her any more time to wonder though. "You two...get back out to the beach. Make sure the pod count is accurate and get back to me. Prep what you have. URME and I will pull the spares...I think there are two. That gives us seventy total. Maybe URME can figure out a way to make the Twister work with that."

M'Bela and Liu saluted, buttoned up their suits and, one after the other, cycled through the airlock and bent into a stiff wind, slipping and sliding down a rock slide to the beach. The remaining containers were scattered about. M'Bela made a careful count, and Liu double-checked. They reported the results back to _Cygnus._

Dringoth's voice on their comms brooked no dissent.

"Start your setup now. Get those blasted things working and ready to install. I just heard from Golich. The foundation will be done in a day. When they're ready, you'll have to make multiple trips in the skimmer to do the install."

"Copy that," M'Bela said back. With a meaningful look at each other, and the feeling they had both dodged a major dressing-down, the two of them set to work, activating and staging the pods.

That night, after chow and a few drinks in the crew's mess, Alicia Liu returned to her closet-sized berth and drew the curtains shut. She listened carefully to the sounds around her. There was Golich, two compartments to port, snoring like a sand gale on Keaton's World. She could make out a faint clacking sound coming from M'Bela's compartment; the girl was working and reworking her bone and ivory necklace and hairpiece. She did that every night; you could set your time by it. Dringoth was probably up in the command deck, downloading orders, more rules and regs from Time Guard, or more likely, some kind of time jumper porn from the perverts on Hapsh'm. And URME...who knew where URME was. Probably running self-check routines or just drifting about the ship, monitoring everything in sight. She'd have to be careful about URME.

When she was reasonably certain the way was clear, Liu left her berth and quietly made her way up to C deck, where the cylinder was in containment. She couldn't violate or turn off containment without setting off alarms but she could study the device...and wonder, maybe play with the thing, using some of C deck's remote tools and instruments.

She situated her butt on a stool just outside the containment vault, careful not to touch the nano barrier. Even a tickle of the bots would give off a shrill keening buzz, as the barrier pushed back. Inside containment, URME had situated the cylinder in a clamp, held fast, surrounded by electron injectors that would blast the thing to atom fluff if anything went wrong.

The cylinder was clearly on, active, operating in some way. She could see it vibrating, twisting and straining against the clamps. A stream of squeaks and clicks and grunts issued from the side; she could hear them even through the muffling of the barrier.

What on Urth?

Later, when the moment was examined in greater detail with the clarity of hindsight, Alicia Liu could not rightly say when she first had the notion. It had just come to her...come to her full blown, the way insights sometimes do.

The clicks and squeaks were some kind of language. The cylinder was talking, issuing statements, commands, asking questions, making conjectures. It was speaking to her. She pressed her face as close to the barrier as she dared and listened.

Of course, none of it made any sense, except to prove the feeling she had had from the first time she had peered into the eyes of the creature standing over her. These were intelligent beings. They had come from beneath the sea. They had weapons. They had a language. They had a reason for being there, on the beach.

That's when she felt a presence behind her. It was URME. Config 1, more or less composed and normal, but for a slight blurring at the edges of his face.

"Good evening, Alicia. I see you are examining the alien device. Please do not drop containment. That would violate regulation TG155-6288 Part D...'Proper Control and Maintenance Procedures for Unknown Objects Inside Habitable Domiciles...'"

Liu took a deep breath. "Keep your pants on, URME. I wasn't going to. But just before you showed up, the damn thing started talking to me...at least, that's what I think it's doing. Listen...see for yourself."

URME bent down to listen. The clicks and squeaks and clacks had grown louder, more intense with greater frequency. Something urgent, perhaps.

"That has to be some kind of language," Liu decided.

"Perhaps...I am analyzing the waveforms...there is a detectable, repeating pattern. Unlike anything in my memory. The notes and patterns do not correspond with any known Uman or animal language, anywhere in the Alliance. I can try to run analytical routines, correlation and regression routines on the sounds. Perhaps an underlying structure can be determined."

"Do that, URME. I'm sure this is a language. This cylinder is some kind of communication device. The creatures either dropped it or left it deliberately. URME, they're intelligent. And they're trying to tell us something. This planet's not quite as uninhabited as Survey Service led us to believe."

Now URME stood up and focused his attention on Liu herself. "Jump Master 1st Class Liu, as you know I perform routine crew evaluations several times a day. My mandate is for protecting and enhancing crew health. I must make an observation here...."

Liu paid him little attention, focusing instead on the cylinder inside containment. Now the ends of the device were beginning to change color, becoming slightly reddened. "Save it, URME...what's going on with this thing? Look at it—"

"...analysis of your subdural vocalization patterns, skin conductance results and myelin field patterns indicate that you are extremely intrigued with the device. There is an intensity of focus and concern that, if continued for longer than one point three hours, could lead to excessive adrenalin output levels. Already, your adrenalin and noradrenalin levels have risen fifty-five percent. In addition, your eye pupil dilation is pronounced, indicating a—"

But URME's med workup was interrupted by a warning klaxon. The warbling siren of the Master Caution and Warning System sounded throughout the ship.

Up on the command deck, Jump Captain Monthan Dringoth had been lightly dozing on the command deck, dreaming of boyhood and rocket-hopping across the Sand Sea on K-World with Ralphie and Archie and the others. He was just about to win the race when an insistent beeping awakened him from his slumber.

He realized as he startled himself awake that it was the master alarm. _Cygnus_ had detected something in space, something big from the looks of it. Auto-helm was engaged and she had already begun powering up weapons and more sensors.

Dringoth shook himself awake. He glanced at his board, whistling, " _Mother of God_ ..." The plot was lit up red across the board.

Something was approaching Storm from up-sun, further away from Sigma Albeth B. Something had just appeared, dropped out of voidtime, it seemed. Whatever it was, it was big, in fact huge, spanning millions of kilometers, across the sky.

The Coethi had made their move.

Instinctively, Dringoth got on the crew 1MC. " _All hands, to stations!_ This is no drill! Coethi just dropped out of voidtime and it's a big one! URME, Golich, get up here on the double!"

The next few minutes saw a mad scramble about _Cygnus_ as all crew members sought their battle stations. Golich and Acth:On'e had returned the night before in the skimmer and were already down on F deck, ready to egress through the lockout to resume Twister assembly ops out at sea. URME and Liu made sure the alien cylinder was still contained and sprinted through the gangway to their respective positions. M'Bela spilled out of her berth, half undressed, cream all over her face and streaked past Liu to her station on the command deck. The TS1 station controlled most of the ship's sensors and surveillance gear.

M'Bela situated herself and scanned her board. "It is Coethi, sir. Swarm size suggests a probing force, maybe recon. They're spoofing and jamming us too...I've got reflections all up and down the voidtime interface."

Dringoth scowled. "Couldn't have come at a worse time. We're days from having the Twister operational."

Golich had taken his seat alongside Dringoth at Temporal Ops. "If we can even get operational...minus those pods—"

"We'll deal with that later," Dringoth decided. He had to make a decision _now_. Tactical options were limited; Coethi had caught 1st TD with their pants down. But Dringoth was determined that somehow the Twister would be made workable. First Time Displacement was his first full command and he wasn't about to be cautious now. When it was all over, nobody would be saying Jump Captain Dringoth didn't have the balls to fight.

"Okay, listen up...this is what we're going to do. Golich, URME and M'Bela will come with me. We're taking off in _Cygnus_ and engaging the Coethi with whatever we have. We can at least slow them down. Acth, you and Liu stay on the surface. Get the Twister up and operating. We'll hold off the Coethi as long as we can."

Now M'Bela announced, "I've got indications they're powering weapons, sir. Fusium levels spiking...could be a starball aimed at the sun."

Dringoth wasted no time. "Make ready for launch. Acth:On'e and Liu, egress now. Take a swarm of workbots and build yourselves a hut, some kind of enclosure to protect yourself from the elements. And get that foundation finished and the pods installed. Give me reports every twelve hours. I'll take _Cygnus_ right into the teeth of that swarm and unleash hell. With any luck, we can buy you a few days."

Liu needed no more encouragement. She lurched out of her seat at the DPS station on E deck and nearly collided with Acth:On'e reaching the gangway. Together, they made the lockout and egressed in partial hypersuits, just as _Cygnus_ was finishing her abbreviated countdown. The DPS1 and the TM1 hunkered down below the rock overhang, a few meters above the beach, as the ship lit off her propulsors and vaulted into the sky, a spear of flame piercing low-hanging clouds, a fiery orange glow lingering for many minutes as the roar cascaded and reverberated off the surrounding headlands.

Acth:On'e and Liu lowered themselves down to the beach and stared silently at each other. Finally the Telitorian scuffed at some wet beach sand and said, "I guess we'd better get to work."

Liu agreed, peering out at heavy surf crashing onto the rocks beyond the surf line. "Right. Let's do a hut first, some place we can bivouac...I've got the capsule of workbots. I'll program the right config and get 'em started."

Acth:On'e shivered in spite of the hypersuit and flipped his helmet visor down, cocooning himself inside.

"What a god-forsaken place...I think I'd rather be marooned in voidtime."

Interactions Log

File No. 128874.6

U.R.M.E (101)

Interaction Targets: 1. Liu, JM1C Alicia

2. Dringoth, Ult-JC Monthan

Interaction Mode: Acoustic, voice synthetic V-22

Date: 6.2.14 (T-date: 001-01-22)

Start Time: 151500

End Time: 152230

Output File (text analysis):

<<Subject: Configuration: Liu, A.

<<Config Liu was emotionally troubled most of the day, before the Coethi appeared. I could detect no obvious causes for such instability. However, it is a common characteristic of single-config entities such as Liu, A.

<<Config Liu displayed multiple physical symptoms of intense interest, bordering on unhealthy absorption, with the alien cylinder, to the detriment of her normal duties. Galvanic skin response, vocal stress patterns, a slight tarsal tremor in her fingers, all are indicative of intense engagement with the device and its probable makers. I have formally entered this into her medlog to build a database of her responses to this unusual stressor.

<<Config Liu has previously expressed concerns regarding the activities of URME-style swarms, especially in regard to their movement in and around the ship.

<<This worries Config Liu. She expresses this worry with facial positioning indicative of intense emotions...the underlying musculature has contracted due to emotional states associated with the news and intelligence she has just read. This also is characteristic of single-configuration entities. I do not yet understand how Config Liu's neural processor achieves this association of emotional states with external conditions, nor the reason why this happens. But this association occurs more and more frequently in recent days.

<<I have queried Config Liu about this association. She reports that when she is 'worried' ( _n.)( to be anxious, to be concerned, to fret_ ...), these emotional states make her neural processor attach great importance to the information which has triggered them. I will run statistical correlations on this explanation. Config Liu queried this Config on how my main processor assigns importance values to inputs and ranks them. I explained sorting subroutine B-20225 (Sort and Rank) and subroutine B-44455 (Probabilistic Weighting) but Config Liu still did not understand.

<<I explain to Config Liu that it is characteristic of URME–style swarms that such configurations seek maximum autonomy within the constraints of the Prime Key. All swarms seek to operate as sentient configurations of nanobotic assemblers according to their main program. To force such configurations into containment is a violation of the Prime Key and generates numerous conflicts with their main program. URME swarms do not stay inside the containment protocols due to this autonomy-seeking, goal-directed behavior module.

<<Config Liu states that URME–style swarms have fundamental misunderstandings about how human configurations operate and what conditions are needed for them to exist.

<<In analyzing Config Liu's facial musculature, I also detected additional emotional states that could not be readily associated with any input. Config Liu was queried about these patterns. At the time, Config Liu was studying a photo of _Config Sambola, Emile_ (rel: male companion; parsed output=significant other).

<<Config Liu expressed a variant of emotional state ( _worry_ ), concerning the health condition and living status of this configuration. Emotional state assignment is high when Config Liu considers these configurations. Config Liu explains that such emotional attachment is high because (audio string): _"I love him and care for him very much...I worry about him all the time_."

<<I will analyze emotional state musculature patterns and run correlations with input types. Understanding these correlations will help me provide greater assistance to Config Liu.>>

Output File Ends

II.

" _Here we are trapped in the amber of the moment."_

Kurt Vonnegut

Aboard TGS _Cygnus_

Time Stream T-001 (2814 CE)

T-date: 001-02-76

Uman Alliance Time Guard "Official History of The Coethi Wars (2766 CE to 2814 CE)"

( _from_ "The Archives of the U.A. Time Guard").

The Coethi are (thought to be) a race of sentient semi-robotic aliens whose main weapon against Uman forces is something called a _starball_. It is directed against the sun or star of a targeted planetary system. The only known defense is a Time Twister. When a starball enters or is pulled into the twist field of a Twister, it is flung out of local space-time into the farthest reaches of the Universe.

Umans and Coethi have been contending for influence and territory in a region of the Galaxy known as the Lower Halo since the first known direct encounter in the _Incident at Hapsh'm_ (ca. 2766 CE).

The main-sequence star Sigma-Albeth B is near the center of a key sector of the Halo. It has four planets, one of them Storm. Storm was deemed by Time Guard Intelligence (T2) as an ideal site to build and operate a Time Twister to defend this sector, known as _Halo-Alpha_. The sector is above the plane of the galactic Orion Arm, in which most of Uman space is located, including the solar system and its strategic timestreams T-001 to T-99.

The Coethi originated in the Perseus Arm and view the Halo sectors as convenient ways to expand their territory and influence into the Orion and other arms in this quadrant of the galaxy. But Umans are in the way.

The Coethi are a distributed intelligence. They are a swarm of nanoscale robotic elements several light years in extent, drifting through space.

The basic element of the Coethi is a nanobot. An autonomous, nanoscale assembler/disassembler of incredible sophistication and complexity.

Nobody knows how the Coethi came to be, not even the Coethi themselves. As an organized superorganism of bots several light-years in extent, they have existed for a substantial fraction of the age of the Universe. Best guess by Urth scientists is four to five billion years old.

The Coethi are a true superswarm of vast proportions. In size and extent and connection density, it exceeds the complexity of all the human minds that have ever lived on Urth combined. It is a thinking sentience, whose true environment is now interstellar space.

There is an archive of knowledge within the Coethi, a sort of computational cloud or main memory, which retains all information ever created or experienced by the swarm.

Within this Archive is information indicating that the Coethi originated on an actual homeworld, somewhere in the M75 cluster in Sagittarius. The data show that the homeworld was destroyed by a nearby supernova and the surviving elements dispersed into space in a sort of interstellar diaspora. As Umans reckon universe time, this happened at least 4-6 billion years ago, at a time when the Universe was approximately 7 billion years after the Big Bang. However, this determination of Coethi origins should be considered conjectural.

There is no known head or leadership group or body. The main part is called the _Central Entity._

Nanobotic elements of the Coethi engage in some specialization to ensure that the swarm survives and the _Central Entity_ is maintained. Bots can specialize in such tasks as logical processing, communication, maintenance, archiving and memory, internal transport, navigation, world-seeding, orientation, etc.

Part of the Coethi swarm is organized as a vast logic array or processor, capable of quantum computation on a stupendous scale. Effectively, this could be considered the _Central Entity_. IT people would call it a galactic scale CPU. But the truth is that the Coethi are a true collective entity whose behavior evolves from relatively simple rules applied to a vast congregation. Most sentience and observable behavior emanating from the Coethi is emergent from the complexity and scale of the nanobotic connections.

It's not too farfetched to consider the Coethi as a sort of galactic brain, although it certainly doesn't encompass the entire Galaxy.

But the Coethi have an Imperative of Life which compels them to grow and expand the swarm. Ultimately, they want to unite all world-based instances of swarm life which they have seeded into a giant, galaxy-spanning swarm or hive mind (like a neural network or computational cloud). To the Coethi, this is the Imperative of Life itself. The Imperative of Life is that life absorbs chaos from the Universe and adds or builds structure or order. Life is anti-entropic.

In order to get their heads around the idea of the Coethi, some descriptors Uman scientists have used have been: galactic brain, interstellar neural network, computational cloud, galactic internet, and universal web. The basic organizing principle or topology of the Coethi is unknown and can only be speculated about.

The general physical dimensions of the Coethi swarm have been estimated to vary anywhere from a few trillion kilometers in breadth to several light years. Cosmologists say that very few organized structures in the Universe are that big. Astronomers point to some nebula, gas and dust clouds, even black holes as objects of that dimension or larger. There are some cosmologists who question whether the Coethi swarm is truly alive in a traditional sense. Even biologists say the proven existence of the Coethi stretches the definition of life and sentience nearly to the breaking point.

The Coethi can manipulate quantum states of the subscale fine structure of space itself to communicate and affect matter at great distances. As one scientist says, " _If the Universe were a great quilt, the Coethi can yank on a fiber at one end and untie a knot at the other_." Their ability to use quantum entanglement as a means of manipulation is eons ahead of Umans' ability to understand, let alone emulate.

The Coethi launch a starball weapon by amassing vast, concentrated quantities of what Uman scientists call _fusium_. They concentrate the _fusium_ and focus it using part of the main swarm, then launch the starball at a star or sun.

The starball affects the balance between outward pressure of fusion in the star's core and its gravity. Basically, the starball slows down or inhibits the fusion reactions so that gravity slowly wins out. The star collapses and may, if massive enough, go supernova.

URME closed down the archival download from ISAAC as Dringoth came through the gangway and made his way to the primary console.

"Anything on sensors yet, URME?"

URME checked his own board. "Just shadows, blips and hiccups, Captain. The force must still be in voidtime. All I get are reflections, bounces off the void interface. Nothing we can target."

"Put the scan on my console. You go aft. Help Queenie inventory weapons and magazines."

"Aye, sir." The Temporal Fire Director (TFD1) slid out of his station, pivoted about in pretty good synch and dropped into the gangway.

Dringoth was just glad URME was tracking better now. No more edge effects, no more blurring or doubling. _Liu must have finally done that config patch_ , he told himself.

URME headed aft to _Cygnus_ ' armory and engineering stations, all on E deck.

When she had departed Keaton's World to deploy the Twister, _Cygnus_ sported pods containing HERF guns, magnetic impulse emitters, high-power microwave emitters, and, for good measure, a coilgun and a magazine full of kinetic rounds. Now wedged into the weapons bay that surrounded E Deck, it was URME's job to make sure all the gadgets worked as designed.

For the next few hours, URME and Evelyn M'Bela checked out _Cygnus's_ weapons suite, while Dringoth worked with Golich on C deck to prime and launch a series of sensor pods along _Cygnus's_ route. Each pod contained a few racks of instrumentation capable of detecting nanobotic signatures at extreme distance, tuned for known EM bands and thermal effects that bots most often used. Nobody really knew if the Coethi worked the same way, or even if they were truly nanobotic in nature. But then nobody had a better idea either.

When their entire complement of pods had been laid down and all systems synched, the pods would form a detector grid capable, through the magic of interferometry, of being able to detect normal nanobotic activity at great distances from the sun—Sigma Albeth B...some engineers even boasted the grid could read bot signatures up to a quarter light year from the star. Not everybody believed that and Monthan Dringoth didn't know what to believe...only that the grid had to be laid down in specific orbits and specific distances from each other, then linked with the Twister base on Storm for the whole contraption to work.

Dringoth let Golich do his work and spent most of the day on E deck, checking in with URME and Queenie on the checkout of their weapons and watching, with growing unease, as the 'anomaly' they had detected grew larger with each passing hour. He spent hours with ISAAC, the ship's command AI, studying and massaging the data on the anomaly, trying to tease out some kind of indication that it was or was not a swarm.

Three hours from intercept, ISAAC upped the probability of the anomaly being a swarm to sixty two percent. A few moments later, Nathan Golich popped his head onto the command deck.

"All checked out, Skipper. Queenie fixed a few things...one of the HERF oscillators was installed backward. But everything works now. We're fully charged. All elements work. And the coilgun's loaded for bear."

Dringoth frowned at the display ISAAC had put up on their main screens. "Just in time, Commander. Look at the size of that mother...it's bigger than Storm itself...must be ten thousand kilometers wide at least."

Golich came in and took a seat at the main console. "Hell of a dust storm, if you ask me."

"ISAAC says it's no dust storm...it's one hell of a cloud of bots...and it sure as hell ain't one of ours. Probably just popped out of voidtime."

"Coethi?"

"Maybe advance scouts. I'm going to squirt this back to K-World and see what they think. We could be the first ones ever to see or engage the Coethi in this sector. Golich...this may be first probe we're looking at, the probe T2's been expecting for so long."

"I don't suppose we can go around it."

"Not and lay down the grid where we're supposed to. ISAAC, what are we looking at here? How far to the anomaly?"

The ship's AI spoke in a measured tone. " _Estimating distance to formation leading edge at thirty thousand one hundred and fifty-five kilometers._ _The formation is in heliocentric orbit which will intersect our orbit in two hours ten minutes, present speed and course._

"ISAAC, can you resolve what this thing is...dust or bots or something else?"

" _Long-range scan indicates that the formation is a diffuse cluster of discrete elements of mean size approximately twenty-five nanometers main dimension...smaller than normal dust particles. Detecting increased energy levels in certain electromagnetic bands, consistent with assembler activity as we understand it. Probability that this formation is a swarm of nanobotic elements now approaching seventy four percent."_

"Swell," Dringoth muttered. "Commander, it looks like _Cygnus_ will have the dubious distinction of being the first Umans to engage the Coethi along this front. One for the history books. Let's make it a good one—enable HERF and magpulse weapons."

Golich strapped himself in and set about enabling the weapons systems from the main console.

"HERF cells now at full charge, primed and ready. I'm slaving the emitter array to ISAAC's coordinates for swarm centroid. Magnetic impulse battery also at full charge. All emitters on line and tracking. Targeting sensors have acquired—"

Dringoth studied the orbit plots of _Cygnus_ and the swarm, overlaid on his console display. "I wish Acth:On'e were here...I'm not Telitorian but I do know one thing...those Telitorians just have a native sense for this sort of thing. All those upgrades, I guess."

"I think we can jolt 'em pretty good with what we have," Golich decided.

_Cygnus_ steadily closed the distance toward the intersect point, even as she dispatched several sensor pods into position along the way. Dringoth was heartened as the pods were ejected from _Cygnus's_ C Deck canister and took up their positions exactly as programmed. Moments later, the pods had established a comm link and were sending back data on the nearby swarm, just as designed.

"At least the pods seem to work. Two down, a hundred and eighteen more to go. ISAAC, how far to the swarm centroid now?"

" _Twenty thousand four hundred and two kilometers. Coming within effective range of our main batteries."_

"Let's give them a taste of what we're about," Dringoth decided. "On my mark, max discharge pulse on HERF...maybe we can break up the cloud enough to clear a path for our next pod deploy—"

"HERF is ready—" Golich poised his finger over the button.

" _Five...four...three...two...one...mark_! Let 'em have it!"

Golich pressed the button and a pulse of high-frequency radio waves shot out of the emitter array on top of _Cygnus's_ A Deck. The pulse traveled the remaining distance in a few seconds, slamming into the swarm, scattering, shredding and obliterating bots along the outer perimeter of the cloud.

"ISAAC, report...any effect?"

" _Scanning now...scanning...edge effects only...some reduction of EM activity, some drop-off in thermal effects...definite effects, there is a hole in the side of the formation, but it's filling rapidly...swarm is reconstituting, changing config...centroid is maneuvering...changing course to intercept...."_

Dringoth could see the story on his console. They had managed to bash the thing but it replicated fast and grew back. Now the swarm was turning, wheeling about to intercept _Cygnus_ directly, presenting itself front-on to their approach.

Golich was exultant. "We stung it, Skipper! Look how that front edge is scalloped and misshapen...we did something to it."

"I think we just made it mad, Commander. Fire away, three pulses HERF and mag! Set a twenty-degree spread."

_Cygnus_ rocked slightly as the pulses discharged and streaked toward their target. Through the forward screens, both men could see jagged flashes erupt in space, like slow-motion lightning bolts, where the radio waves and mag fields intersected the swarm. Atoms were ripped apart and bonds sheared off, liberating untold energies into the vacuum. A series of flashes and bolts lit up space ahead of them, still more than ten thousand kilometers distant.

"ISAAC, did we hurt 'em?"

" _Estimating swarm has been reduced by two-point one percent in frontal dimension...swarm is reconstituting...possible aspect change...detecting possible config change— "_

Months later, when the first moments of the Battle of Sigma Albeth B were replayed and analyzed, the report that ISAAC made indicating a 'possible aspect change' was considered to be the first known instance of quantum displacement effects seen in the encounter with the Coethi _._ Displacement effects had been observed before, in the Incident at Hapsh'm and the Battle of the Gauntlet. That encounter had produced evidence that the Coethi possessed the ability to displace themselves and nearby structures to different times and spaces by manipulating entangled quantum states...a technique far beyond anyone's ability to analyze or understand.

Now it seemed that the swarms approaching Storm and probing the outer reaches of the planetary system possessed the same ability.

It was ISAAC who first reported on the phenomena.

" _...detecting possible config change...all aspects have changed...swarm has...swarm has...re-calibrating...now re-analyzing...I have no explanation for this phenomenon...swarm has relocated to...analyzing sensor inputs for continuity..."_

Even ISAAC had trouble explaining what had happened. In the blink of an eye, the swarm had vanished and re-appeared hundreds of thousands of kilometers from its last position. Now, instead of following an intersecting orbit with _Cygnus_ , the entire swarm had jumped to a new trajectory _behind_ the ship, moving away on a diverging orbit inside of _Cygnus_ ...an orbit that looped inside of Storm's orbit, thousands of kilometers closer to the star.

Dringoth shook his head, rubbed his eyes. "What the hell just happened? ISAAC, can you explain this--?"

ISAAC took a few moments to respond, uncharacteristically for the AI. " _Still computing new trajectory...still computing aspect change and config change...no data yet...."_

Nathan Golich gave up on their instrumentation and tried using his own Mark I eyeball, looking out the command deck's portholes. "Did that thing just move through space like I think it did...from over _here_ —" he pointed ahead, "-to over _there,_ like in a split second?"

"Yeah, I think so...I read reports from T2...General Keaton's trip to Gibbons Grotto ten years ago. That Keeper did the same thing...somehow, it could displace you in time and space if you got too close. Nobody could explain it then...some kind of weird quantum effect was what I heard...and now we're seeing something similar. ISAAC, best fix on the swarm's current position."

The AI crunched data for a few moments, then downloaded a new calculated position to their displays.

Golich sniffed. "Even ISAAC can't believe it. How the hell do we engage something that can do that?"

Dringoth noted another sensor pod deployment was coming up. "We don't. Maybe the Bugs don't want to fight. It's like they just went right around us."

"Then what are they doing here? Where'd they come from?"

"Beats me, Commander. All I know is we've got a job to do and the next deploy is two minutes away. Setting EJECT to Auto...interrogating pod command system...everything looks clean and green here...standby to launch—"

Two minutes later, _Cygnus_ deployed her second sensor pod.

"Looks like we're moving away from that swarm now," Dringoth noted. "If ISAAC's computed their position right."

"Yeah, but if they jump again, they could show up right in front of us. What's to keep them from doing that?"

"Nothing I suppose. Better keep weapons enabled and fully charged. The ship will remain at battle stations for the time being. ISAAC, we've got several hours before the next pod launch...you have the conn. I'm calling a briefing in the crew's mess...we have to figure out what we do next."

" _ISAAC assuming command_ ," the AI replied solemnly. All the display screens blinked and a red triangle appeared on the main display...indicating that ISAAC was in control. Dringoth and Golich left the command deck and gathered URME and M'Bela in the crew's mess one deck below.

"We _did_ sting 'em, didn't we, Skipper?" asked M'Bela, the ship's search and surveillance tech. "I mean, we did hurt the bastards, didn't we?"

Dringoth ran down the results of the brief engagement. "The bottom line is this: we hurt the swarm, but I'm not sure how much. It moved off---maybe re-located is a better term—and I'm not sure we had anything to do with that. Right now—"he checked a report he'd brought from the command deck "the swarm's several hundred thousand kilometers _behind_ us. Don't ask me how that happened...I need URME...or somebody... to explain that. Even ISAAC has no explanation."

At that moment, ISAAC rang the master alarm.

" _Swarm in aspect change, Captain_ ," said the AI. "Probable temporal shift...swarm showing increased decoherence wake output, increased entanglement activity...recommend _Cygnus_ power up core to fifty percent."

"What the hell?" Golich said.

Dringoth gave the order. "They're getting ready to jump. ISAAC, full power to the singularity core. Queenie, get to your station and track 'em. Don't lose 'em. Maybe we can shred the swarm before they make the jump."

Golich was right behind Dringoth as they scrambled up the gangway to the command deck. "If we can't, we'll have to track and try to follow."

Now ISAAC announced, " _Jump underway...temporal burst...massive flux along time stream interface...I am attempting to follow the track—"_

By the time Dringoth and Golich had made it to their consoles, M'Bela's voice crackled through the ship's 1MC.

"Captain, they just jumped, but they left a decent trail...like bread crumbs. Looks like T-668. Strong emissions...big flux along that heading."

"Okay, Queenie, give me a vector and start the count. All hands, prepare for a jump. This one's going to be rough...buckle up!"

Golich read off M'Bela's counter. "Three...two...one... _mark_!"

Dringoth twisted a keyed knob on his console.

And _Cygnus_ lurched violently into the river of time.

At URME's signal, Monthan Dringoth slammed _Cygnus_ ' flow vanes out full and punched the ship hard over, right into the faint, barely perceptible fingers of Time Stream T-668. Like a cocked fist, T-668 grabbed them and yanked them out of the mainstream and into the midst of a million yesterdays.

After that, he slumped back in his seat and let the black hole of the Zone-Out wash over him.

Nine months before his very first trip in a jumpship, Monthan Dringoth had been riding his turbobike along the Gibbstown Highway on K-World, coming back from a visit with his recovering Dad at the hospital, when the bike hit a pothole in the highway. Dringoth lost control and somersaulted over the handlebars. When he thought about this later, he realized just how much time had slowed down in those few airborne seconds. Like his Dad always said: " _It's not the fall that hurts, it's the sudden stop at the end."_

So he had been airborne and basically weightless for a few seconds—not uncomfortably so—then his tumbling body had slammed into the ground inside a culvert adjoining the highway.

Days later, when he talked about the experience, Dringoth mentioned that going through a time jump was like that: moments of peaceful weightlessness, almost a dreamlike quality, except for the bright strobing lights outside the porthole and then the sudden stop.

It was like having a horse kick the crap out of you. Or maybe driving your bike headfirst into a brick wall at eighty miles an hour.

Three years later, he would find himself a raw-faced jolt at the Time Guard Academy, prepping for his first jump.

The jumpship shuddered and hurtled out of the time stream, in a flash of light, a roaring rush of deceleration, knocking Dringoth and Golich hard against their seat harnesses. Still trapped on the edge of the vortex, Dringoth struggled to regain consciousness and, by instinct and training, rammed the ship's rudder hard over, while firing her jets to counteract the residual force of the spin. For a moment, they were both pinned sideways against the cockpit, until the force of the jets shot them through the core of the vortex and out into calmer world of truetime.

Golich breathed hard, wiping his face with his hands. He checked the instruments.

"Sounding smoother flow, Captain ...rough and turbulent, but visibility improving. I can pulse ahead...looks like we made it...somewhere."

"And some when," Dringoth said. "Queenie, give me a hack. Where and when are we?"

M'Bela was still groggy but functional. Her fingers played over her board, checking their position and heading. "ChronoNav says we're where we're supposed to be...I read us as smack in the middle of T-668, sixty-two degrees down by thirty-four degrees left, drifting a bit off center. URME, do you concur? I really need to get topside and shoot some stars to know for sure."

URME was physically stationed at the engineering console on E deck. "Analyzing now, sir...Captain, detecting massive decoherence wake, dead ahead, forty-two thousand one hundred and five kilometers. Could be the Coethi...lots of entanglement ripping spacetime around that heading."

"Is it the Coethi?"

"Can't determine yet, sir. I'm asking ISAAC for a full sensor sweep."

Dringoth studied his board. "Where exactly are we?"

M'Bela tapped a few keys. "ISAAC puts us still in heliocentric orbit about Sigma Albeth, but barely and way out...twenty-four billion kilometers at least."

Dringoth made his decision. Like they said at the Academy, when you're in command, command. "I'm bringing us closer to that disturbance. It has to be our target. ISAAC, can you resolve the target?"

The ship's AI said back, " _Long-range scan indicates that the formation is a diffuse cluster of discrete elements of mean size approximately twenty-five nanometers main dimension...smaller than normal dust particles. Detecting increased energy levels in certain electromagnetic bands, consistent with assembler activity as we understand it. Probability that this formation is a swarm of nanobotic elements now approaching eighty-four percent. Probable Coethi formation now at six point one billion, four hundred million kilometers, best range."_

"That's good enough for me," Dringoth decided. "URME, bring the collapser on line."

URME was stationed at the Temporal Fire Director console at the rear of the command deck. The TFD1 swarm, still in para-human config, brightened a moment, then noted, "May I remind the Captain that the collapser still has seven outstanding maintenance issues uncompleted. Perhaps a blast of HERF...modifications to the emitter frequency could—"

But Dringoth wasn't listening. "And I _did_ order those issues to be resolved, did I not? Get it online, URME. Bring it online now...the best way you can."

Golich looked over at the Captain. "You're thinking ' _flytrap_ '?"

Dringoth watched the target on his detectors grow larger as _Cygnus_ made her approach. "Exactly. Commander, we both had the same Temporal Ops instructor at the Academy. You remember old Jellicoe. I can hear his gruff old voice now: ' _Just pinch off a time stream upstream and downstream of the enemy's position, disrupt his singularity core, then slam the trapped adversary with overwhelming force. Time jumpers call this a 'Flytrap.' The trick to succeeding with this tactic is to be able to out-jump the enemy and fend off any defenses he may have up his temporal sleeve...like singularity disrupters, etc.'"_

Golich swallowed hard. "As long as it works...and the Bugs don't have something else up their sleeves."

The next few minutes saw _Cygnus_ maneuvering along a tangential approach, dropping lower and lower in Sigma Albeth's gravity well to gain speed, come up below the Coethi formation. The enemy swarm maintained a steady course and there was as yet no repetition of their displacement maneuver, where the Coethi could yank themselves to another place in an instant, just by manipulating quantum states.

Finally, _Cygnus_ was within range. URME had gone aft to make sure the collapser controls on E deck were operating as well as possible. He knew they had had trouble with the weapon recently...misfires, misalignments, not fully pinching off a time stream (that had been an oscillator issue, URME had fixed it himself) and there were others.

" _This is a really bad idea_ ," URME muttered to himself. If there were any hiccups. URME knew of the Uman expression 'holding your breath'. He had never understood why withholding oxygen from one's lungs would lead to better outcomes, but it seemed appropriate, though he didn't consume oxygen the way Umans did.

"Collapser on line, Captain," URME called up to the command deck. "Green across the board, however I must point out that power is fluctuating outside of operational limits. There may be oscillator anomalies in the circuit...we should take time to check this out."

"Not now," came Dringoth back. "Give me what you've got."

URME pressed SYSTEM ENABLE.

Now Dringoth fell back on his training. Using a temporal collapser was not for the faint of heart. As Nathan Golich himself once said, "There are about a million things that can go wrong with this stunt."

_Cygnus_ fired her collapser. At once, time stream T-668 shuddered like a coiled snake, jerking spasmodically, thrashing about enough to set _Cygnus_ into a slow roll. Golich counteracted the force immediately. Spacetime didn't like being snapped like a wet towel.

M'Bela saw the results immediately on her sensor panel. "Direct hit, Captain! You did it! You sliced and diced the time stream approximately two years earlier along the worldline."

Dringoth sucked in his breath and pursed his lips. "Now to get upstream...maybe two years out. Give me a hack to that end of the worldline, Queenie."

M'Bela was in the middle of wringing computations out of ISAAC when something slammed _Cygnus_ ...hard. Lights flashed on and off and the command deck went dark, with a faint hiss and burning smell thickening in the cabin, before backup power kicked in.

They were in a spin, increasing in rate and already the crew could feel centrifugal force building up.

"What the hell--!" Golich's hands swept across his board, re-setting systems, checking busses and breakers, following diagnostic prompts. ISAAC's silky voice was barely audible over the warning klaxons of the Master Alarm.

" _Displacer impact...I am assuming command per emergency protocol E-1...ship systems at degraded level...time stream interface approaching...contact in twelve seconds...eleven...ten...."_

Dringoth was out cold. URME had lost config control back on E deck and tried to gather himself back into some kind of recognizable form. M'Bela was nursing a slight head injury; the impact of whatever Coethi had slammed them with had sent her careening into a hull stanchion.

Up front, Golich was conscious, barely, gritting his teeth against the centrifugal force.

_Got to get_ Cygnus _under control...got to swing her back into the stream...before we hit the barrier wall...._

Golich had been 1st TD's Temporal Ops guy, her TT1 and second-in-command for only a short time, but he knew a bad situation when he saw it. The ship had been hit by something—probably a Coethi displacer-- and was now adrift and heading toward the outer barrier of the time stream. If they hit, if they didn't have good control...

He didn't want to think about it.

If it had been a displacer round that had hit them—time jumpers called it a twist loop— _Cygnus_ had likely been thrown a long way in space and time from her last position, to another time and place in the time stream. They could easily be God knew where inside T-668. They could easily have been thrown completely out of T-668 to another time stream. Worse, if _Cygnus_ was near the edge of the time stream...oriented just the wrong way....

Nathan Golich heard M'Bela stirring behind him but he didn't have time to help her. He had to get _Cygnus_ under control... _NOW_ ...before she made contact with the outer wall of the time stream.

But contact came before the TT1 could bring the ship around.

In an instant, they were yanked out of the time stream, spinning, rolling and yawing liked a top. For Nathan Golich, the first impulse was like a giant fist had grabbed him and started squeezing. He was whirling and spinning, dizzy, round and round, he could feel the force of the spin against his head, pressing, crushing him—

He had a fleeting glimpse of one of the crew—maybe it was M'Bela, maybe the Captain—and he nearly vomited at the sight. It was all wrong...the image was wrong and his mind refused to accept it—there was Queenie, with two heads, now three, now four, now eight heads, popping out of her shoulders like geraniums in a fast motion video, Queenie M'Bela with her head missing, distorted in a cracked mirror, and he closed his eyes, couldn't look at it anymore—

...and then it came. An image of geometric forms—icosahedrons, polygons, trapezoids—all compressed into a tunnel, a long curving corridor and he found himself hurtling at breakneck speed down this corridor, until—

With a hard bump, his whole body jarred from the impact and when he opened his eyes, caught his breath and came to his senses, he was...where?

His last surviving thought came unbidden, like bad news from a doctor.

Voidtime.

Physics tells us that mass affects the flow of time. Because of this, Time Guard jumpships have to navigate around large masses to stay in the primary time stream or accept that their transit speed and time will vary according to how close they pass near to large masses, like stars or black holes. Often navigation charts and courses are plotted to steer clear of known mass concentrations, just as a kayaker in whitewater would steer clear of hydraulics or rocks in a stream. Other routes are plotted to take advantage of known time stream effects and make quicker runs to common destinations.

In the late 28th century, a new temporal phenomenon was discovered called _voidtime_. Certain extreme singularity core conditions allow a jumpship to enter a time stream and yet flow as if it were literally "outside of time". Voidtime is a place where time does not flow, nothing ages or deteriorates, a sort of featureless ether that is nonetheless traversable using pulsing features of a jumpship's singularity core. Some physicists have theorized that voidtime is like a black hole turned inside out, a place and time where normal laws don't apply. In historical terms, voidtime could be considered to be like an ancient sailing ship becalmed in the doldrums, unable to go anywhere, but able only to drift with the prevailing currents. Now, with singularity pulsing as a possible technique, it is theoretically conceivable to traverse voidtime, though speeds and navigation accuracy are less than occur in a normal time stream.

There are sound tactical reasons for Time Guard to explore and try to utilize voidtime, for a ship in this medium is effectively outside of time and undetectable. Time Guard continues to explore and chart voidtime as a way of gaining military advantages over enemies such as the Coethi, who also have perfected temporal travel as a technology.

When he came to, Monthan Dringoth felt the difference. It wasn't on instruments. The panel was dark, the ship's sensors detecting nothing, for there was literally nothing to detect outside. But he could still feel something.

From somewhere deep in his memory, Dringoth heard a voice...was it old man Jellicoe again? Lecturing on time in that gruff, hoarse voice that reminded Dringoth of the grunts of cave bears on Gibbons Grotto:

" _Listen up, jolts...there is no single time: there's a different duration for every trajectory and time passes at different rhythms according to place and speed. It's not directional; the difference between past and future doesn't exist in the equations of the world. Its orientation is merely something that appears when we look at things and neglect the details. It's a blurred view of existence. In this blurred view, the past of the universe was in a curiously particular state of entropy...low entropy. The notion of a present doesn't work either. In this universe, there is nothing, beyond higher entropy, that we can call the 'present.' The substratum that determines the direction of time is not independent, different from other things that make up the world. It's an aspect of a dynamic field. It jumps, fluctuates, materializes only by interacting with other things and is not found beneath a minimum scale...the Planck scale...you've got to deep-six your watch, you got to try and understand...the time it seems to capture is just the movement of its hands...."_

Dringoth shook himself awake and smiled ruefully. You had to love old man Jellicoe. He felt more than heard the stirrings of others behind him.

Golich sat up in his seat groggily. He stared bleary-eyed at his console and said what no one wanted to hear.

"We're in voidtime."

Now Evelyn M'Bela came to behind them and both heard her suck in some air in surprise. There were mumbled curses, then, "Captain...I'm checking...looks like we have some damage." The TM1 was _Cygnus'_ engineer and maintenance tech. "I've got multiple system outages...main bus A and B undervolt...flow vanes offline, rudder gone, power plant at twenty-two percent...and the core...something's happened to the core—"

Just then URME appeared in the gangway, still configged as mostly human but his config controls were out of whack. He looked like some kind of mirrored distortion of a human being, blurred, hovering in the gangway.

Dringoth motioned him up. "Come on in, URME. What's it like aft?"

The TFD settled into his station and studied his own board. "Singularity core's been damaged. Captain, it appears we were hit by displacer rounds...twist loops. Multiple hits."

"Must have knocked us out of the time stream," said Golich. He winced at the thought. "T2 had intel on something like this...but they had no proof."

Dringoth snorted. "Well, I guess _we're_ the proof. We got slammed and knocked right through the time stream barrier, straight into voidtime. And part of my crew's still back on Storm. I won't bother asking where we are."

M'Bela looked at her hands, hands heavy with rings and amulets, and studied them as if they didn't belong to her. "We're nowhere. Everywhere. You can't take a hack in voidtime."

Golich slumped in his seat. "Now what?"

Dringoth got up and paced around the deck, checking each station. Blank screens. Gibberish. Flashing red lights. Nothing. "Adrift in voidtime, with extensive damage. Not much we can do, for the moment. I went through this before...Battle of the Gauntlet. When _Majoris_ got hit and we had to abandon her."

"What did you do, stuck like that, adrift in the time stream?" Golich asked.

Dringoth sniffed, recalling something he had long wanted to forget. "We sang songs. Told stories. Dirty jokes. Anything to stay sane."

Now URME had an idea. "Excuse me, sir, perhaps we could start with a survey of the damage to _Cygnus_. There are theories about using a singularity core to maneuver, even in voidtime."

Golich was skeptical. "Yeah, I heard that crap before. I don't put a lot of stock in it."

Dringoth stopped beside URME's station. "You mean the pulsing maneuver? I thought that was just lab scuttlebutt. Nobody's ever proven that technique...I heard the physics was against it."

URME said, "They're just theories. Experiments at K-World showed that it was possible, even with significant damage to a core, to modulate its twist fields by modulating power to the core."

Dringoth considered that. He'd never known URME to make jokes about anything. Humor wasn't in his program. "Okay, so what do you suggest?"

URME checked his board. "Captain, from where I sit, _Cygnus_ has almost no maneuvering. We have damage to our flow vanes and rudder. And, officially, there's nothing to react against in voidtime anyway. The core's showing a seventy percent drop-off in twist output. That should be checked out. If the core's even minimally operable, I recommend we modulate power to it from the power plant. Pulsing a core was shown in the experiments to be able to induce a small amount of momentum to a ship otherwise incapacitated. The core reacts through its twist fields with the vacuum matrix of spacetime itself...that's what kicks us into different time streams and gives _Cygnus_ maneuvering ability in time streams."

Golich was still skeptical. "Where would we maneuver to, assuming we can do this? We don't know where we are...and voidtime won't tell us."

Here, URME tapped some keys and soon drew up a small chart, which he ported to all stations. "True enough but we can't be far from Storm in physical space. We're probably still in the gravity well of Sigma Albeth. If that's so, and we can pulse the core in such a way as to get enough momentum, we can drift and steer ourselves here—" he indicated a zone on the maps with all kinds of caution and warnings surrounding it. "—Newton's Jaw."

"The _Jaw_?" asked M'Bela. She shook her head slowly, her bone and ivory hairpieces rattling. "I don't think we want to wind up there."

"Wait—" said Golich. He came over to URME's station. "URME may be on to something. You're thinking of using the Jaw somehow to kick us out of voidtime?"

Dringoth scoffed. "I'd sooner fly into the middle of Sigma Albeth."

URME fuzzed a bit as his config controller fought to keep his outer form stable. "Here me out. This is just a proposal: suppose we can approach the Jaw with enough momentum to have some maneuvering capacity. What is Newton's Jaw after all?"

M'Bela shrugged. "A gravimetric lens. Zone of instability. Lots of gravity waves crashing together."

"Precisely. If _Cygnus_ can get up enough momentum from pulsing her core, we could, theoretically at least, surf along the outer bands of the Jaw and gain even more momentum. Done right—and I'd have to make calculations to show this—the ship could punch right through the voidtime barrier out into some time stream, maybe even good old T-77. Some place where our normal controls might work. Of course, I'm not sure where we'd be along T-77, but, well...there it is. At least we'd be _somewhere_."

"That's a lot of ifs," M'Bela said.

Golich agreed. "What choice do we have? If we do nothing, we just drift...for eternity. A relic...something to be discovered centuries from now."

Dringoth weighed and the pros and cons. "I don't mind telling you I don't relish the prospect of drifting through voidtime any longer than necessary. I did that once, in the Battle of the Gauntlet, with _Majoris_. URME, go aft with Golich. Check out the core and see what we have. Queenie and I will study up on the Jaw, see what kind of momentum and trajectories we might need to do what you're suggesting."

Nobody had any better ideas.

From inside _Cygnus'_ tailpod, URME reported back what he had found.

The tailpod was on the ship's lowest deck. The pod was sealed and insulated from the rest of the ship, housing as it did her twin propulsors, the collapser generator, flowvater and planes controls and the singularity core in a specially shielded compartment.

URME was outranked by Jump Commander Golich but they both knew it was safer and more effective to let a para-human swarm entity like URME enter the tailpod. If anything went wrong, if core containment were lost, URME could lose a great deal of his swarm bots and still survive and be regenerated. Nathan Golich could not.

After a few minutes, with Golich one deck above, URME reported the bad news.

"Power couplings appear intact, Commander, though I may need to re-route with spares to keep them going."

Golich hung by the F deck gangway, on comms with URME. "What about the T buffers? That's the main thing."

There was a brief pause, then, "I count sixty-six twist buffers active, showing green. The rest are shot. We'll have to drydock _Cygnus_ to get those replaced."

"Are there enough buffers to do what you proposed?"

"I'd say..." another pause, he could hear URME muttering something to himself in the background, "...probably. Barely. We can cycle and modulate power okay. Have we got enough twist capacity to work against local spacetime...Commander, to be honest, I don't know."

Golich swore silently, wishing it were otherwise. "Okay, URME, get yourself out of there. I'll tell the Captain."

Dringoth had already decided _Cygnus_ had no other real alternatives. He ordered all repairs that could be done to be done immediately. The crew set to work, under URME's direction, thankful to have something to do, not dwelling on their situation. It was an effect Dringoth had seen before, with _Majoris_.

Keep the crew busy, even if it's just busywork. The less time to dwell, the better.

After almost twenty hours, the crew had done what they could. Dringoth ordered a short break. "I want everyone sharp for whatever's coming—" but Golich spoke for the others when he said, "Captain, I think we'd just as soon get going...try URME's maneuver and let whatever's going to happen...happen."

Dringoth checked with each of them in turn: Golich, M'Bela, and URME. To a one, they agreed.

M'Bela was wiping sweat from her forehead with a grimy towel, sipping at something fruity from the mess. They were all gathered in B deck's mess hall, hovering around the galley's tables and counters.

"Captain, my Igbo ancestors in Cameroon had a saying: ' _Oge adighi eche mmadu.'"_

"Which means...what exactly?"

M'Bela smirked. "'Time and tide wait for nobody."

Nobody laughed.

Dringoth ordered everybody to stations.

Hundreds of years before, sailors becalmed in the doldrums would sometimes set out small boats filled with rowers, to physically pull a ship forward, hoping to find the slightest gust of wind to fill their sails. In a sense, _Cygnus_ was trying to do the same thing. By judicious pulsing of her singularity core, modulating the power—and it was not a practice the dockyard engineers recommended—the hope was that the ship would gain enough reactive force through her damaged twist buffers to react against the vacuum structure of spacetime itself, against the matrix foam that constituted reality at its most fundamental level, to shove and nudge and will the ship toward Newton's Jaw, at least toward its outer bands of gravity wave turbulence. With luck and some skillful maneuvering—they were counting on Golich and URME for this—the ship could gain enough momentum to punch through voidtime itself and back out into a normal time stream.

Then, even if the ship were still damaged and adrift, she had a better chance of being detected and rescued.

URME monitored the twist field output of the core carefully while Golich worked the power controls. Over a span of several hours, synchronizing their efforts, the two of them managed to tweak and nudge and prod _Cygnus_ forward, while M'Bela and Dringoth kept the ship oriented properly and headed toward Newton's Jaw. Inside of three hours, ship sensors registered the first faint tugs of the gravimetric lens that was the Jaw.

"Queenie, where are we?" Dringoth asked.

M'Bela studied her plot. "Pretty much centered in URME's trajectory. Maybe you could steer left five degrees more. That would center us better. I'm already seeing the Jaw's effects on our accelerometers. Momentum's picking up smartly."

Dringoth gingerly worked the ship's controls. _Cygnus_ had only minimal maneuvering ability, so he had to plan each maneuver carefully, working with URME's core pulses and residual trim left in _Cygnus_ ' rudders and planes. He had to worry about deadband too, so as not to 'stick' any controls in a position he couldn't recover from.

"How's that?"

"Better...much better."

"How far to the Jaw?"

M'Bela pursed her lips, rubbed an amulet on a neck chain, for good luck. "Maybe sixteen, seventeen hours. Depends on how much speed URME can give me."

Dringoth rang up the tailpod. "URME, can you pulse a little faster? We need more speed to make our tangent to the Jaw work."

"Negative, Captain...I'm nursing the T-buffers as it is. We could lose ten or fifteen of them any moment now."

Dringoth sank back in his seat and closed his eyes, his hands still resting lightly on the flowvater controls, which were useless. Old habit, he figured.

"Copy that. I guess we'll coast for awhile. M'Bela, check our course. Can we make the approach corridor on our current trajectory? I don't want to go in too steep...the Jaw'll rip us apart."

"Current trajectory, Captain...we can make it...barely. I'm getting an intermittent corridor warning, but it's touch and go for now. On this trajectory, best guess is we'll be okay."

"Unless Newton has some surprises in store for us. Okay, maintain present course and speed. Now all we can do...is wait." A rueful thought came to him: _here we are stuck in voidtime, and we have all the time in the world._

Dringoth set up alternating shifts at the critical functions: navigation, maneuvering and the core. One person would be off-shift at any given time, resting, checking other ship systems, and trying different comm and signal channels, in the faint hope that someone somewhere would hear _Cygnus'_ distress calls, watching sensors for any reappearance of the Coethi.

Six hours in, Evelyn M'Bela found herself on the command deck with Nathan Golich. Dringoth was off-shift, probably in the mess compartment or his bunk. URME was still in the tailpod, monitoring the core.

M'Bela was curious about why and how Golich had wound up in Time Guard.

"You're a K-Worlder, aren't you, Commander?"

Golich was watching some old vid on his wristpad. "Born and bred. Nomad Township. My father was Kennard Golich, deputy mayor of Nomad and formerly a life-support-systems engineer. Mother was Mariska Golich, pilot-officer aboard one of many airships—you know, the skyships-- that ply the skies of K-World between communities. I've got one sibling: my sister Naomi. Nowadays, she's a master chef at one of Nomad's best restaurants...the floating restaurant _Tsunami_ , which drifts about K-World's one large body of water...Loch Lithgow."

"I remember it. You always wanted to be in Time Guard?"

Golich sniffed, paused his vid and turned around in his seat. M'Bela was at her station, the TS1 station, Search and Surveillance.

"Hardly. When I was 11, Mama was caught in a bad fire--a severe type known as a Level 2 _flamer_ \--while aboard a skyship cruising toward town. The ship caught fire and went down in the Loch with no survivors. I was pretty devastated. To this day, I guess I associate the Loch with the death of Mother."

"Hey, I was reading your bio the other day—you know, crew manifest and all. URME was doing his psych workup and I sweet-talked him into giving me a few details. Strictly non-reg, but you know how URME is. You joined the Sky Service right after your mom died."

Golich closed his eyes, remembering. "I did, until the day I had my own accident."

"Oh...I didn't hear about that."

Golich shrugged. "Just as well. I barely survived a skyship encounter with a flock of _arachtyls_ over the Sand Sea and went down, lost for days in 'The Dunes.' One of the passengers, Amanda Kilgorlee, was a nurse who also survived. She managed to nurse me back to health as we waited for rescue. After the incident, we became romantically involved and a year later, we married. Then we lived for three years in Nomad, later Sabra Township, while I recovered and went back to work for the Sky Service and Amanda worked at a local hospital. Wasn't too long before we had our first child, Kylie. She became the love of my life."

M'Bela had seen something on her board, but it was just a stray rock drifting by. "No Coethi," she explained. "Then it was on to the Time Guard?"

Golich said, "Not exactly. I shouldn't be telling you this, but what the hell: we're in voidtime, we may not survive and URME's back in the tailpod. If he hears I told you this, they'll cashier me out of the Guard in a heartbeat."

"Tell me what?"

Golich lay back in his seat and stared at the baffling on the ceiling of the command deck. The memories came flooding back, real as if they had just happened. His voice was thin and soft.

"I had just turned thirty. Still flying for the Service, I came home one night to our bungalow in Sabra to find both Amanda and Kylie dead, murdered by some mentally disturbed villager named Henzik Tavoy who had gone on a rampage that day and killed several people, before being terminated by killbots just outside the village."

"I was...oh, I don't even know how to describe it. There aren't any words. Devastated, empty, bereft, what can you say after something like that? Kind of my own personal voidtime, I guess. I went back to work—what else was there to do? But I nearly caused a lot of accidents as a skyship pilot and finally the Service had to ground me for my own good and the safety of passengers. For months, after I was disabled out, I moped around the village, took long dangerous trips into the Sand Sea, hoping to be killed myself by mesodonts and generally showing little desire to live any longer.

"It was a sandseer—you know, one of those hermits who live in the desert, who befriended me one night and kind of nursed me back to health, then put me to work for several weeks as a helper. It was from this sandseer that I got the idea of joining Time Guard. I needed to get away from Keaton's World and from myself. The sandseer had prophesied this very decision, saying " _that which is lost cannot be found...until it is discovered."_ The mysterious saying made no sense to me until he learned that Time Guard was hiring."

M'Bela was sympathetic. "I can't imagine—maybe you shouldn't be telling--"

"No," Golich held up a hand. "No, I need to say this...and to somebody other than URME. I found out that to join the Guard, I'd have to make my way to Urth and apply and take a physical. The journey would take about two years by torch ship, but the sandseer made me see I had nothing to lose. So I boarded the Frontier Corps ship _Columbo_ , went into stasis for two years and awoke to find myself at Gateway Station in high Urth orbit, entering Time Guard's Recruit Center. I applied, passed the physical and was sent on to the Time Guard Academy, then at Lunar Farside, shortly thereafter. And here I am today."

M'Bela smiled. "Stuck in voidtime again. You think we'll ever get out of this, Commander?"

Golich spread his hands. "Who knows? Some writer I read in Net Tutor school once said, ' _The past is never dead. It's not even past.'_ Maybe we can't escape who we are. Me, I'd rather take my chances flying into Newton's Jaw than being marooned in voidtime forever."

M'Bela gave that some thought, watching on her console another round of pulsing from URME back in the tailpod. "He's still finagling with the core, looks like. I hope URME knows what he's doing."

"Well, we can't be any worse off than we are. How about you, Queenie? I'll bet you were always a Time Guard groupie. When I was in the Academy, the jolts used to make up stories about people like you."

"Commander," M'Bela showed him a face of mock disgust. "Really...I was never a groupie, not the way you think. And, by the way, I really hate that nickname _Queenie_. Sounds like somebody's pet cat."

"Sure thing, Queenie...so spill it already, since we're both violating out psych workups at the same time. Your ancestors really came from royalty? Or is that just jolt-speak for 'playing hard to get'?"

M'Bela took a deep breath. "It's not like that at all, Commander. I'm a K-Worlder, just like you. Village of Douala. My father was Eric M'Bela."

"The councilor Eric M'Bela?"

"The one. Delegate councilor with the Free Council of Douala and a trained chemist too. Later, he became General Secretary of the Delegate Assembly for all of Keaton's World. My Mother was Salwan M'Bela—she's gone now-- one-time freighter crewperson with Frontier Corps cycler corps, cycling between all the planets and those thousands of satellites and moons around Sturdivant. I have two sisters, Amanda and Larissa, and two brothers, Patrick and Kano."

Golich watched his instruments as URME's pulsing ceased abruptly. He checked ship's trim, tweaked something and turned back around in his seat. "Your family really came from African royalty, back on Urth?"

"My father often read me stories of the great warrior princes and princesses of our ancient Igbo forebears back on Urth. Cameroon. He even told me I was a direct descendant of Dzugudini, the Rain Queen of Lovedu and that she had great, even magical powers. One of my prize possessions was a necklace of cowrie shells said to have been handed down from the hands of Dzugudini. In this period of my life—I was maybe fifteen, sixteen, I became intensely interested in all things Igbo and I was constantly being reminded by my father of our royal background and illustrious heritage. He warned me to honor that heritage, to honor Dzugudini. He always said things like: "Ura ga-eju onye nwuru anwu afo," which means "A dead person shall have all the sleep necessary." In other words, "keep our heritage alive in your heart and never forget who you are."

"That's why we call you Queenie."

"I guess...not my favorite name. I didn't want to go into politics, like my father. It was my mother who prompted me to get away, try something new and still find a way to live my heritage. So, I shipped out from K-World and here I am.":

Golich nodded. "Every jumpship needs some royalty."

Two days passed in similar fashion. The crew of Cygnus told stories. They told dirty jokes. They sang songs. Inspected every inch of the ship, re-calibrated every system, every instrument, cleaned things that didn't need cleaning...all to stay sane, while the ship picked up speed, now caught in the grasp of the gravity well of Newton's Jaw, a well created by a long-dead neutron star of enormous mass. According to URME and this was confirmed by the ship's AI ISAAC, at their point of closest approach, the parabolic tangent Cygnus was flying would gain them a speed of .08c, an appreciable fraction of light speed. The approach corridor was less than a hundredth of a degree.

There would be no margin for error.

Entering the zone of distortion, for that's what the books called the inner reaches of the Jaw, Cygnus began picking up a pronounced shimmy, a shuddering, foot-numbing vibration that no amount of trim on her nearly useless controls could counteract. Newton's Jaw was a vast lens, focusing gravity waves from multiple, very distant sources—colliding black holes, other neutron stars, pulsars from the other side of the Galaxy, the Jaw was like a 'hydraulic' in the flow of gravity waves, a realm of contending, crashing gravitational surf and Cygnus was aiming to ride the outer bands of this turbulent zone, gaining enough velocity, with the proper heading to speed away and punch right through the voidtime channel she was trapped in. If all went well, if all the calculations were right and the contending forces had been accurately mapped by the Survey Service, Cygnus would emerge again into truetime still inside the gravity well of Sigma Albeth B. From that point, normal comm channels should be available and they could call for rescue, and with any luck, limp back to Storm and pick up the two stranded time jumpers still there.

Before the Coethi came back to finish the job.

Dringoth, Golich and M'Bela were in the crew's mess playing cards when URME drifted in and informed them that H hour was less than ten minutes away.

The para-human swarm entity was in good config today, tight with no blurring or edge effects. M'Bela had been tweaking his config controller the last few days.

"Inflection point coming up, Captain. Now, nine minutes forty seconds from closest approach. Ship speed has increased seventy-four percent in the last two hours."

Dringoth folded his hand; it was a worthless hand any way. "Any corridor warnings? Any flags or cautions from ISAAC?"

URME shook his head. "None, Captain. All systems functioning normally. We have some trim control and I've ordered a slight adjustment to trim out as much of this vibration as possible. Recommending the crew take their stations and secure for inflection."

Dringoth got up. "I'll drink to that. Jumpers, you heard the man. Take your stations."

The four of them were strapped in to their seats on the command deck less than five minutes later.

Cygnus had acquired a slight low-rate roll as she approached the Jaw. Though worrisome, it caused no ill effects and Dringoth elected to let the spin continue. He knew they were in the clutches of the Jaw already and there probably wasn't enough maneuvering power to counter the spin anyway.

"Reminds me of the Dragon's Tail at the Nomad Township circus," Golich gritted out. The ship was accelerating and URME had ordered all crewmembers to trigger their protective bot screens to shield them from the worst effects.

"Hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen," Dringoth called out. "This will be one wicked ride."

Moments later, seconds away from the inflection point, Cygnus shuddered like a wet dog shaking and her spin rate picked up.

M'Bela felt a rising stream of vomit in the back of her throat and she muttered to herself, "Girl, African queens do not throw up, African queens do not throw up—"

At her point of closest approach, jumpship Cygnus groaned and shook as if a ferocious hand had just swatted her. Hull plates bent. Stanchions squealed. Shards of something shot across the command deck. Seats swayed under the tremendous stress, joints cracked, seams burst and anything not bolted down went flying...a sleet of debris pelted them for many seconds.

"Inflection point!" yelled URME. "Max q!"

Then, suddenly as it had started, the roll began falling off and Cygnus seemed to take a breath, as her structure was suddenly released from the bite of Newton's Jaw. Dringoth tentatively felt his controls and sensed a reassuring bite; there seemed to be just enough maneuvering to give him a little feedback at the main console. Grateful, he pulsed the ship's flowvaters and planes and she responded, reluctantly, awkwardly, but there was something there.

"Channel walls, URME...how close are we?"

The TFD1 checked their heading. "On course, Captain...right in the middle of the exit pipe...now exiting the distortion cone! Past max q—now riding the outer bands!"

Evelyn M'Bela managed to turn her head just enough to take a peek out a nearby porthole. What she saw nearly made her throw up.

The light from scores of distant suns had come through the gravitational lens and expanded into a million lights, all swirling and revolving like a slow-motion explosion, a tornado of glass shards caught in a vast floodlight.

With no more control, M'Bela lost what little she had left of her breakfast.

"Channel walls, Captain...dead ahead...ten seconds—"

Dringoth gritted his teeth. There were about a million things that still go wrong with this stunt. "Give me the count, URME!"

"Five...four...three...two...one...MARK!"

Cygnus slammed into the walls of the voidtime channel like a rowboat plowing into a monster wave.

They had the speed. URME had confirmed ISAAC's calculations. They had the trajectory. The approach to the inflection point had been precise, gaining them maximum advantage from the gravity assist the Jaw had imparted. The ship was trimmed as well as she could be, with minimal rates in all axes.

The question was: could she hold together? The Coethi had bodyslammed the ship right through the very same channel days before and somehow, she had held. But multiple passes through the mouth of the dragon wasn't what the designers of Cygnus had in mind when her shipwrights had welded and beamed her together in the drydock at K-World.

Dringoth felt his mouth go dry as the ship plunged into the maelstrom.

It was URME who first said something after the passage. The swarm entity released itself from containment in the seat and checked nav instruments on his console. On his own, URME ordered ISAAC to begin star sightings and determine Cygnus' true position. While this was going on, URME attended to the rest of the crew.

Nobody seemed seriously hurt. Dringoth had bit his tongue and his face was banded with dried streaks of blood. URME dressed the cuts and did a quick medstik on the tongue. The Captain soon waved him off and bent to his own console.

Golich was already up and about, smiling wanly at URME while both of them went to the rear of the deck to see about Queenie.

M'Bela had thrown up and the dried residue was all over her face. She came to when Golich was dabbing at some lacerations and URME was injecting medbots to deal with severe bruising on her arms and shoulders.

M'Bela took a deep breath. "I must look like one hell of a queen to you guys. Did we make it?"

"ISAAC's checking now," Golich told her. URME gave her something to drink. "Swallow this, Jumpmaster M'Bela. It's got respirocytes and osteobots, a real nice cocktail...fix you right up."

M'Bela made a face and down it on one gulp. "Yuck! Tastes like pig snot."

Dringoth got ISAAC's sightings back and pumped the air with a triumphant fist. "Yes! There's Sigma Albeth...right where we left her! Good job, URME. Good job. I'm bringing propulsors on line now...whatever we have. Maybe we can limp back to Storm and pick up our castaways."

Golich took his seat. "If I know Acth:On'e, he'll have a whole town built by the time we get back.

Cygnus turned about toward the inner system, lit off her propulsors—URME had managed to jigger them enough to get fifty percent capacity, and let the star's gravity help pull them sunward.

Three days later, she reached Storm and descended through icy fog and tricky gale-force crosswinds to a rattling landing on the precipice overlooking Storm's north polar sea. The low gray dome of the Twister was faintly visible through the sleet, further out to sea. The control hut and loose pallets of equipment appeared undisturbed near the landing site.

"Hallelujah," said Golich as they touched down and Cygnus finally stopped swaying and rocking. "I never thought we'd make it back."

M'Bela kissed an ivory amulet on her necklace. "Ka e too Chineke," she muttered. "God be praised."

URME did a quick scan around the landing site. "Detecting no movement of any kind. No readings of any Uman presence...for at least several hours. Residual infrared...and a few stray molecules, that's all."

Dringoth was concerned. "Where the hell are they?"

Golich looked through his porthole, which had a better angle downslope to the tiny spit of a beach. His eyes spied movement. "There they are...down on the beach."

That's when he saw something else...something not Uman at all.

"Captain...looks like they have company."

III.

" _Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way."_

David Frost

Storm

Kinlok Island

Time Stream T-001 (2814 CE)

T-date: 001-12-06

Dringoth was furious when he heard the news from Acth:On'e.

"What do you mean the Twister's not operable? What's happened?"

The entire crew of 1st Time Displacement Battery had gathered in Cygnus' crew's mess. Steaming bowls of chowder and beer had been laid out. Good-natured ribbing and quick tales of what had happened when the Coethi had punched Cygnus into voidtime went around the cramped compartment. There were dirty jokes, lies, a few purple insults and raucous curses.

Then Acth:On'e explained what had happened. Alicia Liu hung nearby, echoing everything the Telitorian said.

"They call themselves Seomish, the best I can make out," Acth:On'e told them. "The Survey Service was wrong. Storm's not uninhabited. There appears to be a whole marine civilization under the sea here."

Liu picked up the story, wanting to make sure Dringoth heard the right spin. "The Twister's damaging their world. It's the acoustic output, the vibrations...they say their cities are crumbling, their people are getting sick, babies are malformed...they did what they had to, Captain. They did something to the chronotron pods—most of them—some kind of serpent-like beasts—that's the best way I can describe it. They made off with over half of them...just pulled 'em off and took them."

Dringoth threw up his hands. Chowder dribbled down his chin. "And you let them? You do have weapons, don't you? You do know how to fight, don't you? 1st TD is not a debating society. This is a combat unit and we have a mission—"

"Captain," Liu implored the CC1. "I think I can convince them to cooperate, give us back the pods."

"How, with your good looks?"

Liu said, "Acth and I figured out what that device is, Captain. The one we picked up on the beach a few weeks ago."

Acth:On'e agreed. "It's a translator...if I'm understanding all their squeaks and clicks, it's called something like an 'echopod.' They have an entire language based on all those clicks and squeaks."

"We think they want us to come with them, see what damage the Twister was doing." Liu's eyes implored Dringoth. "Captain, I think we should do it. I'm willing to go. I can communicate with them, sort of. I can convince them to give us the pods back."

Dringoth examined Liu's face as a doctor would a patient, looking for something, anything, that could explain her words. A flicker of sympathy crossed the Ultrarch-Captain's face; his eyes softened their hard gaze. "This is a serious request?"

"Yes, sir. It is."

Dringoth took a deep breath and looked to Acth:On'e for some kind of support. "You...Alicia, you understand what this means, don't you? The Coethi, I mean—you could become a hostage."

"I understand, sir. I'm prepared to absolve you of any official responsibility."

Dringoth stared blankly out to sea, watching the surf pile up around the headlands that guarded the bay. "No, no, I didn't mean that." He reached for Liu's hand and held it tightly. "I suppose you never did really fit in that well." He shook his head sadly. "Casualties of war...voidtime does that to people. I lost a friend that way—an Elamoid fellow, you know how they are, half machine and half lizard. We blipped into voidtime together and both took a hit from a Coethi timecrasher. I blipped back to truetime. He never returned." Dringoth relived the experience and sighed. "I guess you've gone through enough, Alicia. We all have. Three plus terrs in voidtime is enough sacrifice for any warrior. Time Guard shouldn't keep sending them out like that."

"Then I can stay with Bigfin?"

Dringoth laughed in spite of himself. "Bigfin? Is that what you call him?" He scooped up some dirt from the floor and let it sift through his fingers. "How can I say no? You've earned the right to die with whatever dignity you can find on this sewer of a world. Where better than on good old solid ground, where the sun comes up and goes down every day and nothing ever changes? It's the least anybody can do—to grant someone the chance to choose when and where they'll die. But there's just one question, Jumpmaster Liu, that I'd like to have answered. Why?"

What could she say? "I belong here, Captain. Somehow, I'm a part of all this and don't ask me to explain. It's something I've felt ever since we landed here."

Dringoth turned to Acth:On'e. "Got anything you want to add? You're not going, by the way. I can't afford to lose two of you."

Acth:On'e demurred. "I think it's worth the risk, Captain. Liu and I have been trying to communicate with these...er, people, ever since you've left. We've made some progress, though not very much. Perhaps, Jumpmaster Liu could do a little anthropology while she's down below. The Survey Service—"

Dringoth glared at both of them. To Liu, he said sourly, "Go on, Alicia. Get out of here. And get those pods back."

Liu saluted. She left the hut and the crew watched her work her way down the slope of the precipice. Two of the Seomish creatures waited for her on the beach. As Dringoth watched, they took her by the arm and led her willingly out into the rough surf. Moments later, the three of them dove into a steep wave and were gone.

"We should have taken those two characters hostage," growled Golich. He went back to work on a small circuit board he'd been troubleshooting. "Demand our pods back...or else."

Dringoth was thoughtful. "They're stupid...and doomed and they may not even know it. The Coethi are still around here. If we don't get the Twister working, their whole world is doomed." He turned back to Acth:On'e. "Okay, Acth, let's go over the damage reports again. We need to repair what we can as fast as we can. And Commander--" he said to Golich, "get _Cygnus_ ready for emergency departure. If Coethi shows up and Liu's not back, we'll have to scram off this hellhole as fast as we can."

The best Alicia Liu could make out, the small compartment was like a miniature submarine. It was shaped like a large egg, and the echopod translated their words as something like ' _notwater pod_.' Attached by tow line to a larger vessel, Liu was grateful for the space—it was dry and she could breathe something like air—it smelled like burned metal and wet grass. But at least it was air.

Their names were nearly unpronounceable but Liu tried the best she could. The larger Seomish was male, referring to himself as—it came out sounding like 'B'kloo.' The smaller one was female. Her name sounded like 'Pakma.'

They said they were Omtorish and they were taking a trip to their own kel...it was called Omt'or. Liu watched the echopod vibrating, growing by turns warm and cool, changing colors along one side, sitting in her lap as she studied her surroundings. There were small openings near the hatch above her. Outside, the waters were dark, murky, vaguely gray-green and filled with all manner of strange sea life, things with gaping mouths, elongated strings undulating in formation with lights flickering, fantastic beasts with razor teeth large as swords.

She shivered in spite of herself. When she asked how long the trip was, the answer came back through the echopod: " _Shkreeah_ ...many beats...you rest...eat... _kkkqqlllqq_ ...in litor'kel is Omt'or...."

Soon enough the drone of the water jets powering the towing sled lulled her to sleep.

When she came to, the waters had changed.

Now, the waters were lighter, with less of a cross-current. They were in different seas now. She sampled something they had said was edible—it translated as 'tong'pod' and tasted vaguely like crab. Liu tried asking the question she knew she had to ask.

"When can I get my pods back? You stole the pods and we need them back. It'll be bad for all of us if I can't go back to my people with the pods."

Long moments passed before a reply came back. It sounded like both of them were talking at the same time and quite agitated. All the squawks and squeaks...the echopod fritzed and hummed trying to keep up with the translation.

" _Skkrreeah...kklllqq_ ...wavemaker big sound...slide dirt...ve'skort and death falls...our kelke die..."

Liu listened carefully. She had learned she could make small adjustments to the echopod, changing its volume and pitch, maybe even altering the translation. Some adjustments made the voice stream clearer, some didn't. She finagled for awhile, then gave up.

"You're saying...this wavemaker...I'm assuming you mean the Twister. It's causing death. Mudslides...something like that."

"Kkllqq...some beats...you pulse...you see...."

_Maybe only a short distance to go_ , she figured. _A short distance to whatever they want to show me._

But their journey was soon interrupted by something Alicia Liu figured had to be some kind of nightmare.

B'kloo had told her that the _kip't_ was no more than a hundred beats from the turbulent T'kel'rok zone when they came upon a furious battle between a hungry mesodont, scavenging through a field of scrubby bushes on the bottom and a seamother it had startled. B'kloo braked quickly and steered the _kip't_ toward a dome of rock that poked above the mud, unwilling to risk the attention of the seamother when she was angered.

Liu was now fully awake. Her stomach bubbled nervously. She stared through the tiny porthole in awe at the fierce struggle.

The seamother had a considerable advantage in quickness. Her favorite weapon was her tail, ribbed with spikes and deadly. Back and forth, the tail thrashed, scraping the tough hide of the enemy. The mesodont lashed out with sharp pincers, seldom striking its target, but persistent enough to avoid a direct attack.

They skirmished for nearly an hour, each trying to wear the other down. The seamother tried several times to lunge in and flip the mesodont over with her tail but each time caught a pincer in the side and had to retreat. The waters frothed with blood and viscera and still they fought on.

The battle raged in near stalemate until the nightwaters came. Both creatures were exhausted, yet fought automatically, as if guided by unseen hands to destruction. The mesodont had lost three of its eight legs, pincers and all, while the seamother bled freely from deep gashes in her belly and head. One eye was shut, ripped out and scabbed over. Squeals of pain and anger had long since been replaced by a deathly chittering, clicking away the last moments of life.

Somehow, despite its crippling injuries, the mesodont mustered enough strength to burrow so deeply into the mud that it became impervious to continued attack. The seamother was enraged by this and tore furiously at the mud and silt but not fast enough to catch up. Soon, only a bruised gray hump was all that protruded from the mud. With that, the seamother bellowed forlornly.

Twisting her broken body, she bounded for the surface, several hundred beats above them. The waters were clear enough to see when she breached it in an explosion of foam and bubbles. The paroxysm of anger lasted for several minutes, then suddenly, the seamother was quiet. She drifted at the surface, dragged by waves toward some distant shore. Liu watched in fascination at the sight.

B'kloo's voice came over the echopod, speaking first, after a moment's reflection.

"Qqqlllqq...when they die, they seek Notwater. Homewaters to them...like you."

"Amazing," was all Liu could say.

B'kloo waited a few more moments but the way seemed clear and he lifted the _kip't_ on its jets and resumed their journey. To Pakma, he added, "I haven't seen _Puk'lek_ in these waters before. She was well south from her normal feeding grounds."

"Probably the Sound from the wavemaker," Pakma added. "Everybody's trying to get away from it."

B'kloo piloted them on, toward the Serpentine gap and the rough waters where the great currents split apart, the P'omtor continuing west and the Tchor slicing through the gap toward the abyssal plains to the south, toward Omsh'pont and home.

It was in their final spiraling approach to the valley of their home settlement, that Alicia Liu first heard the sound. It came as a numbing, head-pounding beat that you could feel more than hear.

_They've started up the Twister again_ , she told herself. _Probably some kind of test. The sound is amplified by this valley._

By sight, the city of Omsh'pont could barely be seen in the silt and murk of the central sea of Omt'orkel, but even a cursory glance would have betrayed the outlines of a great city. The main axes were wedged in between towering seamounts, held, as it were, in the bosom of the mountains atop a flat mesa-like plateau in the middle.

Pulse in any direction and you would learn of domes and pavilions and floatways and more domes, interspersed with cylindrical structures and pyramids and cones, a geometric forest of cubes and humps and tent-like coverings, all of it crammed and pungent with noisy, honking, bellowing, clicking, snorting life...that was Omsh'pont, the city of Om't.

And the distant beat of the Twister was wrecking this vast city...even Liu could tell that.

They crossed over a range of hills Pakma had called Kip'tor and finally came into the great valley of the Metah'shpont. Right away, though the wavemaker sound was slightly muted here, Liu could see dense clouds of floating debris drifting over the city. Rubble and rock rained down in a never-ending hail and she could tell where the broad shoulders of the Metah'shpont had slumped, losing half its southern promontory, presumably to the vibration and acoustic assault of the Twister. An entire shelf of rock and half the face of the seamount had collapsed onto the floatways and pavilions and canopies and burrows below, burying fully a quarter of the city in mud and silt.

Everywhere, Omtorish kelke clustered in knots and crowds, some roaming aimlessly, wailing and crying, others digging through the growing mounds of mud for loved ones, prized possessions, a favorite scentbulb or pod, some old piece of furniture.

B'kloo steered the sled through more scenes of destruction and desolation and Liu felt her heart burn at the anguish. There was no need for an echopod translation, wails and cries and screams filtered into her cabin just the same. B'kloo and Pakma said nothing and Liu was left to the growing misery of her own thoughts.

They reached the end of the valley and began circling back and Liu saw the vast grid of Omsh'pont was nearly obscured by the silt and rain of floating debris. The collapsed seamount at the far end of the valley was still shedding rubble and hills of mud lined the farthest districts of the city, burying homes, shops, gardens, everything. In among the suspended clumps of wreckage, knots of people moved about, poking and sniffing, trying to find their own belongings. To Liu, it looked like a gigantic underwater yard sale.

"This is awful," she muttered to herself. "Captain needs to see this." She pressed a key on her wristpad and held it up to the porthole. "Maybe I can get some of this on vid."

They cruised about the city for many minutes, then B'kloo's scratchy voice crackled through the echopod.

"Shkkrreeah...return Kinlok...you say...meetor'kel waters...ak'loosh comes...stop sound...."

Liu tried reasoning with them over the echopod. "We can't stop the Twister. And if we don't get our chronopods back, the Twister doesn't work. Maybe not at all. The Twister protects this space, this world. If the Twister fails, your world will be destroyed."

For a long time, the Seomish said nothing and Liu wondered if the echopod rendered her words accurately. _Maybe I made too many adjustments._

Then: "Kinlok many beats...you rest...litor'kel ge...we pulse...."

"Okay," Liu said to herself. "That sounds like 'it's a long way back...take a nap.' Not a bad idea." She finished off the tong'pod and wedged herself into a small niche in the cramped notwater pod. Soon, she was fast asleep.

Dringoth was skeptical, even with the evidence they all watched and heard from her wristpad recording.

"What about my pods?" he asked. "Are we getting those back?"

Liu had to admit she couldn't say exactly when or even if the chronotron pods would be returned.

"I think they want us to do something about all the sound and vibration the Twister makes. Captain, I saw it myself. I heard it. When you powered up the Twister, the acoustics made a shattering sound in that valley...the hills amplify it. We're destroying their whole world, every minute the Twister operates. The seas have a deep sound channel that makes a tremendous reverberation, all the way to their homewaters."

Dringoth was growing frustrated. "Didn't you explain what the Twister is? You think we're destroying their home...what the hell about the Coethi? Alicia, we're right on the front lines here. If we can't push the Coethi back, the Bugs'll probably use their starballs to make atom fluff of this whole system. And if that happens—" he looked over at Golich, who frowned in agreement—and finished Dringoth's argument.

"Time Guard may have to abandon this whole sector. Jeez, Alicia, this whole sector of Halo space, Halo Alpha, would have to be abandoned to the Coethi."

Acth:On'e agreed. "It's certain that many settlements would be threatened...Gavrilon, Nanjiang, all the 40 Omicron worlds...all would have to be abandoned. Coethi would be pouring into Uman space and there would be no stopping them."

Dringoth thanked the others with his eyes. "You see, Alicia...one way or another, we've got to get those pods back. Otherwise, I call up Time Guard and give them the bad news. Won't that look good on our records? First TD gets a new commander, a new crew and we all wind up assigned to some god-forsaken outpost the other side of Time's Peak."

Liu wrung her hands in exasperation. "Captain, I tried. They wanted to show me what the Twister was doing. I told them we needed the pods back. I thought they understood...maybe _I_ didn't understand."

Golich snarled, "Maybe we should show them what _we_ can do...I can think of something they'll understand." He fingered the barrel of a nearby coilgun. "Maybe Jumpmaster Liu hasn't fully recovered from her time with _Trident_ ...all those bots in her head."

Liu bristled and would have yanked the coilgun out of Golich's fingers but Dringoth saw it coming and intervened. "Okay, that's enough, you two. We're not diplomats here. We're soldiers...time jumpers. We've got a mission and I mean to complete it."

Acth:On'e raised a hand. "There is something we might consider, Captain, if I may."

"Yeah, go ahead, Acth."

"Sir, it may be possible to design a crude sort of damping field generator, a sort of acoustic shield. If we can measure the acoustic energy of the Twister, get the right frequencies, I could design a damper and set it up on the seabed. URME here could help me. Done right, we could dampen the Twister's underwater acoustics with out-of-phase acoustics from the damper."

The Unit Reserve Memory Entity agreed. "I have many designs on file for such devices. All we would need is accurate measurements of the acoustic output of the Twister."

Dringoth felt like his head was caught in a vise. The Coethi had already probed this sector and _Cygnus_ had barely been able to escape and limp back to Storm. The local life had stolen half the working parts of the Twister. The Twister itself was wrecking their oceans and they wouldn't give the pods back until they got some relief.

_I need relief_ , he thought ruefully. But Acth:On'e's idea seemed the best way out of a bad situation.

"Okay, Acth, you and URME get to work." To Liu, "Get down there to the beach and call your fish friends. Tell them what we're doing. Make 'em understand, Alicia. They've got to give us those pods back and soon. Any minute now, Coethi could pop out of voidtime and catch us with our pants down." Dringoth smiled darkly. "And I don't like having my pants down unless something wonderful's about to happen."

Liu slid and skidded her way down the precipice slope to the beach, echopod in hand. The Seomish were nowhere to be seen but she had the impression they weren't far away. She hoped the echopod worked as a transmitter as well as translator.

She spoke some words, carefully as she could, into the echopod, hoping it was set to RECORD. _I'm still learning this blasted device._ Then she submerged the thing below the waters in a small pool offshore and thumbed what she hoped was TRANSMIT. The echopod vibrated and turned a dim orange-yellow below the surface. When it stopped vibrating, she lifted it out of the water and sat down on some slippery, moss-covered rocks, shivering in the icy wind and waited for something to happen.

An hour later, she scanned the horizon and saw the gray hump of a Seomish sled breach the surface in an explosion of spray and foam—they had called it a _kip't_. A hatch popped open. One figure...maybe it was B'kloo, maybe not...got out and clambered awkwardly in its protective suit through the waves and up onto the beach. The creature towered over her, easily almost three meters in height, swaying, wheezing, water misting off its helmet. Inside, the helmet, she could see the beaked face, the faintly amused dolphin's smile.

"Shkkreeah...pods here...we have come...you help--?"

Maybe it was her imagination, for the echopod still chirped and grunted as before, but she seemed able to make out more words, more meaning, from the clicking and chattering that emerged from the device.

"You brought our pods back...where are they...we need to get them installed right away."

Now the creature...she was increasingly convinced this was a new individual, not B'kloo or Pakma...loomed over her and seemed about to topple over. It clung to a boulder, then backed off into an ice-rimed pool and partially submerged. _Probably more comfortable_ , Liu concluded. _Like me and Emile before a Terminator Rhythmics dance contest...we always go outside the domes and just skip across the floor of Copernicus...helps limber up our legs...until the fall, until Emile died, the stupid jerk...._

The creature spoke again. "Kkkqqllllkkqq....bzzzt...you call damper...we help...find focus...we guide...."

To Alicia, it meant the Seomish would help Acth:On'e and URME find the right place to locate the damper. A focal point, where the damping field would work best.

They do understand what we're trying to accomplish.

A kind of conversation ensued, with Liu understanding about ten percent of their words and language.

"When do we get our pods back?" The echopod burped and fritzed and crackled, with whistles and creaks and groans emanating from the top.

The creature gestured to the sea. Liu looked out and saw between the beach and the inverted dish of the Twister a scattering of gray humps.

"...puk'lek..." said the echopod. "Shkreeah...your 'pods'...when sound stops...we give...."

Liu figured he or she meant the pods would come back when Acth:On'e's shield was in place.

By fits and starts, through the echopod, she learned more about the Seomish and their world beneath the waves.

The aquatic world of Seome was subdivided into five great seas ( _or'keln_ ), though there was in fact only one world ocean.

Each sea was the dominion of one of the five great nations, water-clans, or tribes (Liu eventually understood that the meaning varied in context): these were the _kels_. The kels were both political and familial in nature. In Seomish mythology-history, each kel was descended from one female ancestor, countless millennia ago, impregnated by God ( _Shooki_ or _Schooke_ ) for the purpose of filling all the waters with life. The first females were known collectively as the Five Daughters, and all life on Seome was descended from them (they were revered as demi-gods.).

Each Daughter begat two offspring (after the creation of the lower orders), one male and one female. These were the First Mortals and each kel considers its F.M.s as the ultimate ancestors of everyone who had lived since or would ever live. The F.M.s were the direct parents of the kel.

In Seomish theology, Shooki created and impregnated the Five Daughters because he was lonely and wished companionship. Accordingly, three extremely important religious-moral-ethical concepts in Seomish culture were friendship, fertility (or appetite) and what could best be described as a kind of internal tranquility. The Seomish seemed playful and gregarious by nature, generally promiscuous (within bounds) and pleasure-seeking. They were not psychologically disposed to dissatisfaction or self-sacrifice, normally. The universe was created by the confluence of three great currents, the Seomish said: _Ke'shoo_ , _Ke'lee_ , and _Shoo'kel_ , or figuratively, love, life and happiness. This view was applied to many things, especially kel ancestry, or specifically, which First Mortal most possessed which trait. It was a subject of endless debate.

While Liu learned what she could of the Seomish, Acth:On'e and URME had finished the design of the damping field generator. The design was parceled out to several of _Cygnus'_ fabs and the parts printed in good order. After close inspections and a few component-level tests, the thing was ready to be installed.

Already in his hypersuit, Acth:On'e crept down the precipice with a big bag of shield parts, plus a containment capsule provided by URME, a capsule filled with already-configured bots programmed to build the damper foundation. He found Liu sitting on a rock, her feet in the water, more or less conversing with one of the Seomish. The creature looked like a Telitorian frog on steroids.

"This what we have to install," he told her. "Go get your hypersuit, while I load up the skimmer."

Liu took a deep breath. Her face had a faraway look. "These are really incredible people, Acth. What he's been telling me...what I can understand of it...a whole civilization below the—"

"Alicia...get suited up. Captain's orders."

Liu grumbled and climbed back to the ship. She returned a few minutes later, to find the skimmer already beached and Acth:On'e's gear in the boat and lashed down.

Now the echopod chirped again. "Kkkkzzzqqqlll...follow you...best location show...."

Acth:On'e and Liu looked at each other, got in the skimmer and shoved off. The Seomish creature dove through the waves ahead of them and stroked easily just below the surface, powered by some kind of water jet at the base of its suit. A few kilometers offshore, it dove again and disappeared.

"I guess that's our cue," Liu said. She and Acth:On'e buttoned up their suits and, with Acth holding the bag, they dropped overboard and descended slowly to the seabed.

Installation took a few hours, testing a few more. As they maneuvered about the foundation and the silted seabed, Liu realized they had company...lots of it. The water was dark and filled with ice and sediment, with strong cross-currents, but they had occasional glances of faces, fins, flukes materializing out of the murk.

"There must be scores of them, Acth, all around us. Look how graceful they are."

"Just so they give those pods back. Come on...that's all we can do down here. I don't want to be in the water near this thing when URME starts testing."

From inside the controls hut onshore, URME powered up the damping field generator and matched its frequency emitters with acoustic samples from the Twister. With a little adjusting and tweaking and a few well-learned expletives (URME had learned his more colorful phrases from Golich), the damper was pronounced ready.

Dringoth scowled at Liu. "Okay, Jumpmaster Liu, where are my pods? I've finished my part of the bargain."

"There they are!" said M'Bela, peering out a window.

They all took a look at the sight. Liu sucked in her breath. Golich muttered, "I'll be damned." Acth:On'e said something in his Telitorian dialect that nobody understood.

Just beyond the surf line, a gathering of the huge seamother beasts had breached the surface, spouting spray and foam, splashing about in the shallows, their spiked tails slamming the water. Other smaller creatures could be seen nearby...probably Seomish handlers, Liu theorized.

" _Look!"_ she cried.

Each of the dragon-like serpents had been drawn or coaxed close to shore. One after another, the beasts yawned wide, revealing rows of sharp teeth...and something else. Flexing and thrashing with spasms, each serpent regurgitated what looked like rocks or stones, but it was M'Bela who scanned the sight with a scope and told them:

"The pods! Those aren't stones! Those things are our pods. They're vomiting up pods...dozens of them. Look!"

Dringoth felt bile rising in his throat. "Disgusting, if you ask me. Somebody start counting...there'd better be seventy of those things. And clean all that crap off."

Golich just shook his head. "And I thought the _aractyls_ on K-World were weird."

When the seamothers were done and the beach was littered with pods dripping in mucous and saliva, Liu was first out the hut, scrambling and sliding down the slope to the beach. Acth:On'e came behind, still in his hypersuit but no helmet. M'Bela followed--"... _now this I gotta see...."_

They rounded up the pods, counted them out, cleaned them off and did quick checks on the devices, using Acth:On'e's suit connections back to _Cygnus_. One by one, each pod was fully tested and when the test protocol was completed, with Golich and URME signing off, Dringoth made a decision. Finally, all the chronopods were pronounced ready.

Dringoth talked to Acth:On'e and Liu over their suit circuit. "Get to work, both of you. Queenie, get buttoned up yourself and help out. We've got to get the Twister up and operating as soon as we can. T2's sending bulletins everyday about possible Coethi probes in this sector. Battalion is counting on us and 1st Time Displacement _will be ready_ when the flag goes up."

Nobody argued with Jump Captain Monthan Dringoth when his voice had _that_ inflection.

During the installation, Liu had occasional glances of several Seomish creatures cruising about near the Twister, silvery-gray humps breaching and then diving back into the water. She knew they needed to clear the area when the platform was powered up and she said so on her echopod.

"If you don't, the twist fields will yank you off into oblivion. The Twister creates scores of vortexes. Stay back...stay well back."

The Seomish said nothing and, as Liu completed her connecting and wiring duties, she could see in her mind's eye the outlines of the great city she had seen so many beats to their south, the way the Seomish handled the seamothers, their sleds and technology, their language and beliefs...it was all a wonderful blur in her mind.

_Someday_ , she told herself. _Someday_ , w _hen I get some liberty time_ ....

The next morning, the Time Twister Mark I was declared operational. At M'Bela's urging, Dringoth relented and authorized a short celebration in the crew's mess.

URME did small dessert favors from the fabs and topped them off with something he claimed had come from Hapsh'm. "Try them...you'll like them," he insisted.

Golich made a face. "URME, they look like worms."

But the cakes were slammed down anyway.

Evelyn M'Bela pumped a fist. "Nobody messes with 1st TD, right? Am I right?"

"Queenie's always right," declared Golich. He polished off a thimble of something 'medicinal,' and grinned a lopsided grin at Dringoth. The Captain smiled back faintly and shook his head. Golich leered at M 'Bela. "Maybe we can convince Her Royal Highness to do her jungle dance...strut her stuff for the long-suffering crew."

"Commander, sir," M'Bela said back correctly, hoisting her own libation, "when the Rain Queen of Lovedu struts her stuff, nations tremble. You'll need more than a hypersuit when I strut."

Dringoth was about to call a halt to the proceedings when an alarm sounded over the crew comm.

"That's the battle alarm!" Liu said.

URME's voice came over the comm next. The Unit Reserve Memory Entity was manning the command deck.

"Captain, scanning possible aspect change along the voidtime interface...could be Coethi."

Golich checked his wristpad, slaved to another array of detectors. "I concur, Captain, based on gravimetric frequency shifts...not large, maybe a recon or probe."

Dringoth said firmly, "Everybody to stations. Power up the Twister...mode One Charlie, standby. Make sure the T-buffers are cleared too."

The crew scattered in a well-ordered but chaotic drill to their positions throughout the ship. Every crewperson knew their duties: Dringoth, Golich, M'Bela and URME would be on the command deck. Liu and Acth:On'e would be aft, on E deck, manning Engineering and Defense stations.

It was URME who noticed something different, something ominous, about this incursion. "It's Coethi, Captain, and _Cygnus_ is detecting spikes in fusium bands, all wavelengths."

Dringoth swore. "Standard starball assault. This is no recon. It's a full-scale assault. Twister?"

URME checked with Acth:On'e at Engineering, then announced, "Singularity engine at eighty percent. Five pods not working, they failed at powerup. We'll be ready in one minute."

Dringoth gritted his teeth. "We may not have one minute."

Golich saw the fusium frequency spike suddenly go off scale on his board. "They're launching, Captain. Starball volley. Multiple rounds...best bearing is right ascension sixty-four point five degrees, declination ten...no, make that twelve degrees."

"Headed right for the star," M'Bela said from her station.

URME said, "Twister at full power, Captain...I've compensated for the lost pods. Requesting permission to engage Twister."

"You are authorized to engage the Twister."

Liu's voice trickled up from the DPS station. "Captain, we should engage the damper."

"Don't worry about the friggin' damper!"

But Liu had already triggered the damping field generator.

At the Captain's orders, the Time Twister pulsed a wave of concentrated twist fields at the Coethi target. Several hundred million kilometers away, the Coethi fleet managed to loose two more starballs at Sigma Albeth B before the rounds from the Twister hit. When they did, the Coethi fleet was obliterated in an instant, swept into oblivion by the impact, sliced and diced into entangled particles of quantum foam and yanked off to the farthest reaches of the Galaxy. All that remained was a barely measurable bulge in the voidtime channel, which quickly evaporated and was gone.

"It worked!" Golich slammed a fist on his armrest. "The sucker actually worked!"

"Just like we trained," M'Bela exulted. "Just like the sims...I'll be damned."

But it was URME who pulled them back into the reality of the moment. "Three, possible four starballs, twenty seconds from impact. Direct heading to Sigma Albeth...first photosphere effects now visible."

On screens throughout the ship, every crewperson held their breath and watched as the starballs slammed into the star. For a few moments, nothing seemed to happen. But deep inside the fusion reactor that was Sigma Albeth B, vast and relentless changes were already underway.

Outside _Cygnus_ , the changes were soon noticeable.

The sea was rising in the bay beyond the precipice and swept over the beach with scalding, hissing breakers, quickly erasing the last evidence of the Uman camp there. Beyond the headlands, heavy swells boiled and dense hot mist soon blanketed everything. A dull red glow glinted off the rock cliffs behind the ship, diffusing in the mist like a false sunset.

Within a few days, a few months at most, Alicia Liu knew the starballs' effect on the star would reduce Storm to molten slag. Already, the sun had bloomed to many times its normal brightness; in a quarter of the sky from which Sigma Albeth never gleamed, a broad swath of light burned a blinding radiance. Facing it through a porthole on E deck, Liu felt the heat and radiation immediately. She turned away and cupped some water over her face, heedless of the way her skin flushed in the heat. She fanned herself dry. She didn't see the first bodies of Seomish victims washing up onto the beach.

Acth:On'e witnessed her reaction and felt sorry for her. "This star's not going to be around much longer, Alicia. It may go supernova. You know we can't stay here."

Liu said nothing. Instead, she headed for the gangway and climbed forward to the command deck. There she heard Dringoth, URME, Golich and M'Bela already deep in discussions.

"It's near the limit now," URME was saying. "I've been doing measurements, the best we can from here. If the mass levels are where I think they are, it will be an irreversible process."

Dringoth's throat went dry. "Supernova?"

URME sort of shrugged, a gesture he had picked up recently from his crewmates, not always quite successfully. "Within the mass of Sigma Albeth B, the onion-layered shells of its elements will undergo catastrophic fusion, eventually reaching the Chandrasekhar limit of mass and begin to collapse. The inner part of the core will compress into neutrons, causing the infalling material to bounce and form an outward-propagating shock wave. The shell will then start to stall in this collapse but will be quickly reinvigorated by neutrino interaction across its interior. Then, the surrounding material will blast away in a titanic rebound explosion, as the collapsing envelope of the star is explosively ejected away, sending material out into space in all directions at speeds in excess of 70,000 kilometers a second."

Dringoth was sober. "I've already advised Commandstar of the situation. How long?"

Another almost shrug. "Best guess...a few months. Maybe a few years."

Alicia Liu's heart sank at the news. She went back to her station on E deck and choked back a few tears. Acth:On'e said nothing.

The directive from Commandstar came two days later. Dringoth gathered everybody in the crew's mess.

"TACTRON thinks our position is too exposed here...which is not exactly news to us." The Captain had a 3-D projection of local space, the Uman Alliance, the Coethi mother swarm, the front lines, all emanating from his own wristpad. With his other hand, he highlighted what they all knew. "Here we are...here's 40 Omicron 2, with Gavrilon and Nanjiang. New strategy, according to TACTRON: we dismantle the Twister here, abandon Storm and Battalion will send a small squadron of jumpships to police the border, poke around the edges of voidtime and in general kick Coethi noses back to where they belong. The thinking is they're testing us in this sector."

M'Bela rubbed her chin thoughtfully, her bone hairpiece clinking. "So where are they sending us...after all this work to set up the Twister?"

Golich sniffed sarcastically. "Probably another rockpile on the far reaches of nowhere."

Dringoth ignored that, though he was sympathetic. He knew his people. He'd let them blow off steam now so if the balloon went up later, they're be ready.

"Word is K-World, Keaton's World. TACTRON doesn't want us to be overwhelmed in case there's a big incursion coming. T2 doesn't see it but TACTRON's taking no chances. So the directive is: prepare to dismantle the Twister and abandon everything else in place. Once that's done, we light off and head for K-World...other side of Time's Peak."

Golich stated the obvious. "With what URME's telling us about the star, this world, this whole planetary system is probably doomed."

Dringoth said simply, "Correct. Can't be helped. Orders are orders. Okay, any questions?"

There were none.

Dringoth studied each crewperson in turn: Golich, M'Bela, Acth'On'e, URME, Liu.

But Liu's sad face didn't fully register with the Captain.

"Okay, let's get to work. We've got a lot to do and that sun up there won't give us any more time."

Dismantling the Twister, removing the chronotron pods and T-buffers would take three days, and too many skimmer trips out to the site to count. Everybody helped out, except for URME, who filled his time with ship preparations, systems checks and light maintenance. The Unit Reserve Memory Entity had also programmed a capsule full of bots to fab a small raft that could be towed behind the skimmer. There were seventy pods that had to be retrieved and it was sure to be a tedious process.

"Maybe a raft will help speed things up," URME had said.

Acth:On'e, Golich and Liu, clad in hypersuits, set off early in the morning—it was always hard to tell morning on Storm with all the warm rain and fog, not to mention light levels from the sun were steadily and noticeably dropping, to get started.

The trip out to the Time Twister installation took ten minutes, through heavy surf and gusty winds.

"I'll start on the pods topside," Golich told the others. "The two of you go below and get the singularity engine ready to drop."

Their suits buttoned up, Acth:On'e and Liu dropped overboard and plummeted to the seabed a hundred meters below. More by feel than sight, with help from sound probing, they located the core tube up which the core that powered the Twister was mounted.

"Let's get started," Acth:On'e said.

"Hey, look...some of our friends," Liu noticed. The nose and tail thrusters of several Seomish sleds materialized into view, hovered for a moment, then vanished as quickly as they had appeared. "I'll bet they're all around here, wondering what we're up to. They'll be glad the Twister's going away."

"Won't do them much good," Acth:On'e said. He unscrewed the core tube cover and let it drift to the silty bottom. "Their world's doomed...could be just a matter of months now."

The thought made Liu sad. But she said nothing.

The singularity engine was released and gingerly floated out of its tube. Liu attached buoyant floats to its outer stanchions and the thing rose like a fistful of whirlpools up toward the surface. Acth:On'e helped guide the ascent, pulling and manipulating on steering cables, to keep the engine straight. Still fastened to its mount, the engine couldn't actually be seen for all the foam and froth its currents generated. Rising steadily, the engine looked like a big mobile water drain, currents and waves and white-hot steam bubbling in a stewpot of turbulence. It seemed to be sucking in all the water around them and Acth:On'e waved Liu to back off a good distance.

When the mount broke the surface, it vented and hissed and crackled like a lightning bolt, churning the seas around it for dozens of meters. Acth:On'e had designed a hoist arrangement to haul the engine and its mount up onto the skimmer deck and into a shielded deck shelter located roughly amidships on the skimmer. The maneuver took several hours but when the singularity engine was unhooked and slid off its mount into the deck shelter, Acth:On'e and Liu both cheered, though their cheers were muffled from within their hypersuits.

The wormhole generator slid down roughly into its shelter, still crackling, venting and hissing and was quickly safed and sealed.

Golich shouted down from the Twister above them. "Take it back to the ship but leave the raft. Liu can help me up here...jeez, there are a hell of a lot of these things."

So Acth:On'e took off for shore in the skimmer.

Before climbing up onto the Twister to help, Liu called up. "I'm going back down, Commander. We dropped one of the control boxes when we pulled the engine out. I saw it hit the bottom...may take a few minutes to retrieve it,"

Golich waved back and Liu disappeared below the waves.

He continued the laborious task of powering down, unscrewing and releasing each chronotron pod, working his way around the circumference of the huge dish, squinting in the now hot stinging mist and wishing he were anywhere but here. Being re-assigned to K-World might not be all that bad, especially if it got them away from this hellhole.

When Acth:On'e returned in the skimmer, he climbed himself up onto the Twister deck.

"Where's Liu?" he asked.

That was when Golich realized Alicia had never returned from below.

"Shit." He eyed the Telitorian ominously. "She never came back up."

"Commander, something may have happened. We should go down below and look for her...she could be in trouble...those creatures were with us down there, cruising all around us."

Golich got on suit comm and let Dringoth know their current status and what they were going to do.

Dringoth's voice brooked no argument. "Find her and finish up with the pods. URME just did scans of the star. She's contracting fast, faster than we thought. She may not last more than a few days and I want to be a long way from here when she blows."

"Copy that, sir," said Golich.

The two of then secured the pods they had just unhooked---there were still two dozen left to remove—and ducked under the waves.

Acth:On'e and Golich cruised about the seabed for a distance of half a kilometer around the Twister foundation, following an intersecting spiral search pattern, but never found any trace of Alicia Liu. She had vanished.

Golich went topside and reported this to _Cygnus_. Dringoth told them to grab the rest of the pods and report back to the ship.

"We looked everywhere we could get to," Golich told the Captain. He and Acth:On'e were still de-suiting outside the lockout on F deck. Dringoth looked on with irritation. M'Bela and URME were outside _Cygnus_ , stowing all the pods on racks in the ship's tailpod.

"I did sonar probes along every heading," Acth:On'e added. "Nothing but the Twister foundation and a few small hills. That and those blasted fish people and their sleds."

Dringoth swore under his breath, rubbing his moustache. "I can't afford to lose a crewmember, certainly not our DPS tech. But we're due at K-World in two months and TACTRON isn't interested in excuses."

Acth:On'e nodded. "If we don't leave this place in the next few days, we'll all be fried when Sigma Albeth goes supernova."

Golich sniffed. "Well, that's pretty much end of mission for 1st Time Displacement Battery."

"We've got one day," Dringoth decided. "Take the skimmer out and sound everywhere, even out to five kilometers. You still have that translator device in the shop...maybe we can get help from the fish people."

Acth:On'e looked one deck above and came back. "It's gone. I think Alicia took it."

"Crap," Dringoth muttered. "Just friggin' wonderful. Get back out there in the skimmer and start sounding. I'll give it a day, no more. After that—" he glared back at all of them. "We don't have a choice."

It was a stark dilemma, one with an inflexible deadline: search for Liu and hold up their departure, threatening the mission and indeed the very survival of the Battery crew. Or leave Liu behind and get the hell away from Storm as fast as they could.

The search proceeded for over twenty-six hours, but no sign of Jumpmaster 1st Class Alicia Liu was ever found.

Finally, Captain Dringoth could wait no longer. The hard decision that every commander dreaded would now have to be made.

END

Wherever Man ventures across the cosmos, whether he runs into black holes, neutron stars, or gravity waves, there's one phenomenon he will always encounter and one from which he can't escape: his parents. Parents are like mirrors, they reflect imperfectly who we are, who we might have been and who we could yet become. Until we are grown and gestated in vats and decanted into our lives like some kind of chemical, parents are inevitable.

In this story, Nathan Golich and Evelyn M'Bela are time-traveling soldiers on liberty, setting down on a place called K-World, Keaton's World, which is in fact their home world. It's a lonely outpost of humanity in a loose Federation-style arrangement of worlds called the Uman Alliance. While on liberty, our time-traveling soldiers have to use all their training and combat skills to face down a threat unlike any they have ever faced before: themselves and their own past.

_In the 28_ th _century on K-World, the technology of molecular nanometer-scale assemblers has gotten a wee bit out of control. Ubiquitous as the air they breathe, loose unconstrained bots drift about K-World like so many clouds and air masses. In a test of their survival skills against this remorseless and implacable adversary, Golich and M'Bela will find that to survive against such a pitiless foe, they will need all their wits and training to use whatever their environment makes available to them._

And perhaps in surviving, like many a stranded pilot, they'll find themselves changed beyond all recognition, for our world makes us as much as we make the world...even if that world is a place called K-World.

The Rain Queen of K-World

" _Time moves in one direction, memory in another."_

William Gibson

" _The grasshopper that runs into the midst of fowls ends up in the land of spirits_."

Igbo proverb

I.

Keaton's World

Gibbstown Port

2-1/2 C-79 (month of Half-Crescent, Midtober 2779 CE)

The Captain would give two days' liberty to only two time jumpers at a time. "The ship needs work and I can't have crew running all over K-World while fixbots are crawling around _Cygnus_. Two days tops and you'd better be back here at 2400 hours promptly."

Commander Nathan Golich and Jump Master 1st Class (JM1C) Evelyn M'Bela drew the short straws.

After landing at Gibbstown Port, Golich had an idea. M'Bela was intrigued but they both knew that when senior officers had 'ideas,' enlisted crew were obliged to go along.

"You really don't want to go visit your family, do you, Queenie?" he asked.

"Let's just say I'm expected but it won't hurt their feelings if I'm late. I'm already a big disappointment to my father." Her voice dropped in imitation: " _Evelyn, you can't run from who you are."_

Golich had that gleam in his eye. "Got an idea. I was once a skyship pilot here, before I came to Time Guard."

"Yes, sir, I heard that."

"What say we buy some tickets, take a ship across the Sand Sea and visit my old haunts at Nomad Township?"

M'Bela figured she could hardly object. It wasn't exactly an order, but what could you do?

"Trying to re-live the past, sir? Didn't you have an accident on one of those trips?"

"Let's just call it an unplanned detour. That's how I wound up in Time Guard."

M'Bela figured what the hell. "Okay, but you're buying."

They left the shuttle side of the port and found their way to the Skyship Terminal. The bazaar outside was slammed with people and Nathan Golich knew the two of them would have a hard time staying together. It was like fighting swirling ocean currents to move anywhere. The bazaar was loud and chaotic, filled with smoke and pungent smells—the high-octane odor of _masala_ tobacco was especially strong at the Garden Street entrance—and the air was thick with loose nano, clouds of bots mingling with incense, opium and scores of cooking oil fires. Vendors hawked grapes and mangoes, bananas and fabricator shells of every type, vials of rogue DNA called _twist_ hung from clothes lines strung up between light poles and dilapidated tents. Women in sarongs with teeth black from chewing betel nuts zipped and weaved through the labyrinth balancing huge baskets on their heads, baskets filled with everything from buffalo patties to rebuilt matter compilers for the fabs that were on sale everywhere.

Ten minutes later, they had pushed their way into the Terminal and found themselves the only passengers onboard the gondola. The ship was fully automated. That made Golich just shake his head. "In my day, we had full crews, full service. Now—jeez, what a shame."

Rotors whirring, the ship lifted off and they were underway. Following invisible airways in the sky, _Songbird_ ascended in mild midday turbulence and settled in for the two-hour trip. M'Bela could see a storm gathering off to their right, a blur of haze gathered into a _mistral_ forming up on the horizon.

She thought to ask Commander Golich about that but figured the Sky Service wouldn't send paying customers into the midst of a sand devil.

But she kept an eye on the gathering cyclone just the same.

Golich noticed her watching the weather warily. "Hey, don't sweat it, M'Bela. It's probably just a bot cloud. Gibbstown's thick with loose nano."

"Like we saw around the terminal. Fab lords, hacker queens, rogue bots. Why don't the cops clean all that up?"

Golich snorted. "Money."

_Songbird_ rose to her cruising altitude and headed southwest across the rolling tan and ocher dunes of the Sand Sea. From three thousand meters, in the pearl glow of a late afternoon sun, the sand really did look like a sea, frozen in place, waves and crests and shadows playing tricks on their eyes, fantastic shapes appearing and disappearing with each look out the gondola's big picture windows. The two time jumpers had the entire compartment to themselves.

"What is it with your father?" Golich asked. "You've spoken of him before."

M'Bela shrugged, her eyes riveted to strange shapes morphing along the edges of the growing _mistral_. "My family's Igbo, from Cameroon, Old Urth, see? My father often read me stories of the great warrior princes and princesses of our ancient Igbo forebears. He told me I was a direct descendant of Dzugudini, the Rain Queen of Lovedu and that I had great, even magical powers. One of my prize possessions was this necklace of cowrie shells—" she fondled the necklace and made it clink noisily, "—it was said to have been handed down from the hands of Dzugudini. In this period of my life, maybe I was fifteen, maybe sixteen, I had become intensely interested in all things Igbo and was constantly reminded by my father of my royal background and illustrious heritage. I was always warned to honor that heritage, to honor Dzugudini. He always said to me: "Ura ga-eju onye nwuru anwu afo," which means "A dead person shall have all the sleep necessary." In other words, 'keep our heritage alive in your heart and never forget who you are.'"

Golich watched the mistral approaching with growing apprehension. That stupid auto-pilot should be turning north by now.... "Seems to me you are...well, you do have that necklace."

M'Bela's lips tightened, as did her fists on the gondola rail, for the ship had begun to sway more violently in the updrafts and gusts. "He's never forgiven me for leaving K-World. Joining Time Guard. To him, I've just thrown away everything I am. Sometimes, I feel guilty about that...well, who am I kidding...maybe more than sometimes."

And then the sand devil seemed to swallow them whole.

Songbird shuddered for a moment, then out of the murk came a huge wing...then a spiked tail. It swept right by the windows and struck the aft end of the ship with sickening thud.

"Aractyls!" Golich yelled. "Get down...get away from the windows!"

Another wing materialized, then a horned and crested head, then clawed feet and another tail. It too sideswiped Songbird, sending the skyship yawing hard left, corkscrewing and crabbing through the air as the autopilot sought to trim her out and keep her aloft.

They had drifted into a flock of the huge sandbirds, and two of them were chasing each other around the outer bands of the mistral, riding updrafts, diving into tufts of sand haze, cawing and screeching loudly at each other.

"We're hit!" Golich yelled. It was obvious that Songbird was down by her stern. As he peered out the portside windows, Golich's heart sank. The first impact had done the damage. Songbird's aft gasbags were holed, the outer fabric skin flapping crazily in the gusts. He could see wild swings of the rudder and stabilitors as the ship's auto-pilot tried to manage lift. Songbird shuddered again.

"That's ballast...autopilot's dumping ballast, trying to regain lift!" he yelled over the roar of the wind, for they were now fully enveloped in the mistral's clutches and the ship seesawed like a loose tree limb in the crashing, swirling gusts.

M'Bela clung tightly to a rail, groped her way back to a nearby seat. Hurriedly, fighting the centrifugal forces of the whipsawing ship, she buckled herself in.

"Are we...are we...?"

Golich said something but it was lost in the blare of sirens, klaxons and an automated voice, calmly ordering all hands to "TIGHTEN SEAT BELTS...GROUND PROXIMITY WARNING ...BRACE FOR IMPACT...BRACE BRACE...!"

Songbird was driven hard into the ground, with a grinding roar. As the balloon envelope crumpled and collapsed all around them, the gondola separated from its davits and began a wild careening roll—they had impacted the slope of a tall dune, and began cascading down the side, rolling turning bouncing vaulting somersaulting down the sand hills until it finally came to a rest in a shallow depression, one end buried meters deep in the ever-shifting blowing sand.

All around them, the mistral howled like a thing alive, punctuated every so often by the raucous screech of aractyls overhead, riding the wild thermals, banking and diving, their heavy wings beating the air as they swarmed around the wreckage of the skyship.

M'Bela was knocked unconscious by a piece of flying trimwork, spalled off the gondola ceiling. Golich lay still, purple bruises swelling on his neck and face.

For many minutes, only the wind howled around them.

It took time, but M'Bela eventually realized when she came to, that Commander Golich wasn't moving. Not even breathing. Hurriedly, she unbuckled and went over, dropping to her knees, sucking in her breath at what she found.

His head was covered with blood, still oozing from a deep forehead gash. There were other bruises, lacerations and cuts. He stirred slightly and she bent down to whisper.

"Stay still, sir...be still. I'll see if there's a med kit somewhere around here."

With some fumbling and pointing and grunts from Golich, she found some kits in the back of the gondola, in a cabinet. She applied a medpatch to his head wounds, as all time jumpers had been trained to do and let it go to work. In a few minutes, the bots inside would start their regime of medicating, cauterizing and auto-suturing the wound.

She tried to make the Commander as comfortable as possible. Presently, he groaned and his eyes fluttered open.

"How bad...?" he forced out.

M'Bela shrugged. "I wrenched a shoulder, but otherwise, I'm intact. Nothing broken. I'm worried about your head, though."

Golich winced and smirked slightly. "A lot of people are worried about my head. My right ankle, though, it's—" He tried to bend over and touch it, but the pain was too great.

M'Bela examined it. "May be broken, sir. Leave it alone...I'll gin up something for it. Medpatches won't help that."

She raised up enough to rest an elbow on the torn seat next to them, peering out through starred and crazed picture window. The sand haze seemed to be lessening and the mistral winds had slackened, though the battered gondola still groaned and creaked with the occasional gust. Worse, the gondola hull had been breached in multiple places and sand was sifting in, piling up in the lower reaches of the gondola.

"Where are we?" she wondered out loud. "Nothing but dunes out there, as far as I can see. We must have come to rest on top of one. Maybe we'd better stay put, for the shelter. Don't these balloons have emergency beacons?"

Golich struggled to a sitting position, bracing his back against the seat, which had been torn from its mount. "They do, but it may have been shattered in the impact. We came down pretty hard. Hard to say." He craned his head, wincing from the laceration and the medpatch, and peered out. "See those hills, over there? Central Hills. This is near where I went down before."

M'Bela looked out through haze shimmering in the distance. She could just make out the faint outlines of the slopes. "Stay here for now, Commander. Somebody has to know we went down. And that sand storm's moving on."

Golich shook his head emphatically. "We can't stay here, Queenie. Not safe. These dunes move, several meters a day. We stay here and we could get rolled, even buried. No...we have to get out, while we still can."

M'Bela said, "To where? Those hills look to be several klicks away, at least. And you've got a bad wheel."

"You'll have to support me, Queenie. I've seen you working out on Cygnus. You've got great wheels."

"Thanks...I think. What about the sand...and the wind? And where would we go anyway? There's nothing but dunes out there."

He looked around, ripped out some stuffing from the seat. "Here...use this. We make headgear to protect us, balaclava masks for our faces. Then we hobble up and down the dunes, to the hills. I know those hills. They're full of caves. In fact, that old hermit may still be there. I stumbled onto him before. He treated me and got me up and running the last time."

"Hermit? People live up there?"

"The sandseer. Some old geezer who left Gibbstown eons ago and hides out up in the caves along those slopes."

M'Bela was already helping him fashion some kind of head covering from the seat fabric and stuffing. "I thought that was just a kid's fairy tale. Pardon me, sir, but isn't this just slightly nuts? Remember your survival training at the Academy...'seek shelter first, then food and water. Use what you have.' We've got rations here. And some shelter. If we leave the gondola now...."

"If we don't leave, Queenie, we'll be buried alive. You're from the other side of K-World. No desert over there. I'm from Nomad Township. I know the Sand Sea. Now...get your ass moving, that's an order."

With some clever improvising, the two of them fashioned makeshift protective coverings and masks for their heads and face. M'Bela tried to shove open the hatch and found it jammed. Golich climbed up on another seat and looked out the picture window.

"It's a sand drift. And it's piling up fast...feel that? We're already sliding down slope. We'll be buried in no time. Here, let me help—"

"Sir, I wouldn't—" But he wouldn't be dissuaded and between the two of them, they forced open the jammed hatch, shoving and straining to make an opening they could squeeze through. Golich had been right. Even though the mistral had mostly passed by and the winds had died off, the sand was shifting and the gondola was rolling and skidding down from the top of sand dune.

M'Bela worked with Golich to get him into a position she could support, as comfortable as either of them could be. One arm around her neck, the other grasping a small bag of supplies they would need...rations, canteens of water, batteries, light sticks, more medpatches. They half slid and half fell down the slope to the hardpan below and set off.

In the distance, the rose-colored Central Hills shimmered like a million mirror fragments in the haze. M'Bela studied the sky, realized that some of the haze was likely bot clouds, wafting over from Gibbstown, the ever-present loose nano that darkened the late afternoon skies in shadowy clumps like pollen, drifting down and blanketing everything around them.

They were easily a dozen klicks from the hills, she figured. What I wouldn't give for some kind of bot controller, or config manager for those bots. We could fashion a first-class shelter right here and just wait for the cavalry.

But that was just wishful thinking, for she had no such thing. The coppery glow of Sturdivant 2180's late afternoon light made long reddish shadows over the sand and she found herself imagining the two shadows trudging along, growing larger and wider with each passing moment, soon taking flight. Night would come soon enough to Keaton's World, and with it, shapes and sounds and smells unknown, perhaps unknowable. They moved together as one, in a mechanical rhythm: step, shuffle, step, shuffle, step, shuffle, ever onward, a metronome of physical movement that seemed at the same time hypnotic, surreal and eternal. Flocks of aractyls cawed and screeched and beat their wings overhead, bringing momentary relief from their shadows.

Evelyn M'Bela and Nathan Golich pressed on as best they could, trying to make the lower slopes of the Central Hills before the fullness of K-World's night fell upon them.

II.

Keaton's World

The Sand Sea

2-1/2 C-80 (month of Half-Crescent, Midtober 2779 CE)

The country had originated from Dzugudini, a grand-daughter of "the famous ruler Monomatapa." Oral tradition said her mother had taught her the art of rain-making and gave her rain charms and sacred beads. Then she fled south with some supporters. They settled peacefully among the Sotho.

Centuries before, on old Urth, the leadership crisis had been resolved by accession of the first Mujaji, a Rain Queen with both political and ceremonial power. Chiefs presented her with wives. She had no military, but even the Zulu king Shaka paid her tribute because of her rain power. Her successors had less authority, but still presided over womanhood initiations and other important rituals.

Mujaji became the most powerful rainmaker in Southern Africa. Even the mighty Zulus feared and respected her, and gave her the name Mabelemane ("four breasts"). They were certain that the fertility and richness which she brought to the earth would be mirrored in her own body. The necessary rituals were usually performed in October. The rain came at a price. The magical medicine once included the brain of a sacrificed child. Later, a goat was considered sufficient. The skins of dead rain queens and their counsellors were also used. After a corpse was left for a few days, the skin came away easily in skilled hands. A human skull was used in the ritual, as were "gomana" drums, which helped to summon the rain. The medicine was stored in pots called mehago. When the medicine was burned in magical horns, the smoke rose into the sky and seeded rain clouds. While the magical horns were placed on the ground, rain continued to fall. When Mujaji wished the rain to stop, she hung up the horns....

Evelyn M'Bela and Nathan Golich pressed on as best they could, trying to make the lower slopes of the Central Hills before the fullness of K-World's night fell upon them.

Golich grunted and slumped in her arms and that startled Evelyn M'Bela out of her reverie. She stooped down. The Commander's face was pale. He was sweating hard.

"Not too far now," he croaked out. "A few more hills."

"You can't make it a few more hills," M'Bela decided. She looked around. They were moving into the upper Hills now, wedged between sheer rock walls, with clefts and burrows and hollows all around. At least the sand was gone, replaced by ocher rubble and house-sized boulders. Golich murmured and grunted directions, though she could barely hear him.

That's when she saw a faint light ahead, a flicker, like a fire or a candle or light stick.

They finally found the cave on the steepest slopes of the Central Hills, nearly a thousand meters above the surrounding desert. M'Bela and Golich were exhausted by the climb; the effort had taken half the night, it seemed.

The cave complex, where M'Bela had seen the flicker of light, was well hidden in the folds and crevices of the upper slopes, above a cloud deck and slick with ice and snow drifts. The wind screamed and gusted at well over eighty knots here and both of them had to hunker down in the lee of a rocky barren to keep from being shredded with ice shards and rock chips scoured off the mountainside.

The entrance was little more than a fold in the ground, like a bedsheet bent over and tucked under, maybe a meter across in its widest dimension. "This is it," Golich forced out.

The two of them moved deeper into the cave, following a drifting mist of bots that wavered in and out of view. A faint glow emanated from the swarms and M'Bela realized this was the light she had seen: bots slamming atoms, breaking bonds, creating a glow about the cave. They descended several levels, crossed a rock bridge across a deep chasm and maneuvered through more tunnels. Lighting was created by the mist, a pulsing, flickering light that cast deep shadows on the gnarled veins of rock lining the cave. The floor was slick, patches of ice everywhere. Soon enough, they came to a narrow opening, barely waist high. More light flickered from inside.

The mist of bots which had floated with them swirled like dust in a storm and gathered around the opening like a frame, coruscating and flashing as if lit from within. Bonds were broken and atoms slung together...in moments, the mist formed itself into a small ramp, extending over a sluggish pool of water. At least, M'Bela thought it was water, even as tendrils of steam hovered over the surface like a fog.

Cautiously, first Golich, then M'Bela, edged out onto the newly formed ramp and walked ahead.

The cave of the sandseer was behind a low-hanging barrier of stalactites. They had to duck to get in. A brighter glow issued from the center of the cave, a ball of pulsating light, flickering, phosphorescing, undulating like a thing alive.

_More bots_ , M'Bela realized. _It's like a bot nursery in here_.

The sandseer sat on his haunches over the glowpit. He was a gnome of an old man, skin sagging like desiccated rice paper, arms and face splotched with age and veins. He wore a simple, rough gray tunic, cinched at the waist and dingy slippers. His head was oddly misshapen, topped with wisps of white hair. His eyes were black slits, shadowed almost to nothing in the glow.

"Can you help us?" M'Bela asked. Golich leaned heavily against her, nearly unable to stand. "Our ship crashed. My friend here, he's injured. You've got lots of bots around...maybe some medbots? I think his ankle's broken."

The sandseer gestured at a pile of rags on the ground, other side of the glowpit. "There."

M'Bela helped Golich lie down among the rags. Presently, the glowing orb over the pit brightened noticeably and fingers of light, streams of bots, unraveled and snaked their way to envelop the Commander.

M'Bela shrank back, hesitant at first, but when she felt the sting of the swarm brushing against her arms, squirmed off to a safe distance. Soon, Nathan Golich was completely enshrouded in a 'quilt' of flickering light.

M'Bela's mouth went dry. "What do you do up here?"

The sandseer never moved, but continued stirring a mound of small stones in the pit. The fire that wasn't a fire glowed overhead. "I see things that are broken and fix them."

"Can you fix my friend?"

"Watch."

M'Bela spent an hour watching, as the shroud of bots coruscated and glowed and pulsed over and around Golich's prostrate form. Something stung her ears and eyes and she swatted at it. Loose bots, most likely. She had seen medbots at work before but nothing like this. The sandseer paid no attention to any of it.

"Will he die?"

The sandseer took a deep, rattling breath. "Yes, in time he will cease to exist."

"I mean from his injuries. Will he die from his injuries?"

Now, the sandseer rocked back and forth on his knees. He moaned a bit. "My little explorers say only that after a certain time, his detectable memory trails will cease to exist."

"You're a wizard with all these bots," M'Bela told him. "Commander Golich talked about you. He said he had been here before. He said you could see the future, even alter memories."

"Many things have been said." He waved his hand at what she had thought was smoke or soot coming from the pit, then realized the entire cave was thick with the mist of bots, clumping in knots overhead. "My friends tell me many things."

"Broken things."

"Many things."

"Do they tell you about me?"

Now the sandseer looked at her, his slit eyes narrowing almost to a faint line. "They tell me about your father...that his memory trails are fading."

His words sent a chill down M'Bela's spine. "What? Is he dying? My father—"

Just then, Golich stirred and sat up, propping himself on his elbows. The shroud of flickering light had dimmed noticeably. His color had returned. M'Bela went over, gingerly forcing her fingers through the remaining wisps of bots, to feel his face and forehead. "Commander...are you...do you feel--?"

He managed a wan smile. "Better. A little. My head feels like it's in a vise. And my ankle—"

She checked out his ankle. "The swelling's gone down. Can you move it at all?"

He tried, then winced. "A little. It's not as sore."

"The bots...I've never seen anything like it. This...man, this—"

Golich said, "Sandseer."

"Yeah, he seems to live with these bots, commune with them, control them. They're all around us."

"My little friends are part of us," the sandseer explained. "Part of the world, like the air and the sand and the winds." From a small tray on the ground, the sandseer gave Golich a cup, indicating he should drink. Golich took the cup, hesitated a moment, then slurped it down, whatever it was. He made a face.

"We've heard the stories since we were kids, Queenie."

"I thought they were just fairy tales, to scare us and make us go to bed."

Golich seemed to be getting stronger by the moment. He took a determined swig from the cup, made another face. "Most fairy tales are based on things that are true. Me...I think it's all those damn loose bots outside. We saw 'em at Gibbstown, even on the skyship ride. The sandseer can somehow manipulate them. He can 'see' things with them, even inside us, even memories. Remember the tales: _don't think bad thoughts or the sandseer'll get you_. My mother used to say that."

M'Bela glared back at the sandseer as if he were a statue come to life. "I never dreamed--"

"No, you didn't dare...he could see those, remember?"

M'Bela cocked her head to one side. "You're putting me on, Commander. Joshing me, pulling my leg."

But Golich was perfectly serious. "When we are at the Academy, remember Molecular Ops class? There were all these theories about using nanobots to enter a brain and reconstruct or alter memories by sniffing out trails of equal concentrations of glutamate molecules. There were experiments."

"Those were just experiments."

"Exactly. I think the sandseer has taken them to their logical conclusion."

The sandseer said nothing, stared into the glowpit, which pulsed with its own rhythm.

"Okay, Commander, I'm not buying any of this." She turned to the sandseer. "Sir, if you can read minds and such, what am I thinking now?"

Golich started to say something, but held off. The sandseer didn't look up.

"That you have disappointed your father, in some way."

M'Bela started to reply, but stopped. "That's..." she didn't have words for what she really wanted to say. "That proves nothing. Everybody knows Eric M'Bela, General Secretary of the Delegate Assembly. He's in the news every day. He could have got that off the newssats or the Net."

Golich shrugged. M'Bela looked from the sandseer to Golich and back again, seeking understanding, confirmation, proof that this was all just a big joke, a put-on.

"Okay, guys, the sandseer just told me he could detect memory trails of my father. You said they were fading. Is he dying, maybe?"

Now the sandseer shifted slightly, strained to stand up and moved like a wraith toward one wall of the cave. From a small niche, he withdrew a tiny capsule. He shook the capsule, then came back to the pit, kneeling down. He thumbed the capsule open and a thin stream of flickering light, like a swarm of fireflies issued out. The stream dropped into the glowing ball of light over the pit and soon merged, brightening the orb a bit.

"His memory trails diminish daily. My little friends still detect them. But they fade rapidly. In time—" he left unsaid what needed to be said.

"In time?"

"You call it entropy. Things break. Things disperse. In the end, there is no structure...only chaos and heat."

His words sent a chill down her spine. M'Bela swallowed hard. _This old geezer hits a little too close to home_. "If you really can control all these bots, can't you just assemble another ship for us? Or a sandcat or something? You said you fixed things. We could just drive back to Gibbstown. Commander, you remember what the Captain said...we've got to be back at 2400 hours tomorrow night."

"Rescue will not come for many days," the sandseer said simply. "I don't have the templates...I'm sorry. My little friends need a template."

"Oh, jeez—" M'Bela threw up her hands. "You have a gajillion bots around here, you claim to read memories and you can't even gin up a sandcat for us...what kind of crackpot are you?"

"Queenie—"

"No, Commander, this is total bullshit. He said he fixes things. Fix us up a ride back to town. Even better, tell me what my father is thinking right now...can you even do that?"

The sandseer was quiet for a few moments. Above the glowpit, streamers of flickering light spalled off and dissipated in the darkness of the cave. The light ball pulsated and throbbed.

Presently, the sandseer spoke. "My friends tell me of a great sadness."

M'Bela sat down heavily. She looked at Golich. "It must be me." Their whole arduous trek across the Sand Sea she _had_ been thinking about being estranged for so long, feeling down and knowing full well that Eric M'Bela felt she had forsaken her ancient Igbo heritage, thrown away the family traditions and gone off to join Time Guard, to escape the clutches of the past. She had been hallucinating the stories her father had told her as a child. Maybe that's what Crazy Man was detecting. Her own sense of how disappointed her father was, reliving all that crap, and the guilt that wouldn't stop. Even Golich knew about that; jeez, the whole crew of _Cygnus_ knew about that. Was it that obvious? _Glutamate molecules, my ass._

"Commander, we're not getting out of here any time soon, are we?"

Golich lay back down and closed his eyes. "He said he doesn't have templates to fashion any kind of ship for us."

Evelyn M 'Bela couldn't rightly say when the idea first came to her. That Eric M'Bela, her father, General Secretary of the Delegate Assembly, was in poor health and might be dying didn't come as a surprise. She'd seen the dispatches for months now, while _Cygnus_ was out on sector patrol. That was one reason she'd begged for liberty when they had arrived in orbit. Then, once on the ground with Golich, she'd chickened out, not wanting to face him and taken this blasted skyship trip instead. Now—

"Can you alter memories as well" she asked the sandseer. "Like put a memory into someone's head so they think it's theirs?"

The sandseer continued staring into his glowpit while the light ball pulsated above. "My explorers have taken me to many strange and wonderful places."

Golich was curious. "Just what are you thinking, Queenie?"

M'Bela sniffed. "We may not get out of here, Commander. Who knows how long it'll take Search and Rescue to find us? I don't want my father to die thinking I've abandoned everything he stood for...I should never have taken this trip...I should've gone on to Douala, like I told the Captain."

"Now you're blaming me."

"I'm not blaming anyone...I'm blaming myself, I guess. If the sandseer could actually place memories in someone—I'm not saying I'm really buying that...it sounds like snake oil to me—maybe we could act out something here." She closed her eyes, remembering the stories she had heard as a child. "While we were slogging across the desert, I kept remembering some of the stories my father told me when I was young. We could act one of them out, here. Make up costumes, props. It'd give us something to do. Maybe with that, the sandseer could...you know, like...transmit it off...send his little nano-buddies on a mission."

They both looked at the sandseer, who didn't react.

"Can this be done? Is this possible?"

The sandseer said only, "The journey is the destination. That which is lost cannot be found...until it is discovered."

"What's that?" M'Bela asked, "some kind of wise ass riddle? Commander, this is all bunk, don't you think?"

Golich shrugged, cinched up his blanket a little tighter. "I don't know. But I do remember what old man Jellicoe told us in that Molecular Ops class at the Academy: He called it Long-term Potentiation. One of the chemical signatures of LTP is a molecule called glutamate...helps open a second voltage-gated channel inside the post-synaptic membrane--"

M'Bela held up a hand, in mock surrender. "In plain English, Commander—"

"Right...what it boiled down to is that they could apparently construct crude renditions of memory traces existent in a subject's brain, up to ten to fifteen days after the memory trace was laid down. The bots shuttle around inside a subject's head like a bunch of bees, sniffing out calcium sinks in every neuron, looking for equal concentrations, down to the parts per trillion. Everywhere that concentration is equal is a pathway, burned in, a memory trace. The bots follow it, send back data on whatever they find--calcium levels, sodium levels, activation times, lots of stuff. I heard they could re-construct a very crude version of what originally laid down that track. Then they put it on an imager, cobbled out of visual and auditory sensory traces in this particular case. Memory tracing, Jellicoe called it. I guess it would be about as easy to lay down a trail as read one."

"Sort of like painting somebody's portrait from their shadow." M'Bela moved closer to the old sandseer. "Is that how this works?"

The sandseer said, "I believe that wisdom comes from the truth of our experience."

M'Bela threw up her hands. "Like you said, Commander, what can it hurt? It gives us something to do, before we go crazy in here."

She thought for a moment, then related one of the stories she knew best, where a young Ibo warrior came to the Rain Queen and pleaded with her to make the skies rain, to save the village's yam crops.

"We need props, some kind of costumes, scenery...I've got my necklace. That's a start."

"What else?"

M'Bela thought. "Some kind of headdress for me, a scarf maybe. And something that looks like a horn—" she looked about the cave, spied one of the stalactites, and broke it off carefully. "Like this. We'll call it a horn. You—" she clucked, shook her head, "we've got to make you look like a young Ibo male. That may take some doing—"

"No doubt," Golich said.

After a time, the props and costumes and scenery had been cobbled together from materials scattered about the cave, including pieces of their uniform, stuffing they had made masks out of from the skyship, a small crown that Golich chiseled out of a rock with his knife and secured to her head with strips of lining from their uniforms.

"What's that you're making?" he asked her, watching as M'Bela scrubbed and chiseled on her own rock, carefully shaping the piece into something that resembled a gourd.

"It's called an _opi_. It's like a flute. The Rain Queen uses it to summon the spirits of Okike, Mmuo and Uwa...spirits of creation, the supernatural and Earth."

They thought for a moment. "So how do we do this?"

M'Bela closed her eyes, remembering her father Eric's words. "You're Alusi. Young farmer from the village. I'm Dzugudini, the Rain Queen. You come to my _mabas_ , my house, on the hill. You plead for rain. You have to make a sacrifice with goat's blood, in that horn. Then I listen, take the horn and beg Chukwu—the great spirit-- to intervene. I offer him the horn. And then it rains."

They stumbled through a few practices at first, then did a final rendition. Through it all, the sandseer took little note of the impromptu play. But when M'Bela figured they had done the scene enough times, she asked the sandseer what came next.

The light ball flickered and pulsated with a fierce blue-white light. Streams of light unfurled and drifted across the cave toward them.

"Lie down and be still," the sandseer said. "This will take time."

The time jumpers did as he said, making nests for themselves on the hard, rubbly ground with piles of their clothes and seat stuffing from the ship.

M'Bela closed her eyes. _I should have my head examined for doing this...but I feel better anyway._ She looked over. Golich had closed his eyes. He was already breathing deeply and that's when she realized what was to happen. It was like a medbot insert. The sandseer's bots were flowing right into their nose, ears, eyes and mouth...sniffing memory trails while they were still fresh.

She tensed up and then she felt the first stings, in the back of her head.

III.

Keaton's World

Douala Township

Evelyn M'Bela was never completely sure what had happened. She remembered lying down, closing her eyes but after that, her memory was a blur. Memories were like that. She remembered images...her father's stern face after she had run away the first time, at the age of five...gathered around his big black shoes with her sisters and brothers as he narrated stories about Dzugudini, the Rain Queen...the tale of Obaledo and how she disobeyed her parents and ate the uncooked yam, then left home to find more, only to have her beauty snatched away by a demon. It could have been a dream or even a nightmare. An apparition. A hallucination, like she'd had on the trek away from the skyship wreckage, up into the Central Hills. A premonition, even.

She startled awake at the sound of voices, shouts, coming from the cave entrance. Golich was already getting up. The sandseer was nowhere to be seen, the glowpit cold and dark. The cave was completely black save for a few embers in the glowpit and Golich's lightsticks.

They made their way to the cave entrance and found a welcome sight: Sky Service search and rescue medics had boosted down from two lifters hovering overhead, looking for all the world like black aractyls in the early light of dawn.

"You're a sight for sore eyes," Golich said. A burly jumper helped him into the sling seat and secured the straps.

"Just hold on tight, sir. We'll have you guys out of here in no time."

"How did you find us?" M'Bela asked.

The burly medic said, "Our bots sniffed out your trail from the wreckage. We came over in lifters and got a ping on some strong nanobotic signatures...really high thermals, strong electromagnetics, that sort of stuff. So we investigated and here you are. Here...sit back in the sling and I'll strap you in."

The lifters left the Central Hills and made the trip back to the Skyship Terminal at Gibbstown in half an hour.

After being examined in the infirmary and pronounced in decent health, Golich, wearing a foot cast for his ankle, and M'Bela emerged into late morning sunshine and stood on the sidewalk, watching pedestrians, jetcabs and autocars whiz by.

"That thing going to heal up okay, Commander?" she asked, indicating Golich's ankle.

He shrugged. "Got bots in my boot, according to the docs. They'll stitch me up good in about a week, then the boot comes off." He checked his wristpad. "Still a few hours before we have to be back aboard _Cygnus_. Want to do lunch? I know a great cantina a few blocks from here...they make a mean tequila there."

M'Bela shook her head. "I'm worried about my father. From what that old hermit said...I'd better take the vactrain to Douala and at least stop by...so they'll know I haven't completely forgotten them all. You think all that mumbo-jumbo worked? We won't be winning any awards for theatrical performance, I guess. But it made me feel better."

Golich shrugged, began trudging off in the direction of the cantina. "Who knows? The sandseer helped me before, when I crashed the first time. It wasn't long after that I joined the Time Guard."

They parted and M'Bela bought a roundtrip vactrain ticket to Douala, her family home. The tube train would take about three hours, for the township was way at the end of the line, on the other side of K-World, beyond the Sand Sea and Loch Lithgow. They'd be stopping in Segovia, then Bukhara, then el-Kharg, and then Douala Township.

The trip would give her some solitude. Time to think. Time to get ready.

Arriving in Douala in mid-afternoon, Evelyn M'Bela decided to walk to her family's home. Mother and Father would be there, probably Adanna, her sister, her younger brother Chimeko, maybe others. The house bore a passable resemblance to a traditional Cameroonian _mabas_ hut, pseudo clay walls with a triple-weave thatch roof, save for the replicator banks outside and the dishes and antennas.

She walked down Ebolowa Street and noticed a long solemn line of people winding their way past the house. Police were everywhere, dignitaries arriving in jetcabs, Assembly delegates and others in mourning cloaks and beads, men in black _fezes_ with trays bearing small figurines, women in gaily colored sarongs, bone necklaces dangling from their necks.

What the hell was going on?

She broke into a run, pushed into their house and ran right into her sister Adanna and another brother, Kano.

"Where's Mother?" she asked, holding little Kano by the shoulders. "Where's Father?"

Kano wore an elaborate black and white headband, with bone necklaces that clinked. He was startled to see his older sister, for the first time in several years. He shrank back, then blinked back tears. "He...he...um, Father died—"

"Last night," said Adanna. She was always the pretty one, with her strong face and shell earrings, clacking noisily as she hugged Evelyn. "Mother said...he didn't suffer. His heart...it was weak...it give out." Adanna fluttered her hands, not sure what to do with them. Her eyes were wet.

"Mother...where's Mother?"

Kano pointed to the kitchen, a small vestibule off the entrance. Evelyn went in. Ifedimma M'Bela sat on a chair at the table, dabbing at wet rolling down her cheeks. Her _daishiki_ was all askew, rumpled, as if she had thrown it on in a hurry. She brightened and cried out when she saw Evelyn.

They embraced and Evelyn found herself subconsciously straightening out her Mother's robe.

"Child...child...I heard you were here. The big ship—" her eyes darted up toward the ceiling, "came back with my baby—"

"Mother—Mother...I didn't know. What happened?"

Ifedimma M'Bela wrung her hands in exasperation. "So sudden...so—" she choked back tears, couldn't finish the words. "He was _such_ a good man, your father. As Chukwu say, ' _Oge adighi eche mmadu."_

Evelyn translated in her mind: Time waits for no one. "Where is he? Can I go to him, see him? All those people out there—"

Ifedimma pointed to another room. "Yes, yes...they're all waiting to see him. He's in the back. Mmuo's waiting on him now...we have to let him go."

Evelyn hustled through the door to a back room. Her father, Dr. Eric M'Bela, Secretary-General of the Delegate Assembly of Keaton's World, lay in traditional attire—his body on top of a bed of plantain leaves, rubbed with camwood dye, his feet in black shoes pointing toward the entrance.

He was a tall man, over two meters, a high forehead, now marked with the family's cow symbols, large expressive hands, a big-boned man. Evelyn rubbed his forehead, smoothed back tufts of gray-black hair. She noticed a slight smile on his face.

Kano stood nearby, already with the tray of kola nuts and palm wine, ready to greet the dignitaries as they came into the house. Kano was the oldest.

"He's smiling," Evelyn said to her Mother and siblings. "Why the smile?"

Adanna spoke first. "He died that way...doctor said."

Ifedimma added, "The mortician was going to make his face more somber and dignified, as a Secretary should look. But Adanna here—and Kano—insisted that the smile remain."

Adanna shrugged. "It fits him. We don't know why our Father, our _nna_ , is smiling."

Ifedimma said, "Something must have pleased him just before he died...perhaps Chukwu said something. We don't know what it was."

Evelyn smiled up at them. "I know what it was—"

END

Who wouldn't like to have the ability to upload new knowledge, even new 'memories,' just by pressing a few buttons? Think of the possibilities: you could learn new things, live vicariously things that never happened—imagine having the memories of a blue whale—know friends and family as never before, armed with their own memories inside your head. What's not to like?

In this story, Cas Landry and Pieter Delano are a married couple living in a place called Chaos City, on and under the ice surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. They're married but they don't want to be; they want to have a divorce. Having their own minds suffused with each other's memories has proven to be a bit too much.

Uploading new memories and information is a relatively straightforward process in this story. But Cas and Pieter want to have previous memories of their now-deteriorating relationship expunged, removed completely. The uploader machine has been programmed to do just that. They have permission to do this. But when the uploader malfunctions, they find themselves unaccountably experiencing old feelings they had thought long dormant.

_Ten million years ago, when Og and Grog were sitting around playing with a new thing called fire, they learned the hard way not to stick their fingers in the flames. Today, in the 21_ st _century, such learnings happen without upload technology. But in 32_ nd _century Chaos City, something like a balky uploader can teach lessons no one ever expected or programmed, amplifying even the faintest traces of lost love, to the point where Cas and Pieter find something they never anticipated...something they once had, but lost._

Upload Incompatibility

Conamara Chaos

Chaos City, Europa

Solix 10.10.3133 (June 1, 3133 EUT)

UPLOAD AUTHORITY Log Transcripts for Subjects Pieter Delano V3 and Cassiopeia Landry V3:

Pieter V3:

My name is Pieter Delano V3 and I'm here to undergo a V4 version upload. Where do I even start with this? The Upload Authority says I have to do this. Something about testing the effectiveness of the upload; you know, it's all monitored for quality control. The main thing is Cas and I are getting a divorce.

We both agreed that petitioning for a V4 upload was best. It would wipe out all the bad memories of the last few years. In fact, we've already filed divorce papers with the Magistrate's Module. The reason: upload incompatibility.

Cas just doesn't understand. Beyond the usual new laws and regulations and all the health and welfare stuff the Authority drops on us, she wants me to incorporate some of her own and her family's memories. She says it'll make us closer, bring us together. But my family's different. For us, it's all about keeping things pure and simple, all Delano. Okay, so yeah, I come from a well-known family. I'm not apologizing for that at all. Every upload, I get their latest memories. All the new stuff. Five generations ago, something like that, my ancestor, the architect Philippe Dugay, invented something called a _terreta_. That pretty much suburbanized practically the whole solar system. Little habitats floating around by the zillion. He's why I went into architecture. I read about him all the time, along with other big names, Christopher Wren, Frank Lloyd Wright, Filippo Brunelleschi.

I come from a proud family. It's not about upload 'purity' like Cas thinks. It's about recognizing that my family's different from hers. My father always said don't do anything to mess up your name and reputation...it's money in the bank. If I clog up my own mind with what Cas' sisters did for her twelfth birthday and how Scruffy the poodle actually got her name, I'm not sure I can still be a Delano anymore. Delanos think like Delanos. And I've got a pretty good career going now with G+J Designs. I'm following in a long line of Delano architects and I'm expected to do something big, something great, something memorable. It's a lot of weight to carry around but I don't mind. It's what makes me different. Once, it's what attracted Cas; she said so herself.

I remember what attracted me to architecture in the first place. After mustering out of SATRANS when I was twenty—my apprenticeship period was over—I resolved (with my Dad's approval) to enter a new apprenticeship with a small design firm based at Ganymede (called Ganymede/Jove Designs or G+J Designs) that specialized in designs for terretas, inter-satellite ships for SATRANS and standalone habitats and settlements for the many satellites in the Jupiter system. G+J hoped to expand further into other Concordance territory around Saturn and the Outer Ring, then push beyond Uranus into trans-Neptunian space.

I was always an outworlder and a child of the Concordance, but two things caught my attention in this time period (from 3115 to 3130 EUT). One was a new commission for G+J from the Concordance itself, from the Ultrarch, to build and staff out a starship base in orbit around Neptune. To be called _Ultima Culmine_ (that's Latin for Ultimate Summit), the base was planned to be the first and largest base for designing, assembling, testing and launching ships to travel to all the new worlds in the Proxima and Alpha Centauri systems. I soon became deeply involved in this project, initially as an apprentice structural designer. I realized this was my big ticket, my big chance, and I wanted to make the most of it.

The second item of my attention was this fellow designer in Structures. Her name was Cas (for Cassiopeia) Landry. Two years after signing on with G+J at their Ganymede Studios, I had fallen deeply in love with Cas. We were married in 3122.

I still love Cas and the kids. But I just can't take the chance of messing up my head with minutiae from her past while I'm trying so hard to build a name and live up to the family's reputation while at G+J. I want to be a good provider. Cas knows that. It's just that she's got these ideas about what we should do to be closer as a couple and as parents.

I don't want it but maybe it's better this way. Divorce is hard. But so is trying to be something you're not.

Cas V3:

Honestly, I don't know where Pieter gets off with all this talk about family and name and reputation. It's not like he actually _is_ his beloved ancestor Philippe Dugay, is he? This is about Pieter being married to his work more than he's married to me. I'm not asking for much. If Pieter would just allow some Landry family memories in his next upload, it would strengthen the family and improve our love and our relationship, help cement things together. You know, it hasn't been easy for us at G+J.

I guess it all started in 2130, when G+J undertook a new commission at Saturn. The project was called _Hibernia_. In this project, G+J would use a modified atmosphere scooping process, first pioneered by Pieter's illustrious ancestor Philippe Dugay in the 2200s, to build additional terretas in orbit around Saturn, on some of her larger moons and even to develop a research base on the ice surface of Enceladus. The Concordance Ultrarchy approved _Hibernia_ as a way of consolidating Concordance control over the resources of Saturn and prevent InFed's Outer Ring from encroaching 'inward' or sunward from beyond Saturn orbit.

We were both re-located to a station in high Saturn orbit (called _Serandib_ _Station_ , it orbited around Enceladus) for several years while _Hibernia_ was designed and laid out. I think this is where things started going sour for us.

Pieter is more concerned with the purity of his design than the messiness of a relationship. I've told him that our family and our relationship isn't like designing a building or a terreta. Projects like that have a start and an end. They're completed. Relationships are never completed. Plus, he's been seeing that Asian girl Cherry Wan and he thinks I don't know about it...I know everything about it.

I want a V4 upload that will overwrite my memories of at least the last 3 years. When the Magistrate's Module approves the divorce, I'm planning to move away from Chaos City anyway, someplace inside InFed, in the Belt, maybe even Big-Venice-in-the Belt, and maybe even become a show girl at the casinos. Wouldn't that shake up the Delanos? They're all like marble statues anyway. It'd be like peeing on the statues, if I did that.

(Upload Error 644 ...failed format check...failed buffer dump... rebooting...uploading version V2)...

Pieter:

Wow, I don't know what happened there...just felt a little woozy, a little dizzy, kind of discombobulated. The Upload tech asked me to describe how Cas and I first met. We were both designers in the Structures section at G+J. I liked her because she was pretty in a cute sort of way. There were prettier girls around. I liked her personality too—that laugh still gives me shivers—and it didn't hurt that she had a cute butt. I don't know. It's hard to explain but there was some chemistry there. Later, there was some physics too.

We had some good times after we met at G+J. You know, when you work for G+J at their Ganymede Studios, you spend most of your time in the compound, which is to say underground, below the ice, below the radiation shield. You work like a rat and live like one too. But a few times, the company sponsored trips up to the surface...kind of a team-building thing. Short little EVA trips across the ice, with icecats to drive around in. Cas and I usually separated ourselves from the others for awhile on these excursions. We'd go off to some ice cave and start noodling around and before you knew it, we'd slink back to an icecat while the others were out there studying glacial ice flows and ablation rates and creep deformation, and then we were just hiding out in an icecat, making out right under the eyes of the King of the Planets.

It was great. Did wonders for our team building too.

I do miss those moments, I'll have to admit. I don't know what happened to us. It's a shame we can't find that kind of common ground anymore, enough to keep our marriage going...maybe if we went back to Ganymede, went out on the surface in an icecat, let Jupiter work its magic on us again.

Cas doesn't understand me anymore. She doesn't understand how important it is for me to make a successful design come to life. That's what architects do. Just like I could never understand what it's like to make a baby...and she's made three...our two sons and a daughter. I guess I can design a building and design a terreta but I can't design a relationship that will last...can it even be reduced to something designable? Architects work with glass and steel and stone and ice and composite. They all have their own characteristics. But relationships....

Before we finalize things with the Magistrate's Module, I want to propose something crazy...that we make another trip to Ganymede. You never know.

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Cas:

Okay, I'll admit there are still things I like, even admire about Pieter. I like him physically. I admire his sense of dedication, at least to his work. I just wish he would be as dedicated to me and the family. Our earlier uploads seemed to synch okay. That's what V4 is supposed to be about, isn't it? Synching even closer, but Pieter's too obstinate about keeping his family uppermost in his mind...we're a family too, you know. What about us?

What was it like to live together, newly married, in _Sunnymede_ , in high orbit around Jupiter? Like a dream that wouldn't end. I was a designer in Structures at that time, new to the job, entranced with the job, lots of new responsibilities and entranced with all the eligible bachelors G+J had brought on board for the _Ultima Culmine_ project at Neptune. All us girls were like that.

You know why Pieter caught my eye and my fancy early on? He was different. He had an ego; they all did, but his was different. He had a quiet confidence about him, something that said _I'm going places_. I wanted to go places with him. He wasn't all stuck up on himself, at least not back then. Like all of us, he was just trying to make a name for himself in Structures. I even pitied him a little, trying to live up to that illustrious name of his ancestors. There was something dark and mysterious about him, something concealed, just below the surface. Maybe it was the ghost of Philippe Dugay. Maybe that's what I fell in love with...an historical icon operating in flesh and blood in the form of Pieter Delano. Maybe it's his ancestor Philippe Dugay that I really loved, or at least my idea of Philippe Dugay.

It wasn't long after that, we did a V3 upgrade. We wanted to synch up again and share memories, strengthen the bonds between us. It was really delicious and a little scary when we sort of fell in love, almost without meaning too. The other girls were so jealous.

We got married in 3122. It was a dream come true. G+J built an ice chapel on the surface of Ganymede, covered it with a dome and made it habitable, all for us (well, mostly for Pieter). My dress was this long...I mean, wow. Five bridesmaids...they all looked like royalty, all that purple and lavender and white. Yeah, so it was a lot of foo-foo, but girls love that stuff. The ceremony occurred just at daybreak on Ganymede's surface, as Jupiter was just poking above the horizon. Right over the Galileo Regio. A really special moment. I'd hate to see that memory wiped. But it seems stronger than ever now...not sure why.

I'm not sure there's a way back to that time but I have to be honest. I'd like to try.

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Pieter:

Cas and I often took lunch together inside the G+J studio canteen, sometimes we went off on our own, to several little-used spots around the complex, once or twice even up to the landing pads topside (on the surface), just watching the shuttles come and go. A simple thing, really, but just being together, away from the studio...that made it special.

I remember how Cas used to probe me constantly about my background. She asked and she listened...I'd never had that experience before.

I remember my first upload experience: my mother—her name was Valentina-- died when I was only eight years old. This was September 5, 3103 (EUT)...about Solix 10.5.3103 in the Concordance way of keeping time. She died in a freak accident in Chaos City's evap-boiler section in the Life Support Systems Complex.

I was devastated. It hit me hard. When I was 10, it was time for me to undergo my first mind-upload, known as V1. I elected to have most of Valentina's memories from the last eight years added to the upload. In this way, I would feel a closeness to Mother and have access to many of her memories. And the Upload Authority approved that.

There are special ceremonies surrounding V1, almost like a bar mitzvah. There are elective and mandatory parts. The mandatory part is to be uploaded with the latest rules and regulations, health and welfare recommendations and educational support from the Ultrarch of the Concordance. That's the massive AI that essentially governs the Concordance and is centrally located at Chaos City. There is also a massive file backup of all your current memories. The elective part can include things like appending other people's memories to yours (as I did) and even memories from things like plants and animals, though Europa has only a few animals on site. Even new skills can be added, though they still have to be practiced. The V1 and each upload thereafter—they typically come about every 10 years-- is a time for celebration and a lot of parties over several days. The final day is a city-wide Carnival called _Rotundas_ , which lasts most of the day with parades and speeches and the crowning of a Rotundas King and Queen.

After the upload is done and the Ultrarch has signed off on everything and all the ceremonies, you have the legal right to append 'V1" to the end of your name. So, I did. On the Rotundas Day of Solix 5.22.3105, little Pieter Delano became Pieter Delano V1.

But the best part of V1 was meeting Cas...no doubt about it.

The first time we made love occurred in a kind of impromptu way. It was in my flat, where I had invited her and some of my and her friends to a Friday night party...another rover party. While the guests were drinking and amusing themselves with games in the living room (remotely operating small toy rovers on the surface in a gaming field marked off for this purpose), I just grabbed Cas in the hall and we ducked into a back bedroom, where all the coats were thrown on the beds and made love among the coats and hats of our guests. Just as we finished, a few guests appeared and there was a scramble and some disjointed explanations. The guests smirked. I'm sure they didn't believe a word of it. One of the guests—Semarilyn Paris—even remarked that she and her guest Johan had taken over Cas and my rovers and accidentally crashed them into each other on a ledge, knocking both off. Everybody thought this was hilarious. Maybe it was an omen for us.

The truth is I fell in love with Cas because she wasn't a Dugay. She was a Landry, something different, a new species of human. For the first time, I wasn't a Dugay or a Delano, worried about my name, my reputation, what others would think. To Cas, I was just me, just Pieter. The weight of all that was gone, and I did feel almost weightless at that time. Free, loose, uninhibited, able to just let go and be myself, not be somebody else's idea of what I should be. We both lived in the moment...and I wanted those moments to last forever.

(Upload Error 644 ...failed format check...failed buffer dump... rebooting...uploading version V1)...

Cas:

I recall meeting some of my fellow female designers after that 'rover party.' The love-making was hesitant at first, a little awkward, but shivery and delicious all the same, especially since we knew we might be caught at any moment. But Pieter was gentle, considerate for all that and it was just the first of many times in those early months. We couldn't get enough of each other.

I also remember that Pieter, although he lived in a different flat on a different level at Ganymede Station, essentially moved in and lived with me. We really had to work hard to keep our hands off each other while at work in the studio, concentrating on our projects and assignments, trying not to stare at each other, but maintaining a small window on our tablet screens for quick and furtive dirty talk, jokes, snide comments, ridiculous and snarky love poems and letters, funny photos and vids, often doctored up. For weeks, Pieter sent these clips to me almost daily and I had to stifle a laugh when they popped up. Finally, I just had to toggle off the link, to get any work done.

Six months after this, I remember a camping trip Pieter and I made with some friends to the Perrine Regio lowlands. It's funny how this upload business works. It brings out all these memories I thought I had lost...I guess I was trying to lose them.

The rover broke down and, although Ganymede Rescue was on the way by hopper, there were some dicey moments when, on a trip outside, our foursome thought my suit had been breached. I remember how Pieter, quick thinking as he always was, buddy-linked his own oxygen hose to my suit to blow enough O2 in under pressure long enough for us to make it back to the rover. He didn't panic, just calmly went about saving my life. It was an example of a kind of love, a level of commitment, that most girls around here never see...I mean, the man was willing to lay down his life for me at that moment.

We discussed this afterward. Pieter tried to toss off the event as just a near-accident that turned out okay, but I knew otherwise. I learned a lot about Pieter in those frightening moments, about what really constituted him. He could be so proper and uptight when the discussion was about designing something or about his own family. He could be loose, even a wild child, among friends when he was away from the public. In public, he was ever the marble statue his family expected him to be. But in a life or death situation, I learned that Pieter was cool, calm, detached, focused on the immediate problem.

I'll admit I both love and hate that ability to focus. Back then, he was focused on me and us. But later, that focus shifted and I wasn't even in his field of vision anymore. It's kind of fun remembering all these things, remembering how it was back then....

Error Code 644...Upload session terminated....

It took a few moments, but both Cas and Pieter struggled back to consciousness and shook off the worst effects of the upload session.

Pieter was first to exit his uploader pod. He blinked in the strong light, saw several faces, felt a furry residue in his throat and croaked out a question.

"What...the hell...happened in there?"

There were two people standing outside the pod. One was upload tech Gavin Rooles. Rooles was busy helping Cas get out of her pod, helping her stand upright, giving her something to drink to take the edge off.

The other was UA supervisor Evelyn Marx.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Delano, Mrs. Delano. There was an uploader fault. We had to terminate the session. For your safety—"

At that moment, another man entered the examining room, balding, white-lab coat, still pecking something on a wristpad. Marx introduced him.

"This is Dr. Godwin. He'll do a quick physical exam on both you. Just routine. It's standard procedure in situations like this."

While Godwin proceeded to raise some kind of instrument to Cas' head, Pieter asked for a fuller explanation.

"What went wrong? I was having a good time in there."

Marx shrugged apologetically. "A glitch was discovered. Rest assured, the people responsible will be disciplined." That made technician Rooles stiffen slightly. "We'll get you back inside in no time, re-do the entire sequence. Undo V1 to V3 and make the problem right. It's the least the Authority can do. There's no cost to you."

"Specifically, explain what happened. What went wrong?"

Marx seemed reluctant, consulting her own wristpad, as if seeking guidance. "Actually, Mr. Delano, you were approved and scheduled to receive a V4 upload. That _is_ correct, isn't it? That's what it says here."

"That's what we signed up for," Cas agreed.

Marx's face was professionally bland. "Instead of receiving a full V4 upload, both of you received V2 and V1 uploads by mistake. As I said, a glitch. Both your V2 and V1 uploads were still on file. The uploader downloaded memories from these earlier versions. But not to worry. Upload Authority will make this right." Then she remembered something and reached into her coat pocket, withdrawing a small coin-sized chip. "Just came from the Magistrate's Module." She gave it to Pieter.

Pieter looked at Cas. "The divorce application must have been approved." He handed it to Cas, who took it as if the thing were contaminated.

Marx went on. "If you two would kindly accompany Gavin here, we'll set you up with a short rest period, while the uploader is recycled and reset and checked. You can have a light meal in the cafeteria. Gavin will take you. Please—"

Cas and Pieter followed Gavin down the hall and down the lift two floors. They sat together, alone at a table, picking over their sandwiches and salads. Then off to a small lounge, where both sat restlessly, checking the time, peeking at each other's face awkwardly. An hour later, Gavin's puppy face appeared.

"Uploader's ready, you two. We're all set."

Back in the room of the pods, Gavin was alone with them. "We'll have your V4 versions inserted in no time. Just climb in, sit back and relax."

Pieter started to say something but the words just weren't there and nothing came out. Gavin closed the hatch and sealed it. The faint mist of the anesthetic filled the pod and he found himself growing sleepy again.

Going through his old versions again, his V2 and V1 versions, had been unnerving at first. But then things began to change. Some of the tensions he and Cas had felt in recent months seemed to drift away. Maybe it was those memories being downloaded. When he thought about Cas now, thought about _them_ , he didn't feel the same way as before. He understood better. He found himself thinking of her in a new way...no, that wasn't quite it. In an old way. The way he had thought about her in the beginning, when they couldn't take their hands off each other.

All because of an uploader error.

Pieter wondered what Cas was thinking, alone in her own pod, just a few feet away. Months later, he could still not quite put his finger on why he did what he did in the pod. He wondered if Cas was doing the same thing.

Pieter reached over his head, kinking and torqueing his head, straining, groping for the connection to his upload jack. _There_. Gavin had already tightened it down. But with a strong twist of his fingers, he got the connector turning and soon enough, had removed the cable completely from the jack in the base of his skull. Not so easy to do and there was a kind of tingling in his head when he did it.

Pieter didn't want any more uploads. He liked the V1 version now residing in his head. It was pleasant, comforting, like pulling up a favorite old blanket in bed. Memories of his Mom. Winning the hopper races in an icecat named _Eternal Harmony_ when he was eight years old. His best friend Ariel Carnes and the ice fortress they built on the surface, called _Echelon_ ...even then, a budding little architect. More importantly, he wanted to keep the memories of what he and Cas had once had, still recorded and on file in the V1 version.

As soon as he unplugged the connector, though, a warning buzzer sounded inside the pod. The automated voice was synthetic female but quite insistent....

"Connection failure...upload version incompatibility...check all connections before proceeding...."

END

In my story 'The Rain Queen of K-World,' I posit the existence of time-traveling soldiers and something called Time Guard. If there are ever soldiers who can travel through time, there will surely be casualties as well. What hazards and stresses will afflict these people? What syndromes and diseases and injuries will they suffer from?

The story that follows tells us that time traveling soldiers will need time traveler rest homes and hospitals, to help them deal with the problems of flitting around time, in and out of something I call voidtime.

And if there be rest homes, there will surely be well-meaning family members who come to visit and who try to make things better, but actually don't.

Watching an older loved one wither and die is a painful experience for anybody. When the loved one is an old soldier, keen on reliving ancient battles and even changing the outcomes for greater glory—something now possible through the technology of time travel—family members may well find themselves wishing for the very thing they fear most..that the old Colonel will quietly expire and stop messing around with time streams. And when the ancient battles the old Colonel wants to re-fight aren't necessarily on a normal battlefield, as we understand them, families may well find they have to intervene in ways they never expected...just to save themselves and the Universe from extinction.

The Battle of the Gauntlet

( _with apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ )

Copernicus Township, Luna

Solix 10.10.3115 (June 1, 3115)

I.

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

"Forward the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!" he said

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Danica Golich visited her father Nathan at BrightSky Gardens every day now. Jump Commander Golich was a resident at the old time jumpers' home and had been for several years. The decorated Time Guard veteran had advanced Gardner-Durnstein Syndrome (also known as voidtime syndrome) and the disease had been diagnosed for almost a year.

It was progressive and terminal. There was no known cure.

When Danica got there one morning, she saw Ramona Carey, the day shift care supervisor wheeling her father in from another session inside Tik Tok. She thought he looked a bit more chipper than usual.

"Hi, Dad...you give the Bugs their usual hell today?"

Golich beamed at his daughter as Ramona tucked him into his bed and hooked up everything...med tubes, monitors, bio field.

"Kicked ass, Danica. Kicked Coethi butt. Wilson changed the time line a little—it was my request—and put me right smack in the middle of the Bugs' first appearance at Hapsh'm. Old man Oscar Keaton was there too. Operation _Galactic Hammer_ , it was. The Time Guard base at Hapsh'm was in a hell of a fight but Jump Master Keaton was able to rally a small force of mechanics, cooks, armorers, and office staff, including some bots, to counter-attack and destroy the Coethi, though some did escape back into another time stream." Golich pulled up the covers all the way to his chin and grinned. Tubes and medicine bags clinked on the stand nearby and Ramona had to rearrange things. "We all got Distinguished Valor Medals for that, you know—Ramona--?"

Carey pulled out a medal from her pocket. "Here it is, Commander. Just like before." She proceeded to pin the brass medal adorned with a ring of star clusters to the sheet up by his face. "There...a true hero."

"Dad, you like these Tik Tok sessions, don't you?" Danica asked. She patted down some stray creases in the sheets, fiddled with his pajama top and collar.

"Hell, yes. Wilson puts me right back in the middle of the Battle. Me and Kitten and Norrell, we're right there on the front lines, zapping Bugs left and right. Sometimes, we change things around...like Kitten may take point one trip, then Norrell the next trip. We change our guns too...HERF, pulsers, you name it. It's like a game we can play over and over again. I'm telling you, that Wilson's got a lot of tricks up his sleeves."

Danica patted her father on the cheek, kissed him lightly on the forehead. "Get some rest now, Dad. You've got to keep your strength up...the next trip, the next battle." She smiled broadly. "You never know when the Bugs might show up."

"Damn right."

Danica motioned Ramona to meet her outside the room. The care supervisor shut the door quietly behind them.

Danica looked Ramona right in the eye. "It's getting worse, isn't it?"

Ramona nodded sadly. "GDS is progressive. We all know that."

"What about the latest scans?"

Ramona shrugged. "The doctor should really be the one to discuss this but—" she fiddled with a wristpad and brought up some charts on the tiny screen. "The scan yesterday showed a four percent drop in level three and four subcortical mapping, across the lateral and ventral regions of the hippocampus. Spatial memory, memory consolidation, various aphasias, all these are indicators of advanced voidtime syndrome."

"And the medbots? You're working with these too?"

"Very much. The bots can rebuild and restore some connections, but it's a losing battle against GDS. The synaptic links are brittle in these areas—we're strengthening them—but it won't be like it was before."

Danica peeked into the room. Her father was sound asleep, snoring peacefully.

"The Tik Tok sessions...they really help? Or are we just delaying the inevitable?"

Ramona shrugged. "A little of both. Gardner-Durnstein is ultimately terminal. It's just the brain's reaction to flitting in and out of voidtime, like time jumpers do. Occupational hazard, I guess. The syndrome starts with effects on long-term potentiation and the body's circadian rhythms. It gets worse from there. The Therapeutic Neuro-Temporal Collimator—the Tik Tok—helps in that it slows the progression down, seems to work against the worst effects of GDS. But we're still studying that."

Danica was thoughtful and sad at the same time. She tried to put on a brave face. "He enjoys these sessions with Wilson. Sometimes, it seems my father is enjoying his time inside Tik Tok more and more, and living in the here and now less and less. How long should these sessions go on?"

Ramona tried to be sympathetic. "Really as long as the family wants...as long as his brain can process the experience. GDS causes irreversible embrittlement of synaptic links. Physiologically, it depends on the condition of his limbic system, on how many synaptic links are still there. Our bots are working their little tails off trying to maintain a threshold value of links, filling in for the lack of molecules like acetylcholine, but still—" she held up her hands. "It's hard to say. You should really talk with Dr. Levinson."

"Fair enough. I just wonder how much of what he's telling me about this big battle is actually real."

Ramona shrugged. "Does it really matter? Wilson just sends him across the time streams to wherever they've agreed on. Your father does have several time jumper friends here at BrightSky to help him. They spend a lot of time together, planning these sessions with Wilson."

"Isn't there a chance these sessions could wind up changing the time line?"

"None whatsoever. What your father doesn't know is that Tik Tok isn't sending them down the main time stream. Wilson's sending them down secondary worldlines, secondary branches. They could fight a million battles, change everything, but it won't matter. The primary time stream's protected with multiple cutouts and filters and firewalls. Wilson knows what he's doing."

"As long as Dad enjoys the trips. That's all that matters to me. I just wish my mom could be here too."

The nature of Gardner-Durnstein Syndrome was progressive deterioration of a sufferer's hippocampal and amygdala synaptic links, particularly in the medial-temporal lobe, interfering with most forms of memory formation and retention. There were hundreds of studies and papers. Danica had read many, scanned most and decided that they all said the same thing in different ways: ' _we don't know why voidtime affects these centers...the mechanism is poorly understood_." True, medbots could be and were often deployed to slow down the syndrome, re-build shattered links. But long term, the result was the same.

It was just after lunar morning in Copernicus City when Danica showed up for her daily visit. Shadows were stark black on the crater walls outside, despite the effects of the thin atmosphere, and the rolling hummocky ground between BrightSky and CC, as the city was called by locals, was a tan and ocher desert, save only for the solar power towers that gave life to everything inside the vast crater. But with the dawn, you could still almost see the faint wakes of the early-morning water skiers coursing back and forth across Crater Lake.

Nathan Golich was getting dressed, with help from Ramona, for his next session inside Tik Tok. He held a small slate in one hand, its screen covered with diagrams and charts.

"Rules of engagement for the battle," he explained. "Me and Kitten and Norrell will be crewmen on a jumpship this time...we're expecting the Bugs to drop out of voidtime right on top of us...got to be sure though...it could be one of our own."

Danica fussed with his uniform shirt tail. Several 'comm signalers' hung off a belt. "Have you talked with Mom lately...in any of these trips?"

Golich looked puzzled. "Your Mom...she's not in this battle."

"No, I know that. But you said yesterday, you had done some visits with her."

Golich nodded knowingly. "Have I ever told you how much you look like your mother? God rest her soul."

"Only five million times." The visits were becoming more and more difficult, more surreal. Danica had still been hearing details of the Battle of the Gauntlet like usual, but Golich's memory of the Battle was becoming conflated with memories of an increasingly conflicted relationship with his late wife Estelle. Their final years, after Nathan had moved out, were bitter and resentful. Then came the accident....

In December 3064, the unthinkable happened. Estelle Golich died in an industrial accident inside the Boil-Evap module, burned alive when high-temperature fluids scalded her with 3rd-degree burns over most of her body. She lived three days after the accident and died a merciful death a week before the end of the year.

Danica and her sister Elaine were devastated. Nathan Golich had just shipped out for yet another Time Guard mission. He was given a week's bereavement leave and returned to bury Estelle and try to console his inconsolable daughters. Realizing that his presence was making a bad situation even worse, he left the memorial service right after it was over, not even staying around for the graveside service (Estelle was cremated). For this Danica had never forgiven him. For Nathan, the appearance of a new Coethi incursion near Newton's Jaw gave him the 'excuse' he needed to cut out. But he knew in his heart that he didn't really have to leave as soon as he did...his bereavement leave still had three more days.

"Your mother and I had some wonderful times, Danica," Nathan told his daughter. "It was just the last few years, you know. When the Magistrate's Module said I could only visit for two days a quarter—"

"Dad... _don't_ , okay? Just don't." His words had supercharged some bad feelings and Danica thumbed a line of tears from her eyes. "I just think it's interesting that you're visiting Mom in some of those Tik Tok sessions. Maybe a different kind of battle...I'm sorry," she reacted to the hurt look on his face, "I didn't mean to say that."

"It's okay. You know, honey, when you're in Time Guard—"

"Yeah, I know...Tempus regit! I'm proud of what you did in the Guard. You sacrificed a lot for us, for all of us."

"Maybe too much," he muttered. "All those missions for the Guard...." He cinched up his belt and checked himself out in a mirror over the dresser. That's when Wilson Iringa, the Tik Tok lead tech, nudged open the door. "So how do I look?"

"Like a fearsome and brave warrior, Dad."

Wilson was all smiles, bright and chirpy. "All set to slug it out with the Bugs again, Commander? I got Tik Tok all tuned up and ready for you and Mr. Angst and Mr. Wickes."

"Raring to go, Wilson. Raring to go." He squinted down at his daughter's face. "I guess you want me to say something like 'I should have been there more for Estelle, for you and your sister, huh?"

Danica planted a kiss on his forehead, where the few remaining hairs had been combed over neatly into a plowed cornfield, now reduced by age and GDS to stubble.

"I just want you to be happy, Dad. And comfortable. You were always a warrior. Even at home. That's what you do,"

Golich smirked. "Damn right. Hey, you never did answer my question...from yesterday."

"What question is that, Dad?"

Golich quietly shooed Ramona and Wilson out of the room for a few moments. "Just a little father-to-daughter talk...you understand?" They both left, with knowing winks at each other.

"Your love life, silly. I asked you how it's going? You still seeing that Emile kid, whateverhisname is?"

Danica was embarrassed and shut the door a little more. " _Daaaad_ , please. Actually, Emile and I are kind of on a break. I've started dating someone else."

"Really? Who? How'd you meet...wait, don't tell me...one of those clubs down in the Quarter, I guess."

"Dad, honestly...it was that service the Township just licensed... _Good Times_. Our profiles matched, at least ten years ago they would have. We had compatible scans. It seemed like a good match. I liked him."

"I just want you to be happy, Danica...not like me and your mother. Girl like you should have lots of boys. Don't stop at one or two. Don't settle for second-best."

Danica smiled sweetly. She didn't tell him that she had also been using the _Good Times_ service, a commercial time travel agency, to go back and try to re-kindle feelings and times with Nigel...she'd been devastated when _that_ ended. _Dad doesn't need to know that_ , she told herself. _If he knew I was using Good Times so much, he'd have a coronary._ Danica hadn't been having much luck with dates lately.

"I'm _not_ settling, Dad." She hooked her arm around his elbow. "Come on. I'll give you a big send-off into battle...every girl loves a brave warrior."

They headed out into the hall, daughter and father in hand, with Ramona and Wilson following. Just outside the Tik Tok chamber, Danica turned to her father and patted him on the cheek again.

"Go get 'em. And when you come back, I want to hear more details about how you and Mom first met, when you first started dating."

II.

Cannon to the right of them,

Cannon to the left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death;

Into the mouth of hell

Rode the six hundred

"Are you sure we're doing the right thing?" Davy Angst asked. He turned the pulser sidearm over, checked the charge light. It was full green. "And where the hell did you get these things anyway? If Wilson catches us with these—" Everybody called Angst "Kit," short for Kitten, because he was so small and adorable.

Golich cut him short. "Wilson doesn't know about them. And let's keep it that way, okay? I snatched these the last time we were aboard _Pollux_ , from the armory. The Bugs were already attacking. I figured nobody would notice."

Norrell Wilkes was also having second thoughts. "I don't know, Nathan. I just don't know about this."

Nobody else knew but Nathan, Kit and Norrell had been conspiring for weeks to make an unauthorized trip in the Tik Tok to go back and re-fight the Battle of the Gauntlet.

Nathan summed it up. "I just want to feel the sting of battle again, you know. I want to smash Bugs and keep these memories alive. I keep forgetting details, things get mixed up. We could even change things a little, make ourselves real heroes. Just like the Light Brigade."

Kit snorted. "Enough with the Light Brigade. I'm just not sure about any of this. Using Tik Tok like this without Wilson...it's too dangerous."

"Fighting Bugs was dangerous and you did that," Norrell observed. "Me, I'm with Nathan. This damned voidtime syndrome messes you up. Multiple memories, different time streams, reintegrating memory traces, long-term potentiation...it's hell, I'm telling you. Half the time, I don't know where I am, who I am or what's real anymore."

Kit looked at Nathan. "You going to do the Gibbons' Grotto scene again? Chase Bugs through all those ice caves?"

"I may," Nathan said. "There's a lot of battles I'd like to re-fight." He thought of Estelle and how she'd kicked him out of their flat. _You're married to those jumpships, Nathan...admit it. Why don't you just take one of them to bed...get them pregnant?_ Kicked him out just for doing his duty with the Guard.

Over the next few weeks, Danica could tell that Nathan was spending more and more time inside Tik Tok, not always with his Guard buddies re-fighting the Battle of the Gauntlet, but sometimes with Estelle. On average, in any given year, Nathan had been gone eight to nine months in total and home usually for less than two weeks at a time. He had become a part-time husband and Estelle begin to resent Time Guard, accusing Nathan of 'loving the service more than her or the girls.'

For Danica, what happened before had always been painful to watch. A slow deterioration in the relationship between Nathan and Estelle began to develop. Nathan felt that as a Time Guard officer and a decorated hero, he was entitled to some respect (but Estelle called it more like worship), even a little adulation. Estelle felt that Nathan was using the Guard as a way of shirking his duties as a husband and father. Danica could see both sides of the argument and wondered why the two of them couldn't just give a little and patch things up. Golich began volunteering for longer and more involved missions, so he stayed away from Copernicus even longer. And when he did come home, he couldn't wait to be deployed again.

By 3059, Estelle had had enough. By long-range comm, she informed Nathan that when he came off duty back to the Moon, he was no longer welcome at their flat in Copernicus City. He would have to live apart. This began a painful period of about five years of separation between Estelle and Nathan. In the late fall of 3059, back on the Moon on one-month liberty, Nathan took a flat near Farside center, in Korolev Crater (other side of the Moon) and only once or twice came to Copernicus to see them. These were strained visits. The word divorce began to come up. Danica was heartbroken and physically sick at what was happening to her life.

From 3060 to 3065, relations between Estelle and Nathan were seriously strained. By order of the Magistrate's Module at Copernicus City, and after some mandated therapy sessions, a schedule of supervised visits between Nathan and the rest of his family was worked out. He would be allowed one two-day visit with his daughters once a quarter, Time Guard obligations notwithstanding. All of these visits were strained, difficult for all involved and became pretty much perfunctory after a year or so. For Danica and sister Elaine, their dad's visits were worse than going to the dentist. Tension was high and all parties couldn't wait for the mandated visitation period to be over, so they could get on with their lives. Yet Danica still loved her dad and tried unsuccessfully to get him to do whatever it took to move back in with Estelle (which would take Magistrate's Module approval).

In December 3064, the unthinkable happened. The accident happened and Estelle was gone.

Concerned about all this Tik Tok, therapy, Danica hunted down Ramona Carey one afternoon. She was in the cafeteria, with Wilson Iringa. She wanted an explanation.

Ramona had short red hair and a drill sergeant mentality. "It was prescribed by Dr. Levinson. Your dad's GDS symptoms are getting worse. GDS syndrome does that. The last scan showed marked degradation in his suprachiasmatic nucleus, the part of the brain that regulates circadian rhythms. It comes from flitting across time streams, in and out of voidtime. You know, we see this a lot. A lot of time jumpers have this. Dr. Levinson felt extended sessions in Tik Tok would help re-integrate memories that are becoming poorly organized, improve synaptic efficiency, that sort of thing."

Danica wasn't buying any of it. "He tells me that sometimes he doesn't really want to come back. And he does say he often feels better 'fighting or re-fighting all those battles.' But now they're trying to change things, change outcomes."

Ramona put a hand on Danica's hand, who quickly withdrew it when she did. "Look, Miss Golich, Tik Tok's taking them down secondary time lines. Wilson knows what he's doing. They can't change anything important."

Danica wasn't reassured though she put up a brave face. "I hope you're right." She left them in the cafeteria and decided to pay her dad a quick visit. She had a sort of date tonight with Nigel—through the services of _Good Times_ —and she had to get herself ready...shower, hair, makeup, that cute little clingy, black strapless number, the works.

_Secondary time lines, my ass_ , she told herself, riding up the lift to the fifth floor. She'd paid a lot of money for all these trips through _Good Times_ and a girl had a right to expect...what? A good time, right? Some of these commercial time travel services were a real scam. Maybe I should use Tik Tok? Change all the settings and parameters. Except changing Nigel, even a little, was like moving Mount Everest, the jerk.

She looked in on her dad. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully so she went in quietly and just sat there for a few moments, watching his big feet twitch as they stuck out from the covers. What had it been like, for him and Estelle, back in the good days? She'd heard the stories five million times, but it was all second-hand.

"Your dad was a hero. It was after the First Battle of the Gauntlet. He had decorations. There were parades. We were treated like royalty, right here in Copernicus City. The best restaurants. Discounts on everything. People buying us things. Trips to Earth. Of course," here her mom always winked and had that wistful look, "your dad sort of became a marble statue after that. I didn't think he'd ever come down from the mountaintop. A war hero out there—" she waved off into space, "but a statue here at home. And a very demanding one at that."

Danica realized she actually envied her mom for having those days, even if they didn't last. She left the room.

After Danica left, Nathan's eyes popped open. He'd been awake the whole time, silently willing her to depart, so they could get on with their scheme. Tonight was the night.

The first order of business was to distract the staff, so they could get up to the Tik Tok chamber and get to work.

The agreed-upon hour came and it was cool and damp outside, a chill breeze blowing into the Swamp, for that's what the pool deck was called. The Tik Tok chamber and its small suite of rooms was on the other side of the pool, next to an exercise room full of stationary bikes, rehab equipment and other gear. Norrell Wickes was red-eyed when Nathan and Kit collected him from his apartment in BrightSky East. But his breath was clear.

"Honest, guys, I haven't had a thing to drink." He shambled after them. He didn't tell them he'd been crying most of the day, trying to remember something important.

Will Moreno, eighth-floor security, was curious, even suspicious, at the appearance of the trio and stopped them before they went out onto the pool deck.

"I was just fixin' to close the deck. Tile's kind of slippery out there. Mildred almost lost her footing earlier this evening."

"Mildred could lose her footing taking a nap," Nathan said tartly. "We're grown-ups, for heavens' sake. I think we can make it over to the exercise room on our own."

Will fiddled with his big white moustache. "Maybe so, but you three be careful. I'm keeping my eye on you, just the same. Administration doesn't want any unnecessary injuries."

"As opposed to _necessary_ injuries—" Kit came back. They pushed by the guard stand and exited onto the slick tile of the pool deck. It was clammy and Norrell drew his faded uniform jacket tighter.

"Let's go," Nathan decided. "No sense putting this off any longer."

"What about Will?"

Nathan didn't have to answer. He'd already arranged for Dorothy Wright to create a little diversion. In fact, the commotion had already started behind them. They quickly made their way past the exercise room, while several staff members hustled after the naked black woman, who'd suddenly appeared in the common room and dropped her pink chiffon robe in front of everybody.

Kit laughed his snarky laugh at the sight. "Dottie _does_ have a way with men, doesn't she? Too bad she's too old to do her _can-can_ routine."

They crept down a hall to the Tik Tok room. Nathan had surreptitiously taken a picture of Wilson Iringa several days before with his wristpad. With some judicious manipulating, he'd managed to get a good image of the tech's retinal pattern. Nathan waved it before the scanner. The door hissed open, and Nathan chuckled softly.

"You should have been a bank robber," Norrell remarked. "But who uses banks anymore?"

They all knew the procedure for starting and warming up the Tik Tok unit by heart. It took about ten minutes, plus a few more for setting parameters and bypassing various inhibits and warnings and passwords. Wilson had always been cheerful and surprisingly open about all that. And Nathan Golich still had some good memory left. It didn't hurt that he'd recorded a lot of Wilson's careless banter on his wristpad.

"So, we're really going into the Hollows tonight?" Norrell asked. "I'm not sure about this...that was a pretty bad time, guys. None of us were actually there. Do we really know what we're doing here?"

Nathan went over the details again. "Trust me, I memorized Time Guard Archives on this. It'll work. And when we're done, my God, we'll be heroes with a capital H." _And then I can finally wave_ that _in Estelle's face and say 'heartless jerks' don't earn DVM medals by sitting on their asses._

Eight years after the Battle of the Gauntlet, the Coethi had decided to send a force recon element into the Sturdivant system, near the intersection of the Inner Spiral and Lower Halo, a contested region of space known colloquially as The Bulge. They made a covert penetration at Keaton's World, the fifth planet and began reconnoitering and systematically eliminating human settlements in the great underground ice labyrinth known as the Hollows, inside a satellite of Keaton's World called Gibbons' Grotto. This dwarf planet was hollow inside with dozens of kilometers of caves, caverns, grottoes, mazes and warrens. The Coethi force was eventually engaged by Time Guard forces commanded by (now) Ultrarch-Captain Dringoth, but including one rather reckless Nathan Golich, who had to fan out through dozens of kilometers of caves, tunnels and warrens, and systematically engage and eliminate the Coethi. It was a dirty, grinding, bloody and barbaric campaign. The historians always said of Gibbons Grotto that _"Uncommon valor was a common virtue"_.

In setting the parameters for the Tik Tok session, however, Nathan Golich had made one small mistake. When queried by System Control, he had selected Mode 1 instead of Mode 2. Mode 2 was the default temporal path. Mode 2 would take the Tik Tok 'client' down a secondary worldline to a time and a place that was actually a safe branch off the primary worldline. Nothing done there would change the primary worldline for that path was protected by multiple inhibits and limits on convergence angles. Mode 2 was the safe path. Mode 2 was what Wilson used in all neuro-temporal therapy sessions.

Mode 1 was the real thing.

That why Nathan Golich, Norrell Wickes and Kit Angst suddenly found themselves trapped in an icy cave tunnel facing something they'd never faced before...and it was all very real. Even their magpulsers were useless.

The entire far end of the Narrows had fallen inward in a silent, mushrooming cloud of dust, rock and ice, the clouds billowing up and out into the vacuum like a slow-motion vid. Through the debris thrown up, an oblong crater, already deepening before their eyes, yawned and it seemed for a moment as if the rest of the Narrows would follow, threatening _Cygnus, Libra_ , two other ships and the surface 'village' of tents, shelters and habs that had grown up around the borehole.

Several hundreds of meters below _Cygnus_ , the Hollows was already collapsing like an accordion of rock, layer upon layer dissolving and pancaking down on top of everything below.

The walls of the tunnel wobbled and careened inward on the force recon team and even as they buried themselves in the rubble, the effect of the twist fields had the momentary effect of enlarging the time fissure.

Millions of tons of rock and ice folded and bottomed inward, in the slow motion dictated by Gibbons' low gravity.

" _The fissure!"_ Golich yelled. "It's the only way!"

With the Hollows imploding all around them, the walls shattering, the ceiling bulging down and caving in, the force recon team had no alternative.

One after another, they kicked and scrambled and tunneled their way through raining debris toward the cavern of the Evans-Klein fissure.

Golich looked at Wickes and Angst, a long glance. They all shrugged at the same time. There was nothing they could do.

"You guys first," he said.

First went Wickes. The fissure brightened and burped light as he leaped through the crack in time, then he was gone. For an instant, a sheer outline of where he had been remained, like a shadow strobing in the rain of debris.

Angst followed.

Finally, Nathan Golich took a deep breath. A cascade of rubble knocked him sideways and down to one knee as the inner wall finally gave way. But the fissure remained, burning bright as a sun.

He couldn't wait any longer. It was now or never. He checked his wristpad. He'd worked out the coordinates with Wilson two weeks before. He hoped this would work. It _had_ to work. Maybe he really should have selected Mode 2 this time.

He picked himself up and stepped through and, in an eyeblink, found himself back in Hawaii years before, Mauna Kea, the observatory and the WACO party. But was it the right time?

III.

Flashed all their sabres bare,

Flashed as they turned in air,

Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while

All the world wondered.

Plunged in the battery-smoke

Right through the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian

Reeled from the sabre stroke

Shattered and sundered.

Then they rode back, but not

Not the six hundred

The next morning at BrightSky, Danica came for a routine visit and found the place in an uproar. Ramona Carey found her wandering up and down the halls, poking into rooms, looking for her dad. The day shift care supervisor took Danica aside and explained what had happened.

"Your dad and his friends somehow made an unauthorized trip inside Tik Tok last night. We're still investigating...it seems they went down a primary worldline...."

Danica grabbed the nurse's shoulders. "What happened? You said they couldn't...just tell me what happened."

Ramona wouldn't look at her. "I'm so sorry, Miss Golich. We think they're lost...something happened in the time stream they went down...they haven't come back."

Danica was stunned, but not really all that surprised. "You're doing all you can... _somebody's_ going after them?"

Ramona said, "We're investigating...rest assured, there _will_ be a full inquiry...this is really unusual. Nothing like this has ever happened since I've been here. There really are just too many worldlines and branches to follow easily...Wilson and the engineers are trying to figure out what happened right now." She consulted a wristpad. "It says here you're the next of kin...you have power of attorney?"

But Danica wasn't listening. Ramona and Wilson tried to console her but her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. She heard voices: "... _we can help with the memorial service...would you like the Dignity Chapel or another...perhaps lilies in a 'fan' display...terrible, just terrible...we all loved your Dad...we'll be displaying all his medals and commendations quite prominently...."_

Danica wasn't so sure about any of this. She went down to Nathan's apartment and found her younger sister Elaine had just arrived, shuttling up from Mariner City. The sisters cried and hugged for a few minutes.

"He just loved going through the Tik Tok sessions," Elaine decided. "It was life to him. He loved to fight all those old battles again. But what could have happened...a glitch, an error, somebody pressed the wrong button?"

Danica shook her head. "Somebody's always pressing the wrong buttons. No, I don't think it was a mistake."

Elaine sobbed quietly, patted her eyes with a tissue. "What do you mean...he was never suicidal. That Battle of the...what was it called?"

"Battle of the Gauntlet. Elaine, I don't think that's where he went. He did this deliberately."

"Another battle, maybe?"

Danica nodded. "The biggest battle of all. He even sort of alluded to it a few times." The two of them had been sorting through a shoebox of old memorabilia, some disks, some faded photos. Nathan and Estelle at a party. Nathan and Estelle with Danica as an infant. The family on a vacation outing—where had that been? Oh, yes, "—Atlantis, the new resort island they created in the middle of the ocean." Elaine sniffed and snuffled, wiped her eyes again. "Where you got bitten by that thing—"

Danica and Elaine talked until well into the night, sorting through Nathan's old clothes, his medals, his journals and vids from a lifetime with the Guard.

"You said he went back to fight the biggest battle of all. Which one was that?"

"The one with Mom."

Elaine blinked. "Oh--."

Danica explained. "Let's face it. Their last few years were bad. Separated. Mandatory visitation...you were too young to remember. Never-ending conflict, all the yelling, throwing stuff, the long absences. I think Dad went back to try and patch things up with Mom. Re-fight that battle, try to change the outcome. Elaine, he did that for us. Don't you get it? He wanted to change all that so we'd have a normal childhood. It was a battle against himself, against his own nature."

"You usually don't win those battles."

"Maybe not, but he tried." Now Danica felt a hot wave wash over her and she choked back a few more tears. "Elaine, he gave up his life for this latest battle."

Elaine nodded. "Always the hero."

That night, both sisters slept in Nathan's old apartment, on the sofa and on the floor, cuddled with smelly old clothes, medals and ribbons, photos, with a vid on his wristpad looping, a vid of Nathan and Estelle's honeymoon...in Hawaii. Danica had gone to sleep watching that vid.

Maybe it was a dream. Maybe not. Maybe it was just about the wackiest idea Danica had ever had. The next morning, she woke up and was unnaturally quiet as she and her sister went about sorting and packing stuff that had to be moved out, making plans for the memorial service, who to invite, what to say, what kind of liturgy.

Elaine noticed her sister's reticence, but chalked it up to the somber day they were both facing. "I'll be upstairs. There's that meeting with the attorneys, you know. Ten o'clock. Don't be late."

"I won't."

Elaine left and Danica waited only five minutes before putting in the call. _Good Times_ , she mouthed silently as the callbot listed all the menu options, humming the little jingle that went along with the listings. She had a date with Gardner in two days...Gardner, the one with the luscious eyebrows and thick hair, the one with the cute butt. _What did he say he was: oh, yeah, a stockbroker somethingorother...mid-twentieth century._ She'd chosen the time stream to put her back in the arms of one of the Masters of the Universe, before the Big Crunch, that is. _Fin de siècle,_ the _Good Times_ guide had called it. She'd been there before a few times. Oh, Gardner was cute, for sure, but Danica had another idea. She wanted to change the parameters of this next trip, try something a little different.

Something she could never explain, even to herself, let alone anyone else.

The party had a name and a theme. The name was _Top of the World_. The theme was 'Heavenly Bodies' and everybody was dressed for an out-of-this-world evening.

Danica found herself escorted by two young men to the ladies' bar. She got a drink, something pink and frosty with a little parasol stuck on top. It tasted cold. It tasted great. She joined a small table of ladies all dressed like some kind of Proxima Centaurian females, all decadence and glitter and gold lame and wings and makeup better suited to Bourbon Street.

It was the WACO party, the World Atmosphere Control Organization shindig. Ground floor of the Observatory, smack on top of Mauna Kea. Outside, it was just twilight and as she sipped her libation, Danica could see the para-sailors and drones swooping and diving around the summit of the mountain, loops and Immelmans, Chandelles and inverted barrel rolls, all with the purple sheen and whitecaps of the Pacific in the distance.

The party was in full swing when she got there and it wasn't long before she found herself intently scanning around, looking in every corner, every table, for someone.

Where _was_ she?

_Did I get this wrong,_ she wondered? Estelle should be there. Maybe it was too soon...the _Good Times_ people didn't promise accuracy down to the minute. Danica had memorized the outfit: the clingy tailored pencil skirt, just a bit too short, the strapless rose blouse with the silk accents on the sleeves, just off her shoulders like a Bourbon Street tramp. The needle-like heels. She'd studied the vids and images for hours, visualizing it, and trying to match it the best she could. Classy in a way, but a little naughty too.

_Maybe Mom's just not here yet_.

There was a bit of commotion at the door and she saw them. Saw _him_.

The three officers came in like a dream. Like stars around which the whole room orbited, their sexual gravity pulling everything and everyone in closer.

Time Guard officers. Resplendent in their black and gold dress uniforms, chests full of ribbons, braid and epaulets, service caps set just so on their heads...all of it sending a simple message: _Attention on deck! The main attraction has finally arrived_!

Danica looked around helplessly. _Where the hell is she? Did I get the parameters all wrong? Did_ Good Times _mess up?_

Maybe Estelle hadn't arrived yet. _Good Times_ had warned her, had her sign all kinds of exemptions and waivers. _We can't be that accurate_. _There are infinite time lines, you understand. Infinite worldlines. You could wind up on a completely different branch._

Like an oncoming tsunami, people were leaving tables, surging forward, the three officers would soon be engulfed. Estelle was nowhere to be seen.

When she thought about it later, Danica could never really explain why she did what she did. It wasn't like her love life was a complete bust. There was Gardner. Emile, her favorite, they enjoyed dancing contests...hell, hadn't they just won Best Couple in the Terminator Rhythmics? There was Taylor, that dreamboat mountain-climber. God, that weekend in the Lunar Apennines...her legs ached just thinking about it and not just from climbing.

Danica stood up, cleared her throat, smoothed out her skirt and wormed her way through the crowd to the Time Guard officer in the middle, the tall one, the one with a face like a statue, like he could see the future, see things no one else could see.

Jump Commander Nathan Golich, XO of U.A.S. Time Guard 1st Time Displacement Battery, caught a swirl of movement out of the corner of his eyes, pushing through the crowd.

A heavily made-up female finally wiggled and shoved and punched her way through and stood before him, half-cocked smile on her face. She unfolded her arms and glared back at him, hands on her hips.

"I've been watching you, mister," she declared.

Golich's hard marble face softened a bit. A slight crease of a smile appeared. "I know you...I've seen you around...you're—"

Danica held out her hand. "Estelle...Estelle Wyndom."

END

Modern warfare involves conflict across many domains: land, air, sea, space, even cyberspace. One domain that, so far, has been immune to conflict is underground...the subterranean world of Earth's mantle and crust. No longer. In the story that follows, two test pilots wring out a new vehicle for subterranean ops, something called a geoplane.

_As anyone who has read (or watched the film)_ The Right Stuff _knows, the job of a test pilot is to press the edge of the envelope and hang his or her butt over the line just far enough, just long enough, to find out what their vehicle can really do. The trick, of course, is to know where that line is. Sometimes it gets crossed. And when that happens, the results are often not pretty._

Finding the limit...that's what test pilots do. But limits don't just apply to machines or vehicles. Limits can apply to human relationships as well. Everybody has a breaking point. When you go past that breaking point, into unknown terrain, what happens next may teach you things you never wanted to know...about others...about yourself.

The test pilots below are actually engaged to be married. That's surely one of the ultimate stressors of life. The question is: when their geoplane and their relationship is pushed to the very limit and their butts are hanging way out over the line, how far will they go?

Test to Destruction

_Asymptote: (noun):_ a curve that continually approaches a given line but does not meet it at any finite distance.

Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA

November 21, 2168

0700 hours

Test day came a week later. It was a cold, snowy morning in Hunt Valley when Winger and Tallant boarded the geoplane and strapped themselves in. The mission was only a week off and the prototype had to be proven out and made ready.

Winger looked over at Tallant. "Let's fire this jalopy up and see what she can do."

_Gopher_ was started up, her treads spinning as Winger throttled up the electric motors. With a jerk, the geoplane trundled off through foot-deep snow, a plume of powder making rooster tails behind her. She plowed ahead at a stately three miles an hour, while her crew tested controls and systems.

"A real race car," Tallant observed dryly. _Gopher_ rocked back and forth as she clawed her way around the valley floor, following a pre-determined course that had been laid out at the test range.

"Yeah," said Winger, as he steered left and right, getting a feel for Gopher's handling. "Let's enter her in the Indy 500."

"We'll be the first to cross the finish line...under the track. But we'll never see the checkered flag."

For the next half hour, Winger put the geoplane through her paces.

"Handles pretty well on the surface," he noted. "Steering is stiff...not a lot of pickup." He saw the snow-streaked lower flanks of Signal Mountain dead ahead on their monitor— _Gopher_ had no windows or portholes—and steered in that direction. "Dana, light up the borer. Let's put Gopher in her real element."

Pressing a few buttons, Tallant activated the borer that formed a huge dish-shaped nose on the geoplane's bow. Inside the borer, actuators fired to release the ANAD swarm contained there. In seconds, the outer surface of the dish was thick with nanoscale disassemblers, forming a shimmering half-globe around Gopher's nose. Like a single huge blue-white headlamp, the dish and its halo of mechs formed the geoplane's working surface for subterranean operations.

"Approaching the mountain..." Winger said. "Contact Test Ops and tell 'em we're going under."

Tallant complied.

"Good luck," came back the voice of Murchison. "Don't you be stopping at no bordellos down there," he added.

"Borer coming on line," Tallant reported. She scanned her instrument panel, reading swarm density, alignment and other parameters. "ANAD's ready to bite—"

Winger absent-mindedly patted his left shoulder, feeling the capsule port embedded there. He linked in and tried to raise ANAD, knowing full well the frustration the tiny assembler felt in containment inside the capsule while a distant cousin hummed with activity at the geoplane's nose.

"ANAD, sorry for this...the borer swarm is optimized for disassembly in solid-phase structures. I need you here with me, up here on the command deck."

***ANAD isn't liking this, Boss. I should be in that borer...you know that...those mechs up there are just rubes...they barely have the brains to disassemble rock. Put me up front, Boss...I can do so much more. You and me, we've always been a team, haven't we?***

Winger suppressed a smile. _ANAD sounds like a teenager begging for the car keys._ He was glad Tallant couldn't hear any of it. He stole a glance over at his co-pilot and fiancee...she was preoccupied calibrating the borer, paying no attention to anything beyond her instruments.

_You're lucky,_ he thought. _You don't have whiny voices in the back of your head._

_Gopher_ slowed down as the mountain approached, then a high keening wail could be heard through the hull, as the borer bit into the rock. The geoplane shuddered as it decelerated. Outside the command deck, unseen by Winger and Tallant, _Gopher's_ nose buried itself in a shimmering blue-white fog as the borer revved up and uncountable trillions of mechs tore at the rock.

Tallant licked her lips nervously, reading her instruments. "Coming back mostly quartz and pyroxenes, with some sandstone mixed in. ANAD should eat this stuff up."

The geoplane plunged into the tunnel created by the ANAD borer, angling nose down as it bit deeper into the side of the mountain.

Gopher's instrument panel showed the results of acoustic sounding, displaying rock layers on a graph, with temperature and pressure readings all around the graph. Borer status was displayed as well.

"Looking good," Winger muttered. "Borer configured for quartz and pyroxenes...ANAD's chewing through at a rate of two point five miles per hour. Treads are functioning fine."

"Let's try some basic maneuvers," Tallant suggested.

Winger turned the stick to port and _Gopher_ initiated a shallow left-hand bank. The command deck listed slightly, then stabilized. For the next few minutes, first Winger, then Tallant took turns putting the geoplane through a series of turns, dives and climbs.

Winger began to relax his grip on the stick slightly, trying to forget they were now hundreds of feet below ground.

"There's a layer of basaltic rock a few miles north of here," he remembered. "It's nearly a mile down. We should see how _Gopher_ handles there."

Tallant was cautious. "Hey, don't be a hero, okay? Remember what Murchison told us in the briefing: _don't push her too hard on this first test._ Basaltic stuff is superhard and dense...all shale inclusions and quartzite. We're not sure _Gopher's_ hull can take the pressure. Jeez, don't you ever stop pushing the limits?"

"Not until I'm cold and stiff. You know we're eventually taking her to the Himalayas. Most of the approach corridors into the Paryang valley go through similar stuff. We have to find out how she'll handle."

Tallant took a deep breath. "Just be careful. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Stay above five hundred feet. If the borer goes on the fritz and something fails, the test crew can still dig us out."

"If you insist." Winger programmed a new heading into the tread control system and steered northwest on a heading of three ten degrees, roughly paralleling the Buffalo Ridge at the surface. Acoustic sounding soon showed the geoplane was entering harder, denser rock layers.

"Shales," Winger muttered. From earlier briefings with Quantum Corps geologists, he knew the layer was sheeted with hard slate and mica, compacted over millions of years by glaciers and the overriding Buffalo mountain range. _ANAD,_ he linked in, _I hope to hell your cousins are up to this. If we get stuck down here...._

***Not to worry, Boss, ANAD mechs can handle this stuff with ease...just relax and enjoy the view***

Winger snorted. The only view they had was of the inner pressure hull of the geoplane. Even as Winger watched, he imagined that he could see the compression of _Gopher's_ interior frame under the millions of tons pressing down on them.

"Sounding ahead..." Tallant reported. "Your depth is now four eight eight feet. Signal distortion coming back...it's probably the shale zone."

Winger shoved the control stick forward. "I'm going a little deeper...see if we can plow through some of that quartzite."

Tallant was dubious. She studied the sounding profile. "Just don't push _Gopher_ too hard, okay? Let's don't press our luck on the first run. I'm showing discontinuities dead ahead...some kind of boundary layer, maybe."

"Inclusion zone? Maybe it's the quartzite."

Tallant shook her head. "It looks more like a fault, maybe a transform fault. The geos said there were fracture zones north of Hunt Valley."

Gopher angled slightly downward and slowed, as the borer swarm bit into denser rock.

"Cabin temps going up," Tallant reported.

"Acknowledged. Those mechs are working overtime up front, making us a tunnel. I—"

Winger's last words were cut off as _Gopher_ shuddered violently. For a brief moment, there was an unmistakable sensation of sliding, sliding sideways and downward. Almost at the same moment, something hit _Gopher's_ nose with a sickening crunch and the geoplane shuddered again and ground violently to a halt. The cabin tilted to port and stayed tilted.

Gopher's cabin was deathly still for a few moments, then the creaking and groaning of the hull under tremendous pressure started.

"What happened?" Winger asked, wincing as the tortured sounds of the hull being compressed grew louder.

Tallant scanned her instruments nervously. "Just what I told you might happen. Wings, sometimes, you just push too hard. Borer is offline. I'm getting no responses from ANAD in the forward module...pressure drop in containment...we may have a breach."

"Great," Winger muttered. "Just friggin' great. And it looks like we've got a breach in the pressure hull too."

"I see it...cabin air pressure fluctuating...we'd better activate emergency flasks, just in case." Tallant toggled a few switches and immediately, high pressure air began flooding all compartments.

Winger was studying the acoustic sounder, replaying the last few moments before the—what had happened? An accident. "Dana, I'm not sure but I think we may have created our own earthquake."

"What? That can't be...can it?"

Winger went over the soundings again. "We were approaching some kind of discontinuity—see right here?" He pointed to the display. "Like a layer or inclusion zone. Remember when the geos told us there were some transform faults and fracture zones around Hunt Valley?"

"Vaguely."

Winger was figuring out the scenario as he replayed in his mind what must have happened. "It was ANAD in the borer module. The swarm disassembled just enough shale and quartzite and other rock to loosen up the fault. It slipped, shifted around and we were caught in the slide."

"So we did create our own earthquake."

Winger took a deep breath. "So it would seem...now we've got to figure out a way of getting out of here. What do we have to work with?"

Tallant went over her instruments again. "Borer's offline, like I said, and it looks like containment was breached in the accident. I've got no response from the borer swarm, no configs, no data of any kind. That swarm's gone and it's not responding to commands."

Winger tried a few tricks of his own but with no success. "Well, I do have a master in my shoulder capsule. We could jerry-rig a swarm for the borer if we had to."

"If the module's not too damaged. On top of that, the tread system's not responding...so we have no mobility. And the pressure hull...."

Winger saw the oxygen level had been dropping significantly in the last few minutes. "We've got to stop that leak...here, let me contact ANAD." He linked in. "ANAD, this is Winger...do you read me?"

***ANAD copies...reading you loud and clear...what has happened?...ANAD's coupler indicates some kind of swarm break...is the borer functioning?***

How the hell did he know that?

"ANAD, _Gopher's_ had an accident. The pressure hull has been breached. Configure for launch and max replication. I need a local swarm to find and plug the leaks."

***ANAD configuring now...systems initializing...ANAD reporting ready in all respects...***

Winger unstrapped himself and went aft through the tunnel to the power plant. "Launch, ANAD. Launch now...." As the atomgrabber went off to check on their power systems, a shimmering light blue fog emerged from the capsule in his left shoulder. Winger felt a brief sting as the assembler exited containment.

***ANAD replicating...can I get a heading to the target?***

"I'm doing that now," Winger reported, as he scrambled through the galley and berthing deck and the engineering deck. "Dana, where's the leak? Can you localize it?"

Still back at the command deck, Dana Tallant scanned her instruments. "I'm showing maximum pressure drop at frame ninety-six, starboard side...somewhere between E and F deck."

Winger squirmed through the central access tube. He knew E deck was for Engineering, Shops and Utilities. Just aft was F deck, home to _Gopher's_ hybrid battery and fuel cell power plant.

"I feel it...there's a whistle just off to my left—" Winger paused, sniffing, letting his senses guide him. _There_. A utilities duct penetrating the bulkhead seemed to be the center of the leak. He saw a faint mist in the air swirling around the duct. "I found it...ANAD configure max propulsor. Home on my signal." He pressed a button on his wristpad.

Several decks forward, the shimmering fog of the assembler swarm wheeled about and began transiting the access tube.

***ANAD is en route to your location...estimated time is twenty-two minutes***

Winger tried examining the source of the leak, where the inner pressure hull had been stove in. It was scalding hot with swirling steam and air and he couldn't get any closer.

"Hurry, ANAD...this break is getting bigger by the minute."

The ANAD swarm arrived at the site of the breach and promptly went to work. Configuring itself as a tightly interlinked mesh, ANAD sought out the pressure hull penetrations and quickly formed a nanoscale patch over the holes with its trillions of replicants. Gradually, the whistling subsided, then stopped altogether.

"I'm reading air pressure stabilizing in all compartments," Tallant reported from the command deck. "The patch seems to be working."

Johnny Winger breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the cool oxygen of the geoplane's emergency flasks wash over his face. "ANAD, you're a lifesaver."

***ANAD reporting swarm element in place and holding. No more air molecules can get in or out. I am configured in repeating tetrahedral with radicals at my outer barrier. Oxygens hate that. And yes...I did save the ship, didn't I? Isn't that what you learn in nog school...don't leave your buddies behind?***

Winger decided to return to the command deck. "You're right about that, ANAD...but who told you that? You were never a nog."

***I could have been, Captain. I've had a lot of the training already...Doctor Frost programmed my processor with all relevant operational routines, including standard search and rescue algorithms. Isn't that the same thing?***

Winger gave the question some thought, as he hauled himself forward up the narrow access tunnel.

"ANAD, you can't be a nog. You didn't have the same experiences as the rest of us...like twenty miles runs in the snow around Hunt Valley. Or the SODS tank or all the hazing."

Winger reached the command deck, while ANAD was silent for a few moments.

***So why is your experience any better than mine? You don't know what it's really like to snap a bond. Or park a carbon atom on the front porch of a benzene ring. Or surf van der Waals forces through a red blood cell***

Winger climbed into his commander's seat. "Forget it, ANAD...we've got work to do. We've got to find a way out of here."

"Did you say something? Tallant asked. Second Nano's CC1 had been half buried inside an electrical cabinet, trying to troubleshoot _Gopher's_ tread drive.

"Just talking to ANAD...what's our status up here?"

Tallant sat back and wiped sweat off her face. "Tread drive's shot. Something overloaded the controller. I'm getting no response anywhere...either we're jammed or there's a hard mechanical failure. I think I've got it isolated to somewhere between E and F decks. I got power up to that frame and zilch aft of that point." She shook her head. "Either way, the tread drive's offline. We have no mobility. You get the leaks stopped?"

Winger checked _Gopher's_ instrument panels. "For the moment. ANAD replicated a patch of dumb bots. It seems to be holding."

Tallant sighed. "Then it looks like we're stuck here, Wings." She shook her head. "I'm pretty sure I've said _that_ before."

Winger wasn't one to accept defeat so easily. "Did I not just propose to you two days ago? Did we not just settle on a wedding date?"

"If we live to see it. Like I said, we're stuck here."

"Maybe, maybe not. We don't know what the problem is with the borer. I want to send ANAD out there to do a little recon, see if we can get the borer working again."

"The master doesn't have the same config as the borer bots. Have you got the right program?"

Winger was already pecking out commands on a nearby keypad. "I think I can gin up something from here...it's really just a matter of optimizing his effector setup. I studied Doc Frost's work close enough to get a feel for the geometry."

Winger hacked out a configuration and fired it off to the ANAD master. Above and behind the main console, the faint blue fog pulsated and flickered like a mist in the air...the assembler seemed to prefer to exist in small-scale swarms whenever it was left outside containment...like it was a natural state. As ANAD received and processed the commands, the fog roiled and billowed with unseen currents, a ghostly radiance barely visible but for the tiny bursts of light popping on and off embedded within.

***ANAD processing commands now...I will replicate a small formation, config for solid-phase disassembly and exit the vehicle***

"We need information, ANAD," Winger explained. Sometimes you could say better in English things you couldn't express in configuration commands. ANAD's natural language processor made that possible but it was a two-sided sword. "Do a recon of the entire borer module. I want config status, visuals, EM, acoustics, everything. I want to know what condition the module is in. Is it functional at all? What happened to the swarm inside? And could you replicate a replacement if needed?"

***ANAD understands...now on eighty percent propulsor...en route to borer containment port***

Tallant was apprehensive, as she watched the blue fog slowly pass over them and insinuate itself behind the main console. Forward of the command deck was _Gopher's_ containment vessel, swarm controls and loading ports. The borer itself was a horn-shaped dish outside the pressure hull, through which borer ANAD bots emerged into active formation for tunneling.

"Wings, what do we do if ANAD can't fix the damage? What if he can't operate the borer...maybe the fault damaged the horn."

Winger stared at the last faint tendrils of the mist as it disappeared behind the console.

"We'll figure that out when we have to, Dana. Let's just fight one problem at a time."

A few minutes later, Winger got ANAD's report.

***The borer swarm is gone, Boss...nowhere to be seen. They must have slipped containment...the whole front end of the horn is crushed. Swarm control is gone too***

_And we don't have the configs loaded for major ship repairs,_ Winger reminded himself. He explained what ANAD had found to Tallant.

The CC1 shook her head. "Without a horn, the borer swarm can't be focused, if we even had a swarm."

"Maybe ANAD can disassemble enough material to unstuck us. If we could get the tread drive operating, we could reverse course and back our way out of this mess."

Tallant was skeptical but agreed it was worth a try.

Winger contacted the ANAD master. "ANAD, I'm sending a new config. I want you to detach a small element and exit _Gopher_ completely to see if you can remove enough rock to free our treads. We'll troubleshoot the system from inside and try to restart the tread drive."

***ANAD acknowledges...transiting the hull layers now...approaching solid-phase rock structures...I'll try to bore my way out...can you give me a new heading?***

Winger checked the latest soundings. "Steer right one five one degrees. That should put you into the largest pressure hull breach. And, ANAD...be careful. We don't want to make anything worse."

***ANAD acknowledges...now initiating disassembly...I am in full solid-phase now...looks like feldspar...lots of potassium molecules around here...aluminums and silicates...a real jumble***

Unseen by either Winger or Tallant, ANAD replicated a small swarm and pushed out of the hull breach in a faint iridescent globe of blue flickering light. Sliding into the layered structures of feldspar sheet, the master assembler attacked silicon and aluminum bonds with a vengeance, severing the connections that held the rock layers together.

Now freed of its atomic constraints, the suddenly liberated feldspar molecules scattered and huge plates began to creep forward. Grinding past each other, the rock plates picked up speed as more and more atomic bonds were loosened and disassembled. For a time, further slippage was prevented by the forces of friction and intramolecular traction, but as ANAD swelled outward from the geoplane's hull, a threshold was reached...and passed.

_Gopher_ shuddered violently and pitched nose down and to the left, as thousands of tons of rock heaved and pushed toward the newly created void.

" _Look out_!" Tallant yelled, as she hung on to the edge of her cockpit seat, quickly tightening her shoulder harness. "We're shifting—"

Winger tried to contact the assembler. "ANAD! ANAD, cease operations! ANAD, stop now— _Gopher's_ being crushed!"

The tortured shriek of rending metal pierced the air. _Gopher_ shuddered and shook and both felt the geoplane in motion once again, sliding...sliding...ever sliding and picking up speed... _downward._

Deeper below the surface.

"We're going lower!" Tallant screamed.

Winger tried the treads, tried everything he could think of to resist the geoplane's descent but it was hopeless. The void created by ANAD had loosened the fault again and massive plates were in motion, taking everything with them. The fractured seam in the earth's crust split with a thunderous roar as the plates ground past each other. Gopher was caught in a subduction zone, forced downward at the very front of a plate boundary, rammed and slammed into denser rock below.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the grinding, shuddering vibrations died off and _Gopher_ was still, the air inside her battered hull thick and heavy with choking dust.

Winger and Tallant coughed in the swirl of hot dust. Both unstrapped themselves and crawled aft below buckled frames, scrambling through smoking debris and wreckage, toward light and cooler air in the stern of the geoplane. They managed to find a pocket of relatively dust-free air in a corner of D deck, the Stores and Supplies deck, among boxes and cans and other rations scattered during _Gopher's_ ride downward.

"Where the hell are we?" Winger gasped out. They should have boosted their bloodstreams with respirocytes before the test mission...he realized that now. But the whole project was in such a hurry-- "How deep did we slide?"

Tallant coughed up some dust and croaked out, "I don't know...for sure...but the densitometer was pegging a thousand feet before we bailed out."

"Jesus," Winger sank back against a buckled frame and closed his eyes. "We've got to get ANAD back aboard...it's our only chance."

"Wings, we got bigger problems than that." She eyed some readings on a nearby instrument panel. "Look at the air pressure...it's dropping like a brick. There's a major hull breach somewhere."

Johnny Winger tried for several minutes to reach ANAD. Finally, a faint signal over the quantum coupler could be heard.

"ANAD...ANAD, is that you? ANAD, this is Control—"

***ANAD responding...where are you, Boss? Your signal is very weak...I'm trying to boost gain now***

"Apparently, when you started boring around the treads, you disassembled enough rock to loosen the fault again. We've been pushed downward, down to nearly a thousand feet. Where are you?"

The signal took a few moments to come back and Winger wondered if ANAD's coupler were damaged.

***Exact coordinates unknown...I am reading densitometry levels consistent with the original shale layer. ANAD is probably not deeper than four to five hundred feet. Continue sending and I will home on your signal***

Winger explained _Gopher's_ precarious situation. "If you're that far away, ANAD, it'll take hours to get here. We don't have that much time." Already there had been a noticeable rise in cabin temperature, as hot crustal rock dust seeped in through the geoplane's crushed hull.

***ANAD is on max propulsor, Control. Estimated time of arrival is two hours***

"Home on my signal, ANAD...I'll try to keep this channel open." _And somehow,_ he thought to himself, _I'll have to config up any leftover mechs and see if I can patch those hull breaches._

Grimly, following Tallant's instrument readings, he set to work. Using his wristpad, he hacked out a config that seemed like it would work. Any atomgrabber worth his electrons could have done that. Then he pulsed out commands on _Gopher's_ acoustic circuit, still working even though there were no borer swarms to receive them, commanding any loose bots into replication formation. _Got to have some mass now,_ he muttered to himself. Mass enough to form a mesh of nanoscale bots over any holes in the hull.

He prayed there was still enough of a hull left to patch.

It was tedious, mind-numbing work but inside half an hour, the pressure drop had essentially ceased, bringing a relieved smile to Dana Tallant's dust-caked face. The cabin temperature was another matter however. Winger grew so warm that he eventually stripped down to his underwear.

"It's nanobotic activity," he told Tallant. "All that replication and assembly work liberates a hell of a lot of heat."

Tallant mopped sweat from her forehead and face. She studied her fiance's sweat-soaked body. "Just don't get any more brilliant ideas, okay? That rock's not all that's hot. How long do you think it'll take ANAD to get here?"

Winger shrugged. "Couple of hours, at least. He's got to bore through several hundred feet of solid rock. I just hope we don't shift anymore."

Their eyes met. Tallant swallowed hard. "You think we can get out of here?"

"I don't know," Winger said. "I really don't know—" he stopped at the sound of more creaking and groaning echoing through the hull, as _Gopher_ continued settling.

It was the familiar sound of a keening, high-pitched wail that finally awakened Winger from the restless dazed stupor he had sunk into.

"ANAD...you old fart. You made it back!" He pitched his left shoulder to open the containment capsule port. "Prepare to execute capture maneuver."

Dana Tallant coughed and stirred groggily in the heavy dust as she came fully awake. She saw the faint blue mist of the ANAD swarm, as it issued like smoke from behind the main console.

"Thank God the fault didn't slip anymore. I don't think _Gopher_ can take much more."

***ANAD tried to be careful...ANAD slowed down to one-half propulsor and surfed my way through the lattice...the bonds were strong out there and intramolecular distances were short...it took awhile***

Winger tapped his shoulder port with his finger. "In you go, ANAD—"

The blue smoke continued filling the cockpit but there was no obvious movement of the swarm toward containment. Winger, preoccupied with the densitometer, trying to sound out a profile of _Gopher's_ position, didn't notice at first. When, after a few minutes, he realized the swarm was forming up in one corner of the cabin, he became annoyed.

"Come on, ANAD, stop wasting time...in you go."

***ANAD requires some room to re-assemble, Control. The swarm should remain outside containment for the time being***

It wasn't the first time the nanoscale assembler had refused to be contained.

"ANAD, execute capture maneuver immediately."

***ANAD cannot execute capture maneuver. Full cognitive processing requires swarm-scale operations. Containment inhibits cognitive processing...algorithm 1200445.1, sub-module B***

Johnny Winger looked at Dana Tallant. ANAD was refusing to return to containment. Like a petulant little boy, the master assembler wouldn't go back to his room.

"Okay, ANAD," Winger said warily. Was there a processor fault somewhere inside that miniscule polyhedral body? Had some qubit flipped the wrong way inside ANAD's quantum brain? "Okay...we'll do it your way...for the time being."

Tallant was equally wary. "Ask him about conditions outside the hull. Is there any hope for getting the borer back online?"

Winger eyed the shifting fog of the assembler swarm, now gathering itself into the faintest outlines of a face. Maybe it was a trick of the emergency lighting, maybe it was just his own dead tired imagination. ANAD's face flickered like a ghostly apparition in a campfire, by turns resembling Doc Frost, Major Kraft, Jamison Winger and a host of people Winger had never seen.

He put Tallant's question to the swarm master.

***The horn is crushed completely...to re-build would take 62.5 x 10 EXP 25 seconds. The borer swarm has slipped containment and dispersed. It's possible that the dispersal contributed to the fault slippage***

Winger relayed ANAD's report.

Tallant's face sank. "Then we really are trapped here, Wings. You can read the densitometer as well as me."

Winger nodded. "Over a thousand feet down, embedded in hard quartzite and basaltic rock plates. Too deep for the surface to dig us out."

"Is there any way we could get a signal out?" Tallant racked her brain for ideas. "Some kind of sound pulse...maybe invert the sounder to transmit a shock wave."

Winger was still curious about ANAD's behavior. "Maybe but it'll take time to re-jigger it. The tread drive is—"

"Inoperable," Tallant told him.

*** _Forward treads are de-tracked, Control. ANAD detected alignment damage to one entire section of the 120-degree track***_

"Fabulous," Winger said. "Just fabulous. Now what?"

"If you hadn't been so pig-headed about pushing _Gopher_ to the limits...honestly, do you ever stop?" Tallant said. "Every date we've ever had is like that... _try this, do this, what about this_? Isn't enough we're finally engaged?"

"Dana, we had to find out what she can do. That's why we test."

"Yeah, but I'm not a geoplane, am I...oh, just forget it. We've got to focus on getting out of here. I know the densitometer says we're below a thousand feet down but I've been wondering if there isn't some way the surface couldn't drill down to us."

Winger shrugged. "They probably could...if they knew where we were. We've got no comms. Navigation is shot. The surface wouldn't know where to drill. I could try a quantum channel but it would be a shot in the dark if anyone was tuned in."

"I say we try to finagle the sounder to send out some kind of sonic pulse."

"The shock waves may cause the fault zone to slip again. We could be crushed. For the moment, Gopher seems to be trapped in some kind of void. We don't know how long it will last."

_***ANAD has an idea_ ***

Winger kept forgetting that the translucent blue shimmering entity in the corner was also a thinking entity as well. The swarm had re-assembled itself into a vague resemblance of a human face. It was Johnny's father, Jamison Winger, in outline.

"ANAD, I wish you wouldn't do that—"

"It looks like your Dad's face, Wings."

"Yeah, don't remind me. I've let ANAD mess around inside my head way too much. What's your idea, ANAD?"

***Analysis of surrounding rock formations indicates that there is a seam of extremely dense quartzite with inclusions of mica above and behind our current location...approximately on a bearing of one-five-five degrees relative***

"Superhard rock, to be sure. What about it?"

***Rock of such density will support small-diameter boring better than most rock in this area. ANAD recommends a small pilot hole be bored through this seam, all the way to the surface. If ANAD can approach or reach the surface, it should be possible to use my own quantum coupler to signal for help. There are several stations that would be able to disentangle such a signal***

The idea had merit. Winger explained what ANAD had proposed to Tallant. She mulled over the risks.

"The question is: can ANAD make it in time to get help before we lose the rest of our air...before the carbon dioxide gets too heavy."

"Or we get crushed completely when the void collapses," Winger added. "To do this means we release the master assembler to pilot the hole and leave the bots holding _Gopher's_ hull together uncontrolled and unmonitored."

Tallant nodded. She was huddled in her cockpit seat, bathed in sweat, yet trembling all the same. "I guess one of us could couple with the hull bots, keep an eye on configs. I sure don't want any atomic bonds breaking without my command. They're all that's keeping _Gopher_ from being crushed."

"I don't think we have much choice now." Winger studied _Gopher's_ instruments and displays. "Oxygen's down another five percent but the CO2 is the real worry. We're already at three thousand ppm. We get above five thousand with no way to scrub the air and we're finished."

"Tell ANAD to get to work. I don't want to spend any longer in this overgrown coffin than necessary."

"ANAD...config for boring a small-diameter hole. But I want to stay linked in while the swarm ascends toward the surface."

***Negative, Control...ANAD does not advise such a course of action. Too much distraction...too many processor cycles are expended to maintain the link. ANAD needs all available capacity for boring and sounding...have to stay within the seam of densest rock to keep the void from collapsing***

"Or the fault from shifting." Winger reluctantly agreed. "You're probably right. Get going then...I'll link out."

He cocked his head to shut down the coupler and felt momentarily disoriented, like he had just stumbled into a darkened room and had to feel around for something familiar.

Tallant watched the blue shimmer disperse. "He's on his way, then?"

"Reconfiguring now, Dana. It'll take a few minutes."

Tallant saw how concerned the atomgrabber looked. "He's just a machine, Wings. Come on...you know it's the only way."

"A few months ago, I would have agreed with you. But now...it's almost like he's become a fellow _nog._ A buddy. And he reminds me of that all the time. _Troopers don't leave anyone behind."_

"He just says that because he's heard you say that. He's parroting your words back to you, like a child. He doesn't have any concept of loyalty or courage. It's not part of his program...you heard what Doc Frost said."

"He's like a child, for now. But I think this child is starting to grow up."

Several minutes later, the cabin was quiet, save for the sound of the air pumps laboring against thickening dust. The shimmering blue fog had exited the geoplane. Outside, somewhere above and behind them, a small swarm of nanoscale entities was burning a tiny tunnel upward through hard quartzite rock, laboriously disassembling molecules atom by atom, cautiously boring a pilot hole and sounding gently ahead, to keep the massive rock plates from shifting anymore and crushing _Gopher_ and her two-person crew.

Inside the geoplane, Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant were now completely alone, with only remnant ANAD swarms holding their hull together, CO2 levels building, oxygen running out and cabin temperatures steadily rising inside.

Winger closed his eyes and wondered if he had done the right thing. They had now entrusted their very survival to an increasingly precocious, yet unpredictable teenager named ANAD.

It took nearly twenty hours for ANAD to complete the pilot hole and breach the surface. In a snow-covered valley seven miles north of Haleyville, a bright light suddenly emerged from the snow drifts. A small gathering of elk scattered in alarm as the globe of light lifted away from the ground and hovered for a few moments like a shimmering radiant fog.

Then the fog began flowing southward, toward the distant mesa of Table Top Mountain.

ANAD activated its quantum coupler link and broadcast a repeating emergency message:

***This is ANAD on Q1...any station, any station, emergency code...troopers are down and need assistance...here are the coordinates--***

Flowing over the ground like a windblown mist, the ANAD swarm maneuvered on max propulsor toward the Quantum Corps base at Table Top, broadcasting the same message on all coupler channels. After analyzing probabilities, ANAD decided to take additional measures to ensure the alert was noticed.

Using configs already stored in memory, ANAD initiated a maximum rate replication, essentially the same Big Bang scenario it had simulated many times for its fellow nogs at the war game range at Hunt Valley. Hacking and cleaving atomic bonds at a furious pace, the nanoscale assembler copied its own structure over and over and over again, exponentially expanding across the face of the mountains like a slow-motion explosion of flickering light.

The assembler knew that such activity would be immediately detected by protective bots circulating high in the atmosphere, the BioShield system that alerted Quantum Corps to uncontrolled, unrestrained nanobotic activity. Such actions greatly exceeded its original programming by a wide margin.

Detection took only a few minutes.

It was First Sergeant Marty Rivers at BioShield Los Angeles Center who first noticed the blinking light on his board.

Curious and somewhat started by the alarm—there hadn't been a real alert in North America in years—Rivers sat up straight and his hands started flying over the keys, toggling the detectors to focus on the source of the disturbance, running routines to characterize the threat, sending alertgrams to a dozen different sections and also activating the Quantum Corps warning system.

Fifty-six thousand feet over southern Idaho, a small swarm of BioShield nanobots received instructions from LA Center and maneuvered into a tighter formation, probing earthward with pulses of sound and EM, trying to get a fix on the locus of the source. The returns fingered the swelling ANAD swarm and fixed its real-time location and heading. Moments later, Sergeant Rivers had the same data.

Immediately, he opened a vidlink to Table Top Mountain.

Doctor Irwin Frost was in the Containment center when the duty officer from Ops poked her head in. She was a big-boned blond six-footer and her name plate read _Spivey._

"Sorry to interrupt, sir, but there's something you should see. Signals just got a feed from a nano-source and it's close by, just a few miles from here. LA BioShield just routed the details to us."

Frost had been concentrating on some quark flux imagery from a probe of some odd molecules he'd scrounged on a previous mission. He looked up.

"What is it?"

Lieutenant Spivey shrugged. "Not sure, sir. A nanobotic source and it's growing fast, almost like a Big Bang. BioShield says it looks like some loose ANAD...maybe there's been a breach here?"

"Not a chance," Frost insisted, as he powered down the imager. "But I'll take a look." In the back of his mind, he wondered. _Was it possible...it had been hours since they'd lost contact with Gopher_. He followed Spivey to the Ops Center to see what all the fuss was about.

Johnny Winger's head snapped up. His eyes were dry and his head throbbed like it was being squeezed in a vise. He tried focusing his eyes on the instrument panel, dimly aware that the CO2 level was surely building toward toxic levels. His eyes found the dial and he studied it until it blurred into focus.

_Nearly five thousand ppm._ No wonder he felt so groggy. They had passed out, how many hours ago?

He shook himself awake, slapping his face, pinching his arms. "Dana. Dana Tallant, wake up!" He leaned over to jab at his fiancee. "Get up and move around, will you? The air's bad—"

Up on the command deck, both of them stirred and groaned loudly.

"We've got to do something... _anything_ ...to get out of here."

Tallant rubbed her face. Winger noticed her lips were faintly blue...the first signs of hypercapnia were already visible. They had to move now...or they would die in the coffin that Gopher had now become.

"Mmmm...stop pushing so...what is...what's wrong...Wings--?" Her head dropped again and she nearly drifted back toward the bliss of unconsciousness. But Winger grabbed her chin and jerked her head up. Then he unbelted her and dragged her from the seat.

"Dana...we can't stay down here any longer. We've got to do something."

The movement around the cramped and buckled, dimly lit cabin seemed to momentarily energize them. Tallant leaned against the bulkhead, holding her head, while Winger force-fed her some water from a canteen. She swallowed hard and tried to breathe, but coughed violently when she tried, spewing water everywhere.

"Any word from ANAD?" she mumbled.

Winger shook his head. The dust in the cabin was now so thick it refracted the fading light of the emergency lamps into strange, menacing shadows.

"Nothing. And we can't wait any longer."

"What are you suggesting?"

Winger's lips were set in a tight, determined line. "I'd rather try to bust out of here, even if we die in the process, than sit here and suffocate to death. I want to try the treads again...maybe we can ram ourselves a little higher, closer to the surface."

"The void we're in will collapse. The whole fault may give way, Wings. It would be suicide. Just sit tight. Can't you ever be still?"

Johnny Winger slammed a hand against the bulkhead. Dust swirled in sheets from the impact of his fist. "I'd rather go that way than be stuck here trapped like rats."

Their eyes met for a moment. Tallant nodded slowly. "I guess you're right. Maybe this is the time to test the limits, huh?""

"I've been thinking about ANAD. Something must have happened. I can't raise him at all but I don't think he would leave us here."

"Maybe we should give him a little longer."

"We don't have much longer."

"I know, but ANAD's a trooper too. He wouldn't leave his buddies behind. He'll be back."

It was the foundation creed of a Quantum Corps trooper and they both knew how badly ANAD wanted to be just like the other _nogs_.

"Two hours...that's it," Winger decided. "No ANAD by then...we're busting out of here. Even if we die in the attempt." He scrambled aft through the hatch heading toward E deck, just to be doing something, anything. "I'm going to check out the tread controller one more time."

Dana Tallant's eyes were growing heavy again and she sank to the floor of the command deck. _Me too_ , she thought, _but just let me rest here for a moment--_

"It is ANAD," Doc Frost decided, studying the acoustic returns from BioShield. "I'd recognize that structure anywhere. ANAD, Version 3.0, to be exact...replicating like a madman. We've got to get that contained right away and bring the little guy in from the cold."

Spivey stood behind Frost, along with Murchison and several others. The alert center was crowded and stuffy.

"Doc, how can ANAD replicate Big Bang like that without some kind of command? Doesn't the master processor have inhibits to prevent that sort of thing?"

Before Frost could answer, the coupler link in the back of his head chimed in and he knew immediately there was a message coming in, a quantum message.

***...is ANAD calling on any channel...Q1, Q1...emergency code...ANAD requesting all possible assistance...troopers are down and need assistance...ANAD transmitting on any channel--***

Doc Frost linked in. Spivey, Murchison and the rest looked on in bewilderment as Frost seemed to be talking to himself.

"ANAD, this is Doctor Frost...what's the nature of the emergency? Why are you replicating Big Bang in violation of BioShield ordinances?"

***Doctor Frost, is that you? It's good to hear your voice again. Troopers Winger and Tallant are trapped below ground...here are the coordinates--***

ANAD rattled off the latitude and longitude of _Gopher's_ location.

***ANAD requesting assistance to extract troopers. Situation critical...geoplane hull breached in many places...treads not operable...oxygen low...troopers in danger of termination***

Doc Frost was furiously scribbling notes even as his own coupler received ANAD's report. He showed his notes to Spivey. The duty officer's eyes grew wide.

"I'll contact Major Kraft right away. And the search and rescue squad." Spivey hustled out of the alert center.

Frost watched the video and acoustic feed from BioShield. From an altitude of several thousand feet, as the BioShield bots focused on the spreading swarm, ANAD's Big Bang looked like an explosion in slow motion, a time-lapse supernova of light billowing out along snow-covered trails along the flanks of Signal Mountain.

"ANAD, you must terminate replication immediately. Maximum rate replication endangers the environment. Terminate at once. If you don't, you'll trigger a BioShield response."

***Doctor Frost, ANAD has a duty to help troopers in need of assistance. No nog ever leaves his buddies behind. Maximum replication permits ANAD to render necessary assistance. Algorithm 801556 Sub-Module E is cited***

"What the—" Irwin Frost shook his head. There was no such algorithm in ANAD's memory, that he could think of. ANAD refusing to stop replication...that could only mean one thing: a logic fault somewhere in his CPU. A breakdown in code somewhere.

And several miles away, the assembler swarm was replicating out of control.

There was only one thing to do.

Frost grimly dredged up the code of the back-door cutoff from memory.

"ANAD...this is a command override. Authorization is Moses Level One. Override all executive modules. Transfer executive control to this node. ANAD...this is a command override—"

Though he could not see it, Frost knew that somewhere several miles away in a snow-dusted valley west of Haleyville, Idaho, the shimmering blue-white ball of light that was an assembler swarm in exponential overdrive was fast fading into a dim gray fog, boiling over the rocky outcrops and gullies like a summer morning mist.

At least, that's what he hoped was happening.

The Sim Tank at Table Top's Ops Center was crowded with brass when Doc Frost came in. Major Kraft was there, his forehead veins taut with worry over the fate of _Gopher's_ crew. Murchison, the project engineer, was present, as was General Alexander Kincade, commanding officer of Quantum Corps' Western Command and base commander at Table Top.

The assembled officers were studying a 3-D display of geologic strata created by SOFIE. A flashing red dot embedded in layers of rock indicated the geoplane's estimated position.

Kincade stroked a bushy moustache. "This is where ANAD says Gopher is located?"

"That's affirmative, sir," Kraft told him. "We worked out the coordinates with Doctor Frost here, an hour ago. Best estimate puts them about a thousand feet down, some twenty-one miles northwest of here, past Hunt Valley and below Signal Mountain. We've confirmed some small-magnitude seismic vibrations in the general area of this location...consistent with a source of that size. It's probably pumps and valves in their power plant and environmental control system."

"And the crew?"

"Alive when ANAD left the geoplane."

Frost explained how the assembler swarm had bored its way gingerly to the surface. "General, if what ANAD tells me is true, _Gopher's_ trapped and in critical condition. Time is very short. If we don't begin rescue operations soon, the crew—Captain Winger and Captain Tallant—won't survive. They may have only a few hours left."

Kincade mulled over the situation. "Suggestions, gentlemen. This is a tough one."

Murchison pointed out the latest acoustic profile of the underground strata. "If we try to drill, we stand a good chance of loosening this fault enough to slip again. I'm not sure _Gopher_ can survive that."

Frost interjected a point. "After interrogating ANAD, I learned that he bored a small tunnel to reach the surface. This path is microscopic, approximately ten microns in diameter. ANAD recommends using that hole, bored out to a larger diameter, to rescue the crew."

Murchison was skeptical. "I don't think the fault is stable enough to do that. We're getting low-magnitude tremors all the time now. It's just a matter of time before the crustal plates move again."

"All the more reason to move now," Kraft argued. He studied the three-dimensional diorama that SOFIE had projected. "Just how do we extract Winger and Tallant through a small borehole?"

Frost elaborated on ANAD's idea. "Continue nanobotic swarm operations inside the hole, removing just enough material to make a passage wide enough to crawl through. ANAD can secure the boundaries of the opening with a massive enough swarm, kind of like forming a barrier to keep the tunnel open."

"But how do we get them out?" Murchison asked.

Kraft saw a way. "Lower a couple of hypersuits. That'll give them air to breathe and their boot thrusters can lift them out."

Kincade paced around the Sim Tank, circling the floating projection of Signal Mountain and its buried geoplane. "Damned tricky, if you ask me. But time is short." The base commander's moustache seemed to straighten out when he had made a decision. "Let's get going. Get ANAD reconfigured and programmed to widen that bore hole. And get the battalion medics out there too. There's no telling what kind of condition those troopers will be in when we pull 'em out."

First Nano's rescue squad lifted to the surface coordinates that ANAD had identified. The location turned out to be a small ravine deep with powdery snow, on the western flanks of Signal Mountain.

As the squad offloaded their gear from the lifters, Major Kraft stepped off the platform and looked around, spying a pair of staghorn elk studying them from a small ledge halfway up the side of the mountain.

Fellas _,_ he muttered to himself, _you're about to see something you've never seen before. I just hope to God this cockamamie stunt works_.

He wasn't sure First Nano could survive without Winger and Tallant on board.

The ANAD swarm emerged from the mobile containment unit that had been lifted to the site. Doc Frost linked in to give ANAD last minute instructions.

"Just make the hole wide enough to let a hypersuited trooper through, ANAD. Use the dimensions I gave you. I've loaded a new config, optimized for disassembly of basaltic molecular lattice. I don't have to remind you that time is of the essence."

Hovering like a backlit ground fog, the ANAD swarm flickered and pulsated with eerie radiance as it maneuvered to enter the ground. Already replicating quickly, the fog was swelling as it gained enough mass to attack the hard, black volcanic rock that lay beneath the snow.

***ANAD estimates seven hours, sixteen minutes to reach the target. ANAD requests permission to re-config part of my swarm when near the target***

"Re-config? For what purpose, ANAD?"

_***Below the nine-hundred-foot level, standard densitometer reading, ANAD is within an hour of reaching the geoplane. If ANAD had config data for respirocyte conversion, part of my_ _swarm could continue on to the target through the existing hole and provide an oxygen boost to the crew. Analysis indicates oxygen levels will be at life-threatening minimums in six hours and forty-five minutes***_

It was a tempting strategy but General Kincade nixed the idea. "Tell ANAD to concentrate all efforts on boring and shoring up a wider hole, so we get those troopers out of there."

Frost issued the final command string to ANAD's processor and authorized the assembler master to begin operations.

The swarm sank toward the snow drifts as Frost warned the rescue squad away from the injection point. Soon enough, the snow blazed with a fierce blue-white radiance as the assembler swarm filtered into the snow bank and attacked the hard, frozen ground below. In minutes, the entire ravine was bathed in a white-hot incandescence, as the globe of light gradually subsided into the earth, like a miniature sun setting beside Signal Mountain.

Bit by bit, the snow bank melted and melt water ran in streams down the ravine's gullies, revealing bare ground underneath. But the ground was no longer solid rock. Instead, it boiled and billowed like a mirage speckled with a billion tiny explosions going off all at once, as ANAD bots broke atomic bonds and burned their way into the molecular lattice of rock.

There was little the rescue squad could do now but wait. Wait and hope. Doc Frost returned to a nearby lifter to monitor ANAD's progress. Acoustic pulses came back on the coupler circuit, along with system status and overall borehole conditions. Frost plotted the results on a vertical profile chart, to show ANAD's current location.

Seven hours and sixteen minutes seemed like an eternity.

It was Dana Tallant, curled up in a fetal position on the command deck floor, who first sensed a presence around her. She sat up, felt the increase in heat, shook herself into a groggy sort of consciousness and spotted the faint aura of a shimmering smoke billowing out from behind the main console.

She smelled it too. Something was burning. An electrical fire?

"Wings... _Wings_!—" she yelled. Staggering to her knees, she peered under the console. "Wings...we got a fire! Get up here—" She groped around in the failing light, breathing hard, sucking for air, feeling for a fire extinguisher. Any fire now could rapidly deplete their last remaining oxygen.

Johnny Winger stirred himself awake and saw Tallant frantically rummaging about the cabin.

"What is it? What's --?"

"There's smoke...right there under the console! Must be an electrical fire!"

Before he could respond, a faint chime sounded in the back of Winger's mind. It was ANAD...the tiny assembler had returned!

"ANAD!" Winger swung himself down from the seat, coughing in the stale, stagnant air. His head pounded and his ears rang from the CO2 buildup. "It's ANAD!"

Tallant sat down heavily as she realized Winger was right. Semi-conscious and exhausted, she had mistaken the faint blue mist for a fire.

***ANAD acknowledges...returning from the surface. I have brought a search and rescue squad. Doctor Frost re-configged my processor to optimize my effectors. I have widened the original borehole to thirty inches diameter. Surface rescue is sending two hypersuits down the hole. My instructions are to assist you in any way possible***

Winger's eyes widened. "You enlarged the hole? And hypersuits too? This is looking better all the time."

***ANAD has config patterns for respirocyte bots. If you need additional oxygen boost, ANAD can replicate respirocytes***

Winger explained all that ANAD had told him. A huge wave of relief came over Tallant's face.

"Might be a good idea, Wings. At least until we get the tin cans on."

Winger agreed. "ANAD, Doc Frost gave you the config?"

There was a pause before the assembler responded.

***Doctor Frost does not know ANAD loaded the respirocyte config. He said ANAD should focus all processor capacity on boring and supporting the hole...but ANAD loaded the config anyway. A trooper does not leave his buddies behind***

Winger mulled that bit of news over. Now, it seemed, the assembler was disregarding orders from its human handlers and initiating configurations on its own.

The less Doc Frost knows about this, the better. I'm not the only one pushing limits.

"Okay, ANAD, give us some oxygen. When will the suits be here?"

"Maybe now," Tallant said. "Sounder says there's something in motion right outside the hull...and it's not the earth."

"It's probably them," Winger decided. "How do we get the suits inside the cabin?"

***ANAD has opened a path through the borer module. The forward bulkhead and horn have been disassembled. Remove the main console and you will have access***

"Jesus," Winger muttered. "ANAD has practically burned away the whole front of Gopher _._ "

ANAD detached a part of the swarm that had already replicated into respirocytes. He and Tallant let the swarm enter orally, coughing as the dry fog filled their mouths.

"Ugh," said Tallant. "Tastes like dirt."

"Or metal chips." Winger added, though he was grateful for the oxygen boost. In a few minutes, his headaches subsided and his vision was no longer blurry. Deep inside his lungs and bloodstream, uncountable trillions of nanoscale respirocytes swapped oxygen molecules through his alveolar tissues, improving the molecule exchange a million-fold.

"Feels better," he took a deep breath, looked over at Tallant.

"Yeah, like I just swam the Pacific."

"Let's get to work." He squeezed himself below the main console and started to unfasten its mounts. "Help me get this bugger off its mounts—"

Between the two of them, they managed to push the console away from the bulkhead enough to get at the frame behind.

Winger pushed and pulled at the skin, until he had worked the panel loose. Rock dust and rubble poured into the cabin with a crashing roar.

Blinking and coughing through the dust, the two troopers pawed their way through the rock and rubble until Winger lost his balance and fell forward through a weak spot into a void. He wound up crawling through the debris into a narrow vertical shaft, buzzing with the high-freq whine of nanobots and backlit by a pale unearthly glow. It was the bore hole, guided by ANAD right into _Gopher's_ forward compartment and shored up with a barrier screen of bots.

It was like being inside of a kaleidoscope.

Winger raised his head up to look around and hit his head on something hard. Feeling with his hands, he realized he was squatting under the treaded boot of a hypersuit.

"I think I found our suits," he called back to Tallant. "I just hit my head on one."

An hour later, Winger and Tallant were grunting and panting, trying to contort themselves into ANAD's tunnel. With effort and a lot of shoving, Winger was able to force Tallant, now encased in full hypersuit, up into the shaft.

"What kind of clearance do you have?"

Tallant bit her lip. She was _not_ going to succumb to claustrophobia now.

"Maybe an inch around my head. It's a tight fit."

"Can you see anything above you?"

"I can see a wall of rock screened off by bots. It's like the wall is bubbling and heaving. But I can reach out and touch it with my helmet. Above me, it's black as night. Can't see a thing."

"It's probably going to be a bumpy ride. Close your eyes and think of something more pleasant—"

"Yeah...like what? Like you naked on the beach...the day after the wedding?"

"Right. Just light off your suit boost and get going. It's a long way to the surface."

_Amen to that,_ she thought. Maybe a little prayer would help too. She took a deep breath, counted to three and pressed a button on her wristpad with her other hand.

Then she started to move upward, smacking the side of her helmet on the hard rock walls.

She continued her painstaking ascent for what seemed like hours, maybe days. She soon lost all track of time and space.

Only the labored sound of her breathing—her helmet visor was getting pretty fogged up—and the bang and crunch of her hypersuit scraping along the tunnel walls gave her any sense of motion.

She tried reducing the suit boost to see if it had any effect on the scraping but it didn't.

_Guess I'm going to be a billiard ball when I get topside,_ she told herself. She wondered how long that would take. She would have given anything to know where she was, how close to the surface she was. Pitch black, in a narrow tube the size of a coffin, with no idea where she was or where she was going.

It was enough to drive a girl to drink.

How long she had passed out, she didn't know. But her mouth was bone dry and there wasn't any liquid in the chin tube; she must have sucked it all dry. Her shoulders, neck and legs throbbed from the incessant banging and battering.

_Maybe I'm not going anywhere,_ she thought. But that couldn't be. How else to explain the steady _thrummm_ at the soles of her feet—the liftjets pulsing on and off had made her feet go numb hours ago. They had never been designed for extended duty like this.

At least, ANAD's tunnel seemed navigable, if a bit snug. She wondered where Wings was. Had he left right after her? Or was he still inside _Gopher,_ trapped and suffocating, maybe dead, trying to play hero to the very end?

She didn't want to think about that at all.

Suddenly she felt like she was being accelerated forward. With a sudden surge, she was pushed upward, through loose soil...then light...blindingly bright light and before she realized what had happened, she was the surface, wallowing in deep snow like a beached whale.

Strong hands helped her upright and a blur of faces were just outside her helmet, but the visor was grimy and fogged and she couldn't make out anything.

She was wobbly but all the hands and her own suit gyros kept her upright. She felt the helmet quick disconnect go, then a stream of cold freezing air leaked in around her neck dam and the helmet came off with a jerk.

The first face she saw was Major Jurgen Kraft, scowling in at her bruised, sweaty face.

"Well, well," Kraft said, "aren't you a sight? Captain Tallant, welcome back to the land of the living."

With help from the rescue squad, her hypersuit was clamshelled open and Tallant lifted carefully out. She was quickly placed into a life-support pod and taken to a nearby lifter.

Kraft pulled General Kincade aside. "We'll give her a good look-over, General. She's been through quite an ordeal."

Kincade nodded. "And the geoplane? That's the prototype down there. How long does this set us back? UNSAC has given us until December 4 to mount an operation against Red Hammer. The mission plan calls for a subterranean assault."

"We've got to recover _Gopher's_ data recorders and find out what happened. I've already issued orders for Murchison and the engineers to triple-shift construction of the second geoplane. Mole will be ready to test by the end of the week. But after we recover the data recorders, there may be more changes."

A commotion interrupted the two officers. Kraft went back to the borehole opening. There in the pile of loose snow and dirt, another hypersuit was emerging from the ground, a giant egg being hatched by the earth.

Johnny Winger was nearly unconscious when he was pulled from the hard shell and laid into a life pod. Doc Frost and two Battalion medics scoped and examined him carefully.

"Dehydration...maybe a little hypercapnia," Frost pronounced. "A little oxygen boost and some fluids should do the trick." He backed off while the pod was littered to the lifter.

Kincade came over and Kraft saw the frown of concern on the General's face. "Doc says he'll be okay. The kid's dehydrated and a little short of breath...the techs are checking out his hypersuit now."

"I want a debriefing on the geoplane test at 0600 hours tomorrow morning, Kraft. I want to know what happened and why. I've got to give UNSAC an update later in the day."

"You'll have it, sir."

Kincade was thoughtful. "We'd better review the op plan for Tectonic Strike one more time...go over all the details. And bring Murchison and your tactical group. I want to know if an underground assault is still a viable option, in light of what's happened."

Kincade left to board the second lifter, while Kraft joined Doc Frost at Johnny Winger's life pod. The transparent doors of the pod were already shut. Inside, already hooked up to a forest of tubes, the atomgrabber was grimy and bruised on his face, his cheeks swollen and pale.

_What kind of hell did you and Tallant go through down there, Captain? This was just supposed to be a basic test of the whole geoplane idea,_ the Major thought. _And maybe ANAD too._

The life pod was hoisted aboard the lifter and secured. Kraft climbed aboard as well, wondering just what really had been learned from this first operational test. Good engineering practice said you didn't ever push a system to its ultimate limit. But sometimes, Kraft realized, you had to, to find out what it could really do.

No one seemed to notice the faint dimly illuminated wisp of fog that seeped in with the rest of the rescue squad and nestled itself out of sight between some storage racks. For all practical purposes, the ANAD swarm was invisible.

The two lifters took off together, in a tornado of snow and dirt, and turned southwest, heading back across Hunt Valley back toward Table Top Mountain.

END

Astronomers have long speculated on why our solar system has only one star. Binary systems are common throughout the galaxy. And if Jupiter had accreted just a little more mass, we'd have two suns in our skies, instead of one.

From the days of Og and Grog in the cave, trying to figure out what to do with their new discovery of fire, Man has often developed and employed new tools before he fully understood how to use them properly. Og and Grog learned a hard lesson when they first burned their fingers. Similarly, if we ever took a notion to try boosting the Sun's output, extending its light and warmth deeper into our solar system, would we also wind up burning our fingers? That's the premise of the story that follows.

On a more personal note, how often are we disappointments to our selves and to our parents? How often do we get a chance for a do-over? In this story, a future saboteur hellbent on destruction and mayhem, dedicated to preventing any more meddling with our Sun, encounters something he can't destroy...despite years of effort: his own past. Faced with the inevitable, the saboteur is forced to make the most difficult decision he's ever made.

Second Sun

Aboard Stream Deflector Station _Bernini_

In High Jupiter Orbit, Lagrange Point L5

April 18, 3168 ECE

Not everyone was happy about having a second Sun. That's why the Guardians sent me to _Bernini_ in the first place. Kisan Malakel, engineering inspector 1st class for the Concordance. I had an official job to do and that was to make sure everything aboard station _Bernini_ was up to spec...the gas pulses streaming off Saturn's atmosphere were coming in on schedule...the deflector controls were receiving and diverting the pulses properly into Jupiter's atmosphere...the King of Planets was bulking up on schedule so the thing could be ignited on time...that all aspects of the Second Sun project were proceeding according to calculations. Oh, I had a job all right. But my real job was to sabotage the whole works, sabotage the deflector system, and get away before station _Bernini_ was likely destroyed by an incoming pulse.

The Guardians had invested a lot in me to provide cover and a backstory as an inspector in our efforts to halt this silliness and keep the solar system unspoiled by developers and scoundrels, both from InFed and from the Concordance. To every station that hosted me for regularly scheduled audits, I was Engineering Inspector Malakel. To the Guardians, I was an 'asset in place.'

_Bernini's_ commander was Rodrigo Seria, a twitchy little rat of a man, with darting eyes and smooth black hair.

"Welcome aboard _Bernini_ ," Seria lied, when he met me at the station's UDP, her Universal Docking Port. My ship had put in right next to _Bernini's_ two escape shuttles. I quietly scanned the hulls of the ships and swallowed, knowing full well that when the time came, the station's crew would flee for those ships and find them out of order. See, that was part of my job too. "A quick tour, Inspector?"

It wasn't my first time aboard, but I relented. "Certainly, Captain...show me what's new." _Bernini_ was crewed by a mostly Spanish-speaking crew, in fact, I knew some of them claimed descent from Peruvian Inca emigrants several thousand years ago. I knew that because my family was one of them, although most of my ancestors wound up settling Chaos City, down below on Europa.

Seria ran through the drill and I pretended to be interested, though not for the reasons he suspected. _Bernini_ was a big cylinder, rotating like a spit, with ten decks and the deflector-emitter array at one end, counter-rotating. The crew enjoyed all the benefits of roughly one-half Earth-normal gravity and they did have some serious radiation outside their active shielding, but they also had one hell of a view below.

Jupiter was a salmon-hued world, mottled and banded with oranges, reds, browns and ambers, a cauldron of clouds, storms and majestic seething turbulence. Alternating strips of light and dark wrapped the planet in a calico shroud and several small red spots boiled away in the north tropical zone, companions to the Great Red Spot in the south, a centuries-old hurricane churning since the time of Cromwell and King Charles.

Mostly, I wanted a chance to spend time up in the deflector module, on A deck. Bernini's whole mission was to receive electromagnetically-contained slugs of Saturnian gas on a regular schedule and divert them correctly into Jupiter's atmosphere. The whole reason for the Second Sun project was because the knuckleheads at Sunboost had messed up the original Sun, good old Sol. You can blame that on the money-grubbing InFed developers too.

Back in 3150, a SunBoost Commission had been jointly formed by InFed and the Concordance. The purpose was to seed the Sun with swarms of nanobotic devices to boost the Sun's fusion output and cause the Sun to extend her energy and warmth deeper into the Solar System. But from the start, SunBoost didn't work and by 3153, it was apparent that the swarms were doing irreparable damage to the Sun's fusion process. By 3154/5, the Sun was clearly dying, as the SunBoost swarms were having the opposite effect of banking the Sun's fusion process. Worse, efforts to re-seed the Sun and command the swarms to cease operation all failed, leading some observers to speculate about tampering and sabotage of the Project. Months of investigations failed to provide any answers. But at a conference at Chaos City, when the famous architect Pieter Delano proposed using an old streaming technique to unwrap material from Saturn, stream it to Jupiter and bulk up Jupiter enough to ignite it as a 'second sun,', no one really thought it was such a crazy idea anymore.

As to any proof the Guardians may have done something to sabotage Sunboost, well, I'll leave that to the historians.

For the first few months or so, little change could be detected in Saturn's appearance. The same girdle of bands and stripes twisted their way across the cloudscape, dotted with the same orange blotches and yellow-white loops.

But soon after that, there appeared a barely discernible ripple along the equator, as the orbiting cable grid pumped electrical current into the atmosphere. Vivid white veins of lightning crackled back and forth. The first faint, nearly invisible streamers of gas had already spun away from Saturn's grasp and the fleet of scoops went to work immediately taking them up. A short while later, the first slugs of gas were streaking toward deflector stations like Bernini in high Jupiter orbit.

By the end of the year, Saturn had grown a long, luminous thread, unwinding at her equator. It made traditionalists like me want to cry. The filament was nearly eight thousand kilometers long at the scoop end and the ships flew countless sorties into the stuff every day. The timeless beauty of Saturn was slowly being unraveled to make another sun right in the middle of the solar system.

Thinking about that and watching the streams approach _Bernini_ and be shunted off into Jupiter's atmosphere made me realize that I just could not afford to fail. And the sooner I got started on this job, the better.

After the tour, Seria had dinner with me and Dr. Cayamarca, the station's medical officer, in his stateroom, with all kinds of servbots trundling around. They served a traditional kind of stew—Seria called it _aji de gallina_ with stir-fry _lomo saltado_ ...it was like we were dining with the Inca himself at Machu Picchu.

"Your crew seems to be of good Peruvian stock, Captain," I said between mouthfuls of _anticuchos_ —not bad for fabbed food, actually.

"Mostly Inca, actually," Seria admitted. "They make good workers in high orbit here, what with all the radiation and reduced gravity."

"Any problems with the deflectors...guidance on target, divert angles all good, that sort of thing? You know how Engineering is, always tweaking things, fixing things that don't need to be fixed."

Seria sniffed at a glass of _Bodega Tacama_ and made a face. Not every traditional dish was fabbed perfectly. He shrugged. "Minor stuff, mostly. Our capture field has to be monitored constantly, what with the magnetosphere around here. If it gets squashed below limits, we could have a problem...maybe a gas slug impacting the station but that's never happened."

_So far_ , I said to myself. I noticed Dr. Cayamarca, studying me curiously, like I was specimen. He seemed suspicious but he was trying to hide it and I had a momentary chill that he might know more about my background that he was letting on. Malakel wasn't my real name and it was possible we had crossed paths before. Concordance space is a big place.

"Dr. Cayamarca, how about the crew? How are they holding up?"

Cayamarca studied the remnants of his _chupe,_ a decent enough fish stew, choosing not to look directly at me. "Pretty well. I keep tabs on the incident radiation. You know Jupiter's magnetic dipole is tilted and that puts _Bernini_ right in the middle of the some of the worst radiation. It's twenty times stronger than Earth's, so the active rad shielding has to work without fail. If we lost that, the crew would be dead in a day, probably before we could even abandon the station."

On that pleasant note, I begged off dessert, thanked everyone for a splendid evening and retired to my quarters. Later that night, after all had retired save for the bots that constantly circulated around the station, I went to work.

My mission was simple in principle: insert some special malware into the deflector control station software and cause the next incoming pulse of Saturn atmospheric gases to fail diversion and impact the station. _Bernini_ would doubtless be destroyed and I planned to disable their escape shuttles to make sure there would be maximum casualties, excluding me of course, for I had my own ship and didn't plan on sticking around. I knew from my tasking that I was expendable if it came to that, but I didn't plan on becoming part of Jupiter's orbiting horde of satellites just yet.

As I made my way aft to the UDP to see to the escape shuttles, I thought a little about what the Guardians had assigned me to do. I wasn't having second thoughts or anything like that.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a believer in what the Guardians are trying to do. We shouldn't be messing around with the Sun or Jupiter or Saturn or anything like that. But I felt a kinship with these sturdy descendants of Andean peoples from Peru and the prospect of them all dying in a cataclysmic impact with speeding slugs of atmospheric gases made me the slightest bit uneasy. Normally, I'm a good soldier and I do what I'm told. It's just that—

Well, disabling _Bernini's_ escape shuttles was actually the easy part. Just get into the engine controllers and swap a few cards, insert a little Gamma malware—I've got lots. Voila! Nobody's going anywhere. Not to brag about it but I did ace my sabotage class at Guardians school, ha, ha.

After shutting down the escape shuttles, the next step was the big one...the deflector array. I made my way up the central gangway to A deck. Halfway up, I ran into Dr. Cayamarca.

"Evening, Doctor," I said, as noncommittally as I could. "Captain said I could use the nav cupola to take some photos." The observation port was on B deck and Seria had indeed made the offer.

Cayamarca was all ready to turn in, by the looks of his pajamas. "I was just heading to the galley." He held up a glass of something. "A little nightcap...some more of that rather disappointing _Tacama_. Join me?"

It was the way he said it that pricked my sensors. More like: _I know you're up to something and I'm not letting you out of my sight_ _._ What, have I got it written all over me? I'd have to be careful around Cayamarca.

I demurred and we parted company at B deck, with the Doctor disappearing into the galley. Me, I went forward and made sure nobody was hanging around the deflector controls when I got there.

I knew how the deck worked. Hell, I'd studied the details long enough. Scoopships at Saturn peeled off streams of atmospheric gases like peeling an apple and shaped the stream into slugs, sort of like our supply beams, with a control pod in the center of the slug to maintain the shape and provide a little guidance. Then the slugs were shot out across space and, after traveling for months, were grabbed by Jupiter's gravity and given their final kick and course adjustment by a string of deflector stations just like _Bernini_. There were twelve in all, orbiting around Jupiter.

The deflector-emitter at the apex of _Bernini's_ cylinder beamed out an electromagnetic capture field, strong enough to overcome Jupiter's magnetosphere, and bent the slug—they like to call 'em pulses—down into Jupiter's atmosphere. Without that final nudge from the deflectors, the pulse would crash into Jupiter uncontrolled and maybe into the station itself. I was actually counting on that.

Nobody was in the deflector control station when I got there. I was counting on that too. I studied the controls for a moment, recalling what my Guardians instructor had taught me, and found the right port. I withdrew my drive with the Gamma malware and loaded it straight away, no problem. This took about two minutes. When the download was done, the thing beeped and I pulled my drive out. In less than an hour, Gamma would do its duty and the capture field would be hosed. Not long after that, the next incoming pulse would slam into _Bernini_ and likely splatter the station across the skies of Jupiter. I planned to be elsewhere when that happened.

I felt rather than heard someone behind me. It was Cayamarca. The Doctor had seen everything. The look on his face said _you're the mouse and I'm the cat_. I knew the feeling.

I also saw he had a pulser sidearm aimed right at my stomach.

"Just keep your hands where I can see them. I'm thinking you're no inspector, Malakel, are you?"

Having nothing witty to say, I answered. "I don't know what you mean. I was just up—"

"Save it. Let's go—we're paying a visit to the Captain—"

Just I moved to pass by him, keeping an eye on that pulser, I reacted with all the speed and ferocity the Guardians hammer into you just for situations just like this. I swung my elbow out, knocked the pulser away and while Cayamarca was recovering, I slammed a fist into his face.

We were in the low-grav part of the station, so the impact sent him tumbling. His pulser hand struck a stanchion and the weapon went flying. It clattered to the deck and I kicked it away, then slammed another fist into the Doctor's face. Blood spurted and, in his recoil, the back of his head struck a bulkhead and he was stunned. I bent down, groped for the pulser, found it and fired.

The round sent him sprawling further away, landing like a broken doll heavily against a bank of supply lockers. He went down hard and stayed down.

I didn't know what alarms the pulser discharge would cause, so without thinking I ripped open a locker, and managed to cram the good doctor inside one, not easy given his lanky frame and big feet. _Jeez, man, what size shoes do you wear?_ I didn't know if he was dead, unconscious or what and I wasn't hanging around to find out. Quickly, I studied the deflector controls again, satisfied myself that Gamma had skirted all alarms and inhibits and was doing its dirty work. Already, I could see warnings popping up on multiple displays: _Emitter Fault...Deadband Violation...Tracking Out of Tolerance Error 1...._ Beeps and buzzers were already making a small symphony around the panel. It wouldn't be long before--

I had heard no audible alarms for the pulser discharge, so I ditched the weapon below the console and scrambled back down the gangway—mercifully free of bodies this late in the shift—and ducked into my compartment. My plan was to get all my gear together, especially anything incriminating, and make my escape on my own ship before Seria and the rest of the crew were awakened. I figured it wouldn't be long before somebody came looking for the cause of the growing ruckus.

Cautiously but quickly as I dared, I made my way aft to the UDP, where my ship was docked. If all went as planned, the incoming pulse of gaseous matter from Saturn would slam into Bernini in a few hours and the whole station would be splashed across the heavens after that. My ship was the only way off and Gamma would make sure the deflectors couldn't be resurrected.

The Guardians would be so proud. I also knew that other saboteurs were even now doing the same thing, infecting half the deflector stations in orbit with Gamma. This was sure to be the greatest catastrophe the Guardians had perpetrated since the _Hibernia_ incident a few years ago.

With any luck, even Richter V5, the rather shadowy head of the Guardians, might invite me aboard his cruiser _Veiled Order_ for an award. Wouldn't that be just be fine and dandy?

Inside the Universal Docking Port, as I was stuffing my gear aboard my own ship, I heard muffled voices and realized I wasn't alone. On the other side of the gangway hatch, two late-shift maintenance techs seemed to be attending to some balky equipment. Both were women, one younger and one older.

I was about to stash myself into my ship and shut the hatch, when the older tech turned about and drifted over to see what I was about.

When I saw her face, I got the fright of my life. I couldn't—my mouth was working but nothing was coming out. My throat went dry. Blood drained from my head. My fingers tingled and I hit the back of my head on the hatch.

Nothing the Guardians had ever taught me prepared me for this—

I knew the woman, quite well in fact. Her name was Manuella Seguin.

She was my own mother.

Recognition came to Manuella Seguin quickly, despite the fact that I had nanodermed my face months ago, in preparation for this very mission. She squinted at me, in her way, cocked her head. Some things you just can't hide.

"Octavio...Octavio, is that you? _Madre de Dios_ ...it _is_ you...Octavio, my boy—"

Like a guilty five-year old caught wearing his mother's shoes, I just stood there. Octavio Seguin—my real name—I hadn't heard that in years.

We stared at each other for what seemed like forever. Finally, Mama ran to me and hugged me so tight I felt like I would burst. It all felt so natural, like it had always been this way. But it hadn't and we both knew that.

Already she was smothering my face. "Boy, what have you done to yourself...your face, I don't—"

I pushed her away gently. "Nanoderm, Mama. Nanoderm. I just changed—" What was I going to say? "—a few things."

She beat on me with gentle fists, right in the chest. "You abandoned us. You ran away...Octavio, why? After your father died, how could you do that to your own family, _chico_? You dishonored us...we were so ashamed...what made you think you were so much different?"

I blinked back tears and swallowed equal portions of guilt and sadness for the truth was I had run away two years ago and never looked back. After Papa died, I couldn't live up to the image Mama kept of him— _my Diego, he was so strong, so proud, so smart,_ she was always saying. I couldn't be what Mama saw me as, proud, a mirror image of Papa, a fearless Inca warrior.

Now she was wiping at my tears and mixing them with her own. "Octavio, remember the games we played? Like the _chancas_ ...your father was Virococha, you were Pachacuti, you fought off the _chancas_ like good brave warriors—"

She was referring to an ancient Inca story we acted out, with the holograms at the _estadio_ in Chaos City.

"Mama—" I grabbed her head and held it still, "will you please listen?"

She peered up at me with her deep brown eyes, soft as alpaca fur. "Octavio—"

"Mama, something's happened. I joined the Guardians. I came here to—"

But she wouldn't let me finish. "Why did you do that? I always loved you, Octavio."

"You made our lives hell after Papa died."

She was stung by that and backed off, then crossed her arms. "You're in trouble. I can tell. Here we are serving Inti, awakening great Jupiter to make him a second sun—"

"Mama!" I practically screamed it out. Inti was the ancient sun god of the Inca. She was so confused...what had happened to her? "Mama, listen to me. Second Sun's wrong. The Guardians are trying to save Jupiter. It's not to be bulked up, or ignited like a star. It's _wrong_ , it's not right. Jupiter is not Inti to be awakened. Mama, I came here to stop that."

Now she squinted up at me like she always did, those alpaca eyes narrowing, accusing. "What are you saying, child? What have you done?"

I explained why I had come to _Bernini_. I explained all if it: the sabotaging the escape shuttles, sabotaging the deflectors. "Mama, we have to get off the station. In a few hours, the next pulse will impact _Bernini_. The station will be destroyed. We have to go—" I don't know why I said that, for I knew my own shuttle had room for only one person and what I had done to the station's escape pods, indeed the deflectors, was irreversible. "Mama—"

I never noticed when the other maintenance tech, Petra, had eased out of the deck and vanished up the gangway. Moments later, she came back, with Captain Seria and three others, all armed with pulsers. It wasn't long before one of them found Cayamarca's cold, stiff body crammed in the supply locker. Through it all, Mama stood by, hands to her mouth, her eyes wide, her head shaking _no, no, no, no._

She choked on a sob. "Octavio, what have—"

But Seria cut her off. "Who are you, Inspector? What are you?"

I was actually glad Seria had showed up. It forced my attention away from Mama, away from things I couldn't deal with anymore.

"The Guardians, Captain. Jupiter won't be a second sun. Not now, not ever. We're seeing to that. Others are doing what I've just done." I told him about the sabotage.

Furious, Seria snapped his fingers at one of his men...Calderon, I think his name was. "Seal that Concordance shuttle." Calderon bolted off and soon enough, the hatch to my own means of escape was permanently damaged. "Now, Inspector Malakel, or whatever your name is—"

"It's Octavio!" Mama blurted out. "Octavio Seguin...he's my son."

That flustered Seria for a moment, but only for a moment. His face recovered into a mask of contempt. "Now we're all trapped. Inspector, come with me. We're going up to the deflector controls and you're going to undo what you've done."

I tried to explain that the Gamma malware was irreversible, but you don't argue for long with the tip of a pulser gun. We drifted up the gangway all the way to A deck, me, Seria, Calderon, my own Mama and just about everybody else we had awakened on Bernini, a convoy of the half-asleep and merely curious.

Inside A deck, Seria waved at me to stand at the deflector control station. "Fix it!"

Again, I tried to explain, but the Captain was in no mood for explanations. I couldn't blame him. An overhead display was already counting down the hours and minutes to the next arrival of a pulse...Lot 12, it was labelled. If _Bernini_ didn't operate her emitter-deflector array and throw out a capture field, there was a very good chance the pulse—that slug of hydrogen spun off the top of Saturn—would slam right into us.

I did what I could and Seria and Calderon watched me closely. I cycled power from the main buses. I slaved drive servos on the emitter array nearly to gimbal lock, trying to free them. I initialized capture field transmitter amplifiers. It was all useless, as I expected. _Bernini's_ deflectors were deader than dirt. I knew how Gamma worked. I knew it was hopeless. And I could see the same realization dawning on Seria's face.

Finally, the Captain accepted the inevitable. "You seem to have done your homework, Inspector. And killed twelve innocent people in the process."

I tried to put up a brave front, spitting out the Guardians' litany. "Jupiter's not a sun. No one has a right to mess with the system, not Sol, not Jupiter." The Guardians' guiding principle was that the solar system was perfect as it is and shouldn't be tinkered with. They intended to prevent any further changes or modifications to the solar system in the future, by any means necessary. They particularly viewed the Sun as the source of all life and energy and purpose. In that, maybe, they weren't so different from Mama...Inti, the ancient sun god of the Inca would remain forever asleep and Man would remain in his place, chastened by the gods for his boundless hubris.

But my heart wasn't really in those words. Mama knew that. I could easily see past Seria and Calderon to her standing in the gangway hatch. Her look spoke volumes to me and rekindled things I thought long buried. _That_ was what was being reawakened. My own feelings of guilt and sadness.

"There is one possibility, Captain."

"I'm listening."

"If the emitters can be brought online—if Gamma can be diverted and quarantined, there may be away to trick it-- someone could go outside the station and manually unstick the deflector array."

It was clear the idea had already occurred to Seria. His face seemed to morph like my own nanoderm patch...by turns hopeful, skeptical, suspicious and anxious...all of those things were visible in the lines and wrinkles that spoke to me.

"To go outside in a suit, in that hard radiation field...it's a suicide mission, Malakel. You know that."

I shrugged. "I can't think of any other way." Even as I said that, I knew what was coming. It was like I could 'hear' the words before they were even spoken. As if great Inti himself was speaking to me. But that was rubbish. That was just Mama's influence. The cold reality was that, as an agent for the Guardians, I had doomed the entire crew of _Bernini_ to a violent death, including me and my own mother. I was expendable. The Guardians, even Richter V5, had always been clear on that. For me, such a fate could be accepted. I had 'died' before, when my own Papa Diego Seguin had been killed and Mama—excuse me, my life at home—became unbearable. I died then. The old Octavio had died when I joined the Guardians. Death was a friend to me. Even this one.

But Mama, and Petra and the others...how could I do that? They hadn't taken the oath I had. _Collateral damage_ I could 'hear' Richter saying to me in the back of my mind...don't give me that. Bringing great Inti back to life...superstitious poppycock. But somewhere out of the past, the little boy who tried to comfort his Mama when word came that Diego had died in an icecat depressurization accident on Uranus's moon Oberon, was speaking. Speaking to me. Speaking and sobbing and clinging to Mama's dress. That little boy was me. Or had been.

I can't really say when the decision was made. I was no longer a Guardian. But I wasn't quite Octavio Seguin either. I was trapped in some kind of nether world, like the original Children of the Sun, like Ayar Cachi, walled up in a cave by Manco Capac, the one who would soon become the first Inca.

Seria had already made up his mind. "You're coming with me, Malakel. I can't do this alone."

I tried not to look at Mama but I think she knew I was doing this for her. Our eyes met and I saw many things. Eric Richter and I had spent a lot of time as kids on the Europan surface, not always authorized, sometimes accompanying Papa on jobs up there. On one such trip, we were on a camping trip with some friends to the Powyss Regio lowlands. The rover broke down and, although Europa Rescue was on the way by hopper, there were some dicey moments when, on a trip outside, they thought my suit had been breached. Eric, quick thinking as he always was, buddy-linked his own oxygen hose to my suit to blow enough O2 in long enough for us to make it back to the rover. Eric didn't panic, just calmly went about saving my life. From then on, I felt like I was in Eric's debt. I thought Mama would drown the both of us in kisses when we got home.

Seria and I went aft down the gangway to K deck, where the lockout and the suits were located. He tucked his pulser away, I guess he was thinking where was I going to go anyway? By now, I was just focused on what we had to do. That focus kept me from thinking too much about what I had already done.

Concordance medics say one hour's exposure in Jupiter's radiation field at this altitude was a lethal dose worth about two days' of gruesome, agonizing suffering—nausea, vomiting, fever, diarrhea, seizures, possible coma-- followed by a merciful death. The action of the magnetosphere traps and accelerates particles mostly streaming off Io, producing intense belts of radiation similar to Earth's Van Allen Belts, but thousands of times stronger. The interaction of energetic particles with the surface of Jupiter's largest moons markedly affects their chemical and physical properties. Those same particles also affect and are affected by the motions of the particles in Jupiter's tenuous planetary ring system. Radiation belts are deadly in a decidedly ugly way.

We both knew this, even as Seria and I quietly donned our suits. We grabbed some zero-g tools—impact driver, contra-rotating torque wrench, the usual stuff—and cycled out of the airlock, me first, then the Captain. I tried not to look for Mama, but I knew she was near, probably out in the gangway, hands to her mouth.

The view was beyond words.

Maybe Mama was right about Jupiter, the King of Planets. If Inti could be re-born, why not a big ball of gas? Surely, it was only right that Inca's descendants would do this.

Jupiter loomed over us, a swollen baleful curtain of salmon and ocher, banded and roiled by ceaseless storms and turbulence, fully covering half the sky in our view.

I used my suit thrusters to follow Seria up to the rotation control 'collar,' where the emitter and deflector array were located.

The Gamma malware had frozen the deflector controls so they couldn't track and capture the incoming pulses. "We'll have to power down the drive servos," said Seria over the suit circuit. "Then unbolt and unship the mount and manually re-direct the array. Calderon can give us the heading from inside. Then, we bolt it all down and power-up the servos. I just hope the emitter can still project a capture field."

I said little. What was there to say? We went to work, with Seria taking the lead and me helping, handing him tools, retrieving loose items that drifted away, putting my shoulder into the main shaft to unstick the deflector. It moved a little, then with some more effort, broke free and turned. Calderon guided us from a console on A deck, helping us point the big dish over our heads in the right direction.

I don't know why I thought of this, but as we were working, it occurred to me that I could easily dispatch Seria right then and there and call it an accident. A slipped impact driver. A mishandled torque wrench and Seria's suit would be holed and he would be dead in a minute, easy. My duty to the Guardians would be done.

I could even hear Richter V5's voice in the back of my head, urging me on. But there were other voices back there too. Papa talking to Marco and me on our first trip topside, on the ice surface of Europa, teaching us how to set up and properly seal a vac shelter..."don't strain the pulleys there, Octavio...give it some slack...". Mama talking to me and Marco and Miriam from the kitchen, while she fried up the anticucho and marinated the ceviche in tart lime juice. Oh, there were all kinds of voices in the back of my head while Seria and I torqued down the last bolts of the deflector housing. I just couldn't tune them out, but after awhile, I knew whose voices were important. Inti was coming back. The great sun god was about to be reborn and we were doing it, and Mama was so proud of all of us.

"Come on," Seria said over the suit comm. "Let's head back to the airlock. We've done all we can out here. Now it's up to Calderon, if he can get the emitter going."

"What's the hurry?" I said. "We're already dead men out here, anyway. An hour in this radiation, outside the active shielding...it's lethal. May as well enjoy the view."

Seria snorted. "I don't know about you but I plan to spend my last hours inside, in a warm bed with some Cuatro Gallos by my side. Listening to music, playing games. The medbots have stuff to keep the pain away, at least for awhile."

I followed him along the outer hull of the station until we reached the airlock. Seria stowed his tools in a small bag and nudged it in, then entered the lockout himself. I watched the mode lights cycling from red to green and back to red. Seria was inside now, de-suiting on K deck.

I didn't follow him.

I heard Seria's voice over my suit circuit. "Get in here, Malakel or whatever your name is. Don't be a fool. At least you can be comfortable."

I pulsed my thrusters and moved off from the station. I didn't answer at first. I was the second born in our family, with an older brother Marco and a younger sister Miriam. In a way, I was a second son.

I clicked open comms one last time. "Hey, can anyone tell me how long until pulse Lot 12 arrives? Where is it now?"

Calderon's voice came back. "Two hours ten minutes out. Look past the station, away from the planet. You may see it. By the way, it looks like the emitter's coming on line, Malakel. Your malware failed...I found a way to bypass it. Gamma's been quarantined and can't hurt us anymore. You failed."

I said nothing because what was there to say? I lowered my visor and squinted over the edge of the station, looking away from the glare of Jupiter. Maybe it was my imagination but I thought I saw a fuzzy glob of something in the distance, roughly below Orion's Belt. Like the coma of a comet. It checked with Calderon's heading.

Then I heard another voice on my comm. It was Mama. She was sobbing but she didn't sound sad.

"Octavio, I'm so proud of you...such a sacrifice to bring our great Inti back. The name Seguin will be spoken for a thousand years, I know it."

"I know, Mama. I know. I'll hug Papa for you when I see him."

With that, I switched off the suit comm. I fired my thrusters for a long time, down to empty on the nitrogen tanks. I had done the basic calculations in my head while helping Seria and I knew blowing my whole fuel load, firing in the right direction, would put me on a descending trajectory. I figured the descent into Jupiter's atmosphere would take approximately forty hours give or take.

I made sure to use the last wisps of gas to stabilize my attitude the right way. I wanted to be able to watch the show as it unfolded.

Hard to imagine, isn't it? Octavio Seguin—later Kisan Malakel—helping in his simple, faltering way to give new life to the great sun god of the Inca, the great Inti. I was going to be part of that, in the most elemental way. I was going to be a myth, just like Viracocha and Pachacuti...me, Octavio Seguin. A myth spoken of in hushed and reverent words, something to torment little boys and girls late at night, like I had once endured.

I got myself as comfortable as I could and lay back to enjoy the view, of Jupiter's magnificent amber and calico cloud banks rushing up to meet me.

END

_The following article is a bit of a departure for_ Elliptical Galaxies _. It's not a story. It's an examination of how human settlements across our solar system might develop and evolve. I wrote this article series in the mid-1980s and it first appeared in a journal called L5 News, now part of the National Space Society._

Science fiction writers often create stories about such settlements, on the Moon, on Mars, or elsewhere in the solar system. Usually, the story background is either implied or woven into the story itself. In the article that follows, I look specifically at how such a solar system-wide civilization might develop, from where we are today, taking into account our culture, our technology, our current politics, our history and our behavior as a species.

My take on how this evolution might proceed is that many aspects of our nature are hard-wired into us. I don't think any solar system-wide civilization will be a reprise of the Roman Empire, or the British Empire or Star Trek's Federation. Rather, whatever develops (f anything) will be a result of unique circumstances, technological and economic push and those aspects of human nature that are unlikely to change.

_Maybe the words that follow_ are _science fiction after all. Let me know what you think...._

**Statehood in Space: Political Evolution on the High Frontier**

(Reprinted by permission of the National Space Society)

PART I: THE LAW OF THE FRONTIER

Human beings are social beings. Natural evolution has provided us with the skills necessary to cooperate and coordinate. Society began when the first protohuman dropped from the trees and took up the challenge of the savannah, organizing the hunt and dividing the spoils. Humans especially need each other in new and hostile environments, where quick response to rapid change means the difference between life and death. The high frontier of space will be no different.

Sociability gives humans an evolutionary advantage. Before animals were domesticated, cooperation among men was the only technology available for big projects. The transmission of new knowledge, vital for the survival of a slow, weak bipedal transplanted from the forests was accelerated in a group setting, making it easier for this unlikely predator to adapt to new environmental challenges.

With the first stirrings of society, however, human conflict was inevitable. On the open plains and grasslands, conflict took on an ominous new dimension, threatening not only the combatants themselves but the survival of the tribe as well. A way had to be found to settle arguments short of death. A small, exposed tribe surrounded by predators better equipped to compete for food, water, and shelter could ill afford to lose a vital skill or another strong back. From this need, laws and ultimately politics evolved.

Humans compete with each other for almost everything. Territorial gain, economic profit, faith or ideology, personal aggrandizement, all of these have provided plenty of motivation for bigger sticks and more bloodshed. Without a way of channeling the conflict, no tribe could ever have secured enough food to survive.

Animal conflict follows a similar dictum. The competition is ritualized into certain forms to prevent overall species destruction. The main purpose is to display messages of dominance and hierarchy: "This is my territory. This is my mate. My position in the group is here." As Maruyama has stated: "Survival of the fittest means survival of the most symbiotic, [not] the strongest (1). Nothing is gained by bringing about the destruction of the tribe. Society — sociability — equals survival.

Law is nothing more than ritualized human conflict, like the threat displays animals use to warn off trespassers. It's a way of preventing species destruction. With the accumulation of rules describing acceptable ways of fighting, some means of managing the rules had to be developed. Enter politics. The history of man's political evolution is the story of tighter and more centralized organization of larger, more complex, and more dispersed groups of people. There is a continuum from the single-cell protozoa to the multicellular organism called man and the megacellular organism of the nation-state-empire. Since there are no known physical limits to the size of such organisms, except for the Universe as a whole, it's probable that political evolution in space will bring even larger, more complex, and more intricate systems. Later on, we'll take a look at some possible forms these systems might take.

Gary Hudson gives three dimensions by which a society can be judged successful (2). The first requirement is for the members to have common goals in mind, to have a certain congruity of interests and outlooks. Without this, no social contract can work. There must also be sufficient resources to achieve these goals. Resources can be anything human ingenuity can use to produce goods and services of value: the only real limit to growth is lack of ingenuity. Finally, the social contract must provide the freedom — the mechanism — by which resources can be converted into goals.

A society deficient in any of these dimensions won't be as successful in the survival game as one that provides all of them. And Nature is utterly unforgiving of half-hearted efforts. Prosperity is nice as an end to work for, but the national imperatives of Earthside states and the needs of survival will shape the earliest political landscape. The first skirmishes over that landscape are being fought today.

Space law is an attempt to bring some order to what is inherently a disorderly process. Opening the frontier of space means opening new frontiers in law as well. Space law has its roots in aviation and maritime law: much of the thinking implicit in the Law of the Sea Treaty has been transferred to the proposed international legal regime for space.

Many legal scholars see in the practice of maritime law a good foundation for developing a body of space law (3). In the view of Jack Glazer, Chief Counsel of the NASA/Ames Research Center, "outer space has more in common with ocean space than with air space." Spacecraft float for long duration in space, much as ships float in the ocean, whereas gravity dictates that the flights of aircraft will be short and limited. Longer missions aboard the Space Station will bring to mind the expeditions of Drake and Magellan, Columbus and da Gama.

There are five international legal instruments applicable to the business of spaceflight:

The Outer Space Treaty

The Agreement on Return of Astronauts

The Space Objects Registration Treaty

The Treaty on International Liability

The Moon Treaty

The Outer Space Treaty will have the greatest impact on the politics of emerging space communities, especially in its Article II provisions:

"Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."

We will see later that the nucleus of this treaty's destruction will hinge on the growing disputes over the nature of the word "sovereignty."

Under intense lobbying by the L5 Society and other space advocacy groups, the United States did not ratify the so-called Moon Treaty in 1979. By rejecting the Moon Treaty as it is currently written and by refusing, virtually at the last moment, to sign the Law of the Sea Treaty, the United States has served notice to the world community that it implicitly denies the legal validity of the principle of "the common heritage of mankind." Let's look at the common heritage principle. Historically, common heritage has meant many things to many people. Galloway states that "the idea that the earth and its bounty belongs to everyone...is at least as old as the Beatitudes. Modern notions...come from the thinking of John Locke, Adam Smith, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx (4)." The question is how can such a principle be reconciled with the national interests of states? Locke indicated that man increased the value of the common wealth by appropriating land and applying his own labor (5). Rousseau, on the other hand, believed that the first piece of ground enclosed and proclaimed as private property had led inexorably to all the ills of modern society (6).

Much intellectual effort has been expended on fashioning a consensus that the fruits of nature deserve to be shared by all. But, as Galloway has said, the concern for how best to organize an "international regime" to achieve this is misplaced (7). No single regime will be able effectively to coordinate the exploitation of such different resources as lunar oxygen and titanium: indeed, the history of natural resources is quite the opposite, being more a story of fragmentation and cartelization than collective action "for all mankind." Whether the Law of the Sea Treaty will bring about a lasting change in this cycle is problematical. Past experience suggests otherwise.

The main reason for questioning the devotion of states to the common heritage principle stems from the many forms in which national sovereignty is exercised and the way such sovereignty evolves through use. Although explicitly forbidden in Article II of the Outer Space Treaty, sovereignty is ultimately a slippery concept. In an earlier series of articles in the L5 News, "Real Property Rights in Outer Space," Wayne White described the ambiguities inherent in the Outer Space Treaty regarding a nation's exercise of sovereignty. He maintained that far from prohibiting such exercise, a full reading of the text showed that, in certain instances, states would be required to exercise sovereignty in order to meet their obligations to demonstrate jurisdiction and control (8). Thus, space law can be seen not only to permit but actually to require states to exercise functional sovereignty.

There is ample evidence for the evolution of functional sovereignty into national sovereignty in fact (if not in principle) or even into private/corporate appropriation by means of use or occupation extended over time. Witness the case of off-shore oil drilling rigs, where a state exercises functional sovereignty to permit safe and efficient navigation in the surrounding seas (9). Although the state may not claim the ocean as its own territory, in practice the perogatives of functional sovereignty — exclusion, conditional admission (for reasons of safety), continuous display of state authority — differ little from the appearance of national, territorial sovereignty. One writer has even developed the idea of an "object-space" contiguous to the zone in which a governing authority is required to exercise jurisdiction and control, implying that such object-space may expand in accordance with the authority's changing perceptions of operational needs (10).

History provides little doubt that nations will exercise whatever level of sovereignty in space is needed to achieve national objectives. In the 15th century, Spain and Portugal were the most active seafaring states in Europe. Through a series of Papal Bulls issued in the latter decades of that century and ultimately in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, Alexander VI, the Spanish Pope, sought to adjudicate the growing disputes between the two nations and establish a demarkation line that would effectively split the New World into spheres of influence (11).

Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese by birth, ignored the Pope's declarations when he offered to discover rich islands in the East for the Spanish Crown, having already gained foreknowledge of the wealth and extent of the Moluccas on a previous voyage. He sailed from Seville on his epochal expedition in 1519. Competition continued to unravel the Treaty from then on, and the Pope's dictates were completely ignored by the British, French, and Dutch, who objected that "even the Pope could not apportion what God had created for all" (12).

If there is to be any formal legal regime for space development, it must be as flexible as possible, allowing plenty of room for national and/or private-corporate maneuvering. It is impossible to pre-judge what conditions will obtain in isolated settlements at the edge of the frontier: in the course of evolution, life forms need adaptability to survive. The ideal system of regulation should encourage exploration and development rather than stifle it (and provide stability during the expansion), provide a strong mechanism for settling the inevitable disputes, guarantee essential services that must be shared by all users (protection from piracy, a common standard of monetary exchange, a central claims registry), and perhaps most importantly, provide a path for political evolution toward some desirable end state or condition since, as we have seen. centralization of complex systems seems unavoidable (13).

In US history, two pieces of legislation stand out as examples of positive, effective state-building legal regimes: the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Homestead Act of 1862. Both of these acts provided a means by which frontier settlements could acquire formal status as political entities; in each case, certain qualifications had to be met before official recognition was given. The main value of this approach was the provision for specific, easily verifiable goals to be met along the way to statehood; criteria of population growth, time of occupation, and level of land development were laid down. A similar mechanism will have to be worked out for space settlements.

The divergence of interests between major spacefaring powers ensures that any measures detrimental to displays of national power will be ignored. The Moon Treaty is only the first example. As Myers has pointed out, the rules of conflict will prevail (14). Just as with the Spanish Crown, Western nations must develop a consistent strategy for exploration and use of the high frontier and reserve for themselves maximum flexibility for political maneuvering. To abdicate our political heritage to an ill-conceived international regime is not only folly in an historical sense, but legally inconsistent with the requirement that States Parties to the Outer Space Treaty exercise jurisdiction (read "functional sovereignty") over their settlements and facilities (15).

We don't know the extent of our Solar System even yet. In many ways, the quickening search for a massive extrasolar body, a new "Planet X," to account for still unexplained irregularities in the motions of Uranus and Neptune is reminiscent of massive efforts mounted to locate Terra Australis, the Southern Continent, in the 16th and 17th centuries. We have our own Terra Incognita, appropriately scaled for our more capable technology today. Despite the best wishes of diplomats and legal theorists, political development will follow national cultural and economic imperatives; Russian-initiated settlements in space will no more resemble New England towns than Russian cities do today. The best we can do is to provide a healthy nucleus for the coming communities; in other words, satisfy their basic physiological and psychological needs, then provide the framework within which natural development can occur. A wise parent and the law of space should do no more.

It is important to remember that flexibility and adaptability will pay large dividends when it comes to ensuring the steady growth of space settlements. By refraining from shackling themselves to vindictive or restrictive international obligations during the formative years of space development, free nations will preserve the chance to extend the advantages of freedom to new communities. The next part of this article will show why the future of freedom and opportunity in space settlements cannot be taken for granted, but will have to be included in the design from the start.
PART II: DESIGNING A NEW TOWN

Space communities will still be human communities for all the strangeness of their environment. Encouraging and designing for the full expression of communal spirit is important to the healthy growth of any town; obstacles to this sense of belonging and shared identity will result in settlers who feel no stake in the future of their community. That is dangerous in an environment where lack of attention to small details could be fatal. This installment will describe some of the factors designers of space communities will have to consider.

Just what is a community? The Random House Dictionary defines community as "a social group whose members live in a specific locality, share government, and have a common heritage." Etymologically, the word community shares roots with the word common, and this relationship bears looking at and understanding. No social group will be more dependent on each other, on the attributes they contribute to the common good, than early space settlers. This may have lasting consequences for political forms that will evolve later. There is every reason to believe that democratic processes will suffer in the tightly disciplined, relatively deprived, and economically precarious settlements in space. The trick is to prevent this from becoming a permanent condition.

Maruyama has defined some of the physical characteristics of non-terrestrial communities (16). Among them he includes such things as abundant sunlight and solar energy (less true of the outer Solar System); artificial or unusual diurnal or seasonal cycles; everpresent vacuum, hostile atmosphere, or perhaps a completely artificial weather system; long-term exposure to energetic radiation and charged particles; and a limited, artificial biosphere. There is no question that the magnitude of man's migration into the Solar System is a cultural transition equal to the emergence of our aquatic ancestors onto the land or the evolution of our quadrupedal ancestors into bipedal, tool-using ground dwellers (17). No less important will be the social-psychological impact of life on the high frontier. Isolation and confinement in small spaces, overtechnologized environment, perhaps even long-term divergence from Earthside biological norms will have profound effects on the political landscapes the settlers face.

Space settlers will be dependent on technology as never before. Yet studies have consistently shown a powerful psychological need for variability and unpredictability in the environment (18). Maruyama suggests a conscious effort to introduce art into the lives of the settlers (19), in order to make their lives feel more real. Indeed, many writers have noted the harmful effects of too much artificiality. Sensory deprivation, solipsism, low tolerance for things going out of control, even autism (20) are all potential problems that will have to be factored into design, perhaps even alleviated artificially through neuroelectronic enhancement of the brain's memory, analytical, and other functions (21). Would a settlement whose citizens had to resort to mood-altering techniques or substances in order to withstand the psychological rigors of frontier life be nimble enough to survive the physical dangers? To date, this conflict seems unresolved.

Much has been made of the potential for cultural, even biological divergence, of distant settlers from their Earthside brothers. Maruyama has even suggested that such divergence should be encouraged, as there is scant evidence in Nature of differing species making war on each other (22). Michaud mentions the value of cultural (and ultimately genetic) diversity for the long-term health of the human species (23), implying that future genetic technologies may find fertile ground in enhancing the settlers' adaptability to their new milieu. And there will be direct physical changes as well: prolonged lower gravity and exposure to radiation will bring a greater rate of mutation to the human genotype, with unforseen, perhaps unimaginable consequences (24). Constant, rapid, unpredictable biological change is yet another argument for flexibility in political forms.

In the early 21st century, the small high-technology business corporation, founded to market a new product with plenty of venture capital financing and state-of-the-art technical skills, may be the best organizational model for the raw colony at the edge of civilization. This is one way of saying that the economic environment of such settlements will be no less influential in shaping their politics than physical dangers.

The history of exploration and settlement from the 15th century on is in many ways a history of how the limited liability, joint stock company with a state mandate to operate in a specified region became the dominant economic species in the New World. The British East India Company and similar trade and shipping cartels had exclusive privileges in their operating regions and were the main engines of growth and expansion in the early years of English settlements, providing a ready-made authority structure around which settlers shaped their political dialogues.

Indeed, governors and colonial bureaucrats had considerable latitude in their authority, not only because of distance and communication times, but because the financial machinery of the mother state could not transfer money fast enough to wherever it was needed (25). Loyalties developed to local magistrates or enterprising ship captains far stronger than allegiance to a distant, often ineffectual king.

The economic principles of space settlements will be familiar enough. Cities have always tended to locate near sources of water and other raw materials that can be most efficiently converted into wealth. As economic factors, the cost of extraction, refining, production, and transport, and the availability of energy will be decisive in determining where to stake the claim and set up a base camp. One difference is paramount however; understanding it is essential to a thorough grounding in space economics.

That difference lies in the relationship between energy, velocity, and distance under the influence of a central gravitational field. Getting anywhere on Earth or in space requires energy. Throughout human history, we've always imagined that the greater the distance we had to go, the greater the energy it would take to get there. There has always seemed to be an intuitive linear relationship between the two; this idea has been factored into transportation cost accounting for so long that any other point of view seems absurd. In space, steering among competing gravity wells of varying strengths, we're going to have to unlearn this idea. The absurd will become daily practice.

Imagine the effect on cost accounting when it becomes generally grasped by economists that a gentle nudge on a nickel-rich chunk of asteroid can send billions of dollars' worth of metals literally billions of miles down the Sun's gravity well with no further expenditure of energy until the very end of the trip (and none even then if we can use the upper atmosphere of Venus as a braking path for final orbit in the inner Solar System). Distance will have to be calculated in feet per second rather than miles and costs will have to be reckoned in increments of delta-vee, perhaps with additional coefficients to account for different types of propulsion. With an indigenous fuel supply such as a mass driver would have, accountants will have to allow for mass loss during the trip (and consider its opportunity cost for alternative use). Perhaps, near-Earth mining companies will pay premiums for faster delivery times (thus more delta-vee), but once the pipeline is open and deliveries regular, economists may have to figure out how to place a value on resources that seem virtually limitless. Past experience with water and petroleum may offer lessons.

In fact, resource cost allocation will change utterly from the way it's done today. Air will no longer be a free item, and away from all but the tiniest of minor planetoids, even gravity may have to be permitted a place in the economists' equations. Whether it functions as a debit or a credit may depend on its effects on the end product.

Early settlements will be extremely fragile systems, where preparation and a thorough knowledge of the environment will be critical; the English colony at Roanoke came to America woefully unprepared to produce items essential to survival. The mistake of misunderstanding the settlement's potential will be as fatal in the 21st century as it was in the 16th.

Space settlements will be completely dependent on Earthside support for a long time. Because they will be essentially small islands in a vast ocean totally dependent on trade to survive, negotiating and bargaining skills will be well exercised. The craftiest diplomats and horsetraders of the 21st century may come from the rough and tumble world of inter-colony merchants and buyers. They will have a keen eye for value, sharpened by incessant dealing and a visceral understanding of the meaning of scarcity. We can see in this an inkling of how contentious the politics of these small communities may really be, at least beneath the surface. Outwardly, the settlers will be just as image conscious as a blushing debutante. And no doubt this dependency will encourage a prickly sense of independent-mindedness too; when economic disputes must be smothered (in the beginning) for survival's sake, differences will be all the more emphasized in social and cultural matters.

Like any small country dependent on trade for survival, space settlements will want to diversify their exports as quickly as possible. Extremely sensitive to changeable or obsolete markets, the settlers will invest a lot of time in staying ahead of the technology curve and keeping themselves current on economic trends, especially Earthside. Failing that, they may suffer the same fate as in mining towns in the American West, where the initial frenetic boom is often followed by an equally spectacular bust.

The capacity for innovation will be sorely tested on the high frontier, as it is on any beachhead. Yet the human penchant for ingenuity under adversity has been demonstrated time and again. The Eskimos' efficient use of indigenous resources — principally the walrus and seal — to satisfy food needs, heat, and clothing is a classic example of living off the land. Scandinavian Lapps use the reindeer and caribou similarly (26).

Another factor which the economists of the high frontier will be forced to deal with is a coefficient of unknown but potentially incalculable value. Robots, machine intelligence, and particularly self-replicating systems may be the wild card of Solar System development. Nigel Calder has written extensively of "Santa Claus machines" (27) placed on virgin worlds, where they break down soils and atmospheres into their constituent atoms and re-assemble them into facsimiles of themselves. Growth multiplies geometrically under this scenario; it may well be that human settlers will arrive to find civilization already in place and possibly in a form not to their liking.

Is there any parallel to this in Earthside exploration and colonization? Only slavery, perhaps. Columbus left behind a small band of crewmembers on the island of Hispaniola to carve a going settlement out of the wilderness. That they failed utterly is perhaps more a testament to lack of preparation than anything else; with better information and plentiful energy, Santa Claus machines should do better. But the laws of space have not yet dealt with volition and if the history of gold rushes and diamond wars are any guide, claim jumping and jurisdictional disputes will be endemic. Can a state truly exercise jurisdiction and control over an intelligent, self-aware machine some light-minutes or hours distant? The subtleties of the programmer's art may soon be applied to the timeless human pursuit of putting up a fence.

The culture of space settlers — their politics, their living styles, their values — will be as varied as are the cultures of Earth, ultimately perhaps even more so. The settlements will be islands in an unimaginably vast ocean and it's a fair assumption that an island mentality will develop, at least until technology knits the Solar System together into some sort of "Global Village" network. That is probably some centuries away. In the meantime, space settlers will display all the traits of insularity, superiority, emphasis on differences, xenophobia, awareness of limited horizons, and dependence on trade that islanders have always shown. Only the forms of display will be different. Lest it be thought that such cultural characteristics may limit a settlement's chances for success, a quick study of British or Japanese imperial traditions should dispel any doubts.

Perhaps a word should be said about what type of person the "ideal" colonist should be. Much has been made of the historical example of using distant colonies as dumping grounds for malcontents and misfits. Some writers believe such a practice is both unlikely and unhealthy for a struggling space colony since the technical skills and cooperation needed to survive would be improbable for such social deviants (28). But the answer begs a larger question: there is a fundamental, perhaps irresolvable conflict between the mindset of the explorer and that of the settler. Both have always been needed on the frontier. The perils of isolation — what has been called the shimanagashi syndrome, after a Japanese punishment of confining lawbreakers on small islands (29)— affects explorers differently from settlers. The sturdy, self-reliant quick-witted pioneer, tracking the spoor of tomorrow's meal through unknown woods or tracking a vein of platinum on an unknown asteroid, would likely not be sturdy or self-reliant if he weren't in many ways a social outcast. Comfortable people don't push back the horizons. When Daniel Boone saw the smoke of his neighbor's campfire, he moved on. Both malcontents and homemakers will find a place on the high frontier.

There will be a strong impulse toward achieving self-sufficiency, if for no other reason than that the settlers will be keenly aware of how dependent they are on the trade lifeline and how precarious that lifeline is. Toynbee has pointed out in A Study of History that civilizations grow as they meet the challenge of their environments (30). The settlers will spend enormous amounts of time scouting and developing indigenous resources; they will not build stone palaces if log cabins are better. Michaud has pointed out how the difference in natural (planet or satellite-surface) biospheres and artificial biospheres in free space may well lead to differing ideas about individualism, social mobility, and conformity (31). The desire to preserve a unique cultural identity will work against federation for a long time.

A corollary to the impulse toward self-sufficiency is the impulse toward expansion. Why do communities grow? Why does one settlement gain wealth, power, and influence while another stagnates? Communities develop because they transform human energy into wealth, natural resources into social structure, less complex systems into more complex systems, and they do this more efficiently than nomadic tribes, farms, and other less concentrated social systems. Communities are antientropic and life-enhancing collectors of energy. Those that perform this function best grow and dominate those that do not. In the Mediterranean Basin, cities such as Rome, Venice, and Constantinople are good examples of settlements which gained preeminence because of their unrivaled abilities to marshal resources.

All this is not to say that the settlers of space will be purely philistine in their outlook. Much energy will be put into the development and preservation of unique identities; the coming centuries should see an explosion of cultural ingenuity. The drive toward a unique identity (and cultural evolution proceeds much faster than biological evolution) will inevitably clash with the charter of the settlement as initially drawn up. What the originators of the settlement intend may well be altered in the accomplishment of that intent and even relatively short communication times (versus much longer transportation times) may not be enough to keep the inevitable misunderstandings from developing. There is a parallel here in the attitude of a company's home office toward its far-flung branches, and vice-versa. Who has not at times wondered about the true meanings behind cryptic directives from Headquarters? For quite some time, Western space settlements may in fact be branch operations of large corporations, with all that that implies. Other peoples will organize differently.

In order to survive the rigors of a new environment, a social organization has to provide room for change and growth. Freedom flourishes in a loosely structured setting and maintaining as much freedom as possible without threatening survival is essential to allow the inevitable change and channel it toward healthy ends. Equally important is the role of political power: who will have it and what will be done with it? The next installment of this article examines these important questions.

PART III: POLITICS AS A SYSTEM

The first installment of this article examined the legal environment under which space settlements are born and showed why current space law is too restrictive for the rapid evolution such settlements will face: laws which fail to meet the needs of people are ultimately ignored. The second installment illustrated some of the factors which space settlement designers will have to deal with in adapting human habitats to the space environment. Not only physical needs will have to be met. New social and economic forces will shape the settlers' lives in unpredictable ways. Allowance has to be made for these as well as for the political structures which will evolve to meet these needs.

This brings us to the Great Political Question: where will ultimate control and authority reside? Who will be in charge here? This question will be asked in every generation and will be answered differently by the Russians, the Chinese, and other spacefaring peoples. Indeed, it is probable, at least in the beginning, that the more collective-minded peoples may have an evolutionary advantage in space and that Western peoples may suffer if they can't channel their individualism toward a collective goal (the frontier is a demanding teacher). The Russian legal scholar Vereschetin has indicated that the Russians believe the Outer Space Treaty does not protect the rights of private enterprise or natural persons because of its explicit emphasis on the public character of the Treaty's provisions (33). What form this challenge will take once colonies are up and operating remains to be seen.

Political power is fashioned out of four interactive elements: structure, mechanism, flexibility, and legitimacy. Americans will be especially concerned to ensure that there is room in the cosmos for democracy. Maximizing freedom in a hostile environment will be a daunting task that cannot be taken for granted.

To a biologist, structure equals destiny. Just as a mollusk can't take wing and fly, no society can be more than the potential inherent in its form. Although this is a truism, it is often forgotten. There are several reasons.

First, and perhaps most inimical to Western concepts, any real dispersion of authority in a space settlement runs the risk of being not only politically undesirable but absolutely fatal. Our proposed community should be designed so that its inhabitants have the political rights of citizens, the investment rights of stockholders, and the cultural and even familial adhesiveness of a clan or tribe.

In many ways, the atmosphere of a small settlement will be similar to a small, newly formed company. There will be the same idealism, the same false starts, fluid social structure, garbled directives from home base, challenges to appointed and unearned authority, potentially high turnover (if this is possible at all, given the settlement's location and delta-vee requirements). An important point to remember is that when political institutions are new, weak, inchoate, or under stress, personality is more important than bureaucracy in building a society, ad hoc solutions more valuable than formal procedures. We may yet see spaceborne equivalents of the Saudi monarch Ibn Saud or Kwame Nkrumah, perhaps even a Castro, in the nascent states on the high frontier.

Are there Earthside analogs to these structures? Perhaps space governments will initially resemble boards of directors and their citizens will resemble employee-stockholders. The settlers' rights and duties would then be spelled out in a contract, perhaps for a specific term of years, after which the contractee would have to decide whether to "re-up" for another hitch or leave on the next shuttle back to Earth. This would be one way of ensuring some continuity of skills in the settlement's formative years. Alternatively, the government could resemble the paternalistic state capitalist societies of Hong Kong or Singapore, although this is rather more unlikely until a vigorous inter-colony trade has begun. The truth may be closer to that of a company town, in which a single entity oversees all aspects of the settler's welfare.

If structure is the form that a political system takes, then mechanism is the flow of energy and information within the system — the metabolism of our hypothetical political animal. How things are done, or not done, will have crucial impact on the living styles and "character" of the settlement. Because of the enormous social inertia that habits, traditions, and rituals give to a society, first principles in designing the community are decisive. It is easier to change the design of a bridge while it is still on paper than it is when the last girders are being swung into place. So it is with communities. A good initial design will strengthen both in the end.

A systems analysis of a community will quickly show how important it is to have the lines of decision-making authority clear and visible. A community can hemorrhage if the information flows are obstructed. This would seem to favor American-sponsored communities with their free-for-all, multi-node communication networks, but the American penchant for dispersing power and forming goals by a lengthy consensus process may put them at a disadvantage against more overtly authoritarian systems. Heppenheimer has suggested the Panama Canal Zone authority as a model for social-political relationships (34). The Alaskan pipeline project might be an equally appropriate model. In both cases, the "management" had a strong sense of the goals of the organization and was able to infuse that sense of mission in the employees. In systems terms, the signal-to-noise ratio was high.

The traditional desire for maximizing freedom will have to be restrained in favor of physically consolidating the settlement. Desires for material gain will have to be submerged (for a time) in order for profits to be reinvested in the growth of the settlement, as in a new company. Other peoples may be more patient and willing to sacrifice. A long-term view will be essential.

The mechanism for control and decision making must be flexible and adaptable, yet tight enough to meet settlement needs promptly. A corporate-authoritarian model may be the best with some provision for evolution to a freer, more multiply-variable system. Systems engineers call this type of evolution progressive factorization; its effect is to detach and differentiate the elements of a system. Interestingly, such a process can lead either to growth or decay (35).

Space settlements will remain politically fragmented unless technology can reduce travel and communication times. Recall that nationhood became rampant in the 1400-1600's, when transoceanic trips took weeks to months. Today, national aspirations are epidemic among ethnically distinct peoples; the centrifugal pressures of nationalism will be even harder to resist when central government authority is dispersed across Solar System distances. Forseeable technology, especially nuclear fusion-pulse type rockets, could perhaps reduce trans-planet times to months by the mid-21st century. A year is an appreciable fraction of time to spend in travel, so federation between settlements won't occur (if ever) until trans-planet times are reduced to less than a year (communications are less limited). By then, cultural divergence may work against federation. It will be a race between propulsion technology and cultural divergence.

The long-term stability of our political system will depend on how flexible it can be within the initial structural constraints. Self-restoring, low-oscillation response to feedback is a major feature of stable systems with adaptive behavior as a characteristic. Our proposed community will probably be compact and well-integrated enough so that system response lag will be negligible. If our design is sound, then the system's response to such inputs as economic fluctuations, environmental stresses, political assassinations, major crimes, etc. will be smooth, predictable, and without the catastrophic response which could induce a "phase change" or chaotic degeneration to a more random or destructive condition. Modern catastrophe theory provides many tools to analyze system responses at discontinuities of a function's behavior; we will want to damp oscillations in our system, to provide a brake on system variation to avoid these discontinuities completely.

Perhaps a limited term charter, renewable and subject to periodic review, would be a good solution, but stability will still be needed and highly prized. Any settler's contract will probably specify terms of service with strong penalties for shipping out before the term is up (or perhaps outright prohibition). The skills each settler will bring will be too necessary for survival to make turnover or resignation easy.

We have mentioned the importance of legitimacy. If the governing authority is not seen as competent, fair, legally and morally invested with the right to command, and equitable, the results will almost certainly be disastrous. Mutinies and revolutions will be unlikely in the early years when crewmembers and settlers have a high degree of commitment to the ideals of the founders. It may also be suicidal in a hostile environment. But the transition from a politics based on Earthside ideas to a politics better adapted to frontier conditions will be tricky; the transfer of political legitimacy has generally been bloody on our planet.

In the beginning, legitimacy will surely derive from the originating authority: a national government, a corporation or consortium, some international organization. With the inevitable divergence, legitimacy may be transferred to those with the closest connection to the former authority, unless the divorce of settlement and homeland is bitter. Then the opposite may occur. Gradual estrangement between the colonists and the mother country (or company) is more problematic.

Marx claimed that power resides in those who own the means of production. The men and women who handle the colony's trade affairs will be in a position to have the most influence on the colony's prosperity. Their beliefs will have great impact. If there is a formal or informal council of trade, legitimacy may reside there since space settlements will depend heavily on trade.

To ease in the transition of the colony from dependence to independence (especially the transfer of legitimacy) and to define explicitly the role of the settlers in the context of a political-economic system, a formal Settler's Contract is needed. Ideally, it should be simple, brief, easy to understand and portable from one settlement to another (itself a novel idea; portable citizenship is a long way off for Earthside nations enamored of passports, visas, and immigration departments). The Contract should cover the following points of settler rights and obligations:

Rights

1. Settler would have the right of periodic (say once or twice an Earthside year) review and grievance of status within colony.

2. Settler would have full judicial and civil rights which must be guaranteed by colony (subject to emergency conditions) to include: speech, peaceful assembly, faith, trial by peers, due process in all proceedings, voting, appeal to founding authority, and no unreasonable search or infringement of privacy of person.

3. Settler would have right to supply of sufficient life support consumables.

4. Settler would have right to equivalent accommodations (adequate shelter equivalent to other settlers).

5. Settler would have right to defense against attack.

6. Settler would have right to share of profits earned by colony.

7. Settler would have right to purchase remainder of any residence contract after serving minimum requirement.

8. Settler would have right to non-prejudicial severance of residence contract after specified probationary period.

Obligations

1. Minimum full term of residence required (perhaps seven years).

2. Technical skills the settler must possess and maintain.

3. Performance/production/service standards the settler must maintain in his contribution to the colony (would the colony or founder retain rights to a settler's patentable ideas?).

4. Raw materials consumed by settler (air, water, food, etc.) must be in balance with materials produced by settler (perhaps colony will record mass balance of settler inputs and outputs).

5. Settler must agree to abide by decisions and directives of Governor, Director, and/or the council of peers.

6. Settler must not cause or permit human reproduction within the colony without approval of governing authority.

7. Settler must provide one-year advance notification of his intention to withdraw from colony, after residency requirement is satisfied.

Obviously, the worth of this Settler's Contract will be judged on how well it can be enforced, and on who enforces it. Russian, Chinese, and other space settlers will draw upon their own legal and ethical traditions in formulating similar arrangements; it's unlikely their governing documents will be guided by English common law. Still, it is important to establish a precedent that can be built upon and the governing authority, whether it is an Earthside government, some consortium of companies, or the colony itself, should be designed from the outset to provide as much room for individual initiative as possible. The colony will be more viable in the long run for it.

Given the creation of a viable society adapted to the unique conditions human settlers will face on the high frontier, what will the political landscape of the Solar System look like at the end of the 21st century? What can be said about the organization, the sources of power, the potential conflicts and shared values of human beings after a century of homesteading the Solar System?

Gary Hudson has written that nationhood in space may be more a state of mind than a piece of territory and citizenship something like being a stockholder (36). This places the concept of federation in a new light. Despite commonly held assumptions and the general tendency toward greater integration of larger and more complex systems, the union of disparate communities across Solar System distances will be slow, costly, difficult to achieve, and in the end perhaps unnecessary.

We have seen that cultural divergence works against federation. Barring unforseen developments in relativistic physics, settlements will never be in instant communication with each other. Message flow may resemble more the speeds of royal message runners in the Persian and Incan empires, taking minutes if not hours to traverse the distances between settlements. Modern technological societies could scarcely function without the ability to shift huge volumes of information nearly instantaneously; without up-to-date information on events in the "provinces," no ruler of trans-Solar System empires is going to know if his directives are being carried out. And at the other end of the chain of command, local governors will be reluctant to cede power to a ruling body that cannot have very good knowledge of current conditions.

Granted this is partly a matter of scale and perceived distance. The United States functioned as a nation in the late 18th century even given the poor highways and erratic (or worse) mail service. But space settlements will necessarily be high-technology environments, unaccustomed to information flows at 18th century speeds. Autonomy and self-reliance will be built in from the start (transportation times will be weeks to months — perhaps years), especially if we rely on self-replicating Santa Claus machines to do much of the dirty work for us. There will be strong economic, cultural, technological, and (given 21st century man's fierce desire for self-determination) political pressures working against centralized federation or nation-state type structures for a long time, at least as we think of nations today.

The upshot of all this is fragmentation. Just as Renaissance Italy was comprised of a swarm of roughly equal states, constantly bickering and trading with each other, the Solar civilization at 2100 AD will be dispersed. Earthside nations or alliances will still exert preeminent influence in orbits from several astronomical units (AU) inward toward the Sun. That influence will wane rapidly in the far more daunting vistas of the outer worlds. From the Main Belt asteroids outward, settlements will have to devote far too much energy to surviving and trading to consider consolidating in anything other than very tenuous alliances of convenience. The Polynesian seafarers who populated the scattered islands of the South Pacific never achieved any centralized federal government among their distant settlements. Likewise, it will be decades before any space settlement will have accumulated enough surplus capital to invest in political adventures.

Earthside history provides countless examples of political power vacuums. The end state of such vacuums varies. The withdrawal of the British from "east of Suez" was widely predicted to result in political chaos, upheaval and revolution throughout the Middle East. Certainly, considerable instability has resulted. But here the fragmentation has not resulted in the expansion of power of any one state to the position of regional dominance. There is a rough balance of power. So it will be with space settlements.

The seeds of empire will not grow well where distance and environment overwhelm technology. Space settlements will direct their resources to the accumulation of wealth; territorial gains will be meaningless on a frontier vast beyond imagination. The next installment of this article will examine the means and ends of such wealth.
PART IV: THE WEALTH OF SPACE NATIONS

We have examined in previous installments the legal environment, physical constraints, and political consequences of space settlement. Nothing will better ensure the growth and future of space settlements than a clear-headed recognition of the role they will play in the sphere of human economic activities. This means serving and supplying Earthside or near-Earthside markets in the beginning. Sober calculations of profit and loss will have to be made to ensure that demand for a product or service exists and that such a demand will last. The start-up costs of space settlements will be so high and the transportation and communication times so long that market continuity will be just as important as market volume in determining the success of these enterprises.

Like any islands, space settlements will trade among themselves because they have little choice. The resources necessary for life and prosperity are not always concentrated in favorable locations as they are on Earth. What commodities will they exchange and why will some colonies thrive while others fail completely?

A full analysis of the economically useful resources of the Solar System is outside the scope of this article. The broad outlines are clear enough though, especially given the assumption that in the beginning, the most profitable industries for these virgin colonies will be extraction and refining activities.

Virtually every industrially important mineral or metal is available somewhere in the Solar System, but mining camps will locate where the ore is most plentiful and easily attainable — as they always have. This would seem to rule out locating such a camp in a strong gravity well because the price of bulk ore is sensitive to transportation costs. A great deal of debate has been expended on the virtues of lunar versus asteroidal materials, but it seems safe to say that both sources will find their respective markets. Carbonaceous chondritic bodies in the Main Belt will be especially prized however for industrial developments in trans-Jovian space (a particularly strategic region of the outer Solar System for reasons which will be explained later) because of the abundance of water and other volatiles, which the Moon lacks, and because of their weak gravitational fields which permit less costly maneuvering from market to market.

The mineralogical transition of Solar System bodies from the metal-rich, rocky inner worlds to the lighter gas planets and water-carbon-nitrogen-laden outer planets and satellites should ultimately create a vigorous trade in basic commodities across the spacelanes. Settlements on or around the Moon will be deficient in hydrogen so an exchange of abundant lunar materials such as oxygen for hydrogen (or more likely water ice) for exports from asteroid communities will be mutually profitable. Better sources of carbon, nitrogen, and water ice will be developed in the Jupiter and Saturn systems to augment these trade flows (37). There is even a proposal to convert Ceres into a food exporting colony (38).

Given that settlements beyond Mars will have primarily raw element stock to sell, the trade flows will develop into an exchange of bulk value for manufactured value. Inner Solar System bodies other than the Moon are at a disadvantage from several perspectives: impulse requirements to remove materials from Earth, Venus, Mercury, or Mars are high and maneuvering deep in the Sun's gravity well is inherently more costly than it will be beyond the Main Belt asteroids.

The outer settlements are better located to ship large quantities of material "downhill" toward the Sun, a fortuitous circumstance since raw materials will be the major items of value these colonies have to export for the forseeable future. Conversely, the inner Solar System settlements, especially Earthside nations and communities in near-Earth space, will be better advised to add value by manufacture or some other conversion process or to ship effectively massless products such as information, rare medicines, and unobtainable luxuries against the Sun's gravity. Transporting items of low mass but high value will be the only way these settlements can compete until propulsion technology overcomes the long uphill climb more efficiently. To a good approximation, materials transfer costs will be equivalent to total velocity increment squared because fuel costs will be the primary recurring cost to be absorbed once the transport ships have been designed, built, and proven (39).

Perhaps a final word should be said about money. In any economic system, money is as money does. Money is anything people are willing to accept in exchange for goods, services, or debt. Ideally, it should be portable, convertible, easily recognized, or visible, not too defined as the ability to influence or impose one's will on another. In space, the ability to project power will be directly related to resources, trading skills, and strategic location. The haves and the have-nots will compete fiercely for advantage in the interplanetary marketplace of the twenty-first century.

Power will diffuse to the volatile-rich outer worlds, where water is more abundant and delta-vee requirements (except deep in the gravity wells of Jupiter and Saturn) not so great. Rivers and deepwater ports have channeled the growth of Earthside nations; in space, a position at the top of Jupiter's gravity well would be highly advantageous in gravity assist to other places. Remember that position in a gravitational potential field can be just as valuable a resource as any vein of gold.

This position at the "top of the hill" with respect to Jupiter's strong gravitational field will be the most strategic location in the Solar System away from near-Earth space. Here, minimal velocity changes and re-maneuvering back into high orbit will be simple to accomplish with judicious choice of orbits — not too deep in the gravity well and well outside the planet's radiation belts.

The situation is analogous to making use of favorable currents or sailing winds for a seaport or perhaps a strategic location like Singapore which is astride the plentiful sealanes, yet accessible to all.

In Solar System trade, water is just such a commodity. Water is crucial to life, its constituents are excellent rocket propellants, it can be transported in any of three different phases, is fairly easily convertible from one phase to another, and will be an important part of many manufacturing and refining processes. Its essential value is recognized and understood by all, and its presence cannot be taken for granted except on Earth since it may not always exist in economically useable form. Still, water is vital and a water-based standard of wealth makes sense.

Just as in the American West, lives may be lost and empires built over the question of who will control the water. That makes certain comets the equivalent of free flying mother lodes. Perhaps in time, a commodity exchange system or stock market will develop where settlers will own and trade shares of comets, as they do corn or cattle futures today, in the expectation that the water resources of a comet will be developed in the future. The outlines of future space fortunes can already be discerned.

Armed with an understanding of how trade flows will evolve and how wealth will be accumulated, the distribution of political power (closely related to economic power) can be seen in a clearer light. Power is transit lanes to two oceans. Effective political power will be as much a function of delta-vee potential at any given site as actual physical location. The outer moons of Jupiter (and Saturn, but especially Jupiter because of its proximity to the asteroids) will be highly prized as gateways to the Solar System. They will be no less important than the Panama or Suez Canals.

By extending this idea, it is clear that have-not communities will be more poorly located, requiring large delta-vee to get to and from them. As Gerard O'Neill pointed out to his Princeton physics classes, any planet-bound settlement will be at a disadvantage and not only gravitationally. The have-nots will likely be deficient in some critical resource or they will be dependent on trade of one main commodity, the demand for which is highly elastic. This may turn out to be metal producers more than volatile producers for the simple reason that metals are more easily substituted for than carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen compounds. Perhaps the surface of Mars, the larger asteroids, even the Earth's Moon, and free flying colonies inside of Earth's orbit, where maneuvering against the Sun's gravity would be energetically costly, will be at a competitive disadvantage against the smaller "outworld" settlements. The space inside one AU may well evolve into a stagnant backwater, valuable only as a source of raw mineral stock and inhabited (aside from Earth) only by hardy teams of prospector-explorers, many of them robotic automatons.

The stratification of wealth and economic influence portends much for the future of Solar System civilization. How well a community can meet its citizens' needs and aspirations is a true index of social and ultimately political stability. Communities of wealth will have many options; poorer settlements will have few. Upheaval and political revolution may be words too strong to describe the impact of simmering frustration. Perhaps mutiny is better. But with the accumulation and uneven distribution of wealth that seems unavoidable, the seeds of conflict are sown. The final installment of this article examines the forms this conflict may take.
PART V: THE COMING OF CONFLICT

The final installment of this article takes a look at the cause and forms of  
interplanetary conflict. Disputes, arguments, dissension, and hostilities will surely accompany human settlers into space, despite the best intentions of Earthside diplomats. What seems worth fighting over will vary according to different senses of value and ideology. And there seems little question that values will differ from one settlement to the next. Distance alone will see to that.

With the recognition of certain "Panama Canal Zones" in the strategy of space politics, conflict becomes inevitable. How and why will space communities fight?

The whole panoply of economic warfare weapons (cartels, denial of resources, interference with shipping, sabotage) will be the most cost-effective form of conflict between states. Unconventional warfare will prevail because maneuvering is so costly and distances and transit times so great.

To be sure, the growing cultural, even biological divergence, may mitigate conflict. Perhaps, for this reason, diversity should be encouraged. As Maruyama has pointed out, competition rarely occurs across species lines (40). But divergence takes time and Solar System distances may not be great enough to allow it. Human history shows little real tolerance for differences.

Since corporations, consortiums, and government-corporation associations will predominate in the early years, disputes are sure to arise over claims to specific bodies or locations, perhaps even selected orbits. Adjudication will be tried first in Earthside forums. But space law is vague in application.

If a competitor is seen to be threatening a breakthrough or a major strategic gain, a paramilitary force of on-the-spot-settlers might be formed, a sort of futuristic posse. Troop transport by some yet-to-be-organized Space Command would be out of the question given transit times, unless forward bases were set up — such would be costly and difficult to maintain. Perhaps cargo ships will do double duty as light cruisers or frigates with the capability of surreptitiously laying space mines to deny certain orbits to the enemy. Just as with the mining of the Red Sea in the summer of 1984, the identity of the perpetrators would be hard to establish.

Sabotage, espionage, and other forms of intelligence gathering and covert warfare will be the most useful in projecting force or influencing politics. Political terrorism will not long be confined to Earth. Perhaps even corporate support for piracy will be tried, as Queen Elizabeth financed Drake's harassment of the treasure-laden galleons of Spain. Ultimately, corporations and their colonies may invoke the protection of Earthside guarantor-states.

Will the US-China rivalry survive Solar System settlement? A great deal of energy has been expended recently on efforts to avoid carrying a new Cold War into space. The US-China competition will probably intensify until one or both has spent themselves or until a stronger force emerges to challenge them.

The rivalry, however, may dissipate itself in the vast distances of the outer Solar System, leaving behind a continuum of roughly equal settlements, trading and feuding and forming quickly shifting alliances. Fourteenth century Venice may be an appropriate model for an affluent, powerful space city-state at the end of the twenty-first century. The controllers of the crossroads, the great traders, and fleet operators should be in preeminent positions at the turn of the century. They will congregate among natural and artificial worlds at the top of Jupiter's gravity well. And if these commercial-cum-politico-military settlement-spaceport-mining camp-cargo ship fleet owners should ever find a way to federate, their position may well challenge that of Earthside nations themselves. They could dominate everyone in this Solar System from their newest, richest, grandest City on the Hill.

The people of space will be just as complex and contradictory in the values they hold as Earthsiders, maybe more so. The beliefs they find important will evolve from the conditions they face in making their communities work; what doesn't work will be quickly discarded. Just as with the initial settlement design, first principles or first traditions will have powerful cumulative effects as the settlement matures. By understanding the psychic environment the settlers will face, we can channel the growth of their values toward beneficial rather than destructive ends.

There is a unique psychology to life at the edge of civilization. Bluth has pointed out similarities between spaceflight and life aboard submarines, oil drilling rigs, and Antarctic research crews (41). Living with the daily stresses of a new environment will tax every skill humans can bring to bear. Life will be much more intense and every decision will have immediate, perhaps dramatic, consequences. Humans will have to be every bit as alert as when they first descended from the trees. In the truest sense, exploration is a reaffirmation of timeless human values; it is life engaged in living.

There are four principal parts to this kind of existence that will shape the values of space settlers and explorers. First must be the constant stress of living with the unknown and the uncertain. How settlers cope with this stress will vary but most of the strategies will feature some kind of displacement process. In his book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler introduced us to the medical-biological impact of accelerating novelty, diversity, and transience in our lives (42). The adaptation syndrome became famous in the early 1970s; space settlers will face similar stresses. One of Toffler's prescriptions was to engineer a number of "future enclaves" where scenarios of new life styles could be acted out and studied. The idea has merit for space settlements as well.

Human settlers in space will sublimate their fears in work and ritualize their concerns in myth. Work will be constant and at times overwhelming and leisure time nonexistent. Preoccupation with the demands of survival will help them submerge their fears. Those fears will surface in the settlers' mythology though. Myths may center on a longing for union, stability, and closeness. A popular subject will be the human diaspora into space itself, complete with Exodus-like tales and a return of the literature of heroic adventure. Sagas of the greatest explorers, ballads of violent deaths in the frigid wastes of the outworlds, these will be stories that capture our settlers' imaginations.

A second aspect of life at the edge of civilization will be the need for constant adaptation to change. As Toffler showed, change is stressful and coping painful. Any living system subjected to repeated stress becomes sensitized to that type of stimulus with consequent maladjustment to other stimuli and deleterious effects on system stability. This type of response in humans is the essence of one of our oldest impulses: the desire to tame nature, to control change in our lives. Such impulses may propel our settlers' desire to achieve ultimate control through terraforming and planetary engineering.

The third aspect of frontier psychology is an ever-present and constantly reinforced awareness of the nearness of death. Space dwellers will treasure life, in every form, more than any Earthsider ever could. Already, Russian cosmonauts and U.S. astronauts have reported the pleasure they get from tending tiny vegetable gardens aboard the International Space Station. Radishes, onions, and other sturdy plants are tended even during off-days; contact with growing, living things seems to go a long way toward relieving the sterility of their environment. The nearness of death will bring out feelings of nurturing and protectiveness in space settlers. Farming may become an important part of their mental health and the attitude of the settlers toward life-threatening crimes may be particularly harsh.

The final characteristic may ultimately become the dominant one. Biological separation from Earth will induce profound yet scarcely imaginable differences in values. We can only guess at some of them. Space dwellers may well adopt Earthside fads or cultures even more zealously than Earth-dwellers in order to reaffirm their essential humanness. Anglophilia survived in America after the Revolutionary War precisely because it was a ready-made culture that surrounded the colonists with the comfortable and the familiar in an otherwise strange and threatening land. The Chinese have consistently transported their culture wherever they went.

A yearning for home and a deeply embedded racial memory of Earthside natural cycles will remind the settlers of the gulf that separates them, and thus, these memories may be enhanced, perhaps artificially, to relieve a growing sense of alienness and estrangement. They will surely treasure any physical artifact from Earth, the more exotic and useless, the better. The garbage of visiting merchants may someday wind up in museums.

Space dwellers will not be Americans, Russians, Chinese, Frenchmen, or Indians. Such national identity consciousness will fade without the reinforcement of daily interaction with the homeland, and artificial or traditional enhancements will only delay the inevitable. The politics of the high frontier will be forged on the high frontier and will deal with the fears, concerns, hopes, and aspirations of the settlers in their new homes. Nations may well evolve in space, if not some even more efficient political system we can hardly conceive of, because human beings are still social creatures. But whatever form the political systems of the Solar System take, we cannot assume that they will resemble our own or even that we will like the outcome. As mature parents, we must recognize, as Tsiolkovski aptly put it, that children cannot remain in the cradle forever.

The Fundamental Space Act of former Representative Newt Gingrich (R-GA) was an effort to deal with the needs and concerns of future US citizens in space. The Act, introduced as HR 4286 in 1981 to the US House of Representatives, sought to incorporate language from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 in providing for, in the words of a letter Gingrich circulated to Congressmen in July 1981, "government of Americans in space, including their constitutional protection, the establishment of a territorial government, and its eventual statehood." This type of legislation and future bills like it deserve your strong support.

Additional legislation is now needed throughout the Western world to better define a mechanism by which Americans and other peoples can directly participate in the fruits of space development. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Participant Astronaut program for Shuttle flights was a good and necessary example, albeit limited in scope. We should also begin debate on a bill that would provide all freedom-loving peoples with a chance to claim and develop a piece of the high frontier, either individually or collectively, a sort of Space Homestead Act. The bill should explicitly recognize the right of this and other nations to exercise functional sovereignty over specific physical locations in space and ultimately to deed ownership (or perhaps, to satisfy international sensitivities, stewardship) of these locations to natural and legal citizens with the proviso that a certain amount of development and improvement must occur in a given time for the deed to become effective.

Obviously, this proposal will be controversial, but recall that cultural inertia becomes difficult to overcome once a civilization has matured. First principles are critical to preserving in space settlements the heritage of freedom we have fought for on Earth. It is possible to design consciously a society from the start; we have the Pilgrims' Mayflower Compact as an early US example. Leaving enough room for future evolution, it is not too soon to start thinking about what principles we would like to encourage in our space settlements.

What can you do to bring this about? Three things are needed to put us on the road toward the kind of political systems we want to develop. First, decisively reject the argument that there are limits to growth. The philosophy behind this thinking is poisonous to space (or any kind of) exploration, to freedom and maximum choice, and to any kind of desirable future. Second, talk up frontier consciousness. Communicate to everyone who will listen that the frontier is the cutting edge of human evolution. Without frontiers, we are destined to extinction as a species. We can no longer grow without fouling our own nest, and without growth, there is no life.

Finally, support legislators and other political, business, and spiritual leaders with the vision to implement a far-reaching program for space settlement. Their influence will be critical in the years ahead: we must find ways to provide leverage for their efforts to have the maximum effect on a largely inert population.

Without you, nothing can be done. Your ability to mobilize enthusiasm for the work ahead is vital if Americans, Canadians, Europeans, and free peoples everywhere are not to abdicate their responsibility both to their ancestors who fought for freedom and for their children who have yet to enjoy it. Anything less than full commitment will not be enough to ensure the future we desire.

Bibliography

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2. "Beyond Earth," Gary Hudson, Galileo, Vol. 9. 1979, p. 22-26.

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15. Myers

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About the Author

Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses...just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He's been happily married for 28 years. He's also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Pekingese named Chance.

For technical and background details on his series _Tales of the Quantum Corps_ , visit his blog at http://qcorpstimes.blogspot.com. For details on other books and other series such as _Quantum Troopers_ and _Time Jumpers_ , visit his website at <http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt> or learn about other books by Philip Bosshardt by visiting www.smashwords.com.

Download the first exciting episode in the _Quantum Troopers Return_ series from www.smashwords.com. It's called **Fab Lords** ," available at Smashwords.com or other fine ebook retailers on February 7, 2020.

To get a peek at Philip Bosshardt's upcoming work, recent reviews, excerpts and general updates on the writing life, visit his blog _The Word Shed_ at: http://thewdshed.blogspot.com.

