 
# Alder's World

# Part 1: Mass 17

Joel Stottlemire

Story: Copyright 2015

Settings and Characters: Creative Commons 3.0 BY-SA

Cover Art: "The Cube" by Gavin Revitt

Published by: The Dryden Experiment

ISBN 13: 9781310114281

TOC

Introduction

The First Drop

Maelstrom Rising

Maelstrom

Alone in the Dark

Potted

Mutiny

Revelation

Old Friends

Divisions

Tomb

Stress

Small Talk

Fire

Optimism

The Ceremony

Face of the Future

Human Nature

Needs

Descent

### Introduction:

I have always been a lover of all things text. I always had my head buried in a book growing up. As a form of punishment I would have my books taken away for an afternoon. (Pure torture, I tell you!) The thought of getting rid of or giving away any of my precious books would cause anxiety fits. So, my brother got me a ebook reader. I got hooked on ebooks and discovered independent authors. I knew you could leave reviews, but never thought much of it. Then I started befriending some of these amazing authors and realized that they need reviews. It helps them make money. And it's a vicious cycle. The more money they make writing, the more they write, the more I can read. See, not an altruistic bone in my body. What can I say, I'm a greedy bookworm. I read most anything. I find something fascinating about most books. I do have some genres that are harder for me to get into, but hey, a good book is a good book. I tried to write reviews as I read them, but I was really a bad reader because I continued inhaling books without writing the reviews. An author friend of mine suggested I start a blog. And that's how I came to be here.

When I started writing book reviews on my blog Textual Love (http://www.textuallove.wordpress.com), I came across a post by Joel asking for someone to read and review his book "Seasons of Fire: The Child of Light and Dark." I decided to give it a shot and wrote my review. I contacted Joel giving him the links to the reviews and asking where all he wanted reviews posted. Apparently, he liked my review because soon after, he requested that I review "Flash Master: A Dryden Experiment", his collection of macabre, sci-fi stories. I'll admit, I was slightly hesitant at first because 1.) I'm a book worm and am always greedy for more, so short stories are just a tease and 2.) I'm not a really huge sci-fi fan. Many times sci-fi writers are so interested in the worlds that they build that they forget about the characters that inhabit them. But I figured, why not. If I don't like it, I don't like it and will review it as such. But I did like it. Some stories icked me out. Some made me giggle. Some I was content with the size and others left me wanting more. Chapter One of Alder's World was included in the collection and I definitely wanted more. I wanted to know how they got where they did. I wanted to know what it was that they were dealing with. I wanted to know what happened next. I was NOT satisfied with that small chapter. So I messaged Joel, lamenting about how there needs to be more. And Joel doesn't like to disappoint....

-Tracy Vincent

Textual Love

4/27/2015

### "The First Drop"

Lieutenant Commander Alder tapped nervously on the screen in front of him, flipping back and forth between external camera views. All the cameras showed different views of the same thing, "Mass 17" a mess of strings and ropes half the size of Jupiter but only maybe two thirds the mass of Earth. It was weird, too weird for Alder. In fourteen years as chief science officer for the LOP Duster, he'd seen a lot of weird things; planets in counter rotational orbits, biospheres composed entirely of Sulfur eating sludges, he'd even watched two stars smack into each other from a distance of only one light year. But, he'd never seen anything that he couldn't explain with good old Terran physics.

Alder's face was youthful for his forty-five years. Only the grey in the stocky hair of his temples gave any hint that he was over forty. His face mostly remembered his Asian ancestors. It was broad and golden toned. His nose was high though, and not very wide; the result of Irish or other European stock. Like most people of the age, he was a mix. People who grew up on one planet or another sometimes couldn't even remember what parts of Earth their families were from. Though he'd moved from planet to planet as a child and had never been to Earth, he found it fascinating to look at a globe and think, "Someone crawled into a space ship here or here." It was an odd curiosity but he knew, with some certainty, where the Earth homes of at least five of his ancestors were.

He grimaced and tapped another control. He'd been a lot younger when he approached the League of Planets to request inclusion in one of their deep space missions; young and excited to see what was new, to be part of the first wave of human explorers to leave the star systems around Sol. Now, fourteen years later and more than a thousand light years from the ancestor planet, League Prime or anywhere else humans lived, he liked things to be canny. The ship was older, he was older. While 3-d printers ranged around the ship meant that they could remake almost anything machine that broke and similar technology in the medical bay meant that he could be largely rebuilt as well, the odds still being alive when Captain Pilton finally turned for home went up when things were canny and predictable.

The planet sized ball of space yarn he was studying was as uncanny, even creepy, as it could get. At first, as of yet unnamed Star System -89.6, 1.44, 1107.3 hadn't seemed that unusual; mid aged protoplanetary disc around a fairly new Class A star. It wasn't until the Duster actually got into the system that things started turning up funny. First, there was the number of protoplanets, there were 914, which was completely impossible. Second, the computer had worked out somehow that all 914 masses currently spread helter-skelter around the system, would eventually intercept each other and settle down into only two massive gas giant planets each orbiting less than half the distance from the Earth to the sun – also impossible.

The final weirdness was that the protoplanets weren't protoplanets at all. The object on his screen was everything you'd expect to find in a protoplanetary disk; lots of dust, a fair array of gasses, some metals but it was neither swirling around nor settled into a planet. Something, no one knew what, was holding millions of tons of what could have been an Earth like planet strung out like metal filings around a magnet. Radar showed that there was a tiny, solid dot in the middle but gave no clue about what it might be. The only instrument that was giving any indication of what could be holding the thing together was the gravity wave detector and the things it was saying would give any sane physicist nightmares.

"It has to be alien intelligence." Alder had insisted at the command meeting a few days before.

"How can you be so sure?" Captain Pilton had asked, gazing out of the conference room window at the dark mass in the sky, moodily lit by the blue, white star. His smooth skinned, boyish face bore a jagged scar from shrapnel he'd picked up off a failed pressure container a few years before but his voice was steady and his eyes a clear, steel blue. "There are a lot of natural phenomena that produce orderly patterns, spontaneous alignments in crystals for example."

Alder rubbed the back of his hand against the stubble on his chin. This was really just rhetorical. Once Pilton got curious about something, you investigated. He'd been selected to captain a science vessel in deep space because he was naturally curious and now, twice a far from Earth as any previous ship, he showed no signs of letting up. Alder sighed and had a go anyway. "Sure, nature produces a diamond every now and then, but these masses are two orders more complex. One, there's no known force that could be holding so much mass in those weird knots. The only possible comparison is Make Make and Dark Companion, also never explained. Two, nature doesn't send 914 objects on a course that will randomly form two almost identical gas giants. It has to be alien intelligence."

"I'm confused." The voice was Tallen, the stocky, usually grouchy, chief of security. "I thought the two planets weren't going to form for hundreds of thousands of years."

"Right." Alder agreed. "though it appears the some of the larger masses may be smaller masses that have already intercepted each other.

"Then how long have these balls been floating around?"

Alder licked his lips. "This is all new science, but it looks as if these masses started forming almost 1.2 million years ago."

There was a silence in the room. "You're suggesting that an alien life form visited this star system more than a million years ago and rearranged it so that it would form gas giant planets eons later?" The question came from Wei, the ship's chief systems officer.

"Yes." Alder sighed. "Yes. That's what I'm suggesting. It looks like they started a process that is meant to complete once the star gets to a more stable point in its lifecycle."

The silence returned. Everyone glanced at the Captain. He stared out at Mass 17 as if he could discern his secrets with his piercing stare. Alright." He said finally. "We're an exploration ship. Let's explore. Martin," he spoke to the ship's pilot, "you say you can fly the scout through the dust?"

"Yes, Captain. The cloud is massive but not dense. We should be able to fly all the way to the object in the middle. We should be able to get a good look anyway."

A good look? Alder glanced at the life support readouts on Martin and the two crew members who'd flown into Mass 17 with him. None of their displays showed any activity. Whatever it was they were looking at was playing merry hob with their radio transmitters. He'd heard no word for more than two hours. He was tapping the screen again when he was interrupted by a hissing noise.

Switching to another screen he slid up a control and was pleased to see Martin's face, his yellow, curly hair almost obscuring his eyes where it was trapped under his helmet. "Lance One to Dust. Lance One to Dust."

"This is Dust. Go ahead." Alder said. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the life support readouts for the crew coming on one by one.

"Yeah. We're on the surface. There's a lot of static electricity in the cloud. It blanked us out. I've switched to the microwave transmitter. It doesn't seem to be affected by the storm."

Alder glanced at a camera above his workstation. Although he was deep in the science station at the base of the ship, he knew Pilton and the others were watching from the bridge. "Surface? What surface?"

"We're down on the central object. It's got half a G worth of gravity."

"Half a G on an object that small? It's not possible."

"Yeah, I know." Martin agreed. "But here we are."

"I'm not getting any environment data on this line. Do you have a visual feed for me?"

"Better than that." Martin grinned. "I've got the ring on my helmet going. You're going to want your mask."

"You can see something?" The sensors on Lance One were reporting but the data Alder was getting didn't make much sense.

"Just put on your mask." Martin grinned again. His face was big and gave a loose, friendly smile.

Reaching to his right, Alder grabbed a visor/headset and slipped it over his graying temples. Immediately he was greeted by a 360 degree view of the inside of Lance One's cockpit thanks to a dozen tiny cameras in a ring around Martin's helmet. He looked around. "Very nice." He said. He'd years before gotten used to the idea that he could "see" out the back of Martin's head.

"Yeah. Just wait. Jinx and Pakerson are already inside."

"Inside?"

"Yeah, inside." Alder waited while Martin made his way through the Lance's air lock. His brow furrowed when Martin emerged into the strange space beyond.

"What am I looking at?" He asked peering around in the gloom. The scene was dark, lit only by the Lance's landing lights.

"I'm not sure." Martin's heavy breathing came over the line with his voice. "We landed on a surface, some kind of weird polymer. Pakerson did a reading. I don't know what she saw but it sure turned her on. Whatever this thing is, it isn't nearly big enough to justify a half-g. I flew all the way around it before we landed. The diameter is just over two kilometers."

"Around? It's a sphere?"

"It's a sphere all right with regular bumps and openings. Check this out."

The screen went blurry as Martin swung around and dipped suddenly below the surface.

"Are you getting this?" Alder asked the bridge while waiting for the image to clear.

"Roger." Came Pilton's breathless reply.

"Okay. So I'm sliding down the wall of this sort of canyon. There are maybe twelve of them spread evenly around the equator of the sphere. I think they must be some kind of wave guide or something because the gravity is stronger here. I'm experiencing almost a full-G right now pulling me toward the sides of the canyon and also down. I'll be able to stand again when the canyon turns slightly at about 300 meters."

Gravity wave guides were beyond human technology but Alder could imagine it at least. "Roger. Where does it lead?"

"Almost there. I'm back on my feet. It's as if I'm stumbling down a steep incline."

From inside the virtual mask, Alder almost felt as if he were traveling down the deep canyon with Martin. He could just make out the canyon rim high above him and was dazzled by the rhythmic texture on the walls as Martin's lights played around. He found himself matching the rhythm of Martin's breathing.

"Do you remember that hike we took through that Keyhole canyon on Gayson?" Martin asked.

"Yeah sure." Alder agreed. "Binary star system, real water vapor clouds, blinding swarms of alien bugs. It was beautiful. Made me wish we had dates with us."

"Come on princess." Martin chided. "You know you'd been working for months to get a little alone time with me."

Alder snorted. "I should have left you with the bugs. They were the one's trying to get into your suit."

Martin laughed. "There is one thing that could have made that hike better. It could have ended in a sight like this."

Alder gasped when the space in front of Martin opened suddenly. The walls vanished and he found himself staring around a vast, round room. Pakerson and Jinx in their pressurized suits looked like glittering beetles in the darkness. Openings like the ones that Martin had just come out of appeared at regular intervals around the circumference as far as the three crew members' feeble lights were able to illuminate. It was what was in the vast space that his mind refused to comprehend.

"How big is it?" He finally managed to ask.

"We measure it at 93.6 meters to a side and it's perfectly smooth." Pakerson broke in, glancing over her shoulder from where she and Jinx were setting up equipment.

"Exactly square?"

"Exactly. Each plane 93.6 meters." Pakerson's calm voice hid any excitement.

"A perfect cube inside a sphere. That's intelligence." Alder mused, staring through Martin's helmet. The thing that towered over Pakerson and Jinx, was silver black, faintly metallic; a massive, perfect cube floating in the darkness "What's holding it up?"

"We kind of think it is up." Martin chimed back in. "We think it's generating those nuts gravity waves we've been reading. There's a rhythm to its energy output. Up down every few tenths of a second and the gravity in here is funky. I'm at half a G now pointed toward my feet but Pakerson and Jinx are almost neutral. It's like there are gravity wave forms around the room."

Alder's brain spun. For a second he was caught in the vertigo of the huge room his crew mates were in.

"All right. Uhh. What sort of energy signals are you getting?"

"Not much." Pakerson answered. "There's some low level electrical output but we can't detect whatever is generating the gravity...other than the fact that we're experiencing gravity. Jinx has almost got the sensor array online."

Breathless moments passed while Jinx and Pakerson worked with the scientific instrument and the cube hung before them in omnipresent silence. Finally, a light turned green and the machine flared to life.

"Okay." Pakerson started narrating, her tall, athletic frame towering over Jinx and the sensor set. "Radar is unable to pierce the object. Looks like we've got a surface of some kind of ceramic, but we do detect some energy sources inside, very faint. We'll have to take a closer look later at a higher power setting. There's a little bit of gas in here with us. Just traces of Oxygen and Hydrogen."

The video on Alder's mask shuddered slightly. "What was that?"

"I don't know." Martin's voice shot back. "The whole place just gave a little shake."

"Do you think they heard us?" Jinx laughed nervously.

"We've got changes." Pakerson reported. "An electrical current just ran over the surface of the cube. Small, a few microvolts, but the surface is heating."

"Heating? How?"

"Ummm." Pakerson seemed confused.

"There's a chemical reaction taking place." Jinx jumped in. "Just a sec."

"Look up." Alder ordered. "Martin, look up at the cube."

Martin complied, his lights playing on the shadowy form. "Hey, I think they did hear us. The surface is changing, just a little. Can you guys see it? It's like a texture is forming or...wait, it's getting wet."

"Surface temperature climbing. Oh." Pakerson gasped. "A power source just activated inside the cube. Maybe twenty volts. Chemical battery maybe."

"What chemicals are active at these temperatures?" Jinx mused back.

"What do you mean wet?" Alder asked. "It's 100 degrees below freezing in there."

"I'm going to get closer." Martin's cameras bobbed and weaved as he made his way through the strange gravity. "It may just be the optics but the surface looked dry a minute ago and now it looks wet."

"Be careful." Alder said, pointlessly.

Martin grunted as he struggled through the lumpy gravity to get closer to the nearest point of the cube.

"Is there any water?" He asked.

"No." Came Pakerson's tense reply. "But the Oxygen level is rising. Also, some other trace gasses. Surface temperature is up 10k from initial readings."

Martin's lights were playing up and down the surface of the cube from about a meter away. "It really looks wet you guys. Are you seeing this?"

Alder grunted. "Yes. The reflectivity has changed. Look around. Are there any other changes in the cube?"

"Hey yeah." Martin's lights moved down to the finely formed point of the cube. "There's a drop forming here."

As Alder watched, a single drop, black in Martin's lights, fell off the point of the cube and drifted lazily down to the surface of the sphere below where it vanished in the glare.

"This is tunneling." Pakerson announced.

Several half remembered papers on low temperature chemistry bustled into Alder's mind. "Tunneling? Are you sure?"

"It has to be. There are several processes happening here one of which is chlorination of ammonia."

"It is waking up." Alder muttered to himself.

"Uh guys?"

"Okay Pakerson, I need this data. Can you ask the sensor array to pass data to your suit? That should get the data sent here."

"Guys!" Martin's voice interrupted.

Glancing up, Alder gasped. Thousands of kilometers away but seemingly right before him, Martin's left hand was in the lights. A tiny dot of the black liquid was hissing and writhing on his fingertip like water on hot grease. Images flashed before Alder's mind; the incident on solar comet 2196 A. A University of Mars researcher's self replicating nanobots had gone amok and replicated the entire comet out of existence in a matter of hours.

"Martin, get that off your finger now! You're boiling it with your lights!" It was too late. With a hiss and a squeal, the nanobots ate through the outer layer of Martin's suit.

"What the hell man?"

"Don't hold your breath!" Pakerson shouted. "Let the suit adjust to the pressure loss."

"Get it off your finger!" Alder shouted. "You're too hot."

"I'm too hot? What?"

"Just do it!"

Martin cursed, flung himself down, and began scraping his hand back and forth furiously on the floor of the sphere.

"Turn everything on his suit off." Alder ordered Pakerson and Jinx who were clumsily bounding up behind Martin.

"Why?" Jinx asked.

"Those are self-replicating nanobots. The hotter they get, the faster they eat." Cool him off.

The squeal from Martin's suit was growing and he grunted in pain. "My ears."

"Just don't hold your breath." Pakerson demanded, trying to grab his swinging arm. "Let the suit adjust."

"I've got an emergency bubble." Jinx offered, pulling at the belt on his spacesuit. "Get him to hold still."

"Forget the emergency bubble." Alder barked. "We've got to get it off of him first."

"It hurts." Martin complained.

"Just keep breathing. Your ears will adjust."

"No." Martin protested. "My finger. My finger hurts."

Pakerson held Martin's hand up into the light. The drop was gone, replaced by a hissing hole in the index finger of the suit. As they watched, a thin stream of red, frozen instantly by the extreme cold, began jetting out with the gas from inside.

"Hold him still." Jinx demanded.

"No!" Alder yelled. He swung his head to the right. "Computer! Priority voice authorization. Alder Samuel C. Respond."

"Lieutenant Commander Alder Samuel C, priority authorized." The computer responded emotionlessly.

"Sam, what are you doing?" Pilton's voice jumped on the line.

Alder ignored him. "Computer. This is a level one biological emergency. Subject Martin, Caleb A. is infected with a pathogen type seven, type three, possibly type nine. Confirm."

The computer began reciting the information back but Alder spoke over it. "Officers Pakerson and Jinx, subject Martin, Caleb A is a level one biological threat as is your environment." Red lights began flashing around the science bay." You are to exit the area immediately. Repeat evacuate immediately."

"What? and just leave him?" Jinx asked.

"Fuck that." Came Pakerson's reply.

"What the hell Sam?" Martin asked, his voice squealing as the suit struggled to keep up with growing gas leak.

"I'm...I'm sorry. Pakerson and Jinx you are ordered to leave now."

"No way. I'm not leaving him." Jinx knelt over Martin, the plastic emergency bubble in his hands.

"Carol." Alder, plead to Pakerson. "Carol, you need to look up now."

As Pakerson turned, her lights moved up into the nightmare Alder knew she would see. The surface of the cube had dissolved, turning in only a few seconds into a writhing, swirling cloud.

"What the...?" She gasped. "What is it?"

"Just run!" Alder ordered. "Just run!"

### "Maelstrom Rising"

Alder sat at the conference room table just off the bridge with his head in his hands staring at the desktop. Eighteen hours? Had it been eighteen hours? More like three years and eighteen hours maybe since the cube had woken, Martin had been killed, and Lance One had fallen silent. Surely the agonizing eternity that Alder had spent in the exo-science bay, pouring over radio channels, searching for any sign that Pakerson and Jinx were still alive had been more than eighteen hours. Of course the hours wouldn't have been so long if he didn't secretly already know the truth. His battery of sensors told him the real story. Something amazing was happening in the core of Mass 17. What had been a hard blip deep inside the structure was now a ball, a diffuse and growing ball. From this range and with the electrically charged ropes of gas and dust between them, there were as many questions as answers but one thing was clear; the nanobots didn't just eat a hole in Martin's suit, and they didn't just eat everything in the sphere. The cloud itself was being consumed, transformed into something new. The acidic ball in his gut reassured him that some small part of that something new was made from the remains of Martin, Pakerson, and Jinx.

"So how long are we without contact?" Captain Pilton asked.

"Seventeen hours and twelve minutes."

Alder gritted his teeth. No not three years, not even eighteen hours yet. He hated himself. Eighteen hours was the Oxygen capacity left in Pakerson and Jinx' suits when contact was lost. He hated himself because he was waiting for the others to realize that in twenty-eight minutes they could all relax.

"And we're sure they never reboarded the Lance?" Pilton had lost crew before. If this was hitting him as hard as it was hitting Alder, he wasn't going to show it here.

"No." Com Tech. Reilly, who had been asked to join the meeting answered. "We're not sure. The last data that the Duster transmitted indicated that it was still in contact with Pakerson's suit. She was about twenty meters from the ship at that time..." Her voice drifted off. She and Pakerson were good friends who had served together for many years on research teams.

"And she was still alive and moving toward the ship?"

"We can't tell if she was moving, but yes you can hear her...respiring...on the recording." She didn't mention that the breathing she heard was the ragged gasps of her good friend, half mad with terror fleeing for her life.

"Where was Jinx?"

"He was still in the area around Martin. We lost contact with him about three minutes before last transmission." Reilly paused again.

Lieutenant Commander Mbaka, Alder's equivalent from engineering picked up. "The information we got from his suit is consistent with catastrophic decompression."

The inside of Alder's head felt fluttery like there was a small bird flying around in it. 'Catastrophic decompression?' How was that better than saying 'eaten alive through a thousand pinholes in your spacesuit?'

Pilton eyed Mass 17 through the viewing plate as if the last eighteen...seventeen hours and thirteen minutes hadn't happened. "So, at last contact we have one survivor within twenty meters of safety, but no contact since."

No one answered.

"Let's go get her." Pilton went on. "I want both remaining scouts deployed in the cloud with any instruments that might be able to detect Lance One. Let's commit the radar probes and the passive electronics. I want Guadalupe Gibson to pilot one of the scouts. She did the modifications of the passive gear. Also..."

"She's not there." Alder grumbled at the table top. No one heard him.

"Get Vorhees out of the lab. I want him on the other scout. He's piloted in adverse conditions before."

"She's not there."

"I want preprogrammed paths for all the probes. I don't want our scouts to get in there and then waste a lot of time looking for..."

"She's not in there!" Alder shouted, banging both fists on the table.

Everyone jumped.

"Why do you say that?" Security chief Tallen asked, his already dour face pinched with anger.

"She can't be." Alder explained, aware of Reilly's eyes on him. "Look. We don't know who programmed the nanobots or why. But we do know they're self-replicating and we know that they..."

"How do we know that they're self-replicating?" Tallen asked.

"That's what that was on Martin's suit. You saw it, the way it ate in. Whatever those bots need to replicate, our suits have a lot of. You saw how quickly..."

"I think it was an attack." Tallen leaned forward, he was a tall man and even seated at the table his lean was imposing. "I think the cube detected the radar Pakerson was using, thought it was a threat and attacked. I think there's a good chance she survived if she got to the ship."

"That's not how nanobots work"

"Suddenly you seem to know a lot about a technology we just met?" Tallen's statement sounded like a question.

"It's nanobots. They are really simple machines. They have to be because they're too small to do any advanced programming. You build one to fuse Carbon to Lithium. You build another to snare water molecules. Self-replicators grab the same elements they're made out of and make more of themselves, sort of like wandering DNA. Those nanobots came out of that cube pre-built to eat something that there was a lot of in Martin's suit. It happened fast because they were designed to work in cold space and Martin's suit was white hot by comparison."

"Why does that mean Carol is dead?" Reilly asked. "She could have made it to the ship."

"Yes, but the ship's hull is made of almost exactly the same material as the outer layer of the suits. If those little..." He searched for the right word, "Technoprey ate through our spacesuits in a matter of a few seconds, getting on the ship didn't help Pakerson." He found he had stood up while speaking. He had been awake for almost twenty hours before the incident and found he was swaying on his feet. "Sorry." He said to Reilly.

"Thank you." Pilton said coldly. "I think we understand the danger but we don't leave crew behind."

"She's not there! And even if she was, you couldn't help her." Alder punched frantically at the console in front of him, well aware that his voice was sounding hysterical. A round holograph of Mass 17 rose up from the table. "This is how the object looked when we first scanned it. It's a physical impossibility but you can clearly see that the density of the object remains fairly consistent until you reach the small point in the middle; the sphere Martin landed on. This," he touched his monitor, "is what the mass looks like now. There is no sign of the hard central mass. It has been replaced by growing bands of some other, electrically charged material."

"So?" It was Tallen.

"So. Those are the nanobots. The static electricity in the cloud is being used by the nanobots to turn the gas and dust into more nanobots and God knows what else." His voice was rising steadily. Seventeen hours and fifteen minutes.

"So?"

"So. Going in there is a suicide mission! Suicide! If even one of those things gets on the hull of the scout it's just a matter of time till..." The words 'catastrophic decompression' and the sound of Martin's last, squeaking pleas for help as Jinx struggled with the bubble crashed in his head and nothing came out. His mouth opened and closed. Hot tears rose in his stinging eyes.

Pilton spoke over the stunned silence of Alder's tears. "Thank you for that observation Lieutenant Commander. You are relieved of duty."

Alder sank into his chair and let black grief roll over him as Dr. Thomas rose from his seat and came around to help him.

Seventeen hours and sixteen minutes.

### "Maelstrom"

Polyfiber...Fibrous...Thick...Alder's mouth felt thick and pasty...and cottony, that was the word...cottony. He smacked his lips and swallowed as consciousness slowly rolled back into his head. He made a guttural sound. The bed seemed very deep and warm.

"Hey. There you are." Elana's voice came from across the room.

Alder's arms felt heavy like fat sausages. "What happened?" He asked as her head came into view.

"Dr. Thomas gave a little bit of a sedative." She said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

"A little bit?" Alder asked, forcing his unwieldy body to roll over onto its side.

Elana brushed her hand across his forehead. Her touch was as soft as it had been when he first felt it sixteen years ago during a crew training drill that had left the two of them alone in an escape pod for about an hour too long. "You had a really hard day the other day. He just wanted to make sure you were going to sleep."

A scowl crossed Alder's face as awareness tried to force its way back in between his ears. "The other day? How long? Did they..." He struggled to grasp what had happened.

"Shhhh. Shhhh." You have been specifically forbidden to worry about the ship for at least twenty-four more hours." She smiled softly. The lights in their cabin were low and yellow. "I have been authorized to tell you that, at your insistence, no humans were allowed back into the cloud and that we did, as you predicted, lose all probes that went too deep."

"So Carol is gone."

Elana waited a long second. "Come on Sam. Let's get you a shower and some hot food."

Although he felt like rolling back into the bed and the blackness of sleep, he let her put her hand behind his elbow and help him to a sitting position. Her role as Dr. Alder, ship's psychologist, made her soft suggestions about his care something like an order.

"I need coffee."

"Hmmm. A shower and some real food first."

Thirty minutes in the shower, two eggs, five sausage links, about a quarter kilo of hash browns, and three merciful cups of coffee brought new life to Alder. He and Elana left their cabin in the lower crew section with no particular destination in mind.

The ship was quiet but busy as they wound their way around the outside hallway of level seven of the habitation dome. Even in a crew of seven hundred plus the deaths of three crew members hit hard. No doubt there would be a lot of grumbling again about turning the ship for home. Maybe, with only two communication ponies left to ferry messages back to human space, the deaths of Martin, Jinx, and Pakerson would finally bring Pilton around to the idea that he'd seen enough.

The few crew members in the hall nodded politely as they passed but didn't stop to chat and the small cafeteria that served as level seven's lounge was empty except for a few knots of crew wrapped up in their own conversations. While required to wear uniforms while on duty, long years in space along with advanced printing technology, had led to off duty gear that was as unpredictable as it was colorful. The periodic fashion shows hosted in public areas had somehow stayed fashionable and there was even a bit of competition between crew members who had proven to have an eye for designing the interesting or at least improbable. One of the women sitting in the break area was wearing a dress that appeared to be covered in goose heads. The man with her was in a kilt. The lounge itself was double duty, it served both as a cafeteria and a garden. The apparently ornamental plants were all edible and the fish in the small, ornamental pond were a custom engineered relative of the perch that thrived in confined spaces and produced a flakey, protein rich meat. They were all, humans included, part of a vast, sprawling ecosystem that kept the crew healthy and productive year after year.

They were silent as they boarded the lift to the main ring. Since the Duster was not designed for planetary landing, its space frame was open and built in sections. One of the quirks of space travel using the framing drive was that any mass within a sphere slightly larger than the main ring would travel with the ship when the engine was engaged. The designers had taken advantage of that fact, spacing the different modules of the ship out on great lattices of wire and tubing. In part this was to give the crew as much separation from the insanity crystal that hung in the center of the ship and its occasional bursts of radiation as possible and partly to give the crew some much needed space from each other. While virtual tanks were handy for a quick break, their overuse tended to lead to psychosis and so real space and real variety were built into the ship whenever possible.

As the tube lifted them out of the crew module, they were greeted with a sweeping view of the underside of the engineering bay and the science bay built on its own platform far below and isolated from the noisy, sometimes radioactive rest of the ship.

Alder unconsciously checked the status of the equipment that had occupied his waking life for the last fourteen years. Seven telescopes, four particle detectors, a wave form reader...dozens of instruments all in order and all pointing at something out of sight to his right...Mass 17.

The tube stopped during the passage through the long, flat engineering deck to pick up crew, then rose on to the main ring.

The main ring ran for almost three kilometers around the center of the ship. All around, wave guides, aligned to within a few hundredths of a millimeter caught "frames," naturally occurring ripples in space, and held them out around the insanity crystal for an incalculably small fraction of time, allowing relativity free jumps across space. Outside of the guides, a broad causeway ran the whole length of the ring. It served many roles. It was the ships shopping mall, had several small cafes and even a pair of small stages. Crew could be found here at all hours, jogging the ring, enjoying a bite or maybe even taking in a bit of theater or a fashion show. There was also a small aviary where birds, both edible and pleasant sounding, chittered and whistled.

Elana tried to make small talk as they wandered the ring, but Alder was distracted. The mass was visible from here, but barely. The lights inside the ship masked the dimly lit object and the glare on the glass occasionally obscured it completely. It caught and held his attention every time he noticed it.

After half an hour, Elana gave up. "Come on Sam." She said, pulling him towards a lift.

"Where to?"

"You've got some grieving to do."

The tube hoisted them up into the Environment Dome. Keeping a small city sized crew alive and healthy for any length of time in the depths of space was a major feat not only of agriculture but also of social engineering. The Duster was part of a new class of ships, a class designed to function autonomously for years. It was meant to be a self-sustaining community and every crew member, right up to the Captain had a job in the maze of greenhouses, recycling tanks, and gymnasiums that made up the Environment Dome. Alder did one shift a week in the livestock habitat. It was surreal, working five days in the science bay, with its sterile compartments and whirring machines and then the sixth with pigs and chickens in a yard so large that it occupied two entire floors of the dome. The lights there were full spectrum balls that hung in the ceiling and were capable of delivering a slight sunburn if your skin was unnaturally pasty after hours spent in the lab. The floor above was a working farm with pot bellied pigs, chickens, ducks, small goats, and amazingly large guinea pigs.

The enforced participation in the maintenance of the biodome was definitely therapeutic. Members of Alder's own highly intelligent and notoriously antisocial science team had spearheaded the "Save Maggie" campaign during year three. "Maggie" a pigmy hog with unusual white trotters had been determined too cute to eat and so, after a successful and sometime boisterous lobby, was allowed to live out her life as guardian of the pens. When she died in year nine, there was so much remorse that it was decided that her remains should be fed, en mass to the recycling system thus redistributing her resources in such a way that no one would have to look at their plate and ask if they were eating a part of Maggie. By now she'd been recycled and re-eaten a dozen times but some crew members still kept pictures of her. Her successor "Ronald Midbits" was in year four of his reign. When he had first seen the social plan for the ship, it hadn't made much sense to him, but he couldn't deny that they really did function as a self contained society.

Sam and Elana kept going up past the pens, the racquetball courts, and the machinery that ran it all. There, in the last levels before the flower garden that crowned the structure in a glass dome under the stars, the open spaces gave way to a series of private rooms, some of them full of plants, some of them almost empty. Here individuals, couples or groups could get away from the ship and stare out into space through the long windows that ran floor to ceiling. The last levels were high above the ring and, due to the shape of the dome, looked out and up. In the "high space" as it was called, you could not see the ship, only the stars and space. Crew members were encouraged to take small vacations there, spending days in the quiet, going out for strolls in the garden or just resting. You could even order in. Elana picked an unoccupied room on the side facing Mass 17.

The room was large, dimly lit, and dressed like a Japanese beach house, with paper walls and paper lanterns. It had a bed on a wooden deck by the door and a wooden railing that led out onto a sandy patch by the window. It was Alder's favorite. Although he had never been to Earth himself, he had had a paternal grandfather from Japan and liked the look and feel of traditional Japanese fixtures. In the dark of the room, Mass 17 was clearly visible, side lit in blue white by the young sun and tinted in shades of orange.

There were wooden chaise lounges on the sand. Elana asked the computer for some soft music and they reclined. Alder was immediately uncomfortable, big blob in space, dead friends, psychologist at his shoulder. "Well, it didn't take you long to get me stretched out on the couch."

Elana's face was still round and soft but was beginning, in smile lines and crinkles, to hint that she would someday be a bright, rosy cheeked old woman. "Well, I could have stretched you out on the bed, but you've never really been the grief sex type."

"Grief sex?"

"Very good way to make contact with another human. Usually very energetic. Tends to be a lot of crying at the end."

Alder looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "This a service you offer to a lot of your clients?"

"Only the grieving ones."

"Well, you'll be busy this week."

"Maria came to see me this morning while you were still sleeping."

"Who?"

"Maria Estavidos. Cab Martin's girlfriend."

"Were they still dating?"

"Sometimes. She told me that they had agreed to break up when they got back to human space."

Alder humphed to himself. "How's she taking it?"

"Pretty well. She'd been complaining about what an asshole he was for years. He doesn't seem like such an asshole to her now that he's gone. Death does that for a person. She's been calling the star La Cama de Martin. Martin's Bed."

"The star? Martin died in Mass 17."

"Yes, but dealing with the star is more indirect. I'm not sure she'd be able to give mass 17 such a pleasant name at this point."

"I wonder what she's calling me."

Sam didn't see Elana's smile because he was staring fixedly out the window.

"I don't think she's gotten that far yet. She doesn't blame you though. Word on the ship is that they would have lived if they'd have listened to you."

"Well, not Martin."

They lapsed into silence. Mass 17 was like a third person in the conversation. It didn't feel menacing but its closeness and size made it press in on them as if listening intently.

"I wonder if we'll head home now." Sam mused. "Three deaths is a lot."

"Yes, I think we'll turn around. Pilton is terribly concerned with his legacy. The great explorers who bring their ships home intact are remembered better than those who lose all hands. He wants to sail back into orbit around League Prime with his ship in order and his crew in ranks. It will secure him a place in spacefaring history. He's trying to hold out for as much glory as he can. I think the deaths of three crew and the loss of the scout will tip the scale."

Elana spoke with great surety and Sam didn't question her. He had never been very good at reading people but Elana was the best. He knew some of the crew were desperate to turn for home but the idea didn't really stir him much anymore. Maybe because he knew that, at best speed, the Duster was around three years from League Prime and Pilton liked to stop and have a peek at everything they passed. Thinking practically, they were five years from home plus whatever Pilton stopped to poke at.

"It's beautiful." Elana nodded to the mass.

"Mmm." Alder agreed then scowled. "It's too big."

"Too big for what?"

"It had started to collapse as the nanobots bound materials in the cloud. Have we moved closer?"

"I don't think so. Sam what's wrong?" Alder was out of his seat, his face to the glass boring into the mass with his eyes.

"We were tracking the collapse for hours after we lost contact. How long was I out?"

"About twenty-four hours. We..."

"Shit. Computer, science bay seven. I need to talk to whoever is on duty."

"Connecting to Doctor Subramanian."

"Hi Alder." Subramanian's voice came on the line a few seconds later. He was from a place called Pakistan on Earth and had never really lost his accent. "I'm glad you are awake. How is Elana doing?"

"She's fine. She's here with me."

"Oh hello Elana. How are you doing?"

"I'm fine Shiri. How's..."

"Look Shiri." Alder interrupted. "I need to know what's happening in Mass 17. Is it still collapsing?"

"No. It's very interesting. The gravity waves have not come back but something in the processes with the nanobots is causing a lot of turbulence."

"Is it heat?"

"We can't tell. There's too much dust for infrared imaging in the core. We do know..."

"Water. Is the amount of water vapor increasing?"

"Yes, we have been getting spectrograph signals indicating an increased level of water in the cloud. We don't know by what process..."

"It's on fire. How long ago did the turbulence start?"

"About sixteen hours ago. Sir, if the core is burning..."

"Exactly. Stand by. Computer, I need the commander on duty."

Elana rose and stood next to Alder, "What's going on?"

"Connecting to Lieutenant Fisher."

"Hey Alder. You're up." Fisher's voice came from the bridge.

"In a second." Alder shot at Elana. "D'Ray, we've got a problem."

"Elana not letting you get any sleep?"

"No. I've got quite a bit of science that says Mass 17 is about to explode."

"Explode?" Fischer was the number two security officer behind Tallen, and only in charge of the bridge when nothing exciting was expected.

"Yes. We need to move now."

"Hey. You know I'd love to be going but your science crew has got about a billion projects going at the moment."

"Forget that. We need to go now."

There was a pause on the other end. "Look Sam. You got relieved of duty. You can't really give orders right now."

Alder cursed. "Okay. Who's the duty officer."

"Captain Pilton but..."

"Hold that thought. Computer I need to speak to the captain."

"Captain Pilton is not available at this time."

"Okay. Priority voice authorization. Alder Samuel C. Respond."

"Alder Samuel C. is currently relieved of duty. Authorization denied."

"Alder!" Fisher's voice cut back in. "Cool off man. I've got the bridge. I can call an emergency if we need one. Now what the hell is going on?"

"Sorry D'Ray." Alder rubbed his face. "The Oxygen level in the mass has been rising since Pakerson first started pinging the cube. Now suddenly there's water."

"I don't get it."

"Water is made by fusing Hydrogen and Oxygen." There was no noise on the other end. "They burn at about 2800 C."

"So, you're telling me the inside of a big ball of dust is...on fire?"

"And the pressure is building. Do you remember the physics experiment where they held the flame up to the balloon full of Hydrogen?"

"Yea sure."

"Well the weight of the mass is the skin of the balloon holding the heat in until it bursts and we're the spaceship that's way too close."

Elana put her hand on Alder's forearm.

"Right." Alder could hear the gears in Fisher's brain whirring. "How long?"

The left side of Elana's face lit up suddenly orange. A gout of fire sprung from the surface to the left of the ship.

"It's destabilizing." Came Subramanian's somewhat useless observation.

Elana's eyes lit up with fire and horror as the gout of flame pulsed into the dark of space. It looked as if the surface of the mass was being dragged up with it and the fiery maw was spreading at kilometers per second. On the opposite horizon, a sudden glowing halo reported that a second fire had erupted.

"Soon enough for you?" Alder yelped. But Fisher didn't answer. He was barking orders at the bridge crew. "Shiri get out of there." Alder called to the science bay. "Get to cover. Come on. Inside the main pressure hull." He yelled at Elana who was already moving toward the door.

"The water recyclers." Alder gestured as they emerged into the empty hallway. "We need shelter when the shock wave hits." Lights and sirens flared around them as Fisher declared an emergency.

"Why don't we just frame out?" Elana asked as they dashed down the hall.

"The fusion core is kept off line so it doesn't interfere with the science kit. Fisher needs five minutes at least."

"Has he got that long?"

They passed a viewing deck where a couple was standing transfixed by the image of hell erupting before them. "Get into the recyclers." Alder bellowed at them as they dashed by.

Confused, sleepy, half dressed crew were popping out of the doors.

"Get inside the pressure hull!" Alder ordered as they passed through a bulkhead.

The spaces in the center of the dome were steel and pipes, lacking the decoration of the outer rooms. Turning a corner, Alder gave a code to a door which opened into a white and steel room of humming tanks.

"Get inside!" He ordered Elana then turned back to the people milling in the outer ring. "Come on! Come on! He yelled from the bulkhead. A few bodies scurried past him but most did not seem to understand. The light coming from the viewing deck window had turned white hot. "Just a few seconds. Just a few seconds." He yelled meaninglessly.

With the force of a thousand atomic bombs, the shock wave crashed into the Duster, throwing Alder backward into the interior of the ship. There were a thousand sounds like screaming angels; glass shattered, steel whined, sirens shrieked.

A woman in a white tee shirt and panties slammed into the door frame Alder had just been thrown back from. She grasped it with both hands, and sagged as if winded by the blow.

Alder struggled to his feet on the rocking deck. He was shouting at the woman but his words were inaudible to himself over the roar. The woman's long, dark hair rippled suddenly back from her head and her eyelids fluttered. Somewhere behind her, the hull of the ship was breached. As the bow wave passed, a new sound took over, the howling of the atmosphere pouring out.

Lights flared over the door. The automatic pressure sensors had detected the breach and were about to slam the bulkheads shut.

Alder grasped a pipe on the wall and reached for the woman. She had seen the light and was struggling against the roaring wind to pull herself inside but the pulse of air was stronger than she was and only a second later her arms were pulled to full extension, her breasts perfectly outlined as the wind pushed her thin shirt into her flesh. Their eyes met for an infinite second. Alder could see a cold, fearless darkness inside her. The bulkhead slammed down, forcing her fingers off their grip and she was gone.

Alder dropped to the deck as the howling stopped. His ears were singing with pain. Mercifully, the lights failed a few seconds later and he was left to sob in the dark.

### "Alone in the Dark"

Captain Pilton stood in the middle of the bridge with his hands on his hips and scowled. He'd hated the bridge when he'd first been introduced to it. It looked like some kind of orchestra pit with him in the middle. His five Lieutenant commanders sat in a ring around him, their support staff in a ring outside of that. Who put the captain in the lowest point? He had to look up to see the main screens over his head and the actual ports out into space were three levels above him. Where was the grandeur? How was he supposed to tower over his crew issuing commands?

After a few years, the genius of the design began to sink in. The back side of every console, from his Lieutenant commanders to the waste reprocessing manager two levels up was a screen rolling data. The truth of space flight was that it was seldom useful to actually look out into space but, being able to see everything your bridge crew was working could save your life.

"But where is Alder?" He asked gesturing at the empty science bay chair. It and a few of the other science chairs were the only empties in the otherwise busy room.

"We don't know." Tallen answered, tapping at the security officer's screen. All the screens were lit, which was good. An hour before they had all been dark. "We only have about half our tracking online. I show that Elana had authorized use of a room on level nine of the environment dome about ten minutes before the attack."

Pilton shrugged off the word 'attack' and glanced at an external view of the environment dome. Like the rest of the ship it appeared mostly intact except for some surface ruptures. There were a few lights running, but none near the top. While Fisher trying to take responsibility for the entire disaster, he deserved a medal. With only seconds before the shock wave hit and no time to bring the framing engine online, Fisher had pushed all the mobius shields to full. The damage they'd taken was from their own shields flexing into the side of the ship under the pressure wave. If they hadn't been on...well their little space adventure would have come to an end.

"Which side of the dome was Alder in?"

"I'm sorry sir. It was port cabin 11."

While the damage reports were sketchy, coming in one at a time as the computers rebooted, one thing was clear, very few people in port side cabins had survived. "Okay. Do they have power in the environment dome? Can anyone tell me?"

Tallen interrupted, an engineer's response. "Sir. We are fully enveloped in the cloud. We must move the ship to a defensible position..."

Pilton waved his hand. "I asked a question. Does anyone know if they have power in the environment dome?"

"Yes sir." Engineer Rhye responded from her station. "The inner hull has power and pressure on all decks.

"But we're out of contact." Com Tech Reilly piped in from another level up. "There's a primary break. We're getting backup radio response only."

Pilton cursed. "I have to know where he is. Do we have a tube running into the dome?"

"It's still there but it's not pressurized sir."

"Damn. Okay, get me a rescue team in suits."

"Sir!" Tallen stood up. "We have injured and stranded crew all over the ship. We're registering vacuum outside of twenty-four bulkheads...."

"Yes, and Alder's the only one of us whose shown any hint that he understands why. I'm not moving this ship or doing anything else until Alder tells me what his nanobots are doing. They've eaten through everything of ours that they've touched. Now that the cloud has exploded over us, I can't say that I'm sure why we haven't been eaten too..." He paused. "What's the hull temperature like?

"96 K" Someone responded.

"Why?" Tallen asked.

"Have we not heard from the science bay at all?"

"Sorry sir."

A glance at the monitors showed that the science bay was still there but missing several instruments and ominously dark. "And what's the temperature around us?" The temperature outside had been falling steadily since the initial fiery blast had buried them in the cloud three hours before.

"128 K and still falling."

"Sir. If I can just..."

"Shhhh." Pilton waved a hand at Tallen. "Alder said that heat sped the action of the nanobots. Maybe heat attracts them as well."

He turned on Rhye. "Turn it off. Turn it all off."

"Sir?"

"I want to hull of the ship to cool at the same rate as the space around us."

"So you want me to put the reactor in standby and go to quiet running?"

"No. I want you to turn it off; all of it. I want two things running on this ship; the shields, and a radio to the rescue crew in the environment dome."

"But sir. We'll be unable to defend..."

"I have to tell you Shalim." Pilton said to Tallen. "I'm not very afraid of alien marines, or whole planets that maliciously blow up if you turn a sensor on them, but I'm pretty convinced that Alder's Technoprey killed Martin and the others because they were warm. So were the scouts we sent into the cloud. I understand about hull breeches, and injured crew. I don't understand Technoprey. Turn off the environment, turn off the water. Turn it all off but the shields and then get me Alder."

### "Potted"

It was strange to be isolated in the Environment Dome. Although they knew the rest of the ship was still with them, the communications break down and thick cloud of dust and ash swirling outside made it feel as if they were a tiny mountain of light and air swimming in the void. Standing at an observation port staring into the gloom to where he knew the command pod was barely two hundred meters away, Alder felt suddenly very sad for the world carrying turtle of Indian myth. How strange to find yourself swimming endlessly in the sea of space. Did it know there was a world of life and heat on its back or was it forced to face forever forward into the void, swimming alone?

His thoughts turned suddenly to Micki Span, a girl from his elementary school in Darver Town on Make Make where he'd lived for several years as a child. "Well, I just hope it's a boy turtle." She'd said in the hall after a lesson about Terran religions.

"Why is that?" Young Alder had asked naively.

Micki Span had rolled her eyes and gestured expansively. "Because, if it's a girl, it's only a matter of time before some bloke comes along and tries to climb her back. That won't be so good for the earthlings will it?"

Alder smiled at the memory. His ears had burned as the children around him laughed at what seemed to ten year olds like a very funny joke.

"Commander?" Lieutenant Harshaw, an environmental Tech's voice broke his revere. She had slipped into the room behind him.

"Yes, Allayah?" As third in command of the Duster behind Pilton and the Chief Executive Officer, it was not surprising that Alder was the ranking officer in the dome when the shock wave hit. Nor was it surprising that the survivors in the dome had immediately and amicably set up shop under him in the three hours since the blast. They'd been through a lot together over the years and worked well together under any stress.

He didn't mind being in command, but after being so close to Gabba Rehans as her life ended and having found a fair number of her fingers on his side of the bulkhead when the lights came on, Alder found himself trying to hide in the quiet of one of the remaining rooms.

"Dr. Alder just called in. She's in Med bay two." She reports seventeen injuries, none of them life threatening." Amazingly, none of the survivors in the dome seemed to be badly hurt. Elana herself had about the worst injury with a fractured forearm. She'd struck something during the impact. Alder suspected it was Wen Ye's face. He dove into the compartment with her a few seconds ahead of the blast and had an inexplicably broken cheek bone and bloody lip.

"That's fine. Thank you. Do we have a full count yet?" Until the computers came back on there was no way to know how many people had been sucked into the void or were lying frozen in depressurized cabins but they should at least know how many survivors they had when command finally got through to them.

"Yes Sir. Crews have been through all the pressurized areas between levels two and fourteen. There are eighty-six survivors."

Alder rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. His crew needed him to be on his game. "All right. Eighty-six survivors and only seventeen injuries. Not bad. Do we have any idea of what sort of talents we've got? Who was here when the blast hit?"

"It's a pretty mixed lot. My full third shift second cycle crew was on duty so you've got a full complement for the gardens and equipment, that's twenty-six counting me. The rest were off duty from all over the ship; mostly first shift and some second."

"Okay. Talk to me about resources."

At twenty-three when they'd launched, Allayah was one of the youngest on board. Elana had commented several times on how well she had developed in the rigors of space. She was tall and athletic, with skin darker than chocolate. She looked more like an Olympic Athlete than the officer in charge of half of the high tech ranch that kept the ship fed. While the social engineering behind the ship allowed crews to cross train and move task to task, Allayah had stayed steadfastly beside her crew and livestock. "We're in pretty good shape. Preliminary reports show that air, thermal and water are all running on main or backup power. We've got local systems running with a few small exceptions. We haven't been able to link back to the main computer. It looks like the blast took out most of the linkages running parallel to the tubes. We know the emergency system is transmitting. We don't know if anyone is listening."

"Oh they're listening." Alder reassured her. "The little flickers of light out there," He gestured at the window, "are dust particles hitting the mobius shields and frying themselves." They've got power over there. We're probably just waiting for a reboot." Optical computers were frighteningly fast but a little twitchy. If you got them out of sync somehow, it was virtually impossible to get them back into line. The only real solution was to turn systems off and let the main system turn them back on one at a time.

With a gesture, Alder steered them away from the cloud of dust and into the hallway. "We need to run on the assumption that the rest of the ship is intact and will need food and water to be running at full steam when contact gets made. I don't have to tell you how fast seven hundred people can get hungry."

"Yes, sir."

"We'll also want to keep everyone busy. It's maybe more important than actually making food. I want you to take what crew you can as alternates for your staff. Their normal rotation will be over in an hour. See if you can scrounge a second shift environment crew out of the extras we've got. Let's also get an engineering crew together, anyone that can hold a welder. I want all the exterior breaches examined. I don't really care what. Just make sure everyone has a task. We'll ..."

The main lights went out and were replaced a half second later by the low, blue tinted emergency lights.

"...and get someone to look at the lights." Strips of yellow warning lights flared along the baseboards of the wall.

"Gravity failure." Harshaw hissed. She twisted quickly and launched herself at a table and chair set against the outside wall. Alder wasn't as quick to respond. His next step launched him awkwardly into the air in a roughly right foot over left shoulder turn. He squawked loudly.

"Commander!" Harshaw called, her arms wrapped firmly around the back of the chair which itself was anchored to the floor. "Grab my feet." She stuck her legs straight out at Alder.

"Umm. No good." Alder knew better than to kick and flail against the unsupporting air but several billion years of evolution beat out twenty years of training and he found himself pitching over and over against his will.

Harshaw, seeing his dilemma, pulled her feet under her against the back of the chair and launched back at Alder. They met, her midriff to his thighs and his spin reversed so that his feet were pitched back over her back. He grabbed two handfuls of her shirt and together they pinwheeled into a set of potted plants that shattered off their anchored bases and ricocheted off in a cloud of broken masonry and dirt. Alder and Harshaw rebounded hard off the wall behind the plants and headed back across the hallway on a new but slower trajectory. They were both yelling, "Hold still! Hold Still!"

With thumps of dirt and a clattering of broken ceramics, they arrived at the junction between the outside wall and the ceiling. Harshaw managed to grab hold of the molding and top of the door frame that led out from there. Alder chuckled in spite of himself. He had both arms wrapped around Harshaw's waist, her head was hooked under one of his knees, and his face was planted firmly in her right ass cheek. He chuckled again.

"Good...um...catch Harshaw."

Harshaw, who clearly saw the humor of the situation, unhooked her head from his leg. "Don't worry sir. I won't tell the crew about the flailing."

"Yes." Alder laughed more loudly. "It was a bit awkward."

"It was a personal moment sir. I feel very close to you right now."

They hung side by side, clinging to the rail as laughter mixed with tears overtook Alder. Harshaw, who was chuckling also, hung beside him quietly.

Alder understood that he was in shock and his body was trying to let out the stress. He let it go, his sides aching as laughter and tears rolled out of him. After a few minutes, pain sensors around his body began to register, calming him down. He had several scratches and bruises and his right thigh had taken a hard shot, probably from Harshaw's hip.

"Thank you." He said quietly.

She nodded.

He looked up and down the long, curving hallway. In the dim emergency lights he could see a loose constellation of potted plant parts bumping its way along to their left otherwise they were alone, sticking incongruously out of the wall.

He signed heavily. "Well, here we are."

### Mutiny

Captain Pilton had to be very careful with the word mutiny. Once someone was found guilty of mutiny, there wasn't a lot you could do with them. They were well past the age where you could kill mutineers or just abandon them on some passing planet, although the second was sometimes tempting. Leaving a crew member in lockup was not terribly effective either. For one thing the ships "detention center" was really just a locking room in medical bay. More importantly, mutinies didn't happen in isolation and locking up the leader or leaders was more likely than not to excite loyalty for the prisoner out of the remaining crew members. No the word mutiny was just not usable, even if it was a very exciting and dramatic word.

Pilton glanced over at Tallen where he floated between two guards. The fact that the guards were clearly listening to Pilton and not Tallen probably meant that this whole incident could be explained away later as stress. The med tech beside Pilton poked something painful into the bleeding temple wound Tallen had given him with an elbow. He winced. 'It's a shame about mutiny.' he thought.

Pilton waved the tech away and pulled himself upright against the back of his command chair. With the power out, the screens and overhead lights were all dark. What light there was came from flashlights and a few blue alarm lights that stubbornly refused to stop doing their jobs. He felt a little woozy but not, in his opinion, concussed. His breath mushroomed in the frigid air. Without the air handlers on, the moisture from their breath was trapped in the room with them, forming spiderwebs of frost across the monitors as the temperatures plummeted.

His crew was nervous, riding on a razor's edge. Seven hours after the explosion no one knew how badly damaged the ship was nor could they go about finding out until the power was back on. By now, every minute that they spent looking for Alder had a body count attached to it. He'd had Dr. Thomas' radio silenced, not because Dr. Thomas was wrong to be shrieking about the people dying from the lack of electricity, but because he needed the bridge crew to worry about other things. Now, after the moment of violence, he was in danger of losing control.

He didn't have much of a chin, more of a small cuplike indentation under his lips, but he pulled himself upright as best he could in zero-g and surveyed his frightened and freezing crew.

"It has been an amazing honor to lead this crew." He said loudly enough to be heard by all. "Most of the time, I have hardly felt like I was leading at all. You all work together so well, support each other so well, that I often feel I could stay in my bath for a week and nothing would go amiss." He paused.

"I have to admit that there is nothing in the manual about how to deal with miniature robots that eat through anything. I also have no more idea than any of you do about how badly the ship is damaged." He paused again and nodded slightly as if in answer to a question only he had heard.

"Maybe our journey is at an end. That would be very sad. I will tell you this though; if this is to be our end, we will meet our end as a crew; as the crew who have served each other so well all these years. We all have loved ones and friends in the dark and the cold. We owe it to them to work this problem together or to go down together trying. We'll have no more shouting. We'll have no more violence. We will have scientific inquiry and we will have answers." He nodded one by one to several of the nearer faces mooning at him over their darkened consoles.

He turned to the guards holding Tallen. "Commander Tallen is relieved of duty until further notice. Please escort him to the Primary Medical Bay. Tell Dr. Thomas...

The memory of Thomas' shrieking came back to him. Maybe Tallen and Thomas shouldn't be spending time together just now. "Umm. Let's just keep him in the conference room for now."

Tallen scowled sullenly as the guards pushed him towards the conference room door. Pilton almost felt sad for him as he drifted out of the room. LOP Command, had been concerned enough that the Duster would meet hostile aliens or have disruptions among the crew that they'd sent the combat veteran Tallen along in the midst of crew that was otherwise picked for their cooperative nature and technical skills. Tallen had never really fit in, never really belonged. Now that he had acted violently against the captain, it was unlikely that he would ever be accepted by the crew again.

A drop of blood from his wounded temple slipped into the corner of his eye. He pushed it back out with a pudgy finger. Maybe he didn't feel too bad for Tallen.

A radio crackled to life behind him. He whirled to yell at who ever had turned it on, but was stopped by the voice of Ensign Crough who he'd sent to the environment dome. "Crough to command."

Pilton pushed himself off the chair toward the console but did not get there before Reilly responded.

"This is command. Go ahead."

"I gained access to the environment dome through number four airlock. I've got Alder."

Pilton pressed his hand down on the controller. "He's there?" He asked.

"He's with me now sir. He can hear you."

Pilton gasped with relief. "Can...are you...what about the nanobots?"

Alder's voice was scratchy over the primitive radio. "I'm sorry sir?"

"We turned off all the systems so that we would stay cool; so that the nanobots wouldn't eat the hull. We don't know how to stop them."

"Oh," Alder's voice came over the wire. "Yeah, if that was going to happen, it would have happened right away."

Pilton's eyes slid round to the listening bridge crew. "Are you sure? It seemed like a reasonable precaution."

"Sure I'm sure." Alder's voice was dismissive. "The nanobots function at just a few degrees above absolute zero. At this temperature, they'd either eat us immediately or overheat. Most likely, they were only programmed to live for a set number of generations. The fire probably got the last of them."

Pilton shifted uncomfortably aware of the eyes burrowing into his skin. "Well, good to know. Umm. We'll get our systems rebooted." He nodded to the crew who began tapping their consoles, bringing the ship to life.

"How's the framing drive?" Alder asked.

"We don't know. Why? Is there an issue?"

"We just need to make a jump before it's too late."

"Too late for what?"

"If we don't jump soon, we're going to be the newest moon in the galaxy."

Pilton humphed and frowned, waiting for more explanation. He was trapped. He could sense that he was quickly losing face with the bridge crew but the curiosity was too much to bear. "I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you say, 'moon.'"

### Revelation

A flight of sparrows rose up beating their wings against the steel sky. There was an odd flatness to the shape of their flight, as if they were rising up on an invisible sheet. It was curiously hypnotic. Something about the angle of attack and the symmetry of the movement caught the eye. Before they were more than twenty meters in the air, another flock, similar to the first but at a stronger angle rose up in a clattering of wings.

"y=1.5x" Some dim corner of Alder's mind remembered. He couldn't really focus on the thought. Part of the point of the virtual tank, and one reason it could be addictive, was that is allowed for direct stimulation of the sense processing centers in the brain, bypassing and overriding the urge to think.

Another flight took off, a more complex pattern, y=4x^2 +2 or something, he couldn't remember; a parabola anyway. Some people used the tanks for complex fantasies, often sexual Elana assured him. He preferred the math tutor he'd built for himself in college. Monomials, binomials, quadratics, derivatives, things that he assured people were flying bird versions of synthetic division; it unhooked his mind and gave him a peaceful feeling.

There was a sky and some trees. He never really noticed them. It was the birds, sparrows, with swallows weaving in and out in some more complex functions that held his mind and gave him a break from his troubles.

The edge of his mind tickled about some problem that was not a Mandelbrot of birds; the ship, trouble with the ship. As if in response to the rising distracting thought, the birds began chirping a third tones translation of the pattern they were flying. He hadn't programmed it. Music wasn't his thing but the program had amused when he'd found it so he'd added it shortly before they'd left home. He was always glad he had. It wasn't a song really but it was rhythmic and reflected the changing numeric patterns underlying the program.

The birds had just started the non-linear equations when a small puff of wind hit his face. Tiny, but a warning. Reality was about to come back. The puff came again and rose, rolling over him pushing the sky and birds away.

Blackness.

Alder blinked groggily as low lights lit up the "virtual tank," really just a small pad in a darkened tube. Sliding back the cover he, found himself in a quietly lit room of similar tubes. As many as eighteen of the Duster's crew could vacation from reality at the same time in this room and there were two more like it in the ship. They were available twenty-four hours a day and you could live out pretty much any fantasy you could program in, with the condition that Elana, the ships psychologist, regularly reviewed the choices to watch for potentially dangerous patterns.

It was Elana who had suggested that Alder spend the last hours before the meeting in the tank.

"It's insane." He'd said as they lay in their bed the night before. "Everyone will think I've gone mad."

Elana had nodded dreamily. She was curled up against his side naked. Their bodies wore a fine film of sweat. Alder had passed on the grieving sex but the wave of stress sex that was sweeping the ship had not missed their cabin. Her broken arm lay in its cast over his head. Her good arm rested on his hip. She spoke from the edge of sleep. "What's happened to us is beyond anything we imagined possible but it's not crazy. Pilton wants you to do the talking exactly because you speak clear headed science."

"It's not clear headed science. It's insanity. I'll get us all killed."

"Maybe." Elana agreed, her knee moving slowly across the front of his thighs. "But, if you do, it will be because you found the best odds for us and they just didn't play out."

Alder sighed and rolled onto his side so that Elana was spooning him.

"Listen Sam," Elana murmured into his ear. "This isn't a space ship any more. This isn't about exploration any more. It's about rescue and survival. You've always been the one who could see clearly. You knew the Aft Patterson field was going to fail. You told Pilton where the safe position to watch stellar collision was and when to be there. This crew is going to have to do some impossible things and it's you, not Pilton that needs to tell them. They'll believe you."

"What about Garson? She's the chief executive officer. If Pilton doesn't want to do it, Garson should."

Elna laughed slightly. "Come on Sam. You know Treva isn't right for the job. She lives in the numbers, not in real life. I don't even think she's been on the bridge since the explosion." She snickered again. "You should see some of the fantasies she plays in the tanks."

"Let's out her aggressions there?" Alder asked.

"Oh yeah."

Alder didn't argue. If there was a weak link in the command of the Duster it was Triva Garson the Executive Officer. Bookish and brilliant with data, Garson had a well known penchant for being nowhere to be found when difficult decisions needed to be made. They lapsed into silence. Elana's hand had wandered dreamily down into the nether land under the sheets as if checking to see if Alder might be up for another round of stress release or maybe it was just visiting an old friend. "Look El. I'm just a science officer..."

"You signed on to be just a science officer. You want to be just a science officer. But that's not what you are now. You are this crew's best hope; just like you were the best hope for Cab and Carol; just like you were the best hope when we were stuck in the Environment Dome. I don't know if we can do this, but I know you are the best hope we've got."

Alder sighed again and Elana's hand gave up its exploring, sliding up instead to rest on his shoulder.

"Just do what you do tomorrow. You'll be fine. Go spend an hour in the tank. Let the birds straighten out that beautiful mind of yours then go tell them what they have to do. They'll do it."

'Elana was right,' Alder thought as he left the virtual tank bay headed for the bridge conference room. His head always felt clearest after a trip to the tanks. The hallways were as empty as the tank bay had been. Everyone was already in front of a vid screen somewhere waiting for the broadcast he was about to lead.

It had been a long time coming. For seven days the crew had welded plates, gathered the dead, repaired hatches, tended chickens, screwed like mad, and done anything to keep their minds off the real question, 'was the framing drive ever going to come back on?'

When it became clear that the very best printing technology in the world couldn't print all the pieces the framing drive needed, it was never coming back on, another week passed while every asked, 'Do we have enough ion engines left to fly out of here?"

Alder and a few of the others of the command crew understood that the question wasn't just, "Will we fly?" it was, "Will we fly in time?" Not wanting to spread panic among the crew, they'd waited. The numbers said they could wait for some time. By the end of two weeks though, with the messages coming back from Chief Engineer Mbaka, sounding more and more like, "Maybe someday if a miracle occurs," Pilton had decided it was time to explain to the crew exactly what the real danger was. It was also his idea to present the issue in a somewhat dramatic fashion. "No room for doubt, Alder." He'd said, "Got to say it in a way that everyone believes the first time."

Crossing the bridge without noticing eyes of the skeleton crew manning the command stations tailing him, Alder entered the conference room. All of the positions were filled. None of the seventy-eight deaths during the explosion had been among the command crew and most of the firsts and seconds had been spared as well. Alder's science team had taken the hardest hit. All fourteen of the crew in the science bay at the time had been lost, including Subramanian and Alder's second Dr. Lowen. There hadn't been much cleanup, fortunately. A breech across three levels had pretty much cleaned up behind itself. Alder would like to have had the time to grieve for his lost friends. As it was, he mostly only had time to grieve for the missing equipment.

The conference room was quiet except for Com Tech Rielly who was trying to confirm that all six hundred and forty-three survivors were listening in.

Alder moved to his position but didn't sit down. He glanced nervously at Pilton who was reading something that Garson was showing him on a hand held screen. Both Elana and Pilton seemed to think it was terribly important that Alder lead this meeting. Alder didn't really understand why.

Rielly nodded to Pilton who put down the device and addressed the camera cluster mounted on a tripod in the middle of the desk.

"Good morning everyone. Ship's time is 9:36 AM, 112th day of the year 2360. What does that make it, April, on Earth? I can never keep track. Snowy weather at my home on League Prime anyway. Good time to be out touring the galaxy." He harrumphed.

"You all know I'm pretty fond of saying that this ship is not a democracy, and it's not, but we find ourselves in a pretty mess this time and I wanted to be as open about what's happening as possible."

He nodded toward Mbaka. "You've all seen Mbaka's report. We're missing one hundred and thirty-three wave guides on the port side. That's eighty more than we can run the framing drive on. Additionally we've lost a lot of ion engines. We can reprint most of the parts for the engines but the designers never imagined we'd survive a shot this bad and we don't have enough diamond weaves to cover our wave guide losses. You all know diamond weaves have to be grown. We can't print them out here."

"Now we all know that Mbaka is one hell of an engineer and there's been a lot of talk that, given enough time, he'll get us flying. I sure believe if anyone could pull it off its Mbaka and his crew. I really do."

He cleared his throat and pulled his chin in over his jowls. "There's more to it than just the wave guides and ion engines of course, and that's why I've called this meeting.

"Mass 17 is an odd fish and there's no doubt about that. I uhhh." He stopped, and appeared uncertain what to say, something that never happened. "Well, it's complicated. Why don't I just have Alder explain it to you?" He fell silent like a stone.

"Right." Alder faltered picking up the ball. He stammered for a moment, stunned by Pilton's abandonment. "Let me just show you." If the crew wasn't panicked enough yet, the failure of the normally verbose captain could not be missed. Alder tapped the screen in front of him and a ball of grey haze rose up in the middle of the table around the camera. "What I've sent to your screens is the current visual from one of our drones. What I want to you notice is the block of data in the lower right. The third number there is the current distance in kilometers from our ship. Right now, it's hanging at just over two-thousand kilometers out, roughly straight off our bow. Watch what happens if I order it to continue away from us."

For several seconds nothing happened then the distance reading began to move up, slowly at first but increasing rapidly. "What you're seeing is the dust cloud that enveloped the Duster after the explosion. We should pass out of it right about twenty-two hundred kilometers."

It didn't happen all at once. First there was a glimmer of star light, ripped away almost at once, then a rent in the cloud, then the probe broke free. There were audible gasps from the crew around the ship as the video fed in. The sky broke open, cold, massive, and filled with stars. It was a stunning sight. Mass 17 was hung before them, transformed yet again. Where before there had been a seething mass of gas and dust, a planet had formed. The sun hung over its right shoulder leaving the surface to the imagination. What could be seen were a series of fiery red cracks spread around the dark face and a halo of neon colors that seemed to pulse and whirl around the poles, spreading out in sheets and bands clear to the equator. Rising with the halo were knots of color, strange iridescent objects that seemed to pull the aurora with them.

Alder waited a moment before going on. "What you are looking at is the crust of the newest planet in the Galaxy. Once the burn out that hit us passed, the planet collapsed quickly. A lot of our instruments are offline but we think it's a little smaller than Earth. It's only about two-thirds as massive. It's hot. The cracks are gaps where the plates are still fusing together. But, like everything else in this system, it's strange. It's cooling extremely rapidly. Something, you can see them as blips rising with the aurora, is forcing or pulling super hot plasma out of the poles. The process started by the nanobots is clearly ongoing. The heat of the planet is being pumped into space to cool. Specifically, all the carbon dioxide, water, nitrogen, and other free gasses are being super heated and coaxed off the surface."

"They're building an atmosphere?" Someone around the table asked.

"It sure looks that way." Alder went on. "though maybe on accident. This process probably wasn't meant to begin until all the massed collided far in the future. For whatever reason, those knots are causing the planet to cool a thousand times faster than you'd expect. There's no free Oxygen but otherwise it has all the hallmarks of a terraformable planet. And that's good for us."

He didn't wait for any of the hundreds of voices around the ship to ask why. This was the part they were all waiting for and dreading. They knew there was an issue. Only a few had guessed what.

Touching a few keys on the console, Alder swung the probe around. "This is our problem." He said, as a great, grey cloud that stretched from behind the probe all the way out of sight behind the planet came into view. It was beautiful, gray and purple, full of subtle bands and waves, highlighted by the blue white of the star.

"Some of you will realize that this looks something like a small protoplanetary disc. Notice the bulging center and the bands of dust stretching out of sight. That ring goes all the way around the planet." He paused. The conference room and the rest of the ship were deathly quiet. "Undoubtedly, after the eruption all the mass of Mass 17 was supposed to fall back onto the newly formed planet. As it turned out, there was a large object, us, in orbit and several million tonnes of debris from the explosion have gotten caught in orbit with us. The reason we can't wait for rescue or any other solution is because gravity is pulling all that mass in on us. As the dust settles, it will put steadily more pressure on the mobius shields. Each particle is light but there's more settling on us every hour. We're carrying about fifty tonnes already. Just that pressure has pushed the operating temperature of the shields up three degrees. We estimate that the shields will hold out for between sixty and ninety days. When they fail, we'll become the heart of Mass 17's new moon."

"We have to think about the children." Elana moved into the conversation at a jarring right angle. "I'm sure most of you have thought this through but we've been eating directly from the biodome for almost a month. That's a full menstrual cycle without automated birth control. Within the year our family will start growing. Dr. Thomas tells me that he believes we could have as many as seven pregnancies on board already." A ripple ran around the table and came back over the microphones from around the ship. Alder noticed Wei and Garson glancing at each other across the desk.

"And the center of a moon is no place for children." Pilton jumped in. "Go ahead Alder."

Alder's shoulders slumped. He let the titter of the staff considering children give him reason to pause. While he agreed that bringing up the pregnancies was a good way to prepare the crew to listen to anything, he still couldn't believe anyone would go for what he was about to suggest. "Our main problem is the total mass of the dust cloud. It outweighs us by several orders of magnitude and is leaning on us more each day. If we try to push out of it, we will, at best, pull it with us. That might buy us a little time but, in the end, our shields will still fail.

"There is a kind of, unorthodox, option." He pressed a button and a 3d schematic of the ship appeared in the view. "As you know, we were the first of the Solo class ships put into service. Since we were an untested spaceframe with a long expected flight time, the designers saw fit to back up a lot of our systems with radio-isotope or other nuclear batteries." A set of red boxes flared around the ship schematic. "None of it's bomb grade of course, but, if we bombarded it, it should enrich up to about a single twenty megaton bomb."

"To do what?" Treva Garson, the ships executive commander asked from her place at the table. "Blow the cloud apart?"

"Exactly." Alder responded. "It will create an opening. We'll have a few hours with the cloud off of us to build a little momentum. It would give us a chance to set down on the planet without bringing the whole cloud down on us." Alder barreled on not waiting for people to process 'set down on the planet.' "We're not built to land, but we can definitely collapse our orbit and force ourselves to the surface. In simulation, the ship can survive entry into a thin atmosphere and the shields can survive impact with the surface. It'll be the end of them, but we'll be alive.

"Our best odds are to get down to the surface before the cloud..." He paused. Someone was crying audibly over the intercom. He looked at Elana for support but she only nodded for him to go on. "Once on the surface we would have the ability to gather new resources. Maybe even do a bit of terra forming. Lieutenant Harshaw has..." The crying was steady. Whoever it was was sitting close to the microphone. Alder waited, hoping Elana would step in. "Look." He said finally, "I know you're scared. I know this is crazy but this ship is being crushed to death. It's been dying since the explosion. Maybe it's hard to imagine us not being a ship's crew anymore but we're not. We're survivors on a rescue mission and this plan is our best chance of survival." He paused. "I did the math. This is our best chance. I'm sorry."

He turned away from the table. Pilton picked up after a long pause. "So that's it then. I don't want to do anything hasty. Alder says we've got some time. Let's talk this through." He went on but Alder wasn't listening. Elana had risen and come over to him.

"Good job." She whispered, sliding and arm around him and gripping him tightly by the waist.

He sighed. "Someday we're going to reach a point in our lives where you tell me good job for doing something I enjoyed doing."

"I hope so." She smiled up at him. "It had to be you Sam. You don't ever try to sell anybody on an idea. You just say it like it is. It makes hard things easier to hear."

The conversation about the plans was continuing around the table but Elana led Alder to the observation port. There were waving sheets of sparks in the darkness. "Do you see those little sparks out there Sam? I know those are specks of dust hitting the shield. I know there are more of them than there were a week ago, but it doesn't tell me anything. It's just a fact. When you tell me there will be more and more of those sparks until they overload our system, I believe you. Facts won't save us Sam. Belief will save us. And you make people believe."

Sam nodded. "It's easier being a scientist."

Elana's response was cut short by Captain Pilton. "Alder? Alder? You said you'd done the math. Some of the crew are wondering, does that mean you know our likelihood of survival if we attempt the landing?"

Alder ducked his head as if ducking the question. "It's just a guess sir."

"But you know the odds? You can give us some idea?"

Alder hesitated but everyone in the room was fixed on him. "Sir, when you asked me to run a test of all the solutions on the table; waiting for rescue, attempting to leave orbit, only one showed any significant odds of success and that was landing."

"But the numbers Alder. What were the numbers?"

"Mbaka fully reviewed my..."

"The numbers!"

Alder cleared his throat. "I predict a 20% chance of success with a margin of error plus or minus ten percent."

### Old Friends

Elana could have had her office designed any way she liked. Back on League Prime during the years of endless discussions and analysis of every detail of the Duster's design, she more than any of the other staff had been given free rein to design her space. While all of the medical staff were qualified to speak about psychological health with any of the staff, Elana was expected to know, understand, and steer the mental competency of hundreds of the most brilliant minds in the galaxy as they faced years of unpredictable challenges. All of the science of the last hundred years had not replaced the roll of intuition in the job of psychologist. Elana's job was to understand and shape how people felt about the universe around them.

She had chosen an open, slightly shapeless space, a little more than three meters on a side. She'd had it colored in light blues mostly with some greens and reds. The shape was controlled slightly with balls and tendrils of hand blown glass. It would have been gaudy if not comfortably lit. The impression as she and Com Tech Reilly sat facing each other was that they were in the secluded corner of a larger space. Whether it was the window booth of a cafe or an underwater grotto you could never be sure.

Over time, her urge had been to darken the colors. She felt, as much as anyone the strain of the ridiculously long flight. She'd started telling Pilton that they needed to turn around after year eight; only in private, of course. She was tired. The crew was tired. The ship was aging. Again and again he'd asked. "Will they still follow me?" Every time he'd listened earnestly to her reply, assured her that he'd turn around before the morale situation got critical, and gone right on pushing further and further out. "Just think how elated they'll be when we turn back." He'd say to her. "We can relieve any pressure in a moment by announcing we're headed back." And so they'd gone on and Elana had kept the colors at the same bright, steady hue in her room.

The silence between her and Reilly was lengthening. Reilly was a very predictable woman who made her bi-annual psych appointment with one of the other doctors every six months and went back to her post in communications. There had been a lot of extra visits to the psychologist, or the tanks recently, but it didn't seem in profile for Reilly. Elana let the silence stretch. Reilly was petite with black, straight cut hair that was slowing being infiltrated by single bright white strands as the years passed.

"It's funny you know." Reilly started at last. "You wouldn't think that you'd be thinking about the past at a time like this. It feels strange; everyone talking about what day we're all going to die like that's the most important thing but..." She drifted off again, distracted. "Did you know Carol and I were friends before the ship?"

"Yes. I remember. University of Antarctica wasn't it?" In Elana's line of work you always said, "I remember" and not, "I looked at my notes before you came in and saw that you and Carol Pakerson went to the same school."

"Yeah. Only snow skiing left on Earth." Reilly grinned ruefully.

"You were listening on the radio when she died."

Reilly didn't respond. She looked away. "Carol wanted to go to deep space so bad. Telling her she was going to get eaten by space bugs would not have slowed her down. Even as a freshman she'd drag us all up to watch the transit platform whizz over. It was in a transpolar orbit and would fly over every ninety minutes. Sometimes, if they had a big load coming up from Earth, they'd drop that thing down really low. You could see all the spars and solar panels. The one around Earth is something like six kilometers across. It looked like some kind of ant whizzing by above the aurora. It was really something to see."

She paused again. There were tears pushing at the corners of her eyes. "Some nights it was just she and I. I used to follow her everywhere. My mom had died just a year or two before I got there. I guess Carol was kind of a big sister to me. Anyway, we'd lay up there, on the platform over the air control tower wrapped in thermals, our breath steaming, waiting for that stupid platform and she'd tell me about deep space; just stuff she'd read. She used to go on about every new planet that anyone found, didn't matter where; ice ball around Tenni, lava soaked hell planet somewhere else. I don't think I'd ever thought about going into space before Carol. My mom was a power plant technician. Back then, it was still a big deal even to go to the moon. People only went up for honeymoons and vacations.

"Anyway, when Carol found out about the Solo project, she put in for a transfer to League Prime that hour." She scowled. "I can't even remember agreeing to go with her. I just was there somehow, submitting my paperwork. I didn't have any family closer than Carol so I guess it made sense. We finished our degrees out there and were first in line for candidate selection. 'We're going on the first ship kiddo.' She told me. 'The very first ship.' She was like that. She said we'd get on the first ship headed for deep space and here we are. Except." Her eyes teared up fully and her face changed. "Except she's not here. She's dead and it just me. I just came because she told me I should. I don't want to be here anymore. Everyone keeps talking about fix this and do this so we don't die and I keep thinking, 'I don't care. This is wrong.'" She met Elana's eyes for the first time, tears streaming down her face. The years had shed off of her and she was a lonely, teenager again. "I don't want to be here. I want to go home. Please, can't I please just go home?"

### Divisions

There was no argument. Well, there was a lot of argument; cold weld, or fusion threading; unpowered stress loading or pressure fields. There were hundreds of arguments everyday about every aspect of the task ahead but none, not one, about whether or not the landing was necessary.

It made Alder uncomfortable. Part of the scientific process was rigorous examination of the evidence, occasionally even a painful public vetting, but no one had questioned him. They came to him like he was some sort of prophet. "Alder, if we route the plasma conduits directly to the hard point, will it improve our odds?" "Alder, will the weight distribution negatively impact our chances?"

He kept waiting for someone anyone to corner him, berate him for his stupidity, and give a dozen better options. Even a dozen worse options would have been better than this. Why didn't anyone even try?

At least they were busy. Thirty days had just vanished. It seemed like there were more tasks than people. The remains of the gamma ray pulse generator and a couple plasma wave guides had been jury rigged into a working nuclear fuel enrichment furnace. New control software was being written for the strange flight they were about to take. Everywhere, struts were being taken down from here and welded in place there. Someone had gotten the bright idea to make mesh harnesses for the livestock. Alder was sure some of the crew were getting more sleep than he was, but it sure didn't seem like it. Everyone seemed to be everywhere at all hours. They all had to be exhausted. If he had to put a number to it, Alder would have guessed that Ronald Midbits was probably getting more sleep than any three of the crew.

Alder rounded a corner in the Engineering Bay headed for Mbaka's pod and slowed. He had requested a meeting with Mbaka but Assistant Security Chief Fisher and two of the engineers were between him and the door. They were posed as if expecting him. The two lower ranking men turned to Fisher who spoke. "What's up Alder?" He was tall with light brown skin and a broad angular body. Although he was over 40 he read much younger. He was smiling broadly but his normally laid back manner held and undercurrent of tension.

"I'm looking for Mbaka, D'Ray. Can I help you?"

Fisher's smile held. "No man, no help needed. We were just wondering if you were planning on coming to the meeting tonight."

Alder crossed his arms and planted his feet. "What meeting would that be D'Ray?"

"It's nothing. Just some of us are thinking about the future, you know. We just want to talk about things."

"Tallen wants to talk about things." Alder corrected. While Tallen was still theoretically Chief of Security on the ship, Pilton had allowed him to return to duty, he was making a very poor secret of his intention to try and wrest control of the crew. Pilton's stake had fallen precipitously among the crew and Tallen seemed intent on exploiting the gap.

"He's got some good ideas, man. You should listen to him."

"Look D'Ray. With all the forms of communication on this ship, there's no good reason for you and Tallen to be sneaking off to have these meetings. If you've got an issue take it to Pilton."

Fisher shook his head ruefully. "There's some folks on this boat aren't too happy with Pilton right now. We've been following him for more than a decade and look where it's got us."

"Further into space than any human before?"

"No man. Into a busted ship that we're going to be lucky to get out of alive." Fisher changed gears. "All I'm saying is that Pilton was picked for space, you know, discovery and all that. But things have changed. Life on the planet is going to be rough. We'd just like to hear your opinion. People listen to you."

"And I listen to Pilton." Alder glanced back and forth between the three. "Do any of you have anything actually useful to talk about?"

The three shuffled awkwardly. Ensign Feldt, the smallest of the three finally broke the silence. "Yeah. Muuk ordered more than 10,000 feet of some kind of water proof paper be made. That's a lot of carbon. What do they want paper for?"

"They're making printed copies of every blue-print in the ships library, a lot of the rest of the library too."

"But why?" The other engineer asked.

"We're concerned about what will happen when the computer's fail."

The three men blinked. "The computers could fail?"

"Sure. They're optical computers. Optical computers fail. Even the solid state components won't last forever. We're likely to be on the surface a long time."

There was a pause. "Wow!" Feldt shuddered. "Man, I can't even imagine life without computers. That's like pre-history. Like 20th century stuff."

"Or earlier." Alder pushed his way between the three. "You should start working on the idea. I expect the whole system to fail around the eight minute mark."

"What eight minute mark?" Fisher asked.

"Eight minutes before impact; maximum re-entry stress. That's when we'll break up, or be computerless if we live. Excuse me." He slid through the door and out of sight of the men.

Mbaka's pod was more like a small factory than an office. No less than four 3d printers lined one wall, two plastic injectors, one laser lithograph, and one fusion micro-assembly. There were two assembly bots and a half dozen work stations.

"Alder. What took you?" Mbaka called from behind a stack of monitors.

"I ran into Fisher recruiting for Tallen's revolution."

"Oh. Well. I suppose that kind of trouble is to be expected." Mbaka had risen gingerly to his feet with the aid of cane. At seventy-five, Mbaka was by far the oldest crew member. His left eye had drifted steadily to the side over the years revealing a sclera dyed yellow by the brown of his skin. The wrist on his left side was as stiff as that side's leg, the result of an electrical accident in year four. But his voice was firm and his disposition bright. "A lot of the crew were pretty unhappy with Pilton before he went and got us into this mess." He gestured at a chair and Alder sat. "Now that we're stuck here, there's bound to be a fuss." He had sat back down and was fishing in a small refrigerator under his desk. "Need a drink?"

Alder nodded and Mbaka produced two brown bottles. While alcohol was not permitted onboard, Mbaka and his crew produced an unfermented malt beverage made with hops that had somehow been found growing in the bio-dome shortly after launch. It had been so long since Alder had had a real beer that he could no longer remember if M-Brew was a good knock off or not. It was heavy, sweet and had a fruity aroma.

"Myself," Mbaka said, after a long draw on the bottle, "I had us figured for dead from the start."

"How's that?"

"Well, it was clear from the beginning that Pilton was glory mad. I never knew a glory hound who had the sense to quit while he was ahead. I figured he'd get us out here and do some damn fool thing to get us all killed." He took a drink. "To be honest, I didn't think it would take him near this long."

"If you were so sure Pilton was going to get us killed, why did you join on?"

"Did I ever tell you about my Rosie?"

"Your wife?" Alder scowled. "Died of something. Some kind of palsy wasn't it?"

"No. I mean, did I ever tell you about Rosie?" Mbaka said with an emphatic gesture.

"I guess not."

"Most evil woman who ever lived. A stone around my neck day and night for thirty-four for years."

"You married the most evil woman who ever lived?"

Mbaka waved dismissively with his good hand. "You know how it is. I was a young post-doc, she had these huge breasts. We started arguing the day after the honeymoon ended; weird stuff; why didn't I like her friends, how come I didn't remember her favorite brand of toothpaste. The first few years, I thought, 'we'll learn.' She was young, I was young, but no, year after year she went on like that. One year she'd have an affair. The next she'd run my bank account straight into the ground. The whole time she'd tell me it was all my fault. It turned out she was half crazy and not very bright. I mostly stayed at the university. If she'd have been smarter, I might have divorced her. As it was, I didn't know what would become of her so I just took it. My father was from Africa, real Africa back on Earth; didn't hold with divorce. I could have moved. I could have started over. I just couldn't see explaining to my father that I was too selfish to take care of that awful woman. Finally, after thirty-four years, she died, and it wasn't any palsy either. You remember that fad a while back, clear skin?"

"Yeah, supposed to make your skin so translucent you could see the subcutaneous fat."

"That's the one. What a fifty-five year old black woman wanted with see through skin I'll never know but it got her, blood clots. Anyway, at the funeral I said my goodbyes and went looking for the first ship headed out. Here I am."

"So you don't care if we make it?"

"You remember that binary star system we passed in year six, the one that that was ripping that gas giant apart?"

"Yeah, I remember. The planet had been captured from somewhere. Tidal stresses were shredding it and only the core was still holding together."

"That's the one." Mbaka joined back in. "The whole rest of the planet was strung out like cotton candy around the two stars; violent as hell. Twenty million kilometer long bolts of lightning ripping through the corpse, some of them tying right up in the coronas of the stars. Well, one night while we were there, I went and got one of the rooms up out of sight of the ship. I stayed up all night just watching that poor planet. Twenty million kilometer long bolts all night. Sometimes the surface of the suns would get all spiked up like a plasma ball before a bolt tore loose. I thought about Rosie and my father and I decided I was doing okay. My father was long dead by then but I felt like I'd honored him by taking care of her. I'd honored her with my patience and I'd been rewarded with the best light show in all of space and time."

Mbaka's voice trailed off and Alder found himself staring vacantly at his empty beer bottle. He glanced up and found Mbaka's wandering eye fixed on him.

"I'm guessing though that you didn't come down here to listen to me talk about Rosie."

Alder cleared his throat. "Uh, no. I had an idea that I think could significantly increase our survival odds. It's a little crazy though."

"Crazier than setting an atomic weapon off on ourselves?"

"Maybe. How does, 'saw the ship in half' compare."

Mbaka thought it over. "I don't know? Would there be a magician and woman in a leotard?"

"Ha! No, I was thinking more, 'cut off the science bay and the hab module so that we could present a flat surface to the atmosphere during entry."

"Make the ship into an aeroshell?" Mbaka chuckled. "That's the good kind of crazy. The kind I like. You could almost fly the ship on descent."

"That would be a bad idea."

"You've run simulations?"

"Yeah. I wanted you to take a look before I suggested it to anybody."

Mbaka leaned forward to one of his consoles. "I like it already. Where's the file?"

### Tomb

Lucian Koriminksi was a horticulturalist and had been silently suffering from the long journey for many years. He'd been to see Elana almost weekly for more than a decade. His dreams of finding alien worlds and alien life forms had been swept away quickly in the mind-numbing routine of their tiny bubble of life in the cold void of space. Discoveries, when they came, came after weeks or months of claustrophobic tedium.

As the years progressed, his boredom and dislike for space had grown steadily into a gnawing hatred of everything around him and an almost obsessive need to criticize Pilton, whose unwillingness to turn around he perceived as the main obstacle to his happiness.

In her role as Dr. Alder, Elana had twice requested to have Koriminsksi placed on extended leaves from duty. It was difficult to balance the need to keep him busy with Koriminski's negative impact on the staff around him. He was in furious tears now.

"It doesn't make any sense, Dr. Alder. Why won't Pilton send out a communications pony? We're thirty light years from where we sent the last one. How is anyone supposed to know where we are?"

Elana frowned. "It was my understanding that none of the ponies survived the blast."

"Well then we should build a new one. We can't just sit here."

"I don't understand. Are you concerned that no one will be able to find us?" Elana had to be careful. With the tensions on the ship, Lucian's borderline delusional state could easily get out of control.

"Yes."

"We are broadcasting in radio."

"Radio won't help!" Lucian's voice was high with stress. "Radio waves travel at light speed. It'll be thirty years before they even get to our last known position."

"Help me understand Lucian. You seem very upset. Knowing that we're years from rescue either way, I think the feeling on the ship is that we need to make sure we survive the landing first and then worry about contact later."

Lucian went eerily still and quiet. "What if it's too late?"

"Pardon?"

"I've been watching the sparks on shields. You can see them all night in the bio-dome. It's not specks of dust, it's a moon; a solid moon filling in around us." Goose flesh rose on Elana's arms. Koriminski's voice had the cold edge of nightmare in it. "This isn't a ship. It's a glass and steel coffin and those sparks are the concrete pouring in. When the rescue comes, if it comes, they'll fly right by, just another dead rock in space. It won't matter if we're still gasping. The only way they'll notice us is if they get that chill from walking on someone's grave.

Against her will, Elana shivered. "Well," she said, in a tone unconvincing even to herself. "I guess our escape plan better work."

### Stress

"It will work." Mbaka was saying. "Better than anything we've looked at so far."

Pilton along with most of the rest of the command crew seemed unconvinced. "It seems like a bad idea to me to eliminate half of our living space and the entire science bay. There's a lot of equipment that we're likely to need when we land.

"If. If we land. That's the point." Mbaka was emphatic. "Our whole plan depends on the computer being able to keep the ship upright during landing. That's where we fail. That's where this plan saves us."

"I don't understand." Pilton was querulous.

"Look." Mbaka pushed a button and the ship's wireframe schematic leapt into existence in the middle of the table, this time with red clouds pouring out from points all around the hull. "The shields will withstand atmospheric entry. They'll even keep us alive during the landing, although it will burn most of them out. What they can't do is keep us from tumbling." He touched the table in front of him and the ship began to pitch back and forth. "This hull was never meant to enter an atmosphere. It's lumpy and hard to keep balanced once it starts to experience drag." The floating ship began do sway dangerously. "In the simulations, the failure always comes at the maximum stress point about eight minutes before impact." The image pitched forward suddenly and began spinning unevenly. After a few seconds, it shattered in a spray of pixels and parts that flew out of the range of the hologram and vanished. Mbaka paused and let the tension hang in the room.

"Now. Alder's suggestion, that we cut loose the habitation and science modules, gives us a ship that looks like this." A new version of the ship popped up. Now the broad, flat bottom of the engineering deck and the outer edges of the ring were all that were visible across the bottom of the ship. The halo of shields spread evenly across them. "This configuration is basically the same aeroshell design humans have been using for hundreds of years. Think of it as a giant grav pod." The hologram buffeted and rocked in the simulation of atmospheric entry but stayed upright.

"When I spoke to Muuk about coding entry for this configuration, she about cried." Wei added in. As systems officer, programming the entry codes fell to his crew. "She didn't feel like the other configuration had much of a chance. She feels this is the way to go."

Dr. Shirimi, Alder's number two since Lowen had died in the blast, cleared her throat. "This makes me happy too because it will force us to delay the landing. I've had a look at the knots of plasma rising off the planet. There's something in them. I'd like to have a chance to get a better look."

The room fell silent. Weeks of crisis, funerals, and overwork behind them coupled with more work, exploding starships, and mysterious aliens in the future left a heavy pall that, for a moment, seemed greater than the collected will gathered around the table.

Pilton laughed a sudden, high pitched giggle. "I like it." He announced, slapping his meaty hand on the table. "Let's do it."

"What!" Tallen exploded, just as vigorously. "You can't throw away half the ship on your own authority."

Pilton wheeled on him and shot out an accusing finger. "Mr. Tallen. That is enough. For more than ten years..."

"Yes." Tallen cut him off. "Almost fifteen years. Far longer than anyone but you meant for us to be out here." Pilton sputtered but Tallen pushed forward. "Now instead of being home where we belong, you are trying to get us stranded on your little planet. The ship is dying. Now what will you be? King Pilton?" Tallen sneered. "You say that you are trying to save the crew. Save it from what? From ever being able to get back off the planet? From ever being able to get out from under your thumb? I will not follow you."

"Shalim. I'm confused." Alder interjected. "I'm the one who suggested cutting the ship."

"That's right. And who do you work for?"

Alder glanced at Elana who was sitting pensively to his left. "I work for my crewmates I guess."

"No!" Tallen's huge voice filled the room. "You work for him." He gestured at the suddenly very small Pilton. "How many times has he said it? This is not a democracy. This is not a democracy. It couldn't be a democracy because we would have voted to turn around years ago, when we should have." He rose to his feet, leaning menacingly in on Pilton. "Maybe you will get us down alive. Maybe you will not. Either way, I think your days in command are numbered." He turned and stormed out of the room. Quietly, D'Ray Fisher and Covar, the 2nd in command of systems followed.

Pilton stood as if to speak to the backs of the departing men, closed his mouth and then sat again. "Well," he said into the silence, "let's see how long this will take."

### Small Talk

One of the 'old married couple' things that Elana and Sam did was make meals together. They did it quietly, unconsciously. After the awkward way the meeting had ended, they made their way almost silently down through the heart of the ship to their cabin in the hab module. Sam took vegetables and a block of tofu from their small refrigerator while Elana filled the noodle steamer with water. He cut the tofu into strips and then started in on the vegetables while Elana set the tofu sizzling in an open pan. Sam prepared the sauces while the noodles boiled and Elana stirred the vegetables in with the tofu. In the past they had used the same sauce, but Sam's stomach was growing increasingly intolerant of spice.

They sat side by side at their small table with their bowls of noodles in front of them. They used chopsticks to quietly fish vegetable and tofu out of the pan. For long minutes they alternated between bites of vegetable dipped in sauce and the noodles before Alder spoke.

"Pilton really seems to have fallen down."

"He's struggling." Elana agreed. "His personality is based on glory seeking. There's no glory in this."

"Looks like we've got a real problem with Tallen."

"Yup."

"I can't imagine very many people would follow him."

"Hard to say. The anger with Pilton runs pretty deep."

"I guess." Alder helped himself to a steaming second helping of noodles. "Tallen says he wants democracy. Maybe that's a good thing, if we're going to be a colony now."

"Oh please. That man's idea of democracy is getting enough people to agree with him that he can eliminate the rest. If he takes control, the colony will be a dictatorship."

Sam paused. "Eliminate? You think he'd kill?"

"He has before on at least two occasions. During the Mixili rebellion his position was overrun by Geist Marines."

"Wow. They put a killer on our ship. Who knew?"

"Everyone. Violence is part of human nature Sam. They put a known killer in a head of security in case a rebellion had to be put down in the crew."

"And now he's the rebellion."

Elana sighed heavily. "Yup. Of all the candidates that I approved to be on the crew, he was one of only two that I really wanted to reject. He's just too dangerous."

"Who was the other one you wanted to reject?"

"You."

Alder's eyebrows shot up. "Me? You didn't think I'd do well on the crew?"

"No silly. I didn't want you to go because I was in love with you and I didn't want you to die when Pilton got us all killed."

"You thought Pilton would get us killed?

"Yup."

"Mbaka said the same thing yesterday. How is it that everyone but me knew this was a doomed expedition?"

"Oh you knew." Elana picked up her bowl and slurped the last of the noodles. "Except that what you thought was something like, 'thirty-four percent chance of failure. That is within tolerances.' and then you didn't think about it again. That mind of yours really protects you from the insecurities of humanity."

Alder humphed noncommittally and fished the last bits of tofu from bottom of the pan. "Twenty-eight." He said, at last.

"What's that?" Elana asked, rising and taking her bowl with her.

"I calculated a twenty-eight percent chance that there would be a catastrophic failure that would prevent us from returning."

Elana sighed and reached out a hand for his bowl. "Just perfect."

"I guess." Alder handed her the bowl, and turned to pick up the place settings. "So if you knew we were going to die, why did you come along?"

"Besides the fact that you were here?" She asked over her shoulder while she rinsed the dishes.

"Well yeah."

"I don't know. Honestly Sam, I don't. I was doing fine on Craver Minor. I think it may have to do with the wreck of the IDF Councillor."

"You've mentioned it before."

"It was just such a strange wreck. The pressure seals in one section had held. The crew in that one section lived for more than year. They'd made a little room out of mattresses where they could crawl in and stay warm. It wasn't till the food ran out that they died. It gave me nightmares. I think it has something to do with why I'm here. Something about them, trapped in the dark all that time."

She turned around from the dishes and saw Alder glancing furtively at the data console next to the table. "Oh no you don't." She said drying her hands and grabbing his arm. "No work tonight. Tonight a massage is in order."

"It's okay." Alder protested mildly, letting her lead him into their living area. "I don't need a massage. Besides your hand is still hurt."

Elana laughed. "Who said the massage was for you?"

### Fire

"Seal it off! Seal it off!" Alder screamed. Down the lift tunnel from him, a white hot hell of plasma was arcing and ripping from wall to wall. Smoke from the fire poured up the tube. Two figures, almost invisible in the glare, writhed and turned in the manmade lightning.

"Are Billet and Williams out?" An engineer's voice came over radio. "I can't see in the..."

"They're gone dammit! Seal it! Just seal!" The plasma leak was growing rapidly, consuming the burning figures, threatening to expand into the section Alder was in. Already its blinding heat was threatening to push him away from the power console he was hiding behind.

With a thump, the emergency bulkhead between Alder and the fire slid shut.

Taking advantage of the drop in the heat, Alder rose up next to the console and began tapping furiously at the keys. All of the circuits read cold but somewhere in all the rewiring, plasma had still been running in one of the lines. Unable to identify the offending line, Alder switched to the emergency controls and entered the emergency depressurization code. The white light shining through the glass of the pressure door went out as suddenly as it had begun and there was a whooshing, clattering sound. The bodies of Billet and Williams, burnt beyond recognition by their momentary contact with the live line, were sucked out of the ship with a wisp of atmosphere and plasma, joining the growing list of former Duster crew members who were now specks in orbit around Mass 17.

Alder banged his hand against the console and cursed. With six days left before their expected launch date, they hadn't yet managed to fully separate either the hab or science module but they had now killed a fifth and sixth crew member trying.

"What happened?" The remote engineer asked.

"There was still power in one of the conduits." Alder wiped his hand across his grimy face. "Did you know them?"

"Yes."

Alder nodded. "I'm sorry. Do you need a minute?"

There was a long pause on the other end. "No. I'm okay." The long streak of deaths starting with Pakerson, Jinx, and Martin had given them all the sense of combat veterans. The death of friends was no longer something to stop work over. It was a fact. A part of life. They had stopped talking about fashion shows and new variations in cuisine after the explosion. By now, no one talked about the deaths either, unless you needed to replace someone on your crew.

Alder waited a minute to let the unseen crewman gather his wits. "One of the lines on C bus should be showing a leak now. That's the one that's still hot. I need you to shut it down and then get me another cutting crew. Looks like we're going to need environment suits."

"Line C 154 is showing a leak." The engineer answered. "I'll get off before your relief crew arrives. I'll let folks know too."

"Thank you." Alder sighed. Behind him there was a wet sound. In the excitement, Alder had completely forgotten that Commander Garson was with him.

The normally absent Garson had insisted on joining him for his work shift. She was regretting it now. Bent over on her knees, holding her long hair out of her face, Garson was heaving dryly into a pool of vomit. Tall and incredibly thin, Garson's ribs showed under her uniform as she heaved heavily and then spit. The closest Alder had ever come to an affair, which was not very close, was a couple of awkward conversations he had had with Garson when she and Wei's relationship had hit a rough spot a few years before. Elana had spotted it at once and had been more than a little ferocious. Alder never regretted staying true to her. Still, Alder looked on the heaving Garson with some compassion.

"Sorry you had to see that." He said, moving to stand over her.

Garson swallowed hard and wiped her mouth. "It isn't that." She waved vaguely at the bulkhead. "I'm pregnant."

"Yeah, I uh heard you might be." Alder said awkwardly, trying to move into a kneeling position next to her without putting his knees in the vomit. "You okay?"

Garson leaned back against the wall, breathing heavily. "Yeah. It's twins."

Alder slid into a sitting position next to her against the wall. "Twins? Wow." There was an awkward pause. "I think you'll make a good mom."

"Yeah." Garson laughed mirthlessly. "My mother would be very proud." They lapsed into silence again. "Do you think we're going to make it?" She asked finally.

"Yeah. Maybe. We're in better shape than we were before. If we can get into the atmosphere at the right angle, we've got a good chance."

"What do you mean if?"

"Well, Muuk has got the flight trajectory all programmed in. We should fall shields first. The computer can do the math. If something goes wrong or we start fiddling with what the computer is doing, we run a real risk of turning the ship over."

"Like the simulation?"

"Exactly like the simulation."

Garson looked at the bulkhead lost in thought. "I'm worried about what happens if we survive."

"How do you mean?"

"Do you know that Mbaka caught some of Tallin's men printing firearms."

"What?"

"You know. Firearms, sidearms, pistols, whatever they call them."

Alder cursed. "Do they have any?"

"No. At least I don't think so. He said they had some pieces but no powder, whatever that is."

Alder didn't explain. After a few seconds, Garson went on. "I can't do this Sam. I can't be fifty years old, pregnant and second in line behind Pilton. Tallen will kill him and me too."

"We don't know that Pilton will kill."

"Elana says he did it before."

"Yeah. Yeah she did." Alder rubbed the back of his grubby hand against his equally dirty chin. "Look Treva. We're all worried, but what are we supposed to do?"

"You could do it Sam. You could kill them first."

"What?"

"Tallen only has four or five close followers. They have all started staying with him in his cabin. There could be an accident."

"Treva..."

"I'm not kidding Sam. Everyone knows he plans to take over if we survive. I can't do it Sam. I don't know how. Pilton won't even talk to me. He's been locked in his quarters most of the last week. Someone needs to take charge Sam. It needs to be you."

"Killing crew members in cold blood is not what taking charge is about. You're asking me to act like you're afraid he'll act. The crew is still strong. We've been through a lot together." Garson had started crying while he was talking. "Maybe everyone won't follow Pilton. Maybe Tallen will cause a fuss..." Her body was wracked again, this time with tears of frustration and terror. "There are hundreds of us. We'll make a decision..." His words trailed off. Her mouth was open and her eyes were shut but no sound was coming out. Grief had overcome her. Ignoring the fact that he was pushing his feet into the vomit, he turned so that he could pull her head into his chest.

The lights were low and smoke still filled the hallway. He held her silently as the grief rolled through her and told himself that the tears leaking from his own eyes making clean streaks on his face were caused by the sting of the smoke.

### Optimism

Muuk sat opposite Dr. Alder in the Elana's strange pool of glass and light. She was squat with a broad face and wide nose. Her mostly grey hair was up in a bun, its lightness making the brown of her skin seem darker.

"Last visit I guess." She said conversationally. "Do you think we'll still have quarterly psych evals once we get on the surface?"

"I don't know." Elana answered honestly. "I guess; if enough of us survive."

"Oh we'll survive." Muuk said brightly. "That husband of yours is some kind of smart. We'll whistle right through the atmosphere strange space critters and all. A whole planet, can you imagine?"

"How do you mean?"

"Every problem humans have comes from some time in the past. Every bad lesson, every mistake, passed on from generation to generation. It seems like humans never get a fresh start. Well, it doesn't get much fresher than a brand new planet."

"You're thinking we'll start a new civilization?"

"We're the first humans to make it this far. Even when they start sending ships this far out, it's unlikely that we'll get spotted anytime soon. How long do you think it will be?" Her dark eyes were twinkling. "A hundred years? A thousand?" We've got hundreds of the best sets of genes, custom picked to be friendly and to work cooperatively and hundreds of years alone. It's going to be a wonderful experiment." She leaned back. "I just need to be sure and get my DNA into the pool. I'll have to move quick. I don't ovulate often, but I haven't dried completely up yet." She leaned back forward conspiratorially. "You know, I've wondered about Mbaka for years. He says he's too old for that kind of thing but I'll bet his leg isn't the only thing in his pants that's stiff."

Dr. Dryden opened her mouth and closed it. "That a...refreshing attitude."

"There are only a few hundred of us but we're a good genetic mix. We'll need to get as many combinations out of the original crew as possible. Maybe if I get success with Mbaka early enough, I'll try Frence in the biodome. He's a little young but a cutie. She glanced slyly at Elana. "What about you and Sam. Your baby maker still working?"

"This is a very different set of sentiments than I've heard you express before." Elana countered.

Muuk laughed. "I've been editing and re-editing the same lines of code for more than a decade. A change of pace will do me good. Breeding a new race on an alien world is a great change of pace."

### The Ceremony

There wasn't too much to see but the whole crew seemed to want to make something of it. Wei from systems, Van Weer an engineer, and the pilot Gibson, were standing by on top of the hab module with a cutting torch and a remote control, waiting for instructions to set it loose. The science bay was already gone and there was less than forty-eight hours of work left on the shielding before they would be ready to land.

The Ceremony, as everyone was calling it, was the last significant event before the descent. The atomic was ready, the hull re-enforced, and a thousand other small details attended too. Most of the crew were gathered on the port side of the ring that ran the full circle around the ship. They would only be able to see the last cut on monitors but they would be able to see the module as it disappeared into the thick soup around the ship. The whole process would have been invisible but they'd set up a vibration in the shields that was holding the cloud back a few hundred meters. It cost them in terms of heat in the shield generators but the math said they'd be leaving at least ten days before the first possibility of an overheat.

Sam and Elana stood side by side gazing out the window. For once, Sam wasn't needed for anything in particular. It was almost over. The buzz that had run through the ship for eight weeks was quieting down. One by one, tasks were being finished. There were no more parts to be salvaged from science or hab, no more code to write, no more items to be cataloged. The few crews still working on the shielding were busy and there was some last minute work going on in the biodome ,but more people were spending more and more time talking with friends or touring the ship half looking for work, half taking a final look around.

Some of Tallen's men had shown up though not Tallen himself. They had taken to wearing the same blue security uniforms regardless of their actual job title. Rumor was, they were planning to wait until after the landing before moving to 'remove' the increasingly reclusive Pilton. He was there too dressed in his white dress uniform and speaking formally to anyone who would speak to him as if it were a banquet or formal event. Mostly he was ignored.

A buzz went around that everything was ready and the ring fell silent. Pilton, who was wearing a microphone, began to speak and his words echoed around the ship. Someone booed when they heard it.

"There is no effort more noble that exploration. If humans have survived this long, they have done so because of their unending quest to find homes for themselves where there is no home, to find safe passage to peace and prosperity in lands beyond the horizon..."

Behind his voice, the radio was chattering with the instructions to release the last lines. Van Weer was given the instruction to make the final cut and Gibson powered on the ion engines. Like the science bay, the hab module had only been given enough pads to push it out of the Duster's way. It, like the science bay, would stay eternally in orbit, a part of the tiny moon that they had accidentally created.

"...Not every ship returns home. Not every journey ends in glory but, as we commit our beloved habitation module to her long slumber in space, we know that she is giving herself so that the human journey may go on..."

On the screens, the plasma torch flashed blue as the last beam cut through. Slowly, the hab module began sliding to the port and down, away from the ship. The crew turned their backs on Pilton and the screens, crowding up against the plate glass.

"...This ship is not the metal and glass, it is the people..."

Below them, the hab module slid into view. It looked like a great, mechanical turnip, grey with dust, sliding under the ship's lights and out into the dark. The three crew standing on the top in environment suits were tiny pools of light. They saluted as they approached the edge of vision.

"I got to tell you." Wei's voice came over the comm, walking over Pilton, who fell quiet. "You guys look great from here. I'd forgotten how beautiful a ship in space is. With the modules gone, the bottom of engineering looks like a sea ships keel, very smooth, very strong."

There was some clapping and a few cheers.

"Well, I guess that's it." Elana said as the last glimmer of the lights on the hab module faded into the murk.

"That's it." Sam agreed.

"So, we've got the best odds possible." Elana, glanced at Sam out of the corner of her eye.

"A lot better than we had a few weeks ago. We've got more than a 70% chance that at least some of us will survive."

The three crew members on the hab module had re-appeared from the dust and were powering toward the ship using thrusters built into their suits. The crowd was breaking up into chatting knots. "You think we'll lose people even if we survive?"

"Oh yeah." Alder sounded nonchalant. "The shields will keep us together on impact but, even with the gravity well generators running, we'll feel about 11 g's. People will get hurt; lots of broken bones, probably some fatalities. If we get structural failures..."

"Stop." Elana interrupted then sighed. "You know Sam. It's getting hard for me to keep positive. I keep having this bad feeling."

"Yeah. A lot of folks are pretty worried."

"Are you?"

Sam scowled. "I don't know. The numbers are a lot better than they were."

"But your gut, Sam, what does your gut say?"

"Aw, El, I don't know. The numbers are okay. If I see anything else I can do to keep us safe. I promise."

"I know you will." Elana paused. "I'm off duty for the next twenty hours. Will you come spend at least part of it with me in the biodome?"

"I don't know. I've got a lot..."

"Please, Sam. I know you don't get scared, but I do and the whole, cowardly captain, brewing revolution, imminent death combination has really gotten to me. I could really use some time."

Alder nodded and rubbed her back. "Okay. Mbaka's expecting me. Let me tell him I'm going to be away for a while."

### Face of the Future

Gibson , Dr. Shirimi from Science, and Mbaka, crowded around one of the consoles in Mbaka's pod. Gibson, who had come straight from the ceremony, was speaking, her voice hushed.

"Shirimi wanted me to get as close as I could, but I was worried about the health of the probe, so I dropped a couple of camera buoys on my way in to make sure we'd see it if anything went wrong. You can see me dropping the second one about ten kilometers out."

The holographic display in front of them shivered slightly as the one kilogram camera and sensor module was released. For a second the view changed to that of the buoy. It showed the probe as a black outline of wires, lattice, and sensors moving toward the shifting auroras over the north pole of the planet. The planetary crust had cooled to all black and the sun was on the far side of the planet, casting a ring of blue fire over which danced the glowing lights.

As the view switched back to that of the probe, an object could be seen in the aurora. From ten kilometers out, it appeared to be a knot in the shroud of light, as if the aurora itself were some kind of fabric or blanket twisted in the middle. As the probe dropped closer, an object could be seen at the heart of the twisting glow. It was indistinct at first but grew steadily clearer as the distance diminished. It had long tendrils that seemed to wrap the aurora around them and also strange grilles or lattices that spread out like wings from a solid center. All in all it gave the impression of a new species of insect or maybe spider though it also bore some similarities to a vining plant.

"How big is it?" Mbaka asked.

"The scale is a little hard to track without any other objects nearby. The center section is maybe a hundred meters across, the tendrils stretch out maybe two thirds of a kilometer." Gibson answered. "I can run the rate of change versus the horizon and give you a better number if you want."

Mbaka waved his good hand. "Not important. What is it doing?"

"A lot of things." Shirimi joined in, her voice a soft as Gibson's. "It's making ammonia; stabilizing carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide; there's a lot of methyl alcohol and aromatic ester in the aurora as well. We don't know if it's making them or not."

"Why make aromatics?" Mbaka mused.

"We don't even know why it's in the air. There's no propulsion at all that I can see." Gibson said, fiddling with the controls. "There is one thing I want you to see before we get to the big finish." The screen focused in on the bottom of the center section of the enigma before them. "This thing looks like the glowey part of a firefly. I think it's about ten meters across maybe. Can you see that it's pulsing?"

"Yeah." Mbaka agreed. "It almost looks like it's breathing."

"Exactly." Gibson said. "The rest of the object is rigid or seems to flex on logical pivot points. This thing is different. You can see that it has some sort of rigid attachment to the rest of the structure but it's actually pretty flexible."

The three fell silent for a few seconds, watching the strange glowing bulb on the bottom of the structure.

"The heart?" Shirimi asked.

"Or the crew module maybe?" Gibson fed back.

Mbaka harrumphed. "Or maybe just the battery. That glow looks like plasma to me. Maybe they use some kind of pressurized plasma and that's the pump."

"Could be." Shirimi agreed.

"Whatever it is, they sure protected it. Watch this." Gibson switched to the following camera. The scout looked like an insect moving up next to the strange thing in space. "I was trying to get close to the bulb. I'm moving almost straight down relative to this perspective. I was maybe twenty meters away when this happened.

Almost too fast to see, two of the tendrils looped suddenly back in from aurora and wrapped firmly around the probe. Almost before the watchers could process what was happening, they flipped the probe up to the side of the structure opposite the bulb. They pressed it against the dark hull for a few seconds and the blue light of a plasma torch flashed. Less than a minute later, the probe, now in two pieces, was flung off into space by the tendrils.

"What happened?" Mbaka asked.

"They cut the battery out." Gibson answered. "One of those pieces is most of the superstructure, the other is the equipment. What didn't come back is the battery pack. They ate it."

"Ate it?"

Gibson shrugged. "I guess. I've got the whole thing in great resolution. The torch is built into the side of the ship. They move the probe three or four times while cutting. I don't see the batteries get picked up, but they don't come back. Weird thing is; that's the whole reaction. It didn't slow down or do any scanning. It didn't come for the trailing cameras. It just ate the battery and went right on with what it was doing. Both of those cameras are still on station."

Shirimi whistled. "Has Alder seen this?"

Mbaka shook his head. "No. He's with Elana right now."

"Okay." Shirimi turned to Mbaka. "I say we don't say anything to the crew yet. There's more than a thousand of these things around the north pole alone. I think we've got enough to worry about with the landing. Maybe they won't even be on the ground."

"Maybe." Mbaka concurred. "But you don't build planets because you want to live in space."

"True. I'll show Alder when he's back on duty." Shirimi stood. "In the meantime, I don't think we need to panic anyone over things we can't do anything about."

There was a moment's silence. They all understood that they were also agreeing not to tell Pilton.

"Agreed." It was Mbaka.

### Human Nature

For years, Sam and Elana had worked together in the biodome when their schedules would allow it. There was still some noisy last minute work being done to re-enforce the hydroponic racks, so they steered themselves into the open section directly under the false suns. Rows of a three foot tall corn hybrid were ripening in the warm Earth. Silently, they took plastic tubs and started down adjacent rows. Crop rotation and a carefully controlled environment ensured that there were always vegetables in harvest. Social engineering insisted that the crew do the work. Sam didn't mind the sharp edges of the corn that sometimes cut Elana's hands. What was harder for him was the squash and ground hugging vegetables that made unfortunate demands on his knees as he bent to prune or pick them.

There was only a light, artificially created breeze so the only sound, other than the eternal hum of the machines that ran the facility and an upset chicken over by the pens, was the sound their clothes made as they pushed between the rows.

Sam understood that one of the reason Elana was so attracted to him was because, while she was responsible for caring for the emotions of the crew on the ship, he was rather "pure" as she put it, and un-emotive. When she did need to be comforted, he always felt at a loss and unsure what to do. Over the years, he had learned that just his presence seemed to give her what she needed while she worked out whatever she was working on so he worked in silence on his row, watching her forearm out of the corner of his eye for signs it was still troubling her. It was scheduled to rain in about two hours. While Alder hoped they would go into one of the greenhouses when it did, he knew Elana well enough to know that she would stay out in it. With the deep loyalty that was native to his being, he knew that he would stay in it with her. At least it was a warm rain.

As a member of the command crew, the computer kept track of his location at all times, but he had set his status to "unavailable." Never the less, after about an hour and a half of work, just as their muscles were warming to the work and they were both forming a fine film of sweat, the communications console at the corner of the field paged him. He ignored it at first, but it called a second time a few minutes later with a priority code. He sat down his basket and, with a nod at Elana, went over to the terminal.

Pilton was on the line. "Alder?" His voice was high and nervous. "Alder. Can anyone hear us?"

Alder glanced at Elana who was still working about thirty meters away. "No."

Pilton giggled. "I need to show you, er, I need you to meet me. Can you meet me?" He was talking fast, almost too fast to be understood.

"Sure. Where are you?"

"Oh. Don't come here. Meet me. Meet me at the number 7 airlock. I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Okay." Alder scowled. The number 7 airlock was all the way at the back of the engineering module in the middle of a set of storerooms. It was rarely used except for periodic maintenance that required crew to go outside the ship. "Do you need me to bring anything?"

"No no." Pilton giggled again. "Just uh, just come. You'll see."

Elana gave him a sour look, but didn't comment as he made his way to the lift.

Alder rode down the lift in silence and was startled, as he always was, by the changes in the engineering section. While he didn't think there was much improvement to be had by "balancing" the ship, one of the problems that you encountered when you worked with a crew who had mostly all passed advanced calculus, was that they could work out their own opinion about what was statistically significant. In order to present the most balanced ship possible during the upcoming descent, stores, some of which hadn't been moved in fifteen years, had been sorted, weighed and re-distributed using a nightmarish schema that may or may not have made any real difference.

The once wide, orderly corridors into the bowels of the engineering section were a morass of crates and packing straps.

The number 7 airlock was an entirely utilitarian affair. It was far out beyond the decorated, pleasant sections of the ship, out even beyond the production bays and printers of engineering. The walls were the standard, flat white paint of all the airlocks. It featured a standard round antechamber and completely boxy and unremarkable airlock. Pilton was already in the antechamber when Alder arrive. He was still dressed in his dress uniform. Behind him, in the airlock itself, was large, self-lifting cart with a tarp draped over it.

Alder approached somewhat warily. The Captain was so nervous even Alder could sense it. Additionally, his clothes were wrinkled and torn and there was a cut somewhere in his scalp that was bleeding a thin stream down the side of his face and staining his collar. One of the knees was torn completely out his pants. His pasty white leg peeked out from the opening like a frightened child. It seemed too thin to support his belly. He was noticeably relieved when he saw Alder approaching.

"Computer." He said, "Confirm Executive Authority, Pilton, William, no middle initial."

"Confirmed. You have Executive Authority."

"Thank you. Please make the following changes in exactly ten minutes time. Grant to Alder Samuel C. the rank and privilege of Flight Commander and assign to him the duties and privileges currently assigned to me. Please confirm."

Alder started to say something but the computer overrode him. "Unable to confirm. That order will result in two officers with the rank of Flight Commander."

"Correct. Correct." Pilton agreed. "I will leave the Duster before the end of ten minutes. Please confirm."

"Confirmed."

"Where are you going?" Alder asked. He was eying the cart over Pilton's shoulder. There was a dark and spreading stain on the tarp and it seemed as if something were moving slightly under it.

"I...uh...I have to show you something." Pilton was squinting the eye on the side of the cut. Alder could see a large bruise in his scalp.

"It's about personality styles." Pilton said sliding backward into the airlock. "You see. We were all picked not just for our skills but our personalities as well...for the flight. Hold right there." He said to Alder who was following him, trying to understand. "Now that we're not flying, the rules have changed." He was beside the controls in the airlock.

"Look." Alder said, from just outside the airlock door. "This is going to require adjustment from all of us." A creepy feeling was growing in his gut as he watched the obviously injured Pilton. There was someone under the tarp. Whoever it was groaned softly

"Wait!" He yelled, but realization had come a second too late. The airlock door shut slid shut.

Pilton spoke into the microphone, his voice echoing tinnily in the ante-chamber. "...There are a couple of us that just don't belong. It's science you understand. Well, psychology." He giggled. "Almost science."

Alder rushed to the tiny control booth next to the airlock. Pilton was right on the other side of the thick glass. The controls on Alder's side were locked out. He looked through the six inch glass at Pilton who was staring back at him. "I don't fit here. I'm all glory and fame. You know that. You all are going to be hungry and cold." His eyes were ice blue and didn't look as mad as he sounded. "I could never do cold. I could never lead through a famine." He paused while Alder pushed vainly at the buttons and yelled at the suddenly unresponsive computer. Behind Pilton, the tarp was moving. Whoever was under there was struggling to sit up. "You're orders won't work for another eight minutes or so." Pilton said through the glass, then resumed his narrative. "There are others on the ship who could lead in inglorious circumstances like that, Mbaka, Elana, and you Alder. In eight minutes you will be the new ships commander."

"This is crazy!" Alder bellowed out, hammering helplessly on the glass. "Come out of there."

Pilton shook his head. A red warning light was spinning over his head. "No Alder. It needs to be you. You are clean and egoless."

"Don't say that. Come out. We need you to help us with Tallen."

Pilton giggled and glanced over his shoulder at the cart. The sick feeling in Alder's gut rose to a wave. "You don't understand Alder. I have already helped you with Tallen." He paused. "Fisher too. I told them I wanted to meet. I told them I wanted to cede control in an orderly fashion." He giggled and wobbled. "We were supposed to meet right after the ceremony. I took a plasma charger. I got Tallen from across the table. Fisher was...harder. I hadn't planned on having to kill two." He touched his head gingerly. "I think he gave me a concussion, the bastard." A warning horn sounded. Pilton's mood swung suddenly and he leaned into the glass. "Elana will tell you. I'm the hero here, the one they'll tell stories about. I just saved the crew years of suffering. Tallen was a monster. This is me in glory. This is noblest sacrifice." It was Fisher who was moving on the cart. He was dazed but had managed to get his head out from under the tarp and was moving as if to roll over, and toss himself to the ground. Pilton continued, ignoring him, "No greater love has any man than he who will lay down his life for his neighbors." He jabbed a button and Alder slammed his eyes shut. While quick enough to be mostly painless, the outer door took several seconds to open. Since he had not dropped the pressure before opening the outer door, Pilton created a sucking vacuum that ripped the room clean. A fair percentage of Pilton, Fisher, and the already dead Tallen, stuck to the inner doors as the rest of their remains and the cart were pulled into the dusty void of space.

### Needs

Allayah Harshaw sat quietly in the chair opposite Elana. If she felt tension about having been summoned to the ship's psychologist office, she didn't show it. She's entered the room quietly, looked with some interest at the glass ornaments, and sat when Elana asked her too.

Studying her face, Elana could remember how impressed she'd been with the young bio-engineering back on League Prime when she'd shown up in the candidate pool.

Allayah's profile had appeared, even though she was well below the recommended age due to the concerted efforts of a number of her professors and co-workers. She was really too young for the mission but, there was an X factor to Allayah that couldn't be denied. She had poise. She accomplished everything she set out to do and she was, quietly, extremely likeable. Elana had given her the full psychological profile and recommended her for inclusion; a remarkable woman on a remarkable life journey. Like everyone else who interacted with Allayah, Elana felt a certain pride at having helped her reach her goals. Yes, there was an X factor.

Sitting now face to face, Elana found herself second guessing the conversation she wanted to have. She'd thought about it for years, maybe even since launch, but there'd never been enough need, enough pressure. Elana had things she wanted too and wasn't keen to share. She cleared her throat.

"Sam says you were the one who grabbed him when the gravity failed."

"Lieutenant Commander Alder was caught off guard I think." Allayah responded. "It was humorous."

Elana pursed her lips slightly. She needed the younger woman to open up, hear Elana's personal concerns. She switched gears. "Thanks for coming to see me today, Allayah. I just want to assure you that this is in no way about your performance. It's exceptional, as always."

"Thank you Dr. Alder. May I ask what this is about?" So cool. So direct.

Elana paused. Did she really want to do this? "This is about me, Allayah. I'm afraid that, as the ship's psychologist, I don't really have anyone that I can confide in. As the ship's psychologist, I'm supposed to be calm and in control at all times. It doesn't give me much chance to have moments of weakness or fear myself. Does that make sense?"

"Yes ma'am." Allayah stopped, didn't asked the obvious question about why Elana wasn't seeing one of the other ship's doctors. She sensed as Elana hoped she would, that this was personal.

"There's so much fear in the ship now. Everyone is trying to pack up or make plans for if they don't make it. I'm sure you've felt it; that need to tie up loose ends."

"Yes ma'am. Several of my crew have been hosting 'sit ins' in the gardens. They don't want to go back to their quarters after they finish their shifts. I sent you a note."

"Yes, and I think your response has been wonderful. Let them have these hours. We may really all be dead tomorrow." Elana slipped into silence. Allayah watched her. "I'm a woman too, you know." Elana continued as if to herself. "I have fear. It's curious to me. I don't seem to be afraid of dying, but I have some loose ends I would need to clean up first...just in case."

There was some softening in Allayah's face. She sensed and responded to human suffering. 'Perfect.' Thought Elana.

"You're a remarkable woman Allayah. I've really enjoyed watching you over the years..." She paused again. "I need to ask you to do something for me...something important."

Allayah leaned forward, the roles of Doctor and patient forgotten. Her eyes were warm. "Tell me." She whispered.

"It's...it's not about me you understand." Elana whispered back, her voice thick with emotion. "It's about Sam. I need you to help me with Sam."

### Descent

Alder fidgeted. There wasn't much to do but fidget. He would have liked to have been hiding somewhere with El, be back 'on the couch,' letting the pressure out of seeing Pilton go completely mad. Unfortunately, the immediacy of landing day had trumped all other concerns.

The atomic had gone off as planned, ripping a miles wide hole in the cloud and tipping the Duster toward her fateful encounter with the planet below. The ion pads were burning full strength now, setting the angle of descent. Rolls of numbers were scrolling across the screen in front of Alder, altitude, pitch, velocity, a dozen others, but, until they got far enough into the atmosphere for the pressure to build, there wasn't much to do but watch them scroll by. Hopefully, there wouldn't be anything for him to do even then. He shifted in the harness he was wearing and pulled at his neck brace. The 11g finale to the stunt they were about to pull was enough to snap a neck if the angle was just wrong.

They had moved the bridge from the main ring to a converted room high in the bio-dome not far from where he and Elana had watched the surface of mass 17 burst. The original bridge was just above the edge of the ring and likely to get subjected to intense heat as the ship turned the thickening atmosphere into plasma as it descended. It was possible that the engineering section and parts of the bridge would burn through without destroying the rest of the ship.

It had been hard work to convert what was meant to be a leisure room into the new nerve center of the ship. The optical lines had been re-run, analog lines had been laid down in parallel, and crew members at key controls around the ship were connected wirelessly with battery powered radios in case all else failed. They had had to build a small step in the doorway to help people over the mass of cables.

Pilton's final command had been taken in stride by most of the crew. Lieutenant Commander Alder was now Ship's Commander Alder. Even Garson, who should have been next in line seemed relieved that the burden had passed to Alder. There were a few crew members who were still missing and could cause trouble; some of Tallen's men who, while leaderless, seemed unwilling to admit that their plans for domination had been crushed by a madman in white dress uniform.

Elana had nodded when Alder told her the incredible tale of his encounter with Pilton. She patted his cheek and said, "Really, you've been in charge for years Sam. Pilton was just too proud to admit it."

Alder knew he wasn't really in charge. Everyone knew their jobs and would do just fine without him. If they needed to have a name at the top of the list, he didn't mind that it was his that was there, as long as everyone remembered that they were in charge of themselves. He was sitting in the center chair meant for Pilton. He'd tried to get Mbaka or Gibson to take the seat. Gibson refused on the argument that the flight controls were hard wired into the chair in front of the command chair. Mbaka just laughed and patted him on the shoulder.

So he sat in the command chair and fidgeted. To his left was Wei monitoring systems. To his right was Mbaka who seemed to be joyful, almost giddy. The only other person in the room, and the one who should be in charge, as far as Alder was concerned, was Gibson in the pilot's chair. She was charged with seeing that Muuk's program executed correctly. There wasn't really much she could do. While she might be able to turn critical systems on or off or re-route power, if the computer couldn't fly the ship, there was no way she could. The line was so fine that a flight error would send them into a high-g tumble faster than Gibson's brain could send signals to her fingers. Still, they were flying so there was a pilot. A damn good one at that, Alder thought.

The rest of the crew, with the exception of those hardy souls who had agreed to take wireless radios and be strapped in next to the machines they were responsible for, were lashed into harnesses in the core of the biodome. It was uncomfortable; every available space inside the inner most set of pressure doors had been converted into a padded cell complete with harnesses and a strap that went around the forehead. They'd had to turn off the gravity well generators in two sections to even get people mounted in some of the more outlandish locations. Worse, they had started loading eight hours before the atomic. Already, some people had been in their harnesses for over fourteen hours. In theory, everyone on board was bolted into a harness capable of withstanding 11 g's. In theory.

Elana had chosen to be strapped in with the horticulture crew near the also harnessed animals. She felt the gardeners and livestock handlers were the most unprepared for the dangers of spaceflight and therefore the most likely to be frightened by the mad descent.

"Beautiful isn't it?" Mbaka interrupted Alder's musings.

"Hmm Yes." The other advantage of having the bridge moved to the biodome was the view. The entire front panel was a single window out into the coming storm. They had chosen the shallowest approach possible to minimize the impact with the surface. As terrifying as it was to contemplate trying to slide out a kilometer long ship on bare rock, hitting that rock head on was ten times worse. They had already orbited the planet twice, letting their orbit decay. They were on the night side now, waiting for the dawn. The planet filled the screen, a black ball side lit by the blue white halo of the soon to rise sun. The aurora was still below them but close enough to see the unnatural knots whip by, giving some indication of their speed.

It was the final orbit. If they made it to the night side again, it meant they had survived. If not, their remains would be scattered across the alien terrain.

"Really beautiful."

Alder looked over at Mbaka who was smiling at him broadly. "What are you smiling about?"

"You just seem tense." Mbaka said. "You should learn to relax." For some reason, reaching the climax of their adventure had put Mbaka in a joking mood. Different people respond to stress differently, Elana always said.

"I'll relax tomorrow." Alder shot back, trying to match the mood.

Mbaka smile broadly. "Good. That's in about four minutes."

A slight shudder rumbled through the ship." It's nothing." Wei jumped in immediately. "The number four shield just ramped itself up to 100%." It had been decided early on that the main communications channels would be broadcast across the ship. This was so that crew members trapped away from the bridge, their fate taken out of their hands, could at least hear what was happening around them. Someone was also playing Pietcraig's "To the Skies Triumphant" in the background. It was more than a century old but seemed to fit in spite of the fact that they were falling out of the sky. It was good that it seemed to fit because no one could figure out how to turn it off. Alder suspected that it was a going away present from Pilton. It seemed like the kind of thing he'd do.

Sunrise came a few minutes later. The edge of the sun was hard but the sky around it glittered with water in the halo of atmosphere. As the sunlit surface came into view, Alder got a good look at it for the first time. It was mostly flat and grey, black, the color of raw basalt. There were no high mountains but in some places the hills seems to swirl into circles and crescents as if the disturbance caused by something moving underwater had somehow been frozen in place.

For long minutes they rode with only the chatter from crewmembers reporting statuses as the planet rolled under them. "Twelve minutes." Gibson called and a rumble moved through the ship. High density ion engines were little use against the gravity of the planet but they were being used to control the descent.

"It is beautiful." Alder said as the rumble faded. His mind had filled suddenly with the thought of Elana and their crewmates strapped into steel tubes deep in the ship, unable to see what was happening. "You should see it El." The microphone picked up his voice and echoed it around the deserted areas of the ship. He knew it would find its way deep into the inner chambers where Elana and the others were pinned in the padding and the fear. "The surface cooled so quickly, you can see ripples from the Coriolis effect in the underlying magma. Uh, I mean, the hills seem to spiral in on each other in some places. Not mountains, just long ridges of hills that form spiral patterns. It's almost like the surface was scarified on purpose." The ship was shuddering slightly as the first fringes of plasma wrapped their fingers around the outer ring.

Wei was reading off numbers and Gibson sat tensely at her control panel. Alder glanced at Mbaka who smiled and nodded for him to go on.

"We're low enough now that I can see the atmosphere on the horizon. It's blue. I know you miss the sky El, like the skyline outside of Myfor Proper. We're going to have a sky again. It will be nice. I know you've missed it." He felt awkward but Mbaka was still gesturing for him to go on and Wei was smiling in an affirming way.

"We're only about a hundred and twenty kilometers up now. The plasma is something to see. We're not fully in the ball yet but it looks like a really hot torch is running all along the main ring. I can still see the bridge but I'm glad I'm not down there..." He struggled, lost for words. "When we come out of the plasma storm it will be twilight. New stars in a new sky. I remember seeing you by starlight but it's been a while." He stammered again. "You're pretty in moonlight." He continued talking while the minutes spun by.

"Ten minutes."

"Hold on El," Alder instructed. "The ship has one last chance to make corrections here in about twenty seconds. If it doesn't like our posture, it will adjust us one last time before we hit maximum stress." He didn't mention that it was the first time that there was a real chance that the ship might start tumbling. "We should be coming up on it," he glanced at Wei who nodded, "right about now."

Alder's chair lurched down and away from him, dragging him down by the straps. The room around him seemed to shift in shape, almost as if all four sides were bending down away from him.

"Autocorrection initiated." Gibson's voice rode calmly over the storm. "Yaw increasing. Pitch near redline."

The steadily rising rumble had become a horrible howl. The external view was almost blotted out by the plasma boiling over the front edge of the ring and lashing like whips of fire against the shields.

"Twenty seconds to end of autocorrection." Gibson's voice was choppy with the bouncing of the ship.

Alder wanted to speak to Elana, but found himself instead pulling at the shoulder straps that were digging into his flesh. Mbaka was saying something and laughing but Alder couldn't hear him over the roar.

"Ten seconds."

Alder scowled at Mbaka. Reacting positively to stress was one thing but Mbaka seemed a little too happy. Alder felt prepared for the risk, but he was not enjoying having his vision go red from all the blood rushing to his head and his straps were beating his shoulders unforgivingly.

"Coming out of auto correct now." The howl shrank back to a roar. The ship was still shaking and buffeting from re-entry but it was upright, still under the computer's control. "We're in the pipe. Approach is nominal to profile." Gibson's voice was calm showing no sign of the strain they were all under.

"Number 5 shield now at 125% of tolerance." Wei added. "Power output still at 100%."

Alder forced a deep breath. He couldn't tell if the room was heating from the plasma fire burning a few meters away or if it was just the adrenaline in his system. "Okay. Okay. We're in the worst of it now Elana." He reported over the cacophony of radio chatter and the groaning of the ship. "But we're still upright. If we could see outside, the hills would be close enough to see light and shadow sides. We're running towards twilight so we'd have a nice bright view in front of us." Something in the ceiling above Alder banged and crashed suddenly into something else. He glanced up nervously. "We're getting close to maximum stress, the point when our odds improve. Every second that we stay in profile past that moment is one less second we have to survive."

Alder's stomach was turning. The motion was getting steadily more dramatic. All of the ship's engines were now running well past maximum trying to hold them upright against the buffeting wind. "Hold on El. We're almost there."

"Eight minutes." Gibson called as if on cue.

"Hey Alder." Mbaka called. "We just passed eight minutes."

"Yes. Maximum stress."

"You said the computers would fail at eight minutes."

"So?"

"So, A lot us have been saying for years that we wanted to be around when you got one wrong."

"What?"

"My computer is still up. You're off by at least fifteen seconds. Ooop. Sixteen."

Alders sputtered. "When we land, I'm letting Ronald Midbits into your bunk." He shouted over the roar.

"Now you're getting it." Mbaka laughed, as he bounced up and down in the chaos. "You're doing great! Wrong by twenty seconds."

"We are passed maximum stress. Seven plus minutes to impact." Gibson reported.

"All shields over 125%" Wei chimed in. "Number five at 145%. No power drops."

"All right El." Alder started talking again, knowing full well the entire crew had heard Mbaka. "It will start quieting down now. We're moving into much thicker air but our speed relative to the surface is dropping. We should see the shields start to cool off. It will give them more strength at impact. We're approaching mid-afternoon local time. I can't see out yet, but I should get a glimpse before the end."

Alder talked about the numbers, the percent of water in the atmosphere, and anything else he could think of as the roar retreated back to loud rumbling. The plasma boil faded away over the next few minutes, replaced by whistling wind. They were almost at the light/dark line of morning when glimpses of the sky became visible over the scorched main ring. "I can see the stars El. We're almost home."

"Last adjustment. Two minutes to impact."

The view outside swung to the left as the ship began a flat turn on its axis. The number five shield, having taken the brunt of the burn, was being moved to the rear of the ship where the impact would be felt least. While the shields were expected to fail during slide out, they had to survive at least a few seconds after impact. Number five was expected to be hottest after entry and therefore first to fail.

The turn was slow and dizzying. They weren't flying in any real sense; just falling in a controlled manner. The leisurely spin gave the illusion that they were still somehow in charge of their fate.

The dawn landscape came into view speeding away behind them at a thirty degree angle. It was close now; so close that it flitted out of sight almost before Alder's eyes could process what he was seeing. He tried to force his vision to match the flicker, to give him some idea of the surface but it was too close and they were moving too fast.

"Altitude 400 meters. 900 kilometers per hours. Still in profile."

"This is it El. This is..."

"I've lost my reading. Impact. Impact. Impact."

The landscape spun under Alder's eyes and his jaw worked open and shut. "Elana, I want you to know how much..."

Blackness. Blackness and a tiny light ringed in red. Alder focused on the light. He didn't know where he was; somewhere dark. The light grew as he turned his attention to it. It was a torus now, white on the inside and red on the outside. It seemed bigger. Like it was bigger but he wasn't understanding what he was seeing. He thought about his birds. Flights of birds in order. y=2x+1 birds. A line. Y=2x^2+1 a parabola of birds.

The torus unfolded as he ran through the mathematical models in his mind. He was looking at Mbaka. Mbaka's head was held upright by the neck brace he was wearing but his hands were hanging at his sides. Well, not hanging, bouncing sort of. Everything was bouncing. He swung his head around. Wei was there. The side of his face was covered in blood and he was digging at something in his cheek. Gibson was in front of him. He couldn't tell if she was moving.

The lights and computer screens were all dark. Outside, he could see a red line of molten rock stretching out behind them. They were in slide out. The shields were holding and their pressure against the rocks below was heating and melting them. He couldn't guess their speed, 200 kmph maybe and slowing quickly. They were cutting a trough the width of the ship maybe ten meters deep into the surface. Molten rock was flying out away from them in all directions. At the pressures they were creating, they had spent the first few seconds sliding on a layer of plasma made from vaporized stone.

He became aware of the noise, enormous but dry and hard after the sounds of descent. Some part of the ship was actually touching rock and screaming metallically as it sheared away. Sparks flew from somewhere to his left arching high into the air behind them. 'Three shield is failing.' He managed to process.

There was a lurch and a crunch. A hundred meter piece of the Engineering module tore away and pinwheeled behind them down the trough. The sound changed to all metal against stone. At least three of the shields and the crew maintaining them had broken away with the section of Engineering that was gone. More pieces of Engineering sheared off in balls of fire. The ship was moving slower now and not digging so deep. As their momentum bled away, they were rising slowly from the end of the long channel they had cut.

It stopped. It all stopped. There was the clattering of something under Alder's feet. Then silence. The monitors were dead. "To the Stars Triumphant" had died. The lights, except a few battery powered backups were dead. Several large pieces of the ship were burning in the distance behind them, but they were alive, upright on the ground. Somewhere in the dark of the ship behind them someone cheered, a single voice at first, but it rose up, muted through the bulkheads, hundreds of voices, crying and clapping.

There was a groan and one last sway as the last of the shields failed dropping what was left of Engineering flat against the earth.

"What happened?" Mbaka asked groggily.

"I let Ronald have his way with your face." Alder answered, but his efforts at humor were sideline by a sudden, terrible shaking in his hands. He clasped them together tightly. "That and we survived." His jaw was quivering like his hands. He wanted to unfasten himself but was shaking too badly to grip his harness.

"It's all dead." Wei said. He was tapping at his monitor with his left hand while holding his face with his right. "We'll have to see how much of it we've lost for good."

Alder vomited. It slid down his chin and into his clothes. He couldn't lean forward because of the harness. Again and again he heaved as his hands shook.

"Hold on Alder." Mbaka said, more coherently. "You're okay. Lupe." He called to Gibson who still hadn't stirred. "You okay?" Mbaka unfastened his straps and began working himself free from the harness. "I need you to answer me Guadalupe." She didn't respond.

"Hold on Alder. I'll come back for you." Mbaka said, rising gingerly from his chair. Wei was up too, moving unsteadily towards Gibson.

Someone was running in the hallways behind them, shrieking with joy. Alder gasped and fought to steady his breathing. "Is she all right?" He managed to ask finally.

Alder couldn't see what Mbaka and Wei saw but they shook their heads no in response to his question.

As they worked on the unresponsive Wei, and Alder sat holding his hands together, waiting for the shaking to subside, a brilliant dot of light appeared behind them. It was white hot and lit the room with a contrast maddening glare. As Alder watched, prisms spread along the horizon and a rainbow rose above it. It was beautiful and hypnotic. It shown down the long trough they had cut in the earth, erasing the fading glow of the super-heated rock and painting the hull of the Duster pale white.

"What is that?" Mbaka asked, squinting over his shoulder at the light.

"That," Alder panted, "is sunrise."

End Part One

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