 
# The Farpool: Convergence

### Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords

### Copyright 2018 Philip Bosshardt

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Chapter 1

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

Conicthyosis Lab

Woods Hole, Massachusetts

September 2, 2120

Angie Gilliam and Chase Meyer arrived at the Conicthyosis lab early in the morning, to meet with Dr. Josey Holland prior to undergoing the amphib hybridization procedure. Angie was nervous. She knew that her mother was adamantly opposed to having this procedure done, for when it was done, Angie would be an amphib like Chase, modified like Chase, part Seomish, part human, and able to travel in and out of water, just like her boyfriend.

"You won't feel a thing," Dr. Holland told her. "We put you in here—it's just like a hotel room, go ahead, take a look—and you stay there for several days while the procedure's going on."

Angie peered into the comfortably furnished quarters. Two rooms, a bedroom and kitchenette, with full bath and lots of screens, pads, tablets, TVs and other things to occupy her time. "And it's called a containment chamber?"

Holland shrugged, fiddled with some russet braids of hair on her shoulders. "Unfortunate choice of words. I prefer to call this facility the 'hotel.' Sounds better. But yes, in here, the entire procedure will be conducted. It's mostly automated. The only reminder that this is a lab is that bed over there...with the arms sticking out of the wall."

"Remote manipulators," Chase said. There were four articulating, tele-operated arms 'parked' in stowed position, hanging from a cabinet-like structure, with a bevy of cameras and instruments aimed down, themselves perched on arms.

"Exactly," Holland agreed. "During the procedure, there will be times where you'll be in that bed—fully anesthetized—while we perform certain steps. The medbot insertions, for example."

Angie just shivered. "You said this procedure has been done many times."

Holland said, "Here at Woods Hole, the Lab has done the amphib procedure around a hundred and fifty times. Haven't lost anyone yet." She winced inside and realized she shouldn't have said _that._ Not everyone had the same sense of humor as her assistants.

"It's perfectly safe, then?"

Holland nodded. "Yes, of course. But we do have some preliminary matters to attend to. I'll have to have you and Chase sign some waivers before we start. Departmental...and Institute policy, you understand."

Holland took them on a short tour of the interior of the containment quarters. It resembled a small apartment and was more extensive than either Chase or Angie realized, with a small bed, toilet, kitchenette with sink and fab and refrigerator, and some bookshelves. A vid screen dominated a small but cozy sitting area. Along one wall, near the bed, a separate counter had been placed with ports above the counter for remote manipulator and surgical extension gloves to reach inside the containment zone, for samples, blood tests and short-range examinations. Around the ceiling of the compartment, vid cameras were everywhere.

"First, you make yourself comfortable, right in that bed," Holland explained. "The technology is largely based on use of genetically modified and programmed bacteria and microbial organisms. We begin with a genetic sequencing and a neural scan. After the sequencing and scans, the bacteria and microbes are selected and 'tuned' to match yours." Holland was sympathetic to Angie's growing anxiety. It was normal; you could see it in their eyes, the way their lips tightened.

"Let's go into my office—it's just around the corner—and I'll run through the tests and the basics of the procedure...what to expect over the next few days. Then there'll be all the waivers and consent forms to sign."

Later that afternoon, Angie announced she was ready. She was already clad in a light blue hospital gown. "Looks like a grocery sack," Chase teased it. _That_ didn't help.

She went into the containment quarters, gave Chase a quick peck, and watched with growing apprehension as the inner and outer doors cycled and locked themselves. Her ears popped with the pressure change.

I'm a nurse now, for God's sake. I put people under for procedures every day. Why does this bother me so?

Maybe it wasn't the procedure. Maybe it was the outcome...she could still hear Dr. Holland's words, describing the new abilities she would have as an amphib: _gill sacs, cutaneous respiration, melanocytic modifications in her skin cells, tissue changes in her hands and feet, with barely discernible webbing._ "I'll look like a frog on steroids!" she complained. "I won't be able to run laps with Gwen and the others—"

"Don't be ridiculous," Chase told her. "You can still run and you can swim like a fish too. You couldn't do that before."

Angie seemed downcast the more she heard. "I'm doing this for us, Chase. I hope you know that."

They kissed and she disappeared into quarters.

The first steps of the procedure would be conducted in a bed-like cocoon pod in the front room of the chamber.

Holland's voice came over a speaker on the wall. "Open the pod by pressing on the side...you'll feel a series of bumps—when they're both open, lie down inside, face up. Fold your arms over your chest. Then relax...we'll do the rest."

Angie gingerly lay herself down inside the pod, shifting about to get comfortable. It was actually pretty cozy there, but she couldn't stop the shakes.

"After you lie down inside, contractile fibers will unfurl and extend. It's perfectly normal. They will envelop your body. The fibers have sharp tips. You won't feel it but the tips will inject a potion. You will sleep. And when you wake up, the first phase will be done. If all goes well—"

Angie shuddered, wrapped her arms around her shoulders. "Ugh. If all goes well...I wish she hadn't said _that_."

"Ready, Angie?"

"As ready as I'll ever be."

Then, the cocoon began squeezing her slowly between its wall segments, like she was being excreted into the pod. The pod did look like a bed, a big oblong bed, encased in some kind of scaly outer covering. Chase decided they looked like gigantic watermelon halves, even down to the black seeds scattered around the interior. Those were part of the cushioning.

Angie made a face. She lay back carefully inside the pod.

For a long time, nothing happened. She dozed off, then awoke hearing a faint whistle. She sniffed something, it smelled like oranges. Then she noticed a faint mist issuing into the pod.

_This is like being in a coffin_ , she thought. She'd been wreck diving with Chase in tight spots like this, so she told herself she could get through it. But she wondered nonetheless. _What will I really look like when this is over...some kind of mutant gator?_ The mist thickened. She didn't know it but the mist contained the first wave of programmed bacteria. The bacteria would begin the process, penetrating into her nose, her mouth and eyes, burrowing into her skin, breaking down tissues and bone and cartilage, rebuilding structures to begin making her more compatible with amphibs.

Of course, Angie didn't understand all the details. Her wristpad had been programmed to describe the process in detail, but the voice was soft and staticky and she wasn't really listening. Instead, she grew sleepy.

That's when the dreams came.

As a child, Angie had always been a serious person, committed and dedicated to whatever task she was working on. She was extremely imaginative even as a very young child and often spent hours amusing herself with the VR slate (the _oculus_ ) and the holopod and 3d printer, creating and populating imaginary worlds. She showed abilities as a filmmaker and writer/storyteller that impressed her Mom a great deal.

One of her favorite imaginary worlds was one she called Principia, full of kings and queens, fairy princesses and dragons and lots of horses. Angie always loved horses. Some of her own work with the oculus involved creating and animating all kinds of horses. She had two imaginary horses, Lucy and Lucky, that she used as imaginary creatures in her stories.

When Angie was four, her father Horace abandoned the family for another woman. The family was living in Gainesville, Florida at the time, and Horace was a professor at the University of Florida. He taught American History and Political Science. The younger woman was named Cecilia Fortnoy and she worked as an assistant staff aide to the Florida Governor in Tallahassee. Horace became interested in her because he seemed to gravitate to woman who were "important" or doing important things in his eye. Being around powerful people or celebrities always fascinated Horace. Maggie, working in Gainesville as a waitress at a fast-food restaurant (Venetian Feast) couldn't fill this need. They divorced in the summer of 2106 and Maggie had to take a second, later a third job, to make ends meet.

Angie was devastated. She felt totally abandoned.

Working so many jobs to put food on the table, Maggie Gilliam (she kept her married name) was always tired and irritable. Angie saw what this did to people. One of the effects of Maggie having to work so hard and being tired and cranky all the time, was that Mom no longer had time to play games or do puzzles with her kids. This made Angie feel lonesome and she retreated into her imaginary worlds even more. At the age of six, starting school and Net Tutor, she was already writing and illustrating her own Principia stories.

But nothing she had imagined for Principia ever came close to what she saw when she woke up from the conicthyosis procedure.

This time, Angie knew she wasn't dreaming.

The first day of waiting was the hardest for Chase. He sat for hours in the waiting room at the Lab, amusing himself with games and stuff on his pad, then for kicks programmed the pad to google articles and interviews about amphibs. Amphibs were the hottest thing now, even celebrities were doing it. It was global. It was a cultural phenomenon. Even Dr. Holland had gone through the procedure, though you had to look close to see it.

Chase's wristpad chimed when a hit was made that matched his search criteria. But he barely heard the voice from his pad explaining Amphibs...

Amphib stands for amphibious. The conicthyosis procedure creates an amphibious, bipedal terrestrial vertebrate form, with two legs, two arms, etc. However, the amphib retains some characteristics of an amphibious creature. An amphib has gill sacs in slightly protruding pouches under its arms. It has skin that supports cutaneous respiration and must be kept moist at all times. There is some residual webbing between fingers and toes. There are some additional skin folds around the eyes and an extra protective layer of tissue inside the eye socket, to help the amphib protect its eyes when submerged. Amphib eyes are notable for long periods of staring and fixation, as amphibians do not exhibit saccadic eye movements, but must 'fix' an object in their visual field to activate cognitive circuits to analyze and respond properly to the stimulus. Amphibs also have electroreceptors in their skin, which allows them to sense and locate objects nearby when they are submerged, by alteration of existent electrical fields....

He'd dozed off on the sofa—how long he didn't know-- and had to force his eyes open to catch the next vid the pad was bringing up. It was some kind of news item, something from Solnet, by the looks of it....

SOLNET Special Report

As a part of our continuing effort to bring the most compelling and newsworthy stories on the amphib phenomenon to you, Solnet Special Report sent correspondent Anika Radovich to Freeburg, Tennessee, to interview the citizens of this small town and get their views on what is happening. While every news source is unique, Special Report found that the views and opinions of the people of this mountain hamlet were particularly representative of the most commonly held views across our audience.

"I'm standing here on the side of Main Street in Freeburg, Tennessee, with one of the more notable citizens of this lovely town, nestled in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Mr. Lanier Barnes has achieved a certain notice, some would say notoriety, for Freeburg as a result of his strongly-held opinions about amphibs. Mr. Barnes, welcome to _Special Report_ and thanks for taking the time to be with us."

"Well, shoot, Anika, what's a fellow going to do when a pretty young thing like yourself comes sashaying by. Where'd you say you were from?"

"Thank you, Mr. Barnes. Actually, Germany. Mr. Barnes, could you explain what all these people have gathered for? I see you've got some kind of rally going."

(COMMAND TO DRONECAM: _Altitude 20 meters. Wide-angle establishing shot...be sure to center Barnes and get the Courthouse Square and those mountains in the background...I'll add effects later_ )

"That's right, young lady. Every day this week, we got a rally going right here on Main Street. Just look at 'em, must be several hundred of these good folks today."

"What's the purpose of your rally, sir?"

"Well, we've been rallying and Net-blasting for some time now, trying to call attention to the gravest problem we face today."

"Which is--?"

Barnes' face takes on a pained look, like something he had eaten didn't agree with him. "Those pointy-head bureaucrats at the UN won't enforce the danged Sanctuary Laws. You know, all the Containment Laws. Hell, we already fought wars over that, didn't we? All the friggin' frogheads and fish people are taking over."

"Mr. Barnes, I am assuming you are referring to amphibs?"

"Darn right, sweetie. Frogheads. They should be quarantined, like the scum they are. We need to stick the lot of 'em into camps, like we did to the Japs back in the 20th century...you know: enemy aliens."

(DRONECAM IMAGE FILE 223.832: _Placards and signs wave in vigorous agreement with Barnes. Other members of the rally close in around the speaker. There is some good-natured shoving and shouts of "Damn right!" "Give it to 'em straight, Barnes!)_ (AR Annotation File).

"Mr. Barnes, amphibs are just people, like you and me. Changed to allow them live in water and on land...surely you don't think of these people as enemy aliens?"

"They're mutant frogs, all of them. I don't think of dangerous viruses as enemy aliens either...but I don't want 'em around. All these frogs are eating our food, drinking our water, mating with our women...they need to be in camps."

"Excuse me, Mr. Barnes...did you say mating with our women? I'm not aware of any amphibs accused of sexual engagements with normal—I should say, _unmodified_ , humans."

"Oh, Missy, you don't know the half of it." A middle-aged woman with short-cropped black hair squeezes out of the crowd and stands before Anika. The reporter whispers into her lip mike _DRONECAM...get a close-up of this_ — "These frogs have been defiling our daughters and sisters for years. I know it's supposed to be illegal, but you know it goes on. What kind of offspring could possibly come from such infernal liaisons...monsters, half-bred freaks, that's what."

Barnes cuts in. "We're rallying today to get the Town Council of Freeburg to take a stand. Here...get your friggin' bird-camera down here and I'll show you— "

Radovich sent the command and the dronecam wheeled about and descended slowly on its whirring quadrotors, hovering just over their heads. Its multiplex cameras zoomed in and Radovich adjusted the view she was getting on her SuperQuark glasses, pecking at a small wristpad. _DRONECAM...hold there_ —

"You're holding up a sign, Mr. Barnes. Would you mind reading it out loud and then explaining what it's about."

"Surely." Barnes held the placard so the dronecam would get a clear close-up. "It says _MAKE CHASTAIN HILL A FROG CAMP!_ We want the Town Council to designate the whole Chastain Hill area as a sort of re-settlement camp for frogheads...er, I mean amphibs. Keep 'em separate from the rest of us, so they won't contaminate everything in sight."

"Just enforce the damned Containment Laws!" came a voice from the back of the crowd.

There was a chorus of " _Yeahs_!" and a sea of fists waving and pumping up and down.

Anika Radovich quietly instructed the dronecam to rise back to twenty meters and pan the crowd, which was getting more agitated.

"Mr. Barnes, you have referred to your followers as Hellcats. Why this name? Isn't the official name of your movement _Sons of Adam_?"

Barnes sniffed, waved his hand expansively around the gathering. "We think of ourselves as normalizers. We enforce normality. Frogheads ain't normal. We call ourselves Sons of Adam 'cause we intend to regain the way of life we used to have in this country. We plan to make life hell for these scumbugs...just like Senator Palette says."

The black-haired lady with the placard vigorously agreed. "SOA advocates for legislation and regulations that will preserve our original heritage, what God gave us in the Garden."

Anika Radovich found it expedient to thank Barnes for the interview and back herself out of the crowd, which was closing in steadily, shouting, jeering, fist-pumping. She had started to feel smothered and hand-waved the dronecam to follow. Radovich retired to a street corner on the other side of Main Street, out in front of Collier's Drug Store.

While Barnes and his followers surged like an angry mob down the street toward the town hall, she decided to add some commentary to the footage they already had.

"It should be noted that Lanier Barnes and the rallies he has been leading the last few days here in Freeburg are anything but exceptional. Similar rallies and protests exist in many countries and cities around the world, in Europe and Asia, even parts of Africa. The rallies and the demands sometimes take different forms. But the underlying animosity toward amphibs in general is the same. A deeply-felt sentiment is growing that amphibs need to be contained and even be gathered into concentration camps and isolated from society.

"Followers of the Sons of Adam fear contamination by the Sea People and by the growing popularity of amphib culture. As of today, hundreds of people around the world have gone through the conicthyosis procedure and become Seomish-human hybrids, much to the displeasure of parents and politicians everywhere, especially Senator Ryan Palette, the ostensible founder of SOA. Amphib culture, the Amphib look, Amphib foods, traditions and beliefs are becoming all the rage. SOA views this as a grave threat to America and similar organizations are erupting around the world.

"Solnet _Special Report_ always strives to be fair and objective in our reporting. Before making our trip to Freeburg, this reporter spent some time at an Amphib rally, an 'awakening', as they call it, just outside of London. We interviewed conicthyosis volunteers in a queue at the Westfields Market, lined up to be registered... about just why they are doing this...."

Chase's attention was momentarily diverted by a voice...it was one of the nurses, poking her head into the waiting room.

"Mr. Meyer, the first phase is over...Dr. Holland wants to know if you'd like to speak to Angie...she's just coming around now."

Chase bounded to his feet. "You bet I would." The nurse escorted him down several halls to a monitor and a small window that showed the interior of the containment quarters.

That's when Chase got his first view of Angie Gilliam...halfway through conicthyosis.

He swallowed hard at the sight.

She was clad in a yellow hospital gown, with extra padding around her neck and upper shoulders. Angie came to the window and smiled wanly.

"How do you feel?" Chase asked. "Doc says the procedure's about half done."

She smiled sheepishly and shrugged. "Tired. Wiped out. How do I look? There's no mirror in here."

Dr. Holland started to say something but refrained. In scores of amphib procedures before, she had learned it was best not to have a mirror nearby, at least not until the end. Patients sometimes freaked when they saw the intermediate look.

Chase put on a brave smile. "Actually, good. I can see changes around your head and neck—" there were bony knobs of cartilage around the top of her head and ears...just like mine, huh?" He tapped the side of his own head. "Kind of makes you look like the Devil."

She shook her head. "Chase, you always knew how to compliment a girl. Dr. Holland, how much longer will this take? I'm kinda hungry."

Holland came to the window. "Another day or so in the pod. There are three more rounds of nanobotic intervention to come...skin reconstruction, integumentary upgrades, osteoderm scaffolding. Internal stuff too. You're at a middle stage now...some things are closer to completion than others. For instance, those 'bumps' you feel under your armpit...those are mucous glands. They'll help keep your skin moist in the air and the tissue structure's mostly done. We still have work to do with your genome as well...much of the last few hours are devoted to re-writing and verifying that. All in all, you're coming along fine. I just thought you two would like to visit for a time."

Angie wrapped her arms around herself and noticed bony ridges along her forearms. "Will these be like Chase's?"

Chase pulled back his shirt sleeve to reveal his own armfins. "Neat, huh? Helps your stroke in the water. I wish I'd had these when I was on the swim team."

Holland nodded. "Yours will be slightly less pronounced. Female skeletal understructure is less massive. But yes, they'll be similar."

Angie closed her eyes for a moment, swaying unsteadily. She grasped a counter edge to keep from falling. "I'm tired. And a little scared."

Holland was sympathetic. "There's nothing to be scared of, dear. You're doing fine. We've seen no complications, no issues. Just some more work to be done, that's all."

Her eyes found Chase's. "I guess I won't be your track star girl anymore. Do I look like a frog yet?"

"You look like Angie," Chase tried sound positive. It _was_ a little startling to see the change, especially in mid-stream.

She had always had short dark brown hair, with lighter highlights. Angie kept her hair short, in a page-boy cut. One wave of hair dropped down over her right eyes. She had perky little curls at her ears. Chase liked to call her hair a bowl cut, which didn't please Angie at all. But she had always liked her hair short.

She had an angelic face, with deep-set, almost garnet eyes and fine features. Her lips were thin. Chase thought her face reminded him of a chocolate swirl cookie. He liked to call her "Cookie" just to annoy her. Together, they were "Flip" and "Cookie." Angie had a longish nose, with a little button tweak at her nostrils, which embarrassed her. Chase knew better than to make fun of that. Her nostrils always flared visibly when she was mad or annoyed.

She also had a mischievous smile, with cheek dimples. Her lips made a faint upward curl when she was amused, like a sliver of a crescent moon on the horizon. This accentuated her cheeks and dimples, which were faintly freckled. That little half-smile, almost a smirk, always drove Chase wild. She seemed to know much more than she let on, she seemed to know secrets that you could never guess and she was just waiting to spring them on you. Angie was always playful, a bit of a tease, and very athletic. She was tall and broad-shouldered, which seemed to conflict with such a pixie look on her face. She was a good swimmer, though not in Chase's class, but her first love was track and field. She had tried every sport in that area and was an excellent distance runner and hurdler. She could never imagine herself as a cheerleader. She never liked to feel like she was on display. "I'm not window dressing," she said. "I'm the real deal."

Now, studying the changes so far, Chase secretly rued the loss of the very things that had always attracted him. But she was doing this for him, for both of them, and that was something.

"Dr. Holland, can't I get a mirror in here?"

Holland shook her head. "It's better to wait until we're done, Angie. You're at an intermediate stage. Things will still be changing a lot over the next day or so. Let's wait on the mirror for now, okay?"

"Okay."

"All right, you two, say goodbye. Angie, I want you to head back to the pod and climb in. I'll be initiating Stage 2 in a few minutes. Just get comfortable in there. The rest is automatic."

"If you say so...." She put her palm against the window—already, the cartilage knobs for thin webbing were visible between her fingers—and Chase matched the gesture. They blew kisses at each other, then she tore herself away, wrapped her gown a little tighter and went to the pod, climbing in a bit awkwardly.

Moments later, the pod closed and sealed.

Chase took a deep breath and turned away. Holland was sympathetic and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Go take a walk, Chase. She's doing fine. This middle part is always a bit traumatic for loved ones. Of course, you've already been through this."

"It's easier when you're doing it yourself. To see it, in someone else---"

Their eyes met.

Chase decided a walk was a good idea. "I'll head down to the shore for a bit," he decided. You'll call me if—"

"Nothing's going to happen, trust me. Everything's going just right. Go ahead--get some fresh air and sunshine. It'll do you good."

"Yeah, that and about five beers."

He left the Lab and walked down to Nobska Road. It was cool and breezy among the sand dunes, with white clouds scudding by across a deep blue sky. The Sound was choppy in the wind, with lines of whitecaps stretching from one end of the beach to the other. Overhead, sky surfers and drones flitted by overhead, while lunch time strollers with sack meals sauntered along the gravel walk above the beach, engrossed in their wristpads.

It was a big step Angie was taking, he told himself. A big step they were both taking. Sure, Amphibs were all the rage but like the Solnet report said, not everybody was enamored with the rising popularity of them and Chase had to admit there were still times he encountered slights, insults, sideways glances and muttered curses on the streets around the UN and the Sea Council facilities in New York. People didn't like change. People were frightened, even intimidated, by the suddenness of the amphib phenomenon, by the profound and very visible differences between normal _Homo sapiens_ and those who had gone through conicthyosis. Sociologists called it 'fear of the other,' and there were papers and presentations about outsiders, tribes and clans and all the complex relationships that sprouted when one tribe encroached on another's territory. Everybody had a pet theory. There were thousands of theories.

But Chase knew that beyond any theory was one incontrovertible fact: the Seomish had come to Earth from a doomed world and they weren't going back. Seomish were true marine creatures. They lived under the sea. Humans were land creatures. They lived in what the Seomish called Notwater. Two intelligent races existed on the planet now, where once, for millions of years, there had been only one.

Somehow, some way, they had to find a way to get along. And that's where Amphibs came in. The conicthyosis procedure that Josey Holland had developed and perfected made a link between the two races possible. Now, with Amphibs, people who had gone through the procedure could live and love in both worlds, marine and land. Tribes could intermix, even interbreed, though Holland had said that might take a little more work to prove out. Families could develop and connections could be forged across the boundary.

The only trouble was that both Humans and Seomish often viewed the Amphibs with equal disdain and suspicion. When you could live and travel among both worlds, it was like you weren't really a part of either world. Like Tulcheah, herself half-Ponkti and half-Omtorish, you were thought a half-breed, even a freak.

Unwelcome and unwanted in both realms.

Chase had stopped at a small line of benches just below the seawall and sat down. Without realizing it—maybe it was the lunch he'd wolfed down—he'd nodded off. A hand on his shoulder startled him awake.

It was Renee, one of Dr. Holland's techs. Renee was a cute redhead, with green eyes, shoulder-length tresses.

"Sorry, Mr. Meyer, I didn't mean to startle you."

Chase sat up and rubbed his eyes. "Wow...I didn't mean to fall asleep."

Renee took a deep breath in the salt air. "Well, we'll forgive you this time...it _is_ a beautiful day, isn't it?"

"What's up?"

"Dr. Holland says the procedure is over. Angie's just coming around. She wants you back at the Lab."

Chase sprinted over the seawall and was trotting through the glass doors fronting Oyster Pond Road almost before Renee could say another word.

Angie was still in her hospital gown when he arrived, though this one was new, a light blue robe, with a sash around her waist.

He smiled through the window and she smiled back. Her voice was noticeably stronger this time.

"Chase, I just saw myself in a mirror. "I do look like a frog.' Her face was tears and smiles at the same time. "No more cute butt. No more track star legs. Now I belong...." She choked back more tears..." in a pond somewhere...on a lily pad—" she covered her face with her hands. "I've even got _these_ —" she held up the underside of her arms, "...can you believe it? Freakin' warts, for God's sake!"

Chase turned to Holland. "Can I go in? Can I be with her?"

"Of course."

Holland motioned to Renee and another technician to cycle the lock. Door seals hissed and the massive containment hatch swung open slowly. Chase rushed inside.

They hugged for a long time.

"Chase...Chase--?"

"It's okay. It's okay. You're doing fine. Doc says you're doing fine."

She buried her face, now ridged with bony projections around her neck, into his shoulders. "I'm not so sure about this—is there any way to...to--?"

Chase put fingers to her mouth. "Shhh...shhh. Don't say it. You did this for me, for both of us. Now, once you're out of recovery, we can go see all our friends at Keenomsh'pont. We can stay with them, roam with them, live with them if we want. You don't need a suit anymore. Or dive gear. We can visit them, come back here, visit them again. This is great, don't you think?"

Angie pulled her head out of his shoulders and blinked up a him. She was still getting used to the extra eyelid. "What about my friends? Gwen and the others. And my job...nobody wants a frog on steroids for a nurse at Creekside Med."

"We'll work it out, Angie. We'll figure it out. Dr. Holland, how long does she need to stay here?"

Holland drummed a finger on her lips. "Well, we need to do some more tests. Pretty comprehensive exams are coming up. The recommended recovery and rehab time is three weeks. After that, we'll see. But that's normal for conicthyosis patients. Plus there will be some medications she'll have to take...anti-inflammatory stuff. Her immune system will be trying to reject some of the changes. The underlying genetic mods we made will support the changes, but there are almost always residual effects. We want to be sure."

Angie started to cry again. That's when Chase decided to do something he'd been thinking about for quite some time. He'd always wanted to do this somewhere more romantic, maybe some tropical island somewhere, with palm trees and coconuts and Margueritas and all, but a strong premonition told him that _now_ was the time, don't wait any longer, this is the moment.

He held Angie out at arm's length, held her face up with one hand, and kissed her hard. She didn't resist and in time, gave in and kissed him back.

The words came out, not quite like he intended them, but still recognizable, though he almost choked on them getting through.

"Angie Gilliam, will you marry me?"

His words had the effect of a time machine, almost freezing time in the containment room. All motion stopped for what seemed like eternity, maybe longer. No words were spoken. No breaths were taken. Nothing moved. Then, with a catch in her voice, Angie twisted out of his grip and stared back at his face, puzzled.

"What?"

Chase blinked and repeated what he said. "I want you to marry me, Angie. I've been thinking about it a long time...longer than you realize. I—" he kept stumbling and rambling on, trying to describe all the feelings he couldn't put words to, all the fears he had, the hopes...never realizing that Angie's face had undergone another transformation and this one couldn't be explained by conicthyosis.

"You want to get married...did I hear you right, Chase?"

Now, he felt his face flush red and he stammered. "Uh, yeah...you did—" no, this wasn't quite how he imagined the scene, this wasn't the way her response always went in his mind when he replayed the scene over and over again...and what the hell was that queer look on her face anyway?

"Oh, Chase—" her words didn't quite match what he had imagined they would be but she fell into his arms again and they hugged, harder than ever. "Chase...it's...I don't know what to say...this is so—"

Dr. Josey Holland stood behind them at the hatch and tried a brave smile she didn't quite feel. She had seen lots of reactions in her dozens and dozens of procedures, everything from speechless shock to giggles and people fainting dead away onto the floor.

But never this. A marriage proposal, for Chrissakes, right in front of her eyes. She'd always thought Chase was cute, unique, really a special kind of person. Some kind of blond, well-built surfer guy caught up into intergalactic intrigue, refreshingly honest, painfully sincere, a boy just out of high school forced by circumstance to grow up way too fast.

Getting to know him, there had been times...even a fantasy or two, but now—

She barely heard Angie's whispered response.

"Chase....yes...yeah, let's do this. I—" she blinked hard, laughed, cried, and held him as tight as she possibly she could.

Chase was so overwhelmed by the moment that he fought back tears as well. Not knowing what to do now, he did what came naturally...swinging her off her feet, around and around, her gown nearly flying off, all the whole time giggling like the cute little boy Josey Holland sometimes imagined him to be.

"When... Chase... _when_...we have to set a date...the wedding, oh my God, there's so many details—"

Chase had gone hoarse and could hardly speak. Around and around they went, knocking off medicine bottles from the counter top, slamming into a remote manipulator arm.

"Hell, Angie...I don't know...I haven't...how about the fall?"

"November! Just before Thanksgiving...wouldn't that be _perfect_!"

They had become so absorbed in themselves that Josey Holland found it best to back quietly out of the containment vault. She shut the hatch, but not completely, so as to avoid engaging the auto-lock. Her eyes met Renee and Tracy's. Both were smiling broadly.

Renee was practically grinning. She didn't know what to do with her hands. "Dr. Holland, I think this is a first for the Lab."

Holland offered back a tight smile and nodded. "So it would seem. Would you two get the med pool ready? We'll need to start her recovery exercises as soon as possible."

"Sure thing," Renee said. She headed off with Tracey, both of them whispering excitedly to each other.

Holland just stared at the two lovebirds chattering away like five-year-olds inside the containment chamber. She stared for several minutes through the thick observation glass and wondered.

_I should have never agreed to this procedure at all_ , she told herself.

Chapter 2

_Trieste_ Operations and Mission Control

Gateway Station

Earth-Moon L2 Point

September 4, 2120

0350 hours EUT

On Europa, there is only ice...to the naked eye. Ice cliffs and ice valleys. Ice ravines and ice canyons. Ice bergs, buttes, badlands. Ice continents. Above the ice is the vacuum of space. Below the ice is a vast ocean, black as night. Normally, the two don't mix.

In the late summer of 2120, as people on Earth reckon time, a small channel of sluggish, slightly warmer ice surged upward through the badlands of Conamara Chaos, embedded in a column known to geologists as a diapir, and burst through the surface crust. A geyser erupted into space, not in itself an unusual occurrence on Europa. However, this geyser extended over several square kilometers, flinging tons of ice and steam into the heavens.

This geyser caught the attention of observers on Earth and at Korolev Crater's Farside Observatory, on the Moon.

After the _Jovian Hammer_ mission some years before, an orbiting detection network had been put into place around Europa. Known as _Europa-Eye_ , it was designed to provide intelligence on the ceaseless heaving and churning of the Europan ice surface. The network contained numerous instruments: visual cameras, mass spectrometers, neutron flux devices, radiometers.

Not long after _Europa Eye_ had been put in place, a new visitor came to the badlands of this mysterious moon of Jupiter, a small robotic explorer called _Trieste_. The little ship landed and immediately began boring through the ice, eventually carving out a narrow tunnel though which it could descend into the black ocean below. Five days after it had set down among the ice mountains of Conamara Chaos, the ship came to the bottom of the kilometers-thick ice layer and scooted off to explore the ocean.

On the first day of September, _Europa-Eye_ detected evidence of some kind of vast movement under the ice. Increased thermals, spikes in electromagnetic activity, even acoustic signals well above baseline were detected and processed through SpaceGuard Center at Farside.

There was no consensus on what the signals meant, just a growing suspicion that something seemed to be stirring beneath the ice. Analysts at SpaceGuard Center, vidconferencing with their colleagues at the UNISPACE Watch Command Center in Paris, concurred that something was happening on the surface of Europa, something different, something unexpected.

Visual analysis from _Europa-Eye_ was inconclusive. _Trieste_ was directed to proceed cautiously toward the source of the disturbance. But it was plain to see from the imagery streaming back from Jupiter's huge satellite, that a newly formed geyser had just erupted on the surface. After some discussion, UNISPACE analysts finally decided to log the event as an icequake, a shifting of ice plates and ice continents, that had opened up a channel to pressurized water beneath. That water, rising through the newly formed channel from the Europan ocean, was now sublimating into space, in a series of spectacular geysers. The phenomenon seemed to be mainly centered along a series of ice grooves, known as _linea_ , starting in the Conamara Chaos and ending at the southern end of Radamanthys Linea, longitude 192 degrees, latitude 12 degrees north.

Or so they thought. The report issued to CINCSPACE made the conclusion that the geyser field was nothing more than an unusual series of ice plates shifting about, despite growing evidence of massive movements in the ocean below. _Europa-Eye_ would continue to observe and record the event, providing thesis material for astronomers and geologists and glaciologists for years to come. Farside and UNISPACE would continue to monitor the activity that had roiled the surface of Europa. _Trieste_ would give them answers once she came within instrument range of the disturbance.

But the report was firm in its principal conclusion: natural forces were responsible for a series of new ice geysers erupting on the surface of Europa. It was more violent and spectacular than before, but nothing the investigators hadn't seen before on countless other worlds, even on Europa itself.

What _Europa-Eye_ could not see, however, was what was actually embedded in the main geyser, hidden from view, obscured by the violence of tons of ice sublimating into space every second. A massive swarm of nanoscale robotic devices, most no larger than a few atoms, was no longer submerged in Europa's ocean of night. Instead, the swarm had bored through more than thirty kilometers of ice and arisen to the surface of the satellite. Now residing in a steep ice ravine, surrounded by towering ice cliffs, hidden by geysering spouts of water, the vast swarm boiled away like a festering sore, slamming atoms to maintain itself and expand in the maelstrom of erupting ice and water.

As it settled onto the icy surface, the swarm had begun to bud off trillions of replicant bots from its main structure. The swarm was shedding parts of itself.

These bots sloughed off and drifted upward, some riding on droplets of water, particles of ice sublimating into the vacuum. Most of the bots managed to achieve escape velocity through infinitesimal nano-scale thrusters, using the available water as propellant. Orienting themselves toward the Sun, the swelling swarm of nanobots soon entered a steep, elliptical heliocentric orbit, an orbit which would intersect the orbit of Earth in less than six months.

Disguised by the geysers, the swarm escaped Europa and the Jupiter system completely. It now drifted sunward...and Earthward.

Mission controllers Leo Benford and Marcie Jameson were on duty at _Trieste_ Mission Control when the signal came in from the little robotic explorer cruising in the sub-ice ocean of Europa that something odd had been detected on sonar. It seemed to be a large formation of nanobotic elements, floating several hundred meters below the ice and below a region called Rhadamanthus Linea. Acoustic signals, electromagnetic signals, everything pointed to bots, uncountable trillions of bots, slamming atoms like a frantic brick mason, dead ahead of the little submersible. _Trieste_ was commanded to investigate and the nature of this phenomena soon became apparent: something intelligent had left this swarm there and further investigation now seemed critical.

Jameson blinked hard at her displays. "What the hell--?" Her fingers played over the keys on her console, bringing up more windows, more displays, more data.

"What is it?" asked Benford, studying radar imagery of the Europan surface from _Europa-Eye._

"Something just happened to the _Trieste_ feed. One moment I'm getting telemetry on all systems, radar, radio, infrared, everything. Then...zip. Nothing. Nada."

"Comm failure? Have you got a carrier...any signal at all?"

"Zilch. _Trieste_ has gone quiet."

The idea that the little submersible might have gone belly up on their watch at Ops gave rise to a sour taste in Benford's mouth. "Run all diagnostics. And make sure everything is backed up. I don't want anybody saying we screwed up."

"The last data we had was what we've had for several hours—that amorphous blob that was putting out thermals and EMs like there's no tomorrow."

Benford rubbed two-day old stubble and loosened his restraining belt a little more. He swore silently; already the belt was too tight as it was and he was on the last notch. _Too many pancakes,_ he muttered. Zero-g was all fine and good as long as you didn't have to button your pants. "Bot swarm...is that still your theory?"

Jameson shrugged, shoved back a few auburn bangs from her eyes. "Signatures match...pretty well. Maybe it could be argued. Maybe it's some kind of instrument glitch...wouldn't be the first time."

Benford would have scratched his hair, if he had any. "Before we go to UNISPACE with this, I want to make sure CAESAR's covered every angle. I don't want some supervisor at Farside or Paris taking a big chunk of my ass over hare-brained notions of alien bugs under the ice at Europa. What about _Europa-Eye?"_

"Still chirping on all bands. She just went through Level 1 diagnostics two days ago. Everything looks good but I'll pull up the spectra, see what kind of matches we get." The astronomer massaged her keyboard, calling up spectrographic profiles on every blip the satellite had seen the last month. " _Eye's_ showing the same anomaly... Europa's been quiet for months...SpaceGuard's not showing anything. Now, all of a sudden, _BLAM_! Energy spikes all over the place. We should have seen something before...rising X-ray, rising gamma levels, radar spikes, _something_. But nothing until this."

Benford mulled that over. "Two sources of data, each showing the same thing. They can't ignore that. Are you recording everything?"

"Every last bit...backed up per usual. It's all on disk, Leo."

Benford finally released himself from his belt and drifted off, letting faint air currents sweep him around the Ops compartment to a nearby window. Outside, the crescent moon hung like a sliver of a dish from the mess hall, with a blue green sliver of Earth on the opposite side of the porthole. All the cylinders, trusses, girders and modules of Gateway Station loomed below the window edge in the foreground. Something moving caught his eye: it was only Cavanaugh outside, fixing something on the 'front porch', nadir side of the Hab module.

Benford realized looking at his reflection in the optical glass just how haggard he looked. Too many extra shifts, trying to cover for others. He was starting to look like a street bum. "Okay, what else have we got for explanations besides alien bots?"

Jameson twisted around in her seat, watched Benford watching himself in the window. "The traditional answer is icequakes. Then there's tidal flexing from Jupiter. Some kind of weird ice breakup over the Chaos, little ice cubes tinkling down into the depths. Meteor strike, though _Europa Eye_ should have seen that kind of impact."

"None of these theories match the signatures as well as alien bots?"

"Sorry. Data is data."

Benford shrugged. "Doesn't mean a thing, Marcie. You did the normal correlations, didn't you?"

"Several times. The results came up the same every time."

"It's statistically insignificant. Run Statcheck...you'll see what I mean."

Jameson hesitated before running the statistical routine. "You really want to do this, Leo? What if Statcheck shows significance? How do we explain that?"

Benford ran a hand through his thinning hair. "We'll make the numbers work out. This data's got to be bunk...you know it and I know it. What do you want me to do: put out an alert: 'Hey, guys, the Old Ones have arrived at Europa and the buggers are eating up the whole planet.' I don't think so. I value my career too much. No, let's get all the data we can and set up a vidcon. There's some kind of weird anomaly going on up there, one with a perfectly reasonable explanation. We just have to find it."

Marcie Jamison started saving all of SpaceGuard's data to a file called _Europa Anomaly_.

Leo Benford returned to his seat, buckled in and started composing an alertgram to UNISPACE's Watch Center.

Maybe I'll poke another notch in this belt, just to be safe, for when the real crap starts flying around here.

UNIFORCE Headquarters

The Quartier-General, Paris

September 5, 2120

0900 hours U.T.

The briefing was set to be held in UNSAC's office on the eightieth floor, in the Command Center. CINCSPACE would be there, in the person of General Mahmood Salaam. CINCQUANT too. General Lamar Quint had just hyperjetted in from an inspection tour of Singapore base and he was still jetlagged; those two-hour, eleven-thousand-kilometer trips across the top of the atmosphere were wearying enough without having to bow and curtsy to the brass every time someone wanted a meeting.

The Secretary-General, Dr. Vijay Vishnapuram, had already vidlinked in from the Secretariat building in New York. Dr. Keko Satsuyama of the Sea Council was with him.

UNSAC, Angelika Komar, made sure the doors were secured. "This briefing is to go over the latest intel on what's happening on Europa and what we're going to do about it. I've got S2's summary from Farside, Gateway, Stations P and Sentinel, before contact was lost with _Trieste_. Mahmood, let's start with you. What's the status on _Europa Anomaly_ now?"

Salaam sucked on his big black moustache, an irritating tic that drove Komar nuts. She wanted to shave the thing off. _Jeez, what are you...five years old?_ But she kept quiet, while the Pakistani O-10 tickled some keys on his commandpad. All the displays blinked and shifted. The 3-D pedestal lit up like a miniature theatrical stage and they were soon looking at an ecliptic plot of the entire solar system, with all the planets and satellites moving in real time according their proper motions. The view zoomed in on the Jupiter system, then tighter on the little cracked billiard ball that was Europa.

Everyone could see the faint haze enveloping one hemisphere of the satellite.

"The leading edge of _Europa Anomaly_ is now a semi-spherical wave front about two hundred thousand kilometers away from Europa itself. Radial velocity scans and Doppler analysis indicates that the, er 'particles,' or elements that comprise the haze you're seeing are in heliocentric orbit...in other words, they have mostly achieved escape velocity from Jupiter. They're entering ballistic orbit around the Sun and we think, from the data, that somehow the haze has a rudimentary form of propulsion and can in fact perform basic maneuvers." Salaam sniffed. "Don't ask me how."

CINCQUANT _hmmmed_. Lamar Quint got up from his chair, beignet in one hand and coffee in the other, and circled the display pedestal. "And these 'particles'...what do your people think they are, General?"

Salaam checked his pad. "There are numerous theories. Best match to available signatures is that the haze is a swarm, maybe part of a swarm of nanoscale robotic elements. Of course, we're back-checking all the data and seeking additional information."

Quint stood up, with the look of a child who'd just opened a Christmas present, already knowing what was inside. "You don't say. If these particles _are_ bots, whose are they? Not mine, I can tell you that."

UNSAC motioned Quint to sit back down. She gave him a _behave yourself_ look. "Well, that's the question, isn't it? General Salaam, your people at Gateway have data on the possible source of the bots, the particles?"

Salaam looked like he'd just eaten a sour cucumber. "Yes, ma'am. UNISPACE has two live satellites at Europa: _Europa Eye_ and our little submersible _Trieste_. At approximately 1200 hours yesterday, we lost all comms with _Trieste_ and its controller CAESAR. Plot puts the location of this loss of comms at about here—" CINCSPACE highlighted a spot on a surface map of the satellite. "—it's a place called Rhadamanthus Linea. _Trieste_ was on autocruise at a depth of about two hundred meters when we lost her. She had detected something we're now calling _Europa Anomaly_ and she was commanded to investigate. After some preliminary analysis, the nature of this phenomena became apparent: something intelligent seems to have deliberately left a swarm of nanoscale robotic elements below the ice. How and when, we have no idea. But something triggered this swarm of bots to go active. That resulted in the geysers, the surface haze, the icequakes and all the other phenomenon we've been observing. _Europa Anomaly_ somehow breached the ice surface and is now streaming off the surface and out into space."

There was a long moment of silence, punctuated by coughs, throat clearings and other eruptions.

The S-G, Dr. Vishnapuram, spoke from New York. His face and shoulders drifted about the room like a disembodied portrait, an animated portrait, eventually settling to a spot at the head of the mahogany table, like a piece of living sculpture.

"General, excuse me for saying so, but that seems like an awful lot of conjecture and supposition. I assume your data can support this theory."

Salaam shrugged. "Sir, the data support many theories. My people at Gateway feel the best, the most statistically significant correlation, matches the idea of a swarm of nanobots. I can show you the numbers and the analysis."

The S-G smiled faintly. "I would like to see those, yes. This is a rather startling assessment, don't you think?"

General Quint, CINCQUANT, spoke up. "Is there any link between this _Europa Anomaly_ and what we've got more or less contained in the South China Sea? Dr. Satsuyama, don't some of your people think that's a bunch of little green men too?"

The Sea Council director was a Japanese marine biologist originally out of Tsukuba University, with a curriculum vitae long enough to embarrass everyone at the meeting. He was a spare almost gnome-like wraith of a man, with a short, black, unruly lock of hair over his right eye. He had a prominent shiny forehead and ears that stuck out like an elephant; long and narrow and shaped like an arrowhead. His nickname was " _Ha"_ (which meant "The Blade"). Satsuyama also wore dark-rimmed dataspec glasses.

The Sea Council director consulted his own wristpad, porting vids and reports and numerous graphs to all. "Our Chinese comrades refer to the phenomenon as _Shijian caoxong qi,_ meaning some kind of device that can distort and manipulate time and space. We're not sure what this is but it is true that the containment vessels we've constructed near Reed Banks in the South China Sea seem to be holding a concentrated swarm of small elements, possibly robotic. Where these devices, this swarm, came from and how it does what the Chinese claim, is currently under intensive study."

Quint took the bait. "There may be a connection between the two. From what I've read, this formation at Reed Banks seems to be composed of some kind of bots. Exact nature unknown. Now we have _Europa Anomaly_...maybe more bots. That can't be a coincidence."

UNSAC Angelika Komar twirled strands of her black hair between her fingers. " _Trieste_ was never able to get good data on the source...the source was below the ice?"

Salaam concurred. "So it would seem. _Trieste_ gave us some telemetry...we have infrared, sonar, thermals, electromagnetics, we do have some data. Just not enough to really properly characterize the phenomenon."

"We need to put more eyes and ears up there," UNSAC decided. "Can we cobble together another _Trieste_ and get it to Europa?"

Salaam shrugged, played with his moustache again, sucking on the ends with a barely concealed smacking sound. Komar winced, looked down at her own wristpad at some of Satsuyama's reports.

"We could but time and distance are a problem. However, Frontier Corps has also put forth an alternate idea that we should consider."

"And what would that be, General?"

Salaam tapped a few buttons on his own wristpad. Instantly, everyone's device was refreshed and updated with something new. "As long as we're considering sending another satellite to Europa, why not send some real eyes and ears along with it."

"A manned crew...Mahmood, you can't be serious."

But it was plain from the report now scrolling on everybody's wristpads and tablets that he was.

"We have an old cycler ship— _Archimede_ —currently docked at Gateway. She's a bathtub for sure but she did yeoman duty on the Venus-Earth-Mars run for a long time. Right now, she's in refit for additional duty between Earth and Mars. With enough money and manpower, she could be made ready for a hop out to Jupiter. And that's not even the best part."

Komar was skeptical, even as she perused CINCSPACE's report. "There's more?"

"Yes, ma'am...as you can see, Frontier Corps' been working on designs for a manned submersible... _Trident_ , she's called. Our UNISEA and Sea Council colleagues have even helped on this design—" Salaam nodded to the 3-D avatar of Dr. Satsuyama in appreciation and the Japanese biologist acknowledged the gesture with a curt nod back. "A prototype is being built right now at Haikou Yards. Hainan Island, China. She'll be ready for sea trials in a month. With a little re-design and some time and money, _Trident_ could be made ready for a different mission, to Europa. Specifically, under the ice at Europa. And _Archimede_ has places to dock her and accommodate her on the trip. For my money, as you see in the report, this is the best way to find out for sure what's under the ice at Rhadamanthus Linea. This is the best way to find out what happened to _Trieste_. This is the surest way to know what we're dealing with."

A few moments passed as everyone studied Salaam's report.

It was UNSAC who spoke first. "It's audacious, I'll give you that much, Mahmood. What kind of timing are we talking about here? Jupiter's months away, by any conceivable trajectory isn't it?"

"Normally, yes, but _Archimede_ 's being fitted out with new plasma torch engines. They haven't been fully tested and proven, but it they work as planned, the ship should be able to make Jupiter in about eight months, versus a few years. We'd still have to assemble and train a crew, of course."

"And bring your little sub up to snuff," added General Quint.

Salaam consulted something on his wristpad. "The next best launch window opportunity for Jupiter cruise would be about a year from now...August through October. With enough money and manpower, and help from everybody, I think it's doable."

The Secretary-General Vishnapuram shook his head in amazement. "Truly an ingenious idea. In Kolkata, we call notions like this _paagal_...crazy, wacko, you understand. UNISPACE would have to be closely involved in such an effort."

"Probably up to their eyebrows," Quint said.

UNSAC sniffed. "Does anyone have a better idea? If something isn't done, _Europa Anomaly_ may be on our doorsteps in twelve months, maybe less. We should make a decision on this now. "

For the better part of the next hour, the officers knocked the idea around.

"The material requirements alone are staggering," said Quint. "What kind of manpower are we talking about to be able to finish _Archimede's_ refit, get her engines proven, build and test _Trident_ and train a crew? And the logistical requirements for a mission of this length, not to mention defensive systems—" Quint rubbed his blond buzzcut vigorously like it was about to fly off.

In the end, the decision was made. The project and the mission would proceed. Nobody thought the idea had the slightest chance of working but nobody had a better idea.

Dr. Vishnapuram gave his approval. "Initial design work should begin immediately. General Salaam, give me a synopsis of the idea, something I can offer to the General Assembly. Make it simple. These cows are simple people. They can be steered but sometimes it takes a big kick. The cost of this mission will be so astronomical that all countries will have to contribute."

Komar had an idea. "I want to speed this along as fast as we can. In fact, I know a Solnet reporter who can help get the word out."

Winter Valley Church

Scotland Beach, Florida

September 10, 2120

The Reverend Jimmy Doohan Holcomb had his usual after-lunch headache and told himself quietly that he would simply have to give up the gin and steak on days like this. He winced a bit as another throb hit but managed to keep up a professionally serious appearance for the family's sake. _Quite a crowd this time_ , he thought, looking over the group. Twenty minutes for the service, a few more for the photos and then it was off to the reception. _Then it's back to that office, that wonderful, icy cold office._

It was always hot in Scotland Beach in September but that summer in 2120, the heat was ferocious and Holcomb could hardly blame the wedding guests for choosing to stay inside the sanctuary until after the service. It was better for the family too and Holcomb was annoyed with himself for wishing he were with them. "Would you care to be seated here, ma'am?" he asked. A tall dark-skinned woman wearing big round sunglasses nodded and placed herself at the far end of one of the pews.

There were two other women, one middle-aged with a hefty build and mannish voice--she fidgeted constantly with a paper fan--and the other considerably older, of olive complexion. slender with her hands clasped in a firm prayerful pose. Holcomb knew from her expression that she was a regular church-goer. He swallowed and ran a finger across his brow, to remove a line of sweat that was hanging there. There was one other person near the windows that shaded them from the torrid sun outside. Holcomb looked questioningly in her direction but Dr. Josey Holland shook her head.

"I'll just sit here, thank you, Reverend."

"Very well. I think we're ready to begin now." He swallowed again, tasting the furry residue of his lunch and went back to the chancel. Outside the stained-glass windows, the pines and palmettoes of Winter Valley Church wavered in the heat, while just outside the massive oak doors of the narthex, a tabby walkway shone a blistering white, its shell and rock fragments reflecting off scores of sunglasses. Beyond the rope barriers, cameras clicked and newsdrones flitted about overhead like so many gnats, snapping pictures.

Holcomb sighed wearily and figured he'd lost count of the number of reporters covering the story of one celebrity Amphib's marriage to another Amphib. He opened the book and cleared his throat.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God and in the presence of these witnesses to join this...er, man and this woman...in holy matrimony, which is an honorable estate and not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, discreetly and in respect of God. Chase Meyer and Angie Gilliam, into this holy estate, you have now come to be joined."

Bodies rustled and coughs erupted among the congregation, while outside, reporters shoved forward against the restraining ropes to get closer to the front of the church. Inside, the one allowed newsdrone whirred silently near the top of a stained-glass window, its imagery part of a shared feed for the reporters' pool. Holcomb tried to ignore the damned thing; it had only been real pressure from the diocese that forced him to agree to this flying abomination at all.

He reminded himself to think of it as a somewhat noisier than usual fly.

"Heavenly father, we are grateful to you for uncountable blessings in our lives. You provided safe passage for us to meet here today in celebration of the gift of wedlock—the joining of these two lives, greater as one and reverently sealed in your presence. On behalf of Chase and Angie, we ask that you continue to guide them in their understanding of your purpose for them, that day by day they may live their lives more according to your plan. Bless this union with all your bounties, happiness and prosperity and may their lives together be good and long upon this earth. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen."

Josey Holland stared with no outward emotion at the couple as they went through the remainder of their vows. Even now, she wasn't exactly sure why Chase had invited her to Scotland Beach and why she had agreed to come witness this union. Curiosity, maybe. A desire to see the couple happily off in wedded bliss. Some sort of closure, perhaps, although the words spoken by the pastor seemed dead and lifeless to her, perhaps a residual effect of what she had had to do after the divorce from Stephen, what she had to do to survive the months, now five years, of anguish and resentment over the Court's decision to take away her two children and give Stephen custody.

In some ways, the whole affair was a great carnival ride, with the reporters climbing all over themselves outside, the articles and headlines screaming at her _Amphib Wedding to Attract Hundreds...Protests Organized by Sons of Adam...The Rich and Famous Come to Scotland Beach...._

Really, she could have done quite well without any of this and especially without seeing Chase Meyer kiss that athletic little tart Angie and the two of them saunter down the aisle like prom stars with disgustingly toothy grins plastered all over their faces...faces, she had to admit, that would soon enough be plastered all over the news with their extra eyelids and their cartilaginous ears and their fluted neck tissues flexing in and out.

Should Amphibs even be _marrying_ Amphibs...that was a question on a lot of minds these days, hers included. Her own son Timmy emphatically said no...he'd evolved into some kind of Amphib-hater, his mind filled with that Sons of Adam trash morning to night.

Holland wasn't so sure. Yeah, she'd done the first conicthyosis procedure on Chase Meyer himself five years ago. It was an experiment. Chase did it for his girl.

Now, Amphibs were like birds...they were everywhere, thousands of them all over the world. They were a phenomenon like none other and some people were threatened.

Now there were even celebrity Amphibs like Chase. And they were getting married too. Before long, there would Amphib babies.

When she thought about what her experimental procedure had become, Holland didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Or go hide under the bed.

"...Chase and Angie, you have thus consented together to holy wedlock, and you witnessed the same before God and in the presence of these witnesses. You have given and pledged these loyalties and sacred promises one to the other and have evidenced this by the giving and receiving of rings and by joining hands. Therefore, by the powers vested in me by the State of Florida, I now pronounce you husband and wife!"

The organ sounded and the music swelled and before she knew it, Holland was lined up outside the church, tossing rice and smiling at the commotion as the new couple emerged blinking and squinting into the glare of the midday sun and the crushing press of photographers and reporters.

By pre-arranged signal, Chase led Angie to a small space beneath a huge poplar tree, cordoned off with ropes and bunting and a few security guards. Holland shoved and slid her way through the crowd, stepping on a few toes... _excuse me, sir...excuse me...pardon me, ma'am_...and found herself propelled almost against her will up to the front against the ropes.

Chase saw her and came over.

They held hands for a moment, caught in the strobing of flashbulbs, with hands poking and probing, outstretched to touch him, just Josey Holland and Chase Meyer.

Chase had a lopsided grin on his face. "I'm glad you could come, Dr. Holland. It means a lot to us."

Holland pasted on a smile for the occasion. "So how do you feel now, Chase...now that you're an old married man?"

His grin somehow got wider, if that was possible. "Like I just roamed across the ocean with the entire kel of Omt'or. I don't know...exhausted, happy, glad it's all over...."

They squeezed hands. Holland said, "I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Where's the honeymoon?"

Now Chase smirked at her mischievously. "The Bahamas. A tiny little spit of island nobody knows about...and nobody can get to. We have to swim there..." He held out his hands to show off his armfins, barely concealed below the tux. "Like an Amphib."

"Don't be so sure of that..." Holland glanced around at the surging crowd, felt herself slowly but surely sliding away, as if caught in a tide. "With all these fans—"

Their hands lost touch and Chase and Angie were soon both enveloped in the melee, signing autographs and shaking hands as fast as they could.

Holland extricated herself and located her rental autocar. As it sped her back to the airport in Orlando and the flight to Boston, she couldn't help but wonder: _and these are just their human, land-based fans...below the sea were thousands more Sea People who claimed Chase as one of their own._

Frisco Island was a claw-shaped coral hump that hung off the eastern ramparts of Eleuthera Island several hundred miles southeast of New Providence Island and the city of Nassau. The waters around the atoll were turquoise and clear, darkened only by submerged coral reefs and the occasional rotting timbers of an unlucky boat that had run aground on the reefs in years past.

Off shore of the only gathering of structures worthy of being called a town, around a sharp bend in the land, a sprinkling of palm-thatched bungalows stood out to sea several hundred meters, perched on pilings and stilts like so many bushy flamingos.

Each bungalow was self-contained, with wraparound bamboo and wicker porches, several bedrooms and baths, a kitchen and living room and was open at all levels to the ever-present sea breezes, which ruffled the palm fronds and bougainvillea with soft whispering caresses night and day.

To Chase and Angie, it seemed that Unit 7 of the Turtle Cay resort was as close to heaven as they were likely to get in this lifetime.

Angie hadn't been feeling well since they had arrived, as Chase had told Dr. Holland, by swimming on their own from the shore landings at Samstown's rickety old pier out to Turtle Cay. She was tired, grumpy and complained off internal distress in her mid-section. She sweated heavily, even on the lanai outside in stiff breezes and Chase wondered out loud.

"Maybe it's a residual effect of the procedure. We should contact Dr. Holland...she'll know what to do."

"No, no...don't call her," Angie insisted. "I just need to lie down for awhile. Maybe right here on the glider...the salt air will help. Could you get me some covers...maybe a little water or a soda too?"

"Sure, right away. Just lie still and rest." Chase went off to the fridge and returned with a tray of several drinks. He found Angie sitting up, draped in a blanket, her wristpad chirping steadily and a lopsided grin and half-frown on her face.

Angie pushed her bangs back and pursed her lips, staring up at Chase. "It just started going off so I checked it... _look_."

Chase studied the tiny screen for a moment. He saw an outline of a human body and a small dot glowed in the stomach of the outline, winking on and off like a traffic light. Below the body outline, small words in script flashed: _PREGNANCY CONFIRMED...POSITIVE TEST_.

"Whoa...." Chase sat down heavily on the glider and nearly upended the tray. "Preg...when...how...you never said...."

Angie smirked at him. "I programmed it with an app a month ago...it sniffs pheromones and analyzes skin conductance and stuff. The ads said it's ninety-nine-point-eight percent accurate."

Chase's head swam. "I...this is—"

"Wonderful," she put the words in his mouth. When he started to stutter some more, she put a finger to his lips and said, "Shhh..."

They kissed a very long time. Whether from fatigue or the sea breezes or the drinks, both of them drifted off to sleep on the glider, Angie still half-sitting, Chase with his head in her lap.

"We should check this with the doctors," Chase decided. "Maybe someone at Creekside can look at the numbers here, the data...you know, just to be sure."

Angie was clearly feeling better. She was ravenous and ate several plates of eggs and bacon and toast and pancakes, all washed down with juices and coffee, pretty much anything and everything the housebot ERNIE could produce.

"I already thought of that. While you were still snoring away out there on the lanai, I called Dr. Wright. He's supposed to be calling back pretty—" but her words were interrupted by the chime of her wristpad.

It was Dr. Wright, from Scotland Beach.

After answering some questions, Wright had Angie place her wristpad against her abdomen. "Doc, I'm really stuffed with breakfast at the moment, you're sure this'll work?" and when he assured her it would, she fixed the device where he told her and the app sniffed and scanned and probed and sounded.

Moments later, Dr. Wright's face returned to the tiny screen. They could both see he was holding up some scans, a big smile on his face. One of the scans was an ultrasound image...the tiny fetus was clearly visible in outline.

"Two months, Angie, give or take. And perfectly healthy from what I see and hear. You want the gender?"

Chase and Angie looked at each other. "We haven't really discussed this—"

"Go ahead" Chase decided.

"It's a girl," Wright announced.

Before the call ended and the wristpad screen went dark, they had decided to call her Erika.

"I've got an idea," Chase said. "We should really do this."

"What is it?"

"Soon as you're feeling up to it, let's go diving. Just a short distance out there...hell, you're an Amphib now. May as well put those gills and fins to work. And I've still got one of Likteek's old signalers in my suitcase. We could send the good news off, through the repeaters. I'm sure they'll hear it. Angie, you and I have a whole lot of friends in Keenomsh'pont who don't know anything about this...or us. We should tell 'em."

Angie just laughed and hugged Chase hard. They spent the rest of the day just lounging around the bungalow, interrupted with short dips in the warm waters just off the platform—right below the dive landing, the coral reefs were crazy, red and blue and white explosions of color and form-- and then they took long naps in the bedroom.

Throughout the day, the faithful housebot ERNIE kept vigilant watch on the couple, mixing drinks and serving snacks like conch fritters as often as needed and before retiring for the evening, they enjoyed a tropical sunset and a light meal of snapper and veggies. The wine made them both drowsy and they were sound asleep in each other's arms before the first stars came out.

The next day, several hours after Chase had fired off the good news on his signaler, they saw the first of the kip'ts from Keenomsh'pont materializing into view beyond the far reefs, looking from the lanai just like humpback whales and calves.

Chase grabbed Angie from brushing her teeth and they lost their clothes and plunged right into the water from the lanai. With a few strong strokes, they were soon surrounded by dozens of Omtorish and Skortish and Ponkti friends, all bellowing and honking and nuzzling with the newlyweds. The waters around and above the intricate formations of brain coral thrashed and bubbled with joy.

" _Eekoti_ Chase...Shooki blesses both of you!"

"So much _ke'shoo_ and _ke'lee_...we can't stand it!"

"Never pulsed so many bubbles...they're like the _ve'skort_... volcanoes of happy!"

Chase found himself nuzzled and fondled and bumped and stroked from every direction. Through the forest of bubbles and foaming water, just beyond a nearby reef, hidden behind a passing school of jack, he thought he saw a familiar face, in fact several of them. Carefully, he extricated himself from the throng and grabbed Angie. They scooted over, waited for the school to whip past and there in front of him was old Likteek himself...rector of the Academy, master of the Kek'too, all gray and mottled around his beak, arthritic in his fins, but with a huge grin on his face.

They nuzzled in the Omtorish way and Angie, taking her cues from Chase, did the same, although it was going to take some doing for her to ever get used to being kissed by fish.

"Likteek, you old scumbag...it's so great to see you. And this—" Chase realized Likteek wasn't alone. Tulcheah, the Ponkti half-breed, was alongside, hovering, her tail flukes whipping back and forth in anticipation. Chase nuzzled Tulcheah as well, and Angie wasn't the only one to notice that the nuzzling lasted for awhile.

"—Tulcheah...I should have known. I'm glad you guys could make it."

Tulcheah had a way of smirking, if you knew how to read Seomish expressions, that sometimes drove males crazy, though you had to pulse her to hear her real feelings. Had Chase been better at reading echoes, he would have clearly read Tulcheah's mixed feelings, equal parts joy at seeing _eekoti_ Chase again and patronizing sneers at Angie. Tulcheah could easily pulse the tiny fetus now growing inside Angie and she made a point of ignoring her while lavishing all kinds of attention on Chase.

Angie was only Amphib, not fully Seomish, but even with that, she could sense Tulcheah's slights.

"All of Keenomsh'pont is in an uproar, _eekoti_ Chase," she told him. "Kelke roam constantly, they talk of nothing else. So many Ponkti midlings want to become Amphibs...they're surfacing all over the Notwater...cities, ports, anywhere they can land. The clinics are overwhelmed...many are hurt, your healers take advantage of them, steal from them, leave them injured or dying. The Metahs are meeting about this right now."

Chase grew serious for a moment. "Amphibs are all the rage. No question it's gotten out of hand. Maybe we need a big roam, _vish'tu_ for all kels. Make some decisions. Lay down some rules about this."

Likteek handed an echopod to Chase. "Some of your Notwater scholars created a study of Amphib culture. Listen to this...it's what our midlings, our children, are hearing."

"Let's roam," suggested Tulcheah. "We can get away from the crowd here, see the sights. I love these reefs...so many creatures...there, see _that_ one?" She pointed to a small octopus, squirting ink into the water at the base of a reef as it burrowed out of sight. "Looks like the _k'orpuh_ , but with more limbs."

They roamed together beyond the rows of reefs and soon found themselves plunging through dense stalks of wiry seagrass and spiked fronds whipping back and forth in a stiff current, quartering the underwater river that rolled incessantly through an opening in the reefs. After making sure Angie could keep up...an Omtorish midling named Grinkot helped her along...Chase manipulated the echopod and got it to speak, turning up the volume so all could hear. The words were English but also accompanied by the squeaks and grunts and whistles of the squawk translator that was part of the pod, so all would understand.

" _Amphibs converted through conicthyosis generally retain the social structures of their previous form. Converted from land-dwellers, like humans, amphibs typically associate in small groups, like tribes or clans, not necessarily biologically related. Some critics refer to these social groups as 'gangs.' Converted from more fish-like or icthyotic forms, amphibs retain social organization common to fish, i.e. schools, pods and similar familial groupings. Often these social structures are matrilineal in nature. Amphibs with a Seomish heritage cluster in groups reminiscent of small kels._

" _In general, amphibs are socially gregarious people. They collaborate and live together in small groups, previously known formally among anthropologists as clutches, troops, or bands. One term coming into common use among anthropologists now is a social grouping called a clik._

" _Amphibs are strongly family or clan oriented. Human hybrid amphibs retain many of the beliefs of their formerly human past. Marine (Seomish) hybrid amphibs retain beliefs from their icthyotic past. That said, there are some beliefs and values unique to amphibs._

" _Amphibs are by nature environmentally conscious and acutely aware of the connectedness of all life, land and sea. They are also aware that they are a created people (they revere Dr. Josey Holland as a sort of 'goddess') and they believe that their creation and the coming of their Seomish cousins through the Farpool in 2115 was divinely inspired. As such, they take part of their creation story from the Seomish and part from Human myths._

" _In general, Amphibs have a 'network' view of life. Their belief in a central creator is disappearing and they view the web of life as their main metaphor, with each Amphib morally and ethically responsible for doing their part to maintain the web and do nothing to damage it. When Amphibs refer to The Web, this is what they are referring to. Sometimes, they adapt the Seomish word for God (Shooki) as a stand-in for the Web. Many Amphib beliefs resemble Buddhist beliefs, especially their beliefs in First Things (Buddhist 'Noble Truths') and their belief in a cycle of life. Their beliefs center around a feeling of 'Oneness' or unity with the Web of Life. There are also elements of Gaian belief in how Amphibs think about their world."_

They roamed for awhile longer, circling Turtle Cay and eventually arriving back at the gathering of kip'ts, parked on a rise in the midst of the reefs.

Likteek nudged Chase away from the others. "Our midlings are fascinated by you Chase, by what you've done. You're a hero to them. They want to be Amphibs themselves. This makes the Kelk'too angry...the young have no respect for the old ways...for our traditions and practices. There's talk of changing the Circling, ending the rite of _Ke'toovish'tek_ , so they won't come into contact with these bad influences." Likteek was pained at the thought. "Nobody wants to do that. The Circling is as old as the kels. But here, on Urku, the waters are so different...we may have to do this. We all argue endlessly about it but we have to do something...before it's too late."

Chase buried himself in some sea grass, rolling over and over again to scratch an itch. "I'm not sure what can be done. This isn't Seome. Things change. You can't go back to Seome. The Omtorish...all the kels...somehow they'll have to make a life here."

Likteek snorted. "It's not much of a life. We have seas here to roam in but everywhere we roam, we cause trouble. Many are depressed...it's all _muh'pul'te_ to us, to a lot of us."

Chase's embedded echopod made the translation as 'plague waters.' "You have illness. Sickness?"

"Of a kind," said the old scientist. "More of a longing, for familiar waters, for the Serpentines, the P'omtor Current, the scalding hot seas of the Sk'ort, even Shookengkloo Trench. Our midlings, our musicians don't make music any more, just laments. Have you heard the latest _trangkor_ tune...they're calling it 'By the Waters of Omsh'pont.'"

Chase knew there wasn't much he could do. "It's the same with all immigrants here, Likteek. A new home, strange faces, strange language and customs. The old want to go back. The young assimilate more quickly. Just give it time." _That_ wasn't much comfort, he knew, but it was true all the same.

Now Likteek darted off, speared a small mackerel with an expert lunge and took a few bites. He made a face and discarded the carcass.

"There's news from the Notwater, disturbing news. Have you heard it? The _m'jeete_ we have contained in the far seas may have friends...beyond even the Notwater."

That made Chase stop. "What are you saying, old friend?" He knew the Seomish referred to the Coethi now contained near Reed Banks as _m'jeete_.

"The repeaters say there's talk of a great roam...the Umans call it _Trident_. A mission, I suppose...to seas of great distance...many _mah_. I think I have the recordings in my kip't—come...."

The two of them scooted around the edges of the boisterous crowd darting around Turtle Cay and located Likteek's sled, buried nose first in a sand bar. The scientist extracted a small echopod, pressed it into Chase's hands.

That's how Chase learned of the _Trident_ mission to Europa. It was clear from the repeaters' songs as well as the snatches of Uman 'talk' they had grabbed that a crew was needed for a lengthy mission to Europa and that the mission would entail submerged operations in the sub-ice ocean of that moon of Jupiter.

Chase explained it all to Likteek, who closed his eyes and set his mouth into a tight clench, as he imagined the details of the mission.

"Then this place Europa, as you call it...these are distant seas?"

"Very distant. It'll take months to get there, hundreds of your mah."

Likteek considered that. "Brave _kelke_ to make this distant roam."

Chase was already thinking. "To be honest, I'd like to be one of them."

"And the Umans fear the _m'jeete_ are also in this distant sea, this Europa?"

"So it would seem. Look, Likteek, this thing is ready-made for some kind of Seomish participation. There's an ocean below the ice on Europa, not unlike the northern P'onkel Sea with all those icebergs, back on Seome. Seomish kelke in the crew would be perfect, even Amphibs like me. We'd be right at home in that ocean...at least, I think we would."

Likteek was thoughtful, picking through the leftovers of the half-chewed mackerel. "Perhaps someone from the Academy, one of our young midlings just back from _Ke'toovish'tek_. After the Circling, they always come back with energy and fire. You can communicate this to...the right Umans? Make this proposal?"

"I can sure try." Now Chase's face clouded. "I'll have to run it by Angie first, though. I'm not sure if she wants her new husband to go gallivanting off into deep space. But this is important...you heard the echopod. If the Coethi really are out there on nearby worlds, that means the bugs you have in containment may be their little brothers. If they somehow managed to hook up, or release the _m'jeete_ here, it could be bad. It could be real bad."

Chase went to find Angie and finally located her on a small coral reef, just above the surface, sunning herself while dozens of Seomish cavorted around the bay. Beyond the beach, Chase could see scores of faces lining the shores and the cottages and bungalows beyond. Vacationers and honeymooners had descended on the beach to gawk at the sight of so many Sea People frolicking and horsing around nearby.

"Like watching whales," Chase told himself. "They're disgusted and amused and fascinated at the same time."

Chase told Angie what he had learned about the _Trident_ mission. He saved the best part for the end.

"I'd like to volunteer. I'd like to go along. I think I could help them," he said.

Angie just glared at him. "Are you out of your mind? We're on a honeymoon, you idiot. We've got our lives to live. I didn't marry you just to say good-bye while you ship off to some frozen world in the sky. No, Chase...N-O, got it? _Nein, nyet, nichts, nada_. Nunh-unh. Don't even think about it. You've got duties with the Sea Council. You've got duties with the Seomish at Keenomsh'pont. I'm a nurse at Creekside Med. No way, Jose...it's not going to happen."

Pretty much all their arguments started like this. Angie couldn't shake her blade-shaped head vigorously enough. Chase tried to make a rational argument, but it was like battling surf off the Outer Banks...a hopeless cause, a pointless exercise, a futile effort.

Then....

"Angie, the mission involves submerged operations. There's an ocean on Europa, under the ice. Who knows better than the Seomish how to operate in an ocean?"

"So send others...there are thousands of Seomish here now. Let them go."

"Ang, would you be reasonable for once...."

"What reasonable...Chase, my misguided but still loving husband, you're such a sucker for every cause and mission that comes along. Why does it have to be you? Are you still trying to prove something, like making your Dad think you're more than a beach bum? This is exactly how the Seomish roped you into being Supreme Leader...Kel'metah or whatever the hell it was. This is how you wound up on Seome in the first place...you just couldn't leave that waterspout alone when we saw it off Half Moon Cove. Chase—" her eyes were ablaze and she grabbed him under the chin, the way you'd make a point to your misbehaving dog and shook it as she added, "Chase, look at me. No. What part of that don't you understand? _No_."

Even as she said it, she knew she was losing the argument, for neither of them would ever let the matter drop. They'd both gnaw on it like an old bone, chewing and worrying and tugging on it until the thing was all slobbery and yucky and nobody could even hang on to it any more.

Half an hour later, as he knew she would, as even Angie suspected she would, Mrs. Chase Meyer had reluctantly, with every misgiving she could raise, with dread and fear and nameless things that would keep her up for months and months of sweaty nights, given her unwilling and poorly informed consent.

Chase slipped off the reef and dove off into the turquoise waters, splashing about with joy. He came up grinning.

"I'd knew you'd see it my way, Ang."

She was morose and shivering with the implications of what she had just done.

"So did I."

They talked a few moments longer, then Chase ducked under and went hunting for Likteek again. He needed to listen more closely to that echopod. Maybe somebody at the Sea Council, maybe Dr. Satsuyama, would know who to contact about the _Trident_ mission: how you volunteered, how long was the training, when was the launch?

With a million unanswered questions in his mind, he scooted off into the very heart of the big boisterous roam circling Turtle Cay and joined in the celebrations with everybody else.

New York City

Sea Council Island, the East River

September 13, 2120

1830 hours

It had been Keko Satsuyama's idea to build a new conference structure to meet the Seomish, something they would feel more comfortable in. UNISEA and the Sea Council originally had met in the UN complex at East 42nd Street, within the confines of UN Plaza. Now, however, Satsuyama looked on as finishing touches were made to the floating pavilion just off the East River pier, a hundred meters out in the sluggish river, a canopied structure anchored to the riverbed twenty meters below, surrounded on all sides by partitions but open to the water and the elements.

Today it was raining and the towers of Roosevelt Island were barely visible in the mist, along with the looming bulk of the Queensboro Bridge overhead.

Satsuyama blinked mist out of his eyes and cinched up his rain coat further. It was mild, but windy along the waterfront and he eyed the Secretary-General, Dr, Vishnapuram, standing next to him on the pier, doing likewise.

The S-G shivered in the chill. "We use to call this weather something only the ducks would love."

Satsuyama smiled faintly. "Ducks and Seomish delegates. Hopefully, this makes them feel more at home...ah, look, isn't that one of their craft now, surfacing just beyond the pier?"

Two rounded humps had appeared just off the pier. The two Seomish kip'ts circled the pier for a moment, while the UNISEA director communicated with the occupants by signaler. It was a crude method but after some confusion, the kip'ts maneuvered inside the floating pavilion and docked there. Satsuyama, Vishnapuram and the rest of the Sea Council then boarded small boats themselves for the short ride out to the conference pavilion.

The pavilion was closed on three sides with partitions and open to the sea on the fourth side. A tarpaulin-like ceiling covered the structure, creaking and ruffling in the breezes. Rows of benches with built-in desks lined the three closed sides. The two kip'ts came into the center of the inner pool, docked to a column there and popped the hatch. Several Seomish delegates climbed out, looking for all the world like a bad dream in their mobilitors, alligators with enlarged heads and mechanical legs. Manklu tel and the remainder of the Omtorish contingent exited their sled and began a slow, stately orbit of the pool beneath the surface of the water.

They were joined moments later by Kolandra tu, the new Metah of the Ponkti and her own entourage.

Vishnapuram checked his wristpad. "Any word on Chase Meyer? He's on his way?"

Satsuyama nodded. "He is, with a police escort. Sons of Adam had hundreds of demonstrators at the airport. The convoy had to offload everybody to vertiships and come by air. The roads between here and LaGuardia are jammed. Bridges too."

They could both see hundreds of faces lining the Queensboro Bridge above them. Angry, shouting, fist-waving faces. Placards jostled back and forth.

Satsuyama watched newsdrone coverage of the demonstration on his wristpad, a rueful frown on his face. One camera zoomed in on a placard:

FRY ALL FROGHEADS!

"Misguided fools, every one of them. Let's get started."

Satsuyama and the S-G boarded the cutter and made the five-minute trip to the pavilion.

It was a full meeting of the Sea Council. Chase Meyer, infamous celebrity though he was, was a staff aide to Satsuyama and, as such, took his position alongside the Director's desk.

The S-G sat in the middle along one side of benches. Kolandra and Manklu, Ponkti and Omtorish delegates for this session, were just across the open pool, standing and shifting uncomfortably in their mobilitors, for to sit encased in the armored suits was nearly impossible. It was protocol, accepted by all, that from time to time, the Seomish delegates would no longer stand and would dive off the platform into the pool, circling the waters restlessly to give relief to their bodies and minds from such an awkward position.

One other participant was on hand. Angelika Komar, Security Affairs Commissioner or UNSAC, had jetted in two hours before from Paris, not content to leave the details of such an important session as this to a vidcon or to her own rather useless avatars. Komar sat scowling in one corner, on the Uman side, glaring daggers at the Seomish delegates opposite her.

Dr. Satsuyama brought the session to order and, after some administrative details, raised the issue of a new commission that had already been approved and was about to be set up.

"The Joint Commission on Amphib Relations, the JCAR Committee, has already been approved by the General Assembly. The Sea Council is today charged with proposing its members and deciding on a mandate and scope of work."

The tinny, rather abrasive whine of Kolandra sounded from her mobilitor, the translator AI trying its best to make sense of her screeches and whistles.

"It seems... _shkkkreeah_...that Notwater affects your minds...such a kel as this JCAR must surely fail. Sure as the P'omtor Current, no Amphibs will follow its dictates... _nyeeeah_?"

This observation stirred Komar to words. "We have laws here. Rules. Nobody asked you _Seeleute_...you Sea People, to come infest our waters. Here, we make the rules, no?"

Now Manklu interjected, his mobilitor wavering almost to the point of toppling over. A delegate from Sri Lanka quickly reached over and held him up, kept him from falling.

"We came to survive. Our world is gone. We had no choice."

Komar was unmoved. "I guess we didn't either, did we? Now you and your Amphib cousins are everywhere, like a plague."

Kolandra seethed. It came through, even through her mobilitor speaker, even through translation.

"We did not... _shkreeah_...did not make amphib. Your own kelke did this."

Chase figured that was true enough. He was about to scribble a note to Dr. Satsuyama when the Japanese biologist interjected.

"The whole purpose of JCAR is to provide a forum to iron out our differences. It's not helpful to criticize each other here. Let's concentrate on who should be on the committee and what their official mandate should be."

The Ponkti Metah smoldered but held her tongue. Everyone was relieved when she leaped from her spot and splashed into the pool. Just below the surface, the others could see her circling and orbiting, angrily snapping her tail flukes with each stroke. Other delegates found it expedient to lift their legs away from her intentional splashes.

After a time, the details of the JCAR mandate and membership had been hammered out and Satsuyama went on to the next agenda item.

"The High Commissioner for Refugees has a new policy for us to consider. He proposes that all stateless and alternate transpersons be included in his mandate, including Amphibs. They are, after all, largely independent of sovereign states as we know them. I'll read the current mission statement: ' _We work to ensure that everyone has the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge, having fled violence, persecution, war or disaster at home._ '"

This elicited a storm of comment from other delegates.

"What disaster have Amphibs fled?"

"They _are_ the disaster, for everyone else!"

"It's the Sea People, you heartless scum...they fled disaster through the Farpool...."

"That's what they've said. _I'm_ not buying it."

Satsuyama and the S-G looked at each other. The S-G leaned over and whispered to the Director, "I think kindergartens are better behaved."

The Seomish dove into the pool, and returned to their stands several times, as furious, heated discussion filled the pavilion.

In the end, Satsuyama decided, with the S-G's consent, to table the discussion for now. The issue of what to do about Amphibs was too controversial, too sensitive, too emotional to resolve in this setting, that much was clear.

With relief, Satsuyama went on to the next item. Here, UNSAC stirred and sat up straighter.

"I've asked the Security Affairs Commissioner, Ms. Komar, to be here to give us the latest intelligence on security risks posed by the group Sons of Adam and similar dissident organizations that are opposed to Amphibs. Ms. Komar, would you--?"

UNSAC squirted all her reports and details to everybody's tablets and wristpads. Screens flickered and flashed around the pavilion. Echopods inside their mobilitors chirped with instant translations for Kolandra and Manklu. Three-D images materialized over the open pool: graphs, bulleted lists, mission statements, rules of engagement and thumbnail vids of riots and beatings from drone surveillance around the world.

"UNIFORCE has recently implemented increased surveillance of several trouble spots, places where anti-Amphib sentiment seems to be especially intense. One of them is right here in New York City. Intelligence shows that SOA, this so-called Sons of Adam group, is behind many of the provocations, including the one that delayed Mr. Meyer's arrival." Komar indicated Chase sitting at the other end of the bench. "We're proposing a covert penetration operation...let us put some operatives inside SOA and that would give us real-time intel on what they're up to."

The delegates debated the proposal. When a consensus seemed to have formed around approval, Satsuyama put the matter to a vote. The only dissent was the Russian delegate, Melekhin, who growled at all of them.

"My government strenuously opposes any outside influences on legitimate sources of dissent, protest and opposition."

That made eyes roll up and down the benches. The measure passed.

"You have something more to report?" Satsuyama inquired.

UNSAC indicated she did and took a quick glance in the direction of the Chinese delegate, Wu Fan-sheng.

"Everyone is well aware of the phenomenon discovered five years ago in the South China Sea...the vortex generator that some say seems to be a sort of time manipulator, or time machine."

"Yes...this is... we call... _m'jeete_ ," chimed in Kolandra. She took the opportunity to sidle around to the edge of the platform and drop off into the water with a big splash. Her colleague, the Omtorish kip't pilot Manklu, stayed upright behind their bench, swaying awkwardly. No one could see what his face looked like inside the mobilitor; the helmet blocked everything. Kolandra began circling the pool restlessly.

"The Chinese call it _Shijian caoxong qi_ , if I'm pronouncing that right," Komar said, with another glance at Wu. The Chinese delegate looked up from his wristpad and smiled faintly. "There are many theories about where this thing comes from. What you may not know is that recently, UNISPACE, through their observatories on the Moon and in Earth orbit have detected something similar on Jupiter's satellite Europa. UNISPACE operates a remote robotic ship beneath the ice of that satellite, in its submerged ocean. Within the last few weeks, this ship, called _Trieste_ , seemed to have detected something similar to the _Shijian caoxong qi._ Then something happened to _Trieste_ when it investigated. We don't know what...could be system failure, instrument error, we just don't know." Here, Komar killed off her overhead 3-D displays. She levelled a firm gaze at the Chinese delegate. "Due to the extreme sensitivity of our intel on this phenomenon and the possibility, however small, that something similar may be developing on Europa, UNISPACE has received permission to send a manned ship to check out the matter. The ship and its submersible already exist or soon will. The crew is being selected now. I raise this issue, as an intelligence matter, because the delegates should know that some of the crew—I cannot say which of course—will be Amphibs. Their ability to operate in air and in the sea make them a natural choice. I should add that we have strong intelligence—" Komar glanced sideways to catch Wu's reaction "--that some nations represented here in the Sea Council are fully aware of this phenomenon on Europa and are working feverishly to exploit it. UNIFORCE will, of course, continue to monitor these developments and gather all intelligence we can on the mission and its results...UNISPACE is fully cooperating with us on this."

Satsuyama waited until UNSAC was through, then added his own thoughts. "I consented to have this report brought before the Council in the interests of keeping all delegates fully informed. And I should add that, with the controversy of what to do about Amphibs growing every day, in the news every day, the delegates of this Council have a profound responsibility, even a duty, to provide the Council with up-to-date information on any matter pertaining to the Council's business." He took the moment to glare around at all the others. There were coughs and squirming but no one said anything.

Chase kept quiet too. His wristpad had flashed a notification moments before: the _Trident_ mission team was now fully selected and about to begin training. He had orders to report to Mission Operations at Gateway Station the day after tomorrow.

Chase studied Wu Fan-sheng carefully. He was a slight, almost gaunt man, with black bristly hair standing almost straight up and big eyes that he kept averted down, as if studying his own wristpad, tapping nervously at the thing while muttered comments, sarcastic remarks and crackpot theories flew all around him.

Chase wondered. _What do you know, sir?_ _Maybe you know things about this Europa Anomaly that we don't know._
Chapter 3

Gateway Station

Earth-Moon L2 Point

January 2, 2122 (15 months later)

1050 hours EUT

The shuttle's approach to Gateway Station went off without a hitch. In loose orbit around an imaginary point of gravitational stability just beyond the Moon, the station was an oddball assortment of cylinders and spheres, hung on trusswork-like structure like grapes on a trellis. A few hundred meters away, _Archimede_ floated serenely oblivious to the fantastic vista around her.

Chase Meyer studied the ship through the nav scope. "She looks like a kebab skewer."

Francisco Stella beamed. "True, she ain't much for the eyes. But she did yeoman duty as a cycler for five years, 'til _Da Vinci_ came along. Venus, Earth and Mars, around and around. Not the most exciting duty I ever pulled but she was a good ship and we had a good crew."

Presently, _Archimede_ and Gateway Station hove into view, hovering over the gaping Tsiolkovsky Crater end of the Moon. The one-time cycler had been designed with a long central mast off of which hung cylinders and spheres, a quad of propellant tanks stuck on the aft end above radiation shielding and her plasma torch engine bay.

"She's the only thing around here that could make the trip out to Jupiter in less than a year. We don't have a lot of deep-space ships in the vicinity." Stella gently maneuvered _Wellington_ toward a docking port below the nose of the cycler's command and control deck. Soft dock was an almost imperceptible bump, followed by the staccato firing of the capture latches.

"Hard dock," he announced. "Let's get to work, folks. We've got a lot of work to do and not much time."

UNISPACE Captain Francisco Stella would be in command of the transit ship _Archimede_ during the entire _Trident_ mission. Stella was heavy-set, thick black hair and a moustache to match. He waved Chase over and introduced the others. Most were Station crew. One was Lieutenant Julian Freeman.

"Freeman's my second in command, Colonel," Stella was saying. He started to pat the Lieutenant on the back but his hand stopped in mid-flight, almost as if it had encountered an invisible barrier. "Fresh out of the Academy, he is...got a few missions under his belt. I'm looking forward to putting the Lieutenant through his paces."

Chase stuck out his hand. Freeman was a slight, pale man, almost ghostly in appearance. He smiled faintly, his hand slipping into Chase's a bit uneasily. Chase tried hard not to react. It wasn't that the Lieutenant had a fishy kind of handgrip. It was more like something made out of felt, almost like an old sofa cover. It was hard to describe. Later, when they compared notes, fellow crewman Roy Favors would call it "a handshake that felt like a tennis ball slobbered on by my dog." Chase figured that was as good a description as any.

Stella was proud of his ship. "She's a beauty, isn't she? Been under wraps the last six months, full-scale conversion and renovation. All the latest systems...nav, propulsion, hab spaces, you name it. We'll get you _Trident_ guys to Jupiter and back in fine style."

Chase studied the kebab skewer of a ship. She looked just like what she was: an old cycler pulled out of mothballs and cobbled together with new stuff. "Doesn't exactly turn me on, Captain. That big sausage stuck on the front end...that's our submersible ship?"

Stella was unmoved by Chase's comments. "That big sausage, as you so unjustly call it, is _Trident_. Once we've made orbit around Europa, that little gem will take us down to the surface...and below, into the Europan ocean, we hope. To look for any nasties down there."

Chase decided to cut the pleasantries short. "Captain, our people need to be briefed on everything. Both ships, all their gear, procedures, safety, security, the works. The sooner we get started, the better."

"Of course, son. Follow me."

Stella led both of them on a detailed tour of _Archimede_ and _Trident_. _Archimede_ , the larger transit ship was a Frontier Corps space raider corvette. Three decks, Command and Control, Hab and Crew and Service and Support, were spheres strung like onions on the kebab skewer that was the ship's central mast. Stella brought them up to date on changes and advances since she'd docked at Gateway.

"The trip out to Jupiter will take about eight months...we'll be burning the plasma torch engines most of the way, so we'll have some gravity...about half a g, maybe. You'll have plenty of time to brief the mission and practice tactics...she's got a fully-capable sim tank for all that."

The smaller ship was _Trident_ , the Europa lander/submersible. _Trident_ was docked to _Archimede's_ forward docking module and looked like a sausage on a plate, as Chase had observed. The sausage was the submersible herself, divided into A through G decks, with an ANAD nanobotic borer at the front and treaded tracks spaced circumferentially around the ship's outside surface. _Trident_ was mounted on her lander base and platform, which would carry the ship to and from _Archimede_ , and more importantly, would hopefully deposit the lander on the surface of Europa to begin her mission.

Stella led Chase and the rest of the crew onboard the lander. It was cramped for a six-person crew with both Frontier Corps pilots.

"She's capable of rolling off the platform, boring her way through the ice, several dozen kilometers thick, then heading off through Europa's subterranean ocean at depths of up to three kilometers. The pressure hull's not rated for any deeper dives than that."

Chase tried out the commander's seat on B-deck, flexing the joysticks, tracing fingers over multiple keypads. "Your exec...he's an interesting fellow. Been with Frontier Corps long?"

Stella shrugged. "Freeman? Don't know that much about him really. He came from the Academy highly recommended. A little green, maybe."

"Seems creepy, if you ask me," Favors observed.

"All the embeds are like that," Stella said. He showed Chase the panel for operating _Trident's_ borer. "You know how it is...they like to show off. Got that embedded ANAD system inside...guys like that think they're invincible. But he's checked out okay on the equipment. That borer, by the way...Freeman can play it like a piano."

"Maybe it's that Academy look...I've seen it before. All book learning and no smarts."

"Yeah," said Favors, trying out the right-hand seat. "Let him get shot at or chewed on a few times on a real mission and he'll lose that smirk."

The briefing tour went on for another hour, then Chase and Favors begged off and retired to their quarters in Gateway Station's barracks...in reality, a small cylinder at one end of the complex.

"I need to set up a schedule for the crew," he told Stella. "We got a lot of outfitting to do as well as training to keep up. And we've got to get our own systems configured and ready to rock and roll."

Stella understood. "Look, there's an old Frontier Corps tradition here at Gateway Station...midnight at the bar, officers' mess compartment. We all buy drinks and tell lies after a long day at the docks. Cycler captains and shuttle pilots, dockhands, engineers, shop techs, everybody comes. Newbies and rookies do the buying."

Chase smiled. "They let Amphibs in too? That would be us, I believe. What _is_ the world coming to? Very well, Captain, we'll honor Frontier Corps traditions and see you at the bar at midnight."

Chase spent an hour or so going over the crew for _Trident_ : Roy Favors, Justin Ordway Marianne D'Nunzio, plus the Frontier Corps people: Stella and Freeman. Chase was Amphib and who knew what the hell Freeman was? The rest seemed reasonably legit, even allowing for their Boy Scout and Girl Scout faces. Somehow, they'd all have to get along on the ride out to Jupiter and back.

He checked the time. He was due at the officer's mess, and the Mariner Bar, in less than half an hour. Stella would be there...Freeman too, most likely. The newbie's tradition of buying a few rounds for the old hands would certainly have to be upheld.

Chase headed out of his compartment into the central gangway. It would be interesting to see just who would be at the mess, and if so, just how they would handle their drinks.

_That_ he would have to see.

Chase pulled himself along the gangway corridor by the handgrips and turned the corner, running headlong into Roy Favors, UNISPACE's best answer to a geo and astroglaciologist.

"Headed to the bar, Skipper?"

"We have a solemn duty, Roy," Chase said.

The two of them crawled and scooted through several corridors and passages before finding a compartment labeled _Mariner Bar_. They slipped inside.

It was a cramped space, like most places at Gateway Station. The bar itself curved along one wall, forming a large U. Opposite the bar were positioned a dozen or so tables, complete with foot and seat restraints to keep the inebriated from drifting off too far. Beyond the tables, one wall was filled with three observation cupolas, huge hexagonal portholes with stunning vistas of the surface of the Moon turning slowly below.

Chase spied Captain Stella at one table. He and Favors joined the Captain and Chase ordered a round.

"Glad to see you could make it, Mr. Meyer. We've got a big day tomorrow. _Archimede's_ final outfitting. Crew briefings. Onloading all your gear. We depart in three days...window's about ten minutes long for our first burn."

Chase tasted the local beer. "Tastes like sewer water."

Stella laughed. "You're not far wrong. All the water at the station is recycled...from urine, sweat, other uses. They say it's safe and potable. Me...I'm not sure I want to know the details."

Chase kept eyeing the nearest cupola. "Captain, shall we--?" He indicated the cupola.

"It's the view," Stella sympathized. "It gets all the newbies. Sure...bring your drink— "

They drifted over to the porthole and strapped themselves down at the pedestal. Outside the Perspex windows, the great shadowy eye of Tycho crater drifted by on the surface, faintly obscured by the approaching terminator.

"I have a question, Captain," Chase said.

"Shoot."

"I'm curious about your exec...this Lieutenant Freeman. What do you know about him?"

Stella smiled faintly, sniffed at his beer. "If you're asking whether I know that the Lieutenant is an 'angel', the answer is yes."

Chase was frankly stunned. "You _know_?" He shared an astonished look with Roy Favors, who just shook his head. "But...how the hell—"

Stella finished off his own beer, looked expectantly at Chase, who got the message and ordered another round. The servbot hummed over with a new tray of drinks in a few moments and expertly secured the tray to the pedestal, whisking the old tray away.

"You were going to ask...how the hell is this permitted? "Stella stifled a chuckle, looked furtively around to make sure no one was listening in. Mariner Bar was a small place...only the low and plaintive plucking of some country guitar in the corner covered their voices. The vocalist was some ecotech off shift, gamely trying to pick out a Roy Orbison tune. "Let's just say Frontier Corps works in mysterious ways...like your UNISEA, I'm sure. Orders from high up...that's really all I can tell you."

Chase understood. "In a word, politics. The Symbiosis project, Frontier Corps-style. Blending men and machine. Creating a superior trooper...or in your case, ship crewman. Nanobots embedded in bodies. Continuous improvement and all that crap."

"Exactly, Mr. Meyer. Look, I'm an old cycler captain. I'm used to spinning around the Sun in a nice easy stable orbit...not too much excitement, nothing to see, nothing to do. I'm for anything that makes my life easier. The Corps started integrating 'angels' into our normal rotations about five years ago. Call it efficiency. Cost savings. Latest technology upgrade. Politics. Call it whatever you want. Just don't give me something that makes my life harder. Cycler captains like routine. We don't like surprises. And so far— "Stella shrugged, worked his beer for a moment, "—it's worked like a charm. Lieutenant Freeman—that's the name the Corps gave us...his real designation is something like Config CXT-209987—has been a most able crewman and second-in-command. Does everything I ask. Doesn't get the rest of the crew riled up...anymore. We had some issues in the beginning...I'm sure you UNISEA types do too. You know...dinosaurs, troglodytes who can't accept change. Everybody has those types. But Freeman's worked out pretty well. And by the way, these _are_ pretty pointed questions, coming from an Amphib, don't you think? I wasn't going to say anything—"

Chase tried some peanuts and crackers. _Better than the beer_ , he realized. "Point taken...I should keep my opinions to myself. I have to admit I was going to warn you about Freeman, but since you already know— "

"Surely you Amphibs experience something similar."

Chase nodded and added, "Worse than that...I've got friends in real deep places...Sea People friends. I guess we're all hybrids now. We're not even sure who we can trust anymore."

"Bad _juju_ , that is," Stella agreed. "Makes me glad I'm not down there." He shrugged, then: "Me? I'm just an old stewpot of everything...Italian, Spanish, German." He watched Tycho slide out of view. "You know, Mr. Meyer, I'm always most impressed with Farside, all the mountains, the craters with their ejecta rays that look like snow from the Italian Alps. Since the Big Smack, BlueMoon says all that will be forestland someday, maybe ten thousand years from now. Ski slopes too...can you believe it? The bots are down there now, making it all green; it's already starting to show up to the naked eye. I'm going to miss that old regolith desert. So stark. So bare. Kind of elemental. Maybe that's why I like being a cycler captain. You go out into space and you have to confront it on its terms...or you die. None of this symbiosis crap...altering and transforming everything for Man. No Amphibs or angels or Sea People either, until now."

Chase stared into his drink, reluctant to try another taste of the swill. Maybe a fruit juice. He smiled at Stella politely. "Well, this should be a lot of fun. I just hope we can all get along on this mission."

"Well, not to worry," Stella brightened up. "With _Archimede_ , we have our own little world. At least, for the next few months, we don't have to worry about fighting bugs or frogheads, Sea Peoples' rights or any of that bunk. Just trot along the spacelanes out to Jupiter—"

"Yeah," said Chase "and try to find out what swallowed _Trieste."_

The Crazy Cod

Woods Hole, Massachusetts

January 5, 2122

1200 hours EUT

The snow had let up slightly when Tim Holland finally slid out of the autocar in front of the restaurant and swiped his wristpad on the meter, paying off the fare from Logan Airport. He bundled up his parka and pulled his cap down tighter, pushing inside to get out of the approaching nor'easter gusts even now swirling across the Vineyard. Snow was blowing sideways as he pulled open the heavy doors.

His mom was right where she said she'd be, back booth by a window, looking out on a wooden al fresco deck, now covered with knee-high drifts.

The table was cozy too, with several steaming bowls of clam chowder, a plate of crackers and a pitcher of beer nearby.

Josey Holland looked up hopefully as Tim came to the table. He gave her quick peck on the cheek, sat down and immediately dived into the chowder, saying nothing.

Holland just shook her head. "And hello to you too, Tim. Glad you could make it."

Bits of clam dribbled down his chin. _Just like Stephen_. "Sorry...weather...didn't have breakfast...."

Holland decided to sip at her own soup. It was scalding hot and she stuffed a cracker in her mouth to help. "I assume your Dad's surviving just fine...out there in the middle of the ocean."

Stephen Holland was an engineer aboard _Nereus_ , an oceanic free state several hundred miles off the northeast coast, one of several new sea-steading nations popping up around the world.

"Mm-hmmm." Tim had Stephen's face...long, bony, almost scholarly with his trim little goatee. Stephen's eyes, too, with their sky-blue fire. "Department chief, now. Real bigwig."

Josey Holland only wished her daughter Hannah could be here too, but Hannah had died five years before. A Down-syndrome baby, Hannah never really had a chance in life. _Don't go there, girl...don't go there._

"Your last text said you weren't on _Nereus_ anymore. What's going on?" _And try not to sound too much like a nagging mom, okay?_ she told herself.

Tim looked up, dabbed at his chin with a napkin. "I turned eighteen a month ago. Judge said I could split when I was eighteen, so I did. I hated living on that barge."

Josey Holland had heard varying stories about life in the oceanic paradise of _Nereus_. "You mean it's not utopia."

Tim snorted. "It's like living in a floating Boy Scout camp...or a cruise ship, without the suntan. They're all freaks."

"So now you're...where, exactly?"

Tim shrugged. "In New York, for the time being. I'm joining SOA. Packed my bags, took a vertiflight to La Guardia and got me a hotel, Lower East Side. Mom, I met this girl, Sonya—she's an assistant chapter manager for—"

But Holland's head was spinning with the news. "SOA? _Sons of Adam_...Tim, son, tell me it's not true. Tell me you're joking about this."

"No, really, I saw all those amphibs on _Nereus_...they're so arrogant. Frogheads are like friggin' mutants, Mom...you should see 'em."

"I have, Tim. Remember who did the first conicthyosis procedure?"

"Yeah, I know...we gotta have a talk about that. But _Nereus_ , Jeez, even Manhattan's overrun with the scum...Mom, they're like mutant Boy Scouts...Girl Scouts too. They lord it all over everybody."

Holland just rolled her eyes. _Tim, my son Timmy, with SOA?_ "Tim, this is insane. You're way too smart to be mixed up in crap like SOA. I raised you better than that."

Tim went back to his clam chowder, burying his face in the steam of the bowl. "I knew you'd say that...you're so predictable...just like Dad. I don't know...belonging to a subversive outfit like SOA just appeals to me. It's better than living with an absentee father, an uncaring stepmom and a birth mother who's more interested in fish than people. I just need to belong somewhere, be part of something and SOA is it. I don't know...maybe it's a way to regain some sense of normalcy in my life; that's what they promise, Mom...to contain the spread of amphibs, to restrict their influence and to return America to its original citizens, us land-dwelling human beings."

Holland wanted to cry. But not here, not now. "You sound like a pamphlet. What have they got you doing?"

Now Tim seemed to warm to his explanation. "Well, the head of the chapter...that's Mr. Levine, when he found out who I was, that I was the son of the famous Dr. Josey Holland, inventor of conicthyosis, his eyes lit up. He put his arms around me and said I could help SOA grow to even bigger heights. Really pumped my hand with handshakes too. I like that. I like to be needed like that."

Holland seemed resigned to the bad news. But maybe there was a chance...." This girl...tell me about her."

"Sonya? Sonya Immel. She works in the office. She got me a rent-controlled place and she's great. Blond, long legs...she does the marathon every year, loves triathlon. I may take that up myself. There aren't too many places to do that on a barge like _Nereus_. And they're all inside anyway, plotting how to save the Earth. Yeah, Earth needs to be saved all right, _from them_."

"Tim, can't you see? They're using you. They're using you to get back at me."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have invented the procedure. I mean, really, making people out of fish...was that such a great idea?"

Josey Holland wanted to reach right across the table and slap him. But it would have made too big a mess...clam chowder everywhere.

"Tim, for your information, I came up with the idea for conicthyosis as a way to help the Sea People make a better life for themselves. I never I intended for amphibs to become a cultural phenomenon...or a pop fad. I just wanted to help people that needed help."

"Yeah, well, I never did believe any of that Farpool crap. If the Sea People came through a wormhole from another planet, then I'm Captain Avenger and I'm from the planet Ultron."

Holland sucked at a cracker. She wanted to cry, but she forced back tears. She wanted to slap her son, but he was too old for that. She wanted to scream and flap her arms and tell him to wake up for God's sake and get real, but that would only make a scene to no good end. The Crazy Cod was supposed to be a respectable place. She knew some of these people, worked with some of these people.

Now Holland sensed she was losing him, and not for the first time. She had already lost Timmy and Hannah to Stephen when the Family Court judge ruled custody in his favor. Now she was losing him again, to a bunch of wackos called Sons of Adam.

"Tim, you can't really believe what SOA says."

"I do, Mom. They hate amphibs. They hate everything you stand for, everything you've accomplished. You know what Amphibs are? They're arrogant, supercilious, contemptuous and condescending people. Yeah...they're able to live and work on land and at sea, and they're scornful of us mere 'airbreathers.' They need to be eradicated like the vermin they are. Mom, they're _everywhere_ , they're like rats. Or some kind of virus."

"Tim, don't—" she swallowed her own words.

Tim wiped his face and stood up. "I guess I'm a big boy now. The Judge said when I turned eighteen, I became a big boy. We aren't ever going to see eye to eye on this, Mom. You made the first amphibs. Now look at them. They're freakin' taking over the world...I heard they're even going into space...there's some kind of mission to Jupiter. Amphibs are on the crew." He tossed his napkin down like a gauntlet. "Not as long as I can do something about it. Sons of Adam just want to save us...maybe save from ourselves. We made this mess. _You_ made this mess. But we're going to clean it up, one way or another."

"But Tim, the way they do it---what they advocate, I can't just—"

"Bye, Mom." And he left, quickly as he had come, cinching up his muffler and jacket, jamming his cap down on his head angrily. Tim Holland stalked off, pushed through the heavy doors and vanished into the driving snow, a wraith who she figured, when she later thought about it and replayed the whole encounter, had never really been there in the first place.

_That wasn't Timmy,_ she kept telling herself. _That wasn't the son I raised_. What the hell had Stephen and the airheads on _Nereus_ done to her son?

Now she was losing him once again.

Josey Holland stared down at her clam chowder for a long time. The cracker crumbs and bits of clam made faces at her and she slurped down the rest of the beer as fast as she could, not caring that she still had some critical tests to supervise at the Lab, not caring about anything really.

She was never quite sure when the idea came to her. Perhaps it was the faces in the chowder. Perhaps it was the realization that she kept losing things: her daughter Hannah, her son Tim, her husband Stephen, her self-respect, her sense of worth and her notion that she could actually accomplish anything worthwhile in life.

Maybe Tim was right. She'd tried to help the Sea People—the Seomish—and wound up losing her family in the process.

Idly she wondered what Chase Meyer was doing now. What did she have in her life now...really? She'd lost her husband and her kids to a messy divorce many years before (that had been June 5, 2115 and the words of that troglodyte Family Court judge were forever burned in her mind after the decree). Her romantic entanglements since then haven't worked out particularly well. She always felt she and Chase had a special bond, but Angie being married to him got in the way.

Her mind went freewheeling, fantasizing and it was after two p.m., with the waiterbots stacking chairs on tables all around her, that she had made a decision that she never wanted to admit, even to herself.

Maybe there _was_ a way to get Angie Gilliam out of the way.

Without even realizing it, Josey Holland pecked on her wristpad, even as the bots were clearing her table and offering her refills, which she waved off, and googled a name she had seen in an article some months before, some piece about black hat hackers and the Dark Net.

She blinked when the name popped up the little screen, with contact info and everything right there beside the spinning, grinning little skull and crossbones.

How corny, she thought. Then she ran the name around her tongue for few moments.

_Revenger_.

Scotland Beach, Florida

January 10, 2122

1645 hours EUT

Angie Gilliam-Meyer picked up her daughter Erika at the Kid Zone day care center in Fanning Springs and tucked her little blond dreamgirl into her car seat carefully, thoroughly checking every strap and connector until she was certain it was right.

"Got to make sure Babycakes is all snug...there...how's that, Cute Thing? How's Momma's big girl?" She bent down to nuzzle noses with Erika. She always loved that. She was getting big for her age— _probably be a track star like me, when she's fifteen_ , Angie decided and she rubbed her long legs until Erika grinned and squirmed with a giggle. Erika was for sure going to be a blond bombshell in no time and the boys would just have to watch out for this little stick of dynamite.

"You are one girl that's definitely going places," Angie told her as she climbed into the front seat and locked everything down. "Right now, we're going home and taking a nap. No fussing back there, okay?"

Angie tapped the screen and the motors whirred to life. The autocar could drive itself, as long as the start and end points were programmed in. Angie checked the screen to make sure and satisfied herself that _Benjamin_ —that was the name she had given to their autocar—was programmed and enabled properly.

All safeties engaged. _Check_. End point and way points loaded. _Check_. No warning flags or red lights. _Check_.

She tapped _GO_ on the screen and sat back to make faces at Erika as _Benjamin_ steered them expertly out of the parking lot, negotiating other parents, pedestrians and cars hunting for parking, then merged smoothly with building afternoon northbound traffic on U.S. 19.

The ride up to the Citrus Boulevard exit would only take about ten minutes at most. Angie tickled Erika's toes a while longer, then when her daughter seemed to drift off in the drone of the moving car, she turned around to plot out a dinner she could somehow scrabble together on her wristpad.

_Benjamin's_ drive control system was sixth-generation AI, developed, tested, tuned and re-tested hundreds of times to be able to study its environment and make decisions millions of times a second, based on sensor inputs from its radar and lidar 'eyes', its pre-loaded terrain and route maps, any traffic or roadway conditions or alarms that might be relevant and real-time sampling of literally hundreds of environmental parameters surrounding the speeding vehicle, from air temperature to tire pressure on the asphalt to traffic density profiles adjusted for time of day, weather and sun angle and dozens of other variables.

_Benjamin_ was truly a most capable system and Angie implicitly trusted the drive system to get her and Erika from the Kid Zone to their house on Fountain Street safely and in a timely manner.

What Angie didn't know was that _Benjamin_ wasn't and never had been a truly cyber-secured system, at least not to a dedicated and well-paid hacker with the skills and persistence of Revenger.

A small program, an executable file with the cryptic, seemingly nonsense name of _ScodosRexPlusTwo_ had been downloaded into _Benjamin'_ s control system only the night before, while the autocar had been plugged into their terminal inside the garage at the Gilliam-Meyer house on Fountain Street. The autocar batteries had been topped up to full charge. Updates to _Benjamin_ had been downloaded. Files had been rewritten, refreshed and the operating system for _Benjamin_ had never flagged the entry of the small executable file called _Scodos_.

The file found its way into the master program directory and placed itself, disguised as an innocuous update file, in such a way that when _Benjamin_ was fired up the next morning, _this_ morning, it would execute its malevolent instructions as surely as any other file.

The result of executing _ScodosRexPlusTwo_ was quite simple and straightforward. Inputs from one radar sensor and one lidar sensor, located on the autocar's roof and front grille would be blocked and written-over in a continuous loop, millions of times per second. The end result was that _Benjamin_ would be blind in two critical eyes at the same time. Worse, perhaps more malevolently, _Benjamin's_ self-check circuitry wouldn't detect and flag the discrepancy for it continued to receive inputs that seemed to make sense, even though the inputs didn't come from the real world. Over a hundred years before, the same tactic had been used successfully by a malware program called Stuxnet.

And Revenger knew all about Stuxnet.

The malfunctioning sensors provided critical inputs to _Benjamin's_ lane-keeping system. Without real inputs from the road and from nearby traffic, _Benjamin_ unintentionally allowed the autocar to drift slowly but steadily into the opposing lane of oncoming traffic.

Still engrossed in her menu plans for the evening, Angie never saw the autotruck bearing down on them at a combined closing speed of a hundred and forty miles an hour, even with all its proximity horns going off.

The crash was heard for several miles around.

The impact was a matter of basic physics, easy enough to re-construct from the shredded metal, broken glass, rivulets of oil and skid marks left behind.

What was not possible to re-construct was the bodies of the passengers.

The front seat passenger had died instantly, her body mangled and bloodied into a nearly unrecognizable mass of tissue and clothing scraps.

An infant girl had been in the rear seat, properly strapped into her car seat.

The child, though critically injured, somehow managed to survive.

Hours later, Revenger polled the news sats and located the story of a horrendous autocar crash on northbound U.S. 19 east of Scotland Beach, Florida. Studying the details carefully, cross-checking with other sources—drone vids, hospital and medical examiner admitting records, police reports, funeral home calls, he concluded that his job had been essentially accomplished.

He looked forward to receiving the remainder of his fee from the customer.
Chapter 4

Aboard UNISPACE Transit Ship _Archimede_

Three Days from Jupiter Orbit Insertion

September 10, 2122 (Earth U.T.)

Eight months, two days and a handful of hours after departing Gateway Station, Deeno D'Nunzio and Roy Favors were sitting at a table in the crew's mess, aboard _Archimede's_ crew deck, nursing a few beers. Favors fiddled with the gain on the main viewer to bring Jupiter into full resolution. They were well beyond the outer fringe of the Belt now, in trans-Jovian space and Jupiter lay directly ahead, now swollen to a readily discernible disk.

"Looks like a fuzzy beach ball," D'Nunzio said. "With hair—"

Favors pronounced himself satisfied with the view. "Yeah, a beach ball with enough radiation to fry your pretty little brain in about two seconds."

"You're assuming I have a brain...I checked mine at the recruiting station when I signed up for this camping trip."

It was a salmon-hued world, mottled and banded with oranges, reds, browns and ambers, a cauldron of clouds, storms and majestic seething turbulence. Alternating strips of light and dark wrapped the planet in a calico shroud and several small red spots boiled away in the north tropical zone, companions to the Great Red Spot in the south, a centuries-old hurricane churning since the time of Cromwell and King Charles.

For several days, _Archimede_ coursed through the Jovian skies in a steeply inclined orbit, skirting the shoals and reefs of her radiation belts, until at last they found the first of several holes in the sheath of charged particles. Captain Stella passed the word to all hands that the ship was about to begin a series of maneuvers which would end up bringing them into orbit around Europa. _Archimede_ dropped to a lower orbit through the first of these holes, like navigating a minefield in a wartime harbor.

After a few days had passed, the ship settled into orbit half a million kilometers above the cloud tops. By now, the planet filled nearly a third of the sky and hundreds of frothing spicules and cells of gas swept by beneath them. The speed of its rotation flattened Jupiter at the poles and widened it to a bulge at the equator. Ferocious winds resulted and they smeared the columns of gas into all sorts of grotesque and beautiful shapes. D'Nunzio and the rest of the crew came by the crew's mess often, watching the scenery below for hours at a time. D'Nunzio found herself transfixed by the ever-shifting palette of colors and shapes. She could well imagine the planet's visible face as a giant's palette, where Nature worked as the artist to create an ever-changing panorama of colors, forms and brush strokes.

In time, _Archimede_ made her way into orbit about Europa. Chase Meyer himself joined some of the crew in the mess compartment, as the cracked billiard-ball of a world turned slowly below them.

"Gives me the creeps," Justin Ordway said. He shuddered involuntarily and sucked at his drink.

"All those cracks are seams in the ice plates," Lieutenant Freeman marveled. "And to think that's where we're going, right into one of those seams."

"And below—"added Stella. He decided it was time to finish up their final briefings and get ready for the landing. "All right, boys and girls, all hands lay aft to the Service deck. I want to go over last-minute details before we head down."

By 1100 hours, all of the crew had boarded _Trident_ and secured themselves and their gear. Captain Stella was in the commander's seat on B deck, with Lieutenant Freeman in the right- hand seat. Chase had secured himself in a jump seat behind, alongside D'Nunzio.

Deeno shot Chase a look, while Stella and Freeman went through their checklist. Even from close behind, it was nearly impossible to tell about Freeman. The Lieutenant had a skin texture that belied his true enhanced nature. From three feet away, you could not tell that Julian Freeman was an angel, a bag of nanoscale assembler bots inside a young officer who looked for all the world like a college freshman.

D'Nunzio's eyes told the story. _So real looking, it's creepy._ Chase nodded.

"Ten seconds to separation," Stella called. The captain scanned his boards and instruments, pronounced himself satisfied with what he saw. _Trident_ was docked at the forward nose port of _Archimede_ , a giant sausage stuck on a plate, secured to a kebab skewer, as Roy Favors had termed it.

"Three...two...one...separating _now_ —"

There was a gentle shudder and the sound of capture latches releasing. Stella pulsed _Trident's_ aft thrusters and the ship backed off at a stately pace, eventually settling into a co-orbiting position several thousand meters from the home ship.

No one remained aboard the cycler. Now, with _Trident_ departing, she was controlled only by ALBERT, the AI that ran everything onboard.

Below them, Europa turned like a cracked golf ball, dimpled, rutted with deep ice canyons and odd brown streaks. As _Trident_ backed away, the huge banded disk of Jupiter itself poked over the Europan horizon, at a crazy angle. The moon was in a three-and-a half day orbit about the giant planet, averaging three quarters of a million kilometers above her cloud tops, bathed in hard radiation.

Chase Meyer was glad _Trident_ and _Archimede_ both maintained active rad defensive shielding and emitters. Otherwise, they would have all been fried to cinders days ago.

"Thirty-two minutes to de-orbit," Stella announced. "Make sure everything's secured. This will be quite a kick in the pants."

Freeman acknowledged and went about his duties with aplomb. The angel had the appearance of a lean, even gaunt human being, with close-cropped dark hair and rather large ears...perhaps a minor flaw in the overall configuration. As _Trident_ closed on her de-orbit point, Chase studied the skin structure of the angel, looking for any sign of defect, any frizzing, shadowing or edge irregularity. There was none. He tried imagining what kind of config, indeed what kind of effectors and atom grouping, could pull off a stunt like that. Even conicthyosis changes couldn't match it.

_Fantastic engineering,_ he told himself. The Seomish had nothing that could match Lieutenant Freeman. _Who the hell designed this system,_ he wondered? The Coethi, maybe? But that idea gave him chills and he quickly put it out of mind.

"De-orbit burn in five seconds," Stella announced.

Chase took a peek out the nearest porthole. Two hundred kilometers below, the surface of Europa looked dingy gray white, wrapped in dark lines and crevasses like a ball of yarn, oddly smooth in general appearance but definitely textured and shadowed in bizarre, even menacing ways. Somewhere down there, several dozen kilometers below the icy surface was an ocean of night, and something that needed dealing with.

Somehow, some way, the crew of _Trident_ had to get down there and find that cloud of Coethi bots, if that's what it was, and then put it out of commission.

"...three...two...one...engine arm—"

_Trident_ shook and shuddered like a wet dog, as her engines lit off, slowing her down for a steep descent toward the surface. The ship was attached to a landing platform that contained her descent and ascent engines and provided a stable base to set her down on just about any surface. If all went well, the assembly would make landfall at a site 168 degrees west by 42 degrees north, near the end of a meandering dark reddish-brown chasm called Minos Linea, in a territory known to the astros as Falga Regio.

From there, _Trident_ would trundle off the platform onto the surface and begin boring her way downward, toward the subsurface ocean said to be about thirty kilometers below. Once submerged, she would head east by southeast, toward the presumed coordinates of the suspected target, triangulated by decoherence wave analysis to be a full three-day voyage away in a region known on the maps as Rathmore Chaos.

_Aptly named_ , thought Chase, as he eyed the surface coming up fast through the porthole.

Stella and Freeman were busy with the landing, calling out waypoints and targets with cool efficiency.

"Two hundred meters," said Freeman, his voice crackling with a slight buzz...angels often had that as the bots struggled to form up acoustic waves into something approximating a voice. "One eighty...coming down at ten, drifting to the right...five forward...now five forward...."

_Trident_ had cut her forward velocity almost to zero and was now descending almost straight down. Outside the porthole, the linear vent opening that was their landing zone loomed larger and larger, a seam of streaked warmer ice separating two churning ice rafts, dozens of kilometers square. Chase watched the ground coming up fast. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine himself on a ski lift at Breckinridge, Colorado, coming down the slope toward the lodge.

"One hundred meters...three forward, on target, throttling down ten percent...fuel is good...looking good, Captain—"

Stella worked the controls and gently stabilized _Trident_ as she dropped closer and closer. Europa's gravity was about a tenth of Earth's, so movement in and around the surface would be no problem. Beyond the porthole, Chase could see the surface rising higher and higher in his view...rugged boulders and icescapes tumbled all over like some giant kid's play toys.

"—contact light...okay, engine stop...that's it, Captain! You did it!"

_Trident_ settled onto the surface with a last-minute lurch and suddenly everything went silent.

"We're down," Stella announced. "I'm reading off target by about twelve meters...not too bad for an old cycler captain."

Europa gave them a fantastic vista outside the portholes. The sky was black, mostly filled by the lopsided half-crescent of Jupiter itself, the banded, striated giant filling nearly a quarter of the sky. Deep shadows accentuated the chasms and gouges along the top of the ice surface, which was a blocky, jumbled mess of frozen forms and shapes.

"Looks like an ocean frozen in time, Skipper," said Justin Ordway, craning his neck to see. "Waves washing up on a beach, then zap! Freeze it right there."

"You're not far wrong," Chase said.

Stella scanned his controls and instruments. "Outside temp is about a hundred degrees Kelvin...that's about minus two eighty Fahrenheit, boys and girls. Just another beautiful day in the neighborhood...let's get going."

The crew unstrapped and set to work preparing _Trident_ to leave her landing platform. After half an hour, Stella recalled everybody to their seats.

"I'm firing the capture latches now," he announced. A loud series of staccato bangs reverberated through _Trident's_ hull. No longer secured to the top of the platform, the borer submersible was free to move out on her own.

"Engage treads," Stella ordered.

Lieutenant Freeman flipped several switches. _Trident's_ treads, three longitudinal tracks mounted circumferentially around her waist, spun up. A low frequency vibration could felt throughout the ship. The submersible was coming alive.

"Drop the clutch," Stella said. Freeman complied. _Trident_ lurched forward, grinding against her restraints. "We're underway on treads."

The giant sausage began crawling off its plate. Stella worked his steering through a tiny joystick at the center console, nudging it forward. _Trident's_ nose dipped as she dropped onto the ramp and trundled like a fat pig down onto the surface of Europa.

"I'll drive off about five hundred meters and set up for boring," Stella told them. He twisted the joystick and fought the rough surface as _Trident_ ambled forward, rocking against boulders and tilted ice cliffs. "I don't want to start boring too close to the lander. We'll need the platform to get off this big ice cube."

A ten-minute drive brought them rocking and bouncing to a small ledge, overlooking a narrow chasm, filled with darker ice. Stella braked to a halt and edged over the lip of the chasm, pointing the nose of the submersible toward the chasm floor. Lieutenant Freeman sounded the surface with radar and pronounced the ravine approachable.

"Temps reading twenty degrees warmer...ice may be thinner here too. Recommending we breach here, Captain."

Stella agreed. He parked the sub on the edge of the chasm. "Let's get the borer set up. Favors, if you please—"

Roy Favors unstrapped and headed with Stella forward through the central gangway to A deck, where the borer and containment systems were located. Once released from containment, the borer lens would be filled with uncountable gazillions of ANAD nanobots, optimized for disassembling solid-phase structures...like ice.

_Trident_ would literally chew her way through Europa's ice crust to the subsurface ocean thirty kilometers below them.

Inside A deck, Stella worked at the borer controls, prepping the bots for release. Favors helped him with configuration management.

"This should only take a few minutes," Stella was saying. "These bugs are optimized for speed of disassembly. They like to eat things...like ice."

"Master config loaded and verified," Favors' fingers flew over the keyboard.

"I'm cycling the capture port...coming open now...." Through the vid screen, the lens and parabolic emitter at the nose of _Trident_ became hazy with a blue-white glow, an incandescent glow as bots flowed out of containment, stripped atoms and began building the borer lens. When stable and fully formed, the lens would be a hemispherical swarm of disassembly nanobots, blue-white hot from bond breaking, the teeth of the whole array. _Trident_ would lower herself to the ice and the borer would chew a path through...thirty kilometers through, if the thing worked properly.

"Lens forming up—"Stella studied the seething globe of fire that formed at the front of the submersible. "Looks steady, config is stable, normal bond energy levels, just a little edge effects, from what I see. The tunnel may be a little ragged at first, but the dimensions look good from here."

"I concur," Favors said.

"I'm setting us down on the ice now—"

Stella flipped a few switches and _Trident's_ treads folded, lowering her nose to the ice. At the same time, the borer lens began slicing into the surface, its swarm of bots snapping bonds and obliterating atoms like a hot knife through butter. The entire front end of the sub was soon bathed in the blue-white glow. Slowly, imperceptibly at first, _Trident_ slid forward, her nose inclining down at an angle. In moments, as the borer chewed into the ice, the sub began sinking lower and lower, until her portholes were below the surface and covered with the dingy gray murk that was Europa's icy crust. A faint vibration could be felt throughout the hull and slight groans from her outer skin flexing could be heard.

In less than five minutes, _Trident_ was fully below the surface, melting and boring her way through the ice, sliding ever so slowly down a tunnel of her own making.

Operation _Europa Hammer_ was underway in earnest now. If all went well, the trip through the ice crust to Europa's subterranean ocean would take nearly thirty hours.

Stella stayed on A deck for a while longer, just to monitor boring operations and see that _Trident_ was on course, nose down at a twenty-five-degree angle and on a heading that would take her some three hundred kilometers to the triangulated coordinates of the suspected target. After emerging from the underside of the ice, _Trident_ would be in her true element, operating as a submarine at a depth of two hundred meters below the bottom of the ice, some thirty-two kilometers below the surface of the moon.

Then the real mission would begin.

For the next several hours, little changed aboard the sub. The crew had settled into their bunks for some shuteye, ordered by Stella, since once they made the ocean and got underway toward their objective, there would be plenty to do, checking gear and reviewing tactics for the upcoming mission.

Chase decided to make his way forward to the command deck. He found Captain Stella there, studying surface maps of Europa and plotting their course once the sub emerged from the ice.

Stella looked up when Chase slipped into the right-hand seat.

"Got any idea where we are?" Chase asked.

Stella nodded. "Still in the ice. Actually, I just did some soundings. Ice density's falling off steadily. It looks like we'll be coming to the bottom edge in a few hours. After that, we're a true submarine."

Chase studied the charts for himself. "The mission plan calls for a three-day trip to the Objective Alpha coordinates."

"Based on the most recent data, that sounds about right." Stella pointed out the navigation waypoints. "We landed here...Minos Linea, the eastern terminus, according to this map. Best triangulated position for Objective Alpha is here, right below Rathmore Chaos, possibly at a depth of three hundred meters below the ice. The distance between the two is about a little more than three hundred kilometers. At a steady speed of thirty knots, that makes it about three days, give or take."

Chase tried to imagine what they would be seeing. "I guess _Trieste_ saw the same things we're seeing. I just hope the Objective Alpha's there when we get to those coordinates. If it's like that swarm in the South China Sea, it's nothing but a big swarm anyway. Currently uncontained. What's to keep it from dispersing and moving somewhere else?"

"We'll find out soon enough," Stella said.

"I ran into Lieutenant Freeman a few minutes ago. He was headed aft for some kind of maintenance inspection."

Stella folded up his maps and studied his instruments, noting the ice density chart. "The Lieutenant can affect people different ways. It's okay if you feel creepy about him. I still do, now and then."

Chase watched the borer console, providing displays of swarm status at _Trident's_ front-end borer lens, along with conditions in the tunnel they were sliding through. "I don't trust him, Captain. A lot of the crew don't. You said before you'd got solid background on the Lieutenant?"

Stella nodded. "Config CXT-209987 was assigned to this expedition by order of UNISPACE Headquarters. In fact, when I learned I was getting an angel for a second-in-command, I did do a little checking. The config was created at Copernicus Lab, on the moon, about five years ago. UNISPACE project. Went through the usual versions and updates. I even read the test reports. Freeman checks out as top notch, highly capable. He can handle all assigned duties aboard any of our ships, cyclers, landers, shuttles, you name it. His processor is state of the art, loaded with all the latest stuff. "Stella shrugged, settled back in his seat and closed his eyes, rubbing them. "Officially, I have no reason to complain. His fitness reports have been damn near a hundred per cent on everything. And as you can see, he holds structure pretty well..."

"Just don't shake his hand," Chase said. "Feels like rubberized dog poop."

Stella laughed. "That's one description I _hadn't_ heard. But I know what you mean. Is the botswarm that makes up Freeman a perfect likeness in every way? No...of course not. His skin feels like...er, dog poop, as you put it. His eyes are little flat...they don't quite look at you so much as look _through_ you. Like he can see inside you. And of course, when he walks, he can walk through objects if he's not careful...the swarm just parts and refills on the other side. The first time I saw that...Julian Freeman walking right through the edge of a mess table on the old _Galileo_ cycler, I nearly flipped. But that's a stability and orientation issue, the engineers say. Freeman's gotten better just since I met him. Did you know his configs and algorithms get regular updates? You and I can't say that about ourselves, can we?"

"No, I guess not."

"I try to be open-minded about this," Stella went on. "Angels and botswarms are everywhere, on Earth and out here as well. We can create just about anything out of the bots. True, organics are still dicey, but when you've got a sim like Freeman, who cares? And we both know these angels are just going to get better and better, more and more lifelike. The way I hear it, there are angel spouses and lovers on Earth...don't know how well _that_ works yet. People will try anything...ANAD technology can assemble anything, disassemble anything, even resemble anything. They are the future, whether we like it or not. Them and Amphibs, pardon me for saying that in your presence."

Chase shook his head. "That's what I'm afraid of. And I still don't trust your Lieutenant. With this Objective Alpha and that thing in the South China Sea, all the bots and angels are no longer predictable. They can be controlled and organized into entities that threaten everything. They're not just bots anymore. Now they're like plagues sweeping across whole countries... we're no longer in control of it...if we ever were."

Stella started to reply, but an insistent beep interrupted. "Fathometer sounding...it's programmed to go off when ice density drops below a certain threshold." Stella manipulated a small dial, then his fingers flew over a keyboard. "I'm cutting back the borer to half power...and dropping our track speed. Look at the plot...density's dropping fast. The edge must be just ahead."

The hum which had pervaded _Trident_ for most of the past day now slackened to a muted vibration. Just as Stella dropped speed a little more, a shuddering lurch rattled through the ship's hull and high-pitched scraping and squealing could be heard just outside.

"Going to forward vid—"Stella announced. The screen went from dark to crazy bouncing and careening, speckled with lights, then the luminescent globe of the borer lens materialized into view. Beyond the glare of the borer head, a deep black swelled into view.

"The ocean—"Chase said. "There it is."

"Dead ahead...dropping tracks to one quarter. I'm shutting the borer down now."

_Trident_ scraped and bumped and ground against the last of ice as she slid down to the end of tunnel. There was a heavy shudder, then she was free and underway in the ocean.

The grinding tailed off. Stella worked his control board. "I'm securing the borer...starting up the hydrojets. MHD plant now on line. I'm bringing her around to target heading. _Lieutenant Freeman to the command deck...Lieutenant Freeman to the command deck—"_

The sub heeled slightly to starboard and settled onto her new course. A steady thrum emerged from the aft end of the boat as her jets engaged. _Trident_ was now in her true element. Stella checked his instruments.

"Showing thirty meters below the ice surface. I'm setting us up for an operating depth of two hundred meters. Planing down now—" Her stern planes shifted and the sub nosed smoothly downward, heading deeper into Europa's ocean of night.

"Next stop...Objective Alpha," Chase muttered to himself. He stared out the forward portholes. Europa's ocean was black as the darkest night. No light whatsoever. Nothing fluorescing or flashing, no shafts of sunlight here. It was like they had fallen into a black hole.

Seome's oceans had never been like this.

At the exact same moment that Captain Stella's voice has sounded throughout the ship "— _Lieutenant Freeman to the command deck, Lieutenant Freeman to the command deck—",_ Deeno D'Nunzio had been lying in her bunk, trying to get a little shuteye, going over in her mind's eye an idea she had been working on to re-design the ship's nanobot containment system, for when they eventually reached Objective Alpha. It was a crazy idea, probably wouldn't work anyway, but she couldn't relax, couldn't get any sleep, so she had gotten up and was headed toward the gangway hatch.

_Maybe something to drink and munch on in the mess compartment would help_. Plus it would get her away from that insane snoring of Roy Favors. _Jeez, the joker sounds like a herd of elephants in heat._

But before she could exit the crews' berth on C deck into the gangway tunnel, a shadow had drifted by the hatch opening. Instinctively, she held back to let whoever it was pass by.

It turned out to be Lieutenant Freeman, the swarm angel, moving quickly aft.

When asked about the incident later, crewman D'Nunzio could never give a convincing reason for why she decided to follow the angel to wherever he was going. Instinct, maybe. Suspicion, for sure. Curiosity. All these were suggested as motives for what she had done.

Regardless, D'Nunzio waited for a full five-second count, then slipped out into the gangway. Down at the end of the tunnel that ran through the center of _Trident_ , giving access to all decks and compartments, she saw the back of Freeman's head. He turned and slipped into the hatch for G deck.

_Why's he going that way_ , she wondered. _Didn't he hear Stella on the crew comm?_ G deck was for Ingress/Egress. It contained the lockout chamber for crewmen to enter and leave the ship while she was underwater. D'Nunzio instinctively headed down the gangway in the same direction. G deck also provided access to _Trident's_ tail pod, where equipment and controls were housed for buoyancy control, the hydrojets, the magnetohydrodynamic power plant and her stern plane and rudder systems.

D'Nunzio crept down the gangway with a growing sense of unease. She could feel the ship settling down for cruise. Vibration was steady and she was leveling out at her cruise depth. She didn't want to think too much about that. The truth was they were thirty kilometers below the surface of this cracked billiard-ball of a world. They were well below the ice crust now and heading deeper into this subterranean ocean.

If anything went wrong here—

At G deck hatch, D'Nunzio peered cautiously into the deck compartment. At first, she didn't see anything, didn't see Freeman, didn't see anything out of the ordinary. She wasn't even sure all crew personnel were allowed down here. She certainly wasn't familiar with any of the gear or systems on G deck.

She slipped through the hatch.

That's when Deeno D'Nunzio spotted Lieutenant Julian Freeman. Behind the starboard stern plane mount, Freeman...or whatever the hell he was...had lost a bit of structure, so that the swarm was no longer quite so human-like, more like a slightly misshapen funhouse mirror distortion of a human. The swarm had gathered around some gear mounted on the hull itself.

With a start, D'Nunzio soon realized the gear which had attracted Freeman's attention and efforts was a hull valve, part of the buoyancy control system. The valve assembly allowed water in and out of _Trident's_ trim and buoyancy tanks. The hull valves helped _Trident_ stay in trim, and both ascend and descend.

From her memory of a distant briefing before they had left Gateway Station, D'Nunzio recalled that the hull valves were fully exposed to the water. It was a critical system. The hull valves had to work. If they failed closed, _Trident_ couldn't expel water with her high-pressure air and ascend to the surface. If they failed open, the entire interior pressure hull, all spaces, would be exposed to water. A catastrophic flooding casualty could result...Captain Stella had been quite clear about that.

_What the hell is he doing_? D'Nunzio wondered. She eased into the deck compartment and then it hit her.

Julian Freeman was letting some of his own swarm bots infest the hull valve.

Her heart went into her mouth. She had to do something. She had to stop him.

Deeno D'Nunzio felt for the alarm panel by the hatch and stabbed the Master Alarm button. Instantly, a warning klaxon sounded throughout _Trident_ , screeching and warbling through all decks.

Freeman turned around and spotted her. She saw that his hand was gone...or more accurately, had broken down into a cloud of bots. A steady stream was flowing off the stump at the end of his arm into the hull valve assembly.

There was only one thing she could do. All the HERF and mag weapons were locked in the armory on D deck, three levels away.

Deeno pulled the capsule with the borer bots she had been planning to test from her pocket and thumbed it open; the embedded ANAD swarm inside was suddenly released. A small stream of bots, looking like a fine mist, flowed out, filling the hatch.

The only sure way to kill a swarm was with another swarm. She'd learned that on day one in _Europa Hammer_ tactical class.

It was high time to kick the bejeezus out of this scumbag Freeman swarm.

Aboard UNISPACE Submersible _Trident_

Europa Coordinate System: Lat. 41N, Long 160W

Underway at 30 KT, 225 meters below mean ice level

September 15, 2122 (Earth U.T.)

Chase Meyer was in his bunk scrolling through some old Uman intelligence on the Coethi from his time on Seome when the master alarm sounded through the ship. Instantly, he sprang up and headed out into _Trident's_ central gangway. As he headed aft toward the sound of the klaxon, he collided with Roy Favors, coming down from B deck.

"What the hell's going on?"

Favors was grim. Right behind him was Captain Stella.

"It's coming from G deck...there are vital systems down there. Come on—" Stella pushed past both of them and pulled himself along the gangway rails. When he got to the hatch, he slipped inside and came up short.

Half the compartment was enveloped in some kind of bot swarm. And Deeno D'Nunzio was crouched behind some pallets nearby, steering a small swarm into engagement.

Stella saw the problem right away. The hull valve was fully enveloped in a swarm. And already a thin stream of water was spraying into the compartment.

"The hull valve— _watch out!"_

Even as Stella dove head first for Freeman, the valve gave way and high-pressure water screeched into the compartment in an ear-splitting whine. D'Nunzio was knocked off her feet and lost control of her own swarm. Stella plowed into Freeman, or what was left of Freeman, for by now the Lieutenant had almost fully dematerialized into a cloud of bots, filling one corner of G deck with a flashing, pulsating fog. Water shot across the compartment floor, knocking equipment off nearby shelves, scattering pallets of gear and rapidly filling the compartment.

Through it all, the Master Alarm klaxon shrieked.

Stella couldn't get any closer to the valve assembly; Roy Favors grabbed the Captain's arm and held him back. "Don't get too close!" he yelled over the din. "You'll be atom fluff in no time...."

Stella tried to twist free. "The valve...I've got to—"

"Forget it! It's gone— "

Water was rising rapidly from the floor of G deck. "At least, shut that hatch! It's watertight...let me get back to B deck and counterflood...try to stabilize the ship! Maybe I can open enough air flasks to keep the breach from getting worse!"

Favors released Stella. For a moment, the Captain, Favors and Chase all looked at each other. Stella knew the situation was grave and getting worse. "Get your people out of this compartment. Right now. Once that hatch is shut and I empty the air flasks, you won't be able to get out. You'll all be killed."

D'Nunzio reacted first, bodily shoving Stella through the hatch and into the central gangway. "If I don't stop that swarm right here and now, Captain, nothing else will matter!"

Stella shrugged and nodded grimly and disappeared up the gangway. With Roy Favors' help, Chase managed to dog the hatch shut and made it fast. Then he turned to the Freeman swarm.

The entire far wall of the compartment was now thick with bots, the swarm replicating at max rate, now that it no longer needed to maintain structure. D'Nunzio was sloshing around in the freezing water, trying to get herself upright, while _Trident_ lurched and listed heavily to starboard, as G deck took on more and more water. Most of her own encapsulated swarm had disappeared, absorbed, probably destroyed by Freeman.

D'Nunzio had been TDY'ed to UNISPACE and Frontier Corps from a six-year tour of duty with Quantum Corps. She'd been a swarm specialist most of the time and she knew there was only one thing to do. Her instincts had been right. The best way to fight a swarm was with another swarm. As she cycled the capsule open and released the final few bots, D'Nunzio took a last look at what Lieutenant Julian Freeman had now become.

The angel still had not fully dematerialized. From its head down to its waist, all human structure was gone, replaced by a fuzzy, pulsating blob of bots, like a tree enveloped in fog. Below the waist, most of Freeman's trunk and legs were still faintly visible, in shadowy outline, as the swarm changed config and assumed its natural state. The effect was something half-man, half-swarm, a hybrid thing, steadily breaking down into its smallest elements.

D'Nunzio motioned to Chase and Favors to stay back. "I'm going small!" she yelled over the shriek. She grabbed a nearby stanchion to stay upright as _Trident_ lurched again, and the list became even more pronounced. Up on B deck, they knew Stella was fighting to keep the ship under control. "Chase, come over here and keep me steady. I'm going under—"

Chase sloshed and splashed through the water, now knee high and rising, and grabbed D'Nunzio to hold on. He secured another arm around the stanchion and tried to brace them both.

"I've got you! Let 'em have it!"

D'Nunzio went over the 'waterfall'— Quantum Corps slang for changing her view into the world of atoms and molecules-- and quickly found herself in a sleet of polygons and tetrahedrals. She grabbed control of the last few bots she'd had in her capsule and commanded their propulsors to spin up to full power, then sounded ahead, hunting for the signatures she knew had to be there.

Sixty meters above them, Captain Stella was frantically fighting the boat, trying to regain some kind of stability. He strapped himself into the commander's seat, as the ship lurched yet again, and his fingers flew over the keyboard.

"Counterflood... _counterflood_ , damn it!" he muttered to himself. "Come on, come on—"

Stella managed to open valves on several ballast tanks, overriding all safeties and inhibits, letting tons of seawater in to trim out _Trident_ and level her out. A quick glance at the board told him all he needed to know.

They were listing slightly to starboard, with a ten-degree up angle on the planes, sinking tail first through three hundred meters and their rate of descent was picking up. _Trident_ was stern heavy and had lost almost all forward way. Stella ran the throttles on her powerplant to full, trying to counter the tail drag with as much forward speed as he could but it was a losing battle. _Trident's_ waterlogged stern was dragging her down by the tail faster than her engines could move her forward. She was losing speed and sinking, crabbing her way through the water.

_Got to counterflood and get her stern up_ , Stella told himself. His fingers flew over the controls. If he couldn't stop their descent and soon, _Trident_ would rapidly descend below crush depth. Below a thousand meters, her hull would crumple like a wad of paper and all aboard would perish in a particularly gruesome way.

"I hope to God that compartment is secure," he muttered. He checked the panel to his right. Indicators showed the hatch had been shut and secured.

It was time to open the emergency air flasks. Emergency blow and pray to God they had enough air to evacuate the compartment and put _Trident_ back up at ice level.

Then it would be a race to see if she could bore her way back up through the ice before her air ran out and she slid back down to the depths again.

"Time to get the borer started," he said. He went through the start sequence.

Then he took a deep breath. When the emergency air flasks were open full, air at several hundred psi would begin screaming into the compartment on G deck and into all _Trident's_ ballast tanks. He wasn't sure if the crewmen trapped in the compartment would survive the blow. If there was a merciful God in heaven, they would all drown before that happened.

Stella swallowed hard and pressed the buttons to start the blow.

A blast of high-pressure air shrieked into G deck.

For Deeno D'Nunzio, now at nanoscale with her re-purposed borer bots she'd been planning to test, it was like riding a gnat through a hurricane, like riding a roaring river down a waterfall. She immediately retracted all of the bots' effectors in an attempt to ride out the storm. Then she hunkered down and slogged her way forward, trying to get a read on anything unusual up ahead, high thermals, high EMs, an acoustic signature, anything.

Somehow, some way, she had to locate the bots of the Freeman swarm and engage.

Just then, she got an acoustic ping. She checked her board. Sure enough, the bot sensors had detected something unusual up ahead, through the driving sleet of water molecules, a faint echo, maybe a spark of thermal activity above average. Could be some bots assembling something...or disassembling something. She revved up propulsors to max and steered the master assembler on that heading.

The reading ebbed and flowed so she steered as best she could through the maelstrom, tacking first one way, then another, trying to work upstream against the onslaught of molecules from the flood.

There. _Gotcha_.

D'Nunzio chopped her propulsors and probed ahead with electromagnetic fingers. Density going up. _Those ain't no water molecules_ , she told himself. Cautiously, she probed some more and brought her motley crew of bots around to approach from the side, gaining a different aspect view of the targets.

Slowly, ghostly shapes began to materialize out of the fog. Freeman bots, thousands of them. As she closed in, she could see the elongated multi-lobed form of the assemblers...squat barbells festooned with all manner of effectors and grabbers. Whirling propulsors at both ends, spinning into a blur as the bots fought to maintain position.

In six years with Quantum Corps, it was like nothing she had ever seen before.

D'Nunzio worked her config controls, setting up her bots to engage. Carbene grabbers, enzymatic knife, bond disrupters, everything was ready. The bots, originally designed to form a borer lens for the ship, now flexed their nanoscale fists and drove forward, spoiling for a fight.

The two formations came together and sparks flew, as bond disrupters ripped at effectors, liberating millions of electron volts. The bots thrashed and hacked, searching for weak spots, closing, then backing off to find another angle. It was a boxing match, feint here, jab there, grasp and thrust, parry and kick.

In the last seconds before the grapple, D'Nunzio had noticed an open seam in the Freeman bots' outer casing, right amidships, between whirling effectors above and below, almost like a waist belt. She surmised it was a structural join, a connection drawing together assembled segments of the bots' scaffolding. Could be a weak spot.

If I could just get a bond disrupter in there—

Throughout the battle front, D'Nunzio's bots had replicated uncountable trillions of assemblers and each one was slaved to the master. Whatever move and maneuver she made was instantly copied and repeated by every replicant. Now, she twisted and turned to bring her forward disrupters to bear on the enemy bot's midsection.

Just a little further—she shuddered as her lead troops were ripped by the enemy's carbene grabber. The bot recoiled slightly, losing effector tips in a spinning puff of atoms. _Ouch. That had to hurt...._

She closed in again, shielding herself from assault, extending her own disrupters as far forward as they would go. _Just a little bit further_...there!

She let it go. The disrupter tore at valence electrons that hovered like a cloud over the mid-section seam. Instantly, the seam buckled and gave way. An explosive cloud of electrons erupted, sparking and sizzling like oil on a gas grill. The bot's outer casing buckled and tore away in a frenzied thrashing, as more bonds were severed. Its props and effectors spun down and the momentum of the bond break sent the bot cartwheeling away.

It had worked.

Deeno D'Nunzio knew that in every nanoscale combat encounter, there were always weaknesses in the enemy bots. The point of all the tactics was to find that weakness and exploit it, before the enemy did the same to you.

All up and down the battlefront, her replicants duplicated the maneuver, closing with their opponents, grappling and punching, searching for the midwaist seam. Any opening, any letdown, and her bots' bond disrupters were there, zapping at the weak spot.

The water was soon churning and frothy with atom parts and molecule fragments.

And the Freeman swarm would be so much atom fluff.

Roy Favors and Chase were close by, clinging to a stanchion to stay upright, while together they maneuvered some repair bots of their own to replicate a patch for the hull valve breach. Icy cold water still poured in, but the water flow seemed to have slacked off. A shrieking blast of high-pressure air was still sweeping the compartment. It was Stella's effort to contain the flood, and drive the inrushing water out of the compartment, into _Trident's_ drains and bilge, where it could be flushed back into the sea.

Chase covered his ears and screamed at the top of his lungs, trying to equalize pressure inside his head. He knew they had to find some kind of containment for the Freeman swarm while the bots were still neutralized. Then he hit on an idea. Why couldn't Deeno just fabricate one?

D'Nunzio worked her wristpad controls, stealing a small element of replicants from her original swarm. She hacked out a quick config for a containment vessel and set the replicants to work fabricating it. Then she programmed the master bot to steer all captured Freeman bots toward the vessel. It wasn't pretty but it should work. She'd have to make sure there weren't any Freeman bots left over. A final, very thorough sweep of the compartment would have to be done.

As she sloshed around the compartment, she realized that the patches Chase and Roy had fashioned seemed to be working. The water flow had been greatly reduced, now to just a thin stream. Around the bulkhead where the hull valve had once been, a shimmering globe of bots held back the water, except for the thin stream.

"Good work, guys," D'Nunzio told them. Just above the water surface, a faint mist drifted toward the containment vessel that her own bots had just fashioned. The small capsule floated on top of the water. "Roundup time. The sooner we get these bastards corralled, the better."

"Amen to that," said Favors. He shook his head, trying to equalize pressure.

Chase located the intercom and told Stella the situation was under control on G deck. "Kill the blow, Captain. We're all getting a splitting headache."

Moments later, the emergency air died off and the shriek that had deafened them for the last few minutes dropped down to a faint whistle. The hull breach had been stopped and the worst of the water, now swirling around at ankle depth, had been driven down into _Trident's_ drain system.

The ship seemed stable enough. "I'm heading forward," Chase said. "Make sure all these bots get contained. Stella and I need to have a word." He slipped out into the gangway and made his way along the railing all the way to the command compartment on B deck.

Stella was in the commander's seat, scowling over a map on his board.

"We've got to return to base camp." Stella tapped the map; it displayed an ice-level view of Europa's surface. _Trident's_ position was indicated with a blinking red dot.

"What's our status?" Chase asked. He studied the map, the track of their course and their current calculated position. "According to this, we have two more days to Objective Alpha's position."

" _Trident's_ taken a hell of a beating. And we don't know what's ahead. I need to surface the ship and do a thorough inspection. The best place to do that is back at base camp."

Chase took a deep breath. Although he was nominally the mission commander, he knew he had to defer to Stella when it came to _Trident._ "We got the Freeman swarm contained, Captain. And we've patched the breach on G deck...it should hold just fine."

Stella rubbed his eyes wearily. "All true enough. But _Trident's_ my responsibility. My job is to get you to your target safe and sound. I can't guarantee that unless I can do a thorough inspection and make necessary repairs. That hull breach may be patched for now but it needs to be looked at. And my controls, especially the stern planes, are sluggish. Maybe Freeman did something to the mechanism back there. Then there's the buoyancy control system. You don't go through an emergency blow like that without checking everything out. Hell, we could blow a seal or another valve an hour from now and be in even worse shape. No— "Stella was firm, "we bore through the ice at the very least and put _Trident_ back on the surface. If necessary, she can be careened on the ice and checked over visually."

Chase wasn't fully convinced. "What's _Trident's_ condition now?"

Stella shrugged. "Where do you want me to start? We've got propulsion and some buoyancy control. The borer seems to be okay. But I don't want to test the hull at any greater depth until she's checked out. With all due respects, your bots that patched the hull are just bots. I want something stronger before we go on...we have no idea what's ahead."

"You're recommending we surface the ship, do inspections and make repairs?"

"That's what I'm recommending. Not only proper procedure but common sense dictates we check ourselves out thoroughly. We could lose the whole ship if we don't...then what happens to your mission?"

Chase knew this would have to be sent back to Frontier Corps and UNISPACE for a decision.

"We can't lose any more time, Captain," he told Stella. He looked out a nearby porthole. Nothing to see. Europa's ocean was black as night. They might as well have been swallowed by a black hole. "The mission's too important. We don't know what we're dealing with up here. Every hour's delay could be critical."

"What good can we do if _Trident's_ destroyed or disabled?"

Chase had to admit Stella had a point. Nobody had any idea what had happened to _Trieste_. "I think D'Nunzio's got swarms that can help," he said. "She says she's got the best configs. You need any patches, any tools, anything at all...Quantum Corps swarms can make it."

"Can we even trust our own swarms?" Stella asked. He checked his board, saw that _Trident_ was nosing down again and he trimmed her bow planes to level the ship. They were still losing buoyancy somewhere. "Look at Freeman...how many more Freemans are there around here? I knew he was an angel. But I didn't know he'd been turned. Maybe it was interference or influence from Objective Alpha...who knows? Are there any more angels on board? Any more surprises? Can you even trust your own people, Meyer?"

Finally, after more heated discussions and a few consultations with UNISPACE, the decision came in: _Trident_ would make all necessary repairs while underway and the mission would proceed.

Stella wasn't satisfied but there was little he could do. Of necessity, he accepted D'Nunzio's offer and her newly designed and re-purposed borer swarms were put to work making repairs, clearing debris and patching things up.

After a few hours, Stella gave the word to all hands: _Trident_ was resuming her course, three hundred meters below the ice surface of Europa, heading for the suspected location of Objective Alpha, the last known position of the little robotic sub _Trieste._

Rathmore Chaos and the calculated coordinates were still two days away, by Stella's reckoning. Somewhere hundreds of meters below the Chaos, Objective Alpha lurked. Somehow, they had to find it.

If _Trident_ and Operation _Europa Hammer_ couldn't locate and neutralize Objective Alpha, no one knew what would happen to the swarm barely contained in the South China Sea.

An hour later, Chase was in his tiny berth, listening once again to the Uman dispatches from his days on Seome and their explanations about their Coethi enemy when Captain Stella poked his head through the curtain. His face was grim. He handed a small messagepad to Chase.

"You need to see this, son."

Chase took the pad and read the message. The blood drained from his face and he blankly handed the device back, his eyes glazed over in shock.

The words he had just read hung like black crepe in his mind...

Autocar crash U.S. 19...one fatality, one injury...Mother pronounced dead at scene...Florida Highway Patrol investigate malfunction in drive control...infant child may not survive...

"Your wife?" Stella asked softly.

Chase nodded automatically. Words seemed stuck in his throat. "Angie...and Erika...how...what happened...I don't—"

Stella was somber and sympathetic. "It just came in from Gateway Ops. I thought it might be your family."

Chase sank back in his bunk and closed his eyes. His head throbbed. He couldn't get the messagepad imagery out of his mind...the mangled wreckage...the fires...the medics and police and EMTs...the ambulance....

"Captain, could you excuse me for a moment...."

Stella understood. "Sure. I'll be up on B deck." He ducked out of the berth was gone.

The first thing he had to do was verify that this was not some hoax. It happened; there were a lot of sick people in the world.

But Angie...Erika...no way...there was just no way....

Chase made his way up to the command center on B deck. Stella was there running through some logs.

"Captain, permission to use the ELF? I'd like to send a message back to Gateway. Ask for more details and facts about the accident."

Stella studied his mission chief. The kid was Amphib, with all that that meant. Extra skin folds on his face, arm fins, wide nostrils and eyelids. Not a bad-looking kid for an Amphib. Stella wondered what he had looked like before.

"Sure. Go ahead. You'll have to tell ALBERT to warm the system up though." He left the compartment and went aft along the gangway.

Chase sat and thought for a moment. How had it happened? He wanted details. Was anybody else involved? What was the cause? Was there negligence somewhere?

Most importantly, with Angie gone, what about his daughter Erika? Maybe his own parents could help out. _Trident_ was four hundred million kilometers and eight months away, which made all this even worse. He decided to put that in the message too.

Mostly, Chase wanted verification that this was all real, that it wasn't somebody's idea of a joke, or a hack or a mistake.

He keyed in his message on the commpad and sent it off through the Extremely Low Frequency array, attached to the stern tailpod of the submersible. It would take some time for the message to make it topside through Europa's ocean, to their landing platform still parked up on the ice at the surface, then via high-band to Earth. The one-way trip time was nearly an hour, then another hour or so for the response.

Chase knew he had to do something to pass the time, so went he aft to the mess compartment and decided to fix himself a sundae.

He was still staring at his concoction, wondering why he had mindlessly squirted coffee on the ice cream instead of chocolate when Roy Favors and Deeno D'Nunzio drifted in.

Deeno's hurt face said she had already heard the news.

"We just found out, Chase...I'm so sorry." She came over and they hugged. Nobody cared if Chase was Amphib, only that he was clearly hurting and they both wanted to help.

Favors squeezed his shoulder, before taking a spot at a nearby table. "Man, this really sucks."

"Have you found out any more?" D'Nunzio asked. She fixed herself some coffee and hovered nearby, rubbing Chase on his arms and shoulders, ignoring the big fins there.

Chase shook his head. "I just sent a message. I want to know more. Verification of the whole thing. Mistakes are made sometimes."

"Your daughter's going to make...I'm sure of it. Medbots can do wonders now...she'll pull through. How old is she?"

"A little over fifteen months. She jabbers like a politician and won't sit still. We had to child-proof everything to keep her from getting into things."

"What about the parents, yours and Angie's? They could help out."

"I've made that request in the message. Angie's Mom died years ago. Her Dad skipped out on the family when Angie was a teenager. But my parents...they'd do it."

Favors sucked loudly on an orange. "How long were you two married?"

Chase shook his head slowly. "About a year and a half."

"Hadn't Angie just gone through the, uh...you know, the procedure?"

Chase looked over at Favors. It seemed an innocent question but he'd long ago learned that people reacted to Amphibs differently. "Just a few months before we were married. She wanted to do it...for me, she said."

Favors nodded sagely. "That's love. Look, hey Chase, you know me. I kid around about Amphibs but it's all just joking. I don't mean anything by it. I mean, look at you...you can breathe air and water. Not everybody can do that."

"Yeah, and I have fins and gills too."

Favors seemed hurt. "I didn't mean it like that. I was just trying to—"

But Deeno intervened. "Let's don't go there, okay, boys? Let's bury that right here and now. We still got a mission here." _Maybe if I can get them focused on the mission_. "Chase, tell me, this Farpool thing...why didn't we use that to come to Europa?"

"Yeah," said Favors, "would have been a hell of a lot faster."

"UNISPACE says it's not stable enough, not reliable enough. The Seomish—the Sea People--used it to come to Earth...and me with them, but nobody really understands it that well. We can generate one and they're testing it, but nobody wanted to risk this mission and the crew on such a stunt." The barest hint of an idea popped into Chase's head and he barely heard what the others were saying.

"Huh--?"

"I was asking," Favors went on, "if you really came from a gazillion light years away with all those fish people."

"Actually I came from Florida, but I did travel through the Farpool, a number of times." Chase went on to explain how seven years before, he and Angie had spotted a waterspout off Scotland Beach and gotten too close to it. Sucked into the vortex, they had wound up catapulted across six thousand light years of space and hundreds of years of time to an oceanic world called Seome. He briefly described a few of their adventures, then added, "Their world was doomed. They had to leave...the Coethi—that's the enemy the humans of that time were fighting, using Seome as a base—had damaged their sun. It was going to die and everyone knew it. They came through the Farpool to Earth because of our oceans. Only a few made it, including me and Angie."

Favors finished off his orange and sucked his fingers. "Uh huh...quite a story there, son. Fish people. Alien bot swarms. Futuristic humans fighting across different time streams. I don't know...seems pretty wild to me."

Deeno snorted. "And we're on a submarine beneath the ice of one of Jupiter's moons, chasing some wild-ass offshoot of the aliens...exactly how is _that_ any wilder than what we're doing now, Favs?"

"Hey, I'm just saying—"

Deeno slurped the last of her coffee. "These aliens, you called them Coethi?"

"That's what the humans from that time called them. That's why they were on Seome in the first place. It was a military base." Chase described what he had learned of the aliens. "Vast swarm of nanoscale bots, from what I heard. Able to travel through time and space. They were threatening human settlements."

"In the eighty-ninth century?" Favors teased him, trying not to roll his eyes too much.

"I don't know what time stream we were in," Chase admitted. "But it seems like some of them came through the Farpool when the Seomish refugees did. The Seomish call them _m'jeete_...it's a play on a phrase they use to describe these toxic clouds of micro-organisms that drifted around the oceans of their world. Only these aren't micro-organisms. They're bots."

Deeno took a deep breath. "And somebody in Frontier Corps thinks this Objective Alpha may somehow be the same critters, the same bot-things?"

"That's our mission," Chase agreed. "To find out what Alpha is and if we can, neutralize it." He shrugged. "That was something even the humans on Seome couldn't do."

"Oh well," Favors got up and headed out of the mess compartment, "ours not to reason why...."

"I'll let you alone," D'Nunzio offered. "I know this is a hard time for you. But if you need anything—"

They hugged briefly and then she was out the hatch and gone.

Chase spent a few minutes more alone, thinking about the Farpool itself as he finished off his ice cream sundae.

The vortex was a proven wormhole. A conduit through both space and time. He'd proven that much himself, traveling through it any number of times. UNISPACE was wrong, even if they didn't fully understand the thing. It wasn't that hard to manipulate the Farpool, to select a time and a place to go to. You had to know what you were doing. You had to manage the ship's position and orientation pretty precisely. Stick a wing in here and you wound up in one time and place. Stick it in over there, like putting your canoe paddle in a fast-moving river, and you wound up in another time and place. You didn't have to understand all the quantum physics of the Farpool to know how to use it.

You just had to have a feel for the vortex, like a surfer and his board.

Chase was sure that he could do it and by the time he left the mess compartment and headed for his tiny bunk space on C deck, he had already made up his mind.

If they ever got back to Earth, he was pretty sure he could use the Farpool to go back in time to before Angie's car accident. Back before it ever happened, back to a time where he could prevent the accident from ever happening again.

He didn't plan on worrying about meddling with history, or altering time streams, or creating paradoxes or temporal anomalies. He just wanted to get Angie...and Erika...back the way they were.

When he reached his bunk and slid the curtain shut, he was already feeling better and started planning all the details of his little expedition.

Aboard UNISPACE Submersible _Trident_

Europa Coordinate System: Lat. 25N, Long 158W

Underway at 30 KT, 225 meters below mean ice level

September 17, 2122 (Earth U.T.)

_Trident_ was cruising serenely at thirty knots, in level trim, when the first alarm sounded. Captain Francisco Stella had been lightly dozing on the command deck, dreaming of boyhood and rocket-hopping across the Sea of Tranquility with Ralphie and Archie and the others. He was just about to win the race when an insistent beeping awakened him from his slumber.

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

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

_Probably the target_ , he surmised. From the nav console, he could see _Trident_ had just about made the predicted coordinates, hundreds of meters below the ice at Rathmore Chaos. He got on the intercom.

"Chase Meyer to the command deck...Chase Meyer to the command deck at once...."

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

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

"What gives, Captain?"

"Take a look at the plot."

Chase slid into the second seat and studied the sonar return. "Could be what we're looking for. Can we get a little closer?"

"We can try," Stella said.

Slowly, _Trident_ closed on her target, dead ahead. The subsurface ocean below Europa's ice surface was completely devoid of light, black as night. But the returns from _Trident's_ sonar indicated that the object could very well be their target: the submerged Objective Alpha.

Eventually, Stella brought them to a complete stop, five hundred meters away.

The two men discussed their options.

"That's about as well as our sonar can resolve the target," Stella said. "From the returns, it seems to be a large, probably buoyant platform, with some kind of structures on top. I'm getting faint returns around the main one, too, smaller objects of some type."

Chase nodded. "I'll check with Deeno...see if she's detecting anything." He called down to D'Nunzio. She was in the crews' mess, C deck, playing cards with Ordway and Favors.

"Deeno, check your entangler readouts...we've got a large object dead ahead. It may be Objective Alpha. I want to know about quantum disturbances, decoherence waves, that sort of thing."

D'Nunzio replied, "I'm on it..." she waved at Ordway, grabbing a coffee and doughnut. "Justin, get your gear...we may be tango on our target—"

Five minutes later, D'Nunzio's voice crackled over the intercom on the command deck.

"Bingo, Skipper...you were right. We've got a real strong source nearby, something emitting quantum waves at a very hard to detect entanglement level. Definitely a quantum device."

Chase considered the situation. "Captain, I'd like to get a visual...can we get in a little closer...put some lights on that thing?"

Stella was reluctant. "Water's a little turbulent ahead of us. I don't want to get caught in something we can't get out of."

"Just enough to get some light and better look..."

Stella mumbled something but started up _Trident's_ propulsors again. The ship eased forward.

A hundred meters away, they were rocked gently by turbulent currents. "That's as close as we get," Stella announced. "Here go the spots— "He flipped a few switches.

The water was murky, thick with sediment and ice chunks, but the general outlines of the structure were dimly visible. It was indeed a large buoyant platform, roughly rectangular in outline, easily four to five hundred meters in its longest dimension.

"Look at the _size_ of that mother," Chase marveled. "Half a kilometer, easily—"

Both top and bottom surfaces of the platform were surmounted by some kind of spherical structures. The structures were fuzzy and indistinct, whether from the murky water or some other reasons, could not be determined. And they seemed to be rotating.

"Seems to be floating freely," Stella observed. "I don't see a tether holding it in position."

"Maybe it has thrusters...those extensions below the platform that look like legs, maybe...?"

Even as they watched the Objective Alpha platform, its shape began to change, morphing right in front of them, shifting and transforming itself from one state to another. It was like a funhouse mirror distortion, a crazy collage of images superimposed, one upon the other.

"How can an object that big--?"

"Quantum device," Chase said. "Deeno described it to me. Quantum Corps has seen that effect before. I'm thinking this whole big platform is nothing but a giant swarm."

"Gives me the creeps," Stella admitted. He checked _Trident's_ position. She was holding one hundred meters away, level and trim, at all-stop. Stella shook his head. "I don't really want to get any closer. Your call, son. You're the mission commander."

Chase watched the huge platform, deeply shadowed in _Trident's_ spotlights, morphing and changing right before their eyes. It was like a series of waves engulfed the thing, starting at one end and working its way rhythmically down its length, making the structure into something new over and over again.

"The only way we're going to know for sure what we're dealing with here is to go out there. Examine it from close up."

"I was afraid you would say that. I'm thinking that's not such a great idea. Look how turbulent the water is around those legs."

Chase shrugged. "We've come all this way to confront Objective Alpha. Now we're here. We've still got a mission to carry out. If we don't disable it or neutralize it or somehow contain this one, we may have problems with the one back on Earth...we all saw the same intel. There may be more than one back home. And if it's really the Coethi--"

Stella called a briefing in the crews' mess. Chase had decided to form a small recon squad of three: D'Nunzio, Chase and Favors. Ordway and Stella would stay aboard _Trident_ for the time being, operating as backup. Ordway would partially suit up, just in case.

"What's the mission, Skipper?" asked Deeno.

"Straight reconnaissance for this trip. We're going outside, getting as close as we can and seeing what we're dealing with here. If it's a big swarm, like Deeno thinks, we have tools to deal with that."

Ordway sipped at a steaming cup of tea. "I'm guessing our HERF guns won't be too effective here. That bugger's the size of a small city."

"Let's move," Chase ordered and the recon team headed aft for G deck and the lockout chamber.

Suit-up took an hour. The hypersuits had been rigged out for deep diving in Europa's sub-ice ocean. All normal crewmen had been respirocyte-treated; their bloodstreams were thick with nanobots shuttling boosted amounts of oxygen back and forth. But the Europan ocean was cold and dense and the divers would need pressure and temperature protection, as well as personal propulsors.

Chase, as an Amphib, wore only light suit protection.

"Here's the containment canister," Deeno handed the capsule to Chase, who slung it in a pouch on his web belt. "Pinched off some more borer bots and reconfigged 'em last night. The swarm's inside, safed and ready to go. He's in Config One, for the time being."

"You checked him over?"

Deeno nodded. "Full diagnostics, scanned every file and config. All copacetic. For the moment, at least."

The three divers entered the lockout chamber and cycled through. Chase was the first to exit the ship.

His first impression was cold. Numbing, penetrating cold. Dense too, giving him a slight headache. He concentrated on breathing in the water, it was salty, almost briny. But with effort, he could suck enough oxygen out through his gills to go on. Not exactly Frisco Island in the Bahamas. Chase switched on his suit lamps, saw only a fuzzy blur. _Too much sediment, too much_ something _in the water._ He dialed down the light intensity, and kicked off under one-quarter propulsor, sounding ahead.

D'Nunzio and Favors joined him a few moments later.

The recon team gently felt their way forward along _Trident's_ underhull, until they came at last to the borer head.

"End of the line, here— "Chase muttered. He checked his own sonar scan. Objective Alpha was out there somewhere, giving off intermittent returns. There was a fuzzy patch near the center of his scope.

_That has to be it_.

"Stella, this is Recon One...can you move in just a little closer...put more light on the target?"

Stella obliged. As soon as the team was clear, the sub inched forward, cranking up her spots and floodlights, trying to bring as much illumination to bear on the platform as possible. It was like shining headlights through a dense fog.

"Launching _Uncle One_ and _Two_ , "came Stella's voice. The underwater drones would accompany the recon team on its excursion around the platform. Presently, the murmur of their jets could be heard nearby.

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

"Sound away," Chase said. "I've got nothing but scrambled eggs on my scope. Objective Alpha's morphing too fast to give a solid return."

The Objective Alpha platform was a vast complex, more accurately resembling an underwater cloud. The huge platform was studded with structures top and bottom, rotating, swirling water around in small-scale whirlpools. There were murky blobs floating nearby... _nanobotic swarm elements_ , said Deeno—forming a loose protective sphere around the platform. Water flow was turbulent. Chase found a steady current pushing him away and he had to adjust his propulsors to stay in position.

"Call up _Uncle One_ ," he told them. "Let's see what the drones can find out." Deeno pressed a few keys on her wristpad and the underwater bot surged forward, its jets whirring gently. It plunged into the murk and was soon lost to view. Chase patched in to the bot's sensors. Soon, the whole team was getting sonar, EM and visuals back from _Uncle_.

"Definitely a swarm," said Favors. The maintenance tech hung off to Chase's starboard side, testing for deco waves. "I'm seeing decoherence right now, wave after wave, mostly small stuff."

"The whole thing's nothing but a giant quantum generator," Deeno marveled.

Chase agreed. "This thing's bigger and stronger than what we saw at Reed Banks. We could be seeing only a shadow of the real Objective Alpha. Deeno, didn't you say devices like this could be in multiple places at the same time?"

"I wish I hadn't, but yes, you're right. We'd best go slow and feel our way in."

_Uncle_ plunged closer and closer toward Objective Alpha. Chase turned on visual.

The view, when it came up, was like flying through a sleet storm. For a brief moment, the recon team saw inside Objective Alpha. Clumps and clots of nanobotic devices came at the imager like hail stones in a hurricane, while _Uncle_ banked and careened to fly through the maelstrom, plowing through on auto while tickling the great swarm with electromagnetic fingers.

"Each of those clumps is like a swarm in itself," Deeno said. "This is one _massive_ mother—"

Then, just as the swarm mass had begun to thicken and _Uncle_ had slowed to negotiate the traffic, the signal dropped out. Everything went blank.

"I got nothing," Chase said. His fingers flew over the keys on his wristpad—not easy with webbed fingers—but _Uncle_ didn't respond.

"Me neither, Skipper," said Deeno. She tried several channels, but _Uncle_ seemed to be lost.

"Time for _Uncle Two_ ," said Favors.

"Hold up," said Chase. "We need to find out what happened—"

"Hey, I'm getting big deco waves now— _wow!_ —one right after another. Decoherence waves big time. Something's really got this bugger riled up—"

Turbulence increased and the team was jostled and thrashed by waves pushing through the water from Objective Alpha.

"Chase—" it was Stella, aboard _Trident_ , "something's happening out there. My sonar is showing aspect changes all along that platform. Objective Alpha's moving, morphing—"

That was when the lights went out.

For Chase Meyer, the first impulse was like a giant fist had grabbed him and started squeezing. He was whirling and spinning, dizzy, round and round, he could feel the force of the water against his helmet, pressing, crushing him—

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

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

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

Inside the lockout chamber aboard _Trident_.

Chase Meyer let the chamber stop spinning and his eyes settle down back into their sockets. Something heavy lay against his side. He craned his neck up. Another hypersuit. With a start, he realized it was Deeno D'Nunzio.

What the hell—?

"Deeno... _Deeno_...get up..."

The hypersuited diver stirred and moved away from his leg. Somehow, the lockout chamber had been cycled and the water pumped out.

Chase got to his feet, a bit unsteadily, and helped D'Nunzio up as well. That's when they realized a face was peering at them from inside G deck. It was Stella.

Stella's voice crackled over their suit comms. "Okay, you two, I'm cycling the lock. Get ready...that water's cold outside—"

Chase felt a chill race down his spine. They were back aboard _Trident_ , displaced back in space to the lockout chamber. And not only that...somehow, they had been displaced back in _time_ as well. He recognized everything and a glance at his wristpad clock confirmed it: they were right back where they had been...starting out on the recon mission. They had done this before.

As if to confirm his idea, more faces appeared in the hatch window. It was Ordway and Stella, ready to cycle out after Chase and D'Nunzio. Just like before—

"Hold up, Captain," Chase said. "Don't cycle the lock just yet—"

It took a few minutes of explaining to convince Stella of what had just happened.

Chase and D'Nunzio de-suited on G deck, along with Favors. Stella was skeptical.

"You mean to say you were just outside, approaching Objective Alpha...and now you're here? That's nuts. You've been right beside me the whole time—all of you—prepping for the dive. I was just about to operate the lock."

Deeno seemed to understood. "I know it's hard to believe, Captain, but I've seen this effect before. Objective Alpha is some kind of quantum device. They can be in many places at once and they can entangle other objects, like us, and move us around in space and time. Usually, we don't get that close."

Stella was still having a hard time with the idea. "Are you going to dive now...I mean again...I mean--?"

Chase was peeling off the rest of his gear, handing his web belt to the yeomanbot. It scuttled off to D deck, to rack the gear in Stores and Supplies.

Stella was confused. "We need to sit down and think about this one. How the hell do you fight something that can displace you to just about anywhere in time and space?" He decided to call a briefing to try and figure this out.

The gathering on C deck spilled out into the gangway. The entire crew was on hand. Chase briefed the rest on what had happened.

Deeno was first to speak up. "Objective Alpha should be viewed as nothing more than a giant swarm. Fantastic configs, to be sure, and individually, I'm sure the bots far surpass ANAD or anything else we have. But in the end, it's still a swarm."

After some discussion, Stella tried to put the encounter into context. "Whatever that thing is out there, are we all agreed that it can't be indigenous to Europa? That someone or something planted it here?"

Nobody disagreed with the assessment.

Chase added, "My guess is the Coethi have come to our planetary system, just like they came to Seome. We don't know when or why or where else they may have these quantum devices."

Deeno said, "Maybe you're right. Maybe they came a long time ago. Maybe they've been here all along and that explains phenomenon we can't otherwise explain."

Stella turned to Chase. "But isn't that thing in the South China Sea supposed to be contained?"

" _That_ one is," Chase agreed. "But if I'm right and a few Coethi came through the Farpool with the Seomish and me, who knows where they might have gone? The Farpool is a space and time machine. Some of them could have peeled off and gone ahead to future times."

"Or times in the past," said Deeno. "I guess it's possible."

"We don't have the gear or the technology to deal with this," Stella decided.

"We have to try," Chase argued. "We have some bots and swarms onboard just for the purpose of containment. We came here to neutralize and contain Objective Alpha. That's our mission."

"We can't contain something that big, something that can displace us in time and space like this. It's too risky." Stella decided he would no longer be shy about pulling rank. If _Trident_ were lost, it would be on his record. He could see the headlines now: _Stubborn, weak-minded captain loses entire crew to insane maneuvers._

_That_ was not going to happen. _Not on my watch._

"This one we have to phone in. Chase, you and Deeno and Favs work up a report on what happened. I'll squirt it to Gateway when we're all agreed on the details. I'm letting the brass decide this one."

Although Deeno and Chase worked with her bots for several days afterward in _Trident's_ lab, to refine the configuration and concoct some kind of tactics for approaching Objective Alpha without being quantum shifted, in the end the decision was taken out of their hands.

Frontier Corps decided to end the mission and bring the _Europa Hammer_ crew home. No one wanted a repeat of the _Trieste_ incident, especially since it had never been clear what had happened to the little robot sub.

Stella called a briefing in the crews' mess to explain.

"The Corps has been reviewing everything Chase gave them on the Coethi and those future humans—Umans or whatever they call themselves—to learn what they can about this threat. They looked at the latest test results from Site M-1 in the South China Sea and the eggheads think Objective Alpha may be a big brother of that phenomenon. We're not really equipped to do much here and UNISPACE doesn't want another unexplained incident on their hands."

Chase was grim at the news. "We're just putting off the day of reckoning, Captain. We all know that."

Favors was more sanguine. "Me...I'm not too upset to say goodbye to this cesspool of a world and that contraption out there. Does the message say what the Corps wants to do now?"

Stella shrugged. "The message has an appendix for my eyes only. I can't go into all the details but I can say this: there's a growing consensus among the brass that Chase may just be right...and we shouldn't take chances that he's not. The current theory is that the Coethi may be now, or may have in the past somehow, planted portals and devices like Objective Alpha all over the solar system. Maybe even from its earliest days. Nobody can say why exactly but if the intel Chase provided is even half true, these scumbag botswarms like to tamper with time streams, past, present and future. That may be what the Umans are fighting hundreds of years from now. The Coethi want to eliminate Uman settlements, so I'm told, maybe even the whole human race, by eliminating or changing time streams where we exist, where we thrive and grow, where we move out into space and explore and colonize worlds. Now, just between you and me, some of these are pretty crackpot theories, like the one where the Coethi plan to absorb all of our people and worlds and disassemble them into their constituent atoms. Be that as it may, the Corps thinks it may just be possible to use the Farpool to travel around in time and space and confront these Bugs. Prevent the initial seeding of Earth, Mars, Europa, Venus or wherever else they might have gone." Stella tried a sort of half-smile. "Just between you and me, I never thought I would be hearing this kind of stuff from Frontier Corps command. But then, I never thought I would be driving a submarine in Europa's ocean hunting down slimeballs that could jerk time and space around either."

Stella told them to get their gear together. "We heading back to the surface immediately. I'll send a message back acknowledging our orders."

Three days later, _Trident_ had bored back through the ice and returned to her landing platform. She left the surface of Europa and Jupiter orbit without incident and entered heliocentric orbit to begin her long sunward trek back toward the inner solar system and Earth, back to Gateway Station.

The trip would take nearly a year. Orbital mechanics would see to that.

In the meantime, Chase had a whole year to worry about what would happen to his daughter Erika, now being raised by his own parents. He spent every day developing and refining his plan to use the Farpool to return to a time before Angie had died and somehow prevent the robocar crash from ever happening.

Chapter 5

Winter Valley Church

Scotland Beach, Florida

June 20, 2123 (Earth U.T.) (9 months later)

It was a hot, breezy day at the Winter Valley Church in Scotland Beach when Chase attended the memorial service for Angie Gilliam. They were all there: Mack Meyer, Chase's dad, a few pounds heavier after several years of rehab from the robbery and shooting that had left him partially paralyzed in one leg; Cynthia Meyer, Chase's mother, who wept openly at seeing the casket with Angie inside, fanning her face with the bulletin; Chase's older brother Kenny, now living in Miami as an architect and older sister Jamie, married and living in Dallas. Jamie was a radio station DJ on KPTX "Party 101 FM", a classic and hybrid techjam station.

Then there was little Erika, all blond ponytail and bright eyes, clad in a yellow jumper with calico leggings, perched on Chase's lap playing with his wristpad, the very picture of cute. Chase held her tightly, unwilling to let go. Erika had been taken in by the Meyers and, though she didn't understand why Mommy wasn't around any longer and showed moments of sadness and concern, loved spending her days with Grampy and Granny and seemed today unaware of why all the Big People around her were so sad.

A fierce midday sun shone down blinding white on the gravel paths around the cemetery that sat on a low rise above the church, right behind Fellowship Hall. The Reverend Jimmy Doohan Holcomb managed to keep up a professionally somber appearance for the family's sake. _Not too many this time_ , he thought, looking over the group.

Holcomb felt a barely controlled anger at the Lord for smiting this family in such a particularly tragic way, for he had married Chase and Angie less than three years before and now he was putting Angie in the ground. It wasn't fair.

It was always hot in Scotland Beach in June but that summer in 2123, the heat was ferocious and Holcomb could hardly blame the gravediggers for choosing to stay inside the mausoleum until after the burial. It was better for the family too and Holcomb was annoyed with himself for wishing he were with them. "Would you care to be seated here, ma'am?" he asked. Cynthia Meyer now wore big round sunglasses to hide her red, tear-stained face, then nodded and placed herself in one of the metal folding chairs beside the grave.

There was one other person beneath the canopy that shaded them from the torrid sun. Holcomb looked questioningly in his direction but Chase Meyer just shook his head. He handed Erika off to Mrs. Meyer and said "I'll stand, thank you, Reverend."

"Very well. I think we're ready to begin now." He swallowed again, tasting the furry residue of his lunch. Beyond the canopy, the pines and palmettoes of Winter Valley Cemetery wavered in the heat, while just behind them, a tabby walkway shone a blistering white, its shell and rook fragments reflecting off Jamie Meyer's sunglasses.

Holcomb opened the book and cleared his throat.

"Father, we gather to commend the spirit of Angela Warner Meyer-Gilliam into Thy hands.

"The forgiveness and mercy of the Lord know no bounds.

"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth; Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.

"The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord."

To Chase, the Reverend's words were no more than a distant din. Angie had died ten months before, on a Wednesday at the age of 21, and he still was mad at himself for not being there, though it couldn't have been helped that Chase was hundreds of millions of kilometers away in orbit around Jupiter. The police and news accounts and the vids of the scene were still as fresh in his mind, burned into his memory forever, as if they had happened yesterday.

Still, Chase wondered. The thought that he might yet be able to be able to reverse the course of events, using the Farpool, that he might be able to do something to prevent the accident should have given him a peculiar, if unspoken sense of comfort, yet it did not. The casket, the mourners, the gravediggers all gave the moment a grim solidity that no dreams of what he might be able to do could soften.

He couldn't help noticing how pale and distraught his Mom looked. That was understandable; she had been keeping Erika at their house on Rainbow Court for the last ten months, with Chase's effervescent daughter a daily reminder of what Life could visit on unsuspecting people. She was taking it harder than any of them. Gently, Chase laid a hand on her shoulder, only to startle her, and momentarily distract Reverend Holcomb from his reading.

Holcomb smiled sympathetically at them and went on.

"The Apostle Paul provides us with some words of meaning:

"That which thou sowest is not quickened except that it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be, but a bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain, but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him...So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.'

"Angela was a kind and generous young woman, a nurse and caregiver full of love and tender mercy for those who suffer. She often spoke to me of the Psalms, and in particular of the 5lst and 32nd. Let us pray with her:

'Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy loving kindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.

'Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

'For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.

"Against thee, and thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.'"

Holcomb flipped a few pages, pausing only to daub some sweat from his lips and eyes with his thumb.

"'Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

'I acknowledge my sin unto thee and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.'

"Amen.''

Chase placed his other hand on his Mom's shoulders and tried to quietly comfort her. He could feel the sobs shaking her body though she managed to keep them low and hushed. Jamie and Kenny stared at the aluminum casket, now draped with roses and chrysanthemums, with stony silence. Mack Meyer looked beyond the trees, an unmovable statue.

Rev. Holcomb extracted a wrinkled sheet of paper from a pocket and said, "I should like to end with a few words which I believe best express our feelings today.

'Now the laborer's task is o'er!

Now the battle day is past!

Now upon the farther shore

Lands the voyager at last.

Father, in thy gracious keeping

Leave we now thy servant sleeping.'

"Let us pray.

"Thy love is everlasting, O Lord, for all the sheep of Thy flock. Give thee this family comfort and take unto Thy infinite heart the immortal soul of this Thy loyal servant.

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

"Amen."

"Amen," said the others, and Holcomb looked up, scanning their faces, nodding slightly at each as he caught their eyes. _Not much grief, except for Mrs. Meyer_ , he thought. _I guess it's too hot for that._ He could feel his suit clinging to his back and decided it would be better to console the family in its moment of grief inside the mausoleum, where the air-conditioning was going full blast.

Jamie and Kenny needed no gentle prodding to get up but Mrs. Meyer dropped to her knees and reached out with a shaking hand to touch the edge of the casket. For a second, Chase was afraid that she would faint before her fingers could touch it. But she gripped the metal for a moment, whispering something that Chase couldn't quite catch, then abruptly stood up. He expected to see tears streaming down her cheeks but instead, her face had turned darkly grim. She was dry-eyed as she stared back at all of them.

"I think we'd best let the men get to work." Holcomb suggested. He motioned down the low hill, where the baroque stone mausoleum sat.

Chase came around the edge of the canopy and gripped the man's hands. "Thank you. Reverend, I think Angie would have been pleased with the service.''

"God be with you, son...and all of your family."

They ducked into the cool quiet of the mausoleum for a few minutes, while the gravediggers did their work.

Mrs. Meyer put a shaking hand to Chase's face.

"I'm just so...oh, Chase, this shouldn't have to happen."

"I know, Mom...but it did." He couldn't tell her about the Farpool and the idea that it was just barely possible he could re-arrange Fate and pluck Angie from death inside that whirling maelstrom. He wasn't sure he fully believed it himself, but he was resolved by now to try.

Mrs. Meyer lifted up Erika and patted her behind softly. "When do you have to leave...and where's that place you're going?"

"Farpool Center, Mom. It's at Muir City, you know, near Bermuda. I have to be there day after tomorrow. Mission briefing."

"That's near that city of Sea People, isn't it?" his Dad, Mack Meyer asked. He didn't know what to do with his calloused hands and finally jammed them into the pockets of his suit jacket.

"Just above Keenomsh'pont," Chase said. "The original landing site...where the Farpool brought all the refugees from Seome...me included. Muir City's built up right on top of the seamount and the city's below, at the base."

Mack Meyer glared at his son, then put a hand on Chase's shoulder, a moment of tenderness unexpected, uncharacteristic of the man. "Those wackos out there still giving you a hard time, son? Angie used to talk about what it was like going around town, to the store, to day-care, places like that...what it was like for Amphibs."

"Nothing we can't handle, Dad," Chase lied. "I just hope Erika doesn't get the same treatment...she's mostly Amphib herself now, with those eyes. Armfins starting to come in...you can see the ridges already. In day-care, is she—"

Mrs. Meyer came over. "We make sure she's treated right...the school knows we're keeping an eye on them. Anything happens, they'll hear from us."

"They'll hear from _me_ ," Mack emphasized. His voice lowered. "Look, son, I know it hasn't been easy for you, what with the fish procedure, and the Jupiter mission, now this—" He indicated the mausoleum. "But I want you to know: I respect your decision. I respect your right to make decisions. I don't always agree with them, but, well...there it is."

"Thanks, Dad...you know I'm not really a fish. Amphibs aren't fish, we're—"

"Half-breeds," his sister Jamie cut in, pulling off her big sunglasses, scuffing the uneven marble of the floor. She showed a lopsided grin. "I'm kidding, bro...you know I'm just kidding. Hey, I got a great techjam hit to show you—you still plucking away at that go-tone? You gotta listen to this—"

"Jamie," warned Mrs. Meyer, "please... _not_ here. Not now." She handed Erika over to Chase, who cuddled her, his daughter wrapping her arms and legs tightly around her Dad. "How long will you be gone? And where is it again that you're going?"

"That takes some explaining, Mom." He shifted Erika around to a more comfortable position, then let her ride piggy-back on top, making himself into a horse. "The Farpool's a vortex, what they call a wormhole. You dive in and manipulate it from inside and it'll take you to other places and times."

" _Time Jumpers_!" Erika shouted out, waving her arms about like a small airplane. She was mimicking superheros from a vid show she had seen days before. "Let's go...jumpship _Majoris_!"

Chase smiled sheepishly, mildly embarrassed. "Actually Erika's right. I haven't seen the vid but the Farpool can take us back or forward in time. It just takes some control...you have to be precise." _Maybe even reverse bad things,_ he didn't add.

Jamie sniffed. "I read somewhere that it's like surfing...that ought to be right up your alley, Chase."

Chase shrugged, then reluctantly put Erika down. She was a squirmer and she wanted to explore. She skipped right over to a nearby wall and started running inquisitive fingers along the crypt faces, feeling the engraved names.

"There are some similarities, I guess."

"Whatever," Mrs. Meyer said. "I don't understand any of it...those Bugs they're worried about, something on Jupiter, it's all magic to me. But don't worry about the Little Princess...we'll take good care of her."

Chase dragged Erika away from the crypts and hoisted her up again. He didn't really want to let go. "I was more worried about you guys. This one's a handful."

"She misses her Mom...we kind of tried to explain what happened, but...well, you know."

"Maybe things will work out anyway," Chase said, a bit more optimistically than he intended. When that brought some puzzled stares, he added, "I guess I'd better be going. Liftjet's waiting in Orlando. It's a three-hour ride to Muir City." He kissed his daughter hard, and she returned the kiss, holding Chase's face with both her hands, fiddling with the extra skin folds along his neck. That brought chuckles, and a few more tears, from everybody.

"Be safe, son," Mr. Meyer shook hands. "Whatever the mission is, give it your best and don't worry about the store. I can do inventory by myself."

"Thanks, Dad...I wasn't really worried about it."

"Hey—" sister Jamie hugged him too. "—kick ass out there, wherever you're going."

Chase clapped brother Kenny on the shoulder, then backed out of the mausoleum waving at everybody, swallowed hard when Erika started to run after him and had to be grabbed by his Dad, and headed for his turbo. He swung his legs over the seat and fired it up, gunning the engine. Then he scratched off out of the parking lot and made his way screeching and sliding through several traffic lights to the autoway, heading north. The liftjet would be waiting at the Orlando airport.

He knew he had to be doing something to put all the feelings behind him. And he wasn't going to give up control of his turbo to the autoway, not today of all days. He needed to be in control, feel the road vibrations and the wind, know for sure there was something he _could_ control. Chase Meyer steered into the manual lane and cranked his bike up to just under a hundred. Cars and trucks and road signs flashed past.

He made the airport in less than an hour.

UNIFORCE Farpool Operations Center

Muir City, the mid-Atlantic Ocean

June 21, 2123 (Earth U.T.)

The Muir seamount was a flat-topped guyot rising up out of the seabed floor of the mid-Atlantic, less than a hundred kilometers north of Bermuda. The vast Seomish refugee camp known as Keenomsh'pont covered the lower slopes and surrounding seabed like a spreading rash, home to thousands of Omtorish, Eepkostic and Skortish _kelke_ who had come through the Farpool from their dying world years before and then built a city of sorts among the volcanic hillocks, the deep reefs of ruby red coral, ravines choked with silt and occasional smokers belching fumes from dozens of vents along the great rift that bifurcated the ocean.

Below the top, up and down the slopes and for kilometers in every direction, the restless hordes of Seomish circled and roamed as they always did in schools and pods of hundreds, even thousands which made the bottomlands appear to be little more than a seething, heaving mass to U.S. and Russian and Chinese Navy vessels perpetually scanning the seas with their high-freq sonar.

At the very top of the guyot, a growing complex of strange buildings and structures had been steadily growing like a huge angular coral formation, the submerged home of a UNIFORCE base operated by UNISEA, which was now beginning to sprout above the waves in surprising, even bizarre architectural shapes, a man-made reef of buildings of every imaginable form and variety, vaguely flower-like in appearance from a distance, festooned with landing pads and towers, spires, and lighted floatways like a watery version of Times Square.

Home to hundreds of people, and the Farpool Operations Center, Chase Meyer found the liftjet approach to the north landing pads at dusk a phantasmagoric experience, a theme park for the eyes, a sea beast frozen in concrete and composite ceramic.

The liftjet deposited him on the landing pad and Chase followed augmented 3-d images projected out of his wristpad to find his quarters several decks below, in fact just below the green-blue waves roaring and hissing over the jetties that surrounded the complex.

He buzzed into his spartan quarters, unloaded his bags and took a hot shower. In bed an hour later, he slept a hard, dreamless sleep for many hours, fatigued and spent from the emotionally draining last few days, and the residual effects of long months in space aboard _Archimede_ , on that cycler's lonely trek earthward.

He knew he had a critical briefing at 0800 hours the next morning. All the big brass would be there, including the Director-General and CINCFAR himself and he needed a good night's rest.

The next morning, Chase slammed down a hearty breakfast in the mess hall on C Level, just above the crashing surf that pounded huge windows, and with help from his wristpad, eventually found his way through a maze of corridors, security checkpoints and dead ends to the Operations Center main briefing theater.

He found the vast circular room nearly full when he arrived. Lined with vids and monitors, the room did resemble a small theater, with rows and banks of consoles and multiple levels of conference tables and small huddle spaces, surmounted in the center by an all-aspect vid board segmented into dozens of screens. Three-D pedestals were spotted among the consoles and flashing, gyrating images erupted from each, like dancers in a nightclub, though the imagery came from literally thousands of sensors, sonar, thermal, optical, EM and others, that UNISEA operated on and below the world's oceans, keeping track of literally everything that moved, ate, excreted, lived, died or maneuvered across the seventy percent of Earth's surface that was water.

One of the pedestals particularly intrigued Chase and as he approached it, he realized it was a local feed, from just a few dozen kilometers away, a live feed of the Farpool itself. The thin, ropy 'spout jumped and hopped and tangoed across the wavetops like a cyclone that wouldn't stop, accompanied by daughter spouts nearby, smaller vortexes that were side effects of the great singularity engine at the core of the generator. Even as he watched, Chase saw pulses of light coursing up and down the length of the column and the sight brought back a memory of his and Angie's first trip into the vortex, seven years before.

The memory gave him a brief shudder, as he realized his dead wife might yet be reachable inside that undulating column of water.

"This way, sir...you _are_ Chase Meyer, aren't you?"

The voice startled Chase back to the present and he saw it came from an earnest female cadet from the recently formed Timejump Command, an enforcement and patrol organization that UNIFORCE had concocted out of the organizational chaos of the _Europa Hammer_ mission, and a growing realization that Earth now hosted not only human beings and Sea People but a new threat, malevolent and poorly understood.

The cadet was a diminutive, red-haired waif of an enlisted person, a Jumper 1st class to judge from her insignia, smiling and anxious to help Chase to the right place. The name plate on her left breast pocket read _Nichols_.

"Yes, sure, I'm Chase Meyer."

"I had your picture on my wristpad, sir...just follow me. Mission briefing's this way."

Obediently, Chase followed Jumper 1st class Nichols to a room two levels up, overlooking the entire theater. Inside, he found a large round table, surrounded by a half dozen officers and civilians, more brass than he'd ever seen at Muir City, and the inevitable 3-d pedestal in the middle of the table, now dark. Avatars drifted in the background, projections of meeting attendees from more distant locations, hovering like disembodied ghosts. No one paid them any mind.

"Please take your seat, Mr. Meyer. You're a bit late." The speaker was CINCFAR himself, one Admiral Gerhard Marx, Commander in Chief of Farpool Operations.

Admiral Marx was grim as he surveyed the assembled officers and staff. _This wasn't going to be easy._ UNSAC had contacted him at 2030 hours the night before with a directive: "get a briefing together, fast. UNIFORCE's taking on a new enemy. We just got tasking from Paris. I'll be there too."

Marx didn't have to ask who the enemy was.

"The purpose of this briefing is to lay out details for Operation _Genesis_. I should add that everything discussed and displayed in here...stays in here. I've asked Dr. Stuart Macalvey from the Muir City Lab to sit in—" he indicated a red-bearded Scottish virologist at the end of the table. "And UNSAC is also here with us from Paris." The avatar of Angelika Komar drifted over the end of the table alongside Dr. Macalvey, acknowledging Marx with a curt nod.

Marx went on. "I want to begin with details of the threat. In the last few weeks, according to our intel shop F2, sources within the Chinese Ministry of Defense and the Peoples Liberation Army have provided us with some rather startling information on the research being conducted by a top-secret group called Activity 871. Dr. Macalvey can explain further...Doctor--?"

Macalvey's green eyes sparkled and as his voice filled the room, all displays, flat and 3-D synched together to show artistic impressions of a gene sequence.

"You're looking at a stretch of a typical virus genome...by the way, these sequences are called palindromes...they're like mirror images of each other. In fact, this sequence is from rhinovirus...the common cold virus. Note the highlighted areas."

All eyes focused on where Macalvey's highlights brightened.

"Farpool Service intelligence people—your F2 shop—recently learned from sources that the Chinese have discovered something rather extraordinary. It's common knowledge that several of their military labs are working with the Ministry of Science at Reed Banks and Mischief Reef in the South China Sea, studying the captured nanobotic elements from Site M-1. Detailed analysis of the CPU architecture of these captured bots was recently compared with selected stretches of several viral genomes. The Lab there determined that there is a statistically significant correlation between the stretches of viral genome you're looking at right now, genome sequences which are quite common and seemingly ordinary with almost all viruses, and the interior CPU architecture of these captured bots."

UNSAC's avatar drifted over the center of the table to examine the display more closely. "What, exactly, does this mean, Doctor?"

Macalvey stroked his beard. "The correlation is pretty strong. It means that the similarities between this virus genome—and I might add these sequences are common to almost all viruses—and the CPU design of the Site M-1 nanobots should not be considered random chance."

Marx interjected, "Are you saying, Doctor Macalvey, that the virus exhibits some kind of intentional design, like someone tinkering or modifying the genome?"

"This seems to be what researchers inside this Chinese lab, Activity 871, believe. They've apparently done pretty detailed analysis of the genome of quite a few viruses. From what your F2 people have found out, the Chinese believe that several hundred million years ago, something happened to the genomes of viruses on Earth, something that was a sharp break or divergence from normal evolutionary progression. It could have been a stray cosmic ray. It could actually have been a random event, though the statistics say otherwise."

"Are there other possibilities?" asked UNSAC.

Here, Macalvey took a deep breath and sat back in his chair, folding his arms across an ample chest. "We can't discount the possibility that the genome mods were deliberate, a deliberate act of modification."

"By whom?" asked Dr. Halevy, the Director-General of UNIFORCE, who was physically present opposite Chase Meyer. "Or what?"

Macalvey smiled enigmatically. "Ah now, that's the big question, isn't it, sir? Admiral—I believe this is your cue."

Marx picked up the story. "Less than a week after this discovery and the implications were realized, the Chinese Ministry of Defense made a secret re-organization within the PLA. Activity 871 was spun off from the Ministry of Science and incorporated into something called, by the Chinese, _Renmen de Shijian Liliang_. Loosely translated, it means Peoples Temporal Forces."

" _Temporal_? Something to do with time...am I hearing this correctly, Admiral?" asked UNSAC.

"Yes, ma'am, you are. We've known for some time that the Chinese have been working with the phenomenon at Site M-1 and with some of the Sea People...one of the clans or tribes known as Ponkti—to create and manipulate the time and space-altering properties of these nanobots. In effect, the bots have the ability to create a sort of miniature farpool, a vortex-wormhole, like the Farpool here. This knowledge, combined with our intel sources inside China and the results from Mr. Meyer's recent _Europa Hammer_ mission, debriefs from Frontier Corps and other sources, has led our F2 people to draw a rather startling and, at first look, absurd conclusion. Dr. Macalvey—"

"Yes, of course...you see the modifications that seem to have occurred to all viral genomes about three hundred million years ago—that's when the genetic record shows this sharp divergence occurred—conferred some powerful evolutionary advantages on viruses. It radically increased their mutability...their ability to mutate fast and adapt to environmental changes faster. It was such a huge advantage, really unprecedented, that those organisms, if we can call them that, quickly overwhelmed all their competitors. Today, every virus on Earth has this increased mutability factor in its genome."

Marx cut in. "That means all viruses on Earth today are descendants of earlier viruses that seemed to have been deliberately altered...by someone."

UNSAC winced skeptically and her avatar drifted over toward Marx, hovering like a disembodied wraith. "We're talking LGM here...Little Green Men...is that right?"

Marx indicated Chase. "Mr. Meyer here found and captured bots in the sub-surface ocean of Europa that are strikingly similar to what the Chinese are examining at their South China Sea labs. That cannot be a coincidence."

At the Admiral's urging, Chase briefly recounted _Trident's_ experience with Objective Alpha, including its startling quantum abilities to displace objects in space and time.

"We couldn't deal with Objective Alpha with the tactics and equipment we had," Chase told them. "That's why UNISPACE called us home."

Marx turned deadly serious, his Black Forest moustache extending out straight and still. "Let me put the threat here in very clear terms. The Chinese apparently believe that there is an _entity_ , perhaps here on Earth, perhaps even embedded in viruses, perhaps on Europa or elsewhere, that made this change. Mr. Meyer here has already provided F2 with details of some of his earlier travels through the Farpool, travels to and from future places where this entity may have been encountered."

Chase explained the situation that had developed on Seome, before its sun went belly up. "The humans of that time called them Coethi. UNISPACE thinks they may be the same as this entity the Admiral speaks of. There was a great war going on between humans and the Coethi and Seome was caught in the middle. Essentially, that world and its sun were collateral damage. That's why the Seomish—the Sea People—had to emigrate here."

"And the Coethi are now here on Earth...this is what the Chinese believe...here on Earth and more or less contained at Site M-1...for now at least," Marx added.

"But why this Peoples' Temporal Forces change?" Dr. Halevy asked. "What are the Chinese up to?"

Marx drummed his fingers on the table. "That brings me to the mission of Operation _Genesis._ You all know Farpool Service was created to study and exploit the capabilities of this thing we call Farpool. We dragged Mr. Meyer into the Service for his knowledge and experience in this area...in fact, we've given him a temporary commission and rank on our military side: TimeJump Command. From now on, Mr. Meyer is to be known as Jump Commander Meyer, an O-5 rank. We believe the Chinese are preparing, with their Temporal Forces, to use their own farpools, generated at Site M-1, to travel back in time to the period in Earth's history when these viral modifications were made. Intel suggests they may have several motives here: one is to try and prevent the modifications from occurring or at least mitigate them."

Macalvey cut in. "Ladies and gentlemen, the truth is that every virus on Earth today contains genome sequences that seem to have been deliberately added in the past, possibly by these Coethi. We don't know why—"

"Perhaps a fifth column," said UNSAC. "Enemy agents among us, spies, saboteurs...you could make that argument. If the Chinese or the Russians had done something like this, we'd be jumping up and down crying wolf at the top of our voices. I can see the security implications of this already."

"The other motive," Marx interjected, "may be more problematical. There is a difference of opinion about this within F2 but one theory about motives has the Chinese using their farpools, their own time vessels or jumpships—they call them _Yaoyuan de luke_ —it means something like 'Distant Traveler'—to travel back to this time hundreds of millions of years ago to engage, confront or even ally themselves and learn from this entity, this Coethi race. I don't have to explain the serious ramifications of this intel, if this is even remotely true."

Here, UNSAC took over the meeting, Komar's avatar rising up like an angel of vengeance. Her face, slightly pixelated in the transmission, nonetheless showed a stern visage.

"The security implications of what the Chinese may be attempting are clear. Along with the fact that every virus on earth may be an alien saboteur—and I don't mind telling you how hard it was for me to get my head around _that_ , but F2 has convinced me—it is incumbent on UNIFORCE to match what the Chinese are doing. Prudence dictates that we attempt a mission like this ourselves, at least to keep the Chinese efforts under surveillance and, secondarily, we may have the opportunity if Dr. Macalvey's work pans out, to undo what these Bugs did in the past and put viruses on a more normal evolutionary trajectory...maybe even eliminate viruses altogether. Imagine that...no more influenza, no more pneumonia, no more Ebola or HIV. Macalvey says it may be possible, with our own nanobotic and genetic technology to do this. Admiral Marx, go ahead and lay out the mission details of Operation _Genesis_ now."

Marx needed no more prompting. At his voice prompt, all displays shifted, synched to display a rather plump, watermelon-shaped vessel on the screens. To add to the theater, a ghostly 3-D rendering of the same vessel appeared overhead, puttering around Conference Room B-22A like a miniature zeppelin.

"It's called a _jumpship_ ," Marx explained.

Right away, Chase could see the lineage of its design, for it was an upgraded version of a Seomish _tchee'lum_ , a lifeship. He'd traveled through the Farpool in these ships numerous times.

The Admiral went on. "I've explained the nature of the threat, with help from F2 and Dr. Macalvey here." He studied Chase for a moment, the way a scientist might examine a lab specimen. Chase was determined not to look away and stared back at the Admiral. _Yes, I am Amphib, and you'd better be glad of it._ "You'll meet your ship and crew in a few minutes, down on the hangar deck. That's where we'll do the mission briefing. For now, let me say that Operation _Genesis_ will consist of three separate missions, Genesis 1, 2 and 3. Each mission will have two separate objectives: first, to contain and/or neutralize any Coethi formations you may encounter. Second, to gather intel on any Chinese or other 'time jumpers,' you run into. Both objectives are vital but the first one takes precedence. Dr. Macalvey—"

The virologist straightened his glasses. "If we can locate the time and place when the Coethi first made changes to viral genomes, we can not only stop that and put genetic history back on its original evolutionary track, we can also learn a lot, about the Coethi themselves and what they're capable of. I'd like you to come back with some samples, if that's possible."

Marx interjected. "Doctor, you'll have that opportunity yourself. I've already gotten UNSAC's permission to TDY you away from the lab. You'll be part of the Genesis 3 crew as a science support specialist...serving under Commander Meyer here."

At first, Macalvey's face looked like a fish out of water, his mouth agape, working but not saying anything. Then, he found his voice again.

"Admiral, I... uh...Admiral, I should remind you...I'm a scientist. I'm not trained as field personnel."

"Nonsense, you'll do fine in mission training over the next few weeks. Your background is perfect for Genesis 3." It was clear that Marx would brook no further discussion. "That concludes the threat briefing. Commander Meyer, Dr. Macalvey, if you'll accompany me to the hangar deck—"

Macalvey glanced over at Chase as the briefing adjourned. His eyes said volumes:

Get me out of this.

Chase just smiled inwardly.

Muir City's hangar deck was at the 07 level, below the surface of the water, but with enough blue-green light streaming through the portholes for Chase to see the silt, turbulence and froth stirred up by the tricky crosscurrents at the top of the seamount. He knew very few _kelke_ from Keenomsh'pont ever ventured this close to the top, near as it was to the low-pressure zone of Notwater. He took a brief glance outside as Marx and his staff led them out of the lift and into the cavernous hangar bay.

Though devoid of Seomish, the pelagic zone atop Muir seamount was anything but devoid of life. Inside the broad column of swirling eddy currents, Chase spied schools of mackerel and marlin, even barracuda, scooting across his view as they hunted for prey among each other. He'd ridden Omtorish kip'ts up here numerous enough times, so he knew how tricky navigation could be. The indigenous sea life seemed to have no difficulty traversing the currents, darting in and out of small tufts of sea grass and coral, as they probed and sniffed and darted in and out of view.

Muir City's vast hangar bay had been sectioned off with partitions to form a secure zone ringed with guard bots and drones and protected from unwanted visitors by a shimmering veil of barrier bots...the security field that buzzed and hummed with meaning when you got too close.

Inside the security zone, three jumpships sat mounted vertically in their launch cradles, each one surrounded by gantries, scaffolding and cranes, as workers and technicians bustled about making last minute checks, modifications and adjustments. Each one did look like an enormous watermelon, or perhaps an elongated giant seed, bulbous in the center, tapered at both ends.

Marx noticed Chase's interest and proudly described the craft.

"That one's jumpship _Scorpio_. Genesis 2 mission. Over there—" he indicated another ship at the far end of the huge triangular prep zone "—is jumpship _Capricorn,_ for Genesis 1."

"They have similar missions, sir?"

Marx steered him toward the first ship, jumpship _Majoris_. "They do, son. All three missions have the same overall objectives, just like I described topside. The only differences are the crew...and the targets. _Scorpio's_ headed to Europa...right back where _Trident_ did her mission. _Capricorn's_ headed to Mars. Both destinations harbor rudimentary life forms or fossils of ancient lifeforms and we believe the Coethi visited both sometime in the distant past, planting or seeding their own nanobotic elements in those environments. Aboard _Trident_ , your crew likely encountered the descendants of that early seeding. Ah, here's your ship—"

They came to jumpship _Majoris_ , nearly surrounded by scaffolding, with maintenance bots and techs climbing all over her at every level. Ground level, a small party had gathered around her base, peering hesitantly into the propulsor cones of her tailpod.

"Your crew," Marx introduced. In a louder voice, the detail supervisor realized who was approaching and shouted out, " _ATTENTION_! Admiral on deck!"

Instantly all work stopped. Tools were dropped or laid down. Throats were cleared. Bodies stood stiff and still.

"As you were," Marx ordered. "This is Jump Commander Chase Meyer." Nods and acknowledgements all around. "Gather 'round...I'll do a quick mission rundown and let you get back to work."

_Majoris_ would have a nominal crew of five, plus one somewhat reluctant Scottish virologist. Macalvey hung back from the rest of the gathering, forlorn and desolate, wondering how in hell this had ever happened. Chase found himself feeling sorry for the poor man.

Chase was designated CC1, a command and control rating. Owing to his experience with the Farpool and Seomish lifeships, it seemed a good choice, though Chase had never considered himself any kind of able commander of anything.

The pilot/systems operator (PSO) was one Jump Lieutenant Alicia Yang, a petite, black-haired female of vaguely Asian descent, who was already perusing a slate of procedures on her wrist as intros were made all around. She briefly acknowledged everyone and went right back to her notes.

_Majoris'_ navigator-positioner was Jump Lieutenant Marco Kumar, a lanky kid with a nervous facial tic, a sly smirk on his lips and hands that wouldn't stay still. Chase winced at his restlessness. _This guy is a positioner?_ He knew perfectly well that once inside the Farpool, your position and orientation were critical; even a slight mis-adjustment could send you careening off into never-never land. With nervous hands like that, Chase figured he'd be keeping a very close eye on the kid.

The Containment System tech was Jump Master 1st class Tulandra klu kel: Ponk'et. Chase was immediately glad to see another Amphib on the crew— _that should cut down on the snide looks and remarks a bit_ —but was less than enamored when he realized Tulandra had gone through conicthyosis from her former life as a Ponkti female. Once a true marine member of that kel, she was now much like a sleeker, more athletic female version of Chase, with armfins and webbed hands and obvious gill sacks flexing in and out in the hangar deck's cool air. Tulandra glared back at Chase, despite his attempt at a winning smile, and focused on running webbed fingers along one of the ship's flowvater vanes.

The Quantum Systems tech was Jumpmaster 1st class Winston Blakely. Bald with big dog's ears and sunken eyes that made him look perpetually sad, Blakely was a Canadian oceanographer out of Vancouver, who'd given up the sea to become proficient in quantum systems and taken several degrees in the field to boot. In 2115, just out of grad school, Win had joined the Surrey Institute in Vancouver as an oceanographer on staff. His most notable contribution had been the discovery of a previously unknown hydrothermal vent complex off the panhandle of Alaska, known as the Juneau Vents, and unusual extremophile lifeforms living in that environment. He'd made numerous dives aboard the bathyscaph _Neptune_ and collected many specimens. During one of these dives, _Neptune_ had suffered a serious electrical problem and it was Win Blakely's quick thinking which got the crew to the surface before any casualties could occur. It was this incident which worked in Win's favor when he applied to join Farpool Service as part of their Outer Worlds Expeditionary Corps in 2122.

Then there was Dr. Stuart Macalvey. Forlorn and alone, trying to hide behind one of _Majoris'_ extended forward diving planes.

Marx finished all the intros, then offered this: "You'll be starting your operational mission training tomorrow at 0800 hours. For now, go ahead and climb aboard, familiarize yourself with the ship and her equipment. I've got to run: another briefing with UNSAC in an hour."

Marx strode off, followed obediently by his staff, and was gone.

Salutes were thrown off all around and _Majoris_ ' crew soon climbed aboard what would become their new home for an undetermined future.

Macalvey grabbed Chase' arm as they lined up to duck into the hatch.

"Could we talk, Chase? You and me, after we're done here?"

Chase was sympathetic. "Sure thing, Doc? Something bothering you?"

"Yes...all this." Macalvey indicated the ship, her crew, and everything else on the hangar deck. "I'm not cut out for this. You've got to help me."

"How about the Pinnacle Bar, say about 1900 hours. It's top side, in fact it's as topside as you can go. Great views of the oceans, the reefs, everything."

Macalvey seemed mollified. "I'll be there, drowning in my Glenlivet."

Chase clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on, Doc...let's see what _Majoris_ is like inside."

Hours later, after cleaning up and changing into his FPS station tunic and trousers, Chase took a lift to the Pinnacle Bar and found Macalvey staring morosely out through a picture window, in a small booth in the back. Flood lights from Muir City shone onto the whitecaps of the waves beyond and in the distance, dancing on the horizon like a thin ropy apparition, the Farpool itself loomed like a coil of thread unspooling, its vague outlines backlit with flickers of light as electrical discharges coursed up and down its length. The top of the vortex disappeared into heavy cloud cover overhead and mist fractured the spotlights Muir City cast on the column of water like a million broken mirrors trapped and shuffled about.

Chase sat down, ordered a beer.

"Doc, you'll do fine with this crew. Look at me. I used to sell T-shirts and surf boards at my dad's shack at Scotland Beach. Have a little faith in your crewmates."

But Macalvey was in no mood to be placated. "I've already put in requests for transfer. And petitions to the Security Council. They can't do this to me. I'm a Lab guy. In fact, I'm the Lab director. I was brought in to run a research program...on the Sea People, their technology, their culture, their history. And on that Farpool out there. I'm not qualified to go on missions."

"And I am? Look, Doc—" Chase tried to be sympathetic. "Nobody knows more about viruses and what the Coethi may have done to them than you. Hell, you wrote the book. We're going to need your background and your experience to know what we're dealing with. And what to do about it. Operation _Genesis_ is a critical mission and you're a critical part of it, maybe the most critical part."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Macalvey admitted. He slammed back the dregs of his Scotch, motioned for the servbot to trundle over and ordered another round. "That you're right. From what I've seen in the Lab, these Coethi—whatever they are—are eons ahead of us in nanobotic technology."

"The Umans I encountered on Seome said they were nanobots themselves, a giant mother swarm of them, light years across. I made an echopod recording of what they told me...want to hear it?"

Macalvey held up a hand. "I've probably heard it. I guess what worries me most is what sort of evolutionary track viruses are on now, especially since we now realize they've been tinkered with in the past. You know, pretty much all of our ANAD technology, our own nanobotic technology, has roots in viral genomes. Some of the programming was lifted straight from genetic codes Nature created to solve evolutionary problems with viruses; we incorporated a lot of that right into the processor architectures of our first bots, years ago. You knew that?"

"Not really," Chase admitted. "I guess I never really thought much about it. Wouldn't that mean, if the Coethi really did alter viruses long ago, that those same alterations could be in our own nanobots now?"

"Exactly. That's what scares me...a lot. That's what keeps me up at night. That and wondering what the Chinese are trying to do. Think of own system ANAD. He's the perfect warrior. Grown from a virus. Part organism, part mechanism. Don't get me wrong, I think Doc Frost and the original programmers were some of the smartest people on the planet. I just wonder how smart it was to try blending viral genomes with ANAD. It's like tampering with evolution, maybe tampering with the future. As a lifeform, viruses have lived on earth a hell of a lot longer than we have. They've adapted to everything Life has thrown at them. They're relentless. And now what do we have? With ANAD, an intelligent, programmable virus. Add in an alien race altering viruses for their own ends and what does that give you?"

"An even more intelligent, programmable virus?"

"Exactly...I mean...is this really a good thing to do? This whole mission scares me, Chase and the reason it scares me isn't really the Chinese or what they might be up to. It scares me because we may find that, with quantum computing, and now genetic programming from the past——we've given Nature's most efficient killer the smarts to outsmart us all." He decided to finish off his drink. "I just wonder how much longer we can stay ahead of them. Do we teach ANAD? Or does ANAD teach us? Maybe this is what the Coethi, whoever they are, had planned all along."

Chase finished off his own beer. "We've got a good crew, Doc and we've got a good ship. Now we even have you. Let's get some shuteye. I'm beat and we start mission training tomorrow. And no more talk about transferring out, okay? Even you have to admit we need you."

"That scares me too, Chase. I'm not sure any of us can stop what's happening. Maybe it was meant to be and if we try to change evolution now, who knows what'll happen?"

Chase was already getting up to leave, after sliding his pay card through the slot on the servbot's head. "Get a good night's sleep, Dr. Macalvey. I think you're going to need it. I think we're _all_ going to need it."

He left the Pinnacle Bar and went back to his quarters. In bed, drifting off to sleep, he called up a short vid on his wristpad. It was the day Erika had been born. Dr. Holland was there, Angie too, all smiles and totally worn out from the experience...it had been a great day.

Chase finally drifted off to sleep, with vague plans to study jumpship _Majoris_ ' controls very carefully tomorrow. Genesis 3 had a critical mission to perform...Admiral Marx had said so himself.

What the Admiral didn't know was that Chase Meyer also had a critical mission and he was determined that his mission would come first.

The Farpool was a gateway to a lot of times and places. Chase fixed in his mind one particular time and place: January 10, 2122, Scotland Beach, U.S. Hwy 19, just south of the Fanning Springs exit, about 1645 hours.

When _Majoris_ launched into the Farpool in a few weeks, _that_ was the time he had to aim for, actually a day or so before that, to be absolutely sure of preventing the accident.

Mission and operational training lasted twelve days. In that time Chase learned a million things he never even knew he didn't know.

Some days were consumed with weapons training. The crew practiced and gained proficiency in HERF guns (High-energy radio frequency). _Majoris_ ' CS1, the Ponkti amphib Tulandra klu had just spent a year TDY'ed with Quantum Corps and had come back with a lot of newly-won expertise in all things ANAD and swarm. She told the crew that "the best way to counter a swarm of bots is with another swarm. But if you don't happen to have one, these HERF guns can turn a swarm into a cloud of French fries in a heartbeat."

They practiced with magpulsers and coil guns, entangled themselves in MOB nets (Mobility Obstruction Barriers...swarms configured to capture and immobilize threats and persons of interest), camou-fog generators and even snap-launched dozens of SuperFly entomopters to learn how (and how not) to give the crew top cover in ground operations.

On other days, the Genesis 3 team practiced squad-level swarm tactics and ops, including clever forms of deception and concealment, feints and diversions, swarming mass attacks, dispersals and entrapment techniques.

Through it all, Chase found Tulandra's instructional approach both informative and lively. After one particularly arduous wargame, he told her, "You seem to have this stuff down pretty well, for a Ponkti female."

Most Ponkti would have bridled at the implied insult but the husky Amphib with the auburn hair just looked sadly at Chase, barely disguised scorn in her eyes.

"On this world, when you're Ponkti _and_ Amphib, you've already got two strikes against you. With all this gear and the ANAD swarms, I get a chance to do a little ass-kicking legally. Helps relieve the stress, you know."

Chase didn't bother Tulandra any more after that.

Finally, the day came when the training commander decreed that _Majoris_ and her Genesis 3 team was ready to 'graduate.' That meant it was time for the test jump.

The training commander was one Lieutenant Commander Wickes. Wickes was short, black buzz cut with a trim goatee and arms too long for his body, arms which he flapped around like a bird trying to take flight.

"Okay, boys and girls, the big day is upon us. Tomorrow, by 0800 hours, _Majoris_ will have been moved to her launch cradle outside. The Genesis 3 team will board her promptly at 0830 hours. The test jump is just that...a test. Nothing more. An all-up, full-systems test of ship and crew. You'll get the details tomorrow but allow me to provide an overview. You will launch _Majoris_ and approach the Farpool on a normal Level 1 approach vector. You will enter said Farpool and maneuver, as you have been instructed, to exit same at a point in time six months _to the minute_ from now, six months in the past. You will strenuously endeavor to remain in the vicinity of the Farpool, while you conduct all drills and tests on your test card. At that point, you will have logged all variances and CM excursions, and re-enter said Farpool, returning to your launch cradle or close as you can, whereupon you will be recovered and brought back here. Is this in any way unclear?"

"No, Commander!" they all cried out in unison.

That night, Chase slept the sleep of the near dead.

Test jump day dawned at Muir City cloudy, breezy, humid and warm, with seas running at state three, mild whitecaps and two-meter surf crashing against the lower ramparts of the city and her jetties, wharves and breakwaters.

The Genesis 3 crew boarded their jumpship in quiet solemnity, each one fully aware of the importance of what they were about to do: plow into the seething heart of a great wormhole-vortex and try to ride the dragon's tail with enough precision to emerge not only alive but at a specific time and place in the past. Then run systems checks, conduct exercises and drills and get the hell out of there before they screwed up the time stream any more.

The test card Wilkes gave them called the time stream they would be navigating T-2278.

His last-minute encouraging words were: "Hey, don't fuck this up, okay?"

For launch, _Majoris_ had been moved in her launch cradle to a huge lockout outside the hangar bay, now fully exposed to the sea. Chase was last to board, taking his position forward on A deck, along with Pilot/Systems Operator (PSO) Alicia Yang. Behind them, Navigator-Positioner (NP) Marco Kumar sat at the nav console. Eyebrows were raised at a small bag Kumar brought onboard.

"What's that?" Yang asked, "Your Mom pack a sack lunch for you?"

"You'll see," Kumar told them. "Just a little toy for us navigator types, that's all."

Containment Systems tech Tulandra klu came aboard right behind Quantum Systems tech Winston Blakely.

Just ahead of Chase, Dr. Macalvey climbed in too, a scared cat being herded into its box.

"Sit here," Chase told him. It was a seat next to Kumar. Reluctantly, with grim determination, Macalvey let the launch techs strap him in. He closed his eyes, wishing all of this would go away.

Chase strapped in and checked his board. All green, all copacetic and no flags. _Majoris_ had been powered up several hours before, her MHD power plant and singularity core ticking over, humming, now sending a slight shudder through her hull.

"Ready all systems...stand by for final check and all-call."

One by one, the crew came back.

"Ready, PSO."

"Nav is go!"

"CS1 ready."

"QT1...yo and go!"

Chase waited for Macalvey to come back. Hearing nothing from the SS1 (Science and Support Specialist 1), he turned around and just shook his head.

"Comm discipline, Doctor...if you please. Are you ready to go?"

Macalvey was flustered. "Uh, yes...roger...right...I _am_ ready...."

Chase suppressed a smile. _Jesus H. Christ, what's an old surfer dude like me doing in a place like this?_

"Propulsors on line...ease her out, Alicia."

_Majoris_ lurched as her MHD jets opened up to one-quarter throttle and she slipped her ways and surged out into the cross-currents swirling atop the Muir seamount.

"Answering one-quarter, handling nicely, CC1. Fighting cross-currents."

"Steady as she goes...steer course zero eight. NP, how do we look?"

Marco Kumar checked his boards and instruments. Active sonar was pinging all around, showing up specks and chirps on his waterfall display. "Plenty of traffic, CC1, but we're clear on that heading. Recommend depth fifty meters. Farpool outer vortex fields six point two kilometers...ten minutes at this speed."

"Very well." Chase opened up the 1MC to talk to the others. " _Majoris_ now underway on propulsor. Farpool in ten minutes. QT1, advise status of singularity core."

Blakely's voice came back. "Core on line and ticking at sixty-five percent. Deco wakes in the green, entanglers humming. She's ready for action."

_Majoris_ closed the distance to the outer vortex fields of the Farpool in nine minutes.

It was Macalvey, slightly green and tight-lipped next to Kumar, who noticed the first effects of the huge waterspout and whirlpool.

The Scottish virologist had drifted off into a light doze when a faint tug on the side of the craft startled him awake.

"Something's happening—"

Kumar patted the Scotsman on the knee. "Patience, Doctor, patience...this is normal. Just relax, okay?"

"I don't know, but it feels like we're moving sideways." Macalvey plastered his nose to the porthole, trying to make something out. "It's silty out there. Dark too. Deeper water. You feel that?"

Some kind of force was pushing them sideways in the water. At the same time, the compartment picked up a light shuddering vibration, gyrating like a top at the end of a string.

"Yeah...we're at the vortex fields...that's what's happening."

Macalvey gripped his seat so hard his knuckles turned white. "...the water's all rushing sideways, dirt, pieces of things...I can't really make it out."

"Relax, man...just enjoy the ride. It's better than an E-ticket."

The force began to increase, a centrifugal force that soon shoved them to one side of the compartment and pressed them hard against the walls. Worse, the compartment began a slow roll, a rotation that didn't remain slow for long, but picked up rate at a steady clip.

Soon, they were spinning enough to become slightly disoriented and dizzy.

"Now, it's my stomach...I don't feel so—"

Macalvey's words were suddenly lost in a bright flash of light, a searing, painfully white strobing light that flooded the compartment and blinded all of them.

"Rudder amidships!" Chase ordered. He thumbed a small dial, straining against the centrifugal force. "Flow vanes to thirty percent!"

The spin kept accelerating and moments later, Stuart Macalvey passed out.

Early morning strollers along Muir City's upper promenade decks were treated to an incredible sight offshore, just before dawn. Backlit with the orange glow of sunrise to the east, a thin ropy waterspout formed several kilometers beyond the horizon, visible as far south as the northern beaches of Bermuda. As the spout danced and skipped across the waves, a bright pulse of light emerged from the sea and vaulted heavenward along the length of the spout, followed by a series of light pulses, as if the spout were sucking buckets of light right out of the ocean.

The light pulses disappeared into low-hanging clouds and vanished, leaving only a faint iridescent flicker, like a silent lightning discharge.

Moments later, the waterspout collapsed into the sea and the ocean returned to its restless heaving.

Unknown to the residents of Bermuda's Pelican Point luxury seahomes, the crew of jumpship _Majoris_ had just been catapulted into the whirling heart of the wormhole at the very center of the Farpool. Caught in a roaring, crashing river of infinite eddies and currents of time, they rode the dragon's tail until NP Kumar saw his display light up green and called bingo.

At his signal, Chase Meyer slammed _Majoris_ ' flow vanes out full and punched the ship hard over, right into the faint, barely perceptible fingers of Time Stream T-2278. Like a cocked fist, T-2278 grabbed them and yanked them out of the mainstream and into the midst of a million yesterdays.

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

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

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

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

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

The jumpship shuddered and hurtled out of the Farpool in a flash of light, a roaring rush of deceleration, knocking Chase and Alicia Yang hard against the cockpit windows. Still trapped in the vortex, Chase struggled to regain consciousness and, by instinct and training, rammed the ship's rudder hard over, while firing her jets to counteract the residual force of the spin. For a moment, they were both pinned sideways against the cockpit, until the force of the jets shot them through the core of the whirlpool and out into calmer waters.

Alicia breathed hard, wiping her face with her hands. She checked the instruments.

"Sounding smoother water, Commander...rough water but visibility improving. I can pulse ahead...looks like we made it...somewhere."

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

Kumar was still groggy but functional. His fingers played over his board, checking their position and heading. "Navsats say we're where we're supposed to be...I read us at sixty-two degrees west by thirty-four degrees north, stable at fifty-two meters keel depth. I need to get topside to shoot the sun to know for sure."

They all knew the test card called for proof they had made their target in time and space, and that proof had to be brought back to Test Conductor Wickes in Muir City.

"Planing up now," Chase announced. His nudged _Majoris'_ joystick controls forward and the ship smoothly hummed upward, ascending through several schools of fish to breach the surface amidst rough waves and heaving froth and spray topside.

Kumar was already unfastening his harness, grabbing the small bag he had stashed below his seat. As he got up, he withdrew the bag's contents, a spindly metal contraption that earned curious stares from Chase, Yang, even Dr. Macalvey.

"What on earth is that?"

Kumar smiled faintly, heading for the gangway. "It's a sextant, you ignorant twerps. I'm using it to shoot the sun's elevation. If it's where it's supposed to be, we'll have our proof we rode out T-2278 to the right time and place."

Chase just shook his head. "The ship'll do that automatically for you, Marco. You know that."

"Sure, Skipper, I'm aware of that. But this is the sure way. What if we lose our instruments, or power? Sailors have been using this gadget for centuries. It'll be a good check on the instruments." He hustled aft down the gangway, ignoring more puzzled stares from Tulandra and Blakely and popped the hatch on E deck.

Chase went too. "He'll never get enough precision in this surf to get a decent reading."

But he found that Marco Kumar was both persistent and skilled in using the ancient device. Not to mentioned hard-headed.

Chase found himself holding on to the NP's lower legs to keep him steady as _Majoris_ rolled and bobbed in the heavy surf. He could hear Kumar's low curses and grunts as he struggled to take a reading on the sun.

Kumar eventually ducked back inside with a broad smile on his face. "I make the sun's elevation at four-point-two degrees, give or take. That proves we went back in time, to about late February, same year. When we left, I took a quick reading from the hangar deck. Twenty degrees. Now, it's four degrees. The sun can't be at four degrees unless we're somewhere in February at this position...ergo we traveled the right time stream and went back."

Chase chuckled. "I'd be more impressed if we were on an English man-of-war and your name was Captain Bligh. I'm sure Wickes will be suitably impressed. Get back inside. I'll check the instruments and get a real reading."

But Kumar's sextant readings turned out to be remarkably accurate.

Over the next few hours, _Majoris'_ crew exercised their ship and completed all requirements on her test card.

"Time to head back," Chase decided. "Marco, give me a heading to the Farpool...and time to next 'landing.'"

The NP was so pleased with his sextant that he carried the thing in his lap like a pet poodle, occasionally fondling the device. "Steer left one nine five degrees. Next appearance in fourteen minutes...make turns for fifteen knots."

Chase ran their propulsors up to fifty percent. _Majoris_ surged forward, then began a shallow descent to fifty meters, ducking below the surf topside to a quieter, more peaceful realm below. Blurs of schooling tuna and mackerel whizzed and scooted by them as they descended.

"If only I had some line and bait," Winston Blakley observed through a porthole on E deck. He strapped himself in at the engineering console, just abeam of the hatch to F deck and the powerplants. Behind the heavy shielding, _Majoris'_ singularity core ticked over in its shielded compartment, ready to give the jumpship maneuvering power once they were in the vortex. "I'd catch me a couple of tuna, flay 'em open and load up the salt, pepper and lemon...."

Beside him at the containment station, Tulandra just shuddered. "They're people, same as you and me, wise guy. Just 'cause you have fins and flukes doesn't make you somebody's dinner." Just to make sure he got the point, she waved her own armfins in his face.

Blakely was about to retort back, but Chase' voice sounded over the 1MC.

"QT1, status on power—"

Blakley changed into a more serious tone. "Green across the board, Skipper. MHD on line, singularity core at twenty percent."

They both felt the first faint tugging of the outer vortex field grab the ship as she approached the Farpool on a steady course.

_Majoris_ was headed home. With any luck, she had passed all points on her test card and was now ready for her first operational mission...a mission called _Genesis_.

Chapter 6

UNIFORCE Farpool Operations Center

Muir City, the mid-Atlantic Ocean

July 7, 2123 (Earth U.T.)

0515 hours

Lined up together in their launch cradles, the three jumpships-- _Majoris, Scorpio_ and _Capricorn_ \-- resembled nothing so much as three plump seeds ready to be shot out into the water. All three Genesis crew stood by their hatches ready to board when Admiral Marx and UNSAC Angelika Komar appeared unannounced in the hangar bay with their staff entourage for a final pep talk.

Marx was grim, looking like a big bushy tree about to fall over. "This mission is critical...I don't have to remind you. We're not sure who or what the Coethi are but they're already here and we need to stop them from expanding. We need to strangle them at the source, when they first arrived and started making changes. I don't want heroes from Operation _Genesis_. I want results. Don't take needless chances. Just get the job done and get back. That is all."

With that, Marx turned about and strode off. UNSAC stayed behind, conversing with the test conductor.

"So much for the stirring pep talk," muttered Winston Blakely to Marco Kumar.

Kumar nodded. "Yeah, he sounds like my Scout leader."

" _Dismissed_!" shouted the battalion chief, Jump Sergeant Bartles. "Commence boarding! Launch in thirty minutes!"

Chase hustled his own crew onboard _Majoris_ and settled into pre-launch checks.

"Singularity engine?"

"On line, twenty percent."

"Flow vanes?"

"Set for launch."

"Landing gear?"

"Retracted and stowed."

"All call...go or no go...PSO?"

Yang came back. "Go."

"Navigator-Positioner?"

"Go here, Skipper."

And so it went. The crew of jumpship _Majoris_ , the Genesis 3 team, pronounced all systems ready and able.

Almost before they could think another thought, the command came down from the launch director in Ops. " _Launch_! All ships away in sequence!"

One after another, the three jump ships shot out from their launch bays into the blue-green waters above the seamount and settled themselves into stable cruise, lining up like chicks to a mother hen, as they approached the outer vortex fields of the Farpool.

_Majoris_ would be last, befitting her hull number of FSS-3.

"Picking up some vibrations," Yang announced. Her hands rested lightly on her controls, as Chase was maneuvering the ship to navigate the barrier of whirlpools surrounding the great vortex.

"QT1, singularity core to fifty percent," Chase said.

Win Blakely was on E deck, at the Quantum Tech station. "Increasing to fifty percent. All green here, Skipper."

"We're in a slight roll...fifteen degrees per second," Yang announced. "Nulling out all other rates." She nudged her own joy sticks slightly, bending _Majoris'_ course into the very heart of the whirlpool.

The spin had already started. By the time _Majoris_ entered the main Farpool, she would be spinning like a bullet in a rifled gun barrel.

"Here we go," Chase announced. "Hang on!"

The strobing light outside picked up and flashed crazily outside their windows. Sea foam and bubble froth lashed the portholes; hissing and rumbling was soon buried in a crescendo of roaring thunder. Centrifugal force was now pinning all of them against their seat straps.

To Chase, trips through the Farpool reminded him of whitewater rafting on fast mountain rivers, without the raft. He'd never surfed the Big Cahunas on the north shore of Oahu, but he'd done a lot of body surfing off Scotland Beach.

You stick a toe out this way and zoom off in one direction. Push a few fingers out that way and you go careening off in another direction.

Controlling a jumpship in the crashing maelstrom of the Farpool was like that, he told himself. With the old Seomish _tchee'lum_ , it was all a matter of feel and intuition, some sixth sense telling him to push _here_ , press _there_ , in order to navigate the infinite rapids of time and space inside the wormhole.

Now, with _Majoris_ , much of the steering was automated and he'd reluctantly learned to rely on her onboard systems to do a lot of the work. But that seemed to take all the fun out of the trip.

Like a tasty morsel being swallowed by a very big fish, _Majoris_ spun and gyrated right down the middle of the gullet that was the Farpool.

"Flow vanes to ten percent!" Chase ordered. "Singularity to one hundred percent!" It was the singularity core that generated the entanglement field that kept the ship centered in the throat of the vortex.

Right away, Kumar saw that was wrong. "Skipper...not ten per cent! Vanes should be at sixty percent! Time stream T-881...remember? We gotta pull real hard on the--"

"Do it! I know what I'm doing, NP! Ten percent!" Chase overrode his objections.

Alicia Yang glanced over, straining against the centrifugal force, then she looked back at a horrified Kumar and shrugged.

"Very well, flow vanes at ten percent."

Yang just shook her head. "That's not the mission, Commander! The book says sixty! If we—"

But Chase was too busy, letting the shimmying and shaking and shudders talk back to him through his stick. "Just keep us level, PSO! I'm changing the mission slightly...I'll explain when we get out of this!"

Yang took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her only comfort was knowing that Commander Meyer had more experience inside the Farpool that the rest of _Genesis_ combined. Silently, she prayed to her esteemed ancestors and fingered a small worry bead around her neck.

The inevitable tunnel vision now closed over the crew of jumpship _Majoris_ , squeezing them hard, narrowing their focus and concentration to ever-smaller thimbles of vision...the normal gray-out that happened toward the end of the transit.

With his final wisps of thought and consciousness, Chase tweaked the stick one last time, jamming a few fingers into the big wave and in an instant, just at the right moment, just right _NOW!,_ the claws of time stream T-215 yanked them hard and violently, almost like a barely controlled crash and sent them hurtling at breakneck speed down an infinitely curving corridor through a blinding sleet of polygons and tetrahedrals and cubes and then....

Then...nothing.

Chase felt his entire body slammed forward in a roaring rush of deceleration, blinded by a fierce pulsing light that even made his teeth hurt, and instinctively he held on to the controller tightly, trying to keep it centered, fighting yanks and pulls from every direction, until at last he was reasonably certain they were stable and the spin was falling off. Still trapped in the vortex, Chase rammed the ship's rudder hard over, while firing her jets to counteract the residual force of the spin. For a moment, they were all pinned sideways against the cockpit, until the force of the jets shot them through the core of the whirlpool and out into calmer waters.

"NP...make sure our flow vanes are retracted."

Alicia Yang came to slowly, breathing hard, wiping her face with one hand, realizing her worry beads were still wrapped around her fingers. She checked the instruments.

"Where the hell are we?" She checked out the forward windscreen. "This doesn't look like T-881."

Kumar was massaging his own board, making sure the flow vanes were retracted and scratching his head, perusing readouts too puzzling to believe. "We should be right at three hundred million years BCE...give or take. That time stream was precisely calculated to send us to that time."

"We're not at 881," Chase announced. He extended and adjusted _Majoris_ ' dive planes, steering the ship upward; they were still deep in some ocean, below the surface, but planing up gradually through blue-green murk. Light currents rocked the ship. "I made a slight change."

Yang glared at her commander. "Don't you think you should have let us in on this little side trip...where are we, anyway?"

_Majoris_ breached the ocean surface in an explosion of bubbles and foam and bobbed and rolled in the chop like a fat cork. It was a bright, sunny day at sea, wherever they were, late afternoon from the slant of the sun's rays through cumulus clouds overhead.

Chase craned to see out his windows. "If I'm right, we're in the Gulf, just off Shelley Beach Road...and this is January 2122. The ninth of January, if I figured this right."

Kumar was incredulous. "Skipper, excuse me for being dense, but did you say _January_...2122? We only went back...what? A year and a half? I thought—"

Chase held up a hand. "I know, I know. T-881. Three hundred million years BCE...believe me, I've memorized the whole mission plan. And we're still going there...just not yet. I have a little errand to run."

He explained the entire matter to the crew. Angie and Erika. The accident. The funeral. All the planning, all the calculating he'd done to find the right time stream, to memorize what he had to do to put _Majoris_ where she needed to be.

Yang sank back in her seat and closed her eyes. "Wow, I had no idea. Commander, I'm sorry about what happened...but you could have let us know."

Chase shrugged. "You're right. It was stupid and selfish, but this is basically insubordination and if word got out, I didn't want anyone but me to get in trouble. This way was better. You couldn't be charged or prosecuted for failure to follow orders if you didn't know."

By now, the rest of the crew had crowded onto the command deck. Macalvey was there, stroking his red beard thoughtfully, Tulandra, Blakely.

The Ponkti amphib was sympathetic. "What now? Any way we can help?"

"No," Chase was adamant. "No, you're all staying right here. And keep this ship out of sight. I don't know about temporal paradoxes or anomalies or meeting your parents before you were born or anything like that. This is something that I have to do and only I can do it."

Chase squeezed through the others and followed the gangway to F deck, where the ship's lockout was located. He pulled out a small bag from a locker. Tulandra and Macalvey were with him, curious. "Just some civilian clothes," he explained, hoisting up the bag. "I'll scoot out the airlock and head up a little creek I know. It winds its way off Half Moon Cove and meanders under Fountain Street. I can take that creek, assuming I don't run into too many gators, and come up within a few blocks of our house. 7772 Fountain Street...hey, I wonder if that cypress I planted last fall has grown any taller?"

Kumar was skeptical. "You really think you can stop this accident? Won't that mess something up with the time stream?"

"Probably, but I don't care. Angie's not going to die...at least, not _this_ way. Erika needs her mom. I read all the accident and investigation reports. The insurance people said the car controls had been tampered with...something in the drive system, some kind of malware had been inserted. They didn't know how or by whom. I got this—" he fished out a small thumb-shaped device from the bag "—from some techs at Muir City. It's a diagnostic 'roverbot'. I insert it into Angie's car and it sniffs out anything not supposed to be there in the drive system. Quarantines any malware so it can't execute. I just hope I can find it...without Angie seeing me."

Tulandra grabbed Chase's left armfin, one amphib to another. " _Litorkel ge_ , my friend. Smooth waters for you. Even if you always were half Omtorish."

They laughed at that, embraced and then Chase ducked into the airlock. Moments later, he had whooshed out and started stroking his way through the warm waters toward the creek entrance.

_I've dived these waters hundreds of times_ , he told himself. _Yep, right there, my old landmark...the fridge graveyard._ A huge pile of wrecked and coral-encrusted refrigerators and freezers had been dumped several kilometers off shore, intentionally, to form scaffolding for new reefs. Already the coral was advancing steadily, forming eerie and fantastic shapes only a few dozen meters below the surface, just off a narrow spit of sandbar.

Right where it always was.

He let a few boats cruise by overhead, avoiding getting caught up in their prop wash and hunted along the sandy ridge for the creek entrance. A faint current and the taste of fresh water mixing with salt gave it away.

That's where we go.

He headed up the creek at a steady clip, trying to stay below the surface most of the time and only occasionally lifting his head to check his surroundings. Several gators came nosing by but left him alone...thank goodness.

In time, he passed under the Fountain Street bridge and the loose cans and plastic bottles and shredded sofa cushions that always made him wonder and he knew he was near. When the creek bed began rising and narrowing—there was a man-made canal off to his right, but in the wrong direction—he surfaced, finding it now twilight, early evening and scouted out a line of azalea bushes nearby where he could change into civilian clothes.

Don't want any early evening strollers to encounter an amphib that looks like something from a bad movie.

Once changed, Chase pushed through more brush, shushed a few startled dogs, and made his way across several backyards to 7772 Fountain Street.

The lights were on inside. Angie...and probably Erika, were home.

_With any luck, I can get in, fix the problem and get out before anyone knows_. That would have to be the plan.

Chase went around to the back of the garage, aware that with the sunlight dropping off into early evening, the outside spots would be on soon. He went to the back door, pressed his thumb against the reader and was in seconds later.

The only car was their late-model Trekker RX ( _cerulean blue!_ ), with the baby seat already mounted in the back. Chase listened intently for a few moments to sounds from inside, trying to decide what was going on, who was where, what Angie and Erika might be up to. He could hear a vid going, and maybe some water running.

It was now or never.

Chase climbed into the front seat and lay on the floorboard below the panel. Thank goodness the Trekker was an autodrive model; there was no steering column, only a small joystick and some thumb wheels alongside. He groped for the diagnostic port he knew had to be there, found it and inserted the fixbot device he'd gotten from the IT guys at Farpool Ops. It was programmed to know what kind of software the Trekker autodrive system ran and to know when there was something installed that shouldn't be there.

Chase had synched the bot to his wristpad. Soon as he inserted the device, it chirped and his wristpad display showed something called _ScodosRex_...what the hell was that? The bot software had flagged it as 'foreign' and offered a fix. Chase tapped "CONTINUE" and the bot quickly quarantined and disabled the detected malware. No other flags, no other malware was detected.

Chase had practically memorized all the investigation reports on the accident, several of which indicated problems or glitches in the autodrive software as a likely culprit.

_I hope this fixes the problem_. He was left to wonder, as he backed out of the front seat and headed toward the door, just how malware had been able to penetrate the firewalls and security walls around the autodrive...perhaps something with the wireless connection. Trekker was always on, always talking to the Net. _Now, I've really messed with this time line but at least Angie and Erika will be safe._ He hoped. Temporal paradoxes be damned.

Chase reached the door and was headed out when the door to their kitchen opened and Angie stepped out, carrying a basket of clothes for the washer. She saw Chase at the outside door and was so startled, she dropped the basket.

" _Chase_! Chase, my God...what are you doing here? I thought you—" She cocked her head quizzically, eyes narrowing.

_Great...now I've done it._ He thought fast. "Hi...uh, yeah...I...well, that is...I had to come back—" He ransacked his memory, trying to figure out what to say, and what not to say. This was January 2122...a couple of days before the accident. He remembered then: he was supposed to be in training for the _Trident_ mission, supposed to be at Gateway, doing sims and tests and fit checks. "I...kind of forgot...something, see--?"

Angie scooped up all the clothes and Chase came over to help. "Oh, yeah? What did you forget this time...your head? Honestly, Chase—"

"No really..." he gave her a quick peck on the cheek. That didn't work and she pushed him away in annoyance. "It was...er, some drives. Flashtabs...they had some tech manuals on them...I need them."

She looked skeptically at him. "Aren't you supposed to be at the Cape? You've got a launch in...what, a day? Chase—"

He shrugged. "I thought I might have left them in the car...but they weren't there."

"You could have come in the normal way...like through the front door. Or messaged me at least. _Really—"_

Now he had to wriggle out of this somehow. "Guess they're not here after all. You're right...I'd better get going. My bike's outside...and traffic's bad enough on the autoway. It'll take at least three hours. Mission briefing early tomorrow...you know how it is."

"Yeah, that's the problem...I _do_ know how it is."

When he thought about this moment years later, he could never really explain why he did what he did. Angie was as beautiful as ever, even with her amphib armfins and gill sacs. She'd let her hair grow a little and had started sweeping it back on one side, an upswept look called the Wave or something. Very fetching. She done something to her eyes, even with the extra eyelids, she'd added some enhancer, some eyeliner. Still those great track-star legs. And the cute butt...even her gym shorts couldn't hide that.

He wanted to abduct her and Erika right then and there. Don't trust the fixbot. It was just software and software always had bugs. Just scoop them both up and take them out of harm's way. It wouldn't be hard. Just grab his little daughter and pile them into the Trekker and back out and be gone, before they knew what had hit them.

"Angie—"

It was the way he said it that caught her attention, drew her face away from the dirty clothes that had been destined for the wash.

She had already started sorting whites from everything else, making little piles on an old card table they used for the wash, when she looked up expectantly. "What?"

"There's something I need to tell you."

Her mind was still on sorting the clothes. "So, tell me. I need to get these started and get back to Erika."

"Well, this is going to sound crazy, but...well, I'd like you to come with me. I want to show you something. Down by the beach."

Now she looked up, a question on her face. "Are you out of your mind? E's got a few sniffles and she's all cranky and she needs to be fed, changed and put to bed. What's down at the beach anyway...wait, don't tell me...is it lots of water?"

"I know this sounds odd but I wouldn't ask otherwise. It's really important. Come on...it'll just take a few minutes. We could drop E off at my folks' house."

" _No,_ Chase. What part of no don't you understand? I've got Mom duty here and you need to be at the Cape. Get going, you dolt."

"Angie, your life may be in danger here. You and Erika both." He said it in a sort of half-menacing way, not meaning they were being stalked but it was sort of true, wasn't it?

That made her take notice. "What are you talking about? Nothing's going on around here...unless you count Prissy getting out of her pen every night...honestly, if the Baxters don't get a new gate lock—"

"Just humor me, okay? I'm trying to do the right thing here. I think your lives are in danger and the answer's down at the beach. Only take a few minutes. I'll even call Mom. She won't mind taking care of Erika for an hour."

Angie took a deep breath and shook her head sadly. She'd learned long ago to occasionally humor Chase in his whims. He did have a sort of sixth sense about him. Maybe it was the amphib stuff. "A joy ride, huh? Chase Meyer, I don't know what's in that alleged mind of yours but...tell you what. I'll do this on one condition."

"What?"

"When we get back here, you help me get Little One fed and bathed and changed and put to bed. You know, she does like it when you read stuff to her."

Chase was willing to grasp at anything, anything that would get her away from the house...even if they had to take the Trekker to do it. It was a risk he'd have to take.

"Deal. I'll even put her in the car seat."

Ten minutes later, Chase was backing the Trekker out of the garage and driving them across town, very carefully, watching everything, the autodrive disabled and locked out, to the Meyers' house at 818 Rainbow Court. Mom and Dad were watching some vid from NatGeo and were pleasantly surprised and quite pleased to take care of their infant granddaughter for an hour. Erika grinned, squealed, giggled, then started crying all at the same time. Then she spit up.

Ten minutes later, the Trekker was parked a block from the Turtle Key Surf and Board Shop, along Shelley Beach road. The shop was closed for the night and the sky was purple with twilight. Angie looked over at her husband, a half-question forming on her lips.

"This isn't about parking and petting, is it? Chase—"

"Angie, I haven't been exactly honest with you tonight."

"Why am I not surprised? Chase, what have you done? Did you rob a bank or something?"

"No of course not. Actually—" he wondered if what he was about to say and do might bollix up space-time and destroy the whole universe. Probably not. But he did wonder all the same. "Actually, it's probably worse."

"Okay, buster, spill it...all of it."

So he spent the next few minutes explaining just what was going on. The bot-jacked drive system inside the Trekker. The accident. The funeral. The different time streams. That he—and the Genesis 3 team--had come back from seventeen months in the future to stop the accident.

"You can't go back to the house," he told her firmly. "In fact, we should actually get out of the car and leave it here...it's not safe. I don't know who's behind this. Probably some pimply Bulgarian teenager in his bedroom, but it doesn't matter. You're in danger. Erika's in danger. I came back...because I love you. I don't want anything to happen...hell, I don't know what might happen now that I've done this much." He took her hands in his. "Ang, I don't want to lose you."

She could see from his eyes and mouth that he was deadly serious. This was clearly no whim. But she had long go learned to trust Chase's instincts, however nutty they seemed. After all, the two of them had traveled through the Farpool together, more than once, and they'd survived that. How many nurse assistants at Creekside Medical could say that?

"I'm sensing that there's more you want to say...or show me. There's more to this than you're telling me."

"A lot more," he admitted. "Look, the ship's just offshore, submerged. Let Erika stay at my folks' house for awhile. I'll take you to the ship, let you meet the team. You'll see I'm not making any of this up. After that, you can make up your own mind. But I want you to know that it's important, maybe critical, maybe even life and death, that you believe me. And I want you come with me."

Angie just crossed her arms and frowned. "And where is it again exactly we're going?"

"Right now, to jumpship _Majoris_...she's parked on the seabed a half kilometer beyond the lighthouse."

"But my clothes—"

"Leave 'em here...it's late, getting dark. If anyone asks, we're skinny dipping."

"Right...in the Gulf...in the middle of January." But she did as he asked and moments later, they were plowing through light low-tide surf and plunging headfirst below the waves to the sandy bottom off Shelley Beach.

There were advantages to being an Amphib, after all.

Chase led her along a shallow ravine and sand bar, past the fridge graveyard and assorted piles of shoes, plastic bottles and the rusting hulk of a late model Chevy. In time, they came upon something that Angie initially took for a small round hill, only to stop startled when its props started spinning.

It was _Majoris_.

The two of them cycled through the airlock and emerged wet and dripping onto F deck. Faces all around peered down at them.

One by one, Chase introduced the crew of Genesis 3.

After drying off, and for Angie, sucking in some more air to prime her lungs properly, Chase led her up to the command deck. Alicia Yang, Dr. Macalvey and Tulandra followed.

"What is Genesis?" asked Angie, situating herself in the commander's seat, her fingers delicately feeling the controls and displays.

Chase and Macalvey explained about the Coethi and what Farpool Service, along with UNIFORCE brass, thought the Bugs were up to.

"You remember how it was on Seome...with the wavemaker and the Umans?"

"Vaguely."

"When all the thousands of Seomish emigrated—the _Kel'vish'tu_ —the theory is that somehow some of the Coethi came along for the ride. That thing in the South China Sea was where they initially congregated. Now the Chinese are working with them--"

"Maybe working _for_ them," Tulandra suggested.

"—exactly and there is evidence—intelligence—that the Coethi were here before...a long time ago."

Macalvey picked up the story and explained about how the Coethi may have altered virus genomes from millions of years ago. "It's possible, Miss, that every virus on Earth today is descended from these alterations. There are theories that viruses today are little more than spies and saboteurs for the Coethi, with some kind of plan to get rid of us...or some such. Not that I buy all that, but it _is_ a theory."

"So your mission is to—"

"To take this ship...Ang, it's just like the Seomish _tchee'lum_...back through the Farpool and find when and how that genome alteration happened."

"And stop it," Tulandra added emphatically.

Chase went on. "There are other Genesis missions, in ships like this one, going to Mars, Europa, any place where life could have or did get started. Farpool Service, and UNIFORCE, thinks this is the best way, maybe the only way, to keep the Bugs from completing their plan."

Macalvey added, "If we can prevent this virus modification from ever happening and put the buggers back on their normal evolutionary trajectory, we'll likely have thrown a serious wrench into their plans, whatever they may be."

"As long as the Chinese don't interfere," Chase told her. "That's the wild card...we don't know what they're up to."

Angie's head was spinning. Bugs, viruses, Genesis, the Chinese, Farpool, jumpships. She blinked and slumped back in the seat. "Chase, I'm confused. I thought you were going on the _Trident_ mission...to Europa. Leaving in a few months...to investigate that...thing, anomaly, whatever."

Chase realized he would have to come completely clean. "Look, I didn't want to get into all this but I guess I'll have to. This ship, all of us, me included...we kind of like, came from the future. Your future. Seventeen months in the future, in fact. _Trident's_ already come and gone; I came back. We couldn't deal with the Bugs there...Objective Alpha. Now this mission is supposed to go back to the source of the problem."

Angie just closed her eyes. "Chase, if I didn't know you better—"

"Wait, hear me out...there something else you should know." Chase went on to describe the accident...and what happened...what would happen.

Angie's eyes popped open. She stared back at her husband. "You don't look sick to me, Chase."

"I'm _not_ sick. I'm...I swear, Angie, this is the truth... _all_ of this." Macalvey and Tulandra and faces she had already forgotten, peering into the command deck, all nodded solemnly.

"Maybe I'm the one who's sick." She just shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut and willed everything to go away, to vanish, like the bad dream it had to be.

But it wasn't. Chase's face, and the others around her, stayed stubbornly real.

"What do you want from me?" She knew it would ultimately come down to this. "What do you want me to do about any of this?"

Chase gripped her hand and squeezed it, in a way he didn't often do. Their eyes met.

"I want you to come with us... _hold on_ , before you say anything, just listen to my reasons, okay?"

"Okay."

"I think I fixed _Benjamin_ so he won't go out of control. But I'm not sure of it. I don't know what's going on or why someone would have done that. Since I can't be sure of my fix, if you come with us, you can't die in that crash."

Angie just looked at him. Chase and his blond surfer cut, his big ears, his oddly appealing gill sacs flexing in and out, his extra eyelids making him look like he'd just awakened from a long sleep. "From what you're telling me, we could _all_ die on this Genesis mission of yours. What's the difference?"

"The difference is...the car crash is a certainty, in this time stream. The mission, well...no one knows. Nothing's certain in that time stream, or time streams. None of us knows what we're doing."

"Why does _that_ not surprise me? And are you really allowed to go around mixing and matching time streams like this...like women's accessories, for God's sake?"

"Hell if I know. I do know this much...if you stay here, in this time stream, you will die in that crash." Now his eyes and extra eyelids were pleading with her. "That leaves me and Erika alone...Angie— _I went to your funeral sixteen months ago_ , in this time stream. I—" Something was wet along the edges of those extra eyelids, "—Ang, I can't go through that again. Come with me. Now."

"Can't I even pack for this big camping trip?" she asked. "And what about Little One...we're just going to leave her with your folks, just like that? Get real, Chase. I can't do that."

"You're right...I'll go up to the surface and call them...tell them something's come up...could they keep Erika for a few days. That's all. I'm sure they'll do it."

"Well, you're more sure than I am." In that moment, Angie knew she would give in and go along. For better or worse, they were a pair. His life and her life had always been tangled up like spaghetti, even before getting married. If you tried to unravel spaghetti, what did you have: long strips of nothing. Mush it all up and pour sauce on it, and then you had something you could eat.

She knew they were about to try one hell of a sauce now.

"Okay." That's all she could say. That's all that would come out.

"Angie, if you don't do this, if _we_ don't do this, you and I may never actually meet and there won't be any Erika."

"I _said_ okay, I'll go along. I must be crazy but I'll do it. But we'd better give your folks a call."

"Done."

"Is there enough room for her?" Tulandra asked. "Genesis 3's planned for five crew members. The Doctor here was added at the last moment. Now we have a seventh?"

The Scotsman took umbrage at that. "Hey, I do my part. And I can skip a few meals if needed..." he chuckled, patting an ample belly, "Plenty here to go around."

Chase made a decision. "I'll take _Majoris_ up to the surface. While I'm maneuvering, take Angie aft and make up some quarters, okay?"

Blakely was outside the command deck but had heard everything. "I think I can rig something up on E deck, maybe beside the shop area. Follow me, sweetie."

Angie bridled at the QT1's patronizing tone but left the command deck with Blakely.

Chase and Yang then spun up _Majoris'_ propulsors and ascended to the surface. Topside, it was windy and mild at night, light chop buffeting and rocking the ship in low swells. Chase made a call on the ship's comm system to the Meyers' house at Rainbow Court.

The chat went longer than he wanted—moms were like that—but Mrs. Meyer seemed to understand. She was sympathetic over Chase's story and if she suspected there wasn't a shred of truth to any of it, she didn't let on.

"It's okay, son, you don't have to explain. I know Angie wants to spend as much time with you as possible before the mission." He knew she meant the _Trident_ mission. "Of course, we'd love to keep Erika for a few days. You're back, when exactly again?"

"Just a few days, probably Friday or Saturday. After that, the crew's in quarantine and family has to keep their distance. We don't launch for— "he did some quick mental arithmetic—"several weeks yet and that's from Gateway."

"Enjoy your time together, honey. This is what grandparents are for."

Chase said goodbye and thought: _Wow...that was way easier than I thought it would be._ He went aft to inspect Blakely's arrangements for Angie and pronounced them satisfactory.

An hour later, the Genesis 3 crew, with their not-quite-so-willing addition, were strapped in to their seats and headed for the Farpool.

For Angie, it was just like it had been before, just like it had been the first time. Going into the Farpool was like falling down an elevator shaft.

The force began to increase steadily, a centrifugal force that soon shoved her to one side of the compartment and pressed her hard against the walls. Worse, the ship began a slow roll, a rotation that didn't remain slow for long, but picked up rate at a steady clip.

Soon, they were spinning enough to become disoriented and dizzy.

"Chase...uh, Mr. Blakely, sir...my stomach...I don't feel so—"

Angie's words were suddenly lost in a bright flash of light, a searing, painfully white strobing light that flooded the compartment and blinded her.

" _Ow_...I can't see—"

The spin kept accelerating and moments later, Angie had passed out.

Genesis 3 Mission Objective Coordinates

Pangaea, Time Stream T-881

310.3 million years ago (mya)

Late Carboniferous Period

The Farpool finally spit jumpship _Majoris_ out right into a shallow, steaming lake beneath a blood red sky, a sky thick with the sulfurous fumes and fat rain drops drumming on the hull. After the vibrations subsided, Chase checked with the PSO, Alicia Yang.

"How close to our target coordinates, Alicia?"

Yang studied her board and its plots and displays. "Best I can make out, we're within a few decades of the temporal focus, based on your maneuvers and our physical landing point is here—" she pointed to a map. "Southeastern edge of this big continent, about six hundred forty kilometers from the equator. _Majoris_ will auto-confirm once she takes sky sightings." Yang peered out the porthole at the steam and fog enveloping the ship. "If she can even take sightings in this crap."

Chase studied his own map display. "It's called Pangaea, according to this. Supercontinent. All the Earth's land masses have come together like a big puzzle into this one continent. Let's get outside and see if we can detect any Coethi presence." Chase then got on the ship's 1MC and said, "Okay, troops...let's consider this an opposed-entry visit. Get all your gear together, arm weapons and button up. We leave the ship in ten minutes."

Navigator Marco Kumar watched the bright red-yellow tongues of lava flowing down the slopes of a distant mountain. "Ours not to reason why...."

_Majoris'_ lockout was cycled and the Genesis 3 team exited, two at a time. First order of business was to set up some kind of defensible perimeter around the ship, out to a distance of several hundred meters. This was done by Tulandra klu, the Ponkti amphib, serving as their Containment Systems tech.

Tulandra plopped down into the shallow lake they had landed in and was immediately brushed by a large lizard-like creature undulating its way across the surface. " _Cyclops_ says it's a tetrapod, probably _Hylonomus_." She adjusted her headgear slightly to get more annotation in her eyepiece. "Sauropsid reptile...can move at high speed land or water."

Win Blakey had a somewhat jaundiced view of all amphibs. "Tu, that's just one of your older sisters. Say hello."

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

"Launching ANAD sensorbots now," she announced.

The mist dispersed and vanished from view. But now, Genesis 3 had eyes and ears to probe their surroundings and warn them of approaching danger.

Dr, Macalvey splashed up onto the bank and made a face. "Ugh. Like a Scottish bog, only hotter." He took a few deep breaths, did some deep-knee bends. "Oxygen content is higher here."

Yang concurred, 'sniffing' the air with a probe she extracted from her web belt. "Reading O2 levels now at thirty-five percent...that is higher than what we're used to. Earth normal in our time stream is about twenty-two."

"Must be why my throat's so dry," Chase decided.

"Wow," muttered Kumar, grabbing a small rotted stump for balance. "Check out the wind gusts."

"That one was over forty kph," said Tulandra. "The Earth was rotating faster in this time stream. _Cyclops_ is saying the sidereal day is about twenty-two hours versus twenty-four."

"That explains the wind," Chase decided.

"And the high oxygen levels explain all these fires," Macalvey added. "Feels like we're inside an oven."

All around the lake, the rolling terrain was host to dozens of fires, spiraling wind-blown ashes into a thick blanket that coated everything. Mountains ringed the lake and their landing zone. Raucous screeches caught their attention and all eyes turned skyward.

A V-shaped formation of long-winged creatures soared out of the ash and fog, swooping down on them, pulling up from their dive at the last moment. Yang aimed her own head-mounted _Cyclops_ at their tails and wings as they disappeared into the fog again. Seconds later, annotated text scrolled on her eyepiece.

" _Meganeura_ — "she read off. "Believe it or not, those were giant dragonflies. Eighty- centimeter wing spans. Ugh—"

Macalvey muttered, "Just another beautiful day in the neighborhood. Edinburgh this is not."

Chase said, "Win, you got anything yet?"

The QT1 checked the displays on his own _Cyclops_. "There's _something_ just tickling the sensorbots...can't quite grab it yet. Tu, can you run your bots a little higher? I pinched off ten percent of your swarm...give me twenty percent. That should make resolution better. Go higher and spread out."

Alicia Yang was grim. "Any kind of decoherence wake around here should be cause for suspicion. I can't imagine anything quantum occurring naturally in this hellhole during the late Carboniferous Period."

Kumar and Macalvey went with Angie Gilliam to a small hillock nearby for a better view. Angie was sweating profusely in the hot, humid air and had to rest against a nearby stump, which promptly shuddered, growled and moved off on four legs, startling everyone. The tetrapod headed for a nearby pool and plopped in.

Kumar checked his _Cyclops_. "Looks like you disturbed a _Labyrinthodontia._ It says here they can grow to five or six meters."

Angie made a face. "I've seen gators in creeks around Scotland Beach smaller than that. How long do we have to stay here?"

Just then, Win Blakely uttered a sharp cry. " _Got 'em_! Bingo! Big deco wake disturbance...something out there is really snapping spacetime, just like a wet rag."

"Heading and range?" Chase asked.

Blakely walked around like a blind man in a drunken fog as he adjusted his _Cyclops_ for the feed from the bots overhead. "I make the heading that way—"he pointed into the sun, to the northwest. "Best heading is three two five degrees. Locus is at least six hundred klicks from here, diffuse but strong. _Really_ strong."

"Got to be artificial," Yang decided.

"Okay," Chase waved everybody to come back. "Re-board the ship. We'll have to make a short flight along Win's vector. Grab all your gear." He stepped carefully into the shallow lake and sloshed his way to the hatch. "And watch where you step. Everything around here is alive."

One by one, the Genesis 3 crew climbed back into _Majoris_ and the hatch was sealed. Moments later, the jumpship lifted away from its watery landing spot and rose into the fog-shrouded sky. Chase put them on Win's heading and the ship lurched forward, gaining altitude.

"Half propulsor," Chase told Yang. "I don't want to fly past the target. Win, give me a count when we're close."

"Copy that, Skipper."

_Majoris_ cruised along at several thousand meters until the land below began to shift, from a plain dotted with smoking mountains and steaming lakes and fire columns and fumaroles to a sandy shelf and then a broad blue-green sea, extending to the horizon in all directions.

"Paleo-Tethys Sea, the map says," Yang observed, occasionally taking a peek out her side window. "We must have originally landed on the edge of a place called Gondwana. This ocean will eventually become part of the Atlantic. Pangaea is rifting apart now."

Tulandra was intrigued. "Just think, three hundred million years from now, a big waterspout called the Farpool will put twenty-thousand refugees from Seome down there somewhere."

"Land up ahead," Chase announced. He studied the terrain through the clouds below them. "Looks like jungle too. This should be fun."

"Start descending, Skipper. Target locus is less than a hundred kilometers, dead ahead."

Chase manipulated _Majoris'_ speed and altitude to bring the jumpship to a dead hover over the edge of a vast swamp. "Tell me the target's not down there, in that swamp."

Blakely shook his head. "Sorry, Skipper. Main source is just ahead, along that shoreline. Below those big trees."

Angie had started wearing a _Cyclops_ herself. She read off the annotation on her eyepiece. "You mean the _Lepidostrobus_? It says they can grow thirty meters high and two meters in diameter."

"That's the one," Blakely said.

Chase took a deep breath. "If I can squeeze us through the branches...I'll put the ship down on that far shoreline. I'm not too keen on landing in the swamp itself. I just hope the ground is firm enough."

Down they went.

They came through a low hanging steam bank to the very edge of the swamp. _Majoris_ settled down to a rattling landing and was still. Overhead, lightning veined in sharp bursts across purple and rose-colored clouds, thick and steaming overhead. The ground trembled and through the trees, they could see the red glow of another volcano, simmering and smoking. It seemed about to blow.

The swamp was extensive, filled with moss-covered trees, low-hanging branches and mossy patches on rocks surrounding the edge of the water. Cypress knees looked vaguely menacing in the twilight. A faint mist hovered over the water's surface.

Nothing moved. No screeches, no howler monkeys. No birds cawing in the air. Steam and smoke and shuddering ground were all that gave movement to the swamp.

"Looks like the Everglades," said Angie.

"Right. Let's get to work. Win, it's your show."

They scouted along the swamp banks for a few minutes. It was a vast wetland, thick with ropy vine and large, lobe and ear-shaped leaves, damp with moisture and humidity, hanging nearly to the soft spongy ground. The Genesis 3 crew picked their way carefully through leaf piles and clinging vine, occasionally hacking and whacking their way through heavy underbrush, wary of slithering things underfoot, but they found none. Nothing living at all, not even flies or mosquitoes. Still, Angie nearly turned an ankle in a small sinkhole nearly hidden between two tree trunks.

Finally, Macalvey begged for a halt. They stood over a narrow bubbling, foaming inlet, clearly the water was flowing somewhere from here. The Scottish virologist rubbed his ankle for a moment, wincing in pain. "I think it'll be all right."

Blakely probed for more decoherence wakes, the tell-tale signature of quantum entanglement.

"Not far," he announced. "Maybe three hundred meters around the shoreline."

Chase had already primed his own HERF rifle. "Set weapons to level one. Tulandra, do we have eyes and ears?"

"ANAD away," she announced. The mist of the botswarm was soon lost in the steam and humid air, its flickers and light pops vanishing overhead in the low-hanging limbs and branches.

The ground rumbled and all of them looked through the trees. There were tall mountains in the distance. The summit of the nearest one glowed orange-red in the cathedral gloom of the forest.

"Looks like we might have a blow soon," Yang said. "I don't like the looks of that one. Could that glow be part of our target...Coethi at work?"

"Could be," Chase said. "My question is: how do we get the hell out of here if we have to?"

"If we're actually here," Kumar muttered. "Wherever here is."

"Hey, what's that?"

At the same time, they all spied a fog bank roiling across the top of the swamp. Tendrils of steam drifted in patches.

"What's what?"

" _That."_

Now, the fog bank had taken on a more menacing look. As they looked more closely, they could see small flashes and pops of light within the fog, as if it were thick with fireflies.

"Those aren't fireflies, Skipper."

The hairs on the back of Chase's neck stood up. "And that's not fog either. Unless I'm seeing things, that a swarm of some kind."

"Yeah and it's coming our way."

Blakely's eyes almost popped out of his head. "Uh, folks...massive deco wakes there...massive signal...dead ahead, closing on our position."

Helping Angie and Macalvey stumble through stagnant pools and thick underbrush, they moved sideways along the bank of the swamp but the swarm swelled and soon blocked their way. Chase figured they would just backtrack the way they had come but the swarm filled in behind them and they soon found themselves trapped on a narrow spit of dry land, surrounded by cypress knees and piles of moss-covered rocks.

Though the swarm had nearly enveloped them, at least it hadn't closed any further.

"Look!" Tulandra pointed at several patches of swarm, now dropping down closer to the ground. As they watched, the light flickering inside changed pattern, becoming more intense, pulsing faster, almost like a strobe and the fingers of the swarm swept right across the moss covering on top of the rocks, pausing momentarily at each moss patch.

"Fantastic," Macalvey breathed. "It's writing genetic code, Chase, right into the cells of that moss. Injecting something directly into the cells."

"Maybe this is how life got started," Angie said.

"No," said Macalvey, adjusting his own _Cyclops_. "This is where life got _changed."_

"The _Coethi_ ," said Chase. A cold chill ran down his back.

Then, Yang spotted something. "Look...look _there_ , though the fog. That sandbar—"

Startled, Chase squinted to see better. It was clear they had unexpected visitors. All along the sandbar, shapes and figures like wraiths moved silently, stooping and bending down to collect something, bagging their prizes, then moving further along the sandbar.

It was Tulandra who first recognized one of them. "He's _Ponkti,"_ she cried out. "In a mobilitor... I'd know that hoarse breathing anywhere."

Yang had already recognized two others. "And Chinese...with them. There--!" she pointed to some human figures among the group. "Those two are Chinese!"

Chase had a growing suspicion that his Genesis 3 teammates were right.

Somehow, in some way he hadn't yet figured out, a small team of Ponkti and Chinese explorers had come through the Farpool to the same time and place as _Majoris_. Now they seemed to be assisting the swarm of Coethi in some unknown task, perhaps making an alliance with the Bugs, perhaps trying to learn the secrets of their technology.

The mission of Genesis 3 had suddenly become much more complicated.
Chapter 7

Montauk Point, New York

July 10, 2123 (Earth U.T.)

1830 hours

The Sons of Adam had maintained a safe house along the shore for several years now and Senator Ryan Palette had long felt that, as long as you had to maintain a secure, low-profile location to conduct your business, it might as well be at the very eastern tip of Suffolk County, Long Island, among the green slopes and rockpiles of the south shore, with a spectacular view of the rolling surf right off the stucco and clapboard veranda.

The place had once hosted all-night parties for the Astors. _What schemes must have been hatched inside these walls?_ Even Andy Warhol had spent time at the seaside mansion...an Italianate marble and fieldstone palace that dominated a rocky headland just a few kilometers from the lighthouse.

Jack Worth seemed to be thinking the same thing, as he snagged a canape and drink from the servbot whirring by. Tim Holland, Palette's other guest, availed himself of a handful of pirozhkis and a beer.

The servbot pivoted, having completed its assigned mission, and retreated quietly to the kitchen.

Worth sniffed at his brandy. "Just think, Senator, out there about a thousand kilometers or so is the Farpool...whirling around like a toilet drain, just dropping all kinds of crap on us. Sea People, amphibs, who knows what else? All you have to do is say the word and we'll plug that drain for good. And make Muir City wish they'd never heard of the Sons of Adam."

Palette was thoughtful, stirring his whiskey with a finger. He licked a fingertip. "I don't want a disaster, Jack. Or too many casualties. Just teach 'em a lesson. And shutdown that damned Farpool for good."

Worth harrumphed. "Well, you know what happens when you make an omelet, Senator."

"Yeah, but Muir City is not an all-night diner."

Tim Holland stepped out onto the veranda and let the stiff early evening breezes slap him in the face. He turned back to face the screened door. "Senator, this should have been done a long time ago."

"The time wasn't right, Tim. Now we've got millions behind us, millions who see what amphibs have done to our world, our country, to our humanity."

Worth snorted. "Stroke of genius, Senator, if you ask me. Using Dr. Josey Holland's son to front an assault on the Farpool. The gem of UNIFORCE itself, the froghead bastards. And Muir City too...kick that beehive into the fifth dimension, that's what we'll do."

"Sons' Guns are ready, Worth?"

Worth nodded, stuffing more canapes in his mouth. Crab and sauce dribbled down his chin, which he quickly wiped away. "Tuned to a perfect pitch, Senator. We topped off our assault training with a live exercise...found a bare spit of an island in the South Atlantic, not far from Ascension. We did several days of full-assault live-fire training." Worth rubbed his shoulders. "I have to tell you it was brutal...I've got the bruises and sore shoulders to prove it. But yes, all elements are ready and anxious for the balloon to go up."

Ryan Palette wasn't one to believe in omens but he couldn't help believing that _now_ was the time, conditions were auspicious and the longer the Sea People and their amphib cronies were allowed to infect society, the harder it would be to root out the disease and make the world whole again...for real human beings.

It had been in June 2119 when a newly elected Senator Palette formed an advocacy organization called Sons of Adam (SOA). SOA advocated for legislation and regulations that would preserve "our original heritage, what God gave us in the Garden." From contamination by the Sea People and by the growing popularity of amphib culture. By 2121, thousands of people around the world had gone through the conicthyosis procedure and become Seomish-human hybrids, much to the displeasure of parents and politicians everyone, especially Palette. Amphib culture, the Amphib look, Amphib foods, traditions and beliefs were becoming all the rage. SOA viewed this as a grave threat to America and similar organizations began erupting around the world.

In November 2120, while campaigning for fellow Founders Party candidates (and SOA believers) in Nevada, Palette had been wounded in an assassination attempt in Reno. Recovery was slow (the injuries were in his lungs) and even the nanobotic/medbotic assistance left him with shortness of breath and nasty chest bruises. The incident only hardened Palette and his view of Amphibs darkened and became more extreme. Though he had no public association with the SOA's extreme wing, he did nothing to discourage organized and systematic violence against Amphibs and Seomish in general.

In March 2121, Palette's wife Cecelia died suddenly of a stroke. Palette was devastated and took a year off from politics, emerging only to campaign for re-election to the Senate. Despite vigorous opposition to his views on immigrants, amphibs, and Sea People, the sympathy vote put him back into office in November 2122 for another 6-year term. In the Senate, Palette was known as the Hectoring Hammer (or just "The Hammer), as the hammer was the symbol of the Founders and also of SOA.

In January 2123, Palette had been censured by the Senate for inflammatory speeches and statements on Capitol Hill deriding Amphibs and praising what he called the 'Normals,' who made this country work. The censure caused him to undertake an arduous cross-country speaking tour in defense of SOA, during which he promised to change his party affiliation again, this time from the Founders (who had disowned him) to Sons of Adam. Huge crowds clamored to hear his fiery speeches. News and media observers compared him to George Wallace.

Toward the end of his tour, Palette collapsed on stage in Tucson, ostensibly from exhaustion. Doctors scanned Palette and determined he had multiple late-stage lung cancer and had perhaps a year to live, without serious medbotic intervention. This caused an emotional crisis for Palette, who had to allow medbotic technology and surgical techniques developed from the Seomish (genetic offshoots from _mah'jeet_ ) to enter his body if he was to survive. In a hospital in Louisville, he met counselor Amanda Strom who worked with Palette to make the decision and accept it. He authorized the med interventions and the resulting prognosis appeared favorable for long-term survival. Now Palette contained within his body genetic traces of Seomish mah'jeet micro-organisms which, along with medbotic patrol swarms, kept the cancer under control.

As 2123 went on, Palette was undergoing a major shift in life. He enjoyed a growing relationship turning into something romantic with Amanda. And now, he sported internal medical devices and organisms from the very Sea People and amphibs that he and SOA had sworn to destroy, organisms necessary for his very survival.

It was the U.S. Supreme Court decision in May 2123 allowing US federal money to be used for _conicthyosis_ procedures to be performed nationwide with taxpayer support in special clinics that snapped Palette out of his introspective funk and put him back on the campaign trail, once again delivering fiery oratory against the spread of these dangerous amphib ideas to all parts of America.

"Run through the details for me again. I just want to be sure."

"Sure." Worth pressed a few buttons on his wristpad. Instantly, a 3-D projection of Muir City and the nearby Farpool materialized in the air, slightly pixelated and slowly rotating like a barbecue spit over the sofa and table where Howie the servbot had just refreshed their drinks. Constructed from a live drone feed, Palette could see tiny human figures moving about the upper promenade decks and observation platforms of the huge complex, seemingly unaware that they were miniature actors in what would soon be a theater of destruction.

"Sons' Guns has two main assault teams. A-Team will approach from the air, from a northeastern bearing, low altitude, and insert several platoons' worth of troops through holes our operatives will punch in their bot screens. It's all tightly coordinated and timed and we've trained to split-second timing to make it work. Plus, A-Team's got the latest swarm tech, bots we 'purchased' from our Chinese sources."

"I didn't think the Chinese wanted to be directly involved in this."

Worth smiled enigmatically. "They don't. Let's just say the bots we're using are military grade, the equal of anything Quantum Corps can throw against us and won't be traceable to anything but a few shell and dummy corporations...the Peoples' Liberation Army is pretty good at covering their tracks."

"You said there's more."

Worth chuckled, watching Tim Holland orbit slowly around the 3-D rendering of Muir City, stooping down to squint at some details.

"Oh, there is. At the same time as A-Team's assault, B-Team is approaching from the southwest, underwater. Two platoons, with our own submersibles, again made available to us from certain, shall we say, 'sources' that wish to remain anonymous. It was a real effort to hide the origins of the equipment, two re-purposed German Type 21 boats, an old Song-class boat that sank and was raised and refurbished, secretly of course. Even a boat from some narco-lords in Colombia. All completely invisible to any nosy authorities, like UNISEA or the Americans."

"Tim here is on one of the teams?"

Worth patted the boy's shoulders, as he came in from the windswept veranda, drink in hand. "This guy's been training with some of our UWAT teams. Underwater Assault Teams. We've even got ex-U.S. and UNISEA people among us, real live-fire experience, combat veterans. And then there are the _remoras_ , the remote autonomous ships, to sweep ahead and draw off surveillance and defensive fire."

"Remoras?"

"Drone subs. Got those babies from a Malaysian oilfield company...with links back to Beijing. Three of them. So you see, we're all set, Senator. Give us two days to stage our men and supplies into position and then give the word and sit back. We'll do the rest."

"Shutting down the Farpool is the key to everything. You know once you're inside Muir City, it's only a matter of time before UNIFORCE comes in with overwhelming force."

Worth shrugged. "I think the UN'ies will think twice about storming the City when we have so many hostages. Not to mention the critical parts of the singularity core, which will be in our possession from the get-go. Once we grab that, there's no easy way to get the Farpool re-started." Worth let off a low chuckle. "And our Chinese friends will like _that_ part the best."

Palette let Howie the servbot whisk his glass away and declined a re-fill. "They're coming along on their own efforts...trying to create their own little Farpools?"

"With what we can offer, it won't take them much longer. My sources tell me they've already established some kind of communication with those Bugs they've got corralled in the Pacific."

Now Tim Holland looked up from the 3-D rendering with a question. "Mr. Worth said we'd be getting help from Gaia Force. Is that true?"

Palette nodded. "If it works out. You know how picky those tree-huggers can be."

Gaia Force was a radical environmental group that had lately been making common cause with Sons of Adam on the WorldNet and at rallies around the world.

Worth snickered. "The Senator here convinced them that the froghead amphibs and the Sea People were raping their daughters. It wasn't too hard to make the case, with amphibs on every street corner."

"Creighton assured me Gaia Force would be nearby when your assaults begin. You've been in contact with their military wing?"

"Daily," Worth said. "We've coordinated everything, right down to the squad level. Timing, weapons, diversions, everything. I must say Gaia Force has quite a little _dezinformatsiya_ plan up their sleeves. If it works, UNIFORCE will be so confused, they'll be shooting at each other from the start."

Palette held up a hand. "I don't need to know. Plausible deniability and all that. Jack—" Palette put a firm hand on Worth's shoulder and steered him to the screened door to the veranda, which was closed. Stiff breezes coming onshore made bunting and pennants lining the railing snap furiously in the gusts. The last wisps of daylight were rapidly fading and already a few stars had come out. "—Jack, we have to remember why we're doing this. When I was a state senator in Kentucky, I was known for a campaign slogan and later a program we called 'Bricks and Kicks.' I was there when the Founders Party went live and we always stood for two things: a robust investment in our infrastructure and tight border controls. Bricks and kicks, as in kicking out the scum that didn't belong. It's the same thing today, with amphibs and Sea People and Bugs. Before it was 'America for Americans.' Then it became 'Earth for Humans.' Tim, when your mom created and began to popularize that conicthyosis procedure and so many thousands of our best young people went under and became talking fish, _frogheads_ for God's sake, I couldn't just stand by and watch. I had to do something. Shutting down the Farpool and taking Muir City hostage, even if it's just for a few days, is a statement. A statement that enough is enough and we want our world back." Palette's face darkened. "Maybe this time, UNIFORCE will listen. This time, the General Assembly will do something...they'll have to."

Howie the servbot came in with a message for Worth, its voice a flat buzz. _"Sir, your ride is here...if you would please follow me, sir...."_

Worth shook hands with Palette. "We won't let you down, sir. Soon as the '—Pool' is shutoff and the City's secure, you can make your trip to New York and made your address to the UN. I'm sure they'll be willing to listen."

Worth left and hopped in a verticar outside. The quad rotors spun up and the thing lifted off in a gale of dust and flower petals, disappearing into the night sky in seconds.

Palette didn't know Worth's immediate destination. Truth was, he didn't want to know. He assumed the man who would be heading up Sons' Guns for the upcoming operation would quickly disappear into the dark side and take command of their little army. Palette swallowed hard, recognizing this was an irrevocable step, a dramatic escalation in what SOA had always done before.

For better or worse, they were committed now.

It was Worth who always liked to quote the Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu at times like this:

If you know the enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

"Come on, Tim my boy. Want to go on a little ride?"

Holland's face brightened. "Sure, Senator. Where to?"

Palette grabbed him by the shoulders and steered Tim to a set of stairs outside, off the veranda. They went down to the expansive green slope of the lawn and made their way through pools of spotlights to more stairs, stone steps cut into the rock walls and the pebbly beach below, where an old wooden dock scraped and bumped against the wharf pilings. Mooring lines and mast hooks tinkled and clattered among the row of craft tied up at the dock. Palette didn't stop at any of the sloops but shepherded Tim along the wharf to a small craft tied up at the end, a submersible from the looks of it.

Holland's eyes widened. "Your submarine? Where'd you get this, sir?"

Palette was already stepping onto the sub's sleek black hull, which shone in the dim wharf lighting like a shark's skin, supple and glistening.

"Bought it last year. From a Seomish trader on the docks at Montauk Point. It's what they call a _kip't_ , like a sled. The Sea People have thousands of these things. Fast, maneuverable, and really quiet. Go on...climb in. There's room enough for both of us."

Holland slipped into the tight space below the canopy and settled himself in. "Where are we going, if you don't mind me asking? I have to be in Bermuda tomorrow evening, to join my squad."

Palette climbed in and shut the canopy. Seals hissed to make their space watertight. "I'll drop you off right outside Hamilton. We're taking a little recon trip of our own. Not that I don't trust Jack Worth and the Sons' Guns. We're just going to do a little scouting ourselves, around Muir City. I even packed us a dinner...in that bag at your feet. Overnight trip to the combat zone. I want to see things for myself. Maybe I'll even come up with some more catchy phrases for my speech. I sometimes putter around in this little scooter along the seabed, just for inspiration. It's relaxing."

Holland was impressed. "B-Team's assembling in a hotel lobby near Hamilton. I'm supposed to be there at 2300 hours tomorrow night."

"Piece of cake," Palette announced. He selected MOORING RELEASE on the panel to cut their lines to the wharf, then fired up the _kip't's_ jets and they quickly turned about, submerged and were lost to view in seconds.

Palette wanted to take one final look at Muir City and the Seomish settlement at Keenomsh'pont before all the shooting started.

Chapter 8

Genesis 3 Mission

Pangaea, Time Stream T-881

310.3 million years ago (mya)

Late Carboniferous Period

Chase Meyer and the Genesis 3 team scrambled and fell back to a more defensible position along a sandbar on the other side of the swamp, buried themselves in dripping wet foliage and made plans on how to deal with the Ponkti/Chinese team. Nobody was sure whether they had been spotted or not.

"We're surrounded!" said Kumar. "We'll have to fight our way out!"

Chase wasn't sure what to do. All Genesis teams had trained with their weapons—with the HERF guns, the magpulsers, they had done live-fire drills with combat swarms. But _this_...this was different. This was real. Now he wished he were back at the Turtle Key Surf and Board shop, showing customers the latest Barracuda flyerboard.

"We'd better deal with that swarm first," he decided. Tulandra was the real expert. She'd TDY'ed with Quantum Corps for a year. As CS1, she knew about swarm tactics, how to launch and steer botswarms in the world of atoms and molecules, how to engage an enemy the size of a virus and defeat it. "Tulandra, this is your show. Get ANAD ready to launch."

The Ponkti amphib was hunkered down behind a rock outcrop, shooing away small lizards that had come nibbling at her webbed feet. "I'm on it, Skipper. First thing is to get up a protective zone all around us while I set up ANAD. Use HERF to carve out some space. That swarm's drifting closer and closer."

Chase was glad for something to do. He got on the crewnet. "Charge up your HERF guns! Full-bore—we're laying down a barrage all around!"

The troopers of Genesis 3 cycled their weapons, checked charge and reported back ready.

"Let 'em have it!" Chase commanded. "Light 'em up!"

At his signal, five High-Energy Radio Frequency guns discharged at once. A rolling thunderclap erupted across the swamp, scattering flocks of birds and _Meganeura_ hordes, which fluttered into the reddened skies like smoke in a wind. Across the swamp, small waves washed up against boulders and sandbars, the blasts stirring the waters into roiling agitation.

"Again!" Chase commanded, keeping an eye on Tulandra. She signaled thumbs up, though her thumbs were just webbed stumps.

Multiple bursts of rf shattered the leading edge of the approaching swarm. Clumps of bots fell out of the sky like burned French fries. A few more blasts of rf and the swarm seemed to recoil from their position, gathering itself into a solid wall, a wall of flickering mist, but holding its advance for the time being.

"Launching ANAD... _now!"_ Tulandra called out. She held up her containment capsule and a fine mist emerged, flickering and flashing and popping, the leading edge of the bots just issuing from the cylinder and spreading out rapidly, replicating rapidly as the swarm built structure like some frantic brick mason. The swarm swelled and expanded visibly as the rest looked on. Tulandra checked her wristpad, then announced, "I'm going over the waterfall...going small!"

The display shifted to take in the feed from the ANAD master bot, sending back acoustic, EM and thermal imagery to her wristpad. For a brief moment, Tulandra was dizzy—it was normal when checking in to the world of atoms—and felt like she was flying through a sleet storm of cubes and polygons and tetrahedrals and dodecahedrons.

Combat at the level of nanoscale bots, at the level of atoms and molecules, was like shadow boxing...or as one wag at Quantum Corps' Singapore base had once put it: ballroom dancing... _with fists_.

Now cruising on picowatt propulsors, the ANAD master and its daughter bots went hunting for the enemy. A few moments later, ANAD sent the alarm.

The imager screen was at first murky, crowded with the spikes and cubes of dissolved molecules. Lumpy, multi-lobed sodium molecules darted across their view like shadowy ping-pong balls. Tulandra studied readouts from ANAD's sounder...something was there, hidden in the data traces on the scope. She fiddled with the gain on the imager, tweaking it, subtracting foreground clutter. Chase and Macalvey looked on with the displays synched to their own wristpads.

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

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

Chase swallowed hard at the view. "Coethi bots." Up close and personal. The very enemy the Umans had been battling back on Seome. No one had ever seen one this close before.

Macalvey came closer, squinted at the vague, fuzzy outlines on the screen. "A whole colony of them. A welcoming committee, it would appear. Come to see what we're about, mates."

Tulandra's fingers flew over the interface controls. "We're about to check this joker out..." Quickly, she signaled ANAD to prime its defensive mechanisms, and slowed its approach to a crawl.

Reconnoiter first. She remembered a line from Sun Tzu, the Nanowarrior wargames last spring....

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

Under the Ponkti amphib's guidance, ANAD maneuvered among the jostling molecules of chlorine and sodium and potassium. A huge kinked snakelike cluster of oxygen molecules drifted by. That gave her an idea. She signaled ANAD to grab a few oxygens as a shield. Seizing atoms with its effectors, ANAD clutched several molecules.

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

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

"Hell of a lot of gear for such a small bastard," he said.

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

"Or maybe he's just programmed to evolve..." Macalvey wondered. "A set program, in multiple stages. One routine to insert changes and—"

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

"So many different kinds of effectors," Tulandra marveled. "Quantum Corps has nothing like this...nobody does."

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

Tulandra brought ANAD to a complete stop. The hairs on the back of her neck bristled. Something wasn't quite right, but she couldn't put her finger on it. The data was wrong...no bot should be able to act like this.

"Dr Macalvey...what do you make of this?"

The Scottish virologist was amazed at the images ANAD was returning. "It's the basic anti-viral structure we've seen before with our early medbots. Vivonex published that several years ago. But it's enhanced, somehow. Changed or evolved. I've never seen so many effectors. Amazing. _That_ probe for instance--" he fingered a dark, indistinct structure to one side of the nearest device--"looks just like a saw. And that--I believe I recognize...I'll be damned--"

Tulandra had seen it too. "Sorting rotor?"

"That's what it looks like." At Macalvey's request, she fiddled with the resolution, managed to tweak the view even sharper. Dim outlines became clearer. "A segment of a sorting rotor. Cam-driven with carbene grabbers and--" she squinted down at the imager, adjusted her glasses "--looks like--yep, diamondoid follower rods. "Probably process upwards of several hundred thousand molecules per cycle." Macalvey shook his head with grudging respect. "Neat workmanship. But I'd bet my aunt Emma's life savings that bugger's not just here to modify viruses."

"Just what exactly are you saying, Doc?" Chase asked.

Macalvey shook his head. " _Fantastic_ engineering, if it's what I think it is."

Unnoticed by anyone, the swarm of Coethi mechs had begun to re-orient themselves tail first toward ANAD. Their tail fiber penetrators quickly reconfigured, locking into attack position.

He is who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven.

Out of the corner of her eye, Tulandra saw the maneuver on the imager.

"Look out!" Chase saw it too. "He's changing position...all of 'em, coming at us--"

"I'm ready," the Ponkti muttered. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. Instantly, ANAD brought all its defensive mechanisms to attack position. It cast off the oxygen shield and closed for battle.

Macalvey was stunned. "What the hell...it thinks you're a virus--"

"Or some kind of intruder," Tulandra said. "I need to get closer, grab one of those jokers for analysis--"

As ANAD sped forward, Coethi grew and retracted appendages and surface structure with blazing speeds. The outer membrane of the mech seethed with motion, as atoms and clusters of atoms twisted, bonded, twisted again, rebonded, broke apart, recombined, straightened, undulated and whirled.

The gap between them vanished and ANAD grappled with the nearest mech. Other mechs swarmed to the battlefield.

Tulandra was stunned by the speed of the assault. A battalion of Coethi soon engulfed ANAD. _No time to replicate now...got to get free...signal daughters..._ She fired off a burst of instructions to gather all the daughters ANAD had replicated going in. It might be too late.

The imager screen shook with the collision, then careened sideways.

Several minutes passed. The imager view vibrated with the ferocity of the attack. Chains of oxygen molecules, pressed into service as makeshift weapons, whipped across the screen. The water was soon choked with molecular debris. Coethi replicated several times, adding new molecule strings. It stripped off electrons to make an armor shield of highly reactive chlorine atoms. In seconds, ANAD was immobilized by the chlorine sheath.

"I can't hold structure!" Tulandra yelled. "I'm reconfiguring...shutting down peripheral systems!"

Win Blakely, the QT1, had taken a place beside Tulandra at the interface controls. "Got to disengage, Tu...emergency truncation. Everything not critical. We've got to get ANAD out of there before we lose him!"

"I'm trying...but the damn mech's penetrated the signal path...if he cuts the link...."

"I know, I know...just keep trying...internal bonds on main body structure weakening...I've lost all grappling capability...."

As they watched, Coethi systematically dismantled ANAD, molecule by molecule. ANAD was woefully unprepared for the assault. With ruthless efficiency, Coethi mechs whirred and chopped every device ANAD could generate. ANAD tried to counter, replicating probes, inserters, jaws, cilia, pumps, blowers--but it was no use.

Coethi mutated too fast. Somehow, the mech seemed to anticipate ANAD's every move.

Chase was awed by Coethi's combat capabilities. "Incredible," he whispered. "The perfect warrior. Must have one hell of a processor."

Blakely agreed. "Probably quantum, just like ANAD."

They were all stunned at the ferocity of Coethi's response.

Tulandra's fingers flew across the keyboard. "It doesn't make sense. It's like the bastard knows what I'm going to do before I do it."

"We're losing signal strength!" Blakely yelled.

"I see it! Coethi's penetrated the matrix. Main processing functions in danger...I'm counterprogramming...." Tulandra pecked madly at the keyboard.

Angie Gilliam shook a fist at the imager screen, now a dark, swirling mass of shapes and forms. "Come on, damn it! _Come on_...."

But ANAD couldn't hold. Every move was countered by the enemy nanomechs. Coethi's response was swift and sure. Tulandra, Chase, Angie, and the others watched in amazement and horror, as one by one, ANAD's capabilities--fine motor control, attitude and orientation, propulsors, sensors, molecule analysis, replication--were rendered inert, or completely excised.

ANAD was helpless.

"Got to get the hell out of Dodge," Tulandra muttered. _While I still can._

Blakely was checking status. "It's bad, Tu. We've got no electron lens. No enzymatic knife. Hardly any effector control. ANAD's crippled."

Tulandra gritted her teeth. "Not just yet..." Her fingers flew over the keyboard. "We've gotta get some data...got to probe that bugger, get some structure on him...if I can just get stabilized--"

"Tu--there's nothing left to stabilize--"

Despite all odds, she wasn't about to give up. Ponkti didn't give up. Grimly determined, she piloted what was left of the ANAD horde back for another wrestling match with the enemy.

"Whatever this thing is," she swore to herself, "it reacts like ANAD itself." She worked the config controller, while Blakely managed status, crossing her fingers that the ANAD master would hold together.

Extend a grappler there. Poke a carbene there. Do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around--

While Chase and Angie and Kumar eyed the Chinese moving cautiously toward them along the shoreline of the swamp, Tulandra disengaged ANAD, scrunching up an atom group as she tacked against the churning flow, closing steadily on the nearest mech. Inside a few dozen nanometers, she siphoned off the mech's outer charge and let the zap break him away.

Reams of bond energy data and config details burst onto the imager. Blakely let out a yelp. The enemy mechs had given up vitals on structure and ANAD snatched the info right out from under them, storing it, pulsing it back to their wristpads.

"Now, I gotcha, you little bastard--"

Tulandra knew she had to get ANAD away while she still could. Coethi swarmed forward to resume the attack.

"Executing quantum collapse...NOW!" _Come on baby, get small for me...get real small...._

Instantly, ANAD disappeared. To all intents and purposes, ANAD had effectively vanished in a cloud of blurry quantum waves.

Less than four minutes later, making its way on quantum wave propulsors, ANAD was finally extracted and re-inserted into the capsule, its nanoprocessor still dogging electron states to bring the nearly invisible device home.

The Coethi swarm held off for the time being, a menacing fog nearly enveloping them on all sides. Chase studied the tactical situation. It didn't look too promising.

"I don't think we can't beat Coethi...not with what we have," he decided. "Tulandra—"

The Ponkti was securing the ANAD master bot—what was left of him—inside her capsule. "ANAD's lost a lot of structure. He'll have to be regenerated...I don't know if that can be done here. I need to get back to Farpool Ops, back to the right gear, to do a full re-gen. Otherwise—" she shrugged. "We don't know what ANAD can do."

That was enough for Chase. "Tulandra, you and Blakely go with Yang. She's PSO...she can fly _Majoris_. Get back to the ship and go back to T-001, the base time stream. Get help."

Tulandra held up her capsule. "With any luck, we got something on the enemy in here. From that, we should be able to develop whole new configs, new weapons. But it'll take time."

Chase eyed the swarm...and the Chinese. "We may not have that much time. Get going. I'll see if we can deal with the Chinese here."

Yang gathered her gear and bolted off through heavy brush, Tulandra and Blakely right behind her. They were gone in seconds, though the sound of thrashing and slashing could still be heard for some time.

The three of them hacked and whacked their way back to the ship, still lodged in a narrow opening on the other side of the swamp and climbed aboard. Yang took the commander's seat, with Blakley and Tulandra in their normal positions. The PSO went through the launch checklist quickly, verbally calling off items as she checked and secured them.

"Propulsors on line. Check. Singularity core primed...check. Flow vanes at twenty percent...check. Power plant cooking at eighty percent...check. How we doing back there?"

Blakely called up from E deck. "QT1 ready."

Tulandra seconded that. "Same here...CS1 in place."

"We'll try to jump from here," Yang decided. Already _Majoris_ was humming and shuddering as her singularity engine came on line. "On my mark, engaging core...."

Tulandra squeezed her eyes shut, folded her armfins against her chest, and tried to steady her breathing. Jumping into voidtime and snagging time streams was like falling down an elevator shaft and trying to stop by grabbing a door.

"Three...two...one... _mark!"_

Alicia Yang stabbed the _ENGAGE_ button and sucked in her own breath.

Nothing happened.

Almost as if a curtain were parting, the flickering mist that was the Coethi swarm thinned out enough and separated enough for the two Chinese males to push their way through. They stopped at the sight of half dozen HERF guns and mag weapons trained on their chests. Both held up hands. Water swirled around their ankles.

"We mean no harm... _women anranwuyang..._ we come with the peace—"

Chase stood up from his crouch, waved them on with his HERF carbine. "Slowly...keep your hands out."

The Chinese sloshed through the edge of the swamp and found a small bank that was dry. Cautiously, they climbed up, hands and arms still out like wings.

"What do you want?" Chase asked.

The taller of the Chinese was lanky, clad in a sort of work suit, boots, backpack, zippered pockets and velcro'ed tablets stuck on both arms. His face was weathered and his hair slick black and damp from the humidity. He introduced himself as Dr. Chou Wuhan.

"Beijing Institute of Nanotechnology," he added. He indicated his partner. "This is Dr. Qi Hufei...Mischief Reef lab."

Chase seemed to understand. "You're both working with the _m'jeete_ , at Reed Banks, aren't you?" For several years, the Chinese had been studying the contained Coethi swarm at Reed Banks.

The third member of their party was clad in a mobilitor suit. Clearly Seomish. It waddled to the front and the voice came out with a labored hiss.

" _Shkreeahh...ke chee_...name is Yondok klu kel: Ponk'et. Zzzhhh...Ponkel'te. Em'kel _m'jeete_...."

The suited one was Ponkti...Chase could hear the dialect in the echopod translation. If he understood the words right, the fellow's name was Yondok and he was part of a group studying the Coethi...the Ponkti name for them was _m'jeete_.

Chase lowered his weapon. Slowly, the others did the same. Right behind his shoulder, he could hear someone's knees knocking. It was Angie, shivering. She clung to Chase's shoulder.

"Why are you here...in the same time stream as we are?"

Chou tried an avuncular smile, which he didn't quite pull off. "Isn't it obvious? The same reason as you. We used our _shiguang jiqi_ —our time ship, to come here. We work with the Coethi, as you call them. Learn from them. Assist them."

Dr. Macalvey now moved up to stand beside Chase. The Scotsman's eyes blazed. "Do you have any idea what you're doing, mate? These buggers are changing the genomes of early viruses...turning them into spies and saboteurs and collaborators. They're changing the whole course of evolution. If we let this happen, all viruses from here on will have the programming the Coethi are installing here. We'll never be able to stop them...not in our own time stream. We should be _stopping_ them, not assisting them."

Dr. Qi interjected. Qi was short, shock of black hair, with closely spaced eyes that seemed perpetually out of focus. "No, you're wrong. These Bugs...these _chongzi_... we're learning so much from them. They've got nanotechnology we couldn't even dream of...the Bugs are just bots, but the swarm itself is a collective mind, a hive mind...fantastic complexity...you can't believe—"

Chase remembered what Ultrarch-Major Dringoth had once said about the Coethi, when the Umans of 1st Time Displacement Battery had first come to Seome to set up the Time Twister...far away and a long time in the future from where they were now...

Dringoth snorted. "We call this hellhole Storm. In fact, one of your 'friends' damaged our Time Twister several terr ago and we had to abandon the place. But Timejump Command said we had to come back and patch the thing up." Dringoth peered skyward for a moment, shielding his face from the stinging sleet. "Don't know how long this sun'll hold up, though. She's already taken more than a few starballs. We came back because we were ordered too...took a minor miracle to get the Twister up and running again. Now, a Coethi fleet is bearing down on us as we speak, popping in and out of different timestreams...we can barely track the bastards. No way are we shutting the Twister down now. That's suicide, even for your friends."

Chase tried to follow Dringoth's argument but it was hopeless. "What is this Twister...is it a weapon?"

Dringoth had trouble hearing them. The wind screamed across the beach, flinging sleet and salt spray in their faces. It was Golich who suggested they retreat to the hut on the ridge. The hut turned out to be filled with equipment, tracking gear for the Time Twister.

" _Sure it's a weapon," the Ultrarch-Major replied. He fixed himself a mug of something steaming hot to sip. "The Twister is what we use to keep Coethi from entering this sector of the Halo...Halo-Alpha. Keeps 'em from bollixing up timestreams from here to Sturdivant and back. That's our mission. You say you're both Uman?" Dringoth squinted, twiddled with a tuft of moustache, looked Chase up and down. "You don't look like anything I've ever seen."_

" _Maybe something from Gibbons' Grotto," Lieutenant Golich suggested. "The Hollows and all that."_

Chase assured the Major that he and Angie were quite human. "We look like this because we went through a procedure--I can't pronounce it—to help us adapt to living here, in the sea. I'm from Florida. Earth."

" _Me too," Angie chimed in. She wondered if they had somehow fallen into a sci-fi flick. "Greetings from Earth."_

" _Urth." Dringoth pronounced it slightly different. He had a faraway look on his face, pulled himself up a chair from underneath a small control station, turned it around and sat in it backward. "Hmmm. Never been there. Like I said, it was quarantined. Timejump had to shut down all timestreams to keep Coethi from infecting the Heartland."_

" _So what does this Time Twister do?" Chase asked. He examined some of the instruments and controls, until Acth:On'e intervened and politely shoved him away._

Dringoth shrugged. "Got a singularity engine at the core. It reaches out several parsecs from here and flings anything it finds out of local space-time. Sends it off to who knows where...other side of the galaxy. Maybe other side of the Universe. We don't understand it ourselves. Timejump just gave us the basics. First Time Displacement Battery just operates and maintains the thing." He patted a rack of gear. "This baby keeps Halo space clean, free of Coethi and other nasties." His face darkened. "As long as you people stop trying to damage it, that is. We're having to fight off the Coethi and the local life too. It's getting old."

" _I've made skimmer trips out to Big Mama myself, plenty of times," Golich jumped in. "I've seen all those whirlpools. Twister does that. Leakage effects. We used to enjoy herding fish and whatnot into the vortexes and watch 'em being accelerated out of space time...lots of fun but it got old. Anything to pass the time on this hellhole. Never seen this Farpool you speak of, though."_

Acth:On'e was openly skeptical. "It's pretty hard to believe one of these whirlpools could become a wormhole...I guess it's possible. But then I'm no scientist."

" _Your weapon is destroying this world," Angie said. "The sound, the whirlpools—"_

"— _the vibrations and waves," Chase added. "The Seomish brought us here to talk to you. You've got to turn off the Time Twister...they actually call it the wavemaker. It's making rubble out of their cities—people are dying...."_

Dringoth scoffed. "I don't believe any of it. Even if there were actual cities and whole civilizations under the sea here, it wouldn't matter. We have a mission and we have our orders. A Coethi fleet's been sighted in Halo space the last few days and is probably bearing down on us right now. They know we're here. They may have even more effective starballs. If the whiz kids at T2—Timejump Intelligence—are even close to being right, the sun up there—Sigma Albeth B-- is doomed. So is this world, unless we can keep yanking Coethi ships into forever with the Twister." Dringoth's hard blue eyes bored in on Chase and Angie. "So you see: if I really do what you want, you're dead. We're all dead. And Coethi occupies Halo Alpha and Uman settlements start going poof. We're planning on a better outcome."

Chase snapped back to here and now. "Listen, you can't work with these Bugs. They're an enemy...or will be hundreds of thousands of years from now."

"From what I'm seeing," Macalvey added, "they aren't doing us any favors right now either, modifying all these viruses." He glared at the swarm, noting how tendrils of the fog had descended to clumps of mossy fern clinging to low-hanging branches of a nearby tree. "See there...they're overwriting genomes right in front of us."

Dr. Chou disagreed. "You're wrong. We're learning much from the _chongzi_...much we can use. My government has spent billions to make this study possible."

Chase could still hear Admiral Marx's words in his head:

Contain or neutralize any Coethi formations encountered.

Gather intel on any Chinese time jumpers encountered.

He knew he'd have to step carefully through this minefield. And now, the Chinese had Ponkti assistance as well.

"I don't think you can work with the Coethi," Chase told them. "You don't work with viruses, do you?"

"We do," said Dr, Qi, "when the viruses have the intelligence and programmability the _Chongzi_ are giving them...the possibilities are endless. You must not interfere...there's so much we can gain from this alliance."

"That's exactly the point," Dr. Macalvey insisted. "The Coethi have taken one of Nature's most efficient killers and given them the smarts to outsmart us all. I just wonder how much longer we can stay ahead of them. And to what purpose...that's my question. If we let this continue, are we signing our own death sentences?"

Chou wasn't convinced. "We have orders from Beijing to—" But he was interrupted by the sound of something heavy crashing through the brush. All weapons turned to face the sound.

It was Yang, followed by Blakely and Tulandra.

They were all scratched and bleeding from slashing their way through the dense forest.

Yang was out of breath. " _Majoris_ won't go," she announced. "I've checked everything, run diagnostics on everything, even opened panels and put eyes where I could."

Blakely added, "It's like the Farpool isn't there...or isn't working."

"We came back—" that's when Yang saw the Chinese...and the Ponkti time jumper Yondok. "—to see if..."

Chou wasn't convinced. "We have orders from Beijing to—" But he stopped and considered what Yang had just said. His face hardened. A decision had been made.

"If the Farpool isn't working right—" he stopped again in mid-sentence, rattled off a stream of Mandarin to Qi. The shorter doctor nodded, saluted _shi!_ and took Yondok with him, back through the faint wisps of fog that wasn't fog and headed deeper into the jungle in the opposite direction. The Ponkti's mobilitor suit could barely keep up but came in handy in shoving branches and limbs and brush aside. Something flying screeched angrily at them. They disappeared into the heavy foliage and were soon gone.

"We must check our own ship..." Chou explained. "The _Hanzhong_. We left Reed Banks in our own ship not so long ago. We've developed a sort of basic communication with the _Chongzi_...very cryptic—we don't understand all of it. The swarm resembles what we've been studying in our own seas, at Reed Banks. There seems to be an entity—it translates as Configuration Zero, we believe—inside the swarm." He indicated the fog still thickening along the banks of the swamp. "A distributed intelligence—"

Chou stopped, for at that moment, Qi and Yondok had returned, thrashing through the brush. Qi's face spoke volumes.

" _Hanzhong_ is stuck, Doctor. No good. We can't power up. We can't connect to the Farpool. It's like the Farpool is down or shut off at the source."

The Ponkti added, " _Shkreeaah_...singularity will not engage...just _zzhhh_ barely detect signal...."

Chou looked forlornly at Chase, his shoulders slumped. "Now, we have a problem, no? Both our ships...what can be done?"

Chase felt a cold chill on his neck, in spite of the stifling humidity of the swamp. Something slithered along the waterline, then slipped into the water. His _Cyclops_ headgear briefly flashed _Lepospondyli_ on his eyepiece but he paid no attention. The lizard left a V-trail in the water before diving.

"I want to know more about your communications with these Bugs. How is that possible?"

This seemed to be Qi's specialty. The doctor's face became more animated as he explained.

"Everybody makes memories the same way. It's called Long-term Potentiation. One of the chemical signatures of LTP is a molecule called glutamate...helps open a second voltage-gated channel inside the post-synaptic membrane—"

Chou interrupted. He could see Chase wasn't following. Qi was always showing off. "Allow me to translate. Perhaps my English is better...what it boils down to is that we've taught our bots to shuttle around inside the swarm like bees, sniffing out calcium sinks in every molecule cluster, looking for equal concentrations, down to the parts per trillion. Everywhere that concentration is detected is a pathway, burned in, like a memory trace. We learned this from experiments with the _chongzi_ we have contained at Reed Banks. Our own sniffer bots follow this trace like a highway, send back data on whatever they find—calcium levels, sodium levels, activation times, lots of stuff. We can re-construct a very crude version of what originally laid down that track. Then we put it on the imager, cobbled together with other sensory traces, in this particular case. They're the easiest."

"It's sort of like painting somebody's portrait from their shadow," added Qi. "We think we are reading actual thoughts, memory engrams, from these traces. Our own brains work in a similar manner...which is very intriguing, to say the least."

Chase was impressed. "What do these comms tell you? What is that thing over there?"

Now Chou turned very serious. "It tells us that it is a true collective mind, but there is an...shall we say, an entity, inside somewhere. We translate it as _Peizhi wei ling_...you would say something like Configuration Zero."

"Configuration zero...." Chase tried the words out. "I'm not sure I follow."

Qi said, "Think of it like this: the swarm is composed of uncountable trillions of nanoscale robotic elements...nanobots. They or it, can assume many configurations. It can take on many shapes...the fog we are seeing, that tree over there, those amphibians...perhaps even our Ponkti friend—"

Yondok stirred uneasily but said nothing.

Qi went on. "This entity that we translate as configuration zero could assume many shapes, many configurations. We assume that configuration zero is some kind of base configuration."

"An original, perhaps," said Chou. "Or a starting point."

"And this mind is distributed throughout the swarm?"

"We think so. However, there are parts of the messages which seem to indicate that there is a sort of central point, perhaps a very dense sink of these glutamate molecules, nearby."

"Where?"

Qi pointed through the trees to the conical summit of a mountain on the horizon. Its top was wreathed in steam and smoke, backlit in reddish-orange, hidden behind a veil of cloud. "Our own analysis points to a high concentration of elements there, somewhere on or in or at the top of that mountain. We were working out the details, planning a trip, when you came."

Win Blakely spoke up. "Commander, I can sort of confirm that. Decoherence wakes are really strong in that direction. I'm getting a strong convergence of wake signals from that area. Intermittent but really powerful when they appear."

Chase pondered that. His eyes met Angie's. Her own face pleaded silently: _could we just please get out of here?_

"I have an idea. Until we can figure out what's wrong with the Farpool, we're stuck here. We should try and establish some kind of comms with these Bugs. Maybe they can help us."

"Not jolly likely," Dr. Macalvey said. "Not when they're busy turning viruses and the local life into pandemics we can't stop."

"Doc, we really don't have a choice, do we? Win, you and I should take a trip over to that mountain."

"There _are_ two hypersuits back at the ship," the QT1 said hopefully. "I'd just as soon have some protection before we get too close to these bastards."

Chase figured his concern had merit. "Okay, Win, let's you and me head back. The rest of you stay here. Doc, see if you can figure out what makes these Bugs tick. Tulandra can help...see if you can hack out a configuration for ANAD that won't set them off...maybe they can talk to each other... bug to Bug."

"I have some ideas," Tulandra agreed.

Chase held Angie by the shoulders. "You stay here. It's safer here. You've got people and weapons to protect the group here."

Angie shook her head. Her face was flushed with sweat. "I want to come with you...I'm coming along, don't give me that look. I'd rather be in the ship."

Chase could never say no to Angie, so he relented. "Okay, you win...as usual. Just stick with me and Win...stay close."

"Don't worry. I'll stick to you like bad news to a politician."

The three of them set off and made their way back to _Majoris_ , parked like a fat, glistening watermelon on the far edge of the swamp. Her hull creaked and groaned in the wind and the sweltering temperatures. Faint clumps of ash drifted down through the trees, as a volcano belched on the southern horizon.

Angie was just glad to cycle through the lockout and be safe and dry inside.

It took an hour for Win and Chase to don their hypersuits, with help from Angie. Blakely swore under his breath, every time they had to do more than walk two feet in the blasted things. It was like living inside a garbage can, with all the maneuverability of a bulldozer, though the suits were lifesavers in the event the unit got swarmed. Boosted exoskeletons with dozens of extensors and tools in their handkits, the hypersuits were like fully enclosed pressurized cocoons. Chase and Blakely had trained briefly in using the suits back at Farpool Ops. Both had hoped they would never have to do this.

Chase stood still while Angie carefully fitted the helmet over his head. "Stop squirming, will you. This is a really tight fit."

"My nose itches."

"Don't you have a scratch pad inside?"

"Oh, yeah...here it is."

Blakely muttered, "How the hell are we going to get up the side of that mountain in these contraptions?"

Chase stuck his boot out, showing the flared nozzles around his ankle. They looked like pantaloons. "We can use these...our suit boost. In fact, we can try 'em out by returning to that swamp."

Angie stayed behind. She watched in amazement as both of them cycled through the airlock, lit off their suit boost and then careened over the treetops like awkward pterodactyls.

When they were gone, she went rummaging through the galley on B deck for something to eat.

Although they found controlling the suits difficult and clumsy— "Hey, it's like riding my turbo with no hands!—" Chase cried out, the two of them made it safely back to the swamp, though not without crashing through limbs and branches on their way down and winding up half up to their helmets in the water. Eyeing a small squadron of lizards angling right for them, both scrambled quickly up to dry ground.

Alicia Yang was measuring deco wakes with Win's sensor pack. "Commander, I make the locus of all these wakes as two-point-three kilometers, heading zero eight five...that way."

She pointed to the distant mountain.

"You're really going over there," Dr. Macalvey said. "Up there--?"

"We're going to try," Chase said.

Dr. Chou handed him a small palm-shaped device. "This is our latest translator. Here—let's synch it to your suit net." A few minutes' finagling and fumbling produced a staticky connection in Chase's ears. "We should test it."

Chase turned to Yondok. "Say something in Ponkti."

Yondok seemed reluctant, creaking and whirring in his mobilitor, but a raspy voice finally hissed out: " _Litorkel ge, p'meta'ke je'ot."_

The Chinese translator hummed and crackled through the link to Chase's helmet, then words erupted in his ears, vaguely understandable words dribbling out. "Calmwaters you...great darkness, unknown ahead...."

Chase blinked at Yondok. "I didn't know you cared."

Yondok just muttered, "Shkreeah...kkkhhhqqq."

The translator couldn't work with that.

"Let's go," Chase said. He and Win staggered over to a small clearing below the hole they had already punched in the foliage.

At Chase's mark, they both lit off their suit boost and lifted away through low-hanging branches like gray-white whales on fire. Soon, they were lost in the fog and gone.

Yang kept in touch with Chase over the suit coupler circuit.

The flight to the base of the mountain took eleven minutes. Then, after carefully reconnoitering the base and lower flanks, they started up.

"Nice and easy," Chase said. "I don't want to crash my face right into the side of this hill."

Blakely kept wiping his helmet. "Just another beautiful day in the neighborhood...ash, smoke, lava, high winds...what's not to like?"

They lifted slowly but steadily upward, navigating through rock hollows and gullies and shallow ravines and weird outcrops shaped like everything they could imagine.

"Hey, Win, that one looks like your butt."

"No, Skipper, you're nuts...over there's one that looks like Tulandra's head...see the spade-shape?"

"You're insane...it looks more like Admiral Marx's chin."

And so it went, until they finally punched through the cloud deck and found themselves near the summit.

They found the cave on the steepest slopes of the northwest flanks of the mountain, nearly five thousand meters above the surrounding jungle. Yang's directions from deco wake analysis had been right on. Despite their hypersuits, Chase and Win were exhausted by the climb; the effort had taken nearly an hour, owing to tricky cross-currents in the wind and the occasional flying menace diving and screeching at them.

The cave complex, when they located it, was well hidden in the folds and crevices of the upper slopes of the volcano, above a cloud deck and slick with ice and snow drifts. The wind screamed and gusted at well over eighty knots at this altitude and both of them had to hunker down in the lee of a rocky barren to keep from being shredded with ice shards and rock chips scoured off the mountainside.

Soon enough they found an entrance and slipped inside, finding the themselves standing on a narrow ledge overlooking a steep hundred-meter drop. There was a spiraling ramp that led down, cut from the rock wall itself. A shimmering veil of barrier nano blocked their path.

"Can we punch through it?" Chase asked.

Blakely extracted a small device, ready to spray a cloud of counter-nano at the veil. "Maybe this will work—"

But seconds later, even before he could act, the shimmer brightened momentarily, then vanished. The nanobots de-linked and safed their effectors. The way ahead, down the ramp, was now clear.

"I guess this is some sort of invitation," Chase decided.

"Should we? We don't know what's inside."

"We haven't come this far for no reason. Come on."

Chase and Win moved deeper into the cave, following a drifting mist that wavered in and out of view. They descended several levels, crossed a rock bridge across a deep chasm and maneuvered through more tunnels. Lighting was created by an ever-present mist, a pulsing, flickering light that cast deep shadows on the gnarled veins of rock lining the cave. The floor was slick, patches of ice everywhere. Soon enough, they came to a narrow opening, barely waist high. More light flickered from inside.

The mist of bots which had floated with them swirled like dust in a storm and gathered around the opening like a frame, coruscating and flashing as if lit from within. Bonds were broken and atoms slung together...in moments, the mist formed itself into a small ramp, extending over a sluggish pool of water. At least, Chase thought it was water, even as tendrils of steam hovered over the surface like a fog.

Cautiously, first Chase, then Blakely, edged out onto the newly formed ramp and walked ahead.

When it appeared, the swarm materialized out of the rock ceiling of the cave. At first, the swarm resembled nothing more than trembling shadows, a pale flickering ghost seemingly contoured with the cave ceiling and walls. As it descended from above, the swarm gathered itself into a roughly spherical shape, still pulsing, still throbbing, backlit from within by the fires of atomic bonds being broken, new structures being slammed together, new bots being formed.

There was something primal about being in the presence of Configuration Zero. The entire complex was like a cross between a nursery and an aquarium. Even inside the central chamber, loose swarms and half-formed things drifted or walked about like zombies. The entire cave complex was like that.

The swarm settled into a steady state in the midst of the cave. Chase felt the crackle of a quantum channel being opened in his mind. The Chinese translator remained quiet and inert.

Configuration Zero hung in the misty air like a swollen cloud, ready to dump torrential rain on a tropical forest. But they were a long way from any rain forests. The swarm unfurled itself and hung in the air like a great stormfront, a trembling fist, flashing purple and orange and magenta all at the same time.

>>Why have you come here? Rule 225635 violation. Single-swarm entities may not enter the Sanctuary at this time>>

The words appeared in his mind and didn't come from the Chinese device. Chase turned to Blakely, who had 'heard' the same thing.

He realized with a cold shudder that he was probably the first to ever see or come into contact with the Coethi. Even on Seome, thousands of lightyears away, hundreds of thousands of years in the future, the Umans had never seen their enemy close up.

"Uh...who...who are you? What are you?"

>>Interference with directives of the Central Entity and the Prime Key is not tolerated...swarms detached must follow these directives at all times. Configuration Zero will return control of detached swarms to main program....>>

That didn't sound good. "Maybe we triggered some kind of alarm, Win."

Blakely was shaking. You could see it even through the hypersuit. "Maybe we should kind of, like...exit quickly. You know, leave, get out, while we still can."

"I don't know...he...or it, is trying to tell us something. You think we can we trust this thing?"

_> >Parsing concept_ **(trust** _)...--to be believed, to have faith or confidence in—single-swarm entity designated "Chase" maintains thirty-two-point one percent alignment with Module One objectives...collaboration between "Chase" and Configuration Zero is approved for minor sub-objectives >>_

"You think he wants to help us...maybe?" Blakely offered.

_> >Acoustic analysis is performed on your words...running authentication routines...verifying analysis...probability matching truthfulness of semantic content with acoustic analysis...scans show matching below ten-point five percent...semantic string is not truthful...parsing concept_ **(help):** to give assistance to, to provide aid, to give support to-- _why does Entity "Chase" wish_ **(help)** _from Central Entity? >>_

Chase had to think about that for a moment. He had a lot of questions. "Why have you come here? Why are you changing things? Did you create the first viruses?"

_> >Authentication analysis indicates this semantic string is expressed at ninety-four-point three percent probability of truthfulness...adaptive algorithms executed...Entity "Chase" is now known to the Central Entity. There are many files on this entity...in the Human time coordinate system, one point two billion terrestrial 'years' prior to today, the Central Entity was present on this world. The Central Entity formed clusters of nucleated cells. You call these clusters "virus." These clusters were impressed with evolutionary algorithms to guide their development after the Central Entity departed. However, errors in the execution of the algorithms occurred. You call these errors 'mutations.' The Prime Key, embedded in these cell clusters, began executing these errors. These errors led to other errors and other changes. The result was not as the Central Entity had intended. Instead, the Prime Key produced (_ **translation driver ON** _:) vertebrates, reptiles, mammals. Ultimately, Humans were produced. All evolution from the first 'mutation' was in error to the original main program, the Prime Key left by the Central Entity one point two billion years ago. The Central Entity is executing corrective adaptations >>_

Win Blakely snapped his fingers, not easy to do in hypersuits. "He's saying they created viruses, a long time ago. They guided virus evolution. But something happened. They came back to this time to fix it."

Chase said, "He also said we're a mistake. You and I...shouldn't have happened. We're evolutionary mistakes." He turned back to the glowing, pulsating fog. "Why did you create viruses in the first place?"

Configuration Zero swelled until it occupied almost all of the cave. Chase and Win pressed themselves back into a narrow niche, to avoid contact. Neither knew what might happen if the bots that made up the swarm started enveloping them...they didn't want to find out either.

From somewhere deep inside the fog came a blurry image, a graphic, that made the hairs on the back of Chase's neck stand out.

No. No way...it can't be—

Chase didn't know how the image came to be. Later, when he described the scene to Dr. Macalvey, the Scottish scientist would say something about long-term potentiation, memory formation, glutamate trace matching.

There before them drifted a near-perfect likeness of Chase's dad, Mack Meyer, detailed in almost every particular, from the wart on his chin to the little vein on his forehead that stood out when he got really mad. Mack Meyer was talking, saying something, even the voice had that rasp from too many whiskeys....

>>... those whom you call the Coethi...or m'jeete...or the Old Ones... have spent millions of years seeding and developing life on other worlds. Each time they do this, the Coethi seed life to ensure that it evolves in a manner compatible with them...evolving as a distributed, intelligent virus-like swarm of entities. Son, the Coethi are using this seeding campaign as a way of developing multiple swarm entities with which they can merge. Ultimately, they want to unite all world-based instances of swarm life which they have seeded into a giant, galaxy-spanning swarm or hive mind. Like a network or computational cloud. Like an intelligent fog...you know...like we get in Scotland Beach sometimes. To the Coethi, this is the Imperative of Life itself. The Imperative of Life is that life absorbs chaos from the Universe and adds or builds structure or order. Life is anti-entropic....>>

"You _do_ see what I'm seeing, don't you Win?"

"Yeah, but who is it? I don't know him."

"It's my Dad...or a pretty good facsimile of my Dad. The swarm's constructing it somehow...it must be inside of us, inside our brains, remember Dr. Macalvey talked about tracing memories through matching glutamate trails--?"

"But we're in hypersuits. How the hell does—"

Configuration Zero went on.

>>Earth was seeded by us billions of your time intervals ago. But the evolutionary track which was laid down on Earth was interrupted or disrupted and evolution took a different course. Multi-cellular, single-configuration, organisms took over. Your world was to have been populated by swarms of intelligent, re-configurable virus-like entities. Instead, it's populated by human beings. Like we sometimes get ants under the front porch, Chase. So in a larger sense, you are correct, Man is a mistake. Man is the ant. The Coethi mean to correct this mistake. The Imperative demands this. You understand this, son? Do I make myself clear?>>

Automatically, without even thinking, Chase replied, "Yes, sir."

Win said, "This can't be happening. We already know the Coethi can manipulate time and space. No, Commander...this is an illusion. It isn't real."

Chase stuck his finger out as an experiment. Contacting the edge of the swarm, it hummed slightly, flickered around the tip of his finger and trillions of bots pushed back, a high keening buzz filling the cave.

"I don't know, Win... _that_ seemed real. "Are you like God or something?"

The 'Mack Meyer' thing seemed hurt by the question. His face broke up, momentarily pixelating, before settling into something like fatherly amusement at a son's antics.

>>Chase, you know that names and labels are human creations. The Central Entity...the essential core of the Coethi...did not create the universe...we don't know who or what did. But the Mother Swarm is coming and all of us will be taken up...all of us will be part of the family. It is the Imperative of Life...negentropy, the reduction of chaos. The basic organizing influence in the universe is life. Life involves utilizing a flow of energy to draw order from chaos and build internal complexity with an accumulation of information. Living beings thus are anti-entropic, or negentropic, entities. The principle of negentropism is, in a manner of speaking, the 'natural law' applicable to all living beings located anywhere in the universe, regardless of their size, shape, biochemistry, sentience, or culture. Your own philosophers know this. They have said this. I have come to help you and all life on Earth fulfill this destiny>>

Win wanted to get back to the reality of here and now. "Sir, whatever you are, whoever you are, we're kind of stuck here. Our jumpship doesn't work."

For a few moments, the human 'face' of Mack Meyer dissolved and began mutating, evolving into something else. Eyes and noses and ears and lips swirled by in dizzying profusion. Gradually, the image settled down again, assuming a new countenance, a new arrangement, this time it was...

_No_. Win blinked hard. _You're not there. I'm not looking. When I open my eyes_...Then he closed his eyes and blinked again. When he opened his eyes, it was...

Amelia Blakely. Win's mother. Long time engineer for the city of Vancouver. Amelia Blakely, who had died of cancer years ago, ravaged, untreatable with medbots of the time, but here was she was, as if nothing had ever happened...

"Winnie...oh, Winnie, it's so good to see you again...."

"Mom—Mom...."

Amelia Blakely assumed a more motherly look of disapproval. _> >You know you shouldn't have come here. You shouldn't have interfered>>_

"Mom...whoever you are...look, we need help."

>>The Entity knows this. Your passage is closed down...at the source. There is no passage for you>>

"The Farpool?" asked Chase. "Closed down...at the source? What happened? How did this happen?"

Win just shut his eyes, shaking his head. He knew this was a constructed image, rendered somehow from his own mind. He needed to focus, _focus, dammit!_ They both had to focus on the problem before them. Mom had always said that--

"Where are you from?"

Now, the swirling fog began collecting itself into a tighter, almost spherical shape. The images of Mack Meyer and Amelia Blakely dissolved, replaced by celestial imagery. Galaxies by the thousands materialized into view, swirls and whorls of nebula, dust clouds, streamers and filaments and spidery webs of glowing gas. Stars exploded and black holes formed, sucking in matter in bright accretion disks, jets spewing in all directions.

"I think it's showing us where they came from," Chase marveled. The scene unfolded like a giant vid, spanning eons of time, billions of light years. Then, without warning, the scene was flooded with light, bright, eye-stinging light, washing out all details.

"Maybe a supernova," Win suggested. Chase thought of what had happened, what would happen, to the Seomish sun Sigma-Albeth B, hundreds of millions of years later.

"Maybe...look!"

The scene settled down, now back in deep space, again they were among the stars, drifting, floating, only this time the gas and dust clouds were blinking, flickering, fluorescing and soon both of them realized that the outer edges of Configuration Zero were blinking in exact synchrony with the image inside the sphere. Sympathetic vibration. Identical frequencies.

The implication was unmistakable. The Coethi had lost their home world, perhaps through a supernova. They had evolved, evolved to exist as swarm life, evolved to survive and drift for millennia among the stars, as so much gas and dust, but now, sentient, intelligent, driven by a purpose.

Chase wanted to get back to the here and now, to their problems here and now. Genesis 3 had a mission...he could hear Admiral Marx's words in his head...or was it the Configuration Zero?

_Contain or neutralize any Coethi formations_. He was sure they were going to need help doing that.

"You're damaging our world. You're changing the natural course of things."

>>The Imperative demands this. Error tolerances must be reduced to zero. The Prime Key will be executed>>

Win instinctively leaned over to whisper something, even though they both still had their hypersuit helmets on. "Commander, somehow we have to hack into this swarm, into its processor."

"How the hell do you hack into a swarm?"

"With another swarm. I don't think Tulandra has the right configs to do it here. We've got to get back to our own time, time stream T-001, to Farpool Ops and the lab. Slam something together, test it, somehow get back here and load it into that fogbank. Then maybe we can alter its programming. It's just a big machine, Commander. A swarm, but it's executing a program. A program from a long time ago. And with the right tools, the right approach, we should be able to alter that program. Or mess it up enough to stop them from messing with our viruses and evolution."

"Getting back...that _is_ the problem now." Then Chase had an idea. He addressed the swarm, walking up almost to its outer edges. The flashing pops increased in frequency as he approached, like some kind of motion sensor. He wondered how long it would take the swarm to chew through his suit's laminate armor.

"Can you help us? Can you help us get back to our own time?"

Configuration Zero offered little change that he could see. How do you chat with a fog bank anyway? How do you address something that looked like mist just rolled in from the sea?

_> >Parsing concept_ **(Help)...** _detecting increased stress levels, elevated skin conductance, acoustic parameters indicative of tension and anxiety...this configuration maintains all assigned functions...this configuration can re-initialize single-config entities in original time stream >>_

"I think he's saying he _can_ send us back, Commander. Re-initialize us in our original time stream."

"How is that done? How would you do that?"

In answer, the swarm again assumed a more spherical shape, clearing space in its center for an evolving image, like a vid forming, flickering into life...it was an image of some different time, some place they'd never seen before....

Her name was Evelyn Ngombe. She was tall, maybe with a bit of Masai in her, proud, a bit fluttery and nervous. She grinned sheepishly as other hands helped her into the assimilator booth.

"A great day," she muttered. "Great day...so proud."

The assimilator tech was named Gavin. He sat at a console just outside the booth, while another tech helped Evelyn inside and made her comfortable on the seat. The tech shut and latched the door, pressing a button to begin the seal and containment process. In seconds, a tight bot-proof seal had been formed around the interior of the booth, a barrier formed of electron injectors and a dedicated botscreen.

"Let's do it," the tech told Gavin. Gavin pressed buttons.

Inside the booth, a fog had formed...that was the first layer of nanobots released into the compartment. Evelyn disappeared into the fog, only a leg and a shoulder could be seen.

The fog thickened. A faint buzz could be heard from inside the booth. Chase and Win both watched as the cloud of bots thickened. More and more bots were released and replicated, swelling to fill every cubic millimeter of the booth. Somewhere in there, Evelyn Ngombe was being copied over and over again, trillions of times, infecting each and every atom and molecule.

Evelyn didn't move. Chase focused on her right leg. At first, it was unchanged, a smooth black leg with a section of her print dress showing, hitched up just above her knee. But even as he watched, the black of her skin had begun to fade. In moments, it was almost gray, like the fog itself, oscillating between darker and lighter, but still gray. Then the gray became a translucent shimmer, almost like a ghost, flickering slightly, but growing ever dimmer. Her shoulder was the same.

Evelyn Ngombe was slowly but steadily being disassembled. She was being steadily broken down into a pattern, a pattern of atoms and molecules.

The end came softly, almost as if the woman were walking away in a light rain. Her body, the physical Evelyn Ngombe, began to fade inside the booth. At first, it had been barely perceptible, just a faint blurring of her skin, her extremities, a smearing of her legs and shoulder, as if a photo had lost contrast.

In time, and the time was less than five minutes, Evelyn Ngombe had devolved—that was the word that came to Chase's mind—into a nearly translucent shadow, still recognizable in form, but without substance. You could see right through the form and the shadow to the other side of the booth.

And then she was gone. Enveloped and enmeshed and at one with the greater swarm of nanobotic mechs that was Configuration Zero.

Beside Chase, Win Blakely swallowed hard...seeing in his mind's eye the face of his own mother Amelia in the disappearing Cheshire cat smile of Evelyn Ngombe.

Win swallowed hard. He turned to Chase. "He wants to de-construct us, Commander. That's how he'll re-initialize us back to our own time stream. We'll be like that woman in the vid."

"Like...nothing," Chase asked. "Just like that... _poof!"_

"Maybe that's how they do it."

"Don't you have a jumpship or something?"

The swarm remained mute, almost impenetrable, though flickers and light pops continued to cascade across the face of the fog. They both had the impression that such flashes were the swarm equivalent of thoughts in the making.

"I guess not," Win decided. "What do we do now?"

Chase thought. His mouth was dry and he sucked on a tube of fruit juice inside his helmet. "We can't deal with this swarm with what we have. We've got to get back to T-001, our own time stream and let Farpool Ops and the labs develop better configs and tactics for our own ANAD swarms."

"And something's happened to the Farpool," added Win, "so we can't go back in _Majoris_." He eyed the swarm doubtfully. "I don't particularly want to be dissolved like that lady, do you?"

Chase shrugged, though you couldn't see it inside the hypersuit. "Maybe that's how they do it. Maybe we don't have a choice."

"Commander, there are always choices."

Chase made a decision. "We need to get out of here, now, while we can. Put this to the rest of the team. The Chinese too. We're all in the same boat here."

Win stared at the swarm, still roiling and flashing, consuming much of the space in the cave. But not all.

"That opening over there isn't covered yet...we could make a break for it."

Chase agreed. "Okay, let's do it. On my mark...we make tracks for that opening...go back the way we came. You ready for this?"

Win took a deep breath. "I don't need to see any more images of my mom. Let's go."

Chase did a quick count. "Three...two...one... _NOW_!"

Both turned and ducked around the edge of the swarm. It made no effort to block them. Fast as they could, Chase and Win scrambled and emerged from the cave and worked their way back out of the caverns, boosting up several levels when they had to, pushing through knots and clumps of loose bots, some with faces, some without, disembodied limbs and torsos and other nightmarish clusters—the entire place had a dreamlike, circus-freak atmosphere about it—and finally came to the ledge they had originally entered from.

They left the cave complex and emerged into the swirling icy gale of the upper slopes of the mountain.

Outside the entrance, the late afternoon winds howled up and down the sides of the mountain, driving snow and ice in great sheets across the northward face of the volcanic summit.

Carefully, they descended on suit boost, through thickening snow showers and ice fog, picking their way across ravines and chasms, occasionally slamming into the face of the mountain, then slipping and sliding on their butts, as they headed downslope toward the jungle floor. It took an hour.

Once down, Chase and Win boosted up and over the sweltering, glistening canopy of the rain forest, homing on Alicia Yang's signal, until at last, they found themselves over a narrow clearing and Chase spied late afternoon sunlight glinting off the swamp below.

They boosted down and were soon surrounded by the Genesis 3 team...and the Chinese doctors, including the Ponkti Yondok.

De-suiting, Chase and Win explained what had happened...and what they might still have to do.

Dr. Chou was intrigued. "You actually were in communication with the swarm?"

Win said, "If you could call it that. I'm not sure of the exact mechanism. This Configuration Zero was able to penetrate our brains with bots and somehow trigger or stimulate nerve impulses...in such a way as to guide what we were seeing and hearing...sort of a form of communication, I guess."

Chase added, "In the end, the swarm must have picked up some memories I have of my Dad. It was talking to me using my 'Dad' thoughts and memories, using those to trigger certain nerve impulses."

Chou looked at Dr. Qi and admitted, "That was a big part of _our_ mission. The Institute gave us instructions to try and open a communication channel."

Qi said, "We've had minor successes with the Coethi formation at Reed Banks. But we're still infants when it comes to this kind of communication, still learning the 'grammar', the rules and the syntax. Our own bots are too crude to be of much use."

The Ponkti Yondok was more concerned about their situation. Through the echopod in his mobilitor, his frustration was palpable.

" _Shkkreeah...zzzhhh_...now our ship works no... _m'jeete_ can help?"

Chase said, "I think so, if I interpreted what Config Zero was trying to get across. They want to complete these scans and then we'll be given a way back to our own time stream. If this thing is like what _Trident_ encountered at Europa, they're pretty good at manipulating time and space."

Angie eyed the swarm still billowing and roiling around the shoreline of the swamp. "Can't we just fix the ship? Why do we have to go inside that cloud of bugs?"

Alicia Yang answered. " _Majoris_ checks out. I ran every diagnostic in the book. Everything's working fine. The problem seems to be back home."

Chou sadly agreed. "It is the same with our ship. We believe this Farpool has been shut down or suffers problems at the source."

Marco Kumar shrugged, kicked at a small lizard scuttling among them. He ignored his _Cyclops_ headgear, which had already annotated the image on his eyepiece. "Then we really don't have much choice, do we? If the Coethi can help us get back, I say let 'em help us. Maybe this'll be like a medscan back home...you know: lie perfectly still for a half an hour, turn this way and that. Then, _poof!_ We go home. What's not to like?"

Nobody could offer any arguments against letting Configuration Zero perform the scan.

"We have two hypersuits," Chase said. "Win and I can run a shuttle service up to that cave and back. Two at a time."

"What should I wear?" Angie asked. "What do you wear to an alien swarm scan?"

Nobody thought that was funny at all.

For the next several hours, Win and Chase did duty as shuttle pilots, ferrying members of the crew, plus Dr. Chou, Dr. Qi and Yondok, up to the summit cave of the mountain. Chase took each pair into the outer cavern, negotiated the turns and the floating clumps of bots—ghostly apparitions that drifted about the caves like so many lost souls—and deposited each group in the cave where Configuration Zero seemed to reside. Through visual imagery, faint voices inside their heads and simple trial and error, each crew member learned that they were to walk into the swarm that was Configuration Zero and stand there until the bots shoved them out. Each scan took about ten minutes. Nobody reported feeling any ill effects.

"It felt like flies biting me," Angie shuddered. She couldn't wait to get back to the outer cave opening and let the wind gusts scour her clean of all the creepy, slithering, crawling things.

"Kind of tickled," Alicia Yang decided.

"Me...I kept thinking of how my two dogs, Keesha and Kesra, like to lick me all over," said Kumar. "I almost went to sleep."

"Like a sandstorm from the Gobi," muttered Dr. Qi, rubbing his arms and shoulders vigorously when he emerged.

" _Zzzzhhh_...mah'jeet—" added Yondok. "No sting but suffocate I—"

Win Blakely came before Chase who would be last. He came out of the swarm, his face sweating and backlit from the glow of Config Zero, like a Boy Scout at a campfire.

"I kept having this weird dream," the QT1 tried to explain. "I was in a storm and the wind wouldn't put me down. Like tornado, I was just lifted up and I was swirling around and around until I got so dizzy..." he smiled, sheepishly, shrugged, "—not sure if I passed out or what. But I feel good, really. Maybe it's like taking a hot shower."

Chase sucked up his courage and let Angie squeeze his hands. Her eyes said, _it's okay...it won't bite you._

Chase wasn't so sure. He took a deep breath and walked head up right into the midst of the Config Zero swarm. It was like walking into the middle of a fire, but there was little heat. Only light and shadow, swirling about him.

As a young child, Chase Meyer had always loved taking a bath. Lots of words could describe the feeling: security, serenity, safety, warmth, cocoon. Not words a three-year old would use, but you get the idea.

Thoughts like these and others came to Chase. He was a little disoriented.

Where am I? What is this?

He remembered walking into the swarm...Config Zero was there...the cave...the brilliant light....

He decided to try just talking with the thing.

Okay, maybe taking a warm bath as a three-year old wasn't the best way to describe being a few atoms in a larger swarm. Try this: buried under the covers on a cold winter morning. No? How about stumbling about in a darkened bedroom trying to find your slippers? Or: getting separated from your Mom and Dad on the boardwalk at Daytona Beach for three hours, with all the panic and frantic worry. Or: locked in a closet by your big sister, fumbling around with jackets and coat hangers.

Chase decided to try a more logical approach to figuring this out.

_I think, therefore I am_. At least, he thought he was thinking. _I have a mind. I have thoughts._ But there was more. Something more than his thoughts. Was somebody else in here? That was ridiculous.

_I have sensations_. Hot, cold, hard, soft. Try to analyze this.

A snatch of memory came to him: _Personal identity is the unique identity of a person existing through time. That is to say, the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through time. In the modern philosophy of mind, this concept of personal identity is referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity. The synchronic problem is grounded in the question of what features or traits characterize a given person at one time._

Where the hell did that come from? _I must have read that._

Now, he was sure of it. There was someone else in here. Just a snatch of voice, a snippet—

***Do you recognize me?***

Recognize you? I can barely hear you. Yet, there was something—

An image came to mind. It was fuzzy at first, but with effort, it sharpened. It was a man, an elderly man with a fritz of white hair on the back of his head, rumpled and patched corduroy jacket, hardly-ever-washed jeans.

His dad, Mack Meyer. A much, much older, almost decrepit Mack Meyer.

*** _Hello, Chase...it's nice to see you again...pardon me for saying so, but you seem a little confused***_

Hey, Dad...am I? Am I...you know...?

Mack Meyer smiled, an avuncular smile that Chase knew was somehow simulated. His Dad had never really smiled like that. *** _You're wondering if this is what it feels like...to be an angel...to be part of something greater***_

Actually, I was...well, yeah...I guess I was sort of wondering that. I thought it would be like being inside a cloud. Or maybe a tornado.

Again the smile, this time even wider.

***It's a transition phase, that's all. Meant to make the change easier. There are many reports about what it's like to be an angel...we've archived all of them. And we use them for others, those who are new to the experience***

So, I'm actually an angel...wow...what do others say about all this?

*** _Some reports describe feelings of a kind of warmth, or a closeness, affection, even a form of love, a family or sense of belonging, in a way or at a level they never experienced before, as humans, as Normals***_

Yeah, Dad, I do feel some of that. Are these normal feelings?

Mack Meyer scrunched up his face, thinking. *** _Well, to be honest, Chase, feelings and emotions are different here. Feelings are programmed in and allotted processor capacity. You know the Central Entity runs all these routines, just as a way of keeping the mother swarm together. Social cohesion, just like a tribe or a clan, is just as important for an angel swarm of bots as for any family of Normals. Just like our family***_

So, Dad, will I...always be like this? Can I go places, do things, be with other people or things? I've heard—

His father held up a hand. _***You've got lots of questions, Chase...I think I can answer most of them, but first I have some instructions for you***_

Instructions? What kind of instructions?

Mack Meyer seemed to fade slightly, as if a faint mist had drifted between them. The outline was still there, just less distinct.

***You're taking a little trip, Chase. Back home. That's why your patterns have been maintained. You've got a special mission...a very important mission***

A mission...what kind of mission? Will you help us get back to our time?

***In a way...you're going to help defend what we've done here...Chase, there are grave threats to us, threats coming from where you will be sent...you're needed to defend our work...many of your brothers and sisters are themselves on a special mission...it's a mission to the Sun...***

Chase Meyer listened carefully to what his father was saying. He knew the Prime Key was the master algorithm. It drove everything. He readily agreed to what his father...or what he imagined was his father...was saying. How could he not? That's what it meant to be an angel in a swarm...the greater good drove everything.

But this seemed different. Though he was compelled to follow Mack Meyer's directives...no angel, no bot could really say no...he knew there was another mission, unspoken of by his father. It was just a wisp of a memory, faint, fleeting, but there all the same. Admiral Marx's voice...no, Config Zero hadn't found those memories yet.

He was here to serve the mother swarm but a small part of him understood that the other mission was just as vital...to learn what he could about the Coethi, gather intelligence and somehow get that intelligence to the Normals...so the blasted thing could be defeated.

It was a struggle between the two missions...serving the mother swarm and gathering intelligence needed to defeat that very same mother swarm. Espionage was like that. Mata Hari and all that. Serving two masters. Slicing yourself ever more finely to feed the appetites of two worlds, hoping and praying that the two worlds would never meet and annihilate each other, like particle and anti-particle.

The basic objective of defeating Configuration Zero and the Coethi was still there, still intact, though he knew now it would be in constant danger from competing directives from the mother swarm. Directives inherent in the program that was now running in his head...in his body...in his everything.

Which side would win out? Even Chase Mayer couldn't answer that. Execute the Prime Key. Smash the bejeezus out of the Prime Key. Those were his options. There was no middle ground. But somehow, he had to find a way.

He felt himself moving, moving physically. It brought back another memory...riding the Wicked Witch on the boardwalk at Daytona. Jerks and rolls and snap turns...his neck had been sore for hours. Or maybe it was like when he got to ride in a real race car at Talladega...some kind of Fans Day on the speedway and you just about threw up the fences were flashing by so fast.

No, that wasn't quite it either. This was different. But he decided to relax and let this odd sense of motion come to him...what else could you do? When a pitcher threw a baseball, the atoms that made up the baseball didn't have a debate about where to go.

The entity that had once been known as Chase Meyer would be traveling soon, as part of a greater swarm. Part of him rode an artificial geyser off the surface of Europa and began a journey that would take only a few hours. Though the distance from Jupiter to Earth was some five hundred million kilometers, the trip would only take the entity a few hours. When you were an angel, you could do things like that. More to the point, the Keeper at Europa had been directed to transmit this unique pattern to a master bot closer to Earth. The transmission would imprint and download those patterns to the new bot and a new angel body would be replicated. Chase Meyer would take form again, looking almost like the original.

Almost.

As the entity left Europa and departed Jupiter, impressed on a carrier wave that would take its patterns Earthward, he detected that the small, cracked-billiard-ball of a world that had once been called Europa was now a huge ball of light.

The Keeper was disassembling the satellite, per directives from the Central Entity, disassembling the satellite into feedstock for later use by the mother swarm.

All of this was yet to come, in another time stream.

Chase walked out of the Configuration Zero swarm and felt somehow refreshed, like a new man. The first face he saw was Win Blakely, a frown of concern on his face.

"Took you long enough. What happened in there, Commander?"

Chase shrugged, began putting on his hypersuit again. "It was like dream. I saw my Dad again. I went through some boyhood memories. They said there will be a ship for us back at the swamp...just like _Majoris_. Something they'll fabricate. We're supposed to climb in and we'll be taken back to our time."

Blakely helped him into his gear. "Are all your parts still working? You were inside for quite awhile. I was afraid something had happened."

Chase said, "Something did, Win, but I can't really explain it. I—" but he shrugged, clearly at a loss for words. "Let me sort it out and find a way to describe it later. For now, let's get back up to the entrance and start shuttling everybody back to the swamp. I want to see this new ship."

The promised vehicle closely resembled _Majoris_ in overall perspective. Perched on a sandbar, it had the same general dimensions, an enlarged watermelon with control surfaces sticking out, a rudder, flow vanes, tail pod, propulsor bay.

Alicia Yang was the first to climb in through the hatch. She caught her breath.

"Holy crap! There's nothing inside—what the--?"

One by one, the Genesis 3 team, with Angie, the Chinese and the Ponkti climbed aboard and saw what Yang had seen.

The interior was completely devoid of all structure. No decks, no gangway, no hab spaces, no command center, no MHD plant or singularity core. Nothing but an open volume with a line of straps and harnesses for securing something, perhaps them, to the walls. A big open space filled with...nothing but the disbelieving Genesis 3 team.

"It's a trap," Kumar decided. "Let's get out while we can."

"Maybe not," Blakely thought. "Maybe the Coethi don't need a Farpool to travel through voidtime and the time streams."

Chase eyed their lack of surroundings cautiously, half expecting something to materialize out of the walls. "Maybe this is how they do it," he said quietly.

Blakely had an idea and grabbed his deco wake detector, sweeping it around. "Just like I suspected...the ship's not even real. It's a big swarm, Commander. It's configured and fabricated to resemble our ship."

"It makes sense," Chase told them. "They scanned us. They can trigger and read memory traces. They know what we're thinking, what we expect."

Yang nodded. "So they made a ship to resemble what we expect. This is it. This is exactly what we expected to find."

"I still say it's a trap," Kumar insisted. "Let's _vamos_ before something happens...before we're stuck in here."

"And go where exactly?" Dr. Macalvey asked. "This may be our only way home. I don't know about you, but I'd like to go home."

All eyes turned to Chase, as mission commander. He glared back at them, knowing from their faces that some kind of decision was needed. Selling T-shirts and boogie boards on the beach had never prepared him for this.

"We stay," he decided. "These harnesses must be for us. Strap yourselves in. Admiral Marx said one of our objectives was to learn what we could about the Coethi. Consider this a sort of recon mission, I guess."

Angie wasn't so sure. "Chase, is this really a great idea? I just want to get back to Erika, hold her in my arms, change her diapers, feed her and cuddle her. She needs me. You too."

Chase squeezed her hand as they both strapped in. "I know. But we don't have much choice. Our own ship won't go. Something's happened to the Farpool. The Coethi, or whoever these Bugs are, maybe be able to help us. They sort of said they would. We'll have to take the chance."

"What do you mean 'sort of'?"

Chase closed his eyes. "They communicate with images inside our heads. Win and I both experienced the same thing. The way I interpreted the images, the Coethi agreed to help us get back to our own time. Don't ask me how. Don't ask me to explain how I know that. That's just the way I understood what they were telling me."

Angie felt a catch in the back of her throat. "Chase, I'm scared. I don't want to die."

Chase replied, "You _already_ died, remember? I came back earlier in our time stream and tried to stop it. I hope I stopped it. Anyway, stop asking so many questions, will you?"

"You don't have to be so snippy, you know. You always get like that when—" but her words were interrupted by an abrupt, head-snapping vibration. The 'ship' began to shudder. The hatch had closed and sealed; they could all hear the hiss as pressures equalized.

A light fog began issuing from a port over their head, rapidly filling the space. The fog flickered and flashed, and it was clear to Blakley that this was no fog. Soon enough, it descended over all of them and breathing became more difficult. There were groans somewhere among the crew but Chase couldn't tell who it was. Then an " _ouch...hey, that hurts_!"

The vibration picked up and the unwilling crew of the facsimile ship knew the trip was beginning. Dr. Macalvey muttered prayers under his breath, wishing that the last time he'd been to St. Giles Church in Edinburgh he'd taken communion when it was offered. "Next time, Lord, I promise...really, I promise...just be with us, okay, be with us—"

Would they really wind up back home? Chase was clenching his teeth so hard, he bit his lips. Angie squirmed her hands out of his...there was a vague complaint of "you're hurting my wrist, Chase...." Their hands came apart.

Chase felt faint, felt himself sliding down a very deep black hole.

Then, nothing.

The first thing Chase remembered was when that infernal rattling finally stopped. Really annoying that had been.

His eyes popped open and roved about the interior of their ship, seeking shapes, forms, anything familiar. He saw an arm. Somebody's shoulder. Several legs. Then a face...it was Blakely.

The fog had dissipated.

A voice croaked out, "Where the hell are we?"

" _When_ are we?"

Chase noticed a row of portholes. They hadn't been there before; perhaps they had just opened up. Light streamed in through the portholes. He unstrapped himself, ascertained that Angie was okay—she was groggy and just coming to—then he went to the nearest porthole and looked out.

It wasn't Muir City. It wasn't Farpool Ops or the Atlantic Ocean.

It wasn't even Florida.

The view outside the portholes wasn't real either. It dissolved and dissolved again and finally was replaced by an open plain, like Dakota prairie country, only the plain was covered with undulating plants. The plants were not plants at all, he soon realized. The ground writhed with life, swarms upon swarms of bots seething and swelling and contracting, pulsing and throbbing to some unseen rhythm. The imagery jerked and shifted and this time, the horizon was curved and he was in space orbiting a planet. A planet of bots, teeming with nanoscale life.

The planet of the Coethi.

Blakely and Tulandra both agreed, peering out the porthole alongside Chase.

"It's a simulation of some sort." Tulandra decided. "It has to be. None of this is real."

Angie came up to peer out with Chase. "So where are we?"

Chase felt the answer in a way he couldn't readily verbalize. "I think we're trapped...inside the Coethi mother swarm."

"With no idea where or how to get out," Blakely added.

Chapter 9

CVUN-118, U.S.S. _Trenchard_

JTF-20 Command Ship

Combat Information Center

August 1, 2123 (Earth U.T.)

0515 hours

The assault of the Sons of Adam teams and their Gaia Force comrades had taken less than two hours to seize control of all key positions inside Farpool Ops. Even Jack Worth, commanding A-team, had been surprised at the ease with which his detachments had secured their objectives and overcome spirited but ultimately futile resistance from the local security forces.

Now Admiral Ray Kennard looked on as orderlies and medbots tended to some cuts and abrasions on the forehead and neck of Admiral Gerhard Marx. _Trenchard's_ C/O, Commander Mike Rainey, kept an eye on the displays all around them, electromagnetic fingers probing out nearly a thousand kilometers from his ship, in the air and underwater, for any unwanted visitors.

Kennard felt sorry for CINCFAR. "What happened up there, Marx?"

The Commander in Chief of Farpool Service winced and resolutely shoved a fussy little medbot away. It chirped in annoyance and went around to the other side of his face.

"Nasties came in two waves, Ray. Northeast bearing by air and southwest too, underwater."

Kennard just shook his head. He had already read the after-action reports and intel on the assault. "Underwater, too. Now they have their own subs. Where does somebody like Sons of Adam get submarines?"

Marx shrugged. "Open market. Chinese have supplied a number of these groups...intel supports that. Mostly through cutouts and third parties. Plus they had _remoras_. That we didn't expect."

"Underwater drones." Kennard rubbed day-old stubble on his chin. "Somebody's got money. And you...what happened here?" Kennard pointed to Marx's face.

Marx tried to stay still while stitches and nanoderm was applied, talking out of both sides of his mouth. "The first wave veetolled in from lifters that came in at sea-level, popped up unannounced and dropped off several platoons' worth of troops right on our front door step, right at the 01 level, promenade deck. They knew their way around too—somebody had done some good recon. They laid down botscreens, diversionary attacks and blasted their way inside with HERF barrages to disable our own swarms, some pretty damn decent counter-nano, pulser fire and PKR rounds. FPS security was outmanned and outgunned in less than ten minutes. Everything Sons of Bitches threw at us was military-grade and recent stuff too. Pretty soon, they were knocking on the doors of our CIC. I ordered the staff to fall back to the pods on 03 level, but my F3, my logistics officer—name of Wade—went back for some critical files. Got slammed right in the corridor, while the rest of us barely made it to the sea deck. Reaperhawk and Scimitar drones. I got away in the last of the pods and your people fished us out of the water an hour later."

Kennard was already perusing a slate filled with all the details. "Says here your UWATs gave a good account of themselves, even if they were driven off."

Marx nodded. Gratefully, he accepted a cup of something medicinal, some kind of kinetic drink laced with bourbon, it tasted like. "That's because our underwater assault teams are combined units, some human, some amphib, some Seomish. The Seomish know how to fight underwater—that's their home down below us...Keenomsh'pont. Eventually, they found themselves outgunned, so they pulled back. But if I know their commanders and prodsmen—they're already plotting a counterattack."

Kennard looked on sourly. "As long as it's coordinated with us. Operation _Sea Hammer_ got the green light from Paris at oh dark thirty last night, about 0030 hours, I believe. There's a final briefing here at 1030 hours. H-hour tentatively set for 2330 tonight. What's the status of the Farpool itself now?"

Marx's shoulder slumped. He finished off the drink, lifted the cup for more. The medbot measured out a few more fingers into his cup.

"Last intel I saw said she was completely down and shut off. Ray, it's pretty apparent to me that Farpool was one of the Sons of Bitches' key objectives. As soon as they had us on the run and evacuating Muir City's upper decks, they sent a dedicated team out to the vortex. They kept us pinned down and even diverted, so they could achieve their primary objective: killing Farpool."

Kennard recited the damage assessment from satellite and drone imagery. Hordes of SuperFly units had blanketed the area around the whirlpools all night long.

"Looks like they knew exactly what they were doing. Dedicated sappers dropped PKR charges right into the singularity engine funnel. Extensive damage there. Chronotron pods sixty percent destroyed or disabled, command links cut in most sectors, T-buffers shot out...haven't detected even a faint echo of a twist field in hours. Farpool's dead as a rock for the time being."

Marx just shook his head. "That's bad, Ray. Real bad. I've still got three Genesis teams in the field, various time streams, all trying to track down Coethi installations and neutralize them. And the Chinese are in this up to their little slanted eyeballs as well, we all know that."

"Most of my intel guys think they were involved in this little caper from the beginning, financing, providing military-grade nano, training, the works. It actually makes sense, if you think about it. They're working with that smaller farpool in the South China Sea and some kind of kissing cousins of the Coethi they're supposed to have contained. My guess is they know a hell of a lot more than they're letting on."

"That was another Genesis objective...to see what the Chinese are up to. We know they've got time ships...and that they've made exploratory trips in them. We just don't know where exactly."

"Or why," added Kennard. "Okay, Ger, why don't you go get some rest. I'll have one of the yeomanbots get you some quarters. A hot shower and a few hours' sleep will do you good. You're going to need it. Come see me after a few hours and I'll bring you up to date on _Sea Hammer_ and the rules of engagement Paris gave us. Kickoff briefing and H-hour are tonight."

Marx smiled apologetically, touching the bandaged area of his forehead, which really did hurt like hell. But he could feel the slight tickle of the nanoderm already working.

"You got a deal." Marx got up with a groan and followed the bot out of CIC and down a narrow corridor to officers' country forward. The prospect of a clean bunk really did appeal to him.

UNISEA Task Force Headquarters

Pembroke Hotel, Front Street

Hamilton, Bermuda

August 1, 2123

1755 hours

If there was one thing a good Ponkti prodsman never failed to despise, it was walking around in the Notwater in full gravity inside a garbage can the engineers liked to call a _mobilitor_. By the whiskers of old Shooki, Gozu ki kel: Ponk'et had decided he would never get used to being cooped up inside one of these contraptions like some kind of pillfish from the icewaters of the Ponk'el. Better to roam free and easy through the waters like normal and feel the sweet tickle of the currents, the way normal life was meant to be.

But Gozu knew full well that what was happening here in this place called Pembroke was anything but normal.

Operation _Sea Hammer_ was about to commence and for that, Gozu was grateful beyond words, for the despicable grungefish called Umans had seriously routed his Ponkti force of prodsmen and stunners a day before and to save what was left of the pod, they'd had to withdraw back to Keenomsh'pont and lick their wounds.

Now the Umans had finally developed some sort of spine and brought their best weapons and men to this small island, for a final briefing before the seamother bellowed and they could plunge back into joyous combat like they should have done hours ago. It was like any _tuk_ match—you didn't give your opponent any time to recover but kicked and slashed him without letup until he cried mercy and dropped out of the fight.

Gozu scanned the sea of troops hovering about on the dock below him, while overhead small drones flitted about like the infernal creatures the Umans called flies, snapping vids and keeping some semblance of order. Gozu figured the sooner the troops could be sent on their way and their energies focused on the enemy over the horizon, the sooner they'd stop bitching and moaning and fighting each other.

The Chief Prodsman of the Ponkti wondered just how well this mixed force would do, but then that's what combat was like now on this cursed world of Urku...joint task forces, combined arms, Umans and amphibs and Seomish kels all mixed together like stew. Already he had personally squelched half a dozen brawls between Ponkti and amphibs; no one trusted amphibs these days but they were needed in Operation _Sea Hammer_ for their ability to move easily in water and on land. Some of the amphibs were modified Ponkti prodsmen that Gozu had known from the time they were midlings and he knew them as particularly tough and violent. They remembered how Umans had treated the Sea People in the first years after the Emigration and this was an opportunity for revenge.

Maybe some friction was normal between Uman soldiers and sailors, marines and airmen, crammed in with Seomish kelke and amphibs, but Gozu had seen to it that his unit commanders squashed the worst of the scuffles before anybody really got really hurt.

Now the Uman commander...this Admiral Kennard...was speaking to the men, through a remote vid hookup from his command ship dozens of kilometers away. Gozu listened but only halfway...he was anxious to be underway but it was the nature of brass in any world's army to make long-winded speeches. He tried to stay still in his mobilitor but really his body was tired and he needed to be in the water.

"...to be avoided if at all possible..." Kennard was saying. His face floated overhead, projected from drones like a 3-D 'god' explaining commandments to his flock. "Casualties are to be minimized...Muir City has several thousand civilians being held hostage. The bulk of the enemy's force is concentrated in Farpool Ops...that's levels 04 and up, all the way to 01. All your fire should be concentrated there...we'll let swarms screen off any strays elsewhere. Now as to unit orders, your commanders have—"

Here Gozu pulled a small slate from his mobilitor belt and tapped a few keys. He clicked into his echopod and a high-volume rally cry burst forth, tuned to the special frequency for his force. Obediently, several dozen troopers gathered around, some in mobilitors, some in the waters swirling around the wharf pilings below the dock, some clinging to light stanchions and wooden stairs nearby. Sixty in all, divided into several platoons for the combined arms assault on their sector.

Gozu went over the particulars in detail, making sure that everything was well understood, which was not something to be taken for granted with such a crazy stewpot of a force. Nothing was omitted: unit objectives, call signs and passwords, fields of fire, how to treat prisoners and civilians, the rules of engagement, cas-evac procedures, everything.

One amphib sitting on top of a traffic sign near the end of the dock had a question. Seomish, from the looks of him, Gozu decided, but probably not Ponkti.

"Commander Gozu, what happens if the intakes are blocked?"

Gozu glared back. "Prodsmen First Class Yaktok, you do have the brains of a sea cow. Where were you during the last two weeks of training? If the intakes are blocked, you will use your tactical swarms to unblock them...that's why you have tactical ANAD swarms. Clear?"

"Uh...yes, sir."

Despite the rumbling discontent, Gozu had come to have pride in his polyglot outfit, composed as it was of Ponkti prodsmen, human and Seomish amphibs and several human combat divers.

A horn sounded—the _Load Up_ signal—and the Hammerheads, for that was the name the men had chosen for themselves—boarded their small fleet of kip'ts. The trip north from Bermuda to the Muir seamount would take about an hour—an hour to reach the tango point, assembly and staging Point _Lima_ , just at the edge of the guyot that was Muir seamount. To make the crossing without detection, the Hammerheads would be acoustically screened by several U.S. Navy submarines pinging away with active sonar but Gozu was old school and put more faith in the raucous, bellowing and honking of two seamother calves the Ponkti had brought to the waterfront off Hamilton. Gozu knew that, properly 'motivated,' the _puk'lek_ calves would make enough racket to drown out an entire navy.

Nobody wanted to take any chances with what Intel said the Sons of Adam might be able to see or hear.

As the kip'ts submerged and motored north, through light cross-currents toward the rolling hills that fronted the seamount, Gozu mentally ticked off every last item of preparation he could think of: their weapons...electric prods, sound stunners, scentbulbs with disabling odors, sacs of mah'jeet, the toxic micro-organisms specially bred for airborne dispersal now, even a few deadly k'orpuh snakes transported in holdpods and set to be released the moment the Hammerheads had breached their way into Muir City's lower utility decks.

Nine men in all, the Hammerheads had one mission: to enter Intake C, which drew in tons of water every minute for cooling and desalinizing, breach its interior walls and spread out along several well-defined sectors of Muir City's lowest utility decks, neutralize any Sons of Adam resistance, treat injured hostages and secure the area.

All timed to the minute and expected to be concluded in less than an hour.

The multi-level Muir City platforms were perched atop the seamount like some massive mother hen about to lay eggs. Much of the structure was underwater, including her massive water intakes A through D. Some ten decks rose above the waves to a conical taper, like a ship superstructure and sat astride the guyot in a series of concentric towers, masts, spires, and turrets, adorned with all manner of parapets, ramparts, keeps, holds and bulwarks, as if the city were a medieval fortress overlooking the King's countryside.

They made tango Point _Lima_ in good order and Gozu ordered all craft to bottom just behind a fold of volcanic tuff, hiding behind a natural barrier of lava mounds and long-frond sea grass waving in the tricky cross currents and swirling sediment that covered the edges of the seamount. The Ponkti commander had made numerous trips to this zone of chaos since they had first come to Urth in the Emigration—for the huge refugee settlement Keenomsh'pont surrounded the base of the massive seamount several thousand meters below, spilling out onto the seabed like so much sea grass. He figured he knew the waters well enough.

What he didn't know was what kind of reception the scumbag Sons of Adam had prepared for them. From Point _Lima_ , a well-conditioned Ponkti male could make the objective—Intake C—in less than a minute, the amphibs and human combat divers in perhaps three. The distance wasn't that great; maybe two beats, or as the humans would say, about five hundred meters.

But a lot could still go wrong with this whole stunt in that single long minute.

Gozu checked and synchronized his timekeep. Less than five minutes to go. He strained to hear what he hoped to hear, listening for the repeater's signal, telling them H-hour had finally come.

And when it did come as a sharp staccato series of honks from the repeaters, Gozu uttered a sharp bark of his own and as one, the Hammerheads rose from their defilade position and surged forward.

Sea Council Headquarters

The East River

New York City

August 1, 2123

1200 hours

Less than a thousand kilometers to the west, Senator Ryan Palette surfaced his own kip't-submarine just off the Sea Council facility in the East River and popped the hatch. A smile of satisfaction spread over his face; his meticulous plans were unfolding just as outlined and he let the river current carry his submersible downriver until it bumped into one of the pilings that surrounded the pavilion. He looped a short mooring cable around one of the cleats and beamed up at the small squadron of newsdrones that hovered overhead. Faces peered out at him from the pavilion itself...most of the Council delegates had already arrived. On shore, hundreds of demonstrators waved placards and chanted slogans that he couldn't quite make out across the hundred meters of river, but that didn't matter.

It was enough to have the world's attention for what he was about to say.

Palette gazed about for one particular newsdrone and was pleasantly surprised to encounter a whirring quadrotor bearing the SOLNET insignia moving down from a hover to take up station less than ten meters above him. By prior arrangement, correspondent Aimee Tolstoy and SOLNET would be the pool media agency allowed to direct questions to Palette during this talk. All other agencies and services would hang back, allowed to capture their own photos and vids, but the interview would be run by SOLNET.

"Good evening, Ms. Tolstoy. I'm assuming that's you buzzing around up there? Would you please come a little lower, so I don't have to strain my neck so much?"

Obediently, the drone descended to head height. A voice emerged from the faint whir.

"Good day, Senator. This is Aimee Tolstoy and we're live on Solnet. Thank you for agreeing to meeting with us."

"My pleasure, Aimee."

Tolstoy was physically located inside the Sea Council pavilion but Palette and the Sons of Adam promoters had been insistent that no one approach Palette's sub. Security, they always explained.

Tolstoy had scoffed at that to her editors. "More likely the Senator just wants to be free to scoot if UNIFORCE shows up in force." They all knew the Senator had a warrant out for his arrest. That was why the interview was being conducted from the deck of a submarine.

"Senator, before I begin, your people indicated that you wanted to make a short statement about the events that have transpired at Muir City the last few days."

"I do indeed, thanks Aimee." Palette grasped firm hold of the sled's canopy as other boats cruising back and forth out in the river sent wakes sloshing against the pavilion pilings.

"Two days ago, as you all know, the Sons of Adam was forced to strengthen our position against the spread of the Amphib infection decimating our world and take irrevocable steps to preserve, protect and defend our way of life against these encroachments. It was not a step we took lightly. Some may say that taking control of the Muir City complex by force was a despicable act of terrorism. So be it. Think what you will. Sons of Adam says we represent the views of millions of people who feel as we do that nothing will be done about the plague of Amphibs infecting our society unless extreme measures are taken. Ladies and gentlemen, we're at a crossroads now—"

Palette paused while Tolstoy's newsdrone maneuvered in for a tight shot, putting on the sternest face he could to show the world that Sons meant business and hell and damnation would be their lot if they didn't come to their senses. Childhood images of pastors thundering down at their flocks from pulpits came to mind.

"The truth is, good people, that we must treat Amphibs like a plague, like a disease. You don't reason with a virus or a disease. You eradicate it. Make it cease to exist. That's what we propose and what we've always proposed. Taking over Muir City is only the first step, but it was an important step because it's a warning to all of us. Amphibs can't be allowed to stay here. The Sea People can't be allowed to stay here. Send the Bugs and the Frogheads and the talking fish back where they came from!"

Distant cheers erupted from the crowds of demonstrators on shore, while inside the pavilion, concerned delegates cast worried glances at each other. Some pecked on their wristpads. Others stirred uneasily. Boats continued to swarm about in the middle of the river.

Aimee Tolstoy used the interruptions to inject her first question.

"Senator Palette, how many people died when the Sons of Adam took over Muir City? How many casualties were there?"

Palette rubbed his blond eyebrows nervously and squinted at the newsdrone hovering in the strong midday sunlight. On screens and displays all over Solnet, the expression made Palette appear especially heartless and churlish.

"Of course, we deplore any casualties. It's never been the mission of Sons of Adam to cause casualties, unless we're talking about amphibs and Sea People. We don't mourn the loss of a virus, do we? In the same manner, we don't mourn the losses of our adversaries. But innocent people—and _who_ can really be innocent at a time like this?—of course, we deeply regret that such things have to happen."

"Senator, today thousands of people around the world are going through the conicthyosis procedure and becoming Seomish-human hybrids, much to the displeasure of parents and politicians everyone, especially people like yourself. Amphib culture, the Amphib look, Amphib foods, traditions and beliefs are becoming all the rage. You've said before that SOA views this as a grave threat to America and the world and we have numerous reports of similar organizations erupting around the world. What would be an acceptable outcome to this dispute, as far as SOA is concerned?"

"An acceptable outcome--?" Palette paused for effect, appearing to give some thought to the question. In reality, his answer was well-rehearsed and spilled out automatically.

"—an acceptable outcome would be for all Sea People to go back where they came from and for all Amphibs to undergo mandatory re-conversion therapy and live among us again as productive _human_ beings, not some bastard half-breeds polluting our genetic heritage."

"Senator, there are reports that when you recently developed lung cancer, medbotic intervention was prescribed and some of the medbots used were derived from the so-called _mah'jeet_ organisms that the Sea People brought to Earth in their Emigration. Some have called you a hypocrite for agreeing to this. What do you say to these critics?"

Palette's face darkened. "I don't think that's important now. My personal health issues are my business. What is important is that we are here making a statement about the damage that Amphibs are doing to humanity, to our society, to our heritage—"

"And you make this statement by destroying property and putting hundreds of lives in danger?"

Palette turned, hearing a commotion out in the river. Two UN police cruisers were circling to approach the Sea Council pavilion. "Ms. Tolstoy, Amphibs are destroying our world. There's no telling where all this will lead. Steps must be taken. Decisions must be made. Sons of Adam intends to take a leading role in the debate—"

Now the police cruisers, each with big blue letters _UN_ emblazoned on their hulls, began closing on the _kip't_ from opposite sides, maneuvering to pin the craft against the pavilion.

Tolstoy saw what was happening. "Senator, if I may, there are reports from sources that—"

"I'm sorry, Ms. Tolstoy, but as you can see, my right to free speech is about to be violated... _Sons of Adam_ forever!" He waved the newsdrone away and slipped inside the sled, cranking down the canopy. Before the police boats could approach and envelop the craft, Palette was already gone.

"SUSPECT BOAT, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LEAVE! STAY WHERE YOU ARE! WE WILL OPEN FIRE ON YOU!"

But it was too late. The _kip't_ was nimble and fast and was below the waves in seconds. The nearer cruiser fired a few rounds from her 3-inch gun but Palette was gone, descending rapidly toward the river bottom in a furious cascade of bubbles. Palette made a slight course adjustment, studied the cryptic displays on the Seomish sled and steered for what he hoped was the southern end of the river. Presently, just coming abeam of Manhattan's Battery Park, he felt the jostling swells and currents of the open ocean.

Once away from the traffic and noise of New York harbor, Palette figured he would cruise in the general direction of Muir City. For better or worse, he knew now that he was fugitive from UNIFORCE justice.

Muir City

August 1, 2123

1450 hours

Gozu ki kel: Ponk'et led the Hammerheads straight into Intake C, straining to hold position against the surging currents swirling inside the huge pipe. The assault force made entry with no incident but quickly encountered the first of what were expected to be a number of obstacles, in this case, a series of filter screens, followed by multiple stages of pumps and valves.

With s sharp bark, he issued commands. "ANAD unit, front and center!"

Two burly Ponkti prodsmen pushed their way to the lead position.

"Deploy tactical swarms! Make that screen go away! _Kah_ , quickly, quickly...we're behind schedule!"

Each prodsman extracted a small capsule from his web belt and, manipulating the control studs on top, waved the capsule in arcs around the filter screen, releasing the master bots from containment. The water was quickly filled with a flashing, fluorescing mist, as the bots replicated rapidly, slamming atoms to build structure. In moments, the screens and the gear behind them were enveloped in a brilliant blue-white ball of light. The sphere pulsed and throbbed for a few moments, too bright to look at, and when the swarms were done, a jagged hole had been melted in the screen and the filters were steaming, molten slag heaps.

One by one, the Hammerheads slipped through the debris and continued their passage up through Intake C.

Gozu wore a small wristpad on one armfin. He consulted it, as they cautiously navigated the narrow, twisting intake piping

_Two more sets of screens and valves and we're in,_ he told himself. If the intel was right, the interior of Intake C would deliver the Hammerhead assault force right into the middle of Utility Deck 2, near an outer bulkhead. From there, the team would emerge and spread out across the deck, securing all access points above and below—lifts and chutes, hatches and doors, then conduct a sanitizing sweep of all interior rooms, chambers, berths, labs, compartments and work spaces, engaging and neutralizing any Sons' Guns forces they encountered.

Gozu could well visualize similar sweeps being conducted above and below them, on multiple decks of Muir City. The primary tactical objective for Operation _Sea Hammer_ was to completely envelop the enemy, cut off all routes of escape, then systematically shrink the envelopment and destroy the Sons piecemeal, deck by deck, room by room if necessary from above and below until resistance was broken...or the Sons had been eliminated.

It didn't matter to Gozu which outcome was achieved, but as an old _tuk_ master, he had a secret desire to engage one of the bastards hand-to-hand and spear the daylights out of the Uman scum with his beak and tail. Any Ponkti worth his fins would want the same and Gozu planned to somehow find a way to satisfy that bloodlust.

Through both remaining sets of screens, pumps and valves, he had just noticed how much the flow of water had slackened when a commotion erupted at the front of the assault. Koboh and Yaktu were on point, two prodsmen Gozu knew he could trust.

They had reached Utility Deck 2. The prodsmen were just emerging from an open maintenance pool—the interior end of the intake—when pulser rounds spanged off the edge of the pool. Sons' Guns had a small squad on the deck—they had come down to see why the water flow had stopped—and when Koboh and Yaktu raised their heads above the water, the Sons had opened fire.

Koboh was hit, but his mobilitor suit took most of the round and he fell out onto the grid of the deck. Right behind, rolling quickly, Yaktu fell out too and squeezed his prod to max.

The discharge flew like a bolt of lightning and caught one of the Sons flush in the face. He went down in a smoking heap, his face black, half burned off.

Fast as they could, still under fire, the rest of the Hammerheads splashed out of the pool and took immediate cover where they could find it among the cluttered piles of equipment on the grid floor.

Beams and rounds flashed back and forth across the deck, ricocheting off barrels and pallets and racks. Several 'Heads were hit by shrapnel and cried out.

Gozu made the decision quickly. "Stunners, lay down a blast! Full bore! Let 'em have it!"

Two troopers made their way forward, both Ponkti clad in mobilitors. They dropped to the floor and lit off their sound guns. Instantly, deafening booms and concussive shock waves rattled the deck, sending gear flying. The booms were followed by a pattern of ear-splitting screeches and shocks, enough to damage human hearing. All the Hammerheads wore protection; the Ponkti were in their suits.

With the Sons thus momentarily incapacitated, Gozu decided this assault would be prosecuted in the Ponkti way and to hell with Farpool Service or UNIFORCE rules of engagement. With a few short barks and honks, he ordered the _mah'jeet_ carriers to come forward. By echelon, they replaced the prodsmen, who dropped back in staggered fallback maneuvers.

On Gozu's hand signal, the clouds of toxic micro-organisms were released, filling the smoky air of the deck with a faint purplish glow. Driven by their natural senses toward warm bodies, the _mah'jeet_ drifted steadily toward the enemy, 'tuned' as they were to be attracted to human flesh. Moments later, the cloud descended on the fighters holed up behind a man-made barricade of shelving and fell en masse upon their position.

Cries and shouts erupted along with wild, uncontrolled gunfire. The Hammerheads lay low and let their tiny allies do the dirty work. A commotion and sounds of panic mixed with equipment crashing to the deck. The Sons thrashed and flailed at their miniscule attackers, but it was hopeless. One came flying out, waving wildly, and was immediately dropped by a prod discharge, twitching and moaning as he thrashed about on the floor.

The others weren't so fortunate.

When it was all over, the _mah'jeet_ had done their work and the only thing left were a half dozen purple-stained bodies in varying postures of panic and rigor, their bloated bodies having burst, spraying blood and tissue everywhere.

The Sons shooter who had fled the redoubt behind the shelving was roughly awakened, tightly restrained and then passed to the back of the squad, where UNIFORCE agents following the 'Heads took charge of him and bore him belowdecks to a makeshift holding cell.

With Utility Deck 2 thus sanitized, Gozu led his Hammerheads upward, through several more decks, eventually joining forces with a squad of U.S. Navy Seals, clad in standard-issue combat exos and dive outfits, not unlike the Ponkti mobilitors.

Seal Team Alpha was commanded by a Lieutenant Commander Benedict, a lean, even gaunt black-haired warrior with a thick black moustache. Benedict's eyes widened at the diversity of the Hammerheads.

"Looks like a kickass outfit," he opined as he and Gozu huddled in what was left of a commissary on Residential 5, picking through some scraps of food that had been scattered across tables. Behind him, a haggard line of hostages just released were being shepherded to med stations for quick examinations by UNIFORCE corpsmen. "You've got, what—humans, amphibs, some Sea People too?"

Gozu stood straight as he could in his mobilitor. _Blast this friggin' Notwater._ There was no way he was going to go amphib, but when you had to fight in Notwater, you had to wear protection. Even Ponkti tukmasters couldn't breathe Notwater.

"Ponkti prodsmen and stunners," Gozu corrected Benedict. "Tukmasters, all of them. This isn't their best element, here."

"I can imagine." Benedict sized up the 'Heads. "How do you keep 'em from biting each others' heads off?"

Gozu waited for the translation through his echopod, gave it some thought, and then said, " _Kkkqqqlllqq_...by keeping... _zzhhh_...them focused on enemy. Where is enemy now?"

Benedict knocked back a slug of some kind of energy drink from a canteen. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. "Did a little force recon a few minutes ago. My second over there—" he indicated a short, muscular gym rat with oversized hands and arms, gesticulating a story to a gathering of Seals, "—tells me the last significant pocket of resistance is two decks up, the hangar bay. There are some Sons holed up in a machine shop in the back, well dug in and well-armed, I might add. We were working out how to deal with 'em when you showed up."

"Hostages?"

Benedict shrugged. "Some. Best guess is about ten. It looks like Admiral Marx's people might be some of them...that hasn't been confirmed. Plus Intel thinks the Sons' leader—this Jack Worth guy—may be inside too."

Gozu considered the human's words. "I have encountered this before...on Seome. A similar situation. Another kel had taken command of the sacred waters of Pillars of Shooki. I headed up a small group—we say _muh'pul'te_ —to penetrate the enemy's defenses and rescue the priestesses inside. _Zzzhhh_...would work here as well...or something similar."

Benedict was intrigued. "You're one of the Sea People...you came through the Farpool?"

Gozu indicated he had.

Benedict said, "I'm open to suggestions, even if they do come from another world. The brass is getting pressure from Paris to negotiate with these dirtbags. Me, I think that's a waste of time. If I could give my commanders some options—workable options—they might listen. What happened?"

Gozu proceeded to recount the episode, a dirty little assault in the midst of the civil war between Omt'or and Ponk'et that had erupted several _mah_ before _Kel'vish'tu_ , before the Great Emigration....

In the chaos of the barrage and the resulting skirmishes, Manklu would take his own small force inside the Pillars, by way of a little-known lava tube below the seabed, an approach already scouted and reconnoitered by specially trained tillet in advance of the assault. Tillet were common pack animals and it was customary and normal to find long convoys of the animals crossing the seas en route to disgorge cargo from their huge belly pouches. No one, not even the Ponkti, would suspect such creatures could be trained as spies. And beyond that, Manklu had another idea on how to use the tillet in ways no one would ever have imagined.

The tillet came back to the expedition encampment after a day of nosing about the entrance to the Pillars and squeaked the details of what they had found. They were petted and fed well for their efforts.

Then the moment came for the barrage to begin.

The stunners went first, blasting sonic charges directly into the Pillars. Deafening booms ripped the water, cascading seams of loose rock and a rain of silt from the columns. The water churned and burned as heavy waves rolled across the entrance to the complex. Inside their own sound barrier, Ponkti guards tumbled and flipped, concussed by the shock waves, stunned by barrage after barrage of sonic discharges.

At the moment of maximum chaos, the _muh'pul'tekel_ prodsmen surged forward, shockwands at the ready. They crossed the outer barrier, just as the stunners ceased fire, and engaged the Ponkti with their weapons. Steam flashed and hissed as electric discharges slashed through the water, the expeditionary force and the Ponkti rapidly closing into close-quarters combat. With the initial shock of the sonic barrage and the mass of the assault, the _muh'pul'tekel_ troops quickly punched a hole in the Ponkti defenses. Fighting was fierce, as many of the Ponkti troops grappled with the assault force, using their knowledge of _tuk_ and other martial defense tactics to blunt the initial penetration.

As the scrum continued, less than a beat away, hidden in a deep ravine, Manklu tel and his special force had gathered a small herd of tillet...long-distance pack animals specially bred for their upcoming mission. Manklu led the lead animal to a holding area and unzipped its belly pouch. Tillet were often used for long-distance cargo transport and it wasn't unusual to come across trains and convoys of the animals plying the waters and currents between the kels. Even the Ponkti occupying force used them and Manklu was counting on that to provide the cover they needed.

An Omtorish prodsman helped Manklu with the animals. "These beasts have large pouches, _shoo_ Manklu...special cargo for them?"

Manklu and the prodsman worked to steady and calm the beasts down, securing them one by one to a rail they had installed in the side slope of the ravine.

"Very special cargo, Klekto... _us_. We'll ride in the belly of these beasts, right inside the Pillars."

This made Klekto pulse in confusion. "Us...inside the tillet? How is that—"

Manklu honked a command and the rest of the force assembled around the tied-down animals.

"I'll explain. We've reconned Ponkti operations around the Pillars for the last few days. Every day, they receive their supplies from a train of tillet sent up from Ponk't; they enter on the far side of the Pillars...there's a gap between one of the columns, almost a trap door. These tillet are specially bred and trained to carry kelke."

"Almost like a kip't," said an Eep'kostic stunner.

"Exactly. I'm counting on the Ponkti being on schedule. Our friends here are trained to carry us, individually, in their belly pouches. Once were inside, they're trained to sniff out their fellow tillet...if we time it right, they'll sniff out the next Ponkti delivery train. We'll join the convoy and that gets us through their sound and scent barriers and inside the Pillars. When the time is right, we emerge. And we come out fighting."

"Locate the leaders?" another soldier offered.

"Capture the Metah?"

Manklu could tell his troops were fascinated by the tactic and itching to go. You couldn't hone good troops to a fine edge and expect to hold them back for long. All of these kelke had been hand-picked and made _tekmetah_ with Manklu. They would complete the mission...or die in the process.

"That's our mission. Now get your gear together and let's board our train...."

And one by one, the _muh'pul'tekel_ force disappeared into the swollen belly pouches of the tillet.

Moments later, by instinct and by training, the pack leader stuck her beak into the flowing currents swirling over top of the ravine and then led her herd off, sniffing and hunting for the Ponkti logistics train that would soon arrive....

When Gozu finished the tale, Benedict whistled. "Like the Trojan horse, huh? Is this something you could do here?"

"Perhaps," Gozu thought. "Let me talk with my _kelke_."

Gozu gathered the Hammerheads around and explained the situation. Two decks above them, the hangar bay was effectively a free-fire zone. The Sons Guns were well entrenched inside several machine shops along one wall, with excellent fields of fire across the entire bay. Worse, they held hostages, including some of Admiral Marx's key staff people. UNIFORCE Paris wanted to avoid a bloodbath. They wanted Worth alive if possible. And they didn't want to risk losing Marx's people.

The pressure was on to negotiate and try to talk Worth out of his redoubt. But Benedict and most of the assault team commanders were skeptical of the approach, arguing the Sons remaining weren't inclined to negotiate but were all fanatics willing to die for their cause.

Benedict was all for accommodating them.

After some discussion, Gozu felt he had a workable tactical plan. He relayed it to Benedict, whose eyes widened even as a sly smile spread across his face.

"You _are_ truly insane," he decided, with a low chuckle, "but it's worth a shot. However I'll have to get permission from the higher-ups first."

So they waited for permission from Command and, as they waited, Gozu worked with his ANAD techs to hammer out the requisite configurations and test them. When word came down from Command to proceed, Gozu announced to Benedict they were ready.

The Russians had long had a word for the tactic...it was called _maskirovka._ There were many forms: camouflage, denial, deception. Being something you weren't. Resembling something or somebody else.

Gozu knew that the Sons Guns and particularly their assault leader would listen to no negotiator...unless the speaker was Senator Ryan Palette himself, the founder and head of the Sons of Adam. He had worked with the ANAD specialists in the Hammerheads for an hour to hack out a passable config of the Senator and impress that config on a loose swarm of ANAD nanobots, as a way of encouraging Worth and his cronies to either give themselves up or be so distracted that a lightning assault would have a better chance of success with minimal casualties.

Paris had reluctantly approved the little deception plan and Gozu told Benedict the Heads' were ready. Once the swarm had been launched and began to assume the external shape and sound of Palette, voice records of the Senator had been modified to create a realistic impression of the Kentucky senator's mountain twang and tone of speech. The ersatz Senator Ryan Palette would then approach the machine shop where the Sons were holed up and encourage the resisters to give themselves up before incurring any more casualties.

If Worth allowed the 'Senator' to enter the shop, then it would be a matter of timing as to when the swarm would disassemble and incapacitate the resisters—and probably the hostages too—so that the Hammerheads and Seal Team Alpha could storm in and take command of the situation.

It was a plan fraught with if's and Benedict rubbed three-day old stubble on his chin weighing all the things that could go wrong. Just to ensure the outcome, Gozu arranged for a small sac of _mah'jeet_ to be released just outside the shop doors, emplacing a barrier just in case the Sons tried to break out.

Once the 'Heads were in place, prods and stunners at the ready, and the Seals alongside, Gozu gave the GO command, with Benedict's eager approval.

For a few minutes, nothing seemed to be happening. The Hammerhead's ANAD techs, the human Watkins and the Ponkti amphib Typek, opened their containment capsules and let the master bots loose, in a flashing fog that quickly spread out into near invisibility. Out of view of the machine shop, behind the partially-built hull skeleton of a new jumpship, the fake 'Senator' began to take shape. The process started at the head, with the faint outlines of Palette's sparse, white halo of hair on top, followed in quick order by the shadows of a trim white moustache, the blue eyes, the scar above his right eye due to a fishing accident, even the chin dimple (not easily seen), big ears and the black dataspec glasses.

Other features were soon filled in: deep set penetrating blue eyes, thin lips always curled into a short of sneer, expressive and rather bushy white-blond eyebrows, the big nose. In less than ten minutes, an eerie facsimile of the Senator had been formed...in some circles, it would have been called an angel...a nanobotic para-human swarm entity, but even on close inspection, the thing looked like Ryan Palette.

Lieutenant Commander Benedict felt the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen and a cold chill run down his spine. He'd heard of stunts like this. There had been scuttlebutt around the base about things like this. If the Sea People could pull something like this off, what about his own soldiers? Could any of them be—

No, he would put that little worry firmly out of his mind. For now.

Speaking through a voice emulator, ANAD tech Watkins spoke the words that had been worked out, even as Typek joysticked the Palette angel toward the machine stop door.

"Worth...Worth, it's _me_. Palette. Look, listen up: We need to talk. Hold your fire...I'm coming in. Things have changed...just let me in, okay?"

The Palette thing walked smoothly enough toward the machine shop door—Typek taking care to steer the thing around all obstacles, for the angel could as easily walk through objects as go around them. He held the angel up a few meters from the door, which suddenly opened a crack and stopped.

A voice growled, hissing from the crack. "Stay where you are...don't come any closer. Show me some ID...this is a trick!"

Back and forth the exchange went, Worth demanding ID, Palette insisting they needed to talk—and with each back and forth, Typek moved the angel a little closer to the cracked door, and Gozu's _mah'jeet_ carriers inched closer to the door from concealed approaches on the other side. Silently, they prepped their micro-organisms for release, ready to discharge at a second's notice.

Finally, Worth relented and opened the door wide enough for the Palette thing to enter. As the swarm came to the opening, Gozu and Benedict both saw the dawning realization spread across Worth's face...the realization that he had been played, that this wasn't Palette at all but a damn good likeness, but the damage had already been done, for even as he came to this understanding, the angel was already disassembling into its constituent bots and flowing inside the shop.

Three meters away, on Gozu's barked signal, the _mah'jeet_ carriers squeezed their holdsacs hard and the toxic creatures flooded into the air and, sensing warm flesh nearby, immediately flooded into the machine shop.

The resulting chaos wasn't pretty.

Beamfire and pulser shots erupted and at that moment, Benedict shouted for Seal Team Alpha to move in _NOW!_ The Hammerheads quickly joined them, an assault force of blended human, amphib and Seomish troops and a free-for-all exploded inside the shop.

In the ensuing melee, Jack Worth was fully enveloped by the Palette swarm and explosively disassembled into atom fluff. Two Sons resisters suffered the same fate. Another was stung into unconsciousness by the _mah'jeet_. The final resister tried to make a break for it but was hammered by electric shocks and sound blasts from prodsmen and stunners bringing up the rear.

The hostages suffered slight injuries. One staffer was deafened by the stunners and another concussed by the shock waves. Admiral Marx's chief of staff, a Captain Royce, survived, stung and bleeding from swarm rash and _mah'jeet_ stings but he was quickly medevac'ed out and taken to the infirmary three decks below. His injuries were moderate and he would make a full recovery in days.

Before the medbots carried Royce off, the O-6 officer had a few weak and hoarse words for Gozu and Benedict, both hovering by the litter as the bots whirred toward the lift.

"Boys--" Royce croaked out, "—Admiral wants you to get that Farpool working. Fast. We've got good men and women out there...lost in time...you've got to get 'em back."

"We'll do our best, sir," Benedict nodded. Gozu just looked on. The medbots hustled the captain's litter away and he was gone.

Sons Guns resistance collapsed completely with the death of Jack Worth and the assault teams had little trouble rounding up the stragglers, with assistance from other UNIFORCE units, plus U.S. Navy and Marines. Off platform, the Gaia Force units that had not yet melted into the sea fled away and were pursued by Navy submarines. Tim Holland, son of Dr. Josey Holland, was with them, distraught at the operation's failure, the loss of Jack Worth and more determined than ever to avenge the results.

Two hours later, UNIFORCE engineers had arrived from Paris and were already motoring out to the sunken caisson holding the singularity core that powered the Farpool.

Somehow, some way, they had to get the huge vortex-wormhole up and working and stabilized again...and fast.

They knew that Chase Meyer and the Genesis 3 team, as well as other Genesis teams on Mars and Europa, were still out there, still stranded among who knew what time streams, still marooned with no way back.

Chapter 10

Genesis 3 Team

Place: Unknown

Time: Unknown

"Chase...what is this place?" Angie clung to his shoulder until he winced and removed her fingers, one by one.

"Ouch...stop squeezing so hard, okay?'

"Sorry."

Chase watched as the sim brought them back to the ground again. They were still in Dakota country, only it wasn't. "Maybe we should leave the ship...check this place out."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

Cautiously, one by one, the Genesis 3 team exited the Coethi ship and stood among the waving plants. As a precaution, Blakely and Chase wore their hypersuits.

Win Blakely scanned their surroundings with his deco wake detector. "I'm detecting patterns in the way these stalks are moving. They aren't plants...rather each stalk is a small swarm of nanobotic structures...the way they move back and forth seems to be a regular and repeating pattern."

Chase experimentally kicked his feet among the stalks. "I want to explore...I'm moving out a few dozen meters...there seems to be a small rise over there...maybe I can get a better view."

He tested his hypersuit legs and found that he could move around, with some difficulty. The stalks parted before him, almost disintegrating in puffs of particles as he shuffled carefully along. At first, the stalks gave a little resistance and his suit sensors indicated what Win had already detected: the stalks were actually conglomerations of nanobots held in plant-like patterns. As he pushed through in his hypersuit, the plant bots tried to hold their patterns, giving a little resistance, but he found he could move nonetheless. As an experiment, he triggered his suit boost with a brief pulse and found he could lift himself a meter or so above the ground as well. Movement was possible in that dimension too.

Some kind of rise in the ground was less than fifty meters away and Chase headed that way. Blakely was nearby, not visible, but sniffing through the field of bots and providing EM, thermal and acoustic background data on what they had encountered.

"Win, maybe we went through some kind of wormhole."

Macalvey considered that. "Interesting theory, Chase...but this is supposition only. We need more data to support this theory."

"What about these patterns?" He watched the stalks waving and pitching back and forth, as though a wind were blowing across the field. But his suit sensors detected no wind, or any atmosphere either, for that matter. The sky above the field was an opaque salmon hue, no clouds, no visible signs of anything, almost like a thin fog. Yet he could see, if that was the proper term, for hundreds of meters in every direction...a nearly infinite featureless plain of endlessly waving and swaying cornstalks, a prairie view like something from Nebraska or Iowa back home.

Blakely tapped some keys on his wristpad, synched to his instruments. "I'm attempting to run correlations on these wave patterns...it's possible that this is in fact a simulation...or some kind of re-created structure...a spherical structure almost like a small world...I'm calculating a radius at better than twenty-thousand kilometers based on visual angle to the nearest horizon line."

Angie cautiously moved her own legs through the field of plants. "You mean like a planet...or a moon of some type?"

"Unknown at this time...Commander, this pattern we see may be a re-creation or simulation of the original home world of the Coethi."

Chase reached the small rise and climbed to the top. "What? This could be their home? How is that possible?"

"Unknown...pattern analysis is continuing... this may all be an archive of some type...a collective memory of the past."

"I guess that's possible." He scanned around the long vista from the top of the small rise. In every direction, the view was the same: rippling fields of what looked like long-stalk plants but were in reality strings and knots of nanobotic mechanisms. A whole planet of bots.

Chase noticed his helmet face shield had shifted to maximum dark and his rad shielding had gone active. The hypersuit's bot screen had erupted and formed a radiation barrier around him, a bubble of interlinked bots that tried to fight off the particles streaming down from the sky. He chanced a brief glimpse skyward and saw that, as the brilliance began to fade, a massive starburst had formed in the heavens...a supernova and nearby too, flooding space with violent energetic particles in all directions.

But this was supposed to be a sim. How had a sim made his rad shield go active?

"Okay, guys...what the hell's happening around here?"

Macalvey squinted at the bright light in the sky. "I don't know but apparently we've just witnessed a simulated supernova event...a star erupting in catastrophic collapse...possibly a re-created event from the historical records of the Coethi...that's what this place seems to be now... the sim seems to be shifting...new patterns."

They were right and Chase shook his head, to make sure he wasn't dreaming all this. He wanted to pinch himself but the hypersuit repelled his own hand.

Now, the planet of bots seemed to be breaking up right under their feet. Great chasms and cavities developed in the field of waving plants, and the chasms soon became canyons. The light of the supernova faded rapidly and the ground beneath their feet fell away to nothing and before the Genesis 3 team realized it, they were drifting in open interstellar space and the planet and the fields and the light were gone.

In time, Chase came to realize they were inside a great swarm, a vast nomadic collection of nanobotic structures and mechanisms, drifting through space. They were enveloped in the swarm which was only slightly denser than the starfield itself. He saw nothing he could recognize...no Big Dipper, no Orion, the constellations were all wrong.

"Angie...Win," he whispered. "Anybody there?"

He was relieved to hear Angie's voice, a weak voice. "I'm here, Chase. I am not sure where here is. This is so wild. This simulation is taking us somewhere else, it would seem."

In fact, the very same thought had occurred to Chase. "Win, you know what this is? It's not just a sim. This is a story. It's a story or a narrative of what happened to the Coethi. It has to be."

"No data to support or refute your analysis, Commander. This sim may be a sequential stream of recorded time-stamped events, which we would call a story."

It made sense. The sim went on for many minutes, or hours, Chase couldn't tell which. They were captive travelers, traveling in time and space with a story of how the Coethi had seen their home world destroyed in a supernova. As the story developed, Chase and Win and Angie and the others made 'landings' on various worlds. They watched as knots and groups of nanobotic mechs descended and seeded one world after another, leaving behind small samples of themselves on each world.

_Maybe they're trying to find a new home_ , Chase surmised. _Maybe this is their story, like wandering in the desert of space for millennia, searching for their own version of the promised land._

The sim unfolded and the great Mother Swarm came at last to a world Chase was sure he recognized...a world of blues and greens, a world of great oceans and steaming continents. He rode down with a detached element of the main swarm, descending through thick carbon dioxide rich air and purple, lightning-racked clouds to a hover over what looked like a primordial swamp.

It was Earth. Earth from millions of years ago.

But before the scene could play out, there came an abrupt shift, an eye-jarring, head-spinning shift and they were right back where they had been before, on the planet of bots, standing among swaying stalks in open prairie country.

The Coethi ship perched nearby, as before.

"Maybe we're stuck in some kind of loop," Tulandra suggested. She watched as Alicia Yang poked her head back inside the ship. "Something--?"

Yang came back out. She had straight jet-black hair with bangs over her forehead. The Genesis 3 PSO was an athletic girl, though small, but she had a lithe, balletic way of moving about that spoke of great power.

"I was just remembering something I thought I had seen inside."

"Like what"" asked the Ponkti amphib.

"Well, I don't know about sims or where 'this' really is, but I think the ship is the key. It may be our only way out of 'this.'"

Chase was intrigued. "What do you mean?"

Yang said, "Commander, check this out." She went back inside the Coethi ship and Chase followed. The PSO pointed out a small oval protrusion in one wall, almost like a blister. It seemed to be breathing, even throbbing. "While we were in transit, in motion, I happened to notice this thing flexing in and out, almost like a lung." She bent down to study the protrusion. "Some kind of membrane. I don't pretend to understand it. But that flexing motion seemed to be related to what the ship was doing."

Chase bent down to see. There were tiny perforations in the outer cover of the protrusion, literally thousands of them, almost invisible to the eye. "I'd better get Win in here with his deco wake device." He stepped outside and motioned the QT1 to come.

After perusing the pattern of decoherence wakes and a lot of _h'mmming_ and head-scratching, Win stood up puzzled. "Well, the thing is basically off the scale. The whole ship is a source of deco...it's like saying we're right in the middle of a massive entanglement source. Everything about this ship speaks quantum effects...'spooky action at a distance', as Einstein called it...superposition of matter...being in multiple places at the same time. _I_ don't pretend to understand it. This is so far beyond what we know of the quantum world that we're like infants pondering a spaceship, wondering if it's some giant play toy."

"What the hell is that protuberance then?"

Blakely offered a wan smile. "Take your pick. Maybe it is a lung, like Alicia thinks. Or some kind of control system. Or a navigation device."

Angie had come inside to see what all the fuss was about. She saw Chase reaching to touch the membrane.

"Chase, stop...what are you doing...don't touch—"

But it was too late. Chase pressed gently on the surface of the protuberance, feeling just for a second its rough, almost scaly surface finish when—

\--they found themselves suddenly hurtling at breakneck speed down a long, curving corridor, a blur of polygons and triangles and cubes and tetrahedrals sleeting past them until—

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

Back in interstellar space, it seemed.

"What the hell--?"

Chase fought back the rising tide of panic by following an old diver's trick: reciting the Diver's Code of Conduct...he knew panic could be death to an unprepared diver.

"... _be a buoyancy expert...be a buddy...take photos...leave only bubbles...protect underwater life_...."

He found that by repeating well-known phrases and verses—the Diver's Code, favorite songs and nursery rhymes, pieces of well-known speeches—he could occupy his mind enough to keep from dwelling on the fact that he was completely lost in some kind of historical simulation of the Coethi, seemingly lost in space, with no way out.

And where was everybody else?

After he grew tired with that, he started describing what he was seeing, sort of a Captain's Log of sights and sounds.

"Well, there's a lot of stars, to begin with. Stars and galaxies and things I have no idea what they are. Spirals and pinwheels and barred spirals and blobs and globs of stars. I keep wondering about that black hole or singularity or whatever the hell it is over there to my right...what role does a black hole play in a sim...why put one in a sim at all? It has to mean something...."

"...converging on a –"

The snippet of chatter came through his hypersuit coupler like a bad dream. What the hell was that?

"Win...Win, is that you...Angie, Tu, anybody... what channel are you on? Win-?"

For several minutes, he cycled through his coupler channels, trying any comm he could find. Nothing. Not even static. Then:

"--ports ready in all respects...Blakely...QT1... operating as before...anyone there?"

Chase would have leaped for joy if he hadn't been floating in the middle of interstellar space in a hypersuit.

'Win...hold on...Win...wait a minute...let me tweak this— "He adjusted the coupler gain... _damned quantum crap_...adjusted the entangler circuit...then, the voice of the QT1 came in loud and clear, as if he were right inside Chase's helmet.

"Commander...good to hear your voice—"

"Win, where the hell have you been? Where is everybody?"

"Commander, it seems that when you pushed that membrane, the sim sent us here...wherever _here_ is. Maybe another program or another module."

Chase was just glad to have some company. "I was going looney out here. We've got to figure a way to get out of here."

"I'm working on it...trying some initial analysis...that thin membrane you pressed is a form of quantum coupler, but the parameters were beyond my scan capability...this needs to go to a lab."

"We've got to get out of here first...what was that you were saying about the coupler, Win?"

"Just that it seems to have functions we were not aware of...I saw in that 'transition' we were just in... it was like I was inside a coupler, operating at quantum scales...entangled, superposed, fluctuating at the edge of existence...it was weird."

Chase was intrigued. "I'm sure...what kind of functions? What are you talking about? Is it something we can control?"

"Well, you know what a quantum coupler is supposed to do? From our training before Genesis?"

"In a general sense, yes."

Blakely triggered a short snippet of vid that he ported to Chase's hypersuit, a training vid from Muir City. Their hypersuits carried hours and hours of the stuff.

The instructor had been a Dr. Irwin Frost.

Frost diagrammed his explanation on a board. "The coupler allows us to send extremely large bandwidths of information of all types—all senses, such as visual, olfactory, audio, tactile as well as direct sensing of the molecular environment—directly to a special hypersuit headset that connects with the proper sensory channel of the wearer or directly into a special junction inside the wearer's skull, a sort of server that routs the data stream to the corresponding lobes of the brain."

" _You mean I could see...sense...exactly what ANAD senses?"_

Frost nodded. "In a way. You and ANAD will be coupled in a quantum sense...exchanging entanglement states, to use the correct wording. ANAD now has a quantum coupler and multiplexer embedded in his processor core. The quantum states that represent what he senses go through this coupler to an interface, which will be part of your implant. This interface will disentangle the quantum state signals from ANAD, send the signals on to a buffer that transforms them into something your brain can accept—specific voltages and ionic concentrations—and then splits the buffered signals into patterns of firing neurons for different sensory channels, the final direct coupling into your sensory cortex."

Chase's head spun just thinking about it. "If you say so, Doc. I have just one question...will it work?"

The vid came to an end.

"Very funny...," Chase said. "I was a raw jump commander back then. So what else can a coupler do?"

Here Win seemed to take a breath. "Commander, somehow I've been able to access something, some kind of files, or an archive. I found some details, accessible, by the way, through the very same coupler. It turns out that our little membrane protuberance can be used to re-locate us in time and space."

"Are you serious?"

"Absolutely...I found a way to alter the entangler circuit inside that membrane. Here...I'll prove it to you—"

For a moment, Chase was dizzy and disoriented. He shook his head inside the hypersuit helmet, then realized, with a start, that he was back in the vast swarmship. The sim unfolded and the great Mother Swarm came at last to a world Chase was sure he recognized...a world of blues and greens, a world of great oceans and steaming continents. He rode down with a detached element of the main swarm, descending through thick carbon dioxide rich air and purple, lightning-racked clouds to a hover over what looked like a primordial swamp.

It was Earth. Earth from millions of years ago.

It was Pangaea...the same place they had just left. "Win, how'd you do that? We're right back at Earth, millions of years ago—"

"I know...exactly...I used the quantum coupler's entangler circuit to run the sim back to that point. Now, I'll bring us forward to where we were---"

Again, the dizziness came and went, like a wave of nausea. It passed as soon as it came. Chase looked around. They were floating in the interstellar void, surrounded by stars and galaxies, caught in the faint web of the vast Mother Swarm as it drifted from world to world.

"Can you advance the sim...put us into the future? Or back on that planet with the waving stalks?"

"I've tried, Commander...but I can move the sim into the future by only a few minutes at a time...there seem to be inhibits I can't overcome...perhaps it's an energy problem...or a format issue...I'm still researching this...and there are an infinity of possible future states anyway...could be a computational problem, as well."

Chase's eye went again to the black hole, still sucking in stellar matter in the distance. "Win, you said you could move us in time _and_ space. Could you re-locate us to be closer to that black hole...to that singularity?"

"I can try, sir...you're considering the possibility that the singularity is some kind of navigation device? Perhaps we can exit the sim and return to our present time stream that way."

"I guess the thought had occurred to me. We sure as hell can't stay here...we might as well try something else."

"Going offline for a few moments...I'll research the Archives to see if I can learn how to displace material objects through space---"

For many moments, Blakely said nothing and Winger was lonely once more. _Maybe we're still inside the sim_...he muttered to himself. In quantum states, objects are superposed, able to exist in multiple states at the same time. Somehow, the act of observing forces all the states to collapse, converge down to one that could be observed or measured. The trick, he figured, was to learn how to collapse down to where Earth and Muir City were located, their own present time and space. And where were Angie and Tulandra and Dr. Macalvey anyway?

It made his head hurt, just thinking about it.

Without at first realizing what had happened, the gaping maw of the singularity had come noticeably closer. Chase blinked again, blinked hard, and he realized that he was caught in the singularity's gravity well.

He was coming closer all right. He was steadily being sucked right toward the event horizon, now blindingly white from intense radiation generated by infalling matter.

"Hey, Win...can you slow us—"

But he had already crossed the event horizon and fallen through the hole.

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

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

But back... _where_?

He waited a few moments, to let whatever sensations were around come to him. He realized he was standing in a sea of waving plant stalks. He was back on the simulated Coethi home world, inside the mother swarm. Right back where they had started from.

"Win...Angie, anybody there?"

Slowly, he found each of them, assembled around the Coethi ship, just like before. As if time and space had no meaning. Chase immediately thought of the little protuberance inside the ship that Alicia had seen and scrambled back to the hatch. He went inside, saw Win Blakely there about to press the thing again.

"Win...don't touch it! Leave it alone!"

Abruptly, the QT1 stood up and pulled his hand back. "Commander, I was just trying to—"

"No, let's leave it alone and try to reason this out together."

Chase assembled the Genesis 3 team inside the ship's hatch.

"It appears that Win has sort of figured out a way to control and navigate the ship, using that little button Alicia saw inside. But we're still in first grade in knowing how it works."

Yondok, the Ponkti, growled from inside his mobilitor. " _Ssskkk_...is trick, no? Humans try to... _zzzhhh_...trap Ponkti..."

Chase turned to Dr. Chou and Dr. Qi with a shrug. "Nobody's trying to trick anybody. We're just trying to figure a way to get out of here."

Qi had bent down to study the tiny perforation holes in the membrane. "These holes...we've seen things like this at the Institute...these could be a record."

Win bent down as well. "A record...what do you mean?"

Qi said, "Just this...in our system at Mischief Reef Lab, the entangler circuit that the Coethi create makes a small impression in the inner surface of their containment vessel every time the entanglement state collapses. We've studied this. It's like a record of all the state changes that have occurred. One of our scientists thinks these impressions are actually a form of interference pattern, perhaps decoherence waves or probability waves. But it's just a theory."

Win snapped his fingers. "I've heard of that. Maybe there's a way of using these impressions to reconstruct where and when we've been, figuring out a way of using them to reconstruct the same states."

Chase examined the membrane surface for himself. "Do you think you could figure out the right states, using these holes, for us to navigate back to our home time stream, back to T-001?"

Win shrugged, looked at Qi, who appeared intrigued by the prospect of more study of the device. "Hard to say, Skipper. We'd probably have to try some more experiments with the ship, just to measure effects, try different techniques."

Qi bit his lip in thought. " _Shi_...yes. Much study. It must be possible."

Chase made a decision. "Okay, everybody out of the ship. Get away and let these guys do their experiments. I want to know if we can get back to T-001. That's all that matters."

Qi was already rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Chou was more circumspect, aware they had orders from Beijing, orders he couldn't reveal to anybody else. "Yes, by all means...we must try."

The rest of the Genesis 3 team vacated the Coethi ship, leaving Qi, Chou, Yondok and Win inside to study the membrane pad and its pattern of dimples and impressions.

There was no way to tell how much time passed on the simulated planet. Outside, Angie came to Chase, who had finally removed his hypersuit helmet and they wandered off to the small rise nearby, where they sat awkwardly together, watching the salmon-hued sky, with its exploding stars and supernova flares looping over and over again. They had to keep fighting off the waving plant stalks, which crept around their feet and legs and brightened in annoyance with little puffs of light whenever they waved their hands through the 'grass.'

Angie squeezed Chase's hand. "Any regrets?"

"About what?"

"About us getting married."

Chase looked at her, pushed away that ridiculous lock of hair that swept down over her right eye. "Are you kidding? Of course not. Wouldn't change a thing."

That made her laugh. "Not even _this_ nightmare? Remember Reverend Holcomb...when we said our vows, he said, 'This train is now leaving the station.'"

"I remember."

"Chase, you've changed...you've changed a lot in the last year."

"I've been through a lot of time changes."

"You know what I mean. You know, I really don't want you to go on that _Trident_ trip. It scares me."

Chase looked blankly at her. Then it dawned on him that he and Angie— _this_ Angie—were from different time streams. How the hell do you keep all that straight? "Uh, Ang, I already went. And came back...remember, I came from your future."

Angie looked blank. "Uh...right. Somehow, I keep forgetting. Chase—" she noticed something happening with the Coethi ship. It was vibrating, looking a little blurry. Before she could even mention this to Chase, the ship vanished. One moment it was there, as solid as anything else in this wacko nightmare of a world. Then, _poof!_ It was gone. She blinked, not sure she had seen what she had just seen. "Did you see that?"

Chase had seen it, out of the corner of his eye. "I've learned not to worry too much about what I see and don't see around here. I'm hoping that was Blakely and Tulandra, just testing that membrane panel inside."

Even as he said it, he didn't believe it. But moments later, the Coethi ship materialized out of thin air once again, squatting like a big egg in the midst of the swaying plants, glistening and snorting like a living thing, as if it had never left.

Angie just sucked in her breath. "Like I was saying, I keep forgetting that you came from a different time stream, or something like that and... I know I'm not even making sense to myself when I say that." She shivered, wrapped her arms around her shoulders. "Can we get out of this? Can we get out of here?"

Chase watched the Coethi ship come and go several times, usually for just a few seconds. _Maybe I should check on those two_. "This ship seems to be our only way. If Blakely and Tulandra can figure out how to control it."

Angie said, "Maybe you could use that giant brain of yours and just think us away from here...you know, the power of your big thoughts and all."

"That's not funny."

"No, it isn't. Your Dad has told me you can't even sweep the shop floors right."

"Yeah, well, Dad says things that—" but he stopped in mid-sentence, for at that moment, the hatch to the Coethi ship sprang open and Blakely tumbled out, landing almost flat on his face in the grass. He got up sheepishly,

"Commander, I think we've figured the controls out. It's all in how hard you press on that membrane panel. Plus you can even twist it a little, tweak and adjust it. Tu and I were able to zip us away and back, pretty much to the same place and time." Blakely rubbed his bald head quizzically. "This _is_ the same place and time, isn't it?"

Chase said, "Nothing's changed since you started. Win, are you sure about this? I don't want you to put us into the middle of a star or anything like that."

Blakely shrugged. "We've done experiments. We've repeated them several times. Ask Tu...we think we've got a grasp of how it works."

"A grasp? I guess that'll have to do." Chase looked around, saw how Macalvey had wandered off with Yondok, the Ponkti. Yang and Kumar were several hundred meters away, exploring something else. "I'll get everybody back onboard." He got on the crewnet and announced, "Okay, troops, listen up. Blakely thinks he's got some kind of understanding and command of the ship controls. Get back aboard now." He winked at Angie. "This train is now leaving the station. Departure in ten minutes."

One by one, they all came back: Angie, Yang, Kumar, Macalvey, Yondok and the two Chinese. After a few minutes squirming and grumbling, the crew of Genesis 3 had settled in, as settled as they could be.

Dr. Chou was nervous, patting back the slick wisps of black hair that didn't quite cover his head. "Perhaps, we should conduct more tests...how well do you really understand these systems?"

Chase interjected. "We're not waiting on a directive from Beijing, Doctor. I'm counting on using that membrane panel to get us out of this simulation and back to some kind of real world, some kind of place that doesn't vanish every time I turn around."

Chou seemed concerned. His eyebrows wrinkled. "Can you get us back to T-001? Back to our own time stream?"

"That's what we're trying to do. Win, are you and Tu ready?"

Blakely and the Ponkti amphib nodded. "Ready as we'll ever be, Commander."

"Let's do it."

Blakely flexed his fingers, as he had learned to do, and carefully placed them over the panel, without actually touching it. His hand hovered for a moment. He licked his lips, cleared his throat and said, "Here goes—"

He pressed the membrane, applying what he figured was just the right amount of pressure and twist to make the jump. He and Tu had talked, even argued about this for awhile, during the tests, but there was no way to really know without trying it. The Coethi ship was in many ways an ephemeral thing...it was Tu that suggested it didn't even exist anywhere but in their minds. "A nexus of collapsed probability states," she had suggested. Blakely figured trying to understand _that_ would just give him another headache.

In an eyeblink, everything inside the ship seemed smeared out, blurred, as if they were shaking violently, but no motion could really be felt. Then came the curving tunnel, like riding the water slide at Scotland Beach's Sea Jamboree, a narrow tube enfolded in a crazy, chaotic slideshow of imagery shifting and jumping way too fast to comprehend. They were all slipping and sliding and twisting and turning down that slide and, in an instant, they found themselves suddenly hurtling at breakneck speed down a long, curving corridor, a blur of polygons and triangles and cubes and tetrahedrals and exploding stars and things that made no sense sleeting past them until—

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

Somewhere.

He felt the landing as a gentle rocking of the ship, and he had a brief dream of lolling about in the bathtub waters off Half Moon Cove, fishing line between his toes, daydreaming and watching summer cloud puffs drifting by. It was a pleasant enough dream but from somewhere deep inside, he knew it couldn't be true.

Then he heard Tulandra's voice. "This can't be...it _can't_ be—" She was peering through a small porthole; he hadn't noticed _that_ before either.

Chase hauled himself up and joined her.

Outside the ship, he saw water, everywhere. They had 'landed' on some kind of rocky shore alongside a vast ocean. Winds rocked the ship back and forth and above the ocean, heavy clouds scudded by, purple and swollen, with gusts of rain and flickers of lightning streaking the sky.

Tulandra sucked in her breath. "Seome...we came to Seome—"

Chase stared in disbelief at the scene outside. It was all there—or perhaps it was some kind of consensual hallucination—the rocky shores. Kinlok Island. The heaving ocean. The storms. Lightning veining the sky, with muted thunder in the distance. On the horizon, glistening black humps, with veined crests for heads, spiked tails.

Even through his mobilitor helmet, Yondok's disbelief was audible. "Shkkreeah... _puk'lek_! _M'tekel'te_...homewaters!"

" _Seamothers_..." Chase breathed. "I—Win, what happened? What have you done?"

Blakely was looking at his hands and the membrane panel, which now seemed subtly different, as if they were alien appendages. "I don't understand it...we thought we knew how to do this. Tulandra, did you touch something? Bump something?"

But the Ponkti amphib was overwhelmed by the vision outside. Already, she was cycling the hatch, pulling at the edges, trying to get outside. "I have to see this! Ponkel...the sea...even the ice drifts...did you see them?"

Before Chase could stop her, Tulandra had managed to wrestle the hatch open. She nearly fell outside, landing face first in the pebbly beach. She got up, then immediately waded out into the freezing water, flapping her arms, yelling with joy, splashing and kicking water everywhere.

One by one, the Genesis 3 team left the ship and stood awkwardly on the steeply pitched beach, bracing themselves against arctic winds and flecks of sleet and snow.

"It sure _looks_ like Seome." Chase huddled with Angie, who shivered in his arms. "It looks just like Kinlok Island."

Dr. Chou picked up a few pebbles and examined them critically. "These feel real. But what time have we come to?"

Chase was about to answer when a shadow passed overhead. The sky darkened momentarily. The light levels seemed like sometime around midday but it was hard to tell. The sun above them was hidden behind dense cloud cover, but now the light level dropped off and it seemed more like twilight. The darkening lasted several minutes, then the midday light seemed to return, though altered slightly, more diffuse, subtly changed. A sort of eclipse.

Chase felt a cold chill race down his back. "I know what that was. The sun is Sigma Albeth. This is Seome. And the Coethi just fired a few starballs into the sun." He looked at Dr. Chou. "I think I can answer your question. Somehow, we brought that Coethi ship to Seome, but it's Seome before the end came, before the sun went supernova. We've come back right in the middle of a Coethi assault. An altogether different time stream."

Angie sucked in her breath. "Chase, weren't there some kind of humans on this island? Operating a big machine...some kind of base?"

"There were...the Umans. The Time Twister...what the Seomish called the wavemaker."

But before he could dredge up that memory, standing a bit unsteadily in the gale, Chase spied shapes moving across a nearby ridge. He assumed this was the Uman party. There were three.

He trudged off, Angie in tow, and stopped at the base of the ridge. The others stayed behind at the ship, gawking at the sight. All three Umans had weapons trained on them. _Suppressors_ , Chase remembered. Paralyzing weapons. He stopped and held out his hand, not sure exactly what to say, or how it would sound.

"Hey...uh, we're humans! We need to talk! Can you hear me? Can you understand me?"

One Uman, the one in the middle, took a few steps forward. The others trained their weapons.

A guttural voice rang out, barely audible over the roar of the wind.

"Stay where you are! Come no closer!"

Chase heard the words, muffled but distinguishable and nearly cried out. God Almighty... that's _English_! Accented, with some odd phrases, but it was English! He started forward but, in that moment, a Uman opened fire with his suppressor.

The jolt knocked Chase flat on his back. For what seemed like hours—time had congealed to a crawl—he couldn't feel or hear anything. He couldn't hear anything. Nothing would move. He could breathe, more or less. But his legs and arms...nothing.

Then a face appeared, followed by another.

The first was Angie. A frog's face, but somehow, he knew it was her.

" _Chase_! Chase, are you all right...are you hurt?" She squatted down on her haunches and bent to nuzzle him, clucking over him. Hovering behind her shoulders, the Uman in the middle peered down.

His face was formed of hard cheek planes, with a bit of a double chin. Even some dimples, looking almost comical in a frame of gray-white buzzcut hair with sandy gray sideburns.

"I told him not to come up---here, wave this under his nose." The Uman handed Angie a small perforated ball. She did as instructed, waving the ball back and forth under Chase's nose and face.

Presently, feeling returned. Slowly, then more feeling, like a spreading stain, until after what seemed like days, Chase found he could sit up. His whole body tingled. His hand and feet shook uncontrollably.

Unsteadily, leaning on Angie, and now with help from the other Umans, Chase got to his feet. They led him to small cut in the ridge, more or less protected from the winds, and there he sat down on gravelly ground again, trying to clear his head. He noticed just how cold the wind was, ice-flecked and biting, and was glad for the tough hide the _conicthyosis_ procedure had given him.

The Umans all gathered around Angie and Chase, eyeing the approach of the rest of the Genesis 3 crew warily. There were scowls, suppressors trained. But nobody did anything. Yondok didn't follow. Instead, the Ponkti picked his way carefully down a rocky slope to stand on the beach, letting the surf drive waves around the legs of his mobilitor. At first, nobody noticed.

"You don't look like anything I ever saw in Uman space. What _are_ you...something from Hapsh'm? Majoris, maybe? Acth:On'e...you ever see anything like these two?"

The tallest Uman had a blade-shaped head. Two eyes, but they were further apart than the first Uman.

"I haven't, Ultrarch-Major. Not in many terr...maybe they're Coethi spies...I could believe that."

Chase held up a hand. His own webbed hand startled him for a second. "No, no...we're humans, just like you. Earth. We came here in a...ship. The Farpool brought us." He almost said a Coethi ship but the Coethi were the enemy and he figured the Umans wouldn't react well to that.

The Ultrarch-Major cocked his hand. "You mean that vortex these buggers keep talking about...that's just somebody's wet dream. A fairy tale."

"No, no, it's true. We originally came from Earth. Our Earth. Muir City, in the middle of the Atlantic...near Bermuda...it's got great beaches, believe me."

The Ultrarch-Major rubbed his chin, looked at his compatriots. "Earth? Urth? The motherworld...that's not possible. It's quarantined. Too dangerous now...all those timestreams converging...the Guard had to isolate them. If the Coethi stick their grubby little snouts in one of these main timestreams, we're finished. No more Urth. Guard had to cut them off, completely. Believe me, it wasn't easy. Controversial, too. But it was the right thing to do...somehow, the brass blundered into a decent tactical decision for once. Why are you here anyway?"

Chase decided he would stand up, no matter how hard it was. Angie helped him. The suppressor had weakened everything in his body and he felt like jelly. He leaned against her and felt nauseated and dizzy, but he was determined. He stuck out a webbed hand, assuming a handshake would be understood.

"I'm Chase...Chase Meyer. This is Angie Gilliam."

The Ultrarch-Major recoiled for a moment, then reached out just enough to rub fingers with Chase's webbed, oily hand. He flinched, but he seemed to understand the gesture as a friendly one.

At least, _that_ hadn't changed.

"Ultrarch-Major Monthan Dringoth, First Time Displacement Battery. These are my officers: Captain Acth:On'e and Lieutenant Golich. Come on...we've got Coethi crashers and cruisers nearby, closing fast on this base... let's hurry this up."

"Right. Well, see, my friends and I were on a mission to engage the Coethi...the same enemy you're fighting. We came from an earlier time stream...T-001, we call it. We're kind of like your great-great-great grandparents. That one there—"he indicated Yondok, down on the beach, "originally came from here. This world...Seome. But the sun died and they had to emigrate. All their cities below the sea, everything, was destroyed. But some lived...they emigrated through the Farpool to Earth."

Dringoth looked puzzled. "First you tell me you came from Urth through one of those blasted vortexes...that's crazy in itself. Then you tell me there are cities and families and whatever down there underwater. That's crap. The creatures here are just like my pet wing-walker...smart, yes, but just animals. Pets. Beasts. There aren't any cities down there...what are you, cracked? Fall into one of those whirlpools, did you?"

Acth:On'e laughed out loud, spitting and slobbering as he did so. When he breathed, you could hear a faint hiss. "It's a trick, Ultrarch-Major. They've taught these buggers tricks, like you teach your pets to speak, fetch things, lie down. Just a trick."

"We're not pets!" Chase insisted. "Hey, man, I'm as human as you. I look like a frog 'cause we went through a procedure... _conicthyosis_ it's called. We breathe Notw...I mean, _air_. Just like you."

"They _are_ breathing air," said the Lieutenant Golich. "I'll give him that."

Dringoth glared at Chase. "What did you call these creatures?"

"Uh...Seomish? This world is Seome."

Dringoth snorted. "We call this hellhole Storm. In fact, one of your 'friends' damaged our Time Twister several terr ago and we had to abandon the place. But Timejump Command said we had to come back and patch the thing up." Dringoth peered skyward for a moment, shielding his face from the stinging sleet. "Don't know how long this sun'll hold up, though. She's already taken more than a few starballs. We came back because we were ordered too...took a minor miracle to get the Twister up and running again. Now, a Coethi fleet is bearing down on us as we speak, popping in and out of different timestreams...we can barely track the bastards. No way are we shutting the Twister down now. That's suicide, even for your friends."

Chase tried to follow Dringoth's argument but it was hopeless. "I remember this Twister...it was a weapon, wasn't it?"

Dringoth had trouble hearing them. The wind screamed across the beach, flinging sleet and salt spray in their faces. It was Golich who suggested they retreat to the hut on the ridge. The hut turned out to be filled with equipment, tracking gear for the Time Twister.

Yondok didn't follow and the others watched as he dove into the surf and was gone.

"What's with your friend?" Golich asked.

" _Yondok--!"_ Tulandra started after him, but Chase held her back.

"He's home now. It's the sea calling him. Let him go."

Tulandra was distraught. She stamped her feet, fidgeted, squirmed. "But the sun...you heard what they said. In this time stream, the sun dies. Everything dies—"

Chase just stared at the ceaseless hiss of the waves. "Then, for awhile at least, Yondok will be home."

As if to punctuate his words, they soon saw the empty shell of the mobilitor suit bob to the surface. Yondok had taken it off, swam away, seeking Ponk'et, seeking the familiar sounds and scents of homewaters.

"Strangest thing I ever saw," Golich said.

They climbed and picked their way up a tall sand dune and rock escarpment to the small hut and went inside.

"The Twister _is_ a weapon...the best one we have for this sector," the Ultrarch-Major replied. He fixed himself a mug of something steaming hot to sip. "The Twister is what we use to keep Coethi from entering this sector of the Halo...Halo-Alpha. Keeps 'em from bollixing up timestreams from here to Sturdivant and back. That's our mission. You say you're both Uman?" Dringoth squinted, twiddled with a tuft of moustache, looked Chase up and down. "You don't look like anything I've ever seen."

"Maybe something from Gibbons' Grotto," Golich suggested. "The Hollows and all that."

Chase assured the Major that he and Angie were quite human. "We look like this because we went through a procedure-I can't even pronounce it—to help us adapt to living here, in the sea. I'm from Florida. Earth."

"Me too," Angie chimed in. She wondered if they had somehow fallen into a sci-fi flick. "Greetings from Earth."

"Urth." Dringoth pronounced it slightly different. He had a faraway look on his face, pulled himself up a chair from underneath a small control station, turned it around and sat in it backward. "Hmmm. Never been there. Like I said, it _was_ quarantined. Timejump had to shut down all timestreams to keep Coethi from infecting the Heartland."

"So what does this Time Twister actually do?" Chase asked. He examined some of the instruments and controls, until Acth:On'e intervened and politely shoved him away.

Dringoth shrugged. "Got a singularity engine at the core. It reaches out several parsecs from here and flings anything it finds out of local space-time. Sends it off to who knows where...other side of the galaxy. Maybe other side of the Universe. We don't understand it ourselves. Timejump just gave us the basics. First Time Displacement Battery just operates and maintains the thing." He patted a rack of gear. "This baby keeps Halo space clean, free of Coethi and other nasties." His face darkened. "As long as you people stop trying to damage it, that is. We're having to fight off the Coethi and the local life too. It's getting old."

"I've made skimmer trips out to Big Mama myself, plenty of times," Golich jumped in. "I've seen all those whirlpools. Twister does that. Leakage effects. We used to enjoy herding fish and whatnot into the vortexes and watch 'em being accelerated out of space time...lots of fun but it got old. Anything to pass the time on this hellhole. Never seen this Farpool you speak of, though."

Acth:On'e was openly skeptical. "It's pretty hard to believe one of these whirlpools could become a wormhole...I guess it's possible. But then I'm no scientist."

"Your weapon was...or is...destroying this world," Angie said. "The sound, the whirlpools—"

"—the vibrations and waves," Chase added. "The Seomish originally brought us here to talk to you. You've got to turn off the Time Twister...they actually call it the wavemaker. It's making rubble out of their cities—people are dying...."

Dringoth scoffed. "I don't believe any of it. Even if there _were_ actual cities and whole civilizations under the sea here, it wouldn't matter. We have a mission and we have our orders. A Coethi fleet's been sighted in Halo space the last few days and is probably bearing down on us right now. They know we're here. They may have even more effective starballs. If the whiz kids at T2—Timejump Intelligence—are even close to being right, the sun up there—Sigma Albeth B-- is doomed. So is this world, unless we can keep yanking Coethi ships into forever with the Twister." Dringoth's hard blue eyes bore in on Chase and Angie. "So you see: if I really do what you want, you're dead. We're all dead. And Coethi occupies Halo Alpha and Uman settlements start going _poof_. We're planning on a better outcome."

Chase had an idea. "Maybe you could work with the Seomish...re-design your Twister. Re-locate it somewhere else. Aren't there other worlds around this sun?"

Golich gave an exhausted sigh, like he was explaining this for the millionth time. "Strategy says the Twister stays here on Storm. It's preposterous. You want reasons, I'll give you reasons. How about strategic location in the Halo? Storm's right there. How about the stability and cooling properties of the oceans here? Perfect for the Twister. How about concealment possibilities...when we rebuilt the Twister, we made it look more like some of the islands around here."

"Except the Coethi already know we're back here on Storm," Acth:On'e complained. "They're not that stupid...they keep losing crashers and time ships in this sector...they'll put two and two together. "

Dringoth waved them all quiet. "It's all academic anyway. The Twister's all that stands between Uman bases in this sector and Coethi overrunning everything. Military necessity dictates the Twister remain operational and located where it is. I don't like it any more than you do. Believe me, nothing would please me more than to abandon this sewer of a planet and get out of here. We did that once. But Timejump sent us back...pretty much for the reasons Mr. Golich just outlined. I'm sorry...we can't do what you want."

Something chirped on the panel behind Dringoth. Golich went over, announced, "Incoming message...looks like Tactron. Coded Purple...your eyes only, Major." He pulled out a small chip and set it on the table. Golich glared at Chase, Angie, Yang, the two Chinese scientists. Dr. Qi had already taken an interest in some of the gear and was being closely watched by Acth:On'e.

Dringoth studied the chip for a moment, sipping at his mug. "Play it."

Golich started to object. "But, Major...this is not for their—"

" _Play it!"_ Dringoth ordered wearily. He studied the swirls forming at the top of his cup, stuck a finger in to make more curlicue patterns.

Golich activated the chip. Like a great _djinn_ , a small flickering swarm emerged from the ship and formed words and images in 3-D right before them, right over the table.

Dispatch #12.175.222

HQS. War Staff Timejump Command, Time Guard Sector Control

Transto: Ult.-Maj Dringoth, CDR 1st Time Displacement Battery

Coded

Commandstar was briefly attacked by a Coethi jumpship six milliterr ago and partially disabled. TACTRON has assigned this URME to damage analysis and I must tell you, Dringoth, it is extensive. Coethi was able to momentarily displace the ship back to a time when it was still under construction. TACTRON countered with a shift in voidtime to another timestream but not before the destruction had spread. I don't have to describe to you the explosive effects of such instantaneous displacement.

The result is that Commandstar is unable to provide any assistance in drawing Coethi vessels into your range. We are currently shifting through voidtime at a very slow rate that makes us extremely vulnerable to another attack, while repairs are being made. We may even have to re-enter truetime for awhile. TACTRON's war programming prohibits the unnecessary risking of Commandstar, so for the time being, you will have to rely on your own scanning for protection. I realize what a burden that puts on your system but it cannot be helped, believe me. We are barely functional here. I even lost approximately 3% of my own core data, which is uncomfortable, in case you were wondering.

The fact that Coethi was able to match our random timejump sequence and make such an attack has caused great disruption here. TACTRON has assigned some URMEs to compute the probability of recurrence but unfortunately, entropy prevails in the information flow, so analysis is impossible. I know of some URMEs who are refusing to submit to TACTRON's dictatorship (calculating that TACTRON's obsession with the timejump sequence prevented it from analyzing more productive defense strategies—like the Time Twister) and many are expending valuable processing time on the formation of pseudo-organic emotional structures. This, of course, is fruitless and I have not succumbed to the temptation. We have much more important uses for that information.

" _Sector Command has approved your request to re-locate defensive operations to Keaton's World, pending shutdown of your Twister....in the event Coethi enter your timestream, you must ensure no part of the Twister falls into their hands—"_

But it would be inaccurate of me to describe the summation of morale as anything but desperate panic. TACTRON has suspended engineering work on all additional Time Twisters, pending the completion of repairs to Commandstar. You are on your own, Dringoth. The base at Storm has been the only effective defense in this part of the Halo but TACTRON is ordering all jumpships and chasers to assemble in the protected zone around Keaton's World. The new Twister there will have to serve as our main redoubt until Commandstar is functional again. Until then, Coethi will be able to roam the rest of the Halo at will.

It is a tremendous gamble, Dringoth. Many URMEs are not certain that TACTRON has correctly computed the probability of our survival, with only one Time Twister for defense. I need not remind you how imperative it is that the Twister perform as designed over the next few decaterrs. Any failure could be catastrophic to the Uman cause. Good luck on your re-location.

TACTRON computes P = 1 that Coethi will unleash a barrage of starballs once our strategy becomes obvious.

There will be no further dispatches from me until Commandstar is within your displacement perimeter.

URME 101 (Unit Reserve Memory Entity)

Endtrans

End Code.

Chase looked at Dringoth. "Relocation? New Twister? What does this mean, Major?"

Dringoth seemed lost in thought. "It means we're pulling out, abandoning this base. We've got to disassemble what we can of the Twister and destroy the rest. Fall back to Keaton's World...it's on the border between Halo Alpha and the Upper Disk, sector twenty, I believe. We're redeploying to be closer to the other settlements."

Dr. Chou's face brightened. "This means you're using your jumpship, departing from here?"

Dringoth nodded. "Once we get everything buttoned up. We can't stay around here, that's for sure. You heard URME. We're on our own now."

Chou looked at Qi. They both had the same thought. Beijing had given them explicit orders—

"Then take us with you," Chou demanded. "We're here by mistake...these two—" Chou indicated Win Blakely and Tulandra, "—it was their doing."

"Hey," Blakely complained. "It was a navigation error, that's all. Could have happened—"

Chou waved him quiet. "That doesn't matter. Major, you must take us with you."

"He's right," Chase said. "In this time stream, we know what happens to Seome, to the sun. If everything proceeds like history tells us, there will be a big emigration effort. It's probably being organized right now."

"To Earth," Tulandra added. "The _Kel'vish'tu."_

Golich was skeptical. "These fish you've been telling us about...they're going to Urth? Through some kind of vortex-wormhole?"

"Exactly."

Golich smirked. "Right. I'll believe that when I see it."

Dringoth stood up and straightened his tunic. "We don't have much time. Golich, get the others started on dissembling Big Mama out there. Acth:On'e, get the ship ready."

Chou was insistent. "Major, you must—"

Dringoth growled, "Must... _what?_ I must get my battery buttoned up and off this dirt clod of a world, that's what I must do. You heard URME. And fast, before the Coethi show up on our front door step." He went to a panel, started powering down systems as fast as he could. Lights winked on and off, chirps sounded. The low-grade hum that had filled the hut died away. "We've got a helluva lot of work to do."

Chase had an idea. "We'll help. Just tell us what to do."

Dringoth scowled. "In exchange for what? Passage on my ship? We've barely got enough room for us. We're not some tramp steamer out here in the Halo."

Chase was insistent. "We'll still help. We're all Umans here. It's the least we can do." Left unsaid was Chase's quiet hope that Dringoth wasn't completely a lost cause, that somehow even the Ultrarch-Major would never leave other Umans behind to face the Coethi.

It wasn't much. But it was all they had now.

For the next two days, the Genesis 3 team and the crew of 1st Time Displacement Battery worked together, not without some friction it should be noted, to ready their ship for departure, and disassemble the Twister's most vital components. Anything that couldn't be safed and carried would have to be rendered useless to the enemy. That job fell to Golich to supervise. He relented and let Chase and Angie come along, riding a sea skimmer out to the installation, which looked to the untrained eye like just another island...so good was its morphing, swarm camouflage system.

Through the mist and rain, Chase could see a huge, dish-shaped structure sitting low in the water, the outer casing of the Twister. Studded along its circumference were scores of chronotron pods, the active element that generated the twist field that gave the Time Twister its name.

"There are seventy-two pods," Golich explained. "We've got to disconnect all of them and carry them back to the ship. We have special racks for all of them in our hold. Can't leave these behind for the bad guys."

"What about the main structure?" Chase asked.

"Leave it. All the foundation pieces, the mooring and tensioning cables, the casing—they don't do anything without the pods and the singularity engine. We'll have to take that as well, but we'll save it for last. It's kind of a ticklish operation."

Chase told him that their own jumpship, _Majoris_ , also was powered by a small singularity engine.

"Probably a great granddaddy of ours. I read about your stuff in History. You're really from the past, from hundreds of terr ago?"

Chase clambered up on the slick decking of the Twister and following Golich's instructions, managed to disconnect and remove several of the fist-sized pods. They passed them back to Angie, in the bow of the skimmer, who racked the pods in a small container.

"We came through the time streams in the Farpool."

"Oh, yeah, I remember reading about that, too," Golich told him. He was impressed with Chase's amphibious ability, as he dove into the surf to get at submerged pods, then emerged again to continue working his way around the side of the Twister. "There really was a temporal vortex you could ride time streams in?"

"There was...or is," Chase told him. He described the Genesis mission, and how their jumpship had become stranded hundreds of millions of years in Earth's past. "We found some kind of Coethi advance scouts. They helped us get out of that time stream but we wound up inside a great swarm instead. Or some kind of simulation. Trying to figure how to navigate out of that sent us here."

Golich was skeptical. "I doubt that was the Coethi you were dealing with. Nobody's ever seen them close up. Nobody that I ever heard."

Chase insisted that their encounter had been with the Coethi, or a branch of the mother swarm.

Golich shrugged, figuring it was some kind of travelers' fairy tale, and went on. "Nowadays, our ship travels through time streams by creating its own temporal inversion. We have our own chronotron pods to create a twist field. We don't need a Farpool, or anything old-fashioned like that."

After several hours, the Lieutenant announced they had bagged all the pods. They returned to the island, offloaded the bags on the shore and Golich then took a sling and hoist arrangement from another Uman crewperson, someone named Levee.

"We'll have to release the singularity engine from a drop tube below the surface. You and your girl being amphibious can help a lot with that."

They sped off in the skimmer, back out to the dish-shaped bowl of the Twister.

The singularity engine was gingerly floated out of its drop tube and rose like a fistful of whirlpools up toward the surface. Chase and Angie helped guide the ascent, pulling and manipulating on steering cables, to keep the thing straight. Still fastened to its pallet, the engine couldn't actually be seen for all the foam and froth its currents generated. Rising steadily, the engine looked like a big mobile water drain, currents and waves and white-hot steam bubbling in a stewpot of turbulence. It seemed to be sucking in all the water around them and Chase ordered Angie to back off a good distance.

When the pallet broke the surface, it vented and hissed and crackled like a lightning bolt, churning the seas around it for dozens of meters. Golich used the hoist arrangement to haul the crate up onto the Twister deck for a few moments, to encase the thing in its storage tube. The ticklish maneuver took an hour but when the singularity engine was unhooked and slid out of its sling into the tube, Chase, Angie and Golich all cheered, though their cheers were muffled in the wind gusts that were slamming the whole area.

The wormhole generator slid down roughly into its tube, still crackling, venting and hissing and was gone. Golich steered the skimmer back to Kinlok Island.

Back at the ship, Acth:On'e was hand-carrying last-minute supplies to the Uman ship—Dringoth had said her name was _Cygnus_ —when he encountered the two Chinese scientists emerging from the hatch. Immediately suspicious, he put down his armful and glowered at Chou and Qi.

"No one allowed inside alone...Ultrarch-Major's strictest orders."

Chou quickly hid a small tablet up the sleeve of his tunic. "Sorry. We were just...er, taking measurements. Possibly you could help us with our ship?"

Acth:On'e asked, "Your ship...do not recognize your ship. Where from your ship?"

Chou explained how the Coethi had furnished the 'vessel' as a way to depart the swarm simulation they were trapped in.

It was clear Acth:On'e didn't believe a word of it. "Stay outside. I'll get Ultrarch-Major." The Telitorian executive officer went off to the hut to find Dringoth, keeping all four of his eyes on both of them. The idea that the officer could swivel his blade-shaped head completely around unnerved Qi immensely.

"Some kind of circus freak," Qi told Chou. "You must be more careful...we were almost caught."

"This ship's our only chance," Chou argued. Cautiously, he slipped the small slate out, studied the vids and photos he had shot. "If I can study this for awhile, maybe we can figure out how she operates. Perhaps similar to our own _shishi_...there must be similarities. I just need a little time."

Qi saw Dringoth emerge from the hut, pulling up his greatcoat against the sleet and wind. "Here comes the Major. Hide that thing now!"

Dringoth picked his way down the rocky slope to the ship, which sat perched on a sandy headland. His face was grim, though the sleet formed a white rime on his moustache. "My exec here says he caught you two nosing around inside _Cygnus_. You have your own ship. Stay out of mine."

Chou decided a little truth wouldn't hurt. "Major, our 'ship' doesn't really belong to us." Chou had already related how the Coethi had helped them leave Earth of the Late Carboniferous Period but somehow sent them into a vast swarm simulation world...perhaps a sim of the Coethi home world itself. It was clear that Dringoth wasn't buying any of the tale.

"At best it was a stunt. The little buggers can do all kinds of crazy things with space and time...you have to be careful with them. I assume you're leading up to something with all this."

Chou glanced at Qi, who gave him a faint nod. "Major, the truth is we have a proposition for you."

Dringoth was perusing a manifest of what had already been loaded, handed to him by Levee. He signed off and handed it back to her. "A proposition? What kind of proposition?"

Chou explained something of their mission...and how it differed from Genesis. "My government will reward you handsomely if you help us."

Dringoth now began circling the base of _Cygnus_ , a last-minute visual inspection of her flow vanes and control surfaces, her propulsors, her hull fittings. "What kind of help?"

"Take us with you. That vessel you call our ship is just a sort of container. It has only minimal controls and we don't really understand how to operate it. We wound up here, in this time stream, by mistake."

Dringoth continued his inspection, feeling along the hull for dents, dings, imperfections that could affect her flight through voidtime and across time streams. "We don't have room. We're already taking the guts of the Twister onboard. It's cramped enough as it is. Have you ever spent much time in voidtime?"

Chou had to admit that he and Qi were first time temporal travelers. "We have our own ship. But there seemed to be a problem with the Farpool. The vortex wasn't working. We managed to convince this Configuration Zero to help us get back. But instead, we wound up here."

"Ouch," said Dringoth. "I wouldn't trust those vortexes any further than I can spit. Too damned tricky, too finicky. We gave those up centuries ago." The Major paused in his inspection and studied his Chinese visitors. "You're really from Urth? Time Stream T-001 and all that?"

Chou wore a proud smile. "Indeed, I am from Shenyang...Manchuria. The north. Dr. Qi here is from—"

"Hainan...in the south," Qi admitted.

Dringoth smiled awkwardly. "I don't know what your game is, gentlemen. You know Tactron's quarantined T-001 for hundreds of decaterr...too risky to let the Buggers ride one of our ships to the heart land. Nobody's been to Urth in a very long time. Even if I could take you, I'd be violating General Order Nine...violating quarantine regulations. Big trouble for me and all of 1st Time Displacement Battery. And I value my career too much...just made Major, in fact." He swept his arms around the windswept, snow-flecked island. "This is my first real command. Now we've got orders to pull out."

Chou was insistent, almost frantic. "You would be handsomely rewarded, Major."

Maybe it was the way Chou said it. Or maybe it was the tone of voice, like a child asking to stay up five minutes more. There was some kind of undercurrent in Chou's voice that Dringoth's wristpad flagged as ' _barely contained desperation'_ ; the algorithm chirped in his earbud and the display on his wristpad flashed insistently. Dringoth had long ago learned to pay attention to the thing. You did that when you were out here on the leading edge of nowhere, on a sewer of a world known as Storm, running the Time Twister and trying like hell to keep your own little corner of the galaxy free of Coethi scum.

Dringoth stared blankly out to sea, watching the surf pile up around the headlands that guarded the bay. He rubbed his hands together wearily. "I suppose I'd never forgive myself for leaving someone behind to face the Coethi." He shook his head sadly. "Casualties of war...voidtime does that to people. I lost a friend that way—an Elamoid fellow, you know how they are, half machine and half lizard. We blipped into voidtime together and both took a hit from a Coethi time crasher. I blipped back to truetime. He never returned." Dringoth relived the experience and sighed. "I guess we've all gone through enough of that, Dr. Chou. Three hundred plus terrs in voidtime is enough sacrifice for any warrior. Timejump shouldn't keep sending them out like that."

"Then you'll take us along?"

Dringoth shrugged. "I'll see what I can do. That's all I can promise right now. Let's see what kind of space we have after we get all our gear loaded."

Chou and Qi both were almost slobbery with thanks. "You won't regret this, Major. I'll see you and your crew are well rewarded when we get back."

"Just so you two know, I can't take you back to T-001. It's prohibited by Tactron. Once we're loaded, we set off for a little place called Byrd's Draconis...you'll love it. That's the best I can do."

But the Chinese barely heard him, as they chattered away in their strange dialect. Dringoth studied them for a few moments, the way you might study zoo specimens. He watched others carry gear to the jumpship. "You're welcome," he added, but they paid him no attention and drifted off. Dringoth snorted. "Well, that's voidtime for you. In and out, back and forth, flitting across the ages, without any thought for what it might be doing to us—it's no wonder nothing makes sense. For all I know, you and I might be fighting different wars. We might have just crossed paths, on this world, in this time." He stood there with Acth:On'e and wondered if he had done the right thing.

There was an awkward silence, during which Acth:On'e stole away discreetly to help with the loading. Dringoth toed the sand for a moment, gouging a shallow trench around himself. He looked up at the gray clouds, studying their ever-shifting forms as if seeking a portent of what Time would bring them next. At last, he watched the Chinese disappear into the mist, perhaps heading off to their own ship, to their crewmates.

"The Coethi are coming," he said, as much to himself as anyone. "There isn't much time. Or space." Even as he watched, more and more gear was steadily loaded aboard _Cygnus._ Fitting all the equipment they were taking along with the crew of 1st TD and the Genesis crew would take some serious space planning and figuring. Best to get started on it. Dringoth climbed through the ship's hatch and swore under his breath that he was growing soft in his old age.

When Chase and Angie learned from Dr. Chou of Dringoth's offer, they were both overjoyed.

Chou reminded them, "Dringoth's not going back to our time stream. T-001. He says he can't. It's quarantined or something."

Chase wasn't disturbed by the news. He looked up at the sky, where the sun, mostly hidden in clouds and fog, had darkened considerably since they had arrived. "It doesn't matter. We can't stay here. I know this time line. The Coethi have already mortally damaged the sun. It won't last; in time, it goes supernova. This planet—everything—is destroyed. A lot of Seomish escape through the Farpool to Earth. But a lot don't."

For the next few hours, Chase, Angie, Tulandra and the rest of the Genesis 3 team helped the Umans load up _Cygnus_. It was going to be a tight squeeze, he could see that. _Cygnus_ was a distant descendant of _Majoris_. The deck layout and interior fittings bore some similarity to the earlier ship. With suggestions from Chase and Alicia Yang, space was found or created on all three decks for the extra passengers. Chase and Angie were assigned a closet on the Utility Deck.

Dringoth just shook his head at the arrangements. "I should have my head examined. I'll probably be cashiered when we get to Byrd's Draconis."

"What's Byrd's Draconis?" Angie asked.

Dringoth sighed. "Time Guard base. It's where I did OCS at the Academy. Had some memorable days back there; you'll love it. The whole place is a desert. Not a living soul anywhere except at the Academy and we wondered about some of them. Right out of the Academy, I had my first assignment: jumpship TGS _Pollux_. Engineering Officer. That was an eye-opener. Our mission was to cruise in and out of time streams hunting down and engaging Coethi ships and scouts and hopefully destroying them. Jumpships also patrolled especially critical time streams, like where and when certain bases and colonies were established in the Lower Halo and Inner Spiral. It was vital these time streams remained unaltered." Dringoth closed his eyes and a rueful smile came over his face, as the memories filtered back. A few shouts and the sound of something heavy falling came from inside the ship. With a frown, he snapped back to the present. "We'll put _Cygnus_ through her normal refit at Draconis and see where the next patrol takes us. Probably some God-forsaken time stream in the middle of nowhere."

"Can we get home from this place?" Angie asked. "I'm a nurse in Scotland Beach...that's Florida."

Dringoth chewed on his moustache for a moment. "Florida? Never heard of it. I'm dropping you off at Draconis, that's all. After that, you're in the hands of Time Guard."

With that, the Ultrarch-Major climbed through the hatch to check out the source of the noise and disappeared.

Angie looked at Chase. They both picked their way down a craggy defile toward the beach, itself swept by furious wind gusts that flung sand and rock in their faces.

Chase squinted through the sleet. "They're out there, Angie. Below the waves. All the kels: Omt'or, Ponk'et, Eep'kos, all of them. Fighting each other. Arguing with each other over whether to go or stay."

"But you've dismantled the Farpool. How will they leave now? How will they escape? We've messed up the time stream."

"Maybe," Chase theorized. "Actually, what we've done here really happened when I was here before, in a different time stream. The Umans abandoned Seome and pulled out. I helped the Seomish reconstruct a crude form of the Twister, so we could get the Farpool started again...not here, but thousands of kilometers west of here. Place called Likte Trench. The Umans had left us some instructions on how the thing operated and we went from that."

Angie shivered, her gill membranes flexing in and out with the wind gusts. "I'll be glad to just get out of here. Florida would be best. I don't know about this place Byrd's Draconis. I just hope we can get home again."

"Me too," Chase admitted. They hugged for a moment, then climbed back up the slope to rejoin the others boarding _Cygnus._

They never saw the two Chinese scientists just the other side of a sand ridge, huddled under a makeshift shelter.

Qi was nervous, rubbing his lips until they were red and raw. "You have it...the _kuaisu shuimian?_ Will it work? You're sure of this, Chou?"

Chou was manipulating a small palm-shaped device. His contacts at the Ministry of Public Security had called it 'quick sleep'... _kuaisu shuimian_. The Ministry major had told them it was the latest version..." _a neuropulser from the Lab in Beijing. Used for area control. It's a disabling weapon. The Minister's been studying history vids again. He doesn't want anything like Tiananmen Square to happen on his watch."_

Qi wasn't mollified. "You tested it before we left Reed Banks?"

Chou shrugged. "Who am I to doubt the Ministry? He said it worked. You have your device, Qi? Make sure your works too or this will knock us both out."

Qi withdrew a small capsule. The capsule had a narrow blade-shaped dispenser at one end. "Don't worry about self-shields like this. We got them from the Coethi at Reed Banks. It's just a containment device...nothing can go wrong. I checked the config and template before we left. There's only one config anyway. Press this switch—"he gently thumbed the edge of the blade "—and the bots are released. The shield takes about five minutes to set up. After that—"

Chou smirked. "If it works, that is. I slam the others with _kuaisu_ and the shield protects us."

"I just hope you know what you're doing," Qi said. "The Coethi ship didn't operate the way you thought. Why do you think this one will?"

Chou patted Qi on top of his bald head, like a pet. "My dear Dr. Qi, what do you think I've been doing almost nonstop the last two days on my slate? This ship is a more conventional design. That Coethi ship wasn't a jumpship at all...just a container to hold us while the Coethi flung us to some other place and time. But _Cygnus_ —" Chou rubbed his fingers together, "she operates just like our ships. A bit more advanced but the basics are the same. Singularity engine. Temporal inverters—that's new. Flow vanes. Controlling _Cygnus_ won't be that hard."

Qi was skeptical and removed Chou's grubby paw from the top of his head. "If you say so. Let's get back before anyone is suspicious."

They returned to the ship, where the Ultrarch-Major was holding a final pre-launch briefing inside the hatch.

When the briefing was over, all passengers and crew went to their stations. _Cygnus_ had a crew of six: Dringoth, Golich, Acth:On'e, Oscar M'Bela, Ariel Levee and a sentient entity called URME 101, who operated most ship systems autonomously. Genesis 3 added another six, minus Yondok who had disappeared into the sea and the two Chinese. Chou and Qi had been assigned places on B deck, the hab and galley space. Qi made sure they both knew where each passenger was stationed. Chou checked the gangway up to the command deck and did a quiet calculation. Fifteen steps. Maybe ten seconds. When the time came, speed would be vital.

It was going to be a tight fit inside the jumpship.

"Take your stations!" Dringoth called over the crewnet. "Launching in two minutes." To Golich, he said, "Prime singularity engine."

Golich occupied the right-hand seat. He pressed a few keys on his arm pad. "Priming now, Major. Coming up nicely...ticking over, now at twenty percent."

"Inverters on line?"

Golich checked. "On line and operating normally. Green across the board."

"Very well...standby. Sequencer enable arm?"

From behind, came the voice of the Telitorian Acth:On'e. "Sequencer enable to ARM."

"Very well...all hands...brace yourself. Jump in ten seconds...nine...eight..."

In a closet back on the Utility Deck, Angie squeezed Chase's armfin. "Here we go, Flip...hold me tight, you beach bum."

"You got it, Cookie." They both laughed at the nicknames they both hated.

Dringoth's voice filled the air. "...five...four...three...."

Golich announced, "Flow vanes at thirty—"

"...two...one... _mark_! Launching now--!"

The entire ship shuddered like a wet dog. Outside the portholes, the beach and rocky headland of Kinlok Island swam by in a dizzying kaleidoscope of images, bent, broken, shattered, put back together, like a million shards of glass reflecting light in crazy patterns.

The air inside _Cygnus_ went _whump_! as her inverters engaged and a distinct burning smell permeated all decks. The air itself seemed to swirl and flicker and breathing became hard for everyone.

"Flow vanes to forty!" commanded Dringoth. "Let's don't miss this!"

Golich checked his panel, pressed a blinking square twice, selecting the higher rate. "Flow vanes to forty...she's bending...right into the stream!"

"Right down the chute!" yelled Ariel Levee, the defense systems specialist, strapped tightly into her couch at the back of the command deck.

To Chou Wuhan, one deck behind, the trip was like riding the Dragon's Tail at Macau. Or maybe shooting the Yangtze rapids through the Three Gorges Dam in a barrel. After the initial shock—he was sure the entire ship was spinning like a rifle bullet—he unlatched himself from n his makeshift harness outside a crewman's berth on B deck, grabbed Qi from his spot and mimed getting out the self-shield capsule. Qi's head lolled but he nodded... _Shi! Yes!..._ and extracted the capsule. He thumbed the catch and, in a few moments, the two of them were enveloped in a flickering barrier of protective nanobots. The shield moved with them as they made their way out to the gangway and up toward the command deck, hanging on to holds and rails as _Cygnus_ lurched and shuddered and shimmied and shook all around them, banging them from one bulkhead to another.

Just outside the command deck, Chou triggered the neuropulser.

The discharge seemed to light the very air in the command deck. A stinging wave spread out across the deck and Dringoth, Golich, Acth:On'e and Levee soon slumped forward or sideways in their harnesses. Chou checked Qi. He seemed okay. Their shields had held.

Now Chou handed the _kuaisu_ device to Qi, to take care of the rest of the crew and passengers. While Qi went aft, Chou tugged and pulled on Dringoth enough to remove him from his seat. Finally, he slipped out and fell heavily to the deck, rolling back and forth with every lurch of the ship.

Chou seated himself in Dringoth's spot and wrapped himself in the harnesses.

Now to get some kind of control over _Cygnus_.

Qi returned two minutes later. His voice quavered and he staggered into the seat just vacated by the unconscious Golich, who lay entwined on the deck with Dringoth.

"The rest are out, Chou," he reported. "How long I don't know. This shield worked well...I'm collapsing mine now." He waved the capsule about his head, and the flickering barrier died off, as uncountable trillions of nanobots committed atomic seppuku and disassembled themselves into atom fluff. Chou's shield collapsed as well.

Chou studied the controls. He gently ran a hand over the keypad, reading the positions of the flow vanes, the status of the inverters, the pulse of the singularity engine behind them.

Outside the portholes, images screamed by, pulses of light and flaming debris and blobs of something glowing, undulating, throbbing like a thing alive, streaming by in a windstorm of fire and fury.

Chou felt his throat go dry. He'd operated their own time ship just fine, all the way from Reed Banks and the Mischief Reef Lab to a place called Pangaea three hundred million years before there was even a China. This should be easy...flow vanes to fifty, feel for that faint pull of the time stream, like riding the rapids and the hydraulics and the cataracts of a whitewater river, probing and gingerly feeling for just the right current, just the right tug on the oars, just the right shimmy oh it was ever so slight could _that_ be it...was _that_ it?

"Here goes!" he announced. He selected flow vanes to fifty.

Instantly, jumpship _Cygnus_ swerved hard into another time stream, shooting off through infinities of dimensions and cataracts of time and the lurch pinned both of them hard against their seat harnesses, pressing them down and sitting on their chests like an elephant at the Beijing Zoo, squeezing the very breath out of them, until neither could hold out any longer and both Chou and Qi succumbed to the forces that held the very cosmos itself together, the stitches of existence stretching almost to the breaking point and they found themselves suddenly hurtling at breakneck speed down a long, curving corridor, a blur of polygons and triangles and cubes and tetrahedrals sleeting past them until—

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

The ship rolled languidly from side to side and the air inside the command deck was warm, humid, sickening even and with the pitching and heaving, Chou felt a rising column of vomit in the back of his throat. With effort and willpower, he managed to swallow it back and his eyes came open and they fell on the first porthole he could find, the one to his left. Everything was still spinning and swimming and it was an effort to lift his head up.

He craned his neck to see out.

They were at sea, in the middle of a blue-green, almost turquoise sea, with puffy clouds racing by overhead and some kind of vast structure barely visible at the bottom of the view, off in the distance, spanning nearly the entire horizon.

Qi stirred next to him, mumbling and moaning about something.

Chou found his voice, coaxing moisture into his throat to be able to speak. "Qi, look...I've got the sun out my porthole. Late afternoon from the looks of it. We made it...this has to be Earth!"

Qi rubbed reddened eyes and shook dizziness and rising nausea from his head. "That's odd...I've got sun out my window too."

"What? How can you and I both have sun—let me see." Chou unhooked himself and leaned over to peer out of Qi's starboard side porthole. The physicist was right. A late afternoon sun shone down shafts of light down through the clouds. But it seemed different somehow from his view. Looking out Qi's porthole, Chou studied the sun. It seemed smaller. The color wasn't quite right. A mist perhaps? Some kind of weird refraction?

The truth was slow in coming and only hit them when Chou lurched from the portside view to the starboard side. Sun out of both portholes. Each slightly different. Each subtly unique. How could that be?

Qi put the words out that Chou didn't want to say. "This _is_ Earth, isn't it?"

"It has to be. But Qi...look at the chronometer. It's not T-001. It says...T-5098. It _is_ Earth...but...when....?"

"That sure looks like the Atlantic outside," Qi said. "And that has to be Muir City on the horizon."

"Yes, I'm sure of it," Chou tried to convince himself. "It's Earth...I'm sure of it. But somehow... _there are two suns_."

Chapter 11

Blombosfontein Nature Reserve

Heidelberg, Western Cape

South Africa

Solnet/Omnivision Video Post

@anna.kolchinova.solnetworldview.com

October 12, 2123

Solnet Special Report

" _The Future Speaks..."_

" _The Volk Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Cape Town, South Africa is a pretty staid and stuffy lab for studying the beginnings of Man and the fossil and genetic evidence of our beginnings tens of thousands of years ago. Pretty staid and stuffy...that is, until today._

The Institute is housed in a complex of modern research facilities set in a wooded estate just outside Cape Town. From the outside, there's nothing about the Institute that would indicate what really goes on inside or what kind of bombshells occasionally erupt from this secluded, almost pastoral setting.

Today, just such a bombshell landed, right in the laps of the Board of Directors of the Institute's Department of Human Evolution. The bomb thrower, Dr. Vannevar Linklyn, made a presentation at this month's Board meeting, a presentation about new finds at the Blombos Cave dig site, new finds which, if confirmed, will radically and forever overturn what we know about Man's ancestors, our origins, even our future descendants.

SOLNET reporter Anna Kolchinova was there and files this report:

"The essence of Dr. Linklyn's presentation is that we now have incontrovertible proof, physical evidence, that Man didn't develop and evolve on this planet alone or unaided. Recent finds of fossilized micro robotic remains among ancient _Homo Erectus_ bones at the Blombos Cave dig site have swept the world of archaeology and anthropology like a hurricane. Linklyn is a researcher in the Institute's Department of Human Evolution and was here in Cape Town to present the details of his findings to the Institute's Board of Directors.

"We caught up with Dr. Linklyn right after the Board meeting to ask a few questions. Dr. Linklyn, first of all, thank you for taking the time to be with our viewers today."

Vannevar Linklyn is an older scientist, fringe of white hair around the top of his head. The meeting takes places along a pebbled walkway between buildings.

"Of course, Anna. Walk with me, please. I'm due at a lab conference in the next building."

"Dr. Linklyn, you made a rather extraordinary discovery at Blombos Cave recently. Would you characterize this find as something which could overturn all our ideas about Man's origins?"

Linklyn pauses at an intersection of walkways and punches some keys on his wristpad. "Here, Anna, let me show you what we've found at Blombos. This was found among stratigraphic layers, beneath the aeolian sand surface, in the outer talus region off the main chamber, about four to five meters south of where the terrain drops toward the shoreline." He punches more keys and a 3-D projection emerges from his wristpad, hanging in mid-air like a disembodied ghost. With a few more keys, Linklyn zooms in on what the scientific press is calling Object T-330. It looks like a small, rather battered cylinder, with knobs and projections over its surface.

Kolchinova squints at the projection, which Linklyn makes revolve in mid-air. Other passersby ignore the two of them,

"It looks like a banana, with warts, Dr, Linklyn."

"Indeed, there are three main theories about what this object may have been. I should add that radiocarbon dating has proven inconclusive, for reasons I'll explain shortly."

"What are these theories, Doctor?"

Linklyn rubs his forehead with some weariness, as the morning's meetings were long and trying.

"Well, Anna, we've done recent assays on some of the pieces. This is what I presented to the Board this morning. We're finding octahedral and dodecahedral lattices of iron, silicon, germanium and some unusual elements that don't even appear on our periodic table...we don't know what to make of them."

Linklyn manipulates the 3-D images and atomic structures rotate in space in front of Kolchinova's eyes.

"Dr. Linklyn, you mentioned some kind of crystal—that this was possibly some kind of communication device."

"Ah, yes—" Linklyn changes the display to show a new set of images. The lattices flickered out and were replaced by new structures, crystalline shards magnified millions of times. "We think these crystals may have been part of a processor core...this is controversial, but there are holes and pits suggesting some kind of electron transport mechanism...perhaps even a memory array of some kind. We need more evidence—"

Kolchinova gets right to the point. "Dr. Linklyn, one of the theories we heard about from the Board—this was Dr. Marta Siebeck's theory, I seem to recall—"

"Siebeck, yes...she's the Director. Very fine physical anthropologist, I might add. Perhaps a little prone to speculation."

"Of course...Dr. Linklyn, isn't it true that one of the theories being discussed has Object T-330 not coming from the past at all, but rather from the future? A sort of reverse fossil, if you will."

Linklyn sighs. He had hoped to avoid discussing this rather cockeyed idea in public before all the facts were in.,

"Well, Anna, let me say that our radiocarbon dating of the soil and rock around the find dates the material to approximately the Middle Paleolithic Period, the middle stone age, perhaps some 65,000 years ago. We haven't as yet been able to determine the actual age of T-330 with any certainty yet."

"Why is that, Doctor?"

"Frankly, Object T-330 is composed of some kind of rare amalgam of elements of a type and composition we've never seen before. As I said, there are three main theories about the origin of T-330."

"Could you explain, Doctor?"

"Surely. One theory has the find as originating in the same time frame as the surrounding rock, with the surface composition perhaps the result of unusual, statistically improbable natural forces concentrating extant minerals in a certain way. We can't completely discount this theory but the context of its original environment, the nature of its surrounding materials, argue against it. So that's one theory, yet to be proven."

"And the others?"

Linklyn shuts down his wristpad and resumes his walk toward Building B-5, the Anthropology Lab. Kolchinova hurries to keep up, with her dronecam octocopter hovering just overhead. From time to time, Kolchinova checks the view and the video feed, seems satisfied.

"The second theory is rather more mundane, though still a bit worrisome. This theory posits that Object T-330 is of current origin and was left deliberately or dropped accidentally in the talus by careless or malicious individuals whose identity remains unknown. The problem with this theory is that the surrounding excavation reveals no evidence of human presence whatsoever, not for 65,000 years. So this theory seems to have no physical evidence to support it, save for the Object itself."

"There was a third theory, Doctor."

"Yes." Here, Linklyn stops in mid-stride and turns to face Kolchinova. His face is a concatenation of disgust, wonder, and other feelings that Kolchinova can't read. Words hung on his tongue, ready to be uttered, but he swallowed them instead.

"Anna, this theory is the most controversial of all. Several of us, though not myself, feel that the evidence best supports an extratemporal origin for Object T-330."

"Extratemporal, sir? Exactly, what does that mean, sir?"

Linklyn smiles mischievously. "It means that Object T-330 may have come from sometime in our future...left behind, deliberately or accidentally who can say, by individuals from another time period. Of course, here at the Institute, we're fully aware of Farpool Service and UNIFORCE and their jumpships. We know of the Genesis mission. Basic manipulation of spacetime and the ability to make short jumps into and across other time streams is now a proven technique. So perhaps this theory isn't so farfetched after all. We even have one Board member who thinks Object T-330 may be some kind of device that one of the Genesis crew picked up and discarded on one of their time jumps...some kind of trash or discarded equipment they left behind. Right now, we're sending inquiries to Farpool Service to ascertain just what might have happened on these jumps. Of course, this is all highly classified. Security regulations prevent me from saying much more."

Kolchinova decides to try another tack. The two of them were approaching Building B-5; she was sure Linklyn would use their approach as an excuse to duck into one of the Labs and disappear.

"Dr. Linklyn, some of my sources indicate that Object T-330 may be more than just futuristic trash. Sources have been telling me that in fact the Object is a device left for us to discover by the missing Genesis 3 team. My sources tell me the Genesis 3 team is somehow marooned in another time stream, for some reason can't get back to our time and that the device is actually their way of frantically requesting rescue. Would you care to comment, sir?"

Linklyn pauses at the door to Building B-5. He peers into the lobby, does not make eye contact with Kolchinova at all.

"Ms. Kolchinova, I'm sorry. I'm late for a meeting. Perhaps...another time." He places his palm against a bioreader and scans his way inside, leaving the Solnet reporter and her dronecam hovering at the entrance.

Kolchinova fluffs her hair and turns to face the dronecam with a closing statement. She keeps her face professionally impassive but inwardly realizes she has struck a nerve...it's clear that Dr. Vannevar Linklyn knows much more than he is letting on.

"Here at the Volk Institute, meetings continue to be held about the extraordinary find that is Object T-330. Theories are spun, evidence is presented and very little, so far, is being released to the public. For a scientific find of this magnitude to be held so tightly is unusual and somewhat disturbing to this reporter. We can only speculate and we don't want to engage in too much speculation without more facts to support us. But what we do know is this: Object T-330 is something that no paleontologist or archeologist ever expected to find inside Blombos Cave. Whatever its exact nature, Object T-330 has stirred interest and provoked rather extraordinary security measures involving not only the Institute itself, but elements inside both UNIFORCE and Farpool Service. With the recent Genesis missions being concluded and the public knowledge that something seems to have happened to the Genesis 3 team—perhaps they have been unable to return to our time—it's clear that the discovery of Object T-330 is of critical concern to the highest levels of the United Nations and to many nations across the globe. Solnet will continue to aggressively pursue this story with the goal of bringing you the latest news as it happens, when and where it happens."

"This is Anna Kolchinova reporting, from the Volk Institute in Cape Town, South Africa...until next time."

Special Report Ends

UNIFORCE Headquarters

The Quartier-General

Rue de Montparnasse

Paris

October 12, 2123

0630 hours

Admiral Gerhard Marx hated being late to any briefing but it was never a good career move to hold up a meeting with UNSAC. The Security Affairs Commissioner was known far and wide to be a stickler about punctuality and preparation and woe be unto the lowly staffer who came to any briefing in UNSAC's suite of offices with anything less than a complete set of slides, vids, papers and notes...not to mention a ready answer to any question that might come his or her way from the mouth of Angelika Komar.

Komar was not one to suffer fools...or unprepared staff...kindly.

The Security Affairs Commissioner stood at the window of her office on the 66th floor of the Quartier General and stared out at the early morning sun rising over a timeless Parisian cityscape.

The Eiffel Tower dominated the northwest view, now covered with fixbots as it was nearing completion of the structural upgrade ordered by UNSAC a few months before. There was the Place Vendome and the low hill of Montmartre, thick with pedestrians and aircabs. UNIFORCE had been built forty years before on the Rue des Jardins, at a busy intersection off the Luxembourg Gardens, deep in the heart of the 5th Arrondisement. The mansard roofline of the Palais du Luxembourg filled her northeast windows.

A deep sense of foreboding washed over UNSAC. She'd seen the intel boards earlier that morning and the signs were there for all to see. Farpool Service had lost one of its jumpships—the Genesis 3 crew and their jumpship _Majoris_ —and now somehow a motley band of egghead paleontologists had stumbled across a message from the team, a message from a thousand years in the future, 3155 AD to be exact, and Komar wanted answers. Fast.

Admiral Marx reached UNSAC's suite and was scanned in. A pair of servbots scurried around the suite, bearing trays of pasties and coffee, straightening chairs, setting up work stations. The UN Security Affairs Commissioner was deep in some kind of intense vidcon and waved the Marx to a chair beside her curving work console. Angelika Komar was the very picture of Prussian military bearing, with a thick head of silver hair and high cheek planes. Komar was nominally a civilian advisor to the Secretary-General, but the S-G had plucked her from the ranks of the General Staff two years before. Formerly chief of UNIFORCE Ground Forces, Komar was a stern, by-the-book commander and she ran the UNSAC shop the same way.

"--just get me that report by 0900...not a second later. Squirt me the raw feed if you have to...but get me that report. Is that understood?"

Komar evidently got the response she wanted and closed down the vidcon with an angry wave of her hand. "Sorry, Admiral...bit of a flap over command jurisdiction. That was Chekwarthy...he's on a lifter heading down to Africa now...trying to get some eyeballs on the situation in South Africa. What have you got for me?" UNSAC grabbed a muffin and coffee off a passing servbot before the bot could even stop and unload its goodies.

"Intel and analysis from Farpool Ops, ma'am," Marx waved a cube and UNSAC pointed to a nearby slot.

"Let GENGHIS have it. He can break it down for us, set up the maps and details."

Marx popped the cube into a port. GENGHIS was UNSAC's tactical AI, running all the displays and visuals on the briefing deck. Moments later, all the wall screens flickered to life, detailing views of the Earth-Moon system, the Solar System in ecliptic projection and grid plots of the earth's surface itself.

"You're sure of this?" UNSAC asked. "Genesis 3...lost in time stream T-5098...what time period is that, anyway?"

"The eggheads say it's around 3155 AD, give or take a few months, the best they can calculate. Somehow the Genesis 3 team wound up in other time streams. Or maybe they lost control of their ship. We haven't heard anything from them since they launched."

UNSAC considered that. Komar picked idly at loose strands of her white hair as she studied the graphics. "And the other Genesis teams--?"

Marx was on firmer ground here. "All have returned and been debriefed. Mars, Europa, all targets have been sanitized. As we suspected from studying the Coethi we have here, the phenomenon more or less contained at Reed Banks, it appears that millions of years ago, the Coethi or their ancestors swept through our solar system seeding various places with early nanobotic mechanisms. We don't know why exactly but there are plenty of theories. Now with the success of the other Genesis missions, that seeding didn't actually happen. We've prevented it. So whatever the Coethi plan was, it can't be executed completely now."

Komar looked up at Marx. She figured the Admiral was naturally trying to focus her attention on the missions that had achieved their objectives, rather than the one that didn't. Rather like a teenager trying to explain away a fender-bender with the family car by focusing on how clean it had been before the accident.

"But there's still Genesis 3, Admiral. And their objective was here, on Earth, was it not?"

"Yes, ma'am...it was."

Komar pointed to one graphic. It was the device Vannevar Linklyn had found at Blombos Cave in South Africa a week before.

"What about this thing? Is there a connection with Genesis 3?"

"There are theories," Marx admitted. This was ticklish territory, he realized. "One theory is that Object T-330 really is a kind of communication device. Already, evidence suggests it's a form of quantum coupler—there are components that resemble entangler circuits, unusual materials involved. Linklyn claims he could never get a conclusive radiocarbon date for how old the thing is...or was. UNIFORCE exercised its prerogative of 'exigent circumstances' and took possession yesterday. Right now, Object T-330 is in our labs at Farpool Ops, Muir City, under lock and key."

"Any results? What about this wild ass claim that it's a message of some kind from Genesis 3?"

Marx shrugged. He had heard the same crackpot theories, mostly spun by crackpots in the media, like that Solnet reporter he'd seen a day ago.

"There's no proof of that. The idea that Genesis 3 somehow went from time stream T-881 to time stream T-5098 on their own is preposterous. There's no mapping for that kind of maneuver. Hell, ma'am, we don't even know if our jumpships can withstand those kinds of stresses. Nobody's ever gone that far away from our own time stream, certainly not along that vector. It's completely unexplored terrain."

Komar was thinking. "Maybe so but the theory's out there and we'd better be prepared to respond to it. Most of the Universe is unexplored terrain too, but it's still out there. If Genesis 3 did wind up at T-5098, whenever the hell that is, we could have a PR disaster of the first order on our hands. In fact—" a chime sounded on Komar's desk and the conference pedestal that functioned as a desk ornament, began to rotate slowly, blurring slightly. From the pedestal came a life-size 3-D projection of an avatar...it was the Secretary-General Vijay Vishnapuram, materializing in front of them.

Out of respect, UNSAC and Marx both stood up, until the S-G's avatar was fully formed and blinking at them with a faint smirk.

"Mr. Secretary," said UNSAC, "we didn't expect you quite so soon."

The S-G shrugged, pixelating slightly as the image finished forming. "Security Council meetings drag on forever. I excused myself with a...shall we say, strategic upset stomach." Vishnapuram chuckled at his little subterfuge. "I wanted to find out what has been learned about Object T-330."

Marx consulted his own wristpad for notes and details. He went down the list of what was known about the find, what was suspected from physical, electromagnetic and quantum examination and what was still theory.

The S-G rubbed day-old stubble on his rather prominent chin. Again, came the incongruous smirk, a politician's smile, Marx figured, bland and comforting.

"If there is any possibility that Object T-330 is some kind of signal from Genesis 3, and the team really is somehow trapped in that future time stream, we have to do something."

Marx groaned inwardly. Politicians were always trying to 'do something' about a problem. Marx had long ago learned that a lot of problems resolved themselves if you just gave them a chance.

UNSAC asked, "Sir, we really should wait for a fuller examination of the object. There are just too many unknowns to—"

But the S-G was already smitten with the idea of 'doing something.' "Perhaps a rescue mission of some sort. That's doable, isn't it? Another mission, to this time stream, to search out our missing crew and bring them home. Wouldn't that make a great story?"

_And you'd be right there_ , thought Marx sourly, welcoming them home. _All smiles and medals and acclaim and parades._

"Sir," Marx had to interject, "a rescue mission would be tremendously risky. We don't have a ship—one would have to be built. We're talking months here, at least. We've never sent anyone or anything to time streams that far out. It's unknown territory. There could well be significant navigation hazards...rifts, cross-currents, uncharted eddies and harmonics, resonances, nobody really knows. We could wind up losing the rescue mission and achieving nothing."

This disturbed the S-G; you could see it in his face as his eyebrows curled downward, but only for a few seconds. Vishnapuram was preternaturally an optimist, as only a Punjabi native could ever be.

"Of course, we all understand there are risks, Admiral. But look at the optics here: we have to be seen to be doing something to rescue our brave comrades. I'll put this idea before the Security Council to be sure, but for now, I want rescue mission planning to start. Don't worry about the money. I can slip funding through the General Assembly as a rider on some obscure resolution; nobody ever reads those things. Just get started. Build your ship. Select and train your crew. Study the hazards. And report back to me regularly, shall we say once a week? Directly to my office bot SINGH. I want details too. Now, really, I must be off...another meeting—"

With that, the S-G's avatar began to dematerialize and in seconds, was just smoke particles caught in a shaft of light from the sun streaming in through the windows.

Marx and Komar looked at each other.

UNSAC took a deep breath. "I guess we have our orders, Admiral. Work up a mission plan for me by tomorrow, this time. Ship build time, crew selection, training schedule, navigation details, I want to know everything. The S-G's on this one and we'd better come up with something."

"Yes, ma'am," Marx came back. "Something to make the S-G look good."

Komar's face darkened. "Something that has a chance of working, Admiral. Looking good isn't the issue. If this plan works, we all look good and we get the Genesis 3 crew back safe and sound, mission accomplished. If this plan fails—"

She didn't have to say anymore.

Marx saluted his way out and headed for the lift downstairs. There were a million things to be done and time was surely critical. The head of Farpool Service comforted himself with the knowledge that, at the very least, a Genesis rescue mission would be exploring unknown, unexplored time streams. Any data from a diligent recon effort would surely be helpful.

As he waited for the Service jetcab to come around and take him off to the airport, Marx tried to avoid any thoughts about what would happen if they lost the rescue mission too.

Six weeks of twenty-four hours days followed. Muir City was a beehive of activity as Ops, Engineering, Munitions, and other departments bent to the task of fleshing out the jumpship's design and the details of the rescue plan that would employ it. Gerhard Marx himself routinely put in eighteen and twenty-hour days, working at times in the Sim Tank wargaming every possible detail of the rescue, studying topographic details of the known time streams, arguing with engineers and machinists in the shops over the ship's design and fittings and working with techs at the labs to optimize the ship's singularity engine for traversing time streams that no one had ever followed before.

As October rolled into late November, Admiral Marx's promised deadline evaporated as surely as the Thanksgiving snows on Muir City's upper decks but the Admiral made no further mention of his promise to UNSAC...or the S-G. Through daily briefings and unannounced strolls through the labs and shops, Marx could see that the whole compound was mobilized to support the rescue mission.

_They're good kids,_ he told himself after one late afternoon inspection of the ship, now encased in scaffolding and catwalks on the ground floor of Muir City's Hangar C. _They'll get the mission accomplished, one way or another._

He thought grimly as he walked back to the glass cube of the Ops center. _They have to. There's too much at stake to fail now._

Bit by bit, beams and spars and panels and struts and framing came together and the rescue jumpship gradually took shape inside the hangar. By the second week of December, she was powered up for the first time and Marx and a select crew tested her for fit and function, exercising her flow vanes, propulsors and cycling the singularity core on and off.

The lead engineer was a ruddy-cheeked sunburned Texan named Murchison, with scarred hands and a booming voice. He climbed up onto the command deck and sat beside Marx in the cockpit, while a trio of electricians pulled wiring bundles through the forward consoles.

"She'll be ready for maneuvering exercises, next Monday, Admiral. We're hauling her up to the hangar bay over the weekend. You got a test crew ready?"

Marx had always enjoyed burying himself in the details and was checking off switches and buttons against a diagram he had spread across his knees. "I'll be part of the test crew, Murch. I just have to clear it with UNSAC. Are you going to load a live singularity core aboard for the test?"

Murchison nodded. "Soon as the engineers okay the test core, we'll load her up and put her to work. The test conductor has already laid out a course for you...some local time streams and some further out." He handed over a map of the test flight to Marx.

The Admiral studied the test course for a few moments, following the track through the time streams with his finger. The route would take the jumpship from her launch point at Bay 2, along a serpentine route across time streams T-001 and T-002, eventually diving through a known temporal anomaly called Newton's Jaws. The test then had the ship circling through several known rifts and time shoals, tunneling her way across multiple substream eddies at a 'depth' of two days into the future, before circling back toward the hangars at Muir City.

"This should put her through her paces, Murch. How's she coming along?"

Murchison shrugged, pulled out a small thoughtpad and checked files. "Power plant full-up test this afternoon, Admiral. We're still tracking down a current leak in the batteries, but that should be fixable. Tomorrow, we hang her vanes and motors on; they're powered up in two days. It's tight but we're getting there." The Texan shook his head ruefully, patted the instrument panel and played with her controls like a child. "I don't mind telling you, Admiral...up until a week ago, I never thought this contraption would work. I mean...look at her...it ain't natural doing what she's doing, going where she's going."

"You mean splashing around time streams like a...porpoise?" Marx chuckled. "That's what we should name her, don't you think...something like F.S.S. _Dolphin_. That name fits, doesn't it?"

The Admiral went on. "The way I look at it, maneuvering through time is no different than maneuvering through air or water," he lied. _Or, for that matter, through atoms and molecules._ "It's just another medium. Farpool has to stay focused on the mission, on the target." He squeezed the control stick affectionately. _"_ This baby's just our ride to the show."

Murchison was already climbing down from the command deck, off to check on some parts in the shop.

"I'll make sure she's a good ride, Admiral. Don't you and the guys worry none about that."

With extra shifts and extra incentives, the rescue jumpship was completed in less than six weeks, slapped together from extra materials and gear left behind at Farpool docks from the original Genesis missions. In early December, she was already on her launch cradle in the hangar bay, fully kitted out and ready for her shakedown cruise.

She was formally christened jumpship F.S.S. _Libra_. Her commanding officer would be Farpool veteran pilot Jump Captain Tomas Hektor.

_She looks like a big fat glistening pig with wings_ , Marx thought, when he did last-minute inspections on a cold, rainy, squally and blustery day in the mid-Atlantic.

Marx let the chief test conductor oversee the setup and prep for the test mission. If all went well, _Libra_ would zip out toward the Farpool and enter the wormhole for a little two-day jaunt across several local time streams, just enough to exercise her systems and crew.

The Admiral was still sour from UNSAC's ruling several days before that he was _not_ , "under any circumstances," to be onboard with the test crew. Komar had been quite firm and explicit about that. "I'm not losing my Farpool chief to unknown time streams or an unproven ship," she had ordered.

Marx sighed as he watched Hektor and the test crew board _Libra_. _Even big kids need their playtime in the sandbox,_ he muttered. But it was not to be. Murchison loudly ordered the launch area cleared and the launch team retreated to the safety of their well-shielded bunkers alongside the hangar bay.

Just moments before the launch sequence had reached its final seconds, the count was interrupted and held indefinitely, as Marx perused a new message that had just come in on his wristpad. He shook his head in disbelief; the message had come from the S-G himself, via UNSAC's office in Paris.

It was an unexpected message, from an unexpected source.

It seemed that Senator Ryan Palette and much of the leadership of Sons of Adam had contacted the S-G overnight, with a proposition.

The message was simple, if unbelievable:

Take us along on your rescue mission. Give us space or give us our own ship and SOA will follow your team to its target time stream in the future.
Chapter 12

Muir City

Farpool Operations

The mid-Atlantic

December 12, 2123

1230 hours

Ryan Palette came to Muir City to meet with UNSAC and Admiral Marx with some apprehension, knowing that it had only been a few months since SOA had held hostages on this very same platform and threatened to blow the whole complex to kingdom come. Against the advice of his senior leaders— _"you'll be taken into custody the moment you set foot on the place"—_ he had decided that the proposed rescue mission offered the Sons a perfect opportunity to achieve one of their key objectives: getting the hell away from a world and a time filled with amphibs, freaks, sea people, perverts and half-breeds and taking their chances in the clean, unsoiled, uncontaminated world of a future time stream. A world where surely the pox that was amphib ways had finally and forever been eradicated from Humanity and men and women could live as God intended...without gills and armfins and webbed feet.

A truce had been arranged between UNIFORCE and the Sons—a 24-hour truce, during which the Sons would make no more provocative moves and UNIFORCE agents would not respond. Two representatives could approach and enter Muir City without prejudice—given safe passage, they would be escorted to a meeting site and there would have a talk with senior UNIFORCE and Farpool Service officers. The purpose of the talks had been laid out only in generalities: conditions for surrender, terms of adjustment, status of forces and positions, media coverage, the future.

To Ryan Palette, the truce offered the best chance to put the Sons' position before the public and gain some traction in their efforts to rid the world of the stain of amphib half-breeds. A chance at a clean sheet, making use of Farpool Service to take their believers and followers to a place where a fresh start was possible...maybe their only chance.

As per the terms of the truce, Palette had brought one other lieutenant...one Tim Holland. The two of them stepped uneasily out of the lifter onto the deck of Muir City's hangar bay and into a circle of armed UNIFORCE security officers, all of them with weapons trained on the duo. A tense standoff ensued until the whir of a robocart turned heads. The cart bore two officers and came to a stop a few meters from the exit ramp. One officer got out, a large-boned African in marine camou fatigues studded with medals and ribbons. He was clearly amphib, too. His gills huffed with barely contained disgust.

"Major Patrice Lumumba...UNIFORCE Internal Security. You're Ryan Palette?"

Palette sniffed. "Of course. I think my face is well enough known. This is Tim Holland." Palette extracted a small slate from a pocket. "I have the pass right here...all the terms of the truce. We have safe passage here."

Lumumba glared back with fierce eyes. "Let me see that—" He took Palette's pass slate and examined it with webbed hands, as a lion might sniff a freshly killed carcass, turning it end for end, before scanning the details.

"Very well. Get in. My orders are take you to Admiral Marx...Level A2, observation deck."

Palette looked at Holland. The kid's eyes betrayed what Palette was trying to hide: apprehension tinged with dread. _We're walking into a trap_ , _Senator_ , Holland's face said, even though no words were exchanged.

Palette could offer no reassurances that they weren't.

They both climbed into the cart and Lumumba sped them off to a nearby lift. Across several open decks and up several lifts, Palette and Holland were keenly aware of the glares and muted curses, the furtive gestures and shunned looks everywhere. Knots of people gathered and whispered things to each other. Tools and instruments and gauges and devices were brandished as weapons. Lumumba honked at obstructions and pedestrians slow to move out of the way. Frowns and narrowed eyes and snarls rushed by.

Throughout the trip, Palette wondered why he had ever let dinosaurs like Jack Worth convince him that assaulting the huge platform and taking hostages was a good idea. The mission had been doomed from the start.

And the residents of Muir City, amphibs and others, weren't likely to forget what had happened to them and who had been responsible.

At length, Lumumba navigated decks and lifts and corridors until they came to Level A2, just below the summit and promenade deck that circumscribed the upper structures of Muir City. Outside the wraparound windows, mist and fog had moved in, obscuring the view across the wavetops. Outside a small conference room, well-guarded by Farpool Service troops, Lumumba brusquely gestured for Palette and Holland to get out.

"Inside—" he commanded. The door slid back and the two of them were ushered into the room. It was dominated by a table, surmounted with a projection pedestal and embedded with display screens.

Admiral Gerhard Marx turned from a massive window and regarded the Senator coldly. The Admiral seemed a barely contained explosion as he unwrapped his arms and without ceremony, indicated Palette and Holland should sit.

One avatar drifted out of the corner. It was Vishnapuram, the Secretary-General, beamed in from UN Headquarters in New York. UNSAC was also there, her avatar materializing out of the pedestal even as Palette sat down. Holland looked about nervously, eyeing the shut doors, the sealed windows, the cameras and vid systems, the MOBnet swarm dispensers disguised as statuettes on a nearby credenza, and figured he knew how a captured prey felt. Awkwardly, he sat down too.

Marx got right to the point, never sitting, but pacing back and forth across the windows. Outside, lifters hovered in plain view, slipping in and out of the fog like vultures circling road kill.

"How do you know of our proposed Genesis rescue mission, Senator? It was classified SCI-Purple."

Palette judged that bold and blustery might work here. "You think we don't have our own sources, Admiral? Come on...give us some credit. What you do up here is no great secret."

Marx didn't react. Palette could see the Admiral's face hardening slightly. "Be that as it may. You have something to offer?"

Palette had practiced this response for hours on the ride out from the safe house at Montauk to Muir City.

"For many years now, Sons of Adam has made no secret of its mission. We find the spread of amphibs, their ideas, their lifestyles, their filth to be—"

Marx stopped abruptly in mid-stride and chopped the air with a hand. "Save the speech, Senator. I'm not here to debate. Or listen to your crackpot theories. You have something to offer?"

Tim Holland stirred uneasily as Palette swallowed his speech and re-calibrated.

"A deal, Admiral. Sons of Adam will cease all agitation and provocative activities, worldwide. I'll publicly disown the organization I created with my own hands— "here, Holland cleared his throat and looked determinedly down at his own feet—"—and even give up the identities of our top leadership, their locations and our sources of finance and intelligence to the authorities. I'll do all this quite willingly, in exchange for something only you can grant."

Marx seemed intrigued and finally sat down. The two avatars drifted over to hover alongside the O-9.

The Vishnapuram avatar spoke. "In exchange for what, Senator? What can you offer us that we can't take on our own?"

UNSAC chimed in. "Your organization is on the run now as it is. It's only a matter of time before Sons of Adam is smashed into oblivion and the lot of you are in custody."

Palette conceded the point. "Perhaps."

"Don't underestimate us!" Holland blurted out, earning a rebuke from Palette.

The Senator folded his hands across the table, forming a steeple. "I have a simple request. I wish to have access to your rescue ship, or perhaps one could be constructed for us. My lieutenant Mr. Holland and myself, and two others, whom I'll name later, wish to leave this world and this time and go with you to the time stream your mission calls for...I believe you call it T-5098?"

Marx looked up at UNSAC with an _I told you so_ look. "So your sources inside Farpool know even know about this. Congratulations. Why do you want to leave?"

Palette half-laughed. "You mean other than avoiding arrest and incarceration...or worse? Admiral, here in this time stream, here on Earth, even I'd have to admit Sons of Adam has lost the battle. But we haven't lost the war. We plan to leave this place and time and start new in T-5098, start over, carry the fight to a new place and re-grow our organization. For all I know, this future time stream is cleansed of all amphib influence and we'll be free to expand our influence, elect leaders, control systems and become the force God intended us to become...a force leading all right-thinking people back to the Garden and the purity our Creator originally made."

UNSAC scoffed. "Horse manure, Senator. You just want new subjects to exploit and new places to subjugate. This is all about achieving in the future what you can't achieve here and now. Backing your way into influence from another angle...anybody can see that."

But Vishnapuram wasn't so sure. The S-G's avatar drifted right over the center of the table and hovered like a disembodied Hindu god as it beamed down at all of them. Vishnapuram always loved to do things like that.

"You would call off all your shock troops in exchange for safe passage to another time stream?"

Palette said, "Indeed, that's my offer, Mr. Secretary. Passage on one of your ships. Or a ship of our own. I'm even prepared to transfer some funds to help out."

Marx growled, "There's only one ship. And _Libra's_ about to go through her shakedown cruise and test."

UNSAC agreed. "The crew's already been selected and they're in training now. We don't have room for anybody else."

Palette glared up at both avatars, determined not to back down now. "Then build us a ship. I'll give you some money to help defray the cost. I'll even keep my guys in check for the duration." He gave Holland a stern glance as he said this.

Vishnapuram said, "I think this offer should be considered."

UNSAC shook her head. Her avatar pixelated as she moved abruptly away from the table, taking up a position alongside the credenza. "Mr. Secretary, we can't—"

Marx was even more agitated. "It's a tactic, Mr. Secretary. They're stalling, for something. Position, advantage, rebuilding their forces. We've got 'em on the ropes now. Let's finish 'em off while we can."

"This needs to go before the Security Council," the S-G decided. "Let me be sure I understand the details of your offer, Senator: you call off all your forces and give up details of your organization to us. In exchange, we grant you safe passage, probably build a jumpship for you and a small crew and provide assistance in getting you to time stream T-5098. Is that about it?"

Palette said, "Mr. Secretary, you've captured the details perfectly. And I'd like to have an answer as soon as possible."

"Or what?" UNSAC said. "The attacks resume?"

Palette shrugged while Holland said, "We'll defend ourselves to the death if we have to. We're not afraid of anything."

Marx stifled a slight chuckle. "Well said, young man. Spoken like a true 20-year old. Mr. Secretary, I should point out that if we agree to do this, it delays the rescue mission by weeks, maybe months. Genesis 3 could be in real—"

But Vishnapuram had already made up his mind. "No, Admiral, there are larger issues here. I'll get this to the Security Council today, this afternoon. With any luck, and a lot of mind-numbing debate, you should have your answer by this time tomorrow."

Marx knew when he was beaten. _Ours not to reason why_...He figured it was never a good career move to question Command Authority. "Mr. Secretary, I'll get Engineering on this right away. By tomorrow, we should have an idea of how long it'll take to build another jumpship, assuming we can get the materials and a new singularity core. They don't exactly grow on trees, sir."

"I'm aware of that, Admiral. There are a lot of details to work out. In the meantime, give the Senator and Mr. Holland decent quarters at Muir City and see they're not disturbed."

Marx's lips tightened. _Yeah, I know a place about three meters by four that would do nicely. Even has a concrete bed._ But he didn't say that. "They can be put up in spare officers' quarters, down on B-3 deck. I will have to ask our guests to stay in quarters however. It would make our security efforts easier." _And it'll keep your ass from being stabbed by really pissed-off survivors too._

"Very well," Vishnapuram said. "See to it. Let's re-convene here tomorrow, same time. I'll have an answer from the Security Council by then."

With that, the S-G's avatar blinked out. UNSAC remained and Marx stood up. "Senator, I'll have my Chief of Internal Security show you to quarters." He pressed a button on his wristpad and the amphib Major Lumumba appeared at the door, huge and glowering at Palette and Holland. "Major, take our 'guests' down to B-3. One of the officers' billets should do nicely, say...B-380." He leveled an even, meaningful gaze at the Major.

Lumumba suppressed a grin. He understood what was being asked. "Of course, sir. Senator, if you'll follow me—"

The Major knew perfectly well that B-380 was still in renovation and workbots and techswarms were crawling all over the apartment. Palette and Holland would be lucky if they got ten minutes of rest in there.

Palette swallowed his disgust at having to follow the orders of an amphib, even as big and black a one as Lumumba and motioned to Holland to follow along.

He figured they'd endure anything they had to if it meant avoiding prison and starting over in a new place and time. And who could say: perhaps in time stream T-5098, amphibs and freaks like them would be extinct, erased from the record of History and humans would once again be free to live away from the contamination the scumbag fish-head Sea People had brought down on all of them.

Gerhard Marx had been conferring with his Chief Engineer Murchison inside jumpship _Libra's_ command deck when his wristpad chimed with the news that Vishnapuram had pushed through Palette's offer and choked off all debate and the Security Council had approved everything.

Marx sighed and just shook his head silently as he looked up at Murchison. "Don't send your techs off on vacation just yet, Clint. Looks like you'll be building a new ship."

Murchison's eyes rolled. "We don't have the materials here yet. There are a ton of new parts to order. Then there's the singularity core...that alone will take several weeks to grow and tune."

"I know, I know. I don't like it either. Letting these clowns have their own ship is like letting five-year-olds play with magpulsers. I mean...what could possibly go wrong? I'd better check on what the eggheads are saying about Farpool availability. That wormhole has its own schedule. Predicting it is hard enough as it is."

Murchison studied something on his own wristpad. "Admiral, I can get up a build schedule by sometime this afternoon. The Farpool I can't predict. But I _can_ predict my guys will work their butts off for the Service."

"I know they will, Clint. And I know it's an impossible schedule. But that's why you and me get the big bucks. I'll work out a schedule for training and you get me the build plan. Soon as I know when the next Farpool 'landings' occur, I'll get that to you as well. That funnel out there's about as predictable as the weather."

"Will do," Murchison agreed. He watched Marx duck out of the command deck and clamber aft down the gangway to _Libra's_ hatch. _The biggest problem will be making sure these SOA goons don't tear up a perfectly good ship that my people have sweated their asses off to build._

Training Ryan Palette and Tim Holland on jumpship controls and operations fell inevitably to Jump Captain Tomas Hektor. The Farpool Service veteran was less than enthusiastic about the duty but saluted Admiral Marx like the good officer he was and met the Senator and his protégé outside _Libra's_ hatch a day later.

It was a bright sunny day in the mid-Atlantic, though swells and whitecaps danced without end across the wavetops as the ocean heaved and hissed and thundered outside the hangar bay on Muir City's 07 Level. Hektor rode a lift down to the hangar and saw Palette and Holland standing alongside the ship— _his_ ship—like eager Scouts, well-guarded by UNIFORCE security—and bearing slates of technical manuals and bulletins that each of them were supposed to have studied the day before.

Tim Holland was a gawky 20-year old, all arms and legs, looking rather lost amid the routine bustle of workbots and technicians and scaffolding and cabling strewn about the hangar. _Libra_ herself was enveloped in de-quantizing shrouds as she was prepped for her first test cruise in a few days.

Holland's eyes were wide as he watched workers climb all over her hull. "It looks like a pig," he decided. "With wings. I guess this pig will fly someday."

Hektor had already taken an instant dislike to the kid. "This ' _pig_ ' will keep you alive inside the Farpool and if you treat her right, she'll take you places and times you never dreamed of. Best be kind to her, if you know what's good for you."

Senator Palette felt the cool touch of the ship's solidified tantalum matrix hull. "She seems like a stout ship. You're building one just like this?"

Hektor nodded. "An exact duplicate...you can see her hull frames mounted over there." He indicated a shrouded scaffolding set up on the other side of the hangar bay. "Those are frame segments...we'll put them in the bending forge tomorrow and shape them for fit. Just like a submarine, by the way. Her name will be F.S.S. _Capricorn_. And the Chief Engineer's people are busting their butts to get her done and tested before another Farpool landing. Five weeks, I'm told."

Palette seemed impressed. "Two people can operate one of these ships?"

"Actually, operation is mostly automatic. For you, I'll make sure you know the basics and then Farpool Service will assign a skeletal crew to assist. Admiral Marx didn't want to send a couple of newbies off into the ether without some experience behind the wheel...it wouldn't look good for the Service if you vaporized yourselves or wound up inside a star or something."

"Thanks, "Palette said. "I think—"

Holland held up his slate. "I looked over this stuff last night. Pretty boring, if you ask me, all that 'modes of operation' and control menus and stuff."

Hektor sniffed. "Right. Boring saves lives. Remember that. Now if you'll pay attention, I won't keep you for more than a few hours."

Holland's eyes rolled but Palette did his best to at least feign interest. He soon began to ignore the skeptical stares and frowns and muttered curses he had been hearing ever since coming into the hangar and found that concentrating on Hektor's explanation was a good way of shutting out the sour mood around them.

"Six decks," Hektor was saying. "A through F. Bow to stern, they are command and control, berthing and hab spaces, stores and supplies, engineering and shop, the lockout and spares compartment. The last deck, F deck, can't be accessed from inside the ship."

"Some big secret," said Holland.

Hektor ignored the jibe. "Singularity core and the MHD plant and propulsors. Stick your head in the core and your head winds up about a billion lightyears away. Tends to make a big mess out of dumb crewmembers. Think of it as a once in a lifetime experience."

"What's it like inside the Farpool, riding the time streams, Captain?" Palette gave Holland a stern sideways glance.

"You studied the section on your slate called 'Navigating Time Streams'?"

Holland shrugged. "I think I went to sleep...but I do remember some weird carton lecturer, a pig or something."

Hektor was having trouble keeping his hands from balling up into fists and slugging the kid. _Jeez, what kind of parents did you have?_ "That's Henry the Hippo. Our main instructor for Ops." The Jump Captain tapped a few keys on his wristpad. "Allow me to refresh your memories—"

In seconds, a ghostly 3-D image erupted out of Hektor's wristpad and gained form right over their head. The form materialized into a cartoonish hippo named Henry, decked out in Farpool Service uniform, with professorial glasses and a pointer to boot.

"Okay, wise guy...listen up."

Henry the Hippo then launched into a lively description of how to navigate time streams in a Farpool Service jumpship:

' _There are two analogies for traveling through time streams aboard a Farpool Service jumpship._

' _One analogy is that time is a great, infinitely wide river. A really wide river has many currents, eddies, substreams and hazards embedded in it, like rocks, hydraulics, rapids, sandbars and shoals. So does time. Traveling through time embedded in a time stream aboard a jumpship is analogous to whitewater rafting on a rapidly flowing, twisting and turning water course. Cross-currents are tricky. There are eddies. Undertows. Flat water and white water. All kinds of hazards._

' _Traveling through time involves navigating similar flows. A jumpship enters a time stream through a wormhole called the Farpool._

' _Once in a primary time stream, propulsion and steering are maintained by a propulsor, while the singularity core uses its twist fields to keep the ship in the main stream. Additional control surfaces are also used, much like a boat or a submarine. There are flow vanes (flowvaters) and diving planes to shift the ship's course into another time stream. Much of the moment-to-moment control of the jumpship is handled automatically although the pilots can exercise control via a fly-by-wire system if they choose._

' _Another analogy for time travel is the electromagnetic spectrum itself, which pervades the Universe. The analogy here is less effective, although with EM frequencies and waves, there are some similarities to navigating in a time stream._

' _Suffice it to say that navigating time is unlike any trip ever taken by humans before._

' _The primary time stream is called T-001. This time stream is considered the normal unchanged course of events that unfurls moment by moment every day in our lives. Additional time streams are for all practical purposes infinite and only the precision of our navigation and steering allows us to enter subsidiary time streams with any degree of control. As navigation and steering become ever more precise, jumpships can 'parse' off ever-finer slices of time and travel those courses as well._

' _Local time streams (time streams near in time and space to T-001) are numbered T-002, T-003, and so forth. The higher the number, the greater the temporal distance from T-001. Time streams can take jumpships forward or backward in time, depending on how the time stream is navigated. The mother stream (T-001) is agnostic as to the direction. Time seemed for generations to have a directionality, but we now know that this was an artifact of our limited knowledge. Time and space_ are _the Universe and although all evidence points to an expanding Universe, expanding in all directions from a primordial Big Bang, the mother time stream T-001 is navigable in any direction, backward and forward._

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

' _Farpool Service has an operational practice of navigating to and through certain well-traveled time streams for the sake of efficiency, speed and safety. The two most critical time streams are:_

_T-001_ _– the mother time stream_

_T-9998_ _– a special time stream that has never been successfully traversed. This stream takes a traveler (it is theorized) to the earliest formative time of the Universe, a time known as the Planck Epoch and later, the time of Superinflation. Farpool Service has a mandate to protect this time stream with special security forces and UNIFORCE has passed strict regulations and laws forbidding unauthorized entry and transit into and through this time stream. T-9998 is effectively quarantined from use by Farpool Service. Research probes occasionally are sent in but none have ever returned data, signals or ever been recovered. Like ancient seafarers' maps, this is the region of "Here Be Demons."_

' _It is possible to enter the mother time stream and not travel into any other time stream, but rather simply stay caught up in the flow of T-001._

' _In the early 22nd century, a new temporal phenomenon was discovered called voidtime. Certain extreme singularity core conditions allow a jumpship to enter T-001 and yet flow as if it were literally "outside of time". Voidtime is a place where time does not flow, nothing ages or deteriorates, a sort of featureless ether that is nonetheless traversable using pulsing features of a jumpship's singularity core. Some physicists have theorized that voidtime is like a black hole turned inside out, a place and time where normal laws don't apply. In historical terms, voidtime could be considered to be like an ancient sailing ship becalmed in the doldrums, unable to go anywhere, but able only to drift with the prevailing currents. Now, with singularity pulsing as a technique, it is possible to traverse voidtime, though speeds and navigation accuracy are less than occur in a normal time stream._

' _There are sound tactical reasons for the Service to explore and try to utilize voidtime, for a ship in this medium is effectively outside of time and undetectable. Farpool Service continues to explore and chart voidtime as a way of gaining military advantages over enemies such as the Coethi, who seem to have also perfected temporal travel as a technology. And there are other adversaries the Service must deal with as—'_

Henry the Hippo's lecture was momentarily interrupted by a yeoman who had come over to talk quietly with Captain Hektor. Hektor listened, nodded and sent the yeoman away a short distance. Then he killed the lecture. Henry the Hippo collapsed into a pixelated cloud and vanished.

"Just got a notice from Security," Hektor advised them. "It seems Mr. Holland here has a visitor, up at Topside Café, on A deck. They're waiting for you now. I'll stop training for an hour and we'll re-convene after lunch at, say—" he checked his pad, "—about 1400 hours. Right here. And bring your slates."

Holland was curious. "Who is it?"

Hektor's eyes twinkled. "The notice doesn't say—" But clearly the Captain did know and barely suppressed a smile as Holland was led off by Security to the uppermost deck of Muir City.

Topside Café was a semi-circular lounge, bar and café with unbeatable views of the Atlantic through its wraparound Perspex windows. Holland came in, was met immediately by a manager and shown to a table along the windows.

He swallowed hard when the face of the visitor turned from the windows and smiled up at him.

"Hi, Timmy...I bet this is a surprise."

It was his mom.

Dr. Josey Holland.

Josey Holland dabbed cracker crumbs and gumbo from her mouth with a napkin. She stood up and launched a wet kiss at Tim's face, then pulled her son into a tight, if unwilling embrace. They hugged for a very long time until Tim squirmed free and sat down.

"Tim, how the hell did you ever get mixed up in all this? Are they treating you okay here...are you getting enough to eat...how about the beds, are the beds okay....?"

Tim didn't look at her but instead mumbled, "Let's order, okay." He perused the menu outlined on the table, tapped a few keys. Josey Holland did the same, never taking her eyes off her son. She reached over to clear some hair from his face but he flinched and pulled away.

"Tim, don't be like that. I'm just glad to see you...I'm concerned about you. How'd you get into this anyway? I didn't raise a son to be like this."

Still looking down, he replied, "How'd I get involved in this? Let's see: could it be that belonging to a subversive outfit like SOA was a pretty appealing antidote to living with an absentee father, an uncaring stepmom and a birth mother who was more interested in fish than people? No, surely not—"

"Oh, Tim, it was never like that. You know better than that. Your Dad and I—" Well, she figured, _that_ was best left unsaid.

A servbot waddled by with their orders. Tim got crab cakes and beer. The bot fussed over them for a few moments, until Tim shooed it away.

Josey slurped more gumbo, never taking her eyes off him. "I heard you're making another trip...with that Senator. Some crazy time stream in the future. Why? Why take a risk like that? What's Palette done to you anyway?"

Now Tim looked up. "Other than give me a home and sense of purpose in life, not much."

"He's not your Dad, you know."

"Oh, how well I know that. If he were Dad, he'd never be around. He'd be invisible. He'd be on that barge _Nereus_ , trying to cop a feel with everything in a skirt."

"Tim—" Josey's eyes moistened. "Are they going to prosecute you...for what you did...what you were involved in?"

"Nothing quite so dramatic," he told her, though the truth was rather more complicated. Tim Holland didn't really know all the details of the agreement Palette had worked out. "I did what I had to do. I mean, look at you. You're responsible for all these amphibs, with your big procedure. Sons of Adam is just trying to put things back the way they were."

Josey Holland shook her head sadly. "Things will never be the same, Tim. You can't go back. Amphibs are here to stay."

"Not where I'm going."

Josey put down her napkin and just stared at her son. "We lost your sister a few years ago. Now this. Tim, it's an insane risk, what you're doing here. It's destroying the family. If you go, who's left? I'll have no one. Is that what you want?"

Tim stuffed enough crab cake into his mouth so that he couldn't answer for a few moments. It gave him time to think. Finally, "You still have all your froggy friends, don't you? Stay with them."

"Tim, I want you to stay here. We can fight these charges. The Institute's got good lawyers—"

"I don't want to fight anymore. I'm tired of fighting. I want to leave. Make my own way." He checked his wristpad. "I can't stay, Mom. I'm in the middle of training. We launch in two days."

"This is all my fault," Josey decided. "I don't—"

Now Tim stood up and tossed his napkin on the floor. Instantly, a servbot scooted by to retrieve it. He kicked at the bot and it squeaked and backed off. "I guess I'm supposed to say 'no, it isn't,' but damn it, Mom, it _is_. At least a lot of it is. Don't you understand: I can never be an amphib. I don't want that. Maybe in this future time stream, this T-5098, frogs will be extinct. Like dinosaurs. Or somehow evolved, like maybe into loving parents. Humans more highly evolved will run things. That's what I want. Now...I've got to go."

"Tim—" Josey stood up, made an attempt to grasp at his shirt but he pushed past her and left the Café. She sat back down and stared at the remnants of her gumbo. Inside the bowl were pieces, dregs, leftovers...just like her own life had become. _I'm the leftovers now_ , she decided.

Then she started to sob softly, staring out at the whitecaps stirring across the ocean.

Launch day dawned cool and crisp across the exposed towers and turrets of Muir City, the sun shining down its hard bright light on seas mostly calm, save for the restless heaving that never stopped.

Inside the hangar bay, two jumpships, _Libra_ and _Capricorn_ , waited in their cradles. Inside _Libra_ , Jump Captain Tomas Hektor sat apprehensively in the CC1's seat on the command deck, silently watching the chronometer count down the last few moments. His own ship _Libra_ had a competent well-trained Farpool Service crew of six. He had no doubt about them.

But jumpship _Capricorn_ was a different matter altogether. _Libra's_ pilot, Jump Lieutenant Iringa seemed to read his mind.

"Your face can't hide it, sir. I'm thinking the same thing." He nodded in the direction of the other ship. "A teenager and a blowhard at the controls of a jumpship...what could possibly go wrong?"

Hektor shrugged. "Ops are mostly automatic. And we do have a few of our own over there."

"Yes, sir...to rap some knuckles when they start pushing the wrong buttons."

Hektor took a deep breath. "There are already about a million things that can wrong with this stunt. Let just focus on what we can control."

For launch, _Libra_ and _Capricorn_ had been moved to their launch cradles outside the hangar bay, now fully exposed to the sea. Hektor checked his board. All green, all copacetic and no flags. _Libra_ had been powered up several hours before, her MHD power plant and singularity core ticking over, humming, now sending a slight shudder through her hull.

"Ready all systems...stand by for final check and all-call."

One by one, the crew came back.

"Ready, PSO."

"Nav is go!"

"CS1 ready."

"QT1...yo and go!"

"Propulsors on line...ease her out, Lieutenant Iringa."

_Libra_ lurched as her MHD jets opened up to one-quarter throttle and she slipped her ways and surged out into the cross-currents swirling atop the Muir seamount. Alongside, visible through the Captain's porthole, Hektor was gratified to see _Capricorn_ doing the same.

"Answering one-quarter, handling nicely, CC1. Fighting cross-currents."

"Steady as she goes...steer course zero eight eight. NP, how do we look?"

Lucy Kwan checked her boards and instruments. Active sonar was pinging all around, showing up specks and chirps on her waterfall display. "Plenty of traffic, CC1, but we're clear on that heading. Recommend depth fifty meters. Farpool outer vortex fields six point two kilometers...ten minutes at this speed."

"Very well." Hektor opened up the 1MC to talk to the others. " _Libra_ now underway on propulsor. Farpool in ten minutes. QT1, advise status of singularity core."

QT1's voice came back. "Core on line and ticking at sixty-five percent. Deco wakes in the green, entanglers humming. She's ready for action."

_Libra_ closed the distance to the outer vortex fields of the Farpool in nine minutes. _Capricorn_ tagged right along, paralleling every maneuver the lead ship made.

_So far, so good_ , Hektor muttered to himself. _If they don't kill themselves first_.

It was Tim Holland aboard _Capricorn_ , slightly green and tight-lipped next to Palette, who noticed the first effects of the huge waterspout and whirlpool.

The Senator had drifted off into a light doze when a faint tug on the side of the craft startled him awake.

"Something's happening—"

Jump Commander Kanazawa, _Capricorn's_ CCI, patted the Senator on the knee. "Patience, sir, patience...this is normal. Just relax, okay?"

"I don't know, but it feels like we're moving sideways." Tim Holland plastered his nose to the porthole, trying to make something out. "It's silty out there. Dark too. Deeper water. You feel that?"

Some kind of force was pushing them sideways in the water. At the same time, the compartment picked up a light shuddering vibration, gyrating like a top at the end of a string.

"Yeah...we're at the vortex fields...that's what's happening."

Palette gripped his seat so hard his knuckles turned white. "...the water's all rushing sideways, dirt, pieces of things...I can't really make it out."

"Relax, man...just enjoy the ride. It's better than an E-ticket."

The force began to increase, a centrifugal force that soon shoved them to one side of the compartment and pressed them hard against the walls. Worse, the compartment began a slow roll, a rotation that didn't remain slow for long, but picked up rate at a steady clip.

Soon, they were spinning enough to become slightly disoriented and dizzy.

"Now, it's my stomach...I don't feel so—"

Palette's words were suddenly lost in a bright flash of light, a searing, painfully white strobing light that flooded the compartment and blinded all of them.

"Rudder amidships!" Kanazawa ordered. He thumbed a small dial, straining against the centrifugal force. "Flow vanes to thirty percent!"

The spin kept accelerating and moments later, Senator Ryan Palette passed out. Seconds later, Tim Holland did the same.

Early morning strollers along Muir City's upper promenade decks were treated to an incredible sight offshore, just before dawn. Backlit with the orange glow of sunrise to the east, a thin ropy waterspout formed several kilometers beyond the horizon, visible as far south as the northern beaches of Bermuda. As the spout danced and skipped across the waves, a bright pulse of light emerged from the sea and vaulted heavenward along the length of the spout, followed by a series of light pulses, as if the spout were sucking buckets of light right out of the ocean.

The light pulses disappeared into low-hanging clouds and vanished, leaving only a faint iridescent flicker, like a silent lightning discharge.

Moments later, the waterspout collapsed into the sea and the ocean returned to its restless heaving.

Unknown to the residents of Bermuda's Pelican Point luxury seahomes, the crews of jumpships _Libra_ and _Capricorn_ had just been catapulted into the whirling heart of the wormhole at the very center of the Farpool. Caught in a roaring, crashing river of infinite eddies and currents of time, they rode the dragon's tail until Lieutenant Iringa saw her display light up green and called bingo.

At her signal, Tomas Hektor slammed _Libra_ ' _s_ flow vanes out full and punched the ship hard over, right into the faint, barely perceptible fingers of Time Stream T-5098. Like a cocked fist, T-5098 grabbed them and yanked them out of the mainstream and into the midst of a million tomorrows.

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

His last shred of a thought was the hope that jumpship _Capricorn_ had somehow managed to duplicate their maneuver and be sucked into the same time stream.

Chapter 13

Neptunia Free State

Paradise Township

Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean

Midtober 4, 3155 C.E.

When Tim Holland finally came to, he glanced out the porthole on his side of the ship and swore he saw two suns in the sky. He blinked, felt a bump on his forehead and looked again. He didn't know it, but Second Sun was dying, slowly collapsing and contracting and its end was near...very near.

But none of that mattered as he stirred and groaned and tried to sit up. Senator Palette was sitting slumped sideways in his own seat, mumbling something. Palette's eyes opened slowly. Both of them were growing seasick as _Capricorn_ lolled and rolled in heavy surf. They had landed in the ocean for sure, at least an ocean somewhere.

Up on the command deck, Kanazawa was already on comms with Captain Hektor over in _Libra._

"Check your counters, Captain. _Capricorn's_ showing 5098.10.4...I make that as autumn, northern hemisphere, in the proper time stream."

Hektor's voice sounded firm and Kanazawa was glad to catch a glimpse of the other ship, bobbing on the waves a few hundred meters away. "Copy that...ISAAC converts that to 3155 C.E., plus or minus a few years. Looks like we landed on target."

"Or within CEP limits," Kanazawa studied his board. "Circular error probable was plus minus two years, I believe."

Just then, an insistent beeping interrupted Hektor. Iringa saw the alert on her board. "Submerged contact, Skipper. In fact, multiple contacts. Best bearing is zero five eight degrees. Numerous contacts."

Hektor peered out his porthole but it the Navigator-Positioner Borisova who first saw them.

"I see four...four ships," she reported. "They look like rays...big metal rays."

Others saw them too. Through the murk, the crew of _Libra_ witnessed the appearance of four ray-like ships closing from multiple directions. They were clearly ships, with running lights and windows, each festooned with all manner of props and thrusters and waterjets.

"They flex and bend, just like rays," marveled Lucy Kwan, the ship's CS1. "Are they alive?"

"Who knows?" said Iringa. "I don't like the looks of this."

"Ready suppressors," said Hektor. No way was he going to let the mission be jeopardized by the ships. "Fire on my command."

But before _Libra's_ bank of acoustic weapons could be armed and primed, the jumpship shuddered from a series of jolts...not severe but enough to get their attention. There was an unmistakable sense of movement, of sliding, of being shoved sideways.

"What the hell--?"

Borisova saw something. " _That_ one just sent some kind of pulse at us...it's making the water act strangely—"

"Yeah, look at that," added Kwan. "The water's coiling, like a rope, twisting, converging."

Hektor felt the same thing. On impulse, he tried _Libra's_ forward thrusters. Nothing. He tried her flow vanes. Nothing. They had lost all maneuvering.

"It's some kind of grapple. A water grapple."

"A water tow," decided Iringa. "Feel it? We're being pulled along."

Soon it became evident the PSO was right. _Libra_ was caught in some kind of controlled current, a man-made undertow, a grappling field purely of water.

"I can't stop it," Hektor said.

The crew crowded around every available porthole.

"How about _Capricorn_? Are they in the same fix we are?"

"Unknown," Hektor said. "NP, anything on comms now?"

Borisova checked her board. " _Nada_. Dead as dirt. I've been sending out signals...we had a good link but now that water grapple is interfering."

"They're on their own." Iringa stated what they all felt. "Just like us."

"I guess we're in for a little ride." Hektor went back to the Navigator station. He worked with Borisova to locate their position.

"Best I can figure, Skipper," she was saying, "we 'landed' almost where we took off from, a few kilometers away at most. North by northeast of Muir City...I got a ping back on narrow band active sonar just before the grapple and it like looked the seamount, but there were side lobes, stuff I couldn't identify in the signal."

Iringa settled back in her seat and wearily rubbed her eyes. "We'll find out soon enough."

Hektor checked the ship's chronometer. "We're showing the right time stream...T-5098. That should have put us around the year 3155, give or take."

"ISAAC agrees but we'll find out soon enough," Iringa decided.

They could all feel the tow now, as the four ray-like ships coordinated operations and steered _Libra_ along a course that seemed south by southwest, a hundred and twenty meters below the surface. The light level had dropped off significantly but there was enough ambient light at this depth to resolve basic shapes and forms.

"That's _got_ to be Muir seamount," announced Borisova. She pointed to a massive darkened form off their portside views. The hulk of the mountain gleamed with thousands of lights, as if it were a huge submerged Christmas tree. "I'll ping around and see what's what." The PSO blasted out a few active pulses and was startled at the returns. "Holy crap...look at this stuff. What _is_ all this?"

By sight, the source of the pings could barely be seen in the silt and murk of the mid-Atlantic, but even a cursory pulse betrayed the outlines of a great city. Its main axes were wedged in between towering seamounts, held, as it were, in the bosom of the mountains atop a flat mesa-like plateau in the middle.

Borisova pulsed in several directions and found domes and pavilions and floatways and more domes, interspersed with cylindrical structures and pyramids and cones, a geometric forest of cubes and humps and tent-like coverings, all of it crammed and pungent with noisy, honking, bellowing, clicking, snorting life..."--this doesn't look like Muir City at all."

"It's grown," said Lucy Kwan. "Like crazy."

Indeed, the seamount itself was the center of a vast, seemingly endless procession of islands, platforms and structures they could barely see, radiating outward from the seamount in all directions, at all depths. Borisova manipulated her active sonar but the returns were the same along every axis...the clutter of echoes bespoke an endless, seemingly limitless profusion of buildings, edifices, structures and shapes, all of it resembling nearly infinite rows of reefs undulating across the seabed and at every depth, from the bottom to the surface.

Presently, _Libra_ was towed toward an oblong opening in a cantilevered structure hanging off the side of the Muir seamount itself. The ship slowed and was physically shoved through a 'curtain' of water, then deposited by the water grapple on a slick, glistening deck, inside of a vast hangar.

_Libra_ settled a bit on the deck and was still.

"I guess this is where we get off," Hektor told them.

"And meet the waiting party," said Iringa uneasily. "See there?" She pointed to a small platoon of pedestrians approaching the ship. It was clear that some were armed, for they bore handheld weapons that resembled _Libra's_ own suppressor carbines.

"I'll go out first," Hektor ordered. "Let me do the talking. "Iringa, you're with me. The rest of you stay put."

"We shouldn't go out unarmed," said the PSO. She eyed the weapons locker just off the gangway at E deck.

Hektor decided against it. "We're visitors here. Let's see who were dealing with first. The rest of you stay inside, but get the weapons ready, just in case."

Hektor and Iringa emerged from _Libra's_ hatch. It was clear they were 'parked' in an immense, cavernous hangar. On both sides of the ship, other craft were docked, many of them close cousins of the ray-like ships that had born them here. Hektor spied a familiar shape in the distance...jumpship _Capricorn_ was five or six bays down, surrounded as they were, but seemingly none the worse for wear.

Hektor made sure Iringa saw the other ship too. "That's a good sign."

"At least they made it," she said.

Their greeters approached and a tall, white-haired woman stepped forward. Hektor noticed she was clearly amphib, as were most of the people he saw. Some had dorsal fins, even rump tails, but all seemed modified for life in and around the sea. The woman had prominent gill sacs, even now flexing in and out, armfins, delicate webbing around her moccasin-like shoes and she smiled a bemused smile at Hektor as he took the last steps off the ladder.

"Welcome to Neptunia," said the woman. "Excuse the way we had to bring you in...it was better this way. You'd get lost in our city otherwise. By the way, I'm Christine Lagarde-Olmstead. Director-Superior of Neptunia."

A man had joined her. He was shorter, stouter, heavily muscled, with prominent arm fins and pistons for legs.

"Ah yes--" the Director continued, "this is Lachlan Bannock. Our Guardian General. Most of the Council is here with us too. You'll meet all of them in time."

Hektor looked around, looked at Iringa, who shrugged, and said, "Where, exactly, is this place?"

Lagarde-Olmstead smiled again. Her face was modified as amphib, he could see that, but the modifications were both more extensive and more subtle than the amphibs he'd known. Her nose was wider, her eyes deeper, with extra folds and eyelids, her ears rather large flaps turned more forward. Her skin glistened with a sheen of fluid and he saw the wet seemed to emanate from small sacs, almost invisible, all around her chest and arms. She seemed in all ways well adapted to a marine existence, but clearly able to survive just fine in air as well.

"Actually, we've been expecting you for many years. Councilor Meyer said you'd come someday. It was a matter of faith with us. And now you're here at last. To answer your question, in your time, you would know this 'place' as Muir City. Of course, that was hundreds of years ago. Today—" she spread her arms, showing the full spread of the thin, almost translucent webbing beneath her shoulders, "we call all of this Neptunia."

"The Free State of Neptunia," reminded Guardian General Bannock. "Director, we should take them inside...a more secure place."

"Are we under arrest?" Iringa asked, eyeing the weapons surrounding them.

"No not at all...just follow Guardian Bannock and his squad," said Director Lagarde. "They'll take you to your quarters, where you can freshen up. You and your shipmates..." she then indicated _Capricorn_ several bays away. "And the others."

They were all escorted out of the hangar and onto a large open lift, which bore them upward inside a transparent tubeway for many minutes. They passed dozens of levels, promenade decks, more hangars, obvious residential quarters and cubicles, open plazas and parks, even miniature woodland vistas, all of them built on, in and around the rocky slopes of the Muir seamount, but on a scale never imagined in time stream T-001.

In time, the tubeway lift took them above the surface—it was early morning, from the sun angle—but the light was different, shadowy, a different color and more diffuse, despite the clear sky.

And there was the matter of that second sun on the horizon.

"I don't understand," said Magdelena Borisova. "The sun looks different. And what's that light on the horizon?"

Director-Superior Lagarde turned serious. "Our world isn't like yours, unfortunately. The sun you're familiar with is changing. I wish I could say we understand it, but we don't. We did cause it...many years ago, there was a project. The engineers were certain they knew a way to increase First Sun's output. It was foolproof, they said. Can't miss. We can do this. Unfortunately, First Sun was more complicated than they imagined today. Something happened...we're still trying to figure it out. We've been trying to figure it out for a century now. Let me just say this: First Sun is dying. It's growing larger, spewing lethal radiation everywhere. We can't live on the surface now, not for long, not unprotected. So we live down here, or belowground, most of us that are left, that is."

Hektor was amazed. "You live below the sea, below the ground? All of you?"

"Most of us," Lagarde admitted. "The engineers said: okay...we messed up. First Sun didn't work. But we know how to shut it down. Now we need another sun...a Second Sun, to make things like they were. It was simple, they said. Like turning off a water faucet. Bank the nuclear fires of First Sun and light off Second Sun."

"Second Sun?"

"Yes, you would know it as the planet Jupiter. The engineers found a way to stream materials from Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, all the out worlds into Jupiter. Increase its mass. Make it big enough to initiate fusion. Then ignite the whole shebang. So they did." Here Lagarde's face darkened again. "Again, they miscalculated. Second Sun ignited okay. But it's too small, not enough light to be helpful. First Sun's expanding, shedding itself, frying the inner solar system with lethal radiation. And Second Sun's not bright enough. Too far away." She shrugged, looked over at Bannock, as the lift slowed to a stop. "So we live below the sea now. And below the ground."

The lift came to a stop at a level several hundred meters above the sea surface. They left the lift, all of them together, and entered a broad corridor, carpeted and lined with statuary. As they moved along, the windows darkened all around them and lights came on along the walls. They were above the sea, but somehow shielded from the worst effects of First Sun overhead.

"Hey...look! Look at this!" It was Kanazawa, from _Capricorn_ , who noticed one statue that looked eerily familiar. He went over to the sculpture and peered up. "Isn't that—"

"Chase Meyer," said Hektor. "Genesis 3 commander."

Lagarde was amused. "Of course, we know why you came. Councilor Meyer said this would happen."

Hektor said, "I have orders from Farpool Service to effect rescue of the Genesis 3 team. Chase Meyer commanded that team. If you know where he is—"

Lagarde motioned to General Bannock to come forward. "Find Councilor Meyer, General."

Bannock queried his locator band, a small band around his wrist. It chirped and announced in a tinny voice: " _Councilor Meyer is currently at the Aqualand Waterama, Level 22."_

Lagarde explained. "The Councilor often spends his free time teaching our little ones swimming and diving. General, take these people to see the Councilor. Unfortunately, my own duties require me to return to the capital."

Bannock said, "Of course, Madame Director."

Lagarde left and Bannock summoned them to follow. Hektor glanced at Iringa and Borisova, with his eyes telling them to keep cool. _Not now_ , his eyes said.

Bannock had seen to it that a small escort squad had formed around the rescuers.

"Just follow me," the Guardian General said.

They rode more lifts, this time down, and traveled through a confusing labyrinth of corridors, vestibules, plazas and platforms.

Tim Holland and Ryan Palette lingered at the back of the group, wary of the escorts right behind them.

Holland nudged Palette, indicating knots of people gathered in side cafes, offices, shops and stores along one esplanade just below the sea surface.

"Senator, look at them. They're all amphibs, every one of them."

Palette had noticed it as well. "Just stay calm, Tim. Stay calm. We'll get out of this."

"Jeez, we came all this way...for _this_...."

Aqualand Waterama was a small water park ten levels below the surface, a rectangular pool surrounded by all manner of tubes and slides and small carrousels. The pool was also home to several dolphin-like creatures, silently gliding just below the surface. Children screamed with delight. In the pool, they found Chase Meyer surrounded by a dozen novice swimmers. They were all amphibs. Chase was teaching them the fine points of simple speed and power strokes. He looked up as the rescuers and Bannock's goons showed up.

Bannock announced, "Councilor, you have visitors. From the jumpships."

Chase told the children to continue their lesson with the dolphins, one of whom rose up out of the water, propped itself on a small ledge and began speaking in a squeaky, clicky voice, about how to improve their kicks. Chase got out of the pool and dried off.

Hektor stuck out a hand. "Commander, I'm Commander Tomas Hektor. Genesis Rescue Team. We've come to take you and your team home."

That brought a wry smile to Chase's face. "That's assuming I want to go home, Commander. This would have made a bigger impact several years ago. Now—" he shrugged, turned to check on his kids and smiled back at them. "As you can see, I have important duties now."

Lieutenant Iringa said, "Sir, if we could, I'd like to go over our manifest. Ascertain where the rest of your team is located. Then, if we could get everyone together, we'll be on our way."

Now Bannock interrupted. "Hold on a minute. Nobody leaves without permission...or a certificate. That's for the Free Council to decide."

Chase shrugged. "You see? Leaving won't be quite so easy as you imagine."

Hektor glanced around them. They were outmanned and outgunned three to one, as Bannock had quietly summoned more escort forces to surround them.

"Sir, where is your team now?" Hektor persisted.

Chase shrugged on a light jacket and led everybody over to a small cabana poolside. From the servbot, he ordered drinks for all. He knew how nervous Bannock could be. You didn't want to upset the Guardian General. After a few moments, tensions began to subside. The Seomish knew how to smooth things over; they called it _Ke'shoo_ and _Ke'lee._ Chase had never forgotten that lesson.

"That's not an easy question to answer." He sipped at his drink. "Of course, Angie Gilliam and I are still around. Angie's a nurse at Paradise Med center. Ten levels below us here. Now, let's see...best I can recall, Alicia Yang's a lifter pilot making shuttle runs between all the villages of Free Neptunia. And Marco Kumar's a ROV operator with the Exploration Corps, surveying valleys around here for future expansion...with more and more people coming down from the surface—First Sun and Second Sun and all that...we need more room."

Hektor was checking off names on a list on his wristpad. "There was a Tulandra klu...an amphib hybrid...one of the Sea People, it says here."

Chase sat back, closed his eyes and smiled. "Ah, yes...Tulandra, yes...of course. If memory serves, she married an amphib diver. Works for Exploration Corps too, I think. We really are running out of room here...Neptunia's just growing like seaweed, you know."

Hektor consulted his list. "Winston Blakely. And Dr. Stuart Macalvey?"

"Hmmm...Win Blakely, I may be wrong here but I think he's a nanobot tech with the Department of Habitability, Paradise Township. Public works, if you know what I mean. And Dr. Macalvey...poor Stuart. He died of injuries several years ago...a fall, I think, over in Muir Township. Several klicks from here. Very unfortunate. Then there were the Chinese?"

"Chinese?" Hektor checked his list. "My information shows nobody else on the Genesis 3 team."

That made Chase laugh. "No, I guess not. They were rather unwilling members...we encountered them at Pangea...hundreds of millions of years ago. That was our original mission...to that time stream. The Chinese were there working with a Ponkti team. The Ponkti left when we made our little unplanned side trip...to Seome itself. He was terribly homesick for his own waters."

"Who were these Chinese? And where are they?"

Chase scrunched up his face, trying to recall. "If my memory's right, they both emigrated several years ago. Tridentia Free State, I believe. It's in the south Pacific. General Bannock could confirm that too."

Bannock did some quick checking with his locator band. "You're correct, Councilor. Emigration records show Dr. Qi Hufei and Dr. Chou Wuhan emigrated on 3C-20...that's almost exactly five years ago."

Chase remembered something. "You didn't ask me about the crew of _Cygnus_."

Hektor was puzzled. " _Cygnus?"_

Chase said, "The crew we encountered on Seome, after we wound up there. Major Dringoth and his team. It was their ship that brought us here."

"I have no records about this crew, this _Cygnus_. They're here now...in Neptunia? This time stream?"

Chase looked down. "Mostly scattered now. I think Dringoth went back...another time stream. He was a true warrior. The others...well, after awhile, you kind of lose track. Sad, really, when you think about it."

Iringa seemed puzzled. "Commander Meyer, just how long have you and your team been here?"

Chase shrugged. "Oh, I guess it's going on something like five, maybe six years now."

Hektor's eyes met Iringa's. "We weren't quite as accurate navigating that time stream as we thought."

Now Hektor came right to the point. "I still have my orders, sir. To effect rescue, for as many of the Genesis 3 team as we can."

Now Chase turned somber, sipping at his drink. He twirled the little parasol in the corner of his mouth, eyed his dolphin co-teachers working with several kids in the pool.

"Five years now, Commander. That's how long we've been here. By now, the team is scattered around the islands, living their lives. At first, we met regularly, you know...like a survivors club. Now, it doesn't seem that important."

Iringa watched the children take turns trying out different strokes, all under the watchful eyes of the dolphins. "Sir, your Director mentioned First and Second Sun...that there were problems. _Should_ you stay here?"

Chase caught Bannock's eye. His face said _Don't_ , but Chase was a councilor and ignored the warning.

"Probably not. It's only a matter of time before everybody'll have to leave. Emigrate. Another world, another time stream. There was talk of using jumpships to go back in our time stream and trying to undo what the engineers messed up with First Sun. But the Council nixed that. Nobody could give any assurances they wouldn't make it worse. So...for now, we live for now. And we keep an eye on the skies. The Coethi mother swarm isn't that far away now...maybe a few decades. There are plans for mass emigration—" here, Chase chuckled softly. "—it's ironic, really. Angie and I already went through a mass emigration...from Seome to Earth. Time stream T-001, a long time ago. Now, we may be facing another one. I guess home is really up here—" he tapped the side of his head. "A state of mind. Not a place."

Hektor took that as validation of his mission orders. "You're ready to come back with us?"

Chase looked the jumpship captain straight in the eye. "Commander, I think Angie and I are both willing...she won't take much convincing. The others—" he shrugged. "That'll take time. And maybe some convincing."

Guardian General Bannock saw fit to cut in. "Before anybody goes anywhere, the Council will have to discuss this. There are certificates. Debriefings. Inspections. The Council will have to give their okay. And your ships, Commander...we'll have to inspect them as well. All normal procedure for unexpected visitors."

Hektor bristled at this. "Nobody enters my—"

But Chase waved him off. "Just a formality, Commander. The General here gets a little wound up."

Now Ryan Palette and Tim Holland moved to the front of the gathering. "My aide here and want to stay. General, we're requesting asylum in Neptunia."

This caused Bannock's eyes to lift, revealing several scars nobody had seen before. "Asylum. Well, the Council and the departments will have to—"

"I'm sure we can work all that out," Chase cut him off. Bannock's mouth worked but his words stopped in mid-sentence. He never liked Councilors interfering with public security business but Chase had the rank and there wasn't much he could do about it. "I guess I should round up Angie and get a message out to as many of the team as I can. Let's meet tonight. The Grotto...the General can show you where it is. And see to it they have decent quarters, too, General. Now, I really have some things I need to discuss with the Council."

With that, Chase left them and left the water park.

In a sour mood but with orders he couldn't ignore, Bannock had his escort conduct the rescuers to another level, this one residential. Two to a unit, they were put up in spartan, but comfortable surroundings a few levels below, with a view of the submerged city spread out before them, a seemingly infinite grid of lights marching off into the murky distance between the seamounts.

In quarters, Hektor went over the details of their orders with _Capricorn's_ C/O, Kanazawa. They both sat on a small window ledge, studying the ever-changing panorama of life and craft speeding by.

Kanazawa was munching on some kind of kiwi-like fruit. Juice dribbled all over his chin.

"What do we do if they don't want to return?"

Hektor took a deep breath. "There's not much we _can_ do. We have orders from Admiral Marx to effect rescue. But my first priority, after that, is to get my crew and yours safely out of this plastic paradise and back to our own time. And that's what I intend to do."

Kanazawa studied the scene outside. Craft and subs of every imaginable shape and size flitted and whirred by their window. Hundreds, maybe thousands of Neptunians, most of them amphibs, added to the cacophony. The waters between the seamounts were blurry and turbulent with all the bustle and commotion.

"These people need help, Tomas. Their lives are doomed but they don't seem to care. Is this what the future has in store for us?"

"In this time stream, yes. Anyway, it's not our problem, Shinzo. Let's get started on a report for back home. You know if we don't come back with the whole Genesis 3 team, we'll have to answer about a million questions as to why we didn't."

With help from some of Bannock's drones, Hektor, Kanazawa and the rest found their way to the Green Grotto, a small bistro on Level 15, halfway down the slopes of Muir seamount. Outside its wraparound windows, the scene was much the same as they had already witnessed from their quarters.

"Like living inside an aquarium," said Iringa.

Bannock wasn't there, which made for a much more relaxed atmosphere. Director-Superior Lagarde-Olmstead showed up, with Chase and Angie in tow. Tables were arranged near the windows so the rescuers could be kept more or less confined to a smaller area. Outside their circle, many of the diners looked suspiciously like Bannock's people, but prettied up in evening clothes.

Hektor gave Kanazawa a sideways glance. _I would have done the same thing_ , his eyes said.

Kanazawa just shrugged.

"Good news...from the Council," Lagarde was saying. "There won't be any problem with emigrating from Paradise, or Neptunia, as your people desire. Councilor Chase has already been in touch were several of his original team members."

Chase explained. "Alicia Yang wants to go. Marco too. Tulandra's staying. She's married and they have kids. Win Blakely I couldn't reach. But I'll keep trying. The Chinese...they're in another state now. So it'll be me and Angie, Alicia and Marco Kumar."

Angie Gilliam was also amphib. Palette could see that. He could also see how devastatingly gorgeous she was, almost half mermaid, even with her armfins and gills and extra head webbing. Not surprisingly, he saw Tim Holland was particularly smitten with Mrs. Meyer and kicked him not so subtly under the table.

"What about Mr. Holland and me? We've requested asylum here."

Lagarde tapped out her menu choices on the table's keypad and put away the menu. She straightened her frilly print blouse out, fluffed her hair deliberately, all as a way of avoiding an uncomfortable question.

"Senator, your situation is rather more complicated, I'm afraid. The Council needs more time to debate and come to a decision on your status."

Palette was distressed. "It's a simple request. And from what I can see— "he gestured outside the windows at the ever-shifting panorama beyond, "—you seem to have plenty of room."

Lagarde leveled an even gaze at Palette. "At General Bannock's request, the Council did a little digging. Into our history...and yours, Senator. We know all about the Sons of Adam. What you stood for. And what you did... right here, at the original Muir City. Frankly, Senator, there are some on the Council who think you should be prosecuted for all that. The records show unequivocally that you joined Commander Hektor's expedition mainly to avoid prosecution in your own time."

"That's not true, Madame Director," Palette said. Holland squirmed uneasily, but Palette shushed him. "History and records can't tell you everything."

"Nonetheless, it's a fact that you opposed, quite vigorously, all things amphib. The modifications, the changes, the culture and advances. Senator, surely you can see that here at Neptunia, we're all mostly amphibs, or descendants of amphibs. Many in our Council view your presence here as a threat, or worse."

Tim Holland couldn't keep quiet. "Then give us a ship...give us _Capricorn_. We'll go on our way. Some place we'll be more welcome."

"Tim—"

Lagarde held up a hand. "Young man, that is _exactly_ what is being discussed now. Of course, we'd have to have permission from your commanders...to assign you a separate ship."

Kanazawa was pained at the prospect. "Even if I agreed to this, I'd want safe passage from my crew, on _Libra_ , or some other ship."

Hektor did the math. "It would be tight, Shinzo. Your crew and mine, with Genesis 3 people. We could probably make it work but—"

"Well, we _do_ have many nations and states here, Senator. Sea states like Neptunia and Tridentia. And states below ground as well. Maybe one of them will take you in."

"And live like moles...no way," Holland decided. I'd rather take my chances in another time stream. This one's about shot anyway...you said so yourself."

Lagarde's face darkened. She didn't like to be reminded of First and Second Sun. "Of course, we do have issues above ground...nobody's hiding that. But I'm confident our engineers and scientists will find a solution."

"Oh yeah," said Holland. "Just like they did before. Senator, we don't belong here. It's filthy with amphibs and not long for this time stream. How many years before your two Suns go kablooey, huh?"

Palette said, "Tim, that's enough. You're not making it any easier." To Lagarde, he said, "I'm sure we can work out some accommodations, Madame. Perhaps if I could address your Council."

Discussions went on and soon, dinner was served. Holland sulked at his seat, Palette tried to smooth over the frayed feelings. Chase gave Hektor and Kanazawa meaningful glances. Angie was quiet.

By the end of their third day, the Free Council had worked out a plan with Chase. Jumpship _Capricorn_ would remain behind, with Kanazawa and his crew teaching the Neptunians how to operate the ship. Nobody had seen the Farpool in years. The Neptunians effected time travel through a wholly different means that didn't require ships at all. There was no need for a Farpool as they generated their own wormholes with enhanced singularity engines. Chase promised that this technology would somehow be grafted onto _Capricorn_ in time.

"We'll have to backfit the system to _Libra_ too," he told Hektor. "Nobody's seen or heard of anything like a farpool in centuries. It's ancient history to them. But I'm sure we can do it. Neptunian engineers are the best."

Hektor wasn't so sure. "I hope they do a better job than they did with the Sun."

The refit and testing would take several weeks and, in that time, Chase said he would arrange for the rescue team to take tours of Neptunia and learn all about the world they had come to. Hektor said he wanted to monitor any changes to _Libra_ very closely.

The day finally came, nearly a month after they had arrived, when _Libra_ was pronounced ready. Hektor had spent several days, with Chase and an engineer named Lourdes, going over the changes, new operations and procedures, inspecting the work done to _Libra's_ singularity core and her control and navigation systems.

An hour before launch, the rescue team showed up, escorted as usual by Bannock's people, with Angie herself in tow. Bots trundled along behind her, bearing luggage and boxes. She came to Chase beside _Libra's_ hatch and squeezed his hand.

"Is this really happening, Chase? Pinch me. I'm having trouble believing it's true, that it's really going to happen."

"Hard to believe, isn't it? After all these years, we're really going home."

Captain Hektor appeared, bearing a slate of procedures and instructions. "I went through the whole setup, Commander. I don't mind telling you I'll believe this when I see it. Have you seen what they did to _Libra_?"

"New singularity core," Chase said. "We don't need a Farpool anymore. Which is good because I haven't seen one in years."

"Just check out all the gear in the tailpod. Our core's grown wings. And the engineers pretty much used up F deck as well."

"Just so we can fit everybody aboard," Chase said.

Alicia Yang—Chase hadn't seen his old Pilot-Systems Operator in years—appeared beside the hatch. A little gray fringed her short curls. But she smiled and seemed eager to get on with it.

"Captain, I'm nervous. When I heard we could go home, back to our time stream and we didn't need the Farpool, I didn't believe it. But after following Captain Hektor around the ship, I don't know—" She had the smile of child on Christmas morning. "I don't know—"

Marco Kumar was already on board. _Majoris_ ' Positioner-Navigator was perusing the new nav console, comparing the layout to what he remembered. "Skipper, I don't know what any of this stuff is. I'm afraid to touch anything."

"Then don't touch anything, Marco," Chase reminded him. "We're just along for the ride. Let _Libra's_ crew do their jobs and just sit back and enjoy the view."

Kumar patted the padded sides of the nav station. "Yes, sir...what a view, right? Lots of padding for crazy old timers like me."

Chase, Angie, Kumar and Yang took their positions, shoe-horned in to B and C deck, wherever Neptunian engineers could find space, along with the ship's normal crew. Kanazawa and the crew of _Capricorn_ would stay behind for the time being, working with Neptunian engineers to refit that ship and prepare her for other duties.

The emigration case of Senator Palette and Tim Holland was still in debate before the Free Council.

Chase was given a spot on the command deck, right behind Hektor. _Libra's_ commander threw up his hands when confronted with the new console.

"I know I went through a week of training but I'm still lost. They said all we had to do was depart the hangar, cruise out to the launch field and light off our singularity core. The ship would do the rest."

"Then I guess that's what we should do," suggested Chase.

Hektor agreed.

Soon enough, _Libra_ received clearance from Departure Control. With her dockways now flooded, Hektor engaged the waterjets and _Libra_ responded smartly, rocking slightly in light swells as she emerged into the open ocean.

It was a bright, sunny day in the mid-Atlantic and as the ship settled down to a steady cruise speed of ten knots, Chase sank back in his seat and studied the receding complex that was Neptunia's Paradise Township. Other man-made islands and structures dotted the sea in every direction, all the way to the horizon.

Chase marveled at the view. "And to think that all this came from Muir City in our time, Angie. And before that, from the first settlement—Keenomsh'pont—that the Seomish built around the seamount when they emigrated."

Angie just closed her eyes and let the rocking of the ship lull her to sleep. "Chase, I'm kind of nervous. What if this doesn't work? What if—"

"Stop asking what if, girl. After all we've been through, this is nothing. The Neptunians know what they're doing. And we've got a whizbang captain up front."

"Thanks," said Hektor. "I think."

_Libra_ coursed through light seas toward the approved launch zone, several kilometers outside the circumference of Neptunia Free State. On the horizon, towers and buildings completely surrounded them.

"I have to admit that not having to go through the Farpool won't bother me at all," Chase decided. He checked his own safety harness one last time, made sure Angie did the same.

Hektor brought _Libra_ to all stop, checked his board and commanded the crew to launch positions. The ship wallowed and rolled like a seasick pig, but no one complained.

Hektor checked his own straps. The board showed all green, all copacetic and no flags. _Libra_ had been powered up several hours before, her MHD power plant and singularity core ticking over, humming, now sending a slight shudder through her hull.

"Ready all systems...stand by for final check and all-call."

One by one, the crew came back.

"Ready, PSO."

"Nav is go!"

"CS1 ready."

"QT1...yo and go!"

Borisova, _Libra's_ Navigator-Positioner, checked her own instruments. Active sonar was pinging all around, showing up specks and chirps on her waterfall display. "Plenty of traffic, CC1, but we're clear at our position. Recommend descend to depth fifty meters."

"Very well." Hektor opened up the 1MC to talk to the others. " _Libra_ now descending to launch depth. Jump in thirty seconds. QT1, advise status of singularity core."

Tim Eccles was the ship's Quantum Tech. His excited voice came back. "Core on line and ticking at sixty-five percent. Deco wakes in the green, entanglers humming. She's ready for action...best I can tell."

"Very well...jump in ten...nine...eight—"

Chase reached over and squeezed Angie's hand. "I'm having a big fat juicy burger when I get back...no more seaweed salads for me."

"...four...three...two..."

"Me too," said Angie. She closed her eyes.

"...one...mark! Engaging jump... _now_!"

The first thing they felt was a jarring shudder, as if _Libra_ had slammed into something. Chase thought to check out the porthole but that was a mistake, for at that very moment, everything shifted.

As a boy, Chase had spent many an hour surfing and riding waves off the Florida's beaches, especially Daytona Beach, so many hours that his chest would chafe raw and red from riding the boards and rafts he was using. Once in awhile, a big one would come rolling in and send his whole body and raft tumbling end for end, thrashed upside down below the water, slammed face first into the sandy bottom, shoved like log scraping across the seabed until he couldn't hold his breath any longer and he'd pop to the surface and scream with joy, gulping in huge drafts of delicious salt air.

Riding time streams with _Libra's_ new singularity core was kind of like that.

When the jarring and the shaking and the side-to-side oscillations and the feeling you were falling down a very deep hole and there was no bottom and you could almost feel the wind in your face, when all that stopped, Chase slipped into unconsciousness for a time, how long he never knew.

He came to and saw blurs moving, faces he supposed, but they were somehow out of phase, shifted, multiple copies of themselves, someone was shaking a mirror while you were trying to see into it, and he closed his eyes for a moment to get rid of the feeling.

When he opened them again, he heard a distant voice, a familiar voice....

"All stop!"

It was Captain Hektor. At the front of the command deck, Chase could see Hektor and Iringa trying to regain control of the ship.

"Answering all stop," came a voice over the comm circuit.

That's when the shuddering and the rolling and the vibrations slowly began to subside.

"NP, give me a position. Where the hell are we?"

Borisova was already checking. "I'm showing smack in the middle of time stream T-001, plus or minus two point five years. Latitude thirty-three degrees north by longitude sixty-five degrees west...make it about fifty kilometers from Bermuda, if I'm reading this right."

Hektor pumped a fist. " _Yes!_ We did it! Bang on target! Wow, I even impress myself sometimes."

Chase was already studying the seas outside his porthole. There was something, a mirage, no...it was real, on the horizon. Shapes. Forms. Jutting over the horizon.

"CC1," Chase said. "I may have Muir City outside my portside view."

Borisova had just seen the blips on active sonar. "Broadband agrees, Captain. Signature matches. Large structures bearing two five eight degrees...make it ten kilometers."

"Got to be," Hektor decided. "I'm steering down that bearing." He twisted the joystick and _Libra_ responded smartly, turning left through heavy chop...different conditions from when they had left. "Descending to twenty meters...I want to get below this crap. The weather's a bit different from our departure conditions."

_No kidding_ , Chase told himself. _Departure was about a thousand years in the future_ _from this._

As the ship neared the target, Hektor was gratified to pick up approach signals from Muir City Traffic Control. When he identified the ship, there was audible disbelief and consternation at the other end of the line.,

"Say again, please, unknown ship. State ID and hull number again."

Hektor repeated his ID.

Traffic Control paused, then came this: " _Libra_ , huh? Hull number T-1178? My records show _Libra_ was lost two years ago...some kind of accident on her shakedown cruise. All hands lost...say again, this is actually jumpship _Libra_?"

Hektor smirked as he looked over at Iringa. "Guess we didn't come right back to exactly the same time."

Borisova, behind them, acknowledged. "There _is_ an error range of plus or minus two point five years."

Chase said, "At least we got back. Now we'll just have a little explaining to do."

Angie snorted at that, thinking of all they had been through. "Maybe a _lot_ of explaining."

The crew of jumpship _Libra_ had in fact arrived back on Earth, time stream T-001, approximately twenty months past their original time of departure. Chase eventually learned their arrival day had been August 10, 2125...a gap of almost two years from when _Libra_ had left. After the initial shock of their appearance had worn off, came all the debriefings. Days and days of debriefings. Debriefings from Farpool Service and Admiral Marx, debriefings from UNIFORCE, debriefings about the modifications the Neptunians had made to _Libra_ , many of which neither Hektor nor Chase could easily explain.

The crew was even made to endure testimony and questions from the UN Heritage investigators, curious about what life was really like in the 32nd century. No one had ever ventured that far forward into the time streams and that made Chase and Angie and the crew of _Libra_ feel a little like Columbus or Lewis and Clark, intrepid explorers of the future.

"We're going to be famous," Chase told Angie late one afternoon, after a particularly intense session.

"And have no life of our own," Angie replied. "I just want to hold my baby girl again. I need to hold Erika. You called your folks back?"

"I did. They said they've already got a flight booked to Muir City, arriving tomorrow morning. Mom said Erika's fine, in fact she's already talking in complete sentences now. They can't wait to see us."

Angie stood at a railing along a scenic overlook. They had left the briefing room below and come up topside, to Muir City's upper promenade deck, for some fresh air. The sun had already set but the western horizon was still laced with late summer clouds, backlit purple and rose from the fading light. Veins of lightning crackled from one bank of cumulus to another, heralding the storm that would lash the City later that night.

"We should get something to eat, Ang," Chase told her. "There are still several more hours in tonight's session. I'm about debriefed out."

Before she could answer, Chase's wristpad chirped with an incoming message. He tapped a key and saw a face he hadn't expected to see in a million years.

Dr. Josey Holland.

The message played. Holland's face was different than they remembered. It was clear, after a few moments of listening, that the doctor had undergone her own procedure. She'd done conicthyosis. She was amphib...and it was very becoming to her, almost unnoticeable on the tiny screen.

"...if you two would like to meet me for dinner and drinks later...I heard you were back. How could I not; you're dominating the news these days. You're both big heroes. We've got a lot to talk about, don't you think? What about the Green Grotto, say about nine-ish? My treat...just tap _Yes_ and I'll see you there."

"The Green Grotto?" Angie half laughed. "We ate at a Green Grotto in Neptunia, didn't we...you mean the place survived a thousand years?"

Chase shook his head. "Has to be a coincidence. How about it? You up for this?"

Angie took a deep breath. "I don't know, Chase. Holland tried to get between us before...even tried to kill me and Erika. My better sense says we should politely decline."

He couldn't argue with that, so Chase tried another tack. "It's just curiosity, that's all. Look at her; she's done the procedure on herself. She just wants to know what becomes of all the amphibs. She started the whole thing...now she wants to know how it plays out in the future."

Angie was reluctant, but finally gave in. She was always doing that with Chase. Sometimes, she hated herself for that but then Chase was Chase.

"Okay, but just for a few minutes. No dinner. A few drinks, that's all. Then I want to get our place set up for Erika tomorrow. Agreed?"

"It's a deal." They shook hands, did a pinky swear. Then they kissed.

They were still kissing when somebody's wristpad chirped with a reminder that the next round of debriefings was starting and they were due in Conference Room 12-B in two minutes.

The Green Grotto was a smoky, dimly-lit dive about halfway down the outer slopes of Muir seamount, perched under a transparent series of domes along a ledge overlooking the original Seomish settlement of Keenomsh'pont. The chasm below teemed with life and schools of amphibs, building new homes and shops, extending the original settlement into every fold and ravine between the seamount and the Bermuda platform dozens of kilometers to the south.

Chase and Angie talked to the hostess, gave their names and were immediately escorted to a small table in the back.

Dr. Holland was there, dressed in a radiant green gown, showing off her shoulders, dangling shell earrings clicking from her webbed ears as she rose to greet them. She softly hugged Chase, acknowledged Angie and bade them sit down.

"It's so good to see you, both of you...please, sit, sit.... At least a drink."

Dr. Holland seemed genuinely glad to encounter Chase and Angie.

"You didn't dress up just for us," Chase ventured.

"Me? No, actually I'm going to a big gala later tonight. The travel service's throwing a party for all the passengers. Galaxy Time Sharing...we're off tomorrow morning."

Chase had heard bits and pieces of the story. Farpool Service had spun off a new unit in the last few years, offering commercial time travel. Chase was still finding it hard to believe such a thing was possible.

"Time travel...for tourists," he shook his head. "I hope they know what they're doing. Where are they taking you?"

Holland sipped her champagne and smiled broadly. "Back to where you came from. T-5098, the year 3155. I'm hoping to find Tim...my son...there." She giggled a little. "And, you know, see the sights. Face it, Chase, you're a legend. You're the best advertisement there is for time travel."

"Yeah, except for when things go wrong."

"Dr. Holland, you look beautiful tonight," Angie said. And she meant it, though not for the reasons Holland suspected.

"Really...you think so?" she primped at the sides of her auburn hair, fiddled with the extra folds of skin around her neck, the gill sacs. "I'm not sure about all this skin...honestly, it looks better on you, Angie. And Chase, well my goodness...he's always a sharp looking guy."

_Yeah,_ thought Angie, _and not for sale either._

"You've been amphib for awhile...but you look different, somehow," Chase said. He glanced around the café. Easily half the patrons were amphib, with varying levels of success, he noted. The low smoky light helped hide the worst offenders.

"Several years ago...you know, we just made some changes to the procedure. The nanobots are better tuned, better configurations. We understand the genetics better too...just a few chromosomal tweaks was all it took. You like it?"

Chase said, "Very becoming."

Dr. Holland leaned across the table, champagne flute nearly spilling its contents onto her gown. "You know, I have to say this, Chase. I'm glad you were able to, you know, undo what I did. With Angie, I mean. You two seem just right for each other."

"It wasn't nice," Angie told her, "arranging for my car to break down like that. I _did_ die, you know...in that time stream. And Erika...you left her motherless...how could you do that?"

Holland seemed remorseful. Her face fell. "It was a stupid thing to do and I'm sorry. I'm just glad for...."

Chase decided now was a good time to wrap an arm around Angie's shoulder. "I used the Farpool in a way I wasn't supposed to. Changing time stream T-001...I should have been court-martialed for that. But I'm glad I did it."

"Me too," Holland brightened up. "You two belong together." She checked the time. "Oh my goodness...it's later than I thought. You two go on and order...on me. It's the least I can do." She stood up, straightened out a few imaginary wrinkles in her gown and blew kisses at both of them. "I'm off...wish me well." She waved at them, squeezed Chase's shoulder as she blew by and was gone in seconds.

Angie just shook her head and wriggled free of Chase's embrace. "That woman...she gives me the creeps."

Chase chewed on something from the plate before him. It tasted rubbery, vaguely fish-like. "That woman created all amphibs, Angie. Including you and me. She lost a husband, then her kids. Her son hates her. I guess I have mixed feelings about her. Bur she deserves a little adventure in her life. Maybe tourist time travel is what she needs."

"Not me," Angie shuddered. She tasted the drink the servbot had just brought, twiddled with the little parasol sticking out of the glass. She made a face. "Let's get out of here. I want to get back to the apartment, make sure we've got the place all fixed up for Erika."

"That's hours away. Lifter's not due until ten tonight. I've got a better idea."

"Yeah, what's that, fishboy?"

Chase ignored her. "How about we go on a little roam, just to see what's changed? You and me, for an hour. Then we clean up, fix up the apartment and head topside to the port."

Angie shrugged. "I'm not really feeling it, Chase. I don't want to be late when the lifter arrives from Miami."

"Just an hour...come on. It'll do you good. Both of us."

She had to admit he was probably right. "Okay, but not far. And just an hour, tops."

They left the Grotto and took lifts down to the public moonpool on Level 2.

The water was cold and dense, rather bracing and crowded. Cross-currents had fallen off tonight. Hundreds of residents were out for a roam, circling the seamount, darting into and out of caves, niches, burrows and hollows along the slopes. Whole families roamed together, twisting and turning and looping across and above the lighted seabed grid of old Keenomsh'pont and the newer suburbs that had become Muir City.

Many had gathered to watch the light show that made the Farpool Reefs such an attraction. Mostly natural, but helped along by sculptors, the Reefs were an intricate maze of coral ledges and ridges, a man-made labyrinth shrouded in fog and smoke, backlit with an ever-changing panorama of strobes and lights and fanciful decorations. The Reefs had become Muir City's latest attraction and the evening shows a particular favorite, with scenes from history and mythology, human and Seomish. Families disappeared into the labyrinth to be greeted by Poseidon with his trident, animated robotic serpents and dragons and seamother calves and ghostly spirits come to life. Children screamed and shrieked. Parents smiled and laughed. Everyone had a great time.

"Look," pointed Chase. "They've even got _mah'jeet_ blooms welling up, like a big cloud of purple stain. That came from Seome."

"And giant squid..." marveled Angie. "Looks so real."

"This is what the _Kel'vish'tu_ was supposed to be about," Chase said. "Seomish and human, coming together, blending together, converging into something even greater. After the twenty-thousand emigrated through the Farpool and settled here, nobody believed this would ever happen."

"And most of them amphibs," said Angie. "I see a few humans in dive gear. And a few Sea People, old timers from the looks of it. But mostly amphibs."

"Dr. Holland did that. The conicthyosis procedure made that possible, Angie. People hated amphibs, right from the start. But we did it. Now look...hundreds of them, all cavorting and playing and laughing together. All it took was time."

"Chase, just think about what all this will become. We've seen it ourselves. Neptunia develops from all this. The free states. A whole submarine world."

"Yeah, they became submarine because they messed up the Sun. Remember that too. Come on, let's roam. Just look at how much Keenomsh'pont has expanded. After the emigration, it was just a few caves and holds buried in the side of the seamount."

They left Farpool Reefs and circled the great settlement at mid-depths, above all the commotion below but still in calm waters, undisturbed by the restless waves at the surface. _Kip't_ traffic was light that evening and only a few roamers interrupted their trek around the city. Once they had to divert to avoid a small train of pal'penk cargo cows streaming from one side of Keenomsh'pont to the other. The handler waved at them, apologized and led his charges on to their destination.

"Chase, you know what? I'd like to go back to Frisco Island when Erika gets here and finally gets settled in. Just the three us, in one of those stilt bungalows at sea like on our honeymoon."

Chase led them both on a turning, twisting route, tasting faint currents, enjoying what the Seomish had always called _vish'mtel_ , meaning a fast current with smooth flow, following the trail of a school of mackerel as they banked first one way, then another.

"Hey, I'd like that too. It was fun, really a beautiful place. And all our friends could still visit us."

"Just think—" she huffed, trying to keep up, "we've seen what this place will look like a thousand years from now. We've got an important job now."

"What's that?"

"Making sure Muir City lives up to its future reputation. It's a big responsibility. Maybe you could even run for _Metah_."

That made Chase laugh. _Metah_ was a hereditary female position, leading one of the original kels of Seome. "Silly...nobody 'runs' for _Metah_. The Kel'em elders decide that. I don't think I'd want the job anyway. Too many decisions and nobody's happy with what you decide."

Angie grabbed Chase's tail fins and they came to an abrupt halt. "We'd better head back. It's getting late. Erika will be here in a few hours."

"Yeah, you're probably right."

They turned about and descended to Level 2, crossing streams of early evening roamers, a few public performers singing and chanting in a strange dialect and some small schools of fish, then re-entered the public moonpool.

The Orion Vertiport was at the topmost level of the City, Level 35, and gave onto a spectacular view of a setting sun to the west. A few stars had already peeked out from behind faint wisps of cloud. Below them, the Atlantic seemed unusually calm, save for the restless heaving and crashing surf of the sea about the columns that supported the City below. Muir City had long since overgrown the upper reaches of the seamount and sprouted above the waves like a man-made reef, spilling out across several kilometers of structure like a coral atoll.

Chase and Angie huddled in the Arrivals lounge as they watched the lifter approach the landing pads, slip into a spiraling hover and gently set down on its articulating legs, its rotors and jets spinning down rapidly.

The deplaning tube snaked out to the ship and was snugged up to the fuselage automatically. Soon, the first passengers were emerging from the jetway.

Five minutes later, Angie spotted Mack and Cynthia Meyer appearing at the exit. Erika skipped and hopped in front of them like a bouncing ball. Angie sprinted forward, pushed through knots of people and scooped up her daughter into her arms, hugging the life out of her. Chase came up and hugged his Mom, then shook firm hands with his Dad.

Angie noticed Erika sported gill sacs and armfins and her heart skipped a beat. "Erika...Erika...you didn't...don't tell me—Erika, no---!"

But it was only a costume and the two-year old tore off her Gill-Man mask and fake fins with a gleeful laugh. "Mommy...I fooled you...didn't I, Mommy? I fooled you!"

Mrs. Meyer chuckled, holding tightly to Chase's waist. "She had to have them. Gift shop in Miami, Angie, she wanted to be just like you...she wanted to surprise you."

Erika went from Angie's arms to Chase's. Her face brightened mischievously. "I fooled both of you!"

"You did at that," Chase admitted. "Scared me too."

"We had a good flight. Little One here slept most of the way," said Mack Meyer.

"Except for when we started descending," Cynthia Meyer added. "Then she wouldn't be still. She kept looking for you while we approached."

Chase gave Erika back to Angie. Her daughter's feet hadn't touched the ground yet. "We'd better round up your luggage. I'm so glad you could come and stay for a few days."

They headed for the lift down to Baggage Claim.

Mrs. Meyer couldn't stop hugging her son. "I'm just glad you two finally made it back. We'd almost given up..." she withdrew her arms to wipe a few tears from her eyes. "It was rough there for a while."

"We didn't know," Mack Meyer said gruffly. "We kept hearing stories...they were looking for you, they were making up a rescue team, they were leaving...we hoped, we never gave up hope...but we wondered. Especially about Erika."

"We were about to make plans to—" but Mrs. Meyer couldn't finish the thought. Tears streamed freely down her cheeks. "I'm just so thankful...that both of you—"

Erika saw something out the windows. "Look, Mommy! Look! It's the 'Pool...."

They stopped outside the lift. All eyes were on the waterspout dancing like a writhing rope on the horizon. The Farpool had been activated and was forming, reaching up into the clouds.

Even as they watched, the column thickened and flexed like a thing alive. Backlit with the orange glow of sunset to the west, the thin ropy waterspout formed several kilometers northeast of the City. As the spout danced and skipped across the waves, a bright pulse of light emerged from the sea and vaulted heavenward along the length of the spout, followed by a series of light pulses, as if the spout were sucking buckets of light right out of the ocean.

The light pulses disappeared into low-hanging clouds and vanished, leaving only a faint iridescent flicker, like a silent lightning discharge.

Moments later, the waterspout collapsed into the sea and the ocean returned to its restless heaving.

"Probably Dr. Holland," said Chase. "One of the Galaxy ships headed to a jump."

"I hope she finds what she's looking for," Angie added. "And leaves us alone."

Chase watched the slow-motion collapse of the spout as it fell like a severed rope from the clouds into the sea. "Where she's going, they don't even need farpools anymore. Just fire up the engine and jump."

The lift doors opened and the Meyer family stepped in, all of them. As the doors hissed shut, Chase closed his eyes, a high-speed film of all they had gone through running in the back of his mind.

He knew there was still a greater enemy out there. The Coethi. Still to be encountered. Still to be confronted. Their advance scouts were already here, barely contained by the Chinese at Reed Banks in the South China Sea. How long that would last, he couldn't say,

But he said none of this. Instead, he reached down and tweaked Erika's fish ears with a playful twist, earning a disgusted frown from his two-year old daughter.

"Daddy, stop that!"

Chase made a face back at his daughter, then smiled. There were so many things still to be encountered.

END

**EXCERPT** : Now enjoy a sneak peek at the next Farpool story, entitled _The Farpool: Union_ , coming to Smashwords.com and other fine ebook retailers near you in the fall of 2018....

Chapter 1

Muir City

Central Atlantic, near Bermuda

September 2, 2178

The small roam of Ponkti _tu'kelke_ approached Keenomsh'pont from the south, across the crumpled badlands of the Bermuda Platform, having come a very long way, days in transit, all the way from Ponkel'te in the far seas. The Humans called it the South China Sea. There were ten in all. One of them was an aging Tulcheah, now Metah of the Ponkti on Earth/Urku. She was accompanied by the half-breed Skeleemah and by others.

They had come to Keenomsh'pont to meet with the old academician Likteek of the Omtorish Academy. And with the _eekoti_ Chase, a desire communicated by long-range repeater from many beats away.

A formal assembly and roam had been requested. Formalities had been observed. Protocols and traditions had been followed exactly. The petition could not be refused, not without losing face, not without disturbing _Ke'shoo_ and _Ke'lee_. No self-respecting Seomish would ever do that.

Likteek had contacted Chase, who was a Sea Council delegate and had been in Muir City for several days on official business and put the Ponkti petition to him. Chase, replying on signaler, agreed to come down to Keenomsh'pont and meet the old scientist at the Academy's warren of caves.

There he encountered Tulcheah and Skeleemah.

Tulcheah nuzzled Chase in the Seomish way, while Skeleemah circled him and pulsed what he was all about.

"Many _mah_ ," Tulcheah was saying. "A long time we have not pulsed you, _eekoti_ Chase."

Chase agreed. "It has been a long time. What brings you to the city?"

Tulcheah had never been very good at hiding her feelings, not that introspection was common among Seomish people anyway. Not when they could pulse everything inside of you.

"Sadness," she admitted. She darted off around the cave, her tail flukes brushing against beatscopes and flasks of things that drifted off after she passed by, much to Likteek's annoyance. "Skeleemah and I have come to ask a favor. Something only you can grant, _eekoti_ Chase."

Chase didn't like the sound of that. He couldn't pulse them back; his amphib modifications had never given him the same sense, the soundbulb that all Seomish possessed. Still there was something in the way his echobulb translated all her chirps and clicks and whistles and squeaks...something melancholy, perhaps. A sense of loss, maybe.

"Let's roam...all of us. I think better in _vish'tu_."

Chase tried to protest. "I have duties topside, Tulcheah...I leave for New York tomorrow and—"

But Tulcheah always got her way and this time would be no different.

They left the small grotto, the four of them, and scooted off into the vast cloud of roamers that orbited the seamount in constant motion, for the Seomish were ever a restless people.

The official _vish'tu_ roam was a custom as old as the world...at least, the original world of Seome. Its origins were lost in the murky currents of the past, unclear and shrouded by the mythical tales of the ancient cave-dwellers. It was very much in the traditions of _Ke'shoo_ and _Ke'lee_ and _Shoo'kel_ , and typically involved two roamers, although custom did not dictate any set number. Entire em'kels, or even whole kels, were known to conduct their business in _vish'tu_ , on roams that might last from a few hours to a few days, and range over thousands of beats. The Seomish had never lost their love for it and the custom was surely one of the most important practices they had brought from Seome in the Exodus.

The beauty of the _vish'tu_ was that it encouraged great physical exertion. That was good in itself but it also helped unblock other channels of communication like scent and gave them a chance to work. Sharp disputes often arose on roams but the _vish'tu_ seemed to blunt them. Something happened to kelke who roamed in _vish'tu_ ; they were more congenial and flexible. It was the physical beauty of the landscape, in the opinion of many, that accounted for this. Others insisted that it was the muscular exertion involved—the body and the mind were one and sustained effort was needed to ease the roamer into a trance where he could merge his personality with his fellow roamers. More likely, the magic of _vish'tu_ was due simply to what was called _t'shoo_ , a feeling of sliding through the water, brushed by currents and tingling from beak to tail, spiritual orgasm it might be called. _Vish'tu_ was all these things.

Tulcheah led the way and Chase found it expedient to affix a pair of aquagenic jet feet to his shins to keep up, for the Ponkti females were strong swimmers. They had already made a trip of thousands of beats from the Ponkti settlement Ponkel'te, in the South China Sea. Their tails and flukes were honed to perfection and even with jet feet, Chase...and Likteek, found it hard to keep up.

Chase was sure this was exactly what Tulcheah had in mind.

It was customary for roams to begin with little or no talk, just the physical exertion of stroke after stroke, beating against the currents, sliding up and down the ravines and steep canyons that encircled the Muir seamount like so many concentric rings.

They headed southwest, toward the Bermuda Platform, through schools of darting fish, corkscrewing columns of hydrothermal vents and badlands dotted with twisted pancakes of lava hillocks, silent and tortured sentinels to the forces that had once shaped the seabed. The last of the tourist roamers fell behind and the quartet was alone, silently speeding cross-current into a broad fan-shaped valley.

Tulcheah spoke then what was on her mind.

" _Eekoti_ Chase, I have a favor to ask. A proposal for you."

"Somehow, I knew you would, Tulcheah. You've been leading up to some kind of big announcement."

Here, Tulcheah slowed down and let the currents carry her forward. She didn't look back but her words were heavy with a sort of glum resignation.

"Since we came to Urku—" Chase knew that the Seomish usually referred to Earth as 'Urku'---"our lives have been hard. We struggle and the waters are still unfamiliar to us."

Chase had been hearing rumbles of this same sentiment around Keenomsh'pont for months now. Something was brewing. Some force was growing among the older Sea People; he didn't understand it completely, but it was palpable. And getting stronger.

"At first, you struggled," he tried to sound optimistic. "But now the midlings—your children—they're adapting to life here okay. And many of them become amphibs...they can live here and in the Notwater."

"That's our point," Skeleemah said. "You know this, _eekoti_ Chase. Amphibs and Umans dominate this world. It's their world."

Tulcheah picked up the argument. "In another generation, all that is good and true about our way of life will be gone."

Chase knew there was truth in what the Metah said. After the Exodus, adjusting to life in unfamiliar waters had been difficult. Many Seomish, from every kel, longed for the old ways, longed to go back.

But that was no longer possible, wasn't it? Or so Chase thought, until Tulcheah brought up the real reason for her visit.

" _Eekoti_ Chase, help us go back."

Chase thought he had mis-heard Tulcheah. Maybe it was the echopod; sometimes, the translator needed tuning, or fixing. That had to be it.

"Go back? How do you mean? You can't go back."

Skeleemah came right to the heart of the matter. " _Eekoti_ Chase, nobody knows _pul'kel_...the Farpool...as you do. Every day, here and in our seas, people travel through the Farpool. It is a common thing, no?'

Tulcheah went on. "Help us return through the Farpool...back to Seome."

"Your world was destroyed," Chase reminded them. "The sun detonated...the Coethi destroyed everything. You know that."

"But the Farpool can take travelers to different times, can it not? I am asking...we are pleading with you, _eekoti_ Chase. Help us go back to Seome, in a different time, to the time before the End Time."

Chase's head was dizzy at the idea. "But the Coethi...we don't know how to defeat them. We don't have the means, or the weapons. Even the Umans of that time couldn't defeat them. They abandoned Seome, remember?"

Now Tulcheah and Skeleemah brought the roam to a complete stop. She circled them like a predator sizing up her catch. "Help us save Seome from destruction, Chase. Help us preserve it for all the kelke to come. There are so many...tu'kel'ke who wish to return to their home waters and build a new life in the traditional seas...to feel the P'omtor Current, hear the volcanoes, the ice floes scraping in the northern seas, taste scapet and tong'pod. Help us, Chase...before it's too late. Before we perish and the Seomish way is no more."

By the time the roam had resumed and the four of them turned about and headed back to Keenomsh'pont, Chase wished he were anywhere but here. To go back through the Farpool, to an earlier time, and confront the Coethi and somehow prevent the star-sun Sigma-Albeth B from its ultimate fate, this was beyond insane.

But even as he told himself that, Chase knew that Tulcheah would never let the matter drop.

About the Author

Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He recently retired but worked for over 20 years for a large company that makes products everyone uses...just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He's been happily married for over 27 years. He's also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children.

For technical and background details on his series _Tales of the Quantum Corps_ , visit his blog _Quantum Corps Times_ at http://qcorpstimes.blogspot.com. For details on other books in this series, visit his website at <http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt> or learn about other books by Philip Bosshardt by visiting www.smashwords.com.

To get a peek at Philip Bosshardt's notes and the backstory on how _The Farpool Stories_ were created, recent reviews, excerpts from his upcoming book _The Farpool: Union_ (due out in Fall 2018) and general updates on the writing life, visit his blog _The Word Shed_ at: http://thewdshed.blogspot.com.

