Infinity's Shore

PART TEN

Vubben

SMASHED UP. Wheels torn or severed. His braincase leaking lubricant. Motivator spindles shredded and discharging slowly into the ground.

Vubben lies crumpled next to his deity, feeling life drain away.

That he still lives seems remarkable.

When the Jophur corvette slashed brutally at the Holy Egg, he had been partway around the great stone’s flank, almost on the other side. But the moatlike channel of the Nest funneled explosive heat like a river, outracing his fruitless effort at retreat.

Now Vubben lies in a heap, aware of two facts.

Any surviving g’Keks would need a new High Sage.

And something else.

The Egg still lives.

He wonders about that. Why didn’t the Jophur finish it off? Surely they had the power.

Perhaps they were distracted.

Perhaps they would be back.

Or else, were they subtly persuaded to go away?

The Egg’s patterning rhythms seem subdued, and yet more clear than ever. He ponders whether it might be an artifact of his approaching death. Or perhaps his frayed spindles — draped across the stony face — are picking up vibrations that normal senses could not.

Crystalline lucidity calls him, but Vubben feels restrained by the tenacious hold of life. That was what always kept sages and mystics from fully communing with the sacred ovoid, he now sees. Mortal beings — even traeki — have to care about continuing, or else the game of existence cannot properly be played. But the caring is also an impediment. It biases the senses. Makes you receptive to noise.

He lets go of the impediment, with a kind of gladness. Surrender clears the way, opening a path that he plunges along, like a youth just released from training wheels, spinning ecstatically down a swooping ramp he never knew before, whose curves change in delightfully ominous ways.

Vubben feels the world grow transparent around him. And with blossoming clarity, he begins to perceive connections.

In legend, and in human lore, gods were depicted speaking to their prophets, and those on the verge of death. But the great stone does not vocalize. No words come to Vubben, or even images. Yet he finds himself able to trace the Egg’s form, its vibrating unity. Like a funnel, it draws him down, toward the bowels of Jijo.

That is the first surprise. From its shape alone, the Six Races assumed the Egg was self-contained, an oval stone birthed out of Jijo’s inner heat, now wholly part of the upper world.

Apparently it still maintains links to the world below.

Vubben’s dazed mind beholds the realm beneath the Slope … not as a picture but in its gestalt, as a vast domain threaded by dendritic patterns of lava heat, like branches of a magma forest, feeding and maintaining a growing mountain range. The forest roots sink into liquefied pools, unimaginably deep and broad — measureless chambers where molten rock strains under the steady grinding of an active planet.

Yet, even here the pattern formations persist. Vubben finds himself amazed by their revealed source.

Dross!

Deep beneath the Slope, there plunges a great sheet of heavier stone … an oceanic plate, shoving hard against the continent and then diving deeper still, dragging eons-old basalt down to rejoin slowly convecting mantle layers. The process is not entirely mysterious to Vubben. He has seen illustrations in Biblos texts. As it scrapes by, the plunging ocean plate leaves behind a scum, a frothy mix of water and light elements …

… and also patterns.

Patterns of dross! Of ancient buildings, implements, machines, all discarded long ago, ages before the Buyur won their leasehold on this world. Before even their predecessors.

The things themselves are long gone, melted, smeared out, their atoms dispersed by pressure and heat. Yet somehow a remnant persists. The magma does not quite forget.

Dross is supposed to be cleansed, Vubben thinks, shocked by the implications. When we dump our bones and tools in the Midden, it should lead to burial and purification by Jijo’s fire. There isn’t supposed to be anything left!

And yet … who is he to question, if Jijo chooses to remember something of each tenant race that abides here for a while, availing itself of her resources, her varied life-forms, then departing according to Galactic law?

Is that what you are? He inquires of the Holy Egg. A distillation of memory? The crystallized essence of species who came before, and are now extinct?

A transcendent thought, yet it makes him sad. Vubben’s own unique race verges on annihilation. He yearns for some kind of preservation, some refuge from oblivion. But in order to leave such a remnant, sophonts must dwell for a long time on a tectonic world.

For most of its sapiency period, his kind had lived in space.

Then you don’t care about us living beings, after all, he accuses the Egg. You are like that crazed mulc spider of the hills, your face turned to the past.

Again, there is no answer in word or image. What Vubben feels instead is a further extension of the sense of connectedness, now sweeping upward, through channels of friction heat, climbing against slow cascades of moist, superheated rock, until his mind emerges in a cool dark kingdom — the sea’s deep, most private place.

The Midden. Vubben feels around him the great dross piles of more recent habitation waves. Even here, amid relics of the Buyur, the Egg seems linked. Vubben senses that the graveyard of ancient instrumentalities has been disturbed. Heaps of archaic refuse still quiver from some late intrusion.

There is no anger over this. Nor anything as overt as interest. But he does sense a reaction, like some prodigious reflex.

The sea is involved. Disturbance in the dross piles has provoked shifts in the formation of waves and tides. Of heat and evaporation. Like a sleeping giant, responding heavily to a tiny itch. A massive storm begins roiling both the surface and the ocean floor, sweeping things back where they belong.

Vubben has no idea what vexed the Midden so. Perhaps the Jophur. Or else the end of dross shipments from the Six Races? Anyway, his thoughts are coming more slowly as death swarms in from the extremities. Worldly concerns matter less with each passing dura.

Still, he can muster a few more cogencies.

Is that all we are to you? he inquires of the planet. An itch?

He realizes now that Drake and Ur-Chown had pulled a fast one when they announced their “revelation,” a century ago. The Egg is no god, no conscious being. Ro-kenn was right, calling it a particle of psi-active stone, more compact and well ordered than the Spectral Flow. A distillation that had proved helpful in uniting the Six Races.

Useful in many ways … but not worthy of prayer.

We sensed what we desperately wanted to sense, because the alternative was unacceptable — to face the fact that we sooners are alone. We always were alone.

That might have been Vubben’s last thought. But at the final moment there comes something else. A glimmer of meaning that merges with his waning neuronic flashes. In that narrow moment, he feels a wave of overwhelming certainty.

More layers lie beneath the sleeping strata. Layers that are aware.

Layers that know.

Despair is not his final companion. Instead, there comes in rapid succession—

expectation …

satisfaction …

awareness of an ancient plan, patiently unfolding.…

Kaa

CAN’T-T YOU USE SOMEBODY ELSE?”

“Who else? There is no one.”

“What about Karkaett-t?”

“Suessi needs him to help nurse the engines. This effort will be hopeless unless they operate above capacity.”

Hopeless, Kaa used to think it such a simple word. But like the concept of infinity, it came freighted with a wide range of meanings. He slashed the water in frustration. Ifni, will you really trap me this way? Dragging me across the universe again, when all I want to do is stay?

Gillian Baskin knelt on the quay nearby, her raincoat glistening. Distant lightning flashes periodically lit up the bay, revealing that the Hikahi had already closed her clamshell doors, preparing to depart.

“Besides,” Gillian added. “You are our chief pilot. Who could be as well qualified?”

Gratifying words, but in fact Streaker used to have a better pilot, by far.

“Keepiru ought to’ve stayed with the crew, back on Kithrup-p. I should have been the one who went on the skiff with Creideiki.”

The woman shrugged. “Things happen, Kaa. I have confidence in your ability to get us off this world in one piece.”

And after that? He chuttered a doubt-filled raspberry. Everyone knew this would be little more than a suicide venture. The odds had also seemed bad on Kithrup, but at least there the eatee battle fleets chasing Streaker had been distracted, battling each other. Fleeing through that maelstrom of combat and confusion, it proved possible to fool their pursuers by wearing a disguise — the hollowed-out shell of a Thennanin dreadnought. All that ploy took was lots of skill … and luck.

Here in Jijo space there was no sheltering complexity. No concealing jumble of warfare to sneak through. Just one pursuer — giant and deadly — sought one bedraggled prey.

For the moment, Streaker was safe in Jijo’s sea, but what chance would she have once she tried to leave?

“You don’t have to worry about Peepoe,” Gillian said, reading the heart of his reluctance. “Makanee has some solid fins with her. Many are Peepoe’s friends. They’ll scan relentlessly till they find Zhaki and Mopol, and make them let her go.

“Anyway,” the blond woman went on, “isn’t Peepoe better off here? Won’t you use your skill to keep her safe?”

Kaa eyed Gillian’s silhouette, knowing the Terragens agent would use any means to get the job done. If that meant appealing to Kaa’s sense of honor … or even chivalry … Gillian Baskin was not too proud.

“Then you admit it-t,” he said.

“Admit what?”

“That we’re heading out as bait, nothing elsssse. Our aim is to sacrifice ourselves.”

The human on the quay was silent for several seconds, then lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

“It seems worthwhile, don’t you think?”

Kaa pondered. At least she was being honest — a decent way for a captain to behave with her pilot.

A whole world, seven or eight sapient races, some near extinction, and a unique culture. Can you see giving up your life for all that?

“I guesss so,” he murmured, after a pause.

Gillian had won. Kaa would abandon his heart on Jijo, and fly out to meet death with open eyes.

Then he recalled. She had made exactly the same choice, long ago. A decision that still must haunt her sleep, though it could have gone no other way.

Yet it surprised Kaa when Gillian slipped off the stone quay, entering the water next to him, and threw her arms around his head. Shivers followed her hands as she stroked him gratefully.

“You make me proud,” she said. “The crew will be glad, and not just because we have the best pilot in this whole galaxy.”

Kaa’s flustered confusion expressed itself in a sonar interrogative, casting puzzled echoes through the colonnade of a nearby pier. Gillian wove her Trinary reply through that filtered reverberation, binding his perplexity, braiding a sound fabric whose texture seemed almost like a melody.

Amid the star lanes,

Snowballs sometimes thrive near

flame.…

Don’t you feel Lucky?

Rety

THE DOLPHIN ENGINEER SHOUTED AT HER FROM the airlock of the salvaged dross ship.

“C-come on, Rety! We gotta leave now, t-to make the rendezvous!”

Chuchki had reason to be agitated. His walker unit whined and jittered, reacting to nervous signals sent down his neural tap. It was cramped in the airlock, which also held the speed sled to carry them from this ghost ship back to Streaker. Providing all went according to plan.

Only I ain’t part of the plan anymore, Rety thought.

Stepping in front of Chuchki, with the sill of the hatch between them, she removed the tunic they had given her, as an honorary member of the crew. At first the gesture had pleased Rety — till she saw the Terrans were just another band of losers.

Rety tossed the garment in the airlock.

“Tell Dr. Baskin an’ the others thanks, but I’ll be makin’ my own way from here on. Good luck. Now scram.”

Chuchki stared at first, unable to move or speak. Then servos whirred. The walker started to move.

“Hit the button, yee!” Rety shouted over her left shoulder.

Back in the control room, her little “husband” pressed a lever triggering the airlock’s emergency cycle. The inner hatch slid shut, severing Chuchki’s wail of protest. Soon, a row of purple lights showed the small chamber filling with water as the outer door opened.

A few duras later, she heard engine noise — the now-familiar growl of the speed sled that had brought the two of them here — ebbing with distance as the machine fled. She ordered the outer door closed and locked against the possibility that Chuchki might try something “heroic.” Some still thought of her as a child, and many dolphins also had a mystical attachment to their human patrons.

But I’ll be just fine. A lot better off than those fools, in fact.

Several low, squat hallways led away from the lock, but only one was lit by a string of glow bulbs. Following this trail, she made her way back toward the control room, sometimes lingering to stroke a panel or gaze into a chamber filled with mysterious machines. For the last few days she had looked over this salvaged starship — once a Buyur packet boat, according to Chuchki. Though a mess, it was one of the “best” recovered derelicts, capable of life support as well as full engine maneuvering, owing its remarkable state to the Midden’s chill, sterile waters. Durable Galactic machines might lie there unchanged forever, or until Jijo sucked them underground.

It’s mine now, she mused, surveying her prize. I’ve got my own starship.

Of course it was still a hunk of dross. All odds were against her getting anywhere in this moving scrap pile.

But the odds always had been against her, ever since she was born into that filthy tribe of savages, so proud of their sickly ignorance. And especially since she realized she’d rather be whipped for speaking up than be a slave to some bully with rotting teeth and the mind of a beast.

Rety had suffered some disappointments lately. But now she saw what each of the setbacks had in common. They all came about because of trusting others — first the sages of the Commons, then the Rothens, and finally a ragtag band of helpless Earthlings.

But all that was in the past. Now she was back doing what she did best — relying on herself.

The control room spanned roughly thirty paces in width, featuring about a dozen wide instrument consoles. All were dark, except one jury-rigged station festooned with cables and makeshift bypass connections. Lights blazed across that panel. On the floor nearby, a portable holosim display revealed a staticky map of the ancient vessel’s surroundings, a dart-shaped glow threading its way through a maze of ridges at the bottom of the great ocean.

Most of the decoy ships cruised with simple autopilots, but a few moved more flexibly, crewed by volunteer teams, making adjustments to the swarm pattern planned by the Niss Machine. In this effort, Rety’s intelligence and agile hands had been helpful to Chuchki, making up for her lack of education. She felt justified in having earned her starship.

“hi captain!”

Her sole companion pranced on the instrument console, each footstep barely missing a glowing lever or switch. The little urrish male greeted her with a shrill ululation.

“we did it! like pirates of the plains! like in legends of the battle aunties! now we free no more noor beasts no more yuckity ship full of water-loving fish!”

Rety laughed. Whenever loneliness beckoned, there was always yee to cheer her up.

“so where to now, captain?” the diminutive creature asked. “shake free of Jijo? head someplace good and sunny, for a change?”

She nodded.

“That’s the idea. Only we gotta be patient a little while longer.”

First Streaker must collect Chuchki and other scattered workers. Rety had an impression that the Earthlings were waiting for events to happen onshore. But after hearing the Jophur ultimatum she knew — Gillian Baskin would soon be forced to act.

I helped them, she rationalized. An’ I won’t interfere with their plan … much.

But in the long run, none o’ that’ll matter. Everybody knows they’re gonna get roasted when they try to get away Or else the Jophur’ll catch ’em, like a ligger snatchin’ up a gallaiter faun.

Nobody can blame me for tryin’ to find my own way out of a trap like that.

And if someone did cast blame her way?

Rety laughed at the thought.

In that case, they can try to outfart a traeki, for all I care. This ship is mine, and there’s nothin’ anybody can do about it!

She was getting away from Jijo — one way or another.

Dwer

THE NIGHT SKY CRACKLED.

At random intervals his hair abruptly stood on end.

Static electricity snapped the balloon’s canopy with a basso boom, while pale blue glows moved up and down the rope cables, dancing like frantic imps. Once, a flickering ball of greenish white followed him across the sky for more than a midura, mimicking each rise, fall, or sway in the wind. He could not tell if it was an arrowflight away, or several leagues. The specter only vanished when a rain squall passed between, but Dwer kept checking nervously, in case it returned.

Greater versions of the same power flashed in all directions — though from a safe distance so far. He made a habit of counting kiduras between each brilliant discharge and the arrival of its rumbling report. When the interval grew short, thunder would shake the balloon like a child’s rag doll.

Uriel had set controls to keep Dwer above most of the gale … at least according to the crude weather calculations of her spinning-disk computer. The worst fury took place below, in a dense cloud bank stretching from horizon to horizon.

Still, that only meant there were moonlit gaps for his frail craft to drift through. Surrounding him towered the mighty heat engines of the storm — churning thunderheads whose lofty peaks scraped the boundaries of space.

Though insanely dangerous, the spectacle exceeded anything in Dwer’s experience — and perhaps even that of any star god in the Five Galaxies. He was tempted to climb the rigging for a better view of nature’s majesty. To let the tempest sweep his hair. To shout back when it bellowed.

But he wasn’t free. There were duties unfulfilled.

So Dwer did as he’d been told, remaining huddled in a wire cage the smiths had built for him, lashed to a wicker basket that dangled like an afterthought below a huge gasbag. The metal enclosure would supposedly protect him from a minor lightning strike.

And what if a bolt tears the bag instead? Or ignites the fuel cylinder? Or…

Low clicks warned Dwer to cover his face just half a dura before the altitude sensor tripped, sending jets of flame roaring upward, refilling the balloon and maintaining a safe distance from the ground.

Of course,“safe” was a matter of comparison.

“In theory, this vehicle should convey you well past the Rinner Range, and then veyond the Foison Flain,” the smith had explained. “After that, there should ve an end to the lightning danger. You can leave the Faraday cage and guide the craft as we taught you.”

As they taught me in half a rushed midura, Dwer amended, while running around preparing one last balloon to launch.

All the others were far ahead of him — a flotilla of flimsy craft, dispersing rapidly as they caught varied airstreams, but all sharing the same general heading. East, driven by near-hurricane winds. Twice he had witnessed flares in that direction, flames that could not have come from lightning alone. Sudden outbursts of ocher fire, they testified to some balloon exploding in the distance.

Fortunately, those others had no crews, just instruments recovered from dross ships. Dwer was the only Jijoan loony enough to go flying on a night like this.

They needed an expendable volunteer. Someone to observe and report if the trick is successful.

Not that he resented Uriel and Gillian. Far from it. Dwer was suited for the job. It was necessary. And the voyage would take him roughly where he wanted to go.

Where I’m needed.

To the Gray Hills.

What might have happened to Lena and Jenin in the time he’d spent as captive of a mad robot, battling Jophur in a swamp and then trapped with forlorn Terrans at the bottom of the sea? By now, the women would have united the urrish and human sooner tribes, and possibly led them a long way from the geyser pools where Danel Ozawa died. It might take months to track them down, but that hardly mattered. Dwer had his bow and supplies. His skills were up to the task.

All I need is to land in roughly the right area, say within a hundred leagues … and not break my neck in the process. I can hunt and forage. Save my traeki paste for later, in case the search lasts through winter.

Dwer tried going over the plan, dwelling on problems he could grasp — the intricacies of exploring and survival in wild terrain. But his mind kept coming back to this wild ride through an angry sky … or else the sad partings that preceded it.

For a time, he and Sara had tried using words, talking about their separate adventures, sharing news of friends living and dead. She told what little she knew about Nelo and their destroyed hometown. He described how Lark had saved his life in a snowstorm, so long ago that it seemed another age.

Hanging over the reunion was sure knowledge that it must end. Each of them had places to go. Missions with slim chance of success, but compelled by duty and curiosity. Dwer had lived his entire adult life that way, but it took some effort to grasp that his sister had chosen the same path, only on a vaster scale.

He still might have tried talking Sara out of her intention — perhaps suicidal — to join the Earthlings’ desperate breakout attempt. But there was something new in the way she carried herself — a lean readiness that took him back to when they were children, following Lark on fossil hunts, and Sara was the toughest of them all. Her mind had always plunged beyond his comprehension. Perhaps it was time for her to stride the same galaxies that filled her thoughts.

“Remember us, when you’re a star god,” he had told her, before their final embrace.

Her reply was a hoarse whisper.

“Give my love to Lark and …”

Sara closed her eyes, throwing her arms around him

“… and to Jijo.”

They clung together until the urrish smiths said it was the last possible moment to go.

When the balloon took off, Mount Guenn leaped into view around him, a sight unlike any he ever beheld. Lightning made eerie work of the Spectral Flow, sending brief flashes of illusion dancing across his retinas.

Dwer watched his sister standing at the entrance of the cave, a backlit figure. Too proud to weep. Too strong to pretend. Each knew the other was likely heading to oblivion. Each realized this would be their last shared moment.

I’ll never know if she lives, he had thought, as clouds swallowed the great volcano, filling the night with flashing arcs. Looking up through a gap in the overcast, he had glimpsed a corner of the constellation Eagle.

Despite the pain of separation, Dwer had managed a smile.

It’s better that way.

From now until the day I die, I’ll picture her out there. Living in the sky.

Alvin

AS IT TURNED OUT, I DIDN’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN things to my parents. Gillian and Uriel had already laid it out, before it was time to depart.

The Six Races should be represented, they explained. Come what may.

Furthermore, I had earned the right to go. So had my friends.

Anyway, who was better qualified to tell Jijo’s tale?

Mu-phauwq and Yowg-wayuo had no choice but to accept my decision. Was Jijo any safer than fighting the Jophur in space? Besides, I had spine-molted. I would make my own decisions.

Mother turned her back to me. I stroked her spines, but she spoke without turning around.

“Thank you for returning from the dead,” she murmured. “Honor us by having children of your own. Name your firstborn after your great-uncle, who was captain of the Auph-Vuhoosh. The cycle must continue.”

With that, she let my sister lead her away. I felt both touched and bemused by her command, wondering how it could ever be obeyed.

Dad, bless him, was more philosophical. He thrust a satchel in my arms, his entire collection of books by New Wave authors of Jijo’s recent literary revival — the hoon, urs, and g’Kek writers who have lately begun expressing themselves in unique ways on the printed page. “It’s to remind you that humans are not in complete command of our culture. There is more than one line to our harmony, my son.”

“I know that, Dad,” I replied. “I’m not a complete humicker.”

He nodded, adding a low umble.

“It is told that we hoons were priggish and sour, before our sneakship came to Jijo. Legends say we had no word for ‘fun.’

“If that is true — and in case you meet any of our stodgy cousins out there — tell them about the sea, Hph-wayuo! Tell them of the way a sail catches the wind, a sound no mere engine can match.

“Teach them to taste the stinging spray. Show them all the things that our patrons never did.

“It will be our gift — we happy damned — to those who know no joy in heaven.”

Others had easier leave-takings.

Qheuens are used to sending their males out on risky ventures, for the sake of the hive. Pincer’s mothers did emboss his shell with some proud inlay, though, and saw him off in good style.

Urs care mostly about their work, their chosen loyalties, and themselves. Ur-ronn did not have to endure sodden sentimentality. Partly because of the rain, she and Uriel made brief work of their good-byes. Uriel probably saw it as a good business transaction. She lost her best apprentice, but had adequate compensation.

Uriel seemed far more upset about losing Tyug. But there was no helping it. The Earthers need a traeki. And not just any traeki, but the best alchemist we can send. No pile of substance balls can substitute. Besides, it will be good luck for all races to be along.

Huck’s adoptive parents tried to express sorrow at her parting, but their genuine fondness for her would not make them grieve. Hoons are not humans. We cannot transfer the full body bond to those not of our blood. Our affections run deeper, but narrower than Earthlings’. Perhaps that is our loss.

So the five of us reboarded as official representatives, and as grown-ups. I had molted and Pincer showed off his cloisonné. Ur-ronn did not preen, but we all noticed that one of her brood pouches was no longer virgin white, but blushed a fresh shade of blue as her new husband wriggled and stretched it into shape.

Huck carried her own emblem of maturity — a narrow wooden tube, sealed with wax at both ends. Though humble looking, it might be the most important thing we brought with us from the Slope.

Huphu rode my shoulder as I stepped inside the whale sub. I noted that the tytlal-style noor, Mudfoot, had also rejoined us, though the creature seemed decidedly unhappy. Had he been exiled by the others, for the crime of letting their ancient secret slip? Or was he being honored, as we were, with a chance to live or die for Jijo?

Sara Koolhan stood between her chimp and the wounded starman as the great doors closed, cutting us off from the wharf lanterns, our village, and the thundering sky.

“Well, at least this is more comfortable than the last time we submerged, inside a dumb old hollow tree trunk,” Huck commented.

Pincer’s leg vents whistled resentfully. “You want comfy? Poor little g’Kekkie want to ride my back, an’ be tucked into her beddie?”

“Shut uf, you two,” Ur-ronn snapped. “Trust Ifni to stick ne with a vunch of ignoranuses for confanions.”

Huphu settled close as I umbled, feeling a strange, resigned contentment. My friends’ bickering was one unchanged feature of life from those naive days when we were youngsters, still dreaming of adventure in our Wuphon’s Dream. It was nice to know some things would be constant across space and time.

Alas, Huck had not mentioned the true difference between that earlier submergence and this one.

Back then, we sincerely thought there was a good chance we’d be coming home again.

This time, we all knew better.

Ewasx

ALARMS BLARE! INSTRUMENTS CRY OUT SIRENS OF danger!

Behold, My rings, how the CaptainLeader recalls the robots and remote crew stacks who were engaged in probing the deep-sea trench.

Greater worries now concern us!

For days, cognizance detectors have sieved through the deep, trying to separate the prey from its myriad decoys. It even occurred to us/Me that the Earthling ship may not be one of the moving blips at all! It might be sheltering silently in some dross pile. In operating the swarm by remote control, they might bypass all the normal etheric channels, using instead their fiendish talent at manipulating sound.

I/we are/am learning caution. I did not broach this possibility to the CaptainLeader.

Why did I refrain? A datum has come to our attention. Those in power often ask for the “truth,” or even the best guesses of their underlings. But in fact, they seldom truly wish to hear contradiction.

Anyway, the tactics stacks estimated improved odds at sifting for the quarry. Only one more day, at worst. We of the Polkjhy could easily afford the time.

Until we detected disturbing intruders. Interlopers that could only have come from the Five Galaxies!

“THERE ARE AT LEAST SIX SIXES OF THEM!”

So declares the cognizance detector operator. “Hovering, almost stationary, no more than fifteen planetary degrees easterly. One moment they were not there. The next moment, they appeared!”

The etherics officer vents steam of doubt.

“I/we perceive nothing, nor have our outlying satellites. This provokes a reasonable hypothesis: that your toruses are defective, or else your instruments.”

But routine checks discover no faults in either.

“They may have meme-suborned our satellites,” suggests one tactician stack. “Combining this with excellent masking technology—”

“Perhaps,” interrupts another. “But gravitics cannot be fooled so easily. If there are six sixes of ships, they cannot be larger than hull type sixteen. No match for us, then. We can annihilate the entire squadron, forthwith.”

“Is that why they operate in stealth?” inquires the CaptainLeader, puffing pheromones of enforced calm into the tense atmosphere. “Might they be lingering, just beyond line of sight, while awaiting reinforcements?”

It is a possibility we cannot ignore. But, lacking corvettes, we must go investigate ourselves.

Reluctantly, gracefully, the Polkjhy turns her omnipotence around, heading toward the ghostly flotilla. If they are scouts for an armada — perhaps the Soro or Tandu, our mortal foes — it may be necessary to act swiftly, decisively. Exactly the kind of performance that best justifies the existence of master rings.

Others must not be allowed to win the prize!

As we move ponderously eastward, a new thought burbles upward. A streak of wax, secreted by our oncerebellious second torus-of-cognition.

What is it, My ring?

You recall how the savage sooners called to our corvette, not once, but twice, using minute tickles of digital power to attract our attention?

The first time, they used such a beacon to bribe us with the location of a g’Kek hideout.

The second time? Ah, yes. It was a lure, drawing the corvette to a trap.

VERY CLEVER, MY RING!

Ah, but the comparison does not work.

There are many more sources, this time.

They are stronger, and the cognizance traces have spoor patterns typical of starship computers.

But above all, My poor ring, did you not hear our detection officer stack?

These signals cannot come from benighted sooners.

THEY FLY!

Sara

GRAVITICSS!”

The detection officer thrashed her flukes.

“Movement signs! The large emitter departss its stationary hover position. Jophur battleship now moving east at two machsss. Ten klickss altitude.”

Sara watched Gillian Baskin absorb the news. This was according to plan, yet the blond Earthwoman showed hardly any reaction. “Very good,” she replied. “Inform me of any vector change. Decoy operator, please engage swarming program number four. Start the wrecks drifting upward, slowly.”

The water-filled chamber was unlike any “bridge” Sara had read about in ancient books — a Terran vessel, controlled from a room humans could only enter wearing breathing masks. This place was built for the convenience of dolphins. It was their ship — though a woman held command.

A musty smell made Sara’s nose itch, but when her hand raised to scratch, it bumped the transparent helmet, startling her for the fiftieth time. Fizzy liquid prickled Sara’s bare arms and legs with goose bumps. Yet she had no mental space for annoyance, fear, or claustrophobia. This place was much too strange to allow such mundane reactions.

Streaker’s overall shape and size were still enigmas. Her one glimpse of the hull — peering through a viewing port while the whale sub followed a searchlight toward its hurried rendezvous — showed a mysterious, studded cylinder, like a giant twelk caterpillar, whose black surface seemed to drink illumination rather than reflect it. The capacious airlock was almost deserted as Kaa and other dolphins debarked from the Hikahi, using spiderlike walking machines to rush to their assigned posts. Except for the bridge, most of the ship had been pumped free of water, reducing weight to a minimum.

The walls trembled with the rhythmic vibration of engines — distant cousins to her father’s mill, or the Tarek Town steamboats. The familiarity ran deep, as if affinity flowed in Sara’s blood.

“Battleship passing over Rimmer mountains. Departing line-of-sight!”

“Don’t make too much of that,” Gillian reminded the crew. “They still have satellites overhead. Maintain swarm pattern four. Kaa, ease us to the western edge of our group.”

“Aye,” the sturdy gray pilot replied. His tail and fins wafted easily, showing no sign of tension. “Suessi reports motors operating at nominal. Gravitics charged and ready.”

Sara glanced at a row of screens monitoring other parts of the ship. At first, each display seemed impossibly small, but her helmet heeded subtle motions of her eyes, enhancing any image she chose to focus on, expanding it to 3-D clarity. Most showed empty chambers, with walls still moist from recent flooding. But the engine room was a bustle of activity. She spied “Suessi” by his unique appearance — a torso of wedgelike plates topped by a reflective dome, encasing what remained of his head. The arm that was still human gestured toward a panel, reminding a neo-fin operator to make some adjustment.

That same arm had wrapped around Emerson after the Hikahi docked, trembling while clutching the prodigal starman. Sara had never seen a cyborg before. She did not know if it was normal for one to cry.

Emerson and Prity were also down there, helping Suessi with their nimble hands. Sara spied them laboring in the shadows, accompanied by Ur-ronn, the eager young urs, fetching and carrying for the preoccupied engineers. Indeed, Emerson seemed a little happier with work to do. After all, these decks and machines had been his life for many years. Still, ever since the reunion on the docks, Sara had not seen his accustomed grin. For the first time, he seemed ashamed of his injuries.

These people must be hard up to need help from an ape, an urrish blacksmith, and a speechless cripple. The other youngsters from Wuphon were busy, too. Running errands and tending the glaver herd, keeping the creatures calm in strange surroundings.

I’m probably the most useless one of all. The Egg only knows what I’m doing here.

Blame it on Sage Purofsky, whose cosmic speculations justified her charging off with desperate Earthlings. Even if his reasoning holds, what can I do about the Buyur plan? Especially if this mission is suicidal—

The detection officer squealed, churning bubbles with her flukes.

“Primary gravities source decelerating! Jophur ship nearing estimated pposition of mobile observer.”

Mobile observer, Sara thought. That would be Dwer.

She pictured him in that frail balloon, alone in the wide sky, surrounded by nature’s fury, with that great behemoth streaking toward him.

Keep your head down, little brother. Here it comes.

Dwer

WITH THE RIMMERS BEHIND HIM AT LAST, THE storm abated its relentless buffeting enough to glimpse some swathes of stars. The gaps widened. In time Dwer spied a pale glow to the west. Gray luminance spread across a vast plain of waving scimitar blades.

Dwer recalled slogging through the same bitter steppe months ago, guiding Danel, Lena, and Jenin toward the Gray Hills. He still bore scars from that hard passage, when knifelike stems slashed at their clothes, cutting any exposed flesh.

This was a better way of traveling, floating high above. That is, if you survived searing lightning bolts, and thunder that loosened your teeth, and terrifying brushes with mountain peaks that loomed out of the night like giant claws, snatching at a passing morsel.

Maybe walking was preferable, after all.

He drank from his water bottle. Dawn meant it was time to get ready. Dormant machines would have flickered to life when first light struck the decoy balloons, electric circuits closing. Computers, salvaged from ancient starships, began spinning useless calculations.

The Jophur must be on the move, by now.

He reached up to his forehead and touched the rewq he had been given, causing it to writhe over his eyes. At once, Dwer’s surroundings shifted. Contrasts were enhanced. All trace of haze vanished from the horizon, and he was able to look close to the rising sun, making out the distant glimmers of at least a dozen floating gasbags, now widely dispersed far to the east, tiny survivors of the tempest that had driven them so far.

Dwer pulled four crystals from a pouch at his waist and jammed them into the gondola wickerwork so each glittered in the slanted light. A hammer waited at his waist, but he left it there for now, scanning past the decoys, straining to see signs of the Gray Hills.

I’m coming, Jenin. I’ll be there soon, Lena.

I’ve just got a few more obstacles to get by.

He tried to picture their faces, looking to the future rather than dwelling on a harsh past. Buried in his backpack was a sensor stone that would come alight on midwinter’s eve, if by some miracle the High Sages gave the all clear. If all the starships were gone, and there was reason to believe none would return. By then Dwer must find Lena and Jenin, and help them prepare the secluded tribe for either fate destiny had in store — a homecoming to the Slope, or else a life of perpetual hiding in the wilderness.

Either way, it’s the job I’m trained for. A duty I know how to fulfill.

He found it hard to settle his restless mind, though. For some reason Dwer thought instead about Rety, the irascible sooner girl who had chosen to stay with the Streaker crew. No surprise there; she wanted nothing in life more than to leave Jijo, and that seemed the most likely, if risky, way.

But Dwer’s mind roamed back to their adventure together — as captives of the Danik robot, when Dwer used to carry the machine across rivers by wearing it like a hat, conducting its suspensor fields through his own throbbing nervous system.…

All at once he realized. The recollection was no accident. No random association.

It was a warning.

Creepy shivers coursed his spine. Eerily familiar.

“Dung!” he cried out, swiveling to the west—

— just in time to spy a tremendous object, blue and rounded, like a demon’s face, soar past the Rimmer peaks and hurtle silently toward him, outracing sound.

It was like watching the onrush of an arrow, aimed straight at your nose. In moments the starship grew from a mere speck, burgeoning to fill the world!

Dwer shut his eyes, bracing for erasure.…

Kiduras passed, two for each racing heartbeat. After twenty or so, the gondola was struck by a wall of sound, shaking him like thunder.

But sound was all. No impact.

It must have missed me!

He forced an eye open, turning around…

… and spied it to the east, bearing toward the decoy balloons.

Now he could tell, the behemoth moved at a higher altitude. The imminent collision had been a mirage. It never came within a league of him, or gave Dwer any notice.

But it can’t miss the decoys, he thought. They’re in open view.

Blade, his childhood qheuen playmate, had reported that balloons seemed transparent to Jophur instruments. But that was at night. It’s almost broad daylight now. Surely they see the gasbags by now.

Or maybe not. Dwer recalled how excited the balloon concept made the Niss Machine, which understood a lot about Jophur ways. Perhaps Gillian Baskin knew what she was doing.

The idea was to get the Jophur confused. To send them searching around for supposed enemy ships they could detect only vaguely.

Sure enough, the space titan decelerated ponderously, descending in a long spiral around the general area. An aura of warped air seemed to bend all light passing within half a radius of the tremendous globe. The rewq made clear this was a shield of some sort — apparent grounds for the Jophur assumption of invincibility.

Dwer reached for the hammer at his waist … and waited.

Lark

ME WANTED TO MAKE LOVE AGAIN. Who wouldn’t, after the way Ling had writhed and clutched at him, with animal-like cries that belied her background as an urbane sky god? He, too, had felt a seismic quake of passion. Ardor that reached out of something wild within … followed by a release that was blissfully free of any sapient thought.

Despite their dire circumstance, trapped in a ship filled with mortal enemies, Lark felt fine. Better than he had since—

Since ever. Somehow, this climax did not leave him in a state of lassitude, but filled with energy, a postcoital animation he had never experienced before. So much for my vow of celibacy, he thought. Of course, that vow had been for the sake of Jijo. And we’re not on Jijo anymore.

He reached for Ling. But she stopped him with an upraised hand, sitting up, her breasts still glistening with their commingled sweat.

Ling’s eyes were distant. Her ears twitched, listening.

A jungle surrounded them — supported by lattice scaffolding that filled a chamber larger than the artificial cave of Biblos. A maze of fantastic, profusely varied vegetation nearly filled the cavity. In this far corner, apparently illtended by the maintenance drones, the two fugitive hominids had built a nest. Ling, the trained spatiobiologist, had no trouble spotting several types of fruits and tubers to eat. They might live weeks or months this way … or perhaps the rest of their lives. Unless the universe intruded.

Which it did, of course.

“They’ve turned on their defensive array,” she told him. “And I think they’re slowing down.”

“How can you tell?” Lark listened, but could make out no difference in the mesh of interlacing engine sounds, more complex than the verdant jungle.

Ling slipped into the rag of a tunic that was her sole remaining garment. “Come on,” she said.

With a sigh, he put on his own torn shirt. Lark picked up the leather thong holding his amulet — the fragment of the Holy Egg he had chipped off as a child. For the first time in years, he considered not slipping it on. If the ship had left Jijo, might that make him free at last from the love-hate burden?

“Come on!” Ling was already scooting along the latticeway, heading toward the exit. In a torn cloth sling, she carried the wounded red torus — one of the traeki rings provided by Asx.

He slipped the thong around his neck and reached for the crude sack that contained the purple ring and their few other possessions.

“I’m on my way,” he murmured, clambering out of the nest, wondering if they would ever be back.

Ling had her bearings now. With Lark to sniff scent indicators at tunnel intersections, and the purple ring serving as a passkey, they had little trouble hurrying “north” up the ship’s axis. Twice they sped along by using antigravity drop tubes. Lark’s stomach did somersaults as his body went careening up a jet-black tunnel. The landings were always soft, though. Even better, they did not meet a single Jophur or robot along the way.

“They’re at battle stations,” she explained. “Here. Their control room should be just below this level. If I’m right, there should be an observers’ gallery.…”

Lark smelled an oddly familiar aroma, much like the fragrance traeki used when they referred to Biblos.

Ling pointed to a rare written symbol inscribed on the wall. She crowed. “I was right!”

Lark had seen the glyph before — a rayed spiral with five swirling arms. Even Jijo’s fallen races knew what it stood for. The Great Galactic Library. Symbol for both patience and knowledge.

“Hurry!” Ling said as he applied the purple ring to the entrance plate. The barrier slid open, giving access to a dim chamber whose sole illumination came through a broad window, directly opposite the door. It took just a few strides to cross over and stare through the glass at a bright gallery below. A chamber filled with Jophur.

There were scores of the tapered stacks. Taller and more slickly perfect than any Jijoan traeki, they squatted next to instrument stations, many of them surrounded by flashing panels and lighted controls. At the very center, one gleaming torus pile perched on a raised dais, surveying the labors of the crew.

“A lot of big ships have observation decks, like the one we’re in,” Ling explained in a low voice. “They’re for when legates from any of the great Institutes come aboard — say on an inspection tour. Most of the time, though, they just contain a watcher.”

“A what?”

She gestured to her left, where Lark now saw a roughly man-sized cube with a single dark lens in the middle, looking over the Jophur control room.

“It’s a WOM … or Write-Only Memory. A witness. Any capital ship from a great clan is supposed to carry one, especially if engaged in some major venture. It takes a record that can then be archived in deep storage so later generations may learn from the experience of each race, after a certain time period expires.”

“How long?”

Ling shrugged. “Millions of years, I guess. You hear about watchers being sent for storage, but I’ve never known of a WOM being read during the present epoch. I guess when you put it that way, it kind of sounds like a contradiction in terms. A typical Galactic hypocrisy. Or maybe I don’t grasp some subtlety of the concept.”

You and me, both, Lark thought, dismissing the watcher from his mind, like a slab of stone.

“Look,” he said, pointing toward one end of the Jophur headquarters chamber. “Those big screens show the outside! Seems we just passed over the Rimmers.”

“Toward the sun.” Ling nodded. “Either it’s morning or—”

“Nothing on the Slope looks like that prairie. That’s poison grass. So it is morning and that’s east.”

“See the clouds,” Ling commented. “They’re breaking up, but it must’ve been some stor—” She stopped, blinking. “Hear that? The Jophur are excited. Maybe I can adjust these knobs and—”

Sound abruptly boomed through the observation deck. A screech and ratchet of accented GalTwo.

“ … COMMANDED TO CORRECT THE DISSONANCE/DISAGREEMENTS BETWEEN YOUR VARIED REPORTS! JUSTIFY THIS PATTERNED SEARCH! EXPLAIN REASONS WHY WE SHOULD NOT RETURN TO OUR PRIMARY MISSION — SIFTING FOR THE WOLFLING CRAFT!”

Lark saw the Jophur on the central dais gesticulate along with these word glyphs, so perhaps that one was in command. If only I had a weapon, he mused. But the glasslike barrier was probably too strong for anything as crude as a Jijoan axe or rifle.

“We/I cannot recommend departing this area until we verify/rebuke the possibility of foe ships/smallships,”replied a nearby stack, using a less imperious version of the same dialect. “Starship cognizances hover nearby, undetectable on any other band! But how can that be? Flight without gravitics? The Jophur, great and mighty, must have/pierce this secret, for safety’s sake!”

Another ring stack edged forward, and Lark felt a shiver of recognition. That awkward pile of ragged toruses had once been the former traeki High Sage, though its speech held none of the unassuming gentleness of Asx.

“I/we offer this wisdom — that the scent indicators we pursue have all the stink of an elaborate ruse! Recall the flame-tube weapons that the savage sooners used against our corvette! Now our comrades in the captured Biblos Archive report they have identified the wolfling trick as ‘rockets.’ Contradicting the tactics officer, I/we must point out that these rockets flew quite successfully without gravitics! I/we further maintain that—”

Another stack interrupted.

“Localization! One of the nearby cognizance sites has remained active long enough to verify its location.”

The commander vented compact clots of purple vapor.

“PROCEED ON ATTACK VECTOR! PREPARE A CAPTURE BOX FOR SEIZURE OF SOURCE! WHETHER IT IS A SOPHISTICATED STAR ENEMY OR ANOTHER SOONER RUSE, WE SHALL SECURE IT FOR LATER INSPECTION, THEN RETURN TO OUR PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVE.”

The ring piles reacted more swiftly than Lark had ever witnessed traeki move, setting to work in a whirl of base feet and flailing tendrils. Soon the outside monitors showed clouds and prairie rushing by in a blur, depicted in many spectral bands. On some displays, flashing concentric circles closed in.

“Targeting brackets—” Ling explained. But the circles seemed to contain nothing. Only open space.

Lark’s right hand drifted under his shirt, stroking the sliver of the Egg. “I feel …”

Ling tugged his arm. “Look at the far left screen!”

He squinted, and began to make out something small and round. A ghostly shape, depicted as nearly transparent. Blur cloth, he realized, recognizing the effects of that specialized g’Kek weaving. All at once Lark understood. The Jophur were streaking toward an object that was invisible to nearly all their sensors, because it was made of nothing but air and fabric plaited to smear light.

If only his rewq had not lapsed into exhausted hibernation! The hazy globe loomed larger, even as Lark’s heart beat faster. His amulet throbbed in response.

“What is it?” Ling wondered, perplexed.

Before he could answer, without warning, all the forward viewing screens abruptly went black.

One Jophur let out a shrill wail. Several vented colored steam. The commander flexed and blared.

“HOSTILITIES ALERT! ROBOTIC DEFENSE! ALL STATIONS PREPARE FOR THE DRAWBA—”

Gillian

DETONATION!”

Streaker’s detection officer shouted excitedly. “One of our proximity bombs just went off, almost on t-top of the Jophur!”

The bridge filled with neo-dolphin cheers. “Maybe that got the bastardss,” someone chittered hopefully.

Gillian called for quiet.

“Keep it down, everyone. That firecracker won’t do more than scratch their paint.” She took a deep breath. It was the crucial moment of decision, for commitment to the plan.

“Launch the swarm!” she ordered. “Get us up, Kaa. Exactly the way we planned.”

“Aye!” The pilot’s back showed momentary waves of tension as he sent commands down his neural tap. Streaker responded instantly, engines ramping up to full power for the first time in almost a year. The sound was thrilling, though the act would surely give them away once Jophur sensors recovered.

Telemetry showed the motivators running well. Gillian glanced at viewers showing the engine room. Hannes Suessi darted back and forth, checking the work of his well-trained crew. Even Emerson D’Anite seemed engrossed, running his long, dark hands over the prime resonance console, his old duty station during so many other rough scrapes. Speech seemed hardly relevant at this point, when physical insight and tactile skill mattered most.

Perhaps this time, too, the ship would hear Emerson’s rich baritone victory yell.

If the repairs all worked. If we get full use out of the spare parts we mined from discarded wrecks. If the decoys run as planned. If the enemy does what we hope … if … if…

Overhead, the stress crystal dome of the control room changed color. The jet black of the abyss faded rapidly as Streaker aimed upward, lightening to a royal blue, then a clear pale green. The engine’s roar changed tone as Jijo’s ocean reluctantly let go its heavy grasp.

Streaker blew out of the sea with explosive force, already traveling faster than a bullet, trailed by a spoor of superheated steam.

From submarine, back to ship of space. Here we go again.

Go, old girl.

Go!

Rety

WAKENED FROM A HALF-MILLION-YEAR SLEEP, THE ancient wreck clattered and shrieked. Forced into furious effort, it howled, like some beast screaming in ag-ony.

Rety screamed back, pressing both hands over her ears. Harsh fists seemed to pummel her against the arching pillar where she had tied herself down. With each shake, strips of rope and electrical cable dug into her skin.

From Rety’s belt pouch, yee’s head waved toward her face.

“wife! wife don’t cry! don’t worry, wife!”

But the piping words were lost amid a maelstrom of sound. Soon his calls merged into a wail, an urrish ululation.

Overwhelmed with dread of being trapped, Rety tore at the straps with her nails, struggling for release.

She never noticed the transition from water to air. The little holosim display showed whitecaps stretching to a sandy shore, then the tops of clouds.

Crawling across the hard metal floor, Rety toiled toward the airlock, seeing only a narrow tunnel through a haze of pain.

Ewasx

THE EFFECTS START TO WEAR OFF.

I emerge from stun state, blind and alone. More duras pass before I coalesce My sense of oneness. Of purpose.

Sending trace signals down the tendrils of control, I reestablish rapport with subservient rings. Soon I have access to their varied senses, staring in all directions with eye buds that flutter and twitch.

HELLO, MY RINGS. Report now and prepare for urgent movement. Clearly we have experienced — and survived — an episode of the Drawback.

The what?

Truly, you do not know, My rings? You have no experience of the chief disadvantage of the Oailie gift?

Certain weapons exist which can render us Jophur insensate for a time, forcing us to rely on robotic protection for the duration of that brief incapacity.

What incapacity? you ask.

I/we look around. We are no longer near the CaptainLeader, but stand instead at the main control panel, our tendrils wrapped around the piloting wheels.

WHAT ARE WE DOING?

I command the tendrils to draw back, and they obey. Viewscreens show a blur of high-speed motion as the Polkjhy races across a landscape of jagged, twisty canyons, unlike anything our memory tracks recall from the Slope. Inertial indicators show us racing east, ever farther from the sea. Away from the prey.

Other stacks are beginning to stir, as their master rings rouse from the Drawback. Hurriedly, I send our basal torus in motion, taking us away from the pilot station. We scurry around behind the CaptainLeader, who is just now rousing from torpor.

In all likelihood others will assume that our sophisticated robotic guardians — programmed to serve/protect during a Drawback interlude — had good reason to send Polkjhy careening in this unfavorable direction. Feigning innocence, I/we watch as the pilot stacks resume control, arresting this headlong flight, preparing to regain altitude once more.

MY RINGS, WHAT WAS YOUR AIM? WHAT WERE YOU TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH WHILE YOUR MASTER TORUS WAS INCAPACITATED? TO SEND US CRASHING INTO A MOUNTAIN, PERHAPS?

The robots would not have allowed that. But diverting the course of Polkjhy—that was in your power, no?

I perceive we are not finished learning the arts of cooperation.

Gillian

THRILLING AS IT WAS TO BE MOVING AGAIN, GILLIAN knew this wasn’t the same old Streaker. It ran sluggishly for a snark-class survey ship. The nearby landmass receded with disheartening slowness compared with the rabbitlike agility she used to show. Suessi’s motors weren’t at fault. It was the damned carbon-carbon coating, sealing Streaker’ s hull under countless tons of dead weight, clogging the probability flanges and gravitics radiators, costing valuable time to gain orbital momentum. Minutes of vulnerability.

Gillian glanced at the swarm display. A scatter of bright dots showed at least twenty decoys out of the water, with a dozen more now rising from their ancient graves, screaming joy — or agony — over this unwonted mass resurrection. Groups of bait ships speared away in different directions, disbanding according to preset plans, though empty of life.

All empty, except one.

Gillian thought of the human girl, Rety, self-exiled aboard one of those glimmering lights. Would it have been better to break into her hijacked ship? Or try to seize control of the computer, reprogramming it to bring Rety ashore?

The Niss didn’t think either effort would succeed in the slim time allowed. Anyway, Alvin and Huck had convinced Gillian not to try.

“We know what you Earthlings are trying to do with this breakout attempt,” the young g’Kek had said.

“And yet you volunteered to come?”

“Why not? We risked the Midden in a hollow tree trunk. All sooners know life is something you just borrow for a while. Each person must choose how to spend it.

“All our families and all our septs depend on your venture, Dr. Baskin. This Rety person selected her destiny. Let her follow it.”

As Streaker gradually accelerated, Gillian turned to the dolphin in charge of psi-ops. “Let me know when you get anything at all from the observer,” she ordered.

“No sssignal yet-t,” the fin answered. “It’sss well past due, if you ask me.”

“No one asked,” Gillian snapped.

Without wanting to, she glanced at the Jijoan mathematician, Sara Koolhan, whose brother took off in a hot-air balloon, knowing that if the gale did not get him, the Jophur probably would. Sara floated in a swarm of bubbles, watching intently. But behind the visor of her breathing helmet, Gillian saw a single soft tear, running down the young woman’s cheek.

Gillian did not need more guilt. She tried hard to think pragmatically.

I just wish the boy hadn’t died for nothing. We’re going to have to decide…

She checked the swarm monitors.

… in moments.…

Dwer

THE DAZZLING BLAST JOLTED HIS REWQ, CAUSING IT to retreat, almost comatose. But the creature served its purpose, saving Dwer’s eyes. Except for a few purple spots, vision soon returned almost to normal.

There’ll be a shock wave, he thought. After the abuse of last night and morning, he wondered if the balloon would survive another shaking.

Dwer readied his hammer over the row of crystals, each jammed into the wicker gondola. He peered east, trying to figure out which message to send.

All the decoy balloons were gone — no surprise there.

But dammit, where’s the Jophur ship?

Dwer could not act without data, so he held on and rode out the explosion’s booming echo when it came rolling by, flattening the serrated grass of the Venom Plain.

The balloon survived. Solid urrish workmanship. Picking up binoculars, he sought again for the Jophur, scanning the horizon.

Could it have been blown up by the aerial mine? Gillian Baskin had thought the prospect nearly impossible. No weapon in Streaker’s arsenal could pierce the defense of such a dreadnought, even with the element of surprise. But it might be possible to inconvenience the enemy for a crucial time.

Finally, he made out the distant glint. In fact, the ship seemed to be receding! He had the illusion that it was heading toward the rising sun.

Dwer hesitated over the message crystals. There were only four. None of the prearranged codes took in this possibility … that the foe would flee the scene. Not upward toward space, or west back to the Midden, or even standing still, but away from any chance to spy the Earthling ship!

If I don’t send anything, they’ll think I’m dead.

He thought of Sara, and was tempted to smash all the crystals, just to reassure her.

But then they might make a wrong decision, and she might die instead of me. Because of me.

By now, squadrons of salvaged decoy spaceships would be heading out beyond Jijo’s atmosphere, spiraling toward orbit and beyond. Gillian Baskin had to decide which group to go with. Dwer’s signal was supposed to help.

Frustration locked him in a rigor of indecision. Raising the binoculars once more, he found the Jophur ship again, a bare pinpoint near the horizon.

Then he noticed something.

The distant dot … it had stopped receding. Instead, it seemed to hover beyond a range of craggy highlands.

The Gray Hills, Dwer realized. If only I can give the right signal, I’ll be able to start descending in time to land where I want!

The glittering pinpoint hesitated, then began to move again. Dwer soon confirmed — it was growing larger. The Jophur were heading back this way!

Now I know what to send, he thought with satisfaction. Dwer raised the hammer and brought it smashing down on the second crystal. That instant, his back swarmed with a curious tingling. The feeling came and left quickly.

His duty done at last, Dwer reached for the gas-discharge rope. The battleship was going to pass close again, and the only way he had to maneuver was to lose height.

Easy does it, he thought. Let her down slowly. Might as well reach the foothills before you have to…

The great ship loomed rapidly, then streaked westward while gaining altitude, missing him by hundreds of arrowflights.

Alas, this time it did not ignore Dwer.

As it hurried by, the mighty blue globe dropped a tiny speck. A minuscule dot that arced away and then dropped rapidly, glittering as it came. Dwer did not have to know much about Galactic technology to recognize a missile when he saw one.

Gillian mentioned that I might attract attention when I signaled.

Dwer sighed, watching the fleck turn a gentle curve and then plunge straight toward him.

Ah, well, he thought, picking up his prize possession — the bow made for him by the master carvers of Ovoom Town, in honor of his skill as tracker for the Commons of Six Races.

When the explosion came, it was unlike anything he expected.

Gillian

THAT’S IT!” SHE CRIED OUT, GLAD OF THE NEWS.

Even more elated was Sara, who let out an urrish sounding yelp, on learning that her brother yet lived.

The signal also confirmed Gillian’s best guess. The Jophur had been slow reacting, but they were doing as she hoped.

“They are predictable,” commented the Niss, whose whirling hologram passed through oxy-water bubbles unperturbed. “The delay only means we get more of a head start.”

Gillian agreed, but in her thoughts added:

We’ll need ten times this much of a lead, in order to make it all the way.

Aloud, she told the pilot:

“Punch us out of here, Kaa. Stay with swarm number two. Put us second from the front of the pack.”

The pilot shouted,“Aye!”

Soon the low, driving harmonies of the motivators notched upward in pitch. Gillian glanced at the engineroom display. Morale seemed high among Suessi’s crewfen. As she watched, Emerson D’Anite threw his head back to sing! Gillian only picked up a fragment, though the lyrics had Emerson’s coworkers in stitches.

“Jijo, Jijo…

It’s off to war we go!”

Even suffering from brain affliction, his puns were terrible. It was good to have some of the old Emerson back again.

External displays showed the planet swiftly receding, a gentle blue-brown globe, swathed in a slim envelope of life-giving weather. Numerous sharp-bordered green patches testified to where some metropolis once stood, before the site was scoured and seeded. Whether now covered with swamp, forest, or prairie, the regions still showed regular outlines that would take eons to erase.

Earth has such scars, she thought. In even greater abundance. The difference is that we were ignorant and didn’t know better. We had to learn the hard way how to manage a world, by teaching ourselves.

Gillian glanced at Sara, whose eyes bore pain and wonder, watching her homeworld diminish to a small orb — the first of her sooner line to look down at Jijo, ever since her ancestors fled here, centuries ago.

A place of refuge. A sanctuary for Earthlings and others. They all meant to hunker down, cowering away from the cosmos, each race redeeming its heritage in its own peculiar way.

Then we brought the universe crashing in on them.

She watched Lieutenant Tsh’t move among the crewfen at their dome consoles, encouraging them with bursts of sonar, always checking for lapses of attention. The meticulous supervision hardly seemed necessary. Not one of the elite bridge staff had ever shown a trace of stress atavism. All were guaranteed high uplift classifications when they got home.

If we get home.

If there is still a home, waiting for us.

In fact, everyone knew the real reason why half the crew had been left behind on Jijo, along with the Kiqui and copies of Streaker’s records.

We don’t have much of a chance of escaping … but it might be possible to draw the universe away from Jijo. Diverting its attention. Making it forget the sooners, once again.

It would take skill and luck just to achieve that sacrifice. But if successful, what an accomplishment! Preventing the extinction of the g’Kek, or the unwanted transformation of the traeki, or the discovery and blame that would befall Earth, if human sooners were exposed here.

If this works, we’ll have a complete cache of Earthlings on Jijo — humans, chimps, and now dolphins, too. A safety reserve, in case the worst happens at home.

That seems worthwhile. A result worth paying for.

Of course, like everything in the cosmos, it would come at a price.

They had passed Loocen — the moon still glittering with abandoned cities — and accelerated about a million kilometers beyond when the detection officer declared:

“Enemy cruiser leaving atmosphere! Vectoring after swarm number one!”

The spatial schematic showed a speck rising from Jijo, larger and brighter than any other, lumbering to accelerate its titanic mass.

We could outrun you, once, Gillian thought. We still can … for a while.

Even handicapped by the irksome carbon sheathing, Streaker would spend some time increasing the gap between her and the pursuing battleship. Newtonian inertia must drag down the heavier Jophur — that is, until it reached speeds adequate for level-zero hyperdrive.

Then the speed advantage would start to shift. If only a transfer point were nearer. Gillian shook her head, and kept on wishing.

If only Tom and Creideiki were here. They’d get us away without much trouble, I bet. I could retire to sick bay with confidence, treating dolphins for itchy-flake and spending my copious free time contemplating the mysteries of Herbie.

In a moment of decision, she had elected to take along the billion-year-old mummy, despite the high likelihood Streaker would be destroyed in a matter of hours or days. She could not part with the relic, which Tom had fought so hard to snatch from a fleet of ghost ships in the Shallow Cluster — back in those heady days before the whole Civilization of the Five Galaxies seemed to turn against Streaker.

Back when the naive crew expected gratitude for their epochal discovery.

Never surprise a stodgy Galactic, went a Tymbrimi saying. Unless you’re prepared with twelve more surprises in your pocket.

Good advice.

Unfortunately, her supply of tricks was running low. There were, in fact, only a few left.

The Sages

THE LATEST GROUP OF PILGRIMS UNDERSTOOD more now, about the Holy Egg.

More than Drake and Ur-Chown knew, when they first stared at the newly emerged wonder, glowing white-hot from its fiery emergence. Those two famed heroes conspired to exploit the Egg for their own religious and political purposes, declaring it an omen. A harbinger of unity. A god.

Now the sages have printouts provided by the dolphin ship. The report, downloaded from a unit of the Great Galactic Library, calls the Egg—a psi-active geomorph. A phenomenon observed on some life worlds whose tectonic restoration processes are smoothly continuous, where past cycles of occupation and renewal had certain temporal and technologic traits…

Phwhoondau contemplated this as the newly reassembled Council of Sages approached the sacred site, walking, slithering, and rolling toward the place they had all separately been heading when they heard Vubben’s dying call.

In other words, the Egg is a distillation, a condensation of Jijo’s past. All the dross deposited by the Buyur … and those who came before … has combined to contribute patterns.

Patterns that somehow wove their way through magma pressure and volcanic heat.

To the south, these spilled forth chaotically, to become the Spectral Flow. But here, conditions permitted coalescence. A crystalline tip consisting of pure memory and purpose.

At last he understood the puzzle of why every sooner race settled on the Slope, despite initial jealousies and feuds.

We were summoned.

Some said this knowledge would crush the old ways, and Phwhoondau agreed. The former faith — founded in the Sacred Scrolls, then modified by waves of heresy — would never be the same.

The basis of the Commons of Six Races had changed.

But the basis survived.

A re-formed Council of Six entered the scarred canyon circle, where they spent a brief time contemplating the charred remains of their eldest member, a jumble of frail nerves and fibers, plastered against the Egg’s pitted, sooty flank.

They buried Vubben there — the only sage ever so honored. Then began their work.

Others would join them soon. A re-formed council meant re-formed duty.

At last we know what you are, Phwhoondau thought silently, leaning back to regard the Egg’s great curving mass.

But other questions remain. Such as … why?

Rety

THE CONTROLS REFUSED TO RESPOND!

“Come on!” she shouted, slamming the holosim box with the palm of her hand, then jiggling more levers.

Not that Rety had much idea what she’d do if she gained mastery over the decoy vessel. At first, the stunning views of Jijo and space sent her brain reeling. It was all so much bigger than she ever imagined. Since then, she had left the big visual holo turned off, while continuing to fiddle with other panels and displays.

Wisdom preached that she ought to leave the machinery alone … and finally, Rety listened. She forced herself to back away, joining yee at her small stack of supplies, smuggled off the sled when Chuchki wasn’t looking. She stroked her little husband while munching a food-concentrate bar, pondering the situation.

Every salvaged decoy ship had been programmed to head out — by a variety of routes — toward the nearest “transfer point.” From there, they would jump away from fallow Galaxy Four, aiming for distant, traffic-filled lanes where oxygen-breathing life-forms teemed.

That was good enough for Rety, providing she then found a way to signal some passing vessel.

This old ship may not be worth much, but it oughta pay my passage to their next stop, at least.

What would happen next remained vague in her mind. Getting some kind of job, most likely. She still had the little teaching machine that used to belong to Dennie Sudman, so learning those jabber-talk alien languages shouldn’t be too hard.

I’ll find a way to make myself useful. I always have.

Of course, everything depended on making it to the transfer point.

Gillian prob’ly set things up so the decoys’ll try to lure the Jophur. Maybe they give off some sort of light or noise to make ’em think there are dolphins aboard.

That might work for a while. The stinky rings’ll chase around, losin’ time while checkin’ things out.

But Rety knew what would happen next. Eventually, the Jophur gods would catch on to the trick. They’d figure out what to look for, and realize which ship was the real target.

Suppose by then they’ve torn apart half the decoys. That still leaves me fitty-fitty odds. Which is Ifni times more than I’d have aboard old Streaker. Once they figure which one she is, they’ll leave the rest of us decoys alone to go about our business.

At least that was the overall idea. Ever since she had found Kunn and Jass, dead in their jail cells, Rety knew she must get off the Earthling ship as fast as possible and make it on her own.

I’d better be able to send out a signal, when we pop into a civilized galaxy, she thought. I s’pose it’ll take more than just shining a light out through a window. Guess I better study some more about radio and that hyperwave stuff.

As wonderful and patient as the teaching unit was, Rety did not look forward to the drudgery ahead … nor to relying on the bland paste put out by the ancient food processor, once her supply of Streaker food ran out. The machine had taken the sample of fingernail cuticle she gave it, and after a few moments put out a substance that tasted exactly like cuticle.

Chirping tones interrupted her thoughts. A light flashed atop the holosim casing. Rety scooted over to the machine.

“Display on!”

A 3-D image erupted just above the floor plates. For a time, she made little sense of the image, which showed five small groups of amber points spiraling away from a tiny blue disk. It took moments to realize the dot was Jijo, and the decoy swarms had already left the planet far behind. The separation between the convoys also grew larger, with each passing dura.

One dot lagged behind, brighter than the others, gleaming red instead of yellow. It crept toward one of the fleeing swarms as she watched.

That must be the Jophur ship, she realized. Squinting closer, she saw that the big dot was trailed by a set of much tinier crimson pinpricks, almost too small to see, following like beads on a string.

The red symbol accelerated, slowly closing the distance to its intended prey.

Boy, I pity whoever’s in that swarm, when the stink rings catch up with ’em.

It took Rety a while longer to fathom the unpleasant truth.

That swarm was the one that contained her own ship.

The Jophur were coming for her first.

My usual luck, she complained, knowing better than to think the universe cared.

Dwer

EVERYTHING CHANGED.

One moment, he had been surrounded by sky. Mountains, clouds, and prairies stretched below his wicker gondola. The urrish balloon bulged and creaked overhead.

From the high northwest, a glittering object fell toward him, like a stoop raptor, unstoppable once it has chosen its prey.

That’s me, he thought, feeling transfixed, like a grass mouse who, caught in the open, knows there is no escape, and so has little choice but to watch the terrible beauty of Death on the wing.

Death came streaking toward him.

He felt an explosion, a shrill brilliance…

… and found himself here.

A gilded haze surrounded Dwer as he took stock.

I’m alive.

The sensations of a young, strong body accompanied irksome itches and the sting of recent scrapes. His clothes were as they had been. So was the gondola, for that matter — a basket woven out of dried river reeds — its contents undamaged.

The same could not be said of the balloon itself. The great gasbag lay collapsed in a curved heap of blur cloth, its upper half apparently cleaved off. Remnant folds lay spread across the interior of what Dwer came to realize must be a prison of some sort.

A spherical jail. He now saw it clearly. A sphere whose inner surface gave off a pale, golden light, confusing to the eye at first.

“Huh!”

To Dwer’s surprise, his principal reaction was intrigue. In those final moments, as the missile fell, he had bid farewell to life. Now each added moment was profit. He could spend it as he chose.

He decided on curiosity.

Dwer clambered out of the basket and eased his moccasins onto the gold surface. He half expected it to be slick, but the material instead clung to his soles, so that he had to pull with some effort each time he took a step. After a few tentative strides, he came to yet another startling revelation.

“Down” is wherever I happen to he standing!

From Dwer’s new position, it looked as if the gondola was tilted almost sideways, about to topple onto him.

He squatted, looking down at the “floor” between his legs, riding out the expected wave of disorientation. It wasn’t too bad.

I’ll adapt. It’ll be like learning to ice-walk across a glacier. Or probing face caves at the end of a rope, dangling over the Desolation Cliffs.

Then he realized something. Looking down, he saw more than just a sticky golden surface. Something glittered beneath it. Like a dusting of tiny diamonds. Gemstones, mixed with dark loam.

He leaned closer, cupping hands on both sides of his eyes to keep out stray light.

All at once Dwer fathomed; the diamonds were stars.

Lark

CROUCHING BEHIND AN AROMATIC OBELISK, TWO humans had an unparalleled chance to view events in the Jophur control room.

Lark would much rather they had stayed in the quiet, safe “observation chamber.”

Towering stacks of sappy toruses loomed nearby, puffing steam as each Jophur worked at a luminous instrument station. The density of smells made Lark want to gag. It must be worse for Ling, who hadn’t grown up near traeki. Yet she seemed enthralled to be here.

Well, this was a terrific idea, he groused mentally, recalling the impulse that had sent them charging into a pit of foes.

Hey, look! The Jophur seem stunned! Let’s rush down from this nice, safe hiding place and sabotage their instruments while they’re out!

Only the Jophur didn’t stay out long enough. By the time he and Ling made it halfway across the wide control room, several ring piles abruptly started puffing and swaying as they roused from their torpor. While machine voices reported status to their reviving masters, the two humans barely managed to leap behind this cluster of spirelike objects, roughly the shape of idealized Jophur, but twice as tall and made of some moist, fibrous substance.

Lark dropped down to the floor. All he wanted was to scrunch out of sight, close his eyes, and make objective reality go away.

Responding to his racing heartbeat, the purple ring twitched in its cloth bag. Lark put his hand on it and the thing eventually calmed down.

“I think I can tell what’s going on!”

Lark glanced up the twin, tanned columns of Ling’s legs, and saw that she was leaning around one of the soggy pillars, staring at the Jophur data screens. Reaching up, he seized her left wrist and yanked her down. She landed on her bare bottom beside him.

“Make like vermin,” was his advice. On matters of concealment and survival, Ling had a lot to learn from a Jijoan sooner.

“Okay, brother rat.” She nodded with surprising cheerfulness, then went on eagerly. “Some of their screens are set to spectra I can’t grok. But I could tell we’re in space now, racing toward Izmunuti.”

A wave of nausea struck Lark — a sensation akin to panic. Unlike his siblings, who used to talk and dream about star-flight when they were little, he had never wanted to leave Jijo. The very thought made him feel sick. Sensing his discomfort, Ling took his head and stroked it, but that did not stop her from talking, describing a complex hunt through space that Lark failed to visualize, no matter how he tried.

“Apparently there must have been a fleet of ships on or near Jijo,” she explained. “Though I can’t imagine how they got there. Maybe they came snooping from Izmunuti and the Jophur are chasing them away. Anyway, the mystery fleet seems to have split into five groups, all of them heading separately for the flare star. And from there to the transfer point, I suppose.

“There’s also a couple of small objects trailing behind this ship … connected to it, as far as I can tell, by a slender force string. I don’t know what their purpose is. But give me time.…”

Lark wanted to laugh out loud. He would give Ling the world. The universe! But right now all he really wanted was their nest. Their little green hideaway, where sweet fruits dangled within reach and no one could find them.

Lark was starting to push the vertigo away at last, when a noise blared from across the room.

“What’s that?” he asked, sitting up. He did not try to stop Ling from rising partway and peering around for a look.

“Weapons release,” she explained. “The Jophur are firing missiles at the nearest squadron. They must be pretty confident, because they sent just one for each ship.”

Lark silently wished the new aliens luck, whoever they were. If any of them got away, they might report what they saw to the Galactic Migration Institute. Although Jijo’s Six Races had lived in fear of the law for two thousand years, the intervention of neutral judges would be far better than any fate the Jophur planned to mete out, in private.

“The small ships are trying evasive maneuvers, but it’s doing no good,” Ling said. “The missiles are closing in.”

Rety

SHE CURSED THE DROSS SHIP, FOR NOT GIVING HER control.

She cursed Gillian Baskin and the dolphins, for putting her in a position where she had no choice but to escape from their incompetence into this impossible trap.

She cursed the Jophur for sending missiles after this decoy flotilla, instead of expertly finding the right prey.

Above all, Rety swore an oath at herself. For in the end, she had no one else to blame.

Her teaching unit explained the symbols representing those deadly arrows, now clearly visible in the display, catching up fast.

One by one, the ships behind hers met their own avenging predators. Surprisingly, the amber pinpoints did not snuff out, but turned crimson instead. Each then drifted backward, toward a meeting with the big red dot.

The Jophur did not swallow their captives. That would take too much time. Instead, they were snagged at the end of a chain — like a tadpole’s tail — that waved behind the mighty ship.

Rety wondered. Maybe they don’t want to kill, after all. Maybe they just want prisoners!

If so, Rety would be prepared. She held yee with one arm, and the teaching unit with the other, setting it to begin teaching her Galactic Two — Jophur dialect.

When her own missile arrived, Rety was calmer than she expected.

“Don’t worry, yee,” she said, stroking her little husband. “We’ll find somethin’ they want, an’ make a deal. Just you wait an’ see.”

With desperate confidence, she held on as the ancient Buyur vessel suddenly quivered and shook. In moments, the motors’ grating drone cut off … and then so did the downward tug of the deck beneath her. In its place, a gentler pull seemed to draw her toward the nose of the disabled ship.

The lights went out. But Rety could see a bit. Stepping and sliding carefully along the slanted floor and walls, she followed the source of illumination to an unobstructed viewing port, where she peered outside and saw a world of pale yellow dawn.

yee commented dryly.

“beats being dead, i guess.”

Rety agreed. “I guess.” Then she shrugged.

“At least we’ll see, one way or t’other.”

Gillian

I FOUND A LIBRARY REFERENCE. THEY ARE CALLED capture boxes,” the Niss explained. “This weapon offers a clever solution to the Jophur dilemma.”

“How do you figure?” Gillian asked.

“We thought we had them in an awkward situation, where they must come close and inspect every decoy in order to find us. A cumbersome, time-consuming process.

“But this way, the Jophur need only get near enough to dispatch special missiles. They can then move on, dragging a string of captives behind them.”

“Won’t all that additional mass slow them down?” asked Kaa, the pilot.

“Yes, and that works in our favor. Alas, not enough to make up for the advantage this technique gives them.”

Gillian shook her head. “Too bad we didn’t know about this in time to incorporate it in our plans.”

The Niss answered with a defensive tone. “Great clans can access weaponry files spanning a billion years of Galactic history.”

Silence reigned on the bridge, until Sara Koolhan spoke, her voice transposed by the amplifying faceplate of her helmet.

“What happens if we get caught by a missile?”

“It creates a field related to the toporgic cage your Six Races found enveloping the Rothen ship. Of course that one was meters thick, and missiles cannot carry that much pseudo-material. The chief effect of a capture box is to suppress digital cognizance.”

Sara looked confused, so Gillian explained.

“Digital computers are detectable at a distance, and can be suppressed by field-effect technologies. A principal reason why organic life-forms dominate the Five Galaxies, instead of machines.

“Unfortunately, this means our decoys can be disabled easily, by enclosing them in a thin shell of warped spacetime.”

“Indeed, it seems an ideal weapon to use against resurrected starships lacking crews. The Jophur may be malign and limited in many ways, but they do not lack for skill or reasoning power.”

Sara nodded. “You mean the method won’t work as well against Streaker?”

“Exactly,” Gillian said. “We’ll prepare our computers to stand a temporary shutdown without inconvenience—”

“Speak for yourself,” the Niss muttered.

“As soon as the capture box surrounds us, organic crew members can use simple tools to dissolve it from the inside. Estimated period of shutdown, Niss?”

The hologram whirled.

“I wish we had better data from the expedition the sooners sent to the Rothen vessel. They reported major quantum effects from a toporgic layer meters thick.

“But the Jophur missiles will cast thin bubbles. If prepared, crews should burst us free in mere minutes.”

A happy sigh escaped Kaa and several dolphins. But then the Niss Machine went on.

“Unfortunately, when we pop the bubble, it will alert the Jophur which captured vessel contains living prey. After that, our restored freedom will be brief indeed.”

Dwer

THE STUFF FELT STRANGE. IT SEEMED TO REPEL HIS hand slightly, until he got within a couple of centimeters.

Then it pulled. Neither effect was overwhelming. He could yank his hand back fairly easily.

He could not quite place why it was eerily familiar.

Dwer walked all the way around his circular cage, stopping on occasion to bend down and examine the starscape beyond. He recognized most of the constellations, except for one patch that had always been invisible from the Slope. So that’s what the southern sky is like. Undimmed by dust or atmosphere, the entire Dandelion Cluster lay before him, a vast unwinking spectacle. It would be even more fantastic without the filmy golden barrier in the way.

Thank Ifni for that harrier, he reminded himself. There is no air out there.

In one direction lay a tremendously bright star he did not recognize at first.

Then he knew … it was the sun, much diminished, and getting smaller all the time.

In the opposite direction lay Izmunuti’s fierce eye. The red glare grew more pronounced, until he began to make out an actual disk. Yet he realized it must still be farther away than the sun. Izmunuti was said to be a giant among stars.

In time he noticed other objects. Not stars or nebulae, but gleaming dots. At first they all seemed rather distant. But over the course of a midura, they drew ever closer, rounded shapes that revealed themselves more by their glimmering rims, occulting the constellations, than for any brightness they themselves put out.

One of them — a rippled sphere on the side toward Izmunuti — had to be a starship. It loomed larger with each passing dura. Soon he recognized it as the behemoth that had twice crossed the sky over the Poison Plain, shaking his hapless balloon with each passage.

When Dwer crossed his prison to peer through the membrane on the other side, he saw a line of yellowish globes, even closer than the starship. Their color made him realize, They’re other captives, like me.

Pressing close to the barrier, a tingle coursed his scalp and spine. He felt similarities to when the Danik robot sent its fields through his body, changing his nervous system in permanent, still-uncertain ways.

Well, I was unusual even before that. For instance, no one else I know ever talked to a mulc spider.…

Dwer yanked his head back, recalling at last what this stuff reminded him of. The fluid used by the mad old spider of the mountains — One-of-a-Kind — to seal its victims away, storing its treasured collections against the ravages of time. Months back, a coating of that stuff had nearly smothered him, until he escaped the spider’s trap.

A strange sensation came over Dwer. An odd idea.

I could talk to spiders, not just in the mountains, but the one in the swamp, too.

I wonder if that means …

Once again, he put his hand against the golden material, pushing through the initial resistance, pressing his fingertips ahead. The resistance was springy. The material seemed adamant.

But Dwer let his mind slide into the same mode of thinking that used to open him to communion with mulc beings. Always before, he had felt that the spider was the one doing most of the work, but now he realized, It’s my own talent. My own gift. And by the Holy Egg, I think I can—

Something gave way. Resistance against his fingertips suddenly vanished and they slipped through, as if penetrating some greasy fluid.

Abrupt cold struck the exposed hand, plus a feeling as if a thousand vampire ants were trying to drink his uncovered veins through straws. Dwer jerked back his arm and it popped out, the fingers red and numb, but mostly undamaged. The membrane flowed back instantly, never leaving an opening to space.

Lucky me, he thought.

When Dwer next checked, the starship had grown to mammoth size. A great bull beast, bearing down on him rapidly, with a hunter’s complacent confidence.

I’m a fish on a line. It’s reeling me in!

On the other side, the captive globes bobbed almost touching, like toy balloons gathered along an invisible string. The separating distances diminished rapidly.

Dwer sat and thought for a while.

Then he started gathering supplies.

The Sages

PHWHOONDAU LED THE NEW SEXTET, COMMENC-ing the serenade with a low, rolling umble from his resonating throat sac.

Knife-Bright Insight followed by rubbing a myrliton drum with her agile tongue, augmenting this with syncopated calliope whistles from all five leg vents.

Ur-Jah then joined in, lifting her violus against a fold in her long neck, raising stringed harmonies with the double bow.

After that, by seniority, the new sages for traeki, human, and g’Kek septs added their own contributions, playing for a great ovoid-shaped chunk of wounded stone. The harmonies were rough at first, but soon they melded into the kind of union that focused the mind.

So far, the assembly was unexceptional. Other groups of six had performed for the Egg, over the course of a hundred years. Some of them more gifted and musical.

Only this time things were fundamentally different. It was no group of six, after all.

Two other Jijoan types were present.

The first was a glaver.

The devolved race always had an open invitation to participate, but it was centuries since any glaver took part in rituals of the Commons — long before Earthlings arrived, and certainly before the coming of the Egg.

But glavers had been acting strangely for months. And today, a small female came out of the brush and began slogging up the Pilgrimage Path, just behind Phwhoondau, as if she had the same destination in mind. Now her huge eyes glistened as the music swelled, and strange mewling noises emerged from her grimaced mouth. Sounds vaguely reminiscent of words. With her agile forked tail, she waved a crude rattle made of a stretched animal skin, with stones shaking inside.

Not much of an instrument, but after all, her kind were out of practice.

What must it take, Phwhoondau pondered, to draw them back from the bliss of Redemption’s Path?

Lounging on a nearby boulder, an eighth creature paused licking himself now and then to survey the proceedings. The noor-tytlal had two blemishes on an otherwise jet-black pelt — white patches under each eye — adding to its natural expression of skeptical disdain.

The sages were not fooled. It had arrived just after the others, gaunt, bedraggled, and tired, having run hard for several days. Only urgency, not complacent inquisitiveness could have driven a noor to strive so. The creature’s mobile ears flicked restlessly, and pale, spiky hairs waved behind the skull, belying its air of feigned nonchalance.

Now the secret was out. Everyone knew these were clients of the legendary Tymbrimi. Moreover, their patrons had given the tytlal a boon as uniquely personal as music.

Phwhoondau noticed a soft agitation start to form above the insouciant creature, as if a pocket of air were thickening, and beginning to shimmer. The sages altered their harmony to resonate with the throbbing disturbance, helping it grow as a look of hesitant surprise spread across the sleek, noorlike face.

Reluctant or not, he was now part of the pattern.

Part of the Council of Eight.

In the narrow, resonant confines of the Egg’s abode, they made their art, their music.

And soon, another presence began to make itself known.

Ewasx

BEHOLD, MY RINGS, HOW WELL THE CHASE PROGRESSES!

Already one fugitive convoy is liquidated, its component vessels enjoined to our train of captives. While this growing impediment slows the Polkjhy from engaging her best speed of pursuit, our tactics stacks compute that all but the very last convoy should be in reach before the storms of Izmunuti are near.

To help speed progress, the CaptainLeader has ordered that the string of captive ships be reeled in closer behind us. When robots can board them, we will be able to cast aside the decoys, one by one.

Now the detections stack reports data arriving from Jijo, the planet behind us.

“More digital cognizance traces! More engine signs!”

But the CaptainLeader rules that this is but a futile attempt to distract us from our pursuit. The Earthling vessel may have left salvaged wrecks behind, to turn themselves on after a timed delay. Or else living confederates have acted on Jijo to set off this ruse. It does not matter. Once the fleeing vessels are in tow, we will be in between the Earthers and Izmunuti.

Things would be very different if there were more than one route in or out of this system. But matters are quite convenient for one capital ship to blockade Jijo effectively.

There will be no more breakouts.

That much is true. Yet, I/we hesitate to point out that this may not yet be the end. Indeed, the wolflings may have sent us on a “wild-goose chase,” pursuing only robot ships while they use this respite to cache themselves in new hiding places, deep beneath Jijo’s confused waters. They may even abandon their vessel, taking their vital information ashore, where we will only find it by slay-sifting the entire ecosystem!

The Priest-Stack will not permit so extreme a violation of Galactic law, of course. If such a drastic policy proves necessary, the priest may have to be dismantled, and the watcher-observer destroyed. Then we would be committed irrevocably. In case of failure, we would be labeled bandits and bring shame upon the clan.

How is it possible even to contemplate such measures?

Because all auguries show, with growing certainty, that a Time of Changes has already commenced upon the Five Galaxies. Hence all the desperate activity by so many great clans.

If the Institutes are indeed about to fall, there will be no one to investigate crimes committed on this world.

DO NOT TREMBLE SO, MY RINGS. Have I not assured you, repeatedly, that the mighty Jophur are fated to prevail? And that you/I am destined to be useful toward that end?

Crime and punishment need not be considerations, if we are the ones who will make the new rules.

Anyway, it may not prove necessary to return to Jijo. If the prey ship truly lies before us, the high ambitions of our alliance may soon be within tentacle reach.

We near the second convoy. And now missiles spring forth.

Dwer

WITH THE MIGHTY STARSHIP LOOMING CLOSER ON one side, he had to wait in frustration while the yellow beads clustered on the other, coming together with disheartening slowness. His preparations made, Dwer raced back and forth to check each direction.

In time, he learned a technique to make each crossing go much quicker — kicking off from the wall and flying straight across the open interior.

The Jophur vessel impended, mammothly immense. When its dark mass blocked nearly half the starscape, a door of some sort opened in its curved flank and several tiny octagonal shapes emerged, floating toward Dwer’s prison.

He recognized the silhouettes.

Battle robots.

They took their time drifting closer, and he realized there was still a large span to cross. At least twenty arrowflights. Still, only duras remained until they arrived.

On returning to the rear of the prison sphere, he breathed a sigh of relief. The captive bubbles were touching now! Yellow spheres, they ranged widely in size, but none was anywhere near as large as the battleship. Most were much larger than his own little ball.

Dwer sought the place where his bubble touched the second in line. A low drumming sound carried through each time the surfaces pressed together.

He zipped up the coverall the Streaker crew had given him — a fine garment that covered all but his feet, hands, and head. It had never occurred to him to ask for more.

But right now space gloves and a helmet would be nice.

No matter. The next time the spheres touched, he concentrated for the right frame of mind, and made his move.

Sara

SHE LEFT THE CONTROL ROOM WHEN HER SKIN started puckering from too much exposure to fizzy water. Anyway, there seemed no point hanging around. The same news could be had in her comfortable suite — once the home of a great Earthling sage named Ignacio Metz.

Sara dried herself and changed into simple shipboard garments, snug pants and a pullover shirt that posed no mystery even to an unsophisticated sooner. They were wonders of softness and comfort nevertheless.

When she asked the room to provide a tactical display, vivid 3-D images burst forth, showing that the Jophur dreadnought had once again chosen the wrong decoy swarm, and was just finishing firing missiles. Meanwhile, its string of earlier victims merged with the red glow, as if it were gobbling them one by one.

At her voice command, the viewscreen showed Streaker’s goal, the red giant star, magnified tremendously, the whirling filamentary structure of its inflamed chromosphere extending beyond the width of any normal solar system. Izmunuti’s bloated surface seethed, sending out tongues of ionized gas, rich with the heavy elements that made up Sara’s own body.

Purofsky thinks the Buyur had ways to meddle with a star.

Even without that awesome thought, it was a stirring sight to behold. Past those raging fires had come all the sneakships that deposited their illicit seed on Jijo, along with the varied hopes of each founding generation. Their aspirations had ranged from pure survival, for humans and g’Keks, all the way to the hoonish ancestors who apparently came a long way in order to play hooky.

All those hopes will come crashing down, unless Streaker can make it to Izmunuti’s fires.

Sara still had no idea how Gillian Baskin hoped to save Jijo. Would she let the enemy catch up and then blow this ship up, in order to take the Jophur out, as well?

A brave ploy, but surely the enemy would be prepared for that, and take precautions.

Then what?

It seemed Sara would find out when the time came.

She felt bad about the kids — Huck, Alvin, and the others. But they were adults now, and volunteers.

Anyway, the sages say it’s a good omen for members of all six races to be present when something vital is about to happen.

Sara’s own reasons for coming went beyond that.

Purofsky said one of us had to take the risk — either him or me — and go with Streaker, on the slim chance that she makes it.

One of us should try to find out if it’s true. What we figured out about the Buyur.

All her life’s work, in mathematical physics and linguistics, seemed to agree with Purofsky’s conclusion.

Jijo was no accident.

Oh, if she delved into psychology, she might find other motives underlying her insistence on being the one to go.

To continue taking care of Emerson, perhaps?

But the wounded starman was now with those who loved him. Shipmates he had risked death alongside, many times before. After overcoming initial shame, Emerson had found ways to be useful. He did not need Sara anymore.

No one really needs me.

Face it. You’re going out of curiosity.

Because you are Melina’s child.

Because you want to see what happens next.

Dwer

IT WAS A GOOD THING HE REMEMBERED ABOUT AIR.

There would be none on the other side.

By twisting through the barrier, writhing, and making his body into a hoop, Dwer managed to create a tunnel opening from his prison sphere into the next. A brief hurricane swiftly emptied the atmosphere from his former cell until the pressure equalized. He then pushed through, letting the opening close behind him.

Dwer’s ears popped and his pulse pounded. The trick had severely diluted the available air, taking him from near-sea-level pressure to the equivalent of a mountaintop in just half a dura. Speckles danced before his eyes. His body would not last long at this rate.

There was another reason to hurry. As he departed the sphere containing the balloon remnants, he had seen shadows touch beyond the far side. Jophur robots. Come to inspect their first captive.

His gear had settled against the golden surface of his new cell. Dwer grabbed the makeshift pack and moved toward the only possible place of refuge — the nose of the imprisoned starship.

It looked nothing like the massive Jophur vessel, but resembled a pair of spoons, welded face-to-face, with the bulbous end forward. Fortunately, the enclosure barely cleared the ship, fore and aft. A bank of dim windows nearly touched the golden surface.

And there’s a door!

Dwer gathered strength, flexed his legs, and launched toward the beckoning airlock. He sailed across the gap and barely managed to snag a protruding bracket with the tip of his left hand.

If this takes some kind of secret code, I’m screwed.

Fortunately, the dolphin work crews had a standard procedure for entering and converting Buyur wrecks. He had accompanied them on some trips, lending a hand. Dwer was glad to see the makeshift locking mechanism still in place, set to work in a fashion that even a Jijoan hunter might understand.

To open … turn knob.

Dwer’s luck held. It rotated.

If there’s air inside, the wind will blow out. If there’s none, I’ll be blown in … and die.

He had to brace his feet against the hull and pull in order to get the hatch moving. Vision narrowed to a tunnel and Dwer knew he was just duras away from blacking out.…

A sudden breeze rushed at him, whistling with force from the ship’s interior.

Stale air. Stinky, stale, dank, wonderful air.

Gillian

THE BAD NEWS WAS NOT EXACTLY UNANTICIPATED. Still, she had hoped for better.

As the Jophur ship finished adding another swarm of decoys to its prison chain, the cruiser shifted its attention elsewhere, accelerating to pursue the next chosen group.

Soon the truth became clear.

Streaker’s luck had just run out.

Well, they chose right this time, she thought. It had to happen, sooner or later.

Streaker was square in the enemy’s sights, with seven mictaars of hyperspace yet to cross before reaching safety.

The Sages

THERE ARE OTHERS ON JIJO NOW, PHWHOON-DAU thought, knowing that even eight would not be enough for long. In time, the new dolphin colonists must be invited to join.

I have read in Earth lore about cetaceans and their glorious Whale Dream. What music might we make, when these strange beings add their voices to our chorus?

And after that, who knew? Lorniks, chimps, and zookirs? The Kiqui creatures the dolphins brought from far away? A mélange of vocalizations, then. Perhaps a civilization worthy of the name.

All that lay ahead, a glimmering possibility, defying all likelihood or reason. For now, the council was made of those who had earned their place by surviving on Jijo. Partaking of the world. Raising offspring whose atoms all came from the renewing crust of their mother planet. This trait pervaded the musical harmony of the Eight.

We inhale Jijo, with each and every breath.

So Phwhoondau umbled in the deep, rolling vibrations of his throat sac.

We drink her waters. At death, our loved ones put us into her abyss. There we join the patterned rhythms of the world.

The presence that joined them was at once both familiar and awesome. The council felt it throb in each note of the flute or myrliton. It permeated the clatter of the glaver’s rattle, and the wry empathy glyphs of the tytlal.

For generations, their dreams had been brushed by the Egg. Its soft cadences repaid each pilgrimage, helping to unite the Commons.

But during all those years, the sages had known. It only sleeps. We do not know what will happen when it wakes.

Was the Egg only rousing now because the council finally had its missing parts? Or had the cruel Jophur ray shaken it from slumber?

Phwhoondau liked to think that his old friend Vubben was responsible.

Or else, perhaps, it was simply time.

The echoes steadily increased. Phwhoondau felt them with his feet, reverberating beneath the surface, building to a crescendo. An accretion of pent-up power. Of purpose.

Such energy. What will happen when it is liberated? His sac pulsed with umbles, painful and mightier than he ever produced before.

Phwhoondau envisioned the mountain caldera blowing up with titanic force, spilling lava down the tortured aisles of Festival Glade.

As it turned out, the release came with nothing more physical than a slight trembling of the ground.

And yet they all staggered when it flew forth, racing faster than the speed of thought.

The Slope

TO NELO — STANDING IN THE RUINS OF HIS PAPER mill, exhausted and discouraged after a long homeward slog — it came as a rapid series of aromas.

The sweet-sour odor of pulped cloth, steaming as it poured across the drying screens.

The hot-vital skin smell of his late wife, whenever her attention turned his way after a long day spent pouring herself into their peculiar children.

The smell of Sara’s hair, when she was three years old … addictive as any drug.

Nelo sat down hard on a shattered wall remnant, and though the feelings passed through him for less than a kidura, something shattered within as he broke down and wept.

“My children …” Nelo moaned. “Where are they?” Something told him they were no longer of his world.

To Fallon — staked down and spread-eagled in an underground roul shambler’s lair, waiting for death — the sensation arrived as a wave of images. Memories, yanked back whole.

The mysterious spike trees of the Sunrise Plain, farther east than anyone had traveled in a century.

Ice floes of the northwest, great floating mountains with snowy towers, sculpted by the wind.

The shimmering, teasing phantasms of the Spectral Flow … and the oasis of Xi, where the gentle Illias had invited him to live out his days, sharing their secrets and their noble horses.

Fallon did not cry out. He knew Dedinger and his fanatics were listening, just beyond this cave in the dunes. When the beast returned home, they would get no satisfaction from the former chief scout of the Commons.

Still, the flood of memory affected him. Fallon shed a single tear of gratitude.

A life is made whole only in its own eyes. Fallon looked back on his, and called it good.

To Uriel — interrupted in a flurry of new projects — the passing wave barged through as an unwelcome interruption. A waste of valuable time. Especially when all her apprentices laid down their tools and stared into space, uttering low, reverent moans, or sighs, or whinnies.

Uriel knew it for what it was. A blessing. To which she had a simple reply.

So what?

She just had too much on her mind to squander duras on things that were out of her control.

In GalTwo she commented, dryly.

“Glad I am, that you have finally de

cided.

Pleased that you, O long-lived Egg,

have deigned to act, at last.

But forgive me if I do not pause long to exult.

For many of us, life is far too short.”

To Ewasx — moments later and half a light-year away — it came as a brief, agonizing vibration in the wax. Ancient wax, accumulated over many jaduras by the predecessor stack — an old traeki sage.

Involuntary steam welled up the shared core of the stack, bypassing the master ring to waft as a compact cloud from the topmost opening.

Praised be destiny.…

Other ring stacks drew away from Ewasx, unnerved by the singular aroma tics, accented with savage traces of Jijoan soil.

But the senior Jophur Priest-Stack responded automatically to the reverent smoke, bowing and adding: Amen…

Lark

LARK, YOUR HAND!”

He trembled, fighting to control the fit that came suddenly, causing him to snatch the amulet from around his neck. He clutched the stone tight, even when it began to burn his flesh.

Crouched behind a set of strange obelisks — their only shelter in the spacious Jophur control room — Lark dared not cry out from pain. He fought not to thrash about as Ling used both hands to pry at his clenched fist. At last, the stone sliver fell free, tumbling across his lap to the floor, leaving a stench of singed flesh. Even now, the heat kept building. They tried backing away, but the stone’s temperature continued rising until a fierce glow made it hard to see.

“No!” Lark whispered harshly as Ling dived toward the blaze, reaching for the thong. To his surprise, enough was still attached for her to grab a loop and whirl it once, then twice around her head, as if slinging a piece of flaming sun.

She let go, hurling Lark’s talisman in an arc across the busy chamber, toward the center of the room.

Dismayed whistles ensued, accompanied by waves of aromatic stench so overpowering, Lark almost gagged.

“Why the hell did you—” he began, but Ling tugged his arm.

“We need a distraction. Come on, now’s our chance!”

Lark blinked, amazed by the power of habit. He was actually angry at her for throwing away his amulet, and even had to quash an urge to go chasing after the damned stone!

Leave it, and good riddance, he thought, and nodded to Ling.

“Right, let’s go.”

Dwer

INSIDE THE DECOY SHIP, HE COLLAPSED ON THE deck and retched, heaving up what little remained in his stomach.

Midway through that unpleasant experience, another, completely different kind of disorientation abruptly swept over Dwer. For a moment, it seemed as if One-of-a-Kind were inside his head, trying to speak again. The strange, heady sensation might have been almost affable, if his body weren’t racked with nausea.

It ended before he had a chance to appraise what was happening. Anyway, by then he figured he had wasted enough time.

The Jophur won’t take long picking through my little urrish balloon. They’ll start on this bubble next.

In full gravity, it might have been impossible to climb along the full length of the captured ship and reach the aft end. But Dwer took advantage of conditions as he found them, and soon taught himself to fly.

Lark

THEY WERE DASHING DOWN A SMOKE-FILLED HALLway, chased by angry shouts and occasional bolts of shimmering lightning, when an abrupt detonation rocked the floor plates. A wall of air struck the two humans from behind, knocking them off their feet.

We’ve had it, he thought, figuring it must be a weapon, used by the pursuers.

Glancing over his shoulder, however, Lark saw the robots suddenly turn and head the other way! Into a noisome storm of roiling black soot pouring out of the control room.

“Do you think …?” he began.

Ling shook her head. “Jophur are tough. I doubt they were more than knocked around by the explosion.”

Well, he thought. It was only a little piece of rock.

He felt its absence acutely.

Lark helped her up, still wary of returning robots.

“I guess now they know we’re here.”

They resumed running. But a few duras later, Ling burst out in laughing agreement.

“Yeah, I guess now they do.”

Gillian

A PSI-DISTURBANCE WAS DETECTED, EMANATING briefly from the planet. Soon after that, the detection officer announced a change on the tactics screen. “Will you looka that-t!”

Gillian saw it. The Jophur configuration was shifting. The bright red disk seemed to shimmer for a moment. Its “tail” of tiny crimson pinpoints, which had been bunching ever closer to the mother ship, now flexed and began to float away.

“It appears the enemy has jettisoned all the decoys they captured. I can only conclude that they figured out how to scan them quickly and eliminate dross ships from consideration. The decoys will now drift independently toward Izmunuti, while the battleship, free of drag, will catch up with us much faster.”

Gillian’s hopes, which had lifted when the psi-wave came, now sank lower than ever.

“We’d better get ready for our last stand,” she said in a low voice.

From the dolphins there was an utter absence of sonar clicks, as if none of them wanted to reify the moment, to make it real by reading it in sound.

“Wait-t a minute,” Kaa announced. “The Jophur’s decelerating! Coming about to retrieve the jettisoned string!”

“But …” Gillian blinked. “Could they have dropped it by accident?”

The Niss hologram whirled, then accepted the possibility with an abstract nod.

“A hypothesis presents itself. The psi-wave we detected was far too weak to have any effect on a war cruiser … unless it was direct-causative.”

“Explain.”

“It might have served as a trigger that — either by accident or design — precipitated the release of potentialities already in place … say, aboard the Jophur ship.”

“In other words, the wave might have affected them after all. Maybe it set off events that disrupted—”

“Indeed. If this caused the Jophur to lose their control over their string of capture boxes, they would certainly go back and retrieve them, even at the cost of some delay. Because they would suspect the string’s release was the intended purpose of the psi-wave.”

“In other words, they’ll be even more eager to check every box. Hmm.”

Gillian pondered, then asked:

“Has their intercept time been delayed much?”

Kaa thrashed his flukes.

“A fair amount. Not-t enough, however. We’ll make it to the Izmunuti corona, but the enemy will be close enough to follow easily with detectorsss. The plasma won’t make any a-ppreciable difference.”

Gillian nodded. “Well, things are a little better. And a trick or two to make the odds better still.”

The dolphins snickered knowingly and went back to work, emanating confident clicks. Gillian’s last remark was exactly the sort of thing Tom would have said in a situation like this.

In fact, though, Gillian did not know if her scheme was even worthy of the name.

Sara

THEY SAID THAT A PSI-WAVE HAD COME FROM JIJO, but Sara didn’t feel a thing.

Not surprising. Of Melina’s three children, it always seemed that Dwer had some fey sensitivity, while she, the logical one, possessed none. Till recently, Sara had little interest in such matters.

But then she wondered. Might this be what Purofsky said we should look out for?

Sitting at the stateroom’s worktable, Sara addressed the portable computer.

“About that psi-wave — do we have a fix on its hypervelocity?”

“Only a rough estimate. It traveled at approximately two mictaars per midura.”

Sara tried to work out the timing in her head, translating it in terms she knew better, such as light-years. Then she realized the machine could do it for her graphically.

“Show me.”

A holo took shape, portraying her homeworld as a blue dot in the lower left quadrant. Streaker was a yellow glimmer to the upper right, accompanied by other members of decoy swarm number two. Meanwhile a crimson convoy — the Jophur ship and its reclaimed captives — resumed hot pursuit.

The computer put down an overlay, depicting a crosshatching of lines that Sara knew to be wave vectors in level-zero hyperspace. The math was simple enough, but it took her some time to figure out the rich, three-dimensional representation. Then she whistled.

“That’s not inverse square. It’s not even one-over-R. It was directional!”

“A well-conserved, directional wave packet, resonating on the first, third, and eighth bands of—”

The computer lapsed into psi-jargon that Sara could not follow. For her, it was enough to see that the packet was aimed. Its peak had passed right over both Streaker and its pursuer.

The coincidence beggared belief. It meant that some great power on Jijo had known precisely where both ships were, and—

Sara stopped herself.

Don’t leap to the first conclusion that comes to mind. What if we weren’t the beam’s objective at all?

What if we just happened to be along its path, between Jijo and …

She leaped to her feet.

“Show me Izmunuti and the transfer point!”

The display changed scale, expanding until Streaker was shown just over halfway to the supposed safety of the fiery red giant.

And beyond it, a folded place. A twist in reality’s fabric. A spot where you go, if you want to suddenly be very far away.

Although computer graphics were needed to make it out clearly, the transfer point was no invisible nonentity. Izmunuti bulged in its direction, sending ocher streamers toward the dimple in space.

“When will the psi-wave reach Izmunuti?”

“It has already arrived.”

Sara swallowed hard.

“Then show me estimated …” She dredged memory for words she had read, but seldom used. “Show me likely hyperdeflection curves, as the psi-wave hits the red giant. Emphasize meta-stable regions of … um, inverted energy storage, with potential for … uh, stimulated emission on those bands you were talking about.”

Sara’s face flickered as manicolored lines and curves reflected off her forehead and cheekbones.

Her eyes widened, briefly showing white all the way around the irises. She mouthed a single word, without managing to form a voice.

Then Sara clutched for a nearby pad of paper — no better than the premium stock her own father produced — and scrawled down two lines of coordinates.

Gillian Baskin answered her urgent call, though the older woman looked harassed and a little irked.

“Sage Koolhan, I really don’t have time—”

“Oh yes you do,” Sara told her sternly. “Meet me in your office in forty duras. You are definitely gonna want to hear this!”

Rety

A YOUNG WOMAN SAT IN A LOCKED ROOM, ALL alone in her universe, until someone knocked.

In fact she was not entirely alone — yee was with her. Moreover, the knock wasn’t at the door, but rapped loudly on the window below her feet. Still, the element of eerie surprise was there. Rety jumped back, scurrying away from the sound, which grew louder with each hammerlike stroke.

“it comes from over here!” yee wailed, pointing with his long neck.

Rety saw at once the pane he meant. A silhouetted figure squatted below the window, backlit by the golden haze surrounding her useless ship. The figure was distorted, distended, with a grossly bulbous head. An arm turned, holding a blunt object, and swung forward, striking the crystal once again.

This time, tiny cracks spread from the point of impact.

“enemy foe coming in!”

Visions of space monsters filled Rety, but not with fear. She wasn’t about to give up her domain to some invader — Jophur, robot, or whatever.

Another blow struck the same spot. Clearly it would take several more for the assailant to seriously damage the window. Emboldened to see what she was up against, Rety scooted toward the shadowy figure. After the next impact, she pressed close to the glass and peered outside.

Things were blurry at first. Then the creature seemed to notice her presence and leaned forward as well. Rety glimpsed what looked like a billowing dome of clear fabric. A makeshift helmet, she realized.

And within that protective bubble…

“Yah!” she cried out, twitching reflexively away, more set back than if she’d seen a monster or ghost.

When Rety went back for another look, the figure on the other side started making frantic gestures, pointing toward the side of the ship.

“Oh, yeah,” she sighed. “I did lock the airlock, didn’t I?”

Rety nodded vigorously so the visitor could see, and started scurrying along the canted walls to reach the jimmied door. Rety removed the pry bar she had slipped in place, to keep Chuchki from returning.

The airlock cycled slowly, giving Rety time to wonder if her eyes had deceived her. Perhaps this was just a ruse from some mind-reading creature, seeking to gain entrance by sifting her brain for images from her past.…

The inner door opened at last, and Dwer Koolhan tumbled through, tearing at the balloonlike covering he had been using as a crude life-support system. His face was rather blue by the time Rety helped him cut the taped fastenings, scavenged from material found on other decoy vessels during his long journey down the captive string. The young hunter gasped deep breaths while Rety stepped back and stared. Finally, he recovered enough to roll aside, lifting his head to meet her unbelieving gaze.

“I … should’ve known … it’d be you,” Dwer murmured in a resigned voice.

At the exact same moment, Rety muttered:

“Ifni! Ain’t I ever gonna be rid o’ you?”

Ewasx

HE MUST WEIGH TRADE-OFFS AND OPTIONS. As Izmunuti commences to roil with an atmospheric storm, our tactics stack declares that we have lost valuable time.

Three target swarms flee ahead of our majestic Polkjhy.

The first will enter the storm just as we catch up.

We will reach the second as it passes through maximum hyperbolic momentum change.

And the third?

It will make it to the transfer point, with time enough to jump into the next higher level of hyperspace.

The sabotage attack on our control room has thus created serious problems, out of proportion to the damage done to our CaptainLeader, whose incapacity should not last long. Meanwhile, however, tactics has come up with a plan.

WE SHALL JETTISON THE CAPTURE BOXES DRAGGING AT OUR WAKE.

They are now on course for Izmunuti. If the prey ship lies within one of the glowing traps, it must reveal itself soon, or risk immolation.

THUS FREED, OUR POLKJHY WILL ACCELERATE DIRECTLY FOR THE TRANSFER POINT!

In this manner we will be able to interpose ourselves between the prey ship and its escape path. There will be some backlash from such rapid maneuvering, but the result should be an end to all hope for the Earthlings, whichever swarm they are hiding in. Their subsequent activities should enable us to detect which ship is sapient-guided and which operate on mere automatic programs.

Hunt scents fill our bridge, eagerness for the approaching conclusion to this great endeavor. It will be most gratifying for Polkjhy to achieve conquest of the Earthlings without having to call for help from the great clan. To succeed where battle fleets have failed — this will be glorious!

BUT NOW TO OUR ASSIGNED TASK, MY RINGS!

There are vermin loose on our fine dreadnought. Our damaged/soot-stained bridge was dishonored in full view of the librarian/watcher.

The vermin must be found. I/we am the one called upon as qualified to give chase, by virtue of our/My experience with human types.

Our first recourse, My rings?

Collect the remaining human prisoner!

The one called Rann.

He will help us find his former colleagues. He is already so inclined.

REJOICE, MY RINGS!

In this way we will prove useful, avoiding disassembly. If successful, this master torus has been promised a fine reward.

Quiver in anticipation, My rings! As Polkjhy chases certain victory through space, we pursue another hunt within.

Emerson

ENGINES SING TO HIM IN A LANGUAGE HE STILL UNderstands.

When he works the calibrators, it seems almost as if he were his old self. Master of machines. Boy mechanic. The man who makes starships fly.

Then something reminds him. A written status report flashes, or a robot voice runs down a list of parameters. Prity can’t interpret for him — sign language cannot translate subtleties of hyperwave transformatics.

Emerson’s crew mates respect his efforts. They are pleased and surprised by his ability to help.

But, he now realizes, they are also humoring him.

Things will never be the same.

His long shift ends. Suessi orders him to take a break. So he goes up to the hold with Prity and visits the glavers, sensing something in common with the simple creatures, nearly as speechless as himself.

Alvin and Huck trade insults and witticisms in Anglic, his own native tongue, but he can only follow the general tone of camaraderie. They are kind, but here, too, Emerson finds no solace.

He searches for Sara, and finds her at last in the plotting room, surrounded by Gillian’s staff. Fiery representations of a bloated giant star fill the center of the room, with varied orbits plotted through its flaming shell. Some paths slip close, using slingshot arcs to fling Streaker toward the transfer point — a twisted funnel in space. The tactics look challenging, even to a pilot like Kaa. Yet that approach is the obvious one.

No doubt the enemy expects just such a maneuver.

Other orbits make no sense, skirting the red giant to strike away from the bolt-hole. Farther from the only way to exit this dangerous part of a forbidden galaxy.

Letting the enemy reach the transfer point first would seem suicidal.

On the other hand, at the rate the Jophur battleship is catching up, Streaker will have little choice. Perhaps Sara and Gillian plan to head for deep space and hide amid the seared rocks that were planets, before Izmunuti burgeoned and consumed its children.

Emerson watches Sara, immersed in work. No one seems to note the presumption — of a Jijo-born savage directing the endeavors of starfaring sophisticates. At times like these, an idea can count for much more than experience.

The incongruity makes him smile at last, recovering some of his good mood. His accustomed optimism.

After all, what have the odds ever mattered before?

There is an observation dome tucked behind the bridge, accessible only by a twisty ladder with rungs set much too close together. The small room is a leftover from whatever race once owned Streaker, before Earthclan bought the hull, converting it for dolphin use. It takes some agility to worm into the odd-shaped cubby. Emerson’s secret place.

At one end, a thick bubble of adamantine quartz provides a view outside, where the starry vault is bare, unimpeded, nearly surrounding him with everlasting night. Izmunuti is occulted by the ship’s bow, but vast sweeps of the local spiral arm sparkle like diamonds. Globular clusters are like diatoms, phosphorescent on a moonlit sea. Since waking on Jijo, he never expected to experience this again. The naked confrontation. Mind and universe.

It pours through him, a surfeit of beauty. Too much. Agonizing.

Of course, Emerson spent half a year learning about all kinds of pain, until it became a sort of friend. His ally at dislodging memories. And as he ponders stellar fire, it happens again.

He recalls the stench, just after he crashed into Jijo, clothes aflame, quenching the blaze in murky water, dimly aware of having recently fought a battle. A diversion — a sacrifice to win escape for his friends.

But that wasn’t the truth.

It was a planted cover story.

Actually, the Old Ones took him from that old Thennanin fighter. They probed and palped him. Over a period of days, weeks, they reamed his mind, then shoved him in a little capsule. A tube that squeezed …

Emerson moans, recalling how that passage ended in a blazing plummet down to Jijo and the horrid swamp where Sara found him.

He envisions the Old Ones. Or one faction of them. Cold eyes. Hard voices, commanding him to forget. To forget … and yet, sentenced to live.

I. know … your … lie.…

The command fights back. For a moment, the pain is greater than he ever knew.

Pain that is elemental, like the black vacuum surrounding him.

Like sleeting cosmic rays.

Like all the myriad quantum layers propping up each quark and every lepton in his shaken frame.

Through it all, his eyes can barely focus, squinting past distilled anguish, turning countless stars into slanting needles.

But then, out of those jagged motes there comes a shape. Weaving, thrashing … zigging, zagging.

Swimming, he now realizes. Pushing toward him, as if upstream, against the swell of a strong tide. A shape from memory, but instead of bringing more woe, this recollection sweeps all agony before it. Pushed by stalwart flukes, a soothing current washes over him.

A dolphin’s face swims into focus.

Captain…

… Creideiki…

It is a scarred face, deeply wounded behind the left eye. A wound too much like Emerson’s to be coincidence. The explanation encircles him in sound.

Crooks and foul liars,

Lacking imagination,

Cruelly steal ideas!

Emerson comprehends the Trinary haiku at once. The Old Ones must have read his mind somehow and learned of Creideiki’s injury. It seemed to fit their needs, so they copied it in their captive human. What better way to release him, yet be certain he would tell no tales?

But that still left open the question of why? Why release him at all, if it meant consignment to a twilight existence? What motive could they have?

All … in … good … time …

The phrase brings a smile, for he grasps it in a way he might never have before.

A simple, purified meaning.

… good … time …

Emerson looks back across the galaxies, now cleansed free of pain. Pain he now recognizes to have been illusion, all along. The product of an exaggerated sense of self-importance that his enemies used against him.

In fact, the ocean of night is too vast, too busy to be involved in his agony. An evolving universe can hardly be bothered with the problems of a single individual, a member of one of the lower orders of sapient life.

And why should it?

What a privilege it is, to exist at all! On the great balance sheet, he owes the cosmos everything, and it owes him nothing.

Emerson manages to share a final moment of communion with his captain and comrade — not caring whether the grinning dolphin is a ghost, a mirage, or some miraculous true image. Knowing only that Creideiki’s lesson is true.

There is no setback — no wound or blow of cruel fate — that cannot be turned into a song.

For an instant, Emerson can sense music in every ray of starlight.

When the winter’s

Typhoon pounds you,

Onto sand grains,

Sharp and gleaming,

And creation

All-conspiring,

Breaks you on a

Time of Changes,

At the moment

When breath falters,

And your lifeblood

Pours out streaming,

Cast around that

Bright reef, dear friend,

For a gift to

Grant another,

For some way to

Repay forward,

All the favors

You were given.

For in good time

Prospects glitter

Far along Infinity’s Shore.

THE END OF PART TWO