Iris

In the future another Brendan considered it dispassionately and thought, At least I'm free of those things now. Resurrection gives life its own special sweetness, at least for a little while. And continued ... The old-time Brendan walked through the halls of Tupamaro Arcology, padding forward on the balls of his feet, snarling deep within himself. I'll find them, he thought, and he did. He came upon them in a nexus garden, crystal fountain cascading up to the ceiling at back, standing before its watery beauty, holding hands and watching the liquid rise and fall, endlessly, mindlessly. Their fingers were intertwined and their hips were pressed together, warming to the touch of other humanity, preparing for their coming act of betrayal.

Brendan shouted, "Ariane!"

The couple sprang apart, loosing their close-held grip, and spun about to stare at him. The woman smiled and waved. "Oh, hello, Bren ," she said. "Come and join us. This is nice."

"Nice?"It was a strangled word, gagging him, catching in his throat and making him inarticulate all at once. The planned revilements, the angry accusations faded, sinking down into a night of unrationality , and only action remained. He took a few quick strides forward and seized the small, brown-haired man, a coworker of hers he'd met before, grappling him about the neck. There was a brief, startled squawk, and then the man left his feet, flew through the air, arms whirling wildly, and splashed into the fountain. He jumped up, streaming water, spluttering, and waded out. He stared at Brendan for a moment, standing in the midst of a growing puddle, and then fled in squishy shoes, disappearing from the room and from their lives.

Ariane was planted before him, glaring, her fists doubled up on her hips. "God damn it, Brendan, what the hell is wrong with you?" He was silent, and she continued. "You can't rule my every waking moment. I have to be with other people sometimes. I'll go crazy if I'm around you all the time!" He was helpless before her anger. "It's just ... I love you, Ari . I can't stand it when . . ."

"Shit," she said. "You said you wanted to be here. You didn't have to come." The implications of it enraged him. Didn't have to? And yet you wouldn't come to me. . . . He wished the words would emerge, but fear kept his feelings imprisoned. The parasite chewed on his soul, teeth searing him deeply. He raised his hand, as if to strike her, then let it fall. "No," he said, "I didn't have to come. But . . . here I am."

She took his hand then and led him away, his senses seeming dulled, the fires banked for another little while. They went home and made love with renewed heat.

That other Brendan, riding on the Now wave front of the future, surfing into the unknown, marveled at the things he'd felt. No one, ever before, no one now, no one ever again. Is that how it will be? Is that what I want? The tortures were hard, but the intervals between were so sweet and glorious as to make it seem all worth while. Will I have the will to go on?

One last memory came to plague and inform him, restoring the missing parts to his psyche. He was on a white sand beach somewhere on the shores of the enclosed fresh-water lake that Rio de la Plata had become, perhaps to the east of Buenos Aires. He was lying on top of Vana Berenguer, the epitome of mindless, animal thrusting, and her breath was a stentorian engine beside his ear. Her orgasm came as a squirming, high-pitched outcry, then his own injected semen deep into her body and they were still. His breathing slowed, stirring the tangle of her hair less and less.

He rolled off, flopping onto his back, and gazed at the pale blue sky, blinded by sunlight. He groped about, found his sunglasses, and put them on. The world was reduced to a fine sunset level, and he looked around. Vana was sprawled at his side, eyes shut, legs apart, gelatinous liquids marking the place of his entry and exit. She was breathing slowly, deeply, lips pressed tightly together, smiling slightly, perhaps concentrating on the fading sensations of satiation, prolonging the sense of contact and pleasure. A human shadow fell across the blanket and he looked up quickly. It was Ariane, naked and beautiful. She was grinningslyly, her teeth showing white against a dark tan. She raised one hand and waved, a little wiggling of fingers.

Brendan felt dismay. " Ari, I ..."

"Oh, shut up!" She jumped into his lap and kissed him, grinding herself against the wetness of his groin. He wanted to speak, to say something, anything, but she wouldn't let him. She forced him back on the blanket, worrying at his body, bringing him up into a new round of responses, almost unwilling. She squatted over his face, making him service her will, lay on her back and pulled him onto her, guiding him into her, moving under him in cadences all her own.

Vana watched them and, presently, began to stroke his back gently, rubbing the sweat around, smoothing it into a thin layer that evaporated with swift coolness.

The future crashed down on him and began the present again. Well, he told himself, I wish I'd had that kind of cavalier attitude to play with. I certainly would have been happier. Is that what I am now?

Perhaps I am reduced to their level. In a way I hope so.

He walked on, seeking the things that he knew would come, going to watch scenes that would prove certain things to him once and for all.

Tem and Axie were sitting together on a couch in the CM's common room, enjoying afterglow, watching the yet uncompleted actions of the little group before them, and talking quietly of the future. The time to come was a little hard to contemplate right now, but surely something would come of it all. Perhaps the adventure of Iris and Centrum was over, perhaps not, but Formis Fusion would come, bringing its horde of USEC scientists, and perhaps they would be allowed to join that group, contributing the knowledge that had already been gleaned. Brendan had promised a few surprises.

"What do you think they'll do?" asked the woman.

The Selenite shrugged. "I can't imagine. We've considered that they might punish us for all the destruction that's been wrought, but I don't think so. There's no jurisdiction outhere, not yet, and there are enough competing power groups in the Solar System that I imagine that we'll be safe." Aksinia paused and reflected for a moment. "Here we all are, all except Beth. It would never have occurred to me before how John and Brendan and Jana are freaks, outside the accepted norms, and how their presence is so divisive among us. I thought I was the freak. They keep pushing the limits, shredding and reassembling themselves according to the moment. And everything—everyone—is grist for their mill."

Tem watched the cavorting bodies at his feet. "I don't think I know what you mean. I am a physicist after all. I am guilty too."

"We are all guilty," she said. "Only some of us are guiltier than others. Perhaps I am being unfair. It's so difficult to think without falling into these endless paradoxes. I will not cast the first stone."

"Is that all? Should we try? Would it hurt anyone to try and draw him in, make him a part of the group at last? We know that's what he wants."

"Do we? The only way we can tell is to not help him. Until he makes some effort at a rapprochement on his own."

"But he is my friend. Maybe ..."

The door crackled open and they fell silent. Brendan came in and drifted down on the couch beside them, bouncing lightly. Tem looked at him apprehensively and then glanced across the room. Vana, Harmon, and Ariane were there, locked into a slowly moving, three-cornered embrace. How would the man react? There was no way to predict his response, but he was frowning already, staring at the three naked bodies. Krzakwa tensed himself against possible violence.

Brendan stared at them, absorbing the scene. It was, he thought, typically foolish-looking. It was unaesthetic, but he could imagine how the participants felt quite easily. Vana had her head buried between Ariane's legs and she was, herself, sucking on the man. Harmon had positioned himself poorly and so was forced to work on Berenguer with the fingers of one hand. Brendan's frown deepened. So it doesn't botherme anymore. So what? All it means is that I don't care anymore. Why not? I guess I don't care about that either. I don't care about any of these people; I probably never have. Funny how I could mistake selfishness for love. . . . Was it that? Yes, on both our parts. The only person on this ship who was ever capable of real love was Demogorgon, and he was really crazy! It's probably just as well ... or am I fooling myself there too? If so, I should accept it as being a necessary thing to me. A little voice from deep inside argued against that tack, but he ignored it. There were more important things to worry about now. He could fret and whine about the absurdities of his immortal soul some other time, when he was bored and had nothing better to do.

He turned to Tem and smiled. "I finally managed to get in touch with Demogorgon," he said. Krzakwa breathed a sigh of relief. "Yes? How is he?"

"Hard to tell. I didn't get to talk to him directly, but he delegated a section of Bright Illimit to communicate with us. He seems to be doing fairly well."

"So what will be happening next?"

Brendan grinned broadly and a bit of the old satanity lit up his features. "A lot. He's planning to fire up the Mother Ship's photon drive."

Tem felt an electric tension growing in him, a stern jolt of horror that made him sit slowly upright, releasing Axie's hand. "What?" he cried, aghast. "Oh, Jesus!" Sealock stood up, laughing at him. The old self returns, he thought, and welcome back to reality!

Things proceeded swiftly then.

The technicians among them swept into a nightmare matrix of action, pushing the others aside as they went about the tasks that would have to be accomplished so quickly. Tem and Brendan worked side by side once again, a team for just another little while, joined by the computer skills of Ariane and the limited technical competence that was Harmon's. Li-jiang worked with them, contributing Jana's knowledge that had been carried over into Demogorgon's body.

Polariswas torn asunder, never to rise again, quicklyreduced to a pile of reusable components. The colony was gutted. Domes were collapsed, cut apart, the CM was brought forth to stand once again beneath the everlasting darkness that Iris so easily dominated. The beambuilder machines went to work, resurrecting the matrix of girders that had once been the core of a ship. The Hyloxso matrices were recharged from the waters of their pool, the reactor was gingerly transferred back to its spot, and the ion drill, an engine once again, was slid back into its nacelle.

Deepstarwas reborn, sitting on its four spindly legs upon the smudged and scraped ice, all its components restored as if they had never been touched. The colony site would never look as it had when they first arrived. It was a ruined space, littered with broken and useless throw-offs, dirty and, in its way, depressing. Where the domes had been there were porous-looking, circular discolorations of the ice. They finished, exhausted, but it was done in plenty of time. In the end, there was more time to think.

Beth waited with the others, sitting in reclining chairs in the common room, finally content to let the imagery come in through Shipnet. John sat near her, seeming to seek her attention from time to time, but she ignored him. Some things were best left unsaid, some concepts left alone, by all of them now. She glanced furtively at him and he caught her eye. "It's all right," he said. She turned away with evident difficulty.

The magnified image of Iris against a sky washed clean of stars splashed over her, and her attention was blissfully stolen by this familiar sight. She wondered if they shouldn't have left the little moon world by now, fled as far as they could from the Iridean system in the time that remained, but Brendan had insisted on staying. "This is going to be the greatest thing you ever saw," he told her, seeming childlike and excited, very much like a father she'd lost so long ago. "Even if we get killed, which I doubt, it'd be well worth seeing." So they stayed.

Li-jiang had sided with him in the decision. The Jana part of her, ever dominant, waited with keenly expressedanticipation. Perhaps the Demogorgon part held her horror at a world's destruction at bay. In any event, her mind was quiet.

Suddenly, it happened.

Iris hung silent in the sky for one moment more, and then it changed. The atmosphere around the north pole began to well upward slowly, bringing muddy clouds from the depths to brighten the once blue mantle. Eddies formed about the area, giant hurricanes that whirled ever outward, carrying clouds in their wake. A spiral pattern formed about the north pole, a blossoming flower that grew until it covered the northern hemisphere. It paused then, hanging fire for a few minutes, and swept on until the entire world was a boiling nightmare. The clouds twisted and roiled like smoke, coiling patterns within patterns that formed and disappeared within a minute.

The air over the pole seemed to bulge, and a great plume of gas sprang up, pushing outward into the dark sky, highlighted by the rays of the distant sun. A dim glow formed at its base, a glow that brightened steadily, swiftly. "It's working!" whispered Sealock in a voice that was yet loud enough to fill the entire room. No one else felt they would be allowed to speak. The sound of breathing was loud and irregular. The glow suddenly became an incandescent flare, blinding to eyes that had become adapted to the dimmer light, and Beth cried out, trying to turn her eyes away, unable to do so. The light blotted out everything else, and a dense beam of energy leaped up from the planet, hurling itself away into interstellar space. Someone seemed to cheer, a deep voice. Krzakwa? It didn't matter, now. A world was on the move, pushing itself into the depths once again.

Deep within the immense confines of the Mother Ship, far within Iris, things were beginning to happen. With the torchfire of the photon drive lit off, pushing with a still small acceleration, the multiple throats of the intake mast began to open wider. A whirlpool formed in the southern hemisphere as the reaction chambers drank down vaster amounts of hydrogen, converting them to unimaginable energies along the axial core. Just forward of Centrum's blue sphere, the control moment gyros, long still, began to spin again, counter to the direction of the planetary rotation. The world slowed fractionally and the rigid body of the lithosphere cracked like eggshell, shards buoyed aloft by the ringing tsunamis that crisscrossed the lowest stratum of the already boiling atmosphere. The gyros spun up, keening a wild, silent song, spinning ever faster, and then they tipped away from the equatorial plane . . .

Slowly, and at first imperceptibly, Iris was imbued with a will to go. Holding its fiery beacon aloft, the blue-white world seemed to shrug. The great clouds arrayed in waves swung across the globe faster now, and in close rank, as she began her turn. The emission beam of the drive described a slow arc against the background of the fixed stars. The gyros tumbled back to their neutral position and the turn stopped. Iris' axis of thrust was now pointed in its direction of travel. The intake throats opened still wider, swallowing gigatons of atmosphere, and the deceleration began to increase. The planet slowed in its course, things unimaginable transpiring within, while the humans on Ocypete watched its developing splendor. The heavens were ablaze, bathing their minds in an eldritch, violet glow.

Common sense was violated at once. The moons did not fly off wildly into space, but their orbits began to stretch into more and more eccentric ellipses. They corkscrewed away from Iris' equatorial plane, their apirideons pointing toward the apex of the world's diminishing motion. The world in their minds shrank imperceptibly. As its velocity was slowly canceled, Iris' relationship with the sun changed as well, dying down from its original hyperbola through parabola and ellipse to the precise, curved line that drove a chord through the tiny circle that was Mercury's orbit. And so, no different than a rubber ball dropped from a ten-story window, Iris began to fall.

The gyros tipped again, reorienting the thrust axis, and then it began to accelerate down, full-throat into the gravity well of Sol. Precisely controlled, as unnoticeable as the hour hand of a clock, the stars began to shift. Whipped about theirlord, Ocypete , Podarge , and Aello assumed even stranger orbits, following a high-order rosette as they began to precess. And, with the passage of time, they settled into ever lengthening ellipses, their apirideons tipping farther and farther into the northern hemisphere. The exhaust plume of Mother Ship grew ever brighter and the temperature began to rise. Somewhat more slowly, the badly disturbed ring particles held close to Iris' bosom followed suit, and the dazzling elastic band, no longer a thin line, began to stretch out and disperse.

Brendan and Li-jiang sat in the kitchen module of Deeps tar, whipping up one of an endless series of the small snacks and quick meals that had sustained them during the day and a half since it had begun. The long hours of observation were taxing them, leaving them increasingly tired. Gathering in this experience, the two of them tended not to sleep, whereas once the initial excitement had died down the others had returned to more or less normal sleep patterns. They munched on thick, creamy yogurt loaded with fruit and unnameable crunchy particles. Suddenly the ship lurched, and a deep, groaning rumble filled the room, a palpable presence from the world outside. A gyro started up above their heads. Li-jiang shook her head and wiped at the yogurt that had dribbled unto her chest. "Another one," she said. Brendan nodded abstractedly, gazing out the window at Ocypete's massively altered landscape. The hard radiation scattered from the photon beam had raised the ambient temperature to such a point that the highlands that composed much of the surface were subliming away and the inrushing pressure of air, for such the combination of noble gases, nitrogen, and CO could be called, was filling with white mist, undoubtedly methane vapor. "We should expect quakes," he said. "This place is undergoing a lot of stress."

"Too right. How much longer can we delay a lift-off?"

"Not much longer. I'd like to stay, but . . . we've got to get out of here in a few more hours. The peripheral particle cone of the exhaust is going to strike us by tomorrow noon atthe latest." He laughed.

"The fireworks'd be pretty to watch but painful to endure." The ship rocked slowly again and the plain outside crackled, electrostatic discharges released as the still supercold water ice was stressed. Temujin came up into the room looking worried and shaky. Moonquakes were serious business in the underground cities of Luna. " Bren? We're getting some kind of an attention-getting signal over the QCS."

Brendan's face brightened. "Good. This is what we've been waiting for." He leaped down into the common room, reached out, grabbed a handful of leads, and, walking over to the nearby gang-tap, plugged into Shipnet, whole once again.

The voices started. . . .

Brendan?

It was a soft, gentle whisper, the old voice made real once more, calling to him out of a gray and misty sea.

Demogorgon? Are you all right?

Yes, my friend. I've never been better. I wanted to thank you for all that you've given me, at last. . . . I'm glad you like it. What're you up to?

A lot of things. You'd be surprised.

I'm sure I would. What are you planning? That's what I meant.

I called to tell you about it. I've got to do a number of things to get the ship back on its original mission. There's a great deal to be done. . . . I'm going to dive Iris to within about five million kilometers of the chromosphere, burn off as much of this garbage as I can, and see if I can explode off all the rest. I'll use a phase boost and head for a globular cluster about six thousand parsecs from here. XGC5152, it's called.

Why there?

Pieces of the Centrum records indicate that's where the last functioning Seedee colony was emplaced. I want to see if there's anything left, maybe learn from what has developed over the course of a couple of billion years. From little acorns

. . . Maybe I could pick up another crew. I could use a few physical hands. Sounds like a good idea to me. Listen, what's going to happen to the moons? Things're getting pretty hot up here.

That brought a ghostly chuckle.

I wondered if you'd ask. You'll like this one: this ship has some pretty sophisticated technology; things like the old SF tractor beams are available, working from a limited sort of gravity control that the Starseeders worked out when they discovered QTD, way back when. It's useless for spacecraft propulsion, but it can be used to do a lot of work when you've got a really big planet to use for a fulcrum. As soon as you get out of the way I'm going to bounce the moons. You'd better move quickly, though; there's not much time left.

I know. Where are you sending them?

There was a girlish giggle.

I've worked it all out: I'm going to send those cocksuckers billiarding through the Solar System! Once around Jupiter and through the belt, splitting them apart. I'm going to interact Aello with Phobos and drop her into a loose elliptical orbit around Mars. Instant economy. Then I'm going to let Podarge smash right into Venus. Instant Earth. Like it?

Yeah. There's only a small contingent of scientists on Venus, so it shouldn't be a big problem. How fast'll it hit?

18 kps . No big explosion. Podarge'll break up before impact and come down as an asteroid shower. Lots of steam. Earth will have a lot of work to do, still, but if they act quickly, get the preliminaries done in under a generation, people could be living on the exposed surface in less than two centuries. Maybe less, if they hurry.

What about Ocypete ?

That's yours, pal, I'm going to drop it into a "Toro" orbit, right where it'll do the most good. I think you and John could find some use for a trillion ceus ' worth of inner-system water. . . . John and I?

Think about it. The others don't need you. I saw what was going to happen, back when I took the survivors through Bright Illimit that last time. You did a good job with that GAM. They won't need either of you, but you may need each other. Promise me you'll at least consider the idea.

I already have. You could be right.

I know I am. You'll be feeling like your old self again in a few days, I think. The shock must be wearing off pretty quickly.

Yes. I wish I had you back, though.

Hey, that's nice to hear. If I were still alive, you'd have me blubbering all over you. Listen, I've got one last little present to give you. Latch this data . . .

It squealed suddenly into his head at nearly a million-kbaudrate. Brendan Sealock convulsed and fell to the floor, hemorrhaging from his nose and ears, body beginning to twitch into the opening phases of a grand mal seizure.

Formis Fusionhad been dropping along a swift hyperbola toward Iris when the photon drive lit off. The new planet had been only a few days away and now . . . this. The crew and the scientists they had brought watched, thunderstruck, as the planet began to move. How could such a thing possibly happen?

They called back to USEC headquarters on Ganymede, looking for directives, fearfully awaiting new orders. The command came back swiftly: Proceed with the mission. Go in there and take over. Now. They accelerated into Iris' path, entering into an interaction that they did not understand. The planet swelled before them, a boiling, flaming demon, no longer the gentle water carrier. They looked for her harpies and were horrified to discover that their positions were so far from the predicted place. What was happening? They looked at the glowing exhaust plume, at the dirigible infrastar , and consulted the capabilities of their spacecraft. A converted high-energy freighter, the ship had five-g legs. They fired up the engines, hoping that it was not too late. . . .

An hour and more passed and Brendan was sitting up in his bed, recovering, sipping a cup of camomile tea heavily laced with sugar. John sat in a chair beside him, watching him drink. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Better, I think. I've got a real skull-pounder of a fucking awful headache, though."

"Do you want anything else?"

"No, thanks."

"What happened?"

"One of Demo's brighter little ideas. He popped me with a massive data flow and sent it in at a machine-style flow rate. I'm surprised that the GAM let it happen. He must be running some kind of override to make it cooperate with the inflight procedures that are outside its danger parameters."

"Was he trying to kill you?"

Brendan smiled wanly. "No. He just doesn't understand, yet, the full meaning of what's happened to him. A data flow rate like that one wouldn't faze him a bit. . . ." John nodded slowly. "When are we leaving?"

"In a little bit. Listen, I've got some things I wanted to talk to you about. . . ." Krzakwa popped into the room, gliding across the floor with a puzzled, concerned expression on his face. " Bren? We're picking up some kind of modulated radio signal from the space near Iris' outer atmosphere. . . ."

"Something from Demo?" Sealock was rising to his feet, staring wistfully at the planet, squinting into the glare of its bright exhaust.

"No. I don't know what it is. It's on the standard distress frequency, but the static from the drive is overwhelming it almost completely."

"Standard distress frequency?" He thought about that and then was horrified. "Holy Fuck!" He located a tap and inserted it. "You don't suppose . . ." The flash overloaded his visual cortex. Outside, the others cried out and, when he opened his mind again to dancing shadows, he could see the billowing ball of a thermonuclear explosion blossoming out from Iris. At least in the fifty-megaton range, it left a great crimson pockmark in the planet's gaseous outer integument as it faded.

"Sweet Jesus," murmured Temujin Krzakwa.

"Yeah," said Sealock, his mouth dry. "Say good-bye to our friends from USEC."

"Stupid bastards," said Cornwell, and was surprised at himself. Sealock turned to grin in his direction. "Yeah? There's a lot of that going around lately. . . . Come on, we've got to get this shit can on the road."

They went below, calling the others to action.

Deepstarsquatted for a while in the ground-hugging mists of Ocypete , and it began. Opaque wisps of mist were drifting about, slowly rising toward the level of the CM. A view of the bottom part of the craft showed that the struts and nozzle mounting were hidden by the stuff. And the sky was slowly brightening, a twilight that masked the dimmest stars. Ocypete was breathing, outgassing the atmosphere that had once been hers, and more. She would soon have a substantial atmosphere instead of this thin muck. Dissolution would happen rapidly as methane, ammonia, and finally carbon dioxide evaporated. The pressure would rise over two, then three, bar, and the features on its face would be wiped out by clouds and haze. As it was, and would be, the little world could never again be the same. Already the stars were going out.

Tendrils of methane fog crept up the sides of the ship like some immense living force, striving to hold it down, engulf it, and hold it to its bosom forever. Moments were passing. The people inside the mechanism activated it.

New gases swirled out from the base of the ship, driving the mist before them, creating an island of stark clarity. Venting hydrogen, Deepstar teetered slowly, gently, then began to climb. As it rose, entering new regions of obscurity, Bernoullian eddies of vapor swept across and around the thousand complex surfaces of the ship, finally to be captured in the fountain of descending gas pressure to stretch and disappear. Safely aloft, the Hyloxso engines were lit off—a bulbous spike of bright flame appeared, red, then yellow, then a translucent white clarity that was defined only by its flickering outlines. Below, the mistscape had turned to jealous, hateful chaos.

The mists waited things out, then flowed back in to claim the spot that humans had vacated. All was quiet for a moment, the worlds swirling beneath the violet light of Mother Ship's flame. A bright spark appeared in the sky, throwing new shadows. Deepstar fled from Iris on the flare of its heavy-ion engine, a dim, tiny light drifting slowly away into a deepening night. We'll meet again, the world beneath them sighed on newborn winds, in another year. When they were gone, five million safe kilometers away, a tall, periscope-like mast slowly rose from the dark sea of Iris. It looked around carefully, then began sighting in, first Aello , then Podarge , then Ocypete . An invisible beam of power flashed, carrying the deepest insight of Quantum Transformational Dynamics. Three jolts and the three moons, soared away, punted from the toe of a cosmic boot. Iris drove inward, still accelerating. At the precise moment when the proper velocity had been reached, the drive shut down and darkness closed in. The ship, enclosed in a still substantial world, fell on. Shorn of its moonlets and ring, the world seemed infinitely forlorn and blank. For a long time, a year, Iris simply fell along the mathematically complex but nearly straight path that Demogorgon had chosen. Finally she came within ten million kilometers of Jupiter, into the sway of the much larger world, and her course altered, narrowing its incoming tangent to the sun to within finely tuned parameters. It was going well.

By this time the swirling bands that mottled Iris' cloud banks were a strangely entangled mess compared to the familiar bands and zones of Jove. The temperature rose, and the solar wind began to rip handfuls of world away. Newly ionized particles began to stream outward at a slightly different angle from the barely visible haze that trailed directly behind. Iris was becoming a comet, the greatest comet that ever could be.

Eventually it was visible from Earth, from the few dark regions where light pollution didn't blind the night sky. A second-magnitude star, not yet large enough to present adisk, and growing to make a belt buckle for Ophiuchus . When it was lost again in the twilight glow, it was first magnitude, and slightly elongated. Then, from the vantage point of Earth, it was lost behind the mask of day. The lengthening teardrop of Iris proper continued to fall. More than three times her original size now, sixty thousand kilometers in diameter, the world was larger than Uranus, though as solids vaporized and her atmosphere bubbled out to nothingness her density had become an insubstantial 0.3 gm/cm2. Indeed, were it not for the high-albedo clouds which hid the depths of her atmosphere from the searching heat of Sol, she would already have been ninety percent gone. As it was, much of the hydrogen was still present, though ineffectively held by gravity. It would only be a matter of time before the small atoms found the trajectory that, in their wild oscillations, would allow them to leak into the void. Iris was slowly developing into the traditional shape of a comet, lengthening at the point of her teardrop into a broad tail of streaming gas. At the height of her acceleration she had come to have a more or less regular flow pattern, flowering out from her leading hemisphere and spreading, to disappear in the dark halo of her nightside. Now, all pattern vanished and she was a featureless raindrop of milk, falling crazily toward the light.

The orbit of Mars passed unheeded. The sun waxed slowly brighter, with its promise of freedom and the Grand Design, the mission of ages, reborn. Iris fell . . .

As spring came once again to the northern hemisphere of Earth, billions waited in curiosity as the diffuse spot of light that was the approaching Iris climbed out of the morning twilight. Even before it could be seen in near darkness, the bright stain had spread over most of Scorpio's chelae, covering perhaps five times Luna's half degree. From this perspective, it was still only a slightly elongated circle of haze with a bright center. From night to night its progress through the stars could be seen, and, briefly, the demon eye of Antares was swallowed and disgorged. Soon the central spot alonewas brighter by far than Venus, also visible in the early morning sky.

From the heart of the CFE, Ennis Cornwell watched as Iris reached out and, like her goddess namesake, stretched a bright white rainbow across the night sky. Radiating from a central sphere brighter than the full moon, hazy only at its outer edge, the comet sent out a huge tail, itself hugely bright and spreading to cover almost a fifth of the sky.

When he was a young man, this was the way he'd expected Halley's comet to look, waiting for its apparition in 2062. When it actually came, he could barely make it out against the haze-ridden sky, and really saw it only on the entertainment nets.

Now this was a comet.

And his son was riding it home!

A year and more had gone by, and now Deepstar orbited above Ocypete once again. Iris had gone past the sun, shedding all her mighty airs, and the drive had gone on again. Trailed by a bright, violet flame, the Mother Ship had driven off into the night sky, riding outward toward the stars and a world far away.

John and Brendan were in the common room of the CM, looking through a deopaqued wall at the fog-shrouded, half-molten world below them. The sun had taken over when the photon beam's nimbus no longer remained to heat the little moon. They were alone in the ship. During the long flight, contacts had been made and negotiations had proceeded. Expensive lawyers and diplomats were hired, judges bribed, and governments bought. A threat had been made by certain members of the Comnet Design Board; Maggie Lewis and Cass Mitchell had broadcast a joint statement, harsh and unforgiving in its tone. Do it, or else. . . .

Finally they had made rendezvous with a cruiser of the Contract Police, a ship that bore the guarantees for a Writ of Pardonment . The others had gone aboard, a unified group, never looking back. Cornwell understood that they lived in a giant palace somewhere, wealthy beyond imagination; he didn't know where and found that he didn't care.

"Well," he said, "there's our money. What shall we do with it all?" Sealock leaned forward toward him and grinned. "I know, and I think you do too." Cornwell nodded. "Maybe you and I can do business after all." Brendan stirred suddenly and said, "There's a lot of money bubbling away down there. Money enough to build something really great...."

"And so?"

"I never did tell anybody what was in that big data squeal, Demogorgon's last gift. . . ."

"I noticed that. I figured you had your reasons, as always." Brendan nodded. "Well, it was the Starseeder technology."

John's eyebrows rose a trifle, a study in controlledinexpressiveness. "So. All of it?"

"Propulsion. Long-term life support. Genetic engineering. Suspended-animation techniques. The whole works."

"How much do you suppose it'd cost to build a good-sized starship?" They were sublime now, talking through the shadows of a too long past.

Brendan nodded toward Ocypete . "Not more than that."

John grinned appreciatively, wondering where all the old, horrid emotions had gone. He felt bland but wonderful. It had all been worth while, then. "Maybe it could be a lot less. This starship doesn't have to be too big. . . ."

"True."

"Who should we take along?"

"Does it matter?"

"No, I guess not." John was thinking, It certainly doesn't. We all loved each other and, in the end, it was as useless as anything could ever be.

Brendan's face turned serious again. "Why take anyone? Why not just us?" John smiled and shook his head. "That doesn't sound like a very good idea."

"No, I guess not," Brendan said. "We'll think of something."

"Right." John started to turn away, then stopped. Well, he thought, if I put this off again, it's not going to get done. I have to. ... " Bren?"

The other man looked up from a developing reverie.

Cornwell hesitated again, then said, "I know you've always mistrusted my, well, what I like to think of as my sincerity, but . . . Hell. Will you engage in Downlink Rapport with me?" Sealock looked vaguely uncertain for a moment, not quite taken aback. "After all we've been through?

You don't let go of things easily, do you?" He smiled then. "All right." Feeling a small jolt of surprise, Cornwell thought, All right? But . . . Shit. Am I ready for this? I'd better be. ... He thought about Beth and said, "At least you seem to know who you are." Brendan turned away to look out at the bright clouds of Ocypete again. "We never quite learn, do we?

You know, I feel that I've changed some—maybe I haven't. I could say a great deal about the changes that I think should have taken place in you, but I won't. Maybe that's the only evidence I have that those changes have taken place at all."

John nodded slowly. "Perhaps. And you can give me the only evidence that I know is true enough to accept...." They were silent for a moment, then he added: "In any case —the world goes on." Brendan turned and fixed him with an emotionless stare. "If you never lie again, you'll never speak truer words than those."

Five years later Temujin Krzakwa lay on his back on a padded seat in a shuttlecraft, awaiting lift-off from Baikonur Cosmodrome . A sickly sweat bathed his face and desperation twisted with cold fingers inside him. He watched the countdown clock on the bulkhead move inexorably toward zero, and he thought about what had happened.

It was an unpleasant thing to run away like this, but it seemed the only way. They had him imprisoned Sometimes he thought back to his youth on the Moon and remembered how he'd longed to get away from that congenital entrapment, escape to the lovely freedom that was Earth. Freedom! It hada bitter taste to him now, and he could remember the excitement with which he'd fled Lewislab eight years ago, on his way to a rendezvous with the Triton colonists.

Why has it come to this again? he wondered. No answer? Then why had he slowly oozed out of the solidarity that the others had found in the great chateau by the Dzungarian Gates? They lived lives of contentment and only wanted him to be happy. . . .

His lips twisted with an almost uncontrollable rage. He damped the feelings down and exhaled heavily. Contentment? Jesus, what's keeping this thing on the ground? He looked up at the clock again and felt a sudden, scalding nausea. The progression of numbers had been replaced by a flashing red bar. Emergency hold.

He sat forward and looked out the porthole of this venerable Russian spacecraft. There was a handsomely designed sportsGEM racing across the parched concrete toward him in a cloud of dust, pursued by the flashing blue lights of spaceport security. The police caught up with the intruder, quite nearby now, and forced it to a stop. The hovercar's door popped open and a little figure jumped out. It began running toward the ship. The police pursued the runner on foot and soon had the tiny figure pinned to the ground. When they were gone, the shuttle lifted off only a little behind schedule. Comforted by the roaring engines and the inertial pressure on his back, Temujin began to relax. But he thought, I'm sorry, Axie; I just couldn't take it. You were just another childhood to me: you put me back on the Moon.

Tears tried to well up in his eyes, but he suppressed them successfully.

The armored inner airlock door of interstellar exploration vehicle Deepstar 1.5 slid back into its interhull recess and Temujin Krzakwa looked into the brightly lit space that held Brendan Sealock and John Cornwell.

In their mid-forties now, the two had changed only a little, taking on just the faintest patina of middle age. Cornwell was a little thinner. His face seemed to foreshadow a dour gaunt-ness to come, and a few permanent lines had appearedaround his mouth. Sealock seemed the same at first glance, but a very small amount of subcutaneous fat had appeared under his skin and it made his face a little softer. The contours seemed to have smoothed. . . . Tem supposed he must look to them now like some giant bag of ambulatory cellulite. The image amused him.

Sealock held out his hand and said, "Welcome back, asshole. I knew you'd show up."

"Did you really?"

"No. But I always hoped I'd have an opportunity to say that to you." Tem turned to face Cornwell. "What about you? Do you have anything sarcastic saved up?" He shook his head. "I'm afraid not. I'm glad you're here."

"So am I." As they walked up the corridor toward the control room, Tem said, "It was too much." Brendan turned to look at him curiously, read familiar signs, and nodded. "Relationships like that, ones with expectations, usually are."

And John said, "Maybe that's why we're here. I guess this is what I was looking for, after all. Maybe there are worse things than being alive. . . ."There was a program in the machine now, an interesting one. Assembly. End. Go.

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