The Eternity Artifact

1

Fitzhugh

At times, every professor believes that his classroom represents the abnegation of intelligence, if not absolute abiosis. This feeling has been universewide since long before the Tellurian Diaspora. Lughday was no exception, especially not for my fourth-period class, Historical Trends 1001, the introductory course, one of the core requirements for undergraduates.

I walked through the door into the small amphitheatre classroom and toward the dais. Forty bodies sat waiting in four tiers, arrayed in a semicircle—all avoiding my scrutiny. At times such as the one before me, I could only wish that the university did not require all full professors to teach one introductory course every year, at a bare minimum. I’d drawn fourth period—right after lunch, and that made it even more of a challenge.

I stationed myself behind the podium, the representation of a practice significantly untransformed in almost ten thousand recorded years of human history—and for the last five, savants and pedants had prognosticated the decline of personal- and physical-presence classroom instruction. Yet in all instances where such ill-considered experimentation in technologically based pedagogical methodology had been attempted in an effort to replace what had worked, if imperfectly, the outcomes and the ramifications had ranged from social catastrophe to unmitigated disaster, even as my predecessors in pedagogy had predicted such eventualities.

Technology and implementation had never constituted the difficulty, but rather the genetic and physiological strengths and limitations of human cognitive and learning patterns. From a historical perspective, successful technological applications are those that enhance human capacities, not those that force humans into prestructured technological niches or functions.

As I cleared my throat and stepped to the podium, the murmurs died away. I glanced down at the shielded screen before picking a name, smiling politely, and speaking. “Scholar Finzel, please identify the single most critical aspect of the events leading to the Sunnite-Covenanter Conflagration of 3237.”

“Ser?” Finzel offered a blank look.

For the second class of the first semester, blank looks were not exactly infrequent, not for beginning students, especially for those from nonshielded continents or from the occasional off-planet scholar. “I realize neolatry precludes your interest in matters of past history, but since the Conflagration resulted in the devastation of Meath, extensive damage to the Celtic worlds of the Comity, and significant taxation increases for the entire Comity, and since bom the Covenanters and the Alliance have continued to rearm and rebuild their fleets, with a continued hostility exemplified most recently by the so-called pacification of the Mazarene systems and the forcible annexation of the Walden Libracracy…”

That not-so-gentle reminder did not remove the expression of incomprehension, but only added one of veiled hostility. I used the screen to check his background. As I’d vaguely recalled, he was from Ulster, where he could have netlinked and been provided the answer.

“Scholar Finzel,” I said politely, “Gregory is a shielded continent, and the university is a shielded institution. You are expected to read the texts before class. For some reason, you seem unable to comprehend this basic requirement. I suggest you remedy the situation before the next class.” I turned to a student with a modicum of interest in her eyes. “Scholar MacAfee?”

“According to Robertson Janes, ser, there were two linked causes of the Conflagration. The first was the malfunction of the communications linkages of the Covenanter fleet command, and the second was the widespread perception among the population of the Alliance worlds that the Covenanters intended to spread a nanogenevims that would transform all herbivores into hogs.” A hint of a smile crossed Scholar MacAfee’s lips.

“You’re in the general area,” I replied, “but I don’t believe that Janes said the Covenanter fleet’s command communications malfunctioned. Do you recall exactly what he wrote?”

MacAfee frowned.

“Anyone else?”

“Ser?” The tentative voice was that of Ariel Leanore, a dark-haired young woman who looked more like a girl barely into seminary, rather than at university.

“Yes?”

“I think… didn’t he write something… it was more like… the expectations of instantaneous response resulted in the ill-considered reprisal on Hajj Majora… and that reprisal made the Sunnis so angry that they passed the legislation funding the High Caliph’s declaration of Jihad. There were rumors about the Spear of Iblis, but those were noncausal…” Leanore paused, her voice trailing away.

“Very good, Scholar Leanore.” I stopped and surveyed the faces, seeing that most of them still hadn’t grasped the impact of Janes’s words. “The expectations of instantaneous response… what does that mean?”

All forty faces were blank with the impermeability of incomprehension. When I had been in the service, I had believed that such an expression was limited to those of less-than-advanced intelligence. The years in academia had convinced me that it appeared upon the visages of all too many individuals in the adolescent and postadolescent years, regardless of innate intelligence or the lack thereof.

“What it means…” I drew out the words. “… is that instantaneous communications and control preclude the opportunity for considered thought and reflection. The Covenanter command had the ability to order and carry out an immediate reprisal. They did so. They did not think about the fact that the Covenanter trading combines on Hajj Majora had, within the terms of their culture, acted responsibly against those Covenanters who had manipulated the terms of exchange in a manner that could be most charitably described as fraud.” I cleared my throat There are definite disadvantages to auditory lectures, especially without even sonic boosting, but my discomfort was irrelevant to those who had enacted the shielding compact “Now that you know that, why did I initially suggest that there was only one critical aspect to these events?”

“You suggest that both events listed by Janes share a commonality, ser?” That was Scholar Amyla Sucharil, one of three exchange students from the worlds of the Middle Kingdom.

“Not only the events cited by Janes, but those cited by Yamato and Alharif.”

“Isn’t it communications? They all deal with communications, ser,” suggested Leanore.

Young Ariel might have been tentative, but at least she was thinking, unlike most of the others. “Exactly! Both the events cited by Janes were the result of misunderstanding and misapplications of the use and function of communications, if in different societal aspects. If you apply the same tests to the examples of Yamato and Alharif, you’ll find a similar pattern.” I smiled, not that I wanted to, because it was likely to be a long afternoon. “History illustrates a pattern in communications. In low-tech civilizations, only immediate personal communications can be conveyed with any speed, and those are often without detail. As more detail is required, communications slow. As technology improves, there is always a trade-off between speed and detail, because improving technology results in greater societal and infrastructural complexity, which requires greater detail. Until the development of fullband comm and nanoprocessing, this trade-off existed to a greater or lesser degree. For the past millennium or so, however, the limitation on communications has not been the technology. What has it been?” I surveyed the faces, some beginning to show apprehension as they realized that they did not know the answer, and that I might indeed call upon them.

“Would it be understanding, ser?” ventured Sucharil.

“Precisely! Just because you have the information, and even a hundred near-instantaneous analyses, doesn’t mean that you truly know what to do with it, particularly when the analyses may be conflicting, depending on the background assumptions and the weight of the evidence. This was particularly true in the case of the Conflagration, because of the cultural imperatives of both the Covenanters and the Alliance. Even today, any analyses dealing with the interaction of those cultures are problematical.”

“Ser? Why does it matter that much?” That was from Emory David. “The Comity has a thousand world members, and the Covenanters have less than two hundred. There can’t be more than seventy Alliance worlds.”

“What is the first rule of interstellar warfare?” I replied.

“No planet can be effectively defended against a determined attack… ser…” replied Scholar David.

“And what are the beliefs behind a jihad?”

Finally, comprehension began to illuminate a few faces.

“You mean, ser, tjat they don’t care because they’ll go to paradise?”

“Or Heaven, if they’re Covenanters doing the Will of the Divine, and seeking to ensure that we do not recover the Morning Star,” I replied dryly.

“But… that’s a myth without foundation…”

I could not ascertain the source of that incredulous murmur.

“Not to true believers, it is not. Not even in this so-called enlightened and rational times, and certainly not upon the Worlds of the Covenant. The Morning Star, or the Spear of Iblis, the Hammer of Lucifer, whatever the specific term, is a symbol of forbidden knowledge, knowledge that is considered only the province of Iblis, Satan, or their demon children. If there is one aspect of all true-believer religions that remains constant across time and history, it is that certain aspects of technology or science are forbidden by the deity because use of that knowledge usurps the powers and privileges of the deity. Such theocracies will therefore commit great violence over issues or scientific practices that would appear common to many of you.” I inhaled slowly, for a pause. “With regard to this, even if the Comity is more secular in outlook, once the theocracies have used force against our interests, such actions require force in response, or the perception of weakness will cost even more in the long run. We lost the populations of ten worlds. The Covenanters lost thirty and the Alliance nearly forty. It has taken close to ten centuries for them to recover, half that for us, except that a dead world remains that for longer than we or any other humans will be around to recolonize. A hundred worlds scoured… would you like it to happen again, on Ulster, or Lyr? Or perhaps Culain or Liaden?” I paused. “Or perhaps the Covenanters are somewhat sensitive to the power of position, in which case, what happens to be the other leading secular polity? The one with whom they share the closest stellar congruencies?”

“The… Middle Kingdom?”

“Correct. Now… my skepticism is almost without limbi, but most recently the First Advocate of the Middle Kingdom died in circumstances resembling assassination—right after he had delivered a series of addresses severely critical of the theocratic expansionism of the worlds of the Covenant. What might happen if the Middle Kingdom were reputed to obtain some forbidden knowledge, something resembling the Spear of Iblis? To borrow an ancient metaphor, how long before the sabres began to rattle? Again… just over, if you win, information?”

There was silence in the room, although I could hear someone murmur, “It couldn’t happen again…” I refrained from suggesting all too many people, particularly politicians, had said those words, or some variation, over hundreds of centuries, generally to everyone’s regret.

“Now… I’d like each of you to take a moment to reflect I would like each of you to come up with an example from history where information and how it was handled was critical in determining the fate of something—an army, a fleet, a nation, a world.” I held up a hand to forestall the objections. “I know. Once you’re away from Gregory, you can netlink and get a reply, ordered by whatever parameters you suggest The point of this exercise is to develop your judgment so that when you do that in the future, you will have a greater understanding of what that information actually means.”

This time the majority of expressions were those of resignation. I supposed that was an improvement. If they thought what I was requiring was difficult, they hadn’t even considered what was going to be required in the later stages of applied manual mathematics. I’d learned, years earlier, that if I leaned on the students hard in the opening classes, the classes got easier and more rewarding toward the end. Unfortunately, doing so, and maintaining a cheerful demeanor in the process, was arduous in the first weeks of the semester.

I didn’t quite breathe a sigh of relief when fourth period was over and I left the classroom, walking down the ramp to the main level. There were times I could feel my hands tightening, wanting to throttle certain students. The best ones cared for knowledge as a tool, and the worst only sought a degree with marks that would guarantee entry into some multi or another or into the Comity bureaucracy, which was worse, from what I’d seen, than that of academia. I could not help but wish, at times, that I were back teaching in the days prior to the Disapora on Old Earth, where everything had been broadband and without the direct face-to-face student contact that reminded me all too often of how little most of them cared for knowledge itself.

But… that time on Old Earth had been before the discovery of the subtle but far-reaching effects of broadcast energies, even at extraordinarily low power, on neonatal and prematuration mental development The Comity had banned wide-scale public and private broadcast of information and power, and relied on monoptic distribution systems, unlike the more conservative governments, such as the Covenanters and Sunnite Alliance, for whom cost-benefit analyses included individuals with environmentally damaged attention spans. I couldn’t help but snort to myself. My students had short enough attention spans without additional technological assistance in shortening them further. The continent of Gregory, as many other continents on Comity worlds, had even more stringent requirements than the baseline regulations in force throughout the entire Comity of Worlds.

Once back in my office, little more than an overlarge closet three meters on a side, I settled myself behind my console and keyed in the codes to call up my in-comms— there were no personal direct-links at the university, or for that matter, anywhere on the continent.

The first message was from the provost—just a message, and no text.

Congratulations on being nominated for a senior fellowship with the Comity Diplomatic Corps. Your continued diligence in seeking outside validation and recognition of your talents, accomplishments, and credentials has not gone unnoticed…

I just looked at the message. The last thing I wanted was a senior fellowship with the CDC. Years back, my service tours had convinced me of the futility of government service. I certainly had not applied for such a fellowship. Had the provost nominated me? Why? Had I been that much of a thorn in his bureaucratic side? It didn’t matter. In the unlikely event I happened to be selected, I’d politely refuse. There were more than enough brilliant junior professors who wanted such empty honors and would be happy to accept.

I moved to the next message.

2

Goodman

The five-story building in New Jerusalem was identified as the Zion Mercantile Exchange. It wasn’t, although there were legitimate trade and commerce offices on the main level. At the end of the east corridor, I stepped through the gate to the lifts, cleared by a minute sample of my true DNA. My destination was on the second level. At the third doorway on the second level, I offered my wrist once more to the DNA-coder.

“Request clearance codes.”

“Kappa seven-eight-nine-six, Josiah three, Walls of Jericho, Hatusa version.”

“John Paul Goodman, cleared.” The endurasteel portal irised open, long enough for me to enter one of the sanctums of the Covenant Intelligence Service.

One of Colonel Truesdale’s bright young men looked up from his console at me. “The colonel will be with you in a few minutes, Operative Goodman.”

I was a senior CIS operative, not just an operative. I didn’t correct him. Instead, I settled into one of the straight-backed chairs to wait.

Fourteen and a half minutes passed before the aide said pleasantly, “You can go hi now, Operative Goodman.”

“Thank you.” I offered a warm smile and walked through the door that opened as I neared and closed behind me.

The inner office looked to have a panoramic view of New Jerusalem through a wide expanse of glass. That was an illusion. Two men awaited me. Colonel Truesdale sat behind a table desk, and a dark-skinned man with gray hair sat in a chair to his left, facing me.

Colonel Truesdale’s eyes were hard and glittering blue. They didn’t match the genial laugh and the warmth of his voice. “Operative Goodman, you’ve heard of Major Ibaio.”

I nodded politely. “Yes, sir.” Who hadn’t, after his exploits in pacifying the Nubian Cluster? Or rooting out the followers of the antiprophet among the Mazarenes? He hadn’t had much to do in the ongoing annexation of the Walden Libracracy. He wouldn’t have been needed. The Waldonians didn’t believe enough in anything to fight that hard.

“Take a seat.”

I sat in the remaining chair.

Major Ibaio’s dark eyes scrutinized me from an even darker face. After a moment, he spoke. “The Comity is undertaking an unusual expedition. They have refitted a former colony supply ship. The Magellan is the largest possible vessel that can fit through a Gate. The AG drives are the most powerful ever installed and have been under construction for the past three years. The shuttles are larger than couriers. The vessel is heavily shielded, and armed with the weaponry of a standard Comity battle cruiser, and it will be part of a scientific expedition.”

A colony vessel with beefed-up drives armed like a battle cruiser for a science expedition? That made no sense. Why were they giving me that kind of mission? What I knew about any science besides weapons and the general basics wouldn’t enabled me to pass for a lab tech, much less a scientist. Or was it a way to get rid of me?

“The Comity government has seldom invested heavily in any research exploration, but it seems more than probable that their scientists have located a planet with alien forerunner technical artifacts—or a renegade Technocrat colony that escaped the Dirty War, then failed.” Ibaio smiled coldly. “You understand the possible value.”

“In thousands of years, no one has found any alien artifacts—not anywhere in the Galaxy. It’s unlikely that any of the renegade Technocrat scientists escaped.”

“Exactly.” Ibaio’s voice was colder than before. “The Comity would not expend such funding if they were not absolutely certain. They may even be seeking the Morning Star.”

The legendary Hammer of Lucifer, the Spear of Iblis? Had they ever even existed? I wasn’t about to ask that question. “I’ll do whatever is required, sir, but I’m not a scientist—”

“Your job is both simple… and very difficult,” interrupted the colonel. He smiled warmly once more. “We don’t expect you to bring back scientific discoveries or artifacts. That would be asking far too much of any operative.”

That didn’t reassure me much.

“What you are to do is to leave an AG signaler that will allow our ships to locate the planet or station or locale independently.”

AG signalers didn’t exactly float in orbit off strange planets. That I knew, but I wouldn’t have recognized one if it had been set before me.

“Needless to say, you cannot carry such aboard the Magellan. That means you’ll have to build it from scratch.”

I was getting a very bad feeling about what the colonel had in mind.

“We don’t intend to confront the Comity directly. That would be… unwise, but it is difficult to monitor an entire planet, even for the D.S.S.” The colonel smiled once more. “You’ll be given an in-depth indoctrination for both your cover and for your mission. Your cover will provide you access to the equipment you need. You will spend the next month in a regime of forced nanite education and indoctrination. By then, you’ll look and act like your cover.”

More surgery and forced nanite education? What stories I’d heard about them hadn’t been good. “How many operatives are you putting through this?”

Truesdale ignored the question. “You will be William Gerald Bond, Comity armorer second class. He has been assigned to the Magellan, but will be late in reporting for cadre training because he is currently finishing a patrol cruise on the Drake. That will allow us time to prepare you. Along with other techs of lower rank, armorer Bond has been under surveillance for some time, and we have his DNA. Because this is a long mission, we will have to alter the medical records at Hamilton base and those carried on board the Magellan. We cannot risk changes to the main databases, but the subroutines should hold unless there is a deep audit. Even so, that will require your escape relatively soon after the ship returns. Any other information you can supply will be most useful as well.”

“Might I ask why an armorer?”

“There are several reasons,” Ibaio replied. “First, scrutiny of mid-and lower-level techs is somewhat less. Second, armorers have access to AG-driven message torps and regular armed torps. The torp drives have the components that can be converted to the necessary signaler.”

“Do we know anything about where this place is?”

“Distant enough to require several Gates to reach it. The details will be covered in your briefing and indoctrination, Senior Operative Goodman,” Truesdale said smoothly as he stood. “I wish you well, Goodman. You’re in Major Ibaio’s most capable hands now.”

Ibaio had risen as well. Unlike the colonel, he wasn’t smiling.

The Morning Star—the Hammer of Lucifer, or what the Sunnis called the Spear of Iblis? Why was the colonel sending an operative? Why not a crusader who was deep-programmed? I could see why he didn’t want to send a fleet directly against the Comity, especially when too many ships were tied up in finishing the pacification of the Libracracy, but a single operative?

3

Fitzhugh

After a long and frustrating battle with student preconceptions in the honors seminar about the reliability of standard historical methodologies, I stepped into my office in the History Annex and took a long deep breath. At times, I did indeed have difficulty in refraining from applying violence to those prone to incompetence.

Without thought I dropped into an alert stance as a slender man in a black singlesuit rose from the chair in front of my desk console. I had sealed my office when I’d left for class.

“Easy, Professor Fitzhugh. Jon Herrit. Comity Security. I’ve been waiting for you.”

For me? I didn’t even have to look puzzled. I hadn’t seen a Security type in years, if not decades, certainly not since I’d finished the two Service tours that had paid for my undergraduate and graduate degrees. But then, those years and what they had entailed were best left in the past. “For me? I’m afraid that I can’t be of much help to you—or Security.” I couldn’t help but wonder why so many security organizations wore black—or mostly black. Then, the black was doubtless only used when they wanted to be noticed.

“I’m certain you’ll be of great help.” Herrit smiled almost apologetically. “Before we go any further, though, I’d like to request that you check all your in-comms. That will make some matters clearer, Professor.”

I didn’t like his attitude, but I would have checked my in-comms anyway. So I settled behind the console.

The first message was from the dean, congratulating me on my success in obtaining a senior fellowship with the Comity Diplomatic Corps and granting me up to a three-year sabbatical, effective immediately at the end of the day—today. He also thanked me for obtaining the matching grant for my replacement, wished me well, and asked me to stop by for just a moment before I left. The next message was from the provost, both congratulating me and telling me how much the trustees would appreciate the outside validation of the expertise of the university faculty. The third message was from the Resources Office, noting that, during my sabbatical, my pay would continue to be posted to my designated financial institution and that all coverages would remain in full force, in addition to any coverages that I might obtain through the Comity fellowship.

I looked at Herrit. “Why don’t you explain?”

“You’ve been requested as a consultant on a high-level, extraordinarily secret Comity project.” He shook his head. “It’s so high-level that I don’t know what it is, or where it is.”

“I’m supposed to accept without knowing anything?”

“Actually, Professor, you really don’t have any choice. As you can see from those messages, the government has already made the arrangements with the university system. You will receive your university salary during this sabbatical. In addition, you’ll be paid at the rate of a Comity assistant underminister for the duration of the project, or a full academic year, whichever is longer.”

That was frightening. An assistant underminister made at least three times what I did, and anyone who wanted to pay me that much had either a difficult or dangerous task—or both. “You’re Security, but this fellowship is with the Diplomatic Corps. Why are you here?”

“You’re a very important man, Professor. Why, I don’t know. My job is to make sure you get to the project safely.”

“So… do you have any recommendations on what I should take?” My words came out sardonically.

“You’ll be traveling, and that means packing light. I’d suggest as much material as you can load into a couple of cubes. A mixture of entertainment and professional reading.”

“I’ll have console and equipment access? Or do I need to bring a portable console?”

“I’m quite sure that you’ll be provided with all the equipment you need, Professor. With your background, I’m certain you understand that.”

I ignored the reference to the Service. That had been long ago, even if I did continue the workouts and exercises. They were useful to keep me in shape despite my more sedentary academic lifestyle. They also provided a most necessary outlet for a genetically supported tendency to violence—so that I didn’t actually throttle dense students. “What now?”

“I’d suggest you say your good-byes to the dean, and then we go to your quarters and pack. We have a reservation on one of the late-evening elevator climbers to Orbit Station Beta.”

While I’d had the feeling that the assignment was off-planet, since Leinster wasn’t exactly the hub of the Comity, Herrit’s words still sent a chill through me. “Where am I headed after that?”

“I don’t know. There will be a Comity courier ship waiting for you. That’s all they told me.”

“What do I tell my family?”

“Your daughters are bom grown, and you never recontracted. You tell your daughters that you’re leaving on this splendid fellowship, and that it’s a well-paid, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I have a comm address through which they can reach you.”

“Carefully screened, no doubt.”

“Very carefully screened, I’m certain, Professor.” Herrit smiled. “You’d best cubeload whatever you want from your console here, and then I’ll accompany you to see the dean.”

As if I had much choice. I should have rejected the nomination that had appeared weeks before, except I had the feeling that no one would have listened. And I still had no idea why I was being drafted, or for what, only that the stakes had to be high. But why would anyone want an obscure professor of historical trends from the University of Gregory?

4

Chang

Headed back from Alpha Station, I felt the ice forming on the back of the space armor collar. Brushed it away twice. Wouldn’t want to have it jam the seal if I had to cram on the helmet Cockpit heaters weren’t working that well. Neither were the scrubbers. Frost was building on the bulkheads away from the boards. I triggered the comm links, tight-beam. “Flashpot, stacker two, on return. Cargo as manifested. No passengers.”

“Stacker two, have you inbound this time.”

“Affirmative.” Idiot! “On return” had to be inbound.

“Stacker two, shut down and report to ops upon return.”

“Flashpot, shift’s not over.”

“Operational requirements, stacker two.”

“Stet. Will report as ordered.” Operational requirements meant I got paid. Wasn’t about to let Graysham short me on a technicality. Didn’t get paid enough as it was. Never had.

Scanned the boards, the farscreens and repscreens that worked. Telltales showed a ship at lock one. Priority lock. Couldn’t tell what. IFF wasn’t working. Not much on Beta Station shuttles did except basic habitability, main controls, drives, grapples, and dampers. Why I worked suited, except for the helmet. McClendon was ass-end of the Comity, no orbit elevators. Would have been cheaper and safer, but the tightwads wouldn’t come up with the capital. Couldn’t afford more than basic maintenance. Sometimes, not even that.

Another ten standard passed before I confirmed Beta Station—dead ahead. Would have been shocked if it hadn’t been. Years since I missed on a straight-in. “Flashpot, stacker two. Have lock five, visual and beacon.”

“Two, cleared into lock. Straight to ops after shutdown.”

“Stet.” What the frig did ops want? Shouldn’t say ops. Graysham was ops, maintenance, and my boss.

Went to work. Manual approach. light touches on the steering jets, quick burst on the electrogravs. Shuttle settled against the dampers, cargo and personnel locks lined up perfectly. Magclamps sealed tight.

“Flashpot, two’s locked. Shutting down this time.”

“Stet, two. Report ops soonest.”

Didn’t bother with a reply. First, logged red status to ops. Then had to do the shutdown checklist manually, and by memory. Heads-ups had died three months back. No chance of repair. No one made McCann wafers anymore. Could feel more chill building in the cockpit before I unharnessed. Carried my helmet out of the shuttle.

Wesmin stood by the lock, waiting.

“Red status,” I told him. “Report’s in the station log.”

“It’s a wonder she’s stayed up so long.” Shook his head. “Graysham won’t be happy.”

“He’s never happy.”

Wesmin laughed.

Made my way toward the lockers. Wasn’t about to wear a suit longer than necessary. Stripped off the suit, racked the helmet. Pulled a vest and shorts over my skintights and headed inward. Took the crew tube. Didn’t see anyone. Not that likely at midnight Comity standard.

Ops was on the inner ring, where the grav fields were steady. Cube three meters on a side. Gray walls. Graysham sat in a web chair. He swung away from the comm board and console when I stepped through the hatch. Looked at me, like he’d never seen me before.

Before he said a word, I hit him. “Two’s down. Heaters are shot, and scrubbers won’t take out the water. Whole board’ll go on a long run, maybe even to Alpha.”

“We’ll take care of that after you go, Chang. You’ve got one stan to pack your gear.” Graysham grinned—evil expression.

Wanted to smash his teeth in. Could have, too, except I’d need work. “Not going anywhere. Contract says—”

“I could tell you that you’ve been relieved because you’re a lousy shuttle pilot. That wouldn’t be true. Or I could say that I hate the waste you make of your looks, your arrogant fembitch attitude, and your tight ass. That’d be true, but it’s not the reason. Besides, rundown as Beta Station is, I need good pilots, arrogant and tight-assed as they might be.” He grinned again. “You’ve got a better job.”

That was bullshit. Who was going to hire me?

“It’s the kind even you can’t refuse, Chang.”

“Never been a job I couldn’t walk from.” I’d walk to prove I could, if I had to.

“The Comity Diplomatic Corps wants the best shuttle pilots. They were very specific. They tracked you down from that mess on Lyr.” He grinned again. “I never knew you’d kneed a commissioner in the balls and broken all his fingers.”

“Bastard embezzled operations funds and tried to blame a maintenance failure on another pilot.” He’d groped me, too, but I wasn’t about to tell Graysham.

Graysham waited.

So did I.

“The Corps wants you, one Jiendra Chang. They told me to tell you three things. It’s the toughest piloting job you or anyone else will ever see. You’ll never hold any certification anywhere in the Comity if you don’t take it, and you won’t ever get off-planet to go anyplace else.”

“That’s two.” Maybe it was three, but he was holding something back. Friggin’ Comity. Hated threats.

“The third thing was a name. That’s all. Eliasha Eileen Chu-Wong.”

Double frig! Tried not to react.

Graysham leaned forward, looking uninterested. He wasn’t.

“Who loaded you with all this shit?”

“Oh… and I was told to tell you that, if you do this job right, you’ll get back your star-class rating, and your deep-space master’s cert. You’ll also get paid at star-class rates whether you’re successful or not for a minimum of one year.”

Talk about reward-punishment. Whoever “they” were could break me, even in McClendon system, but offered stuff only Comity execs could provide. “Who said so?”

“The lady in black who’s waiting out in the passageway. She arrived a little while ago on that Comity courier. It’s an armed courier, Chang. Talk to her and go pack. Good luck. Even you’ll need it.” Graysham turned back to the comm board. Not a signal on it. Just a way of telling me he was done.

Stepped out into the passageway. She was three meters back. Wasn’t smiling either.

“Who are you?” Already knew what she was. Muscles, alertness, and black vest and shorts, black skintights said Comity commando. Also meant they knew my background.

“I’m Alya Podorovski, Pilot Chang.” Pleasant voice. Behind it, she was the fem-bitch Graysham thought I was.

“Where’s this pilot job?”

“I don’t know. My mission is to escort you onto the Comity courier waiting in the priority lock and get you to where we’re headed. I suggest we go to your quarters and that you pack your gear. I doubt you have that many memorabilia.” Her eyes went over me like I was raw meat.

Hate it when they do that, men or women.

5

Barna

Peter Atreos walked into the front display foyer. He stopped before the rendition of the Grande Opera Theatre. After a moment, he shook his head. Without looking at me, he spoke. “When I look at this, I see all the faults, and none of the grandeur. Yet every detail is perfect.”

That was because the opera house was an architectural melange, a performing space designed to please the patrons, not to showcase the performers or the production. I saw no reason to point out the obvious. Atreos was one of those patrons.

“Why do you leave that work in the display foyer, ser Barna?”

I shrugged. “It is good art Someday, someone will buy it.”

“You are a great artiste, but you are not a businessman.” He planted himself before the replica of the holo-portrait of Rennis Zaphir. The original was in Zaphir’s private galley. Atreos studied it closely. His eyes narrowed. I knew why. Zaphir had thick bushy eyebrows that dominated his face. They gave him an unkempt look, even in the formal singlesuit. I could have cleaned up the eyebrows a touch. Then the image would have reflected greater control of the power of Zaphir’s iron will, but not the passion behind it, or the humor or the stubbornness. It still would have been Zaphir, but not as much Zaphir. The original showed that to an even greater extent. Originals always do, in a way that even a molecularly identical copy cannot, no matter what the scientific types say. That was why original works remained in demand. They always would.

“You have a reputation for talent and realism, ser Barna,” offered Atreos.

“That is what I am known for.” I could feel Aeryana’s eyes on my back. She stood at the railing of the loft. When potential clients appeared, so did she. She looked down into the display foyer. I always felt her eyes. What artist would not?

“Great realism.” Atreos’s words were tinged with irony. He turned and looked directly at me. “Yet… realism… untempered by, shall we say, practical considerations, fails to serve the patron or the artist.”

It would be best for me to say little. Aeryana was listening, and I knew what Atreos wanted. I nodded.

“You know that we are seeking a likeness of the new Directeur. The work would provide a handsome commission. You did not submit a proposal.”

“I am here, ser Atreos. My work is known. If the Societe Generale sees fit to commission me, I would be most honored.” I offered the slightest bow.

“The Societe General, ser Barna, cannot offer commissions to those who do not apply,” Atreos replied. “The application deadline is tomorrow. You might wish to know.”

I bowed again. “You are most kind and thoughtful.”

“I am not, ser Barna. I would prefer not to deal with you. The others requested you be told.” With a brusque nod, he turned and departed. He did not hurry, but he did not look back.

His parting sentiment was not unexpected. That he had come to the studio at all had been the surprise.

“Chendor!” Aeryana walked down the ramp from the loft Her deep blue eyes flashed. Her jet-black hair was shoulder length, most unfashionable, but perfect for her wide forehead, oval face, and high cheekbones. She was angry, but I enjoyed watching her before she spoke.

“You turned him down! You are an idiot, Chendor! An idiot! You are a great artist, but you are an idiot. You are less than an idiot. You are an arrogant, artistic genius, and we will all starve because you never compromise.” Aeryana’s words burned. They always did. She was exaggerating. I had the studio, and it was on Rimbaud Boulevard, with an eight-room conapt behind it We owned both, in fee simple without encumbrances. We could afford the Academe for Nicole. That was hardly starving in Noveau Rochelle, the city of the arts on Gallia.

“I do not see you subsisting on stale biscuits, my dear.” After twenty years, she was more beautiful than ever, and some of the portraits of her in the conapt would take away the breath of the most jaded. They were not for others, but for me. I would destroy them, in time, but not for many years.

“You are impossible!”

“That is possible,” I admitted.

“Will you never reach out to ask for a commission?”

“Atreos does not want me.”

“The others do. They forced him to come here and ask you to offer a proposal.”

“Anything I painted would not satisfy him. I would not have one of the most powerful financiers in New Rochelle dissatisfied with me.”

“His satisfaction will never pay the bills.”

“That is most true, my dear, but his dissatisfaction may keep others from paying them.”

“You are impossible.”

“I believe you said that before.” I smiled broadly.

“Chendor… I don’t know why I stay with you.”

“Because I am an arrogant artistic genius. And because I love you. I have always loved you and looked at no one else.”

“All that is true, Chendor, but don’t you dare turn down another paying commission that good. Don’t you dare!”

“I can’t promise that, dearest.”

Aeryana was shaking her head as she walked back up the ramp to the upper level, from where she managed the financial side of the studio. She was no longer angry. That I could tell.

Should I offer a proposal on the Societe Generate portrait? It would be simple enough, and the work would not be that hard. Then again, Atreos would tell everyone he knew in Noveau Rochelle all of the faults he saw in the portrait. He knew far more people than I did.

If I created a portrait that pleased Atreos, it would not be the kind of work for which I was known. I would then be accused of abandoning my standards. That could cost me more than I’d gain from the Societe Generate commission.

I looked up from my thoughts. Out beyond the front display window, a black sedan glided to a stop at the curb in front of the studio. It was a security vehicle. I recognized it because one had always followed Zaphir’s limousine when he had come to sit for his portrait. I’d offered to go to his office. He’d said that he preferred the excuse of leaving it.

Two men got out of the sedan and stepped toward the studio door. It was going to be one of those days. Aeryana would be anything but pleased if I turned down a second commission, especially from someone wealthy enough for a security detail.

When they stepped into the front foyer, I bowed. “Greetings.”

As I straightened up, I recognized the shorter man in the lighter gray. It was Georges Hillaire, the managing directeur of Bane du Nord. I’d done a portrait of his wife nine years back. It had been one of my better works, except for those of Aeryana, of course.

“Ser Barna?” That was the taller and younger man in the severe dark gray singlesuit. He had the figure of someone who had been an athlete and still kept in training. His eyes drifted to the representation of the Grande Opera Theatre. He nodded, and his eyes flicked back to me. They were dark gray. They were also far harder than I would have expected from a man who looked so young as he did.

“The same.”

“I apologize,” he went on. “Ser Hillaire had given me your name and had agreed to accompany me. I’m here to discuss a possible… commission.”

The hesitation over the word “commission” suggested tentativeness, but Hillaire would never have accompanied someone who could not have afforded my work—and prices.

“We would appreciate a few minutes with you, perhaps in a less open space.”

Some clients were like that. “The conference room is damped.” I gestured for them to follow me.

Neither spoke until the door was closed. One of them added a secondary damping field. Hillaire wouldn’t have done it. The younger man in the darker gray surveyed the octagonal chamber, with the cherry-paneled walls—and no artwork. He studied the piped-light chandelier, then the circular table, before seating himself in one of the four wooden armchairs.

I took the chair across from him. Hillaire sat at my left He worried his lip with his lower teeth. I’d not seen that before.

“I am here on behalf of the both the Comity Cultural Service and the Diplomatic Corps,” began the man I didn’t know.

“You didn’t say who you are,” I offered.

“I could give you a name. It wouldn’t be mine, but you could track it, and it would be real. As real as any name is, and it would even identify the company that pays my salary. It’s not real, either, except as a financial entity.”

“Why didn’t you just give it, then?”

“Because ser Hillaire suggested I do not. He said that you would know it was not real. Our research indicates the same. That talent is part of the reason the Comity would like to offer you both a stipend and a series of works for a commission. The stipend would go to your wife, the commission to you.”

“I’m certain Aeryana would agree to that.” I laughed. “She might ask why both did not go to her.”

The corners of Hillaire’s lips lifted, then dropped.

“What is this commission?”

“A series of depictions of places and items of great and unique interest. I can only say that you have never seen their like.”

“Can only say, or will only say?”

“I cannot say more because I don’t know more.”

He was telling the truth. That was interesting, and unnerving.

“The stipend would be five thousand Comity credits paid every Gallian month for up to three years.”

That was even more unnerving. Over the past decade, my best year had been seventy thousand, my worst thirty. The Comity was offering a baseline stipend of fifty thousand. “And the commission?”

“An additional one hundred thousand baseline, up to three hundred thousand.”

“I don’t recall such generosity being a Comity policy. What conditions are you omitting?”

“You will be traveling on Comity vessels, not luxurious private transports. The work will be interesting, but demanding. It could take up to two years. You will have comm links, but they will be delayed and monitored. Most important, if you take the assignment, ser Barna, you’ll have to leave within a standard day. We will need to know your decision by the end of the day.”

“And if I don’t accept?”

“We go to the second artist on the list. That’s a Pieter Bounaiev. He’s from Dneipra.”

Bounaiev was good, but not so good as I was. The man in dark gray knew that. He also knew I wouldn’t like to give such an opportunity to Bounaiev.

“You may have my decision now.”

Hillaire frowned. I could tell he thought I would decline.

“I will accept on one condition.”

“I don’t have much latitude, ser Barna.”

“At least twenty percent of the work must be mine to display as I see fit and to sell or resell freely.”

He nodded. “If you will excuse me for a moment. I will need to check with my superior.” He stood and walked out, clearly heading toward the security sedan and its shielded communications.

After the other left the conference room, Hillaire studied me. He had an air of gloom. “Must you always be difficult, Chendor?”

“Artists are. No matter how great what I am to portray may be, and no matter how well I depict it, it does me no good if it is sealed in the Comity archives. It will not do the Comity much good, either.”

“Chendor… you always press too much. You could have the Societe Generale commission if you would but submit a proposal.”

“Georges… that is begging, and I cannot beg.”

“Cannot… or will not?”

“I cannot. You know that.”

“All too well. That will be the death of you.”

Or the making—and the line between the two was thin for an artist.

We waited.

Shortly, the gray man returned. His lips held a faint smile as he closed the conference room door behind him.

He did not seat himself. “Twenty percent is acceptable, but… nothing that will reveal military or technological details. I have been assured that you will have a great deal of choice within those parameters, perhaps more than you would wish or imagine.”

There it was. Take it or leave it. Risk portraying dull images for a high fee or… I almost laughed. The images in Noveau Rochelle were already getting dull. When else would I get a chance such as this? Even before I replied, the unnamed man knew that I could not risk not having a chance at whatever it was that the Comity wanted represented accurately and artistically.

“I accept.”

“Good. I will see you an hour before noon tomorrow. You are limited to one large valise for clothing and no more than one hundred kilos for equipment.”

For the range of what I might have to depict, a hundred kilos might be pushing it, but if I eased in another ten, I bet no one would complain. I intended to take everything from old-style oils, pastels, and charcoal to lightbrushes. The canvases and the light matrices would be the heaviest, but I could always roll some canvases into my valise and limit the frames.

“Ser Hillaire will be here an hour before I arrive to set up the financial details. The monthly stipend to your wife will be coming through Bane du Nord, and the first payment will be in the designated account before you leave—as will half of the minimum commission.”

I walked them to the studio door. When I turned and headed back, I could see Aeryana coming down the ramp. “I’ve taken a commission—”

“I thought as much.” Her words were tart.

“I have to travel off-planet for it.”

“You turn down a perfectly good commission here in Noveau Rochelle, then take one that will send you off-planet? Chendor… I do not understand you.”

“A stipend of five thousand a Gallian month for you for at least a year and a deposit of fifty thousand in advance. Both will be paid tomorrow before I leave.”

“You’re leaving tomorrow? For a year?” Her voice rose. “What about me? What about Nicole?”

“Aeryana… this is an urgent commission from the Comity Diplomatic Corps. It is so important that they have pressured Georges Hillaire to accompany them. You would have me turn down Hillaire? They must have discovered something of great import—an abandoned colony or perhaps the first alien artifacts. My work will be displayed across all the worlds of the Comity. Peter Atreos would look like a fool if he opposed my work. They will beg me.”

“Chendor, those who have any taste already do.”

“This is the chance of a lifetime.”

“What will you be portraying?”

“Everything.”

“Exactly what is everything?” Aeryana’s words were measured.

“They said that they couldn’t tell me.”

“You believed them?”

“Georges Hillaire was with him. The funds are coming through Bane du Nord. Besides, who would pay fifty-five thousand credits if they did not want my art?” Even Aeryana knew that a contract disposal could be had for far less, should anyone wish to remove me.

Tears appeared in the corners of her eyes.

“You said I shouldn’t turn down another good commission.”

“Chendor… I didn’t mean…” Her arms were around me. That was the best we could do.

6

Goodman/Bond

The face in the fresher mirror was still unfamiliar, long and horsy. The short hair was brown, wiry and curly enough to be unpleasantly unmanageable. I was glad for the short military cut. The skin was too dark for my taste, but not out-and-out black or even light mahogany.

After the survey, and another effort to become familiar with the new visage, I stepped from the small fresher into the single room of the pleasure girl’s studio.

I was William Gerald Bond. Before long, I would be the only William Gerald Bond.

At the faint beep, I checked the locator. It showed that the girl was on the ramp headed up to the studio. I stepped behind the old-style hinged door. The bioplastic had been resmoothed and colored so many times that faint streaks of white discolored what had been solid brown.

Waiting for them to arrive, I thought about the last month.

When I had come out of the nanite cocoon, my head felt like it had been split, frozen, and pulverized. The result? I now knew more about being a Comity armorer than I’d ever wished. I also knew how to build an Atrousan-Graviton signaler. Major Ibaio hadn’t left that to mere nanite indoc. I’d built three before he and his chief tech were satisfied—all except for a live power source. We’d used inactive ones. Wouldn’t do to set off an AG signaler in New Jerusalem. I couldn’t say I knew how it worked, only what components to use and how to put them together. I’d also had to practice repairs and diagnostics until my fingers and hands matched my mind.

“You’re tougher than Colonel Truesdale thought.” That was what Majer Ibaio had said at my last briefing.

“How many others didn’t make it?” I’d asked.

“For this position, you were the only choice.”

That meant Ibaio had planted others—or hoped to.

After all the in-depth conditioning and training, I’d still had to get to Hamilton. The first stage had been the most tedious, as a tourist going to the pleasure spa at Maewest. An identity switch, and I’d been Angus DeWeil, natural fabrics factor, on the way home to Hamilton. Now I was in Alexander, the city that had grown up around the Comity’s military orbit elevators, and I stood behind a bioplastic door, waiting for an oversexed armorer and a lightly conditioned pleasure girl.

You know what the steps ahead are, but you don’t think about them, and not about the big picture. You can go crazy doing that, especially if it involved the Comity getting its hands on the Morning Star. You think about what is next and how to react. The door was thick enough that I didn’t hear anything until they were just outside, and she touched the ID bloc.

“Just a moment, big boy… not in the hall.” A nervous laugh followed the words.

The door opened, and I lifted the stunner.

As the door closed, I hit Bond with a full nerve jolt, then dropped the intensity to stun before I triggered it a second time. Neither even had a chance to see me.

Two bodies lay on the floor—one dead and one unconscious.

I straightened the girl, then dragged Bond’s form across the floor and into the fresher. There, I stripped off his uniform. Once I had the uniform off, I carried it out of the fresher and into the other room, laying it across one of the straight-backed chairs set on each side of the small table protruding from the wall.

Then I came back and stripped off his underwear before hauling the body into the shower/drainage basin. I didn’t look at his face. I knew better. I had to wash the underdrawers. Distasteful, but necessary. I hung them on the clothing pegs on the back of door.

Before I went further, I pulled on the double-layered impermeable gloves, then turned the water on in the sink, as hot as possible. Only then did I take out the packet and slide it under the stream of water, just long enough for the outer film to turn red. I quickly placed the packet on the chest of the dead man and stepped back to the sink. There I let the water run over the gloves before I stripped off the outer layer, then the inner one.

I left the fresher and closed the door behind me. The pleasure girl was still out, but breathing normally. I glanced back at the closed fresher door. The packet had held special nanites—gray goo, so to speak. Special gray goo, designed only to dissolve certain kinds of cells— and to be active only for so long. Still, I wasn’t about to step back into the fresher until that time was well past Well past.

I crossed the room to where the pleasure girl lay. With a smile, I bent and lifted her, carrying her to the bed against the wall. I laid her out on it, so that she’d be comfortable.

She was pretty enough, and my new “I” had paid for her services. There was no reason not to enjoy them. It would certainly be in character—and I’d be gentler than Bond was known to have been. I’d just tell her the truth— that she’d fainted as she’d stepped into the studio. I didn’t have to mention that I’d caused her to faint. The priors might not be happy when I was debriefed, and the adjudicators wouldn’t be pleased, but I could always claim that I’d had to stay in character as part of my mission.

In another fifteen minutes, well before she woke, I’d have to go back into the fresher and rinse out the residue in the shower basin.

7

Chang

Never got planetside after the courier left McClendon Alpha Station. Alya stuffed me into a clamshell in the courier’s passenger closet. Boosted out-system at three gees. Couriers don’t use full-grav protection. Too much mass.

Went through the out-system Gate like a hell-bat. Only dropped accel for pre-Gate and Gate. I’d held star-class, but wouldn’t have tried that. Definite way of putting me in my place. Stupid, too. Hit the edge of a Gate, and you become instant singularity, maybe even a graviton wave. That’s after the explosion, the hard radiation, and the general mess within light-hours.

No one asked me.

Courier docked somewhere. I pulsed the links. Where are we?

We’re locked at a D.S.S. station in the outer fringes of the Hamilton system. The exact locale is classified. You can release the clamshell.

I used the inside controls to open the clamshell. Once clear, I looked around.

No one anywhere, but words projected from the overhead. “Your gear is short of the lock. Leave by yourself. You’ll be met. Good luck, sweetie.” The voice was Alya’s. Hot pilot, but a definite fern.

Made my way to the lock. My one kit bag sat there. Took my time checking the pressure equalizations and temps before I opened the inner hatch and picked up my kit. Fog still formed when the lock hatch slid open.

Next hatch was to the station. Checked it more carefully. Indicators green. Opened the hatch and stepped across. More fog, and the faint acrid smell all asteroid stations had—oil and metal and ozone and people. Even nanite-based reformulators never get rid of everything. Faint grav shift. That told me one thing—the station was an asteroid type. Most likely nickel-iron, with tunnels. Easy to shield.

Gray-haired Comity D.S.S. commander met me outside the station lock. Wore the standard blue skintights and gray vest and shorts for stations and ships. “You’re Jiendra Chang.”

I nodded. Once.

“I’m Commander Daffyd Morgan. I’m the operations officer of the Magellan. You’ve been assigned to us, but the ship isn’t quite ready for us to embark.” He smiled, half-sympathetic, and half-hard as adamantine steel. “There’s another aspect of your job no one told you. From this moment on, you’re Lieutenant Chang, and you’re under my command. Your pay is still civilian star-class, but the Magellan is the equivalent of a battle cruiser, and all the pilots are in the military chain of command.”

Shit! I’d thought dealing with Graysham was tight-ass. Military was worse. “Yes, sir.”

“Come with me. I’ll try to answer your questions. Those that I can.” He turned.

I followed. Gravity was at one Tee, or close enough. Passageway was melted through the asteroid. Deck was smooth and even. Bulkheads and overhead weren’t. Station wasn’t regular installation, then. “Commander, was the station created for this mission?”

“That’s an interesting question.” He didn’t look back. “You tell me why you think so, and I’ll tell you if you’re right.”

“The deck is smooth. Bulkheads and overheads aren’t. Be hard to believe that of a regular D.S.S. installation.”

He laughed. “You’re right.”

“What is the mission?”

“I can’t tell you that until later.” He stopped at an unmarked hatch and touched his hand to the scanner. Hatch opened silently. Old hatches weren’t that quiet. Morgan’s office was smaller than Graysham’s cube on Alpha Station. Morgan dropped into a chair, gestured to the other one.

Didn’t feel like sitting, but didn’t feel like carrying the kit bag longer, either. So I sat and waited for him to tell me something I didn’t know.

He grinned, almost friendly. “D.S.S. hijacked you, Lieutenant. Get used to the rank. You’ll be using it for a long time—if you make it. If you don’t, you’ll still get star-class salary while you’re here and your ratings back. That’s if you don’t knee anyone or smash their kneecaps.”

Wondered how he’d found out about the kneecap incident. Had to have been fifteen years back. I waited.

“We need particular skills in shuttle pilots. Most D.S.S. pilots will handle vessels in deep space far better than any of you could ever hope. Most of you can handle small craft around stations, planets, and other moving bodies far better than your D.S.S. compatriots. Different skills, and we need the best of both.” He paused. “You’ll start specialized training tomorrow, along with Lieutenant Braun. She’ll be here in a moment to show you around the station and help you get squared away. She was the first shuttle pilot here. You two will be sharing a stateroom here. You’ll have your own on board ship.”

Didn’t want to share anything. Didn’t know which was worse—sharing with men or women. Just different problems. “How long before we embark on the Magellan?”

“I can’t say. That depends on too many variables. Between two and four standard weeks. You’ll be busy enough not to worry.”

“Can you tell me what I’ll be piloting?”

“A very special shuttle that also is configured as a lander with unique capabilities. Don’t ask me to describe those. You’ll begin to learn all about them tomorrow.”

A slight beep from the hatch indicated someone outside. The hatch slid open. Morgan stood. Figured I’d better, too.

Woman who stepped in was the kind whose looks I hated. Petite, creamy skin, dark mahogany hair—doll-like. Might have come to my shoulder.

“Lieutenant Braun, this is Lieutenant Chang.” Morgan smiled, professionally polite.

“Gretta Braun.” She turned to me. Black eyes like focused particle beams. I’ve seen cold. Hers were colder.

“Jiendra Chang.”

The commander cleared his throat “Lieutenants. It’s fifteen hundred. I don’t expect to see either of you until zero eight hundred tomorrow at the training bay. That’s bay three.”

“Yes, sir.” Braun’s voice was polite, pleasant.

“Yes, sir.”

We walked out into the passageway. Except for us, it was empty.

Braun looked at me. “I have to ask.” Her voice was level, warmer than her eyes. Anything would have been. “Did you really break all of Fingan’s fingers?”

“No. Broke six. Maybe seven. They stunned me before I got the last three. How did you know him?”

“I didn’t. I took the job after you left. I made head pilot a year back.”

“What happened to Hengeist?”

“He had an accident and decided to leave.”

Hengeist had been almost as bad as Fingan. Should have had an accident earlier. “How did you manage it?”

“I didn’t. I just didn’t try to save him very quickly.”

I’d have bet Braun had done more than that. Also bet that it wasn’t wise to say so. “Suppose you ought to give me the tour.”

“I can do that.” She paused. “I’d like to have one thing clear. No men—or women—in the stateroom.”

That was fine by me. “You hadn’t suggested it, I would have.”

That got me a nod.

Braun turned and began to walk. “This passageway is upper operations, only for ops personnel—pilots and ops techs. That’s why it’s mostly quiet. Ops passageways are gray, the same as on D.S.S. ships. Crew passages are blue. Maintenance ways are brown, and the weapons spaces are red. Pilots can use any passageway, but it’s best to avoid maintenance unless there’s no other way…”

I followed, listening.

8

Fitzhugh

While Security agent Herrit had been absolutely accurate in all that he had said, he had not said more than that I was to be handled like a valuable and high-priority package—and that was exactly what occurred. We were sequestered in a luxury lounge on the elevator climber to orbit Station Beta. Orbit elevators represented the cost-effective and practical, but there is little doubt that they dealated the romance of flight, leaving it far less supernal, assuming it ever had been.

We sat in the private lounge, a space no more than three meters square, adjoining two even smaller bedchambers. Feather-light hangings of cream and blue framed the wall screen that showed Leinster slowly dwindling below us and the stars appearing as the elevator accelerated upward out of the lower atmosphere. There was a stripped-down console between our chairs, and I could have read, but I felt even less like reading than watching Leinster, especially with agent Herrit around. For me, reading has always been solitary.

I tried music, an ancient piece, the 1812 Overture. I blocked the visuals. Battle scenes re-created with brilliant blue-trimmed red uniforms and prancing mounts disconcerted me too much, but entertainment multis weren’t about to show filthy blue-and-white uniforms with barefoot soldiers leaving bloody footprints—almost no one listened to music without a visual component anyway. I was one of the remaining few to prefer the auditory over the visual.

Eventually, I went to bed, but didn’t sleep that well.

Herrit was awake and dressed in his black singlesuit before me in the morning, and waiting in the small lounge after I’d freshened up—the mostly waterless way, since water has mass, and every tonne of water means a tonne less paying cargo or passengers.

The eggs Lyonais from the lounge formulator were patrician in style and presentation, but thoroughly formulated in taste, and I eased them down with the excessive caffeine of old-style bergamot tea, also formulated. After beginning my second mug of the ersatz stuff, I looked across the narrow pop-up table that separated us, for Herrit had said nothing.

“How many missions like this have you done? Conveying professors to unknown destinations?”

“Ensuring the safe arrival of people and items is one of our standard duties, Professor. You, of all academics, should know that.”

“How long have you been with Comity Security?”

“A number of years.”

“How many people have you injured or killed?”

He just looked at me. I knew what he was thinking— violence on the personal level was a sign of incompetence.

“Have you had to take special precautions in my case?”

Herrit laughed, genially. “My superiors have. They always do. Why do you think neither of us knows where you’re going or for what?”

“If I’m that valuable…?”

“Professor… you’re an intelligent man, perhaps brilliant. There are a thousand worlds in the Comity. Most hold millions of individuals. How many other brilliant scholars are there in fields similar to yours? You can be replaced. So can I.”

At that point, I stopped asking questions, not because I didn’t have more, but because Herrit couldn’t answer them any better than I could, and because I’d realized something else.

If… if what Herrit had implied was true, then I wouldn’t know anything that would cause anyone to want me dead until I was wherever the Comity wanted me, and the Comity could doubtless find a way to keep me quite protected while I was working on whatever they had in mind. My safety before and during this fellowship was not the problem.

Afterward… that would be the problem.

And I still couldn’t discern why the Comity Diplomatic Corps had any need for a professor of historical trends.

9

Goodman/Bond

At zero five hundred I walked into the transient quarters just inside the main gate of the D.S.S. base. I made sure I was grinning. Most of the techs were sleeping. As I stopped at the locker above the empty bunk, one looked up. I could feel the briefing info take. Gutersen, engineering tech, third.

“Bond… you ought to be grinnin’. I saw that girl.”

“I’d be grinning more if I had another day. That’s D.S.S. Good enough pay for pretty women, not enough time to enjoy ‘em. Course… for someone like you, with a pretty wife…”

“Two hundred kays away.” He snorted. “Don’t you ever worry about where we’re going?”

“A tech’d go crazy worrying about that. Never tell us much. What else is new?” I opened the locker and took out the kit bag. Everything was stuffed inside. My predecessor had not been a tidy man.

After cleaning up and changing, at zero six hundred I presented myself at the D.S.S. in-processing center, a long building another block toward the bluff overlooking the north shore and the circular harbor below. I’d presented the ID card and had it checked against my DNA twice before I got to the personnel section. There the personnel tech took the order card and my D.S.S. ID. I smiled easily as they went into the analyzer. D.S.S. cards were supposed to be unduplicatable. But then, D.S.S. didn’t want anyone to know they weren’t, and CIS wasn’t about to broadbeam that the cards could be duplicated and altered.

There was only the slightest hesitation before the personnel tech nodded. “You’ll be on the eleven hundred elevator. Be at the debarkation dock no later than zero eight hundred. Take the upper inclinator at the end of the avenue. That one goes straight to the ferry dock.”

“You know where I’m headed?”

“Nope. Only says you’re going to D.S.S. orbit station for further assignment.”

The colonel might have learned that I was headed to the Magellan, but no one in D.S.S. seemed to know that. I still had to push away the questions that wouldn’t help with the mission and the speculations about the Morning Star and what Major Ibaio had really meant by that.

The tech handed back the cards. “Make sure you empty your bladder before you enter the elevator. Otherwise, you’ll be very unpopular before long. The elevator has only one speed, and mat’s high.” She didn’t look at me. “Next! Guillermo, Christan.”

It was only six-forty-five, and I walked casually northward through the base. Fifteen minutes later I reached the end of the avenue. From there, the harbor spread out below. There wasn’t much at the base of the basalt cliffs except two long piers. Each was accessed by an inclinator. From the bluff top, I saw the ferry to the terminal platform. It was an SES—the sort that had been around for thousands of years, even before the Tellurian Diaspora.

I stepped onto one of the platforms, to the right of a woman armorer, chief tech. Her eyes took in the second’s badge on my sleeve, then my face. She looked away. I was too old to be a rising tech. That was what the colonel had wanted—the kind of tech no one really looked at.

At the end of the inclinator, I let the chief tech move farther ahead of me.

Another ID/DNA check waited at the ferry. It was amusing. No one had thought about the implications. The DNA check made sure that no one had stolen a D.S.S. ID card, but it didn’t guard against forged cards where the DNA matched. Since all information had to be ship-carried from system to system, the key to D.S.S. security was the unbreakability of the ID card.

The ferry trip took less time than waiting for the ferry to depart.

There wasn’t an ID check at the orbit elevator terminal. There were screens on which names and level assignments were posted. Mine was third level, fourth bay. I took my time, again, but a number of techs hadn’t reported when I reached the bay.

D.S.S. elevators don’t have frills—just flat couches in square bays. Military elevators are faster than civilian elevators. It takes a mere five hours to get to the Clarke point. The trade-off is that D.S.S. only operates eight climbers at a time because the higher velocities require more energy and greater spacing. I didn’t recognize anyone in the bay, and took an end couch. The fabric was old and stained in places. My kit went into the locker under the couch.

Before long, there was the standard announcement.

“Strap in and do not move once your harness locks. The first half hour will seem relatively slow until the climber clears the thickest part of the atmosphere.”

I settled into the couch.

You can’t feel the speed or the acceleration with an AG-boosted climber, and they’re much safer than the ancient elevators. If the guidance ribbon breaks, the AG unit automatically throws the climber into low orbit, and eventually a shuttle comes and tows it to orbit station. Only a handful have broken in hundreds of years. Most of those were sabotage. One I knew about all too well.

Mostly, I was bored and sore by the time we unstrapped and lined up to leave the climber. Everyone in the third level was headed to the same shuttle lock, marked by the blue arrows. I followed the arrows—and ended up in a queue before an open hatch. Gutersen was five techs ahead of me. Officers didn’t queue, and they had a separate waiting area. The tech just behind Gutersen was dark-haired, curved even better than the girl from the night before. She turned. Her face was harder, much older.

Once inside the hatch, there was a circular full-body scanner—the kind you walk through that shows every bit of your interior. Just short of it was an open bin. On each side of the scanner were two D.S.S. Marine guards behind nanite-shielded screens. They both had riot-level stunners, and they were out. My turn came, and I stepped toward the single security tech, third class. He was younger than Gutersen.

“Drop the kit right there.” The tech’s voice was bored. He must have said that a hundred times a day. “Into the bin.”

“Ah… ?” I thought some reaction was required.

“You’re in the group for further assignment, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Your orders stated that you were to bring only minimal kit, and nothing personal. You’ll be issued a new kit when you report to your station. Drop it.”

I dropped the kit bag. It vanished into bin, on its way to reformulation.

“Through the scanner.”

I stepped through. Nothing happened.

On the other side was a personnel tech. She was second class, nice-looking but not special. “You’re cleared, Bond. You’ll leave at nineteen hundred. Pick up one of the temporary kits there.” She nodded at a stack of plastic handkits. “Disposable skintights and toiletries. Enough for your transfer hop. You and your cadre will be in the aft section of the Titarda. Take the second hatch, the green one. Follow it to the waiting area at the end. Facilities and food are there. Don’t leave the area.”

A transfer hop that required more than one skintight meant a long in-system journey. I was headed to the Magellan or to an isolated system station to rot. I picked up the temporary kit and walked toward the green hatch.

Equipment hummed faintly when I stepped through— another scan.

A two-hour wait before we loaded. That wouldn’t be too bad. I stepped into the waiting area, a long narrow chamber that had one large lock at the end. The walls were greenish gray. Every military outfit I’d seen liked some shade of gray.

“Bond!” called Gutersen. He sat in one of the sling seats set in rows. “Come join us.”

I grinned. “I see you made it.”

“Told you we were going the same place,” Gutersen burbled. “It’s just got to be something big. Maybe it’s one of those new super dreadnoughts. Always wanted to be in on something big. What do you think?”

Two hours with Gutersen might be longer than two weeks with anyone else.

10

Chang

Threeday morning I was in the training bay—long chamber, overhead with barely forty centimeters clearance, equipment stacked everywhere, and corridors melted through the nickel-iron at all angles. Was barely on time. Wouldn’t have been if Braun hadn’t reminded me to reset my personal chrono the night before. D.S.S. used old-style seven-day, twenty-four-hour Old Earth clock and calendar. Braun was neat, quiet, and kept to herself. So did I. Better that way.

D.S.S. tech, second, met us. “lieutenants, I’m Weibling, habitability systems tech. We need to get you fitted for armor. Commander Morgan said to get that out of the way.”

Space armor? That meant deep-space ops—or ops in adverse habitability. Or both.

“You don’t know where we’re headed, do you?” I figured he wouldn’t know, but sometimes the techs know more than officers.

“No, sir. We get the equipment parameters. That’s all. I can tell you that you’ll be handling everything from near absolute to perihelion hot, and mostly with no atmosphere. Grav range is from null to one-point-five Tee.”

Braun frowned.

“Thank you.” I managed a smile.

“This way, lieutenants, if you would.”

We dropped back slightly.

“They’ve found an artifact planet Forerunner or alien,” Braun murmured. “Or an abandoned colony with something special about it.”

“Has to be hard to land mere, then. Wouldn’t need us, otherwise.”

She nodded.

We didn’t say more. Followed Tech Weibling. Suit measurements took less than half stan. When we got back to the training bay, Morgan was motioning from the far end.

“Commander wants us,” Braun said.

“Hope not.” Wondered how she’d take the double entendre.

“He wouldn’t. He’s old-style D.S.S., and we’re his subordinates. That’s bad form and worse discipline.”

“Were you ever D.S.S.?”

“Gagarin Academy—one very long tour after that. I swore I’d never come back.”

Promise like that always bites back. Learned that a long time ago. Closet Covenanter once told me God has a sense of humor. Never believed in God. Universe as it is can be rough enough without a deity to mess it up worse.

We moved briskly but didn’t rush.

The commander stood before a long cylinder with an open hatch. Inside was a shuttle cockpit. Even from ten meters away, I could see it had a board like I’d only seen once before, and that was when I was ferrying mining supplies down to Toomai.

“We only have one simulator here, but that should be more than enough.”

“How many shuttle pilots will you be giving fams to, Commander?” asked Braun.

“D.S.S. is sending four former civilians, including you two. I’m a backup, and so is Major Tepper. We can handle the mission with two shuttle pilots, and two backups.”

Four shuttle pilots for a ship? How big was the frigging thing? Dreadnought?

“The captain has also requested that, after you’re up to speed on the shuttles, you two also receive basic familiarization and some simulation training on handling the Magellan.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” asked Braun, “but why us?”

“The captain is a cautious woman. She also said that while you two valued yourselves above anything, that same pride would keep you from selling out to anyone and anything, including fear and disaster.” Morgan offered a smile that looked easygoing. It wasn’t.

More I heard, more it seemed like a bastard job.

“How big is the Magellan, sir?” Finally had to ask.

Morgan grinned. “Bigger than anything you’ve seen, Lieutenant She’s a former colony ship, reconfigured with double dreadnought drives. She’s also armed like a battle cruiser.”

Knew it was a bastard job.

Morgan cleared his throat “Lieutenants, you’ll both need full medicals. That’s so we’ve got baselines in case of emergencies or injuries. Braun—you head to medical now. Your first turn in the simulator will be around eleven hundred. While you’re in the simulator, Chang will have her medical.”

“Yes, sir.” Braun nodded, then stepped back.

Morgan waited until she was well away. Turned to me. “I’ve heard you’re the hottest thing since Chatzel.” He snorted—loud. “You may be one of the best shuttle pilots in the Comity, Chang, or even the very best but you’ve never seen a shuttle like this. Learning how to pilot it is going to take everything you have.” He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t have to. Cut like a focused singularity.

Reminded myself I was getting paid star-class, even if I had to wear blue skintights, with the dark gray D.S.S. ship vest and shorts—and the shiny silver shoulder stripes that said I was an officer. Didn’t feel like one. “Yes, sir. Must be a special shuttle.”

“Very special, Lieutenant. You’ve got chem-jets, photon-thrusters, and AG drive. With the AG drive you’ll be able to lift off and land on any planet up to one-point-six Tellurian with full gross.”

“No magfield drives?” That surprised me.

“Where we’re headed lost its magnetic field a long time ago, and we might be able to use the extra cargo capability.”

That said old. Old enough that there couldn’t be much living there. “Any armament?”

“You know how to handle it?”

“I’ve had torp training, and some background in close-in particle beams.”

“Good.” He frowned. “That wasn’t on your record.”

Lots not on my record. Didn’t want it there. The more that’s there, the more they can claim you screwed up, that you should have known better.

“What else isn’t there?”

“Had a course in commando hand-to-hand, once. Bare and in armor.” Wished I hadn’t said that soon as I did. Bust some jerk’s balls, and they see commando training in the file, and you’re a mankiller. Rather claim accidental self-defense. “Just a short course. Never rated.”

“I don’t believe that. You like ratings too much.”

“Wouldn’t rate me.” That much was true.

“I see. What else?”

“Little things you pick up everywhere. How to jury a bad board, that sort of thing.”

“You shouldn’t have to do that. Everything’s new. You’ve got standard pilot links?”

“Yes, sir. Still star-class.” He’d known that before he’d asked. Hadn’t been able to use links on McClendon.

Straight manual. Equipment there was too old. A mal-link’d be so painful the best pilot couldn’t think straight. Even me.

“Good. Go ahead and strap in. You’d be wearing armor, but that’ll come once Weibling gets them ready.”

“Yes, sir.” Couldn’t wait for that. Working a shuttle in armor, even without gauntlets and helmet, is a frigging pain. Hot, too. Even hotter in a simulator.

Climbed in the simulator, and closed the hatch. Manual style. Inside center was standard, except for the armament panel to the left and the crimson-edged panel to the right of the joystick. Overhead panels had all the extras.

Controls were optimum manual. Millennia back, when nanotech and minimicrotronics first came in, the designers tried direct mind link—minimal physical controls. Then came the Dirty War, and all the mental-link pilots got hammered, blasted, dismembered, by the Gallian Unity pilots on manual controls. Took almost ten years to figure out why. Seemed simple enough to me. Humans are optimized to do things. You train a pilot with brains and reflexes. Reflexes let you do one thing physically while your mind does something else.

Every study ever done shows that humans don’t mental multitask without losing efficiency. Women tend to do it better, but still get clobbered in combat by physical controls. Best deep-space combat pilots tend to be spatially oriented women on mixed controls—or artistic men. Macho males come off worst. Really pisses ‘em off.

Triggered the links.

Online.

Stet. Morgan came through clear, just like his voice. Your call sign will be Tigress.

Wasn’t amused by that. For simulation training?

No. From here on. If you’ve got the first shuttle, it’s Porter. So when you’re piloting shuttle one, the call sign is Porter Tigress. Second shuttle is Sherpa. Magellan’s call sign is Navigator. Got that?

Got it.

Today you’ll be piloting Porter. They handle differently, but we ‘II start with Porter. The board’s live. You ‘ve got ten minutes before you start the prelaunch checklist. You take her through delock and stand off, and I’ll give you orders from there.

Stet.

Forced myself to run through the system specs first. Got more than a few surprises. The shuttle had an empty gross mass of fifty metric tons. Most shuttles ran less than thirty. It was also stressed to fifteen standard gravs—more like an air combat flitter. Except its exterior was barely lifting body shape, if that. Next surprise was that the AG drives weren’t shuttle drives. More like full-scale small ship AG drives. Could have piloted the shuttle from the surface of any Tellurian planet and halfway across any standard system with them. Third was the power of the photon-thrusters. Shuttle one was more like a small in-system cargo ship—an armed one stressed for atmospheric and planetary landings. Braun’s idea about a lost colony made more sense. Doubted we’d find an ancient artifact. No one had in thousands of years.

Went on to touch and check every control on the board. The armaments I didn’t know. Finally, I linked. Don’t know the armaments section.

We didn’t expect you would. We’ll do afam exercise on those this afternoon. You ready?

Ready.

Called up the checklist and started through it.

Locks… closed.

Ship-grav… off.

Fusactors… online.

Finally reached the end. Seemed to take forever. Always did.

Navigator Control, this is Porter Tigress, ready for delock and release this time.

Porter Tigress, dampers released. Cleared for delocking. Use minimal power.

Navigator Control. Porter Tigress, delocking this time. Had to rough-calc the power on the shuttle. Was used to something fifty percent the mass of the Porter shuttle. Could tell I’d overdone it and had to overbrake. Knew it was simmie, but the farscreen feeds jolted me. Simulation showed the Magellan as huge, bigger than most orbit stations, close to two kays in length, and close to half a kay in diameter—and smooth. No hull projections at all— sign of a high-speed real-space requirement.

Porter Tigress, vector two four zero, relative Magellan course line, inclination minus twenty-seven.

Navigator Control, understand vector two four zero, inclination minus twenty-seven. No objective in screens. Interrogative time to destination. Wasn’t about to go charging off without knowing where, or how fast.

Wait one, Porter Tigress.

In the simmie, abruptly, an object appeared in the long-range farscreen—a rocky asteroid. Range was a good ten thousand kays. I blinked. Ninety-eight hundred. What the frig was Morgan doing? Asteroids didn’t have that kind of relative motion. Frig! I was operating off a ship with high relative motion, not a geostationary satellite.

Porter Tigress, rendezvous with and take station on target.

Navigator Control, understand rendezvous and take station. Had scramble to get a relative motion plot and calculation. Sort of thing that can scramble your brain, because where it would be when I got the shuttle there was effectively “below” and “behind” the Magellan. Did a quick power calculation—and froze. Ran it again, quickly. Navigator Control, Porter Tigress. Power reserves insufficient for return from target. Interrogative dust density.

Dust density insufficient for photon scoops. Scrub target alpha this time.

Scrubbing alpha.

Target beta at zero five zero, inclination plus forty five. Interrogative rendezvous.

Beta was possible. With the relative motion, I wouldn’t need as much power on return.

Navigator Control, rendezvous possible, with one-half stan on station.

Porter Tigress, commence rendezvous.

Commencing rendezvous this time.

Gave the thrusters a full jolt, calibrated fine as I could. Corrections take more power than doing it right first. Shuttle was slow to respond, slower than it should have been. Didn’t match mass specs. Ran diagnostics, and found a twenty percent loss in conversion from the right fusactor. Shouldn’t happen on a new shuttle, but Morgan wanted to play games. Cross-equalized power flows.

Made rendezvous in fifteen standard minutes, after one farscreen failure and loss of internal grav. I was dripping sweat.

Went through five different kinds of track-and-rendezvous problems.

Porter Tigress, return Navigator this time.

Stet. Returning Navigator this time.

Made a low-power controlled approach. Shuttle had too much mass to risk high-power quick mass-thrust decel and brake. Like I figured, converters acted up, but I managed to lock with only an extra tenth grav impact, within damper parameters. Went through the postlock shutdown. Made sure I did it step by step. Deliberate. You have to when you’re tired, or you’ll screw up something.

That’s all for now. Morgan’s voice came through the links. Unstrap and come on out.

Back of my vest was soaked. Pulled it away from the skintights before I opened the hatch and stepped out into the training bay.

Morgan looked up from the console. “Not bad.” He nodded.

He was doing his duty. Still wanted to swat him. He couldn’t have managed what he’d done to me. Almost laughed, then. He knew it. That was why he was backup. “Just hope that we don’t have to do some of that for real.”

“So do I, but those kinds of stresses get you a better feel faster.”

Commander was right about that.

He motioned to Braun. She was talking to a tech. She nodded to the man and walked toward us. Her eyes raked me. “You look like shit.”

Didn’t want to talk about it. “How was the medical?”

“Star-class plus. Diagnostics want to know about every cell in your body, and how it got that way. They’re way too personal.”

“Always are.”

She laughed, like a low growl.

“Lieutenant Chang, off to medical, then get something to eat. Sixteen hundred and you’ve got another session.” Morgan looked up from the console again. Realized he was sweating. Glad to see that. He’d made me work hard enough.

“Yes, sir.”

He looked away from me. “Lieutenant Braun. Into the simulator.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kept the smile off my face. Braun’d learn quick enough.

11

Fitzhugh

Security agent Herrit hurried me from the orbit elevator to the Comity Diplomatic Corps courier so swiftly that all I recalled was a blur of maroon-and-blue corridors and artificial light. When I stepped into the lock, Herrit stood back and guarded it. In my judgment, that was more to remind me that, despite my background, he was the one responsible for my safety. Once the courier lock had closed, and the vessel departed the station toward a destination still occluded from my comprehension, I was more than certain I would become another anonym in his long line of assignments.

“Please settle yourself one of the staterooms, Professor. Make yourself comfortable.”

Those words, heterized into androgyny by remote projection, were the only welcome from the pilot.

“Can you tell me where we’re going?”

“To your assignment, Professor. Once there, I’m sure you’ll learn all you need to know. Please stow your gear and settle yourself in one of the staterooms. We’re ready to delock.”

I took the first stateroom, where I slipped my valise and gear into the single locker that barely held both. Then I dropped into the massive-looking armchair anchored to the floor, a more refined version of an acceleration confinement and security couch.

The door didn’t lock, but that mattered little because the ship consisted, so far as I could tell, of two small staterooms, each with two bunks and—sealed off somewhere—whatever quarters and control spaces existed for the pilot or pilots.

During the trip, I did sleep more than I would have normally, probably because I’d slept poorly on the elevator lift to Leinster Orbit Station Beta. I ate less, because, while the stateroom had a formulator, it was basic. I didn’t go hungry, but was not in the slightest tempted to overindulge.

Except for the time devoted to exercises, what I spent my time on was the small console, in order to make a dent in my professional reading, beginning with the Review of Socio-Historical Trends. Most of the articles were more abstruse than I preferred, but I did get immersed in a monograph by Fleming Sohcora postulating that the demise of a culture can be predicted by the degree to which the media and opinion leaders endorse and support the monistic doctrine of single supremacy—the triumph of “winner take all,” if you will. He tied the rise of single supremacy monism to the fall of Western Hemispheric dominance on ancient Old Earth, the collapse of the Cephean Commercial League, and the relative decline of both the Worlds of the Covenant and the Sunnite Alliance. I had my doubts about applying the monistic model to theocracies, but he noted that, in such societies, “the deity is the supreme winner who takes all.”

There was a provocative, but far less well documented and supported, article on secularism as religion, which suggested that secularism as such did not exist, and that secularists were merely believers in other deities—such as “wealth” or “power” or “egalitarianism”—and that such nontheistic beliefs were far more dangerous to a technological society than traditional religions and deities. In that respect, my forced isolation promised wonders for reducing the backlog of my continued delayed professional reading. On the other hand, after reading so much negativity, for the majority of scholarly articles in my field have always struck me as negative, when the ship locked in at the still-unnamed destination two days later, I was feeling more than a shade cynical.

Once the courier locked, I was ushered out into another unadorned bay, where the walls looked to be solid steel, coated with bluish plastrene.

Awaiting me was a D.S.S. lieutenant in blue skintights with the gray D.S.S. ship vest and shorts. His rank-strip gave his name as Ruano. “Professor Fitzhugh. Welcome to Project Deep Find. If you’d accompany me… Could I take one of your cases?”

I surrendered the valise, but kept my hands on the bag that held my datablocs and reference materials. “Where are we, if I might ask?”

“Deep Find Station, of course, sir.”

“And where might that be?”

“We’re in the Hamilton system, sir, but exactly where I can’t tell you. Only one of the pilots could.”

“I thought…”

“This is just a staging point, sir, until we board the Magellan. You’ll have a stateroom here until that happens, and you’ll have a chance to meet some of your colleagues.”

No one had mentioned colleagues, and I had foolishly assumed that my “fellowship” was to be one of the bureaucratic advising types, buried studying secret files and providing analyses. What else could anyone wish from a professor of historical trends?

“This way, sir,” prompted the lieutenant, after taking the valise.

I followed, trudging through the blue-walled and blue-lighted tunnel-like corridor. At the first intersection, we turned left, then traveled at least another hundred meters, to yet another corridor, where we turned right Fifty meters later we stopped before a hatch with a DNA code device mounted on the wall.

“This is your section, sir. You’ll find several of your colleagues in the lounge. Beyond the lounge are the staterooms. There is one with your name. There is a folder on the station in your quarters. It tells you where the mess is and where the briefing rooms are. Just remember to keep to the blue passageways.”

The hatch opened, and I followed the lieutenant He set down the valise, smiled, and stepped back. The hatch closed before I could say a word. Unless previously prepared, as in academic settings, quick repartee has never been one of my strengths.

Two women and a man sat around a table, in replica old-style captain’s chairs. They had turned when I entered, but none of the three looked immediately familiar. The taller woman rose, peered in my direction, then smiled broadly and moved toward me. She had a round cheerful face. I could tell she was one of those people who love to hug everyone, and I braced myself.

“Professor Fitzhugh! I’m so glad that you decided to join our little expedition.” She stopped short of a full-body crush, just flapping her arms around me before stepping back.

“So far as I could ascertain, the element of choice wasn’t presented.”

“An honored fellowship with grant funds and prestige to your institution—how could you possibly term that a draft?” countered the other and more angular woman.

“In my myopic and academic fashion, I must be misoriented, perhaps even believing in counterfactuals.”

“You haven’t changed a bit since New Dublin, Liana,” noted the woman who had greeted me first.

Finally, the face and name came together—Alyendra Khorana. She’d been—she doubtless still was—an economic sociologist at St Patrick’s College. How a Hindji-Anglan had ended up in that bastion of propriety she had never made clear. “Are you still at St. Pat’s?”

“Where else?”

I turned to the angular, if shorter, woman and to the long-faced man with eyes so light a brown that they were almost tan. “I’ve met Alyendra before, but I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. If I have… please excuse me.”

The gray-haired man laughed. “Tomas deSilva. Political science at San Juan University on Melloan.”

“I’m Melani Kalahouri. Theoretical psychology, DeForrest Seminary.” She appeared almost elfin in build and only stood to my shoulder.

“I’m told we’re all colleagues,” I said, “but no one bothered to tell me what exactly we are colleagues in.” I had a growing suspicion after Melani had introduced herself, because theoretical psychology was the latest term for alien psychology, but it was now termed “theoretical” because no one had ever found any alien artifacts, let alone any aliens whose behavior and psychology might be studied.

“We’re all in the social and behavioral science section of Project Deep Find,” replied Alyendra.

“You’ve just told me more than I could get out of all the people who drafted me. What is Project Deep Find?”

“We don’t know,” replied Tomas. As he moved toward me, I could see that he was older than I’d thought, possibly even elderly, although that was hard to tell until a time within a few years of physical nonexistence. “That is, mere have been intimations that there is possibly a renegade colony or even an abandoned alien planet. The locale is quite distant, and it is likely that only a single expedition can be mounted.”

“That seems more than a little illogical,” I pointed out. “To get to any interstellar locale takes a Gate. Once the Gate is in place, a return is possible.”

Tomas raised his bushy gray eyebrows “I can suggest several assumptions behind your statement that are normally true, but are not necessarily so.”

I wish I hadn’t spoken so quickly. That habit has always created difficulties for me. “You may be right. What do you think?” That was a safe enough question.

“It seems unlikely that we would not be traveling by Gate. That would require a generation ship or a new technology.”

“So there’s something about the destination that means a Gate can’t be used repeatedly?”

“That thought had occurred to me,” deSilva replied.

“Maybe the star is prenova,” suggested Alyendrya.

“Or approaching a singularity, or close to an event horizon,” I said.

“All of that is possible.” Melani smiled politely, yet warmly. “There may be other possibilities. Since we do not know, I think we should help Professor Fitzhugh get settled.”

“Thank you.” I bowed slightly. She was less imposing than Alyendrya, yet she’d spoken with a quiet authority.

For whatever reason we had been gathered, it had to be important to the D.S.S. and the Comity. Our small group suggested that we were far from the only scholars who would be on the expedition. I just wished I knew what Project Deep Find was all about, but, at the same time, I had a strong premonition that my satisfaction would be less than profound when the aims of the project were revealed.

12

Barna

The unnamed Security agent stuffed himself and me into an orbit elevator. I had been right. He didn’t say anything about the extra twenty kilos. They were mainly canvases and matrices. I could have done everything with light matrices, but light paintings aren’t always the best way to depict some things.

Getting to orbit station took almost a full day. The orbit elevator was an older model. Nothing on Gallia was known for haste. From there, we took a shuttle to another orbit base. That was the local D.S.S. station. I found myself in a D.S.S. courier, headed to an unknown destination, if without the Security agent. The pilot’s disembodied voice reassured me with generalities before subjecting me to confinement and crushing acceleration.

The only interesting aspect of the trip was the Gatetranslation. I’d never made one before. What artist could afford interstellar travel? I tried to hold on to the image of the translation and how all the colors reversed—yet didn’t. After the initial acceleration that followed going through the Gate, I got out my equipment and tried to recreate the visual sense of what I’d experienced.

I wasn’t sure I had, but the work was something very different. It just showed my small cabin, with the two bunks and the acceleration couch, except the pilot called it a clamshell. I tried to depict the cabin at the exact moment of translation when black was white, and the other way around, and when all the colors were wrong, yet right.

I’d barely gotten a first run at it when I had to stow everything for deceleration. I’d used the lightbrushes, knowing there wasn’t time for oils. Charcoal wouldn’t have done what I wanted, and I wouldn’t have had time to fix it properly.

Several hours later, we ended up docked or locked, and the pilot’s voice was ushering me out. Someone in a uniform—I thought it was a D.S.S. uniform with the blue skintights under the vest and shorts—was waiting outside the courier’s lock. The foyer or bay was a hideous shade of blue. It also clashed with the D.S.S. uniform. It was the shade all the occupationalists had declared “stimulating” a generation before. If they had meant that it kept someone awake, that blue was stimulating. “Hideous” was a better term, and more accurate.

“Ser Barna?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m Lieutenant Ruano. I’m here to escort you to your quarters.”

“Where is here? Where am I?”

“Deep Find Station in the Hamilton system, sir.”

“When do I start work?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. Commander Morgan would be better able to tell you.”

“Could you take me to him, then?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. I’m here to take you to your quarters. Your temporary quarters, that is, until we move to the Magellan in a few days.”

“The Magellan is a ship?”

“Yes, sir. Could I help you with one of those cases?”

I gave him the personal case. I wasn’t about to trust anyone else with the two wheeled cases that held all my equipment, and everything except the extra canvases in my valise.

We walked close to half a kay, or so it seemed, along the blue corridor. I was breathing harder than usual, and I seemed to weigh a little more than I did on Gallia. That wasn’t surprising, since Gallia was a bit less than Tellurian norm, and we were clearly inside some sort of D.S.S. space installation with the gravity set at Tellurian norm. I thought it was probably an asteroid station because the walls weren’t jointed or fabricated, but seemed hollowed out of something and covered with the blue synth wall covering.

“Your section is just ahead, sir. That’s where you’ll be quartered, sir.” The lieutenant stopped opposite a hatch. On it were the letters and number RA-1.

The hatch opened, and the lieutenant stepped back. He gestured for me to go first. I wheeled in the equipment cases. The walls of the room, a low-ceilinged combination of foyer and sitting room, were a pale green. The color was even more unpleasant than the blue of the corridor. There were no windows, and the artificial illumination wasn’t even close to replicating natural light.

“Your quarters are labeled, sir, and there is a folder with directions to the mess. Please keep to the blue corridors.”

With a nod, he was gone, the hatch closing behind him.

A large-boned, silver-haired woman watched me. Her hair was plaited into a braid then coiled on the back of her head. She was seated at one side of a square table with four chairs. They were synth-replicated wood, or what some bureaucrat thought might resemble wood.

I looked at the woman. With that silver hair, she was obviously nearing the end of her career, if not her life, and I wondered what she was doing here. “I’m Chendor Barna.”

“Elysen Taube. Are you in the sciences?”

“I’m afraid not. I’m an artist. What is your field?”

“I am an old-style astronomer. I specialize in capturing and interpreting full-spectrum stellar images.”

That was a kind of art in itself. I decided not to say so. Some scientific types resented any hint that their work was art and not science. “All kinds of stars?”

She smiled indulgently.

I ignored the condescension and waited.

“My work has dealt with the images of older galaxies, those formed right after the brane flex.” A chuckle followed. “ ‘Right after’ is a relative term. The first hundred million years or so through the first few billion.”

“How do you separate them out?”

“Finding them is the hard part. The universe…” She smiled. It was a warm smile, that of someone who could have been a grandmother, but probably wasn’t. I wished I could have caught her image at that moment. “Why don’t we get you settled? You’ll have plenty of time to learn about astronomy, and I’ve always wanted to know more about art.”

“You act as though we aren’t going anywhere soon.”

“Soon is also a relative term, Chendor. I’ve been here several days, and I haven’t gotten a definitive answer yet. Astronomy may deal in millions of years, but I don’t have that many years left. I’m certain that you, as an artist, have noted that Like you, I’d prefer to get on with the project, but it’s so large a project that organizing and assembling those involved takes time.”

“How large a project?”

“A project that fills an asteroid station is a large project” She smiled that smile again, the one I wanted to catch in a portrait “Why don’t we get you settled? After that if you would like tea, we can sit and talk. I do have an old-style teakettle. I brought a large amount of real tea. One cannot formulate tea.”

I could use some tea. Maybe I could also persuade her to sit for an informal portrait too.

13

Goodman/Bond

From the Hamilton D.S.S. orbit control station, we were crammed into an in-system transport, a photon-scoop slowboat that took five days to cart us out-system somewhere. Half the techs complained that there were no bunk screens, only single entertainment screens in the commons. They were spoiled. Individual entertainment screens?

At our destination, we were delocked and ordered along a long passageway, blue for crew. From the bulkheads alone, I could tell we were in an asteroid station. It smelled too good to be an old one. It had to have been built to support whatever mission I was being inserted into. The colonel had that part right.

We were herded into a long bay. Once the hatch closed, there were almost fifty techs in the bay. None of them were unrated. The lowest-ranking techs were thirds. No one showed up to order us around or brief us immediately. So I listened.

“… pulled me right off the Charlemagne ... had almost a full tour to go…”

“I was headed for the Guevara ...”

“Never heard of her…” That was Gutersen, loud as always.

“Special ops vessel… does sweeps along the Arm nearest the Alliance…”

“Better them than the Covenanters. Those guys are crazy. They believe that the whole universe was created by their God for them to control.”

“Or fill with people. They say that every woman’s supposed to have eight children. They don’t believe in synth-wombs or geneing either.”

Eight was only the optimum. I’d known lots of people who’d only had four or five children, as well as some who had had ten or twelve. It was an individual choice, depending on what the man thought was best for the couple. The bishops and the crusaders don’t get into personal choice, unless it’s serious. I never knew a prior who intervened, although I supposed they could have, but that always meant the woman got deep-conditioned.

“They want it natural all the way.”

“So do I,” guffawed Gutersen. “Natural all the way.”

The two both laughed.

One of the younger female techs snorted derisively. I had trouble with females on ships and stations. It didn’t seem right, but I smiled along with the others.

“Attention on deck!” The words rolled through the bay.

Everyone snapped to. Two men walked to the front of the group. One was a commander, the other a chief tech ops tech.

The commander scanned the group. Mild-looking, except when his eyes hit on me. He’d have held his own with either Truesdale or Ibaio. He didn’t speak until the bay got quiet. That didn’t take long. “I’m Commander Morgan, and I’m the ops officer on the Magellan. This is Chief Tiernesco. You’re the last contingent to be assigned to the C.S.S. Magellan. Some of you have been asking whether she’s a dreadnought or a battle cruiser or what. I can’t tell you, because there’s no classification. She’s a converted colony ship, but she’s been rebuilt from the inside out. The mission is a deep-space science exploration run. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you’ll get better habitability here than on a regular D.S.S. vessel. You get staterooms, not bays. Tech thirds and below are four to a room. Techs two and above are two to stateroom…”

I wouldn’t have to bunk with Gutersen. That was a relief.

“This could be a long mission, but it is a combat tour, even if we don’t expect any combat, and you’ll get double credit. The chief will fill you in.” Morgan nodded to Tiernesco. “It’s yours, chief.”

Tiernesco didn’t say anything until the hatch closed behind Morgan. “You all heard the commander. This is a combat tour. You all know what that means. The commander is strict, but fair. So is the captain. You’d have to go a long ways to find fairer officers, or better ones. But he doesn’t like shirkers, and he doesn’t like excuses. Neither do I.

“The ship’s in the final stages of prep, and you’ll be working with the fitters to finish things up. It’s cheaper, and you’ll also get to know things better. That’s important, because gear won’t always be where you’d think it should be. This layout is D.S.S., but it’s different D.S.S.”

The chief tech stopped. His eyes fixed on a tall thin tech. The tech shifted his weight.

Tiernesco offered a cool half smile before continuing. “Quarters assignments are posted on the screens at the end of the bay. You’ll be heading to supply here on the station once you’re dismissed. You’ll pick up a full kit there. Then you’ll take lock two and head up the tower to the ship. Once you’re on board, you’re on board, unless you’re specifically ordered back to the station as part of your duties.” The chief stopped to let his words sink in.

Whatever the D.S.S. was investigating, they certainly didn’t want anyone letting anyone else know, even on the support station.

“Once you’ve gotten your kit, you all head to sick bay aboard the Magellan. You don’t go anywhere else. Everyone… everyone gets a baseline med and DNA scan before starting duties. Once you’ve been scanned into the ship system, find your quarters and drop your kit. Then you report to your duty stations. Like every D.S.S. ship, it’s blue passageways for crew.”

I had to hope that the colonel’s plant had managed to get my DNA into the med/securiry records. If not… I wouldn’t have to worry about anything… ever. I pushed that thought away.

“Any questions?”

There weren’t any. Senior techs knew that the answers wouldn’t tell anything more.

“Dismissed to find your bunking assignments and to get your kits.”

I slipped into the middle of the group walking toward the assignment screens at the end of the bay. I took my time, but not too much. Being either a jumper or a laggard marked you, and my job was to remain competently unnoticed. My quarters would be on the fifth deck, aft of frame 1340, with the other armorers and weapons techs. I was billeted with another second, Alveres. He was listed as a shield mech.

The supply tech took my ID, swiped it through the scanner. Within a minute, a kit duffel popped up on the conveyor beside him. “Here’s your kit, Bond. Take it to the table there and check it. It should have all your uniforms and insignia. If everything’s there, head up to the ship for your med-scans. Next!”

“Velasques…”

As the tech had said, everything was there, from ship-boots to skintights, all to my measurements. I sealed the duffel, hoisted it onto my shoulder, and headed out of supply and along the passageway to the lock tower. Five of us lined up at the base of the lock tower, waiting as two shipfitters wheeled down a cart that almost rilled the ramp that wound up the tower.

“Can you move any slower?” asked a third ahead of me.

“… lucky you don’t have to manage this,” replied the lead shipfitter. “Flatten you thinner than passageway plastrene.”

I followed the others. Sick bay was slightly forward of midships, and two decks below the main deck. Even after the delay at the lock tower, there were still ten techs lined up waiting for their scans. When my turn came, I passed over the ID and order cards.

The medtech didn’t even look at me. “Into the scanner, Bond.”

I stepped between the two panels and put my hands on the plates. There was a faint hum.

“You’re clear and entered into the ship system.”

How the colonel had managed it, I had no idea. I was just happy he had. If the scan had gone red, certain proteins in my brain would have gone to work, and… I wouldn’t have known anything within moments. They don’t tell you about that when they first recruit you for Covenant intelligence. It provides a certain incentive not to be caught.

“Thank you.” I smiled and picked up my kit.

The tech nodded.

The main crew passage was two levels down. A spiral ramp just forward of sick bay led both up and down. I headed down, keeping to the right. I passed a shipfitter first. He didn’t even look in my direction. Once I was down two levels, I headed aft. The crew passageways were narrower, only about a meter and a half wide, tight for two techs with gear, but I only had to pass a handful of others on the way back. A thousand frames was more than a kay. I had to shift the duffel from shoulder to shoulder four or five times.

D.S.S. didn’t use ship slideways. They claimed the longer corridors gave the crew exercise. They also saved mass and construction expense. Our ships were more crew-friendly.

The stateroom was easy enough to find. Getting inside was harder. It was more like a long narrow closet with two built-in bunks. Each bunk had an entertainment screen at the end, flat video, and earplugs—decadent luxury for a fighting ship.

Alveres had taken the upper bunk. That didn’t matter to me. I took my time unpacking the kit and stowing the uniforms and gear according to D.S.S. regs, but not precisely.

Then I was ready to head to the armory. It was “up” and slightly aft of where I was billeted. The hardest part was finding the crew ramp up. When I got there, the armory hatch was open. In the bay just inside were sliders and trolleys. They were configured for torps and probes, but they were empty.

A wiry chief appeared. The name strip on his vest read Stuval.

“William Bond, chief, reporting.”

“Glad to see you, Bond. You’re the last one in the division to report. How was the trip?”

“I could have done without the slowboat from Hamilton.” I offered a headshake. “And what they called food.”

Stuval laughed. “That’s the way it is. Food’ll be a lot better here. You’ll be working in the torp section. Mostly inspection and maintenance. We got some substandard torps with the refit kits. BuWeaps couldn’t give us a complete load of new ones. Told the major that, with the stepped-up patrols along the systems bordering the Covenant worlds, there weren’t enough brand-new torps for everyone, and we’re not going into hostile systems. Captain complained, but it didn’t change anything. You and Ciorio will have to make the bloc switches.”

“Yes, chief.”

“Major Sewiki is the head of weapons, and the assistant weapons officer is Lieutenant Swallow. Now, let’s give you the quick tour, so that you know where everything is.”

I followed the chief.

14

Chang

By the end of fiveday, I’d been through six runs in the simulator, each one tougher than the last. Each exercise told me more about where we were headed. On the last two simmie hops, Morgan had me setting down on a planet, not like anyplace I’d been or even heard of. Gravs were close to one-point-four, but no atmosphere, and cold as Hel. No mag-field and a thirty-three-hour rotation.

Once I got off training, I went to the station system and plugged in the parameters. Nothing matched. Not anywhere in any cataloged system. Figured it wouldn’t, but it was worth the effort.

Ten hundred was my sixday simulator session. I got to the training bay at zero nine forty-seven. Anson Lerrys was getting out of the simulator. Little guy, smaller than me by a couple of centimeters, but just as tough. Have to be at his size and with a name like Anson. Wiry and red-haired. Cute ass, and smiled a lot, though. Morgan had said we’d get two more shuttle pilots, but Lerrys was the only one who showed up. Gave him the same senior lieutenant’s bars as Braun and I had. Had the feeling that the other one didn’t make the cut.

Hung back until Morgan dismissed Lerrys, then moved toward the simulator.

Lerrys grinned. His forehead was coated in sweat. “Good luck, Jiendra.”

Don’t know how he’d found out my first name, but he had. Said it nicely, though. “Morgan in a bad mood, Anson?” Figured I’d give him back the first-name stuff.

“More like a ‘show me your stuff’ attitude.”

“Appreciate it.”

“Do the same for me if it comes to that.”

“I will.” I would, too. Couldn’t help but like him, brotherlike. Wish I’d had one like him.

Morgan was wiping his forehead—like working the simulator was as hard on him as the pilot. Probably was. Looked at me. “You won’t find our destination in the station’s data system, Lieutenant Chang.” He grinned. “Good try, though.”

“You never know.” I grinned back. Mouth felt stiff from all the forced smiles.

“You’ll find out in time.” Morgan cleared his throat and motioned to the open hatch of the simulator. “Today, you’ll start on weapons fam and indoc. The shuttles are armed, but only with a pair of torps. There are no lasers, no particle beams, and no projectile weapons for space or atmospheric defense. Torps are technically the only weapons the shuttles have, but they also have photon nets and scoops for mass collection for the fusactors. In certain circumstances those can also prove useful.”

“How much mass can the nets sling?” I asked. “How fast and how accurate?”

Morgan gave a wry frown. “Enough, if you’re in-system. The accuracy depends on the pilot. Don’t fiddle with those on this run. This is for the torps, just to get you familiar with the systems and the controls. The installation’s not quite standard.”

Didn’t know how anything in the shuttle could be. Shuttles were each one of a kind.

He motioned me toward the simulator.

I went Was… and wasn’t… looking forward to the next two hours.

15

Goodman/Bond

By sixday, I was working with Ciorio on refitting the substandard deep-space torps. Because he was a tech first class, he was lead, and that was fine by me. We were in the torp bay, on the outer deck, right against the hull, with secondary shields. No one wanted a torp malfunction to break the ship in half or impact the drives, but the placement was psychological. If a torp went off inside the Magellan, the ship wouldn’t be going anyplace.

You couldn’t repair a torp, not without more work than made sense. The insides were miracles of microtronics— well, not miracles like those done by the Christ or the saints, but close to them. All an armorer could do was replace defective components and make sure that the systems checked out I eased the second torp off the slider and onto the bench cradle.

Ciorio unsealed the power access. “Check power route.” I ran the links and the diagnostics. “Power off.” Ciorio took a deep breath. “Good. That’s the nasty part. Model is a standard 503. Problem is that the control modules were too temperature sensitive. Not to space. They did fine in cold, but if the internals in the ship got above thirty degrees Celsius, the power cutouts didn’t work. Makes working on them a real bitch, because you’ve got to cut the routing. If you miss by a millimeter, the torp’s junk. That’s why they sent us ten extras. Figured we’d screw up some.”

“Have you?”

“First few times. Not anymore.” Ciorio lowered his voice. “We don’t tell ‘em. If we fix all twenty right, we’ll report that we had to junk five, fed ‘em into the main fusactor. Otherwise, next time, they’ll send us even more of the defective ones, load the repairs onto us.”

“Major Sewiki… she’s stet with that?”

“Stet? It was her idea. No good officer wants the techs working twice as hard to bail out BuWeaps and their screwups.”

That made sense, in a way, but it went down hard for me. The whole idea of a senior tech and a field-grade officer disregarding command procedures—it undermined order and discipline. My first thought was that it didn’t happen in the CSN, but I’d have wagered it did. It was probably even quieter, because no one wanted the crusaders or their priors to find out.

“Besides,” Ciorio went on, “that gives us more torps.” He turned back to the open section of the torp, using the nanoprobes to disengage the links. Sweat beaded up his forehead, but his hands were steady. I watched as closely as I could. I’d used Comity nanoprobes. I just hadn’t been trained in anything like what he was doing.

“Is it only the 503s?” I asked, when he took another deep breath and blotted his forehead on the back of his wrist. “I’d thought…”

“Nah. 502s sometimes, but there aren’t many of them left anymore, and they pulled the 504s before they started sending ‘em out Too many 503s in service. Corvettes are the ones that get screwed, cause they don’t have but one armorer, and no equipment to do refits. Good thing we’re not in a big war. You want to try it?”

That was the last thing I wanted. “I’ve only watched. I’d like to learn… if you’re not worried about spoiling a torp.”

“You came from corvettes, I’d wager.”

“What can I say?”

Ciorio shook his head. “Got to learn sometime. Better take it real easy. One step at a time. I’ll guide you, once I replace the module on this one.”

He made it seem easy, and within fifteen minutes, we had the refitted torp back on the slider, ready to head back to storage.

“Now, we’ll switch places,” Ciorio said.

We switched. He eased the next torp onto the bench cradle.

As I’d seen Ciorio do, I unsealed the power access. “Check power route.”

“Power off.”

I looked down through the nanomags at the module in the open section of the torp. It wasn’t much bigger than the tip of my fingernail without them.

“Look for the green supercon line. Don’t want to touch that Real delicate. The red links are where you want to cut, anyplace between silver beads.”

That was simple enough, and I did know the nanoprobes. I’ve also always had good fine-muscle control. I made the cut.

“Good. Nice touch there. Sure you never did this?”

“Omer stuff. Not this.”

“All right Now… you use the left probe to insert the disable code.”

“That’s me standard D-I-S-X.”

“Right.”

I followed instructions, and the module went dull gray.

“There. Simple as that. Just ease it out. ‘Ware of the supercon line.”

In a few moments, I had the module out and into the disposal holder, sealed.

Ciorio eased the replacement module holder, nanite-protected against dust, up to the probes. I lifted the new module and eased it back into place. It fit perfectly. From Ciorio’s exhaling, I had the feeling that didn’t always happen.

“Now… you’ll have to extrude a touch of the control line, on polarity two. Just fill the gaps where you cut.”

I managed that as well.

“Next… reactivate.”

“R-E-A-T?”

“For 503s. For 502s, it’s R-E-A-3. Don’t ask me why.”

I got the code in, again without brushing the supercon, and retracted the probes. “Diagnostics?”

“Green. You can seal it up, Bond. We got ten more to do. We’ll take turns. Don’t get as tired or careless that way.”

I’d managed to get through one thing I probably should have known and hadn’t. How many more would there be?

16

Chang

Had almost a week more simulator training. Not all of it was on the shuttles. Spent four sessions getting a basic fam on the Magellan. Then Morgan took Lerrys, Braun, and me to the control room, let us link and get the feel of the systems. Decided I’d never really want to drive anything that big on a regular basis. Another three sim sessions were on needleboats. Pretty much all drives and enough mass to carry three torps. Screwy configuration. Couldn’t figure why only three torps with two tubes. Morgan insisted it was the stripped-down fusactor limits and that the original design had only allowed for two torps. Magellan had five needles, just like a battle-cruiser. We were backups. Regular pilots were junior lieutenants out of the two Comity space academies.

After another two days of simulator training, Morgan cleared me to take out shuttle one—the real shuttle, hot a simmie. It was locked on Deep Find Station’s tower three, a good kay “west” of the training bay. Wore my new armor and carried my helmet. A shipsuit will get you through a decompression, but not a battle or a fusillade of space junk. Takes armor for that Morgan escorted me through the ops personnel tunnel. Armor was hot. I was sweating when we reached the base of the ramp up to the lock tower.

Morgan stopped. “Just take it easy. It’s a fam run. I don’t want you acting like a test pilot.”

Commander was acting like he’d built the shuttles. “You put together the specs for them, sir?”

His head jerked toward me. Started to glare, then laughed, shaking his head. “Lieutenant, I don’t understand why you ever had to break anyone’s fingers.”

“Because he didn’t understand some words—like ‘honesty’ and ‘no.’”

He nodded. “Too many people hear what they want and not what’s said.”

Was Morgan was a nice guy inside? So nice that he’d built an endurasteel shell? Or was the niceness was just politeness over practicality? Either way, not my type. Be either too solicitous or as immovable as a singularity.

He stopped short of the tower lock. Noted he was carrying a stunner. “Shuttle one’s all yours, Lieutenant No more than two hours out, and stay clear of the Magellan and the station until you’re ready to return.”

“Yes, sir.” I stepped to the lock. Pulsed the codes and got a return scan. That was another thing about the shuttles. All had the security features of armed Comity scouts. Never seen shuttles that did, not until now.

Stepped into the crew lock, and went weightless. No habitability gravs until I powered up the shuttle. Set my shipboots on the deck and closed the outer lock door, then opened the inner door. Pulled myself into—or over—the quarterdeck. More like a closet with a hatch to the cockpit to the left, passageway to passenger section to the right. Behind the passenger section was one big cargo hold, with the drives and ship’s systems aft.

I opened the hatch one-handed, holding the grip with the other. Like the simulator, only one seat in the cockpit. Inside console and boards were identical to the simulator. Strapped into the pilot’s couch and adjusted the links.

Delta Control, this is Porter Tigress. Requesting clearance to power up this time.

Porter Tigress, cleared, Report when ready to delock.

Control, Porter Tigress, stet.

Ran though the checklist. Didn’t seem to take quite so long, maybe because it was the real shuttle and not a simmie. Readjusted the restraints once the gravs came on. Another difference. Smaller shuttles didn’t bother with internal gravs. Shuttle one was designed to carry passengers who weren’t used to null gee.

Delta Control, this is Porter Tigress, ready for delock and release this time.

Porter Tigress, dampers released. Cleared for delockmg.

Delta Control, Porter Tigress, delocking this time. Slid the shuttle clear of the tower with two measured bursts from the steering jets. Photon nets didn’t work without forward velocity. Couldn’t use the AG drives close to anything else with mass.

Cleared the station, took in the farscreen feeds. Even after the simmie, the real image of the Magellan gave me a jolt. Wondered how long before Morgan would brief us on our objective. Wouldn’t be until after we left the station, maybe later. Still… had a good idea of what we were facing, just not where, or what was on it. Knew it had to be cold and higher grav.

Porter Tigress, advise incoming at your zero eight zero, plus twenty-eight.

Control, have incoming and will avoid. Incoming was a slowboat, heavy mass reading on the detectors. Probably the last supplies and equipment for the Magellan.

Stet, Porter Tigress.

Pulsed the thrusters, watching the separation until the shuttle was well clear of the station and the delimiting area. Brought up the fusactors to full power and eased in the AG drives. Acceleration was smooth, smoothest I’d felt in a long time. Great to have new equipment.

Could tell from the system repscreens that Deep Find Station was well out in the Hamilton system—Kuiper Belt distance. The station was an anomaly itself. Don’t find many nickel-iron asteroids that far out—not solid and not ten kays in diameter. Also noted the varying dust densities created by the shields of the ships servicing the station. Wouldn’t be that long before they’d show up on even commercial detectors—raylike corridors pointing to the station.

Spread the nets at twenty percent. No reason not to scoop up the extra mass.

For a good hour, just played with the shuttle, testing response, lag time. Made a couple of approaches to an irregular chunk of dirty ice. Harder than another ship or a station, but good practice. Hard enough that I was really sweating inside the armor. Felt good in a way simmies never do.

Checked the time again and swung shuttle one back toward Deep Find Station.

Delta Control, Porter Tigress, inbound this time.

Porter Tigress, understand inbound. Cleared to tower three. Advise slowboat is hot.

Understand slowboat is hot. Meant I had to make an indirect approach because the slowboat was linked to tower two and using thrusters to balance against the mass shifts created by the unloading.

Approach was low-power anyway. Wouldn’t try high-power quick mass-thrust decel and brake with the shuttle’s mass, except in an emergency.

Didn’t want to leave the shuttle after approach and locking. Best equipment I’d had in years. More responsive than most men, and had more power. Didn’t talk back, either. Or condescend behind my back.

Took my time with the shutdown checklist Not too much. Screens said Morgan was waiting to debrief me— and to send Lerrys off. Wouldn’t be fair to Lerrys to stall.

Delta Control, Porter Tigress, powering down this time.

Stet, Tigress.

Pulled myself out of the couch. Weightless without power. Hand over hand to the hatch, then to the lock. Hated to leave… but Morgan was waiting.

17

Barna

Elysen had been more than willing to let me work on a portrait of her. It was more like a series of portraits, but I limited myself to light-matrix versions, because I could always store them. I needed to save the canvases until I knew what would be the best media for the images required by the project.

We had more than enough time for her portrait. I had little else to do until we got to wherever we were headed. I’d wandered the approved corridors, and even lounged in the officers’ mess, where we ate, but the officers were all in a hurry, and, while Elysen would occasionally talk to the other groups of scientists, their words flowed over and around me.

The social scientists were worse. Their words conveyed certainty without artistry and without replicable fact. I tried to smile, but I’d never been that good at it. Aeryana had always insisted that I should never attend soirees without her at my side. That was because I could not manage more than three sentences of small talk.

For her portrait, Elysen had insisted on one condition. Anything that was permanent had to have her approval. That made it a greater challenge.

On sevenday afternoon, I was in the sitting room that we shared, trying to get her eyes right. They were green, but there was something about them that I hadn’t gotten. She had gone off somewhere to check on her equipment.

The hatch opened, and I saw a lieutenant’s uniform behind Elysen before she stepped into our quarters and the hatch closed behind her. The blue of the officer’s uniform and skintights clashed with the blue of the corridor.

For all her size and large bones—and her age—Elysen moved gracefully, almost regally. Yet she had short active fingers on large palms. Those fingers seemed at odds with the rest of her build and her mannerisms. They were never still, even when the rest of her was motionless. She was more of a mystery than ever. There was more to her than met the eye. Years before, I’d decided that was true of all women. My own Aeryana was like that. She’d never liked me calling her my own, and I didn’t. I still liked to think of her that way. A man’s thoughts are his own. At least, I’d like to think that they were.

“How is your equipment?” I asked.

“It’s fine. They were transferring it to my work spaces on the Magellan. I had to make sure they moved it right and that no one unpacked it. That sort of help could do more damage than they could imagine. Oh… you have the work space next to mine. I took a quick look. They’ve mounted all sorts of visual farscreens in there. They said it won’t be long before we can go on board. That will be a relief. I won’t need escorts to go everywhere.” She turned on the old-fashioned kettle. “Would you join me in some tea?” That had become a ritual, of sorts.

“Please, if I’m not using too much of your supply.” I set aside the lightbrush and stood, stretching. The stiffness told me I had been in one position too long.

She smiled, beatifically. I could have used that expression if I’d been doing a religious work for one of the Christian-related sects that had hung on over the millennia. The Covenanters wouldn’t have liked it, though. Their art was far too rigid, with mechanical smiles on pregnant women, and a paternalistic deity stern with unbelievers and overflowing with grace for believers. I never understood what believing had to do with good or evil or why believing made someone more worthy in a deity’s eyes.

“There’s more packed in the equipment,” she added. “It fits nicely into the padding and cases.”

“How much did you bring?”

“Several years’ worth.” She smiled. This time the expression was mischievous. “That depends on how much I share.” She turned to the easel, where my latest effort was projected. “I don’t think my eyes look like that.”

“They do, and they don’t. They’d look like that in any holo or flat picture. Those don’t capture what’s in and behind them.” I didn’t want to talk about what I hadn’t been able to depict through either direct capture or my own lightbrush strokes and pointillism. “Did anyone say when we’ll be able to board the Magellan or when we’ll be leaving? Or where we’re headed? Do you have any more ideas about that?”

“No one mentioned any specific time. I did overhear one of the officers talking about his stateroom and how it was better than the station quarters.” Elysen looked at the thin wisp of steam beginning to circle out of the pressure spout of the teakettle that rested on the small counter at one side of the sitting room. “I hadn’t realized the pressure seal was leaking. Watched kettles do boil so much more slowly.”

“Do you have any more ideas about where we’re headed?”

“I had thought it might be an expedition back to Chronos, but the parameters aren’t right, and they wouldn’t need someone like me…”

I nodded politely. I didn’t have the faintest idea what Chronos was.

“… and they certainly wouldn’t need you. They want records, and good ones, but they also want a sense of wherever it is. You couldn’t ever get close enough to record anything artistically, not even with an AG drive. Chronos is a featureless sphere, and with a gravity two hundred eighty times that of Terran norm.”

“Terran?”

“That’s old-style terminology. It’s unfashionable these days. Now it’s either T or Tellurian, but it’s all the same. It has been for millennia. Too many people have the illusion that changing the name changes the truth—or the lie—behind it.”

How old was she? She drank tea, had silver hair, and eyes that were black and green at the same time, and that was a sign of great age.

“You’re saying that they’ve found an alien civilization.”

“I would judge that they have found ruins of some sort, and that they’re quite a distance away. If the civilization were still present, this would be a military expedition—or a diplomatic one backed with great military force. They have certainly found something of great and unique value. I would also judge that it is of great antiquity— unimaginable antiquity.”

Unimaginable antiquity? What would something like that look like? Was it still intact? Or did they want me to create an image of what it might have been from rubble and fragments?

Elysen poured the boiling water into the teapot. “It’s not as hot as it should be. That’s even with the pressure spout.”

I’d never noticed the difference, except that I wasn’t burning my tongue.

“Tea should be prepared with true boiling water, not water pressurized to less than boiling, but that is one of the small irritations of great expeditions.”

The irritations would be forgotten as small only if the expedition were in fact a great one. That also was human nature. I took the cup and saucer from her. It was ancient porcelain of some sort, and I decided that a cup and saucer of that design should be on a side table in the next portrait. Somehow, I needed to combine the mischief, the hint of saintliness, the scientist, and the proper woman who loved tea, a woman out of her time, who was aware of it and yet comfortable with who she was.

18

Fitzhugh

After more than an old-style week on the station, with each day unending in its dolose monotony, broken by but conversations, either speculating upon the forthcoming project or upon the eternal haecceity of academia, I had managed to make a less-than-profound impression on the tortuous backlog of professional readings I had loaded into the blocs I’d brought. So much of what passed for analysis and insight was merely a compilation of events with explications designed to support a preconceived thesis. All too many equated a succession of trends or events with causality. Most of the theses, as well, were based on ideological wistfulness, rather than the rigor of speculative deconstruction. To stand outside one’s history, culture, and language and see what has happened with acciptrine scholarly vision is among the hardest of accomplishments, and the least valued by those who deal with the certainty of a set universe.

As for entertainment, while both stateroom and work space had screens, what was available from the station’s system was insufferably pedestrian and with little redeeming value—social, political, or otherwise. I did listen to my copy of Cavernisha’s Event Horizon Suite, my eyes closed, enjoying the music. I also used the high-gee workout room.

While I pondered, as I did more often than I should, right after breakfast on twoday, Lieutenant Ruano stepped through the hatch into our sitting room. His official title was Mission Liaison Officer, although his diplomacy, tact, and delicacy hovered on the border of taciturn banality, and, when asked a question, his explanations could often have been classified along the range of between disingenuous and totally morological.

“Professors, please pack all your gear. We’ll be moving you to the Magellan, beginning at ten hundred.”

“ ‘The time has come,’ the Odobenus rosmarus said,” I added, almost under my breath.

“Liam, obscurity for the sake of obscurity serves no one,” murmured Alyendra from across the table. “Least of all, you.”

“I was talking about walruses.”

“You are a walrus at times, and that’s being charitable.”

I had let slip from my memory the less than delightful acerbity of Alyendra’s terseness. I resolved not to do so once we parted ways again.

“Will we be able to return here?” asked Tomas.

“That is highly unlikely,” replied Ruano, smiling.

A simple negative would have sufficed, along with a polite apologetic commentary, but Ruano’s social graces had more than obviously reached their limbus at the minimum requisites of military courtesy.

“Will you have a slider for baggage?” asked Melani.

“Ah… I will make sure there is one.”

“Thank you,” the petite theoretical psychologist replied. “It will be far easier for you than having to carry so much of our baggage and equipment.”

Ruano paused. He looked at Melani, then looked away.

Alyendra concealed a smile.

After several moments, Ruano straightened. “I’ll be back at ten hundred.” He turned and departed.

After Ruano’s abrupt withdrawal, we all retreated to our quarters and began the process of repacking. That encompassed some garments, in my case, in need of cleaning, a necessity about which I was more than infrequently guilty of procrastinating, particularly when I was the one required to undertake the ablutive actions.

True to his word, the good lieutenant returned at zero nine-fifty-nine, with a muscular tech and a slider for baggage.

We all had our gear stacked in the sitting room. I had carried out a case of Melani’s that massed as though it held either lead or gold. I wasn’t about to inquire what it contained. I also wasn’t about to warn Ruano, but the tech who accompanied him was the one who lifted it onto the slider, almost as effortlessly as I had.

Once the tech loaded the slider, we followed the lieutenant out through the hatch and down the blue corridor, then a gray corridor, then another blue corridor, for quite a distance—it could have been close to a kay—before we reached a circular ramp.

“This ramp will lead to the lock and tube to the Magellan. At the top of the ramp, each of you will be scanned, and your ID/DNA entered into the ship’s systems. That is necessary to allow you access to the equipment in your work areas and staterooms. Your bags and equipment will be scanned as well. I’ll wait for you inside the Magellan’s lock, and from there, I’ll direct you to your quarters.”

The tech and slider preceded us up the ramp and had vanished before we reached the medical tech and the scanners awaiting us short of the lock. Out of custom and habit, I deferred, and was the last one to finish and rejoin the others in an open space beyond the lock chambers and inside the Magellan. The walls were gray, and the sole concession to decoration was the D.S.S. insignia on the wall to my right, under which was the name C.S.S. MAGELLAN, DSE-3.

Ruano glanced at us. “This is the midships quarterdeck, and we’re on the main deck. All the other decks are numbered outward. The even numbered decks are those above us, and the odd numbered ones are below the main deck. Second deck is the one above us, and third deck is below. Fourth deck is above second deck, all the way out to forty-eighth and forty-ninth deck. Fiftieth deck and fifty-first decks are the outermost decks, and the largest in size, because they hold the locks for the shuttles, needle-boats, and loading and unloading areas. Fiftieth deck covers the whole upper half of the ship, and fifty-first covers the whole lower half.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense just to have circular decks?” asked Tomas.

“It would, except working out the grav system would be worse than the structure on a Gate. The compartmen-talization would be harder, too.” Ruano stopped. “We’ll take the center lift up to thirty-eighth deck. That’s where your quarters are. There’s also a ramp beside it in case we go to low-power conditions.”

There were three lifts, each capable of holding ten people.

Once we got to thirty-eighth deck, Ruano launched into another exposition. “As on Deep Find Station, the officers’ mess will serve both the ship’s officers and all of you who are detailed here as civilian experts. You may sit where you please, except at the captain’s table. That is by invitation only…”

As Ruano went on, I wondered what it was about the lieutenant that annoyed me. I’d certainly made the acquaintance of more than a few self-important, petty personages in academia, and they hadn’t annoyed me half so much as the young officer. That was something else I had let time obscure.

“… All your staterooms are along this passageway. Your names are on the doors. You are to use only the blue passageways on the Magellan, just like in Deep Find Station. If the captain orders ‘General Quarters,’ you are to remain in your stateroom or in your workstation. You are responsible for the cleanliness of your staterooms and work spaces. You have a cleaning facility for your garments on the same passageway.”

Ruano smiled with the satisfaction of an inept provost delivering an address to a hostile faculty. I’d observed more than a few of those encounters over the years, and Ruano was more adept than some of the provosts I’d encountered. That, unfortunately, wasn’t saying very much for either the lieutenant or those long-departed provosts who had equated academic brilliance and blind adherence to formulae with leadership.

“Are there any questions?”

“Do you know when we’ll be departing, and where we’re headed?” asked Melani.

“I can’t say, except that departure is not likely to be more than a few days away, if that.”

“Do you know?” asked Tomas dryly.

“No, Professor. I do not. I doubt that any of the officers and crew do, except for the captain, the exec, and the ops officer.”

Alyendra and I exchanged glances. Inquiring further would have served little purpose except to reveal greater ignorance on the lieutenant’s part, and such forced revelation would doubtless redound to our disadvantage in the future.

“If not, I will leave you to settle into your staterooms. Your work spaces are two decks up on forty-second deck above, and you may find your way there at your convenience, either by the lift or the ramp. Please use the blue passageways. The mess hours are the same as on Deep Find Station…”

Once Ruano had taken his leave, I made my way to my quarters, grandiloquently termed a stateroom, holding as it did a single bunk, with a deep green blanket folded in place, a full-length locker, and an attached multifunction fresher room, barely a meter and a half square. The stateroom proper did have a wall console, so that I could read and compose in privacy, or access what was open to me on the ship’s system, primarily what was termed popular entertainment. Unpacking my wardrobe, such as it was, took little time, and I was eager to see what my “work space” might be.

I went down the blue passageway and took the ramp up to the forty-second deck. There was an open hatchway, with the words SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE on the greenish wall beside the hatch, presumably the spaces allocated to me and those with whom I had been quartered on Deep Find Station, as well as others I had not met.

I passed one open door and saw Tomas inspecting a console beneath a wall screen. The next door held my name, and from what I could tell, my space was identical to that of the political scientist.

I had to admit that the equipment was first-class. There was a single screen on the wall, showing an asteroid, indubitably the Deep Find Station from which we had been transferred so summarily, and a console that would handle more than anything I could have asked for, including multiple simultaneous inputs from datablocs.

“What do you think, Liam?”

Alyendra stood in my doorway.

I didn’t know what to think. The more I saw, the less I understood why I had even been included on what looked to be a scientific search—or plundering—of a defunct colony. Although others had suggested an alien culture was the objective, that seemed a wistful reverie. We had not found a single trace of aliens or forerunners among the thousands of worlds we had explored over the past three millennia. Why would such appear now?

As for a dead colony, my own expertise lay in analyzing documented trends, and I doubted that such colonists would have left much hard evidence or documentation. Dying civilizations seldom do. Their arts replicate what has gone before. Their technology stagnates, with but minor adaptations of what was created earlier. Political systems atrophy, with most debates and conflicts over who holds power, rather than how it is wielded or for whose benefit.

“Liam?”

“Oh… I’m pondering why anyone would wish to spend so many credits on providing me with such equipment, when it’s likely that my contribution to what they want will be so minuscule.”

“Did I hear what you said?” Alyendra raised her eyebrows. “The great Liam Fitzhugh… a minuscule contribution?”

“To this? Yes. We’ll be looking at a dead colony—or the remnants of one.”

“Perhaps they left records in one of the languages you speak.”

I hadn’t considered that, but it was a possibility. I didn’t consider it a possibility of high probability, but… it was possible. I nodded.

“And just possibly,” she added, “someone wanted your insights. They think it’s important enough that they’ve not let even the junior officers know. What do your remarkable insights say about that?”

“Military secrecy is so ingrained that I have doubts whether that signifies extraordinary significance. On the other hand, others might also reach the same conclusion, further obfuscating the magnitude of what awaits us.”

Alyendra shook her head. “You could have said you don’t know.” She smiled. “Would you care to accompany me up to the officers’ mess? We are approaching midday.”

I bowed and offered my arm.

“I’m not that infirm. Not yet.” She laughed.

So we walked to the lift.

19

Barna

In comparison to my stateroom, the work space was luxurious—but only in comparison. Still, it was an office-studio five meters by four, with an array of wall screens and enough power sources for all my equipment. Someone, somewhere, had understood that an artist needed to see, to take in images.

The center screen, a good two meters square, showed a color image of an asteroid, with a tower protruding from its irregular surface. After a moment, I realized that it was a real-time image, doubtless light-enhanced, of Deep Find Station. We hadn’t moved that far, and I hadn’t felt any motion at all when the captain had announced that we were separating from the station.

I settled into the chair facing the board. While I didn’t understand everything before me, I had time to learn it. I would. As I leaned forward, the small master screen flashed, and the words SYSTEMS INSTRUCTIONS appeared. While I would have preferred to experiment, it couldn’t hurt to watch and listen as the system explained itself.

The instructions were very simple. I had access to all outside screens under normal conditions, and any remote feeds or views gathered by the ship’s shuttles or needle-boats once those were entered into the system. If they were. Whether that content was put on the feeds I could access would be determined by the operations officer.

“Ser Barna?”

I bolted upright in the chair. My back twinged as I turned to the open hatch. Elysen stood there.

“Would you care to join me for supper, or whatever one calls the evening meal upon a military vessel?”

I returned the center screen to the view of Deep Find Station and rose. “I’d be honored, Doctor.” I stood and bowed.

“Elysen will do.”

“Only if you call me Chendor.”

“Fair is fair… Chendor.”

We took one of the lifts. We had it to ourselves. When we got off at the mess level, two ship’s officers hurried before us—both women. They were pilots. They had winged insignia—in gold—above their name strips. One was blonde, full-figured but muscular, with short hair, and taller than I. The other was petite, with dark hair. Both were visually stunning, one like a goddess, the other almost doll-like. Beneath the vibrant beauty of the blonde was molten iron. The apparent serenity of the smaller pilot concealed cold steel.

I knew I’d have to try to recapture that image once I got back to the office-studio, the contrast between the apparent and the reality beneath.

“You’re staring, Chendor.”

“Yes. I’d like to capture that image.”

“Just the image?” Elysen laughed.

“Just the image,” I replied. “Beneath those exteriors are women I’d just as soon not get too close to.”

Elysen frowned for a brief moment.

Women think they’re the only ones who see beneath surfaces. Some artists do, too. I can paint what I see better than I can describe it in words.

The officer’s mess was paneled in cherrywood. It was only a veneer, but it made the room warmer. The off-white ceiling and the dark green hangings helped, too. The tables and chairs were cherry synth-wood as well, with pale green linens on the tables. A single rectangular table was set at one end of the mess. Every seat was taken except for the one at the head. All those who were seated there were more-senior officers. That was if I’d read the rank insignia right. The other tables were circular.

“It almost looks like a private club,” I said.

“It is. There aren’t thirty officers on the Magellan, and I’d be surprised if there were that many civilian experts,” Elysen replied. “There might be three hundred or four hundred crew members.”

“Where do you want to sit?”

She gestured. We stepped toward an empty table. None of the occupied tables had space for two, except for the one where the two pilots had seated themselves with a man—another pilot He was red-haired. The three of them also would have made an interesting composition.

At that moment, a senior officer stepped through a side door, and all those at the rectangular table stood.

“Carry on.” The captain took her place at the head of the rectangular table.

We seated ourselves. Within moments, we were joined by two men. I remembered to stand. “Chendor Barna.”

“Misha Nalakov, I’m an applied mathematical theorist.” He didn’t look like a theorist. He had the muscular build of an old-time smith, with black hair slicked back away from a hawk nose.

“Rikard Sorens.” He was slender, with a narrow triangular face that dwindled to an elfin chin. “Materials engineering.”

“This is Dr. Elysen Taube.” I sat down after that.

“I’m an astronomer.” Her smile was that of a regal grandmother or an ancient queen mother.

“What do you do?” Nalakov looked at me.

“I’m an artist.”

“Oh… documentary, I suppose.”

“Representational.”

Both men looked at Elysen.

“Do you have a subspecialty, Doctor?” asked Nalakov.

“Old galaxies… postflex.”

Sorens nodded.

A steward came to the table and set bowls in front of us. Another followed with a tureen and a ladle. The soup was orangish and steamed.

“Where do you think we’re headed?” Nalakov looked at Elysen.

“Somewhere quite distant, I would think.”

“The D.S.S. has to have found some sort of alien artifact. Astronomers, materials engineers, chemists, physicists…” The mathematician shook his head.

“With the military, you never can tell,” Sorens replied. “They once had me consulting on the contents of an outer Oort object. It looked different to them, but it wasn’t manufactured at all, just coated and polished by millennia in the outer reaches of the system. It was something that I couldn’t add much on. The astronomers and chemists knew more than I did.”

“They wouldn’t put together all this for something small,” Nalakov retorted. “They’re too cheap.”

“You’re probably right. One way or another, we’ll know more at the briefing tomorrow.”

“You’re an optimist,” Nalakov mumbled. He was talking and eating.

Sorens smiled indulgently. I liked him.

At the table behind us, I overheard one of the social scientists. I’d been introduced, but couldn’t recall his name. His voice carried.

“… the human species is characterized, assuming the term ‘character’ is not exceedingly charitable, by its predilection to create divisions and barriers, even at times to assert that humans of differing skin shades were of other species, as a basis for establishing competing polities…”

Why didn’t he just say that people used any excuse to assert that they and their group were special?

“Chendor?” Elysen asked politely.

I shook my head.

Elysen smiled, and her eyes flicked toward the adjoining table. Her voice barely carried to me. “Once you get past his tendency to use the largest word possible, Liam seems like a fairly pleasant individual.”

“Do all academics do that?”

“Do you think I do?” Her voice remained a murmur.

“You always knew better.”

“How would you know? We’ve known each other for less than two weeks.”

“Artists always know.” I could see what lay beneath the surfaces of people and what they created. I laughed inside at the contradiction I’d expressed. Elysen was right. I should look inside Liam Fitzhugh before judging. Then, would I see what lay beneath wherever the D.S.S. was taking me? Could I portray it?

20

Chang

We’d finally moved onto the Magellan, late on oneday, after I’d taken shuttle two out on a quick fam, then eased her into the bay on the Magellan. Had to help block and secure the shuttle. Lerrys got stuck doing that on shuttle one. Second shuttle was more of a workhorse. No real passenger spaces, just cargo, and bigger and few holds. Made me wonder what they expected us to cart back. Still wondered from where.

Twoday and threeday, we did drills and fams on the equipment in the ops spaces on the Magellan.

Fourteen hundred on fourday, the captain announced that the Magellan was separating from Deep Find Station. Separating, not delocking. Probably because the Magellan was close to quarter the size of the station asteroid. Not mass, just size. Ship stood off the station running tests and diagnostics, but I knew we weren’t going back.

Sixteen hundred, Morgan gathered all the pilots and what looked to be most of the ship’s officers for a briefing in the ready room aft of ops on the Magellan. Forty-eighth deck, just below the bays that held the shuttles and the needleboats. Had both ramps and ladders up to the bays. Lifts didn’t go to the two outer decks. Ladders wouldn’t be used much unless we had to operate in null gee. With all the officers it was crowded.

Lerrys, Braun, and me—we were the shuttle pilots in the briefing room. All of us civilians wearing senior lieutenant’s bars. The other officers I knew by sight were the snip’s pilots—Commander Morgan; another commander whose name patch read LILEKALANI—the exec; Major Tepper; Major Singh; and Lieutenants Beurck, Lindskold, Rynd, and Rigney. There were three other pilots I didn’t know. Among all the pilots, Morgan, Lerrys, and Rigney were the only men.

After everyone was there, Captain Spier entered. With her was a civilian in an old-style blue shipsuit—not skintights. Iron gray hair, and he looked like he wanted to be anyplace else.

The captain stepped out in front. She took a long look around the ready room, then spoke. “All of you know that Project Deep Find is highly secret and of vital import to the D.S.S. and to the entire Comity. It is so vital that overall control has been delegated directly from the Comity Minister of External Affairs to Special Deputy Minister Allerde.” She gave a quick nod to the gray-haired man in the shipsuit. “Minister Allerde.”

Allerde cleared his throat. “Project Deep Find is the most ambitious undertaking attempted by any system in centuries…”

Wished that he’d get on with the superlatives and tell us what the frigging project was.

“… so ambitious that not even the Comity Assembly knows the nature of the project. Every person involved in the project has been specially selected, and, with the exception of Captain Spier and Commander Morgan, none of you have been told even the most general details of this endeavor…”

Kept wishing he’d get to the point.

“… Now that we are clear of Deep Find Station and will be departing shortly, I’ve been cleared to enlighten you on the overall nature of the project. Then Commander Morgan will follow with some of the specifics.” Allerde cleared his throat. “Project Deep Find is a technological, historical, and archeological investigation of an abandoned city of an alien civilization. The ruins are incredibly ancient, but are remarkably well preserved. They indicate that the aliens most probably possessed at least some facets of a technology well in advance of our present accomplishments. I trust that you can all understand why such secrecy has been necessary and why this mission is considered so vital to the Comity—and indeed to all human civilizations.” Allerde smiled professionally. “I wanted you all to know how important the Minister of External Affairs and the D.S.S. feel this is. Commander Morgan will fill in all the details that I’ve omitted.”

Allerde and the captain stepped back.

Morgan moved forward. “All of you have experienced the mission training.” He smiled, laughed softly. “Most of you thought it was a torture test to weed out all but the best. That’s true. But the conditions in the simulators were as close to what you’ll face as we could design.”

Low whistle came from Lerrys. Felt that way myself, but couldn’t whistle. Never could. Not so as I’d want to around anyone else.

“As Special Minister Allerde has indicated, our objective is what appears to be an outpost world of an ancient alien civilization. We will be traveling well beyond the galactic halo and deep into the void between galaxies. Our target is a renegade world that is crossing the void by itself. It has no sun, no satellites. It still rotates on its axis, if far more slowly than it once did. It’s barely within reach using a three-Gate translation. We’re calling it Danann. That may be wistful thinking, but it seems appropriate. The local gravity is approximately one-point-two Telluran standard. There’s no atmosphere because it all either vanished billions of years ago or froze solid. We have incontrovertible indications that it once hosted a very high-technology alien civilization. I must stress, again, that level of technology certainly appears to surpass anything we have accomplished to date.” Morgan paused.

Another confirmation that we were on a bastard mission—high risk, high payoff.

“Sir? Could I ask how we know that?” That was Major Tepper, the assistant ops boss.

“The D.S.S. has sent a number of ships out to investigate. Several did not return. Some of the local… conditions… were unexpected.” He coughed to clear his throat. “How many of you know about Chronos?”

Braun nodded. So did Commander Lilekalani. I’d never heard of it.

“Chronos was—or is—a galactic anomaly. It is a perfect sphere roughly one-point-two T-standard, but with something like two hundred eighty times T-standard mass. Danann has almost exactly the same diameter, although it’s not a perfect sphere, since it was once inhabited, and it’s linked to Chronos. In fact, that linkage was how it was discovered. AG drives leave ‘traces,’ certain minute disruptions in the membrane of the universe. That’s how graviton trackers operate. Because all concentrations of mass operate under gravitational conditions, they also leave such traces. One of the Comity scientists postulated that Chronos must have left an unusual AG track. His measurements and monitors discovered that the track of Chronos was twice as long as it should have been. That led to additional observations and a single unmanned Gate-probe. That probe discovered another anomaly and the discovery that the trace of Chronos was not just a trace of Chronos, but two traces, and that there was a good possibility that something lay at the far end of that distant track.”

I’m no astrophysicist. Had to take Morgan’s word for what he was telling us. Wondered how all the science led to the alien technology.

“That led to a gamble on the part of the Comity. They sent out Gates and ships. They found Danann. Estimates are that the world was abandoned more than six billion years ago. Rough topographical scans and one landing have revealed that one section of the planet was heavily urbanized—and abandoned in good order. We don’t know how to preserve something for that long, but the Danannians did. That alone is a good indication of then-technology.

“Danann is aimed at another galaxy. We don’t know whether that is by chance or design. Long before it will reach that galaxy, it will encounter a region of silent singularities. The rough ETA is three years. Danann may well survive that transit, but we do not have the technology to explore that area and survive. That transit will take thousands of years at best. We don’t know with enough certitude how much longer Danann will remain in an area of stable space…”

The old pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The alien bonanza, except that it was going to slip beyond our grasp in a few years.

“This is a combat mission. While the D.S.S. has attempted to keep this mission dark, the refitting of the Magellan could not be totally concealed, and there is a good probability that we will encounter some difficulties. We will be accompanied by the Alwyn, the newest of the Comity battle cruisers, and she will be joining us shortly after we leave Deep Find Station. We will also have two fast couriers, the Bannister and the Owens.”

Frigging right there’d be difficulties, as Morgan put it. Even a hint of that kind of technology, and every one of the major powers would be scrambling to get a piece, or stop the Comity from getting it.

“Can you tell us anything about what we might expect to find?” asked Major Singh.

“No. You all know the conditions on Danann. The simulator runs were programmed to duplicate those, as well as we could. I don’t pretend to know enough to explain what the first ships found. They didn’t, either. That’s why we have a large contingent of civilian experts on board. While they’re heavy on the science side, we’ve also included other disciplines as well.”

“Are you saying that the first ships couldn’t enter anything on Danann?”

“They didn’t have the equipment to explore for any length of time or to penetrate the structures.”

“What about defenses?”

“There are no obvious defenses.” Morgan cleared his throat. “There is a briefing package on each of your personal systems. Before you ask any more questions, I suggest you study it carefully, and in depth.” After another pause, he added, “The duty rosters are also posted. This is the ready room and primary duty station for the needle-boat and shuttle pilots.”

No one asked any questions. Not after Morgan had told us to read first and question later. Didn’t like the way he’d answered the question about defenses, either.

I didn’t have duty until twenty hundred. Went back to my stateroom on deck forty. Ship with fifty-one decks, hard to believe.

Called up the briefing package, then looked at the image of Danann. There was only one. Shot from low orbit, it looked like. Had to be light-enhanced. No internal heat to speak of, and no sun for reflected light. Showed just one hemisphere, and what had to be the biggest complex or city ever built anywhere, anytime. A perfect oval, visible from space, and under ice and frozen atmosphere. Must have been three hundred kays across at the narrowest—and sat on a high plateau, looked to be on dark rock. Studied the description. Silvery structures, with gray-black ice some twenty meters thick over it. Bastard mission, all the way.

21

Fitzhugh

At ten hundred—ten o’clock for those unused to D.S.S. terminology—I gathered with all the other nonmilitary civilian members of Project Deep Find in the mess. By my rapid enumeration, there were thirty-one of us seated at the mess tables, awaiting the arrival of whatever D.S.S. functionary had been deputed to brief us. I sat between Melani and Alyendra, a not-too-unpleasant situation. It might have been more pleasant had I not been slightly sore from an excessive session in the Magellan’s high-gee workout room.

“… an alien artifact, perhaps even a ship,” suggested Melani.

“It would have to have crashed in a location where they couldn’t remove it,” pointed out Tomas from across the table. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t need an expedition…”

I still thought an alien artifact or civilization was improbable, but saw no point in spouting forth on that in the midst of so many who hoped for an alien encounter. If the aliens were or had been less advanced, that would only enhance the already-excessive human arrogance, and a superior culture—even the remnants of one—would spark jingoism and paranoia. I doubted that aspect of military culture had changed over the years since I had beheld it more intimately.

Three individuals entered the mess—the dark-haired Captain Spier, a gray-haired D.S.S. commander, and some sort of functionary in a blue shipsuit with angular silver braid on the shoulders. The three perambulated to the captain’s table.

There, Captain Spier stepped forward. “You are all knowledgeable experts within your field, and among the most esteemed in your disciplines within the Comity. By that fact alone, you must have surmised that Project Deep Find is of vital import to the entire Comity. It is so vital that overall control has been delegated directly from the Comity Minister of External Affairs to Special Deputy Minister Allerde.” She gestured to the gray-haired man in the blue shipsuit.

Allerde moved forward and in front of the captain’s table. “Project Deep Find is the most ambitious undertaking attempted by any human government in millennia. It is of such importance that not even the Comity Assembly knows the nature of the project. Every person involved in the project has been specially selected, and, for that, you should all be pleased to know how highly regarded each of you is within your discipline. For all of that expertise, with the exception of Captain Spier and Commander Morgan, no one, either in the ship’s company or among you, has been told even the most general details. Now that we are clear of Deep Find Station, I’ve been cleared to enlighten you on the overall nature of the expedition. Then Commander Morgan will follow with some specifics.” Allerde coughed several times. “Project Deep Find is a technological, historical, and archeological investigation of an abandoned city of an alien civilization. The ruins are incredibly ancient, but remarkably well preserved. The aliens most probably possessed a technology well in advance of our own. So I trust this will explain why such secrecy has been necessary and why this mission is considered so vital to the Comity—and indeed to all human civilizations.” Allerde smiled professionally. “Commander Morgan will fill in some details.”

Allerde and the captain stepped back, then eased away toward the captain’s entrance, where they stood.

The gray-haired commander stepped up before the vacant captain’s table. “Good morning. I’m Commander Morgan, and I’m the operations officer of the Magellan. That makes me the officer in charge of the daily operations of Deep Find Project. Special Deputy Minister Allerde has overall control of the expedition, and Captain Spier, of course, remains totally in command of the Magellan and can override any of my decisions—or those of Deputy Minister Allerde—in the interests of the safety of the ship and its personnel.”

That was understood. No military organization would risk vessels for “mere” science.

“The Magellan has delocked from Deep Find Station. Once the final cross-checks are completed, we will be leaving Hamilton system. We will be accompanied by the battle cruiser Ahvyn and two couriers. Because each of you will receive a complete briefing package on your work-space systems shortly, I won’t go into specific in-depth details. Our objective is what D.S.S. believes is an alien world crossing the void between galaxies. It has neither a sun nor satellites but is rotating slowly on its axis. We’re calling it Danann. We have incontrovertible indications that it once hosted a very high-technology alien civilization, but that was more than several billion years ago. There is strong evidence that many of the structures remain intact, despite the passage of time, and undisturbed. That level of technology certainly appears to surpass anything we have accomplished to date.” Morgan paused.

I could see heads nodding around the mess tables, and while I could not help but be intrigued and excited by the possibility of beholding the ruins of an alien civilization, I had to wonder why I’d been included among all the scientific experts. I had my doubts whether the lessons of human civilization and history applied to long-departed aliens. I also couldn’t help but be annoyed by the choice of the name, because properly it was a possessive form of the name of an ancient goddess. If they were going to name the place after ancient deities, it should have been Danu, but no one had consulted me.

As Morgan spoke, the captain and the Special Deputy Minister made a quiet egress. I had no doubts that Special Deputy Minister Allerde was present only as a political prop so that, once the expedition was over, the Minister of External Affairs could assert that a high-ranking representative of the people had been overseeing the operation all the way.

“It is possible that this could also be a dangerous expedition,” Morgan went on. “As mentioned earlier, we will have a D.S.S. battle cruiser as an escort, and we have attempted to keep those who know me objective and the stakes to an absolute minimum. Keeping such a secret, unfortunately, can reveal that the secret exists…”

That secrecy revealed as much as it concealed was irrefutable.

“We are also operating under a time constraint. Danann will remain in a position where the planet can be explored and evaluated only for a few more years, perhaps less than three. That is another reason for this commitment.” He stopped and surveyed those in the mess before going on. “At the moment, anything more from me would be either superficial or superfluous. After you have a chance to study your briefing materials, either Major Tepper or I will be meeting with the various teams to discuss and develop operations in dealing with Danann.” Morgan offered a pleasant smile, a nod, then turned and was gone.

His behavior fit what I would have categorized as a typical military approach—make a presentation so general that the only value was the basic announcement and follow it with a promise of more information, while avoiding all questions on the basis that they were premature before we read the briefing materials.

“I said it was an alien artifact.” Melani was radiating both excitement and anxiety. “How can we even begin to understand how they thought?”

Alyendra said nothing.

“You must have noticed that we are among the few who are not specialists in the physical sciences,” Tomas said. “I believe there are also an artist, a cryptographer, and a linguist.”

If Tomas was correct in his assessments, we were indeed a minority.

Alyendra finally spoke. “Why all the secrecy? It’s not as though the Covenanters, or the League, or even the Sunnite Alliance or the Middle Kingdom, could use the Comity Gates to get to us, or to wherever we may be headed.”

An economic sociologist she might be, but Alyendra clearly didn’t understand the trends of human history. I cleared my throat.

“If this is truly a scientific expedition, why such a fetish for secrecy?” she continued, her voice increasing in volume and stridency. “All of us could have prepared better if we had known where we were going and why—”

I cleared my throat again. This time I was louder. “Throughout human history, over time, no polity has long regarded the limbus of authority of another polity as sacrosanct, regardless of the difficulties in surmounting either political or geographical borders. No polity has ever resisted the temptation to attempt to possess and monopolize new knowledge and technology. If what the Special Deputy Minister and the commander have asserted is accurate, and the D.S.S. obviously believes it is, or they would not have committed such an inordinate accumulation of resources and expertise, then the potential for a brane-explosion of new knowledge exists for whoever can find it and exploit it.”

“But a Gate is as close to invulnerable as… as a star itself…” That was Melani.

“That is indubitably so. Do you recall what occurred in the Dirty War or the Second Arm War?”

Melani frowned.

“Gates had been long established by that time. Each of the belligerents controlled its own system Gates. Not a single Gate of any belligerent polity was compromised or destroyed through direct military action, yet whole systems were decimated.”

“They created Gate-ships,” pointed outTomas. “Those were ships that went through their own Gates and ended up outside the enemy’s systems, and then they were converted into functioning Gates for the attackers.”

“Exactly. Consider that those wars were over control of populations, territory, and human knowledge. Wouldn’t the possibility of alien knowledge be worth the expenditure to create or use Gate-ships, either to gain control of such knowledge or even to preclude the Comity from monopolizing it?”

“How would they be able to build them so quickly?”

“They wouldn’t. Those earlier Gates later formed the basis for enhanced interstellar contact—those that were not dismantled because of their excessive operating costs. Do you know how many Gates are positioned outside Hamilton system?”

“How would I know that?” asked Melani.

“That’s the salient point. Unless a Gate is used, space is vast enough that no one would know it’s there. If its first use is to translate a fleet…”

“You think they would come after us, after a D.S.S. ship like the Magellan?”

“The commander said we would have a full battle cruiser as an escort.” To me that more than intimated that the D.S.S. anticipated a high probability of some form of hostilities.

“Then let us hope that no one sends a dreadnought after us,” Tomas said quietly.

While I appreciated and shared his concerns, I would rather that he had not expressed them quite so directly.

22

Chang

On fiveday, early, I was down in the ops workout rooms trying to get back in better shape. Never had the time on Alpha Station. McClendon contract had been a bitch. Not many there, and all D.S.S., except for one of the civilians. Dark-haired, working hard but smoothly in the high-gee area. Doubted I could match him. Wondered who he was.

All pilots to stations! All pilots to stations! I’d forgotten that the links worked everywhere in the Magellan. Shouldn’t have forgotten that. She was a D.S.S. ship.

Ran through the shower and scrambled into my uniform and up the ramps—faster than the lifts for a few levels. Lerrys was in the ready room before me. Braun was right behind me.

Major Tepper was waiting, not Morgan.

“We’ve got a small problem.”

Tepper looked across us and the five needleboat pilots. All were junior lieutenants. Lindskold, Rynd, and Rigney were the ones I knew. Rigney was the biggest pilot I’d ever seen, over 190 centimeters. Name strips on the other two said SHAIMEN and UNGERA.

“An out-system Gate has translated two battle cruisers and two frigates. They’ve split One of the cruisers and one frigate will reach us just before we reach our Gate.”

“The others are positioned to keep us from returning to Hamilton system without a fight?” asked Braun.

“They’re Sunni-conngured, and once they’ve translated through a Gate, they don’t back off.”

“Why the Sunnis, sir?” asked Rynd.

“We don’t know. It could be that they’re the most desperate for any possible alien technology. Their systems are outflanked by the Covenanters and the Comity, and Old Earth blasted them the last time they encroached on League worlds.” Tepper gave a tight smile, wry. “If we prevail, the Alliance will deny that those ships ever existed. There certainly won’t be any records. Or if there are, they’ll be raiders funded by some extremist splinter group. All that’s beside the point.” She looked hard at the junior lieutenants. “Sunnite ships carry lots of needle-boats. Each needleboat can carry one antimatter torp.”

Rynd winced.

Rigney nodded.

“We’ll see what the spread is, but you’ll probably have to launch in another three hours.” Tepper turned in my direction. “You’re the designated rescue pilot. Once we engage, you’ll be suited and in shuttle one, but you’ll stay cradled in the bay unless and until you’re needed.”

“Except for Lieutenant Chang, you can all go back to whatever you were doing until ten hundred. Then I expect you back here, ready to fly. If we need you sooner, you’ll be alerted.”

Major didn’t say a word until we were alone.

“Commander Morgan picked you for this, Lieutenant.”

The way she said it meant she didn’t agree. Would have bet she’d done the pickups before. “Yes, sir. I didn’t know.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to. You know how all the equipment works, and you’re the best overall shuttle pilot we’ve got. It’s basically a close and grapple and return operation. No armor to armor, and you never leave the controls. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lieutenant, if you’re launched, your only task is to pick up any disabled needleboats and bring them back, as quickly as possible. We can’t afford delays. You will not recover any enemy artifacts or boats unless specifically ordered. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Wasn’t stupid. Bringing a needleboat that still carried an antimatter torp inside the Magellan’s shields was suicide. Hell, Sunnis had been known to strap antimatter bomblets in place of one of the recycler packs on their space armor. Never understood suicide tactics. Doubted I ever would. Just accepted that some idiots were like that.

“Good. Do you have any other questions?”

“Bringing back disabled boats… what bay do you use?”

“Fourth bay for salvage and repair. It will be the only bay open on your return. That makes it easy.”

“The ship will be maintaining heading and acceleration?”

“That’s the plan, Lieutenant. Delays might provide opportunities for others.”

“How many others?”

Tepper looked like she wasn’t going to answer. Then she nodded brusquely. “We don’t know. We’ve learned of a major security breach. There are… religious implications… we believe.”

Religious implications? What did aliens have to do with religion? If someone believed in an all-powerful god—or goddess—the damned deity had to have power over aliens and us. Who believed in a deity that wasn’t all-powerful? Didn’t say anything, though. Never did understand why people believed that crap. Life after death? Even the words were a contradiction.

“If you don’t have any more questions, Lieutenant…”

“No, sir.”

Tepper left. So did I.

Did a quick workout, then got a shower and a big breakfast No telling how long I’d be standing by.

At ten hundred, I was back in the ready room, and by ten-thirty, I was strapping into shuttle one. Wore full armor, except for the helmet, racked just back of the couch. Had to be able to reach it in instants, but links didn’t work well through armor, unless you used a habitability connection like they did in the needles. Glad I wasn’t running a needle. They piloted in full armor, helmets and all. Went through the prelaunch checklist and put everything on hold. Didn’t carry a tech on a recovery. Nothing a tech could do.

Navigator Control, this is Porter Tigress. Standing by at prelaunch.

Porter Tigress, Control, stand by until further notice. Estimate bogeys in operating area in fifteen plus.

Control, Porter Tigress standing by.

While I waited, called up the Magellan’s farscreens through the links, and the lower command net. Could see the Sunni cruiser and frigate, closing. Alwyn—D.S.S. battle cruiser escorting us—could have outrun both. So could the two couriers, Bannister and Owens. They’d run for the Gate. No reason not to. They didn’t carry but four torps and light shields. Magellan had too much mass to make that speed in a short time. Gate was too far. We wouldn’t make it before the Sunnis reached us.

Alwyn moved to intercept. Sunnis split. Frigate accelerated plus fifteen on a course thirty relative. Would try to intercept from the port forequarter. Magellan should have screens to hold off a frigate. Had to wonder how many needleboats the two Sunnis would launch. They’d need plenty to offset the Alwyn’s firepower.

The Sunni cruiser turned on a tail chase directly toward the Magellan. Alwyn altered course, dropping back slightly, but maintaining position between the Sunni cruiser and the Magellan.

Frigate kept accelerating, trying to draw abreast of the Magellan.

I ran the parameters through the shuttle’s comps. No frigate had enough fusactor mass to keep up that acceleration for long, not even with augmentation from photon nets. Good question as to whether the AG drives would melt down or the fusactors would shut down. Frigate had to be figuring on a one-way attack or a later pickup from another ship. Farscreens only showed the other two Sun-nis—heading toward a stand-off near Deep Find Station. They’d be able to reach the frigate before any Comity ship could. There weren’t any other ships anywhere close in our out-sector of Hamilton system.

Sunni cruiser began an accel-run toward the Alwyn. That didn’t seem right. I checked again. Cruiser was aimed at the Magellan.

I could see the Sunni tactics unfolding. Cruiser would shift all power to acceleration and forward shields. Alwyn would have to shift power to screens and block or destroy the cruiser. That would slow the Alwyn. If the Alwyn didn’t have to protect us, she could have just cut back at an angle, and the velocities would have been great enough that the Sunni wouldn’t have been able to bring torps—or anything else—to bear for more than instants. With the Sunni cruiser on a collision course with the Magellan, the Alwyn had to stand and fight. Both couriers were well clear, closer to the Gate.

I kept listening on lower command band.

Bandit one, closing. Range is one-point-three kilo-kay ETC is eight minus. Bandit two, closing on Navigator, terminal vee. ETC is eleven plus.

Both Sunnis were working on a simultaneous attack, one on the Magellan, the other on the Alwyn.

Bandit one, all shields forward. ETC five plus…

Couldn’t figure why there was so little on the lower command, but realized that the Alwyn was a warship, and the captain of the Alwyn was probably senior to Captain Spier. Meant that he was commanding and using upper band—why it was blocked. They had to give me access on lower for recovery ops.

Farscreens showed a reddish blip that was the Sunni closing on the blue ovoid that was the Alwyn. Magellan was a larger oval, with the smaller red triangle that was the frigate coming in from the port side.

Magellan’s internal shipnet came up with a warning. All personnel! Secure for null grav, Secure for null grav. Probably went out over all audio speakers, too, but I wasn’t where I’d hear that.

On the farscreen, I saw that the Alwyn fired five torps, almost point-blank. Except point-blank in space combat was something like two hundred kays. Sunni cruiser didn’t return fire.

Sunni cruiser’s shields stopped the first torp salvo. Thought I saw a flicker of orange when the fourth and fifth impacted shields. Less than fifty kays separation when the second salvo went. This time the third salvo went on top of the second.

Sunni’s shields went amber, vibrated green-amber, then dropped through the amber to red.

Attacking cruiser, your shields are gone. Surrender and decelerate, or be destroyed.

That message went out on all bands and was repeated in all of the major system languages. Recognized some, but not the others. Sunni piled on acceleration.

Alwyn fired another spread of torps.

I shifted screens to check the frigate, coming in faster, burning drives and systems. Clear suicide run. Looked like that, anyway. A good ten torps blew out from the frigate. Ten? Half were torps, and half were needleboats.

Torp spread flared out from the Magellan, five headed toward the frigate. Another five followed.

Ten torps? More than half the total load of a corvette.

Launching needles this time. Null grav in bays four and five. That was lower command band.

The frigate’s shields went into the amber, but held, through the first salvo, and even the second. The Sunni torps didn’t even cause the Magellan’s shields to flicker. Five Sunni needleboats spread—small targets for torps.

Lead needleboat from Magellan targeted the middle Sunni needle, one that looked larger on the screen.

Bandit one destroyed. Hold rear shields for debris. Another expanding energy globe appeared where the Sunni cruiser had been. Could make out chunks of matter going in all directions, but most of it was headed toward the area aft of the Magellan. Made sense, laws of motion and energy. Sunni cruiser had been accelerating toward us.

Turned concentration back to the port screens. White energy appeared on the screens where the two needle-boats had been. When it cleared, both needleboats were gone. Sunni had triggered antimatter torp—or the D.S.S. needle-boat had.

Four needleboats against four.

Both the Magellan and the Ahvyn sent a salvo of torps toward the Sunni frigate, the Atwyn’s first. Salvos were synched so that all would impact the frigate’s shields at the same time. They did.

This time, Sunni frigate’s shields went amber and red, and then the frigate went from mass to scattered mass and energy all at once.

Left four Sunni needleboats still headed for the Magellan.

Torp from the Magellan took out one more Sunni needleboat, but the others missed, and kept traveling. Might hit something someday millions of years in the future. Probably wouldn’t.

Ahvyn was moving up on the trailing Sunni needleboat. Sunni didn’t see soon enough. Alwyn’s shields crushed the needleboat—another energy flare from antimatter.

Thing was that when the mag containment went, no matter how, you got all that energy—enough that the Alwyn’s screens flickered amber, just for an instant.

One of our needleboats drilled one of theirs, then twisted behind the Ahvyn’s shields. Wasn’t sure how the pilot managed that. Good thing he did. More antimatter combining with matter and lots of energy flaring everywhere.

I’d missed some of the action, because all the Sunnis were gone, but one of our needles was drifting. No propulsion. No debris around it, though.

Didn’t wait for orders. Navigator Control, this is Porter Tigress, request null grav, bay two, this time.

Porter Tigress, Control, stand by for null gray bay two.

Control, standing by.

Going from full grav to null gee gave my guts a jolt, then passed. Checked all the boards, and pressures.

Porter Tigress, Control, bay doors opening, atmosphere barrier in place.

Control, Porter Tigress, understand bay doors opening. The nanite barrier that kept most of the atmosphere in place was transparent. Meant that everything out beyond the doors was visual black. Switched to enhanced farscreen through the links.

Porter Tigress, Navigator Control, bay doors open, cleared to uncradle and launch.

Control, Porter Tigress, uncradling this time.

Released the cradle blocks, then pulsed the steering jets, just enough, and we were clear.

Porter Tigress, you have one pickup. Needle Four. Navigator Control has no comm with Needle Four.

Control, understand one pickup and no comm. I have Needle Four at two eight one, plus nine.

That’s affirmative.

Screens showed three needleboats returning. If the pilot of the disabled needle survived, we would only lose one needle and one pilot.

Once I was clear of the Magellan’s shields, I cut in the AG drives and boosted toward the drifting needle. Pilot had been disabled while accelerating, and I’d have to overtake, capture, then make a powered return that amounted to an acceleration to catch the ship, and then a decel rendezvous with the Magellan. Needle’s habitabil-ity and power wouldn’t last long enough for a more gradual return.

Tried comm two-three times on the out-run. No response. Still took almost half stan to catch the needle.

Finally shifted to closescreens as I eased the shuttle up aft and alongside the needle. It was tumbling end over end. Had grapples and nanite-sticktights ready.

Figured I’d try with my comm. Could be her direction-als had been fried. Up close she might hear.

Needle Four, this is Porter Tigress. Approaching for recovery your port side. Interrogative status.

… Tigress…no attitude control… suited… hab-itability negative…

After that, I got nothing.

Matched relative velocities with the needle, close enough for what I needed. Planted the first sticktight on the fuselage aft of the cockpit, second went farther aft. Dropped the needle’s end-over-end rotation to half what it had been before the lines parted. Good thing the shuttle massed so much more than the needles. Second set almost stopped the rotation. Biggest problem was that we were still bat-assing away from the Magellan. Couldn’t do anything about that until I had the needle grappled and secure. Checked the return calcs. Had less than twenty before return went negative.

Timed the grapples—and clamped. Slight grinding, and amber flash off on the aft clamps, but I had the needle. Tightened up and ran the return numbers. Then began the turn and power accel. Tried to keep it at two gees. Needles didn’t have internal grav systems, and there was no way to tell what shape the pilot was in. Two was as low as I could go if we wanted to make it back.

Navigator Control, this is Porter Tigress, recovery green. Returning Navigator this time.

Porter Tigress, understand green. Interrogative pilot status.

Navigator Control, limited comm, believe status is amber.

Stet, Tigress, will have med unit at bay.

Tried to get a comm link, even with direct contact. Nothing. Had to hope, but couldn’t do anything but get back to the Magellan.

Took almost a standard hour before we were stabilized off bay four. The last part of the approach had been tricky. Screens were showing fuzz and junk aft of the Magellan, just beyond the shields. Remnants of the cruiser that had plowed into the shields and piled up there. Laws of motion again.

Navigator Control, this is Porter Tigress. Extensive debris aft of Navigator, range less than one kay.

Porter Tigress, understand debris. Scanning this time. Maintain separation.

Frig! Maintain separation? I’d had to navigate around all that crap, and they hadn’t even warned me. Control, maintained separation during approach. Just thought you’d like to know. Request clearance to bay four.

Cleared to bay four.

Bay four was longer, not quite so high as bay two. Didn’t enter all the way, about halfway. Weird when you’re split with half the shuttle inside the atmosphere barrier and the other half in vacuum. Differential visuals.

Porter Tigress, Bay Control. Hold position. Cradle moving to recover.

Bay Control, holding.

Had to wait until they got the cradle under the grapples. Needle had mass, even in null grav.

Porter Tigress, cleared to release grapples. Hold position.

Opening grapples this time.

Seemed to take a good quarter stan, but the time showed three minutes before Bay Control came back.

Porter Tigress, clear to leave bay. Minimal power.

Departing. Understand minimal power.

After all that, cradling into bay two was a snap. Inside my armor, I was soaked.

Still had to go through all the shutdown checklists and final clearances from Navigator Control. Also had to report the overstress of the rear grapple and clamp. Finally, I did get out of the shuttle and made my way from the bay to the ready room.

Close to fifteen hundred. Battle with the Sunnis had taken less than a stan. Recovery had taken three.

Major Tepper was waiting. “Not a bad recovery, Lieutenant. Shaimen will make it. You cut it close on habit-ability.”

I was glad to hear that Shaimen had made it. Worried about that all the way back. “Her needle was tumbling end over end. Had to slow it enough to use the grapples.”

“You didn’t mention that in the transmissions.”

“It’s in the system logs, sir. Didn’t want to spend time explaining, not with the separation we were building.”

The major nodded. “You hate to explain, don’t you, Lieutenant?”

Should have been obvious. You can’t explain to idiots, and usually don’t need to for people who can figure it out “Have trouble with it, sir.”

“Chang. This is a military vessel and a military operation. Not everyone understands what you’re doing out there. A few words of explanation would ease things for everyone. You might think of them as… system lubrication. People have moving parts, too. I can explain it this time, and I will. You’re not used to this kind of operation, and you were handling a lot. But lots of people were handling a lot, and one of them didn’t make it back.”

“I’m sorry, Major. I’ll try to keep that in mind in the future.” Tried to look contrite.

Tepper snorted. “You don’t do the contrition well, Lieutenant. Don’t try it. Just explain.”

“Yes, sir.” Managed to smother a grin. Tough woman, but she was right.

“Any quick questions?”

Looked at her. Blotted the sweat off my forehead. “Bf this is so frigging important, why didn’t we get a dreadnought as an escort?”

“Because there aren’t any spare dreadnoughts, not with the latest mobilizations and maneuvers by the CWs and the Middle Kingdom, and the Covenanters with their latest pacification efforts. Even if there were, sending one might have been worse. It would have told the whole Galaxy how important this mission is. Every dreadnought’s assignments are monitored by every other system. Instead of having two obsolete Sunni ships, probably turned over to the Children of Mahmed, we might have had a three brand-new cruisers chasing us.”

“Obsolete… the shields?”

The major nodded. “Let’s just say that there was more to this man meets the eye.”

Didn’t want to hear that. Not at all.

“Lieutenant Lerrys is standby now. You might want to get cleaned up before we translate. Gate ETA is in less than a stan.”

“Yes, sir.”

So I headed back to my closet stateroom and a shower. At least, I didn’t have to share it with anyone. Major’s words about there being more than met the eye nagged at me. So did a suicide attack by obsolete ships. Even obsolete ships cost billions of creds.

23

Goodman/Bond

I’d barely settled into the armory on five-day after morning muster. I hadn’t slept well. Alveres snored very loudly, and I’d have to adjust to that. Even the sonic earplugs hadn’t helped. So much for the Comity’s vaunted technology.

Then the captain had announced over the screens that the ship was on an exploratory mission to an unusual planet that might have some artifacts, possibly even alien ruins, but that we wouldn’t know much more until we got there. Crew scuttlebutt was that there were real aliens. That didn’t make sense. There were lots of scientists aboard, but no Comity Marines. There weren’t any diplomats, either. If there were real live breathing aliens, we’d be carrying lots fewer scientists and lots more Marines.

That told me the captain was staying close to the truth. The Comity was looking to search an abandoned alien ship or some ruins, maybe looking to find some new technology. More likely some ruins, if the colonel wanted me to plant a locator beacon. We couldn’t afford to allow the Comity any additional advantages from an alien technology. Things were bad enough already. If the technology had come from the subdemons of Iblis… that made the possibilities even worse.

“Bond! Over to the transport tubes.” Chief Stuval didn’t quite yell.

I hurried. “Yes, chief?”

“They’ll be calling battle stations before long. Word is that there are Sunni bandits chasing us. We need to start loading torps into the transport tubes. For the needle-boats. Get the small slider. You and Ciorio load it from bank one. Just four to the slider.”

“Yes, chief.” The small slider could only carry four torps. The larger one took six. The armory had transport tubes that shuttled torps to the firing ports and the bays. They were one way. Any unfired torps had to be brought back by slider and reserviced. According to what I’d learned, sometimes repeated temperature differentials affected the internal systems. As a precaution all torps that went out in needleboats and came back unused were checked out before being sent up to the needles for use again.

I had the slider in place before the loading rack in bank one when Ciorio showed up. Even with the dolly and loaders, wrestling the torps onto the slider was work.

“Too bad we couldn’t go null grav,” I said.

“Don’t even think it,” Ciorio said. “That’s how the Flewelling got scrapped. Torps still got mass. You get it moving in null grav, and it doesn’t stop until it rams into something.”

“They’re safed,” I pointed out.

“They’re supposed to be safed. Just like all the 503s weren’t supposed to need reworking.” Ciorio grunted as he fastened the safety clamps in place on the first torp. “What’s the first rule for an armorer?”

“Don’t trust anything you can’t verify yourself.” That was one of those sayings I’d been conditioned with. It didn’t appear anywhere in writing, but all the armorers knew it.

“Right. You want to guess that a loose torp ramming into a bulkhead in null grav won’t explode? Predetonator could anyway.”

“Nope.” I eased the dolly back into position under the second torp in the bay.

By nine hundred we’d gotten all the torps into the transport tubes.

“Make sure everything’s secured. Everything!” The chief pointed at a stylus on the edge of the bench. “Even that, Bond.”

“Yes, chief.” I grabbed the stylus and slipped it into the toolkit.

Ciorio grinned from the other side of the compartment He didn’t say anything until the chief was away. “He’s still got a scar on his shoulder from when he was a tech third on the Collins. The first left one of those loose. Just a null-grav high-speed drill, but it went right through his shoulder. Says he almost bled to death ‘cause the first didn’t believe a stylus could do that.”

I could see that, but I wouldn’t have if Ciorio hadn’t pointed it out “Lots of things you don’t see until something happens.”

“Especially here.” He tilted his head to me side. “Chief said the Sunnis were after us. Thought the Sunnis only went after Covenanters. Why us? Got any ideas?”

“No more ‘n you. Maybe we’re headed into systems they’re claiming.”

“Can’t be that One of the nav techs was saying that no one’s been where we’re going.”

“You got me.”

“Never could figure out the business between them,” Ciorio mused. “They both think there’s a big Juju that created everything. Most of the Galaxy doesn’t. But they fight each other when they got more in common than other systems. Go figure.”

I understood. It was simple enough. The unbelievers were damned to Hell or limbo for eternity, and nothing would change that. They couldn’t see, and wouldn’t. The Sunnis understood that God had been, was, is, and would be—but not truly what He was. They were worth fighting because they were so close that they just might see. They might even feel the same way about us because Covenanters also believed in the Word of God. I wasn’t about to explain. I only said, “The Galaxy’s a strange place.”

“You can say that again.”

“All hands to stations. Stations! This is not a drill. All hands to stations.”

“See you later!” Ciorio headed for his station. Mine was the restraint couch in the armory’s aft bay. I’d been briefed on the harnesses, but my fingers still felt like thumbs.

For a standard hour, outside of twice—once when the lights flickered, and once when we had a minute or so of null grav—nothing seemed to happen.

As I sat there in harness waiting, I couldn’t help but think. How had the Sunnis found out so quickly what the Magellan was doing? The CIS objective was to obtain the technology, but we couldn’t obtain it if the Magellan didn’t get where it was headed. From a personal point of view, destruction of the Magellan would be a double disaster. Not only would I get turned to energy and small chunks of matter, but the worlds of the Covenant would lose the chance to get the location of that world. At the same time, I had to question some aspects of my mission. If the technology represented the Morning Star, did we really want to see that loosed again?

“Stand down from stations. Stand down. Class one stand-down. Class one stand-down.”

From up the passageway, I heard Chief Stuval. “Cio-rio, you and Bond take the slider up to the bays. The boat techs will already be there. Don’t get in their way, but you clean and service the launchers, then unload any torps they didn’t fire. Bring them back on the sliders.”

I hurried out to join Ciorio. He was sweating.

“I hate waiting. You never know what’s going on.”

“The boat techs will tell us,” I pointed out.

“After it’s all over.”

He had a point, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it We had to take the aft maintenance lift, and that meant guiding the sliders a good hundred meters aft, then up—just for one deck. On most combat ships, according to my briefings, the armory was practically beside the launch bays, but that wasn’t so for the Magellan. I’d guessed that was because she’d been designed as a colony ship first.

We got the slider through the shipside equipment locks and into the bay. A maintenance chief appeared. “About time you guys got here. There’s one torp on two, and one on five.”

“None on the other one?”

“Not here. After you’re done here, you’ll have to go over to bay four. Needle Four was a recovery job. It still has two torps on board. Only fired one. My crews aren’t working on it until you’ve got the torps out.”

“We’ll take care of it, chief, after we finish here.” Ciorio smiled.

I could tell he didn’t mean it.

Once the chief stepped back, we eased the slider across the bay and up in front of the full tube on Needle Two.

Ciorio glanced back at the chief, then mumbled, “Shit! Friggin’ recovery job. Just hope the tubes aren’t bent. Have to go back down for metal benders and who knows what else.”

That didn’t bother me. What else was I going to do? “What about the predetonator?”

“We’ll read that first. If it’s bad, and the tubes are bent, they’ll have to jettison the boat. If the tubes are straight, then we pull it and they put a jetpak on it and jettison the torp.”

Ciorio did the readouts. “Predetonator’s fine on this one.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s get this one out first. Least they left the tube ports open for us. Got the stick-tights?”

I handed him the twin batons. He placed one on each side of the torp nose. I tightened the tension on the slider’s winch.

“Begin reeling,” Ciorio said.

I eased the winch into retraction. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the torp began to ease forward out of the tube.

“That’s it Keep it slow. Now, bring up the cradle…”

The other torp was salvageable as well. We got both torps out and stowed in the slider. Then we had to turn the slider, without scraping the needleboats or running over the maintenance carts that were everywhere, and guide it back to the shipside maintenance lock, up along the maintenance passageway, then through the shipside lock for bay four.

Needle Four had gouges down the hull, and a section of the fuselage on the aft port section was crumpled in. Someone had cut through the access hatch locks. They’d probably been jammed. The aft drive section was bent down more than ten degrees.

“Looks like the pilot ran through a comet head,” Ciorio said. “At least the tubes are clear. Better take readings, though.” He stood next to the port tube. “Hand me the probes.”

I handed him the probes.

“This one reads all right.”

Both torps came up green. We extracted them and loaded them onto the slider. Going back down to the armory took longer. The slider massed a lot more, and neither one of us wanted to slam it into a bulkhead or hatch.

24

Barna

When the ship announced “General Quarters! All personnel to stations!” I was already in my studio. It was midmorning, and I’d been trying to re-create an image of the three pilots—blonde, red-haired,, and dark brown—mostly from memory.

I made sure that lightbrushes and the matrix-easel were secure in one of the equipment bins. Then I fastened myself into the seat before the board and tried to get more information. All the systems would tell me was that suspected enemy vessels were on an intercept course and that I was to remain strapped into my station. The heavy seat before the board locked itself into a forward-facing position. It took me a while to discover the screen controls on the armrest. After that, I settled into shifting views on the center screen, awkwardly.

Mostly, what I saw was lots of black, with distant points of light that were stars. An indistinct flickering of amber occasionally appeared, almost like the faintest of mists that I could barely see. I thought that might be the ship’s defense shields interacting with the few molecules of gas that comprised space outside planetary systems.

I’d just as soon have gone back to working on the study of the pilots, but when I started to unfasten the harness, the system warned me, “Please remain in your harness. The ship could lose gravity at any time. Please remain in your harness.”

I stayed put and tried to master the other functions of the screen controls in the armrest.

After about half an hour, while switching screens, I caught sight of something, small arrows, greenish. There were five of them, and they flared yellow-amber as they moved away from the Magellan. I increased the magnification gain on the screen, enough to see that they were more like cylinders that flared slightly into a conical base. They had to be needleboats. That was what I’d gathered from the basic information about the ship. I’d only skimmed through it, because I’d been looking for images, rather than text. The small craft didn’t look at all like needles, but I didn’t know what else they could have been. I was sure that torps would have moved faster.

In moments, they were gone beyond the range of any of the screens connected to my system. I tried the other feeds to the screens, but they all came up showing just stars as points of light, with a few dark splotches here and there. Except for one, and it just showed a small disc of amber-green, and that was only with some sort of enhancement or filters. I thought that might be our escort ship, but that was a guess.

Without access to my equipment, all I could do was switch screens and watch.

After another half hour or so, the lights flickered, and for a moment, there was no gravity. My stomach wanted to turn inside out, but didn’t have a chance to before gravity returned.

Right after that, a small flare of light appeared on the center screen. It wasn’t much bigger than the sun of the Hamilton system, and then it was gone.

I had everything in record mode. I pulled the image back to that and tried to get an enlargement. Even at max gain, and amplification, the best I could do was a tiny image of chunks of something flaring outward, then disappearing into the darkness. I tried infrared, and that outlined the pieces some, but they still faded quickly. Distance and the cold of space, I guessed.

I kept watching.

After a while one of the needleboats returned, followed by another. Then another craft eased out of one of the Magellan’s bays. It was cylindrical and looked to be more than five times the size of the needleboats, although it was hard to tell because they were at different distances, and the needleboats had docked or locked before I could really compare them. The second craft vanished into the darkness. I went back through the familiarization information on the Magellan and discovered that the larger boat was one of the ship’s shuttles.

Another needleboat returned before the announcement came that we could stand down, and the system didn’t warn me when I finally released all the harnesses.

Because I’d wondered what the last boat had been up to, even after I’d taken out the easel and lightbrushes again, I kept checking the screens. In time, well after I’d gone to the mess and eaten and come back, the shuttle-craft finally returned. Grappled to its side was a damaged needleboat, partly crumpled in places. I hoped the pilot was all right. I wondered if she had been one of those whom I was trying to portray.

Then I realized that one of the needleboats hadn’t returned. At least, the screens and the recordings hadn’t shown the fifth needleboat coming back.

From what I could tell, I’d just been in the center of a space battle. I had the best visual screens on the ship—or access to them—and I’d hardly seen anything.

Aeryana would never believe that. Neither would Nicole.

25

Fitzhugh

At the evening repast, if one could term it such, although I had eaten far worse institutional fare over the varied years of my existence, Melani, Tomas, and I found ourselves at a table with Dr. Sorens and Dr. Fer-ward. Sorens had his doctorate in structural engineering. I hadn’t the faintest idea what Ferward did, but all indications were that his expertise was congruent to that of Sorens, given how readily and animatedly they were conversing before we joined them.

Alyendra had demurred from accompanying us, asserting politely that she would refrain from partaking in order not to place more strain on her system. The so-called battle had affected her, although it had scarcely seemed to have had any impact on the Magellan. I had strapped into my seat and watched the screen only long enough to ascertain that the representation of hostilities would display little new to me, indeed, display little at all, and would only provoke my own fruitless analysis of what might have been done. That being the case, I’d employed the time to endeavor to catch up on the seemingly endless professional journals, monographs, and articles that I had downloaded from my datablocs into my office system on the Magellan.

Most of what I had gone though I’d skimmed and discarded, falling as it did in one of two categories—over-analysis of the trivial or inconsequential or reverential obsequiousness in support of long-established historical truisms.

There had been an interesting article by a singer, a Carol Ann Janes, one suggesting that the creative arts, qualitatively presented in terms of exemplary and original work, foreshadowed cultural ascension and decline more closely than more traditional barometers such as technical innovation, predominance of exchange mechanisms, military puissance, or popular cultural inundation. I suspected that there might be flaws with her approach, but it had the merit of being a real-time potential direct causative correlation, rather than delayed secondary symptomatic association. The remainder of the articles had been far less intriguing, and I was more than relieved to join Tomas and Melani.

“Good evening,” offered Dr. Sorens, the engineer who looked as if he would have been more at home as an elf of ancient wish-fulfillment fantasies than on a mission where he was to determine the structural properties of alien materials.

“Good evening,” returned Melani.

“What did you think of the fight?” asked Ferward, a man presenting a round face suggesting jollity above an angular physique that bespoke great physical effort in maintaining optimal aerobic condition.

“I didn’t follow it,” Melani admitted.

“I would have been surprised if it had turned out any other way,” Tomas observed.

“What was your opinion about the events?” I asked, looking at Sorens.

“Ah… I was actually going over some material on anomalous composites.”

“You didn’t watch the screens?” asked Ferward.

“I can’t say that I did, Edmund. There wasn’t much to see, and some of the data in my briefing materials suggested that the aliens might have mastered wide-scale production of anomalous composites.”

“What does that mean?” asked Melani with a warm smile. “If you wouldn’t mind explaining?”

“Anomalous metals and composites have been around for centuries. They’re materials that incorporate the best features of bom glass, liquids, and metals. That’s oversimplifying, of course…”

Ferward snorted softly, as if to suggest that oversimplifying was the least of the problems in Soren’s explanation, then tumed to Tomas. “Why do you think that the battle couldn’t have turned out any other way?”

“The Comity has better equipment, better training, and, in this case, more modem ships and weapons. D.S.S. also would not have sent us off, after investing all the credits in this expedition, without very able officers and crew.”

“Then why did the Sunnis even bother to attack?”

Even as that line of inquiry intrigued me, the trends I had seen so often had already answered my question— the internal dynamics of cultural self-preservation are far stronger than any external force or threat I pondered what Tomas might say.

He reflected for a moment “There are many possibilities, but I would suggest the most likely is that we present a great threat to their beliefs and way of life.”

“The Comity hasn’t ever attacked the Sunnis first.”

“Their holy book dates back over six thousand years, and one of the key lines in it says something like ‘the worst of beasts in God’s sight are the unbelievers, who will not believe…’ In their view, anyone who does not share their theocratic beliefs is one of those beasts.”

“They say that, but how can they believe it?” questioned Ferward.

“ ‘All truth comes from the Lord,’” countered Tomas. “If science, or a secular thinker, challenges what their imams declare as their God’s truth, they will follow the imam. In a technological society, being a true believer tends to create a certain schizoid behavior.”

“Even if that’s true, what does it have to do with this expedition?”

“What happens if we find the ruins of a great civilization that was totally inhuman?” asked Tomas. “What does that mean? Does it mean that there is a greater god than theirs? Or does it mean that their god is fickle and will abandon a great culture? Does it provide proof of a sort, perhaps, that there is no god?”

Ferward shrugged. “God is a figment of the imagination of the weak.”

“That could be,” I interjected, “but political and military history has been determined as much by what people believe to be the truth as what has been accurately verified as such. Facts and established principles have been ignored throughout history in favor of comforting and scientifically impossible beliefs. Recorded history is filled with cultures that have believed what we have determined is scientifically improbable, if not impossible. On ancient Earth, people were burned alive for asserting basic astronomical facts. Until three hundred years ago, it was technically a crime to teach basic brane theory on more than a hundred worlds in the Comity. It still is in the Worlds of the Covenant.”

“Stupid people. There are always stupid people,” Ferward retorted.

That might be, I reflected, but enough stupid people existed to support leaders and polity governments who catered to their beliefs. The idea that the existence of aliens had made the Magellan a military target was less than comforting, and yet I had to concur with the basic precepts that Tomas had advanced.

Ferward shook his head, more than a few times, as if to clear away an intellectually unappetizing proposition. The specialists in the so-called hard sciences have always had difficulty in comprehending, on an emotional and empathetic level, the inability of large segments of any population to embrace verified and unequivocally demonstrated aspects of the universe at variance with their personal comfort-values, all the while insisting that they were rational individuals. That phenomenon had been recognized early on by the political thinker Exton Land, who had categorized it as “me illusion of rationality.” Thousands of years had passed, and human beings continued to demonstrate the validity of his proposition.

Knowing that anything I said would fall on ears unwilling to comprehend that rational discourse had little effect on true believers of all stripes, I took refuge in a strong cup of synth-tea, and turned back toward Sorens and Melani.

26

Chang

Four hours after I docked shuttle two, I was back in the ready room. Didn’t have to be, but I wanted to use the big high-res screens there to see if space looked different when the Magellan translated. I was betting it wouldn’t, that translation mass had an effect. Braun wasn’t there. She’d just finished standby duty.

Major Tepper was in the corner talking to Rigney about something. Rigney was the only pilot I’d seen with a big bushy beard. Didn’t look that good on him. Be a mess, too, if he had to stay in armor for long.

Lerrys was watching the main screen. Turned around and gestured to me.

I walked over and settled into the restraint couch next to him.

“You came back here just to watch a translation on the farscreens, Jiendra? After your day?” He grinned.

“Nice boring translation ought to settle me down. What about you?” Fastened the restraint harness so I wouldn’t have to later.

“I just wanted to see if it’s as dark as the books say it is.”

“Books? The actual bound ones?”

“They’re my hobby. If you want to be accurate, I was talking about system manuals on-screen, but I think of all long written material as books.”

“Don’t they fall apart? Books?”

“Some do. Some don’t. It depends on how often they’re read and how well they’re cared for. It’s amazing how accurate some parts of the old science books are and how wrong others are. The older ones say that it’s dark in the void. Don’t see how it can be, but…”

Ten minutes to translation. Ten minutes to translation. Prepare for translation.

Got the announcement twice, once through the links and once through the speakers in the ready room. Military for you, redundancy in action. Checked my harness anyway.

The Gate filled the screen, a greenish white torus with a black-silver center opening almost a kay across. Frigging big Gate… biggest one I’d ever seen. Had to be to handle the Magellan. We seemed to hang short of it, while the Gate got bigger and bigger in the main wall screen.

Tepper dropped into the couch to my right. Didn’t look at me as she strapped in.

Five minutes to translation. All personnel in secure stations…

“Can’t be many other Gates that big.” Wanted to get a reaction from Tepper.

“I doubt there are many left that large. It’s based on the original Gates for colony ships.”

“Was it a colony Gate?”

“I’d doubt it, lieutenant, but I don’t know. Some things they don’t tell majors.”

“D.S.S. doesn’t seem to tell anyone much.”

“It’s called ‘need to know,’ and they think that makes it harder for people to find out.”

Major sounded skeptical about need to know. I’d always been skeptical. Seemed like the other folks found out anyway. The only ones who got hamstrung from lack of information were the ones who needed it most. The bureaucrats insisted on the secrecy. That might have worked back before nets and microtronics. Once data could be compressed so small that masses of it fit in speck of dust, most security measures were only delaying tactics. The Comity had used all the secrecy it could. We’d still been attacked before we got to the first Gate.

Stand by for Gate translation. “Stand by for Gate translation.”

Looked up at the screen again. Before we had seemed to be holding in space, short of the Gate. Now, we hurtled at the silvered blackness in the center of the Gate.

Translation was like all the others. So much of mass differentials. Everything flashed white and black simultaneously, and we went null grav. Then black turned white, and white black, and all the colors inverted into their frequency complements. White and black strobed, seemed like forever, except it wasn’t, and we were back in norm-space with full grav.

The screens had all blown—first impression I had. A moment later, I could see the faintest patches of white, really faint. Kept trying to find stars, real stars.

Caught Major Tepper looking at me, amused smile on her face. “Commander Morgan told you we were heading into an intergalactic void, Lieutenant. Didn’t you believe him?”

“Some things… have to see for yourself.”

“That can get dangerous, crack pilot or not.”

“Two more translations?”

Tepper nodded.

“How long in normspace before the next Grate?”

“That depends on how accurate the translation was for us and for the Alwyn. I’m not linked to Control at the moment. So I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“No. The possible errors are too large.” Tepper unfastened her harness and stood. Didn’t look back as she left the ready room.

“Were you trying to piss her off, Jiendra?” asked Lerrys.

“Me?”

“You.” He unfastened his restraints, stretched as he stood. “This is the biggest expedition in human history. Tepper’s only Morgan’s number two. Morgan’s probably got orders to keep everything quiet until we’re close to our destination.”

“No one could follow us through a Gate.”

“Unless they’re on board. I’m sure there are some agents in the crew or the scientists.”

“You sound like a spy type yourself, looking everywhere.”

“I’m not. You’re not. Braun’s not, and I doubt if any of the senior officers are. Beyond that, anyone can be compromised, and the stakes are higher than you seem to understand.”

“So there are aliens, or there were. So what?”

“So… after more than five millennia of thinking we’re the pinnacle of intelligent life in the Galaxy, if not in the universe, we’re about to bring back proof we’re not. If Morgan is right, these departed aliens may have known far more than we’ve discovered. What’s a technology like that worth? What would the Sunnis or the Covenanters give to have that? Or to keep the Comity from getting it? What about Old Earth and the League? Or the Middle Kingdom or the Chrysanthemum Worlds? Go ahead, tell me I’m full of crap, Jiendra.”

Didn’t say a word. If I did, I’d regret it Who the hell was Lerrys to lecture me? Sure, we might find tech stuff like that out where we were headed. But who said we’d understand it or could even use it?

After he left, I looked at the screen again. Mostly saw blackness. Not much in the way of individual stars. Figured what looked like nebulae and stars were distant galaxies. Few enough of those. Meant that there was dust of some sort out there. Wasn’t anything anywhere near, and we weren’t any more than a third of the way to Danann.

Lerrys might be right. Damned if I wanted to tell him.

27

Goodman/Bond

“Duty stations for Gate translation!” The announcement blared everywhere.

Chief Stuval looked at me. “To your station, Bond. You can finish the inventory after translation.” He frowned. “Even on a new ship, there’s always something missing. You’d think that they do it on purpose.”

I laughed. It was expected. “Maybe they do.”

“No. They just don’t know any better. Ground-huggers never do. They don’t understand ships or space or translations. They never have. You got to wonder how many ships have been lost over the years because some numbers numbnuts wanted to save a few credits.”

“There are always people like that.”

“You’re right, but when you’ve made as made translations as I have… you have to wonder.” Stuval shook his head, then gestured toward the aft bay. “Better get strapped in.”

Another minute and I settled into the restraint couch in the aft bay of the armory.

“Five minutes to translation. All personnel in secure stations. All personnel…”

I checked the restraints again. I didn’t need to. Nothing ever happened during translation except null grav and disorientation. I sat there and thought how people had different reactions to Gate translations. Yet… why should a translation be different for every person? Everyone on a ship went through the same process and ended up in the same place. Did the translation affect different people’s brains in different ways?

I almost laughed. Everything impacted people in different ways. Even looking at the stars affected them differently. How could anyone look at the vast order of the universe and not accept that there was a Creator? Yet some people denied it, as if chaos could ever create order, as if, in a galaxy where there was no intelligent life except mankind, that was an accident. But were we still in our Galaxy? Or did God limit intelligence to one species in each galaxy? If He did, where had the aliens come from?

With that thought, I had to consider my mission, again. I would have liked to send a message with the locator I had yet to construct. I needed to let the colonel and CIS know that the Sunnis were also trying to obtain whatever alien technology D.S.S. might find. There were two problems with that. First, I didn’t know how to modify the locator enough to send a text or verbal message. Second, the colonel had emphasized that I wasn’t to start on the locator until we were actually at our destination. Over the time since I’d been aboard the Magellan, I’d scoped out where most of the parts I’d need would be, but I’d have to cannibalize part of a working torp for the rest of it—in a way that couldn’t be detected or traced to me.

“Stand by for Gate translation. Stand by for Gate translation.”

I’d made enough Gate translations in my time, but not nearly so many as a midlevel D.S.S. tech would have. I still got nervous. Going through artificial hawkings seemed to violate something about the Lord’s universe. I couldn’t have said what, but to me it did.

When we went through the Gate, white turned black, and black was white. It took forever, yet it was over before I could think about it. After full grav returned, my stomach was still protesting the null grav during translation. I swallowed hard and forced things back where they belonged.

I waited several moments to let my guts settle.

“Translation is complete. Dismissed from stations to normal duties…”

I unfastened the restraints. I had an inventory to complete, and I was looking forward to it, because it gave me a far better sense of where everything was, and what would be easily missed, and what would not.

28

Chang

After the first Gate translation, things quieted down. Farscreens didn’t show that much, except the faint and distant galaxies. We spent three days moving at high sublight to get to the second Gate. Before I’d become a pilot, I’d always wondered why Gates couldn’t be reprogrammed to send ships to different places. That was before I understood the stress relationships between atrousans and gravitons. You try to use a Gate for more than one destination, and pretty soon you don’t have a Gate. You put two Gates too close together, and pretty soon you don’t have either one. That was what happened to some of the military Gates in the Dirty War and why Gates are spaced far apart outside inhabited systems.

After the second translation, the captain had announced we had another day and a half of sublight travel to the third Gate. Ship seemed quieter, subdued.

I was one of the last into the mess at the evening meal on threeday. I’d been in bay two inspecting shuttle one, checking things out, trying to get a better feel for it. Powered up the internal systems and ran through the checklists. Some say you can do that sort of thing with a simulator. You can’t. Not the same. Feel’s important.

Only table with much space and anyone I wanted to talk to held Lerrys, Morgan, and Tepper. Soon as I sat down beside Morgan, Liam Fitzhugh and Alyendra Kho-rana took the last two seats. Fitzhugh sat next to me, Khorana between him and Tepper.

Rather would have had Khorana next to me. Fitzhugh was always spouting something. Not exactly loud, but firm.

I turned to Morgan. “What ever happened to all that debris? The stuff that piled up against the shields? I was thinking about our return. There was enough there to strain shields if we hit it at any high-sublight velocity.”

“The captain decided to push it out of the way and leave it behind,” Morgan said. “She accelerated, pulsed the shields, and changed headings twice. It’s still somewhere around the second Gate, but shoved far enough away so that we won’t run into it coming back.”

“Debris? In space?” asked Khorana.

“The debris from the destruction of the Sunni ship…”

As Morgan explained, I looked toward the captain’s table, where some of the physical scientists had been invited, probably to explain their specialties and what they hoped to find to the Special Deputy Minister. I recognized the faces, but couldn’t put names to all of them. Ferward was there, along with Koch. He was an organic chemist.

“… while space is big, and it’s unlikely that we’d actually run back into that debris,” Morgan was finishing up, “it certainly doesn’t hurt to be cautious and shove it out of the return corridor to the Gate.”

“Such residues wouldn’t include anything explosive, would they?” asked Fitzhugh.

“There might be a torp predetonator, or something like that There wouldn’t be anything else explosive in and of itself. It we hit a lot of mass at high sublight, it could wreak havoc on the shields, and that could be as bad as a torp.”

“My understanding was that shields were deployed in a curved array designed to divert such masses from actual physical impact with the vessel…”

“They’ll divert a few tonnes,” Morgan replied with a laugh. “They won’t divert large metallic asteroids or other ships of significant mass. Or planets or suns.”

Morgan was oversimplifying. The shields would also throw the Magellan out of the way of such large masses. Doing that would make a mess out of the insides of the ship, and anyone who wasn’t restrained. That was why all sorts of detectors were focused ahead of the Magellan. Ships still got lost. I didn’t want to hear any more about what I already knew. I turned to Fitzhugh. “You’re a historian, aren’t you?”

“After a fashion. My expertise lies in historical trends. That includes studying nodal points to determine which factors are causal and which are merely correlative, analyzing seemingly unrelated aspects of a culture’s history to ascertain whether they are part of the trendlines, symptomatic, or merely noise surrounding the signal, so to speak.”

“If… if we find something alien, do you think you’ll be able to make sense of things?”

Fitzhugh paused. “That’s a good question, Lieutenant Chang. I doubt that, if we do find remnants of an alien civilization, there will be cultural referents that will be meaningful, or even intelligible. In fact”—he laughed nervously—”I’ve pondered the rationale for my inclusion in this expedition. Not that I’d give up the opportunity willingly, you understand.”

Had to admit I liked his honesty. Wished he’d give up using the largest possible words, though. “Do you think we’ll find anything worthwhile?”

“To discover remnants of any intelligent life that is nonhuman would be of immense value, if only to disabuse the anthropic principle and those who have used humanity’s apparent uniqueness as a rationale for theistically rationalized tyranny and ignorance.”

“Surely, you don’t consider the Covenanters and the Sunnis as theistically tyrannized?” That was Tepper, sardonic smile after her words.

“No, Major Tepper, perhaps my clarity was lacking. They tyrannize their own people, and would do their best to tyrannize others, rationalizing their actions on the basis of ancient theistic beliefs that state such a deity gave humanity dominance over the universe, but only so long as men, and I use that gendered term advisedly, placed that deity above all and followed the deity’s commandments and those of the deity’s prophets.”

“I don’t think you’ll be on their list of the saved, Professor,” suggested Morgan.

“Nor would I wish to be, not under the conditions they specify for such salvation.”

Had to admit that Fitzhugh’s attitude—under all the words—was more to my liking than a lot of the civilian experts I’d heard. Not that I’d ever see him outside the mess or talk to him once the expedition was over. Still… there was something about him. Talked like a professor, but nothing else was professor-like. He was as big as a Marine, no fat, either. He moved quickly, and his eyes flicked from point to point, like a cat’s. Maybe like his mind did, too.

Didn’t think anyone else saw that, either. They just heard all the big words.

29

Barna

I wasn’t about to ask the three shuttle pilots to sit for a portrait. Instead, I managed to sneak some im-ager shots of them in the officers’ mess, and once in the ship corridors. There was plenty of time to work on that composition, because the farscreens just showed dark patches with faint hazy white globs. I could only get them magnified to barely recognizable images of galaxies. I hadn’t seen much of Elysen for days, not since after the second Gate translation. She and the other astronomers and astrophysicists were already buried in some project.

I just kept working on what I could. I’d created a replica of the Magellan itself, based on the closescreen images I could get and upon the material in the ship’s system, and I’d finished a portrait of Elysen that both she and I liked.

On fourday, just before lunch, she appeared at the door to my studio work space. “Could I persuade a hardworking artist to accompany me?”

“You could.” I rose. I wished I were clever with words, but I never had been. “You’ve been busy.”

“Very busy. It’s been a great amount of work for not much of a result. Not so far, at least.” She smiled. “I’ll tell you about it after I get something to eat It won’t take long.”

“To eat?”

“To tell you.”

We walked down the passageway toward the lifts.

“How many of you are working on this?”

“Just four. Another astronomer, an astrophysicist, a physicist, and me. Cleon and I are limited in what we can add. He’s the physicist and does the calculations. I comment and ask inane questions.”

I couldn’t imagine Elysen asking inane questions.

When we reached the mess, she pointed to a table in the corner, where an older major sat with some of the scientists. I knew their faces, but not their names. “Let’s sit over there. Kaitlin Henjsen can be very interesting, even if she is a close friend of my grandniece.”

Her grandniece? I didn’t know what to say about that, or about her grandmece’s choice of friends. “Which one is she?”

“She’s the thin blonde. She’s an archeological technologist.”

“I didn’t know such a profession existed.”

“There aren’t many. She was the lead on the New Cu-morah project.”

I’d never heard of New Cumorah.

“That was an archeological expedition to the New Zion system. A solar flare wiped out all life on the inner planets more than two hundred years ago. Recently, there was some question whether the flare was caused by New Zionist technology. The Sunnis had claimed it was the Will of Allah…” Elysen broke off and nodded to Henjsen. “Might we join you, Kait? This is Chendor Barna.”

“Please do. I’m pleased to meet you, Chendor. Ely has told me about the portrait you did of her. It must be marvelous. She’s a perfectionist.”

“You’re too kind.” What else could I say?

“Neither Ely nor I is kind.” Kaitlin offered an expression that was wry, not exactly a smile, but not disapproval. Her forehead wrinkled slightly, and her thick blonde eyebrows lifted. Unlike Elysen, while she was tall, she was fine-boned, with a small but squarish chin and gray eyes that could look as cold as rain-soaked stone when she was angry, I suspected.

“Perfection is hard on kindness.” I eased into the seat across from her and on Elysen’s right.

“Spoken like a true artist,” added the black-haired man to Kaitlin’s right. “I’m Reyal Torres. Paleontology.”

There was a momentary silence. I looked at Elysen. “You never finished explaining.”

“It’s something I’ve always wondered about, and since we were here…”

“Wherever ‘here’ is,” murmured Torres.

“… it seemed like a worthwhile idea. We’ve been making observations—the ones that we can with the relative velocity of the Magellan—trying to determine the gas density of the hole in the Small Wall.”

“Small Wall?” My murmur was almost inadvertent.

Elysen turned to me. “I’m sorry, Chendor. The Small Wall of Galaxies is a section of the universe. Generally, the spacing is regular, far too regular for chance, except there’s nothing that suggests it’s anything but coincidence, but there is a hole in that spacing, and we have a chance to take observations that the earlier astronomers who studied it could not do.” She smiled. “They were called the Hole-in-the-Wall gang and never had the data to reach a consensus. Since the exact center of the gravi-ton trace line of Chronos appears to come from the hole in the Small Wall, persuading the commander that it might be relevant was not too difficult, particularly since there appear to be traces of some unusual energies involved. This could be of import, because the concentration of matter in the hole in the Wall is extraordinarily low and comes from a later date than the galaxies of the Small Wall, all of whom ate true second-generation population-two galaxies.”

I was still lost, but nodded.

“We’re not that far, not in astronomical terms, from where Chronos and Danann started, and they represent at least a high Type II civilization…”

“How did you know where they started?” asked Kaitlin abruptly.

“Once we knew that Chronos and Danann were on the opposite ends of the same course,” Elysen replied, “that wasn’t too hard. We did have to persuade Commander Morgan to surrender some navigational information. When we explained the significance to Project Deep Find, he provided it He wasn’t totally enthusiastic, and he made us sign a secrecy agreement of sorts.”

“What have you discovered?” I finally asked. “And what’s a Type II civilization?”

“A Kardashev Type II civilization is one that can harness all the energy from a single star. A Type III civilization should be able to harness all the energy from a single galaxy. Not that anyone knows how that might be done. We humans are roughly a low Type II.” She paused to take a sip of wine. “As for what we’ve discovered… nothing. That’s what’s surprising. We’d always thought that the hole in the Small Wall was just a random effect, or even a thick intergalactic dust cloud. It’s not. It’s truly a hole, and the samplings and observations we’ve taken over the last day seem to support that.”

“A hole? A hole in the universe?” That seemed unlikely, but I was only an artist. I depicted what was there, usually, not what wasn’t.

“In a way. It’s as if something had been removed once, somehow. Over the eons, gases have drifted in, pushed and pulled by various forces, but the area that we think is where the two bodies started out is closer to a pure vacuum than anywhere else we’ve found in the universe. That’s a preliminary observation, of course. We’ll need more and better data to confirm that.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s unprecedented.” Elysen shrugged and smiled. It was an expression that even the ancient Leonardo would have called enigmatic. “If… if the finding holds… who knows?”

“You don’t use terms like ‘unprecedented’ lightly, Ely,” Kaitlin pointed out.

“It’s anomalous, just like Chronos. Two connected anomalies generally mean that either the data or the observations are wrong, or that our understanding of that aspect of the universe is about to change. I don’t know which it might be yet. There’s no point in speculating.”

“Do you think that Danann will help?”

Elysen shrugged again.

I looked to Kaitlin. “Do you think you’ll find anything of interest on Danann?”

“Even the preliminary data suggests there is a great deal of interest on Danann. Whether we can make any sense out of it… that’s another question.”

“You may be able to accomplish more than any of us scientists.” Elysen looked at me.

“Me?” As I spoke, I could see a tightness in Kaitlin Henjsen’s face. She didn’t like the idea that an artist might discover more than an archeologist.

“Images spark ideas,” replied Elysen. “That could be because most artists work more directly from the subconscious. My only suggestion would be that you don’t be secretive with your work. Let people see it, even before it’s finished.”

I couldn’t stop the wince. I hated to display unfinished work.

“Chendor,” Elysen went on, “you don’t have to show it publicly. Just let a few of the scientists working in that area see it.”

I might be able to do that.