Up Jim River

XVI. IN THE BACK OF BEYOND

As Blankets and Beads closed on the mysterious object, its size and scope unfolded. It was the largest vessel they had ever seen. Indeed, it was difficult to think of it as a vessel at all. It seemed more a work of nature. A dozen Gladiola arks could have nestled comfortably on its landing decks.

Yet it had been molded and shaped by human hands, carved and pithed and tunneled; shaven and smoothed and polished. Tubes flared; sensor rings glittered; pods that must have been alfven engines squatted symmetrically along a hull on which, scoured to ghostliness by long centuries of radiation, was blazoned the sunburst of the Commonwealth.

“That ain’t a ship,” Maggie B. commented. “That there is a world.”

“What would it have carried?” her First Officer wondered.

“Anything,” said Donovan, “and everything. Colonists in cold sleep, embryos or seeds of every species; fusion power; nanomachines to remake the chemistry of whole worlds; artificial intelligences and automatons to orchestrate and oversee the whole process. Libraries of libraries. That—is an old Commonwealth terraforming ark.”

“Nanomachines,” said Captain Barnes skeptically. “Artificial intelligences. Fairly tales.”

“Giant ships,” Donovan replied, indicating the ark.

“It’s big and impressive,” she agreed. “But I’ll believe in a nanomachine when I see one.”

“An ark explains the Oorah legend,” Donovan said. “The god fertilizing a world made receptive. Méarana, remember Thistlewaite’s Cautionary Books? The ‘yin on ground’ is…”

“The ‘Vagina of the World.’”

“And ‘yang from sky’ is…”

“I get the picture. So the Oorahs are descended from the crew sent down to prepare the receptors.”

“One of the crews. There must have been others. But something went wrong.”

Ad-Din pointed to the viewscreen. “Maybe that.” He tapped the screen twice and that section magnified.

The sensor ring was melted. Scopes and arrays had sagged, and bent. The hull itself was scorched and broken. Launch tubes and hatches were melted shut. A battle? A brush with the berm of a Krasnikov tube? Stringers of glassine metal ran aft as if in the wind. Whatever had happened had happened under acceleration.

“Looks like a wreck, all right,” said Maggie B.

“Looks like salvage,” her Number One said. “A Commonwealth ship? Even the wreckage is valuable beyond measure.”

Maggie chuckled. “Do you want to put that under tow? We’ll have to mine it in place.”

“And don’t forget,” said Méarana, “parts of it are still working.”

Burly Grimes, the chief engineer, modified a communications satellite; and Ripper Collins, the second pilot, flew it by remote so they could take a closer look. The ark had not reacted to their presence, but Barnes was taking no chances.

The telemetry was displayed on the holostage in the conference room for Méarana and the others to study. Ad-Din took copious notes and marked locations that might provide entry for salvage crews. “Most of it seems to be in vacuum,” he commented, “but there are other sections still holding pressure and maintaining temperature. Here, for example…” His light-pen described a segement of the holo image above the table.

“After so long!” exclaimed Billy.

“Wait!” said “Pop” Haines, the Second Astrogator. “Back up the view there, D.Z. A little more. There!”

A ship, irregular in shape and bristling with sensor arrays, nestled against the ark’s hull.

“It’s an old Abyalon survey ship,” said D.Z. in wonder. “I have a model in my collection.”

“What’s it doing all the way out here?”

“Dang if I know, Pop,” said Maggie, “but I guess we ain’t the first to come across this thing. All right, Mr. Collins, bring her back down the dark side.”

Ripper maneuvered the probe up the ark’s sunlit face and turned on its searchlights. “Be a few minutes,” he said, “before we clear the north face. Newton! It’s like surveying a planetoid.”

As the probe cleared the “top” of the vessel, they could see that the other side of the ship was undamaged. There was a moment in which they glimpsed a second ship jammed into the vessel’s side. Then something on the ark rippled; and everything went black.

They replayed the telemetry of the probe’s last few moments. The second wreck lay half in and half out of the sharp-edged shadows cast by the probe’s searchlights. Ripper magnified the image, cleaned it, enhanced it, threw it on the holostage.

“It’s a Hound’s field office,” Donovan whispered.

A Kennel ship was nearly indestructible. Yet, something had cut it open and tossed it aside like an empty food packet. Méarana turned away from the suddenly blurred image.

Maggie Barnes spoke quietly to her First. “Did the scanners show any life-signs, D.Z.?”

The First Officer glanced at Méarana, then shook his head. “Hull breach. Sorry, m’lady.”

Méarana turned on Donovan. “You told me from the start it would end this way. Are you happy now?”

The Fudir brushed his sleeve against his eyes and shook his head. “No. No, I—” The Sleuth told him it was the logical thing to expect. He listened for his other voices, but even the girl in the chiton was silent.

“Well,” said Captain Barnes after a moment, “we know where not to land.”

A handful of people could learn little about such a vast artifact from a brief visit. Even Bridget ban had intended no more than to confirm its existence and location. But the salvage laws required certain formalities, and one was to set a crew aboard the wreck. Second Officer “Fresh” Franq would take two power room technicians named DeRoche and Wrathrock to make a quick survey of what looked like the engines. Méarana would go because the least she could do was complete what her mother had started, so there was no help for it but that Donovan and the others would accompany her.

“A flying crow always catches something,” Donovan told them. “We may as well watch for exotic materials, hard copy schematics, hand tools. Who knows? There might be something obvious—which is why you have to stay here, Billy. Méarana’s mother was after the activation ray. ‘Fire from the Sky.’ Maybe we can locate the systems that power and control it.”

“Be careful,” Maggie B. warned them. “We know that’s still working.”

“It’s a big ship,” Donovan answered. “It’s not as if we could break it.” Maggie shook her head. “The mucky-mucks can send fleets of experts to pick the ship clean. Before you set out to beat the odds, be sure you can survive the odds beating you.”

Everyone in the Periphery romanticized the old Commonwealth. It had been an era when anything had been possible and so, in song and story, everything was. It had become an age of magic and wonder; of which little more than names had survived. Approaching the vessel, it was hard not to assume that the wildest legends were plain truth. Could such a ship have been constructed by a race any less than godlike? And this had been only one of a vast Treasure Fleet.

Yet: a Fleet now vanished, her descendants living as savages on half-civilized worlds. The hoped-for “end run” had never rescued Terra.

The’ Loons had pushed the closest—they had almost made it—but the Terrans had “moosed,” and the desperate effort had proven in vain. No wonder the’ Loons despised Terrans, even if they had forgotten the details. If he could meet the men of the Commonwealth, Donovan wondered, would he find them as disappointing as he had the True Coriander?

Wild Bill Hallahan flew the shuttle to the ark’s blasted side, well away from the active regions, and took them in through one of the open landing decks spaced down the length of the vessel. Approaching, they saw the shattered remains of boats, among which stood one in almost pristine shape. It was streamlined for atmospheric flight. “Dibs,” said Wild Bill, pointing to it.

Hallahan settled the boat leaf-gentle on the landing deck, feeling for it with the skids. “No gravity,” he announced. “Gotta lash her down. Wrathrock, DeRoche, come with me.”

Skinsuit hoods stiffened into helmets when powered up. Donovan, Méarana, and Sofwari deployed theirs and disembarked. Second Officer Franq went to examine the flier, and the pilot and technicians joined him.

“Tao!” he heard Wild Bill exclaim. “The pilot’s still in it!”

That brought Méarana and Sofwari on the double. But Donovan stayed by the boat and stepped behind the ladder and waited.

“No rush,” he heard Franq say. “Just a skeleton wrapped in tin foil. That foil must be their space suit. I wonder if it generates a force field of some sort, because he’s sure not dressed for a space walk.”

“What was the gun for?” asked Méarana.

“Suicide,” said Wild Bill. “He came back up after what happened happened and…lost hope. Don’t know why he didn’t rejoin the others on the ground. Maybe he was out’a fuel. Maybe his lover had been on board. We’ll never know.”

“There is a song in him, though,” said the harper.

Donovan’s patience was finally satisfied as first one pair of boots, then another, climbed down the ladder. He poked a gloved finger into the back of the first man. “I didn’t think you could stay away, Billy.”

The Confederate turned and smiled. “Of course not.”

“Let me guess: you hid in the engine compartment? How did you evade your guard?”

Paulie was in the other suit. “I was the guard.”

“This does raise some rather delicate questions.”

“Donovan,” said Billy Chins, “I have watched your back and you have watched mine for many weeks. I saved your life in the Roaring Gorge, and Méarana’s during the storm surge on the Aríidnuxr. What more can I do to prove myself? I have been on this quest longer than anyone but you and the harper herself. Do I not deserve at least to look upon the end of it?”

Donovan sighed. “Stick with me, and don’t get out of my sight.”

Billy spread his hands. “Sahb! Where Billy-fella go?”

Méarana strode the ruined decks of the Vessel like the queen of High Tara. This was where Mother had meant to be, and she had come to walk those footsteps instead. She wondered if her footprints were big enough. When her mother’s ship had been hulled, the air pressure had blown everything loose out into space, and that included Francine Thompson of Dangchao Waypoint, d.b.a. Bridget ban, Hound of the Kennel, R.Mh., S.hÓ., etc. There would be no funeral: no burial. Only a memorial service, with ancient words spoken over an empty box.

Their suit lamps cast a halo of soft, subtly tinted light about them. It created an eerie effect in the dark interior: broken and twisted walls and decks, cables and conduits, gaping chasms in which shadows seemed to move. Once, Méarana thought she saw another suit weirdly following them: perhaps an ancient crewman, wrapped in foil like a bonbon, drifting through the empty spaces of the Vessel until he should find his way accidentally to the void and freedom. But when she shone her spotlight on the apparition, she could not find it, and perhaps it had not been there at all.

Another time, they found a floating machine, tangled in cables like a skin-diver caught in seaweed. It had wheels and extensors that resembled arms and two lenses that gave the appearance of eyes; but the carapace was blackened and the unit dead.

Their lamps found an inscription on one of the bulkheads. It was in the Tantamiž, and Donovan puzzled over it some before declaring that, if he guessed the sound-shifts correctly, it meant something like “Amphitheater” and the number five. Five decks from here? Amphitheater 5? Five paces this way? But the rest of the meaning had gone with the rest of the bulkhead.

Blankets and Beads tracked them and kept them informed of their position relative to the large pressurized sector. “When we find it,” Donovan wondered, “how will we enter without losing the pressure?”

“Why worry?” said Billy. “You can’t imagine there are people inside! Not after thousands of years.”

Méarana entertained the sudden image of survivors of this ancient catastrophe; huddled in a redoubt, a civilization in a box. Would such a people commit mass suicide one day when the futility of it all came home to them, when they finally realized that they would never leave their box, that there was nowhere else they could possibly go? Or would they forget that they were even in a box and forget that universes might not have walls?

Méarana told herself it was absurd; but the notion of a spaceship the size of a small moon was just as absurd. So who could say where the line of fantasy ought to be drawn?

As they worked deeper into the Vessel, they found intact rooms and corridors, machines dead but undamaged. There was no air or power or gravity, but whatever had wrecked the Vessel’s outer hull and torn up ordinary quarters and corridors had failed to penetrate this far into the ark.

Finally, they came to a door beside which small lights glimmered green and yellow and blue. What the colors meant was not clear. The Tantamiž consisted of cryptic abbreviations. But that there were lights at all meant everything.

There was a button labeled and another labeled . Beside them the symbol glowed green. Donovan studied all closely.

Billy coughed impatiently. “This means ‘close’ and that means ‘open.’ The symbols are universal.”

“That does seem obvious,” Donovan admitted. “I’m trying to decide if means ‘pi.’ Pirāņam means air, life, vitality, strength, power, so it might be the abbreviation for ‘air.’”

Sofari said, “So the green light might mean there is air on the other side, or it may mean that the power for the door is on.”

“Or there is life within,” said Méarana with thumping heart.

Donovan shrugged. “Or all the above. They had words that cut crosswise through ours.”

“One way to find out,” suggested Sofwari.

“Maybe the rest of us should get out of the way,” said Méarana. “In case pressing the button means something more serious than ‘open.’”

“Umm.”

“What, Debly? What!”

“If there is air under pressure in there, and the door opens, everyone standing in front of it gets blown away.”

“It must be an airlock. What’s the point of airtight doors with no way through them?”

“Aah,” said Paulie, “enough O’ this shit!” And he reached past everyone’s shoulder and pressed the button.

Everyone flinched. The door split down its center—there had been no sign of a crack before—and they found themselves staring down a broad, brightly-lit corridor.

Donovan had a moment to register the sight. Then he braced himself.

But there was no hurricane of outpouring air.

“Magicians,” he muttered. He stepped through the doorway and felt as if passing through a thick layer of gelatin. Then he was inside, and suit sensors activated. There was air around him. His helmet display read off temperature, pressure, and composition—well within the range of human atmospheres.

It occurred to him that, however long recycled, this was the atmosphere of Old Earth herself, that these very molecules had once blown in soft breezes on a free Earth.

His fingers fumbled at his helmet seals. By the time he had pulled the hood off, the others were around him and wondering at the tears that ran down his cheeks.

The ark was named A. K. Prabhakaran. It was the name of a person of such fabulous importance as to cause this enormous vessel to be named in his honor; but it was a name lost in an incalculable past. Warrior, politician, science-wallah, explorer…Even male or female. Whatever he had been, he was only the name of a ship now.

They learned the name from one of the crew.

Shortly after they had entered the pressurized sector, a multiwheeled cart with a raised front rolled down the aisle and stopped before them. The holostage flickered and the head and shoulders of a young woman appeared on the raised platform. The ymago did not have the ghost-like appearance of a normal projection, but seemed a solid body, so that the whole gave the impression of a mechanical centaur: half woman, half cart.

It spoke to them in the Tantamiž, but with many words of the Murkans and the Zhõgwó and the Yurpans mixed in. Donovan learned that he could follow it, though he had to ask the thing to repeat itself several times.

“Why are ye awake at this time?” Donovan understood the thing to say. “Our planet is not yet ready.”

“Who art thou, o machine, that thou mayest ask this of us?”

The ymago smiled. “I am Flight Attendant 8y493 pi-cha-ro, sri colonist; and such are my assigned duties.”

“I will call you ‘Peacharoo.’”

“As thou willst. This is not an alloted wake time. Hath there been a failure of thy pod?”

“And why should I not be awake?” He turned aside to tell his companions. “It says we’re up past our bedtimes. I’m trying to stay outside its box.”

“Be not foolish, sri colonist,” the machine countered. “The planet will not be a world for another nine lakhs of hours. Thou willt be an old man before the landings begin.”

“Nine lakh? Nine hundred thousand hours…Are those metric hours or dodeka hours?”

“Thy query signifieth naught. An hour is an hour. Which are your pods, and I will escort you to them. Do not waste your life-hours, for time spent is never to be regained.”

“A Terran hour, then. Nine lakh would be, ah, about a hundred years.”

Sofwari whistled. “Far less than a Gladiola ark requires to prep a planet.”

“Well,” Donovan told him, “a Gladiola ark is far smaller than this behemoth.” He turned back to Peacharoo. “The planet Enjrun is already terraformed. We have come from there. It is time to wake the colonists and bring them down.”

“I see no ecologist ratings on thy sleeve. Thou wearest not thy required bar code or insignia. Let me ask Ship’s Sensors.” The simulation hummed a bland ditty for a few moments. “The activation beam has been sent within the fortnight, but there is no return signal yet.”

“Thou fool,” said Donovan. “Thy sensors have been destroyed! The signals were sent more than a thousand years ago, but thine ears have gone deaf.”

“It sorrows me to say so,” said Peacharoo, “but such is not my department. If ye would please follow me?” The Attendant spun and rolled down the aisle at a walking pace.

“Tell it to take us to the control room,” said Sofwari. “I’d love to know if their gravity grids are based on the same principle as ours. And the genetic data…Invaluable!”

Donovan gave it a try. “Peacharoo! We have an urgent message for the captain. Might thou summon him?”

The Attendant stopped. “Captain Salahuddin is no longer aboard A. K. Prabhakaran. He believed End Run successfully seeded and took many landers to the planet. But several weeks have now passed and they have neither returned nor contacted the ship. Clearly, the ecosystem is yet too immature to support life. I have exceeded my normal authority in telling thee, but may it persuade thee of thine error.” The Attendant again started forward.

Several weeks… Donavan shrugged. “We may as well see where it’s leading us.” He caught up with the Attendant in a few strides. “What facility is this that we pass through? But speak slowly, that I may translate for my friends.”

“This is Cold Sleep Dormitory Number 183, sri colonist. If thy friends speak neither the Tantamiž nor the Murkangliš, they are in the wrong dormitory. This dormitory is reserved for Terrans. Colonists from the Lesser Worlds are housed elsewhere.”

“The Lesser Worlds,” said Billy Chins, confirming Donovan’s suspicion that he, too, understood the Tantamiž. “Would that include Dao Chetty?”

The Attendant fell silent for a moment, then the image of the girl said, “Tau Ceti is a valued and important member of the Commonwealth. They stand shoulder to shoulder with our comrades against the people of sand and iron.” Peacharoo then added several more compliments in the Zhõgwó tongue.

Sofwari exclaimed over this. Like most, he believed the Commonwealth had fallen through the revolt of Dao Chetty, and that the prehumans were long vanished before humans ever went to the stars.

“I see no sleepers,” said Donovan. “What section is this called that we walk through?”

“This, sri colonist, houses the local backup power and life support for this bank of dormitories. It has been activated, but I have not been informed of the reason. I am sure it is but a drill. There is no need for alarm among the colonists.” The ymago actually managed to appear cheerful and reassuring. “If thou woudst return to thy pod, I will summon Attendants to escort thy friends also to theirs.

When Donovan had translated this, Méarana said, “Is this your artificial intelligence, Donovan? Artificial pig-head, I say!”

“It’s malfunctioning. What do you expect?”

“An ordinary automaton would not have disregarded a direct order,” said Sofwari. “Or told you about the captain. Peacharoo passes the ‘Enduring Test.’ It seems as if we are talking to a person.”

“Fash it. It seems as if we are talking to a bureaucrat! They only recite rules back at you, too. Seeming isn’t being.”

Donovan spoke to Peacharoo. “How long hath the emergency generator run?”

The ymago hesitated, and looked puzzled. “As much as an hour, or…longer. My clock synchronizeth not. Thank you for drawing my attention to this problem. I have sent a maintenance request to repair my clock. Please, do not be concerned, and follow me to your pods.” Then, a moment later, “The Attendants for the other dormitories answereth not my summons. Until they arrive, I will house thy companions temporarily in this dormitory, as numerous pods are now empty.”

As she said this, they passed through a portal into a vast open chamber within which floated evenly-spaced cubes in rows, columns, and layers. These vanished into the distance ahead, above, below, and to both sides. The Sleuth said, This sector seems larger on the inside than it was on the outside. That was impossible, of course; but here they were.

Each “cube” was a block of nested cylinders, twelve by twelve and bore a holographic display with a letter and a number. Since Tantamiž letters were themselves two-dimensional, this served to identify three-dimensional coordinates for each block. Between blocks, catwalks ran in every direction, including up and down. Sleuth estimated that the bay held as many as 50,000 cylinders.

And each cylinder held a sleeping colonist.

Donovan stared at the vast array and a great sadness overwhelmed him. The “great day” had come and gone, and they had slept through it. He wondered whether, had all the colonists made it down, there would have been enough to keep the planet from slipping into barbarism.

“And now,” said Peacharoo, “ye must return to your sleep pods.”

“No,” said Méarana; and then using what she had picked up of the old speech, said “Panna matēn!” I will not do it.

A scowl of impatience crossed the ymago’s face. “Must I summon the Proctors again?”

“Proctors.” Paulie grunted. “If Teddy was here, I know what he’d say.”

“‘That can’t be good,’” said Sofwari. He turned and looked into the distance. Things moved in the shadows.

“Wait,” said Donovan. “Peacharoo! ‘Again’? Was there another awakee?”

“The pods have been awakening people at random. There is no cause for alarm and maintenance is working on it. But the world is not ready for them, and they must be rehibernated. We are all anxious to establish the rear base, but ‘Patience is the Watchword.’ Terraformation cannot be rushed. You must trust us.”

“Where did you take her—the most recent awakee?” said Donovan. “About a year ago. Red hair, golden skin; similar to my companion.”

“I will access the record.” Again, the ymago hummed a bland tune.

Mearana tugged at his sleeve. “My earwig is starting to pick up snatches.”

“That’s how neural nets learn. Careful. The Attendant is learning Gaelactic as well.”

“You asked if it saw someone who looked like me.”

“Yes.”

Her grip tightened. “Did it? Did it?”

“Please board my extension,” the Attendant said. “And I will take you to her.”

A riding platform emerged from the Attendant’s rear. It slid from no apparent opening and with no evident telescoping or unfolding. And there was no room within the Attendant to store it. Once they had boarded, Peacharoo sped off through the three-dimensional grid. Straight ahead, then left, then down. The catwalks had their own gravity grids. Whichever way they turned, they seemed to be on the level—and the whole vast chamber seemed to rotate ninety degrees. It was too much for Paulie, who lost his lunch over the side.

Bank after bank of pods flashed by. Almost faster than the eye could see.

Almost.

“Donovan. Father. They’re empty. The pods are open, and they’re empty.”

“Peacharoo said there was room. I suppose the vacancies are where the ancestors of the Enjrunii came from.”

Now and then, they passed other Attendants, some of them inactive hulks parked in special niches between pod banks or simply standing dead on the catwalks; others were active, like Peacharoo, and fussed over the equipment that fed and maintained the inhabitants of the pods.

Or used to feed and maintain them.

Not all the pods were empty. Donovan caught brief glimpses here and there into open pods and saw grinning skulls, mummified corpses, masses of corruption.

Other pods gave at least the seeming of functionality. Lights gleamed on panels beside them, gauges displayed quantities and qualities. Peacharoo entered a sector where the pods seemed almost pristine. There, it slowed to a stop, and Donovan and the others slid gingerly off the platform. “Quite a ride,” said Paulie, huffing.

Méarana found herself face-to-face with a viewing portal. Pressed against it from the inside was a woman’s face, partly dissolved and stuck in a gluey mass to the glasslike material. Méarana bit down on a scream and buried her face in Sofwari’s shoulder.

“An awakee,” said Sofwari, “but the pod would not open. She suffocated…or she went mad and died in there.”

She pulled away from him. “Is that supposed to comfort me? What if the same thing happened to Mother? That artificial intelligence stuffed her into a pod—and who knows if it was still working?”

“There is no need to be rude,” said Peacharoo in Gaelactic.

Paulie grunted, but said nothing. Billy Chins was breathing hard and looking in all directions. “Sahbs,” he said. “We have company.”

“I guess this here’s the Proctor,” said Paulie.

The newcomer was taller, thinner, and boasted a multitude of arms. Its ymago wrapped wholly around it, so that—save for the wheels on which it rolled—it seemed almost human. Blue of skin, it resembled some ancient multiarmed deity. Žiba the Destroyer, Donovan thought.

“Here, here,” it said in Gaelactic. “What’s all this, now?”

Peacharoo said, “Officer, these colonists have refused to re-enter their stasis pods after I have repeatedly asked them to do so.”

“We can’t have that, now, can we? Sahbs, it is not safe for ye to be up and about. The planet will not be ready to sustain life for…” A pause. “…nine lakh of hours. That is one-third of a life span, and there is little for an awakee to do before Debarkation Day. Idle hands and all that, what?”

“I want to see my mother!” said Méarana. “Thousands of pods have failed. You must have noticed! I want to make certain that she is all right.”

“The request seems reasonable, Attendant.”

Peacharoo said, “I have brought her to her mother’s pod. She can see all the lights are green.”

Méarana cried, “Which is it? Show me!”

The Attendant projected a laser to highlight the next pod but two. Méarana shoved her way past Billy and Paulie and the Attendant and pressed her hands and face against the viewport of the indicated sleep-pod. Donovan stepped up behind.

“Is it her?” he asked.

“I can’t see. I can’t see. Peacharoo! Are there lights inside the pod so I can see if that is Mother?”

“Such filial devotion,” said the Proctor, “is touching in these degenerate times.”

The Attendant’s laser interfaced with something in the controls. Lights inside the pod came to life, bathing the occupant in a yellowish gloom.

Méarana began to cry. Donovan wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “I never thought,” he said. “I never thought we would actually find her.”

“Donovan,” the harper whispered in the thickest Dangchao Anglic she could muster, “wha’ button wakes her oop?”

“How d’ye ken she be ainly in hyposleep?”

“An she waken oop when I press the button. If she’s nae slaeping…An she’s deid…She willnae wake oop.”

“An she be ainly sleeping, the wrong button maun kill her.”

“Aye, but I cannae lave ‘er here. That would gae kill her. Soon or efter, the pod will fail. She would dee wi’oot e’er waking…Or she mought wake and dee trapped like that…thing…back there.”

Donovan turned to the Attendant and the Proctor. “There are certain prayers that we need to recite for her in our traditional language.”

“Art thou then the sleeper’s husband?” the Attendant asked in the Old Tongue.

Donovan hesitated a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

He had begun to bow with his arms crossed over his breast when he noticed that Méarana had touched her fingertips to her forehead, breast, and shoulders. He quickly imitated the gesture, lest he give Peacharoo an inconsistency to wonder about. “Father and Brother,” he heard her say, “dinnae let the Fudir do anything glaikit.”

It would take a stronger prayer than that, the Fudir thought. Okay, Sleuth, Pedant, this is your show. There must be a manual override to wake up this one occupant. Pedant, what are the sound-shifts on those letters?

It will be all right, said the girl in the chiton.

They will try to stop her, said the Brute, and his hand stole into a coverall pocket to grip his dazer. Inner Child watched and listened. He heard Paulie say to Billy, “They ain’t gonna stuff me in one of those sausages.”

But the part of his mind focused on the control panel found and translated what it wanted. He raised his eyes upward. “An’ there be on your side of the door a blue button set in a well?” he asked in Méarana’s dialect.

“Aye…”

“Ye maun press it whan I press this ain. On three.”

“Ae. Twa. Three”

The Attendant cried out as they stabbed the emergency buttons, and the Proctor reached out with his arms to pull them away. “Please to be desisting, sahbs,” it said. “That is a violation of Ship’s Regulations. Assault against helpless sleeper.”

The Proctor’s three-dimensional shell flickered and broke up under Donovan’s dazer, and the torso emitted a high-pitched whine. Behind him, he heard the pod door hiss as it unsealed.

The Proctor’s arm knocked Méarana to the catwalk and pushed Donovan’s gun aside. The image of the policeman recohered. “Assault on a Proctor is a termination offense. This is your first warning. Sahb, what are you thinking? Attendant, please restore the disturbed sleeper to her proper status.”

Peacharoo tried to get past Donovan, but the Brute braced his back against the pod bank and shoved with both feet. Peacharoo skidded. He shifted his feet to the Attendant’s superstructure—and his boots seemed to sink into the hologram’s chest. The automaton tilted, her right wheels lifted from the catwalk.

Billy fired at the Proctor, and its image again broke up. Paulie swung his sword and clipped off the top of the projection core—and snapped his blade in two.

Donovan sidestepped as the pod door swung open behind him. The Proctor’s arm let go and black smoke emerged from its casing. The Attendant toppled, wheels spinning. Somewhere, a klaxon began to hoot and a voice cried out in the Tantamiž: “The Pod Bay is under assault. The Pod Bay is under assault.”

Something shuddered deep within the ship. A dim, distant, low-pitched clank could be heard. And the catwalks shivered. The echoes reverberated into silence.

Paulie said in the silence, “That can’t be…”

“Shut up,” Donovan growled. He activated his comm. and called, “Franq, are you there? Speak to me.” He heard nothing. “Hallahan? This is Donovan. Speak to me.”

“There were no live systems in the engineering section,” Méarana said nervously.

“Franq! Hallahan! Blankets and Beads! Anyone on the trade ship? This is urgent.”

A rumble began in the depths of the Pod Bay, as of something massive rolling. There was a distant hiss.

Méarana said, “We should make our way back to where we left the shuttle.”

“Right,” said Sofwari. “Where was that…” The wallah’s face was layered in despair. The Pod Bay looked the same in every direction. How far had they come? Which turns had they made? The Pedant remembered the way, but the Sleuth pointed out that they could not run as fast as Peacharoo had carried them. It might take hours to return to the entrance. And I don’t believe we have hours.

“B-and-B, speak to me. We need guidance out of here. Lock onto our beacons and talk us to the nearest airlock or hangar deck. Speak.”

A voice crackled through static. “Donovan, this is Franq. We got troubles. Almost at shuttle. Get outside. Anywhere. We’ll locate you.”

Donovan glanced at the now-dark Attendant. “Sorry, Peacharoo.”

“How long was I asleep?”

Each of them jerked a bit at the new voice, though Donovan was startled least of all. A part of him—the Brute, he thought—had been aware of motion behind him. Méarana pushed past him, crying, “Mother! Oh, Mother!” Sofwari grinned. Billy looked at Paulie.

“I said, how long was I asleep?” She seemed remarkably alert for someone who had been but lately in a coma. By long tradition, the first words of such a one ought to be “Where am I?” But Bridget ban knew quite well where she was. She was still wearing the skinsuit in which she had been captured.

“About a year,” Méarana said, “maybe a little longer.” She was bouncing on the balls of her feet, suddenly looking years younger, crying, “We found you! I always knew it! I never gave up!”

Bridget ban said, “A year! What kept you?” Then she looked past her daughter, and the sardonic half-smile faded from her lips, and she said, “You!”

Donovan started to say, yeah, me; but as swift as a black mamba striking, Bridget ban had pulled a needier from a coverall pocket and fired.

Donovan ducked and the beam went wide.

Or it did not. Billy Chins snarled as the arm holding the dazer went numb. He ducked around the corner of the pod block. “Do it, Paulie!” he said as he disappeared. Paulie pulled his pellet gun and fired off four rapid shots.

He was a good shot, and four bullets would ordinarily have been sufficient to his purpose. But Debly Jean Sofwari had seen the hand move and had thrown himself in front of Méarana, and so the four bullets found one target.

The impact threw him backward onto his three companions. Donovan and Bridget ban leapt to either side, vaulting on the pod doors to the top of the stacks. Méarana jerked her arm forward and her knife flew from her sleeve and embedded itself in Paulie’s throat.

The Wildman clawed at the knife, lost consciousness as the blood gushed out, and fell to the catwalk. His legs kicked twice, and then he was still.

Méarana knelt beside the science-wallah and bestowed the long-sought kiss on Debly’s lips. His eyes stared at nothing. She thought she would miss the awkward little man with the strange enthusiasms.

Then she sprinted to where Paulie lay, pulled the knife from his throat without breaking stride, and clambered atop the pod rack, where she lay still.

She listened. She watched. Nothing moved. She might be alone in this vast abandoned ship.

“I see you’ve been keeping up your practice,” Bridget ban said in a low voice beside her.

Méarana did not flinch. “I was coming to look for you.”

“You…didn’t have to come yourself.”

“Who did you expect?”

“Little Hugh, to tell you the truth.”

“Why him?”

“You liked him, back when he used to visit. I thought you would go to him for help. Not the old drunk.”

“Did I guess right? I used to think it was Hugh; but it was Donovan, wasn’t it?”

“Do you want it to have been him?” She peered down the aisle where Billy Chins had disappeared. “He better show himself soon.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you hear the rumbling down below? I hope you don’t think one of those Attendants could stuff me in a tank.”

Donovan was a little disappointed in Billy Chins, and more than a little angry with himself.

“Why didn’t you see this coming?”

«I did,» said Inner Child.

I never did trust him.

“Not quite four to two…,” the Fudir muttered.

Three to one. Our baby took out Paulie all by herself, but Sofwari took four in the chest.

“Two and a half to one,” said Donovan. “Méarana doesn’t have a chance against Billy.”

Donovan didn’t know if he had a chance, either. An old man, long out of practice. And a Hound just out of cold sleep. Separated so that they could not coordinate their moves. Billy might have the advantage.

“Brute,” said Donovan, “you watch down that way with the left eye. Child, take the right eye. Sleuth, you and Pedant try to work out his strategy. Silky, you listen for anyone else coming up on top of these pods with us.

“What about me?” said the Fudir.

“Work with Sleuth. When they figure out what Billy is up to, figure out how to handle him.”

“By the time the subcommittee reports are in, Bridget ban will have taken him out, packed up the harper, and abandoned us here.”

“Check our chronometer, Fudir. It took us less than a beat to get ourselves organized.”

“You know, yours is the persona that once worked as a Confederate courier. I was the masque, like that poor woman out at the Iron Cones.”

“I know. I’m thinking, what would I be doing right now, if I were him.”

“And?”

“He’ll wait to ambush us,” Donovan said, “from a direction we’d not expect.”

From below.

When Billy had ducked around the corner, he had also ducked up or down. Donovan was as certain of this as if he had seen him do it.

Yes. The human instinct is to look up for snipers. But the way the gravity grids are set, he can stand on the bottom of a catwalk, and shoot up from underneath.

“I agree,” said the Fudir, “but he’ll be on one of the pod banks, like we are now.”

Sleuth did some elementary calculations. Unless he can move like the wind and climb like an Awzetchan grass monkey, Billy Chins cannot be any farther than…

“There,” agreed Donovan. “Brute? Fudir? This is your show.”

He stood. The pod block possessed walkways, probably for maintenance automata, that wrapped around the block like ribbons framing a gift. Gravity grids ensured that the pod block was “down,” regardless which face one stood on. Commonwealth magic. Peripheral technology couldn’t manage it. The gravity fields would overlap, create resonances, blow the generators.

He loped across the walkway to the other end of the block and, when he reached the end intending to leap to the next block over, the walkway stretched across the gap like Peacharoo’s riding platform. He nearly stumbled in surprise.

Unless Billy has discovered this, he will expect any approach to be by the catwalks. That was some encouragement, anyway.

He crossed the next block the same way. Then he walked down the side for two levels, found the walkway running across the underside of the pod blocks, and hurried back the way he had come. Silky played gyroscope and maintained the original up/down orientation. To her, he was loping antipodally along the “bottom” of a block, whereas to the Brute, he was doing so across the “top.”

He came at last to the block where he expected Billy to be waiting in ambush and spied him sitting cross-legged at the far end, looking down at the catwalk where he expected his quarry. From the point of view of anyone fleeing down the catwalk from Bridget ban’s cocoon, he would be firing up from underneath.

When Donovan had crept closer, Billy spoke. “One direction, I could not constantly watch; and so from that direction you have come. Yet you did not slay me.”

“I’m not a back shooter.”

“One of your few weaknesses. Come sit beside me, brother.”

Donovan crouched on Billy’s left. “Brother? You and I are nothing alike.”

Billy did not turn his head. “I did not mean bio-brother.”

“Nor did I.”

“No. We are sons of the same trainer—years apart, but the semen of his mind has generated us. You are the prodigal son, and I the faithful. You have gone off and lived among the pigs.”

“It wasn’t that bad. Really.” After a moment, he said, “You killed the jawharry.”

Billy tilted his head in thought; then resumed his watch of the catwalk. “After I overheard you and the harper in the restaurant on Harpaloon, curiosity sent me to question the woman. But she knew nothing. The effort was wasted.”

Donovan heard a distant clatter, like a wheel rolling along jointed rails. It seemed louder than before. “Yes,” he said. “Such a waste.”

“Not so much of a such. In the eternity of the universe, what is a life but an eye-blink. What matter, then, a few years more or less?”

“Yet you saved Méarana on the endarooa.”

“Am I a sociopath? Do I kill for no reason? The harper drove our quest, and I wished to see what lay at its end. And saving her caused you to trust me a little bit more. My duty is to report to Those what they need to know, not to slaughter unsuspecting Leaguesmen.”

“Although you do that, too.”

Billy shrugged. “Sometimes. When needful.”

“When Bridget ban recognized you.”

The Confederate nodded. “Yes. That was one of the times.”

“You could have bluffed it out. Méarana would have vouched for you. You panicked. Listen.”

Above them, from the depths of the ship, came the sounds of shingling metal, like a wind chime in a blustery gale.

“Something is coming,” Donovan said. “You might make it out of here if we all work together. You’ll never make it alone.”

Billy Chins sighed. “Brother Donovan, from the moment I saw this ship and learned of the secret road, was there ever a chance that I would return to my masters?”

“We could have arranged…”

“A comfortable prison? No, thank you. There are simpler ways to silence tongues. If you are too squeamish, others are not. I judged the moment my best opportunity, and seized it.”

“And yet you fought by my side at Roaring Gorge and in the Pit atop Oorah Mesa.”

The Confederate shrugged. “I thought then that I might yet warn the Lion’s Mouth. Now, if I cannot inform my masters, at the very least I can prevent you from informing yours. If you and the Hound die, I count my life cheap.”

“And the trade ship?”

“She must not take word back.”

“And the harper?”

Billy hesitated. “It cannot be helped.”

Donovan sighed. “I will not let that happen.”

“I know. If only you had remained a loyal man.”

“If only you had become a better one.”

One does not chat with Naga the Cobra without a vigilant eye on his motion, for the words are but a screen to lull the attention. Inner Child had been keeping watch through the scarred man’s right eye and saw Billy’s hand move perhaps before Billy knew he had moved it. The Brute seized the gun arm and deflected the aim, although the umbra grazed him; and that gave Billy the opening to deflect Donovan’s own return blast.

Locked in embrace like eager lovers, the two men toppled to the decking, and a swift sequence of moves and countermoves passed between them. Hands, knees, feet, a head butt. Then Billy smacked Donovan’s hand on the maintenance walkway, and the scarred man’s dazer skittered out of reach.

They fought in silence, only grunts and gasps escaping their lips, for only fools waste breath in taunts. They rolled, still embraced, over the edge of the pod block.

And they were “atop” the side of the tanks. Donovan glanced at the catwalk and barked, “Hurry!”

Billy turned his head, realized the trick immediately, but immediately was too late. Instead of holding off Billy’s gun, Dononan yanked and tucked it between their two bodies, pressing the muzzle against the Confederate.

This close, the neural blast was overpowering. Billy spasmed. His legs splayed like two logs and his head threw back. Blood oozed from between his clenched teeth.

Donovan, caught in the umbra, went numb. He rolled to the side; but it was the gravity grid and not volition that moved him. Inner Child cried out soundlessly. Sleuth could not form a coherent thought. Random memories and imaginings flickered through his consciousness.

A young girl in a chiton squatted above him on her heels and with her arms wrapped around her knees. The others, she said, will now have a chance.

He saw the face of Bridget ban, and she smiled as she used to smile years ago. He blinked and it was Méarana, not Bridget. Then even the tingling in his limbs faded, and there was no sensation at all, and darkness had him.

Lucia Thompson, d.b.a. Méarana of Dangchao, mistress of the harp, turned to her mother, feeling once more a child, but also impossibly old, and buried her face in Bridget ban’s hair and shoulders. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this,” she said. At her feet, Donovan and Billy lay like lovers.

The Hound pulled her away and shook her. “It isn’t ended yet,” she said.

The ship’s AI had come awake, and had dispatched the same monster that she had encountered once before. Slinky-Chinky, she had called it, for it moved fluidly with the sound of brass coins falling onto a plate.

“Lucy!” she said sharply to the weeping girl. “We must get to my ship. Time afterward for weeping, if there is time for anything at all. There’s his dazer. Hand it to me.”

“Your ship is wrecked, Mother. And how can we find our way to the shuttle I came in?”

“Fash it, girl! I can find my ship, whether she can fly or no. And you can have your shuttle meet us there. Nothing is lost until all is lost, and that time is not yet.” The Hound unfastened a pocket and pulled out a flat instrument. “This way.”

Méarana brushed her hand against the Fudir’s cheek. “Good-bye, Father…,” she said.

Bridget ban scowled and slapped the slack face of the man on the deck. It rocked to the side, and the bright red of her palm glowed on his skin. “That is for all the years since!”

“Mother! Why did you do that?”

“Because he can’t feel it now.” She stared at the palmprint. “Come, take his left side. He’s a used-up old man. He can’t be all that heavy.”

Méarana and Bridget ban lifted Donovan to his feet and wrapped his arms around their shoulders. The head lolled on Bridget ban’s shoulder and she shrugged it off onto her daughter.

“Is he…?”

“Enough to show red when he’s slapped. That is a feat few dead men master. Run in step with me. Slinky-Chinky will come along the catwalks. If we stay atop the tanks, it cannae reach us. But when we cross the space from one block to another, it will have a shot. And remember, the catwalks run in three directions.”

“I’m not afraid to die, Mother, if I’m at your side.”

The Hound laughed. “And terrified at any other time? It’s nae death ye risk, bairn. It will stun ye and stuff ye like sausage into one of yon pods. I will shoot you myself before I allow that to happen.”

Méarana did not have her harp with her, but her voice was true and she sang a running song while she and her mother loped across the tops of the sleep tanks, holding Donovan between them. She maintained an easy gait, holding his arm around her neck with her left, and holding the belt of his coveralls with her right, lifting his feet slightly above the ground. She did not know how long she and Mother could carry him; but she did not know how long she could not carry him, either.

They stopped to rest and catch their breath, and listened to the metallic sounds of their pursuer draw ever closer. Bridget ban had set her beacon to respond with sharper pings as they drew nearer to where her field office lay. Méarana contacted Franq and told him where to rendezvous.

“Not a beat too soon,” Number Two said. “Wrathrock is bad hurt, but we secured the shuttle and we are now outside the ship. What are those things?”

“Proctors,” Méarana told him. “The ship is delusional. Her internal clock is disrupted; her sensors scrambled. She thinks we are wakened sleepers—and you are boarders.”

“Can’t gainsay her on that account,” said the officer. “We are a boarding party.”

As they resumed their flight, Donovan began to run on his own. It was a peculiar and intensely focused sort of running and when Méarana and Bridget ban let go, he jogged ahead for a few steps, then turned and awaited direction.

“Is that you, Brute?” the harper asked; and the man nodded dumbly.

“Did Silky revive you? She’s got all the glands, right?” Again a nod.

“Are the others okay?”

The Brute placed his hand about three feet off the ground, palm flat and level to the ground. Then he spread his hands and shrugged.

“Inner Child is awake, but you don’t know about the others?” Another nod.

“Another day,” said Bridget ban just before leading them off again, “if there is another day, you will have to explain that, if there is an explanation.”

They had reached the edge of yet another block when the Brute paused, crouched, and held his hand up. Bridget ban went to her knees in an instant; Méarana, a moment later. The metallic jingling had waxed and around the corner of the catwalk came a monster.

It was a machine, like the Attendant and the Proctor, but unlike any machine Méarana had seen before. A centipede of metal hoops, each self-powered, yet all marching forward in rough uniformity. The lead ring bore the seeming of a face. Partly that was the spotlight eyes and the grill where a mouth might be; partly too, the fringe of antennae and sensors that so resembled a bristling mane.

As it passed each intersection, rings scattered clattering and clinging down the four intersecting catwalks—left, right, up, and down. At the same time, other rings, scattered at the previous intersection, rejoined the main body. The whole seemed in a continual state of dissolution, on the verge always of breaking apart, and yet, despite the comings and goings of its constituent rings, maintaining its identity.

Bridget ban consulted her beacon. “This way,” she whispered, pointing forward and to the right. “Yon beastie does nae yet stand’ tween us and my ship.”

Méarana tugged the Brute on the sleeve, held a finger to her lips, and pointed. The Brute nodded and slipped off in silence.

“Will the rest of him e’er come back?” Bridget ban murmured.

“That may depend on how the umbra affected the cortex. Had the muzzle twisted the other way…” The harper shivered. “Did you see the way he looked at you?”

“I had a dog that used to look at me that way,” Bridget ban answered.

“When did you ever have a dog? What happened to him?”

“He went rabid and I shot him.”

It was a mad race in three dimensions. They stayed atop the pod blocks, but in places the extensible bridge connecting one block to the next failed, and they slipped down to the regular catwalks. Without Bridget ban’s locator beacon they would quickly have gotten lost.

It was while on the catwalks that one of Slinky-Chinky’s scouts found them. It rounded the corner just ahead of them and instantly, lights began to flash on its circumference and the sounds of activity came from below. Through the gaps in the catwalks they saw the main snake two levels below them turn abruptly and head up the next intersection.

The Brute meanwhile had taken his dazer, which Bridget ban had restored to him, and fired at anything that might have been a brain-case on the ring that had found them. The ring went dark, and the three of them retreated around the corner and scrambled like monkeys atop the tanks. There, they lay prone underneath the maintenance track, in the V where the cylinders nestled together.

In less than a minute the sound of clinking rings was all around them, as segments ran up and down the catwalks, joining and splitting and rejoining. It’s as if the tanks themselves are invisible to them, Méarana thought. A flaw in their instructions? A malfunction from age or from damage? Not my department?

Finally, the sounds of pursuit faded into another sector, and they crawled from under the maintenance track and raced for the vestibule. There, they paused to activate their helmets before cycling through the air lock.

Orienting themselves on Bridget ban’s locator, they quickly made their way through an open landing bay to the hull and Bridget ban’s wrecked field office. There, they called for the Blankets and Beads’ shuttle.

Wild Bill brought the boat in low, with the outer lock door already open and came to a hover only a few strides away. Méarana and Bridget ban hustled Donovan inside and Wild Bill was pulling away even before the lock had closed.

“Close call,” said Méarana as they found seats in the cabin.

Wild Bill did not turn around. “Still is.”

The shuttle bucked and twisted as the pilot used the gravity impellers to hopscotch across the Prabhakaran’s hull. Franq sat in the copilot’s seat and the two able spacers were in the back. One of them, badly injured, lay across a bench while the other treated him.

“Watch it, Bill,” Franq said. “Those portals are opening.”

“That can’t be good,” Donovan muttered. Then he shook himself and looked around.

Méarana noticed, and said, “Fudir? Are ye back wi’ us?” And at the scarred man’s uncertain nod, threw her arms around his neck. He winced.

“Silky must have put us in some sort of overdrive. I’m weak as a kitten.” He looked around and saw Bridget ban and for a moment he did not speak. The red hair seemed lighter than when he had last known her, or the golden skin darker. “Billy?”

“Coagulated,” the Hound said. “What did you do, push your dazer right up against him? That’s a fool thing to try. The backlash of the umbra…”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. That dazer was going to be pointed somewhere. I preferred him to me. We debated the issue some.”

The shuttle swerved suddenly. The deckhand—DeRoche—cursed.

“Something behind those portals. Weapons, I think,” Franq said. “I think we woke something up.”

“The Artificial Intelligence,” said Donovan.

“Father, if that Attendant was artificially intelligent, the concept has been quite oversold.”

“No, Lucia,” Donovan answered. “Peacharoo was no more intelligent than my little finger.” The which he held up in illustration. “But you do have to ask what was wiggling it.”

Lights in the craft flared and went dark. Wild Bill expressed his dissatisfaction with this and his hands danced in command. Emergency lighting returned. “Missed us,” he said. DeRoche, tending to his mate, muttered, “I’d hate to see a hit, then.”

“Barnsey’s bringing the BB to meet us,” the pilot announced. “Hangar deck is open to vacuum. Locking in—mark.”

“Is that wise?” Bridget ban wondered. “To bring a larger target into range?”

“Prabhakaran’s clock is malfing,” Donovan said. “It thinks it’s still activating the terraformation packages. When the clocks resets, it loops around and does it all over again.”

Wild Bill, having locked in on his landing target, turned in his seat. “That’s nice, Donovan. But how does that make her a poor shot?”

“Velocity is distance over time. If her timing is off, so is her estimate of velocity. Otherwise, she’d have hit us more than once by now.”

“Which means,” said Wild Bill, swinging back to his panel, “she could aim at our nose and hit our engines instead. Either way, we’re soup.”

“And if yon is the trade ship ye’ve spoken of,” said Bridget ban pointing to the forward viewscreens, “even a miss would still hit something.”

Donovan grunted. “I used to think the B and B was big.”

As the shuttle entered the hangar, Wild Bill put her down hard to the deck. The gravity snaps engaged and held her fast, killing her forward momentum. The hangar doors closed and air dumped in—and with the air came the sound of klaxons. Alfven warnings. The Blankets and Beads was preparing to grab space to yank itself away from Prabhakaran.

Donovan pushed the others aside to reach the air lock. Bridget ban called after him, “There is no place to run to this time, Fudir.” But the Terran popped the door, dropped to the deck, and ran to the intercom on the hangar wall, where he called the bridge.

Maggie B’s face showed. “What is it, Fresh?” Then she scowled. “You! Get off my horn. You’re not crew.”

“No, I’m your charter. When you yank space, turn about and head for Prabhakaran’s dead side. If you pull forward, she can still shoot you out of the sky.”

“Those little pop guns…”

“That is Commonwealth tech! You have not seen a tenth of what that ship can still do. The AI is awake now and thinks she’s defending herself against attack! The apertures on the damaged side are fused shut. It can’t fire from that quarter.”

The captain’s lips compressed into a thin line. “Every time you show up,” she said, “I run into trouble.”

“I’ve only shown up in your life twice.”

“Let’s not make it three.” She turned from the screen. “D.Z., right about on the alfvens. Engage at fifty. Full power. Five tugs.”

By then the others had joined him. Wrathrock was being carried aboard on a floater by the ship’s medico. Franq, Hallahan, and DeRoche had rushed off to their emergency stations. Bridget ban nodded at the now-blank intercom. “Smart advice,” she said. “I expect you are correct.”

“Apology accepted. Come on, let’s get to the control room.”

Méarana led the way and Bridget ban followed. Donovan brought up the rear. Halfway through the tube that connected the shuttle module with the control module, the alfven klaxon hooted a second time—the short-long, short-long warning that engagement was immanent.

They grabbed railings and stanchions, and for an instant the ship seemed to stretch like taffy along a skewed axis. Most captains did not engage alfvens this far down a sun’s gravity well. But Blankets and Beads carried survey-class alfvens and, against escape from the ship defense batteries of A. K. Prabhakaran, what did a few burnt-out capacitors matter?

Blankets and Beads skipped across the face of the Commonwealth ark in quantum jumps. Donovan entered the control room in time to see clusters of antennae on the derelict vessel twitch in unison, like grass flustered by a spring breeze.

And one of the cargo modules on the B and B exploded into vapor.

The ship lurched at the impact, her center of gravity suddenly relocated, her angular momentum abruptly changed. Ripper Collins, in the pilot’s saddle, cursed. D.Z. bellowed orders to damage control. “Was anyone in Cargo C? Was anyone in…? Ma’am! Automatic vacuum doors closed on all connecting tubes. No one lost. Princess Wennawa reports her party is shaken but unhurt.”

Wild Bill said, “Raising the dead side. Defensive batteries are falling below the ship’s horizon.”

A certain amount of tension drained out of the crew; but Bridget ban said, “We are only assuming that the defenses on this side were slagged.”

Maggie B. turned to look at her. “I’ll ask who the hell yuh are when I have time. Meanwhile, in my control room, yuh have the right to remain silent. Time for milk and cookies later. Full speed, Mister ad-Din, directly away from that adolescent fantasy.”

“Full speed, aye, ma’am.”

The captain settled back in her seat as D.Z. gave orders to DeRoche and Collins. Flint Rhem turned from his astrogation station. “Activity on the near side. I’m putting it on screen four”

Barnes leaned forward again. Missile port shutters and energy projector blisters, long fused shut, struggled to open. “Too close,” Barnes muttered. She slapped her comm. “Duckie! How long before those alfvens are recharged?…Not good. I’ll need a tug a mighty soon. I’ll take thirty percent when yuh can give it to me. Out. D.Z., how’s the helm?”

“We’re a trade ship, Maggie. We don’t turn on a dime.”

“I’ll take quarters. Give me what we have.”

Moments passed, and none of the shutters snapped open.

Maggie Barnes began to relax. “She can’t fire.”

There was a sudden flare deep within the derelict ship. Something buckled and part of the ship seemed to cave in on itself.

“She thinks the gun ports are open,” whispered Bridget ban.

“Her sensors are slagged on this side,” said D.Z. “How is she aiming?”

“She’s not. She’s firing blind. Expect a broadside.”

A. K. Prabhakaran suddenly lit up like a candaleria. She glowed a serene and lovely orange. Radiances leaked from the edges of ports and from open hangar decks. Donovan thought of sunlight striking through gaps in the clouds.

And then Prabhakaran herself was a cloud—a bright, hot nebula of gasses that for a time held the shape of the ship she had been, and then began to disperse. The ark had been large enough that its own gravity would hold much of the debris together and someday it would congeal into a strange metaloceramic asteroid.

With traces of organic chemicals mixed throughout.

Good-bye, Billy, Donovan thought. Sofwari. Paulie. Good-bye, nameless thousands of Terran colonists, dreaming of new lives on new worlds. Good-bye, Peacharoo.

He sighed. “Damn,” he said.

Méarana looked at him; took his hand. “What?”

Donovan nodded at the screen. “We broke it.”