Recently I found myself on the sidelines of a discussion between two Analog authors. One said he found it hard to believe stories in which humans simply moved in and set up housekeeping on a world with an established native ecosystem, rather than isolating themselves and studying that ecosystem from afar, to learn all they could about it without disturbing it. The other suspected (to paraphrase loosely) that such fastidious adherence to a “prime directive” of noninterference was unrealistic and would effectively preclude any human colonization elsewhere.

The choice doesn't appear likely to present us with a serious real-world moral dilemma anytime soon, though the possibility can't be completely ruled out (even within this solar system). But science fiction tries to consider all kinds of possibilities, not just the most immediately likely. It's certainly conceivable that some of our descendants will eventually find themselves in a situation where they have to decide whether to colonize a world with native life, or keep their hands off.

What should they do?

Such a dilemma has been a central element in a lot of science fiction, and much of it has assumed that the key to the decision should be whether any of the natives are “sentient” or “self-aware.” If they are, we are often told, we should leave them alone to develop along their own path. If they aren't, it doesn't matter; if they're “just animals,” we can help ourselves to their land without compunction.

This has long seemed to me an excessively simplistic dichotomy, and I've had a number of difficulties being entirely comfortable with it. For starters, “sentient” and “self-aware” seemed at best rather vaguely defined.[1] A quick look at an unabridged dictionary will show quite an assortment of definitions, none of them really sharp. The gist of it, though, is that we'll consider a species sentient if its members show some capability for logical and/or abstract thought, language, moral decision-making, or some combination of those traits. Tool use, social organization, and planning for the future are often taken as manifestations of those qualities, if not primary defining characteristics in their own right.

One of the most basic problems I have with the dilemma as it appears in fiction is that it's often presented as a yes-no decision based on a yes-no test. Reality is seldom that simple, despite the ongoing and ever-escalating efforts of humans to act as if it were. A great deal of human thought and education has been dedicated to the proposition that we humans are uniquely superior to everything else, with abilities differing not just in degree but in kind from those of other animals. Inconveniently, research keeps finding new ways in which our “uniqueness” is more a matter of degree than kind. Chimps and ravens unequivocally use tools; apes and dolphins use their own versions of language and show some ability to learn to use ours; a great many kinds of animals have complex social organization and pass knowledge on to later generations. Some people react to these discoveries by outright denial and others by “raising the bar,” changing the definitions of criteria so that only humans still meet them—until we find something else that does. But those who follow that strategy have to keep raising the bar over and over. Eventually they may just have to recognize that sentience, by whatever yardstick you measure it, is more a continuous spectrum than a clear-cut dichotomy.

And the same may be true of appropriate responses to it. Instead of saying, “Yes, the natives are sentient, so we must go away and never set foot here again,” or, “No, they're not sentient, so we can move in and do whatever we want,” we may have to say, “There are beings here that are advanced this far in some ways and that far in others, so we have to be careful with them, but we don't necessarily have to avoid all possible contact."

The discussion I mentioned at the beginning of this musing went beyond the sentience question, in a way I find characteristic of the particular time and place in which we live. The question there was not whether colonization should be acceptable in a place that already had sentient life, but whether it should be acceptable in a place that already had any life. That criterion goes far beyond the one so familiar from much older science fiction. If followed rigorously, it would rule out the vast majority of science-fictional colonies, allowing the possibility only on worlds utterly devoid of preexisting life.[2]

That anyone would even consider such a stringent restriction seems to me very symptomatic of our current era, in which it's fashionable to profess an unprecedented aversion to intruding on any preexisting ecosystem. Such a view has seldom, if ever, been common in the past, and I find it hard to believe that it will continue to be at all times in the future. Prevailing views on just about any subject have fluctuated frequently and dramatically in the past, and I think it's quite likely that they will continue to do so in the future—sometimes just because people are desperately looking for something new to latch onto (which often means rediscovering or reinventing something old), and sometimes in direct response to new pressures. In a time when large-scale migration is impractical and most folks are pretty content with what they have, for example, it's easy to say that explorers discovering a new Earthlike planet should look but not touch, regarding their mission as one of pure scientific discovery. But if spaceflight becomes easier than it now looks, and population or political pressures drive significant numbers of people to want new places to live, it may be a lot harder to sell the idea that they should just look at a piece of prime real estate from afar. Relatively few people consider pure scientific discovery sufficient cause to support an expensive project, especially when it could be serving other purposes as well. Those whose interests are purely scientific may have to decide to what extent they can support other goals in order to get financing for their own.

If we grant the acceptability of ever colonizing any new planet, we'll need to allow for some purely practical considerations. Would we really want to limit the options to worlds having absolutely no life of their own? In principle, maybe it could be done—but creating an entire ecosystem from scratch would be a far larger and more daunting job than adapting to, or even modifying, one that already exists and is reasonably similar to the one we evolved in. We have a strong preference for an atmosphere containing a sizable amount of free oxygen, for example. But that's not how pristine worlds are delivered. By the nature of the processes by which they seem to be made, newly formed worlds that have atmospheres at all will have chemically reducing atmospheres, which we don't need and can't use. The oxidizing atmosphere we inhabit and enjoy on Earth seems to be a direct result of the biggest ecological catastrophe in history: the evolution of organisms that released oxygen in sufficient quantities to overwhelm and replace the earlier reducing atmosphere. If we want a colony planet that already has a breathable atmosphere, fairly advanced native life would seem to be a prerequisite.

So the simplest dichotomy we face may be this: Either we learn to deal with moving into an established ecosystem, or we forget about colonizing other worlds.

Period, and permanently.

Besides, our experience on the one planet we have shows that ecosystems can be wondrous, fascinating things. If there are others out there, as wondrous and fascinating as our own but uniquely different, wouldn't it be a shame of monumental proportions to develop the capability to experience them firsthand and then refuse to take advantage of it?

It's undeniably true that our ancestors have often done what they did in a heavy-handed and insensitive way. But shouldn't it be possible for us to learn something from their experience, something that might enable us to proceed with a lighter and more enlightened touch?

I think that's what the advocates of “remote science only, no colonization” are trying to do—but the lesson they're drawing from history is an unnecessarily extreme one. Yes, we should be able to move into new territories in far less destructive ways than has been often done in the past. But if our ancestors had always been as timid about expanding into places we weren't born to as some would have us be now, we would still be confined to the Olduvai Gorge—and might have been long since out-competed even there. To decide that we must never move into new territories at all amounts to withdrawing from the evolutionary race—and that's a luxury affordable only for those who have already won the current lap, and assume (perhaps to their peril) that there are no more to be run.

Copyright © 2010 Stanley Schmidt

1 “Self-aware” is particularly troublesome, and it took me quite a while to grasp the concept that an organism or machine could carry out sophisticated analysis of other things without being aware of its own existence as an entity and possible subject of thought. These waters were further muddied by often-cited experiments showing that apes recognize their own reflections in a mirror while monkeys don't. Such experiments are often cited as proving that apes are self-aware and monkeys aren't, a conclusion which seems to willfully ignore the possibility that monkeys do have a concept of self, but don't make the connection between it and reflection.

2 Some would rule out even that, saying we shouldn't disturb any natural place—such as Mars, even if an exhaustive search turns up no trace of past or present life. In the intermediate situation where life exists, but only primitive life, we're sometimes told we should leave it alone because of the potential for something more advanced in the far future. Analyzing a possible connection between this view and an absolute opposition to even very early abortion is left as an exercise for the reader.

To understand what others do, you must understand how they see the world—which can be much easier said than done.

Imtep—Fifth planet from its star. Close to Earth-like (.95 on Ming-Hoffman Scale). Dominated by a single massive continent sprawled across equatorial regions. Eastern areas of the landmass are very rugged, but the central and western regions feature extensive prairies or steppes around a large, shallow inland sea. Native sentient species the Izkop ("People") are humanoid, organized into tribes or clans, the majority living on the plains in agrarian/ herder communities. Technology is very limited, primarily craft-metallurgy which allows the construction of durable implements. The Izkop are evaluated as “competitive but non-belligerent,” research reports identifying their dominant culture as well-integrated with their environment. A research facility with a staff of eighty has been established on Imtep. Imtep is classified Type Three for human visitation, with pre-clearance required and only small parties allowed to avoid disrupting relations with the native population.

They had to pry Goldera out of the last set of armor when the power pack drained to exhaustion. After forcing open enough of the suit to get Goldera free, they left the armor lying there as they resumed walking, the empty carcass sprawled in the short, tough grass like a body denied the benefit of burial. There wasn't any simple way to conceal it, and they lacked the time and the strength to do anything else. The blast rifle, useless without power, lay abandoned alongside the armor.

No one had spoken for at least an hour, everyone concentrating on walking, putting one foot before the other despite the fatigue filling their bodies and minds. Corporal Johansen squinted up at the too-bright sun, trying to remember what had happened over that long day since reveille had sounded at zero-three-hundred to awaken everyone for the rescue operation. But he couldn't focus on any single, clear memory, his mind filled with disjointed images of the deathtrap that had been a place called Amity.

Johansen brought his gaze down to stare at the back of Sergeant Singh. The sergeant's last command had been “follow me,” given as they looked down at a valley where nothing now moved or lived except swarms of Izkop warriors. Since then, Singh had been leading them over the hills around Amity, down through patches of woods and shrubbery, and now across this open area. Fear had lent them speed at first, but now nothing kept them moving except the sergeant's steady pace in front.

With a major effort, Johansen called out just loudly enough for Sergeant Singh to hear. “Sarge."

The sergeant didn't stop, instead turning his upper body and head to look back at the corporal as he kept moving, his face locked into the same expressionless mask as someone under inspection. “Yeah?"

"Gotta rest. They're on their last legs."

"Understood. Not out here.” Singh raised one arm to point ahead, toward a tree line. “There. Under cover."

Tall, dark Private Adowa looked toward the trees, her eyes framed by runnels of sweat on her dust-streaked face. “How far is that?"

One corner of Singh's mouth turned upward slowly. “Check the map,” his voice grated out sardonically.

The map had been digital, of course, linked to satellite arrays which the Izkop had already shredded. Normally, the soldiers would have called up the map, gotten their precise location, and a precise distance to the trees ahead. But the navigation units had been built into the powered armor, and that was gone along with the sats. All any of the soldiers could do now was look around, inexperienced with judging distances by eye and unaccustomed to marching this far without power assist from their armor.

How far had they come since the dropship set down hard on one side of the valley that had held the human presence on this world? As the platoon had spilled out of the broken dropship, they had been presented with a balcony view of the disaster unfolding in the valley itself. Debris from what had been the buildings of the human civilian community still falling back to the surface, craters marking the graves of damaged dropships that had plowed in too hard for any survivors, scattered groups of soldiers firing frantically at the masses of Izkop swarming over the entire valley floor. More Izkop popped up, among and all around the platoon, their heavy spears flashing in the light of the morning sun, surging into the dropship to wipe out the crew, dragging down soldiers and tearing apart the robotic mules carrying the backup power packs. Sergeant Singh had rallied them, tried to get as many soldiers as he could up the side of the valley, while everyone shot as fast as they could and members of the platoon got swamped one by one.

Where had all of the aliens come from? Somebody had been screaming “out of the ground” on the comm circuit before their signal cut off.

Johansen focused on that puzzle to distract himself from the fatigue that threatened to overwhelm him. Out of the ground. He hadn't had much time to look around during the fight. None of them had. But he recalled visions of slabs of turf lying neatly cut and overturned. “The ground,” he muttered. “The bastards were all lying under the sod."

Private Stein turned partway to frown at Johansen, then his expression cleared with understanding. “That's where they came from? Because nobody said anything going in. Landing fields are clear, they said."

Adowa shook her head. “They also said we should be careful not to cause any violent reaction by the Izkop. Just a rescue and security op in a possibly non-permissive environment.’ Possibly non-permissive, hell. Orbital sensors can't see aliens lying under a layer of dirt and grass, ready to kill us as we hit dirt."

"What did the damned civilians do to make the Izkop want to wipe out everyone and us in the bargain?” Private Nassar wondered. “The Izkop didn't care how many of them we killed."

Only Private Burgos answered, her eyes haunted. “We didn't kill enough,” she whispered.

They fell silent again after that, just trying to keep moving in the wake of the sergeant, who plowed onward as if he himself were a suit of armor with an inexhaustible power supply. Johansen looked backwards at times, fearing to see the shapes of Izkop coming after them, and irrationally hoping that other soldiers would appear to join them. But he saw nothing, though as the march went on under the blazing sun Johansen sometimes imagined others marched with them, seeing the shapes of soldiers he had once known wavering insubstantially until he blinked and shook his head to clear it. The tree line gradually grew closer, resolving into a thin forest which would offer at least a little cover from the Izkop and a little shade from the sun.

Singh kept them going after they reached the first trees, onward about a hundred meters, before he stumbled to a halt. “Rest. Half an hour."

The others didn't so much sit down as drop, collapsing in place with expressions of mingled pain and relief. Johansen let himself fall as well, luxuriating in not having to keep moving, but after a few minutes forced himself to struggle up until he sat with his back against a tree. Second in command. You're second in command now. The lieutenant was dead, the other sergeants were dead, and so were the other corporals. For that matter, so was the colonel and everybody else ranking higher than the sergeant. Hell, I'm second in command of the entire relief force now. All eight of us that are left.

Eight out of a little more than two hundred in the battalion.

Johansen looked at the six privates who had made it out of the valley with him and Singh. Goldera, short, lean and wiry, lay on his back, staring blankly upward. Adowa, her dark face and hair blending a bit into the shadows beneath the trees, had a jaw slack with fatigue, but her eyes kept roaming the woods, on watch for danger. Archer, one of the worst shots in the unit despite her name, was a bit smaller than Goldera but had clung stubbornly to the platoon's portable long-range comm unit despite its weight and now lay hugging it to her chest with both arms. Nassar sat limply against a tree, but like Adowa his eyes were still alert and searching the woods around them, the buzz-saw light machine gun resting on his lap. Stein, big and solid, lay as if dead, only the movement of his chest revealing that he still lived. Burgos, her eyes open but glazed, seemed to still be looking at the deadly chaos around Amity and unaware of their current surroundings.

Sergeant Singh had lowered himself to sit, breathing deeply, his eyes hooded in thought as if they were just on some especially difficult training mission and the sergeant had to figure out how to beat a tough scenario.

As if sensing Johansen's gaze, Singh nodded to him. “Now that we've reached cover we'll rest ten minutes each hour after we get going again."

News which normally would have been greeted with muttered complaints from the tired privates brought nothing this time, a measure of their utter exhaustion, but Adowa stopped scanning the woods long enough to look at Singh. “Where are we going?"

Singh jerked his head in the direction they had been traveling since leaving the valley. “Before my armor gave out I spotted a place on the map. A small outpost of some kind along a river. At least one permanent building. We're sure to hit the river if we keep going this way. Then we find that outpost."

"Water,” Stein mumbled. “River's got water."

"Yeah. And maybe there's food at that outpost,” Johansen said. They hadn't carried much, just the usual emergency packs. The other rations had been destroyed with the dropships.

"We hope,” Singh replied. “And maybe some shelter. Depends what the Izkop did to it.” He didn't have to elaborate. Amity had been intact when the dropships launched, but just before the Izkop erupted out of the soil they had blown apart all of the buildings, taking soldiers and dropships with them.

Nassar breathed out slowly. “Someplace safe, maybe."

Adowa shook her head. “Safe? How many Izkop got to be looking for us, Sarge? There were thousands back there, and they know we got clear."

"We haven't seen them following us yet,” Johansen said.

"We didn't see them in the valley, either, until we did. How much trouble would they have tracking us with eight suits of armor laying dead, pointing this way? Any fool could follow us."

"Maybe,” Archer murmured, “they couldn't keep up. Sarge moved us a long ways pretty quick."

This time Nassar shook his head. “You heard the briefings. On open ground, the Izkop are very fast and can maintain their speed over long distances,'” he quoted. “They may not be big like Stein, but they're strong enough. Why did we get this far?"

Everyone looked at Sergeant Singh, who shrugged. “No idea. Shooting our way out of the valley wasn't a low-profile op, and they nailed everyone else who was trying to get out in other directions."

"So,” Adowa insisted, “why didn't they run us down?"

"They didn't want to lose any more of their own?” Goldera asked.

Nassar snorted. “You saw them swarm everyone down in the valley. No concern with casualties at all. If we hadn't burned out the suits so fast, firing the energy weapons without a break and jumping up one side of those hills and down the other as fast as we could, we'd be back there with everyone else, getting our guts hauled out and danced on. It's a miracle we made it this far."

Burgos roused enough to glare at Nassar. “I'm not dying before I kill a lot more of them."

The sergeant eyed her soberly. “Ramada's dead. We need to stay alive."

"Yeah.” Burgos barely whispered as she closed her eyes again, shuddering slightly, her left hand clasped tightly so the ring on it stood out clearly.

After a moment of silence, Nassar spoke. “They were waiting for us. How long did they just lay there, under the turf, waiting for us to come down?"

"Days,” Adowa said. “Crazy bastards. How do you plan for fighting against something that'd lay that kind of ambush? I got to tell you, I'm worried we left someone. Somebody still alive."

"Us being dead wouldn't keep them alive,” Johansen said.

Archer sat up wearily, brushing hair from her face with one hand and nodding toward the portable comm unit. “I've heard no signals from anyone else living since we got clear. For a while I kept picking up automatic distress signals from armor back at Amity, reporting occupants killed in action. No wounded needing pickup, just KIAs. But the KIA signals went off, I guess when the Izkop got around to smashing them. I can understand the Izkop pulling the bodies out of the armor, but why go to so much trouble to smash all the equipment on the armor, too, even while the fight was still going on?"

"I guess we can't ask the civs we were supposed to be rescuing,” Adowa said. “Wonder how long they've all been dead and if they put up any fight?"

The sergeant shrugged again. “Probably a while and probably not. The civs here were just researchers. Their reports on file didn't pay much attention to Izkop fighting methods."

Johansen laughed bitterly. “The civ reports barely mentioned that the Izkop had spears. What did the civs call the Izkop? Competitive?"

"And non-belligerent. I keep getting the feeling they're out there,” Goldera added. “Watching us. Sure wish I still had the scout sensors in my armor."

"There's a lot of stuff in the armor we'll miss, but good soldiers can fight without it,” Singh said. He focused on Archer again. “Are you sure the comm unit didn't take any damage?"

Archer smiled slightly and stroked the outside of the comm unit. “Aimee's fine. Ready to talk when we find someone to talk to. The solar collectors on her shell can keep her charged indefinitely and recharge batteries for any other gear we've got left."

"Too bad it couldn't recharge the armor,” Goldera grumbled. “They took out the big ship. How the hell did they know how to take out the ship? Primitives, hell."

"They used the research facility's own protective system,” Johansen said. “The Sara wasn't ready."

"Nobody was,” Nassar observed. “The Izkop burned out everything taking down the Sara and our dropships and frying a lot of the satellite arrays and blowing up everything in that valley. Why'd the Izkop kill all the civs, anyway?” he asked again.

"Who cares why?” Burgos had both hands on her rifle. The lightweight slug throwers, emergency weapons usually stowed literally up on the back of the armor, had become their primary means of defense now. “Murdering scum. Their reasons don't matter."

"Yes, they do,” Singh corrected. “Understanding the enemy is critical. If we don't understand them, we don't know what they might do next.” The sergeant had always worn an old-fashioned watch, not depending on suit systems to keep him aware of the time as most others did. Now he consulted it. “On your feet, everybody. We've got a ways to go."

They staggered onward, the sergeant always in the lead, Johansen always at the rear to make sure everyone stayed with them. There were plenty of times when he wondered if he would collapse as the too-long day on this planet kept the sun crawling slowly through the sky, beating brutally down on them even through the scattered screen of shade provided by the trees. But if he fell out somebody else might drop and be lost, too. So he kept going.

The river proved just as impossible to miss as the sergeant had predicted, meandering across their path, perhaps fifty meters wide but apparently shallow all the way across. As everyone drank their fill through filter straws, Singh studied the terrain. “The map showed some ridges on either side of the place we're looking for."

Johansen looked up and down the stream. “The bluffs beside the river course are just mounds along here. It looks like they're higher upstream."

"Yeah.” Sergeant Singh gazed up at the sun. “I figure we've maybe two hours of sunlight left."

"The night vision gear was all built into the armor."

"Yeah,” Singh repeated. “We don't want to be stumbling around in the dark. Let's get moving, people. We need a place to fort up by nightfall."

As they moved back into the tree line, Goldera paused to look around.

"You see anything?” Johansen asked him.

"Nah. Haven't seen anything but what passes for birds and squirrels here.” Goldera hesitated, scanning the horizon. “Still feels like they're out there, though."

"Keep an eye out,” Johansen said, then moved alongside Singh long enough to pass on what Goldera had said. Singh only grunted in reply, and Johansen fell back again as the tiny column reached the trees and then turned to move upstream.

They found it when the sun was only a short ways above the horizon. The bluffs on either side of the river's lowland had risen enough to form a rift between them. The woods dwindled near the edge of the rift, leaving an area almost open along the sides before the land fell away abruptly into bottomland with the river snaking along roughly through the center. Singh and the others wormed forward on their bellies toward one edge of the rift until Singh could raise his field glasses to examine the small cluster of buildings constructed to human standards, while they all lay as concealed as possible by the sparse vegetation.

After a moment, the sergeant cursed softly and lowered the glasses. “Power focus. Great stuff until the power dies. Anybody got charged batteries?"

Without rising, Archer held out one hand toward Burgos, who took what she held and passed it to Stein, who handed the batteries to Johansen who gave them to Singh. After the sergeant replaced the batteries in his field glasses, he passed the worn out batteries from them back along the chain until Archer got them and slid them into charging slots on her comm unit.

Focusing again, Singh stayed motionless for a long time, then finally passed the glasses to Johansen. “What do you think?"

Johansen focused, trying not to expose himself too much to any watchers. “It looks intact.” The compound was dominated by a low-slung one-story structure that apparently combined living quarters and offices. From here that main building looked substantial, with thick walls of compressed dirt and a heavy roof of reinforced metal with built-in solar cells. The rest of the buildings, including a small livestock shed, were of much simpler construction, just stamped metal set on concrete pads.

"See any sign of Izkop?"

"No. No sign now, and no sign they've been there. Maybe once the civs left the Izkop didn't bother with it.” One of the doors to the main building swung idly in the wind. “It looks abandoned . . . or someone wants it to look abandoned."

Something moved among the buildings and Johansen stiffened as he watched, the others falling into tense silence. As the thing moved fully into sight, Johansen almost laughed with relief. “A cow. There's still a cow alive down there."

"A cow.” Singh made it a statement, gesturing for the return of the field glasses, then studied the animal. “A cow,” he confirmed, lowering the glasses. “Not one of the local herd beasts. A milk cow, Earth-livestock."

"Milk?” Adowa did laugh very softly, her face lowered into the dirt to muffle the sound. “Too bad I'm lactose intolerant."

Singh didn't smile in return. “A milk cow. Abandoned here. It wouldn't have been milked for some time. But it seems content."

"You know cows, Sarge?” Goldera asked.

"My family's neighbors had some.” Singh looked at Johansen. “After only a few days, an unmilked cow would be very uncomfortable."

"Somebody's been milking it?"

"Yes. Would an Izkop do that? Could an Izkop do that without the cow panicking? Stein, didn't your family have a ranch?"

"Yeah, Sarge.” Stein's large face creased slowly in thought. “No. If what the briefers told us is right, cows wouldn't like the Izkop, and cows can be damned skittish even with people."

"Could there still be people down there?” Archer asked.

"Either there are, or it's another Izkop trap,” Johansen said. “You've still got nothing on the comm unit?"

"No. If any civs survived, they're staying si-lent."

Singh looked back at them all. “We go down there, or we go on."

"Go on? Where?” Nassar wondered.

"Nothing any better than this, and nothing we can reach with less than another full day's walk, if we could find it."

Johansen sighed and checked his weapon. “I'm getting tired of walking, and it'll be dark soon. We might as well see what's here."

Burgos licked her lips, her eyes fever bright. “If there's Izkop, maybe it's just a small force. We can wipe them out."

Singh pointed one finger at her. “Or there's ten thousand of them within sound of a shot. Nobody fires without my orders."

"Yeah, Sarge,” Burgos muttered, her expression sullen.

"You go spindizzy on me and I'll shoot you myself, got it?” Singh kept his eyes on her, hard and demanding.

Burgos flushed. “I said yes, sergeant."

Fortunately, the compound was on this side of the river so they didn't have to splash through the water and mud. Tired as they were, the soldiers still moved carefully toward the buildings, only two moving at a time while the others covered them. Once inside the bluffs the flatland around the river was covered with short, round bushes with sparse leaves that caused Stein to mutter “tumbleweeds,” but the area inside the human-built compound had only short grass growing.

Johansen came up against the main building, his rifle at ready, his back to the wall right next to the open doorway where the door still swung lazily in occasional gusts of wind. Adowa crouched on the other side of the door, raising her weapon questioningly. Johansen shook his head, then looked back to where Singh and the others were lying in the grass, their weapons aimed at the windows and doors of the building. He pulled out his combat knife, took a deep breath to fight down a wave of fear, then spun around the corner and inside, once again planting his back against the wall with the knife at the ready before him.

A figure moved, jerking to one side with a gasp of fright. Johansen swung the knife's point that way even as his mind shouted human. “Who are you?” Johansen demanded.

Instead of replying to his question, the figure rose, resolving into a woman who stared at him in disbelief. “Are you a soldier?"

"Yes, ma'am. Any Izkop here?"

"No.” She looked anguished for a moment, then swallowed and steadied. “We haven't seen any here since the recall. We've been unable to contact Amity since then.” Her expression changed. “We heard what sounded like explosions in the distance this morning. In the direction of Amity."

Johansen just nodded. “We? You're not alone here?"

"No. There's two other adults and ten children. The others are in the back rooms."

Finally relaxing, Johansen leaned out the door to wave an all-clear and beckon to the others.

The other soldiers came on carefully, still dodging forward until each darted inside the doorway. As he waited for them and watched for trouble, Johansen saw that the building's interior consisted of a big main room which stretched all the way across its width and perhaps a third of the way back, where an inside wall showed hallways and doors leading to what must be living quarters and offices. A series of big windows ran along the front and partway down the sides, but only two doors were visible, the main entry and a side door. The tables and chairs inside had been pushed around, and the big flat display on the back wall sat dark and silent. Singh entered last, studying the room somberly.

The woman had gone to the back and came out again with two other civilians, both men, one young and the other well past middle age. “I'm Ariana Tisrok,” she said. “This is Juni Garios and Scorse Kalinga."

"Sergeant Singh,” he introduced himself. “Suppose you tell us what happened here?"

Ariana slumped into a chair. “We don't know much."

The younger man, Juni, nodded. “We received the recall. Everybody was to report back to Amity on an emergency basis. But the truck we have here was out on a research run.” He hesitated, his eyes going to Ariana, then Scorse. “It had, um, four people with it."

"Including my husband,” Ariana said in a low voice. Taking a deep breath, she continued. “We tried calling our truck. Nothing. We tried getting a fix on its position, but the transponder was out. It should have been back before sundown that day but it never showed. We called Amity, to tell them we needed a ride and asking for more details. We never heard any reply. My—the people with the truck would have been able to walk back here within a day if it had broken down."

"Our truck might've made it to Amity,” Scorse said stubbornly. “My wife—” He stopped talking for a moment. “They might have made it to Amity,” he repeated, the simple statement sounding like a prayer.

"What reason did Amity give for the recall?” Singh asked.

The researchers exchanged glances. “Something about crowds of Izkop. Large numbers of them,” Juni finally offered. “ Tribal situation uncertain.’ That was the last thing I heard."

"What were you supposed to do if the Izkop turned hostile?"

"Hostile?"

"Yes,” Singh said patiently. “If the Izkop attacked, what were you supposed to do?"

"The Izkop attacked?” Ariana asked.

Johansen didn't quite suppress an inarticulate grunt of disbelief at the question. Rather than answer Ariana directly, Singh pointed upward. “The regional base at Mandalay, about ten light-years from here, got an emergency pulse from the human base on this planet through the quantum entanglement comms. Those can't provide details, but it was the most urgent emergency pulse that could be sent, the one that calls for military assistance as quickly as possible. We're from the on-call battalion at Mandalay. They loaded us on the Saratoga and we jumped here. Once inside the star system we started picking up messages your people had begun sending over a week before, talking about danger from the Izkop and requesting emergency protection."

The three civilians looked at each other in amazement, then Juni faced Singh again. “We never heard those messages. Not long after the recalls, the satellite relays went down, and without those we haven't been able to pick up anything."

"You don't have an emergency transmitter/ receiver?” Archer asked.

"Yes, but—” Juni gave the other civilians an embarrassed look. “It was stored in one of the sheds. Everything in that shed got ransacked and smashed the night after we heard the recall, before we knew the relays were down."

"So the Izkop know you're here?” Johansen asked.

"We don't know that the Izkop were responsible for that."

"Who else could have done it?” Ariana asked. “The Izkop knew we were here then. In the days since we've tried to make it look like we left, because . . . there wasn't much else we could do."

"And because you insisted on it,” Juni grumbled.

"If we'd been alone,” Scorse said, “we'd have set out for Amity on foot, but not with ten children to worry about."

"Ten children?” Singh asked. “Are they all yours?"

"None of them are ours. It was a field trip,” Ariana explained. “Normally we wouldn't have children here. They were staying for a few nights."

"No other adults or transport with them?"

"The two adults escorting the children were also out with our truck. An all-terrain bus brought the children in and was supposed to pick them up three days later. It's not that long a drive from Amity."

Adowa, who had been leaning against one wall peering suspiciously out a window, now looked at Ariana. “It's a long walk. How many kids were still in Amity?"

"None. A few teens. All of the preteens are here."

"The Izkop hit the valley while all the kids were here?"

"I suppose. Hit?” Ariana stared at Adowa, then at Singh. “The Izkop attacked Amity?"

All of the other soldiers looked at Sergeant Singh, who exhaled heavily before replying. “Yes."

"Did they kill anyone?"

Burgos made a choking sound.

Singh nodded twice. “There's nothing left living at Amity except Izkop. Lots of Izkop. They blew up the buildings there, they self-destructed the equipment, and they seem to have burnt out everything in orbit."

None of the civilians spoke for a long moment. Ariana recovered first. “They're . . . all . . . dead?"

"Yes, ma'am. As far as we know, the only humans left alive on this planet are in this building."

"I . . . I don't . . .” Juni made a baffled gesture. “If the Izkop are that dangerous, why did your commander only send eight of you here? And on foot?"

The sergeant spoke carefully. “I said every human still alive is here. We're all that's left of our unit. The Izkop were waiting for us. They turned your systems on us and took down the big ship that brought us, as well as about half the dropships carrying us to the surface. Half the battalion died that way. The Izkop swarmed the other dropships and anyone who got out onto the surface. Nobody had time to form up before they got overrun, so our individual firepower advantage wasn't enough."

The civs fell silent again. Juni just sat as if unable to absorb the news. Ariana kept blinking back tears. Scorse put his face in his hands, shuddering with what seemed like anger rather than grief, then shot to his feet, his eyes blazing. “You got away!” Scorse accused. “How the hell did you get away? You just ran, didn't you? You left everyone else to die and—"

He stopped talking as the barrel of Burgos’ rifle came to rest a millimeter from his nose. “Shut up,” she breathed.

"Private Burgos.” Singh's voice was calm and authoritative. “Stand down."

She held the weapon in the man's face a moment longer, then stepped back, lowering it. “If you say that again, I'll kill you,” she told Scorse in a cold voice. “We fought."

"Stand down," Singh repeated. “Sir, I would strongly advise you not to question the courage of my soldiers. We left most of our platoon dead and barely shot our own way out of there. There was nothing else we could have done but die on the spot. Now, if we're lucky, we'll be able to hold out here until another ship gets in. When the Saratoga doesn't send a routine status pulse back to Mandalay they should send another ship to check on things. If we're lucky, someone could be here in a week."

"And if we're not lucky?” Juni asked.

"Then we're all dead,” Adowa said. Singh glared at her but she just bared her teeth in a fierce, humorless smile. “They ought to know, Sarge."

Ariana shook her head, her expression torn between grief and denial. “How could it have happened? If the Izkop pressed us, we were to withdraw. Pull back from contact until the misunderstanding or whatever was resolved. They knew we weren't here to stay, to colonize or conquer."

"Maybe some of the Izkop didn't get the word on that,” Nassar commented from his watch post near another window.

Singh gave him a flat look that shut up Nassar, then turned back to the civilians. “How many Izkop have you seen around here?"

"The first day after the recall, we observed a few,” Juni offered in the voice of a man coming out of a daze. “Out in the hills, while we were looking to see if the truck was coming in. Before that, there'd been a lot of Izkop movement. The satellites tracked many Izkop moving toward Amity."

"Didn't that worry anybody?"

"There were varying interpretations about the meaning of the Izkop movements. I . . . don't know what they did at Amity,” Juni mumbled.

Singh leveled a finger at Goldera. “It's almost sunset. Get out there and do a scout while we've still got some light. Nassar, watch his back. I want to know what you see around this place, especially whether there's signs that the Izkop are watching it."

"Okay, Sarge.” Goldera slipped out the door, followed a moment later by Nassar.

Singh sat down, gesturing this time to Johansen and Adowa. “Keep an eye on the outside. Burgos, you and Stein check out this compound. Carefully and quietly. I want to know how it looks from a defensive standpoint. No firing at anything. Archer, run a full diagnostic on that comm unit. That's our only lifeline for calling the relief ship when it gets here. Nothing better happen to it. Now, I understand you civilians have had an awful shock, but I'd like a better idea of what happened. Are you sure you don't have any idea why the Izkop went spindizzy?"

"No,” Juni said, hunched over as he sat staring at his hands. “What you describe is uncharacteristic. The Izkop have ceremonies which to outside observers can replicate aggression, but they haven't shown any radical deviations from standard behavioral modes."

"Ceremonies. They haven't been acting aggressive?"

"No. Not that I've heard or observed. The Izkop are well integrated into their environment and have no need to manifest authentic belligerent group behaviors."

Ariana shook her head. “I believe the Izkop are an actively aggressive culture, but they haven't acted aggressively toward us. There's been some pushing of our limits, but nothing serious."

Singh raised one eyebrow. “Pushing your limits?"

"In terms of our equipment, asking more about it. At first they wouldn't ask at all, then gradually they got more interested and wanted to know more. Over time we'd show them a little more, to build bonds of trust and ensure they knew these were simply technological devices."

"They haven't pushed,” Juni objected. “They just ask. They're manifesting natural curiosity about new factors in their environment."

"What about when you said no?” Singh asked. “How did the Izkop react to that?"

Ariana spread her hands helplessly. “I doubt anyone ever simply said no. We're researchers. We've been trained in nonviolent conflict resolution. When the Izkop press us on something we divert them or find a way to address their concerns or whatever is necessary to keep the situation from escalating."

"And you had no indications that wasn't working?” Singh questioned. “Let me tell you what we heard on the way in. The civilians in Amity were sending out messages, both general emergency signals and specific calls for help. They showed video of large numbers of Izkop carrying spears surrounding that valley where your main settlement was located."

"Amity isn't a settlement,” Juni corrected. “It's a research installation."

"Fine. According to these messages, lots of Izkop were threatening the humans there. The same few messages kept auto-repeating. Now we know that must have been because the humans who sent them were already dead. Then the messages cut off after the first transmissions from our ship reached the planet. We figured the Izkop must have trashed the transmitters somehow to keep the humans here from replying to us, but actually the Izkop apparently just killed the signals once they knew we were being lured in."

"You're assuming a rather high level of sophistication in their planning of an act of violence,” Juni said. “How could the Izkop have learned how to take those actions and plan such an entrapment?"

Ariana turned an angry look on him. “Their legends are full of accounts of battles and ambushes."

"Literary and historical cultural inheritances can't realistically be employed to put into practice major changes in group inter-relational dynamics."

"The Izkop knew what they were doing,” Johansen said. “Not only did they lay a near-perfect ambush for us, but someone showed them how to handle a lot of the equipment there, and they figured out how to modify functions to use non-weapons as weapons."

"Everything we have is user friendly,” Ariana said in a low voice. “It's not that hard for anyone to grasp. All you need to do is navigate through simple touch menus to change settings. But at this outpost we never showed the Izkop much. Just the simplest things."

"And in Amity?” Singh asked.

"They . . . might have been forced to show more. A great deal more. If the Izkop threatened them. What you're describing seeing sounds like a dominance display."

Singh sat back, glancing at Johansen. “What's your opinion?"

"We're still missing a reason."

"Yeah."

His eyes glowing with rage, Scorse shouted at them. “They wanted our equipment and they were willing to kill for it! I know soldiers like you don't come from the best and brightest, but how hard is that to figure out?"

Singh kept his own voice dispassionate. “If the Izkop wanted your equipment, sir, why did they blow it all to hell?"

Scorse got up without replying and stormed into another part of the building.

Ariana spoke in a choked voice. “You're certain everyone else is dead?” Singh nodded, somber again. “Juni, could you look after the children alone for a few minutes?” She excused herself and went off, while Juni scowled and headed to a back room where the children must be.

"Lost her husband,” Adowa said in the silence after the civilians left. “Too bad we had to tell her."

"We didn't have a chance to save him,” Johansen said, knowing he sounded defensive.

"No. I'm just saying. Hard to hear, you know?"

"Yeah.” Scorse had lost his spouse as well, but cruel as it might be, Johansen couldn't muster up the same sympathy. Johansen looked around again as Juni led a small column of children out from the back room.

"See,” the young man told the children, “these soldiers are here now."

The soldiers nodded to the kids, who nodded solemnly back, their eyes big. “Are you taking us back to Amity?” one who looked about ten years old asked.

"No,” Singh said. “We'll be leaving on a ship with . . . everyone on the planet."

"Why are you here?"

"Why are we leaving?"

"Why can't we call home?"

"Where's my mom and dad?"

Singh hesitated, uncharacteristically uncertain, so Johansen forced a smile, standing up to convey genial authority. “Hey, guys, we're just soldiers here to do our jobs. You got your people here like Juni. They'll tell you anything they can, but right now a lot of it is secret. You understand?” The children nodded reluctantly, while Juni kept his eyes averted from them. “So you guys stay in the back. That's part of the secret. You have to keep hidden back there until the ship gets here. Okay?"

The children still looked doubtful. “But we've been in there for a loooong time,” one complained. "Days. And we hardly ever get to come out."

Archer smiled, too, as she winked conspiratorially at them. “We need your help, guys. This is a special game, like my buddy there says. Stay secret, stay hidden, stay cool.” The extra maternal boost must have been enough, because the kids smiled back and nodded.

Juni hesitated, then herded the kids into the back again, leaving the soldiers looking at each other.

"Thanks, Johansen. Thanks, Archer,” Singh said.

"Nyet problema, Sarge.” Archer gave the inner door a puzzled look. “Why'd he bring them out here? Like he was trying to dump them on us."

"He hasn't got kids of his own,” Adowa said. “You can tell. And he's really shook up by this. He didn't say it like the old son of a bitch did, but he's another one of those guys who think because they spent ten years in college they understand everything."

Johansen nodded. “Only he's realizing that he can't understand this. The real world is always a shock, but this is a lot worse than those guys usually deal with, and all he can do is take care of the kids."

"Well, I'd love to help,” Archer said, “but I got other things to do right now, and he doesn't."

"You can bet he realizes that, too, and isn't too thrilled to know it."

A few minutes later Burgos and Stein came back, Burgos shaking her head. “Just empty sheds out there. There's hay in a small barn for the cow. Nothing we can use. That shed where they had their emergency gear was completely trashed. Nothing usable in it. Why the hell didn't they have that stuff in here with them?"

Singh waved around. “Living quarters. You should know some of that survival gear isn't allowed to be stowed in living areas. Flares and stuff, because of the hazard. How's the back of this place look?"

"Solid wall. Maybe bad storms always come from that way. The sides of the building back from here have a couple of doors we need to seal off, but the only windows in those areas are slits high up. If we guard the front and sides of this room we'll be okay, though the Izkop could dig through at other places in time.” She sat down, holding her rifle across her chest, her expression gloomy.

"The civs have been milking that cow,” Stein offered. “Feeding it hay, too."

"The Izkop would have spotted that if there's any around,” Singh said, then looked over as Goldera and Nassar returned. “What'd you see?"

Goldera swung his arm in a wide arc through the east, north, and west. “They're out there, Sarge. I knew it. Lots of them. I could see groups of Izkop scattered all around in those directions. None of them seemed to be focused on here, but they were out there all over the place. Not real easy to see, either. I could only spot them when they moved. But it looked clear to the south."

"Clear?” Singh questioned.

"Yeah, Sarge. Not an Izkop in sight that way. There's decent cover and the terrain's easy. We could move fast."

Singh leaned back, frowning, then glanced at Johansen.

Johansen didn't hesitate. “Too easy.” Like the landing zone had looked.

"That's what I was thinking,” Singh said. “That good cover to the south could be hiding Izkop who aren't moving. Still, they might be expecting us to be keeping to the rougher territory, and there was another research outpost northwest of here they might think we were aiming for."

This time Johansen gestured toward the back of the house. “Those kids couldn't move fast. If it was just us, maybe. But not with them."

"Yeah, that pretty much settles it, doesn't it?” Singh looked out of the closest window. “Even if it's clear to the south, we can't go without leaving the civs here to the Izkop."

"It's a chance,” Goldera insisted. “Maybe our only chance to live."

Adowa gave him a hard look. “We've seen those kids. You should take a look, too. How you going to live knowing you left them to the Izkop?"

"That's the thing,” Singh agreed. “We came here to protect the civs. It looks like these are the only civs left, so I figure we have to stay here and protect them."

"But staying here won't make any difference,” Goldera protested. “I wasn't talking about leaving anybody, just us all making a run for it. I won't leave any kids."

"They couldn't keep up.” Singh looked around. “So we hold here as long as we can, soldiers. Let's get things set up for a siege. None of us were high enough in the food chain to know how close other ships are, or what time the Sara was supposed to send in her status pulse each day. Another ship might already be on the way, might get here in time to lift us all out, if we hold out long enough. Make sure those back doors are sealed and that there are no other ways in."

When Ariana returned, her eyes reddened but her expression determined, they tallied up the food resources at the outpost. “With you here as well as the children,” she said, “we probably have about six days worth of food left. We've already been cut off for a while and we're not set up for this population."

"What about the cow?” Stein asked. “She's pretty well-fed. Lot of meat on her. I can do the butchering."

Ariana gave him a wan look. “The cow is . . . was . . . an experiment, to see how the Izkop would react to her. We were hoping . . . her milk has helped stretch our supplies."

"I understand, ma'am,” Stein assured her. “A milk-cow isn't like a beef animal. People get attached to them. But it looks like we'll need that meat."

"We wait six days,” Singh decided. “On the seventh day, if no relief ship has shown up, we kill the cow.” The sergeant stood up, stretching, much harder to see as darkness fell rapidly with the disappearance of the sun. “We're all exhausted, too tired to keep talking tonight, but the Izkop are out there. We stand watches, two hours each, until sunrise. You handle the schedule, Johansen. Make sure the sentries know not to show themselves and not to show any lights, and to wake the rest of us if they hear anything even if it doesn't sound dangerous."

"Yes, sergeant."

Johansen saw and heard nothing unusual during his portion of the watch that night. None of the others reported detecting activity, either. But at dawn Johansen was awakened by a string of curses recited in a monotonous tone by Singh. “What happened?"

"Take a look,” Singh offered, beckoning out the window he was kneeling beside with Burgos, who had the last watch. “Everybody else, get up now!"

Raising himself cautiously, Johansen felt a pit open inside him as he looked at what the dawn's light had revealed. The area around the compound and for about five hundred meters beyond was empty, but outside that what seemed to be a solid mass of Izkop stood in apparently endless ranks, spears in their hands, gazing silently at the human building. Like the Izkop they had fought in the valley, these wore no armor, just odd pants which came only partway down the upper legs and partway up the abdomen.

"I didn't hear anything," Burgos said, her hands twisting on her rifle as she stared at the Izkop.

"Nobody heard anything,” Singh replied. “Or saw anything. These guys are very good at concealment, but we're also too used to depending on the sensors in the armor to hear and see trouble."

Ariana gazed out with a hopeless expression, Juni seemed puzzled as well as frightened, while Scorse glared hatred.

The other soldiers took positions at the windows, weapons ready. Most of them simply muttered despairing curses, but after Stein had gazed out for a while he looked troubled. “Sarge?” he questioned. “There's a lot of them. I don't think we got enough ammo."

Adowa started laughing, then Johansen joined in, then Archer, Goldera, and Nassar. Even Singh laughed, and finally Stein added his hoots to the mix. Only Burgos sat silent, as well as all of the civilians, who were now watching the soldiers in amazement.

"Why are you laughing?” Juni finally asked.

That just made them laugh again, loud and long, even Burgos gasping a few bitter snorts, Johansen himself feeling the darkness inside, the certainty of doom which only dark, irrational humor could keep at bay. He noticed that Singh had stopped laughing, though, and was gazing thoughtfully out the window. “What's up?"

"They're listening,” Singh commented as the last chuckles died away. “You could tell they were listening to us laugh, and watching us. Do the Izkop understand human laughter?” he asked Ariana.

"Yes,” she said, hurrying to look out the window beside the sergeant. “They have a capacity for mirth that seems similar to our own, though I don't understand any of their jokes. I can't tell from here how they're reacting to your laughter. Their facial muscles don't show emotions in the same ways ours do, so it wouldn't be easy even if we were closer.” Ariana sat back, her eyes now on the soldiers. “That display. It's meant to impress. To frighten enemies. But you all laughed."

"Is that going to make them mad?” Adowa asked sarcastically.

"There's an Izkop phrase that I think translates as greeting death with smiles.’ They use it in their legends, to describe heroes.” Ariana took another cautious look outside. “See those Izkop gathered together, the ones with the tattoos and decorations? Those are leaders. They're talking, and I'm sure it's about you laughing when they expected you to be overawed."

"Let's give them something else to talk about,” Nassar suggested, hefting the buzz-saw. “Hey!” he called. “Whenever you're ready! Come and get it!"

"Quiet,” Singh ordered. “Ma'am, do you know them well enough to see if they'll talk to you? Maybe arrange a truce or something?"

Ariana hesitated. “I don't know if they'll—what did they do at Amity? To . . . everyone else? Did they just kill them or . . . ?"

Singh pressed his lips together before answering. “The dead we saw were lying face up, cut open from chest to groin, their guts spread out around them. We saw the Izkop doing the same thing to dead soldiers on other parts of the field while we were shooting our way out."

Ariana looked ill, her body shaking. “Why . . . ? Sergeant, I . . . I..."

"That's okay. If you can't stand dealing with them now—"

She held up one hand, palm out, her voice steadying even though she seemed to be fighting off nausea. “I have to. For everyone's sake. If they'll listen. But I don't know why they—I'll call to them from here.” Ariana visibly braced herself, then stood up, looking out the window, and called out some words in another language, her voice straining over glottal stops and other sounds.

The Izkop leaders ignored her, continuing their conference, then abruptly gesturing and calling out commands. With eerie synchronization the entire force of Izkop began stepping back, slowly retreating with their faces to the humans. They kept going until at least a kilometer distant, then the formations broke and the Izkop seemed to melt into the landscape.

"What the hell happened?” Goldera asked. “Not that I'm complaining, but why didn't they kill us just then?"

Singh rubbed his chin, then looked at Ariana. “Because we laughed at them?"

"Yes, but they stayed in threat posture,” she responded. “And they ignored my attempts to talk to them. I'm not . . . oh . . . the peace of the warrior before death.’ That's what it means."

"So they'll hit us later?"

"Yes.” Ariana sagged, her face in her hands. “It's a mark of respect, not a reprieve. There's no set period for the peace that I could determine."

The sergeant nodded calmly. “At least it's obvious they know we're here. Two on watch at all times,” he ordered the soldiers, “the rest get to work fortifying and blockading all the windows and doors as best we can. Don't worry any more about keeping the barricading concealed from the outside. If the Izkop haven't hit us by the time we're done with that, those off-watch will rest so we'll be ready to keep two sentries on at a time all night."

"What about us?” Ariana asked.

"Look after those kids and keep them quiet, ma'am. It'd be a big help if you all also took care of meals for everyone."

The peace before death had lasted all day. Now, long after sunset, Johansen sat near one window, searching the outside for any signs of Izkop. On the other side of the room, Stein stood sentry at another window. No lights showed inside or out, and the stars and three small moons of this world provided very little illumination.

Johansen had learned that you found out a lot when sitting silently on sentry duty at night. No human noises around, just you and the quiet broken only by the night sounds of whatever place you were in. Listening and watching, you could hear and feel the rhythm of the creatures and the land. And once you knew that rhythm, you could tell when something was disturbing it.

Of course, without the colors and noises and activity of the day to act as distractions, ghosts came at night, too. Johansen tried to ignore the phantoms brought to life by his memories, but still the ghosts sometimes appeared in the stillness of the night.

Ariana came out of the back, hesitated, then came to sit on the floor near Johansen, her back to the wall, hugging herself.

Johansen watched her for a moment before speaking. “You okay?"

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “You mean for someone expecting to die very soon?"

"Yeah.” Their voices were barely murmurs, just loud enough for the other to hear.

"No. I'm not okay.” Ariana clenched her eyes shut in anger. “Why? I know what's happened, but I don't know why. It's my job to try to understand the way others think. Is it too much to ask that I be allowed to understand why my husband died and why I'm going to die and why those children have to die?"

Johansen ran one hand down his weapon, concentrating on the curves and edges of it under his palm. “People always die sooner or later. Why do any of us have to die?"

"I'm not talking about philosophy."

"Neither am I.” Johansen gave her a rueful smile. “I've seen a lot of people die. Most of the time, I couldn't tell you why they died. Especially I couldn't tell you why they died and not me."

She returned a curious look. “Most of the time? Meaning sometimes you could tell why they died?"

"Sure. Sometimes they died because I shot them."

After a long moment, Ariana spoke slowly. “That was a joke?"

"Yeah,” Johansen said. “Soldier humor. Some of it's pretty dark, but you either joke about it or let it give you nightmares. Sometimes both."

"Greeting death with a smile?"

"Yeah. It's nuts, but it keeps us going."

She studied him, shaking her head. “You see, I never understood that greeting death with a smile phrase. What did it mean? None of the other humans here I talked to could understand it, either. They blew it off as some kind of symbolism. I thought it must be an Izkop way of thinking, embracing death under certain circumstances. But you showed it. You and the others, and none of you want to die. Now, I think maybe I understand a little. It's not about welcoming death, it's more about laughing at death to push fear aside."

"Yeah, I guess that's right. No soldiers here, huh?"

"No. We're all researchers.” Ariana looked down. “What Scorse said, about soldiers being..."

"Low-class creatures with limited intellect?” Johansen asked, grinning at her reaction. “That's something Sergeant Singh calls us sometimes. But only when he's unhappy with us. One of the things you learn as a soldier, though, is that everybody's got some experience, some way of thinking that might be useful. Most people, anyway. I've met a few who couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time, but only a few. You need all kinds. I've been around enough to know that everything can't be solved with firepower. Right now, I guess that's all we've got, but I wouldn't mind some other options. At least there's something we can do. I don't know what it's like for you and the other civilians."

"We're not used to any of this,” Ariana said. “The danger. Taking care of the children. Scorse isn't helping at all with that, and even though Juni's okay with children, I can tell he resents acting as a baby-sitter."

"Well, yeah, big shot research guy, huh? I mean, he seems okay, but that's the sort of job he figures he's supposed to pay other people to do. You said none of the kids here are yours?"

Ariana shuddered again. “No."

"That's one good thing, then."

"Yes.” She stared at Johansen. “Having children at Amity was a demonstration that we were here in peace. We kept the numbers limited so it didn't appear we were settling here. It was all supposed to show that this was peaceful and not aggressive."

Johansen made a noncommittal gesture. “I guess the Izkop didn't see it that way."

"Or it somehow didn't matter to them even if they did see what we intended.” Ariana clenched her fists and her jaw, the muscles standing out clearly even in the darkness. “We all thought that we understood them well enough to know if anything was wrong, and I still have no idea why they massacred everyone at Amity. Or what the mutilation after death means. One thing I do know is that the Izkop consider children to be purer of spirit than adults. It may not be a coincidence that the Izkop moved against Amity when the children left to come here for a few days, but why that would matter if they intend killing us here as well is one more thing I don't understand."

After a long silence, Johansen cleared his throat softly. “I dated a woman for quite a while once. Moved in with each other and all that. I thought everything was fine, that we understood each other, and then one day she left. Said she'd been telling me what was bothering her, and when I didn't respond it just made her more upset."

Ariana met his eyes. “But you hadn't noticed anything?"

"Nope.” Johansen looked out at the darkness, not wanting to see the fear and sorrow in her. Instead his mind conjured up a vision of Maria standing at the door to their place, her face twisted with anger, yelling at him. How could you not know? I kept telling you! A door slammed and Johansen started with pulse pounding and weapon coming up before he realized that sound had only echoed in his memory. “We think we can understand aliens when we can't even communicate with other humans half the time."

"I suppose that's true.” Ariana bit her lip. “It's our job to understand, though, just as it's your job to fight. How could the Izkop have killed so many soldiers? Your sergeant explained, but none of us really understood."

He didn't want to recall that, but the question deserved an answer. “Um, well, when you fight, you need someone watching your sides and your back, right? Usually, that someone can be a good distance off, but against a whole mob you need them right there, otherwise while you're shooting forward some others can get behind you and grab your arms and stuff.” Johansen shrugged, hoping the hammering of his heart at the memories of the massacre wasn't too obvious to her. “Like Sergeant Singh said, the battalion was scattered all over the valley."

"But why were you scattered? Didn't your leaders, your commanders, know that you needed to watch each other's backs?"

"Well . . . there was talk the captain, our company commander that is, was unhappy with the plan, but the colonel, he was in charge of the whole operation, was set on dropping in a wide formation,” Johansen explained. “Because it was a rescue op. We could see Izkop on the hills around the valley, in lots and lots of small groups. The colonel wanted us to cover lots of territory so we'd be wherever the civilians were in the valley. If we just dropped in a tight group then some or even all the civs might be outside the group and then the Izkop could rush in and massacre them.” It seemed funny now, in a sick way. “We didn't know the Izkop had already massacred the civs at Amity, and hidden themselves all over the valley. So we got massacred, too.

"We knew they were in the hills but didn't see them waiting in the valley itself. Maybe your people showed them how IR gear and stuff like that works. They figured out how to hide from it, and our leaders didn't figure they'd do that. Just a bunch of spear-chucking primitives, right? There they are, no need to look around any more, no need to deploy special battlefield recce, especially when those civs need us now! So we dropped right in as if the whole landing zone was empty. Only it wasn't. Someone wants to kill you that bad, usually there's a real strong reason. I guess I'd like to know what the reason is, too."

"They destroyed everything in Amity, you told us,” she said. “That has to be a clue. Have I mentioned Prometheus?"

"Prometheus? The Titan who stole fire from the gods?"

"You know about that Prometheus?” She smiled, then looked embarrassed. “I'm sorry. I—"

"No offense taken, ma'am."

"My students call me Professor Tisrok. My friends call me Ariana. No one calls me ma'am."

He couldn't help grinning at her. “So what am I?"

"Call me Ariana. The Izkop legends have a figure I call Prometheus. But the status of the Izkop Prometheus is confusing to me. Is he a god? Or a demon? He seems to be both. The Izkop value knowledge, but also fear having their souls corrupted by accepting things stolen from the gods."

"You think maybe the Izkop decided humans were working with Prometheus?” Johansen asked.

"Maybe,” she said cautiously. “But our policies should have prevented the Izkop from ever thinking that. We never gave them anything. What happened that translated into massacre? What did the Izkop think happened? If only..."

"Yeah?"

Ariana clenched her jaw again. “My professional opinions aren't popular. There's a lot of politics in academia. I believe that mythologies, religious beliefs, tell you a lot about how sentient creatures think. That's not fashionable right now. The orthodox, prevailing view in my field is that myths and religions are just window-dressing, not really fundamental to world-views and not regarded by cultures as serious explanations for how the universe works."

Johansen gave her a baffled look. “Where did anyone get that idea?"

"If everyone you work with and socialize with thinks like that, then it's very easy to believe that it's true of everyone else.” Ariana sighed. “Like Juni, most of my colleagues back at Amity even argued that the Izkop aren't truly warlike, that the spears and the battle practices and everything else are just vestigial and symbolic. They look at a primitive society and see the noble savage."

"Noble savage?” Johansen shook his head, his eyes searching the darkness outside. “How does someone be noble and savage? And how does that correlate with being primitive?"

She laughed briefly, the sound filled with pain. “Those are exactly the sort of questions that I ask. Some very technological human societies have been very savage. Noble primitives seem to be something people want to believe in, like . . . like..."

"Hookers with hearts of gold?"

"Yes! Those are probably as rare in real life as noble savages."

"So,” Johansen asked, “what do noble savages do?"

Ariana sighed, shaking her head. “I've been told by experts senior to me that the Izkop with their primitive technology are so closely connected to their world that they understand their place in the universe much better than we do."

"How exactly does that work?” Johansen asked after a long moment.

She caught the hint of mockery in his voice. “That's a question that Juni would answer with many words made up of many syllables. I don't believe the logic behind them. That's why I was posted out here, where I wouldn't bother others any more with my skepticism. Now perhaps I've been proven right, and those experts are now dead in Amity, and it hurts so bad. If only I'd been wrong.” Her voice broke on the last words.

"You being wrong wouldn't have meant they were right."

She gave him a tormented look. “Perhaps there's something more I could have done. Something that could have saved everyone."

He watched the night outside for a moment being replying, glad that her presence had driven off the ghosts. “Nobody can save everybody. It's not your fault.” He'd been told that, years ago. He hadn't believed it. Not really. He wondered if she would.

Ariana inhaled deeply, then fell silent, so they just sat there for a long time until she dozed off and Adowa came to relieve him on the watch. Adowa raised a questioning eyebrow at Johansen as she pointed at Ariana, but he just shook his head and gestured for quiet.

When dawn came, there were no Izkop visible. Johansen felt hope stir.

The morning dragged on with nothing moving outside except the wandering path of the cow and an occasional sighting of a wild creature in the grass or the sky. Archer nursed her comm unit but heard nothing. They checked and rechecked the barricades at the doors and larger windows. Singh moved from soldier to soldier, giving advice and calming talks, but no one said much, as if afraid too much conversation would draw the Izkop out.

Juni had been pacing back and forth most of the morning, and now peered out the window toward the cow, which mooed piteously. “I should go out. I'll get the milk and come back. The Izkop aren't doing anything today."

Singh shook his head. “No, sir. Please stay inside."

"But it's safe. It's almost noon and—"

Ariana suddenly gasped. “Noon. The banner of the sun flaming its highest.’ Sergeant, one Izkop myth says that's when heroes die."

"And they might think we're heroes? Everybody to the windows!” Singh barked at the soldiers. “Ma'am, you and the others get in with the kids. Call us if there's any sign the Izkop are trying to get in through the back."

Ariana ran toward the rear of the building, grabbing Juni as she went, but Scorse fended her off. “I'll stay out here,” he growled.

Johansen took a long slow breath, his rifle resting on the sill of the window. Behind him, the door to the back room shut. Outside, a flying creature spiraled into the air from the surface of the meadow. “Something scared it,” Goldera said. “They're out there."

Shouts echoed between the bluffs. The Izkop seemed to rise out of the ground a kilometer away and came forward at a steady pace, staying shoulder to shoulder as they moved. “Hold fire until I give the command!” Singh called, also kneeling at a window. “Make every shot count!"

"Hell, Sarge,” Goldera commented, “with them lined up like that even Archer couldn't miss."

"Shut up,” Archer snapped back at him, sounding for a moment more annoyed than scared.

As the Izkop drew closer, Johansen found himself focusing on small things. The way their hips worked as they moved, not quite like a human's would. The bright gleam of the short stabbing spears every Izkop carried. The faces that seemed curiously impassive to human eyes. The tough vegetation being crushed beneath the serried ranks of Izkop.

"Fire!"

Johansen aimed and fired as fast as he could, the solid oncoming block of Izkop an impossible-to-miss target. To his right he heard the thunderous whirr of the buzz-saw pumping out rounds, Nassar walking the stream of bullets across the formation to drop Izkop like a scythe felling reeds in long lines.

The Izkop came inside the fence, rushing toward the building, while the soldiers fired, reloaded, and fired again. The entire compound seemed to be packed with Izkop, a seething mass that lapped against the building like a flood, then abruptly pulled back, retreating to the fence and continuing their withdrawal.

"Cease fire!” Another shot rang out and Singh glowered at Burgos. “Cease fire, dam-mit!"

"Oh, man.” Goldera stared at the mounds of dead Izkop outside. “They're crazy. They just kept coming. We are so dead."

"They'll be back,” Singh agreed, “but we're not dead yet."

A wild mooo echoed through the sky, followed by the appearance of the cow trotting quickly across the yard, her panic-stricken eyes huge and rolling as she dodged the piles of dead.

The soldiers simply watched it wordlessly for a long moment before Archer said something in a wondering voice. “They didn't kill the cow?"

Another long silence, then Stein spoke with great deliberation. “Maybe they like cows."

Archer grinned, too wide and too stressed for the gesture to represent real humor. “Next time they hit us, I'm going to be behind that cow."

"No. I mean it. Maybe they're like Sarge's people."

Singh bent a severe look on Stein. “I'm a Sikh, not a Hindu."

"Oh. Right."

"Anybody hurt? No? Ammo inventory,” Singh ordered.

Nassar waved toward the discarded buzz-saw. “I've got sixty-five rifle rounds left, but the machine gun's out. Now it's only good for hitting them over the head with."

"We'll probably need it for that,” Adowa said. “Thirty-two rifle rounds remaining, Sarge, plus twenty for my pistol."

"I got forty,” Archer reported. “Uh, no pistol,” she added unnecessarily since as the comm carrier she didn't also lug a side arm.

"Thirty-one,” Stein said in an apologetic voice. “And one clip for the pistol. That's twenty, right?"

"You taking time to aim again, Stein?” Goldera joked in a strained voice. “I got twenty-nine for the rifle. No pistol."

"What happened to your side arm?” Johansen demanded.

"I dunno. When we got clear of the dropship it wasn't there. I didn't think I should go back looking for it."

"Eleven rounds rifle, twenty pistol,” Burgos said, then looked away when Singh glared at her again.

"We need to exercise fire discipline,” the sergeant said coldly. “Corporal?"

"Twenty-four and twenty for the pistol,” Johansen said.

Singh looked out the window, his eyes calculating. “We might be able to fight off another attack before the ammo is gone. Maybe not. Then it'll be hand-to-hand."

"They got a lot more hands than we do,” Adowa said. “Any chance we can get some of those spears off the bodies out there? Those have more reach than our combat knives."

"It wouldn't hurt.” Singh turned his gaze back on them. “Not at night. It'd give us cover, but it'd give the Izkop a lot more. Any volunteers to go out there now?"

Johansen blew out a tired breath into the silence. “I'll go."

"Me, too,” Goldera hastened to add. The others removed the barricade at the front door enough for the two to slip out, then Johansen and Goldera scuttled toward some of the dead Izkop, staying low.

Johansen grabbed some of the spears, watching carefully in case any of the Izkop were playing possum and still able to stab. He passed the spears to Goldera, who kept one eye on the fields beyond the compound. “Hey, corporal,” Goldera whispered.

"Yeah?"

"You scared?"

"Damn right."

"Me, too,” Goldera confessed. “If you get out of this and I don't, write my mama and tell her I did okay even though I was scared. Will you do that?"

"Sure.” He picked up a final two spears. “That's two apiece for all of us. Let's get back inside."

"You got anybody you want me to tell anything if you don't make it?” Goldera asked Johansen.

Johansen didn't have to think about it. “Nah. Not anymore.” Then they squeezed inside and the door was sealed again in their wake.

Singh had them all try out the spears, which Johansen found to be well balanced for stabbing though far too front-heavy for throwing. Then everyone settled down again, the civilian adults once again all in the front room. “It's hard being in there with the kids,” Juni complained. “They keep asking what's happening, when they're going home, can they talk to their parents. We told them to play and stay quiet."

"It's going to be a long afternoon,” Singh observed. “Tell us something about the Izkop,” he asked the civilian researchers.

Scorse grimaced. “I'm a planetary geologist. I never cared about them."

Juni shrugged. “I'm a planetary ecologist. I don't study one species, I study the whole system. I received my doctorate at Old Harvard under Professor Haddleton, you know. I know how everything contributes to the whole."

"Wow,” Adowa commented in a non-committal tone.

That left Ariana, who gave Scorse and Juni cross looks before speaking. “I'm not an expert on them. I study mythic structures."

"That probably makes you the biggest living expert,” Burgos grumbled.

Ariana winced as Singh and Johansen both pinned Burgos with glares. “That's true. What do you want to know about the Izkop?"

"We know they're farmers and herders. That was in the predrop brief.” Singh gestured outward. “Tell us something about how they think. You said something about heroes before. Meeting death with smiles. What kind of heroes have the Izkop got?"

Ariana hesitated. “There's one hero they call the pass-holder. Their greatest hero. I call him Horatio, after an ancient human hero who held a bridge. The Izkop Horatio held a pass against demons that were trying to wipe out the ancestors of the Izkop. He died holding the pass. I haven't been able to figure out whether they revere him for saving their ancestors, or for dying while holding the pass. I have a feeling their admiration has at least partly to do with the fact that he died, and would be the same even if he hadn't succeeded. I mean, presumably there wouldn't be any Izkop if he'd failed, but what mattered was that he died. Or was willing to die. I think."

"Hmmm.” Singh blew out a long breath, his eyes still on the outside. “This Horatio was one of the founders of their race?"

"No. He was something separate. That mattered, too. He wasn't of them but he died saving them. Does that make sense?"

"It does to me,” Goldera commented. “The whole Jesus thing, right?"

"Well, yes, but Horatio wasn't the son of their God. The Izkop don't have one God. They have many gods, and each of those gods is many things. The theology is incredibly complex,” Ariana continued, warming to her talk. “Each god can look like anybody or anything. Disguise, concealment, is very big in the Izkop myths and legends. Disguised gods and demons are everywhere, either looking for Izkop to reward for their deeds or trying to corrupt the Izkop with temptations."

"Like the Prometheus guy you told me about?” Johansen said.

"Prometheus.” Ariana shook her head. “He's very hard to figure out. I use the name Pro-metheus for him because he steals the gifts of the gods and tries to give them to the Izkop, like ancient Greek myths say the Titan Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans."

"What did the other gods do to Prometheus for stealing their secrets?” Johansen asked. “In the Greek myths didn't Prometheus get chained to a mountain?"

"Yes!” Ariana gave Johansen a happy look, clearly pleased to have found a kindred spirit. “He was chained to a mountain and a vulture ate his liver every day. Since he was immortal the liver regrew every night. But the Izkop Prometheus, if I understand it right, hasn't been punished because the gods can't catch him."

"Because he can look like anybody and anything?” Goldera asked.

"Exactly, only Prometheus and the other gods and demons, aren't really he.’ Each one is they’ because they're simultaneously different sexes and no sex."

Goldera squinted at her for a moment. “This isn't a Garden of Eden type thing?"

"No, for a couple of reasons. Prometheus is always trying to give the gods’ secrets to the Izkop. It's an ongoing crime or temptation, rather than some ancient act. And also because the gods can't catch and punish Prometheus. Only the Izkop can identify Prometheus. From what I've seen in their mythology, with its emphasis on disguises, the Izkop put a great deal of importance on actions, not appearance."

"Kind of the opposite of humans?” Adowa remarked dryly.

"In a way, yes. Even though humans don't look the same as them, the Izkop didn't seem bothered by that when we landed. I think it's because the Izkop always cared more about what we did than they do about our appearance. It's possible,” Ariana continued in a cautious voice, “that the Izkop have as much trouble seeing emotions in each others’ expressions as humans do trying to see feelings in an Izkop. We're not sure. The emphasis on actions over looks might be the result of them all naturally having what we'd call poker faces."

Nassar shook his head. “What'd the people in the valley do, then? Are you saying the Izkop are reacting to something the humans did?"

Scorse had fixed a burning gaze on Ariana, who pretended to ignore it. “I think something must have happened which made the Izkop believe that we had done something."

"They blew up everything,” Archer said. “That tells us something, right? Did they think all of the human equipment had come from this Prometheus guy?"

"They couldn't have! We didn't give them anything. That was a firm rule."

"You said people showed them stuff,” Adowa noted.

"Well . . . yes,” Ariana conceded. “But there were rules. Let them see things, so they could understand they were just tools, nothing magic or accursed. And the Izkop have gradually shown more interest in our equipment. They know some human words, and the most common ones we hear are probably show us use it.’ So we show them how we use something. They've been asking that more, from what I understand, and why would they be doing that if they thought our equipment was the property of the gods?"

"It's natural curiosity,” Juni said in a low voice. “Universal survival behaviors linked to integrated conceptualization of their environment. Not superstition."

Ariana sighed. “If the Izkop thought our equipment was something stolen by Prometheus from the gods, if they thought we humans were working for or with Prometheus, why would they keep showing interest in the equipment? And if showing interest in the equipment is okay for them, how could that have triggered a massacre?"

"It doesn't make sense,” Singh agreed.

"It doesn't make sense to us," Johansen said.

Burgos spoke in a flat voice. “They're going to kill us, and they've already killed a lot of people. Who cares why? All we can do is kill as many of them as we can."

Annoyed at how Burgos had dismissed Ariana, Johansen shook his head. “I'd like to know why someone or something wants to kill me, and if I can understand that maybe I can figure out how to stay alive."

"Right,” Singh said. “We need every advantage we can get. It's too bad we don't know more about the Izkop."

Juni flushed and stood up abruptly, as if the comment had somehow been aimed at him. “I'm going to milk the cow. It needs it, and we need the milk."

"Juni?” Ariana stared at him. “After that attack? You're not serious."

"Of course I'm serious.” He pointed toward the back room. “We need the milk. And it's obvious that the Izkop won't stop me. They haven't stopped me any other time."

"Juni—"

"Why would they hurt me? I'm not a threat to them. I'm not posturing as a threat. I've always gotten along with them. I'm an ecologist! They're close to the land. They understand living in harmony, in balance. I don't disrupt the balance.” Juni held up the milk bucket, his face pale but determined. “I'm going out. It'll take fifteen minutes. I'll be fine."

Ariana cast a pleading look at Singh, who shook his head. “Sir, I think you'll die if you go out there."

Juni kept addressing Ariana. “The Izkop need to see some normal, routine behaviors. Something that indicates that we understand how things are interconnected. I'll show them that we are working to get the environmental imperative back in balance. That always works. Analyze the system and take corrective action. Right now they're reacting to the presence of these soldiers, this disruptive factor in the eco-system, so everything's out of balance."

"Sir,” Singh said carefully, “there weren't any soldiers around when the Izkop wiped out everyone in the valley."

"And we have only your word for that, don't we? How long has the military really been here and what did they do? We had no problems here until soldiers came!"

Adowa had the look of someone who couldn't believe what she was hearing. “What we did was come here to try to save your butts and lost a lot of friends. No problems here? What happened to your friends and their truck? What happened to your emergency equipment?"

"There's something you're not telling us,” Juni insisted, “or more likely something you don't know. I've supervised assistants. You're just . . . workers. No disrespect, but you have very limited perspectives. I know the big picture, and I can fit in the details. I understand what's happening. And that's why I know I need to stop acting as an au pair and get to work as an expert in ecological synergism!"

"By risking your life to milk a cow?” Ariana asked in despair. “Juni, there's plenty of room for guilt in the misjudgments we all must have made, but blaming others and throwing your life away won't make up for any errors that led to this mess.” She looked toward Scorse for support, but he just glowered at the floor.

Juni flushed again. “It sounds like you're judging me already. If my projections and assessments were sub-optimal, it was due to independently functioning variables whose impact on the planetary organism could not be forecast."

"Sergeant, can't you stop him?” Ariana asked.

"No, ma'am. I have no place to lock him up, no one to spare to guard him, and if I did lock him up or tie him up that'd just mean he died helpless when the Izkop overran the place.” Singh looked at Juni. “Sir, I advise against this in the strongest possible terms."

"I know what I'm doing,” Juni said.

"If you're determined to go out there then Goldera will go with you to the side door and bar it behind you. He'll open it only when he hears you call from the other side and confirms that there's no Izkop with you. Understand?"

"If that's required to satisfy you. I'll be back pretty quickly, and then you'll see how the Izkop react to proper non-confrontational stimuli."

An hour passed, Goldera calling out occasionally to reassure them that he was okay but that Juni had not returned. Ariana sat huddled together, her face a mask of resignation and despair, until the children raised a fuss and she had to go in to deal with them. Scorse might have been made of stone, staring silently across the room.

Finally, Singh gave Johansen permission to look for Juni. “Don't leave the building. Just do a visual recce of the yard."

Taking Adowa along, Johansen led the way to the side entry still barred shut and guarded by Goldera. “Still nothing?"

"Not a sound. Haven't heard anything except that cow mooing every once in a while."

"Okay. We open it quick and I look out. Hopefully if any Izkop are waiting we'll surprise them. If they rush us, get that door sealed even if I'm stuck on the other side. Got it?” Adowa and Goldera nodded.

Johansen took up position near the door, his weapon held at shoulder height, ready to fire. Adowa and Goldera, working together, yanked open the bars and pulled the door open fast without regard for the noise, then Johansen stepped into the opening, quivering with tension.

The yard lay silent in the afternoon light. From here, none of the Izkop bodies littering the front of the compound were visible. About a hundred meters distant in the barn, the cow stood looking back at him blankly. After carefully studying everything he could see for signs of Izkop, Johansen focused on the figure sprawled several meters from the door.

Juni's body lay face up, his abdomen torn open and entrails spread to either side, his mouth still open in a silent cry, his expression locked into incomprehension.

Adowa edged to the door and took a look. “From the way he bled, they killed him fast and quiet, then tore him open."

"How?” Goldera gasped. “I was listening. I didn't hear anything!"

Johansen pointed toward the milk bucket lying in the dirt, the soil around it wet with spilled milk. “They let him milk the cow before they killed him. They really seem to care about that animal."

"Sure wish I was that cow,” Adowa muttered.

"Yeah.” Stepping back inside, Johansen gestured to the others. “Seal it."

"We going to leave him out there?"

Johansen hesitated. “There's no place to put him in here. We'll bury him proper if we get the chance later."

"More likely we'll be lying out here with him,” Adowa said. “I sure hope I'm dead when they cut me open.” She gave Johansen a sharp look. “Neither of you guys are going to make any comments about Old Harvard?"

Johansen looked at the dead man and shook his head. “Nah. Overkill."

"Yeah,” Goldera agreed.

Ariana took the news with a sad nod.

Scorse finally spoke once more. “I'll use one of those spears next time they attack. I'll stay here and fight."

All Ariana did was nod again. “Sergeant, I'd appreciate help with getting the meal."

"Johansen. You and Archer. Eat while you're helping so you can stand watch while the rest of us eat."

The Izkop came in the night this time, their numbers undiminished, filling the yard as the soldiers emptied their rifles and pulled out their pistols, the piles of dead Izkop forming ramps in front of the windows so that some Izkop came running and hurling themselves inside while others smashed through the front entry. The soldiers’ weapons had little muzzle flash, providing just enough light to see the masses of Izkop as the soldiers fired, then the last pistol was empty and they fought in the dark, stabbing with knife and spear at smaller figures, Johansen being forced backwards toward the rear of the room and praying that he wouldn't accidentally spit either Archer or Goldera. He could hear Scorse over by Stein, the civilian yelling obscenities as he fought with an Izkop spear. Burgos also shouted from her post near the door until her voice fell silent.

Pain burned as a spear went into his thigh. Johansen thrust back, despairing as the bodies pushed forward, shouting in the Izkop language, then as he made another stab Johansen realized the pressure had lessened, that the movement of the enemy had changed. The area in front of him held only a couple of Izkop, then none as the aliens fell back through the door and windows again, leaving the humans alone in the building.

There was a moment of strange almost- silence then, the only noises the harsh breathing of the soldiers trying to catch their breath and the faint sounds of the mass of Izkop fading into the night. Sergeant Singh spoke first. “I'm moving to the door. I'm there. All the Izkop here seem dead. Burgos is on the threshold. She's got a dozen spears in her. No pulse. Everybody else report."

"Johansen here,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Got a bad wound in one thigh. Everything else seems minor."

"Adowa. Got one or two deep cuts in my right arm and lots of minor stuff."

"Nassar. Just small stuff. I'll live."

"Goldera. Small cuts. Except I think maybe I lost a finger. Oh, man, I lost two."

After a pause, Singh called out. “Stein. You still with us?"

The answer came from Nassar. “Here he is by the window. Oh, hell. Stein's dead, Sarge. So's that civ, Scorse."

"Damn. Archer? Archer?"

No answer.

"We need to find Archer, people,” Singh ordered. “Adowa, Johansen, Goldera, you three patch each other up enough to stop major bleeding. Nassar, look for Archer now unless the other three need first aid help. I'll keep an eye on the outside."

They fumbled in the darkness, cursing, until Singh told them to use hand lights. “The Izkop know we're here. Use enough light to take care of bad wounds and find Archer. She must be buried under some of the dead Izkop. And make sure all of those Izkop in here are dead."

Half an hour later, med patches melding into their skin to seal off the worst injuries and stop bleeding, the five remaining soldiers halted their search of the building. “She's gone, Sarge,” Nassar said. “Archer's not here. They took her."

"The comm unit is gone, too,” Adowa reported. “Why'd they take Archer?"

Goldera replied in a bone-weary voice. “Why not ask why they stopped and left? We were all dead in another minute or two. Why'd they stop?"

No one tried to answer that. Johansen sagged against a table, looking out into the darkness, feeling no hope, no curiosity, just tiredness and a resigned sort of fear.

An inside door opened, spilling pale radiance across the front room littered with dead. Ariana stood in the doorway, her breath catching at the sight of them still standing. “The children are scared. They heard all the fighting. What do I tell them?"

"Damned if I know, ma'am,” Singh said. “I guess all you can tell them is that we're still here."

"That's a lot,” she finally replied. “They still believe in heroes."

Johansen felt himself straightening up at her words, standing a little taller despite his weariness and injuries, and noticed the others doing the same.

After Ariana had closed the door again, Nassar gusted a single soft and sardonic laugh. “If we got to die anyway, it's nice to know someone appreciates it."

Sergeant Singh nodded, his expression impossible to make out in the dark. “We got one more fight left in us. Two-hour sentry duty, one soldier on at a time so the others can rest."

"You don't think they'll come again tonight, Sarge?” Goldera asked.

"I still don't know what they'll do, let alone why they're doing it. All we can do is protect those kids for one more night, and hope that effort of ours somehow matters to the Izkop when they've got the kids at their mercy."

Johansen had the watch when the sky began paling with dawn's light. He sat on the floor, leaning against the wall next to the window, looking outward, an Izkop spear in one hand, as the growing daylight began turning the vague, gray shapes of night into clear objects with color and meaning. The med patch kept his thigh numb, and while that served as a reminder of the wound it covered, it also meant that when just sitting here he could pretend it wasn't a bad injury. Sitting quietly felt right anyway. In that strange stillness that dawn always held, there might have been nothing else living on the entire planet except for themselves and the distant shape of one of the local flying predators wheeling across the sky.

Silence and stillness. The right and left hands of death, someone had called them. She had died, too, on a planet far distant, gone cold and quiet like the mounds of Izkop here lying forlorn in the growing light. He thought about other dawns to come, without him around anymore. The idea felt impossible, and strange, even after all he had seen.

Archer was out there somewhere, but he tried not to think of that, except to wish that she got it like Juni had, a quick death before any mutilation.

He heard soft sounds behind and looked quickly to see that Ariana had come out of the back. She seemed to be emotionally used up and physically exhausted from dealing with the children, but that really shouldn't matter much longer. “Mornin',” Johansen whispered to her, pain stabbing through the numbness inside him as he thought about Ariana dying, too. One more person he couldn't save.

She reached the wall and leaned next to him, her eyes on his face. “Good morning. Are they out there?"

"I expect. Can't see any of them, of course."

Rising up a bit, she looked out as well, their shoulders touching for a moment before Ariana slumped back again. “I thought soldiers had all sorts of special equipment built into their bodies, to let you see in the dark and do other things."

"No, that's just in stories,” Johansen said. “In real life, they kept finding out that implanting gear into people, biomechanicals and stuff, created a huge Achilles Heel. Anything like that could be hacked or intruded or jammed. One good hack could take out an entire force. Eventually, they decided the only firewall good enough was maintaining physical separation between human and equipment."

She actually smiled slightly. “No secret superpowers to save the day?"

"Nope. Just the same old, same old as back at Troy.” Johansen tapped his spear.

"Does that make me Cassandra?” Ariana sighed. “What were you thinking about before I came out here?"

He hesitated before answering. “I was thinking how strange it is to know that this is the last sunrise I'll ever see. I mean, there's always a chance any sunrise will be your last, but this time it's certain. Kind of a weird feeling. At least it's a pretty sunrise."

"Yes, it is. Are you sorry you came here?"

"Well, yeah.” Johansen glanced at her. “Not that we came to this spot. We would have died anyway, and at least coming here meant a chance for you and the kids. But this planet I could have done without."

Ariana stared at the bodies of Burgos, Stein, and Scorse against the far wall as if unable to believe that they were real. “I thought they'd last the longest. Scorse, I mean, and that woman soldier."

"Burgos?” Johansen shook his head. “She was pretty certain to die early on. After the massacre in the valley and watching Ramada gutted, all Burgos cared about was killing Izkop. Your Scorse seemed to be the same way."

"But if they wanted to keep killing—"

"I said that was all they cared about. They didn't care about living any more, just killing. People who get like that don't tend to last too long, because self-preservation just doesn't occur to them."

She gave Johansen a quizzical look. “But you want to kill Izkop, too, and you told me that you don't expect to live."

"No, but you see I only want to kill Izkop so I have a chance to live.” Somehow Johansen mustered a small smile as he watched the sun rising over the bluffs. “Get me out of here in one piece and I'd be happy never to kill another Izkop. But not Burgos and Scorse. They'd have jumped right back in."

"But don't you want revenge? For all of your friends killed back at Amity?"

He shook his head. “Revenge never brought back anyone. It's just something those still alive do for themselves. I could kill every Izkop on this planet and it wouldn't give me back a single friend. I know that. So did Burgos, but she didn't care. I figure my friends would want me to go on living. To try to, anyway. That's what I'd want for them if I was the one dying."

"What about the big one? He seemed so calm, so steady."

"Stein?” Johansen exhaled heavily. “Yeah. He wasn't the brightest star in the sky, but he was loyal. He was fighting alongside Scorse, so he wouldn't leave him, wouldn't fall back alone. That wouldn't even have occurred to Stein."

Ariana nodded, her head lowered. “And Juni."

"Don't blame yourself for that. Juni was stupid.” Out of the corner of his eye, Johansen could see Ariana's head come up, tears lining her face. “We told him not to go out there. He went anyway. Most of the time in life, stupid just gets you in trouble. In a combat situation, stupid gets you dead. I'm sorry,” he added, because he was. “Juni seemed like a decent guy. And it's not like he was trying to run out on us. He was trying to do something he thought was important. He just thought he knew more than he did. People who think they know all the answers seem to often end up killing themselves or other people in one way or another."

She didn't reply, just continued crying as she looked toward the door leading to the back room. “Listen,” Johansen said as gently as he could, “when they get done with us, they'll break down that door. You just stand there and you beg, you hear me? You can't fight, so plead with them. Beg for the lives of the kids. Not for you, for them. Sometimes that makes a difference. Tell them whatever humans did, or whatever the Izkop think we did, it wasn't the fault of the kids."

Ariana nodded. “You'll be dead if they get to that door?"

"Yeah. They won't get to it before then. I'm really sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Thanks for being Horatio."

"I'm no hero, but you're welcome. I've got to admit, I don't understand why you civilians come to places like this."

She actually smiled slightly. “We come to try to learn more about others and about ourselves. Humans, that is. There's plenty of civilians who wouldn't understand why you're here. Guarding that door even though it's hopeless. You don't understand why we do what we do, and we don't understand why you do what you do, and neither group of us understands why the Izkop are doing what they are doing."

"I hope they at least have a good reason,” Johansen said dryly. “As long as I'm going to die because of it.” Shapes appeared in the distance, coming around one of the bluffs. “Sarge!"

Singh was up at his own window in a matter of seconds as the rest of the surviving soldiers also jerked awake and scrambled into position. “What've we got?"

"A small group,” Johansen reported, squinting to try to make out details. “Maybe ten Izkop, coming down the bluff to the right. They're carrying something."

"Only a dozen?” Singh brought up his field glasses, studying the group as it slowly came closer, walking at a deliberate pace toward the building. “They've got Archer."

"She's still alive?” Nassar cried.

"Maybe.” Singh's mouth worked as he kept the field glasses on the group, then he spat to one side. “I can't tell. They're carrying her. She's upright, but not walking herself.” The sergeant lowered the field glasses and slid toward Johansen, keeping low. He spoke softly. “If she is still alive, they might torture her to death in front of us. Be ready to help hold back the others if that happens."

"I wish we could just charge out and get it over with,” Johansen growled, anger warring with despair within him. “But we still got the kids back there."

Singh let out a sigh. “Right. We secure this building as long as we can, corporal."

The sergeant returned to his own window, the other soldiers staying at their own posts. As the small group of Izkop came closer, Johansen could see that Archer was limp and being supported by several of the Izkop. Even though Archer was fairly small, the Izkops’ own small stature meant that her feet dragged and bumped over the ground as the group approached.

Ariana was right next to him again, her breathing ragged as she also looked at the approaching group. “What's going on?"

"I was hoping you had some idea,” Johansen said. Closer still, the light of dawn growing, they could see rips in Archer's battle fatigues and wide smears of blood. Her head lolled down so they couldn't see her face, but Johansen thought he saw raw wounds down the sides of her neck.

"I've never seen anything like this,” Ariana said. “It's clearly a procession. That one in the lead, the old Izkop, he's wearing decorations that indicate very high rank."

The small group of Izkop stopped at the gate, then came on another couple of meters with a slow gait that seemed ceremonial to Johansen. Archer's head came up for a moment as if that gesture took all of her strength, then flopped down once more.

"She is alive!” Adowa shouted, beginning to rise from her crouch near the door.

"Hold position,” Singh ordered, his voice as dark and commanding as that of a stern god. Goldera let out a curse that sounded like a sob, and Adowa settled back onto her knees, her face drawn.

The old Izkop in the lead gestured to the others to halt and then spread his arms wide, chanting.

"What's he saying?” Nassar demanded.

Ariana listened, her expression intent. “Something about . . . that god I called Horatio."

"They think Archer is Horatio?"

"No. It's more like his spirit, or example. I'm not sure what the words actually mean.” She looked confused now. “The Izkop . . . proved . . . their . . . purity? But so did . . . Archer. I think that's a reference to Archer and . . . her people. I'm sorry, but he's using the ceremonial language which is even harder to understand than the common speech.” Ariana shook her head. “I think he's referring to all of you. The others who came among the . . . demons. No, thieves. Both, maybe. In the valley. Oh, no, they're talking about us. The civilians. Something belonging to gods. False . . . hands? No. Offerings. False offerings. Corruption. I think that refers to spiritual, not physical corruption. Something about that demon god I call Prometheus. Denial. Test. Honor. Test. Strength. True . . . protectors? Of Izkop. Of the gods."

The six Izkop carrying Archer lowered her to the ground, face up, then held up their spears in salute before raising them again, points down, ready to strike. “No,” Adowa got out in a strangled whisper.

But when the Izkop slammed their spears into the dirt, they did so on either side of Archer. The leader raised his hands, calling out in a voice that echoed across the landscape.

Johansen had sudden trouble breathing as thousands of Izkop rose up from the surrounding terrain, standing silently, spears by their sides. His hands slid along the shaft of his own spear, suddenly slick with sweat. He heard a low murmuring sound and realized that Sergeant Singh was praying, perhaps a final benediction before death.

"You put on your damned show, now just do it and get it over with,” Nassar got out between gritted teeth as the Izkop stood silently.

Then the leader raised his hands once more, shouting another command. Just as the first small group had, the masses of Izkop raised their spears, holding them high canted toward the building, then shouted as one before reversing the weapons and driving them point first into the ground like those already planted around Archer.

A third command from the leader, and all of the Izkop began moving back, leaving their spear shafts standing like a low forest bare of branches and leaves. The long ranks of Izkop all around as well as the small group with the leader marched steadily away, leaving Archer lying amid the spears thrust into the dirt around her.

The Izkop had almost vanished over the surrounding ridges when Singh shook his head like someone coming out of a dream. “Nassar, you and Goldera go out there and get Archer."

Holding his spear as if that could still help cover the others, Johansen watched Nassar and Goldera hastily shove aside the bodies blocking the doorway, then trot quickly to Archer. Nassar knelt and examined her while Goldera stood on guard. “She's been cut up quite a bit,” Nassar called back to the others. “Not deep wounds. Like she was sliced with knives. Can't tell if there's any internal injuries but I can't spot any broken bones. Hey, Archer's still got the comm unit."

"What?” Singh demanded.

"Yeah. She's holding the damned comm unit in both arms. Won't let go."

"Let her hold on to it. Just bring her in."

They got her inside, where Ariana rushed to help treat Archer. Johansen saw that Archer's face was almost unmarked except for long cuts down each cheek and on her temples leading down toward her eyes but stopping short. “Get her awake,” Singh ordered. “We have to know what happened and what all of that meant."

One of the injections from the first aid kit did the trick. Archer's eyes shot open and her mouth trembled as she looked from side to side. “Crazy,” she gasped.

"No,” Singh assured her. “You're back. The Izkop brought you back. Why?"

"They . . . what?"

Adowa leaned in closer. “Hey, princess, will you let go of the damned comm unit so we can work on your arms and chest?” she demanded.

"Huh? That really you, Addy?” Archer seemed incapable of unclasping her hands, but with the help of Adowa managed to release the comm unit. She looked around again, her eyes tearing up. “What the hell?"

"You're s—” The sergeant broke off the word “safe,” apparently realizing how absurd it would be to say that. “You're okay. Tell us what happened,” Singh said, his voice more gentle but still commanding.

"What . . .” Archer closed her eyes, her mouth slack for a moment, then rallied. “I was . . . fighting and something hit . . . my head. Woke up, being carried—” Her voice rasped to a halt.

"Water,” Singh ordered, waiting until Archer had drained a cup before speaking again. “Then what?"

"Uh . . .” Archer seemed unaware of the others working on her many minor injures, instead staring up at the ceiling as if seeing recent events there. “Camp of some kind. Thousands of Izkop. Tens of thousands. Some held me.” She looked over to one side. “Comm unit. I still had it. Some Izkop . . . wanted it. Kept . . . asking. Give.’ Wouldn't give it to him. Said no. Hell, no.” Her eyes rolled back to Singh. “My job. You said hang onto Aimee."

"That's your job,” the sergeant agreed. “Aimee's fine,” he added to reassure Archer. “Doesn't look damaged at all. What happened next?"

"They tried to take it. Kept pulling. I . . . wouldn't let them. Others came up and asked. I told them all no. No way.” Archer swallowed. “They . . . cut me . . . hurt . . . but figured they'd . . . kill me anyway. I wouldn't let go."

"That's all?"

"No. Some other Izkop . . .” Archer struggled for words. “Told me they wanted me to . . . to . . . show them how to use it. Kept saying that. Show us use it,’ over and over. I said no. No frickin’ way. They . . . uh . . .” She paused again, looking even paler. “Gonna kill me, they said, held spears. Hurt me real bad . . . if I didn't. Cut me more. Face. Other places."

"Did you show them then?” Singh asked, his voice calm and steady.

"No.” Archer managed a ghastly grin. “Told them . . . go screw yourselves. Why not? Kill me anyway . . . right? Maybe make them mad, they'd . . . kill me quick."

Singh looked at Ariana, who shook her head in bafflement. “What happened then, Archer?"

"Uh . . .” Archer tried to focus on him again. “They kept trying to take Aimee. I wouldn't let go. Show us use it.’ They kept yelling that. Show us use it.’ I kept yelling no. Go to hell. Go ahead. Kill me. Screw all of you. No show, you bastards. You'll have to . . . to kill me if you want it. Over my frickin’ dead body.” Her voice rose slightly, gaining force, a shadow of the screams she must have thrown at her captors.

Nassar appeared baffled. “Thousands of Izkop and they couldn't take that comm unit from her?"

"They could have if they wanted to,” Ariana said. “Easily enough. It must have been a ritual."

"A ritual?” Singh asked.

"Yes. They keep asking her something, and she keeps saying no, and they ask her and seem like they're trying to take it, to force her, but as long as she keeps saying no, keeps fighting them to hold it, they don't kill her and they don't actually tear it out of her hands. They hurt her, but the wounds all seem superficial. Painful, but nothing that would kill her or maim her."

"You're saying that Archer did something right?” Johansen asked.

"But what?” Adowa demanded. “What did she do?"

Singh looked at Ariana. “Show us use it?"

"That's got to be the key,” she agreed. “That and Archer's refusal to give it up.” Ariana sat looking at Archer. “Actions. Not words. What mattered with Horatio was what he did. What matters with Prometheus, how they identify Prometheus, is what he does. Test. That's what the old Izkop meant. The ritual was a test. To see if she was aligned with the gods, or with Prometheus."

"I don't get it,” Nassar said. “If the Izkop are judging us by what we do, then why didn't they run us down after we got out of the valley? That wasn't what Horatio did. Why didn't the Izkop kill us when we ran?"

Something clicked in Johansen's head. “We happened to head this way by chance. And you kept us going toward here, Sarge. The right way. The Izkop nailed anyone who tried escaping in other directions. Maybe to the Izkop it looked like we were going to make sure we died defending others, like Horatio."

"That open path,” Goldera said. “After we got here and I scouted around and the way south looked wide open? They gave us a chance to keep running, to see if we'd do it."

"Damn.” Singh's eyes narrowed. “Yeah. Like you said then, Johansen, too easy. They wanted to see if we'd keep running, or if we'd dig in and defend the civs. If we'd headed south they would have cut us up right then and there."

Adowa shook her head. “So we did the hero thing. Archer did the hero thing. The Izkop think that's cool. But the rest of the battalion . . . what the hell did they do wrong? They didn't even get a chance to head this way."

"Prometheus,” Ariana murmured. “Legions of demons."

"What?” Singh asked.

She met the sergeant's eyes, her own eyes so wide with a dawning realization that Ariana looked like some tragic cartoon figure. “The Izkop believe that you know good and evil by their actions. They tested Archer, and they've been testing humans without our realizing it, because we thought we were supposed to the ones observing and evaluating them. Every time the Izkop asked a human to show them something it was a test. It wasn't curiosity, every time it was a test to evaluate our actions. Despite our explanations, the Izkop must still think our equipment was something from the gods, and every time we showed them how to do something we failed a test. Bit by bit we kept showing them more as they kept testing us, until someone in Amity must have crossed a line, shown the Izkop whatever was necessary to convince the Izkop that we were aspects of Prometheus, or working for Prometheus. That's why they're cutting open the bodies! To release the spirit inside and reveal the true nature of it to the gods in the sky for their judgment! Why didn't I understand that before?"

Singh watched her, his expression grim. “Because you were thinking of physical things being stolen, or scientific concepts. Not something as simple and everyday to us as how to use the stuff we carry around. They decided you civilians were working against the gods, trying to corrupt the Izkop."

"Yes.” Ariana's voice had sunken to a whisper. “The Izkop destroyed everything we'd brought in order to . . . save their souls. And using that same equipment to attack you . . . the hand of the demon turned against it. There's a myth about that. When you soldiers landed at the valley it looked to the Izkop like you were there to defend the other humans, us, the agents of Prometheus. After all, we'd called you, hadn't we? You were coming in to seize the secrets of the gods again. That made you demons, too. To the Izkop, it must have looked like Armageddon."

"An army of demons from the sky,” Goldera said. “Yeah. No wonder they fought like crazy."

"But they had to present a chance for some of you soldiers to prove you were not demons, but agents of the gods. Hiding among the demons, just like demons hide among the gods. They left us alive here to see if any of you would come to aid others rather than try to steal back the secrets of the gods. It wasn't the adults here that mattered, it was the innocents, the children. When you headed this way, toward the children, it seemed your particular group might be working for the gods. And then you acted like heroes of the Izkop, laughing in the face of death and fighting to protect the children. You didn't waver when they attacked. So they captured one of you for a last test, the most important test, to see how that one soldier would act. And Archer didn't act like Prometheus at all. She refused to give any secrets away. She defended the gods’ secrets and showed a willingness to die in that defense. The Izkop have decided that you soldiers, your small group, are agents of the gods. I think that's right. It's only a guess, but it fits what happened."

Adowa leaned wearily against one wall. “So what happens if you're right? Are they still going to kill us?"

"You didn't understand what they just did? I've only heard it described, but now that I know what the Izkop must have been thinking I'm certain that I'm correct. That ceremony where they saluted you and then left their spears. The Izkop surrendered to you."

It took Johansen a moment to realize that his jaw had fallen open.

Singh managed to speak first. “They . . . surrendered to us?"

"Yes, sergeant."

"Wait a minute,” Nassar demanded. “We won?"

"That's right. Or rather, the defenders of the gods won. But that's you, so to us it's the same thing. I'm using the human term surrender, but I think the Izkop would call it acknowledging superiority in this struggle.’ They won't take orders from you, but they accepted you as the victors. The moral victors, that is, because you're on the right side. The . . . fight . . . is over."

"Well, hell,” Singh commented. He looked toward the bodies in the room, then out in the yard and back in the direction of the valley. “I sure wish someone had figured out some of this a little earlier. It would have saved a lot of humans, and a lot of Izkop."

"We couldn't,” Ariana said. “We didn't share the right mental or cultural references with them. It wasn't until I saw you, talked with you and saw what you did, that I began to understand part of how the Izkop were thinking."

"And civilian researchers wouldn't call in soldiers until hell had already broken out,” Johansen said, “because how could we know something they didn't?"

"Yes.” Ariana nodded to him, seeming drained of all emotion now. “If this planet had been a university campus or a research lab, full of people who thought like we did, then everything would have been fine."

Johansen shook his head. “No. The Izkop did the same thing. Instead of really trying to figure out humans, they plugged all of us into their own mythology. After all the humans and Izkop that have died, the Izkop still don't know why you civilians or we soldiers really came here, or why we did what we did. They just think they do."

Sergeant Singh sat down heavily. “What do I always tell you guys? Mistakes cost lives. Helluva big price, though."

"All of those soldiers dead, and it was our fault,” Ariana said.

"Even if it was, you paid an awful price, too. Some victory. But at least we're still alive.” Singh gestured to Adowa. “Pass me that comm unit. Let's see how close the cavalry is, or if it's even shown up yet."

Goldera laughed, giddy with relief. “They're going to come charging in to save us, and you'll get to say, they already surrendered to me.’ What do you think the general will do then?"

"Try to take credit for it,” Adowa said. Outside, the cow mooed forlornly. “Why the hell didn't they kill that cow?"

"I have no idea,” Ariana said. “But we'd better not kill it ourselves."

"Damn right. Anybody who wants that cow,” Adowa replied, “is going to have to go through me."

Adowa and Singh started checking the comm unit for damage while Goldera and Nassar sat together, grinning and talking. Later they'd be depressed, later the extent of their losses would sink in, how many friends and companions had died, later the stresses of the last few days would haunt their nights, and they'd need everything the shrinks and the docs could provide, but for now that was forgotten in the joy of unlooked-for survival. Archer lay asleep under the influence of the meds, the visible parts of her body almost covered with strips of heal-tape.

Ariana looked at Johansen. “There'll be other sunrises for you to see."

"Yeah, I guess so. You going to be okay?"

"Someday. Like you said, my husband would want me to go on."

"What was his name?” Johansen asked.

"Eric."

"If you, uh, want to talk about it, about him, I'll listen. Sometimes talking helps. When you're ready for that."

"Thanks. I'd appreciate help with the children if you can manage that, too. You're a good man, Horatio.” Ariana bowed her head into her knees as if trying to shut out everything for a little while.

Johansen moved his head enough to watch the sun rising higher. An amazing thing, seeing the sun rise. It didn't help you understand anything, but it made you believe in all sorts of things again.

Copyright © 2010 John G. Hemry

In 1956, Isaac Asimov wrote a young-adult novel called Lucky Starr and The Big Sun of Mercury. It was part of a project to tour the Solar System, displaying what was then known of the planets. It was also one of only a handful of stories I remember reading about Mercury, all involving people finding innovative ways to cope with the innermost planet's burning daytime heat. In some, they stayed forever near the slow-moving terminator. In others, they hid in perpetual twilight at the poles, carefully balanced between the intense light of day and the dreadful cold of night.

Memory serves up few other Mercury stories, but while Wikipedia has a whole page devoted to them,[1] the list is pretty sparse. Compared to Mars, Jupiter, the Moon, or just about anywhere else in the Solar System, Mercury is a forgotten planet.

Partly that's because one of the things we've long known is that it's hellishly hot on one side, and Jovian-satellite cold on the other. Larry Niven once wrote a short called “The Coldest Place” in which he made exactly that point: the frigid wasteland of the title wasn't in the far-outer Solar System: it was the night side of Mercury, then thought to be permanently facing away from the Sun.

Basically, Mercury looked like the Moon on steroids—bathed in intense solar radiation, to boot. Though, for a long time we didn't really know much about it. Even its rotation period was misunderstood. As late as the early 1960s, it was believed to be tidally locked to the Sun—a factoid used by Isaac Asimov as the premise of one of the few other Mercury-related stories I remember: a 1956 Wendell Urth mystery called “The Dying Night,” in which the vital clue involved a resident of Mercury who forgot about the existence of sunrise because, in his home habitat, the Sun never rose. Then, Earth-based radar wrecked Asimov's premise by finding that Mercury was in a 3:2 resonance in which it rotates three times for every two orbits around the Sun.[2]

It isn't just science fiction that has given Mercury short shrift. In the first fifty years of space exploration, the planet got one—and only one—visit by a space probe: Mariner 10, which did three flybys in 1974-75, returning fuzzy images of 45% of the surface.

Part of the problem of visiting Mercury is that getting there is nearly as hard as getting to Jup-iter. Unless you want to carry an inordinate amount of fuel, the best route involves braking flybys of the inner planets. And not just one flyby: a bunch of them. The current Mercury spacecraft, called MESSENGER (for ME rcury S urface, S pace EN vironment, GE ochemistry, and R anging mission)[3], took fifteen Mercury years to achieve its first flyby, and will take nearly six and a half Earth years before it can finally settle into orbit.

Launched on August 3, 2004, it flew back past Earth (once), twice past Venus, and has now passed Mercury three times. Its fourth encounter with Mercury is scheduled for March 18, 2011, at which time it will (hopefully) brake into orbit and begin systematic observations.

Why all that effort for a planet thought to be an overheated duplicate of the Moon?

Well, partly, it's because Mercury has become one of the least explored pieces of real estate in the Solar System. And wherever we've gone before, we've found things we didn't expect. Also, as it turns out, Mercury isn't really all that much like the Moon. Bob Strom, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory who's been studying it since the Mariner 10 days, lists a half-dozen major differences between Mercury and not just the Moon, but anywhere else we've ever visited:

* It's the densest planet.[4] Since the demotion of Pluto, it's also the smallest.

* Its orbit is odd: inclined 7 degrees from the plane of the ecliptic. That gives it the greatest inclination of any planet, a fact that might or might not mean anything. Its orbit is also the most eccentric.

* It's the closest planet to the Sun.

* It has zero obliquity, or tilt. This means that Mercury does not have seasons as we know them.[5] More importantly, the bottoms of craters at its pole are permanently shadowed. This means they might have water, in the form of ice. In fact, current thinking is that they do have water.

* It has a dipole magnetic field, like the Earth's, albeit only one-sixtieth as strong. That's weak, but no other inner planets have any dipole field at all (although Mars appears to have once had one). What this means is that Mercury has liquid iron in its core.

* And, finally, Mercury has the greatest surface temperature range of any planet, varying from 467 degrees C (872 degrees F, far above the melting point of lead, but well below that of silver or gold) to -183 degrees C (-297 degrees F, colder than Saturn's moon Titan).

Rather than, why go there, the question is nearly reversed. “This is a planet of superlatives,” Strom says.

Heart of the Matter

The full story will emerge when MESSENGER is in orbit and begins systematic mapping. But three flybys in 2008 and 2009 have already done much to extend our knowledge.

To begin with, they've confirmed that the magnetic field is the result of an active dipole, rather than a remnant, frozen in the crust. Until the second MESSENGER flyby in 2008, that wasn't a sure thing. Each of the magnetic measurements made by Mariner 10, and the first one by MESSENGER, had by unlucky coincidence been made on the same side of the planet. They were consistent with a dipole, but didn't mandate one. It wasn't until the second flyby that we finally got a look at the opposite side of Mercury's magnetic field and confirmed it really was shaped like Earth's. “It's the field of a dipole that's aligned with the spin axis within two degrees,” Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington said last year at a meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA).[6] “This is the kind of geometry you get from dynamo models, but not a remnant field. So it's a vote for a dynamo model."

A strong vote, in fact. And as we noted before, it means Mercury has at least a layer of molten iron in its core.

Mercury's core, in fact, is one of its greatest puzzles. To begin with, in a planet that small, it's a surprise that it's still molten. (We'll get back to that later.) But it's also enormous, at least compared to Mercury's size: three-quarters of its radius, or 42% of its volume. By contrast, Earth's core is 16% of its volume. No other planet has a comparably large core.

There are three possible explanations:

1. There might have been more iron in the materials that condensed to form a planet that close to the Sun. Or perhaps the rocky silicate materials that make up our own much-thicker mantle didn't accrete as well in the hot inner-system environment.

2. Maybe the normal mix of materials did accrete, but the intense heat from the Sun drove most of them back into space.

3. Perhaps Mercury was clobbered by a big (read that “near planet-sized") rock that blasted most of the silicates back into space.

Of these, the impact theory is the most interesting. It requires a truly giant impact—enough to blow away about three-quarters of Mercury's original mantle. But there is growing evidence that each of the inner planets was truly clobbered early in its evolution. Mars may have been hit by an asteroid large enough to produce its northern Borealis Basin, 10,000 kilometers in diameter. A Mars-sized object hitting Earth is the leading explanation for the Moon. And a large impact on Venus could explain its unusual retrograde rotation (it rotates backward, compared to most other bodies in the Solar System). If something similar happened on Mercury it would be an indication that such impacts were the norm.

One of the instruments carried on MESSENGER is a spectrometer. One hope is that by revealing the composition of surface rocks it can give clues to the makeup of Mercury's interior, helping scientists determine exactly what happened, so long ago.

Cold Ice and Hot Pyroclastics

Also of interest is the question of whether Mercury has any significant quantity of vola-tiles, either on the surface or in its interior.

On the surface, radar shows “dark” polar deposits that look suspiciously like ice. “They are in permanently shadowed craters where the temperature is less than -170 degrees C,” says Strom. “[They are] very, very similar to the icy Galilean satellites."

These deposits cover approximately 30,000 square kilometers. If they're as little as two meters thick, that's sixty cubic kilometers of water. Not enough for an ocean, but plenty for a good-sized lake. “I think it's relatively pure ice,” Strom says.

If so, where did it come from? One prospect is cometary impacts. But comets originate far out in the Solar System, and by the time they hit Mercury they're moving fast. “An impact would not only vaporize the water, it would disassociate it into its component parts,” Strom notes. Rather than depositing in permanent cold traps at the poles, these gases would simply escape back into space.

But comets aren't the only possible source of water. H2O is also locked up in minerals found in rocky asteroids. “I think bound water is more likely,” Strom says.

But there are also signs that Mercury might have lightweight elements in its interior. To begin with, MESSENGER has found traces of sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium in space surrounding the planet.[7] “We don't know if they are indigenous to Mercury or were delivered by meteorites or some other exogenous source,” Solomon says. But they definitely exist.

Also, he notes, the only way for the core of Mercury to be molten enough to produce a dipole is if the iron is mixed with a lighter element, like sulfur, which lowers its melting point. Otherwise, as we noted earlier, even that close to the Sun, Mercury would have had its core long since solidify.

Even stronger evidence is coming from photos of volcanic zones that appear to be pyroclastic flows. On Earth, such flows are the deadliest of volcanic eruptions: fast-moving clouds of superheated ash that travel downhill at enormous speeds, searing everything in their paths. On Mercury there's nothing to scorch, but MESSENGER has seen flows whose smooth contours certainly look like pyroclastics.

What's interesting about this is that pyroclastic flows are like ground-effect vehicles for lava: to occur, they require magma with a lot of dissolved gas. “We're getting an intriguing look that even as close to the Sun as Mercury, there may be some process for delivering and retaining volatiles to the interior,” Solomon says.

Lava, Lava Everywhere

Pyroclastic flows aren't the only type of volcanism on Mercury. Like the Moon and Mars (and presumably the early Earth) large portions of its surface appear to be lava.

This might not seem like a particularly important finding: we'd known since Mariner 10 that Mercury has lots of flat plains, both between craters and on the crater floors. They certainly look a lot like lava flows. But appearances can deceive. We got a good lesson about that during the Apollo landings on the Moon, cautions James Head III, a geologist from Brown University, who notes that areas thought to be volcanic plains turned out to be impact breccia (rock melted and reformed by the heat of the impact). Nor did the Mariner 10 photos reveal any signs of volcanic vents or sinuous lava flows—the traditional smoking guns for proving that a plain is comprised of lava rather than something else.

In an effort to resolve this, Head and a group of colleagues even went so far as to attempt to prove it was impossible to create a terrestrial-style planet without volcanism. Unfortunately, he says, “we found that it's actually pretty easy."

MESSENGER, however, has resolved the stalemate. “I'm here to tell you as a volcanologist that we're saved,” Head said at the 2009 GSA meeting. “Mercury has significant evidence for volcanic activity."[8]

The evidence is a bit subtle: nobody suddenly found an Olympus Mons or Mt. Fuji rising thousands of feet above the plains. Instead much of it comes from “embayments"—places where one feature appears to have lapped against the side of an older one.

Many of the newer images, for example, show the rings of small, partially buried craters rising above the otherwise smooth floors of big ones. That tells us a lot about the order in which things happened. First, there was the big crater. Then, subsequent impacts produce the smaller ones. After that, something flowed across its interior, partially burying them.

What this means is that the “something” can't have been formed by the process that created the original crater. It had to have come along afterward. That rules out impact melt and ejected debris. The only option we're left with is lava. We can even estimate its thickness (a couple of kilometers in some places) from the size of the partially buried features.

We see all sorts of features of this type, says Head. One of the most dramatic wasn't discovered until the third flyby (on September 29, 2009), so recently that it didn't even have a name when geologists discussed it at the GSA meeting. Instead, the MESSENGER scientists were informally dubbing it “Twin” because it looked a lot like a previously seen crater called Raditladi.

Both craters are about 260 kilometers in diameter, and both are striking double-ring structures, with central plains, inner rings, outer annulus-shaped plains, and outer rims. What makes “Twin” exciting it that there are far fewer small craters pocking its inner basin than in the annulus. This means the inner basin hasn't been exposed all that long to meteor bombardment. “It's the youngest terrain we've yet seen on Mercury,” says Clark Chapman, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “It's hard to say, but it could be less than a billion years old."

That's exciting enough, but what's really exciting is the difference in crater count between the inner basin and the annulus. It's substantial, about a factor of three, so it's not just a statistical fluke: the floor of the inner basin and the floor of the annulus were formed at different times . . . very different times.

There's only one thing that could resurface the floor of an impact crater in two stages. “That's just absolute proof of volcanism,” Chapman says.

Color Coding

All of these overlapping features—embayments, craters, lava plains, etc.—have another use as well. Once we sort them out, we can determine the order in which they were formed, combining that into a stratigraphic map of the entire planet.

MESSENGER is equipped to look at Mercury in eleven different wavelengths, carefully chosen to reveal key minerals in the rocks. Some of these have already been assembled into false-color maps, readily available online.[9] Although the planet isn't really that colorful (the images are strongly enhanced) they're useful for tracing strata across long distances and guessing at their depths. In some places, for example, the floors of bigger craters are a different color than those of smaller craters, indicating that the smaller impacts weren't powerful enough to punch all the way through the surface rocks. “This gives us evidence for stratigraphy,” says Head.

Maps like this have been used to put together remarkably detailed histories on other worlds, like the Moon. There, for example, the order of the largest craters has been worked out in some detail, telling us much about the process that mysteriously peppered the Moon (and probably all of the inner planets) with asteroids about 3.9 billion years ago, late in the planets’ formation. Recent data, for example, presented at the same GSA meeting by David Kring, a planetary geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, suggest that Jupiter must somehow have shifted its orbit, sweeping the Asteroid Belt with gravitational resonances that knocked large numbers of asteroids out of orbit.[10] Who knows what new hints we'll learn about the early days of the Solar System by putting together similar maps of Mercury?

Crumpled Crust

Volcanoes and lava flows aren't the only signs of geological activity on Mercury's surface. The planet is also crisscrossed with fault lines and zones where its surface obviously moved.

Some were seen by Mariner 10. The most dramatic are long scarps of the type produced on Earth when crustal blocks are squeezed together hard enough that one segment rides up onto another. Known to geologists as thrust faults, these occur on Earth as a result of the crushing forces of continental drift.

But continental drift requires plate tectonics, and it's not at all clear that Mercury ever had plate tectonics. Thanks to the giant impact (or whatever) that stole most of Mercury's silicates, its remaining mantle is only 600 kilometers thick (compared to 2,900 kilometers for the Earth's), a problem, because plate tectonics are driven by convection currents rising from the deep mantle.

Nevertheless, in a 2008 paper in Nature Geoscience,[11] Scott King, a geophysicist from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, was able to produce such scarps by modeling currents in Mercury's thin mantle. But mantle convection isn't the only thing that might have produced them. One side of Mercury is dominated by the Caloris Basin, a 1,550-kilometer-wide impact crater formed late in the planet's evolution. One theory is that the faults are the result of this impact. Another is that the scarps were formed by tidal forces from the Sun.

One odd thing about the scarps is that there are no similar extensional features. On Earth, thrust faults are balanced by rifts, either in the middle of continents, like Africa's Rift Valley, or on the seafloor. These are places where crustal plates are pulling apart at the same rate they're bashing into each other elsewhere, producing a global balance between extension and compression. But on Mercury, there are few extensional faults except in the bottoms of craters (which we'll talk about in a bit). Whatever formed the scarps therefore involved something compressing the entire planet, like a hand crushing a wadded-up Kleenex. For this reason, the leading theory is that they're the result of shrinkage of the core as it cooled, after the crust had solidified. It doesn't take a lot of shrinkage to do the trick: a kilometer or two reduction in radius would account for everything we see.

Custard-Cup Craters

When you look at a global view of Mercury, of course, what first catches your attention isn't the scarps or lava flows. It's the craters. They are why Mercury, on first glance, looks so deceptively like the Moon. But only on first glance. As we peer more closely at them, Mercury's craters prove to be just as intriguing as everything else.

Several, for example, show rings of cracks in their inner basins, roughly paralleling the crater walls. They look like a baked custard whose center dropped, producing ring-shaped cracks.

One of the most interesting of these is Rembrandt Basin, a dramatic 715-kilometer crater first seen on MESSENGER's initial flyby. “It's been through a wringer,” says Louise Prockter of the Planetary Exploration Group in Laurel, Maryland. “It's had all sorts of things happen to it."

First of all, its center shows a wheel-and-spoke configuration of ridges and troughs. Further out, another ridge forms a near-circle, 375 kilometers in diameter. Cutting across the top of all of this is one of the many fault scarps mentioned earlier, indicating that whatever caused the planet-wide shrinking occurred well after Rembrandt Basin had been created.[12]

All told, Prockter says, it appears that Rembrandt Basin saw four successive stages of tectonic upheaval. The first two created the wheel-and-spoke features: probably by subsidence in the crater surface after the interior lava flows solidified.[13] Then the entire center of the crater uplifted, creating the circular wrinkle-ridge. Finally, the planet contracted, projecting a thrust fault across the crater as a whole.

Think that sounds complex? It's nothing compared to the Caloris Basin.

Caloris is the largest crater on Mercury: one of the largest in the entire Solar System, in fact. It is the result of an impact so strong that seismic waves ran all the way through the planet, creating a chaotic landscape on the other side, where the terrain is chopped into a checkerboard of hills and faults. “We think this is the result of focused seismic waves,” says Strom.

Similar chaos zones occur on the Moon, opposite its largest craters (although the one associated with Caloris is much more dramatic, perhaps due to the seismic properties of Mercury's large core). But other features of the Caloris Basin are unique.

In its outer portions, it has circumferential ridges, much like those in the smaller Rembrandt Basin. But further in, a series of troughs, more than 100 of them, radiate almost exactly from the Caloris Basin's center. These features were initially dubbed “the spider,” but are now formally known as Pantheon Fossae. (Fossae, in planetary geology, are trenches; these reminded somebody of groove-like architectural features in the Roman Pantheon.)

The circumferential ridges and Pantheon Fossae appear to have been formed by a two-stage process: subsidence of the crater floor followed by uplift of its center. The subsidence produced the ring-shaped outer cracks. The uplift produced the inner, radial ones.

But what caused the uplift? The default theory would normally be volcanism. In fact, Head thinks the Fossae aren't really cracks, but are instead dikes, where lava intruded into older rock, producing a splay of spoke-like rays. Similar features, he adds, have been seen on Venus.

Solomon disagrees.

To him, the key is a crater called Apollodorus (named for the architect credited with designing the Pantheon).

Apollodorus is a forty-kilometer crater—by no means the result of a planet-busting impact, but nothing to be sneered at, either. What's interesting is that it sits smack-dab in the middle of the fossae. Coincidence? Maybe. But maybe not. Drawing on work by Andrew Freed at Purdue University, Solomon suggests that the impact, also directly in the middle of the Caloris Basin, might have hit just right to release a lot of leftover stress from the earlier, basin-forming impact, allowing the basin floor to rise quickly.[14] “It's a bit like when a pebble hits your [car] window,” he says, noting that car windshields are under similar stress.

If so, it must have been dramatic. Some parts of the fossae are filled with ejecta from Apollodorus, indicating that they would have had to form faster than the impact debris could rain back to the surface. That isn't impossible, says Solomon, but determining if it happened is going to take careful measurements of Mercury's gravity field and surface topography.

Head agrees. “It's pretty much a stalemate at the present time, because we don't have sufficient [data] to distinguish between these hypotheses,” he says. “But we will when we get into orbit."

Getting into orbit is the Holy Grail of the MESSENGER mission. If all goes well, it will happen on March 18, 2011, after which MESSENGER will begin systematic mapping, eventually bring its full instrumentation to play on most of the planet's surface. In addition to photos, it's expected to conduct spectrometry, laser altimetry, gravity mapping, and use multiple images from different angles to produce 3-D pictures.

But already Mercury is emerging as more than a distant dot so close to the Sun that most people never see it. “We're seeing a planet that's much more interesting than even we suspected,” says Solomon.

"Stay tuned,” he adds.

Copyright © 2010 Richard A. Lovett

1 See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercuryinfiction.

2 Because Mercury, like Earth and most other bodies in the Solar System, spins in the same direction in which it orbits, this means it takes two complete Mercury “years” to rack up an extra rotation on its spin axis. In other words, a Mercurian “day,” from sunrise to sunset, is two Mercury years long, or 176 Earth days.

3 For updates, see www.nasa.gov/missionpages/messenger/main/.

4 Technically, it's the densest “uncompressed” planet. The Earth is slightly denser, but only because it's enough bigger that gravity increases its density enough to slightly edge out Mercury.

5 Its high orbital eccentricity, however, means its distance from the Sun varies from 46 million to 70 million kilometers, enough to produce seasons of a different sort.

6 Quotes and data, unless otherwise cited, come from this meeting, October 18-21, 2009.

7 William E. McClintock, et al., “MESSENGER Observations of Mercury's Exosphere: Detection of Magnesium and Distribution of Constituents,” Science, Vol. 324, 1 May 2009, pp. 610-613.

8 Some of this evidence is also in Brett W. Denevi, et al., “The Evolution of Mercury's Crust: A Global Perspective from MESSENGER,” Science, Vol. 324, 1 May 2009, pp. 613-618.

9 For an example, see www.solarviews.com/eng/mercury.htm.

10 See Holly Hight, “Jupiter Shift Pelted Inner Planets with Asteroids,” Cosmos Online, 21 October 2009, www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3085/jupiter-shift-pelted-inner-planets-with-asteroids.

11 “Pattern of lobate scarps on Mercury's surface reproduced by a model of mantle convection,” Nature Geoscience, Vol. 1, 229-232 (2008).

12 See Thomas R. Watters et al., “Evolution of the Rembrandt Impact Basin on Mercury,” Science, Vol. 324, 1 May 2009, pp. 618-21.

13 The reason these are believed to have occurred in two stages is that some of these features cross each other, indicating that they were produced by two types of stress, presumably at different times. There could, of course, have been more than two stages.

14 See Freed, Solomon, Watters, et al, “Could Pantheon Fossae be the result of the Apollodorus crater-forming impact within the Caloris basin, Mercury?", Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol. 285, 15 August 2009, pp. 320-327.

Old job descriptions can change drastically under new circumstances....

So let me get this straight,” Carrie Molina said. This was only about five minutes after landing on the water world called Welkin. She stood on a landing pad where her small shuttle barely fit next to a submersible craft. The pad stood next to a small Earth Unity base perched upon a motile island. She heard waves splashing ashore and caught a whiff of salt spray. “You brought me here to inject me into a creature called a Levi-athan so I can treat its unborn child? What am I, some sort of antivirus or something?"

Carrie saw Matt Christian's grimace and knew she wasn't making a good first impression, but she didn't care. You opened the door with this crazy idea for a mission, she thought, and you take whatever comes through it.

"Not at all,” Matt said. He was a tall, slender man in his late twenties, just a little younger than Carrie. “It's all fairly straightforward. The Leviathan's not quite fifty meters long—"

"That's about twice as big as a blue whale back on Earth!"

"Exactly the analogy I was about to use."

"And the medical problem it's having is . . . what?"

Carrie watched Matt take a deep breath. “Why don't you come see her for yourself? And as soon as he gets here, I can introduce you to your partner."

"Partner?"

"He's someone I work with closely,” Matt said. “And he should complement your own unique abilities."

Carrie followed Matt down to the shoreline and a dock. No boats were tied up there, but her eyes widened as she spotted a dark presence floating just at the surface of the water. Matt said, “Meet the Leviathan—Varis. She has datalink access, but she doesn't care to speak to Humans much. She's a little prejudiced against landside lifeforms."

He didn't exaggerate the size, Carrie thought. No wonder they're called Leviathans. I've traveled aboard ships that were smaller.

A closer look, and she found herself staring into eyes the size of bowling balls. Eyes with an amazing intelligence behind them, she thought. And I don't think I'm anthropomorphizing. Just behind those eyes was a pair of blowholes—Varis was, like an Earthly whale, an air breather, not a fish. A mouth the width of a small shuttlecraft opened and Varis chomped down on a clump of vegetation provided for her at dockside. The chewing sounds were prodigious.

Matt said, “Your partner should be here soon.” He shed his clothing except for swim trunks and jumped into the water. He placed both his hands upon the dark form of the Leviathan. Carrie didn't hesitate, and removed her own clothing—she wasn't wearing a swimsuit, but was accustomed to casual nudity—and moved toward the edge of the dock.

Even as she stepped off, Carrie was conscious of the differences between Welkin and Earth. Its .85 grav meant she fell just a bit longer than she would have on the homeworld, and when she dove beneath its waters, she was aware that the water didn't press against her as much as she was accustomed to.

She took a moment for what Matt called her “unique abilities” to assert themselves. They were, after all, why she was here. As her bioengineered body adapted to her environment, her heart rate sped up to pump blood furiously through her body to keep it warm, and her lungs expanded to half-again their usual size.

Carrie didn't breathe water, didn't have gills; the often-used term “Human fish” was a misnomer. Water didn't retain enough oxygen absorbed in it for the physical exertion she re- quired, and it didn't transfer oxygen into the bloodstream as efficiently. There were reasons many of the largest sea creatures were mammals.

She shivered slightly as the micro-dermal ridges of her skin, a trait she shared with dolphins, opened up—a goose-bumply feeling. Though barely visible, they trapped a thin layer of water molecules against her skin. That let her glide through the water with less resistance, since liquid flows against another liquid more smoothly than against the Human body.

Before heading to the surface, Carrie took this opportunity to check out the rest of the Leviathan's gigantic form. She saw what must be an incredibly strong fluke at the Leviathan's rear. She wondered just how fast it could propel itself through the ocean's waters, despite its massive bulk. Varis's sleek underside was interrupted by a round bulge of considerable proportion. That has to be one big baby, Carrie thought.

Toward the front of Varis's body, just behind those wise-looking eyes, were appendages that looked more like hands than flippers. They were webbed, and she was impressed with the four digits that looked as if they could manipulate objects much as a Human hand would. Tool-using aquatic forms. How did they arise here?

Before she could consider that question further, the Leviathan's body began to shake violently, sending out strong underwater waves that pushed Carrie away. The surface of the Leviathan's rubbery skin rippled again and again until the seizures subsided.

Carrie barely had time to react to that when another aquatic form, about the size of a walrus, but much faster, zoomed past her. I never even saw it coming, she thought. What the hell is it? She kicked upward, breaking the surface next to Matt...

. . . who caught the slightest glimpse of her naked body, blushed, and looked away.

Damn, Carrie thought. One of those. I hate nudity taboos.

Carrie was still figuring out how to regain Matt's attention when the walrus-sized creature surfaced between them. Over her data-link, she heard, “You must be Carrie Molina. I'm Sarbin."

Matt turned back her way, though he seemed relieved that Sarbin mostly blocked his view of Carrie. Poor man, she thought. Can't even enjoy the sight of a good-looking woman.

"Sarbin,” Matt said, “is an Aquatile.” His broad body featured stubby arms, different in detail but apparently similar in function to the Leviathan's. His wide, bright eyes spoke of an intelligence at least equal to a Human's. His snout ended in a single nostril. “I've heard of your people,” Carrie said. “I'm pleased to meet you."

"And I'm pleased to be your new partner,” Sarbin said. Carrie heard clicks and low tones that she realized must be the Aquatile's true speech, which her datalink translated.

Matt said, “Your temporary partner, Sar-bin.” Carrie tried not to react to the firmness she heard in Matt's tone, or what she believed was a note of jealousy. To Carrie, he said, “Let's get back on shore, and I'll let you know what little we've figured out about Varis's seizures."

Carrie expected Matt to escort her to the Unity base for a briefing. Instead, he excused himself to go inside the submersible shuttle on the landing pad. She would've preferred to sun herself awhile and dry off before getting dressed, but decided not to shock Matt's sensibilities any more than she had to and put her clothes back on. They'll dry soon enough under this sun, she thought.

Matt's hand, holding a towel, thrust itself through the submersible's hatchway. His voice was muffled a bit since he spoke without sticking his head outside. “I thought you might want to dry off."

Carrie didn't try to suppress her grin. “That's okay, Matt. A little late now, but I appreciate the offer."

Matt's head moved cautiously from behind the hatchway. “Oh. Sorry."

"A little water's the last thing that bothers me. You were going to show me what's wrong with Varis?"

Matt came down the shuttle's steps with a holopad under his arm. “Let's go back down to the water. I don't want to leave Sarbin out."

That's why we didn't go up to the base, Carrie thought. She followed Matt down to a shallower area of the island's waterline, where Sarbin had beached himself. Matt sat down next to the Aquatile, and Carrie settled down on the other side. Matt made a couple of adjustments to the pad, and a cutaway image of the Leviathan Varis appeared among them, her internal organs clearly visible, along with the outline of the unborn child she bore.

"Damn,” Carrie said as she leaned forward to examine the Leviathan's insides more closely. “I've stayed in hotel rooms smaller than Varis's heart."

Matt said, “As large as she is, you've seen how her seizures affect her."

"And what causes them?"

Sarbin said, “The Leviathans believe they become ill because they're sinful."

"What do you believe?"

"Aquatiles don't believe in sin."

Matt said, “The Leviathans do, though, and they banish from the open ocean those who become ill. They make them come to these motile islands and follow them around awhile. Usually they get well within a few days."

"Which makes it seem as if the banishment actually works."

"And which is reinforced by the fact that sometimes they get sick again once they go back to their families."

Carrie said, “But Varis hasn't gotten better yet."

"Not quickly enough. We suspect the pregnancy is the problem."

"How close is she to delivering?"

"She's about sixteen months along—so about another three months."

"Damn,” Carrie said. “That makes my belly hurt just thinking about it."

Matt said, “We're not sure how to treat Varis herself—it's been difficult analyzing what's wrong with such a large being. But doctors and scientists here at the base have come up with tech they believe can protect the child from further infection, and strengthen her against Mom's seizures."

Carrie ran a hand through her dark hair, which was nearly dry. “So I'm the delivery system."

Matt pointed within the holo to the unborn child's position deep within Varis. “We don't know enough about Leviathan physiology to design a self-propelled delivery system."

"I read up on them as much as I could on the way here,” Carrie said. “I understand the difficulties. How will we even be able to see while we're traveling inside her veins?"

"You'll be wearing goggles that combine infrared imaging technology and sonography. Some things might be a little blurry or indistinct, but you'll be able to see where you are and where you're going—especially given your enhanced eyesight and echolocation abilities."

"But how wide will a needle have to be to inject me?"

Matt grinned mischievously. “That's been its own technical problem. But we think we have a solution."

That solution started with Matt leading Carrie into his submersible shuttle, lifting off, and heading out just far enough over the ocean to settle into its waters just beyond the spot where Varis floated. Even from within the submersible's small cabin, the Leviathan's size was intimidating. Although, Carrie thought, the bigger the better if I'm taking a trip inside there. She told Matt, “When the Unity recruited me for this mission, the briefer told me I'd be taking a fantastic voyage. I thought that meant some kind of ocean trip."

"At least you won't be alone. Sarbin's going in with you.” Matt turned and peered into the cargo bay behind them, which was filling up with water.

"With all respect to Sarbin, why?"

"Varis doesn't trust Humans. She's sentient, but she believes the superstitions about sin causing her illness. Sarbin, being a native and a fellow aquatic being, is the one who's tried to convince her otherwise."

"Except you don't have a good explanation."

"Which doesn't help our credibility much. But we can't wait for research breakthroughs here. Varis's child will die unless we can protect it against whatever is making his mother sick."

Carrie said, “Having a Human—an alien lifeform—crawling around inside your own body has to be a frightening proposition."

"Which is why Sarbin will be there to reassure Varis that everything's fine as you get this job done."

Carrie stared upward at the dark mass of the Leviathan. “Let's hope everything really is fine."

"The Unity asked for you because of your abilities in a liquid environment—plus you have plenty of endurance, and you've shown that you keep your head in a tough situation."

Carrie turned back toward Matt. “That sounds like you're quoting from my file."

Matt looked away from the submersible's controls just long enough to glance back at her. “Well—I did read it."

"You're worried about Sarbin."

Matt's kept his gaze forward. “He's my friend. I never expected I'd become this close to someone who can't even live on land. I've saved his life at least once. And he's risked his for me."

Carrie returned to the co-pilot's position. “I know what it's like to lose someone close to you. I'll take good care of him."

Matt's expression hardened. “If you don't mind—who was it you lost?"

"My sister. Adriana. A man named Malcolm Vicari hurt her badly. She died a few weeks ago."

"Oh.” Matt's eyes seemed to lose focus, and it was a moment before he said, “I'm sorry."

"Being here, working, is the best thing for me. Like I said, I'll take good care of Sarbin. More likely, he'll take good care of me."

"Thank you for being here, then. One more thing...."

"What is it?"

"Something I have to tell you before we allow Varis in on our datalink transmissions. Even Sarbin isn't hearing this. It's about what I might have to do if the two of you get into trouble while you're inside Varis."

"What you might have to do?"

Matt shook his head. “I'm a deeply spiritual man. The idea of killing anyone is disgusting to me. But my orders from the Unity say that if Varis gets worse—if the seizures grow worse enough that it's clear she's dying, and you're in trouble, I'm to use the submersible's disruptors to cut you out of there."

"Me? What about Sarbin?"

"I don't have any orders regarding him. But I consider his life as important as yours."

"As you should,” Carrie said. “But I wouldn't want you killing Varis and her child to save me."

"I don't claim to know how anyone might choose to face death. I can't even say how far my faith could take me if I were in there and in danger. But my orders are independent of your wishes . . . or . . . Sarbin's."

He was about to say, “even” Sarbin's, Carrie thought. She said, “Then I guess Sarbin and I will just have to make sure Varis and her child live."

Carrie stood at the entrance to the cargo bay as Matt continued holding the submersible steady, just behind and beneath Varis. She touched her left middle finger into her palm and her lifesuit tech activated, at a lower level than the usual spacesuit function. It covered her entire body and provided her with a bubble helmet.

Sarbin was in the water-filled cargo bay now. He wore a tight-fitting Aquatile variation on her lifesuit. “Varis is still nervous about this,” he said. “She's decided to speak only to me."

"Is she only listening to you, as well?"

"That's right."

"That's good to know. You've got the medical pouch?"

Sarbin flipped over, faster than Carrie suspected would have been possible for someone of his bulk. “Strapped right to my belly,” he said. The pouch also contained some simple medical instruments in case either she or Sarbin had to perform an incision or seal up a wound.

"Sounds great,” Carrie said, and slipped into the cargo hold.

Carrie couldn't help grinning as Sarbin nuzzled her with his snout. Her body began adapting to the watery environment even within her lifesuit. Her chest expanded (Not that Matt would let himself notice, she thought) to allow her to take in more oxygen, her blood coursed more quickly through her veins, and her skin thickened slightly. As usual when her body underwent its transformation, she felt more alive than she ever did on land.

Sarbin emitted a series of clicks, and Carrie's datalink translated: “I'm so eager to leave—Matt, are we over Varis yet?"

"Just about,” came the answer from the submersible's control cabin.

"Over’ Varis?” Carrie asked.

"She's submerging,” Matt said, “and I'm going to settle us down so we're just touching her back. Ah—we're there."

"So now what?"

"So now this.” A circular portal about two and a half meters wide irised open in the bottom of the cargo deck, and Carrie saw Varis's skin rippling slightly at the bottom of it. “The edges of that portal are rimmed with medical tech. It'll anesthetize that area of her skin and provide an entryway into her bloodstream at the same time—she shouldn't feel more than a pinprick."

That's what doctors always say, Carrie thought. And they're always lying. “How thick is her blubber?"

"The better part of a meter. But don't worry. You'll zip through it in an flash. And an anticoagulant follows you, so she shouldn't bleed much."

"How will we get out when we're done?"

Carrie could hear the tension in Matt's voice even over the datalink. “Just the same way. But we'll have to pick a spot. Your datalinks will let me keep a position on you at all times. I'll be your capcom, right here the whole time."

Sarbin said, “Varis is ready, though she's still fearful."

She's not the only one, Carrie thought. “Let's get started."

Matt said, “Both of you, float facing the incision area. Carrie first, Sarbin right behind her. You're positioned right above a vein in Varis's back. At the moment of injection, I'll create a burst of positive pressure in the water around you."

"Which should pop us right into the vein."

"It should be quite a ride. And don't worry, I won't do any jokes about Jonah. Hold on . . . in three, two—"

I hate countdowns, Carrie thought.

"—one!"

A flash of light blinded her, a giant hand threatened to squeeze the life out of her, and Carrie felt as if she were falling from a high tower while simultaneously being pummeled by giants.

And, as promised, in a flash it was over and she was riding within a smoothly flowing current down a pink tunnel filled with bright red liquid.

Damned if it didn't work, Carrie thought. She checked the size of the vein by extending her arms to either side—she couldn't quite touch them as long as she stayed in the middle. Sarbin was a tighter fit, but still had room to move back and forth.

Her suit glowed, providing just enough illumination to let her see a few meters in any direction. It also helped that Carrie's bioengi- neering included increased light sensitivity and an echolocation sense. But as Matt had said, everything was pretty blurry. “Sarbin, are you okay?"

"I'm right with you."

Then came another push from behind them, and the vein's walls rushed past that much faster for a while before they slowed again. “What the hell was that?"

Matt spoke up over the datalink. “Just a little boost from Varis's pulse. You'll feel it every twelve seconds or so."

Carrie realized she must be blushing about as red as the rich oxygenated blood all around her. “Sorry. Wasn't thinking."

"Perfectly understandable. You and Sarbin are on a good path from Varis's back to her belly. But it's not a straight route—it curves around her body. It could become a bit of a roller coaster ride."

Carrie encountered one of those curves and slammed a shoulder against one side of the vein, bounced off it, and nearly tumbled out of control. Only her bio-engineered reactions and strength let her straighten out and force her way back into the middle of the steadily pumping bloodstream. “It already has,” she gasped.

Sarbin asked, “Are you all right, Carrie?"

"Getting there,” she said, trying to anticipate the vein's next curve as she approached it—she took the bounce with her right arm and her hip this time. “That was better. You have to let the impact work for you. The sides are actually pretty resilient."

"It's too bad you don't have a fluke,” the Aqua-tile said. “It makes the journey much easier."

"It's hard to tell how much progress we're making."

Matt's voice came over Carrie's datalink: “You're not traveling as quickly as you might think. But it's constant."

"With that little boost from Varis's pulse. Sarbin, how's Varis doing?"

"Fortunately, she cannot feel us inside her. But the very idea still worries—"

Sarbin's voice broke off as Carrie was tossed against one side of the vein, then the other, as a vast, deep rumbling assaulted her ears. A third collision knocked Carrie's breath out of her, and for a while she let the bloodstream take her as it would, accepted the pummeling it gave her.

Matt's voice over the datalink: “Carrie, Sar-bin—Varis is having a seizure. Are you all right?"

Carrie had her breath back and started anticipating each collision with the vein walls. “I'm starting to get the hang of it,” she said over the persistent reverberation that surrounded her. “It's just rolling with the punches—except they don't stop. Sarbin, what about you?"

The Aquatile replied, “In different circumstances, this could even be . . . fun."

"Your idea of fun and mine are considerably different."

"Really, Carrie? What's fun for you?"

Some wine, some cheese, and a healthy specimen of manhood who is . . . “Let's not worry about that right now, Sarbin. Matt, how long do these seizures last?"

"It depends. Sometimes several minutes."

Carrie took another hard blow against the side of the vein wall. “Well, I wish this one would hurry up and—"

The rumbling ceased and Varis's bloodstream quit trying to pummel her against the vein's walls.

"—finish."

Sarbin caught up with Carrie nearly effortlessly. “You really should consider having that fluke installed."

Carrie couldn't help grinning. “Matt—how close are we to the child?"

"You're most of the way there. The trick's going to be holding yourself against the blood flow while you insert the pouch."

Sarbin said, “That's another reason I'm here, Carrie—to brace you as you work."

Matt said, “I wanted to be there with you."

That jealousy again, Carrie thought. “Matt, I know you've worked quite a bit with Sarbin. But you couldn't have done this. You don't have the swimming skills or the body strength. Please realize I'm not bragging. I was made this way."

No response for a moment, then Matt said, “Point taken. I'm glad you're there to help Sarbin in ways I couldn't."

Can't fault his loyalty, Carrie thought. “Thanks. How's the baby doing?"

"Vitals are a bit rocky. We need to get that pouch to her."

"By we,’ you mean me and Sarbin."

"Well, uh—"

"Just giving you a hard time, Matt. How close are we?"

"About fifteen meters."

Sarbin said, “I'm going to move ahead of you, Carrie, to get into position to steady you."

"Sounds great. Uh-oh, hang on!"

Varis's body roiled again, and Carrie found herself crashing hard against Sarbin before she could dodge him. She rebounded off the Aquatile and found herself getting into the rhythm she'd discovered earlier—bounce off the vein wall, try to stay in the middle of the bloodstream, anticipate an upcoming curve...

I'm starting to get the hang of it, she thought. It could be worse—

Varis's body jerked again, Carrie struck the vein wall—

And it gave way and she went tumbling head-over-heels and crash-landed against something smooth and rubbery. Whatever it is, at least it cushioned the blow, she thought. But blood spurted from the hole in the vein, covering her and whatever body part she was lying against.

Sarbin's voice came over her datalink: “Carrie, are you all right?"

"I'm fine.” More low noises all around, and Carrie laid herself flat against the rubbery flesh beneath her. Last thing I want is to start bouncing around inside Varis. Then the Leviathan's body grew still again. “I'm worried about the hole in this vein—it looks like Varis is losing a lot of blood.” She rolled to one side to get clear of the flow.

Matt broke in. “It looks like you landed against Varis's bladder."

"Oh, great,” Carrie said. “I'm going to forgo the obvious jokes. Sarbin, can you get to that hole in the vein?"

"I'm fighting against the current. It's easier between pulses."

Their surroundings rumbled again, but not nearly as strongly as before. “What the hell's that?” Carrie asked.

Matt said, “Varis is eating. Mama-to-be gets hungry, especially after one of those seizures."

Carrie tried to stand, but couldn't get sure footing—the giant bladder gave at each step, leaving Carrie wobbling from side to side before falling back down. I wonder if Varis feels this unexpected urge to go, now, she thought. “I can't reach back up toward the vein. Can't stand up."

Matt asked, “Can you follow the vein's path? Is there some place where it's closer to you?"

Carrie peered down the vein's path. “It's hard to see very far ahead of me. I don't think so."

"How about behind you?"

"Didn't think of that. Didn't want to consider backtracking, I suppose. Yeah, I see a place I can grab hold."

Matt said, “You and Sarbin listen carefully. Sarbin, you've got to patch up the hole already in the vein. Carrie, while he's doing that, you climb up onto that vein."

"Onto it?"

"Look at the force of that blood flow—can you climb back into the vein against it?"

"Point taken again. So Sarbin fixes the already-existing hole in the vein—"

"And I create a new one for you to fall into rather than have to push against,” the Aquatile said.

"All right,” Carrie said, “I'm headed that way.” After another attempt to get to her feet, she gave up and crawled along the wobbly surface of the Leviathan's bladder. Not the most dignified way of getting around, she thought. If I get killed in here, I sure hope Matt or Sarbin can get my body out.

Carrie concentrated hard enough on moving forward that she bumped her head against the bottom of the vein. Great. It's huge, of course. Got to see if I can get myself up on it.

She moved to one side of the vein and tried to pull herself up with her hands, but her fingers couldn't find purchase—its sides were too slippery, and she wasn't tall enough to reach to the top.

Then the bladder beneath her gave way in different directions beneath her feet and she fell on her butt.

Damn, I hate this, Carrie thought. I don't want people to have to place their hands over their mouths to hide their compulsive laughter as they explain how I died, trying to stand up on a Leviathan's bladder, walking around like a drunk on a trampoline.

Trampoline? Damn. I need to catch on faster.

Carrie pushed herself up yet again, balanced carefully, then bent her knees and jumped straight up.

About ten centimeters at best. That's all right, Carrie, she thought. Get the rhythm going. You can do this—it's just like great sex. Another bounce, and another, and Carrie managed a bit more height each time.

At the third bounce, Matt's voice came through her datalink: “Carrie, what are you doing over there?"

She grunted at the effort of another couple bounces. “Trying to jump high enough to get on top of this vein. What's happening?"

"Varis is urinating up a storm—it's like a yellow cloud behind her."

Unexpected laughter burst from Carrie and she lost her rhythm and almost fell. So she did feel the urge. “I'm using her bladder as a trampoline—uh-oh.” The bladder was quickly growing flaccid, providing less bounce with each jump. Continuing the sex analogy, I guess. Well, now or never.

A final thrust with her legs, and she leaped toward the curved side of the vein, grasped its rubbery flesh as high up as she could, and scrambled up with her legs until she was lying on top of it.

Yeah, just like great sex, all right. Worn out now. If I were a man, I'd be ready for a nap. I have to keep going, though.

Sarbin said, “I've sealed the hole you fell through, Carrie."

"Great. You see where I am now?"

"I do. Are you ready?"

"Ready as I'm going to—” A hole opened up right in front of Carrie and she fell into Varis's bloodstream again. An immediate pulse started her on her previous path once more.

"Carrie, wait—I have to seal this hole."

Carrie flipped around and fought to swim against the current. The Leviathan's pulse shot her backwards that much more every ten seconds or so. She watched in amazement as Sarbin's stubby arms and hands aimed a suture beam and sealed up the hole she'd fallen through. With that accomplished, the Aquatile deftly folded up the device and returned it to the pouch. “Ready?” he asked.

"Sure am,” Carrie said, and flipped around to proceed on their previous path. It was only when she relaxed to let the Leviathan's steady pulse propel her through the bloodstream that she realized how out of breath she was, how much her leg muscles burned, how badly her ribs ached from one of the many blows she'd taken against the vein walls. She said, “Matt, please tell me we're near the baby."

"You are, actually. In fact, Sarbin needs to get in front of you to hold you in place."

"Here I go,” the Aquatile said, and easily glided past Carrie to precede her in the Levia-than's vein.

"Just a little farther, Sarbin,” Matt said. “I'm going to try to position you and Carrie at a spot where the vein presses right up against the womb."

"Just tell us when,” Carrie said.

"Just a moment. Now, Sarbin—hold her right there."

The Aquatile flipped around in an instant even as Carrie tried her best to paddle against the bloodstream. Once again she was impressed with how quickly such a large being could move. But when Sarbin pressed the tip of his snout against her back, his fluke flapping insistently to keep them both in place, she groaned with pain. “Can you turn your head a bit? You're killing my kidneys."

"Sorry. How's that?"

"Much better. Lemme reach down and grab that medpack from your belly. Okay, got it. All its systems check out, Matt—which way should I point it?"

"That would be to your right, directly in the middle of the vein."

I've got to get this done quickly, Carrie thought. Even my endurance has its limits, and I'm reaching them pretty quickly. She pressed the medpack against the smooth flesh of the vein, with Sarbin adjusting his position to keep her in place as she moved. She raised her hand to depress the control that would deliver the pouch and—

"Stop!” Sarbin said.

Carrie jerked her hand away from the pack. “What is it?"

"It's Varis. She doesn't trust you. She's afraid of what you might be injecting into her child."

"Isn't this a hell of a time to decide that?"

Matt piped in: “Sarbin, you've got to convince her we're doing what's best."

Or I could just go ahead and hit the button, Carrie thought.

But what would happen then? If Varis became upset enough, agitated enough, she could hurt herself and her baby. And if Sarbin and I were in danger, and Matt ended up following his orders to cut us out if necessary . . .

Carrie kept one hand pressed against the medpack, and the other well away from the control that would activate it. She looked down at Sarbin. “What if you did it?"

The Aquatile looked up at Carrie expectantly. “You mean I should perform the injection?"

"Ask her,” Carrie said as Sarbin looked away from her to communicate with the Leviathan on their private channel.

Sarbin said, “Varis accepts your proposal."

"Let's switch around, then. I'll hold the pack against the side of the vein.” My energy's fading, she thought. Either way I've got to finish this quickly.

Sarbin managed to ease himself upward while still keeping Carrie's body pressed against him so the bloodstream wouldn't sweep her away. But his short arms still couldn't reach the medpack. “Use your snout,” Carrie said.

"No!"

"Why not?"

"I'm an Aquatile, not some primitive being. I use my hands or nothing."

"Sarbin, please make an exception. We've got to get out of here."

Sarbin cast Carrie a harsh look. “Just don't tell anybody. If another Aquatile found out, they'd call me a—fish."

"I won't tell anyone. Cross my heart."

"Failure to translate."

"Just hit the button!"

Sarbin thrust his snout forward and hit the button. Immediately, a readout told Carrie the pouch was being delivered. It flowed smoothly, easily, though the vein wall and into the Leviathan's womb. The too-small-to-be-seen machines making up the medical tech would join the proteins, carbohydrates, electrolytes, and other substances within the amniotic fluid to strengthen the unborn child's defenses against infection and provide her more endurance as she coped with her mother's seizures.

Carrie twisted around to return the medpack to the strap around Sarbin's belly. “Time to go,” she said. Sarbin did one of his now-familiar flips and let the bloodstream take him. Carrie was right behind him. All around her came another deep rumbling. Not as strong as Varis's seizures, though, she thought. What could it be?

"Great job,” Matt said. “Everything's looking fine . . . uh-oh."

Carrie was just getting the hang of keeping herself in the middle of the vein again. “Don't say that, Matt. I don't want to hear that uh-oh’ shit. What's wrong?"

"It's the baby—she's moving into position for delivery."

"Uh-oh."

Sarbin asked, “Why would that happen?"

Carrie could hear the concern in Matt's voice: “The tech made the baby stronger, and Varis's body is interpreting that as the baby being more mature."

Carrie asked, “So that's the source of those rumblings we heard a little while ago. Varis is ready to deliver?"

"And it's happening fast. But there's a problem."

"This already was a problem."

"Well, it's a worse one now. The baby's facing head-first. Leviathans are normally born tail-first."

"Why's that?” Carrie asked.

"Being delivered head-first when you're an aquatic animal means you can drown before you're completely born. And Leviathan babies don't turn around until late in the pregnancy."

Another rumble, this time accompanied by a strong shift to one side that made Carrie miss a curve in the vein. She slammed her shoulder against its walls. She groaned, then said, “What happens if Varis tries to deliver now?"

"There's no trying’ to it. She's delivering. That was a contraction."

Carrie said, “You've got to get us out."

No response at first from Matt. Then he said, “Uh, Carrie . . . ?"

"No. Don't you start. As short a time as we've worked together, I can tell what you're thinking. You've got some other mission for us, and I can tell you we've had enough."

"You went in there to save the baby. Now it's both Varis and the baby who are at risk."

Carrie and Sarbin continued to barrel down the center (mostly) of the vein. “What are you suggesting? That I get in there and push?"

Another silence stretched larger. Finally it was Carrie that broke it: “No. You can't mean—"

"That vein you're in is about to curve up toward the womb again, in just the right place. Sarbin can cut a path—"

"No. Absolutely not."

"—you get inside—"

"Does no one understand the word no’ on this planet?"

"—and then you help the baby turn around and be ready for delivery."

"You know, a midwife is supposed to work on the outside."

Matt said, “Once you get in there, it's going to take some work to turn that baby. It's fifteen meters long, after all."

"What, we can't just flip her around?"

"Carrie, for a woman you don't seem to have much of an idea how crowded it is inside a womb."

"It's been awhile since I left one."

"Besides, you're a fixer. At least that's what I was told before you got here. Now here's something that needs fixing."

Sarbin said, “I can help you, Carrie. We have to save the baby."

It's all so simple for Sarbin, Carrie thought. A true innocent. “All right. Matt, let me know when we need to stop. Sarbin, what does Varis think about this?"

"She's concerned and afraid. We were supposed to help her child. But we might've made things worse."

"Yeah. I don't blame her.” And I sure won't say out loud that I'm afraid we could screw this up even worse than that. Especially if she has another seizure. Carrie thought back to the last seizure, and how she and Sarbin were rocked around inside the vein, with the lesser disturbance of Varis eating following soon after.

Wait a minute, Carrie thought. “Matt, what do the Leviathans eat when they're out in the ocean?"

"Mostly tiny fish and floating vegetation, much like our own whales. We've been gathering it up and taking it to her—but yes, it's the natural vegetation that Leviathans eat when they banish themselves to the motile islands."

"But is it the same as what they eat in the open ocean?"

"I guess we've assumed so—you want me to check?"

"As quickly as you can, Matt. It could make a big difference."

"I'll do that, but you're just about at the place where you and Sarbin need to enter the womb."

"Matt, I won't even try to ponder the Freud-ian implications there."

Sarbin said, “Failure to translate."

"I don't doubt it."

Matt said, “Sarbin, stop Carrie right there."

Sarbin flipped around and eased his big body up against Carrie's, just as he'd done while they delivered the nanotech. The Aquatile reached into his medpack and grabbed the scalpel beam, which resembled nothing more than a small stunner or disruptor. Carrie asked, “How will you know where to cut?"

Sarbin depressed the trigger on his device and a narrow blue beam illuminated a small spot on the side of the vein. “Matt can detect that,” he said.

Sure enough, Matt immediately said, “A little up, Sarbin. Now to the left. Carrie, are you ready?"

"No. But I guess we're going anyway. Hey, wait a minute—did you check on the vegetation?"

"I did. They're related, but not quite the same."

"What's the difference between them?"

"The type the Leviathans eat in the open ocean has an alkaloid the one around the islands doesn't. But it's harmless. Varis says no one else in her pod's ever gotten sick the way she has."

Carrie said, “Harmless to them, maybe. But what if Varis's body has some sort of reaction to it?"

"That's something we have to look at later, Carrie—Varis and her child need our help now."

Carrie took a deep breath and mustered her remaining strength. “All right, then. Anytime, Sarbin."

The Aquatile twisted around to narrow his aim at the proper spot of the vein while still holding Carrie in place against the bloodstream's never-ending flow. He squeezed the trigger on the scalpel. The vein's flesh parted. So did that of the Leviathan's womb just beyond it. Sarbin executed a deft flip of his body, thrusting Carrie through that rubbery rift.

It was only the cushioning effects of the womb's amniotic fluid that kept Carrie from having the breath knocked out of her as she landed, hard, against the Leviathan baby's body. A surging stream of Varis's blood began to diffuse within the womb. Sarbin squeezed through the rift and used the scalpel's suture function to close it within seconds. Carrie took a moment to get her bearings. Any movement, she found, was slow and methodical against the thick amniotic fluid.

She stared across the giant baby's back, down its fifteen-meter length. If Varis is the size of a shuttle, Baby's about like a lifepod, Carrie thought.

A familiar distant rumbling drew closer and stronger, and Varis was in the full throes of another seizure. That sent the baby moving, too, whether having a seizure of its own or reacting in fear.

Carrie tried to stay on the baby's back, but she started sliding downward, falling in slow motion within the thick fluid. The fall won't hurt me because stronger lifesuit tech would snap on, she thought, but the baby's movements could pin me against the side of the womb.

Sarbin glided up beneath Carrie, saying, “Grab onto me.” Carrie grabbed the strap around Sarbin's midsection and held on tight as the Aquatile swam through the narrow space between baby Leviathan and womb wall.

Varis's body grew still as Sarbin dropped Carrie off on top of the baby's body again. Carrie kept on hands and knees, both for balance and because she had very little room to move. Matt was right, she thought. It is crowded in here.

Now, seemingly, it was the baby's turn to thrash around. Carrie was about to be pinned against the “roof” of Varis's womb, but Sarbin inserted himself next to her, taking the pressure on his own larger, stronger body. “Matt,” she said, “I don't know if this was a good idea. We can barely move ourselves, let alone turn this big thing around."

"You've got to try,” Matt replied. “Sarbin has the strength. You can help guide."

Carrie muttered, “I could help guide it up your..."

"What's that?” Matt asked.

"Nothing."

Sarbin broke in: “We have to get to work to save the baby."

"You're right,” Carrie said. “Let's get started. You'll have to do the heavy work. I'll get behind the baby's head and try to guide her."

"Here I go,” Sarbin said, and made his way through the thick fluid to the baby's tail as Carrie floated over to a perch just behind the baby's head, right above her closed eyes. Sarbin applied the side of his snout to the unborn Leviathan's bulk and his fluke began to flap, though not as quickly as Carrie expected. In the low light of their glowing lifesuits, Carrie could tell that Sarbin was putting all his considerable strength behind the effort.

But the baby didn't move.

Sarbin rested. “The fluid's too thick,” he said. “I can't move my fluke quickly enough."

Varis's body shook violently and Carrie flattened herself against the baby's body. It looked as if the ceiling was caving in. As her lifesuit snapped into armor, Carrie realized: Varis is having more contractions.

Sarbin pleaded in a strangled voice: “Carrie, help me!"

A glance behind her, and Carrie saw that the Aquatile was pinned between the wall of Varis's womb and the baby Leviathan's body. And Carrie realized: Sarbin doesn't have the same protective tech in his lifesuit that I do. Mine was designed for space, and his was only developed for this mission.

"What is it?” Matt asked.

"Sarbin's in trouble.” Carrie hunkered down as much as she could to try to slide off the baby's back so she could make her way down to Sarbin. “Is there any way you can help out to make this baby flip around?"

"Goodness, I can't think of anything. Carrie—the Unity's counting on you."

Subtext, Carrie thought. He's telling me he'll follow the Unity's orders to cut Sarbin and me out of here if he has to. “The Unity's just fine for now,” she said, hoping to keep her own reference cryptic enough.

Carrie worked herself free of the tight spot between the womb's walls and the baby's back. But I do have to decide—should Sarbin and I just get out of here, even at the risk of killing the baby and Varis herself?

I say, hell no.

At least for now.

Carrie made it back to Sarbin and grabbed his arms and pulled. To no effect.

"I'm being crushed,” the Aquatile said. “I can barely . . . breathe."

Matt again: “Is now the time?"

"Not yet,” Carrie said. “We have to think of something—wait a minute. Sarbin, can you reach your scalpel?"

Sarbin reached down and pulled it from his sheath. “It's right here."

"Put it on a low setting and shoot the baby with it."

"What? I came here to help it, not hurt it."

"A low setting. Sting it!"

Sarbin raised the scalpel beam and aimed it at the wall of flesh right before him. And hesitated.

"Shoot!” Carrie said,

"I . . . can't..."

Carrie reached toward the scalpel. “Oh, Jesus Christ, let me do it—"

Matt: “Carrie—"

"I know, language. Gimme, Sarbin."

"I'll do it,” the Aquatile said, and fired the scalpel.

The baby flinched, and Carrie held on tight to Sarbin as he swam free. “We did it,” the Aquatile said.

Carrie told him, “And the baby's turned a bit. Give him another shot."

"You sound as if you're enjoying this."

"What I'm enjoying is knowing we're about to turn the baby—oh, and that we're not getting squished just yet."

Sarbin took aim again. “I guess we have to do this.” Another shot, and the baby's tail moved farther away from them. But Varis also reacted, moving her own body from side to side, and Carrie held onto Sarbin even tighter as they swayed back and forth in the relatively slow motion of the amniotic fluid.

Sarbin said, “Varis, you have to keep still—we're saving your baby."

A voice Carrie hadn't heard previously came over her datalink, rough and low: “You are hurting my child."

Varis, Carrie thought. Speaking at last.

"I know we're hurting her,” Sarbin said. “But not very much, and if we don't get her to turn, she could die. So could you."

An odd moment passed, of utter silence and stillness. Then Varis said, “Do what you must."

Sarbin didn't hesitate, but raised the scalpel and stung the baby again. The unborn Levia-than shifted around some more, until it was “sideways” in the womb. Carrie said, “She can't be comfortable that way—she'll have to shift around some more."

And she did, but started back the way she'd come. “Again, Sarbin,” Carrie said, and the Aquatile fired yet again.

With a couple of swishes of her tail and twisting of her body, the baby spun around and placed herself into the proper position for birth. She ended up facing Carrie, who found herself staring directly toward an eye the width of her hand—an eye that spun toward her, then blinked a couple of times against her lifesuit's illumination and finally closed again. Wow, Carrie thought.

Varis's body began to shake again and Carrie flattened herself against Sarbin's back. “Dam-mit,” she said. “Those contractions are tough to take. Matt?"

"I'm here."

"How long can a Leviathan's birth take? We don't want to be stuck in here for hours."

"Everything's proceeding faster than you might think."

Varis's entire body shook again and suddenly Carrie felt as if she were on a starcraft where the grav had failed. “Is Varis diving?"

"Don't worry,” Matt said. “It's common practice for Leviathans about to give birth—dive into colder water, and her body rushes blood to the body core where it's needed."

Varis was already leveling off. “What about the baby when it comes out?"

"The cold provides a shock, and the baby expels any amniotic fluid that could be in its lungs."

"Then it's right up to the surface for that first real breath?"

"You got it, with a little help from Mom."

The baby Leviathan's eye opened again. I could swear it looks surprised, Carrie thought. Then it, and the rest of the baby's body, began to recede as Varis's body trembled with another string of contractions. Carrie and Sarbin were rocked from side to side, then found themselves following right behind the soon-to-be-born Leviathan.

"Uh-oh,” Carrie said. “I'm not a Christian, but I'm about to be born again."

"Part of that didn't translate,” Sarbin said.

"Just get ready to take a ride."

The Leviathan baby shot backward all at once, and Carrie grasped Sarbin tighter than ever as Varis's contractions shot them that way, as well, the baby staring at them all during her fitful journey. “Push, Varis,” Carrie muttered, then couldn't help laughing, however feebly. “I guess that's the first time anyone's said that from inside."

Several minutes of violent back-and-forth, side-to-side movements followed. Carrie, hands cramping, arms and legs losing strength, was about to resign herself to falling away from Sarbin and taking whatever came.

Sarbin said, “Look, Carrie—light!"

Every muscle in Carrie's neck protested as she lifted her head, but she was rewarded with the slightest of glimmers as she looked past the baby's body and beyond its tail. “Isn't it marvelous, Carrie?” Sarbin said. “We're part of the miracle of life."

The miracle will be if we survive it, Carrie thought, but at least she had more motivation to keep hold of Sarbin, if this incredible journey was about to end.

Another burst of motion, and the baby suddenly slipped away from them, her umbilical cord snapping and her body sliding gracefully into the open sea. As smooth and controlled as a starcraft undocking, Carrie thought.

Then she had no time for thought, as the umbilical cord, trailing crimson blood, whipped toward her and Sarbin, massive enough that it could've killed them in an instant, but slowly enough that the Aquatile dodged it and headed for the light.

A final contraction from Varis propelled Sar-bin out into the ocean in a cloud of blood and amniotic fluid. The newly-born Leviathan baby, swimming free, cast a broad shadow over them.

Suddenly Carrie felt as if she were being launched spaceward in a shuttle that had lost its inertial protections. She caught the merest glimpse of Varis's fluke pushing upward inexorably against Sarbin's underside, and then, unexpectedly, she and the Aquatile and the Leviathan child broke the surface of Welkin's waters.

The baby barely left the water before falling back in a gigantic belly flop. Sarbin twisted instinctively and transformed his fall into a headfirst dive that barely seemed to part the waters. Carrie, try as she might, was a creature of land or water, not airborne leaps, but managed a feet-first splashdown that was functional, if not graceful.

The first thing she did after entering the water was deactivate her lifesuit, and she gloried in the feel of Welkin's waters flowing over her skin. She broke the water's surface again and took in the sight of Varis's great bulk rolling onto one side, water sluicing down her underside as her newborn moved in to suckle.

It was worth it, Carrie thought. Just for this one moment, it was all worth it.

Sarbin burst out of the water in front of her, arced over her head, and made graceful splashdown behind her. As he came up next to Carrie, he said, “Isn't it wonderful? You worked hard, but everything turned out all right."

Sometimes the innocents of the world get their way, Carrie thought. “You worked as hard as I did. Without you, the baby would never have been born. Race you to shore.” Carrie took a deep breath into her genetically engineered lungs and started swimming past mother and child and toward the land.

Sarbin easily passed Carrie up, but made it a game all the way in, darting around her and encouraging her to go faster. Matt met her at the shoreline, and stood holding out a terry cloth robe, but with his eyes looking to one side. I'm starting to feel as if I'm somehow odious to him, she thought. But she took the robe, put it on, and sat down on the sand. “I won't move for a month,” she said.

"You did a marvelous job—both of you,” Matt said.

"If you'll excuse me,” Sarbin said from the shallow water, “I'm going to take a long swim and a half-nap.” And with a fluke flip, he was gone.

"A half-nap?” Carrie asked Matt.

"The halves of Aquatile brains take turns sleeping. Just like dolphins."

"He's amazing. How did marine life here become sentient?"

"An excellent question,” Matt said, sitting next to her. “One we're trying to find the answer to. One question we have answered, though—why Varis got sick, and why she's getting better, however slowly, here at the motile island."

"It's that vegetation she's eating in the open ocean, isn't it?"

"She has a reaction to that alkaloid—gets sick, comes to one of these islands, eats the other stuff, gets well."

"Which is why the banishment seems to work.” Carrie ran her fingers through the sand to play for time, then told Matt, “Thanks for doing such a good job as capcom. I was afraid we weren't going to get along."

Now Matt looked at her. “I was afraid you were going to be condescending, showing off your abilities and your body all the time."

"I thought you'd expect me to conform to your religious beliefs."

"I gave up on that long ago. But I had my doubts. I knew your abilities, but not how much you'd lived. How much you understood about death. Until..."

Carrie said, “Until I mentioned my sister."

"Her name was Adriana?"

"Yes."

A silence stretched on for several seconds. Then Matt said, “My sister was Juliette. She died, too. Back on Earth, several years ago."

"I'm so sorry."

"So I knew you understood. How much I wanted to save Varis and her child. How concerned I was for Sarbin."

"I tried to bail on you when you suggested that business of going into the womb."

"I knew you wouldn't."

"How'd you know?” Carrie asked.

"Because I wouldn't have, either."

Copyright © 2010 Dave Creek

Are you sure you'd really want what witnesses are sworn to tell?

If the jury had had any pity, they'd have waited a decent interval before returning the verdict. But the order to return flashed on Manny's thumbnail even before lunch had arrived at the café across the street from the courthouse. Elsa saw it and gave him a tense little nod before reaching for her bag. She glanced over at the client but didn't say a word.

Manny knew his paralegal was right: he ought to warn the client of just how bad it was going to be, but he hadn't the heart. So Perez got the full impact of the mammoth damage award in the courtroom itself. He bent forward as if punched in the stomach, a hollow wheeze escaping his mouth. On the way out of the building he wouldn't look at them, and, Manny guessed, probably wouldn't pay his bill—probably couldn't pay it; the judgment was going to bankrupt him.

Manny and Elsa walked back to the office in the rain. Even in her high heels, Elsa was about three-quarters Manny's height and forty percent his weight, and had to splash along beside him to keep up, making her even more visibly impatient than usual.

"That's the sixth case in a row,” she said, swishing her umbrella back and forth irritably.

"Don't start,” said Manny.

"No, listen. You've got to stop taking cases where the other side has a Whole Truth witness. It's destroying your practice and your reputation."

He ground his teeth. “It's not my fault. You ought to have to notify someone before they speak to a Whole Truth witness."

"But you've tried that argument, no?"

"Yes."

"And you lost."

"Yes."

"And even the Supreme Court—"

Manny made a helpless gesture with the arm holding the litigation bag, wondering whether she nagged her husband this way. “What do you suggest? That we avoid any case where Ed Ferimond is the opposing counsel, or where the other side is any decent-sized corporation? Not to mention most criminal cases?” He sidestepped a large puddle, only to land in another one. “Exactly what cases should I take?"

"You could do more divorces,” said Elsa. Manny didn't answer; the words hung in the soggy air like a promise of eternal mud.

Dripping on the worn carpet of the office and mopping her face with a paper towel, Elsa checked the incoming messages with the purse-lipped efficiency that made her worth far more than he could afford to pay her. Most of the messages were confirmations of hearing dates or responses to discovery requests, but one was an inquiry from a new potential client: Tina Beltran, who had just been served with a summons and complaint from WorldWide Holdings, LLC. A copy of the complaint was attached to the message.

"Well, what do you know,” said Manny, skimming the document and realizing that he'd missed lunch. “A civil suit under PIPRA, maybe even a case of first impression. Well, well. Do you want to order out for sandwiches?"

"No, you should have a salad,” said Elsa, heating water for a cup of tea and holding her hands over the first wisps of steam. He could see her hair starting to recover some of its frizz as it dried. “Case of first impression; is that good?"

"It could be. If it's a high-profile case, it might give us a reputation as experts and bring in more business later."

"If we win, you mean.” Elsa started calling up menus from her favorite salad shacks.

"Yes. You know, I'd really rather have the pulled pork at Tomas's."

"I know that's what you'd really rather,” she said, not deviating from the salad menus. “I don't suppose WorldWide Holdings has a Whole Truth witness?"

Manny skimmed down to the bottom of the pleading, seeing the name Edward Ferimond, Attorney for Plaintiff. He sighed. “I'm afraid it probably does."

Although the medical malpractice case against Jerry Zucker did not involve a Whole Truth witness, it was just as hopeless in its own way. The plaintiff was spitting angry, even after seven months of discovery, and wanted to take Jerry for every cent he had. Manny supposed that disappointing plastic surgery would make anyone testy, but Helen Ishikawa was like a child holding her breath.

"Nelson says that Ishikawa isn't interested in a monetary settlement,” Manny told Jerry over the phone.

"So you called to tell me that we have to go to trial?"

"Not necessarily. Nelson says that she wants you to fix the problem."

"Fix what problem?"

"Do the work the way she wanted it in the first place."

Jerry choked on whatever he was drinking. “What, she trusts me to do more surgery after I supposedly ruined her body the last time?"

"It surprises me too. I can't say I'd trust you, myself."

Jerry didn't laugh. “And anyway, what she wanted wasn't really possible. I mean, some parts of the body just don't do certain things, you know? It's a matter of tissue structure and physics; I told her so at the time."

Manny skimmed his fingers back and forth across the desktop. “I wish you had used a good release and consent form."

"I'm doing it now, aren't I?"

"Yes, yes. Well, if there's no way of pleasing her, then we may have to go to trial after all. She won't consent to mediation."

There was a long pause. Manny could hear background sounds of fluid being poured into a glass. Then Jerry started to speak, stopped, started again: “Well . . . hm . . .” Manny waited, looking at his empty coffee cup.

Several noisy swigs or swallows later, the plastic surgeon said slowly, “I said that Ishikawa can't get what she wants by conventional techniques."

"You did say that, yes."

"But, well, there's an experimental technique—"

"Experimental?"

"Yes—involving nanobots."

Manny puffed air out through his nose, as if he were forestalling a sneeze. These days he detested the mention of nanobots. Nanobots were the basis of the Whole Truth process and the consequent implosion of his trial practice. He took a deep, slow breath, also through his nose. “How do nanobots help?"

"Well, in my early tests, they're able to sculpt tissue almost like clay, changing size, shape, texture, color. So if Ishikawa really wants her—"

Manny interrupted. “Have you ever tried this on an actual human being?"

"Only in highly controlled experiments with minor variations, part of the preliminary FDA approval process. Nothing as major as what she wants."

"So she'd be taking it on faith. Faith in you."

Jerry groaned. “Never mind. It was a stupid idea."

"Well, no, not necessarily. Would this technique work on Ishikawa, if you tried it? How certain are you?"

"Actually, given the sort of weird cosmetic changes she wants and where she wants them, I'm very certain."

"You don't want to buy yourself another malpractice lawsuit, after all."

"No, I'm certain."

Manny tapped out a salsa rhythm on the desk with his fingertips. “Let me call Nelson. Maybe we can set something up."

Tina Beltran turned out to be a nervous, fortyish woman with red hair who reminded Manny of a squirrel harassed by too many cats. “So I guess my case is hopeless,” she said.

Manny steepled his fingers, giving Elsa a sidelong glance. She was taking notes, pretending not to have opinions, but he could tell, from the way her eyebrow twitched, that she agreed with the client.

"Not necessarily,” he said. Elsa's eyebrow twitched again. “You never actually created a defragmenter, did you? You never wrote any code, assembled any modules, or anything like that?"

"Well, no, not to speak of. But Althoren—"

Manny's stomach rumbled at the same moment he interrupted her. “Yes, thank you, I was getting to him. The only one who saw or heard you make any remarks about a defragmenter was Dieter Althoren?"

"Yes."

"There are no documents, electronic records, cold memory or other conversations about it?” An unbidden image of a sardine sandwich with mayonnaise popped into his head.

"No, but I intended—"

Manny held up his finger in a reliably commanding gesture; the finger reminded him of a sardine. “Actually, I don't think I need to know what you intended, Ms. Beltran. Our concern should be with the evidence. Mister Althoren was the only person there? And there were no other conversations?"

Beltran froze, as if she'd caught the sudden scent of a predator. Finally she said, “Yes, but he's enough, isn't he?"

The twitch in Elsa's eyebrow seemed to be attempting to send Morse code. Manny asked, “Do you mean, because of Whole Truth?"

"Well, obviously."

Now Elsa dropped her pretence of objectivity and stared at him the way she probably stared at her children when she caught them in a lie.

Manny folded his hands over his increasingly empty belly and spoke slowly to Beltran, avoiding Elsa's gaze. “I agree that the Whole Truth process gives us a disadvantage in the courtroom."

"Disadvantage?” Beltran chittered. “They'll believe every word he says!"

Inwardly Manny sighed. Too many client consultations reached this same impasse. His head inclined one way, then the other. “I'll admit it's a risk. But tell me, how strongly do you feel about this case?"

"How strongly do I feel?” Manny imagined the thrashing of Beltran's angry tail. “One: all I did was talk. Two: all I talked about was creating a defragmenter to reassemble media files with expired copyrights. Expired copyrights, Mr. Suarez! Three: this stupid lawsuit is by some holding company I never even heard of, for my life savings! How do I feel?"

"Well,” said Manny, “I think a lot of people will feel the way you do about it—people on the jury, for example. Not a lot of people have even heard of the PIPRA statute. Once they understand what it is, well, it seems pretty compelling, doesn't it? Giant holding company bankrupts honest designer for talking about creating software to do something perfectly legal?"

Beltran chewed her lip rapidly. “So you don't think we should settle, Mr. Suarez?"

"Please call me Manny. Well, so far they haven't offered us any settlement. If they do, naturally we should consider it."

"We could offer a settlement ourselves."

Manny gave her his widest, hungriest smile. “Would you like to?"

Her beady eyes flashed. “No."

"Good,” he said. “Because I think we can beat them."

After Tina Beltran left the office, Elsa stood in the doorway to the conference room, all sixty inches of her, fierce and birdlike, staring at Manny as if he were a shoplifter or graffiti artist.

"What?” asked Manny. Elsa didn't answer, but her eyes narrowed. He continued, “I'm starving. Do you want a sandwich?"

"You are a shameless, unprincipled opportunist,” she said, sounding more like a crow than a songbird.

"You object to the sandwich?"

"I'm not talking about the goddamn sandwich." Then, as if changing her mind, she glowered at his belly. “Anyway, you eat too much."

"Do you nag Felix this way?"

"Felix doesn't lie to people and build false hopes."

"Neither do I."

"Really?” she asked, speaking through her sharp little beak as she did at her most sarcastic. “After the last six cases, you expect to overcome the testimony of a Whole Truth witness?"

"It's possible,” he said, not very convincingly.

Elsa stepped up to him so that her nose was about six inches from the bottom of his breastbone, and started poking her index finger into his chest with each word, as if pecking for worms. “You—” Peck. “—got—” Peck. “—her—” Peck. “—hopes—” Peck. “—up.” Peck, peck, peck.

"Ow, stop it, get away. Look—” He rubbed his chest with his palm. “This is a test case for PIPRA. If we win it—"

"With what? Good intentions? Political sympathies of the jury? I can see it now: Members of the jury, you should give a damn about little Tina Beltran and some complicated IP statute you never heard of. Manuel Suarez waves his magic wand and everybody ignores the evidence."

"That's possible too.” She glared at him. “There's a good chance that PIPRA is unconstitutional."

"And how many levels of appeal would it take to decide that point in her favor? Don't tell me that WorldWide isn't going to keep going until they run out of courts."

He tried to find a way around her through the doorway, but she blocked him. “Possibly all the way to the Supreme Court,” he conceded.

"Sa—. And we know how much that costs, don't we? Do you imagine that that woman has anything like those resources?” If she'd really been a bird, she would have flown into his face.

"I'll think of something,” Manny said. “I always think of something."

Elsa shook her head and marched out of the room.

"It doesn't look like it's going to work,” Manny told Jerry Zucker. “She doesn't want the procedure when it's totally untested."

He could hear Jerry's sigh over the phone. “So we're back where we started from, aren't we?"

"Yes. We were pretty close, too. Nelson says that if you had even a few patients with major alterations or enhancements from your nano-machine process, Ishikawa might give it a go—he says she'd even drop the suit and sign a release."

There was a sound of something soft banging on something hard—possibly Jerry's fist on his desk, or maybe his forehead. “Hell."

"I don't suppose there's any way you could produce a confidential human subject, is there?” asked Manny.

"What?"

"Well, from what Nelson told me, I gather that Ishikawa would accept any successful subject, even one that wasn't, well, fully disclosed to the FDA."

"You're kidding. We're supposed to trust her with something like that? It's like giving a blackmailer the key to your diary."

"She seems to want this alteration very badly. We might be able to get her to sign a confidentiality agreement."

"Well, I'm sorry, but there is no such patient. I've been a good boy, and I haven't engaged in human experimentation without a go-ahead from the powers-that-be."

"Not even with a consent form?"

"Manny."

"Ah, well. It was worth a try. Looks like the courtroom for us."

"Not a lot of plastic surgeons on juries."

"No, I'm afraid not."

As he hung up, Manny wondered idly whether Jerry would be happy living in some other country and engaging in some other profession. Probably not.

Then he looked up and saw Elsa, standing in the doorway of his office like a torch of righteousness. “Have you found some way not to cheat Tina Beltran?” she asked.

"It's nice to see you too, Elsa. I'm not cheating her."

Elsa began counting on her fingers. “No way to avoid the Whole Truth evidence. No way to cause jury nullification. No way to get a ruling on the law without bankrupting the client. Shall I go on?"

"I'll think of something, chica."

"Don't call me chica. You'll think of something, right. You have the gall to take that woman's money, and you have nothing. She deserves more than to put her hopes in one of your hallucinations!"

Manny froze, not breathing. He looked at Elsa as if he'd never seen her before. “Say that again."

"I said, she deserves more than to put her hopes into one of your—"

He interrupted her, grinning indecently. “Elsa, I love you."

"I'll tell Felix,” she warned.

"Go ahead. I'll pay him a fair price for you. How much do you suppose he wants?"

"Do you want another finger in the chest?"

But Manny was chortling. “Listen, Elsa, listen. If I had, really had, a way of beating WorldWide, would you help me?"

"Of course I'd do that."

"No matter what it entailed?"

She folded her arms and raised an angular eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?"

Dieter Althoren watched through his window as the creepy little car drove away through the canyons of January snow, chewing his lip until he was sure it wasn't coming back.

His parents had warned him about this. “Don't go along with it,” Vatti had said. “You don't know what will happen to you. What will you do if they screw you up?” But he'd needed the money so badly; this job had been his last hope. And the doctors had been so sure, so confident; they'd said that the failure rate was so low . . . He tried to swallow in a dry throat, felt faint, and let himself drop onto the couch.

What to do? If he told Ed Ferimond what had happened, he'd lose his job, and he didn't believe for a damn minute that the lawyer or anybody else would help him. But you signed a release, they'd say. We told you the risks, and you agreed to accept them. “Hold harmless,” see? It says so right here. Bastards.

Well, fine. He wasn't going to tell Ferimond or anybody else what had happened. When was he next seeing the son of a bitch? Not until April, to prepare for the stupid deposition. He'd tell the “whole truth and nothing but the truth,” sure—hell, with those damn bugs in his head he couldn't do anything else—but he didn't have to tell anyone what they didn't ask.

At jury selection, Manny behaved exactly the way Edward Ferimond expected him to behave. He asked each juror what she knew about the Protection of Intellectual Property Revision Act, how it was drafted, who sponsored it, who the lobbyists were. He mentioned WorldWide's name as often as he could. Ferimond, who had the grace, beauty, and haughtiness of an Abyssinian cat, made frequent objections, lazily accusing him of biasing the jury and turning a simple civil suit into a political trial. Judge Rackham seemed bored by both Manny's questions and Ferimond's objections; some objections she sustained, but most she overruled, since the jurors’ opinions about PIPRA were potentially sources of bias.

But Ferimond did not seem to find anything objectionable in Manny's tedious repetition of the same question to each and every juror: “Can I count on you to rely on your own assessment of the evidence, rather than allowing someone else to tell you which witnesses are truthful, lying, or just crazy?” Of course they'd all said yes.

In pretrial conference, Ferimond had looked genuinely put out when Manny declined to stipulate to the reliability of testimony from a Whole Truth witness, although he never had and never would.

So here Ferimond was, his body language conveying how many better things he had to do, questioning Eleanor Moncrief, Ph.D., a plump woman in a flattering blue suit and matching eyes, qualifying her as an expert, and taking her through the familiar territory of the Whole Truth enhancement procedure.

"The nanomachines alter pathways in the parts of the brain associated with memory and volition,” said Dr. Moncrief in a surprising contralto. “The machines are injected in a saline solution, effect their changes in the appropriate neural tissue, and then decompose into trace minerals that pass out of the system. From injection to elimination, the procedure takes about 48 hours."

"And what,” yawned Ferimond, “is the result of this procedure on the behavior of the subject?"

"There are two primary results. First, the subject has total recall of all events occurring after the procedure. Second, he becomes incapable of telling a knowing falsehood."

"How long do these behavioral changes last?"

"They are permanent, until the procedure is reversed or some organic event takes place, such as degradation of tissue with age or illness."

"In the case of Dieter Althoren,” said Ferimond, seeming to regain some interest in what he was doing, “when was the procedure performed?"

"June 23rd of last year,” said Dr. Moncrief.

"Did you perform the procedure yourself?"

"Well, I have an R.N. who does the actual injections. But apart from that, yes, I did."

"So far as you are aware, has the procedure been reversed?"

"Not so far as I know."

"So, doctor, would it be fair to say that anything said by Mr. Althoren relating to any event occurring after June 23rd of last year would be truthful and accurate?"

"Objection, Your Honor.” Although addressing the judge, Manny looked right at the jury. He rose with exaggerated difficulty. “Counsel is asking the witness to opine on a matter of credibility. The jury determines whether a witness is truthful.” He nodded approvingly to the jurors, then sat down slowly.

"Sustained."

Ferimond gave a long-suffering sigh. “Let me rephrase, doctor. Have there been tests during the last twenty years of subjects’ accuracy and credibility following the Whole Truth procedure?"

"There have been dozens of studies."

"What is the percentage of subjects who display, within normal tolerances, perfect truthfulness and accuracy?"

"According to the literature reviews I've seen, that figure is 97.5 percent, plus or minus two percent."

Ferimond did not quite smirk, but he looked at Manny as if to say, Why waste your time? “No more questions."

Manny rose as Ferimond sat. He addressed the witness with his friendliest face. “Doctor Moncrief, where does that two-and-a-half percent failure rate come from?"

She smiled back. “A tiny fraction of pathways do not respond as predicted. For most subjects, the incidence of such pathways is so small that the results are the same. But for just a few, the cumulative effect of unaltered pathways results in unaltered behaviors."

"These subjects have either inaccurate memories, or are still able to lie?” asked Manny.

"Yes, but I must emphasize that you are talking about one subject out of forty."

He nodded. “I see. Now, when you speak of the memories being accurate, you're speaking of memories as perceived by the subject, yes? I mean to say, if the subject's eyes or ears were not working properly, the subject would recall sights and sounds as garbled by his senses, wouldn't he?"

She nodded too. “Yes, he would."

Manny adopted the tone of a curious student. “And also our memories are affected by our own attitudes, aren't they? If a person associates dogs with violence, he might remember a dog he saw as being violent when that dog wasn't actually violent. Isn't that so?"

"Yes,” Moncrief responded slowly. “Within limits."

"What limits?"

"Well, if he had time to see what the dog was really doing, I don't believe he would manufacture things that weren't there. For example, he wouldn't say that there was blood dripping from the fangs when there wasn't."

"But if the dog actually made a friendly move, the subject might interpret it and report it differently, yes?"

"Yes, I think that's right."

Manny nodded. “One more question. If a person is already subject to garbled perceptions, for reasons of mental illness, drug use, brain damage, or other causes, the Whole Truth process doesn't actually cure those things, does it?"

She frowned for a second, then answered. “No, but there are other procedures that we can employ to effect changes like that."

He nodded again, looking eager to please. “Surely, surely, but you'd have to know of such conditions, wouldn't you, before you could cure them?"

"We would."

Manny smiled gratefully and sat down again, beaming at the whole room as if he were planning on treating them all to drinks and dinner.

Dieter Althoren, blond, 28, thin as a rope, earnest of expression, was sworn as the plaintiff's next and last witness. Silkily Ferimond led Althoren through his visit to Tina Beltran's office a mere two weeks after undergoing the Whole Truth procedure—what the room looked like, what she was wearing, the color of her nail polish. Then they padded together through the conversation itself, stopping at every breath and turn of phrase in Beltran's manner, how he asked her about defragmenters, how she said she was planning on writing one, how he offered to pay her for a copy and she agreed.

Throughout the direct examination, Manny quietly arranged and rearranged a few coins on top of the counsel's table, as if not noticing even that Althoren was speaking. When Ferimond said, “Your witness,” Manny stood with even more difficulty than before, shuffling his papers in a doddering, confused manner. He glanced up apologetically at the witness and took a full twenty seconds to find the page he was looking for. The foolish fat man, that was Manny.

"Good morning, Mr. Althoren,” he said, smiling.

"Good morning, sir."

"Let's see. You and I haven't met before today, have we?"

Althoren gave Manny a knowing grin, as if spotting a trap. “You took my deposition, Mr. Suarez."

Manny touched his forehead like a man who's left his keys in the car. “That's right, that's right, thank you for reminding me. The deposition. That was in March of this year, wasn't it?"

"April, Mr. Suarez.” Althoren's grin broadened.

"Of course. Dear me.” Manny shook his head ruefully. “But at any rate, we can say with confidence that you and I hadn't met before the deposition, can't we?"

Althoren's expression changed. He seemed reluctant to speak, but, as if unable to stop himself, said, “I'm afraid we can't say that."

Manny's eyebrows rose, and he cocked his head. “We can't?"

Althoren's voice dropped noticeably. “No, sir. We met in January, at my house."

Manny frowned and put down his paper. Then he opened, consulted, and closed a leather-bound calendar. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a confused look ripple across Ferimond's face. Manny frowned even more deeply, making impressive bulges in his face. “We did? In January?"

"Yes, sir."

"I came to your house?"

"You did."

"Was I alone?"

"No, sir. Your paralegal, Ms. Morales, was there too.” Althoren gestured at Elsa.

"Ah.” Manny chewed his lip, glancing at Elsa in apparent confusion. Then he spoke as if humoring someone who was making an elaborate joke. “Well, I imagine if it was winter, I must have looked pretty awful, eh? Not my best time of year."

Althoren looked even more unhappy. “You could say that. You had that awful green skin."

Manny looked taken aback, then relaxed. “Green—ah, you mean that I looked peaky, right? Green, like I wanted to throw up?"

Althoren shook his head. “No, I mean emerald green. Green, like my neighbor's lawn."

Manny's mouth gaped, then he said, “My skin?"

"Yes."

"Emerald green?"

"That's right.” Manny turned to the jury. All of them were examining his copper complexion; several wore puzzled expressions.

"My hair wasn't green too, was it?"

Ferimond, who seemed just to have realized what was going on, interrupted as smoothly as he could. “Objection. What is the relevance of these questions?"

Judge Rackham, though, was scrutinizing Althoren and did not even look up. “Overruled. You may answer, Mr. Althoren."

"No, sir, you had no hair, and you had antennae growing out of your head.” One of the spectators snorted; Rackham gave the man a warning look.

Manny swallowed, took a drink of water, and swallowed again. Then he said weakly, “What color were the antennae? Green?"

"No, they were bright red, and they wiggled."

There were more guffaws in the courtroom. Rackham and Ferimond both glared, though for different reasons. Manny silently mouthed the word wiggled, raised his hands in apparent helplessness, then said, as if it were an offhand remark, “Well, Ms. Morales didn't have green skin, did she?"

"No, she didn't."

"That's good. Do you remember what she was wearing?"

"How could I forget? She had no shirt on."

"No shirt on? In January?"

"No shirt on under her coat."

"Oh. Do you mean she sat in your house in her brassiere?"

"No, she never sat, and she was bare-chested.” Ferimond looked wildly at Elsa, who seemed merely puzzled.

Manny's face took on a pained expression, as if pleading with Althoren to talk sensibly. “Mr. Althoren, have you any idea why Ms. Morales should come into a stranger's house half-dressed?"

Althoren was sweating. “She said it was so that her wings wouldn't hurt."

Manny's mouth stayed open for five seconds. Ferimond's stayed open longer; emerald green might not have been a bad description of his own face just then. Manny said, “Her—her wings?"

"Yes,” said Althoren, closing his eyes.

"Did you, er, see those wings?"

"I did."

"What did they look like?"

"They were white and feathery, and about three feet long."

"Um.” Manny stared at Elsa, who stared back and shrugged. Then, as if trying to take command of a crazy situation, Manny said, “Come now, couldn't these wings have been a costume?"

"No, sir. She flapped them."

"Flapped. She didn't fly, did she?"

"No, she said she hadn't learned how yet."

There was a roar of laughter from the spectators and several members of the jury. Judge Rackham pounded her gavel for order.

Manny tossed his papers onto the desk and said, “Your honor, I really cannot continue with this witness. I have no more questions.” He sat down.

Judge Rackham turned to Ferimond. “Re- direct?"

Ferimond banished the dazed expression from his face, forced himself to stand, and managed to say, “Judge, I'd like to request a brief recess before any re-direct examination."

Rackham's face said, I'll bet. Her voice said, “Very well, you can have twenty minutes. Mr. Althoren, you will remain under oath during the recess."

Ferimond gestured angrily for Althoren to follow him, and the two of them left the courtroom. The jury filed out into their lounge, some bewildered, some amused. Manny whistled tunelessly, looking through a reference book he'd brought for show. Elsa rolled her eyes. Tina Beltran, who was as confused by Althoren's testimony as anyone, leaned towards Manny and whispered, “What was that all about?"

"Hush,” said Manny, taking out his watch and laying it on the table. “We'll see."

Exactly twenty minutes later, Ferimond and Althoren reentered the courtroom. Ferimond looked aggrieved; he glared at Manny before sitting.

When the jury had re-entered, Rackham asked, “Re-direct examination, Mr. Ferimond?"

Ferimond stood. Through gritted teeth he said, “No, Judge. We rest."

"Very well. Mr. Suarez, you may present your first witness."

Manny stood more easily this time. “Actually, Your Honor, we'd like to waive the presentation of defendant's case and proceed immediately to our closing argument."

Rackham looked startled, the jury puzzled, Ferimond aghast. “Mr. Suarez,” said Rackham, “you're not going to present any evidence at all?"

"No, judge. Since plaintiff has the burden of proof, his failure to present sufficient evidence is grounds for the jury to find in our favor. As I do not believe plaintiff has proved his case, I see no reason to bother refuting it."

"Are you moving for a directed verdict, then?"

"No, judge, but thank you for asking. I just want to talk to the jury."

Rackham tapped her fingernails on the bench. “I'm not going to indulge you if you change your mind later, Mr. Suarez."

"Understood, Your Honor."

"I expect that you'll want a continuance to prepare your closing argument?” She glanced over at her clerk, who was already checking the calendar.

Manny said, “No ma'am. We have half the day left, and I'm ready now."

Rackham consulted the file summary in front of her. “Um, I don't think we've settled the jury instructions yet, have we?"

"Actually, Your Honor, we've read Plaintiff's proposed jury instructions and we're content to let those stand. They're fine. But I'm ready for my closing."

The judge nodded. Manny thought she might be thinking about her docket.

Ferimond sputtered, “Your Honor, this is ridiculous! We're hardly ready for closing. We expected defendant to present a case!"

"That's up to him, counsel."

"But our own closing isn't ready."

"Then you can have a continuance after Mister Suarez has finished.” Ferimond's mouth worked, but nothing came out. Rackham sighed. “Please be seated, Mr. Ferimond. Mister Suarez, you may proceed."

"Permission to approach the jury?"

"Granted."

Manny wandered over to the jury box, shaking his head. “For a thousand years, juries have had the role of deciding the credibility of witnesses. Everyone knows there are excellent liars in the world, and that no one is a perfect judge of character. We have faith that twelve citizens, using their own wits and working together, can tell the liars from the truth-tellers.

"But now a few clever engineers invent a nanobot that, they say, takes that job away from you. They say that a witness who's had the Whole Truth process cannot forget, cannot lie, that anything he says must be true. They would have this machine tell you what to believe.

"But that is not the way our system works. It is still you, the jury, who determine whether a witness is telling the truth. Neither I, nor Mr. Ferimond, nor the judge herself can tell you what to believe, and neither can a collection of nanomachines. Even those who say they believe in the Whole Truth process admit that it can commit an error. I say that your own common sense tells you when an error’ is present.

"It is possible that I have green skin and wiggling red antennae, or at least that I had them in January. It is possible that Ms. Morales, a married woman with two children, walked into a Mr. Althoren's house, bared her chest to him and flapped a set of white angel's wings. If you believe those things, then you should also believe Mr. Althoren's other testimony, and hold that Tina Beltran engaged in the conspiracy of which she is accused. Otherwise, you should find that Mr. Ferimond and WorldWide Holdings have failed to prove their case."

Manny sat down. It was the shortest closing argument he'd ever made.

The next morning, Ferimond delivered a closing that was, in Manny's opinion, a tactical blunder. He focused entirely on Althoren's testimony in direct examination, the details of the conversation with Tina Beltran, and how those facts proved the illegal conspiracy prohibited by PIPRA. He did not address the peculiarities of Althoren's cross-examination testimony at all; indeed, he behaved as if the cross-examination had never occurred.

The judge's jury instructions were tilted towards WorldWide, of course, since Manny had not bothered arguing them. If he lost, Beltran might sue him for malpractice.

But the jury was out for less than a half hour before they returned a verdict in favor of the defendant. Manny rose to ask for statutory attorney's fees.

After accepting Tina Beltran's excited hug, as he and Elsa walked back to the office, this time in giddy sunshine, Manny pulled a personal check out of his jacket pocket. “Three months’ bonus,” he said.

Elsa glanced down at the check without touching it. “Four,” she said.

"What?"

"Four. You owe me more."

"I thought you only wanted two."

"That was before I saw the scars."

"What?"

"Scars. On my back. Zucker promised there wouldn't be any, but there they are, one on each side."

"I'm sorry."

"You should be; the whole thing is practically sexual harassment. But just pay for the cosmetic surgery and we'll call it even. I'm thinking of suing him for malpractice myself. Goddamn pin feathers."

Copyright © 2010 Kenneth Schneyer

The first pulsar was observed on November 28, 1967 by Antony Hewish and his graduate student Jocelyn Bell Burnell of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University in the UK. The object they detected with their radio telescope emitted surprisingly regular bursts of radio waves. They initially called their discovery “LGM-1.” The LGM designation stood for “little green men,” an inside joke based on the speculation that they might be receiving radio signals from an alien civilization. It was subsequently concluded that the radio pulses were the result of a “lighthouse effect” made by radio waves beamed from the magnetic poles of a spinning neutron star, so that the radio beam swept across the detector making regular pulses as the neutron star rotated.

A neutron star is an ultra-dense stellar remnant left behind by a low-mass supernova. (High-mass supernovas leave behind black holes.) A typical neutron star has a mass about 1.4 times that of our sun, but it has a radius of only about 10 kilometers. The large mass and small size give it a density comparable to that of atomic nuclei. Essentially, a neutron star is a giant nucleus consisting almost entirely of neutrons held together by the force of gravity. Neutron stars have about the same angular momentum that their parent star had before the supernova and typically spin very rapidly, about one rotation every 0.0014 seconds or 42,900 RPM. They have polar magnetic fields between 104 and 1010 tesla, much larger than any magnetic field that we are able to produce in our puny Earth-bound laboratories. This huge field, combined with the high spin rate, causes many neutron stars to beam radio pulses (and also visible light and x-ray pulses) as they rotate.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about neutron-star pulsars, aside from the fact that they exist at all, is that the pulses are so regular in time. They are not perfectly regular, however, because neutron stars spin down, due mainly to the emission of electromagnetic radiation, and lose spin energy and angular momentum as they age. Young neutron stars, created within the last 100,000 years, have the highest spin-down rates and the most rotational “noise” due to internal star-quakes. Older systems, with ages up to 100 million years, have rotational periods that are more stable and reliable.

In 1974 Joseph H. Taylor of Princeton University and his graduate student Russell A. Hulse detected radio pulses from one of a pair of neutron stars that were closely orbiting each other. The timing and Doppler shift of the pulses allowed them to precisely determine the rotation period of the binary system (about eight hours). They made repeated measurements over several years and found that the rotation period of the binary system was increasing because the two stars were slowly “spinning down,” losing a tiny fraction of their rotational energy as they orbited. They showed that this loss of energy was precisely the amount predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity as the energy loss due to the production of gravity waves by the two massive counter-rotating stars. Thus, in a rather indirect way, gravity waves have been “observed” though their removal of energy and angular momentum from a binary neutron star. In 1993 Taylor and Hulse received the Nobel Prize in Physics in recognition of this work.

Some pulsar systems have exceptionally regular pulse rates. By far the best pulsar systems, from the point of view of pulse regularity, are the millisecond pulsar binary systems (period less than 10 milliseconds). These are pulsar members of a binary system in which the companion star has a relatively low mass. Astronomers have identified about 70 of these pulsar systems distributed fairly uniformly around our galaxy. They have remarkably stable periods. One of these pulsars, with the less-than-memorable name of PSD J037-4715, was determined to have a period of 5.757451924362137 (plus-minus) 0.000000000000002 milliseconds at midnight, April 6, 2001, and to have a spin-down rate of 5.79370 (plus-minus) 0.00002 x 10power-20. This illustrates the remarkable precision with which the pulsar's pulses can be timed. This precision can be exploited for direct investigation of other phenomena, including gravity waves.

What are gravity waves? A gravitational field, which can be viewed as a distortion of local space, surrounds every massive object. Gravity waves can be viewed as spreading ripples in this space distortion that arise when a massive object is moved and its gravitational fields disturbed. Like light, gravity waves travel at the speed of light and obey the inverse-square law [intensity is proportional to 1/(distance)power2]. Gravity waves induce a kind of “kneading” distortion in the space through which they move, making local distances alternately larger and smaller. In one direction, perpendicular to the wave's direction of travel, space is stretched, while in the other direction space is compressed, with the stretch and compression exchanging places after half a period of the wave. The wave can be visualized as a long sausage with its sides alternately pinched in side-to-side and top-to-bottom, with the pinches along the length of the sausage repeating with each wavelength and the entire sausage moving forward at the speed of light.

Gravity waves have two distinct states of polarization. Viewed head-on, gravity waves with the “+” polarization state alternately compress and expand space top-to-bottom and side-to-side (kneading space with a “+” pattern). Gravity waves having the “X” polarization state compress and expand space along lines 450 to the right of vertical and to the left of vertical (kneading with an “X” pattern). These two polarization states make gravity wave detection more difficult because a given detector is usually sensitive to only one of the two states and therefore detects only half of the possible signals.

Gravity waves are very difficult to detect directly because they are the wave embodiment of the weakest force of the universe (gravity is 4.3 x 10power-40 times weaker than electromagnetism). The effects of gravity waves on matter are correspondingly small. Early detection attempts, using large resonant cylinders as detectors, produced some false positive reports in the 1970s. Ultimately, however, resonant-cylinder detectors were shown to be too insensitive to detect gravity waves at the intensities expected. At this writing (5/11/2010), despite the construction and operation of major interferometer-based gravity wave detectors in the USA (LIGO), Germany (Geo 600), Italy (Virgo), and Japan (TAMA 300), gravity waves have still not been directly detected.

Now there is a clever new approach to the problem of gravity wave detection. As gravity waves travel, they distort the space through which they travel, causing adjacent points to momentarily become farther apart or closer together. The result of this is that radio waves moving through a gravity-wave distorted region of space will have a small variation, on the order of a microsecond, in their transit time through the region. This effect is independent of the polarization of the gravity wave.

Thus, the precise timing of the radio pulses from millisecond pulsars will be modified as they pass through a region where the gravity waves are present, and the pulse train will be delayed by microseconds to nanoseconds. This, at least in principle, permits gravity-wave detection. Further, since there are about 70 known millisecond pulsars, a large fraction of which having trains of pulses that could be delayed by the same gravity waves, pairs of pulsar signals can be correlated to focus on the time delay variation present in both signals from the two pulsars, thereby suppressing noise. The relative strengths of these correlations can also give fairly precise information on the direction and distance of the source that produced the gravity waves, provided that production was in the right frequency range and of sufficient intensity.

The NANOGrav Collaboration (North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravity Waves) is a US/Canadian group of radio astronomers who are attempting to use millisecond pulsar timing, combining observations from a number of radio telescopes, to directly detect low-frequency gravity waves. The work is complementary to that of ground-based gravity wave detectors (e.g., LIGO, etc.) and to the proposed space-based detector (LISA). LIGO is sensitive to gravity waves with frequencies between 50 Hz and 10 kHz. LISA will be sensitive to gravity waves with frequencies between 1 Hz and 10power-5 Hz. The NANOGrav observations of pulsar timing will be sensitive to gravity waves with very low frequencies between 10power-7 and 10power-10 Hz.

It turns out that significant gravity wave radiation from two independent mechanisms should exist in the NANOGrav range of frequencies. In particular, there should be large numbers of supermassive black hole binary systems in the universe. These systems, usually near galactic centers, should involve pairs of orbiting supermassive black holes with masses on the order of 107 solar masses. Such systems should produce very intense low-frequency gravity waves that fall within the range of sensitivity of NANOGrav observations. In addition, it is expected that during the inflationary period of the early universe, primordial gravity waves of similar intensities and frequencies should have been produced as the universe expanded and should still be present as the gravitational analog of the cosmic microwave background.

The problem for the NANOGrav detection of gravity waves is that the present precision with which pulsar periods are determined is not enough to achieve the needed sensitivity due to sparse data collection and insufficient duration of pulsar detection. Their goal is to correct these deficiencies by 2015 and to monitor at least 20 pulsars with 100-nanosecond precision and five pulsars with 10-nanosecond precision.

This improvement should allow them to observe, identify, and locate many supermassive black hole binaries and probably to detect the gravity wave background radiation from the Big Bang.

Therefore, this is an exciting time for gravity wave astronomy. In the next few years, we can expect the first results from the NANOGrav effort, pinpointing the locations of binary systems of supermassive black holes. During this period we also expect the observations, at higher frequencies, of gravity wave detection by the ground-based gravity wave detectors. Watch this column and the science press for breaking news of direct gravity wave detection.

Copyright © 2010 John G. Cramer

AV Columns Online: Electronic reprints of over 150 “The Alternate View” columns by John G. Cramer, previously published in Analog, are available online at: www.npl.washington.edu/av.

The NANOGrav Collaboration:

www.nanograv.org/index.shtml

Gravity Waves and Pulsar Timing:

"The International Pulsar Timing Array project: using pulsars as a gravitational wave detector,” G. Hobbs, et al, Classical and Quantum Gravity, Volume 27, Issue 8, pp. 084013 (2010); arXiv e-print:0911.5206.

Your science claims our planet's dead,

our chemistry's not blood but rust,

this planum's arid sandy red

is not a sign of life, but dust.

—

On desiccated, hot-eyed Mars,

you disregard our spring-time twirls.

You fail to see what joy is ours;

you overlook us playful girls.

—

But give our capering coils a glance:

we're full of life, we want to revel.

We do a Martian primal dance,

we wisps you choose to name dust devil.

—

Sparkling as in a girasol,

our pirouetting Martian dream-wish

is only to rise Phobos-tall

and whirl, whirl, whirl, like any dervish.

—

Come, watch us twisters soar and dive:

Mars can't be dead when we're alive.

Copyright © 2010 Mary A. Turzillo

Even beings so different as to be almost incomprehensible may have some things in common....

The alien at the Alamo met me during a sweltering San Antonio afternoon, one of those days when even the adobe walls of that sacred monument itself seem to melt in the unforgiving sun. He (if gender even existed) was disguised as a human cowboy—short, not over five foot six, very skinny in his tight jeans and white long-sleeved shirt, looking Hispanic. The dark shadow of his white cowboy hat hid the details of his face, but I could tell he was alien. I had encountered a few before (by way of involuntary abductions), and this one had the same not-quite-on-a-human-key look. A cowboy! I laughed silently.

The alien had interrupted a reverie of sorts. As I always did while visiting the Alamo, I'd been humming the tune “San Antonio Rose,” by Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, broken words, empty tunes I knew. Hours earlier, I had left a cooler, windy Padre Island on the Texas Gulf Coast to come look over some architectural details of the scarred mission, as research for an article on Texas history for one of the statewide magazines still in print. I needed the extra income because my retirement was not quite working out financially, not with half my Social Security pension, like everybody's, going toward the wars in Venezuela and Bolivia.

As he approached, I was thinking that this particular meeting might make for a much more interesting article, but I was also sure that nobody would buy it. Nobody had cared about the articles on my three “alien abduction” incidents. So-called alien encounters were very common around the world, but still no more believable to any but the victims. Few people outside of cable TV shows believed any of such stuff; no one in conventional media would even listen.

I sighed and asked my visitor, “Again? Didn't I answer all the questions the others wanted? What's the deal?"

In that perfect South Texan drawl, the cowboy alien said, “My interest in you is somewhat different. Would you care to accompany me to the sidewalk café across the street?” I nodded. Some choice! Either comply now or wake up in the morning with a headache, a sore rectum, and another clichéd abduction story no one would believe. He ordered two pitchers of dark Ziegenbach as we sat at a small café table beneath the surprising coolness of a battered parasol. “I thought you would enjoy the lower temperature,” he said between quaffs from an icy mug. “It is quite easy to adjust.” A whiff of cooking chiles drifted by and stimulated my incipient hunger; I asked the passing waiter for some chileverde dip and nachos to go with my cerveza.

"Thank you for the shade and the beer,” I replied. “What do you want?"

"Information. You give me yours; I will give you mine."

The preternaturally cold beer had improved my outlook, along with the green chile dip and chips. “That's better than my previous abductors did. Shoot."

He nodded. “Consider yourself trying to communicate with an Earthly insect, an ant. Its entire vocabulary’ won't exceed a few dozen words,’ actually meanings that are transmitted by chemical releases and sensing, by antenna vibrations and by limited infrared transmission and reception. Even if you were able to totally understand and utilize all means of communication the ant possesses, you would not get much beyond Here/there is food/mate/enemy/water’ or Grab larvae and run!’ or Attack!’ Now imagine trying to discuss metaphysics with that creature."

I was absorbing that comparison with some difficulty. It must have shown on my face. He said, “I am afraid that my communicating with you, right now, is even more difficult than that example."

Finally, beer-courageous, I objected, “At least I can conceive that I can't conceive of something, that there are intelligences beyond my own. I don't think of you star travelers as gods."

I didn't like his weird smile, as if human muscles couldn't quite frame alien intent. “Are you really so sure? To paraphrase a famous science fiction author, Any sufficiently advanced sentience is indistinguishable from God.'” I gulped and had another cold drink. But my insides were colder than the icy mug. Where was this leading? Here on Earth, we step on ants or use pesticides to exterminate them.

He went on. “You digress. One of my own—interests, shall we agree to call it?—is attempting to enhance communication with your species by methods not usually attempted, to access data channels that you possess, but which you do not recognize except in the most primitive form. Uplifting you, so to speak.” I smiled at the sci-fi reference, but didn't respond. “In this case it is music.” He handed me the latest version of a smartphone, complete with foldout screen and retractable earpods. “Put these on and listen, please."

I did so. He touched the screen, which unfolded, a recognizable video source image popping up on it. I could hear his voice over/through the earpods, “This is from 1998, a group called Blues Traveler. Listen and then tell me how you feel."

I smiled when I heard John Popper's fabulous harmonica playing and plaintive singing voice. Back in that day, his “Runaround” had been one of my favorites. I felt an old familiar tingle as Popper's manic instrumental solo kicked in, repeating and repeating the haunting bridge chords and refrain. A surefire way to stir up memories! When the video ended, I smiled and said, “Great, just great."

The alien cowboy frowned, nodded, and pressed the screen again. “Listen to all this playlist,” he said. “You don't have to speak afterwards; I am monitoring all of your physiological and neurological responses. They tell me more than you would know. What I want, need, to understand."

I really enjoyed listening and watching music videos over the next hour; this cowboy alien had picked out some favorite tunes from my early childhood, including some that my parents and grandparents used to play on old vinyl records. A lot of mostly good newer stuff, too.

The list continued with “San Antonio Rose,” a welcome and familiar melody followed quickly by “Don't Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult, then the Doors’ “Light My Fire,” the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up,” some Beach Boy hits, a militant Leroy Anderson instrumental piece called “The Phantom Regiment,” a Hank Williams tune, and several old Johnny Mercer hits, including “The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” all interspersed with excerpts of classical music I didn't recognize, but whose names I read on the video screen: Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Wagner, Mahler; followed by others, pop, technopop, metal, ska, conjunto and more.

Suddenly, the music stopped and I was back in the world of the Alamo and the alien. I had been guzzling Ziegenbach and munching nachos the whole time and felt pretty good by now. “So what's the verdict, Master?” I bowed smartly in his direction across the café table. “Do I pass this Turning Test, or am I only fit for dinner?” I noticed that even aliens wince at bad puns.

Under the wide brim of the white hat, his gaze was that of an ancient wise one. “Grasshopper,” he answered, using the same cultural reference, “did you understand the meanings of the messages in the panoply of music that you just heard? The overall theme, as it were? Any inkling of the coherent content, the insights, displayed by these structured vibrations?"

"Vibrations? I did like the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations.’ I really felt that one, if that's what you mean.” I stayed puzzled. Some of the tunes had been momentary favorites during parts of my life, usually associated with some romantic interlude or personal stress. But I had never felt I could communicate with aliens after hearing them.

"I see,” he said, glancing at the smartphone screen. “You have provided much data of interest. I had rather hoped that you might be one of the evolving Sensitives that some of us feel will develop from your species, ones with whom we can communicate more fully.” Frowning, he tapped the touchscreen. “But though the music touched you at times, you unfortunately are not progressed enough."

"So the music wasn't uplifting enough? Now what?” I asked. “Do I look at a little red light and you wipe my memory, make me forget all of this? I mean, an alien at the Alamo, a cowboy from the stars? Who would believe?"

He recoiled as if I had spat upon him. “There is no reason for me to do such an uncultured thing. Go tell everyone. Few will believe you. Of those who do, maybe some will be candidates for further testing."

I went on, “So, our deal was, I can ask you any question, and you will answer?"

"Seems fair enough, pard'ner,” he said, downing another brew. “You answered all mine, and more."

I had turned on the voice recorder of my own smartphone when we sat down. Hoping all of this conversation would withstand any unseen alien erasing technology, I asked anxiously, “Where do you come from? And how?"

He smiled, the not-quite-human-keyness much evident in the musculature. “From all over; out there in the sky are googols of stars and other sentience-inducing environments, plus an infinitude of alternities, truly countless intelligent species, more multiplanetary civilizations than there are grains of sand on all of Earth's beaches. We originate from planets, from gas clouds, from electrical fields, from various potentialities, from other dimensions, from different parts of the time/space continuum. And other places that are not really places at all.

"How do we get here? Some have always been here.” Now that surprised me. But he didn't stop there. “None come by physical space ships—entirely too primitive. Some arrive’ by what you might call quantum displacement, others by spacewarps, and others by simply, er, coalescing certain eigenverses, you might say.

"And we are here in the tens of millions."

I had always suspected as much. I gulped again and asked, “Are all of these species more intelligent than humans?"

His voice was very cool, distant, pedantic. “Put yourself in that ant's place and ask the question."

My many beers had somewhat prepared me for that answer, prepping me for a kind of intergalactic bar fight. I said loudly, challenging, “But with all this knowledge, all this intelligence, why haven't you shown yourselves?"

He didn't smile. “You don't pay attention. Our—what you call vehicles’ or craft’ but are actually not for travel at all, but for—you wouldn't understand, couldn't know—they are seen in your Earthly skies and seas all the time. Those who see and report them are called kooks,’ but we don't care if we are seen or not, or what the witnesses are called. It is of no interest."

I was adamant, defiant. “So what are you doing here?” I hoped the voice recorder was catching all of this. It did, as everyone has since heard.

His emotional reaction was very human. “Do?” he snorted, “We don't do; we are. We have always been involved in precisely the activities on Earth that we wish, interacting with only those humans we choose, if we choose, as we choose. Most of the interactivities would have absolutely no meaning for any of you. Though some of us do wish to communicate more completely with you, to share more than you are able to accept now. We influenced one of your famous motion picture productions to show music as an advanced form of communication, to no avail. And even though you yourself have shown some small improvements, our musical interventions have not yet accomplished sufficient enhancement. But we will keep on with its development."

Sensing an alien impatience, I saved the big question for the last. “One final question: why don't you land on the White House lawn? Why don't you reveal yourselves to the whole world, once and for all?"

He rose from the table as if to leave, but turned to me, his gaze from under the white cowboy hat more frigid than the icy pitcher. “My dear fellow,” he said in quite an upper class British accent, totally at odds with his cowboy persona, “didn't you understand me? We are all doing exactly what we desire to do.

"I will repeat: every single alien’ individual and group mind and collective on Earth is extremely intelligent, beyond the dreams of Earthlings.

"So exactly why would intelligent beings ever want to talk to a government?"

Copyright © 2010 Arlan Andrews

Our November issue features something a bit unusual: “Phantom Sense,” a powerful novella by Richard A. Lovett and Mark Niemann-Ross, and a companion science fact article by the same authors about the real science and technology at the core of the story. Science fiction has often explored the consequences of people having capabilities far beyond those of most of us, but what if those abilities can be conferred by technology—and that technology is only available to a few? “Phantom Sense” will put you into the mind of a man with a complex of such abilities that is almost at our fingertips right now, and has potentials both exhilarating and terrifying. But the real problems lie in how the man who has those capabilities can relate to those who don't....

We'll also have a variety of stories by authors both familiar and new, including Allen M. Steele, Carl Frederick, Michael A. Armstrong, and one or two whose names you probably don't know yet but soon will.

Telling people the truth is easy. Getting them to hear it is another matter!

On March 2, 2009 an asteroid the size of a football field flew past Earth close enough to scare the pants off anybody who was paying attention. If it had hit, the impact would have created a blast equivalent to the ones that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Amateur astronomers worldwide were disappointed. Not because they wanted to witness the impact, although a few undoubtedly did, but because the asteroid had been discovered two days before its passage, yet word hadn't gotten out in time for anyone to set up their telescopes and look at it. Worse, they learned after the fact; the news had been deliberately suppressed so it wouldn't cause a panic, even after the few astronomers who knew about it had calculated its orbit and confirmed it would miss the Earth.

When Craig Hendrickson learned about that, he set up the Near Earth Asteroid Reporting Database, or NEARD. People laughed at the acronym, but that didn't bother him. As long as the right people used it—and yes, most of those people were nerds—then he would be happy.

The idea was to give amateur astronomers like himself a place to post their observations of short-notice phenomena so others could confirm their sightings and share the joy of watching a normally invisible piece of the solar system drift by close enough to see. Craig rigged up an e-mail alert system so people didn't have to check the site every few hours, and he added a Twitter feed so people already in the field could get tweets on their cell phones to notify them of new targets to observe that same night. He publicized it on the Cloudy Nights astronomy forum, and a few months later Astronomy and Sky & Telescope magazines ran short articles on it.

There were the inevitable naysayers who condemned his effort as an irresponsible act sure to ignite a global panic the first time someone posted an unchecked observation, but Craig countered them by putting a prominent notice on the front page of the NEARD web site: “The observations reported on this site are preliminary, and speculation on any object's path is just that—speculation—until confirmed by several independent observers.” That was too many characters for a tweet, so he shortened it to simply “Spec Alert” in the Twitter announcement.

Near Earth asteroids are relatively rare. Craig didn't expect the system to be used more than once or twice a year, if that. For the first year it was pretty much as he'd expected: two posts, one for an object that turned out to be a known comet and one for something nobody else, not even the person who reported it, could find again. So Craig was surprised when he discovered his own asteroid just a few months into the second year while searching for the last remnant of Comet Murray as it dropped toward the Sun.

It wasn't as much a coincidence as it might have been. With the economy in the toilet for the third straight year—now officially a depression—Craig's job had evaporated along with most of the country's wealth. He was “between girlfriends” in pretty much the same way he'd been “between jobs” for the last eight months or so. He had plenty of time to spend outdoors with his telescope, and no worries about keeping anybody up at home or having to get up early himself for work. Even better: he had discovered that time spent under the stars was time not spent worrying about his future. The joy of simply looking at the cosmos overrode all other concerns. So he spent hours simply scanning the sky with his telescope, and he had become pretty good at recognizing what he saw.

It was a warm night in early May, one of the first shirtsleeve nights of the season. Craig was in his driveway, cursing the neighbor's porch light as he always did when he set up his scope at home. He hadn't intended this to be a major night out, since the Moon was coming up in an hour and a half, so he hadn't bothered to go to any of his more dark-friendly sites. Just a quick look before the Moon rose and ruined the sky even worse than the city lights. He hadn't even gotten out his big telescope. He was using his six-inch Dobsonian, the one he called the “yard cannon” because it was just about the size of a portable artillery piece and you aimed it pretty much the same way.

Taurus and Orion had already set. Craig was hunting around near M35, the open cluster at the right foot of Gemini, for the comet when he found a relatively bright star that wasn't on his finder chart. At first he didn't think much of it, since M35 was full of stars; then he began comparing this one to what was on the chart and realized that the unknown star was at least a magnitude brighter than the chart's lower limit. It should have been listed.

He checked its position carefully against the surrounding stars and drew it in on his chart. Then he went inside and posted it on the NEARD web site. His tweet simply said, “Found new object in M35. What is it?"

It takes three observations spaced out over time to calculate an orbit. The NEARD alert ensured plenty of observations, but there wasn't much anybody could do for time, especially since the object was barely moving against the stellar background. That meant it would be several days before it moved enough to get even a rough idea of its path through the solar system.

That didn't stop people from speculating. One possible explanation for its slow apparent motion was that it was coming straight at Earth, and since that was clearly the most exciting possibility, that's the one people latched onto. The internet was soon abuzz with doomsday descriptions of how bad the damage would be when it hit. Apparently it gave people something besides the depression to worry about.

And Craig Hendrickson's name was on the original post. Worse, his “Spec Alert” notice at the head of the Twitter announcement had been misunderstood as “Special Alert,” which added yet more artificial urgency to the whole business. He found himself inundated with emails and phone calls from journalists all over the world, all with the same question: How long do we have to live?

"Look,” he told them, “we don't know where it's headed. It could be moving away from us. But even if it's not, the odds of it hitting Earth are almost zero."

On the news feeds, that translated to: “Discoverer unsure where it will hit!” Craig's phone began ringing practically nonstop after that, and his email inbox filled up faster than he could read it.

He spot-checked what he could. At least half of it was forwards of his original NEARD announcement, the disclaimer conveniently snipped off, with several added posts building toward the inevitable “WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!"

Late on the third night after he'd made his discovery, Craig stared at his inbox, watching the “percent full” bar inch upward pixel by pixel. His cell phone added its low-battery warning to the incessant ring.

He navigated to the NEARD site, opened up a text window, and wrote, “YOU'RE ALL A BUNCH OF IDIOTS.” Then he deleted that, took a deep breath, and began writing a reassuring post, explaining how unlikely an asteroid strike really was and how the fact that there was any apparent motion at all meant that this one was definitely not aimed at the Earth. “Close, maybe,” he wrote, “but close only counts in horseshoes. There is absolutely no chance that this thing will hit us."

He imagined all the nit-pickers out there who would pounce on that statement, so he amended it to read “...absolutely no chance that this thing will hit us on this pass. It will glide around the Sun, just like it's probably been doing for millions of years, and it will head back into the outer solar system. By the time it crosses Earth's orbit again we'll have its trajectory figured down to the gnat's whisker, and if it comes anywhere close to Earth on the way out, I'll eat my telescope."

He read it over twice. He thought he'd stated the facts pretty clearly. He hit “send” and turned off his computer. Then he turned off his cell phone, plugged it in to charge, and went to bed.

He woke to pounding on the front door. Bright moonlight washed in through his bedroom window. From the angle, it was about 4:30 in the morning. Craig staggered out of bed and pulled on his robe and trudged to the door.

When he opened it, a spotlight far brighter than the Moon glared straight into his eyes. His astronomer's reflexes kicked in and he threw his left arm over his eyes to protect his night vision, simultaneously shouting, “Turn off the fucking light!"

It didn't go off. Instead, a resonant female made-for-TV voice said, “We're here at the home of Craig Hendrickson, discoverer of the asteroid that is poised to destroy the Earth in a scant six months’ time. Mr. Hendrickson, can you tell us how it feels to be the harbinger of doom for our entire planet?” She pronounced it “Harbin-grr,” like a dog might.

He lowered his arm and squinted into the spotlight. There was a TV van parked in front of his house. A shadowy bulk below the spotlight must have been the camera and its operator. To the right of it stood Andrea LeTour, the local news station's morning newscaster. Her bleach-blonde hair looked salon-perfect, as did her makeup. Craig had always thought she looked pretty hot on TV, but in person she looked like a plastic mannequin.

"That's harbinger,'” he said. “It has a soft G."

"What?"

"And who says the asteroid is going to come anywhere close to Earth in six months?"

"You did,” Andrea said. “On your nerd site. You said it will cross Earth's orbit again on its way out, and everybody knows that Earth will be on the other side of the Sun by then, too, right in the asteroid's path."

Craig opened his mouth to refute her, but he couldn't decide where to start. The asteroid wouldn't have anything like the same period to its orbit that the Earth did. The odds of its orbital plane crossing the Earth's at precisely the right point were vanishingly small. The odds of it being big enough to do any serious damage even if it did hit were smaller yet. And so on. But every time he'd tried to explain it before, the idiots of the world had twisted his words to suit their own ends.

He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing straight up in front. He widened his eyes and twitched them back and forth between Andrea and the camera, because he'd heard that you were never supposed to look directly into the camera. And he said, “All right, you've obviously figured it out. We've been hiding it because we didn't want to start a panic, but you're absolutely right. The Earth is doomed. Doomed! And it's worse than we thought. The asteroid is as big as Mars! There's no chance that life will survive at all unless we build a huge ark and launch it into space."

Andrea's eyes grew wide. “Are . . . are you sure?"

"Absolutely,” Craig said. “You said it yourself; the Earth is going to be on the other side of the Sun in six months. And when the asteroid gets there, smack!" He slapped his right fist into his cupped left palm. “What's left of Earth will be a ring of debris orbiting the Moon."

Andrea swallowed. She looked up into the night sky for a second, then pulled herself together and asked, “What do you plan to do between now and then?"

"What am I going to do? I'm an astronomer. I'm going to buy the biggest telescope money can buy. What are you going to do?"

She thought about it for maybe five seconds. “I've always wanted to go to France. That's where my ancestors are from. Maybe I'll go. Live it up a little before we all . . . all die.” She dabbed at a tear.

Craig gallantly helped her with the sleeve of his robe, which pulled open enough to expose his chest. She looked frankly at his pecs, and for just a second he saw a look in her eye that told him what else she might be interested in doing between now and impact, then she sniffed and dabbed at her eyes and looked away until she'd regained her composure. Craig felt like a heel for leading her on, but before he could say anything more she said, “Thank you for your time, Mr. Hendrickson,” and she and her cameraman headed for their van.

Exasperation is not a good defense for causing a global panic, Craig learned. He quickly recanted when the Homeland Security goons showed up barely an hour later, and he went on news program after news program in the days to follow, debunking his own story and the dozens of other stories that floated around the internet, but as historians have learned since the first clay tablets were inscribed, once you get bad data into the system it's impossible to get it out. And bad news spreads far faster than good, so the truth never stood a chance among the kind of people who like to forward email.

It didn't help that the President went on TV to reassure everyone. After the economy had collapsed completely despite government assurances that prosperity was just around the corner, nobody trusted the government to get the time of day right. If the feds said the asteroid was going to miss, then of course it was headed straight for us.

Bad news sells, and times were indeed hard, so otherwise respectable magazines wound up running articles on the coming devastator, complete with diagrams showing the solar system—nowhere near to scale—with the path of the asteroid drawn as a bold line cutting right past the Sun and intersecting the Earth on the other side of its orbit in a big explosion. In tiny little print below the diagram they put the disclaimer: “Orbital path of asteroid is speculative.” In light gray halftone. And this after the orbit was finally calculated and discovered to come nowhere near Earth.

Craig only avoided prison because the prisons were full of people who decided to spend their last few months enjoying other people's money and possessions. That slowed down considerably when people started fighting back and self-defense against robbery stopped being prosecuted as a crime. Another email that circulated around the internet claimed that the average intelligence of the world had risen about three I.Q. points by the time the wave of thief killings and grudge murders had died down. Craig didn't believe that one, either, although it made him wonder.

Even though he knew the asteroid was going to miss, he bought a twenty-inch Starmaster telescope with the remains of his savings. Despite all the hoopla, it was his asteroid. He'd discovered it, and by God he was going to watch it cruise past with the biggest scope he could afford.

So were a lot of other amateur astronomers, it turned out. Telescope sales picked up dramatically worldwide, to the point where the manufacturers had to hire back their laid-off staff and then some to keep up with the demand.

A lot of companies found themselves in the same situation. Car manufacturers felt a sudden surge in demand for touring cars as people decided to take that last big road trip before the apocalypse. Boat builders found themselves selling out their entire stock within days. Computers and iPods and cell phones flew off the shelves as everyone upgraded to the latest, coolest gadgets while they still had a chance.

Even people who knew there was no doomsday coming still found themselves rethinking their priorities, and more often than not they decided to live it up a little, too. And not long after that, they began finding jobs again: providing the goods and services that a world full of sudden spenders demanded.

When Asteroid 2011 JD Hendrickson made its closest passage to Earth—a comfortable three-quarter million miles away—Craig held a star party at his favorite dark-sky site to celebrate. He invited all his astronomy friends from town, his co-workers at the mirror-coating lab he'd started with seed money from Celestron, and just for the heck of it, Andrea LeTour.

"You made fun of me,” she said when he reached her at the TV station.

"I was making fun of everybody,” he said. “But I apologize. Let me make it up to you. Have you ever looked through a telescope?"

She admitted that she hadn't, and she asked if it would be okay to bring a camera crew to film the asteroid's discoverer observing his discovery.

"Only if you can shoot under starlight,” he told her. “Astronomers don't like bright lights. It blows our night vision and we can't see anything for half an hour afterward."

She laughed. “That's why you were so upset when you came to the door. I've always wondered."

"You didn't think maybe it was because you woke me up at four in the morning?"

"You said Turn off the fucking light,’ not Do you have any idea what time it is?’ That was a first."

"Ah. Okay. So are you coming?"

"Sure,” she said.

He gave her directions to his dark-sky site, feeling a little like a fisherman who reveals his favorite stretch of stream. If she talked it up on the news, he would never find any peace up there again. But she showed up alone just before dark, driving a hybrid Chevolt, and she wasn't made up for the camera. Without makeup, she looked every bit as hot in person as she did with it on TV.

He introduced her around like an old friend, enjoying the looks his buddies gave her, and him. She helped him set up his scope, holding the truss tubes while he settled the secondary cage into place.

Craig's observing site was on a high ridge about fifteen miles south of town. The Sun was already down in the west, but the sky still held a touch of red near the horizon. In the east it was growing dark enough for the first few stars to pop out.

"It's pretty up here,” Andrea said.

"One of my favorite spots in the world,” Craig admitted.

"Is this where you were when you discovered the asteroid?"

He laughed softly. “Nope. I was in my driveway."

She laughed with him. “The truth is never quite as prosaic as you'd like, is it?"

"People don't want the truth, that's for sure,” he said.

"No, I suppose they don't.” She looked at the other astronomers, fast becoming silhouettes in the deepening twilight, then turned back to Craig. “It's funny how it all worked out. We started a panic—” She held up her hands to forestall his protest. “You and I and about a million other people started a panic, but it wound up resurrecting the global economy. Who knew that would happen?"

"I sure didn't.” Craig took a medium-power eyepiece out of the box and fitted it into the focuser, then swung the telescope down toward the southwestern horizon. A little hunting with the finder scope brought Saturn into view. He centered it up in the eyepiece and focused, getting the rings and four of its major moons as crisp as possible, then said, “Come have a look at this."

She stepped around to his side of the telescope and looked into the eyepiece. “Oh my God!” she said. “It's beautiful."

"Now that response I knew would happen.” He let her look for a bit, then said, “See that black line in the ring? That's the Cassini Division. It's about as wide as the Atlantic Ocean. And see those little dots on either side? Those are its moons."

"Are any of them as big as your asteroid?"

"Much bigger,” he said. “My asteroid's about ten miles across. Those moons are maybe a thousand."

"Ah. Not as big as Mars, then?"

"Hmm?"

"You told me your asteroid was as big as Mars."

He felt the heat in his face, was glad it was too dark for her to see him blush. “I did, didn't I? One more thing to live down. But it's considerably closer at the moment. It looks bigger than Mars."

"I've heard guys say that before.” She looked away from the eyepiece and gave him a mischievous grin.

He laughed. “I'm trying to imagine the circumstances under which that could actually have happened."

"Okay, so I made that up.” She stepped away from the telescope. “So show me your great big asteroid, why don't you?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

He swung the telescope high, looking for the familiar dot that had made him both famous and infamous at once. A meteor slashed overhead, and Andrea gasped. Several of the other astronomers oohed and aahed.

"Make a wish,” Craig said.

"I think I've already got mine, thanks,” said Andrea.

The tone of her voice left very little to the imagination. Craig looked over at her, then up at the deepening sky. This could turn out to be a far more interesting night than he'd bargained for.

That was one of the things he loved about astronomy. You never knew what you'd find out there in the dark.

Copyright © 2010 Jerry Oltion

The explanations people want to believe are not always the ones they should believe....

In the late twentieth century, the first unmanned probes were sent to Mars. Most of them failed; of the thirty-nine missions launched by America and Russia between 1960 and 1999, nine exploded during lift-off, seven lost contact with home, seven more either went into useless orbits or missed the planet entirely, and four crashed while attempting to land. No other program had the same failure rate, nor as many mishaps that couldn't be easily explained.

This led someone at NASA to playfully suggest that a creature lurked between Earth and Mars, a gremlin ready to sabotage or destroy any spacecraft that dared to enter its realm. The Great Galactic Ghoul became a standing joke among engineers and ground controllers, but as the missions continued to fail, the laughter stopped. It soon became considered bad luck to mention the Ghoul. Even if these otherwise rational men didn't necessarily believe in space monsters, neither were they willing to say anything that might jinx the mission.

Despite the setbacks, Mars was explored and people eventually went there, and not long after that they began to travel farther out into the solar system. By then, they'd learned how to build spacecraft that were reasonably safe and reliable; they had to, because the consequences of catastrophic failure were unthinkably high. There were accidents, of course, and occasionally a life was lost, but those instances were rare; when they occurred, more often than not human error was the primary cause. In any case, investigations would be announced, studies would be conducted, data collected, reports written, findings made public. Changes would then be instituted, and if the process worked the way it was supposed to, that particular accident would never happen again. Or at least not quite the same way.

In time, the Great Galactic Ghoul was forgotten. But he didn't disappear. He simply went into hiding for a while, waiting for the day to come when he could return from the shadows and wreak havoc upon any vessel he happened to encounter in the darkness between worlds.

Until August 16, 2062, there had never been a deep-space rescue mission. There were countless instances, of course, between Earth and the Moon in which one spacecraft made an emergency rendezvous with another. The distance involved there was less than a quarter of a million miles, though, and since there were over a dozen stations in cislunar space, help was seldom more than a few hours away. Beyond the Moon, the situation was different: spacecraft crews were expected to deal with onboard accidents themselves, without relying on outside assistance. And for good reason: Earth and Mars were separated by an average of forty-nine million miles, and even in the most densely populated zone of the asteroid belt, tens of thousands of miles could lay between one inhabited rock and another.

Nonetheless, it wasn't long before spacers realized that they needed to plan for coming to one another's aid. No one could anticipate every sort of emergency, but there were times when it would have been helpful to know, no matter how bad things might be, that help was on the way. Indeed, one of the first things the Pax Astra did after it was formed in 2049 was to ratify the space rescue clause of the old 1967 U.N. Space Treaty, even though the Pax rejected most of the treaty's other provisions. As much as the newly independent space colonies wanted to break away from Earth, this part of the treaty, which mandated that all space vessels had to respond to distress signals, was worth keeping.

It's a good thing that the Pax settled this particular issue, for only six years later the belt colonies broke away to form their own alliance, the Transient Body Shipping Association. Since the TBSA was willing to do business directly with Earth-based companies and governments, economic rivalry with the Pax Astra was assured. So it was just as well that Pax and TBSA ships formally agreed to come to each other's aid in times of emergency; by 2065, each side would be committing piracy against the other, with worse yet to come.

But hostilities hadn't yet broken out when the Ritchie Explorer disaster occurred. Considering that the Ritchie was a Pax Astra vessel, perhaps it was only appropriate that the nearest ship to receive its mayday signal was a TBSA freighter.

The TBSA Gold Dust Woman was seven weeks out of Ceres, passing Mars orbit on its way to the Moon, when the signal was received by its Ku-band wireless. Because the ship was no longer in the belt, Captain Henry Zimmerman had relaxed the twenty-four-hour watch mandated by flight regulations. Chief Engineer Quon Ko remembers being in his berth, nursing a squeezebulb of Irish coffee while reading a fantasy potboiler on the data screen, when Zimmerman's voice came over the intercom, asking him to report to the bridge.

"I didn't ask what it was about,” Quon says. “I just said okay, be there in a minute, then I climbed out of my bunk, zipped up my jumpsuit and tossed the rest of my drink into the recycler, then headed upstairs."

Gold Dust Woman was an Ares-class freight-er, 272 feet in length and 110 abeam at its outrigger telemetry and reactor booms, the sort of workhorse known by spacers as a “rock hauler” even though it never carried asteroids themselves. It had a nuclear fusion main engine and an open payload bay capable of carrying up to eight cargo containers—on this mission it had six, mainly oxygen, water, copper, and titanium mined from inner-belt asteroids—and it had a crew of three: Captain Zimmerman; Lesley Zimmerman, his first officer, navigator, and wife; and Quon Ko, who doubled as engineering chief and cargomaster. The Zimmermans were the Woman's permanent crew, while Quon was aboard only until the union rotated him out and gave his job to someone else.

As it turned out, Henry and Lesley weren't on the bridge either when the signal was received. Captain Zimmerman was in the observation blister, using the optical telescope to make a manual navigational fix as required by regulations, while Lesley was napping in their cabin. So the transmission was first heard by the ship's AI, which in turn alerted the captain. It took Henry Zimmerman less than a minute to ride his chair down from the blister to the bridge, and only a minute after that to confirm that the signal was an emergency transmission sent by another spacecraft. A stickler for following TBSA regs to the letter, the captain immediately summoned the other senior officers to the bridge; as it so happened, his wife and Ko were also the only other two people aboard.

By the time Lesley and Ko left the living quarters in the ship's carousel and climbed up the access shaft to the bridge, Henry had learned other pertinent facts. The signal was coming from the PASS Ritchie Explorer, a mobile mining rig registered to the Pax Astra. The Explorer was presently anchored to Eros, an S-type asteroid whose annual period presently put it just within Mars orbit. According to the TBSA database, it had a crew of six.

Beyond that, little else was known. The signal, apparently sent by an automatic transponder, consisted of a brief print message that repeated again and again:

MESS. 1397 1503 GMT 8/16/62 CODE A1/0679

TRANSMISSION FROM PASS RITCHIE EXPLORER/433 EROS TO ALL SPACECRAFT PRIORITY REPEATER

MESSAGE BEGINS

MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY

PASS RITCHIE EXPLORER EXPERIENCING LIFE-THREATENING EMERGENCY BREAK EXPLOSION OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN BREAK POSSIBLE CASUALTIES AND/OR FATALITIES BREAK REQUEST URGENT ASSISTANCE FROM NEAREST AVAILABLE VESSEL BREAK LOCATION ASTEROID 433 EROS CRATER HIMEROS 070S 2800W BREAK PLEASE RESPOND ASAP

MESSAGE ENDS

TRANSMISSION REPEATS

1504 GMT 8/16/62 CODE A1/0679

"As soon as I saw this,” Lesley Zimmerman says, “I knew we were going in. There's a lot of ships between Earth and Mars, but chances were that we'd be the nearest one.” A quick check of the chart board confirmed this; although there were two other spacecraft pres-ently operating within that sector, Gold Dust Woman was the closest ship to Eros.

There was never any question of whether the Woman would undertake the rescue effort. Regardless of the fact that the Woman was a TBSA freighter and the Explorer was a Pax Astra mining rig, it had always been understood among spacers that one ship always came to the assistance of another in times of emergency; international space law only codified what was already a long-standing practice that had been carried over from Earth's maritime traditions. A few years earlier, officials from the Pax and TBSA had met to discuss forming a dedicated search and rescue team that would be on permanent standby for just such emergencies, yet both sides soon realized that the inherent difficulties were too much to overcome. Even in the inner system, the distances are just too vast for a SAR ship to be able to respond to a mayday in time for it to do any good. That, and the expense of maintaining crews and vessels which would do nothing but wait for emergencies meant that the proposal was impractical. Ultimately, both sides agreed to simply continue what they'd been doing before: overlook their rivalry in crisis situations, and come to each other's aid no matter what.

So while Lesley began plotting a trajectory that would take the Woman to 433 Eros, Henry and Ko began prepping the ship for a course-correction burn. Once the captain was sure that his crew wasn't having any problems of their own, he got on the radio and attempted to make contact with the Ritchie Explorer. His sense of foreboding grew when he received no response to either voice or text messages.

"That was when I knew that things were really bad,” Captain Zimmerman later told the TBSA board of inquiry. “According to the registry, there were six people aboard. When none of them can apparently make it to the wireless, you know there's serious trouble. And when their comp does nothing more than repeat the same preset message over and over again, then it's clear that they're in deep."

There was one piece of luck: Eros was only about one and a quarter million miles from the Woman's present position. Once Henry and Ko worked out the logistics, they estimated that if they used most of the fuel reserves and ran the engine at maximum capacity, the Woman should be able to reach the asteroid in a little more than four days. This might seem like a long time, but by interplanetary standards it was a quick jaunt. The other two ships in the vicinity—the TBSA Martian Pride, another freighter, and the PASS Ulysses, an exploration ship outbound for the Jovian system—were seven and nine days away respectively, and although the Pride's captain offered to assist the Woman, the other freighter was nearly out of range. Henry thanked the Pride, but told its captain that he and his crew could handle the problem themselves.

"I was wrong,” Henry would say later. “The situation was beyond us. I just didn't know it then."

Eros is somewhat unusual. Not part of the main belt, its highly elliptical orbit brings it as close as .15 AU to Earth during its 1.76-year solar period; during this time, it crosses the orbit of Mars twice, therefore occasionally making it both a near-Earth and a near-Mars asteroid. In 1999, the NASA probe NEAR Shoemaker orbited the rock several times, sending back the first close-up photos of a major asteroid, before crash-landing on its surface. Because of this, more was known about 433 Eros than any other transient body until the beginning of asteroid mining operations.

Despite its proximity to both Earth and Mars, though, it wasn't until fairly recently that anyone claimed a stake on Eros. And for good reason: since type-S stony asteroids are chiefly comprised of rock, they're considered less valuable than either type-C carbonaceous chondrites or type-M metallics, which offer resources of volatiles and precious metals. Eros may have been easier to reach, but it didn't seem to offer enough to attract the attention of a profit-minded mining consortium.

This changed once the more valuable main-belt asteroids were gradually claimed by one TBSA consortium or another, thereby locking out competitors from the Pax Astra. When that happened, Pax prospectors began shifting through old astrogeological data, seeing if perhaps there may be anything that had been overlooked . . . and that was when it was found that NEAR Shoemaker had detected large surface deposits of olivine and pyroxene, along with the possible presence of iron sulfide and iron-nickel. Eros wasn't a bonanza, but neither was it worthless; the fact that it was close to Earth made a stake by Pax consortium a feasibly profitable venture, if they were willing to invest in a mining rig and crew.

Four days after the Gold Dust Woman received the mayday from the Ritchie Explorer, the freighter came within visual range of the asteroid. Thirteen miles long and eight miles wide, Eros looks vaguely like an Idaho potato from which someone has taken a bite; at its midsection is a deep, scalloped depression, less like a crater than a gorge, from when it had apparently broken away from a larger asteroid countless years ago. Called Himeros, this was where the Explorer had anchored itself.

Asteroid mining rigs such as the Ritchie Explorer are called ships only because they have engines that enable them to move from one place to another. Other than that, they're more like spacefaring versions of the offshore oil platforms that used to line the coasts of Earth's oceans. About 70,000 tons in dry Earth-weight, the Explorer was an ugly, dust-covered hulk half-hidden by conduits, pipes, storage tanks, antennas, and cranes, with three fusion engines at one end and a hemispherical command module at its midsection. Eros was in its winter season, with the asteroid's slow, end-over-end tumble on its spin axis causing Him-eros to face away from the Sun, so the rig could only be seen by its red and green formation lights.

As the Gold Dust Woman approached Eros, Henry Zimmerman repeated his radio calls, continually hailing the Explorer while Lesley fired maneuvering thrusters to bring the freighter alongside the asteroid and match spins with it. As before, there was no response . . . and when the Woman finally achieved a parallel position about 2,000 feet above Himeros, its crew saw why.

"It looked like a bomb had gone off down there,” Henry says. “The command module dome was almost completely blown away. It was like . . .” He pauses, thinking of a way to describe it. “If you made a bowl out of aluminum foil, turned it upside-down, then lit a firecracker underneath it . . . that's what you'd get."

"The moment I saw that,” Ko says, “I knew this wasn't a rescue mission anymore. We were just going in there to find the bodies. There was no way anyone could have lived through whatever happened down there."

Nevertheless, Captain Zimmerman proceeded as if lives were at stake and the clock was ticking. According to the database, the rig's six-person crew was an extended family, three married couples who'd joined together to form a clan under a common surname. This practice is not unusual aboard Pax deep-space vessels; quite often, the clans are also the consortiums that own and operate their ships. In this instance, the Owlsley clan was listed as being the owner-operators of the Ritchie Explorer: David and Kathryn Dolan-Owlsley, the captain and first mate respectively; Sean and Clay Connor-Owlsley, the chief engineer and operations manager; and Keith and Jane Wetherill-Owlsley, both surface-operations technicians. According to their profiles, all were experienced spacers; it was possible that a few might have survived in some airtight compartment out of reach from the long-range com.

Because the Woman's reactor boom jutted out at right-angles from the rest of the ship, there was no way the freighter could hard-dock with the rig. To make matters more difficult, the Explorer's primary docking hatch was occupied by its skiff, thereby preventing the Woman from sending over her own skiff; compounding the mystery was the fact that the Explorer's two three-person lifeboats were still in their berths as well. So reaching the rig wouldn't be simple.

After a brief discussion, Henry Zimmerman consented to let Quon Ko make an untethered spacewalk over to the rig. It was a dangerous task; Ko would be using an EVA maneuvering pack, and the slightest misfire of its control thrusters could mean that he'd mismatch his spin relative to those of both the Woman and the Explorer and either tumble away into space or, worse, smash headlong into Eros at hundreds of feet per second. Ko had logged hundreds of hours in spacewalks, though, and had practiced this particular ship-to-ship jump before.

Lesley would later confess to biting her nails to the quick, but Ko made the jump without incident. “The trick is, you don't look where you're going,” he says. “If you did, you'd get dizzy and screw up. So you keep your eye on the heads-up the whole time and just do it."

He came down near a small service airlock located on the Explorer's starboard side, just above one of the four massive anchor pods on the rig's underside that held the rig to the asteroid. Not far away was the hollow shaft of the primary drill; within the dim illumination of the formation lights, Ko could see that the drum-like shaft was sunk within the asteroid, a certain indication that the chemical laser bore had been deployed.

Ko found the airlock hatch, and it was then, within the halogen beams of his helmet lamps, that he noticed a safety line tethered to a rung next to the hatch. The slender rope lay limp from the hatch, falling down the adjacent ladder until it reached the ground, where it trailed away into the darkness. Ko used a flashlight from his belt to give the safety line a quick glance; there was nothing at the end of the line except another tether hook, but he also noted footprints scattered along the dark gray regolith beneath it. Little more than two dozen impressions, they went away from the rig and didn't come back. There appeared to be more than one set of footprints, but it was hard to tell for sure whether more than one person was responsible for them.

"I had a hunch all this was significant,” Ko would later tell the board of inquiry, “so before I went in through the airlock, I took plenty of pictures. Particularly of the footprints, before they got messed up by anyone else."

To avoid disturbing what might be a major clue, Quon Ko clung to the ladder as much as possible while he opened the airlock, setting his own feet on the ground only once. That was made possible by Eros's very slight surface gravity. At less than .002-g, one would have to remain still for a long time in order to stand erect; even a dropped object took a minute or more to slowly drift to a rest.

Once he entered the airlock, the first thing Ko did was to check the interior pressure gauge. He was startled to find nothing but hard vacuum on the other side. It appeared that the Explorer had suffered a catastrophic blowout that had voided even the lower decks. “Automatic pressure doors should've come down,” he says, “unless the explosion was such that the comps were instantly knocked offline. In that case . . .” He stops, shakes his head. “When something like that happens, there's no hope. You're dead before you even hear the alarms."

There seemed to be emergency power, though, so with Henry's permission, Ko disengaged the airlock fail-safes, then pried open the inside hatch. An emergency ceiling lamp had been lit in the adjacent ready-room, and beneath its amber glow Ko found another clue. Two skinsuits were missing from the lockers; the other four were still in place, and when Ko checked their name patches, he saw that they belonged to David and Kathryn Dolan-Owlsley and Sean and Clay Connor-Owlsley. Which meant it was Keith and Jane Wetherill-Owlsley who'd left through the airlock and not come back.

"When Ko found this,” Lesley says, “I figured, Okay, that's it. We're going to find everyone else's bodies somewhere in the rig.’ In fact, I started bracing myself for just that . . . even grabbing the med kit so that I'd have a sedative patch handy."

For Ko, the situation was different. Professional spacers speak of moments of surrealism that sometimes occur during stressful EVAs; they become hyperconscious of the fact that they're seeing the world through a helmet faceplate, and it suddenly seems as if they've become living cameras. “Distancing” is the expression most often used; you're there, but it's as if you're not quite there.

This is what happened to Quon Ko as he made his way through the Ritchie Explorer. Climbing up the ladder from the airlock, he found the passageway that led him to the crew quarters. As he'd suspected, the emergency pressure doors hadn't dropped; one by one, he entered compartments completely absent of atmospheric pressure. In the sanguine red tint of the ceiling lamps, he saw the damage caused by the blowout: food cans torn from galley shelves and strewn across the deck, clothes ripped from closet hangers, shredded paper thrown everywhere like confetti . . . and across it all, a thin layer of frost, where water vapor had instantly frozen out and become a patina of ice.

One small detail he'd come to remember: On the floor of one of the staterooms lay a paperback book, its cover torn and frosted-over but its title still readable—Basics of Rock Climbing. Perhaps because the book was so out of place, it stuck in his mind.

Yet there were no bodies. Like Lesley, Ko expected to find corpses. Even if two of the missing crewmen had been on EVA when the disaster occurred, it still meant that the remaining four should have been inside the rig; the lifeboats were in place, as was the skiff, so it was clear that no one had abandoned ship. Yet just as it was apparent that the rig had lost internal pressure before the emergency hatches could be sealed, so it also became obvious that no one would be found belowdecks.

Leaving the crew quarters, Ko crossed the short passageway that took him into the rig's industrial section. When he came to the place where the ladder to the command module should have been located, though, he found himself at the edge of a gaping hole. A blast crater yawned in the center of the rig: nearly a dozen feet in diameter, it was practically bottomless, or at least as far he could tell from the beams of his helmet lamps. This was the site of the onboard explosion, the effects of which the Woman's crew had seen from above. Judging from the way the torn metal edges of the crater were bent upwards, it appeared that the blast had happened somewhere below.

As Ko peered into the abyss, Henry and Lesley hastily pulled up the Explorer's schematics from the Woman's database. It was then that they discovered that the rig's primary drill was positioned directly below the command module. It looked as if the drill had hit something deep underground that had caused the explosion, the force of which had blown straight upward into the rig itself.

There was nowhere else to search for survivors except the bridge. Rather than spend time searching for another ladder, Ko took the most direct approach: firing his EVA backpack, he carefully used its jets to glide up the crater to the top deck. “I could've left the rig entirely,” Ko says. “The ceiling was almost totally gone. When I got up there, I saw almost nothing but stars above me."

The compartment was a wreck, only a handful of lights glimmering on the sole control panel that remained operational. Indeed, the final report issued by the Pax review board would conclude that it was only by a miracle that the Ritchie Explorer had been able to transmit the mayday received by the Gold Dust Woman; with most of the comps instantly knocked off-line by the explosion, only the emergency transmitter, which was located elsewhere on the platform and powered by its own battery, was left intact.

Still, nothing prepared Quon Ko for what he found. When the ovals cast by his helmet lamp found a black stikshoe wedged beneath the base of an upended chair, his first thought was that it was empty. But then he moved a little closer, and saw that the shoe was crusted with red ice. A foot, roughly severed just above the ankle, was caught within the shoe.

This was the only human remnant found aboard the Ritchie Explorer.

Captain Zimmerman immediately sent word to Ceres Station, which in turn sent urgent requests to the Martian Pride and the Ulysses that they come to the Gold Dust Woman's assistance. By then, both vessels were nearly two weeks away from Eros, time enough for news of the disaster to reach Earth.

Journalists often say that the public pays little attention to what goes on in space until something goes wrong, and this is true more often than not. When space exploration became less about discovery and more about commerce, the only people on Earth who continued to closely watch what was happening out there were investors, lien holders, and insurance companies, along with the handful of amateur enthusiasts who still cared about such things. This tends to change, though, whenever something unusual occurs . . . and in space, an unusual occurrence is almost always something that takes its toll in lives.

So Quon Ko hadn't even returned to the Woman before the first reports of what he'd found aboard the Explorer appeared in the news media back on Earth. Within twenty-four hours, about half of the world's inhabitants, along with nearly 100 percent of the lunar and Martian colonists, were aware of the mysterious loss of six lives aboard an asteroid mining rig. To be sure, most of those same four and a half billion people would forget all about the Explorer and its crew within ten days, for nothing is as fickle as the attention of the media mass-mind. But for the moment, the Ritchie Explorer was the top-of-the-hour lead story.

It wasn't just that six people had been killed. It was also that those six people were missing, with nothing more than a severed foot to show for them. Among the countless experts, real and self-proclaimed, who took turns espousing opinions both educated and ignorant, the more well-informed pointed out that, even if most of the crew had been blown out into space by the explosion—the cause of which was, itself, a major mystery—then Eros's gravity would assert its pull upon their corpses, and the bodies would therefore eventually be found and recovered. And they were right: over the course of the next few weeks, searchers from the Pride and the Ulysses located the torn and frozen bodies of the Dolan-Owlsleys and the Connor-Owlsleys, each floating in space not far from Eros. However, the disappearance of Keith and Jane Wetherill-Owlsley remained both unsolved and unexplained.

Then there was the explosion itself. What caused it, and why hadn't the crew been able to prevent it? This took much longer to figure out; in fact, it wasn't until a year later, when the Pax Astra dispatched an investigative team to Eros, that a cause was definitely determined. Even then, it was something that surprised even accredited experts: the Explorer's laser drill had apparently hit a methane pocket deep within Eros. Such gas pockets are sometimes found within type-C asteroids, but are practically unknown among type-S rocks. Indeed, most media commentators had already ruled this out as a possibility. But the findings of the Pax investigation were conclusive: the explosion had occurred the instant Explorer's laser pierced the rock surrounding the pocket and ignited the volatile gas, and the resultant blast had gone straight up the mine shaft to devastate the rig above.

These things took a while to discover, though, and in the meantime, the imps of the net came out to play. People of our time take pride in their sophistication, but that doesn't mean that the superstitions of the past have vanished. Thus it wasn't long before someone mentioned the Great Galactic Ghoul.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the Ghoul would be remembered. Nothing lives quite as long as a myth, particularly when it takes the form of a ghost story to be told around the flames of a virtual campfire. And the Great Galactic Ghoul was no mere legend; he had a long history behind him, one that could be accessed with only a few keystrokes. The fact that the Ghoul had originally been a joke was forgotten. Like the Loch Ness Monster, foo fighters, or Big Foot, he gradually took on a life of his own.

Sterling Crow, the Nettimes star commentator, was the first to mention the Ghoul. That was appropriate; Crow was not only knowledgeable enough to be aware of the Ghoul, but also gullible enough to indict him as a possible culprit. Since most of Crow's viewers watched his show only for its unintentional humor, the majority of them didn't take him seriously . . . but The Morning Crow boasted a daily audience of sixty million, so even the minority who accepted Crow's ravings at face value was a significant figure.

Shortly afterwards, The Public Inquisitor ran a story claiming that a senior Pax Astra official, who'd insisted upon anonymity, had told the site that “a mysterious alien entity” was responsible for the Explorer disaster, and that Pax investigators believed this entity to be the Great Galactic Ghoul. The Inquisitor went on to say that the Ghoul had been blamed for spacecraft disappearances as long as a hundred years ago, and both American and Russian officials of the last century had covered up the creature's existence. Again, while most people didn't take the Inquisitor seriously, quite a few did, and so its story helped push the Great Galactic Ghoul further into the public consciousness.

Seeing what was coming out of the rumor mill, the Pax hastily released reports of what the Gold Dust Woman, the Martian Pride, and the Ulysses had found thus far. By then, however, theories about what had really happened to the Ritchie Explorer had already appeared in the news media. There hadn't been a mine shaft explosion; instead, the blast had been the result of an energy beam fired by another spacecraft, one doubtless of extraterrestrial origin. The six missing crew members weren't dead, but had been abducted instead; even after four of them were eventually found, the fact that two were still unaccounted for only helped to fuel this particular hearsay. The Ghoul had been gone for a long time, yes, but only because he'd been asleep on Eros; the Ritchie Explorer had disturbed him, and so he'd reacted by wiping out those who'd trespassed on his domain.

All this might have been harmless were it not for the fact that the scare may have contributed to the outbreak of the System War. Royalists within the Pax—notably Lucius Robeson, who'd later become Queen Macedonia's Chief of Naval Intelligence once the New Ark Party was overthrown and the Pax became a constitutional monarchy—were quick to claim that the Explorer disaster wasn't an accident at all, but rather an act of war by the TBSA. The TBSA hotly denied this, of course, and Robeson had nothing to back up his allegations. Nevertheless, insurance premiums on ships traveling between Earth and Mars soared to an all-time high, and some vessels began to add weapons their captains thought they'd never need. It wasn't just the idea that ships might be attacking one another, though. There was also the prospect—however remote or absurd it might seem—that there really was a Great Galactic Ghoul lurking out there. So when actual hostilities broke out between the Pax and the TBSA a few years later, vessels on both sides were already armed with ship-to-ship missiles.

In the midst of all the hysteria and saber- rattling, the investigation quietly continued, even if it had reached something of an impasse. By then, the bodies of the Dolan-Owlsleys and the Connor-Owlsleys had been recovered, and it was clear that they'd died when an explosion had ripped through the command center and hurled them into space. And although no one was yet certain what caused that explosion, it strongly appeared that the rig's laser drill had ignited some volatile gas deep within the asteroid. So the only questions that remained unanswered were why no one in the command center had acted to prevent the accident in the first place, and also the whereabouts of other two crewmen.

Unfortunately, the ships that had responded to the mayday—the Gold Dust Woman, the Martian Pride, and the Ulysses—had to leave before the matter was resolved. All had missions that needed to be completed, and their original destinations were getting farther away with every passing day. So the bodies of the four dead crewmen were loaded aboard the Woman, the only one of the three vessels that was headed for Earth, and the recovery teams sealed the rig as best as they could. And then the TBSA and Pax ships made their departures from Eros.

Yet one person would eventually return to solve the mystery.

"I never believed in the Great Galactic Ghoul,” Quon Ko says. “Maybe it was fun for people to think some invisible space monster was responsible, but I couldn't accept that. I have to work out there, y'know. There had to be another explanation."

Over the next six months, while the Gold Dust Woman made the long trip home, its chief engineer continued to study the problem, putting together everything he and the others had learned while trying to supply the missing pieces. He studied the photos he'd shot, read the Explorer's logbooks, pored over schematics of the rig. Nothing new came to him, but Ko admits that it became something of an obsession and Captain Zimmerman eventually noticed that it was distracting him from his duties.

"Ko and I had a talk,” Henry says, “and I suggested that something might shake loose if he put it aside for awhile. It was sort of a roundabout way of telling him to get back to work, but he seemed to take my advice, because Lesley and I finally stopped hearing his theories over the dinner table . . . which, I gotta tell you, was a relief."

Yet Ko only stopped discussing the Ritchie Explorer with the Zimmermans; he didn't stop thinking about it. And the more he worked at the problem, the more he came to suspect that the two unsolved mysteries—the apparent negligence of the bridge crew, and the disappearance of Keith and Jane Wetherill-Owlsley—were somehow linked. It couldn't be a coincidence that the two surface-operations technicians were both on EVA when the blast occurred. Not only that, but Pax regulations mandated that anyone working outside a spacecraft—even in the low-gravity environment of an asteroid—should use a safety line. So why was only one line tethered to the outside hatch?

Yet Ko didn't come up with answers to any of these questions until after the Gold Dust Woman came home. And even then, it was only by accident.

Three days after the freighter parked at the L2 port on the lunar farside, Quon Ko was strolling through Descartes City's crater floor arboretum when he happened to glance at a bulletin board next to a snack bar. His gaze passed over the various items tacked on the board; along with political ads and notices of lost pets, there were also posters for various clubs and social groups . . . and suddenly, Ko found himself looking again at one in particular, featuring a picture of a skinsuited figure hanging precariously by his hands from the edge of a lunar cliff, with only a thin nylon rope between him and death.

The poster was for the Descartes City Mountaineering Club, and offered instruction in both tethered and free climbing . . . and that was when Ko remembered something he'd seen when he was making his way through the Explorer's crew quarters. A book on the floor, titled Basics of Rock Climbing.

"Just like that, I had the answer.” Ko snaps his fingers. “I knew why Keith and Jane were out on the surface while an emergency was going on, and why there was only one tether and not two."

Quon Ko immediately pulled out his phone and scanned the number on the poster. A few seconds later, he was speaking with Jody Suarez, the club president. After Ko explained who he was and why he was calling, Suarez agreed to check the club's membership rec-ords. Although he reported a few minutes later that the Wetherill-Owlsleys were not on its rolls, that didn't necessarily mean they weren't climbers. Port Armstrong and Tycho City had their own mountain-climbing clubs, as did Arsia Station on Mars, and even then it was possible that the missing couple hadn't belonged to any of those societies.

"I asked him if he'd ever heard of anyone free-climbing on asteroids,” Ko says, “and for a second or two I didn't hear anything. And then he came back and told me that, yeah, he'd heard about this sort of thing, and it was possible that this might have been what they were doing."

Free-climbing—the art of rock climbing without safety gear—has been practiced on Earth for over a hundred years, but only lately has it made its way to the Moon and Mars, where ropes and tethers are mandated for anyone not on planetary surfaces or spacewalking with EVA maneuvering packs. In recent years, a new sport had been devised by enthusiasts: asteroid free-climbing, where one went EVA without lines or tethers, relying only on their hands, feet, and the asteroid's minimal gravity to keep them from floating away.

"Both of the Wetherill-Owlsleys were surface techs,” Ko says, “which meant that they had plenty of opportunity to take up free-climbing. So that made me wonder. Maybe one of them had left the rig to go climbing and somehow got into trouble. That might have forced the other to go to the rescue, but in order to do so, he or she might have had to detach themselves from their own line."

Even though he's describing how he successfully deduced the solution of the mystery, there's no smile on his face, but rather a wary skepticism that persists to this day. “If that were true,” Ko continues, “then maybe the rest of the crew was in the command center, watching the whole thing and not paying any attention to what the drill was doing. So when the laser hit the gas pocket, they'd already lost any chance they might have had to save themselves."

His theory made sense to the Pax board of inquiry when they summoned him to testify. The TBSA had agreed to let Ko continue to cooperate with the investigation, which is what he wanted to do more than anything else. So when the Pax Astra dispatched a military vessel, the PASS Archangel Gideon, to Eros to finish the official investigation, Quon Ko went along as a consultant. Although this forfeited any chance of landing another chief engineer job for the next eighteen months, Ko was willing to return to the Ritchie Explorer.

"I wanted to find out what happened out there, once and for all,” he says. “I felt like I owed it to everyone who'd died that day."

Another person participating in the Pax investigation was Lauren Moore, an astrophysicist from the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Moore had spent months studying old NASA data about Eros, and she had discovered an interesting anomaly that had been overlooked until then. When she described it to Ko while en route to Eros, he responded with his own conjecture, and the two of them realized that it might provide an explanation for Keith and Jane Wetherill-Owlsley's disappearance, however far-fetched it might seem. But they didn't reveal their theory to anyone else; they wouldn't be able to test it until they reached Eros and went out on the surface for themselves, and they didn't want to appear foolish if they turned out to be wrong.

Almost five months later, the Gideon rendezvoused with Eros and its lander was sent down to the Ritchie Explorer. Shortly after it docked with the crippled rig, Ko and Lauren put on hardsuits and, along with Gideon's chief petty officer, Elijah Koons, ventured out on the surface, using the same airlock through which Ko had entered the first time he'd been there. The handful of footprints Ko had spotted were still there, undisturbed in the year that had passed since the Gold Dust Woman had responded to the automated distress signal, and so was the safety line, which the trio followed across Himeros’ basin.

The discarded rope came to an end a hundred yards from the hatch. The footprints continued from there; they were sporadic, an average of six feet apart from one another, and although they were plainly visible now that Himeros was facing the Sun, they would have been easy to miss a year earlier, when that side of Eros had been in the middle of its long night. As both Ko and Lauren anticipated, the footprints led in to the direction of Himeros's western wall, a little more than a mile away.

Quon, Dr. Moore, and Chief Petty Officer Koons carried extra loops of safety line, which they attached to each other as they made their way across the basin. It soon became clear that there were two sets of footprints, one set less distinct and on a slightly different track, as if one person had run after the other. The trails led to the bottom of the wall, where they suddenly came to a halt at the edge of an oval-shaped area where the regolith appeared to have been recently disturbed ("It looked like where kids had been horsing around in a sandbox,” Lauren would say later). There were a few handprints on the steep wall above the area of disturbance, but the searchers didn't notice them until later; it was what they saw at the base of the wall that grabbed their attention.

"Sticking up from the ground was a boot,” Ko says. “It was upside-down, and we could see it from the bottom of its sole all the way down to its ankle. It looked like someone had thrown it there, until we got closer and saw another boot beside it, this one buried a bit more deeply. And then we saw that there were legs attached to them."

This was the surface anomaly that Lauren Moore had learned about from studying old NASA data. As Eros slowly tumbled end-over-end, landslides frequently occurred within its larger craters and depressions. Over time, these landslides would create sand traps that appeared at first glance to be solid ground, but instead were little more than deep pits filled with powdery gray regolith.

"They're like quicksand, only dry,” Lauren says. “Fall into one of them, and unless you're attached to a safety line, you're in a lot of trouble.” A grim smile. “Which is exactly what happened here."

The legs belonged to Jane Wetherill-Owlsley. She lay upside-down above her husband Keith, who was buried more deeply than she was. Her right hand was grasped within his left hand, and their helmets were less than three feet apart from each other, but they were stuck fast, like two insects caught within dusty gray amber. Their suit batteries were dead and the oxygen supplies were depleted; both of them had suffocated, neither of them able to extricate themselves from the death trap into which they'd fallen.

Now it all came together. Keith Wetherill-Owlsley had unwisely decided to go free-climbing while a drilling operation was in progress. Perhaps he was bored with the monotony of his work; it may have even been possible that no one on the rig, other than his wife, knew what he was doing. Whatever the reason, he'd attempted to make an ascent of Himeros's western wall, only to lose his grip and slide downhill to the crater floor . . . where, unknown to him, the sand pit lay waiting.

Hearing his call for help, Jane Wetherill-Owlsley had rushed to rescue her husband. Apparently she'd been on EVA at the same time, probably working on the rig while her husband was goofing off. Since the western wall was beyond reach of her safety rope, she'd released the tether. This decision ultimately doomed both of them, because when she tried to pull her husband out of the pit, there was nothing to prevent him from pulling her in as well, and once both of them were trapped in the pit, they couldn't get out by themselves.

The crisis hadn't gone unnoticed in the command center. The rest of the crew had dropped what they were doing to see what was going on. Perhaps they were on the verge of suiting up and going to the rescue. In any case, this was the third and final mistake the crew made, because while all this was taking place, no one was paying attention to the drill. Any warning that they might have had that the laser was about to hit a gas pocket came too late, and the explosion probably killed everyone in the rig almost instantly. The two surviving crew members only lived a little while longer; their suits’ air supplies finally ran out though, and they died together, only a few feet from safety.

Everything could have been avoided. No one had to die that day. But six people lost their lives because stupid things were done in a place where stupidity isn't easily forgiven.

Quon Ko was one of the co-authors of the final report that revealed the circumstances of the disaster. He continued to serve as a TBSA spacecraft engineer for four more years before taking early retirement. Since then, he has made something of living from the Ritchie Explorer disaster—he has written articles, delivered lectures, and even worked as a consultant on a vid about the tragedy.

To this day, he's surprised to hear how many people continue to believe that the disaster was the work of a mythical creature. What's far more incredible, he points out, is the realization that the Explorer's crew committed three separate errors that, on their own, might have been trivial, but when combined killed everyone on the rig. Nonetheless, some people feel it necessary to believe that an invisible space monster was responsible. He suspects that, for those people, a supernatural cause for the disaster is preferable to one that anyone could commit.

"We spend a lot of time worrying about stuff like the Great Galactic Ghoul,” he says, “but the thing we really should be afraid of is what we do to ourselves. Space monsters don't exist, really. But careless mistakes will kill you just as quickly."

Copyright © 2010 Allen M. Steele

When genetics becomes a matter of choice, “nature vs. nurture” takes on whole new dimensions.

The station seemed to rotate on the screen as Dev Verlain brought the shuttle in, the waiting docks a spiny forest of grappling arms and gantries. He played the throttles as he guided the battered cargo container in front of him. It was his third grab of the day, and he briefly considered making a fourth trip, but in the end the lure of going home to his tiny apartment and Letha won out. He brought the boom mic closer to his lips.

"Approach, 7748 Uniform, inbound with cargo. Request vectors."

"Roger, Four-Eight Uniform,” a woman's voice answered. “Computer guidance to commence in thirty seconds."

"That's affirm.” Reluctantly, Dev turned control over to the tower. He had been genetically tailored to fly starships, and despite nearly two decades here he still rankled each time the computers took control. He placed his hands in his lap and waited, splitting his gaze between the flight-board and the vista of steel and carbon that made up Oasis. The station was one of the oldest in service, ugly as child's crude drawing, a thousand sharp facets and angles slipping in and out of the light as the station turned on its axis, forever locked in orbit around its red dwarf primary. It was a nexus for transport to the real colonies light-years away, a refuel point along the way to worlds with names like Seraphim, Allegro, and Novus, worlds with open skies and air scrubbed clean by rain. Worlds Dev Verlain would never see. After so many years fighting the idea, he had at last reconciled himself that the station was, for better or worse, home.

The shuttle surrendered speed and altitude, sinking toward the waiting berth. Other ships came and went, the darkness twinkling with running lights. Occasional bursts of noise crackled in his headset, pilots and computers talking back and forth, the normal flow of traffic a discordant symphony across the flight bands. Dev listened without really hearing, his attention suddenly drawn back to the screen. Ahead, hanging above the station's jagged outward rim, rode the largest starship he had ever seen. He whistled in admiration.

"She's a beauty, isn't she?” the controller answered, no doubt watching the video feed from his navigation console. “Just broke out of N-space in a couple hours ago."

"Where's she out of?” Dev asked.

"Portius. She's hauling refugees."

"Yeah?” Dev's voice trailed off. Something about the massive vessel called to him, reached deep into his soul and woke things he had fought diligently to keep asleep. The starship grew on screen, her sleek white hull making her seem more like a creature from some mythical sea than a mere construct of carbon fiber and titanium. As his shuttle passed abeam, he fought the urge to switch his view to the rear, an almost magnetic pull centered deep in his chest as if he was being drawn backward toward the enormous ship.

Annoyed with himself, Dev fished his phone out of his breast pocket and flipped it open. The screen flashed a cheerful blue while he waited for Letha to answer. A few seconds later he was rewarded with a blurred shot of his tiny apartment before she moved into view and sat down in front of their console. She leaned closer to the camera.

"Hello, flyboy.” Even on the tiny screen her eyes, brown as melted chocolate, seemed to shine. Her smile turned down into a mock pout, raising dimples on her plump face, her dark hair drawn back into a short ponytail. “Ever coming home tonight?"

"I'm about five minutes from docking. Give me an hour to lock down and grab a shower and I'll be on my way."

"Cool true.” Her voice had the typical drawl of an Oasis native, the local slang as polyglot as the population. Her smile returned, then vanished as she panned the camera down past her breasts and settled on her stomach. She patted the obvious bulge with her free hand. “We'll be waiting for you."

The phone went blank and Dev flipped it closed. He sighed as he slipped it back into his pocket, the sight of his pretty and extremely pregnant wife almost enough to keep his mind off the gleaming white transport riding somewhere behind him.

Hair still damp, Dev made his way down from the hangar where he berthed his shuttle to the trans-rail, leaning spinward against the rotation. Deeper inside the huge complex where he and Letha rented their cramped quarters, Oasis's spin wasn't as noticeable, the centri-petal forces generating less than Earth-standard gravity, but out here, close to the skin, any quick turn of the head could send a wave of vertigo crashing against even the most experienced station rat. He found a waiting car and shoved his way aboard, clinging to the handrail as the platform surged forward.

A thousand sounds and aromas brushed past him as they descended level by level, hot peppery oil from sidewalk cafes, ozone from overheated electronics, and the inevitable cloud of too many bodies pressed too closely together. Here and there a bit of greenery flashed by, potted citrus trees or wall gardens, but most of the station felt artificial, gunmetal walls and garish storefronts, a maze of corridors and passages constantly under construction. Dev scarcely noticed. Compared to the ship he had spent the first twelve standards aboard, Oasis was a virtual paradise.

The car entered a wide, sweeping curve, everyone leaning against the new tangent. Dev bumped the man behind him and apologized, oddly self-conscious. Normally, he would have paid little attention to his fellow riders, but today he couldn't shake the sensation that he was being watched. He felt ill at ease, but put it off as simple exhaustion, the result of too many shifts without respite. It would be good, he decided, when the baby did come and he could spend a few weeks at home tending his family before boredom or a lack of funds sent him once more into the cargo lanes.

The trans-car slowed and Dev gripped the rail as the car lurched into the hub. He shuffled off the platform, a cold breeze washing downward from the recirc fans high overhead. Unexpectedly, a sharp pain slid through his stomach, strong enough that he drew a breath between his clenched teeth. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, letting the flow of bodies spread around him until the pain subsided. Despite the cool air, sweat beaded on his forehead.

"What the hell?” he muttered under his breath. Normally, he was a healthy as a horse, his gene-mods keeping him safe from all but the most exotic ailments. Frowning, he turned around and gasped in surprise. Across the hub, one level up, a slender woman with short blond hair stood beside the rail, staring down at him. From the stunned expression on her face she seemed as shocked to see him as he was to see her. Suddenly he felt hollow, emptied, no more substantial than a shell filled with dust. Dev took a step toward the woman and would have walked off the platform had he not ran into the waist-high rail. He shut his eyes and counted to ten, then looked back up at the platform.

The woman, if she had ever really been there, was gone.

The door sniffed his palm and slid aside. Blue light bathed him as he stepped inside the apartment, a cool cerulean glaze cast by the wall murals, a tangle of thick branches swaying somewhere in the jungles of Seraphim. It was one of Letha's favorite backgrounds, a scene more inspired by the adventure programs she played in her off time than by any real interest in alien biota. She looked up at him from the kitchen counter and smiled.

"Hello, Luv-B.” She came around the counter, her movements exaggerated by her pregnancy, and stood up on tiptoe to kiss him. His arms slid around her, the hard bump of her belly pressing against him. Dev held the kiss longer than usual, needing the reassurance of her body against his. Finally, he relaxed and let her settle back to the soft-tiled floor.

"Wow.” Letha's eyes went wide. “What was that about?"

"Me being enchanted by my beautiful wife."

"Yes, I am, and don't think for a second flattery will get you anything.” She slapped him playfully on his backside. “I'm too broke to slip you any credit and too pregnant for romping. Besides, supper's here."

She turned and walked back into the kitchen. Dev stood by the door, admiring the view. Letha stood a head shorter than himself, her body voluptuous, generous curves even more pronounced as she neared the beginning of her third trimester. He had been in love with her almost from their first date, but tonight couldn't help comparing her with the willowy blond he had glimpsed in the trans-rail terminal. A wave of guilt swept through him, leaving him feeling dirty, and still he couldn't get the image of the stranger standing at the rail out of his mind.

No, Dev thought to himself, stranger wasn't the right word. He knew the woman as well as he knew himself. After all, they had been created for each other, born to mate, to create the next generation of pilots for a ship now long dead. Two decades of separation vanished as if they had parted only yesterday, a pair of crying twelve-year-olds torn apart, the memory driving a spike through his stomach.

"Luv, you okay?” Letha looked up from the pair of plastic cartons she had set on the counter. “You look like you just bit a turd."

"Long day, that's all."

"Well, sit down and eat. You'll feel better for it.” She gave him another swift kiss. “Besides, I might have been exaggerating that too pregnant to romp’ bit."

He forced a smile and scooped up a bite of the stir-fry in his carton, the tiny red peppers in it so strong his tongue felt ready to ignite. Letha took a bite, paused, and added a dash of hot sauce. Dev held back a chuckle. Like every other native Oasian he had met, his wife was utterly addicted to peppers and curry, the hotter the better. Feeling better despite his burning mouth, he ate, convinced once more that he was a very lucky man.

"By the way,” she said, mopping up the last of her stir-fry with a torn piece of flatbread, “you had a message from the Pilot's Association. They's called a general meeting for tomorrow at oh-nine-thirty."

"Oh?” The imploding sensation he had felt earlier returned. “Did they say why?"

"Nah, it was just a bot call. I'm willing to bet it's about that white ship that's popped in today, though."

"You saw it?” Dev tried to hide his growing unease.

"Saw the tower feed.” Letha worked out of the apartment as a spot trader, buying and selling the various cargo containers off the long-haul freighters that passed through Oasis. Despite having never once been outside of the enormous station, she probably knew more about the various ships docked here than most pilots. “According to her manifest, they's got nearly eleven thousand refugees aboard, most of them kids. I can't even imagine what it must be like down in her decks."

"Yeah. They must be stacked in there like bees,” Dev agreed. Again, the image of the woman at the railing flitted through his mind and he fought down a premonition that she was somehow tied to the gleaming white behemoth tethered outside the station.

"So,” Letha said, waiting as he stood up from the counter. “You want to run a vid?"

"Not really,” Dev replied.

"Good. Then take me to bed.” She kissed him on the neck, her tongue exploring the little hollows under his jaw, then turned and led the way into the tiny bedroom. Rain fell on the wall murals, speckling a slow, sapphire-hued river while a tiny blue sun sank into the trees. They made love gently, careful of her pregnant belly, both of them gasping in spent pleasure as they finished. Letha collapsed against his shoulder and within minutes was snoring softly. Dev sighed and pulled her closer, furious with himself that it wasn't his wife's face he had seen when he closed his eyes.

A strange tension filled Oasis, the white ship, the Blanca Rosa, on everyone's mind. Rumors choked every message box, the electronic overflow stating everything from the absurd, that Portius had sent the ship as a vanguard of an invasion, to the barely possible, that the government of the dying planet had secretly shipped their own families away from some ecological disaster that threatened the colony. As nine o'clock and the general meeting approached, Dev toyed with the idea of not attending, but in the end joined the crowd shuffling into the repair hangar the Pilot's Association used for meetings. Cheap plastic chairs stood in rows, the aroma of coffee and spilled propellant thick in the cool air. A low stage had been erected at one end of the hang-ar, a wall screen glowing behind it. Dev found one of the chairs and sat down, the legs scraping against the bare floor.

When he glanced up at the stage his breath caught in his throat. Seated among several other people all wearing identical blue flightsuits and padded jackets was the woman he had seen at the trans-station. She glanced in his direction, and despite being seated five rows back, Dev was certain she saw him, the same electric tingle he had felt earlier stronger now. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and was about to leave when a pot-bellied man with sparse gray hair stepped to the podium.

"Thanks for coming,” the association president said, his voice booming via the sound system. He adjusted his microphone and continued. “I'm sure you've all been keeping up with the texting this morning. I think at last count I had thirteen hundred messages in my inbox.” A polite chuckle ran around the crowd. “As I'm sure you've guessed, this meeting is about the Blanca Rosa, and what's happening out at Portius. They's have a pretty significant request, so rather than me relaying it, I've asked the Rosa's flight crew to explain it themselves. Captain Alvarez?” He nodded at someone standing just off the side of the low stage.

A tall, athletic-looking man with graying black hair stepped onto the podium with an easy, confident grace. He also wore a blue flightsuit and quilted jacket, a white rose holo'd above his name patch. Dev's hands bunched into fists as Alvarez casually brushed the blond woman's shoulder with his hand as he passed her chair.

"Good morning,” he said in a rich baritone. “I'm Fortino Alvarez, Captain of the Blanca Rosa. We are indeed carrying children and selected parents en route to Novus where we hope we can find refuge for them. My ship will be departing tomorrow, but part of my crew will be remaining here, and hopefully returning to Portius with some of you."

Alvarez paused, letting the murmurs die down. “A hundred and fifty years ago when remote probes discovered a planet orbiting a yellow, Sol-like star that had both liquid water and a breathable atmosphere but only primitive terrestrial flora, it seemed too good to be true. We were quick to terraform the world. Unfortunately, some factions on Earth considered colonizing an already established world a sacrilege against that planet's ecology, and in retaliation they released a fungal plague that destroys all Earth-native plant life. By the time the fungus was discovered, it had already spread to the point that widespread famine is a virtual certainty.” He paused. “There is no possibility of evacuating everyone before they starve."

A collective gasp ran across the floor, and again Alvarez waited for the noise to subside. Dev leaned forward, more intent on the glance that passed between the captain and the blond woman than on the impending disaster.

"There is, however,” Alvarez said, “a possibility that we can stop the plague and reseed our world. We have developed an inoculant against the fungus, as well as resistant strains of plants, which can be dropped via canister from orbit.” Alvarez's dark eyes swept the crowd. “But, for the plan to work, we need a large number of pilots and pusher-ships. Portius is an agricultural colony with only a limited space fleet. That is why we are here. Oasis is the only point both in range and with enough experienced pilots to help us. I'll let my chief pilot Kammie Tule explain in more detail."

Dev's stomach lurched. If there had been any doubt remaining in his mind who the blond woman was, Alvarez had just removed it. He stared at the dais as Kammie Tule rose and walked to the podium, her hand briefly twining with the Captain's as they passed each other. Few in the crowd noticed the gesture, but it made Dev so angry his teeth ground together.

"Hello.” Kammie smiled nervously as she took the podium. “I don't have much to add, other than we need every pilot and shuttle we can enlist.” Whether she meant to or not, her gaze settled on Dev. Time seemed to freeze before she once again began speaking.

"I wish I could tell you that this mission will be perfectly safe, but I can't. These are going to be low orbit drops which all involve aero-braking, and we can't rule out the possibility of sabotage from the people who released the plague in the first place. That's why we're offering a ten-thousand credit to everyone who volunteers.” Her lips drew into a thin smile. “But I can at least promise you it will be over quickly, one way or another. Portius is only six transit days from Oasis. If things go as we hope, we can drop all of the canisters within a week. And, if they go wrong, well . . .” Kammie sighed. “If the mission fails, we will bring you back here before things get out of hand."

She continued speaking a few minutes longer, but Dev heard none of it, his mind locked on her face, lost in the horrible, wonderful, dangerous realization that after two decades she was back. Sweat pooled between his shoulder blades, his breath coming in gasps as if a belt was wrapped around his chest and was being tightened by the second. As soon as the meeting concluded he rose and hurried toward the exit, but the flow of people slowed him, blocking his way. When he finally did make it past the double doors into the service corridor, he let his breath out in a loud sigh, glad to be free.

"Hello, Dev."

He stiffened, then turned around. Kammie Tule stood next to the wall, her arms crossed over her chest, so close he could smell the faint, earthy musk of her skin.

"Hi, Kam.” A wave of dizziness crashed over him and he spread his legs wide to keep his balance. “It's good to see you."

"I didn't know you were here when we docked. I promise."

He shrugged. “Would it have mattered?"

"It might have.” A thin glaze of sweat covered her forehead, the pupils of her deep blue eyes so large they seemed to pulse. She reached toward him, but Dev flinched away. She dropped her arm to her side. “This isn't easy for me, either."

"I'm not blaming you, Kammie.” Before he could say more the tall man who had shared the podium stepped up behind her. Dev's fingers closed into fists as Alvarez casually slipped his arm around her slender waist. He nodded at Dev, the smile on his face warm and genuine.

"I was wondering where you'd gone,” Alvarez said. His gaze moved to Dev. “Are you one of our volunteers? I certainly hope so. We can use every pilot we can get."

"I . . .” Dev's throat seemed to close, the scent of Kammie's skin roaring in his senses. He forced himself to take a step back before he lashed out at the man. “I have to go.” He spun on his heel and vanished into the trickle of bodies still making their way out of the hangar, the veins in his temples pulsing as he struggled not to turn around, his heart breaking as if he was twelve years old again and watching while the only person he was allowed to love was led away.

The morning was a waste, his mind spinning in dark clouds that refused to part. Dev preflighted his shuttle and left the station, but only made one run, nearly sending the container he grabbed careening sunward because he forgot to secure the grapple forks around it. Feigning illness, he returned to berth and locked down his ship, then left without bothering to shower or change out of his flight clothes. Letha was waiting for him when he stepped inside the apartment. He started to say something inane but she cut him off with a kiss.

"I've been following the chatter all morning on the forums,” she said, her arms still around him. “I think you should go."

"What?” Dev stared at his wife in obvious amazement. It was the last thing he expected her to say. “I'm not going anywhere."

"Look, lover . . .” An almost embarrassed smile creased her face. “I've already played this scene out in my head a few thousand times today, so just shut up and let me talk. You're going to tell me that you can't join your mates going off to save Portius because I'm preggers, then I'm going to tell you that I'm just starting my third trimester and you'll be home long before my water breaks, and even if you're not it's the docs who'll deliver the baby, not you. I'll be fine.” Letha paused for breath. “What they're trying to do out at Portius is a good thing. And god knows we could use the bonus they're offering."

"This isn't about the money,” Dev said.

"No, it isn't.” She laid her head against his chest and let him draw her closer. He drank in the clean scent of her hair, her breath warm against his shoulder. Though he couldn't see her face, he was sure she was crying.

"Let's sit down.” He guided her to the little couch in the corner of the room. They dropped into the worn-out cushions, her head still resting against him. He stroked her upper arm, reveling in the softness, refusing to compare her with Kammie Tule. “How much do you know about my past?"

"I know you're wasting yourself here,” she said, her voice falling. “You should be flying starships, not shuffling containers."

"Letha..."

"Damn it, love, I'm trying to be noble here.” She pulled back and looked up at him. “This might be your one chance to do something that matters, something that people are going to talk about for generations, and I won't have you blaming me for missing it."

"I could never blame you."

"You say that now. But when the rest of the pilots around here board that freighter you're going to hate yourself for not being with them. I don't much like the thought of being alone, but I likes the thought of you hating yourself even less. Go, would you?"

The computer chimed, an incoming message, but neither bothered to glance toward the screen. Around them, as if the mural was reading their dark moods, a thunderstorm built on the horizon, casting a purple glow across the tiled floor. Dev chewed on his lower lip before launching into the things he had never told a single person. “I'm not saying you aren't right,” he began. “But I have to tell you some things about me that I don't think you're going to like. You know my family belonged to a gypsy-freighter, right?"

"You make it sound like you were slaves.” She smiled weakly.

"Not much difference.” He shrugged. “Out in the reaches where we traveled, there aren't any restrictions on what geneticists can do. When people say I'm a born pilot, they're right. I was gene-tailored, just like my parents and their parents before them. I come from a long line of star-pilots, so it was just assumed I'd stay with our ship, or be contracted out to fly somebody else's. But that's not the worst of it. We weren't just gene-tailored, we were line-bred like race horses."

"All right.” Some of her usual cockiness returned. “So far you're proving my point."

"There's more.” Dev swallowed, his mouth dry. “The captain and the owners made sure before I was ever born that I would pass my genes on with another pilot. Part of the tweaking that was done to me was to make sure I would fall in love with the person they wanted. I was born with a physical addiction to a girl named Kammie Tule whose mother was the pilot off another freighter. We were raised together like brother and sister, except it just assumed that when the time came, we would marry and keep the line going."

He paused, letting the words sink in. Letha stared at him, her wide brown eyes full of hurt and fear as if she had already guessed much of what he was telling her. In some way, he realized, she probably had. Dev drew a long breath and continued.

"When we were twelve, the owners made a string of bad buys and the ship went bust. To settle debts, the freighter was sold and the crew left stranded. My parents hitched a ride to Oasis. Kammie and her mother went back to her family's ship. When we saw each other for the last time, my heart broke. I didn't speak to anyone, not even my mother, for nearly six months. I almost starved to death, and for a while I was put into a hospital. I never thought I could care about anything again. Even after I got my license and started flying, it didn't matter to me. I was just going through the motions. Then, I met you."

He kissed her, but knew the gesture seemed false. Letha pulled back, her eyes bright with tears. “She's here, isn't she?"

"Yes."

"And that's why you don't want to join the mission?"

Dev nodded slowly. Letha looked away, reached up with her free hand and brushed her fingers through her thick, dark hair. “I love you.” She lifted her mouth to his and kissed him hard, then pulled back, her lips quivering as she smiled. “I trust you."

Dev held her, soaking up her warmth and wishing to whatever nameless gods might exist that he could trust himself.

The Blanca Rosa departed the next morning, bearing her load of refugees for Novus. Despite everything, Dev found himself standing among the onlookers watching the little bit of history play out. He watched as the crew made their way to the airlock, Alvarez the last to step inside. The captain turned and kissed Kammie Tule so passionately they seemed to be part of some old romantic vid, lovers torn apart by the onrushing war, star-crossed but defiant. The crowd cheered as Alvarez broke the kiss, waved to the onlookers, then strode up the sloping ramp while the heavy doors slid shut behind him.

Dev watched from the railing one level above the floor, secretly thrilled to see Alvarez gone while Kammie remained behind to take the volunteers back to Portius. She turned and found him staring down at her. This time, neither bothered to look away from the other.

A bulk container was leased to carry the pusher-ships back to Portius, along with one of the largest star-drive equipped tugs, the Elizabeth Toland, to tow it and house the volunteers. Dev kept busy over the next three days, helping load the bulky ships and provisions into the canister, the normal flow of goods through Oasis on hold until the rescue ship was away. By the time the final pusher was stowed and the container secured for flight, he felt as if he hadn't slept in a week, his body on the verge of exhaustion.

And still he couldn't keep Kammie Tule from his thoughts.

A farewell party had been organized, the Pilot's Association hangar now fitted with wall screens blazing light shows and raucous music. Dev could actually feel the bass notes through the soles of his boots as he walked toward the trans-rail. The station seemed deserted, everyone who was anyone at the party. Dev's mouth twisted in an ironic smile as he wandered toward the waiting cars, the hypnotic call of the music reinforcing his decision to stay behind at Oasis. Weary to the core, he swiped his card through the pay-slot and the gate clicked open. The steel rail felt cold in his hand as he pushed it open. Behind him, he heard a soft, hesitant footstep.

"Dev?"

For one moment he considered not turning around. “Hello, Kammie. I thought you'd be at the party."

"I was.” She wore her flightsuit again, the blue padded jacket emphasizing her slender hips and long legs. Her blond hair looked tousled and yet perfectly in place, gold highlights cast by the overhead lamps. “Guess I wasn't in the mood for crowds."

"Yeah, me either.” Somehow his legs seemed to have taken on a mind of their own, carrying him within arms reach of her. “I hope things go all right on the mission."

"Thanks.” She sighed. “Wish you were coming with us. We could use you."

"I don't think that's such a good idea.” Dev pushed his hands into his jacket pockets, feeling like a nervous teenager. “I'm glad things have worked out for you. Piloting the Rosa, I mean. And, you know, you and Alvarez.” He could barely say the name.

"Thanks. Good luck with the baby.” Her smile trembled slightly at the corners of her mouth. “Must be wonderful having a family. I even think about it now and then.” She edged closer, but stopped short of touching him. “I wish I could kiss you goodbye, but..."

"Yeah, but . . .” Dev tipped his head back and stared up at the high ceiling, the open girders casting shadows across the gray surface. Sweat broke out on his back despite the cool air blowing through the chamber, every instinct screaming to take her in his arms. Instead, he forced a grim smile. “Take care of yourself."

"You too."

Turning around was the hardest thing he had ever done. Not until he was seated and the car moving did he allow himself a final look back, his heart breaking all over again as he watched Kammie waving one last goodbye.

The day passed in a blur, normalcy slowly returning once the transport departed, carrying away most of Oasis's pusher pilots with it. Dev tried to keep busy, but in the end he wound up simply wandering the labyrinth of corridors until he was certain the transport had broken dock. Even then he couldn't face going home to Letha, his anger and resentment too near the surface. He needed time to bring himself under control, time to start forgetting about Kammie Tule all over again.

When at last, nearly six hours later, he did return to the apartment, he found Letha sitting at the computer. She turned and looked at him, her dark eyes wide with fear.

"What's wrong?” he said, rushing across the tiny room. “The baby?"

"No.” Letha shook her head. “We're fine. It's . . .” Her voice broke. “Word just came in from Departure Control. The transport canister exploded thirty seconds before engaging their star-drive. They don't know if anyone on the tug survived."

The room, so solid only a heartbeat before, began to dissolve, the floor no longer able to support him. Dev felt his knees buckle and kept from falling only by clutching a nearby counter. Letha hurried to him. A dull roar howled in the background, his own pulse thundering as the room continued to lose substance.

"How?” It was the only word he seemed able to force out his lips.

"Nobody knows.” Letha steered them both to the small couch. “Everything was green on their board. Then, just as they began the jump, their telemetry went dead. Departure picked up a debris field on radar a few seconds later.” She paused, her own voice far from steady. “No one official is saying it yet, but everyone suspects a bomb."

Cold rage flooded through Dev, the shock giving way to the mounting fury. He had friends aboard that ship. They both did. People they had known and worked with for years, nearly half of the active shuttle pilots on station lost because of some fanatic's need to make a political statement. His fists bunched together, the muscles on his arms tensing as he fought to hold in the anger and despair, one overriding thought burning in his mind. Kammie Tule was dead.

He was on his feet and halfway to the door before he realized he had stood up. Still on the couch, Letha called after him. “Where are you going?"

"Out there.” He didn't need to explain where there was. “My ship is fueled and ready. If the tug didn't explode there could be survivors. I'm going to bring them back."

"Dev . . .” She struggled to her feet. “Let the authorities handle this."

"Piss on the authorities.” He pulled the door open, the faintly stale air outside the apartment spilling in. Dev took his wife in his arms, her pregnant belly hard against his own. He held her, not quite sure which of them was shaking the most. “By the time the emergency teams are dispatched, this will be a retrieval mission, not a rescue. I can be there before they even have their ship fueled."

"Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"This is about her, isn't it.” Letha said it as a statement, not a question. Dev flinched, the words sharp as a slap to the face.

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it?” She glared at him. “At least be honest with me if you can't be honest with yourself. If that was me out there instead of her, would you be so quick to throw your life away trying to bring me back?"

He bit down on his lip, holding in an angry, senseless reply. “I love you,” he finally said. “I don't care what you might think, I love you.” Dev slid the door open and stepped out of the apartment. By the time he reached the trans-rail he was running, his back soaked with sweat, thoughts of Letha and his unborn child all but forgotten in his need to reach Kammie Tule before what hope remained faded to zero.

He swam in a sea of numbers, his enhanced nervous system calculating the outbound vectors nearly as fast as his shuttle's computers. He had gambled, taking an extra fuel tank rather than a survival pod, instinctively suspecting that reaching the damaged starship and bringing it back would give any potential survivors a better chance. Besides, Dev reasoned, hating to admit it, a pod couldn't accommodate all of the volunteers and crew, forcing him to damn at least half of them to almost certain death.

"Four-Eight Uniform?” Departure Control tried for the third time in less than two minutes to contact him. He continued to ignore them. “Four-Eight Uniform, do you read?"

He bit down on his lip, knowing full well how much trouble he was facing when he returned. Dev seriously considered turning his telemetry off but decided against it. If nothing else, the official emergency teams could follow his signal. Again, the speakers in his headset crackled, the words echoed on his text-screen.

"Four-Eight Uniform? Mr. Verlain?” A brief pause. “Dev, if you can hear me, be advised that we strongly advise you not to attempt a rescue on your own. However, in case you are hearing this, the most recent scans of the debris cloud indicate a region of density 11 degrees south by 14 degrees west of the solar axis, receding at 38 KPS from Oasis. We can't be certain this is the tug, but we are dispatching our own teams to that region."

Dev nodded to himself, silently thanking the nameless voice for the tip. He made a slight course correction, aiming toward what he could only hope was the tug, the flight computer confirming what he had already calculated. If the tug had been at jump velocity he would use nearly his entire fuel reserve just to reach them. He stared out the tiny forward window at the bulk container grappled in front of him, wondering if the extra fuel it held would be enough. No matter how he played the numbers it would be close.

Too close.

For a moment he considered sending a private message back to Letha, but decided against it, the commo gear aboard his shuttle far too primitive to keep the news-hounds from intercepting his words. Things were going to be bad enough between them without his broadcasting their private turmoil across the nets.

Ahead, most of his view blocked by the fuel tank, he saw a diffuse glow, spilled fuel, and water from the exploded canister illuminated by sunlight. Dev's fingers tightened around the armrests, the foolishness of what he was doing only now sinking in. Any debris he encountered, no matter how small, would be as lethal as a missile at the velocities they were moving. His mouth tightened into a grim line as he began transferring the fuel from the external tank into his ship. Although the combustible mixture wouldn't ignite in vacuum should the tank rupture, it was under pressure and the resulting burst would be enough to send him out of control.

Time hung, the simple concept of minutes no longer bearing any real meaning as he rushed outward. The cloud in front of him continued to grow, becoming less defined the closer he approached. Dev checked his own speed and saw he was moving at nearly 60 KPS, fast enough to overtake the wreckage. Reluctantly, he shut down his engines to conserve fuel for the return flight.

To his left, just at the lower edge of the fuel tank, he saw a twinkle. Dev leaned forward against his restraints, holding his breath, not sure he had actually seen anything. Just as he began to pass it off as wishful thinking, he caught the reflection again. Something large enough to be seen by the naked eye was out there, tumbling and occasionally reflecting back at him. He focused his radar on the region, pushing the sensors to their maximum. A small dot flickered into existence on the screen, bright red against the cooler yellows and blues in the simulated view.

"That's got to be it,” Dev whispered, trying to convince himself. If he changed course now and the object wasn't the tug, he wouldn't get a second chance. He felt cold inside despite the sweat pooling between his shoulders as he made the minute course adjustments, the change in vector so slight he barely felt it in the seat of his pants. Now, all he could do was wait.

His gaze traveled outward, not to the debris cloud, but beyond it to the unblinking stars. For the first time in years he began to daydream about being out there, traveling between worlds instead of pushing freight containers. Suddenly, he craved the rush, the danger as enticing as the need for sex or food. Something within him had awakened, but whether it was the accident and his insane rescue attempt, or simply having Kammie flung unexpectedly back into his life, he couldn't say. No, he corrected himself. He didn't want to say, the possibility that every emotion he felt right now, from guilt to longing to abject fear was inspired by the same genetic twists that left him addicted to a woman he could never have.

"You're an idiot,” he whispered under his breath.

Dev shut his eyes and tried to think of Letha, but it was Kammie Tule he saw, her blue eyes wide with terror, imploring him to hurry. He sighed and gave in, letting his mind sweep outward, searching. Something pulled at him, as if an invisible hand had just reached into his chest and closed around his windpipe, dragging him forward. She was alive. She had to be.

He let his eyes open again. The twinkle was back, brighter now and more regular. He checked the radar and was surprised to see he was within 400 kilometers of the object and closing fast. He fired the maneuvering jets and turned his shuttle around, the tail now pointing forward. Dev watched the timer, tensing as the counter fell to zero and the main engines roared back to life.

Vibration pounded against him, g-forces shoving him from behind as the restraints cut into his shoulders, his breath coming in ragged gulps. Dev tried to watch the burn timer, but the panel was only a blur. Just as he feared he was going to lose consciousness, the engine cut out, the sudden stillness unnerving. Dev shook his head to clear it, breathing deeply as he checked the flight-board.

The radar went blank, then returned, showing the object he had been tracking now less than three kilometers away. Dev looked out the window, pushing the nose of the shuttle down slightly to clear the view. A lopsided grin creased his face as he caught sight of the tug. Again, he fired his thrusters and moved toward the wounded vessel.

As he approached, the damage to the tug became more obvious. The machine was tumbling, the coupling platform a collection of twisted girders and torn hoses. A long gash ran down the tug's starboard flank, patches of frost collected across the scorched hull where fluids had leaked out. A single green running light remained, blinking calmly as the ship rolled end over end, somersaulting against the backdrop of stars. Dev tensed, the view hardly encouraging.

"Oasis Control?” He spoke into his mic, trying to keep his voice flat. “I've found the tug. The ship is in one piece, but shows heavy damage. No sign yet of survivors."

He switched to the ship-to-ship frequency, his hopes fading as he waited for his computer to query the crippled ship. When no automatic reply came, he brought the mic boom closer to the corner of his mouth.

"7748 Uniform to Commercial Towing vessel Elizabeth Toland. Please come in.” He waited. “Towing vessel, this is Four-Eight Uniform, currently one point three kilometers sunward of your position. Please respond."

A metallic taste spread through his mouth as he waited, the icy possibility that no one remained alive aboard the tug becoming more real with every passing second. To himself, he whispered, “Kammie, damn it, send me a sign."

Fighting his own despair, he edged closer, closing the gap between the two ships, brief sparkles of torn metal and ice catching starlight as they drifted past. Suddenly, as the tug made another end-over roll, he saw a light flash in one of the tiny forward windows. The light flashed twice more before it was lost from view.

"Towing vessel Elizabeth Toland,” he said, forcing himself to remain calm despite his thundering heartbeat. “Please flash three times on you next revolution."

He waited, barely breathing, the sour scent of his own sweat filling the cockpit as the tug's forward end rolled once more into view. Dev watched for the light at the window, then whooped out loud as he once more saw the small but intense flash of what must have been a hand-torch blink three quick flashes. To his amazement, he felt the phone in his breast pocket buzz. Shaking, he flipped it open.

"Don't know if you can hear this,” a faint, female voice said, the signal fading in and out. Dev didn't need to be told it was Kammie Tule. “Our tracking dish is out, so we rigged a hand-held antenna.” The signal vanished, then returned a few seconds later. “No power and air pressure is dropping. Forty-three survivors, all in suits. Six in critical..."

Again, the voice in his phone faded, but didn't return. Dev swore under his breath. It was maddening to be within shouting distance of the wounded tug, but having to communicate via a relay nearly forty thousand kilometers away. He relayed the information and position back to Oasis Control, then plugged the phone into the intercom.

"Hang on, Kammie. I'm going to attempt a grapple.” Leaving the phone on, he Velcroed it to the visor above his head then swung his helmet visor down. The row of lights flashed across the faceplate as the seal engaged, a metallic whiff of bottled air kissing his face. Dev drank it in, letting the pure oxygen clear his head as he nudged his ship toward the much larger vessel.

He glanced at the fuel meter and saw nearly a thousand kilograms of pressurized fuel remained in the auxiliary tank. Hardly a surplus, but hopefully enough to cancel the tug's rotation and start braking, maybe even push them back toward Oasis. Gently, he played the controls, easing his shuttle into a matching orbit, rotating in time with the tug's spin. The skewed g-forces pressed him against the side of the cockpit, the stars now whirling madly in front of him while the tug seemed to slow and finally come to a stop. Dev switched on the flood-lamps as he extended the grapple arms, the mechanical linkages stuttering into position.

"Almost there,” he said, not sure if anyone aboard the ship could hear him or not. “I'll hook on amidship just forward of the platform."

A strange calm fell over him as the final meters closed, experience taking over while he maneuvered into position. Gently, as if scratching an eyelid, Dev scissored the grapple arms around a coupling point. A faint click ran up the arms, followed by a low hiss as the hydraulic arms locked into position. Now, he thought ruefully, the real work begins.

"Hang on tight,” he warned, hoping Kammie heard him. Dev made a final check of the flight-board, then opened the throttle. A thunderstorm broke around him, the vibration rising as his engines pushed against the Elizabeth Toland.

Clinging to the armrests, Dev watched the board, gratified to see the numbers slowly swing in his favor. Burning fuel at a monstrous rate, he let the engine run. Sweat poured down his forehead, the vibration becoming more violent as the pressures increased. Suddenly, a red light flashed near the top of the board, an alarm shrilling as sensors reported a failure in the left grappling arm.

A grinding snap shook the cabin as the arm buckled. Dev's hand flew toward the engine cut-off a millisecond too late. He gasped as the impact banged him against the restraints, shaking him. The shuttle rebounded, arcing in the opposite direction, still tethered by the remaining arm. Glass shattered, the air in the cabin joining the cloud of hydraulic fluid and ruptured fuel spewing out of the tanks. His head struck the cabin wall, lights flashing in his eyes as he lost consciousness, the hiss of air pouring into vacuum the last sound he heard.

Pain wound through his skull, a pounding throb that echoed the agony in his right shoulder. A sticky, coppery taste filled his mouth, his breath whistling through the blood coagulating in his nostrils. Darkness surrounded him, the stars and the cheerful blue screen of the cell phone still miraculously stuck to the ceiling the only light. He was cold.

"This is what it feels like to die,” Dev thought without any real emotion.

A flash of lightning sawed through his vision, vanished, then returned. Above him, drifting back and forth he watched the pool of light go from one side of the cabin to the other, diffused by the spider web of cracks in the shattered window. More light, red and blue instead of white, played around him, sparks hissing as they snicked against his visor. The pain worsened, and again he felt himself browning out, not sure if he really saw the cabin roof fly away or the mirrored faceplate looking down at him from outside.

Gray walls, a touch of frost on the metal surfaces, the light twisted. Dev stared blankly at the odd shadows, confused before it dawned on him that he was no longer wearing his helmet. His head throbbed as he tried to sit up, but a hand pressed him back down.

"Careful,” someone said. “You might have whiplash. Just stay still, all right?"

"Where am I?"

"Airlock aboard the Elizabeth Toland.” Kammie Tule shifted behind him, the fabric of her E-suit rustling as she scooted around to face him. She placed her hands on her own helmet and gave it a twist. The bulky headgear popped as it came loose. Her hair was matted with sweat and a thin cut ran at a slant into her left eyebrow, but despite the pain in his skull Dev had never seen anything so beautiful.

"Sorry about the way I had to get you out,” she continued. A cloud of breath hung around her face, the tips of her blond hair already stiffening in the frigid air. “We watched your ship break up but no one could tell if you survived or not. I wasn't really sure until I got you in here and pulled your helmet off. Hope I wasn't too rough."

"I don't remember. I think I blacked out.” Dev winced as he sat up, the pain reminding him how close he had just come to dying. “You saved my life, didn't you?"

"Probably.” A lopsided smile played across her face. “You saved ours, so it's a fair trade."

"Did I?” He frowned, her words floating inside his aching head. “I managed to slow the Toland down?"

"Yeah. We're down to just a few kilometers per hour. Oasis has already dispatched a rescue ship homing in on your beacon. They should be here in a couple hours.” Kammie's smile deepened, the faint lines around her eyes heightened by the single battery powered light set in the airlock wall. “Believe it or not, they heard us talking on my phone. We couldn't hear each other, but they tight-beamed a reply to us."

"Good.” Dev began to shiver, suddenly so cold he couldn't keep his teeth from chattering. Kammie peeled off her gauntlets and let them drift away as she worked the controls set in the left arm of his suit. Almost at once warmth spread around him, the heat pumps obviously still functional. He felt as if he had just slid into a warm bath, the chills deep but lessening. He shut his eyes and drifted asleep, floating in a pillowed dream.

Fingertips whispered across his cheeks, gentle circles around his temples. Dev sighed, reveling in the touch. Her touch. Kammie's touch. His life had been so wrong for so long, but everything was going to be all right now. Kammie was back. They were together, and nothing was going to pull them apart again. His left shoulder ached, but he managed to reach up with his right hand and brush hers, needing to return the touch even if his suit kept them physically apart.

His eyes opened, reality coming back in a single, unyielding flood. Kammie still hung above him, staring down at him. Her hair was tipped with ice, the temperature inside the airlock brutal, but she didn't seem to notice, the redness of her cheeks only making her more beautiful. She had been crying, he could tell, but now she smiled.

"They're almost here. The rescue ship, I mean.” She continued to stroke his face. “We should be out of here in an hour."

Before he truly understood what was happening, she bent forward and kissed him. A sharp pain cut across his swollen lip, but he didn't care, the avalanche of sensation so intense he felt as if he was being pulled apart atom by atom. She drew back, only a little, so near he could feel her warmth against his cheek.

"I love you,” she whispered. “I've always loved you."

"Kammie . . .” He wanted to say so much, but that was the only word he seemed able to say. He tried again to speak, but she silenced him with a touch of her finger against his lip.

"I know,” she said, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “We both have other lives. But that isn't going to change anything, is it?” She bent forward and kissed him again, her tongue flicking at his teeth, the salty flavor of her lips more addictive than morphine. Eternity broke around them, time no more real than the clouds of spent breath spreading through the icy chamber. Finally, she drew back. “I think they owed us that much, don't you?"

Dev wished he could think of something profound to say, but settled for a nod and a sad, quiet smile as they settled back to wait.

She was in the crowd when they off-loaded, huddled near the gate with the rest of the family members, a tiny shape held back by the low metal rail. Dev saw her as he was wheeled down the gantry and waved to her, ignoring the scolding from the army of medical technicians as he stood up.

"I'm all right,” he said, ignoring the protests. He glanced to his left, noting the line of injured people coming off the Elizabeth Toland, at least half of them strapped to litters. “I can walk from here."

He moved away from the gantry, dragging his left leg. His shoulder throbbed, but at least his headache had subsided thanks to the heavy doses of painkiller they had given him during the flight back from the now deserted tug. A padded collar chaffed around his neck, but as badly as he wanted to throw the annoying brace away, he was sure that would certainly bring the technicians pouring down on him.

Behind him, as palpable as if she held the end of a long rope tied around his stomach, he felt Kammie watching. He paused, fighting the urge to turn around, then staggered ahead once more. By the time he reached the crowd Letha had already climbed over the rail and lowered herself clumsily to the metal deck.

"Be careful.” Dev hurried as much as his aching joints would allow, horrified as Letha stumbled then recovered. She spun around to face him.

"You're a fine one to talk.” She stared at his face. “It's a good thing you came back alive, or I'd have killed you.” She watched him, her dark eyes questioning. Dev reached for her, but stopped. Things had to be said, and the sooner he said them the better.

"Letha, I . . .” His words caught in his dry throat. “There's some things you need to know."

"Don't,” she whispered. Her eyes darted over his shoulder, and he had no doubt she was looking at Kammie Tule. “Please don't say it. Not right now."

"I have to.” He reached again for her, ignoring the pain, and pulled her to him, the clean scent of her hair masking the deeper, sour aroma of fear. Dev laid his head against hers. No explosions of sensation rushed him, no drowning flood of undiluted need, but he didn't care.

"I love you,” he whispered, tears streaming down his face. “I'm sorry for what I've put you through these last couple days, and I can't promise I won't put you through more. But I love you. I love you so damn much. Someday, when this is all over and the baby is old enough, I want to go back to flying starships."

"I can live with that.” Letha was crying, but managed a weak smile as she pulled away. “Now would you shut up and take me home?"

They started toward the ramp, moving slowly, hampered by her pregnancy and his injuries, both pretending not to hear the calls from the medical crew. Dev felt again the tug on his heart, but when he glanced back toward the gantry Kammie was gone. Beside him, Letha gave him a gentle shove on the small of the back. He felt a guilty blush creep over his face.

"I can tell you one thing, boyo,” she said, only half mocking as she patted her stomach. “If it's a girl, we're sure as hell not naming her Kammie."

Dev smiled and leaned against his wife, letting her guide him into the corridor. “That's fine with me,” he said. And to his surprise, it was.

Copyright © 2010 Justin Stanchfield

Science fiction, like most areas of human endeavor, has its fashions. Across the history of the field, individual fashions go through a fairly consistent progression. First, someone writes a groundbreaking new story that becomes hugely popular. Then other writers jump on the bandwagon, at first mostly producing imitative and derivative stories to fill the demand created by the seminal work. This goes on for a while. Then, more and more writers explore the new territory, blazing their own trails and taking the original story in different directions. What was a bestseller-and-follow-ups becomes a full-fledged movement. For a time, it seems that everything published is part of the movement.

Eventually the new movement attenuates, like the shell of gas around a nova. Other types of SF reappear, the field returns to its pre-movement diversity . . . but the movement's influences remain. The movement has become a fashion. Then, slowly, the fashion fades as other things take its place—although its impact remains and the field is stronger for it. After a decade or so, everyone wonders what all the fuss was about.

Take, for instance, one of SF's first fashions: the “super-science” stories of E. E. “Doc” Smith, of which The Skylark of Space (1928) was the seminal work. It didn't take long for other writers to join the fun. Before he became editor of Astounding/Analog, John W. Campbell, Jr. made his name with his Arcot, Wade, and Morley stories, which were firmly in the Smith style. Edmond Hamilton was another major writer of Smith-like super-science epics.

After a while super-science stories morphed into what we now call “space opera,” and a movement came into being. Many of the big names of the field wrote space opera: Ray Cummings, Raymond Z. Gallun, P. Schuyler Miller, and Jack Williamson were particular favorites.

Then, as space opera became a full-fledged fashion, its elements spread as all manner of writers took them up in stories that went far afield. Galactic Empires, universe-spanning wars, powerful technologies, multitudes of aliens, swashbuckling adventure—all elements that continue to appear in SF to this day.

The most recent fashion in science fiction—well on its way to also being a fashion in larger society—is steampunk.

As with most fashions, there's no authoritative definition of exactly what constitutes steampunk. That's entirely fitting, as steampunk is in a period of flux, on the brink of the stage when it will begin to disperse itself across the whole field. But as commonly understood, steampunk involves stories set against an anachronistic quasi-Victorian or—Edwardian background. Steampunk stories may take place in the past, present, or future—but it's an alternate universe in which the primary technology is steam power. It's a world in which Jules Verne and H. G. Wells would be entirely at home.

The first steampunk books, published in the early-to-mid 1980s, were categorized as fantasy rather than science fiction: novels by James Blaylock, K. W. Jeter, and Tim Powers. In fact, it was K. W. Jeter who gave the movement its name, in a tongue-in-cheek letter in 1987.

Steampunk, however, straddles the already-indistinct line between fantasy and science fiction. Since steampunk stories are alternate-universe fiction, a case can be made for considering them to be SF unless they include overt magic or other supernatural elements (which some do). Perhaps the best answer is to categorize steampunk as science-fantasy. Or to simply say that if they read like science fiction, then they are science fiction.

The first steampunk novel acknowledged as SF was The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (1990), set in an alternate history in which Charles Babbage's steam-powered analytical engine brought about the computer revolution a hundred years early.

By now, as I said, steampunk has passed beyond the boundaries of SF, fantasy, and even literature itself. Steampunk has become an art form, a musical genre, even a distinct culture. There are steampunk conventions, steampunk dances, and steampunk stores selling all sorts of steampunk merchandise: costumes, goggles, clocks, and assorted objets d'art.

In reality, of course, the aesthetic that we call steampunk has been around since . . . well, since the Victorian Age itself. Verne and Wells were writing steampunk a century before steampunk existed. Harry Harrison, Keith Laumer, and Michael Moorcock all wrote stories that would definitely be considered steampunk if they were published today. (Analog did its part: Harrison's 1973 pre-steampunk novel A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! was serialized starting in the April 1972 issue.)

In media, George Pal's 1960 film The Time Machine had a definite steampunk look and feel. The TV show The Wild, Wild West had a steampunk aesthetic; even Doctor Who had its steampunk-ish moments.

So in one sense, steampunk is the newest fashion in SF; in another sense, it's been part of SF since the beginning.

This month I have an assortment of steampunk books to show you the current variety of the fashion.

Wrath of the Lemming Men

Toby Frost

Myrmidon Books, 320 pages,

$12.95 (trade paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-905802-35-7

Series: Chronicles of Isambard Smith 3

Genre: Humorous SF, Steampunk

Captain Isambard Smith, of the British Space Empire, is a steely-thewed hero in the model of Horatio Hornblower or Honor Harrington . . . at least, if you believe his press releases. He is the commander of the good ship HMSC John Pym, the fastest ship in the fleet. His retinue includes his best friend, alien warrior Suruk the Slayer; android Polly Carveth, a former pleasurebot and the only entity who can pilot the John Pym; Rhianna Mitchell, a hippie-like free spirit who is a constant thorn in Captain Smith's side (not least because of his mad, unrequited love for her); and Gerald the hamster.

In two previous books, Space Captain Smith and God Emperor of Didcot, Isambard defended the Empire against dire threats, but now he faces his biggest challenge: the lemming-men of Yull. On the orders of their insane war god, these ruthless warriors attack the Empire, meeting Imperial forces on the planet Varanor. The Imperial army, consisting of humans and Suruk the Slayer's fellow warriors, handily defeat the lemmings.

Into the breach come Captain Smith and his valiant crew. Their assignment: to civilize the brutal lemming people and end their assault on the Empire. Isambard has no doubt that he'll succeed, but he isn't counting on the defeated lemming commander, who has sworn vengeance against Suruk and all who travel with him.

Oh, and there are the Empire's primary foes, the merciless Ghasts, who are close on Isambard's trail. And Leighton-Wakazashi, an evil robotics company that just might be in league with the Ghasts. Yet Isambard has an ace up his sleeve: an age-old society of Morris dancers who hold the key to universal peace....

Wrath of the Lemming Men is a hilarious read, filled with references to science fiction and other pop culture. It more than lives up to the publisher's tag line: “An epic tale of war, honour, and suicidal rodents!"

Pinion

Jay Lake

Tor, 448 pages, $26.99 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-0-7653-2186-2

Series: Clockwork Earth 3

Genre: Steampunk

On the definite science fantasy side of steampunk is Jay Lake's Clockwork Earth. In Lake's alternate nineteenth century, the universe is quite literally a clockwork construct: driven by an enormous mainspring at the Earth's center, huge gears turn the planet and the entirety of creation. The Northern Hemisphere is dominated by two empires, the British and the Chinese. Around the Equator is a gigantic wall, along which run the giant gears that rotate the world. The largely-unknown Southern Hemisphere, beyond the wall, is home to mysterious societies and horrifying creatures.

In the first book, Mainspring, clockmaker's apprentice Hethor Jacques went on a quest to find the key that would rewind the Earth's mainspring. He was assisted by librarian Emily Childress. In Escapement we met Paolina Barthes, a budding genius pursued by secret societies scheming to use her abilities for their own nefarious purposes. Paolina fled toward the equatorial wall and the safety of the South; Emily is taken onto a British ship that's attacked by a renegade Chinese submarine. She then works her way into a position of influence aboard the sub.

Now, in Pinion, we rejoin Paolina and Emily on their different journeys. The rival secret societies of the North—the Silent Order and the White Birds—are pursuing both women. Meanwhile, a mysterious power from the South has taken an interest in Paolina: they do not want to allow her to bring the North's turmoil into their realms.

Airships, submarines, mechanical men, planet-girdling gears—Lake presents all of these magnificently. Along with generous helpings of adventure comes some truly stunning world building. If you haven't had the pleasure of visiting Lake's Clockwork Earth, you owe it to yourself to redress that omission.

Ghosts of Manhattan

George Mann

Pyr, 240 pages, $16 (trade paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-61614-194-3

Genre: Steampunk, Superhero

In George Mann's steampunk world of 1926, prohibition-era New York teems with coal-powered cars and swooping biplanes. The United States and the British Empire are locked in cold war. Queen Victoria, her life extended by artificial means, has just died at the age of 107. Times are dark and dangerous.

A serial killer is loose in the city, one who leaves ancient Roman coins on the eyes of his victims. The police are baffled.

Enter the Ghost, a Batman-like hero who moves like a shadow through the dark night of the city. Following obscure leads and shady informants, he begins to pick up the trail of the killer, known as the Roman. Yet the Ghost discovers that there's more to the Roman than a mere serial killer—indeed, the man is part of a plot to unleash powers that could destroy the city.

Meanwhile, there's another story here: the story of what makes a man become the Ghost, and how both man and Ghost can come to terms with the double life they lead.

The superhero genre always provides a quandary for SF readers. Many of the conventions of the genre seem more fantasy than SF, and The Ghosts of Manhattan is no exception. Steampunk muddles the picture even more.

Still, George Mann does a great job of presenting his story in such a serious, compelling way that he makes suspension of disbelief easy. It reads like SF. If your tastes run toward superhero fiction or steampunk, you'll have no problem with the book. If not, you'll definitely want to approach it with an open mind. And if you're violently allergic to any fantasy elements in your SF, you might want to give this one a miss.

Ares Express

Ian McDonald

Pyr, 388 pages, $16 (trade paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-61614-197-4

Series: Desolation Road 2

Genre: Mars, Steampunk

Nothing says steampunk quite as much as a train pulled by a steam engine. And nothing says science fiction quite as much as a story set on Mars. Mix the two together, and you have Ares Express.

This is the same Mars as in McDonald's 1988 novel Desolation Road, which Pyr brought back into print last year. It's a Mars that's partially terraformed; artificial intelligences called Angels are in charge of the terraforming, and in the meantime they are messing around with time and space and alternate realities. Meanwhile, railroads carry passengers and freight across the planet, and hardy settlers carve out marvelously eccentric settlements in odd corners of the rust-red deserts.

It's a Mars composed of equal parts of Ray Bradbury and Kim Stanley Robinson, with a generous helping of a wonderful insanity that's uniquely McDonald.

Ares Express, first published in the U.K. in 2001, is finally available in this U.S. edition. The wait has been too long.

The book tells the story of a young woman named Sweetness Octave Glorious-Honeybun Asiim Engineer 12th. She is the daughter of the Engineer of the great train Catherine of Tharsis, and her desire is to become an Engineer like her father. But on the great trains, women are not allowed to be Engineers. Instead, Sweetness faces an arranged marriage into a clan from another train.

What sort of an SF heroine would Sweetness be if she didn't run away from this awful fate? With her friend Serpio Waymember (a totally unsuitable boy from a low-class family of trackbuilders), she flees into the desert in search of the ghost of her twin sister. It turns out that the ghost is in the possession of a con man named Devastation Harx, who wants to use it to gain power over the Angels.

What follows is a fascinating journey across this wonderful Mars and various alternate realities, as Sweetness and Serpio, eventually aided by Sweetness's family, try to foil Harx's scheme and save the world.

McDonald's visions are grand and his prose is lyrical enough to depict them the way they deserve. Ares Express takes the reader to a new and delightfully wonderful world; you'll decidedly want to go along for this ride.

The Science of Doctor Who

Paul Parsons

Johns Hopkins University Press, 320 pages,

$24.95 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-0-8018-9560-9

Genre: Popular Nonfiction

Doctor Who is the best science fiction on television today. Don't believe me: just look at the Hugo Awards, where the show has garnered ten separate nominations and three wins in four years.

It had to happen that someone would write The Science of Doctor Who, and we're all very fortunate that Paul Parsons was the one who did it.

First, his qualifications. Parsons is not only a science journalist, he also describes himself as a “lifelong Doctor Who fan.” It shows. Although he certainly has a light tone with a fair amount of humor, he never falls into the trap of disrespecting or ridiculing the source material. And believe me, with some of the early Doctor Who episodes, disrespect and ridicule would be completely understandable.

Instead, Parsons gives us an entertaining and educational look at both 45 years of Doctor Who and cutting-edge science. After a brief introduction to the Doctor Who phenomenon, he uses various elements of the show as jumping-off points to discuss scientific research that's somehow related. For example, he considers the evolutionary biology behind the title character's altruism, uses the Doctor's sonic screwdriver to speculate on the use of sound in materials science, and considers what sort of genetic engineering could bring about an emotionless cyborg species like the Daleks. And he does all this on a level a little above the usual Discovery Channel or PBS documentary. The average Analog reader won't feel talked-down-to.

Don't worry if you've never seen Doctor Who (but why not?): Parsons explains the relevant parts of the show and its back-story in easy, entertaining prose. But if you are familiar with the Doctor from the planet Gallifrey, you'll find many delightful touches and in-jokes that will make the book even more fun.

If you only read one Science of XYZ book this year, make it this one.

Copyright © 2010 Don Sakers

Don Sakers is the author of A Rose From Old Terra and Dance for the Ivory Madonna. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com.

Dear Stan,

I'm a long time reader and occasional responder. In reading your June 2010 edition, I had two things that invoked a response in this letter.

The first response is to the editorial entitled “Primer.” It seems to have started with the end in mind, taking these words from yours: “creationists” need to mature and stop clinging to first-grade readers as ultimate truth. If the point of the editorial was to ridicule those with whom you disagree, you succeeded, in my opinion. However, this doesn't seem consistent with your prior writing, so I'm responding to raise a couple of points you can consider.

One of your critical and almost submerged points is that saying that when simplifying an explanation for a small child, one needs to have an explanation that is “not strictly accurate,” “reasonably accurate,” or “blatant lies.” I have five children and while I've simplified explanations for them, particularly when they were very young, I've never found the need to be inaccurate. So while the child may not be ready to understand the details, I've never had to provide an explanation that when they understand more, they would say was inaccurate. Incomplete certainly, but inaccurate, no. I think one can express complex things in simple, but accurate ways.

A second and totally submerged point is that we truly know what is going on today. This is highly unlikely. It would simply be amazing that we were living during the one time in history when all that we know to be true really is. Unlike previous science that often was “corrected,” our knowledge will only be refined, never thought to be completely wrong by subsequent science. Again this doesn't seem likely. Some of these “corrections” may eliminate some of the current conflicts between observation and religion.

One example of this developing science knowledge relating to Christian and Jewish Scripture deals with Gen 17, where the angel of God tells Abraham that God swears by himself that he will bless Abraham and make his descendants as “numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.” Now readers up until the development and use of the telescope “knew” that these two numbers were completely unbalanced, with the stars in the sky vastly outnumbered by the sand on the seashore. We now “know” something different. This is not a simple “refinement” of the number of stars; this is a fundamental change in understanding, with galaxies and the like. I suggest that we don't eliminate the potential that future science will have additional non-refinement developments.

To be logically consistent with your editorial, one would have to allow that sometimes a teacher might allow a classroom of students to take measurements and develop their theories based on their observations, then come in and provide the lesson and allow the students to refine their measurements if they like, to try to match the “real relationships.” These teachers might tell the students as their skills develop they need to give up their own observation-based theories as the ultimate truth, because their observations are perhaps all based on observations where there is a fairly consistent force of gravity or they are in a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere.

I know this is going a bit long, but allow me to propose a different analogy from the schoolteacher analogy you suggested, staying in the Christian arena. We go to a magic show, where a magician is in control of the props and tells us he is intending to mislead the audience as to what is happening. In fact, most wouldn't attend if they weren't expecting to be misled as to what occurred. Later we have people in the audience, perhaps trained observers, arguing with the magician as to what occurred. I would rely on the magician's tale over the audience, even if they had many different observations.

I don't think anyone would suggest that God couldn't create the Earth in seven days several thousand years ago and create things so that they look very old. The real question seems to be does it appear that he did so? Thus, could this magic show be a reasonable analogy to what is going on in the earth?

I'm not trying to convert or “save” anyone, only to present perhaps another way of looking at the differences creationism and religion seem to generate, particularly among those versed in science.

The second response is to the cover story, “The Anunnaki Legacy” by Bond Elam. Another good story, which I greatly enjoyed. However, I expected the worms to be a natural state of the Anunnaki. Nothing says that they can't metamorphosis for more than growing up. Crustaceans with exoskeletons might well periodically metamorphosis through this type of worm state to repair their exoskeletons and internal organs. This could be an extension of our sleep. It could take place periodically or when the need arose. I imagine that there would be social constraints if the metamorphosis sleep required a substantial minimum time. If the Anunnaki lived for a long time, their legal system might require the shedding of wealth at each metamorphosis sleep, similar to what England did with the requirement that trusts have a finite lifetime. Perhaps a follow-up story . . . However, it seemed to me to be a lesser step to have this built into the Anunnaki physiology than to have the elaborate scheme created (and working without a failure) at the spur of the moment after their ship was disabled.

Paul Bork

No, the point was not to ridicule, but to suggest a possible scenario for consideration. Nor did I say or imply that one ever needs to tell “blatant lies” to children, but rather to point out that, whether it's necessary or not, adults often do it—and many sincerely believe they have good reasons. Even when they're not trying to do that, greatly simplified explanations are seldom fully accurate; if the whole truth could be put so simply, there'd be no excuse to do otherwise.

I don't agree that your starts-and-sand analogy represents a truly fundamental shift, and even the things that are seldom completely invalidate all that has gone before. Even relativity and quantum mechanics, for example, expand Newtonian mechanics without invalidating it in the realm where it works. And while your magician analogy is an intriguing one, I can see the magician, and even he is subject to the same physical laws as everyone else.

Dear Analog,

Stan Schmidt suggests that religious explanations of the world may indeed have been “gifts from above’ . . . given to our ancestors by somebody who knew more . . . and wanted to give them a helping hand."

It is not evident that a particularly good way for a space-faring civilization to advance a Bronze Age civilization is to hand the Bronze Agers a primer-level explanation of the origins of the universe and of life. How about primer-level explanations of the scientific method? How about primer-level explanations (preferably illustrated) of how to make iron and steel, how to build better plows, how to build other machines that will increase productivity enough to permit the abolition of slavery?

Three books of the Bible—Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy—include laws on the care and treatment of slaves. If helpful aliens had started the ancient Hebrews off with something a bit more immediately useful than primer-level metaphorical treatments of cosmogony and biogenesis, slavery could have started becoming unnecessary and uneconomical (then extinct) a few millennia ago—and slaveholders of later civilizations influenced by the Hebrews would not have been able to cite scripture as endorsing a slave economy.

Even if those helpful aliens had decided that primer-level simplifications of cosmogony and biogenesis were the very best help they could provide, why did the simplifications have to be flat-out wrong? Why did Earth's alien instructors (if they existed) deem it necessary to teach their students that plant life pre-dated the existence of the Sun and other stars (Genesis 1:11-14), or that male humans appeared on Earth earlier than female humans? (Genesis 2:18-22)?

(And I won't even speculate on just how the alien instructors who visited other regions of Earth decided—for instance—that the primer-level cosmogony textbook for the ancient Norse should teach them that the universe began when an enormous cow licked a glacier until it revealed a giant who subsequently birthed the first humans from his armpit.)

If aliens really did write our ancestors’ creation stories, it would be as reasonable to assume that they composed those stories to hinder us as to assume that they composed the stories to help us.

Kate Gladstone

Dear Stan,

I hope Jeffery D. Kooistra's promised speculations about global warming are more on-track than his speculations about Newtonian physics (The Alternate View, June 2010). He says that in an airless, zero-g environment, litter will follow a spaceman around, as described in Alfred Bester's The Stars, My Destination. No. A little thought shows that unless our spaceman deliberately picks up stuff in his path and puts it behind his back, nothing he touches will be directly behind him. The natural thing for him to do, to avoid killing his own forward motion, will be to push stuff in his way to one side. Anything behind him will be moving every-which-a-way.

For a two-dimensional analog, consider a billiard table. Balls struck by the cue ball do not follow it.

Rick Norwood

28-31 October 2010

WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION (Fantasy Convention—focused on the whimsical side of fantasy) at Hyatt Regency Hotel, Columbus, OH. Guests of Honor: Dennis McKiernan, Esther Friesner, David Hartwell, Darrell K. Sweet. Membership: until 15 June 2010 (see website for updated information), attending: $125; supporting $35. Info: www.contextsf.org/WFC/; WFC2010@contextsf.org; WFC 2010, 3824 Patricia Dr., Upper Arlington, OH 43220.

5-7 November 2010

ICON 35 (Iowa SF conference—"A Steam-Powered Convention of the Future") at Cedar Rapids Marriott, Cedar Rapids, IA. Author Guest of Honor: Cory Doctorow; Artist Guest of Honor: Daniel Dociu. Membership in advance: $45 (adult, 13 years+), $25 (7-12). $0 (under 7); at least one adult membership per three non-adult memberships. Info: www.iowa-icon.com/; 308 E. Burlington St, PMB 300, Iowa City, IA 52240

12-14 November 2010

WINDYCON 37 (Chicago area SF conference) at Westin, Lombard, IL. Literary Guest of Honor: Steven Barnes; Artist Guest of Honor: Nene Thomas; Costuming Guest of Honor: Animal X; Fan Guest of Honor: Jason Schachat; Filk Guests of Honor: Tricky Pixie; TM: Eric Flint. Membership: 12 years old and up $45 until 22 October 2010, $60 at the door. Info: www.windycon.org/windy37/

12-14 November 2010

TUSCON 37 (Tucson area SF conference) at Hotel Tucson City Center, Tucson, AZ. Author Guests of Honor: Jim Butcher & Shannon K. Butcher; Fan Guests of Honor: Bjo & John Trimble; TM: Ed Bryant; Special Guest: Noel Neill. Membership: 12+ $45 until 1 November 2010, $50 thereafter and at the door, 3-12: one-half adult price. Info: tusconscificon.com/; (520) 571-7180 (fax); basfa@earthlink.net; TusCon, PO Box 2528, Tucson, AZ 85702-2528. It might be a good idea to carry proof of citizenship with you at all times.

19-21 November 2010

SFContario (Toronto SF conference) at Ramada Plaza Hotel, Toronto, ON. Author Guest of Honor: Michael Swanwick; Editor Guests of Honor: Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden; Fan Guest of Honor: Geri Sullivan; Filk Guest of Honor: Karen Linsley; TM: Robert J. Sawyer. Membership: 21+ CAD45, 13-21 CAD35, 5-12 CAD25. Info: sfcontario.ca/, con2010 @sfcontario.ca, SFContario, 151 Gamma Street, Toronto, Ontario, M8W 3G4, Canada.

17-21 August 2011

RENOVATION (69th World Science Fiction Convention) at Reno-Sparks Convention Center, Reno, NV. Guests of Honor: Ellen Asher, Charles N. Brown, Tim Powers, Boris Vallejo. Membership from 1 May 2010 until some later date (see website for latest details): Attending adult: $160; Attending 17 to 21: $100; Attending 0 to 16: $75; Supporting: $50. [Ages as of 17 August 2011]. This is the SF universe's annual get-together. Professionals and readers from all over the world will be in attendance. Talks, panels, films, fancy dress competition—the works. Nominate and vote for the Hugos. Info: www.renovationsf.org/, info@ renovationsf.org, PO Box 13278, Portland, OR 97213-0278. Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Renovation-The-69th-World-Science-Fiction-Convention/112169025477179?ref=ts; LiveJournal: community.livejournal.com/renovationsf/