Michael Brotherton						About 100,000 words
1161 Apache Drive
Laramie, WY 82072
hm: 307-755-0398
mbrother@uwyo.edu

Spider Star
by Mike Brotherton

Chapter 1

An Angry Sun

	The first thing that alerted Frenk Klingston to the Lashing, as it would soon be called, was the screeching of the spider monkeys.  The spider monkeys of Argo screeched differently from the spider monkeys of Earth.  On Earth, spider monkeys had a high-pitched screech that they emitted without organization by many individuals in a troop, creating a cacophony.  On Argo, the alien creatures differed from their Earthly namesake by joining their voices together.  Together their voices built, harmonized, and, reaching a crescendo, all dropped the call--stone dead silence within the span of a single human heartbeat. 
	Such a thing was unusual for mid-morning, and Frenk and his two sons stopped their work on the construction bots to look up into the surrounding canopy to try to determine the reason for the animals' distress.
	"They do that often, do they?" asked Marta, the Colchis archeologist assigned to oversee their dig.  "That's...unsettling."
	Frenk ignored her, catching glimpse of another oddity.  The shadows from the irregular-shaped leafs were not sharp on the cleared soil, rather they were asymmetrically blurry, holding shadows within shadows in an unusual pattern of light and dark.
	"Da, what's that?" asked his eldest, Allyn.  The boy pointed toward the sun, Pollux.  Not quite at Pollux, Frenk realized, but toward the greater of the two moons, Charybdis, its crescent visible low in the eastern sky.
	Pollux, as seen from Argo, was yellower than Earth's sun, and appeared half again as large.  That bothered some new colonists -- not because it appeared larger, but because it didn't appear more than slightly larger.  Pollux, an evolved giant star, burned helium in its degenerate core, and was an order of magnitude physically larger across than old Sol.
	The contacts protecting Frenk's eyes automatically polarized and darkened as he turned his attention to Pollux, permitting him to stare almost directly at the star without much discomfort.  A bright, thin line stuck out from the star's disk, like the handle of a lollipop.  It was a very strange thing to see and didn't make sense.  "I don't know.  Never seen anything like that."
	Frenk's younger son, Ken, quietly slipped his hand into Frenk's.  Ken was only six and not the bravest child on Argo.
	"I could check the news from my rover," Marta offered.  "You won't start for a few minutes yet."
	Frenk considered.  He had been waiting for three weeks to set up the greenhouse and basement lab, waiting for an archeologist to become available to supervise the process.  He'd gone to the trouble of getting his boys excused from school to help.  It certainly was not clear at the moment what was going on.  It was likely something innocuous, some comet rounding the star, or a test of a new variation on the dark drive.  If it weren't something easily explained like that, they could easily spend all day hearing wild speculation and not get any work done, and doubtlessly Marta was scheduled to supervise some other dig tomorrow.  An X-bot could also supervise his job, but they were even less likely to be able to reserve one.  Who knew when they would get approval again, no matter who he was?  The final issue was that the big bot, the digger, was on a personal loan and he knew he couldn't keep it indefinitely.  "No, let's get on with this.  If it's really so important someone will call us.  We can find out what's going on later."
	"Well, okay.  I just assumed that you might be involved if there was something happening in space.  Might want to check in, or something, you know."
	He grunted.  He knew all too well.  The price of fame.  Notoriety, it often felt like.  He'd tried his best to become unfamous, but trying to undo fame -- especially on an isolated colony world of under a hundred thousand -- usually backfired.  All he wanted to do now during the late summer of his life was make a solid contribution to the colony and enjoy his family in peace.  He'd earned that right, hadn't he?
	"Come on, boys," he said, looking away and shaking away the afterimage of Pollux and its spike.  "Let's do the job!"
	Allyn asked, "Can we start the bots?"
	"Yeah, snap to it."
	Ken let go of his hand and dashed to the bot that he'd been allowed to program, making Frenk smile.  For the time being, he stopped thinking of the strange thing in the sky.
	Within minutes the large bots started to crawl across the cleared field, their blades plunging deep into the earth of Argo.  The spider monkeys resumed their chorus, but their cries were faint against the sounds of the machines and much less "unsettling," as Marta had put it.
	The archeologist's own bots shadowed their larger brethren.  They were spindly-legged things with wings moving too fast to see as they fluttered from one spot to another.  Three hovered around the largest bot, an earth-turner digging out the greenhouse foundation, feeding data to Marta who filtered the images of dirt and rock through high-speed processors.  Another half dozen hopped around, assembling a surveillance pattern and listening to the underground reflections of sound made by the big bots.  A few others crawled through the upturned soil, performing chemical analyses looking for signatures of Argonaut technology.  Fossils were also of great potential interest.  Marta glanced at the measurements from a small tablet.  "Looks clear so far, Mr. Klingston," she said.
	As the dig continued, Frenk watched his boys steal glances into the sky every few minutes.  He resisted the urge himself.  It might well be nothing, and even if it weren't, he no longer played in such big stake games.  Sitting around speculating wouldn't get the lab dug.  It wouldn't get the greenhouse built.  You had to set priorities and stick to them.  That's how important things were accomplished.
	But Frenk's sons knew what they were doing and Marta's bots weren't reporting evidence of Argonaut artifacts or other showstoppers.  Frenk didn't have a lot to do, and the idea of the line of fire sticking out of Pollux might have well been sticking into his own head.  Once, after all, he had played for the big stakes.  Still, he resisted.
	Ken's pants were too short, he noticed.  Time to get him a new set, or invest in a smart set of clothes, or two.  Colony production probably warranted that.  And Allyn, why hadn't he started to get interested in girls yet?  Or boys?  Or something?  He didn't seem to be shy, or hiding things, the way some kids did.  He looked fine, a good-looking kid.  What did Marta, a stranger to his family, think?  She was a bit older, a bit dumpy wearing a utilitarian jumpsuit, no wedding ring or tattooed ring (much more popular on Argo than his own traditional band) on her finger -- surely she would have no right to be critical of his boys.  They didn't have to live up to his fame.  They were fine boys.  Of course they were.
	Above him a fiery line was emerging from the sun.
He finally decided there wasn't much use resisting.  How could the thing going on in the sky not be vitally important to the colony?  How could it not be important to him personally, and his family?  He looked to Pollux again.
There was no doubt about it.  The line of fire was visibly longer.  How much longer?  It was probably foreshortened, wasn't it?  No matter what the answer, it had to be growing fast.  Argo was nearly six astronomical units away from Pollux and at that distance light took about 50 minutes to reach them.  Any visible change in less than an hour meant enormous velocity if in fact it was close to the sun.
It suddenly occurred to him that this thing could be dangerous.
"Boys," Frenk called loudly.  "Shut it down!"
Marta looked over at him, frowning.  "What's wrong?"
Frenk gestured toward Pollux, and shrugged.  "It's nothing, probably, except distracting."  As the boys programmed the bots into safety mode, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, and called his wife.
Virginia appeared distracted, hand raised to her cheek, watching something beyond the phone's camera.  "So you saw it?"
"Affirmative," he said.  "What does the news say?"
She snorted.  "Nothing.  I mean, no one has any idea what's going on.  Something is coming out of the sun at nearly 30,000 kilometers per second, but that's all anyone will say."
Frenk did the math -- that was ten percent light speed!  "It's not headed for us, right?"  It couldn't be, he figured.  If it were headed directly toward Argo it wouldn't extend out so far, and be growing longer.  He thought a little more and realized it could appear to curve away from them and still hit them since the planet was moving in its orbit...but the effect would not produce a very large curvature, would it?
"No, but it's very close, headed in our direction.  Allyn and Ken are with you, aren't they?"
"Yes.  Do you want us to come home?"  Virginia worked from the house, processing data from the Earth feed.  The walk back to the house was less than fifteen minutes if they left the bots out.  Loading them up on the trailer, hauling them home, would take nearly an hour.
Virginia bit her lip.  "No," she finally said.  "We don't know anything at all yet, and it might scare the boys taking them home again so soon.  Stay outside.  Watch it.  Treat it like a meteor shower, something like that.  That may be all the trouble it is, if it's trouble at all."
Frenk looked at her in the tiny monitor, dark tousled hair and bright eyes, alert yet uncertain.  Was this one of those times he was supposed to ignore what she said and do the right thing anyway, whether he knew what that was or not?  Being married was good, but not always danger free.  "Okay, we'll make a holiday of it."
"I love you," she said.
"Love you, too," he replied, signing off.
Frenk silently held the phone for a moment before returning it to his pocket.  He watched his boys maneuvering the bots.  Probably nothing really dangerous, not even compared to a misstep with his wife.  He made himself think it again with the positive emphasis: probably nothing.  Nevertheless, his vision grew bleary, and he blinked the wetness away.
"You said we're taking a holiday?" Marta asked.
Frenk continued to watch his sons.  "That's right.  I don't know what's going on.  No one does, apparently.  We ought to keep on, I suppose, but it just doesn't seem..."
"It's okay, I get paid either way," she said.  "Mind if stay?  We could resume later, maybe, depending."
She didn't seem too star-struck, he decided.  Sometimes people cornered him and pestered him with questions, and he was weary of it.  "Yes, please stay -- maybe we will get back to work today.  Maybe, depending."
When the boys had depowered and deprogrammed the bots, the four of them sat down on the rear of the big digger, leaned back, and watched the sky.
The bright line had grown, a little.  The day remained relatively cloudless and the view became clearer as the line extended further away from Pollux.  It reminded Frenk of watching bamboo grow -- he'd done that a few times.  Several denuded regions of Argo had been heavily planted with a bamboo hybrid and flooded repeatedly, and he'd been privileged to consult on the effort.
"What's the line in the sky?" Ken asked.
"I don’t know," Frenk said.
"Why not?"
"Not enough data," Frenk said.
"Why not?"
"Not enough time to collect it," Frenk said.  Ken liked the question game, but thankfully much less now that he was older.  Frenk was happy that Ken let it drop at that and that Allyn didn't hit his brother.
They continued to watch, and Frenk worried that, despite the quality time he was spending with his sons, he'd simply become more worried about what might be happening.  He tried to ignore the feeling.  Worrying about worry wasn't productive.
After a time they had an early lunch of star fruit, soy sticks, and cheddar cheese.  The spider monkey troop had settled down now that the bots were quiet and no longer seemed bothered by the strange lighting.  The dark-bristled creatures crawled out into the field on their four legs, and, with their four arms, began picking through the upturned soil for worms and other edibles.  Frenk still found them interesting to watch although he'd seen similar troops regularly for the twenty years he'd lived on the surface of Argo.  When one of the monkeys would find a batch of grubs and get excited, there was a ripple effect he could see propagating outward as others would move in to fight for their share.  The spider monkeys moved with a jerky motion that was more reminiscent of birds, or insects, than of Earth mammals.  Of course they weren't any of these, although they were based on DNA just like Earth life -- scientists still argued whether or not panspermia was in operation or if DNA was itself the fittest molecule for life. Ken, giggling, threw a piece of cheese into the troop.
"Ken!" Frenk shouted.  "Don't do that."
The troop scattered, the rippling circles in reverse.  They made a brief unified call of outrage, and then the inner circle dove in for the cheese.  They would eat most human food, fight over it even -- they were an aggressive species.  The colonists, their pets, and livestock had undergone gene therapy to be able to extract nutrition and live off the different combination of amino acids in the Argotian ecology.  The life forms of Argo, however, could not as readily digest most Earth food.  Especially dairy.  Why had he thrown the cheese of all his choices?  Soon the field would be covered in tiny puddles of pungent monkey crap.  Even with biochemistry different from Earth mammals, the waste from most Argotian animals shared a similarly foul stench.
"Sorry," Ken said, and continued to giggle, albeit more quietly.
Frenk, embarrassed, glanced at Marta.  She wore a small smile and didn't say anything.
"Hey, it's really starting to move," said Allyn.
And so it was.  The luminous trace etching along was growing faster than bamboo, clearly moving as he watched it.  Also apparent now was that the part of the line extending back to Pollux no longer seemed quite connected.  The line had become a pulse.
They watched.
This was a glowing line being drawn slowly across the sky, as if God himself had reached down to tear reality open.  The finger of God trailed through the heavens.  It was awesome to watch, and all the more scary for not knowing its origin.
"Da," Allyn said.  "It's aimed at Charybdis."
And surely enough, it was.  The moon was now high overhead.  It was smaller than Earth's moon, but closer, and came in at about a third larger, just less than a degree across.  At a glance, Charybdis didn't look all that different from Luna, but the pattern of craters was far from the same, and there were linear patterns, darker latitudinal lines, across the surface, that had no equal on Luna or other moons in Earth's solar system.  The much-studied dark marks were still not well understood.
Away from Pollux, the color of the light of  the pulse clarified to a light, whitish-green that stood out even in the cerulean blue of the early-afternoon sky.
Frenk felt a warm pressure on his knuckles.  Ken's tiny hand wormed its way into his.
Marta said, "Did you ever see such a thing?"
"Uh uh." No, indeed, he had not.  He felt as if he should have something more profound to say, but he didn't.  He wasn't often struck wordless.
"I live on another planet from where I was born," she continued, "and I've seen some amazing sights, but this silent, inevitable scrawl across the sky...I'm thunderstruck."
Even though he had traveled more than Marta had--more than all but a handful--Frenk could not elaborate on her statement.  He, too, was awed.
The pulse crawled inexorably toward its goal.  They watched, minutes passing.  The pace accelerated.  What had been a barely perceptible motion now seemed fast.  Even though it was moving several kilometers per second, fat, round, Charybdis appeared to sit still in the sky like the easiest target in the history of target shooting.
"What's going to happen?" asked Ken.
"I don't know," said Frenk.  He had always prided himself on the honesty with which he raised his children -- no made-up stories, no nonsense answers, no appeals to mythology or tradition, no resorts to tickling to get out of answering a question.  Now, however, he desperately wished to reassure his son, reassure himself, but his own sense of integrity wouldn't permit him to do it.  He wasn't truly sure if the events warranted being scared, but he was afraid they did.  He resisted thinking about that contradiction.
Thankfully Ken refrained from pestering him with another question loop.
"Would you look at that," Marta said.
The pulse quickened, and suddenly its trek across the sky zipped along faster and faster and, proceeding relentlessly, splashed into the moon.  Splashed, with an intense flash brighter than the sun, making all their corneas instantly darken.  Disturbing, for more than the obvious reasons, a burst lasting many long seconds, with no sound, no smell, nothing an explosion of this magnitude would generate in an atmosphere.  For a few minutes there were two suns in the sky this day.
Ken buried his face in Frenk's side, holding him tightly.
"Cool," whispered Allyn.
Frenk didn't know what to think as he watched the impact's glow on the side of Charybdis facing Pollux.  The glow was bright, searing.  Plumes of molten material blew off the moon's surface and slowly fell back, as if they were watching a distant volcano of fire and black lava.
Without warning, on the opposite side another plume erupted on a beeline through the body.  The pulse continued on its fiery way into interplanetary space.
Frenk tried to call Virginia, but all he got was static.
From their feeding spot in the cleared field, the spider monkey troop looked up into the sky and called out in an uncoordinated and mournful cacophony of distress.

Chapter 2

A Buzzing of Bees

Commander Manuel Rusk, accompanied by his second Sloan Griffin, floated along a corridor of the Visionary propelled by occasional fingertip punts -- sufficient in the microgravity present at the geosynchronous hub of the elevator.  It had been two years since last the entire triumvirate had met at one location, and that had been an anniversary celebration with much pomp and circumstance.  This, quite contrarily, was a secret meeting.  Given the circumstances, what else would anyone expect?  So perhaps it was not so secret.
The Lashing, the Lashing, the Lashing...it was an unknown danger of impossible scope.  Everyone was talking about it, and no one knew anything.  Of course the Triumvirate was meeting.  Your leaders, all of them, meet when the sun lashes out and blasts your moon, don't they?
But why did they want to talk to him?  He was a Specialist, slated to direct the mission to Castor 6 next year.
"Head's up, Commander," Griffin whispered to him.
Head's up indeed.  There was a guard duty stationed outside the Olympus conference room.  Guards?  Most unusual.  Everyone knew everyone up here.  Who did Martin think was going to be up here?  Reporters?  Other troublemakers?  It wasn't like there was a whole lot of either in a colony of their size.
"Rusk and Griffin, reporting as requested," Rusk said, catching a handhold opposite the guards: Trixen and Jones, second-year Specialists he recognized.
The guard pair opened the hatch and nodded them in.  Rusk and Griffin punted themselves into Olympus, following the central guy wire deployed to assist them in the microgravity.
The conference room possessed an overwhelming view, looking down upon the equator of Argo over the primary settlement of Colchis, an arcology of eighty thousand that was only visible at night.  The space elevator connecting the Visionary and Colchis would have been essentially invisible, as thin as it was, but a steady two-way stream of lights for the various elevators traced its location all the way down to an irregular, equatorial island continent of brown and green in the middle of an azure hemispherical ocean, the Omnigean Sea.  The three other continents were in the other hemisphere, but it was still quite a sight that Rusk thought worthy of their colonization.
A semi-circular table of polished Earth-mahogany sat "below" the viewport.  In some sense having a table in microgravity was ludicrous, but the Visionary had been the original colony ship sent to Argo from Earth hundreds of years ago and while underway on the thirty-four light-year voyage this section had been under rotation.  Even in the freefall of orbit, a directional reference was psychologically useful.  "Above" the table attached to the ceiling sat coiled an X-bot.  Behind the table, Velcroed, sat Earth, Sky, and Science, the heads of the three primary divisional powers on Argo.
Rusk had met Claude Martin, the silver-haired head of Sky, on a number of occasions, but he'd never formally met the other two.  They rarely came to orbit, and in the last decade he had rarely visited Argo.  Rusk glanced quickly at Griffin, but she was staring straight ahead at the three.  He turned his attention to Martin.
Claude Martin spoke, assuming a familiar tone.  "It's good you could see us so promptly, Manuel.  You, too, Griffin."
"We're at your service," said Rusk, honestly, speaking for both of them.  He'd tried to be ready for anything since the Lashing.
"All right then," said the head of Earth, Florence Garrison, a heavy-set dark-skinned woman, "enough pleasantries.  You're top Specialist, Commander Rusk.  You're due to get the Directorship of the new Gemini-class out there."  She tossed her head back over her shoulder, exciting waves in her medium-length hair that didn't dampen right away in the microgravity.
Rusk kept his eyes on her and resisted looking for the shipyards, not viewable from this room despite Garrison's gesture.  The shipyards were up the tether, away from the surface, and where his attention had been obsessively focused for the past two years -- toward the new ship, away from Argo, toward deep space.
Garrison said, "We're here to decide if that's going to happen."
Heat pulsed through Rusk at her unexpected statement, and he was glad that his dark complexion kept blushing difficult to detect.
"What Flo means," said the head of Science, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Beverly Sigurdson, "is that we have a proposition for you."
"Yes!" said Martin.
This was a very strange episode, and it was starting to upset Rusk because he didn't know what was expected of him.  Were they questioning his expertise, his accomplishments?  Wasn't this meeting going to be about the Lashing?  He didn't even know enough yet to speculate.  He said nothing, and awaited illumination.
Garrison said, "The Dark Heart isn't going to Castor 6."
"Excuse me?" Rusk asked, trying to keep the shock out of his voice.  They'd been planning, training, for nearly two years.  What was going on?
"Well Beverley, give them the spiel," said Garrison to Sigurdson.
Sigurdson, delegating in turn, said, "Gerald, explain to the Specialists our theory about the Lashing."
It was about the Lashing!  But how could that affect the Castor 6 mission?
The X-bot uncoiled and extended its anterior tentacles pushing it away from the ceiling and toward Rusk and Griffin.  Gerald reached for the floor with its opposite tentacles, latched on with geckopods, then released its other end.  Recollapsing and rotating its body, the X-bot faced them like a person.  Rusk realized from its styling it was one of the new models recently nanofactured after the last Earth beam download the previous month.
Above the X-bot's composite cylindrical body, in its projection dome, a holographic head manifested.  A freckled, redheaded male face of indeterminate age glanced back and forth between Rusk and Griffin and as the face's lips began to move, a deep resonant voice projected forth from the dome speakers.  "Nothing, no matter how well built, stays in one piece for ten million years.  The greatest mystery of all regarding the technological civilization of the Pollux system is how the Argonauts sailed their planet, if you will, to its present orbit when their sun exhausted its core of hydrogen fuel and began expanding into a red giant star."
Personally Rusk felt that the greatest mystery was what had happened to the Argonauts themselves, given that they had a civilization capable of taking steps to survive the evolution of their star.  He had never quite believed the leading consensus that they had utterly annihilated themselves in a system-wide war.  What kind of intelligent race, when facing extinction, would actually do something like that?  What kind of thinking being could press the final button?  The evidence was suggestive, but far from compelling, in his opinion.
The X-bot continued.  "This pattern, Thom Kelly, published a paper a few years ago."  Pattern in this context meant the original who had imprinted the X-bot with his face and expert knowledge -- the freckled redhead speaking to them.  Rusk didn't know how many patterns this latest upgrade could assimilate, but in all likelihood it would be at least several, perhaps as many as a dozen.
Fine-detail actuators resembling delicate hands unfolded out of the X-bot's collar to gesticulate as it spoke.  "In that paper, Kelly worked from two directions.  He worked from the scant data available, mostly hard-to-interpret popular accounts, from recovered Argonaut records, but also with physical models.  Then he used the models of the evolutionary history of Pollux to determine timescales and how the radius of the orbit of Argo needed to change."  The X-bot tapped its own transparent projection dome and on cue the face of Gerald faded out to be replaced with a display of a solar system.  In the middle burned a bright, whitish star.  Moving in elliptical orbits around the star were six planets, in approximately the same plane, each with its own trace color.  The color sequence, Rusk realized, was in order of wavelength with the shortest and warmest for the interior terrestrial planets -- violet and blue -- and the longest and coolest for the exterior giant planets -- green, yellow, orange, and red.
"That's this system from the Argonaut era?" Griffin asked.
"Yes," said the now headless X-bot.  "Nearly eleven million years ago, just after Pollux exhausted its heart of hydrogen fuel, at an age of approximately three gigayears."
Pollux was a younger star than Sol, but almost twice as massive.  The old saying that 'a candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long' didn't apply to stars, Rusk knew.  The amount of hydrogen fuel a star had available to burn into helium was indeed proportional to its mass, but more massive stars burned their fuel much, much faster.  A massive type-O star coming in at some 40 solar masses, for instance, only lived a paltry million years, some ten-thousand times less than the ten billion Sol would endure.  It irritated him that when Earth was three billion years old only the simplest forms of life had evolved, whereas on Argo there had existed not only advanced multi-cellular life forms, but an intelligent civilization that had achieved space flight.
"I'm increasing the time compression.  Watch for the pink bullets," said the X-bot, pointing with a tiny appendage.  A machine-gun series of pink tracers appeared, streaming in a complex series of orbits that moved primarily past the blue, second innermost planet (presumably Argo) and the fourth planet, the yellow and massive gas giant that was apparently Talos.  In the highly accelerated time-lapse simulation, the pink bullets blurred into pulses forming figure eights, elliptical wheels, and more complex figures.  Slowly, as Pollux visibly expanded and cooled, the planetary orbits shifted.  Talos drifted slowly inward, Argo more rapidly outward.
"What's happening?" Rusk asked.
"Forget your celestial mechanics, Commander?" Martin chided.
The X-bot promptly answered Rusk.  "The pink bullets are artificial planetoids.  Each trip out near Talos they pick up a gravitational assist, coming in behind the giant planet and using its gravity for additional acceleration.  This maneuver steals some of the energy from Talos's orbit.  When they come back by Argo, they perform the reverse of a gravitational assist leading the planet, and deposit some energy into Argo's orbit, increasing it in a steady, controlled fashion.  With this kind of celestial machine you can shift orbital energies around on timescales quite fast enough to keep a planet occupying its star's habitable zone."
"I follow," said Rusk, and he did, as far as this point went.  "But I don't understand how this concerns recent events.  This has something to do with the Lashing, correct?"
The orbital simulation faded and Gerald's holographic face returned, every bit as much a simulation, smiling.  "It has everything to do with the Lashing.  In the work just described, the planetoids had been assumed to be natural asteroids deflected and maintained in the proper orbits by means of an attached propulsion system.  Iron-nickel asteroids with rail drives and moderate nanotech would be capable of doing the job, for instance, or even low-thrust ion drives.  We've never found such an object in the Pollux system, but we haven't looked very hard either.  This whole endeavor suffers certain critical risks, however."
	"All those close passes of Argo," said Rusk, "with dinosaur-killer sized rocks.  And having the passes orchestrated perfectly over millions of years."
	Griffin added, "And we know that Argonaut civilization was not stable over megayears."
	The face of Gerald shimmered, then morphed from the redhead Kelly into that of a younger woman with platinum blonde hair and a lop-sided grin, presumably another expert pattern.  "Way not stable!  We know the Argonauts fought among themselves.  A lot.  We have hard evidence of at least fourteen world wars, six of them nuclear.  Why, probably the only reason that we're here colonizing Argo instead of the Argonauts colonizing Earth is that they kept blasting themselves back to the Stone Age.  Vicious little bastards, those Argonauts, make the Mongols look like Saints!"  Her eyes flashed with glee.
	"One of those planetoids would make an excellent weapon," Rusk suggested.
	The X-bot's face morphed back to that of Kelly.  "Exactly.  And do you think the twentieth-century Americans would have trusted the Soviet Union with exclusive control of such a weapon?  Or the twenty-third century Chinese the Indians?  And wouldn't the Arabs of any century been concerned if the Israelis could deflect, or threaten to deflect, one of the planetoids with enough accuracy to warrant a pre-emptive strike?"
	Rusk began to catch on.  "But we're not talking about planetoids, are we?"
	The face in the dome smiled sadly at Rusk.  "No, we're not.  After the Lashing, we reconfigured the Kishimoto Gravitational Array satellites and combined their observations with all other available data, primarily helioseismology, sunspot patterns, that sort of thing.  We intuit this."
	Gerald's projection dome faded to black and in the resulting gloom a new simulation ignited.  The first thing that Rusk thought of looking at the new display was a swarm of bees.  He'd never seen such creatures for real -- Argo had no bees or near equivalent -- but he had studied his parent's native country Brazil extensively and there had been a unit on the introduction of African bees into the hives of European bees.  African bees produced more of some sweet foodstuff, called honey, than the European species, but they were also much more aggressive.  The insects often swarmed chaotically and produced an angry, discordant noise.  Before human defensive modifications became common, such swarms regularly killed people.  As a kid he had found the entire concept very entertaining and he had irritatingly buzzed around his family for weeks.
	The image was not of bees, he was sure, but a static-filled, red-hued image of swarming...somethings. Rusk moved along the guy wire and shifted his head to look at the swarm from several perspectives.  He asked, "What am I looking at?"
	"A three-dimensional map of the interior of Pollux.  And before you ask, no one knows what those things are except that they are mass concentrations.  Somehow they move without significant viscosity in the very dense, very hot plasma at the core.  Clearly, though, they are neither rocky nor metallic planetoids surviving as they do within the center of a star, and apparently surviving there for a very, very long time."
	"The Lashing?" Griffin prompted.
	"Now."  The physical size of the swarm shrank as if by some odd coincidence all the particles found themselves simultaneously near their minimum radial position in their orbits.  All but two, that is, and those two were suddenly locked in a tight orbit with each other and shot out at high velocity away from the core of Pollux.  The field of view expanded to follow them as they barreled toward the star's surface and beyond.  "A self-orbiting binary was ejected, apparently gaining an electro-magnetic field, pulling superheated plasma with it from the stellar core.  That's what hit Charybdis, and what has apparently hit both moons before.  We're also fairly certain that six anomalous zones on Argo represent artifacts of planetary impact, and suspicious of ten other regions."
	"Will it happen again?" Rusk asked.
	"Very likely," Sigurdson answered.  "But we don't know exactly when or in what direction.  Right now the theorists are rather discouraged about the prospects for exact prediction, but it is early in this deadly game.  They tell me that even though the Lashing is unique in the last several hundred years of human observation, the behavior is apparently chaotic, but with an attraction to launch bursts of such events over the course of a century or so once the first is unleashed."
	Garrison said, "We believe the technology that once served to move Argo away from Pollux during its expansion was converted into a weapon by one faction to threaten, or destroy, another.  It may be on automatic, or we may have triggered it somehow.  In any event, it is a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads, now, with no one to turn it off but ourselves.  We also believe this weapon is not an Argonaut technology."  She held up her hand to stall Rusk's protest.  "The details jibe with information in accounts dealing with the so-called 'Spider Star,' technical accounts not yet fully analyzed and not yet cleared for public consumption.  These new accounts also provided us enough information to locate this alien station, which we did late last year."
	The Spider Star, for real?  He'd heard of it, like every other child born in this system.  The story of the Spider Star was an Argonaut fairy tale that was used in several instructional units on the lost alien civilization.  Moreover, it had made the jump to bedtime story a thousand times over.  The Spider Star had sounded far too fanciful to be real.  Rusk, in shock and denial, said, "An ancient alien myth is the source of our troubles?  Even if grounded in some sort of truth, the Argonaut accounts are millions of years old.  The other system can't be close now -- Galactic differential rotation would have carried far from Pollux by now, and even if it is real, it can't be still inhabited after all this time."
	Claude Martin spoke.  "It's closer than we had any right to expect, less than twenty light years, and spectra indicate artificial lighting and a rich and strange absorption pattern.  It's for real, all right, and still functional, and we want you to assemble and train a crew as fast as reasonable."
	"To go to this place, this Spider Star, instead of Castor 6?" Rusk asked, incredulous.  He'd been working for years preparing for a voyage to the multiple binary system 18 light-years away, the brightest star in Argo's night sky, the twin star to Pollux in the Earth constellation of Gemini.  To drop that now to chase after a make-believe place?
	"Yes."
	Rusk nodded, dumbly, attempting to suppress his denial of this strange turn of events and starting to examine the unique opportunities presented.  If the Spider Star were in fact for real...the Director of such an historic expedition would be forever famous.  He could become a king among men.  Anything might be possible, afterwards.  He'd been picked out as leadership material for his ability to rapidly reach a good decision in the absence of complete data, and he realized he was about to reinforce that evaluation.  "Mmm, yes.  I would be honored to do it.  As fast as possible we will embark for this place.  It will be a challenge, but I will rise to it, as will the Corps."
	"Excellent.  One more thing," Garrison said.  She seemed to hold her breath a moment before continuing, as if she were apprehensive.  "We want Frenk Klingston to head the mission."

Chapter 3

Golden Rules

	Sloan Griffin rode down in the first-class express elevator with Rusk and Gerald.  Rusk sat opposite her, while the X-bot, quiet in privacy mode, squatted beside them opposite the door to their car.  They had had their meeting with the Triumvirate only the day before and were already moving to secure their primary target:  Klingston.
	"This is asinine," said Rusk, still looking strange to her, clean-shaven now, with his moustache gone.
	What she liked about her Commander was that she always knew where she stood with him and how he viewed their current circumstances, good, bad, or in this case, 'asinine.'  She was his sounding board, his strategic view; she was the one who identified specific threats.  He was her driving force, her security, who kept focused on the big picture.  She'd recognized his superior abilities long ago and decided to sublimate her own ambition and follow his, and she had rode him far.  They understood each other, and complemented each other, almost always.
	"Yes," she agreed.  "But I assume that we will do as the Triumvirate wishes, right?  There are advantages for us."
	"Of course we will.  I follow the rules.  But advantages?  How?" Rusk stood up to pace, but with the cramped space settled for a spin, and plonked himself back down into his recliner as heavily as the low gravity allowed.  He managed to bounce, once.  "I was in line for Director of the next ship, and now I'm secondary."
	She was silent for a moment, and then said, "You have the preparation, the training.  You'll still be in charge in terms of all operational details.  The crew will know that, Klingston will know it.  Just not officially."
	"'Officially' is what counts in the history books."
	Did the history books really matter?  She didn't care about posterity as much as he did.  Griffin supposed she understood him intellectually, but she herself was hitched to his star and didn't quite feel his dismay at being hitched to that of another -- her entire career track was based on riding coat tails, and it was far from the worst thing.  They would all be taking the same path and would all share in the rewards in the end.  "He probably won't even come.  He's been hiding out for years, playing in the dirt, avoiding attention.  He has a family, of all things.  A family!  He won't agree."
	"He must agree!" Rusk said, snapping his fingers to emphasize the point.
	His intensity surprised her -- she didn't understand why he was so insistent.  "Isn't it in your best interest for him to refuse?  You'd get the official Directorship just like you wanted."
	"Perhaps, but perhaps not.  Klingston exists."  Sweat glistened on his forehead as he leaned forward, dark and intense, and stared at her with his brown-black eyes.  "The leadership, and eventually others, will know I wasn't the first choice.  The crew I can assemble will not be as good.  The resources, more limited.  They might not even give me the Directorship if I fail this first task, but perhaps conduct a colony-wide search for anyone with anything approaching hero credentials -- maybe one of the continental explorers, for instance. And the Triumvirate would be right.  The colony will want Klingston, or the closest thing we have to a demonstrated hero, and there will be speculation about why Klingston or that person is not going, casting shadows on my command.  I'm good, perhaps the best choice we have, but I'm not famous.  Fame counts, and Klingston has it."
	"He's old.  He's got a family.  He's avoided the spotlight for years."
	He frowned, thinking.  "All true, but irrelevant.  The best chance for ultimate success is to take him with us, and make sure we're the ones responsible for mission success.  He'll be even older when we return, and will still avoid the spotlight.  I will step out of the shadows and into his light."
	The car was warm and Griffin could smell Rusk's sweat.  She leaned back and tapped the thermostat down a few degrees.  They had several hours left in their descent to Colchis and while she normally didn't mind a male scent when working out in a gym, it would grow to irritate her in the enclosed space, she knew.  "You may be right," she said, grudgingly.  This was usually the sort of advice she provided him, and he'd reached the right conclusions first.  He was becoming more adroit at political navigation, a specialized form of threat analysis.
	"Unfortunately, I am sure of it.  They ask, I deliver.  Or I lose anyway."
	She had long ago stopped worrying about the difference between "I" and "we" in his language.  Together, they clicked.  They were both happy with the relationship and both had advanced.  But did he always have to be so intense, so dramatic?  Would failure to get Klingston on board really be a losing proposition?  At this point it was simply an issue of convincing him to join the mission, or failing to do so.  The mission would go on, and they would be a central part of it in any analysis, wouldn't they?
	She stewed on it, perhaps with nearly half of Rusk's intensity.
	Every minute they descended, and the gravity increased, exhausting her.
	They spent the final hours of the descent deciding how best to approach Klingston, tossing ideas back and forth.  The man was not friendly with any of the Triumvirate and regularly ignored invitations to speak to any group, government or otherwise.  It wasn't that he was a hermit, either, not exactly.  She had never met him, but knew the facts from his file, knew them cold.  He lived with his family on a private farm outside of Colchis, but did come into the arcology on a regular basis.  He held a respectable position in botanical engineering and regularly won proposals to pursue independent, experimental projects, presumably without special treatment.  A poorly informed neighbor would have no clue how rich he was (although in a colony the size of Argo money couldn't buy nearly as much as it did on Earth or Mars, and few neighbors could be expected to be ignorant), and similarly no clue how famous he was likely to be on every inhabited world within the nearest twenty-five light years -- that almost included Earth now.
	That made her think.  When Klingston arrived on Argo two decades ago, no one had any notion what he had done.  He'd had to tell them, and show them.  When they'd learned, Earth was very likely to want him...in almost forty years.  It would take that much longer for them to get word and to respond via radio to Argo.  Light speed was a bitch.  Forty years...screw Earth.  Klingston belonged to Argo.  He was their resource.  Theirs, period, and they'd use him to best effect.
	When they landed, they had the X-bot secure them a government fancar while they settled in for a rest at the arrival lounge and sipped orange juice.  Griffin felt like she could have managed okay, but the gravity was somewhat debilitating despite the slow descent that had provided them the opportunity to adjust.  Every limb felt heavy, and just walking down the ramp had made her breathe hard.  She hated it, hated feeling weak -- it left her vulnerable.  A tired mind made mistakes, missed threats and opportunities.
Rusk didn't complain, but remained focused and kept up a dialogue about how to approach Klingston.  The man hated to fail at anything, even something he didn't really want to do.
	"You ever meet him before?" Rusk asked her.
	"No," she said.  "I saw him a few times, at a distance.  A restaurant once, a play another time.  Didn't want to bother him."
	"I talked to him, once," Rusk said, rising from the couch to slowly pace, watching his boots, thoughtfully.  "That was twelve years ago, when the first Gemini-class starship left for Earth.  They had a bunch of ceremonies on the Visionary.  I got an invite to a few events as the top graduate that year, if you recall, and several of us cornered Klingston at a reception.  He seemed almost embarrassed to be there, and said that he figured he had to 'make an occasional appearance' to keep from being bothered more often.  That was the last time he left the surface of Argo, and he's been stonewalling on official events ever since."
	"He must have really liked you," she said, then felt bad for being sarcastic and attributed it to being tired.  She tried again.  "He's had kids since then, too."
	"Sure, family keeps you close to home, but I talked to the man, took his measure.  He really didn't want to be there, didn't seem to act like he belonged there even though it was his own legacy.  He didn't like the crowds, for another thing.  He actually seemed to like the three of us insulating him from a larger group."
	"Oh, I understand now." She put two and two together from the files.  "That whole Bureau of Alien Affairs thing."
	"Exactly.  Martin had set up an office for him to head, an orbital office, a staff, but no one had bothered to tell Klingston until just before the ceremony when they'd sprung it on him.  Pissed him off, too, apparently.  No one had asked him, they'd just started to set it up and assumed he'd be thrilled.  He already had his own plans.  That's one reason we’re on this errand tonight rather than Martin, or Garrison, or one of their people.  He's gun shy of the Corps, and rightly so."
	"So now what?  We know he's a family man and distrustful of the Corps in general.  How's that going to help us?"
	"It won't, directly."  Rusk stopped his shuffling and looked at her.  "He screens calls, I'm told, and often doesn't even respond to official Corps inquiries. I say we visit him tonight.  Just drop in, unofficially, and keep it low-key and personal."
	Griffin really wanted to curl up in bed and go to sleep.  Full Argo gravity was only nine-tenths a standard Earth gee, but it still felt like an assault by invisible enemies after being in orbit.  "Okay," she said, finally.  All that brainstorming, and he wanted to improvise.  Typical.
	When the X-bot returned she rose, ignoring the tiny, silent screams her muscles made.  The three made their way outside to the car, fired up the engines, and lifted into the evening sky.  The weather was superb, a breezy cool evening with crystal clear seeing, and Talos and its largest moon shone brightly overhead.  The upper portions of the elevator reflected the brilliant chartreuse sunset.  Castor had not yet risen.
	"GPS secure, autopilot engaged," Gerald announced.
	Klingston's homestead was a twenty-minute flight away from the elevator and the Colchis arcology.  Griffin leaned back into the vinyl seat, which crinkled and popped, and tried to relax.  Everything had changed in less than a week, and there was so much to accomplish in such a short time.  The stakes were potentially monumental, although the future mission itself was still an abstraction beyond her immediate planning horizon.  The personal stakes certainly loomed large for her own career and were easier to contemplate.
	"When we reach Klingston's place, let me do the talking.  In fact, I'd like to get a few minutes alone with him, away from his family.  If I can manage that, you should run interference with his wife, say whatever you think is appropriate.  We're not here to steal her husband, don't mention that at all, we're here to discuss the recent disturbing events, that's all.  Don't even mention the mission, the Spider Star, anything.  Klingston has got to sign up on his own, and I'll have to make that case.  Just make small talk.  Be pleasant.  Smile a lot.  Keep things feeling safe."
	Griffin nodded in the darkness, and tried not to think about the ethics of the thing they were doing.  They were coming to steal him, after all.
	"Descending," Gerald said.
	And they were.  Griffin look out the window into the twilight and made out a cleared field on the edge of a jungle.  A few low buildings squatted in the middle, glowing with the spillover of interior lighting.  She thought there should be floodlights around the perimeter at the least, and all sorts of automated security that their files said wasn't there.  That's what she would have.  While Argo had been settled for close to a century, that wasn't long enough not to expect the occasional surprise, and she faulted Klingston for lack of rigor.
	"Call them," Rusk said to Gerald as they went down.  "No video."
	"Ringing," said Gerald.
	A rough voice came into the cabin.  "Hello?"
	"This is Specialist Rusk.  I'd like to have a word with you, if I might."
	There was a pause.  "You're calling locally."
	"Yes, we're setting down outside your house right now."
	Another pause, followed by something muttered unintelligibly.  Then, "Okay."
	"We'll be down in a minute."
	"Okay."
	The connection died.
	They settled down onto the surface.  There wasn't much in the way of long grasses or shrubbery to indicate the wind they were kicking up.  As the engines whined down, the door to the house opened, spilling a golden light onto the lawn.  Several figures emerged, silhouetted against the glare.
	"Show time," said Rusk.
	They clambered out into the night.  The air smelled different to Griffin, fresher, perhaps.  It was something that she did not typically notice, but the slight wind emphasized the air quality in contrast to the cramped quarters she'd had the last twelve hours, and the orbital stations in general.  There were certain aspects of planets that simply outperformed artificial space environments, but it was too late for her to change her career path now.  She expected to spend a good fraction of the rest of her life in artificial environments.
	Then she saw the children.  Two boys, one maybe a teenager, another younger.  She couldn't help but think, "We're here to take their father away."  But was it their fault their own sun had attacked?  Surely not.  They all stared at her with blank expressions, and she had difficulty dropping the thought.
	There were more important things to consider than a single family.
	Rusk was already striding forward toward Klingston with hand outstretched, and Griffin stepped forward to keep up with him and the X-bot.  Rusk was slight, and dark, and sharp in his Specialist uniform, standing stiffly before Klingston.  Red-faced with a long mane of thinning, graying orange hair, Klingston looked older than his file picture, which she should have expected, as he loomed over Rusk in a rumpled flannel shirt, jeans, and muddy boots.  The man was practically a modern Viking.  Eventually Klingston extended his own hand to Rusk and the pair shook hands, briefly.
	Good, she thought.  This probably wouldn't end in bloodshed.
	Griffin managed to avoid smirking.
	"What's going on?" the older boy asked.
	Rusk said, "We're here to get your father's assistance with some important matters."
	Griffin kept herself from nodding, though she approved. Rusk hadn't made it sound too bad.  Maybe Klingston would buy it long enough to get the pitch off.
	Rusk continued, "Mr. Klingston, I'd appreciate it if you took a walk with me."
	Klingston eyed Rusk, taking a long moment to rake him up and down with his gaze.  "I suppose."
	"All right then," Rusk said, and extended his arm to usher Klingston away from his family.  
	Klingston walked past him into the surrounding darkness.  Rusk and the X-bot followed.
	After the men had walked off, Klingston's wife Virginia turned to Griffin and, brazenly in front her children, asked, "What the hell do you bastards want?"

Chapter 4

The Spider Star is No Star

	"What the hell do you bastards want?" Frenk challenged as soon as they had strolled out of earshot of the house.
	"To make this world safe, that's all, I assure you."  Rusk offered, sounding nonplussed by Frenk's profanity.
	They continued to walk into the darkness, away from the porch lights, toward the jungle.  A faint glow from the X-bot bobbed consistently a few meters behind them, respectful but responsive if requested.
	Coming here with practically no warning, scaring his family, this young commander had better have a good story.  He had to.  Frenk had to bite.  "Safe?  From what?  What's going on?"
	"You saw the Lashing."
	Golden Charybdis was low in the west and would soon set, but the moon's new dark scar was still apparent, glowing a faint red in its center, and Frenk couldn't help but to glance at it.  "Of course I did.  You want to tell me what's going on already?"
	"The short story is that it's an Argonaut doomsday machine."
	Frenk wanted to laugh, but didn't.  While this Rusk was overly dramatic with his approach and language, the statement held the ring of truth.  "Go on."
	"The Argonauts used an alien technology to move their planet as Pollux evolved into a red giant.  We believe that alien technology is still operating, but now in a threatening way.  We want to shut it down."
	"Great!  Get to it!" Frenk said quickly.
	"It is not as simple as that, of course."
	"Of course," Frenk said, waiting for him to continue.
	"The alien technology comes from the Spider Star."
	This time Frenk did laugh despite the other man's level delivery.  "The bogey-man system that isn't there?  Let me see if I remember the translation...'The Spider Star is no star, and the Spider Star is no planet, but it is a place anyway, and its golden heart is the source of all good and evil.  But mostly evil.'"  His mirth died though as he spoke the words -- if there truly were a doomsday machine, as this young commander had put it, and it came from the Spider Star, would that not count as evil?
	"Precisely," said Rusk.
	They had reached the edge of the jungle and moistness was present in the cooling air.  There would likely be a fog tonight. They turned to look back at the house, now just a simple orangish glow a few hundred meters back.  The X-bot awaited their pleasure, silhouetted in that light which glinted faintly off its empty projection dome.
	Frenk turned to look at Commander Rusk.  "So it's real?"
	"Yes."
	"And we've found it?"
	"Yes."
	"So what do you want from me?  My admiration?"
	"A bit more than that, I'm afraid."
	They stood in the quiet darkness on the edge of the jungle, for another long moment.
	Rusk spoke again finally, his intense voice steady and clear without the need for volume.  "The artifact is within twenty light years, and is still active.  We're sending the next Gemini ship there in six months.  We want you on that ship, leading the mission."
	Frenk didn't stop to think about the request seriously.  "Impossible.  I'm done with that shit.  I've got it all here, a woman I love, a family, a world to conquer at my own pace.  I'm not going anywhere."
	"You've also got a mad sun that lashes out at unpredictable times and destroys whatever it touches."
	"It's done that once," he answered quickly.  "Who's to say it will even do it again?"
	Rusk didn't respond, and Frenk's words hung in the still air, sounding stupid and thoughtless.  He tried, "I'm not a leader, and I don't bring anything special to the table."
	Rusk laughed now, a small, calculating laugh it seemed to Frenk.  "You're the only man alive who has ever encountered alien beings, and you brought back a new star drive.  That's something special."
	He didn't like to talk about this, but it was what it always came to when he had to talk with strangers.  "Look, you weren't there.  I didn't really do much of anything!"
	Dark-faced Rusk stared at him and said, "You are the only human ever to have successfully dealt with living, breathing aliens."
	Frenk could not contest the claim.  He gave in, a little.  "What do you know?"
	Rusk waved the X-bot over.  "Show him."
	The X-bot glided to them.  Light kindled in its display.  A female voice spoke, "The Spider Star is an artifact in orbit around a stellar remnant some twenty parsecs from Pollux.  The neutron star had a very small velocity differential, except for the vertical component.  Every few million years it travels within the midplane of the Galaxy near Pollux.  It is now accessible to us well within a human lifetime."
	"Maybe for a young man," Frenk said.
	Rusk made a dismissive sound.  "Hibernation won't let you age that much.  Now look at this image."
	The projection melted into some sort of fuzzy, circular object.  Upon close inspection the thing had a number of arms, perhaps even eight as advertised.  Some sort of bluish gas glowed between the arms -- maybe scattered light, like the sky?  Frenk didn't want to consider it.  "What is this?"
	"This is it.  This is the Spider Star.  An eight-legged alien satellite, the size of Mars, in orbit around a neutron star some fifteen light-years from here."
	Frenk looked at the thing, floating there in the darkness, mocking him.  "Scan me, take my pattern and stuff it into one of your X-bots."
	"That's a good idea, but not good enough," Rusk said.  "It won't mean the same thing to the public, and in the end it won't be the same thing.  Not quite.  You are the one that is wanted."
"No!" he shouted, and began to stomp back toward the house.
	"What about your family?" Rusk yelled after him.
	Frenk kept on toward the house, but stopped abruptly and turned around, suddenly angry.  "What about them?  Are you making a threat?"
	Rusk spoke more softly but the night carried his words clearly.  "No threat, Mr. Klingston.  Not from me.  The threat is alien, from the distant past, hiding in the glare of our own sun, once the giver of life, and perhaps, now, a taker.  Another Lashing will come, and next time its target will be different."  Rusk strode toward Frenk as he continued to speak.  "You are the only man on Argo to have ever encountered technological alien life, and you negotiated a new star drive out of the chance meeting.  If a man with your proven qualities won't lead us, won't even accompany us, what are the parents of children on this world to think?  What is your own family to think?  Don't you, personally, wish to do everything in your power to protect them?"
	Of course he did, how dare this man question that?  But the whole affair wasn't right.  Why did everyone make him out to be a hero?  Once, long ago, he had been brash, and lucky, and that was all.  Now he was angry.  "I'm not going anywhere.  We're done, Commander Rusk.  Go away."
	Rusk frowned.  "We must announce the mission in a few days.  For your sake, for your family's sake, for all of us, I hope you will reconsider your decision."
What a snide little pup!  Well, he wouldn't get the best of him.  He'd keep his cool.  He had kids, after all, and he'd learned to be unflappable.  "I'm going for a walk, Rusk, and when I get back I don't want you here anymore."
	He should have gone immediately straight back to his family, so why had he said he'd go for a walk?  He considered.  Was he embarrassed?  No, he didn't think that was it.  He was angry and needed to cool off, that was all.  But part of him, in his heart, feared it was because this Rusk person had made a point.
	As a younger man, he'd signed on to go into deep space, eagerly, not knowing the cost.  Years of loneliness, despair, boredom, worry, uncertainty, anxiety, fear, anguish, anger, confusion, isolation, and more, little of it good...never again.  He thought he'd go mad, and half-believed that he had.  Several times.  Certainly he'd had to have been mad to do what he'd done when he'd detected the alien ship.  That's what he'd heard in debriefings hundreds of times anyway.  But he'd done it.  Did that really make him special?  Did that really mean he should be the one to lead this strange mission?
	He walked, listening to the grass swishing against his pants.  The sky above was brilliant, with the Milky Way up.  Talos shone brightly, a discernable yellow color to the giant planet.  Pollux was below the horizon, but watching the Lashing showed that a planet itself in the way of the sun was no defense.  The ejecta had tunneled straight through Charybdis, after all.  What was this thing that not even a planet could stop?
	Frenk thought of the other thing that he'd proposed: an X-bot patterning.  He'd heard that the process was unpleasant at best, involving six different scanning techniques, hypnosis, drugs, and exhausting questioning and monitoring, in addition to an intrusive, invasive methodical deconstruction of a person's private life -- every tangible aspect of the patterned lives were consumed.  Some compared the process to psychic rape, or even vivisection, in which the rape was not just mental but also an unrelenting, unwelcome, physical investigation.  He agreed with Rusk that as comprehensive as the whole deal was, it was insufficient when it came to initiative, creativity, and leadership.  What the process did excel at was the distillation of knowledge.  An X-bot was the ultimate technology in expert systems.  Any factual information the original pattern possessed was readily available to the X-bot, and typical schemes of deductive reasoning became quite repeatable.
X-bots could even make excellent sandwiches if that was something the original pattern could do well.
Frenk slogged on through the darkening night, lost in the issues and lost in thought.  It irritated him.  For the last few years, he'd been good at losing himself in life, not in the abstractions that confused him.  Thinking didn't ever seem to do him any good in the long run toward happiness.
He barely noticed the car departing.
All his accomplishments, his money, his fame (such as it was in a small colony)...none would do him any good against these random attacks from the sun.  If he were to believe the young commander there was only one thing that would do any good, short of completely abandoning Argo.  What would a good father do?  Wouldn't a good father do everything possible to protect his family?
	Wouldn't he?
	Walking, thinking, worrying...back toward the golden light radiating from the windows of his home, seeing his family inside around the kitchen table waiting for him -- oh-so-vibrant Virginia, Allyn becoming a man, and little Ken, looking cranky.
Wouldn't he do everything possible to protect them?

	
Chapter 5

Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey

	The next day Pollux again lashed out, an even more energetic ejection, still in the plane of the ecliptic, but nowhere near Argo.
	It took Klingston three more days to come around.
	Rusk smiled, reluctantly, reading the email.  It was his triumph, and his loss.  The only consolation was the one he had hoped for: Klingston was leaving everything to him.  The man wanted to spend as much of his remaining time with his family, and wanted Rusk to do all the real work.  It was a reasonable request, under the circumstances, and one he was permitted to honor.
	It would make it all the easier to assume credit later.  Besides, Rusk wanted to do the work.  He trusted himself to do it right more than he trusted anyone else.
	Rusk sat in his dusty, Spartan office in the Colchis arcology, under dappled, garden-filtered light through his window, and took a moment to reflect on his position in the grand scheme of things.  He had maintained the position, if not the title, of the central player in the greatest story in the history of the greatest human colony to date, that of Argo, already famed throughout the human words for its discovery of a lost alien civilization.
	They had already been working toward the Castor 6 mission, a system at a similar distance from Pollux, so they'd scouted much of the appropriate talent.  Still, an expedition to an alien artifact of unprecedented significance was something to think twice about.  The last several Gemini missions launched from Argo had been for primarily scientific purposes and had carried a complement of Specialists and X-bots spanning nearly the full range of human skills.  This new mission, this Spider Star mission, would require a somewhat different skill balance.  For instance, they'd require experts on the Argonaut civilization, speculative technologies, linguistics, and perhaps even theologians.  Negotiators.  And more.  He supposed they might even need a lawyer.  He and his staff brainstormed constantly to uncover any required specialties that might be necessary on the mission.  He was often tempted to send out specs indicating that they needed every available skill and knowledge base, but he had resisted so far.
	It could be argued there were some areas of expertise that would be completely unnecessary now.  Geology, for instance.  The Spider Star was artificial apparently, so how could geology give them an edge?  But just because he couldn't immediately think of a way did not provide him enough confidence to spurn a geologist.  He had similar issues with a number of disciplines thought to be key to the success of the Castor 6 mission, but some of his best candidates had specialized in geology because they'd been asked to, and it would be a hard choice to pass them over for an historian, for instance.
	Rusk and Griffin had been clever and opportunistic in their studies.  Both held master-level qualifications in twice as many areas as the average Specialist.  He had himself pioneered several new approaches to science in general, seeking patterns to things rather than the details of the things themselves.  For instance, biological and social sciences, and some limited aspects of the physical sciences, were really just applications of self-selecting organization and could be categorized as evolutionary studies, or, as he preferred to think of them, anti-entropic systems.  On the other hand, many other areas fell under the laws of conservation of energy, conservation of momentum -- where win-lose scenarios were the rule, and conservation principles provided the keys to understanding.  He thought of those as conservative systems.  It was a huge advantage to be able to know which was which, to know when one could be converted to the other, and to operate accordingly.  Rusk had parlayed that itself into a new expertise: entropic synthesis, which also required a certain set of social specialties to interact with, and use effectively, other experts.  He could quickly assimilate data and figure out what was going on faster than others, at least in the broadest terms.
	Griffin had studied with him in many areas, but had her own strengths that complemented his.  She did not synthesize well, but tore things apart with superlative skill, seizing on discrepant details like a shark smelling blood.  She was a dissector.  Griffin had once tried to explain to him how she thought over a game of pool, something they were well matched at.  "Imagine a three-dimensional spreadsheet, a data cube basically," she'd said.  "You might want to start thinking about two dimensions first, move to three, and then keep going.  I just think in however many dimensions are required for the problem.  Everything potentially relates to everything else at first with equal probability, but usually there are more fundamental relationships.  I systematically fill in the matrix, make comparisons, and find the sense of things.  Trends emerge, but so do the outliers.  I guess you focus on the trends.  I focus on the discrepancies and figure out how and why they don't fit, or what extreme trend is manifesting.  I like every threat identified, understood -- the general trends are predictable, while the individual problems can be unique.  That's why I like you so much."
	He'd smiled at her, with real warmth then.  "You like me?"
	"Of course.  You're an outlier."
	"I'm a threat?" he'd asked.
	She'd just smiled, and proceeded to cleverly sink the 8-ball early to win the game.  "Not at the moment."  They'd had sex that night for the first time.  They'd continued to have sex occasionally over the years, forcibly keeping it sporadic, casual, and non-exclusive.  Neither wanted Klingston's sort of problem -- family ties -- to jeopardize their careers.  That sort of problem would certainly compromise the pool of non-Specialists.  The Corps had always supported everything but exclusive relationships.
	Rusk returned his focus to the problem at hand.  Normally the Specialist Corp produced sufficient numbers of explorers willing to leave home for years, or decades, with a full range of skills, but this trip needed to draw upon the so-called 'civilian' base.  Few, if any, Specialists planning to leave Argo dedicated themselves to the study of Argo or of its long-gone civilization or technology.  Nevertheless, the Corp would constitute the majority of his crew.  Most had spent years mastering multiple areas of expertise and were prepared to spend nearly half a century to explore a system like Castor 6.
	He worried about the civilian recruiting, but not tremendously.  Not yet.  Despite having such a small population to draw from, Argo was a planet of talent descended from bold explorers, many of whom could still be counted as bold explorers.  Rusk figured that Specialists could fill two-thirds of the berths, but that the last ten to fifteen positions would have to be outsiders.  The best outsiders possible.
	They would have to measure up to Corp standards.  The Specialists he already had in mind all possessed multi-disciplinary advanced degrees in science, medicine, engineering, and more.  There was a surgeon with a black belt in karate who played chess at the grandmaster level, and an electrical engineer with extensive survival training who could hold her breath for nearly seven minutes.  Another was a meteorologist/astronomer/chemist/physicist/paleontologist who had been cleaning up academic awards by synthesizing hundreds of disparate findings into coherent theories -- Rusk liked him.  
	Rusk considered the irony, not for the first time, that while the Corps members were called Specialists, they had to master so many multiple specialties that they were more properly regarded as generalists.  Generalists or specialists, from any perspective, they were fantastic people, the heart of what was special about the humans who had first come to explore the Pollux system.
	He had been authorized to make a big show of the mission at this stage, to make people feel like something was being done to protect them even if it would still take decades and the probability of ultimate success was uncertain.  Other steps would be taken, he knew, including early warning systems, evacuation plans, probably lots more things, deflection research maybe, but people would want the sword of Damocles removed in the end.  That would mean stepping into the alien parlor, and stepping out again with what they needed.  Only the best should even dare.
	Yes, he would identify a dozen more heroes of Argo.
	Now that he had secured Klingston, Rusk could lean on the man's fame.  That would help, some.  The real key was to understand what would attract the most talented, and that had to be the audacious challenge of voyaging to confront an ancient alien species.  He had to make it sound tough enough to challenge the best, but not so impossible as to discourage the general populace.  He spoke a few words to his computer and unearthed some historical precedents.  The most appealing to him was a supposedly very successful advertisement for a polar expedition on Earth some six hundred years earlier:  "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success."
	This much truthfulness seemed a bit far-fetched to be that successful, and Rusk didn't leave himself room, personally, to doubt a safe return (after all, the extinct Argonauts had managed it, so why shouldn't humans?), but the gist of the ad was right.  Certainly this trip would include bitter cold and long hours of complete darkness.  It needed to honestly challenge prospective crew.  And he wouldn't just be placing a text ad.  He had the budget, staff, and resources to stage a multi-media campaign to promote the mission and ferret out the very best Argo could offer.
	Then, if necessary, he would find the levers to force the best to join him.
	Klingston had been too easy.  True, the second Lashing had helped immeasurably, but the man's weaknesses were too apparent.  He loved his family more than himself, and despite his embarrassment and self-effacing demeanor about his alien encounter, Klingston had grown older and wiser and, more importantly, knew it.  When given the choice, how could an older and wiser person leave such an important task in the hands of brash, inexperienced youth such as Rusk?  He'd shaved his moustache off to look younger, and had made sure he'd seemed overly earnest and in awe of what they had to do.
	Griffin knocked on his open door, interrupting his thoughts.
"We got Klingston!" he told her, grinning.
	She smiled, but not as broadly as he might have expected.  "That's super.  I didn't think it was going to happen after how the Corps had treated him."
	While both Klingston and his wife had been defensive and antagonistic from first contact, he and Klingston had talked about the matter at hand.  Griffin and Klingston's wife had spent the whole time quarreling over Klingston's last visit to the Visionary, the time Rusk had met him.  Apparently Claude Martin, newly elected then, had assigned him to a position on the station without asking first.  There had been a huge misunderstanding ('nukefest' according to the wife, who had been his fiancé at the time).  Rusk would talk with Claude about that in more detail when the occasion came up, he promised himself.  It would have helped with his recruitment to know these details, but at least Martin had left it to him and hadn't simply 'assigned' Klingston to the mission.  "What else?" Rusk asked.
"Okay, time for the bad news then.  Flo Garrison just announced a press conference for tonight.  She said she's under too much pressure not to announce a positive action."
	"Damn her!"  It wasn't like this was unexpected, but still...He longed for the time when he could just do the right thing and not have to worry about Argo politics.  Even with a small, well educated population of scientists and engineers, he was subject to politics.
"People are frightened, Rusk.  You can feel it in the restaurants, the clubs, the stores.  I picked up the buzz right away.  There's hell out there, the sun, the giver of all life, is lashing out.  Can you blame people for being upset and impatient?"
"No," he admitted.  "But Flo should have consulted with me first.  We're okay because Klingston is signing on, but we could have been in a bad spot."
"Agreed."
"Is she willing to work with us on the speech, graphics, the whole deal?"
"Oh yeah.  She's got a team on its way now.  You got an angle figured?"
"I think so.  Sloan, we have to get the best.  This must be the best crew ever, heroes all."
"I know," she said softly.
He was a bit surprised at himself.  Usually he was all business, goal-oriented to the extreme.  Everything could be defined in terms of its goals, and then it was straightforward to optimize the strategies.  He was unaccustomed to caring so much about a thing.  But if ever there was a thing to care about, this was the thing.  If he wanted a significant impact on human history, it needed to be something worth caring about.  Even thought he thought it a liability overall, and tried to ignore it when he could, maybe he had a heart after all.
"All right then. Let's put this thing together.  Let's save the world."

	
Chapter 6

Sometimes the Pieces Don't Fit

Allyn was staying at a friend's house (good for Allyn), Ken had been sent to bed early (bad for Ken), and Virginia was screaming at him (terrible for him).  It was better than Frenk had expected.  After all, Virginia hadn't walked out immediately, nor had she murdered him.  It would have been better, he knew in his heart, if he had been the one to tell her.  Deep down, he knew the right thing to do would have been to discuss it with her first before making a decision, but he was pretty sure he knew what the right thing had to be, and had been afraid she'd talk him out of it.
This mess had started when domestic affairs had pre-empted all the television programming for a press conference.  It had to be about the Lashing, but Frenk hadn't thought they'd be announcing the mission this quickly.  "Virginia, honey, I want to talk to you about something," he'd nevertheless tried to pre-empt.
"Hush," she said, sitting on the edge of the sofa.  "I want to see this."
Frenk feared what it was, and sank deep down into his recliner.  He was sure he'd done the right thing, but hadn't been able to bring it up yet.  "Virginia..."
"Hush!"
Virginia sat with Ken who was wrapped up with a handheld video game as Florence Garrison began to speak.
The woman began solemnly standing before a plain podium with a backdrop of gray curtains.  Her normal press conference style was to appear during the daytime in a garden.  Nothing now was normal.  "In recent days we've witnessed the terrible power of nature in what has been dubbed the Lashings.  I'm here to tell you tonight that these events do not appear to be natural, but are a legacy of the destructive civilization, once dominant here on Argo, that so many of us are dedicated to studying.  Alien technology is embedded in our sun Pollux, alien technology that must be understood and eliminated for us to continue to make our home here.
"We've made progress understanding this threat.  Alien masses infest our star, of an origin outside this solar system.  Their origin is the Spider Star, which is much more than just a fairy tale."
Frenk had sat up then, rapt, and nervous.
Garrison smiled slightly and held up hand reassuringly.  "The Spider Star is real and verified by our own astronomers.  We don't know exactly what it is yet, or who lives there, but we know that it is a real place and still appears inhabited.  It is our intention to send the next Gemini-class ramjet to the Spider Star to seek answers, with the end goal of removing this terrible threat from our skies once and for all.
"I'm asking for a special kind of sacrifice tonight, from just a very few of you.  We need the most talented, the most courageous, and the most dedicated, to take an extended voyage of utmost importance, to this Spider Star, to eliminate this threat and protect the people, your families, who make this world home."
A golden, glowing link appeared under Garrison, advertising "Apply here."
"The first sacrifice has been made.  We're proud and happy to announce that this mission to the Spider Star will be headed by the most-qualified Frenk Klingston--"
Garrison probably said a lot more, but at that point Frenk's entire self, body and mind, seized violently, adrenaline surged, sweated exploded from his pores.  He'd only agreed that afternoon!  The bastards hadn't warned him!
	Frenk suffered the abuse heaped upon him from his wife.  He deserved it.  He let Virginia rant.  He'd earned her fury.  He stared at her yelling at him, thinking how much he loved her and how, in a few short months, he'd long to hear her say anything, and even yelling would be welcome.
	"Who are you?" she yelled.  "Who are you?"
	When he thought he might try to answer, to explain, she cut him off and continued, "You have a family here, Frenk!  Think about that.  That means something.  That's a responsibility.  You don't get to make decisions without taking us into account."
	She shifted her stance, her red silk robe sliding across her body, under her crossed arms.  "Are you tired of me?  Is that it?  I've heard what those exploration ships can be like.  Orgies, I hear.  Orgies.  Been here too long?  Itching to get back into it?"
	Red-hot anger ignited within Frenk.  He was a cowardly, procrastinating, sneaky bastard with communication problems, and he was willing to let her yell at him all night long on those issues, but, damn it all, he wasn't going to take this.  "I'm doing it to protect you!"
	She sneered at him.  "Protect me?  By flying off with attractive young women like that one that was here the other night?  Perky little nose, huge smile, and oh, her body!"
	"No, no, no.  It isn't like that at all.  It's not about that at all."  He waved his arms over his head, fiddled with his long hair.  "Don't you understand?  Someone has to fix it before it kills everyone.  Before it kills the kids!"
	Her expression softened, a little.  "Why does it have to be you?"
	He let go his anger, and exhaled a deep breath, sensing that the fight had turned.  "It has to be someone, doesn't it?  Do you want me to trust some hotshot kid, like that one here the other night, to do it?  Hell, I don't know that I can do anything he can't.  But I care enough to do the right thing, don't I?  I know that about myself.  I don't know if he does."
	"I don't know either," she said.  "Look Frenk, we're not done talking about this.  Not by a long shot."
	"I know."
	"But we've been loud enough that Ken heard everything, or at least too much, and he certainly heard what they said on TV.  You need to go talk to him.  Now."
	"Yeah," Frenk said.  He stole a moment to look at her, her pale face luminous, concerned, floating above her dark gown.  She was such a special woman, how could he even contemplate leaving her?
	"Move it," she said, waving him away with the backs of her hands.
	 He turned away, finally, his throat tightening.  It wouldn't be easier facing Ken.  How much could he understand?  He wouldn't understand.  He would suffer for it, even if Frenk's actions might someday save his life.
	He shambled into the tunnel of the hallway, ignoring the pictures of his family adorning the walls, until he came to Ken's room.  A sliver of light peeked out from under the doorway.  They sometimes sent him to his room, but he didn't have to turn out the light until bedtime.  Frenk knocked, hesitatingly, and turned the knob.  "Ken?"
	The boy sat with his back to the door, at the worktable in the center of his room, messing around with a three-dimensional wooden puzzle.  The sight forced a smile from Frenk.  With all the video games, robots, and high-tech diversions, his son was playing with the classic toy that Virginia had insisted he'd hate.
	Ken ignored his entry though, and Frenk quietly walked across the room and around the table to the other side.  He carefully sat on the small chair situated there.
	Ken picked up the pieces, trying to fit them together into a cube.  The wood clinked as he pushed in various ways, obviously frustrated.  "They won't go, Da," he said.
	"I'll help," Frenk offered.
	"No," Ken said.  "I can do it."
	"Okay.  I wanted to talk to you about something."
	Ken didn't say anything, just kept fumbling with the pieces: clink, slide, clink.
	"It looks like I'll have to be going away, not because I want to, but because I have to."
	"Why?"
	So he was going to be that way tonight.  Fair enough.  Frenk could deal with it.  "You remember what happened to the moon?  I'm going to go stop that from happening again."
	"Why?"
	"Because it's dangerous to people.  I want people to be safe."
	"Why?"
	"Because everyone should be safe where they live.  Because it's the right thing to do.  I'm going to be gone for a long time."
	"Why?"
	"Because the place we need to go for help is a long, long way away, and we can only go so fast.  I'll be just a little older when I get back, but you'll be all grown up, an adult, like me and your mom."
	"Why?"
	"Because you have to keep on living your life here, learning things, being a good brother, and helping your mom while I'm gone."
	Ken nearly had the puzzle done.  It wasn't an easy one, but he had done it many times before.  He kept his focus on the puzzle and off of Frenk, his lower lip sticking out petulantly.  After he settled the last piece into place, he twitched, and his hand came smashing down.
The pieces exploded across the table.
As Frenk watched with growing horror, Ken patiently moved to gather the pieces together and started to reassemble the cube, all without saying a word.  His anger quivered before Frenk with equal amounts of purity and maturity, as well as depths of darkness he didn't know his child harbored.
If he left, would his absence destroy the lives of those he loved as surely as a well-directed Lashing?
It couldn't, it wouldn't.  Virginia was a good mother, and together they'd raised their kids reasonably well so far -- he knew that even though he worried about the details.
"Ken," Frenk said.
"Why?" said Ken at once.
There aren't words, Frenk thought.  There aren't words for this.
He nearly got up and left then, swallowed by despair at wanting and needing what was lost to him.  Normally he would have just made a ruling, given a punishment, made Ken behave.  But this was a father-son relationship and you couldn't make someone love you unconditionally.  He resolved himself to say something, let it out even if he himself didn't know it yet, even if Ken wouldn't understand it, let it out in a why-proof rush.  He opened his mouth.  The truth -- it was all he had, even if his son was too young to understand it yet.  "I'm your father, Ken.  I'm part of you, and you're part of me.  We're family, of the same kind.  I don't know if this makes sense to you yet, or if it ever will, but I'm doing this because of how much I love you and your brother and how much you mean to me.  When I leave, six months from now, you'll--"
"Six months?" Ken's head swiveled up toward him.  "Oh, I thought you were leaving tomorrow."
Ken smiled, promptly finished his puzzle, and put it to one side.
Frenk swept him into his arms into a big bear hug.
"Yoosmoffume," Ken said.
Frenk eased off.
"You're smothering me," Ken said.
"I love you," said Frenk, hugging his son again, almost as tightly.

	
Chapter 7

A Ship of Fuels

	In the next six months, Pollux lashed out seven times, without concrete damage to human affairs.
The feasts, ceremonies, and final farewells flew by and the crew of the Dark Heart, including Griffin, were all the happier for it.  When they left space dock this time, it wouldn't be in the elevator back to the Visionary.  Only Specialists of one stripe or another, under quarantine, were in the dock now.  She could concentrate on her job and could force the new Specialists to concentrate as well.
	There were twelve of them, Klingston the most notable, although with a crew like this even the least notable was a remarkable person.
	She ignored that.  They were the equivalent of raw, post-med recruits.  She needed to treat them as such to do her job right.  The most obvious physical difference from recruits was that they were fat.  Usually only polar and mountain explorers chose to carry significant extra weight, and a few fetishists and teen-aged experimenters, but this was immediately pre-flight.  They were fat for hibernation.
	Griffin's main problem dealing with them wouldn't be their physical changes, although they were myriad, obvious as well as subtle.  Her largest challenge was that they were talented, experienced people, accustomed to knowing more than others around them and similarly accustomed to success.  She had to tear that down.  They had to learn some very hard facts about their new existence.  If she and the other Specialists were going to trust them with their lives, they had to know the new rules.
	She also knew that many of them, and certainly Klingston, were making traumatic breaks from family and friends.  She took her cues from military history.  This wasn't a vacation.  This was a matter of survival for all of them, and those of their families back home.
	Griffin scheduled all of them to meet very early in the morning in the space dock gym.  The gym wasn't as necessary at space dock as it was on the Visionary.  The Visionary sat very close to Argo's geosynchronous position, so it was effectively in microgravity: an orbital period was nearly equal to an Argotian day.  Out at the space dock, near the end of the whip-like tether, the orbital period was less than an Argotian day, and, just like on a merry-go-round, centrifugal forces pulled things and people outward, away from the planet.  The effective gravity was about two tenths gee.  Two-tenths gee was more than Earth's moon, enough to stave off completely debilitating muscle atrophy, enough to keep perspective.  The gym's workout devices, despite the gravity, were still of the resistance type rather than weights.  That centrifugal gravity, as mild as it was, would be essential when it came time to launch.
The other advantage of the gym was that one wall was a huge window overlooking docking area one, where the final touches on the Dark Heart were being administered.  Having a large-scale, exterior view of the ship at this stage was valuable.  That view, which they would not have post-launch, would drive home many points that she would make today.  She'd also prepared a few props that she expected would come in handy today.
Griffin faced the dozen and announced, "Attention!"  She'd told them to dress in workout clothes, even though they weren't going to work out.  She, herself, was dressed smartly in a Specialist dress uniform, a navy blue jumpsuit with minor decorations.  She liked it that way.  She smiled to herself when they responded as she wanted: they jumped to attention and awaited her next command.
"I'm here to start your real orientation," she said.  "I'm sure you feel like you're prepared based on the recent briefings over the last few weeks and months.  The truth is, you're not prepared for shit.  This is the real thing, with stakes of life and death, dealing with aliens.  Aliens.  No one here is prepared."
Griffin looked them over, avoiding Klingston's gaze, however.  Compared to him, she wasn't experienced.  Prepared, yes, experienced, no.  She held firm however, ignoring the majority of frowns that confronted her.  "You've had physical alterations, enhancements.  The shots you've been getting, the pills you've been taking, having also been changing you.  These changes are not trivial.  Many are at the genetic level.  You are not longer exactly the same kind of human that left Earth, or at least not the same as the baby your parents bore."
Griffin opened her eyes widely into a bug-eye stare.  She reached up and tapped her eyes soundly with her nails, making an audible series of clicks.  "Your new contacts are Earth military issue.  They're real, they're different, and they'll let you look into a sandblaster.  Tap them, please."
Despite some initial hesitation, everyone did as asked, resulting in a chorus of clicks.  Good.  
Griffin asked, "May I have a volunteer?"
She looked at Klingston as she said it.  She thought he might be the one to step forward, but he was too smart for that.  The first volunteer in a training exercise like this one never got treated well.  Either he knew that, or he was a good guesser.
"I'll do it," a dark-haired woman said.  Sally Madrona.
Griffin remembered her as being multi-talented, but didn't recall the specifics.  Everyone here was multi-talented.  She was annoyed with herself for not remembering -- she should have.  She would next time.  "Come on over," Griffin said.
The woman strode over, confident enough, without being overconfident.  She wasn't super fit, but neither was she a cow.
Griffin reached out and grabbed her arm, somewhat more roughly that was polite.  She turned the woman's arm toward her audience.  "Look at this," she said.
The underside of the woman's forearm showed a bump.
Griffin tapped the bump.  "You all have implants, now.  These record your vital signs, blood chemistry, and location.  They’re not completely passive, either."
Griffin made a fist, leaving two fingers out, and snapped them against the bump.
Sally twitched, but made no noise and didn't jump.  Not much, anyway.
Good.  Griffin couldn't stand wimps.
The bump crawled toward the woman's wrist.  Slowly, yes, but it moved as the watched.
"It hurts," Sally said, seeming more fascinated than anything else.
Griffin replied, "That's normal.  Your implant can move to protect itself.  Not quickly, and not totally pain free.  Keep in mind, it is really protecting you.  If we don't know where you are, what shape you're in, we won't know when to move in and help you."
Griffin released the woman's arm.  "Go get that plant by the door."
Sally did as she was told.  She walked over, picked up the potted fern, and carried it back to Griffin.
Griffin set the pot on the table and ushered everyone to gather closer.  "Get to where you can see the spider."
A medium-sized spider, bright green with long legs, had set up a web amidst the leaves.
Griffin unsheathed her knife from its holster on her belt.  "Give me your hand," she said to Sally.
"Wait a second," Klingston said, stepping forward.  "Are you going to cut her?"
"That was the plan," she said.  "This is an important demonstration."
"Then cut yourself," he said.
She considered the idea, and rejected it.  Moreover, even though he was mission Director, this was a training exercise he needed as much as anyone, and he really should let her do it her way.  "I've had the Specialists adaptations for years.  I'm familiar with them.  I've seen what I need to see first hand.  One of you--" she almost said 'babies' which was what Specialists called new recruits, " -- new people -- needs to do this.  You need to understand what you are now."
Klingston stared at her, eyes squinting in the middle of his ruddy face, his long hair framing his face.  He had serious eyes, and she tried to imagine what it would be like to meet him on the opposite side in a field of battle.  Here, in this moment, he finally struck her as formidable.
But this wasn't a field of battle, it was more akin to political wrangling.  Klingston said, "Fine.  Cut me."
She approved.  He was showing some leadership.  Even if Rusk wanted to find a way to be recognized the recognized leader of this expedition, Griffin was pleased to see that their figurehead might actually manage the role in some ways.  "Give me your hand."
Klingston stepped forward and thrust out his left hand.  She noticed he still wore his gold wedding band, and wondered if it was habit, or he'd made a conscious decision to keep it.
Griffin took hold of his hand and dragged her blade across the ball of his thumb.  She held his thumb and squeezed, forcing a dollop of blood to form.  She twisted his hand around so that the blood drop dangled over the spider in its web.
The drop of blood fell.  It didn't quite hit the spider.  She didn't mean it to -- the lesson would be stronger that way.
The blood drop hit the web and stuck.  Within a few seconds the spider wilted.  Wilted was a term that would not normally apply to an animal like a spider, but it was quite correct.  The spider just wilted, not even running away to a hiding spot, and shortly its legs curled up into the arachnid version of a death's head grin as it hung limply from the web.
"Your blood is lethal to most creatures now.  The fern will take longer to die, but by tomorrow it too will have fallen into a yellow heap.  In a week, it will be dust."
"Hmm," Klingston said.
"Your body chemistry is as lethal as we could make it.  Most Earth and Argotian species succumb as quickly as this spider.  We hope that this will apply to other bio systems as well.  We would like for anything that tries to eat a human dies a quick, painful death, and that will protect us all in the long run."
Sally asked, "Will it affect other people, pets -- cats and dogs -- on Argo?"
"Yes, but it'll be a long time before you interact again with mundanes."  There, she'd done it, started using insider jargon.  It was time to start bringing these babies into the fold.  They were new Specialists, and should know the culture.  Non-Specialists were mundanes.  There was nothing wrong with that.  They just weren't Specialists.  "A drop of blood won't kill your pet cat if it scratches you incidentally, but they certainly won't want to repeat the experience.  On the other hand, a serious dog bite will likely kill the dog."
Klingston stared at the dead spider, ignoring his bleeding thumb.  "I'm poisonous to my own children," he said in a soft voice that didn't carry far.
He jumped to the right conclusions quickly, she was happy to note.  Onward then.  Griffin decided she could perform the next demonstration on her own, although it wasn't her favorite.  "The changes in your bodies are profound.  The shots you've been given, the gene therapies, they're the best technology we have to make you the ultimate survivors.  You’re more than human."
To drive home her point she grabbed the fern and pulled it up, yanking the roots free from the dirt.  She shoved the mass into her mouth and chewed vigorously.  She scooped up a handful of dirt and swallowed that, too.  Griffin chewed, with gusto.  It was nasty, overall, but a thing she'd decided to do.
Things she decided to do got done.  Period.
She realized that everyone was staring at her with funny expressions.  Some looked shocked, which was something she expected.  Some had expressions of amusement.  She expected that, too.
"Your system now has defenses to protect itself from most poisons and hazardous materials.  Moreover, the micro-machines in your digestive track can break down and extract energy from the most outrageous substances."  Griffin allowed herself a slight smile.  "Because time is short, you won't go through the hazing regular Specialists do.  Believe me, dirt isn't so bad."
"And hibernation?" Sally asked.
That was always the big question, and one that Griffin had asked an instructor herself.  While the blood chemistry and the dirt eating were dramatic, they didn't have as serious an effect on everyday life as hibernation did.  Travel time was twenty years each way.  Their maximum velocity of 75% light speed would a help a little, slowing shipboard time by a third, but that wasn't all that much in the grand scheme of things.  Roundtrip travel time on board the Dark Heart would still be over thirty years.
So hibernation.  The Specialists' gene therapy activated a number of enzymes, primarily pancreatic triglyceride lipase and pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase isozyme 4.  Griffin knew the names, had prepped diligently for this part.  The enzymes governed how stored fatty acids and glucose were conserved, or not, especially in muscles like the heart, which slowed to just over a beat per minute during hibernation.  Hibernation helped preserve muscle tone, but there were mechanical/electrical aids that helped with that part, too.
Griffin decided not to throw the technical points at them.  They'd probably looked those up, much as she had, and were really grasping for reassurance.  If you were going to spend the next few decades pulling a Rip Van Wrinkle, wouldn't you be looking for reassurance, too?
She briefly wondered who was there to reassure her.  She was in the same situation they were.  Sure, she'd spent six months in hibernation associated with a training exercise, but decades, that was a whole different deal.  There were a thousand questions.  Did you dream?  By what factor was aging really reduced?  Were there side effects?  Did the condition really lower your inhibitions?
She knew the academic answers, and could speak from her limited experience, but decided to play it straight.  "It's scary.  It's like going under for an operation.  Being drugged, or drunk.  A year feels like a night.  You wake a few times, eat and drink some water, worry about a problem or two, and go back to sleep."
Kim Kelly, a recruit of Asian descent, asked, "Um, exactly how is that different than a normal night?"
Everyone laughed.
That was a good sign, Griffin decided.  "Okay, put that way maybe it isn't all that scary."
Klingston caught her eye.  Despite a small smile, he didn't look amused or relaxed with his ruddy complexion and squinted eyes.  Their gaze locked and she felt a sense of communication as an idea spring full-blown into her mind: what we are now isn't the scary thing, and neither is what we have to do -- what is scary was the consequences of failure.
If Klingston could convey that seriousness of purpose in but a glance, maybe he had much deeper leadership qualities than she appreciated.  A dark leader to be sure, despite his pale complexion, but a leader nonetheless.
Griffin clapped her hands, "Follow me now onboard the ship.  I'll show you the hibernation dens, and more."
#
	The Dark Heart was a Gemini-class star ship.  The term Gemini was inspired by the ancient Greek twins Castor and Pollux after whom the two primary stars in the Earth constellation were named, and also by the somewhat less ancient two-man space missions of the Americans.  The term applied not to the crew, but primarily to the dual star drives.
	Earth-based technology had spawned the first: the CNO ramjet.  A forward-facing ramscoop collected plasma, fully ionized by laser cannons, from the interstellar medium.  This set-up old, classical physics, well understood and well exploited.  The scoop's electromagnetic field collected the ions, channeled them toward the heart of the Dark Heart, toward the ship's fusion reactor.  Concentrated there, confined, the reaction proceeded to explode, providing energy, and, moreover, excessive thrust.
	The nuclear reactions that powered the sun were slow, inefficient, following a sequence long ago dubbed the 'proton-proton chain.'  In this sequence of nuclear reactions, four protons were painstakingly assembled into a single helium atom, with less rest energy than the original four hydrogen ions.  It was a brute force approach that relied upon the nuclear weak force to convert one of the protons into a neutron at precisely the right time -- during a high-energy collision, creating stable deuterium as a step in the sequence.  
	Stars slightly more massive than Earth's sun, like Pollux when it has been on the main sequence burning hydrogen, didn't waste time with the proton-proton chain.  The proton-proton chain was a poor-person's fusion, reliant on a specific reaction simultaneously occurring with a high-energy collision, a rare event that kept the burn rate to a low four billion kilograms per second.  Low efficiency...which helped give Earth's sun it's long lifetime of ten billion years.
	The CNO cycle, now that was a straight-up productive reaction.  It gave you what you wanted, with only a minimum amount of messing around.  Pollux, at nearly twice the mass of the sun, burned through its hydrogen fuel in less than a third of the time.  The sun just didn't have the temperatures necessary to drive it.  The CNO cycle featured a catalyzed reaction in which four hydrogen atoms combined to become helium, with the release of energy, but instead of combining directly, the carbon became nitrogen, which in turn became oxygen.  Catalysts.  In the end, the catalysts were recovered.  The CNO cycle could fuse hydrogen into helium without the slow step that required two rare events to happen simultaneously, making it much more efficient -- 1018 times more efficient.  Other factors complicated the issue and kept stars more massive than the sun from burning through their fuel 1018 times faster, but it was still non-linear.
	It was said that candles that burn twice as bright burn half as long.  Stars, as opposed to candles, that burned twice as bright only burned about 38 percent as long.
	In any event, 1018 was the kind of number that impressed both Griffin and starship engineers.  Still, that reaction rate was a million times less efficient than deuterium-to-deuterium reactions.  The big bang simply hadn't made enough deuterium to pick up such fuel on the fly.
	A fusion reactor sat at the core of the Dark Heart.  The ramscoop funneled in hydrogen fuel, temperatures in the reactor were the same as at the center of a massive star like Pollux -- almost a billion degrees Kelvin -- and the heated exhaust was expelled for thrust.  In principle the CNO ramjet could accelerate at a small fraction of an Earth gravity nearly indefinitely.  In practice, there were engineering problems.  Around 30 percent light-speed problems began to appear, particularly with the fuel intake that limited continued acceleration.
	That's where the alien technology entered.
	"And here," said Griffin, "sits the yellow box, or at least one of the replacement units."
	They were on the engine arm of the ship now, on the opposite side of the ship from the hibernation dens.  They had been moving about the ship in a casual way, Griffin playing tour guide.  While there had been extensive training sessions over the past few months, this was the first time the actual crew, and only the crew, had the chance to check things over in a broad, casual sense.
	"It doesn't look like much," Skael Hamilton, an Argonaut technology specialist with short hair and a goatee, said.  "Does it?"
	It didn't.  It was a hard, opaque plastic housing, filled inside with strange devices, most of which they did not yet completely understand.  The plain housing was about as illuminating as its interior.
	Griffin said, looking to Klingston, "The Director really ought to be the one explaining this part."
	"Okay."  Klingston looked as if he were fighting off a scowl, but stepped forward.  "This unit exerts a force on aetherons, one of the known forms of dark matter.  The aetherons are one of three types of WIMPs -- Weakly Interacting Massive Particle -- that fill the space of our universe.  Under normal circumstances, they only interact with baryonic matter -- protons, neutrons, and the like -- gravitationally.  This device manages to push on them.  We don't know how yet, but we can scan them and nanofacture them.  Squirting aetherons out our backside takes our top speed up to about 70 percent light-speed, but we need to reach a good fraction of light-speed before they become useful.  Oh, yeah, the effect is directionally dependent -- the aetherons have a circulation pattern similar to the Milky Way rotation that's still being mapped."
	Griffin knew all this, and thought everyone else knew it, too.  She'd hoped that Klingston would have related the story of how exactly he'd gotten hold of one in the first place.  The official accounts of his encounter with the alien ship were dry and lacked detail.  He needed to show her more, more consistently.  It was the intangibles, the aura of experience of dealing with aliens, that he needed to provide them with.  She mentally placed Klingston back on secret probation.
	Griffin felt bad -- a little, anyway --about calling him out like she had (his expression and body language had been way too apparent to her), and elected not to press him on it.
	She moved on.  "While the CNO and aetheron ramjets are the key to relativistic interstellar space travel, the Dark Heart possesses four other orientation/propulsion systems: nuclear shock propulsion, chemical rockets, magnetic torquers, and high-energy gyroscopes.  Let's have a look at those, shall we?"
#
	The final days passed quickly, and soon enough came the hour of departure.  Griffin, sitting in the command center, running down her checklist, actually thought they were ready -- as ready for the unknown as anyone could hope to be, anyway.
	The years and months of preparation were complete.  They were going to do it: leave Argo for an alien world.
	She thought Klingston should say something, anything, to mark the moment, but he remained silent, not pre-empting the normal launch chatter.  She also thought, then, that Rusk might do the same in the absence of any words from Klingston, but Rusk didn't say anything either.  Only Donovan, the lead pilot, the co-pilots, and she herself, in her capacity of second seat, back-up systems, spoke, and it was in the timeless, measured cadence of safety that space shots favored.
	Fine then, the launch would be an anti-climax, safe and assured.  She could appreciate that.
Launching from space dock, however, was the antithesis of traditional, surface-based launches.  Planetside, ships sat deep down in deep gravity wells, requiring ass-busting accelerations to reach escape velocity and climb to freedom.  Launch was all about fire, thunder, and crushing weight.
There was a better way.  At the end of a tether, which was really just an extension of the elevator, a de facto umbilical cord reaching down to Argo and waiting to be severed, a ship was already liberated from the energy-sapping gravity well.  The tether swung around with the planet's rotation, swinging the dock around as if it were at the edge of a gargantuan merry-go-round.
Finally, on cue, the docking clamps released the Dark Heart.
	Griffin's stomach fluttered.  It felt exactly like getting dropped, and, physically, that's what it was.  Einstein's principle of equivalence was that acceleration and gravity were indistinguishable, which was the reason underlying why moving "up" the elevator away from the geosynchronous point felt like "down."  The dockyard swung on the end of the tether, under gravity by virtue of its central acceleration.  When the ship was released, Newton's first law took over: An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted on by an outside force.
	They were in free fall, an easy and cheap launch.  It stopped feeling like a fall, which was often marked with perceptual clues to acceleration, and merely felt like being in orbit.
	The clamps had been released when the Dark Heart's release pointed toward a rendezvous with Talos, and there would be additional thrust.  Lots of it.
Sometimes, usually in fact, that was it, since most trips were in-system.  The gentle release, followed by inertia's relentless progress, and a few weeks, or months, later you blew some rockets to kill your velocity and achieve your destination.  Most trips shipped cargo, and advance planning made super speed unnecessary.
But this was an interstellar voyage.  Interplanetary velocities were quite insufficient.  Fire, thunder, and crushing weight were inevitable at some stage, or else they'd all die en route.
Donovan came across the communications channel.  "We're going to start pushing in ten seconds."
Griffin swallowed.  She didn't feel fear -- not exactly.  She'd worked through her issues long ago, and merely felt the sort of trepidation she associated with the loss of control.  She'd based her life on controlling her environment and making it safe.  She sometimes joked with Rusk that it was ironic a security freak like herself would make a career of exploring the unknown, choosing danger.  Wasn't that schizophrenic?
But she was exactly one of the most desirable sorts of people to have along, personally ironic or not, and her success had led her here.
To this moment -- when she would be within close range of not just one nuclear explosion, but hundreds.
"Mark," said co-pilot Slyde.  "Dropping eggs."
Eggs.  What a misnomer.  Eggs were the oldest symbol of creation.  They were dropping destruction, and they were going to ride it.
Outside, about now she guessed, came the fire, a flash she didn't see.  They didn't have a system that could safely watch in any form of visible light.  She was glad that she wasn't in the hibernation dens, in the dimness with eyes wide and staring, waiting for the push that would smack you deep into the grip of the couches.  She had intentionally studied ship systems in order to place herself in a position with some control, or at least the illusion thereof.
Wham!  The smack, the first, arrived.  The illusion shattered.
The pusher plate absorbed the blast.  The Dark Heart lurched forward.
Wham!  Wham!  Wham!
Griffin realized that she was squeezing her armrests and clenching her teeth.  She forced herself to relax, a task that seemed rather difficult under the circumstances.
Wham!  Wham!  Wham!
She breathed deeply, waiting for it to be over, as each explosion thrust her more deeply into crash chair and accelerated the Dark Heart toward their destination.
Wham!  Wham!  Wham!
And then a return to zero gravity and a brief moment of silence...
Griffin let her breath out as the pilots and nuclear techs made their system checks.
"All systems nominal," Donovan announced.
Griffin grinned, and heard distant cheering.
Good, she thought, we're on our way.
#
	They approached Talos a few days, and a few more 'egg rides', later.  Griffin was one of the crew with an extensive list of shakedown activities and not scheduled for immediate hibernation.  Even though most were so scheduled, they waited until they'd made the big turn at Talos.
	Close passage of a super-Jovian gas giant was not to be missed.  The Dark Heart sported a number of direct observation bays, three observatories featuring an array of telescopes equipped with imagers and spectrographs spanning a large part of the electro-magnetic spectrum, and a network that tied all the lounge entertainment displays to the observatories.
	Most of the Specialists vied for positions at the windows, passing false rumors about which ones would be oriented which way during passage.  The computer jock, Tim Tolbert, had rigged the system to generate random answers in response to queries.
	Griffin knew that Rusk would not have tolerated such nonsense, but Klingston did.  Klingston just sat back (well, metaphorically -- he actually spent a lot of time wandering the halls and chatting) and let that sort of thing happen.
	Even though she knew it must have been driving him crazy, Rusk let it happen, too, deferring to Klingston.  She'd always thought he followed the rules a bit too closely, even when following the rules meant allowing others to break the rules.
	To Tolbert's chagrin, Donovan announced all the encounter details, the correct ones, over the PA system as Talos loomed.
	At the appointed time Griffin made her way to one of the secondary portholes.  Her duties prevented her from staking out an early spot, so she didn't even try.  One of the astronomers, Olivia Brenner, had invited her to one of the observatories, but Griffin was a Specialist.  Specialists wanted to see things for themselves, with their own eyes, or they wouldn't be Specialists.
	The secondary window was crowded with nearly ten people.  The lack of gravity made it relatively easy for all of them to look out, although the ones in the center had to hold on to their fellows for stability.  Griffin was thinking about squeezing in when Sally beat her to it.
	Fine.  She supposed she could move to a tertiary window.  There were a few such windows where Talos's second-largest moon, Vulcan, would be worth looking at, even though Talos itself would not be apparent.
	As she deliberated, someone drifted up to her and whispered in her ear.  "I knew you were working, so I saved you a spot.  You don't even have to eat dirt.  Come on."
	Klingston.
	She smiled that he'd thought of her under these circumstances.  There were a million other, more important things to do.  She thought that he disliked her.  His wife certainly had.  And she hadn't treated him special during training, and had called him out a few times.  He'd saved her a spot.
	Rusk would have never done such a thing.  In fact, he'd gone out of his way on a number of occasions to prove he didn't give her any special treatment.
	Griffin shook her head and kicked off to follow Klingston to the primary window.
	It was packed, but, as promised, there was space for two in the center.
	"I was going to make sure Manuel had a spot, too, but he told me not to bother," Klingston said.
	Well, that was like Rusk for sure.  He never took handouts of any sort, even when he'd earned them and it was fair.
	But it still seemed strange.  She knew that on a voyage like this, she would get to know everyone very well, and already felt that way about most of the crew, but did Klingston really consider her and Rusk his closest friends on board?  Lord, what had he given up for this?
	"Come on, now," Klingston said loudly to everyone as he and Griffin wiggled into place, "Let's have the spectacle begin!"
	As she breathed lightly amidst the warm bodies snuggled against the thick diamond window, Griffin reevaluated Klingston again.  He had something here, an appreciation of people that showed.  He didn't play it hard with lots of rules, the way she or Rusk would, but his approach had its merits.
	The encounter was spectacular.  They wanted to get as close to Talos as they could, without encountering atmospheric drag, in order to use the planet's gravity to adjust their course out of the plane of the ecliptic and on a rendezvous with the Spider Star.
	Talos, being more massive and younger than Jupiter, was a warmer planet.  Gas giants, at least the super-Jovian planets, were really just failed stars.  They weren't really in the mass range -- Jupiter, for instance, would need to be 80 times more massive before fusion would ignite within its core.  But there were in the size range, which wasn't very mass dependent, and took billions of years to fully contract, releasing residual heat the whole time.  Not star-like heat, but enough heat to keep its cloud structures especially interesting.
	Like Jupiter, Talos displayed one large, prominent storm that had persisted since humans had first imaged the planet.  While Jupiter's storm was red, the chronic storm on Talos had more of an orange-gold cast.  The cloud colors had to do with trace chemicals, kind of like pigments in the skin, and the chemistry was complex.  Bands ran across the planet: bands of deep red, nearly maroon, in regions without high cloud cover; the streaming bands with high clouds featured light yellows.  From a distance, the planet did have something of an orange-bronze color, so the name of the bronze giant from the Greek myth of the Argonauts had been a natural.
	The encounter was too short.  There was something about looking at big things live, big things with infinite, chaotic detail, that cast a hypnotic spell on Griffin.  A planet like Talos was beyond her control, but so far beyond her control that it didn't bother her and she could enjoy it.  She supposed that less controlling people might feel similar about exceptional people or alien animals, but those were not outside her dominion, at least in her opinion.
	"That was great," she whispered.
	"Yeah," said Klingston.
His diction didn't slip often.  Usually he said "yes" rather than "yeah."  It could be that he was also moved by the vista of Talos, but she wondered if he was perhaps thinking of the more personal aspects of leaving Argo.
Yeah, catching a glimpse of his somber reflection in the diamond, she thought that likely.
#
	Shortly after Talos, and a few minor course corrections, they'd reached a high enough velocity that they engaged the normal matter ramscoop.  At first the acceleration was minimal, but it quickly built to several tenths of an Earth gravity and everyone weighed something again.
	Most of the crew began to go to sleep.
People didn't all take to hibernation identically.  Normally that wouldn't be an issue since lab testing and a training exercise would probe each individual's adaptation.  Some people needed booster shots to sleep, or to wake, and it was useful to know in general how often different people were likely to wake, and for how long, in order to plan a reasonably maintenance schedule.  A couple of the astronomers wouldn't even enter full hibernation, trading the drawbacks of aging on this journey for the opportunity to collect particular types of data.
	Griffin fell squarely within the normal range on hibernation adaptation, but because of the extra systems checks she had to do, she went to bed late.  It was the same sort of problem she'd had with the Talos encounter, but one that she didn't expect Klingston or Rusk to solve for her.
	Hibernation was a stupor.  You didn’t care when or where you slept.  You found a place, and slept.  You woke up at some point, got up, did some things, and went back to sleep someplace.
	Anywhere in the dens would work.  The dens had the right temperature, air circulation, body support, muscle exercise, and monitoring, to make sure that the hibernation state was effective in providing optimal metabolic reduction and maintenance.
	There were other issues to consider, of course, although they were not often talked of planetside.  Hibernating people often snuggled with each other, and often had sexual relations during periods when they were slightly more awake.  Everyone was free of STDs, infertile, and expected to handle it casually.  Sometimes, in intermediate metabolic states, erotic dreams could make even the mildest, repressed personality a sexual aggressor.  Wetwaking, it was called, and those under its spell didn't much care about who they were with. Again, it was more than tolerated as a side effect of a physical state that would save them years of life, and it was far from the worst thing in the world.
	While she could always move after waking up the first time six or eight months down the line, it made her selective about where she lay down.
	The dens were quite cool, and dark, and smelled more than a little funky.  She knew that her sensitivity to the smell of human BO would not persist, but it struck her now.  She stripped down, stowed her uniform in her closet, and move into the den.
	The soft floor squished between her toes as she moved forward, hands out, moving slowing as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.  She'd prefer to find Rusk, if possible, and if not him, she supposed it didn't matter.  Klingston, and a few others, were old enough they might not be so sexual.
	She spotted Rusk as part of a tight sandwich involving four other Specialists.  So much for that.
	There was a nearly empty couch in the back.  She imagined it would be filled with the pilots and the astronomers primarily, and they were a fine group.  Really, everyone here was fine.  The least attractive person here was still good looking and as smart and talented as the brightest humans ever.
	Griffin wiped away a tear.  Sentimentalism was another side effect of the adaptation.  The awful thing about it was that it didn't matter if you knew it was a side effect, you still felt it.
	She curled up, nearly alone, remembering to click on one of the electrostim units.  They had smart units that would crawl around their bodies while they slept, stimulating atrophying muscles and preventing them from degenerating into uselessness.
	Griffin sank into the warm, yielding surface and wondered what wonders she might wake to.

	
Chapter 8

Prices of Discovery

	Years literally flew by.
Dreaming, mostly, and it felt like more dreaming while awake than while asleep.  Frenk hibernated like the rest, and rose every few months to semi-awareness, shifting an elbow out of his face, or rising to get some water, rarely a meal, voiding his bowels, returning to the cool musky darkness of the den.
He'd been alone on his previous mission.  He'd been afraid that being cooped up with a bunch of strangers would be awful, but the funny thing was that it felt comfortable.  Before they arrived at the Spider Star, Frenk would have spent more years with these people than his own family, albeit most of it sleeping.  The waking periods, he supposed, lent a subjective quality to the time it wasn't supposed to have.  When sleeping through a normal night, he'd wake up on several occasions and retain a sense of the passage of time.
He was sure that prior to the mission the idea of sleeping in a big pile of semi-strangers held no appeal for him, but after years in this chamber and his bloodstream filled with the right mix of chemicals, it felt more like home than anything back on Argo.
Frenk's heartbeat picked up to 60 beats a minute.  He awoke this time, groggy as usual, a hairy armpit in his face, and someone's knee in his back.  Typical for the flight so far.  And surprisingly, it didn't bother him.  In a way they were becoming his family, with rights and privileges normally only reserved for such.  And, realistically, he himself had probably been responsible for an unwanted armpit or knee, or three, at one time or another.
He snuggled in his nest of flesh, trying to decide how awake he was, and whether or not he could return to sleep.  Eventually, after a few hours of wistful thoughts, he decided he was hungry.
He rose, unsteadily, and picked his way in the dim light through the tangle of naked bodies.  He climbed up two levels, to where the gravity was a bit less onerous, and checked the duty roster.  There were no outstanding maintenance duties, so he let his hunger lead him.
Frenk shuffled into the galley.  He peered into the lighted refrigerators.  Juice, fruits, veggie protein snacks.  Everything looked crappy.
Didn't matter.  He was hungry and would eat.
Frenk grabbed a couple of random burritos, three juices, a tomato and two oranges.  He spotted some cookies and grabbed a dozen of those, too.
He hadn't ever smoked pot too often, but waking from this hibernation funk made him think of having the munchies.  It was a similar craving.
He took his food over to the main lounge, and sat down at a table in the dim light.  The opposite display showed some famous impressionist painting he thought he probably should know, but didn't.  "Show me a popular comedy," he said.  "Earth-based, twenty-third century."
His place, his time, growing up.  Comedy tended to be very cultural, and he hadn't seen much he thought funny since moving to Argo.  It could simply be because a colony world of a hundred thousand was unlikely to spawn many great comedians.  Whatever.  He felt like a sleepy, complacent chuckle.
As he ate his tomato, a game show hosted by a team of Swedish clowns appeared on the screen.  It was vaguely existential and physical at the same time, with equal parts pratfall and ironic angst.  There was something going on about contestants winning dates with celebrities, but they were slipped laxatives to go with their dinners.  Frenk could tell it was funny, and laughed, but didn't laugh hard.  Hibernation relaxed inhibitions, but did indeed seem to also dull his responses.
He'd endured his own deep space mission wide-awake and crazy for some thirty years.  A drugged, fast funk was okay by him this time.
Frenk heard noises from the galley.  Refrigerator doors opened and closed.  Someone else was up.
"Crap," a female voice said.
Frenk sat, uncaring, his attention evenly split between the comedy and the galley.  He was somewhat surprised that his nudity didn't bother him.  It was natural in the dens, but elsewhere he thought he might be inhibited about it.  Eventually a woman walked in carrying a couple of yogurt containers.
"Strawberry or strawberry," she said.  "I guess someone forgot to fertilize the blueberries."
She had long, dark hair that framed an open but inquisitive expression.  Sally, he recalled.  Nice breasts.  Not shaved the way he preferred.
He decided hibernation funk felt a bit like being drunk.  You felt good, satisfied, unconcerned, but somewhat uninhibited, too.  He'd been told that, but was learning it now for himself first hand.  "You're Sally," he said.
Okay, he admitted to himself.  It made you a bit dumb as well.
"We must be coasting," she said.  "The gravity is less up here."
Yes, that was right.  They must be rotating the ship now, at or close to maximum velocity, no longer accelerating.  How long did that mean they'd been out here now?  Had to be years.  How many?  He wasn't sure.  He could ask the computer, but was it all that important?
"We've been out here a long time, now."
He nodded in agreement, not really knowing how long.  But yes, it had to be a long time.  Then he noticed one of the contestants losing control in front of a celebrity and started laughing loudly and out of control.
"What's so funny?"
Frenk could barely talk through his laughing.  "Um," he snorted, "he's got to go in front of her!"
Did her really sound that inane, he thought, even as he kept chuckling.
"Okay," she said.
They were quiet a time, eating, and watching the show.
Frenk almost forgot she was there, but at some point when he wasn't paying much attention, she had shifted from the table to a seat by him on the couch.  She was warm, he realized, as she leaned in against him.
She laughed, quietly.
He hadn't noticed anything funny.
"You seem so powerful, awesome even," she whispered, "but you're just a person, Frenk Klingston, like anyone else."
Why was that funny?  It was true, he granted, but it didn't seem funny. "Yes," he said.  "So?"
Sally scooted closer and snaked a hand over his thigh.
Frenk jumped, and scooted over, away from her.
"What's the matter, lover?" she asked.
What was the matter?  He knew that leaving Argo would destroy his fidelity as well as it had effectively ended his marriage.  How much older was Virginia now?  A decade older?  Two decades older?  It didn't matter.  They had decided not to wait for each other--it wasn't practical.  Why not jump into this liaison instead of away from it?  It was a normal, healthy thing expected among Specialists on deep-space missions.  Many men would eagerly accept it, even look forward to it.
What was the matter?
"I don't know," he said, sounding as uncertain as he felt.  She was close, warm, willing, and smelled of strawberries.  What, damn it, was the matter with him?
She backed off a half-scoot.  "Want to talk about it?"
He considered.  He wasn't comfortable here in this situation.  He didn't know why.  It might help to talk it over with her, but on the other hand he was the nominal leader on this trip and sharing confidences with her might compromise his authority.  Through the fog of hibernation haze, he decided.  Fuck it.  He could manage on his own.  He needed to confide in someone, and no way was it going to be Rusk or Griffin.  He turned the sound down on the show, but did not quite commit to turning it completely off.  "Okay."
Sally leaned into him, slowly, wrapping her arms around his shoulders without being too overtly sexual.  "Tell me everything."
Everything?  Did they have forever?
	"I don’t belong here, leading this thing."
	"You don't?  But you’re more experienced dealing with aliens than anyone alive."
	He snorted with laughter.  "Oh yes, you can say that I'm more experienced.  Let me tell you something: I've left behind my family, my children, because I couldn't confess the way I should have in the first place.  Because I'm too arrogant."
	She was quiet a moment.  Her hand slowly worked circles around his biceps.  "Confess about what?"
	He didn't permit himself to hesitate.  "About how I got the dark drive out of the alien."
	"And how was that?"
	Here it was, the big secret he'd kept to himself for years.  With the effects of special relativity, he didn't know exactly how many decades, but several at least no matter how he considered it.  "I want to tell someone, and I'm going to trust you."  He hoped this was wise, that it wasn't just the hibernation chemicals in his bloodstream.  "Do you know the official story?"
	"The basics," she said softly.
	"Then you don't know shit," he said, louder than he meant to.  He'd used the profanity intentionally to show his disdain for the official story, and, perhaps, because of the hibernation.  The official story was bare bones, and he'd never bothered to fill in the details.  Yes, the governing council on Argo had wanted the details, demanded the details many times over, but what, really, were they going to do with him, a recognized hero, if he didn’t want to explain every last nuance concerning his encounter?
	Nothing, was the answer, nothing too obvious or overt anyway, and he'd exploited that fact for twenty years.
	"You mean you didn't encounter an alien ship and negotiate for their superior star drive technology?"
	She had him there.  He had indeed done so...sort of.
	"Oh, I did that all right," he said.  "Here's how it went down though.  I'd been alone on that deep scout for about twenty years, give or take, and I was going nuts.  Crazy.  You know?  It wasn't like this with dozens of people to share the work and spacious accommodations, and hibernation.  My cat had died by that point, about half my food sources had stopped growing, and I was getting sick of sugar beets which was the most reliable crop I had."
	"I like beets," Sally said.
	"Fine.  You can have mine next time."  He considered not continuing.  It wasn't that her aside had bothered him (in truth he welcomed the distraction), but he hadn't told anyone the full story before.  He licked his lips and elected to go on.  "I was lonely, I was nuts, and I was raiding the medical supplies.  I was growing old and despite telescope evidence to the contrary, none of the systems I'd explored had anything worthwhile an automated probe couldn't have characterized better than me.
	"Anyway, I was coming into a binary system devoid of planets.  The plan was for me to use one of them for a course change and grav assist to hit the next good target.  There was a small alien ship, smaller than my scout even, coming in that had the same idea."
	"The Raxor?"  She failed to make the gravely, grating sound in the middle the way it was actually pronounced.
	"Yeah, that's right."  It was strange, now, thinking about those long ago but vital events.  He'd been wild, crazed even, and capable of anything.  It had paid off for humanity.  "The Raxor ship was faster than mine, and I was foolish to chase it.  But I had two things to my advantage: I was reckless, and I was willing.  I adjusted my grav assist trajectory to send me up their exhaust plume, and accepted the damage to my ship, overloading the intakes."
	"You really did that?" she asked, turning to look into his eyes.  "That's dangerous!"
	"No shit," he said.  He wasn't happy with the way that the profanity was slipping out of his mouth.  Strong words had their time and place, and using them casually wasted that power.  It was the hibernation, he told himself, and tried to stop worrying about it.  "I still wouldn't have caught the ship, except it slowed down for me to catch up.  Crotx was lonely and bored, too, and nearly half as reckless as me."
	"'Crotx?"
	"Would you rather I referred to him as the carnivorous green-scaled alien biped, example 1, the way the official report did?"
	"No, that's dumb," she said simply.
	"Fine then.  I called him Crotx." He pronounced with the initial creaking sound that was very characteristic of the language Crotx had spoken, and he knew that he didn't quite pronounce it correctly, either.  "And it was definitely a him.  I had to fight about that, too, and it was one of the factors that made me cut the whole deal short when I got back to human space."
	Frenk settled into silence for a time, and Sally let him.  He appreciated that.  She was still physically closer than he was absolutely comfortable with, but she was giving him mental space to work through these long-past events.  Eventually, he continued.  "Look, it was wild thing, meeting an alien, also alone like me, in the middle of nowhere out in the galaxy.  You know as well as I do that there's a whole series of government-sanctioned manuals concerning encountering extraterrestrial intelligence, and I'm telling you they're all crap.  You have to feel out the situation with your heart, think hard the whole time, and fight your instincts.  Instinct is something we evolved with to deal with Earth-based creatures.  Aliens are...alien."
	Frenk wasn't happy with the simple tautology, but he left it there, hanging between them.  He worried he sounded arrogant, when that really wasn't it at all.  Despite what he'd lost personally, there was something he'd gained in that encounter that was difficult to articulate, a world view, a galaxy view anyway, profoundly driven home.
	"So what exactly happened?" Sally asked, seemingly interested, her hands still on his body.
	"Our computers talked for a couple of days while we stared at each other on some 2-d video displays.  Crotx didn't have any eyelids, so he always won the staring contests.  Eventually my scout's computer figured out how to speak Raxor, and vice versa.  That's when all the fun began."
	"Fun?"
	"The 'negotiations' I'm so famous for.  Crotx was basically in the same boat I was, an extreme solo scout at the edge of his species' known space.  The difference was that his species had encountered other aliens before and it wasn't quite the novel experience it was for me.  He knew enough to classify humans as naïve and harmless."
	Sally snorted.  "I studied history.  I've seen the World War III footage, the glassing of Mecca.  We're not exactly harmless.  I'd say we're kind of monstrous, at least sometimes."
	Frenk knew that this argument was pointless.  He decided not to enter it.  "Fine.  I was naïve and harmless.  I pursed the alien craft because I was bored, and nuts, and it was my first worthwhile discovery.  I had no agenda or ulterior motives when we docked."
	"And 'Crotx' did?"
	"Yes, he did.  What struck me then, and sticks with me now, is that the more experienced, more technologically developed species holds all the cards in such interactions.  It wasn't much different than when the Europeans first encountered the Native Americans, and raped them for their land."  There, he'd said it, and he quickly went on.  "What's the famous story?  Manhattan island for a handful of colored beads?"
	"What?  Crotx raped you for your land?" she said, smiling.
	Frenk didn't say anything, nor did he smile back.  His pulse thundered through his head.
	Sally sat up straighter, and her eyes seemed more wide open.  "The official account said you'd traded Earth-based entertainment for the star drive!  I always thought that meant the Raxor wanted movies, books, artwork, so they could study humanity."
	Frenk's pulse eased, somewhat.  The thing was out there, in the open, and he'd survived it.  He now felt the need to clarify, justify, and make her understand!  If at least one other person understood, then it would make it easier.  He hoped so anyway.
	"It wasn't rape, not really.  He needed my willing assistance, and traded me for it."
	"Did you...?" Sally started to ask, then stopped.  "Was it...?"
	"What do you think?  It was weird and I didn't like it.  I suppose I'm standing in the way of science, not recreating every lurid detail in a 3-dimensionally rendered model for the xenobiologists to drool over."  Frenk spoke rapidly, expressing thoughts he'd had many times in the years since the event.  "As it was going on, all I kept saying to myself was that it was for our advancement, that this was a small price to pay for such a technology.  Of course, by that stage, I was a little less naïve and a little more worried about a double cross."
	"But you brought back the star drive," she said.
	Frenk sighed.  "Yes, and that bothers me, too.  Crotx was physically more able than me, and technologically more advanced.  He could have double-crossed me, I'm sure, killed me or destroyed my ship.  But he didn't."
	Sally sat there with him on the sofa, staring, but not in a threatening way.  "Why not?"
	"I've laid awake many nights wondering.  It could be a sense of honor, abiding by the bargain.  Or maybe it's that we're so far behind them that a second-hand engine wasn't a big deal to him.  Or maybe he was mad about being out there alone, and giving away technology was a way of spiting his bosses.  Maybe it was a joke, and it simply amused him.  I spent three weeks docked with Crotx, and I didn't get a clue about what motivated him beyond the sense of loneliness that we shared."
	His immediate thought upon finishing that sentence was that it was a perfect straight line for a cheap joke about what they shared, but thankfully Sally didn't bite on it.  In a good mood, with a good friend, he might have, he acknowledged.  
	"Mostly though," he said, "he was just alien.  Disturbing.  It's hard to explain just what that means without experiencing it."
	"I'm sure," she said, rubbing his shoulder.  "Look, I was going to suggest that we watch some porn and have intercourse."
	"What?"  Frenk tensed up.  He couldn't hide it; surely she had to feel it.
	"But," she smoothly continued, "I'm not sure that's the most appropriate thing to do after a story like that."
	"No," Frenk agreed.  He'd talked things over with Virginia, and both were free to do what they wished with regard to other partners.  They hadn't gotten divorced, but he had signed divorce papers that she could file any time she wanted.  He hadn't been intimate with anyone other than her in twenty years.  Or however many years had passed by now -- more for her than him.  He could check, but didn't care to.  Sex would feel like a betrayal of Virginia now, and he knew he wasn't ready for it.
	"How about I just hold you?  We can get it on some other time."
	Her proposition and assertion didn't relax Frenk all that much, but it was acceptable for the moment.  "Fine."
	She held him, and he liked it.  More than he felt he should have.  She held him, and rocked, and hummed.
	After some time, he realized he was deeply sleepy.  He'd been warned about falling back asleep outside the den -- he could suffer all sorts of muscle problems.
	"Sally?" he asked.
	"Yes," she answered immediately, alertly.
	"I have to go to bed."
	"Okay."
	He remained in her embrace a few moments longer, then, finally, roused himself to move.  He stood up and slid from her arms.  "Will you tell anyone?"
	"No, not if you don't want me to."
	"Thanks."
	"You're more qualified than you think.  You made a sacrifice for the greater good."  She grabbed onto his hands, preventing him from leaving at once.  "Thank you for sharing with me."  And she kissed his hands.
	Frenk pulled away, uncomfortable.  "Okay," he said.  "Um, see you."  What was that?  See you?  He'd just told this women his darkest secret, and she'd propositioned him in essence.  This whole set up was strange.  He felt like a stranger: awkward anyway, nothing like director of the whole mission.  He really hoped this feeling arose from the hibernation state.  
	He stalked back to the dens, stepping into the cool dimness with the familiarity of putting on a pair of broken-in shoes.  Against his every instinct, this now felt like home in a way his real home didn't.  He knew that feeling was physiological, but he still didn't like it.
	Frenk decided to empty his bladder again before going back to sleep.  After glancing in the mirror and sniffing an armpit, he decided to wash up a little.  He wasn't up to a full shower, but he generously lathered up his face and hands, rinsed, and felt better.
	Finished in the bathroom, Frenk stumbled down the ladder toward the dens.  The cool air felt especially cool on his legs and butt where he'd been sitting on the couch.  His eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness and he made his way back toward his spot.
	It was taken.  Genova had rolled over onto her back and now lay spread-eagled across a large part of the cushion.
	"Fine," Frenk mumbled.  He looked around, and spied an open slot next to Rusk.  Rusk was half-curled into a fetal position and appeared quite innocent and peaceful.  He reminded Frenk of watching one of his sons sleep.
	Sally was right.  He'd done the right thing and secured the star drive, no matter the kind of thing it was.  Did he really trust anyone else to make the right decisions, the decisions necessary to save his family on Argo?
	No, he didn't.
	Frenk crawled in beside Rusk and was soon sleeping soundly, his heart beating once every minute.

	
Chapter 9

You Have To Do What You Have To Do

Years literally flew by.
Dreaming, mostly, and it felt like more dreaming while awake than while asleep.  Rusk hibernated like the rest, and rose every few months to semi-awareness, shifting an elbow out of his face, or rising to get some water, rarely a meal, voiding his bowels, returning to the cool musky darkness of the den.
It was just like training, but went on and on.  During his six-month hibernation exercise, he'd only awakened twice.  Given that the trip was the equivalent of one long, cold night, problems arose, and they arose more often as the flight progressed.  Typically the ship's computer self-diagnosed the problems and was capable of writing itself a software fix.  Sometimes there problems involved hardware, and the computer could dispatch an X-bot to swap a circuit board or replace a filter.  On some occasions, a human was needed, and if it wasn't something too critical or requiring special expertise, who ever got up next got the job.
One instance, the time Rusk woke up being spooned by Klingston, there was an X-bot, Kurtz, waiting for him in the galley.  Raphael was the Dark Heart X-bot; Kurtz contained the patterns of the engineering team that had designed and constructed the ship.  Kurtz usually refrained from manifesting a pattern unless the specialized knowledge was really necessary, and typically displayed an image of a deep, dark heart, slowing pulsing in a field of dim stars.  It might have been artistic, but it was hard to make out until you got close.
"What is it?" Rusk asked the bot.
"Toilet malfunction."
"Shit."
"Exactly."
Rusk hadn't meant any humor, and wouldn't have wasted a joke on an X-bot even if he'd thought of a good one.  His subconscious mind was working, making connections that slipped ever so easily to the surface.  He really didn't like hibernation.  He liked having inhibitions, liked keeping to a set of well-thought out rules for speech and behavior.
Kurtz led Rusk to the offending unit.   "Something is caught in the shredder."
Yes, indeed, thought Rusk.  It could be shit.  Sometimes under the metabolic adjustments and diet alternations of hibernation, excrement could take on unusual properties, including extreme hardness.
"And you can't get it out?" Rusk asked the X-bot.
"Not easily."
Rusk was tempted to tell the X-bot to do it anyway, but he wasn't all that prudish about ugly tasks, and if it was something he could fix in a minute or two, that would free up the X-bot to pursue other jobs.
"Okay," he said.  "Make sure the unit's power is off."
"Acknowledged."
Rusk shrugged, stepped forward, and sank to his knees.  He pried open the drain lid, and pushed his arm inside, nearly up to the elbow.  He felt around, trying not to consider too carefully the slime his fingers slid across.  Sterile lubricating gel, surely that was all.
His fingertips alighted onto a stalled blade.  Solids were sliced up to better facilitate recycling.  Something had resisted recycling.
Rusk followed the blade back to the center of the shredder, and, one by one, traced out the other blades until he found the culprit.  There was something jammed in there good, all right.  He felt it, running his fingers over its hard, smooth surface.  What was it?  Someone pass a stone?
No.  It was a round shape, but not a solid stone.  The stuck object had a disk-like shape -- wait, it was a ring.
Someone had flushed a ring, Rusk realized with true annoyance. That sort of thing did happen, he'd been warned, and it could indicate someone having personal issues, but worse, it was against regulations.
Rusk grasped hold of the ring as best he could and worked it for a while.  Quite stuck.  He needed a different angle.  He extract his hand, and, without looking at it closely or smelling it, pushed it back in with a rotation.  He found the ring again and from the new position was able to quickly work it free.
"Start a shower," he told Kurtz.
In the shower, Rusk considered the ring: a simple gold wedding band.  It was large, too, too large to fit on his own relatively small fingers.  Probably belonged to a male, and one of the non-Specialists.  "Ship," he said.  "How many married or formerly married male crew do we have?"
"Three.  Frenk Klingston, Wesley Codon, and Trask Funderburke."
Interesting.  Trask Funderburke was married to Gabriella Powers.  They were the one married couple on board, Argonaut archeologists with a host of other useful skills on both sides of the relationship.  He also remembered that they had matching tattoos on their fingers rather than actual metallic rings.  The X-bot specialist Wesley Codon, he recalled, was divorced several years before their departure and seemed an unlikely candidate.  That left rich, old-fashioned Klingston.  Yeah, that seemed like his style.
After he'd finished his shower, Rusk headed back down to the dens with the ring.  His contacts lightened and he waited a few moments for his eyes to dark adapt.  He wended his way through the bunks and bodies back to where Klingston lay.
"Red spotlight," Rusk whispered, and pointed at Klingston's hands, which he held loosely splayed near his head.  The lights and sounds could potentially shock someone from deep hibernation if too bright or too loud, but he was being circumspect.
No rings.  Rusk peered closer.  On the ring finger of Klingston's left hand, Rusk could make out an indentation.  Bingo.
Now he considered what to do.  He wasn't going to discipline Klingston, although the notion held some appeal.  The question was, did the ring slip off accidentally, or did Klingston intentionally flush it?  Rings did slip off with hibernation -- people usually lost weight, especially on a long trip like this one -- and urinating was a good opportunity for one to slide off.  Or it could have been semi-intentional, a hibernation-assisted act of the subconscious.  It wasn't like Klingston's marriage would last the trip.
Rusk finally decided.  If he had lost the ring, an accident, he'd presumably like it back.  If he'd intentionally flushed it, that was an improper disposal method, and wasteful -- damn the man's personal issues if he hadn't gotten over them yet.  Klingston was in charge and couldn't afford to have personal issues.
Rusk reached down, and, without ceremony, eased the ring onto Klingston's finger.
"There," Rusk whispered, catching a glint of the ring in the spot light.  "All shiny and happy again."
Back in the galley, Rusk decided to reward himself for his dirty duty with a chocolate cake.  He flash-thawed a cake and decided to eat the whole thing, even though it wasn't all that small.  He hoped that a large meal might let him sleep a bit longer next time and avoid another unpleasant job.
He was just about to start in on the cake when someone said, "That looks good."
Rusk turned around to find Gina Dorissey, one of the Specialist doctors, her blonde-hair mussed from sleep, gazing dreamily at him.
Rusk sighed.  He supposed he could share the cake.  "It does, doesn't it?"
"I wasn't talking about the cake, but if you're offering, I'll have a bit of that, too."
They ate some cake, had sex, ate the rest of the cake, and had sex again.
Dorissey wanted to stay up and listen to some music, but Rusk was ready to go back to sleep.  He told her goodnight and went to take another shower to wash off the crumbs of his dalliance.
Back in the dens, his spot next to Klingston was still open and he crawled into it.  The big goon would probably grab him again, but really, during hibernation what did it matter.  And besides, Rusk had put a wedding ring on the man's finger just a few hours previously.  Even though he hadn't thought much if it at the time, now, slipping back into hibernation the act grew large in his mind.
Had he married Klingston?  Surely not, although the idea of sneaking back into bed with a spouse after cheating on them did occur to him.  His hibernation-empowered subconscious had done its damage, however.  The symbolism was there, marrying Klingston fully into the Specialists, the mission.  They were joined, their success or failure, their fate.
Before he could stop it, he was asleep, those thoughts spawning odd dreams.
And the years continued to fly by.

	
Chapter 10

A Patient Spider

	"Frenk," a woman whispered.
A warm hand rubbed his bare shoulder.  Irritating.  He wished she would stop it.
"Frenk."
He was in a deep, dark, sleepy place of comfort without worry, without pain, without awareness.  Dreams lurked nearby, nonsensical, but comfortable as an old broken-in boot.  He liked it.
"Ouch!" he shouted.  Someone had jabbed a needle in his shoulder!  Damn it all!
"Wakey wakey, Frenk."
"No."  Nevertheless, the quiet, safe place receded from him at light speed.  Thoughts rushed toward him nearly as fast -- thoughts about who he was, what he was doing, and, most importantly, where he was.  He winced.
Black became gray, and the gray became shades of faint color.  He willed it away, but reality persisted, calling him from Morpheus to his own now fiendishly strange life.
As official Director, Frenk had to wake up all the way early, which would make approaching the Spider Star a slow process.  They were probably weeks away from the place, at least.  If he were so important to the great bloody mission, why couldn't he sleep through the boring parts?
	He didn't appreciate it.
	But his memories crystallized and he recalled his family, his children, and he realized again why he should care.  There were no boring parts.  Everything was potentially of great importance.
	"We're there?" he croaked to the woman he could now recognize.
	"Getting close," Griffin told him.  "We've established a distant orbit of the pulsar."
	She helped him remove his electrostim bots that had been periodically exercising his muscles while he slept, fending off atrophy, keeping him physically viable if not in top shape.  Rising from the soft den floor was difficult.  Climbing the ladder was even harder, despite the lessening gravity as he rose -- they were obviously under spin gravity now.  He imagined he could hear his joints squeaking.
	He felt old. When he reached the restroom and looked in the mirror, he looked old: the orange of his hair was nearly gone, and his wrinkles had perceptively deepened into canyons.  The drugs and the hibernation had retarded his metabolism and retarded the aging process, but they had not stopped it completely, and had side effects of their own.  He'd been old to start with and he was older now.  How old was difficult to say.  He had an absolute chronological age that he could in theory calculate, but in practice it would have been best had he had a clock imbedded under his skin at birth.  Relativity mucked with everything, even though humans didn't push light-speed all that hard.  More complex was the issue of his subjective age.
	When he'd left Earth, people commonly lived to 150, sometimes 180, with good health and solid activity well into their 120s.  Medicine and the supercomputers had been promising indefinite life spans for centuries (although reconciling even Earth time and Argo time was complicated without being aboard an interstellar ship), but that hadn't quite materialized yet.  The initial serious efforts had produced an explosion of cancers that had slowed advances to a glacial crawl.
	He figured he was probably the equivalent to a well-preserved but natural 50.  Perhaps a few years older than that, he forced himself to admit.  Not decrepit, but by no means a young man.
	Showering, shaving the hair off his face, off his ears (he hated that!)...eventually he started to feel more like himself again and less like he'd come off a three-day drinking binge -- not that he'd done that since the kids had been born.  The scent of the soap and the shaving cream was so sharp, so alien, he closed his eyes and wondered where he was for a moment, losing himself for a brief reality vacation.  He cleared his bowels, blew his nose, brushed his teeth, and, as he was dressing, began once again to feel that he might indeed have a grasp on the situation and be capable of commanding others.
	He wondered how old his sons were now, how old they might look.  He shook his head, trying to expel the thought -- it was so difficult to determine when now was in different places, at different speeds.  They would have a measure of success, he promised himself, and when he returned to Argo to reunite with his sons the timelines would by force reconcile.  He need not worry about it now.
	Not now, with the Spider Star looming.
	But truly, did it loom?  Dressed now in a Specialists uniform that still felt alien, he got himself a something to eat and a cup of coffee and walked to the command center of the Dark Heart.  Griffin and several others were already there, watching him expectantly.
	He sat down in his chair, bouncing in the light gravity, feeling tired from the effort anyway.  His mind sharpening, he realized that they'd have a substantial backlog of broadcasts from Argo.  Relativistic time compression wasn't so terrible at their velocity, and quite a few years of reports should exist.  He'd avoided paying attention to them during his brief periods of wakefulness.  That dream state was not the state to absorb and process significant news.  "Tell me about the Lashings," he said to Griffin.
	"There have been 70 new events, according to the latest.  None have impacted Argo, although Charybdis suffered another hit.  The best theories seem to indicate that the moon was a special target, either because of strategic value, or because of its value as an example."
	Frenk wondered if this was all a lark, if the Lashings were no threat at all to Argo and the colony.  Maybe the bee machine in the heart of Pollux had been meant as a threat, and programmed to hit the moon as a demonstration.  But that sort of speculation was pointless -- worse than pointless.  It held the potential to undermine his entire being, his entire sacrifice, and could not be verified.  He forced himself to veer away from the notion.
"Good," he said.  And it was good.  His mission here was not wasted, at least not yet.  He could turn the spotlight of his attention on the matter at hand.  "So what's going on here?"
	"Nothing, and everything," Griffin answered.
	He hated those kind of answers.  "When's Rusk waking up?"
	"He's been awake for a week," she said.  "He insisted.  He'll be along soon."
	"Undoubtedly," he said, feeling unsure of himself.  He knew he was nominally in charge, Director, but Rusk as Associate Director had been the one training for this for years, the one who had assembled the crew, and the one who best knew their capabilities.  Frenk still felt himself a pretender to this ambitious, talented young man who lurked in his shadow.  All Frenk had was the desire to do the right thing and some prior success -- to the extent he dared to call it that -- dealing with aliens.  He supposed that would have to do for now, and forged ahead.  "Fill me in on the latest.  Start with the nothing and give me a chance to wake up for the something."
	She called in an X-bot named Bela to run three floor-to-ceiling displays and began.  "The system isn't posing too many surprises from an astrophysical perspective.  The primary star is almost nothing, a faded pulsar, about eight kilometers across, cool and dark."
	Griffin pointed at the leftmost screen, which now showed a magnified star field.  At first Frenk didn't see anything, but then he noticed a distortion.  Near the center of the view there was a blank spot, like many other blank spots in the field, but the star pattern seemed to avoid this area a little more systematically as it slowly drifted by.  As he watched there was a slight motion and slight brightening of one of the stars on the edge of the blank spot, as it elongated into a tiny arc.
	She grinned.  "That was the microlensing event we caught last week.  The gravitational field of the neutron star is intense enough to warp space.  It isn't quite up to black hole standards, but it's close.  Now, switching to the far infra-red from the optical the little bugger will pop right out..."
	The X-bot anticipated her request and the picture was already changing.  The blank spot in the distortion, or rather a very tiny spot in the center of the blank spot, brightened to a dull red pinprick.
	"What are those things?" Frenk asked, pointing to a handful of faint specks around the neutron star.
	"Good eyes," Griffin said.  "Bela, stretch the contrast and bring in the supplemental bands."
	Faint red lines emerged from the specks, all converging toward a point off the screen to the right.  Griffin explained, "They beam microwaves, quite efficiently.  It was hard to see anything from them at all.  They drag cables as they orbit, at a different rate than the pulsar spin, and the star's magnetic fields induce a massive electrically current.  The Terawatts of electricity they produce is converted to microwaves and beamed away."
	"To where?"
	Frenk's question cued the next screen.  The faint red beams continued on their path from the first screen onto the second, forming a web-like pattern with its origin at a fuzzy but brightly glowing globe of gold.
	"The Spider Star," said Griffin.
	So there it was before him, finally, practically in real time.  Its golden heart is the source of all good and evil.  But mostly evil.  The heart of so much of his personal pain, the heart of the threat to his adopted home world, to his family.  A live glowing heart, beating in its web, nestled in those strings of power, orbiting a dark star, illuminating the gloom of this corner of infinite space.  A construct of an alien intelligence vastly older than humankind, similarly approached by another star-spanning race millions of years ago.  Had hope kindled brightly in their hearts at its sight?  Or had they felt the darkest desperation?
	Frenk felt both, and shivered.
	A box exploded from the Spider Star and filled the third screen, and the alien thing now loomed large -- larger -- before them.  A central sphere, the core of the thing, throbbed slowly, pulsing, with its golden energy.  A towering shaft speared the core lengthwise, a dark shaft several thousand kilometers long along the spin axis, metallic, seamlessly welded into the glow, glinting darkly, connecting to the surrounding arch of permanent night.  Six thin spikes thrust from the golden core into the equatorial plane in hexagonal pattern, each spike longer than the dark shaft, each thin and gleaming gold themselves, thickening to a knot at a thousand kilometers, then tapering to invisibility many more thousands of kilometers out.  Upon closer inspection he realized that one of the six arms was not lit as brightly as the others, but there didn't appear to be any obvious reason that should be so.  A power failure?  Fainter somewhat diffuse lines traced complex patterns between these spikes and the shaft, most concentrated at the knots, a gossamer network invisible to the telescopes orbiting Argo.  A fuzzy diffuse halo, wispy golds and darker clouds of gray, inhabited the voids among the gossamer, out to the knots in the spikes, twinkling to nonexistence beyond that limit.  Individual lights sparkled, some moving and some not, along the structure's features, an overtone to the golden pulse of the heart of the Spider Star.
	"It does indeed have an atmosphere," Bela offered to the overwhelming image.  "Many of the astrophysicists spent a lot of time fighting over that point.  They all agreed that the spectrum could not arise from any natural mix of gases under any simple set of physical conditions, but the exact nature was less clear.  We still don't know how the Spider Star can maintain such an atmosphere -- there simply doesn't appear to be enough mass even for something this large."
	"It doesn't matter."  Rusk said as he strode into the dimmed chamber.  "So the alien station has an atmosphere.  Perhaps there's a terrestrial core in the center outgassing this strange elemental mix of helium, oxygen, nitrogen, neon, and hydrogen.  Perhaps something else.  I'm sure this place has lots of puzzling features that we may or may not come to understand.  If it does matter, we will figure it out.  We'll achieve our goals in one way or another."
Frenk merely grunted at Rusk.  The man could have acknowledged him directly instead of coming in with an air of knowing, confident command.  That attitude irritated him, as he himself, older and just awake from his long slumber, felt akin to a blind man stumbling through a wet, slick cave.  Getting up a week earlier than him...
His irritation seeped away, vulnerable to the power of the image of the living Spider Star.  Irritation turned back to uncertainty, laced with awe and fear.  This thing projected before him, now so sharp and clear, itself a planet, an artificial planet that dwarfed all the achievements of humankind combined, loomed ominously and churned up childish emotions.  What were they, men and women, daring the galaxy?  What was humanity, what could mankind be, compared to civilizations millions of years old?  The Argonauts had been one thing.  Humans had commandeered their abandoned world and could take comfort in the superiority nature implicitly granted a species that survives compared to a species that extinguishes its own light forever.
Frenk realized his mouth was hanging open and decided he ought to do something with it.  "What's the plan?" he muttered.  "I mean, I know there isn't official protocol for this situation, but remind me what we'd planned."
Fogginess filled his head, made his words awkward.  Maybe the after-effects of hibernation also twisted his emotions toward the maudlin, aiding the alien construct in devastating his self-esteem, his very humanity.  Humanity meant nothing next to this.
Griffin answered, "We've been monitoring various chatter across the spectrum.  Some of it appears to be automated responses, but others are erratic, less regular, suggesting intelligent communication.  Nothing has been directed toward us, so far as we can tell.  We will broadcast greetings, with language primers, on detectable bands and await a response.  If there's no response, we'll launch spy satellites to study the Spider Star, probe its defenses, if any, and from those reports, construct an approach."
Rusk said, "They dealt with the Argonauts, they'll deal with us."
How could he be so confident?  That was millions of years ago, Millions, before Homo Sapiens even existed.  Entire species could evolve over that time span.  And moreover, they'd dealt with the Argonauts but their gift had been as deadly as the Trojan Horse.  Deadlier: it was still alive and held the potential to drive two civilizations extinct on Argo.
Frenk, stupefied, finally said simply, "Okay."
What a meaningless word!  An acquiescence to passivity, an acknowledgment of ignorance, a great big nothing.  He let it stand.  What else could he do now, here?  He'd set out with great determination to do the right thing, to protect his loved ones, to protect his own kind on its perilous perch 30 light-years from Earth.  Nothing could protect him now, the entire Dark Heart, if they made a misstep.  They were an ant coming to an elephant.
"Okay," he repeated to this impossible alien monstrosity that confronted them.  "Okay."

	
Chapter 11

Orbiting the Unknown

Rusk paced.  Rusk exercised.  Rusk supervised the end of crew hibernation.  Rusk made lists of all sorts.  Rusk reported to Klingston.  Rusk rubbed his chin between thumb and forefinger.  But after their messages went out, the Spider Star remained silent.
The Dark Heart woke up.  The Specialists regained their physical form and mental acuity.  The ship was checked and rechecked, adjusted, and checked again, until all was exactly as it should be.
Still, the Spider Star remained silent.
Sitting with Griffin in one of the lounges, the entertainment system off, he fretted.  "We're approaching, closer every second.  It does nothing, says nothing.  We'll fly by it.  We have to do something."
She answered, "We can swing around the pulsar -- not too close mind you -- and approach a second time."
"And if it remains silent?"
"We'll have to attack, of course," she said, flashing a rare smile.
Her joke irritated him.  It wasn't a practical course of action, and the situation did not call for levity.  "It taunts me, and tasks me.  The spysats must go, and soon."
She frowned, a little.  "I suppose.  If they haven't responded to our broadcasts, they're not likely to be concerned about some small fly-bys.  Still, I worry about it."
"You worry about everything."
"Want me to stop?"
	"Of course not.  That would worry me."  He didn't even smile at his small joke, and went silent, pondering for a moment.  "Perhaps not knowing what to do now is acceptable.  We may soon learn things that suggest our next step."
"We may."
He pondered some more.  "Perhaps Klingston has a notion."
"That was the official reason to bring him along.  He's had this sort of problem before.  Dealing with aliens.  Perhaps he will be useful."
That wasn't quite true, but she didn't know the whole story, the details underlying the fiction the government had spun to make Klingston a hero.  Okay, he didn't either, but he knew enough.  The man had simply been bold and lucky -- he accepted Klingston at face value there -- and who would downplay such an achievement?  He would be happy to know the truth.  It would make his power grabs easier to justify.  It wasn't like Klingston was fighting their suggestions much.  Still, if an opportunity presented itself, he would divorce Klingston from as much power as he could.
Rusk said, "Well, we have a ship full of brilliant, well-trained people.  Someone will have an idea.  We'll collect the data, analyze it, and perhaps that will lead to some ideas about how to proceed.  We will simply choose from among the best ideas.  It's an elementary plan."

Rusk met with the primary probe technician, a woman named  Tanner Mistelle, who preferred her last name to her first; Gerald helped him connect the name and face, and her preference, a little more difficult following two decades of hibernation than he cared to admit.  At least he hadn't slept with her and forgotten...he thought.  He remembered her best as the impressive line on his spreadsheet that had plusses or checks under column headings for reconnaissance probes, space environment, feedback control systems, celestial mechanics, global positioning, and remote sensing.  They conferred about the details of the probe flights and contingency plans in the event of alien activity.
He did not permit himself to dwell on the concept of "alien activity."  One thing at a time.
The plan was to send one probe as a flyby to reconnoiter the far side of the Spider Star.  This probe would approach first and most quickly, laser back data from its telescopes, magnetometers, spectrographs, accelerometers, and other instruments.  It would fire a small rocket with enough impulse for it to coast to a position on the far side and monitor.  They would then launch eight slow probes toward the eight extremities of the station.  These probes would creep in simultaneously on cautious trajectories, ease in, and, using one of several technologies, attach.  From these locations the probes could sample and test the station material, provide close monitoring, and serve as global positioning relays.
Mistelle seemed giddy with delight at her task, but Rusk managed to resist the urge to reprimand her.  He smiled instead, thinking how Griffin would be pleased with him.  He could advise Klingston to formally reprimand her if there were the slightest problem, and let the old man bring any alienation on himself.
At the appointed time, everyone assembled in the assembly hall.  The flyby would take many hours, but Rusk knew that it would be good for the group dynamics for everyone to be on hand and discuss their options.  Research had shown that after long periods of hibernation, crew members became lonely and disconnected despite the close quarters of the den and the usual one-on-one recreation most indulged in.  Standard policy urged large social events with lots of food: a party.
The fifty crew members and the dozen X-bots mingled in the hall.  The humans snacked on freshly harvested fruit and soy sticks.  The X-bots congregated among themselves, connecting together with broad-band cables and flashing through their legion of personalities as they caught up on the scientific discoveries they had picked up from the Argo feed.
It was indeed becoming a real party, he realized: an arrival party to celebrate the end of the long winter of their voyage through space and time without major incident, an excuse to get everyone together and motivated before events would force them into their separate roles.
With this good-looking, multi-talented crew before him, Rusk resisted feeling pride.  He knew it was there, but it would serve no purpose at the moment.  In fact, he himself had warned everyone in several speeches before launch that humility would likely serve them better.  They would do the best they could, and they would succeed as the Argonauts had before, but alien civilizations spanning megayears would certainly dwarf their knowledge and capabilities.  He knew that, intellectually.
Rusk found Klingston and hovered nearby to monitor him and his conversations.  Rusk smiled as much as he could stand.  The young, Argo-born Specialists had never been far from home, let alone close to twenty light-years, and there was a novelty of accomplishment in the air based on their travel alone.  Rusk himself didn’t think much of it -- he'd expected to engage in a deep space mission for his whole life.  Why should someone feel accomplishment in what one expects?
He was disappointed in most of the conversation.  Brilliant people were prone to idle, useless speculation in amazing quantities.  Questions discussed ranged from the thoughtful sort like "Do you think this system's unusual Galactic orbit indicates the Spider Star is isolated from its parent civilization?" to the foolish like "Over millions of years these aliens must evolve, right?"  Rusk smiled, and remained silent.  Why would any evolution necessarily occur in a controlled environment?  He wouldn't speculate.  They didn't know enough yet.
Klingston did though.  He'd get these faraway looks and ramble on about so many things, using language that Rusk categorized as 'poetic.'  Did he honestly think that was leadership?  This wasn't a job for poets.  This was a job for pragmatists who were prepared to do what was necessary.  Rusk would make sure that happened, one way or another.
The ship computer announced, "Anomalous data received."
The X-bots disengaged and scuttled to the Specialist most appropriate to help interpret the unusual data: Mistelle.
Rusk jostled across the room to stand at her elbow while Gerald talked to her.  Annoyingly, they whispered to each other.  What was going on?
Mistelle giggled.  "I so knew it!"
"What?" Rusk asked.
"The Spider Star is big."
Of course it was.  It occupied a volume similar to that of Earth's moon.  What was she trying to tell him?
"The flyby probe is deviating from its course.  A lot.  The deviation is consistent with the Spider Star being massive, about half an Earth mass."
Half an Earth mass?  That couldn't be right.  This was a huge artifact, but there sure wasn't much mass to be seen in the images.  Not enough to measure in planetary masses, anyway.  How could this be?
She went on, glancing at the updated information feeding into her tablet.  "More accurately, the Spider Star masses just under sixty percent an Earth mass."
Sure, the thing was huge, but it was a network of material, a flimsy web of stuff.  The filling factor couldn't be more than a fraction of a percent, and the density had to be in the neighborhood of metallic densities, something like 10 grams per cubic centimeter.  There just wasn't enough stuff there to mass so much.
Mistelle continued, thinking aloud.  "We didn't know the precise orbital angle of the system, or the mass of the neutron star well enough, to figure out the mass of the Spider Star itself from Doppler shift curves.  But we'll be able to confirm using that method soon."
Indeed, that was how the mass of most extrasolar planets had first been determined.  Getting the inclination was the hardest part usually, unless the system was edge on and seen to eclipse.  When you measured the Doppler shift of an orbiting body, you never knew for sure if you were seeing the result of a nearly maximal Doppler shift in an edge-on orbit, or a minimal projected velocity resulting from a nearly face-on orbit.  Face-on orbits had to be watched for long time periods with the highest precision astrometry.
There wasn't enough data to figure the thing out, not just yet.  Rusk decided not to worry about impossibilities now.  He would deal with facts.  Fine then, the alien station was massive.  He could therefore think of it as a planet, even if it was not a proper planet, at least for the purposes of orbital dynamics -- they could orbit the Spider Star.  Some smart person here would figure out what was going on soon enough.  He asked Mistelle, "Can we convert the flyby to an orbital insertion?"
	She whispered to Gerald.  While she was doing so, Klingston sidled up to their group, followed by his personal X-bot Marlo.  "What's happening?" he asked.
Rusk said nothing.  Let Klingston weigh in and demand information be repeated, thus annoying Mistelle.  He was Director, he could take over.  It was his official job.
She piped up happily, "The Spider Star masses half as much as Earth."
"Hmm," said Klingston.  "We didn't expect that, did we?"
"No, we didn't!  Isn't it exciting!"
"Hmm," said Klingston.  "Marlo, go fetch Tod, Richard, and Sally over here, will you?  Oh, and Einstein, too."
Rusk thought hard.  He tended not to think of the crew in terms of their first names, but he gave Klingston points for doing so.  He dredged up exactly who they were through sheer force of will.  Tod Salerno was an expert on Argonaut history and in interpreting their recordings, Richard Murdock was a true genius who had made astounding intuitive leaps in several fields of science, and Sally...Sally had been one of the last picks for the crew from the specialist ranks.  She didn't have unique expertise like Tod, or brilliance like Richard.  Sally had earned her berth through a persistent pattern of dogged logic.  During one of her interviews she had confessed that her hero had been Sherlock Holmes, a mythical scientist who ruthlessly applied logic in search of the truth, no matter how outlandish that truth might be.  In the unorthodox exams the Corp applied, she had found solutions no one else could, including Richard and his type, even though she failed many other tests.  She was along because she provided the perfect compliment to almost everyone else on board.
Einstein was the X-bot loaded with the patterns of Earth's greatest dozen physical scientists of the half-century prior to their most recent dump to Argo.  Einstein would be able to quantitatively test and confirm any ideas the Specialists proposed.
While Rusk prided himself on never underestimating anyone, or anything, he admired Klingston's approach under these circumstances.
Rusk thought to go check in with Griffin, but when he turned away from the group Klingston put a hand on his shoulder.  "Stick around," the older man said.  "We might need you."
The gesture and the words filled Rusk with mixed emotions.  It felt surprisingly good for this old man to reach out to him like that, to make an effort to make him feel important in a way Rusk's own father had never done.  Rusk's father had counted himself lucky to have made the Argo expedition and had never had higher aspirations, and could never fathom them in his son.  As a result, Rusk had never respected him much, and had often ignored him when he'd grown old enough.
Klingston was a rival and Rusk made sure to keep that fact in mind, always.
Klingston's hand-picked group assembled, and began to talk.  Mistelle filled them in on the probe's flight path -- she was obtaining more digits on her mass estimate as the trajectory continued to be consistent with an inverse square law and a large gravitational mass.
Rusk watched and listened as each contributed to the course of discussion, each displaying great listening abilities and managing to contribute where they were able.
Rusk even found himself interjecting points to further the conversation.  His particular niche was instigator.  When conversation stalled, or started up what appeared to be blind alleys, he couldn't resist nudging them back on course.  He normally preferred to think of his primary attribute as leadership, but instigation was closer to the truth in this circumstance.
Was he also a tool in Klingston's hands?  Was Klingston everything the triumvirate had promised, and more?
He ignored the dark thoughts and elected to focus on the group effort, to solve the mystery presented to them.
"Einstein, the real Einstein not this X-bot," Richard was saying, "proposed that the effects of gravity were indistinguishable from the effects of acceleration in his elevator thought experiment.  Given his argument, still recognized as valid in the macroscopic limit, even light became subject to gravity."
Rusk himself was talented, very talented.  The Richards of the Corps were useful as tools, means to an end, but not as leaders.  Rusk sensed that this was a dead end.  Tod had been pretty quiet throughout the discussion, but Rusk seconded Klingston's intuition to include him here.  The man likely didn't know much about gravity or acceleration, but he knew several versions of the Argonaut accounts of their experience with the Spider Star.  "What was it the Argonauts said about the 'placeness' of the Spider Star again?  Not just the children's tale, but that other thing?"
Tod cleared his throat and said, "The translation isn't all that accurate.  There's a technical term that doesn't appear often in other parts of the archival record."
"So tell us what you can, already," Richard urged.
Tod closed his eyes, briefly, wrinkled his blonde eyebrows, and recited: "The eight-legged place is of course a place, but it is a place having weight not of this world, a weighty place, that encompasses more than one world.  The placeness of the eight-legged place is more than unity."
"That sounds like a crappy, high-school level translation," Sally said, snorting.
Einstein said, "The translation is consistent with our best accurate understanding."
Tod smiled.  "We know the Argonaut language, major parts of a couple of the major ones anyway.  There's no one alive who is fluent, however."  He neatly avoided coming across defensively, which Rusk admired.
"Does that mean anything to you, Mistelle?" Rusk asked.  He hoped they could connect the historical documents with some semblance of physical reality, otherwise it was useless.
"No," she said.  "But I suppose it requires a contemporary definition of 'placeness.'  I imagine it's possible that there are no direct translations for some terms from one alien language to another."
There was a moment of silence, a fleeting sense of doom engendered by the notion of an impossible obstacle in such a simple thing as language.  Maybe it was not so simple.
Richard said, "What if they've built around a condensed object?  We can't see to the center of this atmosphere.  We can't see past this golden glow in the center of the Spider Star.  What if there is another neutron star hidden at the center, or even a black hole.  They could dump their garbage on it for fuel."
"But then why would they need the power satellites?" Sally said.  "And besides, half an Earth mass would make for a pretty unlikely white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole, wouldn't it?"
That was all true, and the group settled back to silence, thinking.  During this pause, Gerald hopped up to whisper in Mistelle's ear.  "What?" she squawked.
Everyone waited for more information.
Mistelle stared off, intently, as she processed the information she was receiving.  "Apparently the probe orbit is off.  The gravitational mass is not concentrated at the center of the Spider Star.  Kepler's third law isn't holding."
"Well then," Sally said.  "There it is."
Everyone stared at her, until Richard said, "Right!"
Klingston said, "Mind filling us slower types in on the obvious?"
Sally turned to Klingston and touched his shoulder.  "The probe trajectory confirms a large gravitational mass, consistent with the retention of an atmosphere, even though the space station we see isn't massive enough to account for it.  The mass can't be some sort of condensed object inside the core of the Spider Star, the close orbit says, since the mass is distributed.  Ergo, we have an extended mass we can't see.  It must be a form of dark matter."
Rusk never liked people using terms like 'ergo' in normal conversation.  Why not just say 'therefore?'  Still, he liked the irony here.  "You of all people should have thought of it."
"Yes," said Richard. "It all makes sense.  This system matches an evolved black widow pulsar.  In certain binary systems, one of the stars is more massive and evolves faster, finally going supernova.  The supernova doesn't destroy the secondary star, but its remnant, a young, very hot neutron star, if close enough, can, over time, blow away its companion -- literally.  It only takes about a billion years."
"So how does that give us a dark matter planet?" Klingston asked.
Sally spoke, looking at Klingston.  "We know that at least eleven types of dark matter exist, mostly WIMPs -- weakly interacting massive particles.  Some, like neutrinos, aren't very massive, and we've know about them a long time.  Others, like the aetherons we collect in the dark drive, no one knew much about before you showed up with the alien device.  Three of the types we know of can clump and self-interact.  One of those types condensed at the core of the secondary star, and when the pulsar ablated it away to nothingness, the dark matter remained."
"So the aliens built their colossal station in the middle of gravity sink, just floating around this pulsar, millions of years ago?" Rusk asked.
"Apparently," said Richard.
"A dark matter planet!" Sally squeezed Klingston's arm.  "Isn't it amazing?"
Klingston stepped back from her grasp, not too abruptly, to ask Mistelle something.  Interesting.
Mistelle said loudly, "From the preliminary orbital elements the extent of the dark matter is about 5000 kilometers, something like five times farther out than the normal matter atmosphere.  I can't tell yet if the density profile is constant with a sharp edge, like a solid planet, or drops off continuously, like a gaseous sphere.  That would help us understand what the stuff is."
"So," said Rusk.  He noticed that their group had drawn the attention of much of the crew who hovered about listening for news.  "We come looking for an alien space station, and find a dark planet with a golden glow as well.  I'll take that as a bonus."
"Indeed, it is remarkable," said Klingston.  "But we must always keep uppermost in our mind why we are here."
We're going to save the world, Rusk remembered telling Klingston.  But they were also on the singular expedition of their time and Rusk couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
Tod said, "Say, I know we're broadcasting primes and all the other first-contact protocol and such, but are we sending anything in any Argonaut dialects?"
"No," said Klingston.  "But that's a good idea.  Gerald, take care of it."
The X-bot bobbed away to consult with the linguists and communications experts.
The party rolled on, an inefficient but powerful information processing network, a web of deduction.  Rusk made the rounds to touch base with everyone -- until they knew what they would encounter everyone here was potentially very important and needed to be monitored and stroked.  News of the dark matter planet diffused throughout the room and others contributed to fleshing out the details.  The secondary probes attached to the Spider arms, as planned, and even more data flowed in.  Rusk occasionally saw connections among different groups and brought them together to facilitate synergies among ideas.  He fancied himself a webmaster of sorts.
Their information about the Spider Star and its environment doubled every hour, and at some stage Griffin broke up the gaggle of X-bots and had them coordinate the incoming discoveries on a central schematic overlaying the live camera feed.  Size scales went up first, then luminosities and energy fluxes in a number of wavebands.  Masses, velocities, temperatures, composition, and more, sprouted from the diagram like a living, growing tree, with new branches reaching for illumination.  It became apparent, for instance, that one of the arms didn't have the same activity and power output as others did.  People had fun arguing whether that was intentional or due to breakdowns.
The probes started beaming back high-resolution images, scanning the fields of view of their telescopes down into the Spider Star.  Hundred-kilometer high cloudscapes scattered light burrowing out from the core in some regions, while in others thunderheads flashed lightning at irregular intervals.  They glimpsed platforms covered by mirrors shining light onto textured fields of green and maroon -- vegetation, or even crops, some argued.  Straight, transparent tubes come into focus, connecting some of the platforms at the same level on different arms, filled with lights that moved back and forth, with the highest velocities in between the platforms.  Voices bubbled in excitement when some dark specks flashed by; conversations buzzed about whether or not it had been a flock of alien birds.  Every moment brought a new discovery and a new mystery.
Standing before his command chair on the central dais, Klingston clapped his hands and shouted for attention.  "Head's up, everyone!  We're receiving a frequency-modulated RF broadcast.  It's in an Argonaut dialect."
Cheers spontaneously erupted from several quarters, although there was not general cheering.  Rusk himself felt pensive, cautious.  Elation was unwarranted without further information.  What did this alien message say?
Klingston bent forward to listen to an X-bot, then rose up to his full height, grinning, and held up a hand to quiet the hum of nervous conversations.  "Apparently we have been invited to dock." 
About time my real career got underway, Rusk thought.

	
Chapter 12

The Shut Door

	"I still say we shouldn't just blindly do everything we're told," Griffin persisted.  Why was it always so hard to make the type-A personalities of Specialists listen to caution?  They were as eager as new-born puppies that didn't know that pumas or granduluks existed.
	Klingston and Rusk exchanged a quick glance, an annoying degree of understanding visibly passing between them.
	"Noted," Klingston said.  "This is at least a ten-million-year old artifact displaying technology light-years beyond ours.  We're docking exactly as instructed."
	Annoyingly, Rusk kept his arms crossed and appeared quite determined not to make any objections.
	Griffin decided to make one final effort.  "How can we dock 'exactly' as requested?  Our understanding of ancient Argonaut languages is far from perfect.  How many untranslated words did we have in the transmission?
	Klingston looked to Tod.
	Tod shrugged.  "I don't know how we're going to get a better translation whether we wait five minutes, five hours, or five days."
	"Let's do it then."
	Griffin glowered at Klingston.
	He actually noticed.  Rusk would have likely ignored her once the decision had been made.  Klingston asked, "Would it make you feel better if we had an armed force held in reserve."
	Yes, she admitted to herself, even if that might seem foolish in face of the Spider Star.  But should she press Klingston for it?  Would he think less of her and her insecurity?  No, she decided, she had earned her berth on the Dark Heart, and if she didn't express her ideas, she might as well not be there.  "Yes, it would."
	Klingston nodded.  "I want all the Argonaut experts, linguists, philosophers, and negotiators with me.  Anyone that doesn't fit those categories with skills you deem useful are yours to prep.  Okay?"
	"Okay," she said, not feeling as foolish as she feared.
	Klingston had Rusk assemble a group to manage the docking itself, including Donovan, the pilot, assorted engineers, and most of the X-bots.
	Between Rusk, Klingston, and Griffin, they divided up everyone and every bot.  Griffin ended up with Jack Robb, Derik Nyquist, Gretchen Persson, Adrian Slyde, Tom Tolbert, and the X-bot called Drone.
	She singled them out and hauled them down to the armory.  The Dark Heart sported a fully military-quality armory, circa at least the twenty-fourth century, including a wide variety of smart armors and projectile weapons.  She had everyone check out their preferred set of defensive and offensive armaments.  They didn't question her as much as she feared they might.
	In the briefing she said, "We have no idea what we're going to face, and in all likelihood this preparation step is unnecessary.  God, I hope so.  But we'll be ready to handle something on the scale we can deal with.  If something goes wrong at a level larger than that, we'll, we were screwed before we started."
	"Amen," said Tolbert.
	A few other muttered agreement.  What else could they do?
#
	Using chemical rockets, the Dark Heart approached the designated spoke of the Spider Star.
	Their docking point was at a co-rotating point at an altitude of some 3000 kilometers, what would have been a geosynchronous orbit if they'd been docking at a planet.  Given the mass they were orbiting, Kepler's third law gave a solution for an orbital period.  Geosynchronous orbit happened where the orbital period matched the length of the day.  It was no different for the Spider Star in the sense that the alien space station had a revolutionary period relative to the background stars.
	It did not have a day the way planets did.  It's star, the black widow pulsar, had cooled rapidly after going supernova. Now tiny, the size of a city, it radiated as a faint ember in the far infrared.  The visible light for the Spider Star emanated from its core, which seemed to glow continuously, meaning that there was no day/night period directly related to the revolution.  And for anyone standing on a solid platform someplace on the station, the sun was down in the sky, not up. 
	They were still above the atmosphere proper, and drag forces were not large.  Simple orbital mechanics guided their approach.
	Griffin and her team monitored the maneuver from a staging area adjacent to their primary hanger that served as a storage area and would become a real hanger if they nanofactured shuttles or other scout vehicles.  They were prepped with battle armor and three kinds of weapons each, and she hoped they were a completely unnecessary precaution.
	Donovan announced, "Final burn in five...four...three...two...one."
	They had killed the Dark Heart's rotation, leaving them all in free fall.  This last final thrust made everyone not holding on to an anchor drift toward one of the walls.
	And that was it.  The designated entry port steadily grew larger as they closed at the requested speed of 2.2 meters per second.
	Many things could go wrong at this point.  They could have done the conversion wrong (such things, involving not only the same species but the same nation of spacefarers, had occurred previously in human history!)  Their docking port could differ too greatly from the Argonaut type.  The docking system could have deteriorated over the span of cosmic time.  Their mass and momentum could be too far from designed specifications.
	Klingston hadn't seem overly concerned, the cocky bastard.
	As the distance diminished, a spot on the Spider Star grew iridescent, the gray metallic surface shimmering with multiple rainbows, and then it moved, bulging toward them.  The ballooning region split into eight pseudopodia, like a giant amoebae reaching toward them, arrayed in a circular pattern with a hollow interior.  The pseudopodia stretched, thinned, and transformed into squirming tendrils, growing through space like plants viewed with time-lapse turning toward the lights that surrounded the port of the Dark Heart.
	The eight tendrils twisted around their circle, becoming an eight-fold coil, or spring.  The Dark Heart and the tendrils gently collided.
	There was another lurch, slighter than the last rocket burn, and in the opposite direction.  Then...nothing.  No force, no gravity.  They were in free fall again.
	"It's got us," Slyde said, "As soft as a kitten's fur."
	And it did.  The exterior cameras showed a steady image, with the tendrils, and the hull of the Spider Star some 20 meters or so beyond, neither growing nor shrinking in apparent size.
	"How'd they do that?" Griffin wondered aloud.
	Nyquist, who in addition to his California-style martial arts expertise, was an innovative materials chemist, said, "If it were me, I'd do it with van der Waals forces, like Gecko pads, but they've probably got something better than that."
	They continued to watch the cameras.  Light filtered up from the Spider Star, through the branchy tendrils, and cast weird shadows.  The strange lighting made it difficult to see the next step until it was well underway.
	"Look there," Griffin said, pointing.
	The light diminished as they watched, not like a door shutting, but more of a steady dimming.  A thin, gauzy, something grew between the tendrils, wispiness thickening into solid wall.  Griffin felt the scene to be unclean, watching this growing thing, this tunnel, that brought images of funnel webs to mind.
	"Switching camera three to night vision and camera four to thermal," Mistelle announced.
	Pulsing, warm veins networked between the tendrils, colder darker shapes filling the spaces between -- solid, but less active.  As they watched, the heat pattern changed, inverted, as the colder less active regions flared into warmth, and the previously active veins rapidly cooled.
	A few more seconds, and the pattern began to fade as temperatures equalized, or perhaps a layer of insulation grew.  It wasn't immediately clear to Griffin just from watching.
	Orange lights -- visible light -- blinked on at the other end of the tunnel.  There also came a sound, a hissing, over the Dark Heart's speakers.
	"That's for real," Mistelle said.  "We're picking up sounds.  The Spider Star is pressurizing the tunnel.  There's some kind of air in there now."
	Klingston's voice whispered into Griffin's ear on a private channel.  "Suit your group up as if you were prepping for tactical maneuvers in a space environment -- that is, no breathable atmosphere, no matter what our instruments indicate.  I hope we don't need you, but be ready and let me know when you are."
	Griffin acknowledged him and began implementing his orders.  No one complained or questioned the breathing and pressure gear.  They'd expected that, although after the announcement about the tunnel being pressurized it seemed possibly redundant.
	Another five minutes passed, and, as Griffin's team was nearing full readiness, Mistelle came on again.  "Tunnel conditions have reached equilibrium.  Pressure is eighty-two percent Agotian sea-level standard.  Temperature is 210 Kelvin. Composition is mostly molecular nitrogen, 63 percent, a major minority of molecular oxygen, 31 percent, with trace amounts of carbon dioxide, water, and other non-toxic gases.  Relative humidity is 15 percent."
	Like living in the mountains, Griffin thought.  Not all that bad considering this place was light-years away from any mountains.
	Klingston followed right on top of Mistelle's analysis: "We've just gotten our welcome.  The atmosphere provided is consistent with that of Argo, and not too dissimilar from Earth.  We can breathe in that tunnel, and likely beyond as well.  Let's go meet our welcoming committee."
	Klingston sounded genuinely optimistic and cheerful -- about the only time she could recall feeling those emotions from his words in the entire time she'd known him.
	"We're still on call," she told her team.  "Klingston goes in there and has problems, he's going to need us."
	She garnered positive responses.
	After a time, Klingston announced that he and a small group would enter the tunnel and approach the Spider Star.
	Here it comes, Griffin thought.  The big moment is approaching.
	She received another private communication from Klingston instructing her to remain in a support position, where they were, so they could either rapidly follow Klingston's people, or exit the Dark Heart into space for exterior mobility.
	She assented and they watched the historic moment on the head's up displays of their armored helmets.
	A few moments later, the cameras showed the back of Klingston's head, then the rest of his body, as he floated forward, unencumbered with breathing gear, arms outstretched, fingers spread wide, feeling his way into the unknown.  Three others floated behind him -- Kelly, Madrona, and Funderburke she recognized -- carrying pieces of recording equipment, including lights and microphones.  Safety lines trailed behind them, flying about in wild patterns in the absence of a significant gravitational pull.
	"I bet their hearts are racing," Robb said.
	Griffin knew hers was.  Their medical personnel were monitoring their vital signs for the earliest hint of dangerous conditions, but she didn't know how they'd be able to tell what could be expected to be normal under these circumstances.
	"I don't know if you can see it," Klingston's voice came, sounding uncertain and slightly choked, "but these walls are reflecting tiny rainbows.  I'd say it was pretty, but it reminds me of looking at oil sludge."
	She couldn't quite make out the effect on the monitor she was watching.
	"Thin films," Nyquist offered aloud to the group.  "He's probably seeing interference patterns.  Makes sense.  Growing a tunnel like that so fast could only be nano-tech working at atomic levels, building layer by layer."
	Klingston and the others had reached the far end of the tunnel, had touched it in fact, killing their momentum to stop before it.
	Klingston said, "We're at the end now.  I was somewhat concerned that the surface here might be too cold, or too hot, to the touch, but it felt soft and slightly warm.  No shock, nothing like that.  I don't know what the material is.  It isn't metal, although it appears so at a casual glance."
	He was nervous, she realized, and was providing a running commentary about what he was experiencing as a cover.  That was a smart, professional thing to do.
	"The orange lights are diffuse, emanating from a broad ring about three meters in diameter.  They're part of the surface, too.  That is, the material just emits light in this pattern."
	"What would you like to do now?"  Rusk asked on the open channel.  It was the obvious question.  The invitation to dock had not included an instructions about boarding, just docking."
	"Sally, give everyone a video feed," Klingston said.
	Griffin picked up the new video and now she could see the surface as well as Klingston could.  Better perhaps; she had digital zoom.  The zoom didn't help much.  The surface seemed perfectly smooth, but not shiny, the color of slate except for the orange light.
	"I'm going to touch it again," Klingston said.  He reached to his side with his left hand, holding onto one of the veiny structures of the tunnel wall, and with his right hand he reached to the surface of the Spider Star.
	Klingston's fingers brushed across the surface, leaving no marks.  "It still feels warm and pliant," he reported.  "I'm going to push a little harder."
	Griffin zoomed in on the feed from Sally Madrona's camera until she could see the individual blonde hairs on the back of Klingston's hand standing straight up.  His fingers bunched together, as if he were pressing a big button.  His fingers slipped into the Spider Star.
	"Whoa!" he said, and yanked his hand back free.
	Griffin's zoomed image remained on the again smooth surface, which revealed no evidence that it had just sucked in a man's fingers.
	"That was interesting," said Klingston.  "I'm going to do that again."
	That was not the response Griffin would have had, she was positive.  Typically male.
	Slowly Klingston moved his hand forward, pressed against the surface, and into the surface.  His fingers sank in.  "It feels strange.  Not unpleasant in any way.  No significant pressure, or heat, or cold.  There is a slight tingling in the tips of my fingers, perhaps a tiny suction."
	His hand slipped further inside, to the wrist, and a little beyond.  "I don't think this thing is solid.  I mean, I don't know what the surface material is, although it appears solid.  I think...whoa!"
	Frenk had continued to push his arm forward, and when he was in up to his elbow he suddenly let go of his grip on the tunnel wall and fell forward.  The surface swallowed him up, nearly instantly.  He was gone, except for his tether, which emerged from the station's smooth hull.
	The tether then snapped, and wiggled back, waving, toward the Dark Heart.
	Frenk was gone, just gone.  His chip was sending them no vitals of any sort.
	"Let's move it, people!" she shouted at her team, wondering what they'd gotten themselves into.

	
Chapter 13

Alien Colors

	"Easy, Sloan," Rusk whispered to Griffin on a direct channel even as he himself tensed.  He felt bad immediately countermanding her order, but she was obviously keyed up and not being as cautious for her own sake as she should be.  "Give it a few seconds."
	He started to count to ten, anticipating letting her go if he reached to ten, although he thought himself more likely to start a second ten count.
	When he got to "eight" At "eight" a hand pushed out of the hull and flashed an "okay" sign.
	Rusk let out his breath.
	While part of him wanted to let Klingston fail, so he could take over himself, he didn't want humans to experience failure here in these critical first steps.  He also had to admit that he found himself respecting Klingston bit by bit as he got to know him, and really didn't want anything to befall him.  And even more altruistically, which surprised him for the strength of the feeling, he knew that here, so many light-years from the nearest humans facing the prospect of encountering an entire alien civilization, he would root for any human being, no matter even if he loathed them.  Call him a speciest.
	A moment later Frenk popped out whole and unharmed.  "We need to get one of these!"
	Rusk broke in, stern.  "What's going on, Frenk?"
	Frenk sighed.  "Come and see."
	"You've lost your tether," Madrona said.
	Frenk looked around, then down at the sheared line floating from his belt.  "So I have.  Hmm.  We'll have to watch that."
	Frenk turned as if to go back inside, seemingly distracted by thoughts he wasn't expressing.
	"Frenk," Rusk said on a direct channel.  Klingston's chip and I/O devices were on radio frequencies and the direct person-to-person query would work just fine without the tether. "What's going on?"
	He responded on an open channel.  "Come on in with us, Manuel, and bring Richard Murdock, too, if you would, and why not make it a party?  Bring Marlo along."
	Then the bastard kicked off against the wall and vanished into the Spider Star again. His recording team followed him.
	Despite his earlier altruistic thoughts, Rusk labeled them all bastards and bitches.  Everyone was dying here to know what was on the other side of that hull and Klingston hadn't told them!
	At least he would see soon.  He rendezvoused with Murdock and Klingston's X-bot and made for the airlock and the alien tunnel.  On the way he put Griffin officially in charge and told her to use his best judgement, and that he'd send back a timely report with more detail than their Director had.
	"What do you think's going on?" Murdock asked him.
	"I don't know," Rusk said honestly, and it made him feel sick.
	They came to the hull, killing their forward momentum deftly as had Klingston's group a few minutes earlier.  Rusk had a moment of trepidation -- he was contemplating walking through a wall, after all -- but if Klingston could do it so could he.  "Come on you two."
	Rusk did as Klingston had, using the textured wall for something to push against and leaned into the Spider Star.  At first he thought something was wrong, that they were cut off from Klingston, and then he felt a tugging sensation from his entire body -- every part.  It was uncanny, but before he had time to contemplate it, he was moving.  He felt a force, and was worried that it felt like falling, and here he was going more or less face first.  The light changed from orange to a dim red, and then brightened to a cheerful gold.
	And he was someplace else.
	Just like that, without the sensation of actually touching anything, or the sensation of not being able to breathe, or see even.  Murdock and the X-bot popped up next to him.
	Rusk had tried to avoid having expectations after Klingston's non-explanation, but in all the years voyaging to the Spider Star he had never quite expected the reception he saw before him.
	Nothing.
	He was in an empty, circular room -- not spherical, with glowing walls.  Klingston and his three companions were the only objects apparent at first glance.
	Rusk took a mental step back.  There was cool air in the room, too, that seemed to match what he'd breathed in the docking tunnel.  They'd seen lights, power grids, evidence of occupation and activity.  He knew the place wasn't abandoned.  It couldn't be.
	"Ten million years is a long time," Klingston said, echoing his own fears, but not his beliefs.
	That's why Klingston hadn't said anything when he'd come back out.  He'd been preoccupied with the notion that their trip had been a waste.  That wasn't what Rusk thought, not yet, anyway.
	Rusk's first thought was quarantine.  That's what he would do with unexpected alien visitors.  Put them in a box and figure out how dangerous -- or interesting -- they were before interacting with them directly.  But still, nevertheless, for better or worse, they had their entry into the parlor of the Spider Star.  It just happened to be empty.
	"This is fantastic," said Murdock, seemingly enthusiastic despite the circumstances.  "I wonder what else they have in here."
	Rusk exchanged a look with Klingston.  Were they missing something?  "What do you mean, Richard?"
	The man was brilliant, which was why he'd been selected, but he seemed to be missing the point here, didn't he?  They were alone after all, and that was obvious, wasn't it?
	Murdock kicked off across the room in the general direction of Klingston, but drifted past him.  He was looking around, arms and legs spread and waving, as he drifted across.  He said something, but it was hard to hear him in the low pressure, especially with him facing away.
	"What?" asked Rusk.
	Murdock turned and yelled.  "The technology here is fully functional without needing form."
	It could be, Rusk thought, but still leaned toward his quarantine idea.  He didn't feel like floating that proposal since, if it were true, there wouldn't be much to do about it anyway.
	"We're still stuck in an empty room," Klingston said.
"Maybe it’s a puzzle," Madrona suggested.  "You know, a literal entrance exam."
"Or worse," Kelly said.  "It's the equivalent of a door latch to super-intelligent aliens, and we're too stupid to even recognize it as such."
"Maybe not stupid," said Murdock.  "Maybe we simply lack the right senses.  The outside entry was color coded.  I wonder if the interior might be as well."
	That was an interesting take on things, Rusk admitted.  Maybe he and Klingston had both made too many assumptions already.  Funny how that was possible in an instant.  More than possible.  Murdock's idea got Rusk to thinking.  From what they knew of the ancient Argonauts, they had a visual range that exceed that of humans.  Humans could see wavelengths from about 400 nanometers -- violet light -- to about 700 nanometers -- red light.  Pollux, before it had exhausted its hydrogen and swelled to become a red giant, had been hotter than the sun, with more blue light than yellow light.  After the transition to giant status, it was cooler than Earth's sun, with more red light than yellow light.  The Argonauts had evolved with keen blue sensitivity, but from what they'd been able to discern in the recordings, they'd altered their genome to give themselves sensitivity to see deeper into the near-infrared part of the spectrum.
	Whether or not the room was color-coded for Argonauts specifically, or just a species with a different visual range than humans, wasn't important.  The question was whether or not Murdock might be right.
	"Marlo, Sally, what do you see anything in the ultraviolet or infrared?" asked Rusk.  Sally had one of their multi-channel cameras and the X-bot was equipped similarly.
	Marlo extended its tentacles to the 'floor' and 'ceiling' to anchor itself, and then spun its detectors around before Madrona had time to orient herself in the zero gravity.  An excited bald, bearded man manifested in Marlo's display.  "Yes!  In the I-band and longer wavelengths!"
	"I've got it," said Madrona, panning the camera about.  "There are other, I don't know, portals like the one we came through, but in infrared colors rather than the orange.  I'll patch forward a video feed."
	"Not necessary," said Murdock, floating by and tapping his temple purposefully.  "If you tint your contacts red, and cut down on the glare, you can make them out.  I guess we just don't naturally see all that well."
	Rusk tried it, let his eyes adjust for a few seconds, and then looked around.  Now he could see what Madrona had described as portals.  They were circular rings, very similar in size to the portal leading back to the tunnel.
	An entrance exam, quarantine, or simply the challenges of negotiating an artificial environment designed for another species, no matter, they would succeed.  Rusk didn't believe in failure.
	Remembering his promise, he said to Kelly, "Kim, can you go back out and update the others on what's going on.  I'm afraid half thinks we've encountered something horrible, and the other half thinks it something wonderful.  Either way, they shouldn't be kept in the dark any longer."
	"Sure thing," she said.
	"And come back and bring at least three X-bots with you," said Klingston.  "I'm not sure which ones would be most useful -- use your judgment -- but their sensors and tentacles alone will be invaluable."
That was a good idea.  As Kelly left, Rusk took the opportunity to watch her go back through the hull.  Very unsettling -- an unnatural movement he had no instincts for.
	"Okay," Klingston said, clapping his hands and looking more animated again.  "We've got some exploring to do.
#
	They assembled exploratory teams with a mixed balance of areas of expertise that mapped the warren of empty rooms at the space dock.  Some were larger, some were smaller.  Some were 'above' the entry room, some were 'below.'  There was a range of colors on the doors, mostly infrared colors, but a few were visible in the optical without adjusting their contact lenses or relying on the X-bots.
	But they were all empty, and their emptiness unsettled Rusk.
	Klingston seemed satisfied with their non-progressive, frustratingly.  Sally Madrona worked at the problem with special tenacity, dropping observations and new ideas on anyone who would listen -- one example: she discovered that when mapped in three dimensions, the rooms and tunnels between them defined a central shaft running along the Spider Star spoke.  No one knew what it might signify.  Codon had the X-bots combing ever surface of every room with every analysis technique he could think of.  Towson Field, their materials specialist, began to actively probe the Spider Star substance, but with little success.
	Two weeks passed.
	Rusk caught up to Frenk in the showers.  Docked the way they were, they couldn't spin the Dark Heart for artificial gravity, and showers mean shower sacks: Frenk was just a head sticking out of an opaque, bulging sack leaking a flowery scent.
	"What are we doing?" Rusk asked.
	Frenk's sack continued to bulge in different directions.  "We're cleaning up," said Frenk.
	"You know what I mean.  We had the invitation to dock.  We docked.  And now we're stalled, not accomplishing anything.  We're dead in space."
	Frenk's motions paused briefly as he stopped to look at Rusk, then resumed as he spoke.  "We're following the rules, Manual.  I thought you approved of following the rules."
	Of course he did!  Rules were there to make things happen more efficiently, to keep people safe, to do all sorts of good things…as long as the rules were good rules.  But Rusk didn't think they had good rules or clear rules in this situation.  "Look Frenk, we didn't get an invitation to dock until we asked for one, and we asked in an alien language at that.  No one has come to greet us, and at best we've got the run of a space dock where our arms are too short to reach the interesting buttons."
	"I don't know that I'd say that.  Kim found a way to get some sort of panel to pop up earlier today."
	"What's it do?"
	"I don't have a clue," said Frenk, smiling at him, and then looking away.
	The man seemed satisfied though, scrubbing away in his shower bag, happy and clueless.
	"Frenk, do you really think this kind of complacency is the appropriate attitude?"
	"I don't have a clue," the older man said, then turned to fix Rusk in a stare.  "And you don't either."
	Rusk felt a flush rise to his cheeks.  "That may be, that may be, but I have plenty of ideas and I think it's time to start discussing alternative courses of action."
	"We had this discussion right at the start, didn't we?  No one here to meet us could mean we're under quarantine or being tested first, and who's to say what kind of time period would be reasonable for aliens?"
	"The Argonaut fairy tale doesn't say anything about them being quarantined or being tested when they arrived at the Spider Star.  It just goes into the business about the 'Golden Ones.'"
	"That was a long, long time ago," said Klingston.
	No shit, Rusk thought. But, frustration wouldn't get him anywhere.  He took a deep breath, and said, "I agree.  It was a long time ago.  The Golden Ones could have died out, and this whole place just keeps going on automated systems."
	"I'd find automated systems lasting millions of years unlikely if it became uninhabited."
	"You and me both.  I think they're out there, or down there, rather, somewhere.  But there's the one arm of the Spider Star that seems damaged.  This place is old.  Really old.  Anything could be true now."
	"Your point?"
	"We're limiting ourselves if we just playing one or two possibilities.  We should hedge our bets, pursue several possibilities in the absence of hard information.  There's a chance we're shadow boxing here.  Can you set a time limit on our current course of action?"
	Klingston was silent a long time, and his arms stopped moving.  Rusk looked at him and listened to the water hitting the inside of his shower bag.  Finally Klingston answered.  "Do you have a specific proposal in mind?"
	"I do," Rusk said.  "I propose we split our forces.  You keep the Argonaut Specialists, and a few other as needed, doing exactly what you're doing now: exploring the space dock.  I take a diverse group of the most adventurous Specialists down into the atmosphere, probably in a dirigible, and begin independent exploration.  We fly down this arm and check out some of these lights and other structures we're seeing up close.  Griffin maintains the Dark Heart with a reserve unit at the space dock in support of both of our groups."
	Klingston shut down the shower bag, which deflated around him as the vacuum pump, worked to suck out the excess water.  "Do you really think splitting up is wise?"
	"We haven't been threatening, and we haven't been attacked.  We've been here for many days without direct response.  We could have been greeted by an automated system.  The inhabitants of this place may simply not care about a civilization as primitive as ours.  I'd rather pursue some options, and in the worst case manage to get us some notice."
	Slurping sounds emanated from the shower bag as the finished its work and Klingston opened it up.  "The worst case is we all get killed and the next Lashing destroys New Colchis."
	"But doesn't that seem like a big step from where we are now, puttering around a set of empty rooms, ignored?"
	Klingston said, "Sometimes being ignored isn't so bad."
	That puzzled Rusk, but he didn't want to let Klingston distract him now.  "You can continue with the current exploration, and I'll take a different tack.  If I make a mistake and get killed, you can learn from it."
	Klingston gave him a funny look, and Rusk wondered about the wisdom of his last argument, but boldly let the statement float out there without additional justification.
	"Get me a specific personnel and supply request and I'll consider it."
	"I'll have it for you in an hour."
	"You have it made up already, don't you?" Klingston asked, with a smile.
	Rusk smiled back.  "Of course.  I know exactly what I want to do."
	"I thought so," Klingston said, getting dressed.  "Let me look it over and I'll get back to you as soon as possible."
	"Today?"
	"Today.  No bullshit."
	Rusk had to admit that he liked the way Klingston handled things, even though he had many criticisms; the man didn't do many things the way he himself would.  Maybe that was okay.  Maybe there were many pathways to success.
#
	"What do you think you're doing?" Griffin shouted at him.
	Rusk, irritated, detached himself from the station where he and Stubbs were supervising the nanofacture of the specially designed dirigible he would fly down into the atmosphere of the Spider Star.  Spinning around he confronted her.  "I'm preparing an exploration craft."
	"I know," she said.  "Klingston told me.  What I don't understand is why you didn't tell me."
	"I wasn't sure you’d think it wise."
	"Now you can be sure."
	"Klingston approved it."
	"He shouldn't have."
	"Why not?"
	"I'm not with you."
	There it was.  He'd suspected she might get this way.  Her core drives focused on security, safety, and caution.  Despite her position on this mission, she was not, at heart, a risk taker.  True, this entire affair constituted an enormous risk, perhaps the equivalent of a small band of bugs entering a person's house, not knowing when a stomping foot might be headed their way, and Griffin would be the bug recommending a thorough mapping of the first tile square of the foyer.
	"Excuse us," he said to Stubbs who nodded.  Rusk kicked off to the far side of the chamber.  Sound didn't carry very well in the low-pressure of the Dark Heart.  While secrets didn't keep in circumstances like theirs, the semblance of privacy still mattered.
	They picked up their conversation by the armory lockers.
	"Face it, Rusk," Griffin said, "you're better with me.  I compensate for your weaknesses.  You tend to be headstrong when you don't have clear restrictions."
	"I'm bringing a team with me to compensate for everyone's weaknesses using everyone's strengths.  That's how the Specialist Corps works."
	"But we're a team," she persisted.  "A good team."
	They were both holding their position by their finger tips on the wire web surface of the lockers.  Rusk fingerwalked his way closer to her.  She held his gaze with an imploring look, confirming his fears.
	Griffin was taking this personally.  She cared for him, probably too much, and wanted to protect him as an outgrowth of protecting herself.
	Closer now, Rusk whispered to Griffin.  "Sloan, if we get into trouble down there, I don't want you there with us.  I want you up here, ready to rescue us."
	She lowered her voice, too.  "But if I'm with you, Manuel, you might not get into trouble in the first place."
	What could he say that wouldn't sound ungrateful, or worse, patronizing?  He said the only truthful thing that came to mind that might satisfy her, at least a little.  "I'll be careful."
	"Promise?"
	"Promise."
	"I'm going to hold you to that," she said, very seriously.  "And if you're not careful, I'll rescue you.  Then I'll kill you."

	
Chapter 14

First Contact

	Frenk was huddled with Sloan Griffin and Mitch Donovan monitoring the powered dirigible's progress.  Rusk and his team had departed earlier that day in a rather complicated maneuver.  Dropping straight down along a radial from orbit was not something energetically sensible under most circumstances, but the Spider Star spokes carried a magnetic field and by cleverly charging the dirigible they'd been able to quickly spiral down.
	"Frenk," said Marlo, his X-bot.  "Sally Madrona wants to see you in the Spider Star."
	He didn't like leaving, but he didn't like making Sally wait either -- she might have made an important breakthrough.  Splitting his attention this way had not cut his concerns, but had multiplied them.  Frenk had bought Rusk's essential argument, and had even believed that letting him take his own team away would reduce Frenk's responsibilities, but he couldn't let himself focus on the space dock.  Every step seemed critical and he wanted to listen to every report.  For instance, Rusk had already reached the upper atmosphere and switched the dirigible to neutral buoyancy.  They had dropped a deep atmosphere probe, now approaching the core, which had already led them to a number of significant discoveries.  He wanted to be on hand for that.
	If he took the baby monitoring seriously, Griffin took it as sacred.  She'd been glued to the monitors watching every aspect of their descent.  She half-glanced at Frenk and said, "Go on.  I've got things covered here."
	"Thanks," said Frenk, and moved to follow Marlo.
	He was waylaid in the Spider Star before he reached Sally.  Typical.  Why have one thing to do instead of three?
	"Over here!" Millicent Sergevich called to him as he came through the wall of the lobby -- as they were calling the large circular room immediately beyond the hull of the Spider Star -- and into one of the side rooms.
	Frenk grabbed onto the appropriate makeshift guy wires and hauled himself over hand over hand to Millicent.  This particular room was large and spherical in shape surrounded by a ring of spherical cubby holes, each about three meters in diameter.  Millicent floated in the circular entrance to one of the cubby holes.
	"What have you found, Millicent?"
	"Come inside," she said.  She had a big grin, and her blonde hair was tousled, in disarray, as if she'd neglected to comb it.  She was normally well coifed.
	Frenk pushed himself away from the wire and into the bubble toward Millicent.  She reached out an arm to gently catch him and the floated there together for a moment.  Frenk noticed some faint colored circles on the surface before him.  "We didn't notice these before."
	"No," she said.  "They only appear if you come inside and stay for a minute or so."
	"Hmm, that's interesting.  I wonder why that is."
	"My theory is that it works by body heat, and we don't quite radiate as much as whatever it's designed for.  We have to be in here for a while before it turns on."
	"But why bother?  Why not have the controls active all the time?" Frenk asked.
	"Well," she said, smiling mischievously, "maybe it's because of the nature of the controls."
	She reached out and tapped the blue button.
	Hot jets of liquid and a thick mist erupted from all around them.  Frenk howled, startled, and flailed at Millicent as the liquid soaked him.  "Gah!" he said smartly.
	"Easy, Frenk!" she said, holding him and laughing.  "It's okay!"
	And it was okay, he realized.  It had just been the abrupt, unexpected, shock of the hot liquid.  Still, large amounts of water without gravity could be dangerous.  He sputtered a question.  "What is it?"
	"I think it's just your basic, alien zero-gee shower, as far as I can tell.  Non-toxic, but invigorating."
	Frenk looked around, blinking into the mist.  It did seem to come from all directions, even from the bubble opening, but it was difficult to say for certain.  He risked sticking out his tongue, and tasted what seemed to be warm water, although perhaps with a touch of chemical he couldn't immediately place.  There was a scent of ozone, and mint, in the air.  After a few more seconds the jets died, the mist cleared, and they floated there together again.
	"Watch me," she said.
	He did.  Their faces were only a few inches apart.  She had fine droplets of the liquid clinging to her cheeks and lips, but as he watched the droplets shrank and vanished, apparently evaporating rapidly.
	"Isn't that cool?" she asked.
	Frenk managed to smile, although he didn't really feel like it.  He should be like Millicent, taking joy in discovery, in the sheer novelty of having the run of an alien space station.  He couldn't relax.  He was too uncomfortable with the mantle of leadership, the responsibility of success, for him to set aside the constant stress.  He couldn't even enjoy the intimacy of such a close look into her clear blue eyes.  "Yes, that's very cool," he said.
	"I'm going get an X-bot in here and get a detailed analysis.  This sure beats a shower bag." 
	That it did.  Rusk was too impatient, although Frenk had to take responsibility for letting him go.  They weren't stalled here, rather, they were proceeding at a blistering pace in many respects.  How long would it take for a clever ancient human, say an Odysseus, to figure out how to use all the technology present in a modern ground-based home, let alone any sort of space station?  More than a few days, surely, given that he wouldn't speak a modern tongue, which would make the voice recognition and technology difficult at best.  Here the problem was compounded by the fact that the technology wasn't even designed for the same species, and, he had to admit to himself, the species this place was designed for might be smarter than humans.
	That was tolerable, perhaps likely.  It would just take them a little longer.  A month longer, even a year longer, was not long compared to their travel time.  Everyone had to trust that the swarm inside Pollux would behave itself long enough for their mission to matter, or that Argo would find their own solution to the threat without them.
	"Want to borrow Marlo?" Frenk asked.
	"Yes, that would be great!"
	"I'll leave it here with you.  I need to see Sally."
	"She's by the cord."
	That was the cylindrical, central feature didn't seem to have interior rooms and had been hypothesized to be structural support.  "Thanks."
	Frenk proceeded through the warren, managing to dodge additional engagements even though it seemed that Millicent hadn't been the only one making discoveries.  Still, nothing he saw prepared him for what Sally had done.
	Frenk popped into a final large crescent-shaped chamber and actually gasped.  The last time he'd been here, there had been emptiness and lights. This time, there was stuff everywhere.  He didn't know what else to call it.  It was possible to characterize it as equipment, monitors, interfaces, he guessed, but he really didn't know.  What he did know was that Sally was in the middle of it all, literally.
	Sally, prudently wearing green body armor, nestled with an X-bot amidst lighted cables and strange shapes protruding from the walls.  Multi-hued lights flashed across her face as her head tilted slightly, rapidly, in different directions and she blinked her eyes.  She and the X-bot -- Jason, the bot loaded with the Argonaut experts, he recognized -- both had appendages thrust deep into gray boxes mounted on the cables.
	Sally spoke, her voice as far away and exotic as her gaze.  "About time you got here, Frenk.  It's amazing."
	Amazing.  Yes, he supposed it was.  Amazement held her, and was seeping into his own brain, too.  But was amazing the same thing as enlightened?
	"What's going on?" he asked.  "What is all this stuff?"
	Sally blinked, twitched, and bathed her face in the colored lights.  "It's an interface, a control center, a hot zone for the space dock.  I'm feeling the Spider Star around me, a part of it, anyway…it's vast.  But I suppose we knew that.  But, oh, it is so very, very vast."
	"How did you do this?"
	Sally was quiet a long moment, seeing -- feeling -- things amazing and alien.  While part of him was pleased that they had made a quantum leap in understanding, part of him feared the sight of this technology holding his crewmate so enthralled.  She almost seemed a thing alien.
	She finally answered.  "It wasn't hard.  It wasn't meant to be, for an Argonaut."
	That made some sense.  Perhaps the Spider Star was trying to accommodate them and thought them Argonauts since that was the language they had employed for their signature.
	"I don't understand everything.  I'm probably missing ninety percent of what I'm supposed to be getting.  Oh!"
	Sally's distant look flashed surprise, her eyebrows rising and her mouth forming an open circle.
	"Oh?"  He thought he knew her as well as anyone on the mission, except for perhaps Manuel Rusk whose ambition he understood, but at this moment he didn't know Sally Madrona at all.  He didn't really know anyone here, not really, not like he knew his family, and he felt guilty about that.  Much of the Specialist Corps' methodology was intended to engender intimacy and family.  Her cry could reflect a cry of delight, or of horror, and as the strange lights flashed across her face he had no clue.  Only she knew, and so he waited.
	"Someone's coming," she gasped, eyes darting about.  "Someone's coming and they're almost here."
	"Who?" he asked, more alarmed than excited.
	"I don’t know."  Her brows knitted, her eyes squinted.  "I should be able to see that, but I don't know how to do that yet."
	"Keep trying."  What did they need to know now?  What should they do?  This was like his own encounter now, those moments of greatest uncertainty before his first meeting with Crotx, but worse.  Now his decisions would affect everyone here, and while he could rationalize the choice he made on that occasion as the right one, that was not the sort of decision he could make for dozens of other people.
	Please, he thought, please don't let it come to something like that again.
	He took a deep breath.  He needed more information, immediately, and he needed everyone's help.  He wasn't alone this time.  He could solicit input from others.  It wasn't solely his decision.
	That helped.  A little.  His thoughts clarified.  "Sally, how is this 'someone' approaching?"
	She answered at once.  "I know that.  Up an elevator, up the core, the shaft.  There's a portal from this chamber.  We found it, but it wouldn't open.  The elevator car wasn't on this level, and we didn't know how to call it."
	An elevator, opening here.  "How soon?"
	"Eight minutes, maybe nine."
	That wasn't much time, not at all.  He needed to have everyone in the space dock drop what they were doing and assemble here.  Someone needed to tell Griffin what was going on, too.
	He wished that he hadn't left Marlo with Millicent.  "Sally, do you need Jason?"
	"Yes!" She almost shouted.  "He's picking up infrared for me, and executing commands, 
too.  I don't have eight limbs like an Argonaut.  I can't let him go.  George has Phyllis next door, if you must have an X-bot."
	It wasn't an X-bot he needed so much as a messenger, or several messengers.  George and Phyllis must do.  "Keep monitoring their approach.  I'll be back as soon as I can."
	Sally nodded, but barely.
	Frenk went next door, as Sally had indicated, and found George and Phyllis working on a glowing square on the wall.
	"Frenk, you've got to see this!" George said.
	"Not now.  Right now you've got to drop everything.  Someone's coming."
	That did it, having the same effect on George it had on him.  "Who?  Where?  When?"
	"I don't know, Sally's room, about eight minutes."
	"What do you want me to do?"
	George had trained for Specialist duty his entire life, with expertise in materials analysis -- spectroscopy and microscopy of myriad types -- and now Frenk appreciated that training.  George was ready to help in the way that military soldiers of centuries past would jump to follow orders, trusting their superiors to have the information necessary to direct them to their most useful state.  Frenk hoped he could live up to that ideal, and, knowing he didn't but that action was required, settled for the hope.
	"George, I want you to return to the Dark Heart.  Tell Sloan what's going on over here, then come back."
	"What should I tell her to do?"
	That was a good question.  He didn't know.  He didn't know enough about what was happening.  She was good though, he knew.  He shouldn't saddle her with orders that might not make sense.  He said, "Tell her to use her best judgment."
	"Okay," George said, and kicked off toward a portal.
	"Phyllis," Frenk said to the X-bot.  "Make a circuit of the space dock and tell everyone to come to Sally's room as fast as they can manage.  Highest priority."
	The visage of a silver-haired woman manifested in the X-bot's display.  "Roger that.  I'll kick their butts in there faster than you can say sardines."
	Frenk didn't know that particular persona -- it could have been a particularly effective Earth leader for all he knew -- but he was satisfied with her fortitude.  "Hurry."
	The X-bot snaked away and Frenk returned to Sally.  "Anything new?" he asked.
	She seemed even farther away than she had just a couple of minutes earlier, and she took her time answering.  "Here in six minutes.  More than one…entity.  There's more, but I don't understand it."	
	"Take your time," he said, even though he wanted to rush her.  Something of monumental importance would happen mere minutes from now, and he had no idea if it would be something wonderful or something terrible.
	Other specialists began to appear: Millicent with Marlo at her side, Wesley Codon, the X-bot expert, brilliant Richard Murdock, Tod Salerno the Argonaut historian, Dr. Gina Dorissey, and Towson Field.  As the minutes ticked by more trickled in, floating in an excited disarray.
	No one had any weapons.  He decided that was fine.  They'd likely appear distrustful and stupid.  No one had any recording equipment either, though, and that was criminal.  He yelled at a few people and they scurried to cover.  Whatever happened, this was a moment worthy of documentation.
	The seconds ticked on.  Funny how they felt like years now.  They'd journeyed years to reach this time, in hibernation so that the years passed like seconds.  Okay, days.
	People were whispering, giggling even.  Most of the people in the room had worked all their lives in anticipation of this moment.  Frenk couldn't blame them for being excited.  He himself felt the excitement, despite his unsavory previous alien experience.  He didn't think this one could be any worse, at least not at the personal, physical level.
	Seconds stretched into minutes, finally, and proper recording equipment appeared an initialized.
	"They're here!" Sally called out.
	Frenk had to force himself to relax.  Floating in freefall, he had realized that he was balling up as every muscle tensed.  Everyone was floating every which way, equipment was floating every which way.  They were a mess.  "Be ready for anything!"
	Unlike their transport through the other portals, the gateway to the elevator faded into transparency, shimmering in a tenuous existence for a timeless moment.  In that moment, Frenk saw through to the elevator car beyond.
	Red light emanated from the dark car.  Blacks, maybe browns, writhed within, with just a few flashes of color and brief, bright reflections glinting from among the shadows.  He suffered difficulty, a cognitive dissonance, in determining what it was he was looking at.  Recognition would not come.  He was looking at something alien.
	The wall thinned to nothing, and vanished.  The black, brown, glinting mass erupted forth, spewing out from the wall, separating, flying, mingling with the specialists.
	The screaming began.

	
Chapter 15

Plumbing the Depths

	Rusk leaned forward and let his weight settle heavily upon the observation rail of their dirigible.  It was good to have weight again, even thirty-five percent of an Earth gravity -- it was similar to what they had at Argo's space dock, at the end of it's tether.  The part that engendered more ambiguous feelings was the view.
	This wasn't anything like Earth, or Argo, or any planet he'd ever heard of.  That idea simultaneously thrilled him and terrified him.  He was truly doing something new and noteworthy, but also something fraught with danger.
	They still spiraled down around the Spider Star spoke, but all around them was cloudscape and vista.  Thousands of kilometers of vista.  At this altitude the atmosphere outside was cold and barely breathable, but it was also crystal clear and impeded one's view not at all.  Standing on this deck and looking out inspired awe, both of the place, and of one's self for having achieved this position.
	This wasn't a planet, it was an infinite sky.  One could fall forever into a blue abyss, the wind streaming, and screaming, overwhelming.  The loss of control in the face of this infinity terrified Rusk on a level he usually refused to acknowledge.
	He forced the feeling away and asked Slyde for a status report.
	"Everything's perfect," the pilot said.  "All systems optimal.  Descent continuing at a kilometer per minute."
	Perfect?  How could things be perfect?  There were no rules now, just a planet-sized unknown waiting to challenge them.  Was there any way the situation could be perfect?  He could clearly hear Griffin in his head answering: "Perfectly unknown.  Perfectly dangerous.  Perfectly reckless."
	Thanks, Griffin.  Not missing you yet at all.
	"The atmosphere outside is now breathable, if you want to go outside," Mistelle said from beside him.
	Go outside?  Okay, it was a crazy notion, but perhaps the act would restore a sensation of control.  He was supposed to be in charge, the one with all the answers, and part of maintaining that was by preserving the illusion.  "Fine.  Let's go outside," he said.
	There was an observation deck surrounding the gondola, a catwalk, really.  They cycled through the airlock and Rusk breathed his first breath of the air of the Spider Star.  Cold and searing, that breath, and he could see it trailing up and away as they dropped deeper.  No particular smell to it that he could discern, nothing extreme anyway.  He thought he would get a coat if he came out again, but the raw experience of seeing an infinite sky and feeling the wind slicing the flesh of his cheeks, that was worth a certain price.  He was doing something real and important, something worth remembering.  "Fantastic," he said quietly.  "Fantastic."
	Mistelle was there with him.  She said, "I was holding my breath until you spoke.  Funny, isn't it?  I guess I don’t trust my machines so much."
	He smiled, a little.  That was funny.  The woman who told them it was safe to breathe didn't breathe.  "I trusted your measurements.  Perhaps it is that we simply don't trust ourselves enough."
	"I suppose not."  Her voice was distant, quiet, in the wind and the low pressure.
	This place was strange.  On one level it was quite similar to flying through any planetary atmosphere, but the distances were larger, and the light coming from below, rather than above, did create a disconcerting effect.  "Okay," Rusk said finally.  "We've breathed the air.  Let everyone have a step outside, soak up the experience, and then let's get serious."
	Rusk returned to the dirigible's control deck.  Air they could breathe -- what were the chances?  He had no idea.  This was a constructed place, the station anyway, and likely the atmosphere surrounding it that sat in the potential of the dark matter.
	The spectral analysis of absorption lines had indicated all kinds of gases in the atmosphere.  Different Doppler shifts had indicated odd stratifications with altitude that didn't make any natural sense.  Some light gases, light hydrogen, and helium sat at great depths, with neon and nitrogen at higher altitudes, and significant quantities of oxygen and water vapor at all heights.  The pressure gradient was exponential, as expected, but given what they knew about the mass distribution of the dark matter, the temperature gradient was odd, nearly isothermal.  It should rise rapidly with depth, like the pressure, but didn't.  It rose somewhat, rising from the chilly temperatures here to toasty levels deeper down, but not the oven-like temperatures that reasonable physical models suggested.  He'd taken along Chip Porter, a meteorologist and atmospheric scientist, to help him figure out these oddities.
	There had to be reasons behind these properties, but what were they, and were they significant to their understanding of the Spider Star?  Physical characterization they could do, and that had to be the first step toward understanding.  "Mistelle, prepare a probe."
	"I've already got one prepped.  We can launch in minutes."
	"Fantastic.  Let's do it."
	They dropped the probe.  This category of probe didn't fly -- it was more of a bullet, designed to slice through the thickening atmosphere.  The equipment package include a sophisticated weather station to monitor temperature, pressure, humidity, a mass spectrometer to analyze molecular composition, an assortment of telescopic cameras, and even Geiger counters and neutron detectors.  The thicker atmosphere at greater depths, and various cloud decks, made the deep parts of the Spider Star fuse into a golden haze when viewed from a distance.
	Porter and Mistelle supervised the probe operation, while Tolbert, Nyquist, Coyner, and Hamilton pressed in close to watch.  Slyde kept them on their circular dive.  The probe dropped much faster than they did and gave them a picture of what lay below them.
	"This is quite strange," Porter said.  "The atmospheric parameters are matching our previous measurements."
	"Strange?  For matching what we thought already?" Nyquist asked.
	"Our expectations were based on models constructed to fit the line-of-sight absorption features and their Doppler shifts given what we know about the rotation of the Spider Star and its prevailing winds."  Porter, a stocky man with short blonde hair, seemed to be just warming up to a favorite subject.  Rusk hoped he could get to the point before the probe smacked into something.  Porter went on.  "But the model fitting was wacky.  Just wacky.  Didn't make any sense.  Temperatures all wrong, composition all wrong.  Just couldn't happen."
	"Seems to be happening anyway," Mistelle countered.  "I don't care what the models say when the evidence is staring us in the face."
	Porter sighed.  "Empiricist."  He said it like a dirty word.  "Data is meaningless with interpretation, without understanding."
	"And theory is meaningless without comparison to data."
	Rusk thought about referring to them as 'children' in a joking manner, but that would be inappropriate coming from him.  He settled for forging ahead.  "So let's collect the data and have a look at it."
	They spent several hours doing just that while they enjoyed the view.
	Normally in a planetary atmosphere different gasses segregated.  A common temperature meant that the gas particles shared a similar distribution of kinetic energies, but that didn't mean that they shared a similar distribution of velocities.  Lighter particles, like molecular hydrogen and helium, had to have higher velocities to match the energies of slower moving but more massive particles like diatomic oxygen, nitrogen, water, carbon dioxide.  The higher velocities of lighter particles let them streak to greater heights, and if the surface gravity wasn't too high, even escape the atmosphere to space altogether.  Hence the correlations between planetary mass, temperature, and atmosphere.
	The data coming in not only showed that some particular gasses became less abundant as the probe dropped, some other gasses dropped, then increased again.  No natural processes could account for such a thing.
	"It's just not following the laws of physics," Porter said.
	"Of course it is!" said Skael Hamilton, whose wide eyes and loud manners tended to make him come across as a little insane.  Brilliant, but insane.  "You always act like your assumptions are as perfect as a spherical cow!  You've simply missed something -- likely a bit of engineering!"
	Rusk started to roll his eyes, and then stopped himself lest someone notice.  Theorist versus experimentalist was bad enough, but physicist versus engineer was the worst case of it.  He was just happy they didn't have a mathematician along; then they could write their own jokes.  "Fine then," Rusk said.  "Let's look for an engineering solution."
	"Something's got to be pumping certain things in, or selectively pumping them out," said Nyquist.
	"Then we're looking for some kind of structure, the Spider Star spoke, or some of these other things, tubes, pipes, whatever, connecting them," said Rusk.  "Or maybe something free floating.  An atmosphere maintenance center."
	"Right," said Mistelle.
	Tolbert said, "If Chip is correct, and this gas distribution is unnatural, then what is its purpose?"
	Skael rolled his eyes, and even his neck, to draw attention.  "I said it's engineering!"
	Rusk managed to avoid smiling, but not everyone did.  Chip didn't really care about the credit, but Skael did.  "If Skael is correct, then the atmosphere has been engineered to some purpose."
	Skael beamed at Rusk, but said in a low voice her could barely make out, "I'm a theorist sympathizer, you know."
	They waited for more data, people coming and going as they needed to eat, sleep, or attend to their personal hygiene.  Mistelle kept fiddling with things and at one point clapped her hands to call everyone's attention.  "I've got something!  Two things!"
	Rusk had been nursing a cooling cup of coffee and perked up immediately.  "What is it?"
	"A directional concentration gradient, a neutron flux, and a picture."
	"A neutron flux?" Rusk asked, alarmed.
	"Not too dangerously high, but someone's doing some fusion."
	"Where?"
	"Here."
	An image flashed on the big display.  Rusk saw an optical feed from the probe, a little shaky and shimmering despite the electronic image stabilization.  At the center of the image, situated along a fuzzy line, nestled a dark mass.  The perspective changed slightly in real time as the probe fell.
	"What's that?" Nyquist asked.
	"How should I know?" Mistelle replied.  "What you see is what you get."
	The image sharpened as the probe closed.  The dark mass resolved into distinct features that resembled trees and leaves -- a vegetative mass of some sort.  The fuzzy line was one of the tubes, or pipes, that connected the spokes at points of similar altitude.  Rusk had no idea of they were structural support or if they served some other purpose.
	"That dark region is where the neutrons are coming from.  There's some kind of reactor there, changing one set of elements to another set of elements.  To maintain these atmospheric disparities however…they'd have to be all over the place."
	"They’ve got energy to burn," Porter said.  "All those microwaves from the power satellites.  These air gardens don't have to be energy producers."
	Air gardens.  That was awfully poetic to come from a theoretical physicist.  The gardens not only grew plants, but whatever gaseous species were desired at their altitude.  The perspective continued to tilt and the air garden vanished into a blur again as the probe continued its plummet.
	"They are too energy producers," Mistelle said, scanning some numbers on her personal monitor.  "There's a thermal coming out of that place, too.  Has to be an important place."
	Perhaps they'd take a look at it themselves when the dirigible reached that altitude.
	A while later, Mistelle said, "I'm plotting the gas fractions as a function of depth."  She tapped a few keys into one of the dirigible's terminals and a graph popped up.
	A bunch of colored lines appeared, each one representing a particular gaseous species, scrolling down as the probe submitted more data to the stream.  Several of the lines did wiggle in and out, while others steadily increased or decreased.  Still, nothing jumped out at Rusk.
	"Can you plot that as partial pressures, in Earth atmospheres?" Nyquist asked.
	That made good sense.  For many applications, partial pressure was the key quantity, not fraction of the total.
	"Just one second," Mistelle said.  The scales changed and the colored lines shifted.
	"Would you look at that," Tolbert said.
	Rusk did.  Many things jumped out at him now.  Nitrogen started out dominant at high altitudes, then fell with depth.  At deeper levels, argon rose and then dropped.  Next, helium rose, and decayed, but not completely.  Finally, hydrogen, in all its perverseness, became the dominant gas at the deepest levels.  Oxygen, water, and carbon dioxide maintained low but nearly constant partial pressures over the entire range.
	"Porter's right," Skael said.  "This makes no sense.  I surrender."
	Chip Porter chuckled deeply.
	Rusk had to agree.  The behavior was bizarre.
	"Aha!" Tolbert said, sounding a bit like Skael could.  "I get it.  It’s trivial."
	Rusk hated that.  His hatred of that sort of announcement of triviality went back to his days studying for honors classes.  Everyone always seemed to make light of the hard problems, calling them trivial, or simple, when they found the solution first, making everyone else feel like a moron even though they were all super sharp students.
	"I get it, too," Kat Coyner said.  She sported a big, white-toothed smile.  "But I don't think it's trivial, Tom.  You're a diver, aren't you?"
	"Guilty," he said.
	A diver?  What relevance could that possibly have?  "Spell it out for me.  I'm a dunce sometimes, okay?"
	Tolbert and Coyner both started to speak, then both stopped, then both started to talk again at the same time.  Then they laughed.  Rusk hated that sort of thing, too.  He wished Griffin were here.
	Tolbert said, "We're looking at diving mixtures!  Human physiology wants to have a couple of tenths of an atmosphere of oxygen at all times.  At pressures higher than that, for instance, a full atmosphere, inert gases like nitrogen account for the difference."
	Coyner continued, looking quite pleased with herself.  "At higher gas pressures, nitrogen causes problems.  Neon can work.  Helium can work.  At 50 atmospheres, hydrogen, helium, oxygen blends are used."
	"What about other inert gases, like the other noble gases?  How about argon, krypton, or xenon?" Nyquist asked.
	"They cause a variety of problems, like dizziness, and can put you to sleep or drug you out at high pressures," Tolbert explained.
	"This doesn't make any sense to me," Rusk said.  "Why should this place have an engineered atmosphere at all, let alone one designed for humans to breathe?"
	The silence was deafening.  There was no obvious reason.  This was not a 'trivial' problem.  The moment dragged out to minutes, an astonishing amount of time for a gondola full of such talented people.
	Nyquist spoke up.  "I'm going to float an idea.  I don't think it's completely plausible, so don't destroy me with your rebuttals.  At least not until I defend myself too much."
	Derik Nyquist was a chemist, and a good one, but he was also an expert in three different martial arts and carried himself in a way that always seemed unattackable.  For him to talk about being overly defensive seemed somewhat laughable.  Rusk asked, "What’s your idea, Derik?"
	"I've got two ideas, really, although they're related.  First, to answer why the Spider Star has an atmosphere at all, I propose this answer: someone lives here, outside the confines of the station itself.  The atmosphere is here for their benefit.  It's engineered to taste, so it isn't just the various gases that have settled in the gravitational potential of the dark matter."  Derik paused and looked around.
	"What's your second idea?" Porter asked.
	"Well, that's sort of two ideas, too."
	"Can't you keep it simple, stupid?" Mistelle asked.
	Derik smiled, recognizing the ancient admonition.  "Apparently not.  Okay, here's the second idea in all its glory.  The atmosphere hasn't been engineered for humans to breathe.  It's been engineered for Argonauts, who we know have very similar physiologies to our own.  Or," and he help up a finger to forestall the protests that were blooming on the faces of several of his listeners, "all intelligent life in this part of the galaxy has a similar biochemistry to humans and Argonauts, either through some sort of panspermia or parallel evolution."
	That was a mouthful of a hypothesis, and individual conversations exploded between everyone at the same time.  Rusk let them go on.  After all, maybe someone would get somewhere with the seed of Nyquist's ideas, as outlandish as they seemed.  Actually, though, given what he knew now, as he considered the ideas, he didn't see any immediate problems with them.  Sure, they could turn out to be completely wrong, but as working hypotheses, he had certainly operated with worse.
	Coyner was saying, "The Argonauts themselves disprove panspermia!  Similar physiology, yes, but identical amino acids, no!"
	Tolbert was telling Porter, "Parallel evolution is a croc!  There are myriad solutions to biological problems, and just because the solutions appear similar on the surface doesn't mean everything should want to breathe the same atmosphere!"
	Rusk resisted smiling again.  These people, these Specialists, fought over ideas the way cavemen must have fought saber tooth cats to protect their women.  He liked to think that evolution had finally started, somewhere in the last century or two, in selecting for smart people.  Even after the industrial age, civilizations had continued to celebrate great athletes with the brains of bugs, heaping them with recognition and treasure, while nearly ignoring the geniuses of their time.  Enough of that, Rusk thought, time to focus on the present expedition.  "Interesting ideas, Derik.  I think they'll do for now."
	Everyone looked at him with disappointment, except Derik.  They liked discussing ideas, and that was a good thing, usually even when the discussions became arguments.  They were passionate, true, but no one lost their nose in a duel over who was better at math the way Tycho Brahe had back at the dawn of modern science.
	"Hey," Mistelle said, "Something's up.  The probe just cleared a cloud deck and is now approaching something I don't like the looks of, not at all."
	"How far from the center?" Rusk asked.
	"About three hundred kilometers."
	"Project it," said Rusk.
	The view from the probe showed a bright, golden glow beneath it.  They'd dropped the probe not being completely sure about the central conditions of the Spider Star.  If the center was empty, the probe would shoot on through and eventually fall back through the center and up toward them again, with the air resistance slowing it down until it eventually would settle in the center with whatever other junk had been trapped there over the megayears.  They had balloons built into the probe and could blow those to kill its downward velocity, if necessary, and let it provide them with detailed long-term surveillance of something of particular interest.  They were only trailing a few hundred kilometers behind so the signal lag time was tiny and they could react quickly to what the probe showed them.
	"So?" Rusk asked.  "We know the light comes from the center."
	"Look closer," Mistelle said, hitting a few keys causing the image to zoom in.
	Rusk looked closer, as requested, but couldn't understand what he was seeing.  He'd looked at Pollux a few times through a telescope with an H-alpha filter, so he knew what the surface of a star looked like.  This wasn't like that.  Neither was it a solid surface radiating heat.  Nor was it a bank of light bulbs or fluorescent tubes or LED panels.
	"What is that?" Porter asked.
	Skael snickered.  "You don't know already?  I'm shocked."
	"You know what that is?" Rusk asked Skael.
	"No!  But I don't claim to know everything."
	Levity in the face of the unknown -- that had never been Rusk's style.  He preferred to keep his wits focused on the challenge at hand.  But how could this be comprehended at a glance?
	The probe was falling into a giant, golden wall.  No, wall wasn't the right word.  It had wall-like properties, but wall implied a discrete surface.  What Rusk thought of when looking at the screen before him was the crab nebula, a dense supernova remnant with bright filamentary structure, glowing from both line emission as in arc lamps, and also synchrotron processes from the combination of high speed electrons and intense magnetic fields.  The crab was a combination of reds and blues, while this was all a luminous, light lustrous gold, with filamentary texture.  There was no solid surface, but it didn't look like a fluid or gas, not exactly.
	"What do you want to do?" Mistelle asked.
	"How far away is the probe from the…this thing?"
	"I don't have a clue," she answered.  "Radar's not hitting.  Stereo cameras are giving contradictory results."
	"How about angular size as a function of time?" Tolbert asked.  "That would give us an impact time at least."
	"Watch closer," she admonished.  "This surface, if you can call it that, is variable.  I'm guessing we have five or ten minutes, but that's just a guess."
	Normally Rusk would keep his own council here, or, if Griffin had been present, consult with her.  But he'd been admiring the smarts of this group, and how Klingston had been able to extract their talent by letting them work on problems as equals.  He said, "I'm torn.  We could stall the probe, let it study the thing, but at it's depth it wouldn't pick up much velocity if we let it drop again.  We could also just let it drop in and let it report back.  Opinions?"
	Nyquist said, "I think--"
	A flash of light from the display stopped Derik in mid-sentence.  The display went black.
	"What happened?" Rusk asked.
	Mistelle tapped some keys and conferred with their X-bot, Drone, for a few moments.  "We've lost the probe," she said.
	"Damn," Skael said.
	"How?"
	"I don't know," she replied.  "I can probably get some information from the last few milliseconds of telemetry we received.  But we have a bigger problem."
	"We do?  What's that?"
	She tapped a few keys and a new image jumped onto the display.  Rusk tried to make sense of it and finally figured out he was looking down onto the tops of some distant clouds.
	"I'm zooming in," Mistelle said.
	The cloud tops ballooned toward him and then he saw it: a silvery sphere was flying up out of the clouds.
	"It's a lot bigger than us, moving faster, and it's headed directly toward us."

	
Chapter 16

Caught in the Web

	"What do you mean, 'someone's coming?'" Griffin asked George, looking up from her tube of coffee.
	"That's all I know," he said.
	"Who, where, when, how?" she asked, sure that he had to know more than the two words he'd been charged to carry.
	The dark-haired man's eyes bulged and his voice cracked when he answered.  "No one knows who, and I'm not sure about the how either, but they're coming soon and they're coming to one of the rooms inside."
	That helped, not much, but a little.  "Did Klingston say what I should do?"
	"Yes!" George grinned and shook his fist with excitement, making his entire body vibrate in a distracting manner.  "He said you should use your best judgment."
	Terrific.  She'd planned to do that anyway.  So then, what was her best judgment?  What did the back up do in preparation for first contact?  She could do what she'd done before: assembled an armed back up.  Rusk had taken most of the weapons-qualified personnel, and whether or not they would be of any use was quite unclear.  If Klingston was right, if they needed weapons they were in trouble already.
	Still, she thought that securing the Dark Heart would be wise.  She could do that while they gathered more intelligence.  "George, I'd like you to go back into the Spider Star--"
	"Thank you!" he interrupted her.  "I couldn't believe it when Frenk sent me away!  I mean, aliens!  Do you think they've arrived yet?"
	"I don't know," she said simply, giving up the fight against his infectious smile.  She smiled back.  "I want you to take Rosetta and Lance with you.  Take Rosetta to Klingston, but tell Lance to set up a communications corridor, and pop back and forth across the hull once per minute, or as warranted."  Rosetta was the X-bot loaded with their linguistics and communications experts, while the patterns imprinted in Lance featured those with expertise in security, surveillance, and intelligence gathering.
	"Right!  Can I go now?"
	"Yes," she said.
	George bounced toward the stairway, missed it, and clanged against the wall with a painful thump.  "I'm okay!"  He made it through on his second try and she listened to him clang away.
	Griffin called up Persson and Robb and told them to suit up again and station themselves in the Dark Heart's airlock.  "Kurtz and I will join you in a few minutes."  The X-bot, monitoring the communications, didn't need to be explicitly told.
	"Sloan?"  Donovan sounded strange.
	"What is it?" she asked.
	"I don't want to bother you with all this going on, but something's coming up on Rusk."
	Someone's coming, something's coming up…couldn't anyone be specific?  Just give her facts and let her sort them out, please already!  She usually did a better job with facts alone.  "Put Manuel through to me."
	Rusk's voice burst onto the speakers.  "Sloan, something's after us."
	"What already?"  She didn't mean to sound angry, but she feared it came out that way.  Can you pipe us a visual?"
	"Yes, of course," he said.
	"Put it on," she told the ship's computer.
	At first she didn't see anything, then it locked in: a perfectly reflective region moving through the clouds.  It reached a higher altitude, above the clouds, and then with it reflecting indigo skies the thing became clear.  It was something all right, but what, who could say?  This was exciting -- a bit too exciting.  First contact on two fronts.  "What's it doing?"
	"Chasing us," Manuel said flatly, replacing the cloudscape image.  "It's going to catch us, too."
	"Does it seem threatening?"
	"Well, it is chasing us."
	She realized how dumb her question sounded now, but wasn't it just like Rusk to point it out in a way that made it obvious not only to her, but to everyone listening.  He always did tend to find ways to build himself up, usually at the expense of others, but not usually at her expense.  She was too busy to feel very offended, and she would let him know it.  "Someone's coming up an elevator to the space dock."
	There, let him chew on that a little.  He wasn't the only one with something going on.
	"That's great," he said.  He sounded genuine about it.  "Look, I know you can't do anything for us from where you are.  I just wanted to let you know what was happening."
	Of course they knew what was happening with the dirigible -- the airship was sending them a continuous telemetry stream that included everything from computer RAM states to control deck eavesdropping video and sound.
	Rusk, she realized, was making a personal appeal.  He wanted her to know what was going on.  She tried not to read too much into things, but she thought maybe he did want her with him there with him, now.  She softened.  "The space plane will be ready in another day or so."
	They'd started nanofacturing the space plane after they'd finished the dirigible.  The plane was fast, but not nearly as versatile as the dirigible in this environment.  Rusk had wanted to leave before the plane was finished, and Klingston had let him.  She should have insisted on waiting.
	"I don’t know what's going to happen in the next few minutes," Rusk said.
	He was downplaying the situation.  He was scared, she realized, in a way he'd probably never been before in his entire life.  Indeed, who could say what would happen when that reflective ball reached the dirigible?  Not a human.
	"I don't know either."  Although she had a sweet tooth, Griffin was not a believer in sugar coatings, and Manuel respected her for that.  Still, there was some cause for optimism.  "If they wanted to destroy you, surely they have the technology to do that instantly."
	It didn't sound so optimistic after she'd said it aloud.
	"I suppose that's true," he said.
	"Priority interrupt!" Lance announced on another channel.  Rusk vanished and one of Lance's patterns appeared, an older black man with graying hair.  "Klingston's party are being attacked by some things."
	More with the somethings and someones.  All right.  Lance wouldn't interrupt her without serious cause.  It was an emergency.  She kept her mouth shut and watched his report.
	The image of the black man faded to be replaced by a series of short movie clips and sound.  She watched and listened to the voice over.  She saw snippets of video as an autonomous spycam popped across a portal, back and forth, collecting and relaying in alternate steps.
	It was bizarre.  She couldn't understand what she was seeing.  Dark brown shapes, complex shapes, legs?   Arms?  She couldn't tell.  Flashing bright glints.  Distant screams.  Gouts of floating blood.  What was this?
	The voice over provided a time stamp and identification of particular Specialists, nothing more.  The worst part was, she recognized several without assistance.
	What was this?
	"Forward to Rusk," she said.  She didn't know what was going to happen to him, but he had a right to know what was happening up here.  It might help him to know.  She didn't let herself dwell on the idea that seeing this might demoralize him.  She'd never seen Manuel Rusk demoralized as long as she'd known him.
	Griffin had never been demoralized as long as she'd known anyone.  "Robb, Persson, prepare to move in.  This is an armed conflict.  Authorized to use lethal force.  Repeat: you are authorized to use lethal force."
	She looked at the images again, thinking hard.  She spoke again.  "Klingston appears to have been attacked by Argonauts."
	Rusk said, "I don't understand what's happening up there.  What is this?"
	That's two of us, she thought.
	She said, "You're on your own, Manuel.  You were on your own anyway since we can't reach you in time to help, but I'm afraid we can't even talk to you now.  You're on your own."
	"Understood," he replied.
	She wondered, briefly, if that was it.  If their relationship of over ten years would finished with an abrupt businesslike exchange like this.  She loved him, in a way.  Should she tell him?  Would it be inappropriate, even if true?  Could it cause him unneeded distraction in this critical time?
	Stick to business, stick to authorized protocol.  That was the safest course.  That was always the safest course.  It was designed to maximize their effectiveness, and that was what they needed now, wasn't it?  She gave Rusk all she could afford to.  "Best of luck and Godspeed.  We'll update you when we can."
	"Ditto," he said.
	She didn't say anything else.  She didn't know if she could, not to him.  She waved to Donovan and kicked off for the airlock and the Spider Star space dock.  Something awaited her, what it was she had a clue, but not certain knowledge.  That was fine.  She would give it her all regardless of its origin, and if indeed it required painful, forceful decisions as it seemed likely, she would make them.  Rusk deserved that from her, in her position.  So did Klingston, facing a cold-blooded attack, welcoming, unarmed.
	If that was indeed the situation, and she had no reason to doubt it was, she'd do everything in her power to undo it.  Or, if not undo it, to rectify it.  Revenge it.  Avenge it.  This was her moment of empowerment, she vowed, for all their sakes.  If Klingston and Rusk weren't lost to her already, she'd save them, one at a time, at set things right.
	They hadn't traveled close to twenty light-years for nothing, had they?
	They still had nukes left to launch them on their homeward trip, but they didn't have to be used safely.  Ten million year old technology or not, she'd make them prove their superiority if she had to.
	I'm coming, Klingston.  I'm coming.

	
Chapter 17

First, Bloody Contact

	Seconds after the elevator doors opened, Frenk had to admit to himself that he wasn't in control of the situation.  Seconds after that, Frenk had to admit to himself that he was in fear for his own life.
	He had only been in a few honest-to-goodness, out-of-control, in-fear-for-his-life situations.  Once had been approaching the Roxor ship, and then with Crotx painfully straddling him, not knowing for certain how it would end for him.  Another time, on Earth, he'd been flying his car in a snowstorm despite weather advisories and had clipped another vehicle despite the automatic failsafe.  It didn't happen often, but it did happen from time to time.  The thing that unified those moments in his mind was how the time had stretched, in some relativistic law of crisis, for him to think a multitude of thoughts he still recalled clearly for years afterward.
	While his car had been spiraling out of control, falling toward the ground, he remembered thinking something like, no, this can't be happening.  Then he'd thought, I have too many things to do.  He had, too -- this was just shortly before he was supposed to go into deep space.  A few seconds later he landed headfirst, his nanofoam had deployed, and cushioned his impact, and he'd walked away unharmed.  Physically.  He'd spent a few weeks thinking through those terrible moments of spinning and falling, with their memory hitting him at odd and inopportune times, and he'd feared they'd take away his scouting mission.  He'd wanted to do important things and become rich, and since he was a smart talented guy that seemed like one of the more certain ways of reaching his goals.  Life was funny.
	Like now, he started to think to himself, again: no, this can't be happening.  Apparently it was his natural reaction.  He'd thought it again with Crotx, but the duration of the act had diluted the thought's impact in a way it hadn't with the car accident.
	Again, Frenk was falling and spinning, hit in passing by some sort of creature flying out from the elevator car.
	The aliens shot out, fast, dark, furry, all limbs.  Legs, arms, he didn't know.  He was falling and spinning, and so was everyone else.
	How could this be happening?  Weren't the aliens supposed to be at least ten million years more advanced?  The seemed to be attacking Frenk and his people, of all things.  This didn't make sense, and the spinning didn't help.
	Frenk reached out, trying to grab something, anything.
	Something flashed, and he pulled back his hand in pain.  As he continued to spin out, he looked down at his hand to see the blood popping out in a series of small globules.  This can't be happening.
	He hadn't really been listening yet.  Somehow, in all the excitement, he'd stopped hearing anything, or at least being aware of sounds.  Now, with his hand throbbing, he listened to the screaming.  It didn't seem to be all human screaming.  No, there were alien sounds, sounds he'd never heard before, but felt safe in characterizing as screaming.  A crazy, wild, cacophony.  The alien sounds were not screams of pain, but screams of exaltation, that was his impression anyway.  War cries.
	Frenk continued to spin, sending out his tiny trail of floating blood bubbles behind him.  After a few seconds he bounced off a wall, hard, and careened back into the center of the room.
	He really didn't want to be there.
	There were limbs flashing, metal glinting, blood spurting, and all the screaming.  He actually thought back to Crotx, the pain, the humiliation, and how quiet it had been during the entire experience.  He'd believed, at the time, that the silence had made it worse.  Now he thought that the screaming made it worse.  He was afraid if he thought about it he could identify some of the screamers.
	His fall, his spin, stopped abruptly, as something caught him held him, tightly.  There were sounds in his ear.  Harsh, loud, guttural sounds that made no sense.
	Frenk realized he was making sounds himself, something awful between wheezing and screaming, and tried to make himself stop.  He would be dead in seconds, or not, and making awful sounds wouldn't help him either way.
	Scant seconds later, and it was over.  Not over, not completely, not the significance of the thing, but the initial attack.  The screaming stopped, mostly, to be replaced by quieter moans and cries.
	Frenk looked down at his arms, at his legs, and saw limbs gnarly and hairy, dark brown, holding them, squeezing them.  This alien creature held him in a death grip, and he was at its mercy.
	He was cockeyed to them, but he saw another alien creature holding onto Towson, who was screaming bloody murder, kicking and biting.  As he watched them, the creature lifted something gleaming bright -- it seemed to have plenty of limbs to hold Towson and do other things as well -- and stabbed it into him, over and over, with great force.
	More blood floated out into the room, red and dark.
	Frenk felt as if he'd been punched in the gut, and wondered if he himself were about to suffer the same fate as well.  He breathed, raggedly, loudly, and watched, and waited, and wondered how he could continue to endure what was going on.  Tears streamed across his cheeks in every direction, sliding into his eyebrows without gravity to guide them.  He wanted to shake his head, shake the tears off, but worried what the thing holding him might do.
	He wondered how people felt when being murdered, or worse, tortured to death, and worried that he would find out soon.
	Something struck him then.  These weren't alien creatures, not exactly.  They were Argonauts.  Argonauts!  The looked very much like overgrown spider monkeys, long, eight-limbed, screechy.  They were of the technological race from Argo, who had discovered the Spider Star ten million years ago, who had apparently destroyed themselves.
	But they hadn't destroyed themselves, not completely.  An example of the species now held him so tightly he thought the skin on his arms and legs might just separate and spew out even more blood than already floated in the room.  It was the blood of his crewmates, at least a few of whom he counted as friends.  They'd all trusted him to lead them, and had he failed, oh how!
	Ouch!  Frenk had started to moan loudly, and the thing holding him, Argonaut, he supposed he should think of it, squeezed him, and he decided to shut up.  What else could he do?  Now, having a few seconds, he also realized it didn't just hold him by his arms and legs, but it pressed something against his throat.
	Did it have to be so obvious that the throat was a weak point?  Even in just a few seconds aliens, of all things, had figured this out.  Insanely, he thought of a slight woman he'd known back on Earth.  She'd studied several martial arts and he'd kind of made fun of her, telling her that the hundred pounds of muscle mass he had on her would make the difference in any fight.  She'd just looked back him coldly and said, "Everyone's weak in the throat."  He hadn't had any interest in challenging her after that.
	The creature holding Frenk made a loud sound in his ear.  He thought it was a coherent sound similar to the Argonaut language examples he'd heard.
	He didn't have a clue what it meant.
	The creature made the sound again, more forcefully, and a few other sounds as well.
	Frenk floated in freefall, helpless in the alien grasp, the universe spinning out of control.
	Over his left shoulder, he heard a high piping voice he couldn't place.  "Excuse me, but they want you to surrender."
	That seemed a redundant request.
	There were more sounds from the aliens, and he heard someone shriek -- Sally, he thought.  Frenk found his view rotating.  The alien holding him could reach the floor and ceiling simultaneously with its extra limbs, and it turned him until he saw Sally and Jason in the assortment of interfaces that had popped out of the surrounded material.  Two of the Argonauts were near them, but not holding them the same way that he, and poor Towson, were being held.
	Frenk realized that the high piping voice came from one of Jason's patterns, and that pattern likely understood the spoke Argonaut language that was being used.  He risked talking back to the bot, mindful of what had happened to Towson when he'd struggled.  "Tell them we are at their mercy."
	No blades stabbed into Frenk, and for that he was momentarily grateful, but Jason remained silent much longer than Frenk was comfortable with.  Finally the X-bot pattern said, "I advise telling them that you surrender.  The most accurate translation of 'at their mercy' would give them permission to eat you.  They might do that anyway, it being a common practice among some cultures, but I wouldn't tell them to do it myself."
	"Tell them we surrender!" Frenk said, wondering if anyone else out of sight had been killed during this exchange.
	The X-bot made some noises and the pressure against his throat eased, but did not vanish.  Insanely he thought: yes, that's it, we're striking back.  Such thoughts flew through his head, he seemed out of control of his own mind as much as he was out of control of the situation.
	There was silence, of a sort, then.  There was moaning, crying, coming from all around him, but not loudly.  He had a flash to what ancient battlefields must have sounded like after the explosions and yelling had ceased.
	Then Frenk was moving, or his captor was moving, and Frenk was moving with him.  They approached Jason and Sally.  As they drew near, he could make out the freckled face of the young man in the display of the X-bot.
	"I'm Wil," the pattern said to Frenk.  "Isn't this exciting?"
	Frenk had just watched a good, frightened man be stabbed to death by an alien creature and the after wash of adrenaline made him feel sick.  Excitement in this instance was not fun, and as much as he resented the thoughtless words of the X-bot, how could he find fault with a robotic, scanned pattern?  How could these Argonauts kill Wil?
	He wished that they had Drone with them.  Drone was war-equipped, and might have managed to put up a fight.  It didn't seem that the Argonauts had any weapons other than knives or some other sort of blade.  A number of Specialists had skill in freefall combat…and they were all with Rusk or Griffin.
	Frenk had all the techies and Argonaut scholars with him.
	Frenk was too shocked to feel stupid.
	He tried not to think of his family.
	The Argonaut holding him made more loud sounds, and shook him.
	Jason, or Wil, rather, speaking from the X-bot, said, "It's pretty mad.  It thinks you ought to be able to speak their language, and is plenty pissed you can't.  By the way, it knows you're the leader here."
	"How's it know that?" Frenk asked.
	"I don't know.  My guess is that they're really good with body language, even in humans.  Argonaut society, while seeming chaotic at first glance, had a very clear hierarchy to those within it."
	The pressure returned to Frenk's throat.  Okay, they knew he was the leader and didn't question it further.  "Ask them what they want, Wil."
	The strange loud, guttural sounds issued from the X-bot again.  After hearing the reply, Wil said, "They want the your weapons, everything of value, especially your…um, this is a hard one to translate properly…'sustenance trophy.'"
	Frenk didn't know what that last term meant, and the exchange overall didn't make Frenk feel any better about the situation.  His group had no weapons with them.  All the weapons they had were back on the Dark Heart.  
	That got Frenk to thinking.  Griffin, and some of the Specialists who could fight, were back on the ship, safe at least for the moment.  Did she know what was going on?  How had she reacted when George had conveyed his message?  Was there a way to salvage the situation?
	The wild card in all this was that he wasn't dealing with humans.  He didn't know if they lied, bluffed, or were always scrupulously honest.  He didn't know how they handled hostage situations.  Human governments tended to refuse to deal with hostage takers, while smaller groups and individuals always did.  Which was the correct solution usually depended on whether or not there would be repeated encounters, and that was sort of a moot question given his position.  He knew he should know more about the Argonaut species and civilization, but the truth was that he didn't know much except for the most basic details.  Who could have expected that they'd encounter living, breathing Argonauts after ten million years?
	No one could have.
	Was that a good enough excuse for his family.  Sounded like something Ken would have said to him.  No one could have expected it.
	How many of his mates were dead now?  He had no way to tell.  He could ask, he supposed, but how would they, aliens, react to such a question when they had just made a demand of their own?  How long did aliens regard as reasonable to think over their request?
	He imagined he might be able to ask more questions, stall for time, but how would they react to that?
	Frenk smelled something faint, but pleasant, and at the same time noticed a slickness where he was being held.  Lord knew he was sweating, but this seemed to be coming from the Argonaut holding him.  Did they sweat?  He should remember.  What did it mean when they did.
	The Argonaut screamed at him, leaving his ears ringing, and something pricked his weak throat.  He didn't need Wil to translate that.
	"Tell them we surrender!  Tell them they can have what they want from us!"
	What else could he do?
	The X-bot spoke their language.  The grip on him did not relax and the blade remained pressed into his soft flesh.  The alien spoke again, still loud and angry sounding.
	"What's wrong?"
	"They say you've already agreed and you are to make it happen using your authority.  They haven't seen any clear response yet."
	What did they expect from him, magic tricks?  All he could do was talk, and he assumed that everyone else was similarly held.  "Please, ask them to be more specific."
	It sounded stupid when he said it, already bleeding, completely cowed.  Here he was, asking for more specific instructions.
	The X-bot didn't make any sounds, not immediately, then it said in English, "I've thought about it some more.  I'm not sure I made the best translation.  You are to tell everyone to surrender, to say--" and the bot made a strange sound, sound like a whimper, "--and then hand over the sustenance trophies and any weapons."
	Okay, they had to say 'Uncle,' those that were still alive to say it.  They were dealing with aliens.  If that would satisfy them, so be it.  "All right.  But we don't have any weapons.  Tell them that."
	"We don't?" Wil asked.
	Stupid imbecile X-bot.  They had some analysis tools that could be construed as weapons that would be at least as effective as knives, of all things, and they had an entire armory back on the Dark Heart.  No need to give that away.  "We have no weapons in this room.  Tell them."
	Wil made the funny sounds again and got a response.  The X-bot translated, "They accept that seeing as how easily conquered we were, but not they insist on the surrenders or they kill more people."
	Frenk felt a pain in his chest, as if some small but important organ had just imploded.  Kill more people.  Just how many were dead?  He wished he could look around to see, and he was happy that he could not.  "Okay, Wil.  Make the sounds again, and tell everyone to say them.  I don't know if everyone can hear me."
	The X-bot broadcast the alien terms and Frenk forced himself to listen.  He heard voices around the room -- not enough! -- repeating them, and he did himself.  Shocked, empty.  There was no meaning in the sounds.  They were just sounds they had to make to let this horror show get to the next scene so maybe it could finish.  He wished he were in a comedy, even one of those disgusting ones with the Swedish clowns that had been so popular.
	Suddenly then Frenk was spinning, being wrapped in some kind of rope, or twine, and then he was floating, pushed toward one of the walls.  He hit it lightly, and, unlike previous times when he'd bounced off the walls in these rooms, he stuck this time.  He didn't know if it was something the Argonauts had done or the nature of the twine enveloping him.
	He hadn't hit face first, and had a partial view of the room.
	His first reaction was to close his eyes, sick, but he forced himself to open his eyes back up and survey the situation with all the cold logic he could muster.
	He got his first chance to look at a live Argonaut from a distant perspective.  The creature superficially resembled a larger version of the spider monkey on Argo: dark, hairy, eight limbs -- four below a body break and four above.  The heads sported large black eyes without eyelids and a mouth of large, squared-off teeth.  None of them wore clothing, at least not that he could recognize as such, although all of the Argonauts he could see had various colored bands around their appendages -- red, blue, green, maroon.  He didn't know if they were decorative, belts, or what.  They were definitely longer than humans, and wider, but he couldn't say that they massed much more.  Remembering the grip that held him, he thought they were probably stronger than humans.  Seemed like everything was.
	Sally and Jason had both been extracted from the Spider Star equipment and had been wrapped up and stuck on the wall as he was, but not all the Specialists had been so treated.  He saw Towson's body floating alone, and Tod's as well.  He presumed they were dead.  Three Specialists that still seemed to be alive were held by Argonauts: Millicent, Richard, and Kim.
	The Argonauts spoke to each other.  He thought there were only seven of them, but couldn't tell for sure because he couldn't tell them apart.  Even more maddening, he couldn't tell anything about what was going on from their body language.  Alien.  Helpless, he groped for some course of action.  He worked up his courage to speak, and finally said in a low, steady voice, "Wil, can you translate for us?"
	The Argonauts didn't seem to mind them talking.  Everyone else seemed too shocked to talk, or didn't have anything to say.  He wished someone had a great idea, a miracle idea, that would end the nightmare, but no human said a thing.
	"As best I can," the X-bot pattern replied eagerly.  "This is a remarkable opportunity."
	While the patterns were good expert systems and even reproduced personality, they were far from perfect copies.  For one thing, they had no sense of self-preservation -- the autonomous X-bot systems were programmed for preservation but would violate those provisions if ordered.
	"Something about their great deeds, and bravery, and their might.  Oh, not 'their' meaning the whole group, the 'their' meaning the three holding our people.  They've distinguished themselves somehow and earned a bounty, a trophy."
	Frenk hadn't worried much about that condition of their surrender, but now an electric shock tensed every muscle.  What were they going to do to them?  "Ask them!  Ask them what is going to happen!"
	"Very well," Wil said, taking a moment, then speaking again in the alien tongue.
	The Argonauts ignored him.
	Desperation ignited in Frenk, all the worse because his imagination likely conjured worse demons than reality held.  "Everyone, everyone, yell, get their attention!"
	About half the people yelled, or screamed or moaned.  He could make out Sally's voice, high and shrill, but alert and angry.  He worried more about the people he could not hear.
	The Argonauts ignored them.
	Millicent started shrieking then as two Argonauts used their long limbs to walk themselves along the floor and ceiling and took grasped her arms from each side.  The one that had held her now slid over to one side and held her left shoulder with one arm, held her forearm with another, and proceeded to wrap her biceps tightly with a rope with third and fourth hands.  After it had completed tying off the rope, it placed its large, brutal blade against her right elbow.
	Without pause or ceremony, the creature began to saw into Millicent's arm.
	As her shrieks became loud screams, it proceeded with its steady sawing, but took a fourth arm and wrapped its broad, splayed-fingered hand over her face to stifle the sounds.
	Frenk wanted to look away, but forced himself to watch.  He was the Director, and he was responsible.  He had to watch.  It seemed a sharp blade, but it took some time to cut through.
	Frenk wished for a miracle, and wishing for it, realized that such a thing was possible --they weren't alone.  His shock had been so deep, so profound, his demoralization so sudden and deep, he'd forgotten about Griffin.  She could do something!  She could save them!  She was paranoid, right?  She was a security freak, right?  She'd do better than him in this situation.  She wouldn't get surprised.
	He should have told her to be careful!
	As bad as watching Millicent get her arm sawed off, what came next was worse.  The badly translated term 'sustenance trophy' should have tipped him off.  The Argonaut finished cutting offer her arm just below the elbow and pulled it away.  The creature immediately put it into its mouth and began tearing jagged pieces away from it.
	Frenk experienced another one of the those tunnel-vision moments, remembering Griffin's lesson with their modified blood and the spider.  There was enough blood floating around the room, but none of the Argonauts had directly ingested it like this.  She'd said the toxicity of their blood was extreme and extended to Argotian species.  He assumed that would include Argonauts as well.
	He didn't say anything.  He could barely make a sound.  Part of him welcomed the coming revenge, and he felt sure it would come soon, but part of him feared the retribution they could receive in return.
	The Argonaut chewing on Millicent's arm made an awful sound.  It didn't sound like a scream, not a human scream anyway.  It was more of a grating sound, the sound of something hard being polished with great force, more of a screeching than a screaming.  The smell hit him next.  While the smell from the Argonaut who had held him had been sweet, this new smell was rotten.  He had read about strange plants with flowers that smelled rank and rotting in order to attract insects attracted to that sort of thing, and, although he had never smelled one, he imagined they might smell like this smell he now encountered.  And then Millicent's arm floated free, released from the creature's grip.
	They began screaming and yelling at each other with what seemed to Frenk as ridiculous amounts of gesticulation.  When an eight-limbed creature gesticulates, it is a sight, he decided.  This was a perverse situation and a he didn't fault his perverse thought.  "What are they saying?"
	The X-bot answered with Wil's voice.  "Oh, they're quite upset.  The first trophy-taker seems to be dead and they don't know why.  Oh, they decided that quickly."
	"What?" Sally asked.
	Frenk was happy to hear someone else speak up instead of merely moaning, but then he realized that the Argonauts had gone quiet and had turned their attention to him.  They came toward him and didn't stop until they were close.  Very close.  The lead Argonaut, the one who had held him initially, he thought, put its mouth within six inches of Frenk's face and began yelling.  The creature paused finally, and breathed sweet breath into Frenk.
	Wil translated.  "They are quite upset about what's just happened."
	Frenk gathered that, but didn't dare say anything with this creature's giant dark eyes staring into his.
	Wil went on.  "They want to know what you're going to do now about their loss.  They want to know--"
	Shots rang out.
	That phrase sounded trite to Frenk even as he thought it, but it was what was happening and it was the phrase that first sprang to mind.  The Argonaut in his face whipped around and Frenk was afforded a glance beyond it.
	Three armored Specialists and an X-bot -- presumably Lance, what with Drone off with Rusk, all wielding automatic weapons, were floating slowing away from the portal, weapons pointed menacingly.
	Frenk briefly wondered what happened to the shots.  Would the walls of this place absorb them, or let them bounce?  He didn't know and he hadn't noticed.  The initial shots had seemed merely a warning, at least as in so far no one had cried out at being shot.  As the Argonauts were close to their human captives, it seemed likely the shots were warnings and not all that close to actually hitting any living targets.
	Focus, man, focus!
	The Argonauts began howling, loud, wild, whooping noises that deafened Frenk.  It was a cacophony, worse even than the spider monkeys back on Argo.  He knew he was old, but he thought that this would deafen the most noise-hardened teen-ager.
	Suddenly, without warning, he was grabbed, plucked off the wall.  He was being carried.  Others were, too.  Everything was violent, rapid motion.  No up, no down, just accelerations.  After all the jostling, he found himself in the elevator with the Argonauts and at least four or five Specialists and the X-bot Jason.
	He heard Griffin yelling, "Stop!  Stop!"
	Then the wall closed up between them and he fell toward what he had thought of previously as the ceiling.  The elevator car accelerated down into the Spider Star at what felt like close to an Earth gravity.

	
Chapter 18

Digesting the Situation

	The silver globule rose behind the dirigible, inexorable, relentless.
	At first Rusk had been optimistic, and tried broadcasting the same Argonaut hail that had garnered them the docking.  The globe had not returned the hail, nor had it changed its threatening approach in any way.
	It bore on toward them at high velocity, unwavering.
	He'd had Slyde pilot the hell out of the ship.  They'd tried hiding in clouds, but the aliens had unsurprisingly discovered radar, or one of dozens of equivalent technologies, and had not hesitated.  They'd tried spiraling around the backside of the Spider Star spoke, but had been unable to keep it between them and the globe.  The silver globule was faster than their dirigible.
	Rusk had nearly run out of options.
	He was sorely tempted to start thinking of all the things they should have done: take a space plane instead of a dirigible, not drop a probe, and stay on Argo.
	No, he refused to consider that this mission to the Spider Star was an inherent mistake.  After all, ten million years ago the Argonauts had come here and achieved their goals.  Humans had to be able to do at least as well.
	"The globule is almost upon us," Slyde said.
	So it was.  It was within a hundred kilometers, and on the scale of the Spider Star, that wasn't all that far.  Given their relative velocities it wasn't all that far either.
	Rusk wanted to curse out loud, to throw a tantrum, but he wouldn't do such thing unless he was alone.  He was being grossly outclassed by the alien technology, and it didn't seem fair.	Fair enough -- things wouldn't be fair.  They were not just decades or even centuries behind the times, not even millennia, but megayears.  Megayears.  That was an insane amount of time.  Who could even comprehend what that meant?  They were prayer wheels beseeching an unknown god, at best, asking for a miracle they didn’t deserve.  At worst they were ants, ants in a magnifying glass.  As a kid, he'd once gotten some friends to put on ant costumes, and then while a few hundred feet up flying in a car he'd said, "Hey look, those people down there look just like ants!"  His parents had ignored him and that had been the end of his career in comedy.
	If the game wasn't fair, then you had to cheat to win.  The problem was, even if it hadn't been against his nature, Rusk didn't know how to cheat in this situation.
	Okay, if the silver globule was coming for them, did it have to be hostile?  No, it didn't, even if it didn't seem overly friendly.  It might well take hostile action if they provoked it, but did dropping a probe reach the threshold of provocation?  If it did, they were lost already.
	He made a decision.  "Full stop.  Let's float in the wind and wait for our friends."
	There was a hesitation from Slyde, who had until now been doing his best to keep them away from the alien thing.  Finally he said, "Full stop."
	The dirigible became interior became quiet, with no more wind from their passage, and very smooth.
	"I'm going outside," Rusk announced.  It made as much sense as any other action, perhaps more.  Surely no creature living here could have seen a human before.  Maybe if they showed themselves, that would display some good will and pique the curiosity of those piloting the silver globule.  "Any one who wants can join me, just make sure you broadcast anything important to the exterior speakers, and be listening on the audio pick ups for me."
	Rusk went through the airlock to the gondola and stepped out on the catwalk.  There were no rules now.  These were not situations anyone had anticipated in enough detail to write rules for.  Rusk decided it was time for him to start making his own rules in earnest.
	Outside the air was warm, if a touch humid, and altogether pleasant.  The light coming from below, however, engendered a feeling of disquiet within him, a reminder that this was a whole place where the usual rules didn't apply.  He slipped his fingers through the wire mesh of the catwalk cage, holding the cool composite material loosely, and looked toward the direction were the globule would approach.
	After a moment he heard the airlock doors cycle again and tentative footsteps sliding toward him.  Without looking he said, "A beautiful, peaceful view, isn't it Skael?"
	The man laughed.  "And how did you know it was me?"
	"You're the craziest one of us."
	"Second craziest, Manuel.  Only second craziest, now."
	They stood in silence, balanced between rising and falling, in perfect equilibrium with the wind.
	Mistelle came over the loudspeaker.  "It's almost here.  You should be able to see it momentarily."
	Rusk felt strangely ambivalent.  He supposed it was because the situation was beyond his control, which was very unusual for him.  Why should he be invested if he had no control.
	"This is fun," Skael said.
	That almost made Rusk crack up, but he resisted.  Just because he felt out of control now didn't mean he would remain out of control in the upcoming encounter.
	"There it is!" Rusk said.
	A region of the sky before them appeared odd, warped.  That had to be it.  The region grew larger as he watched, and he was sure.  "Mistelle, can you estimate the albedo?"
	The albedo was the fraction of light the object reflected.  Mistelle answered, "Better than 99 percent.  I can't be more accurate right now without active scanning."
	"That's okay," Rusk said.  "I was just curious."
	And he was very curious, especially since part of himself recognized this as a life and death situation.  For all he knew this was a smart bomb designed to track down intruders and blow them to bits.
	So be it.  It was a done deal.
	Part of him marveled as his detachment and disdain.  This was a new side of himself.
	Then the sky opened.
	The reflective surface of the approaching globule was so good that it was excellent camouflage, but inside, it was dark.  A shadowed region just popped into existence.
	"Would you look at that," Skael said.  "That's fucking amazing."
	"No shit," Rusk said, getting into the moment.  Four-letter words distinguished the uniqueness of the event, if not the perverseness.  Rusk tried to save such words for significant events, and this had to qualify (although part of him wondered why he hadn't been cursing continuously since coming out of hibernation).
	The dark region continued to grow larger, apparently growing closer.  The dirigible was a half kilometer long, and more than a hundred meters along the other axis.  The dark region, Rusk thought, was at least three hundred meters across, maybe a little larger.  Perspective was difficult to achieve.  The silvery region surrounding the darkness, that was impossibly huge and hard to estimate, but it had to be measured in kilometers.
	Rusk allowed himself the freedom to enjoy the experience of seeing a cave in the sky.  He'd never even imagined such a thing, and there it was, hanging there before him, growing closer, growing more real.
	Mistelle said, "The alien craft isn't slowing.  It's continuing to head straight for us with the same velocity as when we first spotted it."
	There was some famous quote about consistency that Rusk couldn't recall that probably summed up this situation.  Rusk was simultaneously exalted and disappointed that ancient sayings could wrap up such an incredible situation.
	"We're in for it now," Rusk said to Skael.
	"Nothing we can do."
	"Not at all."
	Together they watched the approaching hole of darkness flying through the sky.  Skael said, "Manuel, I know men don't say such things to each other often, but I wanted to let you know I find you interesting.  You've made this mission interesting, and I'm not just saying that."
	"I appreciate you telling me that," Rusk said.
	Slyde's voice came over the speaker.  "It's almost on us.  What do you want me to do?"
	Inappropriately, Rusk thought that Slyde's words constituted the perfect straight line.  He responded seriously.  "Don’t do anything.  They have the power here.  Let them do what they want, and we'll respond as we can."
	Even as he was giving his instructions, the cavern was swallowing them, growing to fill a large fraction of the sky.
	"Did you ever see such a thing?" Skael asked.
	"Of course not."
	The dark region closed on them, swallowed them, as if they were floating into a cave instead of the other way around.  As the sky vanished, they began to be able to see into the interior.  Well, they couldn't see much, but they could make out the general shape: oval.  Maybe.  It was very dark.
	The hole that had swallowed them began to close, shrinking smoothly from its edges into its center.  As the light vanished, Rusk felt especially vulnerable and naked.  The silence became even more pronounced, even painful.  "Do you want to go back inside?"
	"No!" Skael said.  He probably didn't mean to be so loud, but it came out that way.  "Mistelle and the others will let us know if we can't keep breathing.  Otherwise I want to see things first hand."
	"All right."  Maybe Rusk himself wasn't the craziest one there -- which was what he'd thought all along.  But he had to admit, he could be: there were only eight humans and an X-bot on the dirigible.  He could be the craziest -- all things being equal he had one chance in eight at the title.
	The dirigible was still floating in the air in the dark cavity, lit only by their own operating lights.  Mistelle's voice broadcast out to them, "We're not seeing much of anything in here, not even on the night vision or thermal systems.  It's like we're in a void.  I'm going to brighten it up."
	"Go ahead," Rusk answered.
	A ring of floodlights lining the sides of the dirigible ignited, spilling billions of candlepower into the darkness around them.
	The darkness swallowed it.
	"Weird," said Skael.
	Weird indeed.  The interior, which he'd thought to be oval-shaped -- a giant version of their own ship -- had to be at least as absorbent of light as the exterior was reflective.
	"How about more active probing?" Rusk asked.  "Radar, lidar, sonar?"
	"Yes, I'm getting bounces, but down a factor of a thousand from what I'd normally expect."
	Her word 'normally' made Rusk wonder how many times Mistelle had been swallowed by alien vessels, but that was a small, trite thing to think and would be an even smaller thing to say out loud.
	"Personally I'd expect a parade," Skael said.
	"Hey, I want you two back in here," Mistelle said.
	"Why?" Rusk asked.
	"The chamber we're inside is shrinking."
#
	Back inside, Rusk said, "Show me what's happening."
	Mistelle showed him the time series of their active sensor measurements.  The walls around them in all directions were creeping in at about a meter a second.
	"I can walk faster than that!" Skael said.
	"Walk to where?" Nyquist asked.
	Skael shut up then finally, saving Rusk the trouble of having to tell him.  Rusk said, "What do you think is going on?  Is it eating us?"
	Porter said, "No, I don't think so.  If they wanted to do that they wouldn't just have the walls close in on us, and not slowly."
	Rusk agreed with him, but wanted to get everyone thinking about the new problem quickly.
	Tolbert said, "I'd like to think they'd want to look us over before digesting us.  I mean, we're a new, unique species and they should be interested in us."
	Rusk hoped so, but didn't necessarily agree with Tolbert's optimism.  Maybe they were bugs here, and if you'd seen a few bugs, how interested would you be to see more?  You smacked them, cleaned them up, and went on with your affairs.  The few exceptions didn't help his attitude; he had briefly gone out with a girl in New Colchis who he'd watched shoo a wasp out a window rather than kill it, and that had ended their budding relationship.
	"Can we see anything yet?" Kat asked.
	"Let's find out," Mistelle replied.  "I'm setting up some image processing routines to enhance the scientific-grade detectors.  Let's see what we have."
	An image appeared on the big display of Mistelle's workstation, but Rusk couldn't make sense of it.  What was he looking it?  Some kind of fractal pattern?
	Skael said, "That's weird!  Can you get stereo, and combine it with the distance information to get a scale?"
	"All right," she answered.
	The workstation display shifted from 2D to 3D, and helpful scales appeared, along with a steadily decreasing number indicating the distance from their dirigible.  The pattern changed in real time as they watched.  It was like watching grass grow, with some time lapse, or a spider build its web.
	"What we're watching," Mistelle announced, "is some kind of growing mesh, a foam perhaps.  It's coming at us from all directions, and will impact us momentarily."
	Nyquist said, "We have some weapons, inside here in the armory.  We could try to destroy it."
	That didn't sound very reasonable to anyone and the idea died in the air.  What were they going to do, shoot it?  Rusk couldn't see any alternatives, and again considered whether this foam was a threat.  Was it really coming to digest them?  What other purposes could it serve?
	And then, in a gap in the discussion, it was upon them.
	"It's on us," Mistelle said.
	And then…nothing.
	"What's happening?" Rusk asked.  "I don't feel anything."
	Mistelle zapped through a dozen diagnostic screens.  "It doesn't seem to be doing much of anything.  It's just holding us."
	Then the gravity shifted.
	"We're accelerating!" Porter said, redundantly.
	"I know!" Mistelle said.  "I'm trying to set up a display to show us where we're going."
	Skael said, "Looks like the foam is there to hold us for the acceleration.  I don't think they're going to digest us!"
	They knew where they were, at least in relation to the Spider Star, before they'd been swallowed.  By keeping track of their accelerations, they could figure out their motion.
	A new display appeared, a 3D display of the spokes of the Spider Star.  The red dotted path was making a beeline for the nearest spoke, albeit losing altitude rapidly.
	"We should thank them if we get the chance," Kat said.  "I think they can accelerate a lot faster than this.  They could turn us into jelly."
	Rusk didn't strictly know if that were true, but he filed away the possibility.  Were they bugs, or were they a prize?  He just didn't know and he'd be at great disadvantage until he figured out the answer.
	They flew onward, held snugly in their quiet, dark, cave in the sky, until only about ten minutes later there came a large deceleration that didn't require sensitive instruments to feel.  Mistelle's display showed that they'd reached the spoke.
	Slyde walked down from his command chair on the bridge.  "I'm not exactly piloting any more, so I thought I'd come on down and join you.  I hope that's okay."
	He said the last part looking at Rusk.  Rusk nodded.  "I don't know that we're still an airship, so if all the systems are secure, welcome to the committee of confusion."
	"Hey, committee of confusion…I like that!" Skael said.
	Rusk didn't like it.  He didn't like being funny.  Things were very serious and while he believed that recent events indicated they weren't going to die any time soon, that was about as much as did believe.
	"The foam, the mesh, whatever, it's dissolving!" Mistelle announced.
	And so it was.  They felt a slight wobble as the foam let them go and their natural buoyancy supported them again.
	"I have infrared signatures!" Mistelle said, even more forcefully than her previous announcement.
	"Show us," Rusk said.
	The display shimmered, and a dozen white shapes materialized.
	"Zoom in on one of them," he requested.
	"Here you go, optical-infrared composite image."
	It took him a moment to make sense of what he was seeing.  It wasn't a machine, and it wasn't human, and that made it difficult.
	A large, round shape filled the top part of the image.  Below the large, round shape protruded an assortment of long, thin shapes.  He eventually recognized these as legs, or arms, some of them at least.  There were a lot of them, whatever they were.  Another round shape under the larger one could be a body, or a head.
	"They're balloons!" said Kat.
	As soon as she floated that idea, Rusk had to admit that it was likely.  The shapes were moving smoothly toward them across an open expanse without moving their limbs.  The large part of them probably was floating, presumably buoyant, and holding them up.  Despite their mode of locomotion, the part that struck Rusk most forcefully was the multitude of limbs, glistening, slick limbs.  Even though they weren't sporting a multitude of heads -- probably not anyway -- the multitude of arms made him think of the old Argonaut myth.
	"All those arms, legs hanging down, I'd be more inclined to think of them as hydras," he said.
	"Great!" said Skael.  "They're hydras."
	"So we call them hydras," Nyquist said.  "What matters is what they do, or don't do."
	The things approached, their skin slick and glistening.  As they did and the resolution improved, it became clear they there were holding things, devices, tools, something.
	"The question is," said Porter, "what are they planning to do with those?"
	They found out soon enough.  The hydras settled down just outside the dirigible and then applied their tools.  There were sparks, sounds, grating sounds.  Rusk even thought he felt a slight shudder pass through the floor.  Part of the mesh cage protecting the cat walk peeled away.  One of the creatures grabbed hold and floated off with it.
	"They’re taking us apart," Mistelle said.  "And they haven’t even asked."
	"We can't just let them do that," Rusk said.  "Let's do something about it.  Tolbert, Slyde, Nyquist, take Drone down to the armory and prepare yourself."

	
Chapter 19

Righteous Ire

	Griffin watched as the gray walls grew to cover the opening to the far room, to cover Frenk and the other Specialists, to cover the familiar-looking alien creatures.  "Lance, did you get anything from Jason?"
	"Yes," the X-bot answered in its neutral, non-patterned voice.  "I have a full record of the events that transpired.  I infer that the room they've just entered is not just a room, but an elevator car."
	Damn!  They were sure moving down now, probably at high velocity.  They were likely out of reach…at least for the time being.  "Do you know how to operate the elevator?  Do you know where they're going?"
	The image in Lance's display shifted from the neutral gray and the face of a skinny black man appeared.  "Hell yes, I can operate a simple elevator!  And I'll tell you where they're going.  They're going down!  Get it?"
	Everyone was a comedian, even long-dead patterns embedded in X-bots on this ill-fated mission.  "I get it.  Get another car here as soon as possible."
	Griffin didn't know if she should follow them in another elevator or not.  On the Argo system, the next car would follow hours later than the previous car.  She didn't know how close they needed to keep, but hours seemed like a lot.
	George floated up to her, a little too fast, sending the pair of them flying and spinning when he glommed on to her.  "Millicent needs attention.  She's had her entire fucking arm hacked off!"
	God, it was true.  Millicent floated in the middle of the room, spinning wildly, holding the stump of an arm that trailed a stream of blood bubbles.  It was an awful thing to see.  My god, Millicent!
	Thankfully Gina Dorissey was in the second-wave of Specialists following Griffin and the armed party.  She intercepted Millicent, grabbed hold of her, and shouted out, "Can someone find her arm?  I need her arm, damn it!"
	Millicent groaned obscenely. 
	The whole situation was surreal, and definitely not one covered in her training.  Even worse than Millicent missing her arm were the dead.  She floated by Towson Field, his face slack and discolored, his light blue jumpsuit stained dark with his own blood.  He'd been so efficient, so productive, and now the light of his life was cut short.  She couldn't believe that a first encounter with an intelligent alien species could end this way, especially with the most experienced human in the universe leading their side.
	Griffin often adopted the position of Devil's advocate when she played out hypotheticals, but she'd never imagined she'd see something like this  The smell of blood permeated the air -- what was sane about that?
	And now these aliens, Argonauts apparently, had hostages.  Worst-case scenario indeed.
	There was an additional feeling of betrayal.  Humans lived on Argo, the Argonauts home world, and knew of them from their relics and recordings.  Of the tiny number of alien civilizations that humans knew about, it didn't seem fair that one of them would hurt them like this.  Better it be some random, awful species.  The fact that they knew of so few aliens and to have a violent encounter like this on a first encounter…it implied that the universe was a very, very dangerous place.
	The best minds had said, for centuries, that advanced alien species would be enlightened and would pose no threat to humanity.  They had said they'd be so advanced they would need nothing from us, and would be pleased to provide help and guidance.
	What shitty advice.  Empirical evidence trumped the best theory.  Always.
	Have no expectations, expect the worst, and be thrilled with the best.  That was what Griffin believed before this, and that belief was only reinforced now.  My god, she thought, they'd cut off Millicent's arm!
	"We've got one," Persson said from behind her.
	Griffin spun around as best she could and saw Gretchen's serious face behind the diamond mask of her helmet.  Then she saw what the Specialist was holding: the body of an Argonaut.
	The alien was longer than a human, but not necessarily much more bulky.  Long, thick bristles covered its dark.  Griffin looked at its head; greenish foam bubbled up from its mouth.
	"We got it," she said simply.  She'd seen enough examples of dead predators from Argo that had tried to eat Specialists out on training missions.  "There is some justice in this unholy place."
	Buoyed forth by the notion that these aliens had already paid a price for their transgressions, Griffin took action.  "We're going after them.  We're getting our people back."
	There were no cheers, no smiles.  The situation was too awful, too grim, but Griffin did think that there was a sense of determination in the eyes of the people there with her.
	She hoped so, anyway.
#
	There were only faint RF signatures that rapidly faded to undetectablility.  Whatever was in the elevator shaft of the Spider Star shielded those signals from the chips implanted in Klingston and the others.
	"They're going down," Millicent said.  "Where else can they go?"
	Griffin sat, Velcroed in a chair, in the Dark Heart's command center with Millicent, Jack Robb, and the X-bots Lance, Einstein, Marlo, and Kurtz.
	"You need to follow them and punish them," Millicent said.
	She was right, of course, at one level.  If these aliens were going to interact with humans and perform unspeakable acts like cutting off their arms, they had to be prepared to face the consequences.  Jason had communicated to Lance how Sally had operated the Spider Star interface, and the fact they'd apparently used it to figure out that the Argonauts were coming up.  
"Okay," Griffin said.  "We'll follow them, using the alien interface, and maybe we can figure out how to operate the elevator.  And we'll follow them physically, outside the spokes of the Spider Star.  Inside if we can.  We'll wait for them to stick up their heads, and when they do, we'll cut them off."
It was such a powerful statement for her, especially the way she said it, that Griffin repeated it.  "When they stick up their heads, we'll cut them off."
#
Griffin prepared, working primarily from the Dark Heart command center, directing and delegating as she could.  She had her crew prepped and the space plane was ready to go.  She had Lance and George working on the interface and the elevator.  She had Gina Dorissey performing an autopsy on the dead Argonaut.  She had her own determination solidified.  She would do whatever was necessary to protect her people.  She wished there were some way to nuke the Argonauts from orbit without hurting the hostages, because she would do it.  She seriously would.  They were monsters, taking hostages the way they did, making people worry.  Making her worry.  She would take them out from orbit if she could.
She wondered at herself, at the elemental forces kindled inside her.  She'd never hated anyone before, not like this, but they seemed heartfelt.  Sure, she'd had a few petty jealousies as a teen-ager, sure, but for the most part she got along with people.  Everyone on a small colony world like Argo, you had to get along.  If you screwed up and upset people, where could you go that people wouldn't know you were an ass?  And if you were an ass, they sure weren't going to send you out on a Specialist mission.
Seventeen hours after the elevator opening had shut, Kurtz announced, "We're receiving signals from Klingston and the other missing Specialists.  They're down at an altitude of 2500 kilometers, on the Spider Star spoke, but moving away from it slowly."
She didn't stop to worry about how they might be moving away from the spoke.  There were other structures down there, tubes connecting the spokes, platforms, stuff.  She had a space plane.  She would catch them.
"Donovan?" she said.
His sleepy voice came over the broadcast system.  "Yeah?"
"I want the space plane ready to go in ten minutes.  My task force will meet you there."
She licked her lips and said, more quietly, "They've poked up their heads."

	

Chapter 20

The Battle of the Bubble

	Rusk remained on the flight deck with Mistelle, Skael, Kat, and Chip.  Together they watched the various monitors and hoped that the hydras wouldn't dismantle them before the situation could be resolved.
	He spoke to Slyde, waiting by the primary airlock with his armed team.  "We're going to try a few things before we commit you to action."
	"Roger that," said Slyde.  "I'd be plenty happy not to go out there, and I think I speak for everyone here."
	"I understand," said Rusk.  And he did.  From Slyde's point of view, this had to be like when Rusk had been asked to secure Klingston as Mission Director.  You did what you were told for the good of everyone, even if you didn't like it yourself.  You trusted those around you, or acted if you did, anyway, which was almost the same thing.  If you maximized everyone's good, you yourself were likely to come out ahead.  That didn't mean you couldn't look out for yourself, but there were situations, and there were situations.
	This was a situation.  And just because he was potentially placing Slyde and the others into it didn't mean that he himself wouldn't be in it, too, and soon.
	He was procrastinating.  He had no rules to follow.  No manuals.  No guidelines.  He was already in deeper than his scouting had permitted.  His next actions would be judged on their own merits.
	Rusk's only consolation was that he probably wouldn't have to suffer a bad judgment if they survived this excursion.  He'd get to write the history.
	"Okay," he said.  "Mistelle, hit them with the sirens."
	He hoped this wouldn't be pathetic.
	Their internal audio system maxed out and limited the screeching sounds piped in from the external mikes.  Even so, the sounds were loud and they were annoying.  But what if the aliens found such sounds pleasant and sweet, or perhaps erotic, resembling mating calls of their own species?  He had no answers to these what if scenarios, other than experiment.  So what was the outcome of this particular experiment?
	The creatures he'd christened hydras worked on, unperturbed.
	"What's wrong with them?" Skael yelled, plugging his ears with his fingers and grimacing.
	"Maybe they're deaf?" Kat suggested, making a squinty, unattractive face.
	After another twenty seconds, Rusk had to agree.  They were deaf, or they were so alien they didn't care.  He, on the other hand, was not deaf and did care.  "Cut it, Mistelle!"
	"Shit," said Kat.
	They'd already hit them with floodlights, and now sound.  They had no means of projecting smells.  Their ability to project an exterior electric field was limited.  They didn't have a lot of other things they could do to dissuade this salvage operation without sending out Slyde and the others.  Crap, he just wanted to talk with them!  The dirigible was a ship of exploration, not designed for military operations.  They'd carried an armory to cover their bases, but hadn't expected to engage in any sort of combat.
	"Outgas the reactor," Porter said.
	Hmm, that was an option.  They had multiple ways of cooling their reactor and could shift from full hydro to the air system, and they had a modicum of control over how the super-heated gases were expelled -- it was a handy feature for an airship to possess.  It seemed a little extreme, but he didn't have any other ideas.  "Let's direct it outwards, not right at any of them, but close enough for them to feel a burn, okay?"
	"All right," Mistelle said.  "Here goes."
	The dirigible shuddered, and Rusk could hear a distant pinging from some air duct someplace.
	He watched the camera feeds carefully.
	The hydras outside shifted a few meters away from the hot zone.  That was all.
	What were they, fucking robots?
He clenched his jaw, holding it in.  Anger was not what was required here.  At least he didn't think so, and he certainly hoped not.  "Adrian," he said to Slyde.  "You're going to have to go out there."
"Right," came the immediate response.
Rusk went over it one more time because it was so important.  "Go outside, just outside the airlock, and let them get a look at you.  Don't threaten them.  Let's see if your appearance alone will do the job.  Communicate with them anyway you can.  Defend yourselves if necessary, but don't instigate anything."
"That's why you didn't send me," Skael said.
That was true.  Rusk would not have sent the odd man even if he had possessed military training.  The man lived to instigate.
"Go for it, Adrian, and good luck," Rusk said.
Adrian Slyde didn't say anything, but Rusk could see him give Tolbert an arm signal to cycle the airlock.  Rusk watched them move inside, armed, armored, and briefly thought back to the opening line of Virgil's Aeneid.  Would they remembered for setting out armed, the way that hero had?  Would they be remembered as heroes, or remembered at all?  Maybe this was the beginning of some great epic, but the time to think about that would be later.  The situation was pressurizing to a moment.
Rusk focused.
The outer airlock doors cycled, and the three men and the X-bot stepped out, weapons available but not aimed.
The hydras continued to dismantle the dirigible as if nothing had happened.
Unacceptable!  He couldn't help his anger.  He restrained it, but did not try to extinguish it.  Were they so completely ignorable?  Did their presence matter not in the slightest?
Rusk steeled himself.  He knew what had to come next.  He really didn't have any other choice, did he?  He could not abide sitting idle while alien creatures tore apart his dirigible, the only way they had to return to the Dark Heart.
"Slyde," he said.  "Wing one."
"Wing one?"
"Wing one."
The man was silent for a moment, then said, "Which one?  And where?"
"The nearest one, so you don't miss.  Shoot at one of its arms."
"How about if I just shot beyond them, and made it clear I was missing on purpose?"
Rusk answered at once.  "No.  Wing one."
The sounds, the light, the heat, going outside, nothing had made any difference.  Additional delay would show weakness.  That they were weak didn't matter.
"Okay."
Rusk watched on one of the displays as Slyde slowly and deliberately spread his legs, settled into a stance, and lifted his automatic rifle.  Their weapons were .458 caliber pulsed Strike Eagles, and a direct hit from one would drop a Kodiak Bear (and the edits to the manual had said that was slightly more massive than a Grunduluk).  He wished they had something less powerful since the shockwave on impact could cause a lot of internal damage even in an extremity.
That is, in the extremity of an animal from Earth or Argo.
Adrian Slyde took careful aim, even deliberately, toggling on a green targeting laser and letting if reflect off the glistening skin.  Locked on, his targeting computer wouldn't miss.  Would he even get the shot?
Slyde squeezed the trigger.
A single shot.
The targeted hydra tentacle exploded.  Messily.  Gobbets of flesh flew away from the impact and the bottom meter of arm dropped straight away trailing a yellowish, faintly luminescent fluid.
All the hydras, including the one that was hit, continued with their dismantling operation.  Their huge, dark, bulbous eyes didn't roll toward Slyde's smoking weapon, not the tiniest amount.
"They are fucking robots," Rusk said.
Then, in unison, all of the arms of all of the hydras fell limp below them.  The creatures' buoyant backsides expanded, lifted them up and away from the dirigible.  They spun as one, and with a faint hissing sound floated off into the darkness.
"Whew," Slyde said.
That was it, what all of them were thinking.  Well, maybe some other four-letter words than 'whew.'  Slyde, as the shooter, had likely feared some instant all-powerful alien retribution, striking him down even as he fired.  That's what Rusk had feared for him and had not permitted himself to dwell upon.
Stay focused!  "Mistelle, make sure you mark their egress points."
"Absolutely," she said.  Without hardly a pause she spoke again.  "I've got new bogeys.  I was confused for a second.  They emerged from the same place in the hull that the these hydras are headed for."
"Do you hear that, Adrian?" Rusk asked.  "Keep your eyes open."
"Acknowledged."
Rusk knew they would.  Their HUDs gave them three decades of wavelength coverage over 120 degrees.
"Got them," said Slyde.
"What can we see?" Rusk asked Mistelle.
Their displays blossomed with visuals and tactical overlays.  The general shapes resembled those of the departing hydras: bulbous, floating back end, assortment of arms holding some sort of tools.  The multitude of creatures with their battalion of arms lifted their legion of tools.
"Something's up, Slyde," said Rusk.
"Yeah, I think--"
Dusk-red light burst out from the distant shapes.  Two of their external cameras went dead.  "Slyde!"
"We just had a burst in the microwave," said Mistelle.
"Sylde?"
Nothing on his channel.  "Tolbert?  Nyquist?"
Nobody answered.
The airlock was cycling open.
"Who's that coming in?" Rusk demanded.
No answer, although he could see the deadlock wheels turning on the intermediate airlock cameras.  Rusk jumped into the stairwell and ran down the hallway.  He rounded the corner and slid into the antechamber as the airlock door swung open.
"Damaged, damaged, damaged!" screamed Drone in three different voices as it clattered inside.
The X-bot seemed to be missing a few arms, and half of its canister-shaped body appeared molten, and reflected a faint red.  Its diamond project screen was perfect and unblemished, even though it sat in a misshapen foundation.  A succession of steely, hard faces flashed irregularly across the display, each one proclaiming, "Damaged!"
The screen abruptly flickered, went dead, and Drone rebooted.  Whining capacitors, which should have been well-insulated, audibly charged, cycling up.  The X-bot's default gender-neutral voice said, "Running self-diagnostics."
Rusk's first impulse was to step through the airlock and go get his men, but as he stepped closer to the door, he saw the X-bot more closely.
The faint red sheen, which he had at first taken to be some kind of chemical reaction in its metallic composite, or perhaps the blackbody radiation relic of the heating the bot had experienced, was neither of those things.
It was spattered blood.
Something alien had spat instant death across the chamber, and as much as he wanted to help, he suddenly realized that poking his head out would be a very, very stupid thing to do indeed.
Mistelle's voice, sounding tinny and faint, albeit steady, floated down to him from the room's speakers.  "We've lost Slyde, Tolbert, and Nyquist.  Their radio tags are dead.  Moreover, there appears to be a small army closing in on us.  They're not asking any questions."
And they obviously weren't taking any prisoners, either, noted Rusk.
"What do you want us to do?" Mistelle asked.

	

Chapter 21

Along for the Ride

	The descent took hours, and, especially after the lightning-quick events in the space dock, Klingston thought it would drive him mad.
	There were four Specialists in the elevator with him: Sally Madrona, Walter Stubbs, Tod Salerno, and Gabriella Powers.  Like him, they were all wrapped in some sort of strong twine.  They hadn't been tied, but wrapped, and that struck him as alien as anything else going on now.  The only one not wrapped was the X-bot, Jason.  An X-bot's basic programming contained instructions for fighting -- with humans.  Frenk wouldn't have trusted even a fighting expert system like Drone to simultaneously fight six Argonauts and win, let alone to do it without taking human casualties.
	They didn't have Drone.  They had Jason, chock full of Argonaut experts.
	That probably wasn't such a bad thing, and, in fact, now that he had a moment to think about it, having Jason along was probably the best they could have managed.  Jason contained the best Argonaut linguists, historians, and archeologists.
	The elevator car itself was generally spherical and appeared to be made of the same material as space dock hull.  A diffuse, uniform golden light seeped out of these walls to light the car.
	Frenk lay in a soft indentation in the floor, as did his fellow Specialists.  He realized that he was probably actually laying in the ceiling of the car, assuming they were heading down the spoke arm, but personal down was whichever way things fell inside.  They had significant gravity, and unless the builders of the Spider Star had artificial gravity, that meant they were accelerating.  If Frenk were right, the gravity would diminish as they left the geosynchronous point and dropped closer to the core, if their acceleration remained constant.
	The six Argonauts who had captured them watched them from above, straddling a set of perches much in the same way he'd seen Argotian spider monkeys sit in trees: bottom four appendages wrapped tight and the upper four free for other purposes.
	After the doors had closed, the Argonauts had dumped the Specialists, clambered up, and began to talk.  If Frenk could make any sense at all of their body language, they weren't just talking, but arguing.
	He had decided to chance talking.  They could tell him to shut up if they liked, or gag him.  "Is everyone okay?"
	Everyone said they were, although Gaby added, "They tied my feet pretty tightly.  I'm not sure I have good circulation."
	Tod said, "I'm bruised.  But I bet we all are."
	"Jason," Frenk began.  "Can you ask them to release us?"
	"Are you crazy?" Sally asked.
	"Maybe…but why not ask?"
	Jason said, "Okay," then sat quietly for a moment.  Then it made some sounds similar to those the creatures were making.  The X-bot was loud enough for them to take notice.
	They all began howling -- mad, hooting howls of all pitches, before settling back down to their previous style of vocalizations.
	Jason said, after a moment, "They think you're crazy, too."
	The Argonauts went on talking, or arguing, whatever they were doing.  He didn't know why they didn't stop them from talking -- he would have, in the reverse situation.  He did seem to recall that most Argotian species that vocalized, including the Argonauts, didn't have separate noses and mouths, but just a single orifice.  They probably considered gags to be death sentences, and probably tolerate talking, especially under circumstances like these where communication was so limited.
	He considered having Jason untie, or unwrap them, rather, or Gaby at least, but decided not to push things.  Not yet.  They were still alive and they didn't have to be.  They also had all their limbs intact, unlike poor Millicent.
	Frenk squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them again, willing himself not to remember the sight.  "Jason, please record their conversation above and translate.  Try for the best translation possible, rather than a fast but inaccurate translation."
	Jason spoke with Wil's voice, "I think we've got it down."
	"Already?"
	"Yes.  It's identical, so far, to the Argonaut language number seven, the one used by the secondary culture of the last technological age, from the northern regions."
	"That doesn't make sense to me," Frenk said.  "After ten million years shouldn't their language have drifted, and drifted a lot?"
	"Not necessarily."  Tod's nasal voice.  "A human language over that time would splinter into a thousand new tongues, completely losing the original.  Look at Latin for a modern example in just the last few thousand years."
	"But we're not talking a human language," Gaby said.
	"Exactly," said Tod, sounding strangely triumphant for a man wrapped in twine and laying below a half-dozen warrior aliens that had taken him captive.
	"Okay," said Frenk.  "Jason, can you tell us what they're talking about?"
	Jason spoke, but it wasn't Wil's voice or the gender-neutral default voice either.  Frenk recognized it as that of a senior scientist, Grace something or other.  "Once the doors closed, one of them said to go down at top speed, and then they started criticizing the one who issued the command."
	"For telling the car to head down at top speed?" Sally asked.
	"No," Grace explained.  "We intuit that one to be the leader, and that one, she, was and is being criticized for the effort they've gone to, their lost comrade, and their lack of treasure."
	"'She?'" Frenk asked.  "You've got genders?"
	"Yes, they're all female."
	Frenk knew it shouldn't matter, but he liked to know what he was dealing with.  Most Argotian species, like most Earth species, had two sexes.  Most Argotian species, like most Earth species, had varieties of sexual dimorphisms.  In Argonauts, the females were larger than the males and had been physically dominant in their societies, although the males had lived longer and had dominated in politics and the social arenas.  Gross generalities, he remembered, but he wasn't an expert.
	Walter said, "So can you tell us the kinds of things they're saying?"
	Jason spoke with a new male voice, and Frenk couldn't place it or easily see the pattern's face.  His neck was already feeling old and twisted from wiggling around so much trying to see his surroundings.  He finally lay back, looked up at his Argonaut overlords, which seemed an apt term given their location, and listened.
	"One went on with a long list of accusations about the danger of their mission, and how they now return with nothing but these weird, weak creatures.  Another one is upset because of the death of the one who tried to eat Millicent's arm -- by the way, note that two of the Argonauts have amputations to an extremity.  Another one has been complaining that they have no food now, since they ate it all on the ride up, and we're apparently poisonous."
	Frenk asked, "How is their leader defending herself?"
	"Well, she's suggesting that maybe we're not all poisonous, but when the others challenged her she declined to be the food tester."
	That was something at least.
	The X-bot went on.  "She's saying that we had called in the language of the enemy, and how was she supposed to know it wasn't really them."
	"'Language of the enemy?'" Frenk asked.  "What language did we use to get the docking solicitation?"
	Tod answered.  "Argonaut number one, that of the primary technological civilization, the ones that lived on the island where we established New Colchis, and one of the reasons we settled there."
	The other primary reason was that the island was on the equator, making it an ideal location for the first colonist's to drop their beanstalk.
	"That's interesting," said Sally.  "Maybe they think they're still fighting."
	"After ten million years?" asked Frenk.
	"Why not?  They're alien," Tod said.  "They haven't suffered any language drift at all."
	Frenk stared up at the dark creatures perched above them and agreed with Tod's assertion.  They certainly were alien.  "What are they talking about now?"
	Grace's voice returned to summarize.  "They're fretting about escaping back to friendly territory.  We can't tell if they're afraid of us, as several have complained about being shot at, or someone else."
	Gaby asked, "Have they said what they plan to do with us?"
	"Not exactly.  They're hopeful that you'll be worth something to somebody -- sorry, they weren't very specific and used some words not in our vocabulary.  They're not going to kill you, at least not immediately, but they are very sorry you're not more edible."
	Frenk decided that being toxic to his own children wasn't the worst problem to have.  He didn't let himself stop to think about Ken or Allyn.  Given the present situation, he feared that thinking of them would make him cry, and he couldn't afford to give in to those feelings.
	"I want everyone thinking here, observing.  Start learning the things we need to learn to survive.  I don't even know what that means yet.  Learn to tell them apart.  Learn where their metal weapons come from.  Learn their language, if we're here long enough.  Learn how to be valuable to them.  Learn how to escape."  Frenk kept his voice quiet and low, but he was infusing strength into the words, or the words were infusing strength into his voice.  "Learn why they eat the arms of their enemies.  Learn how they find food.  Learn where they get their water.  Learn why they're still here, alive, after ten million years."
	A dark thought interrupted Frenk's train of thought and crept inside.  Why were they alive, with the run of the place?  Had the Spider Star been abandoned when they had found it?  Was that why the atmosphere, interior here, and exterior down below, seemed breathable?  Frenk knew that the Argonauts hadn't built this place, but perhaps now they were the masters here.
	Luckily, Sally picked up when Frenk trailed off.  "Yes, Frenk, yes" she said. "Everyone here is brilliant.  We're all master students.  We pick up entire subjects as easily as we breathe.  For instance, I've figured out how to tell them apart.  Notice they all have straps, holsters, utility belts -- I don't know what to call them -- but they're in different colors.  See, the bigger one that leads them, his is yellow."
	She was right.  The others had straps around their narrow midsections where they hung their blades, and perhaps other items.  The other colors were brown, red, blue, green, and a dirty orange.  Hmm.  No black, no white.  He didn't know if that was significant or not.
	Tod said, "We can call them by their colors, and try to sort out their pecking order, possibly even exploit rivalries and disagreements.  Jason, which one is disagreeing with Yellow the most?"
	"The one with the orange belt," Jason said.
	"Okay," Frenk said, "As long as they're letting us talk like this, and ignoring us, make an effort to put the time to use.  Plot, scheme, plan, find their weaknesses, and tell the rest of us.  We have an advantage."  Frenk said this directly, without any trace of irony, despite the fact that they were wrapped in twine and at the mercy of these aliens.  "We know their language, we know something of their history, and they know nothing about us except that we're too trusting in initial encounters."
	Frenk considered that last statement, remembering back to his evolutionary studies and their connections to self-organization and emergent computer systems.  There existed an ancient problem, the so-called 'Prisoner's Dilemma.'  Frenk couldn't remember all the details of the problem, but it was basically a question of how did you interact with others.  Did you screw them over, or did you stick by them?  You got a big reward for screwing them over if they trusted you, a moderate reward if you both trusted each other, and screwed big time if no one trusted each other.  The optimal mutual solution was for both sides to trust each other, but the straightforward individual analysis indicated it was in your best interest to screw the other side.  In computer simulations, that strategy was indeed best, but not in situations where you would have repeated encounters.  In those situations, the algorithms that worked best always trusted the other party, and then just did whatever the other party did on the previous encounter.  You rewarded trust, and punished aggressiveness.  Frenk wondered what it meant that the Argonauts had attacked them on first sight.
	Maybe they had thought the Specialists to be someone else, or simply didn't have repeated encounters with aliens.  Either hypothesis was interesting and worth pursuing.
	They kept talking, and kept observing, and the hours passed.
	There are unpleasant realities to face when being held captive for extended periods.  Gaby had to go to the bathroom, and when she confessed she did, several others also expressed their need.  Frenk had Jason ask permission.  He had no idea where they might go, and thought that the Argonauts might be interested in the process, if for no other reason than to learn about their captives, but they denied the request.
	Frenk thought they learned something by what came next.  One of the Argonauts,  "Red," climbed down from her perch, squatted over the nearest Specialist, which happened to be Walter, and urinated on him, with a powerful stream of liquid.
	Frenk didn't know if 'urinate' was the proper term, although he assumed that's what she was doing.  He intended to ask Jason or one of the others about it, but didn't feel up to the task.  There would be time for that later, he hoped.  He didn't want to humiliate Walter and learn that the discharge had been something even more unsavory.  Thankfully, Walter didn’t ask.
	When Frenk had to go, he just went.  He recalled that some of the pioneering astronauts had had to urinate inside their own suits when their had been launch delays, and that connection made it a bit easier to take.
	Eventually, after what had been hours, the gravity shifted in a very perceptible fashion.  It had been changed as he'd predicted: steadily lessening, consistent with a descent into the body of the dark mater planet that generated the gravitational potential of the Spider Star.
	The shift was interesting, and Frenk's trepidation regarding the end of their journey did not diminish his intellectual interest.
	Their indented areas crawled toward the sides of the car.  As the location of the indentations shifted, the Argonaut's perches extended to connect with what had been the floor.  There were a few stomach-turning moments as the acceleration shifted rapidly, and, for the briefest moment, weightlessness, then gravity reasserted itself in the opposite direction.  The indentations continued to shift around to what had been the ceiling, and the Argonauts rotated on their perches.
	The weight Frenk felt seemed like less than that of Earth or Argo.  He knew the maximum local surface gravity of the Spider Star was slight more than a third of that, nearly Mars levels.  He reckoned that they might be in the upper atmosphere of the Spider Star, some 2000 or 3000 kilometers from its center, near that maximum surface gravity.
	The Argonauts clambered down, from what had previously been the floor and had shifted to the ceiling, and scooped up their hostages.  Frenk preferred to think of themselves as hostages, because the alternatives were worse: prisoners, booty, food -- if they could neutralized the toxins.
	The doors of the elevator car opened, revealing a room nearly identical to the one in the space dock where the nightmare had begun.
	They moved through a serious of rooms.  The portals were lit as in the space dock, and they moved through the surfaces in the same way.  Then they came to a room that was different.
	A cylindrical object occupied much of the room.  Its front end abutted a solid wall, but Frenk knew not to give solid walls much credence in this place.
	One of the lead Argonauts -- Blue -- touched some lighted panels on the cylinder and said something he didn't catch.  A hole appeared in the cylinder's side and everyone climbed inside.  Before they entered the cylinder appeared hollow, but Orange said something that Frenk heard, but did not understand, and cushioned seats grew from the floor.  He and the others were unceremoniously dumped into them.
	Once everyone was inside, the surfaces of the cylinder cleared, growing transparent, and they launched.
	'Launched' was a strong term.
	They moved, slowly, through the forward wall of the room.  Slowly, ever so slowly, they gained speed.  Within a few minutes, they cleared the outer wall of the spoke.
	Frenk rolled himself across his seat, flopped his head over its edge, and had himself a look.
	Infinity dropped away below him.  It was an infinite sky, with some sort of distant, golden sun shining up through the clouds.  They were flying!  The cylinder was flying through the sky of the Spider Star!  "It's amazing," he said aloud in all honesty, happy to have something else to look at than a bunch of multi-legged aliens perched over him.
	Sally, who had been tossed in next to him, and whose wrapped legs nestled against his chest, said, "We're in one of the tubes."
	"Yes!" said Walter.
	Frenk kept looking, and didn't bother to think much.  The vista held him in its majesty.  It was almost enough to keep him from worrying about their predicament.
	As the view slid by faster, Sally continued.  "The tubes connecting the nodes of the spokes.  They're just tubes!"
	Just tubes?  He didn't understand.
	Thankfully, Walter elaborated.  "If you drilled a hole through Earth, or Argo, doesn't matter, you could fall to any other point in the surface in about 40, 45 minutes, just under gravity.  Any path from one altitude to the same altitude, if the density is similar, takes the same amount of time."
	"But you can't do it on Earth," Frenk said.
	Gaby, silent a long time, chimed in.  "Because it's a real planet with a molten interior.  Here, if there is a molten interior, it's dark matter.  It doesn't react to us.  We can fall anywhere in 45 minutes or less, if the tube has nearly frictionless surfaces and is evacuated so that there's no air resistance."
	He didn't feel any sensation of speed.  That would be consistent with freefall -- or the near-equivalent if they were following a cord rather than falling straight down -- straight down would leave them weightless, and they certainly had some weight.
	"Wait a second," Frenk said.  "We're in one of the tubes we saw.  If we're falling through it, toward another spoke maybe, how are Griffin and the others going to find us?  We could wind up on the other side of the station."
	As soon as he said it, he felt stupid, remembering their embedded id tags broadcasting their signals.  He wasn't thinking like a Specialist.
	Thankfully no one made him feel dumb by calling him on it overtly.  Sally only said simply, "They'll find us.  They probably have a dozen ways to do it."
	"Ha!" Walter said after a few more minutes.  "I think they already have!"
	Frenk looked around.  He didn't see anything below other than the spectacular view.  He rolled around, against Sally's legs, and reoriented himself to look up.  Then he saw it.
	An Earth-tech space plane paced them, maybe a few kilometers distant.  He was sure Walter was right.  But what could they do?  They could have nanofactured an armed model, and they could attack the tube.  He had no idea what it was made of, diamond he would guess, but maybe something stronger and less brittle.  How could they do anything?
	"It's falling behind," Sally said.
	And it was.  Were they really going so fast?  Frenk thought for a moment, and admitted they would be speeding as they approached maximum velocity, maybe as much as several kilometers per second.  The space plane couldn't match that for a sustained period at low altitude.
	And, indeed, it dropped away.
	"It's gone," Sally said eventually.
	"Griffin will find us," he told everyone.  He truly believed it -- seeing the space plane so quickly had inspired confidence in her talents.  He even almost believed they'd still be alive when she did.

	

Chapter 22

Flight of the Banshee

"What do you want us to do?" Mistelle asked again.
Rusk stood uncertainly next to the rebooting X-bot.  Blood-covered Drone listed on its side chanting, "Checking, check, checking, check, checking…"
What did he want them to do?  What could they do?  Things had seemed bad enough with the first group of non-communicating hydras that had simply started tearing their ship apart.  Should he have waited for them to finish the job and start in on them?  To have the problem of non-communication back seemed infinitely more desirable than what faced them now: instant death.
This wasn't a good time for him to realize that he was more enamored by the idea of being in charge as opposed to actually being in charge.  But he was, and they were cut off from help.  He didn't like leadership if it meant failure, but he liked failure in no endeavor.  He had to think of something.
He wished that Griffin were here with him.  He always seemed to think better with her around.
He had one thought.  One dull, direct thought.  They'd had to hit Slyde and his team with a laser, or maser, rather, to deliver that kind of energy on target.  Or at least he hoped so.  "Mistelle, what kind of spectrum was the microwave burst?"
She came back immediately.  "It was a maser, very tight frequency profile."
Good.  That was something.  His dull idea wasn't torpedoed yet.  "Do we have any conducting materials with the right separation to block that frequency, or most of it at least?  Or could we build a shielding mesh?"
There were several ways to block a maser.  The simplest way was to put a lot of reflective material between you and it and hope it took some time for it to ablate away.  If you didn't have a lot of stuff -- that was, at least meters of armor when facing military masers -- the next smartest thing was to distribute the material on scales similar to the wavelength of the incoming maser -- millimeters.  That meant reflective/conductive chaff, or mesh screens -- many layers of them.  The masers still had energy they would deposit, and short of perfect reflectivity, mesh seemed a better idea than mirrors or chaff, especially if the mesh was well designed and ablated away into a screen of glittery chaff.  Rusk wanted to maintain, or regain, rather, some mobility.  They had a small nanoforge onboard and could perhaps rapidly produce something if they had to.
"Maybe.  Working on it," Chip said.
Rusk hoped so.  But how simple was he?  These military hydras had attacked, and killed three men with a weapon, and he was trying to come up with a shield against that weapon.  That kind of thinking wouldn't let them come out on top in this situation.  He had to find some other way of thinking, something more than reactive, or they were lost.
	"Mistelle," he said.  "What do you have on the entry/exit points of the hydras?  If we get to them, can we use them?"
	There, that was a bold idea.  If staying on the disintegrating dirigible was too risky, they would have to move.  Where could they move?  Into the Spider Star, just like the hydras.  He felt his solution was unoriginal, but natural.  What else could they do?
	"I know where the doors are, if 'doors' is the right term.  I don't have a clue how to work them though."
	"Good enough.  One step at a time."
	Skael said, "Chip's got something programmed in the nanoforge.  He says it'll work in a pinch.  How are Adrian, Tim, and Derik?"
	"Checking, check, checking, fail, checking, fail, fail, fail…" Drone was saying.
	Rusk stalled.  "I'm not sure, just at the moment.  As you can afford the time, get to the armory and suit up.  Everyone needs to be in armor and to have a weapon."
	"I didn't take that specialty," Kat said.
	Would she be more dangerous armed or unarmed?  He didn't know, but the extra weapon and armor could come in handy.  "Equip yourself anyway.  Make sure someone shows you."
	"Okay."
	Rusk took a deep breath.  How close were the hydras?  They didn't seem to move that fast, but how fast did you need to move when you could spit death?  The aliens would be careful, sure, and Rusk and his people would be dead.
	Rusk watched as Skael and Kat jogged by to the armory.  He hoped Mistelle and Chip would be along soon.
	Fuck.  He himself wasn't suited up.  He dogged the airlock shut, and left Drone to its pathetic checks.
	Rusk joined the others, who stood, apparently dumbfounded, in the face of the choice of all the weaponry of mankind.  "Don't mess with the small stuff.  Take the armored flak jackets -- they're not so heavy in this gravity -- and the Strike Eagles.  Take extra clips."
	Then they all moved, with Rusk pointing them at the right equipment.
	Skael said, "All my life I have dreamed of practicing the ancient art of war."
	"Skael," Kat said, "You're a freak."
	"Yes, oh, yes!" he said grabbing a weapon and holding it tightly.  "I am so freaked right now."
	The small man's smile didn't seem amused, but afraid.  Deathly afraid.  Insanely afraid, like more insane than normal for him.  What was Rusk asking of them now?  Was it even possible?  Even a perfect plan wouldn't work if the available personnel couldn't carry it out.
	It had to work, because he had no other idea how to survive more than a few minutes.
	Between the three of them Rusk judged himself the most knowledgeable when it came to personal propulsion units, or PPUs, as he thought of them.  They had enough for everyone, including Drone, if it ever successfully rebooted.
	Rusk quickly donned his armor, grabbed his weapon and ammo, and headed for the PPUs, which were stored in an adjacent room.  He passed Mistelle on the way.
	"Go!" he said.
	"They're almost here," she said.
	He didn't delay, but yelled over his shoulder, "Everyone gets a PPU after the armory!"  He trusted the dirigible computer to relay any directions that were too quiet to reach everyone.
	Chip came hurtling down the hallway next.  "The nanoforge is cooking."
	"Excellent.  Hit the forge last."
	This was all too fast, too chaotic.  What chance in hell did they have?  He'd fucked this up, but good.  He should have treated this as a military encounter from the get go.  If he had, maybe three good men would still be alive.  He hadn't seen their bodies, but they had to be dead.  And it was his fault.
	Rusk stopped in the middle of PPU strap-in.  They were dead, and it was his fault.  What right did he have to make any decisions at all, given his awful track record so far?  Claude Martin and the triumvirate were right to put Klingston into the position of Director.  Frenk Klingston had a track record.  He'd encountered aliens, and hadn't gotten anyone killed.  That trumped any of his own credentials.  What did his test scores matter?  What did his long list of specialties matter?
	Kat tapped him on the arm.  "Are you okay?"
	He wasn't.  He was pathetic.  But how could he tell her that?  "Get on your PPU."
	That was what he had to do.  Just make decisions, moment by moment, and help everyone else do what they needed to do when they needed to do it.  If he could manage that, they would get through this.  At least they would if they had any chance at all.
	His PPU equipped, he said, "Mistelle, how are you doing?"
	"Working on refining the doorway imagery.  It seems to be spherical.  I can't make out any controls, though."
	Fuck.  She needed to be armed, and now.  "Let the ship's computer work on it.  You need to be ready now."
	"I just need--"
	"Now!" he yelled.
	She didn't respond and he assumed she was following his orders.  Klingston had established an informal atmosphere among the Specialists.  Rusk didn't like it, but admitted it aided smoother communications in a number of situations, but not now.  Now he needed immediate obedience, or more were going to die.
	He realized that he liked that sentiment.  It meant that he didn't yet believe they were all going to die, not right away in any event.  His subconscious must know something he didn't.  Tell me already!
	Before too long they were all back in front of the airlock, armored, armed, wearing PPUs, and worried.  Those who had been well trained with this equipment were all outside still and likely dead.  The one exception was Drone, who was saying, "Checking, check, checking, fail…"
	Drone would have been helpful, but for now…who could say?  The bot was a liability.  It had expertise, in theory, but that was only useful if they could get to it.
	"Mistelle," he said.  "Where are they?"
	She gave the dirigible's computer some specific commands, accessing specialized subroutines that she had programmed.  The neutral voice, under priority, said quickly, "Closing to 110 meters."
	The aliens were approaching slowly, and that was good.  It suddenly dawned on Rusk that they hadn't procured the mesh shields.  "Chip, what about the nanofactured shields?"
	"Yes!" he said, heading back into the ship.
	Rusk followed him, knowing he would need help.
	The nanoforge normally operated within a sealed vacuum chamber, but for something simple like the requested meshes, that was unnecessary.  There was a bubbling pool, exposed to the atmosphere, and a shimmering slime floating on its surface.  Rusk smelled a rusty, metallic smell that he knew he couldn't stand indefinitely.
	"Help me," Chip said.
	He reached in and grabbed at the slime, and, like some ancient fisherman, began hauling out the net.  Chip just continued to pull it out.  What Rusk saw was a pile of metallic net piling up at the man's feet, spilling over his boots, and he just kept pulling it up.
	Rusk sprang over and grabbed hold of the damp, textured mesh, and helped haul it up.  It was forming from the liquid as fast as he pulled it out.  He tried to breathe out of his mouth, but thought he could still taste the smell.  "Hurry."
	Between the two of them, they picked up the mesh pile, and headed back to the airlock.  "Where are they?"
	"Fifty meters, and holding," the dirigible computer answered.
	Well, this was it.  They were boxed in, and it was time to act.  They would get to the doors, get in to the Spider Star, or die like Slyde and the others.  There was no other choice, now, was there?
	"Systems check complete, functional capability ensuing," Drone said.
	"Kat, Skael," Rusk said to them.  "We may need Drone, if it's still operational at any decent level.  Kat, you make sure Drone comes with us, and Skael, you help her out with it."
	They nodded in agreement.  With Drone missing limbs, the X-bot was less bulky.  At their current altitude within the Spider Star, the gravity was only about twenty-five percent an Earth gee.
	Rusk smiled, a little, at that thought.  The PPUs would be unusually effective.
	"What about food and water?" Mistelle asked.
	He had to give her some credit for her optimism.  She was planning to survive the next few minutes.  "We're Specialists.  We can eat and drink anything we can find.  The armor has a water reservoir, and we're not carrying any food."
	He switched on his tactical displays and glowing words and numbers filled his helmet's HUD.  When he looked at each of them in turn, Mistelle, Chip, Skael, and Kat, otherwise anonymous under their armored suits and faceless helmets, he had their names and vitals floating next to them.  Everyone's heart rate was up, but otherwise seemed ready.
	"Chip and I will lead.  Mistelle, you trail below.  Kat and Skael will follow with Drone."
	They entered the airlock, arrayed themselves, and deployed the mesh.  They opened the external door, hanging back from the opening.  Outside, beyond the bright white of the light reflecting off the airlock frame, outside was pitch black.
	Rusk's heart pulsed in his ears, and he tried not to think ahead more than ten seconds.
	"Synchronize PPUs, slave them to mine," Rusk said.  Four green lights blipped on his HUD.   "Launch!"
	Their PPUs ignited, transferring thrust to them through their harnesses.  Under their mesh, under tremendous acceleration, the Specialists exploded into the darkness.
	The PPU rumbled on his back and wind whistled through the mesh, screaming almost, its end whipping wildly behind them with accentuating cracks.  Under other circumstances, it might have been fun.
	Heat erupted before them.  The masers were hitting the mesh.  Red glowing filaments of the top layers of mesh popped, and peeled off, leaving streaks of light behind them.  Seconds passed as they barreled through the dark like a screaming banshee, and the mesh cooled.
	They'd survived the initial maser assault.  They would live another ten seconds at least.
	Rusk piloted by inertial systems and their map of the chamber, adjusting their PPUs to direct them toward the door way out of the silver ship and presumably into the Spider Star proper.  Maybe he was only delaying things, but how could it be any worse than waiting to get fried?
	"Coming up on the door," Mistelle said.
	"Be ready for impact!" Rusk advised them.  He wasn't about to slow down and let the maser-toting hydras shoot them again.  The nature of the size of the spacing preventing the passage of the maser, and the meshes insulating properties kept the below layers from heating up, but he didn't know how long the mesh would hold up.  At least seconds, but probably not minutes.
	The wall approached, or so his HUD told him.  He couldn't see much through the mesh even if the walls hadn't been so light-absorbing.  He might as well be flying with his eyes closed, knowing he was about to crash.
	He tensed.  A few more seconds passed.  He relaxed and tensed again, checking the figures.  He--
	His armor gel-packs popped with a acrid, burning smell, cushioning his body and his head as they hit.  Bone-jarring, that was the word that rattled with him inside his helmet.  Stunned, he knew they needed to be doing something.  The PPUs were still firing, holding them against the wall, or rather, against the mesh, which was against the wall.
	Their backsides were exposed.
	Rusk ordered the PPUs into hover mode, released them to individual control, and rolled around.  "Get covered!"
	He looked back and forth, spotting his comrades on his HUD.  He noted that Skael had a cracked rib, and that Kat had a fractured collarbone, but otherwise there were no serious injuries.  He spun around, holding the mesh, and the others moved in unison with him.
	Everyone except Kat, who clung to Drone like a life preserver and didn't move.
	"Kat!  Get under!"
	The masers hit then and Rusk watched her armor char and explode.  Drone, released, fell into the darkness below.  Kat's PPU was damaged, but partly operational, and now, finally, she spun.  She spun away in spirals, bobbing, away from them.
	"Kat!" Skael called after her.
	No time for any feelings, not now.  Later, if there were a later.  "Mistelle, we have you covered.  Find their door, and get us through it."
	The surface level of the mesh glowed red, then white, and began popping off.  Embers drifted like slow rain under the invisible beams striking them.
	"Get us through it now!" Rusk ordered.

	

Chapter 23

Heading for the Headwaters

	The cylinder flew through the tube through Spider Star atmosphere at high velocity, and Frenk couldn't do anything but lay there and watch.  It was all clouds and sky, drifting by, and at was difficult to believe their velocity was as high as Walter had claimed it would be.
	Frenk had to admit that the 'islands' -- that was what he thought of them as -- zipped by too fast to see.  He had to ask Jason about what they'd dropped past.  They were some sort of platforms, or spherical modules, some kind of things, attached to the tube they moved through.  They passed in lightning-quick fashion.  Blink, blink, and they were gone.
	Jason reported shapeless, circular surfaces, surrounding forests of unrecognizable trees, and arrays of machinery, pipes, and assorted metal.  No one had any idea of what they might be, or do.
	But Walter was right, in the end.  Some 40-45 minutes later, as he'd predicted, their pace slowed and they approached a gray structure, slower, and slower -- no quick 'blink, blink' -- until Frenk worried they'd never actually reach in.  But they coasted in, passing through a hull as they had before, and were inside a non-descript gray room the same as the one they'd left before, as far as Frenk could ascertain.
	Wil's voice came from Jason.  "They're reaching some kind of decision."
	The Argonauts had been more and more vocal as the tube trip had progressed, reaching a crescendo as the new spoke approached, and a great vertical band growing wider every minute.
	"Spill it," Sally demanded.
	"They've decided to take us to -- and we apologize for this inadequate translation -- the 'big one.'"
	That sounded ominous, and kind of funny.
	Sally actually giggled, and Frenk silently thanked her for releasing some tension.  Her giggle made him smile, too, even thought he knew he had nothing to be smiling about.  They were all going to see the big one.  Well, there it was.  How could they not laugh?  Frenk hadn’t pissed himself in hours, so why not celebrate?
	"Is that a someone, or a something?" Walter wanted to know, and they laughed some more, while they could.
	The cylinder slid into the new spoke, gradually coasting to a stop.  The Argonauts were upon them again, moving rapidly almost to the point of rushing, it seemed, and hauled them out, tossing them like packages onto the tube dock floor.
	There was an argument.  Frenk didn't need Jason to tell him.  The Argonauts' voice rose, higher in pitch, and higher in volume, until he wished he could put his fingers in his ears.  He wanted to ask what they were arguing about, but was sure he wouldn't be able to hear the answer.
	Eventually their screeches died down, and again they were scooped up.  While Frenk thought he himself probably smelled bad -- reeked, his wife would have said -- the Argonaut's sour stench made him gag and very nearly vomit.  Somehow he endured as the Argonauts carried them into a tunnel, sloping slightly down.  They carried them, jostling, bumping, bouncing, until Frenk was sure every inch of his body was bruised, out onto a platform.
	Platform didn't do the scene justice.  There was a platform -- a floor -- but there were no walls one side, and the ceiling barely counted.  The platform opened out onto the cool, open atmosphere of the Spider Star itself.
	Vertigo gripped Frenk.  He'd never been too afraid of heights.  As he liked to put it, he had a healthy fear of falling.  But this, this was another thing altogether.  The height of the drop -- thousand of kilometers -- was staggering.  Then he saw something.  The platform wasn't empty.  There were piles of fluttering…somethings.  Nothing alive, he didn't think.  It looked like piles of multi-colored plastic, or leather, maybe even canvas or silk of some sort.  Maybe the Argonauts had some kind a craft hidden below the flapping material.
	"Oh my goodness," Gaby said, in a way that implied exactly the opposite definition.  Gaby, he recalled, didn't care for heights.  She'd been recruited as an archeologist with Argonaut expertise rather from out of the Specialists Corp.
	Then Frenk made the same connection that she must have.  The flapping material didn't cover some kind of air vehicle.  The flapping material was some kind of air vehicle.
	Please, he thought, let it be a big, smooth, slow balloon.
	It wasn't, or rather, they weren't.
	Two of the Argonauts, Blue and Brown, went to the material.  Their long, dark arms pulled wildly, lifting the gossamer material up, out, and stretched it over some kind of rigid rods, and tied the structures with the same sort of twine that bound the humans.  Over the course of the next quarter hour, six different sets of wings began to form.  Frenk didn't recognize the shapes or the craft, not exactly, but he assumed they were some sort of glider.
	The Argonauts began dragging Specialists over to the gliders and stuffing them in the bottom of a pouch that was slung underneath the web of struts supporting the wings.  The constructs looked as if a good sneeze would blow them apart.
	Gaby pitched a fit, screaming and yelling, twisting back forth, flopping around, trying to do anything but go into that pouch.
	"Calm down, Gaby!" he yelled.  The Argonauts has been so inured about their chatter, but they had to have limits.  The could all get gagged, death sentence or not, or worse.  He thought of Millicent, and refused to purse that line of thought.
	Thankfully, Green didn't care.  Green picked Gaby up, and stuffed her in.
	There was another argument between Yellow and Orange.  Their voices climbed, the sounds grating on Frenk like metal rapping on teeth, sinking into the bone.  "What are they fighting over now?" he asked Jason.
	"Me, I'm afraid," the X-bot responded.  "I weigh more than you humans do.  No one wanted to carry me.  Yellow is telling Orange to do it, and Orange is refusing."
	Panic flared within Frenk.  If they lost Jason, they'd have no reliable way of communicating with their captors.  Losing Jason was unacceptable.  As the argument continued, Frenk pondered possible solutions.  He had one idea, finally.  "Jason, there's an extra glider, because of the one that died, I guess.  Can you fly it?"
	Jason didn't reply immediately.  Frenk, lying on his side, watched the X-bot's facial display.  All of the X-bot's patterns flashed across the display, some appearing to be in mid-sentence with pursed lips, until finally settling back on the neutral gray.  "We don't know, but we think it would be fun to try."
	Patterns were always up for trying things, even things they couldn't do, or would likely destroy their host.  Part of the patterning process reduced or eliminated the sense of self-preservation.  X-bot's had a high priority to preserve themselves, to be sure, but in situations where the risk assessment was poor, they tended to accept gambles.
	Frenk supposed he would have to as well, if they were to have any chance of keeping Jason.  Even if Orange did take the bot on its glider, Frenk had no doubt that any problems would likely result in Jason getting dumped for a long, long fall.  At least it would if these Argonauts were anything at all like humans.  "Jason, as carefully as you can, suggest you can fly yourself.  Tell them to show you how."
	Jason started speaking in Argonaut language number 7, calmly repeating the same phrase over and over.  Frenk thought that was a good approach.  He worried about giving away too much of the X-bot's capabilities to the Argonauts.  For whatever reasons, they hadn't tied it or hampered its movements.  Frenk hoped that meant they underestimated Jason, but still worried that the upcoming display would make them change their ideas about the bot.
	Eventually, after more squawking and flailing of limbs, Yellow and Orange ceased their bickering and started to listen to Jason.  There were exchanges back and forth, none of which Frenk could follow.  The tone settled down to a mildly unpleasant drone, and Jason turned back to Frenk.
	"It is agreed," the X-bot announced.  "We will pilot a glider.  If we fail to follow the Argonauts, then they will kill some of you.  We look forward to our first time flying an air craft."
	That hit Frenk like -- he couldn't think -- like something really heavy.  And hard.
	His eloquence had evacuated his consciousness.  "Okay," he said finally.  "Don't fuck it up."
	Frenk was last in, stuffed into a glider's pouch by Yellow.  Strangely, being crammed into the bottom of a long sleeve where he couldn't see anything made him less apprehensive.  The situation was out of his control; it hadn't ever been quite in his control, but now the part of his mind that worried about everything had less input.  He relaxed as much as was possible in the situation, giving himself up to it.
	Yellow climbed in the open end of the sack with its smelly bottom four feet, smashing them unceremoniously into Frenk's face and body.  That would impair his relaxation.
	He stopped thinking such dark, cynical thoughts almost immediately.  His side rubbed against the smooth floor as the Argonaut pulled itself and the glider forward with its upper four arms.  Distantly Frenk heard shots, both human and alien, and then it was his turn.
	The bottom dropped out of the world, and his was falling.  Involuntarily, a scream bubbled up out of his mouth.  They were falling, but gravity eased back, and he supposed they were gliding.  After a few moments, he forced his muscles to relax.
	He remembered the punch line to an ancient, and awful joke: if it's inevitable, sit back, relax, and enjoy it.
	He tried.  He really did.  But his mind raced.  What if his family could see him now?  Stuffed into a bag with an alien's stinky feet in his face.  He'd traveled over a dozen light-years to have this experience.  How was this preventing future Lashings?  How was this saving his wife, his boys?
	Frenk eventually settled down, breathed through his mouth as much as he could, and hoped Jason would manage all right.  It was all he could do.
	Stressed and exhausted beyond all reason, Frenk somehow fell asleep.
#
	Frenk was rudely awakened.  Something smacked into him with a good velocity, and he knew he'd be bruised.  As memories of his current reality crashed back onto him, he wished he could return to wonderful, oblivious sleep, but he had no choice now.
	He was still alive, and resting on some kind of surface that didn't give like the glider's silky sack, so he supposed they had landed, and Yellow had let him take the brunt of that landing.
	The Argonaut's stinky feet pushed into his face and groin, and then were gone.  A long, dark arm slinked into the sack, grabbed him by his lengthy hair, and dragged him out.
	He was lying prone on a dark platform -- an unusually dark platform.  He didn't even know if it were a platform.  If he didn't know better, he would have thought that he was laying on the ground back at his farm, close to twilight.
	There was real dirt here!  And it smelled more like soil than dirt, even.  And something approaching night.  If he didn't know any better, he might have thought he was back at his farm taking an impromptu nap, waking to twilight.
	He didn't feel very rested yet.  He didn't know how long he'd been riding the glider, but he thought not more than a few hours.  Oh, bleh, his mouth was like Hell sprayed on.  Every part of him was sweaty or worse.  His pants were still damp, without a doubt his hair was a greasy disaster even at his age, and he thought he could use a good bowel movement.  Oh yeah, he was hungry and thirsty, too.
	He craned his sore neck around, seeking the other Specialists or Jason in the dim light.  He spotted Jason right away.  The X-bot's display glowed with a faint, white light.  Frenk called it over.
	Jason waddled over on its tentacles.  "We flew the glider," it said, oozing self-satisfaction in a way that bots rarely displayed.
	"I'm pleased," Frenk said, and he was, in a distant, abstract way.  Jason's failure likely would have meant deaths or dismemberments for Specialists.  Maybe.  Who knew anything in this crazy world?  "Where are we?"
	"We're on a large, circular agricultural demesne.  The altitude is a few hundred kilometers lower than we started, as you can no doubt tell by the temperature increase of 2.6 degrees Celsius, despite the nighttime conditions."
	Frenk decided to ignore the assumption about his ability to sense temperature.  "Nighttime?  How can the Spider Star have nighttime?"
	Jason switched from his neutral personality to one of its patterns, a middle-aged woman with graying hair whose name escaped Frenk.  Matilda, maybe.  "We're on an agricultural platform.  You should remember the remote imaging.  The platforms have mirror arrays around them.  They open and close to reflect light from the core in a predictable day/night fashion down upon the platform.  Dawn is still some hours away."
	Frenk felt wasted, stupid, so many things, none of them good.  "Jason, ask if we can be untied, unwrapped, whatever.  We're not going to escape.  We need water, food if possible, and some place to rest if we're going to be here a little while."
	"Affirmative," Jason said, and waddled off.
	Frenk lay there.  It was all he could do.  He ached, he hurt.  He was thirsty.  He was hungry.  He stank.  He wanted to piss again, and take a shit.  How far he could fall in a few hours…amazed him, to the extent he could be amazed..
	He kept thinking of the same base needs, over and over.  He couldn't plan rebellion, or escape, or even what to do next.  He couldn't even picture his family, not unless he concentrated really hard, and then the images were fleeting.
	Frenk lay on the alien non-soil, and needed.
	Jason said, "The Argonauts are accommodating you.  There are other Argonauts here, you should know.  Farmers, not warriors.  They do what Yellow says, but they are different from Yellow, you should know.  In any event, you will have what you need."
	That was the most marvelous thing Frenk had heard, except for perhaps the newborn cries of his sons, and the first broadcast he had heard from Argo after his encounter with the Roxor.
	Yellow grabbed Frenk's wrappings and lifted him, a little, and started to drag him off.  Pain he didn't know he had flared from his muscles, his bones.  He was hurt deep, and they'd barely touched him.
	Suddenly he was tumbling, falling, twisting, and coming undone.  Yellow had flipped him, holding on to one end of the twine that held him, and let him unroll in a drawn-out fashion.  Every bump, every impact, left a new bruise.  He hoped all the doo-dads the Corp had injected into his bloodstream would do a better job than his natural equipment, because otherwise he thought he'd be useless for weeks.
	His contacts let his eyes adjust quickly, lending a degree of green-hued image intensification.  It was darker where he'd been unrolled -- the sky was gone.  He was inside some kind of enclosure.
	Something grunted at him.  Several somethings.  Somethings neither human nor Argonaut.
	He wasn't alone.
	He saw them then, squat, six-legged creatures, less than a meter high, slightly smaller than an adult human.  It was dark, and he couldn't discern colors, and their texture was unclear.  He thought they might be hairy, but wasn't sure, and didn't want to find out.  Their most striking feature was a triangular snout that ended in its corners with long, flexible whiskers.  They surrounded him, but avoided direct contact with his strangeness.
	Frenk was free, sort of.  Twine no longer bound him.  The surface in this enclosed pen was damp, muddy even, and he pushed his hands into the grime and tried to push himself up.  His biceps screamed, and it took him three tries to stand.
	When he did, he hit his head.  "Ouch."
	"Frenk?" said a voice.  Sally's voice.
	"Yeah," he said, without enthusiasm or optimism.
	"I'm here, too," said Walter.	
	"And me."  Tod's voice.
	"Gaby?" Frenk asked.
	Nothing.  He thought perhaps something had happened to her, punishment for her reluctance to fly in the glider.  But then he heard a loud gasp.  "Uh huh!  Here.  There's water, and food."
	They conferred among themselves and sorted out their available resources.  'Available resources,' hah!  That was fucking hilarious.  They were in animal pen of some sort and might as well accept the reality of their situation.
	They had a shallow pond, good for bathing and drinking.  They were Specialists -- they could handle that.  They had food, of a sort.  There was a trough filled with some kind of feed.  Nothing like corn or oats, but some sort of small, leathery bean-type things that had a hint of a coffee smell.  Frenk trusted his modifications and ate all he could stand.  He didn't know when he'd be able to eat again.
	There was no bathroom.  Everyone made do as they could, usually as far from the wallow as they could manage, in the corners.  They gave each other as much privacy as they could manage, and most went back to the water to bathe.  Some, including Frenk, took off their jumpsuits, and washed them as best they could.  Frenk wrung out his suit and used it as a towel to drying himself afterward.  No one talked about the how sanitary things were.  They were Specialists.  It didn't matter.  They would endure and prosper.
	After all that, people settled down.  Frenk found himself a spot by the earthen wall, where it was dry, giving himself over to his exhaustion now that his other needs were satisfied at some level.
	He heard a voice in the darkness, and made out a silhouette.  "Can I join you?"
	Sally.  "Of course you can."  Frenk would not have refused any of them.
	She nestled in against him and he put his arm around her.  It was only after a few seconds that he realized she was as naked as he was.  He startled.
	"It's okay, honey," she said.  "None of this is real.  Nothing here matters."
	He worried about that, what it said for her state of mind, but not for long.  He was too tired.  He started to fade out, his body still aching.
	Later, he didn't know how long, he awoke abruptly.  He was hard, and inside Sally, who was lugubriously sliding onto him, moaning softly.
	He squeezed her shoulder.
	"Hush, honey," Sally said.  "It's okay.  It doesn't matter, but I need it."
	Frenk, too tired and shell-shocked and erect, didn't do anything.  Not anything more than he was already doing, anyway.  She rode him, slowly, mournfully, for long minutes.  Every time he thought he was finished, she slowed, teasing him.  He didn't know if she was doing it on purpose or not, and he didn't have the energy to ask.  He was in her thrall.  He was in thrall to the universe, completely out of control.
	Eventually, she quickened.  Her movements, her gasps, made him quicken too, and he moved in response, pumping, finishing.  It did mean something, but what, exactly, he could not say.  He was satisfied in the act, in its completion, and there was something about it, in the face of their captivity, that struck a note of resistance.
	Sally collapsed into his body and he held her, falling asleep again.
#
	With dawn, Frenk and the others were rousted from the animal pen.  In the incoming light, he saw that the six-legged creatures were a sickly pink and covered with crusty sores.  He identified with them, briefly, then he was dragged into morning on the Spider Star.
	Yellow pointed at the sack on one of the gliders.
	Frenk understood, and crawled inside, obedient.
	Solidity dropped away, again, as the Argonaut launched the glider, and together they floated into the infinite sky.

	

Chapter 24

Aliens All Look Alike

	The space plane didn't have a lot of room to move around, but to the extent she could, Griffin paced.  The low gravity made it hard not to bump into things and people, as anxious as she was.  She tried to make sure she didn't bump any instrument panels, but didn't worry about the bulkheads.
	"You ought to relax while you can," Jack Robb told her.  "You may not get the opportunity later."
	Sound advice, and advice she should be distributing instead of taking.  "Yeah," she said.
	But she couldn't.  She had been so sure they were about to rescue Frenk and the others, but the tube vehicle had just continued to accelerate.  She didn't dare match it.  The plane was fusion powered, standard for their nanofactured exploration vehicles, and could stay aloft indefinitely, but to hit their orbital velocities they required real fuel, and they needed to save what they had to be able to return to the Dark Heart.  She was desperate, but not crazy.
	So here they were, piddling along, chasing the ID signals which faded out all too often for her tastes.
	"Our quarry seems to have stalled," an iron-bearded, chiseled pattern announced from Lance's display.
	"Yes," said Donovan.  "There's some sort of solid object there.  It isn't a spoke.  I don't know how it's supported, but if it's floating free it's maintaining a very stable position."
	"Does our tube connect to the solid mass?" Griffin asked.
	"No," said Donovan.
	"How'd the monsters get there then?" Millicent said.
	That was the first thing she'd said since they'd launched.  She'd insisted on coming with Griffin.  Certainly, there was room for her, but Griffin worried about her arm and her state of mind.  There was damage in both places.
	Despite her injury, there now existed a fire-hardened core in the once jovial woman and Griffin knew she could trust the Specialist to do anything necessary to achieve their goals.  She herself had wilted before Millicent's insistence.
	No one had an answer to her question, however, and she sank back into silence.
	Griffin kept vacillating on their course of action.  She hadn't shown any overt uncertainty, and while she did believe that four properly armed and forewarned Specialists and an X-bot could easily handle the six Argonauts who had taken their people hostage, she feared that they would be headed for reinforcements of one type or another.  Just because the one group they'd encountered had appeared technologically simple didn't mean that would be the case everywhere, although she did hope it.  Maybe, after all, ten-million-year time spans didn't mean ten-million-year advanced technology.  Civilizations not only rose, but they fell.
	The time passed quickly enough and their targets remained on this solid object, which, as they approached, appeared to be some sort of platform about 500 meters across, lit by overhead lights, tethered to at least two different inter-spoke tubes.
	"Let's get our people," Griffin said as they approached.  She and Robb suited up, checked their weapons, and prepared themselves.  She trusted their Specialists modifications enough that they didn't need to try to negotiate.  Klingston and the others could survive a few seconds under any circumstances she could foresee.  "Donovan, put us down right in the middle of that platform.  Stay powered, stay nimble.
	"Absolutely," said Donovan.
	Millicent just glared.  Griffin didn't dare give her anything to do, but at the same time trusted her to jump in and perform any necessary task.
	"Lance," Griffin instructed, "keep us all coordinated and informed."
	As they approached, Donovan said, "Interesting.  The lights are changing, mirrors I think.  They're illuminating the platform surface.  I'd guess it's some kind of artificial day/night set up.  Looks like its surface is covered with vegetation of some sort, perhaps a few simple structures.  Nothing high-tech."
	"Lucky break for us," said Griffin.  "Maybe.  I bet our night vision and thermal beat the shit out of anything they have.  They used knives of all things at the space dock, after all.  Come in near the structures, and will just blitz them."
	She was really feeling it.  She was hyped.  She was…a thousand things.  This was action.  This was important.  And she was controlling it.
	Still, she wished Rusk was with her.  She knew he made her better, that she made fewer mistakes with him.
	Griffin and Robb were armored, wired, armed, and primed, waiting over a quick-drop aperture out the bottom of the plane.  They approached.  Griffin tightened.
	"Our targets are moving," Lance reported.
	Daytime on the platform.  Made sense.  Too late, though.  The rescue was underway.
	Donovan came in under VTOL, blowing up an unholy wind, amidst the low, natural buildings.  Out the windows, Griffin saw Argonauts, and other strange animals, scurry about as the long maroon stalks of whatever crop they were growing vibrated in their exhaust.
	She actually screamed as she and Robb dropped the ten meters from the hovering plane.  Griffin was a warrior!  Scream, shoot, scream shoot.
	She had to shoot.  Argonauts were rushing toward her, attacking her.  They'd cut off Millicent's arm, after all.  They were brutal.  She and Robb had to deal with them.  Dozens of them.  Hundreds of them.
	The creatures rushed at them, screaming themselves.
	The Specialists' Eagles screamed back, in a large caliber.  Griffin thought the disparity eminently fair.
	Time stretched.  Griffin imagined she saw her shots fly through the air.  She saw the dark-hued Argonauts coming after her, blades flashing, rushing toward her, falling.  She saw her shots amputate a limb off one.  What did it matter?  They had eight.  The bastards.
	She tried to settle herself.  Getting emotional and losing her logical base would not be in their best interests.  Focus.  Evaluate targets.  Eliminate them.
	Griffin was right.  Two well armed Specialists were more than a match for a large number of Argonauts without advanced technology.  The fight was over in about thirty seconds.
	Robb said, "I don't see anything moving.  Do you?"
	Griffin struggled to get her breathing under control.  "No," she said.  "Everything is still."
	"Spreading out," said Robb.
	"Ditto," said Griffin.
	They moved away from the noisy, hovering plane, checking bodies as they came to them, finding them harmless (lifeless or too injured to be dangerous), and moving on.
	Griffin kicked open a slanted door opening onto a sunken enclosure.  Beneath the door were three -- no, four, she counted -- Argonauts.  They were smaller than the ones she'd cut down, and did not seem to be aggressive.  They huddled before her and shivered.
	What should she do?  What was the right thing?  There was no way to be sure.  If she left them, one of them might rise up and attack the second she turned her back.  If she shot them all, well, that wouldn't happen, would it?  Did that make that the right course of action?  Did it?
	She aimed her automatic.  The Eagle would belch death the instant she thought it.  The power didn't make her feel good.  It made her feel nauseous.  She didn’t know if that was a fair sensation.  Surely she was projecting her own self onto these shivering creatures. They were aliens.  Did her projections mean a damn thing?
	Griffin looked at the pathetic, thin-limbed things quaking before her, and felt pity.  How, and why, should they expect vengeance from the skies like this?  Might they be innocent of any act against a human?  If so, how would she feel in their place?
	Griffin eased back and prepared to move forward.  Even as she did so, she heard Robb release an extended round.  Undoubtedly he was killing something.  She told herself that he was trained, that he wouldn't do that unless he was sure the something needed killing.
	Griffin made herself move on, paying attention to the hole.  If anything moved there, she would kill it.
	She found herself hoping that nothing would move.  Please, she thought.  Don't move.  Don't be stupid.  I don't want to kill you.
	After a few minutes, she and Robb had the area secured.  Anything that had moved had been cut into hundreds of pieces.  Everything else was stationary and intact.  The only structure left they had to explore was a large, circular mud hut filled with some kind of animal.  Griffin and Robb moved in.
	Something beeped at her.  Lance said, "They're not here."
	"Tell me more," she said, stepping carefully forward, not letting her gaze wander.
	"The RF signals are off the platform, descending rapidly."
	"Fuck," opined Robb.
	Indeed.  "Be that as it may, we're not leaving yet.  We’re making this foray count.  We're not wasting--" she started, and stopped.  She had begun to say that they were wasting native lives for no reason, but didn't know that she could say that with certainty.  They'd made shots descending, Robb afterwards.  Lives had been lost.  Alien lives, to be sure, but did they count for less than human lives?  Part of her said yes, part of her said no.  She didn't know how to weight the two parts.
	"Move into the structure," she said to Robb.  "You first, me backing you up."
	Griffin felt bad about the order, but it was procedure.  She had to hang on to something.
	Robb stepped into the darkness, stepped down, and vanished.  Griffin followed him.  It was her responsibility.
	The enclosed area reeked.  Another version of herself, in a parallel universe, was vomiting.  This place was a sty.  Literally.  Filled with unclean animals, with more legs than was natural, that grunted and scurried.  A part of her was tempted to shoot them all.  That would make it easier to evaluate things.
	"All clear," Robb reported.
	So there it was.  The last place, all clear, no Klingston, no Specialists.  "Where are they?" she asked.
	One of Lance's patterns came across the local channel.  "We said they were moving.  They're not actually here anymore.  They've moved off the platform."
	Great.  How many…things, please, don't think of them as people…had they killed?  Zero, twenty, fifty?  She'd shot initially, but Robb had shot more.
	That wasn't fair.  They shared all responsibility, and she was commander.  She had at least as large a share of responsibility as he did, and probably larger.
	Screw that.  No time to be weak.  Events transpired, she had to accept that and go one, until she made the events occur that she desired.  They didn't have Klingston or anyone else rescued yet.  Until her fellow Specialists were rescued or dead, there was no responsibility for anything.  No worries yet.  No success yet.  No failure yet.
	"Lance," she asked.  "Where are our people?"
	"They're off the platform.  We've missed them."
	The answer reassured her, given their lack of success.  "Okay," she said.  "We're coming back.  We're going to rescue them.  If not here, then somewhere.  If not now, then soon.  We're going to rescue them."
	Griffin wished that she felt as confident as her words.

	

Chapter 25

Sinking Deeper

	"Get the door open, Mistelle!" Rusk yelled.
	Their mesh shield was frayed, tattered.  They'd already lost another Specialist, and every few seconds he felt one extremity or other warm up, spillover from hydra microwaves.  Their tattered shield was fast becoming a joke.  He was starting to think it likely he would die in the next few minutes and have very little, if any, warning.
	Surprisingly, it was easy to work in such an environment.  Rusk didn't have to think more than a few seconds in advance, trying to stay behind their shield, and trying to find opportunities to return a shot to their adversaries.
	There was an undercurrent of thought, an undercurrent that terrified him, that wanted to shirk their mesh shield, blast off toward the hydras, and shoot every one of them.  Intellectually he realized that they would nail him long before he would be able to nail every one of them, but the undercurrent grew in strength.  He could solve all of their immediate problems in just a few seconds, if he could release his debilitating fear.  Could he?
	A cool, blue light hit them.
	"We're in!" Mistelle screamed.
	Rusk glanced over his shoulder to see a circular aperture opening onto a tunnel about five meters across.  "Inside," he yelled.  "You first, Skael.  Then Chip and I will back in, keeping us shielded.  Mistelle, can you close the door?"
	"I think so," she answered as Skael's PPU pushed him into the tunnel.
	The maser fire had stopped when the tunnel had opened, but new sparks burst from their mesh curtain and Rusk and Chip eased backward.  "Hold it!" Rusk said, even as the shield began to melt away in their hands.  He could feel the searing heat through his gloves.  "Hold it even if your hands burn down to stumps!"
	Then, almost instantly, a slate-gray wall materialized in front of them.
	"I got it closed," Mistelle said, a hint of self-satisfaction in her voice, which choked off on the last syllable of 'closed.'  She asked, "Where's Kat?"
	"Didn't make it," Rusk said.  "And we've lost Drone, too.  Now, come on."
	"Where?" Chip asked.
	"Where else?  Down the tunnel.  Do you see another choice?"  Rusk said the words quickly, with an edge, and felt bad about it but did not apologize.  "Let's catch up to Skael."
	Indeed, Skael hadn't wasted any time.  He was moving slowly, but deliberately, through the tunnel as it curved steadily and sloped upward.  He even had his weapon armed and ready.  Rusk approved.  Skael was weird, but operative in a crisis.
	From behind them came a slight popping sound, a slight change in pressure, and a slight humming noise.  "We're with you, Skael.  Pick up the pace.  I don't know what's ahead, but I do know what's behind."
	The tunnel diameter gradually increased from five meters until it was nearly ten.  They also began to hear sounds ahead of them.  It was hard to judge how far ahead, or exactly the nature of the sounds -- they were quiet, mechanical, rhythmic, or semi-rhythmic sounds.  They were utterly incapable of preparing him for what he saw a few moments later.
	The tunnel opened into a funnel.  The funnel opened onto a single room.
	Room was a woefully  inadequate term.  Rusk had never seen a single room this large.  The arcology parks back in Colchis weren't so large, and the nearest equivalent he could imagine from his studies would be an indoor football stadium, but that even wasn't close.  If had to guess, he would have guessed the room was ten kilometers across, and shaped like a big empty ball.  The light inside was golden and came isotropically from source in the middle of the room.  Its entire surface was pockmarked with faint blue holes like the one they were floating in, although the holes varied tremendously in size.
	They could only be in one of the nodes that they had imaged from orbit, places where the Spider Star's legs flared out and from which other tubes and structures grew.
	As Rusk took in the big picture, which required significant head swiveling in all directions, he finally began to be capable of assimilating smaller details.  Hydras floated everywhere.  They floated alone, in pairs, in small groups, and in three-dimensional formations that made Rusk think of the word 'battalion.'  Inanely, he wondered what English word would be chosen to describe groups of these aliens?  'Murder' was already taken for crows.  Maybe an 'assault' or perhaps a 'maser' or maybe even a 'hug.'  Words describing groups didn't always make sense.  
	"Don't we need to keep moving?" Skael asked.
	"Yes, we should," said Rusk.  "There's a hug of hydras on our tail."
	"And people say I make no sense!"
	Rusk worried about himself, about his decisions.  There were no rules to follow here!  There was no word for a group of these hydras!  He knew he was struggling, and every time there was a chance to stop to think about their situation, that struggle bubbled up.  Skael was right, they needed to keep moving.  But to where?  This place was full of hydras.
	But what if they were like the first bunch that had come to dismantle the dirigible?  Might they not ignore the Specialists completely?  In any event, they couldn't just go blasting straight up, hoping to follow the leg back to the space dock.  They'd never reach the tunnels near the ceiling before their pursuers emerged and spotted them.
	They'd have to go down a different, closer rabbit hole and hope for the best.  Rusk looked around, focused again.  Where now?  There was no point trying to sort through the logic of the place, so he picked one at random.  Not the closest, but one not so far away.  "There!"  He pointed.
	The Specialists took off.  The closest hydras was a hug of four (his own naming rule, but a rule nonetheless, and he'd stick to it), about three hundred yards away, at a slightly higher altitude.  They continued in their course without pause, paying no attention to the jetting humans.  No hydras anywhere seemed to paying them any attention.  Small favor, or a bit of luck.  Didn't matter, they would take it gratefully.
	Skael led the way down the new hole, at a slightly lower altitude, off to the left about 15 degrees.  Chip and Mistelle powered down after him, their PPUs revving up for the hard turn.   Rusk was about to follow when he paused to look back.
	Just that instant, the pursuing, armed hydras popped out of the tunnel entrance that the Specialists had just vacated.
	Damn!  They barely had a lead at all, and he was still in the open.
	Rusk made a snap decision.  He jetted over the tunnel his comrades had just entered, radioing them quick message: "Keep going and don't look back!"  And Rusk shut down his active receive.  He didn't think they needed more than one more hero right now.
	He hadn't followed his own advice, and would now pay his penalty.  That was just.  That was his own prerogative.  
	Rusk quickly aimed at another hug that was on the projection of the line connecting the military hydras to himself.  He hoped that they would hesitate before masering in that direction.  He located the nearest funnel opening along his new trajectory and dived into it as soon as he could.  He didn't fell any heat, and thought that was to be expected; he wouldn't feel anything in this range with a direct shot -- his head would simply explode.
	In a way, that made it easy.  He simply acted.  Death would strike instantly, if it would at all.  It wasn't that he'd forgo caution, but it did mean he didn't have to concern himself with survival after he'd reached a decision.
	Rusk dropped into his new tunnel.  It was slightly larger than the one they'd exited, but similarly constricted quickly.  He spied a side tunnel branching away, but decided, again in an instant, to skip it.  His pursuers would investigate the first side tunnel.  They'd be slower to investigate a second.  This, now, was a game of margins.
	Rusk continued dropped into the tunnel at full thrust.  The speed dizzied him.  He let his autopilot navigate the turns since it was faster than him.  He decided he'd turn off the main passage at the second or third turn off.  The blue tunnel, turning steadily, mesmerized him.  This was a crazy way to live a life.  To think, in another existence, he could be sitting with friends on a beach, sipping some wine, and petting a cat in his lap, and instead he'd wound up doing this…ludicrous!
	There, another branch!  Rusk took it, spiraling off to his left, a passage with a much tighter turning radius, almost a corkscrew.  He had no idea where this headed, what its purpose might be, but it was his only possibility at survival, so he dove into it with glee and abandon.  Part of him abstractly mused that he was the survivor of a nearly infinite generation of survivors, so he ought to have a chance here.
	Twisting blue tunnel, PPU at maximum thrust under autopilot, masering monsters behind him, the unknown before him.
	Wasn't this exactly what the Specialist Corps had promised him?  The wind whipped in his face, strange odors hit him occasionally, and nothing he saw was anything like anything he'd seen back on Argo training.  This was discovery, no matter how it ended.
	There!  Another branch!  Rusk headed for it, not pausing to look to see if his pursuers were visible.  Part of him hoped they were, because that meant they'd followed him rather than the others.  The selfish part of him hoped that no one was behind him, that he'd escaped cleanly.  That was the selfish but honest part.  Why shouldn't he live, after all?  Wasn't life expectancy arbitrary in some sense?  Why not let him die in bed surrounded by family and friends?  Lots of people managed to do that, so why not him?
	Because he'd had the ambition to head an interstellar mission, gambling the risk against the additional fame?  Wasn't that a reasonable bet to make?
	The new tunnel went down, very down.  The angle of descent was over forty degrees, and had a sharp turn.  Eventually it straightened out and increased its descent angle to over sixty degrees.
	Rusk worried he was in a garbage chute.  It was narrow, and dropped rapidly.  Unfortunately, it didn't seem too narrow for an armed hydra.  He continued to follow it, hoping it would lead someplace with possibilities for escape.  What else could he do?
	Suddenly the tunnel broke up into a maze and Rusk screamed his thanks to no one in particular.  This was as close to perfect as he could expect.  He had no expectations of complete escape and rescue, not yet, but this situation promised at least the prospect of a good hiding spot.  That was as much as he could expect.  If he survived the next few minutes, only then could he contemplate an escape.
	Here he was, Manual Rusk, the best and brightest of the best offspring of the Argo colonists, hiding in a maze in an alien space station, hoping for survival as the best possible outcome.
	This was so wrong.  But you took what the universe threw at you -- how could you do anything else -- and that was what was possible.  If the best and brightest of the Earth's best and brightest who had become Argo colonists, if that was the best humanity had to offer, well, that was Rusk, here, hiding in a maze from maser-wielding aliens.  That was it.  That was the result of billions of years of evolution.  So be it.
	Still, it annoyed Rusk, and didn't seem fair.  The Argonauts had a lead on humans, no matter what the ages of their stars.  He assumed that the hydras did, too.  Was it fair that the fairest possibility was that you'd evolved in the middle of the pack, millions of years after the early adopters?  After a moment of thought, Rusk decided that, yes, it was fair.  Humans might just be screwed coming from the outer part of the Milky Way, from around a lower mass, older star.  It was fair.  They were simply not competitive.
	Still, he hid.  Competitive or not, he would compete.  Life didn't give up.  It played until the end, and so would he.
	He had minutes, entire minutes, to think.  This situation was enormous.  This was one of the first serious encounters between humans and alien intelligences.  No matter the outcome, it would be significant.  Even if it weren't fair, the outcome would shade future interactions.  In principle, if anyone ever learned from this encounter.
	A metaphorical switch shifted then inside Rusk's head.  He was playing a game for the future of humanity, not just himself, and, if he could, he would find a way to pass on his knowledge.
	He found a locker.
	It was a space, with a closing door, anyway.  That seemed like such a trivial thing, initially, but he was able to maneuver inside it, and close that door.  That was huge.  He might have just become invisible to the hydras after him, and he hoped it true, and that it was all of them.  He hope that the other Specialists had escaped free and clear, even if he himself had not.  It was possible.
	Rusk settled down, powered down his PPU, and settled down on top of some coils of rope, wire, something, he didn't know for sure.  He shut down most of his systems, and his lights.  He relaxed his breathing, and waited in the dark box that he had found.  He had now idea what sort of sensors the hydras had.  His alternative was to keep running, and he didn't believe the alternative to necessarily have better chances than his current action.
	Rusk tried to remain silent.  He adjusted his outgassing protocols to prevent detection.  He could hold it a while, after all.  A short time, under normal circumstances.
	It was maddening.
	Again, there were no rules about how long you needed to hide to escape detection.  How long would an enemy keep looking?  A few hours?  A day?  Forever?  When might they give up?
	Who knew?  What was important was that they went by, at least for now.
	And they did!
	Rusk wanted to celebrate as he heard a parade of hydras, a powerful hum accompanying each one, proceed past him.  They could be fooled!  Thy didn’t know everything that transpired on this station, even thought they lived here.  Rusk and his Specialists had a chance!
	A few minutes after the armed hydras passed by him, Rusk powered his systems up and left his locker and backtracked to another passage in the maze.  He would keep going, as long as he had food and water to keep alive, no matter the pursuit.  He was one of the best Specialists ever, and now reality had a chance to confirm (or demolish) his test scores.
	Why couldn't he keep ahead of his pursuit, and eventually escape?
	He would try.  Certainly, he would try.
	He would just have to make his own rules.

	

Chapter 26

Two Tribes

	Yellow took Frenk and the other Argonauts to another grav-tube station, which wasn't all that far away from the farming platform.  Every time Frenk twitched, Yellow kicked him, so the short flight was a blessing.  The new tube station differed from the previous one in that the angle of descent was much steeper.  Otherwise everything appeared at least superficially identical.
	Frenk and the other Specialists were wrapped in twine, which Walter had suggested was a natural plant derivative, and dumped into the car.
	This drop made his stomach rise.  The descent was much steeper.  After the initial drop, he became accustomed to the mild gravity and confidently believed the trip would be just less than 45 minutes.
	Sally was dropped next to him.  He didn't know if that meant the Argonauts realized that there was something between them (was there?) or of they were just piled in at random.  He wanted to ascribe motives to these aliens, but they were still alien.
	He and Sally were close enough that they could converse in whispers, but Frenk wasn't sure what to say to this woman.  The circumstances were, at a minimum, exceptional.  All he knew was that she shouldn't expect any flowers.
	"Frenk," she whispered.  "Frenk, I wanted to let you know that you'll do okay.  You'll manage the situation as well as anyone is able, and if we all die, it isn't your fault."
	That was supposed to make him feel better?  He really, really didn't have any idea how to respond to her statement, or to their coupling of the previous night, except to feel guilty about it.  He opted for the ultimate panacea, and said, "Umm, thanks."
	She didn't say anything, not right away.  Then she said, "Seriously, Frenk.  You’re a greater man than you realize.  When the time comes, and you have the opportunity to make an important decision, you'll do okay."
	Why did this strange, fascinating woman keep saying that?  Didn't she realize that his leadership had landed several Specialists dead or maimed, and several more captives to violent aliens?
	Did their physical act matter?  It made him feel guilty, and perhaps it provided Sally with misplaced confidence in him.  That suggested it mattered, in a negative way, but he didn't see any manner to make up for it.
	They were, after all, bound captives.
	The car fell onward, downward, upward, who could say?  The car moved ballistically, only constrained by the frictionless tunnel wall and the laws of gravity, as one of his old instructors would have said.  Physics was so much easier than affairs of the heart.  You could use calculus, after all, and find an exact solution.
	Eventually the fall ended, the car slotted into a docking station, and the Argonauts hauled the Specialists out again.  There were no glider rides this time.  Instead, each Specialist was carried to an open platform similar to the ones they'd seen before, and tossed off.
	Frenk couldn't believe it!  To carry them all this way, and then, with no hesitation, to toss their captives to their deaths…it made no sense!
	Frenk yelled out when it was his turn.  He couldn't help himself.
	But a few seconds after being thrown, believing the worst, reaching the top of his arc and falling, he slid onto some sort of angled surface.  The surface resembled, at least superficially, the silky material of the sacks and wings of the gliders.  It seemed quite strong, but gave slightly as they landed, and was smooth enough to slide down.
	They slid.  They slid for kilometers.
	Every so often the slope would change, or the direction would shift, and they'd slow.  Somewhat.  Frenk still felt, viscerally in his gut, shining-white-intestine visceral, that they were flying out of control to their ultimate doom.  But at this altitude the acceleration was probably less than twenty percent of an Earth gravity, and things never quite got of control as he feared.
	That is, any more than they already were.
	Frenk heard some yells, then Argonaut shouting as cacophonous as any spider monkey fit he'd ever heard back on Argo.  He wished he had the ability to move, to look around, but he was still wrapped.  All he could do was slide.
	Unbidden, a thought came to him: his son Allyn would love this.
	Almost immediately, his rapid descent leveled off and he saw some sort of flat region and a wall.  The wall seemed to be textured, and brown, and rapidly grew larger as he looked.  He smacked into it at high velocity and sank into the giving surface.
	The brown was apparently a welcome mat.
	Frenk waited to be pulled out, smelling the unusually good smell from the dried, spongy weed.  The musty, cinnamon smell was infinitely better than the animal pen of the previous night.  He smelled, and he waited for his captors.
	There were more wild calls, and Frenk was pulled out.  Two Argonauts he hadn't seen before (they didn’t have colored belts) pulled him out of the cushioning pile of dried vegetation.  They dragged him, and he was dragged.
	Frenk saw blue sky overhead, some sort of crops, and rows of dark-bodied Argonauts lining his path, all his head lolled back and forth and he was pulled along.
	After several moments of irritating his bruises, the alien hands let go and he fell, heavily, onto dusty ground.
	Something loud, and something grating, made sounds that resembled the Argonaut tongue.
	More yelling, more dragging, this time inside a woven hut that smelled subtly similar to rotting garlic.  The smell was strange.
	Frenk, wrapped, laying in the dirt, lifted his head.
	He didn't like what he saw, and dropped his head.
	There was a big creature, maybe an Argonaut, maybe not, making the sounds.  They were louder now, more insistent.  Frenk had no idea what it was saying, and ignored it.  The sounds repeated, several times, and he was kicked, but he said nothing.  What could he say that they would understand.
	Where was Jason?
	Frenk had been tossed on the slide before the X-bot.  Had they decided to leave Jason behind for some reason?
	Something grabbed Frenk by his long hair and hauled him up to a standing position.  Yellow, it was Yellow, and the Argonaut held Frenk's head to force him to look directly at the creature seated before him.
	Seated wasn't quite the correct term.  Nestled was better, as it grasped a large assemblage of twisted, lime-colored branches with its eight appendages, and Frenk couldn't help but think of a spider in its web, waiting for prey to stumble across it.
	Superficially, it resembled the other Argonauts.  Same basic body plan and shape, but several things distinguished the creature.  It was larger, to start with, maybe twenty-percent larger, and that wasn't just the fact that its limbs were longer, everything was larger.  Its big, implacable black eyes, its fanged mouth, its bristly ears, everything.  And Frenk recognized it was male, and didn't need any of Jason's patterns to tell him that.  The coloration was different from the others, too.  Its skin was a shinny, waxy black like the others, but the thin hairs, or bristles, were not black.  They were gray.  And when it spoke, it was louder than the other Argonauts, with a gravely, phlegm-filled quality.
	This was the big one, then, without a doubt.
	And he spoke again, demanding something, what exactly, Frenk still didn't know.
	Yellow answered back and there was an exchange.  It didn't scan to Frenk as a conversation, but rather as a series of questions and answers.
	"So what have we here?" came the voice of one of Jason's patterns, one of the female Argonaut cultural anthropologists.  "Oh my!"
	He heard a clang, as something hard hit the X-bot.
	He wanted to turn to look, but Yellow's strong hands held his head fixed ahead.
	Yellow said something, and someone answered.  The big one -- the Chief, Frenk decided to call him -- said something.
	Another Argonaut stepped forward, Orange, Yellow's rival as far as Frenk had been able to ascertain.  He didn't know if personal rivalries were something that Argonauts had, but he imaged so.  He thought of Ken and Allyn coming before him when they'd been fighting and having to make a decision.  He wondered if someone were about to get a spanking.
	The three called back and forth to each other, growing increasingly louder.  Frenk didn't want to read in things that weren't there, but he thought all three were also getting angrier.  This continued for several minutes and Frenk hoped that Jason was getting it all.
	The Chief finally roared with enough volume that the force of it resonated through Frenk's chest cavity and everyone fell silent.  Except for its mouth, the Chief had remained preternaturally still throughout the entire encounter up until this point.  Now, with careful deliberateness, it released its branching nest with its top two arms and extended them toward Frenk.
	Frenk wondered if he were the one about to get the spanking.
	He didn't have a lot options.  About the only positive action he could take would be to yell at Jason to tell them something, but not understanding the situation, he might just make things worse.  He resigned himself to whatever fate had in store for him.
	Yellow released her grip on Frenk and he expected to be pushed forward into the Chief.  That didn't happen.  Instead, Orange sidled over to hold Frenk and Yellow stepped forward to the Chief.
	Yellow extended her left upper arm.  The Chief took hold of it in a way that almost seemed tender.  But they were aliens.  Frenk didn't really know if the gesture was tender or not.
	The Chief leaned forward and although Yellow's body partially hid what was occurring, the crunching, slurping sounds made it all too clear how his first interpretation was so very, very wrong.  The Chief was eating her arm.
	Yellow stood there, taking it, and the seconds grew into minutes.  The only clue that she was experiencing something that Frenk had to assume was incredibly painful was that her bottom four legs, the ones resting in the dirt, slowly twisted, leaving behind, short, curved trails.
	Finally it was over, and Yellow stepped back.
	The Chief leaned back and yelled.  Argonauts scurried, yelling among themselves.  Two came forward and took helped Yellow move off.  Orange yelled some things.  Jason came tumbling into the space between the Chief and Frenk.
	Orange, continuing to hold Frenk tightly, grabbed her blade and lifted it to his throat.  Maybe now it really was his turn.
	The cool blade touched his skin, and started to slice.  Frenk let go his breath when he realized it was slicing the twine that wrapped around him up to his neck.  Orange shifted her grips as she cut him free, and finally a few moments later, released him altogether.  
	Frenk stood unbound before the Chief.
	The Chief barked a few things, and Jason answered.
	The Chief roared again.
	Orange started to say something, and the Chief cut her off with a quick, loud chirp.  Orange, and all the other Argonauts left the hut, leaving Frenk and Jason alone with the Chief.
	Jason said, "I am to translate."
	"Good," said Frenk.  "Can you tell me what's going on?" He didn't know how long Jason would have, so he added, "Quick summary."
	A slightly heavy woman with short blonde hair appeared in Jason's display.  Judith, Frenk recalled.  She began speaking about three times as fast as a normal person did -- useful now, but undoubtedly not her expertise that made her chosen for patterning.  "Orange and Yellow had a catfight.  They were supposed to return with trophies from the enemies who had called, and should have at least returned with some of our weapons rather than run away with nothing to show for the effort but these useless foodstuffs -- humans, I assume.  They've been fighting about what they should do ever since, and Yellow was punished for not succeeding.  Orange is in charge of the hunting party now.  The big one, he wants to ask you some questions in private, and you're to answer truthfully and not misbehave, or he'll kill you with his bare --hands -- and ask the others.  Keep in mind translations may be imperfect."
	It took Frenk a few seconds for his brain to assimilate her words.  She'd answered some of his questions, but he still had many more.  He was about to ask for elaboration when the Chief spoke again, staring directly at Frenk with his huge, black eyes.
	The interview began.
	The Chief gave a long drawn out grunt with a varying inflection.
	"What are you?" Jason asked, neutral again, synthesizing the translating talents of all its patterns.
	How was Frenk supposed to answer that?  He was a human, a carbon-based life form, a husband and father, a mission director, and more and less than all of those things.  He was a citizen of the galaxy.  Not as much of gentleman as he desired.  In quiet moments, a poet, he liked to believe.  Definitely, at least at the moment, a man who thought way too much.
	Seconds dragged out, and Frenk started to worry that this interview wasn't going well, that the Chief would finish with him and move on to Sally next.
	"Excuse me!" Jason said.  "The question is, 'what are you to me?'  He wants to what you are with respect to him.  Are you a threat?  Are you an opportunity?  Basically, what can you do for him?"
	He had been advised that the translations would not be perfect.  But really, on the first question?  Frenk wondered what mistranslation would get him killed.
	Still, this was a difficult question for Frenk to answer.  Less ambiguous, perhaps, but difficult to be sure.
	Did Argonauts negotiate?  How did they negotiate?  He had an assemblage of the top experts here, extant in Jason, but little time to use them.
	Frenk had to say something.  He turned to Jason and said, "Tell him that--"
	The Chief barked something, loud enough to make Frenk jump.
	"He says," said Jason, "look at him when you answer."
	That was consistent with the way that Yellow and the others had been treating Jason, ignoring the X-bot.  They seemed to dismiss it because it was a machine.  That had to mean something here.
	Frenk spoke again, this time looking directly into the big, black eyes that regarded him steadily.  "I am an opportunity."
	Jason translated his statement.  Frenk needed to keep things simple, learn as they went along, and see if there were room to negotiate.  He just hoped that Jason's embedded patterns would realize the stakes and do their part.  Despite the obvious danger, the opportunity to act unknotted a tightness that permeated his body and let a tiny flicker of hope to ignite.
	The Chief was gargling now, a new question.  When he finished, Jason said, "What type of opportunity?  I cannot eat you, as I am told you are poisonous.  I cannot make you worker, as you are a crippled four arm, and weak.  I cannot make an entertainer, as you are too pale and ugly.  Again, what are you to me?"
	Frenk tried to think of something, but part of him stalled on the 'ugly' part, quite pleased to hear the judgment.  To the matter at hand, Frenk thought he could offer the Chief a great deal although he wasn't sure it would be a good idea.  Modern weapons, transport, and surveillance -- the Argonauts seemed to have little of these, living as they did on these farming platforms.  Why was that, exactly?  They seemed to know how to operate the grav tubes, the elevators up and down the spokes, and tap into incoming communications.  And why, after ten million years, were they still here at all?
	He decided to play for time.  He didn't know what sort of enemies they had here, but Frenk bet that this bunch would have enemies if anyone would.  "We have weapons to offer."
	Jason translated.  The Chief waved one of his upper arms and spoke briefly.  "The scouts say you use ballistic weapons.  These must require specialized materials for ammunition, special processing.  Once the ammunition runs out, your weapons are useless.  Try again."
	Frenk almost spoke immediately, almost offered up a nanoforge.  They had several, and could make more, but that would be too much.  The nanoforge would provide them with infinite ammunition, and more, much more.  And if the Argonauts had been living like this for so long, we wasn't about to give them a magic bag that would upset whatever balances that existed.  Not without a better understanding.
	What else could he offer?  Passage back to Argo, perhaps?  Yes!  It wasn't like this handful of Argonauts would take over their colony.  They'd be a scientific godsend.  "I can provide passage back to your home world."
	The Chief began shivering as Jason translated.  Frenk had no idea what shivering indicated, not specifically, but he thought it likely indicative of some strong emotion.  Again he found himself hoping there hadn't been a mistake in translation that would get him killed.
	The Chief's reply was long, punctuated by gestures from every limb and one clacking his teeth.  Jason waited a few moments before translating, then said, "Home world?  This airy place is our home.  The -- some untranslatable curse, we think -- they have their doomed world.  They are doomed for their hubris, their arrogance, their evil, blackmailing an entire -- people, we think in this context -- into perpetual slavery for second-place land holdings and suffering.  Sorry, we can translate better than this with more time, we'll work on it, continuing.  We stay on here, making this place our home, to keep them from ever saving themselves.  They had their chance, not now, we have made sure.  We win, now and forever."
	This was stunning, unbelievable, impossible.  Frenk knew he had to respond, and quickly, and tried to buy some more time.  Another rant, and that was what it seemed to boil down to, would let him think of a way to exploit this extreme position.  "Jason, only translate what I say between the word 'quote,' please.  I want you to figure out all the ramifications of this, if you can.  What's been going on here.  Now I suppose I have to say something.  Pad it out if it seems too short.  'Quote:' The -- untranslatable curse -- they're long dead and gone.  You could repopulate your world with our help.  Don't, um, turn your back or similarly appropriate metaphor, from the chance to rebuild your civilization.  We've come here to…heal Pollux, the home world star, to make Argo a good place to live again."
	Jason translated after a moment, presumably stalling for time of its own so its patterns could internally converse and work on the problem Frenk had assigned them.
	When Jason had finished, the Chief immediately began to laugh, at least that was how Frenk read it.  From it's rounded black belly, bellowing croaks squeezed out painfully.  The Chief spoke, finally, slowly now, with some undefined shift in emotion that might be humor, but didn't seem to be so simply interpreted.  "I came to this place, with my brothers.  We spent a long time -- hundreds of years, we think -- to reach this place, bringing our spider monkeys to eat, dedicated to freedom and justice.  You see, we came to learn to control the alien technology that held us enthralled as slaves.
	"'One of our number died.  After his death, the golden ones, who made the world, they listened to us.  To be fair, they helped us learn how to control the planet movers.  We called back to our people to let them fight back.  If you are here now, well, the -- and we're just saying 'cursed ones' from now on -- well, the cursed ones truly are cursed and the world is not a home to anyone any longer.  That is their enduring legacy, and the curse they have forced us to cast upon them for all eternity."
	Frenk didn't understand this.  Was the being that sat here truly one who had come from Argo ten million years ago, as he claimed?  Surely not, there was a whole population of Argonauts here and he was surely a descendant; there had to be an error in translation.  More importantly, was he really one of those who had set up the destructive engine in Pollux responsible for the Lashings?  Did that mean he knew how to stop it?  "Quote: You can stop the engine of destruction in the star, make Argo a place for your people to live freely again."
	The Chief responded in the same manner that he'd assumed after Frenk's statement about healing.  "You don't understand, and you've surely made such great sacrifices.  There are no people now.  My food, I bred my food larger, for forces to use against my brothers, and for recreation.  There are no real people left, just five of us, and our monkeys, tending our own spokes.  We can't go home, and don't want to.  Now, again, what can you offer me?"
	Frenk almost fell.  The revelations assaulted him physically, making his knees weak.  Frenk had no purpose unless he could prevent the Lashings, and here was a creature that, if he believed him, was at least partially responsible, and had no interest in stopping them.  He could offer this creature nothing, because there was nothing this creature could offer him that he wanted.  Not if the Lashings were off the table.
	Frenk tensed, fury growing inside him.  A mad leap, yes, he could reach the Chief.  He didn't think he could kill this mad, ancient thing, but he thought maybe he could blind it.  A blind immortal…that seemed like justice for a being that had taken away the sun and made it an enemy.  Yes.
	"We advise against your action," Jason said.  The X-bot could pick up his medical telemetry and draw conclusions about his mental and physical state.  "We believe you'd be killed in an instant.  Do not be misled by this creature's apparent lethargy."
	The Chief gargled some more, foul liquids bubbling up from within its gut to modulate it's utterances.  Jason translated, "I am curious.  We added a long delay into the cycle to permit threats, negotiation, and victory if possible, but we did indeed program death to our enemies.  How could we do otherwise?  Satisfy my curiosity.  Did your kind build their homes on the island on the equator?"
	Frenk swallowed, fearful of the calm, measured words coming from the X-bot, not answering.
	Jason continued, finishing the translation of the Chief's words.  "Because if you did, and it would be a wonderful place -- my people admired it, we did -- that is on the target list.  If you took as long to reach this place as we did, all your people are long dead."

	

Chapter 27

Mischief Maker

	His team would be trying to go up, the hydras would likely expect him to go up, and so Rusk went down at every opportunity.
	Rusk no longer cared for his own survival, at least not in the long term sense.  He would do his best to stay alive, without a doubt, and even permitted himself to dream of Griffin's rescue, maybe, someday, but he vowed to learn what he could and provide periodic distractions.
	Rusk learned that most of the hydras had specialized duties.  That is, a hydra that maintained a power station did just that, to the exclusion of all else, and it didn't care if he walked right up to it and fiddled with its anatomy.
	Their mistake, Rusk decided, had been shooting the salvage hydra.  It had its instructions to do its job -- their dirigible taken to be some kind of floating debris to be dismantled and reprocessed -- and if they hadn't interfered with force they would have never seen the military hydras.
	And Slyde, Tolbert, Nyquist, and Coyner would still be alive.
	He had these thoughts as he grasped a hydra tentacle in his bare hands, feeling its slick but not slimy surface, squeezing its tough, rubbery substance yield beneath his probing fingers, and offer no resistance.
	Rusk had been brash, and had made a mistake that had cost lives.  Klingston wouldn't have been so brash, Rusk was sure.  He'd been too bold, too aggressive.  It was his fault.  It was tempting to throw his life away in some gesture, finding his pursuers, and challenging them directly. He had no illusions about what would happen.  His head would explode with a high dose of microwave energy, and he wouldn't have any more guilt.  The books would be balanced.  
	But he didn't quite believe that.  He could still learn useful information, still provide a distraction that might permit Mistelle, Skael, and Chip, find a way to escape.
	So he studied the non-violent hydras, studied the equipment they tended, the tasks they performed, and he learned.
	He followed one industrious hydra for three or four hours until it led him to a feeding pen.  Rusk had to power up his PPU to reach the dispensers, which were holes partway up a hundred meter wall -- a wall covered in feeding creatures that reminded him of a lesson unit he'd watched once with bees and hummingbirds bobbing along a plant-covered trellis, sipping nectar from flowers.
	The foodstuff had been a bland, pale paste that he'd had to scoop with his fingers and eat.  It hadn't tasted bad, but it hadn't tasted good, either.  He put faith in the ability of his body's modified biochemistry to digest it, and at as much as he could stand.
	He urinated and defecated when he needed to.  His armor could, in time, absorb and pass on his wastes.  Not indefinitely, but he didn't anticipate needing perfection forever.
	He was a wasp.  He flew about, stinging, laying eggs of pain.
	His sabotages had ludicrous simplicity.  These hydras operated mindlessly like robots, and like any robotic plant, if any stage failed to operate to specs it could cause chain reactions of damage.
	For instance, down one tunnel with an especially warm and moist updraft, he found what he took to be a nursery.  There were tanks, filled with a yellowish, clear liquid, aerated with bubbling gas, that stacked the walls from top to bottom filling room with white noise.  Inside the tanks floated gelatinous balls, almost transparent except for a triple set of beady, black eyes.  Their appearance made Rusk think of raw shrimp.  Thin, white strings, umbilicals, or guide lines, connect each blob to the floor of the tanks.
	They grew larger from one end to the other as they floated in their incubators, growing.  Rusk followed the end of the tanks to sets of clear tubing, which the largest of the growing hydras flowed through into another room.  Rusk watched what happened, here, lingering for nearly an hour -- much longer than he normally allowed himself -- trying to understand what was going on.  The embryos, or infants, or whatever the appropriate word was -- huggies? -- ended up on under brightly lit platforms.  Metal arms emerged from the lights and poked and prodded them, after which they were whisked away by clawed arms on moving belts.
	Closely watching the poking and prodding, Rusk realized two things.  First, the pokers and prodders didn't just poke and prod.  They penetrated and punctured, cutting through certain structures in what he thought might be their brains.  Second, there was also one particular arm that left something inside the infant hydra brains, a small, black box extruding tiny silver whiskers.
	Rusk had no idea what all this was doing, what it was for, but he didn't like it.  He was busy being a wasp, a small annoying creature disrupting larger creatures and events it didn't understand.  He took a unitool from his kit and broke the insertion needles on half a dozen of the stations.  Then, before he could be ambushed if his activity was detected, he bugged out.
	Rusk harbored ambiguous feelings about what he'd done.  He didn't know if it was an awful thing, or a clever thing.
	He continued to roam deeper, causing problems where he could, at random, and quickly moving on.
	When he was exhausted, he located another storage closet, set up alarms, and tried to sleep.  Sleep wouldn't come.  Too much had happened, too many mistakes, too many incomprehensible sights.  Still, the rest was good, the little he got, and he was able to save his stimulants.
	Hours grew, and became days.  He thought.
	Three times he had close calls with military hydras.  They were recognizable because they deviated from the patterns of other maintenance hydras, or workers, as he thought of them, and because they carried the shiny masers extended from a pair of tentacles.
	The third time, Rusk thought he was dead.  He had jetted up with his PPU to a worker making adjustments to some hydroponic cages holding some sort of pale leafy vegetable that reminded Rusk of endive.  He'd been planning to take a closer look, record some images, and see if there was a simply way to louse up the system.  Just as he was reaching the worker, six military hydras flew out of a tunnel and spread out across the chamber.
	Rusk, sure he was dead, did the only thing that came to mind.  He powered on into the worker, killed his PPU, and grabbed hold to its tentacles with his arms spread wide and hands squeezing as tightly as he dared.
	They were as slippery as they appeared, and he needed to wrap his legs around them too, and he hung there, from the slowly sinking alien, maybe 50 meters over a hard floor below.  He had an unpleasant flash to an image from a movie he'd once seen, in which someone had to cut open a cow and reach inside to extract a microbomb that had been implanted inside.
	He didn't know how the worker could fail to alert the soldiers to his presence, but there seemed to be little communication between different groups.  Rusk felt heat on his face and arms as a meaty section of the worker warmed rapidly.  Its distended air sack above expanded with the heat, increasing its girth, and as the density decreased its buoyancy increased, and, together, they floated back up to the hydroponics bank.
	With the extra heat came a smell, methane, and other odors he associated with flatulence, all of which went poorly with his thoughts of cow innards.  Still, under the circumstances, Rusk would have hidden in the most disgusting toilet in the universe if it meant surviving.  The smell did fade, slowly.
	Rusk held on, trying to keep the creature's body between him and the military hydras, and hoping its own heat would mask his infrared signature.
	The soldiers cleared out after a few minutes, but Rusk took advantage of his forced proximity to study the hydra more closely.  In particular, he watched the synchronized movements of its muscular tentacles as they groomed the plants.  They moved with a machinelike precision that, in humans, he had only seen in expert musicians and video game players.  Most of his weight hung on two arms in particular, and the hydra simply let these two skip the sequence.  How could it just ignore him?
	But he did worry then, suddenly.  The soldiers had first appeared after Slyde had shot off a tentacle.  If Rusk's weight injured this one, they might get called back and that would be that for him.  He let loose and hit his PPU, stopping to grab some of the ochre vegetables to eat, and exited by taking a different tunnel than the soldiers had.
	He proceeded downward, wondering what additional mischief he could cause.

	

Chapter 28

The Heart of Darkness

	The interview with the Chief complete, Orange came to collect Frenk.
	The Chief and Orange exchanged words.  Then Orange grabbed Frenk by his hair and pulled him out of the hut.
	Jason followed along after, recounting the conversation, although Frenk barely heard it.  "The Chief told Orange that he didn't care what happened to you, that you and the others were Orange's trophies to do with as she pleased."
	What did any of it matter?  They'd built Colchis in the most obvious place, ideal for a space elevator, ideal for studying the ruins of the Argonauts' preeminent civilization, and an obvious target.  Their mission had been doomed before they even started.
	Frenk had failed and his family was most likely dead.
	Orange led him someplace.  He didn't see where.  He looked, he supposed, or he would have tripped, but nothing sank in.
	They had failed.  In fact, they had never had a chance.
	He realized at some point that he was in another hut, dark inside, with the only light filtering in through the doorway and the edges of the thatching where they intersected an overhanging roof.  The other Specialists were there, still wrapped up.  Jason was relating his interview with the Chief.  He didn't know if they'd tried to talk to him, and didn't know that they would understand his silence.  They'd have to deal with the final revelation themselves, as he was trying to do now.
	Frenk realized that he needed to urinate.  So he did.  What did it matter?  He'd been forced to do it several times already in recent days.  He was just an old, single man, in an empty universe.  What did any of it matter?
	"Frenk!" Sally said, seeing, or smelling, what he had done.
	Frenk didn't respond.  What was the point?
	He laid down and tried to sleep, turning his thoughts and all the talking around him into static.  It didn't matter.  Nothing mattered anymore, so he didn't need to think about it then, did he?
	His head spun, here in the shadowed hut, dark with stray streams of reflected light slipping inside.  Eyes closed, eyes open, it didn't matter.
	"Frenk!" Sally yelled into his ear.  She must have rolled over to him.  Good effort for her, he supposed.  Good for someone.  Something good.  A tiny good.
	He didn't say anything.  She hadn't asked him anything.
	"Is it true, Frenk?" she asked.
	Damn.  There it was, a question he'd actually heard.  He supposed he could answer, but it wasn't like any of them had ever known an X-bot to lie.  "That's what the Chief said."
	They all prattled on, and at some point someone had the balls to have Jason untie them.  Frenk think it had something to do with the fact that he was unbound, and that it was worth the risk.  Frenk assumed that they were thinking that he could be blamed, if necessary, and that was fine by him.  It didn't matter anymore.
	And then, unexpectedly, a wracking sob came up from his chest.  And then another, and another.  It did matter!  His sons, Ken, and Allyn, they were dead!  And Virginia, she'd had to be there with them, facing it with them, with no way to comfort them.  He sobbed on, loudly, and didn't care what he looked like.
	Someone's arms were around him, cradling him.  Sally.  "Let it out, let it out," she crooned.
	Frenk did.  It was a thing inside him that he couldn't stop.  They were dead, they were dead, and he was alone again, absolutely alone in a way that didn't exist when he was leading this mission for them, to ensure their survival.
	Tears streamed down his face and snot pooled in his sinuses, and he sobbed.
	"Frenk, Frenk," Sally said, holding him, rocking him.  "Let it out, baby."
	Some time later, he didn't know how long, he was spent.  Oh, despair still enveloped him like a dark cloak, but he just didn't have the energy to cry any more.  He imagined he would again, later, maybe after he'd slept.
	"Frenk," Sally whispered.  "How did the Chief know how far we'd traveled, how fast we traveled?"
	He didn't want to think, but her question worked into his head.  "I don't know," he whined.
	"He probably assumed that the trip was the same distance, and at the same speed, that they had used.  Those assumptions aren't true, are they?"
	They weren't.  The Chief had said centuries, so their ship had been slower.  And he knew from the orbital parameters that their travel distance had been slightly less.  "No," he said, sniffling.  "We got here faster than they did, if Jason did his conversions right."
	"He did," she said, "We all helped check it."
	But did that matter?  Could they even get back in time to prevent disaster?  How much time did they have, if ultimate destruction was inevitably headed for Colchis?
	"And another thing, Frenk," she said, quietly, continuing to rock him, "How do you know they wouldn’t learn to predict the Lashings, and evacuate Colchis if necessary?  Or even find a way to shield themselves.  There's a lot of smart, talented people we left behind.  It isn't all up to us.  Maybe not, anyway."
	What she said was true.  It made sense anyway.  He coughed a little, and slipped his arm up between hers to wipe his face with the back of his hand.  "I'm sorry," he said.  "I'm sorry!"
	Cripes, what did they think of him?  A few words from an alien, based on incomplete knowledge, in an uncertain universe, that could be a lie, and here he was, their Director, reduced to a sobbing pile.  "They could all be okay!"
	"Yes," she said.  "Yes."
	Hope flared in his heart.  He rationalized; the days of captivity, the stress, he wasn't in his right mind.  Maybe his family could be okay -- that was, alive.
	Alive was the most beautiful word in the entirety of English.
	But he'd been so positive, moments ago, that his family was dead.  What was the truth?  Could he know the truth?
	"And perhaps," suggested Sally, "the Lashing mechanism can't accurately target after running for ten million years."
	It was all true, everything she said, at least the possibilities, they had a good chance to be true.  He'd been a weak, self-indulgent ass.  What would Ken think of him?  Allyn?  Virginia?  "You're right."
	She continued to hold him, and rock him.  "Now then, we've still got a job to do.  Right?"
	"Right."
	"This isn't Argonaut technology.  The Chief you spoke with, he referred to 'golden ones' that lived in the core.  That's who we need to talk to.  Not these jokers."
	She was so right.  Why had he been made Director in the first place?  Rusk or Griffin would be doing infinitely better than him right now.  For instance, neither of them were the captives of aliens, now, were they?
	Enough self-indulgence then.  Frenk snorted, tried to clear his breathing.  "You're right, Sally."
	They talked then, trying to figure out what their captors might do with them, what they might do to influence them, or escape.  Walter brought up the best point.  "We're not alone here.  We have people at the space dock, in the atmosphere, and we're all wired.  I don't know that they could read us in the Spider Star legs themselves, but out here, hell, they just boost the power and they should pick us up from hundreds of kilometers, or farther."
	Frenk had forgotten.  Having the chip in his arm, that was not second nature to him, and not to most of them here.  By chance, he'd ended up with experts on Argonauts, not career Specialists.
	He could live with that.  They were excellent, great people.  The best people.
	He ignored the tears that welled up, threatening his stability again.  What was wrong with him?  This wasn't what they required from him now.  "They were growing a plane when we were captured, or they could send Rusk and his dirigible this way.  Our weapons would make short work of this lot."
	Gaby said, "There's too much killing, too many threats.  I don't like it.  We should be talking with these people."
	Frenk thought back to the giant, soulless eyes of the Chief, his cavalier attitude, his scorn for what they could offer him.  "We should be, but we can't."
	There was something there, in that thought.  There was something that now seemed impossible regarding negotiations.  He didn't know if it were their ancient, unwavering stance, or the way that they associated humans with their enemy Argonauts, but there was a block there.  They had to find a way to do an end around.  Sally was right, they needed to talk with the golden ones, or some other species on the Spider Star.
	As long as they remained here, they were dead, and their families were dead.
	"We could escape," Tod suggested.
	They could try, Frenk supposed.  The hut walls didn't seem all that solid, not if they let so much light through.  Their X-bot had at least a dozen tools that could get through it in seconds.  The hut door was guarded by a group of Argonauts, yes, but there would be ways to get past them if necessary.
	He gave idea some more thought, beyond escaping their immediate confines.  "To where?  To what end?  We know almost nothing about this place, almost nothing about how to operate its interfaces.  It would be too easy to die.  No, I think we're best off waiting for Griffin to rescue us, and learning what we can.  We're all together, we're safe for the moment, and we have friends in very high places."
#
	The golden ones living in the core, the ones who controlled the technology, that was who they needed to reach.  Frenk had Jason go over the translation of what the Chief had said about them.  Jason's patterns deferred to Wil.  Frenk decided he could live with him.
	"That's one of the trickiest bits of the whole passage."
	"Why?"  Frenk asked.
	"Because the literal translation didn't make any sense.  But then I realized that they had deified the aliens living in the core, and it all snapped into place."
	"Explain it to me."
	"Well the translation I gave you was: ''One of our number died.  After his death, the golden ones, who made the world, they heard our prayers.  To be fair, they helped us learn how to control the planet movers.'  The literal translation was more like, 'Akkai fell forever, and in falling, was consumed by the sun below.  The ones bathed in endless sunlight, the life givers and star makers, they listened to us then.  To abide their own rules of balance, they instructed us about how to control the planet movers.'"
	Stunned, Frenk wondered how liberal the other translations were that he'd heard.  Something bugged him though about this one.  "As a species, humans are pretty religious, I suppose, although most spacefarers and colonists willing to leave Earth have been overwhelmingly secular.  I know the Argonauts had many religions, but I don't recall anything religious about the Spider Star fairy tale."
	Wil's image grinned, foolishly happy.  "Oh, it's been a great controversy and there are several schools of thought.  You see, I personally believe that it was recast for children that trimmed the pilgrimages of their religious elements.  Historically, the speakers of language the Chief used had a strong belief system."
	Wil's image abruptly faded and the face of an older, short-haired woman appeared.  "Little bratty Wil had his way, too.  I don't think we can afford to not take anything literally here.  Do you?"
	No, he didn't.  Frenk had much to ponder.
#
	The thatched door squeaked open a few hours later, admitting what seemed like blindingly bright light.  Green scurried in on her four lower legs and commenced squawking and gesticulating.  Green threw up four of her arms, squawked especially loudly one last time, and left.
	Jason translated, "She's very upset you're all unwrapped.  She says that someone needs to be punished for this."
	Terrific, Frenk thought, let's get punished some more.  He felt like he'd already experienced the ultimate punishment, those moments of total loss of family, and loss of hope.  They could do nothing worse to him than make those things a reality.  Anything else was well tolerable.  He told them, "If they're going to punish anyone, they can punish me."
	They were led outside to blink in the bright light reflecting off the mirrors above.  It was blinding, and made them stumble as they were prodded onto a trail that wending its way through a long-stalked crop of some sort.  They emerged into a clearing on the edge of the platform.  The clearing was only devoid of plants.
	Dozens of Argonauts milled around the periphery.  Frenk supposed that he should stop thinking of them as Argonauts, remembering what the Chief had said.  The Chief was an original Argonaut, he had to assume, but these other creatures, they were the result of ten-million-years of selective breeding of Argotian spider monkeys.  Listening to their screams and hooting now, he believed it.
	"Hey," said Walter.  "There's not just Argonauts here."
	Frenk looked around and quickly spotted what the other man was talking about.  Huddled in a group of five or six individuals, was a small shrubbery.  He'd glanced over them at first, but he now recognized that they weren't what he'd first believed.  They weren't vegetable and they weren't shrubbery.  They were…difficult…to look at.  Not because they were ugly, or grotesque, but because the mind continuously failed to recognize and process them.  There was a body in there, someplace, but long blue-green needles ending in rounded-bulbs covered them and reminded Frenk of some sort of sea anemone.
	He didn't get to look long before Orange demanded his attention.  The new leader of the elite military force (as per Jason's revised translation) stood completely upright on its back two legs, double Frenk's height, and pulled him to his tiptoes by his hair.
	Orange began to speak, and Jason translated.  "A new species has arrived.  Their importance is unknown, but new things do not come into our world often.  Their leader, this one here, must be punished, and that punishment will demonstrate their submission.  After the punishment, the others will be auctioned off.  Use them for entertainment, work, or simply enjoy the novelty of ownership."
	This didn't sound good.  At best, they'd be scattered, difficult to rescue.  At worst, many could be killed for fun, or in error, in the hands of new captors.
	What could he do?  One idea lurked in his mind, but it was awful to contemplate.  Even more awful than his fast-approaching punishment.
	Suddenly Orange bent double, grabbing him with all free arms.  Almost all.  One held a blade against his left forearm.  Honestly, Frenk had kind of expected this.  Their captors seemed quite dogmatic.  The only consolation was that his arm wouldn't be eaten.
	He had the Specialist biochemistry, all sorts of micro machines in his blood.  He wouldn't bleed to death.  There would be pain -- how much, he wasn't sure -- and the loss of an arm.  The arm, if her were rescued, could be reground eventually.
	Frenk gritted his teeth and prepared himself.
	The blade began sawing into his arm.  It wasn't possible to prepare.  "Stop!  Wait!  One more minute!"
	Frenk shrieked.  He thought watching it being done to Millicent had been awful, and it had been, but now that memory and its horror mingled with the reality of the moment, enhancing it in terrible ways.
	He noticed his wedding band on his ring finger.  Platinum, from Virginia, the only thing directly from her aside from movies and photos that he'd brought with him onto the Dark Heart.  The ring was on the arm Orange was hacking off!
	Frenk moaned, screamed, and cried.  They were cutting off his arm, and his wedding ring.
	He saw his embedded chip move, wriggling under his skin.  It could escape some threats, but no way it was going to crawl up his arm far enough to escape.
	The ordeal finished faster than he imagined.  One claim the Argonauts had made was true: they were much physically stronger than humans.
	Orange dropped him and Frenk fell to his knees, and one hand.  He lifted his bleeding stump to his face, smelling the coppery tang of blood.  He watched fascinated as the blood flow eased to a slow ooze, then stopped completely as the machinery assisted the clotting processes in the face of this catastrophic injury.
	Above him, Orange started shouting something, and Frenk could see the creature raise up on its back two legs again.  He saw the shadow of its arms, waving the arm in one hand, its bloody blade in the other.
	Jason started speaking, but Frenk wasn't listening.
	An idea had formed, barely coaxed, while his muscles and tendons had separated, while his bone had parted, while the pain passed his endurance, while his wedding ring was removed in the most brutal fashion possible.  Akkai fell forever, and in falling, was consumed by the sun below.  The ones bathed in endless sunlight, the life givers and star makers, they listened to us then.  It could be taken literally, without any gods, afterlife, or death metaphor.  It could save this thing, and worse from happening to Sally and the others.  Some of them would die, surely, if separated in this auction.
	Frenk roared out his rage and pushed to his feet, stumbling forward.  The stumble grew into a run, directly for the shrub people.  They scattered before him.
	Frenk kept running, accelerating, not knowing if he'd have another chance.
	There was nothing at the edge of the platform but for a low, earthen wall.  Frenk hit it running, pushing off, and leapt into the infinite sky.	

	

Chapter 29

Timing is Everything

	Griffin smiled for the first time in days.  The RF signatures were stable, out in the open, and within minutes of their position.
	She was going to get Klingston and the other captives back.  They all seemed to be alive still, and while their vitals had strayed from their norms, they didn't seem to be in bad shape, all things considered.
	"Let's be sure about what we're getting into this time," Griffin said.  "Donovan, slow our approach and launch a swarm."
	"Good idea," he said.  "Launching swarm."
	The Specialist surveillance arsenal had a variety of probes, spysats, and drones.  The sneakiest were swarms, sets of 81 tiny robots designed to resemble small insects.  Earth and Argo both had creatures that filled similar niches: flies on Earth, dangbits on Argo.  The thinking was that most living worlds would have a similar niche in their ecosystems and that they'd be camouflaged.  And in any event, they were small, quiet, and distributed.
	Initially, all the displays showed the same thing: a round platform covered with various colors and textures.  Upon closer inspection, more details were apparent.  The largest detail was a raised set of mirrors ringing the platform, catching light from the core and reflecting nearly uniformly across the surface.  There were geometric figures etched onto the surfaces, a sort of patchy grid, with some squares having different colors.  She didn't know if the platform was agricultural, or perhaps a waste processing station, the two things that sprang to mind.
	The swarm closed, and it became apparent that this was an agricultural platform, with irrigation channels and reservoirs.  The images were blurry.  Diffraction limits on such small optics were physically insurmountable, at least when they were taken individually.  "Robb, can you lock-in an interferometric solution?"
	"Almost done," said Robb.
	Lance announced, "Director Klingston's vitals are becoming unstable."
	"There," said Robb.
	A central synthesis image appeared in the primary display, infinitely rich.  "Excellent.  Hold this in memory and let me know when we lose our fringes."  They'd have to, eventually, as the swarm grew near and the individual bugs went their separate ways to collect their individual images.
	In the meantime they had a sharp picture to study.
	Millicent had her own display and was pouring over a zoomed images.  "Oh those fucking bastards!"
	"What?  Where?" Griffin asked.  "Link the primary."
	The image ballooned outward, zooming in on a region near the far edge.  There was a clearing there full of Argonauts.  In the middle of the group were the missing Specialists, their blue jumpsuits clear enough, and one X-bot.
	"That's them," Robb said.
	It was them, all of them.  Dirty, bedraggled, dragging, but alive and whole.  But what was going on?  She recognized Klingston ahead of the others right next to one of the Argonauts, towering over him.  The creature bent over to grab Frenk.
	Scant seconds later, Millicent began to scream.
	"Shut up!" Griffin screamed back, realization about what was happening sinking in.  "We can't do anything about it."
	Thankfully, she did tone it down.  Griffin asked, "Donovan, what's our ETA?"
	"Three minutes if we push it.  The swarm will beat us there by about thirty seconds."
	There was an unspoken question in his second statement.  The swarm units had limited offensive capability that could be employed.  Griffin, however, just didn't see the point.  "We'll come in as planned.  If these Argonauts only have low-tech weaponry, we'll be able to take them quickly.  Bring us in and hover, per plan."
	"All right," Donovan said.
	"Lance, arm your weapon systems, and plan to target Argonauts, non-lethal when possible."
	"Acknowledged."
	"No!" Millicent screamed.
	Griffin saw Klingston's arm raised by the Argonaut, and tried to think of something to say to Millicent to comfort her, but then she realized that the woman might be screaming about something else.
	Klingston was running away.  What was he doing?  He was sprinting as fast as he could, she judged, and it just didn't make sense.  Where did the fool think he was going?
	"Oh my god," Millicent said.
	Griffin watched, dumbfounded, as the aliens around him parted and Klingston went right over the edge.  "No."
	"What's he doing?" Robb asked.  "What in the hell does he think he's doing?"
	Millicent wailed.  "It was too horrible for him!  It was just too horrible!"
	Could she be right?  She would know, if anyone would know, what could go on in a mind after such an event.  But why, oh why, had they just lost Klingston?  They were so close!
	She'd lost Frenk.
	"I'm coming in as planned," Donovan said stiffly.
	He had the right attitude.  This changed nothing.  They still had the others to save, and they had to do it, and do it now.  "Right.  Everyone, prepare yourselves and check your weapons and armor.  We're hitting hot.  We're taking back our people, and no one or no thing had better get in our way."

	

Chapter 30

The Thin Gold Line

	Rusk lived a nightmare.
	There was no other way to describe it.  His life had that never ending quality that some dreams had, a pseudo reality that was impossible to escape, but while within it, the dreamer bought into it in its entirety.
	The lighting was all wrong.  The shape of things was all wrong.  The smells and tastes were all wrong.  The gravity was all wrong.  Moreover, the air itself was all wrong.
	Rusk had gone deep enough that the gas mix had changed substantially.  He could still breathe it all right even though the pressure had to be over ten atmospheres, but he avoided talking now.  There was so much helium that the sound of his voice had changed, the pitch ratcheting up into frequencies he could barely hear.  Everything seemed louder, too, and closer.  He used his PPU sparingly, sure that its exhaust could be heard and traced for kilometers.  The gravity was only a small fraction of Earth's, however, and he could bound around, leaping like a super man, nearly flying.  With the high pressure and low gravity, he thought he probably could fly if he had even rudimentary wings.  These effects all just added to the surreality of his situation, his waking nightmare.
	His mood swung from extreme to extreme.  He would get an ordinate amount of glee from spinning the dials on some sort of manual override, laughing when he heard the alarms echo through the tunnels.  He would cry -- just a couple of times -- when he would snake his arm into a hole to scoop out the sour gruel that he and the hydras fed upon.
	His laughter and his cries sounded the same to his ears: high-pitched squeaks, like a mad tatinka bird.	
	What did these hydras do anyway?  What was their purpose in life?  What was their future?
	He knew he needed to sleep more, knew he needed to eat more.  Hell, he even had to worry about how he pissed and crapped.  He tried to hide it, lest he become too easy to follow.  He urinated into a the food stations once, and giggled about it.
	What was wrong with him?
	Manual Rusk was a highly trained product of the most advanced civilization humans had ever created.  Moreover he was a top Specialist, and under other circumstances would have become a full mission director.
	Here he was, flitting about an alien artifact, living like an animal, committing sophomoric pranks, alternately laughing and crying about them.
	In a more lucid moment, he wondered about the gas mix.  He knew that many gases had narcotic effects at high pressure.  Maybe their initial analysis had been superficial.  Maybe humans couldn't breathe the atmosphere safely at all altitudes.
	Maybe he had gone mad.
	If so, did it matter what he did?  Whether he lived or he died?  Could he, as a madman, even answer those questions with competence?
	Rusk decided he had to operate as if he were sane, and could answer them positively.  And, reaching that conclusion, wondered if it proved him to be sane.  Or not.  How could he tell?
	He tried to sleep more, when he was happy with his hiding places.  He tried to eat regularly, when he could locate food stations.  He tried to create serious mischief that rose above the level of pranks, although he hesitate with starting fires.  While he knew the relative oxygen partial pressure had to be a few tenths of an atmosphere, he also knew that at some depth the hydrogen partial pressure rocketed.  Hydrogen and oxygen would combine, explosively, to make water.
	The lights in this warren did change with a predictable pattern, perhaps a day/night cycle, although the change was more of a wavelength shift than an intensity shift.  The only way that made sense to Rusk was if the hydras originally came from a binary system with stars of two different masses.  The high mass star would be brighter and bluer than the low mass star.  If he were right, then the hydras were a transplanted species here.
	Maybe humans were now, too.
#
	Rusk went on this way, floating through the netherworld, a twilight zone of impossibility, losing track of time, losing track of himself.  Until something triggered him.
	He was in the middle of a descending tunnel, on his PPU at the moment.  Suddenly he felt he was in danger.  He didn't know if he'd heard something, felt something, or what, but he had learned to trust the adaptation of his senses to this strange, old world.
	He'd become a creature of instinct in the preceding days.  If he hadn't have transformed in this way, he wouldn't be alive now.
	Rusk rolled his eyes around, seeing no place to hide.
	Fine then.  If he were going to die sometime soon, then why not now?  All times were equal as far as he could tell -- he'd either succeeded in leading the military hydras away from his team by this stage, or he hadn't.
	Rusk shimmied into a half twist, so that he was facing backwards while the PPU propelled him downward.  He raised his Strike Eagle, and flipped off the safety.  He accelerated down, scanning for the enemy.
	They were there and he fired off six shots at the first glimpse.
	The shots did not make the air explode, and he didn't know enough chemistry to know if he was lucky or not.  He thought their masers might do the same thing, so screw it.  If they were after him, he was firing.
	The tunnel curved, like most of them here, and by keeping his speed high he could keep them from getting a clear line of fire back at him.  But to what end?  How could this end for him?  Presumably they knew where this tunnel led.  He did not.
	His one saving grace was that their coordination seemed poor.  It wasn't like hydra drones below would suddenly drop what they were doing to pick up weapons and peg him as he flew by.  He supposed he wouldn't expect human workers to do so either, but, hell, there was something unnatural about these aliens!
	He would shoot them at will, if they poked their heads up.  He didn't ask for this sort of hostility, after all.
	He had never personally shot at another sentient being, except in simulations, and he steeled himself for the task.  He thought these hydras were just some sort of organic machine, but he knew he didn't know the whole story.
	Rusk fired as he needed to, and neither his weapon nor his head exploded unexpectedly.  That was good, he thought, watching for bulbous white floating things.
	He bumped off the tunnel a few times, rather hard.  His armor compensated for the impact.  How fast was he going?  The PPUs were nominally configured for near atmospheric pressures, and he didn't know quite how their performance specs changes in high pressure, or if they'd even been specified for such extremes.  This was not a natural atmosphere, after all.
	Like some monotonous video game, Rusk shot down the ever steepening tunnel, faster and faster, waiting for his enemies to present a target.  The nightmare had intensified to an intolerable situation, and Rusk feared that it could end in no good way.
	The quality of the light changed, brightening and growing golden.  Rusk ignored it, keeping alert for the hydras trailing him.  The light continued to intensify, starkly illuminating every feature of the curved tunnel zipping by Rusk.  Its surfaces weren't all that reflective, a composite slate gray like most on the Spider Star, so the light welling up had to be overwhelming.  Was it a furnace?  Was he in an incinerator shaft?
	No, there's wasn't much heat associated with the light.
	Then Rusk finally got it.
	He turned just as he pierced the heart of the Spider Star.

Chapter 31

Falling Forever

Frenk fell, and Frenk screamed.
	He couldn't help himself.  He'd made his decision with cold logic, but his animal instincts were more powerful in the moment.
	He tumbled in the cold, loud wind, out of control, falling and screaming.
	After a minute, he gained a little stability, managing a slow spin, facing down.  He remembered something of sky divers and how they held themselves.  The spin slowed a little more.
	The wind ripped by, but seemed quieter than it had been just moments before.  He realized he'd stopped screaming, and with that realization, resumed.
	The remainder of his arm hurt, and he twisted it up against his body and lost control of his fall again, chaotically tumbling.
	Frenk stopped screaming, and regained a measure of control.
	Maybe two minutes had passed.
	He guessed he'd fallen a couple of kilometers.
	Another 2500 hundred to go.
	He continued to fall.  What else was there to do?
	After about five minutes, coherent thoughts began to breach the wall of terror in his mind separating rational thought from conscious thought.  After all, below him was a general golden glow, gentle and diffused by kilometers of atmosphere and clouds.  He appreciated the way his contacts permitted him to keep his eyes open in the gale force winds buffeting him, and he used his vision to try to put his situation in context.  There weren't too many structures visible at his distance, aside from the elevator spoke that steadily receded from him (his rotational velocity was different, although the wind would help minimize that effect).  His speed became difficult to judge in this limbo land.  He figured it had to be some kind of terminal velocity, perhaps a few hundred kilometers per hour, and likely somewhat variable as he fell into higher pressure regions.
	Still, that velocity was slow.  In the evacuated grav tubes the top velocities were measured in kilometers per second rather than kilometers per hour.
	Another five minutes, and he was still falling.
	"Shit, shit, shit," he whispered, trying to remember to breathe.
	Breathing was important.  Crap, he didn't know if it was or not.  He didn't know if he was going to live or not.  But the pressure of the Spider Star's atmosphere increased exponentially toward the center.  At the altitude the Argonauts held sway, the pressure was only about half a bar, but it increased to nearly fifty bars at the altitude of the golden core.  Since the oxygen partial pressure was maintained at a few tenths of a bar at all altitudes, he'd be okay breathing.  The danger was holding his breath -- he needed to keep the pressure outside and in his lungs equalized.
	Wasn't this crazy?  Hadn't he just jumped to his death?
	Under what circumstances was this a sane action?
	He was going to die, and soon.
	Soon was hours.  At 200 kilometers per hour, he'd reach the core in about eleven hours.
	Frenk had had an airplane accident once.  He'd been an advanced student, back on Earth before becoming a deep-space scout, and had a lightning strike.  That was the kind of thing you couldn't do anything about, even if you were a great flyer.  Well, you could avoid flying in poor weather, but at that age he'd thought himself immortal.  It had happened fast.  He only had a handful of seconds between the problem and the anesthetic foam filling the cockpit.  He had only had a handful of seconds to come to the realization that he was in deep shit and likely to be seriously injured, if not die outright.
	Frenk had looked toward his instructor, with the foam streaming out, with no time to articulate anything sensible.  No control at all, no time to establish control.  Out of control.  The thoughts came back easily to him now.  He'd thought to himself, "No, this can't be happening."  But it had been, and it did.  He'd also had time to think, "I'm going to be hurt."
	He hadn't been, and neither had the instructor.  The safety devices operated as designed, protecting them even as the airplane around them shattered.
	This was nothing like that.
	Frenk had thought "No this can't be happening," and "I'm going to be hurt," maybe a hundred times in the first few minutes.
	Could he handle falling for eleven hours?  Besides, maybe he was wrong about that time.  Maybe it would only be ten.  Or maybe it would be thirteen.  Or maybe he would hit some structure before then.  If he didn't, he supposed he had time to figure it out, if he wanted to, even making some numerical approximations in his head.  He'd been good at that sort of thing, once.
	The grav tubes took about 45 minutes for a trip.  He recalled that for an evacuated tube, with minimal friction, the physics were essentially the same as for a simple harmonic oscillator, a pendulum, for instance.  The fact that the timescale was about 45 minutes indicated that the dark matter indeed had a density similar to terrestrial worlds.  It didn't matter if you had a planet like Earth or Argo, or smaller planet like Mars, for a terrestrial density of close to five grams per cubic centimeter you ended up with a transit time of about 45 minutes.  The tube could go straight through the center of the planet, or just connect two surface points a few hundred kilometers away.  The trip would take 45 minutes.  From anywhere to anywhere, as long as you started and ended at the same altitude, was 45 minutes.
	The wind blew, galed, in Frenk's face, relentlessly refuting his thoughts.  It would be a lot longer than 45 minutes to reach his goal.  Air resistance would slow him tremendously.
	He didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
	Did it matter?
	He was falling at hundreds of kilometers per hour into the heart of an alien satellite.  This was not planned, and could not be expected to end well.
	Frenk saw a shape loom before him.  He thought it was close, but it took nearly half a minute to come into focus.  A line stretched before him, below and in front of his trajectory.  He didn't know what it was, but assumed it was another grav tube.
He realized it was not just a grav tube.  One of the gardens swelled along the tube's length below him.
	He felt a warm wind, a thermal upswell.  In a way it was pleasant.  The omnipresent wind had been so cold, so cutting, for so long.  The warm air also carried moistness, and interesting, organic smells.  Absurdly, he considered trying to enjoy the moment as he fell at 200 kilometers and hour into a planet of dark matter.
	Then Frenk realized what it meant to be caught in a thermal.  The source of the heat, the garden, was directly below him.  He was fall into it, hit it, at high velocity.
	He would die in seconds.
	He refused to believe his fate.  He hadn't jumped to smack into something like this.  He had to be able to do something.  Let him be blasted at the core, or fall into the unknown, but to hit an obvious obstacle like this...that was unacceptable.
	Frenk moved his stiff and sore limbs.  He shifted out of the flat, stable, face-down position, and pushed down with his arms and brought his legs together.  His left arm throbbed in protest.  He dove, asymmetrically, in a spin.  It was still a fall, but a faster fall, with a different trajectory.  Different enough to miss the garden anyway, he hoped.
	He lifted his chin away from his chest, looking down, catching sight of the green and maroon mass of the garden looming larger on each spin.  The urge to scream grew in the tightening muscles of his jaw.
	Frenk let it out, a little.  He groaned, a low sound lost in the whipping wind.  He only knew he was making it from the vibrations he felt in his throat.
	Sky -- spin -- garden -- spin -- sky -- spin -- garden -- spin -- sky -- spin -- garden -- spin --garden -- garden!
	Suddenly he was in it, among branches, plunging through great veined leaves that felt like razor blades at his speed.  His thigh brushed a more substantial limb, a bright flare of new pain, and his spin reversed direction, and he was tumbling and flailing again, his fall barely slowed.
	And then he was in the clear again, cold wind burning into new cuts on his face and body, and below him only sky.
	He fought through the new pain in his leg, the old pain in his arm, and the new lesser pains, and tried to once again stabilize his fall.  The adrenaline rush and the spinning had left his feeling sick.
	Something above him squawked loudly.
	Frenk swallowed, twisting, and craning his head around to see what he could.
	Five or six creatures dived after him.  They were splotchy, and light colored, and he imagined they'd be difficult to see gliding through the sky, but they were easy to see against the dark mass of the garden.  They were becoming even easier to see because they were closing on him.
	Frenk didn't have a lot of options.  He could try to dive himself, and perhaps outdistance them, but they look streamlined enough to catch him if they were determined.  He decided to stand his ground, so to speak.
	Another few heartbeats, and the first of the creatures shot past him.  It popped out its wings, slightly, and, from Frenk's perspective, appeared to bounce back up to him.  Two others passed him, and bounced.  Three of the creatures matched his velocity, ringing him.
	He looked from one to the other.  Pteranodons, was his first thought.  Their heads had long beaks and long crests, and from tip to beak was at least two meters.  Their wings enveloped much of their bodied, and extended at least another five or six meters above them.  Their splotchy camouflage broke up a smooth, porpoise-like skin, marred only by a rippling musculature.
	One of the creatures drifted closer, a single plate-like eye on the near side of its head regarding him coolly.  No, they weren't perfect matches for the extinct Earth dinosaurs, despite their similarities.  At this closer distance, the sense of the alien was clearer -- colors he'd never seen in nature on Earth or Argo, a star-shaped iris similarly foreign.
	The creature altitude changed, and the eye rose of sight as it's beak ascended to the level of Frenk's head.  There was a nostril there, about two-thirds down the beak.  The skin around the nostril rose, the way bubbles rose on pizzas he used to make with his kids, and the entire region of the beak elongated until the nostril had become a flared tube -- an intake nozzle.  The end of the quivering tube, several centimeters across, slid toward Frenk's face.
	He considered his options again.  Should he try to hit the creature, or maybe grab this extendable nostril?  If it didn't rip off, could he somehow ride this thing back to a solid surface?  The sharp-looking teeth in the beak, each as large as his finger, didn't seem encouraging for this plan, or his immediate survival.
	As the nostril closed to within scant centimeters of his cheek, Frenk heard a rhythmic sucking sound even over the rush of the wind.  It was sniffing him.
	The nostril suddenly snapped back into the beak, which cracked open as the creature emitted a deafening squawk.
	Frenk heard several loud bangs and the creatures opened their wings into parachutes,  immediately arresting their dives, and found himself again alone in his plummet.
	His blood!  The new cuts he'd gained falling through the leaves...they didn't like the smell of his blood.  Smart move on their part.
	Frenk continued to fall for a few hours.  He didn't have anything better to do.  He talked to himself in bursts.  He knew that the gas mixture and pressure would change as he fell.  He would sound louder as the pressure went up, but against the rippling white noise of the wind he wasn't sure he could tell any difference.  He was pretty sure that when he hit the helium and hydrogen-rich layers he'd be able to tell from the squeakiness of his voice.  So he talked to himself.
	"Some bastard would pay a bundle to do this," he said.
	The view was magnificent, and he sometimes marveled at it, watching thunderheads build hundreds of kilometers away with spectacular lightning shows -- one he got to watch for nearly forty minutes, it was so huge.  There were rainbows, strange rainbows, with a truncated spectrum weak on the bluest colors, but he noticed that there were more blues at lower altitudes than at the higher altitudes.  Atmospheric dust helped redden the core to its golden color -- it would be more of a bright white the deeper he fell.
	He thought of poetry for the sights he saw, but with the pain, his cold, numb lips, usually his verbal updates to himself would come out something like, "Shit, piss, fuck twenty-seven."  That was especially true when he fell into clouds.
	Most of the clouds were water clouds, and it was like falling through a thick fog.  While he was thankful for the moisture, he knew the evaporation would be dangerously chilling falling out the other side.  He'd been cold for hours, and went through shivering episodes.  There was a slight warming trend as he fell, but he believed he was on the edge of hypothermia.  The worst part about being in the cloud was a loss of vision that was somehow much worse than the agoraphobic vistas, and sometimes a cloud passage lasted many minutes.  He imagined unseen things in the fog flying toward him, wondering if were about to die, as he anticipated an unanticipatable collision.
	"I'm sorry, Sally," he said.  She'd had so much faith in him, in his ability to find a solution.  And they'd dragged her off, just like that.  He'd had no power to do anything at all about it.  He briefly wondered if his leap had been a well-disguised suicide, a way of atoning for his guilt.  No, he reaffirmed, he really truly believed there was a chance this would work out.  The only chance he saw.  If he were wrong, well, Rusk, Griffin, and the others might still have a chance on their own and it wouldn't matter if he were alive or dead.  But if this were the only way...well then, who else would be willing to jump?  He surely wouldn't ask anyone else to do it.  Sally, Sally, Sally...he couldn't help but feel guilty.  Intellectually he knew that her mores were not his own, that she had wanted the physical intimacy they had shared, that she had enjoyed it.  Still, he could not help but feel that he had exploited her youth, her naivete, that he'd taken advantage in a way that should be forbidden.  Not only was he much older, he was the one in charge (he felt that way even when they both held the same status as prisoners).  That look, on her face, that last look, had appeared to hold betrayal.  Why shouldn't he feel guilty?  He was guilty!
	Frenk continued to fall, and realized he needed to urinate.  "Damn."
	This would make Ken laugh.  Ken was raised in the country, outside.  Frenk had felt funny about it, but he had encouraged the boy to "take a whiz" (which always made Ken giggle when he said it) whenever he had needed to.  Walk a few paces to the nearest tree or shrub, and take care of it.  Simple.
	Frenk hadn't been raised like Ken.  Frenk had been raised a city boy, and in his century that had meant being indoors 24/7.  Indoors, with computer-controlled recycling systems, pissing in the wrong place had been a fineable offense.  Being poor, Frenk's parents had drilled him ruthlessly.  And now there was nothing but outside -- a whole planet with nothing but outside -- and he had to go.
	Frank recalled something crude he'd once heard Virginia tell Ken:  "Don't piss into the wind."
	Despite the crudeness, it seemed sound advice.  Into the wind was down, away from the wind was up.  Frenk tried to flip onto his back, but just managed to start a runaway series of somersaults.  Escaping the tumble back to stability left his arm and leg aching.  Even if he managed to get stable on his back, there were other problems to consider: opening his tattered jumpsuit and fishing out his equipment.  Worse, he realized that from his back, his own body was likely to block the wind, letting his urine fall faster with less air resistance.  He was likely to make a mess.  He also didn't think there was any way he could manage a sideways position and remain stable as he opened his pants.
	Frenk remember something that gave him some measure of resolution.  As part of his scout training, he'd had intensive lessons on the history of space exploration.  One of the first astronauts, or maybe it had been a cosmonaut, had experienced an extended launch delay.  After laying in his launch vehicle for most of the day, he'd informed the controllers that he had to urinate.  He didn't have a catheter or other collection device -- no one had planned on such a delay.  The engineers called meetings, and discussed it, and discussed it, while their man endured his agony.  Finally, they told him to just go.  He went.  It was okay.
	Frenk went.
	It was cold and uncomfortable, but it was okay.
	He giggled, and the wind caught in his mouth making his cheeks flap.  "I'm so not okay it isn't funny."
	He giggled again, just because he found he could.
	His emotions were all over the place.  He was laughing now, but the truth was that everything hurt so much.  His giggles turned into sobs.  "Ken, Virginia, Allyn," he said.  "What have I done?"
	Every choice he had made had seemed like the one he had to make.  He'd had to act to protect his family when Pollux had Lashed out, hadn't he?  He'd followed the very reasonable recommendations from Rusk and the crew with exploring the Spider Star -- what else could he have done?  He'd have been dangerously paranoid to have greeted the elevator with an armed party, right?  He'd have been suicidal to have tried to overpower the Argonauts, yes?
	Had he been foolish to have read things into the Immortal's statements that perhaps weren't true?
	His conclusions had to be true.  Too many lives depended on his analysis being accurate, starting with his own.  But what were the odds?  Could he calculate them?  Should he have tried to do so before leaping?  He might not have had another good chance.  But maybe he'd ruined his chances, the chances for the whole mission.  Griffin or Rusk could have rescued him, maybe, or there might have been a chance to escape.  Something.  Something other than leaping into an abyss several thousand kilometers deep.
	"What have I done?" Frenk asked.
	His voice sounded strange.
	"Shit, piss, fuck fifty nine."
	He had the voice of a cartoon character.  The atmosphere around him was no longer nitrogen or neon dominated.  He'd moved into the helium, and perhaps the hydrogen levels.  The total pressure was probably tens of atmospheres.
	He'd grown accustomed to it.  As long as he got a few tenths of an atmosphere of partial pressure from oxygen, and the other gasses weren't too physiologically hazardous, the increased pressure wasn't a huge health risk.  He knew that the overall pressure climbed exponentially toward the core, and that the increase would be rapid.  He'd been falling for hours already.  He had no idea how long, exactly.  Perhaps he was nearing the end of the line.
	The exquisite view stretched before him, under his numb body, below the rushing wind.  Cloudscapes, alien structures, and towers of light.
	Towers of light?  The only way to get clear light beams was if the light was not multiply scattered.  That meant Frenk was close.  There wasn't much atmosphere or many clouds between him and the light source at the core of the Spider Star.
	Frenk fell through another cloud, and this time realized that the sensation was cool and refreshing rather than chilling.  The temperature was definitely up.  Before long, water began to collect on his skin and hair.
	He emerged from the cloud in a rain shower.
	Bright, scintillating light, refracted into a million rainbows by the water droplets, grew before him.
	"Lux fiat," Frenk squeaked as his contacts darkened.  "Lux fiat!"
	The light blazed away:  a wall of photons, a wave of heat, a curtain of rainbows.  He was in a zero-gee sauna with a thousand sun lamps before him.  The air pressure, he knew, was high -- close to 50 atmospheres.  The increasing pressure hadn't bothered him too much so far, but now he found it nearly impossible to breathe.  It was like trying to breathe from a geyser.
	This was the end.  He was heading into the light at over a hundred kilometers per hour.  He didn't know if it had a sharp surface, or even what it was really.  The golden core of the Spider Star represented advanced and alien technology.
	Frenk suddenly felt like a bug flying into a windshield, a small creature in a universe of another species' making, subject to powers and forces beyond his ability to comprehend.  He'd known, intellectually, since they set out, that was the situation for them all.  But now he felt it, physically, permeating his body as the luminosity overwhelmed him.
	He continued to fall through steaming rainbows.  He had no sense of the distance, no sense of impending impact.  The light was swallowing him, laying bare the shadows lurking in every corner of his heart.
	"Sally," he squeaked loudly, frustrated that his voice betrayed his intent here in his last moments.  He went on with his list of names, paying homage to those who fed his guilt.  "Virginia," he squeaked-croaked.  "Allyn, Ken."
	All of his actions leading him to this place and time, this fate, had been motivated by other people, people he cared for.  And now he was alone.  He'd even lost his wedding ring.  He was completely, utterly, alone in a way that perhaps no man had ever been alone before.
	In his isolation his fear grew -- not the instinctual, physical fear of falling, which he'd compartmentalized and held at bay -- but a deeply held and powerful fear of failing.  He was afraid he'd failed everyone who had trusted in him.  He was afraid that everything he'd strove for had been a sham, a waste.  Afraid he'd made a mad, desperate choice.  Afraid he was seconds from death.  Afraid he'd failed his loved ones, his family.
	Frenk repeated the names, over and over, as the light and the rain washed over him, rinsing away the blood encrusting his face, soothing -- somehow -- the injuries to his arm and leg.
	Frenk fell into the light, and the light ripped his body apart.

Chapter 32

Heaven and Hell

	Rusk floated snugly in a warm place.  No thoughts.  No cares.  No pain.
	A sense of a warm, golden light filled him.
	He felt like a child.  No -- younger than that, an infant, floating in a womb.  Secure.  Fetal.  A young species.
	Now, why had he thought that?
	He recalled -- no -- he was stumbling after a puppy, and the creature had the temerity to yelp and bite him.  Pain!  The bite hurt.  The universe was not all warm and fuzzy, even the parts that appeared to be so.
	Rusk balled.
	Someone, Mommy, cradled him in her arms, warm supportive, letting him float in security.
	Cake, spankings, present ripping opening...more!  Orbit ball, played in a rotating cylindrical satellite.  Some boring speech, trying to drag his parents away, tugging on their sweaty-slippery hands in the middle of a crowd listening to someone about nothing he understood.
	Bicycles, oh yes, he liked bicycles, even when his foot got caught in the spokes and his father had to wash out the blood.  The red-tinted water swirled down the sink, oblivious to his pain.  Getting back on the bicycle that same day, determined.
	Discovering the TV teacher, exploring everything from bees, to rivers, to government, physics and astrophysics.  More, more, faster, faster.
	Enrolling in the academy, aspiring to the stars.  Knowing he had to know more than everyone else, knowing he had to be the best.  More, more, faster, faster.
	Being a Specialist, waiting on the Corp to send him out.  More training, more work.  More, more, faster, faster.
	Rifling through his head.  Memory activation accessed like computer links -- 
	The trip from Argo, exploring the Spider Star.  More, more, faster, faster.
	Rusk slipping, firing, screaming as the glow shredded his body.
	Rusk screamed out and opened his eyes.
	He panted, mouth dry, eyes wide, disoriented.  He was floating, and he was comfortably warm, also, surrounded by golden, uniform light.  It took long seconds for his mind to process and assemble what his senses were telling him beyond those obvious things.  First, he was naked -- he didn't even have hair, not even eyebrows.  Second, he felt good.  Surprisingly good.  His injuries were gone, healed as if they'd never even existed.
	His life had passed before his eyes, and now he floated peacefully in a place of golden light.  While he personally was not religious, this smacked very much of some people's version of heaven.
	"I have two hands," someone said from behind him.
	He wasn't alone!  Rusk made a garbled sound, but didn't manage anything articulate.  He paddled like mad, trying to spin himself around.  As his did so, another figure came into view.
	It was a man, a human man, naked and hairless like himself, taller and lighter complexioned, maybe twenty-five years old.  A little on the fat side.  He floated, like Rusk, but at a 45 degree angle.
	Rusk's spin carried the other person out of view.  He furiously back paddled, trying to bring himself back around.  He'd trained often enough in zero-gee that this really shouldn't be too difficult, although he admitted he'd rarely permitted himself to get stranded in an open space like this.
	The man reappeared, and Rusk managed to kill his spin so that he wouldn't quickly vanish again.  The man looked familiar.  Then it hit him.  "Klingston?"
	"Yes, Rusk," he said, patting his hands against his chest.  "I think."
	"You're not old," Rusk said.  It was true.  Sometimes bald men looked rather ageless, but Rusk remembered Klingston's appearance quite clearly.  He had skin that had seen too much sun, or at least too much radiation, and had a lot of wrinkles, particularly around his squinty eyes.
	"And you're fat," said Klingston.
	Rusk looked at himself again, rubbed his hands down his sides.  He did indeed sport love handles.  "So I am."  This was most strange.  More alert now, he was also more sure that this wasn't heaven.  "I thought I'd died.  Maybe I did.  Now, trapped with you, I'm starting to wonder if I'm in hell."
	Klingston laughed.  "That's exactly what I was thinking."
	Rusk chuckled, too.  He'd resented Klingston usurping his position as mission director, resented taking orders from the man.  But now, Rusk knew he was in above his head, in a situation beyond his understand, and was truly thrilled to have someone else here with him.  He didn't believe that made him less capable, or less of a leader, just a little more human.  There was an old Spanish saying he knew:  It's good to have friends, even in hell.
	"At least my voice isn't squeaky," Rusk said.
	Klingston nodded.
	It was a bizarre, outrageous situation.  He'd thought he'd died, and here he was, floating fat, happy, and naked in a big golden tub (for all practical purposes), with one of his less favorite people in the universe.
	Rusk blinked, and blinked again.  He tapped his eye, and flinched.  "I don't have my contacts.  You?"
	Frenk closed his eyes and rubbed at this eyelids vigorously for a moment.  "No."  He opened his eyes and said, "I'm coming over."
	Klingston tilted his head down, pursed his lips, and blew.  At the same time he waved his arms and kicked like a swimmer.  Klingston drifted toward Rusk.
	They reached each other and grasped hold without rebounding away from each other.  They clapped each other on the shoulders and grinned like fools.
	"It's good you see you, Klingston."
	"It's good to see you, too."
	Rusk related what had happened to him since they'd separated.  Klingston did the same.  When they had both finished, and had finished questioning each other, a long silence descended on them.  Too many of their fellows had died.
	"I don't think we're dead," said Klingston.  "But I don’t have any good way to explain what's happened.  I'm young, fat, and I have my hand back."
	"I have a possible explanation," Rusk said.  "I don't know if it is a good one, but it's an idea."
	Klingston said, "Go on."
	Rusk wondered a bit at himself.  He was accustomed to just telling Klingston how it had to be, especially when he didn't see any other options.  Rusk said, "The only place we know for sure in the Spider Star with no gravity is the core.  The last thing I remember is falling into the core."
	"Me too," said Klingston.  He wore a strange smile.  "I fell in, too."
	"I suppose you did," Rusk said, remembering the frightening details of Klingston's story.  Rusk believed that he, himself, could have done the same thing under the same circumstances, but was far from sure.  What kind of desperation, or faith, did it take to jump into an abyss a couple of kilometers deep?  He liked to think that he was superior to Klingston in most ways, but he was far from sure he had the balls to do that, desperate or not.
	They smiled at each other some more, like silly goofs.  Klingston said, "So what else do you have to your explanation."
	That caused Rusk's goofy smile to waver.  "We're in the core all right, with no gravity.  The dark matter planet that makes up the Spider Star is pulling at us equally in all directions, leaving us without any net gravity.  But the other things, our fatness, your youth...we've been reborn."
	"Reborn?" Klingston lost his smile.
	"What else?  Our bodies aren't the same."
	"Couldn't we just be fattened up, and shaved, after being drugged and fed intravenously for an extended period?"
	Rusk looked at him, looked into his light blue eyes.  If their situations had been reversed, Rusk would have been thrilled to have shed decades, but this seemed to be bothering Klingston quite a lot.  "You told me you'd felt like your body was ripped apart.  Felt like you'd replayed your whole life."
	"Yes," Klingston admitted.  He had Rusk held each other by their forearms and their heads were only a third of a meter apart.
	"So bear with me.  The light field tore us apart, read our memories, and put us back together from scratch.  That's why we have no hair, and have no injuries."
	They were silent a moment, contemplating this extreme interpretation of events.  The phrase "put us back together from scratch" had just come out, without a lot of premeditation.  If true, what did that mean for them?
	They were dealing with at least ten-million-year-old alien technology.  As far as they could comprehend, there might as well not be any rules, any limits.
	The light altered.  It kept it's bright, golden quality, but altered nonetheless.  Rusk looked over Klingston's shoulder.  "Do you see that?"
	"Yes.  Well, I'm seeing something."
	Rusk was seeing something too.  The opaqueness of the surrounding light had diminished.  There were shapes around them.  He wasn't able to see them very clearly, but that situation improved as he watched, with the contrast improving with every second.
	The shapes resolved into one of two basic types.  One type he classified as 'boxy.'  This included an array of dark, metallic boxes, for want of a better word.  Some weren't boxes, but more complex shapes, but they still shared boxy qualities -- assemblages of smaller boxes, or rectangular shapes.  Size was difficult to judge, but he estimated that the boxy shapes ranged from a few meters across to tens of meters.  They were presumably some sort of machinery.  The other type of shape he saw he classified as 'spider.'  Sure, he'd been thinking of this place as the Spider Star for years, but it struck him as the most appropriate name anyway.
	Yes, spiders.  The things were all legs, long legs, and yes, eight of them. If he'd estimated the machine sizes properly, the spiders had legspans of at least 50 meters.  They attended the machinery.  Sometimes two or three flitted about a single machine.  Some machines had only one, or no, attendants.  Rusk craned his neck around.  In every direction there were machines and spiders.
	As he watched them, Rusk realized that these giant spiders were quite different from Earth spiders of any species.  For instance, the eight legs were arrayed symmetrically, and had a mix of discrete joints and flexible sections.  They seemed well suited to a zero-gee environment.
	"Look up," said Frenk.
	Rusk looked.  Above them, to the extent there was an above, one of the spiders grew larger, approaching them.  It coasted toward them, legs splayed out, leading, slightly, the smaller body.
	Rusk flinched as it neared, but it drew up sharply, stopping abruptly some ten meters from them.  Four of its arms seemed to rest, equidistant, on an invisible surface between them.  The other four were drawn in closer to its spherical black body, pointing toward the two men.  On the ends of those limbs were clusters of digits, appendages, fingers the size of arms, that reminded Rusk of anemones.  On the ends of several of the digits on each arm were dark globules as large as a human head.  Rusk immediately recognized them as eyes.
	The spider was looking straight at them with at least a dozen eyes.
	"Our apologies," came a smooth, mellifluous voice, seemingly straight into their minds with the intensity a laser might shine into their eyes.  "Your language, English, isn't very sensible.  We had to apply some very old systems to understand it.
	"Now then, I imagine that you have some questions.  What do you want to know first?"

Chapter 33

Golden Opportunities

	Frenk didn't know what to say, what to ask for.  This was the first time since their arrival at the Spider Star that someone had apologized, that they'd been asked anything, and here was an opening the size of a planet.  What did he want to know first?
	While Frenk was still trying to formulate his first priority, Rusk spoke.  "Where is my missing team?  Are they still alive?"
	Rusk's heart was in the right place, immediately thinking of the other Specialists, but Frenk thought they needed to worry about their overall mission first, and suspected that they needed more background information to be able to ask the right questions.  Still, he eagerly awaited the answer.
	The spider -- Frenk just couldn't think of it as a 'golden one,' as it was the light that was golden and not the being before them -- did not respond immediately.  It just floated there, quiet, for a long moment.  Frenk didn't think he'd ever have a chance to read what it was thinking, and decided not to try.  He'd take things at face value.
	Finally the spider responded, again with that rich, sonorous voice that came from nowhere and everywhere.  "They are alive.  Where they are would not mean anything to you."
	"Are they captives?  Are they free, and in danger?" Rusk demanded.
	"They are barricaded in an arboretum in a spoke.  More information would not mean anything to you."
	"Tell the damn hydras to stop shooting at them, will you?"
	"It is done, although the command will require approximately forty-three seconds to be relayed to the besieging unit.  Is that acceptable?"
	"Yes, thank you," Rusk said.
	"You're welcome."
	Frenk said, "If you've learned our language from our very minds, then you know why we have come to this place."
	"Yes," said the spider.  "You desire that the devices in the core of the star you call Pollux be rendered inoperative.  We cannot do that."
	The beautiful voice belied the ugly answer.
	"Cannot, or will not?" Rusk asked.
	"Both, and neither," answered the spider.  "First, the devices may only be controlled from a close proximity, and we do not leave this place.  Therefore we cannot.  Second, we made an exchange with the Argonaut species for control of the devices, and it would not be fair for us to give control to another."
	Frenk looked at Rusk, who stared back at him, eyes similarly wide.  What did this creature mean?  Frenk looked back into the spider's gold-reflecting eye, the one on the end of the arm closest to them.  "Fair?  Was it fair for the Argonauts to invite us to dock, and to then attack us?  To kidnap us?  To torture us?  Was it fair for the Argonauts to sabotage an entire star system for millions of years of future habitation?  Is it fair, now, for you to facilitate this state?"
	Rusk picked it up.  "Was it fair for the hydras to capture and dismantle my airship?  Was it fair for them to kill four members of my team?"
	With its smooth voice, sounded neither angry, nor upset, the spider responded.  "Was it fair for your would-be rescuers, Frenk Klingston, to kill 27 Argonauts?  Was it fair for you, Manuel Rusk, to kill 3700 hydras in your sabotage efforts?"
	Frenk looked at Rusk again.  Rusk said, "I didn't know it was so many.  I told you, they were like machines.  They weren't truly living."
	Frenk, thinking about the 27, said, "There was a rescue attempt?"
	"Yes, a couple, actually.  The second one was successful even, just moments after you jumped.  We monitor everything, although we seldom act."
	He'd been right to advise waiting.  Then why had he jumped?  Deep down, he knew.  Part of him still believed they were too late, that a new Lashing had destroyed the colony and killed his family.  Another part realized that while his fellow Specialists being sold as slaves and novelties was bad, he couldn't tolerate the idea of Sally being poked and prodded for some alien's entertainment.  Or worse.  He didn't think the Argonauts would do worse, but there had been that other alien race at the auction.
	Frenk asked, "How many sentient alien races are there on the Spider Star?"
	"At last count, 17, although there is one reclusive species we haven't seen in many years."
	"How many intelligent races are you aware of in the Milky Way?" Rusk followed up, also apparently willing to drop the issue of who killed who, and how many.
	"We are aware of 132 intelligent species in the galaxy, but of those, we estimate that only 87 are still extant."
	Frenk's world whirled.  This was amazing.  He could ask anything, wild things, and get real answers.  He wasn't a scientist or mathematician.  He figured if he knew what the right questions were, he could make history.  Hell, he was making history.  Then he thought of Ken, and remembered what had to remain his top priority.
	"What are you doing here?" Rusk asked.
	That was a good question.  What was the purpose of this place?  Why had they built it?
	"Talking to you."
	"No, in general, in orbit around this pulsar."
	You wouldn't understand," the spider replied.
	"Try us," said Frenk.
	"Very well.  As simply as I can put it, we were created to study the time-evolution and phase changes of a form of dark matter, as you would inadequately call it, that you have not yet discovered.  The timescale post-assembly has implications for the nature of this universe."
	Frenk appreciated the simplification.  He could understand that much, and worried that any additional levels of to detail would indeed be incomprehensible.
	"You were created?" Rusk asked.
	"Of course," said the spider.  "Obviously we're optimized to live in an oxygen rich, free-fall environment.  Such things don’t exist naturally."
	"So who made you?" Frenk asked.
	"Our creators, an ancient race interested in such questions."
	"Are they here?  Can we talk to them?" Frenk asked.
	"No, they're not. We haven't seen them in almost 100 million years."
#
	They continued to talk, the spider seeming to have both near infinite patience and near infinite obtuseness.  Frenk didn't know if that combination was the best possible, or the worst possible.  The silky delivery made the conversation pleasant even for its strangeness, but the same silky delivery made Frenk distrustful, even more so than the circumstances would warrant.
	"Can we go back to our ship?" Rusk asked.
	"Absolutely.  Any time you want.  Do you want to go now?"
	That seemed like a trick question to Frenk -- who knew how and when they would get this chance again without falling a few thousand kilometers -- and thankfully Rusk didn't bite on it.  "No.  Why didn't you answer us when we approached the Spider Star?"
	"You didn't ask any intelligible questions, and at the time we did not know your communications protocols or your languages.  When you asked in the Argonaut language, we assumed you wanted to speak with the Argonauts here.  They answered.  Why should we say anything?  We have our own tasks."
	Hours of this…maddening.  It was everything they wanted here, except what they really needed, and every time they worked back around to that…
	Frenk asked, "How did your creators charge you to treat visitors here?"
	"We are instructed to be fair and friendly, as long as that does not detract from our duties here."
	"Look," said Rusk, "you basically read our minds, right?  You're more advanced than us, right, so why can't you tell us what we want to know that you're allowed to."
	"We're allowed to tell you anything we want.  There are no rules about such things.  How could there be?  It must be very confusing to be your species.  And as for mind reading, as you call it, if you were presented a," the voice paused, "Rosetta stone, enabling you to translate one language to another, that would not permit you to determine every wish and desire of a the speakers of those languages."
	This was crazy, floating naked in a bubble with another man, asking a giant spider for ultimate knowledge, and having it talk circles around you.  Somehow they had to find the intersection of their own needs and 'fair and friendly' as defined by an alien.
	What was 'fair?'  Did that mean they had to treat all other species equally?  Or did it mean they could only provide assistance for some sort of return in kind?  What was 'fair?'  Did that mean simply not killing visitors?  Or did it mean giving them anything they asked for within reason?  Frenk would be happy with less than friendly -- the Roxor had been too friendly for his preference.
	The spider seemed to have as much time as they wanted to take, so they started playing what seemed like a crazy version of 20,000 questions.  'Fair' did indeed seem to imply an equitable transaction, however they defined equitable, and friendly was sort of mind boggling to Frenk.
	"So the second batch of Argonauts traded you their ship, including three grams of the stable isotope of 126, and you provided them with the technique of controlling the planet movers, right?"
	"Right."
	"And to be friendly, as you call it, you gave the Spider Star an atmosphere that they could breathe?"
	"Right."
	They'd given this place an entire atmosphere, and all the engineering that went with it, because some visiting aliens had no choice but to stay there after trading away their ship.
	Rusk asked, "Could we learn how to control the planet movers for the price of our own ship?"
	Frenk's pulse pounded in his ears.  That was a good question!
	The spider responded immediately.  "Do you have any significant quantities of stable isotopes of elements 126, 184, or 484?"
	"No," Rusk answered.  Humans hadn't even discovered them yet, and Frenk knew that it must really annoy Rusk that the Argonauts had had, and used, element 126.  It annoyed Frenk, too, but just learning that there existed stable isotopes of elements 126, 184, and 484, was valuable.  Physicists would be thrilled.
	"Are there other items or knowledge that would earn us the control of the plant movers in Pollux?" Frenk asked.
	"Yes, of course.  We're very fair about such things.  If you offer us something more valuable than what the Argonauts provided, then we can help you."
	This was ludicrous.  They'd destroyed their own civilization warring, and now their leftover doomsday machine threatened a human colony.  What was friendly or fair about letting it, too, be destroyed?  Frenk took a deep breath, and tried to think of the next question they needed to ask.
	He didn't know if it was the result of his rejuvenation, or the fat they'd added to his frame, but he felt like he had the energy and persistence to keep at this as long as necessary.  After the events of the previous few days, it was a great feeling.
	Time to backtrack.  "When was the last time your creators were in contact with you?"
	"Approximately 25 million years ago."
	That was a long time by anyone's measure.  "Have you fulfilled your duties yet?"
	"Oh no.  We're still making measurements.  There's plenty to learn here."
	It seemed like the spider's English was improving, becoming more colloquial anyway.  The voice was still as smooth as melted butter.  He tried to keep it from distracting him.
	Frenk thought there was something here, however, in this line of questioning.  "How often were you accustomed to being in contact with them, say 20 million years ago."
	"About every 27 years."
	"So what happened to your creators?"
	"We don't know."
	There!  That was interesting.  "Don't you want to know?"
	"We would like to know, but we continue to performs our duties as designed."
	Rusk asked, "Why don't you go look for them."
	"We listen," said the spider, "and we watch.  But we are, as we said, designed for this environment.  We cannot endure significant gravity as would surely be required.  Moreover, none of us can leave here."
	"You can't leave?"
	"I suppose that your kind would say 'won't,' but is there really a difference if you have been designed to have that preference?  We are here to perform our task, and that is all, for as long as it takes."
	"Part of that task is to provide your data to your creators, is it not?" Frenk challenged.
	"Most certainly."
	"I have a proposal for you then.  We have a technology, perhaps primitive by your standards, but capable enough: X-bots.  An X-bot is a mobile expert system that can store extensive knowledge bases and behavioral patterns.  You could imprint an X-bot, and we would provide transportation to take it on a search for your creators."
	"And in return?" countered the spider.
	Frenk had thought his desire clear, but had to admit that any direct request had been declined smoothly.
	Rusk spoke up.  "You say it wouldn't be fair to provide the control codes for the planet movers.  What if you instead just provided us a way to disrupt that control, without actually providing us control?"
	Frenk grinned at Rusk.  If that wasn't the right idea already, it was on the right track.
	"We will consider your proposal," the spider said, and kicked away, propelling itself with a jet of air suddenly spouting from the middle of its head.
	"A final question," Frenk said, suddenly aware that a golden opportunity was slipping away.  "What's the ultimate fate of the universe?"
	The spider was dwindling in size, its impossibly long legs pointing back at the men.  The voice came in as clear, and close, and compelling as ever before.  "That," said the spider, "is still being determined."

Chapter 34

A Heart to Heart

	Rusk watched the spider depart, shrinking to a small, unresolved dot, dark against the golden light.  He noticed seven other spiders leave their machines and float off in the same general direction.  Did their proposal merit such a pow-wow?
	Rusk's hand was growing sweaty hanging on to Klingston's shoulder, but he didn't let go.  He turned away from the spiders beyond the bubble's edge and looked into the other man's gray eyes.  "What do you think?  Will they go for it?"
	"They have to," Frenk said.  "What other chance do they have back on Argo?  The apparently random nature of the Lashings, well, that's going to keep them from evacuating, won't it?  But the old Argonaut, the Chief, he said they'd get it, and I have no reason to doubt him."
	"Wish we knew when it's supposed to happen."
	Klingston just nodded his head, in small quick motions, dropping his eyes.
	This was the man that he'd resented so much for usurping his Directorship?  This man, motivated by the love of his family and adopted home?  Rusk looked into the mirror of this man's eyes, and wasn't sure he liked what he saw.
	"Frenk," he began, "I wish I could say that I'd fully supported you since day one, but I -- this is difficult to say -- I wanted to be Director of this mission.  I wanted the recognition.  The triumvirate, they had a space hero in you, and how could I compete against a space hero?  I wanted to be the hero.  I'm afraid I haven't always supported you the way I should have.  The scouting mission, with 20/20 hindsight, that certainly wasn't the best course of action.  I should have stayed to support you, moved slowly.  I didn't know it would be like this.  I didn't know."
	"How could you have known?  How could anyone have known?  And as for the scouting jaunt, I approved it.  It's my fault."
	Rusk had just confessed something selfish, and awful, and Frenk Klingston was taking blame.  Was that fair?
	"You are a hero.  You were the first man to encounter an intelligent alien species.  You brought back the dark drive."
	"I did what had to be done," Klingston said.  Then he told him what he'd had to trade to get it.
	If he'd heard that story second-hand in a bar, he'd have called 'bullshit' on it, but hearing from this old man turned young, literally in the middle of a giant alien space station embedded in the middle of a planet made of dark matter, well, it was hard to doubt the smallest part of it.  After a long, silent moment, Rusk said, "Shit, Frenk.  I had no idea."
	"And that's the way I like it."
	How do you respond to something like that?  Those details should have been in his personnel file.  You think you know someone, understand them, and sometimes you just don’t understand anything.
	"Frenk, listen, if they accept the proposal, you don't have to go," Rusk said.
	"Still bucking for mission Director?" Klingston asked, smiling.
	"No!" Rusk answered, too quickly.  "I mean, I thought you just wanted to save your family, and be with them."
	"That's the idea.  But I'll do it.  If the colony is still savable, if they can help us save the colony, I'll leave again."
	"But your family?"
	"They'll understand.  It would be the first time I'd run out on them."
	"Frenk, that's being unfair to yourself."
	"But true, isn't it?  I mean, Virginia could be dead by the time we get back, or remarried.  In any event, how would she feel about being with a man so much younger?  And my boys, Ken, Allyn, will likely have families of their own, assuming they haven't become Specialists themselves and left Argo."
	How was Rusk supposed to respond?  Was he supposed to tell Klingston that hey, maybe he would get lucky and have the Lashings wipe out their outpost?  On the other extreme, was he supposed to tell him that reuniting with his family would be easy, if possible at all?  The man's wife would be old, and would be likely to have moved on.  That's what Rusk would expect.
	Rusk said nothing more on the subject.  They would have to count themselves blessed to have such problems.  To break the spell, he said, "I have to pee."
	"There's that Specialist education speaking again," Klingston said without derision or mirth.  Then, "Me,  too."
	"What do you think?  Should we just go?"
	The slick, angelic voice entered their heads without warning, nearly making Rusk lose control of his bladder.  He didn't suppose it should startle him -- why did a spider have to be in eyeshot to communicate with them? -- but it did.  "Please feel free to eliminate your wastes without risk to yourselves."
	Klingston said, "I always had trouble with other people watching."
	"I'll close my eyes."
	"Or listening," he said.
	"Tough," said Rusk, and let loose.  They were floating, heads together, holding hands, safely not pointing at each other.  A few moments later, Klingston joined in.
	It was strange, and felt stranger, even though it had to be one of the least strange things they had experienced since coming to the Spider Star.
	The walls of their bubble absorbed the liquid and that was that.  No big deal.
	Rusk realized that they should be talking about the staggering revelations they'd heard from the spider.  Alien races, all over the galaxy, all over the Spider Star.  Races so ancient that their spans had to be measured in megayears, or perhaps it was gigayears.  He wished they'd asked.  He also wished he knew more science questions to ask, fundamental questions.
	He supposed he shouldn't beat himself up too much for asking questions about saving his people and his planet, but, when he considered the big picture, he wondered what opportunities he'd missed.
	Klingston said, "Hey, over there," and gestured with his head.
	Rusk craned his neck around to see.
	Something was moving toward them with purpose, and it wasn't a spider.  "What is it?"
	"I don't know," said Klingston.  "It does look familiar though, hey!  Something's not right here."
	Now Rusk managed to get a better look himself and understood Klingston's consternation.  "It's an X-bot.  Sort of."
	There was something wrong with it as it drifted toward them on its anemic freefall thrusters.  The bot was not symmetrical; it looked melted or something on one side.
	"Drone!" Rusk called out.
	Drone, lost in that initial flight from the dirigible, had also apparently made its way to the core of the Spider Star.  And now to them.
	"Drone," said Klingston thoughtfully.
	The X-bot fired a retro-jet and coasted neatly to a stop in front of their confining bubble.  Its display window showed a single black orb that both emitted and reflected the golden light around them, looking just like one of the eyes the spiders had at the end of their legs.
	"Your proposal is acceptable," said Drone, or whatever Drone had now become.  The voice was no longer perfect and rich, but rather the gender-neutral default.  It was impossible not to realize the intelligence guiding the machine.
	Both the men were silent for three heartbeats, then Frenk erupted.  "Excellent!" he said, smiling like a fool.  "Say, just how many patterns do you have in there?" he asked.
	That didn't seem like the first question to ask this spider wearing an X-bot suit, but the answer proved illuminating to Rusk.
	"Just one," it said, "and some capacity and information had to be sacrificed.  Enough functionality remains to accept the proposal."
	Rusk decided not to consider the immediate implications.  Drone, previously, had been able to store over a dozen human expert patterns and ancillary data/processing capability.  If the spiders wanted to show off, well, he supposed they just had.
	Worse, he imagined they probably weren't showing off.
	"Now then," said the X-bot formerly known as Drone.  "We should work out the details of our arrangement."

Chapter 35

Outliers

	Griffin was in the shower bag on the Dark Heart when the broadcast came.  The space dock shower was superior, but Griffin wouldn't trust it, trust being over there, unarmed let alone naked.
	Sally patched the message through to her.  Stunned, Griffin didn't immediately feel anything, just continued to wash herself.  The words' meaning couldn't reached her entrenched heart, not without additional assaults.
	The voice Rusk's, repeated: "Again, we're coming up to the Dark Heart, me and Klingston, up the elevator.  We'll be there in about eight hours.  Be ready for us."
	She'd seen Klingston jump to his death.  She'd had no word from Rusk since his entire ship had vanished, presumably lost with all hands.
	"They're alive, Sloan," said Sally, speaking after the broadcast.  "They're alive!"
	Griffin kept scrubbing.  Finally she said, "Run a voice match, and a retina scan if they sent video."
	"It's them.  They're alive!"
	Griffin didn't say anything, not right away, but then repeated her order, more quietly, "Run the scans."
	Then she blinked, rapidly, trying to clear her vision.  Her hands were inside the bag and she couldn't use them.  Without gravity, the tears wouldn't fall.
#
	Griffin and half a dozen well armed and armored Specialists were there, waiting, when the elevator opened at the space dock.  She had two levels of back-up Specialists and X-bots serving as relays.  She had gas, grenades, and computer-controlled lasers ready to deploy at the slightest hint of trouble.
	The doors opened and Manuel floated out toward her.  "Griffin!"
	What she wanted to do was launch herself into him and intersect him in an embrace.  Instead she shouted, "Catch the guy wire, mister, and hold position!"
	Thankfully he did exactly as he was told.  He knew her too well not too.
	When she got a good look at everyone inside the car, she knew she'd been wise in her caution.  First, Rusk only had half his team with him, and they were in sorry shape, while Rusk himself seemed kind of pudgy, like he'd spent the entire time he'd been missing eating ice cream.  Worse, Drone was seriously messed up and ran a strange, dark display with glinting highlights that she'd never seen before, but that wasn't so suspicious; the X-bot was clearly damaged, after all.  No, the problem was with Klingston, or the man who appeared to be trying to pass himself off as Klingston.  He was way too young, and, most damningly, had both his arms.
	Griffin had seen his arm cut off.  She'd taken his ring off the arm.
	What kind of bad joke was this?
	"Everyone hold position while I sort through this," she said.  "I need some plausible explanations for what's going on here, and I needed them yesterday."
	Rusk smiled at her and said, "There isn't one.  What can I say?  We're outliers."

Chapter 36

Reversals

	Frenk had returned to the clearing where he had lost his arm, an arm he once again possessed.  The arm was new, but he wore his wedding band once again, thanks to Griffin.  He was still fighting for his family.
	Even as the space plane's VTOL systems whined down, he had popped the hatch and jumped out.
	"Hold up, Frenk!" Griffin called from inside.
	Frenk did hold up, but not because of her request.  Two other things held him.  The first thing was that this really was a beautiful place, with perfect temperatures, clean air, magnificent views, and -- most importantly -- a solid surface.  The unusual lighting gave it the feeling of a late afternoon, with hints of twilight, but still plenty of light to feel alert.  The second thing was the armed war party facing him, led by Orange.
	Frenk considered the group.  Orange had six other Argonauts -- evolved spider monkeys, whatever the hateful things were -- armed with their curved blades.  Frenk had a side arm, and two X-bots and half a dozen armed Specialists in the plane behind him.
	Griffin had told him that the Argonauts had scattered when she had rescued the rest of his group after he'd lost his arm, and after he'd jumped.  Would they scatter again?  Or would they show resolve and want to make up for last time?
	He thought he might be able to tell if he could count how many arms Orange still had.
	Frenk held up his left hand and flipped off Orange.  The brutal creature was fully limbed.  With his right hand, he liberated his .500 magnum Sasquatch Enforcer from its holster and brandished it.  "Give me an excuse," he said.
	He regretted the statement as soon as he'd said it, even though none of the aliens could understand him.  He wasn't a cheap cowboy or a drama queen.  Still, he had to admit he liked the way the phrase rolled around his tongue.  Why not revel a bit?  Here was, on the edge of triumph…but he thought about the interview to come and what it might mean for the fate of his family, and the entire Argo colony, and lost his joyfulness.
	The Argonauts eyed him, balancing on their hind toes, and looked ready to act.  He still sort of hoped they would, the emotional part of him that didn't weight consequences.  It would take a few trophies before things were close to balanced.
	Jason crawled next to him.  "What do you want me to tell them?"
	"Tell them we've come to talk to their big one, and if we can do that, we won't hurt them."
	Jason popped a loudspeaker out of its top and spoke in the appropriate Argonaut language.
	Orange started yelling, louder and louder, waving its six upper arms up, and up, over and over again.  Frenk decided to upgrade the yelling evaluation to ranting and raving.
	Jason translated, but had to slip into 'Wil' mode to avoid internal arguments among the patterns and to keep up with something like real-time.  "She's going on about how last time they weren't ready, but now they are, and who is with her, to reclaim honor -- or glory, maybe -- and take back their…trophies won in battle, as opposed to trophies won by commendation.  She's saying…oh, she's going to attack!"
	Frenk could tell without the translation.  Orange had pulled a second blade from her belt and was hopping up and down, each hop slightly ahead of and higher than the last, each one accompanied by a guttural call.  Frenk eased off his safety.
	The attack was faster than he imagined, and caught him off guard.  Later he would say he didn't know if it was because of the hypnotic jumping, or the fact that attacking him would be suicide, or because he secretly wanted it to happen.  And honestly, he didn't know for sure, but he thought he knew why what happened next happened.
	Millicent, bereft of her arm not yet regenerated, wanting it more than he did, similarly armed only with a sidearm like Frenk himself, dropped Orange with a single shot to her head.
	There was a moment of surreal quiet, and then the Argonauts facing them turned and scattered into the fields.
	"Thanks."  Frenk didn't say anything else aloud, but he had mixed feelings about what had happened.  Seeing Orange laying still in the dirt, really didn't please him in any way, despite how he'd first felt upon exiting the plane.  It was just another waste in this wasteful place that regarded limbs as tools of barter and standing.  He thought, also, that Millicent wouldn't get as much out of the act as she might have thought.  He'd talk with her later, if the opportunity arose, he promised himself.
	"Come on," he said.  "Jason, Gold Eye, let me know if you pick up anything coming back in that seems to be unfriendly."  The X-bots had more senses and more sensitive limits than any human, and likely any pseudo-Argonaut evolved from spider monkeys.  That whole idea still disturbed Frenk on levels he hadn't considered deeply, thinking back to Ken playing with them.
	The large, old hut still stood as he remembered it.  Really, not much time had passed, even though he was, in some sense, an entirely new person.  Did the Chief await them within?
	He had better.
	Frenk walked straight in, unafraid, flanked by the X-bots and backed by a trigger-happy Millicent and five military-trained Specialists.
	The Chief sat there, darkly, in his dark nest, as if he hadn't moved since Frenk had stood before him.  Perhaps he hadn't.  Didn't matter.  This time, the Chief was before Frenk.
	"Shall I shoot off your arm?" Frenk asked, and Jason translated.
	"You are not missing an arm," the Chief answered.
	"True, I am not," said Frenk, waiting for Jason to translate, then continuing.  "We want information that you have.  Will you tell us what we want to know?"
	"Maybe," Jason/Wil said, translating for the Chief.  "More specifically, this particular response implies 'what's in it for me,' or sentiments to that effect.  It's a conditional response."
	Frenk wanted to tell the Chief that he was in no position to bargain, that getting anything at all out of this exchange could be regarded as a significant victory.  But, instead, he managed to ask, "What does he want?"
	The Chief sat there, unmoving as was its predilection, for long minutes.  Frenk waited.  Finally it spoke at length.  Jason translated.  "Part of me longs for an end to this, for death, but I do not want that and do not request that.  I long for change, for excitement, but do not have the energy.  Why is everything the same?  Day to day, more of the same.  I send my agents to contest the other arms, and vice versa, but there is no movement.  I know not what I want.  My default response is to destroy my enemies, but what enemies do I truly have?  I don't know.  Ask your questions, foul beasts.  Mayhap I will respond."
	"Mayhap?" Frenk asked Jason.
	"Sorry -- that's what I have in my vocabulary list."
	Fine then.  That wasn't important.  It was time to ask the question, and ferret out a precise answer.  "When I was here before, you said that the Lashing would strike at the equatorial island continent.  When, exactly, will that occur following the first such event?"
	Frenk waited impatiently while Jason translated.  Everything depended on this old thing's response.
	Jason finished, and the old thing sat there, in its nest, in its web, and said nothing.  Frenk kept cool, patient, and waited for him to decide what it would say.  He failed to make his mind blank, however, and started to consider extreme scenarios.  Was torture justified?  How would an apparently immortal Argonaut respond to torture?  Would Gold Eye, the pattern inhabiting the rebuilt Drone X-bot, tolerate it?  If not, what would it do?
	Frenk waited.
	"How fast is your ship, four-arm?" the Chief asked.
	Frenk made a mental calculation about the creature's intentions, and answered.  "We can reach just over 70 percent light speed."
	"Ehh," said the Chief, a non-committal sound that Jason did not translate.  Frenk could almost hear the cogs turning, the gears whirling.  How would he make his decision to talk?  Given his previous experience, he predicted the creature would talk only if its answer wouldn't be helpful.  It seemed that the Argonauts, at least this race of the species, was just that way.
	It croaked out an answer, slowly, with a rhythmic response.  Jason translated: "We could not easily manage the destructive swarm.  Designed that way?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  We threatened the cursed ones, tried to force them from their lording ways.  Why should everyone be slaves to their effort?  They should be slaves to our effort.  We gave them a choice.  They would be given proof, and escalation, in time.  They would have a deadline to hand over the power, the control.  The sequence, could be shut down, but it was all or nothing.  They would pay!  Pay, I say!  They would have to shut it down!  Them, the slave mongers!"
	This was all ancient history that Frenk preferred not to engage in, just or not.  "How long, precisely?"
	The Chief screamed something, screamed himself hoarse.  Frenk waited for the translation.  "We set it up for 47 years!  It seemed too much, but hell, we thought our enemies to be stupid monsters.  They'd require time to accept our rule.  But in the end, I suppose they didn't."
	Frenk did the calculation in his head.  He didn't need an X-bot.  They were screwed!  His family was dead!  He took a few deep breaths, and reconsidered.  They were dead if they needed him to come back, but there was another way, and his panic subsided, somewhat.
	They'd have no choice but to radio back an evacuation order, which probably would get back in time to save everyone, just.  Maybe.  Everything would have to be checked.  Frenk, suddenly, wasn't sure.  The math was complex, and maybe he was making a mistake.
	"You can't stop it though, no way.  Can you?  Your ship is faster than what we could manage, I grant you that.  Affirmative, I grant you that.  But it isn't fast enough, is it?  Is it?" Jason translated.  And the old, blackened creature began to bark and wheeze, in what Frenk could only consider a laugh.
	Fine, the old thing could laugh.
	It was maddening, this near miss.  Einstein's light speed limit would still permit them to save Argo, but not if it required their physical presence.  That might still be okay.  They could radio back instructions about how to dismantle the planet movers.  Frenk voiced this notion to Golden Eye.  There was a course to salvation that didn't require complete evacuation and abandonment of the colony.
	"From what we can ascertain about your technological accomplishment, no.  You don't have the ability to build the converters you need."
	Converters?  What sort of converters?  Was Golden Eye sure they couldn't manage if they had to?  "Then we're lost, and the deal is off."
	"Why," said the alien-inhabited X-bot.  "We can proceed to Pollux faster, can't we?"
	"We can?" Frenk challenged.
	"Of course," said Golden Eye.

Chapter 37

The Principle of Least Action

	Watching from the Dark Heart's engineering deck, Griffin was in awe.
	The hydras, under direction from the spiders, were building the most powerful particle accelerator she'd ever seen.  The station comprising the accelerating ring exceeded the diameter of Talos.  It wasn't for any scientific purpose, like nearly every other one she had seen, ranging from table-table cyclotrons for instructional purposes to pictures of the lunar supercollider, but this one was solely for them.  It existed solely for the purpose of propelling the Dark Heart to within a heartbeat of light speed over the next 18 years.
	Their own part in the enterprise was much more modest.  They had to build a superconducting ring to transfer the momentum of the particle beam to their ship.  The X-bots, headed by Gerald and Marlo, made sure it happened right.  The tolerances were insane, but possible.  They had enough engineering expertise on their end to manage their responsibilities.  Really, a particle beam craft wasn't so difficult to create, and such a craft held many advantages over the Dark Heart with its intrinsic engines.  The most difficult part was to gather the power and sustain it over the years that a voyage would take.
	They had to trust the spiders would maintain their particle beam for the duration of the trip to Pollux.
	They would return to Pollux at close to light speed, and relativity would shorten their subjective journey to a mere year and a half.  They would shave the necessary few years off their travel time to beat the Lashing that would destroy Colchis and its space bridge.
	This mission would be a success!
	Still, Griffin maintained a cadre of concerns.  The foremost was deceleration.  They weren't really planning for it as far as she could tell, and Klingston wasn't pushing the issue.  They would achieve light-speed, for all practical purposes, or at least so close to light-speed that the trip would only take them a year on the way back.  But how did you shed that speed?  Would they be doomed to spend the rest of their lives slowing back down?  Would a bit of interstellar debris slightly too large to ionize with their lasers smack into them with the force of a planet and destroy them?  Or, and this was how her brain tended to work, was this the direction the spiders wanted them to go, to look for their creators, and were they all being drafted into the search?
	"What are you thinking about, Sloan?" said a voice behind her.  Rusk.
	"The usual.  Threat analysis."  True enough.
	"I should have guess.  Now, come on.  We've won.  No more threats, right?"
	How could he think like that?  There was always a threat.  Safety was never certain.  And, moreover, they hadn't saved Argo yet.  You didn't win until you’d won.  All sorts of things could happen, both natural events like her fearsome debris theory, and betrayal, like the particle beam not being switched off.  How could they afford to spare so much energy?  Was it really so cheap to them?  Still, this was the reason she was such a good partner for Rusk -- she could stay alert after he had ceased.  "Maybe."
	Rusk floated closer to her, and latched on with his arm around her waist.  It felt good.  He said, "Have you given any thought to what happens after."
	See, there it was.  That mindless thinking ahead that made you miss the threat right in front of you!  There was no after until they'd finished their current task.  "Manuel, we've got a long time until then, and some important things to do.  So, no, I haven't."
	"I have," he said.
	Of course he had.  He'd been planning his whole life from the cradle.  That was he strength, and his curse.
	"Frenk and I were the ones who promised to haul Gold Eye around the galaxy.  He shouldn't do it.  He has a family to go back to.  I don't have anything to go back to."
	Griffin wasn't sure how to take that.  She really hadn't given much thought to what happened after.  But some part of her, deep inside, shivered.  She and Rusk were a team, and a good one.  He was off making plans again, and she wasn't sure that was right.  Was their relationship over when they returned?
	"I mean," he stumbled along, apparently in an effort to explain, "I always wanted to be the one in the history lessons, to be immortal and important.  I've followed every rule I could figure out to be center stage.  But you know what?  There are no rules.  Anyone can do anything."
	Was he just figuring this out now?  "That's what I've been trying to tell you for years, Manuel."
	"But I get it now!"
	He irritated her.  Everything was still about him, his revelations.  If there weren't any rules, why weren't they a couple, married even?  They'd only avoided become serious because family complicated mission selection, an unwritten rule that Manuel had followed scrupulously.  They could have done it.  Maybe he didn't feel the same way she did.
	Of course he didn't.  They were very different people.  How could she be so stupid?
	"I've got some things to do," she said, shaking off his arm and leaving the deck.  Thinking, paramount among them.  She had a little over a year until they saved Argo, or didn't.  Little over a year to figure out what to do with her life.  She was sure that Rusk wanted her to go with him, with Gold Eye, on a mission of indeterminate length, one that they'd probably die on, eventually.
	Was that what she wanted?
	It sure didn't seem like the safest option.

Chapter 38

Pollux Passage

	Rusk heard a woman's scream broadcast over the intercom.  The ship's computer said, "Assistance required, lounge two.  Medical emergency."
	He was close, but he tried to be careful and take his time.  The Dark Heart was accelerating under the particle beam at three gees.  You didn't make any fast moves under three gees.
	He was close, but he had to climb a ladder.  Weighing over three times normal and just walking around was bad enough.  Climbing with the extra weight was worse.
	Rusk was breathing hard by the time he reached the next level up.  He took a blow, and wished circumstances would permit him to lay down on the padded floors (every surface in the Dark Heart was now padded).
	He was the first one on the scene.  Sloan Griffin sat, crumpled on the floor before him, a bone protruding through her shin, a nasty compound fracture.  
	Part of his mind analyzed the situation this way.  Her Specialist biochemistry would prevent the wound itself from becoming infected, but she'd need help setting the bone and medical attention.  Three gee acceleration was akin to torture, and no one avoided bruises, or worse.  Given Griffin's ultra-cautious reputation, at least she would set a good example, poster child for being even more careful.
	Another part of his mind did this: Sloan is hurt!
	His consciousness wanted to reject the simplicity and neediness of the second thought process, but it was a true and honest reaction.  Where had it come from?  He and Griffin had always maintained a professional relationship, not letting things go too far.  Why should that have changed now?
	In either case, he responded as he needed to, and rushed to her side to render assistance.
	When he reached her, Griffin screamed, "I need Gina!"
	Right.  Gina Dorissey was the primary doctor on the Dark Heart.  She was a lot more useful than he was.
	"What did you do?" he asked.  The question sounded inane even as it left his lips.
	"I fell down, moron."  She made a noise, a keening shriek, something, indicating great pain, and he sat by her helpless.
	Rusk didn't think he should try to set her fracture, which he knew how to do but deemed unwise, or anything else.  He didn't think there was anything useful he could do except be with her while they awaited more expert assistance.
	Suddenly part of him melted.  This was Sloan, injured, in need.  He was here and would do anything to help her.
	The worst thing was that, even though there were a number of things he knew how to do, with more professional medical help minutes or seconds away, there was no point.  He did the only thing he could think of that might help.  He whispered, "Sloan, I love you."
	She turned to look at him, her face twisted with pain.  "This isn't the fucking time."
	Rusk felt dumb, and could only watch stupidly as Dorissey and two X-bots showed up to take better care of Griffin than he was apparently able to.
	He needed to figure this thing out.
#
	Most of the crew spend the following months in the dens, laying on their backs, and watching movies and other entertainment on ceiling displays.  The days passed slowly, and the literal weight of their burden made optimism difficult to maintain.
	Although they lay side by side together often especially during her recovery, usually watching thrillers of one sort or another, Rusk didn't know what he should do about Griffin.  He thought -- hoped, anyway -- that they had a solution to cure Pollux of the infestation at its core.
	This situation inside his own heart was less clear, and the it was so dark inside Griffin that he thought he needed night vision goggles.
	"She is so stupid," Griffin said one night, while they watched a remake of Casablanca.  "She should just appropriate one of those machine guns and mow down all the stupid people, starting with the Jihadists, and not finishing until she's alone on the entire continent."
	"That's not the point," he said.
	"Why not?  Why can't she be more proactive?  Do you think the fundamentalist regime engaging in that World War was sane?"
	"No, of course not," he said, but uncertain about how to proceed.  His answer seemed safe.  He used to have no uncertainties talking with her, but now, lately, everything seemed to be a minefield.  He decided to just watch the end of the movie in silence.
	It ended too quickly.
	He started a search for something else to watch, but Griffin started talking.
	"Why did you kill all those hydras?" she asked.
	"What?" he said, tapping through some menus to find something else to watch.
	"What 'what?' -- you did kill thousands, didn't you?  How do you feel about that?"
	He tried not to, mostly.  But Griffin was his oldest, best friend, maybe more, and he owed her more of an honest answer than even he owed himself.  "Honestly, I feel fine about it.  They threatened my people, and were not trying to find a solution to our conflict that didn't end up with me dead.  As far as I could tell -- and I've heard nothing to disabuse me of this notion -- the spiders just use the hydras as machines, lobotomizing them, or whatever, from birth.  The poor critters never got a fair shake, and it was tough for them that I didn't give them one either."
	Griffin was quiet a long time while he continued to search for something else to watch.  He was torn between looking for something good and something mindless, which didn't have a great overlap, but he feared starting a new movie that would just get him into more trouble.
	"Okay," she said.
	"Okay?"
	"Okay."
	And they watched another movie.  It wasn't like sex was much fun when you weighed three times normal.  No one wanted to be on the top or bottom.
#
	Pollux loomed before them, although loomed was far from the right word.  Given that their velocity was nearly light-speed, relativity changed everything.
	Doppler-boosting made Pollux into a point of hellishly intensive gamma rays before them, and relativity ensured that the rest of the universe was dark, invisible.  And while the trip to the Spider Star had taken nearly two decades, the trip back was only a year and a half.
	Rusk had never been completely clear on what was supposed to happen when they reached Pollux.  They had set up all sorts of contraptions around the ship that made no sense, in addition to the superconducting ring that let them ride the particle beam.  Gold Eye always managed to weasel out of complete explanations, and Klingston kept letting it.
	This frustrated Rusk.  This deal that they had struck with the spiders, he thought they should push it for everything it was worth.  Having one of them here, even in X-bot form, was a golden opportunity to learn more.  Every statement the thing made potentially had the chance to advance entire new areas of science and technology.
	Ignoring Klingston, Rusk took every moment he wasn't with Griffin to pump the spider pattern.  While it didn't seem to dismiss his questions, it did seem to manage to avoid providing him as much information as he would have liked.  A typical exchange:
	"Those stable heavy elements that you mentioned," Rusk would fish.  "Of what practical use are they?"
	The X-bot would reply, "Many."
	"For instance?"
	"None that you can yet exploit."
	"Give me an example."
	Gold eye said nothing for a long time, then said, "Your science and language cannot yet express the interest properties.  The simplest exploitation you would understand is in ballistic weaponry, akin to the ways your species has previously employed depleted uranium."
	"A more complex example that I can still understand?"
	"Simple applications include high-temperature super-conductors, smart materials, quantum computation, but in no way you would yet have technical understanding."
	Rusk got a lot of that sort of thing from Gold Eye, even concerning matters closer at hand.  For instance:
	Rusk asked one day, "How will we disrupt the planet movers?"
	"With direct action."
	That was not clear despite its simplicity.  "How, exactly?"
	"With an energy transfer."
	"But they're in the heart of the damn sun!"
	"Yes."
	"They're already in the middle of a massive energy sink!  They're in a star."
	"Only in this universe."
	"So what are we going to do, hitch hike to the next universe over?"
	"Yes."
	"How do we do that?"
	"No way that you would understand."
	He repeated the conversations to Griffin, in between movies.  While she didn't spend much time talking with the X-bot, she seemed very curious, and very disturbed, but wouldn't articulate her concerns.  That was fine by Rusk.  She worried too much.

Chapter 39

The Heart of a Star

	Frenk had to admit that he had second thoughts, but he was the man who had jumped willingly into the abyss.  How could he back down now?
	But this was that jump again, a million times worse.
	He sat in central control with Sloan, Manuel, Sally, Mitch Donovan, and Gold Eye.  Before them in the central display was Pollux, or as he preferred to think of it now, the gamma level of hell.  Since they were flying toward Pollux at nearly the speed of light, even this relatively cool star's photons were blueshifted into high energies, into the hard X-rays and slightly beyond, into the gamma-ray regime.
	It was going to get hot, and soon.  Their lasers and magnetic fields kept them safe from particles in front of them, even as the particle stream carried them forward, but electromagnetic waves obeyed the principles of superposition.  Photons passed right through magnetic fields.
	"We should have particle-stream cessation in 60 seconds," Donovan announced.
	This was one of the many moments of truth that would come now, furiously, at the end of their journey home.  They had trusted the spiders to provide them with thrust, and to cease the effort at exactly the right moment.
	They waited.
	Rusk asked, "Gold Eye, what is the probability that the beam won't go off on schedule?"
	"I don't understand," the X-bot responded.
	That answer was not as reassuring as it might have been.
	The Dark Heart creaked, groaned, and the oppressive gravity they had live with for over a year was gone.  Frenk could hear distant cheering drifting up from the lounges and dens.
	"Mark," Donovan said.  "The beam is off.  Right on schedule."
	Okay, Frenk felt a sort of reassurance flooding back into him.  The spiders were bang on, and millions of years more advanced.  Who was he to doubt them at this point?  He'd had more faith when he leaped.
	Was it the fact that they were close to home, close to success, and to his own final fate, that made him doubt?  He ignored the disastrous thought.  Now was not the time.
	Gold Eye said, "The devices activate."
	The X-bot meant the spider devices that had been added onboard, meticulously aligned, and scrupulously calibrated.  They had been explained to some of the more technical Specialists, and they had told Frenk that they didn't understand what they would do.
	Something…happened.
	Frenk's stomach turned, and sweat broke out all over his body, but without discernable cause.  "What's going on?"
	He felt stupid for asking, but he was nominally in charge, if that still meant anything, and it was his duty to ask the stupid questions.  In this case the question was stupid because they knew what had happened, but it was a completely novel experience.
	Sally said, "Look at the sun!"
	Frenk looked, and looked again.
	It wasn't there.
	Rusk said, "Brilliant!"
	Donovan said, "I was going to count down our relative impact time to Pollux, but that doesn't make a lot of sense now, does it?"
	Frenk looked at where Pollux had been, where the 'gamma-level of hell' had been.  Nothing.  Gone.  Vanished.
	Not quite.  There was something still there before them, in the display.
	The swarm.
	Thousands and thousands of points of faint light moved, hypnotically, zipping back and forth
	Somehow, here he was, seeing it, without the assistance of gravitational telescopes.
	"We're dark matter!" Rusk crowed.
	Yes, that was it, and that was a simple way to state it.  That was what Gold Eye had been telling them.  The spider pattern was probably being direct, as direct as it knew how anyway, but it hadn't ever put the transformation into the simplest terms.  The planet movers, they were dark matter capable of carrying a normal charge.
	The spider devices had converted the Dark Heart and its crew into the same kind of matter that constituted the swarm of planet movers inhabiting the core of Pollux.  They weren't in the same universe.  Christ, that stuff that Donovan and Rusk had been telling him was all true.
	The swarm grew as they rapidly approached.  Frenk wanted to think that they were still approaching at light-speed, but he didn't know if light-speed was the same here or not.  His mission, his entire existence, was in the hands of a X-bot hosting an alien pattern, and he didn't trust aliens.
	But he had forced himself to do so now, and he was committed.  The point of trust was a willingness to accept the consequences of decisions when you put your faith in others.  He was a trusting fool, once again.  He hoped the returns would be greater, and the costs less, than the deal he'd made with the Roxor, because it was all beyond his powers.  Any positive action he took now would likely be destructive and stupid.
	Frenk sat there, and watched.  He was made of dark matter, and he was seeing dark matter, at least one of its forms.  He was a ghost, of sorts, except, everyone was a ghost, the ship was a ghost, and the universe was a ghost.
	"Mark," said Donovan.  "Activating secondary fields."
	This was the part that directly exerted the force on the swarm.  They would witness, soon enough, the fruits of their efforts.  As Frenk understood it, the force exerted was exactly analogous to electromagnetism, still the strongest, easily manipulated force even in different universes.
	The Dark Heart shuddered, skipped a beat.  There were real forces in play here, powerful forces, and Frenk was hitched to them.
	The swarm shimmered, the motions of the individual points warping from their dance.  Even as Frenk tried to grasp what he was seeing, the motions changed.  A new pattern emerged, the ballistic launch and fall transforming into a spray.
	A gentle hand pushed him back into his crash seat, a strange, unwelcome weight after the minutes of blessed freefall.  They were pushing on the planet movers, and the planet movers were pushing back.  Newton, in action, again.  Equal and opposite, nothing more basic in all of creation, even in other universes.
	If he got the chance, and had to worship someone or something, he thought Newton would be it.
	The planet movers continued in their spray, accelerating away, dispersing.  They flew into the infinite darkness of this dark universe.
	Gold Eye said, "Reintegrating."
	Frenk thought he would vomit.  His world, the control center of the Dark Heart, spun wildly.  The feeling was similar to what had occurred before, but not identical.  It was worse, causing more nausea.  Frenk wanted to hurl.
	Another part of his mind wondered what, exactly, was going on.  Were they reappearing in their original universe.  If so, was it within Pollux, which would kill them all immediately?  Was someone worrying about this?  Even though he trusted Gold Eye, how far could the X-bot be trusted?
	Frenk didn't die.
	He imagined that meant that they weren't manifesting back inside Pollux.
	"We have stars," Donovan said.
	The implications there were enormous.  They were back in their own universe and no longer moving relativistically.
	"How did that happen?" Griffin asked.  "All of it, since we left.  How did it all happen?"
	"It happened," said Rusk, "Because as a species we don't sit on our asses and we look after our own."
	Frenk thought of his family, and said, "Amen."

Chapter 40

Broken Hearts

	The Dark Heart limped home, at such a slow velocity that Griffin couldn't help but think of some wind-dependent sailing vessel becalmed upon an uncaring sea.  They used Pollux to give them a gravitational boost, blew through their nuclear fuel, and picked up a respectable speed.  It still took days to reach Argo.
	There was a reception -- a party -- for the Specialists at the space dock, of course.  Colchis, the elevator and orbital stations, all were intact, although there were visible scars on Argo and its moons that were clear reminders of the recent Lashings.
	Surprisingly, Claude Martin was still in charge, in space anyway, and looked better than ever despite the forty years that had passed for him.  "Earth has made big progress on several medical fronts," he explained.  "I might be running things forever, unless you want to make a play for my job, young Manuel."
	Griffin stood with him and Rusk in one corner of the party, sipping champagne out of extremely long low-gravity flutes.
	"No," said Rusk.  "I won't make a play for your job.  And I won't be staying, either, not longer than necessary to resupply and refit the Dark Heart."
	"What?" Martin blurted, almost sounding like he'd gotten some champagne up his nose.  "And just where do you think you're going with the Dark Heart?"
	"The Hercules Cluster," said Rusk.  "That's the first place anyhow.  And I'll need to recruit a new crew as well."  He turned to look at Griffin before continuing.  "As you know, we lost people, and not everyone wants to go back."
	"I do though," she said, quickly, startling herself.  She'd been putting off a final decision for months, and Rusk had respected her silence and avoided hounding her, but she'd been leaning this way for some time and the flight through Pollux had crystallized her intentions.  "You see, there are dozens of intelligent alien species in this part of the galaxy with technology much more advanced than our own, and I'm by no means certain that they'll be friendly.  In order to safeguard all of humankind, we must learn as much as we can, as fast as we can, and make allies."
	"Yes, yes," said Martin.  "We have to explore, yes.  But I simply cannot allow you two to make this decision yourself.  We didn't expect the Dark Heart back so soon, and we've been preoccupied with the Lashings, but this isn't how decisions about Specialist missions are made.  I make them, with a committee."
	"Not this time, Claude," Rusk said, steely, not deferential in the least.  "You see, I've already made a promise, and I have to keep it."
	"Promise?  What promise?"  Martin's face flushed.
	"Ah, there," Griffin said.  "You need to talk it over with this X-bot here."
	"An X-bot?"  Martin seemed befuddled at the challenge to his authority.  He'd been in charge for decades now, and was being told how things were, and by an X-bot of all things!
	Gold Eye crawled over.  "The arrangements are made?"
	"Nearly," said Rusk.  "But this official here needs to understand that he cannot impede our mission.  Will you explain it to him?"
	"Of course," said Gold Eye.  "This is something I can clearly explain to one of your species.  It is very simple."
	Griffin didn't like the overtones of that message, but she imagined Martin would like them even less.
	"Come on," Rusk said, smiling.  "Let's join the rest of the party."
	They strolled off to leave Martin and Gold Eye, neither having any doubt about how that conversation would end.  Spiders were very smart, and very forceful.  They kept their deals, as they saw them anyway, and expected others to do the same.
	"There's Klingston," she said, spotting him talking to Sally.
	"Let's let him alone," Rusk said.  "Sally already told me she wants to come with us.  She knows Frenk won't.  I'd just as soon not intrude on them now."
	She should have realized that as well.  They'd been sort of a couple, at least by Specialist standards, on the flight home.  "Well, then, let's try to recruit the best and brightest from this bunch and put together our new crew, Director."
	He reached over and squeezed her shoulder at the title.  She knew it wasn't what he cared about now, not so much anyway, but he had for most of his life wanted it and he seemed happy to hear her say it.  "We'll need a pitch."
	Griffin agreed, and had been thinking about it.  "How about this:  'Men and women wanted for hazardous journey.  No wages, bitter cold and sweltering heat, long hours of bright darkness.  Safety doubtful.  Wonder certain.  More of the same in event of success.'"
	"I like it," said Rusk.

	
Chapter 41

Home is Where the Heart Is

Frenk stepped out of the car onto the green grass of Argo for the first time in decades.  Getting out from under the tinted windshield made him blink and squint into the warm afternoon light.  He missed his contacts, and should have gotten a replacement set already.
A breeze brought the smell of flowers, and manure, in nearly equal parts.  The Klingston estate still appeared to be working experimental farm.
He loved the smell.
Overhead Pollux glowered, blazing, too bright to look at without his contacts, but again a life giver rather than a life taker.  Externally all was right with the world.
"It isn't quite the same as you remember," his driver said.
Frenk finished his deep breathing and looked at the driver he'd been assigned, a young woman with long dark hair no more than 20.  "I didn't think it would be.  But it's actually not that different."
"If you say so," she said, wearing a small smile.  "We can go inside anytime you want to."
So, she was going inside, too?  She looked and sounded familiar, and he'd been thinking about who she might be throughout the flight to the farm.  He'd thought something might be up when she'd been coy about her name, and in a light yellow sundress and sandals she sure didn't look like an official driver. They'd flown slowly, with the top down, and he'd soaked up Argo and they hadn't talked much.  She hadn't tried to volunteer anything, although she he did catch her watching him more than once, and he thought that his family might be pulling a surprise, that she might be his grand daughter.  She resembled Virginia.
He hoped so, very much.
The house looked much the same as he remembered it.  Sure, it needed painting, and there had been an addition, but it was still essentially familiar.  Frenk liked that.
A troop of spider monkeys milled around near the addition.  Frenk tensed up and glowered at them, scanning his surroundings for something to throw.  When he'd lived on Argo before, he'd never minded them, but after what he'd gone through on the Spider Star he'd just as soon smash them all with a heavy stick.  He knew that once, long ago, he'd have found such a notion repugnant, but no more.  He looked around for a heavy stick.
"They won't bother us," his driver said.
He let his breath out.  "No, I don't suppose they will."
He stood still, regarding the house.  "I guess it's time to go in."
"Yes," she said.
He'd been away from home for years by any measure, but here he was, younger than when he left, and subjectively gone for less time than had passed on Argo.  He fancied himself a time thief, and that designation made him feel guilty about showing up at home.
Since the promise that he was expected at the farm, Frenk had resisted the impulse to make automated queries to discover what had happened to his family.  He was expected.  That had been enough.
	Frenk took a few steps toward the house, surreality descending upon him.  Not only was he standing, and walking, on a planetary surface again, he was at his own estate.  His family's estate, he corrected himself.  Ken and Allyn would be gone by now, but perhaps had made a trip back with their own families.  Virginia, he hoped, was still here.  He expected her to be remarried, that this welcome would be a show of sorts.  That was fine.  He'd left a long time ago, and he possessed no preconceptions about his homecoming.  It was enough to know he'd protected his family and that they were safe.
	What happened to him now didn't really matter.  He'd done what he'd set out to do.
	Frenk spied faces in the windows.  Small faces, low.  Children?  Not Ken or Allyn -- they'd be grown by now, and then some.  Maybe they'd had kids and had come back when they'd heard he'd returned?
	"Go on, Frenk," the driver said.
	She was a little more familiar than he was comfortable with, but she did seem sweet and attractive, and he let it slide.  He had more important things to worry about.
	He made his feet move some more.  He found himself walking across the law and onto the porch.  Only the screen door was closed, and he noticed a crowd of people milling about beyond.  So they'd made a party of his return?  Fine.  That was fair enough.
	There had been a party waiting for Ulysses, too, when he'd returned, eventually from the Trojan War.  He'd had to kill most of that crew, but what could one expect after being away for decades, really?
	Frenk's heart raced.  Funny, that.  It was likely a hundred times faster than during most of his voyage.
	The driver stood there with him, which seemed strange, but he was comforted by her.  They hadn't talked much during the short flight, but she was surely more familiar than most of the people in the house would be.
	"I'm not the same as when I left," Frenk said.  "And besides, that was a long time ago."
	She said, "The people in the house aren't the same as when you left, either.  They know what you've done, and why you did it.  This is your home.  It'll be fine, mark my words.  You're still much loved here, even if you were too headstrong."
	Frenk rubbed his sweaty palms on his pants, glanced at her briefly.  She sounded too balanced and wise for her years, too knowing.  But might not someone say the same thing about him, now in his youthful facade?
	Together they stepped up on the porch, his boots plinking the wood, through the door with the squeaky hinge, and into the house.  The inside was quite dark after the sunny afternoon, and Frenk blinked, trying to get his bearings.  He told himself again the he needed to get a new set of contacts.
	"Everyone's waiting in the family room," the girl said.
	"I know the way," Frenk said, not moving.  He heard people down the hall.  A cacophony of voices suggested a crowd of people.  He was afraid Martin had planned something, some ceremony, here in his house.  This was nerve-wracking enough without having to entertain such silliness.  The fact that his family, his home, still safely existed was the greatest reward he could imagine.
	He moved forward, the prospect of a fight helping to settle his nerves regarding the uncertainty with his family.  Tinted sky lights filled the family room with a glow that struck him as especially inviting as he emerged from the hallway.
	People packed the room to nearly overflowing.  Frenk scanned them, just counting, not really seeing at first.  He counted five women, four men, and at least eight children.  All of the smiling adults looked to be no older than forty, most younger than that, so where were Ken, Allyn, and Virginia?  Had Allyn become a stud, impregnating right an left on a mad spree after Frenk had departed?  Actually, that idea kind of made him smile, which really was the appropriate response to this warm reception, whoever these people were, however they were related to him.
	"Is that him?" one of the boys asked.  "Cool."
	 Frenk looked hard at the boy, at all of them, and saw facets of himself in many of their faces.  Could all these people really be related to him?  "I know it must be strange, me being this young, us not knowing each other.  It's strange for me, too.  But can someone tell me what happened to Virginia and the kids?"
	Frenk hoped they were alive and happy someplace, perhaps wisely moving on to a safer colony not beset by an angry sun.  He hoped they weren't dead.
	"Frenk," said his driver.  "You were told that there had been changes while you’d been away, right?"
	"Right."  Of course there had been changes, and he didn't need anyone to tell him that.  He'd been away for a long time, for the second time in his life.  And he himself had probably changed more than anything.
	She nodded, then put one hand on his shoulder and pointed with the other as she began to introduce the people in the room.  "The couple on the loveseat are Janet and Ismail.  Janet is Ken's oldest.  Their baby is Jessica.  Then over there you have Keith and Svetlana -- Keith is Allyn's eldest.  Their kids are Brian and Igor."
	Igor was one the one who had spoken before.  "Yeah!" he shouted, thrusting his fist into the air and striking a pose.  "Igor!"
	Frenk smiled at him again.
	She went on, "Then you have Ken and his wife Eliza there--"
	"Ken?" Frenk asked.
	"Hey Da!" The man she'd called Ken grinned and raised his hand to wave hello.  He didn't look quite forty.  Maybe he just looked young.
	Frenk held his place and resisted the urge to go hug him.  Yes, it did look like Ken.  Ken had been six when he'd left, and while he seemed happy, for all Frenk knew at this point he harbored deep-seated resentment.  But, oh!, he did look happy.
	"Now then, over there are Allyn, and his two wives Faruka and Babette.  Their kids are Jonathan, Eric, David, Carla, Henry, and Atlanta."
	Frenk looked at Allyn, trying not to be impressed that he could manage two wives when one always seemed like plenty, and tried to estimate his age.  He just didn't appear old enough.  "What gives, Allyn?  You don’t look much older than I do, now, and you should.  And you shouldn't have two such fine-looking wives, either, should you?"
	Allyn shrugged, smiling.  "Things change.  Don't forget, we're not just a small colony here on Argo, but we also have Earth sending us technology.  Aging is a disease, and we've all but beaten it."
	As Frenk considered that, his driver turned to face him.  "And really, cosmetic make-overs aren’t that difficult either."
	He squinted at her, leaning close, considering her in a new light.  Was it possible?  "Virginia?"
	"You always were a little slow."
	His hand slipped into his pocket, to feel his wedding ring, that he hadn't dared to actually wear on this return.  Lord, was it really her?  It had been a long time since he'd seen her, but cosmetic alterations or not, could he really have not recognized her?  And what sort of relationship were they to have now?  He was young, she was young, but what if she had someone else?  What if she didn't want him anymore?  Did he want her anymore?  He'd been with Sally, after all.  How could a couple just pick up after what they'd been through, even if there was no one else in the equation?  But she'd called him husband.  That had to mean what he thought it meant, didn't it?
	"Slow, slow, slow," she said, wrapping her arms around his waist and pulling him to her, and kissing him.
	He fought it a moment, then kissed back.  He still had a family!  He had grandchildren!
	Virginia pulled back.  "You're crying, kiddo."
	So he was.  Nothing wrong with that, was there?
	When he thought no one was paying attention -- the briefest of moments -- he slipped his wedding ring back on.
	Ken stood up.  "Come sit down, Da.  We want to hear all about it."
	"Yeah," said Igor.  "Tell us about the aliens."
	Frenk let Virginia lead him forward to sit in the middle of the sofa, the spot Ken had vacated.  Ken went and pulled another chair out of the kitchen and sat down.
	Frenk sat, with Allyn on one side, Virginia squeezing in on the other, and several of his great grand children at his feat.  "I'm overwhelmed."
	Allyn said, "We're overwhelmed.  We're safe, and you're back home."
	It was all Frenk could do for the moment not to break into tears and start bawling.  In the darkest moments he had not imagined such a moment.  He sat quietly, breathing deeply, inhaling the light of his family.  "Where do I even start?"
	Igor said, "The Spider Star is no star!"
	The Argonaut fairy tale?  Yes, he remembered it, how most of it went even.  He could indeed start there.  He would share with them the true story of the Spider Star, because they deserved it, because they'd been there with him in his heart, because they were his family.  He began.  "'The Spider Star is no star, and the Spider Star is no planet, but it is a place anyway, and its golden heart is the source of all good and evil.  But mostly evil.'"
	Frenk sat quietly, tears streaming down his cheeks.  "That was how the ancient Argonauts saw it, but that wasn't how I saw it.  Let me tell you how I saw the place, and what happened there."
	He began to speak in a simple, compelling voice, and his family listened.

The End