The World At The End Of Time Part 11

"We're doing that part of the job," Lundy pointed out. "Then, when it's done, we'll still have drive fuel in Ark. Ark. We can't transfer that! Once it's in the drive itself it's too dangerous. So when we've finished what we came for-then we can take a vote." We can't transfer that! Once it's in the drive itself it's too dangerous. So when we've finished what we came for-then we can take a vote."

"On what? On taking Ark Ark to Nebo?" to Nebo?"

Lundy shrugged.

"And you've been planning this for-how long?" Viktor demanded.

"Since Reesa first suggested it," Lundy said simply. Reesa! Viktor stared at him with his mouth open. Lundy went on: "Now, the question is, are you going to keep your mouth shut about it until we've finished the fuel transfer?"

"I don't know," Viktor said wretchedly.

But, in the event, he did keep his mouth shut. He didn't say a word. He ate the food they had brought back-the fish turned out to be almost too bony to eat, but the turtle eggs, roasted, were delicious-and all the time he was watching his wife and wondering what other surprises were hidden inside that familiar head.

CHAPTER 11.

The fifth of Wan-To's doppels did not have a real name. It wasn't important enough. When Wan-To addressed it at all it was simply as Matter Copy Number Five. Still, Five was fairly important to the remnants of the human race on Newmanhome, because it happened to be the one that had set up shop on the scorched little planet the people of Newmanhome called Nebo.

Although Five was certainly very tiny, primitive and stupid by Wan-To's standards, it was quite capable of doing everything Wan-To ordered it to do. It was even capable of figuring out how to do things Wan-To himself had never gone to the trouble of figuring out before.

There's a human story that describes that situation pretty well. Problem: A human army lieutenant has the task of erecting a thirty-foot flagpole when he only has a twenty-foot length of rope and no hoisting machines. How does he do it? Answer: He calls over his highest-ranking noncom and says, "Sergeant, put up that flagpole."

So when Five received its orders it exercised its built-in ingenuity to carry them out.

It had to start pretty much from scratch. It had no experience of this bizarre kind of environment (it had no experience at all, of course, except what Wan-To had implanted in its memories). It was not deterred by the odd qualities of this "planet" (solid matter! And an "atmosphere"! Five understood the concept of a gas well enough, but these particular gases were so incredibly cold-hardly more than eight or nine hundred Kelvin). Then, the task of manipulating matter all by itself was not really easy. There were so many kinds kinds of matter. There were all those things called "elements" and all their molecular combinations and isotopic variations and interacting relationships. It was definitely a nasty job. But someone had to do it-Wan-To had so decreed. of matter. There were all those things called "elements" and all their molecular combinations and isotopic variations and interacting relationships. It was definitely a nasty job. But someone had to do it-Wan-To had so decreed.

The first thing Five had to do, starting with its control of magnetic and electrostatic forces, and its limited (but adequate) supply of gravitational particles, was simple excavation. It had to wrench out large quant.i.ties of matter-ill a.s.sorted, full of things Five didn't want at all-from the surface of the planet (and from some sources pretty far below the surface) for separation into the basic building blocks it needed; call them ores. To separate the various kinds of useful things out of the ores, it invented what humans might have called a sort of ma.s.s spectrometer: vaporized matter pa.s.sed through a sieve of forces that pulled out each separate atom, according to its weight and characteristics, and deposited them one at a time (but very rapidly!) in "storage bins" until such time as Five was ready to put them together in the combinations and shapes it needed. And it needed so many different shapes of matter! It needed antennae to locate and lock onto the various nearby stars it was meant to carry along. It needed chambers to contain the forces that would move them; it needed sensors to make sure they were moving properly; it needed a separate kind of antenna, just to keep in communication with its master, Wan-To.

And it needed them all in a hurry, because Wan-To was not patient. Wan-To took for granted that the doppel, Five, was moving as rapidly as possible. Five slaved to do so. It wasn't that it was afraid of punishment. The heart of an animal doesn't pump because it is afraid its master will be angry if it stops; it pumps because that is what it does. does.

When, rarely, Wan-To bothered to call up to check on progress Five was not fearful. It was only happy to report that it was doing its job.

When you came right down to it, all Five had to do, on a planet that had nothing, was to create an entire industrial complex. It took Five several weeks, but before the castings had quite cooled on the last of its guidance antennae it had already begun reaching out to all of its chosen eleven stars. It wasn't hard for Five-not for a near (if severely abridged) copy of Wan-To himself.

Five didn't like to question Wan-To. (Wan-To hadn't instructed it to ask questions, only to get the work done.) So Five had to make a number of decisions on its own. Wan-To's orders had been to accelerate this little group of stars. Well, that certainly meant to accelerate at least one planet with them-namely, the one he was on. But what about the other planets, satellites, and lesser things?

Five pondered that for a long time, then decided to play it safe and take everything. Of course, that made its job a little harder. Now there weren't just a dozen bodies to move. There were roughly half a million, it counted, including all the asteroids and comets big enough to bother with.

It was a daunting job, but Five was not daunted. Five was quite capable of doing all sorts of intricate and difficult things, only not very smart about what things to do.

From time to time Wan-To did communicate with his one surviving matter a.n.a.logue. Five wasn't much company, but there were some good things about carrying on a conversation with it. The most important of them was that that kind of conversation was perfectly safe, because the thing was a dolt. It could never threaten Wan-To.

The bad side of that coin was that talking to the matter a.n.a.logue was terribly boring. To begin with, it was boringly slow. The matter thing took forever to get a simple sentence out. Anyway, what could such a sluggish, rudimentary thing possibly have to say?

The answer to that was, "Not much."

At first, Wan-To had been mildly interested by the matter-copy's reports, especially the ones that were transmitted as "pictures." Wan-To wasn't much good at pictures. His perceptions operated in nine spatial dimensions (though, true, six of them were only vestiges), and a flat representation wasn't much good to him. Also, things with definite boundaries of any kind were scarce in Wan-To's experience, especially when they didn't flow or fluctuate. (How stagnant stagnant matter was!) It had been an interesting bit of puzzle solving for Wan-To to attach any meaning at all to the pictorial data the matter-copy turned in. Then, when he had gotten used to the ideas of "shapes" and "edges," the next question was, "What are all these 'solid' things good for?" Why were those great shiny arrays Five was building that swayed from horizon to horizon as the planet turned always pointing toward its little star? ("Energy acc.u.mulators," the matter-a.n.a.logue informed its master-but how odd to be tapping energy from matter was!) It had been an interesting bit of puzzle solving for Wan-To to attach any meaning at all to the pictorial data the matter-copy turned in. Then, when he had gotten used to the ideas of "shapes" and "edges," the next question was, "What are all these 'solid' things good for?" Why were those great shiny arrays Five was building that swayed from horizon to horizon as the planet turned always pointing toward its little star? ("Energy acc.u.mulators," the matter-a.n.a.logue informed its master-but how odd to be tapping energy from outside outside the star!) Why those spiraling shapes whose aims converged at a point far beyond the star's farthest planets? (They were the guides for the graviscalar flow that was pulling the whole group along.) Why the long square structure? or the domed ones? or the ones deep underground? (But you had to have them, Five humbly protested. They sheltered the matter machines that contained the forces that did the job. It was the way it was able to fulfill its mission.) the star!) Why those spiraling shapes whose aims converged at a point far beyond the star's farthest planets? (They were the guides for the graviscalar flow that was pulling the whole group along.) Why the long square structure? or the domed ones? or the ones deep underground? (But you had to have them, Five humbly protested. They sheltered the matter machines that contained the forces that did the job. It was the way it was able to fulfill its mission.) Of course, Wan-To had left the details of how to do the mission up to the matter-doppel's own judgment. Wan-To couldn't be bothered with such details. The matter-copy had been instructed to create a pit of gravitation for that star and its attendant bodies to fall into-endlessly-and it hadn't been told specifically how. The commissioned officer's instructions were just to do it, and do it the sergeant had.

That sort of entertainment palled quickly. After a few questions Wan-To began to tire of the answers. Just before Wan-To decided on cutting off communication with the doppel and looking for something more interesting, he asked the important question. "And the stars in your group? Have any survived?"

"Almost all," Five reported. "Two were damaged some time ago, but there have been no attacks since."

Wan-To didn't respond. That was as he had expected. He was just about to cut off, without of course bothering with any such politenesses as a good-bye, when the matter-copy gave its equivalent of a deferential cough. Humbly it told him that it had come across one little phenomenon it hadn't expected. Nothing in the datastores Wan-To had transferred to him had suggested that small bits of matter might organize themselves into aggregates that seemed to be-well, what else could you call it?-more or less alive. alive.

For a long time after he had finished wringing out of the doppel every sc.r.a.p of information it possessed about this new kind of "life," Wan-To lay in his plasma core, restlessly writhing, marveling at this interesting new thing. How very odd! odd! From all the matter-copy had observed, these "living" things were quite small, quite rudimentary (human taxonomists would have called them mosses, bacteria, invertebrates, and a few flowering plants), and certainly quite trivial in any large sense. From all the matter-copy had observed, these "living" things were quite small, quite rudimentary (human taxonomists would have called them mosses, bacteria, invertebrates, and a few flowering plants), and certainly quite trivial in any large sense.

So, of course, the relevant word was only "interesting." It certainly was not in any way important. important. There was surely no way that these things could possibly affect the lives of Wan-To or his like, ever. There was surely no way that these things could possibly affect the lives of Wan-To or his like, ever.

Yet it was strange that in all his billions of years of life Wan-To had never come across such a thing before.

True, he rarely bothered with anything concerned with matter-what was the point? And true, he told himself justly, even Wan-To himself was fairly young, as far as his probable life expectancy went. It wasn't his fault. The universe itself was only about twice as old as Wan-To, though he had already determined that it would survive for a highly exponential number of times that long (and, if he was lucky, he would survive with it). Matter-life was naturally quite transitory. It was also rather new on the scene, he decided, for some quick "ball-park" (not that Wan-To knew anything of ball parks) calculations had suggested to him that it would take quite a while for this matter-life to arise by chance.

He saw how such a thing could happen, though. All it would take was some random combinations of particles that, purely by chance, turned out to have organizing and reproductive capacities.

It was probably not unlike the same random events that, he knew, had brought his own life into being.

Actually it had not been Wan-To himself that had been brought into being by those events, but his predecessors. That was an unimportant distinction, though. Wan-To's predecessor (being so solitary he hadn't bothered giving himself a name) had made a nearly exact copy of himself when he made Wan-To, and Wan-To had as many memories as his "father" did.

Which, in this case, was not very many. Apart from any other consideration, the proto-Wan-To hadn't been very smart then-well, he had been an infant, after all! His entire network had hardly amounted to more than two or three hundred billion particles altogether, and none of them fully integrated with the others as yet. But as he had grown over the eons to be very smart indeed, and, quite curious, he had spent a lot of thought in deducing how that event had had to be.

As his galaxy (the old one, the one Wan-To had left when it became uninhabitable) turned on its axis, the leading edge of one of its spiral arms pa.s.sed through a "density wave," and a patch of ionized gases was compressed by the shock of contact.

That was just the beginning. It didn't create Wan-To's predecessor. It only made it possible for the next nearby event to do so.

That event came when a particular star of a rather rare kind came to the end of its hydrogen-burning life. It had been a very large star, so it used up its hydrogen quite quickly. Then, with most of its hydrogen turned into helium, it was running out of its best fusion fuel and destined for trouble.

The star could, to be sure, go on burning the helium into heavier elements still. But it took four hydrogen nuclei to make one helium, so when you got down to helium there was only a quarter as much fuel to begin with. Worse than that, helium burning doesn't yield as much energy. Energy was what that old star was beginning to run out of. Energy was what it needed to keep its shape, because it was only the pressure of the terrible heat from within that kept the immense pressure of its outer layers from collapsing into its core.

When the energy from the hydrogen at last ran out, it did collapse.

All that vast ma.s.s dropped-"like a stone," a human being might say, but much faster, and with far vaster impact, than any stone ever dropped on Earth. It struck the core, squeezing it from all directions at once. The core rebounded. Four-fifths of the ma.s.s of the star blasted itself into s.p.a.ce in that great bursting, with floods of X rays and gammas and neutrinos, as well as ten-million-million-degree heat and blinding light; and as that furiously energetic ma.s.s raced through s.p.a.ce it struck the already compacted ma.s.s of gas that was the womb that held the not-yet-existent precursor of Wan-To.

That was what Earthly astronomers would have called a "supernova." The humans, too, had wondered about how things began, and they had worked out that their own sun and most others had been born in that way. They rarely saw a real super nova, of course-especially not one in their own galaxy-because human beings didn't live long enough for that. But they knew that such events happened, over and over, hundreds of millions of times in each galaxy.

They did not, however, ordinarily give rise to anything like a Wan-To.

The supernova that gave birth to Wan-To's forebear was not any ordinary Type I or Type II. It was of the rare kind Earthly astronomers had named an "Urtrobin supernova," after the Soviet astronomer who had found the first of its kind in an obscure galaxy in the constellation Perseus. Urtrobin supernovae don't start with any ordinary supergiant star, a mere twenty or a hundred times as ma.s.sive as the Earth's sun. What is required for an Urtrobin supernova is that very rare celestial object, a star that ma.s.ses as much as two thousand suns put together.

There aren't many stars like that. A lot of Earthly astronomers refused to believe that any such overbloated body could ever form-at least, they refused until they began to calculate in the relativistic effects and saw that those did in fact make it possible. But when such a superma.s.sive star collapses its explosion does not last for a mere matter of months. It takes as much as a year for it to reach peak brightness. Then it declines to obscurity only over a period of decades.

It was in just such a G.o.dlike hammer blow that Wan-To's ancestor's wisp of gas was squeezed and drenched. It was enough. The ancestor was born.

Such an event, affecting such a scarce collection of ionized gases, was very rare indeed in the universe. There could not have been very many such beings formed, not in all the dozen billion years since the Big Bang.

Indeed, Wan-To would have thought his unfortunate parent had been very likely the only one . . . if he had not observed the wreck of some distant galaxies and realized that creatures like himself must have done the wrecking.

He did not want his present galaxy wrecked. It was such a ch.o.r.e to move.

CHAPTER 12.

It was a long trip to Nebo, a hundred and twenty hard days, tough times for any small group of people locked into each other's company. For Viktor the trip was grim.

Black worry began creeping over him as soon as they pulled out of Low Newmanhome Orbit. It got worse. First it was the radio; the surprised, then frantic, then furious calls began to come in from the surface. It got worse still when his sister Edwina got on to plead with him, worst of all when she turned the microphone over to little Tanya. That was pretty close to heartbreaking, the sweet, worried little voice, begging. "Mommy? Daddy Jake? Daddy Viktor? Won't you please come home?" It sent Reesa fleeing into a dark and empty cargo compartment, and when Viktor found her she was weeping uncontrollably. Then she closed up, would hardly talk at all. Not just Reesa, either. Everyone was having second thoughts; everyone was in a touchy, grouchy mood. By the time Captain Rodericks had inserted Ark Ark into its parking orbit around Nebo and the lander was stocked and ready to take a crew down to the surface, hardly anyone was speaking to anyone else. into its parking orbit around Nebo and the lander was stocked and ready to take a crew down to the surface, hardly anyone was speaking to anyone else.

In Viktor's black cloud of worry he kept turning their decision over and over in his mind, asking himself the same nagging questions. Did the kids really need them at home? Well, of course they did, but . . . And did the people people need them there, for that matter? Wasn't it, maybe, their need them there, for that matter? Wasn't it, maybe, their duty duty to be there, sharing whatever came of this unexpected, this to be there, sharing whatever came of this unexpected, this unexplained unexplained new calamity that was (maybe) threatening the colony's very survival? Well, maybe that was so, but still . . . new calamity that was (maybe) threatening the colony's very survival? Well, maybe that was so, but still . . .

But still what they were doing was necessary! necessary! They had to find out what was happening on Nebo! Didn't they? They had to find out what was happening on Nebo! Didn't they?

And even if they didn't, if the whole thing was criminal folly, it was long too late to be asking any of those questions. They were committed.

The other part of Viktor's black cloud was the unhappy state of his relations with Reesa. Something had gone very wrong. In all those hundred and twenty days they did not make love once. True, there wasn't any privacy to speak of in the stripped-down ship. True, Captain Rodericks (who took as an article of faith that only a busy crew could possibly be a happy crew-however laughable it was to use the word "happy" in the present circ.u.mstances) had set up an elaborate routine of drills and practice emergencies, Captain Bu backing him up all the way, and everybody was exhausted most of the time. But Reesa hardly even talked talked to Viktor any more. to Viktor any more.

What made that particularly hard to accept was that there were people she did talk to, and one of them was Jake Lundy. So to all Viktor's doubts and discomforts there was added the thing he had never wanted to believe himself capable of. He was jealous.

Four people were to go down to the surface of Nebo in the ship's lander. No one volunteered. No one refused, either; they drew lots.

When Jake Lundy turned out to be one of the chosen ones-and Viktor and Reesa were not-Viktor didn't rejoice, exactly, but it certainly did not break his heart.

"We're going to be ready for anything," Captain Rodericks had decreed, and so they pretty nearly were. Contingency plans were made for everything anyone could imagine. Emergencies were invented. Ways of dealing with them were devised. Every day, sometimes more than once a day, without warning, there was a ship's drill. Over and over the crew rehea.r.s.ed what to do in case of sudden air loss (helmets on, suits already in place), or power outage (standby batteries kept constantly recharged), or the sudden death or incapacitation of any crew member-backups for every job, everyone trained to do everything.

"Just what the h.e.l.l do you think is going to happen?" Viktor demanded, tired past the point of tolerance.

Rodericks only shook his head and ordered, "Get on with it! Run that leak-patch drill again! The way you deal with emergencies is to plan ahead for them-then you can survive. survive."

When they weren't doing make-work drills, they were stocking the lander for its indispensable job. That wasn't easy, because there was little left on old Ark to scavenge, but they stripped themselves bare to give the lander everything they could. Communications equipment. Recording equipment-Captain Bu even dismantled Ark's Ark's old log, and made them stow it aboard the lander. Hot-weather clothing, cold-weather clothing-they could not be sure what they would find. Dried foods from the ship's ancient emergency rations. Fresh (well, recently unfrozen) food from the capsules on the cryonics deck. That was one of Viktor's princ.i.p.al tasks, salvaging everything that seemed edible from the old capsules (how quaint they were, and how unlike old log, and made them stow it aboard the lander. Hot-weather clothing, cold-weather clothing-they could not be sure what they would find. Dried foods from the ship's ancient emergency rations. Fresh (well, recently unfrozen) food from the capsules on the cryonics deck. That was one of Viktor's princ.i.p.al tasks, salvaging everything that seemed edible from the old capsules (how quaint they were, and how unlike Mayflower's! Mayflower's! They were no more than pods, stacked on aisles that were no colder than any of the rest of the s.p.a.ceship-what a wasteful way to design them!). Then they added plastic sacks of water, and flashlights, and Geiger counters, and infrared viewers, and cameras-everything anyone could think of that the resources of the old ship and the personal possessions of the crew could produce. It all went in. And, at the very end, even four rifles, too. Captain Rodericks himself had produced them out of a long-forgotten h.o.a.rd-not because anyone on They were no more than pods, stacked on aisles that were no colder than any of the rest of the s.p.a.ceship-what a wasteful way to design them!). Then they added plastic sacks of water, and flashlights, and Geiger counters, and infrared viewers, and cameras-everything anyone could think of that the resources of the old ship and the personal possessions of the crew could produce. It all went in. And, at the very end, even four rifles, too. Captain Rodericks himself had produced them out of a long-forgotten h.o.a.rd-not because anyone on Ark Ark really expected anything to shoot at, but because Captain Rodericks insisted. really expected anything to shoot at, but because Captain Rodericks insisted.

And then they were there. The lander was stocked. There was nothing left to do but the launch.

For all that long voyage Ark's Ark's sensors had been fixed on one target only, the planet they were about to invade. What the people aboard sensors had been fixed on one target only, the planet they were about to invade. What the people aboard Ark Ark saw of the surface of the mystery planet depended on how they looked at it. Through the fiber-optic links to the external telescopes there was very little to see. The cloud cover was in the way-featureless white by day, emptily black when they were in the nightside portion of their orbit around the planet-except for a few spots, where something bright beneath the clouds lighted them ruddily from below. saw of the surface of the mystery planet depended on how they looked at it. Through the fiber-optic links to the external telescopes there was very little to see. The cloud cover was in the way-featureless white by day, emptily black when they were in the nightside portion of their orbit around the planet-except for a few spots, where something bright beneath the clouds lighted them ruddily from below.

The instruments told them a lot more. They had long been detecting definite, large-scale emissions from the surface-gamma rays, X rays, radio static. The infrared sensors showed the clear-cut heat sources under the clouds. And radar was the most useful of all. The radar plot had grown more detailed with every day. The radar images were displayed as holograms, and they showed a variety of hard-edged structures. There were flat, broad things that looked almost like buildings. There were tulip-shaped things, like the horn on an old acoustic phonograph, all apparently oriented toward the dimming sun. There were ribbed metal sh.e.l.ls like the carapace of a turtle, and those came in two varieties. Some had things like horn antennae nearby; others were surrounded by great spiky cl.u.s.ters of spiral metal, like Art Deco lightning rods.

None of the sensors detected anything moving. Nothing seemed to be in any physical action anywhere on the surface of Nebo. Captain Rodericks, defending his gift of weapons, argued that there had to be life of some kind there-how else to explain the machines? Could they have built themselves? But there was no sign of the kind of movement that one a.s.sociated with life, especially of civilized, technological life-nothing like trucks, planes, trains-nothing like anything that might have held whoever it was who built the metal structures. For that matter, there was no sign of any living, moving thing at all.

All the same, when Viktor studied the radar he said, "Even if we don't see them, I guess you were right, Captain Rodericks. It stands to reason there's somebody down there." And then he added, "My father was right."

Captain Rodericks barked at him, "Your father was right about what? what? Do you know what those things are?" Do you know what those things are?"

Viktor looked up from the scan. "I don't know know what they are," he said, keeping his temper, "but I can see what they're what they are," he said, keeping his temper, "but I can see what they're doing. doing. My father always thought that Nebo and the astronomical events were connected. Obviously they are! Look at those antennae; They're all pointed right at the sun!" My father always thought that Nebo and the astronomical events were connected. Obviously they are! Look at those antennae; They're all pointed right at the sun!"

Jake Lundy stood up. He glanced at Viktor, then walked over and studied the plot.

When he turned around he was smiling-not a happy smile, the small smile of relief of someone who has had his mind made up on a tough question. "I'd say that settles the first landing place. We check those things out."

On the next to the last orbit, they had a farewell dinner for the chosen four. It wasn't gourmet food. It all came out of the ancient cryonics stores of Ark, Ark, and it had been put there in the first place for its value as biological specimens, not for epicures. But they managed a sort of stew out of seed corn and a kind of hard, flat peas, and the main course was the last of a small breeding stock of dwarf sheep, roasted. and it had been put there in the first place for its value as biological specimens, not for epicures. But they managed a sort of stew out of seed corn and a kind of hard, flat peas, and the main course was the last of a small breeding stock of dwarf sheep, roasted.

Captain Bu said a short, reverential grace. There was no wine. There was not much conversation, either. Once Bu looked up from stirring the stew around his plate and said, to no one in particular, "You know, the lander has to come back. Otherwise there won't be any way for us to get down to the surface of Newmanhome again."

Jake Lundy laughed. "What's the matter, Captain? Do you think they'll maroon you in Ark, Ark, for taking the ship?" But that was obviously what Bu did think. Jake shrugged and changed the subject. "It's a pity," he said deliberately, gnawing at a tiny chop, "that none of these strains will ever live on Newmanhome now." for taking the ship?" But that was obviously what Bu did think. Jake shrugged and changed the subject. "It's a pity," he said deliberately, gnawing at a tiny chop, "that none of these strains will ever live on Newmanhome now."

And little Luo Fah, who also had drawn one of the four slips in the lottery, stood up. "I'm not hungry," she declared. "Do we have to wait for another whole orbit? Can't we launch the lander now?"

Then, all of a sudden, it was happening. The four got up. Some stretched. Some yawned. Some rubbed their chins, or shook hands with one or more of the others. Lundy, after a quick and noncommittal glance at Viktor, pulled Reesa to him and kissed her. (She wasn't the one who had started it-but she didn't resist at all, Viktor observed.) Then they filed slowly into the lander and sealed it down. Viktor and two others closed the inner seals and retreated to the control room, where Captain Rodericks was on the radio to the ship, his eyes glued to the course plot. The little dot that was Ark Ark was creeping across the face of the planet Nebo. Captain Bu cleared his throat, looking around, and then began to pray aloud. "Dear Almighty G.o.d Who is all-seeing judge and eternal master of us all, I pray You care for these, our friends, who embark on this dangerous mission in Your service-" was creeping across the face of the planet Nebo. Captain Bu cleared his throat, looking around, and then began to pray aloud. "Dear Almighty G.o.d Who is all-seeing judge and eternal master of us all, I pray You care for these, our friends, who embark on this dangerous mission in Your service-"

"Launch!" Captain Rodericks cried. And the ship shook slightly, and the lander was gone. Captain Rodericks cried. And the ship shook slightly, and the lander was gone.

On the radio speaker, Jake Lundy's voice unemotionally reported distance, alt.i.tude, and speed every few moments. On the navigation radar, the lander was a blip of bright red, paralleling their course but falling behind. As it pa.s.sed out of the shadow of Nebo the optics picked it up, too, a glimmer of metal, dropping away into Nebo's air. Everyone was watching, Captain Rodericks hunched over his controls, Captain Bu with his eyes glued to the fiber-optic tubes, everyone else staring at the wall displays.

And as they stood there, Viktor felt Reesa's hand creep into his.

He didn't respond. He didn't pull away, but he left his hand limp and uncooperative in hers.

She removed it and turned to look at him. "Is something wrong?" she asked.

He was stubbornly mute. He didn't even look at her. He kept his eyes on the screen.

"Come on, Viktor," she said, her tone unfriendly. "Are you p.i.s.sed because I kissed Jake Lundy good-bye?" She was scowling now. "He's going into real danger, d.a.m.n it! I would've kissed Rodericks if it'd been him!"

Viktor allowed his gaze to turn to her. "Would you have been off in a corner whispering with Rodericks all this time, too?"

"Viktor! What the h.e.l.l are you talking about? Are you jealous?"

"I thought you were my wife, not his," he said stiffly.

"I am your wife, d.a.m.n you! I'm not your possession. possession. But I'm your wife, all right!" But I'm your wife, all right!"

"A wife is supposed to be true to her husband," he pointed out. "You agreed to that."

"Viktor!" she blazed, flushed with anger. "What do you think we were doing? He wanted someone to talk to-who better than me? Oh, Viktor," she said, her voice thick, "you're a dirty, suspicious man. I don't want to talk about it now. I don't want to talk to you at all! We'll have to settle this later." she blazed, flushed with anger. "What do you think we were doing? He wanted someone to talk to-who better than me? Oh, Viktor," she said, her voice thick, "you're a dirty, suspicious man. I don't want to talk about it now. I don't want to talk to you at all! We'll have to settle this later."

"We certainly will," Viktor said grimly. But he didn't know, neither of them knew, how much longer "later" was going to be . . .

A shout of shock and anger from Bu took their minds off the quarrel. "The lander! It's been hit!" he cried; and the others watching the wall screens were shouting, too-and then everything went bad at once.

The radio communications from the lander stopped in the middle of a sentence, and a vast warbling sound filled the speakers.