Toc238718038” class=“calibre9” id=“Toc238718038”>

As soon as Tse-Mallory set the skimmer down close to the dais, Truzenzuzex disembarked and hurried over to help Clarity. Sylzenzuzex was right behind her Eighth, and Tse-Mallory joined them moments later. The philosoph looked up at his visibly fatigued young friend.

“You’ve been chatting with the eons again, I see. I’m curious to know why and what for.”

As a weary Flinx proceeded to explain, the two scientists and Sylzenzuzex soon found themselves enthralled. When he finally finished it was left to Tse-Mallory to restate the obvious; something humans were more inclined to do than thranx.

“A functioning Xunca defense!” The sociologist-soldier’s eyes glittered as he considered the potential ramifications. “Is it the Great Attractor?”

“No,” Flinx had to tell him. “It might lie in that area, but it’s not the Attractor itself.”

Tse-Mallory was staring at the ground while thinking out loud. “No reason for some kind of defensive weapon to be located so far away unless there’s some kind of connection.” He looked up. “The Krang did not describe one, I take it?”

Flinx shook his head. “‘Go there,’ it said. It mentioned a possible means of doing so.” He eyed his friends hopefully. “I know enough to be sure that the coordinates for this hypothetical link lie within the borders of the Commonwealth, but it’s a locality I’ve never visited myself, not in all my travels.”

“You are about to, I think.” Turning, a gleeful Tse-Mallory slapped his longtime companion hard on the back of his thorax. The sound of flesh striking chitin was percussive. “It would appear, my old friend, that the annihilation of civilization is not yet a certainty!”

“My mobility will be, kral!l!l, if you keep hitting me like that,” Truzenzuzex clicked sharply. Given the number of friendly smacks the philosoph had absorbed from his friend over the years, the complaint rang hollow.

As they were breaking down the temporary camp near the entrance and preparing to leave the Krang and its age-weathered world of Booster behind, Tse-Mallory paused in the packing to confront a busy Flinx. The younger man stopped what he was doing and looked up.

“Bran?”

“Those coordinates.” Tse-Mallory looked almost expectant. “If you can remember them without having to check your communit, could you recite them to me again?” Flinx did so. When he was finished, the soldier-sociologist nodded slowly to himself. “I could swear—I’m almost certain that I know that place.”

“I haven’t done an overlay yet myself. Is it Horseye?” Flinx was hopeful. After all he had heard about that multitiered world and its three native intelligences he would have been glad to pay it a visit and see the excavated part of the Xunca warning system for himself.

Tse-Mallory disappointed him. “Not Horseye. There was a report filed with Science Central on Denpasar a little over a year ago by a couple of second-level xenologists. In addition to the expected material it came with a very strange supplementary attachment. Knowing of our interest in such matters, one of our contacts in the Church passed it along to Tru and me. Preoccupied as we were keeping watch over a recovering Clarity and awaiting your return, we weren’t able to go over it in depth or request a follow-up. Those coordinates, though…” His words trailed away as he struggled to remember.

Ten minutes later everyone’s work was interrupted by a violent exclamation from Tse-Mallory. By the time Flinx arrived at his side, Pip having to tighten her grip on his shoulder to keep from being jounced off, the two scientists were deep in excited conversation the details of which Flinx could follow only slightly.

Clarity jogged up alongside him. “What are they jabbering about this time?”

“I don’t know.” Risking impertinence, he raised his voice. “Bran, Tru! If you’ve figured something out it would be nice if you shared it with the rest of us.”

The two old friends immediately ceased their rapid-fire dialogue.

“Of course, my boy, of course!” Turning to Flinx, Tse-Mallory whacked him enthusiastically on the back. Annoyed, Pip spread her wings in case she had to take flight. As for Flinx, it was not the first time he found himself sympathizing with Truzenzuzex. Both had suffered from Tse-Mallory’s effusiveness.

“Those coordinates.” There was a glow to the old scientist’s expression Flinx had not seen there in some time. “They’re in the Senisran system! They aren’t for that water-world itself but for the outlying asteroid belt—the system has two, one between the third and fourth planets and the other proximate to but outside the orbit of the tenth and last.” He wagged a thick finger in Flinx’s direction. “It’s most remarkable. Everything you learned from the Krang ties in with the recently received report I alluded to earlier.”

“How?” Sylzenzuzex wanted to know.

A little of the older human’s ebullience receded. “I’m not sure. As I told Flinx, the report was—odd.” He brightened anew. “Of course,” he added facetiously, “what we hope to find could not in any way, shape, or fashion be considered ‘odd.’ Oh, no.” Turning away from the youngsters, he hurried to share the rest of his revelation with Truzenzuzex. Moments later the venerable thranx was all but turning cartwheels there in the soaring entrance to the Krang.

At least, Flinx mused thoughtfully, his mentors were encouraged. At the risk of diminishing their enthusiasm, he was compelled to point out that the Krang had prefaced everything it had passed along to Flinx by declaring it to be legend.

“It will be a good deal more than ‘legend’ if it conflates with certain aspects of that report, my boy,” Tse-Mallory assured him.

“Me, I’d like to know a little more about this mysterious report.” As always, Clarity’s first concern was for Flinx’s well-being. “What life-threatening, mind-tormenting exercise do you intend to get him mixed up in next?”

“This is not just about Flinx, I think,” Truzenzuzex told her. “We are all of us in this together, for certain and final, for good or ill, until the next egg.” As he reached out with a foothand, four hard-surfaced digits gently gripped her forearm. “Bran and I spent more than a year looking after you while you returned to health, Clarity. Rest assured we are not about to cast aside all that hard work casually.”

“Even if the fate of the galaxy is at stake?” she asked him. But he had already turned and skittered off to resume working on the breakdown of the camp and packing the remainder of their supplies. He had not heard her parting comment—maybe.

In the course of the tedious journey out of the Blight and back into familiar Commonwealth space they had plenty of time to discuss a range of options. Everything, of course, depended on whether there really was anything at the locality that had been provided to Flinx by the Krang or if he had merely been given the coordinates of a myth.

The report that had found its way to Science Central on Earth, however, was no fable. It had been compiled and recorded by two respected xenologists in the course of their diplomatic and anthropological work among the natives of Senisran. Full of anomalous elusions and hypotheses, it was hardly enough to justify the immediate dispatch of a larger, better-equipped, and more costly research team to that watery world. For one thing, in the event that such an expedition were to be mounted, the natives who had provided much of the information that was contained in the report had promised to destroy the important relics the xenologists had described by dispersing them across a wide area of deep ocean. It was apparent that anyone wishing to carry out a formal follow-up to the initial report would have to proceed with extreme caution.

None of which concerns troubled those aboard the Teacher, since they were not going to touch down on Senisran and had no expectation of having to deal with its prickly natives.

The outer asteroid belt where the Krang-given coordinates lay was far enough from its sun so that it might as well have been in interstellar space. A visitor happening upon that circumstellar ring of rock and mineral, compacted dust and water ice, would have been forgiven for thinking that was exactly where he was, save for the dominating presence of a Jovian-sized gas giant nearby. Nearby in the interplanetary sense, that is. The enormous planet lay far enough away so that, while its roiling storms and double rings were clearly visible from the section of the asteroid belt where the Teacher came to a stop, its radiation, powerful magnetic field, and gravity well would not pose any danger.

“We have arrived.” The Teacher was not much given to excessive celebration even in the best of times.

Orbiting in concert with the majority of rocks and boulders and planetoids that comprised the outer asteroid belt, the ship continuously monitored its surroundings lest something small, solid, and moving faster than its fellows threatened to pose a danger to it and its fragile organic inhabitants. During the following first week of searching it had to use its weaponry to reduce several such minor course-crossing hazards to powder. By the second week Flinx almost hoped something (small and essentially harmless but noisy) would slip past the Teacher’s sensors and strike the ship. It could hardly pose less of a danger than the ennui that was threatening to overcome them all.

“It would help if we knew more precisely what we were looking for,” Clarity pointed out to him on the last day of the second week of searching the coordinates the Krang had provided.

“We’re looking for a link.” Flinx was standing by the forward console, staring out the main port. At the far end of the Teacher, its Caplis generator was dark. They could not use the KK-drive field this close to so many sizable solid objects, nor was there any need to do so.

“Like I said,” Clarity reiterated with uncharacteristic exasperation, “it would help if we knew more precisely what we were looking for.”

His retort was sharp. “I am so sorry. I had this perfect tridee image of a four-hundred-million-year-old Xunca alarm-weapons link in my pocket, but I seem to have dropped it somewhere.” Her reaction left him immediately contrite.

“I’m sorry, Clarity. I apologize.” As he started toward her, she put up a hand to forestall him.

“Forget it. Weeks of searching and finding nothing have left us all frustrated and on edge.” She looked around to make sure they were still alone. “Have you seen Syl lately? She’s so wound up she’s chewed a couple of centimeters off the ends of each of her ovipositors.”

The Teacher was doing its best, Flinx knew. But like any AI, even one equipped with symbolic logic, it remained at its core a literal device. It could and would search diligently for anything—if they could just tell it what to look for. On that note the Tar-Aiym Krang had been lamentably uninformative.

Surely they would find something, eventually. It was simply a matter of scanning and analyzing the objects that comprised the asteroid belt until they came upon—what?

“We will know it when we see it,” an optimistic Truzenzuzex insisted. “The complex on Horseye would not continue sending, however intermittently, a composite signal to a corner of empty space.”

At least they did not have to circle the distant sun and search the entire asteroid belt. They only had to examine the portion facing the outer gas giant, in the vicinity of the coordinates the Krang had provided. But visually, at least, there seemed nothing to differentiate one square kilometer of drifting dead rock from the next.

As the third week of searching crept toward its end, the Teacher continued its relentless examination. The less patient organic life-forms on board, however, were approaching terminal boredom.

“This isn’t working.” Truzenzuzex clicked impatiently as his four opposing mandibles finished masticating the last of the early meal.

“An unassailable observation.” Tilting her head back slightly, Sylzenzuzex drained the last of the blue liquid from a spiral-tipped cylinder. The normally even-tempered security officer’s mood was becoming as touchy as that of her venerable Eighth.

These days none of them, Flinx had to admit, was in a very good mood. The promise that had drawn them here from distant Booster had been lost to weeks of endless ennui interrupted only by the venturing of the occasional bad idea. Now it seemed that the philosoph was about to put forth another one. Among his companions, disinterest was universal.

Until they heard it.

“Nothing of value was learned on this journey, dr!app, until Flinx communicated with the Krang. It occurs to me that we are faced with a similar situation here.”

As Tse-Mallory pushed his chair back from the table he was careful to avoid crushing the large spatulate leaves of the trio of decorative growths behind him. Some of the imported flora that bedecked Flinx’s private lounge had done so well that he had transplanted shoots and buds elsewhere within the Teacher. The spread of greenery certainly brightened many purely prosaic corners of the ship.

“If that were the case and there was some sort of similar device adrift here,” the soldier-sociologist conjectured, “wouldn’t it have responded to Flinx’s presence by now?” Turning from his friend, he looked over at the silent subject of the conversation. “You haven’t sensed anything since we’ve arrived here, have you, Flinx? An alien presence, something akin to the Krang or the wandering weapons platform?”

Flinx shook his head as Clarity passed him a ship-conjured pastry filled with simulated cloudberries. “No, sir, nothing,” he replied as he ate.

“I am thinking,” the philosoph mused aloud, “that perhaps his proximity to the rest of us might somehow mute or dilute his sensitivity. Or conversely, confuse the perceptiveness of that which we are looking for.”

Tse-Mallory was intrigued. “You’re saying, in so many words, that the rest of us might be jamming the signals.”

“A crude analogy for what we must presume, if it exists, is an exceptionally advanced interaction, but yes.”

“How do you suggest we overcome this theoretical blockage?”

Both antennae inclined in Flinx’s direction as Truzenzuzex regarded their young host. “We should experiment by isolating him from the possible source of disruption, which is us. Flinx, I am of the opinion that you should take an extended walk while the ship moves to another position.”

Flinx paused with the remnants of the pastry halfway to his mouth. Responding to his abrupt emotional reaction, Pip and Scrap looked up sharply from where they had curled up together among the comforting vegetation.

“I’ve got an idea.” Flinx stared back at the philosoph. “Why don’t the rest of you go for a walk and I’ll stay with the ship.”

Seated beside him, Clarity jabbed him in the ribs. Perceiving that neither the blow nor its perpetrator were representative of the beginnings of actual conflict, both minidrags went back to sleep. “Me, too, Red?”

“No, of course not you, Clarity.” Caught between a woman and a theory, Flinx sensed that neither was immediately resolvable. Perched on the resultant dilemma, he turned to Tse-Mallory. “Bran, what do you think? Is what Tru suggests a viable proposal?”

The powerfully built sociologist did not hesitate. “Nothing else is working. I don’t see what harm could result.” He studied the younger man. “Unless you have a fear of being outside by yourself.”

Flinx shook his head. “I’ve spent too much time traveling through space to be afraid of it. Respectful, yes. Awed, surely. But it’s not something I fear.” He looked back to Truzenzuzex. “When do you want to try this experiment, Tru?”

The philosoph gestured with all four hands. “Yesterday’s searching was devoid of discovery. Extrapolating from our previous probing, tomorrow’s searching is likely to be devoid of discovery. Let us schedule an exception for today. Of course, if you feel you need time to acclimate yourself to the idea …”

Swallowing the last of the pastry, Flinx rose from his seat. “I’ll instruct the Teacher to ready a survival suit.” He looked down at Clarity. “Are you all right with this?”

She hesitated momentarily, eyeing the two expectant scientists. “If Bran and Tru think it’s safe, then I guess we ought to try it. I don’t like the idea of you making contact with any kind of device from any ancient alien civilization. Much less via an interface that might take you away from the ship.” She looked reconciled. “But that’s what we’re here to try and do.”

Smiling, he reached over and lightly tousled her hair. She responded by making a face. “Don’t worry. I won’t do anything stupid. And I’ll be thinking of you the whole time.”

Truzenzuzex shook his head sadly. “Unhelpful. While you’re outside you should be trying to think like a Xunca.”

Flinx would have been happy to comply—except that no one knew how the Xunca thought, and had not done so for hundreds of millions of years.

Stepping outside the ship was more interesting than he had anticipated. While over the years he had viewed the Teacher’s exterior from every conceivable angle, he had nearly always done so from the comfortable confines of one of its two shuttles. He could not remember the last time he had ventured outside in deep space in nothing but a survival suit.

The stars were very bright, and the looming striped mass of the system’s outermost gas giant was brilliant and colorful.

“Everything all right, Flinx?” Tse-Mallory’s voice emerged muted and modulated from the survival suit’s cranial speaker.

“I’m fine. Let’s get this over with. Ship?”

“Flinx?” the Teacher responded promptly.

“Withdraw to distance. Follow the honored Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex’s instructions unless contradicted by me.”

“I will continue monitoring your vitals for any evidence of abnormality,” the shipmind replied. “For example, your blood pressure currently is …”

Flinx cut it off. He knew how the Teacher could go on. Especially when it was concerned about him. “You can recite all the statistics when I’m back on board. In order to conduct the philosoph’s experiment appropriately, I should be left in silence.”

Another voice reached him: Clarity. “I know you’re supposed to be reaching out for a Tar-Aiym contact or something like that, Flinx, but—just watch what you wish for.”

“I’m wishing I was back on the ship,” he offered by way of reply. “I’m wishing I…”

“Flinx …” Truzenzuzex’s perfectly modulated terranglo was both stern and suggestive.

“I know, I know. Try to think like a Xunca. Going to silence,” he muttered.

The Teacher began, very carefully, to move away. The acceleration was extremely measured. Activating his suit’s propulsion unit, Flinx headed off in the opposite direction. The sensation of weight dropped off quickly until, once clear of the ship’s artificial gravity field, he felt himself floating, falling, adrift among the asteroid belt.

He chugged past his first planetoid some ten minutes later. It was about the size of the chair he had been sitting on during the early meal. The lump of dark flinty material looked comparatively solid. Not an aggregate, then, he decided. Utilizing the suit’s propulsion system, he pivoted—and experienced a moment of mild panic. The Teacher was nowhere to be seen.

It took him a moment to find it—a point of light moving away at an angle to all the other drifting shapes. How much distance would Truzenzuzex think was necessary to put between it and him? He had not been boasting when he had told the philosoph that he was not afraid of being out in deep space by himself. The Teacher knew where he was every nanosecond. It would not, could not, lose track of his position.

Could it?

Could he, despite every precaution, end up lost and alone, doomed to drift forever among the shattered shards of an alien planetary system, floating free until his suit’s air could no longer be satisfactorily recycled, dying forgotten among …

Stop it, he scolded himself. The Teacher knows where you are at all times. It’s right over there, just over that way. Distant now yet continuously aware of your presence, your location. You are not isolated. You are not abandoned.

You are not fulfilling your mentor’s straightforward request by wasting your focus on such nonsense, either, he reminded himself.

Settling down, calming himself, doing his best to transmit reassuring readings of his blood pressure and all other relevant biological indicators to a concerned Teacher, he forced himself to start concentrating on the reason for the solo excursion. He projected outward as best he was able, trying to recall and offer up the same state of mind he entered when he was lying beneath receptive Tar-Aiym contact domes. Unfortunately, the unidentified whatever that he was trying to make contact with was not of Tar-Aiym origin. Very little was known about the Xunca other than the fact that they had existed. Nothing whatsoever was known of their works except what little had been learned from study of the alarm complex on Horseye.

As his body drifted, so, inevitably, did his thoughts. He found himself looking away from the larger asteroids, away from the Jovian giant, and outward toward the stars. Stunning they were in their own right, joyous in what they represented. It was horrifying to think of them disappearing, snuffed out one by one like so many candles as they were sucked down and absorbed by the malevolent immensity that was even now rushing this way.

The contrast with the dreary rocks among which he was drifting was striking. Dull and lifeless, these precessed uneventfully in their primordial orbits. Making slight adjustments to his velocity, he fell in among them so that he was now drifting at the same speed as the majority. Several came quite close. Carefully extending an arm in the zero gravity, he reached out and wrapped his fingers around the nearest. His fingers caused the particulate matter that had collected on the hard surface to float away from the stone’s minuscule gravitational field. A little of it clung to his gloved hand.

Using his other hand he flicked the dust away, then idly brushed at the fist-sized rock itself. More dust floated off, adding to the number of orbiting objects without altering their collective mass. Blinking, he brought the potato-shaped rock closer to his face. Was that a hint of color there? Murmuring a command, he activated the external light that encircled the suit’s faceplate.

There was unquestionably some color there, he decided. Where he had brushed the dust away the stone showed a distinct shade of green. Well, the mineral olivine was a known component of many asteroids and meteors. Its presence here was not surprising. Releasing the stone and letting it drift free, he plucked another from its orbit. This one was the size of a melon. Finger-swept, it too revealed the same dark greenish tint. As he was examining it more closely, something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.

The first stone was coming back to him.

Startled, he let go of the rock he had been examining and put up a hand to ward off the first stone, but his intervention wasn’t necessary. It turned out that the rock was not moving in his direction, but toward the second, larger piece of rubble he had been holding. Coming together in total silence, the two stones seemed to fuse. In the process green sparks flared briefly, illuminating the borders. Fascinated, Flinx would have studied the two rocks in more detail if he had not been distracted by another unexpected phenomenon. Looking around, he saw that other stones untouched by him were now also beginning to move in his direction. As they approached, some changed course away from him to intersect the vector of another, resulting in a melding luminously similar to the first two.

Adjusting his position, he commenced a slow pirouette. What he saw caused his jaw to drop in amazement. It looked as if every pebble, every stone, every planetoid within range of his vision, was now in motion.

Some of those that had already merged had begun to glow with a pale green efflorescence.

Hurriedly, he addressed the suit’s communit. “Ship, I think you’d better come and pick me up. There’s something happening here. Some of these stones around me, they’re moving. A number of them are starting to commingle, or fuse—I’m not sure of the methodology involved.”

The Teacher responded immediately. “I am already on my way, Flinx. I have detected initiation of the same unidentified processes here. I will arrive at your location as rapidly as is feasible and safe.”

“I don’t think there’s a need for any special hurry as long as you’re on your way.” Flinx looked on enchanted as more and more of the stony matter around him began to come together. The process seemed to be accelerating. “I don’t see any danger. While a great deal of the material is in motion, it also seems to be avoiding me.”

“Best not to take any unnecessary chances, Flinx,” the ship told him. “While you have not yet been impacted, it is not possible to assure that all of the many orbiting objects will continue to steer clear of you.”

“I’m not concerned.” Inside the suit, Flinx smiled. “You’re pretty good at predicting the movement of objects.”

“That is so,” the Teacher replied. “However, the number of orbiting fragmentational objects that are currently in motion exceeds my capacity to keep track of them.”

Flinx’s smile gave way to a frown. The Teacher’s computational and predictive abilities were exceptional. “I don’t understand.” He looked around again. “How many of the stony objects are moving toward me?”

“All of them.”

He was silent for a moment, uncertain he had heard correctly. “I’m not sure I understand, ship. All of the objects in my vicinity are moving toward me?”

“That depends on how you choose to define ‘vicinity,’ Flinx.” The Teacher’s voice was dry and dispassionate “They are all moving in your direction. The entire asteroid belt, billions and billions of individual objects, is now in motion and giving every indication of commencing a slow but accelerating collapse. You are in the approximate center of it.”

Flinx looked around uneasily. It did not unsettle him that as far as he could see into the void, rocks and stones of every size and shape were rushing in his direction. It did not bother him that as more and more of them slammed into one another and melded together, a great green glowing shape was taking on contour and character not far from where he floated. Emerald sparks flew in all directions, lighting the darkness. It was as if he were drifting across the top of Vulcan’s anvil.

It was only when a trio of asteroids each of which was at least fifty kilometers across appeared out of the dark and came tumbling toward him at high speed that he finally comprehended the enormity of what the Teacher had told him.