But they might be scouting out a way for the Skorpis to infiltrate the ruins and surprise my troopers. Frede must have been right; they had put surveillance satellites into orbit and watched us trek to that ancient city. Like spiders watching a band of weary, lost flies. They sat in the center of their web and invited us to come in.

 

I heard their footsteps before I saw them. Echoing down the metallic passageway, the soft wet padding of their bare feet came to me. Then their voices, low and rumbling like distant thunder. I pulled the hatch almost completely shut, leaving just a slit open for me to peer through. And shoot through. There was not an atom of cover for them.

 

Checking my pistol to make certain it was set at its highest level and still fully charged, I waited grimly as they came closer to me and their deaths.

 

They were talking as they walked down the passageway. I found that I could understand their language, just as I had understood every language I had encountered on all of the missions the Golden One had heaped upon me. I could almost see his smirking expression of superiority, almost hear him telling me gloatingly that he had put the knowledge of the local languages into my brain the way one might insert a list of names and addresses into a computer.

 

"Another waste of time," one of the Skorpis was grumbling.

 

The smaller one, in the middle, said in a lighter, softer tone, "Absence of proof is not proof of absence."

 

The first one growled, "You may impress your fellow scientists with such talk, but all I see is a day spent searching for prey that doesn't exist."

 

"They exist," said the smaller one. "We're certain of that."

 

The third one spoke up. "Once I was certain that I could fly with no aid except a certain magical beverage that I had been drinking." His voice was heavy, sorrowful. "I was very certain. But I was wrong. Several broken bones showed how wrong I was."

 

"The aliens are here," said the one in the middle. Her voice sounded like a woman's. A human woman's.

 

"So you believe."

 

"We have evidence of their presence," she insisted.

 

"I am only a warrior, not a scientist. I believe what I can see, what I can touch or smell or hear or sink my teeth into. Your evidence"-he practically sneered the word-"is nothing but old myths and the tales of ancient ones."

 

They were getting close enough for me to see that the smaller of them was a human. A woman. Humans working with the Skorpis? I had thought that the human race was locked in a war for survival against the Skorpis and their allies. How could humans be allied to our enemies?

 

"We have more evidence than the mythology," the woman said. "And these underwater structures were built for a purpose."

 

Neither Skorpis warrior answered her. Yet their silence was more eloquent than further arguing.

 

They were close enough for me to see clearly now. Unarmed. From the sound of their conversation, they knew nothing about my troopers in the ruins. They were looking for aliens, based on ancient myths.

 

If I gunned them down it would tell their leaders that enemies were near. When they failed to return to the Skorpis base, others would be sent to search for them. I could not hide their bodies. Sooner or later they would be found. The fact that they came out here unarmed told me that there were no predators in these waters that they feared. Their disappearance would immediately be suspect.

 

And, truth to tell, I found the prospect of shooting an unarmed human woman more than I wanted to deal with. Besides, I wanted to find out what she was doing with the Skorpis. There was much more going on here than the Golden One had told me.

 

 

Chapter 9

 

Softly I shut the hatch. Swiftly I opened the one in the floor and slipped into the water. Closing it behind me, I swam back out into the open sea and used my flight pack to drive myself quickly away from the end of the tube, back to the structures that could hide me.

 

If the trio suspected that someone else had been in the air lock, they gave no sign of it. They came out, with helmets and flippers back in place, gathered up their tools and swam back toward the Skorpis base. I waited awhile, then followed at a more leisurely pace, bobbing up to the surface every few minutes to gulp in air, rather like a dolphin.

 

There were underwater piers at the Skorpis base, too, but they were far smaller than the ancient ruins. Only two of them, and so new that hardly a barnacle had attached itself to them as yet.

 

I could see above me the shadow of a pier built over the water's surface, extending out the same length as this underwater shaft. Cautiously I rose to the surface for a fresh swallow of air. So far so good. I was almost inside the Skorpis base. Almost. It surprised me that the Skorpis had not set out electronic security systems underwater to protect their base from any possible seaborne threat. And the trio I had seen in the water had been unarmed. It was as if they expected no enemy attack, almost as if this was not a military base at all.

 

And there was at least one human working with them.

 

The sun was sinking into the sea, throwing a reddish gold glow over the wave tops. I treaded water for a while, bobbing up and down as each fresh crest of the incoming tide surged past me. I was close enough to the enemy to hear them walking along the pier above my head, to hear their voices as they worked and talked and complained about their situation the way all soldiers do everywhere, in any era.

 

"Protecting a litter of humans," one voice griped. "This isn't the life of a warrior."

 

"Maybe you'd rather have been with Second Battalion," said its companion.

 

"At least they got to use their claws."

 

"They're all dead. Is that what you want to be?"

 

"We should've sent in both battalions."

 

"No, we shouldn't have sent in either one. We should've nuked those hairless apes in the first place, not wasted a whole battalion trying to capture their damnable transceiver."

 

"Well, anyway, we're stuck with guard duty."

 

"Do you trust 'em?"

 

"Who?"

 

"The humans, who else? They say they're scientists, but do you think we can trust them? Or are they really spies?"

 

"How the hell should I know? They all look alike to me. The gray furs make those decisions."

 

"Like the decision to try to capture the enemy transceiver."

 

"Yes. Just like that."

 

There was more than one human in the Skorpis camp. And they were scientists, apparently. My head buzzed with the possibilities. Perhaps this was the way for me to penetrate farther into their camp.

 

I gave the matter a few moments' thought. No sense waiting until dark. Boldness might work where stealth would be detected.

 

Hoping that all humans truly did look alike to these Skorpis warriors, I wormed my shoulders out of the flight-pack harness and fastened it to the underside of the pier. With some feelings of trepidation, I also unbuckled my gunbelt and left the laser pistol and knife there, as well. Then I reached up, grabbed the edge of the pier and hauled myself up out of the water.

 

"Who the hell...?" The two Skorpis on the pier were evidently sentries. They both had rifles, which they immediately unslung from their shoulders and pointed at me.

 

"Identify yourself!" said the larger of the two. Both of them were enormous, towering above my height and twice my bulk.

 

"Orion," I said, trying to smile disarmingly. "I got separated from the others and just made it back."

 

"I've never seen you before."

 

"Just arrived a few days ago," I said.

 

"There's been no resupply mission here for months," said the Skorpis. Both their rifles were pointed at my chest.

 

Drawing myself up on my dignity, I answered as haughtily as I could, "I was brought here on a special flight, at great expense. At least your superiors recognize the value of a scientist, even if you don't."

 

They looked at each other. It was difficult to read the expression on their feline faces, but to me they seemed uncertain, fully suspecting that I was lying through my teeth but unable to be sure. Then they did what all soldiers in every era do when in doubt: they marched me to their commanding officer.

 

Thus I was trooped from one giant Skorpis to another, from the pier to the command post at its base, from the command post to the quarters of the officer of the guard. From there to the offices of the chief of security, where a Skorpis wearing a chestful of ribbons on a cinnamon-colored uniform eyed me with enormous suspicion from behind an airport-sized desk. There were no obvious gender characteristics among the Skorpis, at least none that I could detect with their uniforms on, but I knew from my briefing information that this security chief was a female, as all Skorpis officers were.

 

"You come out of the sea with no clothes, no equipment?"

 

I must admit that I did feel slightly foolish standing in front of her with nothing but a pair of shorts that were still dripping wet. "I am with the human scientists," I said with as much dignity as I could command. "I was simply swimming near the base to check the structures that have been built underwater."

 

"And you claim that you arrived three days ago."

 

"Yes, that's right."

 

"There has been no flight into this base since the fleet departed after the battle several weeks ago," she growled at me.

 

"Take me to my fellow scientists," I insisted. "They'll vouch for me."

 

"There has been no flight in here for several weeks," she repeated.

 

"There was one. Perhaps you were not informed about it."

 

"That is impossible. Who are you and where are you from?"

 

I kept insisting that she take me to the other human scientists. She studied me the way a cat studies a bird chirping on a limb, just out of reach.

 

"The only other humans on this planet were the assault team that we wiped out. Perhaps we didn't exterminate all of you...." There was a heavily gouged square of wood on her desktop. Unconsciously, she scraped the unsheathed claws of one hand along it. Or was it unconsciously? I got the impression she would like to use her claws on me.

 

I continued my bluff. "If you'll simply let me see my fellow scientists, I'm certain that all this confusion can be cleared up."

 

She shook her head in a very human negative.

 

"What harm could it do?" I coaxed. "One single human, unarmed, in the midst of a whole baseful of warriors?"

 

"You could be carrying an explosive device inside you. You could be an android. A walking bomb. The humans are very clever that way."

 

I shrugged carelessly. "Examine me, then. Probe me with search beams."

 

"You've already been probed," she replied. "While you've been standing here."

 

"Have you found any explosives? Anything at all but normal human organs inside a normal human skin?"

 

"You humans are very clever," she muttered again.

 

After nearly an hour of stubborn intransigence, she finally decided to march me personally-with a squad of six fully-armed warriors escorting us-to the part of the base where the human scientists were quartered.

 

"They sleep at night," she said disdainfully as we walked through the camp. It was bustling with activity, much as a human camp would in early morning. "This will disturb them."

 

It seemed to me that she did not mind disturbing the humans. Not in the slightest.

 

The humans were in a compound separated from the rest of the base by a fence of energy beams. Two Skorpis guards snapped to spine-popping attention as the officer approached. They turned off a section of the fence for us to walk through. The officer ordered our escort to remain at the fence. "Come if I call you," she commanded them. They saluted as one single organism.

 

It was quiet inside the human compound. Most of the buildings were dark, although lights showed through the windows of one long, low-roofed structure.

 

"The humans eat their meals together," the officer muttered, from somewhere in the darkness over my head. "They eat plants and pastes made by machines." Her voice reeked with distaste.

 

I was tempted to tell her that some humans hunt for their meals. But I refrained.

 

Without knocking she opened the door to the mess hall-for that is what it was-and stepped inside. Floorboards creaked under her mass. I came in behind her.

 

Twenty-two men and women, each of them in drab coveralls, stopped eating and turned to stare at us, spoons and forks in midair, mouths open and eyes wide with surprise.

 

The officer grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and nearly hauled me off my feet.

 

"This one says he belongs with you," she said, loud enough to rattle the windows. "Does he speak truth?"

 

A bearded man at the head of the table swallowed hard enough for me to see his Adam's apple work up and down.

 

"He belongs with us, yes," he said in a high, surprised voice.

 

The officer let go of me.

 

"When did he arrive? How?"

 

Before they could give a story that contradicted mine, I rattled, "On the special flight several days ago, just as I told you." Desperately I hoped that none of the other humans would give me away.

 

"I know of no special flight."

 

"It was only here very briefly," said the man at the head of the table.

 

"You might have been out at the perimeter," one of the women added, in a voice that trembled slightly.

 

"I can check all incoming flights in our computer records," said the officer. "If he is lying, he will die. If you help him lie, you will die with him."

 

The bearded man at the head of the table got to his feet. "You can't threaten us so easily. We were sent here by the Hegemony high command. The work we have to do here is too important to the progress of the war for us to be bullied by Skorpis warriors."

 

The officer hissed at him, just like a spitting cat. Then she said, with murderous calm, "The Hegemony orders us to protect you. If this human is a spy or a saboteur, he must be dealt with. If you help him, you are working against the Hegemony and you will be dealt with also."

 

"Let us take care of him," the bearded man said. "He's no threat to you or anyone else."

 

"You vouch for him? He is a scientist, as you are?"

 

The man started to nod, but one of the women down the table burst but, "We never saw him before! We don't know who he is!"

 

"Randa!"

 

"It's no good, Delos," she said to the bearded one. "What we're trying to accomplish here is too important to allow some spy to wreck everything!"

 

"You say he is a spy?" the officer thundered.

 

"None of us ever saw him before!" Randa fairly screamed. "Take him away. Open up his brain and find out who he is and why he's here!"

 

 

Chapter 10

 

Everyone in the mess hall froze, frightened, faces contorted with shock and uncertainty. Even the huge Skorpis security officer stood stock-still for a moment, just as stunned by Randa's revelation as the other humans.

 

In that flash of a moment I acted. It was either move or die, and I had no intention of dying.

 

I spun on the ball of my foot and punched the security officer as hard as I could on her chin. She staggered backward, knees buckling. Before she could recover I bolted across the mess hall, vaulting clean over the table while several of the humans shrieked and hurling myself through one of the windows. I crashed through and landed head-first on the hard-baked ground outside. I could hear the security officer bellowing like a lioness in heat as I rolled to my feet and ran for the energy fence that enclosed the human compound.

 

It was more than two meters high, but I cleared it with room to spare. Fear augments athletic skills. Now I could hear shouting behind me as I raced through the square tents and more permanent structures of the Skorpis camp. There were plenty of the huge warriors in sight, working, digging, marching in the darkness of the night. They seemed more surprised than alarmed as I sprinted past them, heading for the beach and the sea.

 

I knew the officer I had slugged would radio her security detail to head me off. And sure enough, I could see teams of warriors bustling out of the buildings at the base of the twin piers up ahead. More shouts behind me and a laser bolt crackling bright red lanced past my ear. A warning shot. They won't try to kill me, I reasoned. They want me alive for questioning. But that didn't mean they wouldn't gleefully burn my legs off.

 

I dodged behind one of the metal prefabricated buildings and started running off at a tangent to the beach. The piers were out, too well guarded. But if I could get to the water perhaps I could wait awhile, then swim back to the place where I had stashed my flight pack and weapons. If the Skorpis did not find them first.

 

As I bolted around the corner of another building, angling off toward the beach once more, a team of six Skorpis suddenly loomed ahead of me. All of them armed with rifles. I gave them no chance to aim at me. I dived into them with a rolling block, barreling into their legs, knocking several of them down. My senses were in overdrive, and I saw them tangling each other's arms and legs, cursing and snarling as they tried to pull themselves loose and get at me. I grabbed the rifle out of the hands of one of them, clubbed him to his knees with its butt, then flipped it around and fired into them point-blank.

 

I had no time to see how much damage I had done. Leaving them writhing on the ground, I dashed off toward the beach once again. To my left I could see a squad of Skorpis running along the sand in my direction. I had to get to the water before they saw me.

 

 

Too late. They saw in the dark much better than I did, and they quickly fired several rifle blasts at my feet, puffing up gritty pebbles and sand. I skidded to a stop and they ceased shooting and came running toward me.

 

I fired from the hip, one-handed, and knocked the closest two of them down. Then I flung myself face-first on the ground as the rest of them dropped to their knees and shot back at me.

 

There was no time for a firefight. If they pinned me down here for more than a few moments, the whole Skorpis base would be upon me. I had no choice. I leaped to my feet, firing as I ran, and raced for the water as fast as my legs would carry me.

 

My firing made them duck their heads a bit, but before I had taken a dozen strides a laser bolt seared my hip. I spun around, staggered, then drove on toward the water. Clamping down on the blood vessels, shutting off the pain signals, I limped toward the sea, only a tantalizingly dozen or so meters away now.

 

Another bolt hit my leg and I flopped down, rolled, and used my rifle to haul myself up again. I hopped, hobbled, staggered for the water as the Skorpis warriors came running toward me.

 

"Alive!" I heard one of them yell. "Take him alive!"

 

That was my one hope. I shot two more of the warriors as I tottered for the water. More laser blasts hit me, in the legs, in the chest. They were no longer worried about preserving me for interrogation; I was hitting too many of them.

 

I splashed into the surf, still firing, still being hit. Despite my rigid self-control I felt as if my legs had been burned off. Another bolt burned my shoulder so badly that I dropped the rifle. It hissed as its hot barrel struck the water.

 

The world was spinning. The surf surging against my bloodied legs, knocking me over as more laser blasts lanced past my head. They were shooting to kill.

 

I crawled into the waves, letting the water surge over me, cool and stinging with salt. Like a crab I scrabbled along the sandy bottom as the water flowed over my head, covering me, protecting me from their merciless lasers. I tasted salt water in my mouth, felt it filling my nose. I was deep enough now to float up off the bottom and let the current carry me out farther from the land.

 

There was not much skin on me that was unburned, I knew. Despite my control of the pain signals, my body was telling me that it was almost gone. Legs useless, one arm burned to the bone, another searing wound in my chest.

 

I floated to the surface and gulped cool night air. I did not have the strength to swim. I was going to die again, and this time I knew that the Golden One had no intention of reviving me. I had failed in my mission. Failed him. Failed myself.

 

I would never see Anya again. Never look into her gray solemn eyes. Never feel her touch, hear her voice.

 

The Golden One had abandoned me to die here on this miserable planet. They had all abandoned me, all the Creators. Even Anya.

 

A bitter torrent of regret surged through me. Somewhere deep in my mind I could hear Aten's scornful laughter telling me that he knew I would fail him. I was merely a creature, after all. How dare I presume to love one of the Creators? I was made to be their tool, not their equal.

 

Regret. Love for Anya. Hatred for the Golden One. All these emotions flooded through me as I bobbed in the swells of that unnamed ocean, dying.

 

And something else. Something that I had never realized existed within me came to the front of my consciousness. Me. Myself. The individual who is Orion. Not the slave of the Golden One. Not even the lover of the goddess Anya. Myself. It did not matter how I was created or by whom. It did not matter who I loved or who loved me. I exist. I live and breathe and love and hate. I will not tamely die, mourning my failures, bemoaning my fate.

 

I pulled what little strength was left in my battered body and concentrated every atom of my will. There are paths through space-time, I knew. The continuum is like an ocean, and there are currents in it that can carry you from one place-time to another.

 

Squeezing my eyes shut, I thought back to all the times I had been translated through the continuum of space-time. Could I move myself voluntarily? Could I reach that city of the Creators, the city I had saved from Set's destruction, the city that they kept safe in its own protective bubble of energy?

 

With my eyes tight closed I could not see the stars in the night sky. My body grew cold, numb. I no longer felt the bobbing of the sea. Colder I grew, cryogenically cold for an endless moment.

 

And then I felt the warmth of sunlight on my naked skin. I opened my eyes and found myself lying in a meadow on a hillside. And below me lay the magnificent city of the Creators beneath its radiant sphere of energy, rising beside a calm blue sea.

 

A city of monuments and heroic statues, all dedicated to the Creators themselves. Pyramids and temples from every era, every culture of Earth. A city empty of people, except for the handful of Creators, the self-styled masters of the human race who had allowed themselves to be worshipped as gods. They had translated the monuments that adoring humans had built to them, accumulating them into this glowing city devoted to their own gratifications.

 

I rose to my feet. My body was whole and strong. The breeze from the sea was cool, the sun high overhead warming. I walked through wildflowers down the hill toward the city. Deer bounded in the woods farther off to my right. Rabbits hurried through the grass at my feet, stopping now and then to stare at me, noses twitching.

 

The city was empty. I knew that there were robots and mechanical conveniences waiting to be summoned by mere thought. But the Creators were not there, not one of them. I felt disappointed, yet not surprised. Aten had told me that they were scattered among the stars, struggling to resolve this ultimate crisis that they faced. Yet, to beings who can come and go through space-time at will, why were none of them here in their home base at this particular nexus in the continuum?

 

I wandered on, asking myself what I expected of this visit and getting nothing but a vague sense of uneasiness by way of an answer.

 

Past the Mayan Temple of the Sun I strolled, alone in the ageless city. Past the Parthenon and the great golden reclining Buddha that seemed to be grinning at me, knowingly. I walked through the city from one side to the other until I was at the base of the massive pyramid of Khufu, out beyond the Colossus of Rhodes.

 

I turned the corner of the great pyramid and there was the ocean, clean and glittering beneath the sun, waves washing up on the beach with curls of froth as they broke gently against the sand. The sea called to me and I walked into it, wading up to my hips before I slid in and began swimming slowly out toward the distant horizon.

 

"Welcome, friend Orion," said a dolphin that popped up beside me. "We are happy to see you back among us."

 

"Back among you?" I asked.

 

I saw that I was surrounded by the grinning sea mammals, gray and sleek and each as big as five men or more. It was no surprise to me that I understood their clicks and whistles. But I was surprised that they understood my tongue.

 

"It's been a long time since we hunted the fast-darting tuna together," said the nearest dolphin.

 

"Or went diving to the lair of the giant squid," said another.

 

"Where are the Creators?" I asked. "Do you know?"

 

"The other two-legs? They have been gone for long ages, Orion."

 

"They aren't much fun. They argue among themselves most of the time."

 

"They forget that we can hear them. Our sense of hearing is very acute."

 

"I know," I said, grinning back at them as I treaded water.

 

"Come!" said the nearest one. "There's a whole school of tuna not more than five kilometers from here. Let's feast on them!"

 

"Wait!" I begged. "I can't swim that far."

 

"No need for you to swim, friend Orion. Ride on my back the way you used to so many tides ago."

 

"If you don't mind carrying me..."

 

"Of course not! One hunter to another, we are all friends here in the sea."

 

So I slid one leg across his smooth back and clutched his dorsal fin with both my hands and off we went on a wild splashing ride, the dolphin racing powerfully, smoothly through the ocean, dipping down below the surface to run as fast as possible, then sliding up to blow steamy stale air through his vent and pull in a gulp of fresh air with a wet sucking noise. I did the same each time he popped to the surface. If the individual dolphins had names I never learned them; they seemed to know each other without the need for such tags.

 

They said I had gone hunting with them before, that we were old friends. I had no memory of it whatsoever, but I did not let that interfere with my enjoyment of this wild splashing ride through the ocean. The water was clear as air down to a considerable depth, with the sun lighting it up. If it weren't for the bubbles and the swarms of colorful fish darting all around us, I would not have thought we were underwater.

 

And then would come the splashing, frothing moment of breaking the surface, taking a fresh gulp of air. And then down below we would go again, sliding along smoothly on the powerful strokes of their tails.

 

Soon enough we came to the tuna school, big silver-gray sleek speedsters who turned and fled at the approach of the tribe of dolphins. Fast as the tuna were, though, the dolphins were faster. We split up into several smaller groups, circling around the school of tuna to set up a trap, much as the Mongols did on their great hunts each year. I slid free of my mount and hovered with a few of the older dolphins, treading water as I waited for the circlers to drive the prey toward us.

 

"Don't let them get past you!" my friend clicked gleefully as he dashed off. Underwater, I could not reply to him.

 

The tuna panicked and tried to evade the trap. The dolphins snapped them up in their grinning jaws by the dozens, by the hundred, gulping them down one after another. I grabbed one, more than enough for me to handle, bit through its spine to kill it and then let myself float to the surface with the big fish in my hands.

 

"Only one, friend Orion?" my friend teased. "This is the mighty hunter?"

 

I laughed as I tore at the clean fresh meat of the tuna. "How many deer can you chase down, legless one? How many rabbits can you outrun?"

 

I saw the dark fins of sharks circling in the distance, attracted by our slaughter of the tuna, but they kept away from the dolphins. As the sun began to slide toward the sea, we swam back to the beach by the Creators' city, with me riding my friend's back again.

 

Finally I was wading toward the beach. I stopped while still waist-deep in the water and shouted a farewell to the dolphins.

 

"Thanks for the hunt," I called.

 

"The sea is good, friend Orion. Too bad you aren't a dolphin, or at least a whale. You are a good companion, for a two-leg."

 

"And you are good friends, all of you. Thanks for sharing your hunt with me."

 

"The sea will always be your friend, Orion. It is good in the water."

 

With that, they turned and headed out to the deeper waters, leaving me to stagger back up the beach and throw myself on the warm sand for the lowering sun to dry me.

 

The sea will always be my friend, they said. Yet there was a place in space-time where I was floating helpless in the sea, wounded and dying.

 

I returned to that place.

 

 

Chapter 11

 

I had hoped that I could somehow return with my body repaired, strong and healed of my wounds. But that, I could not do.

 

I opened my eyes and saw the starry dark night and felt pain, wave after wave of agony throbbing through every part of my body. Even as I consciously damped down the pain receptors in my brain I could feel it sullenly glowering beneath my deliberate self-control.

 

I was floating on my back in the deep, dark ocean, just as battered and helpless as I had been before my trip to the Creators' realm. Had I really been there, cavorting with dolphins? Or was it all an illusion, a self-imposed dream, a feverish attempt at escapism?

 

My self-questioning quickly ended. I felt something brush against my badly burned leg. Just a touch, enough to make me twitch with alarm and get a mouthful of salt water in return. Then it was gone. But it would be back, I knew.

 

I remembered those tentacled horrors in the swamp, and wondered what predators this ocean harbored. Alone, half-dead, weaponless, I was going to be easy prey for some hungry hunter.

 

The sea will always be my friend, the dolphins had told me. I doubted it.

 

Another touch, making me flinch again. I remembered that sharks will often nudge their prey, bump it, almost play with it like a cat with a mouse before snapping it up in those horrendous tearing teeth.

 

Should I play dead or try to swim away? Would it make any difference?

 

It was no shark. This time I felt a tentacle delicately wrapping itself around the burned remains of my ankle. I shook my leg and it let go.

 

But not for long. The tentacle came back at precisely the same spot. This time it held fast. Quickly another slithered across my chest. I could feel its suckers attaching themselves to my burned flesh, delicately, almost tenderly.

 

I knew it was hopeless but I gulped down a big swallow of air as the tentacles pulled me below the surface. Bubbles gurgled in my ears. We sank down into the cold inky depths of the ocean.

 

Do not be afraid, friend Orion, I heard in my mind. We will not hurt you.

 

Now I'm hallucinating, I told myself. First I dream about dolphins and now I hallucinate that I can hear their voices in my mind. While I'm being pulled down to the bottom of the sea by some tentacled monster. If I don't drown the pressure will cave in my ribs soon enough.

 

Have a little faith, friend Orion, the voice in my mind said. It felt almost amused.

 

I lost track of time as we sank deeper and deeper into the sea. There was no light to see by, no sensation at all except the rush of water swirling by me.

 

Listen to the music of our world, said the voice. Open your mind to it.

 

I could hear more than gurgling, I realized. There were crackling sounds all around me. Hoots and whistles and soft thrumming noises. And off in the distance a faint melodic crooning that rose and fell. None of the clicks and whistles of dolphins, though.

 

 

Now open your eyes, Orion.

 

I hadn't realized I'd been keeping them shut. Involuntarily I gasped. I was surrounded by hundreds of soft glowing points of light, like being in the middle of a meadow full of fireflies or in the heart of a cluster of gleaming stars.

 

And when I gasped I had air to breathe.

 

"Can you hear me?" the voice asked. And I could. It was using sound rather than telepathy or whatever form of mind contact it had used before.

 

"Good," it said, without my answering. "The air globe is stabilized and you should feel more comfortable. We will see what can be done about your wounds." The voice was silky soft, warm and calm.

 

"Who are you?" I asked. "Where are we?"

 

The lights danced and twinkled around me, blue and red and green and yellow, but I could not make out any shapes.

 

"We are nearing the bottom of the sea, roughly a hundred kilometers from the shore where the Skorpis have made their base."

 

"You know about them?"

 

I sensed a tolerant chuckle. "Yes, we know about them. And about you." The voice grew darker, more severe. "And about the way you casually slaughter one another."

 

"I wouldn't call it casual," I replied.

 

No response. The lights flickered around me, as if they were dancing in a sphere all around me, binding me in a web of blinking colorful flashes of energy.

 

"You haven't told me who you are," I said.

 

"You may call us the Old Ones."

 

"What does that mean?"

 

Again that tolerant sense of amusement, like a grandfather watching a baby's hesitant first steps.

 

"You will find out in due course," the voice said. "For now, we must travel deeper into the sea."

 

I got a sense of motion, acceleration, a tremendous rushing through the dark waters. The lights remained all around me. I could breathe. I seemed to be floating weightlessly, almost like an astronaut in orbit. In the dim flickering light I could see that my wounds were scabbing over. The bleeding had stopped completely and I felt a little stronger. All the while I was moving through the inky depths, speeding deeper and deeper, farther and farther from the shore.

 

At last I saw more lights approaching. They glowed and pulsated as if they were living, breathing creatures. Whole avenues of light opened up before my eyes, as if I were flying toward a vast city, swooping along a highway of lights that led to its magnificent heart.

 

"How do you feel?" the voice asked.

 

"Bewildered."

 

"I mean physically. Your wounds."

 

I flexed my arms, looked down at my legs. They were healing rapidly.

 

"Everything seems to be going along fine."

 

"Good. We are pleased."

 

"Tell me more about yourselves. What is this city of lights that we are approaching?"

 

"This is our home, Orion. The home of the Old Ones."

 

"May I see you?" I asked, sensing that these lights were merely sparks of energy.

 

"You may be unpleasantly surprised," the voice replied. "You may be repelled by our appearance."

 

"Then tell me what to expect."

 

"A reasonable approach to the problem." The voice hesitated, as if checking with others before answering my request. Then:

 

"Orion, your Creators have told you that space-time is an ocean, have they not?"

 

"The one called Aten has taunted me more than once about my linear perception of space-time," I answered.

 

"Yes, we can see that. Yet your linear perception is not entirely in error, Orion."

 

"There are currents in the ocean of space-time," I said.

 

"And there is a flow, a very definite flow. Time's arrow exists. Entropy exists. Even though we may move back and forth across the ocean of space-time, we still cannot hold back entropy. The continuum unravels a little whenever we move through space-time. The greater our move, the more disorder arises."

 

"But what has this to do with the way you look?" I asked.

 

"Time's arrow," the voice replied. "There are earlier times and later times. There is a point in space-time when your planet Earth is barren and lifeless. There is a point where the human race begins-"

 

"Built by the Creators and sent to destroy the Neanderthals so that Earth can be inhabited by the Creators' creatures."

 

"Who in turn, over the millennia, evolve into the Creators themselves."

 

"Yes. They created us and we created them."

 

"There is a point in the evolution of our kind," the voice said, "when we had not yet developed intelligence, when we were far simpler beings living in the seas of our original world."

 

"Lunga is not your original world?"

 

"Oh, no. Not at all."

 

"Then where did you originate?"

 

I sensed a hesitation. "Does it matter? Suffice to say that once we were far simpler beings than we are now."

 

"Simpler beings," I said, beginning to understand what he was hinting at, "with tentacles?"

 

"Yes."

 

"And claws that can crack armor?"

 

"Do you think you are prepared to see us?"

 

I thought of those things in the swamp, with their clutching tentacles and snapping claws and dozens of beady eyes.

 

I took a breath and said shakily, "Yes, I'm ready."

 

"Very well."

 

The sea around me brightened and I saw that I was surrounded by dozens of writhing tentacled creatures. They were huge, immense, like gigantic pulsating jellyfish with long wriggling tentacles and lipless round mouths that opened and closed, opened and closed, coming nearer and nearer to me. My skin crawled and I felt panic rising inside me, surrounded by these enormous engulfing undulating horrors pressing closer and closer, tentacles reaching out for me, mouths pulsating....

 

"Can you rise above your fears, Orion?"

 

I wanted to scream. Those enormous gaping mouths, like suckers big enough to swallow me whole, they seemed to be bearing down upon me, coming to devour me, coming to grasp me in those powerful tentacles and stuff me into one of those gaping maws. I could feel their digestive fluids burning into my flesh. I felt smothered, suffocating.

 

"Can you see beyond your terror, Orion? Can you look upon us as we truly are?"

 

I realized my eyes were squeezed shut, my fists pressed so hard against my temples I thought my skull would burst. They saved you! I raged at myself. They're healing your wounds. They are intelligent beings. Go beyond their appearance; look at them as they see themselves.

 

Shaking with dread, I opened my eyes and forced myself to look at them again. They hovered all around me, huge, engulfing. I took a deep, shuddering breath. They came no closer, floating silently in the deep waters. Yet they were so enormous that they filled my vision wherever I looked. There was no escaping them. I fought against the panic that surged through me, deliberately forced my heart to slow its terrified beat, calmed my breathing to something close to normal.

 

I stared at them for long, long minutes. They hovered all around me, pulsating slowly, lights flickering within their undulating bodies, patterns of color glowing and shifting rhythmically across their translucent skins. There was a certain dignity to them, I slowly recognized. Even a certain kind of beauty as they floated throbbing in the deep waters. They moved gracefully, I forced myself to admit, trying to avoid looking at those dilating mouths.

 

And they were watching me intently. Each of them possessed two giant, solemn eyes that seemed focused on me.

 

"You are... beautiful," I managed to croak.

 

"We are glad you think so. After your experience in the swamp we were afraid that you would be biased against us. Xenophobia is one of the deepest traits of your species."

 

"We were created to be warriors," I replied. "It makes it easier to kill your foes if you are frightened of them."

 

"And yet the dolphins vouched for you."

 

"The dolphins?" I blurted. "Are they here?"

 

"Not in this era," the voice answered.

 

I realized that these Old Ones could travel through time the way the Creators could. The way I had myself.

 

"When we first made contact with you, Orion," the voice continued, "we sensed nothing but a warrior intent on slaying his enemies. But the dolphins told us you were a good friend to them, so we probed deeper."

 

It was the Old Ones whom I had sensed earlier, then. Yet I had no memory of how I got to be a good friend to the dolphins. Was I sent on a mission into the ocean, in another era?

 

"We find that although your basic instincts are those of a warrior, there are other desires struggling within you."

 

"I have a will of my own," I told them, "even though my Creator looks upon me as nothing more than a tool for his use."

 

"That is a part of the problem you present to us." The voice sounded slightly perturbed despite its silky smoothness. "We have been observing your kind since you first arrived. You humans are bloodthirsty as well as xenophobic."

 

"We were made that way," I admitted. "Although some of us have tried to rise above it."

 

"Have you?"

 

"Some of us have. There are humans at the Skorpis base who are scientists. They are not warriors, not killers."

 

"Why do you not regard the Skorpis as humans?" Although I heard only one voice, I got the impression that more than one of these sea creatures was speaking to me, or perhaps they were all speaking, and what I heard was a blend of their individual thoughts and questions.

 

"The Skorpis come from another world," I answered. "They are descended from felines."

 

"While your kind are patterned after primate apes."

 

"That's right," I said.

 

"What makes you think that the Skorpis come from a different origin than your own?"

 

"They couldn't..." I hesitated. "Do you mean that they were also-"

 

"Produced by your Creators? Why do you find that difficult to believe?"

 

"Not difficult. Just-a new idea. I hadn't considered it before."

 

"The universe is old, Orion. And your Creators have been very busy."

 

"But if the Skorpis were also made by the Creators, why are they fighting against us?" I asked.

 

"Whatever your Creators touch degenerates into violence," the Old Ones said. "They are a plague among the stars."

 

"But you," I asked again. "Who are you? What have you to do with the Creators?"

 

"We are a very old race, Orion. Older than your Creators by tens of millions of years. We have no desire to be dragged into the slaughters that your kind are perpetrating."

 

"Why should you be?"

 

"Because your fellow humans have discovered us. They have tried to make contact with us. They want us to ally ourselves with them against their enemies."

 

"I don't even know who our enemies are," I said.

 

"Other humans, of course. And species of similar levels of development, such as the Skorpis and the Tsihn."

 

I felt confused, stunned almost, at all this new information they were throwing at me. They sensed my mental turmoil.

 

"Do not feel anxious, Orion. We will explain everything to you so that you can understand it fully."

 

Why? I wondered. What do they want?

 

As if in answer, the silky voice told me, "You are going to be our ambassador, Orion. You will give our message to your Creators."

 

 

Chapter 12

 

The city of the Old Ones, down at the abyssal depths of the ocean, was a vast wonderland of delights. Actually, the term city is a misnomer, for the Old Ones had no need for buildings or structures. Yet they clustered together in this sea-bottom aggregation of lights and patterns, exchanging thoughts like very old and very wise philosophers. Aristotle would have been happy here; Plato would have found his republic of intellect.

 

For countless days I wandered through the city, buoyed in an invisible sphere that somehow always was filled with fresh air. I neither ate nor drank, yet I was nourished and refreshed. My wounds healed completely as I learned of the Old Ones, their origins and history, their place in the continuum, their relationship to the Creators and the war that was spanning this region of the galaxy.

 

The Old Ones had evolved from octopus-like invertebrates living in the early seas of their home planet. We humans have a prejudice that a species cannot become fully intelligent until it masters energy sources beyond its own muscular power. For a land-dwelling species such as ourselves, that first energy source was fire. Since fire is impossible underwater, we tend to dismiss the possibilities of intelligent sea creatures. Even the dolphins would not have reached true intelligence if human scientists had not augmented their native brains.

 

The Old Ones had manipulating organs: ten tentacles that could grasp and maneuver as well as human hands or better. They had large, intelligent brains and exquisitely subtle sensory organs. Instead of fire, they developed the abundant electrical energies they found in many species of fish and eels. Where we humans built tools and learned engineering, the Old Ones learned biology and incorporated the living forms they needed into a symbiotic existence within their own bodies.

 

They learned about the world around them. Over the millennia, over the eons, they slowly built up a body of knowledge about the sea and, eventually, the land and even the sun and stars. Long before the dinosaurs ranged across Mesozoic Earth, the Old Ones discovered the energies of space-time and learned how to move through the continuum.

 

By the time the primate apes of Earth began to develop into the earliest hominids, the Old Ones had explored the galaxy. By the time Aten and the other Creators decided to build their human tools and send them to the Ice Age strongholds of the Neanderthals on a mission of genocide, the Old Ones had decided to keep to themselves, content to contemplate the universe without tampering with it.

 

Where we humans, driven by our Creators, are constantly meddling with the flow of space-time, constantly trying to alter the continuum to suit our needs and desires, the Old Ones have withdrawn to their oceans and their thoughts. They are to us as a giant sequoia tree is to a chittering squirrel.

 

All this I learned from them.

 

"Friend Orion," said the silky-voiced one to me, "the moment has come for you to return to your own kind."

 

The Old One who addressed me was swimming alongside my sphere as we gently glided through an avenue of blue-white lights that flickered like fireflies through the dark water. In all the time I had spent with them I had never heard any of the Old Ones refer to one another by a name. They had no need of names, it seemed. I could tell them from one another by differences in their coloration and in the sound of their voices, although I never did learn how they produced sounds that I could hear.

 

"You know now who we are and what we are," said my companion and teacher. "Please tell your Creators that we refuse to be drawn into their slaughters. Our only desire is to live in peace."

 

"But what if one of our warring groups tries to force you to join their side?"

 

Again that sense of gentle amusement. "We will not be forced, Orion. We will not listen to their words. If they try to use weapons against us, their weapons will not function. We threaten no one. We will harm no one. But we will not allow our knowledge or strength to be used in war."

 

I recognized the hint.

 

"Will you meet us if we stop fighting? Would you be willing to exchange thoughts with us if we stop the war?"

 

A feeling of wry humor touched me. "Perhaps, Orion. In a million years or so, perhaps then you will be ready to share thoughts with us."

 

I felt myself grinning. "That's something to look forward to."

 

"Farewell, ambassador Orion."

 

 

 

I found myself sprawled on the beach near the ruins of the ancient city, where I had left the rest of my troopers. How long ago? I had no idea of how much time had passed. It was daylight, close to midday, I judged from the height of the blazing sun.

 

Getting to my feet, I started walking rapidly across the glaring sand toward the ruins. Within minutes a voice from one of the crumbling walls hailed me.

 

"Captain? Is that you?"

 

"Yes," I said, stating the obvious.

 

The trooper climbed up atop the broken edge of the wall. I recognized him: Jerron, the smallest man in the unit, often teased as the runt of the litter. He glanced behind him, and made a slight pushing motion with both his hands. I realized that his hands were empty. He was unarmed, not even a pistol on him.

 

I was about to ask him why he had no gun when a quartet of Skorpis warriors rose beside him. They were all fully armed. They pointed their rifles at me.

 

"Surrender or be killed."

 

The nearest bit of cover was the wall on which they stood. Otherwise I was totally unprotected, standing out on the bare beach in the noontime sun, wearing nothing but a ragged pair of shorts. Not even much of a shadow with me.

 

I surrendered.

 

"They came in the second night you were gone," Jerron told me as the Skorpis warriors marched us across the beach toward their base. "Just popped up in the middle of the ruins, outta nowhere. We never had a chance."

 

So the Skorpis had found that the underwater tunnels led into the heart of the ruined city, I realized. They knew we were there and they used the tunnels to take the troop by surprise.

 

"How bad were our casualties?" I asked.

 

"It all happened so fast we never had much of a chance to put up a fight. The guys on sentry duty caught it. Manfred, Klon, Wilma."

 

Manfred. The sergeant I had forced to become a lieutenant. A real lieutenant would not have been on guard duty. Manfred's old habits killed him. Then I remembered Frede's warning me that it's not smart for a soldier to make friends. Manfred was hardly a friend, but I felt his loss as if it were my own fault.

 

"How long have I been away?" I asked. "I've lost track of time."

 

"Four days, sir. The Skorpis knocked us off the second night you were gone, and then they've been waiting for you to come back ever since."

 

"So now they've got us all."

 

"Sorry to be the judas goat, sir." Jerron looked fairly miserable as we walked, struggling to keep pace with the giant Skorpis's strides. They were quite willing to nudge us with their rifle butts if they felt we were lagging behind.

 

"You've done nothing to be ashamed of, soldier," I said. "This whole mission was a disaster from the outset."

 

They marched us through their perimeter emplacements and into an open compound in the middle of the base, sealed off by electric fences, guarded by a dozen heavily armed warriors, surrounded by all the Skorpis on the planet. They were intent on keeping us from escaping, I could see.

 

Lieutenant Frede hurried to me as soon as the warriors pushed little Jerron and me into the compound.

 

"Orion! Captain! Are you all right?" There was real concern in her eyes.

 

"I'm unhurt," I said.

 

"From what we had heard, the Skorpis had fried you six ways from breakfast."

 

"They exaggerated their marksmanship," I said.

 

Lieutenant Quint pushed through the group that had gathered around us. "They claim you killed half a dozen of them," he said, with something like admiration in his voice.

 

"I didn't stop to count."

 

Frede said, "I don't know what they intend to do with us, but it won't be pleasant."

 

"How have they treated you so far?"

 

"Oh, okay, by their standards. We're stuck in this compound. No shelter. When it rains we get wet. We sleep on the ground. They feed us once a day, toward sundown."

 

"I haven't missed today's feeding, then."

 

Her expression grew more serious. "It seemed to me they were waiting for something. I guess they wanted to get you. Now they've got all of us."

 

Quint added, "Now they can do whatever it is they intend to do."

 

"Did you know there are other humans in this camp?"

 

"Others? No!" Frede said.

 

"I haven't seen any," said Quint.

 

"They seem to be scientists. And they're working with the Skorpis."

 

"Willingly?"

 

"I don't know."

 

"You there!" a deep Skorpis voice bellowed. "The one called Orion. To the gate. Now!"

 

I went to the gate, my officers and most of the remaining troopers trailing after me. The one who had called me was the security officer. I recognized her face and the insignia on her cinnamon brown uniform.

 

"Take him out of there," she commanded the guards. "I have a few questions I want him to answer."

 

I shot a glance back to Frede and the others. "Guess I'll miss today's meal, after all."

 

They marched me to the security officer's office and sat me in a chair that was a size too big for me.

 

"At least your uniform is dry this time," the security officer growled as she sat behind her desk. Two big guards stood behind me. My "uniform" was still nothing more than the shorts I had been wearing since she had last seen me.

 

"The other humans know nothing of you, even though some of them were willing to lie on your behalf."

 

"They are scientists," I said. "Not warriors."

 

"And you?"

 

"I am a warrior."

 

"Why did you come here?"

 

"To this planet? To set up a base from which we would attack you."

 

"And after your base was destroyed, why did you try to infiltrate this base of ours? One human, alone?"

 

"My orders were to destroy your base. I was scouting to see how I could accomplish that."

 

"Scouting alone?"

 

"Yes."

 

"And you intended to attack this base with fifty-two warriors, no heavy weapons, no support?"

 

"Yes."

 

She glared at me out of her yellow cat's eyes. "I don't believe you. Not even a human would be so stupid."

 

I temporized. "I knew you had nuclear weapons here. I thought I might set one off and wipe you out."

 

"And kill yourself doing it."

 

With a shrug I replied, "You're going to kill me anyway. What difference does it make?"

 

She radiated suspicion. "You came to this camp to make contact with the other humans. At least some of them are traitors, working against us. You will tell me which ones they are."

 

I shook my head. "I didn't even know there were any humans here when I infiltrated your camp. It was a shock to me. I still don't know what they're doing here."

 

"I don't believe a word you say."

 

"You have lie-detecting equipment, don't you? Or truth serum?"

 

Slowly she raised one hand and unsheathed her claws. "I can get the truth from you with these."

 

"You have the truth from me," I said, trying to remain calm. "No matter what you do the truth will remain the same."

 

"We will see." Then she added, in a growl, "You struck me. Then you ran away. Such a disgrace must be avenged."

 

The two guards grabbed my arms and twisted them painfully behind my back. The security officer rose from behind her desk, holding her hand full of claws in front of her like five surgical scalpels. If a cat could grin, she was grinning. I heard a low growling purr from deep in her chest as she came around the desk toward me, eyes glinting.

 

My senses went into overdrive as adrenaline poured into my bloodstream. My arms were pinned behind me by the guards, but I pushed myself to my feet so fast that they eased their grip on me slightly to grab my shoulders and force me down again. That slight easing was all I needed. I twisted violently enough almost to wrench my arms from their shoulder sockets, but the pain was nothing. I yanked one arm free, although the guard's claws raked bloody trails along its length.

 

I kicked the security officer in the chest, bowling her over backward against her desk while with my free fist I clubbed the guard still holding my arm. The other guard sank his claws into my shoulder, growling. I spun around and caught his chin with the heel of my hand, then drove a crippling blow to his windpipe. He sagged to the floor, gurgling blood, as I whirled to face the first guard, who was reaching for the pistol at his waist.

 

I grabbed his arm, twisted it so hard I felt bones snap, and shoved him into the security officer. She was still draped half across her desk. She pushed the howling guard away and pawed at her holster. I was much faster and snatched the gun out of her hand.

 

She glowered at me, blazing sheer hatred, as I held the pistol leveled at her face.

 

"I have told you the truth," I said. "I could kill you now but that would not change the truth of what I have spoken."

 

Another pair of guards bolted through the office door, saw that their commander was under my gun, and froze in their tracks.

 

"I won't willingly allow myself to be sliced up just because you want to find nonexistent traitors," I said to the officer. "I told you the truth. It was a total surprise to me that you have humans in this camp working with you."

 

I handed her the pistol. She grabbed it and started to swing it at me.

 

"And I bear a message from the Old Ones," I blurted.

 

She stopped in midswing. "The Old Ones? The creatures in the sea?"

 

"Yes," I said.

 

She hissed. But she put the gun down on the desk.

 

 

Chapter 13

 

They carried the injured guards away as the security officer fumed and snarled and slowly regained her self-control. At last she used the comm unit on her desk to speak to her superior, the base commandant. Within a few minutes I was brought to her office.

 

The bearded human, the one called Delos, was already there. The base commandant seemed older than the other Skorpis I had seen. The fur of her face and hands was graying. Her uniform was a pale blue, crusted with ribbons and decorations. The human scientist still wore gray shapeless coveralls.

 

"Is that all the uniform you have?" the base commander growled when they shoved me into her office.

 

"I've been swimming," I replied. "With the Old Ones."

 

Delos nearly jumped out of his chair. "The Old Ones? You've been with them?"

 

"I've spoken with them. They have a message for us."

 

The base commander waved the security officer out of the room. "I'll call if I need you."

 

Once she had shut the door, the commandant got up from behind her desk and indicated the table on the other side of her spacious office.

 

"Sit there," she told me. Delos got up from his chair in front of the desk and joined us. The table was too high, the chair too big, for me to feel comfortable. It was like being a child at an adult's table. I felt small, almost humiliated.

 

Delos did not seem to mind the furniture at all.

 

"What did the Old Ones tell you?" he asked eagerly. "How did you make contact with them? Where are they from?"

 

"Will they join us in this war?" the base commander wanted to know.

 

"They refuse to join either side," I said. "They reject all attempts to draw them into the war."

 

"Reject, do they?" the base commander rumbled. "A nuclear bomb or two exploded at depth might change their opinion, I think."

 

"Your weapons will not work against them," I said. "That is what they told me."

 

"Nonsense!"

 

"I believe them. They are far older and wiser than we."

 

"So were the Tsihn, and we bashed them halfway across the galaxy."

 

"And made eternal enemies of them," said Delos.

 

The commander's slitted eyes flashed, but she turned away from the scientist and said to. me, "You must tell me everything that the Old Ones told you. I must know precisely what they said."

 

I repeated their message word for word, several times. The base commander sank deeper into a glowering unhappiness each time. The human scientist, though, seemed to grow more excited with each telling.

 

"Tens of millions of years older than humankind!" Delos said, almost smacking his lips with anticipation. "The things they can teach us! The things they must know!"

 

"They won't teach us anything as long as we continue killing one another. They regard us with loathing."

 

"But surely they would talk to scientists," Delos pleaded. "We're not fighters. We haven't killed anyone."

 

"Perhaps," I replied. "In time." I smiled inwardly, knowing that the Old Ones' contemplation of time was so far more leisurely than our own.

 

After repeating my story another half-dozen times, I was dismissed by the base commander. Outside her door, the security officer was waiting for me. If the Skorpis still had feline tails, hers would have been twitching with impatience.

 

"She believes you, does she?" she asked as she personally escorted me back to the prisoners' compound.

 

"How do you know that? Can you hear through closed doors?" The thought occurred to me that perhaps she had bugged her commander's office, under the guise of her security duties.

 

"No need to eavesdrop," she said grimly. "If the old tigress hadn't believed you, you would be chopped meat by now."

 

Before we were halfway to the prison compound, though, Delos came sprinting after us.

 

"The base commander's given me permission to house Orion in our quarters," he panted.

 

The security officer snorted, but we changed direction and went to the scientists' fenced-in area.

 

"He is your responsibility," she said ominously as she left me there with Delos.

 

He nodded and gestured toward the nearest of the low-roofed buildings.

 

"Wait," I said. Turning to the security officer, I asked, "What's going to happen to the rest of my troop?"

 

"The prisoners?" she made a movement with her shoulders that might have been a shrug. "Cryostorage, of course. We'll freeze them till we need them."

 

"Need them? For what?"

 

She bared her teeth. "For food, human. What else?"

 

"You eat humans?"

 

"They are made of meat, aren't they? Not as nutritious as some of the enemies we've fought, but they'll do in a pinch. With vitamin supplements, of course."

 

She seemed to be enjoying my consternation. I pulled myself together and said, "Well, until you put them in storage-or other arrangements are made for them-couldn't you find some shelter for them? And better rations?"

 

"No, I could not, human." And she turned abruptly and walked away from me.

 

 

 

The other scientists were just as eager to learn about the Old Ones as Delos was. They clustered around me once he had ushered me into their barracks. We were in a wide, bare room, furnished only with a long table and human-sized chairs and a pair of video machines off in one corner. A single row of windows on one side of the room looked out on the Skorpis camp, where purple twilight shadows were lengthening into night. The walls of the room were devoid of all decorations except for a single display screen showing an astronomical chart.

 

As I told my story still again I scanned the faces of the scientists around me. There were twenty-two of them, nine of them women. Most of them seemed young, the prime of their lives still ahead of them. Unlike my soldiers, they obviously were not cloned from one or two gene sets. They were tall and short, dark and fair, eyes of every shape and color, skin ranging from chocolate brown to pinkish white.

 

The woman called Randa, the one who had denounced me to the security officer, would not look directly at me. Either she felt ashamed of what she had done or she was angry at me for bringing danger to them. None of them commented on the claw wounds on my shoulder, matted with drying blood. I let it pass for the moment.

 

When I had finished my tale, though, I said, "Now I have some questions for you."

 

"Go ahead," said Delos. He was obviously the group's leader.

 

"What are you doing here on this planet, working for the Skorpis?"

 

"Working for the Skorpis?"

 

"What are you talking about?"

 

"We're not working for the Skorpis," said one of the men, with a considerable show of indignity. "They're working for us."

 

"The Skorpis are mercenary troops. They're here to guard us," said Delos, "while we try to study the Old Ones."

 

"Guard you against who?" I asked.

 

"Against you," Randa snapped. "And the rest of your homicidal maniacs who want to kill us all."

 

So it was anger that drove her, not shame.

 

"We had no idea there were other humans on this planet," I said. "All we were told was that there was a Skorpis base here and we were going to eliminate it."

 

"Typical military operation. They only tell you what they want you to know."

 

"Do you mean that humans are fighting against each other?" I asked. "We're involved in an interstellar civil war?"

 

"The Hegemony has been battling for its very existence for three generations now," said Randa. "Your so-called Commonwealth has been trying to annihilate us. You and your lizard allies."

 

"The Tsihn?"

 

"That's what they call themselves, yes," said one of the men.

 

"But how did the war start? What's it all about?"

 

"It started when Commonwealth fleets began attacking our settlements on a dozen different worlds."

 

"They wiped out whole biospheres. Killed everything."

 

"Burned planets right down to the bedrock."

 

"For no reason!"

 

"Without a declaration of war."

 

I shook my head. "It couldn't be for no reason. People don't attack one another for no reason."

 

"Lizards do."

 

"The Tsihn hate us. They hate all humans, anything that's not themselves."

 

"But you said that the Commonwealth is allied with the Tsihn."

 

"Against the Hegemony, that's right. But sooner or later the Tsihn will turn against the Commonwealth, too. You'll see."

 

There was real hatred in their voices, in their faces.

 

"I still don't understand how this could have begun," I said. "It doesn't make sense to me."

 

"You're just a soldier," Randa sneered. "How could you be expected to understand anything except killing people?"

 

That's what the Old Ones thought of me at first, I said to myself. But then they trusted me, they helped me.

 

Delos gave me a worried look. "Uh, if you really want to catch up on the history of the war, you can use one of our readers." He gestured to the video systems in the far corner of the room.

 

"Yes, why don't you do that," said one of the other women. "We need to discuss how we can use your information, what our next steps will be."

 

I could see that they wanted to talk among themselves without me. And I was burning with curiosity to learn how and why this seemingly endless war had begun. So I went to the video reader and sat in the contoured chair before its screen.

 

"I'll show you how to run it." I looked up, surprised. It was Randa.

 

"I can operate it," I said. "Soldiers aren't complete idiots."

 

"Oh." Her face reddened. "All right." She turned on her heel and fled back to the others, who were sitting themselves around the long table.

 

I turned on the machine and softly spoke my request to its computer. The screen glowed briefly.

 

And instead of the history tape I wanted, Aten appeared standing before me where the machine had been. He wore a golden tunic and formfitting tights with calf-length boots. And a frown. The golden aura of his presence enveloped me like a warm mist. I knew that he had brought me out of the continuum into a bubble of suspended space-time where he could interrogate me fully while the men and women across the room neither saw nor heard us.

 

"The Old Ones made contact with you, Orion."

 

I nodded solemnly.

 

"And they refuse to help us?"

 

"They refuse to become involved in our war in any way. Only after we stop the fighting will they even consider further contact with us."

 

"I had hoped for more."

 

"They were quite firm about it."

 

"There must be a way to convince them to help us! There must be."

 

"Perhaps you should try to contact them yourself," I suggested.

 

His frown deepened. "I have. We all have. The only one they responded to was you."

 

I must have smiled. "I'm flattered."

 

"Don't be," the Golden One snapped. "They saw you as a helpless victim of our cruelty. They took pity on you, Orion, nothing more."

 

"I disagree. When they first contacted me, in a dream I had, they were repelled. They saw only a warrior, a killer, a soldier who made war on other intelligent creatures. Later they saw that there is more to me than a killing machine. That's why they chose to speak to me."

 

"Remember, Orion, that I put those additional emotions into you."

 

"No you didn't. Not deliberately, at any rate. You built me to carry out your will, and for me to be able to do that I had to be able to think and act for myself. I've learned much about the world, Golden One. Much about the Creators and myself-and my fellow humans."

 

"Really?" Aten crossed his arms over his chest.

 

"Really. I'm more than your tool. I'm an individual. How many times have you berated me for not following your orders?"

 

"Stubbornness is not godliness, Orion. Only we Creators have full freedom of action. You obey me, whether you think so or not."

 

"You have full freedom of action?" I actually laughed at him. "Then why this desperate war? Why this need for help from the Old Ones?"

 

"That involves forces that your mind could never understand," he said. "I didn't build such capabilities into you."

 

"You didn't have to. I'm learning them on my own. The Old Ones speak to me and not to you. I am learning and growing."

 

"And someday you will challenge me," Aten mocked. "You sound like a frog planning vengeance on an elephant."

 

I decided it was foolish to carry on this vein. Changing the subject, I asked, "How did this war start? What is the reason for the fighting?"

 

"It was inevitable. As the human race expanded into the stars they met other intelligent species. Xenophobia is a basic emotion among all intelligences."

 

"Xenophobia doesn't start wars."

 

"Doesn't it?"

 

"Then how are the humans allied with the Tsihn? And how are the Skorpis working with..." My words choked in my throat. Suddenly I understood what was happening.

 

Aten slowly unfolded his arms, studying me like a zoo-keeper who had just added a new specimen to his collection.

 

"This war-" I hesitated, thinking furiously. It was the only explanation I could see. "This war is really between you and the other Creators. You are fighting among yourselves, and using us as your pawns."

 

His utterly handsome face twisted into a smirk. "Of course. I'm surprised it took you so long to figure it out. You who prides himself on his growing wisdom."

 

"But why? Why would you have such a falling-out with the other Creators?"

 

"It's not only me, Orion. Our little family has split into two almost equal camps. Equal and opposite. Much as we did over Troy, except that this time, instead of a paltry few Greeks and Trojans, we are dealing with interstellar civilizations."

 

"And you drive them to war?"

 

He shrugged carelessly. "There was no other recourse. The other Creators would not listen to reason."

 

"They would say the same of you and your allies, wouldn't they?"

 

"I imagine so."

 

"You still haven't told me why you've split; the source of the conflict."

 

"We have reached the ultimate crisis, Orion. A dilemma so crucial, a turning point so critical to our survival, that we Creators could not agree on how to handle it. I told you that this war was part of the ultimate crisis, and so it is. Until I can force the other Creators to agree with my plan for handling the crisis, we will be powerless to face it when it finally falls upon us."

 

"So you're sending billions to slaughter, destroying whole planets, to decide how to deal with this final crisis."

 

"It is necessary. For our survival."

 

"You make war on each other by using us-and other races, as well."

 

"Why not? Do you expect us to fight each other, to kill one another?"

 

"And Anya? Whose side is she on?" But I knew the answer even as I asked the question.

 

Aten's face clouded over. "I'm afraid she is not among my allies. In fact, she is leading the opposition."

 

"Then, to serve you I must fight against her."

 

"It's her own fault, Orion."

 

I did not care whose fault it was or which of their sides was in the right, if either of them was. All I wanted was to find Anya, even if that meant working against Aten.

 

I looked into his gold-flecked eyes and saw that he understood precisely what was going through my mind. I could not hide my thoughts from him.

 

"The last thing in the world that you want to do is find her," he warned me. "She is far beyond the paltry romance that you once had with her. She has reverted to her true form, Athena, the warrior goddess. She no longer cares to don human shape. She no longer loves you."

 

"I don't believe you."

 

He made an indifferent gesture with his hands. "What you believe or fail to believe makes absolutely no difference."

 

"Doesn't it?"

 

"No, Orion, it doesn't. You can chase across the whole galaxy seeking your beloved goddess. You can think me an egomaniac who sends his own creations to slaughter. No matter what you think, if you find Anya now she will kill you. Without a second thought."

 

"No! She loves me."

 

"Perhaps once she did. But she has outgrown you, outgrown the foolish desire to take on human form. She is truly the goddess of death, Orion. Your death. Believe it."

 

 

Chapter 14

 

For the next several days, as I worked with the human scientists, my mind kept spinning around the revelations that Aten had heaped upon me.

 

Anya was fighting against the Golden One. The Creators were split apart, and they had split the human race into two warring factions. They had even enlisted alien races in their ever-expanding war.

 

And Anya no longer loved me. That I refused to believe. She might hate Aten, she might be fighting against the Golden One with every quantum of her strength and knowledge, but she would never turn against me.

 

Yet I was a soldier in Aten's army. War washes sentiment away in torrents of blood. I could be killed as impersonally as a man swats an insect, light-years away from her, and she would never know it. I would be merely another casualty among the Creators' human pawns.

 

No! I could not accept that, could not believe it. Anya loves me, we have loved each other across the millennia and the light-years of space-time. She still loves me, just as I love her.

 

Can I find her? Can I reach her, wherever she is? Why must I fight this senseless war on Aten's side, instead of hers?

 

These were the thoughts that flooded my mind as I dutifully tried to help the human scientists at the Skorpis base on Lunga. In vain.

 

They had been sent to Lunga to establish contact with the Old Ones and enlist their aid in the interstellar war. The planet's only strategic value was that the Old Ones had a settlement here. My mission, at Aten's devious direction, had been to prevent the Hegemony from making an alliance with the Old Ones while he tried to establish contact with them himself.

 

My mission seemed oddly successful. The Old Ones refused to have any form of contact at all with the Hegemony scientists. We swam in the ocean for days and even had a full-sized submersible sent down to the Skorpis base. But no matter how far we went into that ocean, no matter how deep we dived, we saw no trace of the Old Ones.

 

"Maybe they've left the planet altogether," Delos suggested gloomily as he bent over the display screens in the cramped sensor center of the sub. Each of the screens showed an ocean teeming with sea life and no trace of the Old Ones.

 

"You say they had a city down here?" Randa asked me. In the confines of the sub's compartment we were practically pressing against one another. I could smell the faint trace of perfume in her hair. And a musky odor of perspiration.

 

Nodding, I replied, "A big city, although it really was more of a collection of lights than a set of structures."

 

"Well, there's no lights nor structures anywhere in view," Delos said with an exasperated sigh.

 

"Perhaps the sensors are being blocked in some way," I suggested. "Screened."

 

We sent out swimmers. I went out myself. Nothing. It was as if the Old Ones had never been there. Yet I got the distinct feeling that they were nearby, watching us, perhaps amused by our frustration.

 

The one good thing that I was able to accomplish during those discouraging days was to get better quarters for my troopers. I refused to be housed with the scientists, insisting that I was a soldier and I would share the treatment the other prisoners received. At the same time I pleaded with Delos and the Skorpis base commander, whenever I was brought to her presence, for a roof over the prisoners' compound.

 

One morning, just as I was about to be escorted to the scientists' buildings again, a Skorpis skimmer pulled up at the gate of the prison compound, loaded with sheets of plastic and bags of connectors.

 

"You will build yourselves a shelter," said the sergeant who drove the skimmer. "No tools are needed. Get to work."

 

By the time I returned that evening the shelter stood, neat and square. There was even bedding inside, I saw.

 

"Now we need partitions," Frede told me, quite seriously. "For privacy."

 

It astounded me how the troopers could adapt to their situation. They had slept on the bare ground and eaten one thin meal a day and been grateful that they were still alive.

 

"Now we need to escape," I said back to her. "Before they put us all in their larder."

 

Her eyes widened.

 

"To the Skorpis," I told her, "prisoners are food. The only reason we haven't been frozen so far is that the scientists want me to work with them and I told them that the price of my cooperation is to keep all of you alive."

 

"But as long as you work with the scientists..."

 

I had to tell her, "I don't think it's going to be much longer. They're coming to the conclusion that there's nothing they can do to reach the Old Ones."

 

"Then we've got to get out of here pretty quickly."

 

"Yes," I agreed. "But how?"

 

That was a problem without a solution that I could find. There were forty-nine of us, unarmed, under constant watch, in the middle of a camp of at least a thousand Skorpis. I racked my brain for days on end trying to come up with a plan that might have some faint chance of working. Nothing.

 

Until one night it hit me. We don't need to escape. We need to be rescued.

 

I lay on the plastic floor of our prison, Frede next to me, staring up at the blank ceiling. I still had no clothes except the shorts I had been wearing for weeks. I closed my eyes and called silently to Aten.

 

There was no answer. Nor had I expected one, at first. Summoning up my will and my memory, I translated myself to the empty city of the Creators and stood once again beneath the warm sun on the hillside overlooking the city and the sea.

 

To those who can manipulate space-time, it matters little if you are in a certain place for a moment or a millennium. You can always return to the place and the time where you started.

 

"I can wait," I called the cloud-flecked blue sky. "I can wait as long as you can."

 

I did not have to wait long. Almost immediately a silver glowing sphere appeared before me, so bright I could not look at it, yet I felt no heat from its brilliance. It coalesced, took the form of a man. The Creator whom I thought of as Hermes: dark-haired, lean, the hint of mischief in his ebony eyes.

 

"Orion, the disturbance you make in the continuum is like a toothache."

 

"When did you ever experience a toothache?" I countered.

 

He grinned at me. "What is it? What brings you here all hot and impatient?"

 

"Are you part of this interstellar war?" I asked.

 

"Of course. We all are."

 

"And whose side are you on?"

 

His trickster's face took on a sly, cunning look. "Does it make a difference to you?"

 

"Can you take me to Anya?"

 

He thought a moment, then shook his head. "Better not to, Orion. She bears the weight of our future on her shoulders. She would not be glad to see either one of us."

 

"You serve the Golden One, then."

 

"I serve no one!" he blazed. "I have put in my lot on Aten's side, though, that is true."

 

"Then tell him that he must rescue my troop from the Skorpis base on Lunga."

 

"Tell him that he must? By your word?"

 

"If he expects me to serve him further," I said.

 

Hermes actually blinked at me. "You bargain with your Creator?"

 

I smiled back at him. "No, you bargain with him. I must return to my troopers."

 

And I opened my eyes in the prison shack at the Skorpis base, with Frede sleeping soundly beside me.

 

 

 

The rescue attempt, when it came, was just as fouled up as every other aspect of our mission to Lunga.

 

It was early afternoon. I was out in the submersible with nine of the other human scientists, including Delos-who went on every cruise-and Randa, who still seemed hostile and distant most of the time, although she could thaw slightly, especially when there was some interesting science to talk about.

 

The Skorpis warrior who accompanied us, so big that he could barely squeeze through the sub's hatches, filled the tiny comm compartment with his bulk. If humans felt uncomfortably dwarfed in Skorpis furniture, this warrior seemed ridiculous with a comm set clamped to his furry head. It was designed for human ears and human dimensions, but the warrior had managed to get the earphone to stay in his cuplike ear by slapping a strip of gummy tape across his head. It must have hurt when he pulled it off. I could see the pale scars of earlier tapes etched into his greenish fur.

 

"Return to base," he rumbled.

 

Delos, in the next compartment bent over the sensor displays, jerked his head up so suddenly he banged it on the metal overhead.

 

He yelped with pain, then said, "Return? Why?"

 

"Orders," answered the Skorpis.

 

Rubbing his head, Delos reached an arm into the comm compartment. "Please give me the other headset."

 

The Skorpis warrior complied and Delos held the set against his ear. Standing next to him, I could hear the communications operator on the other end.

 

"Enemy fleet has been observed approaching the planet. Return to base immediately."

 

The rescue mission, I thought. My heart began to race.

 

"But if there's a battle we'll be safer here in the sea, submerged, than at the base."

 

"Orders are to return to base. Immediately."

 

Delos wanted to argue, but the Skorpis at the comm console was already leaning his thick fingers on the keypads that activated the automated controls. We were returning to base, following orders.

 

And the Golden One was coming to rescue my troopers.

 

We broke to the surface a scant kilometer from the shore and cruised to the pier. As I clambered through the topside hatch and out onto the sub's deck, I could see no action. The sky looked clear and serene. But there was an air of electrical expectancy at the base that we could all feel as the human scientists who had remained ashore ran out onto the pier and helped tie up the sub.

 

We rushed back toward the scientists' compound, escorted by two fully armed warriors who had met us at the pier and the Skorpis who had run the comm console in the sub. His two comrades handed him a rifle and a flexible reflective vest as they ran.

 

"There's a shelter beneath the main building," Delos told me, panting with exertion. "The Skorpis insisted on building it even though I thought it was silly. Shielded and everything."

 

I saw that the base was buttoned up, braced for an attack. No one walking about, none of the usual drilling or workaday chores going on. Out by the perimeter the guns were manned. Automated laser batteries were already pointing skyward.

 

"I've got to see to my troopers," I said.

 

"Don't be foolish," Delos said. "Come with us where you'll be protected."

 

"I belong with my troop." I veered off, sprinting toward the prison shack.

 

No Skorpis tried to stop me, although Delos yelled, "Bring them to our shelter if you can."

 

I waved and ran faster toward the shack.

 

It was empty. Had the Skorpis already moved the prisoners to safety? I was surprised, doubtful.

 

Then I saw, to one side of the shack, a pile of canisters. "No!" I shouted. "They didn't!"

 

A high-pitched screeching shrilled through the air, the Skorpis equivalent of a siren, barely audible to a human. The attack was imminent.

 

No need to count the canisters. I knew what they were. Cryonic containers. The Skorpis had spent the morning freezing my troop. There was a big skimmer parked on the other side of the pile. They were going to move them to their food lockers when the attacking fleet was spotted.

 

I pounded the side of the flimsy shack hard enough to make it shake down to its plastic foundation. They're frozen! Frozen!

 

A heavy hand gripped my shoulder. Turning, I saw it was the security officer.

 

"Get to shelter," she commanded. "Attack is starting."

 

As she spoke, a rash of laser blasts splashed against the energy dome shielding the base. The usually invisible dome flared flame red for an instant, then orange. It cleared, but I could see it shimmering above us.

 

"To shelter," she hissed. "Now." She wrapped an arm around my waist, lifted me off my feet and started running, carrying me like a sack of groceries.

 

More laser blasts splashed against the shield, and I heard the lightning cracks of the Skorpis lasers firing back. The whole world shuddered and we were knocked flat as a nuclear warhead hit the base of the shield. The shield absorbed most of the energy, but the kinetic pulse conducted by the ground was like the shock of an earthquake.

 

I scrambled to my feet; the security officer got to hers a bit more slowly. Through the shimmering shield I could see lights glinting in the sky, far overhead. Our ships, still in orbit, catching the light of the sun up there.

 

More nukes exploded and we staggered across the base, between buildings that swayed dangerously with each new explosion. The shield was flaming deeper and deeper into the red now, as more laser beams fired against it. It was only a matter of time until the shield was overloaded. Another blast knocked us to the ground again. Dust and grit filled the air, burning my eyes.

 

Spitting dirt from her begrimed face, the security officer pointed in the direction of the scientists' compound. "Shelter," she said. "You go there."

 

"What about you?"

 

"I have duty station." She hauled herself to her feet and started off in the opposite direction just as another nuke pounded outside the shield, making the shield go black for eons-long moments. The ground shook violently and several buildings collapsed. A heavy support beam cracked loose from one building and fell like an ax across the back of the security officer, flattening her beneath its weight.

 

I staggered over to her, through the choking dust, as more explosions shook the ground. The shield was visibly wobbling now, blinking red and orange and bubbling like water on the boil.

 

She was conscious, but barely. The beam had crushed her ribs, maybe broken her back. I strained against it, summoning up every reserve of strength in me, and hauled it off her. It fell to the ground beside us with a thunderous clunk.

 

I dared not turn her over. Her tunic was a mass of blood from her shoulders to her waist. She lay facedown, one cheek in the dirt, the other caked with grime.

 

One yellow eye gazed steadily at me. "You do not follow orders," she muttered.

 

"I'll get help."

 

"No one will come. I am dead. Go to shelter before you become dead, too."

 

Her eye closed. She stopped breathing. I felt for a pulse in her throat, in her wrist. Nothing. She would have gleefully ripped me to ribbons a few days ago, yet I felt an enormous reluctance to leave her there, to admit that she was dead and there was nothing more that I could do.

 

Another blast and the twisted, crazily leaning side of the building next to us began to groan and shudder. I jumped to my feet and started running, glancing over my shoulder to see the whole building collapse in a thundering heap on top of the Skorpis' dead body.

 

For a moment I was disoriented. I stopped, blinking in the swirling dust while explosions thudded around me and the energy screen crackled and hissed like a badly tuned video.

 

There! I recognized the scientists' compound. Its buildings still stood, although the electrical fence around it seemed to be turned off. The Skorpis must be feeding all the base's power into the energy shield, I thought. Once that shield is overloaded and shorts out, the attackers can blast the whole area with nukes.

 

But what good would that do? I asked myself as I dashed past the dead fence and into the largest building in the compound. The fleet's been sent here to rescue me and my troop, not annihilate us.

 

Or so I thought.

 

I had no idea of how to find their shelter. Must be a doorway or a hatch somewhere, but I could see none in the dim twilight caused by the dust sifting through the air outside. Another explosion shook the building so hard I nearly was knocked to my knees.

 

 

"Where's the shelter?" I bellowed as loudly as I could. "It's me, Orion!"

 

Almost immediately a section of the floor cracked open. "Down here," a voice shouted back. "Quick!"

 

I dashed for the trapdoor and yanked it wide enough to squeeze through just as a greenish light filled the room and I felt a dizzying, nauseating sense of vertigo that made my head swim.

 

Then everything went utterly black.

 

 

Chapter 15

 

When I came to my senses once more I was hanging in midair almost three meters above the team of human scientists, who stood craning their necks upward toward me.

 

I landed in their midst with a painful thump, knocking several of them to the metal plates of the flooring. I rolled over and sat up. Looking around, I saw it was obvious that we were no longer in the Skorpis base.

 

"What happened?" asked one of the scientists.

 

"Where are we?"

 

"Transceiver beam," answered Delos. He was sitting beside me, rubbing the small of his back with both hands. He was one of the men I had bowled over when I fell.

 

"We're aboard one of the fleet vessels, then," I said.

 

"Looks that way, doesn't it?"

 

Indeed it did. We were in a metal chamber, bare except for a slit of an observation window set high in one wall and a tightly closed hatch opposite it. I could feel the humming vibration of a starship's engines through the deck plates.

 

Transceiver beam, I thought. The attacking fleet must have saturated the Skorpis defensive shield at last and then squirted the beam down to snatch us. The beam scanned our molecular patterns, annihilated us, then reproduced us here on the ship exactly as we were on the planet. That was why I materialized nearly three meters above the others; they had been in the shelter and I was at the lip of their trapdoor when the beam found us.

 

The transceiver beam had killed us, all of us, then rebuilt us here aboard the starship. No one willingly allows himself to be transported by a matter transceiver.

 

But we were not asked.

 

"We're prisoners, then," said Randa.

 

"Maybe not," I said. "They may not understand who you are."

 

"Welcome to the Blood Hunter," came a voice from above us. Looking up, I saw a red reptilian face glaring down at us from the observation window. This was a Tsihn ship, I realized.

 

I got to my feet and helped Delos and the others to theirs. The hatch swung open and a pair of reptilians entered the chamber, scaly green and lightly built, so alike I could not tell the difference between them.

 

"You will come with us," said one of them through the translator it carried on a thin chain around its neck.

 

The scientists were put into a fairly spacious compartment lined with bunks, like a barracks. I saw toilet facilities at the far end of the chamber.

 

"Which of you is the one called Orion?" asked one of the twins.

 

"I am," I answered.

 

"You will see the captain on the bridge." So I followed the green little reptilians-after they had carefully closed and locked the hatch to the scientists' barracks.

 

The bridge was compact and quiet. The reptilians do not make noise the way we mammalians do. I found it almost eerie the way every station was manned with reptiles of various size and hue, yet hardly a sound issued from any of them. There was no air of tension on the bridge. Only two of the lizards had their cyborg connectors plugged into the ship's sensors. The battle seemed to be finished.

 

The Tsihn captain was almost my size. It sat in its command chair and looked me over the way a snake studies its prey. Its scales were mottled green and yellow with some gray spots here and there. Much of its upper torso was covered with insignias and markings of rank. Its snout was wide and filled with tiny needle-like teeth.

 

"You have no uniform?"

 

I realized I was still in my threadbare shorts. Before I could reply, it said, "We will provide you with a proper uniform."

 

"Thank you," I said.

 

It seemed decidedly unhappy. "I have lost many capable Tsihn to rescue you and the other humans."

 

"You arrived too late," I said. "The men and women of my assault team have been frozen by the Skorpis."

 

The reptile's tongue darted out from between those teeth, flicked back and forth for an instant, then retreated.

 

"So your team goes into the Skorpis bellies."

 

"You can still pick them up, if you haven't destroyed their base altogether."

 

"Not destroyed," it said. "My orders were to locate you and bring you and the other humans to my ship. This I did. I bombarded the Skorpis base, overloaded their shield, and snatched you from them. It cost me a dozen Tsihn killed, many more wounded."

 

"But my troopers are still down there on the planet, frozen!"

 

"No concern. I have obeyed my orders. You are the one I was commanded to rescue. And those with you."

 

"But those are not my troops." I tried to make it understand. "My troops are still with the Skorpis."

 

"Yes, frozen, I know." The tongue flicked out again; then it asked, "So who are the humans with you?"

 

"Scientists," I said.

 

"I was told you would be with an assault team, not a pack of scientists."

 

I hesitated. If I revealed to the reptilian that these humans were enemies, what would it do?

 

It saw through my silence. "Scientists of the Hegemony, is that it?"

 

"They were studying the planet, trying to make contact with intelligent creatures in the sea. They are not soldiers," I said.

 

"But they serve the enemy."

 

"The Skorpis were there to protect them."

 

The captain hissed in a way that almost sounded like laughter. "Some protectors! We snatched them right from between their claws!"

 

"But my troop is still there," I repeated. "They're the ones you were supposed to rescue. You must go back-"

 

"Go back!" it snapped. "By now the Hegemony has a whole battle fleet swarming around Lunga. I have only four ships, two of them badly damaged by the Skorpis ground defenses. My mission was to sneak in and rescue you, not to take on a Hegemony battle fleet. We don't go back. We run away as fast as we can."

 

"But my troopers-"

 

"Can't be helped. Not now. This is war, human. Losses are to be expected."

 

Not my troopers, I said to myself. Not Frede and Jerron and the rest of them. They've suffered enough. They've been through battle and done everything we asked of them. I'm not going to leave them to feed the Skorpis.

 

"Tell me about these scientists," the captain was saying to me. "They must have valuable information in their heads, no?"

 

"They're not military scientists," I said, warily. "They don't know anything about weapons or strategy."

 

"Still, they are a good prize to bring back to headquarters. A bonus. I will be praised."

 

"You'd be praised more if you brought back the troopers you were sent to rescue," I grumbled.

 

Its red eyes seemed to burn. "Orion, I was sent to rescue you. That I have done. My orders said to bring up any humans with you. That I have done, also."

 

I stood my ground and glowered back at it.

 

It shifted in its chair, then raised one taloned three-fingered hand. "Take the helm," it said to its second-in-command. Then it curled one of those taloned fingers and said, "Come with me, Orion."

 

Mutely I followed it through a hatch that we both had to duck through and into a small, dimly lit compartment. I saw a wide bunk built into one bulkhead, a desk with a blank display screen above it. The captain's quarters, I guessed, spare and spartan.

 

"Sit," it commanded. There was only one chair, a stool, actually, in front of the desk. The captain eased its bulk onto the bed. It reached to a panel at the head of its bunk and a section of the bulkhead turned transparent.

 

I gasped. We were out in deep space, nothing to see but stars that were stretching into elongated streaks of light because of our ship's relativistic speed.

 

"We run with our tails between our legs, Orion," the captain said good-naturedly. "Soon we reach lightspeed and then there is nothing out there to see."

 

I looked back at it and saw that it was holding a metal drinking cup out to me.

 

"Alcoholic beverage made from grain," it said. "I keep this for human guests."

 

"Thank you." I accepted the cup.

 

It reached into the compartment in its bunk again and poured something else into another cup. "Tsihn prefer drinks with blood in them."

 

We touched cups and drank. The liquor was smooth and warming.

 

"Many intelligent species have rituals of sharing food or drink to show friendship," said the captain. "I want you to know that even though I cannot rescue your assault team, I wish to be friendly with you."

 

"I understand," I said.

 

"War is never pretty. But maybe for your troops this is a better fate than they might have expected. They are frozen now. They feel nothing."

 

"But they must have known what the Skorpis intended when they were put into the freezer cells," I said. "Their last thoughts must have been hell."

 

I realized that its darting tongue was the Tsihn equivalent of a sigh. "So what better did they have to look forward to? Your Commonwealth does not regard warriors with honor. The Hegemony, too. Humans treat their warriors very strangely, Orion."

 

"They treat them as if they're less than human," I admitted.

 

"Yes. Send them to do fighting, then freeze them when fighting's over." It shook its head. "Your warriors are treated like machines. Worse."

 

"I would still like to save them, if I could. I'd like to help them, find a place where they could live in peace and safety, without the Commonwealth forcing them to go into battle, without being frozen like some unwanted slabs of meat until they're needed again." I was thinking out loud now, letting my thoughts spin out to this stranger who was not human in form but more human than my own Creators in its sympathy.

 

"Put it out of your mind, Orion," said the captain. "I would like to retire to a planet I saw once, green and lush and so humid that steam rises from the swamps every morning of its year. But I will die in a metal egg, Orion. I will spend my life aboard this ship or another like it and one day, somewhere, I will be killed. That is the life of a warrior. That is what we are, Orion, you and I and all those others of so many different species. We were hatched to fight our peoples' battles. There is no other life for any of us."

 

I sat in that cramped compartment sipping at the whisky this reptilian captain had given me while we grew more morose and bitter. At last I pushed myself to my feet and asked it to excuse me. It ordered one of its bridge crew to show me to my quarters, which turned out to be a compartment almost identical to the captain's. The Tsihn showed me how to manipulate the controls to make the bulkhead transparent and to tap into the ship's communicator and computer systems. It slid back a panel and I saw a closet with two sets of uniforms hanging in it.

 

Once the reptilian left me alone, I slid the closet shut and stretched out on the bunk. It was a little short for me, but I did not care. I had no intention of sleeping in it.

 

I summoned the Golden One. I called across the currents of space-time to him. Speak to me, I urged. Give me a moment of your attention.

 

Nothing. He would not answer. I could have translated myself back to the Creators' city, but what good would that have done? Aten would not deign to see me there. The last time he had sent his messenger. I did not want a messenger, I wanted Aten himself, the Golden One.

 

But he would not reply to me. When I closed all my senses and tried to reach out to him with my mind, I received nothing but emptiness.

 

Wait! There was something. A tendril of thought. The faintest whisper of a contact.

 

Friend Orion, said the Old Ones. You have survived the battle.

 

But my troopers, I called to the Old Ones. They have been frozen. They will be killed.

 

You want to save them.

 

I can't do it by myself. Can you help me?

 

We do not interfere in any way, Orion. We have made that pledge and we will keep it.

 

But my troopers...

 

We feel your pain, Orion. You are gaining in wisdom. Pain is the price of wisdom.

 

Is there no way they can be saved?

 

That is for you to determine, friend. Use all your resources. Reach out to grasp the opportunities that surround you.

 

What opportunities? I asked.

 

But there was no further response. The Old Ones had said what they wanted to say and departed from my mind.

 

Use all your resources, they had told me. Grasp the opportunities that surround you.

 

I swung my legs off the bunk and reached across the narrow compartment to activate the ship's computer. Through the transparent bulkhead I could see that we were still flying at relativistic velocity, not yet beyond lightspeed. I called up the tactical program and saw that there was indeed a full squadron of Hegemony battle cruisers chasing after us. The tactical plot showed that we would reach lightspeed before they came within weapons' range. Once past lightspeed we would be safe.

 

We would also be unable to send back a ship toward Lunga to pick up my troopers. Whatever I was going to do, I had to do it before we got to lightspeed.

 

I had less than two hours to act.

 

 

Chapter 16

 

I spent nearly half that time at the computer screen, learning every aspect of the Blood Hunter , from engine rooms to weapons systems. I was particularly interested in the auxiliary ships that this cruiser carried. They ranged from tiny scouts to shuttles big enough to carry assault teams to a planet's surface.

 

I found one that might serve for what I had in mind: a survey ship that had an adequate carrying capacity and enough range and life support to make it all the way back to Lunga. If I could get it off the Blood Hunter before the warship reached lightspeed.

 

 

I had to act quickly. I felt a momentary pang of regret that I would have to act against the captain who had tried to befriend me. But, as the reptilian itself had said, war is never pretty.

 

I had no weapons, but at least I had a decent uniform to wear: the blue of Earth's sky, with a high choker collar and a wide belt of gold. The buckle was a sunburst symbol, I saw. The emblem of the Golden One. I grimaced with distaste but cinched it around my waist, wishing I had a pistol to hang on it.

 

Out into the passageway and straight down to the level where the Hegemony scientists were being kept. I passed several Tsihn of various sizes and hues; none of them tried to stop me or even acknowledged my presence in any way. Good. Let me be a nonperson among them.

 

The hatch to the scientists' compartment was locked but unguarded. I simply unlocked it and ducked through. They seemed to be preparing for sleep; most of them were sitting on their bunks, a few huddled together in a corner of the chamber, talking.

 

"On your feet, all of you!" I snapped. "We're getting off this ship. Now!"

 

They dithered a bit, but once I told Delos that I was taking them back to Lunga he got them organized in quick order. Now came the hard part: getting all twenty-three of us down to the hangar bay where the survey vessel was docked.

 

"Stay close together and follow me," I told them. "If we're stopped, let me do the talking."

 

It almost worked.

 

We marched along the passageway and down the power ladder to the hangar level. A few Tsihn passed us, but none bothered to ask what we were doing. There were no guards posted inside the ship, but we found a quartet of mechanics working on a damaged scout ship in the repair bay down at the hangar level.

 

"Nonessential personnel are not allowed in this area," said the biggest of the mechanics.

 

"We're just passing through," I said.

 

It was not put off. "Security!" it called to the microphone built into the hangar bulkhead. "Unauthorized humans in the hangar bay!"

 

I smiled and said, "You've done your duty very well. The captain will be pleased with you."

 

And walked my gaggle of scientists past him, toward the pod where the survey vessel was housed.

 

It sat in the pod, a bulky ungainly conglomeration of spherical crew habitats, cargo holds, equipment containers and propulsion engines. It was a true spaceship, never meant to fly in an atmosphere or land on a planet's surface.

 

"Get your people aboard quickly," I said to Delos as I flipped open the cover of the pod's door controls.

 

"SECURITY TEAM TO HANGAR POD FOUR," bellowed the ship's intercom. "ON THE DOUBLE."

 

No time to study the door controls. The Tsihn would override the electronic system from the bridge, anyway. I just reached in and smashed the control panel with my fist. Then I grabbed the overhead door and pulled it shut manually. It moved grudgingly, but within a few seconds I had it closed and manually locked.

 

The air-lock hatch was another matter. I sprinted into the survey ship and squeezed through its hatch.

 

"Seal the hatch once everyone's through," I said to the nearest scientist as I made my way forward to the cockpit. Delos was already in the pilot's seat, powering up the ship's systems. I slid into the other seat.

 

"You're going to get us all killed, you know," he said from between gritted teeth. But his fingers were flying across the control boards. Indicators were lighting up; I could hear the ship's generators whining to life.

 

"We've got to open the air-lock hatch," I muttered, directing the computer screen to list an inventory of the ship's equipment.

 

"A ship like this doesn't carry weapons," Delos said.

 

But it did have a digging laser, I saw on the inventory list. A couple of touches of my fingertips and the computer showed me where the digger was stored.

 

I pushed out of the cockpit, commandeered two of the strongest-looking men, and went outside the ship to unpack the digging laser. Tsihn crewmen were pounding on the pod doors, and the intercom blared:

 

"ORION, THIS IS THE CAPTAIN SPEAKING. HAVE YOU GONE INSANE? STOP THIS MADNESS AT ONCE OR I WILL BE FORCED TO ORDER MY WARRIORS TO BLAST THEIR WAY INTO THAT POD AND KILL ALL OF YOU!"

 

"Captain," I shouted, "I'm taking these humans back to Lunga to exchange them for my troopers."

 

"THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE. YOU HAVE NO ORDERS TO DO SO."

 

"I'm going to crash this ship through the air-lock hatch," I bluffed.

 

"THAT WILL DAMAGE MY VESSEL AND KILL YOU."

 

"This survey vessel is built pretty solidly. I think I can make it through the air lock." I was working furiously as I spoke, helping the others to unpack the laser.

 

"MADNESS!"

 

"You could save a considerable amount of damage to your ship by opening the air lock," I said.

 

"THAT WOULD ALLOW YOU TO ESCAPE."

 

"That would save your ship from damage. Who knows, maybe this survey ship's engines will overheat and explode when I try to push her through the air-lock hatches."

 

By now we had pulled the laser equipment free of its container and were starting to connect its power pack and alignment optics.

 

"YOU ARE THREATENING TO DESTROY MY SHIP!" the captain bellowed.

 

"I only want to get back to Lunga and barter these scientists for my troopers," I said.

 

"I COULD ALLOW YOU TO LEAVE THE BLOOD HUNTER AND THEN DESTROY YOU ONCE YOU ARE A SAFE DISTANCE AWAY."

 

I hadn't thought of that. "Yes, that's true. You could."

 

"Look!" shouted one of the scientists.

 

I followed his pointed finger and saw that the pod door was turning a dull red. The crewmen were working on it with a torch.

 

And then, with a rumble, the inner air-lock hatch began to slide open.

 

"PUMPING DOWN TO VACUUM," said an automated computer voice. "THIS AREA SHOULD BE CLEARED OF ALL PERSONNEL IN TEN SECONDS."

 

We left the digger sitting in pieces on the deck and jammed through the ship's hatch. I pushed past the scientists crowding the main habitat sphere and went up to the cockpit. Randa was sitting alongside Delos.

 

"The captain's going to let us out," I said. Through the cockpit's observation port I saw that the outer air-lock hatch was opening. I could see the stars out there.

 

"Yes, and then he'll blow us to eternity once we're clear of his precious ship," Randa muttered.

 

"I don't think so," I said, thinking of the captain who shared a drink with me.

 

The air lock was fully open now. Delos touched the propulsion master-control key and the ship seemed to lurch once, then slide smoothly toward the open hatch, beyond it and out into the dark starry void.

 

I leaned between them and punched at the communicator panel until the Tsihn captain's red-eyed face glared up from the screen at me.

 

"I'm sorry to betray you this way, Captain," I said. "But this is something that I must do."

 

It hissed. "I'm not even going to waste a shot on you, traitor. Let the Skorpis blow you to hell. There are plenty of them heading your way."

 

I grinned at it. "Thank you, Captain."

 

Its slitted eyes closed briefly; then it said, "Go with honor, Orion."

 

Minutes later the Blood Hunter winked out of sight with a soundless flash of blinding white light, safely in superlight velocity, beyond pursuit by the Skorpis.

 

Which we decidedly were not. As soon as Randa turned on the ship's long-range sensors, half a dozen battle cruisers showed on our tiny screen, heading our way.

 

Delos immediately began taping a message to be beamed to them. "This is Dr. Delos of the University of Farcall, chief of the scientific research team on the planet Lunga. We are returning to Lunga aboard a survey vessel. We are unarmed. Our entire complement of crew is scientists and the human named Orion. I repeat, we are unarmed and are returning to Lunga."

 

Then we waited to see if the approaching Skorpis cruisers would listen to his message or shoot first and ask questions afterward.

 

They listened, and I could hear the sighs of relief echoing through the whole ship.

 

The commander of the Skorpis squadron spoke at length with Delos as the ponderous battle cruisers took up formation all around us. We headed back toward Lunga surrounded by the cruisers, a minnow being escorted by killer whales. It was almost ludicrous.

 

The scientists seemed tremendously relieved. Only as they gathered around me and thanked me for rescuing them from the Tsihn did I realize how much they had feared being prisoners.

 

"Those lizards make my blood run cold," said one of the women. "They don't have a shred of human decency."

 

I thought of the Skorpis and their eating habits and wondered how much political expediency shaped her attitudes. Your alien enemies are inhuman; your alien allies are extraterrestrials.

 

And beyond them all, beyond all the human factions and the alien intelligent races locked in this interstellar war, were the Creators-descendants of the human race but evolved far beyond human form. Were there other far superior races involved, too? I wondered. Aten had spoken of the ultimate crisis as being something far more catastrophic than this "mere" war in which billions were being slaughtered and whole planets devastated.

 

I knew that the Old Ones existed, but they wished to play no part in the struggles that ensnared us. Might there be other races, far older, far superior to us? Was that the ultimate crisis Aten and the other Creators feared?

 

I had scant time to reflect on those matters. We were approaching Lunga again. Now I had to bargain for the lives of my troopers, which meant that the scientists who had just thanked me for saving them would soon be cursing me and trying to kill me.

 

 

Chapter 17

 

"Who are you, really?" Delos asked me.

 

We were alone in the cramped galley of the survey vessel, no more than an hour away from taking up orbit around Lunga. The commander of the cruiser squadron escorting us had suggested putting a Skorpis crew on board our vessel. I had refused, assuring her that we were returning peacefully to Lunga and did not need her help.

 

"I am Orion," I answered as I poured myself a cup of a stimulant processed out of alkali crystals from the gleaming vat built into the bulkhead.

 

Delos shook his head and smiled at me. "Look, I could say that I am Delos. But that tells you nothing except what to call me."

 

His eyes were inquisitive, not demanding. The smile on his bearded face was gentle.

 

"I see," I replied. "You are Dr. Delos of the University of Farcall, chief of the scientific research team on the planet Lunga."

 

He poured himself a mug of the steaming brew as he said, "I am also the son of Professor Leoh of Albion and the Lady Jessica, director of the Farcall Institute of Exopsychology, science laureate of the Golden Circle, and husband of Randa."

 

That last piece of information surprised me. "You and Randa are married?"

 

"Didn't you know?"

 

From the way they seemed to take the opposite position on every question, it had not occurred to me that they might be husband and wife. I was almost amused by the thought.

 

"Now that I've told you who and what I am," Delos said, returning to his original question, "just who and what are you?"

 

I had to shrug. "I am Orion. A soldier."

 

"There's more to it than that."

 

If I told him that I was created by a half-demented egomaniac from the far future, built to be sent on missions of murder and carnage through all the eras of space-time, he would undoubtedly think I was either insane or joking with him.

 

So I said, "No, there's not much more to it than that."

 

"Your parents?"

 

"I'm a soldier," I repeated. "Do the soldiers of your Farcall have parents? Aren't they cloned and raised on military preserves? Aren't they kept apart from the rest of your society, frozen when they're not needed, revived and given their orders and sent out to do battle for you?"

 

He scratched at his beard. "Well, yes, I suppose so. I really don't know that much about the military. This field trip with the Skorpis is the closest to the war that any of us have come. Believe me," he added fervently, "it's been close enough for a lifetime!"

 

"You've been at war all your life, and for a couple of generations before you were born."

 

"Yes, but that's the military's business. We're scientists, we don't get involved in fighting."

 

"Yet you expect your military to protect you."

 

"Of course. That's what they're for."

 

I felt an unhappy sigh filling my chest. "Well then, think of me as one of those soldiers."

 

He studied me a moment with those inquisitive soft brown eyes, then said, "No, Orion, that won't wash. There's more to you than that. I want to know what you're hiding and why."

 

"What makes you think I'm hiding anything?"

 

"Because the Old Ones spoke to you," he hissed, and his eyes suddenly blazed, revealing his true feelings. "My team and I have been on Lunga for two months with no contact whatsoever, no matter how we tried to communicate with them. You come along and the Old Ones speak to you within hours of your reaching the ocean."

 

I had to smile. He was jealous. "I could be lying," I said.

 

"No, you're not lying. And you're not a simple soldier, either. Who are you, Orion? Why were you sent to Lunga?"

 

"I wish I knew," I told him. I drained my mug, feeling the hot liquid burn its way down inside me, then turned and left the galley, leaving Delos standing there seething with curiosity and resentment.

 

Randa was still in the cockpit with one of the other scientists. I told them both to get out.

 

"I'll take over the controls," I said.

 

She shot me a skeptical glance. "Are you sure you can handle it? Inserting a ship into planetary orbit isn't as easy as you may think, Orion."

 

Her meaning was clear. Even the slightly tolerant smile on her lips betrayed her thoughts. I'm a scientist, she was saying, and I can understand how to pilot a survey vessel by studying its control panel and calling for instructions from the ship's computer. You're a soldier, you can't be expected to know anything or to do anything you haven't been specifically trained for.

 

I reached down and grasped her arm. Lifting her gently from the pilot's seat, I said, "I can pilot a dreadnought if I have to. Go on back to the galley and ask your husband if he thinks I'm capable of running this little tub."

 

She looked surprised, annoyed. But she came out of the chair without resistance and started back toward the galley, casting a resentful look at me over her shoulder.

 

"You too," I told the scientist in the other seat. "I'll handle this by myself."

 

He huffed a little, but he left me alone in the cockpit. Scanning the control board, I saw that the vessel had an automated orbital-insertion program built into its computer's memory. Sensors were already estimating Lunga's mass and distance. All I had to do was touch a pressure pad on the board and the ship did the rest by itself.

 

I activated the communicator, instead, and asked for the Skorpis base commander. Several underlings tried to talk to me, but I refused to speak to anyone until the base commander's grim, gray-furred face appeared on the display screen before me.

 

"You are surrendering, Orion?" She made it sound more like a statement than a question.

 

"No," I said. "I have returned to offer you an exchange."