18

One minute, Hennessy was sitting there, looking at his brother, everything fine, and the next there was a piercing noise and his head felt like it was going to burst. His brother began to shake all over. His head tilted to one side, his neck tearing open just where it did when Shane had been killed. He shook more and in a burst his body exploded, spattering everything with blood. Hennessy began to scream and suddenly couldn’t breathe. A moment later the ship around him was spinning, and then darkness.

When he came to, Shane was back, looking just as he had before he’d dissolved into a burst of blood, the same strange fixed expression on his face. He’d moved, though, and was now sitting next to Dantec, facing the other way, looking back at Hennessy. Or not next to Dantec exactly: he seemed to be sitting, so it seemed, partly on Dantec. But as Hennessy pulled himself up, he saw. Shane was partly in Dantec, their hips fused together, his legs somehow jutting through the back of the command chair.

“You’re all right?” asked Hennessy.

“Yes,” said Dantec. “Except for my head. And you?”

He shouldn’t be doing this, said Shane, his mouth moving soundlessly in the air, like a fish out of water. It’s dangerous. Looking’s bad enough, but touching is too much. Neither of you should be doing this. Jim, I thought you were better than that.

“Doing what?” asked Hennessy.

“I’m taking a core sample, of course,” said Dantec. “What did you expect me to be doing?”

This is not something to be examined, said Shane. This is not something to be understood. It needs to be left alone and untouched, where it’s been lying undisturbed for millions of years. Do you think they would have buried it this deep if it was meant to be found?

“What does it do?” Hennessy asked.

Dantec still wasn’t looking at him. “It’s a molecular cutter with a titanium cylinder behind it,” he said. “The circular cutter makes a round hole and pushes slowly in. Once the cylinder is far enough in, the cutters rotate to shear off the end of the sample. I thought you knew all that. Don’t worry, not much longer, we’re almost done.”

You don’t want to know what it does, said Shane. You shouldn’t try to destroy it. You shouldn’t listen to it. You should just leave it alone. You must resist Convergence, Jim.

“Convergence?”

“What?” said Dantec, half turning around. “I guess that yes, the molecular beams converge, in a manner of speaking. But why are you so interested?”

Not to mention the Convergence, said Shane. The last thing you want to do is get that started. He stretched uncomfortably in his chair.

“Be careful how you move,” said Hennessy to Dantec. “You don’t want to tear Shane apart.”