Pascal Saadya stood alone in his darkened office, staring down at the great yellow world through the wide transparent aluminum window. As he looked upon the daylit face of Venus, an old joke sprang to mind: What’s the difference between God and a terraformer?

He spoke the punch line aloud. “God doesn’t think he’s a terraformer.”

The bulk of the force-field network—along with more than eighty percent of Venus’s original hothouse atmosphere—had been carefully and safely lowered nearly an hour earlier. The vast majority of the atmospheric probes remained intact and functional. According to a quick report from the ever-busy Adrienne Paulos, all of the Project Ishtar ground crews, as well as the da Vinci personnel who had provided emergency assistance, were finally out of immediate danger. However, all but a handful of the ground staff had been evacuated up to Ishtar Station, where they would remain pending a detailed appraisal of the damage sustained by the surface facilities arrayed across the Venusian surface.

Saadya was all too keenly aware that he owed an enormous debt to David Gold and his ingenious engineering team. As well as to one extremely insightful and courageous stray Bynar. Without their help, my ambition and haste would have killed dozens of good people. And laid waste to years of meticulous research.

Saadya watched silently as Soloman’s improvised force-field mass driver continued its work, helping the planet continue to disgorge copious amounts of its fiery insides upward past the limits of the atmosphere and into the infinite gulf of space.

The “Big One”—the global volcanic conflagration Venus experienced every half-billion years or so—had indeed come, thanks to the internal stresses Project Ishtar had unleashed. But unlike earlier occurrences, the current lava flows would not engulf the entire planet. The damage would remain localized around a Greenland-size area, where a pancake-dome volcano had arisen in response to Soloman’s inspiring job of force-field tailoring.

The door chime sounded. “Come,” Saadya said.

He remained facing the planetary fireworks display as the door hissed open, admitting a harsh shaft of artificial light from the outer corridor. From the shape of the trio of shadows that fell across the carpet, he guessed the identities of his visitors at once.

“Hello, David. Soloman. Adrienne. I’m glad you came. I think that watching the fires of creation all alone isn’t nearly so satisfying as sharing the experience with others.”

He expected Gold to make a characteristically acerbic remark. But when he turned to face his old friend, he saw only wonder on his face, which—like those of Soloman and Paulos—was turned toward the cosmic drama unfolding far below.

“It’s incredible, Pas,” Gold said. “And beautiful.”

Spread into long, thin strands that Saadya estimated each measured no more than a few meters across, the ejected Venusian mantle material was rapidly cooling as it arced over the western horizon toward the night side, encircling the planet in a great ellipse along its equator. Of course, these “strands” were nothing of the sort; they were assemblages of billions of separate congealing objects, many of them no larger than a human hand, some as small as dust grains. But aligned as they were in speed and direction, they presented the long-distance appearance of solidity, as did the various-size particles that composed Saturn’s voluminous system of rings.

Paulos must have been thinking along exactly the same lines. “It’s a ring system. Forming right before our eyes.”

Saadya squinted at the purple-and-ochre horizon of the nightward terminator. Was he seeing the telltale signs of uneven clumping of some of the ejected material?

“Perhaps,” he said. “But it might not remain in annular form for long.”

“What do you mean?” Gold asked.

“Just that we may have witnessed Venus in the throes of childbirth. She may have begun to spawn a moon of her own.”

“If that’s true,” Paulos said, looking thoughtful, “then we have a baby to name.”

“Eventually,” said Saadya. “It could take centuries for the accretion process to settle down on its own.” Unless we find a way to help it along. He dismissed the thought as soon as it occurred to him. Will I never tire of playing God?

“It’ll still need a name,” Gold said. “How about Venus Victrix, after the Roman bringer of victory?”

Shaking his head, Saadya resumed watching the planet. “I think a more appropriate name might be Venus Felix.”

“Who’s that?” asked Paulos, frowning. “The Roman bringer of housecats?”

“The bringer of good luck, not cats,” Gold corrected. “Though there are members of my family who might argue that there’s no real distinction between the two.” The captain turned toward Saadya. “There’s more to what you’ve done here than mere mazel, my friend. Getting Project Ishtar to this point wasn’t dependent upon luck. To suggest that isn’t fair to you, Dr. Paulos, or the rest of your team, for that matter.”

Saadya smiled grimly, then faced Gold again. “You’re right, David. But I’m being even more unfair to your crew.” His eyes lit on the diminutive Bynar, who so far had yet to utter a word. “Particularly you, Mr. Soloman. You stand astride the worlds of Bynars and humans. And because of that unique outlook, you accomplished what no one else could—you rescued everyone on Venus from my hubris. I thank you.”

Soloman nodded, though he seemed uncomfortable with the praise. “It would be wrong to completely discount random chance and contingency, Dr. Saadya. The unorthodox data-handling the situation forced upon me involved a good deal of guesswork.”

“Skillful estimates aren’t the same as lucky guesses,” Saadya said. Soloman looked skeptical, but didn’t seem inclined to argue the point.

Gold shrugged. “Call it luck, or skill, or even kismet if you have to. You’ve still had several very lucky outcomes here, even without completing the atmospheric ‘blowoff.’ ”

Saadya was speechless for a moment. “Lucky outcomes? Name one.”

“For one, no one’s dead, or even badly injured.”

Saadya drew scant comfort from that fact, then felt a paroxysm of guilt at his own callousness. “Including your shuttle crew?” He realized he’d been so focused on the specifics of Project Ishtar that he’d given little thought to the injuries David’s brave engineering staff might have suffered while flying through the atmosphere’s superrotational layer.

Gold made a dismissive gesture. “The shuttle took the worst of the beating. Dr. Paulos here has taken the liberty of letting us tow the Kwolek to one of your docking ports so Gomez and Tev can kludge a few quick repairs together before the da Vinci shoves off. Tev says your shuttlebay has a smidge more elbow room than ours.”

“It seemed like the least we could do, since our own hardware apparently caused at least one of the shuttle’s hull breaches in the first place,” Paulos explained, holding a dark, lumpy, baseball-size metallic object out for inspection. “It seems the Kwolek ran over one of our little reinforced atmospheric probes. Looks like that’s what damaged her comm system when the da Vinci arrived to bolster her power reserves.”

Saadya winced. That was yet another low-probability eventuality he hadn’t spent a lot of time considering. “My God,” he stammered.

“It’s just a scratch,” Gold said. “I’m sure Tev can buff it right out.”

But Saadya wasn’t buying Gold’s breezy denials. He understood only too well the peril of an untoward encounter with a projectile that was plated with a duranium/rodinium alloy. “Your shuttle crew nearly died trying to save this project. Only to see it fail in the end.”

“Quit punishing yourself, Pas,” Gold said. “It isn’t as though we didn’t know you were using atmospheric probes. It was ahftseloches.”

“Ahftseloches,” Saadya repeated, smiling fractionally. “Inevitable bad luck. I thought you said you didn’t believe in that.”

“Inevitable bad luck is the only kind of luck I can usually rely on,” Gold said, staring at his left hand as he flexed and clenched the fingers. Saadya wondered if this was the hand that had been replaced after the recent shipboard accident he’d heard about.

Gold continued, “But bad luck, inevitable or otherwise, doesn’t always end up badly. For example, Project Ishtar might actually be on firmer footing now because of what happened today.”

Saadya could scarcely believe his ears. “That hardly seems likely, David.”

“Listen to him, Pas,” Paulos said, gesturing toward the window and the plumes of ejected material that continued streaming into space. “In just a few hours, we’ve relieved maybe a quarter of a billion years of seismic stress from the planet’s interior. We’ll be thankful for that little boon when the time comes to attach banks of impulse engines to the crust so we can spin this puppy up to a Terran-style diurnal cycle.”

“And if a spanking new moon really has just plotzed itself up out of the belly of Venus,” Gold said, “then maybe you won’t have to tow Mercury out of its orbit after all. Scratch one more huge item off the ‘to-do-later’ list, Pas.”

“I imagine Captain Scott will be delighted to hear that particular detail,” said Saadya.

“There you go. Terraforming while you wait.”

Saadya chuckled, though his mood remained dour. “There’s still no denying the fact that this was a near-catastrophe. Or that I bear complete responsibility for it. I’m sure that’s how the Federation Council and your Captain Scott will interpret the day’s events. That was certainly how the Central Processor Pair on Bynaus reacted. They’ve decided that Project Ishtar is ‘a waste of their finite time and scarce resources.’ In fact, 1011 and 1110 have already been reassigned, and will return to Bynaus just as soon as the transportation arrangements are made.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Gold said. The little Bynar who stood beside him appeared anxious to speak, but held his tongue.

“You still have the rest of Team Ishtar,” Paulos said. “We’ve gathered a lot of good atmospheric data to guide us through the next ‘blowoff’ attempt. The Federation Council is sure to be interested in tha—”

Saadya interrupted her. “It’s possible that Bynaus is right about Ishtar, Adrienne. Perhaps what happened here today was a sign that my approach has been all wrong from the beginning.”

“With respect, Dr. Saadya,” Soloman said, finally interposing himself into the conversation, “I believe that Bynaus can be persuaded to resume its support for your efforts to remake this planet. My homeworld stands to learn a great deal from the geological information gathered by your ground stations during the crisis. Should you choose to share it with them, that is.”

Saadya suddenly realized that he’d been concentrating so intently on the Venusian sky that he hadn’t given adequate thought to whatever secrets still lay beneath its immobile, atectonic crust.

He resolved to review those data in detail as soon as possible—and discover precisely what it was he had to bargain with. There was so much to do….

“If you’re looking for signs and portents, Pas,” Gold said with a gentle smile, “maybe you should consider today’s events as a hint that only one major change needs to be made to Project Ishtar.”

“And what’s that?” Saadya asked.

“Slow it the hell down. Even God takes billions of years to cook up planets. And it’s not as though there’s been any sudden shortage of galactic real estate, the Dominion War cleanup efforts notwithstanding.”

Saadya mulled over Gold’s suggestion, and wondered what Dr. Seyetik would have said to such advice. Slow down. Not a bad idea, perhaps. I could start by not rushing to the holodeck so often for brow-beatings by Seyetik’s ghost.

Of course, without a pair of Bynars crunching numbers for Team Ishtar, a severe slowdown would be the project’s only option—other than closing up shop entirely. To his surprise, Saadya felt great reluctance to consider that final option. His gathering despair warred briefly with his omnipresent desire to tinker as the gods themselves might do.

The gods appeared to be winning. Gods, after all, could afford to be patient.

“Perhaps,” Saadya said, “I only need to make sure I’m headed forward. Regardless of the speed of my progress.”

He paused, turning to gaze once more upon the clump of coalescing, impact-heated matter that was now growing noticeably near the western horizon’s edge. He decided to indeed dub the nascent satellite Victrix-Felix, as a reminder that luck had prevented catastrophe today just as surely as had anyone’s skill. Even that of Soloman.

Gods and planetologists alike sometimes have to bend knee at the altars of chaos, luck, and even ahftseloches. As did starship captains, Saadya suspected.

When Saadya finally spoke, his voice was lowered nearly to a whisper. Gesturing toward the scene of primordial creation outside his window, he said, “Perhaps what happened here today is a sign that new beginnings are in order.”

After Captain Gold said his farewells to Saadya and Paulos, and beamed back to the da Vinci, Soloman remained aboard Ishtar Station. He had busied himself alongside Paulos and her frantically busy staff ever since the careful lowering of the force-field grid had allowed the Ground Station Vesper crew to be beamed up to the station, along with many of the other surface-based personnel. As he walked the length of the orbital complex, heading toward the docking port where the Kwolek was moored, he realized he wasn’t entirely certain why he’d opted not to beam back to the da Vinci with the captain.

Perhaps he was merely stalling. He knew, after all, that Dr. Lense would want to examine him—and interrogate him about his informational ordeal with the other Bynars—the moment he returned to the da Vinci.

Soloman entered the corridor adjacent to the docking port. He saw 1011 and 1110 approaching from an adjoining corridor, as though summoned by his thoughts.

He saw in their hard, dark eyes that their contemptuous feelings for him had softened not at all.

“So you—”

“—are still—”

“—aboard—”

“—Ishtar Station.”

Soloman found their grasp of the obvious just as keen as ever. Trying to maintain a guarded expression, he said, “As are both of you, I see.”

“Only—”

“—temporarily.”

“Bynaus has—”

“—summoned us—”

“—home.”

Home. From the smug manner with which 1110 had delivered that word, Soloman knew it had been intended to wound. As long as he remained a singleton—an informational cripple and a social deviant in the eyes of his people—he knew he could never again use that word to describe Bynaus.

Then a completely unaccustomed feeling abruptly seized him. His facial muscles grew involuntarily tight and he heard a rhythmic, high-pitched, hiccup-like noise start up and repeat itself spasmodically.

Nearly three full seconds elapsed before Soloman realized that he was the source of the sound.

The other Bynars watched him in evident perplexity as he surrendered himself to the fit of laughter. Their disgust swiftly gave way to fear, and they quickly withdrew down the corridor as though certain that he had gone mad.

Perhaps I have.

Uncountable moments later, Soloman’s laughter faltered, slowed, and finally ceased. He felt limp and wrung out. But also strangely joyful.

Bynaus rejects me, even though I have accomplished things that linked Bynars clearly cannot. That new moon forming over Venus proves it.

But something more fundamental vexed him: Try as he might, he could feel no sorrow over having lost Bynaus. Especially a Bynaus that would embrace the likes of 1011 and 1110.

“Hey, what was that all about?” said Fabian Stevens, whom Soloman belatedly realized must have been standing for quite some time behind him in the open hatchway leading to the docked shuttle. The nearby sounds of Bynar conversation and hysterical laughter must have made him curious.

Soloman instinctively raised his shields. “I merely had to conclude some…unfinished business.”

The tactical specialist eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then shrugged in apparent resignation. “I understand. It’s a Bynar thing, so you probably don’t feel comfortable talking about it with any of your human friends.”

Soloman thought about that for a moment. Were he still bonded to 111—and had circumstances not forced him to improvise with Project Ishtar’s data in a most un-Bynar-like fashion—he would no doubt have agreed with Stevens’s assessment.

Now he wasn’t so sure. He only knew that the disapproval of Stevens and the rest of his shipmates suddenly mattered to him far more than any amount of opprobrium his fellow Bynars could heap upon him.

Just as Stevens was starting to turn back toward the hatchway, Soloman came to a decision. “Fabian…”

Turning back toward Soloman, Stevens asked, “Is something wrong, Soloman?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

Stevens smiled. “Well, only three choices. That narrows things down a bit. How can I help?”

“I would be very interested…in hearing your advice on some of my…unfinished business.”

Still smiling, Stevens gestured toward the waiting shuttle. “Well, the Kwolek is finally spaceworthy again. You can pour your heart out to me about whatever happened between you and your fellow infophiles while Gomez and Tev pilot this heap back to the da Vinci.”

Soloman nodded, then followed Stevens through the docking bay and into the Kwolek’s narrow passenger compartment.

Stevens turned toward the cockpit, where Gomez and Tev were apparently going through their preflight checklist. The debris-ringed planet Venus loomed in the forward window.

“If you guys won’t be needing me for a while,” Stevens said, “I need to speak with Soloman back here for a bit.”

Tev grunted, sparing only enough of his attention to glare briefly at Stevens. Compared to 1011 and 1110, Tev’s casual belligerence seemed downright cuddly.

“We’re doing fine up here, Fabe,” Gomez said, pausing only briefly in her complex data-entering tasks. “You already performed your miracle on the tactical systems. And I think Tev and I won’t need any help getting us back home.”

Home.

Not Bynaus, but home nevertheless.

As he and Stevens took a pair of aft seats, Soloman realized he was no longer dreading his upcoming debriefing with Dr. Lense. In fact, he was beginning to feel great anticipation for it. He had a feeling it wouldn’t take very long at all.

I have come home, a solo man, but one with many friends, he thought. He decided that this was probably all he needed to say to her.

Ishtar Station’s docking clamps released the shuttle with a muffled clunk. The Kwolek glided slowly forward on its thrusters.

Soloman noticed that Stevens was regarding him with an incredulous grin. “You’re smiling, Soloman. Mind if I ask why?”

“Because we’re going home,” the Bynar said, and then proceeded to explain.