The shell struck the dome where it disappeared into the opaque dais. A momentary flare was visible at the point of impact—and that was all. The structure of the dome was not breached, and the explosion did nothing to quell the colorful conflagration that continued to rage in and about its surface. Voocim expressed irritation.
“Again,” she ordered. Gesturing acknowledgment, the subofficer took another step forward and raised the muzzle of his weapon anew. This time he aimed beneath the outer dome at the base of the slab that was supporting the recumbent human.
Something unimaginably profound within the inorganic bowels of the artifact had just concluded an extensive review and analysis of preponderant reality. Among several thousand other factors newly apprised, it had determined that a single A-class mind was present and functioning. This exhibited an aberrant structure, but one that was at least ascertainable. Other minds were present that were not A-class. Furthermore, these were engaged in irritant activities. ETTA energies responded. Dismissing the observed proximate beings as a negligible distraction to be briskly dealt with, that which had sluggishly begun to stir moved on to more consequential activities.
A skull-sized globe of flickering azure incandescence burst forth from the apex of the outer dome and flew straight toward Amuruun. Uttering a startled oath, he tried to duck away from the onrushing ball of blue fire. He did not succeed. The globe touched him on the upper arm. There was a momentary flash of sapphire light, a faint smell of ozone, and a lingering but rapidly dissipating coil of pale blue vapor corkscrewing its way upward into nonexistence where an instant before the subofficer had been standing. Voocim gaped at the hovering sphere of animated effulgence. Darting to its right, it made contact with another horrified soldier. As he threw up his clawed hands in a futile attempt at defense, another flash was replaced by a second wisp of evaporating bluish haze. At this, the rest of the troop broke and ran.
Their commander ran too, her legs pumping, powerful thigh muscles propelling her back up the corridor. Screams and hissing howls of desperation followed close behind. The two senior scientists were shouting also, trying to communicate something instead of simply shrieking in fear. From time to time there was an occasional flash and smell. Gradually, the outcries became fewer, the blue flashes more infrequent.
Gasping for breath, Voocim threw herself behind a massive bulwark of somber gray polycarbide. The corridor was silent, the illumination balanced and restrained. She huddled like that, alone and hunched over, her scaly epidermis squeezed tight against the protective palisade. Would the cerulean specter grow tired and return to the luminous chamber? The Sstakoun’s shuttle waited in the lock. It was still an appreciable distance away, but like all her kind she was a strong, powerful runner. Given even a momentary respite from pursuit, she felt she would be able to make it safely back to the ship.
Slowly, cautiously, she rose, straightening a little at a time to peer over the edge of the bulwark. The exotic material was warm to the touch, almost ductile despite its apparent solidity. Her eyes widened.
The silent sphere of indigo energy that hung motionless in the air less than an arm’s length from her face had no eyes, but it saw her anyway.
Lambent orbs of refulgent energy drifted lazily back toward the blazing dome, to be reabsorbed into its energetic essence. Green-and-gold phlogistons grew intermittent, then scarce. Sequentially, full transparency returned to the structure. The volume of light in the chamber dropped from overpowering, to bright, to a pastel normalcy.
Flinx blinked. He was still tired, but otherwise unhurt. Sitting up, his first thought was for Pip. She was already aloft, fluttering outside the domes, waiting for him to join her.
He rubbed the back of his neck. Something had happened after he had entered the dome. He had gone to sleep, for how long he did not know. A glance at one of the compact instruments attached to his service belt provided the answer. Strange—his period of unconsciousness had seemed longer.
Remembering his pursuers, he looked up sharply. The chamber, as well as the corridors beyond, were deserted. Had they changed their minds, or at the last minute decided to take another route? His good fortune was hard to believe. Could dome and distance have kept them from noticing him? Tentatively, he slid off the slab. It was still cool on contact. Entering the corridor, he searched for signs of his stalkers. Finding none, unable to perceive any emotions save his own, he started forward at a hesitant trot, trying to maintain a steady pace in the event he suddenly had to change direction. Though he felt confident his talent was still working, he was puzzled by his inability to detect even the faintest twinge of emotion from so much as a single AAnn.
Tradssij was standing before an impressive array of readouts, idly scanning and committing to memory mundane ship data while wondering if something more might have been done to save the unfortunate Officer Dysseen from the perfidy of the escaped humans, when technician Osilleel approached.
“Honored Captain, there iss ssomething you musst look at.”
Amenable, Tradssij followed the tech to her station. Above the projector lens, a full three-dimensional depiction of the tenth planet of Pyrassis, its moon, and its immediate spatial surroundings hovered in stasis. Taking her seat, the technician slipped her induction headset back over her scales. Immediately, the image transposed, the view zooming in to resolve on a reduced area. It showed the artifact, still partially cloaked in its dissimulating synthetic atmosphere. The confiscated human starship continued to occupy concordant coordinates.
The same, however, could not be said for the artifact.
Tradssij leaned forward, his prominent snout almost piercing the projection. “What iss happening here, technician?”
Osilleel replied in an awed tone of voice that showed she too was being affected by what they were seeing. Every other tech and officer in the vicinity had also turned to stare.
“The artifact iss dropping toward the ssurface of the planet, Honored Captain. It hass not entered into a declining orbit. The descent is vertical, in contravention of normal gravitational preceptss.”
“Barrisshsst.” Tradssij snarled softly. Without hesitation, he proceeded to give orders. “Inform our people aboard the sshuttle to evacuate their possition immediately and return to the Sstakoun. We will come forward to meet them, dock, and bring them back aboard as quickly as possible.”
Behind him, a subofficer voiced what everyone was thinking. “Captain—Commander Voocim, the sscientific complement that iss traveling with her, and the resst of the exploration-and-capture team are sstill insside the artifact.”
“Truly,” Tradssij replied in the chipped tones of command, adding an especially brusque gesture of second-degree concern coupled with first-degree comprehension. “However, until we are able to asscertain exactly what iss happening, I will rissk no more of my crew than iss necessary. In the abssence of communication or explanation from the landing party, I musst do what I believe to be mosst efficaciouss under the circumsstancess. When the ssituation hass sstablized, the sshuttle will be ssent back to the artifact to remove Commander Voocim and her group.”
No argument arose from those AAnn on station. All felt the captain’s ratiocination of the situation to be accurate as well as succinct. Adjusting course, the Sstakoun began to move toward the regressing artifact and away from the place where it had recovered the transport module containing the body of Officer Dysseen.
Flinx arrived outside the lock less out of breath than he had expected. The continuing dearth of any AAnn emotions found him puzzled but relieved. Here, at least, he had expected to perceive something, only to be confronted with no evidence of feeling sentience but his own.
The reason for the absence of any significant reptilian emotion was immediately apparent: Only one vessel remained within the lock, and it was not AAnn. As near as he could detect, there were no longer any guards aboard the craft from the Crotase, either. Having escaped in Flinx’s transport module, Mahnahmi had left her own shuttlecraft behind.
But why had all the AAnn gone? Had their starship fled orbit as well? Too many events of the past hour were inexplicable. Still, comprehensible or not, the indisputable fact was that he was alive and free.
Nothing and no one challenged him as he entered the lock and cautiously made his way toward and eventually into the unsealed shuttlecraft. The internal layout was relatively typical, the majority of shuttles being built along certain fundamental, common lines. Like all such craft, it was designed to be operated with little effort or training. As he studied the readouts, Flinx felt increasingly confident it would respond to his simple, straightforward instructions.
He felt even more sure of himself when the ship’s systems activated in response to his first verbal command. Given the most generalized coordinates and description, the shuttle’s automatics would be able to lock onto the Teacher and home in on her. Barring surprises, within a short while he would finally be back on board his own ship, surrounded by its familiar confines. He found he could barely contain his anticipation. Pip darted contentedly around the bridge, reveling in her companion’s first upbeat emotions in some time. And still he could not sense the menacing presence of any potentially contentious AAnn.
Now that it was almost over, his only regret was that after all he had been through and everything he had suffered, beginning with his sojourn on Earth and ending in this abject outback corner of the AAnn Empire, he had failed to recover the sybfile containing the precious information about his ancestry. It remained with Mahnahmi. As the shuttle cleanly exited the cavernous lock, he found himself once more contemplating the panoply of unfamiliar stars. The syb was out there, she was out there with it, and he did not doubt that he would encounter both of them again.
That was when the shuttle’s automatics announced, in a clear and emotionless male voice, that a starship other than the one he had chosen as a destination was approaching swiftly from several planetary diameters out.
The Sstakoun’s weapons master hovered close to his captain, his intricate induction headset a triple metallic band that traversed the upper portion of his golden-scaled skull. Together the two AAnn studied the dimensional projection that showed the Commonwealth shuttle departing the massive, rapidly descending artifact.
“Report,” Tradssij hissed.
A technician responded without looking up. “Detection iss weak at thiss range, Honored Captain, but preliminary sscans indicate only two organic life-forms aboard the fleeing vessel.”
“Mark itss coursse,” Tradssij spoke sharply. “Highesst ressolution quadrant sscan.”
Sounding surprised, another technician reported in a moment later. “Gravitational dissturbance collateral with a massked vessel exisstss at point two-four-five, hypothessizing forward from vissible smaller craft’ss pressent trajectory.”
Tradssij was quietly furious. “We have been indolent. That sshall be corrected.” He gestured appropriately to weapons master Haurcchep. “Extirpate.”
The senior officer responded accordingly, relaying the command together with the necessary ancillary instructions to the fire control team situated elsewhere on the ship. A component of the Sstakoun’s limited but deadly arsenal was activated.
Aboard the shuttle, Flinx scrutinized the projection that showed the AAnn vessel rapidly closing on his coordinates. There was nothing he could do. The shuttle was not designed to execute elaborate evasive maneuvers, and the light armament it carried would not penetrate a warship’s minimum defensive field. Maybe they were just coming in for a closer look. If only they held off long enough for him to board the Teacher, he felt he would be able to hold his own. The Ulru-Ujurrians had equipped it with more than adequate defenses. But as long as he was stuck on the slow-moving shuttle, he was helpless.
The shuttlecraft’s voice directed his attention to the other tridimensional display. Intending only to glance in its direction, he ended up staring at it for a very long time. Then, realizing he had no need of onboard technology to perceive what was being manifested, he turned and walked to the unpretentious viewport that curved around the forepart of the ship. Everything that had been delineated in the tridee display was as apparent to the naked eye as it had been to the shuttle’s monitors. There was no need for magnifying devices or vision-enhancing instrumentation. Whether he altogether believed what he was seeing was another matter entirely.
Thousands upon thousands of square kilometers of dense cloud cover, dull brown and bronze tinged with orange, faded yellow, and red, had begun to shrink from the periphery of the methane dwarf. Not by means of simple evaporation or from being blown out into space due to some inexplicable internal cataclysm, but in response to a powerful unknown force that was sucking clouds, upwellings, and entire storm systems inexorably downward. As the thick, abyssal atmosphere was thinned, the inner core of the swirling planet began to reveal itself. Like a few other methane dwarves, Pyrassis Ten boasted a solid center. Unlike the heart of similar celestial bodies, the tenth planet of the Pyrassisian system brought to light an albedo that was off the charts.
Perhaps because it had been polished.
As the enshrouding atmosphere of the gigantic globe was drawn forcibly downward into a complex of gargantuan vents and intakes, the serrated surface of the inner planetary core was exposed. Billions of lights, intensely brilliant and of multiple hues, began to wink to life within the crust of synthetic structures the size of small continents. From a rather dull orb of ordinary aspect, the tenth planet of Pyrassis’s sun was metamorphosing rapidly into the most dazzling sight in the immediate heavens.
As torrents of cloaking atmosphere the size of whole mountain ranges continued to flow into unfathomable depths, they threw off continual salvos of lightning tens of kilometers high. The towering electrical discharges struck the shimmering surface of the newly exposed core without visible effect. As Flinx looked on in awestruck silence with Pip cuddled close to his neck, the artifact he had first thought to be a moon continued to approach the core’s solid surface. Only when it seemed as if a devastating impact was inevitable did a portion of the planetary crust retract ponderously inward. Descending gradually and under flawless control, the artifact concluded a stately entrance into a holding bay capacious enough to admit a real moon.
Big enough to boast its own atmosphere, the artifact, whose size had stunned him when the inorganic nature of its origin had first been revealed, was nothing more than a lifeboat. It was the tenth planet of the Pyrassisian system that was the actual ship. Staring hard at the gleaming surface and the manifold diverse projections with which it was studded, a chill traveled through Flinx unlike any other he had ever experienced—because he recognized at least a few of those lofty, monumental shapes. Subsequent magnification on the dimensional display only confirmed identification of an image he had resurrected from memory.
Clearly visible on the curving, burnished exterior of the artificial globe were no less than a dozen krangs, the ancient Tar-Aiym weapon that was capable of dynamically generating and projecting forth a Schwarzchild discontinuity. It was a device, a weapon, against which nothing could stand. If symmetry held, still more of them were likely to be found on the other side of the exposed surface. As to the multitudinous other revealed protrusions and concavities, the intent behind their ominous contours and configurations could barely begin to be inferred.
Half a million or more years old, the tenth planet of the Pyrassisian system was a Tar-Aiym warship twice the size of Earth.
And it was waking up.
Aboard the Sstakoun, surprise and astonishment at the planetary transformation they had been observing turned to fright underscored by second-degree panic. As Tradssij and his officers shouted and argued over what to do next, it did not occur to anyone to countermand the just-given order to fire at the evacuating Commonwealth shuttlecraft. A few seconds too late, it struck the captain of the AAnn ship with appalling realization that dispatching explosive devices in the general direction of the newly revealed colossus might be interpreted by an unkn
own sentience as something other than a benevolent gesture. Stammering excitedly into the tiny voice pickup that hovered alongside his snout, he frantically tried to rescind the order.
Deep within ancient factitious profundities impenetrable to human or AAnn thought, the synthetic sentience that was the sequentially awakening Tar-Aiym vessel detected a threat directed at the only A-class mind in the immediate astral vicinity. Though the ship was far, far from fully operational, it determined that it was capable of taking certain unassuming measures to countermand the impending danger. As concentric rings of turbulent light expanding to the diameter of a small sea erupted from its summit, a single imposing device of Himalayan dimensions discharged a blinding fork of lightninglike energy so intensely purple it was almost black. When this intercepted the pair of individually powered incoming explosive devices, they vaporized in twin puffs of scattered particles.
His glistening, scale-covered throat suddenly drier than even a desert-loving AAnn would have experienced, a solemn and oddly distracted Tradssij XXKKW pensively voiced the order for the Sstakoun to power up its posigravity drive despite the fact that they were too close in-system for reliable activation. It did not matter. A drive field had barely begun to form within the nexus of the ship’s KK-drive projector when the Sstakoun was struck by a second compacted helix of furious energy emitted by the azoic planetary core. The result was that the space hitherto occupied by the AAnn warship was forthwith filled with a somewhat larger volume of rapidly dissipating particles from whose constituent atoms every last electron had been forcibly stripped.
Flinx watched the implausible awful transpire. Not unreasonably, he wondered if he might be next. But nothing happened. There was no follow-up, no third eruption of desolating energy. Except for the stable, progressive emergence of thousands and thousands of additional lights on the uneven surface of the planet-sized alien warship, no new or startling class of resplendent power revealed itself.
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