Stars End - Starfishers Triology Book 3

Twenty-three: 3050 AD

The Main Sequence

"I don't think you should go, Thomas," the Admiral said. "Let Mouse handle it. Suppose you had one of your attacks?"

"I'll be all right. Look. Ask Lieutenant Corley. She says it'll take a week to reach another crisis point."

"Mouse?"

"Somebody has to look over their shoulders, right? Otherwise we won't know if they're getting anywhere. That's just the way those people are. They're not going to say anything till they're sure nobody can shoot them down. Scientists would rather be dragged through the streets naked than be wrong. If Tommy goes, we'll have twice as many eyes."

"All right. Thomas, you know the woman who heads the Seiner team. Talk to her. Take a recorder. I want to hear what she says."

Twelve hours later McClennon and Storm, accompanied by a pair of Marine sergeants, entered the cold metal halls of Stars' End. The dock ring of their landing bay was a good twenty kilometers below the featureless planetary surface. The plunge down the long, dark shaft had been harrowing. Mouse had lost his supper.

The Marines began horsing an electric truck off the shuttle.

Mouse walked along a steel passageway, away from the dock ring. He peered into what had to have been Ground Control in an age gone by. "Tommy, come take a look in here."

McClennon had to stoop beneath the passageway ceiling. He joined Storm. "What?" He saw nothing but a Marine sentry.

"By that console thing."

"Oh. A skeleton."

The reports said bones could be found throughout the fortress. Thousands of skeletons had been encountered.

"We're ready, sir," one of the Marines said.

McClennon snapped a picture of the bones. "All right. Mouse, let's hit Research Central first."

"Right. We'll probably get everything there anyway."

"Be charming. Consuela el-Sanga looks vulnerable."

"Am I ever anything else?"

The little truck streaked through the endless halls, down ramps, around perilous turns, ever deeper into the metal world. The Marine driver fled on as if being pursued by the shades of the builders. He shuddered visibly each time they encountered one of the skeletons. They passed through one chamber where a score of the builder folk had died.

"The bones that have touched and shaped our lives," Thomas said. "From afar, like virgin princesses."

"You getting poetic again?"

"I do when I'm depressed." He glanced at the Marines. They stared forward impassively. "And this place is depressing." The soldiers seemed to have come out of a robot factory. They had shown no reaction to the Admiral's tapes.

The driver's suicidal rush was the only evidence that either man was disturbed.

The truck swooped into a level with ceilings vaulting a hundred meters high. Brobdingnagian machines crowded it, rising like the buildings of an alien city. There was life here, and light, but it was all machine.

"I wonder what they are."

"Accumulators for the energy weapons," Mouse guessed.

"Some of them. Some of them must be doing something with the air."

"Look!" Mouse squealed. "Sergeant, stop. Back up. Back up. A little more. Look up there, Tommy. On the fourth catwalk up."

McClennon spotted the androgynous little machine. It was busy working on the flank of one of the towering structures. "A maintenance robot."

"Yeah. All right, Sergeant. Go ahead."

They descended more levels, some as high-ceilinged as that of the robot. They saw more of the mobile machines, built in a dozen different designs.

Obviously, only the builders had perished. Their fortress was very much alive and healthy. Storm and McClennon saw no evidence of breakdown.

"It's like walking through a graveyard," Mouse said, after their driver had had to wend his way across a vast, open floor where hundreds of skeletons lay in neat rows. "Chilling."

"Know what, Mouse? I think this is really a pyramid. It's not a fortress at all."

"You're not serious."

"Why not? Think about it. Can you think of any strategic reason for putting a world fort out here?"

"Sure."

"Such as?"

"Right over there are the Magellanic Clouds. Sic somebody on me willing to spend a few hundred millennia conquering the galaxy and chasing me, and I'd build me an all-time fort across my line of retreat before I jump off for a friendlier star-swarm."

"Now who's getting romantic?"

"Romantic, hell."

"They could just go around it, Mouse."

"That centerward mob don't go around anything. They'd just stay here till they cracked it open."

"Maybe you're right, but I'm going to stick to my theory."

They reached the research center a few minutes later. McClennon located Consuela el-Sanga almost immediately, and found her completely free of animosity. He was surprised.

"Why?" she asked. "I'm no Seiner. I'm just one of their captive scientists."

"I didn't know." He introduced Mouse. He wondered if Consuela had heard from Amy.

"Moyshe... That wouldn't be right, would it?"

"McClennon. Thomas. But call me whatever's comfortable."

"Thomas, this is the most exciting time of my life. We can finally compare notes with your people... It's like opening up a whole new universe. Come on. Let me show you what we're doing." Her walk had a youthful bounce despite the higher than Seiner-normal gravity.

Mouse's eyebrows rose questionably. McClennon shrugged. "Come on. Before she changes her mind."

A horde of people were at work in a nearby chamber, where hundreds of folding tables had been arrayed in long rows. Most were burdened with artifacts, papers, or the tools of the scientists and their helpers. To one side technicians were busy with communicators and a vast, waist-level computer interface.

Consuela explained, "The people at the tables are examining and cataloging artifacts. We brought along several thousand laymen to help explore. Whenever they make a find, they notify comm center. We send an expert to examine the site. The confab over there is an ongoing exchange with your Lunar dig people. The people at the console are trying to reprogram Stars' End's master brain so it can deal directly with human input."

"You found a key to the builder language?" Thomas asked.

"No. That will come after we can talk to the computer."

"You just lost me. That sounds backwards."

"It works like this: The starfish commune with the machine. They relay to our mindtechs. The mindtechs relay to our computer people. They build parallel test programs. Communications send them down. Our computer people here try to feed it back to the master brain. The starfish read the response and feed it to the mindtechs again. And round the circle. The idea is to help the computers develop a common language. So far we've only managed a pidgin level of communication. We think we're on the brink of breakthrough, though."

"Math ought to be a snap," Mouse said. "It's got to be the same all over the universe. But I can see how you'd have trouble working toward more abstract concepts."

"Unfortunately, we're using a non-mathematical interface," Consuela replied. "The starfish aren't mathematically minded. Their conscious concept of number is one-two-three-many."

"Thought you said they were smart, Tommy."

Consuela said, "They are. But theirs is an intuitive rather than empirical intelligence. But we're making headway. When our computers can link... "

"Be careful," McClennon admonished. "Be very, very careful."

"Why?"

"This is the boss machine, right?"

"So the fish say."

"Okay. That makes it big and powerful. It might be playing games with you. It's insane."

"Come on," Mouse protested. "How can a machine go crazy?"

"I don't know. I do know I was in Contact during the first battle. I got a little direct touch. It was plain out of its micro-electronic mind. I'd be afraid it could use its capacity to seize control of my own command computers."

"He's right, Captain. Thomas, we know. It's a real problem. Most of the starfish are riding herd on its psyche. Only a few are helping communicate. It seems to have several psychological problems. Loneliness. A god complex. A deeply programed xenophobia and bellicosity... It is, after all, the directing intelligence of a weapons system."

"A defensive weapon," McClennon suggested. "Mouse laughed at this. But think about it. Is Stars' End a pyramid?"

"I don't understand."

"I'm going to wander around," Mouse said. "Don't run off without me, Tommy,"

"I won't. By pyramid I mean it serves the same function as Old Earth's Egyptian pyramids."

"A tomb? I don't think so. The idea isn't new, but it's been mostly a metaphor."

"Assume the builders knew... You don't have all the data." He explained about the centerward race and his suspicion that the builder race had been fleeing it. "Okay. They come to the end of the road. There's nowhere to run, unless they jump off for the Magellanic Clouds. I think they gave up. I think they stopped, built themselves a pyramid, put their treasures inside, and died out."

Miss el-Sangra smiled. "A romantic theory that fits the known facts. And a few you've conjured up, I think. Ingenious, Thomas. I suppose we'll be able to answer you when we complete contact with the master control."

A boyhood incident came to mind. He had discovered—independently, so far as he could discern later—that A squared plus B squared equaled C squared. He had been excited till he had explained it to a friend. The friend had laughed and told him that Pythagoras had crossed the finish line thirty-five hundred years ahead of him.

He felt the same deflation now.

"I hear you and Amy broke up."

"Yes. I didn't realize you knew."

"She called yesterday. She was very depressed about it."

"She took something personal that wasn't."

"That was the feeling I got. Her story was one-sided, but I got the impression you were trying to do what was right for everybody."

"I tried. I don't know how successful I was."

"You two shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place. Landsmen and Seiners don't speak the same language. I've been with them thirty-six years and I still have problems."

"We were both looking for something. We were too eager to grab it."

"I've been through that, too."

"Help her, will you? I never meant to hurt her."

"I will. And don't feel so guilty. She's more resilient than she pretends. She likes the attention."

"I thought you were friends."

"She was a lot more than a friend for a while, Captain. Till she met Heinrich Cortez."

"Oh."

"Hey, Tommy!" Mouse bore down on them like a mini-juggernaut. "Come here." He about-turned and steamed a reverse course.

"Excuse me, Consuela." He chased Mouse down. "What?"

Mouse stopped. "I just talked to a gal who's doing the same thing for the Fishers that we're doing for Beckhart. She was pissed. These clowns, some of them, have been here for ten days. The Fishers have eight thousand people down already. And they haven't even started looking at weapons systems. They don't even care. All they want to do is collect broken toothbrushes and sort old bones."

"They'll get to it, Mouse. You've got to give them a chance to let the new wear off. And they've got to get a dialogue going with the master control. If they manage that, it'll save time. In the long run. The machine can redesign the weapons for us. That would save ripping the old ones out of here, orbiting them, then building ships around them."

Mouse calmed himself. "Okay. Maybe you're right. But I still don't like to see everybody doing something else when weapons are the reason we're all here."

"What if the weapons technology requires other preexisting technologies?"

"What do you mean?"

"Go back a hundred years. Build me a pulse-graser with the technology available then. You couldn't do it. You'd have to create the technology to create the technology to construct the pulse accumulators. Right?"

"Sometimes I don't like you a whole lot, Tommy." Mouse grinned. "I'll tell the Seiner lady to be patient."

"If the Captains will excuse me?" The senior of their Marine custodians approached them.

"Yes, Sergeant?" Thomas asked.

"The Admiral's compliments, sirs, and he needs you back aboard ship immediately."

"What is it?"

"He didn't say, sir. He said to tell you it's critical."

Mouse looked puzzled. McClennon was very much so.

The news hit the busy chamber before they departed.

The starfish had had a brief skirmish with sharks. Hordes of the predators had appeared. A continuous stream were still arriving.

"Holy shit!" Thomas said. "I'd forgotten about them."

"They didn't forget us," Mouse grumbled. "Damnation!"

People swirled this way and that. The mood approached panic. Doctor Chancellor rushed over. "I heard you're going up. Take this to the Admiral, just in case." He shoved a folder into McClennon's hands. "Thank you." He dashed toward the team working at the computer. They were trying to prepare an instantaneous shutdown of the round-robin should the sharks attack.

"They should tell the idiot box to scrub the problem for them," Mouse said as they pulled away. "What did he give you?"

"His notes. They look like a cross between a journal and regular scientific notation."

"Give me some of those."

Their driver flew around worse than he had coming the other direction.

"Here's an interesting one," Mouse said. "No furniture."

"What?"

"The exploration teams haven't found any furniture. There goes your pyramid theory."

"He's right. I didn't see anything but machinery. The bodies are all laid out on the floor."

"Maybe they're invaders too?"

McClennon shrugged. "Here's one that will grab you. How big do you think Stars' End is?"

"Uhm... Venus size?"

"Close. Earth minus two percent. But the planetary part is smaller than Mars. The rest is edifice."

"What?"

"His word. I'll give you the question. Since most of the structural volume would be hollow, how come the place has so much gravity? It's a couple points over Earth normal."

Mouse sneered. "Come on, Tommy. Maybe it's the machines."

"Nope. You're going to love it. According to this, the builders, before they started building, took a little planet and polished it smooth. Then they plated it with a layer of neutronium. The fortress structure floats around on the neutronium, which may be a cushion against tectonic activity."

"Whoa!" Mouse clung to the truck as its driver made a violent turn. "How did they stabilize the neutronium?"

"Figure that out, and how they mined it in the first place, and you and me will get rich."

"What's the kicker?"

"He doesn't have one here. I think it's implied. I didn't see anything at the Lunar digs or Three Sky that would suggest that level of technology."

"So the little people are interlopers. Just like us."

"Maybe." McClennon had an image of Bronze Age barbarians camped in the street of a space age city.

"Keep talking. I don't want to think about the fly up."

A Navy Lieutenant awaited them at Marathon's ingress lock. "If you'll follow me, sirs?"

The Admiral awaited them on the bridge. "Ah. Thomas. I was beginning to wonder."

"Is it critical, sir? We haven't slept for ages."

"It's critical. But the Seiners say it doesn't look like it'll break right away. Rest up good before you go over."

"Over?"

"I'm sending you to Danion. I want you to go into link and give Assyrian and Prussian a fire control realtime."

"You have got to be kidding."

"Why? My calculations show them capable of cleaning up that little mess out there. It's a chance to show Gruber what can happen if he gets tricky."

"Point. Sir, you're over-optimistic. Sharks are super deadly. They throw anti-hydrogen when they get mad. Second point. Why me? A Seiner mindtech could do the job, and probably better. They're better trained."

"I want you. I don't want some Seiner who'll adjust the data to make us look bad."

"I have to go?"

"It's an order."

"Then make it another ship. I'm liable to get lynched aboard Danion."

"Danion is Gruber's choice. That's the ship we know. He has secrets too."

"Thanks a lot. Sir."

Mouse stage-whispered, "The ship's Legal Officer would back you if you want to refuse. You don't have to work when you're under arrest."

"I got troubles enough without getting the Old Man mad at me. Madder at me."

Beckhart glared at Mouse. "You're going with him, son. Head bodyguard. Take your two Marines. Tommy, if it will make you more comfortable, stay with the Psych people till time to go."

"I will."

Danion had not changed—except there were no friendly faces aboard now. Amy met them at the ingress lock. A squad of grim-faced Security people accompanied her. She installed the party aboard a convoy of small vehicles.

People spat and cursed as they passed.

"Tell me something," Mouse said. "How come everybody knows we're here?"

"This isn't Navy," Amy replied curtly.

"You keep on and I won't make love to you anymore." Mouse laughed when she turned to glare at him.

"Easy, boy," McClennon said. "We've got to get out of here alive."

Something thrown whipped over their heads.

"Did you see that?" Mouse croaked. "That was Candy... She wanted to marry me."

"Amy, have you shown people those tapes?"

"What tapes?"

"The centerward... "

Mouse nudged him. "I smell a little political skulduggery, old friend. A little crafty censorship. Old Gruber is afraid he can't keep people cranked up if they find out what's really going on."

"You're not to discuss that," Amy said.

Mouse grinned. "Oh! The Saints forfend! Never, my dear. What are you going to do about it if I do?"

"I saw Consuela yesterday," McClennon said, heading them off.

Amy softened. "How was she?"

"Twenty years younger. Happy as a kid loose in a candy store. She's hoping you'll come down."

"You went?"

"Yesterday. It's interesting. But I don't think we'll get as many answers as questions."

The convoy entered Operations Sector. A huge door closed behind them, isolating them from the rest of the ship. Mouse wondered aloud why. No one answered him. McClennon's former tech team, Hans and Clara, awaited him. Their faces were not friendly, but were less inimical than any he had seen outside Operations. Clara even managed a smile.

"Welcome back, Moyshe. You even get your old couch."

"Clara, I want you to meet somebody before we start. You never got the chance. This is Amy."

Clara extended a hand. "Amy. I heard so much about you when Moyshe was with us."

McClennon removed his tunic, handed it to Mouse. The Marine sergeants considered the couch and its technical stations, posted themselves to either side, out of the way.

The Contact room had fallen silent. People stared. Obviously, no one had been warned that Contact expected visitors.

Thomas settled onto the couch. "Clara, I'm not sure I can do this anymore."

"You don't forget. Hans."

Hans said, "You let your hair grow, Moyshe. I'll have to gum it up good."

"Haven't had time for a haircut since we hit The Broken Wings." He shuddered as Hans began rubbing greasy matter into his scalp, and again when the youth slipped the hairnet device into place. A moment later the helmet devoured his head.

"There's a fish waiting, Moyshe," Clara said. "Just go on out. And good luck."

TSD took him. Then he was in the starfish universe.

Stars' End was a vast, milky globe surrounded by countless golden footballs and needles. The three Empire Class warships became creeping vortices of color. They were at full battle stations already, with their heaviest screens up. Golden dragons slid across the distance, orbiting well beyond the ships.

And beyond the dragons, against the galaxy... "My God!" he thought.

He saw great shoals and thunderheads of red obscuring the jeweled kirtle of the galaxy. The sharks were so numerous and excited that he could not discern individuals.

"Yes, Moyshe man-friend. Will attack soon," a voice said inside his mind.

"Chub!"

"Hello. Welcome home. I see by your mind many more adventures lived, Moyshe man-friend. I see doors opened where once shadows lay."

"What in heaven... You've changed, Chub. You've become poetic."

Windchime laughter tinkled through his mind. "Have been so lucky, Moyshe man-friend. First a spy linker who taught jokes, then a she linker filled with poetry."

McClennon felt the starfish reaching deep within him, ferreting through the hidden places, examining all the secrets and fears it had not been able to reach before. "You remember fast, Moyshe man-friend."

On cue, an outside voice said, "Linker, Communications. We have an open channel to Assyrian and Prussian Fire Control. Please inform us when you're ready to begin."

Fear stalked through McClennon. The starfish reached in and calmed him. "I'm ready now," he replied.

He listened in as Danion's communications people closed their nets and linked with the dreadnoughts. He heard the chatter as the Navy and Seiner fleets went on battle alert. From his outside viewpoint he watched screens develop around the Navy ships. The two giant warships began creeping toward the shark storm.

The sharks sensed the attack before it arrived. Suddenly, they were flashing everywhere, trying to reach their attackers and the ships behind them.

McClennon felt the flow from Chub go through his mind into Danion. He saw the response of Assyrian and Prussian. Their weapons ripped the very fabric of space. Sharks by the hundred died.

And by dozens and scores they slipped past and hurled themselves at the massed ships around Stars' End.

In ten minutes space was aglow from the energies being expended. And ten minutes later still McClennon began to feel bleak, to despair. When he recognized the mood's source, he asked, "Chub, what's the matter?"

"Too many sharks, Moyshe man-friend. Attacking was mistake. Even the great ships-that-kill of your people will not be able to endure."

McClennon studied the situation. Space was scarlet, yes, but he saw no sure indicators of defeat.

Still, starfish could intuit developments before even the swiftest human-created computer.

He began to see it fifteen minutes later. Whole packs of sharks were suiciding in the warships' screens, gradually overloading them. They were doing it to every ship. Near Stars' End at least a dozen vessels were aflame with the fire that could burn anywhere, as anti-matter gasses slowly annihilated the metal of their hulls.

It got worse.

"Moyshe?" Clara's voice seemed to come from half a galaxy away. "You've been in a long time. Want to come out?"

"No. I'm doing fine."

"You're thrashing around a lot."

"It's all right. It's grim out here."

A driblet of fear was getting past Chub's sentinel effort. The starfish himself was in a state of agitation. His kind were being slaughtered.

It got worse.

Prussian was compelled to withdraw. The sharks redoubled their assault upon Assyrian. Hapsburg picked up the realtime link and replaced Prussian.

The Navy squadrons fared better than did the Starfisher harvestfleets. Their fire patterns were virtually impenetrable.

From somewhere, a voice screamed, "Breakthrough! Breakthrough!"

McClennon did not understand till much later. At the moment he thought it meant the sharks had managed their victory. It was not till Chub began exulting that he realized the tide had turned.

The sharks were turning on themselves, pairing off and fighting to the death in ponderous, savage duels. Winners searched for new victims. Here and there, a few began to flee.

Within half an hour the only red to be seen was that fading from fragments of dead shark. Space was aboil with the activity of the scavenger things that followed the sharks. Chub kept giggling like a teenager at a dirty joke. "We do it one more time, Moyshe man-friend. This time when impossible. And in grand style. Grandest style possible. Will make bet. Herd and harvestfleet will have no trouble from sharks again for age of man. So many died here... "

"Moyshe?" Clara said. "Still okay? I think we should bring you out. You've been under a long time."

A sadness came over McClennon. For an instant he could not identify its cause. Then he knew. Chub was sorry to see him go. The starfish knew that this time it would be forever.

"I don't know what to say, Chub. I already said goodbye once."

Chub tried a feeble joke. McClennon forced a charity laugh.

"Not so good?"

"Not so good. Remember me, Chub."

"Always. The spy man from the hard matter worlds will remain immortal in the memory of the herd. Stay happy, Moyshe man-friend. Remember, there is hope gainst the world-slayers too. The Old Ones tell me to tell you so. They are remembered from other galaxies. They have been stopped before."

"Other galaxies?"

"They come to all galaxies eventually, Moyshe man-friend. They are the tools of the First Race, the hard matter folk of the beginning. They do not grow old and die. They are not born as you, but in machine wombs from pieces of adults. They are created things. They do not reason as you. They know only their task."

McClennon felt the starfish struggling with concepts alien to the starfish mind. There was an aura of the extremely ancient in what the creature was trying to tell him. Chub seemed to be translating very old mood lore into the relative precision of modern human thought.

"They scourge the worlds that they might be prepared for the First Race, Moyshe man-friend. But the First Race is gone, and not there to take the worlds, nor to end the work of their tools. They were gone before the birth of your home star."

"Who built Stars' End? Do you know?"

"The little hard matter people, as you thought. Those whose bones you found. They were enemies of the First Race. They won that struggle, but still run from the tools of their foes."

"But... "

Chub knew his questions before he thought them. "They are old, too, Moyshe man-friend. They flee, and the killers-of-worlds pursue. This is not the first time they have passed through our galaxy. You do not know Stars' End. It is old, Moyshe man-friend. Older than the stones of Earth. The enemies of the world-slayers are but a ghost of what once was. They perish in flight, and decline, and always they leave their trail of traps for their foes. The herd knew them of old, Moyshe man-friend, in other ages, when the galaxies were young and closer together and our fathers swam the streams arching between them."

"You're getting poetic."

"The moods mesh, Moyshe man-friend. The moods mesh."

"Moyshe? You'd better not stay much longer." Clara's voice was more remote than ever. He began to feel her urgency.

"Linker? Communications. We're breaking lock."

"Linker, aye. Chub, I... "

"Coming to you, Moyshe man-friend. You will remember."

The starfish's message puzzled McClennon. He would remember what?

Something hit his mind. It was an overpowering wave. Panicking, he yanked upward on his escape switch. "Chub... My friend... " were his last screaming thoughts before the darkness took him.

Pain!

Overwhelming pain, worse than any migraine. His head was pulling itself apart.

He screamed.

"Hold him!" someone yelled.

He writhed against restraining arms. Something pierced his flesh. Warm relaxation radiated from that point: The pain began to lessen. Soon he could open his eyes and endure the light.

"Get back!" Clara snapped at someone. "Moyshe, how do you feel?"

"Like death warmed over. Over."

Though she looked relieved, she growled, "I told you to come out. Why didn't you?"

"Chub was telling me about Stars' End, End. About who built it, and about the centerward race. Race. It was important. Important."

"You pushed it too far."

"Give me another shot. Shot. I'll be all right. Right. How's the battle coming? Coming? What happened, anyway? Anyway?"

Hans held his arm while Clara gave him the second injection. The pain receded. It became a slight irritation over his eyes, like a sinus infection.

"They made the breakthrough with the Stars' End master control, Moyshe," Hans said. There wasn't the slightest animosity in the youth now. "You held them long enough. Once it found the key, it broke our language in seconds. It saw our problem. It did whatever it did about the sharks."

"What did it do? Do?"

Mouse stepped around where he could look into McClennon's eyes. "We were hoping you could tell us. You were out there."

"I didn't know what was happening. Happening. One minute we had no hope. Hope. The next minute the sharks sharks had been hit by a hurricane or something. Or something."

"The Empires didn't do so hot, eh?"

"They did magnificently. Better than all of Payne's Fleet Payne's Fleet did during the first battle. Battle. I think Gruber Gruber will be properly impressed. Impressed. There was just more there there than anybody expected. Expected."

Mouse frowned at him. He asked Clara, "Why is he doing that?"

"I don't know. I've never seen it before."

"Why am I doing what? What?"

"Echoing yourself."

"What do you mean? Mean?"

"How soon can we move him?" Mouse asked.

"Any time," Clara told him. "But he should stay here. Our medical people know how to handle mindtech problems."

"No. The Admiral wants him right back. Come on, Thomas. Feet on the floor. Let's see if you can stand."

"No problem. Problem." He was weak, but he could get around. Why were they all looking at him that way?

He began to remember.

"He told me I would remember. Remember."

"Who told you?" Mouse asked as he guided McClennon toward the door and conveyances waiting outside.

"Chub. The starfish. Fish. I'm beginning to. To. Mouse, I've got to see the Admiral. Admiral. I'm remembering everything the fish know about the centerward race and their enemies. Enemies." He turned. "Clara. It was good to see you again. Again. Hans. Be a good fellow. Mind your grandmother. Mother." He reached with his right hand. Surprised, Hans shook it.

"Of course, Moyshe. Good luck." He glanced at Clara.

The woman said, "Good luck, Moyshe. Maybe you'll surprise us again."

McClennon smiled weakly. "I hope not. Not. No more battles, anyway. Way. Mouse. Let's go. Go."

He was driven by anxiety. He wanted to report what he had learned before the memories slipped away.

Mouse stopped to talk to Amy before he boarded the shuttle. "Take care of yourself," he told her. "And be happy. What's happened wasn't your fault. You could say it was fate."

"I know, Mouse. But that doesn't make it hurt any less." She smiled wanly. "Greater destinies? It's probably for the best. Sorry I was such a bitch."

Mouse shrugged. "No problem. Take care."

"Take care of Moyshe." Mouse looked at her strangely.

"He's your friend, but he's the husband I'm going to remember." She leaned close, whispered, "Promise not to tell him till he's past the worst part. We've got a baby on the way."

"It's a promise. He doesn't need that on his mind too." Storm backed through the hatchway, waved, turned, found a seat. For a time he was too amazed to be disturbed by the fly.

McClennon sat opposite him, beside one of the Marines, writing furiously.