Permanence

Harp scowled, and seemed to be about to say something; Mike Bequith moved forward and said, "There's a defensible point in here that looks as though it was set up as a command post; maybe it's time to make a call?"

She found herself smiling at him. "Show me this spot."

The next chamber had an airlock, and numerous lockers that the science team now proceeded to plunder for their suits. The i

"Chicxulub," said Rue. "Not Lasa writing?"

Mike shook his head grimly. "We may have been mistaken about the origin of the Envy," he said. "This writing covers the entire outside of the ship."

"What does it say?"

"It doesn't make much—" Mike started to say— but the autotroph interrupted him.

"Only the Phoenix persists," it said.

There was a momentary silence; even the members of the science team who had been cramming themselves into their suits stopped to look over.

"Well," said Rue. "…where does this lead?" She pointed to the airlock.

"Come," said Harp. He entered, and she followed. She noticed that Mike was right behind her.

The airlock led to a large spherical chamber, reminiscent to Rue of the interior of the Lasa habitat on the Envy— or, she thought now, what she had taken to be Lasa at the time. An inscape unit had been set up here, and Rue was about to activate her inscape link when she saw something else. Near one side of the white metal space floated a very familiar object: a round, diaphanous chamber similar to the one she had crafted to control the Envy. The chamber was pulsing blue right now, and various holographic vectors were interpenetrating it, like the petals of a ghostly flower.

"You guys built an interface," she said as Katz and the others crowded in behind her. "I'm impressed."

"Well," smirked Katz as he moved beside her, "you bragged about how you did it enough times that we knew what to… do…" He was staring at the glowing sphere in shock.

"It's come alive," he muttered. "What…" He reached out to touch the wall of the sphere; Rue did likewise, and felt a faint vibration through her glove.

"What's happening?" asked Rue.

"I don't know, but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that all the fighting outside has woken this lady up."

"Then we'd better get out of here." Rue popped up her private inscape and keyed in the command sequence that would summon the interceptors. Before she could execute the order, though, Barendts came flying through the airlock and tumbled through space, trying to maintain his aim on the purple disk. Others of the science team were leaping and scrambling through after him; there was pandemonium in Rue's earphones.

"What's going on!"

"— Attacking!" Barendts stabilized himself against a large egg-shaped object that jutted out of the chamber's wall. He kept his laser aimed at the airlock. "There were too many— and the civilians were in the way…"

Rue took quick stock of her people: They were all here, plus most of the science team. She looked back at the airlock, in time to see a bare hand thrust through the surface. The hand was waving frantically, as if in warning.

Slowly, the rest of a female member of the science team emerged through the lock. As her head broke the surface of the ferrofluid, it became clear that there was a laser rifle butted up against her jaw. Her eyes were wide with fear.

Several other human shields appeared, and behind them, marines from the Banshee. "Lay down your weapons!" commanded one. "We have more hostages in the other room, and we'll kill them one by one unless you surrender."

Barendts and Harp looked to Rue. She made her face into a neutral mask to hide her outrage, and nodded to them. Reluctantly, they and the other soldiers let go of their weapons.

The marines holding the hostages moved aside to let another figure through the airlock. This man steadied himself against the edge of the lock, faced in Rue's direction, and depolarized his helmet to show his face.

"Hello, Captain Cassels," said Admiral Crisler. He was smiling. "I don't know how you managed to get here, but now that you are I'm sure you'll have plenty of time to explain it all to me." More marines entered the chamber, and he gestured to them to take the weapons from Rue's men.

"Plenty of time."

27

RUE STEELED HERSELF. She would not flinch away from this man; he was not Jentry and she was not a helpless child anymore. "Admiral Crisler, I was just about to call you."

He smiled ironically. "Considering your situation, I believe you." He shook his head. "I honestly admit, I'm amazed to see you. How did you manage to follow us here?"

Rue had been ready for that question. "Living in the halo worlds, we've had to spend a lot more time and resource building slower-than-light ships than you. It was easy to fix up a couple of rendezvous ships with antimatter rockets; after the beams launched you back to the cycler, we had them launch us. We used the antimatter rockets to decelerate down here, and we have another set ready to boost us out."

"A desperate gamble," Crisler said, his eyebrows raised.

"Not really. Because of why we're here… it's simply that I came to get my people," she said. "As you see I have found them." She gestured around at her crew. "Looking at the state of the Banshee, and the number of berths on this new cycler, it doesn't look like you've got enough room for them anyway. Why not let me take them off your hands?"

Crisler looked surprised, then laughed. "A tempting offer— if I believed you about why you're here, which I don't. Or rather, I know you came for your crew, but what about them?" He pointed at Mike and the professor. "You've arrived with soldiers and scientists, just like I did. I doubt your little expedition's as small as you make it out to be. Regardless of what you want, I'm sure these people want the cycler mother."

"The what?" asked Herat.

Katz hung his head. "Self-reproducing starship technology. It's what we suspected we'd find here. When we got here and saw this place, we knew: Jentry's Envy was not made by the Lasa. It's a Chicxulub ship."

Crisler nodded. "Renegade Chicxulub— who would have thought? Katz here tells me that the Chicxulub were wiped out by their own planet-killers. But apparently not all the Chicxulub were loyal to the extermination program to begin with. There was some kind of splinter group toward the end, and they adopted the goals of the Lasa. They made the cycler mothers, and so here we are." He frowned suddenly at the glowing control sphere. "Katz, why is that thing on?"

"Sir, it seems to have come on by itself. The gunfire, maybe…"

"Well, shut it down." Katz obediently slipped into the control sphere, and began gesturing at the holographic spires and disks inside it. After a few moments he emerged, shaking his head. "Some kind of sequence has started. I can't shut it down."

"Get inscape going," snapped Crisler. "I want to see what's happening here."

Rue switched her inscape implants to receive, and watched as windows blossomed throughout the sphere. As this was happening, she noted Herat moving over next to Katz, and Mike going the opposite way, towing the autotroph canister. Crisler's men had examined it then given it back to him after deciding it wasn't a weapon.

"So what's a cycler mother?" asked Herat casually.

"This place," Katz said. Seeing that Rue was listening, he said, "All human societies have outlawed self-reproducing machines. You know the disasters that happened the few times the things were made— ecological catastrophes, nanotech-based diseases… Most other sentient species also ban them. But not the Chicxulub. They raised their creation to a fine art. All the machinery around Osiris and Apophis is part of a full-grown cycler mother— a machine that gives birth to cyclers."