countenance.
“Really?” Her sigh was wistfully hopeful.
Dwer and Kaa both chuckled. But Harry shook his head.
“Let’s get moving,” he said. “Before something else goes wrong.”
So far, little had gone according to plan.
First came that riotous muddle at the Kazzkark warehouse. While Dwer covered their retreat with a hail of arrows, Harry and Kiwei had managed to grab the unconscious Rety and carry her off without being ripped to shreds by the angry Tandu warrior. Nearby hallways clamored with sounds of reinforcements — more of the vicious creatures — charging to help their comrade wreak havoc while chaos waves shook the little planetoid from end to end.
With a backward glance, Harry caught the final moments of the Skiano missionary — hurled into an exploding globe-icon of Earth, the blue “martyr planet.”
Troubles followed them to the Institute Docks, where slabs of rock wall were already coming loose, toppling to crush vehicles parked at nearby wharves. Screeching alarms warned that a vacuum breach was imminent. Harry hurried everyone aboard and got his station under way — with Kaa’s little corvette towed just behind — just before the ceiling started collapsing. By the time he reached the main airlock, there wasn’t much point going through emigration protocols. The obstructing wall dissolved, revealing fields of weirdly twinkling stars.
It took a while to dodge swarms of hazardous debris before they could make even a simple, short-range hyperjump. Meanwhile, chaos waves rocked the planetoid. Even if I make it back from this mission, there’d be no sense reporting here.
There are other Institute bases.
Anyway, they say it’s safer to be on a planet these days.
Finally, the chaos waves ebbed, though he knew worse was to come. As Kazzkark vanished from sight, Harry hoped Wer’Q’quinn, the old squid, would make it somehow.
Things got kind of blurry then. He gave coordinates to Kaa and let the expert space pilot take them through a dozen B-Level jumps, then into a small t-point that was already declared dangerously unstable.
Kaa’s innovative thread-jumping maneuvers somehow kept them from being torn, sliced, roasted, or vaporized. Still, it was a wild, nerve-racking ride. Harry spent half the time cursing cetaceans and their ancestors, all the way back to the Miocene.
At last, they reached his assigned entry point — a special place, darker than black, where the walls between reality levels were thin enough to pierce — and it was Harry’s turn to take over. Soon, materiality shimmered and they underwent transition to a realm whose physics let ideas have a life of their own.
It gladdened Harry to depart the province of giant statuary, entering a terrain covered by endless swaths of undulating orange “grass”—each blade consisting of some basic concept that thrived free of any language or host mind.
On close inspection, the prairie looked eroded, discolored. Large patches seemed broken or seared, as if raked by quake and fire. Apparently, E Space wasn’t immune to the tumult shaking five linked galaxies. Even the memoid herds were affected. He witnessed several great flocks darting to and fro, stampeding as both ground and sky rippled threateningly.
While his passengers stared in wonder, Harry set course for the Cosmic Path. He must find a portion that peered into Galaxy Four and set his instruments, as soon as possible. Fortunately, these new devices were disposable. He could leave them in place till they were destroyed. Their death cries would give Wer’Q’quinn’s people vital data about the Great Rupture. This time, his boss promised, the information would be broadcast widely, not kept in secret files for use by elder races and star gods.
That was the main reason Harry agreed to this mission. It might seem odd to worry about events a hundred million years from now. But for some reason he identified with people in that distant era. Maybe his efforts would spare those folks some of the ignorant terror now sweeping Five Galaxies. Even if, by then, the “gods” were distant heirs of chimpanzees, and the Navigation Institute of that future age was staffed by descendants of today’s lice. The kind infesting his fur right now, making him constantly yearn to scratch his—
“Captain Harms,” said a whirling circular shape that appeared uncomfortably near his nose. “I have news! Your goal should now lie in view. Congratulations! And may I add that it has been a real—”
Harry cut off observer mode holo with a curt head-shake. Hustling to a bank of windows, he peered past the ever-present E Space haze … and caught sight of a thin, sinuous glow, twisting across the countryside just ahead. “Well, something’s going right, for a change,” he murmured.
While laying his instruments, he would find an appropriate site along the Path, put Kaa and the others in the corvette, and shove the little vessel into normal space — hopefully within reach of their destination. Harry might then have barely enough time to get back home to civilization before the whole place rocked and rolled.
Rety was adamant.
From the moment she got up — stumbling into the control chamber with a hand pressed to her head and the other stroking her little urrish “husband”—Rety made one fact abundantly clear.
She was not returning to Jijo with Dwer and the others.
“You may be homesick for filth an’ a bunch of low-tech barbarians, but if I never hear o’ that place again, it’ll be too soon! I’m going back with Harry.”
That was it. No gratitude for saving her life. No mention of her erstwhile religion, or inquiries about her late guru. Just a fierce determination that defied all opposition.
Even so young, she is formidable. I’ve met some humans with personalities this strong. All were world- shifters — for well or ill.
But most had one trait Rety lacked. They knew the pragmatic value of tact. Of course, she’d been raised by savages. In civilization, she might learn social skills, forge alliances, achieve aspirations, and possibly even be liked.
There was just one problem with her plan.
“I’ll be honest, miss. There’s a good chance I can get you all to the right quadrant of Galaxy Four. Maybe even the sector. But my own odds of survival after—”
Rety laughed. “Don’t tell me odds! I ain’t worried ’bout odds since I was gored by a gallaiter, and given up by my own tribe for dead. Yee an’ I are gonna stick right by your furry side, if you don’t mind. And even if you do.”
The others were no help. Kaa used a spectral analyzer to peer into the Path — filled with dark nebulae and glittering stellar clusters — searching for the telltale blush of a particular stormy star. Kiwei occupied herself staring at the plain of memes, apparently trying to impose her will again, causing more shapes to appear.
Dwer’s sole response was a rolling of eyes. He had no aim to intervene in Rety’s life again.
“Oh, all right.” Harry sighed. “Just promise you’ll stay out of the way. And no whining about where you finally wind up!”
Rety nodded. “So long as it ain’t Jijo.”
A buzzer announced the dropping of another instrument package along the curving Path. With luck, Wer’Q’quinn’s devices would be positioned well before the biggest chaos wave of all. Then it would be a matter of dropping Kaa and the others off near a mapped t-point and wishing them luck.
He offered Kiwei a chance to withdraw.
“You don’t have to enter Galaxy Four. After the links snap, there’ll be no more travel between—”
She raised a meaty hand, chuckling. “Not more fairy tales about a permanent ‘rupture’ please! Scout-Major, you’ve been misled. The Five Galaxies have always been—”
The station abruptly jolted to a halt. A shrill squeal made everyone turn as Kaa used his tail flukes to thump the pad of his walker.
“C-come!” the dolphin urged. “Come and see thisssss!”
Harry and Kiwei hurried to join him at a bank of windows. Kaa used his neural tap to create a pointer ray, aimed toward the glittering Path.
“There it isss!” The pilot hissed clear, moist satisfaction. “I found it!”
Dwer asked—“Izmunuti?”
