find battle fleets lying in wait, eager to secure our secrets before we reached neutral ground. Several times, we were cornered, and escaped only because hordes of fanatics fought savagely among themselves over the right of capture.
“Alas, that compensation seems lacking in our present situation.”
That was an understatement. The Jophur could pursue Streaker at leisure, without threat of interference. As far as the rest of civilization was concerned, this whole region was empty and off-limits.
“Was poor Emerson wounded in one of those earlier space battles?”
Sara felt concern for her friend, the silent star voyager, whose cryptic injuries she had treated in her treehouse, before taking him on an epic journey across Jijo, to be reunited with his crewmates.
“No. Engineer D’Anite was captured by members of the Retired Caste, at a place we call the Fractal World. That event—”
The blue blob halted its twisting gyration. Hesitating a few seconds, it trembled before resuming.
“The detection officer reports something new! A phenomenon heretofore masked by the flames of Izmunuti.”
The display rippled. Abruptly, swarms of orange pinpoints sparkled amid the filaments and stormy prominences of Izmunuti’s roiling atmosphere.
Sara leaned forward. “What are they?”
“Condensed objects.
“Artificial, self-propelled spacial motiles.
“In other words, starships.”
Sara’s jaw opened and closed twice before she could manage speech.
“Ifni, there must be hundreds! How could we have overlooked them before?”
The Niss answered defensively.
“Oh, great Sage, one normally does not send probing beams through a red giant’s flaming corona in search of spacecraft. Our attention was turned elsewhere. Besides, these vessels only began using gravitic engines moments ago, applying gravi-temporal force to escape the new solar storms.”
Sara stared in amazement. Hope whirled madly.
“These ships, could they help us?”
Again, the Niss paused, consulting remote instruments.
“It seems doubtful, oh, Sage. They will scarcely care about our struggles. These beings belong to another order on the pyramid of life, completely apart from yours … though one might call them distant cousins of mine.”
Sara shook her head, at first confused. Then she cried out.
“Machines!”
Even Jijo’s fallen castaways could recite the Eight Orders of Sapience, with oxygen-based life being only one of the most flamboyant. Among the other orders, Jijo’s sacred scrolls spoke darkly of synthetic beings, coldly cryptic, who designed and built each other in the farthest depths of space, needing no ground to stand on or wind to breathe.
“Indeed. Their presence here surely involves matters beyond our concern. Most likely, the mechanoids will avoid contact with us out of prudent caution.”
The voice paused.
“Fresh data is coming in. It seems that the flotilla is having a hard time with those new tempests. Some mechaniforms may be more needy of rescue than we are.”
Sara pointed at one of the orange dots.
“Show me!”
Using data from long-range scans, the display unit swooped giddily inward. Swirling stellar filaments seemed to heave around Sara as her point of view plunged toward the chosen speck — one of the mechanoid vessels — which began taking form against a backdrop of irate gas.
Stretching the limits of magnification, the blurry enhancement showed a glimmering trapezoidal shape, almost mirrorlike, that glancingly reflected solar fire. The mechanoid’s outline grew slimmer as it turned to flee a plume of hot ions, fast rising toward it from Izmunuti’s whipped convection zones. The display software compensated for perspective as columns of numbers estimated the vessel’s actual measurements — a square whose edges were hundreds of kilometers in length, with a third dimension that was vanishingly small.
Space seemed to ripple just beneath the mechaniform vessel. Though still inexperienced, Sara recognized the characteristic warping effects of a gravi-temporal field. A modest one, according to the display. Perhaps sufficient for interplanetary speeds, but not to escape the devastation climbing toward it. She could only watch with helpless sympathy as the mechanoid struggled in vain.
The first shock wave ripped the filmy object in half … then into shreds that raveled quickly, becoming a swarm of bright, dissolving streamers.
“This is not the only victim. Observe, as fate catches up with other stragglers.”
The display returned to its former scale. As Sara watched, several additional orange glitters were overwhelmed by waves of accelerating dense plasma. Others continued climbing, fighting to escape the maelstrom.
“Whoever they are, I hope they get away,” Sara murmured.
How strange it seemed that machine-vessels would be less sturdy than Streaker, whose protective fields could stand full immersion for several miduras in the red star’s chromosphere, storm or no storm.
If they can’t take on a plasma surge, they’d be useless against Jophur weapons.
Disappointment tasted bitter after briefly raised hope. Clearly, no rescue would come from that direction.
Sara perceived a pattern to her trials and adventures during the last year — swept away from her dusty study to encounter aliens, fight battles, ride fabled horses, submerge into the sea, and then join a wild flight aboard a starship. The universe seemed bent on revealing wonders at the edge of her grasp or imagining — giant stars, transfer points, talking computers, universal libraries … and now glimpses of a different life order. A mysterious phylum, totally apart from the vast, encompassing Civilization of Five Galaxies.
Such marvels lay far beyond her old life as a savage intellectual on a rustic world.
And yet, a glimpse was clearly all the cosmos planned to give her.
Go ahead and look, it seemed to say. But you can’t touch.
For you, time has almost run out.
Saddened, Sara watched orange pinpoints flee desperately before tornadoes of stellar heat. More laggards were swept up by the rising storm, their frail light quenched like drowned embers.
Gillian and the dolphins seem sure we can stand a brief passage through that hell. But the vanishing sparks made Sara’s confidence waver. After all, weren’t machines supposed to be stronger than mere flesh?
She was about to ask the Niss about it when, before her eyes, the holo display abruptly changed once more. Izmunuti flickered, and when the image reformed, something new had come into view. Below the retreating orange glimmers, there now appeared three sparkling forms, rising with complacent grace, shining a distinct shade of imperial purple as they emerged from the flames toward Streaker’s path.
“What now?” she asked. “More mechanoids?”
“No,” the Niss answered in a tone that seemed almost awed. “These appear to be something else entirely. I believe they are …” The computer’s hologram deformed into jagged shapes, like nervous icicles. “I believe they are Zang.”
Sara’s skin crawled. That name was fraught with fear and legend. On Jijo, it was never spoken above a whisper. “But … how … what could they be doing …?”
Before she finished her question, the Niss spoke again.
“Excuse me for interrupting, Sara. Our acting captain, Dr. Gillian Baskin, has called an urgent meeting of the ship’s council to consider these developments. You are invited to attend.
“Do you wish me to make excuses on your behalf?”
Sara was already hurrying toward the exit.
“Don’t you dare!” she cried over one shoulder as the door folded aside to let her pass.
