The Sea is Full of Stars

including what had happened to Nakitt in the house and, for the briefest of moments, to even Core itself, indicated that the subjects had been somehow digitized and the energy pattern sent along that beam.

Apparently without loss.

Core was impressed.

South Zone

The various groups lay scattered in the vast chamber, having been unceremoniously dumped there upon materialization.

The mostly mechanized newcomers were the first to come around, with Jeremiah Kincaid getting to his feet fairly quickly. He went over and checked the two women first, saw that they were slowly coming to, then checked Martinez, and finally Wallinchky. He was revolted by what the crime lord had done to the two, both of whom he remembered fondly, and he was particularly pissed off at the near erasure of Angel Kobe.

Where was your God when you needed him? he mused as she started to come to. You should have listened to me when I told you that only Hell exists.

The matter transmission of the ancients was in top working order, and if there were any losses, he couldn’t see them in the others or himself; although given time, maybe they’d show up. That meant Wallinchky was in no better shape here than he’d been back there; in fact, if he wasn’t dead, he certainly was very close. Kincaid wouldn’t have minded if the old man croaked right here, and he thought it would probably do wonders for the others. As for the women, he wondered what they would be like now that they were cut off from the computer that had rebuilt them.

Kincaid checked the readouts from his suit, touched the power ring to manually disengage the locks, and removed the helmet. If anything, he looked more gruesome than he had in the city center, but he didn’t care. The air was pretty good, gravity—well, maybe a little low for standard, but not by much, and a bit more than back on Grabant 4.

ARI Martinez groaned and sat up, looking around, which brought instant mixed feelings. The sight of Kincaid was not pleasant, but the discovery that they were in a vast artificial structure was a relief. Just waking up at all was a relief.

The two women had already sat up, but made no move to help the others, nor do much of anything. They looked very confused.

Although Core had warned them and tried to prepare them for this, it was as if part of their brains, a huge part, had been somehow carved away. It was slower to think, and the amount of data was more than limited. Core had fed into each of them their past memories, but those memories didn’t much relate to their current circumstances. Also added, almost at the last second, had been their old personality modules, although these could not be fully implemented so long as they were attending to the Master. Even worse, they weren’t quite sure which one of them was which. Each had only one personality module, but had access to the memories and experiences of both.

Seeing Kincaid bending over Wallinchky, the two snapped out of their confusion and rushed to defend their master from the monster. Kincaid turned and, reacting as fast as they could, said, “Relax. I was trying to see if he survived the trip. I think he might have, but he’s in very bad shape.”

“Then we must get him to the medlab right away!” Alpha exclaimed.

“And where would the nearest medlab or hospital be, young lady?” Kincaid asked, sounding amused.

“It—We—I—” they both sputtered, then asked in unison, “Where are we?” They both felt cut off and incredibly alone.

“No data, as you might say,” Kincaid responded. “Somewhere else. Somewhere the Ancient Ones might have gone, and somewhere they probably built, judging from the scale of the place and its lack of anything interesting.”

Ari came over and examined the unconscious Wallinchky. “Is he dead?”

“I don’t think he is yet, but he soon will be,” Kincaid told him. “I don’t think he can be moved. How is this possible? Heart disease is so easily and completely dealt with, how could he have let this go? Didn’t he get physicals from his own medlab if not from real doctors?”

“Who knows? When you have the kind of money and power he has, who’s to remind him? He had a full rejuve a while back and they reamed him all out and gave him all new plumbing, so I guess he figured he was fine.” The younger man looked up at the ghoulish-looking Kincaid. “How did you wind up like that so soon?”

“I’ve been like this for quite some time,” Kincaid responded. “When this happened, they couldn’t do what they can do now. The best that could be managed was to apply synthetic skin over my exposed parts so I looked normal, and as long as I got an occasional tuneup, well, I continued to look the same. To steal that ship and make my getaway from Josich’s hideout, though, I had to go through a hideous external atmosphere outside the biodomes there, and it burned most of the synthetics away. Since then, we’ve been working too hard on this business for me to take the time to get it all back again.” He looked up and around with his metallic skull and eerie humanlike eyes on biomechanical stalks. “I don’t think it makes any difference here, either.”

“Well, what do we do now?”

Kincaid shrugged and got to his feet. “That looks like a walkway up there. If we can move him gently, he’ll at least be on a flat and possibly insulated surface. He’s in no shape to be moved any more than that, though.”

“Maybe we should just leave him here. It could be a million light-years to the next hospital.”

“No!” both the women said at once, looking threateningly at the other two. “We cannot abandon the Master.”

“Well, somebody’s going to have to,” Kincaid pointed out. “If he doesn’t get help, he’s going to die, and at any time. Why don’t you move him up there to where he’s comfortable, and then one of you can accompany one or both of us while we look for help. There is no logical alternative.”

They both froze for a moment, then Beta said, “Very well. We will move him.”

It was a very slow and cautious move, but it wasn’t hard, and Jules Wallinchky soon lay comatose on a soft, rubbery, but flat surface that seemed to go on and on.

Ari looked forward and back along it. “Huh! Looks almost like a stock moving walkway, doesn’t it? About, oh, twice the width of one of those doors in the city.”

“Very observant. There might be hope for you yet. Well, come, we should be off, I think.”

“But which way?” the younger man asked.

Kincaid thought about it. “If this is a moving walkway, then it’s the first real artifact of the Ancient Ones we know about that’s not a hollow structure. If everything else works, even their transport system, then maybe this does, too.” He examined the side wall carefully. “There! See? It’s kind of a panel, just beyond the break where we walked in. If we’re lucky, we might even be able to move the lump, here. Let’s see… They were bigger than us, but they had certain basics in common, like doors and roads. So, whether they had hands or tentacles or whatever, figure that would be best as a simple pressure plate.”

Alpha, listening to this, went over and pressed the area. Nothing happened.

“Any more bright ideas, Captain?” An asked him.

“Yes—you press it, son. She’s got machine hands and arms, and mine are almost as bad.”

Ari saw what he meant, stepped around the body of Jules Wallinchky and put his hand on the plate.

The walkway began moving, slowly but steadily, carrying them all along.

Ari Martinez brightened. “How about that!” He shook his head in wonder. “They could wish for anything they needed, teleport all over, and yet they needed walkways?”

“Maybe they didn’t want to get too soft,” Kincaid guessed. “Maybe we got them, or this place, wrong.”

The moving walkway slowed, and then stopped at a junction between two belts where it had to change direction. It was clear why: the next belt was running in the opposite direction, and someone or something was