Phaethon did recall that both the horse monster and Scaramouche had been killed by Atkins in swift and decisive strokes, under circumstances suggesting that Nothing Sophotech could not have heard news of the deaths of bis agents. At best, Nothing would be suspicious because messages from Scaramouche were overdue.
But if Nothing's purpose was to seize control of the Phoenix Exultant before her launch from the Solar System, then this moment now was the evil Sophotech's last Opportunity to act. No matter how suspicious the enemy might be, Nothing had to get Neoptolemous, his agent, aboard, and now.
And so should Phaethon, acting alone, and on the blind faith that he would be able somehow to overcome the agent sent by an unthinkably intelligent enemy Sophotech, the last remnant of a long-dead civilization, an agent armed perhaps with powers and sciences unknown to the Golden Oecumene, should Phaethon knowingly let that agent aboard? ...
But it seemed it was his duty to do so. Better to follow orders, and do his duty, even if he did not understand that duty, rather than let those duties go undone.
He directed a thought at the mirror.
'Welcome aboard, owners and crew. I am happy to serve as pilot and navigator of this vessel. We shall explore the universe, create such worlds as suit us, and do all else which we have dared to dream to do. Welcome, Neoptolemous of Silver-Gray. Welcome, all.'
The hatches and docks all along the miles of the Phoenix Exultant hull slowly, grandly, began to cycle open.
The enemy came aboard swiftly and slowly.
The antennae and thought-port array along the Phoenix Exultant's prow opened to the radio traffic. Phaethon tracked the invasions of the enemy software, and saw the readout begin to register the flows of poison into the hierarchy of the ship's pure mind. This took a matter of seconds.
The prow air lock doors admitted those Neptunians (and there were scores) whose 'bodies' were spacewor- thy. Gleaming blue-gray in their flexible housings, these masses of heurotechnology fell across empty vacuum, slid across the hull toward the air locks. Phaethon consulted ship diagrams, and sent a message to gather the high- speed elevators into the living quarters, and lock them there without power. Those Neptunians entering by the forward air locks would have miles to travel before they reached the living quarters, or any system of the ship where they could do any damage.
At the scores of midship docking ports, smaller vessels, space caravans and flying houses, were arriving. The docks here were wide spaces, half a kilometer wide and five kilometers long. Fortunately, the caravans arriving here also were mingled with the arriving biological material, canisters of Neptunian atmosphere under pressure, and acres of Neptunian jungle crystal held in greenhouses. Phaethon simply deactivated half of his robot stevedores and longshoreman, and cut the intelligence budget available to the supercargo. Then he directed the supercargo to ask all the incoming persons and materials to submit to examinations for viruses, prank-craft, explosives, or self- replicating aphrodisiacs. Being Neptunians, they would not think these precautions odd or insulting. If anything, they might think Phaethon's precautions were lax.
An estimator in his armor allowed him to calculate the average confusion or friction caused by these inefficiencies. It would be long minutes before everything entering amidships was loaded or stored.
But a different story obtained at the four gigantic cargo and fuel bays aft. These spaces were so large that there was no crowding, no opportunity to cause confusion. Even the kilometer-long superships of the Neptunian colonists could fit in the vast aft bays with ease.
And Neoptolemous was on one of those ships. Analy-.sis of the signal traffic showed the communication centers, and, presumably, the brains of the operation, were there.
That communication fell silent when all these ships came close enough to the Phoenix Exultant that her hull blocked the line of sight from ship to ship. All the units of the Neptunian crew were now, in effect, isolated from each other.
Phaethon watched the lead supership move from an outer to an inner aft bay. The locks on the doors could not be programmed to deny Neoptolemous access anywhere, since he was the legal owner of the Phoenix Exultant at this point.
But since the other officers and personnel were not owners, of course, they were held at their various outer bays and deck spaces, unable to proceed farther. The kilometer-long ship of Neoptolemous, all alone, wandered forward into the vast gulf of the inner bay.
This lead supership opened like a flower, disassembling itself in a confused rush of nanotechnic writhings, surrounded by waste steam. Globules and arms of the nanostuff attached themselves to the inner bay walls and began constructing the houses, laboratories, nurseries, and conglomeration chambers for the Neptunians who would be residing there. Greek pillars and Georgian-style pediment and roofs grew out of the bulkhead, all oriented along the Phoenix Exultant's main axis (the direction of motion being 'up').
Phaethon examined the utterly non-Neptunian architecture with interest. A monumental pillar in the middle of the city was erecting a Winged Victory holding up a laurel crown; this was the emblem of the Silver-Gray.
Out from the newly made and still-steaming palaces and peristyles, past the smoldering pillars, steaming English gardens, glowing Egyptian obelisks, and smoking French triumphal arches, came a cavalcade of pike-men leading the carriage of Queen Victoria.
The horses and men of the cavalcade, outwardly shaped like humans, were constructed of Neptunian polymer armor, gleaming like statues of blue glass, and seething with strands and globules of complex brain matter and neurocircuitry throughout their lengths, visible beneath the semitranslucent skin. The image of Queen Victoria was more realistic, as only her face and hands shined with the ice blue Neptunian body substance. The black dress and high crown were real. Unfortunately, a human body was too small to hold all the mass of which a Neptunian Eremite was composed, so the body of the queen was the size of the Colossus of Rhodes, and her huge head overtopped some of the pillars lining the roads, and her crown brushed the triumphal arches under which the cavalcade passed.
Neoptolemous's ownership override opened the great doors leading from the inner bay to the fuel area. Here, the insulation space surrounding the drive axis extended seventy kilometers or more. When the ship was not under thrust, this space was cleared of any obstructions or dangerous radiation. It was actually rather clever of Neoptolemous to enter by this shaft: this was the quickest way to get to the living quarters from the aft of the great ship.
Phaethon thought: It would require only a simple command to the machines controlling the main drive. One- hundredth of a second of thrust would sweep that area with radiation. No complex subatomic particles would remain.
But Phaethon did not issue that command. While all his other men were delayed, out of contact with him, an left behind, Phaefhon allowed Neoptolemous to come closer, ever closer.
It seemed the cavalcade, horses, men, carriage and all. were all part of one master organism, which had, built into it, the same engines and thrusters which Phaethon had seen the Neptunian legate use so long ago in the grove of Saturn-trees: for, once the caval-cade moved into the wide and weightless insulation shafts surrounding the main drive, it began to rocket down the shaft toward the bow of the ship. Men-shapes and horse-things were half melted by the stress of acceleration, and bits of Neptunian body substance be-gun to drop off along the way.
The giant holding cells of the fuel, like an endless geometric array of snowballs, loomed around them for a hundred kilometers. The living quarters and ship's brain, even though it was a large as a good-sized space colony, larger than most ships, was absurdly dwarfed by comparison, not unlike the acorn-sized brain of the original, prehistoric version of a dinosaur.
Neoptolemous was coining.
Phaethon activated the olive drab cards he had found in his memory casket. Information from the three groups of stealth remotes poured into his brain.
The ship was under attack. The attack had been under way for several minutes.
The first attack, of course, had been through thought contamination. Viruses had been introduced into the ship mind with the first communication download; those viruses had been editing every recorder and vision cell of which the ship mind was aware, and blocking all knowledge of the attack from Phaethon.
But the ship mind was not aware of the military remotes monitoring ship-mind actions, and editing out of the ship mind all evidence and awareness of themselves and their two brother swarms.
