Текст книги "Anvil of Stars"

Автор книги: Грег Бир

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"He's doing more than courting her," Ariel said. "Rosa's still in his room. You know she hasn't had a real friend for years?"

Martin nodded. "He thinks she's on to something."

"What?" Harpal asked.

"Something we need," Martin said, and Ariel nodded.

"What?" Harpal asked again, genuinely puzzled.

"Faith," Martin said.

Harpal drew back as if bitten. "You're kidding."

"Not at all," Martin said. "She's getting closer and closer to the mark. I've felt it myself." He tapped his chest.

"I'm completely lost now," Harpal said. "I don't deserve to be second. I'm out of touch."

"Things are going to get a lot more complicated very soon," Martin said. "Let's see how he handles the situation."

Ariel surprised him by agreeing completely. "He's made mistakes… But he's still in charge, and we're still ready to do the Job."

Harpal stood in the door. "If he accepts my resignation, that's fine by me," he said. "But why did he pick Rex? Rex is not the smartest person on the ship. He knows nothing about leadership."

Martin held back the most obvious and the darkest answer he could think of: Rex won't say no.

Hans kept to the back of the cafeteria, smiling benignly. Rosa stood on a table; sixty-three of the crew listened intently.

"In two days," she said, "we'll meet our new colleagues… What will they be like? What will they think and believe? How can we accommodate them? Interact with them? What are we, to them!"

The crew did not answer. Martin sat a few meters from Hans, beside Harpal and Ariel. Hans winked at Martin.

Rosa looked radiant; the beauty of intense compassion, of selflessness. Awkward Rosa had melted finally, giving way to a new woman; had the defining moment occurred in Hans' arms? Hans revealed nothing.

"In the scale of things, we are the very smallest of intelligences, the very dimmest of lights. Yet like plankton in Earth's seas, we lay the foundations for all the complex glory above us. We are the food and eggs and seed of all intelligence, up to and including that radiant center beyond all understanding. A disturbance in the sea of little thinking creatures can move up the spiritual food column with disastrous consequences, though it may take an age; and so the highest regards the lowest with more than just disinterested love, for we are ultimately them, part of their flesh, if they have flesh, part of their histories, and their futures…

"The colleagues joining us have undoubtedly suffered as we have. They have lost their home world, have wandered for centuries in foreign shells, and have fought and lost loved ones, all to vanquish the poison, the death of the planet killers. We join with them now, and the little intelligences merge… And it is noticed by those high above us, those in attendance on the Most High, the galaxies of bright spirituality that rotate around the unimaginably vast center… And that notice is not just a kind of love, it islove, compared to which the love we feel for the parts of our own body, for our own flesh, is a cheap imitation.

"Our success or failure has a larger meaning. When we die, we are not just lost; I have felt the cradle of the Most High coming for our dead, to embrace their memories, their essence, and draw them to the center, where there is eternal motion and eternal rest, peace and the center of all action."

"She hasn't read her Aquinas," Ariel whispered to Martin.

But what Rosa said sounded good to him. Martin needed to know that Theresa and William were happy, that they had found rest; that sardonic and razor-sharp Theodore and all the others were appreciated somewhere, that perhaps they floated in a sea of painless interaction, showing their highest qualities to something that might finally appreciate them…

"When our ships join, we join purposes as well. All our goals must mesh. We are here not to satisfy the moms, but to clean the seas of a poison that could reach to the center itself. Call it evil, call it senseless greed, call it maladaptation… It is separate from the Most High, and the Most High does not cherish it.

"The cup-bearers of planetary death are not among the lights in attendance to the Most High; they are caught in a vicious cycle of pain and fear. We have felt their fear. It killed our home planet and it has killed our friends; the time has come for us to apply the burning iron to that fear, and to send the Killers back to where they can again become part of the column, rise in usefulness again to the Most High.

"But we will not receive divine aid. Though there are things repugnant to the highest intelligences, the greatest spirits, they do not give us their powers and insights when we fight the repugnant things. That would be a kind of interference even more evil than senseless murder; a confusion of scales, the Most High stifling the potential of the low, where all creativity, all creation begins. We are on our own, but our struggle is not senseless."

"What do the moms think of this?" Harpal asked Martin in a low voice.

Martin shook his head.

"The story I tell this evening is of war. Nothing gentle, nothing soothing, it reminds us of what we face still, and may face for centuries more, before we can lay down our weapons and take up the duties of living for ourselves."

"Why can't I feel the touch and see what you've seen?" Nguyen Mountain Lily asked.

Rosa looked puzzled for an instant, then smiled again and raised her hands, sweeping all around. "The Most High is never not touching us. But it does not tell us what to do, and it does not speak to us in words; its presence is the conviction we all feel, that there must be a loving observer to whom we are very important, and who loves us.

"The love the Most High feels is not the love of sexuality and reproduction—it is the love of one of us for our own bodies, our own cells, a constant love made of care and nourishment. But we do not interfere with our own cells."

Martin could poke holes in this like ripping a finger through rotten cloth, but he did not want to; he found himself explaining away the inconsistencies, the poor metaphors, as weaknesses in Rosa's perceptions, not in her message.

"I don't think anything watches me, or cares about me," Thorkild Lax said. "I watch out for myself and for my crew-mates."

"I felt that way. I felt lost," Rosa said. "I thought no one cared—not my crewmates, certainly. I was slovenly, out of touch. I didn't really belong. No one was more lost than I was. But there was this final loving in me, this urge to reach out." She folded her hands in front of her, then swept them out and up like two parting doves, fingers spread. "I reached out in the middle of my pain—"

"Enough of this shit," a masculine voice called out. "Tell the story."

The crowd turned and Martin saw George Dempsey, blushing at the accumulated stares. He got up, started to leave, but Alexis Baikal reached up and held on to his hand, pulled him gently down, and he sat.

Martin felt a warmth, and then a tremor of unease. The group spirit, the bonding again—the wish for strong answers, for transcending love. The special time.

He thought of his father and mother, and the touch his father could give, and the warmth of his mother, large and all-encompassing, the way she wore full dresses to cover her ample figure, the sweetness of her round face wrapped in dark silken hair, the complex and giving love of both; and he thought of that love writ large, the beginning place for that sort of love.

"How do I reach up and out?" Terry Loblolly asked, voice small in the cafeteria.

"When you need to, you will do it as a hungry flower blooms beneath the sun," Rosa said. "If you do not need enough, you will not; your time is not yet."

"If we don't love, does the Most High blame us? Does he hate us?"

"The Most High is neither male nor female. It does not blame, it does not judge. It loves, and it gathers." She curled her arms as if to gather unseen children to her breast and hug them.

"I need that touch badly," Drusilla Norway said. "But I don't feel it. Is that my fault?"

"You have no faults except in your own eyes. All fault is human judgment."

"Then who will punish us for our sins?" Alexis Baikal asked, voice distorted with sorrow.

"Only ourselves. Punishment is our way of training ourselves for this level of life. The Most High does not acknowledge a court of law, a court of judgment. We are forgiven before we die, every moment of every day, whether we seek forgiveness or not."

Martin thought of Theresa waiting at the end of this long journey to explain these things to him, part of the all-enveloping warmth; he put Theresa's face over Rosa's, and wanted to sleep in the comfort of this thought, hoped it would not go away.

"Is Jesus Christ the son of the Most High?" Michael Vineyard asked.

"Yes," Rosa said, her smile broadening. "We are all its children. Christ must have felt the warmth like a fusion fire, even more strongly than I do. It glows from his words and deeds. The Buddha also felt the warmth, as did Muhammad…"

Hakim seemed displeased to hear the Prophet's name in Rosa's mouth.

"… And the many prophets and sages of Earth. They were mirrors to the sun."

"All of them?" Michael persisted.

"All knew part of the truth."

"Do you know only part?" Michael asked.

"A small part. You must explain the rest to me," Rosa said. "Tell me what you find in yourselves."

In murmurs, in challenges and questions, in Rosa's parables and explanations, give and take, for the next two hours the crew spoke and confessed. A current went through the room as something palpable, as if she were a tree, and the wind of feeling passed around her, through her. When others in the crew cried, Martin found tears in his own eyes; when others laughed with a revelation of joy, he laughed also.

"I am not a prophet," Rosa said. "I am simply a voice, no better than yours."

"How can we hate our enemies, when they are just like us?" someone asked.

"We do not hate them; but they are not just like us, they are desperately wrongand we fight them with all our strength, for that is how we correct the imbalances. We must never be cruel, and we must never hate, for that damages us; but we must never forget our duties."

Martin felt the Job fall into place in his thoughts; nothing holy about death and destruction, but a necessary part of their existence, their duty. A natural act, action to reaction.

Nothing they did was sanctioned; nothing they did was judged except by themselves, and by the standards that flooded them from the light of the Most High. The passion of revenge had no place here; it was an abomination. But the duty of correcting the balance, that was as essential as the breath in his lungs and the blood in his veins.

Groups pushed in close around Rosa, hands linked. Together they sang hymns, the wordless Hum, Christmas carols, ballads, whatever they remembered, while others searched the libraries for more songs. All their musical instruments had been absorbed in the emergency, but their voices remained.

The singing lasted an hour. Some were hoarse and weary, and some fell asleep on the floor, but still Rosa ministered to them. Jeanette Snap Dragon brought her a chair and she sat in it atop the table, her red hair standing out in radiant frizz around her head. Jeanette and others sat around her, on the table, at her feet. Jeanette placed her head on Rosa's knees and seemed to sleep.

Others came, until almost all the crew filled the cafeteria. Some looked bewildered, feeling the current, but not letting it pass through them yet; hopeful but confused, resistant but needy.

The special time. Ariel came close to him and he hugged her as a sister. She looked up at him, head against his shoulder, and he smiled, loving all his fellows.

At Rosa's request, the floor softened. The crew lay together on the floor, around the table, as the other tables and chairs lowered and were absorbed. Jeanette's wand projected light behind Rosa and the room fell dark.

"Sleep," Rosa said, her hair an indistinct shadow in the rosy glow. "Soon we begin our duties again. Sleep in peace, for there is work to do. Sleep, and reach into your dreams to find the truth. When you sleep you are most open to the wishes of your friends, and to the love of the Most High. Sleep."

Martin closed his eyes.

Someone tapped his shoulder. Hans kneeled beside him. He shook Martin, whispered into his ear, "Cut it out. Come with me."

Martin rose, a shock like electricity tingling through him. He seemed stuck between two worlds, shame and exaltation. Hans' grim expression and tense marching posture seemed a reproof. Ariel followed, and at first it seemed Hans might send her back, but he said, "All right. Both of you."

Rex Live Oak stood in the corridor, smiling wolfishly.

"Fantastic," Hans said, shaking his head. "She's so good. She's got them all now."

Martin's head cleared as if with a dash of ice water.

"She just needed a little help and encouragement," Hans said. Rex chuckled. "I damn near felt it myself. Didn't you? I think we have this situation under control now."

Ariel touched Martin's shoulder but he shrugged away the touch.

"All she needed was a little reason to live, something just for herself," Hans said.

"Don't slick her too much," Rex said. "Keep her lean and hungry."

Hans shook his head ruefully. "Got to ration my blessings," he said. "I only have so much to be generous with."

Rex and Hans walked along the corridor. Ariel watched Martin for a moment and saw the anger on his face. "You didn't know?" she asked, astonished. "He coached her, Martin. He's been whispering in her ear for days."

His eyes filled and he wiped them. He turned to stamp into another corridor, away from the cafeteria.

Ariel followed. "I'm sorry!" she said. "I assumed you knew! It was so obvious…"

"What was obvious?" Martin asked, still fleeing.

"He was turning Rosa, directing her to shore up the Job. Otherwise she could tear us apart. He thinks—"

"Thinks what?" Martin asked, stopping at the join to the neck. A ladder field appeared and he gripped it with his hand, preparing to descend.

Ariel caught up with him, still astonished by his naïveté. She dropped her voice, murmuring as if embarrassed. "Hans is very smart. He sees that this vision can help him control the crew. He told us so. Remember?"

"Yeah?" The word came out loud and harsh.

"She's warm and cozy in his arms. He says something, you know, about the Job, and our relation to God, something like that. She's happy, she's flattered. She's never been an ascetic by choice. She listens. She goes his way." Ariel spread her arms, eyes narrow, puzzled. "So for him, everything's great."

Martin felt like hitting out, and he went so far as to clench his fist. "Why are you following me?" he shouted. "Why don't you just stay the hell away from me?"

"Hans is dangerous," Ariel said in a conspiratorial, husky voice. "He's hollow inside, and the more he settles in, the hollower he gets. He thinks the Wendys are cattle. He thinks we're allcattle."

"Crap," Martin said.

Ariel's face reddened and her eyes narrowed even more, to angry slits. She spat out, "What are you, celibate! Do you plan on being solitary for the rest of the journey? Is that why you hate me?"

Martin grimaced and laddered into the neck, leaving Ariel behind.

"God damn you!" she cried out after him.

Giacomo and Jennifer hung beside the star sphere in the schoolroom. The ship had stopped accelerating twelve hours before, and all drifted free now. Ladder fields crossed the periphery of the schoolroom and shimmered along what had once been floor and ceiling.

Hakim, Li Mountain and Luis Estevez Saguaro quietly arranged for echoes of the sphere to appear around the schoolroom.

Martin entered alone, stared at the central sphere, and took a deep breath.

They were nine billion kilometers from their future companions, about two days from a merger. The two ships had matched courses and now edged slowly closer.

Harpal came in behind Martin. "Why so many?" he asked, sweeping his arm at the five spheres.

"Hans aims for effect," Martin said.

Hakim climbed along a ladder field, hooked his foot, and hung beside them. He did not smile. "Races over?" he asked.

Hans was making sure the crew was exhausted before bringing them into the schoolroom.

"Almost," Martin said. "Ten, fifteen minutes."

"It seems silly to me, all this exercise," Hakim said. "We could be doing science, anything but rolling like squirrels in a cage."

"Hans has his plans," Harpal said.

"Who's winning?" Jennifer called from across the schoolroom.

"Rex," Martin said carelessly. He climbed in closer to the main sphere. The image of the other Ship of the Law appeared distinct, about two hand-breadths wide, three eggs swallowed by a snake. "They don't look damaged," he said.

"The ship is smaller than Dawn Treaderused to be," Giacomo said. "About half the size. It must have taken some pretty substantial hits. I wonder where they fought? What they did?"

"I don't see any fuel cells," Harpal said.

A mom entered the schoolroom. They had seen so little of the moms in recent tendays that Martin was startled by it. "Hans has not made a tenday report," it said to Martin and Harpal, matter-of-factly, no judgment implied. "Is there something wrong?"

Martin swallowed; for Hans to ignore the tenday was… What? What did they expect? Hans had restructured the society of the Dawn Treader, just as the ship itself had been rebuilt. Why should anything surprise Martin?

Hakim looked to Martin, no sign of natural cheer or even excitement; eyes wary. Betray nothing.

"I don't think so," Martin said. He no longer wanted to play the advocate for the office of Pan, to defend Hans, to judge the situation in the best light. He could not ignore the knot in his stomach whenever he saw Hans' confident, strong features, or Rosa's intoxicated beatitude.

"There is information to be presented to the crew," the mom said. "I am here to report. Is a meeting scheduled?",

"Yes," Martin said.

"Hans shouldn't shirk the reports," Harpal muttered.

"There are problems?" the mom asked. Martin's embarrassment turned to anger in a flash and he crossed his arms, shook his head.

"No problems," he said. Nothing I can pin down in words. Hans does nothing overt; the worst he does is change things without consulting us… and why should he? The crew follows him almost without question. He doesn't act like a tyrant; he just glowers, and that's enough.

We're back to being children again. Hans is Daddy; Rosa is Mommy. So what will we call the moms now? Auntie?

We're one big happy family.

"When will the crew convene?" the mom asked.

"In a few minutes," Hakim said.

"I will wait."

The Wendys and Lost Boys started filing in a half hour later, sweating and flushed. Hans had insisted on trying new sports in the weightless conditions. Three or four had arms in makeshift slings. They gathered in loose groups, no longer according to family or namesake; Hans had dissolved those connections.

Hans and Rex came in last.

All eyes turned to the spheres, weary, interested but shielding responses.

Hakim began his description: the second ship's length, mass, the approximate amount of fuel it carried. He glanced nervously at the mom, wondering if it would merely repeat what he was saying. He seemed to fear becoming redundant; Hans seldom conferred with the search team.

"I think the mom has something to tell us," Hans said when Hakim stammered into silence. Hakim nodded and backed away.

"We will now prepare you for the meeting with your new partners," the mom said. "Noach communications have been established with this Ship of the Law, which is called Journey Houseby its crew. We have many more details. May I take control" of the displays?"

"Of course," Hans said.

The first image in the spheres puzzled the crew: a long black cable. Martin had to concentrate to understand what he was seeing. The first guess would have been a tentacle, or perhaps a snake, but close inspection showed that this was more than an individual being. The image moved, and the crew reacted with shock.

The cable disassembled into a squirming pile of serpents, and then quickly reassembled. Martin wondered whether this was a simulation or the image of a real creature.

"These are colonial intelligences," the mom said. "Such a configuration is not unusual. Many worlds support bionts that combine to form larger bionts, even in more advanced evolutionary phases. Your new partners are of this type. Between ten and twenty components come together to form an intelligent individual. The components"—A single blunt-ended tube with grasping hooks at one end and millipede-like feet at the other—"are seventy to eighty centimeters long, and are not in themselves intelligent, though they perform many social and practical roles. The components are responsible for gathering food, though not for agriculture or preparing food. They are responsible for reproduction and nurture, their offspring. When the offspring are mature, they are instructed in the basics of forming combinations, and these combinations are then raised and educated by fully mature aggregates."

More images: aggregates ranging in size (a human silhouette for comparison) from two meters long, comprising ten intertwined components, to five meters, and fifty centimeters to a meter thick.

"They are oxygen breathers. An atmosphere conducive to both species, human and aggregates, will be maintained in all common areas of the ship, though separate quarters will also be available."

Martin glanced at Hans. Not a hint of shrewd speculation, not a trace of anything but shock. Here was strangeness that exceeded Hans' expectations.

"Their foodstuffs are not edible for humans, nor is your food sufficient for their needs. Contact is not dangerous, provided certain rules are followed. Components must not be molested or impeded in their duties; they can't respond socially beyond a limited–"

"Like my wanger," Rex Live Oak cracked. Some of the crew laughed nervously.

"A limited range of interactions with their kind, guided largely by instinct. Components can be dangerous if they are molested. They can inflict a painful bite. We do not yet know how toxins for this species might affect humans—"

"Christ, they're poisonous?" Rex asked, astonished.

"That is a possibility. But they will not attack unless severely molested. Aggregates are highly intelligent, capable of complex social interactions. We are confident they can mimic human speech better than humans can learn their methods of communication, which are chemical and auditory. To your senses, their variety of smells should be pleasant."

The promise of pleasant smell wasn't cutting much ice. The crew looked on the images with open mouthed amazement and half-controlled revulsion.

"What do we call them?" Ariel asked.

"Good question," Erin Eire commented. "I don't think calling them snakes is a good idea."

"Or worms," Jeanette Snap Dragon added.

"What in hell are they?" someone else asked.

"They are aggregate intelligences," the mom said, not making the mystery any shallower.

"But what the hell is that?" Rex asked. "How do they think? How do they fight?"

"The proper question," Hans said, "is how—and if—we're going to cooperate with them."

Martin stepped forward. "Of course we're going to cooperate," he said, as if challenging Hans directly. Hans took the challenge without hesitation.

"Martin's right. We're going to get along, whatever they're called. Which takes us back to an earlier question. What do we call them?" ."What will they call us?" Erin Eire interrupted.

Hans ignored her. "Suggestions? The moms seem to be leaving this up to us. I assume they don't use any name we could smell, much less pronounce…"

"Do they have sexes?" Rosa asked, voice sweet and clear over the murmuring.

"The components can be male or female or both, depending on environmental conditions. They give live birth to between one and four young every two years. Aggregates do not engage in any sexual activity; sex occurs only among separated components."

The crew mulled this over in silence; stranger and stranger, perhaps more and more alarming.

"We could call the components cords," Paola suggested. "The aggregates could be braids."

"Good," Hans said. "Anything better?"

"We'll call them Brothers," Rosa said, as if it were final. "A new part of our family."

Hans raised one eyebrow and said, "Sounds fine to me."

The names stuck. Cords, braids: Brothers. A new addition to the family of Wendys, Lost Boys, and moms.

Dawn Treaderand Journey Housewould merge to make a single vessel nearly as large as Dawn Treaderhad originally been.

Communication between Dawn Treaderand Journey Housepassed along the noach at a furious rate; hour by hour, the libraries expanded.

Martin, just before sleep, toured the libraries' new extensions and found himself in territories that had not existed before, filled with streaming bands of projected colors, tending to the reds and greens; sounds like aspirated music—haunting, sweet, and disturbing at once; and images of enormous complexity, swimming and flowing as if projected on dense fog. Some images were expressed in rotated and skewed multiples, as if they might be viewed by many eyes, each having a slightly different function.

He checked to see how many of the crew were exploring these fresh territories. The wand reported fifteen so engaged, including himself; the rest, it seemed, were waiting to be pushed.

The size of the libraries had trebled in just a day. If the libraries had been reduced by a tenth during the neutrino storm, then the Brothers' libraries had held just over twice as much information as theirs. Martin was eager to have that translated, if translation was possible; perhaps they would have to learn how to see and understand differently.

Before shutting off the wand, he requested a kind of judgment from the libraries: how the Brothers compared to other beings of whom the Benefactors were aware.

"In a range of deviance from your norm, the Brothers are perhaps halfway along an arbitrary scale of biological differences," the library voice responded.

Martin sensed something new in this answer; something fresh and perhaps useful. They might be dealing with the merged intelligences of both ships' minds; and he thought it more than a little possible that, for whatever reason, the new combination would be more informed, and more willing to inform the crews.

Before falling off into muddled dreams, Martin realized what this could mean, if true.

They're more confident. We're closing in; there aren't many surprises left.

Another voice—it might have been Theodore's—seemed to laugh ironically. How wrong do you want to be? Keep working at it… You might break a record…

Hans gathered the remaining ex-Pans—and Rex Live Oak. They met in the nose, with the search team absent, and looked across a few infinitesimal kilometers to Journey House.

"The ships join tomorrow at fifteen hundred. We'll all wait in the cafeteria," Hans said. His face looked drawn, older. Circles shadowed his eyes. "But we're going to meet a few of the Brothers first. They're coming over in one of their craft in two hours. Three of them, three of us. The moms say they can't predict how we'll interact. For once, I think they're being absolutely square with us. I'd like Martin and Cham to join me. We'll meet them together. Before then, the moms are going to give us background on the individuals." He looked around the group with one eyebrow raised, as if expecting a challenge. Quietly, he asked, "Any suggestions?"

Harpal said, "As Pan's second, I'd like to go."

"Cham is better suited to meeting live ropes," Hans said. It wasn't clear to the others whether that was a joke or not.

"Then I'd like to resign as Christopher Robin," Harpal said.

"Fine."

Harpal waited for someone to object, to rise to his defense. No one did. He nodded, jaw clenched, and backed away.

"Not that you haven't done a good job;" Hans said. "I'm not appointing anyone in your place. Anything you'd like me to ask our new friends?" He made the inquiry with unctuous solicitation, rubbing the moment in.

"Ask them what they regard as a mortal insult," Harpal said. "I don't want to get on their bad side if they're poisonous."

"We'll get all this culture stuff straightened out. Right now—and I think that's a good question, Harpal, but it can wait—right now, I'd like to see just how much personality the braids actually have. How we connect, what sort of fellows they are."

"I think a woman should go with us," Martin said. "A different point of view."

Hans cocked his head to one side, considered for a moment, and replied, "Bad idea. I've watched the Wendys closely, and I think they're going to take longer to adjust than the Lost Boys. Maybe it's a snake or phallic thing. Just look at their faces when the Brothers move. Stephanie maybe, but she's not with us any more."

"They scare me, too," Rex said.

"Here's what I think we should do," Hans said, and he told them.

Martin, Hans, and Cham waited in the weapons store. The air in the hemisphere had cooled to just above freezing and smelled faintly of metals and salt. Hans straightened his overalls and cleared his throat. "We'll meet them casual," he said. "No hands out, nothing. Let them make the first gesture."

"What if we all just stand here?" Cham said.

"I'm patient," Hans said.

A mom entered the store and floated next to Hans. "The craft approaches now," it said.

"Christ, I'm nervous," Hans said.

A field glowed around the pylon, which pushed through a darkness in the bulkhead. Faint clunks and hums resonated throughout the chamber. The pylon returned, bringing at its tip like a fly on a frog's tongue a round craft about three meters wide with a conical protrusion, much like a squat pear. The pylon set the craft gently in a field, and the field wrapped it in purple, lowering it to the floor of the chamber.

"Our gravity will be slightly heavy for them," the mom said. "But they are very adaptable."

"Good," Hans said. His throat bobbed.

Maybe he's got a snake thing, too, Martin thought.