---

Lieutenant Longstocking stood at parade rest, hir expression composed but neutral, hir hands clasped lightly behind hir back. Shi wore a sky blue short sleeved pullover with a Security Force patch on the right arm, a name tape over the left breast, and rank tabs on the collar. A series of muted clunks signaled that the inner door of the transfer lock was about to open; as the panel drew aside shi stepped forward, extending hir right hand. "Welcome to Repair Station Sigma one-seven," shi began. "I'm Lieutenant Longstocking, station commander. Thank you for coming on such short notice."

"Not at all, Lieutenant, not at all." Professor Moseivitch stepped forward and took the offered hand. Both his smile and his handshake were warm and hearty. "It is our pleasure to be of service."

At 158 centimeters Fyodor Ivanov Moseivitch was rather short for a Terran male. A pot belly enhanced the roundness of his torso and his limbs were short but thick, as if he were a normally proportioned man who'd been vertically compressed. His head might have been hewn from granite: heavy brow ridges, a large, slightly bulbous nose, high cheekbones, and a square jaw, all sharply chiseled and covered with fair complected skin having the creased texture of well used leather. Fortunately his expression fell naturally into a bright, friendly smile, making his countenance grandfatherly rather than severe. His hair, iron gray streaked with snowy white, rose from his crown in a luxuriant wave and feathered out just above his shoulders. Complimenting it were a pair of eyebrows so bushy they stood out from his forehead, forming little shelves over his eyes. When his expression became animated they wiggled and danced like caterpillars crawling around on his face. Against that Longstocking barely noticed his impeccably tailored suit of brown herringbone tweed, grey vest, brightly polished black shoes, and navy blue tie.

"Allow me to present my protogé, Shir Darkstar." Fyodor gestured toward his companion.

"My pleasure, Lieutenant." Darkstar stepped forward to shake hands.

Darkstar was a Chakat, which is to say a creature that looked like someone had taken a cat, cut off its head, and spliced in a humanoid torso to create something like a feline centaur. Darkstar resembled a Canadian lynx: blunt muzzle, bearded cheeks, pointed ears with prominent tufts, a lean and long-legged lower body with oversized feet, and a short, stubby tail. A slender, elfin torso with long but not oversized hands connected hir feline portions. Soft, fluffy fur covered hir entire body, upper and lower: gray with dark speckles on hir back and sides, white on hir breast and belly, black and white striped on hir cheeks, black on hir ears and the tip of hir tail. A salt and pepper mane spilled loose down to the middle of hir upper back. From head to forefoot shi stood about eleven centimeters taller than Fyodor, making hir lower body about the size of a lion. As was not unusual for Chakats shi wore nothing but a belt pouch around hir waist; hir breasts, though small, sagged a bit. That, along with a whitening of fur on hir face and muzzle, indicated advanced age. Even so Longstocking found Darkstar attractive in a mature, dignified way.

"We've prepared a full briefing for you in the wardroom," Longstocking said, backing and turning. "If you'll follow me?"

Longstocking- also a Chakat- stood a couple centimeters shorter than Darkstar and looked about a third the age, maybe thirty five or so. Shi most resembled a domestic cat with a solid black pelt, white socks on hir hands and feet, and a white patch on hir muzzle and throat. Hir mane was cut severely short to fit easily inside the helmet of a space suit.

"But of course!" Fyodor stepped eagerly forward. Darkstar fell in behind, admiring Longstocking's shapely hindquarters. Shi appreciated Longstocking's trim but nicely curved form, and as was typical for Chakats shi wore nothing on hir lower body. Thus it was clearly apparent that, while female in every respect and possessing an entirely normal set of female genitalia, Longstocking also had a penis. This wasn't unusual; being as a species fully functional hermaphrodites all Chakats had them. An interesting cultural ramification of this physiological fact was their use of special gender pronouns and honorifics: shi instead of she/he, hir instead of her/him, and Shir instead of Mr./Ms.

Longstocking led hir guests along a corridor wide enough for four Chakats to walk abreast if they stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Black rubber traction matting covered the deck; from floor and ceiling the walls bowed outward slightly so that hand railings, mounted at waist height on either side, did not intrude into the walking area. Plain, off-white plastic panels smoothed the walls and rounded off their edges, leaving no sharp angles even at intersections. Glow strips running along the top and bottom edge of every wall provided illumination. A ladder ran the length of each and every corridor, affixed to the ceiling.

At journey's end the party entered a large room furnished with low tables, beanbag chairs, soft couches, and planters in which grew small trees or fragrant blossoms. On the inner wall several desktop workstations in semi-private cubicles flanked an ornate food synthesizer. Paneling made of what appeared to be roughly cut, weather beaten wood covered the side walls and supported several paintings of pastoral, farmland scenes. A row of floor-to-ceiling view ports completely filled the outer wall, which curved noticeably. Hanging there against a black backdrop of space, perfectly framed in the ports, was the planet Chakona itself. Intensely blue-green ocean filled most of the visible hemisphere, trimmed with smatterings of cloud and dazzlingly bright polar ice packs. Sweeping chains of islands and widely scattered sub-continents accounted for all the land. A pair of moons completed the picture: Cha'turna, smaller and close in on the right, Ka'turna, larger and more distant, on the left.

"Allow me to present the crew," Longstocking said, indicating a group of five people waiting by the doorway. "Warrant Officer Sherlock, executive officer. Warrant Officer Liska Sharpears, technical specialist. Our student interns, Theobald Carson and the brothers Valjean and Javert Hugo."

"A pleasure to make your acquaintances," Fyodor declared. Starting at the head of the line and working down he shook hands with each individual in turn.

"Thank you." Sherlock's hand engulfed the professor's. Hir white tiger pelt covered an appropriately muscular frame; though shi and Longstocking were of similar age and height Sherlock carried quite a bit more mass. Hir tunic enclosed powerful shoulders and an ample bosom; an incautious flex looked about enough to split it wide open. Hir striped mane barely existed, trimmed even more severely than Longstocking's.

"My pleasure." Liska offered a hand and a sultry smile. She wore a comfortably fitted sky blue coverall with cargo pockets on the chest and thighs, a name tape on the left breast, and a Security Force patch on the right arm. It covered but in no way concealed her long legs, sharply flared hips, shapely buttocks, and firm belly. She towered over the professor by a good twenty centimeters, placing her round, firm, and spectacularly large breasts right near his eye level. The front of her overalls had been unzipped far enough to show off her incredible cleavage and just hint at the presence of a black lace bra. Only from the neck down was she entirely humanoid, however; upon her exquisitely crafted shoulders perched an exceedingly fox-like head complete with a long, slender muzzle and triangular, sharply pointed ears. From all visible portions of her body- and presumably the rest as well- sprouted short, silky fur, coppery red on her back and sides, creamy white in front, black on her ears, hands, feet, forearms, and calves. A mane of lightly curled, firey red hair cascaded down to her shoulder blades, complimenting a fluffy, white tipped tail springing from the base of her spine.

"Please, sir, call me Kit," Theobald requested, smiling nervously. His squarish face with its vaguely Aryan features and flinty gray eyes could have been rather intimidating, especially set as they were atop a broad shouldered, thick chested body with long, powerful limbs, elevating him- even without his battered hiking boots- to a height twelve centimeters above Liska. Instead, a certain youthful softness took the sharp edges off, formed the beginnings of a paunch swelling the waistline of his gray and black short sleeved pullover and slightly faded khaki slacks, and made him seem even younger than his years, which couldn't have been more than early twenties to start with. Other than being Terran Kit shared one other quality with Fyodor; his surprisingly fine golden brown hair waved and feathered in a similar, but not nearly so extreme, fashion.

"A pleasure to meet you, sir." Valjean spoke as one whose lines are carefully rehearsed. He faced the professor but his eyes focused on Darkstar's bare chest.

"A pleasure to meet you, sir." Javert repeated not only the words but the tone and even the glance at Darkstar.

The Hugo brothers matched in appearance as well as mannerism. They were foxtaurs, centauroids like Chakats but vulpine rather than feline. Unlike Chakats they were only and entirely male, having attractively sculpted, broad-shouldered torsos and lithe, powerful lower bodies. From head to forefoot they stood about the same height as Liska and their basic color patterns matched hers closely but they lacked manes. Like Darkstar they wore nothing but belt pouches and shi did not hesitate to give them a good looking-over.

"Make yourselves comfortable and I'll begin," Longstocking declared, pointing toward the center of the room. A low couch and several beanbag chairs surrounded two tables pushed together; set out on them were a tray of pastries, a bowl of nuts, and two pitchers of juice.

"Thank you." Fyodor took a seat in the middle of the couch then had to scoot over as Darkstar climbed up. With the couch full Liska settled herself into a beanbag chair near the rightmost end of the table. Next to her Sherlock sat on the floor as a cat does, with hir tail curled over hir forepaws. Kit also sat on the floor, legs crossed, at the opposite end of the table. Valjean and Javert settled on either side of him, laying down as dogs do, with their lower bodies curled slightly to one side, their forepaws reaching straight out in front under the table.

Longstocking moved out in front of the table. "Computer, deploy view screen," shi commanded. A section of the ceiling hinged downward like an enormous trap door; what had originally been the top face of the panel was a gigantic view screen. It almost completely covered the food synthesizer and cubicles, effectively transforming the room into a movie theater.

"This morning, at 0230 hours Chakona Mean time, an unidentified object struck the Deep Space Hyper-Spatial Anomaly Detector, the prime sensing element of the Mileva Memorial Hyper-Spatial Observatory," Longstocking began. Behind hir on the big screen a dot of light appeared, expanding rapidly into a fine hex grid filling the entire view area. It's aspect ratio matched that of the view screen: sixteen to nine. The grid rotated until the observer appeared to be hovering above one corner. A blinking red X appeared in the upper right quadrant of the screen and moved diagonally downward, leaving a dotted trail behind it. When it touched the exact center of the grid the X disappeared and a yellow translucent cone grew out from the point of intersection, exactly bisected by the grid.

"How did this thing manage to get close without triggering the Array's anti-collision system?" Darkstar wanted to know.

"The object was travelling through hyper-space," Longstocking replied. "It emerged into normal space only two kilometers from the Array's center."

"Then the Security Force sentry ships, the Distant Early Warning sensors, or the Array itself should have seen it coming," Darkstar pointed out.

"All true," Longstocking agreed. "However, the sentry ships and DEW sensors registered nothing. The Array picked up a massless particle signature but couldn't match it to a mass shadow. Analysis of telemetry data shows that the sentry ships and DEW sensors did in fact pick up the signature but discarded it as noise."

Valjean frowned, leaning toward Kit until their shoulders pressed firmly together. "What's shi talking about?" he asked, whispering into Kit's ear and, in the process, sticking his nose in it.

Kit jerked his head away, furiously rubbing his ear. "Don't they teach you Robotics majors anything useful?" he whispered back, fixing Valjean with a baleful look.

"Yeah," Javert breathed, sidling up on Kit's other side. "How to make an assassin robot that'll murder smart alecs in their sleep." He licked Kit's other ear.

Kit shuddered violently but said nothing. Quick as a wink he whipped his arms around the brothers' necks, trapping their heads against his chest. "Okay, kids, Warp Drives 101," he murmured, pitching his voice so that only Valjean and Javert would hear. "You wanna move faster than light. You can't do that in this universe so you pop into hyper-space where the slowest anything goes is the speed of light. To get there you use a powerful gravity field and crush yourself into a singularity, like falling into a black hole. It's not natural for you to be in hyper-space so your warp field is constantly losing energy as massless particles. Due to quantum effects too complicated to explain here massless particles don't have speed or direction, they just exist. A ship emitting them can be anywhere in the universe. But the gravity field that put you in hyper-space does have a discrete location. Also due to quantum effects you need the particle signature and mass shadow to identify a ship's position, speed, and direction. Without one, the other is useless."

Valjean frowned. "How do you get into hyper-space without a gravity field?"

An odd expression flicked across Kit's face. He let the brothers go and scooped up a handful of peanuts. "As far as anyone here in the Stellar Federation understands hyper-spatial physics, you can't."

"The original object had a mass of between three hundred eighty and four hundred twenty tons and a maximum dimension of approximately sixty to eighty meters," Longstocking was saying. "Its precise configuration isn't known; the Array doesn't have any normal-space imaging capability." Shi smiled grimly. "We don't need detailed pictures to know that if the object had intersected the Array at any other point it would have passed through with little or no damage. Instead, the object struck squarely on the only part of the Array with any appreciable mass: the power core."

On the view screen the point of view zoomed in toward the center of the grid. At a much higher level of magnification a structure appeared: a skinny cylinder inserted through the grid and held perpendicular by a network of guy wires. Attached to each end of the cylinder was a ball of slightly greater diameter. The dotted red line came down at about a 40 degree angle, ending right where the upper ball joined the cylinder. The ball flew off like a golf ball from a tee and the cylinder went spinning away like a cheerleader's baton, ripping an enormous gash in the grid as it went.

"Fortunately the core didn't rupture or there might not have been anything left for us to find," Longstocking went on. "The downlink assembly was completely destroyed. The operators in the observatory control room back on Chakona were in a veritable panic. The collision alarm went off, then the entire Array went offline. They contacted Security Force Operations and requested an immediate investigation. A sentry ship was pulled off station and sent in, observed what had happened to the Array- and discovered that the unknown object had not been completely destroyed." The red X appeared again, departing the point of impact on a course shallowly divergent from that of the upper ball. "A salvage team recovered the artifact and brought it in for analysis."

"The object was a star ship," Darkstar pronounced.

"Not only that, it was of a configuration and composition which we have never before encountered," Longstocking replied. "Our science teams were utterly confounded and appealed to Dewclaw University for help. The university responded by sending us none other than the distinguished Chair of the College of Xeno-Sciences." Fyodor acknowledged the praise with a dignified nod.

Kit's mouth hung slightly open, his eyes wide. "You're saying it was a star ship- and it came from outside the Stellar Federation?"

"Correct," Longstocking agreed. "The technology used to construct the ship is like nothing any member of the Federation has ever developed or encountered. The drive system it used is similarly alien. And- this is why the matter is being handled with such urgency- preliminary scans suggest that inside the fragment we recovered are systems that are still operational."

---

Repair Station Sigma 17's Operations Center resembled a small movie theater. From back to front the floor sloped gently downward, giving a person at any of three rows of consoles an unimpeded view of the enormous view ports taking the place of a screen. Chakat architects left generous spacing between rows and didn't include chairs. Decor largely matched that in the corridors; brightly colored, intricately complex displays and control panels on the consoles themselves more than made up for any lack of decoration on the walls.

"There it is," Longstocking pronounced, entering then stepping aside to make way for the rest of the party. "It was delivered only hours ago."

Kit hurried down to the very front of the room where he could press his face right up against the transparisteel windows. He looked into a roughly octagonal volume about thirty meters wide, twenty meters high, and forty meters deep. Massive doors, now shut, filled the far wall. Racks of tools, parts, and other equipment covered every other surface except the floor. Channels crisscrossed the deck so tie-downs could be installed almost anywhere. In the middle of it stood a large cradle, gimbaled so whatever it held could be rotated into any conceivable attitude. In it now was-

"That's it?" Darkstar asked, walking down to stand beside Kit.

"That's it," Sherlock affirmed.

In his younger days Kit greatly enjoyed building plastic models and setting them on fire. Longstocking's artifact strongly resembled the aftermath of one of these episodes; Its surface humped and billowed like wax dripping from a candle, with intrusions of harder material sticking through at odd angles. Some areas looked smooth like polished glass, others broken and jagged. Outgasing produced zones of bubbles and pockmarks like caramel boiling, or frothy streamers not unlike fan corals. Over it all lay a riot of color: shiny black, pearly white, muddy brown, garish pink, translucent amber, gauzy reds, metallic greens and blues, intricately swirled yellows and oranges.

"Makes my eyes hurt just looking at it," Javert muttered. Valjean nodded sagely.

Fyodor walked to the middle of the second row and stood with his hands clasped behind his back, studying the artifact through slightly narrowed eyes. "Please tell us what you have learned about this fascinating object, Longstocking," he requested.

"For starters, it's about twelve meters long and masses approximately forty-six tons," Longstocking began. "It survived the collision because of a powerful structural integrity field apparently generated by the host vessel; at the very least no recognizable trace of the machinery remains. It's composed of plastics, metals, solvents, oxides, and a hundred other things all mixed together seemingly at random, resulting in a highly uneven structure shot through with fracture planes, intrusions, and bubbles. It's here at least in part because we were afraid that, under gravity, it would simply disintegrate. Beneath the outer shell, though- which is between one and about two and a half meters thickness- there's a force field that prevents us from scanning the interior. Enough energy is leaking through to make it clear there's an operating fusion core in there somewhere."

"Any sign of a warp reactor?" Darkstar inquired.

"None," Longstocking replied with a sad shake of the head.

"Or we wouldn't recognize a drive system component if it walked up and gave us a noogie," Sherlock pointed out.

"That too," Longstocking agreed.

Kit frowned. "Why protect this part and not the rest of the ship?"

"Obviously the aliens felt that this particular sub-system was of great importance," Fyodor observed. "Perhaps it is a crew module."

"Not much of a crew compartment for a four hundred ton star ship," Sherlock commented.

"If it is a crew compartment it's for a crew absolutely nothing like us," Longstocking said. "Among the metals mixed into the outer shell are a whole slew of heavy metals. Enough to give you a lethal dose of radiation poisoning within ten minutes if you were standing next to it. That's the other reason it's here. We're a power system shop, so we have the gear to handle hot stuff."

"Clearly our priority is to get inside," Fyodor declared. "Any suggestions, Darkstar?"

"Place jamming modules and sensor pods right against the shield," Darkstar replied. "The jammers punch holes through which the sensors scan."

"Can you do that, Longstocking?" Fyodor asked, turning.

"Not a problem, Professor," Longstocking assured. "We use a technique like that while we're testing reconditioned power cores. Liska, Sherlock, you both know what to do, so..." shi pointed.

"Aye aye, boss." Sherlock moved to a station at the left end of the first row.

"That's an affirm, chief." Liska went to the very front of the room. Four stations sat right up against the wall; instead of regular control panels each had a pair of gauntlets suspended above it and more controls on the floor under it. Liska kicked off her shoes and sat at the leftmost station, on the end of a long padded bench where a Chakat or other centauroid could also lay comfortably. She slipped her hands into the gauntlets and operated additional controls with her feet. A slightly translucent holographic image of the artifact shimmered into existence just above the console; using her gauntleted hands Liska poked and prodded it, tracing lines and denoting locations. Informational sidebars and groups of X's and circles linked by lines appeared in response to her gestures and quitely spoken commands.

Kit left his place by the view ports to stand beside Sherlock, watching closely as hir fingers flew rapidly and precisely over the controls. Valjean and Javert watched Liska, but they seemed more interested in the woman herself than her job. Darkstar noted both facts, then strolled over beside Longstocking.

"If this project is such a big deal, why do you still have student interns?" Darkstar inquired, speaking quietly so only Longstocking would hear.

Longstocking shrugged. "Dumb luck, mainly. We'd just finished servicing a couple Windstorm class interceptors when I get a call telling me to prepare to receive some wreckage for analysis, details to be forthcoming. Nothing to suggest that it's anything but routine. Then the tug arrives, drops this thing off, and I get told that this is all a very serious matter involving the highest levels of the Chakonan government, and for security reasons I am to impose communications discipline and all personnel are confined to the station. What could I do? They may just be student interns but so long as they're here they're subject to Security Force regulation. I couldn't send them away even if I wanted to. Besides, they're not too bad. I predict that Mr. Carson there will be one Hell of an engineer when he graduates."

"What about the Hugo brothers?" Darkstar wanted to know.

Longstocking pursed hir lips. "They're quite capable in their own way but... mmm... rather too easily distracted, I'd have to say."

Darkstar turned hir head and studied Liska for a moment. "That's one Hell of a distraction," shi observed.

"Hmm, well..." Longstocking allowed hirself a hint of a smile. "I suppose it is, at that."

"Programming complete, ready to execute," Sherlock reported.

Longstocking nodded. "On screen, if you please, and execute."

"Aye aye." Sherlock touched a control; a rectangular section in one view port turned black then displayed a computer-generated three dimensional wire frame image of the artifact. Inside it was a smooth surfaced, vaguely bean shaped region with six red dots affixed to various parts of it. Three orange lines appeared, converging on one of the dots.

"First we're going to beam out slugs of the shell material," Sherlock explained. "We'll save them for later analysis, and put the sensors and jammers in the holes."

A blinking yellow circle appeared around the first dot. Kit glanced at the actual object but nothing could be seen by the naked eye. Suddenly a second set of orange lines appeared; the first curved so their point of intersection was inside the bean-shaped volume.

"Bloody Hell!" Sherlock exclaimed, in shock and surprise rather than anger.

"Report," Longstocking demanded.

"Um... Whatever's inside there has a transporter of its own. It intercepted the matter stream."

"Any change in baseline readings?" Darkstar asked.

"No." Sherlock studied hir instruments closely. Shi glanced up- and started guiltily, as if shi had been caught doing something improper.

Longstocking glanced at Darkstar. A for an instant the two of them locked gazes, then Darkstar looked away. "Was the slug removed?" Longstocking inquired, as if nothing had happened.

"Yes sir," Sherlock replied.

"Then continue the program," Longstocking directed. "And monitor the baseline readings. I'd like to know how all this is affecting our..." shi hunted for a word. "Guest."

"I'll do that," Darkstar volunteered.

Again Longstocking and Darkstar locked gazes. This time Darkstar didn't look away. "Very well," Longstocking agreed with a curt nod. Darkstar moved to the station next to Sherlock's.

"Energizing," Sherlock reported as orange lines converged on the next dot. Again they bent off target. "Gulp," shi commented.

"No change in baseline readings," Darkstar put in.

Fyodor turned around. "If it can beam through the containment field, can we?"

"Yes," Sherlock replied, "But not without employing a high level of brute force."

"I see." Fyodor faced forward again. "Until we develop a better understanding of this artifact, I believe a more delicate approach is indicated."

"Drill it?" Liska suggested.

"Yes." Longstocking nodded. "Not as high tech, perhaps, but nonetheless effective."

Sherlock and Liska set to work once again. More lines and dots appeared on the display. "Ready to execute," Sherlock reported.

"Do it," Longstocking replied.

The cradle rotated, presenting a different face of the artifact. A mechanical arm deployed from one wall, selected a tool, and held it up against a relatively smooth spot. The computer generated image zoomed in; the drill bit, represented by a yellow arrow head, touched the surface and started in. Out in the work room pale light flickered around the point of contact like heat lightning. The arm and tool didn't move; the drill bit snaked into the artifact at the end of a flexible cable, represented on the graphic as a yellow line.

"The material's pretty uneven but so far nothing we can't cut," Liska reported.

"Be careful on the break through," Sherlock advised. "The cavity's filled with liquid oozing in from surrounding layers."

Liska guided the bit around potential obstacles, taking the easiest if not most direct route. Three times she had to back up and try a different path when the drill got into exceptionally hard or delicate areas. After close to twenty minutes of careful progress the yellow arrow almost touched the first spherical cavity left by the transporter.

"Watch it," Sherlock warned.

"Don't worry." Liska chuckled. "I'll slide it in gently."

"I imagine she has a lot of experience with drilling," Darkstar commented aside to Longstocking. Longstocking covered hir mouth and cleared hir throat several times.

"Damn!" Liska cursed.

"Report," Longstocking barked.

"Cutting head's jammed. The liquid in the chamber hardened suddenly."

Longstocking frowned. "I don't understand. Even if- let me see. Copy scan data to Sherlock's station."

"Aye aye," Liska responded, pulling her hands out of the gauntlets.

Longstocking stepped up next to Sherlock, forcing Kit to jump aside. Instead of merely looking, Longstocking leaned forward until hir nose practically touched the console.

"What happened?" Fyodor inquired.

"The cutting head uses force fields to shear through whatever it's cutting, so supposedly it can't jam because the cutters aren't physical," Sherlock explained. "It looks like the liquid not only solidified almost instantly, it's somehow preventing the shearing fields from focusing."

"How is such a thing possible?" Fyodor wanted to know.

"Nanites," Darkstar replied.

Longstocking snapped erect. "Excuse me?"

"Nanites," Darkstar explained. "Microscopic machines, used to build integrated circuits and advanced composites-"

"Yes, yes, I know," Longstocking cut in. "I also know that nanties are exceedingly delicate and only function under very precise conditions. The inside of that thing-" shi pointed without looking- "is the equivalent of an explosion at a toxic waste dump. Nanites couldn't possibly function under those conditions."

"You mean our nanites could not function under those conditions," Fyodor clarified, his tone as pleasant and mild as ever.

"Well- yes," Longstocking allowed after a brief hesitation. "For what we usually do here, we don't deal with nanotechnology, you see-"

"Of course," Fyodor interjected, gently but precisely. "In this matter, none of us are expert. So, if you will allow me the use of your communications suite, I shall summon one. An expert, that is."

---

"This is so weak," Valjean groused, pulling open a lower bunk and flopping into it.

"We're getting free room and board, plus pay," Kit pointed out. He slouched crossways on another lower bunk, reading from the screen of a portable workstation balanced on his thigh. "What more do you want? A suite at the Ritz-Carlton?"

"Would have been nice," Javert put in.

Ten bunks lined one side of the room, in two rows of five. The opposite wall housed cabinets for gear and personal effects. Since the persons meant to be housed were Chakats the room was very long but not especially high. If Kit tried to sit up on an upper berth his head struck the ceiling.

"At least it's better than the dorm room," Valjean commented, rolling onto his belly and letting one arm flop over the side of his bunk, tracing loops on the floor with his fingertip.

"The dorm would be a lot better if you ever cleaned it," Kit replied.

Javert glanced at Valjean, who inclined his head ever so slightly. "Y'wanna know what really sucks about this place?" Javert demanded, side-stepping with his hind legs so he rotated to face Kit squarely.

"Not particularly," Kit replied without looking up from his workstation. As such he didn't notice the maniacal grin spreading across Javert's face or Valjean clasping a hand around his muzzle to keep from laughing out loud.

"What I really hate about this place," Javert declared, moving carefully into position, "Is that there just aren't enough women. I haven't had a date in- in hours. My God, I don't think I can control myself any longer!" He reared up, pinning Kit to the bunk with his forepaws. When Kit tried to twist away Javert wrapped his arms around Kit's neck and started humping his leg. Kit struggled frantically and bellowed a string of what might have been vile curses if they hadn't been muffled to incomprehensibility by Javert's chest fur. Valjean fell off his bunk, literally rolling on the floor in fit of hysterical laughter. When Javert threw back his head and let his tongue loll out Valjean laughed even harder.

"Okay, I give all ready!" Kit shouted, managing finally to turn his head away from Javert's chest. "I swear, I'm gonna tell Longstocking you tried to rape me!"

Javert tossed his head disdainfully. "Never hold up. I'll tell the court you led me on with your provocative dress and flirtatious demeanor. I have witnesses." Valjean solemnly raised his right hand.

"Besides-" Kit leaned down to recover his workstation and brush the fox fur off of it- "how can you say that any place Miss Sharpears is doesn't have enough women?" He glanced to one side, letting his jaw drop and fanning the side of his face with his hand.

"Oh, Liska is plenty of woman, to be sure." Javert allowed himself a shiver of joy as he contemplated that fact. "But the operative word there is woman." He he held up one finger. "However great she may be, though, there is only one of her."

Kit dabbed at his forehead. "I don't think any of us would live to see thirty if there were more than one of her."

"Look, we're not saying this is a bad gig," Valjean put in, settling back onto his bunk but holding his torso erect. "As a summer job, with every weekend off, I'd say it's just this side of Heaven."

"But now we're stuck here, all the time, for however long Professor Moseivitch and the mucky-mucks at Security Force Command deem fit to keep this mess under wraps." Javert picked up the commentary without a break; a person who could not see them and did not know them well would never have noticed the switch.

"This is the sort of thing that could drag on for years," Valjean continued. "What happens in the fall when classes start?"

"Exactly how long do they expect to keep us locked up here?" Javert concluded. "I mean, why do they need us anyway? We're just interns, after all. There's gotta be about a zillion people, all of whom are way more capable than us, who'd give their left tit to be here right now."

Kit's expression became thoughtful, his eyes unfocused. A smile appeared on his face, growing rapidly into a broad grin. He set his workstation aside and looked up. "Pure, dumb luck," he declared, rubbing his knees. "We just happened to be here when this gig came down the pipe. The reason we're still here is 'cause it's simpler. Sure, there's lots of repair stations, but what if this was the only one that happened to be open at just the right moment? Brass could have sent the alien artifact to any of them, but then there'd have to be an explanation for why the schedule was being changed. There are three student interns on board, but so what? They lock us down, security is preserved. What are we gonna do, jump out the window?" He shrugged. "In short, we're here because a lot of difficult explanations get deferred until later when they can be properly spun."

"The applicant's thesis is thoughtfully reasoned and well presented," Javert said, "But it begs one very important question: why would Security Force Command want to sit on this? An honest to God alien star ship drops into our back yard, and we even manage to recover a piece of it that still works. This is the find of the century."

Kit's face became blank except for a slight narrowing of the eyes that gave his expression a frightening intensity. "Don't you see it?" he asked. "There's what, two or three dozen member races in the Stellar Federation? Of those, five- six including Terrans- developed space travel on their own. Every one of them hit on the notion of super-gravity compression to force their ships into hyper-space. The drive we use today is kinda the average of all those, taking the best of each design. But this morning, at 0230 hours, everything the Stellar Federation thought it knew about interstellar travel became obsolete." He extended the index finger of his left hand. "The alien ship does not use super-graivty compression, so it can't be tracked by our sensors. There could be a zillion of them out there right now and we'd never know it." Middle finger. "The alien ship sustains itself in hyper-space without the use of a warp core-"

"Objection," Javert cut in. "The witness has alluded to evidence not entered into the record."

"Your Honors, the defense submits that it has not violated any procedures," Kit replied. "The energy required to sustain a space-warp field generated by super-gravity compression is enormous. The only currently known practical source for that quantity of energy is the reaction of matter and anti-matter. When equal quantities of matter and anti-matter are brought in contact, one hundred per cent of the matter is converted to energy. Problem is, any matter will do. Which is why our star ships are rigged to eject their warp reactors if they come into distress. If the core's integrity is violated, and fuel elements are allowed to touch either the structure of the core itself or the ship carrying it, you get a big-ass boom. That did not happen, or- as Longstocking so eloquently pointed out- there wouldn't have been anything left to find."

"The Defense's arguments are persuasive, but no not banish reasonable doubt," Valjean said. "The object we recovered could be the warp core."

Kit shook his head. "No. I was looking over Sherlock's shoulder, remember? The containment field inside the object isn't anywhere near powerful enough. Which is to be expected; fusion produces only one twentieth the energy of matter/anti-matter. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the alien ship was not carrying a warp reactor. Now, Your Honors, I ask you to consider this: what would be the public reaction of it were commonly known that there exists an alien race, about which we know nothing, whose ships can move through our space without being detected, and can be refueled simply by scooping hydrogen?"

Valjean and Javert looked at each other. "There'd be mass panic," Valjean whispered.

A view screen on the wall lit up, displaying Sherlock's head and shoulders. "Howdy, gents. Just calling to let you know that Professor Moseivitch's guest will be arriving in approximately thirty minutes. If you want to get some dinner before the evening's festivities commence, you'd best do it now. Bye." Shi vanished.

"That was quick," Kit muttered, opening his workstation and checking the time. Professor Moseivitch placed his call a bit less than two and a half hours ago. "Well, I don't know about you two, but I'm gonna go eat."

"I'm not sure I'm hungry any more," Valjean muttered- but nonetheless he got to his feet and followed Kit and his brother out.

---

"What d'ye suppose this new expert is gonna be like?" Javert inquired, picking up a slice of pizza and folding it in half before eating it.

"Probably some dried up old prune, given the way things have been going," Valjean put in. He scraped the toppings from his slice and ate them separately from the crust.

Kit shrugged, dabbing his mouth with a napkin before transferring another slice to his plate. With properly applied persuasion the food synthesizer would produce an eminently palatable pepperoni and sausage pizza with three cheeses and extra sauce.

"I resent that," Darkstar pronounced, running the fingers of one hand through hir mane. "I am certainly not dried up. In fact, I think I could teach that young buck a thing or two about what goes on in a bedroom."

"You've got good ears if you can hear them from here," Longstocking commented, leaning slightly to hir right so shi could see past Darkstar's shoulder. The three young men, gathered around a table on the other side of the wardroom, seemed to be speculating about how ugly Fyodor's expert was likely to be.

"Never been anything wrong with my hearing," Darkstar replied, taking a drink of juice. "It's my vision that's shot to Hell. Can't see worth a damn at night any more."

"Must have been a useful talent for keeping all those junior officers in line." Longstocking carefully cut a section from hir hamburger and ate it with a fork.

"Oh?" Darkstar raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, come on." Longstocking added a dash more barbecue sauce before taking another bite. "You were in the military, Darkstar. It's in the way you stand, the way you walk, the way you speak... It's oozing out of your pores. Since I haven't heard of you in the Security Forces, I figure you must have been in Starfleet. Twenty years, at least. What I can't figure is how someone like you got hooked up with Professor Moseivitch."

Darkstar's eyes unfocused for just a moment. "Thirty-seven years. I met Fyodor after I... retired and came home. He... persuaded me to take a part-time teaching position at Dewclaw University."

"Teaching what?"

"Astronautics."

"Funny." Longstocking concentrated for a moment. "I've had my share of Astronautics interns, and none of them ever mentioned you."

"I've been out of that for oh, eight years now." Darkstar took a tentative sip of hir ramen to test its temperature. Finding it satisfactory shi slurped a spoonful.

"What do you do now?"

"The usual." Darkstar shrugged. "Live off my pension and investments. Putter in the garden. Read books. Hang out at the community center, swapping lies with the other old farts. Chair the township council. Take care of my granddaughter."

"Granddaughter, huh?" Longstocking chuckled. "You must have dozens of them. Got any pictures?"

Darkstar shook hir head. "No. No pictures."

Longstocking gaped in exaggerated shock. "A grandparent without a sheaf of grandchild pictures? I don't believe it!"

"I gave up carrying pictures a long time ago." Darkstar's face went blank. "When my loved ones are with me I don't need pictures of them. When they aren't... the pictures just remind me of what's not there." shi picked up hir bowl and sipped the broth. "What about you? You're old enough to have kids, if not grand kids. Where are your pictures?"

Longstocking toyed with the remains of hir hamburger. "I don't have any," shi confessed. "In high school I had a terrible crush, but shi went to a different college and I never saw hir again. In college I tried several times but it always ended up fizzling out. What with studying and all there just wasn't time. Then I went into the Service and had even less time. Now...." Shi shrugged.

"Shi's a jealous mate, the Service is," Darkstar commented.

"Yeah." Longstocking nodded.

Some minutes passed. Darkstar finished hir soup; Longstocking continued to shuffle bits of hamburger around on hir plate with no apparent interest in eating them.

An electronic chime signaled activation of the 1MC, the station's public address system. "Ops to Commander," Sherlock's voice announced. "Dr. Janek's shuttle will be arriving in ten minutes."

"Acknowledged." Longstocking got to hir feet. "Sorry, gotta go. Been nice talking." Darkstar merely nodded as Longstocking collected what remained of hir meal and fed it into the recycle slot on the food synthesizer.

---

Fyodor hurried in, patting his hair into place. He took a seat on the couch, adjusted his coat, and after what seemed like a moment's thought his face lit up with an incredible smile.

"What a phony," Valjean muttered, using the pretense of scratching his ear to glance at the professor.

"He's got reason to smile," Javert put in. "Considering that he and Miss Sharpears were both out of sight for a while, eh?"

"Here they come," Kit cautioned.

First came Longstocking. Next-

"Oh, baby," Valjean exclaimed, doing a comical double-take.

"Yiff, yiff, and yiff," Javert added, licking his palm and using it to slick down the fur on top of his head.

"That is most definitely not a prune," Kit observed thoughtfully.

Behind Longstocking came a young- early twenties at most- snow leopard patterned Chakat with a long, luxurious, salt and pepper gray mane pulled into a single queue by an elegantly hand tooled leather clip. A doeskin squaw jacket decorated with long fringes and intricate beadwork clothed hir torso- and what a torso it was; only a tape measure could have said whether shi or Liska had the larger bust line. The rest of hir body, beneath soft gray fur decorated with dark, roseated spots, could only be described as fulsome but firm.

"I know what I want for dinner," Valjean said, licking his lips in a most lascivious manner.

"Yeah, but please don't eat it at the table," Kit replied.

"Why not?" Javert wanted to know.

"It would be disgusting."

"What if I agreed to share?" Valjean wanted to know.

"That would be even more disgusting."

"Ah, Dr. Janek, so good to see you," Fyodor exclaimed, starting forward with his hand extended to shake. He passed the young Chakat, going instead to a person standing beside and slightly behind hir.

"Mmm, not bad," Liska commented, stroking her chin thoughtfully and giving Dr. Janek a thorough looking over. His smooth face, fine features, and diminutive stature- four centimeters less than Fyodor- spoke of youth. His body, athletically sculpted and perfectly proportioned like a Greek statue come to life, was that of a man- and a stunningly beautiful one at that. Liska smiled, imagining him without his dark gray slacks and a light gray jacket

"Quite," Sherlock agreed, though hir attention focused on the Chakat.

"What is he?" Kit whispered to Javert, frowning. Dr. Janek's sensuous, almond shaped eyes were the red of fresh arterial blood, set in a face covered with skin so black it looked blue, framed by long, perfectly straight, bone white hair. His ears grew to long, sharp points.

"An elf," Javert responded.

"Where are they from?" Kit asked.

"Nowhere," Valjean responded. "They're genetically engineered. I understand they were all the rage about a hundred years ago."

"That is the big problem with elective genetic surgery," Kit muttered, crossing his arms. "What do you do when your kids go out of style?"

"Everyone, please allow me to introduce Dr. Ito Janek, professor of Nanotechnology, from our very own College of Inorganic Chemistry," Fyodor announced. "And of course the lovely Shir Snowflake, student intern, Astronautics major, and most capable pilot."

"I got your joystick right here, baby," Javert leered. Valjean giggled.

"Will you two just sheath it?" Kit slapped each brother on he back of the head. "Or am I gonna have to get the fire hose?"

Snowflake may or may not have overheard but shi grasped the gist of the conversation clearly enough. Shi gave the trio a measured look, then tossed hir head and flipped hir tail.

Fyodor quickly introduced the team. "Now, if you would care to have a seat, Longstocking will present a briefing-"

"No," Ito cut in, turning to face the professor. "Skip the briefing. Just show me the scan data. The set those samples you sent me came from."

Fyodor shrugged. "As you wish. Longstocking?"

"Got it." Longstocking moved to one of the cubicle mounted workstations and started typing. "Here goes." The view screen deployed, the room lights dimmed, and data began to appear. Valjean and Javert quickly lost interest and spent their time admiring Snowflake. Kit continued to watch the parade of graphs, diagrams, and images though he understood no more than a fraction of it, frowning slightly in concentration as if he could absorb knowledge by sheer force of will. Because of this he didn't notice Darkstar watching him, a thoughtful expression on hir face.

"Stop," Ito said. Longstocking touched a control and the stream halted. "Darkstar," Ito continued, turning his head toward that person, "I understand you theorized that the material had been constructed by nanites?"

"That's correct," Darkstar agreed.

A wry little half smile spread across Ito's face, exposing some of his perfect, dazzlingly white teeth. "That was a very astute observation. I'm sorry to tell you that it's only half right."

"Oh?" Darkstar cocked hir head.

Ito's smile widened. "Yes. The material jamming your drill wasn't made by nanites. It's made of nanites. You drilled into a cavity full of liquid, yes? That liquid was a nutrient solution with nanites floating in it. The nanites linked together, like, like-" he searched for words, hooking his index fingers as a demonstration.

"Cockleburs?" Darkstar suggested.

"Yes." Ito nodded. "The nanites linked together like cockleburs to form a solid mass. The drill couldn't free itself is because each individual nanite has a force shield to protect it from intense radiation. Those shields diffuse the shearing fields in the drill bit. Moreover, after quickly reviewing the complete data set it's clear to me that all the material thus far analyzed was created the same way. Obviously more detailed study is required but I'm confident in saying that your alien artifact is composed entirely of nanites, the same way an organic body is composed of cells."

"How... how is that possible?" Sherlock asked, somewhat hesitantly tossing hir question out into the stunned silence following Dr. Janek's incredible pronouncement.

Dr. Janek's expression became somber. "Frankly, I have no idea. Rest assured that I'd like very much to find out, because to our science, it isn't. Whoever built this star ship has forgotten more about nanotechnology than the entirety of the Stellar Federation has ever known."

---

Fyodor looked up in surprise as the door to his room burst open and Darkstar stepped in. "I'm leaving you, Fyodor Ivanov," shi declared.

Fyodor closed his personal workstation, folded the desk into the wall, and retreated into a corner so Darkstar could enter and shut the door. Under normal circumstances a junior officer inhabited these quarters; the price paid for privacy was having to live in a volume about the size of a walk in closet. "Why?" he asked.

"Let me tell you a story, Fyodor Ivanov," Darkstar began, taking a seat on the floor. "Midmorning yesterday I was laying in the sun on my front porch, looking forward to a pleasant nap. Next thing I know this funny little man appears and regales me with fantastic stories about alien technology and even a possible First Contact. He asks me to come with him and against my better judgement I find myself compelled to do so, just to see if what he says is really true. For a wonder it is. Now, having seen what I came to see, I'm going home. I need to be with Aurora." Shi rose.

"Please don't go," Fyodor entreated. "I need you."

"You are a lying sack of shit, Fyodor Ivanov." Darkstar spoke with a calmness that came from having long ago exhausted all the emotional energy in a subject. "You don't need me as a scientist, you've got a hundred people at your fingertips who are infinitely better than I ever was. My expertise in Astronautics, while extensive, is rather dated. So why do you need me, Fyodor Ivanov?" Hir voice developed an edge as sharp as a razor and hir eyes became as cold and hard as steel.

Fyodor's face sagged. He wasn't afraid, just... sad. "What do you know about the Janus Project?"

Darkstar frowned, hir expression wary. "Never heard of it."

"It is the consortium that funded the Mileva Memorial Hyper-Spatial Observatory," Fyodor explained. "Scientific organizations from Terra, Voxxa, Cait, Merrak, and right here on Chakona put up fifteen billion credits to fund development and construction of the instrument."

Darkstar blinked. "That is a Hell of a lot of money for a scientific organization to cough up, even if it is a multi-national."

Fyodor nodded. "That's because sixty percent of the cash came from Starfleet."

Darkstar's expression changed from one of distrust to one of calculation. "Why haven't I heard that?"

"Because Starfleet doesn't want the public to know. The money came primarily through an organization called the Tenspan Foundation, which is a front for the Federation Science Corps. It's how Starfleet funds military research when they don't want the public to know it's military."

"There's more," Darkstar said. It wasn't a question.

"The new observatory was to be placed in the Chakastra system, it was said, to take advantage of the concentration of scientific study at Dewclaw University," Fyodor continued. "The uplink, data processing, and control centers were built right on campus. In fact, the College of Astrophysics was completely rebuilt to accommodate it- including a real-time hyper-wave link to the Razagal Observatory on Voxxa and the Hawking Observatory on Terra. The University is guaranteed generous access to all these facilities- access with which it may do anything it likes, including resell."

"All of which costs the University what?" Darkstar wanted to know.

Fyodor's face twisted into a bleak, unpleasant smile. "Not a cent. All costs generously absorbed- not by the Janus Consortium, of which Dewclaw University and the Chakonan Government are technically members, but the Tenspan Foundation directly."

"And your part in all this?"

"I am the Janus Consortium's Chakonan representative. My job was to sell the whole idea to the university and the government. Easy, because I waved a lot of money around. Hard, because I had to skillfully deflect questions about wherefrom that money came. In return, all the power and prestige that come from it are mine alone."

Darkstar tipped hir head back, thoughtfully stroking hir throat and chin with the back of one hand. "After all that, the Tenspan Foundation might come to think that they owned you."

Fyodor nodded. "They might very well think that. They might expect that when a Federation science vessel arrives in a week or so I will turn everything over to the Science Corps."

"You're a dirty, conniving little bastard, Fyodor Ivanov," Darkstar said. "It would serve you right if I just left you to hang."

"Please, Darkstar. You of all people can appreciate what's at stake. Yes, I traded my personal integrity for power. I persuaded the university's board of trustees to trade their scientific integrity for money. But the power I've gained has put me in a position to do some good and I need your help to do it."

"What are you going to do, Fyodor Ivanov?"

"Keep this discovery in civilian hands," Fyodor replied. "If Starfleet gets ahold of this they'll turn it into a black project. Once they realize what they've got they'll decide it's simply too upsetting to let the general public know, and it'll vanish as if it had never existed. I think that would be a terrible mistake and I intend to stop it."

"How can I help?" Darkstar crossed hir arms and leaned back slightly.

"I can't take Starfleet head on. I'll have to fight this as a maneuvering battle, and for that good intelligence is essential."

"You want me to be your spy master," Darkstar said.

"You're the only person I can trust. You have powerful friends and lots of them, who'll listen very carefully to what you say."

Darkstar stood. Shi wanted to pace but there wasn't room so shi sat back down. Hir face became hard like an iron mask, hir eyes burning like coals. "I understand how important this is," shi said in a voice almost too soft to hear. "I agree with everything you said. But-" Shi stood, moving forward and pinning Fyodor against the wall. "I remember another time were together. I remember you saying you needed me." Hir eyes narrowed to slits, hir ears laying back. "You were lying." The word came out a venomous hiss.

Fyodor swallowed. "I'm sorry for that, Darkstar. I regret it. Terribly." He rubbed his face; tears oozed between his fingers. "You... you deserve so much better than me." He straightened up, lifting his chin. "Tell me what you need me to do to make you believe me and I'll do it."

Darkstar cocked hir head. "Anything?"

"Anything."

The calculating look returned to Darkstar's face, but only momentarily. "Take off your clothes," shi ordered, unfolding the bunk. "Make love to me."

---

"I have a solution to your problem," Dr. Janek pronounced. "If everyone will gather around I'll demonstrate." A nod of the head dropped the virtual reality goggles down over his eyes and he slipped his arms into the control gauntlets.

Sigma 17's Hazardous Materials Laboratory was a miniature version of the Operations Center. Consoles lined the back and side walls, control stations the front. A transparisteel view port separated the control room from the actual lab, a room about half the size of the wardroom. Instead of using mechanical arms attached to the walls or ceiling Dr. Janek employed a servo, a robot controlled remotely by a human operator. This particular one looked oddly centauroid: an approximately humanoid torso with two arms and a head attached via a flexible articulation to a bulbous body with four spindly, insectile legs.

Under Dr. Janek's direction the servo approached a bench with some equipment set up on it. "This is a slug cut from the outer shell of the alien artifact," Ito explained. The servo pointed at a shallow pan containing a disk of slightly translucent dark amber colored material about ten centimeters across and one centimeter thick. "Now I'll pour over it a solution containing the nanites I developed." The servo picked up a beaker full of murky, greenish liquid and poured it into the pan. At once the fluid turned purple and started bubbling. After half a minute or so all activity ceased; the servo reached into the pan and scooped out a handful of bristly fibers coated with thick, greasy sludge.

"I assume we can control this?" Sherlock asked. "I mean, we don't want to dissolve the whole thing."

"Not to worry." Ito pulled his hands out of the gauntlets and took off the goggles. The servo, directed now by the computer, cleaned up the mess. "I made my nanites as tough as I could, but inside the artifact they'll last maybe a minute before radiation destroys them. About the best we can hope for is that they'll keep the drill bit clear until you place your sensor pods."

"We have an adequate supply on hand?" Fyodor wanted to know.

"Yes," Longstocking replied. "Security Force has an orbital nanite factory used to make spare integrated circuits and holographic logic units. I had Dr. Janek's specifications sent over last night; they'll be delivering our nanites in, oh-" shi glanced at a bulkhead chronometer- "any minute now."

"Only three days," Darkstar commented. "Not bad."

"That's what military discipline will do for you," Sherlock declared, drawing hirself up proudly.

"Not to mention a military budget," Darkstar put in.

"That too," Longstocking allowed.

"Excellent." Fyodor rubbed his hands together excitedly. "Then let us retire to Ops and prepare, shall we?"

---

"The nanites are loaded," Sherlock announced, glancing at a panel.

"Liska?" Longstocking inquired.

"Hot to trot, sir," Liska replied from the first control station. All was as it had been before: 3D graphic and informational sidebars on the view ports, manipulator arm poised and ready. Dr. Janek stood beside Sherlock, Longstocking and Fyodor on either side of Darkstar. Kit, Valjean, Javert, and Snowflake clustered together off to one side.

"Do it," Longstocking commanded.

"First pod in place," Liska announced. "Your nanites are working like champs, Doc." She gave him a very warm smile. He returned it with a sly wink. Liska giggled. Snowflake folded hir arms, huffed loudly, and rolled hir eyes.

The cradle rotated again. A mechanical arm moved to start drilling the second hole-

"Yow!" Liska exclaimed.

"Report," Longstocking demanded.

"There was a tremor," Sherlock reported. "Something shifted inside the object."

"Junior's getting restless," Valjean muttered. Snowflake had grabbed Kit's arm. He looked at hir quizzically; shi let go and stepped away, head drooped in embarrassment.

"May I call up a seismograph view?" Darkstar asked. Longstocking nodded; Darkstar touched some controls and another window appeared on the view ports. In it a jagged line crossed a slowly scrolling graph; a prominent spike was visible but far from alone.

"Pretty active, isn't it," Longstocking commented.

"And getting more so," Darkstar reported. "Sensor logs indicate seismic activity was almost nil when it arrived but increased steadily over the past three days."

"Can you handle it, Liska?" Longstocking asked.

"Uh- yes, sir. It just caught me by surprise."

"Carry on, then."

"Aye aye."

As drilling continued Kit noticed Snowflake staring intently at the seismograph display. "What is it?" he asked quietly.

"Huh?" Snowflake blinked. "Um-" Shi frowned, lashing hir tail in vexation. Fragile thoughts forming in the back of hir mind dissolved when shi tried to examine them closely. Something about visiting hir father, an obstetrician, while shi was attending to a patient. But what could that have to do with this?

In less than half an hour all the sensors and jammers were in place. "I'm getting telemetry," Sherlock announced. A window opened showing nothing but static, like a TV tuned in between stations. "Damn, that force field is tight. Can't hardly get through even with the sensors right up against it. Darkstar, would give me a hand?"

"Sure." Darkstar stepped up. As the two of them worked strange patterns emerged and receded, like forms dimly glimpsed through heavy snowfall- or perhaps merely the result of the mind trying to make sense out of randomness. The image dimmed almost to blackness, brightened until it whited out, then finally began to stabilize.

"What the Hell is that?" Valjean wondered, cocking his head first one way, then the other.

Snowflake frowned, eyes narrowed. A curved white border crowded into the right side of the image; the rest was mottled gray and black crisscrossed with blurry lines and curves of varying thickness. The mental picture of hir father at the hospital came back even more strongly. Snowflake could see the patient, a young Chakat pregnant with hir first child, laying on a low bed. Snowflake's father sat next to the bed, aiming a sensor wand at the mother's tumescent belly. A view screen on the wall showed a hazy outline of the infant's skeleton while a sidebar graph monitored fetal heartbeat and vital signs-

A series of spikes appeared on the seismograph view. The jumble of lines moved; suddenly in Snowflake's mind they became foreshortened three dimensional forms instead of merely two dimensional shapes.

"Oh my God!" Snowflake shrieked, clutching hir hands to hir cheeks. "It's a baby!"

---

Fyodor finished his coffee, set the mug on the table, and folded his hands over it. Behind him shadow eclipsed the disk of Chakona except for a few glimmers of light from scattered urban areas, a large electrical storm in the northern hemisphere, and a narrow sliver of sunlight along the eastern rim. Darkstar sat across from him, Ito to his right, and Snowflake to his left. Otherwise the wardroom was empty.

"Professor, please tell me you're not taking this seriously," Ito pleaded in what he no doubt thought was a reasonable tone. "Whatever we have in there is fantastically complex and certainly the product of a technology far in advance of ours, but it's synthetic. For the love of reason, it's just a machine!"

"Professor, just because I'm not some high mucky-muck scientist doesn't make me the drooling idiot Dr. Janek seems to think I am," Snowflake growled. Hir eyes were narrowed, hir ears laid back, hir tail lashing angrily. "My father happens to be doctor of natal medicine. I've spent a lot of time in the hospital with hir. I even took a year of premed before switching to Astronautics. If you put what we just saw side by side with a third-trimester Chakat nine of ten people couldn't tell the difference! It has a skeleton. It has hands! You saw it, Professor!"

"You're far too modest." Ito's tone dripped with sarcasm. "You must be a great scientist if you can tell all that from studying one poor quality scanner image!"

"And you can?" Snowflake retorted, slapping hir hands down on the table and jumping to hir feet.

"Quiet!"

Fyodor's outburst shocked both parties into silence. Even more shocking was the livid rage etched into his normally saturnine features. "Both of you are acting like children," he snapped, leveling a finger as if it were a lethal weapon. "I remind you that we are all here to learn. Dr. Janek." Fyodor skewered him with hard, merciless eyes. "You yourself theorized that the object was composed of nanites in the way an organic body is composed of cells. If one extends that analogy to its logical conclusion, you are in fact proposing the idea of a synthetic machine that, to a high degree, mimics the form and function of an organic body. Snowflake." Shi shrank back as Fyodor's eyes transfixed hir but shi could not look away. "If you wish to play the role of scientist you must follow the rules. Because you saw something in scan image that bears a passing resemblance to a fetus does not prove that what you saw was a fetus. At this point there is no evidence to support any conclusion. More investigation is required. To that end we are going to return to Chakona, where the scan data and samples we have collected can be analyzed with better equipment than is available here. That will include having it reviewed by fetal experts from the College of Life Sciences. If it is- or is not- a fetus, let that judgement be rendered by those who are expert on the subject." Fyodor got to his feet. "We will leave as soon as all materials have been packed for shipment." He turned on his heel and walked out without looking back.

"I'd get moving if I were you," Darkstar said as Ito and Snowflake glanced at hir for support. "And especially I wouldn't cross him again. The Professor is made of sterner stuff than you might imagine."

---

Rum Tum Tugger was a Webber class shuttle, a small vessel intended for intra-system transport or short interstellar hops. Its lines suited its utilitarian nature: a short, boxy fuselage with a blunt pointed stem and a flat stern housing a drop-down cargo ramp. A pair of low-mounted warp pods doubled as landing skids. Inside, cargo or passengers filled a single open cabin with two pilot stations at the front. Tracks in the deck allowed cabin fixtures to be added, removed, or rearranged at need. Thirty humanoids, sixteen centauroids, a ton and a half of cargo, or any reasonable combination of the above could be loaded with appropriate fittings installed.

"Anything else you need?" Longstocking asked. Shi stood in the transfer lock, holding the controls of a motorized palette jack loaded with half a dozen large containers liberally plastered with biohazard and radiation warnings. With Tugger's stern mated to the outer door cargo could be carried straight in, as Kit and Sherlock had just done with six other canisters.

"No, we've got everything," Darkstar replied, checking the tie-downs on each canister by thumping them with hir hand.

"You're sure those are the right cannisters?" Ito anxiously inquired, skittering about and trying to look at the labels as Kit and Sherlock transferred the rest of them.

"Sit down, Doctor," Darkstar directed, gently but firmly aiming Ito toward a chair. "If Longstocking says they're the right ones I'm sure they are."

"Cargo is loaded and secure," Sherlock reported, giving the tie-downs one last tug. "'Smatter, don't trust us?" Sherlock inquired good naturedly as Darkstar re-checked each container.

"When it comes to locking myself in a small space with a load of intensely radioactive, virulently toxic crap, I don't trust nobody," Darkstar responded. "Good work." Shi gave Kit And Sherlock a clap on the shoulder and settled into the pilot's couch. "Prepare to cast off."

Sherlock, Kit, and Longstocking retreated into the station. First the inner door of the transfer lock closed, then Tugger's cargo ramp, and finally the transfer lock's outer doors.

"All hatches sealed, cabin pressure stable, umbilicals disconnected," Darkstar said in a singsong voice. "Releasing moorings now."

Artificial gravity inside the cabin reduced but did not eliminate the sensation of movement. Darkstar fed on power, swinging Tugger's nose onto the Chakona approach vector, placing the planet itself off the shuttle's starboard beam.

"When we come back I'm bringing Aurora with me," Darkstar announced.

"But Darkstar-" Fyodor began.

"No buts, Fyodor." Darkstar's tone brooked not the slightest possibility of contradiction. "I am not a whacked-out workaholic to whom family are an inconvenient obstacle on the path to success. I quit that insane asylum you call a university to get away from the rat race. Technically I'm still retired. If you want me to work with you then Aurora is part of the project. That is not negotiable."

"Yes dear," Fyodor replied in that tone surely recognizable by husbands anywhere in the universe. Darkstar fixed him with a cold stare; he met it with a bland smile. Shi sniffed and looked away; his smile widened a bit.

Half an hour later Rum Tum Tugger dropped through Chakona's upper atmosphere. Above the stars twinkled, blurred a bit but still bright. Below the lights of Berdoovia formed a glittering carpet across the landscape, sharply constrained by the urban growth boundary. Chakona's civic planners understood the costs of urban sprawl and kept it under tight control. Tugger wasn't coming down there but off to one side, where chains of light connected small clusters of illumination like beads on a necklace. Darkstar aimed for one of the clusters, which gradually resolved into a tight group of buildings. Bright red and green beacons marked a rooftop landing pad.

"We have arrived," Darkstar announced, bringing Tugger down to an almost perfect landing. As the cargo ramp dropped cool, night air lightly scented by fresh grass, blossoms, and trees swirled through the cabin. Darkstar found it intensely refreshing after Sigma 17's closed, artificial atmosphere.

Ito got up and hurried down the ramp. Abruptly he froze, mid-stride. "Professor," he called, "Are we expecting visitors?"

"No," Fyodor replied. "Why?"

"There's a couple of Peace Force officers here."

Darkstar and Fyodor hurried down the ramp. Two Chakats in grey tunics materialized from deep shadow just outside the landing circle.

"May we help you, officers?" Fyodor asked, stepping down onto the pad.

"Are you Fyodor Moseivitch?" of them asked, stepping forward.

"Yes."

"I'm terribly sorry, sir." Shi produced a chit. "I have a warrant for your arrest on the charge of willful misappropriation of Starfleet property."

---

"What are you?" Kit whispered, curling his fingers against the transparisteel view port as if trying to claw through it. "Why did you come here?"

The Operations Center was quiet but not silent. Consoles clicked, pinged, or chimed as they carried out various automated tasks and the ventilation system sighed softly. Listening carefully one could even hear faint groans and creaks as the station's fabric responded to thermal and tidal stresses. Kit's conscious mind ignored it, as people who spent extended periods on board space habitats tended to do. Directly above him the seismograph display rippled with continuous low level activity.

"Hello, Kit."

Kit started guiltily and spun around. Only one person he knew had a voice like that-

"What'cha doing?" Liska asked. Her overalls were unzipped even farther than usual, enough to reveal where the cups of her bra joined together. Her hips rolled hypnotically as she walked down to the front of the room.

"Well... y'know... just... sort of... looking around." Kit gestured vaguely and looked away. His cheeks reddened.

"Why aren't you up in the wardroom with the rest of us?" Liska wanted to know.

Kit shrugged one shoulder, looking at a point just to the left of Liska's waist. "Dunno," he muttered. "I can't... I can't get this thing out of my head." He turned back to the view port. He didn't want Liska to see his face; he didn't want to admit that he'd left the wardroom because of her. With Fyodor and company gone and research halted until they returned there wasn't much to do other than socialize. Valjean and Javert would hit on everyone in sight and Liska in particular. One or the other would succeed; the Hugos were very talented- and persistent- in that area. That left only Chakats as potential partners and that was a matter Kit definitely did not wish to discuss. How do you explain to someone that you don't want to sleep with them because they are, effectively, half animal? And, to top it all off, they're basically a woman with a penis? That all the Chakats Kit knew were exceptionally friendly and understanding only made it worse. If they'd been ugly or unpleasant at least he'd have some rationale to explain his feelings.

Liska chuckled; Kit's heart flip-flopped in his chest. "You're almost as bad as Dr. Janek, the way you're obsessing about this thing."

"I'm nothing like Dr. Janek," Kit said bitterly. Even he would admit that Ito was stunningly attractive. What female would choose Kit if Ito were there?

"You're right," Liska said. "You're nothing like Dr. Janek. He's beautiful on the outside but he already has a lover."

"Who?" Kit really didn't care but he wanted Liska to stay.

"Himself." Liska tossed her head. "He'd never let something as ordinary as a woman distract him."

"You're not an ordinary woman," Kit heard himself saying. Where the Hell did that come from?

"Why, Kit!" she exclaimed, grinning mischievously. "Are you hitting on me?"

Kit's mouth worked. Grey fog clouded his mind, blocking any possibility of rational thought.

"Since you're so interested in Professor Moseivitch's alien object, how would you like to touch it?" Liska asked.

"Huh?" Shock at the sudden change in subject allowed Kit's mind to function once again. "But- how? There's no atmosphere in the work room and I thought it was too radioactive to approach."

"It is," Liska replied. "But you can still touch it. Come here." She put her hand under Kit's arm and led him to one of the control stations. His knees quavered; her intoxicated him like no spirit ever could. "Sit here," she directed. "And take off your shoes."

"My shoes?" Kit repeated, looking blankly at her.

"Your shoes," Liska repeated. "You have to use your feet to operate the auxiliary controls. Or you'd have to keep pulling your hands out of the gauntlets, which is inconvenient." She dropped to one knee and undid the knot on his left boot. Kit could only sit and watch while she removed his footwear, including his socks. "Computer, activate Virtual Hands," she instructed.

The console beeped. "Virtual Hands ready," the computer replied.

"Put your hands into the gauntlets and wiggle your fingers," Liska directed. "They'll automatically resize to fit."

Kit gasped. The gauntlets shrank around his hands, fitting snugly but comfortably. Out in the work room a pair of gigantic, translucent orange hands shimmered into being. Composed of simple cylinders, wedges, and boxes, they looked like the hands of a puppet but they conformed exactly to the motions of his actual hands as he wiggled his fingers.

"Now touch something," Liska directed.

"Like what?" Kit asked.

"Anything. The computer won't let you pick up or disturb something unless you unlock it first."

Hesitantly Kit made a fist, then extended his index finger. The giant hands did so as well. He touched the far wall.

"Omigod!" he exclaimed. "I felt it!"

"Of course you did." Liska chuckled. "The virtual hands have full tactile feedback."

"Wow." Kit smiled, gently cupping his hands around the object. The arms the cradle were cool and metallic; the object itself felt warm and sort of plasticy. When spikes appeared on the seismograph chart he actually felt them as minute tremors in his fingertips. "Say, Liska... do you suppose Snowflake could be right? That maybe there's something... alive... in there?"

Liska frowned in thought. "I think you'd need a pretty liberal definition of 'alive.' It's made of synthetics and nanites, powered by nuclear fusion. Who heard of life like that?"

"That doesn't mean it couldn't exist, does it?" Kit stroked the object gently, which seemed to soothe it. The tremors eased.

Liska shrugged. "I suppose not. But how could something like that have evolved?"

"It didn't have to," Kit replied. "Look at the Chakats. They didn't evolve, but they're here. Just because they were genetically engineered doesn't make them any less alive, does it?"

"I suppose not," Liska allowed, cocking her head. "But that doesn't mean... I mean, like what Dr. Janek said. It may be very complex, but still just a mechanism. Or even just part of a mechanism."

"I've been thinking about that," Kit said as he gently explored the object's nooks and crannies. "If it really is a mechanism as complex as a living thing, how can one part of it still be alive after the rest got blown to bits? That's like as if someone's leg got cut off and the leg kept on living."

"Well, it would, at least for a while," Liska pointed out.

"A couple hours at best, unless it's deep frozen," Kit replied. "It's been days since this was discovered and it's still active. In fact, it's more active than when it was found. A severed leg would be less active, wouldn't it?"

"I guess so." Liska shrugged.

"Call up the images," Kit said. "I-" He tried to pull his hands out of the gauntlets but they wouldn't release.

"Okay, okay." Liska leaned past Kit, touching a sequence of controls. Kit froze; one of her breasts pressed against his shoulder. The console's holographic display presented one of the sensor images.

"Just look at that," Kit said. "Don't those look like bones?"

"Well..." Liska scratched her jaw. The image showed a series of curved lines joined to a single transverse member; it didn't take a lot of imagination for it to become something like a rib cage. A network if lines might possibly be collar bones, shoulder blades, and arm bones. If so the arms were crossed over one another, making it hard to pick out details. More lines, connecting structures beyond the image's boundaries, further confused things. "There's no head," Liska pointed out. "If it's a baby, where's it's head?"

"That cone-shaped thing pointing down and left," Kit replied.

Liska frowned. She rotated the image, calling others of the same area from different angles. What Kit declared to be a skull looked like a truncated cone attached at its bulbous base to the presumed spine and folded under the presumed body. "What kind of skull is that? There's no eye sockets, no sinuses, no mouth."

Kit smiled craftily. "If we assume it's a baby, what kind of baby is it?"

"I don't follow."

"Think of it this way," Kit explained. "If you looked inside a Chakat, for example, you'd expect to find a baby Chakat, right? So if you look inside a star ship...."

Liska frowned even more. "A baby... star ship? Don't you think that's a bit of a stretch?"

"No," Kit pronounced. "It's made of nanites the way an organic body is made of cells. It even looks like something organic. It survived the catastrophic shut down of its mother ship, which suggests that it's a self-contained, self-sustaining system. There are cases where babies have been born- alive- after their mothers died."

"Hold on," Liska protested. "What if it's a symbiote or a parasite?"

Kit's smile widened to a grin. "It could be argued that by brining that up you're conceding that it's alive. If it was a symbiote it wouldn't be surviving on its own. It it's a parasite- well, parasites can survive on their own, but didn't Professor Moseivitch call this thing a sub-system of great importance? The mother ship used its resources to make sure this bit survived, even though doing so guaranteed the mother ship's destruction. I can't imagine someone going to such great lengths on behalf of a parasite- except insofar as that a developing fetus is a parasite on its mother. Going to such lengths to protect an offspring makes perfect sense."

Liska shifted uneasily, glancing back and forth between Kit and the object. "Wait," she exclaimed suddenly. "You still haven't explained why it doesn't have eyes, a nose, or a mouth."

"Oh, that's easy." Kit dismissed it with a casual shrug. "Noses are for breathing and smelling, pointless activities in space where there's no air. Mouths are for eating, which it doesn't need because it's got a transporter. It can beam whatever it eats directly into its stomach. Eyes are for seeing, an ability of use only when travelling in normal space. For any star ship, the ability to navigate in hyper-space it what matters- and for that you need a mass detector, not eyes."

"I-" Liska clenched and opened her hands. Kit giggled with delight at how he'd neatly maneuvered her.

A light on the communications console flashed and a chime sounded.

"Excuse me." Liska dashed over to the console. When she opened the incoming comm channel Darkstar's face appeared on the view screen. "Repair Station sigma one-seven, this is Warrant Officer Sharpears," Liska announced.

"Mr. Sharpears, a rather serious matter has come up and I need you to connect me with Lt. Longstocking at once," Darkstar said.

"Ah- yes, sir," Liska replied. "Please hold." Another screen activated, showing a portion of the wardroom. "Commander, I'm sorry to interrupt, but Darkstar is on the horn and needs to speak with you at once."

A moment later Longstocking's face filled the second screen. "Yes, Darkstar? What is it?"

"Lieutenant, a Dr. Ygor Stannus of the Federation Science Corps has filed a complaint against Professor Moseivitch alleging that he deliberately misappropriated scientific artifacts belonging to the Corps. There is going to be an arraignment hearing in the morning; if the judgement goes against us all artifacts recovered from the collision with the Array- including and especially the one we've been working on- will be seized pending a trial. You and your crew need to come down at once to confer with our legal staff and be prepared to testify in the morning."

"What about the student interns?" Longstocking wanted to know.

"They aren't named in the suit so I see no reason to involve them," Darkstar replied. "However, I do need to speak with Mr. Carson."

"Kit!" Liska called.

"How do I get out of these?" Kit shot back.

"Press the red button by your left toe!"

"Okay." Kit did as instructed; the gauntlets released. He hurried over to the console. "Yes, Darkstar?"

"Lieutenant, it might be better if you didn't hear what I'm about to say, in case you're called to testify about it later," Darkstar said.

"I... see." Longstocking stroked hir chin thoughtfully. "Mr. Sharpears, put me on the 1MC."

"Sir." Liska touched a control.

"Attention all personnel, this is the commander speaking," Longstocking began, hir voice echoing from the stations's PA speakers. "All station personnel are ordered to report at once to the wardroom for an emergency briefing. All student personnel are ordered to report to Ops, where you will be briefed by Mr. Carson. That is all." Hir screen went blank. Liska gave Kit a look that seemed to express both regret and relief at the same time, then hurried out.

"Kit, listen carefully," Darkstar said. "What Dr. Stannus really wants is to get his hands on that lump you've got there. The real reason I want you and the others to stay behind is because I don't want our object left unattended. Sometime between now and morning some Peace Force officers are probably going to show up with warrants to seize the object as evidence in a criminal trial. Since you aren't Security Force personnel you can honesty say you don't have the authority to grant them access to a Security Force installation. Since the duly authorized commander of the installation isn't available they'll end up having to go to the Judge Advocate General. Then all we have to do is stonewall until the magistrate hands down a ruling at the arraignment hearing. But I don't want you taking any silly risks, you hear? Do you understand what I'm asking?"

Kit nodded. "Yes, I do. You can count on us."

Darkstar smiled warmly. "That's what I wanted to hear. Just sit tight until morning. Whichever way the ruling goes it'll be over then." Shi kissed hir hand and touched it to the screen.

"Thanks." Kit put his hand on the screen. For a reason he couldn't clearly articulate Darkstar's sentiment touched him deeply. Hir image vanished.

"Hey Kit, what's happening?" Valjean wanted to know as he entered the room with Snowflake and Javert right behind him.

Kit drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "The Prof is having some legal trouble. Apparently Starfleet is trying to snatch our artifact. Longstocking and the crew are going down to testify at a hearing. All we have to do is sit tight; if anyone tries to snatch Junior, we lock the doors and play dumb."

"So, we get to spend the foreseeable future babysitting a lump of undefined alien technology," Javert observed with a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm. "Great."

Snowflake leaned forward and picked something from the shoulder of Kit's shirt. Valjean and Javert pushed close to examine the object, which turned out to be a fine red hair. Snowflake frowned and sniffed suspiciously. "Hmm," shi commented. "Been spending some time with Miss Torpedo Tits Sharpears, have we?"

Valjean and Javert gaped in amazement. "You- you mean she was in here, with you?" Javert exclaimed.

Kit flushed hotly. "Look, it wasn't-"

"My brother, I think we may have been wrong about this boy," Valjean commented. "So how was it?" he asked brightly.

"Look, we didn't-" Kit tried.

"Oh, please don't tell me you just sat in here and talked!" Javert tossed his head, clutching at his face. "You felt her up at least, didn't you? Didn't you?"

"She was just- showing me how to work the servo systems," Kit mumbled, staring at the floor and scuffing his feet.

"Oh, lay off," Snowflake cut in impatiently- and maybe a bit remorsefully, at the avalanche hir teasing set in motion. "So... what were you doing with the servos?"

Kit brightened immediately at Snowflake's lame attempt to change the subject. "I touched the artifact!"

"That hardly seems very exciting," Snowflake commented.

"Yeah, but I really touched it- with the virtual hands, I mean."

"You did? Cool!" Valjean hurried down to the first control station and slipped his hands into the gauntlets. When the hands appeared he made a series of rude gestures.

"I wanna try too," Javert added, following.

"Um... are you sure we should be doing this?" Snowflake inquired.

"Liska said the computer won't let us touch anything unless we unlock it first," Kit replied.

"Well-" Snowflake began.

"Touch it!" Valjean goaded.

"Incredible." Javert ran his virtual finger over the artifact.

"What's it feel like?" Snowflake asked.

"See for yourself," Valjean suggested. Snowflake hesitated but curiosity got the better of hir. Shi settled onto the couch and put her hands into the gauntlets.

"Hey, it jumped!" Snowflake jerked hir hands away.

"That's okay, it does that," Kit replied.

The artifact twitched again. This time Kit actually saw it quiver; the spike on the seismograph window was so large the graph changed magnification settings.

"How often does it do that?" Javert asked.

"Never, as far as I know," Kit replied in a tiny voice.

"Um... maybe we should leave it alone?" Snowflake suggested worriedly, pulling hir hands from the gauntlets.

Several minutes passed. All four of them stared intently and fearfully at the object. Nothing happened.

"Let's go see what games are in the library computer," Valjean suggested, turning to go.

"Okay," Javert agreed, falling in step beside his brother.

Snowflake turned but hesitated. "Kit?"

Kit sat down at the first servo station. "I'm gonna stay," he said.

"Suit yourself," Javert responded.

Snowflake continued to hesitate. "Kit, why are you so interested in this thing anyway?"

"I have no illusions about by place in the world, Snowflake," Kit replied, his eyes fixed upon the artifact. "I'm just a college student. It's pure dumb luck that I'm here at all. And this- this is the find of the century. If even half of what Dr. Janek says is true, studying this thing is gonna advance our understanding of nanotechnology by hundreds of years. And then, when we figure out where it came from, there's gonna be a First Contact." He rose slowly, pressing his hands and face against the view port. "This... is probably as close as I'm ever gonna get to any of that. At least... this way when my grand kids learn about it in school, I can tell them I was part of it, in some small way."

Because Kit was looking through the view ports he did not observe the sequence of expressions that crossed Snowflake's features. Surprise, emerging comprehension, agreement, and finally- tenderness? Affection? "I know you'll tell it to your grand kids," shi agreed quietly, reaching out to touch his shoulder- but pulling back at the last moment. Shi was young but not naivé; there were people who simply could not accept the notion of being physically intimate with a hermaphrodite. Over the last three days Snowflake had never once seen Kit make overtures to any Chakat. But here he was, spending time alone with Liska the Doorknob-

The artifact shuddered violently. Alarms beeped on several consoles and an entirely new crack opened on he object's surface.

"What's happening?" Snowflake shrilled, eyes wide, voice cracking with tension.

Kit jumped as if stung. For a moment he could only stare, then his eyes flicked to the seismograph window. I showed another enormous peak and second appeared as he watched.

"I think it's trying to get out," Kit heard himself say, amazed at how calm he sounded.

"We- we- we-" Snowflake's voice squeaked as if shi'd been inhaling helium and shi hopped nervously from foot to foot. "We have to call Professor Mos-"

"There's no time!" Kit grabbed Snowflake's arm as shi started toward the communications console. "Snowflake, even if we can reach the professor, there's no one who can get here in time to do anything! It's us or nothing!"

"But-" Snowflake glanced at the view ports. Another crack opened in the object's surface; fluid spurted out, hardening into gauzy traceries as it flew.

"Snowflake, we can do this." Kit gripped Snowflake's upper arms, his eyes locking onto hirs. "Help me."

"Okay." Snowflake couldn't look away.

"Call the Hugos in here, we're gonna need them. Then stand by the sensor console."

Valjean and Javert appeared in what felt like seconds. "What's happening?" Javert called.

"It's trying to break out from the inside but every time it makes a crack the fluid hardens in it," Snowflake said.

Kit thrust his hands into the gauntlets. "Javert, come down here and help me. Valjean, heat up the transporter and start dematerializing the shell where the fracture planes are forming. Snowflake, open the cradle and spot for Valjean."

"Where do you want me to beam the stuff?" Valjean wanted to know.

As the cradle opened the object tried to jump right out of it. Kit grabbed hold; it was like holding an angry cat in a bag. He almost lost his grip before Javert lent his hands to the effort.

"Don't think that'll be a problem," Kit replied. "Junior's probably gonna slurp it up just like he did the sensors."

Snowflake had activated the targeting display. Newly formed fracture planes appeared as flashing yellow lines. "There!" shi shouted. "There, and there!"

"Got it." Valjean wielded the transporter like a scalpel, slashing through tendrils of nanites even as they formed.

Kit felt the object coming apart in his hands. A crack opened; he tried sticking his fingers in but they wouldn't fit.

"I'm on it!" Javert declared, hitting a sequence of controls with his forepaws. The tips of his virtual fingers changed into pointed talons. He jammed them into the crack; Kit rotated the artifact to give Javert better purchase. Fortunately virtual hands didn't have virtual arms so Kit and Javert could work without bumping into each other. As the crack widened harsh, actinic light burst out along with jets of plasma as improperly dematerialized matter turned into random energy.

"Careful, Valjean, it's coming out!" Snowflake called.

The artifact split apart into three fragments. A roiling cloud of multicolored liquids and solids erupted from its interior, coating the view ports and hardening into a mucousy crust. Javert yelped, ripping his hand out of the gauntlet. "Sonofabitch!" he screamed. "It bit me!"

Something hot and slimy slithered across Kit's hand. He clutched at it; it squirted out of his grip. It was like trying to hold on to a fish. After a moment of struggling- and by touch alone- he managed to trap it in his cupped hands.

"Jeez, it's trying to beam up everything in sight," Valjean muttered.

"Did it eat the stuff you beamed out before?" Kit asked.

"Sucked it down like raw oysters," Valjean replied.

"Then keep it up," Kit directed.

"Should we be doing that?" Javert wondered, massaging his left palm with his right thumb.

"How the Hell should I know?" Kit snapped.

Javert recoiled in shock. "Sorry, he grumbled, shooting Kit a jaundiced look.

The thing in Kit's hands stopped struggling. He relaxed his grip, massaging it gently with his fingers. It felt more like a frog than a fish, with spindly little limbs and smooth skin. "Snowflake, can you clear the view ports?" he asked.

"Got it." Snowflake switched on a force field; hardened material fell away from the windows in a shower of fragments.

"What a mess," Valjean said, rubbing his forehead. Varicolored material coated everything like the aftermath of an ice storm. Shell fragments and bits of gear knocked loose in the excitement protruded from ossified billows of alien resin. Gobbets that hardened before touching anything bounced around like marbles.

"Big time technicolor yawn," Javert added.

Kit felt a sharp twinge in his right hand. A shower of brightly colored sparks erupted between his virtual fingers, dissipating in a cloud of black dust.

"Junior's done eating," Valjean commented.

Kit brought his cupped hands up to the view port and slowly, carefully, opened them. Valjean and Snowflake dashed down to the front and waited breathlessly. Snowflake let out an odd little yelp and clutched hir hands over hir muzzle.

Kit found himself thinking of a penguin. Make that a skinny and emaciated one without feet or eyes and whose beak is just where the front of its body tapers to a blunt point. A cluster of six shockingly humanoid limbs, complete with four fingers and opposable thumbs, sprouted from its belly. Two of them were long and skinny, four of them short and thick, all of them shelled and jointed like a crustacean's. Pulsating chartreuse veins crossed its otherwise purple-black skin.

"Oh, Kit, it's so cute!" Snowflake exclaimed, hir eyes shining. "Can I hold it, please?"

Kit stared in dumb amazement. Cute wasn't the first word springing to his mind. Also, the virtual hands distorted one's sense of scale. This creature- Kit could no longer think of it as a thing- was an eight meter long, fusion powered chunk of unimaginably alien ultra-technology. He opened his mouth to say that but couldn't form the words. Since he didn't say no Snowflake stuck hir hands into the gauntlets and gently scooped the baby- whatever it was- from Kit's unresisting grasp. She stroked and cuddled it, cooing and talking in baby talk. Kit licked his lips- which were as dry as old leather- and hit the button to release the gauntlets. As he pulled his hands out he noticed angry marks where force feedback had bruised him. His palms and arms gleamed with a layer of greasy sweat; enormous stains marked the chest and armpits of his shirt. He dabbed at his brow and found his hair and eyebrows soaking wet. As he slung a load of sweat off his fingers his hand started trembling.

"Um... Kit?" Valjean tried to sound calm but his voice quavered. "What... what did we just do?"

Kit shut his mouth; speaking took too much effort. The room became soft and hazy, the voices of his companions echoing and indistinct. He couldn't feel the floor under his feet; when he groped for it with his toes there wasn't anything there. Then the floor found his head; impact drove from him what remained of consciousness.

---

"Is that him?" Sherlock whispered.

Darkstar nodded. "Yes."

A Terran male of Caucasoid extraction strode briskly down the white gravel path. He looked easily Kit's height but lean and gangly, like a scarecrow, with a hard, bony face, hawk-like nose, and deep set eyes. Liver spots spattered his bald pate and lanky hands; scraggly gray hair hung down from the back and sides of his head to just below his shoulders. Against the early morning chill he wore a dun colored turtleneck and gray slacks. He stopped in front of a stone bench set at the edge of a small lake. Trees crowded down to the water's other three edges, with the fairy spires of Dewclaw University's College of the Performing Arts rising above them in the distance. Sunlight painted the towers in bright, burnished gold; fine mist rendered the mirror smooth water and surrounding trees in soft, glowing pastel.

"Good morning, Dr. Stannus!" Fyodor, seated on the bench, jumped to his feet and offered his hand, fairly bubbling over with good cheer. "Just the person I wanted to see!"

"Dr. Moseivitch." Dr. Stannus gripped Fyodor's fingers for the shortest possible time that satisfied the requirements of protocol. "Now could you explain to me why we needed to meet here at such an ungodly hour?" He swept his long arm in a gesture that took in the whole scene.

"As if we were inconveniencing him," Longstocking muttered.

"I'll give him an inconvenience," Sherlock growled, massaging hir clenched fist. "Right in the kisser."

"We are meeting now because it gives us plenty of time before the hearing starts," Fyodor began, clasping his hands behind his back and pacing slowly in a small circle. "We are meeting here to avoid the media frenzy already developing around the court building."

"Incidental whys." Stannus dismissed them with a curt gesture.

"I wish to settle our differences out of court," Fyodor declared.

Dr. Stannus' irritated expression vanished, along with every other trace of emotion in his face or body. "Why?"

"If this case goes to trial it will drag on for weeks. Possibly years. Regardless of who wins, valuable time will be lost. The inevitable media coverage will be a source of embarrassment for us as individuals and the organizations we represent. To that end I am willing to grant you and your people full access to the materials, in return for which you must agree to drop all charges and refrain from contesting their ownership."

"Why would I agree to your terms?" Dr. Stannus' tone was not argumentative, merely curious.

"If the matter goes before a magistrate, why of course all facts of the matter must be brought to light," Fyodor replied. "Such as, for example, the details of certain agreements made between myself and representatives of the Tenspan Foundation."

"Even if you could prove that any such agreements took place, they have no legal bearing on the matter at hand," Stannus replied. "You made a contractual agreement granting the Federation Science Corps full access to any discoveries stemming from use of the observatory or it's equipment. Clearly this is such a case and you have failed to honor your commitment."

"Whether or not I violated my agreement hinges on who actually made the discovery," Fyodor pointed out. "A magistrate might rule that since a Security Force vessel first observed the artifact the Chakonan government then has proprietary interest- and they can, without prejudice, assign the research to Dewclaw University- whose duly appointed representative I happen to be. Agreements between myself and the Tenspan Foundation may not directly relate in a strictly legal sense, but the suggestion that such things exist might cause certain members of the government to think that an attempt was being made to circumvent Chakonan sovereignty."

"The Chakonan government is not likely to look kindly upon the fact that you were a party to it," Stannus pointed out.

"True," Fyodor admitted. "At the very least I would be dismissed in disgrace from the university. At the worst I could be jailed or deported. Of course I would be forced to confess that I acted- ultimately- in collusion with the Federation Science Corps."

Seconds passed. Absolutely nothing about Dr. Stannus' expression or stance gave the slightest indication of what went on in his mind. "Very well," he said. "I agree."

"Excellent!" Fyodor rubbed his hands together excitedly. "Then let us adjourn to the court building so that our respective legal teams can hash out the details."

"And that's a take," Darkstar said, lifting the servo camera's viewfinder reticule and massaging hir eye. "God, I'm getting too old for this shit. Old bones don't like laying for hours in cold, wet underbrush."

Sherlock frowned. Shi, Darkstar, and Longstocking lay on their bellies just inside the forest edge, screened by a line of ground cover. "Am I to understand," Sherlock began slowly, "That Professor Moseivitch made an agreement with the Federation Science Corps to give away this artifact we discovered?"

"The agreement couldn't anticipate this particular discovery, of course," Darkstar clarified, flipping the viewfinder back down. The camera, strapped to hir shoulder, continued to track Fyodor and Dr. Stannus as they moved away up the path. "But yes. In return for putting the new hyper-spatial observatory here on Chakona, the Corps wanted first crack and any important scientific discoveries it made. Professor Moseivitch was their mole."

"You know," Sherlock said, shifting uneasily, "When I joined the Security Force I swore an oath. To protect Chakona from all aggressors, foreign and domestic."

"And you are," Darkstar replied. "Your assistance is helping to insure that Dr. Stannus doesn't steal away the Security Force's discovery."

Sherlock wasn't reassured. "Why should I trust Professor Moseivitch?" shi demanded bluntly. "He made an agreement to betray Chakona."

"It is a valid point," Longstocking pointed out. "It could be said that Professor Moseivitch has already demonstrated himself to be a traitor."

Darkstar's face twitched. For a long time shi stared out across the lake. Rays of sunlight poked through the trees, slanting down onto the water. "Yes, I see what you mean," shi whispered. Something flicked through hir eyes, which fortunately neither Sherlock nor Longstocking could see. "Let me put it this way. By now I'm sure you've seen that Fyodor is a shrewd politician. He has managed to maneuver himself into a position of great power. Ask yourself this: would you rather have him with you or against you?"

"Expediency doesn't justify it," Sherlock declared.

"Doesn't it?" Darkstar wanted to know. "Isn't that what politics and governments are about? Finding the expedient solution and spinning it to the public? As long as you two have been in the military, you can't tell me you've never faced a situation where the expedient solution superceded the ethical solution. If resolving conflict was a simple matter of black and white we wouldn't need laws or courts, would we? Or governments and militaries, for that matter. The purpose of a government is to tell people to shut up and quit squabbling. The purpose of a military is to enforce those orders in the only way that ultimately makes any difference, which is to say at gun point. Everything we call society falls out of those basic principles."

"But it doesn't have to be that way," Sherlock insisted. Shi seemed less certain.

"By saying that you're admitting that what I said is true," Darkstar pointed out. "Fyodor made an agreement that was unethical, illegal, and possibly treasonous. He did it to gain power and prestige for himself. But if that's what matters, why risk it now that push comes to shove? Why should he put everything he's so carefully built on the line in what can only be called a mad gamble? Especially when losing could very well mean ending up in prison? He's decided that something is more important than all that, even his own life. If that doesn't move you, think of this. If Fyodor fails, your artifact goes to Starfleet. You go back to fixing star ships. Years from now you'll look at the history books and read about how Starfleet made the greatest discovery of the century and there won't be a damn thing you or anyone on Chakona can do about it."

Longstocking tapped Darkstar's shoulder and pointed. Darkstar swung the servo camera and zoomed in on a pair of Terrans- a male and a female- emerging from the underbrush on the other side of the lake. They strolled casually toward the trail wearing sneakers, jogging suits, and bulky backpacks; their faces, magnified in the camera's viewfinder, were flushed and sweaty.

"Who are they?" Sherlock wondered.

"If they aren't lovers who just concluded a very energetic sexual encounter, they're probably folk who spent the last few hours crouched under a null screen, scanning the area with a sensor pack," Darkstar replied.

Null screens were the final word in camouflage. Deactivated they resembled thin sheets of clear plastic. Activated, they took on the colors, patterns, and reflective properties of their environment, blending in perfectly. Objects then placed beneath them became as nearly invisible as modern technology could make them. A problem arose if the object- such as a person or a piece of machinery- generated heat. To keep its own external temperature steady the null screen trapped heat generated inside it. Over time, especially in the chill pre-dawn air near the lake's edge, a small screen- such as might fit in a backpack- would get uncomfortably warm trapping the body heat of two adult Terrans. Temperature being a function of enclosed volume, though, a much larger screen- such as would require two adult Chakats to carry- remained comfortable even while masking three much larger bodies.

"I think we can go now," Darkstar said after the pair vanished from sight. Shi switched off the servo camera and returned it to its case. Longstocking and Sherlock un-pegged the null screen and began rolling it up, sighing in relief as cool morning air washed in.

"Why would Dr. Stannus have people following him around?" Sherlock asked shi kneaded the rolled up screen with hir forepaws to force air out.

"To find out if we recorded the meeting." Darkstar secured the last of the camera equipment in hir saddle packs and slipped them on. "To find out how good we are at playing the game."

"Darkstar," Longstocking said, "Why do you trust Professor Moseivitch?"

"Because-" Darkstar's eyes misted over. "He saved my life. And, for a time, we were lovers."

---

"Oh, my great God in Heaven!" Longstocking exclaimed as shi stepped into the Operations Center and saw the condition of the work room. Shi froze in the doorway, effectively blocking it. Ito vaulted over hir lower body; Darkstar grabbed Longstocking's tail and tugged sharply. Longstocking flinched, stepping out of the way.

"What in the world happened here?" Ito demanded. His gaze settled on Kit. "What did you do?"

"Mr. Carson!" Fyodor brusquely shoved his way through the crowd, not hesitating to use elbows where necessary. His suit looked clean and neat as always but his hair stood out in disarray and dark circles marked his eyes, giving him a positively frightful seeming. "Before we discuss what happened last night I want to see it."

"S- s- sir?" Kit stammered. His clothes looked like he'd slept in them, sweat beaded all over his face and neck, and his whole body trembled like a tree and in a windstorm.

"I want to see it," Fyodor repeated, pointing at the view ports. All eyes followed his gesture.

"I don't see anything," Ito stated accusingly. Remnants of the artifact's shell showed clearly where they had once enclosed a hollow space but no obvious trace of what it might have contained remained among the crusted gook spattering everything in sight.

"Shi's just- shi hides," Snowflake put in, stepping up to one of the control stations and activating the virtual hands. "I'll bring hir out for you."

The orange hands shimmered into being. Instead of reaching for something Snowflake twiddled hir fingers. Ito let out a strangled squeak; a section of wall seemed to detach itself and move in way neither random nor ballistic. As it passed between the virtual hands and the view ports it suddenly sprang into perspective.

The soft, lumpish thing of last night had changed dramatically. Its formerly blunt nose came to a needle sharp point flanked by small, triangular canards. Its wings lengthened into rakishly swept, razor sharp anhedral fins with slightly hooked tips. Its tail flattened out into a smoothly swept elevator like a dolphin's flukes. Just ahead of the elevator a pair of rudders sprouted from the top of the tail cone. The body itself firmed into a sleek lifting-body shape, the limbs folding neatly into smoothly faired channels along the belly. Its skin gleamed with the hard, smooth shine of spun glass; colors and patterns flowed and shimmered across it like desert mirages, some distorted reflections of the room at large, others apparently random. But for lacking engines and a cockpit it resembled nothing so much as a sleek, hypersonic fighter jet. It pressed its back against Snowflake's hand, presenting its belly to the view ports. Snowflake obligingly tickled it.

For long time not a word was spoken. "What... is it?" Longstocking finally asked.

"It's a baby star ship," Snowflake replied in a tone of hushed awe.

"Shi's... beautiful," Sherlock breathed, eyes wide with wonder. Snowflake beamed as showing off hir own cub.

"Very good," Fyodor murmured, stroking his chin. "Very good," he repeated, more loudly and briskly. "Now-" he faced the group- "we shall retire to the wardroom. I- and Longstocking as well, certainly- will want a full report on what happened here last night."

"But- what about-" Snowflake glanced between Fyodor and it.

"Not to worry, my dear," Fyodor replied with a gently reassuring tone and expression. "Longstocking will set up a remote view from the wardroom. If out little darling needs us, we shall know at once."

"Professor!" Ito exclaimed, shocked and scandalized to his very core. "Please don't tell me you actually believe that this- this thing is alive!"

Snowflake pressed hirself forward against the console, cupping the presumed baby protectively in hir hands. Longstocking made a face as if shi smelled something unpleasant. Darkstar's face went completely blank. Fyodor looked down at the floor, massaging his temples. "What I belive, Dr. Janek, is that we should refrain from drawing conclusions in advance of the facts."

"I'm not the one carrying on like- like this thing is my first grandchild!" Ito shouted.

"How can you be so certain that it isn't someone's grandchild?" Darkstar inquired, apparently no more than mildly curious.

"It's a machine," Ito pleaded. "It looks like a living thing because that's what a complex nainite-based mechanism would look like. But it's not alive! It can't be!"

"Why not?" Valjean wanted to know.

"It's made out of plastics and composites. It's powered by nuclear fusion." Ito counted points on his fingers. "There's no way a system like this could have evolved. It was made."

No one moved. No one spoke. Everyone looked at Ito- except Fyodor, who looked at everyone else. A subtle but significant change came over the room.

"Longstocking, would you escort Dr. Janek to the shuttle?" Fyodor announced briskly. "He and I will be returning to the surface immediately."

Longstocking gestured minutely with hir head, glancing at Sherlock.

"Let's go, ear boy." Sherlock stepped up and reached for Ito's arm

"What are you doing? Get away!" Ito pulled away. Sherlock slapped him hard on the shoulder, spinning him around and knocking him off his feet. Shi caught him before hi fell and shoved him toward the door. He struggled uselessly, unable to overcome hir size and strength. "Professor, you can't-" he protested.

Fyodor turned his back. Ito's shouted protests faded as Sherlock hustled him away down the corridor. "Snowflake, go prep the shuttle for flight. After dropping us off return here. Darkstar, please compile a detailed report on what happened here between the time we left yesterday and returned today. When you finish, please send it to my office at the university. If Dr. Stannus or anyone else contacts you, forward them to me. Do not answer any questions or give out any information." He massaged his face then ran his fingers through his hair. "The rest of you, keep studying-" he frowned at the view ports- "whatever that is." He turned sharply and left the room.

Kit watched silently as the professor marched past. He noted, with some concern, that Fyodor's hand trembled slightly.

---

Bright sunshine unobstructed by even a trace of cloud illuminated the gleaming office towers of Berdoovia as Rum Tum Tugger descended toward them. Instead of turning aside toward Dewclaw University Snowflake brought them to a rather brusque landing atop a skyscraper clad in pink marble with windows tinted to match. On each face of the building a triangular section had slightly larger windows and a darker finish, creating a stair-stepped division starting at the top corner of each face and running diagonally down until it hit the opposite side. The diagonals on adjacent faces ran in opposite directions so that top and bottom ends met on opposite sides of the building. All the nearby buildings were brightly decorated, some quite flamboyantly. Snowflake ran up the thrusters even as Fyodor and Ito hurried down the ramp; both men shielded their faces against a storm of grit as the shuttle roared off the pad and vanished into the sky. A stairwell led down to a heavy metal door with a screened small window looking into a small, elegantly furnished reception area. Deep pile carpet covered the floor, intricately patterned paper the walls. Light came through large windows, skylights, and from inset fixtures in the ceiling. Leather upholstered chairs- for humanoids- and couches- for centauroids- lined the walls. Opposite the windows stood low desk; on the wall behind it an intricately carved wooden relief depicted a snow-capped peak overlooking a placid mountain lake.

"Good morning, Professor." The receptionist, a stunningly attractive young foxtaur in a burgundy colored blouse, smiled warmly. Her pelt looked gray, the result of a white undercoat and black-tipped guard hairs. White with orange highlights coated her belly, breast, and throat. "Do you need to speak with Nakala?"

"No, not right now, thank you." Fyodor smiled winningly and took the vixen's hand; instead of shaking it he patted it gently. Then an odd expression flicked across his face and his smile broadened to a grin. "Though if hy could squeeze me in later today, or perhaps tomorrow, I would be terribly grateful. Right now, I would be deeply in your debt if you could summon for me three cars."

"Three?" the vixen asked, glancing at Ito.

"Three," Fyodor confirmed.

"But of course." She typed on a control panel, left-handed, without looking. "They'll be here in fifteen minutes."

"Nakala cannot possibly appreciate what a capable and attractive assistant he has," Fyodor declared, raising the vixen's knuckles to his lips.

"You say that to all the secretaries, don't you?" The vixen tossed her head, sounding more bemused than accusing.

"Of course," Fyodor replied. "Everyone knows that secretaries rule the world."

"Fyodor Moseivitch, you are an ass-kissing liar and I think you should leave while we can all still breathe." She fixed him with a very meaningful look. "You don't want to keep your cars waiting. I'll call you when I have an appointment scheduled."

"Lana, you are a gem. I do not know what I would do without you."

Lana snorted. "You'd be having your devilish way with some other secretary. Shoo." She flipped her hand at him. Fyodor gave her one last grin and headed for the elevators.

On the way down Ito glanced quizzically at Fyodor. Fyodor glanced back. "Flattery will get you everywhere, Dr. Janek. You would do well to remember that." Both his tone and expression were completely serious.

The elevator left them at a basement parking level. Three boxy, van-like vehicles waited at the curb. Fyodor inspected them and the scene; no one was around and they could not be seen from the street. He opened the driver's door on the first and climbed in.

"Where are we headed?" Ito inquired, climbing in on the passenger side.

"Nowhere in this vehicle." Fyodor set the windows to full polarization, entered destination coordinates into the auto-control system, and climbed out. The van pulled away from the curb and drove off, its windows solid black from the outside. He repeated the process for the second but he and Ito remained in the third. As the car drove up the ramp and pulled onto the street- under auto control, Fyodor touched neither the wheel nor the pedals- they passed a group of reporters with servo-cameras on their shoulders and baffled looks on their faces as three identical cars left the parking area headed in three different directions.

"Where are we headed?" Ito repeated.

"Just for a drive," Fyodor replied. "I want to show you something."

"What?" Ito looked around. Traffic was fairly heavy, but with the vehicles on auto control it moved briskly. Most of the cars were generic public vehicles- such as the one in which Ito and Fyodor now rode- or large freight vans. Private vehicles were more varied and more distinct: small sports cars, medium sized sedans, large pickups and vans, brightly or sedately decorated depending on the owner's preference. Convertibles had their tops down and non-convertibles generally had their windows open; people were enjoying the pleasant weather. Since all the vehicles were electric powered the atmosphere was not unduly noisy or unpleasant even here in the heart of Chakona's largest city. Traffic on the broad sidewalks was just as thick and far more varied; most of the pedestrians were Chakats but not all. Leavening the crowd were other centauroids: foxes, other canids, skunks, otters, ferrets, non-hermaphrodite felines, and even horses. For every 'taur there seemed also to be a humanoid equivalent. The result was a bewildering variety of body types and color patterns even before clothing, makeup, and other external decorations were added to the mix.

"The people," Fyodor replied. "All from highly varied backgrounds, economic classes, and even physiological classes. Yet they all have one thing in common: they, or their ancestors, were genetically engineered."

"Oh, that." Ito slumped back in his seat. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Everything," Fyodor replied. "Why are so many of them here? On Chakona, that is?"

"Because the Chakats invited them to settle." Ito folded his arms, regarding Fyodor suspiciously.

"Why are the Chakats here?"

"Because this is their home world."

"But it isn't. Chakats did not evolve on this planet. They colonized it."

"Technically, they didn't evolve anywhere," Ito pointed out. "They were genetically engineered."

"On Terra," Fyodor continued. "Doesn't that make Terra their home world?"

"Is there a point to all this?" Ito demanded.

"Yes," Fyodor replied. "I want the facts clearly established when I make it. The very first Chakat was born on the twenty-sixth of September, 2129, at the Institute of New Generation Genetics in Brisbane, Australia. That birth was the culmination of eighteen years of work by Doctors Charles and Katharine Turner and the scientific team they led."

"All common knowledge." Ito dismissed it with a flick of the wrist.

"But even as this first Chakat is being born, in other parts of the world gene-engineered people- people as demonstratably sentient as you or I- are being rounded up and slaughtered. Why? Because in the previous century the science of genetic engineering had been used to create slaves, super-soldiers, and super-diseases that, in round after round of war and outbreak, led to the deaths of twenty billion people. The Institute of New Generation Genetics was founded to develop cures for the gene-plagues. In the face of that, why would the newly-formed United Nations of Terra World Government allow the Institute to create a new species?"

"To showcase the positive uses of genetic engineering," Ito said. "To demonstrate that genetically engineered people could benefit society."

"That's what the history books say," Fyodor went on. "In fact, Chakats were an instrumental part of the Reconstruction. They were built using super-soldier technology- to make them immune to all the gene plagues. So they could fight the surviving war beasts, if necessary. Because to them would fall the brunt of the work. Decommissioning old weapon factories. Cleaning up biological and chemical contamination. Restoring damaged ecosystems. Between 2129 and 2219, when the Chakonan colony was officially established, Chakats- and others- worked tirelessly healing the scars of war ravaged Terra. Without them there would not today be a Terran Dominion. The history books say also that Chakona was given to them as a home world in recognition of that service."

Fyodor stared straight ahead, his eyes narrowed but focused somewhere far beyond what was visible through the windshield. He held the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip even though the car was still on auto-control. "Back in 2129 there were people who remembered all too well the horror of the Gene Wars. To some of them, Chakats were not symbols of hope for a bright future but symbols of evil from a dark past. For these people, the great achievements of the Chakat species were built on the corpses of twenty billion dead Terrans. No small amount of support for the idea of a Chakat home world came from those desiring to be quit of them. A less favorable interpretation of history could say that Chakats and their genetically engineered brethren are here because they were made to feel decidedly unwelcome on the planet of their birth. Today, two hundred years later, wounds inflicted during the Gene Wars still bleed. The Holy Christian Kingdom of North America asserts that Recombinants have no soul and cannot be saved. The "Humans First" coalition openly vilifies the genetically engineered and commits against them acts of individual violence and public terrorism. There are Chakats- and other Recombinant people- alive today who have suffered, physically and emotionally, as a result of this bigotry. There are people whose friends and loved ones have suffered." Fyodor's head rotated like a turret traversing to cover a target. His eyes, looking out from under his bushy brows, were as cold and merciless as the muzzles of cannons. "In light of all that, don't you think that perhaps your comment about something not being alive because it was made might have struck a nerve?"

All of Ito's composure fell away. His jaw dropped, his eyes bugged, and all color drained from his face- though it was hard to see with his dark skin tone. "I- I- I-" He swallowed. "Professor, I didn't mean it that way. I mean- I've lived on Chakona most of my life! I wouldn't- I couldn't-"

Fyodor sank back in his seat as if the mere act of looking exhausted him. "I didn't think you did." He seemed to be studying the instrument cluster. "I believe that in the heat of the moment you said something without giving thought to the broader ramifications. I brought you here to give... everyone involved a chance to cool down."

"And to prevent Sherlock from beating the crap out of me?" Ito suggested with the hint of a smile.

"That possibility had crossed my mind," Fyodor allowed. "It is fortunate that Chakats are, as a species, very forgiving." He smiled; not his professional smile but a shockingly bitter, sardonic one. "There are exceptions, of course."

Just then Fyodor's coat started beeping. From an inside breast pocket he extracted a personal communicator and flipped it open. "Moseivitch." His eyebrows underwent a series of comical evolutions as they drew together, arched, and relaxed. "I see. Come by my office and we shall discuss it. Thank you. Good bye." He flipped the communicator shut- Ito could hear someone still talking at the other end- and slipped it back inside his coat. "Dr. Stannus moves quickly," he sighed. Perhaps it's just as well I came down." He quickly typed in some modifications to the van's routing instructions.

"Professor, you should get some sleep," Ito suggested. "Dr. Stannus will keep until tomorrow."

"No, I'm afraid he won't." Fyodor rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn. Suddenly he looked much worse, as if Ito's comment had reminded him exactly how long he'd been going without adequate rest. "Dr. Stannus is intelligent, tenacious, and does not suffer fools. Prevarication will only make matters worse. I might as well deal with him now. As for you, Dr. Janek... use the day as you see fit. I ask only that you be ready to return with me to the station this evening, and that you do not speak to reporters.