When she got back home…
She stared out across the smooth, glassy surface of Glister before she entered the lock. The little ship they had arrived on was the only familiar object. The Summer Dreamboat had started its life as a teenager’s toy; now it was far from home, looking oddly lonely and defenseless.
Would it ever see its birth world again? And would she see hers?
Darya closed the hatch. When she got home. Better make that if she got home.
ARTIFACT: PHAGE
Exploration History: The first Phages were reported by humans during the exploration of Flambeau, in E 1233. Subsequently, it was learned that Phages had been observed and avoided by Cecropian explorers for at least five thousand years. The first human entry of a Phage maw was made in E 1234 during the Maelstrom conflict (no survivors).
Phage-avoidance systems came into widespread use in E. 2103, and are now standard equipment in Builder exploration.
Physical Description: The Phages are all externally identical, and probably internally similar though functionally variable. No sensor (or explorer) has ever returned from a Phage interior.
Each Phage has the form of a gray, regular dodecahedron, of side forty-eight meters. The surface is roughly textured, with mass sensors at the edge of each face. Maws can be opened at the center of any face and can ingest objects of up to thirty meters’ radius and of apparently indefinite length. (In E 2238, Sawyer and S’kropa fed a solid silicaceous fragment of cylindrical cross-section and twenty-five meters’ radius to a Phage of the Dendrite Artifact. With an ingestion rate of one kilometer per day, 425 kilometers of material, corresponding to the full length of the fragment, were absorbed. No mass change was detected in the Phage, nor a change in any other of its physical parameters.)
Phages are capable of slow independent locomotion, with a mean rate of one or two meters per standard day. No Phage has ever been seen to move at a velocity in excess of one meter per hour with respect to the local frame.
Intended Purpose: Unknown. Were it not for the fact that Phages have been found in association with over 300 of the 1,200 known artifacts, and only in such association, any relationship to the Builders would be questioned. They differ greatly in scale and number from all other Builder constructs.
It has been speculated that the Phages served as general scavengers for the Builders, since they are apparently able to ingest and break down any materials made by the clades and anything made by the Builders with the single exception of the structural hulls and the paraforms (e.g., the external shell of Paradox, the surface of Sentinel, and the concentric hollow tubes of Maelstrom).
CHAPTER 8
Louis Nenda’s ship was undamaged. Inside and out, every piece of equipment was in working order. The main drive showed signs of overload, but it still tested at close to full power.
“I’m sure that overload happened while they were in orbit around Quake,” Darya said. “I told you, I saw them putting in every bit of thrust they had to try and get away from that silver sphere.”
“Yeah. But you also said they were accelerated away by the sphere at hundreds of gees, enough to flatten everything.” Hans Rebka waved an arm at the orderly interior. “Nothing flat here that I can see.”
“Which is not difficult to explain.” Kallik was crouched down on the floor by the Have-It-All’s hatch, sniffing and clicking to herself. “If the ship were to be accelerated by gravity or any other form of body force, neither it nor its occupants would be harmed. They would feel as though they moved in free-fall, no matter how high the acceleration appeared to an outside observer.”
“Which should mean that if the ship is undamaged, so are Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial.” Rebka was inspecting the main control panel. “And the engines haven’t been powered down. They’re on standby, ready to fly this minute. Which leaves us with one question.” He stared at Darya and shrugged. “Where the devil are they?”
They had searched the Have-It-All from side to side and top to bottom. There was ample evidence that Atvar H’sial and Louis Nenda had been there. But there was no sign of them, and no suits were missing from the lockers.
“Master Nenda was certainly here,” Kallik said, “more than three days ago, and less than one week.”
“How do you know?”
“I can smell him. In his quarters, at the controls, and here near the hatch. J’merlia, if he were here, could place the time more accurately. He has a finer sense of smell.”
“I don’t see how that would help us. Not even if J’merlia could smell it to the millisecond.” Rebka was walking moodily around the big cabin, examining the decorated wall panels and running his fingers across the luxurious fittings. “Darya, I know you said that the sphere that carried this ship away was silver at first, then it turned to black—”
“Turned to nothing, I said. It was like a hole in space.”
“All right, turned to nothing. But couldn’t it have changed again? One odd thing about this place — wha’d’ya call it, Glister? — is that it’s a perfect sphere. Spherical planetoids don’t occur in nature. Hasn’t it occurred to you that it may be the same sphere, the one that you saw?”
“Of course I’ve had that thought. I had it before we even landed. But it only leaves a bigger mystery. Something sent a beam from near Gargantua, at Summertide, and the sphere that I saw ascended it. If this sphere was my sphere, what sent the signal?”
“All right, so maybe this isn’t your sphere.” Rebka seemed amused by her proprietary tone. “I’ll drop that, and ask you again: Where are they?”
“Give me a minute. I may have a logical answer; whether or not you like it is another matter.” Darya sat down on one of Nenda’s comfortable couches to organize her thoughts. As she did so she surveyed her surroundings, comparing them with the familiar, stripped-down, and spartan fixtures of the Dreamboat.
The contrast was great. The whole inside of Nenda’s starship was filled with alien devices and manufacturing techniques. The technology used here had been perfected long before by the Zardalu, before their thousand-world empire had collapsed, and been picked up piecemeal after that collapse to become the common property of the mix of species that now made up the Zardalu Communion.
But even more than it spoke of alien technology, the Have-It-All proclaimed another message: that of wealth.
Darya had never seen such opulence — and she was from a rich world. If Louis Nenda was a criminal, as everyone seemed to think, then crime certainly paid.
In one other area, her first view of the interior of Nenda’s ship was forcing a change in Darya’s thinking. She had first met Kallik on Opal and on Quake, and had seen her then as a callously treated under-being, little better than a shackled and servile pet of the Karelian human, Louis Nenda. But Kallik’s quarters on the Have-It-All were as good as Nenda’s own, and far better than anyone enjoyed in the worlds of the Phemus Circle. Kallik had her own study, equipped with powerful computers and scientific instruments. She had her own sleeping area, decorated with choice and expensive examples of Hymenopt art.
Even villains deserved justice. Darya filed that thought away for future reference. Nenda might act the monster — might be a monster — but his generous private treatment of Kallik was at variance with his public image. Nenda had certainly been crude, lecherous, coarse, and boorish with Darya. But was that the real Louis Nenda, or was it a pose?