A burst of ice crystals exploded through the doorway, scattering like tiny needles against Infinity's suit. Ice crystals and
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snowflakes filled the chamber with sparkling white light, then fell straight to the floor and melted in the thin layer of water. At the same time, the temperature of the room fell abruptly and the floor froze in a slow wave. Infinity moved forward, his boots crackling on the ice.
Snow blanketed the room, covering a large lump in the middle of the floor. The lump lurched as whoever was within it pounded on the floor. The snow sifted off the silver emergency pouch and fell into small drifts.
Infinity turned the pouch to see its transparent panel.
Curled up like the worm in a jumping bean, Griffith glared out. He said something, angrily, but of course Infinity could not hear him. Instead of turning on his suit radio, Infinity grabbed the handles of the pouch and dragged Griffith back into the second chamber.
He left him lying there, helpless—he had no choice about that—while he closed the baffle. He moved some air into the chamber.
He was laughing uncontrollably.
By the time the chamber held enough air to carry sounds, he managed to stop laughing. He took off the suit helmet and wiped his eyes.
The survival pouch writhed against the floor.
"Get me out of here!"
Infinity unsealed the pouch. Griffith scrambled up and kicked away the emergency sphere.
"Damn! What's going on? Where's Cherenkov?"
Infinity did not know the answers, so he did not reply- He settled back on his heels. Griffith strode angrily away, but the closed baffle stopped him-
"How the hell do I get out of here?"
"Open the door."
Griffith fumbled at the controls. The baffle creaked. Radiating anger and impatience, Griffith waited. But when the door had finally slid aside for him to pass, he swung around and glared at Infinity.
"Don't you ever—ever—tell anyone about this!"
A day ago, an hour ago, Griffith would have terrified Infinity Mendez to silence with such a command. Now, Infinity regarded him quizzically. Griffith no longer held any power to frighten him.
274 vonda N. Mdntyre
"I'll tell anybody I want. anything I want. Don't you even have the guts to say thank you?"
And then—he tried not to, but could not help himself—he started to laugh again.
A microsecond's blast of bright white light spread through the interior of the starship, a flash almost too brief to perceive before the filters damped and darkened it. Stephen Thomas cried out and turned away, flinging his arms across his face. Starfarer plunged into dusk.
"That wasn't what I had in mind," Stephen Thomas said,
his voice muffled, his eyes still covered, "when 1 said 1 didn't
like the light."
The whole cylinder trembled faintly.
The sun tubes slowly brightened, radiating a more normal light. Victoria knew what must have happened. There was only one explanation for that kind of intense actinic blast. Somehow the missile had followed the starship through transition. And it had detonated. But somehow it was free of the starship, distant enough for Starfarer to survive the explosion. She started to shake. Satoshi knelt beside her and held her, and they drew Stephen Thomas into the embrace. Zev
sat on his heels nearby, watching them.
"We made it," Victoria whispered. "We're out of transition." Suddenly she caught her breath. "If the missile did detonate—Iphigenie is in the sailhouse! Is she—?"
Professor Thanthavong switched frequencies on her AS controller and opened a voice link to the sailhouse.
"Iphigenie, this is Thanthavong. Can you reply?"
"Are you all right?" Victoria said.
"Yes." Her voice was a whisper. "It's been . . . quite exciting out here."
"The shielding—?"
"It held. Victoria, I saw transition . . . And we are in the Tau Ceti system."
"It's incredible, Victoria!" The second voice from the saii-house belonged to Feral. "God, I think I'll change myself to be a sensory recorder like Chandra!"
"Don't do that." Victoria struggled to her feet, pulling Satoshi and Stephen Thomas with her. "We ought to be in
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the explorer," she said. "We're supposed to be continuing the expedition as if nothing had happened."
She reached for the web, expecting emptiness. To her surprise she touched a fragile strand, a tangle of thread tossed over the surface of the massed databases. Though Arachne would not reply, Victoria felt it growing and spreading, interconnecting, compelled to regain its multidimensionality.
"Stephen Thomas, do you feel up to going out?"
"I told you I'm all right! But. . ."He stared at the rubble of Genetics Hill.
"There's nothing you can do," Professor Thanthavong said.
"No more people are going in there till the AIs and the ASes have been through it." She spoke to all of them. "You aren't in danger of illness—we store no pathogens. But I want blood samples. I may have to mix you a depolymerase if you were exposed to sensitizing virus. It isn't something you want permanently floating around in your system." An AS buzzed up to her and offered her a half-dozen sampling kits. She took blood from Victoria and Satoshi and Zev and Fox, then came toward Stephen Thomas.
"You can have my shirt," he said hopefully.
"Very funny."
As the kit pulled ten centiliters of blood out of him, Stephen Thomas paled. Victoria was afraid he would faint again, but he averted his gaze and collected himself.
"Where is J.D. ?" Zev said.
"I don't know." Victoria looked around. "I thought she was right behind us."
"She does not like to run," Zev said. "She likes to swim."
Automatically, Victoria queried the web, but it was completely involved with its own reconstruction.
"I'm going to the explorer," Victoria said. "That's where I'm supposed to be, and that's where I'm going." She felt near to screaming with frustration. "J.D. knows where it is— maybe she'll meet us there."
They crossed the fields to return to the axis and the explorer dock. Zev tagged along. Victoria walked on one side of Stephen Thomas and Satoshi on the other, just in case.
"I really am okay," Stephen Thomas said. "But I'm going home for a few minutes." He turned toward Victoria, defensive, expecting her to object. "We're all a mess—"
276 vonda N. Mclntyre
"You're right," she said. They al! looked a wreck, particularly Stephen Thomas. Victoria grinned. "We can4! go exploring like this. Remember what your mother always told you about clean underwear."
Stephen Thomas said, "No, what?"
"What is underwear?" Zev asked.
The mini-horses pounded past, running, as horses run, in response to fright, their ears back, slick with sweat. Victoria smelled their fear.
On a hillock near the path, Kolya Cherenkov raised himself out of an access tunnel and climbed to ground level. He reached down and gave a hand to Infinity Mendez, then to J.D., and finally to the accountant from the GAO.
Zev ran toward J.D. and hugged her and swung around
with her. She gathered him in and kissed his hair, his cheek,
his lips, murmuring to him, telling him what had happened.
For a few minutes it seemed as if everyone tried to talk at the same time, explaining, questioning. Only Griffith stood apart. Victoria did not quite turn her back on him—she distrusted him too much for that—but she would not look directly at him; she could neither meet his gaze nor bring herself to speak to him.
"We had a plan to stop the takeover, Griffith and I," Kolya said. "A very foolhardy plan ... it might have worked. But then the missile hit, and things became more complicated.
Then we entered transition."
"You saw it? What did you see? Tell me!"
Kolya's expression sobered. "I ... I cannot describe it. I am sorry."