Tobias shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea—” he began. His attention was so focused on Glimmer that he didn’t see the tongue that snapped from the beak of the crustacean climbing out of the water beside him. Glimmer managed to grab him with two of his forearms as he fell, lowering him gently to the catwalk.
“Sorry to exclude you from what is to happen,” the large crustacean said to Liz. “We owe you much. But you are safer here.”
“What are you going to do?” she exclaimed, stunned by the sudden turn of events. Then she felt something heavy and wet hit her cheek. Instinctively, she reached up to swipe it away, but before her fingers reached her face, she felt her consciousness fading. As Glimmer reached out to catch her, her mind slipped into darkness.
Liz awoke slumped against the cushions of an acceleration chair. Tobias shifted in the seat beside her, just beginning to awaken. Straightening, she looked over the back of the chair behind her. Superintendent Cantrell and the rest of the crew from the transport ship were asleep in the chairs along either side of the isle that ran from the navigation console at the front of the vessel to the bulkhead at the rear. They were on the transport ship’s crew shuttle, a vessel substantially larger than the small shuttle she and Tobias had taken down to Slag. The captain and copilot from the transport were already awake, checking the vessel’s status on the navigation console in front of her. As best she could tell, the shuttle was hanging motionless in space, with no sign of the larger transport ship out of any of the windows.
“What happened?” Cantrell muttered in a groggy voice behind her.
“It would appear you’ve lost your ship,” Tobias said. He was completely awake now, peering out the window on his side of the shuttle.
Cantrell lurched from his seat and stumbled up the isle toward the front of the vessel. “What’s going on?” he demanded from the captain. “Where’s our ship?”
“That’s it right there,” the captain said. He pointed at a blip on the multicolored navigational schematic on the monitor in front of him.
“It can’t be,” Cantrell said. He leaned over the captain’s chair to study the screen more closely. “That ship’s more than nine light-years out.”
“Nine point six,” the copilot said, glancing up at him.
“Does Fleet Command know what’s happening?” Cantrell asked.
“Looks that way,” the captain said. “They’ve got three high-speed caravels in pursuit. There, there, and there.” He pointed to three additional blips trailing after the first one.
“How long till they catch up?” Cantrell asked.
“They aren’t going to catch up,” the captain said.
“What do you mean, they aren’t going to catch up?”
“The transport’s pulling away.”
“Pulling away?” Cantrell said.
The captain nodded. “In fact, I’d say we’re going to lose track of it any moment now. Our sensors aren’t calibrated to track this kind of acceleration.”
“Come on,” Cantrell scoffed. “It’s a mining transport.”
The captain grimaced. “Not anymore. Someone’s modified the engines.”
“Modified them how?”
“You got me,” the captain said, shaking his head. “It’s way beyond anything we know about. Looks to me like they’re accelerating at an exponential rate.”
Suddenly the lead blip vanished from the display.
“That’s it,” the captain said. “They’re gone.”
“Gone?” Cantrell said, blinking.
The captain settled back in his chair. “They’re accelerating too fast for our sensors to follow them.”
As an archaeologist, Liz didn’t understand how they managed to track objects that were moving faster than the speed of light, but it was clear that the freighter had surpassed the capabilities of human science.
“We’ve got a message coming in,” the captain said. “It’s from the Arrow.”
Advocate Lassiter’s face appeared in the display. Dressed in a neatly pressed purple robe, he was seated behind a desk in his stateroom. “Well, I see you’re finally awake,” he said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“We’re still trying to figure out what happened,” Cantrell said. “But believe me, we’re going to get to the bottom of this.” He glared back over his shoulder at Liz and Tobias.
“Don’t bother,” Lassiter said. “We already know what happened. We downloaded your ship’s log right after we lost contact with you. I’ll send you a copy. I’m sure you’ll find it enlightening.”
“Enlightening?” Cantrell said.
Lassiter forced a sour smile. “Indeed. While you were busy twiddling your thumbs, the worms—as you called them—managed to escape from the hold and shut off your oxygen. Everyone onboard lost consciousness before you realized what was happening. Then they put you on your crew shuttle and set off for parts unknown with your ship.”
“What parts unknown?” Cantrell demanded with a confused scowl. “What are you talking about?”
The advocate ignored his question. “I assume Dr. Tobias and Ensign McBride are all right.”
“Yeah, they’re all right.” Cantrell again glared back at Liz. “For the time being.”
“Yes. Well make sure they stay that way.”
“Wait a minute,” Cantrell growled. His eyes narrowed. “You’re talking like this is my fault.”
“You’re the one who just lost his ship,” Lassiter said. “Not to mention your cargo. At this point, I can only urge you to make absolutely sure that nothing—I repeat, nothing—happens to Tobias and McBride. Do I make myself clear?”
“But they’re—”
“They’re our only link with the Anunnaki, you fool!”
“The Anunnaki?” Cantrell blurted. “What are you talking about?”
Lassiter gave a sardonic laugh. “Don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out yet?”
“Figured out what?”
“The worms, Superintendent. They were Anunnaki—the original crew of the wreckage we found in orbit around Slag.”
Cantrell drew back, staring into the monitor. “But they can’t be. That wreckage has been out there for more than a thousand years.”
Advocate Lassiter’s pink lips tightened with contempt as he leaned forward. “You’ve already made the biggest mistake in the history of the Fleet, Superintendent. Just make sure you don’t screw anything else up!”
“But I… I…” Cantrell began, but it was already too late. Advocate Lassiter had broken the connection.
Cantrell turned slowly away from the screen. “The Anunnaki?” he mumbled, shaking his head. “How could they be Anunnaki? They were worms.”
“What?” Tobias chuckled. “You don’t think the Anunnaki could be worms?”
“Well, no. I mean, even those things they turned into—those roaches—they didn’t look human.”
Tobias laughed. “And, of course, any fool knows they couldn’t be Anunnaki if they didn’t look human. I mean, really, what else could they possibly look like?”
“They really were Anunnaki, weren’t they?” Liz said. Her voice was filled with wonder as she gazed out the window in the direction the ship had gone. “I never realized how much they looked like the drawings from old Earth.”
Tobias shrugged. “Anunnaki is as good a name for them as any, I suppose. But whoever they were, my guess is they experienced a problem with their ship. They managed to reach Slag, but with a hydrogen sulfide atmosphere, there was no way they could survive. Especially not on a surface as unstable as Slag’s. So they did the only thing they could do. They used the local life-forms, the ones that had evolved on Slag, to preserve their individual identities until they had a chance to escape.”