. Once we were outside, the suits puffed up. We were comfortably cool inside them. Light was no problem, even though the sun was only a bright star at this distance. The base gave us all the light we needed. If we'd been in an orbit closer to home, we could have looked directly at old Sol and our eyes wouldn't have been fried. We were protected from all cosmic radia- tion. Hell, I wished PO2 Jennifer Steven could have one of these in her locker. The first thing I noticed was a familiar constella- tion. Sure, the constellations were in slightly different locations in the sky. My sky. Fly sky. If there were picture windows in the base I would have figured out that we weren't as far from home as I thought. The second thing I noticed was the ship S&R had promised us. It was right next to the base, and it was a big mother. The light from the base outlined it clearly, like a spotlight. We could make out all sorts of details. There were black shadows crisscrossing the ice. Yeah, the ice. S&R had briefed us on all kinds of interesting details, such as the craft having an ion drive, the engine taking up most of the space. They'd neglected to mention that the entire ship was encased in a gigantic block of ice. The little voice in the back of my head made me promise to ask why when we returned to base, unless someone beat me to the $64,000 question. S&R were carrying a small object with a box on one end and a tube on the other. They'd told us the little whatsit was actually a fusion-pumped laser torch. The rest of us carried nothing at all, so whatever could be done fell squarely on the shoulders of the dynamic duo. They reached the ice cube first and turned on their powerful toy. We were busy mastering the use of the suits. It was hard to believe how much compressed gas was in those belts. When I snapped my right arm straight forward--in the same motion I would have used to knife somebody--the wrap became hard around the forearm. By twisting my hand I could activate the retros. Arm forward, suit forward. Arm back, suit back. Neat! Albert was the first of us to master the suit. Go, marine! So he boosted himself over to help S&R. Arlene was next to get the hang of it well enough to join in. I had the idea that S&R didn't need any help. We were all along for the ride, to see the operation, and to become used to a higher-quality space suit. We could hear each other's voices as clearly as if we were back in the "cafeteria." Hidalgo said a word or two, but he wasn't trying to tell S&R their business. I didn't see any need to horn in. I hung back, taking the watch, in case a space monster showed up or some- thing. When I heard the popping sound, I didn't realize it was inside Albert's helmet. I heard Arlene scream his name before I realized what had happened. There was debris making it hard to see. Then I pieced it together: Albert had been hit by the laser. 27 "Albert!" I couldn't believe it as I reached out to him. He called my name faintly inside his hood: "Arlene, Arlene . . ." The alien suits were so advanced that they seemed like magic. But here was a grim reminder there was nothing supernatural about them. While S&R used the fusion-pumped laser torch, a high pressure bubble had ruptured. The explosion had compromised Al- bert's suit. I'd started to think the material couldn't be torn. Then, adding injury to injury, he was burned by the laser. Sears and Roebuck switched off the torch as I held on to Albert. I saw him grimace through the hood and heard his choking gasp. Flecks of blood appeared on his face. I couldn't tell if the blood was coming up from his waist injury or if he was bleeding from his head. As he gasped, trying to catch his breath, I saw blood trickle from his gums. His face turned white. "Get that man inside!" Hidalgo ordered. S&R didn't move as I grabbed Albert, doing my best to ignore his groans. Suddenly Fly was beside me, helping me. I could hear Hidalgo's voice, talking to the aliens. "They've got him," he said. "You can resume the operation." S&R were as silent as the depths of space. I couldn't bother with that now. My hands were full. In a situation like this, the most dangerous thing any of us could do would be to panic. Fly kept repeating, "Take it easy," but he didn't need to. I willed myself to move slowly and carefully. We were still getting the hang of the suits. There might be features that would surprise us ... and spell Albert's death while we spun around trying to figure out which way was up. We coasted toward the open lock as if we had all the time in the universe. The lock was a port in the storm. Momentum could be a monster or a friend, so we didn't hurry, despite the irrational child deep inside me demanding instant gratification. Floating to the hospital. First aid for a brave marine. We wouldn't let Albert die. Wonder what they do with corpses in the alien base? Do they jettison them? Do they recycle them? No! I wouldn't let myself think that way. Albert had helped mow down zombies, smash spider-minds, blow away steam demons, kick bony butt, and eat pumpkin pie. No freakin' way was it going to end now. All we had to do was race against time and pay attention to the laws of physics. We didn't have to run and duck, fire and fall back, or even take turns on watch. We simply had to fall through the quiet gulfs of eternity, sailing between the stars, aiming not at a barrel of poison sludge but at a black dot that grew in size until it became the open hatchway only a few feet away. Piece of cake. We cycled through the lock. I was so worried about Albert that I barely noticed that his suit had already repaired itself. Unfortunately, the regenerative pow- ers of the Plastic Wrap did not transfer to human tissue. "The blue spheres," said Fly as we stripped off our hoods. "Yes! Oh, my God, you're brilliant. We've got to contact the medbot right away." In another minute I'd be babbling. We humped back to the main section of the base as we carried Albert between us. We'd left his suit on. It might not be a cure-all but as it resealed itself it helped stop the bleeding. Medbot found us! Its voice had always been pleasant. Now it was music to my ears: "Sears and Roebuck sent a message. Part of your unit has been damaged." I slowed down, caught my breath, tried to be coherent. "We need your help. We need one of those, oh, you know--the blue spheres that help sick people." "They are called soul spheres." "How . . . appropriate," whispered Albert, hanging on the edge of consciousness. "Yes," Fly got into the act. "Like the one you used on Hidalgo." The medbot's voice was unemotional but not a monotone. It could have been my imagination, but I thought it sounded sorry when it said, "That was the last one." "What?" I asked, knowing full well what I'd just heard. "This base is stripped down," it said. "We have all the necessities, but we are operating with a minimum of supplies." All this time I thought we'd been in a transgalactic Hilton. This was their idea of roughing it? Maybe that was why we were having to thaw a spaceship out of a block of ice. "This part of your unit will live," said the medbot. More music to my ears. "He will require a longer recovery time without a soul sphere." I was afraid to ask how long. While I pondered the question, the medbot started to take him away. "Wait!" Albert called out weakly. "I have to tell them something." "Whatever you have to say will wait, big guy," said Fly. "You just get on the mend." "No, I've got to tell you this," said Albert, his voice growing stronger. "It'll save you valuable time dealing with Sears and Roebuck. Should have mentioned it to you earlier but the situation hadn't changed yet." "Later," said Fly as the medbot began carting my Albert away. He told the medico to hold up a minute. He hit us with: "Hidalgo can talk to them while it's just them, the same as you did, Fly. But I found out something when I had them synthesize the ring for Arlene, because we interacted with other aliens on the base. There's a trick to getting along with Sears and Roe- buck. They think we're a group entity." "I'd suspected the collectivism might go that deep," I admitted. "Not collectivism," said Albert. "They're part of a true collective. A completely different thing! They can only understand group entities formed from powers of two--pairings of individual entities. They really can't understand three people operating as a unit." So that was why Albert brought the holopicture of himself when he joined our session with S&R! But surely they must have realized it was some kind of virtual reality trick. Or maybe S&R just perversely refused to deal with unacceptable combinations. A cultural thing. "You require medical attention," said the medbot. It sounded testy. Considering the absence of blue spheres, we weren't going to hold up Albert's surgery any longer. The barber pole hurried away, pulling Albert along on a pad. "So here you are," said Captain Hidalgo, coming over to us. He was accompanied by S&R. "I hope Corporal Gallatin recovers," he said, watching the receding forms. "They did miracles with me, so I'm sure he'll be all right." This seemed like a good time to test Albert's theory. Fly, that old mind reader, started the ball rolling: "Sears and Roebuck, would you mind telling us why your ship is encased in ice?" S&R became agitated. They did the looking-at- each-other bit, but they started shaking their heads. They weren't in unison with each other. Finally they tried communicating with the three of us. "Fly and Arlene, the ship was put into icing as part of ice comet going from cometary halo so avoid- ing detection." Then they started all over. "Fly and Esteban, the ship was put into icing as part of ice comet going from cometary halo so avoiding detection." Then: "Arlene and Esteban, the ship was--" "Thanks, that'll do," said Fly. "We'll tell the others." Captain Hidalgo had the aspect of a man whose brain had been sent out to the cleaners and had received too much starch. Arlene took it like a man. She should have been happy. Captain Hidalgo had made an intelligent command decision. I would have to be left behind. I'd live. I'd be fine in several months, by Earth standard time. The mission couldn't afford to wait for my recovery. Hidalgo had needed only a few days to heal. He was the CO. I was baggage. And while I grew old, Arlene would stay young. Maybe that was as it should be. For all her guts and strength, she made me think of a vulnerable child. I'd always wanted to be a patriarch, and now it looked as if I'd at least look like one by the time I saw her again. If I saw her again. I could have predicted it before she said it: "You're the man I want to marry. You're my man." I believed the latter. I had faith that she believed the former, so long as they were only words. As she stood by my bed and we held hands, I performed the simple calculation in my head. I'd be sixty-seven years old when she returned. "I love you, Arlene." "That's not what I want to hear you say." I squeezed her hand and told her, "I know you really love me, Arlene. That doesn't change what you are--a helluva marine who will do her duty, no matter what." The others were waiting to say their farewells. "Call them in," I said. "No. Not until we've settled something." Probably just as well that we weren't planning nuptials. This woman wasn't obedient. She crawled right on the bed with me. I guess you could call it a bed, even though it was a lot better than most. Sort of an overbed or superbed. "Arlene?" I tried to get her attention. "Just because I'm laid up doesn't mean the rules have changed." "What was that about 'laid'?" she asked, smiling wickedly. "Arlene." "Albert." "You're not going to ask to make love again, are you?" "You will make love only to your wife," she breathed into my ear. "That's right." "All right." I'd been through so much lately that I no longer trusted my hearing. My eardrums still ached from my adventure outdoors. "Arlene, what did you just say?" "I said yes, you big dope. I'm accepting your proposal of marriage." I wanted to shout yippee and dance a jig. Couldn't do that, so I settled for crushing her in my arms and kissing her. This was no brother-sister kiss. While we caught our breath, my brain started firing on all cylinders again. "But what about the mission?" I asked. She put her head on my chest, and I ran my hand over her red carpet. Then she lifted up her face and drilled me with the most beautiful emerald-green eyes in the galaxy. "I'm still going," she said. "But we'll have time for the honeymoon." "How long?" I dared ask. "Six days," she said softly. "Captain Hidalgo says we'll have six days. We can count on it. He'll be marrying us." I kissed her again. "You won't wear the silly G-string and pasties, will you?" I asked. "How could I? That stuffs back on the Bova." She nibbled my ear. "But Sears and Roebuck can synthesize anything," I protested. Her lips fluttered over my eyelids and came to rest on my left cheek. "They can't synthesize everything." Her voice was muffled against my skin. "Well, I would sort of like you . . . natural, you know," I confessed, emphasizing my point by licking her all-natural neck. "I'll be the girl next door," my wife-to-be promised. "Need I ask if you've picked a best man?" We both laughed. It's not as if we'd give Fly Taggart any choice. I considered the merits of asking Sears and Roebuck to whip up a tuxedo for the ultimate marine. There was something about S&R's name that inspired the idea. 28 Dear Albert, If I write this letter quickly enough you may receive it before too many years elapse. Sears and Roebuck gave me the idea. The same technology that makes Gate travel possible, not to mention this incredible spaceship, allows me to use the sub-light post office. The laser messages don't move much faster than the ship at max, but remember how fast the ship is moving! If we'd been crazy enough to send a message ahead of us to the Fred base so they could roll out the red carpet, we would have arrived about a half hour after they received the message. "Sub-light" is a term that doesn't do these speeds justice. Traveling an inch an hour is under the speed of light. Both the Freds and our guys can travel right up to that speed. S&R's ship will reach a maximum speed of 99.99967 miles per hour, relative to the Earth. Isn't that incredible? Gate travel without the Gate. I wish you could have seen the ship from the outside when we finished melting off the ice. I swear it looked just like a cigar. Fly didn't pick up on my reference to Frank R. Paul, the science- fiction artist from the 1930s who created a lot of stogie spaceships. That style went out of fashion in the 1950s when the flying-saucer craze started. I suppose there are only so many shapes and forms possible. The human race has expended so much energy trying to conceive of every possibili- ty that we couldn't help but get a few things right. By the way, I meant to say this to you before, so I better do it now: I do believe there is every bit as much imagination and intelligence in religion as there is in science fiction. There'd have to be. It's just that what you take as revelation I assume to be imagination. Before the demons came, I thought the uni- verse was pretty dull and predictable. It only took seeing my first zombie on Phobos to change my mind about that. Forever. Like this ship, for instance. I love it. Poor Fly hates it. He can't stop bitching. I don't mean complaining. I don't mean kvetching. I mean bitching. He was spoiled by the artificial gravity on the base. I sort of regretted leaving the Bova. Zero-g is great for my tits. I forgot you don't like that word. Breasts, I mean. When it comes to outer space, the female body is simply better designed than the male. Why do you think God did that to you poor guys? Sorry, you know I'm only kidding. Oh, I told you Fly was complaining, and then I went off on a tangent without telling you his problem. The Klave ship is a zero-g baby, just like the Bova. If feet could talk, mine would whimper for joy. I could spend my life in free fall. You know how I feel about that after our honeymoon. I'm so glad we found that sealed compartment in one of the zero-g areas. You needed to keep off your feet, darling. When Fly found out he'd be living in zero-g again, his first words were "Oh, man!" You know how irritated he becomes. Even so, Hidalgo con- vinced him that the ship is brilliantly designed. It's two kilometers long. Well, you already know that. We could see this was no dinghy when it was in the ice. It has a central corridor connecting all the engine pods. There are no real compartments. Sears and Roebuck don't believe in privacy. The Klave would be Ayn Rand's nightmare. Anyway, there is no provision for spinning or any other artificial gravity. There is a very good reason for this. S&R told us there can be no gravity generators on their ship like the ones they have on the base. It's flat-out impossible. The gravity maker where you are makes use of exist- ing properties of matter. They say it's impossible for a ship accelerating to near light-speed to use one of these devices. Mass increases, you know, as far as physical measurements are concerned in our local area. The Klave ship is increasing suffi- cient gravity on its own. In other words, if they used the gravity generator, it would be impossible to accelerate to the necessary speed. So thanks to these laws of physics, my feet and breasts win while Fly's stomach loses. Don't I write wonderful love letters, darling? Would you enjoy hearing some more technical staff? Or would you rather devour every word of my wildest fantasy? Well, I don't want to add to your frustration. So I'll tell you more about the Fly ride. The chairs--yes, we have chairs--can be put in any position within the ship. They will be on the ceiling when we decelerate. Fly keeps saying they're not as comfortable as what we had on the base. You see, I wasn't kidding about our big tough marine being spoiled. S&R are proud of their ship. Until now I didn't realize they were capable of pride. Unless I'm losing my mind, they are easier to understand when they are bragging about the ship. I may be imagining their pride, but I'd make book that the Klave have no concept of sentimentality, any more than they do of privacy. The Klave do not give ships names. I suggested they call this one the Kropotkin, after my favorite collectivist, a left-wing communitarian anarchist. A quick aside: did you know that S&R come from a planet with a heavier gravity than Earth? Imagine the backaches they must have under 1.5 gravity. No wonder they like a zero-g ship. Back to the subject of the ship, here are a few more specs. It takes three to four Earth-standard days for us to accelerate to the max, then three to four more days to bring this sucker to a full stop. When S&R said the ship moves relativistically, I asked if the Klave were more like cousins or brothers and sisters. They didn't get the joke, but Hidalgo howled with laughter. We've learned a lot of things that would inter- est you, beloved. First, here's something had been bothering Fly all along. Why did the Freds attack Earth in the first place? What was their motiva- tion? The most they can extract from human survivors is slave labor, and slaves are expensive to maintain; it's more economical to use ma- chines. Fly and the captain and I wrestled over these problems before we laid them out to Sears and Roebuck. There are no natural resources that can't be obtained elsewhere, and more easily, I would think. S&R told us how their side figured out that the Freds were eventually going after Earth. They did this by analyzing the Fred pat- tern of play up until that point. Of course, such an analysis wouldn't indicate why the Earth was chosen as a target in the first place. During the tens of thousands of years when the good guys were in orbit around the Earth, watch- ing and observing, they did their best to compre- hend the attraction of what Fly calls the old mud ball. Hidalgo suggested there might have been a Fred observatory on Earth for even longer. For this insight, S&R pronounced us a most logical unit. That turns out to be why the hyperrealists only risked a small base and a single star-drive ship, the one that brought them to Earth. S&R admits that there is something strange about us humans, other than the problem of dealing with us in odd-number combinations. I never thought of S&R as understanding subtlety, because that seems to go with the concept of privacy, but they hinted there is something very strange about human beings. Apparently this amazing discovery fit right into the plans of the Freds. S&R didn't want to tell us what it is! We played a trick on Captain S&R. Once we'd convinced ourselves that the ship was safely on automatic pilot, Hidalgo, Fly, and I surrounded the spearmint twins in a triangle and began firing rapid questions. The questions didn't really mat- ter. Fly asked who won the World Series. Hidalgo wanted to know if the Soviet Union would have toppled without a nudge from Ronald Reagan. I wanted to know what the outcome would be of a fight between one spider-mind and ten pumpkins. S&R couldn't figure out who the hell was talking to them. They were so totally freaked at being assaulted by three entities at a time that it wouldn't have surprised me if they'd left the ship! Let's face it, Albert, we were torturing our new friends. But it's not as if we had any choice. We had to have that information. With all of us talking at once, S&R couldn't figure out the proper pairings of two. It must have been like finding themselves in the middle of an Escherian geometrical figure that cannot exist in the real world, or in this universe, anyway. S&R collapsed as if we'd let the air out of them and they'd decompressed. Fly and Hidalgo started a swearing contest. If we'd killed them, we'd buggered the mission and any hope for Earth. Fortunately, all we'd done was give them a splitting headache--like in the old TV commercials where your head hurts so much it takes two of you to feel all the pain. We got what we wanted--except maybe we didn't want it after all. When S&R recovered, they told us all they knew. Humans, it turns out, are different from every other intelligent species in the galaxy. You'll never believe what the differ- ence is. Then again, maybe you will. Humans die. Hidalgo spoke for all of us when he asked, "So what? Who doesn't?" We didn't want to hear the answer about all intelligent life forms except us. I've never been an egalitarian, but the news didn't seem fair. When a member of an intelligent species other than Homo saps is damaged beyond repair, the body becomes totally incapacitated, the same as us, but it doesn't end there. The individual (and here we may even refer to S&R as individuals) is still conscious. If the body is totally destroyed, that consciousness remains. We would call it a ghost. These ghost-spirits are easily and consistently detected. They commonly jump into new bodies as they're being born--on those rare occasions when there is a birth. As soon as the physical components mature sufficiently to allow commu- nication, they indicate who they were in the previous incarnation. Then they can pick up where they left off. When I learned this, I naturally thought of our many arguments in the time we've known each other. Maybe we aren't as far apart as we think. My materialism has run into a brick wall of the spirit. Your general faith may be stronger with this knowledge, but the details must disturb any- one with orthodox convictions. I never did ask you if you were bothered by the nearest English translation of the name of the life-saving entities: "soul spheres." Even though S&R weren't deliberately holding anything back from us, it was difficult to piece together everything I'm writing you. Sometimes it seems as if they're starting to master our language, but then out come the fractured sen- tences again. The ghost-spirit-consciousness is freed only when the body is totally annihilated. Naturally Fly asked them what they meant by "totally." Neither Hidalgo nor I desired to learn that partic- ular fact. We were still reeling from the discovery that our mortality was unique to humankind. Fly acted as if he was in the market for an alien body and wanted to check out the mileage. S&R answered that total annihilation occurred when less than eight percent of the original body mass was chemically dispersed, but there were different rules for different individuals. I'm not sure how this applies in the case of the Klave collective, but for other species they take an especially useful specimen and destroy the body before the final death rattle, thus freeing the ghost-spirit to be reincarnated and to continue working that much sooner. You'd think that would be sufficient to conquer death. But wait, there's more. S&R had described the way the system worked, stretching back into the dim mists of time. But science marches on, even with slow evolvers. Techniques were devel- oped to repair almost destroyed bodies. Dead people could be revived in their original forms. In all sorts of ways, the aliens of our galaxy defeated death before we ever encountered our first doom demon. Mortality simply didn't occur to them. Why should it have? They had all sorts of ways to deal with the limbo of endless waiting. They didn't need to deal with death. This was true of both the good guys and the bad guys. They collected their dead and arranged them in temples and theaters where they staged elaborate entertainments, de- bates, classes, lectures, and you-name-it to keep the "deceased" occupied. This was necessary because there are not enough births to accommo- date the soul supply. So untold number of con- sciousnesses remain in a death trance until a body becomes available. Albert, you were closer to these creatures in your certainty that consciousness goes on forever. My atheism is inadequate to describe their reali- ty. But from our point of view, the human point of view, this seems a victory for me. I'm not happy about it. They say no one ever fully dies, except humans! I can hear you answering me right now. I imagine your mouth pressed to my shoulder, forming the word that resolves all these problems for you: God. What will you say when I inform you that no other intelligent species in the galaxy has a belief in gods or God? Only we do, Albert. Only the human race. At last I have a faith as deep as yours, beloved. We've made a contract together, and I intend to live by it. That's why you had such a struggle talking me into it. When I make a plan, or agree to someone else's, I stick to it. I don't change it on a whim. A contract is a sacred trust. So I know what I believe in at last. It isn't religion. It isn't God. It's you, Albert dearest. You are the meaning of my life. Your faithful Arlene 29 It was my fault. Good old Fly Taggart can't leave well enough alone. The mission was proceeding without a hitch. So what if I was pissed about being in zero-g again? Arlene was in her natural element. Hidalgo was doing all right. Only Yours Truly had a problem with it. I was bored. We'd only been out from the base a couple of weeks, Earth standard time. We'd learned a hell of a lot about the galaxy in which the human race counted for one lousy enemy village. Talk about waking up and smelling the coffee. Finding out you're a member in good standing of the most ignorant "intelligent species" in the universe is depressing. At least it was to me. So we were poured onto an alien spacecraft where we were about as useful as Girl Scouts at the Battle of the Bulge. While S&R upshipped us to Fred Land, there wasn't much for us to do except sit back and twiddle our thumbs. I shouldn't squawk. Jeez, Arlene finally bedded down with the man of her dreams and then she ships out with the rest of us. My best buddy had a few quirks of her own, though. If she and Albert weren't going to be separated this way, I could imagine her putting off the moment of truth indefinitely. As it turned out, she never hesitated for a moment about following orders. Hidalgo had won her respect, but even if he hadn't, she would have come along for the good of the mission. I know Arlene Sanders. I mean Arlene Gallatin. I'll never forget Albert ordering me to take care of her. So what else is new? The stupidest thing a soldier can do is wish away the tedium. He may receive a face full of terror. Trouble with me is I've never been a soldier. I'm a warrior. Which means I don't relish long periods of enforced idleness, especially if I'm floating around like an olive in the devil's martini. Sears and Roebuck tried to find work for us. Trou- ble was that the shipboard routine was more auto- mated here than it was on the Bova. Of course, that's like saying there's less for an Apache warrior to do on an aircraft carrier than in a canoe. Aboard the Bova, the navy was in charge. Here the high technology was so high that no one needed to be in charge, except S&R. I don't know why I thought it could have been otherwise. Stupid human pride is not a monopoly of the Marine Corps, no matter what the pukeheads in the other services say. There was one useful task. Someone had to prepare the program for insertion and figure out what we were going to do when we lifted the eight-week, forty-year siege and returned. One guess who was the least qualified member of the crew for that job! Not that I couldn't have stumbled through it. And my bud would have been the first to admit that Jill was more qualified than Hidalgo or her. (How I would have loved to pass that information on to my favorite teenager.) I became so desperate that I hunted around for something to do. We had plenty of the special space suits but no need to go outside. I hinted to the captain that maybe one of us should take a look-see topside, but they saw right through me, as easy as looking through one of the suits. They did at least show me the weapons we'd be using at the Fred base. Ray guns! Honest-to-God ray guns. They required no mainte- nance whatsoever. At least on the Bova there were books. I had found a copy of The Camp of All Saints. I didn't have a memory like Albert's, but I remembered the passage about how civilization is what you defend behind the gun, and that which is against civilization is in front of the gun. A good marine credo. I'd thought about that while we were on the hyperrealist base. It was strange having no weapons the entire time we were there. But nothing was attacking us. The subject never came up except with Albert, and he said, "There's no gun control where the mind is the only weapon." When we first arrived at that base, Albert may have thought he'd entered heaven. Before we left, Arlene did her best to convince him he really had. I was going to miss Albert. Arlene showed me a copy of the letter she lasered her man. She crammed an awful lot in there. She is endlessly fascinated by S&R and their ship. I'm still depressed. I wish faster-than-light were possible. Whether we succeed or fail in upcoming missions, I have the sinking feeling we'll never see our own civilization again. If that's how it comes down, then the Freds and their demonic hordes will have suc- ceeded in ending my civilization for me. "You've got to hand it to the Klave," said Captain Hidalgo. "The food is getting better." He was right about that. The last batch of experi- mental food tasted almost like a passable TV dinner. Sort of a combination meat loaf and chocolate pud- ding. At least it was edible. "Yeah, they're real pals," I said. Realizing how that sounded, I went on. "I'm not criticizing them. They're the only friends humanity has on this side of the ditch." Arlene drifted into the conversation, "they were the official experts on humans. The other message aliens didn't have high enough security clearances to deal with us." That was a revelation. "So the others weren't actu- ally bored to death with us?"I asked, attempting not to sound too autobiographical. "Well, maybe they were," said Arlene thoughtfully. "What matters is why Sears and Roebuck became so interested in Earth. They had no idea why we were so different from them. We were considered counterbio- logical because perpetual consciousness is considered essential to the definition of intelligent organisms used everywhere else in the galaxy." Hidalgo shook his head in wonder. "If it bleeds, it lives," he said. "The monsters must think we live just long enough to massacre us." "Remember we're talking about how these ad- vanced beings view sapience," said Arlene. "We con- sider ourselves biological because we define a biologi- cal system as one that works like ours." "These guys have a definition we don't fit," I volunteered. "Right," agreed Arlene. "Let's say they have a more universal definition. Just as they have expanded our horizons, we've done the same for them." "So where do the monsters fit into this?" asked Captain Hidalgo. A damn good question. Seemed like a long time since we'd had to blow away any hell- princes, deep-fry an imp, or barbecue a fat, juicy spider-mind. "I've thought about that a lot," said Arlene. "The Freds understand humanity better than the Klave and the other message aliens. I believe the Freds are afraid of humans. Their ultimate goal is not to enslave but to wipe out humanity." "They've made a good start," muttered Hidalgo. There was no arguing with that. Arlene did her best to lift our spirits, assuming we had any: "Sears and Roebuck are dedicated to saving us from the Freds. Their logic is sound. If we weren't a threat to the Freds they never would have launched a full-scale invasion." I respected the way S&R thought. They didn't have a clue to what made us special, and neither did I. But we hadn't spent all this time swimming in sludge, muck, and blood to no purpose. We rated because we were hated. That conversation was the high point of a whole day. Earth. Standard. Time. Twenty-four hours. Lots and lots of minutes. Being ordered to relax is hard enough. It takes a real genius to do plenty of nothin'. So, just like the rawest recruit, I wished something would happen to break the tedium. And something did. And I felt that it was all my fault. I didn't used to be superstitious. Or at least not very. But that was in the days before Phobos, before Deimos, before Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. Back when I thought Kefiristan was a problem. Back when the universe made sense and I didn't believe in space monsters. I'm not talking about monsters that come from space. It was enough of a stretch to accept a leering red gnome stumbling through an alien Gate. However, some things should be impossible. Like the space monster that came out of nowhere--there was a lot of nowhere out here-- and attacked the Klave ship. At first I thought S&R were projecting an entertain- ment program. The three-dimensional object darting over our heads looked like a refugee from a Japanese monster movie. I'd never been into those when I was a kid, but when Arlene and I were going to movies together, she dragged me off to a whole day of Godzilla and Gamera movies sponsored by Wonder magazine. She'd picked up free tickets because she was a subscriber. I didn't care for any of the films, but the images were too ridiculous to forget. Naturally I assumed-- always a bad idea--that the thing on display, courtesy of S&R, was of the same kidney. It even looked like a kidney, but it had a shell, and several tentacles and heads stuck out of it at odd angles. At least it didn't have wings. Wings would've been really stupid. "Bile nozzle!" screamed Sears and Roebuck. I didn't know they could scream. They were so freaked that their stubby little legs started a running motion, even though it made no difference in zero-g. I sud- denly realized how fast these suckers could move at the bottom of a gravity well. Here their legs only looked funny, like hummingbirds' wings, as they became a blur. These guys were definitely upset. "Bile nozzle?" echoed Arlene. "Closest in English," they answered, more calmly now that they were past the initial shock. Their legs slowed down, too. I didn't think I'd ever be bored again. Not only were S&R aware of this flying space organ, they had a name for it. Just like in those Japanese movies where the kids automatically know the name of every over- sized sea urchin that has designs on Tokyo. "The ship is attracting to bait," said S&R. "Inertial energy turns into heating." God help me, I understood them perfectly. "From outside, this ship must look like a star," I said. "Unless . . . until we decelerate," Hidalgo re- minded himself as much as the rest of us. "So that monster is chasing a small star," said Arlene. "What does it eat?" "Anything," said S&R. "Not only carbon. Other chemistries! But only from the inside. We must go to away. We're already burning fuel now." "There isn't any way we can fight this creature?" Hidalgo asked, his voice icy. S&R had one of their periodic attacks of schizo- phrenia. One head nodded while the other shook. That didn't mean they intended the same meaning by those motions we did; but it sure fit the situation like a glove. "No time for going to escape maneuvers," they said. "Bile nozzle already matching velocipedes." "Velocities!" I shouted. I couldn't stop correcting these guys, but I understood the problem. This ship was not a Millennium Falcon we could use in a dogfight or a monster fight. The ship used inertial dampers to get rid of the incredible amounts of energy we were using. At 100,000 gravities acceleration, S&R didn't want to make a trivial error that would turn us all into smears of jelly. All that I understood. Bile nozzle was beyond me. Just outside the ship. And whether we sped up or slowed down, that thing was going to stick to us like blood on a combat boot. "How will it attack?" asked Hidalgo. "Becomes one unit," said S&R. That could only mean the thing split into two. "Inside ship part." "I've got an idea," said Arlene with an eagerness that meant she had a damned good one. "How soon will some part of this monster be inside the ship?" "Going to now," said S&R worriedly. She nodded, and I knew what the movement of her head meant! "Tell me, if we can hurt that part, how will the outside part respond?" "Bile nozzle will go to elsewhere," said S&R. They sounded hopeful. "Okay," said Arlene. I recognized her patented early-bird-that-got-the-worm smile. "Out with it, marine," Hidalgo ordered, as hopeful as the rest of us. Arlene said, "Bring me three space suits, every portable reactor pack in the ship, and the biggest goddamn boot you can find!" 30 These were the best marines I'd ever served with. Corporal Taggart-Gallatin's plan was brilliant. I never would have thought of it. I doubted the aliens would have come up with it because they were so terrified of the thing they called a bile nozzle. While we suited up, we could see the space entity right next to the ship. It was difficult to distinguish the heads from the tentacles--if those were heads ... or tentacles. The new menace reminded me of the sea beast we'd encountered in the Pacific. I didn't see how either of these creatures could actually be alive. Their shapes shifted and changed when you tried to get a good look. The largest of the bile nozzle's heads, which was right next to the ship, was a cloud of swirling colors in which one shape kept repeating itself: a crow's head, with a bright dot that bounced around where the eye ought to be. The damned head seemed to regard the ship like a tasty treat. Sears and Roebuck insisted that the thing wasn't dangerous until part of it was inside the ship. Arlene's plan couldn't stop it from joining our little party, but she was one woman who could handle a gate-crasher. S&R insisted on coming with us. They didn't act as if they were the captain and we were under their command. Cooperation was more natural to them than command. A few years ago I thought Earth was the only inhabited planet. Now that I'd had my eyes opened to new possibilities, I didn't expect everyone in the universe to follow my military code. Only a martinet butthead would expect that. The marines could handle this assignment, but S&R were probably afraid to remain inside. I couldn't blame them, because right before we cycled through the airlock, some damned thing materialized only a few feet away. "Hurry! Go to outside," urged S&R. Fortunately the monster hadn't finished forming itself yet. When it became completely solid, we'd be the first items on its menu. According to S&R, the monster liked to start with carbon-based life forms as an appetizer. Then it would go to work on the ship itself. Before we went outside, I had a good look at the face forming so close that I could have spit at it. Steam demons were handsome compared to it. Hell- princes would have been first choice for a blind date. The most hideous imp could have passed as Mr. America by comparison. The eyes were the opposite of the glowing orb in the crow's head. All three were burning black dots, remi- niscent of a fire eater's. They were attached to a tube ending in an orifice that was apparently both mouth and nose. Yellow liquid dribbled out of the tube and sizzled against the side of the ship. An acid that sounded exactly like frying bacon! All this happened while the head was blurring around the edges as it struggled to complete itself. The thing made a snuf- fling, snorting sound. "Bile nozzle" seemed an apt name. Arlene went first, kicking off from the bulkhead and hurtling out through the hatch. We exited from the starboard side of the ship. Seemed like a good idea, because the remainder of the monster was on the port side. We worked fast before the enemy could become curious. Every time I used one of these transparent space suits I became a little less nervous about how flimsy they appeared. If Corporal Gallatin had been wearing one of the navy pressure suits when he had his accident, his lungs would have ruptured in the vacu- um. I was beginning to understand what Gallatin meant about faith. I too had faith in this alien technology. We implemented Arlene's plan before the monster got wise. Our extra-vehicular activity consisted of attaching the portable reactor packs to the outside of the ship. Then we turned them on and let them do the work. Slowly, oh, so very slowly, the packs began to turn the ship. We hovered in space like a hung jury. We were counting on one thing: that a creature which spent its entire existence in a weightless condition would have no familiarity with gravity. If our ship had been spinning it would have left us alone. If Arlene's theory proved correct, the bile nozzle would experience something brand-new: the with- drawal of an invitation. A subtle hint he should go elsewhere. Or go to elsewhere, as S&R would have said. We were patched into the ship through our suits. Before the monster realized there was a problem, it made a kind of contented snoring sound. It didn't take much to get the creature's attention. The ship was spinning at 0.1 gravity when the snore changed to a howl of rage and desperation. Heavy thudding and liquid noises preceded its exiting the craft. We didn't witness the part reuniting with the whole. We saw something better: the huge creature--maybe a third the length of the ship--zooming off into infinity. From this angle we could see what passed for its back--a series of tubes boosting the cloudlike swirling mess that was the rest of it. Right before it went out of range, the mass seemed to grow solid into something I'd compare to a turtle's shell. If I ever met Commander Taylor again I'd recommend this thing for membership in the Shellback Society. I never did find out why Arlene wanted the biggest goddam boot we could find. When we were safe aboard, there were new trou- bles. S&R's ship was not designed to take such acceleration along its radial axis. The structure had sustained severe damage and was leaking air like a son of a bitch. There were so many split seams we would never be able to patch them all. "We have no plan for to use airless ship," said S&R, "but not to worry." Not to worry? Where had I heard that before? Oh, it was from Mad magazine. Alfred E. Newman looked just like the last president of the United States. A fire eater had turned him into toast. It was worse than any congressional investigation. "Why shouldn't we worry?" I wanted to know. "Space suits," they answered. "We've lost time dealing with this monster," ob- served Arlene. "There can't possibly be enough air in the suits for the remainder of the trip." Both Arlene and Fly insisted that S&R had no sense of humor, but the sound that came out of the alien mouths sounded like laughter to me. "Not to worry," they repeated. "Enough air in belts for human life span!" I wasn't the least bit surprised. We were ready to prove what tough guys we were. Marines! We could hold our breath longer than anyone, even those Navy SEALS on the Bova. We could hunker down in our suits as we slowly ran out of air . . . and not complain one time. Tough guys don't complain. We could take it. We'd die without complaint, because we weren't weaklings. We weren't some inferior form of life. We weren't civilians. As I looked at Fly and Arlene--they'd be first names to me for the rest of my life--I wondered if they felt the way I did. I've never met a sane marine. I'm not sure there is such a breed. That's why my wife divorced me. Damned civilian. Arlene shot off one of her clever remarks: "A sufficiently advanced technology greatly reduces the number of cliffhangers." So we'd come to this: we were a charity case in the custody of superior beings. We could kid ourselves all we wanted, but we were not as good as the aliens who ruled the galaxy. It was our good fortune to become pets to one side in a galactic war. The other side saw us as a nuisance. Fly spoke for all humanity when he demanded to know more about that other side. "No more sur- prises," he told S&R. "You should have warned us about creatures like that bile nozzle thing. Did the Freds send it?" "Not coming from the Fred," they assured him. "Just another creature who has received the Lord's precious gift of life," Fly sneered. "Well, it doesn't matter, now that we've kicked its butt. Fill us in on the Freds. What are they like?" S&R hadn't fought the Freds all this time without picking up a bit of knowledge. Our alien allies weren't idiots. I was the idiot for not having requested this information myself. I feared that I was beginning to lose it. When the devils first appeared on Phobos and Deimos, it was a surprise to Fox Company. There was no briefing for Fly and Arlene. There was only survi- val. Before my fire team set foot on Phobos, I had pumped our fearless heroes for everything they re- membered about Phobos and Deimos. S&R were the duo to pump now. The briefing consisted of projected images and a basic description of the main enemy, delivered in S&R's funny English. I gasped when I saw that a Fred head looked like an artichoke. Eyeballs were sprin- kled over their domes like raisins in a cake. The heads seemed a little small to me, but there was a good reason for this: The brains weren't in the heads; the gray matter was housed in a safer place, down lower, in the armored chest. There was room there for a very large brain. The arms attached to the chest were rubbery affairs with semiarticulated chopsticks for fingers. "Avoid them sticking into you," said S&R. "The fingers?" I prompted. The image showed us just what those fingers could do. Contained in tough but flexible skin sacks, the chopsticks were hard and sharp. With a flick of its rubbery arms, a Fred could make any or all of its fingers opposable. Moving on down the torso, we came to a waist so narrow I didn't see how it could support the weight it carried. Then there were two thick legs, each ending in a foot that was very like a human foot, except that it included one feature of a bird's claw: a toe in back, protruding from the otherwise human-looking foot. I wondered what S&R's feet were like, but I wasn't curious enough to ask them to remove their boots. Fly told us that the Freds wore tightly fitting boots. "Magnetized to them walking," said S&R. "They are not liking free-falling." "How reasonable!" Fly blurted out, and then the reality hit him. "Shit. You mean their ships are zero-g too?" "Same principles appliance," said S&R. "The same principles apply." Arlene corrected them this time. "Tell me something else," demanded an irritated Fly. I didn't stop the sergeant, because I agreed with him. "Were you going to let us fight the Freds without giving us any background?" "Humans like going to be surprised," answered S&R. "Maybe humans like going into situations blind," said Fly. "Military men have more brains than that." And their brains are in the right place, I added mentally. Then we reached the important subject: weapons. The Freds did not keep an armory on their ship equivalent to what even a self-respecting imp or zombie would pack. Basically they didn't expect to be attacked. Pride goeth before the fall. Despite their confidence, every Fred carried a per- sonal weapon that was fairly nasty. S&R warned us to keep an eye out for that. The weapons looked like slingshots with more moving parts and used an elec- tromagnetic field to fire little flying saucers. S&R summed up: "We have no plan for to fight past making sabotage at Fred base. Other weapons they may be bringing to exteriorize." "Do you mean exterminate?" asked Fly. The briefing improved my morale. I threw out: "Whatever you mean, Captain Sears and Roebuck, rest assured the United States Marine Corps always has a plan to kick butt." After the crash course in Freds 101, the remainder of the trip was nothing to write home about. It was like the first part of the trip. The only difference was that we were wrapped in cellophane so we'd be nice and fresh at the other end. All good things come to an end. All bad things come to an end. "A teleporter ought to be nothing for you after your Gate problem," Arlene said, trying to cheer me up. The damage to S&R's ship provided an unexpected tactical advantage. We might never return to the message alien base, but now we had a nice decoy to distract the Freds while we used the teleporter. S&R sent the remains of their ship straight at a Fred defense satellite. We hated to see it go. It was a good ship. Disembarking from a ship had never been easier. There was no damage to the airlocks. We were already suited up and ready to go teleport-hunting. All in a day's work. I would have said that if you've seen one transmat- ter device, you've seen them all, but that wasn't true. This one didn't have a stone arch built over it with lots of weird crap carved into it, though. I might have used my experience with the Gate on Phobos as an excuse for being superstitious, but there was no point. Much of what we'd seen since leaving our solar system made no sense according to our physics. So there was nothing for us to do but have faith in the engineering that worked. None of the amazing alien technology had let me down yet, except for one small Gate glitch. I waited my turn and took a deep breath. Then I stepped forward to meet my destiny. 31 I'd never heard a hairy bag of protoplasm call out my name before: "Fly!" Looking down, I noticed something glistening on the floor near my boot. I was slow on the pickup because I had my priorities. First, the boot. That meant we still had our clothes and weapons. Second, we were back in gravity. So what if my back hurt and my arches complained? Gravity, sweet gravity. Third . . . third, there was some kind of problem. Liquid was leaking from the flesh bag. It was sort of a faded pink I'd never associated with blood. I took a closer look at the bag and recognized a human mouth. I'd never seen a mouth all alone before, surrounded by a wrinkled mass of skin sweating pink stuff. The little voice in the back of my head was about to give me hell for not being more observant, and for not thinking at all. Arlene saved it the trouble with a scream. I didn't blame her for screaming. I screamed too, the moment my brain started firing on all cylin- ders. The nitwit who came up with the idea that a strong woman should never scream had his head so far up his ass that daylight was a myth to him. S&R didn't understand what had happened. They asked what had happened to the other units. They meant Hidalgo-Fly, and Hidalgo-Arlene. We tried to explain that the dying thing on the floor was Hidalgo. S&R would always have problems with the idea of death. Arlene and I were more acquainted with that idea. Even as the blob of protoplasm begged for us to "finish" it, we were simultaneously firing our zap guns. The two beams of heat crossed each other, carving the blob into smaller pieces that didn't talk. We kept at it past the point of necessity. "Why did you send new unit away?" asked S&R. The Klave mind found what had happened intriguing. They may have thought Hidalgo had been trans- formed into something closer to them, a duality of some kind. I didn't know. I didn't care. The officer, the man Arlene had once considered spacing out an airlock, had proved himself one of Earth's best. He'd been the leader of our fire team. We owed him what we had just done for him. Funny thing. He'd fought his quota of monsters. A steam demon had taken his wife. He'd kicked butt with hell-princes and spiders. On Phobos he was a bud, helping take down the imps and the flying skulls and the superpumpkin. He was a veteran of the Doom War. And a freakin' teleporter nails him. Shit. A bleeding technological foul-up. It made me so mad I saw Mars- red. We owed him more than putting him out of his misery. We owed him words, a proper farewell due an honorable man. We gave him a different kind of farewell, worthy of a good marine. Our first Freds made the bad mistake of showing up just then. I didn't leave any for Arlene or S&R. The ray guns made my job too easy. Yeah, right. Isn't technology grand? It fries Hidalgo and then gives me a push-button method of avenging him. We kicked ass. Nothing made me feel better. The guns were light, and they didn't need reloading. S&R mentioned they'd need recharging eventually, but they were good for a thousand kills per charge. I tried my best to use it up. A few Freds fired off a few saucers. Their aim was not up to Marine Corps standards. S&R aimed at the Freds' chests to get the brain right away. When I realized the aliens could feel pain I started aiming for the artichoke heads and the arms and the legs. Arlene reminded me that we had a mission to perform. That didn't help. I'd been inac- tive too long, bottled up too much. Now it was payback time. We came across two Freds making love. I recog- nized the process from S&R's lesson. Their normal height was six feet. When one extended to over seven feet, it was ready to copulate; but only if another one was ready to be on the receiving end. The tall one would find a mate that had shortened down to under five feet. Then the tall one would insert its pyramidal head into the cavity in shorty's head. They shared genetic information that way. The "male" turned bright red and the "female" turned a rich purple. A scientist would have found the demon- stration endlessly fascinating. I found it more reward- ing to interrupt the festivities by choosing my shots with imagination. Before they died, I'm certain these Freds felt some of what Hidalgo suffered. While I was amusing myself, S&R and Arlene found the main computer and loaded the program. Then they found me in a room running with alien blood. The color reminded me of iced tea. "What now?" I choked out the words. They tried to tell me the mission had been accomplished. This didn't cut it. We hadn't finished using our zap guns. "We have no ship any longer," sighed Arlene. She turned to S&R and asked if they had any suggestions. Those boys sure did. There were functional teleport pads on the base. In the immortal words of S&R, "Gateways must go to Fred ships. Not safe to go." The little voice in my head pointed out that we had run out of enemies to kill here. At no point did it bother me to think that I was failing to snuff out mind-consciousnesses or ghost-spirits. These alien monsters were dead enough for me. I shouldered the burden of command. Sergeant Taggart had a plan. "Let's go!" covered both my strategy and my tactics. We booked. In my rage I forgot the ship would be in zero-g. But the moment I felt that old free fall spinning in my stomach, I reminded myself that the wonderful ray guns had no kick and were perfect weapons for this environment. Too bad they didn't make the trip with us. Neither did our clothes or equipment. Yep, it was as if we'd gone through the Phobos Gate again. Stripped nekkid. There was Arlene to port, her long, firmly muscled legs kicking slightly as if she were swimming. Kid sure had a nice ass. And there were Sears and Roebuck. Naked, they looked even more like Magilla Gorilla. But their feet were far more human than simian. I'd wondered about that. "What do we do now, Sergeant?" asked Arlene. She didn't say it like my best buddy. She said it like someone who has been thinking more clearly than her superior officer. S&R came to my rescue. "We had no choice but to be remaining baseless." While I tried to decide if that counted as a pun, Arlene began to cry. That was so unlike her that it helped bring me back to a semblance of sanity. I noticed her hand on her neck. Then I realized what was wrong. Her last link with Albert had been wiped out--the second ring, the honeymoon ring. No way could S&R re-create it outside their own lab. We didn't have long to worry about that problem, however. The Freds on the ship soon noticed their stowaways-pirates-boarders. They had better aim than the ones at the base. They came clomping along the bulkhead in their magnetized boots, some below us, some above us. The saucers they were firing were coming closer and closer while we floated around, naked and helpless. This was when I realized I could have done a better job of planning for contingencies. In the few seconds of life remaining, I gave some cursory attention to the ship. Details might come in useful in the next life, always assuming this death theory for humans was inadequate to cover the facts. The ship was the same design as the Klave cruiser, but much longer. I'd guess it was 3.7 kilometers from stem to stern. The Fred spaceship had to be the largest cigar in the universe. While we ducked little flying saucers, I quickly reviewed what I'd learned and deduced from S&R's briefing. They were too busy ducking to engage in dialogue, so I had to trust my memory. S&R had never come right out and said it, but the Freds were more like humans than the Klave in one important respect--they too were individualists. This was carried to a lunatic extreme in the lack of cooperation among the demonic invaders. I'd lost count of how many times Arlene and I had saved ourselves by tricking the monsters into fighting each other. In a choice between slaughtering humans and trashing each other, hell-princes and pumpkins opted for the latter every time. So if it had worked a hundred times before, why not try for one hundred and one? "Hand-to-hand com- bat!" I shouted. "I don't think they're that much stronger than we are." I was certain that none of us in this ship were as strong as S&R. "Maybe we can grab one of their guns," suggested Arlene. "No Fred guns can be used for going to kill by you," said S&R. It took a moment for their meaning to sink in--namely, that the weapons could be activated only by a Fred. I set the example. Much as I hated zero-g, I'd spent so much time in it lately that I'd developed a knack for turning it to my advantage. A new form of martial arts could be developed in free fall. Kicking off from the wall, I grabbed the nearest Fred and yanked that sucker right out of his magnetic boots. Momentum was on my side; it was my new pal. I threw the alien into two of its comrades. They didn't act like pals. If they had any brains in those big chests, they'd have reasoned out what I was doing, then extrapolated from it and cooperated with one an- other. What an irony. Arlene and I were two of the most rabid individualists any collectivist could ever have the misfortune to meet. The Klave collective had thrown in with their antithesis, Homo sapiens, against a common foe. Could the ultimate error of the bad guys be their deconstructionism? They took everything apart, leav- ing no basis for rational self-interest. Food for thought. Philosophy to while away the time after we cleansed this ship of its owners. S&R were using a different fighting technique. They were mainly crushing their opponents, and ripping out whole portions of the chest area. Arlene and I were succeeding in making the Freds fight among them- selves. Suddenly S&R called out a warning. The Fred coming up beneath me apparently wore an insignia S&R recognized as some kind of biological scientist, a med-Fred. When this one grabbed me and pulled me down, I could see that it understood something about our species. Instead of jabbing its chopstick fingers toward my chest, where it might puncture my heart, it went for my brain, assuming the only real weakness of the Freds must also be a human weakness. Never assume. It jabbed one of its killer fingers into the area where it had learned humans keep their brains--the head. But this alien's research was slightly inadequate. The needle of pain hurt like blazes, as it went through my cheek, but he missed my brain by the side of a barn door. Then it was my turn. I ripped into his head like it was a piece of rotten cabbage. I think it screamed as I kept working down, down, down to the part of a living thing that can anticipate bad things before they hap- pen. I laughed. I was getting back to doing what I do best. By some miracle we cleaned out the section we were in. Then we moved to the next. Although similar to the Klave ship in terms of engineering, the inside of this vessel was composed of separate compartments. As we floated from one section to the next, like angels of death, my theory received endless vindication: the Freds were not communicating with each other! We simply repeated the process until our arms and legs were so tired we had to stop. Then we resumed our attack, and still the pods had not communicated with each other. Only at the end did we encounter a different sort of Fred. This one might have been the captain of the ship. He was the smartest, and he had a weapon that almost wiped us out. "Look out for the Fred ray!" S&R shouted in one of their clearest sentences, saving Arlene and me from the brink of destruction. We pushed each other out of harm's way. While we bounced off the bulkheads and bobbed around like corks in a bottle, a searing beam of white energy missed us and melted one wall of the pod. Fortunately the integrity of the ship's bulkhead was not compro- mised. S&R took care of this Fred personally. Four strong hands took the cabbage apart. Afterward we discov- ered we should have taken this one down first. But how were we to know this particular artichoke had access to the ship's main computer? Damned thing didn't even look like a computer. Looked like a blender to me. The top Fred had programmed the ship to go ... somewhere. There was nothing we could do to alter the program. We'd succeeded in killing all the Freds. But we were stuck on their Galaxy Express with a one- way ticket. Arlene was not happy about this. Epilogue I will never see Albert again. I'd reconciled myself to accepting him as a sixty-seven-year-old. I could have still loved him. At least we would have been together again. But Fly had to take the mission to the limit. I saw that berserker look come over him after Hidalgo died, and I understood. I also knew we might not have come through alive without that fire in him. When I can think again, I'll tell Fly I understand. Now I can only feel my loss. By the time we arrive at our destination and turn around, Albert will have been in his grave for centuries. So I sit alone at one end of the ship while Fly sits at the other. The Fred ship has large picture windows. I watch the stars contract to a small red disk at the center of the line of travel. Fly watches a similar disk, but his is blue. We do not talk. He searches for words that I do not want to hear. We both wonder what the human race will do in the next several thousand years.