He told Markoff the whole story, only glossing over the end, suggesting that it was Hendricks himself who had wriggled free of his bonds.

"We did a diachronic tracking of the pulse signal," Altman said. "The strange thing is that it seemed to correspond to Hendricks's mental decay. When the signal was stronger, he started seeing things, becoming paranoid and violent. When it was weaker, he seemed to be like he normally is. I think the signal changed him."

Markoff looked at him a long time. "That doesn't seem possible," he finally said.

"I know it doesn't," said Altman. "But it correlated perfectly. I think the pulse signal does something to the human brain."

"Why didn't it do the same thing to you?"

"Who knows?" said Altman. "Maybe I can resist it for some reason. Or maybe it's doing things that I haven't managed to notice yet."

"What do you think it is?" Markoff asked again, just as he had asked weeks before, in Altman's kitchen.

"I don't know," said Altman. "I haven't even seen it yet. But I can tell you one thing: it scares the living s.h.i.t out of me."

They were both silent for a while, lost in their own thoughts. Finally Markoff looked up.

"You'll have to go down again," he said.

"Now?"

"Soon. We need to add some equipment to the console so that you can communicate with the MROVs."

"Funny," said Altman.

"What's funny?"

"I was going to suggest doing that," he said. "Adding something to the console."

Markoff gave him a quizzical look. "You did suggest it," he said. "That was one of the first things you said to us. Don't you remember? Are you all right?"

I must have been more rattled than I realized, Altman thought. He thought about how to answer Markoff, rapidly decided the best strategy was to ignore it. Altman thought. He thought about how to answer Markoff, rapidly decided the best strategy was to ignore it.

"As long as it's not with Hendricks, I'm willing. I don't mind going down alone."

"Not alone," said Markoff. "I want you to take a few trips down, we'll try a different person each time."

"How do I know they're not going to react like Hendricks did? I was lucky with him. I may not be lucky next time."

"You've become more important than I expected you to be," Markoff said. "You know how to run the bathyscaphe and take the proper measurements. Which means I'm counting on you. I need you to do this."

"And in exchange?"

Markoff gave him a level stare. "No 'and in exchange.' You'll do it."

"Is that a threat?" Altman asked.

"When I'm threatening you, you'll know."

Altman closed his eyes. If it wasn't a threat, it wasn't far from one. But he knew he didn't really have a choice.

"All right," he said. "But I want a tranquilizer gun just in case. And I want whoever goes down with me to be strapped to his chair."

"Agreed," said Markoff. He stood and made a show of shaking Altman's hand. "Thank you for your cooperation. I'll be in touch."

39 Hendricks woke up in a strange place, some sort of medical facility. The last thing he could remember was being on the bathyscaphe. He and Altman were going down, and then his head had started to hurt so much, he could hardly stand it. After that, it all felt like a dream. There had been some kind of problem. He remembered Altman speaking calmly to him, remembered taking readings, but also remembered the feel of the floor. He must have fallen. Maybe they hit something.

He felt groggy. Parts of his body were numb, and parts of his brain felt like they had been torn out. There was a tube running into his forearm. Maybe they were experimenting on him.

He looked around. He was the only one there.

He moved furtively out of bed, peeling the tape off the tube in his arm and pulling it out. It burned coming out. He dropped it, left it dripping beside the bed, and stumbled to the door.

It was locked.

He stayed there, staring at the handle.

After a while he heard the sound of footsteps in the hall outside. He rushed back into his bed and half closed his eyes.

Through his eyelashes he watched the door open. A woman came in, dressed in white, carrying a holoboard. She walked straight to his bed. His mind pictured him running out the door at the far end of the room, but in the end his body did not move.

"h.e.l.lo," said the woman. "How are we today?"

He didn't say anything, still pretending to be asleep.

"Oh, dear. You've torn your IV out again," she said. "We can't have that, can we?"

She bent down for the end of the tube. It was at that moment that his body decided to reach up and grab her wrist. True, he was in his body, was watching through his eyes, but it was doing things he wasn't telling it to do. He wasn't the one controlling it, which meant there must be someone else in there with him.

As soon as he thought that, it felt like everything was happening at a little distance, like he'd sunk deeper into his body, like he'd never be in control of the body again. And yet he could still feel everything. He watched the hand holding the nurse's arm pull her on top of him like she was a doll. He felt the jaw opening and the teeth closing around the nurse's neck, and then a series of wet sounds as the neck burst open and warm blood spilled down across his chin and his own neck. Her wrist, the one he was holding, he saw, was broken, crushed, and the arm attached to it was no longer sitting in the socket right. She was trying to gasp for breath, but there was a hole in her windpipe now and all that came out was a hissing and a mist of blood. Her face was there just above him, her eyes terrified for a moment but almost immediately becoming loose in their orbits as she lost consciousness.

A few seconds later, after his body had done a few more things to her, he was certain she was dead. If he'd been asked to describe how exactly it had happened, he wouldn't have been able to say, though he was fairly certain he had something to do with it. Or not him, exactly: his body. One moment she was still alive, even if just barely, and then there was an awful blur of things happening. When they stopped, she was dead.

He padded softly to the door and tried it. It was still locked. How was that possible? She'd come through it, hadn't she?

She must have had a key. He shambled back to her corpse in search of her pockets. But he couldn't find any pockets. She was too much of a mess. Pushing his b.l.o.o.d.y hands through the sopping remains of clothing and flesh, he finally found something hard that wasn't a bone.

He had just straightened up, b.l.o.o.d.y key in hand, when he realized that he wasn't alone in the room after all. There was a shape there, in the shadows of the last bed.

"Who is it?" he said.

Don't you recognize me? a voice said. a voice said.

He went a little closer, then closer still. It was as if the person was both there and not there at the same time. And then, suddenly, he felt a piercing pain in his head. He staggered. When he looked back up, he knew who it was.

"Dad," he said.

Good to see you, Jason, he said. he said. Come sit down. I want to have a serious talk with you. Come sit down. I want to have a serious talk with you.

"What about, Dad?"

But his dad wasn't where he thought he was. He turned around and found him in another bed.

We're failing, Jason, his dad said. his dad said. You should leave that thing down where you found it. Convergence is not the only thing that matters. You should leave that thing down where you found it. Convergence is not the only thing that matters.

"Convergence?" asked Hendricks, then had to search frantically for his father, who somehow had moved again.

They want us all to become one, son. He gave a mournful smile, shaking his head. He gave a mournful smile, shaking his head. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? he said. he said.

"Who's they, Dad?"

We have to be very careful or there will be nothing left of us.

Then his dad smiled. It was a beautiful smile, like he used to give Jason back when he was very young, just a few years old. Jason had forgotten that smile, but now it all came flooding back.

Tell them, Jason, he said. he said. Tell everyone. Tell everyone.

"I will, Dad," he whispered. "I will."

There was some noise behind him, but he didn't want to look away from his father's face. If he did, he feared he'd never find it again. Then there was shouting. He ignored it as long as he could, but it was too powerful. He turned around and moved toward it.

There was a roar and a flash and he was suddenly on the ground, staring straight up at the ceiling. I should get up and tell them, I should get up and tell them, he thought, but when he tried, he couldn't move. he thought, but when he tried, he couldn't move. I'll just lie here, I'll just lie here, he thought. "Dad?" he whispered, but there was no answer. he thought. "Dad?" he whispered, but there was no answer.

40 "Can I have a copy of this?" asked the icthyologist, watching the vid.

Altman shrugged. "Sure," he said. "What do you think?"

"I've never seen anything quite like it," he said. "Those strange hornlike projections, I don't have a precedent for those. You may have discovered a new species. Or it may be the result of a mutation of some kind. I can ask around, see if anybody's seen anything like it, but I never have."

"So, it's unusual."

"Very unusual."

"Well?" Altman asked. He was in Skud's lab, the water bottle with him. The pinkish swath had been extracted from it and placed into a specimen tube. From this, Skud had taken a tiny sample, running a genetic test.

"It's strange," said Skud. "It's tissue."

"What sort of tissue?"

"Living tissue," said Skud. "Like flesh. It was once alive. But it has a very unusual genetic profile."

"So, it is skin that has been torn off something?"

"I don't think this is so," said Skud. "I think it was alive not so long ago. It was alive when you found it. Maybe even alive until you bottled it."

"That can't be," said Altman. "When I found it, it was just like this, but in big sheets. It couldn't have been alive."

"Yes," said Skud. "It is a very simple organism. I do not know what it is. It has no brain and no limbs and was made of almost nothing at all. But it was, technically, alive."

Altman shook his head.

"You are a doubter, I see," said Skud. "I can prove it with a simple experiment." He upturned the sample vial, leaving the pink swath lying curled on the table. He took a battery with a pair of wires connected to it, sparked them against each other, then touched them to one another. Immediately the swath jolted, moved.

"You see," said Skud proudly. "Alive."

"Don't," said Ada. "It's morbid."

"It's not morbid," said Altman. "I'm just stating the facts. This is just anecdotal, mind you, but it still must mean something."

She rolled her eyes.

"Just listen," said Altman. "Just listen and give me a hand." He held up one finger. "You were the one who started this back in the town. I'm just going to give you the same talk you gave me, more or less. Nearly everybody I've talked to on the ship has a headache. Even if I haven't heard them say it aloud, I've seen them clutching their heads. That's not normal."

"It's just anecdotal," said Ada. "It's not scientific."

"I said that already," said Altman.

"It could be a gas leak," said Ada, "or a problem with the ventilation system."

"It could be," said Altman, but most of those people have been having headaches long before that. They've been having them ever since the first signal broadcast."

He held up a second finger. "Insomnia," he said. "I've asked around about this. Showalter has it. I have it off and on. That German scientist has it. I heard the two guards outside of the command center complaining about it and then later another three in the main dome. Have you had it?"

"No," said Ada. "But I've been having weird dreams."

"That's the other thing people are talking about," said Altman, raising another finger. "Strange, vivid dreams. I've had them, too, lots of people have. And then we get to the more extreme cases." He held up two more fingers. "Attacks," he said, wiggling one, "and suicides," he said, wiggling the other. "Not scientific, I admit," he said. "But we've only been talking a few minutes and I've already run out of fingers. I've never been around a place where I've seen so many of either."

"I heard that Wenbo went crazy," said Ada. "Tried to strangle one of Markoff's men."

"I heard the same thing," said Altman. "Similar thing happened with Claerbout and Dawson. And Lumley stabbed Ewing and then painted a set of weird symbols on the walls of his own room with his own s.h.i.t. And who knows what we're not hearing about, what they're covering up."

Ada shuddered. "And poor Trostle," she said. "He always seemed so stable."

"Suicides and attempted suicides. Don't forget Press."

"Frank Press? Did he attempt suicide?"

"Not only did he attempt it, he succeeded. There must be at least three or four more on that list, too. Doesn't that seem abnormal? I mean there are only two or three hundred on board. That'd put the suicide rate up over two percent. That can't be normal, can it?"

Ada shook her head.

"It's not scientific," said Altman, waving his fingers around. "But I still don't like what it's telling me. Ask around. See if I'm wrong. I hope to G.o.d I am."

A few hours later, Markoff appeared at his door. He was carrying a tranquilizer gun in his hand. It looked like an ordinary pistol but with a longer and thicker barrel, a square cartridge near the barrel's end.