going to get out of this, old man."

"Thanks for the . . . vote of confidence," he said. But then after another minute he decided that Rick was right, and thirty seconds after that decided he could make a dash for it.

Pops took three more shots at the closest Phinons then pushed off into the center of the shaft.

But when Pops looked up he did not ignite his jets.

Above him, seemingly every door to every tunnel that intersected the shaft was open, and suited Phinons

were pouring out of every one.

Pops estimated that somewhere between fifty and a trillion aliens were dropping towards him. They entirely blotted out the stars above. "Aw, shit," Pops said. "Bob, where are you?" For some reason, the lieutenant didn't answer. He should be back to the ship by now, he thought. Or damn close. "Rick, do you know where Bob is?""I can't raise him either," Rick replied."Keep trying. And forgive me, Rick," Pops said. "But I'm going to have to kill myself.""What? No!""Do you see what I'm looking at?""Oh."The detonation of the power core in Pops' suit sent a sword of flame, and hundreds of glowing Phinons, kilometers into space.

IX.

Sammi did not like trying to sleep in normal gravity. Despite having grown up on Earth, where she had always slept in a one-gee field and never even thought about it, since her arrival on the Moon, and particularly, since the apartment she and Steve had shared had variable gravity controls and could nullify the artificial one-gee field extant throughout Luna City, she found sleeping in her bed at the High Command to more often be a chore than a refreshing respite. Her dreams in particular were often a daunting difficulty to be endured.

Like many exceptionally creative people, Sammi had an active dream life. Oftentimes it was in dreams that she would solve technical problems that had proved intractable during waking hours. One of her biggest delights when she went to live on the Moon was discovering, with Steve, that sex in one-sixth gee was much like sex in dreams in that the people involved had nearly no weight. But now that she was sleeping in one-gee fields again, even the weightlessness of sexual dreams had departed, and the vague eroticism of what dreams remained seemed to involve lovemaking with faceless slabs of meat.

At this moment she was again dreaming, and though the images that played through her mind would not have looked sexual to an outside observer, within the dreamscape of her mind there was an underlying charge of desire waiting to burst forth. Strangely, what Sammi was seeing was a military base perched on a cold, lonely rock somewhere out in deep space. Her mind told her that this was Slingshot, but what she saw didn't look anything at all like the original had. But no matter-there were other lessons her mind had to teach her in this dream.

As she lay there, she started to toss in her bed, because the views were starting to hit her in sensitive emotional areas. She saw great System Patrol battleships cruising out of the darkness, and then there appeared from the blackest depths the characteristic bizarre shapes of Phinon spaceships, just like those that had attacked Slingshot, only in this case there were hundreds instead of two. Soon the alien ships were blasting away at the base, and in a strange twist out of the ordinary, she felt she was one of the battleships, but that her "legs" were caught in the muck of dreamsleep, where nothing she could do would result in anything other than slow motion. Try as she might, she could do nothing to stop the Phinons from wreaking havoc on the base.

She saw a lifeboat emerge and fly into the stars.

In the dream she was suddenly released from her incarnation as a battleship, and now she was a free spirit flying loose in space, observing the appalling tableau. She chased the lifeboat, caught up with it, was about to enter it when it turned around, in her dream violating the laws of momentum, but no matter. It was heading back toward the base, and again she chased it, trying to catch up, but having more trouble this time.

She had to tell Steve not to do it. She had to tell him to flee this time, to not try to take out the alien ship.

To come back to her and make her happy again.

She could see the Phinon ship, firing away at the base. She could see the lifeboat ahead of her, continuing to accelerate. She redoubled her efforts and slowly she closed on the lifeboat. As a dream ghost she was able to enter through the drive tubes. The plasma coursing through her felt tingly. She emerged from the engine into the central room, and looked up front to see a figure standing at the pilot's station, peering out the window, delicately touching the controls.

"No, Steve! Turn aside! Don't do this!" she screamed, but there was no sound. She tried to rush to him, but now she had legs, and they were caught in the slow motion muck, and she had to trudge forward.

Slowly she got closer. If only she could look in his face she could get him to stop. She could see the approaching form of the Phinon ship growing in the window.

Finally she reached him. She put her hand on his shoulder and jerked him around. She stared into his face.

It was the face of Lieutenant Robert Nachtegall.

"Aauugh!" she screamed and jumped up in her bed, the dream dissolving into her gloomy room.

"Oh, shit," she said quietly. "Oh . . . Oh . . ." The clock said 0547. That was close enough to morning for her, and she got out of bed and went for a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, the autochef had yet to make it since Sammi ordinarily didn't get up for another hour, so she overrode the controls to get the coffee started, and tried desperately to forget the dream by thinking about her work while she waited.

Now that brought a smile to her face. She had made tremendous progress on her genanites, had pushed the envelope of the whole genano field well beyond what she would have thought was possible within the next ten years only a few scant months ago. Too bad she couldn't publish any of her results until after the Phinon situation was settled. The best she could do was to tell Andy, but try as he might, he was not genano engineer enough to keep up with her. She recalled her civilian view of military scientists, how she used to look down her nose at them as being less than competent. But now she knew what it was like from the other side, and understood the kind of frustration so many of them must have felt at doing tremendous things in science but being denied the emotional satisfaction of publication, and having thus to have to put up with the bigoted-yes, that was the word-views of the academics.

She wondered now why she'd ever felt that way. The minute she walked into the labs at the High Command, she saw the type of equipment that she was to be turned loose on, and knew that the top-ofthe-line stuff she'd been using on the Martian Terraforming Project was primitive in comparison. Indeed, the military could afford to buy the best-and hire the best, for that matter. No, what had separated the academics from the military scientists had never been competence, only ideology. Even poor Andy Fine was no slouch as a biologist.

Since Sammi had no access to live Phinons, she'd had to work on making "wide-spectrum" genanites that could get along in any of the possible Phinon environments that she could imagine. She'd managed to eliminate the need for a bacteriological host. Once she had live Phinons on hand, then only some tailoring would be necessary to optimize her genanites for their task.

She was convinced that she'd been entirely successful.

Now, if only the guys would get back.

The coffee was almost finished, so while she waited the final minute, she went to her workstation and tried to call Dykstra, just to ask if he'd heard any more about where their friends were. But there was no answer.

She shrugged and got herself that cup of coffee.

Where could Bob and the others be? What did any of them know about hyperspatial journeys? As she sipped her coffee, she reflected on the miracle that had taken them from nothing to FTL drives in only months. And not just theory, but an actual spaceship. Of course, the ongoing miracle of technology had helped a lot. Despite Dykstra's genius, and also that of Hague, modern computers and computer-controlled manufacturing had much to do with their success. Had Oppenheimer had modern equipment, he might have built the atomic bomb by himself in a few months.

Technology had made it easier to jump from the known to the unknown, and make it known, in record time, and she could conjure up a thousand scenarios to explain why the guys were late in returning. Or even why they'd never return at all . . .

Enough of that. She left her room and went to the lab.

She checked up on her cultures, a routine matter in which she noted the levels and variations in various metabolic processes, and as expected, all was well. She sat down at her laboratory workstation and went to work on her PKSs. Phinon Kill Scenarios. Yeah! she thought, but barely noticed that she did. The work on scenarios could have been done just as well on her home workstation, except that the Patrol would not let any of the information on the computer out of the lab, period. Her lab workstation had no outside connections at all. But this was fairly typical in the ultrasecret labs.

There was still a question as to just how the Phinons could best be exposed to her genanites. Her assumption was that sooner or later a missile carrying her bugs would intercept a Phinon ship and deliver its payload inside. Then what?

Her best scheme at present was to use the two different strains of genanites that she'd thought of earlier, though now she called them the "virulent pausers" and the "acute infectors." However, she'd lately figured out a way to make one strain serve both purposes.

Once the genanites were inside, upon first generation divisions, roughly half of the next generation would become the pausers, and the other half the infectors. Thus, some of the Phinons within the ship would show the symptoms of infection immediately and begin dying promptly. The remainder would be infected, but the genanites wouldn't activate their "rusting machinery" until a certain amount of time, an amount yet to be determined, counted off by tiny, incorporated biological atomic "clocks," had elapsed. This would give them time to return to their homes-assuming they had homes-and infect more Phinons there.

The mechanics of this scheme, though simple to explain, were fiendishly difficult to accomplish. Sammi had to design the genanites so that once a Phinon was infected with one type, the other strain would leave that individual alone. Otherwise, all of the Phinons would die from the immediate form. One thing that worried Sammi was that the Phinons left alive wouldn't flee. Now that would be a problem. Perhaps when the Hyperlight got back they'd have enough information about the Phinons' distribution throughout the Oort cloud so that another infection scheme might present itself.

Today she wanted to work out what would happen after the Phinons in the Oort cloud were infected. She supposed that they'd all either die out there or flee trying to get away.

And go where?

Nobody knew where the Phinons had come from. It was obvious that they had evolved on a planet, because their bodies were clearly designed with gravity in mind. In fact, they still lived with artificial gravity fields in their ships, despite occupying a living space where fractional gee surface gravities were the norm, and thus must have had artificial gravity almost right from the beginning of their leaving their home planet.

She'd had conversations with Dykstra on this point. He was certain that the Phinons had never developed a sublight drive that worked within the Hague Limit, and so over time probably gave up living in or even utilizing the Hague volumes around stars at all. They probably occupied cometary haloes spread throughout interstellar space-with their hyperdrive they'd never notice the difference when they crossed the subtle gravitational divide that separated far-flung comets into those that belonged to one star or another. And that brought up the question of the extent of Phinon occupation. Given time, they could occupy the entire interstellar volume of the galaxy.

Sammi called up a view of the galaxy, and a beautiful three-dimensional image, slowly rotating for effect, appeared in the holotank. Okay, let's just suppose you guys do own the whole galaxy. How long will it take to get rid of you all? She could ignore the fact that Hague volumes contained no Phinons-on this scale Hague volumes were insignificant. She thought about the conditions that were supposed to apply at the galactic core, tried to figure out how close the Phinons could live to that hellish gravitational/ electromagnetic maelstrom, and guessed at a correction.

The rest was easy. The Phinon hyperdrive allowed a speed of 24c. The galaxy was just over one hundred thousand light-years in diameter. Factor in the added time required by the uninhabitability of the galactic core, and other technical considerations known only to me, she thought, and out came a figure very close to five thousand years.

Just for fun, Sammi directed the Milky Way image to play out the scenario, with infected sectors going black. She linked the time element to the galactic rotation rate. Five minutes equals two hundred million years. Ready, set, go. The whole galaxy went black almost instantly.

With immense satisfaction Sammi ran the scenario again and again. That's it. You can all die for killing Bob- Oh!

She shut off the display. The holotank went dark and she was able to see her reflection in the side of the tank. Who are you? Just who the hell are you? What happened to that idealist who wouldn't let Major Moore recruit her to kill aliens?

In a fog, she walked back to her room. She tried to call Dykstra again, but still there was no reply, and no autoindicator of when he'd return. She then checked her own messages and there found a short one from Dykstra indicating that he had business off Luna and that he'd call her when he got back.

Dykstra was the only real friend she had at the High Command. And right now she desperately needed to talk to a friend.

She made another call. It was answered promptly. "Martha," Sammi said. "I want to visit for a few days. I mean, I need to visit."

Nikki Le watched through the window as the Belt ship lifted off from the surface of the tiny Earth-crossing asteroid where she, Knoedler, and Dykstra had just finished their meeting with the representatives from the Belt. For her, much of the meeting was a mystery since she wasn't privy to it. She was along simply because she was the only person handy who had actually had an encounter with the Phinons and Colonel Knoedler had decided she should be there to regale the Belters with tales of her adventures, such as they were. But once she finished telling her side, she'd been sent to her room to cool her heels until the rest of the-what? negotiations?-had been completed.

There was nothing special about the Belt ship that had brought the two representatives. It was just a simple inner system transport, standard transportation for jaunting around space from Mercury to the Belt. The ship she was in wasn't much better, just a military light transport, though defanged for this meeting (although there were some peculiar pods attached to the stern that she didn't know the reason for). And the rock they were on, just a run-of-the-mill stone in an elongated orbit coming in closer to the Sun than the Earth at perihelion, intersecting the Belt at its farthest extent, right now handily between the orbits of Earth and Mars.

But she had been astonished at how fast they were able to get there.

She was sure that she had just been at a meeting that would be discussed at length and ad nauseam in the history books for years to come. Provided the human race had a future-the Phinons might have something to say about that.

The Belt ship thrusted away on repulsors, then lit its torch and soon was lost among the stars.

Lost among the stars, that's how she had felt on Deepguard after Luke was killed. There had been nothing left but a crater when she reached the site of the laser batteries, and she'd gone into the remains of the base, cried for what seemed hours, prayed, and slept. The next day she put on her professional self and tried to find a way to send a laser message, but it was simply impossible. The day after that she was rescued. She and Luke hadn't known that the System Patrol had nearly a fleet of military and scientific vessels on the way to Deepguard to study the aliens. She'd had no idea that the Phinon Project existed.

She'd been whisked straight back to Luna, was reassigned to the Phinon Project, and spent all her time being debriefed. But lately she'd been doing nothing. She knew too much to go back to an active duty assignment on a battleship, but not enough to help the geniuses that made up the cast of the Project. Then Knoedler had requested her services and told her that he had a plan for her to ultimately visit every spaceship crew in the System Patrol to brief them on the Phinon threat.

But first . . .

Someone knocked on her door.

"Yes? Come in."

Dykstra opened the door. "You may rejoin us, Nikki. I'm sorry we couldn't let you stay with us. But believe me when I say it really was in your best interest as well as in ours."

"That's okay, Doctor. I'm just a measly little ensign, after all. The colonel can order me to swab the deck now if he'd like."

"Well, the deck is kind of dingy," she heard Knoedler say from behind Dykstra, then the colonel came into view.

"No disrespect intended, sir," Nikki hastily said, but to be honest, she didn't really care what he thought.

Recent experiences had given her a more realistic view on what counted, and what didn't.

"Oh, sure there was," the colonel said, smiling. "I used to make those kinds of comments, too. Still do, as a matter of fact." He smiled again.

"So, am I guilty of treason now, too," Nikki blurted out. "Or is my being kept in the dark going to save me prosecution in the event you two get caught?"

Dykstra turned to the colonel. "She's quicker than most of the people on your staff, Colonel Knoedler." Then he looked at her. "And certainly a good deal more honest. Perhaps we'd better 'fess up to the ensign, don't you think?"

"Perhaps. What is it you suspect, Nikki?" Knoedler asked.

Suddenly it's "Nikki" now, eh Colonel? But she found she didn't mind Knoedler's sudden foray into familiarity. "What I suspect is that the High Command doesn't know we're here, and would be damned upset if they found out that you two had been meeting with those representatives from the Belt, cease-fire notwithstanding. Am I on the right track?"

"You'll know eventually," Knoedler said, not looking happy.

Dykstra laughed. "Oh, Colonel. She's got us lock, stock, and barrel. Nikki, you just want to know the whole story, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Why?" Dykstra asked.

"Vengeance. The Phinons killed someone dear to me. I want to be at the front of the phalanx that does them in."

"Okay," Knoedler said. "I'll give you the crisp little version. Although I'm not acting entirely on my own, I'll take the fall for those above me that sanctioned this meeting if things don't go right. The bottom line is that some of us think that the Phinon threat is the real danger to the Solar Union, not the Belt, and we want their help in dealing with the aliens. All of the issues separating the Union and the Belt will be moot once we can go to the stars. We have a cease-fire now and we've been sharing data, but we haven't told the Belt about several new technological advances that we've figured out from our collection of alien artifacts. And unfortunately, there are plenty of folks who want to use the new alien-derived technology to annihilate the Belt government once and for all. Dr. Dykstra and I are not among the latter group."

"The new technology? Like the drive for this ship?" Nikki asked.

"The colonel surprised me with that, too," Dykstra added.

"How did you know . . . ?" Knoedler began.

"I looked out the window, Colonel. I can see Mars. I can see Earth. I know about where we must be. To get here as fast as we did would have required one hell of a drive flame. And yet this is a secret mission . . ."

"Shit," the colonel said.

"Anything else you want to know, Nikki?" Dykstra asked.

"Yes. What's the conflict between the two of you? I've picked up a word or two here and there during the flight. You both agree about how to deal with the Belt, but there's something else about which you disagree, um . . . I'd say violently, but you're both too professional for it to come to that."

"You're right, Doctor," Knoedler said. "She belongs on my personal staff. Ensign Le, you're promoted to, er, Lieutenant Commander, and we'll flush through the paperwork once we get back. And you're not going to waste time visiting ships in the fleet. You're going to be with me for the rest of the war."

"Which one, Colonel?" Nikki asked, doing her best to take the changes in stride.

"The one with the Phinons, Commander."

They had wandered out of Nikki's room and into the middeck. "Now that the commander is your personal assistant, are we free to disclose the nature of our disagreement?" Dykstra asked. "I would be very interested in her opinion. I've already heard from the only other human who fought a Phinon face-to-face. I'd like to hear about it from Nikki."

"I believe a briefing is in order," Knoedler said. "Me first.

"Let's look at some recent history, Nikki. A little over two years ago our first manned probe to the Oort cloud is met by hostile aliens who cripple the ship, board, then go about searching the ship in what can only be called a provocative manner. The one person on board manages to kill one of these aliens-one of these aliens with a technology one genius I know," Knoedler said, nodding at Dykstra, "describes as being no more than a century ahead of ours-with a spear, no less. The remaining alien flees without ever firing another shot, and doesn't even bother to destroy the probe as he's leaving. A bit later we retrieve the man and some alien artifacts from which we eventually obtain the secret of total mass conversion.

"Two years go by without another peep out of the aliens, and then they hit a secret base out sixty astronomical units from the Sun. That they even found the damn place is astonishing, but it was one of the few spots out that far-beyond the Hague Limit, a physical barrier no one but physicists knew anything about until recently-where accurate measurements of their ships arriving might have been taken. The two ships proceed to blast the base, but then, oh joy, one of our lifeboats manages to ram one of the alien fighters, manages to hit it just right so that the ship is destroyed except for the drive unit, and then the other, true to form, flees, again without finishing off the base, which it certainly could have done by then. And after that encounter, we come away with an alien hyperdrive motor and within-what was it, two months, Doctor?-we have a theory of FTL travel, and very shortly after that, an actual working hyperdrive.

"And then, as if all this wasn't miracle enough, Dr. Dykstra informs us that not only do we have a hyperdrive, we have one that's better than that of the aliens, and a nifty sublight reactionless drive for use within the Hague Limit that the aliens seem to know nothing about.