For a moment Chris thought he saw the heavenly image of Jenny superimposed over Sammi, and he smiled. He decided not to mention his "trip" to her. Still, it had been nice to see Jenny again. "I can't leave until my work is done. Maybe when I'm two hundred or so."

"You were coming to tell me that the guys are on their way back, weren't you? You've been out for twenty-four hours. I know about that now. Why didn't you just call?" she asked.

"Did you find out that Pops isn't with them?" Dykstra had told Sammi the identity of the third crew member as soon as the Hyperlight was safely on her way. He could tell from her response that she had not heard the news. "That's why," he said.

Tears welled in her eyes, but she didn't start to cry. Finally she said, "He's with Steve now. I'm sure they have a lot to talk about."

"There are two Phinons coming back, too," Dykstra told her. "I'm sure you didn't hear about that, either. But the men were successful. Now it's up to you."

"You mean 'us,' " Sammi said automatically.

"No. You."

"I don't understand."

"There's a Phinon fleet coming in, Samantha. They've converted their ships to reaction drives so they can get around inside the Hague Limit. But there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of ships on their way. Right now they're all heading towards Jupiter, but it would be stupid to assume that they won't get to the rest of the Solar System in due time."

"Millions of ships? My God," she said. "You're not kidding."

"We can't fight that many ships, Sammi. To his credit, Colonel Knoedler apologized profusely for doubting me, and then thanked me for committing treason, because we needed those Phinons. Genano infection is the only idea we have right now that might ultimately be able to defeat them."

"But . . . um . . . I don't know what to say."

"You're allowed to feel overwhelmed," Dykstra said. "I do myself. And there's more. In the last few days, every human outpost, Union or Belt, out beyond the Hague Limit has been attacked by the Phinons. At least by now most of ours have been on the lookout, so it hasn't been the kind of rout that we took at Slingshot. The Phinons have only been attacking with a few ships at a time. Still, the High Command has ordered a full-scale fall back into the Hague volume, and every single pilot in the Solar System who has ever flown a military ship is on his way to either the Moon or Ceres. For what it's worth, we're putting together an armada of our own to see what they can do against that fleet. Since the Phinons are limited to reaction drives now at least we're not totally outclassed."

Dykstra wasn't sure about how much Sammi was actually listening to him. In fact, he wouldn't have been surprised if she'd missed most of what he was saying, and instead had only thoughts of "It's all up to me" running though her brain.

"At any rate, Rick and Bob should be back the day after tomorrow. I guess you'd better get whatever series of experiments that you need to perform in line. We're not going to want to wait any longer than we have to for the results."

"I'll, um, get right on it," Sammi said, then drifted away, not even remembering to utter the customary "get well soon" remarks one makes when leaving a sick friend.

Dykstra didn't notice the omission anyway.

Alone now, he glanced around his room, noted the monitoring instrumentation, watched the line on the screen that told him how optimally his new heart was operating. But these were just peripheral images to occupy his eyes while his mind continued to work.

He was somewhat ashamed of the minimal amount of work he'd been able to accomplish since returning to the Moon after the Hyperlight's departure, but there'd been all that political rigmarole to deal with, what with the situation with the Belt. At least that was over for now. In an ironic way, it was fortunate for the human family that they'd once again been fighting with each other-their industries were already on a war footing-when the Phinons had come.

We'll have ships rolling off the lines continuously, he thought. And these will have the new drive. Come to think of it, by now we could have lots of ships equipped with it, and should have. I'd better ask Knoedler about that. Apart from the Hyperlight and his boat, I can think of only nine others that are out there. We should have more. Ergo, we do. The Colonel has something up his sleeve. He would have had to keep it hidden from the Belt to keep his own superiors happy. And secret from me, too.

Dykstra thought about the Phinon ships. Reaction drives using partial mass conversion. And out of the million or so in the fleet, only two kinds of ships had been found-the "big" ones, the kind that hit Slingshot and seemed to hold a crew of eight, and the "little" ones like the one that Michaels met up with on OEV 1. He envisioned his penultimate worst scenario (the worst was simple annihilation of humanity). The Phinons would hit the environs around Jupiter, then come through again and hit each of the planets and concentrations of civilization in turn. Humans would be forced to hide out: among the rocks of the Belt, buried deep under the surfaces of the planets, perhaps at the bottoms of the oceans.

The Phinons have been out in cometary space so long, they might not even remember what an ocean is. Then again, I don't think remembering has anything to do with it. But as long as some technical part of society could hold out, eventually we'd get them through genano diseases attacking their bodies or nanotech killbots attacking their machines. To date, there was no evidence whatsoever that the Phinons had nanoscale technology. For of one thing I am certain. The Phinons cannot match us in innovation. Their intelligence is not like ours. Their use of reaction drives for this fleet is all the proof I need of that.

But it would be a shame if it went that far. Much better it would be to defeat the Phinons early. And that thought led the preeminent genius of the 21st century to unlock those doors in his mind behind which he had hidden the ideas for the most potentially frightening weaponry conceived by anyone. Ever. James Christian Dykstra had given the human race technological miracles that had unlocked the Solar System. Along the way he had deliberately not delved into every possible aspect of those technologies, had deliberately not proven to himself that some of the weapons of which he could conceive he could ultimately build. Let the blood be on someone else's hands.

But now was the time to reconsider.

He hadn't had much time to think about it when the doctor had him put under again, and shortly after he awoke the next morning he was told that he had visitors and asked if he wanted to see them.

"Of course I want to see them!" he said, annoyed at the nursebot for even thinking it was an open question.

Within minutes Sammi, Hague, and three squirrels entered.

The squirrels were not roaming free. At least, not on the floor. On Hague, now that was a different matter. The little man was wearing what looked like a heavy leather work coat, and around this, as if they were playing on the trunk of a tree, scampered the squirrels.

"Hello, Chris," Sammi said. "Dr. Hague wanted to come and bring his . . . friends. He was quite adamant about it, too."

"Oh, yes, Dr. Dykstra. Yes. My friends wanted to come, too. Oh yes. Yes. You are feeling well, yes?"

"I'm improving, Arie. Thank you. I'll be out in another few days and I'll be able to visit you and the squirrels in the lab again." It had essentially been a daily thing for Dykstra in the past few weeks to pay Arie and his pets a visit. The diminutive scientist had a way of cheering him up, and the chatter of the squirrels reminded him of his home in the mountains-in the days before the war, that is.

"Good. Oh good. They missed you, yes, yes, Dr. Dykstra. They missed you. Sarobi the most, oh yes, oh yes. But also the others. Yes." One squirrel suddenly perched on Hague's shoulder and started to chatter. It was, in fact, Sarobi, which Dykstra could tell now that she'd stopped racing around. Hague seemed to wait until the squirrel was finished then said, "She is expressing delight. Oh yes. Yes. She is happy to see you. Poor squirrels. Small brains, oh yes. No storage space for words. No."

"Tell her I'm happy to see her, too," Dykstra said, and Hague commenced to chatter and squeal, as if a fourth squirrel had joined the other three.

Sammi was smiling at all this. "I have a hard copy of Arie's paper on squirrel communications," she said. She handed Dykstra a sheaf of pages. "He wrote it himself, then the computer edited it. This is actually a download of the published version from the Journal of Mammalian Science. The editor was quite impressed." In just a few months Hague had learned more about squirrel "society" than had ever even been suspected.

Hague seemed to be involved in a "conversation" with Sarobi. Dykstra said, "Here we are worrying about the future of humanity, and Arie finds time to see what the squirrels are up to. Maybe that will ultimately prove to be more important."

Bob will be back in a few minutes, Sammi was thinking. Then what? She was down at the High Command docks, waiting near the berth where Knoedler's ship would soon be. The ship was only a few minutes out. There were plenty of other people around, technicians she'd never met, a few other scientists from the biology section that she did recognize, assorted brass. The technicians were all clustered around a high-tech cage, the temporary future home of the two Phinon prisoners. No-specimens, Sammi thought with satisfaction.

Dykstra was also there, waiting nearby, this time with his cane firmly in hand as he leaned against the wall. They'd brought a chair for him, but he was stubbornly refusing to use it. He looked drawn and tired. At least he was out of the hospital. For now. That's the problem. Chris has been scared. We need him so badly, and he knows it, too. He doesn't want to die on us. But I bet he isn't afraid of death-he's just afraid of letting us all down.

Present also was Hague, although the squirrels didn't make the trip. Sammi was unsure of what Hague had been told about Knoedler's return. He was clearly excited that Rick would soon be back, but she didn't know if he'd been told about the Phinons. Hague would go absolutely berserk when in the presence of Phinon technology-there was a wrongness to it that the savant just couldn't handle. What would he do when he saw a member of the species that created that technology? That was a question that also concerned the System Patrol-Hague was enveloped by two escorts, no doubt with sedatives at the ready.

And how would she feel when she saw a living member of the species that killed her husband? Specimens, dammit! Specimens.

A klaxon sounded and Sammi turned to look out through the airdam into the sky beyond. Knoedler's ship was in view now, coming in smoothly, and then with silent grace it slipped through the dam and settled gently into its slot. Within moments the side door opened, but first the techs entered, emerging a minute later carrying out the still comatose aliens.

They look like lizards made out of pipes, Sammi thought, but her view of them was so short that she didn't even have time to examine her feelings. She glanced over at Hague, but he seemed simply curious. "Ah, the Phinons, the Phinons, the alien breed, oh yes, yes," he was saying.

Then she did have a chance to examine her feelings, though not about the aliens. Bob walked out of the ship accompanied by Lieutenant Commander Nikki Le.

She'd met Nikki once before, but hadn't actually talked to her. She was just the new aide to Colonel Knoedler, and though Sammi noticed the woman's physical attractiveness, she hadn't thought about it much.

But she was thinking about it now.

Why is he walking with her? What were they doing out there? Who does she think she is, anyway? The questions came unbidden and the more rational part of Sammi's mind recognized how silly they were. But there was a hollow developing in her stomach that she couldn't get rid of, and a slow sinking feeling, different in magnitude, but not in kind, from that which she felt when she was notified of Steve's death.

Dammit, pull yourself together! After the send-off you gave him, what did you expect? You don't have any claims on him. Be careful now-here he comes. Bob had spotted her, and with Nikki, was walking over. Give him a hug . . . She embraced him. Good, one second, two, let go.

"We're all so glad you're back, Bob. But it was sad to hear about Pops," she said as she let the embrace lapse.

"We were successful, Sammi. Wouldn't have been without him, though," Bob said. "Have you met Lieutenant Commander Le?"

"Once before. Hi," Sammi said.

"Hello again," Nikki replied.

"I'm going to go get cleaned up before the debriefing," Bob said. "I'll look you up later, Sammi." And then he was gone. But Sammi was satisfied to note that he went to the right, and Nikki to the left, when they hit the corridor outside the docking bay.

By the time Sammi turned back around, she saw that the others had also left the ship. Knoedler had gone straight to Dykstra, and Rick had gone straight to Hague, and though she could hear only snatches of that conversation, it was clear that Hague was animatedly filling Rick in on the latest research with the squirrels. He would have had to start from the beginning since the squirrels weren't on the Moon when Rick had departed. Then she heard a call of "Rick! Rick!" coming from behind her and she turned to see a gorgeous young woman running in. And who is this . . . bouncy-wouncy person?

"Paula?" Rick said. "What are you doing here?"

"The station was evacuated. All the pilots were brought here." She caught up to him then and gave him a decidedly affectionate embrace, then kissed him full on the lips. Well, I guess I can write him off, too. What the hell was going on out there? "Oh, I'm so glad to see you." The girl looked around. "But where is Pops?"

Before Rick could tell Paula, Sammi left. That would be reliving too painful a memory for her, seeing someone else being given that kind of bad news. She wondered, however, what Rick would say. But she was certain he would be gentle-she had caught that look in his eye when he'd recognized that it was Paula calling to him. Whatever romantic interest the brilliant EE had ever had in her had since gone on to an obviously more fertile field.

Fortunately for her feelings, the next few days were so filled with work for Sammi that she had little time to think about them. Instead of burying herself in her work, this time she was in danger of having her work bury her.

The Phinons were being held in a cage on the very lowest level of the High Command. It was a special sort of cage, designed with gravity control, the atmosphere "mix" that the men had found in the Phinon comet, and internal ultra-high-fidelity holograms so that it would look to the aliens like they were inside one of their own spaceships. No one expected them to be fooled by this-after all, the food would still be the same all-purpose goop. But at least they would be unable to plot a course of action.

There was a viewing area for people who wanted to watch the aliens. The first day this was occupied at one time or another by everyone working on the Phinon Project. Sammi had gone to look, briefly. The viewing screen was oriented so that it looked like one whole wall of the Phinon cage was missing. But there were too many others there, and the fact was that she had too much work to do. After a couple of days the theater would often stand empty, but Sammi had yet to find time to get down there.

Bob and Rick had returned with riches beyond compare for the biology team of the Project. Just sampling all of the video data from the trip to get an idea of what was in the cache had taken her a full day. The views of the Phinons mating had been the most popular; you could bet those places on their shoulders would get extra attention once- Once we kill them, Sammi thought.

One of the other things that Sammi had found especially interesting was that some of the Phinons had fired guns with their "feet." An opinion was emerging that perhaps the Phinons' "head reversal" was equivalent to human right- or left-handedness. Andy held this view. Since both of the Phinon prisoners were "top-headed," further examination of the physiological difference between the two types would have to wait.

Of more importance to her was the nature of the Phinon regenerative capabilities. With a nasty grin she had been working on understanding how that system must perform. She was certain that she could turn it to the advantage of her genanites.

She'd had no chance to talk with Bob since his return other than as they passed once in a corridor. He was as busy as she. It was right after Dykstra had notified her of the time of the funeral service for Pops. She had neutrally greeted Bob when she saw him and asked, "Will I see you at the funeral?"

"No," he'd said. "I'll be out of here again by then. Commander Le and I are being sent to Jupiter with a big ferry boat to try to get out most of the VIPs before the Phinon wave breaks."

Her again, Sammi had thought, but then it was back to work for both of them.

Late at night two days after that Sammi looked up from her screen with bloodshot eyes and decided to take a break. She couldn't go to sleep-not yet, not with so much work to do. It occurred to her that now might be a good time to go down and look at the Phinons in their cage. In fact, it was her last chance to see both together since one was scheduled to be carved up tomorrow. Specimens. That's all they are. She was interested in hearing how the Phinons talked since they did communicate vocally, though perhaps not exclusively that way. She'd been told that it was a "clicky-clacky" sort of language, whatever that meant. She hadn't had time to listen to any of the recordings that had been made.

Sammi took the elevator down then walked slowly along the rough corridor. At this level, the walls were just bare rock. If Chris's bad scenario comes about, I might be seeing a lot more of these kinds of hallways. It's just a cave really. Be a helluva way to live.

Just before she entered the viewing room, she heard voices, and strange, well, clicky-clacky sounds. She walked in to find no one there except for Hague. "Hi, Arie," she said.

"Yes, oh yes," he said, then: "Clickety-click, click, clack clack clack, kickle-kick, t'ch, t'ch, t'ch." He was staring at the two Phinons. It was clear he wasn't responding to her, had never even noticed her enter.

Sammi stayed for ten minutes, tried to search her feelings, but found nothing inside her right now except for a stone coldness. Or is it numbness? She didn't know what she'd expected to find. Some kind of epiphany? Specimens. Just specimens, was all she could say about the Phinons. She left with that thought on her mind.

Hague, intent on the Phinons in a way only he could be, never even knew she'd been there.

XII.

"Colonel, pardon my French, but just what the hell have you been up to?" Dykstra snapped. He was alone with Knoedler in the colonel's office. Dykstra had not bothered to let the colonel get a word out of his mouth before launching into him. "Why don't we have more ships with the new impellers? We should have hundreds of ships converted over by now. You strongly implied to me that that is exactly what you intended to have happen. I know you-you would have started even before the Hyperlight set off. Yet I can find only fourteen in all of the Solar Union, and that includes the Hyperlight and your personal ship. And, oh yes, that spaceliner you had converted over that Lieutenant Nachtegall and Lieutenant Commander Le will be taking to Jupiter."

Instantly defensive, Knoedler attempted to explain himself. "Converting ships over takes time, Doctor. We have to build new facilities. I had a hell of a time even trying to sell my superiors on the idea at first. And besides . . ." Knoedler trailed off.

Dykstra just stared at him, boring in with his eyes, conveying that impatient and annoyed sense that said "Would you please remember who it is you're talking to."

"Okay, you're not buying it. Fine. I won't tell you yet, Chris. The situation with the Belt is still too precarious. If they find out what I've been up to, they'll get skittish. I ran roughshod over everyone I had to. I lied, mischaracterized, and bullshitted in quantities a cattle ranch couldn't match. I've been playing more than hard ball. It's baseball with grenades. This time you're just going to have to trust me!" Knoedler finished with a pounding fist on his desktop.

"So be it," Dykstra said. "Now what is it you wanted to talk to me about?"

Just then Nikki Le entered with coffee for both of them. This was not a duty Knoedler typically asked her to perform. If he ever told her it was expected, Nikki was more than willing and able to tell him where he could go and how to get there, with a kick in the butt to get him started on his way. And Colonel Tommy would just take it from her, too. He's smitten, Dykstra thought.

"Thank you, Commander," Knoedler said when she set the silver cups before them.

"Will that be all, Colonel?"

"Yes. Thank you," Knoedler said, eyes unknowingly alight.

The eyes forever betray the longings of the soul, Dykstra thought, but he kept it to himself.

"You knew about the military expedition to the Phinon fleet?" Knoedler began. Dykstra nodded. "Fifty ships, thirty-five System Patrol, the rest Belt. They intercepted the tail end of the fleet yesterday. We needed to see how we could do against them ship-to-ship when you take FTL away from them."

"You're obviously not happy," Dykstra said. "We didn't do so well?"

"Oh, we did great. Had a kill ratio of over three-to-one. Their ships wouldn't even turn around to engage. And they wouldn't fire until fired upon. But then they'd throw everything at us that they had until they were spent, then self-destruct. We lost thirty-eight war boats out there, Doctor. That's a significant percentage of our combined fleets of military craft. They lost over a hundred. That's nothing to them." Knoedler had gotten up and was pacing his office. He continued: "Given a year and an infinite number of credits, we could convert over every suitable barge, tug, and pleasure boat in the Solar System into some kind of warship, and we might have twenty thousand or so. At a three-to-one kill ratio that still leaves them over a million ships to mop us up with."

"The situation does look grim," Dykstra said. "Doesn't surprise me."

"That's right, God damn it!" Knoedler shouted at him. "It doesn't freaking surprise you. Why the hell not! It surprises the shit out of me. What the hell are they, Chris? You've kept it to yourself-what you think about them, what kind of beings you think they are. You risked being executed for treason so your people could collect those two we have locked up in the basement. I need to know now what kinds of things we're up against." Sometime during his tirade Knoedler had resumed his seat and was leaning toward Dykstra with his hands out, begging.

"Okay. I believe we're up against a billion years of evolution of a purely operant intelligence," Dykstra said. When he didn't continue, Knoedler got annoyed.

"Great. Now what does that mean?"

"It is the functional equivalent of saying we are up against creatures without souls, but that doesn't sound very scientific."

"Well, of course not. No one knows what the soul is, or even if it is-"

"Well, we're about to find out," Dykstra snapped, interrupting, "because we are at war with an equivalently intelligenced species that doesn't have one. Are you going to argue with me at every point, Colonel? That I will not tolerate."

Knoedler looked like his head was about to explode. Dykstra allowed himself to sink just a little more limply into his chair, shamelessly playing the frail-old-man bit visually.

At that, Knoedler laughed. "Aw, shit, Chris," he finally said. "Okay, consider me abashed. Lecture at will."

"The Phinons do not think the way we do," Dykstra began. "They do not invent technology-they evolve it. Phinons do not make intuitive leaps. Given sufficient time their technology eventually evolves the same way a biological organism does, through fits and starts. Sometimes they miss the obvious-the non-variable collimation of their X-ray laser hand weapons is a good example. Sometimes they scale Promethean heights. The beam truncation ability of the same weapon is a good example of that-even I'd never thought of that wrinkle in my physics."

"So you're saying that Phinons don't think?"

"They think, Colonel. Like a machine thinks. And that can look quite clever, indeed. But we need not look for any Phinon political structures, no military command, no formal structure at all that we would think of as one. The Phinons as a whole, or at least the ones in this part of the galaxy, are responding to the stimulus that is the human species. What we are seeing now would be absolutely predictable to someone who has had perhaps ten thousand years to observe them."