It was shortly after he had determined the inherent sameness of flower, shrub, and tree that the landing party had had its initial encounter with the planet's indigenous beings.

Limbless, amorphous, asexual creatures-vaguely mushroom-shaped when Zor first saw them-they lived communally in conical, hivelike structures from which they made daily forays into the surrounding countryside for the purpose of hover-gathering fruits and flowers of the planet's singular plant life. After several days of observing the creatures in their routines and rituals-all of which centered on the flowers and trees-Zor came to understand that the beings made use of the plant for physical as well as spiritual nutrition. Seemingly oblivious to the presence of off-worlders, they ingested the flower petals and fruits of the mature crop and often sipped the sap of the seedlings, which Zor had discovered possessed strong psychoactive ingredients.

Ultimately he had approached what he took to be the hive leader and had learned that the creatures were capable of telepathic communication. He realized, too, that they had the capacity to alter their physical being to suit their circumstances. While Zor and the hive leader had conversed, the creature had actually assumed a semblance of sexually differentiated humanoid form. It was that one who had identified the race by the name Invid and first used the term "Flower of Life." This one who led the landing party to the overlook and told Zor about the Queen-Mother they called Regis.

Zor! Are you coming, Zor? Vard had shouted once more, and, reluctantly, Zor had begun to follow him down the steep slope, along a path strewn with velvety Flower of Life petals.

And so had commenced a marvelous journey of two Tzuptum days through Flower-crowned hills and bustling hive settlements that welcomed them with silent chant and delivered them finally to the lair of the Queen-Mother. . .

Zor stood gazing at her now, eyes next to closing from the soporific warmth of the hive's central chamber. She had conjugated herself in an approximation of humanoid female form in his honor.

In his honor. The phrase she had sent to him.

"We have anticipated your return to Optera for so long, Bringer of Life. Forgive me if I am not yet adept at fully mimicking your present form."

You anticipated our coming? Zor had asked her, confused.

"The memory is ancient but deep within me. The Flowers were your gift to us."

Zor realized that he was being mistaken for someone who had visited Optera in the dim past and was about to correct the Regis when a sudden paralysis gripped his thoughts. The Flowers of this world contained a form of novel bio-energy. They endowed life-indeed, nature and matter itself-with the power to shift and reshape, to wrestle from the gods themselves the ability to control the course of evolution.

Then consider, Zor found himself thinking, what the result might be if the plant's bio-energy could be harnessed and directed.

Would the power to light a thousand worlds seem too much to ask? The power to drive a thousand ships across the sweep of stars? The power to shape and reconfigure the very continuum itself? The extension of life ...

And yet the secret of communicating with the Flower and harnessing that energy lay with the unknown being that had brought it to Optera. And with this Invid shape changer who had fallen heir to the Flower's fortunes.

Zor was intrigued. He realized that the Regis was the key unlocking Optera's mysteries, and in an instant of mad inspiration he decided to set himself the goal of possessing that key-if he had to seduce this queen to make that happen! "Yes, your highness," Zor said to her at last. "I have finally returned."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

I knew Lisa was serious the moment she stepped out of the vanity, dressed-barely!-in that revealing black camisole Karen Penn gave her for her thirty-ninth birthday. I was surprised, even though I shouldn't have been. I mean, I remembered the look in Lisa's eye when she saw Kaziana with Drannin that first time, and, after all, we had talked over the idea some...Well, Lisa must have caught the look on my face (that night on the Ark Angel), because she laughed and started to accuse me of backing out. But I told her no way. And, well, let's just say I put my whole heart into what naturally followed.

The Collected Journals of Admiral Rick Hunter

There was a girl in Rick's past, a gamine, honeyblond California free spirit named Jessica Fisher, the eldest daughter of Alice Fisher, an old friend of Pop's. Rick had met her shortly after Pop had taken the flying circus to Sacramento in search of spectators with a bit of extra wartime scrip in their pockets.

Rick had just turned nine, and he and Jessica were introduced to one another as cousins. It had not taken long, however, to understand that there was no actual blood bond between them, especially after Pop and Alice had decided to bring their own romance out from behind closed doors. Rick, in fact, had been there when things had gotten started between his aging dad and the independent Alice, the night the four of them had gone into San Francisco and "the Visitor-the SDF-1-had made its grand appearance. Of course, very few people realized they had seen a ship in the skies that night, and Russo's government had managed to keep the Macross project under wraps for the next five years. But Pop and Alice seemed to have been touched by something in the air, because their relationship had changed from that night on. Rick, too, had been transfigured by the event. Youthful flying ace that he was fast becoming, he had liked to think the sky as his property-even though Neasian and other military pilots might have argued the claim-and suddenly in that same sky he had glimpsed a power that surpassed all. The impact on his young mind was as devastating as it was exhilarating, for while Pop had done his best to keep his only child sheltered from the disputes that had plagued Earth at the time, "the Visitor" had made it clear there would be no hiding from war's long reach.

Jessica, ironically, had guessed the truth about what they had witnessed. I'll bet it was an alien spaceship, she had told Rick. And it's come down to show everybody on Earth that war isn't the only way that things get changed, that there're all kinds of powers in the universe we'll never understand if we keep thinking war's the answer.

She was almost three years older than Rick and a lot more concerned about such things. And after Pop decided to remain in California instead of taking the circus elsewhere, Rick would often sit at Jessica's feet for hours, listening carefully to what she had to say about hatred and injustice and greed, and he would pay close attention to the things she read aloud from novels and texts and some of Alice's books on philosophy and religion. Outside the year of high school he had attended in Sonoma, the time with Jessica came as close to a standard education as Rick had received; by the time he had turned fourteen, he was completely infatuated with her.

That she was still almost three years older than he made things extremely complicated, because by then older boys had begun to show up at the Sacramento farmhouse, guys who would stop by to visit with Jessica and fill her head with a lot of talk about what they were going to do when they joined the war.

Rick had already tried on countless occasions to express his feelings-he had even gone as far as writing her a poem-but the words just couldn't make it past his lips. At the same time he had tried unsuccessfully to corner her into confessing her undying love for him. There had been a bit of hand holding and quick kisses but nothing that approximated the passion Rick had decided the two of them were meant share. So, invariably, when any of Jessie's prospective boyfriends were on hand, Rick could be found retreating to his room, where he would sulk for an hour or two or stare at all the trophies and medals his flying skills had earned him and wonder why they were not doing the trick. But he certain was not about to sit out there on the porch and spew a lot of nonsense about how many enemy planes he planned to down when his turn came. And what was Jessie doing listening all the lies those characters were feeding her, anyway?

The truth, as it would unfold, was that she had not been listening. One night she had followed Rick back to his room to tell him just that, and damned if she hadn't been aware of Rick's feelings all along! But how could you even think for minute I'd be impressed by all that war talk? she had asked him. I don't want that kind of hero in my life, Rick. I want to fall in love with someone who isn't afraid to look for different answers. Someone like you.

Over the next six months Jessica had led him slowly in the joys of love and sexual discovery, but by the time winter had rolled around it was plain they were not meant to be lovers, that it was more important that their friendship survive than anything else. So Jessie had moved on to the sensitive hero of her dreams, and Rick had thrown himself in stunt flying with renewed fervor. But lord, how his hormones had raged for those six too-brief months! Not even Minmei or Lisa would inflame him the way Jessie had.

And oddly enough, it was Jessie he was thinking about now, laser-cutting a path through the verdant foliage of a new world, staring at Marie Crystal's shapely, jumpsuited deriere.

What the hell's coming over me? Rick asked himself, tearing his eyes away. He had not felt quite so lustful since Sue Graham had tried to seduce him one afternoon in the Ark Angel's situation room.

Rick stopped short on the narrow trail, only to have Karen Penn bump up against his back.

"Excuse me, sir," she said. "I didn't see you give a sign to halt."

"I, er, that is," Rick began. "Listen, Captain, why don't you go on ahead for a while."

"Certainly, sir," she said, brushing past him, face to face. Cripes! he thought. Two women to leer at now.

Angelo Dante had the point, the rest of the human and XT scouting party spread out behind in a trailing wedge. The Alpha-Beta VTs were Battloid-reconfigured on a flat spot of ground where they had left them only moments before. The land was an undulating temperate zone forest of analogue firs, raucous with the calls of black birds that confined themselves to the upper reaches of the canopy. The sun was intense where it shone through; the air was aromatic, rich with the smell of life. Scans initiated from the SDF-3 had indicated the presence of an intense bio-energy nexus in the region, but several low-level passes had revealed little to add to what had already been gleaned from the ship's data readouts, and so Rick had ordered the Veritechs down.

He was not sure just what had made him think of Jessie after all those years. It was true that the argument with Lisa had touched off a cascade of angry thoughts, but no sooner had he lowered the VT's canopy in the launch bay than they had been cleared from his mind. And Marie Crystal's butt not been responsible, either, no matter how pleasing it was. Because for all the lust, Rick was experiencing waves of nostalgia as well. A yearning for simpler-alternative presents.

He felt certain that something in the air had brought it on, or perhaps it was the trees themselves and the memories of northern California redwoods and home fires that their piney aroma elicited.

Memories of Earth before the wars.

Jack Baker appeared from the underbrush a few steps behind Rick-waved, and came up alongside. Rick not only saw a bit of himself in the younger man but noticed the same wistful in Baker's green eyes. He tracked Baker's gaze to Karen's backside.

"What's on your mind, Captain?"

Baker was red-faced when he turned around. "Begging the Admiral's pardon, sir. I guess I was just daydreaming."

"Daydreaminng, Baker?"

"Fantasizing, actually, sir." He made a circular motion with his hand. "It's this place, Admiral. It reminds me so much of where I was brought up. North Carolina, sir, before Dolza, I mean."

"You're wondering what it would have been like if things had gone differently for Earth."

Jack looked at him searchingly. "That's it, sir. I keep thinking this planet's trying to remind us of what we lost."

In a dark corner of the galaxy lost to the SDF-3, silhouetted against the swirling, malevolent backdrop of Ranaath's Star, floated the first nearly completed products of Haydon's IV's mining and manufacturing efforts: shipsmassively proportioned-with featureless spherical hulls attended and ministered to by hundreds of labor drones.

Inside the Ark Angel, Vince, Cabell, Penn, and the Nichols team were fortifying themselves with strong caffie when an unexpected transmission was received from Haydon IV.

"Veldt, is that you?" Vince asked in a rush, eyes riveted to the situation room's commo screen. They had spent part of the Sentinels campaign together, but Vince had not seen the Haydonite in years. Even so, save for the color of his forehead sensor, a certain warmth to his sendings, and definite swagger to his glide, Veidt was nearly identical to countless other "male" beings on Haydon IV.

A synthesized voice answered for Veidt. "Yes, Commander. It's good to see you again."

"And you, too," Vince said. "I only wish it could be under different circumstances."

Beneath the static of the signal, Veidt's expression conveyed a wry smile. "You discern my very thoughts."

For hours the Ark Angel had been hailing the Awareness without response. The flagship of the Karbarran flotilla had been attempting the same and had finally issued the reconfigured artifact world with an ultimatum: Release all Karbarran prisoners by 1200 standard hours or suffer the consequences of a full assault. Cabell had appealed to the Karbarran legation to rethink their position, but the threat stood as delivered.

"You know about the ultimatum?" Vince asked.

"I have only just learned about it, yes. But you must convince the Karbarrans to rescind."

Cabell leaned toward the camera. "You leave them no alternative, Veidt. "

"I will endeavor to explain," the Haydonite said after a moment. "Be advised, however, that Vowad and I have undertaken communication with you at great personal risk. Should my visage abruptly vanish from the screen, you will understand why."

"Then save your thoughts," Vince said. "We think we've got a fair idea of what's been going on." Quickly, he summarized the scenario Louie and Cabell had arrived at. Veidt listened in silence. "We just need to learn where these ships you're manufacturing are headed," Vince concluded. "You have our word we won't interfere with the Awareness in any way. We only want permission to tag along, if that's possible. Veidt shook his head. "That is quite impossible, Commander. Your ship is inadequate for such a journey."

Vince glowered at the screen. "Try to understand our side of it, Veidt. This may be our only shot at locating the SDF-3. Think about Rick and Lisa and the crew. They're our friends, Veidt, and they're in trouble."

Veidt's features betrayed little. "I might also ask that you appraise things from our vantage, Commander. To comprehend after thousands of years that your sole purpose had been to function as caretakers for a race who, if they did not create you, then surely redirected you from your evolutionary process." The Haydonite paused. "And now, even in the face of this realization, to be helpless."

Vince turned away from the camera to glance at Cabell and Penn. "Were sorry, Veidt. But all this doesn't mean we can stand by and do nothing."

The Haydonite's shoulders seemed to shrug under his robe. "The Awareness must be persuaded to release all offworlders-immediately."

Awareness is no longer responding to us, Commander," Veidt sent with a touch of impatience. "We are responding to it. In any case, all offworlders will be released in due course. In the meantime, everyone is being well cared for. Exadore and the Sterlings are in good health: I have even seen to it that they have been equipped with a monitoring device linked to the Awareness itself."

Louie put a hand down on the communication console's interrupt stud and turned his back to the optical pickup. "Ask him if he can put us on-line with Exedore."

Vince studied Louie's face for a moment, then reactivated the system's audio feed. "Listen, Veidt, can't you at least allow us to get in touch with Exedore and Max, just so we know they're all right?"

Veidt computed the feasibility. "I can so arrange," he said, at last.

His back still turned to the screen, Louie smiled. "That may be all we need," he whispered.

Exedore, Max, Miriya, and the Sterling daughters listener attentively while Cabell brought them up to date on current events and the speculative history of Haydon IV. The five of them were huddled around the monitor, hands gripping on another's arms in contained excitement.

"Yes, yes, it all fits precisely with the facts," Exedore was telling the old sage. "The experiment shaped by Haydon has finally succeeded. The Invid have exited the continuum and opened a breach to a new realm. And the SDF-3 is trapped there." He shook his head in astonishment. "This could account for all the irregularities, Cabell-this tightening of the cosmic fabric."

"We think so," Cabell said. "The creation of that breach as you call it, has possibly doomed the world we know to ultimate collapse. It is as though Haydon's 'success' has rendered all evolving life in this Quadrant obsolete. Only one was needed to achieve that passage." The Tiresian shook his head. "For the rest of us, a pat on the back and an accelerated heat death."

"Jeez, you guys," Dana cut in, "try not to sound so cheerful about it, huh."

"Tough break, but they're right about it, Lieutenant," Louie said, his goggled, smiling face on-screen all at once. "Louie!" Dana yelled.

"Hey, Dana. Told you you'd see me again before long." Dana recalled the send-off party Louie's gang had thrown for the 15th aboard Wolff's ship. The memory stirred thought of Jonathan and their last night together. "So where'd you spend the occupation, mechie?" she asked.

Louie grinned. "No time to go into that now, Dana." He looked to Exedore. "We need to know whether the device Veidt gave you can access the Awareness."

The Zentraedi scratched at his thatch of barn-red hair. "Only in the most limited of capacities."

"But you can get in?" Louie pressed.

"Yes, but I don't see-"

"We're going to find out where Haydon's headed by hook or by crook, Exedore. The Karbarrans, God help them, are finalizing their plans. But their attack is going to provide us with the diversion we need."

"Well, we're all set down here," Dana enthused. Catching sight of Max and Miriya's concern, Vince said, "Now look, Dana, don't try anything rash. Veidt's already told us you'll be released."

"Sorry, Commander," Dana countered with a dismissive wave at the screen, "but we're all out of trust down here. Besides, there's no harm in creating a second diversionary front while you're running your op, is there? Who knows, we might even be able to place a coupla monkey wrenches of our own. "

"Dana," Max and Louie said at the same time. Max motioned for Nichols to continue.

"There's one more thing we're gonna try first, Dana," Louie told her. "We've got someone on board who might be able to tell us where the Regis went."

Dana flashed him a dubious look. "Yeah? What'd you do, Louie, bring an Invid along for the ride?"

Louie stroked his cleft chin. "Never was any fooling you, Lieutenant."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Come let me show you our common bond, it's the reason that we live.

Flower, let me hold you.

We depend upon the Power that you give.

We should protect the seed, or we could all fade away; Flower of Life, Flower of Life, Flower . . .

Tiresian chant of the Cult of the Three-in-One

For once even Vard was concerned. are you certain of what you're accomplishing here? he would ask at least once a day. And Zor could answer only with that maniacal grin that had become his ever-present look on Optera: Of course he was certain. And wasn't this exactly what their elders in Tiresia expected of them: to return from these technovoyages with something extraordinary? And if that wasn't enough, who were these Invid that they should have these incredible flowers to themselves? That they alone should possess the ability to reshape the world about them? No, this was for all worlds, Zor had suggested to Vard for the galaxy in all its wondrous variety!

Mad, in those times; possessed, though he would not recognize it in himself...

But to achieve it, thus, Vard would point out. To achieve it by deceiving the hive queen of the race-this Regis. To lay claim to royalty by pretending to be the long-expected one returned, the Bringer of the Flower. And to resort to seducing the secrets from this naive being . . .