The figure on the screen was bending low, touching the ground.

"He's digging," Drake said. "I have no idea why, but I'm sure that he does. Don't forget that his memories are derived from experiences on the surface of Graybill. He also has instincts, things going for him that we know nothing about. He recognizes a dangerous environment without being told. He knows about soundbugs and maybe he has a way to deal with them."

But a big part of Carp also derived from Drake Merlin. What would Drake do, himself, if he were outside and alone in the darkness?

Drake had information that Carp lacked. He knew that a soundbug, as big as any on Graybill, had its den a couple of kilometers to the west, across a narrow but deep hydrocarbon stream that ran to within thirty meters of the clearing.

Worse than that, the soundbug's nightly hunting path took it across the stream and through the clearing. They had picked this particular site to make sure that there would be an encounter.

Drake decided he could answer his own question: If he were outside as dark approached, he would climb back into the flier, lock the door, and wait through the long fourteen hours until dawn. Strangely, that seemed to be what Carp was doing. He had raised from his stooped position and moved back inside the aircar. But the door of the car remained open.

Now Drake could see the result of Carp's digging with his hands. The soil of the clearing was soft and crumbling for only the first few inches, then it turned to a hard tangle of roots and rocks.

"He's coming out again," Milton said softly.

Drake could see that for himself. Carp had emerged from the car. He ignored his digging and headed west, toward the stream. He seemed to be following faint marks on the ground. When he reached the stream he stood on its bank for a few seconds, looking first up and then downstream. Graybill's plant life had never developed woody trunks, and it was limited in height to a couple of feet. Carp had a clear view of both directions. Upstream, to the north, the ground sloped rapidly higher, and at its narrowest point the stream became a series of fast-moving rapids. Downstream the flood slowed and widened to a series of pools and shallows.

Carp stepped into midstream and waded north. The turbulent flow pushed against him, rising past his knees. At one point the stream became narrower and deeper, and he was in almost to his waist. After standing at that deepest point for a few moments, he turned and allowed the liquid flow to push him back downstream. He waded past his point of entry, on to where the flow was slower. There were calm, deep pools here, and the whole stream was much wider.

"But what is he doing?" Milton said.

Drake did not reply. Although the actions were mysterious, the Snark-human synthesis carried a sense of definite purpose in every movement.

Carp emerged from the stream and headed back to the flier. Once more he entered, and once more there was a long and frustrating wait. When he came out he carried a big bundle of soft material.

"He has been stripping the front cabin," Drake said quietly. "Those are seat materials and seat covers from the control chair. Are you sure there is no way that he can control the flier itself?"

"Quite sure." Milton displayed a confidence that Drake did not share. "He would need to change microchip settings from remote to manual, and that requires microtools and a knowledge of circuit designs. He has neither. But he has made sure that we cannot do anything with the flier, either. The cables he is carrying are the ones that control attitude and power levels. Do you think he merely seeks to hold the car as a place where he can hide?"

"No. He could do that without stripping the seats."

But Drake did not have a better suggestion. He watched as Carp, in near darkness now, retraced his steps toward the stream. The synthesis chose his site carefully, and on the stream bank formed a rough cylinder from the material that he was carrying. A long loop of cable went around it and back to his hands. Carp ran another noose on the softground, a full meter away from the cylinder in each direction, and held on to the free end of that line also. In the last glimmer of light he paid out both wire cables and stepped down into the water. Heading upstream, he came to the deepest point of the fast-running rapids. There he crouched down until only his head was visible.

"I think I get it," Drake said. "He saw the soundbug tracks, and he must have an idea what made them. He tried digging as a way to become invisible, but only the first few inches of ground are soft. So instead he's trying to use water to hide him."

"Water?"

"Sorry. I mean liquid hydrocarbons." Yet to Drake, in his present body, they seemed like water. What else should you call a clear, cold liquid that ran in pure streams, that evaporated from surface pools, that you could drink whenever you felt thirsty? He and Carp had a lot in common, even if Drake could not follow the other's thought processes. But it was the difference in thought patterns that provided the whole reason for Carp's existence.

That existence was now threatened. Milton grunted, and drew Drake's attention to another display. It was dark enough for the soundbug to waken from its daytime torpor, and it was on the move. It had emerged from its den and was making its way downhill. No sound signal accompanied the display, but the easy liquid movement across the uneven surface gave an impression of silent, ghostly progress.

That was confirmed when the soundbug came on its first prey of the night. The animal was a short, fat version of a polar Snark. It was scrabbling busily in the dirt, tail high in the air. The soundbug seized it before it realized it was in danger. The soundbug's leathery legs moved the victim to the front constricting rings and compression began. Blood spurted from the blind head end into the waiting maw of the soundbug, but the fat Snark did not die at once. It went on struggling, until the last wriggling tip of the tail was swallowed.

Drake did not look at Milton. He had no trouble imagining the Servitor's reaction, because he shared it. The original idea had sounded clean and simple: combine Snark ferocity with human cunning, to produce an organism more effective than either in combatting the Shiva. What had been left unmentioned was the question of testing the result.

In retrospect it was obvious: he and Milton would have to expose Carp to more and more dangerous situations, until one of them proved fatal. It was a particularly vicious form of torture, with no escape but death.

Drake made his decision. He might be willing to sacrifice himself to save the Galaxy from the Shiva, but he could not bear to create thinking beings merely in order to kill them. If Carp somehow survived through the night, that would be the end of the experiment. The Snark-human synthesis would live out his days in peace on Graybill. That sounded like a cruel enough punishment, forcing a sentient being to exist without others of its kind, but Drake could change that. It would be easy to develop a dozen copies of Carp in the off-world lab and transport them down for release on the surface of the planet.

More than likely, however, that would not be necessary. Every action of the soundbug seemed to emphasize its invulnerability. Nothing in the flier could penetrate that massive armor. Nothing could sever those tough limbs. Unless Drake flew to the distant site at once and rescued Carp, the chance of the synthesis being alive at dawn seemed close to zero.

Drake glanced from one screen to the other. The fat Snark had apparently been no more than an appetizer for the soundbug's main meal. It was on the move again, quartering the ground. Long antennas had unfurled above the armored back, to receive returning sound signals and interpret them as images.

The soundbug was closing on the stream. Very soon the pictures on the two display screens would merge and show the same scene. To Drake, who knew exactly where to look, Carp's head was easy to pick out. It was a lighter gray against the darker turbulent flow. The question was, would the soundbug recognize that feature of the stream as new and different, when natural rocks both upstream and downstream rose above the surface to interrupt the flow?

Very soon, they would know. Thirty meters more, and the soundbug was at the far bank. It had come to the narrowest point of the stream, and it hesitated there. The flier was over in the middle of the clearing. That would be new to the soundbug; but also new, and much closer, a fat cylinder lay on the other bank. As the soundbug paused, the cylinder twitched and jerked a couple of feet along the ground.

The soundbug crossed the stream and pounced in a single movement. As it grabbed the stuffed roll of seat covers, Carp stood upright in the middle of the stream. He pulled hard on the second wire, drawing a noose around the soundbug's legs and carapace.

The predator felt the pressure at once and reached its head down to grip the cable. The maw snapped shut on theclosed loop.

The wire had an outer insulating layer, but its core had been designed to resist both shear and stretching. It would not break, nor could it be cut through. While the soundbug had all its attention on the confining cable, Carp hauled backward and dragged the struggling creature over the edge of the bank into the fast-flowing stream. Weighed down by its dense carapace, the soundbug plunged to the streambed, where it stood with the current swirling about its broad back.

Drake expected that Carp would now try to pull the soundbug upstream, and would fail. The drag of the current in the other direction was too great. But instead, the Snark-human synthesis began to wade forward and allowed the cable to slacken. With the noose still tight around its legs and hindering its movements, the soundbug scrabbled and splashed and was swept farther downstream.

Carp followed. Still holding the wire, he came dangerously close to the predator. Except that it was no longer quite so dangerous. The antennas, thoroughly soaked, lay flat along the back. When Carp pushed at the edge of the carapace, adding his weight for a moment to the force of the current, and then rapidly jumped away, Drake realized that the soundbug was blind. Its sound-emitting equipment was below the surface, and its wet receiving equipment had no signal to receive.

But the animal could still kill anything within reach. The multiple legs were grasping madly in all directions, while the constricting rings in a reflex of violence were dilating and snapping tight every couple of seconds.

Then the upper part of the leathery legs was no longer visible. The dome of the carapace showed less high above the surface. The current had carried the soundbug downstream to one of the deep pools.

Once the thick shield of the exoskeleton had vanished completely beneath the surface, Carp tightened the cable to prevent the sunken body from moving to shallower parts. Then he stood and waited.

Waves on the surface revealed the desperate activity beneath. Four times the soundbug reared up, and the edge of the carapace became visible. Before the head could appear, Carp pulled the body off-balance. The fourth time, the soundbug flipped over onto its back before it disappeared again. There was one last burst of furious splashing, which gradually subsided. Finally not a ripple showed on the surface of the pool.

Carp waited for another minute or two, before finally wading to the bank and hauling himself out. He sat for a while, hunched over and with his legs in the stream. He was still holding the cable that had trapped the soundbug in its noose.

He looked exhausted. It was not surprising. He had fought a creature that Drake had judged invulnerable; he had fought in a place that was not of his own choosing; and he had fought without weapons.

That was when Drake realized the most astonishing thing of all. He and Milton had watched the fight with the aid of microwave and high-frequency imaging sensors. They could see everything. The soundbug, until the stream drowned its sense organs, had also seen perfectly; but Carp could have seen nothing. It was too dark.

He had fought the soundbug totally blind. And still he had won. It was tempting to ask, what were the limits of Carp's abilities as a fighter? How far could he be pushed, before he lost?

That was an immoral question. Drake had made his decision earlier, before the fight began. He would not change it now.

"It's over." He spoke to Milton, who was staring at the display where Carp had at last roused himself and was hauling the dead body of the soundbug onto the bank of the stream. "We wait for dawn. Then first thing in the morning, we go and get the flier."

"And Carp?"

"He goes free. Don't you think he's earned it?"

"More than earned it. But what about the Shiva?"

"We'll have to find another way." Drake took a last look at Carp, who now had the soundbug on its back and was prying open the lower shell casing. There was every sign that the soundbug's final meal would be as a course and not as a diner. What senses was Carp using to guide him? It could only be touch and smell. If it was anything else, some sense undreamed of by humans, Drake would never find out what it was. Just as he would never know what thoughtswere carried inside that long-haired skull.

"First thing in the morning," he repeated. "Then it's good-bye to Carp. Some means can never be justified, no matter what the ends."

It seemed natural that Drake would feel a form of bond with Carp, given the latter's genetic roots. What was more surprising was that Milton had similar feelings.

And yet, why not? Milton had done the genetic design work, plus the tricky splicing of human and Snark nucleotide coding. Milton had also grown Carp's body and downloaded into his brain a body of data that went beyond basic survival instincts. If Drake was the father and one of the Snarks was Carp's mother, then the Servitor could certainly claim to be the midwife.

Milton discussed none of this with Drake. The Servitor merely, and uncharacteristically, volunteered to go back to the clearing and collect the flier. Milton had confirmed that the car would no longer work by remote control, and suggested that it might be informative to learn what had been done to it.

"You can go, with two conditions." Drake was busy with his own work. He had vowed that Carp would have a group of his own kind as companions, as soon as possible. With Carp's template to work from, the task would be short and routine. The seed of the necessary lab had been dropped from orbit, the lab itself had been grown, and the lab's manufacturing line was already up and running.

"First," Drake continued, "you must handle everything with a heavy lift vehicle that stays continuously airborne. You hoist the flier with that, and you don't land anything at all on the surface-including you. Second, you make sure that Carp is nowhere around when you do it. Scan the flier, inside and out. If you see a sign of Carp, abandon the pickup operation at once and return to base."

"Which is precisely what I would have done, without instructions." The Servitor was touchy on only a few subjects, but reliability and sound judgment were two of them. Milton rolled away, leaving Drake to continue the development of the Carp duplicates. The original cells were in a continuous-flow nutrient bath and had a constant doubling time of 820 seconds. Growth from primal cell to full-sized organism, ready to step out onto the surface of Graybill, was a twelve-hour operation. There were fewer than four hours to go.

Drake divided his attention three ways while the growth process proceeded. His main focus was on the development of the Carp clones, but at the same time he was making plans to wrap up operations on Graybill. The orbiting mother craft had already received instructions. It was prepared to send Drake and Milton back to headquarters by S-wave link, as soon as they were uploaded to it.

Every few minutes Drake made a spot check of Milton's progress. Like the downed flier, the heavy-lift air vehicle had been grown on Graybill. Both craft would be left behind on the planet after Drake and Milton were uploaded to orbit.

The vehicles would not last long. With a planned decay time of less than a month, they would crumble to dust as intermolecular forces weakened.

The vehicles had also been built with an eye to rugged simplicity, rather than the ultimate in performance. That became clear during operations. The heavy-lift cargo car could hover, but it had a slight tendency to drift forward. Drake watched until, on the second sweep, the lifter's magnetic grapples secured the flier and hoisted it clear of the surface; then Drake returned to his other tasks. He had seen no signs of Carp on the ground, and he confirmed that Milton's observations had discovered no trace of him. The body of the soundbug had been opened and partly eaten. Without landing for a close inspection, it was hard to say how much of a hand Carp had had in that operation. Plenty of other native life-forms had probably been willing to enjoy breakfast at the soundbug's expense.

Drake checked the status of each biotank. By design, each copy of Carp had been given a slightly different development plan, and the results would all be a little different from each other. Drake spent the next hour monitoring and approving the progress of each variation.

Finally, he looked up and wondered what was delaying the heavy lifter. The vehicle had not been designed for speed, but the three-hundred-kilometer return trip should take no more than an hour. It must be slowed by the presence of the flier beneath it, and by the resistance of Graybill's dense atmosphere. There could be no major problem, otherwise the lifter's emergency beacon would have gone into operation.

Drake turned back to the biotank displays. Almost immediately he was interrupted. The heavy lift vehicle had finally arrived. It lowered the crippled aircar and released it onto the station pad, then made its own landing. Drake, watching at the window, saw the door of the heavy lifter open. Milton rolled out and headed for the aircar. The whisk-broom head turned toward the station. Drake waved and was answered by a nod of tangled wires.Drake confirmed that the orbiting ship had registered the arrival of the lifter and was ready to upload him and Milton.

He made a final check of the biotanks. Everything was proceeding on schedule. In another couple of hours, the biological growth operations within the tanks would be complete. Before the tanks opened, Drake and Milton would leave the planet. Each- copy of Carp would awaken in a biotank that was already dissolving around it. Each copy contained genetic information that would guide it to Carp's location, together with general data about Graybill. After Drake and Merlin had been transferred to headquarters, the mother vessel would remain high above the surface to monitor activity on the planet below for the indefinite future.

Drake heard a sound at the open door of the station. If Milton were finished already, there was no reason they should not leave at once. He knew that his own wish, to stay long enough to make sure that the copies were delivered safely from the tanks, was unnecessary and even dangerous. As soon as they could go, they must leave.

He stood up. As he did so, Carp entered. Drake had no sense of rapid movement, but suddenly he was back in his chair and Carp was leaning over him. A bristly forearm across his throat held him in position, barely allowing him to breathe.

Dark eyes stared into his. They were all pupil, round and black and infinitely deep. Drake saw in them his own folly and stupidity, level after level of it. He had been crazy to think he could play God, devising a superior warrior that would help to battle the Shiva. If he failed, he failed, and the attempt was simply futile. But success was far worse. Why would such a being wait to fight the Shiva, when humans were so close to hand? What madness had led Drake to believe that such a creature, once brought into existence, could be controlled and confined?

A hundred stories, as old as history, told what happened when a man summoned forces he could not master.

And, the final folly. Why had he allowed Milton to go alone to retrieve the flier? If anyone went alone, it should have been Drake himself. He did not know what Carp had done to persuade or trick Milton, or even if Milton still existed. It did not matter.

"I'm sorry." The pressure on his throat was great, and he could barely utter the words. Carp's hands changed their position on his neck and began to twist.

Drake knew that he was going to die, and it would not be of strangulation.

"I'm sorry," he whispered again, as the turning force increased. Sorry that I did this to you, bringing you into such a life, with such a purpose.

There was a different look in Carp's eyes. Surprise, that a being who was about to be killed did not resist? Surprise at Drake's words, which surely Carp did not understand? Or a puzzled wonderment, as Carp, like Drake, stared into another's eyes and recognized part of himself?

But another presence lay within Carp; a cold, remorseless agent that could admit neither reason nor mercy. Like the Snarks, Carp killed because he had no choice. He killed because he had to kill.

Sorry. No words could come from Drake's throat. His neck was wrenched around to a point where the cervical vertebrae were ready to splinter and snap. Sorry for what I did to you. And for what I must now do to you.

Drake had been foolish, but he had not been finally and terminally foolish. The orbiting spacecraft was monitoring everything that happened to him. Certain safeguards were still in position.

Drake felt the bones of his neck breaking. His last moment of darkened vision showed Carp's face, puzzled and alert.

Carp was aware that something new was happening, something beyond his control. Drake's final sensation was the onset of dissolution. The hands that gripped his throat, like Drake himself, seemed to weaken and crumble.

Drake's death provided the signal. Within him, within Carp's body, within the station, within all the biotanks, within the fliers, within every human presence or artifact on Graybill, the changes began. Molecular bonds lost their hold.

In the final moments, Carp released Drake's broken body and dropped it to the ground. He stood upright and motionless, feeling within himself the chaos of death. His final howl, the first sound that he had ever uttered, was a cry of anger. As he fell, he raged at the injustice of a universe that created a perfect fighting machine, then destroyed it before it had a chance to fulfill its destiny.

Chapter 21.

"Out there, we've walked quite friendly up to Death."

Drake hung in open space, six light-hours from the nearest star. Mel Bradley was at his side. While Drake would have been quite willing to receive a report and a display in the War Room, Mel insisted that he see this at firsthand.

Drake knew exactly where he was: out on the far side of the Galaxy, a safe distance from the spreading Silent Zone controlled (or destroyed) by the Shiva. The nearest star of the Zone was about sixty light-years away.

He was less sure of what he was. He had been transmitted here at superluminal speed, but not to any recognizable form of embodiment. He could maneuver in space and look in any direction, but he was unaware of the nature of his body.

"You'd have to ask Cass Leemu about that," Mel said. He seemed unconcerned, his attention elsewhere. "It's something she dreamed up."

"Are we made of plasma?" Drake turned his own attention inward and saw nothing.

"Not the usual sort. We're an assembly of Bose-Einstein Condensates. Cass says a BEC assembly has two great advantages. When we're done we'll be transmitted back without modification."

"What's the second advantage?"

Mel had no way to grin, but he radiated a wolfish sense of glee. "If something goes wrong, Cass assured me that dissolution from a BEC form is painless. Of course, she's never tried it. Makes you think of the old preachers, talking about the delights of heaven or the torments of hell after you die. I always wanted to ask them, Did you die? How do you know what happens if you haven't tried it for yourself?"

Drake was listening, but with only half an ear. He was looking outward again. Mel had said that something was ready to begin. Drake had very little idea as to what would happen next.

Partly that was Mel's doing. He was perfect as the person to develop new offensive weapons, but he was also as awkward and cross-minded and independent as ever, wanting to do things in his own way. And partly it was Drake's doing. He had been learning over the millennia that either you learned to delegate or you drowned in details. Worse than that, if you were involved in the process, you lost the power to be objective about the outcome. It was Drake's job to review what Mel had done, then either approve or veto the next step.

But it was hard. The urge to meddle was deep-rooted in humans.

The nearby star was a white FO type, like the blazing giant Canopus that had troubled Drake so many aeons ago. From this distance it showed a definite disk, slightly smaller and whiter than the Sun as seen from Earth. Drake could see a slight asymmetry. A straight line had been ruled across the left-hand limb. Beyond that line, but within the star's imagined circle, he could detect faint and scattered points of light. They were other stars.

"The caesura?"

Mel said, "You're looking at it. It's started." Even he seemed subdued. The star they were watching might seem small from this distance, but it was thirty million miles across.

And it was being eaten. The dividing line was moving steadily to the right. Drake stared hard at the remaining portion of the star. It seemed unaffected, untouched.

"Are you sure it's really happening, Mel? If the caesura is sending part of the star to another universe, why isn't the rest of it in turmoil? Unless somehow the gravitational effect is left behind. ..."