“What is that?”

“They’re not dead.”

“My God, Kile, stay away from it.”

“Get upstairs! “

The lighting changed abruptly, as if a curtain had passed in front of a lamp. And something that looked like an oversized dragonfly appeared from behind the ship and glided out of the picture.

Kile screamed for Yoshi to look out, and then Kim heard more shouts, but nothing from Yoshi. Someone heavy—Tripley, it must have been—ran across the floor and pounded up the staircase. There were more cries, some now coming from Kane, and she heard a sickening crunch, the sound of flesh impacting and bones breaking.

Yoshi.

Now the heavy steps came back downstairs. Kim understood that Yoshi had fallen or been pushed off the stairway, that Tripley was trying to do something for her, and then he was swearing he would kill the bastards—those were his words—and he hurried back up the stairs and out of the laboratory.

The Valiant remained untouched on the table until the record stopped.

A new image appeared: Markis Kane in a black, loose-fitting shirt. The date advanced to August 11,575. More than two years later.

Lines had appeared in his face, and for several seconds he merely stared out of the screen. Kim thought he appeared unsure of himself. Not at all the Kane she’d come to know.

“I have no way of knowing,” he said, “who will hear this account of the Hunter, and of the destruction of Severin Village. We are all culpable, everyone who was on the mission. For the sake of the others, and perhaps for my own reputation, I would have preferred these events continue as they have, one unremarked, the other unexplained. But I must assume that the listener knows enough that the rest should be made clear.

“Let me admit at the outset that the primary responsibility for the disaster that overtook Severin Village on April 3, 573, is mine. I consented against my better judgment to the seizure of the celestial vessel. I suggested and executed the tactic for bringing it aboard ship, an act which resulted directly in the death of Emily Brandywine. I further failed to dissuade Kile Tripley in his intention to bring the vessel to Greenway, even though I knew there was a potential for precisely the kind of disaster that occurred. That I have not stepped forward and acknowledged these facts has been dishonorable. I hope, before the truth emerges, as it surely must, I will be safely dead, beyond the grip of public opprobrium, or of any but divine justice.

“There was no indication of life aboard the celestial at any time after we had taken it onboard. We assumed that Kile’s attack on the vessel had killed whatever had been inside. We had mixed emotions about that. It was not the way one wants first contact to occur. But they had, after all, taken Emily’s life.

“Kile’s intention was to keep the discovery secret for a time, and to bring in a few discreet researchers. He planned to use one of several laboratories available to the Foundation, for the purpose of dissecting the artifact and retrieving its secrets. But the problem was that the laboratories were all located in heavily populated areas.

“We did not know how the vessel was powered. But we thought it wise to assume it used the only fuel we knew of that made entry into transdimensional space possible: antimatter. That presented us with a unique problem. If they did indeed use antimatter, there was always the possibility of a breach in the containment system. Should that happen, should its power reach so low a level that it could not maintain the magnetic bottle, the vessel would explode, and take us and a sizable portion of the neighborhood with it. Consequently we needed a lab in a remote location.

“I should add parenthetically that we felt we had time, since every test we had run indicated that power was flowing through the ship, and that maintenance systems did seem to be stable. Of course, as the event showed, much of this was guesswork.

“To reduce the danger, Kile decided that the Foundation would sponsor a lab on Shimmer, where an accident could harm no one except volunteer technicians. A hypercomm message was sent before we left Alnitak, directing that work be started immediately. Nevertheless, it would be several months before the facility could be ready.

“In my own defense, I should point out that I argued throughout that the artifact be left in orbit around one of the Jovians in the Helian system, where there could be no danger to anyone. But it was too much to ask of Kile, who was anxious to get to a place where they would have the capability to inspect the find. At the very least, he maintained, the bodies of the crew had to be examined as quickly as possible.

“Kile elected to take it to his summer home in Severin. It was a compromise choice, with less potential for disaster than there would have been in, say, Terminal City or Marathon. At the time, it seemed not unreasonable.

“I believed the chances for a catastrophe were slight, though what evidence I based that on I cannot now conceive. We thought, given a few days, we could determine the nature of the fuel and the state of any containment system. Unfortunately, we were not given a few days.

“We had no difficulty getting the artifact past the customs people. Yoshi walked it through, describing it as a toy for a nephew. She gave it a modest value, and was told it fell within her exemption.

“We took the artifact to Kile’s home, where it turned out that the equipment he had available for analysis was considerably less than he’d implied. We had to go out looking for almost everything we needed. The result was that we wasted the little time we had. For example, we needed a full day simply to locate a Vanover sensor, which would allow us to look into the interior.

“I’m not altogether certain of some specifics regarding the events of April 3, because I was upstairs when I first realized there was a problem. Kile and Yoshi were down in the lab and they started screaming. I ran for the stairs and saw Yoshi coming up. She was scared out of her wits.

“Then I saw that an entity very much like a living cloud had apparently emerged from the ship. It immediately attacked Yoshi. When Kile and I went to her rescue, it released her, and she fell off the staircase, struck her head, and must have been dead when Kile reached her. Meanwhile, the entity came after me. It delivered an electrical shock, which left me temporarily stunned. As I went down, I thought I saw a small vehicle, a tiny lander if you will, glide past me in the creature’s wake. It was hard to be certain, because I was a bit shaken up. Furthermore I’d sliced an arm as I fell and had got blood in my eyes. In any event, something blew a hole in a window, and the cloud and the lander, if that’s indeed what it was, disappeared into the night.

“At about the same time Kile must have seen he could do nothing for Yoshi. He stormed upstairs, and asked me where the intruders had gone.

“I pointed to the window, and without another word he raced after them. I tried to dissuade him, and hurried outside just in time to see him lifting off the pad. I called after him not to go, but he persisted.

“I raised him on his commlink. He told me he was tracking the celestials, that he had them on his screen, and that he intended to make sure of them this time. Then he told me he would call me when it was over, and he signed off. I made repeated efforts to contact him after that, but he didn’t respond.

“I went back to see if I could do anything for Yoshi. But she was dead. A few minutes later, I heard the blast that blew the side out of Mount Hope. The house shook and the lights dimmed and went out. When I went outside, debris was still raining down on the town.

“Fires burned everywhere. There were screams in the wreckage.