Killeen grimaced, and his Arthur Aspect piped in:

I cannot but note that the message contains both a future subjunctive and a future perfect construction—remarkably difficult forms even in relaxed circumstances.

Arthur was a scientist and lightning calculator from the late Arcology Era. He was precise, prissy, and invaluable. Killeen pushed away both Aspects. He watched as Toby’s squad came coasting into a vast bowl lined with scintillant panels. Killeen recognized this from Aspect-pictures he had seen years before. An old-style trap using crossfiring lasers.

“Get out!” he sent on a tightbeam channel.

Toby heard him, veered left. Acceleration slammed perspectives into a squashed blur.

The screen gave quick glimpses of convoluted conduits, incised slabs of pale orange, tangles of wiring. Bolts snarled around them, ricocheting off curved metallic surfaces. Burnt-gold electrical overloads arced ahead of them along the side shafts.

“Mines,” Killeen sent. “Seal up.”

Though the fast-moving picture kept plunging down a wide tunnel, Killeen could hear the faint snick of Toby’s suit closing all possible current-carrying leaks. Voltages lurked all around them, lying in wait for humans who could scarcely take a simultaneous unshielded Volt and Amp, so delicate were their interiors.

Killeen checked with several squads who had entered the tower. They were meeting the same clumsy defenses. The twisting warrens of dense circuitry made it hard to figure the location of the mainmind. No Family had ever entered such a place. Experience could not guide them.

Stranger still, there was obvious damage to some passages. A fight had raged here before. The cuts looked fresh, too. His Ling Aspect said:

Perhaps this explains the rudimentary resistance we are meeting.

“How?”

If someone else has taken this station, they might have left it with token forces.

“Some rival mechs?” Killeen knew mech cities sometimes fought one another, competition run amok. Maybe the Mantis’s reception committee had been knocked off?

Perhaps. We may discover more at the mainmind.

Killeen watched the teams move on a 3D projection of the tower. Shibo entered fresh information as the teams reported in. Quickly, blocks of detail filled in the large blank spaces in the tower projection.

Killeen thought he saw a pattern in the snaking tunnels. The station’s many corridors and shafts did not center on the disk plain. Instead, they necked toward a point high above that, in the northern end of the tower.

He sent orders to the teams to vector that way. Then he turned his attention back to Toby’s scanner feed. It provided the most complete views, which the Argo’s systems immediately integrated into the station 3D map.

Toby was plunging down a hexagonal shaft. Besen flew ahead of him. They both moved adroitly in the zero gravity, maneuvering with experience born of daily drill on the Argo.

Ahead was another squad, which had reached the nexus first. They were attaching inputs to a huge blank cube.

—Mainmind,—came a comm signal.

“Looks like.”

—Wiring so can blow it, Cap’n.—

“Yeasay.”

Toby landed on the bulwark cube, boots thumping. Killeen watched leads attached, holes bored with quick darting laser punches.

Mechs appeared nearby, obvious and awkward. They died in bursts of ruby phosphorescence. Killeen frowned. The mechs seemed unusually slow and stupid. Had they simply gotten unused to human combatants?

A motion caught his eye. Indices showed a higher radia tion count…. even a slow defense can draw a swift, unthinking attacker into a trap…

“Exit now!” he sent to Toby. Relayed, the order provoked a hurried finish to the mining.

“Leave the extra charges!” Killeen shouted.

—But they’re primed,—Toby sent.—I gotta—

“Even better. Go!”

Something appeared at the far end of the shaft. It was big and moved quickly but Killeen’s warning had gotten the squads clear. The approaching shape did not have a good angle to shoot.

The two squads raced away into an exit tunnel.

“Blow those extra charges,” Killeen ordered.

—But they’re just floating,—Toby answered.—Won’t hurt the mainmind.—

“Do it!”

The answering percussive punch came rattling through the electromagnetic spectrum. A strange, descending wail cut across the noise. Killeen frowned. The dwindling shriek was like the cry of a dying animal. Mechs never gave such a sound.

The big thing must have been caught as it passed the mainmind. Killeen guessed that it was the controlling influence here. Only luck had let the squads escape. But there were still plenty of dangers.

Toby’s relayed images showed them racing into a tunnel that led straight away from the mainmind.

“No,” Killeen sent. “Take one that has turns. They’ll have ambushes on the fast routes. And the turns will block the blast.”

In eerie stretched silence he watched the seconds tick on. The screen darted and swerved and lurched as Toby made maximum speed in the zero gravity. The boy could windmill his arms and get his feet into position for a land-and-repel with perfect timing. The screen whirled as Toby tumbled in the closed, narrow spaces. This swept twirling spotlights over the mad rush of mechtech that came streaming up from darkness and vanished just as quickly.

At last they came to a long tunnel that showed starlight in a distant circle. Toby ram-accelerated toward it. The screen suddenly jerked.

“The mainmind’s dead,” Killeen said. “That was an electromag-tag burst from it as it blew.”

—Great!—Besen burst in.

Killeen tensed. Toby tumbled soundlessly in the yawning blackness. Ghostly arms reached out nearby, blue and flickering, searching for something to scorch. Further, Killeen knew, there were other presences called Inductances and Resistors and Capacities which played mysterious but perhaps fatal roles in these electrodynamic corridors. He had learned to use them, but their deep essences eluded the practical programs he had studied.

Toby veered. Three squads followed him in a quick dash for the opening.

Then the screen showed only swirling stars and the harsh yellow-white of the disk plain.

Toby spun and looked behind. From the tower opening came a crumpled form in a shiny suit, drifting with the still-dancing radiance that had almost reached the main party.

Killeen watched as the view approached the coasting body. He recognized the backpatch of Waugh, a woman originally of the Family Knight, now a Bishop. The form did not move.

It spun in stately revolution, as solemn and uncaring as a planet in its gyre. Toby approached carefully. Within the helmet was shadow.

Then Killeen noticed a small dark patch on Waugh’s boot, a flaw perhaps struck by a near miss during the attack. It was a small hole, hardly deep enough to break the suit’s vacuum seal. But it had allowed a voltage in and was rimmed by a burnished halo. Killeen saw that Waugh’s helmet was slightly swollen and distended. He understood then why they could not see into it. Carbon black masked the faceplate. He was grateful for this small fact, because then he could not see inside, where Waugh’s head had exploded.

TEN

The memory came back to him as he ate the celebratory dinner. Waugh, a good crewwoman he had not known well. She had paid the price for his decisions, and he would never know if somehow the cost could have been less.

Fortunately, her genetic material and eggs were preserved by Argo’s surgery. We must take measures to ensure that all Family can contribute to future generations’ genetic diversity. I advise—