Robert was poised on his toes, gently shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he regained his sense of reality. Noticing Herb’s curious expression, he changed his movement into a little dance.

“Come on, Herb. Get with the beat.”

“Don’t give me that,” said Herb. “You were as frightened as I was. What happened back there?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle. There was nothing at the top of that elevator. Nothing. I think we lodged ourselves among the unused seed VNMs. I suppose they didn’t see the need to set them growing, once they realized the Necropolis had gone so badly wrong. There were no senses up there for me to use: they hadn’t been grown. I had to make an educated guess and jump us off in the direction of one of those ships hovering above the planet. I remembered the pattern they formed and sent us off on the path through the lattice that would most likely intersect with one of them. I got it right, but only just. We’re right at the far edge of the formation.”

Robert turned around and began to dance his way along the narrow walkway on which they stood, suspended over what Herb now recognized to be a spaceship’s outer hull. It looked surprisingly old-fashioned: struts and bracing were virtually unknown in these days of shell construction. Herb had a sudden sense of the otherness of the Enemy Domain. He wondered under which alien sun these ships had replicated. He imagined their juvenile forms, floating in bright blackness, the cold glare of some star picking out the stretching and sliding as the braces and struts tensed and tore themselves apart while the ships reproduced by binary fission.

“Look up.”

Herb obeyed as row upon row of silent coffins suddenly appeared above him.

“I just found the ship’s monitoring system for those things. I’ve linked them into our personalities as a visual feed. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

Herb licked his lips. “Are they occupied?” he whispered.

Robert paused a moment. “Let me see…No. They’re empty. I wonder. Do you think that they were supposed to be filled from that planet beneath us? Let me think about that. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? Hmm.”

He lapsed into silence again and strode off along the walkway, his dancing forgotten now that his nerves were calmed. Yet again, Herb found himself following Robert Johnston into the unknown.

They were standing on the bridge of the spaceship. At least, that’s what Robert called it. Herb didn’t understand the concept. There was a wraparound window that made for ideal star-viewing, three comfortable padded chairs, equipped with straps for some reason, and between the chairs and the window, blocking the best standing position to take in the view, a bewildering array of controls.

“I don’t understand. What is this place for?”

Robert grinned. “For flying the spaceship, of course.”

Herb frowned. He ran his finger over the green, webbed material covering one of the chairs, then began to fiddle with one of the straps.

“I still don’t understand. How will these help fly the spaceship?”

Robert was watching him intently, saying nothing; it made Herb nervous. He was being tested, he was sure of it.

Robert spoke. “You don’t understand, do you? Don’t you remember your history lessons? I imagine that the Enemy Domain is thinking ahead. It’s thinking about what would happen if someone was forced to land this ship with the AIs knocked out. All this is intended for human pilots.”

“Human pilots? Is that possible?”

Again Robert said nothing, and Herb cursed himself internally. Of course it was possible. Isn’t that how all ships used to be controlled? Then another question occurred to him.

“Human pilots? Robert, I thought the Enemy Domain was an alien construction.”

Robert gave one of his enigmatic smiles. “It depends what you mean by alien.”

Herb sat down in one of the chairs. It was extremely comfortable, fitting itself to his body perfectly, except for where the straps dug into his back. He wriggled them aside and relaxed.

“You let me think the Enemy Domain was of alien origin. It’s not, is it? The Necropolis was built for humans, before it went wrong. These ships have spaces on them for human beings. Robert, what’s going on?”

Robert Johnston sat down on the next chair along.

“What’s going on? Let me put it this way.” Robert lifted his feet, resting them on the bank of controls before him, and raised a finger.

“Imagine it like this,” he said. “Look at the first finger of your right hand. Got it? Okay, now look at the first two joints of your finger. Imagine that’s the volume of Earth-controlled worlds. It’s about the right shape, too; we seemed to have expanded more sideways than up or down. Now hold out your hand, just like this, see?”

Robert moved his palm downward, in front of his body. His pale pink nails were reflected in the window just before him. Slowly, Herb copied him.

“Look at the first two joints of your index finger: the Earth volume. According to that scale, the planet we are currently floating above would be at the bottom of your right earlobe. You’ve got to get the idea of the scale of things, yeah? Now contrast the size of the tip of your finger with the size of your head and your neck. Run a line down the front of your body, down past your waist, down your legs, right to the tips of your little toes, and then all the way back up to your right shoulder. Think how big all that is compared to those tiny little joints on your right hand. That volume equates to the Enemy Domain.”

Herb looked down at his feet, seeming so far away on the floor. He looked back to his hand in disbelief.

Robert continued softly. “Now, we’re at your right earlobe. Above a planet that lies at the edge of the wave of expansion of the Enemy Domain. Think about your right arm, down to the elbow, along to the hand, think of the palm of your hand, your knuckles, down that first finger of your right hand, all of that space. All of it now occupied by the Enemy Domain’s machines. Think of all those tiny metallic bodies creeping over each other, feeding, and reproducing in their own image. Hungry metal tendrils reaching forward, jumping from world to world. Searching for something. And there, at the end of that first finger, that tiny little finger joint, Earth, all those people, everyone you ever knew, all happily unaware of that smothering, suffocating tide of machinery bearing down upon them. Imagine a single ant scuttling over the sand on a beach and looking up to see the tsunami bearing down upon it.”

A moment’s silence, and then Robert spoke at his softest.

“Don’t think alien or human. Just think destruction. That’s what we’re talking about.”

Herb stared at his fingernail for a moment; stared at the veins that stood up on the back of his hand, at the whorls that ridged the top of his knuckles, the pale blond hairs that marched up the back of his forearm. He suddenly shuddered.

“You’re shaking.” Robert was speaking at his normal volume again. “All this,” he gestured through the window at the few sparse ships floating here at the edge of the vast fleet, “all these ships, that elevator, the Necropolis, the bumblebee robots that buzz around on the planet, the spiders that creep through the tunnels, all of this system in which our consciousnesses find themselves…”

He paused for breath, easing back into the huge green chair. “All of this system is the tip of the tiniest hair that grows from the most insignificant pore on the very edge of your right earlobe. So, don’t think human or alien, Herb. Just think about being afraid. Being very afraid.”

When Herb spoke there was just the faintest tremor in his voice.

“I am frightened,” he said. “I’ve never denied it. Come on, who wouldn’t be?” He smiled sardonically. “An agent of the EA has entered my spaceship via a secret passageway, has captured me, fired my consciousness across the galaxy to the edge of an Enemy Domain, and then that same agent tells me that I am going to help fight something so big I can barely imagine it. It could be said that, yes, I’m slightly nervous.”