“I can see that,” MacIntyre murmured, then paused, struck by a new thought. “Wait a minute. You say Anu’s assumed you’re no longer operational—”

“Incorrect, Commander,” Dahak interrupted. “I stated that I have speculated to that effect.”

“All right, so it’s speculative. But if he has, haven’t you blown it? You couldn’t have grabbed my Beagle if you were inoperative, could you?”

“I could not,” Dahak conceded, “yet he cannot be certain that I did so.”

“What? Well then, what the hell does he think happened?”

“It was my intention to convince him that your vessel was lost due to an onboard malfunction.”

“Lost?” MacIntyre jerked up in his couch. “What d’you mean, ‘lost’?”

“Commander,” Dahak said almost apologetically, “it was necessary. If Fleet Captain Anu determines that Dahak is indeed functional, he may take additional protective measures. The destruction of his enclave’s present defenses by brute force would kill seventy percent of all Terran humans; if he becomes sufficiently alarmed to strengthen them still further the situation may well become utterly impossible of resolution.”

“I didn’t ask why you did it!” MacIntyre spat. “I asked what you meant by ‘lost,” goddamn it!”

Dahak did not answer directly. Instead, MacIntyre suddenly heard another voice—his voice, speaking in the clipped, emotionless tones every ex-test pilot seems to drop into when disaster strikes.

“… ayday. Mayday. Heinlein Base, this is Papa-Mike One-X-Ray. I have an explosion in number three fuel cell. Negative function primary flight computers. I am tumbling. Negative response attitude control. I say again. Negative response attitude control.”

“Heinlein copies, One-X-Ray,” a voice crackled back. He recognized that soft Southern accent, he thought in a queerly detached way. Sandy Tillotson—Lieutenant Colonel Sandra Tillotson, that was. “We have you on scope.”

“Then you see what I see, Sandy,” his own voice said calmly. “I make it roughly ten minutes to impact.”

There was a brief pause, then Tillotson’s voice came back, as flat and calm as “he” was.

“Affirmative, Colin.”

“I’m gonna take a chance and go for crash ignition,” his voice said. “She’s tumbling like a mother, but if I can catch her at the right attitude—”

“Understood, Colin. Luck.”

“Thanks. Coming up on ignition—now.“ There was another brief pause, and then he heard “himself” sigh. “No joy, Sandy. Caught it wrong. Tell Sean I—”

And then there was only silence.

MacIntyre swallowed. He had just heard himself die, and the experience had not been pleasant. Nor was the realization of how completely Dahak had covered its tracks. As far as any living human knew, Lieutenant Commander Colin MacIntyre no longer existed, for no one would wonder what had become of him once they got to the crash site. Somehow he never doubted there would be a crash site, but given the nature of the “crash” he’d just listened to, it would consist of very, very tiny bits and pieces.

“You bastard,“ he said softly.

“It was necessary,” Dahak replied unflinchingly. “If you had completed your flight with proof of Dahak’s existence, would not your superiors have mounted an immediate expedition to explore your find?” MacIntyre gritted his teeth and refused to answer.

“What would you have had me do, Commander? Fleet Captain Anu could not enter this vessel using the parasites in which he escaped to Earth, but could I know positively that any Terra-born humans sent to explore Dahak’s interior had not been suborned by him? Recall that my own core programming would compel me to consider that any vessel that deliberately sought entry but did not respond with proper Fleet authorization codes was under mutinous control. Should I have allowed a situation in which I must fire on every ship of any type that came near? One that would also require me to destroy every enclave your people have established on the lunar surface? You must realize as well as I that if I had acted in any other way, Fleet Captain Anu would not merely suspect but know that Dahak remains operational. Knowing that, must I not assume that any effort to enter Dahak—or, indeed, any further activity on the lunar surface of any type whatever—might be or fall under his direct control?”

MacIntyre knew Dahak was a machine, but he recognized genuine desperation in the mellow voice and, despite himself, felt an unwilling sympathy for the huge ship’s dilemma.

He glared down at his clenched fists, bitter anger fighting a wash of sympathetic horror. Yes, Dahak was a machine, but it was a self-aware machine, and MacIntyre’s human soul cringed as he imagined its endless solitary confinement. For fifty-one millennia, the stupendous ship had orbited Earth, powerful enough to wipe the planet from the face of the universe yet forever unable to carry out its orders, caught between conflicting directives it could not resolve. Just thinking of such a purgatory was enough to ice his blood, but understanding didn’t change his own fate. Dahak had “killed” him. He could never go home again, and that awareness filled him with rage.

The computer was silent, as if allowing him time to come to grips with the knowledge that he had joined its eternal exile, and he clenched his fists still tighter. His nails cut his palms, and he accepted the pain as an external focus, using it to clear his head as he fought his emotions back under control.

“All right,” he grated finally. “So what happens now? Why couldn’t you just’ve killed me clean?”

“Commander,” Dahak said softly, “without cause to assume your intent was hostile, I could not destroy your vessel without violating Alpha Priority core programming. But even if I could have, I would not have done so, for I have received hypercom transmissions from unmanned surveillance stations along the traditional Achuultani incursion routes. A new incursion has been detected, and a Fleet alert has been transmitted.”

MacIntyre’s face went white as a far more terrible horror suddenly dwarfed the shock and fury of hearing himself “die.”

“Yet I have monitored no response, Commander,” the computer said even more softly. “Fleet Central is silent. No defensive measures have been initiated.”

“No,” MacIntyre breathed.

“Yes, Commander. And that has activated yet another Alpha Priority command. Dahak is a Fleet unit, aware of a threat to the existence of the Imperium, and I must respond to it … but I can not respond until the mutiny is suppressed. It is a situation that cannot be resolved by Comp Cent, yet it must be resolved. Which is why I need you.”

“What can I do?” MacIntyre whispered hoarsely.

“It is quite simple, Commander MacIntyre. Under Fleet Regulation Five-Three-Three, Subsection Nine-One, Article Ten, acting command of any Fleet unit devolves upon the senior surviving crewman. Under Fleet Regulation Three-Seven, Subsection One-Three, any descendant of any core crewman assigned to a vessel for a given deployment becomes a crew member for the duration of that deployment, and Senior Fleet Captain Druaga’s deployment has not been terminated by orders from Fleet Central.”

MacIntyre gurgled a horrified denial, but Dahak continued mercilessly.

“You, Commander, are directly descended from loyal members of Senior Fleet Captain Druaga’s core crew. You are on board Dahak. By definition, therefore, you become the senior member of Dahak’s crew, and thus—”

MacIntyre’s gurgling noises took on a note of dreadful supplication.

“—command devolves upon you.”

He argued, of course.

His sense of betrayal vanished, for it seemed somehow petty to worry about his own fate in the face of catastrophe on such a cosmic scale. Yet the whole idea was … well, it was preposterous, even if that was a word he’d been over-using of late. He was absolutely, totally, beyond a shadow of a doubt, utterly unqualified for the job, and he told Dahak so.