Coldness filled his gut. "What do you mean?"

She looked at him sadly. "What the dark templar have been able to do is admirable. It is important and worthy, and they record the memories as best they can. But the way they do it is different. Preservers are organic beings; they are not technology, which is what the dark templar utilize."

"I'm not following you."

"Do you remember how the memories unfolded when I shared them with you?"

He nodded. "I don't think I'll ever forget. It was like I was the person whose memories you were sharing. It was as if it was happening to me right at that moment."

"They lived, then," she said softly. "Through you. Through me. Through all preservers, when they delve into the waters of the memories we carry. Those who have gone before us do not cease to exist. We don't just remember them—we preserve them."

He nodded, still not seeing why this was so—

His eyes widened as understanding struck him. "Oh God... Zamara.. .you won't be preserved, will you?"

She shook her head. "No, Jacob. The memories I hold that the dead have experienced—all preservers have those memories. So they will live on, which is a relief to me—provided I am truly not the last preserver. But I and my memories.. .the knowledge will be saved, and that is important. But...I will not be saved. When others activate this crystal, it will be as if they are reading a history. It will be facts, and figures, and information. But they will not know me. It will be as if I had never existed."

The entire time he had known Zamara, she had been pragmatic and courageous. She had let slip frustration and worry from time totime, and as his condition had worsened, her affection for him had come through. But he had never seen her so vulnerable, so grieved. And he understood completely.

She would be erased. The information, blunt and lifeless, would survive, but all that was Zamara—her stubbornness, her dry humor, her love for her people, the depth of compassion and understanding that only a preserver could have experienced—would be lost to her people.

Zamara would be no more.

This was taking a long time. Rosemary began to fidget after she suspected only an hour had passed. Into the second hour, she could stand it no longer and rose as quietly as possible. Their eyes closed, their bodies as motionless as they had been since they had started, the protoss took no notice of her. With silent steps Rosemary moved toward the door. It opened and she slipped out.

Selendis, Vartanil, Razturul, and Mohandar were there. As one, they turned toward her.

"Is it complete? Was it successful?"

"They're not done yet," Rosemary said. "I had to get out and move a bit. They said they thought it was going to work, though."

"Ah, that is good! And the professor? He will be all right?" asked Vartanil.

"We'll need to get him to a doctor right away. The tumors won't be aggravated anymore, but apparently they won't disappear either. I'm not sure how we're going to find a human doctor, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

"I would offer the skills of our people, but we do not understand your physiology," Selendis said. "Yet.. .perhaps we may be of some help regardless. The tumors were created by exposure to protoss mental energy, which—"

She froze. Her head whipped around. Before Rosemary could blink, Selendis had clenched her fists and summoned two brightly glowing blades from the bracers that encircled her wrists. Razturul emulated her, his blade glowing a bright green rather than a cool blue. Mohandar and Vartanil, too, had tensed, all four protoss staring down the corridor.

"What the hell's going on?" cried Rosemary. They had returned her weapons to her, and now she reached for the rifle she carried strapped to her back.

"The Alys'aril is under attack," said Selendis.

AS IF IT WERE FATE, ALTHOUGH ZERATUL WAS not certain he believed in such a fixed concept, the planet that Jacob had named "Pegasus" was located in the same sector as Ehlna. He realized that the dark templar had even visited the planet briefly in ages past, assessing and then dismissing it as of no real importance. Ah, if those earlier explorers of this world had only known.

Moving swiftly into orbit in the Void Seeker, Zeratul was glad of the closeness of his destination. Experienced as he was, he knew both the necessity of careful consideration and swift, decisive action. What burned inside him was neither. It was a strange sensation of urgency, almost anxiety, that sang in his blood now. Was it simply that finally, after too long spent brooding in isolation, he was again engaged in action? Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

Surely some of this sensation was due to the fact that Zamara had clung so tenaciously to life, of a sort; what she had to impart was vital indeed. Combined with what Zeratul already knew, it was logical to fear and to wish to do something, anything, quickly. But he wondered if it was more than that.

He took the ship through the atmosphere, his fingers moving lightly over the crystal that carried his mental instructions to the

vessel. A holographic image of Pegasus's surface appeared. It was exactly as it had appeared in Zamara and Jake's mind. There was the enormous rock formation, looking like a hooved beast with wings. And there—

The xel'naga temple. Zeratul forced himself to remain calm as he looked at it. He felt privileged in this moment, to behold such a thing. Luminous, glowing green, this was a wild temple, not a planned, structured, organized one such as the one on Shakuras. And yet Zeratul realized, temple indeed it was. Something marvelous and sacred and wonderful was to be found here.

He gazed at it a moment longer, drinking in the sight as he might absorb nutrients from the cosmos, and feeling as nourished by the act. Then he mentally directed the ship to move closer. He would land and approach on foot. Answers were here, he knew it in his bones. He would—

A bright white zigzag suddenly danced across the top of the temple, and with a thought Zeratul swerved away from it. What wasgoing on? From a distance he watched unblinking as the crack spread across the surface, which was glowing even brighter than it had before. Zeratul suddenly recalled Zamara sharing the story of her death with him and Jacob. She had crashed her vessel into such a temple—but one that was a dull green-brown, not this radiant, vibrant green. Zamara had known by the color that—

The energy creature. These temples were eggs—chrysalises. And Zeratul had arrived just in time to bear witness to the hatching of the being housed within. Perhaps that was what he had sensed—the urgency, the need to arrive soon before it was too late.

He watched, enraptured, as the surface of the temple-chrysalis seemed to bow, straining against the white zigzag crack. Suddenly, it shattered, and Zeratul stared at something that was as far beyond his ken as his people must have been to the humans upon first contact.

Beautiful. It was exquisitely, radiantly, gloriously beautiful. It burst through its shell as if propelled, this white, glowing entity of pure light and energy. It should have appeared hideous, displaying as it did tentacles, odd feathery wings, and enormous eyes that shone with a light so bright that Zeratul was forced to turn his head and close his own. But it was not hideous. It hovered over its discarded shell that even now was starting to dim and turn greenish brown, dancing in the air for a moment. Turning back to look at it through slitted eyes, Zeratul's spirit soared. It was powerful; it was potentially lethal, and if it turned its terrible, wonderful attention upon him and destroyed him now, he would die in happiness.