"We need to do something!"

"I know. But I don't know what."

The habitat had finished reshaping itself. It was much bigger now and shaped like a shaggy can. Now something started to bud away from one end. A large sphere, black as everything else, but…

Michael spotted a little dot of red on that sphere. The dot grew to become a letter of Lasa writing. Then a whole word emerged.

"The habitat's reappearing!" he shouted.

"I'll be damned," whispered Herat. "It's squirting itself out."

Over the next several minutes, the original Lasa habitat emerged from the end of the black cylinder. The black liquid was draining off it in an orderly way. The habitat seemed unchanged by the strange transformation that had taken place.

"It's given birth," said Herat. He began to laugh. "And what a bunch of nervous fathers we were!"

"Keep the lasers ready," said Crisler. "Marines, check out the Lasa sphere."

"Sir." The squad jetted away, the mesobot following them. Michael watched them approach the red-lettered sphere from its perspective. His head was spinning. Just what had happened here?

The marines found the airlock, now reverted back to its original condition. They stuck some periscopes through it, then one pushed the mesobot in. Michael's view suddenly went black, then came back as the little bot entered the interhull.

Except it was an interhull no longer. The interior of the black Lasa sphere was almost empty— just a smooth collection of arcing reflections from the metal walls. There were only two objects in here now.

One was a large black sphere of roiling ferrofluid, maybe eight meters across. It drifted near the far end of the sphere.

The other object was harder to figure out. It glowed with faery light, even seeming to have wings, or fans of auroral light around it. It too was a sphere, only this sphere was made of crystal or glass.

Inside it Rue Cassels moved in a slow but purposeful dance. Her space suit's helmet was off and he could clearly see the huge grin on her face.

"She's alive," he said.

"Sir, look! The black, it's peeling off the cylinder now!"

Michael brought his view back from the mesobot. Spotlights had the new cylinder outlined and in their glow he could clearly see the black liquid draining away from a bright metal hull. As it crept away from the end caps of the cylinder it revealed glass and the spotlights refracted into some kind of open interior.

"It's a habitat," murmured Herat. "It's built us a habitat."

"Yes, Professor."

It was Rue. Her voice sounded dreamy, jubilant. "It built us a new home, according to my specs. And it's showed me the origin of Jentry's Envy and its course. This habitat is for humans, Professor. It's ours, as part of the Lasa's crew. Jentry's Envy was a gift all along, you see. All we had to do was unwrap it."

Michael turned on his jets and headed for the Lasa habitat. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Herat jetting toward the new one— curiosity getting the better of him, as always. Crisler was shouting for them to remain where they were, but Michael just wanted to make sure Rue was all right and tell her how happy he was that she had succeeded at finding her dream and desperate necessity.

"Decant Max," shouted Rue. "Bring 'em all out! We're going to have a damned big party! And then Jentry's Envy is open for business!"

Behind Michael, Crisler and his men didn't move. For once, the admiral gave no orders.

RUE AWOKE TO the sound of birdsong.

It was something she had heard in recordings, or synthesized, many times. The first time she'd heard live birds was on Treya; the second time, on Chandaka.

Then this must be the planet Oculus, at Colossus. She opened her eyes.

A billowing canopy of pale blue silk hung over her bed, extravagant as something from history. The bed was a four-poster, strictly for use under gravity. Her head was embraced by a luxuriously soft pillow.

She stretched and yawned. Other than the birds, there was no sound; no fans, or pumps, or footsteps overhead. No wonder she had slept so well, despite the heat in this room.

Sitting up, Rue spotted her clothes neatly folded on a nearby chair. This was her first awakening at Colossus and yet she was not surrounded by doctors, nor was she shivering in a cold-sleep vat waiting to be tended to. She didn't feel a million years old like she had every other time she emerged from cold sleep— in fact, she felt great.

Her feet touched down in deep warm pile carpet. This room was at least seven meters on a side and almost that tall. One entire wall was taken up with high, leaded-glass windows; there were French doors there as well. Rue dressed without looking at her clothes; her eyes were fixed on the vista outside.

She needed to go to the bathroom, but there was no way she was doing that before she got past those windows. She turned the handle on the doors and they opened to let in a beautifully cool breeze. The air smelled of ice and bare rock, like the penumbral mountains at Treya. Eagerly Rue stepped out onto a wide balcony.

A quick glance told her she was halfway up the side of a gigantic building perched on an equally huge cliff. Then she turned her attention to what lay beyond.

The sky at Treya had been alive with clouds. This sky was alive in a completely different way. The whole firmament glowed with sunset mauve and peach, but these colors didn't radiate from the horizon the way sunset had on Chandaka. Rather, at the zenith hung a round golden disk, its edges perfectly sharp. She could look straight at it without difficulty. Near this disk the sky was a lovely peach color, becoming rose, purple, dark blue and finally black at the horizon.

A brilliant aurora danced throughout this beautiful sky. Wavering curtains of light at the horizon, the auroral bands became coiling serpents when directly overhead. The combination of firmament and aurora laid fairy light over a seascape that stretched away to incredible distance before her.

That golden disk must be the brown dwarf Colossus, she knew, but it was nothing at all like Erythrion. Neither was this place like Treya, or Chandaka, or any world she had seen in movies or sims.

A city brimmed over the cliff her building stood upon. Its walls and minarets gleamed like an hallucination in the sinuous light. The cliff itself was pearly white and was backed by ramparts of equally white mountains. It stretched off past the horizons to either side.

Rue had never seen a real ocean, but she knew that the one before her must be unique. Mountains reared out of it, white with emerald and turquoise highlights: icebergs. Smaller chunks of ice floated in the dark water, their sides licked by white foam. The air that blew back her hair was well below freezing— a perfect temperature, in fact. She leaned against the balustrade and closed her eyes, just breathing it in for a while.

Someone cleared their throat.

Rue turned, to find a tall man in the severe black uniform of the Cycler Compact standing at the French doors. "Captain Cassels," he said. "Welcome to Lux and the planet Oculus. I am glad to find you awake. I am Griffin, the abbot of this monastery."

"How long have we been here?" she asked. "Are the others awake?"

"You are the first, since you are the captain of the Jentry's Envy," he said with a bow. "You must tell us the order in which to awake the others."

"How long?" she asked again.

"A week since we recovered your shuttle," he said. "There was no indication of urgency in your messages, so we took the liberty of awaking you in a traditional way, more civilized than one finds in cycler travel lately, I'd wager."