“I guess those sheets spread over the surface are solar arrays,” she said.

Cornelius nodded. “Manufactured from asteroid materials.”

“I don’t see any connections between the bubbles.”

Malenfant shrugged, distracted. “Maybe the squid tunnel through the asteroid. Inside the bubbles you’d be radiation-shielded by the water; that wouldn’t apply on the surface… How have they tethered those new bubbles to the regolith? I don’t see the netting we used on the Nautilus.”

“They don’t have any metals,” Cornelius said. “Because we didn’t show them how to extract metals. Only organic products, including plastics. I guess they just found a way to tether without metal cables and pitons.”

They watched the asteroid turn, slowly, a barbecue potato on an invisible spit, bringing more of the bubble habitats into view.

She said, “There are so many”

“Yes.” Cornelius sounded awed. “To have covered so much of the asteroid in a few months… and we don’t know how far they’ve spread through the interior. They must be spreading exponentially.”

“Breeding,” Malenfant said.

“Obviously,” Cornelius snapped impatiently. “But the point is they must be keeping most of each spawned batch alive. Remember what Dan Ystebo told us about the first generation: the four smart cephalopods among the dozens of dumb ones?”

“So,” Emma said, “if most of the squid now are being kept alive—”

“They must be mostly smart.” Cornelius looked frightened.

“No wonder they need to keep building new habitats,” Malenfant said.

“But it isn’t enough,” Cornelius said. “Pretty soon they’re going to run out of asteroid.”

“Then what?”

“They are stranded on this rock in the sky. I guess they’ll turn on each other. There will be wars.”

“How long?” Malenfant said. “How long have we got before they eat up the asteroid?”

Cornelius shrugged. “Months at most.”

Malenfant grunted. “Then the hell with it. We can stay here for twenty days. If we haven’t got what we wanted and got out of here by then, we’re going to be dead anyhow.”

In a softscreen, Emma saw, something swam.

It was small, sleek, compact. It slid easily back and forth, its arms stretched before it, its carapace pulsing with languid colours. It had a cruel grace that frightened Emma. Its hide shimmered with patterns, complex, obviously information-packed.

“You’re talking to them,” Emma said to Cornelius.

“We’re trying.”

Malenfant growled. “We’re going way beyond the squid sign-language translator software Dan gave us. We need Dan himself. But he’s two hundred light-seconds away. And nobody is talking to us anyhow.”

Cornelius looked harassed. “Some of them think we’re from Earth. Some don’t think Earth even exists. Some think we’re here to trick them somehow.”

“You think the squid tried to kill us?”

“No,” Malenfant snapped. “If they’re smart enough to see us coming, to fire water bombs at us, they are smart enough to have destroyed us if they wanted to. They intended to disable us.”

“And they succeeded. But why?”

“Because they want something from us.” Malenfant grinned. “Why else? And that’s our angle. If we have something they want, we can trade.”

Cornelius snapped, “I can’t believe you’re seriously suggesting we negotiate.”

Malenfant, drifting in the air, spread his hands. “We’re trying to save our mission. We’re trying to save our lives. What can we do but talk?”

Emma said, “Have you figured out what it is they want?”

“That,” Cornelius said, “is the bad news.”

“Earth,” Reid Malenfant said.

“They know Earth, if it exists, is huge. Giant oceans, lots of room to breed. They want to be shown the way there. They want at least some of them to be released there, to breed, to build.”

Cornelius said tightly, “We ought to scrape those slugs off the face of this rock. They’re in our way.”

“They aren’t slugs,” Emma said evenly. “We put them here. And besides, we didn’t come here to fight a war.”

“We can’t give them Earth. They breed like an explosion. They already chewed their way through this asteroid, starting from nothing. They’d fill the world’s oceans in a decade. And they are smart, and getting smarter.”

Malenfant rubbed his eyes, looking tired. “We may not be able to stop them for long anyhow. Their eyes are better than ours, remember? It won’t be hard for them to develop astronomy. And they saw us coming; whatever we tell them, maybe they can track back and figure out where we came from.” He looked at Emma. “What a mess. I’m starting to think we should have stuck to robots.” He was kneading his temple, evidently thinking hard

Emma had to smile. Here they were in a disabled ship, approaching an asteroid occupied by a hostile force — and Reid Malenfant was still looking for the angle.

Malenfant snapped his fingers. “Okay. We stall them. Cornelius, I take it these guys aren’t going anywhere without metal-working technology. They already know how to make rocket fuel. With metal they can achieve electronics, computers maybe. Spaceflight.”

“So—”

“So we trade them metal-extraction technology. Trade them that for an unhindered landing and surface operations.”

Cornelius shook his head, the muscles of his neck standing out. “Malenfant, if you give them metal you set them loose.”

“We deal with that later. If you have a better alternative let’s hear it.”

The moment stretched.

Then Cornelius turned to his softscreen. “I’ll see what form of words I can come up with.”

Emma caught Malenfant’s arm. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

He grinned. “When did I ever? But we’re still in business, aren’t we?”

Whistling, he pulled himself down the fireman’s pole to the meatware deck.

Mary Alpher

›Thank you for visiting my home page. I want to use this space to record my dissent at the national gung-ho mood right now- I am dismayed at the sending of troops to the near-Earth asteroid Cruithne.

›I’ve been writing and editing science fiction most of my working lifen and reading the stuff a lot longer than that-And this is not turning out to be the future I dreamed about.

›I wouldn’t call myself a Utopian. Nevertheless I always imagined, I think, on some level, that the future was going to be a better place than the present.

›In particular! space. I thought we might leave our guns and hatred and de-structiveness down in the murky depths of Earth, where they belong. Neil Armstrong was a civilian when he landed on the Moon, lile came in peace for all humankind. Remember that?

›I believed it. I believed — still believe — that we are, if not perfectible, at least improvable as a species. And that basic worldview, I think, informs much sf. Maybe all that was naive. Nevertheless I never dreamed that only our second expedition beyond the Earth-noon system should be a gunboat.

›0f course it’s not going to work. Anybody who thinks they can divert the course of the river of time with a few gunshots is much more naive than I ever was.

›Thanks for your attention. Purchasing details and a sample chapter of my latest noveln Black Hole Love-, are available ‹here›

Emma Stoney:

“That was the thruster burn to null out our approach and cross-range velocities. Now we’re free-falling in on gyro lock. GRS is active and feeding to the computer, the radar altimeter is online and slaved to the guidance. Confirmed green board. All that jargon means things are good, people. Should hit the ground at walking speed, no need to worry at all…”

To the accompaniment of Malenfant’s competent, comforting commentary, with the grudging permission of the squid factions, O ‘Neill was on its final approach.

Cruithne rock slid past the windows of the zero G deck.