“Then why is part B still attached?” one of Quiverian’s people asked.

Lani moved her two fists around each other, imitating a bola. “We’re using a whirling tether to steal even more momentum from the booster stage. By flinging part B back toward Halley, we give its share of energy to the other piece, our envoy.”

The onlookers barely listened. All eyes were on the center screen, where the Care Package began to turn. What had been a hot speck at the edge of the mirror dome brightened as it swung around to face the colonists’ spinning, two-piece messenger.

The image was too blurred. Their cameras aboard the swiftly rotating section A could not keep a steady bearing on the Earth ship. Processing the quick glimpses, JonVon could barely keep up a simulated point of view.

Saul wondered if he should be helping. He knew JonVon better than did anyone but Virginia herself. At least he could help the organic computer steady the image.

But he had not offered. Frankly, he was afraid Virginia might refuse, and so make explicit what had already become tacit them.

I miss her so. I’ve wronged her by staying away… by not confessing whatI1 have done …

So he had told himself over and over again. But that had not helped him find the courage to tell her of that little warped thing, growing in the clone tank in his secret lab, an attempt at a gift for her… but which had turned out, instead, to be a cruel reminder that God sets limits even on the powers given prophets, and enforces those boundaries severely.

I have been given, into my hands, the power to craft animals and even men… but am denied any way to give the woman I love the child she so desperately wants— a thing most men take for granted.

There had to be a reason. But as yet, the Infinite had not deigned to confide it to him.

“What the unholy clape is the thing tryin’ to do?” Saul heard Jeffers mutter.

“I think…” Carl Osborn glided a step forward, his voice suddenly stark. “I think it’s trying to hit our probe.”

“Impossible!” one of the Ortho moderates from Almondstone Cavern cried. “Why would it…”

But the fierce lance of the Earth craft’s drive suddenly flared in brilliance as its aspect came nearer the camera’s view. Andy Carroll cried out, “Maneuvering! Accelerating turn!” And then all was chaos.

“Tether separated!” Lani shouted.

“I’ve lost contact with section B!” another spacer called out.

“Keep back, all of you! Let them work. Give them room!” Carl cursed as he pushed people away from the controllers. Above their heads the screens were a blur of overloaded sensors.

Carl’s eyes met his as Saul edged past the shouting crowd, worming between the locked arms of Anuenue’s Hawaiians to approach the consoles. There was a silent flicker of emotion on Osborn’s face, then the spacer jerked his head. “All right,” he told Saul. “Help them. But if you get in their way, I’ll have your ass.”

Saul nodded and jumped forward to land lightly on the webbing beside Virginia. He pulled a neural helmet from the console and put it over well-rubbed spots on his skull.

The maelstrom was even worse down in the realm of images and data streams. Without years of practice under Virginia’s tutelage, he would have been instantly lost in the noise.

He sifted, looking only for the vision-processing centers. The really important stuff— vectors and mechanical status reports and course data— he did not even touch. Probably, he would do more harm than good if he tried to help there. But he could give Carl and the others a better view of what was happening. That much was within his ability, he figured.

He called up the section of JonVon’s memory that was reserved for his own work, reciting his secret access code.

Simon says, open Kelley.

The response actually seemed to take a few milliseconds, showing how busy the processor was.

Not now, he interrupted. Override all but basic life-function maintenance. Transfer other resources to processing incoming data into clear images and displaying them according to following formats.

He to envisioned the console before him, and “dived” in with his mind, tracing pathways and naming throbbing electronic blocks for JonVon to access. The data streams were almost total chaos to him, but working with JonVon seemed to open up possibilities. It gave him a glimpse— or so he often thought— at the wonders Virginia dealt in, as surrogates for the share of infinity that could never be hers.

Bad topic. Concentrate, you old fool!

The seared, tumbling cameras on probe A were still transmitting. If only he and JonVon could time and phase the tumble… access the probe and have it send views in quick pulses…

Yes! Clever machine. Mama taught you well.

Gradually, over the course of seconds, the blur resolved, flickered, steadied. He saw that the fiery torch of the Earth ship had been left behind, its flare no longer burning bright.

The breaking tether took it by surprise. He realized that the Earth vessel had not been able to track pieces flying in such suddenly altered directions. One of the sections was now streaking toward the Care Package at an oblique angle, even faster than before.

“It was only trying to defend itself!” someone cried out in the audience. “We must’ve activated a meteoroid defense!”

Another observer agreed. “We have to terminate this stupid interference. Let it come in as its designers planned. Anything we to will be like savages interfering in a complex machine they don’t understand. It’ll only bring disaster!”

There was a rumble of agreement, but Saul could sense, beyond current after current of settling data, the distinctive flavor of triumph from Virginia.

“Got you!” he heard her whisper, from not far away. Briefly, he turned his head and tried to look at her. But the pulsing neural tap and his natural vision system clashed, threatening him with a wave of vertigo. He closed his eyes again and concentrated on stabilizing the image for Carl.

“That’s it,” he heard the spacer mutter behind him. “Easy goes it, Andy, Virginia… try to lock gently at the base of those spinnerets. Then, Lani, help Virginia tap into the thing’s computer. Find out why it hasn’t initiated contact yet.”

“Aye, Carl,” Lani answered. Saul sensed the Earth vessel as a looming image of burnished gold and silver…a globe too mirror smooth to be any substance at all. In that surface a tiny shape wavered and grew, brightening now and then s the colonists’ robot puffed and flared to match velocities. Their little envoy was dwarfed against the curve of reflected starglow, a spindly crudity that dared to reach out and touch angelic beauty.

“Contact! We’re locked onto a spinneret,” Carroll announced.

“Pulsing a probe-to-probe communications code,” Lani reported. “We’ll see what it has to say.”

Then Virginia wailed.

“Those mad sons of bitches!”

It was as if a knife blade had come down and sliced off one of Saul’s hands. A tsunami of noise and pain tore at his moorings like a hurricane, yanking shreds of himself away into a storm of wild data. It felt like drowning, and he had no idea where up was, anymore. The hurt and chaos was overwhelming.

One thing happened then, that saved Saul’s mind. He sneezed.

The jerking explosion was so violent that the neural-tap helmet flew off his head and banged into the console. Suddenly the world was light and air and real noise— a tumult of human voices that seemed, in comparison, like the whispering of a morning breeze.

“What happened—”