It was a sophisticated beast, the vehicle that had traveled so far to bring them gifts from distant Earth, and it had blazed a daring path to reach them here in only five years. Swooping three times past the sun, it had gained terrific speed, until now it streaked outward into the black depths below and beyond the solar-system plain.

During each whipping solar passage it had ridden the blazing sunlight on giant gossamer sails. Then, when distance had dimmed the fires behind it, the great sheets folded away and the machine’s own flame burst forth. Bits of antimatter met in a tiny combustion chamber, releasing energy that was an early collimated light, propelling the craft faster still.

Only three passes were needed to bring its orbit into the plane of Halley’s— but much faster than the fleeing comet. Technology made it possible, and the hot flux of reawakened public opinion demanded speed. To the popular press of a new generation, this was an errand of mercy that would brook no delay.

To others it was something else altogether— a down payment on a bribe to persuade the strange, time-cast, and infected colonists to keep to their agreement, an agreement to stay away.

Did some hope, in this way, to assuage their guilt over the burning of the Edmund Halley? Or to slake their shame over the years of silence and neglect?

Saul watched the screens, along with selected representatives of all the clans, in the cavernous Central Control Room. For once the chamber was actually full, though he would have wagered that the architects had never imagined such a crowd… glowering figures wearing tattoos and clothing woven of Halleyform lichen fiber, bearing scars from illnesses never seen on Earth and muttering to one another in strange dialects.

Even Joao Quiverian was here, frowning with arms folded in a corner, with three bodyguards and a recently cloned weasel watching ferally from his shoulder.

Representatives of all the clans were here to observe while Virginia Herbert guided the colonists’ mechanical envoy into a matching orbit with the still-decelerating Care Package.

“They’ve sure made advances. That torch is fierce,” Andy Carroll said from the ballistics console. “But it’s still not slowing down fast enough to suit me.”

“I’ll match it,” Virginia muttered drowsily. “Don’t fret, Andy. We’ve made some advances of our own.”

A black cloth covered her eyes as she lay back on the webbing by the waldo controls. The neural-tap cable snaked out from the back of her skull, and her fingers gently touched a set of knurled knobs.

Saul noticed Quiverian’s mouth purse in disapproval. To have Percells in charge of the recovery operation was obviously hard for the man to bear. But he was here on sufferance, and could hardly complain.

By rights Carl could have kept the man away, in retaliation for the mutiny he had led down south. Even though Quiverian had disclaimed any responsibility for the renegades who had attacked the equatorial launchers—had denounced them publicly—he and his Arcists were hardly trusted. As long as they were in Central they were watched constantly by a tem of Keoki Anuenue’s neural and adopted Hawaiians.

Still, with the negotiating power the contents of the Care Package were about to give him, Carl could afford to be generous.

No one was even certain what the thing contained. Saul pondered. I could list a thousand items I’d give a finger or a bicuspid for, or more. And there are hundreds of other lists, each as long as mine.

Alas, there probably isn’t even an ounce of good pipe tobacco aboard.

He smiled in faint irony. I’llsettle for the cell-differentiation tuner in that cloning system they developed on Earth ten years ago.

It had started logically enough, his program with monkeys and gibbons and subtly altered strains of wheat… searching for new elements to add to a growing synergism— a meshing of Earthborn and Halleyform life to take the place of perpetual war. But in recent months it had become something more complicated. There were aspects, now, that he was certain Carl Osborn would not approve, and that Virginia probably would never understand.

That was why he had moved his laboratory down into a secret chamber under a quadrant of Halley far from rockets and clans, and prevented even Virginia’s bodyguard mechs from following him there. It had contributed to the growing breach between them, but he had paid that price.

It had been months since he last connected with her the way they had grown accustomed, meshing their emotions— and even an occasional, machine-amplified thought— while holding each other under the faint glow of JonVon’s status lamps. He had not dared For she would surely catch traces… suspect the liberties he had taken, and their tragic results.

A squirming, horrible little thing in a glass incubator… gills and fur and swishing tail… a face—faintly human— contorted in agony and then, mercifully still at last…

“It’s a beauty,” Carl Osborn whispered. And Saul blinked, shaking himself back to the present. It was a memory he preferred not to dwell on, anyway. He looked up to see the faery craft now clearly depicted on the screens.

Spires as wispy as spider’s silk spread like the winter-bared stems of a flower—the spinnerets from which great sails had billowed during the cargo vessel’s three swooping sun-passes—arrayed round a globe that shimmered with impossible mirror brightness.

“I’m scanning that container capsule in the center,” Lani Nguyen said from the instrumentation console. “I’d wondered how they dealt with dust impacts at those speeds. It looks like their shield isn’t even material at all! It’s some sort of gravitic field, or I’m my own maiden aunt.”

“No!” Carroll muttered, and shared a glance with Carl. “A real force field? No wonder they were able to build it so light.”

Otis Sergeov, leader of the Ubermensch party of Percells, hung from the edge of a holistank to the left, with several of his tattooed comrades. “The purple-zippered thingy’s still too meppeed light. What good will two tons of Earth-shit do anyway?”

Jeffers laughed. “What would I do for a few pounds of the right machine dies, or a mile or two of warm superconducting wire? Hell, for those I’d even be willing to paint my skin blue and gibber NewTalk like an Uber, Otis.”

Sergeov’s eyes glinted, and Saul knew that being a fellow Percell would not save Jeffers, if the legless ex-Russian ever had the other man’s fate in his hands.

“Bezmoodiy govnocheest!” he muttered in his native tongue. Jeffers only laughed.

Susan Ikeda, their Earthcomm chief, reported on the latest word over the long-range radio.

“Earth Control says their four-hour estimate is on target. Probe is in the proper deceleration track.”

“Can’t be,” Carroll muttered.

“But they say…”

“Their info is four hours old! Speed o’ light, I tell you. Something’s—”

“Can it, Andy,” Carl said. For a time there was quiet in the room. Only the soft hum of the air fans and faint clicking each time somebody threw a switch. Then Lani spoke.

“It’s turning its torch, Virginia.”

“Check. About time. I’m extending the tether.”

Virginia betrayed no sign of tension, but those in the room hung in suspense. The overhead displays showed the colonists’ two-piece envoy craft, the parts connected by a taut cable less than a finger’s width in thickness and more than fifty kilometers long. Rockets flared, and the connected body began to whirl, like a slow, great bola in the starry blackness.

“Section B’s propellant now depleted,” Andy Carroll announced. “Section A is ready to receive transferred momentum in three hundred ten seconds.”

Lani turned and explained to those observing, “Our probe was a two-stage rocket. Part B provided the initial boost. Part A has saved its fuel for the final match with the Care Package.”