“My current greatness and position? My current position is prone, and my greatness is somewhat dimmed by the fact that I’m DEAD, YOU BITCH!”

She circled him, and for some reason no matter where she was standing, his viewpoint of her was exactly the same, unchanging, unvarying. “You’re not dead, my love. Not exactly.”

“Well then what, exactly, am I?!”

She was smiling. The charming facial expression would have chilled him to the bone, had he been able to feel any sort of sensation. “ Why should I tell you, dear one? After all, you’d have no reason to trust me, would you. That is what you told your own captain, is it not? That my kind are not to be trusted. Of course, you are an extension of my kind as well, so what does that say for you?”

“Artemis... if you can get me out of this... please...”

“Offering me prayers?”She laughed softly. “My, my, that does bring back a wave of nostalgia. And tell me, Marcus, honestly,”and she leaned in closer to him. He would have felt her warm breath upon him provided he could feel. He wanted to scream, to claw his way out of this ... this shell of whatever he was. But all he could do was lie there and continue to die, if that was indeed what was happening to him. “Tell me... aren’t you the least bit interested to know what it’s like to be prayed to? It’s quite a heady sensation, you know. It lifts you up, it makes you grateful to be alive... provided you are, indeed, alive... ”

“ What do you want?”he said coldly.

“To help you. That is all.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

“Simplest thing in the world, Marcus. All you need to do is give yourself over to us, freely and of your own will. It’s such a little thing, really. In fact, I can’t believe that you’ve delayed this long. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. You know that, don’t you?”

“Be one of you, you mean.”

“Yes, of course.”

“One of a group of creatures who assaulted our ship?”he said, and he wasn’t sure if his voice was getting louder, rising with anger, but he certainly felt angry enough to be causing that to happen. “Who put a hole through us? Who killed us? And why, exactly, should I join with a bunch of murdering bastards like you?”

Her face darkened. Literally darkened. He could see shadows creeping across it as her quiet fury grew. “Need I remind you, ‘my love,’ that you are not in the best position for displaying such an attitude. I am the one who is showing generosity at the moment. I could leave you to rot. Perhaps that’s what I’ll do. That would do you some good, I think. To just lie there, unmoving, trapped for all time. Caught in a stasis of your own making, that you’ve neither the puissance nor the knowledge to comprehend. Or better still... I could end you right now. I’m not certain which would be preferable. Leave you to your condemned uncertain state of helplessness, or... ”

“Leave him alone!”

The unexpected voice jolted both of them. McHenry didn’t turn—that wasn’t an option—but it was as if his mind’s eye shifted around, and suddenly he was looking at a boy. For a heartbeat he didn’t recognize him, and then he saw it was Moke. The captain’s adopted son was standing perhaps three feet away, still favoring his injured leg even though it was mostly healed by this point. He was trembling, although McHenry couldn’t immediately discern why, and he was pointing straight at Artemis, and shouting, “Get away from him! You ... you get away!”

“Moke!”McHenry’s desperate mind reached out. “Moke, can you hear me?! Tell them I’m alive! Tell them to do something! Tell them—”

Moke gave no sign that he had heard McHenry’s silent plea. Instead he was still looking at Artemis, and he was advancing on her, his pointing finger shaking without letup, and he cried out, “You’ve hurt him enough! You’ve hurt all of us enough! You just ... you leave him be! Leave all of us be!”

Her attention attracted by his shouts, Dr. Selar came over to him. Her face was impassive as always, but her voice carried with it a distinct sound of annoyance. “Moke, you should not be back here.”

“Make her go away!” Moke demanded, and he was continuing to point at Artemis.

Artemis appeared completely disconcerted. Seeing her that way was something of a first for McHenry. Until then, she had always been completely in control of whatever situation she had thrust herself into. By rights, if Moke was any sort of irritant to her, she should have been able to dispose of him with a wave of her hand. Instead she was rooted to the spot, staring at the dark-eyed boy and apparently unable to do a damned thing about him.

Selar’s frustration was mounting, although again she kept it in check. “Moke ...”

“You will be worshipped, Marcus,”Artemis said, sounding arch even though there was a tinge of desperation to her voice. “You will be worshipped with us... or cast adrift on the byways of space, to spend eternity as you are now. Those are your only choices.”

“Make her go away!” Moke repeated.

“To what ‘her’ are you referring?”

“Her! The god lady! She’s standing right there, in front of Mr. McHenry!”

And something within Selar, some fundamental intuition, told her that these were not simply the ravings of an annoying child. Her eyes narrowed, her interest obviously piqued, as slowly she said, “What god lady, Moke? Where? Describe her to me.”

“She’s gone.”

And indeed she was. McHenry felt at once a swell of depression, and yet a simultaneous glee in that Artemis had apparently been chased off by this ... this kid. “Great job, Moke!”

Moke did not respond. He was frowning at the air where Artemis had been, but he was not reacting in any way to the silent shouts coming from McHenry. Again and again, the frustrated navigator tried to get the boy’s attention, but there was nothing. Not the slightest acknowledgment that McHenry was there.

Here McHenry had felt a brief swell of hope, only to see it being crushed as Selar said, “What about Mr. McHenry. Do you see anything unusual about he himself? Or just the woman standing near him.”

“There is no woman,” Moke said. He was tilting his head slightly, like a dog trying to home in on the distant trill of a sonic whistle. It might have been that he was, on some level, perceiving McHenry’s cries for help, but was unable to discern exactly what they were. “And he’s just ... lying there. I think.”

“Yes. Yes, he is,” Selar said, looking with detachment at McHenry. “Moke ... we shall reexamine that leg to ascertain the quality of the healing, and then we will speak to the captain about what you think you saw.”

“I know I saw her,” said Moke, but he allowed himself to be led away, leaving Mark McHenry crying to the emptiness within himself.

II.

For Robin Lefler, it was as if her life had moved into slow motion.

First, it had taken seemingly forever for the Excaliburto be towed into drydock. Once there, the damage to the ship had been so comprehensive that additional crewmen and members of the engineering corps had been called in to aid in the rebuild. They’d been laid up for two weeks as it was, and the estimates for bringing the ship back up to working order were elongating.

Some of the ship’s personnel had been put on temporary transfer to the Trident,which was continuing to patrol the area. Apparently the Beings had not shown their collective glowing faces again in the immediate vicinity. That, however, did not automatically mean anything. Who knew what they were up to?

As for Robin, there was an emptiness within her that she simply could not shake. She spent most of her off-duty hours in the team room, staring vacantly into glasses of synthehol and making polite chitchat with those people who opted to swing by and extend their condolences. A small, quiet ceremony had been held for the mortal remains of a supposedly immortal woman, Morgan Primus Lefler. Her body had then been placed into a photon torpedo casing and fired into the vastness of space. By this point in time, Robin imagined, it had been caught in the gravity field of a star and likely been pulled in. So ... that was that.