Bill kept lights focused on it, from the lander and from the Memphis itself. George got out of the way.

It was coming faster than he would have expected.

He glanced back at the web he’d erected, reassuring himself it was secure.

He’d been listening to the commlink and knew it had been several minutes since any intelligible sound had been heard from inside the box.

Abruptly Hutch’s voice crackled through the silence: “George, are you ready?”

“Standing by,” he said. “It’s coming in now. About thirty seconds away.”

“Okay. We’ll be there as quickly as we can.”

He watched it approach, watched it rotate slowly around its central axis. The lander was circling and coming back, and Hutch and Nick were off in the distance, near the Wendy, but they were coming, riding one of those rocket belts. They were big enough now that he could see them. See their lights anyhow.

“Ten seconds,” said Bill. “Clear the entry.”

Damned idiot machine. Did it think George was going to stand there and play tag with the box? He listened to the gentle hum of his suit’s power and became conscious of the air flow whispering across his face.

“Five.”

There was a trace of pride in the AI’s precision. At exactly the specified moment the box drifted through the door. It bumped the upper edge of the frame, sailed through the bay, and plunged into the net. Not quite dead center, but close enough.

George ran toward it. “Bill,” he said, “shut the door and give us some life support.”

He told Tor he was inside the Memphis, he was safe now, air in a minute, while he began disentangling the washroom from the net. Tor didn’t answer.

When he got it clear, he pushed it to the deck. “Okay, Bill,” he said. “Gravity up.”

Getting gravity back was not a calibrated business. For technological reasons that he’d heard but never understood, it tended to be on or off, at whatever setting. Bill gave him the standard quarter gee.

The cargo door closed and air returned slowly into the bay. George knelt over the box, waiting for the lights on the status board to go green.

TOR CLAIMED LATER that he never really lost consciousness. If not, he was on the edge during the last few minutes. But it seemed to him that he had in fact been awake the whole time, that he knew enough about what was going on to visualize everything as it occurred, that he wasn’t responding because he was, sensibly enough, conserving his air. He maintained that he understood when his box floated through the cargo door, and was gratified when it hit George’s net. Gratified. That was the way he described it.

In any case, at the end, he was aware of George’s anxious face looking down at him, of George rubbing his wrists trying to restore circulation, of George literally hugging him and telling him he was going to be fine, he’d made it, and he’d appreciate it if Tor wouldn’t scare him like that again.

“WE’VE GOT HIM,” George told her. “He’s okay.”

Hutch and Nick were coming in through the main airlock. “Tor,” she said, “it’s good to have you back.”

“I don’t think he’s quite able to talk yet, Hutch. But he heard you. He’s nodding. Saying thanks.”

“Good show, George,” she said.

After George had gotten Tor clear of the launch bay, Bill decompressed and opened up again. They got rid of the washroom, and Hutch used the go-pack to pick up Alyx.

They left the lander parked about a kilometer away from the ship. They would watch it a while before bringing it back on board. Just in case.

Reluctantly, Hutch did not go after Kurt’s body. He had been awash in whatever had disassembled the Wendy, and the risk involved in bringing him back on board simply did not justify recovery.

Another one lost.

THE DISINTEGRATION AND transformation of the Wendy took something more than two days. They watched from more than twenty thousand kilometers, surely a safe range.

The ship melted away, floated off in iron globules and large wispy clouds. What remained when it was over was a new stealth satellite, the diamond core hard and polished in the starlight, dish antennas rotating slowly as if testing their capabilities. A few hours after it appeared, the stealth satellite was not to be seen, which is to say, its stealth capability had cut in. Shortly thereafter it moved into the orbit occupied by the unit Hutch and Tor had disassembled. Its antennas were aimed back toward Paradise. What remained of the ship finally exploded as the fusion engines let go.

And the thing that had jumped the Wendy dropped out of sight.

“What it looks like,” Hutch told George, “is that each set of six satellites comes with a monitor. The monitor maintains the system. If one of the satellites goes down, the monitor is capable of manufacturing a replacement.”

George thought about it and shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. What if there’s no ship around to make a replacement from?”

“No. It just happened that there were ships in the area this time. We got unlucky. The monitor would be programmed to find an iron asteroid. Probably anything that is metal-rich.”

Tor was okay after a couple of days’ rest. They fed him hot soup and kept him quiet.

Hutch communicated with Outpost and the Academy, reporting the loss of the Wendy Jay and its captain. She described her theory about a monitor.

The lander seemed to be uninfected and, shortly after the Wendy exploded, they inspected it and brought it back on board. Even then Hutch directed Bill to keep an eye on it, and was ready at first sight of anything untoward to heave it out the door.

Meantime they debated the big question: Why were stealths orbiting Icepack?

Nobody had any ideas.

“Are you sure,” rumbled George, “that the outbound signal is aimed at that galaxy, what’s-its-name?”

“GCY-7514,” said Bill. “Yes, there really is no question about it.”

George threw up his hands. “It’s crazy. They can’t be sending a signal way out there.”

Hutch wondered if whoever was behind the network might have advanced FTL technology. An intergalactic drive. She asked Bill whether the signal was strong enough to make it out to 7514.

“It would be exceedingly weak,” he said.

And exceedingly old. Surely, if they had that kind of technology, they’d be sending a hypercomm signal of some sort. Something that would get there on this side of a million years.

“Bill,” said Hutch, “would you recheck the target, please?”

George sat shaking his head. It couldn’t be. They were missing something.

Bill’s virtual image materialized in the chair beside George. Looking at George. Looking embarrassed. “Something’s happened,” he said.

“What’s that?” grumped George.

“The signal is no longer directed where it was.”

“You mean it’s not aimed at the galaxy any longer?”

“That’s correct.”

George turned to Hutch, as if she would have an explanation. “Where is it aimed, Bill?” she asked.

“It appears to be tracking the two gas giants. In this system. Apparently it was directed at them the whole time.”

George frowned. He was still hurting from the fight with the angels, and Kurt’s death, on top of everything else, had hit him hard. He’d confided to Hutch that he was tired, that he felt responsible for so many people dying, and that getting all the way out here and then finding nothing was just too much to bear. The enthusiasm that had carried him through the early weeks had finally vanished.