“You mean,” said Mahnmut, “they’re shifting into a different universe.”

“Yes.”

“The Ilium-Earth’s universe?” asked Mahnmut. His tone was hopeful. When the last Brane Hole that had connected the current-Mars and Ilium-Earth universes had collapsed weeks earlier, the moravecs had lost all communication with that ancient Earth of Troy and Agamemnon, but Hockenberry had been able to quantum teleport across the Calabi-Yau universe-membrane to the Queen Mab—and presumably to QT back, although no one knew where he’d gone when he’d teleported off the atomic spaceship. Mahnmut, who knew many of the Greeks and Trojans, had hopes of reconnecting to that universe once again.

“We don’t think so,” said Cho Li. “The reasons are as complicated as the multiple-membrane Calabi-Yau space math our assumptions are based on and are guided by what we learned from the Device you successfully activated on Mars eight months ago, but we think the tachyon beam’s phase-shifting is to one or more different universes, not that of the Ilium-Earth.”

Mahnmut spread his hands. “So what does all this have to do with our mission to Earth? I was supposed to pilot The Dark Lady in Earth’s seas or oceans, bringing Suma IV down for his mission—just as I was supposed to bring the late Ri Po to Olympus Mons last year. Does the blue-web stuff and the tachyon beams change that plan?”

There was another silence.

“The dangers and cautionary unknowns of an atmospheric penetration are proliferating,” said Suma IV.

“Could you translate that?” said Orphu of Io.

“Observe, please,” said the tall Ganymedan.

A holographic astronomical recording began running above the chart table. Mahnmut described the visuals to Orphu on tightbeam.

“Please note the date,” said Prime Integrator Asteague/Che.

“That’s more than eight months ago,” said Mahnmut.

“Yes,” said the Europan Integrator. “Shortly after we used the Brane Holes to transit to Mars-Ilium space. You notice that the resolution is relatively poor compared to today’s observations of the orbital rings. This is because we were observing from Phobos Base.”

The visuals showed an orbital object similar to the one that had broadcast the message to the Queen Mab, but not quite the same. This asteroid was visible as a slowly rotating rock, albeit one with glowing glass towers, domes, and structures. This orbital object was smaller—less than two kilometers in length. Suddenly another object came into the visual range of the recording—a three-kilometer-long metal construct rather like a long silver wand, clustered about with girders, storage tanks, and fuel cylinders, the column ending in a bulbous, shimmering sphere. Thrusters were firing but Mahnmut didn’t believe the thing was merely a spacecraft.

“What the hell is that?” asked Orphu after hearing Mahnmut’s description and reading the data.

“An orbital linear accelerator with a wormhole collector at its snout,” said Asteague/Che. “Notice that someone—or something—on the asteroid city has sent masered commands to this unmanned linear accelerator, overriding countless safety protocols, and is driving it right toward the asteroid.”

“Why?” asked Orphu.

No one answered. The five moravecs watched and Orphu listened as the long, girdered orbital machine continued accelerating until it crashed into the asteroid island. Asteague/Che slowed the recording. The glowing towers and domes exploded and flew apart in extreme slow motion, then the asteroid itself broke up as the wormhole accumulator at the end of the linear accelerator exploded with the force of countless hydrogen bombs. There came a final series of slow-motion, silent explosions as the fuel tanks, thrusters, and main drive engines of the linear accelerator ignited themseves.

“Now watch,” said Suma IV.

A second telescopic view, then a radar plot, joined the holographic explosions. Mahnmut tightbeamed a description of the blaze of thruster tails from throughout the plane of the equatorial orbital ring as dozens, then hundreds of small spacecraft hurried toward the exploding orbital asteroid.

“What’s the scale on those?” asked Orphu.

“They’re each about six meters long by three meters wide,” said Cho Li.

“Unmanned,” said Orphu. “Moravecs?”

“More like the servitors the humans used centuries ago,” said Asteague/Che. “Simple AI’s with one purpose, as you will see.”

Mahnmut saw. And he described what he saw to Orphu. The hundreds, then thousands of tiny devices rushing toward the expanding asteroid and accelerator debris field were little more than high-powered lasers each with a brain and aiming device. The recording fast-forwarded through the next hours with the servitor-lasers scooting through, under, and over the debris field, zapping every piece of asteroid or accelerator that posed a serious threat of surviving reentry through the Earth’s atmosphere.

“The post-humans weren’t fools,” said Asteague/Che. “At least when it came to engineering. The mass they accumulated in the two rings they built around Earth, if gathered together, would build a sizeable fraction of another Luna—more than a million separate objects, some like the one that hailed us, almost as massive as Phobos. But they had near foolproof failsafes for keeping them in orbit and a defense in depth if they threatened to fall—these high-boost laser hornets that break up any debris are the last line of that defense. Meteors are still falling on Earth more than eight standard months later, but there have been no catastrophic impacts.”

“Orbital leukocytes,” said Orphu of Io.

“Precisely,” said the Prime Integrator of the Five Moons Consortium.

“I understand,” Mahnmut said at last. “You’re afraid that if we use the dropship carrying The Dark Lady the way we planned, these little robot leukocytes will scurry out and zap us as well.”

“The mass of the dropship and your submersible combined would be a threat to Earth,” agreed Asteague/Che. “We watched the… leukocytes, as Orphu put it… laser to plasma or boost uphill much smaller pieces of the destroyed asteroid.”

Mahnmut shook his metal-and-plastic head. “I don’t get it. You’ve had this recording and this knowledge for more than eight months, yet you hauled the Lady and us all this way… what’s changed?”

General Beh bin Adee pointed to something in the rerunning holo recording of the asteroid breakup.

The image zoomed. The computers enhanced the grainy, pixilated image.

What? tightbeamed Orphu.

Mahnmut described the enhanced image. There in the midst of all the explosions and zapped debris was a small craft with three human figures lying prone in what appeared to be an open cockpit. Only the slight shimmer of a forcefield showed why the three were not dying in a vacuum.

“What is that thing?” asked Mahnmut after he had described it to Orphu.

It was Orphu who answered. “An ancient flying vehicle used by both old-style humans and post-humans millennia ago. It was called an AFV—All Function Vehicle—or sometimes they just called it a sonie. The post-humans used them to shuttle to and from the rings.”

The recording sped up, paused, sped up again. Mahnmut described to Orphu the image of the sonie twisting and turning as segments of the asteroid exploded—were lasered—all around it.

The holo showed the trajectory of the sonie as it entered the atmosphere, spiraled across the center of North America, and landed in a region below one of the Great Lakes.

“That was one of our destinations,” said Asteague/Che. He tapped some icons and telescopic still images appeared of a large human home on a hill. The huge house was surrounded by outbuildings and what looked to be a defensive wooden wall. Human beings—or what appeared to be human beings—were visible near the walls and house. Several dozen could be seen in the still photograph.