“Then why haven’t the gods won this war?” asked Hockenberry. “It seems that your technology has sort of stalemated them… even Zeus’s aegis.”

Beh bin Adee, the rockvec commander, answered. “The gods use only the slightest fraction of the quantum energy in play on and around Mars and Ilium. We don’t believe they understand the technology behind their power. It’s been… loaned to them.”

“By whom?” Hockenberry was suddenly very thirsty. He wondered if the moravecs had included any human-style food or drink in their pressurized bubble.

“That’s what we’re going to Earth to find out,” said Asteague/Che.

“Why use a spaceship?” said Hockenberry.

“Pardon me?” asked Cho Li in soft tones. “How else could we travel between worlds?”

“The same way you got to Mars in your invasion,” said Hockenberry. “Use one of the Holes.”

Asteague/Che shook his head in a manner similar to Mahnmut’s. “There are no quantum-tunnel Brane Holes between Mars and Earth.”

“But you created your own Holes to come from Jupiter space and the Belt, right?” said Hockenberry. His head hurt. “Why not do that again?”

Cho Li answered. “Mahnmut succeeded in placing our transponder precisely at the quincunx locus of the quantum flux on Olympos. We have no one on Earth or in near-Earth orbit to do that for us now. That is one of the goals of our mission. We’ll be bringing a similar, although updated, transponder with us on the ship.”

Hockenberry nodded, but wasn’t quite sure of what he was nodding in agreement to. He was trying to remember the definition of “quincunx.” Was it a rectangle with a fifth point in the middle? Or something to do with leaves or petals? He knew it had to do with the number five.

Asteague/Che leaned closer over the table. “Dr. Hockenberry, may I give you a hint of why this frivolous use of quantum energy terrifies us?”

“Please.” Such manners, thought Hockenberry, who had been around Trojan and Greek heroes too long.

“Have you noticed anything about the gravity on Olympos and the rest of Mars during your more than nine years shuttling between there and Ilium, Doctor?”

“Well… yeah, sure … I always felt a little lighter on Olympos. Even before I realized it was Mars, which was only after you guys showed up. So? That’s right, isn’t it? Doesn’t Mars have less gravity than Earth?”

“Very much less,” piped in Cho Li… and her voice did sound a lot like pipes to Hockenberry’s ear. Pan’s pipes. “It’s approximately three seventy-two kilometers per second per second.”

“Translate,” said Hockenberry.

“It’s thirty-eight percent of Earth’s gravitational field,” said Retrograde Sinopessen. “And you were moving—quantum teleporting, actu-ally—between Earth’s full gravity and Olympos’ every day. Did you notice a sixty-two percent difference in gravity, Dr. Hockenberry.”

“Please, everyone, call me Thomas,” Hockenberry said while distracted. Sixty-two percent difference? I’d almost be floating like a balloon on Mars… jumping twenty yards at a leap. Nonsense.

“You didn’t observe this gravitational difference,” said Asteague/Che, not framing it as a question.

“Not really,” agreed Hockenberry. It was always a little easier walking after the return to Olympos after a long day observing the Trojan War—and not just on the mountain, but in the scholics barracks at the base of the huge massif. A little easier—a little lighter in the walking and carrying loads—but sixty-two percent difference? No way in hell. “There was a difference,” he added, “but not such a profound one.”

“You didn’t notice a profound difference, Dr. Hockenberry, because the gravity of the Mars you have been living on for the past ten years—and which we have been fighting on for the past eight Earth-standard months—is ninety-three point eight-two-one percent Earth normal.”

Hockenberry thought about this for a moment. “So?” he said at last. “The gods tweaked the gravity while they were adding the air and oceans. They are, after all, gods.”

“They’re something,” agreed Asteague/Che, “but not what they appear.”

“Is changing the gravity of a planet such a big deal?” asked Hockenberry.

There was a silence, and while Hockenberry did not see any of the moravecs turn their heads or eyes or whatever to look at any of the other moravecs, he had the sense that they were all busy communing on some radio band or the other. How to explain to this idiot human?

Finally Suma IV, the tall Ganymedan, said, “It is a very big deal.”

“Bigger even than the terraforming of a world like the original Mars in less than a century and a half,” piped in Cho Li. “Which is impossible.”

“Gravity equals mass,” said Retrograde Sinopessen.

“It does?” said Hockenberry, hearing how stupid he sounded but not caring. “I always thought it was what held things down.”

“Gravity is an effect of mass on space/time,” continued the silver spider. “The current Mars is three point nine-six times the density of water. The original Mars—the pre-terraformed world we observed not much more than a century ago—was three point nine-four times the density of water.”

“That doesn’t sound like too much of a change,” said Hockenberry.

“It is not,” agreed Asteague/Che. “It in no way accounts for an increase in gravitation attraction of almost fifty-six percent.”

“Gravity is also an acceleration,” Cho Li said in her musical tones.

Now they’d lost Hockenberry completely. He’d come here to learn about the upcoming visit to Earth and to hear why they wanted him to join them, not to be lectured like a particularly slow eighth grade science student.

“So they—someone, not the gods—changed Mars’ gravity,” he said. “And you think it’s a very big deal.”

“It is a very big deal, Dr. Hockenberry,” said Asteague/Che. “Whoever and whatever manipulated Mars’ gravity this way is a master of quantum gravity. The Holes… as they’ve come to be called… are quantum tunnels that also bend and manipulate gravity.”

“Wormholes,” said Hockenberry. “I know about them.” From Star Trek, he thought but did not say. “Black holes,” he added. Then, “And white holes.” He’d just exhausted his entire vocabulary on this subject. Even nonscience types like old Dr. Hockenberry at the end of the Twentieth Century had known that the universe was full of wormholes connecting distant places in this galaxy and others, and that to go through a wormhole, you went through a black hole and came out a white hole. Or maybe vice versa.

Asteague/Che shook his head in that Mahnmut way. “Not wormholes. Brane Holes … as in membrane. It looks like the post-humans in Earth orbit used black holes to create very temporary wormholes, but the Brane Holes—and there is only one left connecting Mars and Ilium, you must remember; the others have lost stability and decayed away—are not wormholes.”

“You’d be dead if you tried to go through a wormhole or a black hole,” said Cho Li.

“Spaghettified,” said General Beh bin Adee. The rockvec sounded as if he enjoyed the concept of spaghettification.

“Being spaghettified …” began Retrograde Sinopessen.

“I get the idea,” said Hockenberry. “So this use of quantum gravity and these quantum Brane Holes makes the adversary much scarier even than you’d feared.”

“Yes,” said Asteague/Che.

“And you’re taking this big spaceship to Earth to find out who or what created these Holes, terraformed Mars, and probably created the gods as well.”

“Yes.”

“And you want me along.”

“Yes.”

“Why?” said Hockenberry. “What possible contribution could I make to …” He paused and touched the lump under his tunic, the heavy circle against his chest. “The QT medallion.”

“Yes,” said Asteague/Che.

“Back when you guys first arrived, I loaned the medallion to you for six days. I was afraid you’d never give it back. You did tests on me as well… blood, DNA, the whole nine yards. I would have guessed that you’d replicated a thousand QT medallions by now.”