Titus gaped at the view, time standing still. The Array filled the bottom of the giant bowl, like a bouquet of alien silicon-life flowers, fragile and glittering. The identical antenna modules were set at precise intervals, all in the same attitudes. None of the structures-made of slender poles and thread-thin guy wires– could have withstood Earth gravity or weather.

Cables tunneled through the lip of the crater from the Sixth Collector and fed the mammoth superconductor tanks clustered between the Array’s landing field and the sparkling white control hut. On top of the hut was a security camera turret that could view the whole basin, and attached at one side of the hut was a supply shed for recharged vehicle power cells, oxygen, replacement parts, lubricants, and survival kits for stranded travelers.

Loose rubble dislodged from the slope had gathered near the walls of the hut and someone had sculpted and painted the rocks into a mock flower bed.

Neither hut nor shed was ever pressurized, and now the hut’s door stood open. Directly ahead of them, on the steep path down to the hut, lay another Toyota, canted onto its side, treads still moving, half in half out of bright sun. Held by a paralyzing sense of deja vu, Titus thought, We’re going to die. The boulder that had caused the wreck lay on the tread marks, a smile painted on it.

“Inea!” But she had already hit the brakes. The faulty left tread snapped loose, ends smacking the cabin with sharp reports. They lost power, and even Titus’s strength couldn’t budge the sticks. The cabin tilted to the left, the vehicle pivoted, but momentum carried them on in horrifying, nightmarish slow motion, on into the wreck before them.

“Helmets!” yelled Titus, shoving H’lim away and grabbing for his, which was on the driver’s side. H’lim canted awkwardly across the console, kicked Inea’s helmet toward her groping fingers. In the back of Titus’s mind, the drill took hold. Secure your air first, then help others.

Training held, and Titus pulled his helmet on while everything in him wanted to reach out and affix Inea’s for her. Then they hit.

The toppled vehicle skidded ahead of them down the slope, soaking up the momentum just enough to prevent the collision restraints from being triggered. The high-pitched whistle of escaping air penetrated Titus’s helmet, and he squinted hard against the shaft of raw sunlight that came through the front window, where the covering plate had been torn away. H’lim came to rest curled up on the instrument console, head tucked to his knees, back to the cabin, facing the dark screens, a streak of light bisecting him.

The last thing Titus heard before the sound from the speakers was lost in vacuum was the muffled timbre of Abbot’s voice saying, “. three of them in the second crawler, and one’s the alien. The alien’s in the second crawler!”

Inea pulled herself back up onto the canted driver’s seat, helmet in place. Titus breathed a sigh that was almost a sob. She’s all right! He pushed himself up. “There’s a jack here somewhere, to connect a suitphone.”

While Titus searched, Inea crawled onto the console where H’lim lay curled. “Maybe he’s already dead.” She tried to straighten the huddled form. He jerked away.

Titus got the phone jack into place just in time to hear the commander’s voice say, “. no wild stories! Now I don’t believe-” He broke off, and his voice was muffled as he asked, “What? They did? There are? You mean he’s legit?” Then more clearly, he ordered, “Ben, Roger, peel off and take a look at those crawlers. If that monster’s there, get him. Rendezvous over the station. Go!”

Power was flickering on and off. Titus couldn’t tell what the seven bombers were doing. He helped Inea straighten H’lim out, muttering encouraging words in the luren language. Then as Titus watched H’lim’s skin turned pink. He rolled the stiff body up in his arms and climbed back into darkness, scrambling awkwardly over the loose junk that had gathered at the lower end of the cabin.

He wedged the luren back into the cubby he’d chosen for a refuge, then built up the pile of junk again as best he could at the high end of the slope. “Better?” he asked as H’lim began to stir.

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Nonsense,” cut in Inea. “You saved my life. I could never have reached my helmet.”

Titus patted a last cylinder into the pile, to make a natural looking mess that searchers could pick at without exposing H’lim. Clumsy amateurs. Amazing we survived this long. He turned to find Inea stuffing small oxygen cylinders into the arms and legs cf a spare vacuum suit. It was the untailored sort with adjustable everything. God forbid you should have to do anything in it.

“Don’t just gawk! Help me.”

He held it while she strapped. “What’s this for?”

“They don’t know H’lim can’t get out even in a suit. They’ll count three of us going for the hut, and they’ll follow. When they find an empty suit, they’ll never believe Abbot again! Come on. We’ve got to hurry! Abbot’s already got the Array in motion, and it doesn’t have far to go!”

“Titus,” whispered H’lim through dry lips, not a scrap of Influence around him. “Listen to me. There are higher instinctive loyalties than to a First Father. To save us all, our planet, Earth, all of us-you can win if you know you must.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get him, or die trying.”

“”Bout time you realized that,“ grunted Inea.

“Yes.” They tore a cushion from one of the seats for the torso and left the helmet empty. Draped over Titus’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry, the suit did look occupied.

By the time Inea and Titus emerged, two bombers were circling the Array’s landing field dropping small bombs, testing for booby traps. Laden with the extra mass of the stuffed suit, Titus veritably flew down the rest of the hill. He caught stride and let momentum carry him, knowing exactly how hard he’d impact the hut and refusing to think about it.

At the last minute, when he was out of sight of the bombers, he hurled the suit against the hut wall as a kind of “breaking jet” and turned so his shoulder hit first. Even so, he almost blacked out. Inea smacked into the hut right beside him, gasping, and slid to the ground.

Titus rolled sideways and rounded the doorjamb in a crouch, looking for Abbot.

The interior was a study in black and white, laced across with dazzling cones of light. The panel readouts had been carefully designed for use in vacuum, through suit helmets, but by human eyes. There was the oppressive inaudible thrum of high gauss fields which Titus had never identified before meeting H’lim. And parts of the machinery casings glowed with infrared colors that filtered through his faceplate, his glasses, and his contacts. Or is it my skin that’s “seeing”?

Bent low, he circled left, keeping behind consoles and housings, focused on locating the distinctive tang of Abbot’s Influence. He was half hoping his father had been permanently crippled by H’lim’s efforts.

There!

Abbot, his back to Titus, bent over a console nested in a nearly complete sphere of display screens. The console desk was made of two semicircles with an operator’s chair in the center that could pivot to bring each segment into reach. Abbot, outside the circle, leaned awkwardly to consult the screens. There was a chair behind him, and others around the desk facing inward, a sloping control board in front of each. A team of five could operate the entire Array manually, debug and test, evaluate and correct anything that could go wrong.

Parts of the console were lit, and some screens showed data shifting as the antennas rotated to point clear of Earth. One set of screens showed exteriors of the two crashed Toyotas and of the landing field, the two bombers still making cautious passes testing for mines or traps. A black cable tethered Abbot’s suit to the console.