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  Someday the General would do something about that. It was one of his vows, and he always did what he set out to do. From an early age he had been that way. The trick was to conceal his desires from persons more powerful than he, so that they could not prevent him from achieving his goals. Fortunately for him, that list was quite small now, and one day it might not exist at all. He didn’t mind taking orders from a commander in chief; but he had to respect the commands, and their source.

  General Sajak stepped off the slideway and strolled through a short corridor, then paused at another security check point. This one scanned him with golden light and left him glowing that color when he left. He made his way down a short set of steps through a hallway where the lights were not functioning, and his own glow cast an eerie illumination on the walls. He took another slideway in a different direction.

  At a casual wave of his hand, a red-cushioned seat popped up beside him on the conveyor, and he sat upon it. The transporter went through a long tunnel that sloped gently downward toward the Military HQ complex, a heavily fortified bunker deep underground.

  In a few moments, he saw a cavern of bright white light ahead, and presently he was immersed in a scanner, this one with a rainbow of metallic colors that left him without a glow. Despite the security checkpoints, one could never be too careful when your mortal enemy was a race of expert shapeshifters.

  Robotic guards greeted the General with stiff salutes as he stepped off the slideway and strode through a wide entrance into the War Chamber. Each of the mechanical sentinels was a weapon in itself, featuring a destructive array of guns and explosives that the General could set off at a thought command.

  The machinery and personnel of tactics and strategy filled the immense War Chamber. Officers in red-and-gold uniforms rose stiffly and saluted as he entered. Those in his way stepped aside, enabling him to reach the red velvis command chair on a dais at the center.

  “Give me a full report,” General Sajak said, as he sat down and gazed about impatiently.

  His adjutant, Major Edingow, was an angular, square-jawed man who favored single malt whiskey and the camaraderie of officers’ clubs. He had halitosis, and to counteract it often chewed mints. This time he seemed to have forgotten his manners.

  Irritated, Sajak stepped back to escape the stale odor.

  Oblivious to the offense he was committing against his fastidious superior, the Major activated a telebeam bubble—a bright light that floated in the air—and moved it to a comfortable distance in front of the General. In a wordless broadcast, data flowed from the bubble into a receiver implanted in Sajak’s brain, and from there traversed the circuitous neural pathways of his mind. He felt a soft hum inside his skull. The facts unfolded in an orderly fashion, and he considered them.

  Concerned about the obsolescence of military technology in the eleven-year old attack force that he had dispatched, General Sajak had sent advance men to the Mutati homeworld, covert agents who were assigned to sneak in and commit acts of sabotage against Mutati infrastructures and military installations, softening them up for the bigger attack. Now he learned the results of the most recent forays, that many agents never got through, and that some were missing and possibly apprehended.

  At the edge of the glistening data bubble, Sajak saw his staff officers watching him alertly, ready to comply with his commands the moment he issued them. At a snap of his fingers, the bubble popped and faded away.

  Ignoring the faces that were turned toward him expectantly, General Mah Sajak considered the new information. For a century and a half—since galaxy-spanning podships first appeared mysteriously and began to increase contact between the races—Humans and Mutatis had been in an arms race, with huge research teams on both sides striving to make quantum leaps in military technology. He did not know what the Mutatis were working on now, but hoped it was not significant.

  A career soldier, it had been frustrating for him to deal with the limited cargo capacities of podships, which had prevented him—and the enemy—from mounting large-scale offensives. He needed the element of surprise to work in favor of his forces … but gnats of worry reminded him that the Mutatis might have their own surprise in store for him.

  Chapter Six

  These machines are designed to mimic only the best aspects of their creators. To permit the opposite, either through something intrinsic or of their own volition, would be to invite disaster.

  —Hibbil product statement, sent out with each AI robot

  The jewel-like volcanic planet of Ignem was a favorite for those who liked to travel the back ways of space. Shaped by a series of volcanic cataclysms that belched up rainbows of porous silica, the glittering world looked like an exotic treat for giant gods, one they could just scoop up and swallow as they flew past on one of their journeys across the cosmos.

  Each day Ignem looked a little different, depending upon solar conditions and the amount of glassy dust that was kicked up by powerful winds blowing across the surface. No known life forms existed on the planet, since conditions were too severe for carbon-based, chemical, electrical, or other living creatures. Humans, Hibbils, Mutatis, Adurians, and other galactic races could only go on the surface in expensive, specially-crafted spacesuits that contained layered filter systems. Deep-space adventure companies took wealthy tourists to Ignem several times a year, and the visitors always returned home in amazement, gushing about the natural beauty they had seen.

  All expeditions stopped first at the Inn of the White Sun, a comfortable machine-operated way station that had been constructed in a dense orbital ring more than eighty kilometers above the surface of the planet. At the inn, bubble-windowed rental spaces had been fitted with an atmosphere that was breathable to most of the galactic races. Adventurers checked their equipment and purchased anything they needed from a wide array of vending machines. At premium prices, of course.

  Sales conventions were also held at the inn, usually for members of the Human-run Merchant Prince Alliance. At the moment, however, many of the rooms were filled with Heccians and Diffros, races of artisans and craftsmen from the far-off Golden Nebula of the Seventieth Sector. They were making quite a commotion as they drank foul-tasting venom extracted from snakes … a traditional kickoff ceremony for their conventions.

  Now it was the month of Dultaz in the White Sun solar system. A flat-bodied, gray robot named Thinker paced back and forth on the main observation deck of the Inn. The deck ran along the top of the thickest ring section, and was not atmospherically-controlled. Beneath him and stretching along the rings were the beehive-like rooms of the Inn, positioned so that they offered spectacular views of the shimmering jewel-like world below. For travelers on a budget, less expensive rooms were available without views, or with vistas of the twinkling darkness of deep space.

  Far below the robot, Ignem glowed with a million colors as the last rays of the setting sun pierced the faceted, layered surfaces of the planet, lighting up the globe and the thin atmosphere surrounding it. He watched the hypnotically subtle chromatic changes, and the translucent effects on Ignem’s surface, as the planet held onto the last rays of light before they were sucked away into the stygian night of space.

  Thinker often came to this spot late in the day and stood by himself. These were reflective times for him, when he could consider significant issues, utilizing the immense amount of information in his data banks. As the leader of the sentient machines in this galactic subsector he had many responsibilities, and took them all seriously.

  In a continual quest to improve himself, Thinker periodically went around the galaxy to collect material for his data banks, which he then brought back to the Inn of the White Sun to catalog. Whenever he traveled, he sought out other sentient machines, conversing with them and making interface connections, to download whatever data they had. Sometimes their security programs would not permit them to interface with him, and if that happened he had the ability to force a connection and override their internal firewalls. But he only rare
ly did that, not wishing to create controversy or call unnecessary attention to himself. Usually it was easier to just move on. There were always machines that would help him.

  The sentient machines under his command had done quite well for themselves, rebuilding mechanical life forms that had been discarded by Humans and putting them back into operation. They even manufactured popular computer chips and sold them around the galaxy. Sometimes, though, they seemed overly dependent upon Thinker. At the moment, two of his assistants, Ipsy and Hakko, were standing at a thick glax door staring out at him, as if they could not do anything further without his advice. He waved them off dismissively, and they stepped back, out of his view. He knew, however, that they were still close by, waiting to talk with him the moment he went back inside.

  I should reprogram them, he reminded himself. But this had occurred to him before, and he had never done anything about it. He knew why. Despite the minor irritations he actually enjoyed the relationships, because his subordinates made him feel needed.

  Far off, in the perpetual night of the galaxy, he saw something flash and disappear. He would never know for certain what it was, and could only speculate. Perhaps it was a shooting star, a small sun going nova, or the glinting face of a comet before it turned and veered away from the reflective rays of sunlight that seemed to give it life.

  It is so beautiful out there.

  Since Thinker was a mechanical creature with few internal moving parts, he did not breathe, and was able to function outside the boundaries imposed upon biological life forms. The machines that operated this facility were the sentient remnants of merchant prince industrial efforts. Thrown away and left to rust and decay all over the galaxy, the intelligent robots had sought each other out and formed their own embryonic civilization.

  Among Humans and other biological life forms that visited the inn, these mechanical men were something of a joke, and non-threatening. After all, the machines had an affection for Humans, referring to them in almost godlike terms as their “creators.” The metal people were an eclectic assortment as well, and amusing in appearance to many people. Some of the robots were Rube Goldberg devices that performed tasks in laughable, inefficient ways, taking pratfalls and accomplishing very little. This explained why many of them were abandoned. Others had been cobbled together with spare parts. In all they looked quite different from the standardized robots manufactured by the Hibbils on their Cluster Worlds, under contract to the Doge and to the leaders of various galactic races.

  Thinker didn’t really care how he and his loyal compatriots were viewed. His emotional programs were limited in scope, and while he became mildly irritated at times he did not take offense easily. His thoughts tended toward the intellectual, toward questions of deep purpose and matters involving the origins of the universe. Most of all he found it exhilarating to stand out here in the vacuum of space, gazing into eternity … into all that was, and all that ever would be. Some marvelous power had created this galaxy, and in his most private thoughts he liked to imagine the Supreme Being as a machine, and not some cellular entity. It seemed plausible … perhaps even likely. The galaxy was a machine after all, one that operated on a vast scale, ticking along moment by moment in its journey through time.

  Lights blinked on inside the rooms and public chambers of the Inn of the White Sun. Far below, Ignem gave up its ephemeral translucence and faded to darkness, casting an ebony shadow against the cloth of stars beyond.

  The cerebral robot was about to go back inside when he felt a rumbling in the metal plates of his body, and his metal-lidded eyes detected a distortion in the fabric of the cosmos, with star systems twisted slightly out of their normal alignment. A section of space in front of him became opaque and amorphous, with a wobbly effect around the edges. He noted a slight change of pressure around him, too, as if a door into another dimension had opened for an instant, and something altogether different was entering.

  Podship.

  The opacity glowed bright green for a moment, then flickered. A blimp-shaped object took form and made its way toward a faint, barely visible pod station, floating nearby in the airless vacuum of space. The mottled, gray-and-black podship had a row of portholes on the side facing Thinker, with pale green light visible inside the passenger compartment. From his data banks the robot drew a comparison. The sentient creature was reminiscent of a whale of Earth, but without a tail or facial features, and cast off into space.

  The pod station, after fading from view during the entry of the podship, solidified its appearance. A globular, rough-hewn docking facility, it was nearly as mysterious as the podships themselves. For tens of thousands of years the sentient podships—hunks of living cosmic material—had been traveling at faster-than-light speeds through the galaxy, on regular routes. The ships were of unknown origin, and so too were the orbiting pod stations at which they docked—utilitarian facilities positioned all over the galaxy, usually orbiting the major planets. Some of the galactic races said that the podships and their infrastructure were linked with the creation of the galaxy, and there were numerous legends concerning this. One, attributed to the Humans of ancient Earth, held that the podships would come one day and transport religious and political leaders to the Supreme Being, where all of the great secrets would be revealed.

  Thinker signaled for a sliding door to open, and then strode into the lobby of the inn on his stiff metal legs. There he encountered Ipsy and Hakko, who had been waiting for him, as he’d suspected. “Later,” he told them. “For once, handle something on your own.”

  “We need to plan next month’s sales convention,” Hakko said, “so that the necessities can be ordered.”

  “Yes,” Ipsy agreed. “There is a great deal of printing to be done—announcement cards, menus. You know the trouble we had at the last convention when we tried to serve Blippiq food to Adurians.”

  “Well, take care of it then,” Thinker said, with mock impatience, since it was like playing a game with them.

  He continued on his way, and entered a lift that took him down to the lowest level of the inn. There, through a thick glax floor, he could see the dark gray pod station floating perhaps a thousand meters away, and the sentient ship that had just entered one of its docking bays.

  Presently he saw a shuttle emerge from the pod station, burning a blue exhaust flame as it closed the gap between the station and the orbital ring. The little craft locked onto a berthing slot, and Thinker saw men step out. He counted twenty-two.

  His first impression was that they were Humans, a group of tourists. Unlike other galactic races, Humans did that sort of thing. They just went places to be there, to experience them. To most galactic races it seemed a waste of time, but Thinker understood. Like the Human technicians who created him, he had a sense of curiosity and wonder about the cosmos.

  But the new arrivals were not Human. As they walked across a deck toward the main entrance to the Inn of the White Sun, he noted subtle differences that only a highly trained observer such as himself could detect. The bodily motions were slightly different. Oh, they were very close to authentic, but not quite right. They moved like what they really were.

  What are Mutatis doing here?

  In order to contemplate without distraction, Thinker folded his dull-gray body closed in a clatter of metal, tucking his head neatly inside. To an observer he might look like a metal box now, just sitting silently on the deck. Inside, though, he was deep in concentration, organizing the vast amount of information in his data banks, trying to solve the conundrum that had presented itself to him suddenly.

  Unlike Humans, Mutatis never traveled for leisure. They always had some important purpose in mind … usually military, political, or economic. In memory, Thinker recalled the bodily movements of the Human impostors. Remnants of their true identities could be seen in every step they took.

  They were Mutati soldiers, led by an officer.

  This worried Thinker, and he wondered if word had gotten out about the machine operatio
ns here. Down on the surface of the volcanic planet, in a region not visible from the orbital ring, the machines were secretly building a military force of their own, a collection of patched-together fighting robots. One day he would use them to prove that his sentient machines had value, that they should not have been discarded.

  Were the Mutatis here to spy on that operation? Or had they come for another reason?

  Chapter Seven

  Our entire galaxy is in motion. The Scienscroll tells us this. But where is it going?

  —Master Noah of the Guardians

  At CorpOne headquarters on Canopa, Noah Watanabe had been shocked to see soldiers in green-and-brown Guardian uniforms, firing puissant rifles and setting off booming explosions. He came to realize that they were impersonating his own environmental activists, but there was no time to determine the reason. Instead, he’d led his small entourage to the rooftop of the main building, where they ran toward a dark blue, box-shaped aircraft.

  From the days when he had worked there, Noah knew the layout of the complex, and the main building had not changed much in fifteen years. Here and there, doorways were marked differently, but the corridors and lifts remained the same, and it was unchanged on the roof. The aircraft, one of the grid-planes kept on the premises for Prince Watanabe and his top officers, was familiar to Noah, for this was a technology so successful that it had not been significantly altered in nearly a century. The onboard semi-automatic systems were relatively simple to operate, and many people knew how to handle them from an early age.