The timely invention of quark-drive made it possible for a specially-constructed ship to cover vast distances in short order, the impediment of light speed no longer a consideration. Mathematically, the actuality of quantum space was foreseen as a distinct possibility by the theoreticians; however, those with their feet closer to the ground harbored doubts as to its reality in any practical sense. The initial test of the quark-drive unit surprised everyone, the believers and doubters alike, the entire scientific community. The configuration of the crystal within the drive itself caused the ship to instantly drop into a level of space where only particles existed as spontaneous eruptions of their fields while simultaneously their superposed natures displayed themselves. Interactions and interference of waves co-existed with the varying energy forms that composed them. Unexpected though this was, the mathematics allowed for it. It was a major breakthrough, to say the least.

When the project first began the modest hope was to build a gigantic ship to take as many fortunates as possible on a journey in search of a new home. At sublight speeds, it would take hundreds of generations just to reach the nearest star--Proxima Centauri--with no real hope of finding a planet suitable for terraforming. At the speed of light, however, it would take approximately 4.22 years. But with quark-drive, the trip would take but days.

For whatever human reason there may be, exploration for suitable planets to colonize or for needed natural resources were directed inward, towards the massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, the Hub. As candidate planets and moons were discovered and terraforming operations put into full swing, the Colonial Expeditionary Alliance expanded to a coalition of planets with each maintaining its own branch of exploratory personnel and ships. As they expanded inward in stages, the colonized planets spread sideways as the density of star systems increased, forming an arc concentric with the Hub. This strategy continued up to the present collection of far-flung border planets--the outworlds. Beyond them were territories visited only by research groups and robot ships recording pertient data, developing profiles.

Efforts to avoid duplication and conflicting territorial claims were regulated by the reinvented Colonial Expeditionary Administration, now no longer in charge of specific operations but rather accepted by consensus to oversee disputes and to facilitate the dissemination of all research results. The Net made findings available to all through the many news and professional magazine sources as well as repositories and archives of stored data in all fields of knowledge. No scientist wanted to waste his time and energy doing dangerous work on a field study that some other group had already completed in excrutiating detail, with authors and affiliated organizations freely acknowledged.

By mutual agreement a moratorium was established on future colonization until stability and development could be attained among all planets now inhabited by refugees from Earth. Nonetheless, this was strictly a governmental administrative mandate for purposes of consolidation, any individuals or groups who wished to venture outward, perhaps sponsored by a university, a consortium of institutions, or a corporation, could do as they please. However, the one caveat was that Space Fleet and its Ranger Patrols would not be available for protection or rescue; you were on your own.

The Earth sits between the Perseus and Sagittarius Arms on Orion's Spur with the Centaurus Arm further in towards the Hub. Thanks to this profusion of stellar systems, colonization has proliferated, with neighboring planets reasonably close. But on the other side, between Perseus and Centaurus is vast nothingness with only the strand of stars in the Norma Arm close to Perseus to break up the relative barrenness. It's estimated that the separation between the two is twice that or more on this side than on Earth's side. Like flocks of birds, a smattering of wandering star clusters roam that space but are few and far between.

The Colonial Alliance had been fortunate with the rich crop of potential candidate planets discovered and successfully readied for habitation. Out there, however, in the outback of the galaxy, pickings would be slim. Nonetheless, curiosity and the thirst for knowledge for its own sake could not be satisfied during this period of vast exploration while all that lay out there went undiscovered. These were exciting times for scientists; researchers; students of all fields, old and newly born, and for people of action. The social atmosphere encouraged and supported forays into the unknown. The treasure-hunter, the seeker of previously unknown minerals, the field archaeologist, the planetologist, the astrogeologist and cosmologist, the adventurer and frontiersman, people whose spirit searched for the new, the novel, the unanticipated, could not be held back forever.

But something else had blocked inquiry into that far land--superstition. Beyond the border planets, mining was being conducted in earnest on every moon and asteroid that offered anything of value. They were not suitable for terraforming, so domes of gamma- and cosmic-ray resistant material enclosed the camps. Back in the colonies, towns, cities, societies and civilizations were under construction, raw materials were in high demand and the opportunity to make big bucks was everpresent. The right accidental find could put a man or group onto another plateau of existence. The land rush was on, and nobody wanted to be left behind.

When on leave, miners frequented nearby planets that catered to leisure activities. Here is where the thirst for news, among other things, could be quenched. For decades stories and rumors circulated about ethereal creatures who dwelt between the stars and ghost ships that traversed the empty plain. Ships of aliens whose civilizations once flourished millions of years ago, but were now only apparitions lost in dimensions between the real and the improbable. And tales of the meandering currents near the middle of this vast ocean--the reason for such random behavior unknown--with hidden whirlpools of time loops, back eddies with no apparent cause, tide rips through deep dimensional canyons and channels--the ebb and flow of gravity waves. Irrational as these superstitions were to the Council of Scientists, they couldn't dismiss out of hand that these myths and legends may have some basis in fact. Plus, they were human and so not entirely immune to childish fears of the boogeyman under the bed.

However, curiosity may be a positive driving force for exploration, but fear of what may lay over the horizon is a persuasive inducement for covert reconnaisance, which can be made to appear as exploration, albeit of a cautious kind. An element of danger was part of the allure in any intrusion into unknown space, part of the job and part of the thrill. Look what happened to Captain Cook. The militaries of those more advanced planets suggested rather strongly that there may be hostile civilizations on the other side who don't know as yet that we humans have populated a wide girth of planets, stretching across three galactic arms, and from Earth to halfway between it and the Hub, the supermassive black hole around which we orbit. If and when they find out, it may be too late to prepare an adequate defensive posture. We could be overwhelmed in a heart beat.

It was decided. Robot ships equipped with the latest in surveillance technology and measuring instrumentation were sent to the outback, spread in a fanning pattern. Cartography, charting out this region, was uppermost on their agenda. And, of course, the artificial intelligence environment of onboard computers would be on the lookout for anomalous features and objects that just didn't jibe with what one would expect. In other words, squeezing the perceived into predisposed notions, leaving out the unspecified, could be suspended. The undefined and unknown were what they sought.

Traveling through quantum space, they covered great distances in short order. Before too long, a ship relayed, through the outer network of communication buoys, that it had found a star system with an unusual feature. Composed of thirteen planets of varying sizes and composition, together with an untold number of moons, the G-type main-sequence star was about 1.4 solar masses and its estimated age was one of the oldest ever discovered--thirteen billion years. The isolated system was about half-way between the Arms. Two planets, third and fourth from the star, resided in the habitable zone, each possessed of a single moon about one-fourth their size. Their rotation rates were the same, like two dancers pirouetting in sync, and because of the mass of the furthest, their orbits coincided: a straight line could be drawn through them and their star. The probe circumnavigated one at a time, forming a figure eight in the interceding space, as it studied their terrain and topography; took spectrographic readings of metals and minerals; sampled the ingredients in their atmosphere; mapped continents, mountains, rivers; assessed for life. Herein lay the anomaly: Although each planet was inhabited by ocean-going creatures; surprisingly, the land showed only the barest of greenery--mosses, clover- and fern-like ground cover, and microbial mats or colonies along banks of waterways. If they've been around all this time--since the star was formed--why had they developed so minimaly and why were they at an equivalent level of evolution?

The Council of Scientists convened on Hawking-I to discuss it. The planets were named Morpheus-I & II after the Greek god of Dreams. Their atmospheres were similar and comparable to the optimum for complex lifeforms to flourish; hence, the sea life. But why no land creatures, not even insects? The consensus funneled in its academic way to the conclusion that a research vessel should be dispatched at once. And not just any ship, but one with both expert investigative capabilities and the ability to provide security, just in case. Space Fleet had been at the service of the council in its exploration of parallel universes and alternate timelines from the project's inception, and they had the experience, the personnel, and the advanced ships to carry out the mission. They were spacers, their element was the vast universe in all its confounding and bizarre ways. And they were Rangers, tough sons-of-bitches.

Predictably, it seemed, Captain Coary and the 300-foot cruiser Edgar Poe were taken off picket patrol and handed the assignment. Both he and the crew were disappointed, they'd been expecting a much-deserved long break. However, Space Fleet was not completely unsympathetic; after all, captain Coary and crew had saved the universe from the Dark Lord, no less, and besides, they needed to be fully briefed and prepared, so what they got was one week. The rush appeared arbitrary; the star system was primordial and so probably wasn't going any place. But pressure from the scientific community and the military put it on the front burner. Each for the same reason but with a different twist: they saw an opportunity to make inroads into the outback.

Coary and his top officers retreated to his home on the bank of Lake Dyson; they'd been given all the information attained from the probe thus far and would be informed as more came in. Lieutenant Commander Aponi Brightfeather, science officer, led the scientific discussions with the brain trust, as the ship's investigators and analysts were called, focusing on the queerness of the dancing twins, a nickname quickly picked up. The captain conferred with his exec, Commander Sean Owens; Lieutenant Commander Seamus Finley, recently promoted genius engineer, and other members of his strategy and weapons teams. The outback was not only uncharted territory but had never been explored until recently, so he wanted all weapons systems fully functional, and, where possible, upgraded. The engineers were to be consulted on the latest advances and their recommendations implemented, unless they conflicted with other more important aspects of warfare. In other words, the weapons chief had the last word. Routine daily practice emphasized the operation of the weapons themselves, a testing. What he wanted now amounted to a military exercise. His weapons chief was to run timed-drills while enroute; any problems or glitches in performance that popped up, either with personnel or systems, needed to be ironed out.

The myths and legends were also discussed; they'd had enough encounters with other-dimensional beings to realize that anything could be waiting out there, something never before experienced or even imagined. But it wasn't all shop-talk. At night, they ate together and recounted their many exploits, of their personal feelings when confronting the unimagined, what they enjoy doing, their favorite pastimes and hobbies, what music they like, the best restaurants on Hawking-I and other planets. They built bonfires on the beach and sat out under the stars, drinking and laughing. This is what Coary wanted; he had a hunch about the coming routine mission. Camaraderie was the cement that held his crew together and drove them to go beyond their limits, to take chances. More than once, it pulled them through.

The new arrivals onboard the Poe, the researchers from the council, scrambled for available crew quarters, the tardy few had to negotiate with the resident brain trust for accommodations. Equipment needed to be stored properly; access to Bertha, their ship's supercomputing artificial intelligence, was explained as well as her personality quirks. If she was busy working on a high-priority problem that truly fascinated her, she might just ignore you. The coordinates the probe sent back were an extrapolation on the conventionally accepted grid imposed on the region of border planets. The nav-officer laid in a series of waypoints through quantum space that gave the central bar containing the Hub a wide berth. They skirted Norma Arm to its terminus, then rode the quantum waves out past the Sagittarius Arm into the vast expanse. Long-range scans indicated small clusters of stars off to either side, hundreds of light-years distant. The last waypoint had been cleared and course correction made. They were now heading directly to the dancing twins; it was only a matter of days. The other quantum versions of the Poe were taking their separate trajectories toward the convergent point, their destination. The visitors were excited and appeared at random all over the ship. Most had never been outside the traffic lanes of the border planets, this was an adventure. But if they were expecting a view in quantum space, they were sadly disappointed.

The understrata of spacetime dwells in a pre-field state, which precludes surface attributes like shapes and visible configurations. However, captain Coary acquired the gift of quantum sight on his first mission through the time convergence plane near the central black hole. The link between parallel universes. Suddenly, in the midst of certain disaster, the result of unforeseeable spontaneous fluctuations, he could see particles in their superposed waves, how they interacted, what macro-consequences that might have. And most significantly, he could see the proper vector running through the middle of the link, a conduit of hyper-active elements of space and time connecting the two parallels. Down the middle was the calm of balanced wave-forms. He managed to rescue the ship and what was left of the crew. Since then, he's been able to see on that level when in that space; it's a part of him.

He watched through a viewscreen in his private conference room off-bridge the twists and turns of the undersea currents. He drank coffee, alone, imagining whales and sharks and dolphins swimming by, creatures that long ago had perished from the Earth. He knew of them from pictures and films when he was a boy and would wonder at their beauty and majesty as they smoothly, effortlessly plied the open seas.

As the Edgar Poe raced through quantum space, unaffected by ordinary spacetime forces, he sat transfixed, immersed in the undulating, interpenetrating ribbons of shifting energy densities, stretching, twisting, contracting, pulling apart like so much taffy. While he had the time, he thought to introduce himself to the council members, familiarize himself with their specialties and discuss their focus on this expedition, why they think it's important. What do they see beneath the surface that may prove to be a piece of a puzzle? And also to reassure the nervous. A personal conversation with a confident skipper can go a long way towards relaxing a greenhorn struggling to find his space legs.

But as he was about to stand, an opaque region far ahead caught his eye. Tendrils of fast-moving energy swirled around an irregular blackness on both sides, like a stream flowing round a boulder. The fuzzy outline was turbulent, disordered, self-destructive, like giant snakes fighting one another. And the Edgar Poe was heading right for it.

Stunned, he quickly returned to the bridge and informed Owens what was happening. The main viewscreen was featureless, the light from within the screen itself filling the otherwise blank space. Coary ordered it turned off. To everyone else, what lay ahead was indeterminable, as usual, but to him, the screen now black and inactive, it was a world unto itself, ever busy, ever surprising, ever volatile. He stared hard at the approaching empty space, devoid of even virtual particle eruptions. Is it an object, a hard object in quantum space? Or a hole, a black hole? Or maybe a tear, or, recalling the thought beings, an illusion?

He ordered helm to come to port 20 degrees. The space moved with them. Then 30 degrees, still it followed them, blocking their way. The picture was the same, only closer. Coary stood, walked towards the screen, and ordered full stop. It remained where it was, fortunately; holding its ground. Scanners showed nothing out of the ordinary. He wondered if the other Poe versions were having the same experience, but it was impossible to communicate across timelines. Whenever he tried to probe into the actuality of other Poes traveling separate and independent paths to the same convergent point, it hurt his head. He wanted answers, right now.

Brightfeather was called to the bridge. He explained what he saw, all the details he could translate into terms he knew that came close to the actuality. Intuition helped a great deal, metaphors of flowing and mingling and blending; separate elementals occupying, cohabiting the same space out of phase with one another; trying to grasp it rationally alone wasn't sufficient. But the fact that something rather large, apparently, given its distance, was moving to block their path was clear as a bell.

Brightfeather suggested, "It acts like a sentry, a robot, perhaps, or, if a living thing, with intelligence. It behaved confrontationally. If benign, to inquire; if not, with intent to do harm if we proceed. But," she noticed, "it held its place, it didn't attack. Perhaps we're trespassing."

Even though they couldn't see anything, a small group of bridge officers assembled in front of the screen. Because of being blind, and thinking like a submariner of old, the weapons chief suggested they surface to ordinary spacetime. Check it out there. The quantum sensors registered nothing unusual; to the array, the vast expanse lay empty before them.

Coary could see no advantage to the status quo. He could continue on, find out just what this thing is in the hope that, if it's not benign, they have the firepower to defend themselves successfully. However, he had enough experience with the hidden powers of the universe to play this one out cautiously. They were very far from home and help. It could be as Brightfeather suggests: we're trespassing. We've never been here before, we have no idea who or what lives here. And it, whatever it is, probably doesn't recgonize us. How could it?

"We're assuming either it has intelligence or some intelligent beings put it there," Owens pointed out, "designed it to act as it has. Suppose instead, it's a creature of space, a predator, or a natural phenomenon in these parts. A bubble of dark energy moving towards the densest object around--us."

"Yes," chimed in Brightfeather. "This whole gigantic volume of space, this ocean, could contain creatures or bubbles of air trapped in a liquid environment. We've never encountered such before, but their possibility has been bantered about for years. Only it's not air, of course, it's compacted dimensions of space."

A few of the new arrivals had learned of the current situation and were milling about, eavesdropping; in fact, the whole ship knew what was happening by now and the brain trust and Bertha were at work. This is how it went on the Edgar Poe; in an emergency or when confronted with the unknown, and this situation qualified for both, it was all hands on deck.

One of the council scientists offered, "Compacted dimensions are below the Planck scale in volume. According to theory. They're invisible to us even though we pass through them constantly."

"But Peter," another said, "by what the captain describes, it's anything but micro-size."

"Yes," said an older man in a tweed coat. "The sensors indicate nothing. All we have to go on is the captain's quantum sight. Excuse me, sir, but could you be mistaken?"

A hush came over the bridge. Coary said to Brightfeather, "If we send a probe, it might think we're attacking. Our only other alternative is to surface, see what it looks like in ordinary spacetime. But we lose considerable maneuverability that way."

Coary looked around at the crowd. Surprised and a little annoyed, he said, "Gentlemen and ladies, I must ask you to leave the bridge. There are conference rooms where you can hold discussions. If you come up with anything you feel might be helpful, given what little we know at present, please inform one of my officers. The bridge must be cleared of all who don't work here." A little put off but, obediently, some pausing to gander at the instrumentation, they shuffled down the corridor.

Coary stared at the screen; the object, irregularly-shaped at first, now appeared as a black, fuzzy ball. Because it was invisible to sensors, he couldn't be sure if it still sat in the same place. Could he be mistaken? Coary resumed his command chair, Owens sat on his left, Brightfeather on his right, the rest of the bridge crew took their positions. Not one to wait for circmstances to dictate the course of events, the captain said, "I want a level six probe, quantum signature inverted for effect, fired dead ahead." Within moments, the insect-like, meter-long sensing pod was on its way. It would ask questions of its target by touch, trying to assemble the responses into a coherent abstract image. Bertha would take that data and draw conclusions as to its probable nature. But would it ask the right questions? If an intelligent creature has no knowledge or awareness of temperature, of heat or its lack, or is non-sentient and composed of something other than material molecules, asking how warm it is won't have any meaning.

They had a lock on the probe. Coary could see its telltale propulsion exhaust in the mire of random particles, order in the midst of chaos. As these elements of prespace approached the object in the invisible current, they aligned themselves, forming a tight, coherent pattern on either side, and sped past in neat strands of pure energy, like moving grains on wood, separated from each other by empty space. But in front of the object, they piled up, turbulence reigned. And that's where the probe was headed.

It seemed close to the object, but without an adequate gauge, all he knew was how far it'd traveled. Based on that, he was trying to guess the size of the opacity. As Coary stared, the black ball began to either recede or shrink, he couldn't tell. He informed his exec and science officer what was happening. It shrank further, as though an eye closing, to a tiny aperture just big enough for the probe to enter. Immediately before that, however, after passing some threshold, it vanished; no more data streamed back. But seconds later, it reappeared in front again, only to disappear once more. Mystified, the captain watched, his description was unnecessary; each time it reappeared, it registered on the sensors. Bertha worked the new data transmitted by the probe for each event, superimposing one set onto the other, accounting for the time dilation. She announced, through the skipper's comm, that what they were dealing with was an entire field containing thousands of time loops networked together, bubbles of time elementals moving in sync and curling back on themselves. Like land mines set in space, not to kill, but to forever ensnare.

"Somebody set these," Owens announced. "These can't be natural. Who would do such a thing? And why?"

"What I want to know," Coary said, "is why does it move to intercept us?" He stood to approach the screen, fascinated by the probe's measured reappearance in front of the sphere. "We need to get out of this space. I don't think emerging into ordinary spacetime will help our lot any. It could be worse, in fact; magnetic forces may be at play that we don't have to deal with here." He turned away from the screen, he had that look in his eyes when a hunch is about to be played. "Bertha, can you pinpoint the coordinates just before the probe vanishes? And is it the same each time?" He paced in front of the screen, scrutinizing the image only he could see. Streams of fundamnetal particles racing past the time bubble on either side. The probe materializing at some distance from the dark sphere, traveling towards it for a moment or two, then vanishing.

He regained his command seat. "Bertha, can you tell how this network is gridded out? I mean, are we in the middle of it or off to one side?"

She responded that she had no way of knowing. When the probe was inside the bubble, it sensed the presence of a vast network intelligence, but the layout was an abstraction without context. He asked, "What about the coordinates?"

"Yes," she replied, her voice as cool as polished silver. "With slight variance due to fluctuations."

"Well, what about its move to intercept? Why is that?"

"I don't believe it did move, captain." After a pause, she continued, "This space behaves very strangely." The entire bridge crew stopped what they were doing; Bertha hardly ever used the word strangely. "At some point in the history of our trajectory, and this may be true for the other versions of the ship, we entered a region of space with gradually increasing viscosity, similar to resin or honey. When we attempted to change course, we pivoted the space containing the field with us. We are being drawn inextricably forward and are unable to angle against the direction of flow. Essentially, we are encased in a semisolid."

Like an insect trapped in amber, thought Coary. So much for concerns about maneuverability, and emerging into ordinary spacetime was not an option, that phase transition brings all the forces to bear, increasing the ship's temporal density by an unknown geometric factor, like making a compacted snowball out of loosely scattered flakes. In other words, their progress towards this thing would be that much faster. Engines in full reverse had no effect. It was was though space had turned inside out past some invisible threshold and was collapsing from behind.

A line of poetry he favored popped into his head: 'Do not go gentle into that dark night.' He watched the probe materialize a few more times, then said, "Bertha, would you please send the coordinates where the probe pops into view to the weapons station?"

She replied in the affirmative. To his weapons officer, he said, "Prepare a corbinite missile, dispersal radius one mile, with a one second delay from those coordinates. Wait for my order. Bertha? You said it was a network of these things; the probe sensed it. How are they connected? What doya have on this network?"

"Control is distributed, no central regulator; the nodes of time-loop spheres that compose it are well-ordered and equidistant from one another. It does not appear to be a natural phenomenon. Further, the nodes are entangled and interdependent; one goes, they all go. They remain linked by transmitting a temporal frequency of their current position. Destroying one node might disrupt the web, but that's not the main problem. We drove right into ever-thickening space until we got stuck. It congealed around us, the spatial elementals are densely packed."

"What's causing that? Any ideas?"

"Perhaps the grid of time-loop bubbles. They affect the volume of space mechanically, eliminating the time component draws the surrounding space towards them, compressing as though time were a liquid interspersed among spatial elementals and was removed in some way to the limit preset by the overall configuration of the network. Space is sticky to begin with, so as volumes on this scale are depleted of time, that property increases exponentially the closer we are to the field."

As she was giving her report, Coary had been watching the screen. At first, he though it was his eyes, tired and bleary, but the differential of recognition had passed that threshold of observation to give it biological cause. In other words, what he was seeing was really happening. The last few incarnations of the tiny probe showed a less than vivid image. He thought perhaps some measure of opacity had cloaked it. But no, the probe was fading, not its exterior from wear, but its whole substance from within. Amazed and a little disturbed, he stared hard as it gradually disappeared, its last ephemeral, ghostly outline slipped into the sphere of darkness and was gone.

"Bertha," Coary called, alarmed at this new turn of events, "did you get what just happened with the probe?"

Time went by, an infinite amount of time for an intelligence like Bertha. Finally, she said, quite dryly, "Probe fades to nothing because bubble absorbs time elementals in their spatial aspect, causing the atoms that compose the probe to cease motion and collapse in on themselves. Without time dimension, nothing can exist. Nodes drain time and turn it into energy to perform their function. In a sense, they eat time.

"If the Edgar Poe were to enter one such bubble, the ship itself would last many iterations, but all living things would die the instant they passed the threshold."

How do you dissolve a resin? Coary asked himself. "We need a solvent," he said out loud to no one in particular. "We need to inject the entire network with liquid, with time." He could tell they'd gotten nearer to the tiny aperture, pulled slowly but inexorably, which he knew would enlarge to accommodate them. "Finley," he commed. The chief engineer acknowledged. "Have you been keeping abreast of the situation?"

"Yes, sir. I've been listening. And I think I might have an idea. Do you remember the beam of anti-spacetime elementals we fired through the gamma-ray canon at the Dark Lord to contain him? If we could shoot a compact ball into the bubble, perhaps it might overload its circuitry long enough to loosen its grip. Then, we get the hell out of here, pedal to the metal."

Coary told him to get on it; Brightfeather left to join him. None of the council scientists had offered any suggestions, they were in over their heads and more than a little frightened. They were academics, for the most part. Those with field experience were in areas unrelated to the current predicament. Given a week, a month, perhaps, they might come up with something, a testable hypothesis. Thinking on their feet, being resourceful, creative, determined to arrive at a novel solution to a problem when life was on the line, ignoring or compartmentalizing the stress, these were qualities that came with experience and demanded a certain kind of character and personality, of which the Rangers had in abundance.

The Poe's brain trust, on the other hand, were working with Bertha on arriving at the precise configuration for maximum coherence and stability of the anti-spacetime beam. Its effect on intervening quantum space would be negligible, a few ripples of uncertainty left in its wake, quickly to reform on interaction with the surrounding medium. Coary thought of that time on the ocean beach when he was a boy. It was his first experience with waves. Not ten years old, he walked through the water until it was up to his chest, then turned to face the beach and all the people lolling about, his mother lying on a blanket. A large wave crashed over him, unseen, almost knocking him to his knees. He laughed as he spit salty water. But the fun part was over. After the wave cascaded onto the sand, it returned. All that water, the sand under his feet streaming away, the undertow pulling him out to the ocean's depths. He struggled to hold his own and rushed back to the safety of the shallow water. This felt eerily similar.

Brightfeather commed in to explain what they had so far. "We can flood the time-loop bubble passed the threshold with oppositely-oriented spatial and temporal elementals. We figure while the node is busy trying to determine how to digest the counter-temporal units, the anti-spatial elementals will work to decompress surrounding space. Possibly, long enough."

Coary stared at the screen and said, "Run the quark-drive through the canon as before and fire when ready."

He leaned forward, confronting the round nothingness, now its original size. An old habit his mother used to do at certain times popped into his head. He crossed his fingers. The tightly-woven, magnetically encased, spherical pulse of spacetime elementals shot out, then vanished behind the threshold. They waited. The gel-like space encasing the Edgar Poe loosened its grip and expanded; its viscosity slackened. "Bertha," he said, "when optimal solvency is reached, inform me at once."

She responded in the affirmative. He ordered the nav-officer to set a course 90 degrees to port and to initiate at maximum speed when he gave the word. That direction would take them away from this edge of the great expanse towards the middle and closer to their original destination. But before Bertha announced that the maximum likely porosity of space had been reached, the screen exploded into white light, bathing the ship and surrounding volume of space. When it subsided, Coary saw normal quantum space, no time-loop bubble of uninviting blackness.

Bertha, always monitorung the sensor array, announced, "The entire network of nodes has apparently suffered a cascade effect as reciprocal time-elementals flooded the connecting links. Not only were they unpalatable, but the result was similar to a meeting of matter and antimatter--annihilation."

The space was clear and free to move in; nonetheless, Coary thought, and Owens agreed, that whoever built this elaborate contraption might be a little annoyed at its destruction. Its level of sophistication and ingenuity were far beyond anything they'd ever come across or knew of. Still, what could its purpose be? As an impenetrable and death-dealing wall, automated and self-referential? If that be the case, then whoever it's intended to repel must be formidable indeed. Coary didn't want to get in the middle of any local disputes; in fact, he rather hoped his presence was never known. It could be an artifact from an ancient war, all participants long gone, the network operating on its own, self-sufficient. But he wasn't interested in waiting around to find out.

He gave the order to vamoose at top speed. Waypoints were reestablished to the star system of Morpheus-I & II. Coary turned the wheel over to his exec, who turned it over to the nav-officer, and retired to his quarters for a nap. As he lie there decompressing, feeling the adrenaline wash away, he thought about that time at the beach, the warm sun, not too hot, the feel of the sand yielding under his feet, running along the edge of the surf, that slapping sound, captivating. Hoping the universe would hold off on the surprises while he slept, he drifted off.

It took half a day for the crew to settle down; near-death experiences can do that to a person. Their trajectory traced a wide arc out to the middle of the great expanse. The nearest cluster of stars in that direction would take a month for the Edgar Poe at full speed. They were entering what early ocean explorers called the deep. The feelings it evoked were similar for spacers. An all-embracing stillness pervaded the space, quantum activity appeared to be in slow motion. Even quantum states of surface debris, chunks of asteroids and comets, were completely gone, swept out. They were in the far wilderness, the backside of the galaxy, on their own. Coary and his Rangers found it liberating.

Three more days put them in the vicinity of the dancing twins. The Poe emerged into ordinary spacetime, the stuff of finished forces, of touch and feel of electromagnetic surfaces and the sight of a rainbow. The council members brimmed with enthusiasm. By consensus, they selected Morpheus-I, closest to the star, as their base of operations. The planet was about the same size as Earth, its continents spread out, covered in greenery, nothing taller than a few inches. The Poe circumnavigated, performing an initial planet-wide scan, automatically drawing a topographic map on the holoviewer in the brain center. Based on images transmitted by the robot ship, which had taken up orbit around Morpheus-II, the particpants had already decided where they wanted to set-up. Part of their assignment was to reinitialize the robot to continue its exploration of the outback, grid by grid.

The two shuttles landed on a field near a fast-moving stream. The atmosphere, temperature and gravity were almost too ideal. Tents were constructed, equipment placed on tables, generators installed, communications with the Poe established. Coary and Brightfeather wandered the site and discussed the situation. The seas contained all manner of lifeforms, big and small, fish and mammals, egg-layers and the born ready. But here, on land, the barest of ground-cover ranged as far as the eye could see, across the entire planet. Same thing on Morpheus-II. What happened? Or, to be more precise, what didn't happen? That's what the investigators hoped to find out.

Coary and Brightfeather took a shuttle over to Morpheus-II. The physical parameters--air, temperature, gravity--were identical to its sister. They spotted a meadow similar to the encampment chosen by the researchers and put down. They decided to have lunch and threw a blanket on the ground. After the past few days, the peacefulness and calm of the green field did wonders for their nervous system. As they ate, they engaged in normal conversation, talking of home and places they'd been, holovids they'd seen, country they'd like to visit.

After a thoughtful pause, Coary said, "We're the only land animals on this entire planet. Isn't it natural for the process of evolution for sea creatures to migrate onto land?"

"That's the assumption being made and the reason we're here," replied his science officer. "But suppose, on this side of the galaxy, it works differently."

"Why should that make a difference? Evolution has to do with life, the principle by which it develops ever more complex patterns. It drives the universe and everything in it. Why then should these two planets be the exception?"

Brightfeather smiled, her Blackfoot eyes shone with amusement. Coary laughed at himself. He found cares, ordinary leadership ones, lifting from his shoulders. He lay back on the grass and stared at the sky, a bright, vivid blue; the sun was almost directly overhead; the horizon a crisp curve scribing the edge of space.

"But you have a point, captain," she said. "I feel a sense of wrongness here. An unnaturalness. It's not that it's too good to be true, I mean the physical parameters, not the absence of animal life, but both these planets orbit in sync with the same rotation rate. That sounds like a single thing happening. A linkage between them. Whether it emerged accidentally when the system was orginally formed, or whether they've always been one object, entangled on a macro scale. Perhaps in the beginning, they were a single massive planet that divided by pressure from the star and the pull of the other larger gas bags further out."

Coary sat up, bit into a piece of fruit. "Yea, let's say that's it. But it doesn't explain why evolution only went so far after all these billions of years. What, the star is thirteen billion years old? Isn't that enough time to generate a vibrant biosphere with all the niches filled?"

She had to agree. Her sense that progression had been artificially held up, her sense of wrongness, trumped her scientific conclusion that evolution simply had another agenda. It was an inherent principle of nature and nature was everywhere. Could it be that strange on these planets?

Taking advantage of the down time, they decided to go for a stroll, get some exercise. As they walked, they talked. Besides rotation rate and physical conditions, Brightfeather confessed to being at a loss to explain how the two planets could align themselves so precisely. "The stellar wind impacts the magnetosphere of the inner planet and then flows around it to do the same with that of the second planet. Number two rides in the protective shadow of number one. But the stellar wind is constantly and vigorously attacking both fields, plasma buffeting, pushing, shoving, colliding with charged particles in the atmospheres. If the outer planet were to get even slightly ahead or, especially, behind the inner, the friction resulting would be enough to eventually force the two planets apart. Such a change would disrupt the entire system. Thirteen planets and who knows how many moons would experience the gravitational ripples and shoot off into other orbits, crashing into one another. Once these two planets fell out of their precisely balanced arrangment, the system would descend into chaos, anarchy; it would totally disintegrate in short order."

"So how has it been able to maintain such exactness over billions of years?"

They walked in silence over the green ground cover, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the clean, fresh air, and most of all, the deep quiet of the unspoiled landscape. Coming over a hill they noticed an indentation in the rock face on the other side of a narrow canyon. Curious, they approached. It proved to be more than just a collpased section of dirt; it was a cave. Standing at its mouth, they could see in for about twenty feet to where it turned sharply to the right. Not worried about bears or other cave-dwelling animals, they flicked on their light beams and proceeded to investigate.

The walls were of hardened sediment; the ground, gravelly but flat, negotiable. Instinctively, in spite of their unconcern for residents, their hearing and sense of smell were heightened. They turned the corner and shone their lights down a slight incline about eight-feet wide, the ceiling was another two-feet above their head. At the bottom they encountered a wall with what looked like a doorway cut into it. They glanced at one another, Coary stepped through, shined his light around, then gave the okay; Brightfeather followed.

The huge room was about a hundred feet by fifty, the ceiling, far above. In the middle sat a round, raised platform, shiny and smooth, about twenty feet in diameter. On it, resting on a legged, semicircular table, what could only be described as equipment, instruments, devices, lay here and there. Standing on the ground in front of it, they could see what appeared to be display screens, partially covered in clay-dust. On the walls at regular intervals hung thin sheets, about eight-feet by three-feet, of apparently synthetic material, inscribed with symbols and geometric patterns. Brightfeather examined a panel of buttons and switches set into the table at the center of its arc. Carefully wiping the dirt away, she was able to make out symbols etched into the metal surface adjacent each control toggle; she assumed that's what they were. She was looking for the on button. In the upper left, a hinged cover of some kind partially concealed a stick-switch; next to it was a symbol of concentric circles. She was convinced, enough to try.

"Captain, Brian, check this out." He'd been studying the wall-hangings. After the encounter with the shaman, hangings of this sort held special significance. She flipped back on the resistant hinge revealing the switch. "I believe this is the on/off button." Her enthusiasm and fearlessness was a hallmark of her personality and underscored her reputation for being the creative and insightful scientist she was. However, it also had gotten her into trouble more than once.

"The on/off of what? Of us? What are we looking at here? Let's not rush into this. These planets are supposed to have no animal life, that includes sentient cave-dwellers with sophisticated equipment on a world where there's no civilization capable of building such things. Whose is this? They sure as hell don't live here or on the other one." He hated the expectation of disappointment in her eyes, but he had to put his foot down on this. Something was going on that quite possibly affected both planets in a crucial way, and that switch might set off unimaginable and undesired consequences.

"Let's get Finley and the brain trust in here. Have him go over this thing, all these things. We don't know what we're dealing with, commander; let's study it first."

She relented and pushed the cover back in place. But she said, "When it comes time to flip it, I want to be the one." Coary was helpless to deny her; it went like that a lot.

After the Edgar Poe perfomed a full scan of the planet and transmitted the three-D topographic map to the holoviewer, she adopted a stationary orbit over the cave. The crew was on full alert. Tactical teams were assembled; Bertha relayed the coordinates of other possible cave dwellings. The council members on Morpheus-I were informed of the situation; it abruptly changed their itinerary, to say the least. The wizard's curtain had been pulled back. The project took on a whole new meaning. Whatever models they'd been developing since the initial discovery of the dancing twins to explain their strangeness were canned. They informed the captain that early results on the seismometer indicated low-frequency vibrations deep within the planet. As well, after a cursory survey with the shuttle of the volcanoes in the vicinity, they were willing to speculate that all were dormant, had been for millions of years.

Members of the Poe's team of scientists familiar with cryptographic linguistics examined the sheets of symbols. Finley and his crew had no luck searching for joints or crevices in order to take the main control panel apart. They were making an assumption, of course, but experience in the field had taught them the general configuration of a control system, and this fit the bill. No wires extended from it; if indeed it transmitted signals, they must be radio or microwave. To what did they go and what did they activate?

One recon team reported they'd found another cave with similar equipment, including an identical panel of switches and buttons that apparently hadn't been used for some time. Finley held a homemade device that could detect a wireless network without triggering anything over the suspected power switch. The engineer with the recon team in the other cave reported that a tiny light in the center of the panel had blinked on and off three times, then stopped. They were connected, miles away, through solid rock.

What activated the light? The nickel-colored metal panel was two-inches thick and three-feet on a side. No wires stuck out of it. It rested on the table, transportable, and not very heavy, maybe five or six pounds. The power source must be inside, but the body was all of one piece. X-rays wouldn't penetrate its atomic lattice, nor, Finley suspected, would any other frequency. He considered laser drilling, but after conferring with his team, decided it wouldn't do any good, there was no point to it. Of course it had a power source, what it powered was the question.

Brightfeather and the other physicists worked on decrypting the etchings next to each button and switch on the panel. In the lower right-hand corner was a symbol of the sun, the one above, that of a waterway, and the next, a stick figure of some creature with four appendages and a head. They were doing a lot of guessing, of course, but, like the engineers, after years in the field analyzing alien symbols and notation, they learned that pictorial images of things tended to converge across otherwise disparate civilizations. A tree is a tree, whether on Hawking-I or any other planet.

The research team on Morpheus-I commed in, sounding a bit nervous. The blue, pristine sky was clouding up, coming from the north. A breeze now blew from that direction as well. No one expected bad weather, the robot ship had relayed one sunny day after another. They were out in the open with valuable equipment; they told the captain they were bringing everything inside the shuttle and breaking down the tents. They needed to regroup, rethink this whole thing, but they would stay on Morpheus-I and continue to report developments. The seismometer and magnetometer were well dug in and would continue to relay data.

Coary had a hunch. Brightfeather and he had landed where they did because it appeared so similar to where the council team had chosen to set-up base. He told his men crewing the shuttle to walk in the same direction they had. If they see an indentation in a cliff face across a narrow gravelly canyon, investigate with extreme caution.

They cleaned the grimy clay dust off the screens on the half-dozen pieces of equipment. Although they were transparent, their crystal structure was metalic. Below each screen was a keypad of obscure symbols, alphaneumeric, perhaps. Coary's patience was running out; they were getting nowhere. He looked at Brightfeather, she knew what that meant. "Captain," she said, "I suggest we take a chance and find out what happens."

The skipper nodded; Finley and the others braced themselves. The team in the other cave was informed that they were about to run a test of the system. Report any changes. Brightfeather lifted the cover over the power switch and without further adieu, flipped it. Nothing happened, at first. But seconds later, all the screens came to life. The engineer in the other cave announced the same thing. Each depicted something different, but all were of graphs of waves overlaid on various views of the planet. The other switches on the control panel were all set in the same direction, except two. Next to one, incised into the surface, was an unmistakable etch of a fish, simple and clean, and on the other, the impression of a river or stream.

The shuttle crew on Morpheus-I reported that they'd found a cave with equipment in it similar to the images they'd been sent. But nothing was on, no screens, no lights. They were told to stay put, on alert, and report any changes. On that regard, he was told the weather was getting worse; the wind was picking up and the sky was dull grey. Coary ordered that if it looks like it's becoming dangerous, they were to leave the planet and come to Morpheus-II. He didn't think it was a coincidence that things started going awry weather-wise on Morpheus-I immediately after they entered the cave, before anything had been touched. They needed to step back and gather what they knew. What were they dealing with here?

He commed the Poe to tell them to be on the lookout for anything unusual or new. Addressing his fellow cave dwellers, he asked, "What does anyone think about all this? The situation on the other planet is getting worse. They found a cave with the same kind of equipment, currently inactive. We have at least two caves here that are networked. We don't know, there could be hundreds of such caves, both here and on the other world. Apparently, the planets operate independently. I use the word operate because I'm getting the feeling that whoever installed this equipment has done so for control reasons. Maybe more. Maybe the planets aren't real. Maybe they're artificial."

"If that's the case," said the exobiologist, "and I'm not saying it isn't, how do you explain the broad diversity of sea creatures? They're quite real."

"Who could possibly possess such technology," asked the planetologist, "to construct two enormous planets with the right interior materials and dynamics to orbit in tandem with such exactitude and then position them just so?"

"Or," began the astrogeologist, "these planets were once inhabited with all manner of flora and fauna, the sentients managed to destroy it, and in a last ditch effort to recoup on their losses, terraformed it into their image and with their oversight?"

"But then," sneered Finley, "where are they? Where is any evidence of someone living here, of anyone having ever lived here? No settlements, no roads, no signs of people, no graves, no civilization. Nothing. Although we don't yet know what it does, a people who could build this stuff would necessarily have a sophisticated culture. They would exist. There'd be evidence, traces. Like it is, it's like some super-forensics team went over the entire planet removing, carefully, anything that might point to someone having been here, any proof. But why?"

"We don't know," said Brightfeather. "By the condition of the equipment, no one's visited for some time. Maybe they set things up and then left."

"For their homeworld," added Coary. He was getting a really bad feeling that they'd stepped into somebody else's playground. He ordered the shuttle on Morpheus-I to take the council members back to the ship. It was just as well, he was told, the wind was stiffening, flying sand and gravel obscured vision, and rumbling within the planet had intensified. The weather on Coary's planet had remained as it was when they first set down, sunny, warm, calm. It was as though, he thought, they had their signals crossed. Possibly, upon entering this room, they triggered a security system consisting of atmospheric storms and earthquakes on the other planet. Their wires were crossed. Or, after landing with the council research team, the trigger had been flipped, the no trespassing rule put into effect. Possibly, there's a grace period where a visitor has to punch a certain code into something in order to cancel the security alarm. But if it's the case where whoever was running this show lived elsewhere, that alarm probably reached them.

Coary had people spread out all over the place, recon patrols scouring the planet, some of his resident brain trust here. He felt vulnerable and he knew their investigation had stalled. The status quo had to change. "Brightfeather," he began, "let's see what the hell this thing does. Owens," he commed, "monitor activity in the sea. We're going to perform an experiment. I have a hunch."

He approached the panel. If all hell was going to break loose, he wanted responsibility to fall on him. He flipped the toggle with the fish symbol next to it. Immediately, below them could be heard a churning sound as of heavy machinery kicking into gear. The ground shook slightly, then stabilized. Soon, the hard-edged sounds settled into a whirring and clicking, then smoothed to a low-pitched, steady hum. They all looked at one another. Uncertainty and concern showed, but they were scientists and Rangers, so curiosity trumped trepidation.

"Captain," Owens, said, "you're not going to believe this."

"Try me," spat Coary.

"The oceans are empty of all life. Gone, just like that."

"Thanks, commander."

"What's going on down there, captain? What just happened? The ocean was teeming with all kinds of creatures, and then whammo, nothin'."

"I'll tell ya' later. Continue monitoring the planet and establish a security perimeter. I want a deep scan, all directions. We might have visitors."

He contacted the recon patrols and told them to stay above five hundred feet and report any activity. Unhesitatingly, he flipped the toggle with the sketch of the barest lines of a tree. The buzzing, clicking, and droning followed as before. Guards at the head of the cave ran in. Trees and bushes and flowering plants had materialized everywhere at once. The patrols reported the same; one second, there was only ground cover, the next, a veritable forest had appeared out of thin air.

They all ran outside, amazed and mystified by what they saw. The bark and leaves felt real, it wasn't a hologram; bushes of berries and multicolored fruit displayed themselves as though at harvest time. Every imaginable variety and kind of flower ranged over the meadows and hillocks, sprang from stream banks and scented the air with the most delicious fragrances. They reentered the cave, Coary stood in front of the control panel. Other toggles were for animals, insects, birds, everything a healthy planet could want, individually produced. Now that they'd discovered the function of the machine, Brightfeather wanted to push other buttons, flip other switches, but managed to restrain herself.

"I have a question," Coary said. "Why would whoever they are leave the waterways and sea life switch on but turn everything else off? And why not cover all this stuff, keep it from getting grimed up? Did they have to leave in a hurry?"

Brightfeather put forth another line of questioning: "What is the purpose of this place, of both places? By the sounds emanating from beneath us, I'm guessing it's artificial, constructed by some incredibly advanced civilization and positioned here, or, these planets are natural and have been remade."

"That's probably more the case," suggested the astrogeologist. "The core appears to be iron-nickle with magma circulating, similar to Earth. How else would you have a protective magnetosphere and the required mass to maintain the orbits they do after billions of years? They had to be among the original planets when the system finally settled down to approximately what it is now."

It was seductive, intentionally so. The rich, vibrant smells from outside wafted in. It was too tempting. No one had ever imagined running into a planet like this. They couldn't just leave without testing everything. When would this ever happen again in their entire lives? How could they, in this crazy, bizarre universe where life could end at any moment, pass up the chance?

Coary led a brief discussion. The consensus was: If the owners were indeed on their way, it would be best to know how everything worked in case it might be needed. The idea of packing up quickly and leaving the area was never even considered. Coary asked for volunteers. Everybody wanted to push a button or flip a switch. How this complex process was being done, the physics and technology behind it, was beyond anything anybody knew. That job was given to Bertha, to cogitate and speculate. They turned on everything, including the one with the incised depiction of a four-legged animal. He warned his men to keep their weapons handy, predators may be part of the package.

Outside was a wonder. Birds of all colors and shapes plied the blue skies, perching in tall trees. What could pass for deer or antelope could be spotted in the woods. Squirrel-like creatures scampered along the canopy, leaping from branch to branch. Insects flew, crawled, and hopped. The streams and brooks ran as before, but now took on a more vital significance as drinking water for wildlife.

"Owens," Coary said breathlessly into his comm. "Are you reading this?"

"Yes, captain. Unbelievable. It all just materialized. What did you do?"

"I think it would be easier to just come down here and see for yourself. Finley'll explain it to you. Bring some deep-earth radar and seismic imaging equipment; I want to find out what's under this floor. Have you detected any visitors?"

"None so far, we're still on alert."

The seismometer on Morpheus-I transmitted a decrease in vibrations, as far as the wind storm was concerned, they didn't know, but Coary suspected it too had subsided. He and Brightfeather and the rest of his team wandered about the meadow and into the forest and along the reeds bordering brooks, burbling, of course. This was all too pat for the captain. Too absolutely perfect, too infinitely detailed, yet seemingly uncontrolled. Nature left to its own devising; however, it all felt scripted.

Brightfeather felt the planet's seductive power, it was almost palpable; against her will, it seemed, tension drained from her body. Was that too by design, she thought, or has it been too long since I've been in such beautiful, harmonious surroundings? Coary sat on the bank of a wide stream, alone, plucking at long grass. She came up behind him and sat beside him, then threw a stone into the fast-moving water. She could tell what he was thinking. She said, in her best scientific tone, "Complex adaptive systems running as open-ended computer simulations. This whole planet is one vast computer capable of generating living organisms. With the rules of ecology regulating interactions. An animal gets thirsty, it comes down to the stream and drinks. It's hungry, it grazes or eats fruit."

"But living things out of thin air? Are we sure they're alive?"

"This stream is real. I'll bet if we flick that waterway switch, it'll vanish."

"Yeah. The ingredients must be present somewhere. Those for water are easy to come by, but genetic manufacture would take considerably more in the way of information. You need layers of regulatory genes overseeing other sets. I wonder if this system allows for replication, procreation, breeding? There must be a storage unit, a memory source or archive. A two-dimensional sheet projected holographically into three. Sheets. Those wall-hangings."

"I didn't count them," said Brightfeather, "but I'll bet they're the same as the number of controls on the panel. That might be the equations for each sub-system, but I suspect that below, that noise we heard, is a much larger space where the workings are. But these trees and animals aren't holograms, they're visceral and function independently. The algorithms would have to be incalculably complex."

Owens commed, "Sir, I was about to leave when our scanners detected a large object, perhaps 500 meters long, on the outskirts of the system coming fast. I think the landlords are here."

"Right. Cancel the trip. Sorry. All units, return to the ship, we have company. Cave dwellers, everybody wherever you are, return to your shuttle and the ship, now." He and Brightfeather ran back to where they'd parked. Coary grabbed the blanket and what was left of their lunch. The less evidence of their presence, the better. As they stepped into the shuttle, they glanced at the picnic spot; for a brief moment in time, life had been delightfully commonplace.

As they lifted off, Brightfeather dissolved into giggles. "What!" demanded Coary.

In between fits, she said, "You grab the blanket but leave all the house lights on." She bent over in the chair next to his, she couldn't help it.

Coary's eyes widened, then he too burst out laughing. "At least we didn't take anything; they can't bitch about that." They laughed 'till tears ran down their cheeks.

Everyone secure onboard, Coary ordered the helmsman to pick a course straight out from the planet away from the system and drop into quantum space as soon as they cleared the magnetosphere. But when he attempted to engage the plasma-drive, nothing happened. "Sir," the sensor-officer said, "we're enclosed in a force field of some unknown kind. We can't move."

Coary stood to approach the main view screen. "Find that ship," he said. Momentarily, a gargantuan vessel, five times bigger than the Edgar Poe, appeared on the screen, sitting just a few kilometers off their bow. "Red alert, all hands, battle stations. Hull protection at maximum, boost it through the quark-drive if necessary." Owens joined the weapons officer and together they prepared the system, but didn't load anything. They didn't want to provoke possible disaster if it could be avoided. They were in unknown territory dealing with an unknown race of beings way more advanced technologically. A race that, nonetheless, was presumed to be humanoid by the nature of the equipment they found and most especially, by the nature of their creations.

Coary waited, the whole bridge crew held their breath. They knew that some day they'd run into someone who'd squash them like a bug, this must be that day.

Coary ordered the communications officer to open a link to whoever this was and said, "Hello. I am Captain Coary and our ship is the Edgar Poe. We are on an exploratory mission, scientific in nature. We were informed that the two planets below were uninhabited. We come in peace."

Bertha chimed in, "Captain. Our archives are being accessed as well as navigation and weapons systems. I cannot block it."

Coary turned to look at Brightfeather questioningly. He was about to say something when the whole world began spinning and spiraling, hard surfaces twisted and turned, then soundlessly broke into shards of colors and shapes all intermingling and running like thick water down a wall. In the mix he saw Brightfeather's face, her eyes wide with terror. They were moving through a tunnel, its surface sparkling with particle fluctuations and clouded here and there by puffs of ionic fur balls. Presently, they appeared in a stately drawing room. Bizarre paintings of unknown creatures and landscapes of incredible detail adorned the pale-blue walls. Down the center stood a long, dark wood table, twenty feet perhaps, surrounded by high-backed yet comfortably-cushioned chairs. On the floor, a richly-embroidered rug, burgondy its background color.

They sat next to each other near the middle. At either end sat a man, human-looking, and directly across from them, two women. They were dressed rather elaborately but not ostentatiously in colorful clothing. In addition, the men wore capes and gold chains around their neck. Coary had no idea what to say; he was suitably flabbergasted and not exactly in a position to bargain.

The man to Coary's right said, in a voice very human sounding, "Captain Coary and Commander Brightfeather, we thought this setting might be more... agreeable." He smiled. "We've accessed your data storage and know why you came here. We applaud your courage and determination to pursue knowledge for its own sake." He paused as someone entered a door that Coary was sure wasn't there a second ago. She carried a tray with curved cups and a pitcher, placed it in front of them, and departed. "Please, drink, we're sure you'll find it enjoyable."

This was a test, Coary knew. He'd been around the block a few times and was naturally suspicious of overt friendliness by people who should be just the opposite. So, drink, if you dare, if you trust. He poured a cup for Brightfeather and himself, smelled it, then took a sip. She waited, staring at him. "This is delicious," he said sincerely. "What is this?"

"A concoction of many different kinds of fruit that grow on our world. Captain, you probably have many questions, but perhaps I can eliminate some. We are from two very different worlds. We have never traveled to the other side of the galaxy; instead, we've ventured to other galaxies in the nearby cluster. A decision was made long ago, and that's the way it's been. Something else you should realize, it concerns the planets below. Your science is little more than a thousand years old. In those same years, ours is a billion years old. You know of four forces, we are familiar with dozens in other dimensions we've learned to access. We are intrigued now by your race, but contact is simply not possible for several reasons."

Coary asked, "What are those planets? What are they for?"

He smiled, then said, "They are learning aids for our children, parks for others to mediate and contemplate, and experimental laboratories for the researcher, a theatrical background for the artist. As you two found, they also make ideal picnic sites."

Brightfeather and Coary smiled. "How could you know that?"

"Each planet records everything that transpires and sends it to us. We watched. All of you. We saw that, although a little too inquisitve, you meant no harm. We came to make sure you didn't harm yourselves. We also saw that when confronted with uncertainty, you'd rather take a chance on annihilation in order to rid yourselves of it than play the cautious role and live in ignorance. You came all this way, you're weren't going to go away empty-handed. You take great risks for knowledge. We discovered these planets orbiting in perfect sync half a billion years ago. They were lifeless at the time; there was evidenc of life having flourished for billions of years, and then some catastrophe struck, wiping out all life. We speculated at the time a nearby supernova or a massive gamma ray burst from this cranky old sun. Now we suspect that other dimensions of fractured space cross-hatched with them, destabilizing their rotation. But, we don't know. We had to install resonating sound inducers in order to keep them in sync, one behind the other."

The rumbling as of an earthquake, recalled Coary. "We found the control panel with the sea creature and waterways on. Was that intended?"

"Yes. We found that the mass of the oceans and that of the creatures in them help maintain balance. It gives us another parameter to work with. And also to protect the seabed, the sun would bake it, cracking the crust."

He paused for a long moment, chagrin flickered across his all too human features. The man at the other end spoke for the first time. "We have a kinship with your race; my brother feels it. On the level of the psychic field, we share the same fundamental frequency, the same signature. Curious. But, unfortunately, your people are much too warlike and primitive. You have far to go and much to learn."

"Teach us," said Brightfeather. "We wish to learn about the universe we live in."

"We have no way to communicate, the abyss is too wide." At once the room changed. They were sitting at a circular crystal table on seats of pure light. The walls had no surface or color; they weren't black and they weren't white. The table refracted a soft warm light that seemed to come from everywhere at once. In the center of the table sat a single white candle, its flame flickering at their hurried breathing. A voice said, "If you wish to return, for a picnic, feel free. On your way home, make sure you hug the Norma Arm, as you call it. Long ago, when complex animals first appeared on your Earth, we fought a war with a vicious barbarian people living in that far sector. They established walls of time-devouring, dimensionless spaces at the periphery of their territory to keep us out. But to no avail; we defeated them and now they fear us. Their ways are no longer followed, not by the many worlds we know on this side of the galaxy, so they may no longer exist. Nonetheless, the fields do, so avoid them. Now, good humans, let us help you on your way."

At once, without all the tunnel spectacle, Coary and Brightfeather were in their bridge seats; the viewscreen showed the alien ship one instant, and the next it was gone. Coary was about to express his awe at their speed when the nav-officer informed him that they were almost across the great expanse, heading for the Norma Arm. Numb from recent events, the captain felt no surprise. He told his nav-officer to plot the wayponts home and to not spare the horses. His mind flashed to his rustic lakeside abode and the cool summer breeze at night on his porch, a glass of bourbon in his hand.

Brightfeather retired to her quarters, she needed to process and to sleep. Bertha commed that she had an idea how they did it all, the details. He rubbed his head and said, "Not now, please. Not now."

He went to his room, ate something to quell the hunger pain, then plopped into bed. He had much to think about on the return trip. Who were those people? What did he mean by kinship? Will Brightfeather and I ever go back for a picnic?

Daydreaming of that beautiful planet with all its overwhelming feelings of well-being and peace filled his thoughts as he drifted off to a deep sleep.