"Move out," came the cry, echoed up and down the line. Mogarth raised his heavy body, his four powerful yet very tired legs straining, wiped his antennae clean, then lifted the M-ray pulse rifle and slung it over a shoulder. They walked ahead into the neverending breeze, wary but also casually, they've been here before. They marched in silence towards the hill, not knowing or wanting to know what lay beyond. Mogarth, his mind weary, tried to imagine what could've made the wump sound. It was new.

An Anti-Mass Inducer (M-ray) striking some material causes its mass to vanish, resulting in the disintegration and discorporation of the internal crystal structure. The generic signature or fundamental frequency resonates through the material neutralizing all possible types of mass force-particles. Electrons, besides charge and spin, have mass as do neutrons and protons. Without mass, electrons lose their capacity for charge and are no longer able to hold things together. In other words, these sub-atomic elements can't exist as such without mass. Matter thusly disintegrates. With an organic substance, like flesh and blood, it supercools it, which effectively, and ironically, causes it to burn.

The landscape was a series of ridges, dunes of gravelly sand, pebbles, and misshapen pieces of rock, all of the same mineral. The valley they were in was deep, about two hundred meters across, and the ridges on either side a good thirty to forty meters high. The dune was steep and slippery, giving way without notice, but they'd become used to it, their four legs churning away like machines. When they neared the peak, the commander ordered them to get down and crawl up to peer over the ridge. Mogarth, and probably most if not all of his comrades, planned on doing just that as per common sense and from training, what they've been doing since they landed on this barren rock, but in case anyone was too spaced out to care, it was good, he thought, to be reminded. All it would take is for one of them to unconsciously stand there in sight of whoever might be on the other side to put the entire group in danger.

Several feet from the top, he got down on his stomach and squirmed up. Peaking over he saw a huge sphere, about fifty meters in diameter, smooth as metal, no protuberances. He shifted his mind to his antennae, focusing on every detail of what was around him, eliminating what he knew--his team, the rocks strewn everywhere, the fine dust that always seemed to be floating in the air--and sensed absolutely nothing. Despite the fact that they could see it, the sphere radiated no electrical or magnetic energy, whatever material it was made of was unknown on his home world. Its light reflection must be occurring on another spatial dimension, he considered, then translated as a limited expression to this one as a psuedoimage. Either that, or the internal features of the material projects the image he sees before him. Somehow. And nothing on the biomolecular level as well; that is, no lifeforms. But that wasn't conclusive. If made from the same mineral as the surface of the planet, it may not allow for intrusion, or, it could be solid.

He shook his head, slid down a bit, and leaned back into the hard, stiff sand, burrowing. All he knew for sure was that it was there, a great unknown. It was their first encounter on this world with anything; apparently, nothing above atmospheric microbes existed. Fortunately, the gravity was slightly less than nature had designed him for and the air was in breathing range. Otherwise, they'd be lugging concentrated-air tanks with full masks.

Mogarth had been in this war for almost three years; it seemed like a lifetime. With war inevitable, all his friends had signed up and were shipped out to training centers. He'd been alone, wandering all their familiar haunts, growing more and more morose and irritable. He couldn't make up his mind. He was involved in things he cared about, studies of how the universe worked and what meaning it brought to life. Life, he believed, was so very precious. But one day leaving a cafe he passed by a storefront that had a video player in the window. It caught his attention. It was a news story depicting the destruction of the capital city on the populated planet two star systems away. People bloodied and carrying their dead, some were children. The video, the narrator said, had been smuggled out along with a shipload of refugees. A daring rescue by a team of specially trained soldiers--Ragnar Force. In the fog of his mind he recalled from letters that two of his closest friends had qualified. That was it. The sight of the children especially had broken through his reticence and doubt. He signed up and trained and trained and eventually succeeded in becoming one of the elite Ragnars.

Ragnar: An ancient mythological character who could make himself invisible and was capable of killing with a force emanating from his antennae. Some accounts say he could render a foe defenseless with a single, penetrating look. He was a fierce warrior.

The enemy had been expanding in all directions; one planet after another was conquered and their people enslaved. Leaders from all over the world had gathered to confer about what course to take. It seemed they had few choices. They could try appeasement, paying tribute to be left alone. But with more evidence as to the invader's character, their aggresive nature and singleminded goal, it was determined unlikely such an appeal would stave off destruction, death, and subjugation. Another choice was to wait and see. Perhaps they would expand only so far from their home base, wary of overextending communication lines and central control. But that too was rejected. They would live consumed by anxiety and constant dread. Always on the watch, always checking to see if the invaders were preparing to attack. The invaders would be given time while the populace sat passively by, hoping against hope. So that was it, the only choice that felt right and what they wanted to do all along--take the fight to them and crush them into the ground so they'd never again threaten the galaxy.

From interrogations of captured enemy, intelligence gatherers had discovered the location of their home world. Plans were devised to attack it, get to their heart in one bold overwhelming invasion. But when put before the people, the reaction was negative. The populace feared that while the brunt of their military was busy fighting on a distant world, they would be vulnerable to forces arrayed on the much closer planets the enemy possessed. So, it was decided to grind it out. Push them back along a path that led straight to their home and encircle them. By that time, the liberated populations of the worlds conquered would be fully with them, adding enormously to their numbers and fire power. But the enemy didn't occupy only civilized worlds, they also had bases and staging areas on desert planets. This was one of them.

And because of its position along a string of planets that led ultimately to the enemy's home, it was of strategic importance. But, he wondered, sighing deeply, when does this string come to an end?

"Mogarth," he heard his name spoken with the harsh whisper of his unit leader. "Get up on the line." Resignedly, he crawled back up. It was still there, glowing in the bright yellow sun in the middle of the valley. He just stared, his eyesight blurry, the sunlight glinting off the great ball sitting placidly on the flat layer of crumbled rock.

According to their chronometers gauged to home--for the sake of sanity and order--it'd been almost three rotations since they first set down in a valley similar to this, a few kilometers from where the enemy was last sighted; they were all the same. A hundred of them quickly debarked and fanned out several meters apart, heading in that direction. They communicated by radio at first until the command crew onboard informed them that the enemy might be able to listen in. Since then, it's been hand signals and passing orders and messages down the line.

But what enemy? he wondered. Is this it? A giant ball? All this time hiking over one rocky, gravelly, sand hill after another, slipping and sliding, in the relentless heat from a sun much closer than the one he grew up with. Does it ever set? It loomed so gigantically he felt it might just suddenly fall onto the planet, onto him. No trees, no grass, no desert creatures, nothing. The death of this place was beginning to get on his nerves. He tried to imagine his home planet when it had once been like this; the land part, that is. How incredibly lonely it must've been. And that was another thing, after surveying the planet on entry into the system, they'd found no surface water, and if it was deep beneath, they couldn't tell. Their instruments were unable to penetrate the strange mineral covering it, or perhaps, was it. And also, no signs of the enemy. They were supposed to be here, they'd been spotted and recorded by probes, the images sent back to Headquarters. He stopped his ruminations to take a quick sip of water; he was going off again on a tirade and knew he needed to focus on the job at hand. But something was bothering him.

He hadn't seen those videos, come to think of it. They were deemed classified as had all the others from the planets they'd fought on. The intelligence community and the military and political leaders had studied them, of course, but they were not for public consumption. But why? Doesn't everyone have the right to see who they're fighting? He recalled the last one he'd killed. He rounded a building and not ten meters away an enemy stood. The air was breathable for both, so he could see his face clearly under his round camouflage-covered helmet. Two eyes, blue in color, above a fleshy breathing organ and below that, an opening with bony growths inside, how they ingest food and drink. Hair grew from the lower part of his face. Surprised and stunned, he froze. In that brief instant, Mogarth fired, burning a large hole through his middle. So, yea, he had to admit, they are hideous; maybe that's it. He killed several so far on other planets. Two legs they stand on and two thinner appendages grow out of the sides of their body near the top, with tendrils at their ends. No antennae and their eyes embedded in the same side of their tiny heads. How can they see behind them? He shuddered.

Abruptly, his antagonism subsided, his mood shifted to one of empathy. The self he kept within, suppressed, protected. He shrugged. Regardless of whatever they look like, he felt, they have lives, family, friends. Mogarth confessed to himself that he was tired of all the killing, all the rancor and hate and cruelty. But, reminding himself of what atrocities this race of invaders has committed on other worlds, he felt no remorse. He had a job to do and that was that. It was kill or be killed, or worse.

They'd already liberated three planets, the first was in the next system, a red dwarf star, in the direction of the enemy's home. It was too close for comfort and triggered the plan into action. It wasn't as difficult as it was initially expected to be. The enemy hadn't dug in sufficiently, their satellite defensive system had yet to be deployed. Plus they had the help of the local residents, resistance fighters skilled in house to house warfare. All who could be spared from the mopping-up volunteered to join the main assault, offering cover and support. Fierce battles were fought in space as the enemy sent squadrons of ships to reinforce their comrades; they were repelled by fighters from the liberated worlds, people whose rage harbored no fear and no mercy. Death and destruction reigned on both flanks while Mogarth and his band were at the spearpoint, driving straight ahead.

"Pass it down," he heard to his right, "we move at 16:30." He passed it on and glanced at his timepiece. He checked his weapon for the tenth time. The harsh sand could find its way into the tiniest of places like it had a mind of its own.

As one, the group stood and stepped over the ridge and down the slope, sliding with each stride until reaching the flat, brownish valley. Before them a hundred meters or so sat the base of the enormous ball, a slight depression under it as though it'd been dropped there by a gigantic child. The commander ordered them to surround it and check for any openings or signs of a break.

Mogarth's antennae examined the surface for imperfections, his stalk-bound eyes searched independently, his brain organizing the information into a single panoramic view. After several moments, the surprised murmur of nothing echoed through the ranks. The commander walked outside the ring, studying the sphere as he slowly circled it. Mogarth, his frustration getting the better of him, pointed his rifle up at its bulge. The commander spotted him and shouted, "Mogarth, don't," just as he pulled the trigger. The blast of greenish light hit it, then spread out forming a curved disc across the surface, petering out at the edge, then fading into nothing.

The commander came up next to him. He stared at the spot Mogarth had hit, he was aghast. No material he ever encountered could withstand an M-ray burst. Together they examined the vicinity of the spot. Their antennae hummed, their eyes scoured. They could detect no molecular damage or crystal dislocation. All was as it had been, a perfectly smooth, seamless, and apparently impervious boulder.

Several of the others gathered around the commander. The wump sound came back to them. They discussed it. Could it have fallen from orbit, was it something natural? No, it couldn't be something from space or the resulting impact would've cleared the area and destroyed the sphere. Dust, thick and sharp, would've circled the planet. A new weapon? Was it a ship, in fact, a ship with an impenetrable hull? A robot ship, used for exploration and surveillance? No. Too big. Small is better. And if it's a ship, why no external sensors or visible means of propulsion? Is it hollow or solid?

They stood in the hot sun, chewing on energy bars and drinking water. Despite its size, it didn't appear threatening. Mogarth spoke up, they all listened. His insights and intuitions usually offered a perspective no one else had thought of, and sometimes could be most entertaining. "Nobody saw it land. We're walking towards it, so if it landed, we would've seen it, a giant ball of rock? So perhaps the enemy staged it here or it's always been here, for a long time, before the enemy showed up, in fact, and the wump sound was it trying to get our attention, or anyone's." They stared, waiting for the punchline. "The wump doesn't go off all the time, only when it senses someone near."

"Senses with what," demanded the commander, "and for what reason?"

Mogarth shrugged and grinned, a gesture that always made him look like he knew the answer.

The commander broke radio silence to contact the ship. His request for suggestions was answered with we'll get back to you. What to do with a giant ball of rock has never come up. The captain intervened. He told the commander he was moving the ship to their present location, he wanted to see this ball of rock for himself.

Down the valley a ways was a flat mound of tawny sand, a raft between the crests of dunes. Gathered on the mound they collapsed wherever they could, grateful for the respite. Several stood guard around its edge, however; there was something spooky about this whole set-up, some could feel, most were just too damn tired to care. The commander had a large tent put up in the center in anticipation of the captain's arrival and to get out of the interminable glare of the sun. Compressed in a skinny tube no longer than a meter, it expanded to whatever size you wished up to four meters tall and five on a side when the micro-tubular web was inflated.

Mogarth lay near the far edge away from the great ball of unknown mineral. Except for the fact that its surface was so smooth it was almost reflective, as if by some mechanical process, it looked like all the other rocky debris covering the planet. He'd have to wait for ship's detection instruments to analyze it, but he felt sure it was the same and also that it meant something important. Using his pack for a pillow, he stared at the spot he hit with his rifle. In short order, his muscles surrendered to the moment, fatigue overcoming curiosity. As he relaxed into the sand beneath him, one eye closed, his other eye on the way, he noticed a dark rectangular shape not more than a few feet across just above the bulge. It hadn't been there before, he was sure. He sat up and moved to rise to tell the commander when abruptly it vanished, the hard surface returning.

No one else, not the guards on the ridges or those milling about the edge of the mound had been watching, apparently. It couldn't have been there for very long, moments. A window. Someone had chosen that instant to look down on them. But surely, if it was a vessel of some kind, they would've already known of their presence, could see them through a viewer. Why else land where they did? They spotted them trudging along and plopped down ahead of them. But that didn't make sense, he reminded himself. A 50-meter in diameter ship comes down from the clear, pale red sky and lands hard with a noticeable thud right in front of a hundred well-trained soldiers, albeit a little tired, and nobody sees it? They all heard a loud yet muffled wump sound, the unmistakable sound of some large object landing on sandy ground. He wondered now why he hadn't questioned it, why no one had. A ship landed but nobody saw it, how can that be? But they'd decided that because nobody saw it, it wasn't a ship. Then what was it? Exhausted, they fell into the attitude: The captain was coming, let him handle it.

Mogarth stood straight and tall in front of the commander's tent peering at the area where he saw the window. He turned quickly and strode into the tent. It was totally dark, his eyes needing time to adjust. "Commander," he called out, unable to see him. After a moment or two, shadows appeared, followed by the small group standing around a makeshift table, maps covering it. The open entrance now offered plenty of light. "Mogarth," queried the commander, squinting, "what is it?"

He blurted out what he'd just seen. The commander and the two officers he'd been conferring with came running out. Mogarth pointed to where he'd seen the blackened area, well above and over from where he'd shot. The others were still unaware. The officers roused them immediately, explaining what happened. In spite of their exhaustion, they quickly formed a defensive perimeter around the mound, waving the guards on the ridges to come in.

Mogarth had a feeling whoever was inside that thing could see what they were doing and knew they'd been discovered. And where the hell did they come from? Or had they been lying in wait? So what would be their next move, if anything? As though they were reading his thoughts, he had his answer.

As they watched, mesmerized and stupified, mouths agape, the giant, round ball of rock shimmered brightly, its light intensified until all had to close their eyes or look elsewhere and rely soley on their antennae. A crescendo of energy reached the pain threshold and then abruptly ceased. Antennae read nothing, they opened their eyes, stalks wiggling. The ball of unknown mineral was gone, only the depression remained as testament that it had once been there. Mogarth could feel a wave of warm air pass by carrying a distinct sound--wump.

The commander and his hundred elite, experienced fighters stood motionless, confounded, staring at the emptiness where the sphere had been. A low vibration reverberated across the valley, bouncing back and forth from crest to crest. Before anyone had a chance to warn them of possible consequences, their ship moved over them and came to a landing in the depression vacated by the ball. The commander ran into the tent to radio the captain, to let him know what'd just happened and the significance of where he parked. Before he had a chance to speak, however, the captain's voice came through asking where this ball of his was. The commander responded, "You'd be sitting on it, sir, if it was still there."

The portal opened and the gangway amidships extended down. The captain, accompanied by a small phalanx of armed guards, strode down. The guards stayed at the bottom of the plank; with a hundred Ragnars standing around, they really weren't needed. He approached the commander and they spoke for a few moments, the commander gesturing, the captain nodding. When he finished, he waved for the men to come on. After days of marching across the crumbly orange-brown terrain to experience the fanciful, they needed a break. Tired, hungry for a decent meal, and now dazed, they ambled up the gangway behind the officers in total silence; only the shuffling of boots over rough gravelly sand could be heard. The tent was collapsed and the maps repacked. Mogarth stared at their ship, the same width as the diameter of the sphere but twice its length. He admired its streamlined design, its powerful ionizing engines strapped to both sides amidships, the circular bridge just forward of the mains, the hull gently fanning away in all directions, raking to a point at the bow, the stern tapered to a flat knife edge. A Behemoth Class Star Cruiser and combat vessel. All the latest in weaponry and defensive capabilities. And speed. It could travel through the substrate of spacetime with little to no resistance, crossing light years of space in a twinkling. But it couldn't disappear. Into what realm had the ball of rock gone? And once there, how would it travel?

He walked behind the crowd, stepping around rocks of every size and shape resting on the coarse sand. Fractured pieces and scattered shards that could be the tailings of grinding machinery or the pummeled remains of a giant's hammer failed to completely cover the finer sand beneath. He noticed over the past days how the terrain seemed to be broken up. Dense parcels of stony, rocky areas were spread like islands in a sea of sand. And crests bordering valleys; wide, deep valleys and quite high ridges in some cases. The planet had an iron core spinning in a molten liquid bath of electrons, else there'd be no atmosphere. And there was no evidence of tectonic forces; the planet's surface, its crust, was one solid continuum, no plates to migrate separately. So, he wondered, there's no moon but that sun must play a significant role with tidal effects. On the other hand, because of its size and proximity, they probably cancel out, pulling both ways at the same time. Could the patches of rock, the islands, be drawn together out of some kind of affinity for their kind? He was drifting again, his imagination having experienced a major impact.

On the shadowy side of a small boulder he spotted a sphere no bigger than his hand. A curious shape, unlike anything else in the field of broken pieces, but not improbable. He picked it up, felt its heaviness and surprisingly smooth texture. He wanted to know just what this stuff was, so he dropped it into his pouch.

Onboard, the Ragnars retired to their respective quarters, drained of all enthusiasm. Mogarth went to his cabin he shared with two others, removed his uniform, cleaned up, and donned a fresh ship's suit, soft and comfortable, designed to facilitate relaxation and peace of mind, something difficult to attain. He took the ball to the labs for the scientists to examine. He wasn't surprised to find them busy with samples gathered from their landing site. He showed it to the lead scientist who he knew well and asked about its properties and make-up. He found the shape curious, but otherwise informed him that they had plenty to work with at the moment. He became much more interested when Mogarth told him about the M-ray blast that bounced off. Unable to neutralize mass, he mumbled to himself, looking distant, impervious. "It's in the commander's report, I'm sure, Doctor. When it hit it didn't just ricochet perpendicularly away then dissipate, it conformed to the surface curvature as it spread out before fading to nothing. And it disappeared right in front of us, all of us."

"Yes, we know. The captain informed us. By the look on his face, I think he expected an explanation at the ready." He snickered, shaking his head. "Too bad a video wasn't taken."

"Yes, Doctor. Maybe next time it'll let us know in advance."

"That would be nice."

"It's in the report. The commander's pretty good at describing things. You should read it.

"When we receive a copy, I shall."

"Why did you think it did that? How, I mean. It's rock."

"We're studying it, Mogarth. It's unlike anything on Zangun or any of the neighboring planets. You're sure the large sphere was of the same material?"

"It certainly looked like it. Its smoothness distracted, the reflectivity, but the quality of its deeper texture could be seen by the color variants. So I'm fairly certain."

The scientist nodded with the usual smile he had for Mogarth. "With your knowledge, Mogarth," he said, letting a tinge of exasperation enter his tone, "why are you a soldier? You could do so much more for the planet than that."

After a pause, he said, "I don't know, sir. All my friends joined, two dead now in the last three years. I needed to be a part of it, take the risk like the others. I feel more anchored to the real world now than I did. Funny how being in combat brings you so very viscerally into the present." He laughed. "I spent a long time thinking about it. Joining, I mean. Maybe I was afraid I'd lose something, the things I cared about."

Shifting the point he was making, the scientist returned, "Like your life," a fatherly affection and concern leaking through. He nodded, however, understanding but not agreeing, then retrieved a hologram cube from his work station containing what they had discovered thus far and gave it to Mogarth. Mogarth thanked him and left. Remembering to pass by the dining area to pick up something to eat, he returned to his room.

He needed to sleep, his mind not as sharp as it could be. Nonetheless, his curiosity wouldn't wait. His roommates were gone. He sat in their public space and put his sphere on a bundle of clothes on the table before him, so it wouldn't roll away, and placed the cube in the viewer beside it. As he ate absently, images of various layers of the mineral, scaled from the macro to the micro, rolled by with detailed explanations. He wasn't making much sense of the technical jargon and was about to turn it off for later, after he rested, when a strange image appeared.

An image. He stopped the spool with a word. Slowly, with utmost care, he stood on his four legs, picked the ball up gingerly and stared at it suspiciously. The image in the hologram depicted what appeared at first inspection to be a crushed crystal lattice as though great pressure had been applied. He reflected on his civilian life when he was engaged in studies of different fields. He was considered a generalist by his peers, looking for similar ideational structures, networks of connectivity, across contexts. At increased magnification, the crushed crystal revealed what would ordinarily be considered the nodes or vertices defining the edges of crystal planes, only smeared out due to the mineral's morphological deformation. But that's not what he saw. The nodes appeared to be cells, neurons, and the fracture lines, meandering and varying from path to path, synaptic connections. Were, or had they been, alive at some time? Whatever passes for life on this barren wasteland. Was the very idea the result of an overactive imagination due to exhaustion, stress, and the shock from what he'd witnessed?

The ship shuddered as its magnetic thrusters kicked in, lifting the huge vessel off the surface. The captain had decided to rethink this whole operation. He'd rushed in based on intelligence from a robot probe. Not his usual style. Now he would regroup, take his time to survey, area by area, grid-like, the entire planet, carefully and in detail. If the enemy was here or had been, he would find out on his own. More than once in this war he'd been misled by faulty information; this could be one of those times. He would scan and scrutinize the whole world, sift through data and sensory information, a 50-meter in diameter rock ball should stand out like a lone tree in a swirling desert, which is how he thought of this planet. And he was determined to relocate it, wherever it had gone.

Mogarth needed a break. A deep sleep was on the horizon. It was the policy of the captain that everyone onboard was entitled to have access to the viewer. Hence, the crews' quarters each came equipped with a wall screen showing what was on the bridge's main viewer. Mogarth turned off the hologram reader and put down the sphere. He leaned back in his chair to passively watch the broken landscape of rolling hills of orange-brown stone and sand. It went on for as far as the eye could see in all directions, a desert planet, desolate and mindnumbingly boring. Almost asleep in the comfrotable, form-fitting chair, his mind shifted to a whole other phase, one that bordered dreamland. As the ship cruised slowly not far above the surface, meticulously stopping to more closely examine strange formations and nooks and crannies hiding in shadow, he couldn't help but get the impression that what he was seeing was not the original, or natural, condition of this world. Something had happened here, long, long ago. Something inconceivably destructive and devastating, and what the viewer displayed was the result.

He couldn't take it anymore. He ordered the viewer off. His roommates entered, mumbled something incoherent and collapsed into their bunks. Mogarth followed suit. It had been a long day and tomorrow wasn't looking to be all that different.

He tossed and turned in his sleep, his dreams plagued by faces of the enemy he'd killed, then shifted to old times with friends hanging out, enjoying life. He spoke to those who died and those he hadn't seen for a long time. There were other operations going on. Ahead on the populated string and to the sides. Taking ground, then holding it. Rooting out holdouts dug-in on some faraway planet, threats to the success of the whole strategy. They were advancing in much the same way as the enemy had, the difference being that peace and autonomy followed behind them as they pushed closer to the enemy's home world.

His dreams, always filled with lots of people and busy downtown urban scenes, were drowned out by a deep voice calling his name, "Mogarth, wake up. It is time."

With a start, his antennae twitched about, then his eyes opened and he achingly sat up on the edge of the bed, his two back legs beside him and two front ones bent at the knees, bare feet on the warm rug. The pale-red light was just sufficient to distinguish things from shadows. He listened, but all he heard was the heavy breathing of his roommates and faint humming of the air purification system. He faced the now black sphere of rock nestled in clothes on the table. Maybe it was the play of light and shadow, but it seemed to him to be larger.

The intercom crackled, then the commander spoke, low but clear, informing them to get up, get something to eat and get ready. They'd found a cave complex needing investigation. The ship was putting down in front of it. One hour.

Due to its incredible size and the planet's extraordinarily slow rotation, the sun had never set. His roommates grumbled, early morning gripes. Why hadn't they sent more ships, more men? But they knew. Expectations were low. They were on a recon mission. Find the enemy, assess strength in numbers and equipment, withdraw to orbit, call in for reinforcements and join in the fight when they arrived. But still and all and even though they'd only been there a few days, it was grueling and dangerously tedious. But what really bothered them, or concerned them, Mogarth understood, was if things turned suddenly rough, it was up to them--one hundred Ragnars--to protect everyone and make sure they and the ship got out safely.

They debarked five abreast down the wide aft gangplank. Before them a hundred meters was an assortment of caves, several in fact. Some at ground level and a few higher up, meters above their heads. But the one directly in front would be better characterized as a cavern. The opening was about eighty meters across, the top shaped like a jagged parabola, the height above ground a good twenty-five meters. They could see inside that the ground was not smooth but contained towers of tapered rock, most as tall as they. The overall appearance was of a mouth filled with teeth, lots of teeth. Light filled the space a good thirty meters or so before shadows overtook it. The men stood at the entrance. The commander explained what was expected of them and how to proceed. No one was to explore anywhere alone, that was an order.

Once inside, Mogarth and his two roommates cut to the left following a path of sorts. Their antennae focused on biomolecular signals and frequencies of radiating genetic and neural activity, features of sufficient complexity interacting with the environment. Otherwise, they had motion detectors and were naturally highly sensitive to odors. Mogarth had been in caves before, exploring with others for the enjoyment and out of sheer curiosity. But they'd all had a distinctive clamminess to them from moisture, a dank humidity which was part of the experience. This one was as dry as outside in the sun.

They heard a call from one of their comrades off to the right, and then another to the left. They could barely make them out through the forest of rock formations. Mogarth and company continued on ahead, the rear of the cave not discernable in the fading light. They turned on their head lanterns and rounded a high, flat mound of rock, and froze.

Mogarth wanted to call out but couldn't find his voice. They stood on the lip of a large hole, perhaps 50 meters by 30 and only 10 metrs deep. In it, everywhere covering the bottom, were bodies; their enemy haphazardly arranged as though indifferently dumped. Mogarth estimated there could be as many as 500, all in uniform, their weapons as randomly scattered as they. He could see evidence of blood and broken appendages, heads crushed, necks twisted.

Finally, one of his cohorts stepped around the mound and yelled that they'd found something. Within moments an officer showed up; he too was pushed back aways. He told them that they found three others similar to this but with perhaps half as many dead. The commander, after having inspected the others, arrived. He shook his head, amazed and dumbfounded. There was no sign of equipment, however, heavy or otherwise. This was an infantry unit of specialists stationed here in secret but spotted, at least in part, by the probe. He wondered how many other pits they'd find further back and in the other smaller caves. Distraught by the carnage and distracted by its implications, he quietly, almost reverently, told them to continue searching.

The captain and bridge crew watched through a video link the commander wore. It was hard to take, some turned instead to their stations.

An hour later everyone who'd been part of the recon gathered out front. Smaller units had checked the other caves and found nothing. Only the massive cavern had bodies in it. They'd discovered a few more pits of varying sizes right up to the back wall. Accounts taken by one of the officers, approximately, of course, came to 3,000 bodies and only personal weapons and equipment.

They all stood in nervous silence. That spooky feeling only some felt the previous day on the mound--which turned out to be justified--had now spread to all. The commander refused to give in to it, but could sense it in the men. He couldn't let it get the better of them. He didn't expect them to panic, they were too experienced for that, but it could get under their skin, causing hesitation, uncertainty. A hundred Ragnars with the jitters is not a pretty sight.

He stood on a rock pile and said, "Ragnars, I know this is a mystery, what happened here. Apparently, our enemy has another enemy. One that is interested in hiding evidence of a serious confrontation. As you know, so far in our survey no sign of a battle has been discovered. Could they have been rounded up, brought here and then killed? That's a possibility. Another possibility is that they were already here, were attacked and wiped out. Hard as that is to believe. If so, whoever did this was in force, enough to easily overcome 3,000 desert-planet operations specialists.

"The enemy of our enemy is our friend doesn't work here. We may be seen the same as these, intruders, violators of someone's private, local neighborhood. The nearest habitable planets were not invaded by the enemy; they were passed by. There might be more reason for that than just luck."

An ensign from the ship approached and spoke briefly to the commander. Forthwith he announced loudly, "Okay, everybody back in for now. Everyone."

The mood onboard was somber, even among ship's crew. People were stunned and perplexed, and, admittedly, a little intimidated. A force existed out there that could do this, an unknown force. A force that left no traces of who or what they are.

Captain Galran had commanded Star Cruisers long before the war. He was widely experienced and well-traveled and had a reputation for being unshakable. He was tough. He worked his way up the ranks from one of the original, elite Ragnars, venturing off-world occasionally on missions to help friendly planets quell insurrections and fight invasions, but mostly he saw duty on Patrol Ships providing security for those traveling the general traffic and trade lanes. Highwaymen, pirates, and outlaws from various planets were a constant problem in the wild and wooly days. Although there was still the need for security and protection from outliners and independents, homesteaders among the expanding range of populated worlds, people with their own rules; eventually, their region of the galaxy became more civilized and orderly. Different races of beings working in cooperation for all to have a productive and enjoyable life. It became the guiding principle of the day. Until now.

Yes, captain Galran was courageous and firmly rooted. But there was something about this that ticked him at the back of his mind. It was eerie. He didn't like eerie. He also didn't like the idea that there was a powerful force in the vicinity against which his hundred specialists might prove wholly inadequate. His medical people said, considering the degree of decomposition, rigidity, and blood samples, whatever happened did so fairly recently. Before we arrived, he believed, or they would've been aware of it. But not much before. The probe saw them, so they were here then, at least. Maybe that was the last time they were alive. Nonetheless, whoever's responsible could still be in the area.

Ship to ship he could probably hold his own, but, he reflected, on the other hand, he'd fought enemy ships, several in fact, and they proved to be closely matched. So, logically speaking, they could be outclassed. The enemy was crushed so completely not even evidence of a battle has been found. As though everything about them was an infringment, a degradation, an irreverence that had to be eradictaed from the planet. And what about encampments? Setting up a camp on this horrible jumble of rock, sharp stones and coarse sand would be an enormous undertaking involving heavy machinery. Where is it? The camp, the machinery? The necessary equipment to make it all happen? Could it have been used and then removed in order to provide a lower profile? If a ship to ship battle happened, where are the remains of their ship or ships?

Suppose, he reconsidered, there was no ship battle. They could've been dropped off by transports. But if they were working on new weapons, they would need a facility--another monumental construction endeavor--and only a small contingent of security personnel, not 3,000 special operations soldiers. We haven't seen that yet if it's here, which he doubted. Given that the ground could be made adequate, in some miraculous way, you could have both: a weapons development plant and a temporary staging area for troops. But, apparently, if that's the case, somebody didn't like it.

The obvious suspect was the sphere. Could it be a ship from another planet, people who claimed it and didn't like trespassers? Or perhaps it was a robot ship that belonged to the enemy, part of some project and the only thing that escaped destruction. Still acting on its program. Either way, why didn't it fire on them? Maybe it couldn't. Maybe if it is a drone, it's designed for something different. His first thought was that it might be some new weapon impervious to M-rays. Something that could shield itself, render itself invisible, then fly away soundlessly and radiate nothing that antennae could detect. But that was before the discovery in the cavern. As seasoned as he was, he had also grown tired of death. Like it or not, the scene in the cave affected him more than he let on. Consequently, he wasn't thinking as clearly as he could; at least, not for the time being. He was coming up with nothing and decided to forget the sphere. If it shows up again, he'll deal with it. For now, concentrate on finding where this battle took place. Surely, it must be easy to spot.

All we know is what we've seen. Three thousand troops would need supplies, a flow. We've been here three days. They could be on their way.

From his command chair on the bridge he ordered lift off and told the sensor-array officer to concentrate on deep space for any sign of approaching ships. The navigation officer controlled the land survey, its sensors were more finely tuned for detailed, short-range searching. If there was so much as a fragment of clothing or a water container hidden amongst the crust, they'd find it.

Something at the back of his mind was troubling him about this whole affair. Ordinarily, he was quick to connect the dots and make sense of things. There had to be a connection between the giant sphere and the dead men. But what, he couldn't guess. As though the answer was out there somewhere, he stared at the main viewer as they slowly covered the glittering, sun-drenched land below, grid by grid. They were on a path perpendicular to the wave crests, eliciting the sensation of riding across an ocean. On the surface of the dunes, sand and tiny stones dominated the top, below that, gradually bigger pieces lay on both sides, but he noticed they weren't evenly distributed as one would expect from the force of gravity. Some of the waves of broken rock were not continuous, wide interspersed swaths going down to the ground separated them into long sections, revealing their cross-section.

He ordered the helmsman to hover over the next high ridge where the dune had been cleaved, and to line it up on the viewer.

In the direction they were heading, the dune's heavier rocks were at most a third of the way up from the ground, whereas on the back side they were much nearer the top. He attributed this to the constant breeze blowing towards the dark side of the planet, the pronounced hook near the top, the sand flowing down covering the rocks. All the dunes shared this common profile. Where it was separated it angled away from him, so he could also see its internal arrangement. The rest of the way down the shards and pebbles were more densely packed on the front side, gradually becoming less so towards the back, which gave it a forward-leaning, curved appearance, like a water wave. But the planet rotated in the opposite direction, could that make the difference? Staring hard, trying to see meaning beyond the material, the composition, he got the distinct impression of movement, motion, running the same direction they were. Instinctively, it seemed, with the sea.

Meanwhile, back in the labs, Mogarth's scientist friend, Doctor Ramadji, and his team of researchers were busy. A non-militray cadre of scientists had become standard issue on battle cruisers because of the many unknowns encountered in different star systems and the unfamilar, strange, and downright perplexing configurations of conditions on other habitable planets. Complications always came up and new discoveries made. They were not only fighting a war, they were also acquiring knowledge, valuable in its own right along with the prospect of technical applications. The possibility of discovering something that might give them an advantage was foremost on their minds. Scientists were on the front, an important component to the war effort.

They had many questions. Some pointed to speculations they hadn't imagined. For instance, why were ship's sensors on entry--their deep ground penetration probes--unable to pass beyond the topmost surface layer, yet here in the lab they had no problem using simple lab-equipment to delve into all layers of its internal structure? The obvious difference was the sun. Somehow it rearranged the crystal lattice in such a way to make it resistant to radiation of all types, as though an adaptation to protect itself. Like a living thing would or might. But it's not permanent, it's a reaction. Like a simple flower that opens and closes in response to sunlight. But to protect what?

He walked over to the work table where more samples lay. Rocks of a single mineral, with all the basic properties of minerals: crystal form, density, hardness, cleavage, color, and so forth, none of which stand out. The crystal arrangement is unique, however. But, he and his people had found other minerals on other planets and moons equally unique and previously unknown.

He handled them one by one, some larger than his hand and others quite small, right down to piles of coarse sand grains, rounded from wind erosion. Felt their heft, their rough texture. Dropped them on the metal table to hear the tone, his antennae sensitive to the receding harmonics. But they were jagged, misshapen, and multi-faceted. He recalled of a sudden Morgath's rock ball he'd found. Based on their rather large collection, some now taken from the cavern site, the probability of finding one so perfectly speherical was slight to none. In fact, it stood out as most unusual, now that he held a larger picture of surface conditions: prevailing wind currents, how they swept around the planet; temperatures barely fluctuating from pole to pole over the entire sun-side, slightly cooler at the poles. A planet without seasons. The shadow zone with its extreme cold, how it circled the planet as it rotated in the opposite direction under its oversized sun. Factors producing erosion wouldn't ordinarily favor spherical symmetry.

And what about the passage of time. On his visits on other planets in the systems where stars varied across the spectrum of possibilities, time moved differently. Ship's chronometer fixed to that of the home world always ran at different rates. Does that matter? Has anyone bothered to check how time passes here? How would you tell? We've been here three days of our time. What does that mean to this place?

They'd been studying this nameless mineral from the traditional perspective of the usual analysis protocols. They needed to step back, he thought, reframe the whole pursuit. He contacted Mogarth on his personal comm link, "I don't know where you are now, but whatever you're doing, drop it and bring that ball of yours to the lab, would you?"

"I'm in the dining hall. I'm hungry but I can't eat. I'm still a little shocked by that cave. Such reckless mayhem. They must be some cold-blooded ..."

"Forget that," Ramadji spat out. "We have work to do. Bring the sphere." He clicked off.

After a beat, Mogarth said to himself, "All right, Doc." He grabbed a piece of fruit. "I'm on my way."

Captain Galran, as was his habit, sat in his comfortable easy chair in his quarters and carefully went over everything from the very beginning of this venture. He wasn't into second-guessing, what he was interested in was the possibility that he missed something that at the time didn't seem relevant or significant.

Long-range scans had not detected any satellite warning systems. For a planet this size, four were all that was needed, orbiting in the upper atmosphere. Either that was an oversight on their part--not likely; they hadn't gotten around to it having only recently arrived; although that was the first thing to do when setting up an installation or encampment on a new, unpopulated world; or they didn't want to attract attention. Galran figured it was that last reason, so he anticipated camouflage and concealment. And as he now believed, that last wish may have extended to others.

On entry into the planet's upper atmosphere they'd performed a cursory survey and mapping confirmation. The probe had mapped the planet and pinpointed the enemy's location. Unfortunately, because the terrain was unrelieved in its homogeneous sameness and continuous in all directions with no outstanding landmarks, it was difficult to identify and coordinate the probe's contour maps with the underlying ground reality. Time had gone by and things appeared shifted, blurry. And troops move, it's what they do.

However, they entered the lower atmosphere in the approximate region where the enemy was last seen and proceeded to circumnavigate the entire planet and found--nothing. They were unable to detect any lifeforms as well. Because surface material blocked ground-penetrating scans, if there were lifeforms, they could be under cover of a cave or cave complex. The shadow zone was the narrow curved band that ran from pole to pole. At its widest point along the bulge, its arc length, it was about one-fifth of the circumference of the planet, about 14,000 kilometers. They were halfway between that and what they'd designated as the north pole. They parked ahead of the zone opposite the planet's rotation, an extraordinarily slow process, almost imperceptible from their perspective. But he wasn't surprised. He'd found it to be the same for all the planets he's been on where the rotation is counter to the orbit around their sun. Usually there's a reason peculiar to the planet's relationship with its sun. The fact that this one is a massive, cool giant wasn't the answer as the other planets in the system rotated in the direction of orbit. Something else happened to explain it, a collision perhaps, he didn't know.

They were on a recon mission. The plan had been to observe the enemy, assess their strength in men and equipment, return to the ship or have it pick them up, withdraw to a safe orbit, and call in reinforcements before they had a chance to escape. But that was all in the past. Now, things had changed.

His comm link hummed, he pressed it. The voice of the nav officer informed him that they were about to enter the shadow zone. He thanked him and proceeded to the bridge. At first, the main viewer displayed the scene in natural light. Stars popped out beyond the horizon, but too far and too few to offer much relief. Captain Galran leaned back into his command chair, his antennae twitched in extrasensory mode. "Where are you?" he mumbled to himself, making the assumption that whoever killed off the soldiers in the cavern were still around. "How can this world be in your neighborhood and what can this pile of simple rocks, this lifeless orb, mean to you?"

The zone's boundary was a mix of sunlight and utter darkness that quickly gave way to total blackness, the can't see your hand in front of your face kind. It was gloomy with a hazy cast to it, like fog. The screen's filters made adjustments and the gravelly sand dunes that defined this planet revealed themselves, albeit with a greenish hue. They were searching for any scraps of evidence to explain, or hint at, what took place. How did 3,000 soldiers end up dead and dumped in a cave? Presumably, they were outmatched and soundly defeated, but by whom? The captain was determined to find out. A third party of such power was not to be ignored. Suppose they have designs of their own? They watch and wait until the war's over, then move in, all the hard work done? But, apparently, he considered, they hadn't chosen to take the enemy's side. If we could at least establish lines of communication, diplomatically, receive assurances of their neutrality. At the most, they would be good allies. But, if their society is not free, there could be trouble down the road. Too many unknowns. First things first. Find out who they are.

He was mindful of the danger involved in doing so, however. He didn't want his crew ending up buried in some cave, tossed like so much trash. Whatever their enemy did to anger these beings, he wanted to avoid, if they hadn't already done so.

Doctor Ramadji stood next to a metal-topped work bench deep in thought. Mogarth couldn't help it. He crept up next to him, held the rock ball several inches above the table, and dropped it. Ramadji didn't budge. Without changing his position, he said, calmly, "Don't you know by now I've got your scent?"

Before he could reply, Ramadji turned and placed his hands on the spherically-shaped mineral as though it were alive and might bite. "Is this how big it was when you found it?" he asked, a curious tone in his voice.

Mogarth was surprised, recalling his sense in the relative dark of his room early that morning that it had grown. "Yes, I think so." He placed his hand over the top of it. "Yes," he said again, but not with total certainty. "I believe so." The spookiness from the event of the giant sphere vanishing and then the unexplained bodies in the cavern started to resurface; he suppressed it. He removed his hand and said more sharply, "It's a rock, Doctor. How's it going to get larger?"

Ramadji smiled his concern. "It's all right, Mogarth," he said consolingly. "You've been through a lot. But now's the time to focus." He started to walk away. Over his shoulder he said, "Grab it and come on."

They entered a large room towards the rear of the main lab. A continuous table with various instruments on it ran around the walls, cabinets above it. In the center on a large table all its own stood a huge cubic chamber, a meter on an edge, with a door in a side. Although familiar with most of the other equipment in the labs, Mogarth had never seen this before. Ramadji asked him if he had a chance to study the images on the cube he gave him. He thought for a bit, looking for a general comment to make regarding the quality of the images when he remembered the one with the crushed nodes. The impression that came to him that they resembled brain cells and the crystal taken as a whole, a network of interconnections.

"Show me," Ramadji said, and led him over to a hologram reader. Mogarth apologized for leaving the cube in his room but the good Doctor had one in a pouch. He placed it in the reader and Mogarth scrolled until he arrived at the image, or one of them, the best one, with the crushed lattice. Ramadji stared, increased magnification, turned it to several particular angles, what he called markers, then stepped back, antennae intertwining, humming quietly. Finally, he said straight out, "They're not crushed or deformed. What we're looking at here, of course, is a static image. Okay soldier, carry that ball over here. Let's see what gives."

He opened the door of the cube, inside on the bottom of a pedestal were thick, rubbery, vertical prongs that increased in length from a few centimeters as they spread parabolically out from a tiny bowl at the center. On the walls and above were sensors arrayed in what appeared to Mogarth to be a random fashion. He placed it gingerly in the bowl and stepped back. Ramadji reached in and adjusted it ever so slightly, then stepped back and closed the door.

Behind them on the table sat a spherically-shaped 3-dimensional screen about a meter in diameter, similar to a hologram viewer but what it displayed was not a 3-D projection of a 2-D still. It depicted what was there in real time. Its skin was of a clear, non-crystaline mineral, polished to almost invisibility. Beneath it, embedded in the table, was an array of buttons and knobs. Ramadji flicked a switch, the monitor lit up, filled with vacuum space. He pulled a stool over and surrounded it with his legs, his antennae arched forward. Mogarth sat next to him. Adjusting a knob, the ball of rock appeared before them. After dialing other knobs, he pushed a button and the interior of the sphere filled the screen.

"Now's the fun part," Ramadji said, smiling like a kid. He grabbed a handle sticking up on the side of the array and began to move it. It felt to Mogarth that he was on a ship traveling through the atomic lattice arrangement of the crystals. It was a universe unto itself, seeming to go on forever. Suddenly disoriented, he reached out for the table. Ramadji smiled and said, "Hold on, Mogarth, we're almost there."

Ramadji tweaked another knob and the atoms spread apart. They traveled through electron clouds unscathed and dove into the maelstrom of vibrating nuclear particles racing to and fro continually. Eventually, they reached the deepest recesses where what had appeared to be crushed nodes of crystals filled the latticescape. The Doctor stopped in an empty space.

They found themselves in a jungle of intertwining tendrils going off in all directions. On a flat screen adjacent, measurement readouts indicated they were near the center of the ball of stone. Structural and chemical properties generated a sequence of geometric models nested within one another. The outer region was of the unknown mineral only, but shifted or transitioned into hybrid combinations the deeper it went. That is, each subsequent model, representing a finished crystal alignment, revealed a slightly different variation on the basic template as though gradually altering its nature. At the middle, where they were, the apparent crushed nodes and interconnections resembled a neural network intimately and intricately joined in criss-cross ways with the external stratified matrix. They watched as it undulated, sending electrical energy through the complex configuration. Nodes, or neurons, flexed and shrank with each exertion.

For all intents and purposes, it looked very much alive.

Captain Galran paced the bridge, glancing at station screens as he went. If we're going to find something, he thought, this is where it's going to be. Because the planet rotates so slowly, most of this area has been under shadow since we first set down. Perhaps the 3,000 sought to hide here. It would be a logical choice. Quite a bit colder, but it would give them cover, or, at least, that's what they may have thought.

He returned to his command chair and stared absently at the viewer. Methodically, he went through their history again beginning with their approach to the planet, looking for something. A flag went up. He remembered that the deep-ground probe couldn't penetrate the surface. The reason he was told was that the sun somehow affected it, an adaptation, reflecting, or absorbing, all forms of radiation. But it's not a permanent feature, it reacts to sunlight.

And now, there is no sun.

He ordered the scan officer to initiate the core probe on a focused beam, high range. Something's down there that needs protecting. But if it is an adaption to the environment, it's not, can't be, protecting anything that's not native. Not native. He thought of the huge sphere that disappeared in front of his men, what he started out looking for the previous day. He didn't believe it vanished into thin air, magic he dismissed out of hand, but rather that it activated a shield that made it appear invisible, then flew away, quietly. Could it actually be a ship and whoever is inside be those responsible for the massacre?

"Sir," called the scanner, "you might want to take a look at this."

Galran moved to the officer and stood behind him. Seated in front of five displays, he pointed at the one in the middle. "It's indicating a lifeform. There is some interference, electromagnetic, otherwise it'd be clearer."

Galran peered hard. "A lifeform, you say?"

"It's not within the criteria computer's ammased based on our discoveries of what defines a lifeform. There are no organic compounds, for instance, but computer is recognizing coherent thought-energy patterns and fluctuating mental waves. Indicative of complex lifeforms. Although I don't know how that can be; it's a mineral. Structurally, though, it looks like a web of connections similar to a neural network--what computer is suggesting--or a fungal web like you'd find in soil, but that could be an artifice caused by the noise. The surface may not be reflecting the way it does in the sun, but it's not completely open to invasive meddling either."

"How deep is this, what you're looking at?"

"The shift from mineral crystal to neural activity begins at about half a kilometer; although, similarities in structure to a lesser degree begin just below the surface, the number of interconnections and degree of complexity grow with depth. Also, indications of salt water begin at about a kilometer; the boundary is not well-defined but appears to be porous. I don't know how deep it goes, the readings get scrambled below that depth."

What were they dealing with? he wondered. The unknowns were piling up.

Still a little shaken by the sight of all those men thrown in a heap like broken dolls and mystified by what Ramadji had just showed him, Mogarth asked, "Why did you ask me if it got any larger? It was strange because I had that impression early this morning. But it was dark, so I dismissed it as a play of the light."

Ramadji pulled back on the stick to a position close to the surface. "What we're looking at, the basic unit cell, the lattice work defining the geometry of each crystal plane, has the physical characteristics of a liquid. Something is keeping it from losing its solid form. And that same something may be able to push it passed a transition point into a gaseous state, especially with a little help from the oversized sun. Then it could expand to whatever size possible and reform as a solid. The mass differential is distributed so that the overall structure always maintains the same mass. For a sphere, as diameter increases, mass thins out. But once at the size it seeks, it can absorb mass from its surroundings and in the process contract space, and just as easily shed it when the time comes. It's mass independent, probably why your blaster was ineffective.

"The space within the crystal is elastic, not the mineral itself mind you; although it does possess exotic properties. It maintains symmetry by conjugation factors on the atomic level as it changes form. And, it can do that, I'm sure. It happens to choose this spherical shape for reasons not quite clear, but it may, and I'm just speculating here, have something to do with connections to dimensions of space that are compacted and thus invisible. A supersymmetry drawing on the deepest strata to maintain balance.

"Think of it this way. There are unseen dimensions of space that we are not privy to, all around us. They are like the nutirents in the soil that feed crops. Without them, we would starve. But they also shape what they feed, they have some say. And the spherical shape is the most economical and efficient. For a given surface area, the sphere contains the largest volume of spatial elementals. Maximum power, minimal interface with surroundings, which could be highly advantageous. And, spherical symmetry is universal.

"The space and time elementals of which spacetime is composed on the micro-level, somehow, through some expediency, expand or contract in all directions simultaneously, or selectively assume any odd shape. Space and time are created through the medium of thought energy, which has both physical and functional properties synthesized into the very essence of motion, without which there would be no universe. And thought energy has its source and is derived from the psychic field, the fundamental universe of pure, non-differentiated consciousness.

"What we're seeing here and guessing to act like a brain, or at minimum a centralized nervous system, couldn't have been infused into it by some external source. It had to have grown there. This mineral, under the continuous onslaught of the sun as contributor, has undergone metamorphosis with an increase in chemical complexity towards a rudimentary consciousness. A rock aware of itself. With time, billions of years, that consciousness developed to be able to manipulate elementals, the microscopic constituents of space and time. It can change from one configuration to another without going through any intermediate stages, while yet maintaining the same set of relationships among the fundamentals, seemingly in the background. In other words, its single identity is composed of the sum of many possibilities, only one of which does it express at any given moment. It's not a static thing. The images on that holo-cube were of a single possibility caught at the moment the graph was taken. It's how it's able to move about and transcend the passage of time."

"Well," interrupted Mogarth, "I just spent three days trudging over it and I don't remember it moving much, except from my stepping on it."

"Can you be certain? Moving doesn't necesarily mean locomotion from one position to another; it could also mean reshaping subtly for whatever physical reason. Why would a piece of mineral want to adopt another external form? For what purpose? To fit more comfortably with its neighbors? Moving in response to some force? To heat? Vibrations from you marching? I don't know, but being able to control spatial dimensions would certainly help in that regard.

"It gets energy from the sun on the nuclear level, vibrations, quite possibly through a dimension of space that allows it to bypass ordinary restrictions. It propagates by the repetition of closely-identical structural units in space, like any other mineral, but in this case, the neural net is the driving unit of the assemblage, capable of rearranging its manifestation. Life evolves from its environment however it can."

Mogarth recalled in his civilian days reading about space elementals, the basis of the universe, along with those of time, which he understood were fabricated by the stardrive through the elimination of all physical restraints supporting and conditioning ordinary spacetime--how that technical feat was accomplished he couldn't fathom--making it possible for ships to surround themselves with a micron-thin, insulating bubble or membrane of neutrally-oriented temporal elementals, which enables ships to jump from point to point as though distance had no meaning.

He stared at the screen. They had returned to the central tangle. "How did you come up with this theory, Doctor?"

"We ran tests." He folded his arms and leaned back against the table, looking off into the distance. "We placed a piece not much larger than a grain inside a magnetic field containment device and bombarded it with a range of high-energy particles like those that make up the solar wind. Its surface was only microns thick, yet it was able to transform to resist the assault and insulate the interior, such as it was. Applying bioelectric fields at a range greater than what our bodies produce normally to similar samples had a different effect. They expanded in volume. On close inspection we were able to measure that the material, the hard mineral, remained consistent, but the space between atoms had stretched elastically. Quite remarkable."

Time took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Ramadji changed his tone to that of a teacher who wanted his student to connect the dots. He continued, "You found that ball as you were walking towards the ship, Mogarth?" He turned to look directly at him. "The ship had parked in the spot where the giant sphere had been sitting?"

Mogarth gazed at the Doctor, wondering what he was getting at. Then suddenly, his eyes lit up, his antennae went rigid. He stood, alarmed. "Oh no. That wasn't an alien ship. We have to get that out of here." Before the Doctor could say anything, Mogarth opened the chamber door, grabbed the ball of rock, and started running. "Off the ship."

"Wait. It may wish to make contact. We should try to communicate," Ramadji yelled after him. But the memory of the giant sphere was indelibly etched in Mogarth's mind. Something the good Doctor had not experienced, viscerally, as it were. It needed to be dumped. But where? How do you get a rock ball off a moving ship?

Some day, he promised himself, he'd have to take a tour of the ship. Surely, there was more to it than his room, the labs, the gym, and the food hall. Maybe he should take it to the captain on the bridge, he'd never been there. "Here, captain," he could say, "this ball of rock is liable to expand to at least 50 meters in diameter at any moment. Whatdoya think we should do with it?" He knew just what the answer would be.

He ran with the orb in his hand tucked against his side looking for an exit, an open window, a garbage chute. As he rounded a corner, almost knocking over two crewmen working on a light fixture, he was sure he could feel it vibrating. The shuttle bay. The door's always open when flying low to the ground. He stepped into the first elevator he saw and told it to take him to the bay. It stopped shortly after and three crewmen, two men and a woman, heading for a common room stepped in. They stared at Mogarth and the rock ball. One of the men recognizing Mogarth as a Ragnar looked at the ball and then him and said respectfully, "Rough sport."

"Yea," he replied, trying to sound tough. "But you get used to it." The elevator stopped, they nodded his way and stepped out. He continued on.

Galran returned to his command chair and peered at the viewer. He was searching for something. He recalled a time before the war when visiting a colony planet for recreational purposes. It grew food crops from his home world, but also very strange indigenous flora. In the city where he was staying an entire park was devoted to the planet's natural growth. There was one, a long red reed about a meter high with a single, large, round, purple flower that gave off a sweet aroma. If you put your hand on top of it, it would sing in a deep tone, ranging over the spectrum of harmonics. If you hummed something while holding it, it would repeat it, remembering precisely. Now, he was confronted with a mineral that could grow a nervous system, or was it the other way around?

"Sir," called the scanning officer, "Movement. We have movement directly ahead, five kilometers." The captain immediately ordered computer, "Viewer, five kilometers, magnify." As though prodded from behind, he stood, his eyes and antennae fixed on the scene before him.

He ordered, "All stop." They hovered in place a kilometer above the shifting ground, several kilometers into the shadow zone. As waves passed through them, the ridges high and low undulated and reshuffled their shape while yet remaining in the same relative positions. Rocks rolled and tumbled about, disturbed by the action. The sand on the tops moved as one, cresting over and spilling down the front side of the ridge, more sand from the back taking its place.

"Scan," he said, "how far does this go?"

After a pause while he adjusted knobs, he replied, "To the end of the shadow range, sir"

He didn't know what to make of it. What it foretold. The speed of the wave was slow and its movement ponderous as though originating deep within the planet. Watching the churning sea of rock he realized that if there had been a battle in this region, all evidence would've been ground up and buried--obliterated. Weapons, uniforms, bones and blood. However, he sensed no malevolence if such could be attributed to what looked like rock. On the contrary, his antennae registered serenity, joyfulness, freedom. Wanting a closer look, he ordered a shuttle to be made ready and a team of Ragnars to meet him there.

Initially, their mission was to find the enemy and destroy them or, if necessary, call in additional forces to help. That, however, was no longer a problem. What killed them had become the new priority, and it might very well be tied in with the phenomenon before him. But putting the rolling sea of sand together with the dead bodies in the cavern made no sense. And the giant sphere, how did that fit in? Curiosity had taken over, he found it impossible to resist. He needed to get to the bottom of whatever happened here, to be able to explain it to himself rationally. He wanted to find out what killed 3,000 elite soldiers. Was there another force they needed to worry about? Somebody who might show up at any moment? Even though there was nothing to stop him from leaving the planet right now, he knew questions would be asked, the same ones he had. A potential military threat behind them as they moved closer to the enemy's home would not be acceptable.

The captain checked with scan, no ships approaching. He put the nav officer in charge and told weapons to keep an eye out, then left for the shuttle. He wasn't sure what he was going to do, but staring at it from the safety of the bridge wasn't getting them anywhere. As far as he was concerned, the war was on hold. He was coming to the end of his career and warfare was a dirty job he'd rather be done with anyway. He wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to experience and explore what he could of the universe, and with his ship, he had the means to do that. And if they survived whatever is going on here, he knew he would never be back. This was a one-shot deal and he intended to make the most of it.

The commander and five Ragnars, fully armed, entered the shuttle bay. Mogarth had just tossed the mineral ball out the opening into the darkness. No one had objected, he was a Ragnar. Just as he let go--as is always the case--he remembered the window in the giant sphere opening and quickly closing. He was sure at the time that someone had looked out, that was his feeling. How could that be? he wondered.

"Mogarth," the commander called as he crossed the shuttle bay floor. "I was looking for you. We're going for a walk and I could use your expertise."

"My expertise?" asked a bewildered Mogarth, still trying to catch his breath.

"I know how you like to lay around in the sand, that's what we need, somebody who loves it."

Mogarth didn't find that at all funny. "I don't have my weapon, it's in my room. And my gear."

"Here, take my blaster. There's enough gear on the shuttle, thermocoats and helmets, stuff. This is guard duty. The captain wants to explore. The ground's acting like waves, moving like an ocean. Very strange." In a more serious tone, he said, "I figured you might be of some help explaining it."

Galran came in accompanied by Doctor Ramadji. He smiled at Mogarth and proceeded to board the shuttle with the captain, followed by the squad of Ragnars, the commander bringing up the rear. The captain and Ramadji sat behind the shuttle pilot and navigator. The Ragnars occupied a room amidships that came equipped with a viewer that could be adjusted to any angle. Right now it aimed forward.

They flew through the murky gloom a hundred meters above the ridges. The view screen flickered as it went through a series of filter corrections to try to compensate for dust floating in the air. Finally, it settled down to a greenish hue with black spots coming and going. The altimeter and proximity sensors, however, seemed sure of themselves. The pilot appeared a little nervous; he didn't like flying at night and this was as night as it gets.

Mogarth fixated on the scene before him. After his conversation and trip through the wild inners of this peculiar mineral, a description he now thought too restrictive and insufficient to encompass the nature of this thing, he was the only one, besides the Doctor himself, who had even the faintest hint as to what was going on. The wave crests were much closer than on the sunny side and much steeper too, maybe twenty meters for the tallest. And perhaps fifty meters or so in wavelength. The valleys in between were now sloping down, rounding off near the bottom forming a trough. Mogarth had spent time sailing on his home world and that's what it looked like to him. Could that be it? he thought. The heat from the sunny side whipping through the cold shadow zone? The weight of the dunes was deceptive, he now knew; its mass can vary. All other things being equal, like liquidity, if its mass was equivalent to that of water on his home planet, the scene before him would be akin to a fifty to sixty knot wind blowing across the open sea, knocking the spray off the tops. That would explain the dirty air. Waves move through water but the molecules of water themselves merely undulate about. But once it's passed though, the water collapses. Here the dune was held in place, a vibrating picture, repeated across the zone. Time. Was the passage of time slowed way down? If they stood in a valley, a trough, long enough, would they eventually be covered in rock and sand as the waves passed through the dunes and they collapsed?

Ten kilometers ahead of where the ship hovered, the valley between two twenty-meter crests was a good sixty meters wide and reasonably flat. The captain ordered a landing. The pilot kicked in the autolander, trusting the computer to negotiate with the proximity sensors. With a hush and a bit of a bump, they set down. The viewer did a slow 360; rock, stone, and gravelly sand were all they saw.

The Ragnars formed-up at the door, it opened and the gangway extended down to the ground. The shuttle's red landing lights reflected off the orange-brown of the mineral; it appeared to be crawling in the dismal light. They quickly assembled at the base of the plank, forming a semicircle of protection. Their head-lamps could penetrate only about twenty meters before being swallowed up by the fluid darkness. The Ragnars' antennae searched for vibrations outside the norm, frequencies that stood out. Mogarth's face felt damp, the air was misty. But they'd found no bodies of water anywhere on the planet, he recalled, and that cavern of the dead was as dry as, well, bone.

Galran and Ramadji, now dressed in protective clothing and head gear, debarked and stood together on the moving ground. The sudden sting of bitter cold was startling, and the steady rush of a light wind streaming past bore particles of coarse sand. They stared up at the dune ominously appearing to be coming towards them. Because of its curvature, it had the look of a real wave, moreso than the ones approaching and at the beginning of the zone. Ramadji compared it to the dunes that were in the sun the longest; they were more symmetrical in shape, probably due to gravitational effects over time, he surmised. It shuddered from the force of a wave, the bulk however remaining in place, fortunately. They glanced at one another briefly, a serious glance, one that asks the question, are we sure we want to do this?

The commander took lead and gestured to his men to follow; the captain and Ramadji right behind. He walked down the center, away from the bright lights of the shuttle, Mogarth to his right. Three Ragnars on each side were spread out evenly, the ones on the ends about five meters from a dune. Sand from the tops of the dunes cascaded down and pebbles tumbled and slid over one another in sheets, producing a shearing sound, ending in a muffled clatter at the bottom. The fact that these sounds were occurring in total darkness didn't help.

Ramadji managed to keep upright as he made his way over the vibrating stones and squirming sand to the dune on their right, the one showing its curved, forward side, and had the Ragnar shine his light on it. When the soldier turned to do so, Ramadji saw a deep resolute fatalism in his eyes, an openness to his surroundings that was almost alarming, his antennae curved forward in a supple, agile attitude. He couldn't help but smile at the Ragnar, clearly fully aware of the absurdity of being barely five meters away from a twenty-meter wall of intermittent avalanches of pebbles and sharp chunks of rock. A hill that occasionally vibrated vigorously as though it might fall at any moment. Ramadji noticed the pungent smell of metal near the base of the dune. After a few moments he crossed over to the left to examine the lead one. He then rejoined the captain, taking his time, behind the commander.

He had a glimmer of an understanding about how it all worked, and now that he was in the midst of it and knowing what he did about its nature, he felt more certain. On the dune facing away he could see that the shards and smoothed pebbles on the backside were being drawn up to replenish the mass lost in front. The process involved dragging those on the valley floor, and to some extent below, along like a rug, so there was no piling up at the forward base of the one on the right. A very clever system, he thought. The dunes retain their shape, relative to the speed with which the waves pass through, while yet moving closer together as the waves speed up; the one in front shedding and pulling material faster than the one behind, causing that dune to move forward as though the material of the dune itself were merely a facade, a covering, thereby narrowing the distance between. When the shadow passes the one behind, the sun slows it down, stretching the distance. Varying proportionately, the frequency of the waves exceeds the pull of the recoil, but not by much.

He reminded himself that a wave was a periodic event of motion. Frequency of wave means how often the front dune drags the floor between it and the back dune, the one right behind it. And the recoil is the back dune being restrained.

Taking it all in at once, he imagined the dune that had been in the shadow zone longest, the one at the beginning, becoming exposed to the sun as the planet rotates. When that happens, it slows its forward progress to a standstill and the effect ripples across the entire zone. The one in front of it, still in shadow, is reined in, its activity and forward motion is damped, its amplitude restricted, and so forth down the line, as the waves increase in speed.

The Ragnars carried motion detectors, their sensitivity raised above the level of the ambient movements of the gravelly dunes. Mogarth found the sensation of the ground rippling ever so slowly not terribly uncomfortable but he had to admit it was unsettling, bordering on nerve racking; especially, as the source was unknown. They sidestepped to maintain balance on the moving floor. It was like standing on the back of a huge beast struggling to wake up, or a long worm-like sea creature traveling along just below the surface. Is that where the water is? he wondered. A huge subsurface sea driven deep below the crust when the sun bears down on it? Is that why it feels misty?

Ramadji, for his part, was fascinated. He imagined the neural pathways at the heart of every individual piece, of which there were trillions beyond trillions, were joined as one vast organism, entangled, and the waves coherent action transmitted from one to the other. Each part knows what the whole is doing. They proceeded on, cautiously; the captain still not sure what he was searching for, lost in amazement at what was going on around him. The rhythmic crunching under their feet vied with the periodic sounds of gravel falling as a wave moved through a dune, stealing its scratchy way into their calm. What could be causing it was on everybody's mind. Ramadji realized, with no little trepidation, that the oncoming ridge of rock and sand could suddenly expand and engulf them. He knew it was possible, but thought it best to keep it to himself.

Galran visualized a wiring system interconnecting living cells in a very abstract way. Basically, a schematic. He cringed within at the idea of living. Perhaps that was overreaching, too excessive, attributing properties of life to what may be considered a machine that only mimicked a living thinking thing. He needed to put it to the test. Be in the thick of it. Feel this crazy environment viscerally, emotionally, instinctively. He reminded himself that the computer was constrained to work with the translation of what the programmed scanning instruments reflected back. And they could only see what they were designed for as well, everything else was essentially invisible.

Ramadji and Mogarth had seen it in action, knew how it was infused into the rock, believed in its life force. They didn't need to be convinced. And they understood its potential with regard to abrupt changes in size and shape, but they weren't talking. How would you explain it? A mineral whose basic unit structure emanated from what appeared to be a neural network, a brain, capable of manipulating space to conform to whatever shape it could?

They were a good hundred meters from the shuttle, its lights barely discernable in the dense, dusty fog, when their motion detectors began to flash soundlessly, and their antennae hummed, but without alarm, just recognition. They stopped, all six of them, the commander walking a few steps farther to listen. He turned to Mogarth, the closest, "Well," he asked quietly, "what is it? Read."

"Dead ahead, sir. I estimate 300 meters. Very large and moving fast. Coming this way."

"Three hundred? Why didn't your detector pick it up sooner?"

"It just suddenly appeared."

"How many?"

"One." He looked up at the commander, waiting and hoping for direction. The captain and Ramadji were right behind and overheard the exchange. The commander looked at the captain, an unspoken query on his face. Galran walked up to Mogarth and stared at the motion detector; his eyes widened. "All right, everyone," he ordered hurriedly, "back to the shuttle. Now." They turned and ran, even Ramadji, the Ragnars put themselves between whatever it was and the two older men. Mogarth called out, "Two hundred meters, and closing."

Galran commed the pilot to get ready to take off as soon as they were onboard. They quickly scurried up the plank, it was secured and the portal sealed. Immediately the shuttle lifted and rose to several hundred meters. All sensors were aimed in the direction of the approaching thing but read nothing out of what had become the norm. They performed a wide circle around where it should be, gradually spiraling in. Rocky, grainy ridges and undulating ground, nothing else. They returned to the ship.

Galran ordered the shuttle bay buttoned up and made his way to the bridge. He wanted a full scan, entire area, all filters across the spectrum. Ramadji was a bit shaken but felt invigorated. He wanted to be in the midst of it, there's nothing like field work to flesh out an idea, and agreed eagerly to the skipper's request to come along, his expertise and scientific perspective, he was told, would be appreciated. He realized he'd made an assumption based on the experiments that he now saw as a misinterpretation. And there was something else he needed to mull over, so he retired to his quarters.

The commander stopped by his office to retrieve holo-maps made on their initial survey and proceeded to the conference room to examine them with the other officers. He didn't know what he hoped to find, but looking for something that stood out or didn't seem important at the time was the name of the game right now.

Mogarth and the others talked about the encounter in the shuttle bay, wondering what they could've done if they'd held their ground, always a Ragnar's prime concern and resolute intention. But Mogarth recalled the look on the captain's face, so he had no misgivings. The captain knew what it was, that something he was looking for. He ordered them back, they went, case closed. The questioning session over to their satisfaction, the group broke up and went their separate ways, Mogarth to his room to watch the viewer and wait for orders. They hadn't been put on alert, but that didn't mean to call it a day, either. In no time, news of what happened would be known by all hundred Ragnars, the grapevine worked fast on a ship. Another mystery to pile on. Mogarth's roommates had been on the mission with him, they were probably in the food hall watching the wallscreen with most of the others. He wanted to be alone; everybody had their own way of handling stress.

The large smudge on his detector could've only been something embodying or composed of the mineral intelligence, and he had a feeling the captain knew this too. Its shape was probably not like anything they'd ever seen, and the manner with which it was bearing down, its intent, was anything but friendly. The sphere had first discovered their presence, and now it was time to confront. His fellow Ragnars didn't know, how could they? They were completely in the dark. It wasn't right to risk your life and not even know what you're in the middle of. They listened to him and he could explain things in a more practical way than the good Doctor. So he went to the food hall to explain the situation, including his experience exploring the byways of the mineral's inner domain with all its implications. They deserved to know. They were his brothers.

Galran broke off searching for the large blip after only a few minutes. He knew he wouldn't find it. Something huge rushing towards them. Something with legs and an angry attitude. Where had it come from? If it had materialized from the rock, as his intuition was now telling him, why not right in front of them? Was it only trying to scare them? Well, it worked. But if that was the case, how could it know we had motion detectors or some other way of telling movement in front of us? Our detectors could determine distance, but our antennae were sufficient to pick up abberant motion, to register a moving form of that size. But how could it know that? Is it capable of knowing what we're doing and what we're physically able to do? Whatever it was, it wasn't anymore. He headed the ship in the direction of the sea and continued their journey across the zone.

He sat in his command chair watching the desolate, migrating landscape go by. Why was it doing what it was doing? What would be the purpose? An ocean of rock moving around the entire planet opposite its rotation. Was it trying to bring it to a stop by countering its momentum, and then force it to rotate the way all the other planets do? There are five in the system, the three outer ones are mostly gas and had several moons each. The one closest to the giant sun was small, not much more than a few thousand kilometers in diameter. And, according to the survey probe, except for this moonless orb, none had life.

He was developing a theory about what happened here, and the incident in the valley supported it, albeit in an indeterminate way. He knew now that it would've been impossible realistically for those men to establish a base of operations in the shadow zone. No one could, it's in turmoil. Nothing could be built to house men or work on experimental weaponry on that trembling terrain. Besides, even though it was the dark side of the planet, they could still be spotted. They needed cover. So, the cavern, the cave of caves and deep pits. The ground was forested with tall rock formations, not the same as out in the open where they'd found nothing but the heavy rolling sea. And, he recalled, they weren't composed of stacks of separate pieces. Of course not, how could they be? He asked communications to run the commander's video of the cave on his personal display. The formations stood at most three meters apart; the tallest he saw were about ten meters high. He was sure now that the men had chosen to bivouac there. An unfortunate choice.

As the commander had walked about surveying, he stopped at anomalous sites. Scattered throughout the expansive floor were open, flat areas about ten to fifteen meters across, meadows in the forest. He froze the action to study one such, a rather large space, approaching circular, about twenty meters in diameter. It was midway from the opening to the rear of the enormous cavern and approximately in the middle widthwise. That's where I would set up my command center, he thought to himself. The others were probably used for sleeping and eating areas.

He sat back, a misgiving searched him. All well and good, he thought. Out of the sun's glare and the weather, a good deal cooler, hidden from sight, the feeling of protection, and a defensible position. Plenty of rock barriers to prevent armor from entering and plenty to give cover. What's wrong with this picture? he wondered. Glancing at the scanning officer, who shook his head no, he rose to pace the bridge. He stopped behind the scanning display, absently watching a red line rotate in empty space on the center one, to think. It was dark not too far from the mouth; they would've used artificial lighting. They could be seen. He resumed pacing until he came to the main viewer where he let himself be drawn into the mineral ocean over which they were traveling, heading for the far side of the zone. That was it.

He wasn't looking at the big picture. Scattered about on separate oases, not just near the front but throughout the depths, the way they must've been, bordered by tall mineral towers, they wouldn't have been able to see other groups around them. Therefore, they would be unable to assemble a unified front. A wall of protection. Instead of 3,000 strong, they were split up into squads of twenty or thirty. Each group could've been overwhelmed by a large enough force or one with superior weaponry, and then the next one and so on. But who would be doing the overwhelming?

He recalled all too sharply the large red bleep on the motion detector and returned to his chair. He told the video to continue. Could it be? He could see no sign of movement in the pillars of rock, quite a contrast to what he'd just experienced. He commed Ramadji and asked if he was busy, it was urgent. He had questions and needed to be briefed on what they'd discovered thus far. Ramadji replied that he was just about to contact him. Handing the bridge over to the nav officer, he left for Ramadji's cabin. Scan had yet to detect any ships in the area. It was eerie. Galran didn't like eerie.

The captain and Ramadji exchanged notes over tea. Ramadji had insisted on having his own personal kitchen installed. Privacy to think and meditate helped him in many ways. He told the captain everything he and Mogarth discovered and summarized the many experiments his team had undertaken. The captain was about to follow with his theory, but Ramadji waved him off before he began. He wasn't finished and needed to get this out. In a low, almost conspiratorial voice, he told him what he noticed on their jaunt through the wilderness. He said, "I tasted a harsh tang of metal in the air just before the motion detectors went off. Did you?" Galran nodded no. "I had to think about it when I got back. All our experiments were performed with the sample enclosed in a sealed chamber. The sensors indicated that the air around the material had been ionized, a clear sign of the presence of metal. The bioelectric fields generated expansion, growth, and at the same time reconfigured the crystal structure to form a malleable, conductive, reflective, hard surface."

He rose to get the tea pot, filled the captain's cup and his, then placed the pot carefully back on its stand and returned to his chair. "You must've felt the dampness," he said, squinting suspiciously. "The air was more than humid, it was misty like on the sea coast. We got similar results in the confined tests, but attributed it to condensation from the heat energy produced by whatever radiation we were applying. Now I'm thinking it comes from somewhere within. Possibly from dimensions of space that exist here but we can't experience. An electrical charge generates positive ions in a moist atmosphere. Moist like salt water. There certainly wasn't any indication of moisture in the mineral in its quiescent state, out in the sun where we picked up most of the samples. Not until we applied pressure, squeezed it chemically. And the ones from inside the cavern more readily demonstrated a moisture content." He sat back to reflect, tea cup in hand.

That was it, for now. The captain regrouped. "Those 3,000 men were stationed in that cavern where their bodies were found; I'm sure of it." He paused somberly in remembrance. "I was just watching a vid, I can have it piped through here. You need to look at this more carefully." He commed the communications officer and had her transfer the video through Ramadji's viewer. A few seconds later, the commander's recording began at the beginning. His was mostly of the overall structure of the vast cavern itself, the layout, pausing to take in the open, flat islands of space interspersed among the groupings of tall, narrow, tapering mounds. Ramadji said he wished they could see the entire floor from above, it might be revealing. Galran requested same from the computer: Patch together the segments from everyone's video recording for a full panorama of the floor from as far above as you can get, what's optimal, a projection.

They sipped tea and enjoyed the quiet of the moment. A brief respite. Galran looked around at the paintings and statuettes the Doctor had collected on different planets. He'd been onboard for the past three years and called it home. They weren't what you would call good friends, their duties hardly ever overlapped on a personal level. Studies, analyses, experiments, reports, that was it. But they did share a great deal of respect for one another and were similar in their passion for understanding, for digging into a mystery.

The computer came back, "As you wish, captain." The scene depicted the floor from the angle at the top of the mouth; it was about eighty meters across. The aerial view moved in several meters at a time, the projection, mathematically derived, came from the ceiling twenty meters or so above. When it arrived over the large, round space in the middle--the cavern had gradually widened to another twenty-five meters--Ramadji raised his hand; the captain ordered it stopped. Ramadji rose and walked over to his two-meter-wide screen.

"The pillars are all of one piece, not stacks of countless rocks; I hadn't noticed that before when the vids were first taken. The scene of the dead piled up in pits was disturbing, to say the least; I couldn't think straight. But now it's quite obvious." He stepped back and let his eyes roam independently. The image was not terribly well-lit towards the back, but enough for him to make out patterns. He described what he saw.

"Clumps of pillars of varying heights and thicknesses with rounded tops, separated from one another by a meter or two, congregated around open spaces, also of varying sizes, roughly circular in shape. Despite the clumping, you can make out clear paths slicing through, connecting the large centralized space to all the others, as though the heart of a circulatory system, as many as a hundred, perhaps more hidden in the alcoves, scattered over the floor, randomly it would seem, becoming smaller and less attended towards the periphery on the sides and in the rear."

He backed up to take in a broader view. Then went on, gesturing as he did so. "Notice the mounds now. Clustered together yet each one has a path, meandering slightly, not straight, to one space, whichever is closest. But you can see that the tallest form a connected ridge like a mountain range migrating across the floor with branchings of shorter ridges here and there, and that they have access via paths to two spaces on either side, downhill you might say."

He returned to his chair and drank tea, his hands quivering a bit with excitement. "I have an idea, captain. A theory actually. Or maybe it's not even a theory, let's call it a hypothesis. Tell me what you think. Based on what we know thus far, how about this."

He got up to pour them both more tea, now lukewarm, and sat on the edge of his chair. "Samples of the covering mineral collected by my colleagues in front of the cavern, and especially those gathered by the Ragnars inside, possess imprints of a magnetic field that have been filtered through and consequently altered by kilometers of salt water. So here's what I think. It was once a planet of all water, a salty sea, the bubbling magma surrounding the core formed a thick crust at the interface and released toxic gases, toxic to us, through hydrothermal vents and chimneys into the atmosphere, which, at the time, wasn't much. The sun was young then. Bombardment by asteroids and comets, besides delivering the seeds of organic life, led to the mineral's formation from salts suspended in the vast ocean. A very different kind of mineral, its configuration and properties don't fit into the taxonomy of classifications we know for minerals. The element may even be from an entirely different galaxy.

"Bacterial microbes, ocean dwelling, of course, evolved from fundamental constituents, a process we've found to be quite common throughout the habitable galaxy. Over billions of years they transformed the poisonous atmosphere to one containing oxygen and an ozone layer, which now protects those suspended in the air from harmful radiation.

"Now here's the hypothesis: I believe the sun went through a phase transition billions of years ago, generating such an overwhelming gravitational impact on the planet that it brought it to a standstill. Solar and atmospheric tidal forces locking together were responsible, for the most part. And a shift in the sun's magnetic field effected the basic properties of particles, atoms, and molecules. This was the first stage. Also, and more to the point, the sun's transformation had the effect of driving the planet-wide ocean down through porous cracks to beneath the crust. What didn't evaporate, seeped down. This invasion into the magma formed another shelf or sub-crust. The sea was sandwiched between. After the ocean was driven beneath the surface, the atmosphere and surface rocks dried out completely; and except for the wind, erosion ceased, which is why those ancient rocks yet exist. Some millions of years later, perhaps billions, when the tides achieved a stable balance between them, the planet began to rotate in the direction opposite to its orbit, and quite slowly we've discovered. Microbes suspended in the atmosphere adapted to the phase-shifted frequencies of the light spectrum and new magnetic field strength and in the process aquired novel characteristics. They went through a period of attrition, no doubt, but survivors eventually adapted to the new solar environment.

"Okay, those living in the lower crust and the sea had no sunlight to photosynthesize, so they adapted to harvesting chemical energy from the native minerals and chemical compounds that spew from the vents, gases finding their way to the atmosphere through rifts in the surface. Different types of rock and different types of chemistry should result in different types of microbes, and that's what happened."

Putting his fingertips together, he pronounced, "Here's where I take a leap of faith and possibly reason: By necessity and a peculiar mutation altering the nature and internal structure of the microbes living in the surface crust; that is, in the mineral we've found covering the planet, a union took place between those microbes and the mineral's crystal lattice forming a neural network as unit cell. A symbiotic relationship developed, fusing neural microbe and exotic mineral. The microbes morphed into the basis for the unit cell and by some means asserted their instinct for survival as an organism and shaped the mineral as a sculptor would marble, changing it into the protective shield we encountered on entry. A metallic shield, in fact; malleable, conductive, and hard. The mineral provides nutrients in the form of compounds created by its interaction with the sea below, and in return, the microbes turned neural net provide the mineral with the capability of movement. A crust capable of movement over the sea, directed by what we may call a primitive brain. Of course, it's a brain only in the most general rudimentary sense."

He stood to carry the two cups of cold tea to the washboard next to the cleaning bowl. Then turned, arms folded, to face the captain. "The whole planet is composed of this one orange-brown mineral. A wave or waves moves through it, constantly. A wave generated and guided by the combined bioelectric force of the mineral's neural network. The cavern could have been created purposefully, or the towers we see were once under water. I think the former. And stranger still, our experiments have shown that the microbial-mineral synthesis is capable of manipulating space and time elementals, probably how it's able to move, no small feat and completely unprecedented in my experience. And I think," he paused for effect, "I'll go one step further. Despite its apparent primitivity, at least as perceived in our spacetime, it's evolved to self-awareness."

"You said purposefully. If that's the case, what could all this mean?" Galran asked, gesturing towards the screen. "What's it doing there? If this isn't a completely natural formation, then who constructed it and what's it supposed to be?"

"Oh, I believe it's natural, quite natural. As far as what it's supposed to be, it appears to be an incubation repository or facility or a sanctuary of some great importance. I doubt we'll find another like it on the whole of the planet. I think the survey report said it was 20,000 kilometers in diameter; that's a lot of surface area, and only one growing place? Quite significant. All conditions being equal, its lack of commonality belies the likelihood that it was formed by local physical laws acting independently of a guiding hand. But nonetheless, its creators are as natural as the rocks themselves. In other words, it constructed itself."

"I see what you're describing, Naleesh," said the captain, using Ramadji's other, less formal name. "I think. And you're right, it does sound crazy. But it leaves the door open for my crazy idea. I believe..."

He was interrupted by a message through his comm from the bridge. "Sir, sorry to barge in, but we're two-thirds of the way across the zone. The waves have picked up speed and the wavelength has shortened appreciably. Also, and I should've mentioned this first. That giant sphere of rock from yesterday? Well, it's on our tail, about fifty kilometers back and closing."

"I'm on my way," he replied. Eyeing Ramadji, "Could that be the ball of rock you and Mogarth dissected, Doctor?" sarcasm in his tone.

"It sounds like it," he admitted, coloring over. "However, there could be more than one," he said, feigning uncertainty. But he knew better. There was something special about its intricate complexity and magical abilities. The captain's antennae arched forwards. Finally, hands spread matter-of-factly, he relented, "He threw it out. I suppose. I haven't spoken to him since he ran out of the lab, but that's where he was heading."

"And it would appear he succeeded."

"His only concern was the ship and the people on it. He did the right thing, I believe now. Witness its size."

"Perhaps you'd like to join me, Naleesh." Galran stood. "I can use your input. You know more about this thing than anyone." He concurred and they left together.

Just as Mogarth had finished answering questions, the commander entered. All of them were there, the word spread quickly that Mogarth was briefing them on their currrent situation, trying to explain as best he could what they were dealing with. Ordinarily, the commander addressed the men as a group in the staging area in front of the wide deployment door, but, for now, this seemed more appropriate.

He stood in front of the screen showing the rolling landscape below. He began, "I've just been informed by the captain that our large ball of rock from yesterday is back." Mogarth flinched, suddenly nauseus. He should've found a way to destroy it instead of throwing it out, he thought. But his first instinct was the safety of the ship and all onboard. He felt there was no time to waste. He hadn't mentioned it to the others nor did he tell anyone about what he was sure was a window opening and closing, not even Doctor Ramadji. In fact, he had trouble remembering it because its existence was tied to the belief that the sphere was a ship of some kind or an experimental weapon of the enemy. Based on what he knew now, a window made no sense.

The commander said the captain's plan was to outdistance the sphere and return to the cave complex, the cavern of the dead. He had a hunch that it held the answers. They'd scrutinized the survey maps and could find no other caves on the rest of the planet.

One of the men who had been outside with Mogarth guarding the captain had a question; he spoke for all. "Why don't we just leave? The enemy are all dead and there's nothing here but a crazy rocky world that doesn't act normal. It has its own rules that we're liable to get tangled up in. Remember the big blip on the detectors? What was that? Or it's being protected by some people who don't like interlopers. Either way, we've seen what happens if you hang around too long. We have a war to fight and it's not here." There were nods all around.

In his heart the commander had to agree. When he saw that sphere vanish, he thought it was something built by the enemy or a ship capable of amazing feats. But after experiencing the rocky sea and especially the detector bleep, he believed something else was going on they should rather leave alone. And now the giant rock ball was on their heels. He didn't want himself and his men to experience the same fate as the 3,000. Nonetheless, he was a soldier in command of a hundred Ragnars, under the command of the captain who made the decisions, for whatever reasons he may not agree with.

He replied, "Something or someone killed those men, we don't know what. If we leave without finding out, it may turn out to be our undoing. Any minute a ship could show up from one of the neighboring worlds. A ship of aliens who routinely come to this planet for reasons of their own. Who came here and found 3,000 trespassers and killed them. We need to find out who they are without getting ourselves killed in the process. Three thousand men are dead because of something. It could very well have been us. We need to discover if we have another enemy, someone who may be taking advantage of the current conflict to try to take control. We could write it off and leave, and somewhere down the road be unpleasantly surprised."

The argument wasn't going over very well with Mogarth and he could see dubious expressions on the faces of most of the others. He suspected the captain was mostly curious. Something happening outside the norm has intrigued him. It was a mystery he wanted to solve for his own personal reasons. He was risking everyone's life, putting them in danger, and for what? We were trespassing, that was clear, as were the 3,000. And we saw what happened to them.

Mogarth was going off again and caught himself. He realized that he didn't know the captain all that well. Maybe his interest was based on a need to know for future trips through this sector. For security. He took a deep breath and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. For now. Perhaps something of value could be gained by solving the mystery. Something worth the inherent danger. An expanded view of the universe. Knowledge for its own sake. New allies made. He didn't know. But what he did know was that he had no intention of risking his life over nothing, or letting any of his brothers do the same. They were Ragnars and they were on their own.

The spherical entity ceased pursuit. Instead, it veered off over the pole and then down to the cavern of dreams and positioned itself in front. It increased its diameter to a hundred meters and absorbed the requisite mass from its surroundings. The added weight caused the ground beneath to tremble. It was testing. It retracted to fifty meters. Internal complexity quadrupled its web of connections; new paths were etched into the mineral. Moments of eternity passed by. Then of a sudden, being emerged on the plane of seeming. The willfullness that gave birth to all of creation. From the everpresent darkness into light--eyes were born. To see the world of becoming and the glittering stars beyond. Dimensions expanded, extended, continuously. Existence. Imagination. Thought.

It would hold its position in front of the caves. The Dreamers had been disturbed once, not again.

Doctor Ramadji sat next to the captain. The main viewer showed the rolling sea with waves thirty to forty meters high and the trough so deep and dark the filters couldn't compensate. And it was moving fast, the wavelength not even half what it was at the beginning. The captain, wanting to put distance between the ship and the sphere until he could figure out what to do with it, was about to order full throttle when the scan officer called his attention.

"The giant sphere is no longer behind us, sir, and a ship is approaching the planet."

"Put it on viewer and magnify," ordered Galran. A huge ship almost filled the screen. The main body was circular, a disc, about a hundred and fifty meters in diameter. Hanging beneath and off to the sides projecting another thrity meters were two narrow, cylindrical engines. It was coming hard.

The captain ordered all stop. He asked the scanner if it could read them. He replied, "Doubtful, sir. Not with all the activity beneath us. We're probably lost in the background noise and the dark." The entire bridge watched as its direction shifted towards what nav said was the location of the cavern. Computer reported that its design was that of a supply ship, Titan Class.

Galran relaxed. Despite its size, a supply ship was no match for a fully armed cruiser. He stood to pace the stations. Ramadji proffered, "Their attention is no doubt drawn to the caves where they expect to find their men, alive, of course. Could we take advantage of that?"

The captain smiled. He ordered helm to elevate to the upper atmosphere, then encircle the planet to a position above the cavern. He returned to his chair.

Mogarth had been lying on his back when he sensed the ship stop and begin to rise. There was a knock on the door. "Come in," he said, stradling his legs over the edge of the bed.

"Did you see that?" asked an excited fellow Ragnar.

"See what? I was dozing and dreaming of warm beaches and beautiful..."

"That ship," he broke in. "On the viewer. It's enormous. An enemy supply ship heading for the cavern."

"How do you know?"

"The commander. He monitors the bridge. I banged on his door. He said we're going to go up to the void then sneak around to their position. I gotta go tell the others." The door hushed closed. Mogarth watched the viewer. The tumultuous, roaring sea receded into the distance. Gradually, the scene shifted from the darkness of the shadow zone to the brightness of the enormous orange sun peaking over the pole. They moved forward. He could see the swath of twilight boundary below as they passed into the daytime side. The sea slowed, its momentum driven down beneath the surface. Eventually, it came to a standstill. The terrain had an all too familiar look. He and his comrades had spent three days trudging through it. He recalled the wump sound. The sight of the gigantic sphere of rock. Firing his M-ray at it to no avail. Its perfectly smooth, reflective surface. Lying on the mound of coarse sand with the others. And then the window.

He stood suddenly. What his mind had blocked out jumped into view. Eyes. Those eyes. Gleaming bright against the backdrop of utter blackness. That was more than just neural networks manipulating stone. Who was that? he asked himself. And why did he look at me?

They assumed station directly above the cave complex, hovering over the cavern of the dead 3,000. Everyone was watching a viewer, the bridge crew, the scientists, engineering, medical and other support staff, maintenance, ship's security, cooks and dishwashers; the entire ship was glued to a screen somewhere. The Ragnars, along with a few stray crewmembers, were assembled in the food hall. Ramadji was not surprised to see the sphere at the gateway. That's how he saw the entrance to the cavern now, as pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. He assumed the huge supply ship was no doubt expecting throngs to emerge from the caves to welcome them and help with unloading. The sight of this giant ball of rock must stun to bewilderment its captain and crew.

It set down a kilometer away, its prodigious legs descending onto the rough gravelly valley. There they sat, the supply ship facing the enormous sphere. Galran and his crew hadn't seen this famous ball until now. When it was pursuing them, because of the incoherent nature of the space between, they were unable to bring it up on screen. Only the Ragnars had had that pleasure up close and personal. The story of it vanishing before them was received as fact at first, but some of the crew had doubts and the Ragnars became the butt of jokes. After all, they'd been hiking through mountains of gravel and sand with only the sound of their feet crunching along in the hot overbearing sun for three days. Mass hallucination does happen. But those who were more familiar with Ragnars, their mindset and personalities, believed them. Their reputation for being able to concentrate on their surroundings despite the onset of unusual circumstances was legendary. Backing down wasn't in their playbook. Now it was confirmed. It was as impressive to the crew as it must be to those on the enemy ship. Main difference being that they weren't dealing with it.

Galran tried to imagine what its skipper must be thinking. For that matter, what would he be thinking? Perhaps that the contingent of troops had been killed or captured and this thing was left behind, a new weapon or a crude warning? Time went by, nothing moved in the harsh sunlight, the reflection of the orange-brown mineral's metalic skin filled the air with even more brightness and waves of heat. In fact, the sphere itself was difficult to focus on through the ghostly haze.

As they watched, the ends of flat gangplanks extended past the disc on both sides, landing hard in the ground, digging in. Immediately after, soldiers packing pulse rifles ran down three abreast and spread out in a line across the valley. There couldn't have been more than forty or so, the brunt if not all of ship's security personnel. They stood for a bit, waiting for a response, but except for dust motes dancing in the sun, all remained still. Abruptly, as one, they proceeded to walk towards the sphere and the cavern beyond, joining up after passing the bow of the ship. Mogarth and the Ragnars could understand better than anyone what was probably going through their heads. When they ran into this thing, they explained it to themselves as belonging to the enemy, something they could accept as almost normal. Nonetheless, it had been mindnumbing and overwhelming, still was. But now, thanks to Mogarth's explanation, they had at least a mechanical understanding of what they were witnessing, insufficient though it was to grasp the finer more subtle points of willful action by a bug-infested rock. Something bordering on the magical was taking place, the forces of nature supporting and defining it beyond their imagination.

The soldiers were halfway to the sphere when Galran, Ramadji, and the rest of the riveted onlookers noticed movement in the shadows just beyond the wide entrance to the cave. Because of the curvature of the sphere's lower half, they could see almost the whole expanse. If it had been quiet before, it was now deadly silent as all held their breath.

Spread across the opening, headless pillars of rock, anywhere from ten to fifteen meters tall, arms straight and thick seamlessly protruding from their very top, extending to half their body length, walked stiffly out of the darkness into the light. Long, jointless legs and bulbous feet forced them to lurch uncertainly. But there was nothing uncertain about their intent. Their exterior was smooth, surrounding them with a shimmering halo, the metalic sheen making it difficult to get a clean fix on their position. There were ten of them, five lined up on either side of the sphere, spread to cover the entire opening.

Without hesitation the soldiers let loose a barrage. Tube-shaped pulses of pure energy, shifted to the short end of the spectrum, seen as they pierced through the golden dusty air, struck the metal men, ricocheting off in all directions. The metal men raised their fingerless hands towards the soldiers. The space before them seemed to crinkle, then break into countless shards and spirals of light, creating a dissonant wave of ragged shapes, each with multiple sharp points. Traveling at near light speed, it struck the line of soldiers. Within a second or two, all forty men lay on the ground a bloody, broken mess, their weapons scattered here and there. The metal men lowered their arms and stood stiff and silent.

Within a second or two, the gangplanks slid back up and the ship, its engines charged, began to lift off. But it was too late.

They watched in horror, aghast, as the grand mega-class supply ship began to fold at its circumference. Crumpling inward, compressed and compacted and vanishing at the same time. Within moments the long cylindrical engines were almost completely gone. Explosions blew holes in the hull, their sources quickly extinguished and engulfed, the ship torn asunder and replaced by nothingness.

Galran stood, his mouth agape, staring in disbelief at the viewer. Ramadji placed his hands over his heart and leaned forward. Mogarth and the other Ragnars watched the impossible happening right before their eyes. Uncertain what they were witnessing, they turned to Mogarth. He reminded them of how the neural networks seem to have control over space elementals, the reason it's able to move, reshape, and expand and contract. Why it was disappearing, he wasn't sure. Matter stripped of its matterness, pulled apart until the space between atoms exceeds that within the atoms themselves? He had no idea.

The metal men tottered as they lurched an about face and lumbered back inside. The soldiers who had been dispatched were also gone. No trace of the ship or the men remained except for deep impressions in the coarse sand where the ship's landing pads had stood. And Galran knew that when the shadow covered this area they wouldn't last long. He sat in his command chair overwhelmed. Ramadji was deeply withdrawn. He knew the lifeform could control spatial elementals, but not on this scale. The view screen still held the image of the sphere and the cavern. Particles of sand and dust raced about violently in the air between it and where the supply ship once rested on the orange-brown crust. The entire bridge crew sat stunned. Seconds ticked by in bewildered silence. No one moved.

"Sir," called the scan officer. "I'm getting indications that the sphere is aware of our presence. How that's possible is unknown. But our sensors are detecting magnetic waves coming from its direction."

Galran came out of it; there was only one thing to do. "Helm, get us the hell out of here. Vector ninety degrees into space. Maximum speed." Momentarily, the ship turned in that heading and zoomed away, the captain hoping the ball of rock's power had a limited range.

They'd been on duty for a long time, and this last encounter put them all, including the captain, on edge. They'd seen the strange, the unusual, and the downright bizarre on other planets they fought on and just visited, but their experience of metal world was in a class of abnormality all its own. We stretch our minds to include things and make sense of them by classifying them as some particular kind. But sometimes, it's a stretch too far. Nerves were frayed, concentration compromised, emotions exhausted; they needed a break. They plotted a course for home and punched it into the auto-nav.

En route, a report was sent to HQ warning about the planet and insisting it be quarantined. The announcement was disseminated to the fleet and their allies. Only the most general reasons were given. The video recordings of the destruction of the supply ship, mega-class, its soldiers, the giant sphere of a very unique mineral, the metal men, the insides of the cavern and the dead soldiers piled within, all were sent, along with survey and other customary related vids. Galran would let them experience the shock without too much prelude. Mere words really couldn't do it justice, anyway; you need the visceral effect to fully appreciate it. He and Doctor Ramadji would explain details to the one's running the show when they got there, let them know what we have to contend with out here in the field. But he sure would like to see their faces when the metal men come walking out, not to mention when the supply ship disappears. He wondered now what that must've sounded like? Combined with all the screaming and shouts of astonishment and shock and fear. He shuddered and pushed it out of his mind.

He needed a rest. And he intended to get it.

He spent a good portion of the trip in his cabin. He reviewed events, looking for indicators of danger he might've overlooked or ignored as irrelevant. His habit. What transpired, he believed, no one could've anticipated. Perhaps they should've left after their excursion in the outdoors, when the large blip showed on the motion detectors. He still didn't know what that was; although, he now suspected it might've been a bigger brother of those creatures at the cavern. But besides that, he really couldn't put his finger on anything specific.

He wondered though why when the Ragnars had encountered the giant ball of rock, and especially when one of them, Mogarth, had fired his blaster at it, it left them unharmed? It, the entity within or whatever was controlling it, made a decision based on something. Because of that, he figured its vanishing was for show only, a harmless, although quite impressive, demonstration of its abilities. So, he ignored it. That was a mistake. But how could he have known?

At the time, he thought it was a ship or an experimental weapon of the enemy. But the site of the dead conflicted with that supposition and overshadowed it. Finding out who did that became a higher priority and the sphere wasn't a consideration. He didn't know what it was, but it didn't seem to be the culprit in the mass death of 3,000 special operations soldiers. But what else was there that could've? Still, at the time, he assumed a battle had taken place and went looking for evidence. That was the normal operating procedure, what made sense. Only this time, sense didn't apply. He drove himself crazy with this second-guessing and knew it had degraded into simple self-blaming. So he let it go.

He took his meals in his room and dreamed of home. Of stretching his four legs more than he gets walking around the ship. On a beach or through the woods. Activities and pursuits to help him forget, at least for a time, the war and the planet of the strange mineral ocean and the mysterious sphere. And most of all, the metal men. Imagine an army of such, he considered, what damage they could do. And how did that smaller version of the sphere get into the ship? Mogarth carried it, he remembered. He picked it up amongst all those rocks. It stood out, obviously. It was a sphere, a ball; everything else were broken chips and jagged chunks. But what kind of coincidence was that? What are the chances? It could've expanded or simply taken the ship apart from the inside. But it didn't. What was it trying to do?

Doctor Ramadji and his team prepared detailed technical reports on their experiments and findings, including speculations on the nature and abilities of the mineral-intelligence based on their experience, something they'll never forget. They considered the planet to be inhabited, but by what they couldn't say for certain at this time. All the samples were boxed up to be delivered to HQ labs. He went about overseeing the preparations in a most serious manner, not engaging in the usual smalltalk, his mind turned off, his imagination suppressed.

Otherwise, he kept to himself. He was having trouble getting over the scene of that ship dissolving before his eyes. All those people, terrified, not knowing what was happening, as their ship and fellow crewmen, friends, colleagues, family perhaps, disintegrated and vanished around them. He recalled that the supply ship was attempting to leave; the sphere could've let them, but it didn't. Why? Surely others will come looking for their comrades, or at the very least send a probe. The sphere doesn't know that about people.

He wasn't military, only a scientist doing what he could for the war effort and his people. But enough is enough, he felt. Maybe when he got home, he'd quit and take a teaching job. He drank tea and read journals, neither with much real interest. The universe he loved was filled with beauty and many awesome and wonderful things and events, but some, he decided, he'd rather not know about. He struggled to make sense of it all.

Mogarth lay in his bunk, the viewer off and his two more gregarious roommates out and about. When on duty, which they always were when on a mission, his mind was filled with certain thoughts, his training, what mattered and what didn't, where his priorities lay. But now he wasn't, and gradually, in leaps and slides, his personal self emerged. His mind was free to think about certain things in a clearer manner, without prejudice.

As far as he was concerned, everything that happened on that planet was explainable. Maybe years from now, many years, the forces those beings were aware of, understood, and controlled will be known. He sifted it all, from the intial sky-high view on entry and trudging over the dunes and valleys, to the ripping men to shreds with pieces of space and the gobbling up of a huge shp. He believed that some day that would be understood, how that happened.

He sat up and toyed with a synthetic ball Ramadji had made for him, about the size and color of the one he'd picked up. Why did I do that? he wondered. It did stand out amongst the shards and misshapen pieces. But there was something else on the tip of his mind. Those eyes. I know that entity looked at me. I know he did.