ew of ... bonies. The Big Four didn't need all this special attention. We were willing to hop down. Paratroopers of the Infinite! We could suit up and use mini-rockets to come in like mini-spaceships. With a bit of luck we wouldn't smash ourselves to a fine red spray--an appropriate death with Mars hovering over our heads, like the god of war. Now for the first time Commander Taylor allowed herself to be testy with her marine passengers. "This is no time for a gung-ho kamikaze operation! The mission is a failure if you die before you meet what's on the other side of the Gate. We know how impor- tant your mission is and that the Bova is expendable. Why do you think we carted a few UAC goodies along just for you? Finding UAC stuff isn't easy anymore but you need every advantage. And remember that we will remain in this area until you return. If Phobos is too dangerous, we'll wait farther out. When any of you return from the mission, you will be greeted by someone ... unless all of us are dead. Meanwhile, you will have the safest passage to Phobos that it is within my power to grant. Now not another word about paratrooping in." She'd made such a big production out of it that I took my chance for Albert to finally see a space skipper do her stuff; and I wasn't averse to getting an eyeful myself. The landing took a full hour once Taylor was in position to touch down ever so gently on the moon. I wasn't nervous, even though "Phobos" means "fear." Hidalgo took command with grace. I was starting to feel more comfortable about him. I wasn't sure what had changed. He'd had us keep our gear in top condition aboard the Bova, but he hadn't been neu- rotic about it. Plus there was only so much exacting inspection he could do in the near-dark. Hidalgo was beginning to assume his proper place in the pecking order as the fire team commander. The problem he had was that this position should have been held by the team member with the most combat experience. For this war, that narrowed down the list to two living marines: Fly and me. Next came Albert because he'd fought the monsters with us, close up and dirty. When Colonel Hooker saddled us with Hidalgo the test immediately became: is he an asset or extra baggage? I liked traveling light. This was the last place for a know-it-all to try to assume command. Fly and I had the most firsthand information and we were still shooting in the dark most of the time. Hidalgo asked the right questions. He listened. Even though we'd never had the oppor- tunity to train together to the point where we could operate as one perfect fighting machine, three of us did have this seasoning. With some applied intelli- gence, Hidalgo could be the brain. Fly and I had worked out the route. Captain Hidalgo sent us in doing a simple echelon formation, with Albert taking the point. Then came Fly, then Hidalgo, and I brought up the rear. I kind of liked it that my beloved and I were doing all the security sweep area between us. Albert was a good marksman and he had a brand new Sig-Cow. He rilled out his space suit better than the rest of us. We'd worried there might not be one to fit him, but the mission had been too well planned for that. Naturally, Albert's suit was at the bottom of the pile. Seeing him from behind was like watching him grow in height as he looked up at Mars. The distant sun didn't illuminate the scenery too well, but the Bova would light our way as we searched for the right facility. Mars looked more orange than red to me; at least it did in this light. I'm sure that Albert would have loved it if it had been the color of a spoiled pumpkin--pie, that is. It felt strange to deliberately reenter hell. Half-normal gravity returned. The lights were on. My heart sank, and not from putting on weight all of a sudden. Since the gravity zones were still functioning, I figured the enemy must still be around. This conclu- sion might not have been entirely rational, though. The gravity zones had been operating long before the enemy arrived. It was possible the things couldn't be turned off. Call it woman's intuition, but I figured the red meanies would have trashed everything somehow if they didn't need it anymore. The next second I was proved 100 percent right. I hate it when that happens. I saw the flying skull before anyone else did, zooming in at four o'clock. Thank God we had our radios on. We'd discussed, and rejected, the possibility of maintaining radio silence for security and only talking by putting our helmets together. If we'd been that paranoid, the others wouldn't have heard me. In space they hear you scream only when your radio is on. "Look out!" Albert nailed the sucker before it could chow down on the material of his pressure suit. We hadn't had time to find out what currently passed for air here. The .30-caliber slugs did the job, and the skull skidded over to the nearest access-tube ladder. Down it went. I wasn't the least bit surprised when a moment later Fly announced, "The test is positive. We can breathe the air." "Remove helmets," Hidalgo ordered calmly. The suits were well designed for our purposes. The hel- mets hung in back, leaving our hands free so that we wouldn't be impeded while we added to the body count. Or head count, as the case might be. "If everything's as we left it," I blurted out after my first gulp of base air, "we can expect a lot of opposi- tion before we reach the Gate." "Take it easy, Corporal Sanders," said Captain Hidalgo. "Yes, sir." He was acting as if he knew his business. "We'll handle them," he said. "That's why we're armed with state-of-the-art boom sticks." Another try at humor. This had started with his friendship with Lieutenant Riley. I didn't know how long it would last, but I kind of liked it. Hidalgo gave the orders. We followed. Of course, the orders were based on our accurately locating the correct Gate. We encountered no opposition for the next fifteen minutes. We did find a functioning lift that appeared to have been repaired with pieces of a steam demon. I didn't like the idea of using it but Hidalgo made the decision. Halfway down the shaft I could see through a ragged hole in the wall that the ladder I would have gone down ended in a tangle of spaghetti. The makings of a reception committee waited for us at the bottom. If the skull had contacted them before we wasted it, they might have caused us some trouble. By this time, I thought I'd seen it all. I was wrong again. Occupying the center of the room was an almost intact spider-mind. All that was missing was the head. In the smashed dome on top, where normally resided the evil brain-face, two spinies were doing something. They almost seemed to be laughing, and I could understand why Fly called them imps. They were eating. When one of the imps looked up from his meal, I could see gray and red splotches on his brown face. Bits of gore dripped off the white horns sticking out from his body. Then he lifted one of his claws, and I saw what was dripping from it. I was grateful Captain Hidalgo had ordered us to remove our helmets. I couldn't help throwing up, a reaction that surprised me. Why should my stomach churn at the sight of imps devouring a spider-mind? I'd seen far worse things happen to human beings and not lost my cookies. I guess I'd reached a new level of disgust, though I didn't think there was anywhere lower. The imp saw us at about the same moment we saw him. Instinc- tively he threw one of his patented fireballs, but he forgot he was still holding on to a dripping chunk of spider tissue. The gory piece of bug brains caught fire, and the imp was scorched by his own flame. By now the other imp figured out what was happen- ing. He was smarter than his brother and did some- thing I would have thought impossible. The spider's gun turret rotated in our direction and started spitting out its venom: 30mm rounds. We would have been in trouble if it had been an actual spider-mind. But we had one of Commander Taylor's presents. While I zigged, Fly zagged. Albert and Hidalgo did their part by staying alive. The show belonged to Fly. I never thought I'd see a BFG 9000 again, the crown jewel of UAC's weapons division. Three blasts would take care of a fully operational spider-mind. One blast proved more than sufficient for the imps who had themselves a great tank but weren't properly trained to use it. "Praise the Lord!" shouted Albert. "And pass the ammunition," said Fly, sweat bead- ing on his forehead and a big grin growing under- neath. "Better than a chain saw," was my on-the-spot report. "Regroup," said Hidalgo. "It'll be a shame to lose that fine weapon when we go through the Gate." Albert tried for optimism. "Maybe we could leave it on the other side for when we return?" "We could never risk that," answered the captain. "This place is crawling with vermin. We don't want them to get their claws on this weapon." None of us said aloud the obvious: If we return. The plan we'd made with the Bova was "no news is bad news." By now they knew we weren't alone on this rock. We'd continue observing radio silence be- tween ourselves and the ship. Fly summed up the situation. He's always good at doing that. "We've seen this place when it was crawl- ing, Captain. Right now it's almost deserted. I don't have any idea why or how long it will last, though. It could be swarming again by this time tomorrow." "Commander Taylor and Lieutenant Riley know the risks," he said, which struck me as a little odd. Seemed to me that the primary subject on the table right now was the fire team. "Then we're enjoying good fortune," said Albert-- a bit pompously, I thought. A problem I've always had when I fall for someone is that I become hyper- critical. I think Fly has this problem as well. Hidalgo gave us the word, and we moved on. I was astonished that I hadn't fired my plasma rifle yet. But it's wrong to wish for such things. I'm just supersti- tious enough to believe that you get exactly what you wish for. My opportunity to test my weapon came with the appearance of a new monster. I hate new monsters. This one I mistook for a pumpkin. There were plenty of similarities: big round floating head, one eye, a gasbag with satanic halitosis. The differences, partly obscured by a sudden change in the light, were most annoying. We might have become a little lazy. We had the best weapons, and the opposition was thin. Seeing a round thing come floating around the corner seemed almost too easy. One lousy pumpkin. Who was going to lay dibs on it? Who would have the pleasure of hosing it? Hidalgo's reflexes might have been a little off, as well. He hadn't experienced Phobos when the shit storm came down nonstop. Even so, he got off a shot with his Sig-Cow. Some of the shots connected. He'd succeeded in getting the thing's attention. It returned fire. I expected the usual: lightning balls. But this one had a surprise in its gullet. We were treated to a stream of flying skulls pouring out of its mouth, each one as nasty as the one Albert had shot out of the sky a short time before. But now the sky was full of them. 19 The colors started shifting. That was a new trick. The corridor went from normal light to blue and then red, distracting us just enough so we wouldn't notice that this pumpkin was something other than a pumpkin. As its single eye focused on me, my only thought was that here we had a larger than usual pumpkin. As it vomited out the first flying skull, I still didn't understand what was happening. I had the dumb idea that it had eaten one of the smaller heads and couldn't keep it down. (Down what?) As a second and third skull came zooming out of the ugly mouth, I started to read the picture. The first skull reached me before I could bring up the BFG. I heard Arlene shout, "Fly," just as I did the next best thing to shooting the little bugger: I kept it from taking a bite out of my shoulder by swinging around so that it collided with my helmet. There was a metal- on-metal sound as it dented the helmet and bounced off, making itself a perfect target for Hidalgo, who popped it. Around about now we lost count of the skulls that filled the narrow corridor. It looked as if we'd knocked over a basket of candy skulls from Mexico's Day of the Dead celebrations ... but there was noth- ing sweet about our tormentors. Hidalgo froze for a few seconds. That was all. A brief moment of battlefield shock. If we lived, I could count on Arlene chewing my ear about it. And I could hear myself answering that we hadn't scored all that high in the reflexes department on this one. If we lived. "I'll try for the pumpkin!" I shouted. The BFG 9000 would do the job--if I could just get a clear shot. The problem wasn't finding an opening through the skulls--the blast would pulverize them--the problem was to make sure that Albert was outside the field of fire. Meanwhile, the others didn't need to be told to eliminate the flying skulls. No problem. There was only a zillion of 'em. Hidalgo proved himself worthy of command yet again. He didn't say a word. He was too busy blasting away with his Sig-Cow, taking down his quota. Arlene provided Albert and Hidalgo with a helpful safety tip: "Don't let them bite you!" She shouted this over the sound of her plasma rifle. She almost took down the main problem with her first blast, which went through three skulls. But this particular pump- kin was smart. The damned thing floated back around the corner where we'd first sighted its ugly mug. Then it kept spewing out skulls from its more protected position--a clever move, I had to admit. Of course, the solution was obvious. I realized that I didn't really need a clear shot for the BFG if I could just see the target area. I blew away the entire wall and destroyed the ugly. Then, just for good measure, I pulled the trigger again. As the debris settled, I realized that I'd dropped half the skulls with those two shots, and the others were bumping into each other in the dust-filled air. This finally set- tled a question for me: the bastards didn't have ra- dar. The little voice in the back of my head insisted we were in too close quarters for using a weapon like the BFG. I couldn't hear anything else because of the ringing in my head, so I argued with the voice, reminding it that once upon a time I'd done a much crazier thing--I'd used a rocket launcher in an en- closed area. The voice didn't have a good answer to that, and by then I could hear Arlene cursing a blue streak. She was bent over Hidalgo, her medikit open. Albert stood over the two of them, blasting the remaining skulls out of the corridor. I felt a little dizzy but managed to stumble over to rejoin the human popula- tion of hell. At least one of the skulls had reached the captain and ripped up his throat something fierce. Hidalgo's torn space suit had a whole new meaning now: walking body bag. Arlene was doing what she could, but there was damned little hope for the captain. It looked as if we'd be finishing the mission sans officer. The way Arlene was feverishly working on Hidalgo it was hard to believe she'd ever talked about spacing his ass out an airlock. There's no substitute for being in combat together. The last skull was either down or had flown the coop, but Albert remained on guard. I was grateful that the colors had stopped shifting, and I wondered if the light show had been part of this superpumpkin's powers. Whatever the facts might be, I'd become distinctly prejudiced against round things that floated through the air. They seemed to live in a permanent condition of zero-g. That was enough reason to hate them right there. As we milled around helplessly, watching Arlene try to close the wound in Hidalgo's throat, I noticed Albert tense up. He raised his Sig-Cow to fire at something that was drifting in the air behind us. Naturally, I assumed it was another skull. The last thing I expected to see this side of paradise was a blue sphere drifting toward us. A gorgeous, beautiful, welcome blue sphere. One of those miracles that had saved both my life and Arlene's. A blue sphere that Albert was seconds away from blowing to kingdom come. "No!" I shouted, pushing his arm at the same time. Good thing I acted as I spoke. It was too late to stop him from pulling the trigger, but I spoiled his aim. I couldn't remember if Arlene or I had told Albert about the blue spheres. It was pretty likely we had. But in the middle of a fight you don't expect the new guy to hesitate on the off chance it's not an enemy coming to say hello. It was only dumb luck I was saved the first time I encountered one. Luck. Back to luck. How in the name of all the saints did this baby show up at the precise moment Hidalgo needed it? Arlene and I had just run across ours. This one was making a house call. "It's a good one," I told Albert. "Like an angel. The blue spheres can heal us." He lowered his weapon, and I gestured for Arlene to step back. Not one to waste a precious second, Albert reloaded. I moved out of the way, too. The blue sphere descended on Hidalgo, who wasn't the least bit worried; he'd blacked out from loss of blood. The sphere burst the moment it touched him, making a popping sound like a cork coming out of a bottle. The color became darker as it spread, changing from sky-blue to a rich purple. Hidalgo was sur- rounded by a violet haze that became a glistening liquid on his body and then seeped through his pores. The ugly hole in his throat closed like two lips pressed together, and his face flushed as new blood pumped through his body. A few minutes later he opened his blue eyes and regarded us with surprise. "What happened?" he asked. Arlene did her best to tell him. He gratefully sipped water from the canteen she passed to him. "Incredible," he admitted, speaking more slowly than normal. He sat up against the wall. Albert continued on his watch. "We need to move," I said, once again possibly usurping his prerogatives. I remembered how sleepy I'd been after receiving the treatment. "Let's get a move on," he said, struggling to his feet. "How far do we have to go?" "Only a few klicks," said Arlene. We moved out, Albert leading the way again. Hidal- go, growing stronger with every step, asked the obvi- ous question as his brain began firing on all cylinders again: "The blue balls didn't seek the two of you out when you were here before, did they?" "No," Arlene and I said in stereo. "Then why would this one deliberately come to my aid?" We walked in silence. We had no ready answer. Only more questions. Then I had a thought. That happens sometimes. "When it happened to me, it bugged the hell out of me," I told Hidalgo. "Even though mine didn't go out of its way to save my butt. There was an important piece of information I didn't have then." Arlene smiled. The old lightbulb clicked on right over her head. "The aliens who sent the message," she said. "Right," I continued. "It never made sense that our enemies would fabricate these incredible monsters and then throw in a few Florence Nightingales to patch us up. Now I know better. The blue spheres are not here courtesy of the Freds." "The good guys sent them," marveled Arlene, the same thought taking up residence in her cranium. "You were right to call them angels," said Albert. Hidalgo nodded. "If that's true, then they must want all of us to make this trip." Unconsciously he stroked his own throat, where there was not even a scar. We reached the Gate without encountering any more opposition. The creepy critters had been busy playing architect again. I should have expected some- thing like that, considering how they were constantly altering the appearance of the different levels. The Gate was decorated in a sort of late neo-satanic style. All they'd left out was gargoyles. If they wanted that last touch, they only had to look in a mirror. The basic addition appeared to be a huge stone doughnut jammed into the ground so that it formed a doorway with the grid right in the middle. All sorts of weird crap was carved into it. The monsters had no taste at all. Guess that goes with being a monster. The dips had put two horns on top of this horror, one on either side of the "head." Adding insult to injury, they had placed two big stupid eyes on the semicircle of stone in relation to the horns so that even the dumbest grunt would pick up on the subtle idea: a giant demon head with the Gateway for its mouth. I was prepared to laugh out loud, but I thought better of it. Chortling didn't seem like a very nice thing to do while a good friend was freaking out. "Moloch!" Albert screamed. His eyes were wide, and he was foaming at the mouth. As a top fire team, we still had a few bugs to iron out. 20 Albert was too good a man to lose his grip now. As his commanding officer, I couldn't stand by and let him dissolve into a puddle. The team needed a leader. This was always a danger when taking command in a dicey situation. The survivors could bond too much. I had realized the truth of this when I stopped feeling suicidal. After they pulled me back from my own dipdunk and told me how the blue angel had saved me, I was so grateful that I said a prayer. I did this silently, of course. That way I know God heard me. I could truly understand Gallatin's reaction to the sight of the graven image. My parents took me to a horror film when I was only six, one of the dozens of movies about the Aztec mummy. The monster didn't really frighten me; but the sight of young maidens being sacrificed by evil priests gave me nightmares for a week. Their idol looked like Moloch. As I grew older, I began seeking out the image of Moloch. I found it in the old silent German movie, Metropolis, and it showed up in a frightening picture about devil worship. But I'll never forget how effec- tively it was used in the movie they used to make the transition from the old series, Star Trek Ten, to the new one, Star Trek: Exodus. These strange creatures we fought were apparently able to crawl inside our minds and extract the most terrifying images from the human past. Fighting mirror images of your own nightmares had to be bad for morale. Sergeant Taggart and Lance Corporal Sanders were watching me as I watched Gallatin. Taggart started toward him, but I gave the order not to touch him. "Gallatin," I said, keeping my voice low. "Snap out of it, marine." He seemed to hear me as if I'd called to him across a vast gulf. His eyes were glazed. But he stopped making noises ill befitting a marine. "Look," I said, pointing at the ground. "There are no human bones here. There is no fire in the maw waiting for human slaves to shovel in human food." There was, in fact, a solitary skull staring at us with empty sockets, but even the blind could see there was nothing remotely human about it. Gallatin calmed down. "I fouled up, sir!" he said in his old, strong voice. I was damned glad. If words didn't work, the next step would have been to trade punches. Gallatin was no coward. He would never cut and run. If he went nuts and stayed nuts, he'd have to be put down. "This is the Gate," said Fly, checking his coordi- nates. "Why do you think they dressed it up for Hallow- een?" I asked anyone who wanted to answer. "It's what they do," Sanders volunteered, keeping her eye on Gallatin the whole time. I didn't blame her. So far, their feelings for each other hadn't inter- fered with the mission. If there was a time for her to blow it, this would have been it. "Gives me the creepy crawlies," I admitted. "It's Lovecraftian," added Sanders. "Oh, no," said Taggart. "Just don't say it's el- dritch." If I hadn't returned from the dead, thanks to the blue angel, I would have put a stop to the banter. Normally I'm a stickler for protocol, but death had provided me with new insight. (Sanders said I was only near death, but I know better.) We weren't on such a tight timetable that we couldn't spare a few minutes. Up to this point, Taggart and Sanders had been our guides, but once we stepped through that portal, they would be no more experienced than the rest of us. No one had a clue what to expect. We had orders. Hope was allowed. "I'd never describe that as eldritch," she threw back at Taggart. "I'd only observe the lurid shimmering about the base of the stygian masonry; and how overhanging our fevered brows leer abhorrent, arcane symbols threatening our very sanity with portents of an unwholesome, subterraneous wickedness." "Well, okay," Taggart said, surrendering. "Just so long as you don't describe it as eldritch." This moment of R&R was no excuse to lay off work. Since the Marine Corps had failed to provide us with eyes in the backs of our heads, I ordered a modified defensive diamond. Half of one. All four of us couldn't very well cover the four cardinal directions. Two of us had to prepare for the trip. Then we switched the duo. My pressure suit was torn around the neck where the skull-thing had bitten me. Taggart's helmet was damaged but still usable; the dent in the side did not prevent his getting it over his head, and the faceplate wasn't cracked. The only suit likely to leak was mine. At my query, Taggart repeated his belief that the suits, weapons, and everything else not of woman born would not make it through. The preparations might be a waste of time, but I wasn't going into the unknown leaving anything undone. We'd be foolish to assume anything. Making bets was another thing entirely. The odds were entirely on Sergeant Flynn Taggart's side. That's why I asked one last time what it had been like for him the last time he went through a Gate. He reported: "I retained consciousness, sir. You don't worry if your equipment is still in your hands because you don't have any hands. There's no sensa- tion of having a body at all. Then suddenly pieces of you come back. It's like you think of them and you're whole again; or maybe it's the other way around. Hard to tell." "Were you awake and standing when you reached the other side?" "Standing, sir!" We'd covered the same ground before, but we weren't under attack at the moment. I liked going through the checklist one last time. And now our time was up. I gave the command. "Move it, marines!" We humped into the mouth of Moloch. At first there was a sensation of moving, of motion, a light drop, or a dropping into the light ... but it's hard to see without eyes. We had no hallucinations, though. Our minds were our own. You can just say no to hallucinations, but you need a tongue to say no. Know what I mean? ESTEBAN HIDALGO: Does anyone hear my voice? I hear it, but I don't have ears. You didn't say we could communicate while traveling through the Gate, Ser- geant Taggart. FLYNN TAGGART: Never traveled in a group before, sir! Arlene and I went separately on the Gate trip from Phobos to Deimos. The Gates are different from the short-hop teleports. ARLENE SANDERS: You can say that again, Fly! HIDALGO: I've never experienced either. Which do you prefer, Sergeant? TAGGART: I'm not sure, sir! Anything that doesn't require using a stupid plastic key card to pass through a secret door is fine with me. Last time I was on Phobos, I really hated that. HIDALGO: This is annoying enough for me, Ser- geant. ALBERT GALLATIN: I like being here. SANDERS: Albert? You don't feel you've been sacri- ficed to Moloch? GALLATIN: The opposite. This is wonderful. It's better than sex. SANDERS: Well, I'll grant you it's up there. HIDALGO: What do you think about that, Sergeant Taggart? TAGGART: About what, sir? HIDALGO: Do you think this disembodied condition is better than sex? TAGGART: Nothing is better than a clearly deline- ated chain of command, sir! HIDALGO: Is that sarcasm, Sergeant? TAGGART: No, sir! HIDALGO: I don't like this experience. How much longer do you expect it to take? SANDERS: May I answer that, sir? HIDALGO: You are both veterans of Gate travel, Lance Corporal. SANDERS: Time has no meaning here. TAGGART: There is no here here. HIDALGO: I was afraid you'd say that. TAGGART: Since we don't know how far we're travel- ing, or how fast, there is no way to calculate anything, sir! GALLATIN: Permission to speak, sir? HIDALGO: Tell you what. While we are in this whatever-it-is, we can drop all formalities. No one has to call me sir. Now, what did you want to ask me? GALLATIN: If we encounter God, should we address him as sir? HIDALGO: In case the answer is no, I'm more com- fortable with dropping the formalities. Did you hear that, Fly? TAGGART: Yes. HIDALGO: You are good at following orders. TAGGART: Yes. HIDALGO: I'd like to thank all of you for saving my life. TAGGART: It was the blue sphere. HIDALGO: Perhaps you willed it to appear. SANDERS: That's occurred to me, too. HIDALGO: Strange to be brought back from the dead by a creature I didn't see. SANDERS: While you were unconscious, you didn't see the face on the sphere. HIDALGO: I was dead. I saw the light. The sphere had a face? TAGGART: I wonder if any of our hosts at the end of this journey will have a face like that? It didn't look like any of the doom demons. HIDALGO: Doom? TAGGART: We call them that sometimes, after we found out the invasion was called Doom Day. GALLATIN: Did you feel that? SANDERS: Can we feel anything? GALLATIN: I felt something warm. I feel as if I'm back on the Bova . . . weightless. Must have a body to feel that. SANDERS: Wait. I feel something. But it's cool, not warm. I feel as if I'm in free fall, also. HIDALGO: Maybe our journey is nearing its end. NOT HIDALGO-TAGGART-SANDERS-GALLATIN: Your journey ended a long time ago. You wouldn't be having a conversation if you were in transit. HIDALGO: What? Who's that? TAGGART: That's not a voice. SANDERS: It's not an identity--not one of us. GALLATIN: Are you a spirit? NOT HIDALGO-TAGGART-SANDERS-GALLATIN: We are the reception committee. You had a long journey, a long sleep. You are only now returning. TAGGART: But we are experiencing what happens toward the end of Gate travel. NOT H-T-S-G: No, you are remembering the sensa- tions accompanying the transitional state. The jour- ney is over. You have arrived. To reassemble, you must begin with your last memories. You must be aided through the psychotic episode. HIDALGO: Psychotic . . . TAGGART: Episode? NOT H-T-S-G: The fantasy. The death fantasy. Do not concern yourselves. Reassembly is. HIDALGO: If we have arrived somewhere, may we be informed where? NOT H-T-S-G: Here the many meet and diplomacy greets. The True Aesthetic welcomes you. Sirs, sirs, sirs, sirs! TAGGART: Something tells me we've been talking on a party line. 21 I've never been able to explain to Arlene why I'm so convinced there's a God. She lives in a world of logic and science. Mysteries bother her. They are problems to be solved; and she insists on a certain type of answer in advance. Her stubbornness only makes me love her more. I'm not stupid. I realize the object hanging over my head is no angelic being. But lying on my back and watching the slow movements of the gossamer crea- ture with flashing jewel eyes I feel a deep calm. The butterfly things that flutter around its flower-shaped head are attracted to the eyes, as I am attracted. The gossamer being eats the small flitting creatures. This flying alien is no animal. It is a genius of its kind. But it pays no attention to me. If poor Dr. Ackerman had lived and joined us on this mission, he would have fulfilled his life's ambitions. The alien base contains a remarkable collection of geniuses; it was a sort of a galactic Mensa. I haven't been able to find out where we are, but I'll keep asking. The only problem with this place is that most of the gossamer creatures completely ignore us. That's one development I never expected--aliens who are simply bored with us. The bad part is how their attitude rubs off. I'm bored with us. If this keeps up, I'll lose my desire to shoot things. Never mind what that means for my career in the marines. We Mormons believe in a warrior god, warrior angels, warriors, but there's not a single fiery sword anywhere in this whole gigantic habitat. What's a fella to do? I know. I'll make friends with some of the natives. There must be somebody in this burg who'll show a new guy a good time. "It's good to have our bodies again," said Arlene over a cup of H2O and a plate of little red eyeballs. They weren't really eyeballs. But then, they weren't really red either. "Not bad," I agreed. "I think I lost a few pounds." "Fly, there aren't any extra pounds on you." I shook my head. "Our vacation in Hawaii put a few extra pounds on the old carcass." "Not that I ever noticed," she said in her friendliest voice. "You know, Fly, I feel as if I'm on vacation now." So did I. It was hard to believe we were on an alien base God knew where. We were sitting at a table floating in the air between us. We were not in zero-g, but the table sort of was. I'd never sat in a more com- fortable chair. It altered its shape to accommodate my slightest move. We'd taken our pills and were now enjoying the best human dinner available to us. The only one. "Captain Hidalgo is not on vacation," I pointed out. There had been a problem with him. The strange entity we called a medbot had told us that Hidalgo's brain and body were not yet in harmony, but they would be. Whenever we asked the medbot how much time it would take for Hidalgo to be on his feet again, the eye of the robot seemed to wink at us, and the thing produced equations in the air. To be honest, I wasn't completely certain it was a machine, but Arlene insisted it had to be. Arlene understood one statement, which put her kilometers ahead of Yours Truly. She said that in quantum physics there is no such thing as absolute time; there is only time relative to the location and speed of the observer. I'd settle for finding out how much longer it would take for Hidalgo to rejoin us. There was no one I could ask about when Albert might come out of his mood. Arlene seemed to read my thoughts again. Maybe in this place she really could. "Albert's not on vacation either." "At least he's all right." "Physically, yes, but I've never seen him in such a strange mood before." "He told me he was meditating." She shook her head. "He told me he was trying to communicate." "That may be the same thing with these critters. We could spend the remainder of our lives attempting to adjust and never get anywhere." I remembered coming back into my body. When we had eyes again, I saw the naked forms of Arlene, Albert, and Hidalgo. We weren't alone. There were aliens with us, but my reactions were off. I didn't even worry about whether the aliens had weapons or were menacing us in any manner. I'd undergone a change in perspective unlike anything that happened when I Gate-traveled before. I perceived the naked bodies of my fellow human beings with a completely new objectivity. I figured the difference had more to do with where we were than how we arrived. I didn't feel desire for Arlene. I wasn't judgmental about the bodies of the two other men. I didn't feel any locker-room embarrassment or competition. But I wasn't indifferent. I was curious about the human body, as though I were seeing it for the first time. I felt the same way about the aliens, whose strange forms were suddenly no stranger than the fleshy bipeds called human beings. The oddity of the moment was the medbot, who was all the reception committee we rated. It looked like a barber pole with an attitude. When Hidalgo collapsed, none of us rushed to his aid. We were still in that weird frame of mind, which I can describe only as objectivity. For the moment there was no strike team of marines. The medbot scooped up Hidalgo's prostrate form, but it didn't tell us anything about his condition. The weird thing was that none of us asked. If the room had been crawling with spider-minds, our trigger fingers wouldn't have twitched; there was nothing to aim anyway. Slowly we had found ourselves again. It was like returning to a house you'd left in childhood and exploring each room again as an adult. Only this house was your own body. As we became less alien to ourselves, the real aliens seemed stranger. Arlene had the guts to make the first move. Too bad she didn't accomplish anything. "I've always said you're the bravest man I know, Arlene. I was still staring into my navel when you tried to strike up a conversation with the . . . others." "Well, you've always been a navel man," she said. Catching my expression, she added, "Didn't you hear the e, Fly? You're too much of a marine to fit into any other service." Yep, we were back to normal. That didn't seem to be getting us anywhere in this galactic Hilton they called a base. Maybe we shouldn't be complaining. We were alive. The medbot had seen to that and had answered most of our medical questions. There were some questions it simply couldn't answer, though, about where and what and who and why. These were outside its field of competence. But I'd find someone to tell us where we were. The medbot dodged only one question, when Ar- lene asked how come it spoke flawless English. "The English of this unit is not without flaw," it said fussily. When she came right out and asked how come it spoke English of any kind, it said, "Guild secret," and changed the subject back to our biological questions! We had plenty of those. "How do you think this food compares to MREs?" I asked Arlene as she chomped down on one of the little balls that looked like eyes to me but reminded her of a different portion of human anatomy. "Heated or cold?" "Cold, like we had on the Bova" "Better." "Hot." She shrugged. "Close call. But I'm not criticizing the chef. We can eat this." "The medbot says the provider of the feast wants to meet us. And he's not really a chef; he's more a chemist." She took another healthy gulp of water. We'd both become quite fond of water. "I'll meet with anyone," she said, and I nodded. When she addressed the various creatures surround- ing us at our arrival they had turned their backs on us--the ones who had backs--and wandered off. At first I thought we were being snubbed. But that wasn't it at all. The show was over. They'd seen what they wanted and had better things to do. "Do you think the chef is one of the aliens who sent the message?" "God, I hope so!" When someone as atheistic as Arlene invoked the name of God, I knew she was speaking from the heart. I felt the same way. What could be more pointless than traveling so far--and one of these damned aliens was going to tell me how far if I had to wrestle it out of him--and find no one on the other end who gave a flip? "We know the chef helped the medbot work out the details of our body chemistry, so it's a safe bet he wants us alive." The first thing we learned from the animated barber pole was that everyone on the base was a carbon- based life-form. For all I knew, there wasn't any other kind. So far, everyone we'd met was also the same on both sides of the invisible vertical line or, as Arlene would say, bilaterally symmetrical. I was grateful for two things: Earth-normal gravity and reentering the oxygen breathers' club! But that didn't mean we might not run into some other problems. Hidalgo sure did. So it made sense that they'd kept all of us on ice, in some sort of limbo, until they were sure we'd be all right in the environment of the base. When Arlene and I went through the Phobos Gate to Deimos we were traveling between artificial zones that were terrestrial-friendly. That was good news for us. When you're naked at the other end, you better hope you can breathe the air and your skin can take it. I was damned glad they could handle human specimens here. I just hoped Captain Hidalgo would pull through. "Don't you like the food?" Arlene asked, noticing that I'd left half my meal unfinished. "It's okay. The truth is, I'm not really hungry. My stomach spent so much time in zero-g aboard the Bova that it's taking its time returning to normal. Plus I'll let you in on something." "What?" she asked