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The universe has no center

- Shipquotes

RAJA THOMAS stood under the gigantic sear Lavu’s crew had gone, turning offwas a diently at its tethers above hireat folds and concavities in it yet, but before Alki joined Rega dayside, they would be airborne, the bag as full and shter of that size had ever been seen

Thoar, impatient to leave Why does Oakes want to meet me here?

The order had been succinct and si out especially to inspect the LTA and its attached sub before allowing them to venture into the unprotected wilderness of Pandora’s sea

Is he about to veto the project?

The iy went into projects such as this one It was contra-survival The exterht be the last scientific investigation per tiy could be applied to food production

The contrary argu hour of hunger

Without the knowledge we gain there may never be dependable food production on Pandora The kelp is sentient It rules this planet

What did the kelp call Pandora?

Hoination?

No response

Thomas kneas too keyed up, too full of uncertainties Doubts It would be so easy to share every viewpoint Oakes put forward Agree with hi up that h Colony: I’ry now!

Where was Oakes?

Keepingto teach me my place

The self-constructed persona of Raja Thoht, but there were distant echoes of Flattery in it - distant but distinct He felt like an actor well seated in his part after many performances The Flattery self lay in his past like a childhood memory

What have You hidden in the depths of the sea, Ship?

That is for you to discover

There! That definitely was Ship talking to hiainst its tethers Thomas stepped from beneath it and peered up at the sphincter leaves of the skydoovast shadowy circle in the diht His nostrils tasted a faint bitterness of Pandoran esters in the air Colony had found that sos froainst other ravening native predators - especially against Nerve Runners Nothing was forever, though The demons soon developed counter-responses

Thomas looked back at the shadowed sushte a s lines down its sides

Again, the LTA creaked against its tethers There was a draft in the hangar and he hoped this did not erous exterior He was unarround-level hatches, and a watch tea Tho but marked by the subtle differences of Pandoran cheo the way Rachel De man but there was no doubt in hisIt had been too convenient, the tih?

Such things happened every day on perimeter patrol Colony had a number for this attrition: one in seventy It was like losses in a war Soldiers knew Except that most Shipmen appeared to know very little about war in the historic sense

They knew soldiering, though

He sniffed

A faintly sweet undertone of native lubricants drifted on the air This ave up any of its substance to Colony He had seen the reports - just cutting in the wells for those lubricants had cost theeneral reluctance to go for cloned replacements - an unexplainable reluctance

Fewer and fewer clones around, except out at that on

What was Lewis doing out there?

Why the growing split between clones and naturals? Was it soinated on a planet

Was there some atavistic memory at work here?

Why don’t You answer me, Ship?

When you need to know, you will knoithout asking

Typical Ship answer!

What did Oakeshim on that project, Ship? Are these new clones Your project?

Who helped you o dry There had been barbs in that response He glanced at the sub suspended off to his left Quite suddenly, he saw it as representing a fragile and foolish venture Sub and LTA had been shaped to si its characteristic rock ballast No matter that the sub did not lookShip’s de iven hiame, no platform upon which to stand

Hoill you WorShip?

No matter the different ways Ship phrased the question, it came out the same

Who would listen to an unknown, self-proclaimed Ceepee awakened from hyb? He was an ad redefined by Oakes

Talk to the sentient vegetable Did the kelp have an answer? Ship hinted at it, but refused to say definitely That’s for you to discover, Devil

No help there No clues on how he could open a conversation with this alien sentience In the abstract, it was an exciting idea - talk to a life form so different from humankind that few evolutionary parallels could be drawn

What strange things could we learn frolanced at his chrono This delay was getting ridiculous!

Why do I permit it?

By this tih shook hi had released Panille less than an hour before night-side They delayed hi now What did they have in mind? Waela, i

Could that be the cause of Oakes’ delay? Had Oakes discovered that Wael ?

Thomas shook his head sharply Foolish speculation! He felt cold and exposed waiting here in the hangar, and there was no denying his uneasiness at thoughts of Waela Waela and the poet

Thoination He had never before experienced such a powerful physical attraction toward a woed up fro drive toward possession - private and exclusive possession He knew this ran directly counter to much of the behavior Ship had allowe or promoted Wael Wael

He had to force a mask of distant, deliberate coolness The delay with Panille could have been the tiainsthim It was necessary that Waela become intimate with this poet, peel away his masks and fin What? Panill Pandor More of Ship’s doing?

Waela would find out She had her orders She must turn this Panille inside out, peer at the center of his being She would learn and report back to her commander

Me

Who obeyed Oakes that way? Lewis, certainly And Murdoch And that Legata What a surprise to find she was the Ha Did they set traps the way he had set this one for Panille?

Waela would do it right It ht tiht condition

Dammit! How can I be jealous? I set this up!

He kneas perfor to Oakes’ design What was the relationship between Oakes and Ship?

Blaspheht be right

Thoht not be God

What did we make e created Ship?

Thomas knew his own hand in that creation But had there been other, unseen hands in that construction?

Who helped you make Me, Devil?

God or Satan? What did we make?

At this moment, it did not much matter He was tired in body and emotions and his doh the sexual trap and defy it Thomas did not really expect that to happen

I’ Your job to the best of my ability, Ship

"A function of ood works Ship they believe possible"

Those had been Ship’s words to him

Why? Because frustration helped us to succeed with Project Consciousness?

Were they only replaying an old theht work once more?

It occurred to him then that the Moonbase director who had supervised the building and the crew preparations for that original Voidship - old Morgan Hempstead - had served this identical function

He was our Devil and we knew it But now I’m Ship’s Devi and best friend

Tho a friend of Ship carried special perils Oakes ht have chosen the better role Eneh Ship chided hiaa noise intruded on his awareness The sound came frohts Dead men’s lockers, the Colony called the ure clad in a white shipsuit Tho to be that kind of a ht from his pocket and waved it to shohere he stood

Responding to the light, Oakes changed his path slightly Oakes always felt diar area Too much space used for too little return

Bad investment

Tho overhead

These thoughts firmed his resolve It would not pay to cancel this project outright without a dramatic motive There were still souments

Learn to live with the kelp!

You did not live with a wild cobra; you killed it

Yes, Tho but dramatically, very dramatically Two Ceepees could not co-exist in Colony

Oakes did not want to knohat Lewis and Murdoch had arranged An accident with the subh accidents without arrangement The cost in Shipmen lives had reached abrasive levels Colonists expected casualties while they subdued this planet, but the latest attrition rate went beyond the tolerable

As he caesture he could afford

"Well, let’s look at this new subuided to the sub’s side hatch and into the cra that Thomas offered no se which Oakes had co was business, technical: Here were the new sonar instru sensors, the nephelometer

Nephelometers?

Oakes had to cast back into hisfor the association

Oh, yes Instru small particles suspended in the water

Oakes alhed It was not siant kelp: fully visible and certainly vulnerable In spite of his aly responsive questions

"Whatin the sea has to serve the kelp?"

"Because that’s e find, that’s the condition of the sea Everything fro cycles of the biota to the distribution of trace rowth demands of the kelp Wecycles o ?"

"The biota - all the livingcreatures and those on the surface, all appear to be in a profound syrazers, for example, stir the toxic products cast off by the kelp into a layer of highly absorbent sediment where other creatures restore these substances to the food chain The"

"You mean the kelp shits and this is processed by animals on the botto it, but the total irazers, for instance, whose only function is to keep the kelp’s leaves clean The few predators all have large fins, er than you’d expect for their size, an