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Sandra caught up with me on the way back to
Actium
. I winced at her touch, fully expecting a tirade. What I got instead was a weary
smile.

“Your plan is the best we can come up with, Kyle,” she said. “The others don’t like
it, because it’s not perfect. But that’s just too bad.”

She looked as pretty as ever, but her eyes were half-closed.

“You didn’t sleep while I was gone, did you?” I asked.

“No.”

I pulled her up against me and walked toward
Actium’s
airlock.

“Come with me,” I said. “I’m going to go down to Eden-6 to kick Marvin in the butt.
He’s got to stop killing Centaur volunteers and start turning them into super-goats.”

She balked at the airlock. “I’m not going to get any sleep on this trip either, am
I?” she asked.

“I swear, I’ll let you have a good rest. At least eleven hours’ worth.”

“It takes fourteen hours to get to Eden-6.”

“Yeah? Well, the other three hours are for both of us. We need to get reacquainted.”

Sandra snorted, but followed me into the ship.

Fourteen hours later, we were both well-rested and in a much better mood. As we eased
into orbit over Eden-6, I looked down upon the heavy clouds. Here and there, the cloud-layer
had burned through enough to reveal the endless sparkling seas underneath. There was
no land visible through any of those holes in the cloud-layer—just ocean.

“Such a big world,” Sandra said. “Nothing but islands and beaches. I like the place,
even if there isn’t much in the way of direct sunshine.”

I nodded, staring. “I see something out there, moving out of orbit.”

“I don’t see it—oh, you mean that silver thing?”

“Actium, display Eden-6 and our orbital surroundings. Identify all moving vehicles.”

The ship did as I asked, and we moved to the command chamber. We took our chairs and
strapped in. There were several vessels in the region. They were quickly located,
displayed, and identified by
Actium
. Most of the ships here were transports. There were seven of them, all of which had
brought colonists to various landing sites. I wondered vaguely how the civilians were
enjoying their new environments. I imagined it was quite an adjustment for them, but
it had to be better that sitting in space.

There was one contact that didn’t show up as green, however, and had no identifying
trace of words next to it on the display. It showed as a faint golden-yellow color.
I looked at the vehicle as it streaked away to the far side of the planet.

“Actium, follow that unknown contact.”

The ship lurched and the display swam sickeningly as we changed course. Sandra and
I clutched the arms of our chairs and strained against the restraining arms.

“Open a channel, Actium,” I said.

“Channel open.”

“Hailing unknown ship: Identify yourself.”

There was no response, but the contact swept quickly around to the far side of Eden-6.

“It’s moving even faster, Kyle.”

I frowned. “Marvin, is that you? Respond immediately.”

“Oh, hello Colonel Riggs. I didn’t know you were in the area.”

“Yes you did,” I said.

“No, sir. You did not give prior warning concerning your visit.”

“Yeah? Well, stop running away.”

“Do you trust me, Colonel Riggs?”

I frowned at the console for a moment. What was this crazy robot up to now?

“Well…within reason,” I said.

“Good. Let’s start from that positive basis. I’ll make my report from Eden-7. I’m
quite busy now, you see—”

“Marvin,” I said, cutting him off. “My admission of trust in you does not mean my
orders can be ignored. You will stop and reverse course back to Eden-6. And, you’ll
tell me right now who gave you authorization to rebuild yourself into a ship.”

“You did, sir.”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

A recording of my own voice came over the channel. “Get it done, Marvin. I don’t care
how, just make it happen—”

“I see,” I said. “You took that order as a countermand to all previous orders against
structuring your body into a vehicle?”

“My body has always been vehicle, Colonel. Since the beginning, when I was downloaded
from the Centaur database and you so kindly provided me with a large brainbox and
limbs for locomotion, I’ve been capable of self—”

“Yeah, look—oh, it doesn’t matter. Shut up about that. Let’s talk seriously. I’m heading
down to your ponds. Meet me there in ten minutes, with a full report ready to go,
or I’ll kick dirt into them.”

“That would be extremely counterproductive, Colonel. At this delicate stage, the microbial
colonies are—”

“Right,” I said. “So make sure you aren’t late. And be prepared to explain why you
tried to run off when you realized I’d arrived for a surprise inspection.”

“You characterization of my actions is both hurtful and unnecessary.”

“And also dead-on. Be there, Marvin. Riggs out.”

When we landed at the planet’s only working spaceport. It was on the same island where
Kwon had built his bunker and Marvelena had been blown up. In fact, it had recently
been named Bunker Island by the new locals. There were colonists here along many of
the beaches, but none of them were in sight on Bunker Island. The place looked deserted.
I wondered what this place would look like in the future, when there were millions
of inhabitants instead of a few thousand.

As we stepped out of the stuffy canned-air interior of
Actium
, we took off our helmets and sucked in the fresh sea breezes. The surf was up, and
the waves were crashing on the beach at our backs. The sky was overcast as usual,
but it was humid and slightly too warm. We pressed forward into the foliage of tall
grasses that dominated the island’s central region and followed the path up past the
original bunker.

There, we stopped dead. All around the bunker were pools of slimy brown liquid. There
had to be a hundred of them. Marvin had cut down the thick stalks of grass and kept
digging more and more ponds. I could see worker machines tearing out the taller grass-forests
farther upslope, and sculpting fresh pools on every hillock overlooking the bunker.
There were pumps everywhere as well, with black hoses connecting the pool to one another.

“Kwon!” I shouted, expecting him to come up out of the bunker. Since I’d launched
this project on his outpost island, I’d let him take up residence here again. I knew
he liked it, and I hadn’t expected this level of destruction to the environment.

Kwon didn’t appear. I frowned and marched forward. I’d donned my armor before exiting
the ship, and my feet sank nearly a foot deep with every stride in the mushy ground.
I flipped on my repellers and glided over the scene instead to make better time.

“This looks awful, Kyle,” Sandra said. “Did you give Marvin permission to do all this?”

“I guess I did—at least in his twisted little mind. Why don’t you go down to the beach
area and find Kwon?”

She looked at me for a second, then swept her eyes over the scene. “You’re worried
what else we might find here, aren’t you?” she asked. “You’re trying to get rid of
me, but that’s okay, because I don’t want to see what Marvin’s been doing anyway.
Call me if you need me.”

She left me then, and I pressed ahead with a grim expression on my face. I found Marvin
way out in the back of the place. Here, things were worse. The pools not only dotted
the once lovely landscape, they also stank. I could see bones in several of the pools,
along with scraps of floating fur and the curve of a protruding horn now and then.
Marvin had been feeding the ponds with the Centaur dead.

Marvin’s chassis was bigger than it had been the last time I’d seen him. He could
no longer fit into a ship, I was sure of that. He
was
a ship. This realization didn’t improve my mood.

“Marvin, can you explain why you had to turn this place into a disgusting swamp? And
while you’re at it, why you felt the need to build flight capacity into your physical
form? I’ve forbidden that on multiple occasions.”

“Colonel Riggs!” Marvin said, sliding forward with whipping tentacles. Something he’d
been holding onto splashed down into the pool under his bulk. I only caught a glimpse
of it, but it seemed to be a smallish Centaur corpse. “I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve
made so much progress. The experiment was a grand success—in the end.”

I slowly glided around him, letting my humming suit fly me over the ponds. The water
rippled and the crusty scum on the top of the one Marvin crouched upon spread open
to reveal the inky water beneath.

“Careful!” Marvin admonished me. “This is the one. This pool has produced the exact
serum necessary. A dozen generations of Microbes have given their all to create the
waters below us.”

It looked like dirty, disgusting slime. I wrinkled my nose. Could this vile substance
really be the salvation of this entire star system? What a strange twist of fate it
was, if it was true.

Then I noticed something as I gazed down into the pool more deeply. I squinted, looking
past the ripples and reflections. “What the hell?” I asked. “Are those
baby
Centaur corpses, Marvin?”

“Well, that is a definitional distinction which could be argued with,” Marvin said.
“They are post-birth, and many of them have been weaned. I believe the proper term
for animals in this stage of—”

That’s as far as he got before I grabbed him. Grabbing Marvin wasn’t an easy thing
to do on the best of days, but today he was bigger and more variegated than usual.
There were stalks, bulbs, cameras and tentacles everywhere—lots of tentacles.

I was beyond angry. Somehow, seeing that he’d experimented on Centaur young, using
my name to perform his abominations, threw me into a rage. I grabbed the nearest tentacle,
which terminated in a floating camera eye. I ripped it loose by the root and tossed
it back over my shoulder. It twirled around twice before splashing down in a distant
pool of muck.

“Colonel Riggs? Are you experiencing a malfunction?”

I didn’t answer. I just kept ripping pieces off him and throwing them away. Marvin
backed up and his tentacles curled and swirled protectively. I didn’t care. They soon
grappled me, but they couldn’t stop me. I was a nanotized marine, veteran of numerous
Microbial baths and wearing a combat-ready exoskeleton. I was also seriously pissed-off.

After I tore away seven or eight of his thrashing limbs, he began to fly upward. I
went with him. He tried to spin around and dislodge me, but I hung on. We soon rose
above the treetops.

“This is highly irrational behavior, Colonel. I have performed the function you requested.
I have been successful.”

“You also knew it was time to run when I showed up,” I growled, ripping loose one
of his tacked-on gravity repellers. This change to his structure made the whole thing
unbalanced, and we went into a spin. I clung to him, reaching for another gravity
repeller unit. “You weren’t supposed to fly, and you didn’t have to kill their babies.
You did it just to find out what would happen. Well, I’m giving you a new lesson in
animal behavior!”

After I removed a second gravity repeller on the same side, we began falling at a
forty-five degree slant. The endless ocean appeared to zoom back out of the hanging
mists of Eden-6 as we plunged back toward it. I snapped my visor down, suspecting
I was about to get a mouthful of seawater.

“You’re accusations are unfounded. I had to generate a disgust response and powerful
fear responses. Employing heuristic problem-solving, I studied the brain activity
and trained the Microbes to invade and alter that portion of each subject’s synaptic
web—”

We hit the water, and Marvin’s excuses were swept away with the crashing impact. I
almost lost consciousness—but hung on. A minute or so later, I was moving under my
own power again. I looked for him and spotted him, crawling on the rocky bottom. He
was no longer able to fly or swim under propulsion. He dragged himself uphill toward
dry land with whipping arms that churned up a great deal of debris from the seabed.
Watching him, I was reminded of a desperate starfish caught on an open beach.

I looked after him and thought about burning a hole in his brainbox. I had a laser
unit on my suit—but I hadn’t yet used it. I could end the entire adventure that was
Marvin right now. All the horrors and all the wonders. Was it the right thing to do?
I wasn’t sure.

Maybe he knew what I was thinking about, because he was really trying hard to get
back out of the water and onto dry land.

I heaved a deep breath and found that my initial rage had passed. I engaged my repellers
and glided after him.

He ducked when my gauntleted hand reached down to take hold of yet another tentacle.
I grabbed again, and caught him this time. I lifted and pulled him toward the beach.
After a few seconds, he stopped struggling and let himself be dragged along. Every
camera he had was looking at me. They snaked around my helmet to gaze into the visor
that covered my face. I don’t know what expression he saw there. Disgust, disappointment—depression?
Something like that. After a few minutes, we reached the beach and his cameras retracted
to a safer distance.