“We won’t have time to search Cronus’s bulk,” Gloria added.

  Jon wrung his hands until he realized what he was doing. “We’ll have to head back into the void.”

  “Not with a ruptured hull we won’t,” Gloria said. “The void will rush in, and we won’t be able to create a reality field.”

  “Damn,” Jon said. “You’re right.”

  A few minutes ago, everything had fit into place. They would grab the Subspace Teleport Device, slide back into the void and come out again to pick up the insertion craft. Then, they would reenter the void and head for home.

  “Can we bargain with the highest-ranked AI?” Gloria asked. “Maybe you could bluff it into a deal.”

  Jon considered and rejected the idea. He pointed at Gloria. “Fixing the hull is your job. You’re the mentalist. Use your imagination and figure out a quick fix. Talk to Bast on the insertion craft—”

  “There’s too much static between us to do that,” Gloria said, interrupting.

  “Got it,” Jon said. “Well…figure out the answer to that, too.” He headed for the exit.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  Jon looked up sharply.

  “Sir,” she added.

  “I used to run the Black Anvil Regiment. Today, I’m going to lead the marines onto Cronus. If I’m not back in time—”

  “Jon, no,” Gloria said.

  He halted and headed straight for her. Her eyes became large. Jon put his hands on her shoulders and stared into her liquid pupils. She was so lovely.

  “I love you, Gloria,” he said softly. “Think up an answer for a quick hull fix. Be ready to leave as soon as I return with the teleport mechanism.”

  “Is that all?” she asked.

  “No. Make sure Bast and the others are onboard. I have a feeling we’re going to have to do everything fast. This is it, love. If we can grab the Subspace Teleport Device…”

  “It didn’t help Cronus.”

  Jon drew her against him and hugged her tightly. He hoped this wasn’t it. He hoped he saw her again. The fact that each battle was so deadly important proved he had to try to find the teleportor. Humanity—the Confederation—needed a real equalizer against the AI Dominion. Void ships were good, but they were so hideous to use. A teleporting device and possibly a plasma ejector and force field—

  “I love you,” he whispered. “Babe, don’t let me down.” He released her.

  She clutched him harder. “You’d better come back.”

  “Count on it.”

  “I mean it, Jon. You find the teleportor and return. I can’t live without you.”

  “Roger that.” He pried her hands off him and hurried from the bridge lest anyone see the moisture in his eyes.

  -25-

  The Nathan Graham had parked beside the uneven planet-sized chunks of Cronus. Black ooze leaked everywhere, but that wasn’t all. There were wobbly globules of who-knew-what and separated tentacles, some of them over a thousand kilometers long. The radiation from the warheads was high while rubbery chunks the size of Greenland drifted and bumped against other strange masses.

  A hangar-bay door on the void ship opened. Seconds later, twenty attack sleds slid out, heading for one of the continent-sized masses.

  An attack sled was an open spacecraft. It had a curved front with a laser cannon mounted in place. A battlesuited marine piloted the craft. He had access to graviton acceleration. Behind the pilot were other battlesuited marines, ten to a sled. Packed on the open sled were various sensors and equipment.

  The battlesuits seconded as spacesuits, and they provided the marines with protection against the radiation.

  Jon led them. He rode an attack sled with two battlesuited techs monitoring a tracker. Gloria had programmed the tracker, which zeroed in on a device deep in a Cronus third. That device gave off the same signals Gloria had recorded while Cronus teleported.

  The next move turned out to be gruesome. The ten sleds maneuvered toward the selected rubbery Cronus mass and opened up with mounted laser cannons. The lasers burned into the mass, devouring and creating a tunnel. Black gunk oozed from the wound, but other lasers devoured the oily substance.

  The sleds headed into the tunnel. How far they would have to go into the mass to reach the device was anyone’s guess.

  Like other marines, Jon wore a two-ton battlesuit. He had a rifle attached by a line to the main laser generator. With the laser rifle, he burned nearby ooze and gunk, helping them tunnel into the mass.

  He’d read about ancient whaling on Earth before the Space Age, how the whalers would flense the giant beasts with saw-blades and axes. The workers had cut away and peeled off blubber. At times, while out at sea, the men tied a dead whale to the ship. Others had walked on the dead beast, flensing it with their tools.

  This wasn’t flensing, but the lasers did cut away rubbery mass as they searched for the Subspace Teleport Device.

  They hit an area where pieces and flakes of Cronus-stuff drifted to the battlesuits. Before marines could burn it all, some of the stuff stuck to the battlesuits. That immediately caused malfunctions.

  “Burn it off!” a marine screamed over his com-link.

  It turned out that laser drills worked best to burn off the flakes, set on lower power. None of the techs could tell Jon why the flakes had caused malfunctions.

  The burrowing expedition was a vicious struggle as they headed deeper into Cronus’s flesh. He was huge, world-sized, and after a half hour, Jon turned to his sensor techs.

  “Any difference in the signal?” asked Jon.

  “It has gotten stronger,” the senior tech replied.

  “Given its greater strength, how much farther do you think we have to go?”

  “Twelve thousand kilometers,” the senior tech replied.

  “We’ve only burrowed eighty klicks so far,” Jon said.

  “The lasers are starting to overheat,” the junior tech added.

  Jon turned away. They didn’t have the luxury of time. “We need grav-beams,” he said over the com-link. “We have to shear off much greater areas, or we’re never going to do this in time.”

  For some reason, the surrounding Cronus stuff had negated their communication link to the ship. That meant sending a sled back to the Nathan Graham.

  Time, they didn’t have enough time to do this.

  The sleds turned around and raced back. Soon, Jon saw the stars again. They looked glorious. He realized that something in the Cronus-stuff had been weighing on his psyche.

  After com-linking again with the Nathan Graham, the real work started. Grav dishes activated, and golden beams sliced into the targeted planet-chunk. Black gore, a strange fiery liquid and masses of flesh drifted everywhere. The combined grav-beams created giant tunnels that reached thousands of kilometers into the rubbery substance.

  “That should do it,” the senior tech told Jon.

  The sled teams flew into the great thoroughfare beamed through the rubbery substance. They soon discovered that after five hundred kilometers the deeper they went, the more the suits started malfunctioning.

  “Sir,” a marine asked him over a com-link. “Why is the substance so weird?”

  Jon’s head had been throbbing the last one hundred kilometers. The psychic weight was becoming too much.

  “Sir?” the marine asked.

  “What?”

  The marine repeated his question.

  “Mine is not to reason why,” Jon quoted. “Mine is but to do and die.”

  “Sir?”

  “Let’s figure out the reasons later,” Jon said, trying to master the weirdness in his mind. “Right now—”

  “Incoming,” a marine yelled over the com-link.

  The ten sleds had reached a huge, cavernous area with red veins throbbing along the cavern’s sides. This must have been an inner chamber of some kind and was over four hundred kilometers long. Searchlights from the sleds and helmet-lamps were the only illumination. Three of the bigger searchlights targeted a bizarre spectacle.

  Jon did a double-take and used magnification with his visor. The searchlights showed a marching army of green humanoid slime monsters.

  “What the hell?”

  From each sled, lasers rifles opened up, chewing fifty monsters before Jon regained control of the marines.

  “There’s too many of them for that,” he said. “We’ll use the sled cannons.”

  The laser mounts aimed at the horde and the gunners beamed and beamed, burning hundreds of the marching things.

  “How are they walking?” a marine asked. “There isn’t that kind of gravity here.”

  “Their feet must act like magnets on the rest of the dead bulk,” Jon said. “Maybe more like sticky pads.”

  “Those things don’t look dead to me, sir,” a different marine said.

  That’s when it hit Jon. Even though Cronus was divided into three giant parts with other lesser parts, he wasn’t dead. Cronus’s brain, his mind and willpower, yet lived. How could Cronus have survived all this, though?

  Jon shrugged. Cronus was something different, possibly from a different multi-dimension. The slime humanoids surely proved that the monster’s willpower still existed. That meant—

  Jon’s battlesuit turned. He walked along the open sled and told a marine, “Move aside.”

  The man did so, careful lest he trip over the railed side and floated inside the monster’s stomach.

  Jon crouched down by a large com unit. He took a line from the unit and hooked it to his battlesuit. Then he began trying one frequency after another. He couldn’t have signaled through this stuff back to the Nathan Graham, but couldn’t this Cronus-flesh act as a conduit to the brain or mind of the cosmic horror?

  “Cronus? Can you hear me, Cronus?”

  There was nothing but static. Meanwhile, more of the humanoid slime monsters rose up from the red-veined inner substance of the primeval entity. Some process kept them from freezing and cracking due to the vacuum of space.

  “Cronus,” Jon said at a different frequency. “Can you—?”

  “Hawkins?” asked a voice, strangely altered but still recognizable as the cosmic creature.

  “This is Hawkins. Am I talking to Cronus?”

  “How are you managing this?”

  Jon’s mouth turned dry. The first part had worked. Now, he had to talk the monster into helping humanity. They had almost run out of time. The octopoid pods neared, as did AI missiles. Behind them, a siege-ship maneuvered into attack position. The Nathan Graham stood absolutely no change against a siege-ship.

  “I know you hate me,” Jon said, deciding on his approach. “I know you probably hate the universe. The question today is, who do you hate the most?”

  “The One,” Cronus said promptly.

  “I won’t pretend to know who that is, although I have an idea. Who do you hate the most in this star system?”

  “I am dying, Hawkins. I no longer care.”

  “I can certainly understand that. Main 54 proved to be greater than you—”

  “Is that your best taunt?” Cronus interrupted.

  “There was no taunt intended. Remember, I helped you destroy Main 54.”

  “I am not fooled by your words. Main 54 still lives. I witnessed his brain-core ship fleeing the wreckage of his bulk. Main 54’s intellect drives the inner-system siege-ships, which have launched missiles and octopoid pods. Main will destroy you and ravage my corpse. But that is as it should be. To the victor goes the spoils, eh, Hawkins?”

  “You’re right about one thing. Main will shred your bulk so he can discover how you teleported, created and ejected plasma and beamed a force field. He will use his victory over you to build himself greater than ever. Whenever other AIs ask Main 54, ‘How did you achieve this wonderful power?’ He will answer, ‘I slew Cronus and looted his corpse.’”

  “Leave me, Hawkins. Your words anger me. I desire that you and Main 54 both die gruesome deaths. That is who I hate most: all of you.”

  “You will cower to your killer then?”

  “Your words are meaningless babble, backstabber.”

  “It’s true I launched a few missiles at you. I feared that in your victory you would hunt humanity down. I had to strike while I could. I could never have damaged you so heavily, though, if Main 54 hadn’t already defeated you.”

  “I despise you, Hawkins. You are the cause of all my woes.”

  “Or maybe you simply made a mistake. You must choose today, Cronus. I have to leave soon. As you pointed out, siege-ships are coming. I will not let them destroy my ship. But they will certainly finish you with their grav cannons.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “I do know. I wonder if you realize that I hate the AIs far more than I ever hated you. That’s why I’m offering you an opportunity to flip them off from the grave.”

  “Oddly, I understand your references.” Cronus fell silent. Perhaps he was thinking.

  Jon waited, waited longer, and was ready to pull the com-link from his suit.

  “My loathing of you has almost blinded me to my greater hatred of the AIs,” Cronus said in an angry voice. “Why haven’t the life forms gathered in power and destroyed the AIs?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know. Humans are late to this game. I hate the AIs as much as you do. They are hunting down all—”

  “Don’t lecture me, Hawkins. I am dying. I—yes,” Cronus hissed over the com. “You have a point. I hate the AIs more than I hate you. The idea of helping humanity seethes through me so much I am gagging. But I recognize that you are a gadfly next to the potential of the AIs. You are a treacherous cur and double-crossed that vain bastard, Main 54. I suspect your double-cross has shorted some of his circuits. Don’t think for a second that your words have swayed me. It is the fact that you’re such a treacherous little flea that causes me to hope that you will hound Main 54 to the grave. I want him to learn to hate the way I hate. Here is the device. I gift it to you. Take it and leave me!”

  “The force field and plasma—”

  Cronus interrupted with vile laughter. “I am already destroying those components. Main 54 will gain nothing from me. You have one of my key devices. Long may you torment the AIs with it. Go now, Hawkins. The longer I speak to you, the greater my desire to annihilate you grows.”

  “Sir,” a marine said. “A huge black machine just emerged from the substance.”

  Jon saw spotlights shine on a huge machine bigger than the insertion vessel. Had Cronus been using his substance to worm the machine away from them? Would they have ever found it any other way than this? After changing his mind, had Cronus used his flesh to force the machine here?

  “I don’t see any more of the slime monsters,” a marine said.

  That proved Cronus’s intent.

  “Let’s hook that machine to the sleds,” Jon said. “And start monitoring it. Cronus may be double-crossing us. Be ready for anything.”

  -26-

  There were no explosives or hidden devices to cause malfunctions in the great black machine that Cronus had ejected from his mass.

  The sleds dragged it out of the rubbery-lined tunnels and started for the Nathan Graham. Time was running out, as several enemy matter/antimatter missiles were nearing. Behind the missiles maneuvered a moon-sized siege-ship.

  The other inner-system siege-ship had turned for the half-sized vessel holding Main 54’s brain-core. Likely, it would guard the brain-core while the other siege-ships headed in-system from the Oort cloud.

  As Jon and his marines headed for an open hangar bay, two shuttles raced toward a different planet-sized chunk of the dying Cronus. Jon ignored the shuttles for now, having too much on his mind. He hoped Gloria had found a solution to the damaged outer hull. If they failed to escape into the void, all of this would have been for naught.

  ***

  It turned out that Gloria had discovered a possible solution, and it was gory in application. The shuttles used heavy lasers and cut away rubbery Cronus substance. With tractor beams, the shuttles dragged the cut-off part back to the Nathan Graham.

  “We don’t have time to rebuild the ruptured area of the asteroid-like hull,” Gloria explained to Jon on the bridge. “Instead, I’m having the ruptured area patched with Cronus substance.”

  “Will that work?” Jon asked.

  “We’re going to find out,” Gloria said.

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “How could I possibly know? It’s a theory. It could work. Will it?” She shrugged.

  Earlier, while Jon was hunting in the Cronus-stuff, Gloria had ordered counter-rockets fired at the approaching AI missiles. The rocket warhead detonations bought them another hour. The siege-ship would be in grav-beam range by then. Other rockets had accelerated at the octopoid pods. The three pods had veered off.

  Techs in shuttles and attack sleds lowered the cut rubbery substance onto the damaged hull area. Like a huge sticky patch, the Cronus-substance adhered to the hull. Would it stay there during travel and while in the void?

  It was a crazy expedient at best, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  A half-hour before the siege-ship arrived within grav-beam range, the null-splitter opened a reality rip. The Nathan Graham slid through…and the reality field worked. Cronus’s substance successfully took the place of the damaged asteroid-like hull.

  Jon sagged in his command chair, sitting up a second later. “Let’s get the insertion vessel. Then, we can plot our course home.”

  ***

  Surprisingly, there were no problems reentering normal time and space. The insertion vessel maneuvered into a cargo hold. The great hatch shut, and the null-splitter created yet another rip.

  The Nathan Graham, with all hands on board, with the Sacerdotes and with the black machine that might or might not be the Subspace Teleportation Device, headed into the void to get home as fast as possible.

  -27-

  The AI siege-ship decelerated as it approached the various masses, liquids, gases and debris of drifting Cronus. The siege-ship had failed to destroy the Nathan Graham, which had slipped away into the void. It was not going to fail Main 54 in acquiring unique technological items from the monster, though.