Maddox tilted his head. There had been a sort of space ripple. That had changed everything on the starship, but he didn’t know why or how.

  Then he heard the still, small voice say, “Very good,” inside his head.

  “Who are you?” Maddox asked.

  There was no answer. There was no chuckle. There was no smugness. There was nothing. If Maddox possessed any telepathic abilities, it was not in the sense of sending messages. He had some abilities, but they were not of the nature of Captain Becker fame. He’d have to approach this differently. What was the driving idea, then? All he could detect was the need for survival. Was there some way to fix his starship?

  “Yes,” the voice said in his head.

  Maddox nodded. “How may this be done?”

  Again, there was silence. It was as if the entity was testing him. Maddox was thoroughly tired of tests. While he couldn’t remember everything, he knew Omegan had tested him. Was this another like Omegan?

  Maddox waited for an answer. None came.

  As he had been thinking these things, Maddox had been walking along the shore. Here was drinking water, but he would need food, too. Were there animals, things to eat? He was not sure. Therefore, he kept walking, drying out his clothes. He looked for a sun, but there wasn’t one. He noticed that when he jumped up, he didn’t jump as high as on a low-G planet. Something was odd. Something was very off. Things were not as they seemed.

  He pinched himself hard again and yelled. He decided he would test one more time, and he pinched himself so hard that he drew blood. He tasted it, and it was coppery.

  “I’m awake,” Maddox said.

  He was not dreaming this. This was happening to him. Thus, he needed to take it seriously. But to what purpose? Somehow, he could save his starship, but everything was primitive here. So, perhaps he needed to search. But what direction did he need to go? Was there a way to determine what direction to go?

  “Yes,” the voice said in his mind.

  Maddox nodded tightly and grinned even tighter. He wanted to meet this entity, and he tried not to project the reason why. But he wanted, quite simply, to beat the shit out of it. That made him feel a little better, because he knew he was Captain Maddox, but he knew he must keep his anger in check. It had been slipping away from him lately, seemingly at the right time, in order to do great deeds. But to become a man of rage? No, that was not what a captain of a starship should do. Nor should a superior man act that way.

  Maddox stopped. Was he a superior man? Not like a New Man. He did not ever want the arrogance of one of those. He was Captain Maddox. He was married to Meta. And Jewel, the fierceness of his resolve to resist whatever was happening and win through, was strengthened by the realization of his daughter Jewel.

  He kept trudging. There was a way to tell which way to go. He felt that strongly. He turned in a circle, thinking, which way should I go? When he faced a particular direction, the feeling of “I should go this way” was strongest.

  Thus, he set out on that path. What would it bring? He didn’t know. What was this place? Well, if he were to guess, it was some kind of island within underspace. That meant they hadn’t left underspace. That meant the ways that he thought reality should act could be different from how they really did here. So it was not that there were no physical laws in place. It was simply that they were acting in a way that he did not as yet understand.

  Feeling much better, setting out at a good pace, Maddox heard a growl and then a roar. He spun around.

  Behind him stood three reptilian creatures. Each stood head and shoulders taller than him. Each was thicker, wore a loincloth, and gripped a spear. They did not seem to have any other type of equipment. When they grinned at each other, they showed lizard-like or crocodilian snouts with fangs. Maddox realized they intended to kill and eat him.

  Therefore, Maddox decided that it was time to run. He turned and did exactly that.

  -74-

  Maddox ran, but not at his full speed. Turning back, he noticed the three lizard men gaining on him. They huffed and puffed like steam kettles, holding their spears ready to skewer him. Not wanting to exert such effort, but realizing the necessity, Maddox sprinted. When he turned back, expecting to see them having dropped back, he saw that they were closer than before. These bastards were fast.

  Now he ran at his top speed. He ran with everything he had, flying through the forest. He looked back and he was pulling just a little ahead. They no longer grinned with such delight. Perhaps they were astonished at his speed. He continued pumping his arms, going as fast as he possibly could, and he knew that he could not keep this up for long. In time, he would tire, and it wouldn’t even be that long of a time. If he ran too long, he would be exhausted when he faced them.

  Glancing back, Maddox noticed they were starting to spread out; the fastest distancing itself from the slowest. There was a little bit of distance between the reptilians. Maddox decided that this would be his strategy. He kept sprinting, exerting with everything, and they continued after him. If they had hunting stratagems, they weren’t utilizing them as they began to lengthen the distance between each of them.

  Maddox huffed, feeling his lungs burn and his thighs tire. He was running extraordinarily fast. Not even an Olympic sprinter from human history could achieve this speed, though some New Men might.

  Maddox abruptly slid to a halt, turned, and charged toward the enemy.

  The first one did not stop and wait for the others to catch up. He raised his spear for a hurling cast, and then threw it. His tail leveraged some of it, but even so, he stumbled. Running at top speed and trying to hurl a spear was not an easy thing to do.

  Maddox slowed as the spear was thrown, and at just the right moment, he dodged it.

  Then he closed. Now the enemy was sliding to a halt. The others were coming up. Maddox lunged at the enemy and drew his monofilament blade at the same time. He sliced into the beast’s guts. He ripped upward, even his arm thrust in, because of the unique cutting ability of the monofilament blade. As he lay there, having slain the first one, the second ran up. Maddox rolled aside as a spear stabbed down between his legs a mere centimeter from his balls. He hurled the bloody knife up at the second creature. The blade hit, sinking under the reptile’s chin.

  That one collapsed.

  That left the third. It had stopped short. It held its spear with two hands and glared at Maddox with malevolent hatred. Clearly, it wanted to kill him. Just as clearly, it had seen what Maddox could do.

  Maddox had scrambled upright. He saw the spear that the second had used to stab and almost castrate him. Then the spear was in his hands. He faced the other, who was bigger, probably stronger, but they both panted from exertion. Maddox also panted from the expenditure of energy in his killing as well as running.

  “Now,” Maddox said, shaking his spear at the other.

  The other shouted in its alien tongue, and the two closed. Just as when he had faced Artaxerxes Par dueling, Maddox now fought, clacking sticks, their spears. He noticed each spear had stone-shod heads. Thrust, block, thrust, block, dancing, moving. When the beast tried to strike with its tail, Maddox stepped in, absorbing the impact with the shortened part of the tail and used the wooden end of the spear to smack its head forcefully.

  The beast absorbed the hit, seemingly chuckling as it opened its mouth. The beast would have had the joke in the best way, except Maddox reversed the spear and thrust it into the creature’s chest. The beast looked at him stupidly, wonderingly, as if asking, “Why did you do that when I was mocking you? Don’t you know that was an unfair strike?”

  Maddox scrambled back.

  The lizard man toppled dead.

  Maddox had taken down three large adversaries. Were their weapons superior to his? Maddox went to the second and drew out his monofilament blade. In truth, the throw had been mostly luck. But he would take luck when he could get it. Now he cleaned the blade and then sheathed it. He wondered what was the best course.

  He had defeated these three. He was no closer—

  Ah, I remember, he thought. I have to aim myself in the right direction.

  Maddox chose the best spear and aligned himself in the right direction. Exhausted from the chase and combat, Maddox started walking in that direction again, pondering what might come next.

  -75-

  Maddox wished he knew how long he had trudged. It seemed like he had been doing this forever. There was no sun in the sky. The only realization of time was the distance he’d traveled. He looked back and could see the lake shimmering from its position higher up in the terrain. He was vaguely thirsty. He felt like he should be raving with thirst, and he wondered if he was being sustained in some way, the same way the city-sized scooper had sustained the rakers on the Ruby Planet.

  Was there a connection between all this? He did not like the idea. He just wanted to get out of underspace. He wanted to get off this rock, and yet, he looked back. Far up in the sky, which seemed to have turned darker, he saw the double oval spaceship that was Victory. There was his wife. There was Jewel, Galyan, Ludendorff, all of them. There weren’t any lights on the ship. It did not seem there was any life either. He squinted. Was that a crystalline lattice around it?

  That reminded him of the crystalline lattice Omegan had used at the end, and that he’d seen—not on the strategists of Leviathan, for he had not fought them. He had just seen the strategists recline with their augmented brains plugged into the master computer. Instead, he had seen Soldiers of Leviathan as he fired blaster shots at them.

  Maddox didn’t want to think about it. So, he kept on trudging. He wondered if his boots would soon wear out. It felt as if there was a force, a power, sustaining him.

  He saw a silvery glint ahead. Was it a trap? Was it some other marooned individual?

  Maddox stopped and nodded. He was marooned in space. No, he was marooned in inner space, underspace.

  He had no idea if Leviathan had launched an assault upon the Commonwealth. He realized then where the first attack from Leviathan would be.

  Why would they think Leviathan would send a fleet to the Aquila Rift seven hundred light years from Earth? Leviathan didn’t have the apparatus that crossed distances like that except for a Builder pyramid.

  There was a Builder pyramid at Omicron 9. That was the logical place for Leviathan to strike first. Maddox hoped that the Lord High Admiral and the other Star Watch strategists realized that. That was the closest place in Commonwealth territory as it jutted out toward the Scutum-Centaurus Spiral Arm. If Leviathan could gain the Builder Nexus at Omicron 9, it could launch attacks into all kinds of places in the Commonwealth and do so swiftly.

  Maddox shook his head, casting that aside as he approached a small circular object the size of his fist. Hadn’t they come across something like this before? Half-Life? That had been a precursor to Balron the Traveler. Was this another like Half-Life, or was this something else?

  Maddox held the spear ready, though he didn’t know what a stone spear tip would do against a ball of metal. As he approached, lights began to blink across the metal surface, and then the ball began to levitate. It reminded him so much of Half-Life. When it began to talk, it did so by making clicks and strange noises.

  “What are you?” Maddox said. “Do you have a universal translator? Are you a device that speaks?”

  It clicked again in different sequences.

  Maddox shook his head. “I can’t understand that. Why don’t you try talking in a civilized language, one I can use?”

  “How is this?” a robotic voice said.

  “Hey, that’s pretty good. What should I call you?”

  He expected it to tell him to call it Half-Life.

  Instead, it said, “You may call me Liam.”

  “Liam, what are you?”

  “I am,” it blinked and flashed, sinking a little bit before levitating again up to Maddox’s face, “a unit of the starship.” It stopped, and the lights blinked again.

  “You’re not from my starship.”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where this is?” Maddox asked.

  “No, I have never been to a place like this before. I have been deactivated for a time. I do not even know what the passage of time is.”

  “Do you have a mission?”

  The lights blinked furiously. “I know of no mission.”

  “Why don’t you help and keep me company then?”

  “What are you?”

  “Captain Maddox of the Commonwealth.”

  “What is the Commonwealth?”

  “A unity of planets with people like me, forming a free government. I belong to the military arm that protects the rest.”

  “Will you lend me aid for helping you?”

  “Yes. Look up there.”

  The little mote, Liam, seemed to look up, focusing an optical aperture. “That is an artificial spaceship.”

  “That’s right,” Maddox said. “That’s what I came in on.”

  “How utterly unique,” Liam said. “You have a method, then, of leaving this place?”

  “I do, if I can get up there and power the starship again.”

  “I’m afraid that does not sound likely.”

  “No,” Maddox turned, “I’m headed in that direction.” He pointed.

  “Why in that direction particularly?” Liam asked.

  “Because something there can aid me.”

  “Do you mean the pillar?”

  “I guess I do mean the pillar,” Maddox said. “Is the pillar a power source?”

  “It is the entity. No. That is incorrect. It is the speaking force of this spheroid.”

  “I see. And what is the spheroid?”

  “Not the spheroid but this spheroid,” Liam said. “It is the intelligent entity.”

  “Wait a minute.” Maddox made a circle in the air with a finger. “You mean this whole spheroid is intelligent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why doesn’t it just show itself and speak to us, then?”

  “At the pillar, it will speak to you.”

  “Have you spoken with it there?” Maddox asked.

  “Once,” Liam said.

  “What did it say?”

  “Go.”

  “No, no. What did it say to you?”

  “Go.”

  “And you interpreted that to mean ‘get away from me’?”

  “Yes.”

  Maddox nodded. “I guess that is what ‘go’ would mean. Do you know why this pillar would send you away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Maddox asked.

  “Because I was of no use to it,” Liam said.

  “Do you think it’ll say the same thing to me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to come with me and find out?” Maddox asked.

  “Yes.”

  “If I succeed, I’ll take you with me to the starship. How does that sound?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mean ‘good’?”

  “Good,” Liam said.

  “All right,” Maddox said. “What is your power source?”

  “I warm myself from heat. May I stay in your hand and repower my sources? Even though the decay is very slow here, I have lost some power.”

  “Sure,” Maddox said. He held out his left hand, and Liam, the mote, the metal mote, rested on it. It buzzed for a moment, and then it ceased.

  “Ah,” Liam said, “That is good. I feel energy trickling into me. Ah, that is so good. I believe that I have been here for millennia.”

  “How can you speak my language?”

  “I do not know,” Liam said.

  “Have you ever seen creatures like me before?”

  “Never.”

  “Have you seen the creatures,” Maddox lifted the spear, “that wielded this?”

  “You call them lizard men, yes?” Liam asked.

  “That’s correct. How do you know that?”

  “My data banks tell me so.”

  Maddox frowned. “But if you’ve never seen me, and you’ve never seen them—?”

  “I have seen them chase and kill other survivors,” Liam said, interrupting.

  “So others have been marooned on this spheroid before?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many have you seen since you’ve been here?”

  “Twenty-seven different groups,” Liam said.

  “Have the lizard men killed them all?”

  “Yes.”

  “I killed three of the lizard men.”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah, I think it’s good too. Well, I’m going to keep walking in the direction of the pillar, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope you have a little bit more conversation to make than just ‘yes’,” Maddox said.

  “Do you wish me to leave?”

  “No.” Maddox said, realizing he did not want Liam to leave. The chance to talk to somebody fed an ache that he hadn’t known he’d been feeling. The idea of being marooned on this strange place with nobody to talk to—he hadn’t and didn’t like the idea. Liam fortified his resolve. Twenty-seven marooned aliens of some sort had landed here for unknown reasons. Those lizard men had killed them all, according to the mote of metal, but he had slain the lizards instead. Did that mean something positive?

  Maddox puffed out his chest. Yes, he was the di-far. He was determined to repower Victory and learn exactly what this place in underspace was.

  -76-

  After an extraordinarily long time of walking and talking with Liam, Maddox approached what looked like ancient Greek ruins upon a small hill. Beyond were mountains. A meandering river lay between the hill and the mountains. As he neared the ruins, he was reminded of the broken remains he had once seen in a different dimension on a dais.

  When Maddox arrived, he noted one particularly large column. It was twice as tall as he was and three times as thick. As he approached, the marble shone with light, making it seem as if the pillar had turned to crystal.