“Us?” squeaked Argolo. She promptly tossed her gun aside and put her hands behind her back. Fontes hastily imitated her. Praxedes exhibited an incomprehensible reluctance to mimic the sensible actions of his companions until a tentacle the size of an air conduit slammed into the deck before them and the Autothor hovering at its end expanded to an angry, flaring turquoise sphere ten meters in diameter. His weapon sailed farther than any of the others.
“What devices?” he managed to choke out.
“You intended me physical harm!” Four black and crimson eyes bulged at the tiny humans.
“No, no!” Fontes and Argolo were half dragging, half carrying the sobbing Bassan while their commander struggled to come up with reassuring words. “Just a reflex action, that’s all.”
The Drex was unimpressed. “I interpret it as an unfriendly, however, impotent, gesture.”
“No worries,” Praxedes insisted desperately.
Four legs carried the alien a giant step nearer. Incandescent eyes blazed. “It makes me very, very angry.”
At that the three commandos bolted to their right, hauling the useless Bassan with them as they fled in panic for the doorway. If anything, they accelerated when they reached the outer corridor.
With its four eyes the Drex followed them briefly. Then it turned to the five waiting seniors. Hawkins stopped laughing.
Iranaputra found himself pointing as he frowned. “Can that be you up there, Zabela Ashili?”
She leaned over, gripping the slowly weaving tentacle with her powerful legs. “Sure is. This is a Drex.”
“We’d already reached that conclusion, dear,” said a very drawn Mina Gelmann.
“He’s my friend.”
“I am not your friend.” The alien turned its baleful multiorbited gaze on his passenger. “We are peripheral acquaintances.”
“You should be thankful to these people.” There didn’t seem any point in being overly deferential, she’d decided. If the Drex determined he’d had enough of her, he could shake her off like a piece of litter. Better to challenge its thinking. “They’re the ones who reactivated your ship and released you from a sleep that might otherwise have been eternal.”
“Resulting in alerting the enemy.”
“You can’t be sure of that. What if the enemy had come eventually anyway and found you and the ship both quiescent? They’d have buried you forever.”
“You theorize feebly.” Nevertheless, the tentacle dipped gently to the floor, allowing her a short hop to the deck.
“You know about the approaching alien fleet?” Shimoda asked her.
She nodded. “He assumes it’s the enemy.”
“Well, that’s all right, then,” said Heath. “This ship can defeat any number of attackers, right?”
“Incorrect.” Avoiding the tiny humans, the Drex lumbered over to the nearest monolith and leaned against it. The Autothor melted into the edifice, which was instantly suffused with a deep blue light. It began to change shape, flowing like a fluid as it adjusted to the outline of the Drex’s body. As soon as the process was complete the Autothor emerged and resumed its normal elliptical form.
Occupied again for the first time in a million years, the battlelith rose imperceptibly and turned, floating some centimeters above the floor on a cushion of indigo energy. Tentacles gestured toward raised inscriptions and other contact points. The Autothor darted obediently from one to the next, sometimes dipping within and then emerging, other times merely making casual contact. The observation chamber came alive as lights brightened throughout the room like phosphorescent sea creatures agitated by the wake of a passing boat.
The six humans marveled at the transformation. Shimoda thought it at once beautiful and ominous.
The portion of lunar surface visible through the sweep of observation window vanished, to be replaced by unwinking starfield. High atop one curving wall, more starfield appeared, within which a multitude of brilliant green lights rotated in concert.
“There the enemy’s advance force,” the Drex announced. The Autothor shot from a tentacle tip to touch the view and it was instantly replaced by another displaying an unfamiliar cluster of stars. “There the course I must set for home. If it is still there after a million years. It lies near the galactic center almost directly opposite your home system. A long journey. But then, I’ve had adequate rest.”
Beneath their feet a slight shiver ran through the fabric of the great ship, imparting a sensation of prodigious forces suddenly summoned to life.
“Wait a minute, old thing.” Heath gazed apprehensively up at where the towering alien lay secure in its command chair. “You’re not leaving just yet, are you?”
“It is clear that you possess sufficient intelligence to infer the obvious.”
Heath glanced around at his friends, back up to the Drex. “But if you flit off into tachyspace, will this unknown fleet of warships follow?”
“I should imagine it will materialize here and begin to search for whatever has drawn it to these coordinates. By that time I expect to be long gone from this system.”
“You should excuse my repeating what my good friend Wesley just said, but they’ll still follow, won’t they?” Gelmann asked.
“Eventually. First they will scour this area to ensure that this ship has departed, and that no further evidence of my species’ presence remains. In the process I imagine they will destroy a good portion of the region where this vessel lay dormant. They are as thorough as they are relentless.”
“Then you have to stay and fight.” Gelmann shook a chiding finger at the tentacled colossus. “You can’t just run away!”
“Mina, for God’s sake!” Hawkins whispered frantically.
The monolithic command chair turned ponderously to face her. Four burning black and red eyes glared superciliously down at the frail bipedal creature that dared to enjoin. “Why not?”
“Let me go, Wallace.” She shook off Hawkins’s restraining hand, squinted up at the Drex. “See here. We didn’t ask you to go and bury yourself on our world. Even so, you were left alone. Nobody bothered you. Now the activation of this ship has apparently attracted this huge alien force. You can’t let them just take up orbit around Earth to ravage and destroy.”
“Watch me.” Tentacles writhed eloquently. “You are nothing to me. Your world is nothing to me. Your species is less than nothing to me.” One eye flicked in Ashili’s direction. “Though you are occasionally amusing, in a primitive, imbecilic sort of way.”
Down through the decades dozens of people had tried to slow Mina Gelmann down. All had failed. The single Drex did no better. She had that rare courage which arose from supreme confidence in the absolute correctness of everything she said. Put otherwise, she talked too fast to realize she might be saying something stupid.
“Earth was your hiding place, your refuge. Don’t you have any gratitude?”
“I was commanded to deep sleep,” the alien rumbled. “I did not request such a fate. I would far rather have departed with my people when the great ship was completed. You cannot request gratitude on behalf of your kind because you did not exist when I was interred. I owe you nothing. Be grateful that I tolerate your irritating presence instead of smearing your puny selves across the floor.”
“Wonderful,” Hawkins muttered. “We finally meet the hypothetical aliens everyone was convinced didn’t exist, and they turn out to be advanced, powerful, and not to give a damn.”
“Ha!” Gelmann put hands on hips and adopted the knowing look which had infuriated generations of suitors. It was the look that said she held the key to the secrets of the universe but there was no point in sharing them because obviously no one else would understand anyway. Especially you.
The heavy lid of flesh above the four eyes sagged slightly.
“Ha?”
“Ha! I was right all along.” She looked back at Hawkins, who tried to shrink into the floor. “He’s just the type.”
“The type? What does that mean?”
“You’re a coward and a bully. Oh, it’s all very well and good for you to threaten us, who are so much smaller than you. But to stand up to a real enemy, like the one that’s coming this way now, noooo. Not you.”
“You try my infinite patience!” The Drex’s words echoed thunderously through the chamber. Hawkins looked around wildly and, finding no immediate cover, hid behind Shimoda.
“See? You know I’m right. Go on, you’re so proud of your logic. Reason it to me. Any mindless animal can rage and stomp and kill. Show me that brain of yours, wherever it is, is capable of concocting more than just feral threats. Or is it?”
