-1-

The door hissed open, and Blair Munroe stepped into the small chamber off the Science lab. The lighting inside was dim, the only sound emanating from the air circulation vents set into the walls of the room. Alice Petrie sat in the terminal seat in a reclined position, her head resting in the horseshoe-shaped interface unit. Her curley blond hair was pushed askew by the encompassing headrest, her blue eyes closed. To an uninformed observer, she would appear to be asleep. Careful not to disturb her, Blair walked quietly to a padded chair nearby and sat down to wait.

Alice was the science officer of the expeditionary vessel, currently in a geosynchronous orbit over the largest continent of the planet below. Sensory probes strove down through the seven miles of atmosphere, searching for sources of electrical, electromagnetic, and thermal energy. Each new discovery was quickly logged into the records of the vessel's powerful computer, then correllated and submitted for her review.

Review was in the form of "communion". Magnetic energy radiated from the sofa's headrest, stimulating the areas of Alice's cerebral cortex controlling vision, hearing and memory. The whole of the ship's investigaion was playing across her mind's eye; she heard it's voice in her ear, guided it by thought alone.

Blair was the captain of the vessel. He was also Alice's lover, and the slight smile that curled her lips as she lay in repose was enticing to him on several levels. It was his professionalism that kept him on the subject at hand.

For over two hundred years, man had been exploring outer space, seeking habitable worlds and signs of intelligent life. In all that time, two things had become painfully apparent. First, old Carl Sagan had been right--life existed but it was incomprehensibly rare. Only six planets had been found harboring life, and only one of those had been hospitable to man. Second Earth, as it came to be called, was a living, breathing ecosphere in the classic Terran mold, and it had yeilded up the second great discovery.

The ruins found on Second Earth had been in a state of decay for millenia, but even so, their resemblance to the pyramids of Egypt and the Mayans had been unbelievable. Here, at last, was proof positive that an alien species had visited both worlds.

The reptilian aborigines who inhabited Second Earth could relate tales of "sky gods" whose descriptions were an eerie match for the dieties called out in ancient egyptian mythology. These sky-gods had given the aboriginies vast "magical" powers and command over the elements, then departed. The primitives then quickly used these "powers" to nearly exterminate themselves in a brutal series of wars. They had knocked themselves straight back to the stone age, and all traces of the technology they had been given were lost in time.

Eventually, the archeological teams investigating the sites on both worlds began referring to these visitors as Missionaries, given that the aliens seemed to impress their social and spiritual beliefs on the primitives they discovered. Over the next several decades, ruins were found scattered in other solar systems, always in advanced stages of decay. The technology employed by the Missionaries was as vanished as the species that generated it.

Until now. The discovery of a habitable world was news of galactic import in and of itself. But the energy emenations detected, even by the long-range probes, on a world with no obvious signs of sapient life, was an order of magnitude greater.

Alice sighed and sat up. She was not suprised to see Blair waiting for her. She couldn't supress the grin that broke across her face, like a devil with a new pitchfork. "Well?", he asked.

"It's there," she said. "It's there, it's immense, and it's artificial."

Blair closed his eyes now, drawing in a deep breath, professionalism demanding he resist the urge to jump up and down and scream with excitement. A functional Missionary power source.

-2-

Blair sat at the conference table in the ship's briefing room. To his right was Alice, then Petra Valenkov, the medical officer; Doug Abram, pilot; Dana Avery, Technical Engineer; and Miles Kincaid, ship security. Alice, as the science officer, had just completed her briefing of the rest of the crew.

"So we do have a fix on the location of the power source?" Doug asked.

"We do," Alice said. She pressed a button on her laptop and a holographic map of the continent appeared hovering translucently above the table. "You'll see here a region where the northern sea winds sweep inland over the mountain range, here," she pressed a button, and the areas she referred to enlarged to fill the display, the wind direction shown as blue highlights flowing over the view.

"The region beyond is a desert, possibly volcanic in origin," Alice continued. "The emanations are proceeding from the central area, here." Again, there area enlarged to fill the display. The blow-up revealed an area of sand with some black objects laid out on the surface in a geometric design.

"So now we actually go in and look for it?" Kincaid said.

This is all the further I can get with the probes. There is a region about thirty k's to the southeast where we can set up a base and establish the Berbils."

Kincaid stroked the end of his chin with his fingers, considering. "No large predators in the area?"

"None," Alice said. Kincaid was a squat, beefy man, with a powerful build and intelligent eyes. He was also a cautious man, overcautious in her opinion, but then , the safety of the team was his reponsibility.

After another moment, Kincaid placed his hand on the table, palm down, and said, "I have no objections."

"Anyone else?" Blair asked. Headshakes and half-spoken "no"s met his gaze. "Very good then. As soon as Petra can cook up a suitable pan-vaccination, we'll assemble a landing mission."

As everyone stood, Petra asked,"Captain, to create my filing system, I'll need to know the planet's name."

Blair smiled. "I apologize, Petra. I presumed everyone would know. We're calling it 'Third Earth'."

-3-

Dana knelt in the grass outside the camp enclosure, setting up the last of the Berbils. The sun had been shining for three days now, a golden orb hanging in a pure azure sky, surrounded the most adorable puffy white cotton-ball clouds she would have ever seen, if she ever happend to look away from the task at hand, which was never.

Dana was not now, nor had she ever been, at home with nature. While the others were exclaiming about the local fauna, she was complaining about bugs -actual insects- in the Berbils. The little bastards could not actually hurt the robots, but she had been bitten, stung and, on one occasion, squirted entirely enough for one survey mission.

She took comfort in the Berbils themselves. Modern miracles of technology, and a rare spasm of forethought from Survey Command, the robo-bears were autonomous artificial intelligences, every one. Their design incorporated nanotechnology, giving them a synthetic cell structure, which in turn allowed them to heal and reproduce in the same manner as an organic creature.

When the survey team departed, the Berbils would remain behind, cultivating, mapping resources, building shelters first for themselves, then for the colonists who would begin arriving in a few years. In truth, the only thing she did not love about them was their appearance--their desginer had been a member of a Jedi cult, and had built the things to look like Ewoks.

As she completed prepping the last Berbil, ignoring the dozen others who thronged around her to watch, Dana thought it was ironic she should criticize their appearance. She was over six feet tall, painfully thin, with close-set eyes and a bird-like nose. Her natural somberness was translated into severity by her features, and tended to push people away. However, when she smiled, she felt she just looked silly, so she rarely did.

She had just inserted the last memory module into the Berbil when she heard behind her, "Almost finished?"

She jumped visibly, then turned to view the speaker. Of course, she knew by voice it was Blair, but hearing him wasn't enough. Not for her.

"Yessir, just wrapping up," she said. She snapped the access hatch on the Berbil's head closed and pressed the activation switch behind it's left ear. The robot stood up straight and turned clumsily to face them.

"Greetings, Mistress," it said. "I am Ro-Bear Bill."

"Of course you are," Blair said. "You understand your purpose?"

Dana saw Bill's optical sensors rotate and fix momentarily on Blair's Captain rank insignia on his left breast. "We understand, Captain, and are pleased to serve."

"Very good," Blair said, then added to Dana, "Get them started, then join the group at the enclosure. We're planning the site trip, and I need to know the status on the landfloater."

"Yessir," she said. He nodded and turned away, heading back to the shelter. As he left, she cursed herself vehemently. Why, for all her intellect, had she never found a way, in a year of space travel, to tell Blair how he made her feel; the sweet, poignant, delicious terror his attention fired inside her.

No, she thought angrily, driving the emotions down. This line of thought always ended the same way, in a sleepless night spent dredging up memories of opportunities for love that she had failed to see, or bungled entirely. It would end in a pillow wet with tears.

Restoring her self-control, shutting out the hollow ache in her heart, she quickly instructed the Berbils on their tasks, then set out to rejoin the group.

-4-

"It's magnificent," Blair breathed.

The four-faced pyramid was fashioned of a black granite-like stone, with four pillars positioned about ten meters directly diagonal out from the corners. It had elements of both Mayan and Egyptian design, almost identical to the relics of Second Earth.

It had taken only moments for Doug's handscanner to locate the concealed latch that opened the entrance to the pyramid. It had taken barely an hour to establish the research station, connecting the cameras and lights to the reactive generator so that the whole of the tomb could be illuminated and the intricate hyroeglyphics adorning the walls recorded.

The central hall consumed most of the monument, running almost the full length of it. In the geometric center of the structure was a large stone circle, apparently a pool of some type, long since dry. Aligned with the center of the pool and in line with the outer obelisks were towering statues, constructed from the same stone as the pyramid itself. Rising twenty feet high, fashioned in the image of the Missionary gods, they were conclusive proof of that nomadic race's former presence here.

At the end opposite the entrance they had found the altar and sarcophagus. Scanner readings indicated the both were hollow, and both contained some sort of organic material. Unfortunately, the seal to the altar had apparently been intended permananent, as no opening mechanism was available. Blair was unconcerned, however; there would be time for dissection of the artifact later. Doug and Dana were at work on the sarcopohagus, and hoped to have it open shortly.

Blair sought out Petra, and found him seated at a table in front of his computer, pouring over images of the glyphs that had been cataloged so far.

"Any conclusions yet, doctor?" he asked.

Petra turned to face him. "Not much to go on, I'm afraid. The humanoids most commonly represented are very much like ourselves in construction, bipedal and whatnot. They are also blue, although wether this was some sort of body paint or actual pigmentation, I cannot say."

"Similiarly, I cannot deduce anything about their physiology, such as body temperature, chemical composition, or even if they are mammal or reptile, or something else entirely," he continued. "We'll have to wait until our worthy technical staff are able to crack that nut of theirs for anything further."

Blair looked at the readouts. A few berbils had been drafted as cameramen, and were working their way around the perimeter of the chamber, recording every inch of the heiroglyphics. When the team returned to the Inferno, these would be turned over to the AI to see if it could make sense of them.

Satisfied that everthing was proceeding well, Blair made for the pyramid entrance. As he approached, he saw Kincaid leaning against the wall beside the entry corridor. Miles' gaze was intent as he carefully scanned the pyramid's confines, his jaw muscles tense under his red-hued beard. He nodded to Blair as he drew near.

"Is something wrong?" Blair asked.

"No," Kincaid replied simply. Blair could see plainly that he was lying. Miles was on edge, but Blair knew he could not force the issue; Miles would speak when he was ready.

He found Alice behind the structure, her scanner extended to arms' length towards magnetic north. He crept up behind her, slipped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder with one motion. She automatically turned her head in the direction of his face to recieve a quick kiss on the cheek.

"How goes it?" he asked.

She stepped forward, breaking his grip on her. She punched a few more buttons and smiled her "I'm so clever" smirk as she passed him the set.

Blair looked at the readout screen. It showed a sphere, intersected by a plane about one-third of the way inwards from it's surface. On the plane, within the perimeter of the sphere, was a four-sided pyramid.

"So the source is underground then," he said.

"The emanations we picked up on the ship are, measured from here, about twenty kilometers in diameter at the surface." she said. "But that's only the upper third of the sphere."

"Which means the source is about three times stronger than what we are measuring from here," Blair said, finishing her thought for her.

"But that's not all," Alice continued. She took the scanner from him, pressed the "Next" button, and passed it back.

The display had shifted to an overhead shot of the pyramid. Lines passed in precise ninety-degree increments throught the statues, pillars and the corners of the pyramid itself, of which Blair was already aware. What took him by suprise was the line passing from the projected center of the energy sphere directly through the center of the pyramid.

"This means that..." he trailed off, stunned.

Alice drew near him, speaking quietly. "It means that the structure was built at a time when someone knew of the power source, and it's exact location. This pyramid was built while the Missionaries were here, either by them or at their direction."

Blair stared at her "So if we're right, and this is actually a tomb, the cadaver could very well be..."

"We got it!" they heard, and both started violently. Doug was walking rapidly towards them, grinning broadly. "We got the sarcophagus open."

-5-

Petra yawned, stretched his arms and, upon entering the medical lab, headed immediately for the beverage dispenser mounted in the wall by the computer workstation. He punched buttons that produced a piping-hot cup of creamy, sweet coffee, spiked with extra caffiene.

After recovering the cadaver, the crew had remained planet-side for just six more hours before boarding the shuttle and returning to the ship. It had been four more hours since then unloading cargo and submitting to tests for perniscious microbes, but finally they were all allowed to go back to their respective duties.

No doubt by now the ship's science and commanding officers were busily de-stressing each other, as were, he suspected, the pilot and engineer. He wondered if Kincaid ever thought about approaching one of the women. No, he thought with a chuckle. That man was so self-sufficient he probably couldn't ejaculate unless it was self-induced.

Petra had a date of his own tonight. There he was on the examining table, a handsome rogue certainly, but something of a complexion problem. Being dead for thousands of years was likely a factor in that.

The mummy was short, about Petra's height, it's leathery blue skin drawn tightly to it's skull and bony hands. It was swarthed everywhere else in tight-fitting mummy bindings fashioned from native fibers. A red cloak, remarkable well-preserved, covered the creature to it's complete length.

Petra activated the examination systems, ordering a full workup, including chemical composition, x-ray, magnetic resonance and CAT scans, and a host of other tests.

He took a set of forceps from the drawer beneath the table. "Now this won't hurt a bit," he said to the cadaver, chuckling again at his own wit. He pinched a tiny piece of tissue from the back of the right hand and placed it on a glass slide. He carried the slide back to the work station and slid it into the electron microscope. He activated the system and began to focus the image.

After several moments he got a satisfactory picture. He leaned back in his chair to consider what he was seeing. When it dawned on him, he leaned forward, the chair creaking under his girth, staring in utter amazement, transfixed by the image before him.

So immersed was he that he was unaware of movement in the lab behind him, until a dessicated blue-skinned hand grasped him below the chin and spun his head violently around, breaking his neck.

-6-

"Warning! Warning! Medical Officer Valenkov's life signs have terminated! Proceed immediately to the medical science center and render aid! Warning! Warning!"...

The alarm shocked Blair and Alice out of bed and sent them scrambling for their robes. The message repeated over and over as they raced out the door and down the hall towards the lifts. Inside, Blair hit the button for C deck, where Medical was located, then stepped away from the panel to wait for the doors to open.

"What happened?" Alice asked raspily.

"Probably the heart attack he's been working towards the whole voyage," Blair said. It was a crude comment, but Alice could see the intensity in his eyes, the way his whole body seemed to shift itself into high gear in a crisis. She loved him, body and soul, and knew in her heart that even death would fear such a man.

Blair burst into the Medical Lab and stopped. Behind him, Alice emitted a short, piercing scream.

Petra was sprawled on the floor motionless. At his feet stood the cadaver, it's red cloak thrown back over it's shoulders, it's arms outstretched over Petra's body. Both forms were surrounded in a cloud of bloody vapor.

Even as his mind struggled to get ahold of this impossible scene, he realized that Petra's body was decaying at an impossible rate. Like a time-lapse video, the portly Russian's body was dissolving, collapsing into itself, dissappearing. In the same instant, he realized the cadaver was filling out, it's ancient flesh regenerating.

My God, he thought, It's eating him.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back towards the door. It was Kincaid, and in his other hand was a maser. Blair backed away, pushing Alice along behind him , while Miles took aim and fired.

The maser emitted a high-pitched whine, unleashing a burst of microwaves that vaporized the creature's organic tissue without jeapordizing the hull of the ship beyond. Miles fired twice more, producing half-dollar sized holes passing completely through the creature's chest.

The creature threw it's head back in a silent shriek of pain. The mist surrounding it collapsed, drenching both itself, Petra's corpse and the surrounding area in a flood of gore. It oriented it's outstretched hands to point towards Miles.

The room exploded in blinding light. Blair threw his hands up by reflex, then was knocked from his feet by a deafening roar.

"Get out!" Blair screamed to Alice, unable to hear his own voice. He struggled to his knees, tried to open his eyes and found that they were open. Deaf and blind, he could not tell where Alice or Miles were, whether they had heard him, or if they were alive to hear. Panic swept over him, making his heart thud wildly inside his chest.

On his knees, he felt around himself desperately, trying to locate the maser. Hands grasped his shoulders, and he lashed out blindly, felt his arm caught and worked into an wristlock. He struggled for several frantic seconds, then felt a sting on his captured arm. Immediately he felt the panic begin to subside, replaced by a warm narcotic glow. His sensory darkness subsided into the darkness of unconciousness.

-7-

He felt something cool pressed to his face, the soothing sensation making him aware of the pain it eased. His face felt hot, dry and stiff. Burnt, he thought. Alice, he thought.

He opened his eyes, and was relieved to find he could see again. He was lying on a blanket stretched out on the floor of the ship's bridge. Alice was wiping his face with a cloth that smelled medicinal.

"It's from the first aid kit," she said, noticing him looking at it. "You've got a first-degree burn on your face and hands." She picked up his hand and began to stroke it with the cloth, like a caress. "You should be fine in a few days."

It was hard to hear her, the way his ears were ringing. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said. "You shielded me from the worst of the blast with your body."

He sat up stiffly. "Kincaid?"

Alice mouth drew down into a bitter frown. She looked away from him and wiped her eyes quickly and shook here head twice.

As he got to his feet, Alice rising beside him, he noticed Doug and Dana by the com console. As he approached, Doug passed him a maser. "Is that thing still alive?" he asked.

"We're not sure, sir," Doug said. "There was nothing in the room but yourselves and the bodies when we arrived. By the smell in the room and the condition of Kincaid's body, I'd guess some sort of electrical discharge took place."

"Alright," Blair said. "We need to know if that thing is still aboard our ship. Even if it was killed, death doesn't seem very permanent for it. If it is still alive, then we need to know what we're dealing with."

"Doug, Dana, I want you to remain here. Work on the translation of the heiroglyphics we took from the pyramid, they may tell us something useful. Alice, arm yourself and come with me."

As Alice retrived a maser from the secure rack on the bridge wall, Blair asked, "What did you two do with the bodies?"

Dana said, "We bagged them and put them in refrigerated storage in the lab."

Blair nodded and walked to the bridge door. Dana fell in behind him. He unlocked the hatch and cracked the opening, looking through the slit for movement. Seeing nothing, he carefully exited the bridge. When nothing happened to him, he waved Alice through and closed the hatch. He heard Doug secure it as they advanced down the hall, weapons ready.

They rode down the lift in silence, weapons trained on the door as it slid open. They moved down the corridor to Medical, entering in the same manner they had left the bridge.

The medical lab stank of charred flesh and ozone. A thin layer of soot covered every exposed surface. They completed a circuit of the lab, but found no sign of the creature. Alice moved to the control console while Blair covered the rest of the room with his maser.

"Damn," Alice swore. "The computer is shot. Probably took damage from the discharge Doug was describing." She stepped quickly to the microscope. "This is done for too. Oh, wait..." she said, and ejected a disk from the microscope's data drive. "The drive is shielded. There may be something left on this."

Blair nodded and said, "I want you to have a look at Kincaid's body, see if you can tell what sort of weapon that thing employed."

Alice moved to the locker and carefully opened the door. Seeing no movement in the darkend room, she snapped the overhead lights on.

"Blair," she said, the quaver in her voice making his chest constrict. "What?" he said.

Inside the refrigeration chamber, two specimen drawers, man-sized, were pulled out of the storage units. Both were empty.

-8-

"Do you think they're alright?" Dana asked.

Doug smiled what he hoped was a reassuring smile. They were sitting on the deck in the corner nearest the door, waiting for the computer to finish, or the others to return, whichever came first. "Sure they are. I trust them both."

Dana said, "I've heard you say that before, that you 'trust' someone. That really means something to you, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, it does," Doug said. "Blair's been in Exploratory for twenty years now, and Alice is one of the top science officers in the fleet. Their combined IQ is probably greater than the ship's computer. I trust their judgement."

"That's not what I mean," Dana said. "I didn't ask why you trusted them. I wanted to know why it's so important to you to trust them."

Doug thought this over for several minutes as the computer struggled on with it's translations. "I guess I just need to feel confident in my team. We all have to depend on each other at different times, and if we don't trust each others' abilities and respect their decisions, then we can't call ourselves a team."

Dana was quiet, watching him for a moment. "Do you trust me, Doug?" she asked, softly.

"Yeah, I do," he replied, with complete sincerity.

"Translation complete," the computer chirped.

"Summarize and save files," Doug instructed. They got up from the floor and walked towards the console, Dana in front. Halfway across the room, Doug noticed a reddish glow that seemed to float eye-level in midair. Something struck him in the throat, and he felt himself go numb from the neck down. He struck the floor and rolled, coming to rest against the captain's chair.

Everything was dreamlike. He saw the creature appear in the room, like a fuzzy video image being tuned into focus. It was filled out now, thin and bony, but not the dried husk they had brought from the surface. It's strength was obvious, for with one arm it lifted the screaming, struggling woman from the deck by her throat, and held her there until she turned purple and stopped screaming and struggling.

"I'm sorry," he thought. "I failed you." The creature dropped the corpse and walked with a shuffling gait to where Doug lay, twined it's fingers in his hair and lifted him from the deck. The ease with which it did this suprised him, but no more than the sight of his own headless body beside Dana's.

-9-

Alice and Blair were preparing to leave the medical lab when the ship's alarms began to bray. "Warning! Emergency landing procedures initiated. All hands to stations. Warning..."

Blair broke for the door, then stopped short when Alice yelled, "Wait!"

-10-

Covering their path with the masers as best they could, the two raced back to the lift, then down the corridor to the bridge. Blair punched in his security code, but the door wouldn't open. He tried it again, and still no response.

"Engineering", Alice said, grabbing his shoulder. They turned to go, and the door hissed open behind them. They spun back, terror electrifying their spines, snapping their weapons up into the doorway.

Nothing moved. Blair stepped quickly into the room, Alice at his back. Their eyes ran across the bridge, and then Alice gasped.

Blair grimaced at the sight of the bodies. Two more of his friends were dead, Dana's asphyxiated corpse was laying like discarded rubbish on the floor of his bridge, Doug's severed head sitting on the ship's navigation console like some grotesque desk furnishing. But when Doug's eyes seemed to follow his movements, the head rock on the console as the jaw worked, mouthing voiceless words, Blair had to question whether his hold on sanity was slipping.

Alice ran without hesitation to the nav console, punching buttons furiously, yelling over the wailing klaxons, "Computer, abort, abort!" Blair ran up behind her and studied the readouts, knew it was hopeless.

"It's going to put down by the pyramid," he said in her ear to be heard over the sirens.

"No, the trajectory's wrong," she yelled. "It'll burn up in the atmosphere! We have to get to an escape pod!" Even as she spoke, the huge vessel shuddered violently, throwing her into the console and Blair to the deck.

They raced through the door, weapons forgotten in their hands, as the ship continued it's death throes. Just beyond the door was a hatch built into the side of the corridor. Blair raised the cover on the switch by the door, pressed it. The hatch slid open, and they ran inside the small room.

The pod was large enough to accomodate the entire crew, so they had ample room to move. Blair secured the pod while Alice entered the landing coordinates, far from the site of the black pyramid. She hit the launch button, and the vessel broke loose from it's parent craft.

Alice turned from the console and walked over to Blair, putting her arms around him. They held each other tightly, unaware that the navigation console buttons had begun to depress and release rapidly, as though struck by invisible fingers. In seconds, the landing coordinates were changed.

Blair opened his eyes, saw the movement, and pulled free from Alice, thrusting he aside. He whipped his maser up to aim at the moving keyboard, then stopped.

Out of the air, a wavering shape appeared, solidified, revealing the red-cloaked, bandage-swathed form of the alien.

"Lay down your weapons. They are of no use against me," the creature said slowly. It's voice was quavering, yet deep, full of power and authority."

"I suspected if you could learn to navigate our craft, then our language was probably no challenge for you," Alice said, but she did not lower her maser. With every second, the pod rocketed further from the mothership, closer to it's destination on Third Earth below.

"Who are you?" Blair demanded.

The creature issued a cackling, obscene laugh. "I am the eternal night that falls at the end of life. I am the tomb, forever hungering for the warm flesh of the living, while I myself can never die. I am the servant of the ancient spirits of evil, the destroyer of gods, become a god myself."

"I am Mumm-Ra, the Ever-Living, ruler of this world, and your new master."

Blair looked at Alice, who looked back, shrugged and nodded. Even as she did so, her form flickered before him. Mumm-Ra noticed.

"What trickery is this?!" the creature bellowed. It's hands rose, lightning flashed unerring towards them, passed through them and struck the bulkhead, searing and puckering the metal.

The images of Blair and Alice glowed as they were ionized by the discharge. "This is where we part, you murdering bastard. Happy landings," Blair said, and then the pair of them vanished.

"NOOOO!" Mumm-Ra screamed as his vessel shrieked towards the earth far below. He spun to the controls, struck them in the patterns he had discovered in the brain of the pilot. His destination was within a mile of his tomb, but he could not slow the vessel down.

The pod's tore through the sky at five times the speed of sound. It's hull, composed of the strongest materials Terran science could create, struck the desert surface like a meteor, blasting the desert sand outward from the point of impact in a fifteen-foot high wall. The wave of sand crashed into the pyramid, then drove higher, burying the structure beneath tons of dry silica.

Of the pod, nothing remained but a twisted mass of metal, embedded in a sarcophagus of glass generated by the tremendous heat.
 
 

As the pod plummeted to the planet below, so did the vessel it had launched from. In the science lab, Alice and Blair sat up from the interface seats and hurried towards the bridge.

"I expected it would learn what it needed to get back to it's pyramid, and would focus on that," Alice said as they fast-walked to the lift. "It probably knows what the word 'hologram' means, but never took the time to discover that we can generate one anywhere in the ship."

"You're a genius Allie," Blair said. They walked onto the bridge. "Think we can figure out how to get control of the ship back now?"

Alice examined the nav console for several minutes. In virtual reality, while pulling off their ruse, she had examined it as well. This check only confirmed what she already knew.

"I can't stop the landing procedure; that's locked in," she said. "What I can do is change our setdown point." She tapped keys for several seconds. "There, about eight hundred miles from the pyramid, by this huge forrested region."

The ship shuddered violently, but this was not Alice manipulating the attitude jets. "There goes the reactor core." Blair said. They watched the ship's fuel trail behind them in a glittering stream, to safely burn up in the upper atmosphere, rather than risk detonating on the planet's surface.

Blair put his arm around Alice's shoulder. She pressed herself closely to him. "We never did send out a report to Command, did we?"

"No," Blair said. "We were waiting for everyone to complete their share of the report. And the hyperspatial transmitter won't work in an atmosphere."

"Well," Alice said. "I guess we're home."

Together, they watched the horizon of Third Earth loom larger, until it filled the forward screen completely.

-11-

Three years had passed.

Blair stepped through the airlock and into the darkened vessel. Emergency lighting was still functional, although dim, allowing him to find his way to the emergency stairway. He followed the stair in the direction of the science lab.

Blair's body was lean, hardened by the nescessities of life in the great forest. Always fit, his muscles had grown beyond the confines of his original fleet uniforms, until he was forced to begin tanning animal hides to allow the fashioning of new clothes for himself and Alice.

She had remained at home this time, tending to the children with the aid of the few operable Berbils left on board. He smiled; it was a big family, more like an elementary school class, in truth.

The science labs had contained a vast array of equipment, all of which had been pressed into service at some point since the crash. First had been the terminal seats, where they'd downloaded nescessary survival skills, such as tanning and sewing hide clothing, directly from the AI into their own brains. Using the skills was not unlike trying to remember how to ride a bicycle--it came back quickly, and got stronger with practice.

The second had been the cloning tanks in the genetics lab. Among their children were duplicates of themselves, of Dana and Doug, and then every possible combination of the four. To preserve viability, each zygote had it's genetic code altered, tailored just enough to rule out the possibility of inbreeding. A few more derived directly from tissue samples stored in cryofreeze, and the colony numbered twenty in all. So long as intermarriage was maintained according to plan, when the children matured, the colony would survive.

Their dwellings were high in the ancient trees of the forests, connected by walkways; the predators of Third Earth had proven too inventive, too powerful, or simply too persistent for ground dwellings to be safe. Now, they only needed to return to the ship when it's unique facilities were required, usually medical.

One of the children had contracted a virus that was not responding to the pan-vaccine. Blair had brought a sample of blood for the AI to analyze, then manufacture a remedy. He dressed a slide and performed the procedure, soon collecting a vial of updated vaccine sufficient for the whole clan.

As he left the lab, he noticed the door was sluggish. The emergency power was failing; in no more than a few hours, this option would not be left to them. At that point, the ship would seal off forever.

Overcome by a sudden wave of nostalgia, he set the vial and hypos in the airlock and began to trek back towards the bridge. He wanted to have one last look at his command before it passed out of his life permanently.

The bodies had been removed, of course. He looked towards the navigation console, remembering Doug. He had lived just six hours after the crash. Tests had revealed the secret to survival for both him and the creature that called itself "Mumm-Ra"; his tissue was infested with nanocytes. The microscopic machines were feeding his cells oxygen and nutrients directly from the air around him, carrying waste to the stump of his neck to be expelled. When the power stored within the 'cytes had failed, the process stopped, and Doug died.

The 'cytes themselves were wonders. While man-made nanotechnology produced strains specific to given tasks--one for a cold virus, another to repair tissue, another to ease a migraine--the alien units were non-specialized. They could literally do anything their controller could concieve of, except generate their own power. They had to rely on a field of energy to replenish their stores, or they simply failed.

This of course explained why Mumm-Ra had been so desperate to return to it's tomb. While the nanotechnology that sustained it and gave it it's psuedo-magical powers could be seperated from the field for a time, maybe even days, eventually that power would flag. If it failed completely, the thing might very well die itself.

In the meantime, it had used that miraculous technology to kill four people, cannibalizing two of the corpses to regenerate it's own dessicated tissues. It had used them to neutralize Doug as a threat, then very likely to patch into his brain, extracting his knowledge of piloting the ship. It could use them to conceal itself somehow, although just how, he did not know. It had cheated death. With such power, no wonder the thing thought it was a god.

On the bridge, he turned on the long-range scanners and used them to observe the pyramid site. He observed the glazed area where Mumm-Ra's pod had crashed. Nothing seemed to have changed; perhaps the creature had died there, in the bottom of that glass-filled crater. He thought of the power of the alien nanotechnology Mumm-Ra commanded, of those millions of microscopic robots, restored to their power source, scraping away infintesimally at their crystalline tomb, eroding their way to freedom as relentlessly as the rain tearing down the mountains.

Where had it come from, how had it gained such power, how did it control the technology? The Missionaries were involved, but in what way? Sometimes, in the blackest hour of the night, he would sit in the entrance of their little hut, the last maser in his hand, and think that maybe this creature was a Missionary, a mad one, left behind by the others. Or perhaps it was native after all, a servant who turned his gifts to evil purpose after the masters had departed.

Or perhaps it was a usurper, who'd stolen the fire of the gods and turned it on them. Perhaps the journey of the Missionaries had ended in that dark stone tomb.

The glow from the screen began to fade, bringing him out of his reverie. As it did, he noticed the com console screen, it's ready light glowing. He pressed the restore switch, and saw the screen come on, the glowing icon the read "translation summary". He pressed the icon on the screen, then cursed softly; even as the text appeared, the screen dimmed out and the emergency lights failed completely, lreaving him in ink-like darkenss.

Blair found his way out by touch. As he exited the ship, the last of the vessel's energy was spent closing and sealing the hatch. No matter; he had what he'd come for, and every other usable piece of the equipment had long since been moved out.

Blair walked down the gangway, turned to face the vessel. Their last link to the stars was severed. They were as perpared as they could hope for, as they would ever be. He began the long walk home.
 
 

Hundreds of miles away, in the dim interior of the black pyramid, within a sealed sarcophagus, something stirred.