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systems. The thought of an ill-equipped rabble of humans from fifteen centuries before my time having
any hope of overcoming that might is risible, frankly. And besides we are not hyperdrive engineers. We
could not 'pass on the secrets' of the Squeem drive, as you put it."
"Then let our engineers take it apart."
"Any such attempt would result in the devastation of half a planet."
Berg found herself bridling again. "You're still being patronizing," she protested. "Even insulting. We're
not complete dummies, you know; we are your ancestors, after all. Maybe you ought to have more
respect."
"My friend, your thinking is simplistic. We did not come here to attempt a simple military assault on the
Qax. Even were it to succeed which it could not it would not be sufficient. Our purpose is at once
much more subtle and yet capable of achieving much, much more."
"But you won't tell me what it is? You won't trust me. Me, your own great-to-the-nth grandmother "
Shira smiled. "I would be proud to share some fraction of your genetic heritage, Miriam."
Side by side they walked on, still heading toward the center of the earth-craft. Soon they had cleared the
belt of construction-material huts with their knots of busy people, and the hum of the Friends'
conversation faded behind them; when they reached the center of the craft it was as if they were entering
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a little island of silence.
And as the two women walked into the broken circles of stones, that seemed entirely appropriate to
Berg.
There were no globe lights here; the stones, hulking and ancient, stood defiant in the smoky light of
Jupiter. Berg stood beneath one of the still-intact Sarsen arches and touched the cold blue-gray surface
of a standing stone; it wasn't intimidating or cold, she thought, but friendly more like stroking an
elephant. "You know," she said, "you could cause a hell of a stir just by landing this thing on Earth.
Maybe on Salisbury Plain, a few miles from the original which, of course, is standing there in the wind
and the rain, in this time zone. If it was up to me I couldn't resist it, Project or no Project."
Shira grinned. "The thought does have an appeal."
"Yeah." Berg walked toward the center of the circle, stepping over crumbled fragments of rock. She
turned slowly around, surveying the truncated landscape, trying to see this place through the eyes of the
people who built it four thousand years earlier. How would this place have looked at the solstice,
standing on the bare back of Salisbury Plain, with no sign of civilization anywhere in the universe save a
few scattered fires on the plain, soon dying in the dawn light?
...But now her horizon was hemmed in by the anonymous gray shoulders of the Friends'
construction-material huts; and she knew that even if she had the power to blow those huts away she
would reveal only a few hundred yards of scratched turf, a ragged edge dangling over immensities. And
when she tilted her head back she could see the arc of Jupiter's limb, hanging like an immense wall across
the universe.
The old stones were dwarfed by such grandeur. They seemed pathetic.
Absurdly she felt a lump rising to her throat. "Damn it," she said gruffly.
Shira stepped closer and laid her hand on Berg's arm. "What is it, my friend?"
"You had no right to do it."
"What?"
"To hijack these stones! This isn't their place; this isn't where they are meant to be. How could you
murder all that history? Even the Qax never touched the stones; you said so yourself."
"The Qax are an occupying power," Shira murmured. "If they thought it in their interest, they would grind
these stones into dust."
"But they did not," Berg said, her jaw tight. "And one day, with or without you, the Qax will be gone.
And the stones would still stand but for you."
Shira turned her face up to Jupiter, her bare skull limned in salmon-pink light. "Believe me, we the
Friends are not without conscience when it comes to such matters. But in the end, the decision was
right." She turned to Berg, and Berg was aware of a disturbingly religious, almost irrational aspect to the
girl's pale, empty blue eyes.
"How do you know?" Berg asked heavily.
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"Because," Shira said slowly, as if speaking to a child, "in the end,no harm will have come to the
stones."
Berg stared at her, wondering whether to laugh. "Are you crazy? Shira you've burrowed under the
stones, wrapped a hyperdrive field around them, ripped them off the planet, run them through the gauntlet
of the Qax fleet, and thrown them fifteen hundred years back in time! What more can you do to them?"
Shira smiled, concern returning to her face. "You know I will not reveal our intentions to you. I can't. But
I can see you are concerned, and I want you to believe this, with all your heart. When our Project has
succeeded, Stonehenge will not have been harmed."
Berg pulled her arm away from the girl's hand, suddenly afraid. "How is that possible? My God, Shira,
what are you people intending to do?"
But the Friend of Wigner would not reply.
Chapter 5
The flitter nestled against the Spline's stomach lining; small, clawlike clamps extended from the flitters
lower hull and embedded themselves in hardened flesh.
Jasoft Parz, watching the anchoring maneuver from within the flitter, felt his own stomach turn in
sympathy.
He ran rapid tests of the integrity of his environment suit green-glowing digits scrolled briefly across his
wide faceplate and then, with a nod of his head, caused the flitter's port to sigh open. There was a hiss
of equalizing pressure, a breeze that for a few moments shouldered into the cabin, pushing weakly at
Parz's chest. Then Parz, with a sigh, unbuckled his restraints and clambered easily out of his chair. Since
the last time he'd visited the Governor inside his Spline flagship, back in Earth orbit a full year ago, the
AS treatments had done wonders for some of his more obvious ailments, and it was a blessed relief to
climb out of a chair without the accompaniment of stabbing agonies in his back.
Antibody drones had fixed a small, flat platform over the Spline's stomach lining close to the lip of the
flitter's port; a compact translator box was fixed to it. Briskly Parz pulled himself out of the flitter and
activated electromagnets in the soles of his boots to pin his feet to the platform. Soon he was done, and
was able to stand in a reasonably dignified fashion.
He looked around. The hull of the flitter, resting beside him, was like some undigested morsel in the gut
of the Spline. He turned his face up to the ball of boiling fluid suspended above him; alongside it,
shimmering in the murky gloom of the Spline gut, was a Virtual of the scene outside the icosahedral
wormhole portal, a sliver of Jupiter itself. "Governor," he said, "it's been a long time."
The Governor's voice sounded from the translator box, slightly muffled in Parz's ears by the thick air.
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