“Damn right. Even if they pulverize Juloss, they can’t eliminate us from this system now. Terrestrial DNA is here to stay. We mutate. We adapt. We evolve every time. In a billion years, this will still belong to our life. Because we rock.” He tilted his head back to kiss her.

Beside them, the waterfall cascade slowly shrank away until only drips were falling from the stony lip. A loud chime sounded across the garden zone.

“Time to go,” Yirella said softly.

They both looked up at Juloss again for a long moment, then made their way along the path to the exit.

—

The Morgan was made up of seven principal structures, all contained in spherical grids fifteen hundred meters in diameter, with silver thorn thermo-dumps rising up out of the strut junctions like metallic porcupine spikes to radiate excess heat out into space. The rear globe contained the gravitonic drive, capable of accelerating the battleship up to point nine light speed. Next came the main aneutronic fusion generators and their ancillaries, along with tanks of boron-11 and hydrogen fuel. Ahead of that, the third globe was basically a warehouse, containing asteroid mining equipment, along with refineries and one-stage von Neumann replicators. It was the same payload every human traveler generation ship carried, giving them the ability to start an entire high-level civilization in whatever star system they arrived at. As long as there was solid matter available—in the form of planets, asteroids, or comets—human society could build habitats and thrive. Globe four was the main life-support section, housing a pair of counter-rotating toroids that offered a pleasant park-like environment and comfortable apartments for the Morgan’s five-thousand-strong crew. Ahead of that was the weapons level, packed with a long and frighteningly impressive inventory of munitions that could devastate entire star systems, let alone enemy ships. Then came the hangar, with fifty genten-controlled attack cruisers capable of hundred-gee acceleration, along with fifteen troop carriers designed for both deep space and atmospheric flight. Finally, the forward globe housed the main portal shield which would open out like an umbrella around the warship to swallow any interstellar dust and gas the Morgan encountered at its incredible velocity, shunting it harmlessly away through twinned portals trailing a light-second behind the ship.