I hesitated. “Yeah… Probably.”

“All right,” he said, standing up. “I guess I’m in. Let’s go see this surprise of yours.”

We continued on, climbing until I led him, finally, out a gap onto the surface. I pulled him over to the entrance to my improvised home, then made him hold on to me as I lowered us down inside, as—well—the chances that he’d slip and fall were pretty good. He really was amazing at a ton of things… but I’d seen him drop no fewer than eight books on his toes while studying this past year.

“This had better not be something to do with rats, Spin,” he said as we landed. “I know you go crazy for them, but…”

I turned up the light on my light-line, illuminating the ship. As if in coordination with my reveal, M-Bot turned on his dash and running lights. I’d cleared away much of the rubble, and with the lights, the ship didn’t look half bad. Broken, yes, with a bent wing. But distinctly different from anything we had in the DDF.

Rig gaped at it, his jaw dropping practically to the floor.

“Well?” I said. “What do you think?”

In response he sat down on a nearby boulder and—still staring at the ship—pulled off his right boot, then flipped it over his shoulder.

“Well,” I noted, “I said boots. plural. But I’ll take it.”

18

I didn’t get much sleep that night.

I spent a few hours helping Rig look over M-Bot—he wanted to check each bit of damage. Eventually though, I started to get bleary-eyed. Rig was still going strong, so I rolled out a mat and used Bloodletter for a pillow.

Every time I dozed off, I’d eventually wake to hear Rigmarole speaking to the ship. “So… you’re a machine, but you can think.”

“All machines ‘think,’ in that they execute responses to input. I am simply far more complex in my executable responses, and in the inputs I can recognize…”

More dozing.

“… can explain to us what is wrong?”

“My memory banks are faulty, so I cannot offer more than cursory explanations—but perhaps those will be sufficient.”

I turned over on my side, and dipped back down into sleep.

“… do not know where I originated, although a fragment of a memory implies I was created by human beings. I am not certain whether other species of sapient life exist. I believe I could answer that once…”

Around six in the morning, I rubbed my eyes and sat up. Rig lay below an open access panel, fiddling with something underneath the ship. I flopped down next to him, yawning. “So?”

“It’s incredible,” he said. “Have you told Cobb about it?”

“Not yet.”

“Why delay? I mean, what if this thing can make the difference in fighting the Krell?”

“Theoretically,” I said, “humans had this thing when they first fought the Krell. It didn’t help then.”

“I would note,” M-Bot said, “that ‘it’ is listening.”

“And?” I asked the ship, yawning again.