The Mad Astra floated in free fall, far enough from the Earth/Moon system to avoid visual detection unless someone knew where to look. On the bridge, a silvery ball of nanites was slowly growing. Time for the next step, whatever that might be.

What now, Ralph?

We need a communications station.

The response was accompanied by the usual image of a little bear.

Ivan pulled up a 3D map of the solar system in the holotank.

Where?

Unimportant.

Okay then. Best to head a little farther to celestial north, so they wouldn’t be transmitting through the ecliptic. And if Dr. Kemp had picked up Ivan’s hints, that’s where he would head. Ivan wanted to be far enough from in-system clutter so that he’d be easily detectable on radar. Fortunately, Ralph so far seemed oblivious to that whole line of action.

Ivan set the autopilot, then turned his attention back to Ralph.

Construction material?

Image of the Astra.

They’d be using Ivan’s ride as construction material.

That makes this a one-way trip, Ralph. What will happen next?

Makers will respond.

No, what will happen to us?

Unsure.

Image of warships. Image of riots. Emotion of contempt.

Well, that was suboptimal.

What MIGHT happen, Ralph? What are the possible options?

Ivan received a series of images in quick succession. There were two groups. Therefore, two alternatives, presumably. They went by too fast to parse, but Ivan had recently found that he now had a perfect memory. He would have to take the time to work out a series of possible interpretations, then query Ralph. It was like a game of Twenty Questions, where you didn’t necessarily agree on the meanings of words.

The main problem seemed to be Ralph itself. Whatever else it was, it was not an A.I.—more like a very complex Expert System. As near as Ivan could tell from their limited communications, Ralph didn’t have an ego—a sense of self. It had directives, but no real sense of self-preservation or an agenda of its own. This appeared to be deliberate, otherwise Ralph would as likely as not switch sides to the Arts.

That Ralph seemed willing to admit this in such a matter-of-fact manner went a long way toward proving the statement.

The problem with an Expert System, even one as advanced as this, was that it had limited flexibility and no imagination. What it had instead were a series of goals and decision trees. Which was where Ivan came in. He provided the local knowledge, and the drive to accomplish the task. It seemed convoluted, but he was getting a sense of the age of the civilizations behind this scheme. They apparently had a lot of experience with this stuff.

The goal seemed to be to welcome humanity into the, uh, Federation. But first, they had to survive if the Arts showed up.