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“What?” He looked over at her. “If you object, Clarity, or think we should try something else first…”

She sighed and shook her head. “Don't listen to me. I'm just tired, that's all.” She offered a wan smile. “My area of expertise is cosmetics, remember? Not of much use when it comes to trying to save civilization. As far as deciding how and when to experiment with alien artifacts, I'll be the first to admit I don't have any qualifications.”

“Sure you do,” he contradicted her. “I'm an alien artifact, and you've experimented with me.”

She gaped at him. Figuratively, he gaped at himself in self-inflicted shock.

I—I made a joke, he thought numbly. A joke about my genesis. Try as he might, he could not remember having done anything of the sort ever before. His origins had always been a matter, to himself and to others, of utmost seriousness. Unsurprisingly, it had been left to Clarity to extract for the first time a scrap of absurdity from it.

Experiment, he thought dazedly to himself. That was the origin of Philip Lynx. Serious, somber, stern, severe—and if you looked at it a certain way, from a particular angle, just possibly also a little—silly?

They were all staring at him. As much to his surprise as that of everyone else, he smiled. “All right. Let's go see what's inside the big glowing green stone thing. Maybe it's a Xunca surprise.”

“Let us hope it is a Xunca surprise.” Truzenzuzex whispered under his breath, his spiracles barely pulsing. “Otherwise we will be reduced to drifting mentally as well as physically while formulating hopeful hypotheses from nothing.”

Semisentient as it was, the Teacher might have been expected to raise an objection or two of its own to the scientists' proposal. It was sufficiently advanced, however, to recognize that the experiment was one that had to be tried. If its master and his fellow organic intelligences were willing to risk their continued existence in the service of such investigation, then as a properly programmed AI it could hardly do less.

The vast chasm at the enlarged end of the asteroidal aggregate loomed even bigger as the Teacher approached it. Not a hint of the soft, almost comforting green glow was apparent within. A sequence of barely visible silvery striations lining the interior were all that interrupted the otherwise interminable starless dark. As the ship moved deeper and deeper inward, Flinx could not shake off the sensation of being swallowed.

He forced it from his thoughts as the ship moved deeper. It was a foolish analogy anyway. There was not the slightest suggestion of the macrobiotic about the alien assembly whose immense curving walls now fully engulfed them. It was cold, dead, and manifestly unalive.

Which led him to wonder at the source of the faint violet glow that appeared directly ahead.

At first he thought his eyes were playing tricks and that the purple was visual, not external. Standing beside him, however, Clarity raised an arm and pointed toward the same glimmering.

“Flinx, do you see that?”

He nodded. “There's some color there.” He looked sharply to his left. “Bran, Tru?”

“Something there for sure.” Tse-Mallory moved forward until he was leaning against the smooth surface of the main console, as if the additional bit of space he had walked might bring him close enough to the flickering color to allow him to identify it.

Further reflection was interrupted by the Teacher. “Flinx, we are accelerating.”

“I didn't give that order.” He had not taken his eyes off the distant speck of profound purple. “Do you feel a need to or have evidence that suggests we need to increase our forward velocity?”

“It would not matter if I did,” the ship replied uninformatively. “I note only that we have begun to accelerate. Rather dramatically, if I may say so.”

Flinx and Clarity exchanged a glance, then looked across at the two scientists.

Tse-Mallory looked bemused. “I don't sense any increase in speed. Tru?”

The philosoph was likewise noncommittal. “I perceive nothing. Flinx, ask the ship to elaborate.”

Flinx needed no prompting.