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The emotional underpinnings of her reply were those of a soul ragged and torn. Lying against Flinx, a distraught Pip tried to filter that acid and agony.

Die now, die later; everything dies. Galaxies collide, suns go out. The universe is a cruel, dark, uncaring place. What do I care, what does it matter, if a little death arrives a little sooner for one insignificant pin-wheel of stars? Let chaos and disorder sort out the consequences between them, I say, and damn the collusion of apathetic elements that brought me into being!

Her declamation was accompanied by the emotive equivalent of an all-encompassing sneer.

I'm going to kill this woman lying here before me, she continued remorselessly, and next, the female bug lying next to her, and then your senile friends, and then I am going to kill you, brother. I'm going to do it because, unlike you, I can. What are you going to do about it?

This, he told her. I'm going to do it because, unlike you, I can.

He reached out with everything that he was, everything that he had become in his too-long twenty-six years of hard existence. Everything that was in him, everything that was of him. He sensed her mind harden as she threw up her defenses.

And felt her recoil from his compassion.

It was the last thing she expected him to send her way.

His effort was not a solitary one. The cetacea were there with him. They draped around her an inescapable cocoon of such warmth, such sympathy, such understanding, that despite her mental howls of protest she could not ignore it. The Krang made itself known as well, saturating her mind with hundreds of thousands of years of lost history It showed her the destruction of entire worlds, the unending war between the Tar-Aiym and their hereditary enemies the Hur'rikku, and the desolation and ultimate futility that was the eventual result of that ghastly colossal conflict. Lastly the group-mind of Midworld weighed in, an all-engulfing greenness that was at once the projection and representation of an entire planet whose globe-girdling organisms were bound together by the universal need simply to survive. Exploiting Flinx as a vector it reached out to enfold her.

The inexorable power of all that collective compassion beat back the interminable rage, smothered the blind fury, suffocated the bitterness that drove and nourished his half sister. She fought back ferociously, striking out blindly at the understanding that threatened to throttle her.

Nothing could withstand the force of that collective empathy. Not all the hate in the galaxy. Not even the embittered, shrunken soul of one as driven and obsessed as Mahnahmi. Her rage finally gave way.

Uttering a last defiant cry of hate she shook her fist at the heavens, and began to tremble. Sitting down slowly on the deck she put the gun carefully to one side, drew her legs up to her chest, wrapped her arms around her knees, and began to whimper. After a moment she started to rock back and forth, side to side. Deep inside her something had been exposed and, once exposed, could not be nonchalantly shoved aside or casually put back the way it had been.

Breathing hard, the pain behind her eyes finally beginning to subside, Clarity found herself staring at the devil-woman. Nearby, a bruised and battered Sylzenzuzex was starting to regain consciousness. After a few moments a hesitant Clarity started forward on hands and knees. Reaching out, she swept the thranx weapon aside. It skittered roughly across the deck. The striking blond woman made no attempt to grab for it.

Jet-black eyes rose to meet Clarity's own. Their gaze was blank, utterly blank. There was no maliciousness in them now, no visceral loathing, no homicidal yearning. There was just—nothing.

The woman leaned toward her. Clarity started to draw back, hesitated, and held her ground. The moans of the injured filled the control chamber. Advancing on hands and knees, the woman came closer, closer. Halting, she dropped her head and lay down on her side. With her head in Clarity's lap she drew her