“Right.”

  Leila led, and I followed, tracking after her with Peachy at my back. It wasn’t something I was exactly comfortable about, but it would do. I wondered where he was from, who would bother coming, let alone staying, when they knew what dangers threatened the world.

  “They’re everywhere,” Peachy explained, when we’d settled Geordie into a bunk in one of the smaller houses. “And, as you’ve noticed, they’re getting better at finding their way around, more precise with their rifts. It’s almost like they can sense where we are.”

  I glanced nervously around the cabin, and he smiled.

  “Not here,” he said. “It’s the stone—which is why we’re here.”

  “We being?” I wanted to know.

  “CHASM,” he replied, and continued when he caught the puzzlement on my face. “Corporation Halcyon Armed Space Mining. C.H.A.S.M. for short. CHASM.”

  Mining. Well, that explained a lot.

  “And what do you want here?”

  Peachy gave me an impatient stare, and then looked askance of Leila.

  “You haven’t explained,” she said, “and we’ve literally been living under rocks for years.”

  He sighed, and started speaking as though he’d told the story all too many times before.

  “As I’ve said, the interdimensionals are getting better at making incursions into this dimension, so good, in fact, that they’re now able to get onto starships and space stations.”

  I’d heard of those. When the colony had moved itself underground, they’d taken their tech with them. It was the only reason we hadn’t gone back into the stone age, the only way we’d been able to make the caves habitable and build a civilization beneath the ground. Ten years ago, and even I knew we’d been slowly slipping. With no contact with the outside universe, how could it have been otherwise… and then I remembered: Halcyon had been one of our sponsors.

  “So, you wanted to make good on your investment,” I said, ignoring his story.

  Peachy stopped, his mouth open as though he’d been about to continue. He closed it, glanced at Leila, swallowed, and looked at me.

  “The stones shield you from incursions.”

  “Even in the largest caves,” I confirmed.

  “We know of nothing else that can. This,” and, here, he paused to make a gesture that included the cabin, and the valley and tunnels beyond. “This is our research station. We’ve patented the mineral formula, and will be bringing in scientists and equipment to develop a way of synthesizing it and, or, bonding it to metal. We need to know what it does, exactly, and exactly how it does it.”

  He stopped, watching my face.

  “And then you’re going to market it,” I said.

  I had lived my whole life with people developing products in the hope of one day re-establishing contact with the universe outside. I knew about product patenting, and marketing.

  “And you’ll need to contact and expand the colonies,” I added, “make mining and processing a priority, and so forth.”

  Peachy looked from me to Leila, and back again.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Miranda always was a quick study,” she said, “so you’d better tell her the rest.”

  The rest?

  “I take it there’s a catch,” I said.

  There always was.

  “It depends how you look at it,” Peachy began, and I glanced at Leila.

  Her shrug was not reassuring.

  “Canon V is a corporation asset,” he began, and I bit back the urge to argue.

  Canon schmannon. They’d left us on our own for ten years. They’d ignored our hails, and they hadn’t cared whether we lived or died—until they’d discovered we had this protective layer of rock, and they needed it. Well, well, well.

  Peachy seemed to be waiting for an outburst, or a tirade, but I hadn’t been made a guide because I ran my mouth. I waited for him to continue. Finally, with a sigh, he did.

  “And the colony was seeded with our funding.”

  Again, he waited, and, again, so did I. Again, he continued.

  “So, I believe we have a lot to offer each other.”

  And, again, he paused. This time, it was more difficult for me to keep my mouth shut.

  He believed we had a lot to offer each other? Yeah, right. More like, he was here because Halcyon—CHASM, my ass—Halcyon believed it could make a tidy profit. Come to think of it, if the interdimensionals were the threat this guy was claiming, the profits would be enormous.

  Peachy glanced at Leila.

  “I believe it’s time for us to contact the colony,” he said, and Leila gasped.

  That news had come as a surprise, but Peachy kept talking.

  “We need to move our operations up a level. Miranda, we’ll need a complete debrief…” he paused, as I swayed on my feet.

  Leila caught it, too.

  “Maybe when she’s rested,” she suggested.

  Her next question: ‘How far did you run?’ was something I heard through a growing fog, as I sat down on the floor. Twenty-four hours plus a bit, Geordie and I spent on the move. Even I had my limits. I wasn’t much help as they got me into the bunk above Geordie’s, didn’t even hear them leave as I plunged into sleep. Felt like something had curled up and died in my mouth, when I woke thirty-six hours later.

  There had to have been sensors in the cabin, because Leila and Peachy were waiting when I stepped out of the shower. Lucky I was sharing the cabin with Geordie and had found a pair of coveralls in the closet at the end of the bunk. At least I was dressed when I answered the door.

  “Debrief?” I asked, not stopping as I opened the windows for when Geordie woke up, and then I worked my way around the kitchenette.

  I found a few new things. Coffee? I’d heard of it. It hadn’t been considered a colony essential, and the grown-ups had whined about it running out. Milk… Hadn’t had much of that either, but Leila had stocked in the usual shroom teas, which didn’t need it. I selected one of those, then took one of the big blue fungi out of the pantry and found a fry-pan.

  Peachy wrinkled his nose, and I ignored him, slicing the shroom into steaks, and pulling out the jar of tark fat that was in the fridge. It didn’t take too long to cook, and Geordie was up and in the bathroom before I was done, so I cooked him a couple of shroom steaks, as well. They were done by the time he was out, and looking a lot more awake.

  “So,” he said, settling down beside me on one side of the table, accepting the plate of shroom, and cup of tea I’d set there. “Where we at?”

  “Miranda was just going to debrief us,” Peachy told him, taking a seat opposite.

  It didn’t seem like he wanted to wait, so I filled him in, in between mouthfuls. Man didn’t want to give me time to eat, man was just going to have to put up with it. Geordie didn’t say a word, just ate his steaks, while I talked. I think he knew what was coming when I was done.

  “And you?” Peachy asked.

  I finished off my breakfast and cleared our plates, while Geordie spoke. By the time he was done, the dishes were clean again, and I’d made shroom tea all round. He picked up his cup, shortly after I’d sat down.

  “So, you can both sense when the interdimensionals are on their way,” Peachy said, and his change of topic startled me.

  I must have looked as surprised as I felt, because Leila laid a hand on Peachy’s wrist, and he stopped.

  “Let me take over,” she said, and I knew I wasn’t going to like what was coming next.

  I was right. I sat opposite Leila, and I wondered at how far and how fast she’d fallen in a few short months. And then I took a strong grip on my temper, and tried to make sure I’d heard right.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said, looking from Peachy to Leila, and deliberately avoiding Geordie’s eyes. “You want me, and Geordie, here, to have a baby.”

  They nodded, but I kept going, struggling to keep my voice calm, as I did so.

  “Because, you want some kind of early warning system on your ships, and you haven’t devised a computer alternative yet, and”—I raised a hand as they both opened their mouths to respond—“And because I’ve got the ability to deal with confined spaces, which Geordie hasn’t, but because we’re both sensitive, you want us to make a baby that might be stronger than either of us.”

  Now, I waited for their response. In the end, it was Peachy who replied.

  “Essentially, yes,” he said.

  “You can’t do a gene splice for the desired traits?” I asked.