"Lisa, What's your opinion?" Zhou asked.

Lisa opened her mouth to respond.

She never got the chance.

---

"AI Ninety-Seven," Bath said, spinning around in a spinny-chair he'd brought into the craft. Its black, plastic, cushioned form was refreshingly synthetic. "What is it?"

"The ground here is showing signs of radiation," it replied.

Bath cocked his head. Now that he thought about it, the city-seeds growth was a bit odd; some of the buildings were growing in wrong, requiring him to provide manual corrections.

"Is it trace radiation?" Bath wondered, scooting his chair up to the craft's false windows. If it was only radiation left over from something else--like a nuclear detonation--he'd just manually transplant the seed to another location himself. After a few cycles of growth, he'd be able to isolate any radioactivity and send it off to ground zero.

"No. Something underground is sending out alpha particle waves, inducing radioactivity in the surrounding area."

Bath looked at the android dumbly. "This isn't a sapient world," he said. "Is there anything natural that could produce the alpha particle waves?"

"In the natural world, nothing is absolute," the android replied cryptically. "However, for this planet, the probability of naturally producing localized alpha waves of this strength is nil."

Bath couldn't get over the fact that the radioactivity-inducing waves were only showing up here, right where COTD decided to put down a new city-seed. I think I would have noticed if the grass on this mountain exhibited signs of radioactive mutation. Moreover, what were the chances of such a strange phenomenon being just outside of the planet's entrance gate?

Even as this thought passed through his mind, he realized that this wasn't in fact the case: he had nothing to compare the grass to, having only just stepped onto the planet. Though it looked like the grass of Earth--green and spiky--it had its own unique evolutionary history.

"I'll investigate," Bath grumbled. In an instant, his body disappeared and reappeared outside the craft as he transferred his Center along the gaseous pool of essence saturating the Egdelek Arc and the outside area within his range. Because his range reached into the center of the new city-seed, he was able to immediately reform next to the Anima and its upper level, the Spire.

He zipped forward as a small spearrow look-alike, darting down to the ground and changing into the form of a jerboa. He dug a hole, disappearing down its rapidly-lengthening depth for a few hundred feet. Then, content that he was alone, he assumed the form of his rock-rending worm--the same form he'd used to eat his way through the mantle of the Tortus.

He didn't know what he was looking for as he dug through the rocky mountainside under the still unnamed city-seed. His goal, for now, was to create a network of tunnels through which he could send his essence.

This was a job usually reserved for the jerboa: he just did it faster. And, if the radioactivity was serious, it was much safer for him to carve out the mountain's underbelly. He wasn't entirely sure what harm alpha particle waves could cause mammalian bodies. If the radiation adversely affected the brain...he wasn't confident that he could freely reverse the damage.

He doubted damage from radioactivity would affect their brains in a truly deleterious manner--radioactivity killed people by giving them cancer, not psychosis or memory loss--but...better safe than sorry. He liked his quasies, damn it.

A few minutes into carving up the mountain, Bath stopped digging. He rotated his worm's maw in shock, then proceeded in a new direction, thinking.

---

"Lisa," Bath said, whispering into her ear. "There's another alien ship beneath the mountain that's sending out radioactivity. Well, I think it is, at least. You need to come down--actually, scratch that, I'll just bring the ship up. Give me a few minutes"

Lisa's words caught in her throat. She looked around at the expectant kursi, her eyes growing wide. "Uh, I think we should ask people who actually do this stuff for a living. Consultants, people who study ethics, lawyers." She coughed, then stood up. "The best response I can give is that we need to look at each planet individually and assess the pros and cons behind colonizing it."

This was apparently an acceptable answer, so Zhou nodded and asked Khalid to give his opinion. The man gave Zhou a dubious look and turned around before talking about the effects of colonialism on the Middle East.

---

"Erzey, Juselin, I hear that the jerboa have already carved out a network of tunnels beneath the city," Bath said, lazing with the other verdora in one of the city-seeds cookie-cutter gardens. While most of his attentions were focused on digging up the Arc, he also recognized the need to keep up pretenses. Moreover, the Dragon wasn't supposed to intervene directly in things more than necessary. Sure, the Dragon could excavate the Arc, but so could anyone else.

As usual, Bath only addressed his two official followers. However, around fifty other verdora lay in the gardens, listening in on the conversation.

"We should investigate. Who knows what's beneath the mountainside?" he said, shamelessly pushing his agenda.

The Delelens gave him excited looks. "Certainly," they chorused.

Two minutes later, the fifty-three verdora were filing single-file into the tunnel Bath had hollowed out only five minutes before.

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"Let's see what's this way?" Bath said, leading them directly toward the still submerged Arc.

Soon, they arrived at its exposed back entrance hatch. Because only the shiny, white hatch was visible, none present recognized it for what it was.

"This is different from the stone," Bath said, looking back. "What is your opinion of it?"

Erzey narrowed her eyes. Juselin inclined his head slightly, snorting into his veil. "It bears a striking resemblance to the material used to make the new ships." He stepped forward and placed a hand to the hatch's surface. As he did so, the hatch popped open, revealing a familiar--though markedly different--interior.

The inside was that of a bedroom, though it looked like it had been ransacked. The furniture had all been either overturned or smashed in; moreover, because the ship wasn't level, the furniture had all fallen to the right side of the room in a jumble.

"Another Arc?" Erzey mumbled, following Bath and Juselin into the craft.

The other verdora stood behind, looking uncertain. Bath looked over his shoulders and shouted, "Anybody up for adventure, come along."

The fifty-three verdora congested the main corridor of the vessel, their footfalls echoing conspicuously through the seemingly empty craft.

Does this craft have its own form of artificial intelligence? Bath wondered. He would have expected to see something like AI Ninety-Seven by now.

Even as he walked through the craft as Thaddeus, he continued, as a worm, to burrow an exit path for the ship through the mountain up to the surface.

Soon, they arrived at the door to the control room. Unlike the Egdelek Arc, the door shone a bright orange. Bath wondered offhandedly who chose the color scheme. He pushed the door open, revealing the room's interior.

He stepped gingerly through the threshold, the Delelens flanking him, eyes alert and muscles coiled. He understood why.

So, there was an android at one point.

"What happened to it?" Erzey gasped, skin darkening. The contingent of verdora all locked eyes on the gutted form of what was clearly a clone of AI Ninety-Seven. It robotic form sprawled on the ground, chest completely gutted, as though some animal had ripped clean through and gored it.

"I'm going to see if I can fly this ship to the surface," Bath said, padding toward the familiar control pedestal. "We can have COTD's engineers inspect it then."

Suddenly, a loud crack noise sounded out. Silence fell over the room. Bath's eyes narrowed as he stepped back from the control pedestal. He then noticed something interesting.

The sigils in this room are all completely different from the Egdelek Arc, except for one: the one that I accidentally changed. That sigil is here.

Before he could adequately inspect the sigils, another crack rang out. This time, instead of coming indistinctly from the main corridor, the sound seemed to come from above.

Peculiar, considering that there's nothing above the ceiling. According to the blueprints, at least; Bath supposed that he ought to ask the engineers to know for sure.

Then, instead of a crack, a long, metallic rip rang out. If the first sound came from everywhere, and the second sound indistinctly from above, the third sound came from directly above the pedestal. A few verdora gasped and recoiled as the ceiling ripped outward from the inside, white metal-plastic curling up and around. A few small, tile-like white segments fell onto the floor below.

A second after the ripping noise, a shiny, silvery form about the size of a German shepherd dropped down to the ground. Its limbs clicked as its body made jerky, insect-like movements.

Well, observed Bath, this is new. He considered trying to talk to it, but only for a moment.

The robotic creature wasted only a moment's worth of time before launching its assault.

To the left of Bath, Erzey was the closest to the robotic invader and thus the first to receive its attack. The robot darted nimbly forward, slicing at Erzey with a sharpened appendage. She defended with a dragonleaf-armored forearm, striking back by elevating onto her back legs and mauling the robot with her second pair of hands.

The robot sustained serious damage, its internal components sparking where Erzey ripped them apart. She, on the other hand, remained unhurt, the dragonleaf arm guard shrugging off the robot's slash.

"Mm, good," Bath said. "Everyone," he continued, raising his voice. "There should be more coming. They aren't too strong, nor are they very sturdy, but remember: two weeks ago, they would have killed any of us without difficulty. Don't be careless."

More turned out to be an understatement. Scarcely two minutes later, the fight spilled out from the control room into the main corridor. At least a thousand of the sharp-limbed, fleet-footed bug-bots had swarmed in, engaging the fifty-three verdora. The most annoying part of the situation was that, even after the bug-bots were rendered unfit for battle, their dysfunctional forms lay strewn about the ground. Anywhere the verdora stepped, they fell within a one or two feet of their fallen adversaries.

And, apparently, even with most of their components broken, they could swipe their bladed arms out. Even some of the ones that had been most savagely trashed--their entire bodies smashed to smithereens--retained the ability to move their spiky legs back and forth.

In any other setting--such as an open field--the bug-bots would have been easy foes to beat. However, in the closed-off ship, the verdora had to fight an incoming stream of bug-bots in a space littered with defeated bug-bots swinging their legs around like bladed propellers.

Bath had to admit that the bug-bots were frustratingly resilient. One of the flaws of the verdora's inexperience--and their danger adrenaline--was that they were overexerting themselves and running out of energy. While Bath had taken great pains to make his close combat boons energy-efficient all while enhancing the ability of the sapient body to store energy, the verdora couldn't continue fighting for too much longer.

After subduing two robots near the pedestal, he did the only thing that made sense, considering that he'd finished the tunnel to the surface before the fight even began: he activated the manual flight controls of the pedestal.

Can't be too difficult, he thought. While AI Ninety-Seven had always handled flying the Egdelek Arc, the new, man-made Arcs were all human-piloted (though, of course, computer assisted). Bath wouldn't have any software assisting him, but all he needed to do was drive the Arc straight forward--it was already oriented at a diagonal, nearly perpendicular to the slant of the mountain.

He gunned the ship's engines and felt an uncharacteristic jerk as it launched forward. Too fast, Bath cringed, jabbing his right index finger into the pedestal. The ship's acceleration slowed, though it continued forward, picking up speed.

"You're hitting the tunnel!" Juselin roared, stomping on a whirring leg to his left and blocking the thrusts of two bug-bots attacking from the left and right. "Doesn't it have an auto-pathing algorithm?"

Bath shook his head. "No; I think that's what the AI--" he pointed in the direction of the AI Ninety-Seven look-alike-- "is supposed to do."

Bath cringed with each heavy scrape of the ship against the rock. He tried to use his essence to cushion the ship as it flew out of the mountain, but the needle-shaped ship's body was too long and massive to properly shield.

Shit, Bath thought as the ship bumped especially hard against a segment of tunnel bordering another segment of tunnel. He heard a distant rumbling sound. I really hope I didn't just commence the collapse of the mountain...

---

Lisa listened to the debate for fifteen minutes, then felt Bath's weird little disembodied mouth clear its throat (?) beneath her ear. She coughed, then walked toward the control room's exit, saying, "I'll be back in a--"

The shiny, new, man-made kursi Arc shook. Lisa turned around, looking through the ship's window. Her jaw dropped.

"Well, that's interesting," Zhou said, turning around along with everyone else. He massaged his jaw, then asked in the same way he'd ask about the weather, "Is that another Arc?"