"All right, Kell - I understand your people have their secrets. But you need to tell me everything you know about Leviathans. Right now."

Brooks stared at the being, who looked back at him with an apathy that would have enraged a lesser man. But Brooks kept his composure.

He had called the Shoggoth into the Captain's Study, and the being had taken his time in coming - four minutes, when it was less than a minute's walk.

"You say that as if you believe I am hiding information from you," Kell replied to him evenly.

"Aren't you?" Brooks retorted.

"Yes," Kell answered. "But not for the reasons you seem to think." Shaking its head, Kell moved to sit, but despite these conspicuously human moves - that Brooks imagined were entirely intended to put him at a greater ease - there was still something unnatural in even just the way that Kell sat. It was too rigid in some ways, too lax in others.

"Right now, I don't care about your reasons. There are 35,000 beings on the Craton - and trillions in the Sol System. You need to tell me."

"Can you describe color to a blind man?" Kell asked.

"What?"

Kell's head turned to the side, and the being stared at him. Unblinking. "How does one describe something another being has never experienced? I have memorized your entire language, and yet there are no words for what I see. You want me to tell you how large the Leviathan is? I see it expanding into infinity in dimensions your brain is incapable of imagining. It fills the void, it fills the stars, infinite and finite at once. Does this help you, Captain?"

Brooks sat forward. "You've got to know something useful, Kell."

"A weakness in it? No, it is not that obvious. I have never seen a being like it before, but I can see more than you. I see that it has been asleep - in what you might call a nightmare - for the age of this universe. And in even marginally awakening it, you and the Hev vessel have become the focus of its . . . ire. That is a simplification; it does not feel emotions as you understand them. As I do not. What do you and a paramecium have in common to feel, after all?"

"In this case we're the microbe," Brooks commented.

"In how it views you - I suspect yes. It is not fully awakened, as I have said. But it is somewhat awake, and it is lashing out. It is not a stupid beast running purely on instinct. Its intelligence is of a different kind than ours, and it is vast."

Kell stood up. "Captain, you have done the right thing by pulling it away from the path that leads to Earth. More than you can ever realize, this mattered. It will not have mercy on whatever or whomever it finds when it fully awakens. Even if it wanted to. We must not let it find a system that is inhabited by life. If it costs all of our lives aboard this ship, it is worth it."

Without another word, Kell left.

*******

Pirra gripped the restraint strap tightly. "All packaged and ready to go!" she shouted.

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It wasn't necessary; each member of the Response Unit had already clicked in that they were locked in for launch. But it was tradition, at least for them, that the second-in-command shout out all confirmations.

The rest of the crew completed their traditional slogan;

"And ship us off to hell!"

Their commanding officer, Iago Caraval, grinned. "Hold on tight, kids!"

The ship accelerated; she heard whoops from the team, but she kept silent and merely felt the glee rise up as the ship began to accelerate.

The launch tubes of the Craton were perfect for accelerating either massive kinetic slugs . . . or a shuttle in an emergency. Just at a less break-neck speed.

She'd heard of humans who passed out from such high-speed launches. It was an alien concept to her; while a human's distant ancestors had been tree-clinging creatures, hers had been flying animals that dove head-first into water to catch swimming prey. They could take high-G maneuvers and laugh it off.

Their ship shot into the black. Suddenly seeing stars in all directions could be disorienting to humans, another factor that didn't bother her. They had never lost the parts of their brains that let them think easily in three-dimensions.

Her green feathers bristled. "We have a lock on the Hev ship," she commented.

"Course is set," Caraval said. "All right, everyone, briefing is now - that Hev ship might have touched the Leviathan in zerospace. That means full-level safety standards are in effect. Touch nothing without confirming it's safe."

All humor was gone; in their line of work, they all knew the hazards of interacting with anything altered by a Leviathan. Even coming too close to one could make metal run like water, crawl like a living thing, or simply evaporate into gas. And the effect could even spread to other things. As little as observing something altered could be unhealthy.

"Do the Hev even know that the Craton is here?" someone asked.

"No. We believe all equipment is down aboard their ship, and we were never within their visual range. Even if they had a window and someone looked out, they wouldn't have seen us."

"All their power? Every single reactor?" Pirra asked.

"That's right," Caraval said grimly.

It was unheard of - ships had multiple reactors, and even if those went off, such things as computer systems required such minuscule power compared to propulsion that even some emergency generators should have been able to keep something on.

"If that's the case, then their translators aren't going to be working," someone realized.

Pirra let her crest fall in embarrassment. It was a mistake that was too late to rectify. They were running silent from the Craton, barring an emergency. Couldn't know what might irritate the Leviathan.

"Our translators will let us understand them," someone else pointed out.

"Yes, but we need them to understand us. Does anyone here speak Hev?" Caraval asked.

There was a silence. No one had thought of that; they'd been launched too quick, and personal translators were typically a given. Pirra couldn't recall a single time that everyone on a ship had their personal systems fail.

It was going to be a big problem if they couldn't assure they Hev they were there to help . . .

"I speak a little," Pirra ventured.

"How little?" the Lt. Commander asked. His look of surprise was typically human, far different from her kind, but she had learned to recognize it. She was weird that way, actually learning another species's language and mannerisms.

"A few basic phrases regarding haggling," she replied.

"That will have to do," Caraval said, with an exasperated sigh.