Again, Thoxel felt exhilaration from the increased thrust. He tried to track the silver sphere, which was streaking overhead. Then their trust stopped. He saw the second stagers drop and twist goodbye in the black sky. One ant had yet to expend all her chemicals. She spun until her abdomen exploded and bathed them all in brief light. Chunks of its abdomen became orbital debris.

They were on their final stage now. Two of their final eight ants fired. Thoxel looked above and right. The Silver Star! It was even closer. Too low! His antenna tried to message his command crew signaler. Miss! He watched them cross above its trajectory and burst past underneath. Overshot!

The entire structure rotated as if in one accord. With so much weight discarded, they could alter velocity easily, but still they were on the wrong trajectory. They were too high, and too slow. Thoxel eased his anxiety, and the ship continued to rotate until he was on the underside, shielded from the sun. He saw the silver silhouette by the black side of their moon. He briefly wondered how they would track it during eclipse, but as their orbit was so high and so fast, that any shadows would be brief.

Those first two ants of the third stage were expended, then pushed off. It was Thoxel, his command crew, and six final propellant ants. The craft rotated roughly parallel to the path—sideways and a bit down. Four more ants fired off their reactions, and a stronger acceleration began, but quickly ceased. The whole stage started and stopped in a jerky manner. Full throttle, then stop. Accelerate. Alter. Then accelerate again to align their parabolic orbit with Silver Star’s velocity and trajectory.

Thoxel watched the sphere. It grew big and white as they approached. He saw no seem and briefly wondered if the hooked spines of the holobiont egg would catch anywhere. Silver Sphere was completely round, like ants have carved a perfect circle of pure ice. It looked like magic. But he saw it unfold or unroll or something. He did not have the words for it. Then the craft seemed to unpack itself. It enlarged its volume and expanded out like one large cavern. It stayed connected to itself, but appeared to be hollow inside. Good, he thought. It looked like a larger target and, therefore, an easier jump.

His command crew grew tired. They still had more breath, but they stopped the frantic calculations and sat still like him. Their craft was still above, but now their relative velocities diminished. Thoxel could not tell who was faster, but it had to be them, because the growing sphere was still a considerable distance ahead. With each adjustment, it seemed the Silver Sphere responded to their actions and caused the rendezvous to occur sooner than expected.

The four propellant ants dropped away, leaving the final two of the original eight. Thoxel now roused himself. His muscles tensioned, as he gauged whether the jump was possible. It looked doable for him alone, but not him and the egg.

His command crew perked up, too. They checked the orbits with long, curved tools. The signaler commanded the remaining two ants with thrust commands. They all held onto each other as the two gently released brief spurts of power for a few moments. Another position check and then a quick burst of thrust.

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Thoxel stayed quiet and passive, conserving his air, but his eyes always watched, and mind always calculated how probable the jump was.

Those final two propellant ants exhausted their energy. They fell away lifeless. There was no kick or twist, and they would suffocate long before their trajectory went suborbital and impacted them into the surface.

Thoxel floated weightless. It was him, his command crew, and the payload. All they needed now was time for the two orbital arcs to overlap at the same time. This was the waiting game.

His command signaler-counter came to him. Twenty-three longs. Or how many more long-moments they needed before the orbits were the closest. This stage of the rendezvous took the longest. He felt his air growing stale but resisted all urges to react. The medicine had worn off, but he resisted panic and stayed motionless and calmed his body.

Thoxel eyed the distance. Possible, though still improbable, especially since he needed to hold the egg and could only push off the three remaining ants. They were the same mass as him and the egg. He felt cold, even when the sun was on him. Their time was running out.

Fifteen longs, the signaler sighter said.

Thoxel clutched the holobiont egg. The new queen was inside, along with the various other creatures they cultivated, packed with royal jelly. The egg also contained numerous packages of silk, the sacred texts of knowledge, which could be read once weavers were hatched.

Ten longs.

He felt the command crew scurry over him and reset their tools on the front. Then they stopped. All was silent. They returned and got behind him, formed a tight ball for him, and held onto his back legs.

Go.

This was the penultimate moment of his fate. He was birthed, fed, trained, and instructed for this exact jump. Thoxel moved his head back and forth to gain a better perspective on the Silver Sphere. It seemed motionless. His hind legs tensed.

His legs triggered. He jettisoned his command crew with all the strength they had and shot into the black. It was now him and the egg. Ahead and below, a faint mist of water ice could be seen. The Silver Sphere opened up a catchment. It flew through the ice mist, and a wake of black could be seen behind it like it had collected the mist.

It suddenly rotated.

It was not, in fact, featureless. Thoxel saw the lone green eye of the Silver Sphere. The piercing laser light hit him and the egg. It ran quickly over them both. He did not know what to do. He had only a bit of life in him, but felt he could do one final push to alter the direction of the egg, but strangely it was not needed. The Silver Sphere approached with no effort of his own other than his mind’s will. He clutched the egg.

The silver sphere expanded and engulfed the green egg. Thoxel pushed off as if to give it one last kick for good measure, though it was firmly in the sphere. Thoxel spun slowly in the void. With each passing moment, he felt the mission and his life had been a resounding success. The colony’s prized possession had been delivered.

The strange Silver Sphere closed back up in a slow and soft way, which did not give him any fear. He had done it. He had done his best and given his all; for hill and hive, for (future) queen and colony.

But he could not follow. Thoxel floated peacefully in orbit. Right before passing out, he saw the stars roll away from the center of the sphere. The sky went a starless blank. Then the silver sphere blinked out of existence and Thoxel passed out in that null space.

The space probe had achieved all its programmed scientific goals. It had mapped, scanned, and sampled this strange biome, unique in the cosmos, and the amazing life it contained.

The sphere unrolled itself from the wormhole and reemerged in a different star system. Another burst of light from the causality spike, though it was far less. It was always the first linkage of different spacetimes resulted in the largest released of light. Though it did not go unnoticed, the device lit its beacon and waited for retrieval.