Chapter Thirty-Two
What is the origin of the pods? If we could answer that, it might reveal much about the nature and purpose of our galaxy.
—”Great Questions” (Mutati Royal Astronomical Society)
The podship emerged from space in a burst of green luminescence, having traveled the arcane, faster-than-light pathways known only to these sentient spacecraft. With glowing green particles clinging to the mottled, blimp-shaped hull and dissipating around it, the vessel approached a pod station that flickered in and out of view. The arrival seemed like tens of thousands that had preceded it, and even more that were expected to follow.
The intelligent ship carried a small red-and-gold vessel in its hold, ostensibly one of the Doge’s merchant schooners on a trading mission. Purportedly it was filled with wondrous products from exotic ports near and far, such as Churian teas, Kazupan silkine gowns, Hibbil machines, Adurian organics, glax lenses, and pearlian spices.
But inside the faux schooner sat a Mutati outrider disguised as a Human. In a trance, he quoted aloud from The Holy Writ of his people, the purity-extolling religious text that was the doctrinal basis for the annihilation of unclean Humans throughout the galaxy.
The podship docked at a zero-G berth inside the orbital station. Momentarily, without a creak or a squeak, doors opened in the vessel’s gray-and-black, living tissue underbelly.
The disguised Mutati craft inside the cargo hold dropped like a child from a cosmic womb. The engines of the fake schooner surged on, and the pilot guided it past loading docks and walkways. All pod stations were built essentially the same, and so were the interrelated podships, so the pilot—even though he had never been to this particular station before—knew his way around.
As the outrider taxied, he passed a “glyphreader” robot patrolling the sealed walkways, one of the sentient machines that scanned and translated the pinkish-red geometric designs on arriving podships, which indicated their routes. It was one of the few mysteries about podships that the galactic races had been able to figure out—the way the markings changed constantly, like destination screens on jet-buses. The robot had an electronic sign atop its head, a small version of larger display panels that hung from ceilings. All were written in Galeng, the common language of the galactic races.
Smoothly, engines purring, the Mutati guided his little ship out of the station and dropped down into weightless space, with a blue-green planet visible far below. Twin jets of white-hot exhaust shot out of the double tail of the clandestine schooner, and the craft accelerated downward. Within seconds, instruments told the pilot he was inside the atmospheric envelope of the planet, and he saw ionized orange sparks from the friction of the hull as it skimmed the air.
The Mutati, his senses deadened by focal drugs, had no ancillary thoughts in his mind. He recalled nothing of his life or family or career, none of which existed for him anymore. His entire raison d’être, everything he had done in his life up to this point, culminated in this one task. The assignment had come directly from the Zultan Abal Meshdi himself.
I cannot fail.
He studied his console of instruments and electronic charts. The globe below had a crust of thirty-three kilometers in thickness, with sedimentary materials and an upper shell of granite. Basalt, gabbro, and other rock types were beneath that … then the mantle, and the molten core.
Switching on a prismatic timer, the outrider set the torpedo, which in reality was his entire schooner. The doomsday device … a Demolio … screamed down toward the ice-covered southern continent of the planet.
Thousands of years ago this had been an important world to the Humans, where billions of people lived. Stripped bare by endless wars and the insatiable appetites of Human industry, it now contained a mere thirty million inhabitants.
“Earth,” the Mutati muttered as his suicide torpedo penetrated the crust. Seconds later, it reached the fiery core and went nuclear. The planet was obliterated in an explosion, so sudden and immense that it consumed the pod station and the podship as well, before it could set course for a new star system.