A golden sphere appeared in the air before me, blazing radiance, forcing me to throw my arms up over my face and sink to my knees.
“That’s better, Orion,” I heard Aten’s arrogant voice say. “A properly worshipful position.”
When I dared to look up, the Golden One had assumed human form, standing before me in his immaculate military uniform.
“You did well on Bititu,” he said, almost grudgingly.
“It was a slaughter.”
“Yes, but necessary.”
“Why?”
“You mean you haven’t puzzled that out for yourself, Orion? You who claim to be almost as good as your Creators? You who scheme to find the goddess you’re so infatuated with? Why would the Commonwealth want Bititu?”
Not for itself, certainly, I reasoned swiftly. Then it must be valuable for its location. But there was nothing else in the Jilbert system except the fading red dwarf star itself, a single gas giant planet orbiting close to it, and the scattered debris of other asteroids, dead chunks of rock and metal….
I looked into Aten’s gold-flecked eyes. “There was once another planet in the system. You destroyed it.”
“Two others, Orion,” he answered. “We destroyed them both.”
“How many were killed?”
He shrugged carelessly. “The Hegemony had planted colonies on those worlds. They were turning them into powerful military bases.”
“But what did that threaten?” I asked. “There’s no Commonwealth world for a hundred light-years or more.”
“So?” he taunted. “Think, Orion. Think.”
The only other planet in the Jilbert system was the gas giant, a huge blue world covered in clouds. Beneath those clouds the planet’s gases would be condensed by its massive gravity field into liquids. A planetwide ocean. Of water, perhaps.
It hit me. “The Old Ones.”
Aten actually clapped his hands. “Very good, Orion. The Jilbert gas giant is a world on which the Old Ones have lived since time immemorial. Perhaps it is their original home world.”
“The Hegemony established their bases in the system in an attempt to establish contact with the Old Ones.”
“And to prevent us from making such contact,” the Golden One added.
“Now that we’ve driven the Hegemony out of the system,” I reasoned, “you want to try to reach the Old Ones.”
Like a patient schoolteacher, Aten prompted, “And since you are the only person the Old Ones have seen fit to talk to…”
“You want me,” I finished his thought, “to attempt to contact them again.”
“Exactly.”
My mind was churning, trying to set this new factor into my plans without letting Aten realize what my true objective was.
“In that case,” I said, “I will need a ship and a crew.”
“I can send you there without such paraphernalia,” he said.
“And have me tread water in that planetwide ocean until the Old Ones deign to speak to me?” I retorted. “Can I breathe that planet’s atmosphere? Can I eat the fish that swim in that sea?”
He nodded. “I see what you’re after, Orion. You want the survivors of your assault team to be retrained as crew for your vessel. Touchingly virtuous of you, to be so loyal to such creatures.”
“They are human beings,” I said.
“Manufactured to be soldiers. Weapons, Orion, nothing more.”
“Your ancestors,” I reminded him.
Aten laughed derisively. “So are tree shrews, Orion. Do you feel pangs of conscience for them?”
Before I could answer, the entire scene disappeared as suddenly as a snap of the fingers and I was hunched over my computer screen again in my quarters at sector base six.
The computer beeped and my orders appeared on the display screen: I was to command a scout ship and return to the Jilbert system where I would contact the Old Ones and invite them to join the Commonwealth.
I saw to it that my cryosleeping troopers received the training they needed to run a scout vessel. I myself spent almost all my time in the training center with a crown of electrodes clamped to my head as the training computer poured information into my brain. I wondered if this was the way Aten trained me for my various missions throughout space-time, while I was unconscious.
In a week my troopers were revived and our ship arrived, a sleek disk-shaped scout named Apollo. I frowned when I first learned the name; the Golden One had styled himself Apollo to the awestruck ancient Greeks and Trojans. Aside from the name, though, I found the vessel trim and fit, and my troopers transformed by their cryosleep training into a crew that at least appeared to know what it was doing.