“Wait outside while I check your clearance.” Ritter passed him, Ethan could feel the air move as he strode out, and heard the door close.
He was about to speak to Velda when the door opened again, and someone slipped in.
Linao, he was guessing. She’d decided not to wait outside while Ritter checked her story.
“You obviously outrank him.” Velda spoke up, and Ethan sensed Linao stop in her tracks.
Linao breathed out. “Maybe I just like to push against authority,” she said.
“You probably do,” Velda agreed. “But you still outrank him, don’t you?”
“Maybe.” Linao laughed softly. “So, how many days have you been in Ritter’s clutches?”
“Two,” Velda said. “Apparently the first ‘experiment’ didn’t work, so we got a second dose.”
“And what does the experiment consist of?” Linao asked.
“Can you see the blindfolds?” Velda asked.
“Sure, I can see them. So you have no idea what’s going on?”
“Nope.” As Velda said it, Ritter came back in.
“I asked you to wait?—”
“I know, but I outrank you, and you’ve had confirmation about my security level, haven’t you?” Linao’s voice held a laugh.
“I’ve been told you might have more information that could help me with my experiments,” Ritter conceded. “I didn’t know it was you who gave the report about the silver balls from that undiscovered planet.”
“Well, it’s not so much undiscovered, as undiscovered by us,” Linao said. “To be fair, a whole planet’s worth of people might take issue with your description.”
“Fine. Undiscovered by us. A lost Verdant String planet.” Ritter’s tone was irritated. “You’re sure they’re Verdant String?”
Ethan felt a shot of shock and adrenalin at what they were discussing, as casually as you please.
“As in, from the same ancestral convoy as us? Definitely. And somehow, even though they’ve had it far tougher than the rest of us, they seem to have a better record of their history than we do. I don’t know if it’s because they had to more or less wall themselves in for centuries before they were able to expand, but they literally still have the mothership. They’ve made it into a museum.”
“You saw it?” Ritter asked.
“I saw it,” Linao said. “Saw what the balls did to their elite soldiers, too.”
Ethan shifted at that, because there was a layer of disgust in Linao’s voice and he had a feeling he and Velda had met the balls. Just this morning, in fact.
“Bulking out, you said in your report. What did it look like?” Ritter had forgotten he was resentful and annoyed, and sounded like he was lapping up every word out of Linao’s mouth.
So was Ethan. Given he had a suspicion the silver balls they were talking about had been dropped into the hollow of his throat twice, he very much wanted to know whatbulking outlooked like.
“I was attacked by them in that form once while we were collecting the ore we’d mined. Before one of my crew . . .” Linao stopped, and he heard her draw in a breath as if she was recalling something incredibly distressing.
“One of your crew?” Ritter asked.
“Never mind.” She sounded like she was still struggling with what had happened. “Let’s just say it ended with our ship being totally destroyed and us becoming their prisoners for a week. The whole planet is full of monsters. Everything there is out to kill you, and I don’t know if the nanotech in the balls adapted to that by allowing the designated protectors to grow bigger when needed, to take the monsters on, or whether that’s just how it works, but they grow maybe head and shoulders taller and they look . . . feral.”
“Well, that hasn’t happened yet, no matter how many times I’ve tried it. I’ve given it a few days each time, and then taken the balls back out when it hasn’t worked. There were a few incidents—people going a bit crazy when they understood the ball was coming back out—but nothing we couldn’t handle.”
“Maybe they’ve been sitting dormant too long,” Liano said. “They call them gyra on the monster planet, and the inhabitants have been assigning them to their guards, called Gyr, since they landed there.”
“The same ones, over and over?” Ritter sounded shocked. “For two thousand years?”
