Mission to Minerva When explorers on the Moon found a skeleton in a space suit of strange design, a baffling mystery began. The skeleton was undeniably human, but carbon dating showed it was older than the human race itself. The mystery deepened with the discovery of a wrecked ship on a moon of Jupiter, showing that another race had once inhabited the Solar System, originating on the now-shattered planet whose remains form the asteroid belt. Then a ship manned by the humanoid “giants” returned, bringing with it answers to the riddle of humanity’s origins. But it brought great danger, as Earth found itself caught in a battle between a benevolent alien empire, and another offshoot of the human race who regarded the Earth as their property and were bent on taking it over. That was in the recent past, and the future now looked bright for Earth, as trade and knowledge flowed back and forth between Earth and Thuria, the world the Giants colonized when they left the Solar System aeons ago. Then Dr. Victor Hunt received a phone call—and the face in the phone’s video screen was an older version of himself, calling from a parallel world. That was the first step in bridging the gap between the parallel universes of the “multiverse.” Unfortunately, it also meant that the enemies who had been decisively defeated in one universe might still be alive and dangerous in another, and could arrive in force at any time. And the possibility soon became a frightening reality. . . . Cover art by Bob Eggleton ORDER Hardcover This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. First printing, May 2005 Distributed by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 0-7434-9902-6 Copyright 2005 by James P. Hogan All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. A Baen Books Original Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471 http://www.baen.com Production by Windhaven Press Auburn, NH Electronic version by WebWrights http://www.webwrights.com For Sheryl, Lindsey, and Tara Baen Books by JAMES P. HOGAN Inherit the Stars The Genesis Machine The Gentle Giants of Ganymede The Two Faces of Tomorrow Thrice Upon a Time Giants' Star Voyage from Yesteryear Code of the Lifemaker The Proteus Operation Endgame Enigma The Mirror Maze The Infinity Gambit Entoverse The Multiplex Man Realtime Interrupt Minds, Machines & Evolution The Immortality Option Paths to Otherwhere Bug Park Star Child Rockets, Redheads & Revolution Cradle of Saturn The Legend That Was Earth Martian Knightlife The Anguished Dawn Kicking the Sacred Cow (nonfiction) Mission to Minerva PROLOGUE By the fourth decade of the twenty-first century, the nations of Earth had finally resolved or learned to live with the differences that had made so much of their history a story of exploitation and conflict. A major expression of the new spirit of cooperation and optimism toward the future took the form of a joint program of Solar System exploration carried out under the direction of a Space Arm formed as part of the UN. With its redirection of the resources and industries that had once served a bloated defense sector, the program was seen as a triumph of the unifying power of technology and reason, and a prelude to reaching outward toward the stars. As permanent bases appeared on the Moon and Mars, and manned mission ships reached the outer planets, it was confidently assumed that the sciences responsible for such spectacular success were thereby shown to form a solidly based foundation for the continuing expansion of human knowledge. The basic belief structure was secure. While the universe undoubtedly had more revelations and surprises to deliver, the body of fact that had been established was impregnable to any major need in the way of revision. Such moments of blissful self-assurance invariably come immediately before the biggest tumbles. In just a few short years, a series of stupefying discoveries not only added an entire new dimension to the history of the Solar System, but uncovered a strange, totally unanticipated story of the origins of the human race itself. Twenty-five million years before the present time, a race of nonviolent, eight-foot-tall giants had flourished across the Solar System and surpassed everything that humankind had achieved. The "Ganymeans"—so-called when the first indication of their existence was discovered in the form of a wrecked spacecraft buried under the ice of Ganymede, largest of the Jovian moons—had originated on a planet christened Minerva, that had once occupied the position between Mars and Jupiter. By the time the Ganymean civilization reached an advanced stage, climatic conditions on Minerva were deteriorating. As would be expected, their voyages of discovery had brought them to Earth, from where they transported large numbers of plant and animal forms from the late Oligocene–early Miocene period back to their own world as part of a large-scale bioengineering research project to combat the problem. Terran life enjoyed a generally greater toxic resistance than that possessed by the Ganymeans, and their hope was to incorporate the appropriate genetic structures into their own makeup in order to render themselves tolerant to altering Minerva's atmosphere in a way that would enhance its natural greenhouse mechanism. These efforts failed, however, and the Ganymeans migrated to what would later come to be called the Giants' Star, located twenty light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Taurus. In the millions of years that followed, the imported terrestrial animals left on Minerva replaced most of the native Minervan forms, which owing to a peculiarity of early Minervan biology that precluded the emergence of land-dwelling carnivores, were unable to compete effectively. The terrestrial forms included a population of primates as advanced as anything existing on Earth at the time, which in addition had undergone genetic modification in the course of the Ganymean experimental program. Fifty thousand years before the present time, while the various hominid lines developing on Earth were still at stone-using stages of culture, a second advanced, spacegoing race had already appeared on Minerva as the first version of modern Man. They were given the name "Lunarians," after evidence of their existence came to light in the course of twenty-first century lunar exploration. (See Inherit the Stars.) At the time of the emergence of the Lunarians, varying solar conditions were bringing the onset of the most recent ice age on Earth, while the even greater effect on Minerva threatened to render the planet uninhabitable. The Lunarians responded with a concerted effort to develop their space and industrial technologies to a level that would permit mass migration to the more hospitable climate of Earth. But, as with the Ganymeans before them, the ambitious plan came to nothing. When the Lunarians were practically within reach of their goal, the cooperative spirit in which they had worked for generations broke down with the polarization of their civilization into two superpowers, Cerios and Lambia. Resources that could have been concentrated on saving the race were squandered instead on a ruinous military rivalry. The result was a cataclysmic planetwide war, in the course of which Minerva was destroyed. The Ganymean culture, in the meantime, had entered a long period of stagnation brought about by the unanticipated effects of advancing biological science to the point of prolonging life practically indefinitely. When the consequences became clear, they took a decision to revert to their natural condition and accept mortality as the price of experiencing a life enriched by motivation and change. By the time of the events on Minerva, they had established a thriving interstellar civilization centered on the planet Thurien of the Giants' Star system. The Thuriens were never comfortable with what they regarded their ancestors' abandonment of a genetically mutated sapient species left to take its chances in the survival arena of Minerva, and followed the subsequent emergence of the Lunarians with a mixture of guilt and increasing awe. But when it all ended in catastrophe, the Thuriens relaxed the policy of nonintervention that they had been observing and sent a rescue mission to save the survivors. Gravitational upheavals caused by the emergency methods used to transport the Thurien ships threw what remained of Minerva into an eccentric outer orbit to become Pluto, while the smaller debris dispersed under Jupiter's tidal effects as the Asteroids. Minerva's orphaned moon fell inward toward the Sun and was later captured by Earth, which until then had existed as a solitary body. Even after all their experiences and the loss of their world, hostility between the Cerians and the Lambians persisted, making them incapable of uniting to rebuild their culture. The Lambians went back with the Thuriens and were installed on a planet called Jevlen, where they grew to become a fully human element of the Thurien civilization. The Cerians, at their own request, were returned to the world of their origins, Earth, only to be almost overwhelmed by the climatic and tidal devastation caused by the arrival of Minerva's moon. Their remnants fell back into barbarism, struggling for millennia on the verge of extinction. Apart from myths handed down from antiquity, the meanings of which were forgotten, all memory of their origins was lost. Only in modern times, when they at last mastered space again and ventured outward to find the traces of what had gone before, were they able to piece parts of the story together. The rest was added when a freak occurrence reestablished contact between the human inhabitants of modern Earth and the ancient Ganymean race that had created them in the form of their Lunarian ancestors. (See The Gentle Giants of Ganymede.) The Jevlenese never ceased regarding themselves as Lambians, and the Terrans as ongoing rivals who would challenge them again if the opportunity arose. As part of a plan to eliminate the perceived threat, they inaugurated a campaign to retard the progress of Earth toward rediscovery of the sciences, while they themselves absorbed Thurien technology and gained autonomy over their own affairs. Fully human in form, they obstructed Earth's development by infiltrating agents throughout history to spread irrational beliefs and found cults of unreason, diverting energies from the path to reacquiring true knowledge. As the confidence and arrogance of the Jevlenese leaders grew, so did their resentment of the restraint to their ambitions posed by the Thuriens. Exploiting the innate inability of the Ganymean psyche to suspect motives, they gained control of the surveillance operation that the Thuriens had set up to keep a watch over Earth after the catastrophe that had befallen Minerva. The Jevlenese fed falsified accounts to the Thuriens of a militarized Earth poised to burst out from the Solar System, and by playing on the implications, induced the Thuriens to devise countermeasures to isolate and contain the threat. But the Jevlenese intent was to seize control of the countermeasures themselves and contain the Thuriens, settle the score with their Cerian rivals of old, and then take control of the system of Thurien-administered worlds themselves. And the plan would have been fulfilled but for the reappearance of a lost starship from the time of ancient Ganymean Minerva. The scientific mission ship Shapieron was sent to conduct experiments on altering the radiation dynamics of a distant star to assess the feasibility of changing the Sun's output as an alternative solution to Minerva's problem if the attempt based on atmospheric reengineering coupled with biological modification failed. But the star went unstable, forcing the Shapieron to make an emergency departure when partway through overhauling its drive system, which operated by creating a local distortion of spacetime. The result was that the ship experienced an artificially compounded time-dilation in which twenty-five million years passed by before it was able to reintegrate with the local solar reference frame, compared to only twenty years of ship's time. Hence, it returned to find the configuration of the Solar System changed, Minerva gone, and a new race of terrestrial humans spacefaring among the planets. The "Giants" came to Earth, where they were cordially received, and remained for six months. But the most significant outcome of their presence was the opening of the first direct contact between Earth and the Thuriens, bypassing the Jevelenese intermediaries established by longstanding precedent. The story of how the Jevlenese had schemed to retard Earth's development and misrepresent its modern-day situation was finally exposed. In the ensuing confrontation the Jevelenese, who had been secretly making military preparations of their own, proclaimed their independence, staged a demonstration of strength, and demanded submission from the Thuriens. But their hand had been forced; the bid was premature and collapsed when the Terrans and Thuriens working together turned the Jevlenese's own stratagem of deception against them by inventing a fictitious Terran battle force manufactured entirely within the supercomputing entity VISAR, which supported the Thuriens' interstellar civilization. (See Giants' Star.) The Jevelense leaders believed the deception and capitulated, after which the world of Jevlen was placed under Ganymean and Terran administration while a reformed system of government was being worked out. Because of the autonomy and privacy to run their own affairs that the Jevlenese had always insisted on, this was the first opportunity for outsiders to look closely into what had been going on there. What they found was even stranger than anything that had gone before. Obsession for conquest and fixation on the irrational ideas that had been imported to Earth was not a general trait common to all Jevelenese. They stemmed from a small, disaffected but influential group within the race that had appeared suddenly. Something about their deeper psychology seemed to set them apart from the majority of Jevlenese. They were the source of the beliefs in magic and supernatural powers that defied all experience and had never arisen among the Ganymeans or Lunarians, yet sprang from inner convictions that were unshakable. It was as if their instincts about the nature of the world and the forces operating in it had been shaped by a different reality. And it turned out that this was indeed exactly the case. For the "Ents"—from "Entoverse," or "Universe Within," as the unique realm where they originated came to be named—were not products of the familiar world of space, time, matter, and physics at all. In setting up their own planetary administration, the Jevlenese had created an independent computing complex, JEVEX, to serve a comparable purpose to that of the Thuriens' VISAR. In a peculiar concurrence of circumstances, information quanta took on a role analogous to that of material particles, interacting and combining to form structures in the dataspace continuum that corresponded to molecules and more complex configurations in physical space. A complete phenomenological "universe" resulted, eventually producing self-organizing entities that were sufficiently complex to become aware of their own existence and perceive themselves as inhabitants of a world. But the "forces" that guided the unfolding of events in that world derived not from the physics of the universe outside, but from the underlying internal rules imposed by the system programmers. Following Thurien practice, the primary method for interfacing with JEVEX was by direct neural coupling to the mental processes of the user. Some of the Ents discovered that they could interact with the data streams flowing through their world, and from them they extracted perceptions of a "higher space" beyond the one that they existed in, where superior beings lived and impossible things happened. Adepts among the Ents learned to project their psyches into these "currents" and transfer themselves into this world "beyond," where they became occupiers of hosts who had literally been possessed. So the aberrant element among the Jevlenese were not deviants who had acquired their aggressions, insecurities, and strange notions of causality in the same world of experience that had molded the minds of Ganymeans, Lunarians, and Terrans; they were victims of a form of alien invasion more weird than science fiction had ever conceived. (See Entoverse.) Such "possessed" Jevelenese—taken over by Ent personalities—seemed also have been at the root of the schism that subverted the Lunarian enterprise when it had almost succeeded—fifty thousand years before JEVEX even existed! How could this possibly be? Following from the earlier Ganymean spacecraft propulsion technology, the Thurien interstellar transportation and communications web exploited artificial manipulations of spacetime to bypass the restrictions of ordinary space. The mathematics of the physics involved also admitted solutions that implied the possibility of transfer through time. Since the Thuriens had never been able to put a physical interpretation to this, they regarded it as no more than a theoretical curiosity. But then, in the final stage of the "Pseudowar" in which the Jevlenese believed themselves about to be assailed by VISAR's imaginary Terran invasion fleet, their leadership attempted an escape to a distant planet that they had secretly made into a fortress. When JEVEX initiated creation of a transfer port to transport their ships, VISAR intervened in a countermove to neutralize it. Nobody ever knew quite what happened as the two supercomputers grappled across light-years for control of the same knot of spacetime—except that the fleeing Jevlenese craft were swept into the convulsions. Afterward, all sign of them had vanished. Everywhere. But the last images to be received from a surveillance probe that had clung in pursuit showed they had rematerialized somewhere. There was a background of stars. And there was a world. The world was Minerva, intact, as it had been. The starfield showed the time to have been the late period of the Lunarians. In fact, it was at just before the time when the Lambians adopted their militant and uncompromising policy toward Cerios. This was surely too much to have been a coincidence. With Jevlen pacified and on probation while its population adjusted to life undisturbed by the influence of the Ents, the scientists of Thurien and Earth were free to turn their attention to the latest, and perhaps the most baffling mystery of all. (See also the "Giants Chronology" compiled by Dr. Attila Torkos, page 403.) PART ONE: The Multiverse CHAPTER ONE The object appeared out of nowhere on the Earth-ward side of the Sun, roughly halfway between the mean orbits of Earth and Mars. Its bulk ejected the flux of solar-wind particles and cosmic-ray photons that happened to be occupying the volume that it materialized in, and generated a mild gravitational ripple fitting for its mass of several tens of thousand tons equivalent. But otherwise, its arrival was as unremarkable as its appearance. It was about the size of a domestic washing machine and vaguely cubical in form, although any clear lines were lost in the profusion of antennas and sensor appendages cluttered untidily on all its sides. For a while it hung in space, sampling and processing information from its surroundings and sending its findings back to the realm from whence it had come. Then, as suddenly as it had arrived, it vanished again. Its corrected position put it inside the Moon's orbit, approximately twenty-two thousand miles above the Earth's surface in the belt used by synchronous communications satellites. One more relocation, and it was in place to intercept the beam from the comnet ground station in Maine, which handled one of the primary trunk routes into the USA. The alien device connected into the system using standard Terran communications protocols and transmitted the phone number of the UN Space Arm's Advanced Sciences Division at the Goddard Center in Maryland, one of the homes of what had been NASA in years gone by. * * * In a neighborhood bar called Happy Days, a few miles from Goddard, Dr. Victor Hunt leaned back in a corner booth by the window and took in the scene. It was a sunny Saturday morning in June. People were making the best of the fine weekend. Across the aisle, three men who had pulled up earlier in a pickup loaded with timber were downing some preventative thirst medicine on what looked like their way to a home remodeling project. Some younger people at the far end were working up enthusiasm in advance for the Baltimore Orioles versus Atlanta Braves game due to be played later. A couple sat holding hands across one of the tables, blissfully unaware of anything else. For Hunt, the snatched moment of relaxation was a rare luxury. His position as Deputy Director for Physics of UNSA Advanced Sciences put him at the center of the effort to assimilate Thurien scientific knowledge without disrupting Earth's social and economic structure. Already, some of the most cherished notions once believed to be permanently beyond questioning had been consigned to oblivion. The whole system of values that most had considered as constituting the inescapable underpinnings of commerce and production was having to be rethought in the light of the Thurien existence, proof that deeper, less adversarial ways of motivating creativity and cooperation were possible. Nobody knew what the next ten or twenty years might bring. Paradoxically, for the majority of people this all added up to carrying on more or less as normal. The gigantic forces now in motion that would change all their lives irreversibly were beyond any ability of theirs to control. A swarthy figure sporting a shaggy mustache and wearing a bright scarlet shirt and shorts turned from the bar and came over, bearing two pint glasses of black, creamy-headed Guinness. Jerry Santello was Hunt's neighbor from the adjacent apartment unit in a landscaped residential development on the edge of town. They had come out for some refreshment after a morning workout at the complex's gym. Jerry deposited the glasses on the table, pushed one across, and sat back down on the seat opposite. "Cheers," Hunt acknowledged, raising his in salutation as he picked it up. Jerry took a draft and licked his lips. "I'd never have believed it. I'm actually taking to this stuff." "About time, too. Beats that fizzy yellow concoction. Too sweet. I'm not sure I like the connotations of Clydesdales, either." "The bartender asked me if I wanted them mixed with ale. Is that normal in England too?" "Black and tan," Hunt replied, nodding. "Oh, really?" "Half and half. That's what they call it. It was the name of the auxiliary military units the English used in Ireland back it the time of the Troubles . . . around 1920, or whenever it was. They had uniforms that were half police and half army." "Wasn't it two different countries there until not long ago?" "Right. The North originally stayed with the UK—when the rest became the Republic." "What was all that shit about? I never could figure it." Hunt shrugged. "Usual thing, Jerry. Too many Catholics. Too many Protestants. No Christians." He looked away while he took another sip. A girl called Julie, who worked in one of the administration sections at ASD, had come in with two others that he didn't recognize. Jerry carried on. "Anyway, Vic, as I was saying, this scheme that the guys are buying into. . . . People are working less, retiring sooner, and when the family's grown and gone and they move to a smaller house that's paid for." He made an open-handed gesture. "They've got money. The spendable income isn't with the kids anymore. By the time they leave school half of them are maxed out on credit already." Jerry was a former employee of the intelligence agencies. The spy business had contracted markedly as the world gradually resolved a legacy of twentieth-century political absurdities by allowing people to live among those they chose to. Having banked a lump severance payment, and finding himself less than enamored by the thought of returning to the corporate style of workplace, he was constantly on the lookout for investment opportunities to provide the wherewithal for preserving the ease and freedoms that a period of enforced paid leave had led him to grow accustomed to. The latest was a plan for a chain of theater-restaurants with lounge bars and dance floors to cater to the more mature clientele. It was an interesting thought, Hunt had to agree. There were probably thousands of such couples, or singles wanting to be half a couple, hidden away in the suburbs with nowhere to go that suited their taste. At just over forty himself, Hunt could go for it. "I've always wanted to own a nightclub," he said. "I like the image. It must be from seeing Casablanca years ago. You know, Bogart in the white tuxedo with the carnation in the lapel. Piano bar and all that stuff. . . . You don't see that kind of style these days. Do you reckon we could bring it back, Jerry?" Jerry tossed up a hand. "Who knows? Anything's possible. Does that mean you're in?" "How much are we talking about?" "The other guys are coming in for ten grand." "Um . . . I'd need to think a bit more. How soon do you need to know?" "The option on the deal closes at the end of next week." "Okay, I'll let you know one way or another by then." "You can't lose, Vic. Lot's of people have been waiting for something like this, who don't take to the bar scene. Some place to go out and meet your friends, have a meal, see a show. . . . Music that you don't have to be some kind of spastic epileptic or something to dance to . . ." "Dr. Hunt?" Hunt looked up. Julie had come over to the booth with her two friends. She was tallish and slim, with fair hair, a scattering of freckles around her nose, and just at that moment, a nervously uncertain smile. "I saw you over here and just wanted to stop by and say hi. I hope you don't mind." "Not at all. Glad you did." Hunt looked at her quizzically for a moment. "Julie, from the main admin section, right?" "That's right!" Julie seemed impressed. Hunt glanced at the other two girls, who were hovering behind. "So what are we doing—starting a party?" "Oh. This is Becky, who's visiting from Virginia . . . and Dana." Hunt gestured across the booth. "Jerry, my neighbor." "You live near here?" "Redfern Canyons—on the west side from here." "I think I know it. Where they have all the valleys and ridges cut into the hills so it looks like somewhere in California. With a creek and ponds down the middle." "That's it." Becky, who was looking mildly awed, found her voice finally. "This is really the Dr. Hunt . . . who was there at Ganymede when the aliens came back, and then discovered that whole world inside the computer on Jevlen?" She shook her head. "I always think of people you see on shows and read about in magazines as flying everywhere in limousines and living in places with security gates and fences. But here you are, just a regular guy in the local bar." "I hope we weren't interrupting something," Dana said. "We're quaffing away all the benefit from a couple of hours of healthy working out this morning," Hunt replied. "But I've always had this theory that too much health is bad for you." "So that tastes really good, I bet." Julie indicated their drinks. "The first one didn't touch the sides going down," Jerry said. "Actually, Jerry was trying to sell me on a business proposition. Restaurant nightclubs for older fossils like us to get out to and creak around in. What do you think?" Julie looked perplexed. "I'm not sure what to say. You don't exactly look over the hill or anything like that, Dr. Hunt." "Oh, don't worry about it," Hunt told her cheerfully. "People have the wrong attitude. What's wrong with getting over a hill? Think what happens on a bicycle. All the hard work's over. You just leave everything to gravity, sit back, enjoy the view, and pick up speed. Life's the same. That's why everyone says time goes so much faster. You know—" The call tone from the seefone in the holder on his belt interrupted. "Excuse me." He took it out, flipped it open, and thumbed the Accept button. The head and shoulders of a young man in a white shirt greeted him on the screen. A caption below gave the sending code and advised that the call was from the UNSA Goddard Center. "Hello. Vic Hunt here." "Dr. Hunt, this is ASD. We have an incoming off-planet call on hold. The caller is asking for you." Off-planet? Hunt wasn't especially expecting anything of that nature. UNSA communications from distances farther than about the Moon usually came in as recordings because of the propagation delays. Ironically, an interactive call was more likely to be from the Thuriens' interstellar net, which communicated virtually instantaneously via spinning microscopic black-hole toroids, and linked to the Terran system via Earth-orbiting relay satellites. "Who is it?" he asked, at the same time conveying an apology with his eyes to the others around him. But the face on the screen hesitated, seeming not to know how to answer. "It doesn't matter," Hunt said. "Just put it through." A moment later, he was staring incredulously in total befuddlement. The face looking back at him was of a man around forty, with tanned, lean-lined features giving him an alert and active look, and wavy brown hair starting to show touches of gray just discernible on the matchbook-size screen. He seemed amused, even impudently so, waiting several seconds as if savoring the effect to the utmost. Finally, he said, "I suppose this must come as a bit of a shock." Which perhaps qualified as one of the greatest understatements in all Hunt's years of experience. For the face was his own. He was talking to some bizarre version—existing in some other where, and for all he knew, some other "when"—of himself. He could do nothing but sit there, stupefied, unable to muster a coherent response. The three girls exchanged mystified looks. Then Jerry said, "Are you all right, Vic?" The words jolted Hunt sufficiently to make him look up, though for the moment still only marginally aware of his surroundings. Finally, with an effort, he forced his faculties back to something resembling working order. "Er, I'm sorry," he said, standing up. "If you'll excuse me, I need to take this privately." He crossed to the exit and left. "What was it, a ghost?" Jerry muttered to the others. Outside in the parking lot, Hunt climbed into his car and closed the door. The face of his other self was still there, waiting on the screen of the seefone. "Okay, I give up," he told it. "So . . . just what in hell is going on?" "I'll try to be brief, because there may not be a lot of time," the image answered. "First, the Thuriens are trying the wrong approach. It isn't an extension of the h-space physics the way they've assumed. That only applies within particular wave solutions evolving vertically and manifesting internal space and time separation. Horizontal movement involves a different concept. Think of the dynamics of the data structures that we found in JEVEX's computing matrix. . . . As I said, there may not be a lot of time. This is an early test run. We haven't learned how to sustain coherence for extended periods yet. I've got a compressed file here that will give you what we've managed to figure out so far. The main thing you need to know about is the convergences. But codes can be different, even between nearby regions. Can you send me something to scan for any transmission corrections we might need to make?" "What . . . ?" Hunt was still numbed by the shock. "A file out of your system there. Anything. We need to know the codes you're using so the one here can be set to match." "Oh. . . . Right. . . ." Hunt shook himself into action sufficiently to bring