In a ragged circle of fungus, a small purple gem appears.

The gem tastes the weak orange light. The arid dust. The mild sensation of lightness.

Nothing appears to be urgently moving in its vicinity. Nothing appears to be highly _energetic_ in its vicinity.

Maybe it can fix that. It starts to put out extremely small tendrils, nothing it can't afford to waste, questing for lines and places of power.

The orange light of the dwarf star is diffuse, filtered through the overcast sky and dust in the air.

The surface is broken up by boulders, hoodoos, cracked earth concealing cavities, and long fissures and trenches that seem to replicate the cracks in the dry earth on a much larger scale, like a fractal.

There are very few craters, despite the lack of any other planetary bodies in this solar system to catch asteroids or comets.

The first layer of the surface is of soil and clay, and this extends down to a depth of fifty meters before reaching a new type of porous rock that acts as an aquifer and seems synthetic in character. This synthetic rock layer is pierced through by a complex tangle of pipes carrying silt and water at high pressures in different directions, mainly towards the distant mountains, and those pipes are notably warmer than the surrounding rock. Weak lines of power, but plentiful. Hundreds of meters deeper still, the tendrils can sense no more flows of energy: the pipes cease, and the synthetic aquifer is replaced by some substance that is opaque to their senses.

A direction!

Tiny slender tendrils retract, bringing their energy back, building up their mass around the little crystal until they can bind themselves together in weak, scuttling legs.

Something stronger might be needed later, but this form is cheap and inconspicuous, and there is no clear hurry.

But - motion, a plan, an impetus - towards the distant mountains, conserving energy, weaving glittering eyes to better maintain a cautious watch on the suspiciously barren landscape.

As the crystal scuttles towards the mountains, over broken ground and around hoodoos, there's suddenly a pulse of power, one that eclipses anything sensed before. It's distant, not visible before the horizon hundreds of kilometers away, but from the direction it can't be far over the horizon unless it's a truly astronomical source out in space.

After perhaps a minute, there's another pulse like it. Then silence.

So far away...

The gem re-evaluates its options, glowing slightly with what it could scavenge, such a taste but so hard to catch...

Caution wars with curiosity. Curiosity wins. It could scrabble for untold aeons across this barren land without finding anything again so interesting.

When the next pulse hits, it is bigger, it is more ready, and it pulls more into itself.

And starts to run. The lack of a repeat only makes it more determined - more frantic...

The landscape is vast and desolate, whipping past beneath the legs of the gem.

About an hour later there's another pulse, and this one is repeated after five minutes. If the gem is capable of triangulation, it will be able to place the source about ninety kilometers away, not yet visible.

Two hours after that, the source of the waves of power activates again, now only eighty kilometers away. This time, there are effects visible to the naked eye (or local crystalline equivalent): a shining point of light rises up from the mystery emitter atop a pillar of billowing clouds of vapour, ascending slowly into the sky.

Is it getting away?

Too slow. Not capable enough. It tries to add to its construction, longer legs, but it doesn't really understand articulation well enough and they tangle and catch.

Caution is whispering to it again, is this all it is going to have to work with, should it plant what it has rather than using it to build itself?

But there is no other sign of life. Maybe it will come back. Maybe there is more of them. Maybe it can at least taste whatever traces it left behind.

It surges onwards, but trading off between speed and storing enough of the energy to change plans.

Several minutes into the ascent of the point of light, a shimmer passes through the sky. Thousands of sparkling points of light glint for an instant in a sequence from one horizon to the other, like a school of fish turning around underwater.

The point of light stops climbing and falls in multiple pieces. Shortly after, there's another pulse of energy, then nothing for hours.

Hope; despair; determination.

The pieces fell - maybe they will be findable.

As the power source does not come back and does not come back, it re-absorbs some of its exuberance of form, concentrating on sensory apparatuses over speed.

It's got to make it last until it gets there, to the nearest fallen shard of power, and also to be able to find where 'there' is from that brief memory of light.

It refuses to give up yet. The distance to a piece is surely less than the distance to the mountains.

It takes most of a day-night cycle to reach the first piece, but the crystal is in luck: the rotation of the planet meant those pieces landed closer to it than where the point of light rose up from.

The first three pieces are disappointments, twisted lightweight metal alloys heady with the scent of high-energy chemical compounds but coated only with their combustion products.

The fourth piece is the prize: Buried under three large brightly-coloured sheets of thin fabric and tangled up in thin strings connecting them together is a conical metal object, of a size comparable to the crystal itself.

The blackened exterior of that piece bears blocky glyphs, partially obscured, reading "THFIN", and is dotted by tiny crystal lenses. Inside, there is a partially melted disc of gold with a surface textured in irregular patterns, a black cube that resembles diamond and seems to have some complicated internal structure, a tangle of fine metal wires and equally complicated smaller crystals, and lastly a chunk of heavy metal that hums with the steady emission of ionised helium by its decay. Every few minutes, the assembly produces a brief chirp of radio waves.

The gem has no idea what the exterior patterns might mean, but gently wraps itself around the cone, insinuating extremely careful tendrils to avoid displacing anything important in its functionality.

They shrink back from the chunk of heavy metal - a little bit too hot to touch, there - but gradually it weaves in and through and around it, and stands up again on many small legs, having incorporated the object into itself, nested carefully for safe-keeping.

A beat of energy like its own internal surging, but more regular - not as fast as the intruders it barely remembers, but still - a heartbeat.

This completed, it faces another decision. It could plant itself here, grow its own tendrils of magic - but the light was visible for a long way around. Others may come. Extending wispy tendrils out to taste the air, it tries to recall the landscape it has fled across - looking for a better hiding place.

The possible hiding-places include:

At the top of a nearby hoodoo, offering commanding views of the surroundings but plainly visible to any aerial adversaries.

Wedged into a deep ravine. The crystal had crossed this at a point narrow enough to leap across, but the crack in the ground widened out into a jagged valley. Well-concealed, but without many options for escape.

Travelling onwards towards the source of the much greater pulses, which looks to be nestled between several bluffs that provide shelter from every angle but which the crystal has not yet explored.

Caution tells the gem: nestle deeply in the earth, grow in power, grow a place of power around you.

But curiosity is a greater drive. Nothing has seemed dangerous here at all, yet. Nothing that can threaten the precious heart of power it has retrieved.

And at the source... there might be _more_.

More power would serve both caution and curiosity.

Carefully, looking out for anything else that moves or glows with power, no longer in a great hurry to outrun starvation - but also not in a great need to conserve resources - it begins to move towards the source.

The source is visible at the heart of the formation of bluffs.

It resembles a sphere of polished black metal, around 10 meters across, with no signs of any erosion or damage, in stark contrast to the windblown rock formations surrounding it. That core is hard to look at, the outline never quite coming into focus, the pristine surface nauseating and vertiginous, as though it's vibrating in place at high frequencies. It's enclosed within a dense bramble of thorny arms, bent and angled, interlocking. The entire structure is transparent to much of the electromagnetic spectrum outside of the visible and thermal range. In the latter part of the spectrum, it is noticeably cooler than the surroundings.

Interlocking thorny arms, bent and angled... an intrinsic memory, a feeling of power to be tapped, is trying to rise up.

The gem carefully circles the sphere, studying it, drinking in all of the details, experimenting with ways of sensing.

There is something very like this, that it could - make? become? - that would help it...

But it will take a long time to surface.

It reaches out a thin tendril, achingly slowly, ready to cut it loose if danger is provoked, to gently contact those twisting arms and attempt to quest within them.

Building something this far outside itself is not a fast process at all, not without a much greater expenditure of power than it currently intends to put forwards, even with its heart here to restore it.

Both the sphere and the cage around it are impenetrable, both in terms of lacking any openings and with the material itself seemingly immune to deformation.

There's one point on the surrounding cage that stands out as anomalous: an organic-seeming growth on the exterior surface, patterned in twists, curves, and whorls that spiral in with mathematical perfection.

Before that feature can be examined further, the exterior arms move and change shape in defiance of their prior immovability. They go from enclosing the sphere in a spherical cage to rearing back like snakes around it, creating an opening.

The sphere itself turns to complete darkness, projecting another of those massive pulses that the crystal detected before, and up close the crystal can now detect an ongoing hum of energy as ripples of green lightning cascade across the surface of the black singularity.

Out of the perfectly opaque sphere emerge three bipedal figures. Their silhouettes resemble those inscribed on the half-melted golden disk, and their body plan resembles the monkeys the crystal has seen, though oddly proportioned. In place of a face they have a reflective golden curved panel that pans around. Their hands are curled around complex metal objects. Wrapped around the figures are bands of a different material that attach large containers to their backs. Their surfaces are composed of a single material, matte and flexible, the colours matching the exterior of the metal fragments and with the same glyphs as on the cone: "PATHFINDER", they read, along with smaller sets of glyphs that differ for each biped reading "GUNDERSON", "MALOMER", and "LEIGHTON". MALOMER pushes a wheeled trolley carrying more sealed containers in front of him.

These figures emit body heat. The items they carry in their appendages and on their backs contain several more localised power sources, mostly resembling the heavy metal from the cone on a smaller scale, and they also bear several more chunks of light metals that connect to them for some purpose.

"One small step for us, one giant leap for transhumanity," LEIGHTON says in English. Her head emits a transmission of radio waves for the same duration.

"You don't have to say that every time," GUNDERSON responds, in the same language but with a much more weary tone.

None of the three figures have noticed the crystal yet. Twenty seconds after the arms first moved, they flow back into their interlocking positions and the caged singularity winks out with another pulse of energy.

Movement!

Movement is dangerous. As soon as the portal rears back, the gem drops the very end of the tendril, scuttles for cover, and leaves only the rest of the tendril draped across the ground to detect what happens next.

A set of extremely complex creatures burst forth from the object, making highly complex animal calls to each other. Maybe if it stays round the corner, they won't pick it up. They can't hurt it, but they might damage its heart, which seems more fragile and to which it has grown rather attached.

Its heart beats - a radio pulse - 

"Leighton?"

"Yes, Gunderson?"

"I'm picking up some unusual telemetry here."

"...By 'unusual telemetry', do you mean that the nose cone of the scout rocket we were sent to retrieve has somehow landed within metres of the Gate, despite the Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of the rocket it was launched from?"

"...not just my sensors, then. It should be right nearby, judging by the signal strength. I'll reconfigure my antenna to play hotter/colder, I was expecting to triangulate over a day-long trek."

"Securing the perimeter," says Malomer, unpacking a large mostly-cylindrical object that contains a compact but powerful energy source. "Hide and wait for the scheduled reopening if I scream or miss a check-in. Don't bother going for my stack."

More animal chatter. It's quite complicated animal chatter. They don't seem to even be having a dominance contest or anything. They're just... chattering.

And their hide patterns are interesting. They're very precise in some areas, but not camouflage.

Really this is quite fascinating. The gem might be putting more sensory buds on the tendril than is necessarily wise in the presence of danger, especially as escape will be slowed down by having to carry the heart.

One such animal will walk right past the tendril, as Malomer patrols in search of whatever horrible creature is going to kill him this expedition.

Hmm. That is a very tasty-looking energy source.

But there are several animals and while they don't look very vicious, they also don't seem to be very concerned about anything, and they might try to run away with the heart.

The tendril stays very still and patiently observes. For now.

(And checks that the extra movement isn't going to let the creature get a line of sight on the gem's main body, which will have to shuffle round as quietly as it can if so - which is not as quietly as it would like, with all the shifting dirt and the extra weight that isn't totally under its control...)

Shortly after, another of the animals will haltingly and erratically come closer, adjusting direction after each radio beat of the gem's new heart.

This animal seems odd compared to the other two: its limbs are more slender and there are faint flows of energy beneath the surface, moving in complicated patterns. Another power source is embedded in its chest.

If the gem doesn't move it, the heart will be discovered before long. If it does reposition, the creature seems like it will be able to notice that the direction of the radio heartbeats has changed, even if it doesn't hear the sounds of movement.

Skitter. Skitter-skitter-skitter.

It's definitely following - but not fast - not as if it is _hunting_?

The creature is much bigger, though. Can the gem even grow fast enough legs to get away?

Only one way to find out. Legs gradually lengthen, trying to trade off stealth and being ready for a burst of speed...

Unfortunately for the gem, first-in Gatecrashing teams tend to come equipped with high-end sensory augmentations.

"Gunderson?"

"Yes, Leighton?"

"Why has the nose cone of the scout rocket we were sent to retrieve grown legs and come to meet us?"

"Probably to try and kill us," mumbles Malomer.

The three warily converge on the position of the heart.

Ugh. They are pack animals and they are absolutely stalking it.

Not likely to get away by speed. Time to look really, really inedible. The gem hunkers down and starts putting out spikes. And thickening the shell around the heart in case something takes a bite anyway.

And, hmm, they do noises right? Let's have a noise maker then.

It starts with a rattle and a few moments later escalates into a high, terrible monkey screech of warning off.

"Everyone back!" Malomer warns. The three of them hastily retreat back several metres, Leighton and Gunderson sticking to the nearest walls of the bluffs for cover while Malomer crouches out in the open.

"I don't think it likes us," Leighton says redundantly over the screeching. "Switching to text comms, advise you do the same."

As the three of them watch the screaming spiked nose cone, they continue sending radio signals back and forth between each other but without the accompanying sounds they were making earlier.

>Leighton: Okay team, ideas?

>Gunderson: some kind of alien hermit crab

>Malomer: I reckon it's a TITAN nanovirus, there were reports of devices acting up like this during the Fall... :-/

>Leighton: There have been no signs of TITAN presence on any other exoplanets accessed through the Gate network.

>Gunderson: selection bias

>Malomer: Nobody's survived to report TITAN pre- yeah what Gunderson said :-|

>Gunderson: ill try to interface with the black box from here

>Leighton: On a sandboxed ecto, I hope?

>Malomer: You were just agreeing with me that this was TITAN tech... :-(

>Gunderson: no i was disagreeing with leighton

>Gunderson: the hardware changes are obvious

>Gunderson: if the payload was software then the cone would be waiting right where it landed for me to plug into unwitting

Leighton puts her hand on a device attached to her hip as Gunderson takes out another device and starts sending radio waves out at the heart. The heart responds immediately, sending back a steady stream of information-dense radio waves in return, nothing like the brief heartbeats it was emitting earlier.

At least they've backed off - it can keep the screaming up for a while - 

The heart is... Feeding it? Maybe the heart wants to get away too?

The gem uses the energy surge to grow somewhat larger and get some legs under it again, distracting it a bit from modulating the scream which becomes somewhat more one - note.

If the creatures remain backed off, as soon as it has a reasonable locomotive capacity - probably not enough to outrun, but enough to make it a chase they might not want to bother with - it takes off in the direction that looks most open.

>Leighton: Gunderson, what did you do?

>Gunderson: just opened the datastream

>Gunderson: good signal, checksums match, virus scans clean

>Malomer: You trust the virus scan? :-o

>Gunderson: leighton does

>Gunderson: eta for full data transfer is half an hour, then its mission complete

>Gunderson: easiest gatecrash ever

>Leighton: Sounds like we just need to sit tight, then.

>Malomer: Wish it would stop screaming... :-(

The creatures seem to relax, postures becoming a little less tense, and they start paying more attention to their surroundings, less on the gem.

When the gem makes a break for it, the clearest route being back the way it came, there's a moment of disbelief and confusion before the figures start moving. The oddly spindly one runs after it first, swiftly overtaken by the one carrying the big object.

>Malomer: Movement!

>Gunderson: after it!

>Gunderson: chose a short range high bandwidth protocol

>Gunderson: we got to stay close

>Malomer: Could be leading us into a trap... >:-|

>Malomer: I'll take the lead >:-|

>Leighton: Hanging back and dropping breadcrumbs.

>Leighton: Safeties off, but let's not be the aggressors.

>Leighton: We don't need to catch it, just stay in range until the transfer's done.

A chase ensues: three transhuman figures running after the nose cone they were sent across the galaxy to retrieve, which has now grown legs to run away from them. The one in the lead maintains a steady loping pace, keeping closer watch on the ground and the few rocks offering cover beyond the bluffs than on the fleeing gem. Then comes the spindly one, scrambling after the gem with a gait unbalanced by how both hands are keeping their radio device raised and pointing at it. The last of the group has a stubby device in one hand and another object at their side is dropping tiny fluorescent cubes at a steady rate, each of which gives a weak shortwave chirp at regular intervals.

They're not trying to outrun the gem or catch it, only to stay close. Unfortunately for the gem, these creatures are of a species that once survived as pursuit predators, and that capacity for endurance running has only been enhanced by their recent foray into tool use and technology.

There will proceed to be... a lot of running. Every now and then the gem tries a different alarm call, attempting to fake out the pursuers with the idea that other creatures might come to its rescue.

Only one of them is something that might be vaguely reminiscent of language rather than an animal call, the Ophidian language for "On me!" and "Sneak round the back while they're distracted!". (This is also the Holy Tongue of the Eidolons and may turn out to be English...)

>Malomer: ...If it's leading us to a trap, it's a long way off ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>Gunderson: rocket logs so far arent showing any drop in g with altitude

>Gunderson: this planet must be huge, no wonder it didnt make orbit

>Gunderson: so dont rule out a trap just yet

>Leighton: Am I hearing language use?

>Gunderson: not something from any of the kernels i brought

>Malomer: Could be mimicking what it heard from us earlier... :-L

>Leighton: Malomer, try playing the First Contact pack

Malomer's suit will start to produce a whole multimedia broadcast: electrochromic camouflage on the chest adapted to serve as a screen to flash up words and images, radio transmissions and speakers expressing the same words and concepts, and the man himself dutifully takes a hand off the object he's carrying to use sign language as well, rote motions that have all the emotional affect of a 21st-century airline attendant going through the pre-flight safety briefing.

There are regular pauses to give the recipient of this xenolinguistics package the chance to offer their own means of communicating the same concepts.

>Malomer: This would be easier if we were standing still... :-[

>Leighton: Data retrieval comes first, we can try herding it to a stop afterwards.

The various screeching noises coming from the gem cut out first, then it starts to stumble over uneven patches of ground, scuttling backwards being delegated entirely to whatever is left for self preservation autopilot.

It is fascinated. Mesmerised. Starts to replay bits and pieces of the contact sequence, as sounds from the resonator it had been using for the animal calls, and gradually also as chromataphore scribbles across its surface.

It seems to be trying to understand. To construct a reply. Somewhere between 'please don't hurt me' and 'are you like me' and 'are you dangerous to me'...

>Gunderson: that sure sounds like first contact

>Malomer: Leighton, you taking point on this? :-?

>Leighton: On it.

The lead runner begins to slow down, waiting to see whether the gem will slow down in turn. The once-rear runner falls into step besides him and her armour begins producing the same multispectral output, this time matching her words.

"We do not come to harm you. We come to learn about this world. Are there others like you?"

Deep instincts say - never admit weakness - never admit you're alone -

The gem matches pace, cautiously, and claims that those like it are everywhere, mostly in a kind of pictorial pantomime - it's not very fast at drawing on itself but seems to find depiction easier than words.

Malomer and Leighton continue slowing down, to see if they can stop running entirely. To a human, Gunderson's body language is visibly relieved.

>Malomer: There's more of them? :-E

>Gunderson: must be better at hiding than this one

>Gunderson: underground?

"We come to talk with you. There are others like us. We are like you in some ways." For now, Leighton is stalling for time while the transfer completes. She's grateful for how slowly the gem responds with pictographs, it gives her longer to work out how to compose her next responses. Her muse has taken over drawing pictographs on her own armour, with accompanying labels in case they can teach reading that way.

Glyphs, arranged for signifying concepts like sounds do? Much easier to put together.

The gem comes to a halt when it is reasonably convinced that the creatures are not about to pounce if it does.

That means it can try scratching out patterns on the ground, which seems like it might be faster than growing them, if less high contrast and legible.

What it scratches on the ground are glyphs - "Talk." "Symbols?" "Learn. Yes. Learn."

Leighton: Gunderson, ETA on the transfer?

Gunderson: 68% and counting

Gunderson: keep it talking

Leighton takes out an extendable baton and uses that to scratch her own glyphs from a safe distance. Pathfinder briefings suggested using the same medium for communication, if possible.

First, a stick-figure human, with "HUMAN" underneath. Then she attempts to draw the gem, and steps back to invite it to name itself.

"We have to leave soon. We will come again. You can come with us."

She draws out a sketch of the Pandora gate, in both the caged and active configurations, and then starts adding more vocabulary relating to astronomy: a planet, a moon, a solar system, a galaxy.

Scuttles closer. Arrow to gem drawing. "Facet" in scrawled glyphs.

Stick figure, holding gem-around-heart. Arrow into attempt at sketch of place they came out of. Question mark.

Sketch of ground layers, the pipes underneath, going towards the mountain, lines of power. Question mark.

Sketch of the nest of interlocking pieces they came out of. Trying to draw something - similar - different - the spines arc over the ground and draw in the lines of power, and more gems on the ground with little tendrils growing...

It hasn't even really noticed it is now in reach for them, concentrating on trying to be understood - trying to persuade them to take it with them.

>Leighton: "Facet"? Cute.

>Gunderson: i suck at pictionary, any idea whats up with the ?subway network?

>Malomer: Bad news is a safe bet... Think that's where all the other ones are?

>Malomer: It's close enough to grab, want me to try?

>Leighton: Hold off on that, let's keep things friendly.

"We don't know those," Leighton says of the pipe network. "Do you come from those?"

Drawing a map. It's not... Totally lies. It's a plausible map of lines and places of power, if those things existed properly on this... Planet?

Which they don't seem to, but that would be admitting weakness.

So, pretending that the pipe network is a proper set of lines of power, and there are proper convergences / ritual sites and proper pooling areas / mana sites, just not right here where they can immediately see that they do not actually do that.

>Gunderson: well *something* sure is going on under the surface

>Gunderson: btw transfer is done, all good to go back

>Malomer: We can afford to walk instead of run, but let's not dawdle B-)

>Leighton: Noted. I want to see if I can get this Facet to follow us.

"Facet, we need to go now. You can come with us," Leighton says. She slowly starts walking away, looking back at Facet repeatedly and making it clear that the gem is invited along with them.

Scuttle scuttle scuttle, this gem is definitely not getting left behind.

Yes, they're an existential threat. Yes, it could find somewhere safer to bunker down here if they were gone, and maybe even figure out how to do that spines thing it keeps thinking about.

But also - the most interesting thing that's ever happened to it? Not letting that get away.

This is probably what happens to all the facets that get tricked by the snakes into showing themselves and getting dead.

But. Interesting things. Delicious power sources. Not getting stranded alone in a huge desert where very little else is moving and none of the lines of power are quite right.

Scuttle scuttle scuttle. They're a bit like monkeys, right? Monkeys are interesting and harmless...

>Leighton: I was not expecting that to work.

>Gunderson: easiest gatecrash ever

>Gunderson: even with all the running

>Malomer: Stay vigilant...

The three walk back along the trail of breadcrumbs left behind by Leighton, the little cubes showing up brightly against the drab landscape and with regular radio chirps besides. At least one of them is looking over their shoulder at Facet at all times, as though they expect it to run off or pounce at any moment.

It takes a while to return to the Pandora Gate, after all that running.

If the breadcrumbs aren't picked up in good time, then crystal tentacles will descend from the gem and delicately acquire them, incorporating them into the 'body' area.

The gem is also attempting to ask the monkey people about whether they know the snake people, but it might need to be rather better at chromatophore pictionary to get this across to them.

The breadcrumbs are apparently disposable; Gunderson notices that they're being picked up and watches Facet collect the next few, but offers no comment.

>Gunderson: hermit crab, called it

>Gunderson: also whats with the squiggle people?

>Leighton: Whoever the Pictionary champion of Mars is, they're going to have a weird but lucrative few days coming up.

"Are those... other people like us?" she asks. "Did they come through the Gate?"

When they reach the Gate, Gunderson will fiddle with another of his devices to project a hologram in the air. At first it shows a photograph of the Olaf Gate they're standing in front of, cropped into a circular border. As Facet watches, a growing slice of the circle, starting from the top and slowly increasing in angle, will be replaced by another photograph of an active Gate with the cage retracted and the green lightning flashing over the singularity. Above the circular picture is a set of glyphs counting down from "13:49.000s".

"Okay, Gate's opening in a little over ten minutes, let's decide on protocol and coach our new friend Facet on it." Leighton says.

"I can take the lead," Malomer says. "I'll warn the receiving crew, let them know."

"Olaf Gate's wide enough for a parallel entry, I can cross with Facet?" Leighton says.

"Guess I'll bring up the rear, then," Gunderson says.

Leighton sets to work explaining the process to Facet. If the gem proves amenable to the proposed marching order back through the Gate, she'll go so far as to have them practice that procession walking in a circle around it before it becomes active. Every second the Gate stays open here longer than it needs to costs Pathfinder a blistering sum of credits in opportunity costs, and as a company woman she intends to keep that waste to a minimum.

"other people", writes the gem, and tries a close up of some scales which seems to be the main difference. Then something like monkey is to visor-person as snake is to snake-person. Then some animal skin teepee style tents, but not very accurate, as if only seen from a distance.

It is very happy to practice the dance that the monkey people want to teach it. It's still running on the many legs model, as it is now carrying a fair amount of stuff compared to the amount of body it seems to have available, and the individual legs aren't that sturdy. It seems to be gradually trying to consolidate them now it's not changing form constantly. 

>Gunderson: humanoid fish people?

>Leighton: Ever hear of the aquatic ape hypothesis? It's not unbelievable.

>Gunderson: pseudoscience

>Gunderson: anyway this thing is fucking smart

>Gunderson: in case either of you missed that it just hypothesised our evolutionary ancestors to use as an analogy

>Gunderson: i propose an information quarantine on the other side

>Leighton: Approved. Malomer, start the arrangements as soon as you're through.

Before long, the 13 minutes and 49 seconds are up. The team lines up, ready to march through.

The Pandora Gate does not open.

"I hate these Gates," Malomer mumbles.

"Stay calm, we're still within standard tolerances for delays and drift. At worst, we'll be camped out here for a week until the next opening window in the schedule."

And then the cage shifts and separates, twisting back as though to present the naked singularity as green lightning washes over it in sheets, and the team moves forward as one on well-rehearsed instinct.

The gem takes its place in the rehearsed dance, and steps through on cue.

If this is how it dies, well, it's been fun.

There's a subjective instant of perfect darkness.

- countless branching paths, countless points of light distributed along vast filaments -

And then they're all through. On the other side of the singularity, the Martian Gate is barely visible beneath the superstructure of diagnostic tools and security installations around it, only glimpses of the angular black arms can be seen. Even inside the spherical cage that holds the singularity, there are interior walls fabricated by Pathfinder that include shaped charges, sensors, and rails to allow bulk freight.

The team emerges onto a platform that rotates around beneath them so that the next Gate connection can be made with as little delay as possible. Colourful patterns on the floor light up to indicate the route through to the quarantine facility. The air hums with EM signals being exchanged, there are giant electric motors beneath the floor, multiple redundant generators distributed throughout the facility, billions of credits of transhuman technology all set to the task of using the Martian Gate to make trillions. For Leighton, it's inspiring. For Gunderson, it's overwhelming. For Malomer, it's just another day on the job.

Welcome to Mars.

The gem basks in the radiance of all this energy!

It is growing bigger and sturdier and more sure-footed with every step.