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The alien creatures had the appearance of stingrays without tails. They broke away from each other, dispersing with a sudden burst of speed. Blue lights flashed around them, peppering the nebula with blinding strobes as they disappeared into space-time, fleeing to the safety of some other place, some other time. One though, flipped on its side, wounded by the javelin.

“That was you,” Jason said in a voice breaking with emotion.

The wounded alien creature tried to escape. Flashes of blue light strobed around its circular hide, but several more javelins struck the animal. Was it an animal? We’re all animals, Jason reminded himself, regardless of how civilized we try to appear. He had no doubt those that hunted these magnificent alien creatures somehow depersonalized their barbaric acts just as humanity had done for centuries when hunting whales or apes.

Another dark saucer-like creature appeared on the edge of his vision, with a row of javelin darts attached beneath its shell, strapped on like missiles on the underside of a warplane. The intruder rushed at the wounded creature.

Jason watched as spider-like aliens launched themselves from this marauder, thrusting through space and landing on the crippled alien. Some kind of particle beam erupted from one of these pirates, searing the central dome and creating the massive scar he’d floated through just minutes before when he found the alien in the darkened crevasse deep within OA-5772.

Jason could see that the spiders were capable of operating without a spacesuit. Their exoskeletons must have shielded their internal organs in much the same way as his spacesuit protected him.

Jason found himself wondering about the energy requirements of such celestial creatures and the need for their metabolism to maintain an internal temperature in which their biochemistry could function properly. That space was poor at convective heat transfer must have helped, but the extreme differences between starlight and shade would have made it difficult for any biological creature to negotiate. Perhaps this was why these creatures stayed well clear of the stars, he thought. Perhaps it wasn’t the gravity wells they were avoiding, but the excessive heat. Or maybe it was both.

Jason wanted to study these creatures. He was fascinated by the possibilities filling his mind and he could understand how Jae-Sun would have once felt the same way.

His viewpoint closed in on the fractured, smoldering dome of the creature and he could see one of the hunters setting up the console he’d seen glowing in the darkness.

The wounded creature fought, bucking like a bronco. Strobes of light continued to burst around it as the pirates set about breaking their captive’s will. Jason found himself willing the alien to flee and in a flash of light it was gone. The marauders were left without their prey, drifting aimlessly through the nebula in response to the shockwave that reverberated when the wounded creature fled.

Jason was again in the darkness of the chasm deep in the shattered asteroid, only his viewpoint had shifted. Although his outstretched hand still pressed hard against the mass of brain matter, he appeared to be floating near the back wall of the skull. He watched as another astronaut sailed in through the gaping wound and at first he thought it was Lassiter.

A white spacesuit drifted before him. Spotlights flashed around the darkened interior of the skull.

“That’s me!” he said, almost expecting to see himself responding to those words. It took a moment for him to realize he was seeing Jae-Sun in the original time stream.

His doppelgänger turned, looking through him, not seeing him.

Several more astronauts drifted by outside the creature, floating past like scuba divers in a dark cave. They attached cables to the outside of the animal.

The view before Jason flickered and suddenly the empty brain cavity was flooded with light.

Jason blinked as his eyes adjusted to the sudden influx of light.

Several men walked around within the brightly lit skull of the creature. They were dressed in clean-room suits, hermetically sealed with their own oxygen supply.

That the men walked meant they were under the influence of gravity, and Jason wondered whether this view was onboard the Excelsior or on Earth. Their movement was too fluid for either Mars or Titan, where they would have appeared to rebound more, but either way, this view revealed a much more distant, future time.

Jason could make out Jae-Sun’s features through the visor of one of the suits. He’d aged considerably. Given that they were both already almost five hundred years old, that could only mean Jae-Sun had reached the limit of genetic renewal. As Jason understood the process, that would have made Jae-Sun almost a thousand years old.

“The collar is in place, but the damage appears too great,” one of the men said.

“I’m convinced we can do it,” the older Jae-Sun replied. “I’ve studied the design. I understand the physics.”