06/04/2025 Snippet, THE CALL OF THE MOON-BEASTS.

We are almost done with this!

…

The effect of that got the immediate attention of Wilcox and Emi, both of whom were staring at the table full of equipment and scrolls. Tobias could feel the sudden focus from Abbie and Lillian, too. As for Asenath? She was definitely there, but curiously attenuated, like she wasn’t trying to draw attention to herself.

“I do,” Tobias replied. “And I’ve had this conversation before. Usually with somebody I didn’t trust in the slightest.”

“Trust is the lie to obligation’s truth,” Grabinski intoned, in the manner of someone quoting something. “No doubt those fools thought you were too weak to truly bargain for anything past mere survival. But you were not. You were strong. Strong enough to be worth a proper bargain, one that gives you more than you had before.”

Tobias flicked looks at Abbie and Lillian both, shaking his head minutely before nodding gently in the other two humans’ direction. “We’re not weak,” he told Grabinski. “We just want one thing. We want to get off this hell-rock, and back to Earth.”

“Understandable. Then what?”

“We probably die.” Tobias’s tone would have chilled him, back before all of this started. Now it merely felt bracing. “Either on the trip, or back home because of… everything going on up there. It doesn’t matter. Better to be dead on the ‘cool, green hills of Earth’ — or at least trying to reach it. If we can’t land the Lifeboat, we’ll do a reentry anyway. At least our atoms will make it back home that way.”

“Your piety speaks well of you,” Grabinski told him after a slightly longer silence than usual. “But what if you do not have to die? What if you could return to your homes, safe, strong, and powerful? Would that not be preferable for all of you? It could happen. It should happen.”

“Here we go. Tell me the catch,” Tobias snapped, hard enough for the other humans to start.

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