Star Blaze by Keith Mansfield Page B

a newly born Cornicula Worm and when Johnny next opened the container to release it on Pluto, he knew it would return to this exact spot, leaving open a tunnel in the space–time continuum.
    Johnny looked at Alf who smiled back. “Master Johnny,” he said. “Congratulations to the father.”
    Stage one of the plan to defend the solar system was to have Pluto Base operational, but the Andromedans might not be so obliging as to unfold on its doorstep. Johnny’s visit to the dwarf planet had been all too brief, simply checking in on the little Tolimi and releasing the Cornicula Worm (which immediately vanished, tunneling straight to Johnny’s bedroom).
    Now they were even further out, some thirty trillionkilometers from the Sun in the region known as the Oort Cloud. Here was the solar system’s final resting place for the leftovers of failed planets from a few billion years before. They were so far from home that, standing on the bridge, the Sun appeared as just another (albeit bright) star in the heavens. Even so, Johnny still felt a special draw toward it. A handful of Sol’s nanobots had been reprogrammed to become spatial disturbance detectors, and were about to be released to join the frozen debris. Over the next few weeks they would multiply, building copies of themselves from the material in the cloud, finally forming a giant nebulous neural net that would encase the entire solar system, feeding information back to the Tolimi in their new home and from there, via the newly opened Wormhole, to Halader House. If an Andromedan ship unfolded anywhere in the outer solar system, both the Tolimi and Johnny would soon know about it.
    The defense net was quite an engineering feat, all designed by Alf who had the honor of pressing the button on Johnny’s console to set everything in motion. Clara was wearing a sparkly dress and had curled her hair specially for the occasion. She’d poured glasses of lemonade for the three of them, making sure Alf’s was as full to the brim as it was possible to be, as it was always fun to watch the android drink effortlessly without spilling a drop. She also added some to Bentley’s bowl, before they raised their glasses in celebration. Sol joined in by creating a spectacular laser light show just outside the ship, which the sheepdog especially loved, standing on his back legs to get a better view through the sides of the bridge. Although Alf made a point of complaining that the beams could theoretically be visible through Earth’s most powerful telescopes, confusing astronomers for decades to come, Johnny had the feeling that the android was secretly rather pleased.
    With the nanobots released, they were ready to leave forMelania to ask the Emperor for ships to protect Earth. There wasn’t much point knowing the Andromedans had arrived, if they didn’t have the firepower to stop them. Clara had programmed a series of folds for the Plican to follow. Once the divide that held the creature in a tiny compartment at the very top of its tank was released, the alien would propel itself through into the main section, unfurling its eight tentacles to take hold of pieces of space itself and send the ship on its journey. Johnny placed three fingers on the console by his captain’s chair and three capsules emerged from the floor around the edge of the bridge. These were the gel pods that protected space travelers from the ordeal of folding. As ever, Clara would remain outside to keep the Plican company—she didn’t seem to mind having her stomach repeatedly turned inside out. It was Captain Valdour who’d first recognized her unique ability to withstand the manipulation of space that would cause anyone else to be, at best, violently sick and, at worst, seriously dead. It wasn’t just that Johnny’s sister could handle what no one else seemed able to—she positively thrived on the special sensation of folding.
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