Phoenix Starship Andromeda—Research Labs
The question Where is everybody? occupied most of Thorpe’s attention when he was not actively dodging microbot swarms. He knew Mother could handle the microbot evasion, but with the possible consequences of getting it wrong, even once, he chose to remain involved.
He was happy he had good people to address the other problems. Thorpe didn’t think he needed a full understanding of argon’s role or the bot’s navigation system to commence an investigation of the sphere’s interior. He was less concerned with how the bots changed what they scavenged to what they needed or how they chose between travel and reproduction. With time, those answers would come. Daphne and her people, Sally and Bad and theirs, and Ustrun with his engineering team—Thorpe was con
