"We still have time to come up with a solution." said Yale to the group. He noticed that everyone was still keyed up about the Z.E.D. attack.

"Yeah? How?" asked Cameron, irritated that they weren't absolutely safe, inside of the cave. He kept shifting his Magpro's aiming sight from one eye stalk clump to another, watching for any telltale turning that might give away a Z.E.D. on silent approach to their hiding space.

Yale raised his voice with a gesturing wait motion when his Eden Project family's babble rose to an angry buzz of frustration. "Remember what the Balancer is doing right now during Moon Cross. She said that she conveys her indigenous populations to the world of their choice through the moon pools."

Morgan Martin leaped to his feet from a fire warmed boulder. "Are you suggesting we just pack up and leave G889 for one of those two moons up there?!"

"No, that would be foolish. Our colonists are arriving at New Pacifica next spring. What I'm thinking is that someone else who's not so near and dear, does the leaving. The Z.E.D." Yale clarified.

Devon Adair startled at Yale's idea. But then immediately frowned. She set her eye stalk tea down between her boots. "Would we be in the right with dumping them off planet? We'd be inflicting soldiers, still hot for outdated intelligence about a long dead war, onto innocent lands."

Julia agreed. "That would be worse than what human action has already done with the Phage here. It would be just trading one plague for another one. Besides, we don't really know how many Z.E.D. are actually roaming around out there. Don't they run silent so Zero can't detect their presence? We may not be able to find, trick, and transfer all of them away before the eclipse is over."

Alonzo Solace sighed deeply with fatigue. "Back to square one. I was getting excited there for a moment about possibly being able to finally solve something on this rock ball for once."

Bess Martin's eyes were darting back and forth and she was uncharacteristically silent amid the brain storming flying around her. Her husband noticed, "Bess, what are you thinking and hiding from the rest of us? I know that look of private concentration. Your eyes give you away."

"Shut up, Morgan." she said defensively, suddenly ashamed of her idea.

John Danzinger just dropped his head and rolled his eyes mildly at Mrs. Martin. "Come on. It can't be worse than the mass genocide already in progress or the mass cyborg relocation we're not going to be orchestrating."

Bess finally got up from the tarp covered piece of equipment that she had been sitting on and pulled it off reluctantly.

Morgan Martin goggled at the revealed geolock in horror and shivered. "Oh, God, no. Not those things again."

Yale's mouth flopped open at the same time as Julia Heller's.

"Could it be that simple? We freeze and cut it out?" said their only doctor.

"Excisement, oh my." the tutor considered. "How long would the Phage bacterium have to be in stasis before it dies?"

"Not very d mned long." John Danziger chuckled. "Don't germs live out entire generations in just a few hours?"

"This one does." Julia grinned, nodding. "With the geolock, we can arrest all the mutations, too."

Devon Adair sat foward, growing disturbed and agitated as she wrapped her head around the whole concept. "Just how would the Mother react? We'd be killing what's left of the Terrian population."

"Not if we coordinate with The Balancer. She can rescue those in the plague area and take them to one of the other moons to keep them safe." Bess half smiled. Her hands still shook from the memory of the geolock's power, but Morgan took her chilled ones into his own warm grip and kissed them tenderly.

Her husband whispered, "If anyone can pull that one off, you can, Farm Girl." he giggled nervously. "This alien Earth loves you."

"And my son..." said Devon.

"...this Earth's human communicator." said Yale.

"What am I? A stuffed shirt?" said Alonzo, of his ability to talk to the Terrians in dream.

Magus smacked his arm to hush up their pilot, only half mock. "They don't trust you, Solace. You aren't open to them in the way they need."

John sucked in a big breath of air from where he had True cradled in his lap and blew it out again. "So what do we do once the entire extinction zone's frozen away from time?"

"We cut out the tumor." Julia said quickly.

That statement created a rush of babble again from everybody within earshot.

"What? A few thousand square miles of planetary crust plus fifty years' percolation deep, down to the bottom of all of its water tables?!" Morgan quailed. "Oh, the Mother's going to just love us performing that kind of human surgery."

"But it won't be by humans, Morgan. Don't you see?" Bess said, looking up with incredulous amazement. "Terrians are the perfect miners and excavators already. They can perform the operation. And then they can perform the terraforming that restores the land afterwards."

"Peeling off some of G889's layers like an onion's all well and good. But what about the Z.E.D.? Why have they started targetting our youngest people all of the sudden?" Yale stated.

Julia guessed. "Because our children are the smallest. This planet doesn't know what bacteria are. Remember? There aren't any, and never has been, in the history of its entire ecology. For all we know, the spores from the Pod Porter flowers are the tiniest lifeform that has ever lived here. And those are ginormous. About poppy seed size."

Devon glanced down at Uly. "Are you saying the planet's using our planet's Z.E.D. template idea, on their own kind, to be antibodies? Trying to kill off the new germs?"

"Well, yeah. It's just that they're... not very good at it. Not yet. Perhaps the whole idea of immunity's foreign to the Mother." shrugged Heller.

"It's a long way from a little girl's size to a plague cyst, Julia." John grumbled.

"I know. I know. But it makes sense though, I mean, why else did the original Z.E.D. go after us in the first place? We're totally foreign." the doctor reasoned, throwing out an obvious hand shrug.

"So are they. They're half cyborg." Danziger glared.

"But is their flesh part, human? I wonder.." Yale thought out loud.

"Well, what else could they be?" Morgan shifted uncomfortably.

The tutor opened up his holographic hand to an image of a dead Z.E.D.'s face, the one from the sleeper ship they had left behind. "Grendler? Hmmm. Possibly.. Terrian?"

"Aw, no way!" Cameron flared. "Then what people here made the robotic half then? Anything machine's totally a human invention."

"Is it?" Yale grinned. "We are not the only travelers in space. There are too many stars out there for us to be the only beings exploring the outer reaches. Perhaps Uly's Mother sentience is someone else's experiment or game, and the Terrians are the playing cards. Making tools was co-evolutionary on our Earth, so why not here? And so must machine building be, in turn. Whoever they are stole our Earth concept of war machine." he insisted.

"But these Z.E.D.s are cruel, too! Why are these new ones that way?" Bess insisted. "Those worm bullets are still torturing devices."

"Ah, but that's as seen through human eyes! How might it be through a biological perspective? Doctor?" the tutor encouraged.

Julia Heller's face brightened. "Breeding. A... sharing of information, before recombination."

"The worm bullets are sperm?" John blinked.

Heller threw up her hands. "We don't know how the Terrians reproduce themselves. Do they grow? Are they... made in a test tube? Or are they still babies, with all the Z.E.D. actually being their biological parents?"

"Are you saying they were trying to mate with my True?!" John roared.

"No, John." Julia flinched, then she started laughing. "But they did use the only delivery system they know about. Shooting. No, True's attack was definitely an attempt at trying to kill the Phage bacteria. Only they mistook the same species as the Phage makers, us, to be the germ itself. Your daughter is a closer step into the right direction to the Phage's actual size than any of us adults. I think the Z.E.D. are still learning how to be ...uh, for lack of a better word.. A disinfectant." Heller concluded, biting her lip.

Adair smirked. "Z.E.D. : Germ, you're dead?"

"Still alive..." groaned Uly.. "...and kicking." True, moaned.

Julia set her hands on both her patients' shoulders. "Welcome back to being awake, you two. I knew the cooler air in this cave would do the trick. Have you been listening to what we've been saying this whole time?"

"Yeah.." "...yeah.." said Uly and True.

Julia raised an eyebrow. "Tell me something then. Have you guys ever seen any predator and prey action on G889 since we arrived?"

Uly sighed, still half groggy. "You mean like somebody eating somebody else?"

"Uh huh.." Heller nodded. "Carnivores."

"No." True replied.

Uly contradicted her. "Just when John did."

"A cannibal?" True sucked in a gasp, wide eyed.

"Shhh..." Devon hissed at him. "Don't speak of it, Ulysses. Don't you ever.."

"I'm sorry, Dad." True whispered, closing her eyes which each let out a single tear of stress. "I didn't ...really.. let it sink in."

"It's okay, True. We were real sick then, freezing to death, and starving. Survival instincts in us can get real ugly. That's why the Grendler was so mad at me.
Be very, very glad that Z.E.D. didn't try to eat you instead of darting you. That's another thing this planet's never caught on and figured out how to do by watching us." he told her.

Twenty minutes later, some of the depression in the group had lifted.

True tried to glance over at her partner in crime during school lessons, but Uly was too busy trying to focus his eyes on the fire. She contented herself with just talking to the rocky ceiling in the cave instead. "Say, Uly."

"What?"

"How do the Terrians stay healthy if they don't eat?"

"They just... are. And they just ...go where they want to be." Uly told her. "Where ever that is."

"Can they be born?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen that long ago yet. The Mother's so literal minded. Everything's all right here, and all about what's happening right now, that's messing her up."

"It's messing up you, too, Uly." Devon warned, as the boy tried to sit up. Adair kept him lying flat on the cot. "Don't get up."

"All I need is clean dirt, mom. That's all. The stuff around here's like the station." he mumbled, falling asleep again.

Devon was surprised. "That's right! That's what we found on the day Uly was cured of his Station's syndrome. How could we not see that answer before?"

Julia sighed, monitoring Uly's new snores with her diaglove. "We've had a lot on our mind. Finding food. Figuring out the Balancer and the true purpose of Moon Cross."

Yale blinked, holding up his hand. "Speaking of which, how long do we have left of the three hour eclipse tonight?"

Morgan looked at his watch. "One hour, ten minutes left. I...sort of set my stop watch." he said self consciously.

"That's not much time at all. We have to go find her." Devon said, shooting to her feet.

"Find who?" Magus asked.

"The Balancer! To set our plan in motion! Come on, let's go!" shouted Adair.