“Rabbits,” growled Hadjeran. “My partner’s been missing for two days in the deep forest, and no one will form a search party because of rabbits.”

The Governor of the colony of Byreton, Munsonia, unfolded her hands and gestured to the chair in front of her desk.. “Please, Mr. Hadjeran, it is not quite that simple.”

“I’ll stand, thank you.” Hadjeran said. “There’s nothing complex about this. Peri and I were diverted here from attending a conference on hypothetical xenobiology. We got separated at Altair starport because of a scheduling issue, and her ship reached orbit around Munsonia a week before mine did.

“During that time she started to investigate your reported problem, and now... no one knows where she is. None of the local citizens or constabulatory will talk to me, everyone is treating this colony as if it’s about to become a war zone, and apparently this is all due to some sort of rabbit problem. I was referred to you, so here I am. I would greatly appreciate some straight answers, if you would be so kind, Governor Wellis.”

“You may be under a misapprehension, Mr. Hadjeran. We wouldn’t ask for help from the Colonization Board, and request xeno-biologist support with a security detail, over a minor wildlife issue. These are creatures that are somewhat rabbit shaped, but are not rabbits, nor any species descended from Earth stock.”

Hadjeran stared, almost at the edge of an impolite sneer. “That’s just preposterous, Governor. This planet, after being scanned as utterly sterile and life-free, was still steamed to the bedrock by orbital lensing three hundred years ago. Just to be sure. When Munsonia got terraformed, it was stocked only with standard biota classes. You yourself must have come through the intense prequalification regimen to have emigrated here.

“There is not one bacterium, one yeast, one gnat on this planet that was not intended to be here by planetary ecobiologists. It was designed to be an entirely human-safe world, and... mysterious black bunnies that kidnap people were certainly not on the approved manifests.”

“I know these facts as well as you, sir,” said Governor Wellis. “We’ve had eight human disappearances of our own, along with most of the local stock of larger Earth fauna - deer, moose, mostly the larger animals. Our hunters were running out of things to shoot, so they’ve had their hand at tracing down the cause. Despite their losses, they got some pics.” Wellis waved a hand and her desk display showed a series of 3D shots.

Hadjeran walked about the display, chewing his lip as he peered closely. It was superficially like a rabbit, but the ear shape, if those were ears, was too round. Its rear legs were more catlike than bunnylike, but there was a complete lack of claws on its feet and teeth in its tiny round mouth, something that deeply bothered Hadjeran. The pinpoint eyes looked luminescent, glittering lights in the velvet black of its fur, and were quite tiny for something that resembled a nocturnal herbivore.

“It doesn’t seem carnivorous,” said Hadjeran. “Has anyone been wounded? Have the beasts been observed trapping their victims?”

“No one has been wounded directly, to my knowledge,” said Wellis. “And we have no observations of any disappearance. The victims seem to get separated from the group somehow, with no one remembering when they left. Stringent searches thereafter have found no trace. Trails seem to peter out and become untrackable. And no sign of a human corpse has yet been discovered—not one human bone—which you may take as a hopeful sign. I do not know what to make of it, myself.”

Hadjeran frowned; nothing was making sense. “May I examine a captured specimen?”

“We have none,” said Wellis. “Bullets and darts seem to conveniently miss them. We've tried to capture them, and even when the trappers swear they caught one, there's never anything but dirt and leaves in the trap.”

Perhaps the rabbit-things were employing hallucinogens? Hadjeran had ways to counter that. “I’m certainly going to need more to go on if I’m to be of any use to you. I can be prepared an hour from now; how soon can you assign me a party?”

“Mr. Hadjeran,” sighed Wellis, “In my opinion you can best be of use to us in an advisory capacity until reinforcements arrive. I will not assign any guards for you to make an excursion. I cannot stop you from seeking volunteers, but I strongly discourage it. None are likely to join you after the ones assigned to escort your partner went missing.”

“You're not going to just wait it out?!” said Hadjeran, leaning over her desk. “Peri’s out there somewhere, with your other missing colonists. You can’t ask me to sit on my heels while they’re in danger!”

Wellis gazed up at him with a piercing and dangerous gleam in her eyes. “Mr. Hadjeran, I've made a formal and urgent request for a full research and security team with xeno-containment experience to the Colonization Board. Priority one, Class A, Probable Xeno-Contact forms all filled out. They're taking me about as seriously as you were taking me at the start of this conversation.

“When I do have reinforcements here to ensure our safety, we can go searching for the missing and try to properly contain this menace. Until then, we are defending our perimeters with what we have, and travel is restricted. I am not at all responsible for any consequences if you choose to go into the forest alone, and in fact, I hereby forbid you to do so.”

Hadjeran stood for a minute, taking her measure, then nodded briefly and turned to leave.



A bit over three hours later, in a late afternoon under the turquoise skies of Munsonia, Hadjeran was entering the oak trees at the skirts of the black woods. He’d found no one to accompany him, but his interviews of the hunting party survivors had given him updated map overlays and some possible leads.

A xenobiologist’s kit was not dissimilar from a wilderness survival kit. Humanity had fortunately not encountered any sapient aliens yet, so heavy armors and weapons were not deemed necessary; the last thing humans wanted was any serious evolutionary competition.. A range of pharmaceuticals that could be administered or received via medical wristband were in the standard issue, along with portable pop shelters, puncture-proof ‘steeylon’ fabric clothing, and multivisors that permitted infrared and night vision, in addition to numerous data overlays and automatic routines to spot and catalogue various organisms.

In short, Hadjeran was vastly better prepared for tracking down elusive alien beasts than your average colonist hunter. But Peri, his partner, had been prepared as well, and had met an uncertain fate. At least he was forewarned.

It took Hadjeran no time at all to locate Peri’s camp. She’d employed a standard collapsing hut with tracking devices and other electronics embedded in the unrippable steeylon cloth. He inspected the site, nestled in a small clearing of oaks at the top of a gentle rise, and found nothing out of the ordinary.

He thumbed the tent open, ducked down and entered. Peri’s cell was not visible and it presumably had gotten damaged or lost with her; it was certainly not broadcasting. Hadjeran tried the tent display; Peri had left copies of her logs. Hadjeran was settling himself to read them when he heard the scratching sound outside. He quickly swiped the logs over to his cell and switched views to the exterior.

One of the beasts was there, black fur like a hole in reality, staring at the tent with its bright eyes, its earlike appendages spread wide. It was looking straight at him, which meant it was focussing on the tent’s camera.

Capturing one of the beasts would be a step forward in understanding what had happened to Peri and the others. Hadjeran prepared his dartgun and spring-net, made sure that anti-hallucinogenics were being dosed to him via his medband, and got quietly to his feet. The hut had a tiny exterior access port and he brought the dartgun up to it, using the exterior view to help him aim. He targeted the chest, braced his wrist, and fired.

There was a tiny hiss as the dart was magnetically propelled to its target. Hadjeran saw the yellow needle-tipped slug, with its embedded tracer, strike the base of the creature’s neck. It gave a whistling, fluty noise, and fled, running catlike into the trees and brush.

Hadjeran burst from the tent and set off in pursuit, tracking it easily at first. The trail was certainly not a rabbit’s trail. There were four toes instead of five, and they lacked the characteristic exclamation point appearance of a rabbit leaping or loping and putting its long back feet before its front paws.

As the skies deepened to dusk, he lost sight of it a few times and almost missed the trail, but fortunately the creature started to drip a trail of red blood behind it. Curious; the dart should have caused minimal bleeding. Perhaps the dart tore the skin or a larger vessel? He loped after it, following the trail easily. The thought floated in the back of his mind that this was going awfully easily, but the excitement of the chase occupied his attention.

He cornered it at last in an intersection of two ridges. It paused as it reached the far edge, as if it was waiting for… not rescue, but some event. There was something familiar about the way it turned and cocked its head at him, almost like a curious dog. The blood had stopped flowing and was now a patch of red on its chest. He readied his spring-net.

He noticed the smaller white sapling trees around it… no, they weren’t saplings so much as shoots. They didn’t look like any Earth flora. Whatever was behind these beasts had brought a bit of their home with them, it seemed.

When he touched the spring-net release, several things happened at once. The coil of steeylon mesh sprang out too quickly for the eye to see and clasped around the beast. And something dark leapt from a branch by his face, and tore his multivisors off.

As he fumbled to recover them, he saw a glimpse of a black beast grabbing the visors in its mouth and dashing off between the trees.These weren’t dumb animals, they knew what they were doing somehow. Were they were toying with him? For the first time, a sick fear started to nestle and curl around his heart.

Hadjeran’s eyes tried to adjust to the sudden dimness, but as he strained to see, the white alien shoots seemed to pop open around him, emitting sporelike puffs that struck his unprotected face. He cried out as his exposed eyes burned and he clutched at them. Disoriented, he reeled and fell.

All around him in the darkening landscape, darker shapes were appearing, seeming to fade in out of shadow, pinpoint eyes gleaming like stars in the night sky. They’d planned this. Every choice he’d made had been meant to bring him here. He shouted to them. He railed and cried for help as he got to his knees. His cell had gone missing somehow. There was a tug at his wrist as his medband was pulled off and away.

As he cleared his stinging eyes, one of them came up to him, the one he’d shot in the neck earlier. The Decoy. It hadn’t been caught in the spring net! It was impossible… no, almost impossible. He couldn’t be seeing things this badly.

The breath hissed and rattled in his throat as his heart raced and panic shot like daggers of ice through his chest. The beast came to him, shaking as it walked, and shimmying something like a cat. The yellow dart wiggled, then fell from its bloodstained neck. It reached his side and its earlike things reached out, and stroked him.

When he didn’t react, it hopped up on his lap, again more like cat than rabbit. He started shaking. Its ears… antennae? soft as velvet, stroked him on the belly. All around them, in the darkness, the glittering eyes seemed to multiply. There was nowhere to run

Soon, he reached down and stroked its soft black fur. It turned its head, making a quiet whispering hiss, and licked his hand with a sharp darting little tongue.

The others started to approach as he stroked its back, feeling alien vertebrae under its supple back.

His skin crawled in the cool of the evening and he shuddered. They came to him and surrounded him and their warmth and scent filled the air around him; it was a sharp odor like metal in the rain. He trembled. He wanted to leap over them, take to the trees, win back out of the night and into light and sunshine. He wanted to strike out and smash them, win through, survive. But his legs felt too weak to stand. His teeth chattered and his arms and legs strained in contradicting signals. His grip tightened on the one in his lap and it growled in warning or complaint until he relaxed his hold.

The ghosts of shadow with their bright eyes came from the dark and pressed against him and their ear-antennae wrapped over him like soft feathers. They leapt up on him and pressed close, and he sank slowly under their weight. They crawled upon him and slowly stroked him until his eyes rolled back and he collapsed. They continued to gather on him, covering all of his body, curling against each other, falling into dormancy one by one. In the blackness, there was no sound but for their breath. The dark pile rippled and shifted as the human form inside strained against them.

What they needed to do took much power, much potential, but they had the sphere of his possibilities firmly contained within theirs now, and could make full use of him and what he offered. They began their work.

The red-throated one nuzzled under his shirt, intimate and very familiar, and pressed its mouth and sharp tongue to his bare skin. A drop of his blood flowed out and dripped down. Others joined in.



The bright orange half-moon finally climbed in the sky and cast its light between the branches in gentle beams. In the pile of sleeping forms, one of them stirred, rose to all fours and sniffed at the sky. Its movement started another, and soon all of them were rising up. They trotted around, checking the clearing, pressing their noses together, preparing to head on. All were somewhat larger than they’d been before.

One only remained where the pile had been. It was hunched up, eyes wide, ear-antennae folded back, shivering.

The one with the red throat came to it, stroked it gently, nuzzled and rubbed against its flank.

Eventually, the shivering one was coaxed into standing up. With red-throat at its side, they joined the pack and headed for the clearing’s edge, fading as they reached it into invisible shadows.



He remembered parts of what he had once been, but only the parts that would help them all to continue to grow. What wasn’t needed had been absorbed or discarded. He was one of them now.

The Pack perceived time differently, not in sharp linear jumps as a human does, but as possibilities spread like ripples in water, only in four dimensions. Where the ripples intersected, possible things could be made to really happen. Certain ripple patterns could reinforce and build in strength, to make the intersections grow stronger and reach further into the remote space of possible outcomes. As a Pack, they could jump between branches of events, hiding in the interstices, finding the right choices that would produce the best outcome.

It had not been probable that his biochemistry could become their own, but once he'd been bitten there was a possible path, and chasing the ripples with precision had eventually altered him and brought him fully into their fold. Each human added to the Pack not only swelled their ranks but added new chains of possibilities to the swelling ripples that represented the best way for events to happen. The technique also worked for transforming the human-introduced fauna and flora back into their native counterparts.

The Pack did the things that caused the strongest concentrations of possibility, and as they were the best at flexing the ripples of potential, that meant projecting what they were as strongly as possible at each decision point, which sometimes led to odd choices. Withdrawing fully from the detectable world to hibernate in potential states, while disastrous to their ecosystem in the short run, had led to the human colonization of this planet, and that colonization now provided strong knowledgeable organisms to donate their mass and potential, their techniques, their knowledge, their starships...

None of the Pack fully sensed the end of their actions. They only sought to maximize their survival and the strength of their intersections; this made them feel good. But they all could sense it was building to something vast.

Vaster than galaxies.