Seven.

“No, no, no! It says plainly on page 437 of the Decker Guide that you have to connect the transdimensional optic spirograph to the main port if you want vector inversion!”

“Only if you're using old editions of the matrix scanner. It's been updated; besides, the errata to the Decker Guide clearly states that the optic spirograph is more or less redundant.”

“Really? I'm not sure I like that...”

Maximus sighed, looking at the two women arguing. Since they had docked at the Holosphere, they had accomplished absolutely nothing. He didn't understand much of the conversation. The way he saw it, this Jane woman had asked Andromeda for help, and then apparently disagreed with Andy's solution, and then Andy had disagreed back, and now it was just a contest about who could disagree the most.

“Wow. They're really going at it, huh?”

Maximus jumped – there was someone behind him. He spun around, coming face to face with a brown-haired woman wearing a Terminal Imagination T-shirt.

“You're a Terminal Imagination fan?” he asked, surprised. He dimly recalled that Jane had spoken about an “assistant”.

“Of course. They're an awesome band. I'm Selma. I'm the one who actually does the work around here.”

“Maximus. My friends call me Max. So... you're Jane's assistant?”

“She likes to call me that, for some reason. We're sort of taking care of things around here at the moment. Well... us and Sawyer.”

“Sawyer's here?” asked Max, surprised. “Wow, I haven't seen him in a while. Does he live here?”

“Yeah. Works here, uses the 'sphere to broadcast lectures... and to research old stuff.”

“Any chance I could meet him?”

“Sure. I don't think those two will be finished for a while yet, anyway. Right this way.”

Maximus got up from his seat, following Selma through the cluttered corridors of the Holosphere. Things had just taken a turn for the better. Sawyer would be willing to help them, for sure.

Six.

The interior of the Intergalactic Battle Academy carried an air of tradition and elegance. Outside it looked like any other space station, a great rotating ring of steel and plastic – but the inside had been built and decorated to look like an Old Earth academy, with genuine oak doors and mahogany floors. It was built to impress, and compared to most stations it was wasting an obscene amount of space on high ceilings, enormous archways and large hallways. The only exception were the student dormitories, which were small and cramped. Krystof and Darren remembered this well.

“I can't believe we're back.”

“Me neither,” replied Darren. “It's been way too long. Maybe this was a bad idea.”

“You could have at least asked, first. So are we recruiting a coupla students, or what?”

“Better. We're recruiting from the staff.”

“Huh? You're bringing our old teachers with us on a treasure hunt?”

They turned a corner, heading for one of the zero-gravity classrooms. “Don't be stupid, Krystof. Our old teachers are probably retired. I'm looking for old friends.”

He punched a few buttons, and the door to the zero-gravity chamber slid open. The huge, cylindrical chamber was almost empty, but as Darren and Krystof drifted inside, they spotted someone near the ceiling. It was a short-haired woman in camouflage pants and a red bandanna. She looked a little distracted, floating through the room with her attention focused on a hand-held computer.

Krystof's eyes widened. “Babs?”

“Huh? Oh! Hi! Christian! Darryl! So good to see you!”

“You haven't changed a bit,” Darren smiled. “Listen, can you round up the other girls? We've got a job on our hands, and we could use some help.”

“Sure thing! They should be somewhere around the Wormhole.”

“Gotcha. Uh, are you coming with us?”

“In a minute. Just gonna finish this game...”

Five.

“Hey, Silver?”

“What is it now?”

“Someone's approaching. Someone on a pretty messed-up ship. Looks like they're coming straight for us.”

Jane Silver spun around in her seat. “Customers, is it? Interesting.”

She pressed her palms together, a sinister look passing over her face. The white light of the control room reflected in her glasses, as she leaned over to press a few buttons. “Let's see what they want, shall we? Put them on screen.”

Her companion did so. An extremely blurry picture came on, full of interference: Jane could see two people, a man and a woman. The man was remarkably short, somewhat eccentrically dressed and serious-looking; by contrast, the woman was tall, sharply dressed with a brown coat and brown trousers, but with a peculiar, exaggerated grin on her face. It very quickly vanished from her face.

“Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” the tall woman said apologetically. “We're here to see the owner. She knows we're coming, I sent her a message.”

Jane adjusted her glasses.

“Rita isn't here right now. My assistant whats-her-face is running the show around here in her absence.”

Both of the strangers looked disheartened at these news. “Any chance she's left any messages concerning us? I'm Andromeda, this here's Maximus. We're old friends of Rita. Our nav disc is broken, we could really use a replacement.”

Jane considered. In all likelihood, these two people wouldn't be able to cover the cost of a nav disc. Then again... maybe they could come in handy.

“Either of you know anything about hologram technology?” she asked.

“Pretty much everything there is to know.” said the other woman.

“You can dock at airlock three. Over and out.”

Four.

Maximus slammed his hands against the control panel in frustration.

“Useless piece of cac,” he swore. “Useless, useless, useless.”

“Still no luck, huh? Hold on, let me try one more thing...”

“It's no use, Andy. It's bust. I can't believe it! We get the coordinates for the biggest treasure in the galaxy, and now our nav disc isn't working!”

Andromeda leaned back in her chair, thinking. “Well... maybe we could get it repaired.”

“For what money? All we found on board that ship were the coordinates.”

“I know, but... we could call in a favor.”

Maximus looked at the woman, puzzled. “Who owes us a favor?”

“I was thinking... We're not far from the Holosphere. We could navigate there just riding a wave.”

“The Holosphere? You think she would help us?”

“I think maybe she might. We're old friends, after all.”

Maximus considered. It might be that they would have to share some of the treasure if they called for help... but then again, if the legends were true, the treasure of Christmas Planet would be huge enough to last well over a dozen people for a lifetime. Surely splitting it with one or two more people wouldn't hurt too badly?

“Fine.” he said. “Contact her.”

Andromeda leaned forwards, pressing a few keys on her hand-held communicator. “Already on it. It's a good thing I have free wave service on this thing.”

Three.

“Christmas Planet? I thought that was just a legend.”

“So did I, but the transmission is genuine. Krystof, the garbled message we picked up really did come from the Star of Bethlehem. I triple-checked it. It must have travelled through space for months, years maybe, but it's real.”

“If it's been travelling through space for years, don't you think someone else has already picked it up and looted the planet?”

“No. It was encrypted. Even if someone else picked it up, they'd need a pretty sharp programmer on board to figure out what it meant. My algorithm cracked the code, but it was sheer luck I tried to run it on this particular wave of random junk. Unless someone found the actual Star, we should be the only ones with the information.”

A strange sort of glow passed over Krystof's face. His eyes shone up, and he took a step closer to Darren. “Are you serious? We have a shot at the treasure of Christmas Planet? Oh wow, imagine all the stuff we could buy! Computers! Androids! A holodeck! Imagine that: Our own holodeck!”

“Calm down. We need to get there first. And I admit, there is a risk someone else has found the message too, so we'd better hurry.”

“Gotcha. Set the course and give me maximum speed. I'll soup up the engine, if I can.”

Darren sighed. It was so like Krystof to take command in situations like these. Well, it was a sensible course of action, so he wouldn't object. He spun around in his seat, entering the coordinates into the ships' computer, and started the autopilot. The ship turned around, away from the black expanse of nothingness, to face a cluster of bright stars.

A thought struck him.

“Hey Krystof?”

The other didn't respond. He was probably already down in the engine room. Well, it would be foolish to rush towards their goal. Christmas Planet could be dangerous: It probably was, judging from its location in uncharted regions. Neither himself nor Krystof had the equipment they needed for serious combat, and even if they did, there were only two of them.

“I can't believe I'm doing this...” Darren said to himself. “Well, there'll be enough treasure for everyone, I guess.”

He reached the keyboard of the control panel, and fed it the coordinates for the Intergalactic Battle Academy.

Two.

“Careful with those explosives. You've got to be gentle.”

“Don't worry, I've got this.”

Maximus looked on anxiously as his companion climbed out of the airlock, wearing the old suit he had patched up himself. He hoped it would hold. Virtually everything on the entire ship had been repaired at least once, but it was different with a suit: A suit didn't have any back-ups. If it failed...

Andromeda seemed to be doing fine, though. He saw her do the thumbs up before she climbed up on top of the ship, disappearing from sight. When she next appeared, she was floating gracefully through empty space, holding a cable. She had calculated the jump carefully – moments later, she slammed into the wreckage. Maximus breathed a sigh in relief – at least the easy part was over.
“All right, Andy, do you hear me?” he said into the microphone on the control panel.

“Loud and clear.” came a distorted reply. “I'm setting down the charges now.”

“Make sure you attach the cable.”

“Already have.”

There was no noise, of course. Maximus just saw the explosions light up, and then the airlock doors of the wrecked spaceship collapsed. He sent a thought to the poor bastards who had been on board – to die in space wasn't a pleasant fate.

“I'm going in.” came Andromeda's voice from his speakers.

She was already climbing across the hull of the ship, reaching the destroyed doors and disappearing inside. He hated this part: The waiting. “Roger that.” he responded, and leaned backwards, trying to distract himself.

He settled for practising a little of the old Earth languages he was studying. Closing his eyes, he mumbled the words one by one, slowly, so they would last for a while. Minutes went by.

“You okay, Andy?”

“I'm fine. Already on my way back.”

He opened his eyes, and saw her float through space – holding the cable in one hand and a metal briefcase in the other. She disappeared from sight, and he stared in anticipation at the airlock. After a little while, it opened.

Andromeda was a tall woman, much taller than himself – much taller than most men, in fact, and powerfully built: The fact that the briefcase caused her to stagger a little against the artificial gravity meant it probably was rather heavy. She dragged it into the cockpit, and just ruffled his hair as he tried to help her with it.

“Let's just open it here, Max, all right?”

He nodded, and cleared away some space on the small desk. Andromeda set the briefcase down, and opened it – it wasn't locked.

A strange green light emerged from inside, illuminating the both of them. They stared at the contents, trying to make sense of what it meant.

“Are these... coordinates?” asked Maximus.

“You know, I think they are."

“For what? What could possibly be so important that you use a whole computer just to store the coordinates?”

The answer to the question struck them both at once.

One

Space. The final frontier. A vast ocean of nothingness, an inky black expanse between the distant stars, a big, stupendous, amazingly-sized enormous huge giant infinity of stuff.

Darren didn't like it. It made him feel uneasy.

He stood staring out from the ship's bridge, the only illumination being the green light from the screens of his computer. He couldn't see a damn thing out there, which was very disconcerting, because it meant there wasn't anything there to see.

Tearing his eyes away from the glass, he turned instead to the screen of the computer. Even out here, there were fortunately ways to keep busy. He could perhaps play a game or something, to keep himself from going crazy. He sat down by one of the monitors, ready to start up a program – any program, really – when he noticed a little flashing symbol in the corner of the screen.

“Huh. That's odd. What's this do again?” he thought to himself, pulling it up to full-screen.

Moments later, he was hurtling down the corridor. “Krystof! Krystof! Wake up!”

He tore open the door to his companions' quarters, and the other man jerked awake, confusedly trying to untangle himself from his sheets. He grabbed a gun from the bedside table, and leaped out of bed, still wearing his sleep mask.

“What? What? Are we being attacked?”

“Whoa, Krystof, careful! Don't wave that thing around.”

The other man angrily tugged the blindfold from his face, throwing it aside. He blinked at the sudden change in light, shielding his face with his gun arm.

“Jesus, Darren, don't you know how to knock? Don't startle me like that.”

“I'm sorry, it's just... Come on. You've got to see this.”