| Astra 3 was still turning the problem of her demifox analogs over in
her mind. It was clearly possible to use the Crystallics to bring people
from another world - after all Minestus had managed it, if not in the end
in a controlled manner - but that apparently required those brought across
to themselves be in the vicinity of something powerfully magical: a Crystallic
or magic mirror or the like. Even then, there seemed to be no way of locating
a particular desired alternative reality.
Perhaps science offered more hope than magic? Probe had said that Alliance
ships could only navigate to alternative realities that they had visited
before. Now an Alliance ship had visited her own reality. That wasn't the
same as the reality that the demifoxes were in, but from the similarity
of events up to an advanced stage it sounded as if it should be very "close"
to it. (As she understood it, the adventurers had only been transported
through space by Moreau, not to another reality, so were still in the same
reality that they had started in.) Might that mean that if an Alliance
ship were to visit her own world, it would be "close" enough for the demifoxes
to be located by either science or magic, and brought across to the ship?
She realised that this would in any case have to wait for a cure for
the Phage. For one thing, until then the mages who might be needed for
such an operation couldn't go on an Alliance ship. Secondly, whilst in
their demifox forms those she wanted to rescue would presumably be immune
to the Phage, once transformed back to their human forms they would lose
that immunity. Or would they? She hadn't really understood the talk about
the genetic difference between the Astra who had died of the Phage and
the other Astras. But all the other Astras had spent time as a demifox
before being converted back to humanity. (Except that this world's Astra
was a demifox still, of course.) Could it be that the Crystallic had not
precisely replicated the originals when converting them back? Perhaps even
deliberately, as protection from the Phage, since the Crystallics seemed
to have a measure of some strange intelligence?
-
 Deciding that
further speculation on this topic was pointless for the moment, she wondered
when Belboz would get back to Malachi Droconis.
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