Conflicts of the last progenitors

sending more crafts for those of us who remain. All Bullets stay

behind. Go.

The workers disperse in disordered confusion.

LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)

Do not exceed the vehicle’s weight

limit-- you wreck in the cold out

there, you’re dead.

The watching sculptors sound weird LOW PITCHES in unison.

The anthropologist points: from the rim of the plateau clamber ninety-two more SCULPTORS. They join but do not advance past the first fifty.

LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)

Di yu.

Lo-Cheun glances back at the hover-vans: the first is filled and rising into the air, VWIRRR; people are just now climbing into the back of the one Sven pilots. Lo-Cheun TAPS his earplug.

LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)

Once you’re full, go.

The filled hover-van surges forward, propelled by its sizable rear thrusters, VWIRR...

Heavy stones fall from the cavern ceiling onto the craft, mashing the steel hull with a BOOMING tattoo.

136.

The people inside SCREAM. The pounded hover-van veers, drops and crashes into the stone forty feet below, BOOM!

The crushed and dying people trapped within the wreckage CRY

out in agony; a few blood-covered survivors squirm from the wreckage like terrible newborns. People run to help.

Lo-Cheun points to the roof of the cavern.

LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)

KILLCALL!

INT. PRAYER ROOM - SAME

Aboard Elysabeth, sixty-four people sit on wooden, v-shaped benches in the non-denominational prayer room. Colored glass lit from behind illuminates the variegated occupants.

Amongst them is Mlissa, clutching her six-pointed star.

Everyone is silent.

Without warning, half of the room disappears, CRUSHED into oblivion by a speeding cylinder made of lavender ice, FWASH!

INT. DOCKING TUBE / ARMADILLOS AND HANDYMEN - SAME

Transports Armadillo-5 and Armadillo-7 rocket through and then out of the docking bay in Elysabeth’s arm, into the preternaturally dark night of the crescentcraft’s shadow.

INT. ARMADILLO-5 - SAME

Piloting the ship is Stanuel (the curly-haired blond man who explained the midwives’ agenda). Five hover-vans are parked in the transport’s hatchbay; within each sits a solemn PILOT...a freed conspirator.

INT. MULTI-STAR COUNCIL ROOM - SAME

The Seniors watch the panorama; internal disasters unfold upon the screen. A thought occurs to Florida.

FLORIDA

Is it too late to try to parlay?

Send someone to meet with them?

The Seniors look at Florida; the little leader nods.

GRAYNOSE

Let’s try a Dragonfly first. See

how they react to that.

137.

Graynose looks at an eye in the wall.

EXT. OPTION-1 OCEAN - SAME

Within a crater on Elysabeth’s stomach, Dragonfly Spirit-12’s hull-boosters fire, POOMF; the craft lurches into the air and slowly ascends toward the miles and miles of suspended cylinders that hang above like a chandelier.

The probe ascends, VWIRR...

Three thousand feet separate the Spirit-12 from the crescentcraft; two thousand feet separate the insectile probe and the looming aggressor. The probe draws within one thousand feet of the crescentcraft.

Without a sound, a cylinder drops from the crescentcraft, turns into lavender mist the moment it impacts the Dragonfly; resolidifies and replaces itself in the bottom of the crescentcraft.

The night is silent. Like a specimen trapped in a glass paperweight; the Dragonfly probe hangs petrified in a lavender cylinder from the bottom of the crescentcraft.

INT. MULTISTAR COUNCIL ROOM - SAME

The Seniors stare at the panorama, upon which is broadcast an image of the crescentcraft; the optic tightens on the trapped probe.

GRAYNOSE

Elysabeth, is Spirit-12 still

transmitting a signal?

The image upon the panorama splits into twenty-five smaller images: lavender ice, gray fuzz, the moon as seen through lavender ice, the slug-like body of an ice worm (its posterior branches shifting speedily) and different views of luminous bubbles drifting in random or linear patterns.

FLORIDA

(to Graynose)

What do you think those bubbles

are?

GRAYNOSE

Proteins? Nutrients? Maybe a

means of storing information?

Florida considers the information and then nods.

138.

FLORIDA

I have an idea. But we should

evacuate Elysabeth first.

INT. THE HUMAN PLATEAU - SAME

The two Frenchmen put thermal contacts into their right eyes and look into the darkness of the cavern ceiling.

SECOND FRENCHMAN

The ones we shot-- out to avenge

their missing legs. Spray shots.

The two Bullets aim their j-guns up and squeeze off bursts-CH-CHAK, CH-CHAK- rotating their barrels in small circles to cover a larger- but specific- diameter in the darkness.

Five sculptors (each without legs) fall from the cavern ceiling more than twelve-hundred feet above; they impact the stone and BURST into pulpy abstracts of red blood and pale organs.

The other Bullets keep their weapons trained on the one-hundred-and-thirty-three sculptor host; the humanoids have not moved. Lo-Cheun listens with disbelief to his earplug.

LO-CHEUN

In daylight?

(he listens)

Fine. They getting close?

EXT. CREVASSE WITHIN THE CRATER - SAME