|
The crew find Namtar, a scientist who promises them that he will make maps to their home worlds using information taken from their DNA. Aeryn doesn’t give him a sample because she knows she can’t go home to Peacekeeper territories, and Namtar can’t find John’s world, but he has directions for the others. In exchange for the maps, he requires one of Pilot’s arms. Zhaan, D’Argo and Rygel unhesitatingly assault Pilot and give Namtar what he demands. They engage in a series of squabbles over whose home they will go to first, but when they get the crystal with the maps, they learn that only one map will be viable. Rygel runs off with the crystal and hides it. Zhaan and D’Argo make a pact to exclude Rygel but when that doesn’t work out Zhaan tries to seduce Rygel into siding with her.
Meanwhile when Aeryn realizes that she may someday be left alone on Moya, she goes back to Namtar for a DNA test. She hopes he will find a Sebacean colony somewhere in the Uncharted Territories where she can live. Instead of removing a sample, though, Namtar injects some of Pilot’s DNA into her. She soon begins to mutate into a Pilot-type being. When John realizes what’s happening to her and how scared she is, he brings her back to Namtar, who is quite proud of his work. He intends to acquire Pilot’s multi-tasking abilities for himself through experimentation on Aeryn.
He knocks John unconscious and when he revives, Kornata (Namtar’s assistant) explains that she had set up the laboratory and Namtar had been one of her lab creatures. He had evolved and grafted the desirable traits of other species onto himself. She offers John her assistance and they go back to Moya to work out an antidote and a plan for administering it.
When Pilot tells John that Rygel is nearly finished reconfiguring the crystal for Hyneria, Kornata tells them that it was never meant to work and if Rygel is successful in uploading it to Moya, it will destroy everything that’s in her data banks. John tries to grab the crystal but it flies out of Rygel’s hand and smashes on the floor.
John and Kornata return to the asteroid. When they inject Namtar with the solution they concocted, he devolves into his original form, a lab rat. John then administers a dose to Aeryn and she also returns to her original form.( I sure hope Kornata saved some of that stuff for herself.)
In the last scene, D’Argo is playing his shilquen to Pilot as a back-door sort of apology because, as Pilot says, "Luxans are not given to apologies".
|