Hope you enjoyed the story! The book, as you are probably aware, is slightly different to the online version. So if you can get your hands on a paper back copy, go and get it!
Thanks again to all that contributed and also to those folks from the community that kept pestering us to finish it.
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CHAPTER 26
It is important that we never stop asking questions.
Albert Einstein
"It's just not fair," Elena said in a low voice. Brennan silently looked at her for a long while and then turned to gaze at the deep blue of the Argon horizon, right where the skies and the ocean met.
"No, I guess it's not," he said. A soft breeze arose, tugging the cuffs of his blue USC jacket.
Elena wiped a black strand of hair from her face. "I've not known many Teladi, but he was a very special saurian. Dammit, I'm going to miss him, you know!"
Brennan nodded solemnly. "I'd only known Nopileos for a short time, but he definitely grew on me."
Elena sighed. "Kyle, I'd like to meet his egg-brother Sissandras, and the Ceo, his grandfather. I'd like to tell them about what he did for us, and just how proud they should be of him."
"That’s a good thought, Elena."
Voices became audible ahead of the large hexagonal hovering platform Elena and Kyle stood on. Two more of those platforms hovered in the distance, about a hundred meters from each other, a couple of kilometres off the coastline. Elena glanced at them; a few men were running to the hand-railed rim of their platform, excitedly staring down at the calm sea below.
"So how's Ninu?"
"She's doing alright, considering the circumstances. Her mother died last week. Right now, she's arranging the ceremony at the Goner temple."
"Hard times," Elena said. "Excuse me if I'm being too curious, Kyle, but …"
"You are too curious."
"Gee! I knew that! So…?"
"There, she's coming," Kyle replied, pointing towards the rim of the platform. Obviously, he wasn't referring to Ninu. "Come on, let's go. Aren't you anxious?"
"So-so," Elena said vaguely, starting for the handrail anyway. The ocean, lethargically swashing two metres beneath the platform, was remarkably calm today, and what waves there were weren’t worth mentioning. "But aren’t we being a bit evasive?"
"Ninu and I are in love. As soon as I'm back from Earth …"
"You're a dreamer, Kyle. Seriously, a dreamer. But that's probably why I'm so fond of you."
"Well, I'm fond of you too, Lady Naysayer!"
Elena remained silent for a few moments. "I'm not a naysayer," she then said. "Never have been."
"Don't you want to go back to Earth, Elena? I honestly do, but my heart wants to stay here."
Elena took a step forward, gripped the handrail with both hands and looked down. Far below the clear surface of the freshwater sea, she could see a vague, bright silhouette, rising slowly closer.
"Of course I'd like to see Earth again some day." A little smile shone on her face now. "There's an old man on the promenade at Milano. He foretold that I'd be returning, once I got rid of my restlessness."
Brennan looked surprised, but also a little mischievous. "You feel restless? News to me. I've never noticed that!"
Elena thumped him in the ribs amicably. "Hey!” She complained, chuckling. "Right now, the thought of returning to Earth makes me more restless than the thought of staying here. I think I can accomplish more for Earth if I stay here. I've learned heaps, while you were playing cat and mouse!" She winked.
"Yeah, like how to brawl with fishermen. Look, over there!"
Gradually, some large fawn thing emerged from the sea. The clear water washed over it, pouring off of both sides, while the object surfaced, bit-by-bit. It was vaguely school rubber shaped, slanted at the bow and the stern. A few black and burnt looking streaks scored its dented, formerly white but now heavily stained flanks; one of them charring a stylized image of a four-legged man in front of a spiral nebula. The writing underneath the image read USC Getsu Fune.
"That's not a tear in your eye, is it?" Brennan asked suspiciously.
"Naw – just the wind. You know I never weep." Elena wiped her eye with her index finger.
"Of course you don’t. Hm. A few dents here and there, and the right-hand attitude jet at the stern is gone. I've seen worse."
"Now why doesn't that surprise me, test pilot? Once you are done with a space ship."
"Now, c'mon!"
"I'm just thinking the Nereide. Nine meters down is it? Well?" Elena looked at Brennan mockingly.
"O-kay. Thank you, Mr. State Attorney, Sir, I think I've heard enough!" Both of them chuckled and turned their attention back to the ongoing salvage operation.
By now, the Getsu Fune had risen almost halfway from the water, and it was possible to look inside the cockpit. It looked like the water hadn’t got in.
"Do you think it's going to work? Put her jump drive into the X and head home?"
Brennan looked thoughtful. "I do hope so. Or perhaps we can set the Getsu herself afloat again. Well, I say it'll work."
"Hey!" Something flashed into her mind which she hadn't told him before. "You know what I managed to get hold of? It's a guitar that once belonged to a man named Frank de Vries, of the crew of the Dragonfyre!"
"You're nuts! Do you know how far that dates back?"
"'Course I know that! But the guitar is over there in a storage hold!"
Brennan shook his head. "That's crazy. But, Lin. Tell me one thing. Please."
Elena looked at him attentively. He took a deep breath, stepped forward and clenched the handrail while the Getsu Fune emerged in her entirety.
"Since my first day in the Community of Planets, I've been stumbling over, well, you know loose ends. Everywhere. Do you know what I mean? And many of them fit each other somehow. Or they fit loose ends we brought with us from Earth."
"You mean, like tiles in a puzzle slowly taking shape?"
He nodded fiercely. "Yes, exactly! I may be wrong, but behind all of this, behind all those loose ends, those puzzle tiles – there is someone who fits tiles together, and shuffles them again. And ties up loose ends, or cuts them. Do you understand?"
"Absolutely."
"Yes. But what do you think the puzzle means, what’s the purpose behind the cutting and tying of loose ends?"
Elena looked at the Getsu as it was slowly guided towards the hovering platform she and Brennan were on. The water had almost drained from her flanks.
"I have no idea Kyle, not the foggiest notion. But I knew someone who was cruising half the universe with the answer stored in the memory banks of his on-board computer." She smiled. "I believe that, since we were given the answer once, we will be given it again. I really do."
She searched for the right words. "At any rate, I for one am going to look for it. Until my restlessness vanishes." She tapped the handrail pointedly with both hands. "Well then," she said, nudging her best friend amicably, "now let's have a look at the Getsu. Maybe Marc put the time he spent on the ocean floor to good use and developed some real intelligence!"
Brennan smiled absently, gazing into the sky. Somewhere up there, seventeen light-years straight ahead, and to the left at the third star, somewhere up there, Sol was twinkling beyond the haze of the newborn day. He let his eyes dwell just a little longer on that mystic, invisible spot in the sky that was so near and yet so far away. He reached into a pocket and touched Gisbert's morphing globe, letting it go without whispering the word in his heart.
"To develop some real intelligence," he echoed. "Perhaps that is exactly what they want from us."
THE END
because it's finished and 
NAAH! LOVE IT! 
I've definitely done this before. I always assumed this forum was exempt from that rule. I understood the purpose of that rule to be in preventing the spread of out-of-date information and to facilitate random topic discussion 
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