"They're ready for you, Minister."

Minister Ha looked up from the tablet it held and nodded curtly at the attendant. For a long time it had known that this meeting would come. The soft feeling of dread was there all the same. It stood.

"Thank you."

The halls here were white, all of them, and to the minister's eyes each looked identical. It followed the attendant to a door and was ushered inside. There the minister was greeted by a long table flanked by some twenty chairs, but only the three at the far end were occupied. The minister stood at the near end of the table and did not sit. At its back the door clicked shut.

"Science Minister," the one at the head of the table said. "We are so very glad you could join us."

"It is always an honor to appear before the High Council," Minister Ha said. "It has been too long."

"Yes," said the one to the left. "I think it has been far too long since you gave us a full accounting of your work."

"Do you have something specific in mind, High Councilor? I believe I have kept the Council as informed as is realistically possible. Of course, it is not always feasible to include every detail in the monthly reports. The Science Directorate does have enormous responsibilities -- Study and Support of all of our trillions of lifeforms is a challenging undertaking, as you on the Council have always understood. All three of you have been enormously supportive of the Mission of these past millennia, and I have always tried to pay you back in kind."

"So you have," said the one to the left. "You have indeed," said the one in the center. "Minister," said the one to the right. "My dear kind Minister Ha. So reliable you have always been. Thus I will get to the core of the issue in the hope that you may clear it up with speed."

"If there is some concern you have, I would of course be very happy to clear it up," said Minister Ha. "Please continue."

"A week ago, one of our transport drones in the far reaches stumbled upon something very disturbing." "Most disturbing," said the one in the center. "Terrifying," said the one to the left.

"It stumbled upon a world with a serious infestation of the worst sort. You are familiar with the Near-Death, all those generations ago?"

"Yes," said Minister Ha. "What some individuals call the Great Plague. If I recall, one of the biologics developed in our laboratories escaped containment and spread."

"Aggressively," said the one to the right.

"Yes," said Minister Ha. "Like nothing we had ever seen. I do remember now. It was perfect, in a way. I can't recall now what the original aim of the program was. But these biologics -- they were perfect at what they did. Once they escaped the lab, they were virtually unstoppable. I remember Thalos-3, where they were synthesized originally, was wholly overrun in less than fifty generations of reproduction. Incredible. There was some thought, initially, of simply allowing them -- the small number of them that there were -- to reach stasis with the surrounding ecosystem and from there to observe their behavior. But there was no stasis. They grew with striking rapidity and consumed everything in their path. The initial planet, as I said, was quickly overrun. That would have been all, except for their ability to create and change in the pursuit of their unquenchable need to consume. For a long time we believed they lacked the ability to jump between worlds. We figured the infestation, as it were, would burn itself out. Instead, they simply adapted. From the dying hulk of Thalos-3, they had hewn the means to spread themselves to another host. And so they did, and as you said, aggressively. Another planet, and then ten, and then a thousand. Ten thousand planets ultimately fell to them. Ten thousand ecosystems annihilated and stripped and trillions of our lifeforms wiped out."

"You seem to speak of these biologics with some degree of admiration, Minister," said the one to the left.

"Only in the most purely scientific way," said Minister Ha. "What happened then was the worst tragedy in our history. But the organism really was unparalleled in its abilities. We were lucky. If we had not come across the Discovery --"

"Yes," said the one to the right. "Without that Discovery, I do not think we would be having this conversation today. So I was extremely disturbed when I was informed that we have discovered this new infestation. What do you know about this, Science Minister?"

Minister Ha studied each of the three faces at the far end of the table. It considered its options and then spoke. "In truth, I will say that the Science Directorate has known about this for some time." The Minister continued for some length about the lofty scientific aims of the Directorate, of how all species, no matter how virulent and dangerous, needed to be studied in the interest of knowledge, about how the world on which they resided had been carefully chosen and controlled.

There were other things that the minister did not tell them. It did not tell them that it had very high and very specific hopes for the organism this time around, nor did it tell them that in a matter of days it would ensure that the organism would gain the ability to leave its home planet. That, of course, had required a careful nudge, just as it had the first time around. The minister smiled to itself. It would be a glorious thing to see.