Some hours later, the caterpillar laid down the pipe of its hookah and politely coughed.

"What do you want?" Otto gruffly demanded.

"I believe that the same agency which destroyed the Peppermint Stick is now bent on attacking us. You recall the existence of those dwellers in the liquid ocean deep below Tethys' surface...?"

"Not those stupid Clarke worms!"

"What're Clarke worms?" asked Goldie.

Toto explained. "The natives of Saturn's satellites. They drove your horny water-ice miners off planet the same year your ship was destroyed, and before humans could counterattack, we went through the Singularity and didn't need their crummy moon anymore, so nobody's ever been back."

"A large fleet of intelligent missiles is fast approaching," said the ship. "Shall I--?"

Otto yawned. "Of course. And sterilize the moon too while you're at it."

Goldie swung her legs over the edge of the couch.

"Done," said the deva.

"Wow. You guys don't mess around. But was it really necessary to kill, like, even a bunch of worms so thoroughly?"

"Oh, it'll give someone else the interesting task of reconstructing the species. And you know, Little Golden, that reminds me. Something you said earlier has sparked an idea in my Original Human brain."

"Do tell," said Toto. "This will be a first."

Ignoring the taunt, Otto said, "Take us to the Oort Cloud, deva. Allow me to show you around the ship, meanwhile, Little Golden."

Pointing out the various features of the Grigori Bearford, including the Fast Forward drives, took nearly an hour, toward the end of which time Toto, Otto and Goldie stood before a closed door.

"Now, behind this door is the one part of the ship you must never visit, even though it's easily accessible."

"Gee, what's in there?"

Otto aud Toto looked at each other with chagrin. "We've forgotten. The frog has ruined our short-term memories. But I distinctly recall it's something really awful and scary and not good to mess with. So stay away."

"Mega-Bluebeard," said Goldie. "But I'll try."

Reentering the room where she had first encountered the twins, Goldie noticed a sobbing coming from the breadbox. Before anyone could stop her, she had removel a weeping Buffo and was cradling the hypertrophied toad between her breasts.

"There, there, what's the matter, froggie?"

"I"--sniff, sniff--"just want to be licked!"

"Oh, is that all?" said Goldie.

"No, don't!" warned Toto.

But it was too late, for Goldie had already obligingly slurped the patina of slime off the toad's head.

The toad fell from her lifeless hands, and she keeled over onto the floor with a look of ecstatic overload on her face.

Otto scooped up the toad. "You greedy bastard. Look at what you've done now! You should have known an unsartorized human couldn't take your foul mess!"

"It wasn't fair," whined Buffo. "You two had all the fun you wanted."

"But we didn't go and break her!" said Otto as he stuffed the amphibian roughly back into its bulpy box.

The floor was already closing over Goldie. "I will have her reanimated shortly," consoled the ship. "Meanwhile, we are now stopped some forty thousand AUs from the Sun, at the farthest fringes of the Oort, home to the Solar System's comet reserves."

Otto rubbed his big hands together. "Great! Now, this is what I've thought up. We're going to terraform the Earth!"

"But the Earth is already pretty much terraformed, isn't it?" suggested Toto. "More or less by definition?"

"I know that! But just think! If we bombard the planet with millions of comets, just like our ancestors did to Mars, it will completely wipe out billions of people and all of civilization there! Then we can spend a lot of time and energy recreating it!"

Toto shook his head admiringly. "I have to confess, Otto, that with this marvelous idea, you have surpassed your inherent limitations as a copy. Let's do it."

At that instant, a choir of glowing angelic beings materialized inside the ship.

"It's those ghosts from the end of time again," Otto observed with annoyance.

"And they are radiating a controlled flow of cornucopions," added the deva.

"Yes," said the choir with one celestial voice, "we have returned to reason with you once more. We are your potential descendents from the Omega Point of futurity. And we are here to stop you. If you carry forth your mad plan, we will never come to be!"

"It's a rather tenuous foundation to argue from, isn't it?" asked Toto.

The lead angel raised his/her arms in an imperious gesture. "Enough! Will you desist?"

"Make us!"

There came a blinding radiance that filled the ship. When it dissipated, both the twins and the angels were nowhere to be seen.

Seconds later, from the floor, Goldie was reborn. Sitting up, she looked curiously around.

"Otto? Toto? Hello? Anyone?"

Buffo called out from his box. "It's just you and me now, babe!"

"Oh, you nasty thing! Be quiet."

Goldie moved to the mushroom and poked the slumped unconscious caterpillar, but he failed to respond.

"Goodness! I'm really up the creek now!" Goldie began to wander through the ship.

Finally she found herself at the forbidden door.

"Should I...? Well, why not?"

But before she could try to open the door, it opened on its own.

Behind it stood Otto. Or Toto.

Save that he was only as tall as Goldie's knee, and proportioned to suit.

"Who--who are you?"

"My name's Toot," said the teddy bear. "I'm the original. Let me apologize for any inconvenience my duplicates might have caused you. The ship is bootstrapping itself back into existence now, incorporating what it learned from the angels. And if our hypothetical descendants should return, they won't find us such an easy mark."

"I don't understand."

Toot explained what had happened.

"Does that mean," Goldie asked, "that you're going to go ahead with the crazy scheme Otto and Toto came up with?"

"Of course. It's brilliant. I knew that if I left them alone long enough, they'd hit upon something."

"And what about me?"

Toot said, "How does being called 'Eve' suit you?"

Goldie squealed and said, "Oh, Teddy, how romantic! You're just right for me!"

"I had better be, hadn't I? Now that we've effectively snipped the loop that contains our distant heirs out of the continuum, you and I have a big responsibility to fulfill."

"And just what might that special ol' thing be?" Goldie inquired, rubbing the top of Toot's head sensuously.

"You and I are just going to have to pop down the nearest wormhole and ahead to the Omega Point in order to take their place. Ride out the Big Crunch safe and sound, and kickstart the next universe."

"Oh, Teddy, what a wedding present!"

"Nothing I can't afford."

And we even took Buffo.