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worktable along one white wall might be missing one of the latest gizmos for micro development. If so, the missing device was on order. What surprised Kris was the sight of a stasis box sitting in the middle of the table. Now, that was overkill.
    More surprising, Tru did not flip it open.
    “Your Aunt Alnaba sent that from Santa Maria.”
    Great-aunt Alnaba was a real aunt, Great-grampa Ray’s youngest girl. She’d specialized in zenobiology and devoted herself to studying the artifacts the Three left behind on Santa Maria. She’d spent a lifetime trying to figure out bits and pieces of a technology so far beyond humanity’s present level that they had built jump points in space as highways across the stars. Grampa Ray had worked with Alnaba most of the last twenty years. He’d never met a challenge he couldn’t handle. Kris grinned; cracking the technology of the Three and the present politics of humanity just might ruin Grampa Ray’s perfect score. “What’s in it?”
    Tru did not open the box but pulled a picture from her pocket. It showed a small square beside a penny for perspective. As wide as the penny was across, it was a bit thicker. “That is a piece of rock from the mountain range along Santa Maria’s North Continent. We cut those mountains up pretty badly during the war against the Professor.”
    “Cut them up, hell. That Disappearing Box made them vanish, just vanish.” Kris shook her head. “Navy tried for fifty years to figure out how that little box worked. Don’t know any more now than they did the day it arrived in the lab.”
    “Yes,” Tru agreed. “But maybe they’re starting too high on the tech food chain. You have to know how to use a screwdriver before you can take a clock apart. I don’t think we’ve figured out the Three’s equivalent of a screwdriver. A million years ago, we were using stone flakes for tools. Could that version of the human brain conceive of a screwdriver, even if you put one in its hand?”
    Kris mulled that idea over, could add nothing to it, and waved at the stasis box. “So, what is that?” she repeated.
    “A tiny part of the data storage that was locked up in those mountains.”
    “Is it active?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What’s it contain?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What do you know?”
    Tru grinned. “Nothing at all. The question is, what would you like to know?”
    Kris eyed the picture, then the box. “How would we find out if this rock has any data stored in it that can be retrieved?”
    “By trying.”
    “How?”
    “Whatever we tried would have to be very sophisticated . . . or maybe very simple. It would need to be flexible and willing to adjust to just about any requirement. I don’t even know what kind of power this thing operated on. We’d have to construct different power sources, apply them very carefully, and see if the mouse squeaks.”
    Kris rubbed her nose; Nelly was suddenly feeling very heavy on her collarbone. “Self-organizing circuitry, huh.”
    “Self-organizing. Very powerful, and very well integrated with its human. Your Aunt Alnaba and her team tried several, what you might call, standard approaches. You know, the big lab, working long hours, everyone looking over everyone else’s shoulders. No results. Then she asked me if I had any ideas. I told her I did.”
    “And they were?”
    “Ever read how the Professor contacted your Grampa Ray?”
    “It got kind of complicated. Biology was never my favorite science,” Kris dodged.
    “Mine neither. What I found interesting, though, was the relationship between his sleeping brain and the tumor growing in his skull. Do you have any idea how important sleep is?”
    “Only when I’m not getting enough of it.”
    “Newborn babies take in as much of this new and confusing world as they can, then fall asleep to absorb it all. Study, sleep, study, sleep. How many times did I tell you when you were in high school that a good night’s sleep was the best preparation