A Talent for War

XXIII.

WE RETURNED TO the Centaur for a meal, and some sleep. But the sleep came late: we talked for several hours, speculating on what had finally happened to the captain and crew of the Corsarius. Had the Tenandrome found remains on board? And possibly conducted a funeral service? A ritual volley, report home, and forget it? Pretend none of it ever happened?

"I don’t think so," said Chase.

"Why not?"

"Tradition. The captain of the Tenandrome would have been bound, if she took such action, to have closed out the Corsarius’s log with a final entry." She looked out at the old warship. Its running lights glowed white and red against the hard sky. "No: I’d bet they found her the same way we did. She’s a dutchman." She folded her arms tightly across her breast as though it were cool in the cabin. "Maybe the mutes captured the ship, spirited away the crew, and left it here for us to find and think about. An object lesson."

"Out here? How would they expect us to find it?"

Chase shook her head, and closed her eyes. "Are we going back over?"

"We don’t have any answers yet."

She moved in the dark, and soft music crept into the compartment. "There may not be any over there."

"What do you think Scott’s been looking for all these years?"

"I don’t know."

"He found something. He went through that ship, the same as we did, and he found something."

While we talked, Chase took us out another few kilometers, smiling ruefully, but admitting that the derelict made her nervous.

I could not get out of my mind the image of a Christopher Sim in despair. It had never occurred to me that he, of all people, could have doubted the eventual outcome of the war. It was a foolish notion, of course, to assume that he’d had the advantage of my hindsight. He turns out to be quite human. And in that despair, in his concern for the lives of his comrades, and the people whom he tried to defend, I sensed an answer to the deserted vessel.

There will be a Confederacy one day; but they will not construct it on the bodies of my men.

Long after Chase had gone to sleep. I tried to tabulate everything I could recall or guess about the Ashiyyur, the Seven, Sim’s probable state of mind, and the Rigellian Action.

It was difficult to forget the guns of the Corsarius turning in my direction during the simul. But that, of course, was not how it had happened: Sim’s ploy had worked. Corsarius and Kudasai had succeeded in surprising the attacking ships. They’d done some serious damage before Corsarius had been incinerated in its duel with the cruiser. That at least was the official account.

It obviously hadn’t happened that way either. And I wondered, too, why Sim had changed his strategy at Rigel. During his long string of successes, he’d always led the Dellacondans personally. But on this one occasion, he’d preferred to escort Kudasai during the main assault, while his frigates drove a knife into the flank of the enemy fleet.

And Kudasai had carried the surviving brother to his death only a few weeks later at Nimrod. But Tarien lived long enough to know that his diplomatic efforts had succeeded: Earth and Rimway had joined hands at last, had promised help, and Toxicon had already joined the war.

The Seven: somehow it connected with the tale of the Seven. How did it happen that their identities were lost to history? Was it coincidence that the single most likely source of their names, the log of the Corsarius, was also mute on the subject, and in fact mute on the battle itself? What had Chase said? It could not have happened!

No: it could not.

And somewhere, along the slippery edge of reality and intuition that precedes sleep, I understood. With a clear and cold certainty, I understood. And, had I been able, I would have put it out of my mind, and gone home.

Chase slept fitfully for a couple of hours: When she woke, it was dark again, and she asked what I intended to do.

I was beginning to grasp the quandary of the Tenandrome. Christopher Sim, however he might have died, was far more than simply a piece of history. We were embroiled with the central symbols of our political existence. "I don’t know," I said. "This place, this world, is a graveyard. It’s a graveyard with a guilty secret."

Chase looked down at the frosty, cloud-swept rim of the world. "Maybe you’re right," she said. "All the bodies are missing. The bodies are missing, the names are missing, the log entries are missing. And the Corsarius, which should be missing, is circling like clockwork, every six hours and eleven minutes."

"They intended to come back," I said. "They put the ship into storage. That implies someone expected to come back."

"But they didn’t," she said. "Why not?"

During the entire history of Hellenic civilization, I know of no darker, nor more wanton crime, than the needless sacrifice of Leonidas and his band of heroes at Thermopylae. Better that Sparta should fall than that such men be squandered. "Yes," I said, "where are the bodies?"

Through a shaft in the clouds, far below, the sea glittered.

The Centaur’s capsule was designed to permit movement from ship to ship, or from orbit to a planetary surface. It was not intended for the sort of use I proposed to put it to: a long atmospheric flight. It would be unstable in high winds, it would be cramped, and it would be relatively slow. Still, it could set down on land or water. And it was all we had.

I loaded it with supplies, enough to last several days.

"Why?" asked Chase. "What’s down there?"

"I’m not sure," I said. "I’ll keep the videos on."

"I have a better idea: let’s both go."

I was tempted. But my instinct was that someone should stay with the ship.

"They’re all a long time dead, Alex. What’s the point?"

"Talino," I said. "And the others. We owe something to them. The truth should have some value."

She looked dismayed. "What am I supposed to do," she objected, "if you get in trouble? I won’t be able to come down after you to bail you out."

"I’ll be all right. If not, if something happens, go for help."

She sneered, thinking how long it would take to make the round trip. "Be careful."

We ran through the various systems checks. "Don’t go to manual until you’re down," she said. "And probably not then. The computers will do all the tricky stuff. You’re just along for the ride." She’d been staring at me.

I reached for her, but she stiffened and drew away, shaking her head. "When you come back," she said, so softly I could barely hear.

I climbed into the vehicle, pulled the canopy down, and secured it. She rapped on it twice, gave me a thumbs-up, turned quickly, and left the bay. I watched the lights change over the exit door, signaling that the chamber was sealed.

Her image popped onto my display. "All set?"

I smiled gamely and nodded.

Red lamps in the bay went purple, then green. The deckplates opened beneath the capsule, and I was looking down at wisps of cloud and a gem-blue ocean. "Thirty seconds to launch, Alex."

"Okay." I locked my eyes on the instrument panel.

"It’ll be late afternoon when you get down there," she said. "You’ll have about three hours until dark."

"Okay."

"Stay in the capsule tonight. You have no idea at all what sort of place this is. In fact, you should probably stay aloft. Keep off the ground altogether in the dark."

"Yes, Mom."

"And Alex—?"

"Yes?"

"Do what you said. Keep the cameras on. I’ll be with you."

"Okay."

The capsule trembled as the magnets took hold. Then I fell away, down through the clouds.

It was raining over the ocean. The capsule descended into gray overcast and leveled off at about a thousand meters. It turned southwest on a preset course, which would parallel the overhead track of the Corsarius.

There were thousands of islands scattered through the global ocean: no way I could hope to search them all. But Corsarius had been left in orbit.

I was certain now that there had been a conspiracy. Its shape and form was unclear, but I had no doubts who the principal victim had been. But why abandon the ship? To torture him, perhaps? Or as a sign they would come back for him? Whichever it was, the conspirators, with an entire planet to choose from, would have placed him somewhere along its track, close beneath its orbit.

Within the womb of the bubble cockpit, I felt warm and safe. Rain splattered in large sluggish drops on the plexiglass.

"Chase?"

"Here."

"Islands ahead."

"I see them. How’re you doing?"

"Ride’s a bit rough. I don’t know what this thing’ll be like if it gets windy."

"The capsule’s supposed to be reasonably stable. But it’s small. They really don’t expect you to go joyriding in it, Alex." She still sounded worried. "You might want to cut the search area down."

I was planning to look at everything in an eight-hundred-kilometer-wide band centered on a line drawn directly beneath Corsarius 9s orbit. "It’s probably too narrow already."

"You’re going to be busy."

"I know."

"You’ll run out of sandwiches long before you run out of islands. You’re lucky you don’t have to track across the continent."

"That wouldn’t matter," I said. "It’s too cold there." It must have seemed a cryptic remark to her, but she didn’t press me.

The first group of islands lay dead ahead. They looked sterile, sand and rock, mostly, with scattered brush and a few withered trees.

I flew on.

Toward sunset, the storm had fallen behind. The skies purpled, and the sea became smooth and transparent and still. A school of large, black-bodied creatures glided below the surface; and towers of sun-streaked cumulus drifted on the western horizon.

The ocean was studded with white, sandy reefs; lush, fern-covered atolls; and ridges, bars, and islets. There were thousand-kilometer-long island groups, and solitary fragments of rock lost in the global sea.

Chase’s voice, exasperated: "If I knew what you were looking for, maybe I could help."

"Sim and the Seven," I said. "We’re looking for Christopher Sim and the Seven."

I saw no birds anywhere, but the skies were filled with schools of floaters. They were bigger by far than their cousins on Rimway and Fishbowl, and indeed larger than any I had seen anywhere. These living gasbags, variations of which could be found on so many worlds, gamboled through the air currents. They rose and dived in synchronized movements, and swirled in wild chaos like balloons in a sudden gust.

All the floaters I’d ever heard about, though, were animals. These seemed different, and I learned later that my first guesses about them were correct. Their gas sacs were green; and they possessed a vegetable appearance. The larger ones tended to be less mobile. Long tendrils trailed from a stem and, on the more sedentary creatures, floated on the surface. I saw no indication of eyes or any of the extrusions associated with animals. I suspected this was one of those ecologies which produces animates, species not possessing the clear distinction between plant and animal which adheres on most living worlds.

A few approached the capsule, but they could not keep up, and though I was curious, I resolved not to slow down. Keep moving. Tomorrow maybe.

I passed over a group of desert islands while the last of the sunlight was fading. They were strung out at remarkably constant intervals, alternately to my left and right. Footprints of the Creator, Wally Candles had said of a similar chain on Khaja Luan. (By then, I had become something of an expert on Candles.)

Candles and Sim: how much had the poet known?

Our children will face again their silent fury,

Who walks behind the stars

On far Belmincour.

Yes, I thought: Belmincour.

Yes…

I crossed into the southern hemisphere in the late afternoon of the following day, and approached a wedge-shaped island dominated by a single large volcano. It was a place of luxuriant growth: of purple-green ferns and broad white flowers and vast green webs that clung to every piece of rock. Placid pools mirrored the sky, and there was a fine natural harbor, complete with waterfall. It was an ideal site, I told myself, setting down on a narrow strip of beach between the jungle and the sea.

I climbed out, cooked my dinner over an open fire, and watched Corsarius pass overhead, a dull white star in a darkening sky. I had a steak that night, and beer. And I tried to imagine how it would feel if the capsule (whose cabin lights glowed cheerfully a few meters away) were gone. And if Chase were gone.

I kicked off my boots and walked beneath the stars toward the sea and into the surf. The tide sucked the sand from around my soles. The ocean was very still, and the immense isolation of that world was a physical thing I could touch. I activated the commlink.

"Chase?"

"Here."

"I can see the Corsarius."

"Alex, have you thought about what you’re going to do with it?"

"You mean the ship? I’m not sure. I suppose we should take it home."

"How? It has no Armstrongs."

"There must be some way to manage it. It got here. Listen, you should see this beach."

"You’re out of the capsule," she said, accusingly.

"I’m sorry you’re not here."

"Alex, I have to watch you every minute! Do you have anything down there to defend yourself with? I didn’t think to pack a weapon."

"It’s okay. There are no large land animals. Nothing that could be a threat. By the way, if you look at the sky a little to the north, you’ll see something interesting."

I heard the sound of movement over the commlink, and then she caught her breath. Wally Candles’s wheel. The cluster of stars seemed almost to spin in the heavens: a blazing halo dominating the night, a thing of supernal beauty.

I went back to the capsule and extracted two blankets from the utility box. "What are you doing, Alex?"

"I’m going to sleep on the beach."

"Alex, don’t do it."

"Chase, the cockpit is cramped. Anyhow, it’s lovely out here." It was: the surf was hypnotic, and the moving air tasted of salt.

"Alex, you don’t know the place. You could get eaten during the night."

I laughed—the way people do when they want to suggest that someone is being unnecessarily alarmist—stood in front of one of the capsule’s cameras, and waved. But her concern was sufficiently infectious that I would probably have retreated back into the cockpit, if I could have done so graciously.

With a suspicious glance at the black line of jungle which was only a dozen or so meters away, I spread one of the blankets on the sand. The spot I’d picked was only a few quick steps from the capsule. "Goodnight, Chase," I said.

"Good luck, Alex."

In the morning, I crisscrossed the island for an hour, but there was nothing. Disappointed, I set out again, over a wide expanse of unbroken ocean. About midmorning, I ran into a sudden squall. I went higher, to get over the storm. There were patches of heavy weather throughout most of the rest of the day. I inspected more sites, sometimes in bright sunlight, sometimes in cold drizzles. There were plenty of floaters, which sheltered from the storms under trees or on the lee side of embankments and rock walls.

My instruments were most effective at shorter ranges, so I stayed within fifty meters of the surface. Chase urged me to go higher, arguing that the capsule was subject to sudden violent air movements, and a sharp downdraft could easily drive it into the ocean. Still, there was no sign of turbulence, despite the numerous storms.

I looked at probably twenty islands that third afternoon. None seemed promising. I was approaching one more (which was big, and a lot like the island with the volcano), when something odd caught my eye. I wasn’t sure what it was, though it was connected with a cloud of floaters which were milling aimlessly just off the surface, about a half kilometer north of the island.

I switched over to manual, and cut air speed.

"What’s wrong?"

"Not a thing, Chase."

"You’re losing altitude."

"I know. I was looking at the floaters." Several of them reacted in a way that suggested they were aware of my presence, just as they had the day before. But they must have decided I was no threat.

No wind blew. The ocean was calm.

I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong in the picture: sea, sky, animates.

A wave.

It was on the far side of the floaters, approaching: green and white, its crest breaking and reforming, it rolled through the silent sea.

The island was long and narrow, with a high rocky coast at the eastern hook, sloping down into bright green forest and white beach. Quiet pools lay within sheltered glades.

"My kind of place," said Chase, not without irritation.

I drifted down through the heavy afternoon air, and settled onto the sand just beyond the water line. The sun, approaching the horizon, was almost violet. I pushed the canopy back, climbed out, and dropped to the ground. The surf was loud.

I looked out across that ocean over which no ship had ever sailed. It was a lovely, warm, late summer day, with just enough bite in the salt air. Here. If there was an appropriate place on this world for the conspiracy to come to its climax, it should have been here.

But I knew it was not so. The scanners had shown no evidence of previous habitation. No one else had ever stood on that beach.

Out beyond the breakers, some of the smaller floaters played in the air currents.

The wave kept coming. It was somehow not in sync with the surface: too symmetrical, too purposeful, and perhaps too quick. It was in fact accelerating.

Curious.

I walked down toward the waterline. A couple of huge shells, one almost as big as the capsule, were lolling gently in the shallows. A small creature with a lot of legs sensed my presence and burrowed swiftly into the sand. But it left its tail exposed. Something else, a quick flicker of light, moved in the water and was gone.

Some of the floaters turned toward the wave, and it dissipated. They exhibited uncertainty. Most drifted as high as they could without lifting their tendrils out of the ocean. A few, smaller, brighter colored, probably younger, were nudged loose altogether and rose into the afternoon sky.

I watched, fascinated.

Nothing happened.

One by one, the floaters settled back toward the surface, until, eventually, almost the entire herd was down on the water again. I assumed they were feeding on the local equivalent of plankton.

The ocean stayed quiet.

But I could feel their uneasiness.

I was about to return to the capsule when the wave reformed. Much nearer.

I wished I’d brought the binoculars with me, but they were in a storage bin behind the seats, and I didn’t want to take the time to go back to the aircraft, which was about two hundred meters down the beach.

The wave was headed directly toward the floaters, approaching on a course more or less parallel to the coastline. Again, it seemed to be gaining velocity. And getting bigger. A thin line of foam developed at its crest.

I wondered what sort of sense organs the floaters had? Anything with vision would have been clearing out, but they only bobbed nervously about on the thin strands that resembled nothing so much as tethers, as if the creatures were tied to the ocean.

The wave rushed toward them.

There was a sudden squeal, a shrill keening that seemed just on the edge of audibility. The floaters erupted skyward simultaneously, in the manner of startled birds. They were apparently able to pump air through the central gas bag, and they were doing that vigorously, trying to gain altitude, but the larger ones were slow.

Nevertheless, the entire colony would, I thought, be well clear of the water when the wave passed; why then did their cries sound like panic?

The wave acquired a sharp angular shape as though its essential fluidity had hardened. And it passed, harmlessly, I thought, beneath the retreating floaters.

But several of the creatures were abruptly jerked down toward the surface, and were hauled twisting and flailing in the wake of the disturbance. Two got tangled in each other’s tendrils. And the wave changed direction again. Toward shore.

Toward where I was standing.

Chase’s voice: "Alex, what the hell’s going on?"

"Feeding time," I said. "There’s something in the water."

"What? I can’t get a good look at it. What is it?"

Her questions were coming closer together, tumbling over one another. The onrushing wall of water climbed higher. It was long, almost as long as the beach itself, which would have taken fifteen minutes to walk across.

I broke for the capsule, which seemed impossibly far away. The sand was thick and heavy underfoot. I churned through it, fixing my eyes on the aircraft, listening for a change in the dull roar of the surf. I lost my balance and pitched forward, but came up running, pumping wooden legs.

Chase had gone silent. She would be watching through the videos, and that thought caused me to reflect (as if everything were happening in slow motion) that my dash across the beach displayed a degree of terror that would embarrass me later. If there was to be a later. I could sense her holding her breath; and so my flight became even more frenzied.

I rehearsed what I would have to do to lift off. Open the canopy. (My God, had I shut the son of a bitch? Yes! There it was, dead ahead, gray and gleaming and closed.) Activate the magnetics. Energize internal systems. Pull back on the yoke.

I could activate from where I was by whispering the instruction into the commlink, but I’d have to slow down to do it, get my breathing under control. That would lose time, and anyhow my body was running on its own. No way I’d be able to stop it.

The wave was entering the breakers now. But it was enormously higher, and heavier, than the combers it rolled over. Goddam tidal wave. But there was an odd lack of fluidity to it: the sense of the thing was not that something enormous lurked within, but that the wave itself was somehow alive. The water that composed it seemed a deeper green than the ocean, and, in the sunlight, I discerned a dark, fibrous strain. A network. A web.

Through all this the shrill ululation of the entangled floaters had been rising in pitch, but diminishing in volume. As, presumably, they were dragged into the churning water.

There were tidal pools near the capsule. Thick brown water ran into them, and they began to overflow their banks. A long, slow mud-colored wave broke on the shore and rolled high up the beach.

It came my way, and I splashed through it. It clung to my boots, pulled at me, and tried to suck me into the sand. I broke free and ran on.

I ran blindly. Something hissed past me, a thin fibrous strand. The beach made for slow, ponderous going. I couldn’t get my breath and fell headlong. Some of the water got onto my right hand: I felt a stab of pain that brought tears. I wiped the flesh against dry sand, and ran again. Ahead, the tide swirled over the skids and around the ladder. I was slogging through it, one heavy step at a time, wrenching each boot free before moving on.

In the shallows, the wave broke, and roared across the beach.

Only one of the trapped floaters was still in the air. It whipped in tight little circles, squealing ceaselessly, fueling my own panic.

The sun was blocked off now.

Chase’s voice exploded into the tableau: "Come on, Alex. Run!"

I plunged desperately across the last few meters. The depth of water underfoot was increasing, and my lower clothes were wet and beginning to burn, and they slid clammily over my flesh. Another strand, fibrous and green and alive, arced around one foot, and pulled tight. I tumbled against the ladder, held on, and kicked free of the boot. I scrambled up, hit the release, waited in sheer panic while the canopy opened, fell into the cockpit, started the magnetics, and stabbed at the computer panel to activate the rest of the systems. Then I yanked back on the yoke and the capsule jerked into the air. The wave hit the struts and skids, the vehicle rolled sharply on its side, and nearly dumped me out. I dangled over the boiling water, and for a terrible moment, I thought the capsule was going to flip completely over. More filaments whispered toward me. The tip of one brushed my foot. Another wrapped around the undercarriage.

I scrambled into the cockpit and pulled the canopy shut. In the same moment, the vehicle lurched and dropped. I looked around for a knife, thinking wildly about climbing back outside. I was lucky: there was none. It forced me to take a moment to think.

I pushed the yoke quickly forward. The capsule fell a few more meters, and then I kicked in full thrust and jammed it back. We leaped up and ahead; shuddered to a quick, bone-ripping halt, and then lurched free.

I didn’t know it then, but the undercarriage was gone.

I threw most of my clothes out after it.

Below, the thick, gummy water had rolled over much of the island.

And I shuddered for Christopher Sim and his men.

After that, I no longer considered tropical islands as likely candidates for my search. Surely, I thought, the conspirators would have been aware of the dangers. They would have looked for something else.

Mid-morning of the next day, while I cruised somberly through a gray rainy sky, the monitors drew a jagged line across the long curve of the horizon. The ocean grew loud, and a granite peak emerged from the mist off to my right. It was almost a needle, worn smooth by wind and water.

There were others, a thousand towers rising from the dark water, marching from northeast to southwest on a course almost directly parallel to the orbit of the Corsarius. The storm beat against them, and buffeted the small craft in which I flew. Chase urged me to go higher, get above them.

"No," I said. "This is it."

The winds drove me among the peaks. I navigated with as much caution as I could muster. But I quickly got confused, and lost track of where I’d been, where I wanted to go. Chase refused to help from the Centaur. Eventually I was forced to take it up a few thousand meters and wait for the storm to end. In the meantime it got dark.

The red-tinged sun was well into the sky when I woke. The air was cold and clear.

Chase said good morning.

I was stiff and uncomfortable and I needed a shower. I settled for coffee, and drifted back down among the towers. "It’s here, somewhere," I told her.

I said it over and over, as. the day wore on.

The spires glittered blue and white and gray. And the ocean broke against them. Occasionally, on the sheer walls, a tree or a bush had taken root. Birds screamed at the heights, and patroled the boiling sea. Floaters, perhaps fearing the combination of sudden air currents and sharp rock, were not to be seen. Smarter than I was, maybe.

In all that wilderness, there seemed hardly a place where a human could set foot.

"Straight ahead," said Chase, galvanized. "What’s that?"

I put down the binoculars to look at the screens she was using. She blanked all but one: a peak of moderate size, utterly without any unusual characteristic. I should note that I was expecting to find something with its top lopped off. A place that had been thoroughly flattened and made habitable.

That was not the case here. Rather, what I saw was a wide ledge, about a third of the way down the precipice.

Déjà vu.

Sim’s Perch.

It was far too level, and too symmetrical, to be natural. "I see it."

I eased up the magnification. A round object stood on the widest part of the shelf. A dome!

I stared through the scopes: there had been no way on or off, up or down. Not that it mattered.

Odd that a man who had owned the light years should eventually play out his life confined to a few hundred square meters.

Other than the shelf and the dome, there was no sign of the hand of man. The scene possessed almost a domestic aspect. I imagined how it must have looked at night, with lights in the windows, and its illustrious tenants possibly seated out front idly discussing their role in the war. Awaiting rescue.

"I don’t understand." Her voice trembled.

"Chase, at the end, Sim lost heart. He decided to save what he could, to make terms."

It was very quiet on the other end. Then: "And they couldn’t allow that."

"He was the central figure of the war. In a way, he was the Confederacy. They could not allow surrender, not while there was still a chance. So they stopped him. In the only way they could, short of killing him."

"Tarien," she said.

"Yes. He would have had to be part of it. And some of his senior staff officers. Maybe even Tanner."

"I don’t believe it!"

"Why not?"

"I don’t know. I just don’t think they’d have done that. I don’t think they could have."

"Well. Whatever. They faked the destruction of the Corsarius. Brought it out here. And marooned Sim and the crew. They must have intended to come back. But most of the conspirators died within a few weeks. They were probably all on board the Kudasai when it was destroyed. If there were any survivors, they might have had no stomach for facing their victims. Except Tanner, maybe. However it happened, she knew what they had done, and she knew about the Wheel. She saw it; or someone else did and described it to her."

I drifted in over the shelf.

"I wonder," said Chase, "if Maurina knew?"

"We know Tanner went to see her. It would be interesting to have a copy of that conversation."

Chase murmured something I couldn’t make out, and then: "Something’s wrong here. Look at the size of the dome." It was small, far smaller than I’d realized. "That thing would never support eight people."

No. And I understood with sudden, knife-cold certainty how terribly wrong I had been, and why the Seven had no names.

My God! They’d left him here alone!

Two centuries late, I floated down through the salt air.

The wind blew clean and cold across the escarpment. No green thing grew there, and no creature made its home on that grim pile. A few boulders were strewn about, and some loose rubble. Near the edge of the promontory, several slabs stood like broken teeth. The flat-sided peak towered overhead, its walls not quite sheer. The ocean was a long way down. Like at Ilyanda.

I landed directly in front of the dome.

Damage sustained in the fight with the sea animate—a bent undercarriage and a missing skid—gave the capsule a distinct lean to the pilot’s side. I set the cameras, one on the dome, the other to track me, and I climbed out.

"It’s a lot like the two-man survival unit we have on board the Centaur," said Chase. "If it were properly stocked, he could have survived a long time. If he wanted to."

A makeshift antenna was mounted on the roof, and curtains were drawn across the windows. The sea boomed relentlessly against the base of the mountain. Even at this altitude, I Imagined I could feel spray.

"Alex." Her tone had changed. "You’d better get back up here. We’re getting visitors."

I looked up, as though it might be possible to see something. "Who?"

"Looks like a mute warship. But I’m damned if I can understand what’s going on."

"Why?"

"It’s on a rendezvous course. But the damned thing’s coming in at relativistic speed. No way it can stop here."