The Engines Of God

15 The Academy of Science and Technology (HV Simulation Section), Washington, D.C. Tuesday, October 19, 2202; 1700 EOT

Hutch stood at the edge of the cliff and looked down at the stars and at Shola's shimmering rings. The gas giant itself was behind her, low in the sky.

It was unsettling. This was not like climbing around the hull of a ship. She smiled at her reaction, and knelt, partly to examine the lip of the cliff, partly to regain her balance.

It was not the jagged, irregular rim one would expect, but the precision cut of a jewel.

This was a truly alien place, a place without purpose, a place that made neither aesthetic nor functional sense. But certainly, after Oz, a place with an echo. A stone plain, polished and chiseled, spread out behind her. It was pool-table flat, marred only by a few craters and a spread of fissure lines. The limits of the plain were not horizons; rather, at fairly close range, the smooth rock simply stopped, and one knew instinctively that beyond those abrupt summits, the cliff side fell away forever. The sky surrounded her, came at her from all angles. It was full of fire and light and crescents. A great clockwork, its spheres and stars clicked steadily through their rhythms while she watched.

It oppressed her. It was ominous. Frightening in a way she could not quite grasp.

Four of these objects circled the big world the Noks called the Companion. Identical size. Once equidistant. Two of them were badly charred.

Charred. Again, like Oz.

What were they?

There were no cryptic symbols here, as there were in the round tower. But there was a message nevertheless, an outcry, perhaps, in this spartan geometry.

She removed the helmet, and the lights came on. She laid it on the table beside her, and looked out at the Arlington skyline.

Deja vu.

Cumberland, Maryland 10/19/02 Dear Henry,

I have a translation: Farewell and good fortune. Seek us by the light of the horgon's eye. A horgon is a mythical Quraquat monster. But don't ask me what it all means.

Maggie

On the anniversary of the publication of Richard Wald's landmark study, Memory and Myth, his family and friends conducted a celebration of his life. They chose a hilltop in Arlington, a site from which the Academy was visible, and erected a small pavilion. It was a bleak day shortly before Thanksgiving, gray, threatening rain, with the kind of chill that no clothing can deflect.

Hutch received an invitation and considered staying away. She was not one to be taken in by the fa?ade of affirming life when she knew damned well what was really on everyone's mind. It was all still too painful, too close to the bone. Maybe next year she could sit comfortably and reminisce about him, but for now all she could recall was the limp figure dangling below the shuttle.

When the day came, however, wearing the talisman he had given her, she was there. The event's sponsors had set up a small platform atop a low hill, and laid out a table beneath a stand of spruce trees. They filled the table with souvenirs and artifacts and photos. There were copies of Richard's books and tablets from Pinnacle and crossbows from Quraqua and representations of the Monuments. The Academy's seal and colors were centrally displayed.

Refreshments were in liberal supply. People spotted old friends, and clustered in animated conversations. Hutch stood off to one side, ill at ease and dispirited. At noon, a tall man who looked like a younger Richard climbed onto the platform and waited for the crowd noise to subside.

"Hello," he said. "I know some of you, but not all. My name's Dick Wald. I'm—I was—Richard's cousin. He'd have been pleased to see how many of you came out here today. And he'd have wanted me to say thanks." He paused, and looked over the crowd. "He often said he was happy with his life, and fortunate in his friends. We used to make a lot of 'dead' jokes about him. And there are so many archeologists here today that I know you've had to put up with them too. You know how they go, about how everybody he knows has been dead at least eight hundred years. About how he only speaks dead languages. Well, there's a lot about death in an archeologist's field of interest, and it seems painful that it should come eventually to the archeologist himself." He paused, and the wind moved in the trees behind him. "I'd like to invite Bill Winfield to say a few words. Bill taught Sumerian 101 to Richard."

In turn, people got up and spoke about him. They thanked him for launching their careers, and for helping them with money or advice or encouragement. For setting the example. Several quoted favorite passages from his books, or idle remarks tossed off on windswept evenings:

The difference between history and archeology is the difference between public policy and a coffee table. One is theory and analysis and sometimes even spectacle. The other is a piece of life.

There is a kind of archeology of the mind in which we unearth old injuries and resentments, pore over them, and keep them close to our hearts. Eventually, like thousand-year-old air encountered in a tomb, they poison us. It gives me to wonder whether the value of history is not overrated.

I have always felt a kinship with the gravediggers in Hamlet. They are the first recorded archeologists.

History has nothing to do with reality. It is a point of view, an attempt to impose order on events that are essentially chaotic.

And an observation from an essay on Pinnacle which Hutch wished he had himself taken seriously: The universe has a sense of humor. Two years ago, a man in Chicago was driving to his wedding when a meteor totaled his car. The prospective bridegroom took the hint and left town. When conditions prevent a prudent excavation, archeologists would do well, also, to take the hint.

When the last of those who wished to speak had finished, Dick Wald asked if there were anyone else. Instinctively, Hutch shied away from public appearances. But she could not do that today. Not knowing what she would say, she strode to the platform, and turned to face the crowd. Many knew her, and she heard a smattering of applause.

She groped for the right words. "I'd just like to say," she said, "that he was always good to work for." She paused. The sky was clear and blue and very far away. "He died doing what he believed in. He died, I think, the way he would have wanted." She looked around desperately, and wished for divine intervention. Her mind had gone blank. Reflexively, she took hold of the talisman, and drew it out into the sunlight. "Love and prosperity," she said. "He gave me this. Its inscription, in one of the Quraquat languages, says love and prosperity will be mine while I wear it. Actually, they were mine as long as I knew him."

Later, she said hello to Dick. He told her Richard had spoken of her often. Up close, his resemblance to Richard was striking. And there was a trick of speech, a tendency to draw out r's in the manner of Bostonians, that they shared. She could have closed her eyes and believed he was back.

The Academy was out in force. Henry showed up, an act that must have taken considerable courage because a lot of people, including Hutch, blamed him for Richard's death. He had aged during the few months since their return. His face was gray in the dull light, and he walked uncertainly.

"How are you?" Hutch asked, offering her hand.

He took it, but his grasp was perfunctory. "Good," he said. "It's nice to see you, Hutch." His eyes traveled between her and the speakers' platform, which was now empty. "I would have preferred better circumstances."

An awkward silence followed. Hutch knew a reprimand was in the works for Henry. The whole world knew it. He had announced his retirement, and he faced the prospect of becoming the central figure in a landmark legal dispute over the issue of court jurisdiction beyond the solar system.

"I didn't thank you, by the way," he said, "for everything you did."

"I was glad to help," she said.

"I wish things could have turned out better." He was backing away from her, anxious to be gone. "Me, too," she said weakly.

Princeton

Saturday, Nov. 27, 2202 Dear Priscilla,

Just a word to let you know that Cal Hartlett got married today. I know we've had this conversation before, and I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but there's another good one you could have had. That boy idolized you. I've met the bride and she's pretty, but she isn't in your league.

Please think about the future. We're not getting any younger.

Mom

Hutch put her feet up on the hassock, sipped her coffee, and stared out over the rock plain. She was well away from the edge this time, and Shola was off to the right. Although the gas giant dominated the sky, its light was dim. Overhead, there were no stars. She was looking directly into the Void. Look hard enough, long enough, and one could see the other side, the distant flicker of the Sagittarius Arm.

The coffee tasted good.

Portland, Oregon Monday, Nov. 29, 2202 Dear Ms. Hutchins,

The enclosed holo arrived here several weeks ago, before you got back from Quraaua. In fact, it came before I'd heard about Richard's death. I haven't been certain who to send it to, and I thought you would know. I thought somebody at the Academy might have some interest in it. Best wishes.

Dick Wald

(ENCLOSURE)

DOWNLINK HOLD Leader marked "PERSONAL FOR RICHARD WALD"

David Emory in a field office. "Richard," he says, "It's ironic that you would have been asking about this just a few days ago. We have found Orikon. I thought you'd like to hear what we have, but please keep it to yourself until we publish.

"We've known for some time that the ruins were located under a modem city, where they were not accessible to direct investigation. Or, more accurately, I've known, but since we couldn't get an actual physical piece for dating purposes, there was no way to prove anything.

"The scanners showed a metal circumference around the ruins, with lines jutting off. Theory was that it was a defensive structure of one kind or another." He takes a chair, and crosses his arms over his chest, quite satisfied with the direction events have taken. "This world is subject to enormous tides, because of its proximity to the Companion. There are sea walls here now, to restrain the ocean. But these structures are recent.

"Orikon was located on a cluster of islands which are now hilltops. At low tide, they looked out over swamps. So the question always was: how, under such circumstances, could the inhabitants travel from one section of the city to another? This is no small feat, by the way. We are talking about islands spread over twelve hundred square kilometers. Furthermore, how did they maintain access to an ocean when they had to travel over ground that was sometimes a sea and sometimes a swamp?

"The solution: they had a monorail. This is mountainous country, and we went looking on some of the peaks for evidence. Yesterday we found it: a piece of concrete bolted into the side of a precipice. We now have other evidence as well. They seem to have thrived between 18,000 and 16,000 B.C. So it turns out civilization is three times older here than we thought.

"Orikon lives, Richard."

Henry removed the helmet. Sunlight warmed the room. Hutch looked out at the Morning Pool, the Ivers Museum, elta Park, and, in the distance, the Washington Monument.

"Good of you to bring it by," he said. "May I make a copy?"

"Of course." She waited for a sign that he agreed with her assessment of its significance.

"Well." He folded his arms and pushed back comfortably. "How is everything with you?"

"Fine," she said.

"Is something wrong?" he asked. "You seem tense."

"Henry, you don't seem surprised."

His leathery face did not change. "What surprises you, Hutch?"

"We've got a second discontinuity on Nok. Two on each world. That makes a trend."

Henry studied her across the broad expanse of his desk. The office was big, crowded with mementoes of his career. "You're assuming that Orikon suffered one of these events."

"Of course. How else would you explain the disappearance of a civilization capable of building a monorail?"

"We aren't talking about established facts, Hutch. We are fully aware of events on Nok. You should be aware that Emory has a tendency to jump to conclusions. However, there is a curious coincidence. He says the most recent artifacts are from about 16,000 B.C." He looked at her expectantly.

She didn't see the point.

"The events on Quraqua," Henry said, "were divided by eight thousand years."

"— And on Nok by sixteen thousand. Twice as long. But what does that suggest?"

He shrugged. "Multiples of eight. For whatever significance that might have." He looked old; his movements were stiff and seemed to require conscious effort.

"Multiples of eight? Would we know if there'd been an event on Nok around 8000 B.C.?"

"Probably not. The current cycle of civilization got started three thousand years later." He studied the top of his desk. "I have no problems with a coincidence. One coincidence."

"What's the other?"

"The resemblance between Oz and the cube moons."

"So what do we do now?"

"/ retire," he said. "And hope I have some money left after the lawyers get finished with me."

"Henry, you can't just walk out—"

"I sure as hell can just walk out. Listen—" His face reddened and he leaned across the desk. "Do you have any idea what all this means to me? I'm about to be drummed out. Blamed for the death of an old friend." His lip quivered. "And God help me, maybe they're right."

"But we need you."

"And I needed you. We went through hell out there, and I made a decision that I'm going to have to live with the rest of my life. You're taking an accusing tone with me now. Where were you when we were trying to get a few answers? All you could contribute was to hang on the other end of that damned commlink and try to panic everybody. Did you really think we didn't know what was coming? We went down there with our eyes open, Hutch. All of us."

And you didn't all make it back. But she said nothing. He glared at her, and then the energy seemed to go out of him, and he sank back into his chair.

"I'm sorry you feel that way," she said. "I did what I had to."

"As did I."

They looked at one another across a gulf. Finally, Hutch said, "You will follow up on this. Right?"

"You follow up on it. If you find something, I'll be in Chicago."

Henry's anger hurt. Had the others felt the same way? My God, had Richard gone to his death disappointed in her? A cold wind blew through her soul.

She could not go back to her apartment that night.

She wandered among some of her old hangouts, ending eventually at the Silver Dancer, which was a favorite nightspot for airline types, and which had probably never seen an archeologist. She drank a series of rum-and-cokes that had no effect on her. Somewhere around midnight, she encouraged a shy young flight attendant with good eyes and went home with him.

She gave him the night of his life.

Hutch wanted to let it rest, to put it behind her. But she could not. So, on a crisp, clear evening a week after her conversation with Henry, she met Frank Carson for dinner at an

Italian restaurant along the Arlington waterfront.

"I wouldn't worry about it," he said. "Henry tends to get upset, and he's been through a lot. He told me, by the way, that he'd talked to you."

Carson was a good guy. He tended to take a paternal line with her, but she could forgive that. She came very close to approving. "He resents me," she said.

He asked her to explain. When she'd finished, he tried to wave it away. "I did the same thing," he said. "I was on the circuit to Henry, and I kept pushing them the whole time. It's not to your discredit that you wanted them out of there. In your place, Henry would have done the same. He's upset with me, too."

It was just after sunset. They were drinking Chianti, and watching a boat discharge passengers from Alexandria onto the dock. "What do you think?" she asked. "About the discontinuities?"

He didn't hesitate. "I don't think anything's established yet. If it turns out there was an event on Nok eighteen or twenty thousand years ago, I still don't think it would mean very much."

"What about 'the engines of God'?"

"Beg pardon?"

" 'He will come who treads the dawn, Tramples the sun beneath his feet, And judges the souls of men. He will stride across the rooftops, And he will fire the engines of God. It's from a Quraquat prayer book. Art thought it might have been a prediction of the Second Discontinuity on Quraqua. The timing was right."

"There are always predictions," he said.

Their dinners arrived, spaghetti and meatballs for both.

"Feel better?" Carson asked, after she'd made inroads.

"Yes," she said. "I guess so."

"Good. I've got some news for you: we've tracked down the horgon."

She looked up from her plate, delighted. "Good," she said. "What have you got?"

"Well, it's kind of interesting. You know the thing was a mythical monster. It was all claws and teeth, it had fiery eyes, ti was armored, and it stood on two feet. It had a built-in flame thrower." He paused. "And it could see three hundred sixty degrees."

Hutch did a double take. "The horgon's eye," she whispered.

"Yes." Delighted, Carson drew out the aspirate. "That's what we thought. The beast is associated with the child-hero Malinar, and with Urik, who was a kind of Quraquat Hercules. Malinar rescued his sister when she was threatened by the creature by diverting its attention with a plate of food. The thing pitied the child and spared him. And the girl. We know there was a cycle of Malinar myths, but the horgon story is the only one we have.

"Urik is perhaps the best known of all Quraquat mythical figures. The important point is that he would certainly have been known to the Quraquat of the Linear C era."

"So we get a fit," said Hutch.

"Yes." He speared a meatball and tasted it. "Good," he said. "Anyway, Urik lived at the beginning of their civilization, in a world filled with enchantment and dark spells and divine retribution for anyone who got out of line. Only one god in this scenario, the usual male deity, with the standard short temper and no-nonsense code of conduct. Monotheistic systems, by the way, were common on Quraqua during that period. There is residual evidence of polytheistic religions, but over thousands of years the original tales must have been rewritten to reflect correct views. And there's another universal tendency."

"What's that?"

"Monotheistic religious systems are usually intolerant." He smiled warmly at her, and his tone softened. "This is actually quite nice," he said. "Having dinner with the loveliest woman in Arlington, Virginia."

Appreciative, Hutch reached across the table and squeezed his hand.

Back to business, he said: "Somebody was having trouble with a horgon. It was terrorizing the countryside and generally raising hell. So they called in Urik."

"Okay."

"The only way to kill it was to put a sword into its heart."

"Seems straightforward," said Hutch.

"It's an old story," he said. "Hermes and Argos."

"Beg pardon?"

"Greek myth. It's a hunter's tale. You are trying to bring down the ultimate prey, a creature that's exceedingly deadly,

and you can't hide in the bushes. And you can't take it head-on. So you have to devise a trick.

"In the Urik story, a series of heroes, over the course of a generation or so, have tried to kill the monster. They used all sorts of imaginative schemes to get close to it. They tried to blind it with sunlight reflected from a polished shield; they tried to sneak up on it disguised as a female horgon; they tried to put it to sleep with a magic trombone."

Hutch smiled. "A magic trombone?"

"Well, not really. But it was a mystical instrument, a pipe of some sort. In any case, things always went wrong. The hero put the pipe down to get a good grip on his sword, the horgon woke up, and the hero got barbecued. That was the technique that Hermes used, by the way. It worked for him.

"There was also an attempt by a female. Her name was Haska, and she brought along an army of pages to keep dousing her with water. The horgon cooked the pages, but Haska was fortunate enough to escape with her life. She was the only hero to do so, until Urik.

"Now—and here's the point—Urik got involved in all this because his lover, Lisandra, was carried off by demons, and he was advised by a neighborhood sage that he could find her only with the assistance of a horgon's eye."

"Bingo."

"Yes. It would seem that whoever carved the inscription was familiar with Quraquat mythology. Incidentally, the various sources aren't consistent as to the number of eyes the creature actually had. Anyhow, Urik's boyhood friend Calipon went with him, and the two planned to distract the horgon by giving it a meal."

"A cow?"

"The horgon's diet was apparently limited to people."

"Oh."

"Or the hero's imagination was. Calipon volunteered. The strategy they settled on was that he would deliver a frontal attack. Urik was to stay back until the attack failed, and the creature was half-gorged."

Hutch tilted her head. "Did this seem like strange behavior to the Quraquat? They weren't suicidal, were they?"

"Keep in mind, Hutch, that you're talking as if there were only a single culture. The Quraquat, like us, had a wide range of codes of behavior. Some embraced suicide as a reasonable action. But we know almost nothing about the period that gave rise to the Urik tales. For that matter, we don't know much about the later civilization that built the Temple of the Winds. So I can't really answer your question. Calipon, incidentally, was a hero in his own right, but he achieved his immortality through his sacrifice. Eventually, a nation was named for him."

Her eyebrows rose. "The second-banana hero."

"Yes. And selfless. Still another universal, Hutch. You see it everywhere. Nok has several variations. So do we. Patroclus, for example."

"Why didn't the other guy, what's his name, Urik, offer to be the main course? After all, it's his girlfriend they're after."

"Well, it wouldn't be decent to rescue the lady by throwing her lover to the wolves. No, Calipon is in the narrative for the specific purpose of serving as the sacrifice. And doing it willingly. That's what gives meaning to the tale. It's the point of the story. Everyone has an obligation to the greater good."

"It worked, of course, right?"

"Yes, Hutch. It worked. Calipon died, Urik finished off the horgon, and retrieved one of its eyes. Eventually, with the help of a sacred sea bird, a diver, he also retrieved the lovely Lisandra. In celebration of the manner of her freedom, she placed the eye on a gold chain and wore it ever after at her throat. And, in representations, she is said always to have been accompanied by a diver." He propped his chin on his hand and studied her. "So the question is, where does all this leave us?"

"That's itT she asked.

"That's it" Carson lifted his glass. The electric candles glittered in the Chianti.

"He rescued her, and they lived happily ever after," she said.

"No." He shook his head. "That isn't the end. It never is. Not for epic heroes. There has to be a final validation of the myth, a recognition by a divinity, and by the community, of the significance of the heroic acts. And it has to be set up. The setup is that, while the hero is away on a quest, raiders attack his home. Lisandra dies protecting their son.

Urik catches up with the bandits, and does them in, although he is mortally wounded in the encounter. And the gods have their opportunity to bestow divine honors. The reward for Urik—Calipon is not mentioned—is to be accepted into the company of God's warriors, a deathless squadron to be called on in time of great need. The members were memorialized by being placed in the sky."

"That's interesting," said Hutch. "Seek us by the light of the horgon's eye. Are the Monument-Makers showing us where they live?"

"Maybe."

"If so, the horgon's eye is a star. Possibly the home star."

"That's exactly what I thought," said Carson.

Hutch disposed of some spaghetti. "Could we be looking for a constellation?"

"I would think so."

"Which one? Do we know the Quraquat constellations?"

"Not from that era."

She sighed. "We're still at sea. How do we find one that looks like a big Quraquat with a spear? And then, how do we narrow it down to an individual star?"

"I don't think we're looking for Urik. He's not the one who's associated with the horgon's eye. It's Lisandra. She carried it."

"Whatever," said Hutch. "Did Lisandra get a constellation, too?"

"Urik and Lisandra were lovers. In mythical systems, lovers, if they are of sufficient stature, are never separated beyond the physical realm. These two would be closely associated throughout the mythic cycle, and so we should expect to find them together in the heavens."

"It's still hopeless." Hutch threw up her hands. "Have you ever been able to make pictures out of the stars? How would we ever recognize her?"

"Good question. If you have a suggestion, I'd be happy to hear it."

"I have no idea."

"Maybe it's not that hopeless. We've got a hole card: the horgon's eye is red."

LIBRARY ENTRY

They drink my deeds in the halls of the Ka, And bless their arms with my name. Yet I, riding through deep snow, In the dark of the moon, Do not pause.

Where, now, is Calipon my comrade?

The pennants ripple atop Master's outpost,

Brave colors, gray and blue, rock and sea,

My colors,

Bright still in the fading light;

I nod, but do not stop.

And where, at last, Lisandra?

— from Urik at Sunset (Translated by Philip Marcotti)

16 The Academy of Science and Technology, Washington, D.C. Friday, December 10, 2202; 1545 EST

Professor Emeritus Eric Kofton of Georgetown was visiting the Quraquat display at the Ivers Museum when he noticed a zodiac carved in a three-legged table. It didn't take him long to learn he had made a discovery, but he had no idea of its importance. The Academy awarded him a certificate.

The images were idealizations, giving no hint what the constellations might look like. But there were inscriptions identifying the figures. "I don't know whether it'll help us," said Carson, unrolling a poster reproduction. "The table is from the same part of the world as the Casumel culture. Unfortunately, it's only a few hundred years old. So maybe it's the same zodiac, and maybe it isn't. But look at this." He pointed at a snouted Quraquat with spear, shield, and war helmet. "It's called the Warrior."

"Urik, do you think?"

Carson looked hopeful. "We need to stay objective. But he comes complete with a female."

"The female's a separate constellation? Or part of the same one?"

"Separate. Its name doesn't have an English equivalent, but it would translate to the 'Beautiful Woman Virgin-Mother. »

Hutch grinned. "That's Lisandra. I'd recognize her anywhere."

He looked down at a notebook. "The constellations are listed by occupation. Or function. There's a woodsman. A fisherman with a net. A soronghilia plant."

"A what?"

"The Tree of Life. Symbol of immortality. There's an axe. Even a strider."

"We could have used a few pictures of the constellations."

"They would help." They were in Carson's office on the fifth floor. It was filled with memorabilia from both his military and archeological careers. She counted three models of combat aircraft, and the Temple shuttle. Awards and photos covered the walls. A young Carson in Air Force gray posed beside a black Labrador retriever. An older version stood beside a striking brunette.

"Who is she?" Hutch asked.

"Just a friend." His face clouded briefly. "Used to be."

Fearing she had intruded, Hutch retreated to the subject at hand. "What are the other.constellations?"

"A bucket, a shield, a couple of animals—"

"No horgon's eye?"

"No. And something we think was a scales."

"It's interesting. But it's hard to see that we've made any progress."

In answer, he handed her a simmy helmet. She put it on, and a starfield blazed into existence. "View from Oz," he said. "Circa 9000 B.C." The stars lay across half a sky, the campfires of a distant army. Beyond lay the black heart of the Void. Two crosshairs appeared left and right. "They represent the two towers, Hutch. You're standing directly in the center of the city. Each crosshair is targeted on a straight line from your position to the corresponding round tower, and angled up parallel to the rooftop."

The sky rotated, and one of the crosshairs locked on a red star. "That's from the tower with the inscription," Carson said. "The star is Orchinda. The Orchid. It's a red giant, only about nine light years from Quraqua. More violet than red, not that it matters."

If they had guessed right, when the horgon's eye appeared in one sight, the target sun would appear in the other. The target—she glanced at the other crosshair—was dim.

"I don't recall its numerical designation. We've never been there. It's a class G. Sixty light-years from Quraqua, a hundred fifteen from here."

"Is that /7?" Hutch was prepared to respond with an appropriate outburst, but Carson was too reserved. It wasn't going to be this easy.

"Maybe," he said. "There are seventeen red stars that appear in one or the other of the crosshairs. Sixteen of those give us a star in, or very near, the opposite sight. The problem is that we have to assume the towers have slipped over the millennia, been affected by quakes, meteor strikes, whatever. So we're looking at everything within four degrees of the target area."

"How did you arrive at that figure?"

"By throwing darts."

"How many suspect stars did we wind up with?"

"About eighty."

She sighed.

"Hutch, we need to go back and do a complete survey at Oz. Establish the extent to which there's been ground movement."

"How long would that take?"

"Years. Right now, nobody at the Academy wants to hear anything about either Quraqua or Oz. And I don't think there'd be much enthusiasm for sending out eighty expeditions either. Especially when we have no idea whether our margin for error is too conservative. Which it probably is." He looked discouraged. "At least, we've had some movement."

Hutch was looking at the black Lab in the photo.

"Her name was Spike," he said.

"Odd name for a female."

"My nephew named her." He followed her gaze to the picture. "Something wrong?"

"Animals," she said.

"Beg pardon?"

"You said there were animals. How about a divert"

"I'm sorry?"

"A diver. The sea bird that was connected with Lisandra."

"Damn. I never thought of that."

The sky moved again. "It had a long beak," she said.

"You think that'll help?"

"It's the diver's primary characteristic. I looked it up. Like Hercules' club, or the dipper's handle. It would be a row of stars. Three or more. Maybe even prominent, if we're lucky."

"That's optimistic. More like two stars, I'd think. Maybe one. You know how constellations are."

"No," she said. "Two won't work. You can draw a straight line between any two stars in the sky. If we don't have three, we're wasting our time."

"Okay," he said. "What's to lose? The horgon's eye, the diver, and the virgin should all be in the same neighborhood. We'll line up every red star that gets close to either crosshair, and look for the beak."

This was not the sort of search that was likely to produce a sudden, blinding result. They worked through the afternoon, recording those stars which might possibly have served as the all-seeing eye: Olphinax, forty light-years farther along the shore of the Void; Tulikar, with its dense companion; Kampatta Prime, centerpiece of the Quraquat Pleiades. They added Anapaka to the list, and Hasan and Alpha Qui and three stars whose only designations were their catalog numbers. Each was accompanied by a nearby line of stars that might, by imaginative observers, be classified as a beak. "How do we know," asked Carson, "that it isn't curved?"

"Beg pardon?" said Hutch.

"The beak. How do we know it's supposed to be straight? It could look like a pelican."

"No," said Hutch. "I saw a picture of one. It's straight."

It was all too inexact. Their margin for error resulted sometimes in multiple hits: a single horgon's eye candidate produced two, three, and in one case six, targets in the other crosshairs.

The search for the beak proved fruitless. They discovered a basic universal truth: Almost anywhere one looks in the sky, stars line up in threes and fours. Eventually, they cataloged more than fifty candidates and began the process of elimination. All stars that were not class G or M, or that were not at least three billion years old, were excluded. ("A bit arbitrary there," said Carson. "But Rome wasn't built in a day.") Multiple star systems, which are probably too unstable to permit life to develop, were also disregarded. Stars which had already been surveyed were removed.

By the end of the afternoon, the number of candidates was down to thirteen.

"We've done pretty well," she said.

"We've done a lot of guesswork. I liked the old days when we could just order up a survey. This isn't nearly good enough. We have to pin it down, isolate it. And then we have to persuade Ed Horner."

Hutch felt desperate.

"Let's quit," Carson said. "Day's over."

It turned into a gloomy, rainswept evening. She wondered whether Carson had already given up, whether he was hoping she would see the futility of continuing, of risking their careers for a cause that most of the Academy people considered ludicrous. And that, it suddenly struck her, was the point. From his perspective, she had nothing to lose. She was a pilot, with no professional career at risk. Whatever happened, no one would laugh at her. It was Carson who was taking the risk, his colleagues who smiled tolerantly, his judgment at issue.

They went to dinner again, in Georgetown. But it was a mistake because they reinforced one another's discouragement. Afterward, Hutch was glad to get home. She climbed into a simmy and sat with it until she fell asleep.

Somewhere around two, she jerked fully awake. There was another test they could try. The obvious one.

Carson would have to go to the commissioner, and they'd have to pull some strings. But it could be made to work.

The Tindle Array, Farside, Luna. Monday, January 24. 2203; 1130 GMT.

Alexander Coldfield walked into his office, peered through his tinted windows across the vast expanse of Mare Musco-viense, and slid into his seat. Off to his left, a coffee machine perked noisily. The thick columns and spidery dishes of the Tindle Array marched across the lunar plain.

Coldfield loved places that were isolated and hostile. He'd grown up in the Bronx, and had escaped to North Dakota at his first opportunity. He discovered an affinity for fireplaces and barren plains, for good wine and heavy snow. Solitude became his watchword. His affection for a landscape grew in direct proportion to its inconvenience for natives and inaccessibility to travelers.

He was a career government employee. He had worked in outposts from Manitoba to New Brunswick. The break of his life had come when, at thirty-two, he'd been appointed observer and technician at the one-man weather station on uninhabited Kaui Island, two thousand miles west of Hawaii. When he went there, he expected to remain forever, and would have, had not the lunar assignment come up.

The Tindle Array, located in the Tsiolkovsky area, had required a technician/operator. The tour was designed to last one year, and he could take his family if he wished. Of course, Coldfield had no family. That had been a problem at first. One of the busybodies in OHR had wondered about his psychological well-being. But Coldfield was solid if anybody was, and he'd made his case convincingly. The analysts agreed.

The appeal of the assignment was enhanced by the fact that Tsiolkovsky was located on the far side of the Moon. The Earth would never rise over the Array.

None of this should be construed to suggest that Coldfield was a misanthropist. He most definitely was not. In fact he liked people, felt he had been fortunate in his acquaintances over the years, and made good use of the relay circuits to a dozen points on Earth to talk with old friends. The truth about him was complicated. It involved a degree of self-doubt, of discomfort with strangers, and a thoroughgoing dislike for crowds, combined with a genuine love for remote places and a strong meditative inclination. (He would never have admitted to the latter.)

The Tindle was to have consisted of one hundred eleven fully steerable antennas, each sixteen meters in diameter. They would occupy an area forty kilometers across, and be set on individual tracks ranging from eight to sixty meters long. The project was only two-thirds constructed, but the government had run out of money. No one seriously believed that it would ever be finished. But it added up to tens of thousands of moving parts, which had to be kept operational under extreme conditions. It would not have been correct to say there was always work, but repairs were needed often enough to justify Coldfield's presence.

The tasks were simple enough. When something went down, the systems isolated the problem for him, and usually all he had to do was trek out to the offending unit and substitute a microboard or a crystal.

He had even become involved in the operational side of the Tindle. Harvard-Smithsonian had requested his help in entering values directly into the machines, and had asked him in some cases to execute programs manually. Coldfield understood, despite his operators' denials, that they wanted to increase his contact with other people. He was the first person to come alone to the Array, and they were watching him closely.

He had passed the evening with a biography of Evelyn

Lister, who was enormously popular in her time, but who was now widely perceived as the architect of the catastrophic conditions which had overtaken and ultimately leveled the old United States. The biography showed no mercy, and it warmed Coldfield to read the attacks. He objected on principle to the powerful. Even when they were dead.

The Array was listening to OQ 172, a quasar ten billion light years out. Col.dfield took his work seriously, and had acquired some rudimentary astronomy. But he did not understand the peculiar significance of quasars, nor could he make much out of the analytical readouts. Still, he knew it had something to do with creation. And he was curious about that. He had grown up in a family of religious skeptics. But, on the back side of the Moon, the supernatural seemed very possible.

The brief chime of the commlink startled him. He swung away from the windows, stabbed the receiver. "Coldfield."

Michael Surina's image blinked on. "Hello, Alex. How are you doing?" Surina was the project coordinator. He made it a point to call once a day. His concern for the Big Array's lone inhabitant both warmed and touched its subject.

"Fine," Coldfield said.

"No problems?"

There was a coupling that needed replacing on No. 17, and the plumbing in one of the bathrooms was backing up. (He had three.) But there was nothing that could be described as a problem. "Negative, Mike. Everything's quiet."

"Okay. We're changing the program, so don't be surprised when things start to happen."

"What's going on?"

"We want to listen to a new target. A series of new targets."

"When?"

"We'll wrap up the quasar exercise in a little over six hours. At 1922 Zulu. Then we're going to adjust the entire schedule. The operation will take several days."

"Several days! There'll be hell to pay."

"Doesn't matter. We'll do it."

"What are we going to tell McHale and Abrams and the rest of them? They've been waiting a year and a half for their time."

"We're taking care of it. You won't have to deal with them at all."

"Damn right I won't." Surina was young, but would probably irritate too many people to move up. Now he sat watching Coldfield, and his expression implied that he understood, but that Alex knew how bureaucracies were. It's no concern of ours if they screw up, his eyes said. Naturally, on an open link he wouldn't make those sentiments overt. "This is a hell of a way to run an operation, Mike," said Coldfield.

Surina shrugged. "Somebody at the Academy is pulling strings, and favors are owed."

Naturally. Surina could say what he liked, but Abrams and the others would bitch at him. "What kind of targets?"

"Short range. Local stars. You're going to do a search for patterned radio signals."

That was unusual. The Tindle had never, to his knowledge, examined anything closer than the galactic core. "Why?" he said. "What are we looking for?"

"LGMs."

"Beg pardon?"

"LGMs. Little green men."

THE WORLD REVIEW COMMENTARY

The European Commonwealth is informally floating a proposal that we announce our presence to the inhabitants of the earthlike world Inakademeri, and begin negotiations with a view to assisting the natives technologically, and to securing territory which would serve as a homeland for populations of undeveloped nations.

This may be an idea whose time has come. Inakademeri is sparsely populated, wracked by global war, depleted of natural resources. The «Noks» need help. In fact, there are groups among them who claim to know of our presence, who say they have seen our aircraft and shuttles. Whether in fact they have is of no consequence. What is significant is that these unfortunate creatures, who think we may exist, literally pray for our intervention.

There would be some inconveniences. Settlers would have to become accustomed to an eleven-hour day/night cycle. The climate on the whole tends to be wetter than ours. But it is livable.

Biosystems on Nok are sufficiently like our own that we could subsist quite well on that world's food supply. It may well be that we have a second Earth available, that we need not wait decades for Quraqua to develop.

The World Council should give careful consideration to this proposal. If no more serious objections exist than those already advanced, it should be approved, and action taken within the shortest possible time.

— "The Observer"

Wednesday, January 26, 2203

Carson called her in on her birthday, February 1. "It's Beta Pacifica," he said.

NEWSDESK

BAHRAINIS SHELL BORDER TOWNS Council Threatens Military Action

CORE CASES INCREASE IN AFRICA, MIDDLE EAST Bone Loss Syndrome May Worsen

Fear Spreads to West Foxtcorth Assures Nation: "No Need to Panic"

SIX DIE IN BLAST IN MANHATTAN BAR

El Corazon Admits Responsibility Demands Repeal of Immigration Ban

EGYPTIAN FERRY CAPSIZES 110 Dead; 300 Missing

FOXWORTH PROMISES TAX EQUITY FOR MULTIPLE-CHILD FAMILIES

CHINA MAY BE BUILDING NUCLEAR WEAPON

Hiao Denies VSE Charge Wul Resist Inspection "by Force of Arms"

INDIAN FAMINE MAY HAVE KILLED MILLIONS

World Council Pledges Aid; Demands Cessation of Hostilities

PRICES CONTINUE TO CLIMB

CPI Hits Annual Rate of 11 % Sloan: "Foxworth Neglects Economy"

POPE VISITS BRAZIL

Decries "Modern Life Styles"

BEWARE CHRISTMAS CON ARTISTS

Elderly at Risk «Real» Trees, Gift Subscription Funds Lead List of Scams

ATLANTIC CLUB PREDICTS GRIM FUTURE "Great Famine May Have Been Only Prelude"

NEW E-SAT GOES ON-LINE

Network Near Completion

Will Provide Near-Unlimited Clean

Energy for Africa, Middle East

LEGION TRADES BOOM-BOOM FOR 4 PLAYERS, 5 DRAFT CHOICES

Chicago. Sunday, February 6; 2100 hours.

"You owe it to yourself."

From his balcony on the thirty-fourth floor of the Tiara Marriott, Henry Jacobi looked out across a breathtaking view of Chicago and the lakefront. The crosstown glidetrain moved through the sea of light. "I don't think so," he said, without turning.

Carson had thought he knew the older man. Consequently he had come with full confidence that when presented with the facts, and the possibilities, Henry would relent, would cast his personal demons overboard. Would accept his responsibility to take command of what might become the epochal mission.

"No," Jacobi said into the silence that drew out between them. "You'll have to do this one without me."

"Why, Henry?"

"My God, Carson, don't you know what's been going on at the Academy? You put my name on this mission and it's dead." He turned, came away from the railing. "I appreciate your coming. And God knows I appreciate the offer. But not this time. The Institute has a good job for me here. I'll be doing what I like, and it's low profile."

The air off the lake was cool. Carson lifted his glass. The ice cubes clinked. "Good Scotch," he said.

Henry sat down, grunting with the effort. "It's not what you think. I can live with the events. But I want to see you succeed. That at least will give the events at the Temple some meaning." His eyes were dark. "Have you picked your crew yet?"

"Yes," said Carson. "I'd like to run it by you."

"No." He pulled his sweater tight. "It's your call. You'll have to live with it. How many are you taking?"

"We'll have five. Counting me."

"And Ed has approved it?"

"Yes."

"Good. He needs something spectacular, or he's going to be out here, in the adjoining lecture hall." The broad, friendly-mutt features lit up. "Good luck, Frank. Give 'em hell."

Arlington. Monday, February 7; 1000 hours.

"I was hoping you'd ask."

"How could you think we might not, Hutch?"

"I wasn't really sure you'd want me." She managed her game smile. "Thanks."

Beta Pacifica was two hundred twenty-five light-years from Earth. Again, on the edge of the Void. Fifty-five light-years from Quraqua. "What's the radio signal like?" she asked. They had been very secretive. Had in fact sworn her to say nothing of the pending mission.

"Continuous repetitive patterns. Every few seconds, sometimes. No long segment ever completely repeats, but there are patterns that seem to be variations of each other. Coming from a single transmitter."

"A single transmitter?"

"Yes. As far as we can tell, the sender never gets a response."

"That seems odd. Maybe we just can't hear it."

"Probably. Ed thinks it's a beacon. Incidentally, the source of the transmission is probably not on a planetary surface."

"What makes you think that?"

"It's several AUs from the star, and it's in a polar orbit. A polar orbit, Hutch."

They hugged. "It was put there," she said, squeezing hard.

Langley Park, Maryland. Monday, February 7; 1930 hours.

The entry bell sounded, the display blinked on, and Maggie looked at Frank Carson. He knew, of course, that he was on camera, but he still could not entirely conceal his impatience. Carson never changed: he liked things to happen according to schedule, disliked even the slightest delay. He wore a yellow wool pullover and cuffed dark-blue skims. She thought of him as a good detail man, somebody who ensured that equipment was maintained and supplies arrived on time. But the price of that kind of talent seemed to be a kind of overwhelming grayness. Carson was impossibly dull. He was well-meaning, even indispensable. But he was dreary company. She keyed the downstairs lock.

"Door's open, Frank," she said. She pushed back from her notepads and sketches, blanked the monitor, which resumed its wall-panel appearance. She'd lost track of time. It was too late to do a cleanup now, but the room was cluttered rather than dusty. She could live with that. Maggie had no idea why Carson had asked to see her. It couldn't be social, and it wouldn't be connected with the Oz inscription; she had already solved that for them. What was left?

Possibly, they were planning some sort of formal expression of appreciation for her. If that were so, she'd be happy to accept. And they might have sent Carson to arrange it, try to get her to show up at the appropriate place without giving away the game.

Maggie was still luxuriating in the afterglow of having deciphered the horgon lines. (That she had found the final elements of the solution among texts already present in the data banks, that the last-minute material sent up by Henry and Richard had helped, but might not have been necessary, she had told no one. The fact tarnished her achievement slightly, and left her vaguely resentful, but against whom or what she was not entirely certain.) She had been working on her notebooks since their return, and was now in the process of deciding what she would do next. Academy policy was to rotate field and home assignments, and she had offers from Oxford, Harvard, CIT, and the Institute for Advanced Studies.

The door opened to reveal Carson. "Hello, Maggie," he said.

She extended her hand. "Hi, Frank. Good to see you."

Conversation had always been difficult between them, and she felt the thickness in the air already. Carson was a master of the inconsequential; she had no use for small talk.

"I'm sorry to bother you at home."

"It's okay." There was an odd sense of worlds coming together. Carson belonged light-years away. She indicated a chair, and sat beside him. "Frank, what can I get you?"

"Nothing, thanks."

"You're sure?"

"Yes," he said. "Nice apartment."

"Thank you." She was proud of it. Tasteful furniture, walls lined with technical texts and novels, framed ideographs and poetry from the Knothic Hours, in the original.

"D.C. changed while we were away." He went on for some minutes in a superficial vein, commenting on the unseasonal warmth; the likelihood of rain; the local outbreak of CORE, the African virus that induced a kind of super rickets.

Maggie sighed and waited. When she saw her chance, she asked what was happening. Translation: Why are you here?

His gaze intensified. "Maggie," he said, "we're going out again."

That surprised her. "Who is?" she asked. "Out where?"

"The inscription points to Beta Pacifica. It's in the same area, along the edge of the Arm."

Maggie had not really believed they would pin down a candidate. At least not so quickly. She'd expected the effort would take years. "Why not let a survey ship take a look at it?"

"Because we think they're still there." He paused for effect. "Maggie, we've picked up radio transmissions." His eyes were big and round and very full. Maggie Tufu had never been given to emotional demonstrations. Particularly not with Frank Carson. But now she jabbed a fist in the air. "Magnificent," she said. "Am I invited?"

The Academy. Wednesday, February 16; 1345 hours.

Ed Horner looked up as Carson entered. "Good to see you, Frank," he said. "Is everything ready?"

Carson nodded. "Yes. We're all set."

"Very good." He rose, came around the edge of the desk. He looked hard at Carson, as if he were trying to see past him, to calculate odds. "Since there is a signal, we are going to find something. But I want to impress on you that your task is limited to establishing whether there is anything there that warrants a full mission. If they actually exist, I do not want details. Do you understand? I want you to make the determination and come back with a recommendation. If they're there, keep in mind we know nothing about them. Don't stop to chitchat. Don't let them see you. Get in and get out—"

"We will," said Carson.

"Incidentally, your departure time has been moved up. You've got forty-eight hours."

Carson opened his mouth to protest.

"You'll need to let your people know," the commissioner continued. "I know this puts you on a short schedule, but we're under pressure. Hard questions are being asked in high places. I'm not sure how long we can hold the lid on this operation."

Carson's mouth clamped firmly on whatever it was he was going to say. "Thank you," he said, finally.

"Don't bother." Horner held out his hand. "Just come back to us."

Hutch and Carson left Atlanta Launch at sunset. The shuttle was filled with passengers, mostly wealthy sightseers who would be outward bound tomorrow on the Estrata. Interstellar tourism was developing into a growth industry. Those wealthy enough to pay for the privilege could sail past neutron stars; watch from short range the deadly dance between Delta Aquilae and its massive companion; cruise past the Great Maelstrom on Beta Carinis IV; navigate the smoking marble flatlands of Lesser Culhagne, the Cold Star. And end the voyage with dinner in the shadow of Holtzmyer's Rock on Pinnacle.

They were mostly couples, middle-aged and older, well-dressed, excited by the views of Earth and Moon. There were a few children, some station personnel, and two men who turned out to be theoretical physicists working on artificial gravity.

One was a tall, garrulous black with a gray beard and knife-sharp features. His colleague was a taciturn Japanese who watched Hutch with eyes that were full of suggestion.

The black man's name was Laconda, and he reminded Hutch of her old high-school algebra teacher.

She commented that she'd always understood that artificial gravity was impossible, and Laconda responded with talk about high-energy particles, guide paths controlled by magnetic fields, and local space warps. Hutch got lost quickly, but she understood enough to ask whether the method, if it worked, could not also be used to produce anti-gravity?

Laconda smiled, pleased by the aptness of his student. "Yes," he said. "That should follow. And the critical point is that very little energy would be needed."

"Cheap anti-gravity?" Carson's eyebrows rose. "Makes you wonder where it will all end."

The physicist glowed with satisfaction. "The future is coming very quickly," he said, glancing toward Hutch to gauge her reaction, "and we need to be prepared for it." He oiled through the phrase with smooth precision.

Hutch was still considering the possibilities when they began their approach to the Wheel. True anti-gravity. Not the parlor magic stuff of superconductivity, but a real low-cost system that would negate mass and resistance. The power needs of the world would plummet. "You could," she told Carson, "move a sofa with the flick of a wrist. Sail over New York without an aircraft. We'd no longer be tied to the ground, and our individual strength would go to infinite." She grew thoughtful. "It would be a new kind of life."

"It's science fiction," said Carson. "It'll never happen."

The Japanese looked up from his computer, glanced around to assure himself that Laconda was out of earshot, and said quietly: "Your friend is right, young lady. It's a crock. The thing's a government grant, it'll never work, and Laconda knows it."

Hutch was glad to see the Winckelmann again. She strode down the access tunnel, entered the main port, which was at the top of the ship, crossed the bridge (a technician was running queries on the navigation systems), dumped her bags on the deck, and began an inspection tour. She was not so pressed for time that she could not have gone to her station quarters, but she enjoyed the sense of security and comfort within the familiar bulkheads.

There was a framed picture of Cal on her worktable, taken two years ago. Shortly after they'd met. He was wearing the outsize green golfer's hat that she'd once thought so charming. Still did, actually. She picked the picture up and slipped it face down into the upper right-hand drawer. Long past time—

Maintenance people were wandering through the ship. Hutch went down to C ring to check supplies. The inventory showed food and water for six people for eight months. She conducted a physical check, and signed off.

Two hours later, she met Carson in Vega South. He was every bit as anxious as she was to be away. "I would hate to get shut down now," he said.

"Relax. We'll be fine."

They sat at a corner table sipping drinks. "This is all happening pretty fast," he said. "We need to think a little about how this expedition should be run, what we want to accomplish, where things might go wrong. For example, what do we do if there actually is a functioning supercivilization?"

"We get out as quickly as we can, and come back and report. I thought you said Homer made that clear."

"But we can report without physically coming back. Are we really sending a team of researchers all that way just to push an alarm?"

"I assume he doesn't want another disaster."

"But how do you avoid risk? Look: if we come back and say somebody's out there, and it's somebody who had star flight twenty thousand years ago, how is anyone going to approach them safely? No. What he really wants is some hard data. But he can't tell us that flat out. He has to assume we'll be smart enough to understand. If they're there, we bring back enough details to make it possible to plan a follow-up mission. But how much is enough!"

Earth glowed softly in sunlight.

"Is this the same conversation you told me about?"

"You've got to read between the lines a little, Hutch. He doesn't want us losing the ship, or letting them know we're around." He looked better than she'd ever seen him. He had lost weight, his energy level was up, and he was grinning like a big kid. "But he needs more than a go/no-go."

Well, whatever, she thought. In any case, she expected to enjoy herself. It was, after all, the flight that Richard had always hoped to make.

Janet Allegri and George Hackett arrived shortly after 0715. They came together, arm in arm. Janet looked fresh and enterprising, ready to go. She wore a blue and white jumpsuit with a Quraqua mission patch. Her blond hair was cut short, military style, and she moved with her customary flounce. Hutch was surprised by a jealous twinge.

George walked easily at her side, one stride for every two of hers. A sweater was knotted round his neck, and he swung an imitation leather athletic bag. They might have been headed for an outing in the park.

Hutch met them at the top of the exit ramp. Both had been out of the D.C. area since their return from the Temple, and she had seen neither. They embraced and exchanged greetings. "You said you weren't going to do any more field trips," she told George. "Get tired of the home front that quickly?"

He grinned. "No," he said. "Frank asked me to come, so I came." He hesitated. "I also knew you'd be along."

Hutch caught Janet's Oho, — what-have-we-here? expression. "Thank you," she said, enjoying the moment. It was good to know she wasn't completely overshadowed.

She led them into the Wink, showed them where to stow their bags, and distributed mission patches and mugs. They featured an eighteenth-century four-master under full sail through an ocean of clouds, beneath a prominent star. The legends Beta Pacifica appeared at the top, and Onward at the bottom.

When they were settled, they wandered casually through the ship, talking about what they'd been doing, and about the mission. Hutch explained how they'd tracked down Beta Pac, and put a diagram of the signal on a monitor. "Hard to see a pattern anywhere," said Janet.

"It's there" Hutch said.

George watched for a while. "Who else knows?" he asked.

"We've kept it quiet," Hutch said. "Hardly anybody, other than the commissioner."

"And he's letting us go after it?"

"1 think he feels that since we tracked it down, it's ours."

"More likely," said Janet, "he figures it's a long shot, and he wants the results in hand before he mentions it to anybody. No point looking foolish again."

Flight luggage arrived. They all went down to get it and were dragging it back to their quarters when Carson charged through the main airlock. "Hello, George," he said, shaking hands. "Is Maggie here yet? We need Maggie."

"We haven't seen her," said Hutch. "What's the problem?"

He looked flustered. "The results from the Tindle were routinely passed to higher authority.".

Hutch shrugged. "That doesn't surprise me."

"No. But apparently somebody actually read them. It looks as if they figured out what the implications are. Horner's people learned that they are about to be told Beta Pac is off limits until further notice. If that happens, he'll have no choice but to stop the mission."

"How'd you find out?" asked Janet.

"The commissioner's private secretary." He was looking at his watch and an empty approach tunnel. "He wants us out and gone."

Hutch was trying to think it through. "They can't communicate with us in hyper. How much time have we got?"

"Don't know. We'd better assume it could come at any time."

"The ship's ready to go. I'll only need a few minutes to run through the checklist. If we can get clearance from Flight Ops."

"See if you can reach Maggie," said Carson.

Janet pointed to the monitor. "No need," she said. Maggie Tufu was outside carrying an overnight case.

Hutch called Flight Ops. While she was getting departure information, Maggie made her entrance. Stern and striking, she was an intimidating presence. She greeted them, and her dark eyes glanced perfunctorily around the room, hesitating momentarily when they encountered Janet. She did not seem to notice Hutch.

The Traffic Controller gave Hutch a choice. "If you can get out at 0810, it's a go." That gave them fifteen minutes. "Otherwise, we don't have another post until 1630 hours." That wouldn't be much better than the original departure time.

"We'll be ready," she said. "Put us on the log."

Maggie turned toward Hutch. "Have my bags arrived yet?"

She saw no activity in the luggage chute. "No."

"You may have to leave them," said Carson.

"You're kidding." Maggie's expression changed, but it did not grow dour, as Hutch had expected. Instead, it took on an impish quality. "I'll be a little short of clothes." She showed them the overnight case.

"We've got plenty of coveralls on board," said Hutch. "Several sizes."

Maggie did not object, but looked ruefully at the over-nighter. "I didn't realize we were in that much of a hurry. Don't we have several hours yet?"

"They're trying to cancel the mission," said Carson.

"Hutchins," she said, "can you determine when my luggage will get here?"

Not this side of Christmas, honey, I hope. "It's still in the sorter," she reported gravely. Too bad. Have to do without.

Maggie looked for sympathy. "Any possibility we can wait?"

"First contact in the nude," Janet said, grinning.

"It's in the pipe," said Hutch. "There isn't anything we can do to hurry it along."

Carson looked uncomfortable. "How long?" he asked Hutch.

"Maybe a half hour."

"Have to do without, then," said Carson.

The console chimed. "Preflights check out." Hutch said. "We have permission to depart."

Maggie took a long deep breath. "Let's go," she said, turning toward Janet. "You're close to my size. A little hefty, maybe. But if we take your stuff in a bit, we should do fine. Right?"

17 On board NCA Winckelmann. Friday, February 18; 1025 GMT

They rode outward from the sun. Winckelmann & twin Hazeltine engines were fully charged, and she could have made the insertion into transdimensional space at any time, but regulations set minimum standards to avoid backwash. Her flight plan called for a jump in twenty hours.

Carson sat with Hutch on the bridge. He was an odd mix that day: delighted that they were finally on their way, fearful that the recall might come, uneasy about the nature of the mission itself. "It's hard to plan for," he said. "I hate going into a situation blind."

"That's what makes it interesting," said Hutch. The atmosphere was thick. They had both been glancing frequently at the communications console. "Maybe we ought to take out some insurance against getting canceled."

"How can we do that?"

"We should probably have a communication malfunction." She checked the time. "We're due to file a movement report in a few minutes. I'll garble it. That'll establish the problem for official purposes. After that, we don't respond to anything. Once we're in hyper they can't talk to us in any event. When we get to Beta Pac, we can effect repairs, or not, depending on events."

"Do it," he said.

"Okay. Now I have a question for you. If we get positive results from this trip, is it likely to help get Henry off the hook?"

Carson didn't think so. "It can't hurt. But the Academy is in a comer. If they don't act against him, then they're in effect condoning his action. They can't afford to do that. No.

Maybe history will do right by him. The Academy won't. And the media won't." He looked at her, and she could read the pain in his eyes. "And maybe they're right. He is responsible."

He fell silent, took out his notepad, and drifted away from her. After a while, he began writing. Hutch had detected a change in Frank Carson since the Temple. Like Henry, he seemed to have aged. He was more reflective, less optimistic. Despite the bravado talk about going beyond the mission parameters, she sensed he would be more cautious than he might have been a few months earlier.

She caught a glimpse of a title in his notebook, and smiled: CARSON AT BETA PAC. It sounded like Napoleon in Egypt, Schliemann at Troy, Costikan at Pinnacle. / hope you make it, Frank.

She turned her attention to the movement report, brought it up on her screen, and garbled the back half of it. No way they could misunderstand: Wink has a communications problem. She hit the Transmit button.

The response was almost immediate.

WINCKELMANN: SAY AGAIN YOUR MR08.

Okay, she thought. We're in business.

A few hours later, while Hutch was making final enhancements for the transdimensional insertion, the message board chimed again. Hutch assumed it would be another request for a communication status check. But this was altogether different:

WINCKELMANN FROM ACADEMY: ABORT MISSION AND RETURN. ABORT REPEAT ABORT. PLS ACKNOWLEDGE. HORNER.

She cleared the screen and switched on the ship's intercom. "We'll be making our jump in eleven minutes. Everybody belt down. Please respond to the bridge."

She showed the message to Carson. "We never received it." he said.

Still, they both felt better when the stars went out and the fog closed around the ship.

That evening, after dinner, Carson held a general briefing. The first question: What was known about Beta Pac? "Not much," he admitted. "No survey ship has visited it, or been anywhere close for that matter. Class G star, about three billion years older than the Sun. Located along the edge of the Void."

"So we have no idea," said Janet, "what's waiting for us?"

"None," said Carson.

Maggie pressed her fingers together. "This signal," she asked, "started on its way at about the beginning of the twentieth century. Have we made any attempt to find out whether the source is still active? Did we check with any other stations?"

Carson nodded. "We asked Nok to try to get a reading for us, and the Ashley Tee, which is our closest survey ship. Neither heard anything, but that could be because they're out of effective range for their receivers. The signal the Tindle picked up wasn't much more than a whisper."

"Three centuries is not a long time," said George, "if these are the people who built Oz eleven thousand years ago."

"So what's the plan?" asked Janet. "What do we do when we get there?"

Carson was all business. "We're homing on the signal. We're going to make the jump back into standard space as close to the source as we can. It's hard to formulate a strategy beyond that. We've been directed not to make contact, if they're there. And not to allow ourselves to be seen. But we want to find out who's home. And bring back whatever details we can. To that end, by the way, we will make no transmissions while we are in the Beta Pac system."

Maggie leaned forward attentively. They were gathered around a table. "Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. We may be talking about a civilization with twenty thousand years of development. Possibly a lot more. Does anyone really believe we can sneak in, take a look, and leave undetected?"

"We don't know they've had twenty thousand years of development," said Janet. "They could be frozen in place. Or in a dark age."

Carson agreed. "We can imagine all kinds of possibilities. Let's just take normal precautions. And play the rest by ear."

Maggie looked annoyed. "Why would an advanced race care whether we wandered in or not? That seems a trifle arrogant to me. I suggest we sail right up to the front door, and show the flag. No pussyfooting around. That might get their respect right off the bat."

"You could be right, but that's a direct violation of my instructions. We won't do it that way."

Hutch was not officially a member of the expedition, and consequently not entitled to express an opinion. Still, she was responsible for the safety of the ship. "I think," she said, "we should take the possibility of hostile response seriously."

"They won't be a threat," insisted Maggie.

Janet peered at her over the top of a teacup. "Why not?"

"If they're advanced, they're rational. Unprovoked hostility is //rational. And if they're not advanced, we don't have to worry about their hostility." Her tone was that of a harried instructor.

George listened quietly through most of the discussion. Eventually, he asked about the Academy's view. "Who does Horner expect us to find? Is there a real chance these are the Monument-Makers?"

"Ed doesn't know any more than we do," Carson said.

"I'll give you a straight answer," Maggie told George. "If there's anyone at Beta Pac, it won't be the Monument-Makers."

Hutch was surprised and irritated by the conviction in her voice. "How can you be so sure?" she asked.

"It might be the same race" Maggie explained. "But the Monument-Makers are gone. Just as the classical Greeks are gone. I mean, no one seems to be running around making Monuments anymore. Haven't for thousands of years. But the Monuments do imply that a long-lived, stable civilization once existed. Anybody want to speculate what happens to a culture that survives for twenty thousand years? Does it become highly advanced? Or moribund? Does it develop in some oblique way?"

"Check out China," said Janet. "Or Egypt. Or India. Our experience is that durability is not necessarily good."

Later, Hutch took Carson aside. "Let's talk worst-case scenario for a moment. What happens if we arrive and are promptly attacked?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Give me an answer first."

"We clear out."

"Okay. But you should be aware, for planning purposes, that after we jump into Beta Pac space, we will need a minimum of fourteen hours to recharge the engines. We are not going to be able to clear out on a moment's notice. No matter what."

He nodded. "Okay. Let's hope we don't have a problem."

Hutch had not forgotten Maggie's willingness to sacrifice her comrades. She didn't like harboring grudges, and her professional responsibilities militated against allowing her feelings to show. She made a pact with herself, to accept Maggie Tufu, with the reservation that, in a crisis, she would not trust the woman's judgment.

Of her four passengers, Maggie was the only one who still qualified as a stranger. Hutch had not had an opportunity to spend any time with her at the Temple, or on the flight from Quraqua.

She was polite enough. But the woman saw everything as simplistic or ironic, and seemed to take nothing seriously other than the professional issues raised by her work.

Despite her presence, this group, unlike others Hutch had carried, showed no tendency to fragment. No one hung back, no one spent inordinate amounts of time in a compartment, no one got buried in the cybernet to the exclusion of all else. Even Maggie came around after a few days, shedding much of her arrogance. She took time to engage in occasional small talk, although it was clear she found it not particularly stimulating. She also revealed an uncommon skill at poker. Gradually, Carson discovered that she had an interest in military affairs. George commented that she was much more sociable here than she had ever been on Quraqua, and Hutch wondered whether they were being driven together by the approach of the unknown.

They gathered every evening after dinner, and the conversations ranged over a world of topics. Somehow, out here, terrestrial problems seemed more clinical, more amenable to solution. Plans were brought forward to combat starvation and reduce population, to stop wars and perhaps end international rivalry once and for all, to deal with teenage sexuality, and improve the public schools. They agreed that all the plans, however, had something of a fascist ring. There was a tendency, between the stars, to lose patience with disorder.

They debated whether it was really possible for a social structure to survive intact for tens of thousands of years. Janet argued that that kind of stability would necessarily imply "damn near absolute rigidity. The place would be a literal hell."

They talked about the Monument-Makers, and about the discontinuities. And eventually they began to talk about the things that really mattered to them. Hutch learned that the woman in Carson's photo had run off with a securities dealer, that Maggie was morbidly afraid of death, that Janet had trouble attracting reasonable men. "I don't know why," she confessed, and Hutch suspected it was true. Most men she had known would have felt threatened by Janet Allegri, would never have felt comfortable in her presence.

George, she decided, wanted to excel so that a young woman who had walked off years ago would regret her choice.

And Hutch? She wasn't sure what she gave away. She was careful not to mention Cal, and she didn't talk about Richard. But Janet told her years later that she had first come to understand Hutch when she described her fear and humiliation while Janet took on the strider. "I promised myself I would never stand by again," Janet quoted her as saying. And she added, herself: "I liked that."

As for the mission, one series of questions was central: if these were, indeed, the Monument-Makers, would they remember their visit to the solar system? Would they remember their own great days?

"Oz," said George, when asked to produce a question for the aliens. "I want to know why they built Oz."

The evening gatherings quickly took on a ceremonial aspect. They toasted one another and the commissioner and Beta Pac. Mission symbols and patches, worn on Academy blue, became de rigueur. Whatever reserve was left drained away, and they relaxed in each other's company. They joked, and laughed, and required everyone to produce entertainments. There were magic tricks and monologues and sing-alongs. Maggie, reluctant at first to join in, demonstrated an ability to impersonate the voices and mannerisms of everyone on board. She'd captured Carson's military demeanor and George's back-country accent; she caught Hutch's trick of tilting her head when puzzled, and Janet's slightly voluptuous stance.

They staged a dance (ties for gentlemen, skirts for ladies), and they began running an improvisational comedy, Great Excavations, in which a group of misfits at a mythical dig took turns tryine to fleece and bed one another.

Hutch enjoyed the fun and games, which always seemed to work well within the closed belly of a starship where human companionship counted for so much. Night after night, they talked into the early hours, and Hutch felt the bonds among them strengthening.

Near the end of the third week, Maggie took her aside. "I wanted you to know," she said, "that I'm sorry about Richard."

"Thank you," Hutch responded, surprised.

"I didn't know you were so close, or I would have said something earlier. I think I was a little stupid."

"It's okay." Hutch felt a wave of regret. Not sure why.

Maggie looked uncertain. "I know a lot of people think Henry is getting a bad deal. They think I'm responsible for what happened." Her dark eyes found Hutch, and held her. "I think they're right." Her voice caught. "I'm sorry," she said again. "We did the right thing. Richard knew that. That's why he was there. But I wish it could have turned out differently."

Hutch nodded. Maggie hesitated, opened her arms, and they embraced. Maggie's cheek was warm and wet.

Hutch lived by her rule; she maintained a cautious demeanor toward George. She had been delighted at his inclusion in the mission, but she also recognized that his presence necessarily created a difficult situation. His eyes lingered on her through the long evenings, darting quickly away when she looked back. They brightened when she spoke to him, became animated when she asked his opinion about the topic of the hour. His voice softened noticeably in her presence, and his breathing downshifted.

She would have liked to talk frankly with George, explain why she was not responding. She did not, after all, want to discourage him. But she could say nothing until he provided the opportunity by making an overt move.

When it came, she blew it.

They had fallen into the habit of pronouncing each session formally closed with a midnight toast, and marking off another day on the mission calendar which Carson had constructed and placed on a bulkhead in the lounge. (The ever-present four-master loomed above the five weeks and two davs allotted for the outbound flieht.1 On the twentv-sixth evening, George had seemed especially vulnerable. He had seated himself across from her, where he could demonstrate monumental unconcern. But color went to his cheeks early in the session, and stayed there.

When the group broke up, he approached her. "Hutch," he said in his most serious manner, "can we walk?"

Her pulse fluttered. "Of course."

They descended into the lower reaches of the ship. The configuration had changed for this mission. She was still carrying three rings, but they were smaller. The vast cargo areas had been removed; the living quarters were reduced. There was still ample space to store artifacts, should the need arise, but Hutch no longer felt she was walking into an aircraft hangar. This Wink would present a considerably smaller target to scanners.

"Hutch," he said almost timidly, "you're one of the loveliest women I've ever seen."

"Thank you," she said.

"When we get back, I'd like to have an evening with you. Just us."

Yes. "We can do that."

He was very near, not quite touching her, his breath warm and uneven. She steered them toward a viewport. Outside, the mist of the interdimensional world drifted slowly past. They might have been in an old house on the edge of a moor.

"It's like you" he said, watching the fog. "You can't see into it, you can't quite get hold of it, and it keeps moving."

She laughed. They both did. And she made the first move. It was subtle enough, and would not have been noticeable to a bystander: she leaned in his direction, a mere centimeter or so. A signal passed between them, and she sensed his body make its own decision.

"Hutch—"

He reached out, tentatively, and touched her hair. His lips were very close.

Hutch felt her tides begin to run. Fingertips touched. Flanks brushed. His eyes held her. His hands curled around her shoulders, and her cheek touched his. It was warm. She was up on her toes, lips parted, open, waiting.

The moment expanded. Her breathing, her heartbeat, melted to his. Breasts, protected only by the flimsy material of her work uniform, touched him. He bent to her, met her mouth with his own, not pressing her. She accepted him, let him explore the thrust of her lips. Her heart hammered, and she lost her breath. When finally he broke away, she caught the nape of his neck, softly, firmly, and drew him back.

She had one final moment of clarity, of reluctance, and then folded herself against him, inviting him, becoming part of him. She had to get up on her toes to reach him, but she loved it. His fingers brushed her right breast, lingered, drew away.

She'd been on flights which featured people padding between rooms in the middle of the night. She didn't want any part of that. "Come with me," she said.

He moved silently behind her.

"Only tonight," she said.

His hand settled on her shoulder, touched her throat. And then he stopped. "Hutch," he said, "do you really want to do this?"

Yes, you fool.

She led him into the shuttle bay. The Alpha lay in its cradle, shadowy, silent, potent. The cockpit windows glittered in the uncertain light. (They had replaced the damaged tread, bent by the tsunami.)

He swung her easily off the floor, strode across the deck, and paused at the shuttle cargo door. He jabbed at the release mechanism, but nothing happened.

She did it for him; there was a maintenance seal that had to be removed.

He ducked inside with her, found a blanket, and spread it out.

"You didn't answer my question," he said as he bent to her again. "Because I don't want to spoil anything. I love you, Hutch."

She kissed his cheek. Drew his head down. "Be careful what you say. I might hold you to it."

"Now and forever," he said. The response was sufficiently artificial that she almost laughed. But he added, solemnly, "I mean it, Hutch."

What waited at Beta Pac? Maybe they were being invited to join the Galactic League. Or to receive a history and detailed atlas of the Milky Way, with its civilizations and its points of interest and its rest stops. Carson sprawled comfortably in his chair, feet propped up. "How do you suppose an individual in such a culture would define fulfillment?" he asked. "What would they want out of their lives?"

"Same as us," said Janet.

George sipped dark wine. "What would that be?" he asked.

"Power," she said. "And love."

"It's impossible to know," said Carson. "That's why they're alien."

Hutch sat with a book open on her lap. "But we are able to understand alien mythologies, at least the ones we've encountered so far. Which means we are motivated by the same drives." She thought once again about the footprints across the ridge on lapetus. "I would guess they'd live, as we do, for achievement. To do something. And to want others to know what they've done. That's the whole point of the Monuments."

The wall panels were open, and the internal lights played off the fog. There was always a sense of something just beyond the limits of vision. Hutch remembered an old story that pilots who had gone outside during transdimensional flight occasionally heard voices.

George kept their bargain and stayed at a distance. She was pleased that he understood the need for discretion, and that he refrained from demonstrating the possessiveness which was so often the immediate downside of a sexual encounter. There was no second event. Both had been around long enough to recognize the damage that pairing up does to a small team on an extended mission. So they strove for the same pleasant amiability with each other that they displayed toward each of their colleagues. In Hutch's case, at least, it required no small effort.

Unlike her personal life, Wink glided placidly through the veils. It never trembled, never quivered, never accelerated. No inner systems quickened, and of course it received no messages from outside.

Hutch enjoyed doing simmies with this crew. She portrayed a series of love interests attached to cynical antiheroes, like Margo Colby in Blue Light and lisa in Casablanca. George charmed her as Antoine in the one, and Carson was appropriately vulnerable as Rick in the other. (It showed her a side of his personality that she had not anticipated. And she was moved almost to tears when George/Antoine left her behind and rode to his death near Moscow.)

Carson had a taste for open-air historical spectaculars. He looked dashing, if a little beefy, as Antony at Actium, astride a white charger, the sun glittering against his horsehair helmet. Maggie was, they agreed, sensational as Cleopatra.

When it was her turn to choose, Maggie inevitably went for the Maclver Thomson cliffhangers, in which she excelled as the quintessential damsel in distress. (It struck Hutch as odd that their most intellectual member would opt for thrillers.) And, by God, she was good: she screamed her way through Now the Dawn, hunted by the members of a bloodthirsty cult; fled the maniacal clown Napoleon through the deserted amusement park in Laugh by Night; and fought off Brother Thaddeus, the murderous monk, in Things That Are Caesar's, while her would-be rescuer, the globe-trotting adventurer Jack Hancock (George), tried to recover from a vicious whack on the head and an attack in the rook tower by a pair of eagles.

Janet specialized in women gone wrong. She portrayed Lady Macbeth with such pleasure and malevolence that Janet herself, seated beside Hutch, was chilled. (Watching acquaintances in the classic roles added an extra dimension to the experience, provided they were good. It all depended on the energy level and passion that one could provide to the mix.) Janet was also the scheming Mary Parker in Roads to Rome, and Katherine in Bovalinda. "You have a taste for power," Carson remarked while she was seizing control of a metals consortium and simultaneously plotting to murder an uncooperative husband.

"Yeah." Her face glowed. "Damn right."

Hutch discovered something about herself during the evening they watched Things That Are Caesar's. There is an all-out, no-holds-barred love scene in a rock pool within an abandoned monastery. And it was with an uncomfortable stirring in her breast that Hutch saw George, her George, close in on Maggie for a long aquatic grapple. It wasn't really George, of course, any more than it was really Maggie. It wasn't even their bodies: the subjects had supplied only fully clothed images and personality ranges; the computer had generated the rest. But Hutch felt a rising heat all the same, and she could not avoid a sidewise glance at Maggie, who was enjoying herself. As was George, sitting with a silly smirk.

Beta Pacifica was somewhat smaller than Sol, and slightly cooler. The radio source was located fifteen AUs from the star. "We should materialize within fifty thousand kilometers of the target," said Hutch as they began waiting for Navigation to signal that a jump was imminent.

"We won't hit it, will we?" asked Janet.

"Chances are thin." Hutch grinned. "Fifty thousand kilometers is a lot of space. There's a better chance that both Hazeltines will fail."

"That's not necessarily reassuring," said Janet. "You're assuming it's a station. What if the source is on a planet?"

"There's no appreciable probability of that," said Carson. "Anyhow, the mass detectors would pick up any significant gravity well and cancel the jump. Right?" He looked toward Hutch.

"Right," she agreed.

Carson brought up a star chart. "We're back in our old stomping ground," he said. That was approximately true: Pinnacle, Quraqua, Nok, and the Beta Pac system were all located along the rim of the Orion Arm.

"Party time's over," said Janet as they closed to within a few hours of their ETA. "Time to go to work."

LIBRARY ENTRY

(Scene 221 from Things That Are Caesar's: Ann Hol-loway is carried by the giant monk, Brother Thaddeus, through an underground passage into a rock chamber. She is stunned, and only begins to recover consciousness as he sets her down. She is wearing an evening dress, but it has been partially ripped away, exposing a shoulder and the upper curve of one breast. Brother Thaddeus, in obedience to his vows, shows no interest. He removes his sash and uses it to tie her wrists. When he has finished, he drags her across the stone floor toward an iron ring in the wall.)

THADDEUS

(Starting to secure her to the ring) No need to pretend, little one. I know you are awake.

ANN

(Stirring, confused, most of the fight now out of her) Please don't.

(Looks around wildly.) Jack? Where are you?

THADDEUS

He is past helping you, child. He is past helping anyone.

(Opens a panel in the wall, revealing a switch. Zoom on switch.)

ANN

(Tries to cover herself) Let me go. Let me go, and I'll tell no one.

THADDEUS

I'm not afraid of what you can tell, Ann Holloway.

ANN Then why kill me?

THADDEUS

(Pulls the switch. We hear the sound of running water.

A stream begins to gush into the chamber from above.) I have no intention of killing you. It is your past that condemns you. Your long nights of illicit pleasure cry out for atonement.

ANN No! It's not true. You're crazy.

THADDEUS (Sounding genuinely sorry; water gushes over her.)

Have courage, child. God's cleansing waves will save you yet. It is your only path to paradise.

ANN

(Strains at the chain. The torn blouse falls open, revealing still more, but she is well past worrying about it. Camera in close as she struggles.) Jack—

THADDEUS

(Pauses at the entrance to the chamber, prepared to close the heavy stone door.)

Pray, my dear. It will ease your passage.

(She screams. He begins to close the door. Water pours into the chamber.)

The peace of the Lord be with you. (Bows his head. Camera in close. He hears something behind him, turns. Camera looks past him, down the passageway. Jack stands silhouetted in flickering torchlight.)

JACK

Where is she, you madman?

THADDEUS (Surprised to see him.) Hancock? Do you really still live?

ANN

(Desperate) Jack! I'm in here.

THADDEUS

You should have accepted the grace the Lord gave you, and stayed away.

JACK

(Advancing) Hang on, Ann.

THADDEUS

(Closes the door behind him, sealing off Ann, and blocking the passageway.)

You cannot help her. Best prepare for your own judgment, which is very close. (Touches the crucifix which hangs on a thin chain about his neck.)

The wicked are like the chaff which the wind drives away. The wicked shall not stand.

(Moves forward. They close in combat, and Thaddeus' greater size gives him an immediate advantage. He quickly forces Jack back, removes a cord from his robes, and loops it around Jack's neck. Meantime, cutaway shows water rising rapidly in the chamber. Ann struggles, etc. Holding Jack temporarily helpless, Thaddeus hauls him back along the corridor until he reaches the torch. Here, there is a lever in the wall. He pulls it, and a pit opens at their feet. A few rocks drop into the dark, and it is a long time before we hear them land. He drags Jack toward the edge of the pit. Jack breaks free, and the struggle rages while the water rises around Ann.

THADDEUS

For you, O God, delight not in wickedness; no evil man remains with you; the arrogant may not stand in your sight.

(The water passes Ann's waist. She is thoroughly drenched, of course, and thoroughly revealed. Outside, Jack seizes the torch and uses it to break away. The men struggle at the edge of the pit. Ann's shoulders go under, and her screams fill the chamber. Jack is down on one knee, forced relentlessly into the pit.)

THADDEUS

Ask forgiveness, Hancock. This is your last chance to save your immortal soul.

JACK You crazy son of a bitch.

THADDEUS

Then I ask pardon in your name. The Lord forgive you.

(Secure in the knowledge he has won, Thaddeus releases the pressure on Hancock's windpipe, and clutches his crucifix. The water is now cutting off Ann's screams. Jack sees his chance, and seizes the crucifix, ripping it free. He jams it into Thaddeus' groin, and the giant folds up in agony. He seizes Jack and both fall into the pit. We hear a long scream, and then we see a hand rise over the edge of the shaft. Jack climbs painfully out, unbars the door, and casts the bar aside. Theme swells as water pours out of the chamber, and he moves quickly to rescue Ann. He turns off the water, cuts her bonds, and lifts her, choking and gasping, into his arms.)

ANN

Jack, thank God you got here. He said he killed you.

JACK I think he missed. You okay?

ANN

Sure. Dragged up a few flights of stairs. Punched out a bit. Half drowned. Otherwise, I'm fine.

JACK Good. Because the evening's young.

"How long?" Carson watched the mist drift past. He pushed back in his chair, trying to look calm, dispassionate, but he was excited. Damned near ecstatic.

All gauges on the jump-status indicator had gone to a bright amber. "Coming up on three minutes." Hutch began to divert power to the fusion plant. "The jump should be smooth. But buckle down anyhow."

Systems lamps went green. The power levels of the Hazeltines were beginning to rise. Real-space mass was showing zero.

Maggie, closeted with George and Janet in the passengers' cabin, said, "Please, God, let them be here."

Red lamp. Unsecured hatch in one of the rear storage areas. Hutch opened it, closed it again. The light went green.

Janet said, "This is going to be a terrible disappointment if Beta Pac is a radio star, and the analysts were wrong. They've been wrong before."

"Two minutes," said Hutch. The comments around her receded to background noise. Only George's voice got through. But no one really had anything new to say. They were talking to create a web of security, impose a sense of familiarity on a condition they'd experienced before but which was nevertheless potentially quite different.

They floated forward.

"One minute."

Lights dimmed.

The real-space navigational systems, which had been in a power-saving mode, activated. The fusion plant went to ready status. External sensors came on line. Shields powered up.

Someone wished her luck.

Navigation came to life.

And, with scarcely a bump, they slid out into the dark. Stars flowered in the deeps, and she felt a brief flash of vertigo, not unusual during transition. They sailed beneath an open sky.

"I'm always glad to be out of there," said Carson, releasing his restraints.

"Maybe not," said Hutch. She jabbed a finger at the main navigation screen. An enormous black disk lay dead ahead. "Everybody stay belted in, please."

Fusion was about to ignite. She stopped it.

"What's wrong?" Maggie hadn't missed the strain in Hutch's voice.

Hutch gave them the image. "Talk later. I'm going to throw on the brakes."

"What is it?" George asked.

"Not sure." She went to full mag. It looked like a world. "That can't be right. Mass detectors show zero." She reset, but nothing changed. "Don't know what it is. Hold on."

Carson stared out the forward screen. "Son of a bitch—"

"Braking," said Hutch softly, "now." She engaged the retros, didn't ease into them as she normally would, but hit them hard.

"It's just an area with no stars," said Janet. "Like the Void. Maybe it is the Void."

"If it is, it's in the wrong place."

The thing ahead reflected no light.

"Hutch?" Maggie's voice had risen a notch. "Are we going into that thing?"

"It's getting bigger," said George.

"It can't really be there." Hutch's fingers moved across keys. "Self test okay."

"It's not a sphere," said Carson. His beefy features had hardened, and the eager-to-please archeologist had been replaced by the old colonel. Military bearing front and center. In an odd way, it was reassuring.

"What else could it be?"

Carson was squinting at the images. "It looks like a football" he said.

Worried sounds were coming out of the passenger cabin.

"Hang on," said Hutch. "We're going sharp to port." She punched in a new set of values, maybe more thrust than they could stand, and hit the button. Again, they were thrown against the webbing.

A haze had risen before her eyes, and it was hard to talk against the push of the thrusters. "Collision," she said. "Imminent." The words hung in the frantic air.

Carson took time to breathe, steady his voice. "How long?"

Hutch felt cold and empty. "Seven minutes. And change."

The object filled the sky. To their eternal credit, the three in the cabin kept their heads, and did not distract her. She even heard them trying to laugh about their situation. She opened a channel. "You can see what's happening," she said, speaking as though she were describing an interesting view. "We have a problem."

"How serious?" asked Janet. "Is it as bad as it looks?"

Hutch hesitated. "Yes," she said. "I think so."

She eased off on the thrusters, and killed the course change. "What are you doing?" asked Carson.

They were in free fall again. "No point torturing everybody."

"What do you mean?" said Maggie. "We aren't going to give up, are we? Just like that?"

Hutch didn't respond. Didn't know how to.

"How about jumping back?" George suggested.

"Can't."

"Try it."

"There's no point."

"Try it. What's to lose?"

The black football was growing. Carson said, "Not good." In the passenger cabin, someone laughed. Janet.

"I'll try to reinsert when we get closer," Hutch said. "Give the engines a chance to breathe. But don't expect anything."

Maggie whimpered.

Carson, strain finally locking his voice somewhat, asked, "How fast will we be going when we hit?"

Hutch was tempted to dodge the question. Throw back some facile response like fast enough. But they deserved better. "Almost fifty thousand."

What was the damned thing? She decided they weren't quite dead-on after all. They would hit a glancing shot. Not that it mattered.

"Goddammit, Hutch," said George, "we ought to be able to do something."

"Tell me what." Hutch had become deadly calm.

No way out. The object was vast and dark and overwhelming. An impossible thing, a disk without light, a world without rock.

"No moons," said Carson.

"What?"

"It has no moons."

"Hardly seems to matter," someone said; Hutch wasn't sure who.

Four minutes.

A terrible silence took the ship as her passengers settled into their own thoughts. Janet looked subdued and frightened, but managed a resigned smile; Maggie, tougher than Hutch would have expected, caught her looking, wiped her eyes and nodded, seeming to say, not your fault. George's glance turned inward and Hutch was glad she hadn't waited. And Carson: he wore the expression of someone who had absorbed a prank, and was taking it all quite philosophically. "Bad luck," he told her. And, after a long pause: "It happens."

"Did we get a message off?" Janet asked.

"Working on it."

"How big is it?" asked Maggie. "This thing?"

Hutch checked her board. "Forty-three hundred kilometers across. Half again as wide as the Moon."

It crowded out the stars.

Hutch saw a blip on her status board. "It's putting out a signal," she said.

"Same one they got at the Tindle?" asked Maggie, breathless.

"I think so. It's fifteen-ten. That's the right frequency. Computer's doing a match now."

"That's a pretty fair piece of navigation," said Carson. "We hit it right on the button." They laughed. And in that moment Hutch loved them all.

"Transmission's away. They'll get a full set of pictures. And it is the same signal."

"What now?"

"Time to try the jump. On a count of ten." She set up, and shook her head at the energy level for the Hazeltines, which was around six percent of minimum requirements. "Okay." She hit the «Go» button.

The engines whined.

And shuddered.

Whined again.

She shut it down. "That's it."

They were beginning to see features in the thing. Ribs. The void became a surface: blue-black, polished like plastene, or an ocean. "You know what's crazy about this?" said Carson. "We're still not getting gravity readings. What is this thing? Anything that big has to have a gravity field."

"Detectors have a glitch," said George.

Under a minute. Hutch stopped watching the clocks. In the cabin, she heard the sound of a restraint opening. "Stay belted down."

"Why? Why bother?" It was Janet.

"Just do it. It's the way a well-run ship does things." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her training screamed at her to hit the retros. But she only shut down the screens, locking out the terrifying perspective.

She closed her eyes. "Damn," she said, not quite able to stop the tears. She felt oddly secure in the sealed bridge, as if the lone plunge had somehow been arrested She loved the soft leather texture of the pilot's chair, the green radiance of the gauges, the electronic murmur of Wink's systems.

"Hutch?" Carson's voice was calm.

"Yes?"

"You're a hell of a woman."

In the dark behind her eyelids, she smiled.

18 On board NCA Winckelmann. Thursday, March 24; 1103 hours

Hutch listened to the familiar sounds of the bridge. To Carson's tense breathing, to whispers from the passenger cabin, prayers maybe, wishes, things undone.

She felt terrified and helpless and humiliated, but for all that, she did not want it to be over—God, she did not want it to be over—

She squeezed her eyes shut. Squeezed the rest of the world down to her heartbeat and the soft curve of the chair. And the countdown that some inner voice maintained—

Three. Two..

A hammerblow struck the hull.

The ship shuddered. Alarms exploded. The electrostatic hum of power in the bulkheads changed subtly, deepened as it sometimes did when the vehicle was responding to crisis. Carson shouted something unintelligible.

But she was still alive.

They had problems. The navigation board was on fire; black smoke poured into the air. Warning lamps blazed across the banks of consoles. Two of the monitors died. Computer voices spilled from the commlinks. Deep within the ship, systems sighed and shut down.

But oblivion did not come.

She looked at the gauges and could not believe what she saw. Their altitude was a hundred forty kilometers. And rising.

Rising.

She silenced the klaxons and stared at her status board. The power plant was going unstable. She shut it down, and switched to auxiliary.

Then she let out her breath.

"What happened?" asked Carson in a tentative voice.

"Damned if I know. Everybody okay?"

They were rattled. But okay.

"Is it over?" Janet asked.

Someone began to laugh.

In the passenger cabin, a cheer broke out.

"We seem to have gone through it," Hutch said. "Don't know how—"

"Son of a bitch, Hutch," said Maggie. "That was beautiful!"

Hutch's hands trembled.

"What did you do?"

"Damned if I know."

She killed the fire, and sent out a distress call. Carson reached over and clapped her on the back. "I don't think I want to do that again," he said.

They passed through three hundred kilometers.

"Hutch," said George, "that's the finest piece of piloting I've ever seen."

They were all laughing now. She joined in, and if the celebration had a hysterical edge to it, she didn't care. No one cared.

The ground was receding. It glowed softly. The illumination might have been internal. Or possibly reflected starlight.

"Maybe," said Maggie, laughing and crying simultaneously, "it was just smoke."

The sky had developed a distinct roll. "We're tumbling," Hutch said. "That's all right. We can fix that"

"Are we okay?" asked George. His voice trembled.

"Yeah. We're fine." Hutch was running through her checklist. Seconds after impact, the fusion plant had sent a blast of energy through the ship. There were systems in place to guard against the effects of a surge, but they were not, could not be, entirely effective. Who knew what might have burned out? She would need a walk-through to assess damage. "We're in good shape," she said. "We've got some power problems, but nothing we can't handle." Their situation was uncomfortable, but she saw no reason for alarm.

Auxiliary power consisted of a net of batteries and solar collectors. Several of these were also down. Not good. "We can maintain life sunnort. And soin. But we can't fire the main engines, and the Hazeltines can't recharge, so we have no stardrive. We are dead in the water." Navigation readouts implied altitude adjustment systems were out of line. Water pressure had dropped precipitously, but was now holding steady. That meant a tank had burst. The Hazeltine flux detection system was putting out a flat line. Even if she had power to go hyper, she'd have no real way to control their point of re-entry. But we could be worse, she thought. Damned lucky. Her hands were trembling.

They were getting far enough away now that the object was regaining its ovoid shape. "Could it be water?" asked Maggie.

"Even that would've wrecked us," said Carson. "Unless it was just a couple of centimeters deep."

"Hey." Janet sounded surprised. "Why do I keep trying to fall out of my chair?"

"Because we're tumbling," said Hutch. "Our gravity's off center."

Carson was preoccupied with the ovoid. "It's thin. Micro-thin. Has to be."

"Can we straighten out?" Maggie looked unhappy. "I'm getting sick."

'Trying."

The number four thruster showed negative. She disabled it, and set up a bypass firing sequence. "Heads up," she said. "We're going to have a little movement."

"We have power to spare?" asked Carson.

"Enough. We're going to be here a while, and we don't want to have to deal with all this rolling—" She executed, and felt the satisfying push of the rockets, felt the ship respond.

The firing sequence was long and complicated, but the stellar dance slowed, changed direction, changed again, and almost stopped. Almost. There was still a mild lateral motion.

"Best I can do," she said. "You can stand up now. But be careful, we have a wobble."

"You want to try it again?" said George.

"No. Too much drain. We'll live with this."

"What do we do next?" asked Janet.

"Take a look at the damage to the fusion plant," Hutch replied.

Carson shook her hand. "Thanks," he said.

"Not my doing. We were lucky."

"I suppose. Thanks, anyway."

The others crowded onto the bridge. The exhilaration was subsiding. "Can we restore power?" asked Janet.

"I'm running the diagnostics," said Hutch. "But I can tell you the answer. Fusion plant repair is not something you do on the run. We should proceed on the assumption that we will not have it available. Which means we are stuck here." She released her restraints.

"Then we need to get help." Maggie took a long deep breath. "Somebody's going to have to come and bail us out. First thing to do, I guess, is get off a distress call."

"We've already done that."

Maggie had arrived on the bridge, and was walking unsteadily across the deck, testing her balance. "Nobody's going to want to do any drinking," she said. "The floor runs uphill."

"Where would rescuers have to come from?" said George. "Nok?"

"Probably." Hutch was looking at flight schedules. "There isn't much else in the region. Unless you want to ride with Kosmik. They've got a ship at Quraqua."

"We're going to be laughingstocks," said Janet. "We go out looking for an artifact, and crash into it."

"The Valkyrie's at Nok. Just got in, if we can believe the schedule. They normally stay about four days. We're two days away, transmission time. So it'll still be there when our SOS arrives."

"It does mean," said Maggie, "that we lose the mission. Everybody'll want in now; we'll be squeezed out, and the credit will go elsewhere." She looked desperately at Hutch. "Do you have any ideas?"

"No, Maggie. All we can do is wait to be rescued."

"How long will it take?" asked Janet. "The trip from Nok, I mean."

"The packets are fast. If they leave as soon as they hear the distress call, the Valkyrie will be here in eleven days."

"We can live with that," said George. "Maybe in the meantime we can figure out what that thing back there is."

The real problem surfaced five hours later. Hutch was still trying to reroute and reprogram her status board when Janet strolled in, blowing conspicuously on her hands. "It's getting cold in here."

It was chilly. Hutch's board showed 103 °Celsius. Hot enough to boil water. She ran a diagnostic, and got a Negative. No problems. She shook her head, got up, and walked over to one of the ducts. "It's pumping cool air."

"It's not really cold," Janet said. "But it isn't room temperature either."

"We better go down and take a look. The programming is probably scrambled. But I can't get at it from up here."

They collected George in the passenger lounge, and crossed over to C ring, Life Support and General Maintenance. They walked halfway round the long outer passageway, picked up a repair harness, and entered Engineering. The bulkheads were lined with housings, casings, cabinets. The metal was cold.

"We should have brought sweaters," said Janet. "Let's make this quick."

Moving about was difficult because of the tumble. There was a tendency to lurch anti-spinward. As they moved toward the spine of the ship, it translated into an affinity for strolling into left-hand walls, and falling down easily. They stumbled past the fusion power unit, a set of teardrop cylinders framed within a series of tori. A yellow status lamp and the pale light from the control panel provided the only illumination.

"You sure you don't want to try to fix this?" asked George.

"Yes," she said. Fusion units were strictly dockyard work. Not to be touched by operating personnel. Hutch's training was clear on the point: switch to auxiliary systems, cut back wherever possible on power usage, and go home. By the shortest route. Here, of course, with the Hazeltines exhausted, they weren't going anywhere. In that case, send for help.

They inspected the series of tanks and drums which housed the ventilation system. Nothing obvious suggested itself. Hutch brought the air flow schematic up on the control terminal.

Four recyclers, operating in series, maintained the appropriate carbon dioxide/nitrogen/oxygen mix. These were large cylinders from which air was pumped into three enormous pressurized tanks, where it was stored until needed. The recyclers and tanks were interconnected. Prior to re-entering the ventilation system, air passed through a series of four con-vectors, which heated (or cooled) it to the proper temperature. The four convectors all showed "Nonfunctional."

They removed one of the hatch covers and looked at a charred ruin. "So we replace them. Right?" asked George hopefully.

"We can replace one of them."

"You only have one spare?" Janet sounded skeptical.

"One spare," said Hutch. "These things don't give out. And this sort of damage is not supposed to happen."

"Right" said Janet.

"How much good does one spare do us?" asked George.

"I don't know. We'll have to figure it out. But it should mean that we'll freeze a little more slowly."

"I'll tell you what I think it is." Maggie, wrapped in a blanket, jabbed a finger at the ovoid. It was blown up, and spread across a wall-length screen in the lounge. It looked somewhat like a spider web, half-seen on a moonless night. They could make out a fine network of lines, a sense of fragile beauty. "It's the ultimate Monument, and if this is not the home system of the Monument-Makers, at least it suggests we're on their track."

Carson was wearing a sweater and had a spread draped over his legs. "Are we agreed we went through it?"

"Had to," said Maggie. "Say—" She brightened. "Maybe we've got some samples aboard."

Carson's eyes met hers. "On the hull."

"Could be."

He looked up at one of the air ducts, walked over to it, and held his hand in front of it. "It's colder," he said.

A door at the rear of the compartment opened. Janet came in, followed closely by Hutch and George. All had acquired jackets, and they looked discouraged.

"Not so good, huh?" said Carson.

Hutch described what they had done. The new convector was in. "We'll get a little heat," she said.

"How about diverting the air flow?" said Maggie. "Put the air from the working conductor in here."

George shook his head. "It doesn't work that way. The air passes over all four conductors and then exits into the individual ducts."

"Then cut off the other spaces altogether," suggested Carson. "I'd think a smaller volume of air will cool down more slowly because less of it is exposed to the outer bulkheads."

Hutch nodded. "We thought so too. But we're limited as to where we can cut down. Anything that freezes over, we lose. Data banks in B ring, for example; food and water and life support in C."

"How cold will it get?" asked Maggie.

Hutch took a deep breath. "Cold." She patted Carson's wool-clad shoulder. "You're going to need more than that. Let me see if I can get my systems back on-line, and maybe we can figure out some options." She passed through the cabin, headed for the forward door.

"Before you leave," said Carson. "I've got a question on a different matter. We keep getting further away from that thing. Is there any chance of turning around and going back? To get a closer look?"

"It wouldn't be a bad idea," said Janet. "It would give us something to do while we're waiting for help to arrive. And we wouldn't look quite so silly when this is over."

Hutch shook her head. "We don't even have the power to stop our forward motion, Frank, let alone reverse it. No, Wink isn't going anywhere except straight ahead for a while. Sorry—" And she was gone.

The obloid floated on a wall-sized screen. George frowned, turned his head sidewise, used his hands to frame a picture, frowned again. "Anybody mind if I reduce this?" It was at five mag. Nobody objected, and he took it down, stage by stage. He played with it awhile, back and forth, and turned suddenly to Maggie. "You know what I think? It's a bowl. Look at it: it's a big, curved, planet-sized bowl." He cupped his hands, and tilted them so they could see. "You come in at the right angle, the football looks like a bowl. See?"

"You're right," said Carson. "So what is it?"

Maggie sank deeper into her blanket. "We know it puts out radio signals. It's apparently a big dish. A relay station, maybe. Certainly a beacon of some kind."

"Why would you want a beacon that big?" asked Janet.

"Maybe they never developed the TD band," said Carson. "Is that possible? That they could have FTL travel, but not FTL communications?"

"I guess it's possible" said Maggie. "But it makes no sense. Why would anyone with a stardrive want to send a message that would need decades, or centuries, to get to its destination?" Her nose was cold. She rubbed it. "You know," she said, "this place is starting to get downright drafty."

ARCHIVE ZZ 03/241611

XX EMERGENCY EMERGENCY EMERGENCY TO: GENERAL DISTRIBUTION FROM: NCA WINCKELMANN SUBJECT: GENERAL DISTRESS

GENERAL DISTRESS CALL ALL SHIPS/STATIONS. UPDATE 01. REQUIRE IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE—LIFE THREATENING SIT/BETA PAC. LIFE SUPPORT FAILURE. WILL MAINTAIN ALL–CHANNEL SIGNAL, STANDARD SET. THIS IS A FIVE ALPHA EMERGENCY, EXTREME DANGER, EXTREME NEED FOR HASTE. MESSAGE WILL REPEAT AT EIGHT-MINUTE INTERVALS.

On the bridge, Hutch faced the bad news. The lone convec-tor would prevent the temperature from falling below -36 °C. That in itself would not be comfortable, but it was survivable. The problem was that the system that supported the convector would start to freeze up at twenty below. It was then likely the convector would fail. If that happened, it was going to get very cold.

How long would it take?

She was unable to measure current heat loss. It appeared to be somewhat more than a degree per hour. At that rate, they could expect to hit zero sometime tomorrow. There would be other hazards as it got colder: air pumps would fail, food dispensers would cease to work, the power system might give way altogether, trapping them in a frigid, dark shell.

She had six Flickinger belts to fall back on, but there were only twenty-four hours of air for each. Once the power went, there would be no way to refill the breathers.

My God. She sat and stared at her instruments.

She needed an idea. And no reasonable possibility presented itself. A sense of her culpability began to take hold. Not that she had erred in any way that a board of inquiry could bring a finding against her; but she was ultimately responsible for the safe delivery of her passengers. Whatever that took. At the moment, she was not sure what it might take—

When she felt she'd postponed the confrontation as long as she could, she pushed away from the console, took a deep breath, and returned to the cabin.

Carson was absorbed in his notebooks when she entered. The others were talking, a conversation that immediately faded.

"Okay," she said, "here's where we are." She outlined their situation, trying not to seem alarmed, speaking as if these were merely complications, trivial inconveniences. But the inevitable conclusion was that they would freeze before help could come. Carson watched her without putting down his pen, as though prepared to take notes. Janet remained impassive, blue gaze fixed on the deck; George and Maggie exchanged glances freighted with meaning.

When she finished, they were quiet. Maggie tapped an index finger thoughtfully against her lip. Hutch sensed disbelief. "What do we do?" asked George.

Janet looked up. "Can we build a fire? Keep it going in here?"

"There's nothing to burn," Hutch said. Even their clothes were fire-resistant.

George looked around as if he expected to find a stack of logs. "Got to be some stuff somewhere."

"If there is, I don't know what."

"And we can't expect help earlier than eleven days?"

"At best." Everyone looked at the calendar. Rescue might arrive sometime April 4.

"It'll be pretty cold by then," said Maggie.

Carson was writing again. He didn't look up. "How about abandoning ship? Take the shuttle? Is there any place we can reach from here?"

"No," said Hutch. "We've got about a week's air supply in the shuttle. There's an oxygen world in the biozone, but we couldn't get close in the time we have."

"Do you have any suggestions?" asked Maggie.

The crunch. "I'll think better in the morning. But yes: maybe we can reconfigure the micro-ovens that cook our food to put some additional heat in here. Actually, we can probably manage that fairly easily. It won't be much, but it'll be something. The problem is that the rest of the ship will freeze."

"Which means?"

"The recyclers will stop, for one thing. That'll be the end of the air supply." She looked at them. "Listen, we're all exhausted. I'm sure we can work out something. But we need to sleep on it."

"Yes," said Carson. "Let's give it a rest. We'll come up with some ideas tomorrow."

Hutch huddled under three blankets during the night. She rolled and tossed and stared into the dark. Where else could she get heat? The first priority was to keep the convector going, but she could see no way to do that.

By first light, she was still awake, and exhausted. But it was time to stop beating herself up. She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, grabbed fresh clothes (she had not undressed), and padded across the cold floor to the bathroom. They still had hot water. One of the first tasks this morning would be to salvage a water supply from C ring.

She closed the door behind her, and opened the faucets. When she judged the room was warm enough, she dropped the blanket, stepped out of her clothes and into the shower. It felt good, and she soaped herself down thoroughly. But she was cataloging places where they could find containers. Damn, this was a nightmare.

George was in the main cabin, brewing coffee. He was wrapped in a thick robe. "How we doing?" he asked, holding out a cup for her. His usual optimism had vanished, and she knew that he too had lain awake much of the night.

She took the cup. The coffee was good, and imposed a sense of routine. "Okay, I guess." Her nose and ears were cold.

He looked glad to have company. "This is scary," he admitted.

"I know."

Hesitantly, he asked: "Any ideas?"

The reluctant criticism stung. "Not yet."

Deep in the ship, a hatch closed.

George's gaze met hers. "Who's wandering around back there?"

She checked her board. "Lower level. One of the supply rooms."

"Maybe somebody else can't sleep."

Hutch opened a channel. "Hellooo?"

Nothing.

"Ghosts," he said.

"I think we're hearing a computer glitch."

He could not entirely keep the emotion out of his voice.

"Hutch, you know the ship pretty well. What are our chances?"

She took a minute to drink him in. Despite his size, there was something of the eternal child in George. He was boyishly good-looking, enthusiastic, careful of her feelings in a situation which he understood must be especially painful to her. And he was striving manfully to hide his fears. Somehow, it was for George she was most anxious. "We'll find a way," she promised.

"I've got something else to tell you."

Hutch didn't think she wanted any more news. "What's that?"

"I've been up on the bridge. I hope you don't mind."

"No," she said. "Why would I?"

He nodded. "There's no radio noise out here anywhere. Except what comes off the star. And the signal we followed."

"None at all?"

"None. No electronic radiation of any kind." In the press of events, the reason they'd come to Beta Pac, on the track of an artificial radio broadcast, had got lost.

"But we're still picking up the signal from the Football?"

"Yes. It's still there. But that's all there is. Hutch, I don't think anyone's here." His eyes looked away. "I've got a question."

"Go ahead."

"We'd all like to find out what it is. The Football, I mean. We can't turn the ship around, but what about going back with the shuttle?"

"No," she said quietly. "We could do it. But we wouldn't be able to get back to the ship." She finished off the last of her coffee.

He studied her for a long moment. "Does it matter? Whether we can get back?"

The question jolted Hutch. "Yes," she said. "It matters."

Someone was coming.

// matters.

Janet appeared in the doorway, shivering. "Cold," she said. "Hutch, we need some ideas."

Hutch was still thinking about the shuttle. "Maybe you're right," she said. They had no place to go. But that didn't mean they shouldn't use Alpha.

Hutch woke Maggie. "Let's go."

She pulled her blankets more tightly around her and did not look up. "Go? Where?"

"The shuttle. It has a heating system. Get whatever you need."

Hutch hurried to her own quarters, grabbed clothes, towel, toothbrush, comb, whatever she could carry. She'd come back later for the rest. Now, with the prospect of warmth imminent, the temperature seemed to plummet. Her teeth were chattering when she entered the shuttle bay. Carson arrived at the same time.

She opened the hatch with her remote and they climbed in. The pilot's seat was stiff and cold. She switched on the heater and waited. George appeared, hauling a suitcase. "Good idea," he said.

He threw the bag into the rear. The blowers kicked on, and warm air flowed into the cockpit. "Hallelujah!" he said. The others arrived, and hurried inside.

"Shut the hatch," said Janet, trying to find room. "Keep it warm."

"Why didn't we do this last night?" Maggie grumbled from a rear seat. "Or didn't we think of it?"

Janet blew on her hands. "It feels good. I'm not leaving here until help comes."

"Cargo area in back will be warm in a few minutes," said Hutch. "We can set up living quarters in there."

They passed clothes and overnight bags back and then crowded into the cockpit and shut all the doors. Hutch handed out coffee.

She felt better now than she had since they'd come out of hyper. She wasn't sure yet they were safe, hadn't taken time to think it through, but for the moment at least, life was good again. The hold was gray and cramped and utilitarian. It would provide little privacy. But it already looked like the best accommodation she'd ever had.

"What's our situation exactly?" asked Carson. "We're getting our power from Wink, right? That's not a very reliable source."

She nodded. "We should have all the power we need. We can switch to internal if we have to, but we won't be using much other than heating and lights. The shuttle's batteries are designed for a much heavier workload. I suspect we'd be okay for six months or more on internal alone. Not that we'll be here that long," she added hurriedly.

"How about air?" asked Janet. "How much air do we have?"

"For five people?" Air was their potential problem. "If we used only the shuttle tanks, we'd be limited to about a week. But we're getting our air from Wink. We'll continue to do that as long as it's available. When it freezes out there, we'll switch to our own system. But we should be fine. There are a lot of things we need to do though, and we have to get to them before it gets too cold outside."

"Food," said Janet.

Hutch nodded. "That'll be your job, okay? We'll assume rescue will be late."

"Where do we put the food?" asked George. "Space is limited in here. We know where to get more if we need it. Why not leave it outside? It's not as if anything will spoil."

"I'm not so sure," said Hutch. "We're talking cold. Better we have it in here where we can control temperatures. I don't want to leave anything to chance."

"Okay," said Carson. "What else?"

"Water. Frank, you take care of that." She told him where to find containers, and then turned to Maggie. "Cargo area divides into three sections. There's a washroom at the rear. We'll expand that, and use the other two sections as living quarters. See what you can do in the way of furnishings. Oh, and if you can get us a supply of towels, soap, dishes, that would help." She glanced around the cabin. "I'll be back in a little while."

"Where are you going?" asked Carson.

"The bridge. We have to tie into the ship's communication system. Back here, we won't know what's going on."

"We'll need the Flickinger belts, too," said Carson.

"Right. We've got six in storage. I'll bring them back. You guys should take a few minutes and make a list of what we need. Try not to miss anything." She opened the hatch and climbed out. The air seemed less cold than it had.

She went only a few steps before she smelled something burning. "We've got a fire somewhere," she told the link. That brought everyone boiling out of the shuttle.

It was coming from one of the ducts. They traced it to the food processors, and minutes later they were all on the scene.

One of the units had overheated and burned out its wiring. They tried to shut it down, but the override didn't work, and they ended by disconnecting it.

The temperature was now near freezing, and no one had anything heavier than a light jacket. They were thoroughly chilled when they returned to Alpha.

"I'll go with you to the bridge," said Carson. "I don't think anybody should go anywhere alone anymore."

That made sense to Hutch, but before she could reply, Janet held up her watch, and pointed out the window. "It's still dark," she said.

It was by then almost 7:00 A.M., GMT. Ship's time. The lights should have brightened in their simulation of the day-night cycle.

Hutch took care of her technical chores first, ensuring that she had full control of Winckelmann's communication systems. For good measure, she also connected routine shipboard controls. She wondered how long her circuits would last after the starship froze over. It occurred to her that Wink might suffer a complete communications blackout. Maybe, if that happened, she could launch Alpha at noon April fourth, on the assumption that Valkyrie would be in the area. But that was risky: if the rescuers failed to arrive, there would be no guarantee they could reconnect with the ship's air supply. Furthermore, she wondered whether the shuttle bay doors would respond when the time came.

She consulted the computer:

Q. AT CURRENT RATE OF HEAT LOSS, AT WHAT TEMPERATURE, AND AT WHAT TIME, WILL SHUTTLE LAUNCH DOORS BECOME INOPERABLE?

A. AT 284 DEGREES CENTIGRADE. 031903Z.

"Uh-oh," said Janet. "The nineteenth? Wasn't that last week?"

"I think we can write off the computer," said Hutch.

Daylight arrived at 1010 sharp. It snapped on, bright, intense, noon at sea. They were spread out through the ship, foraging what they could, and they greeted the sudden illumination with cynical cheers.

They set themselves up as comfortably as conditions allowed. They disengaged chairs and tables from the main cabin, found three divans, and anchored them in their living quarters. They even mounted a few prints. Maggie put a crystal dolphin on one of the tables, and Janet tried to rescue the occasional plants that were scattered around the ship. But it was much too late for them.

As a safety precaution, Hutch shut down all unnecessary systems. The rings no longer turned, and their simulated gravity ceased. Everything had to be bolted down. Drinks were taken through straws, and the shower was an adventure.

On Monday the 28th, the fourth day after the collision, they received a reply from Nok. Hutch read it, and then handed it around:

RECEIVED YOUR 03/241541Z and 03/241611Z. UNFORTUNATELY WE HAVE NO SHIP TO SEND. HAVE PLACED YOUR REQUEST ON GENL BROADCAST TO NEAREST VESSEL, SURVEY SHIP ASHLEY TEE, CURRENTLY IN HYPER. ESTIMATED ARRIVAL TIME BETA PAC APR 11 RPT APR 11. GOOD LUCK.

"My God," said Janet, "that's two weeks. What happened to the Valkyrie?"

Hutch slumped into her seat. "Maybe they canceled the run. They do that if there's no reason for a flight. Maybe it needs maintenance. Who knows? What difference does it make?"

LIBRARY ENTRY

During my entire career, which has embraced a number of notable successes (if I may be allowed the indulgence), along with some spectacular failures, I know of no single event that has so frustrated me as being sealed inside Winckelmann and its shuttle craft, within a few million kilometers of an archeological puzzle of overwhelming dimension. And being able to do absolutely nothing about it.

My companions share my concern, although they are distracted by life and death issues. I'm scared too. But I'd still like to get a look at the Football. What is that thing? Incidentally, I should record here that I'm glad we have Hutchins along. She is something of a jerk. But I know she'll pull us out of this. If it can be done.

— Margaret Tufu's Journals, dated March 29, 2203

Published posthumously by

Hartley & Co., London (2219)

(Edited and annotated by Janet Allegri)

19 On board NCA Winckelmann. Tuesday, March 29; 1218 hours

"We're going to have to come up with something else."

Ship's temperature had dropped to -30 °C. Electronics systems had begun to fail. Water lines had long since frozen. Hutch, concerned that a hatch somewhere might freeze and cut them off from other parts of the ship, left everything open.

Janet found an auto-kitchen on C deck and carried it back to Alpha. It was capable of making sandwiches, coffee, and snacks. They also commandeered a refrigerator.

The day after the bad news had come from Nok, Wink's lights went out. Hutch thought she could restore them, but saw no point in making the effort. So they huddled in their warm, illuminated cocoon, in the belly of the dark ship.

And they worried about the air supply. They were still breathing from the ship's tanks, and tapping the snip's power. But the loss of the lights had shown them the future. Any time now, the voltage that drove the recyclers would fail, or the pumps would freeze, or any other of a dozen misfortunes would shut down the oxygen supply. Then they would have to switch to the onboard tanks, and from that time they would have one week left. Plus roughly twenty-four hours with the Flickinger belts. The Ashley Tee was due, at best, in thirteen days. Which meant that if the ship's air supply failed any time within the next five days, they would not make it.

A green light glowed on her status board, confirming the flow of air from the Wink into the shuttle. If it stopped, when it stopped, the lamp would blink off and an alarm would sound.

She looked out into the darkness. Illumination from the shuttle windows etched the decks. "Not much fun, is it?" asked George, breaking a long silence.

She shook her head. "Not much."

"We'll be okay." He squeezed her shoulder. "It's always hard when you can't do anything except sit and wait."

Several minutes later, the remaining convector quietly died.

The Football was no longer easy to see at zero mag. It was a small patch of night with indefinite boundaries, an empty place among the stars. A well in a city of light. Its radio pulse played across a monitor that Maggie had set up. Carson sat watching it intently. A second screen displayed telemetry. He was absentmindedly scooping cereal out of a bowl in his lap. Beside him, Maggie dozed.

Hutch and George played chess, the board balanced on a water container. Janet was dividing her attention between a book and the game. (She would play the winner.) George munched a chocolate cookie. They had adjusted reasonably well to the lack of amenities. The shuttle had almost come to feel like home.

Exercise was of course feasible only outside in the bay. They could still walk through the ship protected by the Flickinger energy fields, but that would stop when they lost the external air hookup, because it would then become impossible to refill the breathers without draining the shuttle's supply.

They didn't talk much about the dangers of the situation. But in the pointedly irrelevant conversations that had become the order of the day, Hutch noted a tendency to lower the voice and speak in hushed tones, the way one does in church. The fiction that escape was only a matter of time was maintained.

And they continued to speculate about the Football. They had tracked the signal source to the center of the object.

"It has to be an antenna," said George, stabbing the air with a rook. "And a standard radio transmission would have to be intended for someone in this system." He set the piece down to support the queen's bishop pawn, which was under pressure. It was early yet, but the game was turning against him already. As usual. "I wonder whether anyone's listening?"

"Someone must be," said Janet. "Somebody would have to come out here once in a while to do the maintenance."

"Maybe it doesn't need maintenance," said Hutch. She sailed into a line of pawns with a black bishop. Sacrifice. George could not see the point. "Don't underestimate an unknown technology," she continued.

Carson picked up the cereal bowl and tilted it so that it lay at the same angle as the Football. "Hutch," he said. "Was there a blip of any kind when we went through the object? Did it seem to notice we were there?"

"Don't know. I wasn't recording the signal. I couldn't see any reason to at the time."

Janet grinned politely at George, and shook her head. "Resign," she said.

"Why is it so big?" asked Hutch.

"Maybe it's more than a relay," George suggested.

"What else could it be?"

"A telescope, maybe. Something like the Tindle. But bigger."

"A lot bigger," said Carson. "With a telescope that size, you could see someone strike a match across the Void."

"Your move," said Hutch, smiling.

George pushed back from the board, shrugged, and pushed over his king.

"If it were a telescope," said Janet, "it would have to be solid, right? We were doing, what? Fifty thousand klicks? We'd have disintegrated."

"Depends," said Carson, "on how it's made."

Janet set up the pieces, and turned the board to give Hutch black. "Something else," she said. "Assume you had a bowl that big. How would you turn it?"

"What?"

"If it's a telescope, how would you turn it? I would think that any attempt to move it would wreck it."

"Maybe you don't turn it," said George. "Maybe it was preset to observe something that doesn't move much. Very little apparent motion."

"I can't imagine how the thing would hold together." The voice was Maggie's.

"I thought you were asleep." Carson's smile was almost paternal. "// it's a telescope, and if it's permanently aimed, what do vou suooose it's looking at?" He cleared his screen.

and directed the question to the computer.

Maggie got up and stretched.

Janet, who was a decent match for Hutch, opened as she always did, with c4, the English Game. Hutch wondered how it happened that a woman who was so aggressive, so careless of her own safety, would become enamored of an opening that was deliberate, methodical, and cautious.

"Nothing," said Carson. "There's nothing at all in its line of sight."

"It's been there a long time," said Maggie. "Back it up to about 10,000 B.C. and take a look."

George picked up Janet's book. It was a historical novel, set immediately after the collapse of the U.S. He paged through.

Carson got a result, and smiled. "The Lesser Magellanic Cloud. That's interesting."

"Why?" asked George.

"Closest extragalactic object," said Hutch.

"Hard to believe," said Janet, "that anyone would build that kind of monster to look at one astronomical target. It seems like overkill."

George frowned. "I thought the nearest galaxy was Andromeda."

"Andromeda's the nearest big one," said Hutch. "It's two million light-years out. But the Magellanic Clouds—there are two of them—are only about a tenth as far."

Maggie rubbed her eyes. "I'm more interested in what's at this end. You said there's an oxygen world in the biozone. What does it look like?"

"We don't have much detail," said Hutch. "The sensors are pretty badly skewed. Temperatures are earthlike. There are water oceans. It's got life. But it's putting out no ECM. And that's about all we know for certain."

Janet opened her mouth to say something, but the lights in the room dimmed. They did not quite go out.

Hutch peered into the cockpit. The warm green glow of the oxygen lamp still burned. "We're okay," she said.

Moments later, they came back up.

No one was sleeping well. Everyone tossed and turned, and made pointless trips to the washroom, and read late into the night. They had three divans to stretch out in. That created problems. At first the men had insisted they would sleep on the deck. Hutch, feeling the weight of tradition, refused the divan, and declared her intention of sleeping up front in the pilot's chair; Janet and Maggie announced they would accept no special consideration. Eventually, they agreed to a schedule. Everybody would get a divan three nights out of five, and spend the other two in the cockpit.

Despite the limited fare, there was a tendency to overeat. They stayed closer to the shuttle now, rarely going out for walks. The long unlit passageways of the starship had an unsettling effect.

Hutch learned that Janet had been a peace activist during the Arab Wars, had picketed the World Council regularly, and had been jailed in New York and Baghdad. "In New York, we whitewashed the cells," she said, "and the cops got irritated. We had good P.R. NewsNet was always there next morning to take pictures. Eventually, they had to do something. Didn't look good having all these straight A types getting locked up. People got excited a lot easier in those days."

Hutch came to realize that Frank Carson, for all his bravado, and his considerable accomplishments, was unsure of himself. He needed the approval of those around him, and he was not entirely comfortable in his role as mission director. She sensed that he was relieved that the crisis had come on shipboard, in Hutch's area of responsibility. For that reason, perhaps, he was especially sympathetic to her, whom he perceived as having, to some degree, failed. Hutch found it difficult to mask her annoyance. She questioned her own competence, but didn't care to have others participating in the exercise. Furthermore, her tolerance for sympathy was low.

George was drawing closer to her. Periodically, while he joked about the lack of privacy or the advantages of celibacy ("Keeps the mind clear"), Hutch detected passion in his eyes. Her own emotions churned. She loved being near him, but it was frustrating that they could be alone only if they took walks together. Which was to say, advertised that there was something going on.

Maggie made no secret of her reservations regarding male intellectual capacities. "They're okay when they're alone," she might say, "but put a woman in the room and their 1Q drops thirty points." She masked these comments as light banter, but everyone suspected there was a wound that had not healed. No one took offense.

At 1106 GMT, Thursday, March 31, precisely one week after the collision, the alarm sounded. Hutch unbuckled, but Carson pushed her back. "Relax. I've got it." And he floated forward to the instrument panel.

No one said anything. They could hear him up there, could hear the play of electronics. "Air pressure's down," he said. "We're not getting much."

"Let's go take a look," said Hutch.

The line that connected Alpha with the starship's pumps had cracked. A stream of vapor fountained out, turned to crystals, and floated away.

"I would have thought," said Carson, "that everything in a shuttle bay would be impervious to the cold."

"There are limits," Hutch told him. "This place isn't supposed to be constantly frozen." The decks, and the equipment, were covered with frost. When she flashed her light around, the beam filled with fine white particles. Hutch examined the line. "We've got a couple of spares. We'll replace it."

It was now -77 °C.

They got up a bridge game that night, taking turns sitting out. It lasted longer than usual, and when it was over no one wanted to sleep.

Hutch had one of the divans. It was more comfortable than the web-chair up front, but she still had to tie herself down to avoid floating off.

"Eventually," George said, "we'll all sit around at the Mogambo and reminisce about this." He didn't explain what the Mogambo was.

"I hope so," she said. The lights were out.

"Wait and see," he said. "The day will come when you'd do anything to be able to come back here and relive this night."

The remark surprised her. It was out of character. "I don't think so," she said. She thought he wanted to say more, but was leaving her to fill in the blanks. Their third occupant was Maggie. No dummy she: Hutch knew she would have liked to shrink into her blankets. Damn. "Goodnight, George," she said, and whispered, too low for anyone to hear, "maybe."

The line to the pumps gave way again the following morning just as she was getting up. Carson was in the cockpit waiting for her.

They went out into the bay, carrying lamps, and removed the line a second time, with a view to putting in another replacement. While they were working on it, Hutch became uneasy. "Something else is wrong," she said.

"What?" asked Carson.

It took a minute. "Power's off."

The electronic murmur that normally filled the starship was gone.

"Hey." George's voice came from the shuttle. "We got red lights in here."

"On my way," said Hutch. And to Carson: "That's it for the pumps. We'll have to switch to internal air."

"It's too soon," said Carson.

"I know."

"Okay," said Maggie. "As things stand now, we will use up the last of the shuttle's air April eighth. Give or take a few hours. The breathers will carry us over to the ninth. The cavalry gets here two days later."

At best.

Ship's communications had switched over to a backup power cell. Beyond that, the vessel was dead.

"Wink's tanks are full," said George.

Hutch nodded. "That doesn't help us without a working pump."

George, perhaps for the first time, saw things going terribly wrong. He looked pale. "Can we go manual?"

She shook her head.

"I'll tell you one thing," said Janet. "If we're not going to survive this, I don't want to die in here. Why don't we launch, and get away from this mausoleum?"

"We could," said Hutch. "But if help comes, Wink will be a lot easier to find than the shuttle."

She too looked rattled.

George's eyes locked on Hutch. "There's got to be a way."

"How about Kosmik?" said Maggie. "Quraqua's closer than Nok."

Hutch pulled her knees up under her chin. "I requested help from them ten minutes after we got the response from Nok. They should have seen the original distress calls. And they've probably also seen Nok's reply. Assuming best outcome, that they realized we were in trouble, that a ship was available, and that they dispatched it immediately after Nok backed off, they will probably arrive a little earlier than the Ashley Tee. But not by much. Travel time on the jump is eight days. They'll need another day to find us after they get here. At least."

"We'd still be dead," said George.

Maggie had been drawing arcane symbols on her lightpad. "I'm not anxious to suggest anything radical." She pronounced each syllable precisely, as if she were reading lines. "But we have a total of forty days of air to divide any way we please."

Carson's eyes came into sudden, sharp focus.

"I'm not recommending anything," she said again. "But it's something to think about."

Four people could last ten days. There would be a chance.

She must have read Hutch's expression. "I'm sorry. We don't seem to be having any luck this time out," she said.

"There's a possibility we haven't tried yet," said Carson. The Monument-Makers. We know their address. Maybe we haven't been asking the right people for help."

The antenna clusters did not respond. Hutch and Carson went out onto the hull and found what they had expected: the units had been scraped off in the collision. They jury-rigged repairs and installed a guidance system stripped from the bridge. They had brought out a portable transmitter and a booster, and tied everything together. The signal was prerecorded. It would be a simple SOS on the multichannel, centering on frequencies used by the Football. If there were aliens abroad in the system, they might not be able to read the signal, but it would clearly be artificial, and it would have to arouse their curiosity. And, maybe, bring them running. These were desperate measures, and no one had any real hope they would succeed. But it was all they had left.

They looked out across the same schizoid sky that one found all along the edge of the Orion Arm: a tapestry of stars to port, and a black river to starboard. Across the river,they could see the glow of the far shore.

"Ready?"

Carson's voice shook her out of her reverie. She activated the transmitter.

Carson nodded. "Okay. I hear it." Above them, light from the open shuttle bay hatch illuminated the underside of the A ring.

She tucked her equipment into a pouch. Carson had straightened, and stood watching the constellations rise and set around the curve of the ship. Silhouetted against the moving stars, he should have been a heroic figure. But he wore a white pullover with a little sail on the breast pocket, and a pair of fatigues. Despite his surroundings, he looked like a man out for a stroll.

Through the entire operation, her mind was on Maggie's arithmetic. Four people might make it.

That evening, Hutch sat up front watching the communication lamps on the main console. Distracted, discouraged, frightened, she felt overwhelmed, and was unaware she wasn't alone until she smelled coffee beside her.

Maggie.

"You okay?" Maggie's voice was controlled. Deliberately calm.

"I've been better."

"Me, too." She had something to say, but Hutch knew she'd get around to it in her own good time.

They stared out into the dark bay. "The Monument-Makers know about us by now. If they exist." Maggie held her cup to her lips.

"That's true."

"You know this is the first functional artifact we've found. Anywhere."

"I know."

"This is a historic trip." Another pull from the coffee. Maggie was nervous. "People will be reading about us for a long time to come."

Hutch didn't think she would look so good. She would rank right in there with the captains of the Titanic and the Regal.

"You ever been in serious trouble before?" asked Maggie. "Like this?"

"Not like this."

"Me, neither." Pause. "I don't think we're going to come out of it."

Hutch said nothing.

Maggie's eyes shaded away from her. "I can understand this has been harder on you than on the rest of us."

"It hasn't been very easy on anybody."

"Yeah." Her face was masked in the shadows. "Listen. I know you're blaming yourself."

"I'm okay." Hutch's voice shook. Tears were coming. She wanted to tell Maggie to go away.

"It isn't anybody's fault."

Maggie's hand brushed her cheek, and it was more than Hutch could stand. "I feel so helpless," she said.

"I know," said Maggie.

Janet Allegri, Diary

—— April 2, 2203 This is an odd time to start a diary. I've never done it before, never even considered it, and I may be down to my last few days. Still, I watch Maggie writing into her lightpad every evening, and she always looks calmer when she's finished, and God knows I'm scared silly and I need to tell somebody. I feel as if I should be doing something. Writing a will, maybe. I've neglected that, but I can't bring myself to begin it. Not now. Maybe it's too much of an admission.

I should probably make some recordings. There are people I need to say goodbye to. In case. But Tm not ready for that yet either.

I've been thinking a lot about my life the last few days, and I have to say that it doesn't seem to have had much point. I've done well professionally, and I've had a pretty good time. Maybe that's all you can reasonably ask. But tonight I keep thinking about things not done. Things not attempted because I was afraid of failing. Things not got around to. Thank God I had the chance to help Hutch throw her foamball. I hope it gets out. It's something I'd like to be remembered for.

(No second entry to the «Diary» is known to exist.)

We will have to pitch somebody over the side. Hutch had one of the divans that night, but she remained awake. If it had to be done, then 'twere well it were done quickly. And, though she shrunk from the necessity, though tears rolled down her cheeks, and cold fear paralyzed her, she understood well enough the ancient tradition: save her passengers, at whatever cost to herself. Without her, they had a chance.

Every moment she continued to breathe, she lengthened the odds against them.

Midway through the night, she found herself back in the pilot's seat, unsure how she had got there. Outside, the bay was black. Silent. Dimmed lights from the cockpit threw a glow across one of the cradle bars. Snowflakes drifted through the illumination.

The ship's air supply was freezing. Do it now. Get it over with. End it with dignity. Alpha had two air tanks. One was full, the other had already dropped off by an eighth.

Maybe she should wait until morning. Until her head was clear. Maybe then, somebody would find a way to talk her out of it. Maybe someone else would volunteer. She shook the idea away. Do it.

A pulser bolt would end it quickly. She got up, opened the storage compartment behind the rear seats. Two pulsers gleamed in the half-light. They had orange barrels and white stocks, and they were not too heavy even for a woman of Hutch's size. They were used primarily as tools, but had been designed so they could double as weapons.

She picked one up, almost casually. She charged it, and when it was done, and the little amber light pinged to green, she set it on her lap. Bright metal and black handgrips. She raised it, not intending to do it now, just to see how it felt, and pressed the muzzle beneath her left breast. Her index finger curled round the trigger. And again the tears came. Do it.

The drifting snow blurred. Be careful. If you make a mess of it, you could slice a hole through the shuttle. Kill everyone else too.

She realized suddenly that would happen anyway. The weapon had no setting low enough to ensure the vessel's safety. She would have to gc outside into the bay to do it right.

George, where are you?

She put the weapon down.

They had talked about their options before the lights went out. By now everyone understood that four people had a good chance at survival. And five had none. Hutch had said little. Carson took the moral high ground: / don't want to be rescued at the expense of seeing someone else die. No one disagreed, but she knew what they were really thinking. Really hoping.

Maybe they would get lucky: maybe the SOS would bring the Monument-Makers; maybe they could sleep a lot and use less oxygen. If anyone harbored resentment against Hutch, there was no hint. But she felt the weight of their eyes, of the occasional unguarded inflection.

Janet suggested a lottery. Write everybody's name on a piece of paper, put the pieces in a box, and draw one.

They looked guiltily at each other. And George's eyes had found Hutch, and she'd read what was in his mind: Don't worry. It won't come to this.

And Maggie: If we're going to do it, we need to get to it. This is a window that's going to close fast. And then two of us will have to go.

In the end, they postponed the discussion until morning.

But there was no way Hutch could face that tribunal. She pushed herself from her chair, picked up one of the Flickinger harnesses, sealed off the inner cabin, cycled the air out, and opened up.

Snow flakes floated before her eyes. Not snow flakes, really. Frozen atmosphere. The temperature had dived further, faster, than they had expected.

Holding the pulser, clasping it close, she stepped out of the shuttle. The deck crunched beneath her magnetic boots; some of the flakes clung to metal surfaces. It would have been easy to imagine she was back home, beneath a heavy sky, the white ground cover extending off into the dark.

She used her remote to seal the cockpit. Lights blinked on and off, signaling the return of heat and air.

Goodbye.

She crossed the bay. Behind one of the storage containers would be best. Somewhere out of the way. Good form. Don't want to be lying out in plain view. She managed a grin.

Equipment lockers and overhead struts and consoles retreated into the dark swirl. She turned on her wrist lamp, and kept its beam low. Her imagination carried her into the Pennsylvania woods where she had played twenty years before.

There were no stars, and the storm pressed down on the trees, heavy, and wet, and quiet.

She moved slowly across the deck, and stopped behind a row of storage cabinets. Here.

Just pull the trigger.

Don't damage the Flickinger harness. Or the air tank. Stay away from the chest. Head is best. Maybe she should kill the energy field. It wouldn't stop the pulser beam, but it might deflect it.

The snow drifted through the lamplight.

She looked at her wrist controls and raised the weapon.

Push the button, pull the trigger.

Snow.

Snow!

The idea washed over her. Yes. She held both hands out to the flakes. They swirled and danced. Some landed on her palm. They did not melt, of course, but remained white and soft against pink flesh.

Yes!

A few hours later, Hutch and George came outside and opened the shuttle bay doors. (Whenever they touched, their fields flashed.) Since all other partitions and hatches and doors throughout Wink were already open, whatever remained of the starship's heat escaped quickly into space.

It was a glorious day, and Hutch loved everybody. She did a pirouette as they walked back toward Alpha, bringing Carson's admonition that she be careful, zero gravity, magnetic boots, and all that.

George noticed her tracks of the morning, prints that seemed to go nowhere. He frowned and looked at her darkly, but asked no questions.

And while Hutch, in later years, often described herself as having been monumentally obtuse on the Beta Pac flight, she never told anyone she had been outside the shuttle. In her own mind, she was never sure whether she would actually have pulled the trigger.

Three days later, when the shuttle's starboard air tank had been exhausted, Hutch brought the port tank on line. Everyone except Maggie (they had by now established a policy that someone stay with the shuttle at all times) picked up whatever empty containers were available, and advanced on Wink's maintenance section. They used buckets and bowls and plastene housings. They took frames off consoles and uprooted lockers and hauled everything back and set it down before the three main starship air tanks.

Hutch chose the middle one, and dwarfed by the installation, took up a position at its forward end, where the connection valve to the recyclers was located. "Everybody stand back," she said. "There'll be some pressure here." She took a pulser out of her tool belt and aimed at the base of the connection, in close to the tank. With a sense of considerable satisfaction, she pulled the trigger. A yellow beam ignited, and sliced through the metal. White mist spouted and formed a pale cloud. "That it?" asked Carson.

"Let's hope so." Hutch walked around to the side of the tank and pressed the firing stud again.

George eased in beside her. "Hold it a second," he said. "If we didn't get rid of all the pressure, this thing could explode in your face."

She nodded. "We should be all right." He reached for the device, but she held it away from him. "Let me do it," he said. "You stand over by the door." "Forget it. Back off, George." She pulled the trigger. The beam touched the plastene, which bubbled and began to peel away. Hutch watched with equanimity. It was going to work.

She refocused the pulser, and fired again. The tank hissed, and a long split appeared. She cut it wider, and someone put a light to it, into it.

It was filled with heaps of snow. Frozen atmosphere. The snow was blue-white, and it sparkled and glowed.

They filled their containers and returned to the shuttle bay and passed them into the Alpha through the cockpit. They dumped the snow into their empty starboard tank. When they had measured out enough, they closed the tank. Several containers remained on the outside deck.

Then they had a party.

And when it was over, and they thought everyone else was asleep, George and Hutch went up to the cockpit and took one another for the second time.

Of course, everybody knew.

LIBRARY ENTRY

/ sailed up a river with a pleasant wind, New lands, new people, and new thoughts to find; Many fair lands and headlands appeared, And many dangers were there to be feared; But when I remember where I have been, And the fair landscapes that I have seen, Thou seemest the only permanent shore, The cape never rounded, nor wandered o'er. — Henry Thoreau from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Copied into his notes by George Hackett, April 5, 2203.)

20 In the vicinity of Beta Pacifica. Friday, April 8; 2110 hours

Melanie Truscott came to the rescue on the fifteenth day after the collision. She arrived in the Catherine Perth, a sleek new transport, and dispatched a shuttle to pick them up.

The transfer craft was one of the new Trimmer types, designed primarily for hauling heavy equipment. Because it was too big to enter Wink's bay, the pilot brought it alongside the main door, where they rigged up a cable. No one was sorry to leave. Maggie, on her way out, commented that it was a good thing they hadn't had to depend on the locals.

The shuttle pilot was a weathered, middle-aged man, jaunty in Kosmik green. He waited in the cargo hatch, grinning and shaking hands with each of them as they came aboard. "Good to see you. You folks okay?" His voice had a vaguely Midwestern accent. "Jake Dickenson. Let me know if I can do anything to help. Coffee up front."

When they were all in and belted down, he asked their names, and recorded them on a lightpad. "Only a short flight," he said, tucking the pad under one arm, and retreating to the cockpit. Hutch was trying to pick the Perth out of the starfield, and having no luck, when they pulled away from Winckelmann.

They disembarked a half-hour later, and found Harvey Sill waiting. Sill wore an open-necked white shirt two sizes too small. He looked not quite as tall as he had on Hutch's overhead monitor. But in every other way, he was bigger. There was something of the rhino, both body and soul, about him. His voice was big, and he oozed authority. He made no effort to hide his disgust at being called out to rescue incompetents.

He delivered a perfunctory greeting to Carson and Janet, whom he knew, frowned at Hutch as if he recalled having seen her but couldn't remember where, and ignored the others. "Please come with me," he growled, and strode off.

The Perth was returning about a hundred members of the Project Hope crew, and their equipment, to Earth. It dwarfed the scaled-down Winckelmann, and had the feel of a small city. Its cabins and lounges were filled with people. "You were lucky," Sill said. "Ordinarily, we wouldn't have had a ship available." He sounded as if they deserved a less happy conclusion.

"No justice anywhere," said Hutch, drawing a frown.

They followed him into a board room. The decor was far more luxurious than the Spartan furnishings of Academy vessels. The bulkheads were tastefully paneled in stained walnut. Portraits of stiff-looking elderly men and women ringed the room. The Kosmik seal was mounted between a pair of corporate flags. A carved door was set in the bulkhead on the other side of a broad conference table. Sill waved them into seats around the table. "Wait here," he said. "The director wants to talk with you, and then we'll assign you quarters."

He spun on his heel and left.

"I'm not sure," said Janet, "I wouldn't prefer to go back to the Wink."

Minutes later, the carved door opened, and Melanie Truscott came in. She wore a Kosmik worksuit, without ornamentation. She faced Carson, smiled politely, and offered her hand. "Good to see you again, Frank," she said.

Carson's expression was masked, but Hutch knew he was embarrassed. "We appreciate your assistance, Melanie."

Her gaze flicked across the others. "I know you had a difficult time. I'm glad we were able to help." She moved on to Janet. "Do I know you?"

"Dr. Janet Allegri. I don't think so. I was with the Temple group."

"Welcome aboard the Perth, Dr. Allegri." She gave the name just enough of a twist to suggest that the formality was amusing.

Maggie was next. "I've seen you somewhere. Maggie—"

"— Tufu."

"You're the cryptologist."

"Exoohiloloeist."

"Same thing." Truscott's eyes narrowed. "You were the reason they stayed too long."

To Hutch, it seemed as if everyone stopped breathing. But the statement was delivered as if it were a simple, obvious fact rather than a judgment.

"Yes," said Maggie. "That's probably true."

Truscott took a seat, not at the head of the table, which they had unconsciously left empty, but between George and Janet. "Things don't always work out as we'd like," she said. And, looking across at Hutch: "And you are the pilot."

"I am."

"I know you, too. Hutchins, I believe."

"Yes. You have a good memory, Dr. Truscott."

"My job is largely political." She peered into Hutch's eyes. "What happened to your ship? To the Wink?"

"We jumped in at the wrong place." She glanced at Carson. Do we want to tell her any more?

"How do you mean?"

Carson encouraged her. "There's an object out there that registers no mass," she said. "We showed up in front of it."

Truscott nodded. "That would be one of the telescopes."

"One?" asked Maggie.

"Oh, yes. There are eight in all, we believe, although we've only located five so far. It's an array." If she had said she'd encountered a flight of wild turkeys, Hutch could not have been more surprised. It had never occurred to her that the monster was anything other than unique.

"Where are the others?" asked Hutch.

The light shadowed and softened Truscott's features. She must have been breathtaking when young. "All in the same orbit." A steward entered with a tray heaped with sandwiches, wine, and fruit drinks. "A remarkable engineering project. Certainly well beyond our capabilities. Wouldn't you agree, Frank?"

"Yes," said Carson. "Have you seen one up close?"

"No. You were our first priority."

"Thank you for that. They must be very thin." Carson let his curiosity show. "I wonder how they hold together?"

She regarded him with interest. "Tell me, Frank, how did you know something like this was here?"

"An accident," he said. "We're on a routine survey."

Truscott's eves glazed. Of course. "If vou like. Do vou want to see the object you hit?"

"Yes, we would. Very much."

"I'll give the word to the captain. The Perth was about to leave for home when we heard your distress call. We came this way with every intention of continuing that journey after we ensured your safety. But the damage you've sustained can't be repaired out here." She swung her attention to Hutch. "Do you concur?"

"Yes," said Hutch.

Truscott smiled at her, as if they shared a secret. "When is the Academy vessel due?"

"About three days."

"You understand we cannot wait. I intend to examine the artifact, and then we will proceed home. Ah, you don't approve."

And leave the Monument-Makers to others? Damn real.

"We need to talk," said Carson.

"I'll be happy to listen."

"Frank—" Hutch used a warning tone. If there were discoveries of a technical nature to be made at Beta Pac, they did not want to allow Kosmik any claim to them.

Carson's hesitation was evident. The room fell silent for several beats. Then he said "We have reason to believe there are ruins in this system. We would like very much to be put down near them." Hutch smiled to herself. He was making it up as he went along.

"What is the nature of the ruins?"

"We don't really know yet, Melanie. Relatively primitive."

"Of course."

"Can you take time to do that?" asked Carson. "Give us a pod and some supplies, and we'll wait for the Ashley Tee on our own."

She shook her head. "I won't risk your lives." She seemed to be watching Hutch closely, gauging her reaction.

Carson sat back in his chair and tried not to look uneasy. "Let me reassure you that we would not be at risk. The Ashley Tee will be here within a few days. At most. You could land us and be gone within twenty-four hours. And we'd be fine."

Truscott's tone softened. "Travel delays are expensive. I don't see how we could manage an extra dav. In any case, mv passengers are anxious to get home." She tented her fingers, and appeared to dismiss the idea. "I am neither inclined, nor at liberty, to leave you."

Hutch decided to try her luck. "Dr. Truscott," she said. "This might be a major find. You have a chance to make a contribution."

She looked curiously at Hutch. "Would I, really?"

"Like the old days. You haven't given all that up, have you?"

Truscott registered surprise, and her eyes stayed on Hutch for a long moment. "No, young lady, I haven't." She got up, went to the door, and opened it. "Let's see what the telescope looks like. Then maybe we can talk some more." She rose. "We'll see. Please help yourselves to the food." And she left the way she had come.

Hutch climbed out of her clothes, showered, and collapsed on the bed without bothering to dress. Gravity felt good. She was asleep within minutes.

She was still asleep several hours later when someone knocked.

"Just a minute," she said. Her robe was still packed in her luggage. She grabbed a pair of slacks, pulled on a blouse, and opened the door. Melanie Truscott stood in the passageway.

"Hello," said Hutch.

"Hello, Ms. Hutchins." Truscott's voice was level. "I hope you're comfortable."

"Yes, thank you." Hutch made way. "Won't you come in?" She used the remote to clear the bed out of the room, and turned on a table lamp. The apartment still looked moderately untidy, but the director didn't seem to notice.

She smiled, and found a seat. "I've been talking with Dr. Carson. You had a close call."

"Yes," she said. "We were lucky to come out of it."

Truscott's hair was swept back, her brows neatly arrowed. She spoke, and moved, with graceful economy. "You were lucky. There's no question about that. But you did pretty well," she said.

Hutch thought she'd performed poorly. Moving into the shuttle, and transferring the snow, had both been good ideas. But she'd been slow coming up with them. "Thanks," she said.

Truscott shrugged. "I'd fly with you any time." She looked quite placid, a neighbor who had strolled in for a friendly visit. "I came by because I thought you and I should talk."

"Really? Why?"

"Clear the air." Her tone changed. "You sent over the foamball."

It wasn't a question. And the directness of the statement took Hutch unaware. "Foamball?" She met the older woman's eyes. Oddly, she saw no rancor in them. She would not ordinarily have hesitated to own up, take this woman on. But there was the question of Academy liability. Furthermore, Truscott seemed likable, and her manner suggested that Hutch's deed was ill-mannered. Rude. Perhaps even irresponsible. "That's true," she said. "But I'll deny it if you quote me. How did you know?"

The smile came again. "Obvious. No one else had the opportunity. And I'm a decent judge of character."

Hutch shrugged. "You deserved it. You were playing hardball."

"I know." She looked pleased. "I assume you'll be happy to know that no permanent damage was done. You gave me some bad moments. Made me look silly. But after a while, my people noticed that I stayed. That I got as many off as I could. I think they compared me to some of the other management types they've known. I gather I came away looking pretty good. Anyway, I wanted to say hello to you properly, and let you know there are no hard feelings."

Hutch thought of Richard clinging to the end of his lifeline while the wave took him. "Easy for you to forgive," she said.

Truscott nodded. "I know. And I'm sorry. But you knew it was coming. Why the hell didn't you get him out?"

"Don't you think I would if I could have?"

Hutch stared angrily at the older woman, and Truscott said quietly, "There's some brandy in the cabinet beside the monitor. Will you have a drink with me?"

Hutch hesitated.

"If you refuse, I understand. And I would be very sorry." She got the bottle, and filled two glasses. "If it helps, Corporate feels the same way you do. They're blaming me for Wald's death. I'm to be fed to the court of public opinion."

Hutch didn't care much for brandy. "I'm not sure whose fault it was," she said, reaching for a glass. "At this point, it hardly matters."

Truscott looked somber. "Nobody wanted it to happen."

"Of course not." She couldn't quite keep the sting out of her voice. "We're all well-meaning."

The director nodded. "To Richard Wald," she said.

They drank, and Truscott refilled their glasses.

"So what happens now? With you and Kosmik?"

"Board of inquiry. They'll find culpability on my part if I let it go that far."

"Can you stop it?"

"I can make a public apology. Take the blame. I don't mind doing that. It happened on my watch, and I can't really evade responsibility. Did I tell you I was directed to see that no one was hurt?"

"No—" Hutch felt a new surge of resentment.

"It's true. I thought I'd arranged things pretty well. But I blundered."

"How?"

"Doesn't matter."

"What will happen to you?"

"They'll get my resignation, I'll drop out of sight for six months, and then I'll start a new career. I'll be fine. I have friends."

Hutch was silent for a long time. Finally she said, "Losing him was such a waste."

"I know. I've been reading his books." She sighed. "Hutch, you have a job with me any time you want it."

They drank to that. They drank to Perth, and to Alpha.

Then, amused, Truscott proposed a toast to Norman Caseway. "God bless him," she said. "We couldn't have got here without him. And you'd still be waiting for the Ashley Tee."

"How do you mean?"

"The Perth brought out the people who are going to implement phase two of Project Hope. It also brought the directive for me to go back and face the music. Caseway did not send my recall on ahead. Instead, he arranged to have it handed to me by the ship's captain. An insult. But, as a result they had to wait around a few days while I finished with loose ends. If that hadn't happened, the Perth would have been on its way home when your SOS came through.

There would have been no ship to send after you."

Hutch drained her glass, refilled it, and refilled Truscott's. "One more," she said. Hutch did not have a lot of tolerance for alcohol. It didn't take much to loosen her inhibitions, and she knew she should not propose this new toast. But she couldn't help herself.

"To whom?" asked Truscott.

"Not a whom, Melanie. You don't object if I call you Melanie? Good. Not a whom, Melanie. A what. I give you, the foamball."

Hutch raised her glass.

Truscott's aristocratic features darkened. She looked hard at Hutch, and the cloud lifted. "What the hell," she said. "Why not?"

It was clearly a bowl. Carson's team gathered in an observation lounge during the approach, where they had access to a wide-screen display and communication with the ship's operations center. Harvey Sill joined them, announcing that he had been assigned to assist. "Don't hesitate to ask for anything you need," he said, with marked lack of enthusiasm.

Perth moved in on the open side of the object. It broadened, and mutated into an inverted world, a world whose landscape sank, and whose horizons rose. They glided below the rim, and their perspective shifted again: the surface flattened, became a blue-black plain, stretching to infinity. The horizon rose, and the lower sky went black. They passed beneath an enormous arch, one of a network tied in to strong points across the face of the object. "This is the only one of the telescopes," Sill said, "that's still transmitting."

"Have you tried to translate the signal?" asked Carson.

"We don't really have the means to attempt it. But we can tell you that they were aimed at the Lesser Magellanic."

There was a young male crewman with them, wearing earphones. He reported precise physical specifications as they came in—diameter, angle of curvature, declination. "And thin," he said. "It's very thin."

"How thin?" asked Carson.

"At the rim, they're saying a little under six-tenths of a centimeter."

"That's still thick enough to have ripped us up," said Hutch. "How did we get through?"

"There's an antenna at dead center," said the crewman. "And it looks as if that's where the transmitter is." He listened to his earphones and nodded. "Operations reports it is rotating around its axis. They say one complete rotation in seventeen days, eleven hours, twenty minutes."

"What holds it together?" asked Maggie. "It seems too fragile."

"It's not metal or plastic. We're getting odd readings: potassium, sodium, calcium. Heavy concentrations of calcium at the center construct."

"Do we have a picture of it yet?" asked Sill. "The center?"

"Coming up now." The crewman glanced at the screens.

The bulkhead opposite the window changed colors, went dark, and revealed a cluster of black globes, a group of small dish antennas, a few domes. "The signal source," said the crewman.

Carson glanced at Sill. "We'd like to get a good look at it," he said.

"We'll take you in close."

"Is there a way we can date this thing?" asked Hutch.

"Maybe if we had a sample," said Janet.

"I don't think we want to do that." Carson looked uncertain what he wanted to do. "How about scrapings? Can we do it with scrapings?"

Janet thought about it. "Maybe."

"It's even thinner away from the rim," said the crewman. "Scanners indicate that thickness in this area is less than two millimeters. There's a latticework of thicker material, providing support. But for the most part, the object is micro-thin."

Nobody noticed Truscott until she spoke. "Now we see why Wink survived," she said.

She was accompanied by a narrow, uniformed man whom she introduced as Captain Morris. His eyes were the color of water, and his hair was black and cut close in a military fashion. He acknowledged their names and shook hands with an irritating air of self-importance.

They were approaching the cluster of antennas.

"Historic moment," Truscott said. "We are getting a look at the first piece of alien high tech. We'll try to do an analysis, see if we can figure out precisely what we're looking at. How about you, Frank? Do you have an expert along who can give us some answers?"

Carson looked at his colleagues. He received no encouragement. "We're a little short on experts," he said.

Perth glided over the featureless blue-black terrain. Her lights played on the surface, producing muted yellow blurs. The ship might have been moving across a burnished marble floor.

"How does it get power?" asked Janet. "Solar?"

"Probably," said George.

Truscott looked at Carson. "Do you want a sample?"

"Yes," said Maggie.

Carson nodded. "Try not to damage anything."

The captain showed irritation. "We'll take care of it," he said coldly. He spoke into his commlink, listened, and looked puzzled. "Melanie, we can't find the collision site."

"Were we looking for it?" asked Carson.

Morris nodded. "We tracked your course backward, as a navigation exercise for my junior officers. There's no hole anywhere in the impact area large enough to run a starship through. Or anywhere else for that matter."

"Your junior officers flunked," said Carson.

Morris responded with a superior smile. "My junior officers are quite good. And we've checked the numbers. There is no error." He looked at Hutch. "You did not change course, I understand."

"That's correct," she replied. "But we did take some damage. I had to adjust for a tumble, and it's possible that when I terminated the burn the thrusters didn't shut down simultaneously. That could have resulted in a new heading."

Morris shook his head. "There is a hole in the impact area. But it's not big enough to accommodate a shuttle, let alone Wink."

"That's odd," said Truscott.

"That's all there is," said the captain.

"Why don't we take a look?" Hutch suggested. "At the hole we did find."

The site was plowed up, exploded outward. They floated above it, in Flickinger belts, looking down through the open space at stars on the other side.

"It's less than seven meters across at its widest point," said the Ops officer, a young woman named Creighton.

"Well, we certainly didn't come through here," said Hutch. "There must be another one somewhere."

"No." Morris spoke from the bridge. "There is no other hole. We've looked everywhere."

"There has to be," Carson insisted.

Lights played across the damage.

"This is strange." George was holding his hand over the hole. He pushed it through, and withdrew it. And pushed it through again. "There isn't clear passage here," he said.

Janet, who'd been examining the membranous material of which the Bowl was constructed, directed her lamp into the hole. "He's right," she said. "There are threads or thin fabric or something in it—"

"Filaments," said Maggie.

ARCHIVE

"Yes, director?"

"Do you have anything yet on the sample?" "We've just begun." "What do you know so far?" "It's organic." "Are you certain?"

"Yes. I can give you more details in a few hours. But it looks like a spider's web."

Commlog, Ship's Laboratory, NCK Catherine Perth Dated April 10, 2203

Melanie Truscott, Diary

I have not been able to sleep tonight. We have withdrawn from the immediate neighborhood of that telescope, construct, creature—God help me, I don't even know how to think of it. Now we begin the business of trying to learn who put it there. And why.

There is no evidence of artificially generated electromagnetic radiation anywhere else in the system. Even the other telescopes are quiet. (I wonder, does that mean that their transmitting equipment has given out? Or that the telescopes are dead?)

The third and fourth worlds are both in the biozone, but only the third has life.

April 10, 2203

21 Melonie Truscott, Diary

Even the transmitter seems to be organic!

How old is this thing? Allegri says that dating the scrapings will require more elaborate techniques than we have at our disposal. She told me privately that she doubts whether they can be dated at all.

The technology level that produced this is unthinkable. I cannot imagine that, if the builders exist, we could enter this system unobserved. If they are here, they made no effort to assist people who were in desperate trouble. And I find that disquieting.

April 11, 2203

On board NCK Catherine Perth. Monday, April 11; 05JO hours.

Beta Pacifica III floated in the windows and viewscreens of the Catherine Perth. It was a terrestrial world, with a global ocean and broad white clouds. There was a single land mass, a long slender hook, seldom more than two hundred kilometers across. The hook was often broken by channels, and occasionally by substantial patches of ocean, so that it was in fact a series of narrow islands strung together. The coastline was highly irregular: there were thousands of harbors and peninsulas. It extended literally from the top of the planet to the bottom, sliding beneath both icecaps. In the south, it curved back up almost to the equator.

There were ribbons of forest, desert, and jungle, usually stretching from sea to sea. Plains crowded with tall, pulpy stalks dominated the equatorial area. Snowstorms were active in both hemispheres, and it was raining along the flanks of a long mountain range in the south.

Four moons orbited the world. They were airless, cratered rocks, ranging in size from a fifteen-kilometer-wide boulder to a giant a third larger than Luna.

After the discoveries at the Bowl, Truscott had found it easy to persuade her passengers that they were aboard an epochal cruise, and that they would not want to pass up a stop at Beta Pac III. To encourage their cooperation, she broke into the special stores, provided sumptuous meals, and passed out free liquor. Captain Morris objected to all this, and Harvey Sill sternly disapproved, but the passengers were happy enough. And that was all she cared about.

It was dusk over the westernmost arc of the continent. They had approached the world from sunward with a high degree of enthusiasm and were now on their first flyby. Among the members of the Academy team hopes were high, although no one would say precisely what he was hoping for, nor even admit to any degree of optimism. In this sense, Hutch was like the others, playing the hardheaded pessimist, but overwhelmed by the possibilities.

The passengers tried to stay close to them. When history happened, which Truscott's campaigning had induced everyone to expect, they wanted to be able to say they'd been on the spot. Consequently, Carson and Janet had been pressed into giving seminars, and they'd all signed autographs.

As Perth approached its rendezvous with destiny, the team retreated to their observation lounge, where Beta Pac III floated on the wall screen. Other monitors carried pictures of the moons, the Bowl, a schematic of the planetary system, comparisons between Beta Pac III and Earth, and rows of telemetry from probes.

Telescopes had been trained for days on the expanding world. They had not yet seen indications of intelligent activity: neither engineering works nor signs of environmental management were visible. But it was possible that an advanced society—this was Maggie's argument—would have learned to live in communion with the natural order. So they watched the continent slide past the terminator. And hoped for lights.

But no soft yellow glow punctuated the gathering darkness. The night swallowed everything.

Collectively, they let out their breath.

"Pity," said George.

Carson nodded. "Nobody home, I think."

Hutch had been sitting quietly, contemplating the image, but she was thinking about Richard, who should have been here for this moment, whatever the outcome. "Too soon to know," she said.

Captain Morris, seated on the bridge at the command console, looked up into the camera, straight into their eyes, and opened a channel. "Still negative EMR," he said. "If there's anyone down there, they aren't generating power." He smiled condescendingly, pleased (Hutch suspected) at the general disappointment. He was mean-spirited, one of those unfortunate creatures who enjoys seeing others fail. Hutch had eaten dinner with him the previous evening, and his position seemed to be that, yes, highly developed species probably existed in the Milky Way. But here! Where we are? That was too incredible.

The numbers on the atmospheric lower levels appeared: 74 % nitrogen, 25 % oxygen, a goodly fraction of a percent of argon, a miniscule amount of carbon dioxide, and traces of neon, helium, methane, krypton, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, and xenon. Very Earthlike.

Snacks arrived. Snacks appeared constantly, adding to the generally festive atmosphere aboard ship. Coffee, cheese, pastries, fruit juices, beer, rolled in an unending stream out of the galley. Hutch ate more than she would ordinarily have allowed herself, and refused to give in to disappointment. The fact that they were here at all was cause to celebrate. If there was to be no welcome from the Monument-Makers, they had still achieved much. "What do you think?" she asked Carson.

He smiled encouragingly. "If they're not there, maybe they left something behind."

"I'd like to find something" said Truscott, who was standing beside Maggie Tufu, looking out at the darkness. "I truly would."

"You've gone well out of your way for this," said Hutch. "We appreciate it."

"You didn't leave me a lot of choice," she said. "It was a chance to be on the Santa Maria. I wouldn't have wanted to tell my grandkids that I could have ridden with Columbus, and passed it up."

Janet, who had been up all night watching the approach, retired to a corner chair and fell asleep. In a sense, it signaled the death of their wilder hopes.

Monitors displayed planetary characteristics:

ORBIT

SIDEREAL PERIOD: 1.41 Standard Yr

PERIHELION: 1.32AUs

APHELION: 1.35AUs

GLOBE

EQUATORIAL DIAMETER: 15,300 km

OBLATENESS: O.OO4

MASS (EARTH = 1): 1.06

DENSITY (WATER = 1): 5.3

ALBEDO: O.44

AXIS TILT (DEC): 18.7 ROTATIONAL PERIOD (D/H/M): 1/1/17

OTHER

ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION

(ARTIFICIAL): None Noted MEAN EQUATORIAL NOON

TEMPERATURE (EST): 28 °C

"Hey!" Carson pointed at one of the moons. The one designated Three-B.

At the same moment, they heard the captain's voice, raised a notch above his usual monotone: "Director, we have an anomaly on Three-B."

"We see it," said Truscott. Three-B was the largest of the satellites. It was heavily scored, covered with lava seas. In the northern hemisphere, they could make out, on the western arm of a broad plain, something. A mark. An eruption. A speck.

"What is it?" said Carson. "Can you give us a better picture?"

The image got bigger. And clearer. "We don't know yet," said the Captain. "It's the same color as the surrounding rock."

"It looks like a square," said Janet, awake again.

Morris had become almost frenetic. It was amusing to see him nonplused. "It does appear symmetrical," he said.

"It's an Oz," said Hutch.

"Roughly two hundred kilometers on a side," continued the captain. "Big."

"She's right," said Carson. "It's the same damned thing they've got at Quraqua."

Maggie raised a triumphant fist. "Except bigger. A lot bigger."

Truscott looked at Carson. "Do we want to inspect it up close?"

Carson glanced at each of his people in turn. "No," he said. "We know what it is."

Truscott nodded. "Obviously," she said. "It is Oz, isn't it? Why do I have the feeling you've been holding back on me. What's the connection with Quraqua?"

Carson shrugged. "No big secret," he began.

After the continent had drifted into the world's night, the Academy team reviewed the pictures. They looked for likely city-building sites: harbors, river junctions, mountain passes. And for roads. For any evidence of habitation.

George was looking at a site about 30 degrees north, where the land mass narrowed to less than half a kilometer. Lush red and yellow forest rolled downhill from a promontory and spilled into the ocean on both sides. It was the kind of area that, on Earth, would have been natural high-roller real estate. Good place to spend a weekend with Hutch. His mind drifted and his tides began to rise when he noticed a sharp angle in the trees. A shadow. A wall, maybe.

Or a place where a wall had once existed.

He could find nothing more definite, and was about to show Hutch, when Janet said quietly, "I think I've got something."

They were only dark pocks on a river. But they were regularly spaced.

"I think they're bridge supports," said Janet, her voice rising. "Son of a bitch, they are!" She threw up her hands. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a bridge\"

Well, they didn't really have a bridge. They had the remnants. But it didn't matter. Cheers broke out. The assembled passengers surged forward, spilling coffee, pounding one another, calling to others outside to come see. There were handshakes all around and Hutch got squeezed and kissed and squeezed again. But she didn't mind. Goddam, she did not care.

"Congratulations," said Truscott.

"How much time," said Carson, "can you give us?"

"Frank," she said patiently, "I am already well behind schedule. We had an agreement."

"But we have found something."

"Yes, we have. The Academy has a new archeological site to explore." She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I even think I know how much it means to you. But we have to get moving. I'm glad we got something out of this, but I'm going to authorize departure. Morris is raising a storm. And he has grounds for complaint. You'll have to come back with your own people."

Hutch thought she knew what it would mean. Somebody would figure out that this world had been home to a starfaring society. There'd be a lot at stake, and consequently the mission would be taken away from the Academy. There'd been momentum in that direction before they left home. Carson and his friends might one day return, but it would take a while, and they would be subordinate parts of a much larger operation.

Damn.

Truscott left, and they sat listlessly around the lounge, commiserating with one another, crashed from the emotional high of a half hour before. Hutch stood all she could for fifteen minutes, and got up to go somewhere else. As she did, the commlink chimed, and Sill's image appeared. "Dr. Carson," he said, "would you come up to the bridge, please? Bring your colleagues with you."

"We have an object in orbit."

Melanie Truscott, with the captain in tow, steered her five passengers to the main navigation display. It was mostly starfield, with a muted planetary arm across the bottom. One of the stars was extremely bright. "That one," she said.

Hutch felt a ripple of exhilaration. "What kind of object?"

The captain answered. "We don't know. You're looking at mag five. But it isn't a natural satellite. Its RI is way too high for its range."

"An RI is a reflectivity index," said Truscott. "It's big.

Bigger than our station at Quraqua."

Hutch and Carson silently shook hands.

"John." Truscott was addressing the captain. "Are we prepared to make a quick exit if we have to?"

"Yes, Director." He motioned to one of his crewmen, a quick jab with his index finger, and the crewman spoke into a mike. Hutch suspected they were warning all passengers to tie down.

"Is there any indication of onboard power?" asked Hutch.

"Negative." Morris bent over one of the consoles. "Nothing." He looked sternly at Truscott. "Melanie, we have a ship full of people. I think we should leave the area."

The bridge was immense by Hutch's standards. There were four officers on duty, not counting the captain. One, a young woman seated at the navigation console, touched his shoulder and directed his attention to a display. "We've got lights down on the surface," she said. "Low power. Very low. Probably not electrical."

"Reflections?" asked Truscott.

"Possibly," she said.

Truscott turned to Carson. "Someone's made your point for you, Frank. What do you want to look at first?"

When had Hutch ever seen Carson look more pleased? "The orbiter," he said.

"Very good." She folded her arms. "I believe we are about to commit history."

They pursued the white star down the curve of the world.

It took a hauntingly familiar form on the scopes: a double-ring rotating wheel, not unlike the home station, or Kosmik's orbiter at Quraqua. The architectural style was less utilitarian. This orbiter possessed a degree of elegance and panache, of blurred lines and eclectic curves. It looked fully capable of harboring winding staircases and secret rooms. It was a station with a gothic flavor, maybe the kind of station Poe would have designed.

Windows were everywhere. But they were dark.

Hutch loved it. She watched it drift closer, felt a cool stirring within her, a chill that was simultaneously pleasurable and disquieting.

"Negative EMR," said one of the officers. "It's tumbling." And, moments later: "Wheels not rotating."

Pity, thought Hutch. We're too late again.

She knew Carson well enough to read his discouragement. There was no denying the signs: the Bowls in disrepair, no lights on the surface, a collapsed bridge, and a dead orbiter. The Monument-Makers were gone.

"We'll want to board," said Truscott.

Carson nodded Yes, as if he had anticipated a struggle.

The captain's features hardened. "I advise against it, Director."

There was something wrong about it. More than its strangeness, because strangeness was at the heart of the thing, designed into it, underscored by all those unlighted windows. Something else was wrong.

"I understand, John. But we can't really sail away and just leave this." Truscott's face glowed with excitement. "And I wouldn't miss it for anything." She looked at Carson. "I assume you would like to come?"

Hutch saw a shade of disapproval cross Carson's features. In view of the long history of accidental damage caused to artifacts by untrained personnel, he would have preferred to limit the landing party to the Academy group. But he was prudent enough to hold his tongue. "Of course," he said.

"Any others from your team?"

"I expect," said Carson, "everybody."

"Very good. We can manage it." She turned to Sill. "How about you, Harvey?"

"If you're going."

She swung back to Morris. "Seven for the shuttle, Captain."

Hutch went to her compartment to change. She was still uneasy. There was something that shouldn't be there. Or something missing. It was at the edge of vision, a memory that one can't quite grasp.

She switched on her monitor. The orbiter was coming into sunlight. Its twin wheels would once have rotated counter to each other. Now the entire artifact simply rolled slowly over as she watched.

What might its design reveal about its builders? It was the sort of question Richard would have asked. What do the esthetics tell us? There were symbols on the hull, black, angled strokes and tapered loops. Two groups of characters, she thought. Two words. What had they been?

Details appeared: blisters and antennas and connecting coils and hatches and maintenance pods (at least she assumed that was what the teardrop bulges above and below the rim, distributed at equal intervals, had to be) and loading bays and equipment whose purpose would have to await closer inspection.

A long cable trailed behind the thing. And hatches were open.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and stared hard at the object, trying to imagine how it might have been when it was active, and exotic ships circled it. And the antennas received signals from the Great Array.

How long ago?

She got up, padded across the floor, and into the washroom. She started the flow of water in the shower, adjusted the temperature of the stream, and stepped in. It was cool and brought a sting of pleasure.

Gravity was generated on all starships the same way: by rotating the living spaces, whether they were located within a permanent hull, as was the case on Perth, or within the ring-shaped modules of the Winckelmann. Consequently, the shower stream bent slightly counter to the direction of spin. Not enough to be noticeable, but the same crosswise pressure sent the water swirling across her toes and down a drain located at the side of the stall. Hutch enjoyed the sensation; it was one of the many effects of shifting gravities that she relished, that lent her wings and granted a sense of freedom from terrestrial shackles.

And today, while she closed her eyes and let the cool spray wash over her, it occurred to her that the space station had also been designed to spin. To create the same effects.

And that was what was wrong.

She finished quickly, dried off, slipped into a Wink work uniform, and hurried up to the Academy observation lounge. Carson was still there, and Maggie. The others had gone, presumably to prepare for the boarding.

"Everything okay?" Carson asked as she burst into the room.

"Why was it built to rotate?" she demanded.

"Why was what built to rotate?"

"The space station, damn it."

Maggie stared at her, astonished at the question.

"Why is it so much like our stations, Frank? The Monument-Makers are supposed to have had anti-gravity. So we always assumed they had artificial gravity as well. But then why build rotating wheels?"

"Maybe we were wrong," said Maggie. "Either we still haven't found the Monument-Makers, or—"

Frank finished her statement. " — this was built before the Monument-Makers came to lapetus."

"That," said Maggie, "would mean this thing's been up here more than twenty thousand years. I don't think that's possible."

Carson did not want to talk about more complications. "Maybe it's a Monument from their early days. So they kept it in place. Let's not worry about it now."

"Another Monument?" Hutch didn't believe that for a minute. She opened a channel to the bridge. The captain was not there, but she spoke to the command duty officer. "I wonder if you would do me a favor?"

"What do you need?" The CDO was a middle-aged, graying, no-nonsense woman.

"The space station," she said. "How stable is its orbit? How long would you say it's been here?"

The CDO looked uncomfortable. "We're navigators, Ms. Hutchins. You'd need a physicist to come up with that. I'd like to help, but we just don't have the expertise."

"Do what you can," said Hutch, using a tone that implied full confidence.

The CDO allowed herself a pleased smile. "We'll try."

John F. Morris, was a man with narrow shoulders, narrow tastes, and narrow vision. He had achieved the highest position to which he could aspire, and he had done it by unrelenting loyalty to the company, taking care not to offend the wrong people, and good old nose-to-the-grindstone attention to detail. He was not a man to be overwhelmed by other people's histrionics, but he could recognize a career danger. His great strength, and his great weakness, was an unblinking, clear view of the downside. He knew that Melanie Truscott was in difficulty, and that she was taking liberties with his ship. The fact that she had every right to do so (within certain specifically-provided-for parameters), that she had full authority to direct his movements, might not help him if someone decided to take offense at the misuse of company property. Or if something went seriously awry. It was for these reasons that the captain had remained aloof and cool during the approach to Beta Pac III. He was not prepared to defy Melanie Truscott, because he knew very well that one did not advance one's career by offending the powerful, even when the powerful were in trouble. People at her level had a way of resurrecting themselves. But he was not a good enough actor to conceal his displeasure.

He felt compromised, and he resented it. His resentment extended in no small way to the Academy refugees whom he'd pulled from their wreck. Especially Carson, who pretended to know everything.

Satisfied that the shuttle would be ready for its rendezvous with the station when promised, the captain went looking for Truscott. He found her in the forward lounge, deep in conversation with Sill. She looked up when he entered, noted his grave appearance, and smiled in her most reassuring manner.

"I'm not comfortable about going any further with this," he said.

"Oh?" Truscott's gaze sharpened. "What is it that bothers you?"

"Several things." His voice shook. He did not like opposing a superior, even to the extent of adhering to his duty to provide sound advice. But now that he was fairly begun, he would maintain a steady course. "First, the transfer of personnel to a derelict of unknown nature is a violation of the regs. However you try to cut it. And if there's any kind of emergency, we aren't well-equipped to deal with it. Our medical department is limited. We have only one shuttle. If you get into trouble over there, we cannot come to your rescue. At least, not very easily. And certainly not quickly. Furthermore, 1 have collaborated in this fiction about a maintenance stand-down, but that won't protect us if we have to answer difficult questions. Should a problem arise, should we sustain any sort of major equipment loss, damage to the ship, or, God forbid, lose someone, I think Corporate would be extremely short with both of us." He paused to let the seriousness of their situation sink in. "There are other potential problems. For example, the artifact is probably priceless. If we damage it, might we not be held liable?"

Truscott nodded, in that infuriating manner that suggested she had already considered all these things. "And what do you suggest we do, John?"

"That's easy. Set course for home. Report the finding, and let people who are trained in these things, and properly equipped, deal with them." He straightened his shoulders.

"You're probably right," she said. "But I can no more turn away from this than you could walk out the airlock. John, don't you have any curiosity? Don't you want to know what's over there? Or what's down on the surface?"

"Not when it interferes with my duty."

"I understand. We'll have to disagree on this one. Please continue the preparations."

He bowed. "As you wish. The shuttle is ready."

"Thank you. And, John?"

He turned, standing in the doorway.

"Log your objections."

"Thank you, Director."

He walked back through the quiet passageways of the Catherine Perth, toward the bridge, and he knew that if things went wrong, she would do what she could for him. But it wouldn't help much: they'd all go down together.

The comm watch officer chimed Carson. "Response to your question, sir."

Frank was walking with Maggie toward the shuttle bay. "Go ahead."

"Telescopic examination of the anomaly on Three-B does reveal charring. Over perhaps thirty percent of the structure."

Carson watched his team file into the shuttle ready room. George looked happy and anxious; Maggie was intense and full of electricity. He had grown close to Maggie during this mission, had found her far more human than he would have believed. And less detached than she would have wanted to reveal. Today, standing on the edge of history, she anticipated photos. And had dressed the part.

Janet was playing her usual casual role, unflappable, talking quietly to Hutch. But she was a little more erect than usual, her eyes brighter, and he sensed her eagerness to get about the day's business.

And Hutch herself. He'd learned to read her moods. Today she was distracted, preoccupied, thoughtful. He understood that their objective was more personal for her than for the professionals. The archeologists had uncovered their grail, and maybe far more. But Priscilla Hutchins had never learned to let go; she was carrying a lot of baggage with her to the derelict.

"Safety first when we get over there," he said. "Take care of yourself, and don't break anything." They would split into three groups: Janet and himself, George and Maggie, and Hutch with Truscott and Sill. "I'd have preferred that we didn't have to carry Dr. Truscott and her pet bulldog along, but since they own the shuttle, there's not much we can do. Hutch, I want you to keep an eye on them. Don't let them get hurt; don't let them wander off.

"We'll keep in contact, check in with each other every ten minutes. Try not to get involved with the details of what we see. We need a map and a general survey. Once we've got those, we'll set up a plan of action and try to go about this systematically."

"How long will we be staying?" asked Maggie.

"Four hours. That allows us a reasonable safety margin. We'll carry a couple of extra Flickinger harnesses and air tanks on the shuttle. Just in case. Hutch?"

"Will there be someone with the shuttle throughout the operation?"

"Jake is our pilot. He'll stand by. We're going in through an open hatch. It's one of several. Apparently, when the owners left, they never bothered to close the doors."

Sill came in. "We'll be ready in a few minutes," he said.

George was studying a lightpad. "The station has at least six airlocks," he said, "or apertures that look like airlocks. The outer hatches on three of them are open." He looked at the faces around him, inviting an explanation.

"They left in a hurry," suggested Janet.

"Don't know," said Sill.

"1 think," said Maggie, "we're going to discover the artifact has been stripped of everything valuable. The last visitors were looters. Which would explain why they didn't bother to close the doors." She put a finger to her lips. "I wonder why there are no other stations? The later ones? There should be more advanced orbiters."

"Who can say?" said Carson. "Maybe they all went down." He looked at each of them. "Okay, what else? What have we missed?"

Hutch looked up. "Pulsers?"

"We'll have one with each group," said Carson.

"Why do we need them?" Maggie asked.

"To get through doors that won't open."

But Maggie looked uncomfortable. "What's wrong?" asked Janet. "That's not unreasonable."

"Don't know," she said. "The place is a little spooky, and I'm not sure it's a good idea to be walking around in there with weapons. In case somebody gets nervous."

"If nothing else," said Carson, "we might need it to cut through the inner door of the airlock."

Truscott and Sill arrived. "Sorry to be late," she said. "Our people have been doing a structural analysis of the station."

"What have they concluded?" asked Carson.

Truscott passed to Sill. "Primitive," he said. "It isn't up to our technology at all. And by the way, we have an answer to Hutchins's question about the orbit. As far as we can tell, it's stable. This thing may have been here a long time. Possibly for thousands of years."

"One other thing," said Truscott. "We've found some more ruins. A lot of them."

Melonie Truscott, Diary

"As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, ana it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more."

— Psalms 103: 15–16 April 11, 2203

22 Approaching the space station at Beta Pac HI. Monday, April 11; 2140 hours

They looked through large oval windows at long passageways, and wide sunlit rooms filled with oversized chairs and carved tables and broad carpets.

"They knew how to live," Hutch told Truscott. The two women had been talking like old school friends. Everyone was a trifle garrulous on this flight, except maybe Sill, who simply stared warily out the window.

Their pilot, Jake Dickenson, was elaborately uneasy, and full of advice. "Don't assume there's no power," he warned. "Be careful what you touch." And: "Keep in mind there's always a chance the thing might be booby-trapped. We don't know what the circumstances were when these people left."

They drew alongside, and the air in the shuttle thickened. The station was brick-red. It looked like a run-down factory, cluttered with struts and joists and supports and turrets. There was no attempt here to create a smooth outer skin: the hull supported a wide array of pods and antennas and beams. There were also parapets, dormers, crests, and brackets whose only raison d'etre appeared to be decorative. The turrets might have housed living quarters, with wrap-around windows.

"Shuttle bay to port," said Jake. Two cradles were visible through a pair of windows. A small, blunt-winged craft lay in one of them.

They passed above an antenna field. Sill poked an index finger against the window. "Here's what I mean about primitive technology. Look at these. These are conical antennas. They are light-years behind the biosystem apparatus they were growing on the Bowl. This station is probably limited to radio. And their technology for that isn't very good. Look at the antenna booms."

"What's wrong with them?" asked Carson.

"Ungodly long. We've been doing better than that since the twentieth century. And it uses oversized solar panels. They're inefficient. This thing wasn't built by the same people who designed the telescope."

Hutch described her own conclusion that the shape of the station suggested a technology more primitive than the one associated with the lapetus visitors.

"How long ago was that?" asked Sill.

"Twenty thousand years."

"Which means what? That this thing is older than that?" He squinted out the window. "I don't believe it."

"Why not?" said Carson. "You've already said this thing is old."

"But not that old," replied Sill.

Hutch didn't believe it either. But she was tired thinking about it. They needed to wait until they had more information.

The shuttle glided past long rows of empty windows. She glanced at George, entranced by the view. "What are you thinking?" she asked.

He seemed far away. "How lucky I've been," he said. "I got an assignment with Henry right out of the box. Most of the guys in my class wound up working on reclamation projects in Peru and North Africa. But I got to see the Temple. I was there when most of the major discoveries were made. Now I'm here—"

Jake's voice broke in: "Coming up on the front door."

Truscott surveyed her passengers. "Let's go," she said.

They'd picked out an open hatch more or less at random. The station's red skin moved slowly past the viewpanels. Hutch had just begun to check her equipment when Jake gasped.

"What's wrong?" Sill asked.

"The inner door to the airlock," he said. "It's open, too."

"No seal," said Maggie. The station was exposed to vacuum.

"Can we get a picture?" demanded Sill. "That doesn't make sense. Airlocks are always designed to prevent anyone from being able to open both doors at once. Because if you do, you die. Maybe everyone dies."

"Someone must have overridden the safety mechanism," said Hutch. She looked toward Carson. "I wonder if ail the open hatches are like this?"

The shuttle nosed into lockdown position. Meter-long extensors, equipped with magnetic couplers, had been added for this flight. Now Jake extended them. When he was satisfied both were in contact, he activated the power. A mild jar ran through the craft. "We're in business," he said.

He sealed off the cockpit while his passengers buckled on Flickinger harnesses, stepped into magnetic boots, and checked breathers. When they were ready, he depressurized their cabin and the cargo bay. Sill opened the door at the rear of the cabin and led the way into the cargo section, where he distributed portable scanners and collected two pulsers.

He strapped one to his side in an easy, familiar motion, and held the other out to Carson. Carson took it, checked it expertly, and put it on.

Sill produced about thirty meters of cable. "We'll string a tether out to the station's hatch. Lock onto it when you go. Everything's turning, so if you get thrown off, we might not get you back." He glanced around to assure himself that energy fields were all active. "Director," he said, "would you like to do the honors?"

Truscott declined, and looked at Carson. "Frank—?"

And Carson, in the spirit of the proceeding, turned it over to Maggie. "She got us here," he said.

Maggie nodded appreciatively. "Thanks," she said. They opened the doors, and the derelict's surface curved past within arm's length. It was pocked and scarred. Maggie reached out, and touched it. First contact.

"If you like," Hutch told Carson, "I'll set up the line."

He nodded, and she pushed through the door.

"Careful," whispered Sill.

Hutch's momentum carried her across to the station's hull. She put both boots down on its metal skin, and looked for the hatch.

Above. About ten meters.

Sill clipped the cable to a magnetic clamp, secured the clamp to the hull of the shuttle. Then he passed the line and a second clamp to Hutch. She snapped the line to her belt and started toward the hatch. Her perspective shifted: the deck of the cargo hold, which had been "down," rotated 90

degrees. Her stomach lurched, and she closed her eyes to let the feeling pass. The trick now was to focus on the derelict. Steady it. Make herself believe it was stationary. Forget the shuttle, which was now vertical. The sky moved around her, but she concentrated on the hatch.

The airlock was big enough to accommodate a small truck. The inner door was indeed open, but she could see nothing beyond except metal deck and bulkhead. She attached the clamp and waved to Maggie, who promptly drifted out of the shuttle.

Hutch warned her about keeping her eyes on the hull. She nodded, and tied onto the cable. But she had difficulty from the start, and Hutch had to go get her. When they got back to the airlock, she helped her inside, where the environment was less upsetting. "You okay?" she asked.

Maggie crumpled into a ball. In a weak voice she reassured her rescuer.

"I hope this is worth it," Hutch said. "It is," Maggie said feebly.

They came over one by one. The sunlight was strong, and everyone used filters. They climbed rapidly into the lock, anxious to gain the security of an enclosed space.

The inner passageway beckoned. Maggie recovered quickly and claimed her privilege, stepping through into a bare, high-ceilinged chamber. Bilious orange walls were lined with empty bins. One was cluttered with debris, pinned by the motion of the station. There were instruments, and a giant boot, and plastic sheets and semiflexible material that might once have been clothing.

"Maybe they left the airlock open," said George, "to preserve the interior. If they really wanted to maintain this as a memorial, I don't know a better way. Let the vacuum in, and nothing will deteriorate."

Janet was fascinated by the boot. "They were big, weren't they?"

Carpeting still covered the deck. Passageways that dwarfed even George opened off either end of the chamber. They were lined by windows on one side and closed doors on the other. The doors were quite large, possibly four by two meters.

When Hutch, who was the last one through the airlock, caught up with them, they were examining the equipment. George thought he recognized some of it—"this is a recharger, no question" — and Maggie had already begun to collect symbols. Carson picked a passageway at random and moved into it.

None of the doors yielded to gentle pressure, and they would not of course break in, short of necessity. The outer bulkhead consisted mostly of windows. Outside, they could see the sun and the shuttle. One of the windows had been punctured, and they found a corresponding hole a couple of centimeters wide in the opposite deck. "Meteor," said George.

They clicked along awkwardly in their magnetic shoes, staying together, not talking much, moving like a troop of children through strange territory. Hutch noted a vibration in the bulkhead. "Something's going on," she said.

It was like a slow pulse.

"Power?" asked Truscott.

George shook his head. "I don't think so."

More deliberately now, they advanced. The sun moved past the windows and out of sight. The corridor darkened.

Sill produced a lamp and switched it on.

The heartbeat persisted. Grew stronger.

The planet rose and flooded the passageway with reflected light. Its oceans were bright and cool beneath broad clouds.

Ahead, around the curve, something moved.

Rose. And fell.

A door. It was twisted on a lower hinge, but still connected to the jamb. As they watched, it struck the wall in time to the vibration, moved slowly down and bounced off the deck.

They looked through the doorway into another, smaller chamber. A crosspiece set at eye level resolved itself into a rectangular table, surrounded by eight chairs of gargantuan dimensions. The chairs were padded (or had been: everything was rock-hard now). Hutch entered, feeling like a four year old. She stood on tiptoe and directed her lamplight across the tabletop. It was bare.

George had a better angle. "There are insets," he said. He tried to open one, but it stayed fast. "Don't know," he said.

The furniture was locked in place. "It looks like a conference room," said Janet.

Cabinets lined the bulkheads. The doors would not open. But, more importantly, they were inscribed with symbols. Maggie made for them like a moth to a flame. "If it is the

Monument-Makers," she said, after a few moments, "they aren't like any of the other characters we've seen." She was wearing a headband TV camera, which was relaying everything back to the shuttle. "God, I love this," she added.

There was another doorway at the rear of the room, and a second, identical suite beyond.

Hutch turned off the common channel, and retreated into her own thoughts. She watched the shifting shadows thrown by the lamps, and remembered the lonely ridge on lapetus, and the single set of tracks. Who were these people? What had it been like when they gathered in this room? What had they talked about? What mattered to them?

Later, they found more open doors. They looked into a laboratory, and an area that had provided support functions to the station. There was a kitchen. And a room filled with basins and a long trough that might have had an excretory use. The trough was about as high as the table. They saw what might have been the remains of a showering facility.

Daylight came again. Forty minutes after it had passed out of the windows, the sun was back. At about the same time, they came to an up-ramp which split off the passageway.

"Okay," said Carson. "Looks like time to divide. Everybody be careful." He looked at Maggie. "Do you have a preference where you want to go?"

"I'll stay down here," she said.

He started up. "We'll meet back here in an hour. Or sooner, if anybody finds anything interesting." Truscott and Sill fell in behind him, and the plan to have Hutch watch them collapsed. Carson grinned, and signaled for her to forget it. Hutch, delighted to be rid of what had promised to be onerous duty, rejoined George and Maggie.

They continued along the lower level, and almost immediately found a room filled with displays and consoles half-hidden by lush, high-back chairs. "Computers," breathed Maggie.

There were photos on the walls. Faded. But maybe still discernible.

Maggie was trying to get a look at a keyboard, but the consoles were too high. She glowed with pleasure. "You don't think they'd still work, do you—?" she wondered.

"Not after a few thousand years," said Hutch. "If it's really been that long."

"Well, even if they don't, the keyboard will give us their alphanumerics. That alone is priceless."

Then George got excited. He'd found a picture of the vehicle they'd seen in the shuttle bay. It was in flight, and the space station was in the background. "Glory days," he said.

A second photo depicted Beta Pac III, blue and white and very terrestrial.

Eager to have a look at the consoles, Maggie moved in front of a chair and pulled off one of her magnetic shoes, planning to float up onto the equipment. But she became suddenly aware of something in the chair. She half-turned, and screamed. Had she been successful in removing both shoes, she would probably have launched. As it was, one foot remained locked in place, and the rest of her anatomy careened off at a sharp angle. She pitched over, and crashed into the deck.

The chair was occupied.

Carson's voice erupted from the commlink. "What's happening? Hutch—?"

Maggie stared up at the thing in the seat, color draining from her face.

"We've got a corpse," Hutch said into the common channel.

"On our way," said Carson.

The occupant of the chair was a glowering, mummified thing.

"This one, too," said George, trying to steady his voice, and indicating the next chair.

Two of them.

Maggie, embarrassed, stared up at the corpse. Hutch walked over and stood beside her. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said. "It just startled me. I wasn't expecting it."

Its eyes were closed. The skin had shriveled to dry parchment. The skull was dust-brown, lean, narrow. Ridged. Long arms ended in large hands that retained a taloned appearance. The gray-black remains of a garment hung around its waist and clung to its legs.

"There must have been air here for a while," said George. "Or the bodies wouldn't have decomposed."

"I don't think that's so," said Maggie. "Organisms are full of chemicals. They'd cause a general breakdown whether the corpse is in a vacuum or not. It would just take longer."

It was belted into its chair.

Had been belted in when the airlocks were opened.

Its dying agony was still imprinted on its face.

What had happened here?

Maggie gingerly touched its knee.

Hutch stood in front of it, and knew the thing. Recognized it.

Carson and the others filed in.

They spread around the room, moving quietly. "Is it them?" Truscott asked. "The creatures from lapetus?"

"Yes," said Carson. He looked around. "Anybody disagree?"

No one did.

"Sad," Maggie said. "This is not the way we should have met."

Sill was just tall enough to be able to see the work stations. "It's their operations center, I think," he said.

George turned back to the photos. They were encased and mounted within the bulkhead. Most were too blurred to make out. But he saw a cluster of buildings in one. He found another that appeared to be a seascape. "That could be Maine," said Sill, looking over his shoulder.

Hutch could not look away from the corpses.

Strapped down.

Had they been murdered? Unlikely. The restraining belt did not look capable of holding anyone who didn't want to be held. Rather, they had stayed here while someone opened the airlocks and let the void in.

The station was a mausoleum.

They found more corpses in spaces that seemed to have been living quarters on the upper level. They counted thirty-six before they stopped. There would undoubtedly be more. The bodies, without exception, were belted down. They understood the implication almost from the start, and it chilled them. // was a mass suicide. They didn't want to get thrown around or sucked out by decompression, so they overrode whatever safety features they had, tied themselves in, and opened the doors.

"But why!" asked Truscott. Carson knew the director to be tough and unyielding. But she was shaken by this.

Maggie also seemed daunted. "Maybe suicide was implicit in their culture. Maybe they did something wrong on this station, and took the appropriate way out."

In the aftermath of their discovery, they roamed aimlessly through the station. Adhering to the spirit of Carson's safety concerns, or maybe for other reasons, no one traveled alone.

Maggie commandeered Sill and stayed close to the operations area. They prowled among the computers, and took some of the hardware apart, with a view to salvaging data banks, if they still existed.

George and Hutch went looking for more photos. They found them in the living quarters. They were faded almost to oblivion, but they could make out figures wearing robes and cloaks. And more structures: exotic upswept buildings that reminded Carson of churches. And there were two photos that might have been scenes from a launch site, a circle that resembled a radio dish and something else that looked like a gantry. And a group photo. "No question about that one," said George. "They're posing."

Carson laughed.

"What's funny?" asked George.

"I'm not sure." He had to think about it before he recognized consciously the absurdity of such intimidating creatures lining up for a team picture.

In another photo, two of them stood beside something that might have been a car, and waved.

Carson was moved. "How long ago, do you think?" he asked.

George looked at the picture. "A long time."

Yet the place did not evoke the weight of centuries, the way the Temple of the Winds had. The operations spaces might have been occupied yesterday. Things were a little dusty, but the station was full of sunlight. It was hard to believe that the sound of footsteps had not echoed recently through the long corridors. But there was an easy explanation for that: the elements had not been able to work their will.

George found a photo of the four moons strung out in a straight line. "Spectacular," he said.

"Maybe more than that," said Carson. "It might give us the age of this place."

Maggie found the central processing unit. It appeared to be intact. "Maybe," she said.

Sill folded his arms. "Not a chance."

Well, they would see. Stranger things had happened. She would remove it, if she could figure out how to do it, and send it back to the Academy. They might get lucky.

Three hours after their entry, they regrouped and started back to the shuttle. Maggie had her CPU, and they carried the photo of the four moons. They also had taken a couple of computers.

Hutch was preoccupied. She watched the shifting light and said little as they clicked back through the passageways.

"What's wrong?" Carson asked at last.

"Why did they kill themselves?"

"I don't know."

"Can you even imagine how it might happen?"

"Maybe they got stuck up here. Things went to hell planetside."

"But there's a shuttle on board."

"It might not have been working."

"So you'd have to have a situation in which, simultaneously, your external support broke down, and the onboard shuttle also broke down. That sound likely to you?"

"No."

"Me, neither."

Priscilla Hutchins, Journal

Tonight, I feel as if someone took an axe to the Ice Lady. The Monument-Makers seem to have vanished, to be replaced by pathetic creatures who build primitive space stations and kill themselves when things go wrong. Where are the beings who built the Great Monuments? They are not here.

I wonder if they ever were.

0115, April 12,2203

23 Beta Pacifica III. Tuesday, April 12; 0830 GMT

The shuttle glided through the still afternoon above a rolling plain. The windows were drawn halfway back, and fresh air flowed freely through the vehicle. The smell of the prairie and the nearby sea stirred memories of Earth. Strange, really: Carson had spent all those years on Quraqua, on the southern coastline, and he'd never once felt the sting of salt air in his nostrils. This was also the first time he'd ever ridden a shuttle without being sealed off from the outside environment.

First time with my face out the window.

There were occasional signs of former habitation below: crumbling walls, punctured dams, collapsed dock facilities. They were down low, close to the ground, moving at a hundred fifty klicks. The sky was filled with birds.

They came up on a river. It was broad, and mud-colored, with sandy banks, and giant shrubs pushing above the surface close to shore. Lizardlike creatures lay in the sun.

And more ruins: stone buildings in the water, worn smooth; a discolored track through forest, marking an ancient road.

"They've been gone a long time," said George.

"Want to go down and take a closer look?" asked Jake, their pilot.

"No," Carson said. Hutch could see that he wanted to do precisely that, but Truscott had given them thirty-six hours. "Mark the place so we can find it again."

The prairie rolled on. They listened to the rush of air against the shuttle, watched the golden grass ripple in the wind.

"Something ahead," said Maggie.

It was little more than a twisted pile of corroded metal. Carson thought it might once have been a vehicle, or a machine. Impossible to tell from the air.

They left the river and flew over a patch of desert, passing over walls, and occasional storage tanks sinking into the dunes like abandoned ships.

Prairie came again, the land rose and narrowed, and ocean closed in on both sides. In this area, rock walls were everywhere, like pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle.

They picked up another river, and followed it south into forest. Mountains framed the land, and the river disappeared occasionally underground, surfacing again to roll through picturesque valleys.

Carson had a map on his display. "Seems to me," he said, "that the towns are located in the wrong places."

"What do you mean?" asked Hutch.

"Look at this one." He tapped the screen. A set of ruins were well out on the plain, several kilometers from the ocean, and fifteen from a river junction. "It should be here, at the confluence."

"Probably was, at one time," said Maggie. "But rivers move. In fact, if we can figure out when the city was on the confluence, we might get a date for all this."

"They shared the human taste for living by water," said Hutch.

Carson nodded. "Or they relied heavily on water transportation." He shook his head. "Not very rational, for a civilization that had anti-gravity thousands of years ago. What happened? Did they have it, and then lose it?"

"Why don't we go down and look?" suggested Janet.

Ahead, the river drained into a bay. "Up there," Carson said. "Looks like a city. And a natural harbor. We'll land there."

The forest took on a jumbled, confused appearance. Mounds and towers and walls broke through the foliage. It was possible, with a little imagination, to make out the shape of streets and thoroughfares.

Was the entire continent like this? One vast wreck?

Jake touched his earphones. "Ops says the Ashley Tee has arrived. Rendezvous in about forty hours."

"Marvelous!" said Maggie. Maybe they would be able to stay now, and inspect this world of the Monument-Makers at their leisure.

Jake congratulated them, but Hutch saw that he was not pleased. When she asked, he said that he did not want to get pulled out now.

The forest overflowed a wide, sun-dappled harbor. Great broad-leafed trees crowded the shoreline. The shuttle sailed out over the open sea, and curved back. A narrow, grassy island divided the harbor mouth into twin channels. Both were partially blocked by a collapsed bridge.

Hutch saw truncated squares in the water, massive concrete foundations (she thought), and piles of rubble.

"There used to be big buildings down there," said Janet. "Maybe something on the order of skyscrapers."

"There are more in the woods," said George.

"Anybody got a suggestion," asked Carson, "where we should set down?"

"Don't get too close to the shoreline," advised Hutch. "If there are predators, that's where they're most likely to be."

They picked out a clearing about a half-kilometer from the harbor. Jake took them down and they landed among wet leaves and bright green thickets.

Hutch heard the cockpit hatch open. "Hold it a minute," said Carson. "We need to talk a little before we go out there." Good, she thought. For all their experience on the Quraqua mission, these were not people who necessarily understood the potential for danger on a new world. The old fear of contamination by extraterrestrial disease had been discarded: microorganisms tended not to attack creatures evolved from alien biosystems. But that didn't mean they might not attract local predators. Hutch had gotten an object lesson on that subject.

Carson assumed his best military tone. "We don't really know anything about this place, so we'll stay together. Everybody take a pulser. But please make sure you've got a clear field of fire if you feel you have to use it."

They would not need energy shields here; but they would wear heavy clothing and thick boots to afford some protection against bristles, poison plants, stinging insects, and whatever other surprises the forest might have for them. "Which way do we go?" asked Maggie, zipping her jacket.

Carson looked around. "There are heavy ruins to the north. Let's try that way first." He turned to Jake. "We'll be back before sundown."

"Okay," said the pilot.

"Stay inside, okay? Let's play it safe."

"Sure," he said. "I'm not interested in going anywhere."

The air was cool and sweet and smelled of mint. They gathered at the foot of the ladder and looked around in silent appreciation. Bushes swayed in a light breeze off the sea; insects burbled and birds fluttered overhead. To Hutch, it felt like the lost Pennsylvania, the one you read about in old books.

The grass was high. It came almost to her knees. They got out, checked their weapons, and picked out an opening in the trees. Carson moved into the lead, and George drifted to the rear. They crossed the clearing and plunged into the woods.

They immediately faced an uphill climb. The vegetation was thick. They picked their way between trees and spiked bushes, and occasionally used the pulsers to clear obstacles.

They topped a ridge and paused. Tall shrubbery blocked their view. Janet was trying to look back the way they'd come. "I think it's a mound," she said. "There's something buried here." She tried using her scanner, but she was too close, literally on top of the hill, to make out anything. «Something» she said again. "Part of a structure. It goes deep."

George produced a lightpad, and started a map.

They worked their way down the other side, past an array of thick walls. They ranged in height up to treetop level, and were often broken, or leveled. "This is not high-tech stuff," said George. "They've used some plastics, and some stuff I don't recognize, but most of this is just concrete and steel. That fits with the space station, but not with the telescope."

"It doesn't follow," said Janet. "The more advanced stuff should be on the surface. A low-tech city should be long-buried."

Animals chittered and leaped through the foliage. Insects sang, and green light filtered through the overhead canopy. The trees were predominantly gnarled hardwoods, with branches concentrated at the top. Lower trunks were bare. They were quite tall, topping out at about five stories. The effect was to create a vast leafy cathedral.

They forded a brook, walked beside a buckled stone wall, and started up another mound. The area was thick with flowering bushes. "Thorns," warned Maggie. "The same defenses evolve everywhere."

The similarity of life forms on various worlds had been one of the great discoveries that followed the development of FTL. There were exotic creatures, to be sure; but it was now clear, if there had ever been much doubt, that nature takes the simplest way. The wing, the thorn, and the fin could be found wherever there were living creatures.

They explored without real purpose or direction, following whims. They poked into a concrete cylinder that might once have been a storage bin or an elevator shaft. And paused before a complex of plastic beams, too light to have supported anything. "Sculpture," suggested Maggie.

Carson asked Janet whether she would be able to date the city.

"If we still had Wink," she said.

"Okay. Good." He was thinking that they could send the Ashley Tee to find the ship, and recover what she needed.

At the end of the first hour, Carson checked in with Jake. Everything was quiet at the shuttle. "Here too," he said.

"Glad to hear it. You haven't gone very far." Jake seemed intrigued. "What's out there?"

"Treasure," said Carson.

Jake signed off. He had never before been first down on an unknown world. It was a little scary. But he was glad he'd come.

Jake had been piloting Kosmik shuttles for the better part of his life. It was a prestigious job, and it paid well. It hadn't turned out to be as exciting as he'd thought, but all jobs become dull in time. He flew from skydock to ground station to starship. And back. He did it over and over, and he transported people whose interests were limited to their jobs, who never looked out through the shuttle ports. This bunch was different.

He liked them. He'd enjoyed following their trek through the space station, although he'd been careful to keep his interest to himself. It was more his nature to play the hard-headed cynic. And this: he knew about the Monument-Makers, knew they too had roamed the stars. Now he was in one of their cities.

The heavy green foliage at the edge of the clearing gleamed in the bright midday sun. He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. And saw something. A glimmer of light in the trees.

It looked like a reflection.

He poked his head through the hatch and leaned forward and watched it for several minutes. Something white. A piece of marble, maybe. The warm harbor air washed over him.

They stopped by a crystal stream and gazed at the fish. The filtered sunlight lent an air of unreality and innocence to the forest. There were paths, animal trails, but they were narrow and not always passable. Occasionally, they had to back away from a dead end, or a steep descent, or a bristling thicket. Carson wore out his pulser and borrowed Maggie's.

The stream ran beneath a tapered blue-gray arch. The arch was old, and the elements had had their way with it. Symbols had been carved into the stone, but they were long past deciphering. Maggie tried to read with her fingertips what lay beyond the capability of her eyes.

She was preoccupied, and did not hear a sudden burst of clicking, like the sound of castanets. The others didn't miss it, however, and looked toward a patch of thick briar in time to see a small crablike creature pull swiftly back out of sight.

Beyond the arch, they found a statue of one of the natives. It was tipped over, and half-buried, but they took time to dig it up. Erect, it would have been twice George's height. They tried to clean it with water from a nearby stream, and were impressed with the abilities of the sculptor: they thought they could read character in the stone features. Nobility. And intelligence.

They measured and mapped and paced. George seemed more interested in what they couldn't see. In what lay hidden in the forest floor. He wondered aloud how long it would take to mount a full-scale mission.

There was no easy answer to that question. If it were up to the commissioner, they would be here in a few months. But it would not be that simple. This world, after all, could be settled immediately. And there would be the possibility of technological advantage. Hutch thought it would be years before anyone would be allowed near the place, other than the NAU military.

Jake climbed out onto the shuttle's wing, dropped to the ground, and peered into the trees. He could still see it. The clearing was lined with flowering bushes, whose lush milky blooms swung rhythmically in a crisp wind off the harbor. They were bright and moist in the sunlight. Jake's experience with forests was limited to the belt of trees in his suburban Kansas City neighborhood, where he had played as a kid. You could never get in so deep that you couldn't see out onto Rolway Road on one side, or the Pike on the other.

He understood that despite its peaceful appearance, the woodland was potentially dangerous. But he wore a pulser, and he knew the weapon could bum a hole in anything that tried to get close.

The day was marked by a sky so blue and lovely that it hurt his eyes. White clouds floated over the harbor. And sea birds wheeled overhead, screaming.

He touched the stock of his weapon to reassure himself, and walked toward the edge of the clearing.

They were fairy-tale trees, of the sort often portrayed in children's books with grimaces and smiles. They looked very old. Some grew out of the mounds, enveloped the mounds in their root systems, as if clutching whatever secrets might be left. The city had been dead a long time.

"Hundreds of years," said Maggie.

The underbrush now was sparse, and the trees were far apart. It was a forest cast in summer sunlight, a vista that seemed to lose itself far away among the living columns.

They came over the crest of a hill and caught their collective breath.

The land dropped gradually away into a wooded gully, and then rose toward another ridge. Ahead, a wall emerged from the downslope, from thick, tangled brush, and soared out over the ravine. It was wide and heavy, like a dam. Like a rampart. It extended somewhat more than halfway across the valley. And then it stopped. Five stories high, it simply came to an end. Hutch could see metal ribs and cables. A skeletal stairway rose above the wall, ending in midair. There had been crosswalls, but only the connections remained. The top was rocky and covered with vegetation.

"Let's take a break," said Carson. "This is a good place to eat lunch." They broke out sandwiches and fruit juice and got comfortable.

Everyone talked. They talked about what the valley had looked like when the city was here, and what might have happened, and how everything they had gone through had been worth it to get to this hillside.

Carson opened a channel to the shuttle. "Jake?"

"I'm here."

"Everything's quiet."

"Here, too."

"Good." Pause. "Jake, this place is spectacular."

"Yeah. I thought you'd think that. It looked pretty good from the air. Are you still coming back at sundown?"

Carson would have liked to stay out overnight, but that would be taking advantage of Truscott. And maybe foolish, as well. Now, with the Ashley Tee within range, he was sure she could be persuaded to wait for the rendezvous. Which meant they had plenty of time to poke around. No need to push. "Yes," he said. "We'll be there."

"I read."

Carson signed off, and turned to Hutch. "How long will the Ashley Tee be able to stay in the neighborhood?"

"Hard to say. They'll have a two-man crew. They stay out for roughly a year at a time. So it depends on how much food and water they have left."

"I'm sure we can scrounge some from Melanie," Carson said. (Hutch did not miss the new familiarity.) "I tell you what I'd like," he continued. "I'd like to be here when the Academy mission arrives, say hello, and shake their hands as they come in. By God, that's the stuff legends are made of. Maybe we can find a way."

Jake could see a white surface, buried in the foliage.

He stopped at the edge of the trees, slid the pulser out of his pocket, and thumbed the safety release. The shuttle waited silently in the middle of the field, its prow pointed toward him. Its green and white colors blended with the forest. He should make it a point to get some pictures of the occasion. Jake's shuttle.

The Perth name and device, an old Athena rocket within a ring of stars, was stenciled on the hull. The ship was named for the early space-age heroine who had elected to stay aboard a shattered vessel rather than doom her comrades by depleting their already-thin air supply. Stuff like that doesn't happen anymore, Jake thought. Life has become mundane.

He poked his head into the foliage. It was marble. He could see that now. It was clean and cold in the daylight. But the shrubbery around it was thick and he could find no path. He used the pulser to make one.

He was careful to keep the weapon away from the structure. But he got tangled among the bushes and almost caught himself with the beam. That threw a scare into him.

It looked like a table.

An altar, maybe.

It was set beneath a parabola. A line of markings was carved across the rim. It looked old.

Damn. He should have brought the camera. He'd have to go back and get one.

He activated the common channel. "Frank?"

"Here." Carson was eating.

"There's something out here that looks like an altar," said Jake.

"Where?" He caught an edge in Carson's voice.

"Just south of the clearing." He described what he had seen.

"Damn it. You're supposed to stay with the shuttle."

"I am with the shuttle. I can see it from here."

"Listen, Jake. We'll take a look when we get back. Okay? Meantime, you get inside the cockpit, and stay there."

Jake signed off. "You're welcome," he said.

The altar was not designed for anything of human size. When he stood in front of it, the table-piece was above eye level. The workmanship was good: the stone was beveled and precisely cut.

He was enjoying himself thoroughly. He struck a heroic stance, hands on hips. He looked up at the parabola. He touched the symbols on the front of the altar.

/ wonder what it says?

He walked back into the clearing. Maybe he had actually discovered something. Directly ahead, the shuttle gleamed beneath the bright blue sky.

The grass rippled in the wind.

He felt movement atop his right shoe. Reflexively, he shook his foot, and it exploded in pure agony. He screamed and went down. Something sliced into his ribs, slashed at his face. The last thing he knew was the smell of the grass.

The wall came in from their right off the valley. It was wide enough to accommodate eight people walking side by side, so that after it had plunged through heavy shrubbery into the glade, it came to resemble a roadway. At its point of entry, it was about shoulder high to Hutch. But midway across the clearing, it was broken, and the entire left-hand side had sunk or been removed. Or never existed. It was hard to know which, but the structure dropped in a single vertical step to about the level of their knees, and slipped into the hillside.

They inspected the structure, which was concrete reinforced with iron. Hutch climbed atop the upper section, and pushed through the foliage. The forest floor fell away rapidly.

The stairway lay two-thirds of the way out. "It goes all the way to the bottom," she said. That was not strictly accurate: a lower flight was missing. It picked up again further down and appeared not to stop at ground level, but rather to sink into the earth. How much lay buried in the forest floor? She called for the scanner. "There are at least eight stories in the ground," she said thoughtfully. "It could be a lot more." They would need an airborne unit to get decent images.

She returned to the glade. "Later," Carson told her, looking at his watch. "We'll get a better look later."

Overhead, the swaying, sun-filled branches that blocked off the sky looked as if they had been there forever.

They passed beyond the valley, moving at a leisurely pace, and came to a dome. Janet scanned it and announced that it was a sphere, and that it was probably a storage tank. "It was painted at one time," she added. "God knows what color."

Carson looked at the sun in the trees. "Time to start back."

George opened a channel to call the shuttle. After a moment, he frowned at his commlink. "I'm not getting an answer," he said.

Carson switched on his own unit. "Jake, answer up, please."

They looked at one another.

"Jake?" George went to status mode. The lamp blinked yellow. "We're not getting a signal. He's off the air."

Hutch tried calling the shuttle directly. "Still nothing," she said.

"Damn it," Carson muttered, irritated that his pilot would simply ignore his instructions. He missed his military days, when you could count on people to do what they were told.

"Okay, we'll try again in a few minutes." The daylight had reddened.

They took a group picture in front of the dome. Then they began to retrace their steps.

"Mechanical problem," George suggested. But they were uneasy.

Janet moved with her usual strong gait. Alone among her comrades, she was confident everything was okay at the shuttle. Her mind was too crowded with the triumph of the moment to allow any temporary uncertainty to spoil things. She was accustomed to being present at major discoveries (major discoveries were so common during this era), but she knew nevertheless that when she looked back on her career, this would be the defining moment. First-down in the city by the harbor. It was a glorious feeling.

Fifteen minutes later, they had re-entered the valley of the wall, and were headed uphill in single file. Janet had drifted to the rear. She was thinking that she would not live long enough to see this place yield all its secrets, when she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye, just beyond the beaten grass. She looked, saw nothing, and dismissed it.

Her thoughts switched back to the ruin underfoot—

Almost simultaneously, Hutch shouted Look outl and a hot, sharp needle drove into her ankle. She screamed with pain and went down. Something clung to, scratched at, her boot. She thought she glimpsed a spider and rolled over and tried to get at it. The thing was grass-colored and now it looked like a crab. Maggie ran toward her. Pulsers flared. Around her, the rest of the party were struggling. The agony filled the world.

Carson's reflexes were still good. Janet's scream had scarcely begun before he'd sighted and killed one of their attackers: it was a brachyid, a crablike creature not unlike the one they'd seen earlier in the day. But pandemonium was breaking out around him.

Janet was on the ground. Maggie bent over her, hammering at the thick grass with a rock.

Carson's left ankle exploded with pain. He crashed into a tree and went down.

Hutch dropped to a kneeling position beside him, pulser in hand.

Crabs.

He heard shouts and cries for help.

Maggie reached back and called Pulser! and Hutch slapped one into her hand. The brachyid was clamped to Janet's boot. Carson watched it rock madly back and forth in a sawing motion. Blood ran off into the grass. Maggie shoved the weapon against the shell and pulled the trigger. The thing shrieked.

"Stay out of the grass!" cried George. "They're in the deep grass!"

A black spot appeared on the carapace, and began to smoke. Short legs thrust out from under the shell and scratched furiously against Janet's boot. Then it spasmed, shuddered, and let go. Maggie drew it out.

Hutch spotted another brachyid. It was in front of them, watching with stalked eyes. A thin, curved claw scissored rhythmically. She bathed it in the hot white light from her pulser. Legs and eyes blackened and shriveled, and it wheeled off to one side, and set the grass afire. Hutch, taking no chances, sprayed the entire area, burning trees, rocks, bushes, whatever was nearby.

It occurred to her that they might be venomous.

"More coming," said George. "Ahead of us."

Hutch moved out in front, saw several of them ranged across the path. More moved in the grass to either side. "Maybe we should go back," she said.

"No," said Carson. "That might be the whole point of the maneuver."

"Maneuver?" George said anxiously. "You don't think they're trying to box us in?"

The brachyids charged, churning forward with a frantic sidewise motion that was simultaneously comic and revolting. Their shells reminded Hutch of old-time army helmets. Something like a scalpel flashed and quivered from an organ in the carapace situated near the mouth. Claws twitched as they approached, and the scalpels came erect.

Hutch and Maggie burned them. They hissed, crustacean legs scrabbled wildly, and they turned black and died.

Suddenly they stopped coming and the forest went quiet. They were left with the smell of smoldering meat and burning leaves. Maggie helped Janet up and placed her arm around her shoulder. George lifted Carson. "This way," he said.

Hutch played her lamplight across the path ahead. Nothing moved.

They limped uphill. When they felt it was reasonably safe, they stopped, and Hutch got out the medikit and dispensed painkillers. Then she cut Janet's boot away. The wound was just above the anklebone. It was jagged, bleeding freely, and it had begun to swell. "You'll need stitches," she said. "Be grateful for the boot." She gave her an analgesic, applied a local antiseptic, and dressed it with plastex foam. "How do you feel?"

"Okay. It hurts."

"Yeah. It will. Stay off it." She turned to Carson. "Your turn."

"I hope the thing didn't have rabies," he said. This time, Hutch had a little more trouble: part of his boot had been driven into the ankle. She cut it out, while Carson paled and tried to make light conversation. "It'll be fine," she said.

He nodded. "Thanks," he said.

When she'd finished, Maggie held up her left hand. "Me too," she said.

Hutch was horrified to discover she'd lost the little finger of her right hand. "How'd that happen?"

"Not sure," she said. "I think it got me when I pulled it loose from Janet."

She closed off the wound as best she could. Son of a bitch. If they'd been able to recover it, it could have been grafted back by the ship's surgeons. But they weren't going to go back looking.

"Finished?" asked George nervously. "I think they're still around." Hutch could hear them out there, tiny legs scratching against stone, claws clicking. But they seemed to be in the rear now.

Neither Carson nor Janet would be able to walk without help. "We need to make a travois," said Hutch, looking around for suitable dead limbs.

George frowned. "We don't have time for construction work." He found a couple of dead branches and fashioned walking sticks. "Best we can do," he said, distributing them. "Let's go." He directed Maggie to help Janet. And provided a shoulder for Carson. "Hutch, you bring up the rear," he said. "Be careful."

They moved out.

It was slow going. Frank was no lightweight, and George was too tall. He had to bend to support Carson's weight, and Hutch knew they would not make it all the way back to the shuttle. Not like this. Maybe they could find an open spot somewhere. Get Jake to come for them. Use the shuttle to crash through the trees and get them out. If they provided a signal for him to home in on—

George fired his weapon. They heard the familiar crab-shriek. "Damned things are almost invisible," he said. "That one was ahead of us."

Where the hell was Jake? Hutch tried again to raise him. But there was still no response. That silence now suggested an ominous possibility.

Hutch looked with frustration at the trees, which could provide no sanctuary since the branches were far beyond their reach.

"This isn't working," said Carson finally, disengaging himself from George and sitting down. "If you didn't have to worry about me, you could carry Janet, and you could move a lot faster. Give me a pulser, and come get me tomorrow."

"Sure," George said. "I'll hold the pass, boys. You go on ahead." He shook his head. "I don't think so."

They were leaving a trail of blood. Hutch traded places with Maggie. Then they started again. Occasionally, Maggie fired her weapon. And it seemed to have gotten personal. "Little bastard" she'd say, "take that." And: "Right between the eyes, you son of a bitch."

She exhausted another pulser. They had three left.

Hutch reluctantly gave Maggie her weapon. "What do you think?" asked Carson.

"We need to get off the ground," said Janet. "We need a tree."

"Find one our size," said Maggie. And then: "How about a wallT

"Yeah," said George. "That should work. The upper level might be safe. If the bastards can't climb." He looked at Hutch. "Can we contact the Perth!"

"Not directly. Somebody would need to activate the shuttle relay."

"Wouldn't matter anyhow," said Carson. "They couldn't help. Their shuttle's down here."

His dressing was soaked with blood. Hutch added more foam.

They'd stopped in a small clearing to do repairs, when George held up a hand. "Heads up," he said. "They're here."

Hutch had to fight down an urge to break and run. "Where?" she said.

They came out of the high grass from all directions, and they came in overwhelming numbers. They moved forward with near-military precision. Hutch, Maggie, and George formed a circle around the others and killed with a will. White beams bathed the advancing horde. The brachyids died. They died in rows, but if the lines wavered, they did not stop. Scorched carapaces littered the area, and the grass and bushes caught fire. Carson and Janet, without weapons, squeezed back and tried to keep out of the way. The air filled with the smell of charred meat. A crab trailing smoke caromed off Hutch's foot.

George fought with coolness and calculation. Standing at his side, Hutch almost felt she didn't know him. He was smiling, enjoying himself. The gentle innocence was gone.

Their attackers moved with malice and purpose. Hutch sensed feints and sallies and organization in the attack. Their eyes locked on her and tracked her. No crab on the beaches of her youth had ever seemed so aware of her presence.

Maggie's pulser was fading, going red.

The things came on relentlessly.

The fear that they were not going to get out was beginning to take hold. Oddly, that suspicion induced a series of conflicting emotions in Hutch, like currents in a quiet lake: she was almost simultaneously calm, terrified, resigned. She joined George in taking pleasure in the killing, wielding her beam with deadly satisfaction. And she began to consider how the end might come, what she should do. She decided she would not allow herself, or anyone else, to be taken down alive. She located Carson and Janet with sidewise glances. Carson was riveted by the battle, but Janet caught her eye and nodded. When the end comes, if it comes, do the right thing.

The dead, smoking shells continued to pile up. Hutch thought she detected some reluctance in the animals trying to breach the rising barrier, but they were incessantly pushed forward by pressure from behind. She found, increasingly, she could expand her field of fire, and attack the rear ranks. The zone of smoldering meat around them began to act as a shield.

She took a moment to reduce power.

Black smoke was getting into her eyes. She killed two more, and spared one that lurched crazily away from her and ran into a tree.

"We've got to run for it," said George. "Before they regroup."

"I'm in favor," said Hutch. "How do we manage it?"

"The bushes." He pointed to the side. He was shouting, to be heard over the din. Most of the creatures were on the trail, front and rear. "Punch a hole through the bushes," he said.

Hutch nodded.

"Everybody hear that?" called George.

Hutch turned toward Janet and Frank. "Can you guys manage on your own? Until we get clear?"

Carson looked at Janet.

"/ can hop," she said. "Let's go."

Hutch wasted no time. She swung her pulser toward the shrubbery George had indicated and burned the hole. Several crabs were moving back there, and she killed one while George held the rear. The bushes were thick, and she feared they might bog down in them. Protecting her eyes, she tried to ease the path for Janet. Once, twice, she stopped and drove off attackers.

But by God they were moving again.

Minutes later, they came out on a grassy hillside.

"Where''s George?" said Maggie, looking behind them.

Hutch opened a channel. "George, where are you?"

"I'm fine," he said. "I'll be right along."

"What are you doing?"

"Hutch," he said, in a tone she had never heard him use before, "keep going. Get to the wall. I'll meet you there."

"No!" she howled. "No heroes. We need you here."

"I'll be there, dammit. Frank, will you talk to her?" And he signed off.

"He's right," Carson said.

"I'm going back for him—"

"If you do, we're all dead. His only chance is for MS to get to high ground. Now, come on—"

Charred grass and crab-parts crunched underfoot. George followed Maggie, but the crabs came too quickly. He turned and fired. There was no point in his hurrying, because he could go no faster than the people in front of him.

The attack slowed. A few individuals charged, but for the most part, they seemed to understand where the limits of his field of effective fire lay, and they remained outside that range. He backed through the bushes.

They kept pace. And he could hear them on both sides.

He fought down an urge to break and run. He listened for pulsers ahead, and was encouraged to hear only the sounds of people clumping through forest.

In whatever dim perceptions they had, the brachyids understood and avoided the pulser. They did not charge him, at least not in large numbers. They had learned. He needed to use that fact to buy time.

He didn't dare move too quickly. Didn't want to come up on his companions before they'd gained the safety of the wall. So he stopped occasionally, and, when the creatures approached, sometimes singly, sometimes several abreast in their pseudo-military formations, he turned back on them, and drove them off.

Hutch's frantic call unnerved him. He'd been able to hear her both on the link and on the wind. They were still very close. Damn—

The possibilities for ambush were everywhere. But no sudden rush came, no charge from the flank, no surprises. They merely stayed with him. And that was okay. If they were targeting him, they weren't chasing the others. And fast as they were, he was quicker. As long as he didn't have to carry anyone.

He plunged into high grass, too high for him to see them directly, but he could see the stalks moving. He kept going until he came out onto rocky terrain. Where he could see. Where they'd make easy targets.

Let Hutch and the others get as far away as they could.

"Where's the wall?" asked Carson.

They'd reached the top of the slope. Maybe another half klick. "Ten minutes," Hutch said. And, to Janet: "You okay?"

Janet and Carson were limping along as best they could, supported by Hutch and Maggie. "Yeah. I'm fine."

Hutch would have kept George on the circuit, but she had her hands full with her injured comrades, and she didn't want to distract him. But it was hard to keep back the tears.

Carson was quiet. His forehead was cool, and his eyes looked clear. When she tried to talk to him, he only urged her not to stop moving. "I can keep up with you," he said.

They followed their own trail through cut thickets, watching for the foliage to open on their left and give them a view of the wall. They had to be dose now.

Without warning, Janet collapsed. Hutch caught her, lowered her gently to the ground. "Break," Hutch said. "Take a minute."

Carson did not sit. He hobbled to a tree, and leaned against it.

Janet was pale and feverish. Drenched with sweat. Hutch activated her commlink. "George?"

"Here, Hutch."

"Please come. We need you."

George signed off and committed the misjudgment that cost him his life. He had succeeded in buying adequate time, and might have disengaged and rejoined his friends within a few minutes. But the crustacean army lined up behind him was too tempting a target. He returned to the tactic that had been working so successfully. Thinking to thin out his pursuers, he turned on them, and walked the pulser beam through their ranks. It was red now, failing quickly. But it was enough.

They scattered, making no effort to come after him. And they burned and died as they scuttled away. He pursued with singleminded thoroughness, killing everything that moved. Fires ignited, and the shrieks of the brachyids filled the twilight.

But when he turned back, the ground before him was moving. He played his beam across the new targets. It did not stop them, and he had to concentrate its power on a single animal to kill it.

They advanced deliberately in that sidewise gait, and the scalpels were erect. To his rear, the fire was building. No escape that way.

High on the dark hill, he glimpsed his comrades' lamp.

It looked very far away.

He plunged through an opening in the shrubbery. And they were waiting for him.

24 Beta Pacifica III. Tuesday, April 12; one hour after sunset

They saw the flames below, in the dark.

"He'll be okay," said Carson.

Hutch hesitated, looking back. The entire world squeezed down to the flickering light. She wanted to talk to him again, reassure herself. But she remembered Henry's anger: Where were you when we were trying to get a few answers? All you could contribute was to hang on the other end of that damned commlink and try to panic everybody.

Miserably, supporting Janet, she set off again. How different everything looked now. The beam from her lamp fell across a tree that had been split by lightning. "I remember this," said Maggie. "We're close—"

Moments later, a scream ripped through the night. It rang across the trees, vibrated in the still air, erupted into a series of short cries. Hutch called out to him and turned back.

But Janet anticipated the move. "No! You can't help him." She grabbed her and held on. "My God, you can't help him, Hutch—"

Janet was considerably stronger, but she could not have restrained her more than a few seconds had Carson not gotten there quickly. They fell in a pile.

"There's nothing you can do," he said.

She screamed.

"You'll make it for nothing." It was Maggie, looking down at her.

"Easy for you," said Hutch, hating the woman. "When other people die, you're always safely away!"

And the tears came.

The wall looked bright and safe in the glow of the lamp.

Get to the upper level. Hutch's vision had blurred, and she was close to hysteria. "Hold on," Janet told her. "We need you."

The lower strip, the portion they had thought of as resembling a roadway, emerged from the hillside to their right. Halfway across the glade, it rose vertically almost two meters. Not much under ordinary circumstances. Bri tonight was another matter.

It was a difficult climb with only one foot available. But Carson, supported by Maggie from below, and pulled by Hutch, and perhaps encouraged by the whisper of moving grass, negotiated it, although not without losing more blood. Once he was up, however, Janet became an easy proposition.

Hutch did a quick survey out across the top of the wall to assure herself there would be no surprises. Satisfied, she sat down and got out the medikit. "Let's have another look at everybody," she said in a flat voice.

Janet appeared to be going into shock. Hutch got her legs up, propping them on a mound of earth, removed her own jacket, and drew it over her. Carson was in better shape. When she had done what she could for both, she looked at Maggie's mutilated hand.

"How does it feel?"

"I'll live."

"I'm sorry," Hutch said. "I really didn't mean what I said back there."

"I know."

She changed the dressing. But tears continued to roll down her cheeks and she kept getting everything wet. Maggie had to finish the job herself. Carson hobbled over and sat beside her.

Hutch stared into the dark. The fires had burned out, and the night was growing cool. A crescent moon floated in the trees. "He's gone," she said.

Carson put an arm around her, but said nothing.

"I don't—" She stopped, pulled back, and waited until she had control of her voice. "I don't want to leave him out there."

"We'll get him back," Carson said.

Janet did not look good. We need to keep her warm. Maggie contributed her jacket. Hutch gathered some branches and built a fire. The wind began to pick up, and the temperature was dropping. Carson looked pale, and Hutch feared he might go into shock. "It's going to get cold," she said. "We don't want to spend the night out here."

Carson gazed wearily into the fire. "I don't see what choice we have."

"We can get the shuttle."

"How do we do that! I can't walk back there. Neither can Janet, for God's sake."

"I don't mean everybody. I mean me."

"And what would you do after you got there?"

"Bring it here."

The treetops were tied together and shut out the sky. "And do what? You can't get through that."

"Sure I can. If we remove a tree or two."

Carson's eyes found hers.

"It's all we've got," she added.

"Wait for daylight."

"We may not have until daylight. Janet's not in good shape."

He glanced at Maggie. "What do you think?"

Maggie's eyes were wide with fatigue and horror. "I think it's her call," she said.

She hasn't forgotten what I said. Hutch felt desperately tired of it all.

It would have been best, of course, if she could start at once. But there were things that had to be done first.

She needed to find the right tree to take down. She thought they could get away with one, and she found it well out along the wall, past the ruined stairway. It was close enough that they could reach it with a pulser; and she judged that it would leave a hole big enough to get through with the shuttle. That latter point was touch and go, but she was hopeful. If it didn't, they'd deal with it when they had to.

Next, she selected a pickup site, and helped get Janet and Carson to it. Just the use of the term seemed to revive their spirits. Once there, she rebuilt the fire. They were far out over the valley now, and close to the treetops. Branches and leaves reddened in the glow of the flames.

While Hutch got ready to leave, Maggie wandered to the edge, studied the target tree, and looked down. It was about five stories.

"You know what to do now?" Hutch asked.

"Yes. We'll be waiting when you get back."

They had only two functional pulsers left. But Maggie's had gone red. Hutch had the remaining one. She held it out.

Maggie shook her head. "Take it with you. You might need it."

"You need it to take the tree down. Anyhow, I'm not going to shoot it out with the little bastards." Janet's breathing didn't sound so good. "Got to go." Their eyes caught and held. "When we get out of here," she said, "I'd like to buy you dinner."

Maggie smiled. It was an uninhibited smile, ringed by tears. "Yeah," she said. "I'd like that."

"Be careful," said Carson.

She strapped the lamp to her wrist and started back along the top of the wall. The night closed over her.

The smell of the sea was strong, and the woods below were full of the sound of insects. George's final cries echoed through her mind, and she was desperately afraid.

Her mind would have conjured up images of his last moments had she allowed it to. But she let the shock effect numb her imagination. She tried to concentrate only on what needed to be done, to push her fears and her loss aside.

She hurried back along the wall, watching the forest floor rise. Ahead, shrubbery blocked her view of the glade.

And she heard them. Directly ahead.

Below, the forest floor was quiet.

Bushes swayed in the wind. She held the lamp up, played its beam across the top of the wall. Everything looked clear. She passed into the screening bushes and emerged in the glade.

They were on the lower level.

She glared down at them.

They were pushing leaves and dirt toward the base of the wall. A chill worked its way up her spine.

Hutch picked up a rock and threw it at them. Incredibly, it missed. But the work stopped momentarily, and eye-stalks swung toward her. Several peeled off and moved into the underbrush on either side of the wall. The others began to back away, and withdrew beyond a distance that George would have recognized.

She opened a channel on her link. "Maggie."

"Here."

"They're out here at the end of the wall. Building a ramp."

She heard a sharp intake of breath. Heard Maggie relay the warning to Carson. "Maybe we should try going down the staircase," Maggie said.

"No," said Hutch. They would never make it. "You've got time yet. Just be ready to go when I get back."

"Okay. Hutch?"

"Yes?"

"I'm looking forward to that dinner."

"Me, too."

She retreated back through the shrubbery, and looked down. It was a healthy jump, about five meters. But she saw only one crab.

She sat down, swung round, and hung by her hands. The thing below began to move. She pushed away from the wall, and let go. The fall took an ungodly long time. While she dropped, she held the lamp away from her body, where it was less likely to get broken or cause injury. She was aware of the wind, and the smell of the woods, and of filtered moonlight.

She hit harder than she'd expected, rolled to her feet, and, without wasting time looking for the brachyid, took off.

The route they had blazed was to her right, uphill, but she thought it wise to stay off it for a while. She chose a parallel course, and resolved to cut over when she was safely away from the area. She had decided she would give the little bastards full credit for military capabilities.

There was no sound of pursuit.

"I'm clear, Maggie," she said into her commlink. "And on my way."

She did not run all out. Something had happened to Jake. Keep that in mind. But time pressed. She hurried on, and plunged through blinds and into vegetation that she might otherwise have avoided.

Gradually, she angled uphill, expecting to find the trail.

She didn't. She reached the top of the ridge without knowing where she was. Son of a bitch.

She'd missed it. Gone right past it.

Don't panic. She called the wall. Pause. Give her a chance to regroup. "Maggie?"

"Here. How's it going?"

"Still moving. I'm okay."

"Be careful."

"I will. How are you doing with the tree?"

"Slow. The range is a little long."

"Stay with it. I'll keep you posted."

Five minutes later, she stumbled across blackened shrubbery. Okay. This was the way they had come. But the trail barely existed, and her notion that she could sprint back to the shuttle vanished. She realized how little attention she'd paid coming out. And they'd made no effort to mark their passage. No one had considered the possibility of a problem getting back; after all, at worst, it would only be necessary to home in on Jake's signal.

She made several wrong turns. Each time, she retraced her steps and conducted a search. At one point, she came out of the woods and found herself looking across open, moonlit water. The collapsed bridge they'd seen from the air lay in the shallows like a sleeping dinosaur.

The tree did not fall.

Maggie had cut completely through the trunk, but it only leaned to one side, hopelessly tangled in the web of branches. Leaves and broken wood rained down on her, and some went over the side and took the long plunge to the forest floor.

But the canopy was as solid as ever.

"What now?" she asked Carson. She had exhausted her pulser. Only Hutch's weapon remained. She took it out of her belt.

Carson surveyed the trees. "Over there," he said. Cut that one. It was the same width, but about four meters farther out. At the extreme limit of the weapon's range. "Get that one, and they might both come down."

She looked at him unhappily.

"It's all we've got, Maggie."

She crept to the edge, and reached out. Get as close as possible. She pulled the trigger.

Hutch had no idea where she was. There were no stars to guide her. No landmarks. Nothing. She saw no sign of their previous passage, no hill or tree that stirred memory-She had triangulated on Maggie's link, which sent out a continuous signal. That told her where she was in relation to the wall, and allowed her to estimate generally where the shuttle should be. It was in this area somewhere. But where? She worried that she had already passed it, that it lay behind her.

"Look out."

The trunk tilted toward them. That shouldn't have happened: Maggie had angled the cut away so it would fall in the other direction. But instead it came down slowly in a cacophony of splintering wood. She scrambled back from the edge. Twigs and leaves and vines came with it. The trunk slammed into the wall, and the entire structure shuddered. The general tangle fell across Maggie, a vast leafy net, knocking her off her feet. Branches cracked and the trunk kept rolling until it slipped clear and started a long, slow descent into the abyss. And Maggie reali/ed with horror that she was going with it.

She was dragged relentlessly toward the edge of the wall. She tried to free herself. Find something to hold onto. But everything seemed to be going over the side.

The world was filled with broad flat leaves and a terrible grinding sound. She heard Carson calling her name. And it occurred to her that she was not going to find out about Oz. Not ever. Nor why the Quraquat had identified the Monument-Makers with death.

Made no sense.

The tangle paused, balanced high over the forest floor, allowing her a final glance at the sliver of moon. Mercifully, it was too dark to see how high she was.

Sorry, Hutch.

"Hutch." The voice was frantic.

"Go ahead, Frank."

"Maggie's dead."

The words hung on the night air. Her eyes slid shut. She had left the lake front, and was struggling through flowering plants and oversized ferns. Utterly lost.

"Hutch? Did you hear me?"

"Yes," she said. "How? What happened?" It did not seem possible. Maggie had been fine. Was too smart—

Carson told her. His voice was thick with sorrow. "I found her pulser," he added. "She dropped it."

"You're sure she couldn't have survived?"

"Hutch, she went over the side." Pause. "Did you get to the shuttle yet?"

"No, Frank. God help me, I have no idea where I am."

"Okay." Carson's voice was gentle. "Do what you can. We've got a hole now. You can get in when you get here."

In the dark, she stared straight ahead. "Out," she said quietly.

Janet had slept through the disaster. Carson looked at her. She seemed unchanged, and her pulse was steady. He sat beside her, grief-stricken. Her eyes fluttered and she touched his wrist. He smiled. "We're doing fine," he said to her unspoken question.

"Can I help?" He had to lean close to hear.

"Not now. Later, maybe." She drifted back to sleep.

Carson buried his head in his hands.

Truscott was listening to several of her passengers outline the future assignments they were expecting when they got home, when Harvey, wearing an irritated frown, asked if he could speak with her in private.

"We've lost contact with the landing party," he said.

That should be no cause for concern. Commlinks failed. "How long?"

"Last check was due forty minutes ago."

She thought about it. "It's a little early to push the button. What do you think? Equipment failure?"

"Unlikely. They would have to be aware of it, though. And the shuttle has several communications methods available. Morris is worried."

"Last status was—?"

"Still on the ground. Carson and the Academy team went off somewhere to look at ruins. They left Jake with the shuttle."

"When were they expected back?"

"Before sunset. It's been dark there for over an hour."

She leaned against the bulkhead. "What options do we have?"

He looked at her. "I hoped you might be able to think of something."

Hutch was back out on the shoreline, looking at the downed bridge. Here, at least, she had a decent idea which way she wanted to go. But once in the woods, there was no guide. No way to check her course. And she could pass within ten meters of the shuttle and fail to find it.

West. It was toward the west.

She started off, striving to remain within sight of the water.

Earlier, nothing had seemed familiar. Now, she felt as if she'd been everywhere. She moved with frustrated abandon. The brachyids she had feared so much at the beginning of the odyssey had drifted to the back of her mind. Where was the shuttle?

Carson's voice broke through the stillness. "Any luck, Hutch?"

"No," she said. "I'm in the neighborhood—"

"Okay. I think we're out of time up here. I can hear them coming."

She did not know what to say.

"I'm going to take Janet down the stairway."

The stairway. It wouldn't work. Probably wouldn't even support their weight. "Don't do it, Frank," she said.

"I'm open to suggestions. We've got maybe ten minutes. At best."

Her lungs heaved. The forest went on forever, trunks and underbrush and roots pushing up through the soil and deep grass and rocks and cane plants.

"Frank."

"Yes?"

"Say something to me. Loud."

"What do you mean?"

"Talk to me."

"Hello."

"Louder."

"Hello."

"Shout it, damn it."

"HELLO!"

"It might work." Jake could not have been attacked unless something got into the shuttle, or he went for a walk. In either case, a hatch, at least, had to be open. Most likely, the cockpit canopy. "Frank, switch to the shuttle's channel, and make as much noise as you can."

She broke contact and listened.

Nothing.

But it was somewhere up ahead. Had to be.

Frank Carson understood that once he left the wall they were dead. Even if he made it down that impossible stairway, they would have no chance. Hutch would not be able to get to them with the shuttle.

Consequently, he bellowed into the commlink. Sometimes he called her name. Sometimes, "SHUTTLE, ONE TWO THREE." Sometimes, "GODDAM, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?"

He had stationed himself ten meters in front of Janet. There was still life in the pulser, so they could put up a fight. Ahead, he heard the sound of crustacean claws on rock.

"What's going on?" Janet's voice. She didn't try to move.

Carson explained, in as few words as he could.

"No way off?" she asked.

"No."

"Where's Maggie?"

There was no way to soften it. "Dead," he said. He described how it had happened.

He listened to her breathe. "Little bastards," she said. "Do we have another pulser?"

"No."

She struggled to her feet. Fresh blood welled out of the packing on her ankle. She sorted among broken branches, and picked up one that she could handle.

Carson began talking to the shuttle again. "WE COULD REALLY USE HELP, HUTCH."

Janet stationed herself directly below the opening in the overhang. "If they get here before she does," she said, "I'm going to follow Maggie."

Hutch was fording a stream when she heard it. A whisper, far off, carried away on the wind. It sounded like: " — Bitch." She broke into a run.

Carson understood the simple ferocity of a beast looking for its dinner. But there was something else at work here. They had expended too much to get him. He wondered at their singlemindedness. Almost as if they perceived the humans as a threat. Was it possible they had dim recollections of the city's former inhabitants, and had made some sort of connection?

Whatever this was about, he was pleased to discover that they hesitated when he showed himself. And there was another piece of good fortune: the brachyids were no quicker on this battered surface than he was. He watched them come, climbing over broken concrete, sliding helplessly into cracks and crevices. One fell off the wall.

He stood adjacent to the stairway. Parts of a handrail had survived. He heard wings, and a large dark-green bird settled on it. The handrail trembled. The bird watched the crabs with interest. Its head bobbed, in the manner of terrestrial avians. It had the wingspread of an eagle, and it leaned forward, made several threatening starts, and suddenly plunged among the creatures. It seized one in outstretched claws, holding it at an angle that prevented the scalpel-claw from doing any damage. The brachyid shrieked, and the bird cackled and rose into the night.

"Where are your relatives?" asked Janet.

Moments later they heard a sharp meaty crack from below.

Last hope of retreat down the stairway was about to go by the boards. Janet looked at him. "You sure we want to let ourselves get cut off?"

He didn't reply.

"We could go sit on it. Climb to the upper level. They couldn't follow us up there."

"The damned thing would collapse. Let's give Hutch more time."

They waited. And eventually the crabs came.

Carson stood with legs braced, the pain in his left ankle pushed into a corner of his mind. They covered the ground before him, a dark horde he could not hope to stop. Nevertheless, they slowed, hesitated, somehow knowing what was coming. When the leading edge had drawn to within a meter, he pointed the weapon at them. They stopped.

He watched.

The moment drew itself out. And finally, as if a signal had been given, scalpels came erect and they swept forward.

The pulser's warning lamp blinked on. He pulled the trigger and played the beam across them, knowing he could not take time to kill them individually. Hurt large numbers, he thought, hoping that would be enough to drive them back. They squealed and blackened and crashed together, like tiny vehicles.

They fell back, and the weapon died.

Janet moved close to the edge of the wall. "Okay," she said.

"Hey." Hutch's voice.

"Go ahead."

"I need more noise. I can hear you. The shuttle's right here somewhere."

Carson grunted. "It's a little late, Hutch."

"Talk to me," she raged. "Come on, Carson."

He roared her name to the stars. "It's too late," he cried. "It's too goddam late."

"That's good," said Hutch. "Keep at it."

Carson stayed where he was, hoping to intimidate the creatures. He followed Janet's example, and found a branch. He broke off the smaller limbs, and hefted it. When he was satisfied, he joined her. They stood close together.

Carson liked to think of himself as a man of the world. He had taken sex where he could find it, had enjoyed his passions, had been honest with his women. He was not given to sentimentality. Nevertheless some of those women lingered in his affections. Two or three, he might even have settled down with, had circumstances been different. But never in his life had he experienced so strong a rush of emotion, of love for another human being, as he did in those desperate moments, with Janet Allegri, atop the wall in the harbor city.

Hutch's lamplight silhouetted the shuttle, silvered it for all the world to see. Its cold metal hull gleamed, and with desperate joy she thought how it sheltered power she had never appreciated. The cockpit canopy was up, and Carson's profanity spilled out of it in erratic bursts.

"Okay, Frank," she said. "I've got it."

"Good. Move your ass."

It occurred to her that if Jake had been taken inside the ship, it might still be inhabited. But she had no time to monkey with details. She sprinted across the glade, leaped onto the ladder, and was relieved to see that the cockpit, at least, was empty. "On my way," she said into the commlink.

"Keep giving me a signal, turn on the lamps, and don't forget where you're supposed to stand."

She ignited the engines, drew the canopy down, and slammed the door to the cargo section. Checklist. My God, it was hard to ignore old habits. But she had no time for a checklist.

"Negative," said Carson. "All bets are off. The crabs are pushing us to the end of the wall. How far away are you?"

She lifted into the air. "I'll be overhead in two minutes." She locked the DF on Carson's signal, swung around, and hit the burners. The landing gear warning lamp blinked at her: the treads were still down. Leave them that way. The shuttle rolled over a sea of silver-tinged foliage. Look for the hole.

Maggie's hole.

She reached behind her into the supply cabinet for a fresh pulser, and laid it on the seat beside her.

Carson and Janet were defending themselves with sticks. Carson clubbed and jabbed the creatures until the wood shattered. Janet swept large numbers of them over the side. But it seemed hopeless, and they had already exchanged a final questioning glance, looking down the side of the wall, when lights blazed overhead.

The shuttle crashed through the vault of the forest. It was wider than its landing surface. But it came down with treads extended and spotlights flashing.

"I see you," said Hutch. "Can you disengage?"

One of the creatures stabbed Carson's good ankle. But he had seen it coming, and he rolled away before the scalpel could penetrate deep.

"Negative," said Janet.

The black hull, ringed by running lights, was coming in directly on top of them. "Heads up," said Hutch.

The top of the wall was alive with the creatures. How much of us, wondered Carson, do they think there is to go around? In that frightful moment, the notion of all those crabs after two people struck him as absurd. And he laughed.

"Hit the deck," said Hutch. "Look out for the treads."

They went down and one of the brachyids bit Carson's right thigh. Janet hit it with her stick. The agony was blinding.

The treads came in over his head.

Hutch pushed the stick forward. The top of the wall was ribbon-thin. Alive. The battle disappeared beneath her. The shuttle had visual capabilities below its treads, of course, but Hutch elected not to use them. Just one more distraction. She focused instead on the dimensions of her landing site. Keep level. Keep centered.

Rely on Janet and Frank to get out of the way.

"Stay low," she said. She released the cockpit canopy, and raised it.

Almost down.

Carson screamed. She cut off his channel. No distractions. Not now.

She looked back along the wall. Keep in the middle.

"I'm here, Janet," she whispered.

She jounced down, lifted again. With a little luck, the crabs were running for cover. Do it right. No second chance.

The treads settled.

Contact.

She eased off, got a green board, grabbed the pulser, and leaped out onto the wing.

"Let's go."

Janet already had hold of the boarding ladder. She was covered with blood and dirt and her eyes were wild. Hutch made no effort to be gentle. She seized her shoulder, yanked her up, and pushed her toward the cockpit. Then she went back for Carson.

He wasn't visible. But there were crabs down there. Churning, wall-to-wall crabs. Then she heard him, and saw a hand trying to get hold of the port wing, on the other side of the shuttle. "Coming," she said. She took the shortest route, across the cowling rather than back through the cockpit. The hand was gone when she got there. Carson was on the ground, at the edge, trying to beat back the clicking, jabbing horde.

He called her name.

The wing stuck out over the abyss. "Jump for it, Frank," she said. She sprawled down flat on her belly and anchored a foot against the hatch to provide purchase. "Do it—"

He threw a glance toward her. One of the things had fastened onto his leg and was cutting him. Without a word, he leaped, throwing both arms across the wing. She tried to grab his trousers to haul him up but she had to settle for his shirt, his ribs, and she couldn't get a good grip.

He grabbed wildly at the smooth metal. Hutch was dragged half off the wing. Janet—

And she was there. She was taller than Hutch, longer, and she scrambled alongside, leaned down, and snatched him back. Snatched them both back.

For years afterward, I was unable to write, or speak, about that terrible night. This was to have been our shining moment, the peak of all our careers. God knows, I felt safe enough when we started. We were well-armed. And we were in a land that had lately served a great civilization. I did not believe that serious predators could have survived such a period.

Nevertheless, I failed to take adequate precautions. It cost the lives of two of the finest people I have ever known.

— Frank Carson

Quoted in "Overnight on Krakatoa," by Jane Hildebrand, The Atlantic, Oct 11, 2219

Carson sounds as if he forgot he also managed to lose a shuttle pilot on that trip. His name, for the record, was Jake Dickenson.

— Harvey Sill, Letter published in The Atlantic, Oct 25, 2219

25 On board NCK Catherine Perth. Wednesday, April 13; 1800 GMT

They recovered Maggie's body at about noon, local time. They also found parts of Jake's clothing and equipment. There was no sign of George, other than a few bumed-out areas. The brachyids, if they were still in the neighborhood, kept out of the way of the heavily armed landing party.

Harvey Sill led the mission. Hutch went along as guide, but she needed tranks to hold herself together.

On their return to the Perth, Maggie's body was placed in refrigeration, a memorial service was scheduled, and formal notifications were sent to Kosmik and the Academy. To Carson's knowledge, it was the first time anyone had been killed in field work by a native life form.

Captain Morris directed preparations for the memorial with a mounting sense of outrage mixed with satisfaction that he had failed to make his point with his superiors but been proved right. However, he could expect to be held responsible by Corporate. He had never before lost a crewman or passenger, and he now had three to account for. Worse, the mission had been unauthorized.

"I hope you're aware," he told Truscott, "what you've got us into."

She was aware. She'd assumed the professionals knew what they were doing, and had trusted them. It was a mistake she'd made before, but she didn't know any other way to operate. You have to trust the people who are close to the action. If once in a while things go wrong, you take the heat. "I'm sorry I've created a problem for you, John," she said.

He missed the quiet irony. "A little late for that. The question is, what do we do now?"

They were in the captain's conference room. Truscott had followed the progress of the recovery party on the command circuit, had watched the body come back, and felt little patience with Morris, enclosed in his own narrow envelope. How do we get people like you in positions of authority? "I told you," she said, "that if a problem developed, I would see to it that you were absolved of responsibility. And I will."

"I know you will try." Morris's throat trembled. It was unlike him to stand up to anyone who was in a position to damage him. "Nevertheless," he said righteously, "three people are dead."

"I understand that."

"I'm captain here. I expect to be associated with this disaster for the rest of my career. There'll be no escaping it."

It's a terrible thing to listen to a grown man whine. "I rather think," she said, "that the unofficial culpability, if any, will attach to Dr. Carson."

Morris was glad to hear that. But he was too smart to show his satisfaction. Instead, he sat for some moments peering sadly off into a corner, as if he were considering the varieties of disaster which can befall even the most capable men.

Truscott suspected that when she was gone, he would call up a coffee and a cinnamon roll. Emotional encounters, she knew, always left him hungry.

"You'll need some reconstructive surgery when you get home. Meantime, stay off it as much as you can." The ship's physician, a grandmotherly type with an easygoing, upbeat bedside manner, irritated Carson. He had never much liked cheerful people. "Neither of you will be able to walk for about twelve hours," she told him and Janet. "Afterward, I want you both to stay off your feet for several days. I'll let you know when."

Janet was sitting up, examining her anesthetized left leg. "When do we get out?" she asked.

"There's no indication of an infection or complication, but we don't have much experience with this sort of thing. The brachyids injected you with a protein compound that seems to have no purpose. It might make you a little sick, but that will be the extent of it."

"Venom?" asked Carson.

"Probably. But you're not a local life form. So you got off lucky. Anyway, I want to keep an eye on you until morning. If nothing develops by then, you can go back to your quarters." She checked her lightpad. "You have a visitor. May we show him in?"

"Who is it?" asked Carson.

"Me." Harvey Sill appeared in the doorway. "I've got some information for you."

The doctor excused herself, while Sill asked how they were doing. "Pretty good," Carson said. Truth was, he hadn't slept since they'd brought him aboard. "What've you got?"

"A reading on the syzygy."

"On the whatl"

"The lunar alignment. Remember? You wanted to know how long it had been since the four moons lined up?"

A lot had happened since then, and Carson had forgotten. "Oh, yes," he said. It seemed trivial now.

"It's been a while. We make it 4743 B.C., terrestrial."

He tried to make the numbers fit, and had no luck. "That can't be the one we're looking for."

"Why not?"

"It's too recent. We know they had interstellar travel as early as the twenty-first millenium B.C. The space station is primitive, so it should predate that. Do we have an event that happened more than twenty-three thousand years ago?"

Sill consulted his pad. "One of the moons has an orbit at a steep angle to the others. Which means that they hardly ever line up. Prior to the one in 4743, you have to go back over a hundred thousand years."

"That can't be right."

Sill shrugged. "Let me know if we can do anything else for you." He smiled at Janet, and left the room.

"It was worth a try, I guess," said Carson. "The orbiter may have been up there a long time, but not a hundred thousand years."

"Maybe the photos are simulated."

"Must be." His eyes slid shut. The room was getting sunlight just then. It was warm and sleep-inducing. Something connected with the station had been bothering him when the business with the crabs started. He needed to think about it, to reach back and find it. "Janet," he said, "think about the ruins for a minute."

"Okay."

"We didn't really get to see much of the harbor city. But did it look to you like the kind of city that a high-tech race of star-travelers would have built?"

"You mean the steel and concrete?"

"Yes. And the evidence we had of extensive water travel. I thought the collapsed bridge looked like something we might have built."

"We're star-travelers."

"We're just starting. These people had been at it for thousands of years. Does it make sense they'd still be using brick walls, for God's sake?"

"Maybe," she said. "What are you trying to say?"

"I don't know." The air was thick. It was hard to think. "Is it possible the interstellar civilization came first! Before the cities and the space station?"

Janet nodded. "The evidence points that way. We tend to assume continual progress. But maybe they slid into a dark age. Or just went downhill." She punched a pillow and finished with a rush of emotion: "That's what it is, Frank. It'll be interesting to see what the excavations show."

"Yes," said Carson. But somebody else will get to do that. I'm sure as hell not going back down there.

His legs were anesthetized, and he felt only a pleasant warmth in them.

While Janet slept, Carson withdrew into the back of his mind. The sense of general well-being that should have accompanied the tranks never arrived. He was left only with a sense of disconnectedness. Of watching from a distance.

He went over his decisions again and again. He'd failed to take seriously the possibilities of attack. Failed to consider any danger other than a single, dangerous predator. Failed to provide adequate security.

The room grew dark. He watched the moons appear one by one in his view panel. They were cold and white and alive. Maybe everything in this system was alive: the sun, the worlds, the things in solar orbit. Even the continents. The moons aligned themselves, formed up like a military unit, like brachyids.

Syzygy.

He was awake. Drenched with sweat.

Beside him, Janet slept peacefully.

Syzygy.

It had last happened in 4743 B.C. And the era of the Monuments had ended, as far as they knew, around 21,000 B.C.

He picked up a lightpad, and began writing it all down. Assume that the people who had lived in the harbor city had put up the space station. Assume also that the station had ended its useful life shortly thereafter, because it was primitive, and would quickly have become obsolete. But there were no other stations, more advanced ones, so the harbor city and the planetary civilization had ceased activity. Had they perhaps not outlived their orbiter?

The time span between the last syzygy and the (supposed) end of the Age of Monuments was approximately sixteen thousand years.

DISCONTINUITIES

Beta Pac III Quraqua Nok 21.0OOBC 9000 16,OOO BC 4743 BC 1000 400 AD

Again, there were increments of eight thousand years.

He stared at the numbers a long time.

And he thought about the space station. Why had its occupants tied themselves into their chairs and opened the hatches?

Carson remembered the old twentieth-century story of the cosmonaut who was stranded in orbit when the Soviet Union dissolved. He was circling the Earth, and one day the country that put him up just wasn't there anymore. Maybe these people got stranded too. Something happened on the ground. Something that cut off all hope of return. And out of grief, or desperation, they had let in the night.

Maybe the discontinuities weren't gradual events. Maybe they were sudden, overnight disasters. Okay, that seemed ridiculous. But where did it lead? What other evidence did he have? How could it connect with Oz?

Oz was always the final enigma. Understand Oz, he thought, and we understand the whole puzzle.

Clockwork.

Whatever it is, it happens every eight thousand years. Had there been an event on Beta Pac III in 13,000 B.C.? And on Nok around 8000 B.C.? Yes, he thought, knowing Henry would not have approved this sort of logical leap. But it seemed likely.

What kind of mechanism could produce such an effect?

After a while, he slept again, but not well. He woke to find that daylight had returned. Hutch and Janet were talking, and he got the impression from the way their voices dropped that he had been the topic. "How are you doing?" Hutch asked solicitously.

"I'm fine."

Janet pushed her left leg out from under the sheet and flexed it. Tit's coming back," she said.

Carson felt better, but was content to lie still.

"Hutch was saying," said Janet, "that there's a memorial service this evening."

He nodded, and felt a fresh twinge of grief. He knew Hutch had gone back to the surface, and he asked about the trip. She described it briefly, in general terms. Maggie had died in the fall. No predator had got at her afterward. Thank God for that. "It must have been pretty quick," she added. "Sill was all business. He wishes we'd go away, and he blames us for Jake's death. He hasn't said it, but it's obvious." She stopped suddenly, and he realized she was sorry she'd said that.

He changed the subject. "Here's something you might be interested in." He fumbled around in the bed, found his lightpad, and passed it over.

Hutch's eyebrows went up. Then she held it so Janet could see. "We've got the eight-thousand-year factor again. I'd say the coincidence is getting pretty long."

Carson agreed. "I can't even begin to formulate an explanation. Could there be something in the wiring of intelligent creatures that breaks out every eight thousand years? Like Toynbee's notions about the cycles of civilizations? Does that make any sense at all?"

"I don't think so," said Janet.

Hutch was still looking at the pad. "All three places," she said, "have strange artifacts. The artifacts are obviously related, and they tie things together. Something has to be happening. And we have it by the tail."

"Tail," said Janet. "It's a cosmic horgon that shows up periodically and blows everything away." She was propped up against three pillows, rapping her fingertips against the tray table that stood by the side of her bed.

"Can I get you," she asked Hutch, "to do a diagram?"

"Sure." Hutch picked up the remote and opened the wall to reveal a display. "What do we want?"

"Let's get a look at the relative positions of Beta Pac, Quraqua, and Nok."

Hutch put them up. Beta Pac floated directly on the edge of the Void. Quraqua lay more inshore, fifty-five light-years away, in the general direction of Earth. Nok was lower on the arm, a hundred fifteen light years distant.

"Okay," said Janet. "Let's add the dates of the discontinuities."

Carson understood what Janet was looking for: a connection between dates and distances. But he couldn't see anything. If their guesswork was correct, the earliest known event had happened on Beta Pac III around 21,000 B.C. But there was no discernible order to what happened after that. A second event on Nok five thousand years later. And a third on Quraqua seven thousand years after that. It was chaos.

On a whim, Hutch plotted Earth's position. It was far out of the picture. They all looked at it, and it seemed to Carson they were missing something.

Janet was already gone from the medical facility when Carson, with some help, dressed and prepared to return to his quarters. They gave him a motorized wheelchair, and he was testing it (and grumbling) when an attendant informed him the captain wanted to see him.

The attendant led Carson to a small examining room. It was furnished with two chairs, a gurney, a basin, and a supply cabinet. "He'll be right with you," he said, withdrawing.

It required little to bring Carson's dislike for Morris to the surface. The symbolic gesture of forcing him to wait, of demonstrating that Carson's time was of less value than the captain's, irritated him. He wondered whether there was any reason he should tolerate this, and was about to leave when the captain strode in, told him pontifically to "be at ease," dropped his hat on the gurney, and pulled up a chair with the air of a man who had important business waiting elsewhere. "Well, Carson," he said, "I guess we really stuck our ass in it this time."

"I guess we did, Captain." Carson's blood pressure started to rise.

Morris' gaze had a waxy quality. It slid off Carson's shoulder. "I wanted to say that I'm sorry about the loss of your colleagues."

"Thank you. I appreciate that. And I'm sorry about Jake."

The captain nodded. "He'll be missed." He looked straight ahead, at nothing in particular. Carson's impression was that he was striving for an appearance of stricken contemplation. "You know I was against all this from the beginning. If I'd had my way, none of this would have happened."

/ wish you'd been more forceful, Carson thought, but said nothing.

"Tell me, did you learn anything of significance down there?"

Carson was surprised by the question. "Yes," he said. "I think we did."

"Thank God for that, Doctor. With three people dead, we can at least be grateful the mission had a point." He slightly underscored Carson's title, as if it were something that needed to be stepped on.

"It had a point." Carson felt old. "That's not the same as saying it was worth the cost."

"I understand." Morris had a slight wheeze. "I would have you know that the loss of a crewman and two passengers is no small matter. There is paperwork to be done, explanations to be made. And regardless of the fact that the command of this ship is in no way culpable, the incident will nevertheless reflect poorly on me. You have certainly made your presence felt, sir."

"I regret that we have been a problem."

"No doubt. Unfortunately, prudence sometimes comes late. Well, no matter now. There's a memorial service this evening at 1900 on the shuttle deck."

Carson smiled. "Of course." He shifted his weight, uncomfortable at feeling helpless before this man. "Is there anything else?"

"No." Morris' eyes found him again. This time they did not waver. "I'm sorry for you, Doctor."

There was no question that the crew of the Perth had liked Jake Dickenson.

Oversized photos of Jake, George, and Maggie dominated the walls. Jake sat in his cockpit; George had been photographed against a rocky shore, hatless and thoughtful; and Maggie, a head shot only, intense eyes, dark hair falling over one shoulder.

Approximately ninety people gathered for the ceremony. The crew wore uniforms with black arm patches; the passengers eschewed the colorful clothing which was the fashion of the time.

It was mercifully short. Jake's friends and shipmates described good times shared, the man's kindness, favors done but never before revealed. Some also recalled brief moments spent with Maggie or George.

Carson was pleased that no one seemed to be blaming him. We are in it together, they said, in several different ways.

The captain presided, clad in formal dark blue. He noted this was the first time the Catherine Perth had lost anyone. He would miss Jake, and although he hadn't really had the opportunity to get to know the deceased members of the Academy team, he was assured they were fine people, and he regretted their loss. Here he paused and his gaze swung slowly around the walls, lingering on each photo, coming finally to rest on the needle-nose prow of the shuttle.

"We can take our consolation," he said somberly, "in knowing they died advancing the cause of human knowledge." His eyes were half-closed. "They understood the risks, but they never hesitated." To Carson, it sounded as if he were already planning his defense before the commission that would surely investigate the accident. "We can offer no higher praise for Jake, Maggie, and George." He glanced toward Carson, and requested the consideration of the Almighty on the assemblage. Carson thought that his friends deserved a better send-off than this hackneyed, dogeared ramble. But Morris rolled on.

When at last he finished, Carson wheeled forward.

He took out his own prepared remarks and glanced at them. They seemed dry and overblown. Too much like the captain's platitudes. Melanie Truscott, watching silently from a position near the statboard, smiled encouragement.

He slid the pad back into his pocket. "I did not know Jake as long, or as well, as you did. But he died with my people, trying to help us." Carson looked at Hutch. "When we lose someone, there can never be an adequate reason. But they knew, and it's important that you know, that they were not lost on some trivial, arbitrary, sightseeing trip. What lies below matters. Jake, George, and Maggie are forever part of it. As are we all." He paused and looked around the assemblage. "I'm sorry. We've paid with our blood. I wish it were otherwise."

The crowd did not disperse. Bound by common loss, they drifted up to the forward lounge, where the lights were brighter than usual and three white candles had been lit. People collected in small groups.

It was the first time Hutch had experienced death on a starship. She had always realized that the interstellars, hauling their fragile cargoes of environment and people, created intense, if temporary, societies. People felt closer, united against a hostile universe. Antagonisms that might have played out to unhappy conclusions on the broad stage of a planetary surface tended to break down in the observation lounges and on the shuttle decks. And the corollary, she realized, was that disaster hit harder. There were no bystanders between the stars.

Most of the tables were occupied. Hutch wandered among them, exchanging stories, sometimes just listening. She was hurting that night. Occasionally, she got up in the middle of a conversation and walked to a spot where she could be alone. No one took offense.

Truscott drifted in, and filled a wineglass. "The Ashley Tee is alongside," she told Carson. "They can take your team off when you're ready. But you're welcome to stay with us, if you like. Your survey ship won't have much in the way of medical assistance should you require it."

"Thanks," said Carson. "I'm sorry about all the trouble."

"I'll survive." She managed a smile. "Frank, has John spoken to you?"

"Not in any substantive way. I know he's unhappy."

"He means well. But he's frustrated. He's lost people, and he's worried about his reputation. This isn't a good time for him."

"I know. But considering what others have lost, I have a hard time sympathizing." Truscott, for one, would be in even more trouble. "What will you do now?" he asked.

"Don't know. Write a book, maybe. There's a commission forming to see whether we can adapt terraforming techniques to improving things at home. I'd be interested in joining that."

Carson grimaced. "Can you do much without kicking up tidal waves and earthquakes?"

Her smile illuminated the table. "Yes, we can. We can do quite a lot, as a matter of fact. The problem is that too often the only people who can act don't want change. Power doesn't so much corrupt as it breeds conservatism. Keep the status quo." She shrugged. "Caseway thinks the only solution is to move a small, well-educated, well-trained group to a place like Quraqua, and start over. I'm inclined to agree with him that the home world is a lost cause. But I don't think human nature will change just because we send out a contingent with sheepskins."

"You don't believe the Quraqua experiment will work?"

"No." She sipped her drink. "I'm not a pessimist by nature. At least, I don't think I am. But no: I think the nature of the beast is intrinsically selfish. Quraqua is to be the new Earth. And I suspect it will be. But education makes a difference in the short run, at best. Train a jerk all you want; in the end, you've still got a jerk."

Carson leaned forward. "You think we're that bad?"

"Homo jerkus," she said. "Just read your history." She looked at her watch. "Listen, I have to go. When they write about this, make sure they spell my name right. By the way, I have some messages for you." She fished three envelopes out of a pocket, and handed them to him. Then she turned and walked toward the exit.

The envelopes were standard dispatch holders from the Perth communication center. Two were from Ed Horner. The first said: SORRY TO HEAR ABOUT COLLISION. HOPE ALL IS WELL. FIRST PRIORITY IS CREW SAFETY. TAKE ANY ACTION TO PROTECT YOUR PEOPLE.

The second was dated two days later. It authorized Carson to use the Ashley Tee as he saw fit. "Within reason."

Hutch came up behind him. He showed her the messages. "What do you think?" he asked.

"About what we do now?"

"Yes."

"Restrict ourselves to aerial survey. And then go home."

Carson agreed. He had no heart left for the world of the Monument-Makers. "Tell me what you know about the Ashley Tee"

She sat down. "It will have a two-man crew. Their specialty is broad-based survey. They look for terrestrial worlds, and they do some general research on the side. They are not designed for ground work."

"Will they have a shuttle?"

"Yes," she said. "But why would you want a shuttle if we're going to stay off the surface?"

"Hutch, there are whole cities down there. We'll want to do some flybys. Find out what we can."

"Okay. The Ashley Tee is a Ranger-class EP. It's small, and its shuttle is small. The shuttle is not designed for atmospheric flight, by the way. It's a flying box."

"Not good for atmospheric flight, you say? Can it be done? Can you do it?"

"I can do it. It'll be clumsy. And slow. But sure I can do it."

Hutch had never looked better. Candlelight glittered in her dark eyes and off her black onyx earrings. He sensed a depth, a dimension, that had not been there before. He recalled his first meeting with her, among the monoliths at Oz, when she had seemed a trifle frivolous.

Janet joined them. She'd had a little too much to drink, and she looked disheartened. The shimmering rim of the world rolled across the observation port. They were over the night side, but the ocean and the cloud cover glittered.

Hutch was trying to get a look at the third envelope. "What's the other one say?"

"It's from Nok." He tore it open.

FRANK. HAVE COMMANDEERED PACKET. ON MY WAY. HANG ON. DAVID EMORY.

"Well," smiled Janet, "we're getting plenty of help. It would've all been a trifle late. But you have to give them credit for trying."

Carson laughed. "David's figured out that we've got something here. He's interested."

Hutch reassured everyone she was fine, and stayed in the forward lounge long after Carson and Janet had gone. She could not bear the thought of being alone that night.

Alcohol had no effect. Occasionally someone drifted over, sat down, tried to start a conversation. But she could not follow any of it. She almost believed she could will George to come through the door. That he was still at the other end of the commlink.

She forced herself to think about other things. About Carson's idea that the space station was relatively recent. That there had been a dark age.

She cleared the table and took out her lightpad.

Eight-thousand-year cycles.

She drew a line across the top of the field. Void here. Beta Pac III there. On the edge of the arm. Land's end. And Quraqua? Well back. Fifty-five light-years. Toward Earth. She sketched in Nok, ninety-eight light-years from Quraqua, a hundred fifteen from Beta Pac.

She wrote in the dates of the known events: 21,000 and 5000 B.C. at Beta Pac; 9000 and 1000 B.C. at Quraqua; 16,000 B.C. and A.D. 400 at Nok. Round the 400 date off to zero. Fill out the eight-thousand-year cycle. Assume events on Beta Pac at 13,000 B.C., on Nok at 8000 B.C., and on Quraqua, when? 17,000 B.C.

She looked at the result a long time. Looked out the window at the world of the Monument-Makers. Strings of islands. A jade ocean. The continent around the other side.

They had known something. They had built Oz, and cube moons, and a greater Oz here.

Why?

When she looked back at the lightpad, she saw it. And it was so obvious, she wondered how they could have missed it for so long.

She went back to her quarters, generated a map, and checked the numbers. Everything fit.

TO: COMMISSIONER, WORLD ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SMTTHSONIAN SQUARE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

FROM: DIRECTOR, BETA PAC TEAM

SUBJECT: MISSION STATUS

WE'VE LOST MAGGIE AND GEORGE DURING ATTACK BY LOCAL LIFE FORMS. PLEASE MAKE APPROPRIATE NOTIFICATIONS. BOTH DIED ATTEMPTING TO PROTECT THEIR COLLEAGUES. MAJOR DISCOVERIES AWAIT ARRIVAL OF FULL-SCALE EXPEDITION. REPORT FOLLOWS. WE WILL REMAIN, AS RESOURCES PERMIT, WITH THE ASHLEY TEE.

CARSON