Текст книги "Anvil of Stars"

Автор книги: Грег Бир

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"End of deceleration in twenty seconds," the mom said.

Their weight passed from them until they floated. Martin automatically did the exercises that controlled his inner ear and his stomach.

"Separation will begin in fifteen seconds," the mom said. The snake mother made low string sounds and percussive clicks for the Brothers.

The ladder fields grew brighter. Muffled sounds of matter being rearranged, fake matter growing; Martin's hair stood on end. He thought of the decaying death ship lost in endless cold void, its fake matter fizzling away after ages, mummies of the crew surrounded by eternal haloes of cold dust, undisturbed in the interstellar medium until their arrival.

The cafeteria closed in. Fields jostled them within the smaller, rearranged space. They now occupied the sleeping quarters of the Trojan Horse.

"I told them about the Iliad," Paola whispered to Martin and Ariel. "They were very impressed. And we chose another name for the ship, when we're in disguise, so we don't have to explain Trojan Horse: Double Seed."

More sounds, sliding and scraping, something vibrating like a broken pitch pipe. Trojan Horse/Double Seedbroke free of Greyhoundand Shrike.

All three ships spread apart, each on a different course and schedule, each with a different mission, fifty billion kilometers from Leviathan, still racing at close to light-speed.

"Super deceleration in ten seconds," the mom said.

They had been through this many times before, enough to be used to it, but Martin felt a deep sense of dread: dread of the poised dreamstate, his every move second-guessed by the volumetric fields. He felt them creep around his molecules, taking inventory of his body. And dread as well for what they all would have to face if they succeeded, when the ships came back together: the lies and deceit he knew had been perpetrated on the crews.

"Good luck," Ariel said.

He tried to think of a pleasant scene on Earth, to lock this into his thoughts and avoid visions of the dead.

Instead, he saw as if through a grim documentary that the entire crew had been fed fake matter food, that they were now made of massless coerced points in space; that when the Job was done they would simply dissolve like the Red Tree Runners' Ship of the Law.

The Law would be done at the cost of their being; in fact, they were nothing right at this moment, merely illusions on a ghost ship falling again into brightness to bring death.

His unvoiced moan seemed to echo behind his closed eyes. If he opened his eyes, he would see the others, trying to do little tasks, conversing or just sitting, waiting out the constrained hours. He preferred to be alone with this nightmare.

Twenty-two hours passed.

An hour before super deceleration ended, as planned, Hakim broadcast their first message to the beings around Leviathan. He had created a simple binary signal repeating pi and the first ten prime numbers, without the Brothers' help; the moms had indicated Brother mathematics was most unusual, and not likely to be easily understood.

The signal was adjusted to disguise their velocity. It would reach Leviathan's worlds in twenty-three hours; Trojan Horse/Double Seedwould be twenty-two billion kilometers from the system by then, easily visible to Leviathan's masters.

The mom informed them that Greyhoundand Shrikewere doing well, that all was going as planned.

Martin listened to the mom's voice, acknowledged with a nod that he had heard the news and understood it, closed his eyes again, waited, still not convinced of his reality, his solidity.

Ariel touched his arm. "You don't look happy," she said.

"Nightmare," he said, shaking his head.

"You're not asleep," she said.

"Doesn't matter."

"Want to talk?"

"About what?"

"About after."

He smiled. "After we get the Job done? Or after we've decelerated?"

"After anything," she said.

Martin opened his eyes completely and wiped them to clear his mottled vision. What he saw was still not sharp; Ariel leaned on her elbow a meter away, face blurred, eyes indistinct, mouth moving. He made an effort to listen.

"The Wendys will make their gowns. We'll marry a planet. Do you ever think about that?"

He shook his head.

"I do. I'd like to let it all down, relax, sit in a thick, fresh atmosphere with the sun in the sky… just not worry about anything. Do you think people on Earth ever did that?"

"I suppose."

"I wonder if I'd make a good mother. Having babies, I mean."

"Probably," he said.

"I've just started thinking about being a mother. My thoughts… I've been young for so long, it's hard to imagine actually being grown-up."

"Ariel, I'm not thinking too clearly right now. We should talk later."

"If you want. I don't mind if you don't answer. Do you mind listening?"

"I don't know if I mind anything right now."

"All right," she said. "I'll wait. But we're going to be so busy."

"That will be good," Martin said. "Not having time to think."

"Do you have a voice…" She trailed off. "It sounds so silly, like something Rosa might say. Do you have a voice that tells you what's going to happen?"

"No," Martin said.

"I think I do. We're going to survive, Martin."

"Good," Martin said.

"I'll be quiet." She lay back and folded her hands on her stomach. Martin looked down at her from his seat against the wall.

"She's not as pretty as Theresa," Theodore said, standing over them. "But she's honest. She's resourceful. You could do a lot worse."

"Shut up," Martin said.

Ariel opened her eyes languidly. "Didn't say anything."

"Not talking to you," Martin said, slumping until his legs bumped hers, then sidling up next to her. He reached out and hugged her. She tensed, then sighed and relaxed, turned her face toward his, looked him over from a few centimeters, eyebrows arched quizzically.

"I know I'm not as pretty as Theresa," she whispered. Her vulnerability pricked deep beneath his lassitude.

"Shh," he said.

"You two were good," she said.

He patted her shoulder. "Sleep," he said.

She snuggled closer, gripping his hand with her long fingers.

Trojan Horseended super deceleration at ten percent light-speed. Volumetric fields lifted. They would coast for five days, then begin a more leisurely deceleration to enter the system.

The first response to their signal came on tight-beam transmission from the fourth planet, content simple enough: a close match, with subtle and interesting variations, of Hakim's repetitive code. The first twelve prime numbers were counted out in binary.

Martin examined the message while still dazed from the constraints. Simple acknowledgement, without any commitment or welcome.

Salutary caution in a forest full of wolves. Or supreme confidence mixed with humility…

Hakim sent another message, this time with samples of human and Brother voices extending greetings, his own voice counting numbers, and a list of mathematical and physical constants.

Martin ate his lunch of soup in a squeeze bulb and a piece of cake as he looked over fresh pictures of the fourth planet. Huge and dark, touched with streamers of water vapor cloud, wide black oceans and lighter gray continents.

"When will the other ships finish super deceleration?"

" Shrikein fifty-four minutes, and Greyhoundin one hour, fifty-two minutes," Hakim said. "We can noach them now, if you wish, of course."

"No need," Martin said. "Let them recover first. We need time to work on our disguise. We need to rehearse."

"Sounds like the class play," Erin said, moving in for a closer look at the projected fourth planet.

"We'll follow the script closely," Martin said. He looked around the compartment, making sure the Brothers had recovered from deceleration. They took the process harder than humans and needed two hours disassembled to bring themselves out of funk.

Eye on Sky came forward, Paola at his side. He smelled of some exotic spice Martin couldn't identify: wine and cinnamon, hot resin.

"We are ready," Eye on Sky said.

The bridge of Double Seedtook shape, Brothers and humans orchestrating the final practical and decorative touches.

The crew compartment made sleeping nets for humans and ring beds for Brothers—a series of hoops within which a braid could disassemble and the cords could hang, one or two claws attached to each ring.

Silken Parts and Paola translated the proceedings for all the Brothers.

"We'll have four more days to rehearse," Martin said. "Hakim and Sharp Seeing will keep track of our interchanges with whoever's down there. We'll have an all-crew briefing every twelve hours. If you're not on duty, you're free to contribute to the background. Ariel and Paola will coordinate with Scoots Fast."

"Scoots Fast has requested a name change," Paola said. "He wants to be called Long Slither. It's more accurate. And more dignified."

"Fine by me," Martin said. He followed Hakim and Eye on Sky into the noach "inner sanctum," a small interior compartment screened against outside examination. There was barely room for the three of them.

Eye on Sky contacted Shrikefirst. At the extreme edge of noach range, text messages were most reliable, and Shrike'smessage was projected flat before them. Silken Parts translated the Brother text, a short row of closely spaced curved lines: "We we are safe and still joined in the giant braid. Swift work and firm sand."

The last contact with Greyhoundbefore entry was short and sweet as well: "In orbit and recovered," Giacomo transmitted. "Everybody impatient. Good luck! "

"Giacomo needs to work on his poetry," Erin said wryly. "We're being outclassed."

Hakim, Martin, Paola, and Eye on Sky gathered on the new-made bridge. Panels pulled back to show steady blackness, a close-packed haze of stars.

"This is very splendid," Hakim said, touching the new bulkheads, so different in style from the moms' usual architecture. "Like being on a ship that might have been made by humans, begging the Brothers' pardon!"

"We we also feel that if traveled to the stars, it might have been on such a ship," Eye on Sky said.

Hakim nodded pleasantly, "For the time being, we still use the moms' remotes on a wide baseline, advanced eyes and ears…"

An image of the fourteenth planet, nearest to the Trojan Horse, grew before them in a small star sphere. Martin leaned forward. Mottled, cold blue and green, a gas giant fifty thousand kilometers in diameter, the fourteenth planet was surrounded by twenty-one moons, and more besides. Its mushy upper atmosphere sprouted floating platforms hundreds of kilometers in diameter, needle-like proboscises extending down through the haze to high-pressure regions below. From the center of each platform, a crystal plume of white rose through a ring that glowed bright as fire in the upper, clear atmosphere. Hyperbolic lines of plasma shot from the ring, like threads from this distance, but hot as the filament in a light-bulb.

"Gas wells," Martin said. "Tens of thousands of them. Raising gas from the depths, packing it—somehow—accelerating it in those rings, retrieving it in orbit. Impressive."

"They reveal matter-conversion technology right here," Hakim said. "They do not care to hide it. No platform parts made of normal matter could survive in those depths, nor contain the gases under such conditions. We see the bottom of the fuel chain, which leads to the top—the technology of the platforms themselves."

Eye on Sky rustled and smelled of camphor and pine.

The scene shifted to the next planet nearest to them, number twelve, half a billion kilometers closer to the star, this one a rocky world with a diameter of ten thousand kilometers. The color of the planet's crescent—viewed in close-up—was dark brown with scattered patches of tan and white. "Resolution of about four hundred kilometers," Hakim said. "It may be made of rock and ice. It is cold enough for ammonia and methane to lie solid on the surface, and the atmosphere appears to be mostly nitrogen and argon. There is no large-scale construction—"

Abruptly, the planet darkened as if the illuminated limb were obscured by shadow. Then, within the shadow and along the limb, thin lines of brilliant white appeared like molten silver poured over a surface of carbon soot. The lines curved into circles and ovals, scribed contours, ran straight as great circles. The density of lineation increased, thinner lines within thick, until the entire planet glowed hot silver. Just as abruptly, color returned—but a different color, with different details, grayish-tan with green patches.

Jennifer giggled abruptly, then clapped her fingers to her mouth. "Sorry," she said.

"What in the hell was that?" George Dempsey asked.

Dumbfounded, Hakim looked between his colleagues, then read the fresh chemical analysis. "Pure argon atmosphere. The surface appears to be mostly silicates, fine sand perhaps, small rocks. The green patches are very cold, much colder than the rest of the planet—four or five kelvins."

"I hope Giacomo saw that," Jennifer said, face ghostly. She could not stop her hands from touching her shoulders, her elbows, her knees. She seemed terrified. "If Hans is looking for proof of illusion…"

"Let's not draw conclusions yet," Martin said.

Jennifer giggled again.

The next planet inward that shared the same quadrant of the Leviathan system, number two, orbited scarcely one hundred and fifty million kilometers from the star, barely within a "temperate" zone allowing liquid water. Pale brownish-red, lacking any thick atmosphere, this planet was lumpy with structure. Even with a diameter of over twenty-one thousand kilometers, its outline was remarkably uneven.

"They're showing off again," Paola said. "How tall are those… whatever they are?"

"Hundreds of kilometers tall," Hakim said. "Tens of thousands of them. Cities, perhaps?"

"Are we getting any communications between the planets?" Jennifer asked.

"No artificial radiation leakage," Hakim said. "Except for the energies used to ship gas up from the giant planets. But even those are of a frequency easily interpreted as solar flares. From a few light months away, the system is rich with planets, but quiet."

"So they're not hiding, but they're not attracting attention, either. What about commerce between the worlds?"

"It is ripe with ships like seeds in shore fruit," Eye on Sky said. "Tens of millions of vessels rising up, falling down. Every world takes ships but the twelfth. It orbits alone. The fourth planet is most visited."

"Can we tell if there's any commerce notusing ships?" Martin asked. "Matter transmission—something more sophisticated?"

"Not found any such signs," Eye on Sky said. "If they are using noach, of course we we are not detecting them."

Martin rubbed the side of his nose. "Let's send two messages, one after the other, video with speech accompaniment, the next with Brother text/sound. Coded pictures in polar and rectangular coordinates, one hundred shades, no color, of our ship seen from outside, a Brother assembled and disassembled, and a human male and human female seen from the front, naked. Show our origins related to the three nearest stars. Our fictitious origins, of course…"

"A Voyagermessage," Paola said, smiling. She explained for the Brothers. Silken Parts had already researched this small bit of human history.

When it was finished, Martin projected the message for all to see. Silken Parts and Paola quickly worked to translate it into Brother text, which Eye on Sky approved. He suggested, "Let us add full set of symbols from each written language."

They waited twelve hours. At some six billion kilometers from Leviathan, the first response to their inquiry came from the fourth planet, ten pictures in coordinate video. The mom quickly translated and projected them, one after another.

The pictures showed five different beings. The crew examined the portraits in sequence. The first type was four-legged, slender and graceful looking, with a long, slim neck topped by a short-nosed head with two prominent forward-facing eyes. But for a few features, it might have been a smaller, less stocky version of the Red Tree Runner sauropods. "Where are the hands? " Erin Eire asked.

Nobody answered. The second type stood upright on two thick, almost elephantine legs, with a barrel chest and a small head without apparent eyes. Two sets of arms emerged from its barrel chest, equipped with two sets of many-fingered hands.

"These are the ones who met with the Red Tree Runners," Erin said.

"Sure looks like them," Andrew said.

The third type seemed to be aquatic, having no legs or arms as such, elongated, shark shaped, with wide wing-like fins along their sides, narrow, ridged pointed" heads" with no visible eyes, and fins with finger-like extensions just behind the head. The fourth was a nightmare, a nest of tentacles or legs jointed dozens of places along each length, some tipped with smaller tentacles, others with three-part pincers. The body, dwarfed by the tentacles, was squat and dark.

The image of the fifth type brought gasps from the humans. Reptilian, with a long crested head and a short trunk, and limbs that folded backward at the lower joints, the fifth was much smaller than the preceding types.

Erin reached out to take Ariel's hand. The humans stared in shock and disbelief.

"God damn them," George Dempsey said.

"They don't know where we come from," Cham said. "They've screwed up royally."

Martin nodded. Paola began to explain to Eye on Sky, but the Brother rustled and emitted a strong rosy odor of sympathy. "We we recognize," Eye on Sky said. "This is from your endtime history."

"We've found them," Martin said.

"Don't jump to conclusions," Ariel said softly.

"What other conclusions are there?" Martin asked.

"How many beings have they investigated, how many forms might they have stolen? We still can't be positive."

Martin wanted to bask in this sense of discovery, have the peculiar satisfaction of watching the Killers make a mistake, reveal a weakness. "I want to be positive," he said ambiguously.

"Then think," Ariel said, glancing nervously at the others, as if anticipating a sudden wave of emotion overriding reason. "This could be the originalthey stole their design from."

"Not likely," Martin said. "If the Killers knew them well enough to copy their… bodies, their designs, they'd be dead by now, almost surely…"He turned to the mom. "Do you recognize this type from any of the worlds the Benefactors saved, or any other worlds you know?"

"It does not match any in our records," the mom answered.

Martin turned back to Ariel. "Any other theories?" he asked.

Ariel raised her hands. "I still think we shouldn't jump to any conclusions."

"This is the one," Martin said. "It's the creature they used as a decoy outside the spaceship in Death Valley. I know it is."

Cham laid his hand on Martin's shoulder. "Let's say it is, for now. Doesn't change our plans any. Just another piece of evidence."

"Right," Martin said, shivering off his emotion. "Noach it to Shrikeand Greyhound. Noach all the pictures."

"Let's finish looking at them ourselves, first," Cham suggested evenly, still patting Martin's shoulder.

Martin pulled himself back from his anger. "Sorry," he said.

"We all feel it, Martin," Erin said.

"All of us," Ariel said. She took a deep breath and squatted on the floor.

The next two pictures sketched an orbital path in relation to the fifteen planets, astrogational hints given by binary number measurements triangulating on the nearest stars.

"Very friendly. They're suggesting we decelerate at five g's," Cham said, tracing his finger along the projection, "and go into orbit around the fourth planet."

"Can we survive there?" Andrew asked.

"It is the inexplicable one," Hakim said. "Far too light to be solid, one hundred two thousand kilometers in diameter, there is a cool, solid surface and a thin atmosphere, ten percent oxygen, seventy percent nitrogen, fifteen percent argon and other inerts, five percent carbon dioxide, about six tenths of ship's pressure. Not good to breathe. The surface temperature is fine, a range of ten to twenty degrees centigrade. The gravitational pull is high, however, about two g's."

"The mom can't wrap us in fields," Andrew Jaguar said. "We're not supposed to have that kind of technology."

"We we might disassemble," Eye on Sky warned. "With such weight, there is often no braid control over cords."

Martin held up his hand to cut the discussion. His head hurt abominably. "I don't think that's going to be a problem, one way or another. If they treat us like guests, they'll probably have ways to make us comfortable. If not—" He looked around the cabin. "Why worry?"

"We don't know we'll be invited to the surface," Paola said.

"Not very neighborly if we aren't," Erin said.

"Or they might just kill us," Andrew Jaguar said. "These worlds look like a lot of very sweet candy for curious flies."

"Andrew," Jennifer said testily.

"Nobody can tell me they don't look… just very interesting! Gingerbread house and witch!"

Paola tried to explain this to the Brothers, but Eye on Sky showed with a flourish of head cords that explanation was either not needed or not wanted. No more of our violent fairy tales, Martin thought.

He turned to Eye on Sky. "Do we go in?"

"What is your opinion?" Eye on Sky rejoined. Some of the Brothers smelled of cloves.

Martin nodded. "Sure," he said. "That's why we're here. Jennifer, is this diagram clear?"

"Clear enough," she said. "Silken Parts and I can tell the ship where to go."

Martin turned to the mom. "I assume you'll vanish into the woodwork, so to speak, when the time comes."

"When the time comes," it said, "my presence will not be obvious."

Without warning, the mom made a peculiar noise like a trumpet blat and gently toppled to one side, rebounding against the floor. The crew stared in surprise; before anyone could react, it made a similar noise and rose again, stabilized. "This vessel has been searched for high-density weapons. Examination may have been conducted by noach. My functioning was temporarily interfered with."

"How do they searchby noach?" Jennifer asked, voice squeaky.

"They may query selected atoms and particles within our vessel for their state and position."

Jennifer looked as if she had just opened a wonderful Christmas present, and she turned to Martin, gleeful, clearly believing that her work and theory had been confirmed.

Martin was struck by how much they acted and sounded like eager, frightened children, himself included.

"Will they know the ship has a fake matter core?" he asked the mom. "Could they know you're here?"

"Unless I am mistaken, which is possible but not likely, such a noach examination can only reveal extremes of mass density."

Jennifer slapped her right hand against her thigh; it was obvious she wanted to do more momerath and plug in these new clues.

"Jennifer," he said, "you have work to do?"

"Pardon?"

"Go do it. You're making me nervous."

Jennifer grinned and left the bridge.

"So they know we're not armed with anything lethal," Martin said. "Why did you quit for a moment there?"

"I am not sure."

Martin looked at the mom intently, then returned his attention to the projected images. "Put us into orbit around the fourth planet," he told Hakim and Silken Parts.

Hakim did his momerath and drew the best path and points of drive bursts; the path closely matched that suggested on the transmitted charts. "Steady deceleration of five g's, we will be in orbit within five days, thirteen hours and twelve minutes," Hakim said.

Silken Parts did the same calculations using Brother math, reported the results to Eye on Sky, then turned to Martin. "We agree within a few seconds," he said.

"Noach our plans and the messages to Shrikeand Greyhound," Martin said.

Martin's cabin aboard the Trojan Horsewas less than a fifth the size of his previous quarters and contained only his sleeping net. The crews had not yet finished adding homey touches to the masquerade; he scanned the walls and imagined perhaps posters of Brothers and humans frolicking on beaches beneath a blue-green sky. That isn't too bad. He'd mention the idea to Donna Emerald Sea, who with Long Slither was in charge of ship design now.

He twisted into the net and closed his eyes. He was instantly asleep and in no time at all, it seemed, his wand chimed. It was Jennifer. In long-suffering silence, he crawled from the net, assumed a lotus in mid-air to keep some sort of dignity, and told her to come in.

"Their noach is better than ours," she said. "Much higher level, more powerful than the moms' noach, I mean."

"That's obvious," he said, still groggy.

"I just had a long talk with Silken Parts. We swapped theories on Benefactor technology. Martin, we're going to be way outmatched down there—far more than we were around Wormwood. What these folks had around Wormwood is like a steel trap, and this, this is an atom bomb."

"What do you think they have?" Martin asked.

"They swept us with something—no, that's not right; sweep isn't the right idea, not the right word. They queriedour ship's matter and particles from six billion kilometers. From what I can work out, we couldn't manage that intense a scan at all, ever—and if we could, we couldn't transfer that much data in less than a few weeks."

"Impressive, but what does it imply?"

"If the moms are right, and these folks don'tknow everything there is to know about us now—and frankly, I can't think of a reason why they shouldn't, except maybe bandwidth—"

"Jennifer, I'm not thinking too clearly. You woke me up and I haven't slept since coming out of deceleration."

"I haven't either," Jennifer said, blinking.

"Well, you're superhuman, we all know that."

"Flattery won't get answers any faster," she said much too brightly, her face flushed as if with fever. "Sorry. I'm a little giddy, too. What I'm getting around to saying is, they could turn us into anti-matter right now. Or just enough of us to blow our ship to pieces."

"Are you sure?"

"No. I'm not sure. And obviously, they haven't. But—"

"There's nothing we can do about it."

"I know," she said. "I know that."

"Can you give me any advice about what we can do?"

"Of course, we can't let them know we understand what noach is."

"That'll be easy. I don't understand."

"Or that we know it exists," she said, knitting her brows in irritation. "Silken Parts is working over other implications, and one of them… Are you going to pull a Hans on me?" she asked suddenly.

"Pardon?"

"I'm going to tell you something really big, really scary. Are you going to pull a Hans and vanish into some macho shell right now?"

"I promise, I won't do that," Martin said.

"We thought maybe the twelfth planet changing character, color, maybe that was more proof that parts of this system are illusory. A projection or something. Martin, if they can do what I think they can, it doesn't matter, there isn't any difference. They could make a shell of fake matter around an entire planet, an entire star, just as solid as this ship is. They could redirect or manufacture images as wide as this system in any direction they desired."

"Do they have the energy?"

"I'm guessing yes. They might be tapping the star. From what we can see, the system seems to be rich with volatiles.

Maybe they've held all their resources in reserve, waiting for the main assault."

"Do you have any goodnews?" Martin asked.

Jennifer grinned. "Not fond of endless David and Goliath?"

"It's a living," he said dourly.

"I can do without it myself. But I do have some wild-ass ideas that might be encouraging. I want to noach with Giacomo and do some momerath with him, and I want to hook into the ships' minds. I'm hoping we can collaborate. This is something moms and Brothers and humans need to do together."

"I'll get you some private time with Giacomo. No sweet nothings, though," he chided.

"Strictly business," Jennifer said.

Martin saw the Trojan Horse/Double Seedas an ant crawling into a kitchen, staring all unknowing at giant appliances, instruments of unknown utility, technologies beyond the capacity of its tiny brain to comprehend…

There was so much that made no sense whatsoever.

The twelfth planet continued to change its character every few hours, alternating between three different sets of features, all the same size, all rocky, but radically different in all other ways.

The ninth planet had an eccentric orbit, carrying it outside the orbit of the tenth planet. It was small, perhaps a former moon, though with no surface features. It had an albedo of one, a perfectly reflective mirror at all frequencies.

The eighth planet, a bright orange-yellow gas giant with a diameter of seventy-five thousand kilometers, possessed three large moons. Cables two to three kilometers in diameter hung from the moons to the planet's fluid surface, leaving great whorls in their wakes, like mixers in a fantastic bakery.

The sixth planet, eight thousand kilometers in diameter, appeared to be covered with dandelion fluff, each "seed" a thousand kilometers tall. Incoming space vessels never ventured below the crowns of the seeds. In close-up, between the seed pillars, storms churned a thick atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen and water vapor. Hakim thought this might be a giant farm of some sort, for raising unimaginable creatures or plants, but Martin thought that seemed archaic; one wondered if such powerful beings would still need to eat, much less eat formerly living things.

"Then the creatures might have other uses," Hakim said, eyes glittering with speculation.

"None of which we can guess," George Dempsey cautioned.

"Let us have our fun," Erin said peevishly.

Peering deeper down Leviathan's well, to the fifth planet, nine thousand kilometers in diameter, dull gray, and like the ninth, smoother than a billiard ball, but far from reflective.

And perhaps the most fascinating of them all: the fourth planet, one hundred and two thousand kilometers in diameter, with six moons, three of them larger than Earth, its dark reddish-brown surface radiating heat steadily into space, covered with liquid water oceans with narrow ribbons of continent and low mountains between like stripes on a basketball.