Louis Nenda wished to travel separately from the Pride of Orion for a very specific reason. Julian Graves, as you might expect of a numb-nuts Ethical Council member, was a hopeless pacifist who did not believe in the use of weapons. Maybe it hadn't been Graves's idea to add a "survival team" to the party, but it was unlikely that he had fought against it. Arabella Lund—whoever she might be—had trained them, and she was one of Graves's buddies. So he trusted her and them. Nenda, on the other hand, trusted nobody but himself, and he had made too many blind and desperate leaps through Bose nodes to leave to chance whatever might lie on the other side.
Long before the Have-It-All made the final Bose transition, the ship had every weapons port open and every weapon primed. All warning sensors were on full alert. The ship was ready to fire on command, to make another Bose jump, or to run a high-speed route for whatever cover might exist. Nenda had also silenced any device that might signal their presence to an unfriendly listener. If anyone's signal beacon served as a homing signal for enemy fire, it would not be Louis Nenda's. What those morons on the Pride of Orion chose to do was up to them.
The Have-It-All emerged from the node and floated free in space, its drives turned off. Nenda took one look at the warning displays and released a long-held breath.
"Nothing. Not one blessed thing."
He meant that he saw no signs of anything dangerous, but Atvar H'sial, at his side, was receiving the input of other sensors tuned to her own echolocation vision. Her pheromonal output murmured, "Less than nothing." When Nenda turned to stare, she became more specific. "We are supposed to find here the home world of the Marglotta, are we not? It is the presumed source of much strangeness and who-knows-what wonders of alien technology, priceless when returned to the Orion Arm. Tell me, then. Where are these treasures?"
Nenda turned on the raft of displays not dedicated to warnings. The Have-It-All should have emerged close to the Marglotta home star, somewhere within a complex stellar system. All that showed on his screen was a central disk of darkness against a faint background of distant stars.
He scanned the other monitors. "Nothing at any wavelength. What gives? Has the Marglotta star been turned into a black hole? And where are the planets?"
The pheromonal reply from Atvar H'sial was tinged with uneasiness. "There are planets, in abundance. But all are cold. Too cold for liquid water, too cold for a breathable atmosphere."
"No air, no water. So there's no life. Unless the Marglotta don't need any of that?"
"But they do, Louis. Remember, they were air breathers just as we are air breathers. They could not survive on any of the worlds we see."
"Master Nenda, if I may with respect add to this discussion." Kallik, crouched at Nenda's side, had access to the same displays and was following Nenda's spoken version of the conversation with Atvar H'sial. "The main body that you see on the screen cannot be a black hole. Our mass detectors indicate that it contains as much matter as a large star, and this is confirmed by the periods of revolution of the planets. However, a black hole of such a mass would have a diameter of only a few kilometers. What we observe is a dense object several tens of thousands of kilometers in diameter, at just a couple of hundred degrees above absolute zero."
"The size of a large planet, but as heavy as a star. A white dwarf?"
"Except that it gives off no energy. I wonder." The Hymenopt hesitated.
"Spit it out, Kallik. No time to get coy with me."
"The body that we see does not lie at the end of any natural stellar evolutionary sequence known in our own spiral arm. It appears to be solid matter in a cold, crystallized form. Could it be that the laws of physics are different in the Sag Arm?"
"That is at best a remote possibility." Atvar H'sial had been receiving pheromonal translation through Nenda, and her response revealed her chemical scorn at such an idea. "The laws of physics are the same throughout the universe."
"Maybe. But either way we got us a mystery."
"I think not. Louis, there is one other possible answer. Ask Kallik if she believes that the star arrived in its present state through natural processes."
As soon as she received the question, Kallik shook her round head. "I can see no way for natural processes to achieve such a result."
"Very good." Atvar H'sial nodded as Nenda gave her that reply, and went on, "Tell Kallik, then it must have reached its present state through unnatural processes. The star has been drained of its energy, by some external agent."
"I concur. And the same is true for the big planet." Kallik gestured to the bank of monitors. "Observe. It is supernaturally cold. Nothing in this whole system is warm enough to radiate significant amounts of energy."
"Not quite nothing. Not any more." Nenda pointed to one of the monitors, where the signal beacon of another ship suddenly flashed bright against the dark span of the Gulf. "Look at those dummies. They're certainly radiating energy. They come through the Bose node into possible danger, an' they're all lit up for the holidays. I'll bet you Hans Rebka is foaming at the mouth, but he don't have final say on the Pride of Orion. Lucky for them there's nothing sittin' here waitin' to wipe 'em out."
"Nothing now." The chill in Atvar H'sial's words was that of the frozen stellar system to which they had come. "But at some time, Louis, the fusion processes of that star were halted and it was depleted of its energy. Something has been at work here on a scale that I find hard to imagine."
"The Builders?"
"They are certainly capable of it. Yet this does not fit with my perceptions of Builder activities."
"Kallik? Do you think the Builders might have done this? Atvar H'sial says no."
"With respect, Master Nenda, I must agree with Atvar H'sial. This does not have the feel of a Builder artifact."
"So where do we go from here? At, do you think we're safe in this system?"
"I believe that we are safe for the moment. The continued existence of the Pride of Orion supports that idea. Its crew must be as puzzled as we are, since this is clearly not the system of the Marglotta."
"We should have known that all along. We told 'em that no Polypheme ever tells the truth unless it has to."
"Congratulations to us on our own perspicacity. However, self-praise does us little good. This is not the place where we thought to arrive. I repeat, it is not the system of the Marglotta."
"Damn right. It's colder than a witch's cul-de-sac."
"And I am at a loss to suggest what we should do next."
"Ten heads might be better than five. Let's go an' see if Graves and his bunch have any bright ideas."
"In order to do that, Louis, we must either travel or send signals to them."
"Then that's what I guess we gotta do."
"Either signals or motion will reveal our existence and our position."
"But according to you, At, for the moment we don't need to worry too much about that." Nenda turned on the Have-It-All's signal beacon. "There. Now everybody knows we're here." He activated the intercom to the pilot's cabin. "Hit them buttons, J'merlia, an' take us to rendezvous. It's time to compare notes. Let's give the others a chance to show off how smart they are."
The Have-It-All was Louis Nenda's pride and joy and his most treasured possession. Allowing J'merlia to serve as its pilot represented a triumph of reason over emotion.
Nenda's homeworld, Karelia, wasn't the sort of place that went in for formal education. Survival was the limit of most people's ambition. Maybe because of that, Louis despised anything that might be labeled as philosophical thought. But he had learned a thing or two in the school of hard knocks, and one of them was that if somebody or something did a job better than you ever would or could, it made sense to let them. J'merlia had instincts and eyesight and reflexes that Nenda could not match. So, J'merlia would fly the ship.
In the same way, Kallik had superior analytical ability, while Atvar H'sial possessed a great knowledge of Builder history. Nenda suspected that Darya Lang knew even more, but he wasn't about to head into that territory. Atvar H'sial's satisfaction when Darya was left behind on the other ship had sent a pheromonal message you could read at a hundred meters.
And amid all this talent, what did Louis Nenda himself do? He knew the answer to that. He did anything left over that had to be done, and he examined anything that made his guts rumble uneasily for no defined reason. While the Have-It-All and the Pride of Orion closed in on each other, he took a closer look at the planets orbiting their frozen primary.
Ignoring the usual space rubble of minor planetoids and comets, the count was unusually high. The tracking equipment on the Have-It-All reported forty-seven sizeable bodies, eighteen of them massive enough to maintain some kind of atmosphere. Few of them did—most were simply too cold—but one oddity would have caught the eye of a space traveller far less seasoned than Louis Nenda. Of the five worlds orbiting within the life-zone region of a normal star of equivalent mass, one planet was a monster larger than all the others combined. It was also the coldest one, almost as big as the star around which it orbited. Based on diameter alone that should make it a gas-giant with a gravitational field strong enough to sweep clear a broad swath of space. That had not happened. The deep ranging system on the Have-It-All revealed the existence of celestial debris, including objects no bigger than orbiting mountains, crisscrossing the orbit of the monster world.
You could not expect to see much from eighty million kilometers, but Nenda focused the Have-It-All's best scope on the planet.
The instrument's smart sensor complained at once. This target provides no emitted radiation at any wavelength useful for imaging. The body is close to absolute zero.
"I know. Do the best you can."
That may still prove unsatisfactory. There is nothing to work with but a meager supply of photons provided by the reflected light of distant stars. Image dwell time may be unacceptably long.
"I'll be the judge of that. Show us what you're gettin' as you go, and stop moanin'."
The image built slowly. At first it was no more than the faintest speckling of points of light, providing the ghostly outline of a disk that might well be no more than a man's wishful thinking. Louis Nenda waited. He had the patience of a man who had once spent two days and nights immersed in the oozy swamps of Doradus Nine, ears and nostrils stopped while he breathed through a narrow straw and troops of Doradan Colubrids sought to exact revenge for the death of their ancestral leader. No chance. If necessary, he would have waited a week.
Photon by unpredictable photon, the picture on the screen strengthened and solidified. Nenda was not seeing the banded cloud patterns of a typical gas-giant. He did not expect it. At such low temperatures, all gases must change state to become liquids or solids. Rather, he thought to see the typical fractal cracking of a methane or nitrogen iceworld surface. But that too was incorrect.
Just what was the pattern, slowly building on the display? He saw linear features, straight as though ruled on the distant ball. Or did he imagine them? He was well aware of the tendency of human eyes to "connect the dots," making from random patterns of light and dark a structured mental picture.
He said to the sensor, "Hey, I need an independent check. Am I really seein' straight lines on the image you're producin', or am I making 'em all up?"
They are real. Would you like an enhancement of linear features?
"Not yet. Wait another ten minutes, then you can—"
The blast of a siren through the interior of the Have-It-All cut off his instructions. It was followed at once by J'merlia's soft voice. "We are about to make our rendezvous with the Pride of Orion. Be prepared for possible anomalous accelerations."
With J'merlia at the controls, the chances of a rough ride were close to zero. But either you did what your pilot told you, or you looked for a different pilot. Nenda said to the imager, "Any problem with building the picture while we rendezvous?"
Yes and no. The ship's movements experienced during rendezvous can readily be corrected using image motion compensation algorithms. However, the planet is turning on its axis. Even if we continue imaging, our final result will be of variable definition, since the dwell time for the whole surface will not be uniform.
"Times are hard all over. Do the best you can, an' keep addin' photons to give us a good picture." Nenda took a final look at the image on the display. Numerous dark dots were coupled by narrow lines to form a fine web over the whole planetary surface. It was exactly the kind of pattern that the mind liked to conjure up—except that in this case, the sensor assured him that what he saw was not just the result of human imagination.
There was one more thing that had to be done before rendezvous. Nenda turned to Atvar H'sial, who had been listening intently to some mysterious two-dimensional data stream of sound.
"At, can I borrow J'merlia for a while? I have a job for him."
"If it will extend into the time of our meeting on the Pride of Orion, you will deprive me of my interpreter."
"I'm not as good with the pheromones as J'merlia, but I can run you a pretty good simultaneous translation."
"Then I agree. You will, of course, owe me a favor. I will go now to J'merlia and command him to follow your instructions."
The Cecropian glided out. Nenda turned to Kallik. "I have a tough one for you."
"Master Nenda, I will operate to the best of my abilities."
"This will need them. While Atvar H'sial and I are gone, I want you and J'merlia to plot out the locations of Bose transition points in the Sag Arm. Mark as many of them as you can, along with associated closest stars and distances."
"Master Nenda, we lack data about the Sag Arm. How are we to locate Bose nodes?"
"If I knew that, would I be askin' for help? You can make a start with the data base from the Polypheme ship. It was all loaded into the banks on the Pride of Orion. You should be able to access that from here."
"Data provided from Chism Polypheme sources are notoriously unreliable."
"Sure they are. But that doesn't mean everything in them is wrong."
He heard the faint sigh of equalizing air pressures. J'merlia had already docked them with the Pride of Orion, and so gently that Nenda had not even felt the contact. Which meant that Louis had to get a move on—the last thing he wanted was somebody on board the other ship deciding to take a look at the interior of the Have-It-All. He had closed the weapons ports as soon as he gave the command to seek the Pride of Orion, but there were plenty of other things he did not want exposed to prying eyes.
He gave a few final instructions to Kallik and hurried out. Behind him, the instrument sensor was turning for sympathy to Kallik, the only organic being remaining in the chamber.
This task cannot be performed well unless the ship moves closer to the target. A simple accumulation of photons will not suffice to provide a first-rate image. There is also the question of resolution. Even with diffraction-limited optics—
Nenda was barely in time. But for the actions of Atvar H'sial he would not have been. The umbilical between the two ships was already in position when he reached the hatch, and Atvar H'sial was standing in front of it. The Cecropian had towered up to her full height, with her black wing cases stretched as wide as they would go to block the whole umbilical. The pheromones wafting from her were wordless, but they betrayed a smoldering anger.
"What's up, At? Give us a bit more room there." Nenda squeezed his way through on her right-hand side. He pushed the wing cases and delicate vestigial wings out of the way, and found himself face to face with a human female. "I see. And who the hell might you be?"
But he could already guess the answer. The only strangers on the Pride of Orion were the "survival experts." This had to be one of that team of five, kept in strict seclusion by Julian Graves.
Nenda could see now why Graves had hidden them. The woman in front of him was fresh-faced and slim. With her big blue eyes and curls of golden hair, she looked about sixteen years old. She ignored his question and stared at Atvar H'sial with obvious curiosity.
"So this is a Cecropian," she said. "Funny, I thought he would be bigger."
"She, not he. The only Cecropians you'll ever meet away from their home world are females. You were standing in Atvar H'sial's way."
"No. She was in mine."
"Same thing. You're lucky she didn't pick you up and squash you flat. Cecropians are strong, an' they don't have much patience with humans. Weren't you briefed on this sort of thing before they let you out of the creche?"
The woman again ignored his words, but she did stop staring at Atvar H'sial. She turned those innocent blue eyes on Louis, and said, "I suppose you must be Nenda. Graves warned us about you."
He knew it was a deliberate come-on, but he couldn't resist. "Warned you of what about me."
"Oh, that you are a thief, and a villain, and probably a murderer. Is it true?"
"Go to hell."
"Graves said that you would cuss and flame and generally act like an uncultured barbarian."
"What do you mean, act? You got the real thing here."
As they spoke, Nenda was reevaluating the woman in front of him and providing an edited pheromonal version of their conversation to Atvar H'sial. The impression of youth came partly from the pale and flawless skin, but beneath it he could see strong tendons in her bare arms. Her eyes might seem innocent, but they were everywhere, scanning him and Atvar H'sial. Her movements were unnaturally rapid and precise, and he guessed at hidden enhancements.
He said, "Do you have a name?" and as the woman in front of him answered he passed a pheromonal message to Atvar H'sial: "Keep crowding us forward along the umbilical. We definitely don't want her near the Have-It-All."
"I am Sinara Bellstock. Born on Miranda, trained on Persephone."
"Louis, I do not like this human female. Her pheromones suggest a desire for continued badinage and intimate discourse with you."
"That's crazy. At, if I listened to you I'd never speak to a human woman."
He said to Sinara Bellstock, "Trained to do what?" At the same time he moved past her, forcing her either to follow him or come into contact with Atvar H'sial. The Cecropian was gliding steadily forward and blocking the whole corridor.
"Trained in martial arts, trained in weapons, trained in diplomacy. Trained to endure pain, trained to be patient, trained to evaluate a situation quickly and then act. Trained to survive."
But not trained to lie, and cheat, or disbelieve half the things that you are told? Then good luck, lady. Because you're going to need it. Without all those other things you wouldn't last ten minutes on half the worlds in the local arm.
Louis did not speak those words to Sinara Bellstock. Nor did he convey them pheromonally to Atvar H'sial, who continued to transmit bursts of suspicion and displeasure. They were at the end of the umbilical, and as they entered the docking chamber of the Pride of Orion he could see four people waiting for them. There was Julian Graves, and E.C. Tally, and behind those two were Darya Lang and Hans Rebka.
Louis Nenda experienced multiple feelings of relief. The effort of speaking to a human and simultaneously holding a pheromonal conversation on a different subject with Atvar H'sial made his head feel like it would split in two. It would be a luxury to sit for a while and just listen to what others had to say.
And then there was the behavior of Atvar H'sial herself. Preoccupied with Sinara Bellstock, for the first time in years the Cecropian was not reacting with suspicion and annoyance to the sight of Darya Lang.
Louis moved forward. He had never thought it could happen, but the sight of Hans Rebka's scowl of greeting and of E.C. Tally eagerly poised to speak brought a smile to his face.