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  Esker tugged his chin. “Well, yes, your reasoning is, uh, reasonable. Have you any further thoughts?”

  “Mainly this. Given the character of the Dominance, I am sure that its members hope for some outcome, some discovery, that will greatly strengthen the Confederacy and therefore themselves. It may be military, it may be economic, it may be something else. I do not know, and doubt that they know, yet. But in their minds, the possibility justifies the effort—which is, actually, a modest investment, a small gamble for a perhaps cosmically large stake.”

  Esker straightened on his bench, as if he were a judge. “And you’re betraying your people?”

  “They are not my people,” Orichalc replied, his natural voice gone soft.

  Lissa stirred. “That will do,” she ordered. Things looked like getting nasty. The expedition could ill afford quarrels.

  Esker shifted his glare to her. “Milady, I’ve had a hard life,” he said. “I’ve learned lessons a patron like you is spared. A traitor once is apt to be a traitor twice.”

  “Our comrade’s motives are honorable,” she clipped. “Watch your language, Remember, it’s going into the log.”

  Embarrassment yielded visibly to relief among the subordinates when Esker hunched his shoulders and growled, “As milady wishes. No offense meant.” And maybe, she thought, that’s true. Maybe he does not perceive his own boorishness.

  Noel plucked up courage to say, “I beg milady’s pardon, but what’s this about a log?”

  “A robotic ship records everything that happens on a voyage, inboard as well as outboard, unless directed not to,” Lissa explained. “It isn’t normally a violation of privacy. We have very [85] little of that anyway, while we travel. As a general rule, at journey’s end, the ship edits everything irrelevant to the mission out of the database. But we can’t foresee what may teach us something that may be valuable in future operations. Psychological stresses are as real as physical, and as dangerous, when you’re bound into places never meant for humans.”

  Had Valen been listening outside, or did he chance to enter at that moment? His body filled the doorframe vertically, though its jambs stood well apart from him. “Pardon me,” he said in his usual mannerly style. “I know this has been a big surprise sprung on you four and you have a sunful of questions; but we’re just a couple of hours from hyperjump, and I need to make a certain decision first. Would you come confer with me in my cabin, Orichalc?”

  “Indeed.” The Susaian flowed off his bench and stumped to the captain. They departed.

  The rest gaped after them. “Well,” said Esker. “Isn’t he the important one? What might this decision be that we commoners mustn’t hear about?”

  Why does that irritate me? wondered Lissa. Aloud, curtly: “I daresay he wants to consider possible hazards, without ground-siders butting in. You, sir, might best be preparing yourself and your team for your job, once we’ve arrived.”

  And what will mine be? she thought, not for the first time. What’s waiting in space for me? I’m only a planetarist. And even that title is a fake. I don’t do geology, oceanography, atmospherics, chemistry, biology, ethology, or xenology. I dabble in them all, and then dare call myself a scientist.

  She rose to her feet. I help get the specialists together, and keep them together, and sometimes keep them alive. That’s my work. That justifies my being here, though I had to force it every centimeter of the way.

  Esker got up too and approached her. His squatness barely reached above her chin. As he neared, he made a dismissing [86] gesture at the others. They didn’t leave, but they sat where they were, very silently.

  “Maybe I could put a few of our questions to you, Milady Windholm,” he said.

  “Certainly,” she replied. After all, it was she who had co-opted him into this, and for justifiable reasons. She knew him for able, quick-witted, fearless. That she sympathized with him, felt sorry, would like to give him a shot at his dreams—these things were beside the point. Weren’t they? “I’ll answer as best I can. This isn’t a military mission.”

  He cocked his head. “But we are under confidentiality. There might be some advantage to our House.”

  She picked her words with care. “Possibly. Still, you know Windholm isn’t interested in conquering anybody. We simply want to ... stay on top of whatever wave we’ll be riding. Keep the power to make our own fate.”

  “Of course. But then why are you willing to cede New Halla to that creature?”

  “We won’t necessarily. An assembly of the House will judge how much Orichalc’s help was worth to us.” I never felt more proud of what I am than when he agreed to trust our honor, he who can feel our feelings. “We will take good faith for granted and into account. The island would be no great loss to us.”

  “But why does it, uh, he want the place?”

  “Well, you see, Orichalc is a ... a crypto-dissident in his nation. I don’t entirely understand the situation. Maybe no human can. But it seems—we’ve verified—there’s been a movement among the Susaians, starting several centuries ago. The trans calls it the ‘Old Truth.’ A religion, a way of life, or what?” Lissa spread her hands. “Something that means everything to its believers. And that doesn’t fit well into most Susaian societies. It’s been generally persecuted, especially in the Great Confederacy, where it was finally forbidden altogether. Orichalc’s lineage is one of those that pretended to convert back to orthodoxy, but has maintained the [87] rites and practices as best it can in secret, always hoping for some kind of liberation.”

  Esker gazed at a bulkhead. “I see. ...”

  “New Halla would be a haven for the Old Truthers,” Lissa proceeded. “They aren’t so many that they need more, and probably quite a few couldn’t manage to leave their planets anyhow. But Orichalc does have this idea of a refuge for them.”

  “Yes.” The black eyes caught at hers. “They’ll be under Asborgan sovereignty. We’ll be their protectors. And they’ll multiply, and move into other parts, and eventually our evening star will be full of them, won’t it?”

  “How would that harm us?” she retorted. “They’d acquire any further land legitimately. We’ve made sure that their principles are decent. I should think there’d be pretty wonderful potentials in having beings that different for our friends and neighbors.”

  “Well—” The hostility dropped away. He shivered. “Maybe. Who knows? You understand, milady, don’t you, I’m concerned about our House. It’s mine, too. I’m only a client, adopted at that, but I belong with Windholm.”

  Pushy, she thought; and then: No, that’s unfair. Isn’t it?

  Encourage him. “Leave politics to the patrons, Esker. Look to your personal future. Why would the Dominance be so interested in this thing ahead of us, if they didn’t believe it may lead them to something really new? Something maybe as revolutionary as, oh, quantum mechanics or nuclear fission and fusion or the unifying equation.”

  She saw the pallor come and go in the blue cheeks, the hair stir on the backs of his hands. “Yes,” he said, “yes, that’s possible, isn’t it? Thank you, milady.”

  The upward blazing wish to discover, to know, briefly transfigured the ugly face.

  XV

  “STAND by for hyperjump.” The ship’s voice filled her cabins and corridors with melody. Lissa had a moment’s envisionment of her as the stars might see, a golden torpedo soaring amidst their myriads.

  “Ten, nine, eight—” sang the countdown. It wasn’t necessary, only a custom followed when time allowed. That sense of oneness with history, clear back to the rockets of old, gave heart on the rim of mystery, “—five, four—” Lissa tensed in her safety harness. The console before her seemed abruptly alien. She, the fire control officer? A jape, a sop. Dagmar alone could direct the weapons she carried. “—two—” Well, but somebody had to decide whether to shoot and at what, and Valen would have plenty else occupying his attention. “—one—” Besides, Valen was a coward.

  “—zero.”

&nb
sp; And the viewscreens that englobed Lissa showed a sky gone strange.

  Inexperienced, she lost a second or two before she saw the differences. Stars in space were so many, unwinking diamond-bright; constellations became hard to trace. Moreover, the distances she had hitherto traveled, to suns near hers, changed them but little. Now she had skipped over—how many light years had Orichalc said? Seven hundred and some.

  Acceleration had terminated shortly before transit through hyperspace. The ship fell free, at whatever velocity her kinetic and potential energies determined. It couldn’t be high, for an instrument revealed that she had not generated an exterior force-field to screen off interstellar atoms. Nor did there seem to be any other [89] radiation hazard. Weightless, Lissa revolved her chair three-dimensionally and studied her new heavens.

  Odd, she thought, how familiar the Milky Way looks. Some differences, this bend, that bay, yonder silhouette of the Sagittarian dust clouds; but I expected it to be quite altered. And Orichalc didn’t mention red stars. How many? A score at least, strewn all around us—“Damn! I clean forgot.” Sweat prickled her skin. “Any trace of Susaians?”

  “None,” replied the ship.

  Her muscles eased. “Well,” she said redundantly, “our navigation data aren’t what you’d call precise. We’ll have to cast around a sizeable region till we find what we’re after, close enough to identify it.”

  Valen’s command over the intercom was otherwise. “Captain to science team. Start your studies.”

  “What?” responded Esker. “We can’t be anywhere near our goal. Commence your search pattern.”

  “I’ll give the orders, if you please. We’re not going to hyperjump about at random till we have some idea of what this part of space is like. I want at least a preliminary report within an hour. Get busy.”

  Captain Caution, Lissa thought. But it does make sense, I guess. She touched her own intercom switchplate. “Fire control,” she said. “I’m obviously no use here. May I be relieved? I could give a hand elsewhere.”

  “Perhaps.” Valen sounded skeptical, as well he might. “Stay aft of the command sector.”

  Why, what will you be doing that nobody else should interrupt? “Aye, aye.” Lissa unsecured, shoved with a foot, and arrowed toward the exit. A dim circle of light marked it, for it was part of the simulacrum system. When it retracted for her, she passed as if through the galactic band into a prosaic companionway.

  Motion in zero gravity was fun, but now she sped on business—to find Orichalc and put certain questions to him. The [90] Susaian occupied one of the crew cubicles. It was unlocked. Entering, she found it empty, save for the few curious objects that were personal possessions.

  Hm. Would the wight scuttle around idly under these conditions? No, he was a cosmonaut and knew better. Just the same, Lissa searched everywhere she was permitted to go. It took a while to establish that the Susaian must be forward with Valen.

  Why? Well, he did go reticent after that private talk of theirs. What are they hatching? Let’s try the physics lab, she decided. I barely glanced in earlier.

  There Lissa found confusion, Esker’s three assistants struggling with apparatus that wandered perversely from them. The chief was shouting at the intercom: “—weight! These people can’t work in free fall!”

  “Then they’d better learn,” Valen’s voice snapped.

  “Destruction curse it, do you want a quick report or don’t you? Nobody else is here to detect us, unless you’ve brought along some phantoms of your own.”

  After a moment during which the whirr of the ventilators seemed loud: “Very well. One-half gee in five minutes.”

  Esker switched off. “Treats us like offal. What’s he think he is, a patron?” He noticed Lissa. “Oh. Milady.”

  “I’ll help you get your stuff together before the boost,” she said. “Not to let it crash down helter-skelter.” Skillfully, she moved about, plucking things from the air. “I didn’t know you three lack this training,” she told them angrily. “I took for granted you had it. What possessed you to [choose] them, Esker?”

  The man’s tone went sullen. “I made sure they aren’t subject to spacesickness. That’d have been adequate, if our dear captain showed some common sense. Why should we conduct these studies? Elementary, routine procedures. The ship can perfectly well do them. Bring up one or two robot bodies from the hold, if necessary.”

  “This tests how well you’ll perform when we need procedures that are not routine,” Lissa replied. “Well, I’ll give you three some [91] basic drill as soon as may be, and hope for the best. But Esker, I’m very disappointed in you.”

  She wondered how much rage he must suppress in order to mumble, “I’m sorry, milady.” The wondering was brief. A thought came to the fore, instead. Test—

  Countdown gave warning, power coursed silent through the engine, the deck was once more downward and feet pressed lightly against it. Having nothing better to do, Lissa sat in a corner and watched the physicists work. She confessed to herself that Esker got things organized fast and thereafter efficiency prevailed. Spectroscopes, radio receivers, mass detectors she recognized; others she did not, but they spoke to those who understood.

  Excitement waxed. “Yes, got to be masered— Three hundred twenty kiloherz— This’n’s nearly twice that— And another— Minute by minute, suspicion gathered in her.

  Valen: “You’ve had your hour. What can you tell me?”

  Esker muttered an oath and raised his shock head from the instrument over which he had stood crouched. “We don’t need interruptions!” he called.

  “I didn’t say you must stop work. I only want to know what you’ve found out so far. You can keep on as long as needful.”

  Esker straightened. “That may be some while.” His tone gentled, with a tinge of awe. This is certainly ... a very peculiar region. Radio emissions from—a number of sources, we haven’t established how many but they’re in every direction. Mostly coherent waves. Frequencies and intensities vary by several orders of magnitude. We’ve only checked two Doppler shifts as yet, but they show motions of kilometers per second, which I suspect are orbital. Many graviton sources are also present. I can’t state positively that they are invisible accelerated masses. ... Oh, we’ll be busy here. Is this a natural phenomenon, or could there be artifacts of the Forerunners, still operating after how many millions of years—?”

  “What do you propose to do?”

  “Keep studying of course. Examine everything. We haven’t [92] even begun to search for matter particles, for instance. Neutrino spectra, perhaps? Captain, I don’t want to make any hypotheses before we know a muckload more.”

  “Very well. Carry on.” Valen laughed. “Don’t forget to fix yourselves a bite to eat now and then.” He switched off.

  He wouldn’t crack a joke here, would he? Unless—

  It shivered through Lissa. She rose. “Esker,” she said, “would you analyze one or two of those red stars?”

  The physicist blinked. “Huh? Why, they’re just dim red dwarfs, late M types, milady. You’d need amplification to see any that are more than three or four light-years off.”

  “Please. I have a notion about them.”

  “But—”

  Lissa put command in her voice. “I have a notion. You can do it quickly, can’t you?”

  “Well, yes. Automated spectroscopy.” With visible resentment, Esker squinted into a finder and operated controls on a box.

  “Hasn’t it struck you odd that we’ve got this many around us?” Lissa asked. “Not that I’ve seen any except the closest, as you said, but they imply plenty more.”

  “Red dwarfs are much the commonest kind of star, milady,” Tessa ventured. “They often occur together.”

  “I know,” Lissa answered. “These, though, aren’t enough to be a proper cluster, are they?” Of the usual sort, that is.

  She saw how Esker stiffened where he stood. Did he see what she was driving at? He stuck to his task regardless, until
he could look up and announce: “This specimen is extremely metal-poor. As much so as any I’ve ever seen described. Ancient—” His features congealed. “Shall we survey the rest?”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary.” Lissa touched the intercom. “Captain Valen, I can tell you what we have found.”

  An astonished-sounding hiss bespoke Orichalc’s presence at the other end. “Then do,” the man said slowly.

  Victory responded. “This is the remains of a globular cluster. [93] Old, old, formed almost at the beginning, first-generation stars, when hardly any atoms heavier than lithium existed. Probably drifted in here from the galactic halo. All the big suns in it went supernova ages ago. The lesser ones evolved into red giants, sank down to white dwarfs, radiated away that energy too. Only the smallest and feeblest are still on the main sequence. Everything else is clinkers, cold and black, or at most emitting so little it’s well-nigh lost in the cosmic background. Maybe a few neutron stars give off pulsar beams yet, but weak, and none happen to be pointed at us. More likely, I’d guess, they’re also dead. Cinders, embers, ashes; let’s get out of here.”

  Air whispered.

  “The radio waves?” Valen asked. She heard the strain.

  “Beacons,” she said. “What else? You’d need them to find your way around in this gloom. The debris may not be closely packed by planetside standards, but the risk of collision would be appreciable, especially when you hyperjump, if you didn’t know where objects are. A higher risk would be coming out of a jump too deep in a gravity well, and blowing your engine.

  “Somebody finds it worthwhile to mine the cluster. The ancient supernovae must have plated certain smaller bodies with a rich layer of rare isotopes. I daresay it’s a Skleron enterprise. This sort of thing fits what I’ve read about them.”

  Lissa glanced around. The three assistants had retreated toward the bulkheads. They looked alarmed. Esker stood his ground, legs wide apart, shoulders forward, hands flexing at his sides. Lips had drawn away from teeth. Word by word, he spat, “You knew about this. You did not take us to our goal.”