George hung ominously in the background as Terry picked out a spine and directed Bill to match rotation with it, so that it became a stable fixture a few meters from the airlock.

The Quagmor, which was affectionately referred to by almost everyone as the Quagmire, was the first research vessel designed specifically to operate near the clouds without fear of drawing the lightning. Unlike the polygon object it was inspecting, it had no right angles. The ship’s hull, her engine mounts, her antennas, sensing, and navigation equipment, everything, was curved.

They’d even penetrated George’s surface mists, gone a few hundred meters into the cloud, taken samples, and tried to listen for the heart of the beast. That was a joke between them, a reaction to the insistence of one school of thought that the clouds were alive. It was not a view that Terry took seriously. Yet plunging into it had given him the eerie sensation that there might be some truth to the notion. It was a view easily dismissed when they’d emerged. Like laughing at ghosts when the sun was high.

“Ready?” asked Jane.

“All set.” He was standing at the edge of the airlock trying to decide on a trajectory. This was the first time they’d been outside the ship on this run, except for a brief repair job on the forward sensor pods; Terry nevertheless had long experience working in the void. “There,” he said, pointing.

One of the higher spines. Nice broad top for them to land on. Easy spot to start. Jane shook her head, signifying that she’d done dumber things but was having trouble remembering when. They exchanged looks that were supposed to register confidence, and he pushed out of the lock, floated across the few meters of space that separated the ship and the spine, and touched down on his target. But the stone surface was slippery, slippery even for the grip shoes, and momentum carried him forward. He slid off the edge, blipped the go-pack, did a 360, and came down smoothly atop the crest.

“Nice maneuver, Flash,” said Jane.

“Be careful,” he said.

She floated over and drifted gently onto the surface, letting him haul her down. “It’s all technique,” she said.

Terry rapped on the stone with the handle of the cutter. “Feels solid,” he said. “See any way in?”

She shook her head. No.

He looked into the canyon. Smooth rock all the way down, until the beam faded out. The spine widened as it descended. It looked as if they all did.

“Shall we see what’s below?” he asked.

She was wearing a dark green pullover and light gray slacks. A bit dressy for the work. “Sure,” she said. “Lead the way.”

He stepped into the chasm and used the go-pack to start down. Jane followed, and they descended slowly, examining the sheer wall as they went.

Plain rock. Smoother than on the roof, because the lower areas took fewer hits. But there was nothing exceptional, all the way to the bottom.

BILL MANEUVERED THE Quagmire directly overhead, leaving the spotlights off because they would have been a distraction. But the navigation lights were on.

There was nothing in Terry’s experience to which he could compare the place. The spines did indeed grow out of one another. There was no flat or curved surface at the center of the object that could have been described as housing the core. It was dark, surreal, the Quagmire no more than a few lights overhead, and the rest of the world walled out.

Terry felt light-headed. Even in the vacuum, he was accustomed to having a flat space underfoot, a moonscape, a ship’s hull, something. Something to relate to. Here, there was no up or down, and everything was at an angle. “You okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he said.

He took the cutter out of his harness. “There’s a chance,” he said, “that this thing is under pressure. I’m going to cut a narrow hole to find out. But stand clear anyhow. Just to be safe.”

She nodded and backed off a few meters. Told him to be careful. Not to stand in front of it.

Terry grinned. How could he make the cut standing over to one side? He pressed the activator and watched the amber lamp come on, felt the unit vibrate as it powered up. “Big moment,” he said. The lamp turned a bright crimson. He punched the button, and a long red beam of light blinked on. He touched it to the wall.

It cut in. He knew not to lean on it, but simply held it steady while it went deeper.

Jane advanced a few steps. “How’s it going?”

He was about to suggest she try a little patience when it broke through. “Bingo,” he said.

Somewhere deep in the hedgehog, he sensed movement, as if an engine had started. Then the ground murmured. It trembled. Rose. Shook violently. He told Jane to get out, for God’s sake get out, and he stabbed at the go-pack and the thrusters ignited and began to take him up.

And the world went dark.

ARCHIVE

Sky, we lost contact with the Quagmire moments ago. Divert. Find out what happened. Render assistance. Report as soon as you have something.

— Audrey D’Allesandro

Hyperlight transmission to the Patrick Heffernan

Arlington.

Monday, February 24.

THE CHINDI HAD finally begun giving up its secrets. The gigantic alien starship, apparently fully automated, continued its serene slower-than-light voyage toward a class-F star whose catalog number Hutch could never remember. It had taken a major effort, because of its velocity, to get researchers on board. But the Academy had begun to get a good look at its contents, artifacts from hundreds of cultures. And live visual recordings over a span of tens of thousands of years. The ship itself was thought to be more than a quarter million years old.

Its pictures of lost civilizations were opening up whole new areas of knowledge. The vast distances that separated sentient species tended to create the illusion that civilizations were extremely rare. It now appeared they were simply scattered, in time and in space. And, disconcertingly, they did not seem to last long.

They were sometimes suicidal. They were often destroyed by economic, political, or religious fanaticisms; by the selfishness and corruption of leaders; by an inability to stop ever-more-deadly wars. They sometimes simply behaved in stupid ways. Some that had avoided the more obvious pitfalls were swept away by something that should not have been there: the clouds.

Hutch had always felt a special kinship with the Monument-Makers, who’d roamed this section of the galaxy for thousands of years, who’d tried to save others from the omegas. She had been to their home world, and had seen the remnants of a race reduced to savagery, unaware of their proud history. They’d been on her mind recently because the chindi had, a week ago, provided a record of another demolished culture. She’d sat during the course of a bleak wintry day looking at pictures of smashed buildings and ruined cities. And she’d recognized some of the images. It was the home of the Hawks, the race that had come to the rescue centuries ago on Deepsix when the inhabitants of that unlucky world had faced a brutal ice age.

The images haunted her, the broken columns, the brave symbols scrolled across monuments and public buildings, the overgrown roads, the shattered towers, the cities given over to forest. And perhaps most compelling, the starship found adrift in a solar orbit.

The Hawks and the Monument-Makers. And the human race. It was hard not to dwell on what might have been, had they been allowed to sit down together, to pool their knowledge and their speculations. To cooperate for the general good. To become allies in the great adventure.

As has happened with the Monument-Makers, a few individual Hawks had survived. But their civilization was gone. Their racial memory consisted only of a cycle of myths.

Kellie Collier had been there, had been first to board the Hawk starship, and had complained later to Hutch about the cost imposed by the existence of the clouds. There had been tears in her eyes when she described what she’d seen.

KELLIE AND THE broken cities and the clouds were never far from Hutch’s mind. The chilling possibility that they were about to experience another wipeout had kept her awake these last two nights. It would be the most painful of ironies if they had finally found a living civilization, someone other than the Noks, that they could actually talk to, just in time to say good-bye.

The cloud in question was at a substantial distance, more than thirty-one hundred light-years. Nine months away. The Bill Jenkins was enroute, diverted from its survey mission by the station at Broadside. But they’d need a month to get there. Add another week for the report to reach her. It would be April before she knew whether she had a problem.

Prudence, and experience, suggested she expect the worst.

She arrived at the Academy bleary-eyed and in a foul mood. She’d talked it over at home with Tor, but all he could think of was to suggest she ease the pressure on herself by quitting. We can live comfortably on my income, he’d suggested. He was a commercial artist, and the money was decent, although they weren’t going to wind up with a chalet in the Rockies and a beach home on Sea Island.

She needed to talk to somebody. The commissioner wasn’t the right person either, so she put in a call to Harold as soon as she arrived at her desk. He wasn’t in yet, his watch officer explained, but they would contact him. Five minutes later he was on the circuit. Just leaving home.

“Harold,” she asked, “have you had breakfast yet?”

“No,” he said. “I usually eat in the Canteen.”

“How about eating with me this morning? My treat.”

“Is there a problem?” he asked cautiously.

“I need your advice.”

“Okay. What did you have in mind?”

“Meet me at Cleary’s,” she said. “Twenty minutes okay?”

CLEARY’S WAS THE small, posh coffee shop overlooking the Refuge, the alien habitat that had been hauled in from the Twins and reconstructed on a platform at the edge of the Potomac in Pentagon Park. The sun was warm and bright, and the sky full of lazy clouds. When Harold walked in, Hutch was sitting in a corner booth, stirring coffee and staring out the window, her mind gone for a gallop. She didn’t see him until he slid in across from her.

“This is a pleasant surprise, Priscilla.” He smiled shyly.

She knew that she intimidated him, but didn’t know why. She’d noticed it years before when she’d provided transportation for him on a couple of occasions. It didn’t seem to be all women, just her. “It’s always good to get away for a bit,” she said. She asked him a few questions about Weatherman, and the tewks, to put him at ease.