“That’s to be expected, though a good host would offer us a constant link. We’ll start to worry if they actually shut that hatch.”

The MSV reached the top of the cylindrical grid. Joshua extended one of the vehicle’s waldo arms to grip it in the clamp. “We’re secure,” he reported, using the band to Quantook-LOU.

“Please proceed to the airlock ahead of you. I await on the other side.”

Joshua and the others fastened their space armour helmets into place. They assumed the Tyrathca didn’t have programmable silicon, so they wouldn’t know about SII suits. The armour would appear to be their actual spacesuit, reducing the risk of offending their hosts at the same time providing a degree of protection. The MSV’s cabin atmosphere cycled and the four of them slid out.

There were three airlock hatches at the end of the grid. Only one of them, the largest, was open. The chamber behind was a sphere six metres across.

“Those other hatches were too small for the breeders,” Samuel said. “I wonder if one of the vassal caste has been bred for a higher IQ; they certainly weren’t capable of useful engineering work before.”

Joshua didn’t reply. He stuck his boots to what could have been the chamber floor just as the atmospheric gas started to hiss in. Suit sensors told him was a composition of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, argon, and various hydrocarbon compounds, the humidity level was very high, and there were several classes of organic particulate in circulation. He made a strong effort to keep his hand away from the innocuous-looking cylinder on his belt which was actually a laser.

Strangely, he felt no excitement at this moment. It was almost as if there was too much riding on it for him to take anything other than an objective view. A good thing, he supposed.

The inner hatch opened, revealing one of Tojolt-HI’s wider habitation tubes dwindling away to a flat metal bulkhead a kilometre away. Two colours dominated the interior: red and brown. Joshua smiled round his suit’s respirator tube as he saw the cluster of xenocs waiting for him. They weren’t Tyrathca.

First impression was a shoal of human-size seahorses floating cautiously in the air. They had that same kind of flowing twitch along the length of their body, as if forever poised at the start of a race. Their colouring was almost black, though Joshua suspected that was due to the unvarying red light; sensor spectral analysis showed their scales were actually a shade of dark grey-brown very close to the Tyrathca, suggesting a common Mastrit-PJ ancestry. The head was pointed, dragon-like, with a long beak-mouth and two small semi-recessed eyes. It was held almost at a right angle to the body by a heavily wrinkled neck, suggesting considerable flexibility. The rest of the body had an ovoid cross section that gradually tapered away towards the base, though there was no sign of any tail. It curved slightly, producing an overall S-shape. Three pairs of limbs were spaced equidistantly along it, all sharing the same basic profile: a long first section extending away from a shoulder-analogue socket and ending in a wrist joint. The hand appendage was elongated with nine twin-knuckle digits. On the highest set of limbs they were thin and highly dextrous; the middle set were smaller and thicker; while the hindset were stumpy, toes rather than fingers. On most of the xenocs the hind feet appeared to be withered; becoming simple paddles of flesh, as though they were borrowed from aquatic creatures.

It was an appropriate classification. Every surface inside the tube sprouted lengthy ribbon fronds of rubbery vegetation, all of them reaching up for the geometric centre. Even those planted in the glass were growing directly away from the light, something Joshua had never seen on any terracompatible world he’d visited, no matter how bizarre some of its aboriginal botany and biochemistry.

The constant tangle of vegetation along the inside of the tube did however make movement very easy for the xenocs. They seemed to glide along effortlessly through the topmost fringe, with the lower half of their bodies immersed in the brown fronds, their limbs wriggling gently to control their motion. It was a wonderfully graceful action resulting from what was essentially a mad combination of the smooth flick of a dolphin flipper and a human hand slapping at grab hoops.

Joshua admired it with mild envy, at the same time wondering just how long evolution would take to produce that kind of arrangement. It was almost a case of symbiosis, which meant the fronds of vegetation would have to be very prevalent.

He couldn’t doubt these xenocs were intelligent beyond any Tyrathca vassal class the Confederation had encountered. They wore electronic systems like clothes. The upper half of their bodies were covered in a garment that combined a string vest with bandolier straps to which various modules were clipped, interspersed with tools and small canisters. They also went in for exoaugmentation; lenses jutted out of eye sockets, while plenty of them had replaced upper-limb hands with cybernetic claws.

Joshua switched his sensor focus around them until he found one whose electronics seemed slightly better quality than the others. Their styling was more slimline, with elegant key pads and displays. Some of the modules were actually embossed with marmoreal patterns. A fast spectrographic scan said the metal was iron. Curious choice, he thought.

“I am Captain Joshua Calvert, and I apologize to Quantook-LOU,” he said. The communication block relayed his words into the hooting whistles of Tyrathca-style speech, which he could just make out through the muffling of the SII suit’s silicon. “We assumed the Tyrathca occupied this place.”

The creature his sensors were focused on opened its gnarled beak and chittered loudly. “Do you wish to leave now you have found it is otherwise?”

“Not at all. We are delighted to have gained the knowledge of your existence. Could you tell me what you call yourselves?”

“My race is the Mosdva. For all of Tyrathca history we were their subjects. Their history has ended. Mastrit-PJ is our star now.”

“Way to go,” Monica said over the general communication band.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Syrinx admonished. “They’re clearly from the same evolutionary chain.”

“Relevant observations only,” Joshua told them. “I mean, do we even need to carry on? We can be diplomatic here for a couple of hours, then fly off to the nearest probable Tyrathca colony star to get what we need.”

“They have the same language and origin planet,” Parker said. “It’s highly probable they share the same stellar almanac. We need to know a lot more before we even consider moving on.”

“Okay.” Joshua datavised his communication block back to its translation function. “You have achieved much here. My race has never built any structure on such a scale as Tojolt-HI.”

“But you have built a most interesting ship.”

“Thank you.” He took a processor block from his belt slowly and carefully. It was one that he’d found in Lady Mac ’s engineering workshop, a quarter of a century out of date and loaded with obsolete maintenance programs (they’d erased any reference to starflight). The general management routine might be of some interest to the xenocs, especially from what he could see of their own electronics. In fact, it might be a slightly too generous gift; half of their modules would have been archaic back in the Twenty-third Century. “For you,” he told Quantook-LOU.

One of the other Mosdva slithered forwards through the foliage and gingerly took the block before hurrying back to Quantook-LOU. The distributor of resources examined it before putting it in a pouch near the bottom of his torso garment.

“I thank you, Captain Joshua Calvert. In return, I would show you this section of Anthi-CL, of which you have expressed such interest.”