“At last,” Liol said eagerly. He closed his eyes and accessed the image.

Beaulieu hadn’t activated any visual enhancement programs to counter the redness. All Joshua could make out was a big brilliant-white shape gliding up towards a rendezvous with Tojolt-HI—the same configuration as the ship already docked to the rim: five huge globes clumped round a drive unit and scoop. Except these globes were glowing a vivid purple-white, brighter than the photosphere.

“It surfaced twenty minutes ago,” Beaulieu datavised.

The cosmonik replayed the recording. Lady Mac ’s sensors had detected a magnetic anomaly within the photosphere, hundreds of kilometres wide, the flux lines twisting into a dense wood-knot pattern. But it was moving faster than orbital velocity, and growing larger. Visual sensors started tracking it, showing the endless scarlet haze. At first it was as unruffled as a sea mist at dawn, then the impossible happened and long streaks of shadow rippled across the picture. They were actually folds in the gas. Something underneath was stirring the igneous hydrogen atoms, creating swirling currents in the calm envelope. A bright patch of white light started to shine up through the red plasma. The ship rose up smooth and clean through the outer layers of the photosphere, scoop first, pushing a vast bow wave of glowing ions ahead of it. Each of its five globes was shining as bright as a white dwarf star, radiating away enormous quantities of electromagnetic and thermal energy. Thick scarlet coronas avalanched from the lip of the scoop, purling gently all the way back down into the body of the red giant. The remainder of the nimbus was sucked down into the ship’s funnel, growing steadily brighter as it progressed, until it was consumed by a dazzling white flame burning brightly at the throat.

“The globes have been dimming since it surfaced,” Beaulieu said. “Their external temperature is dropping in concert.”

“Looks like you were right about it being a ramscoop, Josh,” Liol said cheerfully. “It’s got to be where they get their mass from now the asteroids have been consumed. Fancy that, mining the sun.”

“That thermal dump technology is damn impressive,” Sarha said. “It’s got to be superior to anything we have. Shedding heat while you’re inside a star. God!”

“Simply compressing and condensing photosphere hydrogen into a stable gaseous state wouldn’t generate that much heat,” Alkad said. “They must be fusing it, burning it down into helium, perhaps even all the way to carbon.”

“Christ, they must be desperate for mass.”

“The iron limit,” Joshua mused. “You can’t fuse atoms past iron without having to input energy. Every other reaction until that element generates energy.”

“Is that relevant?” Liol asked.

“Not sure. But it makes iron their gold equivalent. It can’t hurt knowing what they value most. It’s the trans-iron elements that they’ll be running out of.”

“The fact that they’ve resorted to this extraordinary method gives us some considerable leverage,” Samuel said. “We’ve seen little evidence of molecular engineering compounds in the diskcity structure. Our materials science will allow them to exploit mass far more efficiently than they do currently. Every innovation we bring has the potential for inflicting vast change upon them.”

“This is what we have to decide,” Syrinx said. “Liol, have the ELINT satellites revealed anything that might help us?”

“Not really. They’re holding station a thousand kilometres above the darkside now, which gives us excellent coverage. It’s pretty much what we observed as we flew in: trains moving about and very little else. Oh, we picked up a couple of nasty-looking atmospheric vents. The tubes must have ruptured. There were bodies in the gas stream.”

“They must fight a constant maintenance battle against structural fatigue,” Oxley said. “That’s a lot of surface area to cover.”

“Everything’s relative,” Sarha said. “There’s a lot of Mosdva to cover it.”

“I wonder how inter-dependant the dominions are,” Parker said. “For all Quantook-LOU says about driving a hard bargain on the cargo and mass which Anthi-CL sends to the inner dominions, they have to ensure supplies are preserved. Without fresh material, the tubes would decay. The inner dominions would react strongly to such a threat, I imagine.”

“We’ve confirmed eighty dead areas across Tojolt-HI,” Beaulieu said. “They amount to just under thirteen per cent of the total.”

“So much? That would tend to indicate a society in decline, possibly even a decadent one.”

“Individual dominions might fall,” Ruben said. “But overall their society remains intact. Face it, the Confederation has inhabited worlds that don’t exactly thrive, yet some of our cultures are positively vibrant. And I find it significant that none of the rim sections are dead.”

“The other major source of external activity is based around those dead sections,” Liol said. “It looks like major repair and reconstruction work. Those dominions certainly aren’t decadent, they’re busy expanding into their old neighbours’ territory.”

“I can accept they’re socially comparable to us,” Syrinx said. “So based on that assumption, do we offer them ZTT technology?”

“In exchange for a ten-thousand-year-old almanac?” Joshua said. “You’ve got to be kidding. Quantook-LOU is smart, he’ll know there’s something very wrong about that. I’d suggest we build in an exchange of astronometrical data and records along with whatever commercial trade deal we can put together. After all, they’ve never seen what lies on the other side of the nebula. If we offer them the ability to break free of Tyrathca-dominated space they’ll need to know what’s out there.”

“I’ve told you,” Ashly said. “ZTT isn’t a way out.”

“Not for the proles,” Liol said. “But the leadership might take it for their families, or clans, or members of whatever cause they rally round. And it’s the leadership we have to deal with.”

“Is that the kind of legacy we really want to leave behind us?” Peter Adul asked quietly. “The opportunity for interstellar conflict and internal strife?”

“Don’t get all moral on me,” Liol said. “Not you. We can’t afford those kind of ethics. It’s our goddamn species on the brink here. I’m prepared to do whatever it takes.”

“If, as intended, we’re going to ask a God for its help, perhaps you should consider how worthy we’re going to appear before it should you follow that course.”

“What if it considers obliterating your foes to be a worthy act? You’re assigning it very human traits. The Tyrathca never did that.”

“That’s a point,” Dahybi said. “Now we know why the Tyrathca managed to get where they are with zero imagination, how does that reflect on our analysis of the Sleeping God?”

“Very little, I’m afraid,” Kempster said. “From what we’ve learned about them, I’d say that unless the Sleeping God explained itself to the Tyrathca of Swantic-LI, they simply wouldn’t know what the hell it was. By calling it a God, they were being as truthful as only they can be. The simplest translation equates to our own: something so powerful we do not comprehend it.”

“Just how much will ZTT change the diskcity society?” Syrinx asked.

“Considerably,” Parker said. “As Samuel points out, just by being here we have changed it. We have shown Tojolt-HI that it is possible to circumvent Tyrathca space. As this is a species with an intellect not dissimilar to our own, we must assume they will ultimately pursue that method. In effect, that gives us control over the timing, nothing more. And allowing them access to ZTT now may generate a portion of goodwill among at least one faction of a very long lived and versatile race. I say we should pursue every effort to make the Mosdva our friends. After all, we now know that ZTT or the voidhawk distortion field ability are hardly the last word in interstellar travel, the Kiint teleport ability has taught us that lesson.”