“A refinery of some kind,” Ione guessed. “I think most of this rock is carbonaceous chondrite.” As her sensor sweep continued, she picked out several dense magnetic fields. The equipment producing them was mounted on bulky platforms that encircled the cylinder. They looked like fusion drive tubes.

“Who lives here?” she asked Quantook-LOU. “It’s the Tyrathca, isn’t it?”

“This is Lalarin-MG. It is their designated location. I am displeased to find that they are still alive.”

“But you hate them, they’re your old slave masters. I thought you’d killed them off. That’s what you implied.”

“Those that remained at the end of the time of change grouped together in their enclaves. They became difficult to dislodge. It was not worth challenging their defences. We excluded them from contact with the newformed dominions, and allowed them to decline in isolation. Only those that were the largest still exist.”

“That’s incredible,” Samuel said. “They’re like the grain of sand in an oyster; the Mosdva simply grew around them.”

“A very big grain,” Sarha said. “Take a close look at that cavity. I’ll bet you it was all asteroid rock when the diskcity was built, probably with a biosphere cavern hollowed out in the centre. They’ve had to refine it away over the millennia to supply themselves with fresh minerals, and the cylinder is most likely what the biosphere evolved into. They couldn’t expand like the Mosdva, so they just kept to the same size. We know they can keep that kind of society running indefinitely. Tanjuntic-RI was fully operational for the same length of time as this enclave. Except that one day they’re going to run out of rock to consume.”

“That fits what I can see, except for the rocket engines,” Ione said. “Why keep them functional when you need to expend every effort to maintain a highly artificial environment in adverse circumstances?”

“They might have been spaceship rockets originally,” Liol said. “Not any more. I think they were adapted into the defence system Quantook-LOU mentioned. Don’t forget, the Mosdva revolution happened when the diskcities were in their embryonic stage. The enclave asteroid would already be attached to the rest of the cluster at that time. If you use a fusion plume like a flame thrower, it would have caused havoc, completely broken apart the asteroids, destroyed the new inhabited tubes and thermal exchange mechanisms. The Tyrathca didn’t have anything to lose, but the Mosdva sure did. So both sides agreed to the isolation.”

“And the Tyrathca being unimaginative SOBs, kept their end of the threat in full working order all this time,” Ashly said. “Fusion plumes could still do a lot of damage to a diskcity, even today.”

“Except they’re not all in full working order,” Ione said. “I can see ten, of which only three have magnetic fields.”

“Yes, but the Mosdva don’t know that.”

“They do now.”

Quantook-LOU and the Mosdva bodyguard were on the move again, crawling along the tubes around the circumference of the cavity. Ione set off after them. “Looks like we’re heading for the hub of the cylinder,” she said. “He must be planning on going in to meet them.”

“I’m beginning to respect old Quantook-LOU,” Joshua said. “He’s been pretty linear with us. Coming straight to a Tyrathca civilization is a good indication he genuinely wants to get the almanac for us.”

“I wouldn’t attribute his behaviour entirely to fair play,” Syrinx said. “Our appearance gave him a simple choice. Go for the number one position, or see Anthi-CL be absorbed by someone else’s unifying alliance. He doesn’t want the almanac data, he needs it desperately.”

“You never used to be this cynical.”

“Not before I met you, no.”

Joshua chuckled, wishing for the first time ever that he had an affinity bond. Not that he needed to check his own crew. Liol would be covering a grin, while Sarha would be casting a sly look his way and Dahybi would pretend it was all going way over his head.

“Trains are moving again,” Beaulieu said. “The ELINTs are tracking five; they all started in the last ten minutes.”

“So tell us why that’s bad.”

“They are all within a hundred and fifty kilometres of the Tyrathca enclave, and are heading towards it.”

“Jesus! Wonderful. Ione, did you get that?”

“Confirmed. I’ll tell Quantook-LOU, not that we can speed things along much at this point.”

The serjeants were now climbing along a tube directly underneath the end of the cylinder, an uncomfortable position. The gap was gradually narrowing as they approached the hub, and the cylinder’s monstrous inertia had become terribly apparent. Ione knew if she was fully human she’d be having constant memory recall of the day when she got her hand caught in her bicycle wheel (six years old, and she’d reached down to try and move a jammed brake block before Tranquillity could stop her). As it was, she could just appreciate the associative link.

“We will enter here,” Quantook-LOU announced. The Mosdva stopped around an airlock hatch in a web junction. One of them placed an electronic module over the rosette keypad on the rim. After a moment, the module’s green LEDs displayed a string of figures. They were tapped into the keypad, and the hatch locks disengaged, allowing it to swing down into the airlock chamber.

“We will go first,” Quantook-LOU said.

Ione waited until the cycle had run, then both serjeants pushed down into the chamber. The inner hatch opened into the junction. Her suit sensors had to disengage filter programs to adapt to the light inside. It was white. She wondered how the Mosdva would cope with that—if they could actually see colour. Not that the question was high on her agenda.

The junction was a sphere thirty metres across, with seven hatchways set into it. Ten soldier-caste Tyrathca were standing around it at conflicting angles, their hoofs wedged deep into the sponge indentations, holding them perfectly still. They were pointing thick maser rifles at the Mosdva group.

Chittering and loud agitated whistles rang through the air as Quantook-LOU talked insistently to the single Tyrathca breeder who was standing among the soldiers. The distributor of resources had taken his suit helmet off.

“What are they?” the breeder asked, its hazel eyes had locked on the serjeants.

“Proof of what I say,” Quantook-LOU replied. “They are the creatures who have come from the other side of the nebula.”

“What Quantook-LOU says is true,” Ione said. “We are happy to meet you. I am Ione Saldana, one of the crew from the starship Lady Macbeth .”

Several of the soldiers rustled their antennae when she spoke. The breeder was silent for a moment.

“You speak as us, yet your shape is wrong,” it said. “You are not a caste we know. You are not a Mosdva either.”

“No, we are humans. We learned your language from the Tyrathca who came to our domain on the flightship Tanjuntic-RI. Do you know of it?”

“I do not. The memories of that age are no longer passed on.”

“Bloody hell!” Ione exclaimed over the general communication band. “They’ve junked their records.”

“It doesn’t mean that at all,” Parker said. “The Tyrathca pass useful memories down the generations via their chemical program glands. The details from fifteen thousand years ago are hardly likely to be relevant enough to be maintained in that fashion.”

“He’s right,” Joshua said. “We’re after their electronic files, not family legends.”

“I would like to mediate with the family that governs the electronics of Lalarin-MG,” Quantook-LOU said. “That is why we are here.”

“Tyrathca and Mosdva do not mediate,” the breeder said. “It is the separation agreement. You should not have come here. We do not come to your dominions. We maintain the separation agreement.”

“What about the humans?” Quantook-LOU said. “Should they be here? They are not a part of the separation agreement. The universe outside Tojolt-HI has changed for Mosdva and Tyrathca. A new agreement must be mediated. I can do this. Allow me to mediate. All will benefit, Mosdva, Humans and Tyrathca.”