“Except that’s all bunk. Speaker-Between’s dodderin’ along, doing what it thinks it was told to do. But I don’t believe that’s what it was really told by the Builders. You can get things screwed up pretty bad in five million years. Atvar H’sial agrees with me — the constructs are conscientious, an’ real impressive when you first meet ’em. An’ they got lots of power, too. But they’re not very smart.”

“If that’s true, where are the Builders? And what do they really want the constructs to do?”

“Beats me. That’s more your line than mine. An’ right now I don’t much care. We got other worries.” Nenda turned, to where Atvar H’sial had finished connecting the supply lines. “Like how we land on Bridle Gap. We’ll be there in two days. The Erebus can’t go down, because J’merlia and Kallik were dumb enough to buy us a Flying Dutchman. An’ we don’t have credit to rent a downside shuttle. So you better cross your fingers.”

Atvar H’sial was turning spigots, and the pipes leading to the brown ovoid were filling with cloudy liquid. Darya followed Louis Nenda and bent to stare at the shiny surface of the egg.

“What is it?”

“That’s the question of the moment. This is the gizmo that Julian Graves found when he was pokin’ around the other day. No one could identify it, but yesterday At took a peek at its inside with ultrasonics. She thinks it might be a ship-seed. The Erebus is a Tantalus orbital fort, so it never expected to land anywhere. But there would be times when people on board needed to escape. There were a dozen of these eggs, stacked away close to the main hatch. In a few hours we’ll know what we’ve got. ’Scuse me. At says I hafta get busy.”

He hurried away from Darya to crouch by the spigots and control their flow. Fluids were moving faster through the supply lines, and the glossy surface of the ellipsoid was beginning to swell ominously. A soft, throbbing tone came from its interior.

“Don’t get too close,” Nenda called.

The warning was unnecessary. As the egg began to quiver, Darya turned and headed out through the exit of the auxiliary engine room. Nenda had given her a lot to think about.

Atvar H’sial watched until Darya was out of sight. “That departure is not before time, Louis Nenda.” The pheromonal message carried a reproving overtone. “As I remarked before, the human female provides an undesirable distraction for you.”

“Relax, At. She don’t care about me, and I don’t care about her. All she’s worried about is the Builders, and where they are.”

“I am not persuaded; nor, I suspect, is Captain Rebka.”

“Who can go stick it up his nose. And so can you.” Louis spoke in irritated tones — but he did not provide his final comment in pheromonal translation.

The world of Bridle Gap had never been settled by humans.

The reason for that was obvious to the crew of the Erebus long before they arrived there. The parent star, Cavesson, was a tiny fierce point of violet-blue at the limit of the visible spectrum, sitting within a widespread shell of glowing gas. The stellar collapse and shrugging off of outer layers that had turned Cavesson into a neutron star forty thousand years earlier would have vaporized Bridle Gap — if that world had been close-by at the time. Even today, the outpouring of X- rays and hard ultraviolet from Cavesson created an ionized shroud at the outer edge of Bridle Gap’s atmosphere. Enough ultraviolet came blazing through to the surface to fry an unshielded human in minutes.

“It must have been a rogue planet,” said Julian Graves. The Erebus had sat in parking orbit for a couple of hours, while the ship’s scopes revealed as much surface detail as possible. Now it was time for action.

“It was on a close-approach trajectory to Cavesson,” he went on, “and if the star hadn’t blown up, Bridle Gap would have swung right on by. But the ejecta from Cavesson smacked into it and transferred enough momentum to shove it to a capture orbit.”

“And if you believe that,” Hans Rebka said softly to E.C. Tally, “you’ll believe anything.”

“But you reject that explanation?” The embodied computer was standing between Rebka and Darya Lang, waiting for Atvar H’sial’s signal from within the seedship that the interior was thoroughly hardened and the little vessel ready to board.

Rebka gestured to the blazing point-image of Cavesson. “See for yourself, E.C. You take a look at the spectrum of that, then tell me what sort of life could develop on a void-cold rogue world, far from any star, but adapt fast enough to survive the sleet of radiation from Cavesson.”

“Then what is your explanation for the existence of Bridle Gap?”

“Nothing to make you feel comfortable. Bridle Gap was moved here by the Zardalu, when they controlled this whole region. The Zardalu had great powers when humans were still swinging in the trees — just another reason to worry about them now.” He began to move forward. “Wherever it came from, the planet must have had natural high-radiation life-forms. You’ll see them for yourself in a couple of hours, because it looks like we’re ready to go.”

Louis Nenda had appeared from within the seedship’s hatch. “Tight squeeze,” he said. “And goin’ to be rough when we get down there. Sure one of you don’t want to stay with the rest?”

Rebka ignored the invitation to remain behind and pushed E.C. Tally on ahead of him into the seedship’s interior. With Atvar H’sial already inside, it was a tight fit. The seed, full-grown, was a disappointment. The hope had been for a sizable lifeboat, capable of carrying a substantial fraction of the Erebus’s total passenger capacity. Instead the final seedship proved to be a midget: puny engines, no Bose Drive, and only enough room to squeeze in four or five people. The landing party had been whittled down: Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial, most familiar with Zardalu Communion territory and customs; E.C. Tally, to provide an exact visual and sound record of what happened on the surface, to be played back for the others who stayed on board the Erebus; and finally Hans Rebka, for the good — but unmentioned — reason that somebody less naive than E.C. Tally was needed to keep an eye on Nenda and Atvar H’sial.

The group remaining on the Erebus had been assigned one unrewarding but necessary task: to learn all that could be learned about the Torvil Anfract.

The planet that the seedship drifted down to was at its best from a distance. Two hundred miles up, the surface was a smoky palette of soft purple and gray. By two thousand feet that soft, airbrushed texture had resolved to a jumbled wilderness of broken, steep-sided cliffs, their faces covered with spiky gray trees and shrubs. The landing port for Bridle Gap occupied half of an isolated long, fat gash on the surface, with a dark body of water at its lower end. Louis Nenda took the ship down with total confidence and landed at the water’s edge.

“That’ll do. Cross your fingers and claws. We’ll know in another five minutes if Dulcimer’s here.” He was already smearing thick yellow cream over his face and hands.

“Five minutes?” E.C. Tally said. “But what about the time it takes to clear customs and Immigration?”

Nenda gave him one incredulous stare and continued applying the cream. “Better get coated, too, ’less you wanna crisp out there in two seconds.” He went to the hatch, cracked it open and sniffed, then fitted improvised goggles into position. “Not bad. I’m goin’. Follow me as soon as you’re ready.”

Hans Rebka was right behind as Nenda stepped out onto the surface.

He gazed all around and made his own evaluation. He had never been to this particular planet, but he had seen a dozen that rivaled it. Bridle Gap was bad, and one would never go outside at noon, but it was no worse than his birthworld of Teufel, where no one who wanted to live went out while the Remouleur dawn wind blew.