This was an Origin Story. Somewhere, the small red sun had spawned the creatures who built the Bowl. Why didn’t it open on a planet where the builders began? There were none in the black sky. If the red star had planets, they were small. So maybe the creatures’ world was far away, orbiting the first bright spot she had seen. Maybe the builders came from near a distant companion of this small sun.

Now the measureless basin turned. The bee swarm of working ships was an earnestly working fog as they spun up this world in the making. The soil settled and blue haze spread throughout the skin of atmosphere. Darting flashes lit the troubled high clouds. Monsoons swept the ragged continents, and seas sloshed.

The system evolved. Storms lashed immense, windswept lands. A joist on the backside popped free and the bee swarm surrounded it as gouts of dirt and gas became a volcano into a vacuum. Patched, the system ground on, spinning up. The shimmering sheet holding in the atmosphere flexed and rippled as angular momentum warped it.

Time ran faster. She was not sure how she knew this, but surely it would have taken a very long time to form a working biosphere. Yet now she saw the air clear and gray clouds form in high stacks like pancakes. Green lands spread like a bacterium overwhelming a curved petri dish.

Beth could see the Knothole now through the clearing atmosphere. In an arc around it, mirrors blossomed in lines, like yarn wrapping around the floor of the Bowl. The dark patch of the Knothole bristled with large gray shapes that she supposed must be large magnet cores being built. Slowly the center resolved and she could see stars winking in it.

The winding up of the mirror fields slowed as the last strands of it popped into being. Now the mirror fields jittered and flashed as they came alive. Her view tilted and swam toward the edge of the Bowl, where knuckles of burnished metal grew. Quickly the mirror field gained a slick metallic sheen. Fitful sprays of blazing colors worked in it.

The mirror fields showed sparkling oranges and reds. They threw images of the small star into view, flickering and finding their patterns, settling in. Abruptly a thin line of boiling plasma arced in and played in the spaces above the Bowl. The plume steadied, stuttered—and lanced through the Knothole.

Thin at first, the luminous Jet thickened. Snarls worked along it. Dark spots. A filament broke free and lashed across the envelope that held in the atmosphere. The Jet snapped off. But the damage was done: the atmosphere’s skin darkened and massive plumes of air shot out. A blur of worker ships stopped that.

The view turned toward the reddish star. Its corona boiled with hoops of magnetic force, making giant high bridges around a white-hot point. That was the mirror focus spot, and more ships tended to it with anxious energy.

With a jerk the Jet lanced out again. It speared exactly through the Knothole. The repaired skin of the atmosphere reflected a pale image of the Jet.

Now this Bowl of the past resembled the vibrantly alive presence of today. The point of view backed away from it, and the constantly flickering swarm of worker ships faded.

Imperceptibly, the system of star, Jet, and Bowl began to move. It swam across the blackness, the Jet’s raging brilliance drowning out the icy stars. The vast contrivance glided with aching slowness away from the distant yellow white star.

Leaving the system, she guessed. It could not make a pass near that star without risking disruption of whatever planets might orbit there. The Bowl became a vessel bound for the distant pale lights, the firmament of beckoning stars.

Only the starscape remained.

Lau Pin, Fred, Tananareve, and Mayra looked around themselves. It was, Beth thought, a little like being on LSD. A trip into a distant, wondrous time.

In the dark she could see through the globe’s smoky glass. Gigantic Bird Folk were walking underneath.

Fred said, “I think I see.”

Mayra said, “We all saw, Fred.”

Tananareve said, “I think I see why primitives died out when they ran across advanced civilizations.”

Lau Pin said, “It strikes me that if there’s only one way into here, there’s only one way out.”

Beth: “We can’t leave now. We’re surrounded.”

“If any of them come in—”

“We’re dead. Let’s keep looking. All the secrets are here. By the way, Beth, this has to be the map of the origin world.”

“Oh … almost.”

*   *   *

Over the next hour, two dozen Bird Folk passed them by. The human folk spent their time examining hundreds of spacegoing tools. Most were too cryptic even to be described. Mayra took pictures.

They gathered at one point to share dried canard bird meat. It was all they had left, save for a bar of chocolate Tananareve shared out.

“I think the Bird Folk are gone,” Beth said. “Do we feel lucky?”

“We feel hungry,” Tananareve said. “Somewhere around us, there must be something to eat.”

THIRTY-FIVE

Six little world-globes ran in a row, three or four meters in diameter, half a kilometer apart. Worlds—big enough to show as spheres—but not all Earthlike. One was featureless blue, bigger than the rest. One was stark ice white, cracked around the equator. None of them had windows or openings.

The final bubble, an hour away, was another glassy sphere marked with land masses in a great blue sea. They moved carefully now, slipping from clumps of immense ferns to the shelter of occasional tree stands. Bird Folk of a variety Beth didn’t recognize were streaming into a great arch. Beth’s troupe moved carefully, but the Bird Folk were paying no attention at all. They murmured and whooped with odd, high singsongs.

Tananareve crept close against the glass, around the curve from the entrance. “Dancing,” she said. “It’s a dance hall.”

Lau Pin was beside her now. He stared awhile, then said, “Mating ritual.”

Beth said, “There’s a difference?”

The chuckles that followed this weak joke told her how tense they were.

Beth was up against the glass now. Slow, thumping music with skittering undertones. A simple song, cascading chords ornamented by lots of percussion. Lurching bodies, heads turned upward to the ceiling.

With sun and flare behind her, she and Tananareve might look like ferns, if they held still. There were platforms throughout the interior, on narrow pedestals, some topped with … sofas … nests? Thousands of Bird Folk, including a few gigantic Astronomers, were paying no attention to anything but one another. Some were dancing, some fighting, some … head to tail … that must be mating. But the Astronomers weren’t doing any of that. Were they there to supervise? Or as voyeurs?

“Nothing for us here,” Mayra said primly.

“But, Mayra, it must be a map of Glory! It’s the last globe in this park.”

“Get some photos, then.”

They did that, then went on.

The ridge continued toward the Bowl’s inner well. Vegetation was sparse here, offering less cover. There was nothing to eat.

And the next dome was silver, as big as several football fields, with a tremendous square opening and tracks running into it. Floating railroad cars ran in and out. They were open cages, and inside—

“Live animals,” Tananareve said.

“Plants, too. Warehouse,” Lau Pin said. “Anyone hungry?”

They crept in, hidden by the shadows beneath a slow-moving car, and rolled away before the cars reached the unloading dock.

There were Bird Folk around, one of the big varieties. Some might be guards, but most were working, moving stuff on and off the cars. What went on the cars was recognizable: crates of melons and plants and creatures from the humans’ garden-prison. What came off were ferns and reeds and grass, tons and tons of it. It must all be food for Bird Folk of various types, Beth thought.