“She is what we have,” the Packmistress said suddenly. “She studied these aliens.”

“But the risk!” the Profound said, turning to make the strut-challenge to the entire room. “We know from prior eras that aliens drawn to us from planets arrive with a planetary view of life. This cripples them. Of course, once having seen and lived upon the Bowl of Heaven, they saw their errors and found a quiet equilibrium. The Adopted have been quite useful to us and, once rendered docile, improve the lives of us all. Yet inevitably such aliens suffer for reasons built deeply into their genes—a nostalgia for planets that necessarily suffer the pains of days and nights, of axial seasons, of uncontrolled, hammering weather. So the Adopted are susceptible to incitement. These Late Invaders could excite such nostalgia into rage, vast violence, and then—”

The Packmistress held up her arms, and the room fell silent. She did not react visibly, but turned to Memor and gazed steadily. “You will find a way to draw them out.”

Memor hesitated. “But … how can I…”

“You know them. You have seen their ways of bonding, of talking with those curious faces of theirs. The idea of an intelligence that does not fully control expression, showing all to any who see—and so lets others know what emotions pass within! Use that! You have two bands of aliens moving across the majesty of the Bowl. They are communal animals, yes?”

“True, they daily meet and speak and—”

“Good. Use that.”

“Lure them?”

“If you can devise a way, surely.”

“May I have use of the Sky Command? I can cover territory quickly with the fliers. And especially the airfish.”

“I suppose.” A sniff.

Memor hesitated, then bowed. Her caution warned her not to go further, but—“What of their ship?”

“Eh?” A Packmistress is not used to being questioned.

“Their starship orbits about our star. Suppose it has some powers we do not know?”

“That is for the Astronomers, surely.” The Packmistress stirred, as if she had not considered the issue. “I heard at Council that our mirror complexes probably cannot adjust quickly enough to focus on their ship. It has capacity to maneuver, and could evade a beam.”

A senior Savant added, “No small ship could damage the Bowl, in any case.”

“Ah, that is consoling,” Memor said with a bow and a humble submission-flurry of crest feathers. Then, as she rose, she had an idea.

THIRTY-EIGHT

When they stopped for a rest after a long journey in the magcar, Cliff searched for food. It felt good to get out of the car and into the “sorta-natural,” as Irma called it.

There was little of animal prints or scat here, he noticed automatically. He found ripe berries, spotting them from experience. Some large trees had fruit growing off their trunks, an oddity that he used. With Howard he shot several of them off the bark by laser. He had developed a small poison detector, using the gear he had brought. That time of their landing—going through the air lock and then on the run—seemed far in the past. He had expected a few days on the Bowl, mostly doing bio tests, then back to SunSeeker.

The fruit was a succulent purple and tested okay.

But the purple sap drew tiny flies that went for the fruit and then tried to suck the moisture off his eyeballs. They darted into his ears and dwelled there, prying deep inside. Dozens of them danced in the air, looking for suitable targets. Only running left them behind, and not for long.

This just led the flies to the others, who batted at the buzzing irritants. It got bad and they decided to fire up the magcar and flee. Aybe was irritable; they had stung him on the neck repeatedly. He took out his ire by “trying out the dynamics.” This meant more acrobatics. Howard had measured the magnetic fields around the magcar and found it was an asymmetric dipole, with field squeezed tight under the car. With all aboard, the car sped faster by hugging the ground, so they skimmed along at only a meter in altitude. The more weight, the faster they could go. “Counterintuitive,” Howard said. “Must be the fields grip the metal belowground better.”

Aybe nodded. “I figure the Bowl underpinning is metal with magnetic fields already embedded.”

Irma said, “Maybe those big grid lines we saw on the outer skin? Could be enormous superconductor lines. Howard, what’s the magnetic field intensity at ground level?”

“Strong—so much, I can’t measure it with my simple gear. At least a hundred times Earth’s, maybe a lot more.”

Soon a ridge of mountain loomed before them. Aybe took them straight at it and Irma said, “That’s not far from the gridding I found. Maybe it’s a city?”

“Then let’s not go there,” Howard said.

But under binocs, the rising ridge looked like bare rock and there were no signs of locals. Aybe worked them around the narrow canyons that led to the base.

“No signs of life,” Aybe said. “Maybe it has some structural role?”

“We can get some perspective from up there,” Cliff said mildly. He had wanted to see further around this immense place but until now could not think of a way to do it, short of capturing an aircraft. Yet they had seen few of those in the skies.

They started up the slope of the spire. It was mostly bare rock, but here and there they could see in the gullies some metal, as if the frame were showing through. The magcar handled well.

Howard said, “I think the magnetics are getting stronger.”

Aybe nodded. “I’m feeling more grip now. We can go uphill pretty fast.” He brought the magcar down even lower to the rock face and they lifted steadily.

Cliff watched the terrain fall away. Forest, grasslands, rumpled hills. The spire steepened steadily but somehow the magcar held on, groaning, and propelled them up its flanks. He wondered what drove it—a compact fusion scheme? The oscillating rumble under his feet suggested that, but alien tech could—no, would—be alien.

As they rose he saw immense decks of clouds rising like mountains in the distance. The atmosphere was so deep, such stacks could form and drift like skyscrapers of cotton. The Bowl rotated around in about ten days, and this drove waves and eddies in the huge atmosphere. The clouds followed this rhythm in stately cadence. He had seen the effects on the thin film that capped the atmosphere, and in the deep air below—ripples that shaped the winds, tornados here and there spinning like vast purple storms, resembling a top on a distant table. How could anyone predict temperature and rainfall in something this big?

Aybe had taken them far up the spire now. It felt like climbing a building with no safety net. They were above the layer of air where small clouds hung, and now the view reached farther. Opposite the clouds was a clear zone. He was looking away from the rim of the Bowl, toward the Knothole. The Jet slowly wrapped and writhed, a slender red and orange snake. He followed its dim glow toward the Knothole but could not see past the foggy blur there. But nearer, beyond the vast mottled lands, lay a strange, huge curved zone—the mirrors.

He was about to turn away when he saw something new.

Glinting pixels struck his eye. The whole zone seemed to teem with activity—winks and stutters of light. Were the mirrors adjusting to tune the Jet, to stop the snarling waves that rode out on it?

“Let’s go there.” Cliff pointed. “That’s got to be where whoever runs this place lives.”

“Up to high latitudes?” Howard said. “We haven’t any idea what’s there!”

“We haven’t got any ideas!” Irma burst out.

“Then we need some,” Aybe said.

*   *   *

They kept moving up the rocky flanks of the immense tower, then had another sleep stop. At their rest site were some of the helically coiled, willowy paper bark trees they had found before. These they used for toilet paper, but they also cooked fish wrapped in it. Terry discovered a local herb that, roasted inside the fish, gave a pleasant taste to the big slabs of white meat. Cliff gutted the fish they caught in the surprisingly rich streams and ponds, and kept notes on his slate about their guts. There were oddities to the usual tubular design, such as one that excreted to the sides, not at the tail, and another with a circular comb around its flanks. Disguise? Defense? Hard to know.