“I think that is quite enough indeed,” Bemor said—rather haughtily, Memor thought. “But…” Bemor moved uneasily, feathers rustling. “The Ice Minds do not always reveal their thinking. They seem unusually interested in these primates. Still, they wish us to secure the help of these Late Invaders.”

Asenath rushed to send an assent-flutter toward Bemor and turned a subtle angle toward him, and so away from Memor. “So, Contriver, I propose that we give the primate ship a reminder of their true position.”

“Um,” Bemor said with a skeptical eye-cant. “How?”

“They are inspecting the magnetic configurations around their ship, probably to better guide their own craft. But it could be they will use it to disturb our magnetic mechanics, as well. Their technique is to spread a wide array of sensors.”

“Adeptly so?” Bemor said.

“These are craftily done, hundreds of disks the size of my toenail. I suggest we wipe our skies free of them.”

“Destroy them?” Memor asked.

“It will serve as a calling card,” Aseneth said with a smirk-flutter.

“I’m sure it will,” Bemor said, sending an assent corona of yellow and blue. He leaned forward eagerly. “We will at least learn something from their response.”

“I shall see it is done,” Asenath said happily. “I believe these Late Invaders will be put in their proper place, and soon realize it.”

Memor wondered if she had been outmaneuvered here. Caution would have been her policy, but Bemor seemed bemused by the idea of overt action. “I hope you enjoy it as well, Asenath,” Memor said with what she hoped was just the right tone of sardonic agreement. It was always difficult to get these things right.

TWENTY-FIVE

Blessed night, Cliff thought. The soothing qualities of pure deep darkness washed over them all. After months of relentless sun, they had all they wished of sweet shadow. It fell like a club upon their minds, sucking them into sleep.

He swam up to blurred consciousness after another long sleep, wrapped in a fuzzy warm blanket the Sil had found for them all. His team lay around like sacks of sand, feasting on the festival of dark that released their need, after so long in the field, for rest.

He was still groggy. Something had sent a twinge, awakened him. He got up, pulled on pants and boots, and left their little room carved from brown rock. His boots were getting worn down and he wondered how he could get something serviceable. As usual, the right answer was, ask the Sil.

Small soft sounds were coming from where they viewed the Ice Minds messages. He came in carefully, watching the two Sil speaking in their curious way. There was more eye and head movement than there was talk. And as usual, the most active one was Quert—who noticed Cliff and beckoned him over with an eye-shrug.

“Ask for wisdom of past,” Quert said. “This got now.”

On the screen were phrases that might have been answers to Sil questions.

Over long times there is no lack of energy or materials, only of imagination.

Not having resources makes species resourceful.

Anger dwells long only in the bosom of fools.

“Thanks for having them do this in Anglish.”

“Did not ask. They spoke first to us. Now to you.”

“What is this all about?”

“Want to deal with Folk. You can help. Ice Minds care not for us. Care for you.”

“Why?”

“New Invaders know new things.”

“So they brush you off with ‘Anger dwells long only in the bosom of fools.’ And you are supposed to forget how the Folk killed so many of you?”

Quert gave only a tightening around the eyes, and his words were in a cool whisper. “Ice Minds say we are unquiet in soul.”

“You’re handling those deaths better than I have done with my friend Howard.”

“There is more worry to come.”

Quert beckoned him toward the large portal that gave a view of the sprawling icefields. To the side the stars wheeled and on the dim icy outer crust of the Bowl the vacuum flowers slowly tracked the brightest stars in the moving sky. This was for Cliff still a magical vision. He watched it with Quert, who after a moment made a simple hand gesture and the portal flickered. The view jerked and though the stars still swept across the jet-black sky, now there was a bright object moving counter to the Bowl’s rotation, skating across the blackness. When it was nearly overhead, a sudden beam flashed into view and Cliff realized the craft was using a spotlight. A powerful green laser beam fanned out to a ten-meter circle, sweeping. The beam flared briefly as it shone directly into the portal and then moved on. The bright point of the surveying ship tracked on, away and over the horizon. The stars wheeled on.

“That was a recording?”

An assent-rachet of Quert’s eyes. “They not see your kind. Saw us.”

“Some Sil? If they were looking for us, then we’re safe—”

“Folk say Sil not come here.”

“I thought—” He stopped, realizing that he had not thought at all whether the Sil were trespassing here. Apparently they were. Once the thought occurred, it seemed reasonable. You don’t want riffraff intruding into the provinces of beings who dwell in deep cold. Their mere body heat could cause damage.

“No one is to come talk to the Ice Minds?”

“Not allowed by Folk.”

“So they’ll come after you?”

“Soon. We move.”

Cliff realized he had thought of this cool dark refuge in rock as a resting place. They were all tired of moving across strange landscapes. But now they would lose that, too.

“Where to?”

“Warm and hot.”

TWENTY-SIX

Redwing woke from a blurred dream of swimming in a warm ocean, lazily drifting … to a melodious call from the bridge. He hated buzzers in his cabin, and so the strains of Beethoven’s Fifth drew him up with their four hammering notes. If he didn’t answer within ten seconds, it would double in volume. He got to it in nine. “Um, yeah.”

“Captain, the smart coins aren’t reporting in,” Ayaan Ali said in a tight, clipped voice. In task rotation, this was her week on the skeleton watch. It was 4:07 ship time.

“How many?” He was still groggy.

“All of them. Their hail marks just winked out. I had them up on the big board along with full stereo visuals in optical. Their hails started disappearing at angle two eighty-seven, and a wave of them swept across the real space coordinate representation. It took, let’s see, one hundred forty-nine seconds to sweep over all of them. I can’t get a response hail from a single one.”

“Sounds like an in-system malf.”

“I checked that. The Insys Artilect says nothing wrong.”

“You called on the other two?”

“I brought them up into partial mode to save time. With just their diagnostic subset running, I got them to review whole-system stats for the last hour. They say there’s nothing wrong.”

“The full Artilect is right, then.” His mind scrambled over the problem, got nothing. “Run it again. And direct for an all-spectrum search. Plus look at all the particle count indexes. Everything we’ve got.”

“Yes, sir. Shall I call—?”

“Right, Karl. And Fred.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be there pronto.”

He made it in under two minutes. His onboard coverall slipped on easily—he had been losing weight lately, working the weights and doing pace running—and he used Velcro shoes. Ayaan Ali’s brow was creased with lines he had never seen before. Worry, not fatigue.

“Nothing unusual in the all-spectrum,” she said, voice high and tight. “Particle fluxes normal. The magnetosonic and ion cyclotron spectrum is as usual, pretty much. But the Alfvén wave spectrum power is up nearly an order of magnitude.”

The Insys Artilect visualized this spectrum, cast over the schematic of their near-space environment. It presented as a green front of waves rolling over the zone of the smart coins, silencing each as it swamped them. With an on-screen slider bar, Ayaan Ali moved this map backwards and forward in time. “I wonder how these magnetic waves could turn off our coins.”