There followed some back and forth translating as Memor insisted on a full introduction using her complete title, Attendant Astute Astronomer. Bemor then managed to get his “Contriver and Intimate Emissary to the Ice Minds” into the discussion. Tananareve whispered, “Slip those titles into your remarks now and then; they like that.”

Cliff watched the huge aliens as the light of the jet and star, at these higher altitudes, poured down on the fleshy floor like glistening yellow-white oil. Asenath thundered, “We have you indeed, at last. The first issue is our need of you, to prepare a message for those whom you term the ‘Glorians’—to continue the artifice.”

The others looked to Cliff. He faced the big skull Asenath lowered, as if to listen more closely. Cliff suspected this was just intimidation—and decided to ignore it, the only strategy that might work. “Artifice?”

“Glorians believe you primates are the rulers and pilots of our Bowl,” Asenath thundered. “They confuse our mutual trajectories as meaning that the Bowl comes from your world.”

“Weird. So?” It seemed to Cliff better to play dumb for a while. There was too much going on to make sense of this. He needed time to talk to Tananareve and get his bearings. These Folk had talked to Redwing, using Tananareve, but what were the nuances of that?

Asenath gave a purple and rose display and her head descended still closer. Her Anglish was clipped and brusque, perhaps because she had only recently imbibed the language, or because she meant it that way. “Of course we converge on Glory. Over time scales of many thousands of orbitals, similar goals emerge. The only puzzle to us is why you, with your simple though ingenious and craftily made ship, desire to attain the status the Glorian technologies imply.”

Cliff shrugged, glanced at Tananareve—who shrugged. “Imply?”

“The gravitational signals. Surely this lures you.”

“Not really. We’re bound for Glory because it’s a biosphere a lot like our own. The right oxygen levels, water vapor, a hydrogen cycle with oceans. Plus no signs of technology. No signatures of odd elements in its air. No electromagnetic emissions. No signals at all. Kind of like our world thousands of years—I guess you call them orbitals—ago.” Cliff spread his hands, hoping this was a signal of admitting the obvious.

Asenath gave a rustling flurry of feather displays, crimson and violet. “Your ship has received the Glorian signals, yet you do not know?”

“Know what?”

“The Glorians, as you term them, are of the August.”

“Meaning…?”

“They do not deign, over many megaorbitals, to answer our electromagnetic signals. No matter of what frequencies. The Aloof and August.”

“The same might be said of any rock.”

“The advanced societies of this galaxy deliver their August messages only by means that young societies, such as yours, cannot detect.” Asenath gave a rattling side-display in eggshell blue. “Most important, signals of great information density, to which young worlds cannot reply.”

“We picked up the gravity waves, around the time our ship left Earthside,” Cliff said. “There didn’t seem to be a signal, just noise.”

“So young societies would think,” Bemor said from beside Asenath. “We do—”

Suddenly something made the three Folk pause, Bemor with his mouth partly open. Silence. Their yellow eyes were distant.

Quert appeared at Cliff’s side and whispered, “They hear other voices.”

“They’ve done this before, getting signals somehow,” Tananareve said. “Let’s use the time. What’s our strategy here?”

“These Folk have something in mind, using us somehow, I’ll bet,” Aybe said. “Wish I knew what they’re hearing right now.”

Quert said, “They now listen to what we Sil brought forth. Told to. We showed old truth.”

“How?” Tananareve asked.

“Folk control electromagnetic pathways in Bowl. So Sil make signs buildings.” The swift slippery slide of Quert’s words belied the content.

Cliff said, “Those deforming houses we saw you building?” He recalled how the Sil had deftly rebuilt their ruined city. He had seen a growing arch inching out into a parabolic curve, the scaffolding of tan walls rising from what seemed to be a sticky, plastic dirt. Wrinkled bulks had surged up as oblong windows popped into shape from a crude substrate, all driven by electrical panels. The Sil were working their entire city into fresh structures like spun glass, growing them into artful loops and bridges and elegant spires.

“You make signals with your cities?” Irma asked. “How?”

“City, all can see all across Bowl. Others know to look to us. To get message.” Quert had now a calm the feline alien wore like a cloak.

“What was the message?”

Quert looked at them all slowly, as if unburdening at last. He wagged his head and said, “Bowl pass by your sun. Go too close. Shower down mass. Damage world biosphere.”

Irma said, “What? When?”

“Long ago. Folk call it Great Shame.”

Terry said, “You got this how?”

Quert looked puzzled, as it always did by the human habit of conveying a question by a rising note at the end of a sentence. “Your ship told you. You told us.”

“What?” Terry turned to Cliff. “You got this from Redwing?”

“Yup. I tried it out on Quert. I didn’t believe it, really.”

“You didn’t tell us!” Aybe said.

“Saw no need to.” Cliff’s face stiffened. “I still don’t know if it’s true.”

“We got more from … others,” Quert said. “Come.”

Quert led them to a small room that puckered into the ribbed, pink slabs that formed the great hall. Cliff looked back. The Folk were still rigid, eyes focused on infinity, taking in some transmission from … where? Their bodies were clenched, feet grasping at the floor. He turned and went into a narrow chamber where a bright screen fluoresced into pale blue light. “We have map sent. History.”

It was a 3-D starscape. Across it scratched a ruby line. “Bowl went there. Time go backward.”

A dot started at the Bowl, shown as a small cup embracing a red star. The ruby line stretched as it moved backwards, away, into the reaches of stars. Cliff and the others muttered to each other, watching the constellations slip by as time ran in reverse, accelerating. The line looped near many dots that were stars—yellow, red, some bright blue—and went on, faster, until the perspective became confusing. It wound along the Orion arm of the slowly churning galaxy. They could see the stars moving now in their gyres. The ruby line ventured out toward the Perseus arm, which was festering with light, then looped near some to pick off glimmering sites apparently of interest. The Bowl’s method, Cliff could see, was to dive into the distant, shallow slope of the grav well of a star, slowing somehow, and skate by. A close-up view near a yellow dot showed bright sparks departing the Bowl, to descend deeper into the gravity potential well of the destination star. These soon returned, apparently bearing whatever they found on the circling worlds down in the grav well. This happened several times as they watched.

Then the Bowl cruised through what Cliff recognized as the Local Fluff inside the Local Bubble, terms he recalled from some distant lecture for the spaces around Sol. Then the Bowl surged a bit, building speed, bound for the next target brimming ahead.

Cliff and the Sil had to interpret in this way the backward-running line, for what they saw was the reverse. Then the Bowl-star pair descended on a yellow star.

They watched the entire encounter and talked about it, piecing the story together in backward fashion. After the encounter, the Bowl came soaring out of a system racked and ruined. Comets flared in the yellow star glow, and it was clear why. The Bowl had swept through the prickly small motes of light that swarmed far from the star. It had left a roiling path through those tiny lights, giving them small nudges, and so some had plunged inward. Only one was needed.