But if the planets and sun are deities, then the black nebula is the Mother Ocean that blesses the universe with her bounty. (“It’s the best explanation we could decide upon”—Lorkin added later, with a scribbling hand.) In some long-ago past, the Mother Ocean visited their world with Her body. Their descriptions sound like a starship. The aliens aboard were as large as the natives, or larger. Or perhaps they were secondary ships departing from the main body. Either way, they were finned and perhaps warm-blooded … they knew how to speak to the natives … but in most cases, they chose to say nothing …

The visitors seem to have planted the idea that the nebula is an ocean and a god, and that She washes the universe with her bounty. Until then, the locals had assumed that the blackness was just a hole in their otherwise god-rich sky …

We could have visited the cold cetaceans, but our streakship is meant for fast transit and fully equipped ports of call. An icy moon would have supplied us with limitless fuel, but our machine shops are minimal and our shuttles small. I have decided to pass through the system, using the sun to help slingshot us on a new, more promising trajectory … a second system closer to the nebula, where the cetaceans claim to have heard voices rather like their own …

The K-class sun has no worlds, only a loose assemblage of asteroids and comets left over from an impoverished dust cloud. Settlers from a machine species have claimed every rock larger than a human fist, attaching beacons and at least one species of booby-trap. In culture and language, they seem to be related to the 449-tables, but since they won’t meet with us, much less allow close examinations, we can only make sloppy guesses about their origins …

They claim to know nothing about the nebula. They say it does not interest them, that they possess all of the room and resources they need right here, for now and the next ten billion years … which is a fair estimate, considering that to date they have retroformed only half a thousand scattered bolides …

But my first officer has voiced doubts about their attitude.

We passed through the system last night, borrowing momentum from the sun to acquire a new course. Neither my first officer nor I could sleep. “Remember when we were approaching?” she asked. “When they first noticed us, I mean. We made a burn and gave our little ‘Hello …’”

“What about it?” I asked.

“Remember? What did their first transmission show us?”

An elaborate, highly detailed picture was sent to us. (I’m including the image, of course. Perhaps you can make more out of this, Master.) From what I can tell, the picture shows us that the local residents possess no starships. They were tiny machines, and scarce, and by a thousand measures, utterly harmless. They had no intention of launching toward the nebula. Again and again, they referred to us as being “great thinking silicon”—apparently a common 449-Able reference to intelligent machinery—and they seemed to mention an old treaty, a sworn agreement, or maybe a desperate promise …

“I don’t think it was a treaty,” my first officer told me. “Treaties are drawn up between near equals. To me, they sounded as if they were little guys begging the nebula to let them survive.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I argued. “We weren’t coming from the direction of the nebula.”

“Yeah, but we seem to be heading toward it,” she reminded me. “At two-thirds the speed of light, which might be an alarming sight to somebody who spends a lot of their time being scared …”

Today, we caught a stray broadcast from a G-class sun twenty light-years removed from us … from the far side of the nebula, apparently …

A highly intelligent species—a sessile species from a world with a dense wet atmosphere—was trying to communicate with someone inside the dust cloud. For thirty seconds, we were traveling inside their much-weakened com-laser. We captured just a portion of their message. (Broadcast included.) They seem to be giving thanks for some small charity or favor … and when they are not saying, “Thank you,” they are begging for a response …

In one image, they show themselves rooted beside a second species. The nebula inhabitants, perhaps? Both species appear sessile, as it happens … like giant hydras, with very much the same body design … But their neighbors—the ones who are now refusing to answer their pleas—seem at least ten times larger than them …

Approaching the new world, the Pak’kin seemed to assume that we were a starship returning to the nebula. One nest after another sent us greetings, wishing us a successful voyage home. Even from fringes of their solar system, we could see that their world was enormous and very dry. Again, we found another weak candidate for a port of call. But on the outskirts of the system, a stony little comet smashed our armor, its shards gutting us in a hundred places, and after making rough repairs, I have just told my first officer, “We’ve got to stop here.”

We have no choice.

Our main antennae will have to be rebuilt from scraps and scavenged pieces of our shuttle com-systems. We will be in a blackout state until finally moving into a high orbit around the Pak’kin world. My first officer suggests that we pretend to be from the nebula. “In this neighborhood,” she points out, “everybody seems to respect whoever lives inside that black cloud.” She says, “We should fake it, and we might win favors. You never know until you try.”

But I have made a different choice.

“We come from the Great Ship,” I have told her, and everyone, “we don’t have any reason to lie. In fact, I think we can use our home ship to our advantage. An artifact bigger than most worlds, and older than any sun … How can a cloud of cold black soot appear any more impressive than us … ?”

AS THE CALAMUS transmissions were being replayed, the Submasters were scattered around the ship, in secure immersion tanks, each sitting inside the same holo image showing the landing party and the Pak’kin. It made for a very crowded mountaintop.

“Now look this way,” Pamir instructed, using a blue laser to guide everyone’s eyes. “Past Lorkin and his crew. Past their ugly-ass little shuttle. You see? Out where the cameras weren’t really pointing … do you see that … ?”

Washen thought she could see it, yes. Where light and shadow had been captured by the peripheral edges of the lenses, she could see bodies. They were even lower-built than the Pak’kins sent as the delegation, perhaps they were more powerful, and there were too many of them to count. And each cone-shaped body seemed to carry some type of weaponry.

“No, I’m talking about something else,” warned Pamir.

The holo was received just three days ago, and he had done the initial analysis. Until moments ago, nobody else knew what he had found.

“But who are these others?” the Master inquired, her image sitting with the invisible cameras, her puzzled voice twisting the conversation back to the obvious. “Are they soldiers from the local hive? Or another hive?”

“One or the other, madam,” Pamir replied.

Washen walked through the image of Lorkin and then his first officer and lover. Alone, she strolled to the edge of the holo, observing what seemed to be the low, gravity-smashed peak of a second mountain standing on the very brink of sight. Strong limbs or machinery had eaten into the peak’s bare stone. An image had been created, and at first glance, it was a Pak’kin. A nest queen, apparently. But the proportions were a little wrong, and she understood biomechanics well enough to appreciate that this enormous figure portrayed a creature that was not at all Pak’kin. But whatever the species, myth or alien, it had so impressed the natives that they had spent centuries and fortunes to reproduce its vastness and majesty.