The Circle was the most precious of her race’s natural resources. The names of the podia who had found and captured the Circle would ring down through history forever. Possession of the Circle gave the podia the key to slitting the throats of whole worlds. They had used it against the mechs who opposed their move into Galactic Center.

It could be hurled against mech craft at immense speed. After it had chopped ships, there was a way to make it suddenly radiate enormous bursts of electromagnetic radiation, frying all unprotected mechs within an entire solar system. The Circle Masters were benefactors and warriors beyond all comparison in the history of the podia. Quath was proud to tread the ruptured ground beneath their handiwork.

On this rumpled plain mech ruins clogged the ravines. Smashed mech factories gaped like rotted teeth. Mech carcasses still smoked from past battles. Podia had stripped others of useful parts so that only the shell remained. Quath swelled with pride at the devastation her kind had wrought.

Even this lightly defended world had demanded the best of the podia. They had fallen upon it while the local mechs were beset by internal struggles. The Illuminates had detected signs of exceptionally vicious mech intercity competition. Those wise beings had then ordered the Hives to descend. Once enough of the surface was secured for construction of the magnetic clamping stations, the Cosmic Circle had been brought into play. Their victory here opened the possibility of penetrating into the mech fortress stars even closer to the tantalizing core of the whirlpool galaxy.

A herd of grazing animals caught sight of Quath and scattered, pell-mell. Even for animals, they seemed stupid and graceless. To think Nimfur’thon had hesitated a precious time too long, out of concern over such base creatures! This was a crude planet, incapable of hatching more than Noughts in its scum of sea and sky.

Some scattered Noughts—mere planet-bound creatures, with crude devices—remained here. Only after the mech defeat had the podia even noticed them. Disemboweling their world would finish such trivial beings.

Yet some podia still fell to their assaults. Even such minor creatures could hurl podia into the blackness that Quath now knew to be everywhere, behind each apparently solid object.

As it had swallowed Nimfur’thon, so it would, inevitably, suck down Quath, the Tukar’ramin, everyone, everyone and everything, making a vile joke of continuity.

Quath plucked up a boulder in irritation and flung it skyward, arcing toward a distant herd of dull-witted grazers. The stone smashed great holes as it bounded through them, felling a few. Smaller animals hopped in panic from their holes. They melted into the shadowed dusk and Quath turned, weary, back to the floating alabaster mountain that was the Hive.

The Syphon lanced skyward again. This time the Cosmic Circle held steady in its course and the Syphon did not snake sideways. No burning lash fell, letting streaming yellow gush forth.

The podia took special care with this first successful firing. The Circle spun perfectly, caressed by sinewy fields. They would have to repeat the exercise many times before abandoning this scrap of a world, each time made a bit more difficult because of the shifting pressures below as the planetary mantle collapsed.

Quath took refuge in the bustle of work. She volunteered for excess time at the feedback-stabilization monitor. Canted forward to sense the rippling green display, integrating differential inputs, she felt the pressing hollowness of life lift away. If there was no redeeming facet in things, atleast there was this: A blur of activity hid the fact that activity meant, finally, nothing.

As the Syphon steadied its rush of core metals, the Hive lifted farther. Quath watched from a viewing blister. The ground below heaved and broke, spurting fountains of dust. The land groaned. Pebbles rattled on the blister’s underbelly. Animals stumbled in panic as hills slumped. Pits opened beneath their feet.

Quath felt her resting strands quiver and she turned, away from the chaos outside. Beq’qdahl nimbly enveloped herself in a webbing, saying, <A good show.>

<Yes.>

<I think we’ll start mining tomorrow.>

Quath allowed herself a glance at Beq’qdahl’s large, hairy mass. <You’re looking forward to it’?>

<Isn’t everybody? It’s a chance to show what you can do on your own.>

Quath had not thought of mining that way, but Beq’qdahl’s self-assurance made the point obvious. With each sucking of the Syphon the crust churned, exposing fresh seams of rare minerals. Many ores were needed in the thermweb weaving now going on in orbit. To thread the great bands of coldformed nickel-iron required bonding pastes and weldings, so freighters lofted a steady stream of mixed materials from the surface.

Captured mech ships and a large orbital station aided this. Quath and Beq’qdahl had both been privileged to pilot flights to the captured mech station, the nearest they had gotten to where the orbital weavers conjured their deft magic.

No hope of such lofty labor now. All surface-working podia had to find rich upturned seams. All who could be spared became prospectors.

<It is boring work,> Quath said.

<So say they who do not do it well.>

<I would prefer focusing the Syphon.>

<That’s just puzzle-work. No real zest in it.>

<It is intellectually more difficult to—>

<Oh, never would I question your intellectual credentials.> Beq’qdahl dipped her proboscis sarcastically, impaling on it a burr of spitfood. <Particularly after your brilliant cross-examination of the Tukar’ramin.>

Quath bristled cilia. <I was seeking answers.>

<To grub-stupid questions. What does all that matter?> Beq’qdahl plucked a mite from a moist slickstrand.

<It is everything.>

<Talk, mere talk. We are here to act.>

<But what is the purpose, when—>

Beq’qdahl leaned closer gracefully, her hydraulics wheezing. <The purpose, slit-eye, is to get into orbit. To weave, not hug the ground like a grub.>

Quath framed a reply and suddenly saw that Beq’qdahl would be a success. Beq’qdahl’s smooth, successful, uncaring manner came naturally because she was in touch with deeper wellsprings, she sensed the way things truly were. And in that clear world, the Synthesis was talk and the Summation a promised sugar dollop meant to quiet children, not a thing podia took seriously for long. That world was real. Relentlessly real.

SEVEN

Gathering call, came the beep, slicing through Quath’s concentration. She crunched over crumbling slag and looked for silvery green streaks.

Gathering call.

She slipped a needle into the flaking silver-green, measured and clattered her ossicles in frustration. The stuff wasn’t palazinia. Finding a lode of palazinia, the rarest of the bonding pastes, would have been a coup. This scrap, glinting falsely—Quath kicked at it—was worthless.

Gathering call.

She answered, dreading.

Rendezvous! Noble Beq’qdahl has found a deep seam of—

Savagely she clicked the message off. Another feat for Beq’qdahl.

This was the fifth important find since the prospecting and mining had begun, all Beq’qdahl’s. Most of the other podia were kept busy mining Beq’qdahl’s discoveries, leaving the field clear for Beq’qdahl to find more, to stand out even better. Quath had pondered giving up prospecting—she wasn’t good at searching; she moped and rambled when she should scuttle, ferretlike, poking into every cranny—and becoming a miner. But something inside made Quath keep on, trying to best Beq’qdahl. She would not yield the ground so easily. If only—