Now the thick churn sang against Argo, a quickening wind driven by the galactic wheel. The Argo had somehow tapped this gale, he knew, harnessed its unseen dynamics. The massive, dusty currents smothered suns and silted planets with grime, so his Arthur Aspect said. The moaning that ranged and stuttered through Argo seemed to wail of dead worlds, of silted time, and of the choked-off visions of lost races he would never know.

The tabletop between them flickered abruptly. Shibo’s chiseled features appeared, flattened and distorted by the angle. “Pardon,” she said when she saw Lieutenant Cermo. “We have clear view now, Cap’n.”

“You see more inner worlds?”

“Aye, a new one. Dust hid it before.”

“Good detail?”

“Aye, sir,” Shibo said, her glinting eyes betraying a quick, darting enthusiasm. If it had been just the two of them, she probably would have thrown in a dry joke.

Killeen made himself take his time finishing the bowl of green goulash and then savored the last dregs of his tea. He spoke slowly, almost casually. “Take a sure sighting, using all the detectors?”

“Course,” Shibo said, a small upturning of the corners of her lips showing that she understood that this show was for Cermo’s benefit.

“Then I’ll be along in a bit,” Killeen said with unexcited deliberation. He had seen his father use this ruse long ago in the Citadel.

Cermo shifted impatiently in his chair. They all wanted to know to what world two years of voyaging had brought them. Many still felt that the Mantis had sent them toward a lush, green world. Killeen was by no means convinced. He trusted no mech. He still remembered with relish their obliteration of the Mantis in Argo’s exhaust wash at liftoff.

He took his time with the tea, using it to consider the possible reactions of the Family if their expectations were not met. The prospect was sobering.

He debated having another cup of tea. No, that would be too much torture for Cermo—though the man had certainly seemed to like handing it out to the Radanan woman earlier.

Forgoing the tea, he nonetheless put on his full tunic and walked rather more slowly than usual around the ship’s axis and up one level.

His officers had already assembled in the control vault when Killeen arrived. They were staring at the big display screen, pointing and whispering. Killeen realized that a proper Cap’n would not allow such milling in the confines of the control vault, despite the fact that this was a completely natural reaction to years of long voyaging.

He said sharply, “What? Nobody’s got jobs? Lieutenant Jocelyn, how’s the patching going in the dry zone? Faldez, those pipes still clogged in the agro funnel?”

His stern voice dispersed them. They left, casting quick glances back at the display screen. He wanted them to see that he had not deigned even to look at the image there, but had tended to ship’s business first.

They could not know that he kept his neck deliberately turned so that temptation would not slide his eyes sideways to catch a glimpse. He exchanged a few words with several departing officers to be sure his point was made. Then he turned, pursing his lips to guard against any expression of surprise that might cross his face, and stared directly into their destiny.

FIVE

Two years before, Cap’n Killeen had flinched when he saw the ruined brown face of his home planet, Snowglade, as Argo lifted away.

Now, with heady relief, he saw that the shimmering image before him did not resemble that worn husk. Near its poles small dabs of bluewhite nestled amid gray icecaps that spread crinkled fingers toward the waist of the world. But these features came to him only after a striking fact:

“Wrong colors,” he said, startled.

Shibo shook her head. “Not all. Ice is dark, yeasay. But middle is green, wooded—see the big lakes?”

“Pale areas in between look dead.”

“Not much vegetation,” Shibo conceded.

“What could cause…?” Killeen frowned, realizing that he would need to know some planetary evolution, in addition to everything else.

Shibo said, “Could be these clouds did that? Dust killed plants, dirtied up the ice, turned it gray.”

Killeen sensed that it would not be wise to admit complete ignorance in front of Cermo, who had remained.

“Might be. Plenty dust still around. That’s why we’re coming in at a steep angle.” Killeen studied the planet’s crescent for signs of human life. The nightside was utterly dark, though even if he had seen lights they might easily have been cities built by mechs.

Cermo said hesitantly, “Sir, I don’t understand….”

Normally it was a bad idea to explain the basis of your decisions to underofficers, his Ling Aspect had said. But it was also a good idea to train them; the days ahead would be dangerous, and if Killeen fell, his replacement would need to know many things.

“These little black blotches—see them?” Killeen pointed as the scale of the viewing screen enlarged, bringing in the hot disk of the parent star. Beyond it, the broad, banded grins of two silvery gas giant planets hung against a speckled tapestry of molecular clouds. Tiny smudges freckled the image, motes that ebbed and flared from day to day.

“This star, it’s ripped apart a passing cloud. There’s lots of these blobs in the plane of the planets.”

Killeen paused. The three-dimensional geometry had been easy for him to see in Aspect-provided simulations, but now it was hard to make out in a flat grid projection like this.

So I directed us in at a steep angle,” he said, “cutting down into that plane. That’ll avoid running into small clouds that we might not detect. Argo won’t hold up if we get blind-sided by one of those.”

He watched fondly as Shibo’s exoskeleton whirred as her hands passed over the control boards. Its polycarbon lattice made swift, sure movements. For Killeen one of the many delights of Argo’s slow spin was that she seldom needed her mechanical aid except for quick precision. In Snowglade’s heavy gravity she had used it continually just to keep up. A genetic defect had given her only normal human strength, which was much less than the Families’ level.

Still, the simple sight of her made him smile. Momentarily the day’s weight lifted.

She brought up wildly different views of the planetary system, images colored in splashes of violent reds, tawny golds, cool blues. Killeen knew these arose from different spectra, but could not say how. They showed grainy specks orbiting between the planets—small knotty condensations that hailed incessantly in toward all the stars at Galactic Center. These had been caught by Abraham’s Star and now pelted its planets unmercifully.

“Bet it makes for a dusty sky down there,” Shibo said reflectively. She thumbed up a speckled orange display which highlighted five cometary tails. They lay above and below the plane of the planetary orbits, gaudy streamers that pointed inward like accusing fingers.

Killeen caught her meaning. “I don’t believe, though,” he made himself go on with casual assurance, “that the dust could snuff out life. This planet’s suffered infalling grime before. You can see the forests have survived. It can still shelter us.”

Shibo gave him a wry sidelong glance. She sometimes fed him hints like this, enabling him to seem to have thought problems through before they came up. It was a great help in slowly building a crew, Killeen thought, if the Cap’n happened to love the Chief Executive Officer. He resisted the temptation to smile, sure that Cermo would guess his thoughts.

“Any moons?” he asked stonily.

“None I can see so far,” Shibo said. “There’s something else, though….”