"I noticed," Hans said. "How long has it been?"

Hakim worked his momerath quickly. "If estimates of proper motion are correct, this image would have to be one, perhaps two thousand years old."

"They've been out here two thousand years?" Harpal asked, whistling.

The next few images showed the spacecraft itself from several angles: three spheres linked by necks.

"It's like our ship," Jennifer said.

Harpal whistled again. "It's a Ship of the Law, all right."

More pictures: cabin interiors, what might have been a social or even a mating ritual, sauropods holding up pale ovoids for examination, breaking the ovoids and appearing to consume the contents, beings in repose or dead, twenty blocks of what was probably text, then a series of ten individual portraits.

The next ten images were simple charts of a stellar system. Hakim compared these charts with the charts they had made of Leviathan. The numbers and orbits of the planets were very similar, though not exact. "Puzzling," Hakim said. "There is strong similarity, but…"

"Maybe the system has changed," Martin suggested.

"Not natural changes. Twelve planets are shown in these charts, but we have detected only ten. The largest planet is not shown in the earlier charts. Where could it have come from?"

"You're saying they didn't visit Leviathan? This is another system?" Hans asked.

Hakim frowned. "I do not know what to say. The resemblance is too close to be coincidence… these six similar planets, congruent masses, orbits, diameters…"

"Forget it for now," Hans said.

The next forty images showed planets and planetary surfaces, details too muddied to be very useful. Hints of mountains or large structures with regular, smooth surfaces; a lake or body of water; dramatic cloud formations over a flat-topped mesa, sauropods in suits exploring a broad field.

The last image was startling in its directness.

Three sauropods in suits on a planetary surface confronted a being of another kind entirely; three times more massive than they, barrel-bodied, standing on two massive legs like an elephant's, with a long, flat head topped by a row of what might have been eyes, nine of them.

They were exchanging ovoids. One sauropod appeared to be kneeling before the larger being; offering up an ovoid.

"What in the hell happened?" Hans asked, frowning, fixed on the final image. "They've picked a mighty poor choice of pictures to tell a story."

"Perhaps the sequence is incomplete," Hakim said. "What could be left after such a time?"

"Are we going to change course and find out?" Giacomo asked.

"Hell, no," Hans said immediately. "They're dead. This isn't a distress call, that's clear; they must have known they were dying."

Silence settled. Then, very distinctly, the ship's voice spoke—the first time they had heard it since a year before the Skirmish, before Martin served as Pan.

"There will be an expedition to examine this ship," it said in a rich contralto. "It would be best if members of the crew accompany the expedition."

Hans' face reddened as much with surprise as anger. "We don't have the fuel to waste!"

"There is sufficient fuel," the ship's voice said. "A vessel will be manufactured. It can carry three people, or none, depending on your decision."

"You can make another ship now?" Hakim asked in a small voice.

"Why do it at all?" Hans said. "The ship is dead—it must be! Two thousand years!"

"It is a Ship of the Law," the ship's voice answered. "The transmitted information is likely to be much less than what is stored aboard the ship itself. It is required for all Ships of the Law to rendezvous and exchange information, if such a rendezvous is possible."

Hans lifted his eyes, then his hands, giving up. "Who wants to go?" he asked.

"We can draw lots," Hakim said.

"No—we won't draw lots," Hans said. "Martin, I assume you'd like to go?"

"I don't know," Martin said.

"I'd like you to go. Take Hakim and Giacomo with you."

Jennifer's breath hitched.

"How long a voyage?" Giacomo asked.

"Your time, one month," the ship's voice said. "Time for this ship, four months. There will be super acceleration and deceleration."

"A lot of fuel," Hans said under his breath.

Giacomo touched Jennifer's hand. "Nothing like a side trip," she said. "Makes the heart grow fonder."

Giacomo did not look at all convinced.

"If people go, it will use more fuel," Martin said. He wondered if Hans wanted him out of the way.

"That is correct," the ship's voice said. "But it is not a major consideration. You will learn much that cannot be learned by sending an uncrewed vessel. Your observations will be valuable."

"There it is," Hans said. He wrapped his arm around Martin. "It'll cheer you up," he said.

"How?" Martin asked. "Visiting a derelict…"

"Get your goddamned glum face off this barge," Hans said.

"Doesn't sound like I'm being given a choice."

"I could send Rosa," Hans said.

Martin stared him down. "All right," Martin said. Hakim tried to break the tension.

"It will be a very unusual journey. While we are gone, the crew will have something to do. They'll study these pictures and—"

"Bolsh," Hans said. "We don't show them to anybody now. We can't avoid letting them know there's a ship, but everything else… zipped lips."

"Why?" Jennifer asked, astonished.

"Our morale is so low the pictures might kill us," Hans said. "Martin, Giacomo, you study them with Hakim and Jennifer. Nobody else sees them for now. I don't even want to look at them. Report only to me."

"Hans, that's deception," Jennifer said, still astonished.

"It's an order, if that means anything now. Are we agreed?"

Jennifer started to talk again, but Hans interrupted.

"Slick it. If everybody wants to choose another Pan now, let's go to it. I'll be glad to go back to a relatively normal life, taking orders instead of giving them," he said evenly. "Am I right?"

Nobody was willing to push the issue. They agreed reluctantly. Jennifer transferred the images to their private wands.

For the first time in their journey, one group would withhold information from another.

Numb, his gloom deeper and more perversely comforting than ever, Martin returned to his quarters and looked through the images again, trying to fathom the seriousness of what had just happened, and whether he had gone along with Hans too quickly.

He did not look forward to the journey. The pictures were devastating. The Benefactors apparently could not save this Ship of the Law; the sauropod beings were almost certainly thousands of years dead.

The Benefactors could have known about Wormwood and Leviathan for millennia.

They had sent others here before. They had surmised that much around Wormwood; now it was confirmed.

The Dawn Treaderwas just another in a series.

No ship had succeeded; none had even gone so far as to burn the tar baby, until now.

But what awaited them around Leviathan might be even more deceptive, even more complex, playing for much higher stakes…

The craft created within the second homeball was slightly bigger than a bombship—ten meters long, with a bulbous compartment four meters in diameter, within which Martin, Giacomo, and Hakim would spend one month—much of that time asleep or wrapped in volumetric fields.