"Maybe he's depressed because of the show," Erin suggested. "It's gotten to me."

"Maybe," Martin said. He was empty of either optimism or gloom. The sheer weight of superiority of Leviathan's worlds made it hard for him to breathe, much less think.

Silken Parts and Jennifer left the noach chamber after three hours. Jennifer could hardly talk. She hung on to a net in the crew quarters and thirstily gulped a bulb of juice. When Martin approached, she held up her hand and shook her head.

"Please," she said. "My head hurts. Giacomo's found ways to—"

"You don't have to talk now if you don't want to," Martin said. She ignored that.

"He's found ways to use Brother math to describe Leviathan's noach physics. Silken Parts and the ships' minds are collaborating.

"It's just too fast, much too fast. We see something, maybe the way number twelve changes or the number eight has big suspended cables, and Silken Parts comes up with a hypothesis… Giacomo runs it through… I look it over. Ah, God. I'm dead tired."

Jennifer waved her hand again weakly, closed her eyes, and instantly fell asleep.

"I think we've broken through," Hakim said. "I give them all the credit. They're sending us basic math now, which means they understand the symbols… the human symbols."

"Is there any of interest in the math?" Silken Parts asked.

"All very innocuous, child's stuff," Hakim said. "More like human math than Brother math."

Silken Parts made a noise like leaves on pavement.

Eye on Sky examined the projected records of the transmissions from the fourth planet. Still shaky after four hours' sleep, Jennifer peered around the Brother at the records. "They're echoing most of what we send, but making changes, some… improvements? The notation is altered a little… here and here." She pointed to equations describing n-dimensional geometries. Martin couldn't begin to interpret what she was seeing.

"They learn fast and soon," Eye on Sky said. "We can seed the beach now, I we think."

"Time to test them on language," Martin said. "Transmit a Brother and an English dictionary, and a full audio record of speech sounds for both languages."

"Like opening our book to them," Ariel said.

"Baiting the hook," Martin said. He turned to the mom and snake mother. "Can you arrange for the Trojan Horseto have some supernova damage?"

"Yes," the mom replied.

"Cham, you and Erin design our damage and report to Eye on Sky and me when it's done."

"Got it," Cham said, and they left the bridge.

"It looks dark and heavy," Ariel said, staring at the projection of the fourth planet. "I've got a name for it, if anybody cares," she said.

"What?" Martin asked.

"Sleep. The other planets… the bristling world, looks to me like Puffball. The flipping world…"

"Masque," Martin suggested.

"Blinker is better," Erin said. Within ten minutes, they had named each of the planets, according to their characteristics, working outward from Leviathan itself:

Frisbee, orbiting barely half a million kilometers above the surface of Leviathan, a rapidly rotating white disk seventy-two hundred kilometers in diameter, its circumference fringed with tangled, outward-streaming "hair" of unknown purpose and composition.

Big City, surrounded by red acid haze, covered with architecture to a depth of four hundred kilometers.

Lawn, a blanket of blue-green vegetation divided by artificial rivers, Earth-like but for the fact that the average surface temperature was three hundred degrees Celsius, the rivers ran deep with liquid fake matter (so Giacomo and Eye on Sky speculated), and the atmosphere consisted largely of carbon dioxide and steam.

Sleep, a dark funeral bouquet of wilted roses packed into a ball one hundred and two thousand kilometers in diameter…

Cueball, featureless gray.

Puffball with its thousand-kilometer-high seeds.

Pebble One, barely a thousand kilometers wide, empty gray rock and water ice au naturel.

Mixer, cables hanging from three moons stirring its gaseous surface into a beautiful abstraction of swirls and eddies.

Mirror, perfect and apparently pointless.

Gopher, like a huge lava bomb from a volcano, riddled with holes impossibly deep and wide, green lights winking in the holes like baleful eyes.

Pebble Two, very much like Pebble One: in fact, exactly alike in every detail.

Blinker still flipping like the display on a cosmic clock, changing its character between three different worlds.

Pebble Three, duplicate of Pebbles One and Two.

Gas Pump, blue green, a slushball of methane and ammonia and hydrogen and helium, its glowing wells tossing billions of tons of volatiles into orbit every hour.

And at the farthest extremes of the system, Magic Lantern, covered with oceans of perfectly smooth water ice, interspersed with polished iron and crystal land masses, the land and solid seas studded with black domes hundreds of kilometers across.

Naming Leviathan's fifteen planets did not bring any cheer or sense of control.

Martin hung in his net, watching with half-closed eyes the image of Sleep fill his cabin. Savages canoeing up the Hudson River, walking into New York City. Look up: the skyline. Pad on moccasins down the asphalt streets. Threaten to destroy the city with bows and arrows. Laughing, the mayor invites them into his office.

On the bridge, Jennifer, Hakim, Cham and Ariel floated at different angles, heads turning toward Martin as he entered. They all wore the same half-terrified expectant look Martin had become familiar with in the past few days. "Play it back," Cham said. "This is new," Hakim said. "Ten minutes ago." The transmitted voice sounded flat, sexually neutral, a little harsh, diction precise and almost chilly. "Hello," it began. "You have entered cooperative areas and are welcome to the gathering of partners."

"Not perfect," Jennifer commented. "But good enough."

"Many different kinds of intelligence work and play in union. Your kind may join, or may visit. There are no requirements except peaceful intentions. As you no doubt are aware, the local star group is a dangerous territory, populated by machines and intelligences not of good will. Weapons are not allowed in our neighborhood. If you have any weapons, even defensive weapons of low power, you must notify us and dispose of them under our direction, instructions to follow. Further informative discussions will follow. Is this understood?"

Eye on Sky listened intently to the same message delivered in Brother audio. "It is hollow and smells like space," he said. "But it is understandable."

"They'll be suspicious if we're completely unarmed," Cham said.

Martin nodded. "I think we should make some weapons and hand them over. Nothing impressive. Defensive projectile weapons, chemical…"

"The ship should have something, too," Erin said.

Martin looked at Ariel. "Lasers," he said.

"Right," she said.

"You direct the mom and snake mother," he said. "We'll need something convincing to hand over or jettison soon. It's time we put on our costumes and start getting used to our roles. In a tenday or so, I think we're going to be in their control…"

Martin asked Eye on Sky, "How do we answer them?"

"Enthusiasm and charm," Eye on Sky said. "We all we must be eager to learn. We all we are young, loving to splash the shore, and they will teach."