"Math ought to be a snap," Mouse said. "It's got to be the same all over the universe. But I can see how you'd have trouble working toward more abstract concepts."

"Unfortunately, we're using a non-mathematical interface," Consuela replied. "The starfish aren't mathematically minded. Their conscious concept of number is one-two-three-many."

"Thought you said they were smart, Tommy."

Consuela said, "They are. But theirs is an intuitive rather than empirical intelligence. But we're making headway. When our computers can link... "

"Be careful," McClennon admonished. "Be very, very careful."

"Why?"

"This is the boss machine, right?"

"So the fish say."

"Okay. That makes it big and powerful. It might be playing games with you. It's insane."

"Come on," Mouse protested. "How can a machine go crazy?"

"I don't know. I do know I was in Contact during the first battle. I got a little direct touch. It was plain out of its micro-electronic mind. I'd be afraid it could use its capacity to seize control of my own command computers."

"He's right, Captain. Thomas, we know. It's a real problem. Most of the starfish are riding herd on its psyche. Only a few are helping communicate. It seems to have several psychological problems. Loneliness. A god complex. A deeply programed xenophobia and bellicosity... It is, after all, the directing intelligence of a weapons system."

"A defensive weapon," McClennon suggested. "Mouse laughed at this. But think about it. Is Stars' End a pyramid?"

"I don't understand."

"I'm going to wander around," Mouse said. "Don't run off without me, Tommy,"

"I won't. By pyramid I mean it serves the same function as Old Earth's Egyptian pyramids."

"A tomb? I don't think so. The idea isn't new, but it's been mostly a metaphor."

"Assume the builders knew... You don't have all the data." He explained about the centerward race and his suspicion that the builder race had been fleeing it. "Okay. They come to the end of the road. There's nowhere to run, unless they jump off for the Magellanic Clouds. I think they gave up. I think they stopped, built themselves a pyramid, put their treasures inside, and died out."

Miss el-Sangra smiled. "A romantic theory that fits the known facts. And a few you've conjured up, I think. Ingenious, Thomas. I suppose we'll be able to answer you when we complete contact with the master control."

A boyhood incident came to mind. He had discovered—independently, so far as he could discern later—that A squared plus B squared equaled C squared. He had been excited till he had explained it to a friend. The friend had laughed and told him that Pythagoras had crossed the finish line thirty-five hundred years ahead of him.

He felt the same deflation now.

"I hear you and Amy broke up."

"Yes. I didn't realize you knew."

"She called yesterday. She was very depressed about it."

"She took something personal that wasn't."

"That was the feeling I got. Her story was one-sided, but I got the impression you were trying to do what was right for everybody."

"I tried. I don't know how successful I was."

"You two shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place. Landsmen and Seiners don't speak the same language. I've been with them thirty-six years and I still have problems."

"We were both looking for something. We were too eager to grab it."

"I've been through that, too."

"Help her, will you? I never meant to hurt her."

"I will. And don't feel so guilty. She's more resilient than she pretends. She likes the attention."

"I thought you were friends."

"She was a lot more than a friend for a while, Captain. Till she met Heinrich Cortez."

"Oh."

"Hey, Tommy!" Mouse bore down on them like a mini-juggernaut. "Come here." He about-turned and steamed a reverse course.

"Excuse me, Consuela." He chased Mouse down. "What?"

Mouse stopped. "I just talked to a gal who's doing the same thing for the Fishers that we're doing for Beckhart. She was pissed. These clowns, some of them, have been here for ten days. The Fishers have eight thousand people down already. And they haven't even started looking at weapons systems. They don't even care. All they want to do is collect broken toothbrushes and sort old bones."

"They'll get to it, Mouse. You've got to give them a chance to let the new wear off. And they've got to get a dialogue going with the master control. If they manage that, it'll save time. In the long run. The machine can redesign the weapons for us. That would save ripping the old ones out of here, orbiting them, then building ships around them."

Mouse calmed himself. "Okay. Maybe you're right. But I still don't like to see everybody doing something else when weapons are the reason we're all here."

"What if the weapons technology requires other preexisting technologies?"

"What do you mean?"

"Go back a hundred years. Build me a pulse-graser with the technology available then. You couldn't do it. You'd have to create the technology to create the technology to construct the pulse accumulators. Right?"

"Sometimes I don't like you a whole lot, Tommy." Mouse grinned. "I'll tell the Seiner lady to be patient."

"If the Captains will excuse me?" The senior of their Marine custodians approached them.

"Yes, Sergeant?" Thomas asked.

"The Admiral's compliments, sirs, and he needs you back aboard ship immediately."

"What is it?"

"He didn't say, sir. He said to tell you it's critical."

Mouse looked puzzled. McClennon was very much so.

The news hit the busy chamber before they departed.

The starfish had had a brief skirmish with sharks. Hordes of the predators had appeared. A continuous stream were still arriving.

"Holy shit!" Thomas said. "I'd forgotten about them."

"They didn't forget us," Mouse grumbled. "Damnation!"

People swirled this way and that. The mood approached panic. Doctor Chancellor rushed over. "I heard you're going up. Take this to the Admiral, just in case." He shoved a folder into McClennon's hands. "Thank you." He dashed toward the team working at the computer. They were trying to prepare an instantaneous shutdown of the round-robin should the sharks attack.

"They should tell the idiot box to scrub the problem for them," Mouse said as they pulled away. "What did he give you?"

"His notes. They look like a cross between a journal and regular scientific notation."

"Give me some of those."

Their driver flew around worse than he had coming the other direction.

"Here's an interesting one," Mouse said. "No furniture."

"What?"

"The exploration teams haven't found any furniture. There goes your pyramid theory."

"He's right. I didn't see anything but machinery. The bodies are all laid out on the floor."

"Maybe they're invaders too?"

McClennon shrugged. "Here's one that will grab you. How big do you think Stars' End is?"

"Uhm... Venus size?"

"Close. Earth minus two percent. But the planetary part is smaller than Mars. The rest is edifice."

"What?"

"His word. I'll give you the question. Since most of the structural volume would be hollow, how come the place has so much gravity? It's a couple points over Earth normal."

Mouse sneered. "Come on, Tommy. Maybe it's the machines."

"Nope. You're going to love it. According to this, the builders, before they started building, took a little planet and polished it smooth. Then they plated it with a layer of neutronium. The fortress structure floats around on the neutronium, which may be a cushion against tectonic activity."

"Whoa!" Mouse clung to the truck as its driver made a violent turn. "How did they stabilize the neutronium?"

"Figure that out, and how they mined it in the first place, and you and me will get rich."