The main floor of the observatory looked deserted. The big scope glittered faintly under starlight. On a nearby table, one hooded lantern spilled a red-filtered glow onto a clipboarded sky chart and a pad covered with what might be mathematical markings — lots of numbers plus some symbols that weren’t part of any alphabet… though now that I think about it, maybe Mister Heinz did show some of them to our class, hoping to hook an interest.

“Listen and note,” Ur-ronn said. “The motor for tracking objects in compensation against Jijo’s rotation; that device is still turned on.”

Sure enough, a low, hoonlike rumble transmitted from the telescope’s case, and I smelled faint exhaust from a tiny fuel cell motor. Another extravagance almost unknown elsewhere on the Slope but allowed here because Mount Guenn is a sacred place, certain to cleanse itself of all toys, conceits, and unreverent vanities, if not tomorrow then sometime in the next hundred years.

“That means it may still be pointed wherever they were looking before they left!” Huck responded eagerly.

Who says “they” have left? — I was about to add. Turning around again, I noticed a closed door outlined by a pale rim of light. But Huck rushed on.

“Alvin, give me a boost so I can look!”

“Hr-r-rm? But—”

“Alvin!” A wheel stroked one of my footpads, as a warning to do what I was told.

“What? A boost?” I saw no ramp or other way for Huck to reach the scope’s eyepiece, only a chair resting next to the table. Still, the best course would be to let her have her way, as quickly and silently as possible, rather than forcing an argument.

“Hrrrm… well, all right. But keep it quiet, will you?”

I stepped behind Huck, squatted down, and slung both arms under her axle frame. I grunted, lifting her to bring one stalk level with the eyepiece.

“Hold still!” she hissed.

“I am… hrm-rm… trying…”

I let my arm bones slip slightly, so the elbow joints clicked into a locked position — a trick I’m told humans and urs are jealous of, since even the strongest human who tried this would have to do it using muscle power alone. Even so, Huck had put on weight, and holding her in place meant standing in a bent-over half-squat. Whenever I grunted, she’d twist a free stalk round to glare, just a handsbreadth from my face, as if I was annoying her on purpose.

“Hold it, you unbuff hoon!… Okay, I can see now … a whole lot of stars… more stars… Hey, there’s nothing but stars in here!”

“Huck,” I murmured, “did I ask you to keep it quiet?”

Ur-ronn whistled a sigh. “Of course there’s only stars, you hoof-stinky g’Kek! Did you think you could count the fortholes on an orviting starshif with this little tele-scofe? At that height, it’ll twinkle like any other foint source.”

I was impressed. We all know Ur-ronn is the best mechanic in our bunch, but who figured she knew astronomy, as well?

“Here, give ne a chance to look. It’s fossible I can tell which star isn’t a star, if its fosition changes in relation to others.”

Huck’s wheels spun angrily in air, but she could no more deny the fairness of Ur-ronn’s request than keep me from lowering her to the ground. I straightened with relief, and some crackling of cartilage, as she rolled away, grumbling. Ur-ronn had to put both forehooves on the chair in order to rise up and peer through the eyepiece.

For a few moments, our urrish pal was silent; then she trilled frustration. “They really are all just stars, far as I can tell. Anyway, I forgot — a starshif in orvit would drift out of view in just a few duras, even with the tracking engine turned on.”

“Well, I guess that’s it,” I said, only half disappointed. “We’d better head on back now—”

That’s when I saw that Huck was gone. Whirling, I finally spied her, heading straight for the doorway I had seen earlier!

“Remember what we discussed?” she called rearward at us, speeding toward the back-lit rectangle. “The real evidence will be on those photographic plates you say Gybz spoke of. That’s what we came up here to look at in the first place. Come on!”

I admit staring like a stranded fish, my throat sac blatting uselessly while Huphu gouged my scalp, gathering purchase for a spring. Ur-ronn took off in a mad scramble after Huck, trying desperately to tackle her by the spokes before she reached the door—

—which swung open, I swear, at that very instant, casting a painful brightness that outlined a human silhouette. A short, narrow-shouldered male whose fringe of head hair seemed aflame in the glare of several lanterns behind him. Blinking, raising a hand to shade my eyes, I could dimly make out several easels in the room beyond, bearing charts, measuring rules, and slick glass plates. More square plates lay racked on shelf after shelf, crowding the walls of the little room.

Huck squealed to a stop so suddenly her axles glowed. Ur-ronn nearly rammed her, halting in frantic haste. We all froze, caught in the act.

The human’s identity wasn’t hard to guess, since only one of his race lived on the mountain at the time. He was only known far and wide as the most brilliant of his kind, a sage whose mind reached far, even for an Earth-ling, to grasp many of the arcane secrets that our ancestors once knew. One whose intellect even the mighty self-assured Uriel bowed before.

The Smith of Mount Guenn was not going to be pleased with us for intruding on her guest.

Sage Purofsky stared for a long moment, blinking into the darkness beyond the doorway, then he raised a hand straight toward us, pointing.

“You!” he snapped in a strangely distracted tone of voice. “You surprised me.”

Huck was the first of us to recover.

“Um, sorry… uh, master. We were just, er…”

Cutting her off, but without any trace of rancor, the human went on.

“It’s just as well, then. I was about to ring for somebody. Would you kindly take these notes to Uriel for me?”

He held out a folded sheaf of papers, which Huck accepted in the grasp of one quivering tentacle-arm. Her half-retracted eyestalks blinked in surprise.

“That’s a good lad,” the savant went on absentmindedly, and turned to go back into the little room. Then Sage Purofsky stopped and swiveled to face us once more.

“Oh, please also tell Uriel that I’m now sure of it. Both ships are gone. I don’t know what happened to the bigger one, the first one, since it appeared only by lucky accident on one early set of plates, before anyone knew to look for it. That orbit can’t be solved except to say I think it may have landed. But even a rough calculation based on the last series shows the second ship de-orbiting, heading into an entry spiral down to Jijo. Assuming no later deviations or corrections, its course would have made landfall some days ago, north of here, smack dab in the Rimmers.”

His smile was rueful, ironic.

“In other words, the warning we sent up to the Glade may be somewhat superfluous.” Purofsky rubbed his eyes tiredly and sighed. “By now our colleagues at Gathering probably know a lot more about what’s going on than we do.”

I swear, he sounded more disappointed than worried over the arrival of something the exiles of Jijo had feared for two thousand years.

We all, even Huphu, stared for a long time — even after the man thanked us again, turned around, and closed the door behind him, leaving us alone with our only company millions of stars, like pollen grains scattered on a shimmering ocean, stretching over our heads. A sea of darkness that suddenly felt frighteningly near.