That one happened to be the “remote hermitage” of Saunt Edhar.

Word got around. Within a month of the big Voco, everyone in the Decenarian math knew most of what we knew about the ship. The hierarchs could do nothing to suppress it. But still they didn’t open the starhenge. I found myself getting invited to a lot more late-night chalk hall sessions. We studied the diagram Lio had found in that book and worked out the theorics of how such a ship would function, and how much bigger it would have to be to journey between stars. Some of it was simple praxic calculations about the shock absorbers. Some—such as predicting what the plasma would do when it hit the plate—was extraordinarily challenging work. The theorics was too advanced for me. It felt like we were proving the Lorites wrong, because some of the other avout, just a little older than I, were coming up with proofs that we were pretty sure had never been thought of by anyone before—anyone on Arbre, that is.

“It makes you wonder about the Hylaean Theoric World,” Arsibalt volunteered, one summer evening, about eight weeks after the big Voco. He had been pretending to look after his bees and I had been pretending to tend the weeds. By that time, the Sarthian cavalry had penetrated deep into the Plains of Thrania and driven a wedge between the Fourth and the Thirty-third Legions of General Oxas. So it wasn’t surprising that Arsibalt and I bumped into each other. At our latitude, days were very long at this time of year, and we still had some light remaining even though supper had ended hours ago.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked him.

“You are toiling in chalk halls with the other Edharians, trying to work out the theorics of this alien ship,” he said, “theorics that the aliens must have mastered long ago, to build such a thing and drive it among stars. My question is: are they the same theorics?”

“You mean, ours and the aliens’?”

“Yes. I see the chalk-dust on your bolt, Fraa Erasmas, from equations you were drawing after supper. Did some two-headed, eight-limbed alien draw the same equations on the equivalent of a slate on another planet a thousand years ago?”

“I’m pretty sure the aliens use different notation,” I began.

“Obviously!” he barked.

“You sound like Ala.”

“Maybe they use a little square to represent multiplication and a circle for division, or something,” he went on, rolling his eyes in annoyance, then whirling his hand to indicate he wanted the conversation to go faster.

“Or maybe they don’t write out equations at all,” I said. “Maybe they prove things with music, or something.” Which wasn’t farfetched at all, since we did something like that in our chants, and there had been whole orders of avout who had done all of their theorics that way.

“Now we’re getting somewhere!” He was so thrilled by this idea that I regretted having mentioned it. “Suppose they have a system of doing theorics that uses music, as you said. And perhaps if it leads to a harmonious chord, or a pleasing tune, it means that they have proved that something is true.”

“You really are going off the deep end now, Arsibalt.”

“Tolerate your friend and fraa. Do you think it’s the case that, for every proof you and the other Edharians work out on a slate, the aliens have a proof in their own system that corresponds to it? That says the same thing—expresses the same truth?”

“We couldn’t do theorics at all if we didn’t think that was the case. But Arsibalt, this is old stuff we’re talking about. Cnoüs saw it. Hylaea understood it. Protas formalized it. Paphlagon thought about it—which is why he got Evoked. What’s the point of going over it now? I’m tired. As soon as it gets a little darker, I’m going to bed.”

“How are we to communicate with the aliens?”

“I don’t know. It’s been speculated that they have been learning our language,” I reminded him.

“What if they can’t talk?”

“A minute ago you had them singing!”

“Don’t be tedious, Fraa Erasmas. You know what I’m getting at.”

“Maybe I do. But it’s late. I was up until three talking about plasma. Hey, I think it is dark enough for me to go to bed now.”

“Hear me out. I’m saying that it is through the Protan forms—the theoric truths—in the Hylaean Theoric World that we might end up communicating with them.”

“It sounds like you’re just itching for an excuse to barricade yourself in Shuf’s Dowment behind a stack of old books and work on this. Are you asking me for—permission? Approval?”

He shrugged. “You are the resident expert on the alien ship.”

“Okay. Fine. Knock yourself out. I’ll back you up. I’ll tell everyone you’re not crazy—”

“Capital!”

“—if you help me with one thing that really has me scratching my head right now.”

“And what would that be, Fraa Erasmas?”

“Why does the Millenarian math appear to be glowing?”

“What?”

“Look at it,” I said.

He turned around and raised his chin to gaze up at the crag. It was glowing ruby red. This was not a normal thing for it to be doing.

Of course, we saw soft lights up there all the time. And if the weather was right, the walls would sometimes catch the light of the setting sun, as when Orolo and I had looked on it during Apert. For the last few minutes, as the twilight had been deepening, I’d noticed a red glow about the place, and reckoned it must be that again. But the sun was absolutely down now. And this light was a shade of red that was most un-sun-like. It had a grainy, sparkly quality.

And it was coming from the wrong direction. Sunlight would have lit up the west-facing surfaces of the math and the crag. But this weird red light was striking the roofs, parapets, and tower-tops. Everything below was in shade. It was almost as if some aerocraft were hovering high above the crag shining a light straight down. But if that were the case, it was so high we could neither see nor hear it.

The meadow grew busy with fraas and suurs who came out of the Cloister buildings to look at it. Most were silent—like Deolaters gazing upon a heavenly omen. But among a group of theoricians not far away an argument was gaining momentum, featuring words such as laser, color, and wavelength. That jogged my memory: I knew where I’d seen that grainy sort of light before: the guidestar lasers on the M & M.

And that was the key to the riddle. A laser beam could shine across a vast distance without spreading out very much. The thing that was shining this light on the Millenarian math didn’t have to be nearby. It could be thousands of miles away. It could be—could only be—the alien spaceship.

Exclamations, and even a little bit of applause, rose up from the meadow. Looking more closely at the Millenarian math I saw that a column of smoke was rising from behind its walls. I swallowed hard and got very upset for just a moment, thinking that the laser was setting fire to the place! It was a death ray! Then my better sense got the upper hand. To burn things down, one would want an infrared laser, whose light would make things hot. By definition, this laser wasn’t infrared, because we could see it. The smoke wasn’t from burning buildings. The Thousanders were creating it. They were throwing grass or something onto fires, filling the space above their math with smoke and steam.

It was impossible to see a laser beam from the side if it was traversing empty space or clean air, but if you put smoke or dust in its way, the particles would scatter some of the light in all directions and make the ray stand out as a glittering line in space.

It worked. That ray might be thousands of miles long. We’d never be able to see most of it—the part that traversed the vacuum above the atmosphere. But the smoke made by the Thousanders enabled us to see the last few hundred feet, and to get a very good idea of which direction the light was coming from.