“I assumed—” said Bill.

“—It was aimed out of the system,” finished Hutch.

“We should go take a look,” said Nick.

Tor was sitting at a table with Alyx, drinking coffee, apparently completely recovered from his experience. “It wouldn’t do any harm,” he said.

“How far are they?” asked Hutch. “The gas giants?”

“Roughly 100 million klicks.” Bill put them on-screen, and there was a collective gasp.

Two cloudy disks, a pair of Saturns. Each with rings. And a third set of rings, wispy and ill defined, circled the entire system. “They are approximately 3 million kilometers from each other. Quite close. Especially for objects of this size.”

The room had become very quiet.

A cloud floated midway between the worlds, at the center of mass. It was enormous, big enough to envelop either of the giants. Lightning bolts rippled through it. It looked like a third planet. Broad bands of clouds lined both worlds, autumn-hued on one, blue and silver on the other.

“I’ve never seen anything remotely like it,” said Hutch, breaking the long silence.

Ice tinkled in someone’s drink.

THE TWINS WERE 1.1 billion kilometers out from the central luminary. And they were a long run for the Memphis, which would have needed two weeks to reach them with her fusion engines. Hutch opted instead to make a short jump, which could be done, at this range, with pretty good accuracy. Within an hour, they completed the transit and soared out into a sky filled with spectacle. Chains of glowing worldlets and gas swirled through a night dominated by the twin globes. Both worlds were flattened and misshapen by the gravity dance. “I’m surprised it all holds together,” said Pete.

They were in the common room. Bill activated the main screen, killed the lights, and lit everything up for them, so they had the impression of standing outside on a veranda where they could gawk at the spectacle.

“Maybe this is why they came,” said Alyx, her voice barely a whisper.

The Memphis was entering the system from broadside, so the twin worlds, one light and one dark, one bright and warm and brilliantly colored, the other dusky and ominous and melancholy, were opposite sides of a balance.

“Not many moons,” said Bill. “I count nine in the plane of the system, other than the shepherds. Of course, with an arrangement like this, that’s not a surprise.” The moons were all beyond the outer ring.

“In the plane of the system,” prompted Hutch.

“Right. There’s a tenth one. In an anomalous position.” He showed them. It orbited vertically, at right angles to the big ring. A polar orbit of sorts, like everything else, around the center of mass.

Long tendrils rolled out of the central cloud. Bill ran time-set images so they could see them lengthening and withdrawing, as if the thing were alive, reaching squidlike toward the planets they never quite touched.

The vertical moon was big, almost the size of Mars, and it appeared to have been roughly handled at some point in its history. It was moderately squashed on one side, as if it had been hit by something almost as big as it was. Stress lines staggered out of the depression. Elsewhere, the surface was torn up by peaks and chasms and ridges and gullies. It was a rough piece of real estate.

Bill reported that its orbit wasn’t perfectly perpendicular after all. It was actually a few degrees off.

All the satellites were in tidal lock. On Vertical, the depressed side looked away.

Hutch frowned at the picture as Bill traced the circle of the moon’s orbit, a few degrees askew at top and bottom on either side of a longitudinal line drawn down the middle. “I wouldn’t have thought that kind of orbit would be stable,” she said.

“It isn’t,” said Tor. The comment surprised Hutch. How would he know?

“That thing will be ejected or drawn in,” he continued, “eventually.” He caught her looking at him. “Artists need to know about orbital mechanics,” he said, with a cat-that-got-the-cream grin. “This is another major discovery. This is very hot stuff we’re looking at.”

George shrugged. “It’s only a rock,” he said.

Tor shook his head. “It might be something more. That kind of alignment. In a place like this.”

“In a place like what?” asked George.

“A place this glorious.” Tor was looking off into the distance somewhere. “I have a question for you, George.”

George made a rumbling sound, like water going over rocks. “Ask away,” he said.

“Look at the system. Lots of satellites adrift in the plane of the rings. If you were going to live out here, where would you want to be? To get the best view? Where do you think an artist would set up his easel?”

“The vertical moon,” said Alyx, jumping in before George could even think about it.

Tor’s blue eyes found Hutch. Whenever they looked at her lately she knew he was sending a message, maybe one that he wasn’t aware of himself. “The thing is,” he said, “moons don’t assume that kind of orbit naturally.”

They all looked at the images. Hutch thought he was probably wrong. The orbit was unlikely, and temporary, but it could happen. The proof was in front of them.

“Any sign of stealths?” asked Alyx.

“Bill’s looking,” said Hutch. “He’ll let us know. It’s going to take a while to do a comprehensive survey here.”

“You buy into what Tor says?” George asked her.

“No,” she said. “Not necessarily.”

“I think he might be right,” George continued. “Place like this. Vertical moon. I think he might be right.”

Somebody put it there. Somebody who wanted a room with a view.

“Well, for what it’s worth,” she said, “I don’t think anybody’s ever seen one orbiting top to bottom.”

“Makes me wonder,” George continued, “whether this whole arrangement is artificial. Somebody’s idea of a rock garden.”

That sent a chill up her back. She looked over at Tor, who was examining a coffee cup. “That would require a fair amount of engineering,” she said. “No, it’s hard to believe this isn’t all quite natural.”

“Pity,” said Alyx. “I’d like to think there’s something out here with that kind of esthetic sense.”

Hutch didn’t think she wanted to meet anyone, art patron or not, with the kind of power it would take to arrange all this.

George was only half listening. “You know,” he said, “I think we ought to take Tor’s suggestion and go look at the vertical moon.”

The inner system sparkled. A twisted luminous line connected both sets of rings with the central cloud. Like chains. Like a twisted diamond necklace.

HUTCH SPENT THE day on the bridge directing Bill. Pictures of this, gravitational estimates of that, sensor readings of cloudscapes. Launch probes.

She got a string of visitors. George came by to tell her she’d been doing a damned fine job. And to hint that when it was all over, if she’d be looking for work, he had a lot of friends and would be happy to see that she was well taken care of.

She thought that was generous of him, and she said so. “But I’m probably going to retire after this,” she said. “I was ready to quit before we started. After this…”

“How can you say that, Hutch? This is an historic mission.”

She just looked at him, and he nodded, and said, “Yes, I don’t blame you. I’m not sure I’d want to go through all this again either.”

Alyx came in for awhile to tell her that she’d been thinking about using the flight of the Memphis to create a musical. “I just don’t know, though. It’s gotten awfully dark.” She looked genuinely distressed. “I’m afraid they’d stay home in droves.”

Nick was wound up and wanted to talk about experiences in the funeral business. The deceased has a recording played saying things to his widow that he would never have said face to face (and includes a lawyer to ensure that Nick doesn’t forget to play it). The other woman shows up at a viewing. A widow comments in front of the mourners that it’s really just as well because the deceased was only a virtual husband anyhow.