THEY ARRIVED IN the neighborhood of the vertical moon during the late morning of Christmas Eve.

It was a forbidding place, a world of Martian dimensions. But it lacked the wisp of atmosphere and the broad flat plains of Earth’s neighbor. Great slags of landmass had been pushed up, and vast canyons had opened. Craters were everywhere. It was a place of needle peaks and jagged rock formations and scrambled canyons, of cliffs, crags, plateaus, and rills. Of craters and escarpments. Like the other moons, it was caught in tidal lock, always presenting the same face to the cloud.

Vertical was out near the edge of the system, 24 million kilometers from the center of mass. From its vantage point, the system of rings and giant worlds was tilted about fifteen degrees, maybe the width of Alyx’s hand from thumb to outstretched pinkie.

Its path gave it a unique perspective. Instead of looking through the big ring, as the other satellites did, the vertical moon moved over and under the entire system, so that its sky, if one was on the correct side, provided a magnificent display. Everything was up there, the cloud, the Twins, the three sets of rings.

Originally, no one had taken Tor’s idea, that the vertical moon might not be in a natural orbit, seriously. But when they glided through its skies and looked up, the idea that this world had been moved, had been placed, seemed not so implausible.

If I could move a world, Hutch thought, looking at a pair of needle peaks on the edge of a mountain range, this is where I’d put it.

She was alone on the bridge when Bill blinked on in front of her. He’d traded in the lab smock he’d been wearing during the last few days for a formal tie and jacket, and looked as if he were going to dinner at the Makepiece. “Hutch,” he said. His eyes sparkled and a mischievous smile played across his lips.

“What?” she asked.

“There’s a building down there.”

You’re kidding. She looked up at the screens, and there it was! Sheer joy surged through her, and she decided she’d been hanging around George too much.

A jagged mountain rose out of a series of ridges. Near the top, she could see a wide shelf. And there, on the shelf, rested a house.

Well, a structure.

It was an elongated oval, open in the center, running lengthwise along the face of the cliff. She could make out windows, but they were dark. There was no shell protecting it from the vacuum, suggesting it used, or had used, something like a Flickinger field. “Any power readings, Bill?”

“Negative.”

“So it’s empty.”

“I would say so.”

Poor George.

“I would point out that it’s on the equator,” said Bill. “Perfect for sight-seeing.” He showed her. Autumn was in the southern sky, Cobalt to the north. The cloud floated directly overhead.

The shelf was about a thousand meters up the wall. Hutch passed the word to George, and then went down to mission control to be with her passengers when Bill relayed the pictures.

“How about that?” said Tor, when the oval appeared on-screen. “What’d I tell you people?”

They went through yet another round of congratulations. Up and down, thought Hutch. We’re doing either celebrations or memorials.

George took her aside and thanked her. “You’re a wonderful warm human being, Hutchins.” He laughed.

“It was Tor,” she said. “He’s the one who thought the vertical moon was worth a closer look.”

The Memphis by then had gotten a better angle, and Bill’s telescopes were providing more detail.

The building was two stories high. It had a front door and lots of windows. The architecture was plain, without any attempt at ornamentation, unless you counted setbacks and abutments. (“Who’d try to put a fancy house in a place like this?” asked Alyx. “It would get overwhelmed by the scenery.”) A couple of benches had been placed in the open central section. There was a cupola, exactly the kind of cupola you might expect to find on one of those twenty-first-century Virginia country houses. It was made of gray stone, undoubtedly quarried out of the surrounding cliffs. It was achingly beautiful.

“That’s odd,” said Nick.

“What is?” asked George.

“Antennas. I don’t see any sign of a receiver.”

HUTCH SENT OFF the contact message to the Academy, as required by the regulations. She disliked doing it, because she knew they’d rip a copy for Mogambo at Outpost. And the news would bring Mogambo running.

Pity, but there was no help for it. Meanwhile, she was feeling pretty proud of herself. During the decades since humanity had first developed FTL travel, it had taken literally hundreds of missions to find a world that had been—or was still—home to an intelligent species. The Memphis, on this flight, was three for three.

They were paying for it in blood, but when they got home, she expected that the president herself would be on the Wheel to shake hands with George.

AT NO TIME had there been any doubt the place was empty.

Two large dishes were mounted on the roof. Solar collectors, although they weren’t aimed at the sun. Weren’t aimed anywhere, actually. They pointed in different directions, one out toward the big ring, the other directed down into a canyon. Nonfunctional.

The space in the center of the oval had once been a courtyard. She looked at the images, studied the benches, saw a walkway. And there was an open deck under the cupola.

“Look!” said Alyx. “Off to the left!”

Outside the building, along the shelf.

“Enhance, Bill,” Hutch said. “Left side.”

It was a spacecraft! Probably. Hard to tell for sure. It could as easily have been a grain storage shed with windows.

“Why would they leave a ship behind?” asked George.

Hutch didn’t know, but she wondered if the occupants hadn’t exactly left.

The grain storage shed, the ship, the lander, glittered in the uncertain light of that impossible sky.

“We’ll want to go down and take a look,” said George.

“Of course.” That was Tor. She could see him getting his easel out.

“Who wants to come?”

ALYX WASN’T SURPRISED when Hutch suggested caution, reminded them that they’d made assumptions before, and people had died.

“But surely,” George said, “this place is empty. It’s hard vacuum down there.”

It was hard to argue with that. It was like the moonbase at Safe Harbor, Nick pointed out. There’d been no danger there. This was perfectly safe.

Alyx thought so, too. She liked Hutch, but she seemed a tad reserved. Too cautious. Not at all the dashing sort of person one would expect to be piloting a superluminal. She’d been right about the angels, but this was surely different. Still…

They debated the issue for several hours. There was never a question about whether they would go, but rather who would go. George and Hutch to make sure everything was okay? George, Nick, and Tor because it was best to have guys out front when there was danger? Alyx suggested Hutch and herself because women were smarter.

The men laughed because they thought she was joking.

In the end, after it was clear everyone wanted to go, Hutch conceded, and they all piled down to the lander and strapped on e-suits. Alyx enjoyed the feel of the energy surge around her when she activated the Flickinger field. It was warm and clean, and it embraced her like a soft body garment.

Hutch set the rules while they waited for the air pressure outside the lander to go to zero. Nobody was to wander off without a partner. Don’t touch anything unless you poke it first with a stick. Keep in mind the gravity’s different. It’s low, but if you fall off the mountain, you’re just as dead. “And please keep in mind,” she added, “that everything in that place is of immense value. Try not to handle stuff. And don’t break anything.”

Nick sighed and wished everyone a Merry Christmas.

Hutch turned that penetrating blue gaze on him. “I know how it all sounds, Nick. But I really don’t want to lose anybody else.” The lights on the control board went green. “Okay, Bill,” she told the AI. “Launch at will.”