“And you think there’s another set of stealths around Autumn?”

“No. It would be too hard to find a stable orbit. If you were going to put satellites in this system, it would be best to put them outside the big ring.”

“What then? What’s it aimed at?”

Bill smiled at her. “I have no idea.”

IN THE MORNING they agreed unanimously to go look at the white spot. They returned to the Retreat and effectively broke camp, retrieving the pocket dome, and trying to leave the structure as they’d found it.

“WHAT IS IT exactly, Bill?” They were gathered in mission control, looking at the white disk floating at the top of Autumn’s atmosphere.

Bill sounded puzzled: “Spectroscopic analysis indicates it’s pure ammonia ice crystals. And a variety of gases.”

“Bill,” said Hutch, “I mean, what is it?”

“It’s a blizzard,” he said.

All right. Let’s start with basics. “Bill, something like this, assuming it could happen—”

“—It is happening—”

“—Wouldn’t it be yellow?”

“That is what I would expect.”

“Why yellow?” asked George.

“Because you get a lot of sulfides and whatnot. But the critical thing is—”

“—that you’d expect,” finished Nick, “to find it inside the atmosphere. Doesn’t take a weatherman to figure that out.”

“So what,” asked Tor, “could cause a snowstorm in outer space? Shouldn’t that be impossible? Bill?”

“It’s clearly not impossible.”

“You’re being evasive. Is it possible in the natural state of things?”

“I would think not.”

They were still a few thousand kilometers away from it. Hutch had not been asked her opinion when the decision to come out here went unanimous. She would, of course, have gone along with it. This was the sort of thing the Academy people loved. And it seemed harmless enough.

She even allowed herself to get caught up somewhat in the general enthusiasm. They were like kids, George coming down on Christmas morning and finding one toy after another under the tree, Alyx always trying to fit the cosmos onto a stage, we can do the snowstorm, get the light behind it, we want the audience to see into it, to feel the strangeness because this is no ordinary storm. Tor was making plans to go out on the hull to paint the thing, and Nick spent much of his time entering philosophical observations into his notebook. “It’ll be a bestseller when we get home,” he said. “The Notebooks of Nicholas Carmentine. I like the sound of it.”

“What are you writing?” asked Hutch.

“It’s a personal memoir. Hell, Hutch, when we get back, we’re all going to be famous. Have you thought about that? We’ve found everything we’d hoped for. And more.”

“Well,” said Tor, “almost everything.”

Even Bill was swept along by the general enthusiasm. “It has to be artificial,” he admitted to Hutch.

The disturbance, whatever it really was, was big, thousands of kilometers wide. It threw off jets and gushers in all directions. Streamers arced halfway around the planet. The central body of the storm was a large glob, filled with winds, driving snow, and slurry. The winds blew at about 80 kph, gusting to 130. Relatively serene for a storm on a gas giant. It was located directly on the equator.

The coffee tasted thick and warm and reassuring. When Hutch had been a little girl at camp and they’d told ghost stories around the fire at night, she remembered that the smell of coffee (which she wasn’t allowed to drink) had always made her feel better, had made the world a bit more solid. It was like that now. And it felt good because there was something of the dark woods about that cloud.

She brought the Memphis in close enough that they could have reached out and collected a bucket of snow. The storm trailed down into the atmosphere, but the big central section was clear of the upper clouds by at least a hundred klicks. Over the rim of the giant planet they could see Cobalt, blue and gold in the distant sun.

“It keeps getting stranger,” said Bill. “I’m reading an explosive effect. The snow is coming up out of the atmosphere. Like a fountain.”

“How,” asked Hutch, “could that be possible?”

“I do not know. But it is happening.”

“Why don’t we go into the storm?” asked George. “Maybe we can figure out what’s doing this.”

The suggestion visibly alarmed his colleagues. Tor frowned and signaled Hutch he didn’t think it was a good idea. “Actually,” she said, “we might want to do that. But later. Let’s get some more information on local conditions before we jump into anything.”

Bill measured the diameter of the storm at roughly four thousand kilometers. “Whatever’s causing it,” said Tor, “it shouldn’t last long. The sunlight’s on it.”

“How long do you think?” Bill kept the mockery out of his voice, but Hutch knew it was there.

“Oh, I don’t know. A few days, maybe. Right, Hutch?”

“It’s a complete unknown, Tor,” she said. “I’d point out though that it’s been there more than a week already.”

“Got something else,” said Bill. One of the screens lit up, revealing a picture of a moonlet. It was approaching the storm. “Looks as if it’s in the same orbit.”

It was a flattened rock. Generally smooth surface, with several ranges of low hills. “I believe it’s going to go inside,” Bill continued. “In about fifteen minutes.”

Hutch was hungry. She ordered up some pancakes and joined Alyx, who was just starting on a plate of eggs and toast. Alyx asked whether she thought the storm was in some way connected with the Retreat. “I can’t imagine,” said Nick, “how that could be possible.”

Asteroids come in all sorts of shapes. They are elongated, they are hammered in, they are even broken shards. This one was flat, not unlike a sea ray, and it was symmetrical. Not perfectly symmetrical, but its mass appeared to be evenly distributed along both sides.

“Bill,” Hutch said, “dimensions, please?”

“It’s 16.6 kilometers long,” said Bill, “and 5.1 wide at maximum. Vertical is.8 at the center.”

“Not much of a moon,” said George.

“And we have a surprise,” Bill continued. He waited while Nick got slowly out of his chair and literally gaped.

“What?” said Alyx.

He jabbed his index finger at the satellite. At the trailing end of the satellite. “Look.”

Bingo.

The object had exhaust tubes.

GEORGE WAS ON his feet. They were all on their feet. Nick shook Hutch’s hand and congratulated her.

An alien ship. The first one.

“Record the time, Bill,” Hutch said, as she was swept up and embraced by George. George of all people. “Record everything and mark it for the archives.”

“Yes, Hutch. Congratulations, Mr. Hockelmann.”

“Thank you.” George beamed.

They jacked up the magnitude on the rock. It had antennas. And sensors.

“Some of the dishes,” said Bill, “are aimed back at Icepack.”

Hutch directed Bill to angle the approach so they could get a good look at the vessel, above and below, both sides, front and rear.

The exhaust tubes were enormous. But that figured: The engines had to push a lot of mass.

They watched it move toward the snowstorm. The blizzard. The big Slurpy. Why would it do that? Tor looked across at Hutch for the answer.

“Bill,” she asked, “is it under power?”

Bill’s dignified features came on-screen. “Yes, Hutch,” he said, “they have just made a slight course adjustment. It is not a derelict.”

“They’re moving clear of the storm?” she asked.

“No. They seem to be headed right into it.”

A cloud of objects appeared from somewhere beneath the object, not unlike a swarm of insects. They charged forward, toward the blizzard.