Far Rider shook his head. “It devoured the seedship, along with more than twenty-eight thousand kilometers of the tree ring itself—every leaf, fruit, oxygen pod, water tendril—even our protogene growth centers.”

“There were far fewer purely space-adapted Ousters in those days,” said Reta Kasteen. “The adapted ones attempted to save the others, but many thousands died on that first visit of the Destroyer… the Devourer… the Machine. We obviously have many names for it.”

“Ship from hell,” said the Chief Branchman, and Dem Lia realized that he was almost certainly speaking literally, as if a religion had grown up based upon hating this machine.

“How often does it come?” asked Den Soa.

“Every fifty-seven years,” said the Templar. “Exactly.”

“From the red giant system?” asked Den Soa.

“Yes,” broadcast Far Rider. “From the hell star.”

“If you know its trajectory,” said Dem Lia, “can’t you know far ahead of time the sections of your forest ring it will… devastate, devour? Couldn’t you just not colonize, or at the very least evacuate, those areas? After all, most of the tree ring has to be unpopulated… the ring’s surface area has to be equal to more than half a million Old Earths or Hyperions.”

Chief Branchman Keel Redt showed his thin smile again. “About now—some seven or eight standard days out—the Destroyer, for all its mass, not only completes its deceleration cycle, but carries out complicated maneuvers that will take it to some populated part of the ring. Always a populated area. A hundred and four years ago, its final trajectory took it to a massing of O² pods where more than twenty million of our non-fully space-adapted Ousters had made their homes, complete with travel tubes, bridges, towers, city-sized platforms and artificially grown life-support pods that had been under slow construction for more than six hundred standard years.”

“All destroyed,” said True Voice of the Tree Reta Kasteen with sorrow in her voice. “Devoured. Harvested.”

“Was there much loss of life?” asked Dem Lia, her voice quiet.

Far Rider shook his head and broadcast, “Millions of fully space-adapted Ousters rallied to evacuate the oxygen breathers. Fewer than a hundred died.”

“Have you tried to communicate with the… machine?” asked Peter Delem Dem Tae.

“For centuries,” said Reta Kasteen, her voice shaking with emotion. “We’ve used radio, tightbeam, maser, the few holo transmitters we still have, Far Rider’s people have even used their wingfields—by the thousands—to flash messages in simple, mathematical code.”

The five Amoiete Spectrum Helix people waited.

“Nothing,” said the Chief Branchman in a flat voice. “It comes, it chooses its populated section of the ring, and it devours. We have never had a reply.”

“We believe that it is completely automated and very ancient,” said Reta Kasteen. “Perhaps millions of years old. Still operating on programming developed when the alien ring was built. It harvests these huge sections of the ring, limbs, branches, tubules with millions of gallons of tree-ring manufactured water… then returns to the red-star system and, after a pause, returns our way again.”

“We used to believe that there was a world left in that red-giant system,” broadcast Far Rider. “A planet which remains permanently hidden from us on the far side of that evil sun. A world which built this ring as its food source, probably before their G2 sun went giant, and which continues to harvest in spite of the misery it causes us. No longer. There is no such planet. We now believe that the Destroyer acts alone, out of ancient, blind programming, harvesting sections of the ring and destroying our settlements for no reason. Whatever or whoever lived in that red giant system has long since fled.”

Dem Lia wished that Kem Loi, their astronomer, was there. She knew that she was on the command deck watching. “We saw no planets during our approach to this binary system,” said the green-banded commander. “It seems highly unlikely that any world that could support life would have survived the transition of the G2 star to the red giant.”

“Nonetheless, the Destroyer passes very close to that terrible red star on each of its voyages,” said the Ouster Chief Branchman. “Perhaps some sort of artificial environment remains—a space habitat—hollowed-out asteroids. An environment which requires this plant ring for its inhabitants to survive. But it does not excuse the carnage.”

“If they had the ability to build this machine, they could have simply fled their system when the G2 sun went critical,” mused Patek Georg. The red-band looked at Far Rider. “Have you tried to destroy the machine?”

The lipless smile beneath the ectofield twitched lizard-wide on Far Rider’s strange face. “Many times. Scores of thousands of true Ousters have died. The machine has an energy defense that lances us to ash at approximately one hundred thousand klicks.”

“That could be a simple meteor defense,” said Dem Lia.

Far Rider’s smile broadened so that it was very terrible. “If so, it suffices as a very efficient killing device. My father died in the last attack attempt.”

“Have you tried traveling to the red giant system?” asked Peter Delem.

“We have no spacecraft left,” answered the Templar.

“On your own solar wings then?” asked Peter, obviously doing the math in his head on the time such a round trip would take. Years—decades at solar sailing velocities—but well within an Ouster’s life span.

Far Rider moved his hand with its elongated fingers in a horizontal chop. “The heliosphere turbulence is too great. Yet we have tried hundreds of times—expeditions upon which scores depart and none or only a few return. My brother died on such an attempt six of your standard years ago.”

“And Far Rider himself was terribly hurt,” said Reta Kasteen softly. “Sixty-eight of the best deep spacers left—two returned. It took all of what remains of our medical science to save Far Rider’s life, and that meant two years in recovery pod nutrient for him.”

Dem Lia cleared her throat. “What do you want us to do?”

The two Ousters and the Templar leaned forward. Chief Branchman Keel Redt spoke for all of them. “If, as you believe, as we have become convinced, there is no inhabited world left in the red giant system, kill the Destroyer now. Annihilate the harvesting machine. Save us from this mindless, obsolete, and endless scourge. We will reward you as handsomely as we can—foods, fruits, as much water as you need for your voyage, advanced genetic techniques, our knowledge of nearby systems, anything.”

The Spectrum Helix people glanced at one another. Finally Dem Lia said, “If you are comfortable here, four of us would like to excuse ourselves for a short time to discuss this. Ces Ambre would be delighted to stay with you and talk if you so wish.”

The Chief Branchman made a gesture with both long arms and huge hands. “We are completely comfortable. And we are more than delighted to have this chance to talk to the venerable M. Ambre—the woman who saw the husband of Aenea.”

Dem Lia noticed that the young Templar, Reta Kasteen, looked visibly thrilled at the prospect.

“And then you will bring us your decision, yes?” radioed Far Rider, his waxy body, huge eyeshields, and alien physiology giving Dem Lia a slight chill. This was a creature that fed on light, tapped enough energy to deploy electromagnetic solar wings hundreds of kilometers wide, recycled his own air, waste, and water, and lived in an environment of absolute cold, heat, radiation, and hard vacuum. Humankind had come a long way from the early hominids in Africa on Old Earth.

And if we say no, thought Dem Lia, three-hundred-thousand-some angry space-adapted Ousters just like him might descend on our spinship like the angry Hawaiians venting their wrath on Captain James Cook when he caught them pulling the nails from the hull of his ship. The good captain ended up not only being killed horribly, but having his body eviscerated, burned, and boiled into small chunks. As soon as she thought this, Dem Lia knew better. These Ousters would not attack the Helix. All of her intuition told her that. And if they do, she thought, our weaponry will vaporize the lot of them in two-point-six seconds. She felt guilty and slightly nauseated at her own thoughts as she made her farewells and took the lift down to the command deck with the other three.