Wasteland of flint

belt and Three. If the shuttle leaves Three the same day; if they just dropped in, grabbed whatever they were looking for and jetted out, then the minimum time to transit is eight days.'

Kosho's wand sketched a box in the air, describing a fat volume of space between the red disc of Ephesus and the gray scattering of the belt.

'So at event plus five, they could have met – somewhere in this volume – and made gradient to hyperspace. Now – a Tyr masses in excess of three hundred million tons empty and I think she'd have taken on at least another hundred million tons of ore samples, or more, by this time. The departure spike from such a large mass leaves a lasting footprint – and I don't see one in this volume.'

'Hayes-san?'

'Chu-sa, I'm not sure we'd see one in this system for more than a few days, no matter where the departure took place.' The weapons officer scratched his eyebrow. 'The planetary orbits in this system are all messed up and irregular, there are queer gravitational tides and eddies. Our own footprint is barely discernible today and we know our entry-point to the centimeter!'

Kosho made a dismissive motion with her stylus. 'We're a fraction the mass of a Tyr and our hyperdrive is tuned to leave as little footprint as possible. Look -' A new set of data clouded the well. 'There's no spike on any record; not ours, not the Palenque's…and I believe our scans of the asteroid belt in the projected path of the Tyr show evidence of further disturbance. I think the refinery ship is still here. I think her captain is greedy and kept right on working after the accident on the Palenque. He badgered as soon as we entered the system, hoping we'd go away. Now he's stuck – ore holds are full of rich samples – and he doesn't want to dump mass. If he tries to make gradient to hyperspace, he'll have to light up like a temple tree and we'll see him.'

Hadeishi raised a hand. Kusaru appeared silently with the tea and miso. Both of the junior officers took the light meal with grateful bows, though only Hayes drank from his z-g tight cup.

'I understand,' Mitsuharu said. 'Is there a swift way to tell if the refinery ship is still here?'

Kosho nodded sharply. 'Yes.' Her stylus stabbed at the last winking point. 'We creep in here and check the area of disturbance – if he's slagged out a rock, we'll be able to get a reading on his drive exhaust and be able to tell how long ago he was working.' A flicker of hungry pride flashed across her composed oval face. 'To the hour and the minute.'

Mitsuharu nodded, privately calculating their course and time to intercept. 'Hayes- san, plot us a course and execute. But gently, very gently. We must creep away from the planet and approach this prey with equal caution.'

The Palenque

The main hatch into the Medical bay opened suddenly, sliding into the overhead with a soft thump. Gretchen looked up from where she was kneeling on the deck of the examining room, her work lenses dialed to hi-mag. She heard Bandao hiss and step back and a low growl from Magdalena. Flipping up her lenses, she found herself staring into the black snout of a shipgun, held in the hands of one of the Marines – she couldn't tell which one – in combat armor.

'Over against the wall,' the Marine said, his voice a buzz through the suit. Bandao moved back, automatic held gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. The Marine crabbed into the room and was immediately followed by another, taller, man also in matte-black combat armor. 'Just lay the gun down on the deck.'

Gretchen rose, spreading her hands wide to show they were empty. A heated sense of outrage was warring with the urge to laugh aloud at the insectlike appearance of the soldiers, and she managed to remain composed. The two Marines surveyed the room, then relaxed fractionally.

'Clear,' the taller one – Fitzsimmons, Gretchen guessed – said, his voice almost unrecognizable through the faceplate of his suit. Then she stiffened as his rifle swung toward her. From this vantage, the weapon seemed very large. 'Doctor Anderssen, please leave the examining room and stand over here by Bandao- tzin.'

Almost tiptoeing, she ducked through the damaged doorway and moved to join Bandao – who had adopted a very calm expression – and Magdalena, who was emitting a near-subsonic growl which raised the hackles on the back of Gretchen's neck. Worried, Anderssen took hold of the Hesht's paw to restrain her.

The lean, wrinkled shape of Hummingbird stepped into the room. His high forehead gleamed like polished mahogany in the overheads and his dark eyes swept across the three of them to settle on the debris in the medical bay.

Without speaking, the Mйxica judge went to the adjoining room and knelt to examine the deck. The Marines said nothing, one of them covering the nauallis with his rifle, the other keeping a strict eye on the three civilians. Gretchen itched to speak, but guessed this was not the time and place to annoy Imperial authority. He could just ask politely…

Hummingbird moved around in the examining room and Gretchen couldn't really see what he was doing but there was a strange muttering sound, and the man seemed to go back and forth, sometimes turning this way and that, making a slow, convoluted circuit around the long table. At length he returned to the doorway and motioned for the nearest Marine to hand him a small black bag. Hummingbird took out a small electrostatic vacuum and a specimen container.

He returned to the room and resumed moving slowly around the table. Again, Gretchen thought she heard a peculiar sound, but it was so faint and the acoustics in the two rooms so poor, she couldn't make out what he might be saying. Neither Marine showed any reaction, and even Magdalena was starting to settle down.

Eventually, Hummingbird returned to the nurses' station and stowed a newly-heavy specimen container in the carryall. The bag closed with a heavy click.

'The dust is inactive,' Hummingbird said, looking up, his eyes dark as flint. 'What did you do?'

Gretchen took a half step forward and felt both Bandao and Magdalena tense behind her. 'I think the organism started to die the moment Parker's shuttle left the Ephesian atmosphere. When the radiation shielding dropped, it just came…apart. But five minutes of high-UV flooding the chamber seems to have stopped all remaining molecular activity.'

The Mйxica nodded, glancing at the control panel for the examining room. 'Like the spores infesting the shuttle engines. You think they are a related species?'

Gretchen felt a certain familiar hollowness in her gut. And now, she thought, the Imperial authorities will step in and a great deal of work – months of observations, countless crystals of data, maybe a man's entire career – will vanish like night dew. 'Sinclair- tzin has a theory – and as expedition microbiologist, he should – which points to a commonality across all Ephesian life.'

'All current Ephesian life?' Hummingbird's tone grew sharp, as if he already knew her answer. 'Since the destruction of the surface?'

Gretchen's eyes narrowed and she felt a subtle tension tighten in the old Mйxica. He's fishing, she thought, but for what? Then she thought of the cephalopod fossil and the entombed cylinder. Too much had been happening for her to show Sinclair that bit of evidence. In any case, she was familiar enough with the types of organisms trapped in the ancient limestone to know there was no evolutionary descendent among the microbiota flourishing on the surface today. The violent arrival of the First Sun builders had separated the two epochs of Ephesian life as night from day. 'All current life,' she said. 'Like the spores in the intakes or whatever organism gave fruit to this…copy of Russovsky.'

'Yes…' Hummingbird seemed suddenly older, the brief flicker of interest and tension ebbing away. He visibly slumped. 'Everything made new, green shoots rising from desolation. You did well to destroy what remained, no matter how inert it seemed.'

Gretchen nodded, and fought to keep from looking down at her boots. Got to get these into secure storage, she thought guiltily, and figure out some way to keep them alive for study.

'I have sent the Cornuelle away,' Hummingbird said, abruptly changing the subject. 'As Thai-i Isoroku informs me this ship will be able to make gradient to hyperspace within the day.' The tlamatinime looked to the two Marines. 'Ship's records indicate there is an