Anvil of Stars

“Shh,” he said.

“You two were good,” she said.

He patted her shoulder. “Sleep,” he said.

She snuggled closer, gripping his hand with her long fingers.

Trojan Horse ended super deceleration at ten percent light-speed. Volumetric fields lifted. They would coast for five days, then begin a more leisurely deceleration to enter the system.

The first response to their signal came on tight-beam transmission from the fourth planet, content simple enough: a close match, with subtle and interesting variations, of Hakim’s repetitive code. The first twelve prime numbers were counted out in binary.

Martin examined the message while still dazed from the constraints. Simple acknowledgement, without any commitment or welcome.

Salutary caution in a forest full of wolves. Or supreme confidence mixed with humility…

Hakim sent another message, this time with samples of human and Brother voices extending greetings, his own voice counting numbers, and a list of mathematical and physical constants.

Martin ate his lunch of soup in a squeeze bulb and a piece of cake as he looked over fresh pictures of the fourth planet. Huge and dark, touched with streamers of water vapor cloud, wide black oceans and lighter gray continents.

“When will the other ships finish super deceleration?”

“Shrike in fifty-four minutes, and Greyhound in one hour, fifty-two minutes,” Hakim said. “We can noach them now, if you wish, of course.”

“No need,” Martin said. “Let them recover first. We need time to work on our disguise. We need to rehearse.”

“Sounds like the class play,” Erin said, moving in for a closer look at the projected fourth planet.

“We’ll follow the script closely,” Martin said. He looked around the compartment, making sure the Brothers had recovered from deceleration. They took the process harder than humans and needed two hours disassembled to bring themselves out of funk.

Eye on Sky came forward, Paola at his side. He smelled of some exotic spice Martin couldn’t identify: wine and cinnamon, hot resin.

“We are ready,” Eye on Sky said.

The bridge of Double Seed took shape, Brothers and humans orchestrating the final practical and decorative touches.

The crew compartment made sleeping nets for humans and ring beds for Brothers—a series of hoops within which a braid could disassemble and the cords could hang, one or two claws attached to each ring.

Silken Parts and Paola translated the proceedings for all the Brothers.

“We’ll have four more days to rehearse,” Martin said. “Hakim and Sharp Seeing will keep track of our interchanges with whoever’s down there. We’ll have an all-crew briefing every twelve hours. If you’re not on duty, you’re free to contribute to the background. Ariel and Paola will coordinate with Scoots Fast.”

“Scoots Fast has requested a name change,” Paola said. “He wants to be called Long Slither. It’s more accurate. And more dignified.”

“Fine by me,” Martin said. He followed Hakim and Eye on Sky into the noach “inner sanctum,” a small interior compartment screened against outside examination. There was barely room for the three of them.

Eye on Sky contacted Shrike first. At the extreme edge of noach range, text messages were most reliable, and Shrike’s message was projected flat before them. Silken Parts translated the Brother text, a short row of closely spaced curved lines: “We we are safe and still joined in the giant braid. Swift work and firm sand.”

The last contact with Greyhound before entry was short and sweet as well: “In orbit and recovered,” Giacomo transmitted. “Everybody impatient. Good luck!”

“Giacomo needs to work on his poetry,” Erin said wryly. “We’re being outclassed.”

Hakim, Martin, Paola, and Eye on Sky gathered on the new-made bridge. Panels pulled back to show steady blackness, a close-packed haze of stars.

“This is very splendid,” Hakim said, touching the new bulkheads, so different in style from the moms’ usual architecture. “Like being on a ship that might have been made by humans, begging the Brothers’ pardon!”

“We we also feel that if traveled to the stars, it might have been on such a ship,” Eye on Sky said.

Hakim nodded pleasantly, “For the time being, we still use the moms’ remotes on a wide baseline, advanced eyes and ears…”

An image of the fourteenth planet, nearest to the Trojan Horse, grew before them in a small star sphere. Martin leaned forward. Mottled, cold blue and green, a gas giant fifty thousand kilometers in diameter, the fourteenth planet was surrounded by twenty-one moons, and more besides. Its mushy upper atmosphere sprouted floating platforms hundreds of kilometers in diameter, needle-like proboscises extending down through the haze to high-pressure regions below. From the center of each platform, a crystal plume of white rose through a ring that glowed bright as fire in the upper, clear atmosphere. Hyperbolic lines of plasma shot from the ring, like threads from this distance, but hot as the filament in a light-bulb.

“Gas wells,” Martin said. “Tens of thousands of them. Raising gas from the depths, packing it—somehow— accelerating it in those rings, retrieving it in orbit. Impressive.”

“They reveal matter-conversion technology right here,” Hakim said. “They do not care to hide it. No platform parts made of normal matter could survive in those depths, nor contain the gases under such conditions. We see the bottom of the fuel chain, which leads to the top—the technology of the platforms themselves.”

Eye on Sky rustled and smelled of camphor and pine.

The scene shifted to the next planet nearest to them, number twelve, half a billion kilometers closer to the star, this one a rocky world with a diameter of ten thousand kilometers. The color of the planet’s crescent—viewed in close-up—was dark brown with scattered patches of tan and white. “Resolution of about four hundred kilometers,” Hakim said. “It may be made of rock and ice. It is cold enough for ammonia and methane to lie solid on the surface, and the atmosphere appears to be mostly nitrogen and argon. There is no large-scale construction —”

Abruptly, the planet darkened as if the illuminated limb were obscured by shadow. Then, within the shadow and along the limb, thin lines of brilliant white appeared like molten silver poured over a surface of carbon soot. The lines curved into circles and ovals, scribed contours, ran straight as great circles. The density of lineation increased, thinner lines within thick, until the entire planet glowed hot silver. Just as abruptly, color returned—but a different color, with different details, grayish-tan with green patches.

Jennifer giggled abruptly, then clapped her fingers to her mouth. “Sorry,” she said.

“What in the hell was that?” George Dempsey asked.

Dumbfounded, Hakim looked between his colleagues, then read the fresh chemical analysis. “Pure argon atmosphere. The surface appears to be mostly silicates, fine sand perhaps, small rocks. The green patches are very cold, much colder than the rest of the planet—four or five kelvins.”

“I hope Giacomo saw that,” Jennifer said, face ghostly. She could not stop her hands from touching her shoulders, her elbows, her knees. She seemed terrified. “If Hans is looking for proof of illusion…”

“Let’s not draw conclusions yet,” Martin said.

Jennifer giggled again.

The next planet inward that shared the same quadrant of the Leviathan system, number two, orbited scarcely one hundred and fifty million kilometers from the star, barely within a “temperate” zone allowing liquid water. Pale brownish-red, lacking any thick atmosphere, this planet was lumpy with structure. Even with a diameter of over twenty-one thousand kilometers, its outline was remarkably uneven.

“They’re showing off again,” Paola said. “How tall are those… whatever they are?”

“Hundreds of kilometers tall,” Hakim said. “Tens of thousands of them. Cities, perhaps?”

“Are we getting any communications between the planets?” Jennifer asked.

“No artificial radiation leakage,” Hakim said. “Except for the energies used to ship gas up from the giant planets. But even those are of a frequency easily interpreted as solar flares. From a few light months away, the system is rich with planets, but quiet.”

“So they’re not hiding, but they’re not attracting attention, either. What about commerce between the