Anvil of Stars

frequencies.

The eighth planet, a bright orange-yellow gas giant with a diameter of seventy-five thousand kilometers, possessed three large moons. Cables two to three kilometers in diameter hung from the moons to the planet’s fluid surface, leaving great whorls in their wakes, like mixers in a fantastic bakery.

The sixth planet, eight thousand kilometers in diameter, appeared to be covered with dandelion fluff, each “seed” a thousand kilometers tall. Incoming space vessels never ventured below the crowns of the seeds. In close- up, between the seed pillars, storms churned a thick atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen and water vapor. Hakim thought this might be a giant farm of some sort, for raising unimaginable creatures or plants, but Martin thought that seemed archaic; one wondered if such powerful beings would still need to eat, much less eat formerly living things.

“Then the creatures might have other uses,” Hakim said, eyes glittering with speculation.

“None of which we can guess,” George Dempsey cautioned.

“Let us have our fun,” Erin said peevishly.

Peering deeper down Leviathan’s well, to the fifth planet, nine thousand kilometers in diameter, dull gray, and like the ninth, smoother than a billiard ball, but far from reflective.

And perhaps the most fascinating of them all: the fourth planet, one hundred and two thousand kilometers in diameter, with six moons, three of them larger than Earth, its dark reddish-brown surface radiating heat steadily into space, covered with liquid water oceans with narrow ribbons of continent and low mountains between like stripes on a basketball.

“Thirty-two billion square kilometers,” Ariel said in wonder. “If the land is ten percent of the surface, that’s over three billion square kilometers.” Pause for quick figuring. “Earth had about one and a third billion square kilometers of land. How many people could live here?”

“At two g’s, not me,” Cham said.

“The physics don’t make sense,” Hakim said. “Not dense enough to support a solid surface… The density below the rocky shell must be less than one and a half grams per cubic centimeter. How is this done?”

“How is any of it done?” George Dempsey asked.

The images and charts were noached to Greyhound and Shrike. Hans’ voice replied: “We’re almost at maximum range. Soon be out of touch for a while. How is it?”

“I think they must be treating us like nursery school kids—if not like stray insects.”

“We’ve been looking over the mug shots of the citizens of Leviathan,” said Hans. “The crested critter is pretty audacious. They like to repeat themselves, don’t they? Anybody prepared to make a judgment now?”

“I think we’re close.”

“What more do we need?”

“The final dotted i and crossed t.”

Hans chuckled. “I’ll settle for frontier justice and getting the hell away.”

“We’ve come this far,” Martin said. “We’ve been invited to orbit the fourth planet, and we’ve already set our course. We’ll be down there in twenty-seven days.”

“Godspeed,” Hans said.

“How’s politics?” Martin asked hesitantly.

“My worry, not yours, Martin.”

“Just curious.”

“We’re prepared for whatever you ask of us. Count on it.”

“Any idea who killed Rosa?” Martin asked.

“Time enough after the Job’s done.”

“Jennifer wants some extended time with Giacomo. She thinks she may have something interesting to present to the ships’ minds.”

“I can’t wait,” Hans said. “Not more super-physics doom and gloom, I hope. We’re getting enough of that here, every time we look at those damned planets.”

“She says it might be good news.”

“Put her on, then. Giacomo’s in the nose with me.”

Jennifer came forward and said she wanted the bridge empty while she talked with Giacomo. Humans and Brothers left, all but Silken Parts, who was collaborating on the problems using Brother math.

“Hans doesn’t sound good,” Erin told Martin in the hall outside the bridge.

Ariel concurred. “I hope he’s keeping it together.”

“Maybe he’s depressed because of the show,” Erin suggested. “It’s gotten to me.”

“Maybe,” Martin said. He was empty of either optimism or gloom. The sheer weight of superiority of Leviathan’s worlds made it hard for him to breathe, much less think.

Silken Parts and Jennifer left the noach chamber after three hours. Jennifer could hardly talk. She hung on to a net in the crew quarters and thirstily gulped a bulb of juice. When Martin approached, she held up her hand and shook her head.

“Please,” she said. “My head hurts. Giacomo’s found ways to—”

“You don’t have to talk now if you don’t want to,” Martin said. She ignored that.

“He’s found ways to use Brother math to describe Leviathan’s noach physics. Silken Parts and the ships’ minds are collaborating.

“It’s just too fast, much too fast. We see something, maybe the way number twelve changes or the number eight has big suspended cables, and Silken Parts comes up with a hypothesis… Giacomo runs it through… I look it over. Ah, God. I’m dead tired.”

Jennifer waved her hand again weakly, closed her eyes, and instantly fell asleep.

“I think we’ve broken through,” Hakim said. “I give them all the credit. They’re sending us basic math now, which means they understand the symbols… the human symbols.”

“Is there any of interest in the math?” Silken Parts asked.

“All very innocuous, child’s stuff,” Hakim said. “More like human math than Brother math.”

Silken Parts made a noise like leaves on pavement.

Eye on Sky examined the projected records of the transmissions from the fourth planet. Still shaky after four hours’ sleep, Jennifer peered around the Brother at the records. “They’re echoing most of what we send, but making changes, some… improvements? The notation is altered a little… here and here.” She pointed to equations describing n-dimensional geometries. Martin couldn’t begin to interpret what she was seeing.

“They learn fast and soon,” Eye on Sky said. “We can seed the beach now, I we think.”

“Time to test them on language,” Martin said. “Transmit a Brother and an English dictionary, and a full audio record of speech sounds for both languages.”

“Like opening our book to them,” Ariel said.

“Baiting the hook,” Martin said. He turned to the mom and snake mother. “Can you arrange for the Trojan Horse to have some supernova damage?”

“Yes,” the mom replied.

“Cham, you and Erin design our damage and report to Eye on Sky and me when it’s done.”

“Got it,” Cham said, and they left the bridge.

“It looks dark and heavy,” Ariel said, staring at the projection of the fourth planet. “I’ve got a name for it, if anybody cares,” she said.

“What?” Martin asked.

“Sleep. The other planets… the bristling world, looks to me like Puffball. The flipping world…”

“Masque,” Martin suggested.

“Blinker is better,” Erin said. Within ten minutes, they had named each of the planets, according to their characteristics, working outward from Leviathan itself:

Frisbee, orbiting barely half a million kilometers above the surface of Leviathan, a rapidly rotating white disk seventy-two hundred kilometers in diameter, its circumference fringed with tangled, outward-streaming “hair” of unknown purpose and composition.

Big City, surrounded by red acid haze, covered with architecture to a depth of four hundred kilometers.

Lawn, a blanket of blue-green vegetation divided by artificial rivers, Earth-like but for the fact that the