Selene turned the conversation to practicalities before Ondo and Hessia could resume their squabbling. “At least we won't have to worry about the enemy for once. We can jump in-system and reaction-drive our way to the world without any waiting and watching. We can park in orbit, too; no one on the ground is going to notice.” She looked at Eb, whose mouth was moving as if he could still taste the data he'd pulled from the bead. “I presume this journey isn't going to be traumatic?”
“It is a simple metaspace jump. We can be there in a few hours.”
“Will you come too, Hessia? By the sound of it, you might enjoy the experience. Ondo, I don't think you should go. You shouldn't have come to Fenwinter.”
“I'm absolutely fine.”
“There's an uptick in the frequency of your headaches. You need to stay on the ship.”
Ondo scowled and was about to object further, but Hessia spoke over him. “Makes sense. I'll return to my ship and prep a lander.”
Selene considered Eb for a moment. She'd been trying to find the right moment to ask him. “Will you come, too? A trip to another world; the shift in perspective might be useful. And, this world in particular … your presence could be invaluable.”
“I cannot leave my vessel.”
She'd expected such a response. “Is that really true? Surtr was able to do so.”
Eb opened and closed his mouth, but didn't respond. There was a look of raw alarm in his eyes. Hessia leaned across the desk and placed a hand upon his. “You want to, but you also fear doing so. It is understandable after so long a time. I agree with Selene that it might be useful, though: useful for us, yes, but mainly for you. If it is possible.”
It took Eb long moments to respond, as if he were light-seconds distant rather than there in the room with them.
“I believe it might be possible, for a short time,” he responded eventually. “I will come.”
Out of ingrained paranoia, the Radiant Dragon and the Falling Fire translated into the Ansider system at two pre-agreed points two hundred million kilometres apart. They needn't have worried. The system was as quiet as Hessia's monitoring had suggested. The two vessels converged on the planet, exchanging all the telemetry they could pick up from their respective spheres, but neither could detect any sign of Concordance hardware, and there were no discernible shadows eclipsing the background stars. To Selene's frustration, they waited for a couple of hours, wary of fogged Concordance devices, but saw nothing suspicious.
Ondo spent the time studying the star, something about it intriguing him.
“What are you seeing?” Selene asked. “It looks completely stable to me, no risk of an unexpected supernova.”
“Precisely so. If anything, it's too stable.”
He showed her the readings of the star's internal structure he'd picked out of the Dragon's sensor readings. “If I had to guess, I'd say this red star is almost the opposite of the dead star at the end of the Coronade tunnel. That one was overloaded with mass until it went into nova. This one is being drip-fed mass at a very precise rate, balancing out exactly the fusion burn rate. It's been engineered for stability.”
“I can't detect a metaspace tunnel outlet within it.”
“It must be there. Somewhere across the galaxy, I'd guess, a donor star is slowly being drained of its hydrogen to keep this one young. Perhaps many such stars.”
The planet, meanwhile, was quiet, giving off no electromagnetic chatter. Selene had become so used to the void that the sight of a planet – any planet – sent a thrill of wonder through her. A world with a viable biosphere and a water-cycle was a miraculous thing. There was so much complexity: the intricate whirls and dots of the clouds, the fractal outlines of the coasts, the washes of colour from sands and forests and ice-fields.
And the life: as they neared, they began to pick up clear images of fields, regularly squared-off and attached to small clusters of houses. There were larger settlements, too, but none were anywhere near large enough to be considered a city. There were the snaking lines of roads – trackways more likely – but nothing like the coordinated transcontinental communications infrastructure found on any advanced world. Nothing mechanical flew in the sky, and the atmosphere, while showing a smoke particle concentration that was slightly elevated, carried nothing that could be considered pollution.
Selene was about to suggest deploying a blanket of low-atmosphere nanosensors to look for anything on the planet that might actually be of interest, when the Dragon picked up an unusually large stone structure emerging from the darkness of the terminator. The rays of the rising sun lit up its pinnacle in burning gold. Intrigued, she zoomed in, correcting for the atmospheric disturbances of the low-angle viewpoint.
A moment later, Hessia, in a slightly lower and faster orbit, sent better images. The structure was clearly artificial: a stone building consisting of three concentric walls around a central tower. It was by far the biggest structure they'd detected on the planet.
“The position is interesting,” said Hessia. “There's a clear star of tracks and paths converging upon that central point, and I see a hinterland of smaller buildings scattered around. It has to be a construction of some significance.”
“It's as good a place to start as any,” Selene responded. “Are you able to pick up anything on the inhabitants' emotional states?”
“A little. From this far out it's an unfocused whisper, and I can't pick out individuals, but everyone appears to be calm. Even contented.”
“There must be all the usual range of emotions going on, too. Anger, sorrow, lust.”
“There must, but I'm not hearing them. All I'm getting is the overwhelming tranquillity of the place.”
“We should be wary. We'll leave one ship
