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  “So yes, an attack,” she replied.

  Nessus plucked nervously at his unkempt mane. “We know they have some sort of spaceflight capability. We need somehow to extrapolate whether that capability can grow into a threat to the Fleet. Given their rapid progress in other fields, that risk could be substantial.”

  “I still feel we should start out by asking.” Only as she realized she was shaking did Kirsten grasp how strongly she felt. “If radio contact with them does not work, I volunteer to go down myself.”

  Omar switched off the projection. “Kirsten, we are far from home. Your primary job is to get us back. After Nessus, you’re the last of us I would put at risk.”

  She found herself thinking again of that long-ago hike in the woods. No one knows everything.

  She just wished she knew whose ignorance—that of Nessus, or herself, or the still-mysterious Gw’oth—was the issue here.

  FROM DEEP WITHIN a comforting nest of pillows in the sanctuary of his cabin, Nessus considered Kirsten’s unusual request for a private audience. He had already reached his decision about the aliens. His full focus could now be on assessing the Colonists. “Please come by my cabin,” he decided.

  The knock on his cabin door was timid, but Kirsten had wasted no time getting to him. “We’re making things worse, Nessus.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I believe our actions are stimulating the Gw’oth to develop in ways contrary to the Fleet’s interests.”

  That was also his suspicion. “I don’t see how that could be,” he lied.

  “You know we’re deep inside their communication networks and data archives. There is no sign they know Explorer is here, but their R&D is being influenced by how we study them. We map their cities with deep-penetrating radar, and they detect radio-frequency anomalies. Their radio and radar research expands. We destroy one of their satellites, and they quickly develop a rapid-launch capability. The pattern goes on.” Kirsten looked around the cabin for someplace to sit; finding none, she leaned against a wall. “The longer we test the Gw’oth for capabilities we consider undesirable, the more likely we make it that they will develop just those capabilities. Our very presence may give them the theoretical potential to endanger the Fleet as it passes.”

  She was methodical and insightful. If that intellect could be combined with Eric’s devotion to the Concordance, how useful their children would be.

  Thoughts of Colonists mating made his stomach roil. “Kirsten, do you admire these primitive aliens?”

  “I do,” she said. “That’s all the more reason not to groom them into a threat meriting any action on our part. Respectfully, Nessus, I recommend that we leave this solar system now.”

  Kirsten was raising valid points. The Gw’oth were erecting large observatories above the ice. How could they not notice the Fleet when it approached? They already had primitive chemical rockets and fission. Would interplanetary capabilities follow? In the seventy years until the Fleet passed by, it was surely imaginable—which crossed his risk threshold—that the Gw’oth would have spacecraft exploring the fringes of their solar system. Should such probes be stealthed and maneuvered to lie undetectable in the Fleet’s path . . .

  Why do anything that might advance progress among the starfish?

  The correct course of action was obvious. Nessus had decided several shifts earlier on his recommendation to those who lead from behind. The Fleet should adjust its course slightly. Over seventy years, even a minor course modification would steer the Fleet far from any possible Gw’oth danger. Slamming a comet into the ice moon was a last resort, and even if it came to extreme measures, he could imagine far more subtle actions.

  “Nessus,” she prompted him apprehensively.

  Unfortunately for Kirsten and her crewmates, the investigation of G567-X2 was always his secondary objective. “I appreciate your input, but I believe we must continue assessing the Gw’oth.”

  She flinched at the gentle rebuke. “May I use your holo projector?”

  “Of course.” He wondered where this would lead.

  Kirsten called up a file from the ship’s archives. A bumpy sphere appeared: the hidden ocean floor of the ice moon. Scattered dots glowed, some blinking. “The red dots are major data archives. The blinking dots are archives associated with major Gw’oth development centers.”

  “They had to do their engineering somewhere. What is the significance of the locations?”

  “Now look at this,” she answered. Her face reddened as a second holo appeared.

  It was a squirming mass of twisting, entangled aliens. His stomach churned as the view changed to another such scene, and another, and another. There were chains of convulsing aliens, pulsing arrays, and writhing piles. That the aliens performed these acts on camera revolted him.

  Reproduction was a private matter. Among Citizens, sex meant reproduction. No Citizen was comfortable discussing sex with any other species. To sound sternly disapproving took no effort. “I have no interest in others’ sex lives.”

  Her face reddened further, but she stood her ground. “I know what this looks like. When such scenes appeared on our random video surveys, I turned away. Then an amazing thing happened. The longer we have been here, the more frequently such scenes appear in our intercepts.

  “The outpouring of technological change, the above-ice journeys of exploration, perhaps suspicions of unseen observers—it must be very stressful for the Gw’oth. At first I thought, and please excuse me for this indelicacy, that they respond to stress with increased sexual activity.”

  She could not meet his eyes, and he guessed he knew why. Humans must also react that way to stress. Reluctantly, he gestured for her to continue.

  “Then I noticed a perplexing correlation. This . . . activity corresponds with the growth of data in the archives. The activity is most prevalent where the archives are fastest growing. What could that mean? In desperation, I made myself watch these scenes.” She froze an image. “Look closely,” and she swallowed audibly, “and you’ll notice that each Gw’o has, umm, linked tubes with four other Gw’oth.”

  Nessus forced himself to confirm her observation. As best he could ascertain, there were sixteen Gw’oth in the image, all linked as she described. “Why is that significant?”

  Kirsten searched the cabin once more for a chair. Finding none, she settled onto a pile of cushions. “What I’ve not yet mentioned is near which data archive this scene happened. It’s an archive specializing in rocketry development. This group interaction has been ongoing for days, starting and stopping, aligned with the apparent work schedule of the surrounding Gw’oth city. As this activity continues, there has been extensive growth in datasets related to rocket-nozzle design.”

  Rocket nozzles? Nessus struggled to imagine the need to design such things. It seemed as archaic as inventing a pillow or table. Such things had been standardized on the homeworld for many millennia. Yet his people, like the Gw’oth, had had to originate the technology sometime. He supposed the design process had had to consider variations in heat and pressure throughout the nozzle volume. Ah. “Three spatial dimensions and time. You’re likening four-way linkages”—and despite himself, he could not keep disgust from his voice—“to a four-dimensional matrix calculation.”

  She leaned forward on her cushions, eyes bright. “Exactly. I found similar correlated expansions in other archives, where the number of inter-Gw’o links matches the apparent mathematical model. Lines of linked Gw’oth and simple, one-dimensional gas-diffusion models. Three-way connections and 3-D models of molecular bonds. I found more examples.”

  He was beginning to believe. “How is such a thing possible?”

  “We already suspected from their medical records that the species evolved from a colony organism. The individual tubes are like hollow worms, with at least a vestigial version of every organ required for independent existence. Omar thinks the ancestral forms linked nervous systems and eventually evolved a large, share
d central brain. It looks as though nervous systems can also connect at the other end, the freely moving end, of the tubes. If that’s right, such connections would form multiperson minds.”

  Nessus’ purpose was not served by admitting anything, but he was fascinated. “Biological computers. That would explain why you’ve found large archives, but no computing centers. It’s an interesting hypothesis, although this may be only a coincidence.” Could it be true? “But even if you are correct, why should I care?”

  “Don’t you see? We all wondered, and worried, about this sudden, unexplained outpouring of creativity. The Gw’oth must have been preparing for ages to break through the ice, waiting to act until they had a very detailed plan. Remember all the seabed ruins we’ve seen in deep-penetrating radar images and intercepted video—this is an old civilization. The eruption of capability only seems sudden.”

  He had never been more convinced of the value of the Colonist scouting program. Would Citizen scouts have ever reached such a bizarre—but quite possibly correct—conclusion about the Gw’oth? He doubted it, even ignoring the difficulties in assembling an entire Citizen crew.

  “Kirsten, say you are correct. Throughout their history, the Gw’oth have been limited to the energy of muscle power and tides and perhaps volcanic heat. Their collective memory was limited to what could be recorded on some underwater analogue of paper. They remained stuck beneath the ice.

  “Now those constraints are all lifted. They have nuclear energy. Above the ice, they’ve had the means to create vast data archives. And they’re on the verge of space travel, with all these other moons at hand. Perhaps all that remains unchanged is the will that sustained them until they could entirely plan their renewal. Consider how dangerous that focus might be coupled with their vastly expanding resources.”

  Her mouth gaped in shock. “Nessus,” she finally managed. “They don’t know we exist. They don’t know the Fleet exists. They have done nothing to threaten anyone. And we all agree they’re smart—if they do spot the Fleet, an undeniably more advanced civilization, why would they provoke us?”

  “What are you suggesting, Kirsten?”

  “What I proposed earlier. We should just leave.”

  A succession of insights was not Kirsten’s only surprise. Obviously, she had developed an emotional bond with those Explorer had come to study. He sensed there was yet more she was thinking but not admitting to him.

  How would her feelings for the Gw’oth affect her behavior? Might she oppose the application of defensive measures, should the Fleet’s safety require such? He needed to know. “Your findings have brought me to a different conclusion. We must strive harder to understand certain implications.”

  His Colonists had compellingly proven their abilities to be great scouts for the Fleet. Now, Nessus pondered a dilemma that had never before occurred to him.

  It remained to be proven whether they would be loyal servants.

  6

  Starlight glistened off the icy, potato-shaped body on which Kirsten stood. With her visor photomultiplier turned up, it was as bright as a cloudy day on NP4. Boulders were scattered in the ice beneath her feet, and more rock protruded from the surface. Eric tramped nearby, crouching occasionally, inspecting the ancient and pockmarked surface of the proto-comet.

  What made this region of the snowball safe for them to work on was what it lacked: gas pockets. Although they were much too distant from the sun for any significant heating, they had used deep-penetrating radar to find an intrinsically stable area for their landing.

  This was her first time off Explorer since they had left the Fleet. I’m on another world, if only a small one. Not long ago, a mere chance of such an adventure would have elated her. Knowing the purpose of the excursion now sucked the joy from the experience.

  Explorer floated at a safe distance. As Kirsten watched, a port opened, through which a small sphere emerged: a General Products #1 hull, not much larger than her helmet, hardware glittering within. Omar remote-piloted it toward them.

  “Success,” Eric called with satisfaction over the public channel. “Here’s a suitable spot. I’ve got a clear view into the ice for as deep as my flashlight will shine.”

  She walked over carefully to see. The improvised crampons on her pressure-suit boots did more to hold her to the surface than the snowball’s feeble gravity. She believed him, but wanted to speak alone. Private channel two, she gestured. “This is wrong,” she began without preamble.

  He dialed his flashlight-laser to its highest intensity setting and aimed it downward. Steam instantly boiled from the surface, luridly illuminated by the laser beam. “What do you mean? If we’re careful, which I am being, this is perfectly safe.”

  “Not unsafe, wrong.” How long did she have before Nessus became curious or suspicious? “We’re endangering another intelligent species, Eric. We shouldn’t be doing this.”

  He released the laser’s ON button for a moment, allowing the steam to dissipate so he could have a look. “A nice shaft,” he said to himself, before he resumed drilling. “No one is hurting them, Kirsten. We’re testing them. The question is: Will they see and respond to a comet-collision threat? It’s our best bet at predicting how soon they’ll be able to detect the approaching Fleet, and whether they can launch anything that might endanger it. After we watch for a while, see whether they react or not, we’ll divert the comet.”

  “Will we really?”

  The laser beam wobbled as he jerked in surprise.

  “Careful with that! I’m serious, Eric. This test is happening because the Gw’oth might be a threat to the Fleet. We know nothing about what they’re like or how they think. Admit it: We’re endangering the Gw’oth. And why? It’s purely because they’ve acquired some basic technology. Ask yourself what Nessus will do if our monitoring shows they have detected a collision risk and made plans to divert our comet.”

  He switched off the laser. When the steam dissipated, he grunted approval at the hole gaping near them. “Kirsten, I have to talk to Omar now. I’m going public.” He tapped buttons on his sleeve. “Omar, give me control of the probe.”

  The sphere approached slowly. “Reactionless drive. There is a technology I bet our little buddies don’t have,” Eric said. The tiny ship settled into the hole he had excavated, smacking the bottom with a thump they could just sense through their boots. “Piloting something that is practically indestructible makes the job a lot easier.”

  With his flashlight-laser dialed to a broader beam, Eric began fanning the surface around the hole. Less steam erupted than before, and the tube collapsed inward on itself. He slowly fanned the area until all that remained of the shaft was a shallow depression. Kirsten waved her flashlight laser about, too, but her beam was set so wide it contributed only harmless light.

  Eric gestured for a return to the private channel. “You know this test isn’t a danger to the aliens. At worst, they’ll think it is. The thruster we just planted will slowly change the proto-comet’s orbit, to make it a near-miss threat. If the Gw’oth don’t see it, or if they are unable to respond, the thruster will be used later to nudge it off an intersecting course.”

  She knew the plan, too. It would seem from a distance as though the typical random eruption of gases from the comet had changed its orbit to something safe. “Or our embedded probe could re-aim the comet for an impact on a later orbit. Or the probe could rip through the comet on full thrusters, and shatter it into several large pieces to make it all the harder to divert.”

  “I guess you two wanted to be alone,” Omar kidded on the public channel. “Fine, take a little while. I assume you know Nessus thinks every unnecessary minute you spend out there is a sign of insanity.”

  “Kirsten, what is this really about?” Eric asked.

  “We have just built the means by which the Gw’oth civilization could be destroyed. Maybe the entire species. A comet striking their world would kill millions. To create such a device just in case . . . are we any better than thos
e who attacked our ancestors?” She stared down at her boots. “Is the Concordance?”

  He grabbed an arm and jerked her around to face him.

  “How dare you make such accusations against Citizens! Someone, and we’ll never know who, attacked the starship transporting our ancestors. It was a Citizen vessel that found the hulk, dying and adrift. You know how fearful Citizens are, and yet they boarded the derelict, they rescued the frozen embryo banks, and they salvaged whatever few artifacts they could carry in a vessel no larger than Explorer.

  “Kirsten, they might have left the hulk lost in space, and our ancestors with it. Instead, they saved us. They created a whole language and culture for us. They gave us our whole world. So don’t expect me to think ill of them or their motives.”

  Every word he spoke was true, and yet . . . together, under Nessus’ tutelage, they had created this frightful device. How could any sense be made of that?

  Eric was staring at her. She had to respond to his outburst somehow. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe this is just too far from home for me.”

  “I’m going back on public in a moment,” Eric said. “But yes, we are a long, long way from home.”

  Meaning he accepted her rationale? Meaning he took her almost-apology as a long-awaited acquiescence to his advances? In either case, she breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that her unworthy misgivings would, at least for the moment, remain between them.

  7

  Kirsten did not know whether they had passed or failed.

  All she knew—all Nessus had told the three of them—was that he had decided to return to the Fleet. Any danger from the Gw’oth was far into the future. The Concordance government could choose a course of action, which might be simply to change the Fleet’s path slightly.

  And the Gw’oth? Nessus assured them the comet experiment had been canceled. The altered snowball would stay far from G567-X2. She could neither confirm nor refute, much as she yearned to, that the danger to the ice moon had passed.