5

Have You Heard the One?

YOUR INSTINCTS SEEM TO HAVE GUIDED YOU WITH ACCURACY, OR AT LEAST A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF THAT QUALITY, remarked Ten Per Cent Extra Free. Often Strider wondered if there was some sarcasm in the way the Image addressed her. ALREADY THERE IS A TECHNOLOGICAL ARTIFACT APPROACHING US.

"Friend or enemy?" she said.

Possibly neither.

"That reply wasn't helpful. Tell me a bit more, Tenper."

She was in her cabin alone. She'd told Hein that she didn't want him with her tonight. In fact she did. What she didn't want was his expectation that he could share her bunk whenever he chose. He was showing a distressing tendency to assume a sort of ownership of her—a strange and asexual sort of ownership, because he showed no objections when she made love with Lan Yi or Maria (that latest time had been remarkable, so remarkable that Strider wasn't sure she wanted to repeat it: disappointment is a deadly virus).

WE CAN DETECT NO SIGNS OF LIFE ABOARD THE VESSEL, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

"In some ways that's a bit of a relief—it might have contained another Maglittel," Strider said, scrubbing her face. "How come it's heading towards us then? Puters?"

It is certainly equipped with very powerful artificial intelligences, yes, Captain Leonie Strider, and indeed the ship itself is an artificial intelligence, but everything seems to be completely inactive.

Strider might have been deceiving herself, but in the singsong of Ten Per Cent Extra Free's voice she thought she could hear a note of puzzlement. It was rare for the Images to project any emotion at all.

"It's drifting, you mean?" she said.

Yes, quite rapidly: at about ninety-three per cent of the velocity of light. It must have been under some form of propulsion when all of its systems were terminated.

Hm. It was a high sub-light velocity. The relativistic effects acting on it must be goddam impressive.

"Any idea how old this thing is, Tenper?"

It seems very old indeed, perhaps as ancient as the ancient species of The Wondervale.

"Maybe it's one of their vessels, left over from when they were exploring Heaven's Ancestor?"

Dubious, Captain Leonie Strider. The Onurg's Images have already portrayed the vessel in a Pocket for him, and his species' records show no trace of any like it.

"Yeah, but that's just the Pridehouse. Coulda been one of the others."

She was making her way forward to the command deck. It was about time that she had a look at the enigma as well.

You forget, Captain Leonie Strider, that The Wondervale's ancient species coordinated their efforts in all their endeavors, that they had no inter-species rivalries. The Pridehouse's historical records quite naturally possess details of the technologies of all the others.

"Ah."

As she came on to the command deck she saw that Nelson and Leander were already there. Both of them were deeply engrossed in their Pockets, and neither looked round on her arrival. She wondered if Ten Per Cent Extra Free had spoken with them as well.

No. They are speaking to each other. They were quarrelling earlier, and decided to settle their argument in this fashion, rather than physically face to face.

"Well tell them to fucking well patch up the dispute fast—tell them it's their captain's direct order, OK? We don't know what's in that ship out there." She took rapid paces towards the central Pocket, still speaking to the Image. "It could be a decoy. It could be something very dangerous. Leander's to be in constant liaison with Orphanwifer and Nelson with the Onurg, so that if either of those two come up with something that might help us they can be patched directly to me. Oh, yeah, and get Lan Yi up here as well."

Oh, wow, but the alien spacecraft was a beauty. It was shaped like a slightly irregular dodecahedron, a little longer in the direction of travel than it was across its width, as if someone had made a geometrical model carefully out of a malleable substance and then stretched it a bit. The various facets showed brightly in the Pocket's enhanced starlight but, as she turned up the magnification, she could see that they were heavily pockmarked in many places by impacts with interstellar gunk. This baby's defensive screens had been down for a long time.

The graphics beneath told her that the craft was two hundred and fifty-three point seven recurring kilometers long: a big baby, in other words.

"I want her," Strider breathed.

What for?

"For my collection," she said. "Us Humans have—used to have—the habit of collecting useless things just so we could look at them." And it's true, she thought, that ship really would be useless to us at the moment, even if the Images could get its systems up and running. It's too big and clumsy—it'd be an easy target for the Autarchy's forces. But at the same time it's like the biggest jewel a gem-cutter ever got their hands on: if there wasn't a war on I'd take it for myself.

I DO NOT THINK IT WOULD BE A PRACTICABLE ADDITION TO ANY SUCH COLLECTION AS YOU DESCRIBE, CAPTAIN LEONIE STRIDER, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

"I was only speaking," said Strider. "I didn't mean it. Never get the damn' thing steady on the mantelpiece anyway."

Good.

"Are Leander and Nelson on line yet?"

Yes.

"Anything from the Pridehouse or the Lingk-kreatzai?"

I am monitoring both discussions and will inform you as soon as anything of significance emerges. At present, both Orphanwifer and the Onurg are still as baffled by this vessel as are we Images.

"Could be it came from somewhere outside Heaven's Ancestor." Strider didn't really mean to say the words—she was just free-associating—but she could feel Ten Per Cent Extra Free's attention suddenly focusing.

THAT IS A POSSIBILITY WHICH HAD NOT OCCURRED TO US, he said, the trill of his voice deepening slightly. WE HAD ASSUMED THAT THE CRAFT WAS CAPABLE OF ONLY SUB-LIGHT VELOCITIES, MERELY BECAUSE OF THE RATE AT WHICH IT IS CURRENTLY TRAVELLING. BUT THAT REPRESENTS MERELY THE VELOCITY AT WHICH IT WAS LAST MOVING UNDER POWER. IT IS POSSIBLE INDEED THAT IT HAS A TRANS-LIGHT DRIVE OF SOME KIND, OR THAT IT IS CAPABLE OF NAVIGATING THE WORMHOLES. IT IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR US TO TELL WHEN ALL OF ITS SYSTEMS ARE SHUT DOWN.

"Any way of re-activating them?"

We have tried.

Strider puzzled it over a little longer, feeling her face crease as she thought.

"Any way that physical beings might be able to do it?" she said at last.

There was a longer pause than usual.

I have consulted with the other Images of the fleet and we have come to the conclusion that, yes, it might be feasible.

"Then I want to go aboard it."

You Humans are perhaps not the best suited . . .

"Yeah. Point taken. Orphanwifer can send some of his people along as well. The Onurg too. But I want me and my crew to be in the expeditionary party. That's an order."

Is it wise for the commander of a—?

"We can't at the moment get back to The Wondervale," she snapped, "so there's a good case for asking the questions, just what is this fleet for, and why does it need a commander? Right now I'm no more important than anyone else here. I'm redundant—OK?"

With a last lingering glance at the bright facets of the stranger, she drew her head back from the Pocket and stepped back, bumping into Lan Yi.

"Hi," she said tersely, and saw the smile vanish from his face. Another time she might—just might—have said some emollient words, but now she was too irritated by what Ten Per Cent Extra Free had been advising. "Take a look at that," she instructed the out-of-Taiwanese, jerking a thumb towards the Pocket.

He moved to obey.

Strider tapped Nelson none too gently on the back.

"We're going to board it," she said. "Tell the Onurg, if the Images haven't told him already."

She repeated the process with Leander, then went back through the ship, hammering on people's doors to tell them the news. She could have put in a commlink or got the Images to relay the information, but somehow doing it in person made the whole endeavor more real.

The last cabin she reached was Hilary's, and her fist stopped just before it hit the surface of his door. Did it make sense to take all of them with her? Hilary was just a kid.

Yes, it made sense. She couldn't leave Hilary on his own: if he stayed, she'd have to leave a few others of her small crew with him, because if anything fatal happened in the alien vessel Hilary might become the most orphaned small boy in history. A fate worse than death, she thought grimly, wondering where she'd heard the phrase before.

Wallop! Her fist rose and fell.

"Yes, Hilary," she found herself saying a few moments later, "you can bring the cat as well."

#

The wonders of the tachyon drive, thought Lan Yi drily twelve hours later. With any conventional drive it would have taken us several years to match velocities with this beast. He wasn't sure exactly how the Images had performed the feat, though through the Pocket he sensed that some algorithmic process had been used—a million rapid pulses of the drive, each smaller than the last—but the Midnight Ranger was now clamped firmly against one of the facets of the alien craft.

We are puppets, he mused as he checked that the helmet of his suit was securely attached to the rest, but I am not certain who is pulling our strings. We dwell in a Pridehouse vessel whose functioning we do not totally understand. We are subservient to the Images, in that it is they who know how to navigate us—and know so much else that we do not.

Four of the Humans—it was becoming increasingly difficult to think of Polyaggle as anything other than a Human (she played chess, after all)—were going to try to effect the first invasion of the ship. They might not be able to get through the airlock. The rest would follow later, because Strider had insisted that they remain together—wisely, in Lan Yi's opinion. He felt a mixture of excitement and fear. Strider. Himself. Polyaggle. Hein. Difficult, too, not to think of Hein as a Human. He wondered what emotions were going through the minds of the two members of the ancient species: probably they were emotions he would never learn to comprehend. In his mind, Polyaggle and Hein occupied two categories: they were at the same time Human and utterly strange.

His feelings towards Hilary were much the same, because it had been so very long since Lan Yi had been a child.

He tested his commline, knowing that it would work—because it always did.

"Strider?"

"I hear you."

"Hein?"

A happy laugh of acknowledgement.

"Polyaggle?"

SHE IS ABLE TO HEAR YOU BUT CANNOT UNDERSTAND YOU DIRECTLY, said the voice of Pinocchio. I HAVE CONVEYED THE IMPORT OF YOUR QUERY TO HER.

"I thank you," Lan Yi said politely to the Image. He had always had a great respect for Pinocchio, who was another who had regularly beaten him at chess. He missed their games. They had tried to play chess a few times since Pinocchio's transformation, but it had proved almost impossible for the Image not to read Lan Yi's thoughts.

He looked at the other three suited figures, wishing that he could see their faces more clearly through their visors. It was easy enough to know who was who. It was as if they had become their spacesuits, rather than themselves. The spacesuit that was Polyaggle was the slightest of them all, her apparent frailty making Lan Yi want to put an arm around it. Strider was a sturdier spacesuit, stockier; one could feel the strength and purpose radiating from it. Lan Yi, hardly taller than she was, wondered what characteristics emanated from the spacesuit that was himself. And finally there was the much more massive spacesuit that was Hein.

Puppets, he thought again. Like puppets we have blank, immobile masks instead of faces.

"You goddam meditating in there, Lan Yi?"

Strider, of course. So she saw them all as creatures inside spacesuits. Her insight was greater than his—or perhaps it was just that she was capable of attaining a greater simplicity of thought.

"I am prepared," he said.

"Well, let's get on with it."

She led the way to the main airlock, the spacesuit that was Hein following close behind her. The sight was incongruous, as when Loki led an obedient but much larger Hilary towards the foodstore, mewing her commands. The small spacesuit that was Polyaggle maintained a cautious distance from the two ahead of it, and once again Lan Yi found difficulty in not reaching out a gloved hand to give a reassuring caress.

Silly. Polyaggle is much more able to cope with this than I am.

"Are you there, Tenper?" It was Strider's voice again.

YES. I AM HERE. All four of them heard the carol of the Image.

"All stations go?"

If by that you mean you may press the button on the outside of the airlock, Captain Leonie Strider, then the answer is in the affirmative.

"Sometimes I think you have a sense of humor, dammit, Tenper."

The compliment is returned.

"Why, thank you."

Through the comm came quite clearly Strider's added whisper: "Patronizing bastard."

#

The spacecraft was massive enough to have a detectable gravitational field, but only just. The craft was moving in a slightly curving trajectory through the system of a blue giant star; one had to remember never to look in the direction of the star, which from here was a tiny outburst of light, hardly discernible as a disc but blindingly dazzling nevertheless. Its distant presence made life easier, though; they weren't having to grope around with nothing but their helmet torches to show them where they were.

The Images had managed to land them close to what they had decided was probably an airlock, but even so the little party used belt-ropes and grav-grapples as they made their way cautiously across the facet. Common sense told them that if a hasty movement threw them off the vessel into space, the tiny gravitation would eventually bring them back down again; common sense, however, also told them that "eventually" could mean a very long time.

Strider looked up at the stars which composed Heaven's Ancestor. Back in childhood, she'd been the only one at the orphanage who had been able to pick out the constellations—she'd been the only one who had loved the stars. Leo had seemed obvious to her: there was a lion. Orion had been less obvious, his sword a quandary. Andromeda had never been more than a mirage.

Here there were new constellations. Although she was aware that the curve of her visor was distorting them slightly and the relativistic velocity at which the alien craft was travelling distorting them more, she found herself identifying shapes among them. To her the formations were plain and, once noticed, unforgettable; she knew, however, that the rest of the party would look at her in bewilderment when she started to describe the Open Book, the Winged Serpent, the Nordic Berserker with Ice Cream Cone in Hand, the Locked Door and all the others she could see. In The Wondervale the stars had been so densely packed together that it was hard to imagine constellations—wherever you looked there was an almost even distribution of the points of light—but here in Heaven's Ancestor it was different.

Although this was a far distant galaxy, Strider felt in a bizarre way as if she had finally come home, albeit only partially.

Once in her youth on Earth she had climbed a rock-face because she had been dared to do it. This was much the same, and there was something of the same quite enjoyable frisson of fear: although there wasn't the relentless tug of Earth's gravity reminding her that a missed hold or a misplaced footing might plummet her to her death, there was the vastness of the Universe all around her, seemingly trying to draw her into it. At the same time she felt a sort of claustrophobia, as if the hugeness of space were pressing down on her, confining her.

Strider dug her boot into a fresh pockhole and waited until the belt-rope attached to the rear of her waist slackened; then she hurled her grav-grapple ahead of her and made a leap towards the next pockhole. She miscalculated it by a few centimeters and skidded along the smooth surface until she could catch hold of another, nearby. That hadn't been too clever a maneuver. Stop thinking about the stars, Leonie. You're here to do a job, not to have philosophical intercourse with the marvels of the Universe.

She was yanked backwards by Hein's rope, but maintained her grip in the pockhole.

"Sorry about that," she said.

"No worry. Even through a spacesuit your rear view is good, ma'am."

The ridge of the spaceship's facet was not far ahead now. The Images had told her that there was something like an airlock at the very tip. Because of the scale of the craft, that tip looked completely sharp, even from here. She assumed that the Onurg's party and Orphanwifer's were making equally rapid progress towards it from different sides.

She turned to look behind her. There were only four of them, roped together and to the ship, but she felt somehow as if she were at one end of a string of beads.

"Tenper, you really sure yet this is an airlock we're heading towards?" she subvocalized. "I don't want to make a wasted journey."

YES. WE HAVE ASCERTAINED THAT IT IS INDEED AN AIRLOCK. It was Pinocchio's voice that replied.

"Any idea how we're going to open it once we get there?"

Ten Per Cent Extra Free is working on the problem, and has it nearly solved. As soon as this has been done we shall inform you. It is unlikely that you shall be much delayed when you achieve the airlock.

"Thanks." Thanks for not a lot, she thought as she made her next lurching essay along the side of the slope. It was becoming quite hard not to think of it as climbing, even though it was more of an ungainly scrabble across a surface that was, because of the tiny gravitational tug, if anything directly beneath her. So we get there and hang about, huh, like dopeheads waiting for a ziprite bar to open?

They reached the ridge and discovered that what had looked from the distance like a blade-sharp edge in fact offered them a flat surface about ten meters across. They were only a couple of hundred meters away from the tip, which Strider could now see was squared off.

"Wasn't that exciting?" she mumbled to herself as the other three joined her.

"It stirred even the blood in my old veins," said Lan Yi tidily.

Bloody commlink, she thought. I've got so used to having the bloody thing in my mouth that half the time I forget it's there. I'm halfway to becoming a cyborg without wanting to. It wasn't that she was technophobic—she'd hardly be here, stuck on the outside of a monster alien spaceship if she had that particular problem—just that she didn't like technology invading her. She knew that she was a bit atavistic—look at all the advantages of thighputers and secondary retinal screens and all the rest of the hardware that people stuck into their bodies to enhance themselves—but she couldn't help it. Besides, the people of the ancient species like Polyaggle and co. didn't bother with such stuff—they jammed in temporary measures the same way she did—so maybe she wasn't so much of a throwback after all.

Now she listened for it, she could hear the sounds of the others breathing. She'd heard it earlier, but it had hardly registered on her—if some dim part of her unconscious had recorded the soughing noise she had thought it was the music of the cosmos, or something.

Stop it, Leonie. Don't get so romantic about the Universe. Sure, space is a lovely place to be—the place you spent all your adolescence wanting to be—but the Universe is a serial killer: if the vacuum don't get you the Autarchy will.

"Onward, ever onward," she said, gesturing with an arm towards what had damned well better be an airlock. If not, she was going to get Ten Per Cent Extra Free and Pinocchio by the . . . She wondered what bodily part, if any, the Images could be got by.

The Humans got to the airlock before the other two parties, and secured themselves there with their grav-grapples. Strider wished she had a Solar System flag to plant so that future generations would be able to remark on the Humans' small triumph over those who were adjudged so much wiser and more knowledgeable.

"Do you two want to start opening this thing, Pinocchio?" she said. "Or do we wait for the snails?"

We wait for the snails. Ten Per Cent Extra Free has discovered the functionings of the mechanism, as I suggested he might.

Pinocchio seemed every time she spoke to him to be going further away from the Human race, like an old friend dying slowly.

Suddenly Orphanwifer was with her, giving her a suit-clumsied embrace that almost knocked her over.

"Hey," she said, "we've hardly been introduced."

The Images did their best to translate his reply, but all she could make out across the cultural divide was something about candlelight and black satin sheets. This probably meant pitch darkness and a bed of particularly luxurious mud. Strider decided not to follow the conversation any further.

She had been surprised that both Orphanwifer and the Onurg had decided to come here themselves, even though she had made an analogous decision. Thanks to Kaantalech's use of the Shift, we're all three suddenly without responsibility, she thought, and we're all three equally replaceable. No, not equally. If this craft decides it wants to kill us all on sight, the Human population of this neck of the Universe is going to be seriously depleted.

The Onurg arrived a few moments later. She lifted a hand towards the three-eyed grin she could see through his visor, thinking at the same time that she was glad she hadn't been the one chosen to design the standard Pridehouse spacesuit.

"Pinocchio or Tenper: atmosphere report?" she said.

Once again it was Pinocchio who responded. TEN PER CENT EXTRA FREE IS ALREADY INSIDE THE VESSEL. HE BELIEVES THAT THE ATMOSPHERE WILL BE BREATHABLE BY ALL OF YOU. IT IS STRANGE . . .

"Strange? If there's anything strange in there I want to know about it right now."

There should be bacteria. Viruses. Unicellular organisms of some kind. The normal detritus of living creatures. But it's as if the interior has been deliberately sterilized. There's nothing.

"It's an old ship," she said. "Maybe when its original builders abandoned it the micro-organisms just sort of slowly died out."

It's so old that, quite the contrary, they might have been expected to evolve a little by now.

"Feeding on what?"

Each other, of course. No, Leonie, this is a mystery. We are uncertain what precisely has happened here.

"But it's safe for us?"

Certainly. In fact . . . in fact, it could have been tailor-made for you. The concoction of gases in its atmosphere is such that it is within the tolerances of all three of your species—Human, Lingk-kreatzai and Pridehouse. This is very peculiar indeed. It is the one thing about the vessel that truly perturbs us.

"Perturbation, schmerturbation. Let's get the 'lock open. What should I do?" When she'd been crossing the flank of the vessel she'd felt herself afloat in a sea of timelessness, letting her thoughts roam wherever they would. Now she was impatient.

Nothing. Just wait a little, and Ten Per Cent Extra Free will open it for you.

"I'd rather open it myself. It'd be a kind of declaration of our having arrived—having made it here."

This would not be possible.

She looked more closely at the airlock. Whatever creatures had built this ship had been of roughly human dimensions, to judge by its size. The outline was hexagonal; three tiny lines indicated how the three doors would nictate. There was nothing at all on the outside—no wheel, lever or any other protrusion—to indicate how it worked. Vexed, she decided that Pinocchio was right: best to leave it to Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

"How much longer?"

Now.

#

Strider had assumed that the three airlock doors would slide easily back, but instead, as she watched, they seemed slowly to melt away. Then she realized that in fact they were hingeing inward. Yet they were doing something more than that, for there was a lack of definition about their edges, as if at the same time they were moving slightly adrift from reality.

Alien technology. You could never trust it to do what you had anticipated.

She took the necessary few steps forward and bent down to look into the airlock. All she could see was nothing. She tongued on her helmet torch, but still she could see hardly anything, just the dim impression of a large featureless box.

Sort of like a rat-trap.

"Is this safe, Pinocchio?"

Yes. It is safe.

Casting her grav-grapple apprehensively into the maw, she took a brief glance around at the others and then hauled herself along her belt-rope for a few meters until she found herself face-first against a solid surface. The rear wall of the airlock. Somebody landed gently on her back and bounced slowly off again.

"Careful, all of you!" she ordered.

"My apologies." It was Hein.

As always, there was a lack of grace in the proceedings as the rest jostled their way into the airlock.

"Everyone in?" She found that she was sweating, as if she were in an overcrowded room—which in a way she was, except that she was also inside a spacesuit and the outside ambient temperature was only a few degrees above Absolute Zero. She tried briefly to concentrate on reducing the flow of moisture from her pores, but all this did was make her sweat more. "Everyone in?" she repeated.

"We're all here," said Orphanwifer. "I was the last."

There was a slight vibration against her, and she guessed this must be the closing of the outer doors. For a few seconds they were in pitch darkness, and then there was a sickly flicker of yellowish light which grew in intensity until it was about as bright as an Earthly dusk. Strider could see her gloves and the metal surface she was up against, but not very much else. She twisted around and could see her companions as heavy-seeming shapes, their helmet torches lighting up the blank walls and odd pieces of each other's suits at random as they floated and bumped around the interior of the 'lock.

"Seems that not all the systems have cut entirely down, hm?" she subvocalized.

This is as much of a surprise to us as it is to you.

"That's not very reassuring."

Then she was slithering down the airlock's rear wall. It took her a second to realize what this meant—that all of a sudden there was such a thing as down—before she felt the soft blow of her landing on the airlock floor. Her ears were filled with cries of consternation as the rest landed. Some of them stumbled against each other, grabbing for support.

Artificial gravitation. This ship is not as dead as it seemed when Ten Per Cent Extra Free and I first investigated it.

"Any other jolly little unexpecteds? There's nobody just about to toss a tactical nuke in here among us, or something, is there?"

No. Why should you think that? What a very peculiar question, Leonie.

"Aw, leave it," subvocalized Strider. "Let's get inside this beastie."

There is one further surprise.

"Great."

The interior of the vessel has become illuminated as well. You will be able to see where you are going.

"That's a relief. Air we can breathe and light we can see by—whole place sounds like a veritable home from home. All we need is for a sweet old lady to open the door to us and we can play Trick or Treat."

Ten Per Cent Extra Free is more than old enough to qualify.

A joke? Pinocchio wasn't as remote from humanity as she'd begun to believe.

The inner doors slowly peeled like flower petals towards the interior of the ship. The light was the same murky yellow as in the airlock as Strider tentatively, lazgun at the ready, crept forward into what was to all intents and purposes a long straight corridor about ten or twelve meters wide and the same high. Satisfied that there was no immediate threat, she beckoned the others to follow her.

They stood there in an indecisive huddle. There was nothing resembling a door to be seen in either direction. The place felt very empty. It's the emptiness of time, thought Strider. Nothing has moved here for millions of years. As so often before, it was brought home to her quite how long a period a million years actually is. It was something easy to forget, because the words "a million years" fell glibly enough from the tongue, as if they represented a span that was only somewhat longer than a millennium. She'd been in a mosque alone once, back on Earth; it had been only a couple of millennia old, but the ponderous solidity of the high stone walls and the echoes of her footsteps had conveyed to her this same sense of the aeons.

Lan Yi coughed politely. She turned and saw that his suited figure had moved away from the group in the center of the corridor and was bending forward to examine the wall opposite the airlock doors, which were now closing. The doors bothered her more than whatever it was Lan Yi wanted to draw her attention to.

Are we going to be able to get out of here if we have to? she thought to Pinocchio. This wasn't a conversation she necessarily wanted the others to overhear.

Ten Per Cent Extra Free believes so, yes.

Only "believes," for shit's sake? Not long ago she had been thinking of the airlock as being like a rat-trap. Maybe the whole ship was one.

He is convinced.

It's all right for him—and you. You can get out of here any time you want to.

If I thought that you were in the slightest danger, Leonie, I would not allow you to proceed.

You've allowed me to proceed on other occasions without showing any sign of compunction.

Orphanwifer had joined Lan Yi at the wall.

That was when it was necessary.

The words were a reproof to her. It had been Pinocchio who had sacrificed, as he had thought, his own existence on Qitanefermeartha in order to save her life.

Sorry. Out of order.

There is no requirement for an apology. But Ten Per Cent Extra Free and I are certain that this ship represents no threat to you, and that you will be able to leave when you wish. It was Ten Per Cent Extra Free who opened and closed the doors, not the ship.

You were wrong about all the systems being dead. The lights came on.

The very lowest systems were activated by your arrival at the 'lock. It is true that we had not expected this.

Then don't not expect too much else, OK?

Lan Yi coughed again. "I think you should come and have a look at these, Leonie. If nothing else, they will fascinate you."

She tucked away her lazgun and joined Lan Yi and Orphanwifer. The others gathered round, Hein looming over the rest.

In the low, dirty-seeming light it was difficult to see what the small scientist was indicating, and the optical distortion produced by her visor wasn't making things any better. The Images had assured her that the atmosphere in here was harmless. And somebody had to be first.

She unlatched her helmet, her hands fumbling with the mechanism. The bastards who'd designed these suits back on Mars had obviously never tried taking the bloody helmets off when wearing the gloves of a deep-space suit.

Strider took a breath. There was a faint ammoniac smell in the air, as if she'd found herself downwind of a men's lavatory, but it was nothing too offensive. The Images would have known if the ammonia concentration was high enough to do her any damage.

Hein and Polyaggle, she was pleased to note, were having even more difficulty getting their helmets off than she had. The three Lingk-kreatzai and the other four Pridehouse, damn them, performed the exercise with ease.

All of them stood there, hardly stirring, for a few moments, just practicing the art of breathing. Strider could see the relief crossing Hein's and Lan Yi's faces as they realized that, while the air wasn't too great, it wasn't too bad, either. Within an hour or two, the Humans wouldn't notice the ammonia and the other species probably would have no trouble with the smells of whatever gases they weren't accustomed to in their own habitats.

There was something odd, however, and it took Strider a few seconds to realize what it was.

Yes, that was it.

The light that had seemed so muddily yellow and inadequate hadn't changed color or brightness, but it had become somehow . . . right. It was easier to see by. She looked at the visor of her helmet, held in her hand, but it was as transparent as ever. She blinked a couple of times, with the curious sensation that her eyeballs no longer belonged to her, but the light still seemed perfectly designed for her vision. She remembered Pinocchio's expression, "tailor-made," and for the first time since they had made contact with the alien vessel began to feel real misgiving.

Despite herself, she made a slight shuddering movement with her shoulders.

Don't show it, Leonie. Keep it in. Bottle it up.

"You were wanting to let me see something?" she said to Lan Yi, who was watching her with a quizzical expression on his face. He'd seen that shudder, and knew what it meant. Probably none of the others did.

He turned back to face the wall.

"Look here," he said, pointing with his glove. "There are pictures on the walls."

His voice sounded slightly deeper than usual. Marginally different atmospheric density, Strider guessed, but the speculation flitted only briefly across her mind as she peered at the place he was indicating.

The etching in the metal was bordered by a cleanly executed hexagon. Inside the hexagon there was a design that was maddeningly close to being a pictogram but also maddeningly close to being an ideogram. Clearly it was portraying something in stylized form, but at the same time it wasn't. Just when she got her head around the notion that this was a simplified picture of something, she realized it was an abstraction—an abstraction that had not been born from several million years of Human cultural history and was therefore utterly impenetrable. But as soon as she concluded that it could make no sense to her, her mind began to make connections between the various lines and dots, and it was beginning to look more like a pictogram again. She felt as if she were watching a holo suffering from static, so that she knew there was an image there but couldn't work out what it was and certainly couldn't describe it.

"Anyone got any good ideas as to what this is?" she said.

The Onurg buffed her aside with his shoulders so that he could scrutinize the design. She rested her gloved hand on his head. There was a long pause. "I have," he said eventually, Pinocchio automatically translating his snarls for her, "the smallest of impressions that . . ."

He stopped again.

"That what?"

"That I've seen something like this before. In our records. Orphanwifer, come look."

The Lingk-kreatzai knelt down to examine the artifice. "Yes, I have the same feeling."

"Excuse me," said Lan Yi, "but I think it would be instructive to discover whether there are more of these designs."

"I agree," said Hein, speaking for the first time since they had come aboard. For once he was looking slightly timid. Strider caught his eye and ducked her head in an almost imperceptible nod which she hoped would give him something like reassurance. She had never noticed any hint of nervousness in a member of the Pridehouse before, and it did nothing for her own apprehensions to see Hein like this.

"It hurts my eyes to look at just this one," Strider said. "Why go off looking for things that're going to give us all strabismus?"

"This is language, I think," said Lan Yi uncertainly. "It has all the appearances of a language. It is hard to start to decipher a language on the basis of only a single word."

"Yes," remarked Polyaggle. "It is a language. Like the others, I have seen something like it before."

"Like the others," thought Strider. All the others except those who don't happen to be part of an ancient species. Remember us? We Humans are here too, you know.

"Onurg," she said, knowing that her voice sounded ratty, "can you get on to whatever it is you use as a commlink and get someone to go through your records?"

"Better than that," said the Onurg. "Seragarda has a small holojector with her."

Seragarda proved to be a Pridehouse with such an elegance of movement that, even though she was confined in her spacesuit, one wanted to reach out and touch her. Well, Strider did, anyway. The holojector proved to be mounted at the throat of her suit: it looked something like a fancy collar stud. Hi-tech, thought Strider disgustedly. Useful, but humiliating for those who don't know how to use it.

The she-wolf bent her back and put her foremost paws on the wall, targeting the design. There was a brief flash of ruby light.

"Is that it?" said Strider.

Seragarda turned her head. "Yes," she said. "Already there will be someone back in the main fleet examining the image and comparing it with our puterized records."

Strider, who had never met Seragarda before, had the annoying feeling that she was going to like this person even though, as a matter of principle, she didn't want to. "Right—Lan Yi, Orphanwifer, Onurg, Seragarda: you study these eye-benders for the next few hours. Lan Yi—comm Nelson and tell him I want the remainder of the Midnight Ranger's personnel up here as soon as possible—including the cat, or there'll be hell to pay with Hilary. The rest of us are going deeper into the ship." She tugged her lazgun from its holster and looked both ways up and down the seemingly featureless corridor. Which way to go? She hadn't a clue: they both looked as uninteresting as each other. "This way," she said determinedly, marching off to the left. "This way looks best."

Well, at least it didn't look worst.

#

The Eramm had taken longer to annihilate than Kaantalech had anticipated. What none of her aides—most of them now dead aides—had thought to tell her was that the warlord Mgs had already despatched flotillas of warcruisers to various other parts of The Wondervale, expecting her attack. As she had moved in on the ten dozen or so stellar systems that he commanded, destroying planets whether or not they were inhabited, Mgs and his warcruisers moved in behind her, deploying sheatherfields—whose technology the Alhubra species had never been able to steal or extort from the Eramm—to conceal their presence. As Kaantalech's fleet had focused at last on the Eramm home planet the sheatherfields had gone down and Mgs's forces had poured an unimaginable degree of firepower into the Alhubran armada.

The destruction had been enormous. She had lost about sixty per cent of her fleet in that first horrendous onslaught—she had had to watch her warcruisers, the physical representations of her might and ruthlessness, flare into short-lived incandescence amid the blackness of space, as if her ambitions were being first lit and then snuffed out. Her anger had surpassed anything even she herself had known before, but at the same time she had found herself salivating copiously. Devastation was in its way a visual art, no matter whose lives were being lost for its sake.

She had crushed Mgs, of course. Even so much depleted, her fleet was still larger than his, and most of her weaponry superior. It was possible that a few of his cruisers had fled to safety under the cover of sheatherfields, but she thought it was unlikely: the Eramm had been a fiery species, and flight from the battleground would have seemed to them worse than extinction.

She rather hoped that a few of them had made a run for it. Destroying them singly later would be a pleasure, like picking at twee little delicacies after a satisfying meal.

Still, Kaantalech had found herself having to spend far more time than her patience was designed for in reassembling her armada. Since the Humans had wreaked such damage on F-14, the Autarchy's primary factory world, production of cruisers and other items of war had reduced to a trickle. Once she had established herself as the undisputed Autarch one of the first things she would do was rebuild the yards and emplacements on F-14, ship in however many slaves were needed, and get the manufacturing up off its knees again. Happy days were in prospect.

After the destruction of the Eramm and as soon as her fleet had been brought up to full strength again, Kaantalech had taken out a few of the minor warlords—along with their species, of course. It had been good practice for her troops, most of whom, because of the tough resistance of the Eramm, were raw conscripts. In fact, it had been only with hindsight that she had realized the wisdom of her giving the troops practice; at the time she had just wanted to enjoy herself. There is nothing more satisfying to an Alhubra than detonating a really good big supernova.

Kaantalech had never seen an oyster, and if she'd come across one would have thrown it into her mouth before bothering to open up the shell to see what was inside. She had no idea that a grain of sand could (in the days when the Earth's seas had supported oysters) slowly be further and further laminated until it became a pearl. Had she learnt this, the knowledge might have informed her at the moment.

The grain of sand was the presence, somewhere, of the Humans. Her sensors had combed The Wondervale, but had detected nothing of the strange Human protoplasm. Her aides could find no trace. Yet she was convinced that the aliens hadn't simply dropped into a wormhole and carried on their journey to wherever it was they had been going: the Strider-thing had been too pugnacious, too determined—too much like Kaantalech herself, in a way—to do anything like that. The Humans were virtually the least of Kaantalech's problems—a single ship with no more than average technology—but still extra layers kept accreting around the mental grain of sand until sometimes she could find herself barely able to think of anything else.

She turned to an aide, whose face told her that he had suddenly thought of an urgent need to be somewhere else.

"When were the Humans lost?" she said. "Call up the Main Computer. Don't just tremble there, dammit!—do it!

Claws shaking in the fashion that showed an aide was desperately trying to make sure they didn't shake, he rat-a-tat-tatted across a songboard until the Blunt Instrument's Main Computer's artificial voice filled Kaantalech's command deck.

"They vanished in the region of Alterifer, while we were there gathering our forces for the ultimate coup."

Kaantalech dismissed the aide with an almost fatal sideswipe; he had served his purpose. "When was this?" she said to the Main Computer.

The machine gave her a date and time to about seventeen decimal places before Kaantalech called a halt.

"I want you to correlate that moment with any other events that might have been synchronous."

"Any other events in the entire Wondervale? You sure about this?"

Kaantalech's blood roiled. The one entity aboard the Blunt Instrument that could act superciliously towards her was the Main Computer, because it was—at least in the shorter term—irreplaceable. In the longer term—well, when she was securely enthroned as the Autarch, Kaantalech was going to enjoy the great entertainment of stripping the machine out of her flagship node by node and replacing it with another. They said that AIs were incapable of feeling pain but, by the light of the Autarchy, Kaantalech was going to do her damnedest to make sure that this one did.

"Start with Alterifer," she said, "then the regions around it, then the further regions. Keep going that way. I don't care how long it takes you."

"If I end up having to cover the whole of The Wondervale this could take me a very long time," said the Main Computer. "A very long time indeed."

"How long?"

"Several hours."

Kaantalech mused. Tying up the AI for that long could be dangerous—wars had been won and lost in the space of a few hours. She was going to leave herself and her plans exposed and vulnerable.

Pearls were very pretty objects, and otherwise perfectly sane people would undergo great dangers to obtain them. There weren't any oysters left to make them, so the pearls that still existed were much coveted back in the Solar System—not that Kaantalech knew anything of this. Pearls were nothing more than attractive gewgaws, but murder had often been committed for the possession of them. In their own sweet lambent way they were as lethal as potassium cyanide.

The Humans were Kaantalech's pearl.

She wanted them so much, so much.

"Go ahead," she said.

"As you say."

#

Strider led the way, and the others had to scurry to keep up with her. She was still highly apprehensive, which was probably why she was walking so quickly. She had an odd feeling about the nature of the light that surrounded them wherever they explored. It was as if, could she reach the next corner or doorway—for after the first few hundred meters they had discovered doorways, although none of them had doors—fast enough, she would be able to look round it or into it just in time to see darkness. This wasn't as if there were lamps being lit automatically whenever they sensed the presence of a living organism—that trick had been achieved by even Human technology more hundreds of years ago than Strider cared to guess. It was more that the expedition seemed to be in a gradually expanding bubble of light, which extended each new pseudopod, as it were, in the direction of wherever the expedition was next going to be.

She didn't like the sensation. Was the suited party pushing the light into new chambers and antechambers of the vessel, or was the light leading them where it wanted them to go?

What's happening, Pinocchio? she asked.

I cannot answer your question. It's difficult for us to experience light in this physical reality. There seems to be an even distribution of minor radiative activity throughout the ship, but whether or not this is light is hard for us to tell with certainty. Our belief is that it is.

OK, so she was just being paranoid.

Being paranoid was no bad thing. Kept the adrenalin going. Meant that if a big toothy monster sprang at you unexpectedly you had a better chance of zapping it with your lazgun before it ripped its claws into your abdomen and started shredding your guts while you were still . . . Actually, Leonie, there's paranoia and paranoia. That version's a bit over the top.

But she couldn't get over the feeling that someone or something intelligent was either guiding them or catering to them. She'd heard people talking about the sensation of being watched, although it was something she'd never experienced herself—until now.

"Your remaining personnel have been successfully inloaded," Hein's voice informed her over the commlink. She could tell he was happy: when he was happy his voice seemed always to be on the verge of breaking into laughter. "Umbel Nelson seems to be trying to make advances towards Seragarda and not knowing why he's doing so."

"Having a lot of fun with Lan Yi's ornaments, are you?" she said sourly.

"Yes."

"Found out anything?"

"No—except that he was right: these ideopictograms do indeed come from a language. Whether it was a verbal or a written or simply a visual language is something we haven't yet been able to ascertain."

"Comic strips? You gotta be joking. I come three-quarters of the way across the Universe and all you can produce for me is comic strips?" The conversation was already taking the cold edge off her sense of being observed—but the cold edge was still there.

Lan Yi's voice broke in. "I think you misunderstand my friend," he said. "When he talked of a visual language he was referring to the way in which a triptych might communicate a message to you more fully than could the three single panels if seen individually." His Argot was stiff, which meant that he was either nervous or intellectually excited. "There are many more than three panels here, but the images they portray link together in a way that . . . in a way that is hard to describe. We are beginning to think that we can understand their sense, although there is no meaning that can be verbalized."

"Keep going, Lan Yi. Report in now and then. I've always enjoyed wandering through the groves of academia—pretty restful there. I'll let you know if I get killed."

"Furthermore," said Lan Yi, "the cat has disappeared. We got her out of her suit and the next thing we knew was that . . ."

Strider bit back the first word that came to mind: Good. Although Loki was a pain in not just the ass but most of the rest of the body, Strider . . . no, she had enough on her mind without going down Sentiment Avenue. "I'll put Tenper on to it. If she's in this ship, he'll find her."

"Agreed."

"Now, can we cut communications?"

"Certainly, Leonie."

Tenper?

I was listening. The cat has been located. I will lead Hilary to it and then back to Lan Yi.

Good.

She wished, on reflection, that she had chosen to undertake this first excursion into the ship on her own. It was good to think that there was someone watching your back the whole time, but the little troop dogging her footsteps was beginning to distract her. The only one she actually wanted with her was Polyaggle, whom she knew she could trust to do the right thing in any eventuality—whom, in fact, she thought she could trust better than herself. Her first impulse had been to bring along as many Pridehouse and Lingk-kreatzai as possible, but now she felt they were a liability, a raggle-taggle band of gypsies who might be great company if she met them in some other context, but not now.

She took a decision.

She stopped abruptly and pivoted, raising her hand to halt the rest.

"Know how to find the way back to the airlock?" she said to the nearest Lingk-kreatzai. The woman was as tall as Strauss-Giolitto, and bulkier—the type of Lingk-kreatzai you wouldn't want to meet in a dark Martian alley.

"Sure. Who doesn't?"

"Then take these people there. Perhaps they can help Lan Yi. I want Polyaggle and myself to be the only ones who continue from here."

"Why?"

"Less risk. If anything happens, there's only the two of us gone down. Tell Orphanwifer or the Onurg they can have the Midnight Ranger. Besides, Polyaggle and I can move faster, just the two of us, than a bigger group."

"May we re-investigate some of the rooms we have passed?" said the Lingk-kreatzai.

"Sure."

The trouble was there hadn't been much to see in those rooms. Some of them had looked as if they were dormitories, but when you're dealing with an alien culture what looks like a bed to you might just as easily be a culinary implement. Strider had thought of calling on the Images to see if they could interpret the functions of some of the artifacts, but she knew that Ten Per Cent Extra Free was busy trying to penetrate far more important aspects of the ship—the way its AIs worked, the way its major systems worked, the way it itself worked—and she needed Pinocchio to be concentrating on her not just for translation purposes but also, she admitted to herself, because his mental presence comforted her. He was currently located in her suit's oxygen-control meter, even though it had shut down the moment she had taken her helmet off. She patted the meter with her free hand, as if to return some of the comfort.

"Just you and me, eh, Polyaggle?" she said as they watched the rest of her motley crew move in their various gaits back down the corridor.

"I think this is wise," said the Spindrifter. "We shall be able to move much more swiftly."

"Me too. And I want to get out of this bloody spacesuit."

"I concur."

At the next corner they reached, a place where Strider was confident she could see far enough in both directions to have at least a chance of repelling any attack with her lazgun, she gestured to the Spindrifter to climb out of her suit. She passed her lazgun to Polyaggle and then did the same herself.

Taking back the lazgun she said: "Noticed something else that's weird here?"

"I have noticed no particular strangeness," said the Spindrifter. "Our species is accustomed to encountering different environ—"

Strider cut her off with an upraised hand.

"The ambient temperature. It's just right for me. You're used to a much colder environment. What's it like for you?"

The Spindrifter thought for a second or two before replying. "Yes," she said, and Pinocchio was able to convey the doubt in her voice. "I find it pleasant. Perhaps a little warm."

"The same way I find it refreshingly but not unpleasantly cool. Again it's like the inside of this spacecraft has been designed precisely for the benefit of us all." Strider gnawed on her lower lip, her gaze still flicking backwards and forwards along the two corridors that led off from this corner. Without thinking, she flipped the lazgun so that it performed a neat arc before returning to her hand. "Correct lighting. Correct artificial grav. Correct atmosphere. Correct temperature. Everything made squeaky clean for us, so that everything's as easy as it can possibly be for us. A sort of committee compromise to make sure that Humans, Spindrifters, Lingk-kreatzai and Pridehouse can all live with it. But this ship is millions of years old. If the Images are right, it's been floating through space since the time my evolutionary ancestors were having difficulty figuring out what a tree was."

Polyaggle said nothing, but began to walk away along the new corridor, her wings fluttering slightly from time to time in the display that Strider knew represented the gesture "I am thinking about this." For once Strider wasn't leading but following. She sensed that Polyaggle was not only turning the puzzle over in her mind but also consulting with the Images. Strider concentrated on staying alert, making sure she had a clear view in all directions, her lazgun in readiness.

Abruptly Polyaggle halted.

"The Images had it wrong," she said.

"A-fucking-gain?" Strider pulled herself up short before she ran into the Spindrifter's back.

"Yes. They are most contrite."

"They fucking oughta be." Strider hefted her lazgun. Just occasionally you could see the flicker of the presence of one of the Images out of the corner of your eye, and right now she was in the mood for a spot of target practice.

"Our arrival here did more than make the lights come on. It activated the spacecraft's life-support systems at a much more profound level than that."

"But Pinocchio and Tenper have been telling me the opposite. They've been saying that Tenper's been having hell's own job trying to raise a spark out of the Main Computer."

"That is true," said Polyaggle. "But you'll recall that their initial analysis showed that the ship as a whole is also an AI. It is the ship that we have awoken by our presence here."

"Oh, shit! I want out of here."

"I rather think my feeling is the same."

Strider tongued her commlink and started talking rapidly as she and Polyaggle began to run back the way they had come. "Nelson, Leander—whoever's there—get everyone together and start embarking through that airlock to the ships. I want us clear of this baby as soon as we can be."

IT'S TOO LATE, said Pinocchio. TEN PER CENT EXTRA FREE CAN NO LONGER OPEN THE AIRLOCK.

There are others, aren't there? Strider thought angrily at him.

The same is true all over the ship. We've been locked in.

The rat-trap. The notion returned to her mind yet again.

"The airlock door kinda declines to open, light of the cosmos." Nelson's voice through the commlink was exaggeratedly casual. "Besides, I'd have to drag Lan Yi outa here by his hair. He's fascinated by the pictures."

"Keep trying."

Polyaggle reached the place where they had dumped their spacesuits first, flitting on her many-colored wings ahead of Strider, who felt that her sprint was a heavy-footed lumber by comparison with the Spindrifter's easy passage. With surprising strength, Polyaggle threw Strider's suit towards her and then, delicately manipulating the fabric with her claws, began climbing into her own. Strider tripped over an outflung leg of her thrown suit and almost fell, then made herself stay still for a second or two before starting to struggle into it. If you panic now, it'll just take you longer, she thought piously, then fought with the suit like a wild animal.

THERE IS NO NEED FOR YOUR SUITS, said Pinocchio. THE SHIP IS SEALED.

Look, dammit, Pinocchio, thought Strider angrily, just how many things have you and Ten Per Cent Extra Free got right since we climbed aboard this hulk?

There was no reply.

Exactly. So fucking shut up for a bit, will you?

Without being able to use her wings, Polyaggle made much slower progress. Strider grabbed her arm and pulled her along, but between them they could manage nothing more than a jog.

"You go ahead. I will catch you up."

"No way."

"You should be with your personnel."

"I am with one of my personnel. Save your breath for running. 'sides, I'd get lost on the way back—I'm relying on you, Polyaggle."

She tongued her commlink. "Any advance, Nelson?"

"Nope. The door's shut tight as a nun's—"

"Has Lan Yi got any clue?" If anyone was going to get them out of the rat-trap Strider put her faith in the old man—more, even, than in the Images.

"Not a hope. The Onurg's had Seragarda hard at the problem as well, alongside Lan Yi, and neither of them are getting anywhere. It's, like, not just that the thing won't open, dearest, but that it's been deliberately closed and bolted."

Nelson's veneer of calmness was beginning to wear thin, however hard he was trying to keep the words light. It was a bad sign. Strider tried to hurry Polyaggle along faster, getting angry with the Spindrifter even though she knew it wasn't the alien's fault.

"Which way?" she said as they reached yet another intersection.

Polyaggle shoved her towards the left, so Strider lugged her that way. Unlike before, Strider paid no attention at all to the doorways they passed: if anything was going to leap out and attack them it would have done so by now. Anyway, being eaten alive by a many-tentacled thing out of one's worst nightmare seemed just as good an option as being stuck forever in that many-tentacled thing's spaceship.

TEN PER CENT EXTRA FREE HAS BEEN ABLE TO GAIN ACCESS TO THE SHIP'S MAIN COMPUTER, said Pinocchio.

"We're on speaking terms again?"

Have we ever been otherwise?

"Fuck you, wise guy."

This is important.

"Can it wait?"

No.

"Why?"

Because the Main Computer is now bringing on-line more sophisticated systems than any we have so far encountered. It is also giving life to the ship. The drive is going into warm-up mode. You will very soon begin to notice the effects of this transition.

"Umbel alive! Can't Tenper bloody shut the thing down again?" She was worried that Polyaggle was going to collapse from the strain of their half-run and that she'd have to carry her. The Spindrifter didn't weigh much by the standards of a Human, but still would be a fair burden. And Strider herself was beginning to tire.

Only the Main Computer can shut the Main Computer down. It is working in tandem with the ship to create the kind of environment that it believes we shall enjoy. It is starting the drive. It has activated food-generator units to produce comestibles that it believes will be palatable to all the species aboard. And shortly it will start supplying guides.

"Guides?"

Pinocchio didn't need to answer her question because suddenly a holo appeared ahead of her in the corridor. It turned towards Strider and Polyaggle and gave them both a rather toothy smile of welcome.

First contact with an alien intelligence.

One of those things Strider was good at.

"Fuck off," she said to the holo, stumbling directly through it, Polyaggle in tow.

"I agree," said the Spindrifter, to Strider's amazement.

She didn't really have time to be amazed, however, for the same holo or another identical to it abruptly materialized about thirty meters ahead of them.

"I've already told you one time!" yelled Strider. What made prickles of fear climb up her spine was that the holo looked like a crude impression of herself, although with a turquoise cast over all its features. It was the sort of representation a color-blind child might have produced. Deliberately, she stoked up her fury, knowing that this was the best way to keep her trepidation at bay.

"But I only wish to help," said the holo.

Strider stopped moving towards it. The Argot was perfect. The accent was, near enough, her own.

"Then tell us how to get the airlock open," she said, breathing heavily.

"I have been programmed not to divulge this information," replied the holo casually. Strider found it hard to keep reminding herself that she wasn't talking to her own reflection in a colored mirror or even just to the holo, but to an alien Main Computer—or maybe even to the ship in which she was trapped. "For you to leave Artificial Environment 17,863,006 would place you in danger. There is nothing to breathe out there, you know."

"I'm perfectly bloody aware of that!"

"Artificial Environment 17,863,006 has been designed to ensure that beings of diverse species may thrive within it, and to nurture them." Just as she herself would have done in the circumstances, the holo ran its fingers back through its hair and gave a slightly goofy grin before adding: "So take that for an answer, OK?"

"Do you want to get on well with me?" said Strider, her eyes narrowing until they were almost shut. A red haze was beginning to fill her vision. Had she been less terrified and less furious she might have been interested by the color effects this created as she stared at the blue-green replica of herself; as it was, all she wanted to do was think up a way of killing holos. Well, she was a humane individual. Seriously incapacitating them would be enough. Just about.

"But of course."

"Then stop looking like me."

"Certainly. How would you wish us to appear?"

Invisible, dammit, was Strider's first thought, and the holo faded.

"No," she said. "Wait a moment!"

Her turquoise self became more seemingly solid.

She went rapidly through a number of images in her mind, and the holo morphed accordingly—alarmingly. Pinocchio, a desk complete with pen and pencil set, Heaven's Ancestor, a rather spectacular erection which Hein had produced the other night, Polyaggle—Polyaggle herself gave a mew of protest—a lazgun, a lavatory she had once used on Mars (How the hell did I remember that? she thought, revolted at the sight, remembering how ill she'd been through an over-intake of ethyl alcohol), and finally an ancient book she'd read in which there had been holos who looked like Human-size rabbits. The old Santa Maria had been a home to rabbits—their only home outside Earth where, despite their prolific breeding habits, they'd been in danger of extinction—and with luck it still was. Yeah, rabbits she could cope with.

The holo stabilized as a rabbit. It looked revoltingly cute. She wanted something she could hate, but this would do.

"Now can you let us pass?" she said. "I want to get out of this spaceship."

"I cannot let you do that," said the holo in a friendly fashion, its yellowing front teeth looking far too large for its mouth to be able to hold. "As I have said, your lives might be in danger."

"We'll take that risk."

"I cannot allow you to."

"Ever crashed?"

"No."

"You might just find out what it's like."

Strider hauled Polyaggle through the holo and onward towards the airlock. They must be pretty close to it by now. She wished the corridors weren't so uniform. A Human community would probably have at least painted all the walls in different colors, or something. Hung up a few ghastly paintings the kids had produced—she'd have to get Hilary to work on that pretty damn' soon. Or maybe that was all the ideopictograms were: look, here's my mum with both ears on the same side of her head.

Stop thinking, Leonie. Keep on with the doing bit.

They came round a new corner and in the distance Strider could see Strauss-Giolitto. "This way!" the woman yelled, waving her hand for emphasis.

Strider tried to increase her pace, but Polyaggle constantly slowed her down. It seemed, in fact, as if Polyaggle were deliberately trying to slow her down. The anger she had been fending off returned again.

"Come on!" she said.

Rather than translate whatever it was that Polyaggle was trying to tell her, Pinocchio spoke to Strider directly. LOOK MORE CLOSELY AT STRAUSS-GIOLITTO.

It was obvious as soon as she had had her attention drawn to it. That faintly turquoise cast. Another holo. Another "guide."

Can we trust it?

I think we can.

I've stopped betting on your predictions.

NONE OF THE SHIP'S SYSTEMS HAVE SHOWN ANY SIGN OF ANYTHING OTHER THAN BENEVOLENCE TOWARDS US, said Pinocchio. SO FAR. IT IS PERHAPS MISGUIDED BENEVOLENCE, BUT—

Stow it.

— in their way they are trying to protect you.

I said, stow it.

She and Pinocchio had hardly ever used to quarrel back in the days when he was a bot. She guessed it was something to do with the relationship between physical beings and non-physical ones, like the Images—who were rather like quasi-demigods, if very fallible ones. She loved Pinocchio at the same time as he pissed her off, and she was pissed off with him just now. Everything was pissing her off, in fact—Polyaggle, the lighting around here (which didn't seem so good as it had been), Pinocchio, the holo of Strauss-Giolitto, the sensation of being trapped inside a small space even though the ship must have a volume of between eight and nine million cubic kilometers . . .

This time she didn't have to half-drag Polyaggle. The Spindrifter seemed to be as pissed off as Strider was. Side by side, the two of them walked straight through the holo of Strauss-Giolitto. Polyaggle produced a peculiar chirruping noise which Strider assumed was the Spindrifter equivalent of her own growl.

"Nearly there, I guess," said Strider.

"It is my belief that we are."

Strider tongued her commlink again. "Nelson, any news on the airlock?"

"Nothing. Pinocchio would have told you if—"

"Pinocchio and I aren't talking right at the minute. He and Tenper have fucked this one up real bad."

"You have a way of not mincing words, dawn's delight."

Trapped.

They really were.

All this time, Strider had been hoping they'd get out of here, back into their ships, and rendezvous with the rest of the armada she'd been appointed to lead. Pinocchio had told her there wasn't a chance, and while her brain had taken his word for it her gut hadn't. But hearing Nelson's voice, with its flat note of resignation, had convinced even the gut.

OK, Pinocchio, I'm prepared to speak to you again.

Good. It is time that we spoke. The drive is beginning to move into fully operational mode.

Can Tenper work out what the Main Computer has in mind?

Distance.

The single word, and the sorrow with which it sounded in her head, instilled more fear into Strider than anything else that had happened to her since they had come to The Wondervale. They had fallen through a wormhole: distance. They had been introduced to the tachyon drive: distance. Kaantalech's field had Shifted them all the way to Heaven's Ancestor: distance. And now there was distance again. It seemed that everything she did took her further and further away from the Milky Way and the Solar System.

Shit, Mars wasn't much of a planet anyway.

Yeah, but it was, you know, home.

There were lots of other people like me there.

Some of them were scumbags, if the truth be told, but at least they were Human scumbags. Unlike this person whose arm I'm holding on tight to because, even though she's not a scumbag at all, looking after her is the one thing that's standing between me and going bananas.

Who would you prefer as a friend, Leonie? Polyaggle, or the inadequate guy who waits outside the ziprite bar with a machete in his hand because he thinks it'd be kind of interesting to see what female entrails look like when they're spilled out on the floor? The guy with the eyes that are too close together.

"Look, we're talking about home," she said to her thoughts.

Was "home" all that great a place?

"It had its moments."

Polyaggle was staring at her. Then she looked away towards the stretch of corridor ahead of them.

"I'm having an inner debate," said Strider lamely to the Spindrifter. "Just keep out of it. I want only the two of me involved in this argument, not interruptions from the floor."

"Can you walk and have an inner debate at the same time?"

"If you try very hard," said Strider firmly.

"Then may we walk?"

"Yup, OK. Now leave me to slug this one out with myself."

Think about it, Leonie. All through your earlier decades you wanted to go out into space, to reach the stars. Was that because you really wanted to see what was there, or was it because you wanted to put distance between yourself and the Solar System? Rephrase that. Between yourself and the rest of the Human species?

Strider decided she didn't want to answer that question, so her thoughts answered it for her.

So what are you complaining about now that your wish has been granted a billion times more thoroughly than you could ever have hoped?

"There are limits," she muttered. Polyaggle, walking alongside her, shot her a sharp look.

Maybe that's going to become a billion and a half, or two billion, or more. Your mother is a long way away now—and a long time dead—but you're about to start putting even further distance between yourself and that rejection. Ain't that a cause for celebration? At least sort of?

"I could have loved her. If I'd tried, I could have reconciled myself to her, discovered her as a person, perhaps forgiven her and become her daughter." Now Strider could see the cluster of figures around the airlock. Some were still suited; others were naked.

Fat chance. You know who you are.

She did. From the moment she'd seen that half-sanctimonious viddisc there had never been any possibility of her ever establishing any kind of relationship with her mother other than to repel her, even the idea of her.

There was another type of distance that she'd travelled—a mental distance, the distance between herself and the Human species and all its concerns. Long ago, so very long ago, when the Sun had become just a bright pinpoint among myriad other bright pinpoints, she had felt the tug of her home system trying to pull her back there. The thought that she might never walk under the Sun again had pained her heart—as had the thought of never being able to do some of the banal things again, like sitting in a ziprite bar getting quietly stoned. She felt none of that any longer, only a rather guilty lack of interest in how her kind might be faring. Strider had become a citizen of The Wondervale, and her concerns were now devoted to it.

Also, she had become in a way the mother of her crew: they were the population of her home world.

Hein looked in their direction.

"Strider! Polyaggle!" he called.

She squinted at him suspiciously, but he looked like the real thing, not another holo.

So be glad of the extra distance. Every megaparsec is one megaparsec further away from being hurt.

"I don't think like that."

You just did.

#

"Wow!" said Hilary for about the fiftieth time. "This is real exciting. Isn't it? Isn't it?"

"Belt up," said Strauss-Giolitto reflexively, for about the forty-eighth time. No, maybe it was the forty-ninth. She liked the kid, but in the circumstances her patience was becoming about as limited as Strider's. "Go and look for Loki." Second thoughts. "No, hang on. Don't wander off. Stay with the rest of us."

The rest of them weren't doing much that displayed any great degree of purpose except around the airlock while Lan Yi and Seragarda exchanged opinions in low voices, opinions which either Ten Per Cent Extra Free or Pinocchio didn't think were worth transmitting to the rest of them. Strauss-Giolitto could make out bits and pieces of Lan Yi's side of the conversation, but most of it was meaningless to her: although she couldn't stop his words entering her ears and hence her mind, she was making a point of expelling them again.

Strider and Polyaggle joined them. Leonie looked paler than usual, as if something dreadful had just happened. Polyaggle moved to join Lan Yi and Seragarda; Leonie turned towards Strauss-Giolitto and then Nelson and shrugged at them in turn.

"Look good?"

"No, lady love," said Nelson. He was trying to appear nonchalant and not succeeding very well. Strauss-Giolitto herself said nothing, but put her hand protectively on Hilary's shoulder.

"Pinocchio's told you that the drive is powering up?" said Strider.

"Yup." Nelson again. "I joined the SSIA to see the Universe. And what did I see? I saw the Universe."

Strauss-Giolitto looked at the three Lingk-kreatzai and the four Pridehouse. In a way it was easier for the Humans: sure they'd taken sides in the war in The Wondervale, but it wasn't their galaxy. In a way, although they'd been there in the thick of it, everything had been happening such a long way from home that they were emotionally divorced from it. But the Onurg and Orphanwifer and the others: it really mattered to them. The stubbornly closed airlock doors barred the Humans from a tract of the Universe that was little more than space and suns and balls of rock and, oh yes, the occasional lifeform; for the Lingk-kreatzai and the Pridehouse, what was on the other side of those doors were not only friends and families but also several million years of cultural heritage. Their loss must seem as deep to them as Polyaggle's had been when Spindrift had been destroyed.

What baffled Strauss-Giolitto was that the ancient species showed nothing of the desolation she would have expected. Seragarda and Polyaggle were talking animatedly with Lan Yi, seemingly more interested in the problem as a problem than in what fate might have in store for them. The Onurg was lying near them, possibly asleep but with one ear cocked in case they said something of interest to him. Orphanwifer was saying something outrageous to Leander, so that the woman, despite the pallidity of her face, was clearly having difficulty in not bursting out laughing.

So why, thought Strauss-Giolitto, is it that we Humans, the ones who have least to lose, are the ones who seem most frightened by the situation? Even Strider's shit-scared.

THE DRIVE IS NOW FULLY POWERED UP, said Pinocchio in all of their minds. DEFENSIVE SHIELDS HAVE BEEN ERECTED AROUND THE SHIP, AS HAVE BEEN ANTI-DETECTOR SHIELDS. WE ARE NO LONGER VISIBLE TO THE UNIVERSE OUTSIDE US.

Someone gave a small scream of panic. Strauss-Giolitto was embarrassed to realize it had been her.

Ten Per Cent Extra Free believes that initiation of the drive will occur within eleven point one nine seconds. Oh, he got it wrong. The drive has already initiated.

We're on our way.

"To where?" croaked Strider out loud.

We don't know.

#

This was a world that, like so many in The Wondervale, had never had a name or even a number. Somewhere in a puter there would be a numerical record of the smallish yellow star around which it orbited, but the number would be an extremely long one, reflecting the fact that nothing whatsoever of interest had ever been discovered here or emanating from here—no artificial electromagnetic activity of any kind. It might well be on file that an Autarchy exploratory vessel had been by some time, stopped to take a look at the system and found nothing worth reporting: no mineral or other resources that would justify the effort of straying off the main routes to exploit, no lifeforms that were strong or intelligent enough to make useful slaves, no rare materials in any of the planetary atmospheres, nothing. Or perhaps no Autarchy ship had ever bothered to investigate the system. The Autarchy's sensors were always on the alert to pick up signs of artificial electromagnetic radiation—the general indication that a culture had achieved a potentially threatening technological status. A year or a million years later a flotilla would be despatched to see what could be looted and plundered and to decide whether or not the species should be destroyed.

Even the dominant intelligent species on this world had not named it, for they had no real idea that what they were living on was a world. Sometimes the Spirits of the Rocks would make the skies bright; at other times the Spirits would darken the skies so that it was possible to see them as sharp and tiny lights. It was good to know that they were there, watching over you. Their kindness was indeed glorious.

The species had named other things aside from the Spirits of the Rocks. They themselves were the Kua. Each of the Kua was, for convenience, given a special name at birth: as births were almost always multiple, this was an important process if the Kua were to keep their minds straight.

Keeping minds straight was not easy. The average lifespan of a Kua was a little over ten terrestrial years. Because each individual had so little time in the physical existence before joining the Spirits of the Rocks, it was very difficult for species knowledge and technology to evolve in the way that they did among longer-lived creatures. Yet the Kua enjoyed a degree of mental communication that was exceedingly rare throughout the Universe, and thanks to this level of cooperation had been able, as a species rather than as individuals, to develop something that could be called a civilization. There was no cruelty among the Kua, because one person's pain was shared by all. There was a dim awareness that the other creatures around them, although unable to react to the simple exercise of thought, were a part of the environment that should be cherished as much as a Kua infant. It had never occurred to the Kua collective conscious that animals might be killed and eaten, and nor had it occurred to the animals to try out such a bizarre food-source as each other. Vegetation grew rapidly and prolifically on Kua, and there was enough for all.

Tectonic forces created death: volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods. When thousands died in these disasters the entirety of the Kua shrieked mentally in anguish and also in fear, for it was clear that the collective conscious had offended the Spirits of the Rocks in some way.

The Kua, who were each about half a meter in diameter and a few centimeters high, were able to manipulate their environment by use of extremely rapid and flexible pseudopods; around the perimeter of their generally rather featureless bodies they had nine eyes, which could be pointed skyward or groundward or horizontally. There was a mouth and an excretory organ, but not much else to see on their fairly featureless bodies.

They had discovered numbers at a relatively early stage in their development. It was still unclear to the Kua what numbers were actually for, but obviously the Spirits of the Rocks would not have created them without purpose—even if only as a benevolent gift: playthings for the Kua, who duly played with them. The invention about a million years ago of what was to all intents an abacus had been the cause of great rejoicing among the Kua, and only the newborn were ever seen without one. Indeed, it would have been tempting to regard the Kua species as forming a single, vast organic puter. The possibilities of this planet-wide thinking device were very exciting. Given a few billion years, the gentle, non-aggressive Kua might be the best thing ever to happen to The Wondervale—either in themselves or as a resource that could be used by the other creatures of the galaxy.

Kaantalech's fleet descended from tachyon state alongside this world at random on their way to somewhere else and used it not as a developing organic computer but for target practice.

#

There was no sensation of motion at all, yet Strider felt somehow as if there were accelerative gees tugging at her. She had spent most of her life equating rapid travel with forces of some kind and only a comparatively short while moving around by tachyon drive. It was difficult to persuade one's subconscious out of the reflexes of a lifetime.

"Oh, boy," she said to the company at large. "Another fine mess I've got us into."

She explained to them quickly about the holo guides, and just as she finished one of them, on cue, sprang into being by the side of Nelson, who was sitting slumped against the wall, his head in his hands, and didn't notice. This time the holo didn't look like a Human at all, much less Strider herself, but in the greasy sheen of its depicted skin and the seeming blindness of its head she was reminded of something. It was bulky and about four meters tall.

"Artificial Environment 17,863,006 is now in progress towards the Twin Galaxies. We shall reach there within one month or twenty-seven thousand nanreets or two and a half breers." The holo's voice sounded as if the thing were speaking through syrup. Nice to see that the Main Computer gives the Human time unit before the others, thought Strider. Due respect, and all that. "My food-generator units will provide for you—we have received relevant specifications concerning your requirements from the entities whose nature we do not understand—"

"Images," said Strider, fascinated yet repelled by the holo.

"Images. Your terminology is recorded. Similarly, they have provided us with data as to your preferred modes of accommodation and recreation. I will require a short period of time in order to prepare suitable places for your recreational and other activities." The holo paused for a moment. "Excrete where you will until I have suitable facilities available; all shall be cleared away for you."

The holo winked out of existence.

Oh, tremendous, Strider thought. Sounded like the brochure you get given on arriving at some new pleasure-dome on Mars to discover they haven't quite finished building it yet. All that was lacking was the platoon of staff hanging around to have a good laugh at you.

Odd thing was, she'd have preferred it if the giggling staff had been there.

Somebody to hit.

She'd like to hit Pinocchio and Ten Per Cent Extra Free—well, Pinocchio, anyway. In her mind's eye she could visualize him in his physical incarnation. It was difficult to imagine Ten Per Cent Extra Free as anything other than an elusive flicker of color; you wouldn't get satisfactory bruising of your knuckles even if you could get a blow to land on him.

The Onurg laughed up at her. Always so bloody cheerful, the Pridehouse. Maybe she could hit the Onurg.

"Twenty-seven thousand nanreets," he said. A drop of spittle from his mouth splashed the boot of her suit. His nasal eye withdrew and then reappeared. "Plenty of time for us to relax and enjoy ourselves."

"What?"

"I can't think of anything better to do," he said. "There's no way out of here, no battles we can fight. When we get to the Twin Galaxies—wherever that might be—we can think again."

"Just lie back and enjoy it?"

"Yes." He seemed bewildered that she should think of doing anything else, or maybe there was some completely different emotion going through his mind.

"There's getting on for nine million cubic kilometers of this bitch," she said.

A little while passed before Pinocchio was able to interpret this for the Onurg. Orphanwifer had moved across to be with them, and there was a further pause while Pinocchio translated again. Strider thought about how her attitude towards Artificial Environment 17,863,006 had changed: this had been the beautiful vessel she had wanted to claim as her own, but now it had become a bitch. It was like a friend who had betrayed her.

"It'd be kind of sensible to try to discover a bit more about what's inside it apart from us," she continued.

"We could examine the local area," the Onurg pointed out, rather reluctantly. "The ship's too big for us to do any more than that."

Strider put her palm on his white, furry head. As always, he seemed to enjoy the gesture. She smiled at him. "Oh, yeah? Just look at me try."

Pinocchio, Tenper. Any chances of rigging us up a few Pockets aboard this bastard?

#

Lan Yi had observed the holo with some interest. There was no point in their struggling to understand the functionings of the airlock any longer—even if they were able to open it and get back to their ships, which he assumed would still be affixed to Artificial Environment 17,863,006's sides, already they must be far enough from The Wondervale to have little chance of being able to do anything useful there. So he calmly and deliberately forgot about the unsolved problem and turned his attention to other things.

The pictures on the walls—they had prodded at memories tucked somewhere at the backs of the minds of himself, Orphanwifer, the Onurg and some of the others. The visual appearance of the holo had done the same.

He knew that he'd never seen any creature that physically resembled it, yet he'd seen something that in an intangible way looked like it.

Lan Yi looked across at Seragarda and saw that she had been watching his face. She moved her third eye in a smile. They didn't need to say anything to each other: it was clear that she had been thinking along exactly the same lines as he had. Already Lan Yi found that he had developed an empathy that he had not expected could exist between an upright biped from one culture and a six-legged wolf from a completely different one. They should have had communication difficulties as each tried to match one mind-set to another, but there was no such barrier between them. When he had tried to explain something to her in terms of music she had seized upon this new concept immediately—the Pridehouse had no music—and within minutes was handling it as skillfully as he did himself. She had described to him, while they were trying to unpick the airlock, a technique that required the use of a mathematics based on the shapes of living cells, and her explanation had been so pellucidly expressed that he had absorbed the information while hardly realizing that he was doing so.

Together they crossed the corridor, ignoring all the others, to scrutinize once more that first ideopictogram he had discovered.

He knelt down beside her.

The Images must be fully occupied executing Strider's command, because the growls she made to him went uninterpreted.

He ran a finger in a circle around the design, then began to trace some of its details. There was a dynamism in the design: unless he was being anthropocentric, whatever was being depicted here was related to action rather than simply delineating an action. Like Seragarda, he was now completely convinced that the ideopictograms were indeed drawn from a language; he was certain that they were not an alien form of decorative art. He let his finger pause frequently, whenever it seemed to him that it had encountered some item of particular interest. Whenever he did so, Seragarda nudged him with her shoulder if she agreed.

After a while she scrambled out of her suit so that with her claws she could point out to him further details that interested her.

Of course, Lan Yi knew, what were of importance were not the individual details themselves but the connections that could be established between them. The difficulty was that it was almost impossible to keep more than one sector of the ideopictogram in his mind at the same time. He knew this wasn't his failing or even a Human failing, for Seragarda had earlier complained of the same.

Lan Yi attempted to create a mental filing system. He would concentrate for several full seconds on a single shape or line or pattern, then tuck it away into a pigeonhole at the back of his mind, from which it would be withdrawn later only if he came across something that tenuously—or even identically—matched it elsewhere in the design. Even this he found impossible: he made several cross-matches only to discover that he'd registered the same features twice.

Maybe not all of the "pictures" were like this. He didn't hold out much hope, but the attempt was worthwhile. He patted Seragarda on the shoulder to attract her attention, and when she turned her head to look at him he saw that once again she had come to the same conclusion.

Lan Yi turned round.

Strider was squatting down beside Nelson, trying to persuade him to stand up and look around him, trying to convince him that he should shake off the bleakness of his despair. Funny that it should be Nelson, of all the Humans, who had cracked first. Lan Yi might have predicted that it would have been Maria, although she was by no means the brittle, vulnerable person she'd been when he'd first met her, back on Mars—and, of course, she had Hilary to reassure, the self-discipline of which must be helping her. Although he was devoted to Maria, he had few illusions about her. Leander, white-faced and almost motionless, as if she'd been frozen mid-pace as she moved towards her lover, could have done with a Hilary to look after.

"Strider," said Lan Yi gently.

She looked up at him, scowling. "Can't you see I'm busy?" she mouthed silently.

"I think," he said, "as does Seragarda, that it is a matter of some urgency that we attempt to extract what information we can from the pictures on the walls."

"Then go do it," Strider said out loud, her grim expression relaxing slightly. "There'll be a Pocket here soon, I hope, so you could wait for it."

"We believe the ideopictograms are not entirely visual."

"That's the trouble with modern art," said Strider sourly. "Go on, the two of you. I just told you to."

"I want to come as well," said Strauss-Giolitto, astonishing Lan Yi.

He stared at her, hoping that he was keeping the surprise out of his face.

"I'm a teacher, remember?" she continued. Lan Yi was pleased to notice that there was no defensiveness in the way she spoke. "What I'm good at is looking at complex fields of knowledge and picking out of them the stuff that young minds can understand, then stripping out the next layer of understanding, and so on. It was what I was trained to do."

Lan Yi nodded. He and Seragarda were accustomed to looking at complicated systems and assuming they'd be able to work them out in their entirety—that there wouldn't be any purpose in doing otherwise.

"If Strider will permit . . ."

"Strider permits," muttered Leonie from Nelson's side. "The more of you I can get rid of for a bit, the more chance I've got to be able to do some thinking—and some psychological counselling."

"I wanna go too," said Hilary.

Yes, his presence would keep Maria from slipping back too much into contemplation of their predicament. Lan Yi wanted her mind to be as controlled as possible.

"You'd be welcome," he said courteously. "I am sure you will be helpful."

"And Loki."

"Yes, Loki may come as well."

Polyaggle made a whirring sound with her facial proboscis, then clicked her claws together.

Lan Yi gave her a shallow bow of assent.

Before Artificial Environment 17,863,006 had activated itself he had explored briefly in one direction up the corridor and none of them had been able to decipher anything from the ideopictograms. It made sense to try the opposite way. Maybe these pictures, viewed sequentially, formed some sort of instruction in language, rather than a simple statement to the original occupants of Artificial Environment 17,863,006. Maybe they had anticipated that, one day who knew how far in the future, creatures alien to them would come aboard the deserted ship. Maybe that was what the ship had been designed for—maybe it had never been crewed.

Lan Yi remembered Strider mumbling something about a rat-trap. He hoped that instead Artificial Environment 17,863,006 had been sent to them instead as a gift—a gift of knowledge sent blindly from one species out into the Universe to educate younger ones who might happen to come across it. If his speculative conjecture—and it was nothing more really than a wild idea—were correct, Maria could be of even greater assistance than she had claimed.

Hilary, his left hand locked firmly in Maria's right, tugged the teacher across the corridor to look at the ideopictogram that Lan Yi and Seragarda had been poring over. The boy had to stand on tiptoe to look at it properly.

"Wow," he said. "How come there's a picture of a Helgiolath here?"