Ariel clenched her teeth; Erin floated beside Cham, face deliberately bland, Hakim beside Donna, George behind them.

"We're not in the loop," Martin said. "Not really. But I've told Hans we'll play our part."

"You didn't consult with us," Ariel said.

"No," Martin said.

"You should have," Erin said.

"I presented our views."

"But you told him we'd go along," Erin said.

"What else can we do?" Martin asked.

"Stand down," Ariel said. "Encourage them to choose another Pan."

"Hans may be right," Martin said.

"We could put a name on what we're going to try," Ariel said. "We could call it genocide."

"Bolsh," Cham said.

"The potential for this is in the Law," Hakim said. "We have sworn to uphold the Law. I believe it possible the Benefactors knew killer civilizations might hide behind such screens, and worded the Law—"

"We're way beyond our limits," Ariel said. "I did not travel this far to kill innocents."

Hakim calmly persisted. "It is probable some Killers remain here."

"We haven't seen them!" Ariel shouted. Martin felt a pleasant tremor at her return to form; perversely, he found her more appealing.

"It was inevitable," Hakim persisted. "No villain comes in black, screaming obscenities. All evil has children, homes, regard for self, fear of enemies."

"I did not agree to kill innocents!" Ariel shouted. She spread her arms, opened her fists. "I don't care what the moms do, or what they don't tell us."

"You've been a bit strong about the moms all along," Cham said. "I don't think they're holding anything back. They're building new weapons, snowing us how to use them—"

"Ah, bolsh, yourself!" Ariel said, face wrinkled in disgust. "I thought some of you would have the brains to figure it out."

"What?" Hakim asked.

"The moms aren't inventingnew weapons! They're not suddenly discovering new principles and applying them—what utter crap!"

Martin's admiration quickly turned to irritation.

"They've known about these big, impressive technologies all along," she said. "They just don't want to show their cards any more than they have to. Nobody trusts us, nobody tells us more than we absolutely have to know. That's the way it's been from the beginning. If we want to believewe're helping them develop wonderful new toys, who's going to disabuse us? Not the moms."

Martin's irritation turned on himself now. He hadn't even considered that possibility; and why not? Because there was no evidence for it; Ariel was reverting to paranoid suspicions. He preferred the direct— the easier—approach. Believe what you're told.

She curled her knees and wrapped her arms around them, again like a little girl sitting in a window, weary, disappointed by Martin, by herself. "We're getting ready to kill trillions of intelligent beings who might be innocent. We just can't take that chance, and Martin shouldn't have agreed for us."

"He's in command of this ship," Cham said.

"Not true, not true," Ariel said, closing her eyes, rubbing them, staring at Hakim side wise. "He shares command with Eye on Sky, and the Brothers are breaking with us."

Cham looked at Martin. "She's right."

"They haven't decided yet," Martin said.

"That's what they'll decide," Cham said with resignation.

Martin's wand signaled. Eye on Sky requested a meeting.

"We have to make our own decision, whatever Hans says," Ariel concluded.

In the Brothers' quarters, Martin hung from a net beside Eye on Sky. The Brothers coiled around them, cords' skins gleaming in the offset lighting, the upraised foreparts of the braids casting shadows around Martin like a larger net. The presence of so many large serpentine shapes might have been threatening; but for him, the Brothers represented a gentleness and humanityHans didn't think they could afford. He felt no threat from them.

Eye on Sky splayed his head and crawled along the net closer to Martin, smelling of cut grass, fresh-baked bread: smells of strength and firmness, of assurance. "Listening to we our fellows on Shrikeand Greyhound, we we decide there is a chance to learn more, and so will act with yours."

"I should ask for another meeting?"

"Yes," Eye on Sky said.

Martin chewed his upper lip thoughtfully. "Do you think the Killers are still here?"

"Perhaps not possible to know."

"Some of us think we should have expected this problem from the beginning," Martin said.

"Questions without answers. Expected, not anticipated in detail."

"We were young," Martin said.

"We all we are young, this problem is ancient. It eats we us as a sweet, with delight."

"Will you go down with me?" Martin asked. He did not say this out of cruelty; rather, as a kind of test, as if he stood in Hans' place for the moment.

"Not I we," Eye on Sky said. "We we disassemble in that condition, that world. You have named it Sleep. For we us, it is a true kind of sleep. You must go for we us, if permitted."

Martin took a deep breath.

"You are disturbed?" Eye on Sky asked.

He shook his head. "No, no more than… Yes, I am," he reversed himself. "In a way, Hans is right about Leviathan. Everything we see here seems tailor-made to divide us, confuse us. If Hans is right, and the Killers are still here…"

"Not happy," Eye on Sky said.

"They'll make us much more unhappy before they're done with us."

Hakim repeated the message several times without reply from Sleep. Martin stood behind him as he went through the procedure again, panel projected before him, fingers touching controls glowing in the air.

"Nothing still," Hakim said. "They were prompt before."

Martin nodded.

Beyond the projected control panel, small images of Leviathan's planets hung against the dark aft wall of the bridge. Blinker caught Martin's eye.

It no longer blinked. It maintained a steady sandy brown color.

"Something's changed," Martin said. He pointed to Blinker. Hakim's face darkened with excitement.

"How long does it take a light signal to reach us from Blinker?" Martin asked.

"Three hours twelve minutes," Hakim said.

"Can you play back the records?"

Hakim quickly replayed ship's memory of the planetary images until they found the precise moment when the planet had stopped its fluctuation. "Three hours ago," Hakim said.

"What else has changed?" Martin asked.

Hakim expanded the planetary images one by one: Mirror turning milky, its perfect reflectivity catching a hot moist breath; Frisbee, its edges browning like burned bread dough, the unknown "hair" shedding into space; Cueball unchanged; Gopher's gleaming lights within impossibly deep caverns burning brighter, bluer, like torches.

They came to Puffball, with its immense bristling seed-like constructions. Some seeds had lifted away from the planet's surface, one, three, six of them, and more on their way. Spikes at the top of the seeds also broke free, flying outward at high speed.

"Are they attacking?" Hakim asked.

"I don't know. Pass this on the noach to Greyhoundand Shrike."

"Done," Hakim said. A moment later, his mouth went slack. "There is no noach connection," he said. "They are not receiving. I do not know where they are."