"They reveal matter-conversion technology right here," Hakim said. "They do not care to hide it. No platform parts made of normal matter could survive in those depths, nor contain the gases under such conditions. We see the bottom of the fuel chain, which leads to the top—the technology of the platforms themselves."
Eye on Sky rustled and smelled of camphor and pine.
The scene shifted to the next planet nearest to them, number twelve, half a billion kilometers closer to the star, this one a rocky world with a diameter of ten thousand kilometers. The color of the planet's crescent—viewed in close-up—was dark brown with scattered patches of tan and white. "Resolution of about four hundred kilometers," Hakim said. "It may be made of rock and ice. It is cold enough for ammonia and methane to lie solid on the surface, and the atmosphere appears to be mostly nitrogen and argon. There is no large-scale construction—"
Abruptly, the planet darkened as if the illuminated limb were obscured by shadow. Then, within the shadow and along the limb, thin lines of brilliant white appeared like molten silver poured over a surface of carbon soot. The lines curved into circles and ovals, scribed contours, ran straight as great circles. The density of lineation increased, thinner lines within thick, until the entire planet glowed hot silver. Just as abruptly, color returned—but a different color, with different details, grayish-tan with green patches.
Jennifer giggled abruptly, then clapped her fingers to her mouth. "Sorry," she said.
"What in the hell was that?" George Dempsey asked.
Dumbfounded, Hakim looked between his colleagues, then read the fresh chemical analysis. "Pure argon atmosphere. The surface appears to be mostly silicates, fine sand perhaps, small rocks. The green patches are very cold, much colder than the rest of the planet—four or five kelvins."
"I hope Giacomo saw that," Jennifer said, face ghostly. She could not stop her hands from touching her shoulders, her elbows, her knees. She seemed terrified. "If Hans is looking for proof of illusion…"
"Let's not draw conclusions yet," Martin said.
Jennifer giggled again.
The next planet inward that shared the same quadrant of the Leviathan system, number two, orbited scarcely one hundred and fifty million kilometers from the star, barely within a "temperate" zone allowing liquid water. Pale brownish-red, lacking any thick atmosphere, this planet was lumpy with structure. Even with a diameter of over twenty-one thousand kilometers, its outline was remarkably uneven.
"They're showing off again," Paola said. "How tall are those… whatever they are?"
"Hundreds of kilometers tall," Hakim said. "Tens of thousands of them. Cities, perhaps?"
"Are we getting any communications between the planets?" Jennifer asked.
"No artificial radiation leakage," Hakim said. "Except for the energies used to ship gas up from the giant planets. But even those are of a frequency easily interpreted as solar flares. From a few light months away, the system is rich with planets, but quiet."
"So they're not hiding, but they're not attracting attention, either. What about commerce between the worlds?"
"It is ripe with ships like seeds in shore fruit," Eye on Sky said. "Tens of millions of vessels rising up, falling down. Every world takes ships but the twelfth. It orbits alone. The fourth planet is most visited."
"Can we tell if there's any commerce notusing ships?" Martin asked. "Matter transmission—something more sophisticated?"
"Not found any such signs," Eye on Sky said. "If they are using noach, of course we we are not detecting them."
Martin rubbed the side of his nose. "Let's send two messages, one after the other, video with speech accompaniment, the next with Brother text/sound. Coded pictures in polar and rectangular coordinates, one hundred shades, no color, of our ship seen from outside, a Brother assembled and disassembled, and a human male and human female seen from the front, naked. Show our origins related to the three nearest stars. Our fictitious origins, of course…"
"A Voyagermessage," Paola said, smiling. She explained for the Brothers. Silken Parts had already researched this small bit of human history.
When it was finished, Martin projected the message for all to see. Silken Parts and Paola quickly worked to translate it into Brother text, which Eye on Sky approved. He suggested, "Let us add full set of symbols from each written language."
They waited twelve hours. At some six billion kilometers from Leviathan, the first response to their inquiry came from the fourth planet, ten pictures in coordinate video. The mom quickly translated and projected them, one after another.
The pictures showed five different beings. The crew examined the portraits in sequence. The first type was four-legged, slender and graceful looking, with a long, slim neck topped by a short-nosed head with two prominent forward-facing eyes. But for a few features, it might have been a smaller, less stocky version of the Red Tree Runner sauropods. "Where are the hands? " Erin Eire asked.
Nobody answered. The second type stood upright on two thick, almost elephantine legs, with a barrel chest and a small head without apparent eyes. Two sets of arms emerged from its barrel chest, equipped with two sets of many-fingered hands.
"These are the ones who met with the Red Tree Runners," Erin said.
"Sure looks like them," Andrew said.
The third type seemed to be aquatic, having no legs or arms as such, elongated, shark shaped, with wide wing-like fins along their sides, narrow, ridged pointed" heads" with no visible eyes, and fins with finger-like extensions just behind the head. The fourth was a nightmare, a nest of tentacles or legs jointed dozens of places along each length, some tipped with smaller tentacles, others with three-part pincers. The body, dwarfed by the tentacles, was squat and dark.
The image of the fifth type brought gasps from the humans. Reptilian, with a long crested head and a short trunk, and limbs that folded backward at the lower joints, the fifth was much smaller than the preceding types.
Erin reached out to take Ariel's hand. The humans stared in shock and disbelief.
"God damn them," George Dempsey said.
"They don't know where we come from," Cham said. "They've screwed up royally."
Martin nodded. Paola began to explain to Eye on Sky, but the Brother rustled and emitted a strong rosy odor of sympathy. "We we recognize," Eye on Sky said. "This is from your endtime history."
"We've found them," Martin said.
"Don't jump to conclusions," Ariel said softly.
"What other conclusions are there?" Martin asked.
"How many beings have they investigated, how many forms might they have stolen? We still can't be positive."
Martin wanted to bask in this sense of discovery, have the peculiar satisfaction of watching the Killers make a mistake, reveal a weakness. "I want to be positive," he said ambiguously.
"Then think," Ariel said, glancing nervously at the others, as if anticipating a sudden wave of emotion overriding reason. "This could be the originalthey stole their design from."
"Not likely," Martin said. "If the Killers knew them well enough to copy their… bodies, their designs, they'd be dead by now, almost surely…"He turned to the mom. "Do you recognize this type from any of the worlds the Benefactors saved, or any other worlds you know?"