"It does not match any in our records," the mom answered.

Martin turned back to Ariel. "Any other theories?" he asked.

Ariel raised her hands. "I still think we shouldn't jump to any conclusions."

"This is the one," Martin said. "It's the creature they used as a decoy outside the spaceship in Death Valley. I know it is."

Cham laid his hand on Martin's shoulder. "Let's say it is, for now. Doesn't change our plans any. Just another piece of evidence."

"Right," Martin said, shivering off his emotion. "Noach it to Shrikeand Greyhound. Noach all the pictures."

"Let's finish looking at them ourselves, first," Cham suggested evenly, still patting Martin's shoulder.

Martin pulled himself back from his anger. "Sorry," he said.

"We all feel it, Martin," Erin said.

"All of us," Ariel said. She took a deep breath and squatted on the floor.

The next two pictures sketched an orbital path in relation to the fifteen planets, astrogational hints given by binary number measurements triangulating on the nearest stars.

"Very friendly. They're suggesting we decelerate at five g's," Cham said, tracing his finger along the projection, "and go into orbit around the fourth planet."

"Can we survive there?" Andrew asked.

"It is the inexplicable one," Hakim said. "Far too light to be solid, one hundred two thousand kilometers in diameter, there is a cool, solid surface and a thin atmosphere, ten percent oxygen, seventy percent nitrogen, fifteen percent argon and other inerts, five percent carbon dioxide, about six tenths of ship's pressure. Not good to breathe. The surface temperature is fine, a range of ten to twenty degrees centigrade. The gravitational pull is high, however, about two g's."

"The mom can't wrap us in fields," Andrew Jaguar said. "We're not supposed to have that kind of technology."

"We we might disassemble," Eye on Sky warned. "With such weight, there is often no braid control over cords."

Martin held up his hand to cut the discussion. His head hurt abominably. "I don't think that's going to be a problem, one way or another. If they treat us like guests, they'll probably have ways to make us comfortable. If not—" He looked around the cabin. "Why worry?"

"We don't know we'll be invited to the surface," Paola said.

"Not very neighborly if we aren't," Erin said.

"Or they might just kill us," Andrew Jaguar said. "These worlds look like a lot of very sweet candy for curious flies."

"Andrew," Jennifer said testily.

"Nobody can tell me they don't look… just very interesting! Gingerbread house and witch!"

Paola tried to explain this to the Brothers, but Eye on Sky showed with a flourish of head cords that explanation was either not needed or not wanted. No more of our violent fairy tales, Martin thought.

He turned to Eye on Sky. "Do we go in?"

"What is your opinion?" Eye on Sky rejoined. Some of the Brothers smelled of cloves.

Martin nodded. "Sure," he said. "That's why we're here. Jennifer, is this diagram clear?"

"Clear enough," she said. "Silken Parts and I can tell the ship where to go."

Martin turned to the mom. "I assume you'll vanish into the woodwork, so to speak, when the time comes."

"When the time comes," it said, "my presence will not be obvious."

Without warning, the mom made a peculiar noise like a trumpet blat and gently toppled to one side, rebounding against the floor. The crew stared in surprise; before anyone could react, it made a similar noise and rose again, stabilized. "This vessel has been searched for high-density weapons. Examination may have been conducted by noach. My functioning was temporarily interfered with."

"How do they searchby noach?" Jennifer asked, voice squeaky.

"They may query selected atoms and particles within our vessel for their state and position."

Jennifer looked as if she had just opened a wonderful Christmas present, and she turned to Martin, gleeful, clearly believing that her work and theory had been confirmed.

Martin was struck by how much they acted and sounded like eager, frightened children, himself included.

"Will they know the ship has a fake matter core?" he asked the mom. "Could they know you're here?"

"Unless I am mistaken, which is possible but not likely, such a noach examination can only reveal extremes of mass density."

Jennifer slapped her right hand against her thigh; it was obvious she wanted to do more momerath and plug in these new clues.

"Jennifer," he said, "you have work to do?"

"Pardon?"

"Go do it. You're making me nervous."

Jennifer grinned and left the bridge.

"So they know we're not armed with anything lethal," Martin said. "Why did you quit for a moment there?"

"I am not sure."

Martin looked at the mom intently, then returned his attention to the projected images. "Put us into orbit around the fourth planet," he told Hakim and Silken Parts.

Hakim did his momerath and drew the best path and points of drive bursts; the path closely matched that suggested on the transmitted charts. "Steady deceleration of five g's, we will be in orbit within five days, thirteen hours and twelve minutes," Hakim said.

Silken Parts did the same calculations using Brother math, reported the results to Eye on Sky, then turned to Martin. "We agree within a few seconds," he said.

"Noach our plans and the messages to Shrikeand Greyhound," Martin said.

Martin's cabin aboard the Trojan Horsewas less than a fifth the size of his previous quarters and contained only his sleeping net. The crews had not yet finished adding homey touches to the masquerade; he scanned the walls and imagined perhaps posters of Brothers and humans frolicking on beaches beneath a blue-green sky. That isn't too bad. He'd mention the idea to Donna Emerald Sea, who with Long Slither was in charge of ship design now.

He twisted into the net and closed his eyes. He was instantly asleep and in no time at all, it seemed, his wand chimed. It was Jennifer. In long-suffering silence, he crawled from the net, assumed a lotus in mid-air to keep some sort of dignity, and told her to come in.

"Their noach is better than ours," she said. "Much higher level, more powerful than the moms' noach, I mean."

"That's obvious," he said, still groggy.

"I just had a long talk with Silken Parts. We swapped theories on Benefactor technology. Martin, we're going to be way outmatched down there—far more than we were around Wormwood. What these folks had around Wormwood is like a steel trap, and this, this is an atom bomb."

"What do you think they have?" Martin asked.

"They swept us with something—no, that's not right; sweep isn't the right idea, not the right word. They queriedour ship's matter and particles from six billion kilometers. From what I can work out, we couldn't manage that intense a scan at all, ever—and if we could, we couldn't transfer that much data in less than a few weeks."

"Impressive, but what does it imply?"

"If the moms are right, and these folks don'tknow everything there is to know about us now—and frankly, I can't think of a reason why they shouldn't, except maybe bandwidth—"