They most certainly did.

He was numbed by the incessant drumroll of mech-work around him. Arthur’s intrusion at first seemed a vagrant thought of his own. “What means?”

The mech civilization undertook centuries ago to change the ecology of Snowglade. They do not function well in the warm, wet world it was.

“What’s so bad about it?”

Moisture and heat quickly bring rust. Snowglade had Alpine woods once, and vast grasslands that stretched from horizon to horizon. The mechs came to see if the planet was useful for their projects, and seem to have decided that it was, though of course it needed what they would call, I quite believe, improvement.

Killeen stopped beside a carboglass device that was milling what looked like large spheres of matted, chromed sponge. “How you know?”

I was there. We were first aware of them as simple explorers. The Clans had set up their Citadels—

“There were more than one?”

Arthur’s smoothcoursing voice paused only momentarily in surprise:

Oh yes, I forget so readily now. You are young. We once had glorious things. When we came to Snowglade we were under no illusion that we were safe from mechlife. But we could scarcely cover an entire planet, protect every—

“Yeasay, get on with it.” He had never heard of anything truly manmade other than the Citadel, only of things fashioned from mechcraft or stolen outright. The Aspect frequently talked of things which Killeen knew did not exist and so he thought they were lies or brags or else tall tales to hold Killeen’s attention. The contrast of these past accounts with their present condition had made the Family seldom consult the Aspects.

The mechs did not confront us directly. Some felt that the mechs scarcely noticed us, or else thought we were local lifeforms of no real consequence—a view which I suppose history has confirmed, with sad consequences for us all. At any rate—

Here Arthur obviously sensed Killeen’s impatience. His voice speeded up until the images and thoughts came in bursting bluebright clots, vivid pictures delivered without explanation, letting Arthur’s remembered experience explode directly into Killeen:

We noticed first that winters deepened and there was less rain. Our crops dwindled. We had to undertake some extensive breeding and genetic alterations to harden them against the warped seasons.

“You savvyed weather?” Killeen was impressed, but wished there was some way he could keep Arthur from knowing. There wasn’t, of course. He felt the Aspect’s pleased aura.

Understood, yes—or so we confidently thought. Only slowly did we realize that the mechs were deliberately bringing clouds of gas and dust into Snowglade’s planetary path. They even used fineground asteroids. This brought the dust-storms we thought were a passing feature of the changing weather, but were in fact causing that weather. The dust smothered our equatorial regions. Somehow, the mechs contrived to evaporate a great deal of the icepack at the poles. This drove Snowglade toward a dryer, cooler climate, using processes I cannot guess. Obviously the mech civilizations have worked this kind of planetary engineering before, and they well understood the thousands of small side effects one must calculate. It was a feat of awesome power, and one carried out so gradually we had no intimation of truly fundamental change until centuries had passed. By then our crops had withered and we were eking out an existence at the Citadels, planting more and reaping less with each passing year. We were innocent, thinking the mechs at best had not detected us, or at least would ignore us. More the fools, we!

Killeen picked up one of the chromed balls and tossed it to the floor. It shattered into a thousand strands of delicate spooling fiber, each glinting in the harsh fluorolight. He concentrated on Arthur’s fastpassing talk. Such ancient knowledge he had always ignored, figuring that Fanny would tell them what was useful. Ledroff, he knew, was similarly ignorant. “The Splashes’re still left,” he said.

So paltry were our imaginations that we did not at first recognize the significance of the Splashes. Snowglade follows a near-circular orbit around Denix. Denix itself loops about the Eater in a long ellipse. All our time on Snowglade had been spent in the warm middle portion of its orbit—after the glacial stage, but before Denix approaches the Eater. Here:

A three-color 3D diagram strobed in Killeen’s left eye. An iceblue dot circled a flame-red globe. Then point of view telescoped and the globe looped around a hotpoint swirl of colors: the Eater. Numbers and words Killeen could not read gave slide-sheets of data.

“Yeah.” Killeen rummaged for something to say. “Pretty.”

I do not work out such intricate aids for your artistic appreciation.

Arthur’s voice was stern, piqued. Killeen dutifully shut his right eye. The diagram swelled, showing Snowglade as a mottled dry disk. Sandy blotches blended into gray, ribbed mesas.

The view was time-sped. Centuries flickered by. Glinting sheets of ice dwindled. Clouds dispersed. Deserts gnawed at the flanks of flinty mountain ranges.

This is what they have done to approach the climate which mechs desire. And then—

Three notes piped in his right ear, an assembly-call. “Look, gotta go,” Killeen said with relief.

Into his right eye popped a 2D map to guide him to Ledroff.

SEVEN

Killeen could see Ledroff was holding a meeting as he approached. Five Family were sitting on a big brassglass machine at the end of a tin-roofed assembly shed.

“—since we silenced the managers quickstyle, there’s prob’ly no mayday, no outbound screamers, nothing.” Ledroff was saying as Killeen dropped down on a polished rampart.

“Ummm,” Jocelyn said doubtfully, fingering a stray tuft of glossy hair, coiling it around her thumb. “Right, we used get couple days clear ride. But now?”

Ledroff said, “Our strike was good. The best.”

Killeen thought it was pretty routine, but he said nothing. Let the new Cap’n crow.

Cermo-the-Slow blinked owlishly. “Could use the break.”

Killeen asked, “What’s on?”

Ledroff made a little dramatic pause out of putting his helmet on a nearby lever. He was sitting on top of the blocky, alum-edged pyramid-machine, and control levers sprouted around him. “We’re discussing holing up here,” he said down to them.

Killeen snorted. “We got a step or two still in us.”

“I think we’re still tired,” Ledroff said reasonably. “In the past, no higher mechs showed up ’n’ checked a deadheaded factory for three, four day. I say we use that, rest up.”

Jocelyn said, “Mantis might’ve called some Marauders, try trackin’ us.”

Ledroff nodded, his bushy beard like a frothy explosion beneath the severity of his stiffhaired ridge. Killeen noticed that the scalping around Ledroff’s backchopped hair was fresh. The slick, walnut skin stretched tight and shiny. He was paying more attention to his appearance now. “Yeasay—in the open. Here they not look.”

“Whosay?” Killeen demanded as he climbed up a tier on the big silent machine. From there he got a view of the whole ’plex. Navvys still went about their mutedumb rounds. A perpetual machine hum bathed the area. Among the steady, efficient trajectories of the mechs, Family moved on their own paths, taking whatever they could find.

Ledroff eyed him. “Isay. Is custom! Family hangs out after a raid.”