The three midshipcrew left hurriedly, each taking a last glance at the screen where two mysteries of vastly different order hung, luminous and threatening.

TWELVE

Killeen glided silently around the sleek craft, admiring its elegant curves and economy of purpose. Its hull was a crisp ceramo-steel that blended seamlessly into bulging flank engines. The capture had been simple, flawless.

The squad that had seized it hovered near both large airlocks in the ship’s side. They had waited here in the station’s bay, and done nothing more than prevent six small robo mechs from hooking up power leads and command cables to the ship’s external sockets. Without these, the craft floated inertly in the loading bay.

It was clearly a cargo drone. Killeen was relieved and a little disappointed. They faced no threat from this ship, but they would learn little from it, as well.

It is of ancient design. I recall the mechs using such craft when they transported materials to Snowglade. I believe I could summon up memories of how to operate them, including the difficulties of atmospheric reentry. They were admirably simple. People of times before mine often hijacked them for humanity’s purposes.

Arthur’s pedantic, precise voice continued as Killeen inspected the loading bay. Arthur pointed out standard mechtech. The Aspect was of more use here, where older, high-vacuum tech seemed to have changed little in the uncounted centuries since humanity had been driven from space altogether. On Snowglade the mechs had adapted faster than humans could follow, making the old Aspects nearly useless. Arthur’s growing certainty about their surroundings in this station began to stir optimism in Killeen.

Flitters! See there?

A squad member, exploring nearby in the station, had fumbled her way through a lock. A large panel drew aside, revealing a storehouse of sleek ships similar to the cargo drone they had just seized.

These are quick little craft that can reach the surface with ease. I remember them well. We termed them Flitters because they move with darting ease in both atmosphere and deep space. Admirable for avoiding interception. That was before the Arcologies lost control of their orbital factories. Before the mech grip on Snowglade grew so tight.

Killeen ordered some fresh squads to inspect the storage bay and estimate the carrying capacity of the Flitters. The Family had explored only a fraction of the station, so it was no surprise that this storage-and-receiving bay had eluded them. Killeen had hoped such a place might turn up; the incoming vessel had simply pointed the way.

A signal came on comm from Shibo.—Something’s happening with the hoop.—

Killeen quickly made his way through shafts and tunnels to the station’s disk surface. He had to juggle his elation at finding shuttle ships which could take parties to the planet surface, against the unyielding fact that something vast was at work on New Bishop.

The vision that confronted him was mystifying. The hoop had nearly reached the polar axis, he saw. But it was not moving inward now. Instead, it seemed to turn as he watched. Its inward edge, razor-sharp and now ruler-straight, was cutting around the planet’s axis of rotation. In a simulation provided by Shibo he saw the hoop spinning about its flattened edge.

—It slowed its approach to the axis,—Shibo sent.—Then started revolving.—

“Looks like getting faster,” Killeen said.

A pause.—Yeasay…the magnetic fields are stronger now, too.—

“Look, it’s slicing around the axis.”

—Like cutting the core from an apple.—

“Revolving…”

—Yeasay. Picking up speed.—

As he watched, the hoop revolved completely around the axis of New Bishop. The golden glow brightened further as if the thing was gaining energy.

“Pretty damn fast,” Killeen said uselessly, wrestling to see what purpose such gigantic movements could have.

The simulation grew more detailed as Shibo’s uncanny sympathy with Argo’s computers brought up more information.

He said quizzically, “That dashed line further out—”

—That’s this station. We’re clear of the string,—Shibo sent.

“More like a cosmic ring,” he mused. Wedding band, he thought. Getting married to a planet…“It hitting anything?”

—Naysay. Nothing’s orbiting near it.—

“Looks like somethin’ in high polar orbits.” He had picked up some of the jargon from his Aspects but still had trouble with two-dimensional pictures like this simulation.

—That’s small stuff. Too far away to tell.—

“Much around the middle?”

—The equator? More small things. And a funny signal. Looks very large one moment, then a little later it reads as small.—

“Where?”

—Close in. Just skims above the atmosphere, looks like.—

“Sounds like mechtech. We’ve poked our hands into a beehive. Damn!”

—There’s more. I’ve been scanning New Bishop. Picking up faint signals that seem human-signified.—

“People?” Killeen felt a spurt of elemental joy. A human presence in this strange enormity…“Great! Maybe we can still live here.”

—I can’t tell what the signals say. Might be suit comm amped way up. Like somebody talkin’ to a crowd.—

“Try getting a fix on it.”

—Yeasay, lover.—She added a playful laugh and he realized he was being too brusque and Cap’nly.

“You can get even in bed tonight.”

—That an order?—

“You can give the orders.”

—Even better.—

He laughed and turned back to the spectacle.

His mind skipped with agitated awe. It had been sheer bravado, he thought, to name this sun Abraham’s Star. A tribute to his father, yes, and with a sudden wrenching sadness he wished desperately that he could again talk to Abraham. It seemed he had never had enough time to learn from his father, never enough to tap that unpretentious certainty that Abraham had worn like a second skin.

He recalled that weathered yet mirthful face, its casual broad smile and warm eyes. Abraham had known the value of simple times, of quiet days spent doing rough work with his hands, or just strolling through the ample green fields that ringed the Citadel.

But Abraham had not been born into a simple time, and so he had come to be a master of the canny arts humans needed. Killeen had absorbed from him the savvy to survive when they raided mech larders, but that was not what he remembered best. The wry, weary face, with its perpetual promise of love and help, the look that fathers gave their sons when they glimpsed a fraction of themselves in their heirs—that had stayed with Killeen through years of blood and fear that had washed away most of the Citadel’s soft im- ages. He could not recall his mother nearly as well, perhaps because she had died when he was quite young.

And what would Abraham say, now that his son had named a star for him that was a caldron of vast forces, beside which humanity was a mere fleck, a nuisance? Some promised land! Killeen grimaced.

The hoop had finished its first revolution and begun the second, hastening. Its inner edge did not lie exactly along New Bishop’s axis but stood a tiny fraction out from it.

As Killeen watched, the cosmic ring finished its second passage, revolving with ever-gathering speed. The hoop seemed like a part in some colossal engine, spinning to unknown purpose. It glowed with a high, prickly sheen as fresh impulses shot through it—amber, frosted blue, burnt orange—all smearing and thinning into the rich, brimming honey gold.

—I’m picking up a whirring in the magnetic fields,—Shibo sent.

His Arthur Aspect immediately observed:

That is the inductive signal from the cosmic string’s revolution. It is acting like a coil of wire in a giant motor.