Once outside the ship, however, not even Hormagaunts who adapted themselves to the vacuum could cross the distance between the vast cylinder and alien pilothouse controlling the sails. Presumably the ship’s brain and the crew, if there were any living crew, were seated there. But the pilothouse was separated by one hundred thirty thousand miles, and connected only by impalpable cables of magnetic energy to the slowly moving cylindrical body. Anything attempting to cross the distance was destroyed by focused energy from the sails, perhaps an automatic meteor defense.

In the twenty-six years since the departure of the first deracination ship toward Proxima, no spokesman, no instructions, no overseer representing the Hyades overlords had addressed the abducted thousands aboard.

The brilliant Swans and diligent Locusts trapped aboard one of the ships, the one headed toward Tau Ceti, had discovered how to use electric signals to change the consistency of the mud. A correct combination of signals could instruct the mud and form it into hills and valleys, rivers and lakes, expanses of fertile soil. The Tau Ceti-bound expatriates also constructed a transmitter powerful enough to reach across the one-fifth of a lightyear gap separating Sol from the globe of receding ships. This gap, at that time, was roughly three hundred times the semi-major axis of Pluto’s orbit.

Tellus had transmitted the Tau Ceti ship’s discoveries across the light-months toward the other ships receding through transplutonian space. This was easily done. Every schoolboy on Earth knew the longitude and right ascension of those ships, their speed and distance, nor was there any intervening material or medium to hinder the radio signal.

Which of the other deracination ships had the presence of mind to erect a receiver was unknown, but eight had erected transmitters of sufficient power to reply: the ships bound toward Proxima, Omicron Eridani, 61 Cygni, Altair, Gliese 570, Eta Cassiopeiae, and HR7703.

The millions aboard now knew certain codes to program the matter which coated the inner hulls of their world-sized prisons. But there were neither safety features nor warnings in the electronic signal codes the abductees had deduced, or the environmental instruments the aliens had left for them to find. It was another intelligence test.

It was a merciless test. Reports from seven of the radio-fluent ships over the next few years were horrific. Countless numbers had died in earthquakes, floods, and quicksand caused by improperly programmed landscapes. As many died from an improper balance of gases as the artificial atmosphere interacted with changes made to the artificial soil.

The eighth ship, bound for Omicron Eridani, fell out of radio contact ten years into her one hundred sixty-four year journey.

3. Second Contact

A.D. 11298

Decades had passed before the Omicron Eridani ship reestablished contact, and news returned from beyond the distant abyss of space. The grim events were these: a layer of slumberers had been thawed from the murk, to find their miles-long cylinder airless, and themselves trapped in tiny airtight closets.

In those closets they endured for months while their Melusine discovered how to program the mud to find the hull breech, grow over the area, and solidify into a stress-resistant shape. Other mud layers formed the correct mix of gases and liquids to fill the empty interior, and to thaw segments of murk containing crops and seeds.

These survivors did not know what had caused the breach, but the traces were left of the endless tornadoes which had swept the previous group of tens of thousands into outer nothingness. Eventually digging into the aft plate, they found transparent sections of their world-sized prison. Then they beheld the slowly retreating silhouettes of corpses, cloud upon cloud, outlined against the gleaming vastness of their sails. No worm and no bacteria existed in the radiation-filled vacuum of the acceleration-beam from Sol in which the sailing vessel swam. The bodies would never decay.

4. The Plea of Tellurians

A.D. 11300

Once and once only were Montrose and Del Azarchel recalled from exile at the moons and rings of Jupiter and summoned back to Tellus.

Montrose had forgotten how pleasant natural gravity felt, after so much time in carousels or free fall. He redesigned his bones and muscles not once, but twice, during the long Hohmann transfer from Jovian orbit to Telluric. The transfer orbit was a much longer one that it would have been before Asmodel, since the Earth no longer orbited in the plane of the ecliptic, and there were fewer windows to achieve an energy-efficient orbit.

They were not permitted to attempt a planetfall in their ship’s pinnace. Earth provided the means for their descent. The two men were lowered in a landing shell on a beam of energy that ignited the air beneath them. There was a sickening period of free fall, and then the landing shell was plucked out of the air by a diving vessel like a sparrow caught by a hawk. The diving vessel spread wings and parachutes and splashed down in the mighty Mississippi.

Stepped pyramids of enormous size, windowless, hundreds of feet high, loomed on the banks of the great river, and among them were minarets like upright swords, and obelisks that flashed gold crowns in the sun.

More than one flight of marble stairs ran down to the water. Guarding these stairways were pillars atop which centaur mares with the heads and breasts of cold-faced women reared, or snarling black-winged leopards.

Ximen del Azarchel and Menelaus Montrose, with an entourage of silent, fawning, raccoon-like Moreau in goggles escorting them, passed from their diving vessel in coracles to the riverbank.

At the top of the stair was a broad, green field spread between the looming ziggurats. The grass was waist-high. It was some species of grass evolved or made after Montrose had departed the Earth, and he did not recognize it. The grass-blades were thin, dark and waxy, almost like the leaf of a palm tree.

Within the field, as far as the eye could see, were white statues of men and women of many races, Sylphs, Witches, Chimerae, Nymphs. Here were monstrous Hormagaunts, no two alike, and handsome clades of twins, no two unalike.

Half unseen in the grass were statues of Locusts in their several variations. Winged statues ten or twelve feet tall stood here or there amid the others, narrow-faced and narrow-eyed beings, their hands raised, palms turned inward, in graceful postures of welcome. These were Swans. There were other types Montrose did not recognize. In the distance were the silhouettes of motionless Giants, bald and grim as worn mountains.

In the air overhead was hanging a scroll, partly unrolled. The visible section was thirty feet tall and fifteen feet wide, written on both sides. Silently it stood, rustling in the wind, but not drifting. There was no trace of whatever power kept it aloft and held it in place. The hieroglyphs were illegible, yet seemed electrically charged with meaning, as if tensed to shout their messages.

The glyph shapes were based on a simplified Monument notation, but they curled and writhed beneath the surface of the scroll. At the corners of the scroll were metallic eyes that neither Montrose nor Del Azarchel could stand to look into, and so they knew this was a manifestation of some higher power.

“No one here to welcome us,” said Montrose, putting his foot on the grass. Immediately a strange sound rippled over the silent scene, a harmony of soft wails, hoots, trills, and rippling echoes. With it came a throbbing as if some immense heart, larger and slower than a man’s were beating. “Whoops! Reckon I spoke too soon.”