Redwing shook his head. Cultures could best be understood in the rearview mirror. Superman might work among the multitudes of Earthside, but such guiding archetypes were not what you needed in deep space. The interplanetary culture spawned Smoke, Ellipso, Whitethighs, and others. Such larger-than-life figures helped cultures understand themselves, turn their lives into stories.

So … Here among the worlds and stars, this was a frontier. Earthside hadn’t had one in centuries.

But the aliens spoke in that antique visual language. They must have used big antennas to pick up all sorts of popular media, broadcast over hundreds of years. Then, apparently, they finally saw the Bowl headed toward them. So they sent a brush-off message, using the cartoons that swerved around language and slammed home the point. Aliens stomping on Superman, beating him up, kicks to his head and gut, the finishing glower straight into the viewer’s face—classic, in its way. Any chimpanzee would get that right away. Even a smart one with a starship.

There were intelligent, technological Glorians who knew something about images with power—and they didn’t want the Bowl to appear in their skies.

Well, who would? It had immense mass and its own star in tow. It couldn’t approach a planetary system without scrambling up planetary orbits. Coming to call meant the bull comes into your china shop and is in no hurry to leave.

A warning was understandable. Threats, comic book or not, might work.

But … no curiosity? No desire to embrace the strange, the alien, the obviously huge technology the Bowl implied? What kind of aliens were these Glorians, anyway?

Beth had said shakily, “I need to think about this,” and departed.

A sharp rap startled Redwing. He glanced at his desk, which pulsed with a reminder color.

Karl had knocked smartly on the door, right on time. Redwing got up and met him, shaking hands as he did sometimes with crew to show this conversation was more than ordinary. After all, the close quarters and endless waiting led, in classic fashion, to rumors, imaginary problems, and endless speculation.

“I carried forward those points you brought up,” Karl began.

“You’re done integrating the new crew?”

“Nearly. They’re slow, dazed. Some sleep pods didn’t work just right, it seems.”

“Anything serious medically?”

“No, just slow recovery rates.” Karl looked tired.

Redwing knew that rumor-mongering went double for the newbies. Some of the freshly revived had the checked-my-actual-personality-at-the-door look of people absorbing and not able to react. It was a surprise, yes. Not Glory on the viewscreens, but an immense, whirling landscape. Redwing had decided to let them get into the work cycle, then get to know them, see what teams he could shape from them. Dealing with the Bowl to get what Redwing wanted was going to be a complex game.

They needed supplies of volatiles and fusion fuel catalysts, just to depart and head for Glory. That was only the beginning, though.

Best to get things back on firm ground. He leaned forward, hands clasped on the desk. “You and I need to have a clear understanding of how the dynamics of this Bowl and star system work. It may be the only leverage we have over the Folk.”

“They’ve been running this place for a very long time,” Karl said. “I doubt it has any vulnerabilities.”

“Start with that jet. You’d think they’d have reached cruising speed and been able to shut off the plasma jet by now, but never mind that—”

“They can’t!”

Redwing looked skeptical. He liked playing this role, letting crew “educate him” and tumble out their ideas. While a lower-rank officer dealing with the myriad specialists a ship needed, he had learned that you could get to the point much faster this way. These were tech types first and crew members a distant second. “Ummm … Maybe they can’t.”

Karl rose to the bait. “Look, a grad student can show that the Bowl isn’t statically stable. I know, I checked with a shipmind nonlinear analysis, and I’m just an engineer.”

“Why not?”

“The Bowl’s not in orbit around the star. Turn off the jet, the star draws it in by gravity. It hits the star.”

“So the jet has to stay on.”

“This whole thing is dynamically stable, not static—same as we are when we walk. We take a step, fall forward, catch ourselves—only way to get anywhere.”

“So what makes the whole star-and-Bowl scheme work?” Redwing had a hunch, but he liked to check it against somebody who really knew. It helped the intuition. Karl was just the type he needed.

“The jet comes off that glaring hot spot. The Bowl reflects a lot of the star’s own sunlight on that spot, making the corona far hotter than you ever see on the surface of a star. Somehow—here’s the real magic trick—the star’s own magnetic field gets wound up in that spot. Notice the star’s spinning—so it generates magnetic fields deep in its core, a dynamo. That leaks out, forms the whole region dominated by the fields—the magnetosphere—and that hot spot draws field lines in, wraps them around the jet as it forms. Then the field takes off with the incredibly hot plasma, trapping that pressure in a wraparound like rubber bands—and it all escapes the star. The magnetic field lines wrap around the plasma like tight invisible fingers, squeeze it, make it spurt out. The jet carries forward, slim as you like, straight for the Knothole—and passes through. The jet thrust makes the whole damned thing move forward, star and Bowl and all.”

“So?” Redwing knew he could appear incisive by just asking the obvious next question, interrupting the headlong spinning out of a whole complex story.

It worked. Karl blinked, seemed to come out of his techno-daze. “So … the magnetic fields hit the Bowl’s fields—”

“What fields?”

“The Bowl’s a huge conductor, spinning fast, with electrical currents running in it. It makes its own magnetic fields. I checked the lander data from when the teams went down. Strong fields, even at the top of that deep atmosphere. Keeps cosmic rays away, sure, but its real reason is—”

Karl blinked again and sensed he was going into lecture mode. Redwing just nodded. Keep ’em anxious but focused, his old cycle-ship commander had said. They never really notice you’re leading them.

Karl slowed. “The Bowl mag fields, they catch the fields from the jet. I’ve got plenty of mag-depth photos of this. The Bowl shapes the jet and binds to it, both. That links the Bowl to the star. Of course, gravity’s making the Bowl want to fall toward the star—after all, it’s not in orbit or anything, just spinning around. But it can’t fall into the star—there’s a sort of dance between them. The star’s running away, thanks to the steady push it gets from the jet. So the Bowl is chasing it. To make the ride less bumpy, the system has those nice magnetic fields, acting like rubber bands you can’t break. See, magnetic fields always form closed loops.”

“Why?” Even Redwing knew this, but it was best to throw the occasional bone.

“Old Doc Maxwell. It’s the law.”

“So—”

Karl jumped right in, as Redwing had known he would. “The fields massage the Bowl, cushion minor excursions, smooth out the ride.”

“So the Folk can’t turn it off. Ever.”

“Do that, the Bowl crashes. I estimate it’ll take about a year to fall into the star. I’d love to see it—gotta be spectacular.”

“But it can’t happen. Because of the jet. So—how do we screw around with it?”

Karl blinked yet again, twice. “But … why…”

“We have people down there. Must be billions of smart aliens on the Bowl, too. We have to make a deal to get our people back. To get on to Glory.”

Karl looked at the Bowl view sliding by on the wall—forestland now, dotted with twinkling small seas, whitecaps outlining some where a strong wind blew down from somber gray mountains. “They’ve been safe for millions of years. Longer.”