Most of the cities seemed to have a library. They were getting pictures of Goompahs sitting down to read, but Collingdale and Judy couldn’t see the materials. Invade one of those places, they told Digger. We need to find out what they’re reading. Send pictures of the scrolls. Sometimes he wondered whether Digger had any imagination at all.

Judy made suggestions where the surveillance units might be placed for maximum effect. She pointed out that they’d gotten next to nothing whatever from the interior of the temple. Nothing ever happened on the main platform, the altar, whatever it was, except that one of the worshipers occasionally got up and stood on it in a pious manner and looked around.

Inevitably they ended back on Collingdale’s beach, where he stared out at the dark sea—the wine-dark sea—while she stood by to ensure he wasn’t alone.

A few cities along a seacoast. Widespread literacy. Sailing vessels. A peaceful society. Probably participatory government. Apparently universal education. Not bad, actually.

He wondered whether the human race had just encountered its first serious competitor. The Korbs would need an industrial revolution and all that. But if they could skip the Dark Ages, and the assorted other imbecilities that people had come up with, they might leapfrog ahead pretty quickly.

And the omega. They’d have to get past that too.

“They’ve got a lockup,” Judy announced without warning.

“A jail? How do you know?”

“Somebody got tossed in.”

“Do you know why?”

“No. I think he was trying to steal some fish. Got caught, the shopkeeper chased him down, and somebody came and took him away. So there is a police presence of some sort.”

They also had a series of terms for what seemed to be political leaders. There was a kurda, and a krump, and a squant. But they were unable to get equivalences for them. They were in charge, but whether a kurda was a king, a representative, a ward boss, or a judge, there was simply no way to know.

WITH SO MANY young people on board, social life on the al-Jahani was active. It didn’t usually get rowdy, but there was a fair amount of partying and VR games. The older members of the mission, anxious to get away from the noise, took to congregating in a storage area on C Deck, near the shuttle bay, where they talked about the mission, their careers, and the omegas. They worried about whether they’d get to Lookout in time, and reminisced about the old days.

Collingdale had traveled with most of them before. And if they’d become cranky over the decades, they were nonetheless good people. They’d endured months and sometimes years digging on Quraqua and Pinnacle, or cataloging the systems within a couple of hundred light-years of Earth until we knew the diameter, weather, and mass of every world in the neighborhood. A couple had been at Deepsix when it had blooped into the gas giant Morgan. They had a history of getting results. Melinda Park, for example, had served four years on Serenity, a space station assignment that would have driven Collingdale completely around the bend. But she’d directed efforts to determine the laws of planetary formation and had won an Americus for her efforts.

Ava MacAvoy, who’d been with him at Moonlight, was there. And Jean Dionne, with whom he’d once conducted a romance that had been a kind of shooting star, lots of flash and then an eruption and nothing left. Except regrets. Nevertheless, or possibly because of that fact, they’d remained friends. Their captain was Alexandra Kyznetsov, who had also been at Moonlight, lobbing nukes from this very ship. She’d been embarrassed at the way things had turned out and assured Collingdale immediately after departure that she’d brought no bombs this time.

It would not have been correct to say that during the passing months they’d become a tightly knit group. In fact they didn’t agree on much. Some thought the basic mission was to study the society on Lookout (before it got obliterated?) while others thought the intent of the mission was to get ready to set up a rescue effort. Although how the latter was to be done was unclear.

Some argued that, under the circumstances, they should forget the Protocol and make contact with the Goompahs, while others maintained it would do far too much harm. There was disagreement over how the basic research should be handled, who should be allowed down on the surface, what the priorities were, and how best to make decent coffee using the onboard equipment.

“Basho,” said Collingdale.

“I’m sorry?” said Elizabeth Madden, who’d been complaining about the coffee in Alexandra’s presence, but who had no idea what Collingdale was talking about.

“Basho. Coffee. You’ll have to get the language right if you want to prosper on the surface.”

Madden was the most outspoken of those who wanted to maintain the isolation policy. She was a small woman who always spoke in a level tone, never got excited, and seemed to have a mountain of facts to support any position. There was a quality in her manner that implied, without her saying so, that her opponents merely needed to hear the reality of a situation to see the foolishness of their position. She occupied the Arnold Toynbee chair at King’s College, London. Her husband Jerry, also a xenologist of considerable reputation, had accompanied her, and usually led the opposition.

She was alarmed when she first heard that Judy Sternberg was having the pickups moved around.

“Unconscionable risk,” she maintained. “We were lucky the first time. It would have been prudent to wait until we were on the scene.”

Judy shrugged. “I can’t see that any harm might be done.”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “If the Korbs so much as become aware that we exist,” she said, “their entire worldview will change.” Their natural development would be set aside, she argued, and they would become dependent, at least in their philosophy and probably in their development of technology.

“Ridiculous,” said Judy.

“They’ll wind up on reservations! There has never been an exception to the general law.”

Madden didn’t explain which law, but there was no need to do so. Somebody-or-other had laid down a manifesto that a civilization could not survive collision or integration with, or even a bit of jostling by, a more advanced culture.

“If we don’t intervene directly,” said Judy, “there won’t be enough of them left for a reservation.”

“That’s an exaggeration, Judy. You know it and I know it. We’ve survived at least one of these things at home, and other worlds have survived God knows how many. It kills off individuals, and that’s regrettable. But it will not kill off the culture.” They were sitting in the area they’d fixed up in cargo, which someone had nicknamed the Oxford Room. “Our obligation is to save the culture. To give them their chance to evolve.”

Well, maybe she was right. But Lookout was not a global civilization. It was a handful of cities, positioned on a narrow strip of land between major oceans. The cloud was coming and when the destruction was over, maybe the archeologists could go in and look at what was left of the culture. And the xenologists could go home.

RAW DATA POURED in. Collingdale sent his analyses on to Hutchins, with information copies to the Jenkins.

The package went out daily at the close of day. They were, he thought, making excellent progress.

He had just finished sending off a message to Mary, exulting over how well the effort was going, when Judy asked him to come by the workroom.

He hurried up to the B Deck conference room that the linguists had taken over. Judy was there with a couple of her people, Terry MacAndrew from the Loch Ness area, and Ginko Amagawa from Yokohama.

She handed him a printout. “We just found this,” she said. “Thought you might be interested. It’s from a conversation on a park bench.”

It was in Goompah, but using English letters. Nobody tried to translate it for him, and Collingdale felt the force of the compliment. He had to translate it however word by word:

“ROM, HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT HARKA AND KOLAJ ARE MISSING?”

“YES. THREE NIGHTS NOW. WHAT DO YOU THINK?”

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO THINK. I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF ANYTHING LIKE THIS.”

“IT SCARES ME.”

“IT SCARES ME TOO, ROM.”

Collingdale’s first thought was that two of the young ones had been kidnapped. Or two lovers had eloped. Did Goompahs elope?

“We’re not sure what Harka and Kolaj refer to. But we think they may be stars.”

“Stars?”

Judy glanced at Ginko. Ginko’s eyes were dark and worried. “We think they’ve just seen the cloud, Dr. Collingdale.”

ARCHIVE

Nobody here can understand how it happens that a race virtually confined to a limited land area, sealed off both north and south by natural impediments, has managed to maintain what is clearly a peaceful existence. There are no armies, no walls, no battle fleets. No indication that anyone even carries weapons other than what might be expected for hunting purposes.

We are not yet certain, but early indications suggest the cities are independent, that there is no formal political framework, but that somehow they coexist peaceably.

This framework is difficult to understand in light of the fact that the Goompahs are clearly carnivores. Hunters. They do not appear to have a history extensive enough to explain the amity in which they live. We would also like to understand why they find Digger such a fearsome creature.

We share the sense of loss at Jack’s death. But I would be remiss not to commend Digger and Kellie, without whom we’d be flying blind.

— David Collingdale

Hyperlight Transmission

June 9

On the ground at Lookout.

Friday, June 13.

…INVADE ONE OF the libraries. We need to find out what they’re reading. Get access to the scrolls.

The Frances Moorhead arrived in the middle of the night with the industrial-size lightbender, which would hide the lander. Kellie and Digger thanked the captain, and transferred Jack’s body. That was an ordeal that reopened wounds and left Digger wandering aimlessly through the ship after the Moorhead had gone.

He’d received a sympathetic message from Hutchins shortly after the incident. She was sorry, shared their grief, don’t blame yourself, bad things happen. But she didn’t know everything, didn’t know Jack had warned him to stop, didn’t know Digger was going to lift the coin.

“She never really asked for the details,” he told Kellie. “She must know I left stuff out.”