So they would make the additional flight. “To be honest,” Julie told her, as they approached one of the cylinders floating off the Jenkins’s port bow, “getting down with this thing slung on our belly will be enough of a battle.”

The package was big. A large cylinder more than thirty meters wide, maybe forty-five meters long. Marge had been impressed with Julie’s cool performance as she locked onto the rim, attaching it so that the mouth of the cylinder faced down. Listening to the heavy bang as the clamps engaged, she decided the pilot’s caution was justified.

The unit was equipped with guidance thrusters, which she now jettisoned. The Jenkins could retrieve them later.

They were on the night side, approaching the terminator, chasing the sun. “Not the best planning,” Julie said. “We’ll have to go around once before we start our descent.”

At this point it didn’t matter. Marge sat back to enjoy the ride. The skies were clear and bright. The omega was behind them somewhere, not visible unless they called it up on the scopes. The rising sun picked out a couple of islands and a few drifting clouds.

They were passing through daylight. Marge watched the oceans and landmasses rotating beneath, thinking how green it all was, how lovely, and she began to wonder whether it would draw settlers eventually, people who would argue that the Goompahs only used a small part of the world anyhow, so why not? It occurred to her for the first time that terrestrial governments might eventually find themselves unable to enforce their edicts about interfering with other civilizations. Might not even be able to stop groups of exploiters from seizing distant real estate.

Ah, well. That was a problem for another age.

Behind them, the sun sank below the horizon and they soared through the night. “Starting down in five minutes,” said Julie.

It was okay by Marge.

MOMENTS BEFORE THEY entered the atmosphere, Julie switched on the spike, reducing the gravity drag. Marge noticed that they’d dropped out of orbit earlier than the point where they’d started the other three descents. “Losing weight isn’t the same as losing mass,” Julie explained. “We’re still carrying a load, and we need more space to get down.”

There were a few clouds over the area, and she didn’t see the shoreline until they were directly over it. Then they raced inland, over rolling hills and, finally, the forest. The omega had set, and the eastern sky was beginning to brighten.

Julie eased the vehicle down among the cluster of trees where they’d landed earlier. When her cargo touched the ground she held steady, keeping the weight of the AV3 off it. “Okay, Bill,” she said, “release the package.”

Marge felt it come free.

They continued to hover immediately overhead. “Bill,” Julie said, “peel the wrapper.”

Marge watched the tarp protecting the rainmaker fall away. Grapplers took it up and stored it in the cargo bay.

When it was done, Julie banked off to one side so they could see. The chimney was made of ultralight, highly reflective cloth. It was a flexible mirror, and it was virtually invisible.

And that was it for the night. It was getting too close to sunrise to try to do any more. The next day, when they came back, they would bring the helicopter.

The mood has changed. You can’t really miss it. Everywhere you go at night, Goompahs are looking up over their shoulders at the thing in the sky that won’t go away and gets bigger every day. The sense of something deadly, of something supernatural, coming this way has become a palpable part of everyday life here. The streets aren’t as crowded at night as they used to be. And the Goompahs talk in hushed tones, as if they were afraid the monster overhead might hear them.

It might be that the most disquieting aspect of the thing is that it looks like a squid. The Goompahs are familiar with squids, or with something very like a squid. They’re a delicacy here, as they used to be in some cultures at home. But the Goompahs, like us, are struck by their grasping capabilities, and they, too, find the creatures unsettling. I overheard a group of them today describing an incident that is probably apocryphal, but which they were convinced was true: Someone in a fishing boat was seized by a squid and dragged overboard while his comrades watched, too frightened to assist. Did it really happen? I don’t know. The interesting thing is that the story surfaces just as the time when a celestial squid seems to be coming after the entire Intigo.

Something else has changed: They don’t call it T’Klot anymore. The Hole. It’s become instead T’Elan. The Thing. The Nameless.

— Digger Dunn, Journal

Thursday, December 4

On board the Hawksbill.

Friday, December 5.

KELLIE COLLIER WASN’T comfortable with Dave Collingdale. He never laughed, never eased up. He sat beside her on the bridge, staring at the images of the cloud in stony silence.

“We never took the clouds seriously,” she said finally, trying to start a conversation. “People who think we can just ignore them and they’ll go away should come out here and take a look at one close up.”

“I know.” And he just sat there.

She asked him an innocuous question about the flight out, but that didn’t go well either.

He turned aside every effort to lighten the atmosphere. Ask him how things were going, and he told you the position of the cloud. Ask how he was feeling, and he told you how he was going to enjoy doing it to the cloud.

Doing it to the cloud.

She got the sense that he would have used stronger terminology had she been a male.

But however he might have said it, it carried the clear implication that the cloud was alive.

“I am going to get it,” he said.

Not decoy it.

Not turn it aside.

Get it.

THERE WAS AN industrial-sized projector mounted on the belly of the Hawksbill and a twin unit housed in the shuttle. Hutch, who had apparently thought up this whole idea, had warned her that the Hawksbill was the wrong shape for working around omegas, and she was sorry but they’d needed to pack so much stuff on board there’d been no help for that. Keep your distance, Hutch had said. Watch out.

She intended to.

The jets boiling off the cloud’s surface raced thousands of kilometers ahead of it. The omega was coming in from slightly above the plane of the system, so most of its upper surface was in shadow. She’d arced around and come in from the rear. They were three hundred kilometers above the cloud. The mist stretched to the horizon in all directions. It was quiet, placid, attractive. And there was an illusion, quite compelling, that there was a solid surface just beneath. That one could have walked on it.

“How big is it, Bill?” she asked. “Upper surface area?”

“Eighty-nine billion square kilometers, Kellie.” Seventy-five hundred times the size of the NAU, which combined the old United States and Canada. “This is a good time to launch the monitors.”

“Do it.”

There were six of them, packages of sensors and scopes that would run with the cloud and keep an eye on it.

Collingdale stood behind her, watching, grunting approvingly as the lamps came on, indicating first that the units were away, and then that they had become operational. “Dave,” she said, “we’ll be ready to go in about ten minutes.”

“Okay,” he said. He took his own chair and brought up an image of the shuttle, waiting in the launch bay with its LCYC projector. The LCYC was a duplicate of the one bolted to the ship’s hull.

Dead ahead, slightly blurred by mist, she could see Lookout. There was just the hint of a disk. And the two moons. Permanently suspended in the omega sky, as though they were just rising.

“When this is over,” he said, the tension suddenly gone from his voice, “I’m going to push to get this problem taken care of. If we organize the right people, make some noise in the media, we can get funding and get the research under way.”

“To get rid of these things, you mean?”

“Of course. Nobody’s serious. But that’s going to change when I get home.” He looked down at the cloudscape.

They were moving faster than the omega, and as she watched they swept out over the horizon, and it fell away. But it was still braking, and the vast jets thrown forward by the action rolled past her.

“Okay, David,” she said. “Let’s line up.”

She took them down among the jets and set the Hawksbill directly in front of the cloud.

“Electrical activity increasing,” said Bill.

She saw some lightning. “That coming out of the main body?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Bill.

“Directed at us?”

“I believe it is random.”

Collingdale got up again and stood by the viewport. Man couldn’t stay still. “It knows we’re here,” he said.

More illumination flickered through the cloud.

She felt chilled. Wished Digger were there.

“It’s okay,” he said soothingly, apparently sensing her disquiet, but not understanding the reason. “We’re going to be fine.” His eyes were hard, and a smile played at the corners of his lips. He’s enjoying this.

“I need you to sit down and belt in, David,” she said. “Maneuver coming up.”

He tapped the viewport as if, yes, everything was indeed under control, and resumed his seat.

She didn’t like being so close to the damned thing. She could very nearly have reached out the airlock and stuck an arm into one of the jets.

“Range approaching 250,” said Bill.

“Match velocity.”

The retros fired. The same technology that provided artificial gravity served to damp the effects of maneuvering. But they still existed, and for about twenty seconds her body pushed against the forward restraints. Then the pressure eased.

“Done,” said Bill.

The problem for Kellie was to find adequate operating space away from the plumes. He waited with studied patience while she did so.

“Bill,” she said, “begin relaying data to Jenkins.” Just in case. Bill confirmed, and she turned to Collingdale. “Dave, we are ready to launch the shuttle.”

THE LCYC PROJECTORS were industrial units with a variety of uses, ranging from entertainment to environmental and architectural planning. They were configured, when used in tandem, to create a larger, more clearly defined image than either could have done alone.

The shuttle left the ship and moved out to a range of seven hundred kilometers, where it assumed a parallel course with the Hawksbill.

“In position,” said Bill.