It looked convincing, even to them.
The hull continued to make torsion sounds. They were genuinely trapped, and genuinely frightened.
•
The two missiles were beginning to diverge from each other and from the Charles Manson, but only to a degree which had been calculated. The lenses in their nosecones swept the same area of Horus 4’s horizon as did Foord and the others back on the Charles Manson, but without any accompanying thoughts. They were simultaneously focussed and shortsighted. Apart from the lenses, the missiles were inert. Their drives and warheads were dead, and they had no communication with the Charles Manson and no knowledge or memory of its existence. They were beyond its contact or control; instruments of themselves.
They had no life, and would have none until She appeared. Then, their life would flare and die. It would begin and end almost simultaneously, with the performance of a very specific task.
They seemed ill-equipped for it. They were small and quite primitive. Against Her many and mysterious abilities, they were like a pair of claw-hammers. And where they floated, they were at the focus of another If: If they managed to stay unnoticed by Her. Because if, at any time, She did notice them…
•
“Nine hours to the high point,” Kaang reported.
A long, dead time. The engagement had congealed around Horus 4, producing a minor planetary system. Horus 4 now had a new, silver, artificial moon orbiting it, one which it might later destroy like the others, and that moon itself had two smaller moons, dark and inert; and there was another moon, even more unreadable than Horus 4, which would soon rise above the planet’s horizon. Until it did, the new planetary system was almost stable; quiet and balanced and Newtonian.
Foord was beginning to wonder, idly, if he’d rather see the missiles damage Her than destroy Her—it would open Her up, you could learn things about Her—when, like a polite tap on his shoulder, every alarm on the Bridge started murmuring discreetly, and Thahl said “Object approaching, Commander. Look at the screen, please.”
Foord wondered then whether She too had a sense of irony. For what rose over the horizon of Horus 4 was not Her, but a small silvery object. A pyramid.
On the Bridge screen, local magnification showed it tumbling end over end, but in a slower and somewhat more stately way than the pink cone She had sent them in the Belt. It was much smaller than the pyramid at CQ-504, in fact only about the size of a small lifeboat. It was featureless, and appeared to have no drive emissions, but it was headed in their direction.
“The dimensions along its base and sides have exactly the same proportions as the one in the Belt,” Thahl said.
Foord nodded, unsurprised. “Anything else?”
“Our probes get only surface readings, like the one in the Belt. If we trace back along its trajectory we get to 11-15-13, where we think it was launched. That’s also where we estimate She would be, at Her present rate of slowing.”
They paused, and studied it. Thahl’s expression was unreadable. Smithson snorted and muttered something about Cylinders, Ovoids, Pink Cones, and Now Fucking Pyramids. Cyr laughed unpleasantly, a laugh that Foord knew and didn’t like; it made her ugly.
“Ignore it again?” Smithson ventured.
“Yes,” Foord said, “ignore it. And we know what it’s going to do next, don’t we?”
It passed them by, exactly as they had done to its larger relative back in the Belt, and with exactly the same precision. It described a careful semicircle around them, so careful that at any given point it was the same distance from them. Then it plunged down into the face of Horus 4. It flared briefly, not from atmospheric friction—Horus 4 had no atmosphere; that too had been destroyed by gravity—but from the friction of being compressed down to nothing, to not even a smear. That was the last they saw and heard from Her of pyramids.
“So what was that about, Thahl?”
“Perhaps She was telling you something, Commander.”
“Kaang, how long to the high point of the orbit?”
“Seven hours, Commander.”
“Thank you…Telling me something, Thahl?”
“About how we ignored the pyramid at the Belt.”
“And what do you think She was telling you, Thahl?”
“Commander?”
“You’re the only one on board”—he’d been about to say The only one of Us, but caught himself just in time—“who might know what She is.”
The Bridge was already silent, otherwise it would have fallen silent then. Thahl paused a long time before replying.
“I know what Srahr said She is, Commander.”
“And what Srahr said She is, would it…”
“Affect this mission? No. And if it—”
“If it did, you’d tell me?”
“Of course I’d tell you, Commander. Why are you asking all this now?”
“You’re a Sakhran, but you’re also First Officer. Deputy Commander of my ship. Which comes first?”
“The ship does, Commander.”
“Which ship?”
“This one, Commander. You know I meant this one.” Thahl was not angry, but reproachful.
What made me suddenly ask him all that? thought Foord. Then the alarms started murmuring, differently this time. Different alarms for different events. Monitor displays, dark since She cut Her drives, lit up again. Foord whirled round to look at the Bridge screen
“She’s here, Commander,” Kaang said softly
and saw Her.
•
Slowly, and apparently with caution, She rose over the horizon of Horus 4
Her position, said the Bridge screen, was 8-7-12; close to where they expected, far enough from Horus 4 to avoid its gravity, and not yet close enough to be seen by the missiles. The Bridge screen, unasked, shuffled filters and switched to local magnification. She was a slender silver delta like the Charles Manson, but the proportions differed; Her length was about eight percent less than theirs, and Her maximum width, at the stern, about eleven percent less. Her surface had interlocking hull-plates, like theirs but smaller; the size of scales on Sakhran skin. The contours of Her hull were covered in small ports and slitted windows and apertures, but there was no light or movement behind any of them.
They had seen images of Her before, on recordings. They knew Her dimensions, knew what She would look like from every angle, and knew Her shape would be like theirs. But all that was before they had actually seen Her. None of it mattered, now.
They watched Her in a silence which grew around and between them, neither joining nor separating them. This time, they knew they shared the same thought. She’s brought more than just Herself to face us here, She’s brought a universe.
Foord went away somewhere on his own. They all did. And a few miles and a universe away, She noticed; and waited for them.
•
The Charles Manson, Thahl told himself, had simple lines which were visibly curved or straight; Hers were neither. The Charles Manson had a simple, recognisable geometry with an inside and outside, ending at the outside; Her geometry was different. She began at the outside.