Two of the energy mirrors in Helion's field of vision lit up with images. One showed, against a starry field, the foreshortened view of a blade of dark gold, with a brilliant fire before it like a small sun.
The rate-of-change figures were astonishing. The object was on a path from transjovial space, normally a two- or three-day voyage. This ship had crossed that distance in under five hours.
This was the Phoenix Exultant, her drives before her, her prow pointed away, decelerating. There seemed to be a halo of lightning around her; charged particles emitted by the sun were being deflected by her hull armor, and the ship had such velocity, and solar space was so thick with particles, that the Phoenix Exultant, flying through a vacuum, was creating a wake. Views to either side, in other color schemes, showed other bands of radiation, diagrams of projected paths.
The Phoenix was descending into the sun. The other mirror that had lit displayed a figure in black armor, the faceplate opened to reveal a lined, harsh, gray-eyed face.
Helion said, "What is this apparition from the past, who comes now so boldly past my doors and wards? By what right do you interrupt where I have asked for privacy, you who wear a face out of forgotten bloody history?"
A slight tension around the corners of the mouth might have been a smile or a grimace of impatience. "This is my own face, sir."
"Good heavens! Atkins?! Have they allowed someone like you to live again?! That means ..."
Daphne said softly: "It means war. 'War and bloodshed, terror and fear; the wailing of widows, the clash of the spear ...'"
Atkins said: "I've never been away, sir. I don't know why you people think I vanish just because you don't need me." He gave an imperceptible movement of a shoulder; his version of a shrug. "No matter. I'm interrupting to tell you you're in grave danger and to ask you to cooperate. There may be a Silent Oecumene thinking machine, called the Nothing Sophotech, hidden inside the sun. We don't know what kind of vehicle or equipment or weaponry it has. So far, Silent Oecumene technology has proven able to introduce signals into the shielded interior of circuits, by either teleporting through, or creating electric charges out of, the base-vacuum rest state. We think they can do this for other particle types as well, and we don't know their range and limitations. The last solar storm, the one that killed the previous Helion, was created and directed by their technology. The Silent Ones are in a position to seize control of the Solar Array. If they do that, especially during the Transcendence, when everyone's brains will be linked up to an interplanetary communication web ... well, you can imagine the results.
From the Array, they could induce prominences to destroy Vafnir's counterterragenesis stations at Mercury Forward Equilateral, crippling our antimatter supplies at the same time. In any case, I'd like to ask you to cooperate. ..."
"I know you from old, Captain Atkins. Or is it 'Marshal' now? You want me to stay here, in harm's way, until the enemy commits himself. Then when he reveals himself by striking at me, you promise to avenge my death by utterly annihilating him, is that it? I do not recall that your somewhat Pyrrhic strategy of winning was all that successful at New Kiev, was it?"
"I'm not going to debate old battles with you, sir. But the Earthmind told me you might cooperate. I told her I was sick of trying to deal with you people who do not seem to understand that sometimes, when the cold facts demand it, you have to risk your life or give your life to win the battle. Since you remember me, Helion, you remember why I say that."
There was something very cold in his tone of voice. Daphne looked back and forth between these two eldest men, wondering what past was between them.
Helion's expression softened. "I remember the kind of sacrifices you were willing to make, Captain Atkins." His expression grew distant, thoughtful. "It is odd. You also stand your ground when everyone else runs away to save themselves, I suppose. We may be more alike than I supposed. What a frightening thought!"
"Are you all done kidding around there, sir, or do you want to help?"
Helion straightened. "I will not desert my Oecumene or my post. Tell me what service I can perform for you. Though I think I can guess...."
"Don't bother guessing. I'll tell you. Phaethon is about to dock that monster ship he's flying at your number six Equatorial Main two-fifty. It's the only place big enough for the Phoenix Exultant"
"You need to give me more time. I have to use my field generators to create a sunspot underneath you as you descend, a cooler area, with a helmet streamer to create a flow of cooler plasma, a stream the Phoenix can follow to come down here to my dock."
"Don't bother. Phaethon says the Phoenix Exultant can descend through the corona without damage. But once we dock, I want you to provision him with what he needs: you can spare the antimatter, I take it?"
"I can spare it," said Helion wryly. His Array controlled thousands of masses of antimatter the size of gas giants.
"And give him your latest intelligence on submantle conditions. The Nothing Sophotech must know we're coming; Earthmind thinks the approach of the Phoenix might tempt the Nothing to show itself. It will probably try to corrupt your whole Array and take control of you personally, if it hasn't already done so." "It has not, to my knowledge." "That doesn't mean much, in this day and age. The other thing I want you to do is direct as many deep probes as you can toward the solar core, to see if we can find any echotrace of the Silent Oecumene ship. All we have right now is a location; we don't know size or what else is there. Also, examine your record to see if any suspicious astronomical bodies fell into the sun in any place your sensors could have seen."
"What else?"
"You stay up top while the Phoenix goes down through the chromosphere into the radiative layer of the core, where the enemy is hiding. You will act as our sounding station, and meteorological eyes-up."
"With no one to help me? It seems a little odd, on a day when everyone else is celebrating, not to sound a universal alarm and call to arms?"
"I think so, too. But the Nothing, smart as it is, may not know how much we know, and if it thinks the Transcendence is going to go off as usual, it may hold its fire until everyone is linked up into one big helpless Transcendent mind. Got it? I don't want to set off the alarm if that will make the Nothing set off its biggest guns."
Helion was silent, thoughtful.
Atkins said, "Well? That's what I want from you. You have a problem with any of this?"
"I have no doubts or reservations. You are not the only one who knows what the word 'duty' means, Captain Atkins."
"Great. And just between you and me, since you're in such a giving mood today ..."
"Yes ... ?"
"Say you're sorry to your kid. He's been moping around ever since we set course for the sun, and it's getting on my nerves. I mean, it would be good for morale."
With another segment of his mind, Helion made contact with his lawyer and accountant subroutines. Aloud, he said, "Very well! You may tell my son, by way of apology, that, by the time he docks at number six, his debts will be cleared, his title reinstated, and the ship he is in shall belong to him once more."
Helion came out of the place still called an air lock, even though it included transformation surgeries, noumenal transfer pools, body shops, neural prosthetics manufactories, and other functions needed to adapt a visitor to the physical environment and mental format of the Phoenix Exultant. This air lock was housed amidships, projecting inward from the hull nine hundred feet, a direction that was, at the moment "down," and surrounded by other housings and machines, all looming like the skyscrapers of some ancient city turned on its head.
Phaethon stood not far away, on a walkway that ran from upside-down rooftop to upside-down rooftop. Behind him, underfoot, far below the fragile railing, rested the fuel cells of the Phoenix Exultant. These cells reached away to each side beyond sight, like an endless beehive of interlocking pyramids, each with a ball of luminous metallic ice at its center.