This is a fan translation of The Missing Link (Недостаяющее звено) by Mikhail Akhmanov, currently only available in Russian and, because of the author's passing in 2019, unlikely to ever be published in English. This is the third book in a series called Trevelyan's Mission (Миссия Тревельяна), which is a spin-off from the author's Arrivals from the Dark (Пришедшие из мрака) six-book series.

I claim no rights to the contents herein.

Note: Footnotes are located at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 3

Silmarri

The Silmarri were a unique race, not so much mysterious as incomprehensible and also, unlike all the other races, utterly lacking in a homeworld, planetary colonies, manmade tools, language, or even that which every other sentient culture considered their history. History was a vessel in the ocean of time; its path from one fact to the next, from one event to another assumes a counting of the years, centuries, or millennia passed, as without the support of dates, the real past turned into myth, a chaos of legends and fables, the indistinct muttering of a voiceless singer. The currents of time carried the ship of history, the waves propped it up, swayed, spun around, and everyone knew that without this mobile environment that connected the past to the future, there was no ship or any other floating vessel that could save the memories from before. It seemed that the Silmarri didn't have them, just like the concept of time.

In the words of the Kni'lina sage Yezdan the Gray-eyed, "One who casts no shadow of his own stands near towers whose shadows are dark and long."

Even after a thousand years of traveling among the stars, the galaxy still hadn't become an open book for humankind. This disk with a dense central core and three spiral branches that consisted of over a hundred billion stars seemed too large, too immense: a hundred kiloparsecs across and two kiloparsecs thick. No civilization—except for, perhaps, the ancient Daskins—had learned how deep the abyss between the branches was, how hot the flames burning in the galactic core was, and what awaited a traveler who managed to reach the distant globular star clusters and the Magellanic Clouds. Maybe those distant worlds were inhabited, but who possessed them, whose ships prowled the Great Emptiness?

Fortunately—or maybe unfortunately—the grim predictions of ancient astrophysicists about the uniqueness of intelligent life in the universe had been proven to be false, as intelligence was, if not a ubiquitous phenomenon in the galaxy, then still one that was fairly frequent and commonplace. Its bearers varied in appearance, their physiology could be strange or familiar to humans, their metabolism could be similar or distinct; some fit the humanoid type, while others looked like humans only externally, and yet others had evolved from alien lizards, birds, warm-blooded predators, or aquatic beings and could thus hardly be suspected of having kinship to humanoids.

The history, traditions, and lifestyle of these creatures seemed just as different as their appearance. Humans knew almost nothing about the Ancients, the mysterious Daskins who'd been the overlords of the galaxy millions of years ago, even though the fact of their existence was never in doubt. After departing, they'd left behind certain artifacts to the younger races: the contour drive, a star chart called the Daskin Portolan, a network of subspace tunnels, and the memory of their power. The Lo'ona Aeo weren't as ancient as the Daskins, but they were still of a venerable age, having gone through the childish craving for power and self-affirmation; now that peace-loving and wealthy culture did their best to avoid war and conquest, preferring to engage in trade instead. While they didn't let aliens into their space cities, they still interacted actively with other worlds through the use of their Serv biorobots, giant transport ships, and intermediary races. While their appearance was in many way similar to human, or maybe elvish, they weren't actually humanoid. They communicated with one another telepathically, had four sexes, and reproduced via mental conjugation [Footnote 1]. Metamorphs, another wise ancient race, were able to change the shape of their bodies, never warred or traded with anyone, never settled other planets, instead protecting their homeworld from aggression by keeping its coordinates a great secret. No one had ever been to their star system, lost among the myriad of suns, but all the advanced races knew about their observers, as Metamorph emissaries, who were virtually indistinguishable from the natives, were located on almost every starfaring race's homeworld. They were harmless, as long as the race under their supervision did not exhibit excessive activity, such as attempting to establish hegemony over a large part of space. In such cases there was always another race with the same goals, so the inevitable clash extinguished the ambitions of the rivals and sometimes all life on their planets as well. Metamorphs, great craftsmen of intrigues and behind-the-scenes struggles, played the role of the stabilizing factor in the galaxy.

Obviously, there was a dire necessity in that. Unlike the Lo'ona Aeo, the Metamorphs, and the benevolent Paraprims, the younger races did not strive for intellectual excellence, instead going for interstellar expansion, taking more and more systems, colonizing planets, growing their combat capabilities, and multiplying quickly and uncontrollably. The galaxy was far from being a field for peaceful contacts, exchanges of cultural achievement and assistance, which the sages from the stars could offer their less advanced brethren — all that were merely beautiful illusions produced by the dreams of humanists and were as tenuous as a desert mirage. In reality, any race that had mastered the technology for moving through Limbo spread out around their home planet for one or two hundred light years in all directions, created a star empire (or a sector of influence, to use the commonly-accepted galactic terminology), and, inevitably, sooner or later, clashed with its rivals. The reasons for such conflicts varied and were dictated by physiology, social order, and past experience of every civilization. The Dromi, who had evolved from lizards, had an extremely high rate of reproduction, so the demographic pressure forced them to constantly engage in territorial conquest. The Haptors and the Kni'lina, both of which were humanoid races, thought of themselves as the pinnacle of all creation; encounters with other humanoids, like humans, was a shock to such proud and egocentric beings. Their first reaction was unpleasant surprise, followed by outright hatred, and finally an attempt to destroy those whose appearance looked like God's or Creation's mockery to them. The Faata, whose genotype was incredibly similar to that of humankind, had survived destructive catastrophes in the past, so they believed that settling hundreds of worlds and subjugating their inhabitants was the best way to prevent any future collapse. Nonhumanoid races like the Llyano and the Aich, had their own causes for confrontations; for example, some thought that the human appearance was ugly, their habits were vile, and their intelligence was highly dubious.

The club of star empires, the society of the chosen, respected strength most of all, and any new member had to prove the might of its civilization, its cohesion under external threats, its ability to respond blow for blow, and its determination to go to the end, no matter how horrible it may seem. And so Earth had fought. They'd fought the Faata, whose giant starship invaded the Solar System and was destroyed in the icy wasteland of the Antarctic, fought them again far from Earth, at Beta and Gamma Malleus, fought them deep in the Void, and those battles lasted for almost three hundred years. Then came the turn of the Dromi, the Haptors, the Kni'lina… The Earth Federation had been growing for seven centuries, getting stronger under the glint of plasma throwers and annihilators, defeating its enemies and turning them into, if not friends or allies, then at least into neighbors recognizing Earth as an equal rival that was dangerous to provoke. No one in the galaxy had any friends, and the very concept of "friendship", one that was highly vague and unclear, was substituted for something more concrete: similar interests, mutual benefit, armed neutrality. Even the Lo'ona Aeo, who had maintained peaceful relations with Earth for a millennium or so, were not friends to humans, more like trade partners. And those who hired on to serve as their mercenaries saw them as masters. Although, to be fair, they were honest and generous masters.

For the past three hundred years, the part of the galaxy known on Earth as the Orion Arm enjoyed peace and relative calm. The Faata, who were native to the Perseus Arm, weren't attempting to cross the Void and enact revenge for their defeat; the Dromi were regulating their numbers and, instead of annexing alien worlds, were adapting the cold planets of red stars to their needs; the Haptors and the Kni'lina, having sobered up a little after the recent bloody fights, had strengthened their diplomatic relations with Earth and agreed to joint projects, such as creating mixed colonies, research expeditions, and charity missions. The latter ones were under the purview of the FDAC, a human institution that protected cultures that hadn't yet reached the Kinnison threshold [Footnote 2] and were pre-technological. There weren't that many of them, but not few either, about one in two hundred G-type stars (like Sol), as well as in red giant and binary star systems (although intelligent life there, or life in general, was highly exotic and rare). Geliri and Highmore, Pta and Sella, Saikat and Osier, Inferno and Pink Smoke, Sakura and Trini, Elsinore and Terbordla… On some worlds, the inhabitants were already forging iron swords and plows and going on journeys aboard sailing ships, others didn't have any alloys stronger than bronze and ships better than canoes, and yet others had savages killing their prey with rocks and burnt sticks. Such planets and their natives were considered to be under the patronage of the Foundation, which liked to involve Haptors, Kni'lina, and all the technological races prepared to help this noble task with specialists, funding, and equipment. As for the races themselves, their governing bodies, sociology, culture, philosophy, traditions, sectors of influence, industrial and combat capabilities, the Foundation stayed away from these problems, preferring to leave them to university scholars and experts in Star Fleet intelligence.

However, the Silmarri weren't one of the primitive tribes and, at the same time, were not on the list of the technological races either. If one understood technology to be machines made of plastic and metal, various industries on planets and in space, armies of robots, resource mining, power plants, computers, and holoprojectors, then the Silmarri lacked any such artifacts. They also had no planets to serve as their permanent or temporary shelter, no centers of science and culture, no governing bodies, homes, or cities; there wasn't even a part of space that could be seen as their home. They were eternal wanderers, who crossed the Milky Way from one end to the other, the sole example of a nomadic civilization that had no attachment to planets or stars, one that was self-sufficient, mobile, and rejecting interactions with the world of the sentient beings, the sedentary inhabitants of the galaxy. Perhaps they didn't even perceive these creatures to be living beings, more like something akin to a natural phenomenon, dangerous or deadly, like a star's hard radiation, magnetic storms, black holes, or an asteroid swarm. The idea that someone could rule over a part of the Great Emptiness, to lay down a border, to infringe on the right of movement, was incomprehensible and alien to them; they flew everywhere, avoiding only trade routes and inhabited planets. They defended themselves if attacked, but would never strike first, even their enemies, ones who hated them, feared them, and interfered with their free movement. They were treated differently by the other races: the Lo'ona Aeo respected them, considering them to be a harmless ancient race; the humans, Haptors, Kni'lina, and Teruxi tried not to bother them (although, out of curiosity, observed their migrations along the Orion Arm); the Dromi and the Bino Faata feuded with them, and the roots of that feud reached far into the distant past.

Silmarri ships, which looked like shapeless clumps of gray clay, were living spaceborne beings; they were probably the first lifeforms to appear at the dawn of time in gas clouds, even before the formation of the stars. The issue of their intelligence remained open, but there was no doubt that the presence of the Silmarri animated them, as the ship and the crew was a sentient being. This symbiosis had no exceptions; the Silmarri lived within each ship, forming a family unit with it that existed for thousands or even millions of years, as long as their unending journey went on. Human specialists had many theories on their origins, and some believed that this race was a parasite that appeared in the ship's giant body and, after a long process of evolution, reached the threshold of intelligence. But to the rest of the galaxy their minds were incomprehensible and alien.

The appearance of the Silmarri did not help mutual understanding either. They looked like enormous whitish worms capable of stretching their bodies out to ten-fifteen meters, lacking in any limbs or, very likely, visual or auditory senses. Their tactile and psychic perception of the world made conversations with them a difficult task, even when they were willing to talk to someone. They didn't need much to live: a temperature between negative forty and sixty Centigrade, an oxygen-nitrogen mix with the atmospheric pressure of one-fifth of Earth's, and water that has been enriched with microscopic organics. Water vapors and microorganisms in the breathing mix were their food and were absorbed through the skin.

The nomads of space, which was what others called them. Without a doubt, the Silmarri had adapted to life in the Great Emptiness much better than the other galactic races. To all other sentients the Emptiness was a cold, dark, and long journey that led from one shelter to another, a barren desert that lay between planets and stars, but to the Silmarri it was home, or more like a hospitable manor, where they could go for a stroll, pick up energy from any star, obtain oxygen and water on a suitable planet, and, upon meeting others like them, exchange news.

But space favored no one. The Great Emptiness was merciless, harsh, and hostile to life, and even the nomads could experience problems in its vastness.

To Trevelyan's surprise, the transport came out to a star after the second jump. While it wasn't impossible for there to be stars in the Void, it was still a rare case — singular, in fact, which was confirmed by the Star Atlas. According to the ancient Hertzsprung—Russell classification [Footnote 3], this star was a red dwarf with the surface temperature of three thousand degrees and luminosity three orders of magnitude less than Sol. Dim, like a dying ember, it could still last for millions of years and warm a planet that was orbiting close to it, closer than Mercury in the Solar System.

Then again, Trevelyan was far less interested in this world and the dying sun than the upcoming encounter with the Silmarri. The exchange of information with them was an incredibly rare occurrence, and, while the transport was moving on grav-drives towards the alien ship, Ivar had a chance to read over all the information on verified interactions. There turned out to be few of them.

In 2125, a unit under the command of Commodore Vrba, an almost legendary individual, encountered a Silmarri ship in Gondwana's system. The Commodore was leading six cruisers and a frigate to the edge of the Void, to Beta and Gamma Malleus, to the worlds that had then belonged to the Faata; it was a counterstrike for their attack on Earth and the destruction of a human flotilla at the Martian orbit. Vrba was undoubtedly in a hurry, but he still sent the frigate to study the strange object, as back then they had known nothing about the Silmarri, except that they existed. Their ship was adrift at the outskirts of the system, and the dormant crew was idle; as was discovered much later, this dormancy was a part of their reproductive process. Xenologists from the frigate entered the ship and examined it, leaving their unique video recordings to their descendants and also immortalizing their own names. Ivan Asenov and Helga Swahn of the Star Fleet Research Corps, Trevelyan recalled, peering into the thousand-year-old recording.

An enormous compartment opened up before him, stretching for hundreds of meters in all directions and illuminated by a weak light; it probably took up the entire volume of the ship. It was filled with thin transparent flexible surfaces that crisscrossed at oblique angles in a chaotic diversity: a maze of a multitude of cells that had no floor, no walls, no ceiling, just framing plates with round openings roughly a meter in diameter. The structure grown by the ship was useful for movement of beings without any limbs, whose bodies could bend in any direction, stretch, and slide from one hole to another, using their edges as supports… Here and there nerve fibers lay along the plate joints, looking like cables made of some dark material, opening in deep bowls like giant tulips, which were the means of interfacing with the ship for the crew. Through the transparent structure that filled the volume and looked as if it was haunted, he could see a central rod that looked as if it had been molded from black plastic — the acceleration shaft, which allowed the ship to submerge into Limbo. A certain biological organ, assuming the ship was alive, but Trevelyan couldn't figure out its metabolism or mechanism, but then neither could any other specialist in the galaxy.

Sighing, he switched to the other messages. During the Third Void War, the Silmarri had been attacked by Faata combat modules and seemed to have requested assistance. At least that was what the captain of the heavy cruiser Chennai decided, since, as always, the Silmarri message had been unintelligible, and it was entirely possibly they simply wanted to destroy as many enemies as possible and die a glorious death. But the Chennai's captain deprived them of this chance by vaporizing a dozen modules. The Silmarri left without contacting the cruiser. Did they know that it was customary to express gratitude for a rescue? Did they even know what gratitude was?..

In 2502, a Silmarri ship entered Jupiter's orbit and began to submerge into its roiling atmosphere. A rescue monitor sent from Callisto was moving on a parallel course, until the Silmarri asked to be left alone. The request was convincing: a plasma pulse across the monitor's stern. Then their vessel disappeared into the Great Red Spot [Footnote 4] and was never seen again.

In the 27th and 28th centuries, the Silmarri occasionally approached human ships, accompanying them during their acceleration, typically away from busy routes, at the outskirts of star sectors or in unclaimed space. There was also a case when the Silmarri asked to be sent an inert organic object necessary to restore their ship's mass. The passenger liner Queen Maud sent a shuttle with twenty tons of artificial protein, after which the Silmarri ship was wrapped in a glow similar to an aurora. Perhaps that was a sign of gratitude, one the captain of the Chennai hadn't received.

What Trevelyan had read and seen only served to incentivize him. Of course, being a FDAC socioxenologist, he studied primitive races, to whom both space and atmospheric flight seemed to be magical, something only done by angels and demons. Social structure dynamics, tribal migration, invasions of relatively civilized nations by barbarian hordes, theosophy and religious rites, the driving passionary impulse, and, finally, the search for analogs in Earth's history, which allowed one to predict events — all these were the problems he'd been dealing with on Osier, Saikat, Highmore, Inferno, Pta, and other worlds. The Silmarri were not his bailiwick and outside the interests of the Foundation, so Ivar wouldn't claim to be gripped by professional curiosity. Just ordinary curiosity.

The Silmarri ship was floating approximately one astronomical unit [Footnote 5] from the local star, and it took the transport ship nearly a full day to reach it. The final hour Trevelyan spent on the bridge, watching a dark spot, illuminated by a scanning beam, slowly grow on the viewscreens. The nearby sun looked like a small red disk from this distance, maybe seven or eight times smaller than Sol.

They approached the Silmarri to 0.1 megameter, and the onboard computer dropped a pair of probes with lights and holocameras. In the beams of the floodlights, the dark mass took on volume and color, now looking like a gray cloud with conical hills poking out here and there. The first probe rounded this structure, and a black crack, clearly a hull breach, appeared on the screen.

A clump of mud, the Commodore noted, gazing at the image through Trevelyan's eyes and the camera in the headband. A clump of mud, and someone has fried it recently. Doesn't look like an annihilator, the hole would've been bigger. Probably got hit with plasma.

"There are no other ships here," Ivar said, glancing at the sensor screen. "Who could they have breen fighting? And where?"

With the Binucks, if they were coming from the Perseus Arm. They could've run into them in the Void. The Faata have to be monitoring their borders.

"But the breach looks fresh and is already healing," Trevelyan objected. In the floodlights, he could see that the regeneration was already underway, as clumps of burnt flesh were spewing out from the crack, its edges were quivering and moving closer together. "I doubt they ran into the Faata, Grandpa. We know their tactics: they would've grabbed onto them like wolves and wouldn't have let go. This is something else!"

Why bother arguing? Just ask them! the Advisor stated and fell silent.

"Ship," Trevelyan called. "Transmit to them that a human vessel is here. Have them tell us what happened, whether they need help, and—"

The communication screen suddenly flared to life, and a scattering of tiny dots appeared in its depth. They were moving, spinning around several centers, trying to form into symbols or images of some kind — it was the work of the galactic code translator, a universal program for communicating with any alien ship.

"Incoming transmission, Emissary," the computer informed him. "As previously, the deciphering process is proving to be difficult."

Worms, what can you do? the Commodore grunted. No arms, no legs, no head, and if they do have any brains, then they're also not normal. This code isn't for them, lad. I spoke too soon… How can you talk to the worms? Can't ask them, can't understand them…

But Trevelyan wasn't losing hope just yet. The Silmarri ship was big, three or four kilometers across, and the materials perused by Ivar stated that these leviathans of space never stopped growing, year after year, century after century. A family cell within such a huge ship could number in a thousand Silmarri, and their collective intelligence was something powerful. If they couldn't understand one another at the level of images and symbols, then there was another way: direct mental contact. But that was an extreme case; diving into an alien brain was an unpleasant, sometimes even dangerous, task.

Another minute passed, and the onboard computer gave up, "There are errors in the code, Emissary. Quality translation is not possible."

"And if I don't care about the quality?" Trevelyan asked, shifting the headband back. There was no reply; clearly such an option made no sense to the computer. Obeying the assistance program and the passenger's order, it had tried to contact the Silmarri, but the flickering dots in the silver depth didn't become any more understandable.

"Shall I send out repair robots and welding torches, Emissary?"

"No." Frowning, Ivar examined the spacious bridge with a single chair, screens, and constellations of holographic lights that were glowing a calming green. "No robots, buddy! This is a biological object, so laser welding is the wrong option. It'll probably be seen as aggression."

"We must render assistance," the computer objected stubbornly. "The object has a hull breach. We need—"

"Shut up," Trevelyan commanded, hid hand sliding through his hair. He scratched his head under the headband, snorted, and said, "I'm accompanied by an AI. Maybe it can figure it out… It has much better semantic circuits and also polyvalent thinking… Link it into the external communication channel."

That's good, the Commodore approved. Our tin can is better than this moron.

"Awaiting your orders, Emissary," the Brain's voice came through the speakers. These sounds, not at all like the dry speech of the onboard computer, were colored by emotion, since the Brain was entirely self-aware. It also understood some emotions; it feared the Commodore and idolized Ivar.

"We've encountered a Silmarri ship," Trevelyan said. "They've requested assistance, but we have no idea what kind and with what. You're on communications. Can you please work as a translator?"

"Working," the Brain informed him tersely. Then a light cylinder flew up above the communication panel, and the symbols of the galactic code appeared within it; they started spinning faster and faster, until they reached a feverish pace. Trevelyan could no longer make out the dark symbols, but he was able to understand by the flashing and the fading of the hologram that it was alternating between sending and receiving data, as the Brain was gathering the necessary statistics. Presumably, the errors made by the Silmarri weren't being repeated exactly, so by comparing the responses it was able to pick out the correct information. At least the part that could be deciphered.

The bastard knows what its doing! the Commodore said approvingly, and at that moment the cylinder stopped spinning. Ivar glanced at the screen, but nothing changed there: the dots were wandering in its silver depth as a swarm of mindless ants.

"The problem cannot be resolved," the AI informed him. "The response has been received, but the likely correctness is low, between thirty and thirty-six percent."

"I'm okay with that," Trevelyan said. "So what's going on?"

"There is no information about the damage or its causes. They would like to know who you are, Emissary. There are circumstances under which they will not accept assistance." The Brain paused, then added, "I hope that I was able to decipher correctly."

Ivar furrowed his brow, "They want to know who I am? I assume they mean my race."

"Yes, Emissary. They keep repeating a term… a strange term…" The Brain seemed to have choked on it, "a root, a knot, a sprout… a five-knotted one, or a being with five sprouts. They are sending an image… this one."

The dots wandering across the screen ran together, joining into something that looked like an inkblot or a starfish as drawn by a child. The star had five beams that were coming out of the central blot: two long ones, two shorter, and one thick and round. Trevelyan was staring at the mysterious picture with some confusion.

"Five-knotted… hmm… So what do you think this means?"

"Unable to interpret, Emissary."

"Really?" Ivar frowned. "Grandpa, what do you say?"

I'll say that you need to get your brains checked. Use your head, lad! The picture shows what the worms don't have: two arms, two legs, and a head. It's a humanoid, in their perception, of course. And if they've come from the other side of the Void, then this isn't just a humanoid, it's…

"…a Faata," Trevelyan finished. "Their enemy, and they can't accept assistance from an enemy. Definitely not! It would be humiliating!" He stared at the cylinder glowing over the panel, reflecting on the fact that all sentient beings seemed to have pride, even the strange beings that lived inside space leviathans.

The Brain's voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Your instructions, Emissary?"

Ivar turned to the "starfish" image.

"Send the picture back along with the coordinates of the Solar System. They understand the galactic code, so they'll figure out the coordinates and realize where we came from. Then keep repeating the question: What assistance is required? Keep at it until you're able to decipher their messages."

Dark symbols once again began to float and spin in the column of light over the transmitter. Trevelyan was watching them and squinting in thought; the temptation to peer inside the Silmarri ship was gnawing at him. To send the probe into that black crack before it closed, get inside, and look at the maze of cells, the chaos of transparent surfaces, the huge whitish bodies sliding from one opening to another, the flower-like bowls at nerve endings, and the elongated rod of the drive… The temptation was great; no one but Helga Swahn and Ivan Asenov, ancient xenologists, had seen this view, plus they also hadn't observed the crew in an active phase.

Sighing, Trevelyan shook his head, getting rid of the obsession. Caution had won out over curiosity; he knew that the distance from an uninvited guest to an enemy was shorter than a hair's length.

The Brain's voice came on again, "They need water, Emissary, lots of water. They now know that you're a different five-knotted one, not like the ones that live beyond the Void. They're requesting assistance."

"Five-knotted one…" Trevelyan muttered. "A good definition for humanoids! Although, to be fair, there are a lot more than five knots… the nose, ears, fingers, toes, and something else…" He grinned and said, "It seems you're now able to understand them better. Good job!"

"My merit in this is slight. These creatures learn quickly."

"Fine. Tell them that I'll be sending a container full of water."

I gave the order to the onboard computer, and the quadplane floated out of the airlock and headed aft, towards the water cisterns. The last of the long chain of them had been undocked, the quadplane got behind it and pushed the cistern towards the Silmarri ship. Turning to the side screen, Ivar watched it move away, blinking a red light. The computer sent out another probe that was flying alongside it and illuminating with its floodlights.

There's no point, the Commodore noted. The worms don't have any eyes.

Nodding in agreement, Trevelyan, walked between the controls and the captain's chair. The bridge was spacious, thirty-four paces wide, and the lack of people made that distance almost endless. These Silmarri, he was thinking, seemed to incomprehensible, so strange… But, ultimately, everything depended on habits, upbringing, and point of view. And, of course, on physiology and a race's technological level… What would those worms say if they knew that this enormous ship only had a single being aboard, a certain xenologist named Ivar Trevelyan? One living being, two artificial intelligences, the soul of a dead man on a memory crystal, and three hundred holographic portraits, whose purpose was to alleviate the traveler's boredom… It would probably seem strange to them too.

The cistern got close to the Silmarri ship. One of the conical hills on its surface started to stretch out into a long tentacle, its end opened in a toothless maw that gripped one end of the cistern. It seemed that the maw was about to swallow it up, but a minute or two passed, and the water tank, presumably now empty, was tossed aside.

"Swallowed up. Find out if it's enough," Ivar said, glancing at the screens.

Dark symbols once more spun around in the column of light.

"This is sufficient," the cryogenic intelligence informed him. "They pass on their thanks."

"Can't make a coat out of thanks. Ask them if they can share some information."

"What sort of information?" the Brain inquired a second later.

"I want to know where they're coming from and who attacked them. I can see the result of the attack, that hole with burned edges in the hull. Were they fighting the Faata?"

"This will require time, Emissary Trevelyan. The message is a complex one."

The light cylinder over the transmitter panel flared brighter, then its sheen dimmed, turning into something that looked like a smoldering discharge. Flare, dimming, light, darkness… They were alternating in a rapid jerky rhythm, indicating that the Brain was conversing with the Silmarri, trying to relay Ivar's questions and understand the answers. It seemed that it wasn't easy, as the rate of exchange was growing, and soon the flashes of light merged into a barely noticeable flickering.

"Emissary, I have completed the deciphering process in general terms." There was obvious jubilation in the Brain's voice. "They are coming from the other side of the Void. Such journeys are called… there is no adequate term, I am unable to provide a precise translation. Probably something that has to do with their physiology or emotional state… The journey has drained their supplies of moisture that is necessary for the ship and the beings inhabiting it. They have come to this star system and noticed that the world near the red giant is uninhabited and is abundant in water. In such cases, they descend to the planetary surface and refill… no adequate term, probably resources or supplies. They attempted to do that, descended over the ocean, but then were suddenly attacked. Using high-temperature plasma. The source is unknown, possibly a natural discharge or an artificial formation. Returning to space, they transmitted a request for assistance and began to wait for the ship to heal the wound. The ship was severely damaged, and without water the regeneration process is very slow. They could have died."

"Is that all?"

"Yes, Emissary. Now they are leaving."

"Interesting!.." Trevelyan dragged out, then headed for the chair in front of the viewscreen and sat in it.

The Silmarri ship, looking like a cloud of gray ash, was suddenly illuminated with an iridescent glow. White, pink, purple bands were flowing and undulating around it as if an aurora, like sails or banners fluttering from an unseen wind that was blowing from the cosmic darkness; the colors were shimmering, the white opal hue was transitioning to a crimson ruby, then to a sparkling amethyst sheen and the matte depth of black pearl. It was all so unexpected, so beautiful! Trevelyan sighed in awe, while the Commodore grunted, What's up with the illumination?

"Probably gratitude. This was also seen by the people aboard one of our liners after they shared artificial organics with the Silmarri… the Queen Maud on her flight from Earth to High Mountain…" Trevelyan slapped the armrest of the chair. "Ship! Are you recording this?"

"Yes, Emissary. Shall we return to our original route?"

"No, no need to rush." Squinting, Ivar watched the Silmarri space habitat dim the glow and melt away on the viewscreen. "Bring the probes back and go adrift." He threw a glance at the heading indicator. "We're about 1 AU from the star… this orbit will work. I trust you've scanned the star and the planetoid?"

"Naturally, Emissary. Standard procedure. The data has been prepared for the Star Atlas."

"Put it up on the screen."

The information on the star, gathered by the ship's sensors, was brief. M-type red dwarf, surface temperature: three thousand Kelvin, mass: 0.17 of Sol. Despite the modest size and low luminosity, the star continued to warm its only world, which was colder than Earth, but not by much. It had an oxygen atmosphere, a reasonably deep ocean, a large main landmass, and two huge islands that were themselves almost continents. The planet's axial tilt was 1.5 degrees, its period of revolution was 47.3 hours, its orbital period was 176 days, so its year was almost the same as that of Earth. Its mass was 0.78 of Earth, the diameter was 11,210 kilometers, its density was 4.8, while the distance to the star was 0.32 AU.

"A suitable little planet," Trevelyan muttered after reading the data.

It is, the ghostly Advisor agreed. Especially for a secret Faata base near our borders. So what are we going to do?

They exchanged glanced, mentally, of course. In life, Commodore Olaf Peter Carlos Trevelyan-Krasnogortsev had been a brave man, an excellent strategist, and a daring gambler; his descendant Ivar Trevelyan inherited his ancestor's passion for adventure and love for dangerous games. They often understood one another without words, but in this case they still needed to discuss the disposition.

"We have to scout it out," Trevelyan said. "True, the situation on Inferno is serious, but three or four days aren't going to make a difference. Again, we have to understand was serious is. If there are Faata hiding here…"

…then screw Inferno! the Commodore finished. Earth Federation security always has top priority!

"So we're going then?"

We have to, lad.

"But let's leave the transport in orbit. We'll take a quadplane."

Just make sure it's well armed.

"We don't have any weapons aboard."

There are mining lasers for Inferno. We can attach one to that cuttlefish… what do you call it?.. quadplane?..

"We can. We also need food, a blaster, a grav-glider, and a field kit."

Also a vac suit. Do we have any combat ones?

"No. We have a biotic skin for muscular enhancement and a shell [Footnote 6]."

Bring the shell, it's more reliable.

"We'll have to bring the Brain too.

That tin can? Why?

Trevelyan scratched his head.

"I know many languages, but not Faata'liu [Footnote 7]. There's no point in studying it, since you need either throat surgery or a special translator. If we take a prisoner, we'll need an interpreter."

Fine. Agreed. Let the tin can come too.

Contacting the onboard computer, Ivar had it prepare a quadplane and to remain in its current orbit. Then he rose, stepped down from the dais, exited into the hallway, and headed for Anna Kay's portrait.

"I'm going to leave you for a short while, girl."

"Have we arrived to Ravana already, Ivar?"

"No, we're loitering in the Void near some star. I need to inspect the planet circling it."

Hearing about an inspection, the gloomy lady from the neighboring portrait livened and opened her mouth to give unbidden advice, but Trevelyan touched the frame and shut her off. He was looking at Anna's pretty face, she was looking at him, and both were smiling. Then the girl said, "Come back to me quickly, Ivar. I'll miss you."

"Three or four days, my beauty, it shouldn't take longer than that. Three or four days…"

Saying goodbye, he raised his hand and smiled at her for the last time.

Footnotes

1) Conjugation is a sexual process involving a temporary joining of individuals of different sexes and an exchange of chromosomes and cytoplasm. On Earth this behavior can be observes among ciliates.

2) When deciding whether to advance the development of a particular alien culture, the FDAC makes use of a theory developed by Kinnison, a theoretician and one of the Foundation's prominent figures in the 28th century. Kinnison proved that successful influence is only possible on primitive cultures that haven't yet entered the medieval stage of development. Attempting to progress a civilization at an early technological or later stage invariably leads to deadly consequences, often to a global war and the total extermination of all life on the planet (as it happened on Bitter Berry and several other worlds).

3) A diagram showing the relationship between a star's luminosity and spectral class was created by early 20th century astrophysicists Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell. The majority of stars (excluding supergiants, red giants, and white dwarfs) lies along the main sequence and is characterized thusly: very hot blue stars, then white, yellow-white, yellow, orange, and red. These star classes are marked by the following symbols: O, B, A, F, G, K, and M. Earth's sun is a G-type yellow star.

4) The Great Red Spot is the most noticeable formation in Jupiter's atmosphere, a brick red area 50,000 km across (discovered in 1878). According to modern views, a stable atmospheric vortex (which doesn't explain its color). In reality, it's the mouth of one of the subspace tunnels created by the ancient Daskin race millions of years ago.

5) An astronomical unit (AU) is equal to 149.6 km, which is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun (approximately 8.3 light minutes).

6) A shell suit provides the wearer with reliable protection, is equipped with artificial muscles, can act as a mean of transportation, attack, and defense. Unlike a combat suit, it's not designed for operating in vacuum.

7) Faata'liu is the language of the Bino Faata. Human vocal cords are incapable of producing most of its sounds.