Eye on Sky splayed his head and crawled along the net closer to Martin, smelling of cut grass, fresh-baked bread: smells of strength and firmness, of assurance. "Listening to we our fellows on Shrikeand Greyhound, we we decide there is a chance to learn more, and so will act with yours."
"I should ask for another meeting?"
"Yes," Eye on Sky said.
Martin chewed his upper lip thoughtfully. "Do you think the Killers are still here?"
"Perhaps not possible to know."
"Some of us think we should have expected this problem from the beginning," Martin said.
"Questions without answers. Expected, not anticipated in detail."
"We were young," Martin said.
"We all we are young, this problem is ancient. It eats we us as a sweet, with delight."
"Will you go down with me?" Martin asked. He did not say this out of cruelty; rather, as a kind of test, as if he stood in Hans' place for the moment.
"Not I we," Eye on Sky said. "We we disassemble in that condition, that world. You have named it Sleep. For we us, it is a true kind of sleep. You must go for we us, if permitted."
Martin took a deep breath.
"You are disturbed?" Eye on Sky asked.
He shook his head. "No, no more than… Yes, I am," he reversed himself. "In a way, Hans is right about Leviathan. Everything we see here seems tailor-made to divide us, confuse us. If Hans is right, and the Killers are still here…"
"Not happy," Eye on Sky said.
"They'll make us much more unhappy before they're done with us."
Hakim repeated the message several times without reply from Sleep. Martin stood behind him as he went through the procedure again, panel projected before him, fingers touching controls glowing in the air.
"Nothing still," Hakim said. "They were prompt before."
Martin nodded.
Beyond the projected control panel, small images of Leviathan's planets hung against the dark aft wall of the bridge. Blinker caught Martin's eye.
It no longer blinked. It maintained a steady sandy brown color.
"Something's changed," Martin said. He pointed to Blinker. Hakim's face darkened with excitement.
"How long does it take a light signal to reach us from Blinker?" Martin asked.
"Three hours twelve minutes," Hakim said.
"Can you play back the records?"
Hakim quickly replayed ship's memory of the planetary images until they found the precise moment when the planet had stopped its fluctuation. "Three hours ago," Hakim said.
"What else has changed?" Martin asked.
Hakim expanded the planetary images one by one: Mirror turning milky, its perfect reflectivity catching a hot moist breath; Frisbee, its edges browning like burned bread dough, the unknown "hair" shedding into space; Cueball unchanged; Gopher's gleaming lights within impossibly deep caverns burning brighter, bluer, like torches.
They came to Puffball, with its immense bristling seed-like constructions. Some seeds had lifted away from the planet's surface, one, three, six of them, and more on their way. Spikes at the top of the seeds also broke free, flying outward at high speed.
"Are they attacking?" Hakim asked.
"I don't know. Pass this on the noach to Greyhoundand Shrike."
"Done," Hakim said. A moment later, his mouth went slack. "There is no noach connection," he said. "They are not receiving. I do not know where they are."
Paola and Erin entered the bridge.
"We're in trouble," Martin said. "Hakim, pull out of orbit…"
Silken Parts pushed through the door as Hakim ordered the ship away from Sleep.
"What's happening?" Erin asked.
"We don't know, but I'm taking us out of here."
"We have a reply now," Hakim said. "From Sleep…"
Salamander's voice filled the bridge. "There have been disruptions on four of our worlds." Salamander's image appeared in flat projection. Crest pointed straight out, three eyes open, hissing loudly behind its words, the bishop vulture managed to convey its disturbance.
"We don't know what's happening," Martin said.
"There is tampering with balances. These worlds are delicate and many lives are in danger."
"We haven't communicated with our…" He couldn't finish the deceptive wording, his tongue caught in too many prevarications. He simply stared at Salamander's image. The bishop vulture lifted its crest, hissed softly.
"You are a lie and a deception," Salamander said. "We have no further need of you."
The image and voice faded. "End of transmission," Hakim said. "Still no success with noach to Greyhound."
The rest of the crew crowded the bridge, watching the long drama play itself out over the next half hour.
The three identical planets—Pebbles One, Two, and Three—abruptly glowed dull orange, then red, then white, in sequence according to their distances from the ship. Their surfaces diffused like paint in water, glowing specks rising and falling.
"Who's doing that?" George Dempsey asked. "Them, or us?"
The seeds of Puffball twisted about as if blown in a gentle breeze. On such a scale, that simple motion spoke of immense energies.
Martin could hardly think in the ensuing babble noise. The cabin filled with Brother smells, stinging his eyes. He saw a cord scramble past him, then watched as a Brother—he could not identify which—disassembled. Silken Parts immediately began gathering up the cords, which clung to fields waving their feelers helplessly.
They didn't even know what weapons Greyhoundnow possessed, or what their effects would be. One effect was obvious—the attack had been launched on many targets almost simultaneously, judging by the arrival of light-borne information at intervals determined solely by distance. That spoke to Martin of noach; and the first object to change its character had been the massive noach station, Blinker.
What are they up to?
"I know what's happened," Ariel said just loudly enough for Martin to hear, bracing herself on a field behind him.
"What?"
"Hans has started the war without telling us."
With a momentary sense of dizziness, as if he had been through all this before, he realized she was probably right.
Hans had used them to give Greyhoundan edge.
"Then why aren't we dead?" Martin asked. His entire back prickled, waiting for imminent death.
Ariel shrugged. "Give them time."
The mom and snake mother came onto the bridge. "This ship has been under steady attack for an hour, and our ability to armor against their weapons is diminishing. We assume control now. Super acceleration is called for," the mom said.
"We don't have the fuel," Martin said.
"We will convert as much as we can," the mom said.
"Can you communicate with the other ships?"
"Yes," the mom said.
" Greyhoundand Shrike?" Martin asked.
"Yes."
"Are they attacking?"
"Yes."