Hans Eagle spoke out. "If the Killers live here, did they send out machines before or after they made these changes?"
"Probably before," the first mom said. "In our experience—"
"Nobody knows how much experience you've had, or how long," Ariel said, voice chilly.
"Please, Ariel," Hakim said, infinitely patient.
"In our experience," the mom continued, "beings who build killer probes usually do so before they have mastered the techniques necessary to perform large-scale stellar reconstruction."
"Then it's been thousands of years since the probes were launched," Hans continued.
"Very likely."
Hans nodded, satisfied.
The last display traced the paths of intercepted killer machines, but covered a thousand light years rather than a dozen; their known and postulated victims were marked by red dots, and the systems they had merely passed through glowed green. Approximate dates relative to Earth's death and distances of these events from the three-star group were given in flashing white.
Martin was astonished by the wealth of data; a partial answer to Ariel's doubts. His mind raced to gather the implications: sometimes the Ships of the Law didbreak silence, to transmit the locations of killer machines, to broadcast their captures and triumphs. The transmissions would not have been hidden; the distances are too vast for the noach… They would have risked revealing themselves…
Hakim concluded by placing all the displays around the star sphere for their contemplation. "That is all we have for now," he said.
Again, the children did their momerath, and the schoolroom fell silent.
Martin visualized the spaces of probability behind tight-closed eyes, hands opening and closing, seeing the numbers and the paths, making them converge and diverge. Each time he repeated the momerath he concluded there was a high probability—perhaps ninety-five percent—that the Killers came from this stellar group. The probes had probably been manufactured in the system of the Buttercup, the near yellow star.
After sufficient time had passed—perhaps two hours of steady concentration, in complete silence—the moms gathered at the center of the schoolroom, and the first mom said, "What is your judgment?"
"Comments first," Paola Birdsong insisted.
The comments were more expressions of personal involvement and emotion than substantive questions or objections; this much Martin had expected. He had watched the group reach consensus on other matters far less important than this, and this was how they worked: speaking out, finding individual roles.
Mei-li Wu-Hsiang Gemini, a small, quiet woman with the Starsigns family, asked whether there were other civilizations within the close vicinity of this group. Hakim called up a display already shown: all stars that might have harbored planets with life, within twenty-five light years of the group. None had shown even the most subtle signs of civilized development. That was not conclusive evidence one way or another; left alone, the planets might not have developed intelligent life—though the chances were two in five, for so many stars, that at least one civilization would have evolved.
There was always the possibility that the intelligences might have been smarter than humanity, keeping silent even in their technological youth.
But added to the other evidence, the lack was significant.
"What are the chances that civilizations would die off or abort themselves, in so many planetary systems?" George Dempsey asked.
The first mom said, "Given the number of systems with planets, and the probability of life arising, and the probability of that life developing technological ability—" The figures flashed before them again. Martin did not bother doing the momerath; he had done it already, the first time around. Chances were, so had Dempsey. This was socialization, not serious cross- examination.
Time of accepting what they all knew must come next…
More questions, for yet another hour, until Martin's eyes and tense muscles burned. He could sense the group's fatigue. He glanced at the remaining children in his mental queue, decided they would not have anything substantive to add, and said, "All right. Let's get down to it."
"You're prepared to make a decision?" the first mom asked.
"We are," Martin said.
Grumbling and rustling, the children rearranged themselves into their families and drill groups. They felt much more comfortable among their chosen peers; this was not an easy thing and none was happy to be hurried along.
"You are deciding whether to decelerate, at substantial fuel cost, and direct this Ship of the Law into the stellar group we have observed, to investigate the intelligent beings there, and to judge whether they built the machines that destroyed your world," the first mom said. "Pan will count your votes."
One by one, they voted, and Martin tallied. There could be no more than ten abstentions in the entire group, or the process would begin again. Seven abstained, including Ariel. Sixty-one voted to go in and investigate. Fourteen voted to pass the group by, to search for something more definite.
"We need an opposition Pan," Ariel insisted. Paola Bird-song, who had voted to investigate, disagreed.
"We've followed procedures," she said. "It's done."
"We've followed the moms'procedures," Ariel said.
"They train us and instruct us," Ginny Chocolate said. "I don't see what you're after."
"Are we puppets?" Ariel asked, glaring around the groups.
The other children seemed confused. The grumbling increased. Martin felt his stomach twist.
Jorge Rabbit intervened. Olive skinned, with thick black hair, quick with jokes, Jorge was popular in the group. "This is enough, poor children, Martin is right. We are here to do this work. We are not puppets; we are students."
Ariel tightened her jaw and said no more. Martin felt a sudden perverse tug for her.
"It's done," he said. "The children have voted. We go."
Martin ate in the cafeteria with the day's drill group when the maneuvers began.
The children felt it first as a deeper vibration through the ship, singing in their muscles and bones.
"Oh, man," Harpal Timechaser said. He brought out his wand and let it drift in the air. Slowly, precessing this way, then that, as the ship maneuvered to bring its drives to bear, the wand spun slowly, drawing their complete attention.
The vibration increased. The Dawn Treader'shull made a melodic singing noise, deep and masculine, as all the stresses of the drive pushed through its fabric. The wand began to settle, first toward one wall. They felt themselves "pushed" with it, and they yelled with excitement, then groaned as the room oriented within the ship, as if spun on gimbals, one flat wall becoming a floor, the other a ceiling.
A gentle ten percent g as the drives came alive, stretched, clearing their throats.
"I'm going to be sick," Paola Birdsong said. "Why don't they smooth it for us?"
"Because we hate that more than this," Martin reminded her.
Half an hour later, the ship sang again, on an even deeper note. Martin saw the ship in momerath, felt its load of fuel decreasing steadily, flare of particles and radiation disappearing into the bottomless darkness of the ship's external sump, a way to conceal their wastes by scattering them across the surrounding light years as an increase in the energy of the vacuum.