Team C began jetting over to the Watchtower a hundred meters away. Dudley held Emmanuelle’s maneuvering pack as she shrugged her way into it, receiving a thumbs-up in gratitude. He enjoyed that, it made him feel like a fully paid-up member of the team.

“Right, that’s everybody out,” said Francis Rawlins, the leader of team C. “Make sure you’ve secured your equipment bag before you leave the shuttle. You can freeflight in your own time. Head for the beacon they’ve put up on the alien station. We’ll regroup there, and move on in.”

Dudley made sure the cylindrical bag was fastened to his belt. The others were slowly lifting off the fuselage grid. Tiny squirts of white gas puffed out of their maneuvering pack nozzles, just visible in the dusky light of the distant star. His virtual hand gripped the pack’s joystick, and he tilted it forward. The gas produced a dull rushing sound, vibrating against his back. But his boots left the grid, and he was floating away from the shuttle. Once again his heart went yammering as adrenaline cut loose into his bloodstream. He couldn’t believe he was actually doing this. There was a holiday he’d taken in his first life when he’d signed up to go paragliding; trusting himself to a sheet of fabric and praying the straps held as he and the instructor jumped off the top of a mountain. The rush of tension and exhilaration that hit him simultaneously when he saw treetops below his feet was like nothing he’d ever known. Now here it was again, far more intense than the first time.

As before, he forced himself to relax into the inevitable. It just took a while to convince his body there was actually nothing wrong, that the suit and the maneuvering pack were working fine and taking care of him. Inside the helmet he was grinning like a madman. His free virtual hand tapped a microphone icon, then keyed in a privacy code.

“I’m approaching the strange alien station we’ve called the Watchtower. All of us agree now that it was misnamed. This is no guard outpost, simply the sad remnants of an industrial facility that was damaged during a conflict that went nuclear. I can’t help but feel regret that all the effort and cost which went into establishing such an enterprise should fall victim to this primitive lack of emotional control. Although the Dyson aliens have accomplished so much, and I concede some of their technological accomplishments exceed ours, I hope they can still learn from the way our society resolves conflicts and disagreements.” That would go down well back home. Always make the audience feel slightly superior.

The course graphic inside his virtual vision showed him heading off to one side of the beacon. He corrected. Overcorrected. Then had to tip the joystick firmly the other way. This was exactly what his skill training memory instinctively warned him against. He just couldn’t integrate that knowledge at an autonomic reflex level. So he wobbled his way forward, gas burping from every nozzle of his maneuvering pack in a seemingly random pattern, and keeping a cautious eye on his relative velocity.

Francis Rawlins was easing her way in through the gap beside the beacon as he finally came to rest just above her. The other members of team C followed. Dudley looked around eagerly once he was inside, but the compartment was something of an anticlimax: a simple box of blue-gray metal, flooded with vibrant pools of light by the suit beams. Nothing to hint at alien-ness.

“Now we’re inside I can’t emphasize enough to use caution,” Francis said. “The Ops office is watching out for us individually, but they can’t compensate for every mistake. The only solution is, don’t make any. We’re not in a race, we’ll keep searching around until we’ve acquired the data which the captain needs, so don’t rush anything. Now, teams B, D, and E have already explored down to level five, and radially they went as far as sections A3 and A8 on your charts. They’ve placed comrelays to cover that area, but when you go beyond them you need to set up your own, these walls are an effective block to our signals. Do not allow any communications dead zones, especially in the connecting tunnels. We stay in contact the whole time, understood? Okay, you’ve got your assignments. Move out.”

Dudley studied the topography of the 3D chart in his virtual vision, matching it to the big tunnel entrance on the compartment’s wall. An orange line snaked through it, detailing his route. He brought the inertial guidance on-line, aligning it with the beacon.

“You ready?” Emmanuelle asked.

“I think so.” He was staring at the black gulf that was the entrance to the tunnel they were going to have to use to get down to level five. It was nearly three meters in diameter. Thus indicating the Dyson aliens may be bigger than us—idiot. Not so small as to trigger claustrophobia. At least, not straightaway.

On the other side of the compartment, Francis was already hauling herself into a tunnel that snaked its way over to section A8. Dudley drifted over to the tunnel his chart indicated, and gripped the side of the entrance to steady himself. His suit lights cut straight through the gloom, revealing a tube whose carbon composite walls were mottled with hairline fractures and coarse blisters. It started to curve downward about five meters ahead, with a gentle twist to the left. He pushed his feet lightly off the compartment floor, allowing his legs and torso to slide up until he was level to the entrance, then pulled himself forward into the tunnel. “And into the unknown.”

“Sir, we’re being signaled,” Anna called out. “Sensors are showing both laser and microwave transmissions directed straight at us. Originating from Alpha Major orbit—the moonlets.”

“Son of a bitch,” Wilson grunted. “Are you sure? Could they just be aligned on something beyond us?”

“I don’t think so. There is nothing behind us. All three beams intersect here, and they’re holding constant. We’re definitely the target point.”

Wilson quickly called the signals up on his console screens. Even after the RI’s best filtering they came up as a jumble of sine waves and fractal patterns. “Is this the same stuff they transmit to each other?”

“Yes, sir. It looks like it.”

“So they might not realize we are aliens?”

“They must have a good idea we are not native to this star system,” Tunde said. “After all, now the barrier has come down, they’ll be expecting some kind of communication or contact from the species which put it up. They would be watching.”

One of the visual sensors was trained on a laser beam coming from a worldlet around Alpha Major. That single ruby dazzle-point obscured much of the planet’s delicate wrapping of fusion flame. Wilson stared at it with a growing concern that he might just have been underestimating the Dysons. “They’ve been looking for us, or at least an alien ship, since the barrier went down?”

“That would be the logical thing for them to do, yes.”

“So if they haven’t got hysradar, how the hell did they find us?”

“Our hyperdrive wormhole creates a great deal of gravitonic shock, and it also has a strong quantum signature. On top of that there will be neutrino emissions from our fusion reactors.”

“Small ones,” Antonia said immediately. “I’m keeping the fusion systems a couple of percent above breakeven. The niling d-sinks are our primary power source, but they’re very well shielded.”

“Captain, this entire planetary system is overflowing with advanced technology,” Tunde said. “And if they really are as conflict-driven as we suspect, they will have a great many sensor systems. I’m really not surprised they have detected us.”

Wilson was drawn back to the main portals, both of them showing an unaugmented visual image of the Watchtower. His initial concern was now turning to real worry. “Anna, give me a hysradar sweep. Is there anything out there?”

After a few initial scans of the Watchtower they’d switched off all of their active sensors, keeping all emissions to a minimum in a bid to achieve silent running. It was his choice again to remain inconspicuous; quietly gathering data until they were ready to make contact. A strategy that would allow them the upper hand.