Unless the Forerunners are something utterly other, thought Lissa, so strange that we can’t ever find them—or couldn’t recognize them for what they are if we did—maybe beings or machines that can survive at the core of the galaxy, maybe off in a whole different universe, maybe— It was not the first time she had wondered, nor was she the first one.
Hebo slapped his knee. “All right,” he said impatiently, “have we told each other enough of what everybody knows?”
“No, rather, of what no one knows,” answered Karl.
“What is this thing here?” Lissa whispered.
Hebo laughed. “I thought you’d never ask. Well, that’s what we’re trying to figure out. There could be one blue giant of a lot [24] to learn from it. Including, maybe, a clue or three to the makers.”
The little she knew whirled in her head.
Found, almost always by purest chance—
A great field of rock on each of three airless worlds, fused by something not natural, optically flat save where meteorites had gouged craters.
Two nickel-iron asteroids that had been shaped into perfect spheres and set in the Trojan positions of the orbit of the planet humans called Xanadu.
On another living world, a single crystal the size of a high hill, which may have been the core of a huge machine or—or what?
Small metallic objects of peculiar shapes, brought to sight by erosion of the rock around them, conceivably tools or components that had been dropped and forgotten, as modern explorers might leave a hammer or some bolts behind, but the uses of these were unguessable, though when their perdurable alloys were finally analyzed it opened up a whole new field of materials science.
Six-meter bubbles of similar stuff afloat in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized planet, hollow, emptied of whatever they once contained, though maybe that had not been matter at all but a resonance of forces.
Fossilized traces of foundations removed and activities ended, like dinosaur tracks, and one maddening impression that might have been made by some kind of circuitry—
Where datable, perhaps ten million years old, but the probable error of those measurements might be up to fifty percent.
And few, few—
How much more waited undiscovered, at the half-million or so stars that spacefarers or their robots had come to, however briefly, and the three hundred billion or more in this one galaxy that none had yet reached?
Lissa stared back toward the river. “This may be … the best preserved Forerunner object … ever found.”
Hebo nodded. “As far as Dzesi and I can tell. We even suspect it’s in working order. Though we can’t tell what that would [25] signify. It can’t be hyperbeaming, this far down in the gravity well. Maybe there was a relay satellite, or maybe a ship called now and then to collect the data.”
“But this is incredible. You can’t keep it hidden.” Anger flared. “You’ve no right to!”
She jumped, to her feet, spilling her drink. The Rikhan glided up, hand on knife, lips drawn off teeth. Karl whistled and stirred his bulk.
“Whoa, there!” Hebo rose too. A cloud passed over the sun, blown from the west. A wild creature screamed.
Hebo picked up Lissa’s beaker and busied himself with a fresh one. “Here, let me make you a refill,” he urged. “Come on, we’re friends. Just listen, will you?”
“Go ahead,” she agreed after a minute. She accepted the drink. He’d mixed it stiffer than before. She’d better be careful.
Hebo returned to his chair, outrageously relaxed. “Well, now, to start with, I told you I make my living where and how I can, as long as it’s more or less decently. Decency’s got a lot of different definitions, human and nonhuman.” His tone smoothed. “But I assure you, milady, I’m not a worse man than most.
“So a couple of years ago I caught word about the discovery of, uh, Jonna. Obscure, only another sort-of-Earthlike planet—‘only!’ ” he exclaimed. Calm again: “Sooner or later, somebody would try to learn more, but no telling who or why. Nobody can keep up with everything that everybody’s up to. Well, why not me? Nothing to forbid. No one’s laid any claim. No jurisdiction except the Covenant of Space, and you know how much that means.”