"As far removed from us as Salem's saints, as high above us as Salem's gates..."

--Old Adonist saying

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17 Rising Withering, 1886 CE

Tellus System, L1 Lagrange Point

"What on Tellus is that?" Aoife asked, her voice stuffed up, as the six of them stared out the shuttle's canopy at the black blob. It wasn't a shape so much as the absence of one, only visible by the way that it blocked the light from the stars beyond it.

Fatigue from hours of travel in cramped weightlessness fled from Tvorh's mind as he strained to make out the details, but his eyes were only as good as Aoife's and she didn't have a Symbiont to enhance her vision. He could have asked Senrii for access to her brain, but that seemed wrong now, somehow, after Aoife.

He wasn't even going to think of asking Thiyyatt, though she kept casting haughty yet inviting glances in his direction. She was so sure he could be tempted away from Aoife.

Well, she was wrong. He tightened his grip on Aoife's hand. She was doing a lot better now. The ship had provided a treatment for her nausea, pumping it directly into her veins. Other than stopping up her sinuses, it seemed to have worked, because she'd stopped throwing up.

"Not on Tellus," Senrii said. "Above it."

The planet's curve lit a portion of the blackness as visible through the canopy. It was an incredible sight. Light in the darkness.

So dark all around them...

"Access codes sent and accepted," the shuttle announced.

"What are you talking about? What access codes?" Senrii asked, but she needn't have. The black splotch ahead of them lit up with external lights.

"Adon have mercy," Aoife said, squeezing Tvorh's hand in surprise. "It's--"

"A heavenwhale," Eztli said, drifting toward the canopy and placing a hand on it in awe.

A massive structure floated in space ahead of them. Judging distances was impossible without a frame of reference, but it had to be many miles long and several miles wide. Seven concentric cylinders or closed tubes, wide enough for people to live inside them and separated from each other by short gulfs of unlit space, revolved slowly around a central axis.

Massive supports criss-crossed the gulfs between the cylinders, holding the structure together. Nodules and broken hardpoints extended from the outermost tubular habitat, leading to even more distant fragmented structures.

It was a ruin in space, but as the heavenwhale's external lights glittered and revealed its outline, Tvorh couldn't help but think it was a glorious one.

"This is a Heavenfall ship, isn't it?" Aoife asked, tugging Tvorh with her as she drifted forward to join Eztli at the glass. "Adon have mercy. This is a Heavenfall ship."

"It's been here for eons," Eztli said. "We are gazing into the past." Then she chuckled.

"What's so funny?" Senrii asked. Her voice was quieter than usual.

"Mmm. Nothing. Only that mere days after the Smoking Mirror forsakes me, I am granted the opportunity to see more clearly than ever before." Eztli smiled grimly. "Gens Nxtlu would be appalled that I was chosen for this."

"We must beware," Piotr said. He pointed toward the void between the internal axis and the innermost cylinder. How far across was that gulf? Half a mile? "Anomalies."

"What?" Aoife asked. "I don't see anything."

"Yeah, it's hard to make out." Senrii, too, floated to the glass and squinted. "But there's a blob on the inside. It's black, so I can only see it because it's blocking the stars between the supports, like a stick shoved across a kaleidoscope. It's like something crawled between the supports and then got stuck against the spinning walls."

"How big is it?" Tvorh asked. "Can you tell what it is?"

Senrii shrugged. "Smaller than the heavenwhale. A lot bigger than the shuttle."

"What does it matter?" Thiyyatt asked. "If there is danger, I will stop it."

"Yeah, like you stopped the Chimeras and definitely didn't set them rampaging across Tellus," Senrii said. "Come on. Don't act like you're not impressed."

Thiyyatt raised an eyebrow and smirked. Trying too hard. Yeah, she was impressed. Aoife squeezed Tvorh's hand and giggled slightly at his thought.

"Commencing docking procedures," the shuttle announced as it drifted to the outermost cylinder.

"How does it keep spinning?" Aoife asked. "Its bearings must be worn away from friction by now."

Nobody replied, because nobody knew the answer.

"Uh, one problem," Senrii said. "How are we supposed to dock? And where on Tell--I mean, where above Tellus is the Tool we were talking to back in Strathlic?"

Aoife perked up and reached across her body to slap Tvorh's shoulder several times. His eyes--her eyes--focused on a patch, maybe a mile wide, of green and purple streaks, lit by the glow of the planet and the heavenwhale's lumins, clawing across the outside of the Heavenwhale. They looked organic. "Are those vines?" Tvorh asked as the ship maneuvered, slowly falling closer to the habitat.

A few moments later, a blob like a hemispherical treehouse, or like a leafy green blister on the outside of the ship, came into view on the habitat's horizon. It was tiny compared to the whole skywhale, probably only a few rooms in size. Leaves spread from its zenith into space, and green and purple vines covered in frost spread outward across the cylinder's skin like creepers across the jungle floor.

"Well, that's our answer, I guess," Senrii said.

"I bet the Operation Silver Suns satellite bound itself into the heavenwhale," Tvorh said. "Maybe that's why the heavenwhale is letting us in."

"Good a guess as any. Since you're so smart, kid, what about the structures on stilts?" Senrii asked.

"The fragments coming off the outer layer? Maybe they're the remnants of older cylinders that broke down and fell off."

"Fell off. Of a heavenwhale," Senrii deadpanned. "Suddenly going in there doesn't seem like a great idea."

While small structures dotted the outside of the ship, there was one ruin of struts and spars and haphazard metal panels that stretched like a skyscraper layer-cake not far from the Silver Suns satellite blob. Piotr pointed at it. "The anomaly has transfixed that edifice from within."

Senrii's eyes fluttered as she communed with her SOPHIOS. "Bile. You're right. That black thing's speared straight from the inside of the ship through the layers."

"Three entities." Eztli pointed at the habitat. "A Heavenfall vessel." She pointed at the Silver Suns parasite as it passed beneath them. "A Last Era inquiry satellite." She pointed at the layer-cake ruin. "And... something that we haven't yet identified."

Unknowns like that made Tvorh antsy.

Other than the Silver Suns blister, there were no organic elements to the heavenwhale at all; it was all metal. That didn't stop a space in the skin of the ship from flowing open like mercury a short distance--or maybe just short compared to the length of the heavenwhale--from the Silver Suns blister. Green and purple vines turned outward as the shuttle drifted closer.

"Beginning automated docking procedure," said the shuttle, and it lurched.

Then everybody and everything fell to the floor.

Slowly.

There was much grunting and wobbling as rotational gravity asserted itself. It was much weaker than on Tellus, but as Tvorh tested it, bouncing up and down on his heels, he was glad to have even a little bit of gravity back.

"Providing summary of docking capabilities to Silver Suns satellite," the shuttle announced as it drifted into a dark interior. "Stand by for translation into Pre-Exarchian and response of the Patrick Henry."

"Pre-Exarchian?" Eztli's eyes widened. It was the most surprised and the most energized Tvorh had seen her in--well, ever. "Operation Silver Suns speaks Pre-Exarchian?"

"What's a Patrikenry?" Aoife asked.

They had no more time to discuss, because the shuttle lurched to a stop. A distant roaring noise shook the ship as air flowed back into the now-closed docking bay. Then a deep grinding noise rattled the shuttle. "Living metal gangplank extended," the internal Tool announced. "Exit prepared. Welcome to the Patrick Henry."

"Oh," Aoife said. "It's the ship."

"Their Tool must have told the Operation Silver Suns Tool its name. Which then told the shuttle's Tool its name," Senrii said. "Too many Tools in this workshop." She hopped a couple of times, then swung down the ladder. "Come on. Let's suit up."

Thiyyatt followed her, racing Piotr for second position. Piotr didn't seem to notice, yet he still somehow made it to the ladder before she did.

"Ductrix Eztli, are you coming?" Tvorh asked.

She was still staring out the now-dark window. "Just Eztli, now, Erus Tvorh." She only seemed to realize that she was speaking to him when she said his name. She turned slowly, and Tvorh read dread in her motions. "I don't think that this heavenwhale, this Patrick Henry, has a Tool, not as we understand it."

"So?" Aoife asked, still clasping Tvorh's hand.

"So there is much that we don't know. Much that we don't understand." Eztli strode past them to the ladder. "And where there is no knowledge--"

"The people perish," Aoife said. An old Adonist saying, the thought flickered to Tvorh.

"Yes." Eztli slipped onto the ladder. "Is it worth risking ourselves by wading into the darkness of ignorance in the hopes that we might emerge with knowledge that will save others?"

"You're feeling mighty philosophicalish today," Aoife said. "I might like you better when you're all cryptic and confusing."

"What do you think, Eztli?" Tvorh asked.

"Yes, Tvorh. Saving others will always be worth it." Eztli's head disappeared beneath the lip of the deck.

"Hey." Aoife's lips brushed Tvorh's ears, making him squirm. "Don't worry. I'll go first." She leaned back and gave him a gentle wink, then released his hand. Vision vanished. "We can't have you getting stuck in any deer traps yet."

"Yet?" Tvorh asked as she clanked down the ladder.

"Yeah. Not yet. Not before--well, you know."

"You know what?" Tvorh asked.

But Aoife didn't answer. Sometimes she could be as cryptic as Eztli. Tvorh rubbed his forehead in frustration and followed her.

When this was over, they were going to have a serious talk. About--

Well, about everything.