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The bridge hummed with soft voices.

Behind Message Bearer a glow was fading, dying. Its death was carefully monitored. One couldn’t turn the main drive on and off like a light switch, lest showers of lethal particles burst from the magnetic bottle and spray through the ship.

Puffballs of flame streamed from sixteen digit ships mounted along the aft rim, fine-tuning Message Bearer’s velocity. Bridge, personnel watched the view from a sensor pod that reached out from the hull like a big-headed metal snake. Pastempeh-keph watched the screens, letting it happen. His flthp could manage this without his help.

Thrust shifted him against the web that held him to his couch. He watched a black-and-gray mass approach his ship.

The Foot was woefully changed.

Within the outer fringe of the gas giant’s ring they had found a rough-surfaced white egg, two makasrupkithp along the long axis, against a backdrop of terrible beauty. It had been like something out of the Shape Wars, a heretical representation of the Predecessors: a featureless head, lacking digits and body, lacking everything but brain.

The mining team had chosen it for its size and composition, out of an eight-cubed of similar moonlets. Over the next ten Homeworld years its icy strata had hatched water and air and fuel; its rock-and-metal core gave up steel alloys, and soil additives for the garden section.

It was no longer an egg. Six-eighths of its mass was gone. The ice was gone, leaving ridges and gouges and runnels and pits in a makasrupk-long nugget of black slag. A faceless alien head had become an asymmetrical alien skull. It drifted closer now, an ugly omen.

“I hoped that we could shunt it aside,” Pastempeh-keph said.

“We gave ourselves the option,” said his Advisor. “If the prey had proved tractable, our present foray might have become a base of operations. We might have taken Winterhome without the Foot.”

Pastempeh-keph trumpeted in sudden rage. “Why do they always wait to attack?”

“It’s not a serious question, Herdmaster.” Fathisteh-tulk was placid as always. “We organized our foray over the past several years. Why would they not take a few eights of days to gather their forces? So. Now they have used fission bombs on their own Garden regions, and I must admit that that seems excessive—”

“Mad.”

“Mad, then. If they are truly mad, our problem is worse yet. Give thanks that it is the Breakers’ problem, not ours, not yet.”

“It will be soon.”

“Yes. But Digit Ship Six approaches with new prisoners and a considerable mass of loot. The Breakers should learn a great deal when it arrives.”

The Herdmaster trumpeted satisfaction. That, at least, was as expected. Nothing else is. “Why have the natives not sent messages?”

“Before there was anything to say, they wanted to talk,” Fathisteh-tulk said. “Now that we have some estimation of our relative strengths, they say nothing. No demands, no offers. Twelve digit ships are destroyed, and vast stretches of cropland, and the prey’s herdmasters have nothing to say to us. Perhaps the Breakers will learn why.” Again, that overly placid, languid, irritating voice. There is nothing to be done, the Herdmaster told himself. He is Advisor. What would I do, in his place?

Message Bearer surged backward, and shuddered. A fi’ turned and said, “Herdmaster, we are mated to the Foot. Soon we may begin acceleration. Have we a course?’

This was the moment. Long ago the Predecessors had destroyed a planet. Now — “Continue the Plan. Guide the Foot to center its impact on Winterhome. The Breakers’ group will find us a more specific target.” He stiffened suddenly. In a lowered voice he said, “Fathisteh-thlk, I believe I forgot to do anything about the mudmom!”

“Phoo. Defensemaster—”

“I saw to it that the mudroom was fully frozen before we stopped our spin.” Tantarent-fid said complacently. “I evacuated your private mudroom too, Herdmaster.”

“Good. Well served.” Pastempeh-keph shuddered at a mental picture: globules of mud filling the air, fithp in pressure suits trying to sweep it away— Lack of a communal mudroom would cause its own problems.

Henceforth every fi’ would be vaguely unhappy-as if the skewed mating seasons were not enough. He lifted his snffp high. I drown in afloat! of troubles.

Fathisteh-tulk made sympathetic gestures.

Not sympathy. Answers. “Defensemaster, bring the Breakers, the Attackmaster, and the priest to the conference pit. We must make decisions regarding the prey and the Foot.”

“Attackmaster?”

“We have discontinued the base in Kansas,” Koothfektil-rusp said. “Digit ships are in transit with prisoners and loot. We lost Digit Ship Thirteen, which carried the bulk of what we had gathered, but we saved several prisoners and some material on other ships.”

“How was this one lost?”