“I guess so.” He had to admit that Victoria Rione had more than once pushed him in directions she wanted without his realizing it. “But Rione’s end goals were pretty much the same as ours.”

  “So what can we do?”

  He shrugged, unhappy but having to face reality. “What we’re already doing. Keep moving forward but watch where every step is going to land so we don’t step on a mine.”

  “Like mines in space, mines in the ground are usually hidden so you can’t see them before you step on them,” Desjani said.

  * * *

  ANOTHER day in orbit. Charban and his assistants, now with John Senn aiding them, had sent more questions out but had received either no answer or answers that were vaguely reassuring but lacking in specifics.

  He’d expected things to happen once they were in Dancer space. Instead, they seemed to be simply waiting for something to happen, either another problem within the fleet or whatever the Dancers intended.

  The request to call Boundless came as a welcome distraction. To his surprise, Dr. Cresida answered it. “You asked me to call?” Geary said.

  “The universe is full of surprises, Admiral.” Cresida looked down, then back at him. “I find myself in the difficult position of having to request a favor from you.”

  “A favor? Doctor, I already owe you. What do you need?”

  “My colleagues and I came here in hopes of learning something of Dancer scientific discoveries, but that has proven impossible because the only transmitter aboard this vessel which is capable of communicating with the aliens is under the exclusive control of a megalomaniacal incompetent.”

  “You’re speaking of Dr. Macadams,” Geary said, trying not to smile.

  “Obviously.” Cresida paused again, as if bracing herself. “I am told that you have a similar transmitter on your ship.”

  “It’s Captain Desjani’s ship, my flagship, but yes. It’s the original transmitter loaded with the software the Dancers sent us. Do you want to make use of it?”

  “If possible.” Dr. Cresida grimaced. “I know time on the device must be extremely valuable. I have nothing tangible to offer in exchange for asking for that time.”

  “Doctor,” Geary said, “you’re working on behalf of the Alliance. We’re not going to, uh, charge you for using the transmitter. I do need to tell you that my people working directly with it are pretty tied up rendering messages into formats the Dancers will pay attention to, so I don’t know how long it would take us to get your questions into the right formats to send out.”

  “Formats? What sort of formats?”

  “The Dancers appear to equate certain forms of speech with, um, sophistication of the speaker. General Charban thinks ordinary speech, like we’re doing, comes across as baby talk to them. Lieutenant Jamenson had the insight that Dancer messages to us in their original forms sound musical. Not like songs, exactly, but with a rhythm and cadence to the sounds. When we started replying with words cast in poetic forms, the Dancers began responding with clearer answers.”

  Dr. Cresida gazed at him for several seconds, her expression giving no clue to her thoughts. “Do you believe that songs will be a format the aliens would consider sophisticated?”

  “Yes. We’re trying some songs with them right now, but results are spotty.” How much should he say? “The Dancers aren’t being very communicative since we arrived here, so it’s hard to tell how well or how poorly it’s working.”

  “Would I be allowed to attempt my own format?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Geary said. “If you’ve seen what Dr. Macadams is sending out, that’s what not to do.”

  Cresida visibly hesitated. “I would much prefer sending the message myself.”

  “You want to come aboard Dauntless?” Having seen Jasmine Cresida’s reactions the last time she was aboard the battle cruiser, in an environment that she equated with the death of her sister, the request surprised him. “That’s fine.”

  “The . . . commanding officer of that vessel does not appear to be fond of me.”

  She wasn’t fond of your attitude, Geary thought. But he kept that to himself. “Tanya Desjani was a close friend of your sister’s. She’s also professional enough not to let personal feelings impact her interactions with you.”

  “Then I have clearance to go to your ship?”

  “Yes. Captain Desjani’s ship. My flagship. Believe me, the distinction matters a great deal to the commanding officer of a ship.”

  The call with Cresida ended, Geary braced himself before calling Desjani on the bridge. “Captain,” he began, to establish this as a fully formal communication, “I need to inform you of another visitor who will be coming aboard from Boundless.”

  Tanya eyed him with open suspicion. “Tell me the visitor is anyone but Jaylen’s sister.”

  “The visitor is Jaylen’s sister, Dr. Cresida.”

  Desjani inhaled slowly, her jaw tight. “There are moments when I wonder if I’m really dead and in hell. Why is she coming to my ship?”

  “She needs to use the Dancer transmitter.”

  “Fine. Thank you, Admiral.”

  Knowing from that “fine” that he’d better end this conversation fast, Geary nodded and quickly ended the call.

  * * *

  GEARY decided to meet Dr. Cresida at the shuttle dock in order to minimize any interactions with crew members who might not appreciate her previous attitude. She was being gone over with extreme care by security personnel, who worked with grim efficiency that had only gotten more exhaustive since the murder of Inglis. “She’s clean, sir,” Senior Chief Tarrani reported.

  Dr. Cresida followed Geary silently through the passageways of Dauntless, her expression unrevealing, only her eyes shifting about as she examined her surroundings. The sailors they passed gave her curious looks but none seemed to recognize her.

  Just before they reached the compartment holding the Dancer communication device, Ensign Duck came waddling complacently down the passageway from the other direction, closely followed as usual by two of Dauntless’s Marines. Apparently this particular passageway was a favored walkway for the duck. A pair of sailors ahead of Geary saluted, grinning. “Good afternoon, Ensign Duck!”

  “Ensign Duck?” Dr. Cresida said.

  “It’s a long story,” Geary said.

  Inside the compartment, General Charban, Lieutenant Iger, Lieutenant Jamenson, and John Senn stood up as Geary entered. “This is Dr. Cresida,” he told them.

  General Charban smiled in apparently genuine welcome. Even though his initial interactions with Dr. Cresida hadn’t been jovial, she nonetheless was not part of, and was in many ways opposed to, Dr. Macadams’s group. That alone redeemed Cresida in Charban’s eyes. “If you have your questions already laid out, we can help you render them in the form the Dancers are most likely to respond to.”

  Dr. Cresida shook her head. “Thank you, but I believe my questions are already prepared properly.”

  Charban spread his hands, gave Geary a weary look, and then gestured to the device. “There’s no one sending at the moment. Touch that to transmit.”

  Sitting down, Dr. Cresida looked over the device, humming as she did so and consulting her comm pad. Finally, she touched the transmit command.

  A moment later she began singing, her voice soaring through the room as the others there stared in astonishment. Her words danced along, rendering phrases such as “normalized wave function” and “time-independent Schrödinger equation” into poetic sweeps of sound. Everyone watched, silent, until the song ended with an almost sad note.

  Dr. Cresida touched the command to end transmission and sat looking at the device as if nothing special had happened.

  “Oh my ancestors,” John Senn said. “That was an aria. An unaccompanied aria.”

  Cresida spared him a glance. “That’s correct.”

  “You wrote that?”

  “I did. Have you studied music?”

  “Yes,” Senn said. “Just as a sideline.”

  “You’re the history person,” Cresida said.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Interesting. How long until the Dancers respond?” she asked Charban.

  “It’s hard to predict,” Charban replied. “Sometimes—”

  He was interrupted by music coming from the transmitter, something that sounded like multiple flutes playing a polyphonic composition. “Please . . . wait for our reply . . . eldest one!”

  The silence following that was broken by Lieutenant Iger. “That’s interesting.”

  “ ‘Eldest one’?” Charban nodded toward Cresida. “I think they’re impressed. The rest of us are going to have to up our game considerably now.”

  “It’s not a game,” Dr. Cresida said. “I asked some serious questions concerning theoretical physics.”

  “Of course you did,” Charban said. “Well . . . I honestly don’t know what to tell you as far as when or if we’ll get an answer.”

  “I can wait,” Dr. Cresida said, moving to a seat at the far end of the compartment where she quickly became absorbed in whatever was on her comm pad.

  * * *

  BY the time Geary got back to his stateroom there was a very high-priority message waiting from Dr. Macadams. Not particularly interested in hearing from Macadams, but concerned by the use of a message priority that was supposed to be employed only for critical emergencies, Geary called up the message.

  It took only a moment of watching and listening to realize that Macadams had overheard Dr. Cresida’s message to the Dancers and was considerably upset about it. Watching Macadams’s frenzied motions, Geary found himself half hoping / half wondering whether Macadams would have a stroke. But even that wasn’t worth listening to the entire message.

  He hit the reply command. “Dr. Macadams, I will repeat again that my responsibilities include direct communications with the Dancers.” Macadams himself refused to use the term Dancers, insisting despite all evidence to the contrary that the name offended them. “If your own attempts to communicate with the Dancers are having little result, I suggest that instead of blaming those having more success you might try learning from their experience and their example. I will also only warn you once that misuse of flash priority message precedence will result in you being banned from being able to employ that priority in the future. Do not use that precedence again except for a life-critical emergency. Geary, out.”

  * * *

  THE crew of Dauntless was used to the admiral walking through the passageways late in the evening. It helped him think, and let him occasionally interact with members of the crew under low-stress conditions. Having been vaulted from command of a single cruiser to command of a fleet of hundreds of ships, Geary had had a hard time adjusting to the knowledge that it was now impossible for him to personally know everyone under his command. But it was at least possible for him to know everyone aboard his flagship, so he was glad for the opportunity to do so. And if along the way he managed to think a bit, perhaps coming up with answers that had eluded him during busier periods of the ship’s day, then so much the better.

  Lately, though, since the murder of Inglis, he’d found himself feeling spooked if passing through an area without anyone else visible. He told himself he was overreacting, that whoever had killed Inglis could have already killed him if they wanted to, but nonetheless he found himself suddenly looking behind him as if that might reveal an invisible watcher.

  At such times he wondered just how effective the defenses would be that Tanya Desjani had ordered her crew to build into his working uniform. Tanya had assured him that they’d trigger only if an actual attack were detected, but he still worried about them suddenly activating during a normal interaction with someone else.

  As he walked down one nearly deserted passageway, Geary spotted Dr. Cresida in a break room. He stopped, seeing that she was slumped in a chair, eyes closed. Assuming that she would return to Boundless once she had sent her message to the Dancers, Geary hadn’t thought to ensure she actually had. Apparently she’d been literally sincere when saying she intended to wait for the Dancer reply. “Dr. Cresida? Do you need a place to sleep?”

  She sighed and opened one eye. “This is a place. I was asleep.”

  Geary shook his head as he walked to the nearest comm panel. “If you’re going to remain aboard this ship, we need to get you a place to stay.”

  “ ‘We’? Do you often talk like a royal?”

  He glanced back at her, for some reason amused rather than aggravated. “ ‘We’ as in the sailors and Marines of the fleet.”

  Cresida sighed again. “I assure you that I did not expect nor do I require any special care.”

  “It’s not about what you expect of us,” Geary said. “It’s about what we expect of ourselves. Duty officer? I need a stateroom bunk for Dr. Jasmine Cresida. Yes, now. She’s in this break room with me. We’ll wait here.”

  Cresida struggled upright in her chair, giving Geary a cross look. “Why are you rousting people so late in the ship’s day?”

  “It’s my job,” he said. “And it’s their job to be rousted when something comes up. If you’re asking why I happened to be here at this time, it’s because sometimes I get restless and can’t sleep. Walking through the ship helps me think, and lets me stay in touch with the crew and how they’re doing. How are you doing?”

  “I was recently awakened from slumber by an authoritarian individual who ignored my wishes to be left alone,” Cresida said. “How are you doing?”

  He decided to be open with her. “I’m wondering what the Dancers intend. Why they answer some of our questions and not others, and why they’ve communicated so little to us since we arrived here.”

  Instead of sniping at him again, Cresida gazed at the opposite bulkhead. “We know practically nothing about them. If they answer me, we might learn more.”

  “More physics?”

  “More about them.” Dr. Cresida shifted her eyes to look at Geary. “The quantum world is fundamentally different from what humans experience in the macro world that our senses have evolved to deal with. The only way we can seek to understand the quantum realm is by observations filtered through human senses and our ways of thinking. That’s why metaphors are often employed to try to make sense of quantum things that otherwise appear too strange. Schrödinger’s cat is the most commonly known example. If the aliens answer my questions, the way they formulate those answers will tell us much about how they view the universe. If they also use metaphors, those metaphors will tell us something of how they understand things.”

  “That would be very important,” Geary said, staring at Cresida in surprise.

  “Of course it would. Hadn’t you already thought of that?”

  “No.” He made a vague gesture around him. “I’m all too aware that there are many things I don’t think of. That’s why I try to surround myself with people who’ll think of things that I don’t.” For some reason at that moment he recalled some of Victoria Rione’s last advice to him. “And who will tell me those things even if I don’t want to hear them.”

  Dr. Cresida smiled slightly. “I really don’t want to like you. But sometimes you almost display admirable traits. When am I going to be allowed to go back to sleep?”

  At that moment a lieutenant came hastening down the passageway. “Admiral,” she said, “is there a Dr. . . . ?”

  “Cresida,” Geary said. “Lieutenant Amarin, this is Dr. Cresida.”

  “Hi, Doc! If you don’t mind sharing a room, we’ve got a spare bunk.”

  Cresida stood up, sighing a third time. “Thank you.” She followed Amarin without another word to Geary.

  But that was all right. She’d given him some important things to think about.

  * * *

  THE next morning, Geary reviewed fleet status updates. Most things were unchanged, of course. Some ships had some systems go down due to part failures and provided estimated time of repair, which was always a concern but also a fact of life. And it was nothing like the problems the fleet had earlier endured when ships designed to last a couple of years had found themselves exceeding their planned life spans. Almost all of those ships had now had their primary systems overhauled and replaced.

  On the other hand, disciplinary problems, mostly minor, were increasing in frequency, as always happened during periods of relative inactivity. Many of them involved sailors and Marines getting into scuffles. Like members of the same family, they’d unite fiercely against any outsider, but among themselves in the fleet Marines and sailors would sometimes squabble over the smallest things.

  The longer they stayed in orbit here, waiting for something without any idea when it would happen and not even knowing what would happen, the worse morale would get.

  That wasn’t even taking into account the extra stress created by the Inglis incident. No one was supposed to have talked, but according to reports from other ships versions of the murder and Inglis’s own actions were making the rounds of the fleet’s gossip. The idea of an internal enemy, invisible and deadly, wasn’t doing anything for anyone’s peace of mind.

  Tanya Desjani’s arrival was a welcome distraction. “I understand yesterday’s guest is staying.”

  “She’s waiting for a reply from the Dancers,” Geary said. “Dr. Cresida is like Jaylen that way, I think. Very work driven.”