The hours dragged on, seemingly multiplied by the heat and Hernandez's exhaustion. At her request, Pembleton increased the frequency of their stops, to once per hour. Each break consumed another canteen of water, and on the fourth stop they rested a bit longer and picked at their cold rations. After lunch ended, the landing party segregated by gender, and each person sought out some small measure of privacy in the thick undergrowth.

As the landing party regrouped, Hernandez looked around and realized that the trees in this part of the forest, while still larger than anything on Earth, were smaller than those they had left behind, and they were s.p.a.ced a bit more generously. Looking ahead in the direction they had been traveling, she could almost see some faint glow of white daylight in the distance.

The sharp, crisp sound of finger snaps turned her head and silenced the murmuring of the group. Private Steinhauer had his hand scanner out and open, and as the other MACOs looked at him, he made short chopping movements with his hand in several directions around the landing party. Hernandez followed his gestures and was barely able to notice unusual flutters in the thick greenery, like ripples in water.

In slow, steady motions, Major Foyle and the other MACOs raised and braced their rifles. Sergeant Pembleton motioned the rest of the landing party to get down. Then he selected a target and put himself between it and Hernandez. Around the rest of the landing party, the MACOs formed a tight circle.

"Set for stun," Hernandez reminded everyone in a whisper. "Remember this is a first-contact mission."

The MACOs checked their rifles' settings and nodded to Foyle, who said in a low monotone, "Weapons free."

The forest erupted with bright flashes of phased energy and echoed with the screeching of rifles discharging in three-shot bursts. Piercing shrieks added to the cacophony as the soldiers' shots found their marks. Enormous, semitransparent creatures that reminded Hernandez of millipedes reared up out of the fronds, their antennae twitching and their multi-segmented bodies wriggling from multiple hits by the phase rifles. Within seconds, all the creatures were in retreat.

Foyle shouted, "Cease fire!" The staccato roar of rifle fire stopped, leaving only its distant echoes reverberating in the cavernous s.p.a.ces of the forest.

Hernandez noticed only then that she had drawn her own phase pistol without realizing it. She tucked the weapon back in its holster on her belt. Then she looked around and saw the other flight-crew officers doing the same thing.

Foyle and his men lowered their rifles and grinned at one another as they watched the Columbia personnel holster their sidearms. "Thank you for the backup," the major said, "but we have it under control."

"Gracias, Major," Hernandez said.

"De nada, Captain," Foyle said. He waved to Pembleton, who gave him his attention. "Sergeant, I want a defensive formation until we clear the forest."

"Yes, sir," Pembleton said. "Mazzetti, Crichlow-each of you take a flank. Steinhauer, join Yacavino on rear guard. Major, will you join me on point?"

"Absolutely," Foyle said, stepping past Fletcher and Hernandez. When he reached the front, he turned back and said to the landing party, "We're less than an hour from clearing the forest. I'd like to pick up the pace and get this over with. Anyone who doesn't think they can handle it, speak up now." No one said anything. "All right. Double-time. Let's move out!"

The jogging pace was twice as difficult to sustain as Hernandez had expected, but she was determined not to set an example of frailty. Inhaling the muggy air was a labor, and within ten minutes her chest hurt with each heaving breath. Her black bangs were matted to her forehead by sweat, and knifing pains between her ribs felt as if they penetrated into her lungs. Exertion left the muscles in her calves and thighs coiled and burning, and each running step sent jolts of impact trauma through her knees. Only the widening slivers of light through the trees kept her stride from faltering.

She noticed Fletcher striding alongside her, her longer legs making it easy for her to overtake the captain. Fletcher asked with a smirk, "Hangin' in there, Captain?"

Lacking the air to respond, Hernandez shot a venomous glare at her XO and kept loping along behind Foyle and Pembleton.

After almost twenty minutes of jogging, the tree line was within sight. A dark wall of Brobdingnagian trunks rose like columns in front of a curtain of pale illumination. Hernandez found it hard to let her eyes adjust; she stared at the light until she could make out the details. A narrow, vertical slice of landscape emerged from behind a veil of shimmering haze: green land below, a crimson shine on the horizon, and a cloud-streaked sky above. But then the forest became a black ma.s.s around her, and she was unable to see where she was going.

She blinked and cast her eyes toward her feet, so that her eyes could readjust to the shadowy realm beneath the arboreal giants. The landscape beyond the tree line was washed away once more in a radiant, white flood. As the landing party neared the forest's edge, the ferns and fronds that choked the ground became taller, and the s.p.a.ces between them narrower and harder to traverse. Within moments, the lush green foliage towered over their heads, aglow with the intense light that slanted almost horizontally into the forest near its perimeter.

Pembleton slowed to a walking pace and called back to the others, "Regroup and stay close till we get clear of this stuff."

The heat from above grew stronger, and the light became much brighter. Filtered through the tall plants, it bathed the landing party in an emerald glow.

Then they broke through the wall of green into daylight.

Slack-jawed and silent, the landing party fanned out in a long line and stared at the vista before them.

Rolling knolls covered in knee-high flaxen gra.s.ses and brightly hued wildflowers punctuated the otherwise gradual downward slope of the landscape. The crescent border of the forest stretched north and south for hundreds of kilometers, disappearing into the misty distance. Flatlands stretched west toward the horizon, in front of which rose a jagged mountain range backed by a seemingly endless bank of storm clouds.

Rising from the center of the golden plain was a ma.s.sive city unlike any that Hernandez had ever seen. Metallic white and shaped like a broad bowl filled with fragile towers, it looked as if it were perfectly symmetrical, but her eyes couldn't discern all the minuscule details of its architecture from this distance. Its surfaces gleamed with reflected light.

"No air traffic," Fletcher said. She took her hand scanner from her belt and activated it. After making a few adjustments, she added, "And we're inside the scattering field, so scanners are drawing a blank."

Hernandez eyed the landscape around the metropolis. "No roads," she said. "It's like this place has no history."

Major Foyle asked, "What are you talking about?"

"A city this big doesn't just spring up from nowhere," Hernandez explained. "Urban centers are hubs for commerce, industry, and travel. Even in a society long past the age of ground travel, you'd expect to find evidence of old roads leading to a city this size."

"Not to mention infrastructure," Fletcher said. "I'm not seeing any signs of civil engineering outside the city. No water or sewage-removal systems, no power grids, no comm lines."

"I'm sure this is all fascinating, Captain," said Major Foyle, "but I just need to know one thing right now: Are we going forward, or going back?"

Hernandez nodded at the city. "Forward, Major. We have to see if anybody's home."

"Then we'd better get going," Foyle said, pointing at the kilometers-long shadow of the city that was angled in their direction. "We're losing the light."

Hernandez looked up at the blinding orange orb of the sun, which was making slow progress toward the horizon. "Move out," she said, and she started walking to lead the way.

Her officers fell in as a group behind her, while Foyle silently directed his MACOs with hand signals to spread out in a triangle-shaped formation around the Columbia team.

Though the alien city was still nearly three kilometers away, it loomed large above the wild s.p.a.ces of the plains, an intricate jewel standing like a citadel of order and authority amid the undefiled chaos of nature. Hernandez's admiration of the city's austere beauty was enhanced by its contrast with the storm-bruised dome of sky in the distance.

Fletcher seemed wary of the majestic white metropolis as she asked Hernandez, "What'll we do if it's deserted?"

"Plant a flag," Hernandez said, only half joking.

Still leery, Fletcher said, "And if it's not deserted?"

"We'll start with 'h.e.l.lo' and see how it goes from there."

"Some plan," Fletcher quipped. "Showing up on their front porch empty-handed. Maybe we should've brought a gift."

Hernandez grinned and played along. "Like what?"

"I dunno," Fletcher said. "A nice ca.s.serole, maybe. Or a basket of m.u.f.fins. Everybody likes a basket of m.u.f.fins."

"I'll put that on the first-contact checklist from now on," Hernandez said. "Phase pistol, universal translator, first-aid kit, and a basket of m.u.f.fins."

Fletcher shrugged. "Couldn't hurt."

The slight downhill grade made the hike to the city an easy one, and the group picked up speed as they continued.

Hernandez sighed and muttered, "d.a.m.n you, Fletcher." When she saw her first officer's aghast reaction, she added, "Now I can't stop thinking about blueberry m.u.f.fins. Thanks a lot."

"My work here is done," Fletcher said.

It was half an hour before anyone spoke again.

As the landing party crested the last knoll between them and the city, they saw that the metropolis didn't rest at ground level. The center of its convex underside hovered several dozen meters above the planet, and its outer edges were hundreds of meters off the ground. It was like standing beneath a giant, levitating bowl of dark metal. Hernandez saw no obvious means of reaching its surface.

Pembleton craned his neck and stared up at the city's edge. "Well, that's just great."

Fletcher said to Hernandez, "We could walk under it. There might be an entrance somewhere along its bottom."

Karl Graylock, who hadn't said a word since beaming down several hours earlier, peered through a pair of magnifying binoculars and shook his head. "Nein," he said. "The ventral surface has no apertures. Going under the city is a waste of time, Captain."

Hernandez saw Ensign Valerian fiddling with the settings of her communicator. "Sidra. Anything?"

Valerian shook her head. "Sorry, Captain. No signals on the standard channels. I'm scanning a wider range now, but all I'm getting is background radiation."

Lieutenant Thayer folded her arms and stared upward at the unreachable city. Hernandez stepped beside the tactical officer and asked, "Ideas, Kiona?"

Thayer look dismayed. "Short of throwing rocks at their windows, no."

Foyle interjected, "My men and I could fire a few shots, get their attention."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Hernandez said.

The major shrugged. "Then I have nothing."

Hernandez stared up at the majestic structure looming above them, and she watched it dim as the planet's ma.s.sive, tangerine-hued star sank behind the mountain range in the west. She sighed heavily. "Well," she said, "that's just great."

Then she saw it.

Hernandez backed away from the city's edge, her gaze still directed upward as she said, "We've got company."

The rest of the landing party backpedaled alongside her as they turned their eyes to the rim of the megalopolis, hundreds of meters above. A vaguely humanoid shape, its limbs barely discernible in the twilight, stepped off the city's edge and descended as if borne aloft on the breeze. Its feet and head seemed large, ponderous, and not at all delicate, even from a distance. The landing party regrouped in a semicircle around Hernandez, who stepped forward to meet the being that floated with steady grace to the ground in front of them.

Only in the broadest possible sense would Hernandez have described the creature as humanoid. It had a torso, two arms, two legs, one head, and a face, but any resemblance to a human ended there.

Its skull was bulbous and quite large, and had two valvelike protuberances high up along the back. Two almond-shaped, upswept, lidless eyes of silver-flecked sea-green were set wide apart on the alien's face, which looked as if it had been stretched until the nose flattened and disappeared, leaving only a taut, lipless mouth curled into a permanent frown. It had no chin to speak of; its face continued to its chest in an unbroken slope of loose, leathery skin folds.

Segmented, tubular growths emerged beneath the base of the being's skull and hugged its shoulders as they curved down into its chest and blended into its mottled hide. Overlapping ridges concealed its shoulders, upper arms, and elbows, like interlocking plates in a suit of well-made armor.

As it took a cautious step in their direction, Hernandez froze, and the landing party tensed silently behind her.

Seeing the creature in motion had emphasized how different its physical proportions were to their own. Its arms were freakishly long by human standards, and its legs seemed impossibly thin to support its weight, even though its chest was birdlike. Its wide, long feet had two enormous forward toes of equal length on either side of a deep curve, and a clawlike third toe near the heel, along the instep.

Loose strips of violet fabric hung over its ungainly body, wrapped around its bony thighs, and were draped between its legs to just above its ankles. Underneath the fabric was a fitted piece of armor that covered the being's torso. A circular plate attached to the back of the armor rose up behind its shoulders and framed its head in a manner that for Hernandez evoked the images of haloed saints on stained-gla.s.s windows.

It gestured at the landscape with three delicate-looking, undulating tendrils at the end of its arm. "Welcome to Erigol," it said, in a voice with a deep male timbre. "I am Inyx, the chief scientist of Axion."

"h.e.l.lo, Inyx," Hernandez said. "I'm Captain Erika Hernandez of the Earth vessel Columbia." She pivoted and nodded at the landing party. "These are members of my crew."

Inyx turned his head slowly one way and then the other, gently twisting the rough, mottled waddles of green-and-purple skin between his face and chest. "You have come seeking aid."

"Yes," Hernandez said. "Our ship-"

"-was damaged in a conflict," Inyx said. "We observed the incident, and we noted your approach."

Hernandez traded confused glances with Fletcher and Foyle before she replied to Inyx, "You've been watching us travel here for over twelve years?"

"Yes," Inyx said. "Do you wish to enter Axion?"

His casual response to her question and the matter-of-fact manner in which he had proffered his invitation left Hernandez feeling conversationally off balance. "Yes, we would," she said finally. "It's why we're here."

"An ingress is being extended," Inyx said. He lifted one arm and waggled one of his ribbonlike digits upward. Hernandez and her team looked up and saw that a cylindrical shaft had sprung from the ostensibly unbroken sh.e.l.l of the city's underside and was quickly extending toward the surface near them. It touched the ground without a sound or vibration, despite its apparent ma.s.s. Inyx walked toward it. Hernandez hesitated for a moment before she followed him. Foyle and Fletcher flanked her as the landing party fell in behind them.

A pinpoint formed on the column's silvery-white metallic surface and opened like an iris, into an aperture wide enough for the landing party to pa.s.s through three across. The interior of the cylinder glowed with amber light. Inyx stepped inside first and then moved to the left of the entrance to facilitate the others' pa.s.sage. As soon as everyone had stepped in and was clear of its threshold, the aperture spiraled shut.

Hernandez stood beside Inyx and stared at his unexpressive face. She felt an awkward need to make small talk. "Our species is known as human," she said.

"We know," Inyx replied. "You are one of many species in this part of the galaxy who have recently developed starflight capabilities-an occurrence of dubious virtue."

Masking her concern over the possible meanings of his remark, she asked, "What are your people called?"

"Caeliar. For simplicity's sake, you may use it in its noun form as a singular or as a plural, and also as an adjective."

Overhead, the top of the cylinder retracted, revealing the late evening sky. Then the walls of the cylinder fell away, and Hernandez saw that she, Inyx, and the landing party stood on the far perimeter of a magnificent city.

Below the ramparts, wide thoroughfares of moving walkways were flanked by lofty towers that looked like sketches of steel and gla.s.s. Great vertical columns rose side by side hundreds of meters above the city, their edifices decorated with intricate, repeated designs, and all of them linked by tenuous filaments, as if they had been wrought from platinum and gossamer.

"It's beautiful," Fletcher said over Hernandez's shoulder.

"This is Axion," Inyx said. "Our capital city."

Under their feet, the elevator disk that had lifted them from the surface detached from Axion's foundation and drifted upward. Then, without any sense of acceleration, it sped forward into the city, which filled its enormous, concave foundation. Canyons of gleaming metal and unearthly light blurred past. The disk transited a circular tunnel through the base of a skysc.r.a.per, then shot out beneath a network of airy, open walkways that bridged the yawning s.p.a.ce between two cl.u.s.ters of buildings. Swaths of the metropolis were lush with vegetation, some of it wild, some of it artfully landscaped. Lights sparkled to life in the spires as the night at last took hold over the city.

As the hoverdisk carried the landing party deeper into Axion, Hernandez asked Inyx, "Where are we going?"

"To your accommodations," Inyx said.

"I guess I could use a rest, after the day we've had," Hernandez said. A look at her landing party garnered no objections. Looking back at Inyx, she continued, "When can we talk to someone about getting help fixing our ship?"

"Your ship will not be repaired," Inyx said.

The landing party's expressions of wonderment at the city's beauties were replaced by surprised and indignant glowers. Hernandez felt her own features harden with anger, then she forced herself to relax and remain diplomatic. "We wouldn't expect you to perform any labor, of course. You obviously have remarkable manufacturing capabilities. If your people could just help us fabricate some spare parts-"

"Perhaps I was not clear," Inyx interrupted. "We will not aid you in the restoration of your vessel."

Hernandez's temper began to get the best of her. "Could you at least send a subs.p.a.ce signal back to Earth so another ship can come out here and get us?"

"We have that capability," Inyx said. "But we will do no such thing. Multiple warnings were sent over subs.p.a.ce radio to your vessel during its approach and were not heeded."

Fletcher adopted a defensive tone. "Our subs.p.a.ce array is damaged," she said as the hoverdisk blurred through another tunnel. "We can't send or receive any signals via subs.p.a.ce."

"Yes," Inyx said. "We realized that when we conducted a more intensive scan of your vessel. It was the only reason we allowed you to proceed without interference."

The breeze that accompanied their flight felt good to Hernandez after the heat of the day, but she was too upset to appreciate it. "What are you saying? That if our comms had worked, you'd have destroyed us?"