No amount of preparation could make them completely ready when the hydrogue attack finally came. And it was coming. Sullivan was sure of it.

In the last hours of darkness, unable to sleep, he stood on the chilly observation deck and looked down into the clouds. The air that penetrated the atmosphere-condensing field smelled strange tonight, with a crackle of static energy that prickled the fine hairs on his arms. He and the green priest made a habit of spending an hour or so together before sunrise, watching the distant lights of the Ildiran sky-harvesting city as it sought hydrogen-rich updrafts.

Kolker cradled his precious treeling, always wearing a preoccupied smile as he listened to a background conversation that no one else could hear. Sullivan didn't mind; he felt no need to be talking all the time.

The cloud harvester had sent another ekti shipment back to the Hansa. Under his management, the facility was even more productive than the most optimistic projections. He had received congratulatory messages from King Peter and Chairman Wenceslas, and his wife Lydia had informed him that the extraordinary bonuses were going to put all the grandchildren through college.

Things were going well.

In the darkness, Sullivan saw an unexpected whirlpool form in the bottomless sea beneath the harvester's trailing whisker sensors. Beside him, Kolker stared into the churning soupy mists as a knot of lightning skittered through the storm's gaping mouth.

"I don't like the look of this," Sullivan said. In the expanse of clouds separating the Hansa facility and the Ildiran complex, more bursts of lightning erupted.

The door from the control deck behind them whisked open. Tabitha came running out, her face pale. "Sullivan! We've got major activity on the sensors-"

Directly below the observation deck, the thick clouds spread apart, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Tabitha skidded to a halt as all three of them caught their breath in awe. The green priest gripped his treeling, as if it were an anchor.

Electrical bolts traced lines from cloudbank to cloudbank, eerily silent except for muffled, delayed thunder from far below. Then, like legendary leviathans heaving themselves into open air, six enormous warglobes rose through the nightside ocean. Even from a distance, Sullivan could see sparks of blue-white power that crackled from the diamond hulls.

Tabitha could not tear her eyes from the looming diamond spheres that continued to ascend, growing larger every second. Sullivan grabbed her arm. "Snap out of it! They're not coming for a social call, and we've got to save the crew!"

Running so fast that she nearly stumbled, Tabitha charged back into the control center. Loud alarms shrieked through the decks of the cloud harvester. Men and women off-shift staggered out of their cabins, bleary-eyed and half dressed, but they did not question what was happening. Sullivan had never played tricks on them with surprise drills; they knew this was the real thing.

Leaving the green priest out on the observation deck, chattering a desperate report to his treeling, Sullivan charged into the control center. Tabitha and three coworkers stood by display screens and a sectional diagram of the facility. Sirens and buzzers rattled the metal walls.

From the day of its deployment, Sullivan had understood that his cloud harvester was probably doomed. His crewmen scrambled to evacuate, and Sullivan was glad to see so many of them automatically following the procedures. Through the wide window, he watched more of the deadly warglobes emerge from the clouds. The deep-core aliens had no need to hurry.

"We're screwed," Tabitha said.

During drills, the crew usually took half an hour to complete the evacuation procedures, but with their lives really on the line, they might find an extra burst of speed. Sullivan prayed they would have enough time before the warglobes began a full-scale attack.

Chapter 74-JESS TAMBLYN.

After guiding his water-and-pearl ship across the vast emptiness for several days, Jess approached Plumas, viewing the system through the liquid curves of his vessel. Vivid memories fueled an energy inside his heart that had nothing to do with the power of the wentals.

Home. It was a concept that even Roamers clung to.

Jess had grown up with his older brother and younger sister in the sheltered settlement under the frozen crust. He'd worked every day, learning the family water business, prepared to follow tradition. Plumas had a huge reservoir of liquid water and a shallow gravity well for easy transfer to Roamer ships. The demand would never diminish, and the Tamblyn clan's Guiding Star seemed bright and clear and strong.

Who could have guessed that Jess's family and their future would unravel like poorly stitched embroidery on a clan jumpsuit?

His mother had been killed on Plumas almost twenty years ago, her body forever frozen in a deep crevasse. The Tamblyn clan had moved forward, prospering and unified, until Ross and their father parted ways in a harsh falling-out, leaving Jess in the middle of so much friction. He should have done more to bring them together again. He'd waited for a good opportunity, assuming he would have time after tempers died down. No one had imagined that hydrogues existed, much less that they might rise up from the clouds to destroy Ross's Blue Sky Mine.

Another few threads unraveling...

Jess had been there to comfort his father, but old Bram had died of grief. Then his sister had run off to join the Eddies and fight the hydrogues. These days, the EDF was attacking Roamer settlements instead. What was Tasia doing?

More and more frayed threads...

His four uncles ran the water mines, while Jess and his fourteen volunteer water bearers went about their vital mission, spreading the wentals to empty worlds, to the clouds of Golgen, to a spectacular living comet cruising across space. The elemental beings grew stronger and stronger, preparing for their ultimate conflict. Soon, the battle would be engaged.

Despite the flood of alien energy within him, Jess could not forget that he was still human. He still loved Cesca and longed to be with her. He wanted to know where his sister was, hoping she was still alive among the Eddies. He wanted to do do something to help his people, his family. Otherwise, what did these wental powers benefit him? something to help his people, his family. Otherwise, what did these wental powers benefit him?

The exotic spherical ship hovered above the glacial surface of the ice moon, and Plumas filled his view like a polished opal. Jess looked down at the wellheads and pumping stations surrounded by igloo-style hangars, large water-tanker ships for delivering supplies to settlements, and elevator passages that descended to the subcrustal settlement.

Staring through his ship's filmy hull of contained water, Jess remembered every hillock, every block of ice down there. When they were younger, he and Ross had driven across the landscape in insulated rovers. The two brothers had been reckless in the low gravity, gaining too much speed, jumping narrow fissures, crunching vacuum-stretched icicles that oozed out of pressure joints in the crust. Even after so many years, the jittering tracks of their vehicles were still visible as sketch lines. Back then, carefree times had seemed the normal way of things.

Jess set his wental vessel down on the floor of a crater, coming to rest near a trio of large-bore wellheads. The water-mine workers would have sounded alarms down below. He was sure by now that his uncles would know what had happened to him. They must have heard of the speech he had given to the gathered clans at Rendezvous.

Rendezvous...which was now no more than drifting rubble, thanks to the brutality of the Earth Defense Forces. Should he not use his newfound abilities to make a difference for his people, as his water bearers had demanded? Imagine what would happen if he landed his exotic wental ship in front of the Whisper Palace on Earth. Would the Hansa Chairman finally see reason?

But the wentals would not allow him to focus on a feud among humans. It had been difficult enough to convince them to come here. Jess had finally made the wentals understand about heartstrings and family and obligations.

When his ship rested like a teardrop on the ground, Jess pressed against the curved membrane. The impenetrable film puckered around him like a kiss, and he passed through. Standing out on the frozen surface, Jess wore only the tight white singlesuit that left his hands and feet bare. His body crackled with power from the wentals within his cells, protecting him. He turned his face to the shatteringly cold vacuum, able to gaze upon the open majesty of space in a way that no other human had ever done.

Home.

Through the soles of his feet, he could sense the thrumming industry beneath the kilometer-thick ceiling of ice. He smiled as he recalled his irascible old dad. Bram Tamblyn had been a stern leader, demanding hard work and absolute diligence from his family and his employees. Jess called to mind one of his father's favorite sayings: A true member of our family, a true water miner, needs to have ice water in his veins. A true member of our family, a true water miner, needs to have ice water in his veins.

Faint vapors lifted into the air: carbon dioxide and water molecules volatilizing into the vacuum and hovering near the crater bottom like fog. Plumas's low gravity could not hold on to the gases for long before they evaporated into space.

He walked to a sheet of smooth black ice that had been melted and refrozen from tidal stresses. He spread his feet and closed his eyes, calling upon the wentals, water to water in an elemental synchronicity. Raising his hands overhead like a diver, he sank through the ice without a ripple. He descended, like a spirit on an intangible elevator, through layer after layer, until finally he plunged through the curved ceiling to the vault far below and dropped into the ancient, cold sea. The water enfolded him.

The leaden sea around him contained life of its own, and the wentals held themselves inside his body. They did not flow out of him to infiltrate Plumas as they had done on the comet, adhering to their agreement not to taint an inhabited world. They could have possessed all this water, sweeping through the subcrustal ocean. But they did not, leaving the ice moon to the Tamblyns.

Jess allowed his entire body to rise to the surface, then made his way toward the icy shore where domes, huts, and storage shacks formed his clan's main settlement. Home Home.

The workforce here ranged from fifty to a hundred Roamers, most of them related in one way or another to the Tamblyn clan. The well-rounded staff members were trained in numerous skills beyond their specific assigned duties as mechanics, administrators, architects, handymen, transport pilots, ice drillers, cleaners, and cooks.

He smiled as he walked to solid land, an ice shelf bordering the cold underground sea. Jess had grown up here in an enclosed world with a ceiling of artificial sunlight. When at the age of twelve he had finally traveled with his father to see Rendezvous, he had never imagined anything so vast and crowded. He had seen Cesca, just a glimpse, when she was beginning her schooling under the old Speaker Okiah.

Now he spread his hands, drinking in the atmosphere, the water, the environment of Plumas. Droplets of the prehistoric ocean dripped off him and froze in puddles on the ground. Steam rose from his hair and shoulders as his body's own power dried him.

Three of his uncles came out of their huts in the business complex of the mining settlement. His uncle Caleb wasn't with them. Wynn, Torin, and Andrew couldn't believe what they were seeing. "Jess! Jess, is that you?"

The twins looked at each other. Andrew, the quietest uncle, sighed happily. "Ah, boy, it's good to have you back-even if we heard you're not quite human anymore."

Jess smiled reassuringly, accustomed to that reaction by now. "I'm still the same person inside." His voice carried as if artificially amplified.

Wynn scratched gray stubble on his chin. "Shizz, Jess, you fly in here in a giant water bubble, and then you stroll across the surface in hard vacuum without a suit on! You just melted yourself through a kilometer of ice and landed here without so much as a goose bump or ruffled hair."

"Doesn't exactly sound like a normal human to me," said his twin, Torin.

"Me either," said Andrew, who was in charge of finances and accounting at the Tamblyn water mines. "We watched you on the wellhead cameras."

Jess smiled, and his skin tingled with a faintly visible aura. "Maybe I was showing off a little bit. The wentals allow me to do many things that must seem strange."

Wynn and Torin, wearing skeptical frowns, sat beside each other on a cold block of ice. Insulated suits kept them warm, though Wynn clenched and unclenched his hands to keep the blood circulating in the chill air. Around them among the mining huts, many workers peered out with cautious curiosity, staying away from the strange manifestation of Bram Tamblyn's only surviving son.

"Have you heard anything from Tasia?" Jess asked.

"No. Who knows how the Eddies have brainwashed her by now?" Wynn said. "We thought you might bring some news."

"I haven't been close to people much."

Andrew retreated to the administrative shelter and returned in a moment with a chairpad for himself and a thermal bottle of pepperflower tea along with four cups. He sat on his chairpad, while the twins pretended to be comfortable on their frozen lump. Andrew poured a cup of the steaming, spicy beverage and extended it to Jess. "If you're going to stand there looking all sparkly, you'd better tell us your full story. Here, have a hot drink."

Jess did not touch the cup. "That's not necessary, Uncle Andrew."

"We've got a lot stronger stuff, if you prefer, Jess," Torin offered. "We distill it ourselves."

"I'll tell you my story...but the wentals provide everything I need." He briefly described how he had sifted the wentals from water molecules strewn across a nebula, how he began to communicate with them, how he seeded them on empty ocean worlds, and how, when the hydrogues destroyed his ship above an alien sea, the wentals penetrated his cells and kept him alive, while changing him forever.

Wynn blew out a long breath that emerged as a plume from his nostrils. "Those supernatural wental things you've got inside you, Jess-the ones you're spreading around to other water worlds?-I'm not sure we want them living inside Plumas. I don't care if you call them beings or ghosts or elementals or aliens."

"They are are enemies of the hydrogues," Andrew pointed out. enemies of the hydrogues," Andrew pointed out.

Torin seemed just as concerned. "Even so, we're trying to run a business here."

"Don't worry-I wouldn't do anything to jeopardize the water mines," Jess said. "The wentals have agreed not to release themselves. They altered me me fundamentally, in a similar way to how the worldtrees change a person into a green priest. I am fundamentally changed, charged, but they will not do so again. It was a conscious decision on their part, to save my life because I was the only one who knew about them. Here on Plumas, though, they will keep themselves separate, just like the worldtrees on Theroc." fundamentally, in a similar way to how the worldtrees change a person into a green priest. I am fundamentally changed, charged, but they will not do so again. It was a conscious decision on their part, to save my life because I was the only one who knew about them. Here on Plumas, though, they will keep themselves separate, just like the worldtrees on Theroc."

"What do the worldtrees have to do with it?"

"The verdani are elemental beings, much like the wentals-and the faeros, and the hydrogues. I can't even begin to explain the incredible war that took place ten thousand years ago." He shook his head. "But the wentals were nearly exterminated, as were the worldtrees. The hydrogues retreated to the cores of gas-giant planets, and the faeros hid inside the stars."

"And now they're all awake again and at each other's throats." Torin snorted. "Lucky us."

"I didn't come to saturate Plumas with wentals," Jess said. "There are plenty of other places for them to spread. I flew here for other reasons-the most important of which was to see my home and my family again."

Andrew looked relieved by these reassurances and stood up from his chairpad, as if ready to return to his work. He seemed to think all matters had been discussed and decided upon.

"After hearing you talk, boy, I'd give you a hug, if I could," Wynn said, "but it doesn't sound like that would be a smart thing to do."

"No, that wouldn't be smart at all." Jess formed a smile, and his watery blue gaze became distant. "But now that the wentals have changed me, I'll be able to accomplish something here that I've wanted to do for a long time."

Chapter 75-PRINCE DANIEL.

After a few days on his own, Daniel was no longer so enamored with freedom. He was hungry. He had no place to sleep and no friends to contact. Every place he went, he imagined that the Chairman's agents were hunting for him. As discreetly as possible, he watched news loops, searching for announcements of the Prince's disappearance. He had assumed the Hansa would offer a substantial reward for his safe return. But he heard no mention of his escape-nothing! As far as the public knew, Prince Daniel was still happily ensconced in his royal quarters in the Whisper Palace.

By now he looked dirty and rumpled, and there were small tears in his clothes. Though he hated to admit it, he would have welcomed even a plate of the annoyingly wholesome food OX had inflicted upon him. He didn't like this at all.

Out of desperation, he worked his way through the streets to the neighborhood where he had once lived with his stepfather and slutty sister. He hadn't regretted leaving them, but they might help him out. He couldn't wait to brag to his sister about where he'd been for the past year, rub her nose in the fact that he was the Hansa's new Prince.

But when he arrived at the familiar block, he discovered that the entire building where he had lived was gone. The dwelling complex had been torn down and replaced with a commercial structure full of offices and shops.

He had to be careful not to show too much curiosity, since Chairman Wenceslas must surely be watching this place. Trying to act casual, he asked an old woman what had happened to the people who lived there.

She shrugged. "Evicted, I think. Health hazards, some kind of epidemic. Quite a few people died, and everyone else was turned out onto the street."

Unsettled, Daniel walked away without thanking her. In a daze, he remembered an occasion not long ago when King Peter had barged into the Prince's chambers claiming that the Hansa had killed Daniel's family. At the time it had seemed little more than an outrageous bluff, a scare tactic.

Now Daniel wasn't so sure.

At night, with hunger gnawing at his stomach, he crept up to a small grocery distribution center, smashed a window, then reached in to unlock the door, so he could slip inside to where boxes of food sat surrounded by shadows. He didn't have a plan; he simply grabbed the first edible items he could find-crackers and a tube of tart jam-and began gorging himself.

When he moved deeper into the grocery area, searching for food he could take with him, he heard a rattle and a slam behind him. Automatic guard gates locked into place over the broken entrance. He ran to the gate, but could find no way out. He must have triggered a silent alarm.

While waiting for the local police force to arrive, a resigned Daniel spent his time eating as much as possible.

When he heard the security vehicles and saw uniformed men emerge, he arranged an indignant look on his face. "What took you so long?" he said, mustering as commanding a tone as he could remember from the statesmanship lessons OX had given him. "I am testing the security of my Hansa. Professional thieves could have cleaned out this place in the meantime."

Unsympathetic, the police came toward him with their twitchers drawn. Daniel remained indignant. "I am Prince Daniel. Don't you recognize me?"

They didn't. Nor did they believe him.

Only moments after the police response, bleary-eyed news reporters arrived, taking images of the arrest in progress for a bland local report. Daniel began struggling and bellowing that he was the Prince, to the amusement of the reporters.

Finally, the policemen used their twitchers, firing a burst that scrambled nerve communication. Daniel dropped immediately, unable to control his voluntary muscles; he remained completely conscious, embarrassed while he flopped about harmlessly. He had never been stunned before.

Still twitching and fighting the effects, the young man was hauled away and transported to a massive blocky building, where he was imprisoned with other miserable-looking and surly suspects. No amount of shouting and petulant demands brought the police to see him.

The following morning, a broad-shouldered, neatly dressed man arrived, whom Daniel recognized as Franz Pellidor, one of the Chairman's special assistants. "I am the boy's uncle," Pellidor said to one of the administrators in the police station. "I'm afraid he's quite deluded. He must have succeeded in hiding his medication again. I apologize. Our family will pay for any damages and all necessary fines, of course."

Pellidor's grip was like an iron vise around the runaway's arm as he led the boy out.

"All right, I'm sorry," Daniel pouted. "I've learned my lesson. Just take me back to the Palace. I have to admit I'm glad to see you."

Pellidor looked into the Prince's face with an expression of sheer contempt. "You will not be so glad when you see Chairman Wenceslas."