Gaston huffs. “I wish. At least we’d know what we’re dealing with. We haven’t been able to fully recover the Observatory’s memory, but I did get some information on the path the Xolotl took to get here. This new ship is on a completely different trajectory.”
I stare at him instead of the blue dot. “Maybe you could say that in words I could understand?”
“It’s not more Grownups.” He lets go of Spingate, taps the red dot. A line extends from it, arcing away to my left, away from Omeyocan.
“That’s the path the Xolotl took to get here,” he says. He taps the blue dot. Another line appears, curving away and to my right. “That is the path the new ship took.”
The ships came from completely different areas of space. It took the Xolotl a thousand years to reach this planet. That new ship could have been traveling equally long, but from another direction.
“If it’s not Grownups,” I say, “then who?”
When Gaston speaks, his voice is quiet and steady, free of any trace of the mockery or bravado that usually define him.
“When the Grownups got here, they destroyed the Springer civilization. Based on what Okereke found in the hole, we think the Springers destroyed another race that was here before them—meaning the Springers are probably from somewhere else, just like we are. Three races have occupied this same area. So who is in that new ship? My guess is it’s a fourth race. And based on what the Grownups did when they arrived, and what the Springers probably did when they arrived, we have to assume this fourth race isn’t coming here for milk and cookies.”
No one speaks. The blue dot blinks softly.
I couldn’t have possibly anticipated this. No one could have. We earned peace. An uneasy peace, certainly, but humans and Springers are working together, trying to build bridges that will lead to us sharing this planet. Not as one people, perhaps, but as cooperative neighbors. We’ve fought for that, and now a tiny point of blue light tells me it might all be for nothing.
“How long?” I say. “How long until it arrives?”
Gaston scratches his beard. “About two hundred days.”
We don’t know what it is. We don’t know what’s in it. We don’t know if it is friend or enemy.
Spingate clears her throat. “It’s likely they detected our radio wave, so they know that we know they’re coming. We’re trying to figure out how to send a communication, but we’re not sure how to do that, or if they would even understand. Should we—”
The room speaks, cutting her off.
“Grandmaster Spingate,” Ometeotl says. “Contact Gamma-One detected.”
Farther out from Omeyocan, past the blue dot and in yet another direction, a yellow dot appears.
Spingate and Gaston say nothing.
“Is that the sun?” I ask. “One of the two moons?”
Spingate slowly shakes her head. “The Xolotl is labeled Alpha-One. That was the first thing the radio wave detected. Then it detected the blue dot, which we labeled Beta-One. The wave keeps expanding, continues to detect things that are farther out.” Her hands rub absently at her swollen belly.
Gaston turns quickly to another pedestal. He calls up glowing symbols, grabs them, moves them, turns them.
The yellow dot grows a line: it points out into yet another area of space.
“A third ship,” he says, his voice flat, stunned. “Estimated time to orbit, two hundred eighty-one days. Maybe it’s a ghost image or something, or an asteroid, or—”
“Grandmaster Spingate, contact Delta-One detected.”
A green dot appears. This time I don’t have to ask what it is—it’s all too clear.
Gaston works the controls.
“Getting the estimated time to orbit,” he says. “Roughly…three hundred thirty-two days.”
Three ships, out there in the blackness of space. They are all coming from different directions.
They are all coming here.
Our fight for Omeyocan is long from over.