"But a lateen rig or a fore-and-aft rig is a lot more efficient."

Kira gave Jason a skeptical look. "When did you become an expert on sailing ships?"

He shook his head. "I'm not an expert in terms of actually sailing. But I've played sims with sailing ships in them, and the way the sails were rigged mattered. It was one of the options when designing a ship, so I had to learn a little bit about them. I'm just wondering why your world ended up with an older, less efficient design. I mean, it looks really great. But—"

"It looks great." Kira sighed. "One time when I talked with a librarian— You have librarians on Urth, right? The protectors and distributors of knowledge? We were talking about how our world is, and the librarian said it seemed like when the crew members from the great ship founded the Mechanics Guild they sometimes chose things for the world just because they liked that thing. They liked it and they were deciding what would be in the world, so they put it in."

Jason's jaw dropped as he looked at her. "No way. They treated it like they were designing a game. Putting in stuff they thought was cool. But they were playing with real people."

Kira stared downward, feeling angry at old injuries done to her world. "Jason, I wish Urth had sent another ship to find out what happened when communications stopped. Another ship could have done something about what the crew did here."

"Not necessarily," Jason said. "The crew could have fabricated some pretty nasty weapons, and the colony ship would have had beta field generators, which are still about as nasty as it gets."

"What's a beta field generator? A bomb?"

"No. Bombs leave stuff behind. Beta field generators were created to dispose of stuff like asteroids that were threatening human-occupied moons and planets or something like a colony ship. They just…make anything inside the field go away."

Kira frowned at Jason. "Are they still on the remains of the great ship above us?"

"No. We scanned that. Your ship was completely stripped of useful equipment." Jason scratched his head. "The crew must have brought them down, maybe so they'd be sure of having access to them if another ship did come. I wonder what they did with them?"

"Once the Urth ship leaves," Kira said, "we need to get you to the librarians' tower on Altis so you can see if those beta things are there. The librarians say they have no weapons, but maybe they wouldn't recognize them. Anyway, Urth didn't know the crew had deliberately broken off communications. Why didn't they send a ship?"

He blinked in surprise. "They haven't told you? I mean, over the ERIS transmissions?"

"Just generalities. My mother says they kind of talk around it."