"It is indeed a telescope," the brown man said, smiling. "The last the Frants built before our gate opened."

"This is Ser Rennslaer Yates, secondary gate opener," Olmy explained, introducing them around. "He will accompany us to one point three ex nine."

Yates unhitched his tool kit. "This meeting has been long expected. Ser Olmy has kindly kept me informed about all of you. The Frants indulge me by letting me tinker with their historical treasures." He pointed with one hand to the telescope and the dome and pavilion, then donned a blue cloth shirt and closed it by pressing along a seam. "There's not much need for gate openers now. The primary can do most of the work very well without us." He approached Patricia. "Olmy's told me a fair amount about you. You've made some impressive discoveries."

Patricia smiled but said nothing. Her eyes, however, were bright and square: cat with a secret. Lanier felt a surge of—pride? something else?—as he realized how much she had improved since last night.

"I'd love to tinker with that," Heineman said wistfully.

"Perhaps someday you will—or one like it. Frants are not much for preserving their past, I'm afraid." He patted the telescope mount. "I will not be back here for some time," he said sadly. To Heineman and Carrolson, he confided, "I'd ask them to keep up the work, but they'll be reassigned—wander off and homogenize, as Frants do—and it will start decaying all over again. In its day, you know, this instrument and fourteen others like it were kept busy from dusk to dawn, searching for the comet sweeps." He waved his hand, bidding them to follow him beyond the rim of the pavilion and across a narrow, flat field.

At the lip of the steep precipice, they looked across the flatlands and the sea beyond. "The Frants were already moving into the space age when we arrived. They had built thousands of missiles with nuclear warheads—fantastic, ingenious and very jumbled technologies; jerry-rigged could you call them? It had been over nine centuries since the last major impacts, and they were waiting.

"If this instrument or any of the others had sighted comets, then trajectories would have been computed by thousands of Frants linking minds. Years it might have taken them, but otherwise they had only primitive computers. The villages would have been moved, placed in safer areas. Every village on the planet in motion! They were saved from that. Still, this"—raising his hand to the dome—"was a noble instrument." He shook his head. "Ser Olmy! Lead on. I am done here." He hugged each of the Frants and touched their hands in the homogenizing gesture, though for a human it was purely a formality.