But Pirius hadn’t seen Titan. He was stuck here on Ensh, as the locals called it, which was just another Navy base that could have been anywhere from here to the Prime Radiant itself. Once, it wouldn’t even have occurred to him to feel restless. But now he felt as if his curiosity had been opened up by his time in Sol system. What else was out there to be experienced—what else might he already have missed, if not for the strange irruption into his life of Pirius Blue?

He tried to focus on the discussion.

Commander Darc was out of his depth. “Forgive me, Commissary. I’m just a humble tar. Are you saying that the nightfighter is alive? That the Xeelee are their ships?”

“I, I—” Nilis stumbled, wiped his face with the back of his hand. He was overworking, Pirius knew, stretching himself thin across Sol system. “Yes, if you want a short answer. But it isn’t as simple as that. I’m saying there is no distinction between the Xeelee and their technology.”

Luru Parz seemed amused by all this. “But, Commissary, spacetime defects or condensate—neither seems very promising material to make a phenotype out of. Unlike the carbon-compound molecules of which you are made, for instance, there simply isn’t much of it about.”

“Quite true.” Nilis smiled at her. “Most life-forms we have encountered have a certain commonality. Space is full of prebiotic chemicals, the carbon-based chemistry that underlies our kind of life—stuff like simple amino acids, ammonia, and formaldehyde. This stuff is manufactured in interstellar clouds and rains down on the planets. Even today, thousands of tonnes of the stuff fall on Earth, for instance. So carbon-water chemistry is really an obvious resource for making life. Of course there is little in common in the detail between humans and, say, Silver Ghosts. But we derive from the same prebiotic interstellar chemistry; in a deep sense we are indeed cousins.

“But, as you say, Luru Parz, the Xeelee are different. These spacetime defects of which they have been baked aren’t common at all. Or at least, not now . . . but there was a time in the universe’s complicated history when they were common. The Xeelee—or their progenitors—must surely have arisen in an earlier age of the universe, an epoch when spacetime defects proliferated. But that era was in the first moments after the singularity. If that’s true, the Xeelee have very deep roots in time.”

Gramm made an explosive noise through his plump lips. “You goad me beyond endurance, Commissary. This is supposed to be a military briefing! Will—you—get—to the point?”

Nilis leaned on a desk and glared at Gramm. “The point, Minister, is that we now may understand why the Xeelee cluster around Chandra, the black hole. They need its deep gravity, its wrenching spacetime curvature.”

“Ah.” Luru Parz nodded. “To them, Chandra is like a last fire in a universe grown cold.”