My crew and I had come here to study Flood origins. But mysteries were piling upon mysteries.

* * *

The crew again rose from slowness. Audacity had taken up a nearly circular orbit around the fifth planet, a murky gas giant surrounded by seven rings of icy debris.

“A star road!” Clearance said in awe. “And huge!”

From the seven rings, a narrow great band dropped inward to touch the planet’s slushy, cold outer layers. As we moved around to the opposite side, we saw another, very slender road rising below the rings, then sweeping downstar in a smooth, tremendous curve, like a single strand of spider silk strung between neighbors—neighbors only in the sense that they were a mere forty million kilometers apart.

As we watched, the star road slowly flexed, automatically adjusting to changing forces, all the way downstar to the last tiny, sun-skimming chunk of rock.

And it was not alone. Many more star roads had been strung around the inner system, forming a great web—but with substantial gaps, deletions where automatic adjustments had not sufficed, where not even Precursor technology could correct the chaotic imbalances, and the web had crumbled. All the planets had once been connected, strung together. At opposition, some of the webs would have had to loop up and over the star, like swinging ropes in a child’s game.

But these children played enormous games.

The web was doubtless Precursor, far more impressive and possibly more ancient than anything seen in our galaxy. But just as dormant. Just as dead and abandoned.

Or so Forerunner scientists assured us. How many times had skeptical Lifeworkers attended the mandatory Builder lectures on this dogmatic assertion? The many explanations of how a structure could adjust and adapt, yet have no real inner life or process …

And because star roads and other Precursor artifacts merely adjusted, and never changed in other significant ways, we accepted. We believed.

Keeper was jubilant. “Forerunners must have collaborated with the Precursors, long ago! More glory to Builders—glory to all!”

I could not follow his reasoning—but it might not be wrong. All things seemed possible here: time-shifted probability mirrors, upstar veiling, massive complexes of star roads.

Chant, Keeper, and Clearance moved to the opposite side of the bridge to carry out their own analyses. Not all were heartened by what the deeper evidence was telling us.

“Downstar, around the middle rocky planets … We see vessels of a very different design,” Dawn said. “Much smaller.”

“Forerunner—I’m sure of it,” Keeper said. “They appear to be dead hulks. No activity. Undoubtedly prehistoric. I’ve seen their like as symbols in Builder rituals.” He glanced at me, embarrassed to be telling secrets. “The teachers told us such ships were sacred vessels. Nobody ever thought we might actually find them.”

“There are no energy signatures. All are inactive,” Audacity confirmed. “Dormancy possible but unlikely.”