They were just like the ones he had seen on the images of the Klikiss Torch experiment, apparitions he had dismissed as irrelevant anomalies. Margaret Colicos, though, had been absolutely correct in her first assessment.

Ships. He suddenly experienced a deeper chill than any he had felt aboard the station.

The fleet of bristling diamond-hulled spheres approached with dizzying speed, like moths drawn to Oncier’s new flame. Fourteen glassy spheres the size of asteroids dropped toward the former gas giant and its thawing moons. They looked like transparent planets, perfectly round but studded with sharp protrusions; the clear hulls showed murky mists inside, hinted at complex geometrical machinery. Like hungry insects the alien globes surrounded the smallest moon, Ben.

All of his crew rushed to the observation windows. Dazzling light from nearby Oncier reflected from the crystal-curved balls. Triangular pyramids like perfect mountains thrust through the bubble-skin; their pointed tips crackled with blue lightning.

“Are we getting all this on permanent record?” Serizawa said. “This is amazing! What are they?”

“They seem to be interested in Ben. Maybe they’re scanning—”

The alien ships opened fire on the moon.

Blue lightning from the pyramidal protrusions of all fourteen alien ships converged, then shot downward in a single beam, slamming into Ben’s already unstable surface. Heat glowed, land masses vibrated as acoustic waves transmitted powerful energy throughout the rocky body.

Serizawa shouted into the communications systems, as if the aliens might understand his outcry or even respond to him. “What are you doing? Please stop! This is human territory. This is—” He looked at his companions, but no one offered any suggestions.

The weapons fire continued. Gases erupted from the moon, the rocky continent broke apart, and orange heat boiled upward from the now-exposed core. Ben began to shudder, splitting under the onslaught.

It took the silent aliens twenty minutes to demolish the moon and break it into glowing coals that drifted apart in space.

“My God! Why?” The techs and astrophysicists were wildeyed.

The crystalline globes moved smoothly away from the hot rubble of Ben and headed straight for George. Serizawa’s face glistened with sweat. Though his skin seemed as cold as ice, he felt as though he were burning with anger.

The fourteen diamond spheres hovered over the second moon. Analyzing? Mapping continental flaws, fractures in the core structure? Then the lightning hammers blazed downward again.

Serizawa’s anger turned to terror. “Transmit these images! Call for help, a general distress in all directions.” He cursed the fact that their poorly staffed observation platform had no green priest aboard to provide instant telink communication.

“Dr. Serizawa, it’ll take weeks before anyone receives these transmissions.”

Serizawa knew that full well. He spread his palms, panicked and helpless. A man dying of a medical emergency does not write a letter to summon an ambulance—but that was all he could do now. “Somebody’s got to know.”