To make this plain to grounders will be pure task profound. They show proper respect through their Library on this arid moon. Their great Librarian, a female savant, deserves respect. She is one who has worked on scales of suns and worlds, the interstellar appropriate view. For this we chose her to be our point of plunge.

I and my Flock are much diminished here. Flush with pride, though few in number. I accepted that constraint when I agreed to command, to be the point of our V.

We could squeeze only a few dozen into our tube ship, and even then it was vexing. The spacetime Mouth had its constraint set by spacetime struts. We could but snake through it. Even done, I had to stride the corridor in full scowl to quiet their fluttering anxieties.

Then came the disaster of the Mouth. I was shaken but could not show that.

I had to peck a few of the Flock, to release them from their panic. The flight through the narrow drawing-in Mouth, and thus through the spacetime tunnel, began by letting the entrance Mouth draw us toward it. Its attraction was like that of a small world. We fell into it, keeping rigorously true to the exact center of the thing. It glimmered, a sphere that seemed polished metal but was not. It curved light about itself, spacetime master, a cocoon of shiny brilliance.

In we went. Our machine intelligences set plunging—calibrating, steering. As we had drilled for, over years. Then the shimmer of the tunnel. Slick light, a strumming like unto a deep bass flight song. Quick, a glimpse of dark space ahead—

The through-slip had been simple and quick. Not the exit.

The physicist Lexnor explained later the chaos that awaited our slender ship. We emerged as expected, true. Into empty space, star blaring nearby.

Engines thrummed. All seemed calm and right. For moments. But then the exit Mouth spun away. Tumbling. A fire of hard particle radiation showed us its path. I watched, confused. This was not how the rehearsals had gone. My Flock rippled feathers. Caws and songs.

Our ship nearly snapped into two. Groans, cracks, metal shrieks. Worse, we spun, hard. We lost all sight of the Mouth. Yet it was our path back! I sang the gathering-in call to calm the jittery chirps that echoed in our slender cylinder. Boomed and strutted. This worked on the Flock, while the physics crew did their best to fathom what had happened. Much remains to be done, but we have a path homeward—if we can find the Mouth.

So it came to be: we spoke the first time to the groundlings, through flights electromagnetic. Negotiations. Our craft swept up through their sun’s gravitational potential, angling arrow-sharp toward their bright world of blue and white and green.

Then a swift turn. To their rocky, pale moon, pimpled and ancient, where we knew their Library lurked. Where the hero Librarian lived, who had tamed the hydrogen wall. Such valiants we can deal with. My Overflock so commands. No lesser will suffice.