Silence. Then Rachel said, “We can date that era. It’s somewhere millions of years in the past.”

Stiffly Stefano said, “That could match, if Fraq would tell us when his species came here.”

Rachel said, “He doesn’t know. It was a long time ago, and his species had done a lot. They abandoned their native planet and now live in artificial sites strung around their solar system. In all that, plenty of their records vanished.”

Both men gaped at her. “This…” Stefano said, blinking rapidly, “… this is known?”

“To me and few others.”

“Why isn’t this understood more broadly?”

Rachel spread her hands, shrugging as if the answer was obvious. “Some of it Fraq told me—me alone. Plus, the Library doesn’t want to turn this into a media circus. Being on Luna helps to shut out Earth’s grabby media net. Taking Fraq to Mars is even better. The Prefect liked that idea a lot.” But he sure as hell hadn’t liked getting cut out of the Mars expedition, at Fraq’s demand. “It… keeps Fraq under wraps.” There, Rachel thought, I’ve said it.

The Prefects had in mind all along isolating Fraq until they knew more. Never said so directly, but after years of working with them, she had become accustomed to their furtive ways. Fraq was consistently cagey about the aliens’ motives, the wormhole location—without ever really saying how they’d gotten here at all. She knew a big game was afoot here, too big to squander on a mere publicity campaign. The Prefects had tried to stop the whole orbitfall stunt, lost out to Earther pressure. Then the Everest ascent, the smokers, now Mars… Puzzling indeed, to the myriad Earther theorists, to politicians, to social comment folk, to media mavens…

Hassan said, “This casts new light. Fraq is exploring here a site his species once knew. Why?”

Rachel outlined the alien’s curious stunts, though they knew most of it. “The point is, Fraq is going back to the time when his kind had a world—an act of ancient nostalgia, I suppose. And the Marsmat is part of that. Somehow.”

“Why didn’t his species spread through the wormhole network—assuming there is one, as some Messages said, long ago, I know—so they could come here?” Stefano asked.

Rachel shrugged. “We don’t know. Maybe they didn’t have the tech for a long time. Or—could be the location of their wormhole mouth is a closely guarded secret, known only to a few?” She laughed wryly. “Because that’s how Fraq is treating us, too—hiding the wormhole location. So… why?” The big prize, she thought, but didn’t say.

Stefano looked worried, then made his face blank. Rachel supposed this was moving too fast for him and his agenda. “We should be careful about turning speculations into facts,” he said stiffly.

Hassan nodded, but said, “Nobody can test an idea before taking the trouble to have an idea.”

After that, she decided to go for a walk.

In her first days on Mars she had stayed inside, a bit shy of the complicated suit-up rituals needed. She got to know some of the people in the habitat instead, and made a discovery. Media had conditioned viewers to think that only emotionally repressed pilots spouting acronyms were the Real Stuff. Some had become celebs, like Julia and the others in the original First Landing team: the Bright Stuff. But the thousands of people on Mars now, after a century of Marsforming, were varied and spirited—pioneers. Good, odd people. Still, it was the frontier that most interested Rachel here, the unknown.