“Centuries ago, right?” Cat continued. “First close-ups of the neighbors, the 550 AU orbital big ’scopes just getting started.”

“Right. I’m looking at the old missions, the microwave-beamed sailships that scoped out the nearbys.”

Catkejen eyed a passing guy, maybe looking for an evening elsewhere, after work. Some of the higher-ups had their own singleton rooms—great for parties, and, of course, a romantic perk. Catkejen yawned, a clear come-on signal, but the guy just kept moving. Cat blinked, refocused. “Yeah, long before we knew what a web of interstellar messaging there was.”

Rachel leaned forward to keep Catkejen from diversions. “I’m looking at the 550 lens data, too. Plenty of life-bearing planets around the galaxy’s dwarf stars, that astro century-long survey says. Some with signs of a civilization. But most dwarf-star globes are shrouded in clouds, hard to see anything much.”

Indeed, Rachel loved roving through the images gathered from coasting telescopes at the great theater in the sky, where worlds of the galaxy were on display.

The sun’s focus spot was 550 astronomical units out, where the sun’s gravity gathered starlight into an intense pencil. The many sailship telescopes there fed back distorted images of faraway solar systems, as if seen through a funhouse mirror. But smart Artilects untangled them into a wealth, a panorama of planets.

Rachel had learned much by scanning those images. The talent for not dying was distributed undemocratically. Few worlds could dance blithely through a gigayear. But still… So many planets!—crisp and dry, cloudy and cool, cratered yet with shimmering blue atmospheres. Plus hordes of stars, sometimes in crowded clusters, at times seen up close and going nova in bright, virulent streamers, or in tight, snarly orbits around unseen companions that might be neutron stars or black holes.

After a while even exotic alien landscapes became repetitious for her: blue-green mountain ranges scoured by deep gray rivers, placid oceans brimming with green scum, arid tan desert worlds ground down under heavy, brooding brown atmospheres. Many ways for life to blossom, or die: ice worlds aplenty beneath starry skies, grasslands with four-footed herds roaming as volcanoes belched red streamers in the distance, ocean worlds with huge creatures wallowing in enormous crashing waves, mystery places hard to identify in the swirling pink mists. Life adapts, indeed.

Catkejen rolled her eyes. “Um. That improves your stats?”

Rachel had let her mind wander again. “Uh. In time, sure. Mostly I just… follow my nose.”

Catkejen leaned forward, too, her ironic grin mocking. “Look, your nose should lead you to use the Seekers of Script more. You’re behind in code-processing—way behind, gal!”

Meaning, of course, Look, I have two patches already. Cat didn’t know that Rachel wanted it that way—no prominence, no attention because of the hydrogen wall or the Symphony.

Still, she had a point. The Seekers of Script were supposedly below Trainees. But they were like career officers, narrow specialists more experienced in deciphering SETI messages, using brute-force methods from cryptology. They assisted Trainees and reported to Librarians.