“There’s a pattern here. Dead civilizations around dwarf stars.”

Another sniff. “The universe is cruel to the unwise. You are ignoring your essential tasks. Does that seem wise?”

She made herself be systematic. She took a physio-extender that let her work straight through the days remaining. Her pod began to smell of her. Reek, actually.

The dwarf-star planets were marvels, in their way. She had always been impressed by their efficiency at packing hydrogen, the stuff of flammable zeppelins, into such a small space. Some such stars were more than twice as dense as lead. The density of Sol was bubblegum by comparison.

Many were tide-locked, or nearly so. Some had a spin/orbit resonance like Mercury, which rotates three times, every two orbits around Sol. Others were firm-locked and so were split worlds, half warm and half frozen—with a twilight border rich in black and gray forests, with mostly minimal animal life. The best were those that spun lazily in the ruby furnace of their skies, averaging the wine-colored radiance.

There was one system whose sun was but a tarnished penny above a world where three moons played at their races. On other worlds, winds were whips, polishing continents to smooth mausoleums. Such hells of sand gave her itchy flashes as the centuries-old probe explored. She rejected these, and many stony rocks and super-Jovians that circled other burning circles in the sky.

There were even worse. Some planets circled close enough to their star that atmospheric temperatures exceeded the boiling point of water. Clouds of unlikely mixtures of potassium chloride or zinc sulfide lifted high into the atmosphere, yielding a flat, dull spectrum.

Yet even here brightly glowing plumes reminded her of an underwater scene with turquoise-tinted currents. Strange nebulous strands reached out, echoing starfish, giant beings aloft in an atmosphere that would have crushed a dinosaur. If anything lived there, she did not wish to know of it.

She had two more days to comply with the Prefect’s orders. But she couldn’t. She had gotten more work days from Shilo but… Some intuition drove her forward. She kept on mining the recon files, experiencing them whole-body. Trying to see patterns. Seeking the Ythri world, somewhere.

In her mind swarmed filmy ideas. She slept restlessly, tossing in sweaty sheets—and alone; no social life seemed worth the lost moments. She put off Kane’s attentions. She skipped meals and snacked on garlic-flavored fried beetles. Plus slurpy fruit glop with taste-enhancers, an eat-your-peas diet she dutifully used to trim away aging neuro flaws. Plus sacred coffee, of course.

Then back in the pod. The Prefects could have cut off her privileges, but no such order came. Yet.

Among the dwarf stars Earth had explored, or had seen through the lenses coasting out beyond 550 astronomical units, there were some worlds on which fancy sorts of watery membrane learned to think—and made great wet beasts from green crusts and reddish films and fizzing electricity. These were often on warmer, cloudy L-class dwarfs and cooler T-dwarfs, whose atmospheres were clear and sharp.