Of course, not all these facts had boiled up out of the telescope array. Some details could be known only firsthand, from eyewitness participants. Isak knew, better than most, that Ceres had joined in the slaughter. He thought about that for a while.

Finally, he said, “I think Asimov was right. His dandelion seeds may be the only wild card, the only real chance we have—or have ever had.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” said Bishop. “There’s no way we can sneak Ceres out of the solar system without being noticed. But if we can crawl out into a few of the smaller, darker asteroids, and perhaps even flick away from our own equator into interstellar space, inside small, rebuilt pieces of Ceres—”

“You’re a jolly optimist,” Sargenti said. “In another time I’m sure you would have believed in the king’s horse.”

Bishop flashed her a half-puzzled, half-angry expression. “Don’t you mean horses? Isn’t that the one about Humpty-Dumpty?”

“No, no,” Sargenti said. “It’s a story told for centuries, from bazaars in Baghdad to the court of Henry the Eighth, and it seems quite relevant—to me, anyway—so don’t be offended.”

“Go on,” Bishop said.

“There was a thief whom the king had condemned to death. In order to buy time, the thief boasted that within a year he could make the king’s favorite horse talk. So the king’s men were ordered to put the thief to the task. ‘But that’s impossible!’ said a friend of the thief. ‘Be silent,’ the thief replied. ‘For within a year, many things can happen. The king may die. Or the horse may die. Or I may die. Or the horse may talk.”

“Or the horse may talk!” Isak cried out. His easy grin was on his face, and the others at the table joined him in mild bursts of laughter. But Bishop was not laughing. He was scrawling letters on his pad.

“Is anyone here familiar with twentieth-century pop music?” he asked, looking up with astonishment and a hint of hysteria. The laughter died in an instant.

“What’s up?” said Isak.

“The Intruders are talking to us, but I’ll be damned if I can understand what they’re trying to say. I’ve got a perfectly coherent signal, written in gamma rays and transmitted as binary code. Here, listen.”

Bishop wrote a command on his pad, and lyrics began playing from all the other pads on the table; a pleasant and eerily familiar chant. Isak suddenly sensed that he should be able to guess what was going on, and he saw from the faces of the others that they had also responded with vague recognition.

“What was that, Bishop? What you were saying about twentieth-century pop?”

“Wait—I’m finding multiple tracks in this signal, different layers of complexity.” He was scribbling on his pad at a manic rate. Every pad except his stopped chanting.

“Layers of complexity,” Isak said in a whisper. “Bishop! Remember what that Rather fellow said about the danger of even listening?”

“I’m way ahead of you, sir. I isolated the entire net from the receiver the moment I came across Rather’s idea. Only one computer is connected to the array, with instructions to transmit findings nowhere except to my pad. It’s the only one in the entire station with a complete copy of the signal. And none of your pads can tap into mine, sir. If Rather was right about the danger of receiving an alien program, it’s boxed in tightly, I assure you.” Bishop’s pad continued to play the song.