"Are you surprised? Maybe the Snowmen aren't interested in interpretation and evaluation."

"What do you mean?"

"Godel's Incompleteness, remember? No matter how much you derive from a body of data, there will always be statements you could not have deduced. Always something else to store."

"...Ah. And Godel is at the heart of their ancient, world-weary, philosophy."

Mace laughed briefly. "I think you're working it out, policeman. Knowing the limitations of deduction, the Snowmen decided that to record events -- and only to record -- was the highest calling of life. And that's all they want to do. They took apart their world, rebuilt it as a monstrous storage system... used all the material at their disposal to freeze as much data as they could. They won't do anything with our proof; for fourteen billion years they have merely watched time unravel--"

"There's your streak of poetry again, Mace."

"Your Assimilation must fail," Mace said bluntly.

Kapur sighed. "Why?"

"Think about it. The Snowmen have no motivation we can connect with. Our actions will mean nothing to them -- we, almost by definition within their Godelian philosophy, dance meaninglessly before them. Even their own destruction would be no more than an event, a final act to be stored and noted."

"That can't be all, Mace. There must be more. Every species wants to grow, to develop." Kapur reflected. "Even if all they wanted was a greater data storage capacity--"

"Come in, Kapur. It's over. I'll call in the Spline."

"No." Kapur closed his eyes, tried to keep the trembling out of his voice. "I still have time."

With slow insolence, Mace said, "It's your mission, policeman."

Without returning to the yacht Kapur had Mace download more human datasets and propositions; and he learned quickly how to input new material -- his own reflections and feelings -- into his Eye stores.

That took most of a day.

Kapur slept briefly, nestled within the meadow scents of his cold-suit.

When he turned to the 'Flake once more, he had six hours left.

The Snowman had not changed. The human proof of Godel remained lodged within its abstraction of a belly, a cold, primitive lump.

Kapur began to download data to the probes: more and more, as rapidly as he could. Mathematics first. He found data on an ancient, failed, experiment, a life form based on the Incompleteness theorem, a bizarre disaster which had resulted in the destruction of a moon, a loss of human life...

Then, on a whim, music -- he watched as ancient compositions frosted into veils of blue ice within the 'Man.

Human history. He told the 'Man of the Xeelee, humanity's vast, implacable foe; and of how mankind was seeking to mobilize the resources of a Galaxy in its war.

He told the 'Man what the humans on board the Spline ship planned to do to the Snowflake.