"The mechanism is similar to what you know as the Lynden-Bell analysis of the Jeans instability," the Ghost said. "The mechanism whereby a star cluster can settle to a compact, stable equilibrium by collisionless relaxation: ejecting its own faster-moving components to an outer halo--"

"Enough. So you're going to use gravitational cooling to form a dark matter star, right here."

"The quagma pods will impact in the core of the moon, in a complex manner. They will be induced to decay and coalesce; their stores of superforce energy will be released in shaped pulses. The resulting gravitational waveforms will initiate the process. A photino cloud of approximately the mass of a small planet will begin to coalesce. Some thirteen percent of the cloud's mass will be ejected during the violent relaxation process. The final soliton star will be just a few feet across, at the heart of this moon. A complex massive Klein-Gordon scalar field will be produced, with no self-interaction save through gravity, which..."

I tuned him out. I fed all this into my Notebooks.

"Why here?"

The Ghost spun, bobbing in space. "There is much dark matter, here in the galactic halo. And few Xeelee."

"And few humans, right?"

"I would be interested to know of the source of your information on the project, which--"

"It's going to take some close control," I said. "The crucial events will last just microseconds: that complex sequence of quagma collisions in the core... Ambassador, you must have one giant AI controller built into that moon."

It said nothing to that, and a grain of suspicion lodged in my mind. But I had other issues to pursue.

"Tell me why you're doing this, Sink Ambassador. If you make a soliton star -- so what? What will you have achieved?"

It rolled, as if it was turning to face me.

"You know as much as we do, now, about the fundamental truths of the Universe," it said. "The secret history of the cosmos: the epochal conflict between light and dark matter, whose effects we have only begun to discern.

"To sustain their existence, the creatures of photino matter need stable baryonic star cores. And therefore they are accelerating the evolution of the stars." It rolled in space. "Even now," the Ambassador said, "photino creatures are clustered in the hearts of those hundred billion stars, choking them. Even the original star of mankind, called Sol."

"But they face resistance."

"Yes. From the baryonic life forms whose habitats they are destroying. But even the Xeelee, immeasurably stronger than my race or yours, will be defeated."

I knew that was true, from the glimpses Eve had vouchsafed me.

"And so--"

"And so," the Ambassador said, "we are striving to generate another option. A better way." It wheeled over the shaped moon. "Raoul, the quagma pods are merging in the moon's core. It begins..."