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with?” “Nothing conclusive, I’m afraid,” he said. “But they are tending toward the nonhuman end of the argument”
    She hated the sinking feeling in her stomach, the way it betrayed her hopes. She’d been pinning Ira: hopes squarely on the original Peter Alander’s theory that complex alien life wasn’t likely. “Why?”
    “We can only guess at what sort of technology is driving these things, but we do know some things for certain. You don’t build on this scale without cheap matter transmutation and easy conversion of matter to energy. We don’t have either—or rather, we didn’t”
    “Is it possible that Earth would have achieved such technology by now?”
    “Assuming that technology kept advancing at the rate it was when we left,” he said, “then yes, it is very possible. But I’d just as soon not assume anything.”
    Hatzis nodded in agreement. “Go on.”
    “Well, we’ve picked up no sign that the spindles are communicating with each other, and we have no way to guess how they’re powered. The way they appeared out of nowhere suggests a highly advanced method of transportation, the principles of which we can only guess at.”
    “They could be experts in camouflage, of course.”
    “Not a likely possibility. The spindles are being observed from a hundred different instruments. How do you fool everything at once? The only surefire way would be to infiltrate our networks and corrupt the data. Again, it’s a possibility, although the team sees it as a remote one at best.”
    “Wishful thinking, perhaps.”
    “Perhaps.” Jayme nodded. “The use of gravitational waves suggests a highly advanced materials technology, capable of manufacturing and handling ultradense substances. It also suggests an advanced knowledge and manipulation of space-time. This, combined with the way they arrived, leads the team to believe that the Spinners are capable of faster-than-light travel.”
    She nodded, unsurprised. The spindles had already demonstrated such incredible prowess that she could believe almost anything of them.
    “It’s too much to hope that they’re from Earth,” she said, anticipating his next comments. “That’s what you’re going to tell me, isn’t it? They couldn’t have possibly achieved that type of technology by now.”
    “Highly unlikely, Caryl. Ftl communication, maybe, but not travel. Nothing like this, anyway.”
    She absorbed what was happening on the screen for a long moment. “So where are they from?”
    “We don’t know. There’s no way we can know... unless they decide to tell us, of course.”
    She laughed at this. “Jayme, at this stage, I think we’ll be lucky to get a hello out of them.”

    * * *

    The orbital ring was complete within the hour. Hatzis watched the threads link up with a feeling of dread, wondering what would happen once it was finished. Would the Spinners finally talk to them? Did she even want to hear what they had to say?
    When the circle was closed, a massive current surge swept once around the planet, leaving brilliant auroral streamers in its wake. As the surge struck each of the spindles, their glow died back to a warm infrared, and their structures stabilized. Even the pulsing of gravitational waves from Spindle Six ceased, although Nalini Kovistra suspected that a particularly massive object still lurked inside. Once the circuit was complete, the pulsating glitch high above the ecliptic flashed once and disappeared.
    Then silence.
    Hatzis ordered the Tipler to maintain its vigilance for another two real-time hours. A hundred eyes sensitive to a thousand frequencies studied the spindles for any signs of activity, but there were none. The solar arrays studied the sky for any sign of the glitch but likewise found nothing.
    Before fatigue finally overcame her, Hatzis watched a piece of orbital debris drift without incident barely one kilometer from Spindle Three. Satisfied that nothing dramatic was likely to happen for the moment, she