"Major?" Bagnel murmured. "You have a gift for understatement, Marika."

Kiljar said, "If you managed that you would be immortalized with ... "

"It is not possible," Bel-Keneke said. "You are talking about halting a process of such a magnitude that ... "

Bagnel added, "Perhaps we ought to hear her idea before we tell her it is impossible."

Marika gave him a nod of gratitude. "Excuse me, mistresses. I know it would be a large project and extremely difficult, but it is not impossible-except perhaps in that it presumes the cooperation of all the Communities and all the brethren bonds, working toward one end. Achieving that will be more difficult than the actual engineering and construction."

"Go on," Kiljar said before Bel-Keneke could interject negative comments.

"Review: The problem is that insufficient solar energy penetrates the dust and falls upon the planet. The solution-my solution-is to increase incident radiation."

"Do you plan to sweep the dust up?" Bel-Keneke asked. "Or to stoke the fires of the sun?"

"Not at all."

"Why so negative, sister?" Kiljar asked. "Do you feel threatened because your predecessor has come out of hiding?"

Marika ignored the sparks. Those two old arfts never had had much use for one another. She said, "We collect solar energies that are flinging off into the void and redirect them toward the planet. We do that by constructing large mirrors."

"Large mirrors," Bagnel said.

"Very large. Wait. I admit there will be difficulties. The orbital mechanics of our situation, because of the presence of so many moons, will make maintaining stable orbits for the mirrors difficult. But I have been studying this matter for some time. It is not impractical. If we can install the largest mirrors in the planet's leading and trailing solar trojan points and keep them stable ... "

"Pardon me," Bagnel interrupted. "The idea is not original, Marika."