Ursula felt sure that theirs were the first eyes to look on this scene since some awful force had wrought this havoc.
The ancient destroyers had to be long gone. Nobody had yet found a star machine even close to active. Still, she took no chances, making certain the weapons console was vigilant.
The sophisticated, semi-sentient unit searched, but found no energy sources, no movement among the ruined, unfinished star probes below. Instruments showed nothing but cold rock and metal, long dead.
Ursula shook her head. She did not like such metaphors. Gavin’s talk of “murdered babies” didn’t help one look at the ruins below as potentially profitable salvage.
It would not help her other vocation, either… the paper she had been working on for months now… her carefully crafted theory about what had happened out here, so long ago.
“We have work to do,” she told her partner. “Let’s get on with it.”
Gavin pressed two translucent hands together prayerfully. “Yes, Mommy. Your wish is my program.” He sauntered away to his own console and began deploying their remote exploration drones.
Ursula concentrated on directing the lesser minds within Thunderer’s control board—those smaller semisentient minds dedicated to rockets and radar and raw numbers—who still spoke and acted coolly and dispassionately… as machines ought to do.
3
Greeter is right. One of the little humans does seem to be on the track of something. We crippled survivors all listen in as Greeter arranges to tap the tiny Earthship’s crude computers, where its Captain stores her speculations.
Her thoughts are crisp indeed, for a biological creature.
Still, she is missing many, many pieces to the puzzle.
4