He waited. But heard only static.

“They’re slowing,” said Rob.

BLACK GLOBES. HE could make out devices on the hulls, antennas, other equipment that might have been sensors, or weapons. They re-formed themselves into a straight line running parallel to the course he was traveling. Still to port.

“Distance between units is four kilometers.”

The first one passed.

“Antennas are pointed in our direction,” said Rob.

And the second. They blinked quickly past, one every couple seconds. Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over, and the line pulled well ahead of him. He watched them settle back into their vee.

“Phenomena of this type,” said Rob, “have been reported here and in several other locations over the past two years.”

“We have everything on the record?”

“Yes, Jerry.”

Ahead, the globes were becoming hard to see. He got on the allcom. “Anyone on the port side will have seen unidentified vehicles passing. I don’t know what they were, but they are gone now. However, I’d like you to stay belted in for the moment.”

Moonriders. So named because they’d first been reported as dark shadows moving among the moons of Pollux IV. That had been forty years ago.

They were gone now. Like the tour ship, they seemed headed toward the Sungrazer. Sightseers from somewhere else?

PART ONE

macallister

chapter 1

Wherever it is dark, there will always be strange lights. In primitive times, the luminescences were fairies. Then they became departing souls headed for paradise. Then UFOs. Now they’re moonriders. It doesn’t seem as if we ever grow up. Those imaginative souls reporting alien vessels circling the Pleiades cannot bring themselves to believe the anomaly might be anything so prosaic as a reflection. Or perhaps not enough ice in the Scotch.