“Peacemakers? Silver Ghosts?”

“Well, it’s possible,” he said. “Though it’s not characteristic of Ghost behavior. It was a draconian solution: a quarantine of technology, the trashing of two spacefaring civilizations … How arrogant. Almost human.”

I felt uncomfortable discussing Ghosts with human-like motives. “What about these lift palettes?”

“It makes a certain sense,” he said. “From the point of view of a meddling Ghost, anyhow. A simple technology to help the survivors to rebuild their ruined worlds—something you surely couldn’t turn into a weapon—but it didn’t work out.” He smiled thinly. “Instead the populations used the gifts to build this insane bridge.”

“How is this going to help us find the Ghosts?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “There are no Ghosts here, child.”

… Of course, he was right. Ghosts spread out over every world they infest. We would have seen them by now, if they were here. I’d known this, I guess, but I hadn’t wanted to face the possibility that I’d thrown away my life for nothing.

I slumped to the littered floor. The strength seemed to drain out of me.

In retrospect, I can see his tactics. It was as if he had designed the whole situation, a vast trap. He waited until I had reached the bottom—at the maximum point of my tiredness, as I was crushed with disappointment at the failure of the hunt, surrounded by alien madness.

Then he struck.

The length of bone came looming out of the dark, without warning, straight at my head.

I ducked. The bone clattered against the wall. “L’Eesh—”

“It’s just business, child.”

My heart hammered. I backed away until my spine was pressed against the rough wall. “You’ve found something you want. The vacuum-energy weapons. Is that it?”

“Not what we came for, but I’ll turn a profit, if I can manage to get off of this moon.”