Who Met the Azlanti Among the Stars

34.

The journal leaves the house of skin on Eox and next finds him among the stars, facing an Azlanti ship. Nothing records the road between.

Where the record ends, stand.
Do not step into what you cannot see.

— the Cycle, I.5

How did he come from the hut to the open sky? I have looked, and the records do not say.

35.

He wrote the ship down before anything else. Azlanti. A medium explorer. Two living crew aboard. Quick, and nimble in the turn. Its shields held evenly on every side. He wrote the strength of its core as well.

Learn the ship before it reaches you.
Count the living aboard.
Know how fast it turns.
Know where its shields are thickest, and whether they are thick everywhere.
(Zigu, from his journal.)

— the Forms, Form 32, later additions

Who weighed the Azlanti ship, and counted the living aboard.

— the Long Names, Zigu, 14

36.

Then the fight. Shots found the ship, and found it again. The journal doesn't say whose. Then a second vessel came into it: Drone ship.

One fire calls another out of the dark.

— the Cycle, II.3

37.

Partway through, a page holds his name and nothing under it.

What holds does not hurry.

— the Cycle, III.4

Surely the fight left him no time to write. A warrior's hands are busy when it matters.

38.

Exploding Drones! The drones burst. Three more shots went home, the first of them heavy. Then a single word: Success!

Who met the Azlanti among the stars, and came through.

— the Long Names, Zigu, 15

In 27 the page's only exclamation was for another's blow. Here there are two, and both are for the fight itself.

39.

Then a name with no chart behind it. Uncharted - Nejeor. A yellow dwarf sun and nine worlds. The first two share a single orbit.

All mass bends toward what is near.

— the Cycle, III.1

In 19 I set this verse beside the gorge. Here two worlds bend so near they keep one path.

40.

He wrote the worlds down in order. Three gas giants, the third, sixth and eighth, each a different color. The fourth dotted with forest turned to stone. The fifth volcanic. The seventh and ninth cold and lifeless. Moons around the third through the seventh.

Every world is a stone that kept its heat, or lost it.

— the Cycle, I.7

41.

The sixth, a gas giant, showed life: a metropolis, floating. And under everything, weak and erratic signals of energy, thousands of years old. Three hours to enter orbit.

Old light is faint. It is still light.

— the Cycle, I.8

42.

Only one place to set the ship down. A landing pad. The journal stops there.

Who came to a star with no chart, and found the one place to stand.

— the Long Names, Zigu, 16

Choose the ground before you step onto it.
Where there is one place to stand, the enemy knows it too.

— the Forms, Form 14