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this time… Her shroud is perfect when She’s not moving...No drive emissions,” Copeland muttered, half to himself. “Scanners, I want that signal pinpointed! Weapons, Pilot, Engineering, I want immediate…”
    “Captain,” someone on the Bridge shouted, “ look at the screen .”
    “Convoy leader to Wulf . Convoy leader to Wulf .”
    The end of the emergency had registered as slowly as its beginning, but now it was over. The twenty-eight freighters were regrouping into classic landing formation; if anything, more smoothly and tidily than before.
    Copeland subsided. His chair creaked.
    “Convoy leader to Wulf .”
    “Copeland speaking. Why didn’t you call?”
    “Captain…”
    “Never mind. Just tell me, what was that? And if you say a malfunction in the….”
    “ Cap tain,” the convoy leader snapped, “whoever is preparing this convoy to land, it isn’t me. ”
    On the screen they were continuing to regroup, briskly and very precisely.
    Copeland’s control came close to leaving him. You asked how She was going to do it, he told himself, and now She’s shown you. He was already seeing three moves ahead. Expressions of horror at what was about to happen were passing across his face like cloud-shadows across Anubis 4.
    “Scanners, Captain. The override signal is unstoppable. Source is 02-05-03.”
    “So. She’s closer than I thought.”
    “Just below the horizon. Do we engage Her now?”
    “Of course not! Don’t you understand yet? Copeland to Khan. Copeland to Khan.”
    “Yes, Captain?”
    “Doctor Khan, did you hear that last call from the convoy leader?”
    “I did. It seems we’re getting our freighters after all.”
    I’d really enjoy meeting her, Copeland thought. I wish there was more time.
    The screen showed a very precise line ahead landing formation emerging; Copeland caught himself admiring its tidiness.
    “Doctor, I need to know, very quickly, what defences you can deploy down there.”
    “Captain, what you need to know is that we have nothing Down Here capable of stopping twenty-eight freighters from crashlanding on us.”
    “Then you must….”
    “No, Captain, there’s no time to evacuate, and nowhere to go.”
    Freighter One was peeling off to commence descent. Freighter Two was moving forward to follow it. The rest held their formation tidily. One at a time, thought Copeland incredulously, She’s even going to observe that last detail and crashland them one at a time.
    “It seems we’ve run out of choices, Doctor.”
    “It seems we never had any, Captain. Go ahead. Do what She wants.”
    “Copeland to convoy leader. Abandon the convoy. Take your ship out of the area. You have ten seconds.” Ten seconds during which Copeland reflected on his own slowness, the inadequacy of his scanners, and how he’d had the instinct to know She would come here, but not the imagination, or the strangeness, to guess how She would make Herself known.
    “Convoy leader, confirm you’re now clear.”
    “Confirmed, but….”
    Copeland cut the channel. He took a deep breath.
    “Weapons, destroy the freighters. One at a time, as each one peels off for landing.”
    Freighter One had already commenced landing descent when the Wulf ’s particle beam found it and reduced it to less than dust. The screen filtered out the momentary flare. Focus shifted. Freighter Two was peeling off downwards and again the particle beam stabbed out, again the screen filtered and refocused, and showed nothing; no wreckage, not even the afterimage of wreckage. Three moved forward and peeled off, and the beam stabbed out; flare, filter, refocus, nothing. Four moved forward and peeled off, and the beam stabbed out; flare, filter, refocus, nothing. It became a rhythm, the dispassionate rhythm of a culling.
    Copeland had no language for what was happening. From the empty space on the screen where Three and Four had gone, and where Five and Six were going... his gaze wandered to a spot he couldn’t see, just below