“Any response from the kinetic platforms now, Owl?”

“Negative, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Good. That’s good, Owl.”

There was no response from the computer this time. Merlin hadn’t really expected one, although Owl did seem to be at least starting to develop the personality the operator’s manual promised he would… eventually. The AI had actually offered spontaneous responses and interpolations on a handful of occasions, although seldom to Merlin. In fact, now that he thought about it, the majority of those spontaneous responses had been directed to Empress Sharleyan, and Merlin wondered why that was. Not that he expected he’d ever find out. Even back when there’d been a Terran Federation, AIs-even Class I AIs (which Owl most emphatically was not)-had often had quirky personalities that responded better to some humans than to others.

“Activate phase three,” he said now.

“Activating, Lieutenant Commander.”

This time, if Merlin had still been a flesh-and-blood human being, he would have held his breath as two-thirds or so of the steam signatures on his sensors began to move. Most of them moved fairly slowly, their paths marked by twists and turns, stopping and starting, turning sharply, then going straight for short distances. Several others, though, were not only larger and more powerful but moved much more rapidly and smoothly… almost as if they’d been on rails.

Merlin watched the slower moving heat signatures tracing out the skeletal outlines of what could have been street grids in the “towns” and “villages” while the larger, faster-moving ones moved steadily between the clusters of their slower brethren. Nothing else seemed to be happening, and he made himself wait for another half hour before he spoke again.

“Still nothing from the platforms, Owl?”

“Negative, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Are we picking up any signal traffic between the platforms and the Temple?”