The Lure by Bill Napier

back into the office. Gibson was scribbling; the others were doing their things at terminals and there was an air of quiet concentration.
    ‘Svetlana, can you throw up those canyons and mountains again?’
    She obliged.
    ‘The regularity’s amazing. Can you go back to the full view now?’
    The Man in the Moon reappeared.
    ‘Look at the edges. It’s not exactly spherical. There are flattish plains, like continental plates, as well as bumps all over.’
    ‘Obviously.’ Gibson had rejoined them. ‘It’s a very mountainous planet.’
    ‘There’s more to it than that,’ Petrie said.
    Freya was looking at the screen with narrowed eyes. ‘I’ve been thinking that, too, Tom. In fact, I’m way ahead of you.’
    Petrie said, ‘Yes! It’s bizarre.’
    ‘I don’t want to interrupt your private telepathy,’ Gibson said, ‘but would either of you people care to let me in on the secret?’
    Freya unconsciously flipped her hair back over her shoulder. ‘Charlie, the Earth is eight thousand miles across and Mount Everest is six miles high. It’s a tiny blip on the surface. That’s because gravity is too strong to support a taller mountain. If Everest was pushed up much higher, the rock at its base would crumble.’ She pointed at a couple of places on the screen. ‘Look at the height of these mountains. They couldn’t exist on an Earth-sized planet.’
    ‘So gravity’s weaker there. It’s a small planet.’
    ‘Yes, a very small one. It couldn’t be more than a thousand kilometres across, say like a giant comet or an asteroid. That’s your reasoning, Tom?’
    Petrie nodded.
    Freya continued. ‘But an asteroid’s gravity is too weak to hold on to an atmosphere. Any body of liquid water would long since have been lost to space. And you’ve been telling us that water is essential for life.’
    Svetlana looked meditatively at the screen. ‘How could any sentient being be content to live on a dry airless hunk of rock?’
    Freya said, ‘It’s not a hunk of rock, Svetlana.’
    Shtyrkov looked at the image, and then at Freya and Petrie. ‘Is it possible?’
    ‘Let me in on it,’ Gibson pleaded.
    Petrie squeezed Svetlana’s shoulder. ‘Make it tumble.’
    Svetlana typed a few symbols and the Man in the Moon, mouth agape, tilted and disappeared, reappearing from time to time in random orientations.
    ‘Look closely,’ Petrie said.
    Svetlana said, ‘It’s not a sphere.’
    ‘No. It’s an icosahedron.’
    ‘A what?’ Gibson was looking blank.
    ‘It’s made up of twenty triangular plates joined together. Look at it. See how it keeps coming back to the same shape. That’s because it looks exactly the same from sixty different orientations. It’s one of the Platonic solids.’
    ‘Plato?’ Gibson repeated in exasperation. ‘Tom, are we on different planes of reality or what?’
    ‘Charlie, an icosahedron is one of the most beautifully symmetric solid forms. Plato wanted to understand the world in terms of mathematics and harmony. He believed that tetrahedron, cube, octahedron and icosahedron made up earth, air, fire and water. It’s all there in his Timaeus.’
    ‘So what are you saying? That the signallers have read Timaeus? That they’ve shaped their planet like a Platonic bloody solid?’
    Petrie shook his head. ‘That’s not a planet, Charlie. It’s a virus.’

13
    Moscow Chatline
    Phone ringing.
    Its rasp penetrated layers of sleep and merged with a bizarre dream in which she was floating above a TV quiz show. An uncomprehending eyelid dragged itself open; green numbers on a bedside clock read 2.10 a.m.
    Phone ringing, at ten past two in the morning.
    Dasha! There’s been an accident!
    She dragged herself fully awake. A sense of dread washing over her, she threw back the blankets and stumbled through to the tiny living room.
    Phone still ringing.
    The window was partially open and a black electric cable snaked through the gap down to the battery of a silver Niva five flights below: it was