On the Lightfoot, calm collapses into crisis as the alien vessels move into battle posture and arm weapons. Meshner, still impaired after his shutdown, tries to understand whether another enemy has arrived, but Kern reports no new vessel. Fabian relays that the diplomatic bubble has lost its field, meaning Helena and Portia are trapped inside freezing water.

Meshner tries to plan a rescue despite his weakened condition. Scans show the bubble has become a jagged but intact ice sphere, and two alien ships hold it between them while a third blocks the Lightfoot. The aliens do not fully attack; instead, they launch limited missiles, broadcast hostile color-signals, and begin towing the iceball slowly toward the nearby water world.

Kern deploys countermeasures, and Fabian helps secure Meshner when Meshner’s hands shake too badly to manage alone. Meshner realizes his brain may be damaged, while Zaine judges that the Lightfoot has too little remaining defensive mass to force a rescue. The crew sees that the aliens appear to be warning them away rather than simply destroying them.

Kern then reveals that the alien hostility followed Kern’s acknowledgment of an antique Imperial C signal from the inner planet. The transmission contains strange natural-history-like material about alien life, and Kern concludes it may come from a surviving hybrid human system similar to Kern. Kern suggests that the water-world aliens may associate humans with a prior threat from that source.

With Helena and Portia possibly still alive but unreachable, Viola argues that the mysterious sender may provide leverage or help. Kern identifies the sender as Erma Lante, giving the crew a new destination and a possible counterpart to Kern after millennia of uniqueness.