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fringes of the system, the herd announced itself as a faint patch of monochromatic lavender light.
     As it approached the outermost world of the No-Moon system, an outpost of loose rubble held together by nitrogen ice, the
     patch resolved into a sprinkling of random spots, all glowing with the same spectral hue.
    Seen from the side, as they passed, the spots became chains of glowing pearls, neatly stacked in line astern, all pointing
     straight at the nearby star, Lambda Coelacanthi. Although they varied in size, every pearl was ring-shaped, aligned at right
     angles to the axis of the chain, with their matter—if it was matter—spiraling smoothly into the central hole and out again.
    There were hundreds of these chains, irregularly distributed in a teardrop-shaped cluster, and each chain contained anywhere
     between eight and sixty pearls.
    The pearls were magnetotori, primitive organisms made from magnetic plasma, living Bussard ramscoops that devoured the thinly
     spread hydrogen of the interstellar medium, sucking it up atom by atom, fusing the atoms into helium to create energy. Every
     two hundred thousand years this herd of wild magnetotori repeated the same nomadic cycle, migrating from star to star in a
     pattern whose origins were lost in the abyss of deep time.
    Elsewhere, other herds followed their own cycles, longer or shorter. And for the past few million years, all of the migrating
     herds had been accompanied and regulated by itinerant herders, whose physical form was a pattern of standing electromagnetic
     waves confined in cocoonlike metallic nets. The herders drew sustenance by absorbing radiation from their toroidal “cattle.”
     Without this life support, the herders could never have survived in the dark voids between the stars.
    They accompanied their herds in ramshackle ceramic vessels, floating junk piles assembled according to rules that only a herder
     could comprehend, and controlled their beasts with pulses of magnetic force. The herders could not change the migratory routes,
     but they could make sure that the journey was timed to their own advantage.
    The magnetotori were coming to graze in the photosphere of the system’s sun, where the local plasmoids were roosted.
    The herders had a longstanding arrangement with the plasmoids. They could direct their beasts to feed on selected regions
     of magnetic vortex-fields, where their presence would be most beneficial to the dynamics of the star. There, too, the magnetotori
     would mate. Before the fields became overgrazed and turned into sterile magnetocrystals, a process that took a few centuries,
     the herds would move on to the next star in their itinerary.
    At this distance from the star, their passage was slow and leisurely. As they neared their destination, their speed would
     pick up. Now they sailed gracefully past two moderately sized gas giants: the enigmatic green mist of Ghost and the blotchy
     blues and purples of Marsupial. Next they traversed a dangerous belt of rocks and snowballs to cross the orbit of Bandicoot,
     timing their passage to stay well clear of its fuzz of radio noise. Bandicoot, too, was a gas giant, a protostar that had
     failed to ignite. It was made of hydrogen, helium, and a hundred other gases. It spun so slowly that the normal equatorial
     bulge was distinctly subdued, and its clouded atmosphere crackled with electrical discharges as a matched pair of never-ending
     storms circled its north and south equatorial zones, pursuing each other as if in some bizarre ritual hunt.
    The next three planets were tiny, all much the same size but differing wildly in physical constitution. Baugenphyme was a
     sulfur desert, pockmarked by the calderas of long-dead volcanoes. Hilary was a cracked ball of ice, coated in a thick layer
     of dust, dominated by a spectacular impact crater whose radiating arms wrapped themselves right round the little world, overlapping
     one another in a fishnet pattern. Jones was a mottled ball of