Near the neutron star there were multiple lobes of light. They looked like solar flares to Malenfant: giant, unending storms rising from the neutron star’s surface. Further out still, the founts of gas lost their structure, becoming dim, diffuse. They merged into a wider cloud of debris which seemed to be fleeing from the neutron star, a vigorous solar wind. And beyond that there were only the Galaxy core stars, watchful, silent, still, peering down as if in disapproval at this noisy, spitting monster.

This was a pulsar. You could detect those radio beams from Earth.

Malenfant had grown up with the story of the first detection of a pulsar. Pre-Gaijin astronomers had detected an unusual radio signal: a regular, ticking pulse, accurate to within a millionth of a second. Staring at such traces, the scientists had at first toyed with the idea it might be the signature of intelligence, calling from the stars.

In fact, when envoys from the stars began to make their presence known, it was not as a gentle tick of radio noise but as a wave of destructive exploitation that scattered mankind and all but overwhelmed the entire solar system – and the same thing had occurred many times before.

We put up a hell of a fight, though, he thought. We even won some victories, in our tiny, scattershot way. But in the end it was going to count for nothing.

It was ironic, he thought grimly. Those old pre-Gaijin star gazers had thought that first pulsar was a signal from Little Green Men.

In fact it was a killer of Little Green Men.