Timelike Infinity

Chapter 10

"Michael." Harry Poole’s voice was soft but insistent. "Michael, wake up. It’s started."

Michael Poole emerged from sleep reluctantly. He pushed back his thin blanket, rolled on his back, and rubbed his eyes. Beside him, he saw, Berg was already awake and sitting up. Poole lifted himself onto his elbows, wincing at a stab in his lower spine: Shira’s little hut was quiet enough, and the air of the earth-craft was still and comfortably warm; but — despite Miriam’s assurances that the hard surfaces were doing him the world of good — he doubted if he would ever get used to sleeping on nothing more than an inch of coarsely stuffed pallet over a floor of Xeelee construction sheeting.

Miriam Berg was already pulling on her one-piece Friend’s jumpsuit. "What’s started, Harry?"

The Virtual construct of his father, coarsened by diffraction, hovered over Poole, fuzzy with pixels. "The high-energy particle flux from the Interface portal has increased. Something’s coming, Michael. An invasion from the future — we’ve got to get out of here."

Poole, still struggling into jumpsuit and shoes, stumbled to the teepee’s open doorway. He squinted in the Jovian light and turned his face to the sky. The Interface portal hung there, delicate and beautiful, apparently innocent of menace.

"Spline," Berg breathed. "They’ll send Spline through. The living ships the Friends described, the warships of the Qax, of the Occupation, come to destroy the earth-craft. Just as we’ve expected."

There was an edge in Berg’s voice Poole had never heard before, a fragility that induced in him an atavistic urge to take her in his arms, shield her from the sky.

Berg said, "Michael, those things will defeat the best humanity can throw at them — fifteen centuries from now. What can we do? We haven’t got a hope of even scratching their ugly hides."

"Well, we can have a damn good try," Poole murmured. "Come on, Berg. I need you to be strong. Harry, what’s happening in the rest of the System?"

The Virtual, sharp and clear out here outside the teepee, shrugged nervously. "I can’t send a message out, Michael. The Friends are still blocking me. But the ships in the area have detected the high-energy particle flux." He met Michael’s eyes, mournfully. "Nobody knows what the hell’s going on, Michael. They’re still keeping a respectful distance, waiting for us to report back. They don’t see any threat — after all the earth-craft has simply sat here in Jovian orbit for a year, enigmatic but harmless. What can happen now?" He looked vaguely into the sky. "They’re — curious, Michael. Looking forward to this. There are huge public Virtuals, images of the portal and the earth-craft hovering over every city on Earth… It’s like a carnival."

"But once the Qax begin their assault—"

"It will be too late." Berg took Michael’s arm; the fear still masked her face, he saw, but some of her determination, her cunning, seemed restored. "Listen to me. The best chance of hitting them is going to be now… in the first few minutes after the Spline emerge from the portal."

Poole nodded. "Right. Causality stress."

"The Spline are living creatures," Berg said. "Maybe that’s a weakness we can play on; the Qax, and their ships, are surely going to take a while to ramp up to full effectiveness. If we can hit them fast maybe there’s a chance."

Berg was right, of course. There was a kind of inevitability to all of this, Poole thought. It’s going to be up to us. He closed his eyes, longing for the silence — the lack of decisions — of the Oort Cloud.

Harry laughed, his voice brittle and too bright. "Hit them fast? Sure. With what, exactly?"

Poole whispered, "With the singularity cannon."

Berg looked at Michael sharply, possibilities lancing through her mind. "But — even if we get the Friends to agree — the cannon wasn’t designed as a weapon."

Michael sighed, looking tired. "So we adapt."

Harry said. "As long as the damn things can be pointed and fired. Tell me how the things are supposed to work. You fire black holes into Jupiter…"

"Yes," Michael said. "A pair of singularities is launched in each cannon shot. Essentially the device is a true cannon; once the singularities are launched their paths are ballistic. Orbiting each other, a few yards apart, the singularities enter Jupiter’s gravity well. The trajectories are designed to merge at a specified point in the body of the planet."

Berg frowned. "Ultimately the hole, or holes, will consume Jupiter…"

"Yes. The Project’s design is to render Jupiter into a single, large black hole of a specified mass—"

"But that could take centuries. I know the holes’ growth would be exponential, but still you’re starting from a miniscule base; the holes can only grow as fast as their area allows them."

"That’s true." He smiled, almost wistfully. "But the time scale of the Project is longer than centuries; far longer."

Berg tried to drag ideas from her mind, ignoring the lowering sky above her.

How could they use this planetbuster cannon to disable a Spline? If they simply shot off black holes, the tiny singularities would pass through the flesh of the warship. No doubt tidal and other effects would hurt the Spline as the holes passed through, and maybe they’d strike it lucky and disable some key component… but probably not; the Spline was a mile wide and the wounds inflicted by the traversing holes would surely be not much worse than isolated laser shots.

A multiple strike, a barrage? "What if we launched two singularities to come to rest at the center of mass of the Spline? Could we do that?"

"Of course." Michael frowned; she could almost see trajectory curves rolling through his head. "We’d simply need to launch the singularities with a low velocity — below the earth-craft’s escape velocity, essentially."

"Yes." Berg pictured it. Like stones hurled into the air, the singularities would come to rest, hover in the body of the Spline itself… But only for a moment, before falling back. What good would that do? It would take days for the holes to consume the Spline’s mass — hours, probably, to absorb enough material to inflict any significant damage — not the few seconds they would be present in the volume of the Spline.

Anyway, they wouldn’t have hours to spare.

Then what?

"Why send the singularities into Jupiter on such complex trajectories? Why have them merge before they reach the center?"

Michael shook his head. "You haven’t grasped the subtleties of the design," he said seriously.

"Evidently not," Harry said dryly.

"Do you understand what happens when two singularities converge, combine?" He mimed, with his two fists, the singularities approaching each other, whirling around each other, finally merging. "The event horizons merge into a single horizon of greater net area… entropy, proportional to the area, increases. The singularities themselves, the flaws in space at the heart of the holes, fall in on each other; blue-shifted radiation increases the effective mass until the final merger occurs on Planck time scales — the immense gravitational fields generated effectively deflate time. And the joint event horizon quivers like a soap bubble, generating radiation through quadrupolar effects."

Berg nodded slowly. "And what form does this — radiation — take?"

He looked surprised by the question. "Gravitational, of course. Gravity waves."

She took a deep breath, felt her blood surge through her veins a little faster. Gravity waves.

Michael explained further.

These weren’t the dinky little ripples in spacetime, propagating at lightspeed, which had been studied by human astronomers for centuries… When two massive singularities merged, the gravity waves were monstrous. Nonlinear distortions of spacetime itself.

"And the radiation is directed," Michael said. "It pulses along the axis of the hole pair. By choosing precisely the placement and orientation of the holes at merger inside the carcass of the planet, you can direct gravity-wave pulses as you choose. You can sculpt the implosion of Jupiter by working its substance on a massive scale; it was the Friends’ intention, I believe, even to remove some of the mass of the planet before the final collapse. The precise size, angular momentum, and charge of the final black hole are evidently important parameters for the success of—"

But Berg was no longer listening. Then the earth-ship wasn’t just — just — a singularity cannon platform. It was a gravity-wave gun.

A human-built starbreaker.

They could fight back.

Michael looked up and gasped. The color of the sky had changed, and cast gray shades across his face.

Berg looked up. A vast moon of flesh slid complacently toward the zenith, its gunmetal-gray surface pocked with eye sockets and weapon emplacements. Bloody scars a hundred yards wide disfigured the skin-hull. Berg searched for the Interface portal and made out another of the great elephant-ships emerging from the wormhole passage to the future. Its limb brushed the sky-blue wire framework of the portal, and a layer of flesh boiled away as exotic matter raised tides in living tissue.

Spline…

It had begun.

Jasoft Parz, suspended in entoptic fluid, clung to the rubbery material of the Spline’s cornea and peered out at the past.

Parz’s ship was climbing out of Jupiter’s gravity well now, on its way to its hyperspace jump-off point to the inner planets. The wormhole Interface portal was receding; the portal looked like a bluish scar against the swollen cheek of Jupiter. Parz could see that a second Spline ship, the companion of his own, already loomed over the scrap of Earth green that was the rebels’ craft.

Parz sighed. "The rebel ship is elegant."

The Qax said, "It is a scrap of mud hurled into space by hyperactive apes."

"No. Look at it again, Qax. A camouflaging layer of earth built over a shell of Xeelee construction material… They must have stolen a Xeelee flower, constructed this thing in some deep hollowed-out cavern." He laughed. "And all under your watchful gaze."

"Under my predecessor’s gaze," the Qax said slowly. "According to the ship’s sensors the thing is constructed around a layer of singularities. A thousand of them, the total amounting to an asteroid-scale mass…"

Parz whistled. "That doesn’t sound possible. How—"

"Obviously such masses could not be transported from space," the Qax said. "The rebels must have evolved some technique of assembling such materials from the substance of the planet."

Once humans had been able to engineer artifacts of exotic matter. Evidently not all of that technology had been lost, or confiscated by the Qax. Parz imagined wells of magma, shaped and compressed, imploded into a stream of singularities by immense forces… He marveled at the earth-craft. "It’s bold, audacious, ingenious."

"You sound proud."

Parz shrugged. "Why shouldn’t I be proud? In impossible circumstances, humans have achieved a remarkable feat. Even to come so far as these rebels have—"

"Keep your sense of perspective," the Qax snapped. "This hardly represents a serious threat to the Occupation. For all the ingenuity of its construction we are faced by a single, ramshackle raft, barely capable of maintaining its structural integrity. And it was constructed furtively, like the earth of a hunted animal. Where is the cause for pride in that?"

"Perhaps the rebels see themselves as hunted animals," Parz said.

The Qax hesitated. "Your admiration for these criminals is interesting," it said mildly.

"Oh, you don’t need to worry," Parz said with vague self-disgust. "I talk a good rebellion. I always have. But when it comes to action, that’s a different matter."

"I know. I understand this feature of yours. So did my predecessor."

"Am I as predictable as that?"

"It is a factor that increases your usefulness, in our eyes," the Qax said.

From behind the curved flank of the Spline, another ship appeared. This, Parz saw through the Spline’s lens, was one of the craft indigenous to the period: a squat, ungainly affair, gaudily painted, hovering before the eye of the Spline like some insect. The sensors showed there was a crowd of these barges, clustered around the Interface portal. So far none of them had interfered with the Spline — or attempted to interfere, rather.

Parz said, "Aren’t you concerned about these local craft?"

"They cannot harm us," the Qax said, sounding uninterested. "We can afford to take time here, to check through the Spline’s systems, before the cross-system hyperspace flight."

Parz smiled. "Qax, listening to you I can hear the voice of the commander of a twentieth-century atomic carrier disdaining the painted dugout canoes of islanders, drifting out to meet him on the curve of some sea. Still, though, the most primitive weapon can kill…

"And I wonder why they don’t attack anyway." He pressed his face to the cornea and glanced around the sky; now that he looked for them he saw how many of the strange local ships there were, and how diverse in design they were. The political structure in this period was chaotic, he recalled. Fragmented. Perhaps these vessels represented many different authorities. Governments of moons, of the inner planets, of Earth herself; as well as of the central, international agencies… Perhaps no war-footing coalition existed here yet; perhaps there was no one to command an attack on this Spline.

Still, Parz was irritated by the Qax’s complacency.

"Aren’t you at least worried that these vessels might be raising a System-wide alert? Maybe the inner planets will be able to pack more of a punch against you," he said grimly. "And if they’re allowed to prepare…"

"Jasoft Parz," the Qax said with a trace of impatience, "your death-seeking fantasies are beginning to grate. I have monitored none of the dire warnings you seem to yearn for."

Parz frowned, absently scratching his cheek through the thick, clear plastic of his face-mask. "The situation doesn’t make sense, actually, even given the political fragmentation. The Friends have been in this time period for a year. They’ve had plenty of time to warn the human natives of this era, to coordinate, assemble some sort of force to oppose you… perhaps even to close the Interface portal."

"There has been no evidence of such coordination," the Qax said.

"No, there hasn’t, has there? Is it possible the Friends haven’t warned the natives? — perhaps haven’t communicated with them at all, even?" Parz could still make out the Friends’ craft against Jupiter, an island of green on a sea of pink. What were the rebels up to? The Friends must have had some project in mind when they made their desperate run to this period… but they had not felt the need to enlist the resources of the natives of this period.

Parz tried to imagine how a handful of rebels on a single improvised ship could hope to strike across fifteen centuries at an interstellar power.

"It makes little difference," the Qax murmured, its disembodied voice like an insect buzzing somewhere behind Parz’s eyes. "The second Occupation craft is minutes away from the rebel craft, now; this absurd episode is nearing its climax."

"Michael Poole. Miriam."

Poole dragged his eyes away from the astonishing sky. Shira stood before them; Poole saw that the customary blank composure of her skeletal face was marred by a tightness of the mouth, a pink-white flaring of her small nostrils. Beyond her, Poole saw now, the earth-craft was full of motion; Friends bearing slates and other pieces of equipment ran across the wiry grass, converging on the stones at the heart of the craft.

Berg snapped, "Shira, those are Spline warships up there."

"We understand what is occurring, Miriam."

"Then what the hell are you going to do about it?"

Shira ignored this and turned to Poole. "You must stay inside the teepee," she said. "The surface of the earth-craft is not safe now. The Xeelee construction material will shield you from—"

Poole said, "I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re going to do."

Harry, his image restored to brightness outside the hut, folded his arms and stuck his jaw out. "Me too," he said defiantly.

Shira’s voice was fragile but steady enough. "We are not going to respond directly to the incursion of the Qax," she insisted. "There is no purpose—"

Berg shouted, "You mean that after bringing them here you’re just going to let them walk in and do what they want?"

Shira flinched away from the other woman’s fury, but stood her ground. "You do not understand," she said, the strain still more evident in her voice. "The Project is paramount."

Harry tried to grab Poole’s arm; his fingers passed through cloth and flesh in a cloud of pixels. "Michael. Look at the Spline."

The first warship had crossed the zenith now and seemed to be receding from the earth-craft. As it worked its way through the sky it rolled, as if peering from side to side like some obscene eyeball; deep in craterlike pores Poole saw the glint of blood and metal.

The Spline’s partner, the second warship, was clear of the Interface. It was already the size of a large coin, and it grew visibly.

The second ship seemed to be coming straight down at them.

"Only two," Berg muttered.

Poole glanced at her, startled; her face was screwed up tight around peering eyes, a mask of appraisal. "What?"

"No sign of any more coming through the portal. There’s already been time for a third to start appearing."

Poole shook his head, amazed at her ability to think her way through the looming threat from the sky. "Do you think something’s stopping them, at the other end?"

Berg shook her head with a brief, dismissive jerk. "No way. Two is all they think they need."

Shira’s hands climbed over each other like anxious little animals. "Please," she said. "The teepee."

Poole ignored her. "What do you think they’re doing?"

Berg, her fear gone now, or at least suppressed, tracked the silent motion of the Spline. "The first one’s leaving Jovian space."

Poole frowned. "Heading where? The inner Solar System?"

"It’s logical," Berg said dryly. "That’s where Earth lies, fat and waiting."

"And the second?"

"…Is coming down our damn throats."

Shira said, "You need not fear. When the Project comes to fruition these events will be… translated into harmless shadows."

Poole and Berg, dropping their heads from the ugly movements in the sky, studied the Friend.

"She’s crazy," Berg said.

Shira leaned forward, her blue eyes pale and intense. "You must understand. The Project will correct all of this. The continuance of the Project is — must be — the top priority for all of us. Including you, our visitors."

"Even above defending ourselves — defending Earth — against a Spline attack?" Poole asked. "Shira, this may be the best chance well have of defeating the assault. And—"

She didn’t seem to be hearing him. "The Project must be seen through," she said. "Accelerated, in fact." The girl looked from one to the other of them, searching their faces, pleading for understanding; Michael felt as if he could see the practiced phrases rolling meaninglessly through her mind. "You will come with me now."

"What do you think?" Poole said to Berg. "Will they force us? Do they have weapons?"

"You know they do," Berg said calmly. "You saw what they did to my boat."

"So we’ve no way of impelling them to do anything." He heard the frustration, the despair in his own voice. "They’re not going to oppose the Spline at all; they’re putting all their faith in this Project of theirs. The magic Project that will solve everything."

Berg growled softly.

She lashed out sideways with her bunched fist.

She caught the Friend squarely on the temple. Shira fell loosely, crumpling, as if supporting strings had been cut; she lay with her small, skull-like face fringed by pink-stained grass.

Harry, staring down, said, "Wow."

"She won’t stay out long," Miriam said. "We need to move fast."

Poole glanced up at the still-growing, rolling form of the Spline warship. "What do we do?"

"We have to take out both Spline," Berg muttered. "That much is obvious. As long as either of them is loose In the Solar System, the whole damn race is in peril."

"Oh, sure." Harry said. "Let’s take ’em both out. Or, on the other hand, why don’t we think big? I have a cunning plan…"

"Shut up, Harry," Michael said absently. "All right, Miriam, we’re listening. How?"

"We’ll have to split up. Harry, is the Crab’s boat ready to lift?"

Harry closed his eyes, as if looking within. "Yes," he said.

Shira stirred on the grass, moaning softly.

"Maybe you can get away in the boat," Miriam said. "While the Friends are still running about confused, trying to stow everything. Get back to the Crab and go after the first Spline, the one that’s heading for Earth. Maybe you can catch it before it engages its hyperdrive."

"And then what?"

Berg grinned tightly. "How should I know? I’m making this up as I’m going along. You’ll have to think of something."

"All right. What about you?"

Berg looked up. The second Spline, advancing on the earth-craft, loomed still closer; it was a fleshy moon above them. "I’ll try to do something about that one," Berg said. "Maybe I can get to those singularity cannons."

Shira moaned again and seemed to be trying to raise her face from the grass.

Poole said, "And her?"

Berg shrugged. "Take her with you. Maybe she’ll be able to help you."

Poole bent, picked up the girl; her protruding eyes, trying to fix on his face, slid across the sky like poorly tracking cameras.

Berg searched Poole’s face. "I need to say good-bye, Michael," she said.

Harry looked from Poole, to Miriam, and back to Poole; and he winked politely out of existence.

Michael looked beyond the village of Xeelee-material huts, toward the center of the earth-craft. Three burly Friends were running toward them. No, four. And they were carrying something. Weapons?

He turned back to Berg. "You’ll never make it to the center of the craft," he said. "Come with us."

Harry’s head popped out of space, close to Miriam’s ear. "Sorry, folks," he said, "but you haven’t a lot of time for this."

Miriam grinned briefly, ran her hand through her stubble of hair, and took a deep breath. "But I’m not going to the center of the craft. Good-bye, Michael." And she swiveled — away from Michael, away from the approaching Friends — and started to run, toward the edge of the world.

Michael Poole stood watching her for one second, mouth open.

Shira wriggled harder in his arms, kicking like a stranded fish.

There was no more time. Michael turned on his heel and ran for his boat, the ungainly burden of Shira flopping in his arms, the disembodied head of his father floating at his side.

The rim of the craft, ahead of her, was a fringe of grass, incongruous against the bruised-purple countenance of Jupiter.

Her mind raced.

From the circular village of the Friends of Wigner, Berg had about a hundred yards to run to the lip of the craft. Well, she could cover that distance in maybe ten seconds, on the flat. But the weakening of gravity as she approached the edge ought to let her speed up — as long as she didn’t fall flat on her face — but on the other hand she’d be climbing out of the earth-craft’s gravity well, so she’d feel as if she were running uphill…

Yes. Already the ground seemed to be tipping up beneath her.

She tried to work with the weakening gravity, gain whatever advantage she could: she consciously slowed her pace, letting her stride broaden and carry her farther.

She risked a glance backward. The posse of pursuing Friends had split, she saw; two of them had concentrated on Michael and the girl, and the other two were coming after her. They were fit and covered the grass fast.

They carried laser-guns, of the type that had turned her boat to slag. She imagined coherent photons surging from the weapons and arcing into her back, faster than thought. You don’t dodge a light weapon… She felt her back stiffen and tense, the muscles locking up. Her stride faltered, and she tried to empty her head of everything but the next step.

She seemed to be climbing a one-in-three slope now. She didn’t dare look back again, for fear of seeing the earth-craft apparently tip behind her, of tumbling helplessly backward, her balance lost. And, damn it, her chest hurt. Her lungs were dragging at thinning air; coming this far out of the earth-craft’s tiny gravity well was like climbing the mountains of Mars.

She wondered why the Friends didn’t just open up. No need to aim; they could just hose her down, slicing her spine the way they’d cut open her boat. But they were hesitating. Thinking twice.

They wanted to stop her, not murder her, she realized; they were reluctant to use those weapons.

She didn’t have much time for the Friends, but at least they weren’t killers. Maybe it would be better if they were.

Perspective was starting to work on the approaching edge of the world, now. She could see individual blades of grass, rushing toward her.

Her lungs hurt like hell. She felt her tongue protrude from her mouth. Her whole chest ached, including the muscles of her back and her upper arms. And her legs, stiffening as they climbed the steepening hill, were shivering, as if they knew what they were approaching.

She ignored it all; her arms flailing at the thinned air, she drove her feet down at the grass, pushing the earth-craft below her.

The plane reached a crescendo of steepness; she was flying up a bowl-shaped Alp -

And then there was no more grass beneath her boots.

She tipped forward, stumbling over the edge of the world; her momentum carried her away from the earth-craft and into the pink light of Jovian space, arms and legs spread wide like some unlikely starfish. As she spilled slowly forward she saw her posse sprawl against the grass, weapons abandoned, the thin air drawing their mouths open in cartoon masks of amazement.

She was lost in space, her lungs empty. She hung, seemingly motionless, between the earth-craft and the bulk of Jupiter. Darkness crowded the edge of her vision.

Oh, Jesus, Michael, maybe this wasn’t such a good plan after all.

Michael Poole, running around the rim of the earth-craft village toward his boat, arms aching with the weight of the semiconscious Shira, was exhausted already.

He saw Berg go flying over the edge of the world. He found time to wonder if she knew what she was doing.

He glanced over his shoulder; the twist of his muscles only added to the breathless ache across his chest. Two of the Friends were still chasing him. Even as he ran he stared with a strange fascination at the encroaching detail of the Friends: the mud spattered over their light pink coveralls, the set grimness of their hairless faces, the glinting plastic of their laser-rifles…

Harry hovered beside him, his legs whirling propeller style in a cartoon running motion. "I hate to be the bringer of bad news," he panted, "but they’re gaining on us."

Poole gasped between footfalls, "Tell me something… I don’t know."

Harry glanced easily over his shoulder. "Actually I don’t know why they don’t just lase you down where you stand."

"Save the… pep talk…" Michael gasped, his shoulders and arms encased in pain, "and… do something!"

"Like what?"

"Use your… initiative, damn you," Michael growled.

Harry frowned, rubbed his chin, and disappeared.

Suddenly there were wails from Poole’s pursuers, arcs of laser light above his head, the sizzle of ozone.

Legs still working, Michael risked another look back.

A ten-foot edition of Harry, a shimmering collage of semitransparent, fist-sized pixels, had materialized in front of the two Friends. Startled, they’d stumbled to a halt before the apparition and had let rip with the lasers. The pale pink beams lanced harmlessly through the grainy image, dipping slightly as they refracted out of the atmosphere.

But within seconds the Friends had dismissed the Virtual, Michael saw. Shouting to each other they shouldered their weapons and set off once more; Harry materialized before them again and again, the basic template of his Virtual body distorted into a variety of gross forms, but the Friends, their strides barely faltering, ran through the ineffectual clouds of pixels.

Poole tucked his head down and ran.

"Michael!"

Poole jerked his head up. The boat from the Crab was speeding toward him, a gunmetal bullet shape that sped a few feet above the plain. The English grass waved and flattened beneath it. An inviting yellow light glowed from the open airlock.

Harry’s amplified voice echoed from the distant Xeelee-material buildings. "Michael, you’re going to get approximately one chance at this… I hope your timing is better than your stamina."

Michael pounded across the grass, the girl an ungainly bundle in his arms. His breath scraped through his throat. The boat swept toward him at fifty miles per hour, the open hatchway gaping like a mouth.

A flicker of pink-purple light above his head, a whiff of ozone, and there was a small hole in the gray-white carapace of the boat. Smoke wisped briefly; the boat seemed to falter, but kept coming.

It looked as if the Friends were shedding their scruples about using their weapons. Or maybe they were just trying to disable the boat…

The boat filled his world.

Poole jumped.

The door frame caught his right shin, his left foot; pain blazed and he felt the warm welling of blood. He fell hard on the metal floor of the airlock, landing heavily on top of Shira. The girl gasped under his weight, her eyes widening. They slid in a tangle of limbs across the floor, Poole’s damaged legs leaving a trail of blood; they were jammed against the back wall of the airlock, and for the second time the air was knocked out of Poole’s laboring lungs.

A laser bolt flickered at about waist height, a few inches above Poole’s head.

The boat surged away from the ground, the hatch sliding closed slowly; Poole, struggling to rise, was slammed to the floor again, this time away from the girl. His chest strained. He hadn’t been able to draw a single decent breath since his last desperate few strides across the grass of the earth-craft, and now he felt as if he were in vacuum.

He forced his head up and looked blearily to the closing port. He saw a splinter of salmon-pink Jupiter, a wedge of stars; already they were out of the toy atmosphere of the earth-world, above its scrap of blue sky, and their air was rushing into Jovian space.

Blackness welled up within him. The pain in his legs stabbed through his dimming senses.

The girl moaned, sounding very far away, and he thought he heard Harry’s voice. His lungs were empty. He was very cold. He closed his eyes.

Berg turned a half somersault before the thin air slowed her tumble. Then she was falling, upside down relative to the earth-craft, gravity tugging at her so feebly it seemed as if she were hanging in the sky.

Sucking at the cold air, her arms and legs spread wide, she stared back at the earth-craft. The biggest danger with all of this — the biggest in a whole zoo of dangers, she conceded — was that she might have run herself up to escape velocity. Would she continue to fly out into the Jovian light, her lungs straining to find the last few molecules of oxygen? She tried to taste the air, to sense if it were getting any thinner, but it was impossible to tell.

The earth-craft was laid out like a toy before her. She was suspended upside down below the craft, so that she was looking down at the flat, quarter-mile-wide dome of dove-gray Xeelee material that formed its base. The dome was breached by circular vents, each about a yard wide, which must be the mouths of the singularity cannon Poole had described. The dome reminded her incongruously of some old sports stadium, ripped from the Earth and hurled into orbit around Jupiter; but from the base of this stadium dangled a cluster of Xeelee-material buildings and the battered, ancient stones of a henge. Close to the edge of the inverted landscape she could make out her two pursuers; staring after her, they clung to their ceiling of grass like two pink-clad flies, their weapons pinned to the sward by the inverted gravity.

Beyond the earth-craft the Spline warship climbed across the sky, Jupiter casting long, mottled highlights onto its elephant hide. The Spline was like a bad dream surfacing into consciousness, Miriam thought.

Now there was the faintest whisper of a breeze past her ears as the earth-craft’s weak, complex gravity field stroked her back into the artificial sky. She felt a surge of relief. Well, at least she wasn’t to die of asphyxiation, suspended carelessly over Jupiter.

The earth-craft seemed to be tipping toward her, dipping its domed section and hiding the grass-coated face from her view. Soon, even the Spline ship was hidden by its bulk.

For an odd, brief moment she was alone. She was suspended in a bubble of crisp blue sky; tufts of ragged white cloud laced the air, draping themselves over the ragged edge of the earth-craft. It was utterly silent. It was almost peaceful. She didn’t feel any fear, or regrets; she was on a roller coaster of events now, and there wasn’t much she could do except relax, roll with it, and wait to react to whatever happened. She tried to empty her mind, to concentrate just on drawing in each painful breath.

A breeze pushed more steadily at her face now; she felt it riffle her short hair, and her loose jumpsuit billowed gently against her chest and legs.

She watched the dome more carefully, focusing on the nearest of the seemingly randomly placed singularity-cannon vents, about two hundred yards in from the rim of the craft. By measuring it against her thumbnail she saw that the vent was growing, tipping toward her like an opening mouth.

She found herself sighing with a small, odd regret. So much for her little interlude in the air; it looked as if the world of events was drawing her back in again.

The gray construction-material dome was looming up at her now; she was going to hit about twenty yards up from the earth-lined rim of the craft. Well, she was glad to avoid the vents for the moment; the Xeelee material was monomolecular, and she remembered the razor-sharp edges of the doorway to Shira’s hut…

The gravity on this part of the dome would be about a quarter of the Earth-normal field in the interior of the craft. Enough to cause her to hit hard. She tried to orient herself in the stiffening wind, her arms and legs bent slightly, her hands held before her face.

Michael opened his eyes.

He was breathing normally. Thank God. He took a luxurious draught of thick, warm air.

He was inside the metal box that was the boat’s airlock. The floor felt soft below him… too soft. He probed beneath him with his right hand, and found the metal floor a few inches below his spine; inadvertently he shoved himself a little farther into the air.

Weightless. They’d made it into space.

When he turned his head, his shoulders, chest, and neck still ached from their labors in the thin air of the earth-craft. Beside him Shira was curled into a question mark, the diffuse light of the airlock throwing a soft highlight from the elegant dome of her head. Her face looked very young in her sleep. Trickles of blood, meandering in the weightless conditions, snaked from her ears.

Poole lifted cautious fingers to his own face. Blood at his nose and ears. And the sudden movement made him rock in the air; his hovering legs dangled and banged together, and the pain from his damaged shins and feet flared anew. He cried out, softly.

Harry’s face popped into being just in front of his own. "You’re alive," Harry said. "Awake, as a matter of fact."

Poole found his voice reduced to an ugly scratch. "Great timing, Harry. Why didn’t you run it a bit closer?"

Harry’s eyebrows raised a little. "Piece of cake," he said.

"Let me sleep." Michael closed his eyes.

"Sorry. We dock with the Crab in one minute. Then we’ve got to get out of here. We’re assaulting a mile-wide sentient warship from the future. Or don’t you remember the plan?"

Michael groaned and squeezed his eyes tighter.

Berg’s hands, feet, and knees hit the unyielding surface first. The construction material was slick, smoother than ice, a shock of sudden cold in her palms. She let her hands and feet slide away from beneath her. She turned her face away so that her chest and thighs hit the surface comparatively softly.

She lay spread-eagled, flattened against the dome. She lay for a few minutes, the breath hissing through her teeth, her cheek flat against the cold Xeelee substance.

She’d had worse landings.

The light changed.

She lifted her head. Once more the Spline was rising over the curved horizon of the dome, a malevolent moon of flesh, cratered by eyes and weapon snouts.