'I did what you suggested, Corrie-Lyn said. 'The capsule smashed its way into the reception hall. I just got inside when there was this almighty explosion over the forest. It knocked the capsule around quite a bit, but I was caught by the internal safety field. We zipped over to the administration block. You were… a mess, but I managed to pull you inside. Then we rendezvoused with the Artful Dodger outside the clinic, the way you set it up. The starship put its force field round the capsule while we transferred in. Good job. The police were going apeshit with me. They were shooting every weapon they had at us; there were craters all over the place when we took off. I told the smartcore to get us out of the system, but it followed your preloaded flightplan. We're just sitting in some kind of hyperspace hole a lightyear out from Anagaska. I can't make a Unisphere connection. The smartcore won't obey me.

'I loaded a few options in, he said. His u-shadow gave the smartcore an instruction, and a storage locker opened. 'Do you think you could get me that robe, please?

She frowned disapprovingly, but pulled the robe out. 'I was really worried, I thought I was going to be stuck here for ever if you died. It was horrible. The medical chamber would rejuvenate me every fifty years, and I'd just sit in the lounge plugged into the sensory drama library being drip fed by the culinary unit. That's not how I want to spent eternity, thank you.

He grinned at her drama queen outrage as he slipped the robe on. 'If the chamber could rejuvenate you, it could certainly re-life me.

'Oh.

'In any case, if I die, the smartcore allows you full control.

'Right.

'But! He caught hold of her hand. She jerked round, suddenly apprehensive. 'None of this would have happened if you'd been ready to pick me up when I told you.

'I haven't seen any decent clothes in weeks, she protested. 'I just lost track of time, that's all. I didn't mean to be late. Besides, I thought you got wounded before the scheduled rendezvous.

He closed his eyes in despair. 'Corrie-Lyn, if you're on a combat mission, you don't call a fucking time out to go shopping. Understand?

'You never said combat. A quick raid sneaking into their vault, you said.

'For future reference, a covert mission in which all sides are armed is a combat situation.

She pulled a face. 'Nothing they have will he a match for my biononics?

'I never said that.

'Yes you did.

'I… He let out a breath and made an effort to stay calm. Yoga. She always made us do yoga. It was fucking stupid.

Corrie-Lyn was frowning at him. 'You okay? You need to get back in the chamber?

'I'm fine. Look, thank you for picking me up. I know this kind of thing is not what your life is about.

'You're welcome, she said gruffly.

'Please tell me we still have the memorycell.

Corrie-Lyn produced a minx smile and held up the little plastic kube. 'We still have the memorycell.

'Thank Ozzie for that. His u-shadow told the smartcore to show him the ship's log; he wanted to check how much effort had been made to try and track them. Since they'd left Anagaska in a hurry, several starships had run sophisticated hysradar scans out to several lightyears — but nobody could spot an ultradrive ship in transdimensional suspension. The log also recorded that Corrie-Lyn had managed to circumvent the lock-out he'd placed on the culinary unit to prevent it making alcoholic drinks. Now really wasn't the time to make an issue of it.

'Okay, he told her. 'I don't think anyone's spotted us. Though there were some mighty interesting comings and goings just after our raid. Several ships with unusual quantum signatures popped out of hyperspace above Anagaska; the smartcore thinks they might be ultradrives in disguise.

'Who would they be?

'Don't know. And don't intend to hang around to ask. Let's get going.

'Finally.

He held his hand out, carefully maintaining a neutral expression.

Corrie-Lyn gave the kube a sentimental look, and took a while to drop it into his palm. 'I'm not sure I like the idea of you reading Inigo's mind.

'I'm not going to. Memory assimilation isn't like accessing a sensory drama off the Unisphere, nor accepting experiences through the gaiafield. A genuine memory takes a long time to absorb. You can compress it down from real time, but still this kube contains nearly forty years of his life. That would take months to shunt into a human brain; it's one of the governing factors in creating re-life clones. If we're going to find him before the Pilgrimage, we don't have that much time to spare.

'So what are you going to do?

'Take it to someone who can absorb it a lot quicker than I can, and ask nicely.

'You just said human brains can't absorb stored memories that quickly.

'So I did. Which is why we're setting course for the High Angel'

Corrie-Lyn looked shocked. 'The Raiel starship?

'Yes.

'Why would the Raiel help you?

He smiled at the kube. 'Let's just say that we now have an excellent bargaining point.

Corrie-Lyn didn't have the kind of patience for extensive research. Aaron had to fill in the decades and centuries she skipped through when she started to access the files her u-shadow trawled up on the Raiel. Humans discovered the High Angel back in 2163, he explained, when a wormhole was opened in its star system to search for any H-congruous planets. CST's exploratory division quickly confirmed there was no worlds that humans could live on, but the astronomers did notice a microwave signal coming from the orbit of the gas-giant Icalanise.

'What's that got to do with angels? she asked. 'Were they all religious?

'Not astronomers, no.

When they focused their sensors on the microwave source they saw a moonlet sixty-three kilometres long with what looked like wings of hazy pearl light. The wings of an angel.

'Sounds like they were religious to me, if that's the first thing they think of.

Aaron groaned. With more sensors urgently brought on line, the true nature of the artefact was revealed. A core of rock sprouting twelve stems which supported vast domes, five of which had transparent cupola. Cities and parkland were visible inside.

It was a starship; a living creature, or a machine which had evolved into sentience. Origin unknown, and it wasn't telling. Several species lived in the domes. Only the Raiel consented to talk to humanity, and they didn't say very much.

Several of the biggest astroengineering companies negotiated a lease on three of the domes, and the High Angel became a dormitory town for an archipelago of microgravity factory stations producing some of the Commonwealth's most advanced, and profitable, technology. The workforce and their families soon grew large enough to declare autonomy (with High Angel's approval) qualifying for a seat in the Senate.

With the outbreak of the Starflyer war, High Angel became the Commonwealth's premier Navy base while the astroengineering companies turned their industrial stations over to warship production. More domes were grown, or extruded, or magically manifested into existence to accommodate the Navy personnel. Still nobody understood the High Angel's technology.

'Do we know more about it now? she asked.

'Not really. ANA might; the Central worlds can duplicate some functions with biononics; but the External worlds haven't managed to produce anything like it.

Humans, he told her, had to wait for two hundred years after the War before the massive alien starship's history became a little clearer. Wilson Kime's epic voyage in the Endeavour to circumnavigate the galaxy revealed the existence of the Void to the Commonwealth, complete with Centurion Station and the Raiel defence systems maintaining the Wall stars. Other Navy exploration ships discovered more High Angel class ships; the one species common to each of them was the Raiel. At which point the Raiel.