The Delivery Man went on into the main hangar. He whistled softly at the vast array of Neumann cybernetic modules occupying half of the space inside. The machine was powered down, but he was familiar enough with the technology to guess its sophistication probably put it beyond a level-six replicator. That was not something an individual Higher citizen normally possessed. No wonder Troblum needed such a large smartcore, nothing else could operate such a rig.

'Can you access the main memory? he asked his u-shadow.

'Not possible for me. I will need high-order assistance.

The Delivery Man cursed, and opened an ultra secure link to the Conservative Faction. There was a small risk it could be intercepted by another Faction or more likely ANA: Governance itself, but in light of what he'd stumbled across he considered it necessary. 'I need help to gain access to Troblum's smartcore. It should tell us what he's been building with this machine.

'Very well, the Conservative Faction replied. With his u-shadow providing a link, the Delivery Man could almost feel the Faction's presence shift into the hangar. It began to infiltrate the smartcore. While it was doing that, he began to look through the mundane files in the hangar's net to try and find delivery schedules. The individual components of the machine had to come from somewhere, and the EMA to obtain them went far beyond an individual's resources. There was no court the Conservatives could use to confront the Accelerators with, even if he established a datatrail back to their representatives; but if he could find the proxy supplying Troblum with additional EMA there was a chance he could find other illicit EMA transfers from the same source. A whole level of Accelerator operations would be uncovered.

'There is only one design stored in the smartcore, the Conservative Faction announced. 'It would appear to be an ftl engine capable of transporting a planet.

The Delivery Man swung round to stare at the dark machine looming above him, his gaze drawn to the circular extrusion mechanism in the centre. 'A whole planet?

'Yes.

'Would it work?

'The design is an ingenious reworking of exotic matter theory. It could work if applied correctly.

'And this built it? he said, still staring at the machine.

'There have been two attempts at producing the engine. The first was aborted. The second appears to have been successful.

'Why do they want to fly a planet round at ftl speeds? And which planet?

'We don't know. Please destroy the machine and the smartcore.

The Delivery Man put his hands on his hips to give the machine an appalled look. 'What technology level can I go up to here?

'Unlimited. Nobody must know it ever existed, least of all Highers.

'Okay. Your call.

The Conservative Faction ended the link, leaving the Delivery Man feeling unusually alone. Now he knew the purpose of the machine the silent hangar had the feel of some ancient murder scene. It wasn't a pleasant place to be, putting him on edge.

He called the Jomo's smartcore, and told it to fly over. The hangar's main doors were open when it arrived, and it nosed through the security screen to settle on the cradles inside. Its nose almost touched the wall of Neumann cybernetics.

The Delivery Man made sure the hangar security screen was at its highest rating before he stood underneath the Jomo's open airlock to be drawn up by an inverted gravity effect. Once inside he used a tri-certificate authorization to activate the Hawking m-sink stored in one of the forward holds. The little device was contained inside a high-powered regrav sled, which slipped out to hover in front of the Neumann cybernetics. With that in place, the Delivery Man aimed a narrow disrupter effect at the machine, just above the Hawking m-sink. A half-metre section of equipment vaporized, producing a horizontal fountain of hot ionized gas. It bent slightly in mid-air to pour into the Hawking m-sink, which absorbed every molecule. The Delivery Man tracked the disruptor effect along the front of the machine, with the Hawking m-sink following.

It took forty minutes to vaporize the entire machine. When it was over, the quantum black hole at the centre of the Hawking m-sink had absorbed three hundred and twenty seven tons of matter, putting the regrav sled close to its weight lift limit as it edged back into the starship's hold. The Delivery Man requested flight clearance from the starport, and the Jomo lifted into Arevalo's warm summer skies.

Justine watched it go from the safety of her own ship, parked on a pad eight hangars down the row.

Twilight was bathing Hawksbill Bay with a rich gold hue, mild enough so that strange constellations could twinkle merrily across the cloudless sky. The only sound around the pavilion's swimming pool came from the waves breaking around the rocks of the headland below.

'An ftl engine that shifts planets, Nelson said. 'Got to admire them. They don't think small.

'They don't think: period, Gore grunted. 'ANA is embedded in the local quantum fields. You can't just rip it out and fling it across the galaxy on a blind date with the Void.

'They obviously believe it. Troblum's EMA came through one of their front committees. He built the engine for the Accelerators.

'Don't believe it, Gore said, shaking his head. 'He even made a presentation to the Navy about the Anomine using something like this to haul the Dyson barrier generators into place. Asked Kazimir to fund a fucking search for them for Christ's sake. Why would Ilanthe allow him to go public with the idea? They'd atomize him before he even put in a call for a meeting with the Navy. No, we haven't got enough information yet.

'Makes sense if it's a diversion, Nelson said reluctantly. 'They wouldn't build anything so critical to their plans on a Higher world. We don't.

'And he's taken years to get it built, on a fairly pitiful budget. Wrong priority level. We really need to find Troblum and ask nicely what he's really been doing for the Accelerators.

'He left Arevalo a while back. Filed a flight plan to Lutain. Never showed up there, or any other Commonwealth world, Central or External.

'We need to find him, Gore repeated firmly.

'That's not going to happen. Either the Accelerators have him, or he's hiding, or more likely he's plain and simple dead.

'Then we find out which one it is.

Justine stood in the middle of the weirdly empty hangar and called Paula.

'There's something seriously wrong here.

'In what way? Paula asked.

'I think the Delivery Man just cleared the whole place out. Justine slowly looked round the big empty space, opening her optical vision to Paula. 'See that? There was something in here. My field scan shows those power cables were cut by a disruption effect, same goes for the support girders. Whatever it was, it was sizeable and used up a great deal of power. But the Jomo is no bigger than my ship. Which only leaves one option how he did it.

'I thought the Hawking m-sink was even more secure than ultradrive technology. It would seem I'm wrong, which is disturbing.

'Kazimir will have to be told, Justine said. 'If there are starships flying round the Commonwealth equipped with that kind of weapon the Navy should know about it. The Factions don't use the most principled people as their representatives.

'I'll leave that to you.

'Great. Thank you. He's still human enough to blame the messenger.

'He's a professional. You'll be all right. Do you know where the Delivery Man is heading?

'His direction indicated Earth when he left my sensor range. I imagine he'll want to dump the mass stored in the Hawking m-sink first, and he'll do that deep in interstellar space. Expelling it will produce a colossal gamma burst.