'You know, these edge-of-Polity worlds can get a litde rough,' he said.

'I am aware of that,' Pelter replied, then he stared down at the cup he was holding. He had not yet moved, or pulled the tab on it. Stanton wondered when the Separatist had last eaten or drunk anything, for he had not seen him do so. Eventually Pelter moved to the wall and sat down with his back against it. He pulled the tab on his coffee.

'Social order breaks down in the face of dictatorial takeover,' he said, widiout a great deal of conviction.

'It always seemed to me,' said Stanton, 'that you got whole worlds behaving like naughty children trying to cause as much mayhem in their classroom as possible before the teacher got mere.'

'An archaic image… The trudi is that their behaviour is a result of despair.'

Stanton sipped his coffee rather than disagree. Pelter was a committed Separatist and was blind to the realities. The Polity was something that could be described as a benevolent dictatorship in which all enjoyed their portion of plenty. Separatists were always in the minority, like all terrorists, and were hugely resentful of what they considered the blind complacency of their fellow citizens. So far as he understood it, only two worlds had seceded, both for a period of less than ten solstan years. In bodi cases the Polity was called in to clear up the mess. In the case of one of diose worlds, that mess being large radioactive wastelands. Despair… ninety per cent of the population were having a party prior to subsumption.

'Huma can get a bit rough, you know,' he said, labouring to keep a conversation going.

'I do not think I will have a problem with rough,' Pelter replied, giving Mr Crane a meaningful glance.

'Yes… but you do realize that mere will be weapons mere that could destroy even Mr Crane. No Polity weapons proscription on Huma, and some pretty nasty characters.'

'That is why we are going,' said Pelter and sipped his coffee.

Stanton was groping around for something else to say when the intercom crackled.

'Time, I mink, to sort out the payment,' said Jarvellis.

Pelter stared into the air for a long time, before he put his coffee to one side and stood. Mr Crane began putting away his toys, until Pelter turned to look at him. The android men retrieved the ones he had put away, and continued sorting them as if playing some strange game of patience. Pelter stepped over to him, squatted by the briefcase, and opened it. From inside he tore a black strip with ten of the etched sapphires embedded in it. Stanton deliberately looked away as Pelter closed the case and stood up again. The Separatist leader was paranoid enough as it was; he didn't need to be made aware of Stanton's interest in etched sapphires.

Pelter took the strip round the racked cargo to the second bulkhead door. In the bottom of the door a circular hatch half a metre across irised open.

'Just toss them in,' said Jarvellis.

Pelter rolled the strip up and tossed it through- The hatch closed with a crack.

'Good to do business with you, Arian Pelter.'

Another crackle signified the exchange was over.

Stanton looked at Pelter and saw the deadness there. He knew this signified a craving to kill. The side-to-side movement of Pelter's head, as he scanned the hold for visible cameras, speakers or microphones, signified that he had not yet found something on which to focus that craving.

Beyond atmosphere, the stuttering of the Lyric's ion engines became a constant glare. Unlike the larger Polity ships it did not have ramscoop capability, and had to accelerate for some time before it reached what was sometimes referred to as 'grip speed'. This speed varied for the size of ship and the efficiency of its underspace engines. For the Lyric it was approximately 50,000 kilometres per hour: a speed it took the ship, with its limitations on fuel expenditure, twenty hours to reach. When it did, the underspace engines engaged, fields gripped the very substance of space and ripped something ineffable, and the ship dove into the wound. Stanton woke with a gasp at a sudden feeling of panic and groped for his pulse-gun. He opened his eyes and sat upright.

'This hold is not completely shielded,' said Pelter from where he was sitting cross-legged on a sleeping bag, facing Mr Crane, who was seated the same. He did not look round, but went on. 'A good job there is some shielding, else we both would've been screaming by now. Getting that close can drive a man insane.'

Stanton leant forward. A glimpse of underspace could certainly do that to a normal man. He wondered what it would do to Arian Pelter. Drive him sane?

'We should go under,' he said.

'Yes,' said Pelter. 'I have nearly finished with Mr Crane.'

'Finished what?'

'I do not want anything untoward happening while we are under. Mr Crane will watch for us. He has, after all, got the patience of a machine.'

'I shouldn't think she'd try anything.' Stanton stood up. 'She just doesn't want to get anywhere near him.' He walked over to the pods and stared down at them for a long moment. Abruptly he stooped down and slapped the touch-plate on one of them. The pod split down its lengdi to expose a metal interior impressed with a man's shape. 'Claustrophobic' seemed too weak a term to describe it. Jarvellis had not gone so far as to provide any padding, but then what padding did you need when you were all but dead? Either side of the neck were the junctions for the carotids and jugular arteries. From that point his blood would be replaced with a kind of antifreeze. At the base of the skull impression was a simple circular disc: the nerve-blocker. Inside the rest of both manshapes were pinholes only centimetres apart. Each, Stanton knew, contained a needle. The body had to be saturated with antifreeze to prevent terminal cell damage. Stanton swallowed dryly and began to undress. Shortly Pelter joined him and looked down into the pod.

'I've never done this before,' said Pelter.

'Nothing to it,' Stanton replied. 'Just get undressed and climb inside. The nerve-blocker hits before the lid closes, and that's all you know until you wake.'

Pelter nodded and began to remove his clothes. Before climbing into the pod, Stanton glanced back at Mr Crane. The android was sitting with Pelter's briefcase in its lap: it was sorting its toys again. As Stanton lay down in the cold metal, he wondered if that was all Mr Crane would do throughout the months of their journey.

Then, nothing.

A ball flung through a curtain of black cobwebs, the starship Hubris entered real space. For an instant, the starship, a kilometre-wide pearl, was poised ahead of spacial distortions like a mutilated finger, then the invisible wings of the ram-fields folded out, and caught-hydrogen phased to red and hid the ship. The pearl was lost in the flaw of some vast jewel, decelerating from dark, down into the system. Then, a pin-wheel of lasers striated a blood-drop of hydrogen and it became a different plasma: a fusion flame like an orange segment cut from a small sun, blasting against the same spacial distortions that collected the hydrogen. Into the gravity well, Hubris dropped: three-quarter light, half a light, then speeds measured in a mere few thousands of kilometres per second. The fields weakened as the quantity of hydrogen increased. Finally the hydrogen ceased to phase, and the ship became visible again. The fusion reaction shut down and was gone like a droplet of milk swirled away in water. The pearl that was the ship rolled round the edge of the gravity well: a ball cast into the roulette wheel that was the Andellan system.

Cormac stared out onto the cold emptiness, and felt it was mirrored in himself. What was it the shuttle pilot who had taken him from Minostra to the Hubris had said?