Silver turned over in the snow hole in her environmentally frozen cabin, and wondered if either of the others had seen her remove the magic purse from Marco's hideaway and secrete it in one of her own. For later evaluation...

Kin lay watching the blinking red light that indicated vacuum in the corridor outside her cabin, and felt a vague sympathy for the raven. Then she wondered if either of the others had seen her take the magic purse from the place Silver had hidden it and drop it out of a disposal chute during an Elsewhere jump. By now the purse was barrelling on towards the edge of Universe, propelled by the steady ejection of Day bills from its open mouth.

Spaced at four arbitrary compass points around the ship were quick-air chambers, installed during its construction to conform with Board of Trade regulations. They meant that, if caught during sudden decompression, a crewman could duck into a chamber instead of having to struggle with a suit. They were a good idea.

The big red light on each one was supposed to flash so that later rescuers could see it. There was no-one to see it now, but one was flashing.

Inside, both claws gripping the pressuring lever, the raven leaned with its beak pressed against the air vent, and thought about survival.

During a dull moment, of which any voyage had plenty, Silver once asked the ship's library to provide her with a copy of Continuous Creation. It couldn't, but it did furnish this extract from the relevant Ten Worlds Literary Digest -- after 167 lines on the book's contribution towards the rediscovery of paper-making.

'The book's achievement was that it drew together a few dozen strands of research on archaeological, palaeontological and astronomical fronts, and wove the Theory out of them. It is easy now to say that, of course, the Theory was obvious. Obvious it was, but it was so obvious that it was almost hidden -- except to a planetary designer who was used to thinking in terms of secondary creation, and who was also a voracious reader.' This was the Theory:

There were the Spindles: telepaths, so telepathic that no more than a thousand of them could occupy a world at a time, because of the mental static. And we humans thought we had a population problem. They left libraries and scientific devices, and it was already known that they could reshape planets more to their liking. They needed room to think. They were proud. When they discovered, on Bery, the remains of a Wheeler strata machine under half a mile of granite, their pride was shattered. Spindles were not, as they had believed, the first lords of Creation -- the Wheelers had beaten them to it, half a billion years before. The shock led them to cease reproduction.

One ship, conveniently stocked with library tapes, had eventually tumbled slowly enough across Earth's system to be stopped. Inside its meteor-ripped skins were three mummies. They had been the crew. Three crew.

The ship had been over a hundred miles across. Most of it had been empty balloon. Room to think...

The Wheelers were silicon hemispheres, propelling themselves on three natural wheels. Nothing except shell and wheels had survived, but there were, under the granite, the compressed remains of Wheeler cities. Other Wheeler remains began to be discovered.

Wheelers had recorded traces of an earlier race, the palaeotechs. Palaeotechs were said to have created theType II stars and their planets. One of their specialities had been the triggering of novas as a crucible for heavy metal creation. Why? Why not? Palaeotechs weren't easily understandable. (Once, Kin Arad answered to her own satisfaction at least the question of why the palaeotechs had created stars. 'Because they could,' she said.)

In one interstellar gulf a ship dropping out of Elsewhere for repairs had discovered a palaeotech -- dead, at least by human terms (though Kin Arad has pointed out that palaeotechs probably lived by a different time-scale and that this apparently lifeless hulk may have been very much alive if considered by slow, metagalactic Time). It was a thin-walled tube half a million miles long.

Wheeler legends spoke of a polished smooth world where palaeotechs had inscribed their history, which included the legend of the pre-palaeotech ChThones, who spun giant stars out of galactic matter, and the RIME, who produced hydrogen as part of their biological processes...

This was the Theory: that races arose, and changed themselves, and died. And then other races arose in the ruins, changed the universe to suit themselves, and died. And other races arose in the ruins -- and arose, and arose, all the way back to the pre-Totalic nothingness. Continuously creating. There had never been any such thing as a natural universe.

(Kin once heard a speaker refer disparagingly to the Spindles because they had manipulated worlds. She stood up and said: 'So what? If they hadn't, Earth would still be a mess of hot rocks and heavy clouds. They changed all this and they brought in a big moon, but do you know the best of all? They gave us a past. They jiggered their strata machines to give us fossils of things that had never existed. Icthyosaurs and crinoids and chalk and ancient seas. Maybe they didn't feel at home unless they had a few hundred metres of fossil strata under them, like they couldn't feel happy if there was another Spindle within fifty miles. But I think they did it because it was their art. They didn't know anyone would see it, but they went ahead and did it.')

Kin found a quiet moment to explore the weapons hold. If Marco had flown the ship to a world with a shaky government, there was enough stuff on board to equip a rebel army. There was what looked like a complete missile system, and several racks of small arms that Jalo must have had made to ancient patterns. One handgun fired sharp wooden bullets. Why?

The ship -- they never did get round to naming it -- dropped into real space. Marco's hands hovered over the controls as he waited for a welcoming barrage.

There was nothing. There wasn't even a star near the ship.

'We're still on the edge of explored space,' said Marco. 'That blue giant there is Dagda Secundus. It's about half a light-year away.'

'Well, here we are and where are we?' asked Kin. 'A star like that shouldn't have planets, especially nice sunny ones.'

'The computer is searching,' said Marco gloomily. 'Needle. Haystack. Perhaps we'll find some iceball whipping along at maybe twenty knots orbital velocity.'

'Meanwhile, we could eat,' suggested Silver.

They each dialled their meal from the dumbwaiter and wandered back into the control room.

'Give it an hour,' said Kin. 'This area of space has been explored. What the hell can it find that the survey teams missed ?'

'I doubt if they looked out here,' said Silver. There was a brief moment of nausea as the computer flicked the ship a few million miles for a parallax measurement.

'We followed Jalo's course tape,' said Marco. 'I'd hate to have to--'

The computer chimed. Marco vaulted into the control chair and juggled the screen controls.

At the limit of magnification there was a small fuzzy hemisphere. They looked at it blankly.

'Just a planet,' said Kin.

'Rather brightly lit for this distance out,' agreed Marco. 'Highly polished ice?'

Silver coughed apologetically. 'I am no astronomer,' she said, 'but surely it is wrong?'

'Not ice?' said Marco. 'Could be Helium IV, I suppose.'

'You misunderstand me,' said the shand. 'Surely the light hemisphere should be pointed towards the star?'

They stared at it. Finally Marco exclaimed, 'Bleeding hell, she's right!' He glanced down at the shouter screens. 'It's half a billion miles away,' he said. 'I should be able to make a straight-line jump. Uh...'

For a moment four hands hovered like a flight of hawks over the controls.