“Yes, I’m sure it must.”

“Good. So how did they power it? If you’re bootstrapping yourself up to archangel status, that’s going to take a lot of energy, especially when you’re using a machine that’s nearly half a cubic kilometer of solid-state systems.” He turned to stare at the bulging tower that backdropped the Last Throw and wagged an accusatory gold finger at it. “But if you’ve got a cable that plugs directly into the nearest star, power is the least of your worries.”

“Ah, the wormhole doesn’t carry information …”

“No way. They’ve got some kind of energy siphon swimming about in the photosphere or maybe deeper. It sends all the power they need back along the zero-width wormhole. Okay, that works for me. We’d best go see if the siphon’s still there.”

For a moment, words refused to come out of the Delivery Man’s mouth. “Why?”

“What part of ‘I don’t give up easy’ is hard for you?”

“The wormhole isn’t extended. Everything is managed by machines that have their own psychology, and it’s anti-us psychology.”

“One step at a time. First we check it all out. If everything is still there in standby mode just like they left it, then we start an infiltration strategy. Human-derived software is the most devious in the galaxy. Our e-head nerds have had a thousand years to perfect their glorious trade, God bless ’em, and I’d stack them up against anyone. Certainly a race as sweet and noble as this lot.”

“But we don’t have any with-” The Delivery Man caught the expression on Gore’s golden face and groaned as comprehension kicked in.

“And if I can’t reestablish something as fucking simple as a de-energized wormhole, then I’m already dead and this is hell taunting me. Now come on.” Gore started marching across the plaza to the Last Throw.

“Are you leaving?” Tyzak asked.

“For a short while only,” the Delivery Man assured the old Anomine. “We have to fly to check on something. It should take less than a day. Will you stay here?”

“I wish to hear the end of your story. I will remain for a while.”

The Delivery Man resisted the urge to spill out an apology and hurried after Gore.

In the time it took to dive into hyperspace and reemerge three million kilometers out from the star’s photosphere the culinary unit had produced a batch of lemon risotto with diced and fried vegetables. Lizzie used to make it, standing over a big pan on the cooker, sipping wine and stirring in stock for half an hour while the two of them chatted away at the end of the day. The Delivery Man instructed the unit to produce a side plate of garlic bread and started grating extra Parmesan cheese over the streaming rice. Lizzie always objected to that, saying it dulled the flavor of the vegetables. Gore shook his head at the offer of a bowl.

“You’re still worrying about Justine, aren’t you?” the Delivery Man said.

“No, I am not worried about Justine,” Gore growled out. “We’re still well inside the time effect it should take her to reach Querencia.”

“Okay, then.”

“Even if something has happened, it’s not as if we can launch a rescue mission.”

“Unless that witch Araminta persuades the Skylord to abandon the Silverbird, I don’t see anything which could interrupt her flight.”

“That wouldn’t stop my Justine. Maybe slow her down some but nothing worse. You have no idea how stubborn she can be.”

“Where does she get that from? I wonder.”

Gore gave him a small grin. “Her mother.”

“Really?”

“No idea. That is one memory I made sure I junked a thousand years ago.”

The Delivery Man put a slice of the garlic bread into his mouth and ended up sucking down air to cool it. “I don’t believe that.”

“Son, I’m not a fucking soap opera. I can’t afford to be; my emotional baggage level is zero. I haven’t had anything to do with that woman since Nigel watched Dylan Lewis take his epic step.”

“What?”

“Kids today! The Mars landing.”

“Ah, right.”

Gore sighed in exasperation.

The Delivery Man wasn’t sure just how much of that attitude was for his benefit. As he forked up more risotto, the Last Throw emerged back into spacetime. Warning icons immediately popped up in his exovision, along with a series of external sensor feeds. A quick status review showed the force fields could cope with the current exposure level of radiation and heat. Hysradar return of the corona and photosphere was fuzzy, distorted by the massive star’s gravity. Even the quantum field resonance was degraded.

“We need to get closer,” Gore announced.

The Delivery Man knew better than to argue as they began to accelerate in toward the star at ten gees. He just hoped that Gore wouldn’t try to tough out the heat. The way the gold man was wired, it was a distinct possibility.

There were no borderguards within ten million kilometers of the star, and the few that did cover that section of the Anomine solar system showed no interest in their flight. Nor were there any other kind of stations, only a host of asteroidal junk and burned-out comet heads. The closest large object was the innermost planet at seventeen million kilometers out, a baked rock with a day three and a half times the length of its year, allowing its surface to become semimolten at high noon. It was only the starship that had followed them from the Leo Twins that showed any interest in their exploratory flight, remaining five million kilometers away and still keeping itself stealthed.

The Last Throw’s safe deflection capacity limit was reached at approximately a million kilometers above the fluctuating plasma of the photosphere, leaving them swimming through the thin, ultravolatile corona. Giant streamers of plasma arched up from the terrible nuclear maelstrom below, threatening to engulf the little ship as they expanded into frayed particle typhoons rushing along the flux lines.

Sensors probed down into the inferno, seeking out any anomaly amid the superheated hydrogen. The starship completed an equatorial orbit and shifted inclination slightly, scanning a new section of the star’s surface. Eight orbits later they found it.

A lenticular force field two thousand kilometers below the surface of the convection zone. Hysradar revealed it to be fifty kilometers wide. Intense gravatonic manipulation was keeping it in place against the force of the hydrogen currents that otherwise would have expelled it up into the photosphere at a respectable percentage of lightspeed.

“That’s definitely our power siphon,” Gore said. Hysradar showed them the flux lines swirling around the disc in odd patterns. The force field appeared to be slightly porous, allowing matter to leak inward at the edge.

“Why not just use a mass energy converter?” the Delivery Man mused.

“Check the neutrino emissions; only a mass-energy converter will give those kinds of readings,” Gore said. “And look at it. All it’s doing now is holding position, and see how much mass it’s converting just to do that, because sure as commies complain about fairness, that intake ain’t flowing out anywhere afterward. This is the mother of all turbo-drive converters.”

“Okay, so we’ve proved it’s there and still functioning. Now what?”

“Our force fields wouldn’t get us halfway, but the only way we can access it and infiltrate is to go down and rendezvous-possibly even dock, or at least cling on and start drilling into the thing’s brain.”

The Delivery Man gave him a frankly scared look. “You’re shitting me.”

“Wish I were, son. Don’t panic. The replicator we have on board is high-order. We’ll have to churn out some advanced force field generators to upgrade the Last Throw’s defenses. Once they’re beefed up to Stardiver standard, we’ll drop into the convection zone and switch the power back on to the elevation mechanism. Well … when I say us, I mean you.”