'Oh great Ozzie, Araminta wailed. Now the tears really were flowing free.

'Everyone is making a lot of demands of you, Gore said. 'I expect you're frightened and uncertain. I also expect you want lo stay out of sight, certainly everything you've done so far Indicates this. I appreciate that. You're coming to terms with what you are, and nobody can help with that. You have a lot of decisions to make, and I don't envy you any of them. If you want to get in touch with me, I'll help in any way I can, that goes without saying. Again, that's not why I am making this appeal. There is one thing that does not require a decision: the Void devourment phase must be stopped. As far as we are aware you are the only one who can currently do this. I say that because someone else is trying to help. Gore took a breath and squared his shoulders, trying to be brave. 'My daughter, Justine, was at Centurion Station when the devourment kicked off. Unlike everyone else there, she didn't head back home. Against all my wishes, my pleas, my hopes, she's aimed her ship directly for the Void. It's one of the secret ultradrive ships you may have heard rumours of. Very fast. Which means that in another day or so she'll arrive at the boundary. Justine's not like me, she's sweet and kind, very much an optimist, all the things to be proud of in our species. She's been involved in diplomatic work for centuries. She's flying alone to the Void in the hope she can talk to the Skylord; she believes that reason will prevail. But first she has to get inside. Humans have done that once before. Inigo and the Waterwalker showed us that. I appeal to you, Second Dreamer, to contact the Skylord one last time, and ask it to let Justine in. That's all, just ask it that one thing, nothing else. You don't have to talk about the devourment phase, or the Pilgrimage. Just give my daughter a chance to try and negotiate with whatever passes for authority in there. Justine is going to fly into the boundary come what may, despite everything I've said to try and stop her, she believes in humanity, that our nature should be placed upon this alien altar and given a chance. She believes in us. I hope, I beg, you will do what you can to give her that chance. Don't let my girl die in vain, I beseech you. If there's anything you need or want, then contact me in complete safety at the code on this file. Please. One last time, help put a stop to what's happening out there. There's not much time left. Help her. Only you can.

Araminta put her hands over her head as the message finished, wanting nothing more than to curl up in a ball and leave the universe altogether. 'Thanks for fucking nothing, she told the haunting memory of Gore. At the same time she felt a tiny lifting of doubt. Maybe this Justine woman can do something. Maybe it's not all down to me after all.

That just left getting in touch with the Skylord without Living Dream and all the others tracking her down. Yeah, that should be dead easy for someone who can't even get a culinary unit to make a sandwich.

In the middle of a desert of dry mud was a house, an igloo of baked sand. It had a wooden door that years ago had been painted dark green. Harsh sunlight and dusty winds had abraded it down to the bare wood, though some flecks of green still persevered in the cracks between the oak boards.

He knew that door. Knew it well. Knew what lay behind.

The sun hung at the apex of the world's sapphire sky, bleaching all colour out of the desert. It was always thus.

He dismounted from the huge Charlemagne just short of the igloo, his plain white robes flowing around him. The deep hood protected his face from the sun's penetrating rays. Somehow, those few steps to the door took for ever. His limbs were fighting an unknown force that resisted every movement. He kept asking himself if he wanted to do this because he eventually realized that the force fighting him was fear. Fear of what waited for him on the other side of the door. He carried on anyway, because in this, as always, he had no choice, no will, no independence. The effort left him trembling from exertion, but eventually the door was in front of him. He raised his hand, placing it palm down on the warm wood, feeling the familiar sand-smoothed grain. Pushed.

The door opened, and darkness spilled out, contaminating the sunlight. It built round him like a fog, and his dread spiked upwards. But the door was open. There was nothing now between him and the person living in the house. Something moved in the shadows, a presence that was reaching out.

'You and your father both had the courage to make the right choice in the end, a voice told him. 'Not that my opinion counts for anything. But I'm glad. I figure I owe you this second chance.

'My father? He lurched forwards—

— the ground crawler lurched again as the front tracks cleared another ice ridge, and the wedge nose tipped down sharply. Aaron shook himself as the real world claimed him back from bedlam, gripping the chair arms, staring out of the slit windscreen. It was profoundly dark outside, midnight beneath clouds that towered five kilometres into the screaming hurricane sky. Headlight beams were clotted by driving snow. The small glimpse of the ground they did allow revealed ice boulders half the size of the ground crawler. Regular bursts of lightning showed the wicked, sharp-edged boulders scattered across the frozen land in all directions without end. Narrow gaps between them were becoming fewer, and had been for the last hour. It was a nightmare geography out there. Their progress was pitiful, and getting worse.

He checked the vehicle's inertial navigation system. In the last two hours they'd travelled a grand total of seven and a quarter kilometres, and very little of that was in a nice straight line forwards. Eleven hours now since the unknown starship fired a Hawking m-sink into Hanko. He was beginning to wish he had the math to work out an accurate timetable for how long it would take the weapon to digest the planet from within. But knowing the exact moment when the continents would implode wasn't going to make the ground crawler go any faster. His early rough estimate of three days was realistic enough.

The crawler's net slowed the tracks, which Aaron perceived first as a change in the constant vibration afflicting the cabin. When he asked it why he was shown a radar sweep. There was a rift in the ground ahead, a vertical drop of over ten metres.

'Lady! Inigo exclaimed as he studied the radar profile; his face was gently shaded by the weak violet light emitted by the two polyphoto strips on the cabin roof. 'It's going to take half an hour to cut our way down that.

'You're the expert, Aaron muttered sourly.

Inigo gave him a tight smile. 'I certainly am. He gripped the manual control stick, and backed up, then activated the forward power blades. They extended out of the nose and began rotating. The ground crawler edged forwards again, and the spinning blades touched the ice. A wide plume of dirty ice granules shot up into the snowstorm. The screech from the blades resonated round the cabin, and the whole vehicle began to shake as they started to dig themselves a track. Inigo steered them carefully, curving round to run parallel to the rift, always descending. The plume reduced visibility to zero. He was relying on the vehicle's sensors and his own field effect scan. The lost messiah must have had some sophisticated filter programs, Aaron decided; his own scan revealed little beyond the crawler's bodywork. The ice they were traversing showed up as a thick unified substance laced with rock and soil, like a haze of interference; yet Inigo was able to discern the structure, knowing when to back off and when to apply pressure.

The noise of the power blades set Aaron's teeth on edge. Its lone was constantly changing as they hit soil, then back into ice. Then the blades hit some kind of rock, and the rasping was so bad he wanted to hit something. When he glanced back at Corrie-Lyn she was pressing her hands over her ears, her teeth bared in a wild grimace of dismay. Inigo adjusted the stick fractionally, curving them away from the dense strata. Rock and lie gravel spewed out sideways, falling in a long arc down the side of the rift. Inigo drove them into the ice again, gouging a wider cut.