Araminta crept over to the balcony windows, and peered out across the park. There were several Ellezelin capsules hanging above the encircling road. They were all stationary; like everyone else their occupants were captivated by the chase thirty thousand lightyears away. Below them, the crowd stared up into the heavens whose stars were smeared by the weather dome. She nodded in satisfaction.

'They're firing again, Justine yelped. 'Oh Christ.

The Silverbird shuddered violently. Araminta gritted her teeth, feeling the huge tremor of anticipation in the gaiafield. More sections of the ship reported overloads. The speed fell off as the drive reconfigured its energy manipulation functions around degraded components. Justine changed course, streaking into the loop, the shortest distance to the barrier. Both Raiel warships followed unerringly. Closing the gap.

Araminta pulled a big sky-blue cushion out of a nest pile and into the middle of the living room. She was annoyed to see the ebony-wood parquet had been stripped back to the bare wood. Didn't Mareble understand how difficult it was to get the varnish application correct? The work that had gone into cleaning the little wooden blocks!

She sat down on the cushion and crossed her legs, banishing such negative thoughts.

'Good strategy, darling, Gore said. 'There aren't many planets inside the loop.

Araminta retrieved Likan's program from her storage lacuna, feeling her mind finally settle. It was a risk using this apartment, but she wasn't sure how good Living Dream was at tracking people through the gaiafield. The day Danal had moved in he'd confided to her that he was helping with the search for the Second Dreamer, and how the confluence nests were being altered somehow to facilitate that. So she certainly didn't want to be in her own place when she did this, just in case they were accurate enough to fix the exact location. And they might just think Danal's apartment was some kind of false reading. She didn't know anywhere else she could go. Other than to Mr Bovey's house, but that would expose him to the paramilitaries, which she could never do.

The shadowy spectres of sensation that lurked within her subconscious expanded outwards. She let her attention swim across the myriad thoughts it contained. Drifting. Content in a way the program alone could never kindle.

Most of the thoughts she could ignore. Some were intriguing. One had a mental signature she knew, associated with a dark tone that almost made her shy away. Instead, she concentrated.

'My Lord, Ethan was pleading. 'Hear us please.

He was calling with all his mental strength, amplified by countless confluence nests, directing his appeal outwards into the infinite. Wrong., she mused from her lofty Olympian distance. The Skylord is not beyond us, it is within.

She drifted further, devoid of urgency.

'If you don't call them off I will personally rip your fucking arkship apart molecule by molecule with all of you in it, Gore was yelling. 'You think the Void is a Bad Thing? Do you, huh? You believe that? Because let me tell you: it is your mommy with her titty out for you to suck on compared to me.

Araminta couldn't help grinning. Now that's the kind of father I would have liked. Out in the park, people were cheering. A cry taken up across hundreds of planets. The gaiafield filled with determination and support, the raw emotion of billions, swelling the sense of unification to near ecstasy. Go Gore, humanity whooped. Araminta added her blessing, a whisper lost in the multitude.

'I can do nothing, Qatux protested. 'They are warrior Raiel. Not our kind, not any longer.

'Find a fucking way!

Araminta lifted herself away from the turmoil, drifting towards a strand of familiar quiet thought. Opening herself in greeting. The nebulas of the Void emerged from darkness to glimmer spectacularly around her. Half of space was a gauzy splash of aquamarine with a few distant stars shining though. She recognized it as Odin's Sea where a Skylord coasted between two of the scarlet promontories, spikes of whorled gases lightyears long, swelling to buds big enough to contain a globular cluster. And here, the thoughts of what once was mingled with more purposeful notions. An awareness wove through this space, not conscious, but knowing purpose.

Silverbird burst out of the loop and streaked towards the final implacable barrier. All around it, broken stars sleeted inwards, shedding the glowing husks of the planets they had once birthed as if they were an encumbrance during the final tumultuous plunge to extinction.

'Oh God, here we go again, Justine whimpered. Ten lightyears behind her a gas-giant imploded. Hyperluminal quantum distortions burst out from its vanishing point.

The Silverbird dropped out of hyperspace, flying free in spacetime that no human would recognize. It was a dark universe inside the Wall stars. Thick braids of dust and gas shielded the light of the galactic core behind the starship. Ahead, few photons escaped the macrogravity cloak of the Void as suns sank through the event horizon. A lurid vermilion band shimmered across space, the swirl of ion clouds enraged by the loop's fatal discharge, illuminating the fuselage like the devil's own gaze. Radiation alarms howled in fright as the force field started to collapse. The fuselage blistered.

'One of us comes, Araminta said. 'See?

The distortion shockwave was almost unnoticeable in real space as it flashed past. Dead streamers of atoms were stirred briefly by the unquiet force leaking back out of the quantum interstices. Silverbird powered back into hyperspace, smouldering from radiation burns.

'You, Ethan exclaimed.

The Skylord resonated with interest. 'I still search for you. The nucleus aches with longing.

'I know. You must stop that. Please welcome our emissary. She approaches you.

'Where? I sense you are so far away.

'I am. She is close to you now. Feel for her. She bleeds emotion as do we all. Guide her as you should. Open your boundary.

'The Heart will welcome you.

The two Raiel warships were closing on the Silverbird. Justine's sensor display showed her another gas giant sized mass barely five lightyears away. If they targeted that it would be the end. The Silverbird's ultradrive was struggling to maintain acceleration now.

'Hurry. Please, Araminta implored.

The Skylord radiated satisfaction as it receded.

'I thank you, Gore said. 'Whoever you are.

Justine sank back into the couch, her mind fully open to the gaiafield, letting every emotion pour fourth. Hopes. Fears. Everything she was.

Ahead of the Silverbird, the Void boundary changed. A vast circular wave rippled out, creating a crater ten lightyears across. From its centre a smooth cone of pure blackness rose up towards the starship.

Justine regarded the exovision images in surprise. She was gripping the couch arms tight, her skin slick with sweat. 'I'm not to sure—

Behind her, the Raiel warships slowed, allowing the Silverbird 'to race onwards. - this is such —

Al fifteen lightyears high the cone stopped expanding.

' — a good —

Its apex opened like a flower, petals of infinite night pealing back. Exquisite nebula-light shone out into the Gulf.

Silverbird passed across the threshold, into the Void.

' — after all.

The cone closed up. It sank back into the now quiescent boundary. Silverbird's communication link to the Navy relay ended. Both Raiel warships executed tight curves and headed back towards the Wall.

'Please, talk to us, Ethan appealed. 'The Skylord has anointed you as our' Second Dreamer. We await you. We need you. He was given no reply.