Instead, there was only this decayed Sun and its ruined worlds… even the wormhole routes, it seemed, had been shut down. And here she was, stuck inside the pilot-cage of an alien craft, chasing across tens of billions of miles in search of one, sad, isolated beacon.

She began to take her body through a simple regime of calisthenics, exercises she could get through without climbing out of her couch. “So, Louise. You’re telling me that Sol is dead. The System is dead. And you sound… upset about it. But what else did you expect to find?”

“I expected nothing. I hoped for more,” Louise said. “But I guess the slow destruction of the Sun, coupled with the Xeelee assaults, were together enough to wipe the System clean…”

Spinner felt, suddenly, profoundly depressed, as if the weight of all those lost years, those hundreds of billions of lives which had resulted in nothing but this cosmic rubble, was bearing down on her.

“Louise, I don’t want to hear any more.”

“All right, Spinner. I — ”

Spinner shut her off.

She blanked out her faceplate, and filled its inner side with a soothing, cool green light, the light which had filtered through leaves from an artificial Sun to illuminate her childhood. She immersed herself in the warm feel of her muscles, as she pushed through her exercises.

Immersed in the cries of the klaxon, Morrow’s party held a council of war.

“I’ve been scouting,” Mark said. “And as far as I can tell it’s the same all over the Decks. No people, anywhere. The same emptiness… Everyone has been taken into the Temples. And it’s not going to be easy to get them out.”

“Let’s leave them in there, then,” Trapper-of-Frogs said practically. “If that’s what they want.”

Morrow studied her round, unmarked face. “Unfortunately, that isn’t an option,” he said gently. “We have to protect them.”

“From themselves?”

“If necessary, yes. At any rate, from the Superet Planners.”

Trapper thrust her face up at his. “Why?”

Morrow started to feel impatient. “Because we have to. Look, Trapper, I didn’t want to come on this jaunt into the Decks any more than you did. It’s not my fault we’re being shot at — ”

“Starve them,” Trapper said simply.

Morrow turned to her. “What?”

“Starve them.” She turned to study the Temple with an appraising eye, as if assessing its capacity. “There must be hundreds of people in there — and in the other Temples. They can’t have that much food and water; there just isn’t room in there. I say we wait here, until they get starved out. Simple.”

Constancy-of-Purpose grinned, maliciously. “We could block the sewage outlets. I know where the outlets are; it would be easy. That would be fun. And a lot faster acting.”

Mark hovered before her, his artificial face drawn into stern disapproval. “And cause plague, illness and death on a massive scale? Is that really what you’re proposing?”

Constancy-of-Purpose looked doubtful; she passed a massive hand over her scalp.

“Listen to me,” Mark said slowly. “This is my field — I’m a socio-engineer, after all. Was, whatever. The last thing we want is a siege, here. Do you understand? I’m not sure if we have the resources to break a siege. If we tried, the fall-out — the illness and death — would put an immense strain on the Northern’s infrastructure.

“Besides — ” He hesitated.

Morrow said, “Yes?”

“Besides, I’m not certain that breaking a siege is even possible.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look: the Planners see themselves as messianic. They, and only they, can save ‘their’ people. If we besiege them, the Planners simply won’t respond the way a rational person would — by studying their resources, by assessing the chances of a successful break-out, and so on. Worse still, we — the besiegers — would become part of the fabric of their delusion, an embodiment of the external threats which assail their people.”

Morrow frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Mark, evidently forgetting there was no drive-induced gravity, started pacing around the Deck, his Virtual feet soundlessly missing the floor by a fraction of an inch. “You have to understand things from the point of view of the people in control in there: the Planners.” He turned a frank gaze on Morrow. “I’ve been studying you, Morrow. I know you’re still intimidated — by this place, by the nearness of the Planners. Aren’t you? — despite all your experiences outside here, beyond these walls.”

Morrow said nothing.

“This culture has a lot of power,” Mark said. “Almost all of it is concentrated in the hands of the Planners, with the mass of people dumbly acquiescing. Morrow, the Planners have taken the species-survival logic of Superet — the logic which lay behind the whole of the Northern’s mission, after all — and extrapolated it into something more — something almost religious.

“We’re dealing with a powerful concept, folks; one that seems to touch buttons wired deep into our human psyches. People on these Decks have followed where the Planners have led for nearly a millennium — including you, Morrow.

“When Louise and I saw this tendency developing, quite early in the flight, we decided we couldn’t overcome it — and it would be wastefully destructive to try.

“So we withdrew, to the Great Britain, leaving enough of a physical control infrastructure in place for us to ensure the ship could run smoothly.

“Well, maybe we were wrong to do that; because now the Planners’ messiah complex is leading us to a crisis…”

Morrow found he intensely disliked being analyzed in this way by a Virtual construct. “But what are we to do?” he snapped. “How are we to use these staggering insights of yours?”

“The situation is unpredictable,” Mark said bluntly. “But it’s possible that the Planners would destroy their people — and themselves — rather than let us win.”

The little party exchanged shocked glances.

Trapper said, “But that’s insane. It even contradicts their conscious goals — to protect their people.”

Mark’s smile was thin. “Nobody said it had to make sense. Unfortunately, there are plenty of precedents, right through human history.”

Constancy-of-Purpose said, “With flaws like that hardwired into our heads, it’s a wonder we ever got into space in the first place.” She let herself drift a little way from the Deck, her legs dangling beneath her, and studied the Temple, eyes squinting. “Well, if we can’t break the siege, we’re going to have trouble. For a start, there are more of them than us. And, second, their cross-bows have a much greater range than these blowpipes wielded by Trapper and her friends — ”

“Maybe,” Trapper-of-Frogs said slowly, “but I’ve been thinking about that. I mean, the Planners could have killed us earlier, when we were strung out along the Deck. Couldn’t they?”

Mark frowned. “They fired over us. Maybe they were trying to warn us.”

“Maybe.” Trapper-of-Frogs nodded grudgingly. “Or maybe they were trying to hit us — but couldn’t. Watch this.”

She pulled a dart from the pouch at her waist and raised her blowpipe to her lips. She spat the dart harmlessly into the air, on a flat trajectory parallel to the Deck.

Morrow, bemused, tracked the little projectile. It rapidly lost most of its initial speed to the resistance of the air, but its path continued flat and even, still parallel to the Deck. Eventually, Morrow supposed, it would slow up so much that it would fall to the Deck, and…

No, it wouldn’t, he realized slowly. The GUTdrive was shut off: there was no gravity. Even if air resistance stopped the dart completely, it still wouldn’t fall.

“When the gravity first disappeared,” Tracker said, “I couldn’t hit a damn thing. I seemed to aim too high, every time. I quickly worked out why: even over quite short distances, gravity will pull a dart — or a cross-bow bolt — down a little way. I’ve grown up compensating for that, allowing for it unconsciously when I aim at something.