"… menoa tire alao galatrive." Vallus Leafbower fell silent. Directly ahead of the hammership, a new star burst into life: a point of fierce white light. A smile of satisfaction spread across the elfs face as he saw it. When he spoke, there was a slight tremor of exertion in his voice. "The portal is open."

Aelfred nodded to an unspoken order from Estriss. "Aye," he responded. "Flow stations. I'll spread the word." He gave Teldin another quick but reassuring grin. Then, stopping only long enough to extinguish the lantern that hung over the chart table, he left the bridge.

Teldin felt his eyes drawn back to the new star that had sprung to life in the firmament. It looked somehow different now from how it had been in its first moments of existence. For one thing, it seemed to twinkle slightly, to shimmer the way stars had always done when he'd looked at them from the ground. In contrast, all of the other stars were constant when viewed from space, totally unvarying in their hard light, like tiny crystals. There was now color, too; sometimes the new star seemed blue, sometimes red, changing its hue so rapidly that his eyes could hardly keep up with it.

Was it just his imagination, or was the star growing larger? At first it had been a point, totally dimensionless. Now he could swear that it had a disk…. Yes, there was no doubt at all. It was growing larger.

With a suddenness that was as shocking as a solid punch to the stomach, his perception of the universe instantly reordered itself. No longer was he looking at a star that was somehow, unaccountably, growing in size. He was looking at a hole in the blackness-a hole through it-leading to what lay beyond that infinite wall. The light he saw wasn't coming from an object. It was the light of whatever lay outside this crystal sphere, outside Krynnspace. The hole-the portal-wasn't growing. The Probe was hurtling toward it at inconceivable speed….

Teldin couldn't control his reactions. He slapped both hands over his eyes and folded at the waist so his chest was against his knees. He heard a whimper of panic… and realized that the voice was his own.

He felt a hand on his back, and the cool touch of Estriss's voice in his mind. There were no words involved. It was the mental equivalent of a soothing murmur, the inarticulate sound of comfort parents make to their small children. Teldin drew strength from it. He sat up again, taking his hands away from his face. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. He couldn't meet the illithid's gaze, nor look up at the others standing around the map table. His humiliation was complete.

Words formed within his brain. There is no reason to be sorry. Fear is natural when one is confronted by the unknown. The vast majority of those who travel the universe experience a reaction similar to yours at some time,… often the first time they see the boundary of a crystal sphere and realize its significance. Humor tinged the mind flayer's words. My own reaction was much the same as yours, perhaps more intense. Estriss continued more seriously. The shock typically strikes but once. After the first impact, die traveler is inured, it least partially.

Come, a test. The illithid tightened his grip on Teldin's shoulder. We are about to pass into the flow. Look on the portal and tell me your reaction.

Somewhat hesitantly, Teldin raised his eyes. The view ahead of the ship was vastly different. The true nature of the porral was obvious now. It was perfectly circular, a great hole in the blackness. The margin of the portal-the circumference of the circle-glowed with a harsh and brilliant blue-white light that reminded Teldin of lightning storms over the mountains neat his home. Under other circumstances, this glowing margin might have been bright enough to dazzle, but here it faded almost to insignificance-because the light of chaos itself seemed to flood through the portal!

Beyond the black plane of the crystal sphere was what looked like an ocean of multicolored fluids intermixing in turbulent, riotous confusion. Streaks and whorls of every color of the rainbow churned with hues for which Teldin had no names. All glowed with a radiance in which every object on the bridge cast shifting multihued shadows. Wisps and ribbons of color seemed about to leak through the portal, but appeared to evaporate at the last instant. This must be the flow….

The ship's forward motion had slowed drastically. No longer did the portal seem to grow with such dramatic speed. Instead, the Probe seemed to be edging its way forward, cautiously, toward the unknown. For the first time, Teldin's brain could finally make sense of what he was seeing and grasp the scale involved. The portal was near now. He could tell that for sure; only a hundred paces or so remained. It wasn't as big as he'd initially guessed, only about twice the length of the Probe-a total of about five hundred feet-in diameter.

How do you feel? Estriss asked him.

Teldin didn't look at the illithid, didn't take his eyes off the view ahead. "Dazed," he replied quietly. "Amazed, but under control."

Good. The captain joined the others at the chart table. Even though the thought wasn't directed at him, Teldin "heard" the illithid's order: Take us through.

The Probe inched forward. The distance to the portal halved.

The chaotic colors of the flow seemed to bulge outward, away from the ship's bow, as though a bubble were forming in a liquid. As the ship advanced, so did the bubble. It's like we're a ship in a bottle, Teldin thought, remembering the intricate ship models he'd once seen an old man selling, impossibly constructed inside a narrow-necked glass bottle. If you immersed the bottle in paint, this is what the crew would see. The Probe's bow passed through the portal. For an instant, the black wall was invisible. A thin line of blue-white brilliance encircled the ship. Then the vessel was through.

Teldin's curiosity overcame the sense of weakness that still possessed him, and he forced himself to his feet. He edged his way past the officers at the chart table and descended the three shallow steps to the forward weapon deck. The crewman who was taking Teldin's watch duty was squatting on the deck, his back against the ballista's swivel mount, gazing around him with undisguised fascination. He heard Teldin's approaching steps and nodded a greeting before returning to his observations.

Teldin searched his memory for the man's name. After a moment, it came: Shandess. Older than most other members of the crew, he reminded Teldin of an ancient bit of chewed leather: very much the worse for wear, but still tough and resilient. "You've done this before?" Teldin asked him. He'd meant to speak in a normal voice-a way to prove to himself that he'd shaken off his earlier shock-but the words still came out in a whisper.

"The flow?" Shandess nodded. "Oh, aye, three score times, more maybe." He grinned, showing crooked and broken teeth. "It always gets you, don't it?" The old man pointed upward and astern, over the forecastle. "That's your home behind us, ye know."

Teldin turned. The black plane was visible again, but this time astern of the Probe. The sense of infinity was missing, simply because the flow itself wasn't perfectly transparent, and attenuated his vision over distance. Still, the sheer immensity of what he could see was quite impressive enough.

The stern of the vessel was just passing through the portal. From this perspective, it was easier to appreciate the shape and size of the air bubble that surrounded the ship. It looked like a smooth ovoid, about three times as long as the ship, and about three times as wide as the Probe's beam. As far as he could tell, the bubble's "walls" were totally insubstantial; the light of the flow didn't reflect or refract from anything. He knew that his initial image of the bubble as a glass bottle was wrong, but still it was very descriptive. As the ship moved forward, the intertwined rivulets of color parted for it, eddying slightly as they flowed backward along the bubble's periphery.