It was time to go. Teldin felt the power of the cloak grow around him, flow through him. Light flared, a nimbus of bright pink that seemed to shine right through his bones. He felt the ship around him like an extension of his body, an extension of his will. As responsive as thought itself, the large squid ship lifted clear of the ground.

Teldin held the vessel at an altitude of fifty feet or so over the meadow, as he repeated his mental "inspection." Now that it was airborne, the stresses on the ship's hull and keel were slightly different. The staved-in planking of the hull had shifted slightly-nothing critical, he decided-but the keel felt as solid as a rock. Gently at first, he put the ship into a climb, feeling out its maneuverability, ready to respond instantly to any instability or other hint of problems. With his wraparound awareness, he saw the verdant forest drop away below him.

The ship was steady, responding instantly to his mental commands. He let the speed build up slowly, as he simultaneously brought up the bow. Again the torn planking of the hull complained, but again he judged it to be nothing dire. Ever more confident with the ship's solidity, he pushed the Boundless to the maximum speed he felt was safe within the atmosphere. Rigging creaked and sang in the wind that penetrated the vessel's air envelope, an audible counterpoint to the tension that still gripped his heart. He brought the bow up even farther. The contrast between what his sense of balance and what his eyes told him became profound. While he felt as though he were standing upright on a horizontal surface, the horizon of the planet was canted at an angle of sixty degrees or more as the squid ship hurtled toward the freedom of space.

Julia was back at the sextant, tracking the mini-suns once more. "No change," she announced quietly. "The window's still open."

Teldin nodded. He could feel the resistance of Nex's atmosphere lessening, and he added a touch more speed. The ship was now flying faster than a dragon, faster than a swooping eagle. Soon, he knew, it would be traveling unimaginably faster still.

Below the ship, the surface of the world was changing from the landscape of a map to a sphere. From this altitude, he could easily see the curvature of the horizon.

Without warning, the keening of the wind through the rigging died. They were clear of the planet's atmosphere, Teldin knew. The only air around them was that which the ship carried along with it, and that was traveling at the same speed as the vessel itself. In other words, there was no more air resistance. He extended his will, through the cloak, and the Boundless leaped forward.

"Coming up on the mini-suns," Julia said.

"Any change?" he asked.

She shook her head, her copper hair gleaming in the ruddy light of the fire bodies. "They're all still on course."

"Let them stay that way," he muttered.

The passage through the region of the mini-suns turned out to be purest anticlimax. At the ultimate helm's full spelljamming speed, the squid ship flashed through the danger zone and out into the emptiness of wildspace. If the Mind of the World had even noticed their departure, it hadn't shown the slightest sign. According to Julia's readings, no mini-sun had diverged even a fraction of a degree from its normal course.

For the first time since the Boundless had lifted from the planet, Teldin let himself relax. "Please tell Blossom that she has the helm," he said quietly to Julia, and he heard her relay the message down the speaking tube. Only when he felt the priest extend her will did he let the power of the cloak fade from around him. The ship immediately slowed to normal spelljamming speed from the velocity imparted by the ultimate helm.

"Blossom wants to know what course to set," Julia announced.

The Cloakmaster was silent for a few moments. Then, "Tell her to take us out the way we came in," he decided, "That'll do for the moment. I need to talk some things over with you and Djan."

*****

Teldin stared fixedly out of the Boundless's starboard "eye" port, as if looking for an answer to his questions in the unrelieved blackness of wildspace. Behind him he heard Djan shift uncomfortably in his chair.

"You don't know where to go next," the half-elf said quietly, is that it?"

The Cloakmaster nodded wordlessly.

"The People didn't know where the Juna disappeared to?" Julia asked.

"No," Teldin replied. "Message Bearer said they're just gone."

"But they did mention the Broken Sphere," Djan reminded him.

"Yes," Teldin agreed, "but they didn't say anything meaningful about where it is. Just that it's 'at the center of all things,' and 'between the pearl clusters' or something. Does that mean anything to either of you?" He turned his back on the porthole to look at his friends.

Djan shook his head. "That sounds like myths I've heard in the past," he said, "about the First Sphere, the Cosmic Egg."

The Cloakmaster nodded. "Me, too," he agreed, remembering what he'd read in the Great Archive on Crescent.

"There was nothing new?" the first mate asked.

"Only that the People link the Spelljammer with the Broken Sphere," Teldin said, "and with the Juna. But I've heard both those connections before."

"And it doesn't help anyway," Djan concluded. "People have been looking for the First Sphere for a long time and they've never found it. What are the odds that we'd be the first?"

Teldin glanced over at Julia, saw the pensive expression on her face. "What is it?" he asked. "Did you think of something?"

She looked up, a little surprised to be jolted out of her reverie. "Probably not," she said slowly, "it's probably nothing…" She smiled self-deprecatingly. "But… you said something about 'pearl clusters,' didn't you?" The Cloak-master nodded. "Well, from the Flow, crystal spheres often look like pearls, don't they?"

"So?" Teldin wanted to know.

"So, what if there's somewhere in the universe where the crystal spheres are very close together?" she suggested. "Where they look like clusters of pearls? Maybe that's where you'll find the Broken Sphere."

A half-forgotten memory tugged at Teldin's consciousness. What was it… ?

Then it came back to him. It was an image he'd seen through the perceptions of the Spelljammer via the amulet, while he was cruising in the Ship of Fools to the world of Crescent. An image of half a dozen crystal spheres so tightly packed that some were separated by less than the diameter of a single sphere-gathered together against the backdrop of the Flow like a cluster of gargantuan, magical pearls….

Excitement washed over him like a wave. Breathlessly, he described the image to his friends. "Is there any place like that on the charts?" he asked.

His excitement turned into depression again as he saw them both shake their heads. "Not on any charts I've seen," Djan answered for both of them. "Maybe it's on some specialized chart somewhere, but most of the charts you can buy show only the important 'known' spheres, the ones that are on standard trade routes." He laid a hand on the Cloak-master's shoulder in commiseration. "I'm sorry. I wish I could tell you different."

Teldin looked at his friends with empty eyes. "Then I've got nowhere to go," he said quietly.