As much as he wanted to return, to see Mare again, he did have mixed feelings. His last visit had been an accident, and he’d been terrified that he would never get home. Although he and Adikor did believe that the portal could be reopened, and kept open indefinitely, no one really knew for sure. Ponter had almost lost Adikor, Jasmel, and Megameg once before; he wasn’t sure he could stand the possibility of losing them again.

But no. He would go. Despite his concerns, Ponter wanted to go. Yes, he was interested in finding out how things would develop with Daklar Bolbay. But it would be most of another month until Two became One again—his next opportunity to see her—and, if all went well, he would be back in this world long before then.

Besides, this time Ponter would not be traveling alone. He’d be accompanied by Tukana Prat, a female of generation 144, ten years his senior.

The first time the portal opened had been an unforeseen event. The second time, it was a desperate rescue attempt. This time it would be a planned, orderly operation.

There was always a chance that things would go wrong; that the portal would open to some other world, or that Ponter had misconstrued the Gliksins, and that they were actually waiting for an opportunity to swarm through from the other side. To that end, Bedros, one of the elder members of the Council, would hold a detonator in his hand. Mining explosives had been placed all around the rooms of the subterranean quantum-computing facility. If things turned bad, Bedros would detonate the explosives, bringing thousands of pertavs of rock collapsing down, filling in the chamber. And although the transmissions from Bedros’s Companion implant couldn’t reach the surface from here, they could reach the explosives; if Bedros should die—if Gliksins or other creatures swarmed through with weapons firing—his Companion would set off the explosives.

Adikor, meanwhile, would hold a less-stringent panic button. If something went wrong, he could shut off all power to the quantum computer, which might sever the link. And if he died, his Companion could do the same thing. Up on the surface, the entrance to the Debral nickel mine had likewise been rigged with explosives, and enforcers stood watch there, ready to act in case of emergency.

Of course, Ponter and Tukana weren’t going to just burst through to the other side. A probe was to be sent through first, with cameras, microphones, devices for sampling air, and more. The probe had been painted bright orange and had a ring of lights encircling it. They wanted there to be no possibility of the Gliksins misconstruing it as a stealthful attempt to eavesdrop—Ponter had explained the strange Gliksin obsession with privacy to the others.

Like the robot that had been sent through before to help rescue Ponter, the probe would feed its data back to this side through fiber-optic cabling. But unlike that hapless robot, it would also be anchored by a strong synthetic-fiber rope.

Although the probe was high-tech, and the Derkers tube that would be used to force the portal to stay open was a reasonably sophisticated piece of mechanical engineering, the actual insertion of the tube was to be a decidedly low-tech operation.

Ponter and Adikor’s quantum computer had been built to factor truly huge numbers. When so doing, it accessed parallel universes in which other versions of itself already existed, and each of those other versions tried a single potential factor. By combining the results from all the universes, millions of potential factors could be checked simultaneously.

But if the number being factored was so gargantuan that it had more candidate factors than there were parallel universes in which this quantum-computing facility already existed, the quantum computer would be forced to try accessing universes in which versions of itself did not exist. But as soon as it did connect with one of those universes, the factoring process would crash, creating the gateway.

The quantum-computing facility had originally consisted of just four rooms: a dry toilet, an eating room, the control room, and the massive computing chamber itself. But three more rooms had just been added: a small infirmary, a sleeping room, and a large decontamination facility. People would have to pass through decontamination going in either direction, to reduce the chance of taking something inimical from here to the other world, and to cleanse them of any pathogens they might have brought back. The Gliksins had limited decontamination technology; either having almost no body hair made it easy for Gliksins to keep clean, or having tiny noses made them blissfully ignorant of their own filthiness. But tuned-laser bodily decontaminators—to which the specific protein structures of human skin, flesh, organs, and hair were transparent, but which vaporized germs and viruses—had long been in use in this world.

There had never been so many people in the quantum-computing facility before. Ponter and Adikor were there. So was Ambassador Prat, and three members of the High Gray Council, including both of the local representatives. Dern, the roboticist, was on hand, too, to operate the probe. And two Exhibitionists were there with recording units, taking pictures they would relay once they got back up to the surface.

And now, it was time.

Adikor stood at his control console on one side of the room, and Ponter stood at his on the other. Dern had a separate console, perched on a tabletop.

“Got everything you need for the trip?” asked Adikor.

Ponter did a final check. Hak, of course, was always there—and had been upgraded with a full medical/surgical database, in case anything happened to Ponter or Tukana in the Gliksin world.

A wide leather band covered with pouches encircled Ponter’s waist. He’d already done the inventory: antibiotics, antivirals, immune-system boosters, sterilized bandages, acauterizing laser scalpel, surgical scissors, and a selection of drugs including decongestants, analgesics, and soporifics. Tukana wore a similar belt. They also both had suitcases containing several changes of clothes. “All set,” said Ponter, and “All set,” repeated Tukana.

Adikor looked at Dern. “What about you?”

The fat man nodded. “Ready.”

“Whenever you want to proceed, then,” said Adikor to Ponter.

Ponter gave Adikor a splayed-fingers gesture. “Let’s find our cousins.”

“All right,” said Adikor. “Ten!”

One Exhibitionist was standing next to Adikor; the other, next to Ponter.

“Nine!”

The three members of the High Gray Council looked at each other; more had wanted to attend, but it was decided that three was the maximum that could be risked.

“Eight!”

Dern pulled out some control buds on his console.

“Seven!”

Ponter looked over at Ambassador Prat; if she was the least bit nervous, she was hiding it well.

“Six!”

He then looked over his shoulder at Adikor’s broad back. They had deliberately not said any elaborate goodbyes last night; neither wanted to admit that if something went wrong, there was a chance that Ponter would never come home again.

“Five!”

And it wasn’t just Adikor he stood to lose. The thought of his children ending up with no parents so early in life had been Ponter’s biggest worry about repeating his journey.

“Four!”

A lesser—but still significant—worry was that Ponter would fall ill again in the Gliksin world, although doctors here had boosted his immune system, and Hak had been modified to constantly monitor his blood for foreign bodies.

“Three!”

There was also concern that either Ponter or Tukana might develop allergies to things on the other side.

“Two!”

And Ponter had some misgivings about the long-term stability of the gateway, which was, after all, based on quantum processes that were by their very nature inherently unpredictable. Still…