“I’ve done a bit of salt-mining,” Rebka replied absently to Maddy. “On Teufel. It wasn’t all that bad.”

She snorted. “Uranium salts? The good news was, after a year of that no one talked about breeding any more.”

“I never had to handle uranium. Maybe Teufel’s not so bad after all. I couldn’t wait to get out, though. Nobody wanted to breed me, but a lot of things wanted to kill me. Anywhere else looked better. But I don’t know if I was right.” Rebka gestured around him. “The future here doesn’t seem too promising. Did you know that Paradox is shrinking?”

“You mean, the whole thing’s getting smaller?” Lissie Treel, the tall skinny blonde who had caught Rebka on his arrival, stared at him in disbelief. “How can it? It’s always been the same size.”

“Sure. And it’s always had a Lotus field inside, and it never stopped anything from getting out before.” Rebka shrugged. “Paradox is changing — fast. Don’t take my word for it. Go have a look for yourself.”

Lissie frowned at him, stood up, and headed across to the diamond-shaped entrance. She was back a few seconds later.

“Shrinking, and changing color. No reds any more. What’s going on?”

“It is not Paradox alone.” E.C. Tally was sitting cozily between Maddy and Katerina Treel. After he had explained to them who and what he was, the three sisters had assured him that they liked him a lot better than if he had been a real man. “According to a new theory back on Sentinel Gate, changes should be occurring in all the artifacts. It is evidence that the purpose of the Builders has at last been accomplished.”

“So what is the purpose?” Katerina asked.

E.C. Tally stared at her unhappily and blinked his bright blue eyes. It occurred to him that this was one feature of the Quintus Bloom theory which remained less than wholly satisfactory. “I have no idea.”

“It may not make much difference to us what the purpose is.” Lissie came back to sit across from Hans Rebka. “If Paradox keeps shrinking, we’ll get squished out of existence. Since it’s down to two kilometers, instead of twenty-five—”

“Two!” It was Rebka’s turn to jump up. “It can’t be. It was close to five less than an hour ago.”

“Don’t take my word, to quote you. Go see for yourself.”

Everyone rushed for the entrance, with E.C. Tally bringing up the rear.

Maddy Treel got there first. “It sure as hell looks closer.” She stood there, head tilted to one side. “Hard to judge distance when you can’t be sure the fringes haven’t changed.”

“They have not.” This, unlike the purpose of the Builders, was something about which E.C. Tally could be completely confident. “My eyes are unusually sensitive, enough to see reference stars within the rainbow fringes. Refraction has been changing their apparent positions. The outer boundary of Paradox is indeed shrinking. Assuming that the present rate of change is maintained, it will achieve zero radius in” — he paused, not for calculation but for effect. He had remained completely still to make his observations, and in the first millisecond after that he had performed all necessary data reduction — “in twelve minutes and seventeen seconds.”

“Achieve zero radius?” asked Katerina.

“That’s E.C.’s polite way of describing what Lissie called getting squished out of existence.” Rebka was on the point of asking Tally if the embodied robot was sure, until he realized that would be a total waste of what little time they had left. E.C. was always sure of everything. “We’ve got twelve minutes.”

“To do what?” Maddy had adjusted to the facts as rapidly as Hans Rebka.

“Four things. First, we all put suits on again. Second, we board your ships.” Rebka scanned the two small exploration vessels. “Just one of them, for preference. Might as well stick together. Which one has the stronger hull?”

“Katerina’s our engineering expert. Katie?”

“Not much in it. The Misanthrope’s a little bigger, and a little faster. My guess is it’s also a bit tougher.” Katerina turned to Rebka. “What are you planning on doing? Neither hull was built for strength.”

“That will be our third action.” Rebka was already half into his suit, but he paused and gestured at the inner wall of the chamber. “Once we’re aboard we send the ship full tilt at that.”

“No way. We’ll be flattened!”

“I don’t think so. Paradox isn’t just shrinking — it’s falling apart around us.”

“But suppose we do break through the inner wall?” Katerina was in her suit, and leading the way to one of the scout ships. “We’ll be just as badly off. We’ll still be inside Paradox.”

“Did you notice what was at the center of this torus of chambers when you came in?”

“You mean that black whirlpool thing?” They were inside the Misanthrope, and Lissie was already at the controls. She turned to Rebka. “We saw it all right — and we stayed well clear of it. We may be wild, but we’re not crazy. I hope your head’s not going the way I think it is.”

“Unless one of you has a better idea. I say we have no real choice. If we don’t go there under our own power, we’ll finish by being squeezed into it. I’d rather enter in this ship, with some say in how we fly.”

“He is crazy.” Katerina turned to Maddy for support. “Just like a man. All they want to do is order us around.”

“I am not a man,” E.C. Tally said quietly. “Yet I am obliged to concur with Captain Rebka. I also saw the center of Paradox as I entered, and I suspect that he and I have information unavailable to you. That vortex strongly resembles the entry point for a Builder transportation system.”

Lissie abandoned the controls and spun around in the pilot’s chair. The other two sisters moved alongside her.

“Go on,” Maddy said softly. “You can’t stop there. How would you know what a Builder transportation system looks like? So far as I know, there isn’t any such thing.”

“You pretend you know what you’re doing,” added Katerina, “but you did no better than us at steering clear of Paradox. Worse, because you told us you knew things were changing here.”

“We maybe weren’t too smart.” Rebka glanced at his suit’s clock, then toward the chamber entrance. “Four more minutes. The outer boundary of Paradox is squeezing in. Look, you’ve either got to believe us, or it will be too late to do anything. E.C. and I know what a Builder transport system looks like because we’ve been through a few of them.”

Lissie and Katerina turned to look at Maddy. She glanced at the shattered wall of the room, where Rebka had broken in. “What does a Builder transport system do to you? And where does it take you?”

“You survive, if you’re lucky, but you don’t enjoy it. As for where it takes you, I don’t know how to answer that.” Rebka shrugged. “Wherever it wants to.”

“No comfort there. I should have known better.” Maddy Treel tapped Lissie on the shoulder. “Make room, sis. Soon as we’re ready to fly, hand over to him.”

“You mean, let that man fly our ship!”

“I know how you feel. Have to do it, we’re up Drool Creek without a paddle.” Maddy glared at Rebka. “With who-knows-what for a guide. I hope you’re as good at getting out of trouble as you are at getting into it.”

“Strap in, everybody.” Rebka didn’t respond to Maddy, but he moved to the copilot’s chair next to Lissie. “It may not make a damn bit of difference, but I’ll feel better if we’re all secured. Ready?”

Lissie nodded. “Any time. Just don’t ruin my ship!”

“Not a chance.” Rebka threw the local drive to maximum and aimed directly for the chamber’s inner boundary.

With forty meters in which to accelerate, the Misanthrope took over a second to reach the wall. Plenty of time to visualize a ship with its drive set to maximum hitting an impenetrable barrier. The drive thrust would continue until everything ahead of the engines was a centimeter-thin compressed layer.