Then, leaving the four of them staring cautiously at each other, Miriam turned her face to the clear viewport, lifted her face to the zenith. Against the cheek of Jupiter the frame of the Interface portal was a tetrahedral stencil; and the Spline warship, the lodged wreckage of the Crab clearly visible even at this distance, was like a bunched fist against the portal’s geometric elegance.

As she watched, the warship entered the Interface; blood-colored sparks ringed the Spline where the battered carcass brushed the exotic-matter frame of the portal.

Berg considered raising a hand in farewell.

The sparks flared until the Spline was lost to view.

Miriam Berg closed her eyes.

The lifedome of the Crab was swallowed by the receding darkness of the Interface portal. Michael, staring up through the dome, found himself cowering.

Blue-violet fire flared from the lip of the lifedome; it was like a multiple dawn arising from all around Michael’s limited horizon. Harry, from the couch beside Michael’s, looked across fearfully. Michael said, "That’s the hull of the Spline hitting the exotic-matter framework. I’d guess it’s doing a lot of damage. Harry, are you—"

The holographic Virtual of Harry Poole opened its mouth wide — impossibly wide — and screamed; the sound was an inhuman chirp that slid upward through the frequency scales and folded out of Michael’s sensorium.

The Virtual smashed into a dust of pixels that crumbled, sparkling.

The Spline shuddered as it entered the spacetime wormhole itself; Michael, helplessly gripping the straps that bound him to his couch, found it impossible to forget that the vessel that was carrying him into the future was no product of technology, but had once been a fragile, sentient, living thing.

Harry’s head popped back into existence just above Michael’s face. Harry looked freshly scrubbed, his hair neatly combed. "Sorry about that," he said sheepishly. "I should have anticipated the shock as we hit the exotic matter. I think I’ll be okay now; I’ve shut down a lot of the nerve/sensor trunks connecting the central processor to the rest of the ship. Of course I’ve lost a lot of functionality."

Michael shuddered, a vast sense of loss, of alienation, sweeping over him; Harry’s face was an incongruously cheerful blob of animation in a vision field otherwise filled with the emptiness of a spacetime flaw. He forced himself to reply. "I — hardly think it matters anymore. As long as we can power up the hyperdrive."

"Sure. And I’ve my battalions of loyal antibody drones protecting the remaining key areas of the ship; they ought to be able to hold out until it doesn’t matter one way or the other." The Virtual head plummeted disconcertingly close to Michael until it hovered a mere foot above his nose; it peered down at him with exaggerated concern. "Are you okay, Michael?"

Michael tried to grin, to come back with a sharp reply; but the feeling of desolation was like a black, widening pool inside his head. "No." he said. "No, I’m not damn well okay."

Harry nodded, looking sage, and receded into the air. "You have to understand what’s happening to you, Michael. We’re passing from one time frame to another. Remember how Jasoft Parz described this experience? The quantum functions linking you to your world — the nonlocal connections between you and everything and everybody you touched, heard, saw — are being stretched thin, broken… You’re being left as isolated as if you’d only just been born."

"Yes." Michael gritted his teeth, trying to suppress a sensation of huge psychic pain. "Yes, I understand all of that. But it doesn’t help. And it doesn’t help, either, that I’ve just left behind Miriam — everyone and everything I know — without so much as a farewell. And it doesn’t help that I face nothing but death. That only the level of pain remains to be determined… I’m scared, Harry."

Harry opened his mouth to speak, closed it again; convincing-looking tears brimmed in his eyes.

An unreasonable anger burned in Michael. "Don’t you get sentimental on me again, you damn — facsimile."

Harry’s grin was slight. "Should we activate the hyperdrive?" he asked softly. "Get this affair over and done with?"

Michael closed his eyes and shook his head, his neck muscles stiff and tight, almost rigid. "Not yet. Wait until we’re well inside the throat of the wormhole."

Harry hesitated. "Michael, what exactly will the hyperdrive operation do to the wormhole?"

"I don’t know for sure," Michael said. "How can I know for sure? No one’s tried such a damn-fool experiment before. Look, a wormhole is a flaw in spacetime, kept open by threads of exotic matter. And it’s an unstable flaw.

"When the hyperdrive operates the dimensionality of spacetime is changed, locally. And if we do that inside the wormhole itself — deep inside, near the midpoint, where the stress on the flawed spacetime will be highest — I don’t see how the wormhole feedback control systems can maintain stability."

"And then what?"

Michael shrugged. "I’ve no idea. But I’m damn sure the Interface will no longer be passable, and I’m hoping that the collapse we initiate will go farther, Harry. Remember that more wormhole links have been set up, to the future beyond Jim Bolder and his heroics. I don’t want to leave the opportunity for more Qax of that era to take the opportunity to come back and try wrecking history again."

"Can we close the other wormholes?"

Poole shrugged. "Maybe. Wormholes put spacetime under a lot of stress, Harry…"

"…And us?" Harry asked gently.

Michael met the Virtual’s gaze. "What do you think? Look, I’m sorry, Harry." He frowned. "Well, what were you going to tell me?"

"When?"

"Your big secret. Just before we hit the exotic matter."

Harry’s head shrank a little in an odd, shy gesture. "Ah. I was vaguely hoping you’d forgotten that."

Michael clucked his tongue, exasperated. "My God, Harry, we’ve just minutes to live and you’re still a pain in the arse."

"I’m dead."

"What?"

"I’m dead. The real Harry Poole, that is. The original." Harry’s eyes held Michael’s but his tone was level, matter-of-fact. "I’ve been dead thirty years, now, Michael. More, in fact."

Michael, lost in quantum isolation, tried to make sense of this ghostly news. "How did you — he—"

"I reacted adversely to a stage of the AS treatment. Couldn’t accept it; my body couldn’t take any more. One in a thousand react like that, they tell me. I lived a few more years. I aged rapidly. I — ah — I stored this Virtual as soon as I understood what was going to happen. I didn’t have any specific purpose in mind for the Virtual. I didn’t plan to transmit it to you. I just thought, maybe, it might be of use to you one day. A comfort, even."

Michael frowned. "I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry. I… know how much your youth, your—"

"My good looks, health, and potency." Harry grinned. "Don’t be afraid to say it, Michael; I’m kind of beyond modesty. All the things I wanted to keep, which irritated you so much."

"I know how much life meant to you."

Harry nodded. "Thank you. I’m thanking you for him. He — Harry — died before I, the Virtual, was animated. From my point of view I share his memories up to the point where he took the Virtual copy; then there’s a gap. Before the end of his life he left me a message, though."

Michael shook his head. "He left one of his own Virtuals a message. Well, that’s my father."

"Michael, he said he didn’t fear death." Harry looked thoughtful. "He’d changed, Michael. Changed from the person I was, or am. I think he wanted me to tell you that in case you ever encountered me. Perhaps he thought it would be a comfort."

The Spline shuddered again, more violently now, and Michael, staring beyond the dome, seemed to see detail in what had previously been formlessness. Blue-white light, sparking from tortured hull-flesh, continued to flare at the edge of his vision. Fragments of light swam from a vanishing point directly above Michael’s head, swarmed down the spacetime walls, and, fading, shot down over Michael’s horizon. They were flashes, sheets of colorless light; it was like watching lightning behind clouds. This was radiation generated, he knew, by the unraveling of stressed spacetime, here deep in the throat of the flaw. He gripped the couch. For the first time there was a genuine sensation of speed, of limitless, uncontrollable velocity. The lifedome was a fragile, vulnerable thing above him, no more protection than a canvas tent as he plummeted through this spacetime flaw; and he tried not to cower, to hide his head from the stretched sky that poured down over him.