Mu-space, and a quarry to kill.

Call it their life purpose.

It was a long and tricky chase, following the faintest of spoors through mu-space void, close to black fractal stars and through the heart of a scale-free fern-like nebula; but just as ship-and-Roger were about to open fire, Holland-and-ship shone white and disappeared, transiting back to realspace.

Ambush?

Conscious that the insertion point was far from the galactic core and therefore the renegade base, they took the risk and followed, bursting through into realspace at maximum speed – planet! – and tumbling into orbit of a greenish, cloudy world – I see it – but the dark-green and purple ship was already a tiny dot diving deep into atmosphere.

Where are we?

Must be Siganth.

It was not a human world. Various indigenous species, if that was the correct term for classifying entities that seemed scarcely organic, were both sentient and vicious, metallic and ferocious. Neither Pilots nor the human xeno-contact teams they brought here had achieved much by way of communication.

And we follow?

Yes.

There was no way to tell whether they were under observation as they descended through a sequence of cloud layers and came out over a sharpedged mountain range, following the fugitive’s trace.

There.

It led into a vast cavernous opening. Ship-and-Roger descended to the ground outside the entrance, every weapon filled with energy, standing waves building up in resonance cavities, aching to be cut loose. After a few seconds, great bronze-and-black metallic forms clanked their way out into the open: native Siganthians, whose carapaces concealed intricate body-mechanisms, cables and pumps for sinews and muscles, some with heavy metal wings, looking incapable of flight, launching themselves nevertheless into the air.

Sparks of sapphire light shone among their multitudinous eye-sockets – Anomaly! – and ship and Roger let loose a single burst of weapons fire – we need to bug out – then ploughed all energy into thrusting flight, hauling upwards at maximum acceleration – we won’t make orbit – ignoring the heat – I know – before embracing the moment of risk.

Transit now.

They burst through.

Yes.

Golden void, scarlet nebulae in the distance, and the knowledge that they had achieved transition under the most dangerous of circumstances. They scanned for renegades, but the region was clear, and Holland was no doubt among his own kind on the realspace planet, among the inhumans.

So Siganth is a hellworld.

And collaborating with renegades, although Holland must be desperate to take the chance.

Looks that way.

This was news that had to reach the Admiralty.

So much for his planned journey of victory, flying home from Vachss Station with Jed’s ship alongside, taking their time. When Roger reached Labyrinth, he left his beloved ship in one of the clandestine docking hangars – having entered un-observed as always – and requested immediate debriefing. One of the two officers who responded was a familiar face: Havelock, who had interviewed him on his first day in Tangle-knot. The other Pilot was also someone he recognised, though it had taken a few seconds to work out, and the conclusion was a shock.

Dad. Did you really want me to know this?

Her name was Lianna Kaufmann, and he remembered being smitten with her at the Academy . . . except that he, Roger Blackstone, had never attended the Academy. Those were Dad’s memories.

In his mind Lianna was the same age that he was now; but in reality, the woman sitting across from him in the interview chamber had greying hair, and her face showed the lines of hard decisions made. It made him think of Leeja, now living on Vachss Station: he had not even tried to contact her. But events had moved quickly.

‘This is important news,’ said Lianna as Roger concluded his report. ‘You’ve done well.’

‘Thank you.’

He was careful not to use her first name, this being their first meeting in reality.

Havelock seemed thoughtful. ‘I agree, it was good work. You understand why it was decided to send you in particular.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Roger, wondering what the issue was.

‘The Vachss Station judicial hearing was not public.’ Lianna was frowning. ‘But some important events took place there. Even if the recordings don’t go public – I’m afraid your name is destined to become well known on Vijaya.’

‘Crap,’ said Roger.

‘Well, precisely,’ said Havelock. ‘You said previously your success would depend on remaining unknown, but this time it’s worked out differently. Not an entirely secret victory.’

So much for subterfuge and infiltration.

‘Since the Göthewelt raid,’ Havelock went on, ‘there have been seven more Zajinet attacks in realspace. With Labyrinth on a war footing, you and your classmates are likely to be operational immediately on completion of training. The nature of those operations is . . . malleable.’

Meaning not what they had been trained for.

‘Understood, sir.’

But it was Lianna’s words, at the conclusion of the meeting, that would stay with him.

‘Your father would be proud,’ she told him. ‘Very proud.’

In return, he could have told her how much Dad had been in love with her when they were young, and how hurt he had been by her dismissal when she believed him to be Shipless; but some thoughts are best kept hidden for ever.

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he said.

TWENTY-FOUR

THE WORLD, 5575 AD

When the potential for flight among the worlds was discovered, the possibility of sailing the heaven-void, they cast for more Seekers to join them, and seven came. Alongside Seeker-once-Harij and Seeker-once-captive, they should be enough to respond to flux-queries from within the vessel – or so they believed.

Zirkana’s thoughts were entirely different.

**It cannot fly.**

The excavation had completely uncovered the ancient vessel, which looked . . . younger. Newer. Vast and lustrous, dark green banded with white. It seemed capable of holding hundreds, perhaps a thousand sleeping people stacked in bunks, as the ancient legend said.

**In dreams through golden space they fled/Till xeno demons cut them dead.**

There was more to the old verse but, even among Seekers, few bothered with it; for it was clearly allegory and filled with indecipherable allusion: for one thing, space was most obviously black. In the absence of other Ideas from that period, the references made little sense today.

What had surprised the two hundred workers as they dug sand, brushed hardened clumps from the uncovered ship, and polished every part, was that the underlying metal – if it was metal: its properties were odd – had failed to deteriorate despite being buried for so long, a great many generations.

And after a time, as they had approached the end of the cleaning, the ship had begun to hum, a soft low fluxcast that lightened every heart, made every person smile and wonder. That included Zirkana; but unlike the others, she broke away to spend time worrying, because the intent had arisen among the group without discussion: if the ship could fly, the Seekers wanted to try her out. They thought of the ship as female, for no reason they could decipher.

Zirkana was afraid for Seeker-once-Harij.

**Let the others try it, if they must.**

In their alcove within the dormitory caverns, when day was beginning outside and everyone else was asleep, she would hold him very tight. But they both knew that the urge to Seek was as strong as love and that to set them in opposition could only bring pain.

On the final night before the attempt, travellers arrived, twenty in number, from a settlement within a distant mountain. What they brought was a gift, a chunk of virgin dreamlode, its crystal free of contained flux. It was both a celebration of the project’s triumph and a potential tool for the Seekers intending to fly the vessel.