About fifteen people were in there, most of them huddled in small groups on the settees, having intense exchanges. Everybody looked badly stressed. Laura saw several who had clearly just been tank yanked like her, and recognized them straight away; also like her, they were all from the starship’s science team.

That was when she became aware of a very peculiar sensation right inside her head. It was like the emotional context of a conversation within the gaiafield – except her gaiamotes were inactive. She’d never really embraced the whole gaiafield concept, which had been developed to give the Commonwealth the capability of direct mind-to-mind communication through an alien adaptation of quantum entanglement theory. Some people loved the potential for intimate thought sharing it brought, claiming it was the ultimate evolution of intellect, permitting everyone else’s viewpoint to be appreciated. That way, the argument went, conflict would be banished. Laura thought that was a bunch of crap. To her it was the creepy extreme of voyeurism. Unhealthy, to put it mildly. She had gaiamotes because it was occasionally a useful communication tool, and even more sporadically helpful for acquiring large quantities of information. But for day-to-day use, forget it. She stuck with the good old-fashioned and reliable unisphere links.

‘How’s that happening?’ she grunted, frowning. Her u-shadow confirmed that her gaiamotes were inactive. Nobody could connect directly to her neural strata. And yet . . .

Torak, the Vermillion’s chief xenobiology officer, gave her a lopsided grin. ‘If you think that’s weird, how about this?’ A tall plastic mug of tea floated through the air towards him, trailing wisps of steam. Torak stared at it in concentration, holding out his hand. The mug sailed into his palm, and he closed his fingers round it with a smug grin.

Laura gave the bridge ceiling a puzzled look, her ever-practical mind immediately reviewing the parameters of ingrav field projector systems. Theoretically it would be possible to manipulate the ship’s gravity field to move objects around like that, but it would be a ridiculous amount of effort and machinery for a simple conjuring trick. ‘What kind of gravity manipulation was that?’

‘It’s not.’ Torak’s lips hadn’t moved. Yet the voice was clear in her head, along with enough emotional overspill to confirm it was him ‘speaking’.

‘How did you . . .?’

‘I can show you what we’ve learned, if you’ll let me,’ Torak said.

She gave him an apprehensive nod. Then something like a memory was bubbling up into her mind like a cold fizzy liquid, a memory that wasn’t hers. So similar to a gaiafield emission, but at the same time definitely not. She had no control over it, no way of regulating the images and voices. That scared her.

Then the knowledge was rippling out inside her brain, settling down, becoming instinct.

‘Telepathy?’ she squeaked as she knew. And at the same time, she could sense her thoughts broadcasting the astonished question across the bridge. Several of the crew flinched at the strength of it impinging on their own thoughts.

‘In the purest sense,’ Torak responded. ‘And telekinesis, too.’ He let go of the tea mug, which hung in mid-air.

Laura stared at it in a kind of numb fascination. In her head, new insights showed her how to perform the fantasy ability. She shaped her thoughts just so, reaching for the mug. Somehow feeling it; the weight impinged on her consciousness.

Torak released his hold on it, and the mug wobbled about, dropping ten centimetres. Laura reinforced her mental grip on the physical object, and it continued to hang in mid-air. She gave a twitchy laugh before carefully lowering it to the floor. ‘That is some serious bollocks,’ she murmured.

‘We have ESP, too,’ Torak said. ‘You might want to close your thoughts up. They’re kind of . . . available.’

Laura gave him a startled glance, then blushed as she hurriedly tried to apply the knowledge of how to shield her thoughts – intimate, painfully private thoughts – from the scrutiny of everyone on the bridge. ‘All right; enough. Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on? How are we doing this? What’s happened?’

Captain Cornelius Brandt stood up. He wasn’t a particularly tall man, and worry made him appear stooped. Laura could tell just how worn down and anxious he was; despite his efforts to keep his thoughts opaque and calm, alarm was leaking out of him like ethereal pheromones. ‘We believe we’re in the Void,’ he said.

‘That’s impossible,’ Laura said automatically. The Void was the core of the galaxy. Up until 2560, when the Endeavour, a ship from the Commonwealth Navy Exploration fleet, completed the first circumnavigation of the galaxy, astronomers had assumed it was the same kind of supermassive black hole that most galaxies had at their centre. It was massive. And it did have an event horizon, just like an ordinary black hole. But this one was different. It wasn’t natural.

As the Endeavour soon learned, the Raiel – an alien race more technologically advanced than the Commonwealth – had been guarding the boundary for over a million years. In fact, they’d declared war on the Void. From the moment their first crude starships encountered it, they’d carefully observed the event horizon undergoing unnatural expansion phases. Incredibly for anything that large on a cosmological scale, it appeared to be an artefact. Purpose unknown. But, given the severity and unpredictability of its expansion phases, it would eventually inflate out to consume the entire galaxy long before any natural black hole would have done.

So the Raiel invaded. Thousands upon thousands of the greatest warships ever built tore open the Void’s boundary and streaked inside.

None returned. The entire armada had no apparent effect on the Void or its atypical, inexorable expansion. That was a million years ago. They’d been guarding the boundary ever since.

Wilson Kime, who captained the Endeavour, was politely but firmly ordered to turn back and fly outside the Wall stars which formed a thick band around the Void. After that, the Raiel invited the Commonwealth to join the multi-species science mission that kept a constant watch on the Void. It was a mission which had lasted since the Raiel armada invaded, and in those million years had added precisely nothing to the knowledge of what lurked on the other side of the event horizon boundary.

‘Improbable,’ Cornelius corrected. ‘Not impossible.’

‘Well, how did we get inside? I thought our course took us around the Wall stars.’

‘Closest approach to the Wall was three thousand lightyears,’ Cornelius said. ‘That’s when we fell inside. Or jumped. Or got snatched. We’re still not sure how. Presumably some kind of teleport connection opened up inside hyperspace. It would take a phenomenally advanced technology to create that; but then, as we’ve all suddenly been granted superhuman powers, quantum hyperfield theory is the least of our problems.’

Laura gave him an incredulous stare. ‘But why?’

‘Not sure. The only clue we have is Tiger Brandt. Just before we were brought in, she said she experienced some kind of mental contact, like a dream reaching through the gaiafield, but a lot fainter. Something sensed us or her. Then, next we know . . . we were inside.’

‘Tiger Brandt?’ Laura asked. She knew all about Tiger, who was married to Rahka Brandt, the captain of the Ventura. ‘Wait – you mean the Ventura is in here with us?’

‘All seven ships were pulled in,’ Cornelius said gloomily.

Laura looked at the tea mug again, ignoring all her tank yank discomforts. ‘And this is the inside of the Void?’ she asked incredulously.

‘Yes. As far as we understand, it’s some kind of micro-universe with a very different quantum structure to spacetime outside. Thought can interact with reality at some fundamental level, which is why we’ve suddenly acquired all these mental powers.’