'I'm not certain I want to meet her,' said Dom. 'Mysself neither, my word!'

'this could be exciting.' A panel in the rock wall ground back. 'this is an inspection shaft. leave this WAY. WHERE WILL YOU GO WHEN YOU LEAVE ME?'

'To Band, then, to see this person who is old.'

'as old as the hills, as OLD ...' the Bank paused. There was no sound, but Dom got the distinct impression it was laughing, '... as the sea. move! '

Take the Creapii.

Take them as the Jokers. It was an old theory.

They were an ancient race, and they were adaptable. Literally so.

Once there had only been one kind of Creap, the silicon-oxygen Creaps of low degree, living in barbarism and molten phosphorous sulphides on a small world hugging close to the fires of one of the 70 Ophiuchis. Seventeen light-years away, a brighter than average ape was seeing real possibilities in banging two stones together.

The Creapii were kindly, patient, and intensely curious. They were also pathologically humble. When they spread into space, they changed the Creap to fit the situation.

Half a million years of gene-manipulation and radical molecular restructuring produced the middle-degree Creaps, based on a silicon-carbon bond, a dynamic species that lived happily enough at 500°. Soon afterwards the vats stabilized the intricate aluminium silicon polymers of the High-Degrees, the ones that occasionally floated their rafts on cool stars.

There were others, including even a boron sub-species. Wherever a star warmed a rock beyond the melting point of tin, there was a Creap to bask in its beneficence.

The Creapii had a long history. They sought knowledge as other, cooler animals sought game. They were polite, and gentlemanly in their dealings. They mixed well. They lived in heat, but had no sexes.

Dom had liked Hrsh-Hgn's theory.

There are many binaries in the galaxy. And often they are an ill-matched pair, one small, dense and actinic, the other huge and red. There is day on the red stars, just occasionally. And there is night on the hemisphere where the bright star does not shine. Dark? There can only be darkness on a sun by contrast.

On this sun the Jokers lived. They ... would have to be like Creapii, with an armoured integument. Certainly the huge rafts, poised on a heat-contour, would have to be protected. Before the Creapii discovered matrix-power their rafts floated on a downdraft of oxidized iron, but the Jokers must have been more inventive . . . a race that twisted the Chain Stars would have to be inventive.

Power would be no problem. Power enough would be very close indeed... but it was only a theory...

Take men. The Jokers had ceased to build their strange artifacts long before man arose, brother to the apes, but who knew where men had come from? And men were adaptable, or could adapt themselves. There had been a thousand years of colonization. Now the sinistrals of Widdershins had night-black skin, no body hair, a resistance to skin cancers and UV-tolerant eyes. By mere chance, too, half of them were left-handed. On Terra Novae men were stocky and had two hearts. Pineals had more in common with phnobes than other men. The men of Whole Erse lived in a permanent war. Eggplanters were simply strange, and edgy, and vegetarians green in tooth and thorn. And men, it was admitted, were the sort to glory in planet-sized memorials. Weren't the leading Joker experts men?

Spooners could have been Jokers. As many artifacts were found on cold worlds as hot ones, and the dark side of the sun took on a new meaning in the far orbits. Sidewinders, Tarquins, The Pod, the two Evolutions of Seard... they all could have been the Jokers.

Somewhere was the Jokers World. It had been a legend so long that it was not open to doubt. There, waiting, were the secrets of the Towers, the machines that made the Chain Stars, the frictionless bearing, the meaning of the universe.

The pinpoint junctions cast a pale light along the tunnel. Dom hurried forward, darting around a small wheeled robot that was inspecting a junction box.

They broke into a cavern, and Hrsh-Hgn stared up at the shadowy machine that loomed above them. He nudged Dom and pointed upwards.

'Do you know what that iss?' he hissed.

'It's a matrix engine,' said Dom, 'Warship size. The Bank's got his own ships, hasn't he?'

'I believe not.'

A wheeled robot braked in front of them. It extended a padded arm and pushed at them, ineffectually. They hurried on.

The tunnel led into a cavern off the main hall. It was thronged, as usual. The entrance to the ship park was on the far side.

They split up. Dom dodged among the groups, keeping an eye open for Widdershins robots. Hrsh-Hgn loped stiffly in what passed on Phnobis for a conspiratorial walk.

Dom was halfway across the glittering floor when he glimpsed Joan entering the hall, with three security robots on either side of her. She seemed to dwarf them. She looked determined.

He ducked back and a hand gripped his shoulder. He spun round.

The man was smiling. The smile looked awkward on that face.

He saw the blue robe and the heavy gold band around the neck, and Dom remembered. He tried to back away, but the hand followed him. It was the man at the party.

'Please don't be afraid.' Dom squirmed under the grip. There was a flurry and the hand flew off his shoulder, Ig's needle-sharp teeth buried in a finger. But the man did not scream, although his faced paled. Dom stepped back into the embrace of a robot.

He took off. Strictly speaking, flying within the bounds of the Bank was illegal. He just hoped the Bank would not interfere.

The sandals were built for one, though they could operate in strong gravity fields. Below them two other robots were staring vacantly upwards, and across the floor two more had Hrsh-Hgn cornered.

There was an eerie calmness about the vertical flight. The roar of the crowd dropped away, leaving only the underlying thunder of the Bank. He looked into the robot's multi-faceted eyes, which mirrored the corona effects on the surrounding pillars.

'You're a Class Two, aren't you?' he asked.

'That is so, sir,' said the robot.

'Are you equipped with any motivation towards personal safety?'

'No, sir.' The robot glanced down. 'Unfortunately.'

Dom kicked his heels together and went into a dive. Thirty yards above the floor he twisted and felt his shirt tear as the robot lost its grip. It continued to fall in a long arc which ended abruptly in a glistening pillar of germanium. There was a flash and a rain of hot droplets.

Two other robots were rising from the floor on lift belts. Dom shot upwards, giddily, watching the distant roof grow. It was specked with black dots. It was only when he drew nearer he saw that they were caves.

It was hot near the roof. The air roared into the caves and Dom flew with it, because there was nothing else to do. He swam in a torrent of warm air, which buffeted him as it thundered along a tunnel.

And over hell.

He was able to look down for a few seconds before the hell-wind caught him.

He had been carried out into a mile-wide ventilation shaft. Between his feet the walls narrowed down, mile after mile, lit at the end by a white-hot eye. Thunder rolled around the shaft. It sounded like the churning of distant mighty engines. And the heat was palpable, tangible, like a hammer. It caught him like a leaf and fired him like a bullet.

Dom tumbled out of the shaft and towards the stars, balanced on a gout of super-heated air. Night was all around him. In one direction - up and down had lost their usual positions - was the web of cold stars. In the other there was just one, a hungry red eye with a white pupil.