In the split second before the disruption struck, Father Captain de Soya saw the eight sparks leaving the simtact Gabriel: Stone was taking no chances—she would vaporize Raphael rather than have it escape.

The mother-captain’s virtual image flew backward and evaporated as the deathbeam tore into her ship, severing all com connections as the humans aboard died.

Less than a second later, Father Captain de Soya felt himself jerked out of simspace as the neurons in his brain literally fried. Blood flew from his eyes, mouth, and ears, but the priest-captain was already dead, as was every conscious entity on the Raphael—Sergeant Gregorius and his two troopers on C deck, GOPRO Meier, VIRO Argyle, ESSO Denish, and WHIZZO Shan on the flight deck. Sixteen seconds later, the eight Hawking-drive missiles flashed into real space and detonated on every side of the silent Raphael.

Gyges watched in real-time as Raul Endymion said good-bye to the family in red robes and paddled his kayak toward the farcaster arch. The world was in dual lunar eclipse.

Fireworks exploded above the canal-river and strange ululations came from thousands of throats back in the linear city. Gyges stood and prepared to walk out across the water to pluck the man from his kayak. It had been agreed that if Raul Endymion was alone, that he needed to be kept alive for interrogation in the starship waiting above—finding the girl Aenea’s whereabouts was the goal of this mission—but no one said anything about not making it more difficult for the man to fight or escape. While still phase-shifted, Gyges planned to hamstring Endymion and sever the tendons in his forearms. He could do that instantly, surgically, so that there would be no danger of the human bleeding to death before being stored in the ship’s doc-in-the-box before interrogation.

Gyges had jogged the six klicks to the farcaster arch in no time, checking out pedestrians and the strange windcarts as he passed the frozen forms and figures. Once at the arch and concealed in a patch of willows on the canal’s high bank, he shifted back to slow time. His job was to guard the back door. Nemes would ping him when she found the missing spacer.

During the twenty minutes of waiting, Gyges communicated with Scylla and Briareus on the internal common band but heard nothing from Nemes.

This was surprising. They had all assumed that she would find the missing man within the first few seconds of real-time after she had shifted up. Gyges was not worried—he was not actually capable of worry in the true sense of the word—but he assumed that Nemes had been searching in widening arcs, using up real-time by frequently shifting down and then back up. He assumed that his common-band queries had been made while she was phase-shifted. Added to that was his understanding that while Nemes was a clone-sibling, she had been the first to be devatted. She was less used to common-band sharing than Scylla, Briareus, and he. To be truthful, Gyges would not have minded if their orders had been simply to pull Nemes out of the rock on God’s Grove and terminate her then and there.

The river was busy. Each time a ship approached the farcaster arch from either the east or west, Gyges shifted up and walked across the spongy surface of the river to search it and check on its passengers. Some he had to disrobe to ascertain that it was not Endymion or the android, A. Bettik, or the girl, Aenea, in disguise. To be sure, he sniffed them and took needle biopsies of the robed ones’ DNA to make sure that they were natives of Vitus-Gray-Balianus B. All were.

After each inspection, he would walk back to the bank and resume his watch. Eighteen minutes after he had left the ship, a Pax skimmer flew around and through the farcaster arch. It would have been tiring for Gyges to have to board it in fast time, but Scylla was already aboard with the searching Pax troopers so he was spared the effort.

This is tiresome, she said on the common band.

Yes, agreed Gyges.

Where is Nemes? It was Briareus back in the city. The clumsy troopers had received their radioed search warrant and were going from house to house.

Haven’t heard from her, said Gyges.

It was during the eclipse and the accompanying ceremonial nonsense that he watched the windcycle wagon pull to a halt and Raul Endymion emerge. Gyges was sure that it was Endymion. Not only did the visuals match perfectly, but he picked up the personal scent that Nemes had downloaded to them. Gyges could have phase-shifted immediately, walked over to the frozen tableau, and taken a DNA needle biopsy, but he did not have to. This was their man.

Instead of broadcasting on the common band or pinging Nemes, Gyges waited another minute.

This anticipation was pleasurable to him. He did not want to dilute it by sharing it. Besides, he reasoned, it would be better to abduct Endymion after he had separated from the Spectrum Helix family who even now were waving good-bye to the man in the kayak.

Gyges watched while Raul Endymion paddled the absurd little boat out into the current of the widening canal-river. He realized that it would be best to take the kayak as well as Endymion: the watching Spectrum Helix people would be expecting him to disappear if they knew that he was trying to escape via farcaster. From their point of view, there would be a flash and Endymion would have farcast out of sight. In reality, Gyges would still be phase-shifted, now carrying the man and kayak within the expanded phase-shift field. The kayak might also be useful in revealing where the girl Aenea was hiding: telltale planetary scents, methods of manufacture.

Along the riverbanks to the north, people cheered and sang. The lunar eclipse was complete.

Fireworks exploded above the river and cast baroque shadows on the rusted farcaster arch.

Endymion turned his attention away from the waving Spectrum Helix family and concentrated on staying in the strongest current as he paddled toward the farcaster.

Gyges stood, stretched languidly, and prepared to phase-shift.

Suddenly the thing was next to him, centimeters away, at least three meters tall, towering over him.

Impossible, thought Gyges. I would have sensed the phase-shift distortions.

Exploding skyrockets spilled bloodred light on the chrome carapace. Metal teeth and chrome spikes twisted the expanding flowers of yellow, white, and red across quicksilver planes.

Gyges caught an instant’s look at his own reflection, distorted and startled, and then he phase-shifted.

It took less than a microsecond for the shift. Somehow one of the creature’s four clawed hands made it into the field before it completely formed. Bladed fingers dug through synflesh and muscle, seeking one of Gyges’s hearts.

Gyges paid no heed to the attack but attacked in return, swinging his silvered, phase-shifted arm like a horizontal guillotine. It could have cut through whiskered carbon alloy as if it were wet cardboard. It did not cut through the tall form in front of him. Sparks and thunder exploded as his arm bounced away, fingers numbed, metal radius and ulna shattered. The clawed hand within him pulled out ropes of intestine, kilometers of microfiber optics.

Gyges realized that he had been opened from navel to breastbone. It did not matter. He could still function.

Gyges clenched his right hand into a sharpened bludgeon and thrust it forward into gleaming red eyes. It was a killing blow. But the great steam-shovel jaws opened, closed, faster than phase-shifting, and Gyges’s right arm suddenly ended above the wrist.

Gyges threw himself at the apparition, trying to merge fields, attempting to get his own teeth within tearing distance. Two huge hands seized him, the bladed fingers sinking through shift field and flesh to hold him tight. The chrome skull in front of him slashed forward: needle-spikes pierced Gyges’s right eye and penetrated the right frontal lobe of his brain.