And then…

"What the hell?" said Keith, gripping his armrests.

"Jesus" said Thor. " Jesus."

The vast field of dark matter had begun to move, slowly at first, but now with gathering speed. It was spinning out into lumpy streamers, greenish on the side facing toward the rogue sun, inky black on the other. The streamers grew longer until they spre ad out over millions of kilometers, tubes of gravel with planet-sized spheres distributed along their length like knuckles on ethereal fingers.

The Starplex probeships dived above or below the streamers. The Waldahud pilots found their ships traveling in erratic courses, unable to compensate for the streamers' gravitational attraction. In the spherical hologram, Keith could see the attacking ships staggering in drunken, weaving lines, pulled off course by the hundreds of Jupiter-masses within each dark-matter ribbon.

The streamers were growing with surprising speed. Keith still had trouble with the concept of macrolife living freely in space, but of course most life-forms could move quickly when they wanted to…

The pilots of the incoming Waldahud ships were realizing that they were in trouble. One of them aborted what had clearly been 'an attack run toward Starplex, and was now veering off at a steep angle. Another fired its braking jets, the exhausts four ruby pinpricks against the blackness. But the darmats continued to reach for them, long, puffy fingers against the night.

If the ships had been able to use hyperdrive, they could have escaped.

But the gravity well from the green star, and the shallower but still significant wells created by the darmats, prevented that.

The farthest of the new fighters was now only a few kilometers ahead of one of the dark-matter tendrils. Keith watched as the gap was closed, the ship disappearing within the fog of gravel.

Thor provided a schematic, showing the fighter's position within the streamer — a streamer that now was no longer reaching forward, but had started pulling back, its gravity dragging the Waldahud vessel with it…

Soon a second dark-matter tentacle had enveloped another Waldahud ship.

A third fighter was trying desperately to get away; Keith could see the flash of explosive bolts as it jettisoned its weapons clusters in order to decrease its overall mass. But the dark matter was still gaining on it, Meanwhile, the two tendrils that had already caught ships were still pulling back, and — that was curious — had begun curling in on themselves, archirig away, like cobras made of ash.

The third small ship was finally caught, and its gray finger started pulling back, too. The giant Waldahud ship was also being approached from above and below by separate dark-matter tentacles. Only the fifth new ship seemed likely to get away, although Keith's heart was pounding as he saw that Rissa and Longbottle were now pursuing it. His son's face flashed in front of his eyes — still a kid at nineteen, the goatee notwithstanding. How would he break the news to him if his mother got killed?

The first two tentacles had arched back into semicircles, the cups of which were facing away from the green star. At the same moment as the large vessel was engulfed by the two converging streamers that had been pursuing it, the first of the dark-matter fingers snapped forward like a whip. The Waldahud fighter that had been embedded in it shot ahead, out of the tentacle, tumbling end over end. Keith saw the pinpoint lights of ACS jets firing, but the ship's wild rotation continued unabated

Keith's jaw fell open. Good Christ— !

—as the ship was flung directly toward the green star. The vessel continued to rotate over and over as the distance between it and the star diminished rapidly. The pilot finally managed to gain control, but he was too close to the 1.5-million-kilometer-wide ball of fire. Prominences licked toward the incoming projectile — and the ship turned to vapor in the star's upper atmosphere.

Keith shouted, "Rhombus, hail our probeships!"

"Channel open."

"Return to Starplex!" said Keith. "All ships, return at once to Starplex!"

Four probeships acknowledged and changed course, but one was still pursuing its target.

"Rissa!" Keith shouted. "Turn back!"

Suddenly the second dark-matter whip cracked across the night, sending another Waldahud ship hurtling toward the green star. Keith's head kept snapping left and right between the twin horrors of Rissa's ship receding from Starplex and the fighter's head-over-heels rush toward destruction.

The Rum Runner was corkscrewing wildly as it approached the enemy vessel. Laser fire from the Waldahud's rear cannons kept missing the probeship, or glancing off its force screens. But, after a moment, the firing stopped as the Waldahudin aboard presumably became absorbed in the spectacle they, too, were no doubt monitoring.

The second ship the darmats had tossed toward the sun was rapidly reaching its destination. Lifeboats popped away from it, but their puny motors weren't strong enough to let them achieve orbit around the star.

The last sight the dying Waldahu-din probably saw on their monitor screens was the star's strange dumbbell-shaped sunspots, gray-black splotches against a hell of liquid jade.

The PDQ and the Dakterth were returning to Starplex now. Of course, they had to approach from above or below to avoid the torus of hail surrounding the ship. Rhombus was using tractor beams to pull them down onto the flat surface of the central disk. There was no way to get them into the docking bays — the ice prevented that — but there were emergency docking clamps on both faces of the disk.

Rum Runner was still giving chase. "Rissa!" shouted Keith into his mike. "For God's sake, Rissa — come home!"

Suddenly the Rum Runner's laser erupted, PHANTOM dutifully drawing in its beam on the holographic display. It swept across the starscape.

Rissa's aim was perfect, severing the ship's engine pod from the craft in one clean slice.

The pod tumbled against the night, a puff of expelled gas around it shining like a halo of emeralds. And suddenly — The pod flared brilliantly, brighter even than the nearby star, as it went up in a fusion explosion. Longbottle executed a crazed arcing maneuver to avoid the expanding ball of plasma, then began a laser-straight path for Starplex. The engineless Waldahud ship shot away at an oblique angle under momentum, unable to maneuver.

The third dark-matter whip cracked, sending another Waldahud fighter pinwheeling across the firmament. As this one passed by, Keith saw that several of its hull plates had been deliberately blown away; the crew had apparently preferred opening the ship to vacuum over cooking alive as they plunged into the sun.

Next the combined double finger that had enveloped the huge Waldahud ship began to rotate around its midpoint, playing out into a spiral design like a galaxy as it did so, turning faster and faster. PHANTOM showed the location of the ship buried within one arm of the spinning mass. The rotation became more and more rapid, until finally, like an athlete throwing a discus, the dark matter hurtled the giant ship away from it. The bigger ship managed to regain control before it impacted the sun, but as it startedto alter its course, the white fusion flames of its exhaust stark against the green inferno, a giant prominence arched upward from the photosphere, engulfing it.

"Four of our five probeships are safely clamped to our hull," reported Rhombus. "And the Rum Runner will be back in eleven minutes."

Keith let out a heavy sigh. "Excellent. We must have everyone out of the lower decks by now, right?"

"The final elevator is on its way up," said Lianne. "Give it another thirty seconds."

"Okay. Keep the lower decks at zero-g so no more water will flow down.

Thor, stop spinning the ship."