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  Two more hours passed uneventfully. Cyr broke the silence every few minutes with status reports on the missiles: they were all launched accurately and did not, so far, require any additional guidance or in-flight correction. A long way below them, the Breathtaker continued to plough through the heaving middle levels of Horus 5’s atmosphere. The life-forms around it, who tinted the air and who might be sentient, watched it quizzically as it thundered past them. It would kill some of them when it started functioning, a fact which concerned Foord, but not enough to decide against using it.

  “Cyr?”

  “The Breathtaker is on course and on schedule, Commander; just over seven hours to go. And functioning perfectly.” She glanced at Smithson.

  Foord looked at the beaker on his chairarm; it was quite steady. Conceitedly, he thought it important not to look too much at the headups on the Bridge screen. If something happened, he didn’t want to look like he’d been waiting for it. So when it did, he wasn’t; he missed the first warning flicker of headup displays on the screen.

  “Commander,” Joser said, “missiles Three, Eleven and Eighteen are gone.”

  “How?”

  “They’re just not there anymore. If She fired on them, we didn’t detect it.”

  “Any pattern to it?”

  “Not that we can see. They’re all on random orbits, and they weren’t close together. It seems as random as their launch pattern. And whatever She did, we didn’t detect it.”

  “Yes, you said that. It’s still data, so no doubt your people will analyse it.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Thank you. You can turn the alarms off now…and Joser, this is likely to happen again. Don’t sound the alarms each time.”

  Two hours passed; then “Ten, Fourteen and Fifteen have gone, Commander. No attack on them was detected.”

  Thirty-five minutes later, one more. Ten minutes, two more. Two hours, and getting closer to impact, two more. Fifteen minutes, and another seven. Fifty-five minutes, three more.

  They tried, unsuccessfully, to discern some mathematical progression in the times and numbers of their destruction, or some spatial pattern determining which ones were destroyed, and how they were destroyed. Nothing. Especially about how they were destroyed.

  Foord tried to tell himself that it was still data, that they could still analyse it and draw conclusions. But it wasn’t, and they couldn’t. She had given them nothing. She had stayed silent and shrouded, and yet twenty-one of their missiles, so far, were gone. This isn’t a simple military engagement. It’s already stranger than that, and will get stranger still.

  “And the Breathtaker?”

  “Still exactly on schedule and course, Commander. Now ninety-one minutes to go.”

  Foord frowned slightly.

  “Are all the readings from the Breathtaker satisfactory, Cyr?”

  “Yes, Commander. Atmospheric pressure is well within its tolerance, the turbulence hasn’t deflected it, and all its onboard systems are functioning.”

  “I see.”

  The Breathtaker was beginning to worry him. He still assumed that She would destroy it, but he hadn’t expected it to get so far without apparent detection or response. If it got much further he might start thinking it could succeed, and then the engagement would end early—something he didn’t want for a number of reasons, all of them ambiguous. Or, if She did respond, it might be something unreadable and patternless, as with the missiles. As with Her visits to Commonwealth solar systems. As with everything She did.

  It was like throwing a stone into water, and watching it sink without ripples.

  “Joser—”

  “If it’s about the Breathtaker, Commander, we’ve scanned the entire length of its projected path since its launch.”

  “Like you did with the missiles,” Cyr muttered.

  “Even She,” Joser continued, still speaking to Foord, “might find it difficult to put any beam on the Breathtaker through all that atmosphere.”

  “Thank you, Joser.” Foord noted the Might, but let it pass. “Cyr, any further observations?”

  “No, Commander.”

  Another hour passed. Five more missiles went, and then two; the last two. The Breathtaker continued to plough its way through Horus 5’s lower atmosphere with bovine unconcern—an unconcern matched, apparently, only by Her. Suddenly time was running out.

  “Breathtaker’s due to detonate in six minutes,” Cyr said. Foord nodded.

  “She’s going to move,” Kaang announced. She looked around, aghast at the flurry of activity this remark had produced, and added lamely “I’m sorry, I was talking aloud. I mean thinking aloud. I mean, I think She’s going to move. I mean, She must know it’s there… ”

  The Bridge of the Charles Manson had many kinds of silence, for use on different occasions. The one which now lengthened around Kaang was the shape of pursed lips.

  “It’s fine,” Foord said, eventually. “And I agree, She must have detected it. We never made it to be undetectable.”

  “Even if She hasn’t detected it yet, She can hardly fail to when it starts making holes in the atmosphere and shooting bits of Horus 5 at Her. Can She? And then, all She has to do…” Joser trailed away.

  “All She has to do is outrun it, which She probably can, and watch the slug of hydrogen lose momentum and dribble back to where it came from. We never expected it to succeed. We expected it to make Her respond, and make Her wonder.”

  Of course we did, said the silence on the Bridge. The Breathtaker was a powerful weapon, but crude and unproven, and easily avoided. In fact, if it could only survive another few minutes, and if Smithson’s theory and cobbling-together worked, an absolutely devastating weapon. But easily avoided.

  Cyr spoke something into one of her command needlemikes, and after a moment nodded.

  “The Breathtaker has sent its second confirmation. It’s in position, directly underneath Her.”

  “Arm it, please,” Foord said.

  Cyr touched a sequence of panels, and looked up at him.

  “The arming signal has been sent and received, Commander. Detonation in two minutes.”

  “Now She’ll move,” Kaang whispered.

  But She didn’t. Another minute passed, somehow.

  Now perhaps She’ll move, thought Foord. He shot a glance at Joser, who was now the focus of a nest of command needlemikes. Joser shook his head; She continued to do nothing, or nothing detectable. Foord frowned—something he was now beginning to do regularly—but made no further comment.

  “Forty-five seconds to detonation,” said Cyr.

  It would have been a good moment for Joser to hit the alarms and announce a sudden change in Her position, or the sudden approach of a swarm of unidentified objects, but none of this happened. They entered the last thirty seconds, then the last ten, and Cyr started counting down. At Five, Joser said “It’s gone, Commander! Like the missiles, no detectable attack but there’s nothing there.”

  “Zero.” Cyr said. Then, “No detonation. There’s nothing there.”

  Joser turned to Smithson. “I don’t know what She did, but your weapon is gone.”

  “Then,” Smithson said, “we should both be disappointed. Me, because my weapon is gone. You, because you don’t know what She did.”

  Joser did not reply. He couldn’t; he was hitting the alarms.

  “Unidentified object approaching, Commander.”

  “That’s better,” Foord said, and genuinely meant it. “What, where, how many and how long to impact?”

  “If its speed stays unchanged, just over nine minutes. Apparently a single object. Position 06-04-08 and closing. Travelling on low ion power, from the direction of Her last position. Readings suggest a missile, but a large one, about three times the size of those we launched. More results are coming in, and we should have a visual any moment.”

  If; Apparently; Suggest; About; Should Have. Cyr was right, thought Foord. Mediocre. The weakest of us, in t
he area where She’s the strongest.

  “Thank you. Please superimpose the visual, and give me the rest later. Kaang, ion drive, please, at forty percent in reverse for ten seconds; no more. Just move us further out, and hold.”

  If the ion drive made any noise, it was not enough to be heard above the soft and, as always, discreet murmur of the alarms. If it produced any emission from the outlets around the ship’s snout, it was not enough to be noticed on the forward section of the Bridge screen, which would have filtered it out anyway. And if it produced any sensation of movement—which objectively it did not, because the gravity compensators would have dealt with it—it was only the illusion of the ship standing still for ten seconds while the red screen image of Horus 5 receded.

  “It’s changed course to match our movement, Commander,” Joser said, “but it hasn’t changed speed. Eight minutes forty seconds to impact.”

  “Thank you. Another ten seconds on ion drive at forty percent, please, Kaang. This time to starboard.”

  Again the object matched them, again without changing speed.

  “Here’s the visual, Commander,” Joser said.

  On the screen directly ahead, a hole opened in the face of Horus 5. It was a black rectangular section of space, as though punched through the planet by some industrial machine, and in the middle of it floated a featureless grey sphere.

  “Just over eight minutes to impact, Commander, and I have a full set of results. I’ll put them up on the screen.”

  Foord studied the superimposed rectangle carefully. Joser’s text scrolled along its lower edge. Unasked, the screen began generating a series of schematics of the object from other angles: ventral plan, dorsal plan, side view, rear view. It wasn’t a sphere—that was only an illusion created by its angle of approach, which was head on to the Charles Manson and closing—but a cylinder. A long, thick cylinder whose snout was blunt, whose rear bulged in a manner suggesting both photon and ion drives, but whose exterior was blank and featureless. While Foord gazed at it the alarms continued to murmur on the Bridge and throughout the ship, but the normal onboard business of the ship was still conducted as quietly and calmly as if they were silent. If anything, more quietly and calmly.

  “Good,” Foord said eventually. “Joser, your results suggest that it’s three times bigger than one of our standard missiles, but seven times heavier. So what’s happening inside it?”

  “I’m sorry, Commander, the interior’s too heavily shrouded.”

  “But your people are working to penetrate the shroud.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “And what else can you tell me?”

  “The hull is a conventional mixture of alloys and ceramics. It’s on ion drive at the moment, but seems also to possess photon drive. Its guidance system is obviously active and self-programming. And She must have launched it at us only a few minutes after we launched our missiles at Her.”

  “Thank you, but most of that’s on the screen. Do you have anything to say about how She kept this hidden from us until now?”

  “I’m sorry, Commander.”

  “He means No,” Cyr whispered.

  “Cyr, you have about…seven and a half minutes. Particle beams first, then closeup weapons. Kaang, hold us at this position for now. Joser, please turn off those alarms.”

  The Charles Manson’s particle beams were dull blue, the colour of bruises. They stabbed out once, in two parallel and almost-solid lines. They reached the object, but what followed was unexpected. It threw up a flickerfield to meet the beams, a shimmering white aura which enveloped it. It lasted only for the nanoseconds of impact and no more—no vessel, even Faith or the Charles Manson, could sustain a defensive forcefield for any longer than the bare minimum, the millionths of a second needed to survive—but instead of the inevitable blinding concussion as the beams hit the field and either stabbed through it or were deflected, the field merely assumed their shade of dark blue and sank back into the object. The silence which followed should not have lasted so long.

  “Six minutes forty seconds,” Joser said. “Still closing. No variation in course or speed.”

  It was the first recorded appearance of a flickerfield which was energy absorbent and not energy repellent, and it robbed Foord of nearly half his weaponry.

  “Cyr?”

  “Her flickerfields are like ours, Commander, they only repel energy. You’ve seen recordings of Her other engagements.”

  “I know. So why has that thing got an energy absorbent field?”

  “For whatever it’s going to do next. Which won’t be just to make impact.”

  “So don’t…”

  “I know, Commander. Don’t use beam weapons.”

  “But everything else.”

  “Six minutes ten seconds to impact,” Joser said.

  He knows it won’t be impact, Foord thought, but he’s too sloppy to think of another word.

  “Use everything else, Cyr. Everything.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Imagine it’s some frightened kid at Blentport.”

  She glanced at him, but did not reply. She was already sending orders through a nest of command needlemikes which had grown up around her.

  “Five minutes fifty seconds to impact.” How, thought Foord, did we suddenly get so short of time?

  Without needing any formal confirmation, the ship—having heard the conversation, and exercising its usual discretion—placed its entire resources at Cyr’s disposal. As Foord became increasingly polite and punctilious during a crisis, Cyr became increasingly passionless; Foord’s last remark, which he was already regretting, had been easy for her to ignore. Under her direction the Charles Manson turned the whole of its conventional weapons array on the approaching object, Cyr’s curiously flat voice ordering in rapid succession the use of harmonic guns, friendship guns, tanglers, disruptors, plasma clouds, and finally missiles: missiles with conventional explosive warheads, with micronuclear warheads, with bionics-disruptive and hull-corrosive warheads. And one by one, the object’s flickerfield met and repelled them, in a series of jarring concussions which the Bridge screen duly filtered out.

  “Nothing’s reached it so far, Commander,” Cyr said. “I can try again, but…”

  “Four minutes ten seconds to impact.”

  “…but its flickerfield was reinforced by what it absorbed from our beams.”

  “Thank you, Cyr. Discontinue for now, but have closeup weapons ready. We’ll resume this at close quarters.”

  “They’re ready now, Commander.”

  “Thank you. Kaang, when I give the word, take us towards it; ion drive, fifty percent.”

  “Standing by, Commander.”

  “But not yet…I think something’s happening to it. Joser?”

  There was no reply. Foord glanced up.

  “Joser?”

  “Commander, the object is slowing down.”

  “Deliberately? Or is it damaged?”

  “I think…Commander, I think we may have hit it. I’m getting readings which suggest it may have sustained internal damage. Its drive emissions are…”

  “One moment, please. Cyr?”

  “None of our weapons reached it, Commander. I don’t think it’s damaged.”

  “Neither do I. I think it’s slowing deliberately. But why?”

  “Commander,” Joser continued, “it’s almost at rest now. And its drive emissions are clearly…”

  “Get us out of here, Kaang! Photon drive, ninety percent, random evasion!” His voice sounded strange. It wouldn’t carry.

  “Have you seen the screen, Commander?” Thahl asked.

  “Kaang, I said Get us out of here!”

  “Out of where, Commander? Where are we?”

  “The screen, Commander,” Thahl said loudly. His voice sounded strange too. “Look at the screen.”

  Apart from the object, which was still dead ahead, the Bridge screen was empty. Horus 5 was gone. The stars were gone. The distance between the stars, a
nd the ability to measure it, was gone.

  Some of the Bridge instruments sounded failure or overload alarms. Others stopped registering altogether, and fell silent. Elsewhere around the Bridge, needlemikes and navigation computers and scanners and sensors were jabbering impossibilities at each other; ordered to disprove what had happened, they were pouring out proof in stream-of-consciousness torrents. The stars and planets were gone, not merely as electronic images on the main screen or as phosphor-dot smears on computer displays but as solid objects, as sources of gravity and energy and positional reference. They were gone.

  The size of the universe was the distance between the Charles Manson and the now-stationary object facing it.

  From outside, a single concussion shook the ship. It was repeated, repeated again, and became a continuous vibration. It was soft and low-register, as discreet as one of the ship’s own alarms, and pitched well below the threshold of actual discomfort; but to the ship, it was more profoundly wrong than the stars’ apparent absence. Very little of what went on outside the Charles Manson should ever have been felt inside. The ship tried to define the new situation—it couldn’t fight what it couldn’t define—by telling its sentience cores to analyse what had happened, and they variously shouted, warbled, beeped and murmured back at it their inability to do so. For a moment the Bridge, unthinkably, became deafening, then the ship told them to stop. It was at least able to do that, but not much more. If it had been more sentient it would have defined what it felt as human panic, while the humans and humanoids who inhabited it remained inhumanly calm.

  “Presumably,” Foord said, “that object has put something like a force-field around us.”

  “Around us and itself, Commander,” Joser said. “It’s about ten times more powerful than our flickerfields, and…”

  “Ten times?”

  “…and it’s continuous. It’s blocking everything from outside—light, gravity, radio waves, X-rays, infrared, ultraviolet… For all I know, the universe could have ended the other side of it.”

  On the screen, what had been space was now a confined space, a compartment they shared with Her missile, and with nothing else; depthless black and infinitely close. Joser’s voice still sounded strange. So did Foord’s. So did everybody’s. The reason was—