“Blind, I’m blind!” He couldn’t even tell if his voice was working.

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” someone said to him. “We can help you. We can let you see again.”

He tried to open his eyelids. There was a loathsome sensation of thin tissues ripping. And still there was only blackness. Pain began to ooze its way inwards, pain from every part of his body. He knew he was falling, plummeting to the ground.

Then the pain in his legs faded, replaced by a blissful liquid chill, as if he was bathing in a mountain tarn. He was given his sight back, a spectral girl sketched against the infinite darkness. It looked as though she was made up from translucent white membranes, folded with loving care around her svelte body, then flowing free somehow to become her fragile robes as well. She was a sublime child, in her early teens, poised between girlhood and womanhood, what he imagined an angel or fairy would be like. And she danced all the while, twirling effortlessly from foot to foot, more supple and graceful than any ballerina; her face blessed by a bountiful smile.

She held out her arms to him, ragged sleeves floating softly in the unfelt breeze. “See?” she said. “We can stop it hurting.” Her arms rose, palms pressing together above her head, and she spun round again, lightsome laughter echoing.

“Please,” he begged her. “Oh, please.”

The pain returned to his legs, making him cry out. His siren vision began to retreat, skipping lightly over the emptiness.

She paused and cocked her head. “Is this what you want?” she asked, her dainty face frowning in concern.

“No! Back, come back. Please.”

Her smile became rapturous, and her arms closed around him in a celebratory embrace. Stewart gave himself up to her balmy caresses, drowning in a glorious tide of white light.

Ilex coasted out of its wormhole terminus a hundred thousand kilometres above Lalonde. The warped gateway leading out of space-time contracted behind the voidhawk as it refocused its distortion field. Sensors probed round cautiously. The bitek starship was at full combat stations alert.

Waiting tensely on his acceleration couch in the crew toroid, Captain Auster skimmed through the wealth of data which both the bitek and electronic systems gathered. His primary concern was that there were no hostile ships within a quarter of a million kilometres, and no weapon sensors were locking on to the voidhawk’s hull. A resonance effect in Ilex ’s distortion field revealed various ship-sized masses orbiting above Lalonde, then there were asteroids, satellites, moons, boulder-sized debris. Nothing large was in the starship’s immediate vicinity. It took a further eight seconds for Ilex and Ocyroe, the weapons-systems officer, working in tandem, to confirm the absence of any valid threat.

OK, let’s go for a parking orbit; seven hundred kilometres out,auster said.

Seven hundred?Ilex queried.

Yes. Your distortion field won’t be so badly affected at that altitude. We can still run if we have to.

Very well.

Together their unified minds arrived at a suitable flight vector. Ilex swooped down the imaginary line towards the bright blue and white planet.

“We’re going into a parking orbit,” Auster said aloud for the benefit of the three Adamist naval officers on the bridge. “I want combat stations maintained at all times; and please bear in mind who could be here waiting for us.” He allowed an overtone of stern anxiety to filter out to the Edenist crew to emphasize the point. “Ocyroe, what’s our local space situation?”

“Nine starships in a parking orbit, seven colonist-carriers and two cargo ships. There are three interplanetary fusion drive ships en route from the asteroid Kenyon, heading for Lalonde orbit. Nothing else in the system.”

“I can’t get any response from Lalonde civil flight control,” said Erato, the spaceplane pilot. He looked up from the communication console he was operating. “The geosynchronous communication platform is working, as far as I can tell. They just don’t answer.”

Auster glanced over at Lieutenant Jeroen van Ewyck, the Confederation Navy Intelligence officer they had brought with them from Avon. “What do you think?”

“This is a backward planet anyway, so their response isn’t going to be instantaneous. But given the contents of those fleks I’d rather not take any chances. I’ll try and contact Kelvin Solanki directly through the navy ELINT satellites. Can you see if you can get anything from your planetside agents?”

“We’ll broadcast,” Auster said.

“Great. Erato, see what the other starship captains can tell us. It looks like they must have been here some time if there are this many left in orbit.”

Auster added his own voice to Ilex ’s affinity call, spanning the colossal distance to the gas giant. Aethra answered straight away; but the immature habitat could only confirm the data which Lori and Darcy had included in their flek to the Edenist embassy on Avon. Since Kelven Solanki had transmitted the files to Murora there had only been the usual weekly status updates from Lalonde. The last one, four days ago, had contained a host of information on the colony’s deteriorating civil situation.

Can you tell us what’s happening?gaura asked through the affinity link between Aethra and Ilex . He was the chief of the station supervising the habitat’s growth out at the lonely edge of the star system.

Nobody is answering our calls,auster said. When we know something, Ilex will inform you immediately.

If Laton is on Lalonde he may make an attempt to capture and subvert Aethra. He has had over twenty years to perfect his technique. We have no weaponry to resist him. Can you evacuate us?

That will depend on the circumstances. Our orders from the First Admiral’s office are to confirm his existence and destroy him if at all possible. If he has become powerful enough to defend himself against the weapons we are carrying, then we must jump back to Fleet Headquarters and alert them. That takes priority over everything.auster extended a burst of sympathy.

We understand. Good luck with your mission.

Thank you.

Can you sense Darcy and Lori?auster asked Ilex .

No. They do not answer. But there is a melodic in the affinity band which I’ve never encountered before.

The voidhawk’s perceptive faculty expanded into Auster’s mind. He perceived a distant soprano voice, or a soft whistle; the effect was too imprecise to tell. It was an adagio, a slow harmonic which slipped in and out of mental awareness like a radio signal on a stormy night.

Where is it coming from?auster asked.

Ahead of us,Ilex said. Somewhere on the planet, but it’s skipping about. I can’t pin it down.

Keep tuned in to it, and if you track down its origin let me know right away.

Of course.

Jeroen van Ewyck datavised his console processor to point one of Ilex ’s secondary dishes at a navy ELINT satellite orbiting Lalonde, then opened a channel down to the office in Durringham. There was nothing like the usual bit rate available, the microwave beam emitted by the navy office was well below standard strength. A flustered rating answered, and switched the call straight through to Kelven Solanki.

“We’re here in response to the flek you sent on the Eurydice ,” Jeroen van Ewyck said. “Can you advise us of the situation on the planet, please?”

“Too late,” Kelven datavised. “You’re too bloody late.”

Auster ordered the bitek processor in his command console to patch him into the channel. “Lieutenant-Commander Solanki, this is Captain Auster. We were dispatched as soon as we were refitted for this mission. I can assure you the Admiralty took the report from you and our Intelligence operatives very seriously indeed.”