Reaching the sphincter door I heaved my way through it. In the corridor beyond I saw Rhodane and Yishna, obviously having come from their acceleration couches, circling each other like wary hounds. Though Rhodane claimed to be just about clear of the Worm's influence, I wondered if she was being entirely candid. If that could be true of any of us.

"How long until we reach Corisanthe Main?" I asked, just to try and break their focus upon each other, and not because I particularly wanted to know. I could already feel the damned place looming, and the perception-distorting effects within the ship had not so much intensified as taken on a weird symbolic meaning.

Rhodane turned towards me. "We'll be in low orbit within an hour, then we must take Yishna's vessel to shuttle us across—though Director Gneiss has agreed for us to come, he will not allow a Brumallian ship to dock with the station."

"You think he bought it, completely?" I wondered.

It was Yishna's turn to reply. "He would be a fool to believe our only purpose is to bring along that evidence. I think he let us come because he is curious about you." She paused for a moment, her gaze twitching back towards Rhodane. "Director Gneiss follows the rules, but for his very own reasons."

Rhodane grimaced, shook herself, then began propelling herself along the corridor. Orduval joined us on the way, and soon we reached the large chamber where Yishna's craft awaited. Slog and Flog were waiting there too, the evidence chest hanging in the air between them. They looked agitated, knowing what we were going to do next, but unable to come with us. At least they weren't suited up for Sudorian temperatures, so it looked like they had grudgingly accepted the Director's order.

I considered what we were about to embark upon. Yishna's alteration of the Emergency Ozark Protocols would result in all the cylinders being ejected even if there was a breach in only one of them. The fact that all four would be ejected simultaneously demonstrated even more how powerfully she had been manipulated than just the fact of her altering the protocols at all. To me this indicated that the Worm realised that once any single one of those protocols was used, it would be in danger, so that was then time for it to leave, all four parts of it together.

While Yishna opened the shuttle's hatch I gripped hold of a glassy handle protruding from one wall and pulled the pendant from my shirt. It had changed now, taking on again the form of a tiger, but one made of wax that had been placed too close to a fire.

"Tigger," I said, "are you able to reply?"

Momentarily something shimmered in the air, then blinked out.

"Tigger, if we succeed, the cylinders will be beyond the station shields within twenty minutes. It should then be evident which canister has been breached. You need to hit that one first, and the rest of them after. Only total destruction of that creature will break its grip on these people."

"I…" again that flickering in mid-air, followed by the brief appearance of two amber eyes"… can do this."

It wasn't really enough. I pushed myself away from the wall and down to where Rhodane and Orduval were conversing in subdued tones. At my approach, Rhodane smilingly reached out to briefly rest her hand against the side of Orduval's face, before she turned to face me.

"Still not enough of a response from Tigger," I stated flatly.

She nodded agreement. "Enabling a ship to feel pain was considered, by consensus, to be an incentive, since it prevented the ships making decisions without first considering all the repercussions. I would have thought Polity AIs able to handle pain."

I shook my head. After my few recent intermittent communications with Tigger, I'd learnt exactly what had happened. "It's not the pain, but the repetition of it Tigger is having trouble breaking out of. The two AIs are interlinked, and that's causing a feedback loop."

"I will have to remain behind," Rhodane glanced at Yishna, "though I would rather have come with you, just to make sure. Yishna understands what needs to be done, but I wonder if the Worm may understand what she is doing and somehow intervene?"

It would have been nice if, after having things carefully explained to them, the Brumallian crew could be relied upon to do what needed to be done from this end, but they weren't in full consensus—being understandably reluctant to fire upon Combine—so it wouldn't get done without one wilful half-Brumallian to remain behind and push them towards the consensus we required. It had only been her input into the small consensus aboard the ship that had enabled us to bring it up here in the first place.

"Can you be sure you'll be able to fire those weapons when the time comes?" I asked. "The crew seems to be still having trouble with the ship's controls."

"Your drone's melding with this ship's AI caused that. I'll be able to get round it so long as neither AI chooses to interfere."

"They won't," I said, with more certainty than I felt.

Orduval and Yishna—after a rather silly tug-of-war, followed by Rhodane's intervention—managed to take the chest away from Flog and Slog and convey it over to the hatch. They climbed inside with it, and I followed. The two of them took the main seats, while I strapped myself into one of the two fold-down passenger seats right behind them. A scraping and rattling ensued and beyond the front screen I observed the vine-like growths that held the vessel in place parting and sliding away. Within the shuttle the temperature, already higher than in the Brumallian ship, began to rise. My two companions shed their jackets, but I was wearing little I could remove. I soon began sweating and wondered if I could stand yet another temperature change, since down there on the planet I'd come close to fainting, and once back on the Brumallian ship again had begun shivering and even noticed my hands turning a nice shade of frosty white.

"The bay is now clear," came Rhodane's voice, from the console immediately in front of Yishna, whereupon she and Orduval strapped themselves in. After a moment there came a roaring, and I could see bits of organic detritus blowing past the screen. Then the craft tilted and was soon tumbling out into vacuum. Thrusters corrected attitude; a steady increase in acceleration pushed me back against the bulkhead. Were we all just being used as puppets, seemingly unable to comprehend our minimal chances of success? IF21 shifted violently inside me. I coughed, spat blood, and held on tight.

Some time later Yishna said, "Here comes our escort." I glimpsed the flare of steering thrusters, their light bursting over the screen, followed by some kind of globular craft swinging past, then descending out of sight. Shortly afterwards the immense station Corisanthe Main ascended into view and grew ever larger. Now I had seen ships in the Polity that were larger than that station, but this thing hung in my perception with a mass that seemed to extend beyond the skin of reality. I knew that, like the mass of a planet distorting spacetime about it to extend its influence well beyond, this huge station sat at the heart of those perceptual distortions that influenced the minds of all Sudorians. Eventually we flew past one of the Ozark Cylinders, and I felt a shiver of apprehension while gazing at that featureless tube.

"We'll have to move fast once we're in," said Yishna. "I'll lead the way up to Centre Cross. The automatics should register the presence of three of us here aboard, as required, but after that there'll still be more security to get through."

"You are sure you can do this?" asked Orduval, turning to inspect her closely.

She returned his gaze, her expression bland, her emotions rigidly under control. "There are only two people in the Sudorian system who could penetrate that security."