“The image was diffused. The thing still scared him, that’s all.”

Garamond stared helplessly at his wife. “I don’t get it. Why should he be afraid of a Clown?” He turned his attention to Christopher. “What’s the matter, son? Why were you afraid?”

“I thought the Crown was coming to get me too.”

“That was a silly thing to think — they never harmed anybody.”

The boy’s gaze was steady and reproachful. “What about all the people they froze? All the dead people?”

Garamond was taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t confuse him,” Aileen said quietly. “You know perfectly well what’s been in the newscasts for the last couple of days.”

“But I don’t! What did they say?”

“About the outer planet. When they built Lindstromland they shut off all the light and heat to the outer planet and froze it over.”

“They? Who were they?”

“The Clowns, of course.”

“But that’s wonderful!” Garamond began to smile. “The Clowns created Orbitsville!”

“Their ancestors.”

“I see. And there were people on the outer planet? People who got frozen to death?”

“They showed photographs of them.” A stubborn note had crept into Aileen’s voice. “Where did they get these photographs?”

“A Starflight ship must have gone there, of course.”

“But, honey, if the planet is frozen over how could anybody take photographs of its surface or anything on it? Just try thinking it over for a while.”

“I don’t know how they did it — I’m only telling you what Chris and I and everybody else have seen.”

Garamond sighed and walked to the communicator and called Cliff Napier on board the Bissendorf. The familiar head appeared almost immediately at the projection focus and nodded a greeting.

“Cliff, I need some information about ship movements within the Pengelly’s Star system.” Garamond spoke quickly, without preamble. “Has there been an expedition to the outer planet?”

“No.”

“You’re positive?”

Napier glanced downwards, looking at an information display. “Absolutely.”

“Thanks, Cliff. That’s all.” Garamond broke the connection and Napier’s apparently solid features faded into the air just as an expression of puzzlement was appearing on them. “There you are, Aileen — a direct, clear statement of fact. Now, where are the photographs supposed to have come from?”

“Well, perhaps they weren’t actual photographs. They might have been…”

“Artists’ impressions? Reconstructions?”

“What difference does it make? They were shown…”

“What difference?” Garamond gave a shaky laugh as the mental chasm opened between himself and his wife, but he felt no annoyance with her. Their marriage had always been simple and harmonious, and he knew it was based on deeper attachments than could be achieved through mere similarity in interests or outlook. One of the first things he had learned to accept was the certainty of lasting incompleteness on some levels of their relationship, and usually he knew how to accommodate it.

“It makes all the difference in the world,” he said softly, almost as if speaking to a child. “Don’t you see how your attitude towards the Clowns has been affected by what you’ve seen or think you’ve seen on the viewers? That’s the way people are manipulated. It used to be more difficult, or at least they had to be more subtle when literacy was considered vital to education…” Even to his own ears the words sounded dry and irrelevant, and he stopped speaking as he noticed Aileen’s predictable loss of interest. His wife absorbed most of her information semi-instinctively, through images, and he had no picture to show her. Garamond felt an obscure sadness.

“I’m not stupid, Vance.” Aileen touched his hand, her intuition in sure control.

“I know.”

“What did you want to tell me?”

“I just want you to remember the Starflight Corporation is like…” he strove for a suitably vivid image, “…like a snowball rolling down a hill. It keeps getting bigger and bigger, and it keeps going faster, and it can’t slow down. It can’t afford to stop, even when somebody gets in the way… and that’s why it’s going to roll right on over the Clowns.” “You always seem so certain about things.”

“The signs are all there. The first step is to implant in people’s minds the idea that the Clowns ought to be rolled over. Once that’s been done the rest is easy.”

“I don’t like the Crowns,” Christopher said, breaking a long silence. His grain-gold face was determined.

“I’m not asking you to like them, son. Just don’t believe that everything you see on the viewer is real and true. Why, if I went to the outer planet myself I could…” Garamond stopped speaking for a moment as the idea took hold of his mind.

“Why not? After all, that’s the sort of work the S.E.A. ships were designed to do,” Elizabeth, had said, reasonably, and at that point she had smiled. “You’re on indefinite leave, Captain, but if you would prefer to return to active service and visit the outer world I have no objections.”

“Thank you, My Lady,” Garamond had replied, concealing his surprise.

Elizabeth’s imperfect smile had grown more secretive, more triumphant. “We will find it very useful to possess some hard data about the planet — in place of all the speculations which are filling the air.”

Garamond reviewed the brief conversation many times during the period in which the Bissendorf was extending its invisible wings and disengaging from fleet formation. It came to him that he had proposed the exploratory flight partly as a challenge to the President, hoping that a duel with her would ease the growing tensions in his mind. Her ready agreement to the mission was the last thing he had expected and, as well as drawing a few pointed comments from Aileen, it had left him feeling both disappointed and uneasy.

He sat in the control gallery for hours, watching the bright images of the other Starflight ships perform the patient manoeuvres which would bring each one in turn to the entrance of Orbitsville where it could discharge its load of human beings or supplies. When the Bissendorf’s own progression had taken it out through the regulated swarm, and nothing but stars lay in front, Garamond remained on station watching the irregular stabs of the main electron gun, the ghostly blade of energy which flickered through space ahead of the ship. The harvest of reaction mass was not plentiful in the immediate vicinity of Pengelly’s Star and in the early stages of the flight it was necessary to ionize the cosmic dust to help the intake fields do their work. Gradually, however, as the ship spiralled outwards, the night-black plain of Orbitsville’s shell ceased to blank off an entire half of the visible universe. The conditions of space became more normal and speed began to build up. Once again Garamond had difficulty in setting his perceptions to the correct scale. Everything in his past experience conspired to make him think he was in a tiny ship which was painfully struggling to a height of a few hundred kilometres above a normal-sized planet, whereas at a hundred million kilometres out it was still necessary to turn one’s head through ninety degrees to take in both edges of Orbitsville’s disc. The size of the sphere was, in a way, painful to Garamond, causing familiar questions to seethe again in his mind. Was the fact that it was large enough to accommodate every intelligent being in the home galaxy a clue to its purpose? Why was there only one entrance to such a huge edifice? Did the physics of the sphere’s existence dictate of necessity that neither flickerwing ship nor radio communicator could operate inside it? Or were those features designed in by the Creators to preserve the sphere’s effective size, and to prevent ingenious technicians turning it into a global village with their FTL ships and television networks? And where were the Creators now?