“This raises questions about the identity and motivation of those who sealed the entrances. The evidence suggests that the work was carried out by a race of beings who found Orbitsville long before we did. We may never know what these beings looked like, but we can tell that they shared some of the faults of our own race. They, or some of them, decided to monopolize Orbitsville, to control it, to exploit it; and the method they chose was to limit access to the interior of the sphere.

“The evidence also shows that they succeeded — and that, eventually, they failed.

“Perhaps they were destroyed in the battle we know to have taken place at the Beachhead City entrance. Perhaps in the end they lost out to Orbitsville itself. By being absorbed and changed, just as we are going to be absorbed and changed. The lesson for us now is that the entire Starflight organization — with its vested interest in curbing humanity’s natural expansion — must be set aside. All of Orbitsville is open to us. It is available as I speak…”

Elizabeth removed the headset, cutting herself off from the dreadful didactic voice. She put her hands on the smooth surface of the roof and sank down until she was lying prone, her open mouth pressed against the foot-printed plastic.

Vance Garamond, she thought, her mind sinking through successive levels of cryogenic coldness. I have to love you… because you are the only one ever to have given me real pain, ever to hurt me, and hurt me. She moved her hips from side to side, grinding against the roof with her pubis. Now that all else is ending… it is my turn… to make love… to you…

“My Lady, are you ill?” The voice reached her across bleak infinities. Elizabeth raised her head and, with effort, identified the grey anxious face of Charles Devereaux. She got to her feet.

“How dare you!” she said coldly. “What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing. I…”

“Why did you let this… object enter my quarters?” Elizabeth turned and stared accusingly at Robard who had quietly retrieved the headset and was reeling in the attached wire. “Get him out of here!” “I’m going — I’ve seen enough.” Devereaux hurried towards the stairwell. Elizabeth watched him go, twisting a ruby ring on her finger as she did so. It turned easily on bearings of perspiration.

Robard bowed nervously. “If you will excuse me…”

“Not yet,” Elizabeth snapped. “Get me Doctor Killops on that thing.”

“Yes, My Lady,” Robard murmured into the instrument, listened for a moment, and then handed it to her. He began to withdraw but she pointed at a spot nearby, silently ordering him to stay.

Elizabeth raised the communicator to her lips. “Tell me, Doctor Killops, has Mrs Garamond had her sedative today yet? No? Then don’t give it to her. Captain Garamond is returning, alive, and we want his wife to be fully conscious and alert for the reunion.” She threw the instrument down and Robard stooped to pick it up.

“Never mind that,” Elizabeth said quietly. “Get my car ready to leave in five minutes. I have urgent business in Beachhead City.”

The shock of hearing by radio that his wife and son were still alive had stormed through Garamond’s system like a nuclear fireball. In its wake had come relief, joy, gratitude, bafflement, renewal of optimism — and finally, as a consequence of emotional overload, an intense physical reaction. There was a period of several hours during which he experienced cold sweats, irregular heartbeat and dizziness; and the symptoms were at their height when the little transit boat from fleet headquarters arrived underfoot.

As had happened once before, he felt disoriented and afraid on seeing a spacesuited figure clamber upwards through a black hole in the ground. The figure was followed by others who were carrying empty spacesuits, and — even when the faceplates had been removed and the two parties were mingling — they still looked strange to him. At some time in the preceding months he had come to accept the thin-shouldered shabbiness of his own crew as the norm, and now the members of the rescue party seemed too sleek and shiny, too alien.

“Captain Garamond?” A youthful Starflight officer approached him and saluted, beardless face glowing with pleasure and health. “I’m Lieutenant Kenny of the Westmorland. This is a great honour for me, sir.”

“Thank you.” The action of returning the salute felt awkward to Garamond.

Kenny’s gaze strayed to the sloping, stiff-winged outlines of the two aircraft and his jaw sagged. “I’m told you managed to fly a couple of million kilometres in those makeshifts. That must have been fantastic.”

Garamond suppressed an illogical resentment. “You might call it that. The Westmorland? Isn’t that Hugo Schilling’s command?”

“Captain Schilling insisted on coming with us. He’s waiting for you aboard the transit boat now. I’ll have to photograph those airplanes, sir — they’re just too…”

“Not now, Lieutenant. My Chief Science Officer is very ill and he must be hospitalized at once. The rest of us aren’t in great shape, either.” Garamond tried to keep his voice firm even though a numbness had enveloped his body, creating a sensation that his head was floating in the air like a balloon.

Kenny, with a flexibility of response which further dismayed Garamond, was instantly solicitous. He began shouting orders and within a few minutes the eight members of the Bissendorf’s crew had been suited up for transfer to the waiting boat. Garamond’s mind was brimming with thoughts of Aileen and Chris as he negotiated the short spacewalk, with its swaying vistas of star rivers and its constrained breathing of rubber-smelling air. As soon as he had passed through the airlock he made his way to the forward compartment, which seemed impossibly roomy after his months in the aircraft’s narrow fuselage. Another spacesuited figure rose to greet him.

“It’s good to see you, Vance,” Hugo Schilling said. He was a blue-eyed, silver-haired man who had been in the Exploration Arm for twenty years and treated his job of wandering unknown space as if he was the pilot of a local ferry.

“Thanks, Hugo. It’s good to…” Garamond shook his head to show he had run out of words.

Schilling inspected him severely. “You don’t look well, Vance. Rough trip?”

“Rough trip.”

“Enough said, skipper. We’re keeping the suits on, but strap yourself in and relax — we’ll have you home in no time. Try to get some sleep.”

Garamond nodded gratefully. “Have you seen my wife and boy?”

“No. Unlike you, I’m just a working flickerwing man and I don’t get invited out to the Octagon.”

“The Octagon! What are they doing out there?”

“They’ve been staying with the President ever since you… ah… disappeared. They’re celebrities too, you know — even if there is some reflection of glory involved.”

“But…” A new centre of coldness began to form within Garamond’s body. “Tell me, Hugo, did the President send you out here to pick us up?”

“No. It was an automatic reaction on the part of Fleet Command. The President is out at North Ten — that’s one of the forward supply depots we’ve built.”

“Will she have heard my first message yet?”

“Probably,” Schilling pointed a gloved finger at Garamond. “Starting to sweat over some of those things you said about Starflight? Don’t worry about it — we all know you’ve been under a strain. You can say you got a bit carried away with the sense of occasion.”

Garamond took a deep breath. “Are there any airplanes or other rapid transport systems in use around Beachhead City?”

“Not yet. All the production has been concentrated on ground cars and housing.”

“How long will it take the President to get back to the Octagon?”

“It’s hard to say — the cars they produce aren’t built for speed. Eight hours, maybe.”