No, they had them in Ulubis and Ashum.

Watching, following. Followed by something small enough to be even less visible, perhaps? Somebody, something must have followed a Dweller ship in-system, somewhere, and suddenly found itself plunging into a secret wormhole… And yet, apparently, nobody and nothing ever had.

So casual, so lackadaisical, so la-la-la; could it all be a perfect, never-failing act? Could the Dwellers all really be geniuses at acting, brilliant at stealth, flawless exponents of the disciplines required to keep complete discipline for every single solitary journey-transfer-jump-whatever? Dear reason and fate, they’d had ten billion years to get perfect at anything they wanted. Who knew what skills they’d developed to perfection in that time? (Yet there was still chaos, extreme chance, the simple stacking-up of odds that something had to go wrong sometime, no matter how close to perfection you could get…)

Coming round, slowly. Rovruetz, Direaliete. Shit, more names to deal with, more places to take in, another damn step along the way. He would die forever following this elusive fuck of a Dweller, or accumulate such dislocation, accrue so much summed grogginess that he’d forget what the whole insane quest was for, and find Leisicrofe one day, finally, when it was all too late anyway, and just stare at the fellow, utterly unable to recall what it was he wanted to ask him or what it might be that the Dweller could possibly have that would be remotely interesting or important to him.

The passenger compartment of the Velpin was mostly taken up by the esuit of the Sceuri called the Aumapile of Aumapile: a huge white-stippled black lozenge like a strange distorting viewport into space. Fassin, waking slowly, feeling grubby and sore as usual, couldn’t even see Y’sul or the anyway useless screen on the far wall.

“Urgh!” the giant black esuit exclaimed. “So that is unconsciousness? How disagreeable. And I strongly suspect inherently so.”

Fassin was glad that somebody agreed. He started checking out the arrowhead’s systems as he warmed them up again. The left manipulator arm was proving sticky, the self-repair mechanisms reaching the limits of their abilities. On past form it would sort of half-work, jerkily, for a few real-time months and then jam completely. He supposed he was lucky he’d got this far without any equipment failure, especially given the punishment the little gascraft had taken since the flight from Third Fury.

“And yet interesting!” the Sceuri announced, voice booming round the near-full space. The Aumapile of Aumapile was even louder than Y’sul. “Hmm,” it said. “Yes, interesting, more than certainly. Are you two awake yet or am I first up? Ha-ha!”

“Either awake or having a very noisy nightmare,” Y’sul said testily and unseen from the creature’s other side.

“Ditto,” said Fassin.

“Super! So, are we there yet?”

They were.

And they weren’t.

When the fuzzy screen cleared, it showed they were in the middle layers of a gas-giant atmosphere. The Velpin had done some high-speed spinning after all, and the zapping-unconscious had been more rough and ready than before. They had taken two days to get where they were going.

This, their travelcaptain assured them, was Rovruetz, Direaliete, a weather district and gas region of Nhouaste, the system’s own gas-giant.

The Aumapile of Aumapile was delighted. Just as it had thought! It fairly bounced out of the Velpin’s gaslock into the vast, shaded scape of towering RootClouds and horizon-spanning RayCanopies. It twirled like a centrifuge from sheer happiness. They spent another day, perfectly undisturbed by any native Dwellers, investigating the supposedly Toiler remains, which actually looked remarkably like an abandoned Dweller globe-city sitting on top of a damaged and discarded mega-klick BandTurbine. All very impressive, but not, Fassin and Y’sul both realised, what or where they were really looking for.

· This is not Rovruetz, Direaliete, is it? Fassin asked the truetwin shortly after they arrived, while the Aumapile of Aumapile dashed to and fro throughout the ruins, calibrating instruments and grabbing screenage.

· Are you mad? Of course not.

— Direaliete’s on the far side of the galaxy.

· Take days to get there.

· A system? Fassin asked.

· A system.

· I’ve no record of it, Fassin told the truetwin.

· You wouldn’t. Direaliete is its name in the Old Language.

— Well, variant thereof.

· So, Fassin sent, — this is just a trick.

· Correct.

— Our friend has what it wanted, we have what we wanted. Two out of two. One of our more successful missions.

— Meanwhile, Fassin sent, — we’re wasting time.

— Time wastes itself.

— Who are we to float in its way?

After offering to leave the breathless Sceuri scholar behind and come back for it — it wasn’t quite that easily fooled — and then telling it they really needed to be getting back now — it declared there was too much it still had to look for — Quercer Janath just abandoned the Sceuri, waiting until it had whirred off into the centre of the abandoned city before telling Fassin that the Aumapile of Aumapile had finally seen sense and was coming aboard in a moment for the trip back, getting the human and Y’sul secured, and then closing the external doors and taking off, warning their passengers there was some fairly intense spiralling ahead.

— What the fuck? Fassin signalled to Y’sul before the gascraft’s systems were shut down. — What about the Sceuri?

The Dweller had been in on it.

— A good joke, eh? he sent back, laughing.

Fassin signalled at the wall-screen, getting through to Quercer Janath in the command space.

— Did you warn the Aumapile you were about to leave?

— Yes.

Fassin waited. No more came. After a few moments he sent, -And?

— Didn’t believe us.

— Laughed.

· So you’re just abandoning this fabulously wealthy, appar-ently politically well-connected, Dweller-naive idiot in a gas-giant in its home system?

· About sums it up.

— Can’t say we didn’t warn him. It.

· Conditions of Passage.

· Don’t you think it might get hunted or just die anyway?

Fassin asked. — Or get back home, eventually, deeply annoyed?

· Suppose it’s a possibility.

— Keep going?

— Get back home, eventually, deeply annoyed with all Dwellers? And that that might be a bad thing for the Dwellers who live in Nhouaste?

— Point.

— Could cause friction.

— Kudos loss!

— Maybe we should have warned somebody we were leaving the flop-backed suck-puncture behind.

— Thinking. Suggestion. Know! We’ll send a signal.

— Happy?

Fassin didn’t even get time to reply.

— No more talk time. Switch off now, start spiralling.

* * *

The Archimandrite Luseferous reviewed his forces. The nearest parts were right here, within the curved, concentric hulls of the Main Battle Craft Luseferous VII: they were his space and ground crack troops, all stood at attention by their sleek all-environments attack craft and high-skill-spec weaponry. The warships, support craft, troop carriers, landers, bombardment monitors, harrier drones, missile carriers, scout and surveillance machines and other vessels plus miscellaneous heavy devices he could discern — stretching as far as the unaided eye could see into the distance — were just projections. But they were live, real-time, and mostly clustered within a few light seconds of the invasion fleet’s core, whose absolute, steely heart was the Main Battle Craft Luseferous VII.

This was, in a way, the Archimandrite’s favourite bit. He had made a tradition of reviewing his forces like this before every major engagement, and especially before every system invasion, simply because it was such an astoundingly rewarding experience. Even the feeling of victory achieved — of having crushed and overcome, of having utterly prevailed — was hardly any better than this, when all the forces that would soon be thrown into the unavoidable mess and untidiness of battle — getting killed and shot up and dirty and lost and damaged and so on -stood or sat or lay or hovered or flew in perfect formation before him, gleaming, serried, grouped, exactly aligned, neatly laid out, symmetrically and systematically arranged, all just glistening with power and threat and promise.