And over a hundred devastated human worlds, Xeelee fighters folded night-dark wings.

Vacuum Diagrams

Paul opened his eyes.

His body ached. He lay facedown on a surface that glowed with white light. Grass, or fine hair, washed over the surface.

What is this place? How did I get here? And…

What’s my name?

His face grew slick with sweat; his breath sawed through his mouth. He perceived the shape of answers, like figures seen through a fog. He writhed against the shining ground.

The answers floated away.

A meaningless jingle ran around his mind: “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here…”

The grass vanished. He waited, hollow.

Three men walked slowly through Sugar Lump City. Paul trailed Taft and Green, their urgent talk washing past his awareness. The sights, sounds and smells of the new City poured into his empty memory.

The embryonic street was lined with blocky buildings of foamed meteorite ore. Most of the buildings were still dark, silent. Paul passed a construction site. Huge machines with ore spouts like mouths clawed aside meteorite debris and sprayed out floors and walls. The cold air was filled with dust, the stink of machine oil — and an incongruous tang of fresh-cut wood. Four workmen stalked around the site, shouting at the huge devices which did their bidding.

Taft and Green had paused at the knee-high lip of a light well. Paul joined them and peered into the well. The exposed surface of the Sugar Lump, twenty feet down, was a shining disc. A beam of light thrust straight up from the well and splashed against curved mirrors above their heads, illuminating the surrounding streets.

Shadows passed beneath the exposed plane like fish in a light-filled pond.

The sky was blue-black. Above the City’s thin layer of air Spline warships prowled, visibly spherical.

Paul felt he was floating, suspended between mysteries above and below.

“Coexistence with the Xeelee,” Taft was saying. “That’s what the colony is about. The meteorite impact which smeared rock over this Face of the Lump was a miraculous break. By terraforming this region and colonizing it we can prove to the Xeelee we don’t have to go to war with them.” He was a tall, heavily-built man of about physical-forty; the well’s under-lighting gave his bearded face a demonic power, and when his metallic Eyes fixed on him, Paul felt a psychic shock.

“And isn’t your mysterious waif here going to endanger that?” Taft demanded.

…And one day, Paul realized, this man would try to kill him. He edged closer to Commander Green.

Green interposed his short, blocky frame between Taft and Paul. Well light glittered from his ornate Navy epaulets. “Your colonization project isn’t under question at present, Dr. Taft,” he said briskly.

“Isn’t it?” Taft raised bushy eyebrows. “Then call off your Spline war dogs. Spend your resources on my terraforming efforts down here.”

Green spread callused hands. “Let’s stick to the point, shall we? You know I don’t have the authority to call off the exclusion fleet. And those who do are unlikely to withdraw as long as there’s so much mystery, so much threat associated with the Sugar Lump.”

Taft snorted. “Threat? The government acts like a bunch of superstitious fools every time the Xeelee are mentioned. Look, Green, we’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve established that the Lump is an artifact, fabricated from Xeelee construction material—”

“And that’s about all you have established,” Green said with a touch of steel. “Despite the money you’ve spent so far.”

“Commander, Xeelee construction plate isn’t tissue paper. You can’t just cut a hole in it.”

“I know that. So it seems to me that Paul here — with his proven non-local perception abilities — is our best hope of getting some hard data.” He winked at Paul. “What I fail to see is what threat Paul represents to you.”

Taft stared at Paul. Well light glittered over his metal Eyes, and again Paul was flooded with a nameless fear. “I won’t discuss this in front of the boy,” Taft said.

Paul worked to keep his voice level. “I’d like to hear what you have to say. And I’m not a boy, Doctor. Physically I’m twenty years old.”

Green grinned, showing even teeth. “Good for you.”

“Damn it, Green, we don’t know anything about this — boy — of yours. He’s found in a fouled, ill-fitting pressure suit on the exposed Face at the edge of the City. Nobody knows who he is, or how he got there — including Paul himself, so he says—”

“His amnesia is genuine,” Green broke in. “And as to how he got to the Lump — Taft, have you ever traveled on a Spline ship?”

Taft glared at him. “Do I look like a Navy goon?”

“A Spline warship,” Green said patiently, “is a living creature. A sphere miles across. Its human crew occupy chambers hollowed out of the stomach lining. A Spline ship is a big, complex, disorderly place. If Paul was a stowaway he won’t have been the first—”

“He’s an unknown,” Taft insisted. “And by introducing him into this situation we incur an unknown risk.”

“But what’s beyond question is his bizarre, quantum-mechanical perceptive faculty. He represents an enormous opportunity.”

Taft folded his arms and stared into the light well. “Suppose I refuse to cooperate?”

“I have sufficient authority to force you, frankly,” Green said quietly. “Officially this is a war zone.”

“I’ll go over your head.”

“I could have you arrested. Requisition your staff. Doctor, you haven’t much choice.”

Slowly, Taft nodded. “You’re right, Commander. I don’t have any choice. For the present.” And he shot another savage metallic glance at Paul.

“I’m glad we agree,” Green said dryly. “Now, I believe you’ve a plan to have Paul taken to an Edge. That seems a good idea.”

Taft nodded reluctantly. “And if necessary we could go on to a Corner Mountain.”

“We?” Green asked suspiciously.

Taft indicated the construction site a few yards away. The four workmen had gathered around a machine which had shattered a nozzle against a stubborn lump of rock. “You can see how busy we are,” Taft said. “I’m not going to sacrifice my schedules for this — venture. I’ll accompany the boy myself.”

The four workers sang softly as they hauled at the broken nozzle. Paul strained to hear their words, struck by an unaccountable feeling of significance.

Green said carefully: “Of course I’ll escort you both.”

“As you wish.”

“Well, shall we start?”

The words of the work song drifted through the cold air: “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here…”

Paul stood transfixed. The words echoed around his head.

Green touched his arm. “Paul? Are you okay?”

Paul turned with difficulty. Green’s lined face was reassuring. “That song,” Paul said. “What does it mean?”

Green listened for a few seconds, then chuckled. “Paul, soldiers and sailors have been singing that for centuries. Whenever they’re forced to do something they don’t particularly like. The tune’s called ‘Auld Lang Syne’. It’s thought to predate the Qax Occupation…” He searched Paul’s face. “Have you heard it before?”

“I… don’t know. Maybe.”

Green smiled sadly. “Come on. Let’s catch up with Taft before he has us thrown off the Lump.”

Taft escorted them to a car at the edge of the City.

The air here seemed colder and thinner. Raw meteorite material, scorched and fragmented, crunched under Paul’s feet. On the horizon the Face of the Sugar Lump lay naked, as still and flat as a sea of light — a sea which stretched thousands of miles until it plummeted over an Edge, as if over some huge waterfall of photons.