A breeze pushed more steadily at her face now; she felt it riffle her short hair, and her loose jumpsuit billowed gently against her chest and legs.

She watched the dome more carefully, focusing on the nearest of the seemingly randomly placed singularity-cannon vents, about two hundred yards in from the rim of the craft. By measuring it against her thumbnail she saw that the vent was growing, tipping toward her like an opening mouth.

She found herself sighing with a small, odd regret. So much for her little interlude in the air; it looked as if the world of events was drawing her back in again.

The gray construction-material dome was looming up at her now; she was going to hit about twenty yards up from the earth-lined rim of the craft. Well, she was glad to avoid the vents for the moment; the Xeelee material was monomolecular, and she remembered the razor-sharp edges of the doorway to Shira’s hut…

The gravity on this part of the dome would be about a quarter of the Earth-normal field in the interior of the craft. Enough to cause her to hit hard. She tried to orient herself in the stiffening wind, her arms and legs bent slightly, her hands held before her face.

Michael opened his eyes.

He was breathing normally. Thank God. He took a luxurious draught of thick, warm air.

He was inside the metal box that was the boat’s airlock. The floor felt soft below him… too soft. He probed beneath him with his right hand, and found the metal floor a few inches below his spine; inadvertently he shoved himself a little farther into the air.

Weightless. They’d made it into space.

When he turned his head, his shoulders, chest, and neck still ached from their labors in the thin air of the earth-craft. Beside him Shira was curled into a question mark, the diffuse light of the airlock throwing a soft highlight from the elegant dome of her head. Her face looked very young in her sleep. Trickles of blood, meandering in the weightless conditions, snaked from her ears.

Poole lifted cautious fingers to his own face. Blood at his nose and ears. And the sudden movement made him rock in the air; his hovering legs dangled and banged together, and the pain from his damaged shins and feet flared anew. He cried out, softly.

Harry’s face popped into being just in front of his own. "You’re alive," Harry said. "Awake, as a matter of fact."

Poole found his voice reduced to an ugly scratch. "Great timing, Harry. Why didn’t you run it a bit closer?"

Harry’s eyebrows raised a little. "Piece of cake," he said.

"Let me sleep." Michael closed his eyes.

"Sorry. We dock with the Crab in one minute. Then we’ve got to get out of here. We’re assaulting a mile-wide sentient warship from the future. Or don’t you remember the plan?"

Michael groaned and squeezed his eyes tighter.

Berg’s hands, feet, and knees hit the unyielding surface first. The construction material was slick, smoother than ice, a shock of sudden cold in her palms. She let her hands and feet slide away from beneath her. She turned her face away so that her chest and thighs hit the surface comparatively softly.

She lay spread-eagled, flattened against the dome. She lay for a few minutes, the breath hissing through her teeth, her cheek flat against the cold Xeelee substance.

She’d had worse landings.

The light changed.

She lifted her head. Once more the Spline was rising over the curved horizon of the dome, a malevolent moon of flesh, cratered by eyes and weapon snouts.

Chapter 11

Harry’s voice was strained. "Michael. The Spline is attacking the earth-craft."

Michael Poole, the Crab’s two gravities heavy on his chest, lay in a reclined couch. The subdued lights of the Crab’s lifedome were a comforting sea of familiarity all around him.

Above him, directly ahead of the advancing Crab, the Spline they had chosen to chase loomed like a moon of ugly flesh, growing perceptibly. Other ships orbited the Spline in a slow, complex gavotte. The whole tableau was almost pleasing to watch; peaceful, silent.

Poole felt tired, his capacity to absorb change exhausted. Lying here was almost like the precious days when he had sailed alone through the Oort Cloud.

The girl Shira, in a couch beside Poole’s, her frail frame crushed by the two-gravity thrust, wept softly. Poole turned to her reluctantly. Her face was gaunt. There was moisture under her eyes, her nose, patches of colors in her cheeks; her eyes were like red wounds. Harry’s disembodied head floated in shadow some feet above them both, no expression readable.

"Damn it," said Poole. "Harry, bring up an image of the earth-craft."

A section of the dome turned opaque, hiding the Spline and its ineffectual human attendants; the opaque section filled with a salmon-pink wash, an inverted slab of grass-green, a ball of hull-flesh. The little cup-shaped earth-craft, dwarfed, hung beneath the attacking warship like some absurd pendant; and it hung with its grassy face averted, its construction-material belly turned up to the Spline like a submissive animal. Cherry-red fire flickered from the gut of the Spline, dimming Jupiter’s light. The earth-craft shuddered visibly.

"Starbreakers," Shira breathed, eyes wide. "The Spline is using starbreakers."

"What did you expect?" Poole replied grimly. "Can the Xeelee material withstand starbreaker beams?"

"I don’t know. Perhaps for a while. The earth-craft isn’t a warship, Michael."

Poole frowned. In the magnified and enhanced image of the dome the singularity-cannon portals looked like breaches in an armor plate. Presumably the causality stress was still impairing the Spline’s power and accuracy. But if the Spline got through one of those portals it would be over, no matter how tough this magical Xeelee substance was.

Suddenly there was smoke, fire erupting from one of the cannon mouths. The light was an intense blue, heavily loaded to the ultraviolet. Poole, used to the silent flickering of light and particle weapons, stared. Two points of light, intensely bright and whirling around each other, shot out of the cannon and spiraled along the column of smoke and light toward the patient bulk of Jupiter.

Harry said, "What the hell was that?"

"Singularities," Poole breathed. "I can scarcely believe it. They’re working their cannon; they’ve fired off two of their singularities. The Friends are fighting back. Maybe Berg—"

"No." Shira’s face, though damp with weeping, was composed. "It’s the Project. They are proceeding with the Project." Her eyes were bright, seemingly joyful, as she stared upward.

Starbreaker light flared. Overloaded, the lifedome turned black, the image imploding; then the dome cleared once more.

Now, above Poole’s head, the Spline he was chasing was turning, weapon pits glinting like mouths.

"I think they’ve spotted us," Harry said.

The belly of the Spline came down like a lid. The nearest cannon-mouth portal was still yards away.

Berg threw herself flat against the construction-material dome. Hull-flesh rolled above her, silent and awesome, like the palm of some giant hand. There were pockmarks big enough to hide artillery pieces, metal artifacts glinting in their depths; and now a huge wounded area swept over her, an inverted pool of blood and disrupted flesh. Something swam in that thick, oillike blood, she saw: symbiotic organisms — or constructs — patiently tending to the worst of the damage. With acres of charnel-house meat suspended over her head, she found herself gagging; but, of course, there was no smell, no sound; the Spline was still outside the atmosphere of the earth-craft.