Would Xeelee construction material stop the weapons of a Spline warship? Maybe not. But it sure would help…

She had to get inside the dome.

Trying to ignore the looming ceiling of flesh she slithered on her belly toward the hole in the dome.

It was too slow, too damn slow. After a few seconds she stopped, rested her face against the dove-gray cheek of the Xeelee material.

This was ridiculous. Crawling wasn’t going to make a difference, one way or the other; it could only slow her down.

Muttering encouragement to herself, keeping her eyes off the nightmare covering the sky, she pushed herself up to a kneeling position, got her legs under her, stood uncertainly.

As if in response cherry-red brightness burst all around her; the dome shuddered like a living thing.

She was thrown to her face.

Then, when the singularity cannon fired, Berg’s body actually rattled against the shuddering Xeelee material. She pushed herself away from the dome, leaving smears of blood from her nose, her bruised mouth.

She got to her feet. There was a stink of ozone; a wind pressed at her chest, weak in the thin air. Twin points of light — which must be singularities — climbed a tube of smoke into the pink-stained sky. The points whirled around each other like buzzing fireflies. She gave a hoarse cheer: at last, it seemed, the good guys were fighting back…

But then she saw that the smoke tube the singularities were following almost grazed the surface of the dome; it passed neatly through the gap between the dome and the lumbering belly of the Spline and arced toward Jupiter.

The Friends weren’t trying to attack the Spline, to defend themselves; they were firing their singularities at Jupiter. Even at a time like this, all they cared about was their damn Project.

"Assholes," Berg said. She started running.

Ignoring the pain of the thinness of the atmosphere in her lungs, the heady stench of scorched air, the buffeting winds, the shuddering dome, she tried to work out what she’d do when she got to the mouth of the cannon. The tubes were about three feet wide, and she’d have about twenty yards to fall to the inner base of the dome; she could probably slide through the first few yards and then use her hands and feet to brake -

Starbreaker light flared hellishly all around her. Abandoning all conscious plans, she wrapped her arms around her face and dived headfirst into the cannon tube.

Even though the Spline’s weapon ports must be open now — even though the warship from the future must look like some fleshy wall across the sky, massive and menacing, to the natives of this era — a lone matchstick craft was coming at them out of the flotilla of ships, flaring along a two-gee curve straight for the Spline.

Jasoft Parz could hardly believe it.

The ship was about a mile in length. Its drive-fire plumed from a block of comet ice; from the block emerged a long, delicate, open-frame metal stalk, tipped by a clear lifedome. The dome was a pool of subdued light; Jasoft could almost imagine he could see humans moving about in the dome, actual people.

Jasoft recognized the design from the research he’d performed for the dead Governor. This was a GUT ship, driven by the phase energy of decoupling superforces. It looked so fragile.

Something moved in Jasoft, lost and isolated as he was in the grotesque eyeball of the Spline.

There had to be something he could do to help.

He pushed away from the lens. With short, heavy strokes in the thick entoptic fluid, he cast about the eye chamber, looking for some way to damage his Spline host.

Berg rattled down the translucent singularity-cannon tube.

The barrel seemed to be sheltering her from the blazing red light of the starbreaker assault, but its surface proved to be slick and unyielding; her hands or feet could not gain any kind of purchase on the walls of the tube. So she kicked out at the walls as she collided with them, jamming herself as hard as she could against the opposite side: anything to generate a little friction. She knew the lower mouth of the tube was six feet above the crystalline floor of the inner chamber. Berg tried to twist in the tube so she’d land butt-first, protecting her head and arms -

She plummeted out of the cannon.

The plane of singularities, diamond points in a lattice of blue-white light, rushed up to meet her, slammed into her back.

For long seconds she lay there spread-eagled, staring up at the Xeelee-material dome. Cherry-red light glimmered in distant cannon mouths.

She gingerly moved her legs, wriggled her fingers. There was a cacophony of pain, but nothing seemed to be broken. Her lungs, back, and chest felt like a single mass of bruises, though; and it was hard to expand her lungs, to take a decent breath.

It felt nice to lie here, she thought, just to lie here and to watch the light show…

Starbreaker light flared anew beyond the dome — no, she realized with a shock; now it was shining through the dome — and as she watched Xeelee construction material blistered, bubbling like melting plastic.

She’d postpone blacking out until later, she decided.

She rolled over and climbed painfully to her feet, ignored the clamoring stiffness, the pain in her legs and chest.

The hollow heart of the earth-craft was a hive of activity. Friends ran everywhere carrying bits of equipment, working control panels, shouting instructions to each other. But there was no chaos, or panic, Berg saw. The Friends knew exactly what they were doing. There was something of the air of a great installation — a power plant, perhaps — in the throes of some crisis.

In the commotion no one seemed to have observed her unorthodox entrance. There was damage around her, evidence of the huge assault; close to her there was a burned-out control console, two young, gaunt bodies splayed over it.

A cannon tube flared, forcing her to shield her eyes; a pair of singularities hurtled out of the plane beneath her feet, dazzled up into a cannon tube, and soared beyond the dome like ascending souls. She felt the plane beneath her shudder as the whole craft recoiled from the launch of so much mass.

And now there was a rush of noise above her, like the exhalation of a giant. She glanced up. The damaged area of the dome was beginning to glow white-hot; around a quarter of the dome was sagging, losing its structural integrity under the sustained Spline assault.

There was a smell of burning.

Berg recognized a man — a boy, really — the Friend Jaar, who’d taken Poole on his sightseeing tour of this place. Jaar was working at the center of a little group of Friends, poring over slates that bore what looked like schematics of singularity trajectories. There was soot and blood smeared over his bare scalp, and his jumpsuit was torn, begrimed; he looked tired, but in control.

In a few strides Berg crossed the chamber. She forced her way through the knot of people and grabbed Jaar’s arm, pulling away his slate so he was forced to look at her.

Irritation, overtension, crossed his face. "Miriam Berg. How did you get in here? I thought—"

"I’ll explain later. Jaar, you’re under attack. What are you doing about it?"

He pulled his arm away from her. "We are finishing the Project," he said. "Please, Miriam—"

She grabbed his shoulders, twisted him around so he was forced to face her. "Look above your head, damn it! The Spline is using starbreakers. The whole damn roof is going to implode on you, Xeelee material or not. There’s not going to be time to finish your precious Project. You’re going to fail, Jaar, unless you do something about it."