"So," she said to Jaar. "What next, for the Friends of Wigner?"

He smiled a little wistfully, his large, fragile-looking head swiveling as he surveyed the battered earth-craft. "The craft has suffered too much damage to remain habitable for long—"

"Atmosphere leakage?"

He looked at her. "Yes, but more significantly the loss of the hyperdrive when the construction-material dome was crushed—" He closed his long fingers into a fist. "And without the hyperdrive we have no effective radiation shielding. This skimpy blanket of atmosphere will scarcely suffice to protect us in Jovian space, and I doubt if we could survive even one close encounter with the Io flux tube."

"Right." Berg looked up at the sky nervously. Suddenly her situation — the fact that she was standing on a lump of rock, lost in orbit around Jupiter, with nothing over her head but a few wisps of gas — seemed harshly real; the sky seemed very close, very threatening.

"Well have to evacuate, of course," Jaar said stiffly. "We will accept assistance from your contemporaries, Miriam. If we may."

"You needn’t fear," she said as kindly as she could. "I’ll speak to Michael, if you’ll let me; he can intercede with the authorities. There are plenty of ships in the area."

"Thank you."

"And then what, Jaar?"

"Then we go on." His brown eyes were pale and intense and filled once more with unshakable faith; she found herself returning his gaze uncomfortably. "We find a way to resume the Project."

"But, Jaar—" She shook her head. "Your Project has nearly brought disaster down on us all already. Hasn’t it? You mustn’t lose sight of this simple fact, my friend — we were lucky to defeat the Qax invasion from the future. If they hadn’t been so slow to react, so complacent, so sure we had no threat to offer them — then they could have destroyed the race. Is your Project worth such a risk again?"

Jaar replied with intensity, "Berg, your words in the singularity chamber, at the height of the struggle with the Spline — that I must survive, in order to fight another day, to continue with the Project — changed me, convinced me. Yes, the Project is worth all of that. It’s worth any risk — believe me, any price."

"Look, I said all that when the roof was caving in. Literally. It was a ploy, Jaar. I was trying to manipulate you, to get you to fight, to make you do what I wanted you to do."

"I know that." He smiled. "Of course I know that. But the motives behind your words don’t reduce their truth. Don’t you see that?"

She studied his long, certain face, and wrapped her arms closely around her, troubled.

Harry Poole, downloaded into the nervous system of the Spline, was in agony.

Jesus Christ -

The Spline’s body and sensorium encased him like the inside of his own (corporeal) head. He felt its vast, intimidating bulk all around him; the toughened outer flesh-hull felt as if it were third-degree burnt; the weapons and sensor spots were like open wounds.

The Spline must be in constant, continual pain, he realized; yes, they had been adapted for survival in space and hyperspace, but clumsily, he saw now. He felt like an amputee, nerve ends crudely welded to steamhammers and jacks.

Was this a price worth paying, even for special longevity?… and the Qax must have endured this horror too. Then again, he thought, perhaps pain had a different meaning for one as alien as a Qax.

In addition to the routine life agonies of the Spline there was more torment: from the half-healed wounds in the hull inflicted by its close encounter with the exotic material of the Interface portal; from the wreckage of the Crab that was still lodged within the Spline’s fleshy bulk like a clumsy arrow.

The shock of Poole’s crude attack had been enough to kill the Spline. The pain Harry suffered now was like the agony of a new birth, into a universe of darkness and terror.

…And yet, as he became accustomed to the size and scale of the Spline, to the constant, wailing screech of pain, Harry became aware of — compensating factors.

Some of his sensors — even some of the Spline’s ancient, original eyes, like the one ravaged by Jasoft Parz — still worked. He saw the stars through the eyes of a sentient starship; they were remote yet accessible, like youthful ideals. He could still turn; the Spline could roll. Vast, hidden flywheels of bone moved somewhere inside him, and space slid past his hull; he felt the centrifugal wrench of rotation as if the stars themselves were rolling around him, tugging.

And burning like a fire in his gut, he felt the power of the hyperdrive. Cautiously he flexed those strange, indirect muscles; and he thrilled at the power he could direct — the power to unravel the dimensions of spacetime itself.

Yes, there was grandeur to be a Spline.

He opened pixel eyes inside the lifedome of the wrecked Crab. His son was staring up at him. "I can fly," Harry said.

Jasoft Parz had shed his skinsuit, snakelike; now he floated in the air, one of Michael’s roomier dressing gowns billowing around him. "From what your companion Berg reports, these Friends of Wigner sound determined to revive their Project."

Michael Poole lay back in his couch in the Crab’s lifedome and steepled his fingers behind his head. "But the Friends are going to need access to singularity manufacturing technology on an industrial scale, if they are to rebuild their earth-craft. And that surely means keeping the Interface access to the future open. We simply don’t have the infrastructure for such an endeavor, in this time period."

Harry, his huge Virtual head floating in the air above Poole’s couch, nodded wisely. "But then we’re leaving the door unlocked against whatever else the Qax choose to throw down their wormhole pipe at us. Not to mention any companions of Miss Splendid Isolation over there." He nodded toward Shira; the girl from the earth-craft sat at a data console scrolling idly through some of Michael’s research results, studiously ignoring the conversation.

Parz said, "The Qax were utterly complacent in their invasion of this time frame. And so — perhaps — no message, no report of the disaster, was sent back through the Interface to my era. But the Qax Occupation authorities will surely send through more probes, to investigate the outcome. We have bought time with our victory; but no more, as long as the Interface remains open."

Shira looked up; Michael absently noted how the light of Jupiter highlighted the graceful curves of her shaven cranium. "Are you so sure you can close the portal?" she asked quietly. "You designed it, Michael Poole; you must know that spacetime wormholes are not hinged hatches one can open and close at will."

"We’ll find a way, if we have to," Michael said seriously.

"And if the Qax, or the Friends of the future, choose not to allow it?"

"Believe me. We’ll find a way."

Parz nodded, his green eyes narrow. "Yes. But perhaps we should begin considering now how to do such a thing. We may need the option rapidly, should we decide to use it — or should it become necessary to do so."

Harry opened a pixel-blurred mouth and laughed. "In case of emergency, break laws of physics."

"Start working on it, Harry," Michael said wearily. "Shira, it’s not impossible. Wormholes are inherently unstable. Active feedback has to be built into the design, to enable a hole to endure…"

But Shira had turned away again and was bent over her data. In the semidarkness of the lifedome, with her face lit from beneath by the pink-blue glow of Poole’s old data, her eyes were huge and liquid.