The three ANAdroids were standing together, holding hands, their heads tipped back so they could watch the early morning sky.

Kysandra turned to look at the Forest. She drew in a sharp breath, and her lips twitched in the start of a smile. The Forest was still there, but now it was crowned with a halo of vivid emerald light. As she watched, strands of the light chased across space like stellar lightning bolts. One hurtled towards Bienvenido, passing close above the atmosphere, and that entire half of the sky abruptly seethed turquoise. ‘Oh, great Giu,’ she groaned. Space itself was splitting open.

‘Cherenkov radiation,’ Fergus said. ‘It’s working. The Void is breaking up.’

Kysandra laughed in delight as the perfect green ruptures multiplied. ‘He did it. Oh, Giu, he did it!’ The nebulas vanished, their dainty light obliterated by the raw energy of the fissures. Her laughter weakened. Except Uracus. Uracus was still there. The malevolent tangle of fluorescent scarlet and yellow fronds was at the centre of a violent radiation storm. Jade cataracts writhed in torment, rebuffed by Uracus.

The tainted red light of the ominous nebula was growing stronger.

‘It’s growing,’ she moaned. ‘Uracus is growing.’

The cancerous presence, which alongside sweet Giu had dominated the night above Bienvenido her whole life, was flexing energetically, like a spectral serpent wriggling through space. Visibly expanding as it came.

‘That’s impossible,’ Marek said. ‘Nothing that big can move that fast. It’s lightyears across. And lightyears away.’

‘So . . . it started doing this years ago?’ Kysandra asked uncertainly.

‘I don’t think so,’ Fergus said.

Kysandra took a small step backwards. Uracus now took up a quarter of the sky. The thrashing aquamarine clefts of the quantum distortion were in retreat before it. ‘Uh . . .’ she breathed. ‘Is it coming towards us?’

‘Oh, dear,’ Demitri murmured.

‘The Void knows,’ Marek said. ‘It can sense the internal damage the quantumbuster is inflicting. This could be its response mechanism.’

‘But Uracus is where the bad souls are sent,’ Kysandra groaned. ‘It’s what the Commonwealth legends call hell. Nigel told me.’

‘We’re not going to hell, Kysandra.’ Fergus said quickly.

Kysandra didn’t believe him.

Uracus filled the entire sky now, its tangled web of topaz and scarlet plasma strands flexing ominously as it rushed towards Bienvenido. Golden sparks emerged around the central gash, to slither around and between the individual strands as if they were flocks of frenzied shooting stars.

‘It’s going to hit us!’ Kysandra cried. ‘It’s going to smash into Bienvenido!’

Uracus engulfed them. The sun vanished behind its tattered swirls of phosphorescence – an eclipse that dropped the planet back into night. Faint, cold moiré light was all that illuminated the landscape now. A fissure of utter blackness split apart down the centre of the nebula. Long tenuous strands of pulsing cerise and saffron stardust curved back in great cataracts, a million effervescent waterfalls falling out of the universe. Deeper and deeper they plunged down the infinite lightless abyss as it opened still wider.

Then Bienvenido was falling beside the phenomenal cascades. Uracus closed behind it.

*

Nigel Sheldon woke up with a start, the ANAdroids’ dream of the terrible abyss still chilling his mind. He opened his eyes.

Torux was watching him from the other side of the private chamber on board Olokkural.

‘What just happened?’ Nigel demanded. ‘I can’t dream them any more. Where the hell did they go?’

EPILOGUE

Beyond the Abyss

Kysandra heard the planes of the Air Defence Force droning overhead as she walked across the gardens at the back of the manor house. She wasn’t surprised; there had been a Fall alert on the radio that afternoon. The big radars of the Space Vigilance Office had picked up a batch of eggs on their way down to Bienvenido from the Ring. They estimated the Fall zone to be west of Port Chana, close to the Sansone mountains; impact would be five o’clock in the morning.

Without her retinas switched to infra-red, she couldn’t see the planes against the jet-black night sky. But everybody knew and cheered that distinctive sound now; it was the twin engine IA-505s above her. They were stationed down at the aerodrome of the county’s fledgling squadron, just outside the city. Five IA-505s had been delivered to Port Chana so far, with another three expected before the end of the year. They were a veritable miracle of manufacture for Bienvenido’s primitive industrial base, the first planes able to lift the heavy-calibre Gatling guns that could penetrate the shell of a Faller egg. The radio was always full of praise for the valiant workers on the big new factory lines, transforming Laura Brandt’s designs into solid metal.

Kysandra had to admire Laura for that. She was dealing with engineers who had grown up with steam engines. Supercharged V12 engines were something they just about comprehended. Bienvenido’s foundries didn’t require too much modernization to fabricate the components. Production was starting to increase. The skies would be safer.

The large observatory building was a simple circular stone wall with a dome roof, whose wooden petals could be cranked apart to give the telescope access to the sky. There wasn’t another building like it in the region, which sooner or later was going to cause problems. Kysandra still hadn’t decided if they should dismantle the structures they’d built to contain and operate all the systems Nigel had removed from Skylady before his final flight. Or if she and the ANAdroids should simply move. A life spent constantly on the run didn’t really appeal. But now the medical module had finished enriching her body with biononics, she didn’t actually need it any more. The semiorganic synthesizers, though – they were a different matter. She didn’t want to abandon them. They could produce a great many useful Commonwealth items.

For six months they’d been busy extruding sophisticated components for Demitri’s telescope. With its array of flawless mirrors and electronic focal sensors, it could scour the empty skies like nothing else on Bienvenido. Demitri spent every night in the observatory, looking for . . . well, anything.

Bienvenido was slowly turning Port Chana towards dawn, a motion which had brought Aqueous above the horizon, a strong point of blue light, shining by itself in the absolute night. Seventeen million kilometres distant along the same orbit, their neighbouring water world was too far away to show as a crescent to the naked eye. Unlike Valatare, the gas giant that orbited their new star only ten million kilometres further out. Its pink disc dominated the sky when they were in conjunction, creating tides that plagued the coastal cities and producing a season of storms to lash the lands.

The heavy throbbing noise of the V12 engines had faded into the west when she opened the observatory’s door and went inside. Demitri was sitting on a stool, wearing a thick sweater against the cool night air. The shelf bench beside him held a couple of processor modules that controlled the telescope, with an old-style hologram portal on top of one. The big multi-mirror telescope itself filled most of the observatory. Tonight it was angled to point into the south-west.

He looked round as she came in. ‘How did the trial go?’

‘Oh.’ She waved a hand airily, feigning a lack of interest. It was still odd not having an ex-sight, or teekay for that matter. Even now, five years on from the Great Transition, she frequently tried to perceive the emotional content of minds of everyone she encountered – not that she’d ever been able to read the ANAdroids back in the Void. ‘What we expected.’ The short-wave radio signal from the capital had drifted in and out annoyingly all night, but the result of the show trial was never going to be in doubt. ‘Bethaneve was found guilty of sedition. Apparently she was plotting against Democratic Unity with other anti-revolutionary forces.’