And being outside might be safer if things went badly. He had officers posted at each lock to evacuate crew in pressure suits if Argo’s hull split. How they could survive for long without a functioning ship Killeen could not imagine, but at least such preparations gave them all something to do before the battle. Anything was better for the crew than agonized waiting.

Which was, he reminded himself, just what he was doing. He stopped fretting and walked along the gently curving hull. Argo was headed out from the waning sun. Its lessened light made the ivory washes of molecular clouds seem nearby. They bore now toward the seething disk of the Eater itself.

—They’re coming fast,—Shibo sent.

“Quath?”

We are acting.

Killeen held his breath. Suddenly the leading missile veered to the side. It wobbled and then streaked away.

We have deceived the first.

As Quath spoke, the missile burst silently into a crimson ball.

“Shibo?”

—Our shields are stopping the UV pulses.—

“Good.”

But those were trivial threats. The main purpose of the missiles was simple: to crack Argo’s hull.

The two remaining missiles had swollen to red disks in Shibo’s grid.

We are tumbling the second.

One of the disks bobbed randomly. Killeen watched it explode into another soundless crimson globe.

We attempt the third.

“Are there others behind these?”

Not yet.

Then there was still a chance.

We are… difficulty… difficulty…

For the first time Quath’s tone was streaked with warring impressions. Killeen had the sensation of watching multiple minds clamor and struggle to a single purpose. Before he could comprehend this he felt a heavy, drumroll urgency.

We… fail.

Death grew behind them. Killeen could see the sleek form now.

“Quath! Isn’t there—”

No. It resists my deceptions.

Killeen stared at the rapidly growing dot. In the sharp clarity of vacuum he felt as though he could almost reach out and slap it away. Or throw something at it. In space even insubstantial things could—

The idea was so simple it startled him.

“Jocelyn! Cermo!”

—Yeasay!—

“Release! Open the locks!”

—Yessir!—they answered together.

Clouds spurted from three openings in Argo’s hull. On signal the maintenance locks had popped open in the polluted zone of the ship. Now the air rushed out, carrying foul fluids with it. Anything left within quickly boiled away into hard vacuum.

Sunlight caught the expanding clouds. Suddenly they became huge, spreading foils. Billowing yellow wings seemed to twist and fan, as though Argo glided forward by beating against utter vacuum. Expanding gossamer veils trailed behind as the ship steadily accelerated away.

Killeen stood uphull from the locks and so was spared the spray. For long moments the fluids burst into sunlight. Gusts came forth. Each added more radiance to the fluttering wake.

“Shibo! Side vector!”

Argo lurched. Shibo had fired the jets on one side. The ship coasted sidewise.

Now Killeen could not see the approaching enemy. The luminous fog obscured everything. He hoped that the missile saw the same wreathed confusion.

“Quath?”

Approaching hard. Accelerating.

“Fire main engine!”

To stay on the hull Killeen had to catch himself against a pipe. Argo accelerated strongly.

Glory burst behind them. The plasma drive struck the wake cloud. The agitated ions immediately provoked answering radiation from the gas. Like a searchlight playing through clotted fog, the exhaust brilliantly lit a huge irregular blob of mist.

Killeen held on against the rising thrust. He had done all he could. Now—

A fireball flared nearby. It lit the billowing fog further, casting shock waves of luminescence.

“Missed!” he cried.

—Hot damn!—Cermo shouted.

Shibo laughed. Her tinkling voice rang in his ears.

—Let ’em eat shit!—Cermo yelled.

“And so they have,” Killeen said grimly. “Shibo?”

—No damage reports.—

“It went off where it thought we were. Couldn’t find its way through all our crap.”

Laughter pealed through the comm. Killeen could not help himself; he joined in.

“Quath?”

We detect no further missiles. Perhaps this deception of yours has worked. The radiant cloud is emitting signature frequencies typical of heated organic compounds.

“No surprise,” Killeen said. “That’s what it is.”

However, the pursuing vessel will interpret such emissions as evidence of a ruptured hull. A clever ruse.

“Think they’ll break off followin’ us?”

It seems so.

“You sure these are the last enemy Cybers?”

We have been assured by the Tukar’ramin. Our victory is now complete. The rightful Illuminates now prevail.

“Damn glad to hear it.” Killeen was still rankled to think that his Family had gone through so much because of a factional dispute among distant beings he would never know.

He let the spike of irritation pass. It was irrational to harbor resentments against beings whose motivations and meanings were so alien. He thought he caught glimpses of Quath, but he was sure the deeper essence eluded him. Who could have guessed, for example, that the Legacies aboard Argo would mean something to a Cyber—when simple spoken sentences often did not? The Illuminates had commanded that they be ferried up from New Bishop and returned to Argo. That had been done just as Argo cast off from the station. Cyber craft had tried to destroy the Flitter carrying the Legacies and the Illuminates had expended ship after ship defending it.

Why?

Killeen shook his head.

Standing beneath the roiling sky of incandescent majesty soothed his spirits. He walked the hull as their radiant wake dispersed. A few more moments out here would settle him and make the coming tasks of Cap’ncy easier.

Raucous laughter streamed through the comm. Let them celebrate. The Family needed some release. And they would still have to watch the pursuing craft carefully.

He allowed himself a grin. Maybe, just maybe, they were going to escape.

To what? He looked ahead at the yawning bluehot majesty of the disk that surrounded the Eater. It was a long voyage away. They would have to prepare for whatever lurked there.

The Family… So much had changed since Fanny had led a scrap of Bishops away from Abraham’s wrecked Citadel, into Snowglade’s bleakness. That remnant had joined with dregs of Knights and Rooks. They had slipped free of their world and had seen it as a speck in an ocean of night.

Now, here, the Family had been seared again… only to cleave anew with new members who brought their own scarred heritage. A new whole. A greater sum, perhaps.

He turned and walked back along the hull, boots thumping down on magnetic anchors. The slowly expanding cloud thinned and let in a little light. He could just make out the small golden circle that lay far behind. It was more distant than the enemy, but Quath said it was accelerating strongly. It would catch up with Argo soon.

Killeen tried to imagine what vessels could transport the enormous mass of the cosmic string. Well, he would see. All in good time.

That great scythe would follow them toward the Eater, Quath said. So the Illuminates had decreed. They had stopped the gutting of a world to send the ring along with Argo. Halted the building of their gray warrens. Interrupted the labors of millions of Cybers. For what, no one yet knew.

And after? There was still the enigma of the electromagnetic being. Somewhere ahead it lurked, tied to the disk of the Eater.

His brushing contact with that mind, back on New Bishop, had implied much while explaining nothing. It had spoken of his father. Maybe Killeen had tempted fate by naming the star that waned behind them for Abraham. But perhaps Abraham was a key to all this. Yet how could his father, lost at the fall of the Citadel, figure in the deliberations of a tenuous magnetic mind? Could such a being revive those long dead?