To be ready.

'Would you rather grandmother caught us, in her present mood?'

To be steady.

'Frssh!'

'Come on, now, face it like a cosmospolitan.'

Go.

An invisible hand wrenched See-Why out of the sky and hurled it at them. They were falling into the sun. Then they were falling around the sun. They skimmed over a blurred sea of blue-white fire that broke on the reefs of space, its roaring a dim thunder inside the pseudofield, towards a glowing horizon that had no curve.

And the star dopplered behind them. Sundog soared up into the interstellar dark, singing.

Silence filled the cabin.

'Wow,' said Dom.

'Urghss!'

Isaac peered at the matrix panel, and dimmed the ship lights. In the darkness there were only the stars ahead, and they began to flare blue.

'Prepare yourselves to become a relativistic impossibility...' sang Isaac.

Illusion.

Dom knew about the things seen in interspace. The larger ships usually had screening around most of the hull, and perhaps an unscreened lounge for the incurably curious...

A white stag galloped through the cabin wall, which glowed under an orange light. It bore a gold crown between its horns. Dom sensed its fear, smelled the rankness, saw the sweat-matted hair on its flanks - but its hooves merged with the floor, and floor and skin merged and flowed continuously. It reared, and leapt through the autochef.

Dom saw the huntsman on his black horse when he brushed through the wall of the drive cabin like bracken. He wore white, except for a red cloak hung with silver bells, and his face beneath yellow hair that billowed in an intangible wind was pale and set. For a moment he looked at Dom, who saw his eyes gleam momentarily like mirrors and a hand go up protectively. Then horse and rider were gone.

'Chel! He almost seemed real!'

Isaac grinned. 'He almost certainly is, somewhere.'

'Uhuh. They say interspace is where all possibilities intersect. I got the feeling he sensed us.'

'A spirit on the wind, no more.'

Dom stood up unsteadily. The walls still looked as if they had been made of second-hand moonlight.

'Now there's an illusion I've heard about.'

A red globe the size of a fist drifted easily through the shielded windows. He watched fascinated as it passed through the autochef, part of the main cable conduit, and the floating figure of Ig, who stirred uneasily in his sleep. It disappeared in the general direction of the matrix computer.

It was an interspace interpretation of a star, probably BD + 6793°. They were harmless enough, though a red giant or a spitting white dwarf could be unnerving to watch as it passed through your body.

Dom looked round after hearing a scuffle. Hrsh-Hgn was wedged under the autochef, in the foetal position. It was almost an hour before he was persuaded to emerge, blinking with embarrassment.

'We phnobess are not perhapss so ressilient ass you—' he began, 'Intersspace sscares uss. It is a region of uncertainty. Who knowss that we may not ceasse to exist?'

'You appear to be all here, physically and mentally.'

The phnobe nodded sheepishly.

Isaac closed the maintenance panel on the autochef.

'It's a '706 model, a quality job,' he said. 'I can't find a print-out for the menu, anywhere.'

Dom nodded. 'I think great-great-grandfather intended the One Jump as a one-man ship. I should imagine the menu is programmed into it.'

'Quite. He'd be so busy fleeing from his creditors he'd have no time—sorry, chief, I think maybe I stepped out of line a little there.'

'It's okay. He was a bit of a pirate. But according to the family history he was a strict Sadhimist, too. Simplicity was a virtue. I shouldn't expect it to run to anything more appetizing than bread and maybe fish.'

The autochef used simple molecule-breeding techniques to duplicate dishes stored as probability equations in its menu. The one aboard One Jump Ahead gurgled after it was switched on, broke into a low buzz for several minutes, and extruded a table from a base slot. Another, larger slot opened and the meal slid out.

They stared at it for several seconds. Dom reached out and picked up a crystallized fruit, gingerly.

Hrsh-Hgn coughed. 'The intricate bird with the honey glaze I recognize,' he murmured. 'It's a Croupier swan. I think the blobss are cream.'

Dom took the lid off a silver dish.

'Some class of a shellfish baked in—well, it tastes of eggs.'

Isaac picked up a cut-glass goblet and downed the contents in one swallow.

'Old Overcoat,' he said. 'The genuine stuff. Two glasses and you lift off on a pillar of flame.'

They stared at him. He put down the glass.

'Haven't you seen a robot drink before?' he asked.

'We were wondering ...' Dom stopped, embarrassed.

'... where it goesss?'

'We new model class Fives can derive power from the calorific content of organic substances.' He reached for his chest panel. 'If you like I can—'

'We believe you,' said Dom. He looked down at the table again. 'Did I say something about the virtues of simplicity? I think it may be against Sadhimist laws to eat this.'

' "You will not waste",' quoted Hrsh-Hgn. 'There are timess when it iss a pleassure as well ass a duty to follow the One Commandment.

Ten minutes later Dom said: 'Hrsh-Hgn, this damn black jam tastes of fish.'

'It's caviar.'

'Caviar? I'd always wondered. On Widdershins only poor people are allowed to eat it. I suppose they get used to it.'

Twenty minutes later the autochef digested the remains of the meal. Ig drifted towards the matrix room, chewing a fish head. A small, burned-out wreck of a star passed crosswise through the cabin and disappeared. Dom watched it go.

'If the First Sirian Bank is the galaxy's leading Joker expert, why hasn't he found Jokers World?' he asked.

'I assume you don't mean that he should have roved across the universe, Roche limits being what they are. A thing the ssize of the Bank would upset the balance of the average solar system, probably. As to exploration via the available data, he may well have disscovered Jokerss World. Why not? Why, then, sshould he tell uss, mere upstart civilissationss.'

'We'd pay well.'

'We? We? Phnobic We? Human We? Let uss assume the race who findss Jokerss World gains immeasurably. Why should he want that?'

Dom frowned. 'But he runs himself as a Bank. He charges for his services, too.'

'He choosess to. A creature musst do something to relieve the boredom of three billion years. He likes people around.'

'You mean he wouldn't like to see anyone get hold of the World because they might put the Bank in jeopardy?'

'Maybe. It iss all conjecture.'

He started to talk about Jokers World.

Three races walked like men. One of them was Man. Taller than men, but generally lighter, were the phnobes. Much smaller than men but built more on cuboid lines so that they looked like heavy-gravity chimpanzees on a steroid diet, were drosks.

Phnobes came in three sexes. They had a secondary, vestigial brain. They evolved on a world with no readily-available metal. In cerebral matters they were supreme. A world where most of the higher animals were adapted to a tri-sexual system needed a race with brains.

Drosks came in two sexes, eventually. It made sense on a harsh, bitter world. The young males evolved into mature, strong-rninded females after about the first third of their life. Their social system was intricate but was surpassed in complexity by their religion, a fiery edifice involving the double star and three large moons in their system. Drosks were cannibals, it was part of the religion. Drosks found it difficult to conceive of a number greater than seven. Drosks periodically built up a machine-age civilization then, for no well-understood reason, carefully dismantled it and reverted to barbarism.