Later there was a cloud at the limit of vision. It stayed there for a while, then raced up the glittering stream at a speed that made Kin flinch. There was the faintest of lurches and a second's darkness as the ship left the water behind at the molecule sieve, and then there were stars.

There was a long hiss from Marco. It may have been a sigh of relief.

Silver said, 'I would have felt happier if the Computers had been able to arrange a more conventional launching, but I must admit that it had style.'

'From their point of view that was the most efficient way,' said Kin. The sky spun again as Marco turned the ship so that 'down' was where long tradition had always put it, in the region of the feet.

Silver unfastened her couch straps, then looked across at Kin.

'We built the universe, didn't we,' she said. 'Not us precisely, these lumps of bone and brain, but the thing in us that makes us what we are. The thing that dreams while the rest of us is asleep.'

Kin smiled. "The Computers wouldn't tell,' she said. 'But yes, you're right. I think the Computers had a certain extra function, they could suppress all the mental static so the -- oh hell, why avoid the word? -- so that the god inside could surface just for a while and perform. That's why practically anyone could be the Disc master. If Jago Jalo had tried the helmet, he'd be there still.'

'No-one will believe you,' said Marco, without turning his head.

'I'm not sure that would be a tragedy,' said Kin. 'The Disc was put there as a hoax, or a hint. No-one has to believe it. We'll build a planet for the Disc people and transfer them, and that is the thing that needs to be done.'

The challenge warmed her. The building of a new Earth; so carefully done that the Disc people could be transferred and not know it. There'd have to be new continents designed, and the Disc people would have to be put into a freeze-sleep until some of their number had bred enough to populate them. It could take a thousand years. There'd be a whole solar system to drag into place, great planets around far stars to be ringed in some vast fields and flipped across light-years.

Buffaloes to be designed.

Life wouldn't be boring.

Would what the Computers could tell them pay for it?

It would.

They slept and they ate, while the ship dipped under the monstrous shadow in the sky. The little toiling sun shed no light on the blackness as it swung across it.

Presently the far edge of the Rimfall began to grow larger. Marco slid back into his seat and spoke to the ship's little brain.

'OK,' he reported, 'major burn coming up. This is where we say goodbye, so get into those couches. The Committee are timing this one for us.'

It took ten minutes of slight discomfort, listening to the faint roar from the outrigger jets. Kin heard a sigh from Marco's couch as the engines shut off.

'That's it,' he said. 'Now we hit the hole, or we miss the hole. I never thought I'd have to worry about running into the wall of the universe.'

The Rimfall raced past a few thousand miles away, phosphorescent in the light of the full moon. Even Marco took a deep breath as the ship rose above the edge of the Disc and plunged towards the sky.

The Disc was a design of white and black, a silver and ebony coin floating under a sky wild with stars.

The stars were getting nearer. The moon became a pearl hovering over the Disc, and the stars were definitely getting nearer.

The hole that Jago Jalo had cut in the Vault of Heaven had been big enough for the ring ship to go through, and this one was much smaller. But it would be approaching it at a low angle.

The Computers had told Marco that the hole would be wide enough. They had told Kin the same, but had added their estimate of the distance to spare. Kin hadn't dared pass it on to Marco. The minimum clearance was a little less than a metre.

She found she was staring ahead, searching the sky. The other two were doing the same. Stars were drifting overhead. While Kin watched, their silent, snowflake movement became a brisk race.

Then they were a blur. There was the briefest impression of something around the ship as a star swelled, blazed and disappeared. A slight shudder marked the demise of one of the outrigger jets, knocked off against the edge of the sky.

Then there were stars again, deceptively similar, and the ship was dropping into the gulf.

She could hear Marco breathing noisily. Silver was humming a tune in a rolling baritone.

Kin watched the stars she knew were only 70,000 years old, marginally older than their cousins hanging from the Vault of Heaven. Stars were just lights in the sky, but bigger skies demanded bigger stars.

Kin thought about the second edition. The ship fell onwards, into the scenery.

THE END