The Reaches

must have been millennia ago.'

'What does it mean?' I asked.

'To us?' said Stephen. 'Nothing. Because our business is with the Federation; and whoever this fellow was, he wasn't from the Federation.'

IN TRANSIT

Day 92

The Oriflamme came out of transit-out of a universe which had no place for man or even for what man thought were natural laws. This series had been of eighteen insertions. The energy differential, the gradient, between the sidereal universe and the bubbles of variant space-time had risen each time.

I stood with one hand on the attitude-control console, the other poised to steady Dole if the bosun slipped out of his seat again. I hadn't eaten in. . days, I wasn't sure how long. I hadn't kept anything down for longer yet. Every time the Oriflamme switched universes, pain as dull as the back of an axe crushed through my skull and nausea tried to empty my stomach.

Dole had nothing to do unless Piet Ricimer ordered him to override the AI-which would be suicide, given the stresses wracking the Oriflamme now. Helping the bosun hold his station, however pointless, gave me reason to live.

Stephen Gregg stood with a hand on Lightbody's shoulder and the other on Jeude's. Stephen was smiling, in a manner of speaking. His face was as gray and lifeless as a bust chipped out of concrete, but he was standing nonetheless.

During insertions, the Oriflamme's thrusters roared at very nearly their maximum output. Winger, the chief of the motor crew, bent over Guillermo's couch. He spoke about the condition of the sternmost nozzles in tones clipped just this side of panic.

A few festoons of meat cured on Respite still hung from wires stretched across the vessel's open areas. We'd been eating the 'birds' in preference to stores loaded on Decades, for fear that the flesh-smoked, for the most part-would spoil. There was no assurance we'd reach another food source any time soon.

Salomon's screen was a mass of numbers, Ricimer's a tapestry of shaded colors occasionally spiking into a saturated primary. The two consoles displayed the same data in different forms, digital and analogue: craft and art side by side, and only God to know if either showed a way out of the morass of crushing energies.

The Mizpah in close-up filled Guillermo's screen. The gradients themselves threw our two vessels onto congruent courses: the navigational AIs both attempted with electronic desperation to find solutions that would not exceed the starships' moduli of rupture. The range of possibilities was an increasingly narrow one.

'Stand by for transit,' Piet Ricimer croaked. 'There will be a sequence of f-f-four insertions.'

He paused, breathing hard with the exertion. Guillermo compiled the data in a packet and transferred it to the Mizpah by laser.

Winger swore and stumbled aft again to his station. He would have walked into the Long Tom in the center of the compartment if I hadn't tugged him into a safer trajectory.

The Mizpah's hull was zebra-striped. The reglazing done on Respite had flaked from the old ship's hull along the lines of maximum stress, leaving streaks of creamy original hull material alternated with broader patches of the black, basalt-based sealant. Leakage of air from the Mizpah must be even worse than it was for us, and it was very serious for us.

More pain would come. More pain than anything human could survive and remain human. Oh God our help in ages past, our hope in years to come. .

'We need to get into suits,' Salomon said. He lay at the side console like a cadaver on a slab. 'They're in suits already on the Mizpah.' The navigator's eyes were on the screen before him, but he didn't appear to be strong enough to touch the keypad at his fingertips.

A sailor sobbed uncontrollably in his hammock. Stephen's eyes turned toward the sound, only his eyes.

'This sequence will commence in one minute forty seconds,' Ricimer said. His words clacked as if spoken by a wood-jawed marionette. 'The gradients have ceased to rise. We're. We're. .'

Stephen didn't turn his head to look at Ricimer, but he said, 'You're supposed to tell us that we've seen worse, and we'll come through this too, Piet.'

Watching Stephen was like watching a corpse speak.

Ricimer coughed. After a moment, I realized that he was laughing. 'If we do come through this, Stephen,' Ricimer said, 'be assured that I will say that the next time.'

'Prepare for t-trans-' Salomon said. He couldn't get the final word out before the fact made it redundant.

My head split in bright skyrockets curving to either side. Guillermo's screen, fed by the external optics, became hash as the Oriflamme entered a region alien to the very concept of light as the sidereal universe knew it.

Back a heartbeat later, another blow crushing me into a boneless jelly which throbbed with pain. The gasp that started with the initial insertion was tightening my throat and ribs, or I might have tried to scream.

Half the Mizpah hung on the right-hand display. A streak of centimeter-thick black ceramic ringed the stern. Where the bow should have been, I saw only a mass as confused as gravel pouring from a hopper.

Transit. There was a God and He hated mankind with a fury as dense as the heart of a Black Hole. The mills of His wrath ground Jeremy Moore like-

Back, only gravel on Guillermo's screen, dancing with light, and then nothing because the Oriflamme had cycled into another bubble universe and I wished that I'd been aboard the Mizpah because-

The Oriflamme crashed into the sidereal universe again and stayed there while I swayed at Dole's station and Stephen Gregg held Jeude's slumping form against the back of his seat. There must have been a fourth insertion and return, but I hadn't felt it. Perhaps I'd blacked out, but I was still standing. .

'The gradients have dropped to levels normal for intrasystem transits,' Ricimer said. He sounded as though he had just been awakened from centuries of sleep. The muscles operating his vocal cords were stiff. 'We'll make a further series of seven insertions, and I believe we'll find Landolph's landfall of Pesaltra at the end of them. Gentlemen, we have transited the Breach.'

I tried to cheer. I could only manage a gabbling sound. Dole put up a hand to steady me; we clutched one another for a moment.

'We made it,' Jeude whispered.

Guillermo's display showed a blank starscape, and there was no pulsing highlight on the main screen to indicate the Mizpah.

PESALTRA

Day 94

The ramp lowered with squealing hesitation, further sign that the stress of transiting the Breach had warped the Oriflamme's sturdy hull. Air with the consistency of hot gelatin surged into the hold. I was the only man in the front rank who wasn't wearing body armor. Sweat slicked my palm on the grip of the cutting bar.

'Welcome to the asshole of the universe,' muttered a spacer. He spoke for all of us in the assault party.

'Well,' said Piet Ricimer as he raised the visor of his helmet. 'At least nobody's shooting at us.'

Steam still rose from the mudflat that served Pesaltra as a landing field. Nine of the local humans were picking their way toward the Oriflamme. Molts-several score and perhaps a hundred of them-stood near the low buildings and the boats drawn up on the shore of the surrounding lagoons. The aliens formed small groups which stared at but didn't approach the vessel.

There were no weapons in sight among the Feds or their slaves.

Finger-length creatures with many legs and no obvious eyes feasted on a blob of protoplasm at the foot of the ramp. They must have risen from burrows deep in the mud, or the thruster exhaust would have broiled them. The creatures were the only example of local animal life that I could see.

'No shooting unless I do,' Stephen Gregg said, 'and don't expect that. Let's