Now Korzenowski broke out of his trance long enough to pict an instruction to the console hovering beside him. Olmy’s mysterious signal passed through the open link and down the Way.

“Is everything—” the president began.

The point of light in the darkness ahead of them flashed. Korzenowski felt a tremor in the clavicle. That tremor seemed to growl throughout the Thistledown; warning picts appeared in front of him, telling of disturbances in the sixth chamber.

Korzenowski made sure the link had been correctly established. It had.

Something was trying to pass through the link from the other side.

Korzenowski focused all his attention once again on the clavicle. A force had inserted itself into the link, intent on keeping it open; a force stronger and more sophisticated than Korzenowski had imagined possible.

“Trouble,” he picted quickly at Farren Siliom.

He tried to sever the link. The point of light remained, even grew in size. He could not reduce the link; all he could do was expand it, and he did not think that was wise. Whatever was on the opposite side apparently desired a complete re-opening, a reconnection with Thistledown.

Returning to the clavicle’s simulation of the weave between universes, Korzenowski examined the link from a wide variety of “angles,” searching for a weakness, something that in theory had to exist. He could exploit that weakness to destabilize the link, clamp it down on whatever was trying to pass through.

Before he found that weakness, a hideous flare of energy shot from the point and pierced the traction field blister over the end of the bore hole. The blister sparkled and vanished and everything spun in an instant wind, other traction fields flickering desperately as air rushed out of the bore hole.

Farren Siliom grabbed Korzenowski’s robe. The flare of energy whipped this way and that, searing the walls of asteroid rock and metal, arcing over the witnesses to touch the lead flawship and blast its nose into shards. The flawship swung out of its traction dock and smashed against Korzenowski’s spherical personal quarters, squashing it against the smoking wall.

Korzenowski could not breathe, but that didn’t matter. He closed his eyes and in the expanded instants of implant-augmented time, searched for the defect he knew must be there.

Farren Siliom lost his grip and shot past Korzenowski. An emergency traction field net expanded across the gap, lines glowing fiercely as it tried to stop the outrush of air and debris and people. The president struck this net and spread out against it, arms and legs held fast.

Olmy had fetched up against a pylon and now clung desperately, watching people fly past. Judith Hoffman, wrapped in a flickering emergency environment field, rolled by, and he reached out to grab at her. His hand was burned by the malfunctioning field, but he caught her and held, and the field extended around both of them.