When she called Hoffman’s terrestrial residence in South Africa, a message awaited her, conveyed by a delegated partial with instructions to speak only to selected people, herself among them. The partial explained that Hoffman had been on Thistledown until the very last moment, and was now on a shuttle returning to Axis Euclid. The partial was willing to arrange a meeting; it was possible, if channels were not closed by the Hexamon, to speak with its primary now. Did she wish to do so?

Ram Kikura, usually reluctant to impose, did not hesitate now. “If you can open a channel, I’ll be very grateful.”

Hoffman’s partial made the necessary arrangements, found that channels were still available, and Hoffman herself appeared in Ram Kikura’s living room, seated in a white shuttle formfit, exhausted and unhappy.

“Suli!” she said, trying to muster a semblance of polite gladness. “It’s a disaster out here. We couldn’t access a third of what we wanted to…. If it all goes, we’ll lose so much…”

“Do you now what’s happening?”

“It isn’t even classified!” Hoffman said, waving her fingers in dismay. “The presiding minister lifted all security measures—”

“I know. I’m free.”

“The re-opening is a disaster. They say there was instability in the Way—but I can’t believe Korzenowski couldn’t take care of that.”

“Mirsky?” Ram Kikura suggested.

Hoffman rubbed her neck with her hands. “We were warned.”

The coloring on her image changed. With raised eyebrows, she peered to her left—where a transparency in the hull might be—and a look of wonder crossed her face. “What is it?” she asked others around her. Ram Kikura caught muffled sounds of other voices.

She glanced through her own window at the arc of darkness visible beyond the edge of what had once been the flaw passage. That region was no longer dark; now it glowed a ghostly blue.

“Something’s happening,” Hoffman said. “Transmission—”

She faded with a silent sizzle of white lines. Ram Kikura called for an image of the precinct’s exterior, and then added, “Where’s Thistledown? Show me that octant.”

A circle of radiant blue appeared in the middle of her living room, enchanting and deeply disturbing. It did not block out the haze of stars visible beyond Earth. “Thistledown,” she ordered. “Show me where Thistledown is.” A projected red line curled snake-like around the bean-sized white object and blinked. The glow was not coming from Thistledown, nor was it limited to the starship’s vicinity; it seemed to come from all space, all directions.

The bean-sized object grew brighter as she watched. “Magnify,” she demanded. Throughout Axis Euclid, she knew citizens by the tens of thousands were asking for the same picture; her own private projector’s image flickered occasionally as the precinct’s signal amplifiers and splitters cut in.