The Charitable View communicated this turn of events back to the Yawning Angel, which went into shock for about a millisecond. It rechecked all its in-system ships, drones, sensors and external reports. There was no sign that the Sleeper Service had dumped its extra mass anywhere within range of the Yawning Angel’s sensors. Yet it was behaving as though it had. Where had it done it? Could it have secretly built longer-range Displacers? (No; half its mass would have been required to construct a Displacer capable of dumping so much volume beyond the range of the Yawning Angel’s sensors, and that included all the extra mass it had taken on board over the years in the form of the extraneous environments in the first place . . . though - now that it was thinking in such outrageous terms - there was another, associated possibility that just might . . . but no; that couldn’t be. There had been no intelligence, no hint ... no, it didn’t even want to think about that . . .)

The Yawning Angel rescheduled everything it had already arranged in a flurry of re-drafted apologies, pleas for understanding and truncated journeys. It halved the departure warning time it had given. Thirty-three minutes to departure, now. The situation, it tried to explain to everybody, was becoming more urgent.

The Sleeper Service’s acceleration figures remained steady at their design maxima for another twenty minutes, though the Charitable View - keeping a careful watch on every aspect of the GSV’s performance from its station a few real-space light days behind - reported some odd events at the junctions of the Sleeper Service’s traction fields with the energy grid.

By now the Yawning Angel was existing in a state of quiveringly ghastly tension; it was thinking at maximum capacity, worrying at full speed, suddenly and appallingly aware how long things took to happen; a human in the same state would have been clutching a churning stomach, tearing their hair out and gibbering incoherently.

Look at these humans! How could such glacial slowness even be called life? An age could pass, virtual empires rise and fall in the time they took to open their mouths to utter some new inanity!

Ships, even ships; they were restricted to speeds below the speed of sound in the bubble of air around the ship and the docks it was joined to. It reviewed how practicable it would be to just let the air go and move everything in vacuum. It made sense. Thankfully, it had already shifted all vulnerable pleasure craft out of the way and sealed and secured its unconnected hull apertures. It told the Hub what it was doing; the Hub objected because it was losing some of its air. The GSV dumped the air anyway. Everything started moving a little faster. The Hub screamed in protest but it ignored it.

Calm; calm; it had to remain calm. Stay focused, keep the most important objectives in mind.