“I always did want to be remembered,” Blue said.

“So did I.”

“Maybe we will be after all. Good-bye, brother. Tell Nilis . . .” But his voice winked out, and Pirius heard no more, nothing but Bilson’s quiet sobbing.

In the ops room the cheering was loud.

That netting around the event horizon looked as if it had been punched open by a vast fist. The surface beneath, a mist of sheets and threads of plasma falling into the event horizon, was awash with waves of density that flared brightly—some were so dense, the monitors said, that hydrogen fusion was briefly sparking. These waves were caused by oscillations of the event horizon itself, where it had been struck a mighty punch by the coalescing black holes of Blue’s cannon. All around this part of Chandra, intense pulses of gravitational waves were washing out, and it was those waves that were wreaking such damage on the netting structure, far overwhelming the feeble human efforts.

It was Nilis’s moment of triumph. When Enduring Hope looked for the Commissary, he was nowhere to be seen.

Luru Paz watched, her eyes cold.

“Lethe, Nilis was right,” Marshal Kimmer said. “It worked! Where is that oaf? Commissary!”

At last Nilis came running onto the walkway. He was carrying a data desk which he waved in the air. He hurried up to Kimmer. “Marshal! I have it at last. Those final images of the web structure were the key—I knew there was more to this black hole than we suspected!”

Kimmer evidently didn’t know what he was talking about, and didn’t care. He wrapped one arm around Nilis’s shoulders. “Commissary, you old fool! Unlike you, I have no imagination. I had to see it with my own eyes to believe it. But you’ve done it! You’ve ripped a hole in that peculiar Xeelee nest—and we still have four armed ships left to finish the job. By the time we’re done that black hole will be as naked as the day it was formed, and the Xeelee will have nowhere to hide. I tell you, if you told me you had found a way to beat the Xeelee in a bare-knuckle fight I’d believe you now!”

Nilis pulled away forcibly. When he spoke, it was practically a shriek. “Marshal—listen to me. We have to call off the attack.”

Kimmer, shocked, was silenced.

Luru Parz said, “And the remaining ships—”

“Call them home. Let no more lives be lost today.”

Kimmer looked thunderous. “You had better explain yourself, Commissary.”

Nilis waved his data desk. “I told you. I have it!”

“You have what?”

“The truth about Chandra. The Xeelee live off the black hole. But the Xeelee aren’t alone. . . .”

Chapter 57

The monads cared nothing for humans, of course, or for quagmites, or Xeelee, or photino birds, or any of the rest of the universe’s menagerie at this or any other age. But they liked their universes to have story; and it was living things that generated the most interesting sagas.