The boxes exploded; Dura quailed from a monstrous, ballooning image of Karen Macrae's face, of the pale forms infesting her eyecups. There was a soundless concussion, a flood of purple light which filled the cabin before fleeing through the walls of the ship and into the ocean beyond. The human-thing, the simulacrum of Karen Macrae, was gone. Hork twisted in the Air, punching at emptiness in his frustration.

But there were new shadows in the cabin now, blue-green shadows cast by something behind Dura. Something outside the ship. She turned.

The object was a tetrahedron, she recognized immediately; a four-faced framework of glowing blue lines, like fragments of vortex lines. Sheets of gold, rippling, glistened over the faces. The construct was perhaps ten mansheights to a side, and its faces were easily wide enough to permit a ship the size of the "Pig" to pass.

It was a gate. A four-sided gate...

Dura felt like a child again; she found a smile, slow and heavy with wonder, spreading across her face. This was a wormhole Interface, the most precious of all the treasures lost in the Core.

It could be a gateway out of the Star.

She grabbed at Hork's tunic, wonder flooding out her fear. "Don't you understand what it means? We'll be able to travel, to cross the Star in a moment, as we could before the Wars..."

He pushed her away roughly. "Sure. I understand what this means. Karen Macrae can't stop the Glitches. And so — for the first time since dumping us in the Mantle all those years ago, since leaving us to our fate — she and her Core-infesting friends need us. We — you and I — are going to have to travel through that thing, to wherever it takes us, and stop the Glitches ourselves."

22

CRIS MIXXAX CLIMBED ONTO his board. The wood under his bare feet was polished, warm, familiar; his soles gripped the ridged surface, and the ribs of Corestuff embedded in the wood felt like cold, hard bones. He flexed his knees experimentally. Electron gas hissed around his ankles and toes as the board cut through the flux lines. The Magfield felt springy, solid.

Cris grinned savagely. It felt good. It all felt good. At last this day had come, and it was going to be his.

The sky was a huge diorama, all around him. The South Pole, with its brooding purple heart sunk deep in the Quantum Sea, was almost directly below him; he could feel the massive Polar distortion of the Magfield permeating his body. Above him the Crust seemed close enough to touch, the dangling Crust-trees like shining hairs, immensely detailed; patterns of cultivation showed in rectangular patches of color and texture — sharp, straight-line edges imposed by humans on the vibrant nature of the Star.