Miss Jacinth, said Schelling, indicating a stool against the wall opposite where Bash sat, if you will. He studied her for a moment. You are going to cooperate, arent you?

Do I have a choice? she asked.

Schelling studied her pointedly. She sighed and placed herself on the stool.

You must make it absolutely clear to the Wanderer that the girl is a bridge directly into the mind of a Magi ship, he told her, and therefore to everything they know about the Makers. Well make an exchange: the girl, and remote access to the Magi ship at Dios, for whatever it gave to the Meridians. Oh, and, Miss Jacinth . . . ?

Megan eyed him expectantly.

We have a specialized AI hooked up so as to monitor the data-flow, Schelling continued. Well be recording everything you say to the Wanderer for future analysis. So if you had any plans to communicate with the Wanderer for your own reasons, dont. Because, I promise you, well know.

We should start now, said Tarrant, making a final adjustment. Hes all ready.

Megan rested her elbows on her knees, letting her head fall into her hands and taking a couple of deep breaths.

Whenever youre ready, Megan, said Tarrant.

She opened herself up, shifting her mental focus into her personal datascape an artificial void, generated by her implants, that contained doors through which she could access data by whatever means it was made available to her. She pushed her mind towards the door beyond which lay Bash.

She didnt have to wait long for something to happen. For, all of a sudden, she felt that very same sense of an alien presence she had first experienced years before on the Beauregard, when they had first jumped into the Wolf-Rayet system where the Wanderer hid. Schelling, the cavern, Redstone . . . all of that was gone.

She floated in silence and darkness, without any sense of her own body. The presence she had sensed changed . . . and became something more familiar.

Something that was not the Wanderer.

A whisper in the dark, which might have been her name.

No, she thought, it couldnt be.

Bash?

Then that familiar presence was gone, replaced by something far more terrifying. There was a sound like moons grinding together, and in the next instant Megan found herself again confronted by the black-and-grey bulk of the Wanderer. Its multitudinous branches seemed to reach out to grasp for her, as if she had somehow crossed tens of thousands of light years in one single, cataclysmic leap.

She tried to scream as a barrage of alien thoughts and sensations flowed into her mind, but she no longer had a voice, or lungs, or even a body.

LOOK for the FOR THE move between MOVE BETWEEN STARS we WE search SEARCH FOR

The tide grew stronger, becoming a torrent of nonsensical data that threatened to overwhelm her.

THE magi MAGI star dwellers THE STAR DWELLERS FIRE that WASHES over OVER