“Don’t you need to concentrate?” Cole asked the doctor.

Ryke looked at him for a long while. He took one hand off the steering column and scratched his thick, brown beard. He rubbed his bald head and adjusted his black goggles. Cole couldn’t take it anymore. He turned and peered down the narrow chute of visibility created by the roostertails, certain that they were travelling far too fast for anything meant to come in contact with water.

Earlier, the vehicle had seemed pretty damn nebular, back when it was in the garage and sitting still. It was basically a flat triangle of steel sitting on three runners and topped with a sleek bubble cockpit. Ahead of the cockpit was a flat deck with a crane-like apparatus stowed flat. The whole thing was painted stark white and appeared fast even when idling. Cole had been excited to crawl inside, but now that they were racing along, hydroplaning across the wet surface of hyperspace half-blind, he just hoped to survive long enough to get back out.

“Concentrate on what, exactly?” Ryke finally asked.

Cole shook his head and pointed forward. “On where we’re going!”

“Oh, I know exactly where we’re going. Alls you gotta do is head right for the rain.”

“Well, we seem to be doing that awful fast,” Cole said.

Ryke laughed. “If we didn’t, we’d never get there!” He leaned over toward Cole, as if about to confide in some secret. “She’s shaped like a cone, you know.”

Cole peeled his eyes away from the smeared carboglass. “What? The Seer?”

That really got Ryke going. He laughed and slapped his thigh. “Don’t be silly! It’s hyperspace that’s shaped like a cone.”

“Can we talk when we get back?” Cole asked. “I’m feeling a little sick.”

“No problem. You just listen, then, and I’ll do the talking.”

Cole groaned.

“It all comes in at a point, hyperspace does. Like I said, it’s pretty much a cone, but laying on its side. And it’s always moving, not just the stuff in the air, but the surface, too. It’s always sliding back into the past with new stuff and happenings coming in at the tip.”

He paused, scratched his beard, and fiddled with a dial. “Not sure where it all goes, though. Maybe back around? Still working on that . . .”

Leaving the dial alone, he pointed forward, through the center of the two roostertails. “Anyways, the Seer lives out there. Impossible to miss her as long as we head into the rain. All the way forward, hyperspace ain’t so far around. Like I said, it’s the tip of a cone, so we don’t need a map. Now, getting back is different, but quicker. That’s what the radio’s for, so they know where to meet us.”

“Mortimor and them.”

“Right. Now, you keep quiet, not enough room in here to get sick.”

Ryke scratched his beard.

“Darnation, I was about to ask you a question. You gonna chunk if I ask you to nod?”