In seconds the bots evaporated, sprays of liquid metal. Claire followed them with magnetic tendrils. Grabbed for the worm. Magnetic field lines groped, probed.

We have 87.88 seconds remaining for antimatter confinement.

“Save a reserve!”

You have no plan. I demand that we execute emergency—

“Okay, save some antimatter. The rest I use—now.”

Rachel could not keep track of the time limits. They would have to trust their Artilect.

The ship plowed downward, shuddering. Claire’s hands fumbled at the wormhole. “Now it feels slippery, oily.”

On the main screen Rachel watched magnetic fields like greasy hair, slick, coiling, the bulk beneath jumping away from Claire’s grasp, as if it were alive. On side screens she saw the dark globe slide and bounce. The worm wriggled out of her grasp again.

Rachel turned to Fraq. “Now’s the time for that recog code.”

At last Fraq murmured, “True, yes. I did not believe possible, but we did receive a hail from the Gatekeeper, as the ancient texts termed it.”

“When you came through the wormhole?”

“It was just inside the Mouth. Somehow suspended there. It can control access—again, I know not how.”

Rachel turned to Claire. “Run the unscrambler.”

“Already done. What’s the code?”

Fraq said simply, “My name. Use”—he rattled off six digits—“and beam at one hundred thirteen gigahertz. I follow your numerics.”

“Got it.” Claire punched in. A squeak signaled transmission.

The wormhole swelled, turned a dark crimson. Rachel could not imagine what arcane dynamics were at play here. Gravitational signals?

Claire barked in surprise. Now she could snake inductive fingers around the shimmering, ruby-red oval. “Easy, easy… there. Gotcha!”

Rachel gasped, suppressed the sound. A thin sigh echoed from Erma.

On operations screens she saw the ship’s magnetic vaults begin to lock up.

“What’s its mass now?” Rachel called.

Tens of tons, I estimate.

“We’re dragging it, but we’ve got magnetic pressure from the arch, too,” said Claire.

Entangled field lines, plasma loops—these increase the apparent inertia.

Claire growled, “Let’s see what we can do about cutting free.”

Fraq said, “The wormhole is receptive now. You may move it. But I wish you take care.”

Rachel felt a surge as the ship began to lift, firing hard, dumping antimatter into the reaction chamber. Erma at work. The ship had funneled in dense plasma to match against the antimatter, so they had heavy thrust now. The hot jet spurting out below them was a mixture of matter and its howling enemy, its polar opposite.

Rachel thought, Hell hath no fury like—

—and her thought stopped as she saw Claire slamming the fury-fire down, down—in a cone, onto the flux tubes around the hole. Leggo, damn it.

She realized that Claire knew an old trick, impossibly slow in ordinary free space. When you manage to force two magnetic field lines close together, they can reconnect. The inevitable plasma caught on them went turbulent, adding resistance. That liberates some field energy into heat and can even blow open a magnetic structure. The process is slow—unless you jab it with turbulent, rowdy plasma. That triggers massive slabs of field pressure to annihilate.