Across the entire face of the Sun, the chromosphere itself was slowly receding. In three or four orbits, Anjin guessed, Sargenti-Peterson would once again be circling in the lofty heights of the corona without ever changing altitude. He was unable to decide whether or not restoring the thrusters and descending to a lower orbit was a good idea, because he did not know if the Sun would rebound from its present contraction, or perhaps even go nova. The only sure prediction was that he had rendered the Sun’s behavior utterly unpredictable.

Harnessed in their quarters, the rest of the crew were joining the engineer and the Captain on their pad screens to stare in astonishment at the changing sunscape. Brilliant outbursts of sapphire pink and champagne orange loomed directly ahead, pulling apart like mist and veiling much of the crater’s far wall. The ship-comet streaked through the mist and continued inexorably along its path.

Not even the face of Neptune sweeping up ahead could diminish Lenny’s initial amazement. At the highest power of Gaius’s scopes, the black spot looked to him like a viral infection spreading across the face of the Sun.

“My God,” he exclaimed for the seventh time in as many minutes. “I just don’t believe it!”

“Do you really think they’re redesigning the Sun?” said Vinny.

“Engineering it to their own purposes?” asked Robyn. “Does such power exist?”

“It exists,” answered Lenny. “Difficult to believe, but there it is. Do you still think I’m hyperparanoid about nukes and neutrinos? Do you still doubt they can find us?”

Lenny’s heart was racing. In the beginning, he was just being cautious. He had started out only half believing that whatever had destroyed Graff, Nautile, and everything else that moved within Sunspace might detect a neutrino glow no matter how small. Born of the weak force, the neutrino’s interaction with matter was also weak, meaning that it could not possibly be shielded from alien detectors, for the vast majority of neutrinos would shine easily through a hull of solid lead and keep on shining through a dozen planets the size of Neptime.

Still, his crew had argued, if the glow could be kept weak enough to match very closely the background neutrino flux of the Galaxy, then small nuclear reactors might be the safest and most efficient option, making unnecessary the inconveniences and hardships of frugality. But Lenny was taking no chances. When he opted for chemical and mechanical means of power production, he had not really believed his enemies were all-powerful and allknowing. Now, convinced that they could rebuild the Sun, if they so desired, he believed they would find him no matter what precautions he took. They were like monsters in his childhood dreams—impossible to escape or hide from because they knew everything that he knew, even where he was hiding, because he was dreaming them. These destroyers were not only real, but they did not have to enter his mind. They could get him without really trying, without really knowing him….