I went on, "The first time you turned that switch you watched the data desk fall twice as fast as it should have done. That was your clue... And that's how you got Krupp. The data desk suddenly came down on him at two gravities--"

"I had to abandon the nullifier on the planet," he cut in harshly. "So you'll never know for sure, will you, Gorman?" His head rotated and his pale eyes locked onto mine.

I knew he was right.

I had nothing else to say. I broke the stare and walked away. Ballantine stayed at the port, teeth bared.

The only law governing the squabbling junior races of the Galaxy was the iron rule of economics.

The second Occupation of the worlds of mankind was far more brutal than the first.

Because there were so few of them, the species called the Qax weren't naturally warlike -- individual life was far too precious to them. They were instinctive traders, in fact; the Qax worked with each other like independent corporations, in perfect competition.

"The Qax enslaved mankind simply because it was an economically valid proposition," Eve said. "They occupied Earth because it was so easy -- because they could. They had to learn the techniques of oppression from humans themselves. Fortunately for the Qax, human history wasn't short of object lessons..."

PART 3 ERA: Qax Occupation

PART 3
ERA: Qax Occupation

Blue Shift

Blue Shift

A.D. 5406

Blue shift!

My fragile ship hovered over the tangled complexity of the Great Attractor. From across a billion light years worlds and galaxies were tumbling into the Attractor's monstrous gravity well, arriving so fast they were blue-shifted to the color of fine Wedgewood.

I could have stared at it all until my eyes ached. But I had a problem. Swirling round me like dark assassins' hands were a hundred Xeelee ships. They would close on me within minutes.

My hand hovered over the control that would take me home -- but I knew that the Qax, who had sent me to this fantastic place, were waiting there to kill me.

What a mess. And to think it had all come out of a sentimental journey to a breaker's yard in Korea...

Of course I should have been looking for a job before my creditors caught up with me, not getting deeper into debt with travel costs. But there I was on the edge of that floodlit pit, watching gaunt machines peel apart the carcass of a doomed spaceship.

A wind whipped over the lip of the pit. The afternoon light started to fade; beyond the concrete horizon the recession-dimmed lights of Seoul began to glow. It was a desperate place. But I had to be there, because what they were breaking that day was the last human-built spacecraft. And my life...