The science platforms were pulling away now, leaving the gold-silver sphere exposed and alone.

The Sink Ambassador continued its lecture. "But we want to go further. We see this Planck-adjustment technique as a means of probing -- not just the very large -- but the infinite. Our device will verify some of the most important theorems of our, and your, mathematics, simply by a direct inspection of cases, all the way to infinity."

I stared at the bobbing Ghost. "I think you're losing me. Won't an infinite number of cases still take an infinite amount of time? -- and energy?"

"Not if the time and energy is allocated in decreasing amounts, so that the total converges to some finite value. And -- if the Uncertainty Principle is removed completely -- there is no limit to the smallness of energy allocations."

"Right. So you're going to take Planck's constant all the way to zero."

"That's right. And, Jack, mathematical conjectures are just the start. A training exercise. The artificial mind is heuristic -- it is flexible; it can learn. With its infinite capacity at our disposal we anticipate the dawn of a new era of--"

There was a spark, dazzling bright, at the heart of the silvered Planck sac. The mind-device thrashed like some grotesque fetus.

I knotted my fingers in a length of silvered rope. "Ambassador, 'space could shatter.' "

"What?"

"What does that mean to you?"

"...Nothing. Jack, are you--"

The flame filled the sac, overwhelming the machine. For an instant the sac glowed brighter than the star core.

Then the sac turned silver. It looked like some huge Ghost. Images of the crowding science platforms, of the slotted walls of the city-world cavity, shivered over its flanks.

"Ambassador, what's happening?"

"...I'm not certain."

"Have you achieved Planck Zero?"

"Yes. But the device should be signaling to us--"

The walls of the sac contracted by a few hundred feet, trembling; it was as if the sac were a living creature, breathing in.

My ship lurched away from the sac and towards the walls of the chamber. One crewman was left tumbling in space, like a drop of mercury in freefall. I clung grimly to my rope.

The walls were still miles away.

The sac's surface billowed out and overwhelmed us.

I was utterly alone.

Lonely.

Darkness.

...Dark because photons could carry no energy, here at Planck Zero; nothing to excite my optic sensors...

Cold. How could I be cold? I rubbed my hands together. I could feel my fingers break up like ancient, crumbled paper.

Electron orbits in an atom are proportional to Planck's constant. At Planck Zero the orbits must collapse... right? So, no more chemistry. How long before the crumbling process reached my brain pan?

How would it feel?

And quantum wave functions, linking me to the rest of the Universe, had all turned to dust at Planck Zero.

I could feel it. I was alone in this shattered space.