What about the ship? Was it still heading for the wall?... Something else, in here with me. The Ghosts? No; something larger, more powerful.

Infinite.

The mind-device was without limit. It was stranded in this discontinuous space, and it was enraged.

Enraged by a pain I recognized.

Now I made out other minds. Ghosts. They were like tiny stars, shining out, falling away from each other.

The Planck mind lashed out. Ghosts were overwhelmed, insects in fire.

...The ship burst out of the sac; quantum functions rushed over me (for a precious moment visible, like prismatic waves lapping around me) and I was bound into the Universe once more.

The ship hurtled through a city-world passage, trailing ragged fragments. Ghosts lay dying all around me, their proud bodies deflated.

I looked back down the passage. A silver half-dome peered after us like some vast eye.

"...Sink Ambassador?"

"I'm still here, Jack."

We emerged from the city-world. Ghost paramedics floated onto our ship and tended the wounded.

The city-world was changing.

A light, clear and white, shone out of the hundreds of portals, illuminating the murky giant star material. The massive drive assemblies at the poles had been damaged; I saw sparks fizzing across the surface of the nearer. A flotilla of heavy Ghost ships approached the drive units.

"Ambassador, what are they doing?"

"We must endeavor to repair the drive units, or the moon will fall into the core... Jack, the growth of the Planck sac in that cavity was not controlled. We are afraid."

"I bet you are."

"We are going to try to move the moon out of the giant star."

"And then what?"

"We must find some way to restrain the sac."

I stared down at the core of the giant. "Ambassador, it will overwhelm you. What are the limits to its growth?"

"There are no limits. Perhaps the Xeelee will intervene."

"The Xeelee aren't gods." I thought fast. "Sink Ambassador, listen to me. Do you have any influence over operations here?"

"Why?"

"Stop the efforts to repair the drives."

"...I do not have the authority."

"Then find someone who does. As acting human ambassador here, I formally request this. Sink Ambassador, have you recorded that?"

"Yes, Jack. Why do you want this?"

"Because I'm frightened, too. But I think there is a way out."

The Ghosts cut the drive assemblies loose from the city-world. Within an hour the Planck sac had overwhelmed the battered moon; it hung in the giant star glow, perfectly silver. They got us out of there. I could see reflections in the sac's surface, chains of ropy Ghost ships heading for safety. It took about a day for the Planck sac to impact the star core. By that time it was ten thousand miles wide and still growing. Huge ripples crossed its monstrous surface. It slid inside the star core, fusing hydrogen closing smoothly over the shining ovoid, vacuoles flaring.

An hour later the core started to implode.