...It had burst out of hyperspace like a fist. At first Paul could make out nothing but a blaze of blue-shifted photons and gravitons. Then, gradually, he perceived its structure. It was a sphere a million miles wide. Fusion fires still burned within it, although its structure had clearly been badly damaged by its impact at near lightspeed with the debris in the Ring chamber: great gobbets of material showered from its surface, so that it left a trail like some impossible comet as it blazed, Paul saw, towards the throng of photino birds.

It looked like a ball of ice-cream thrown into a bank of live steam. But it was a star: a star that had been accelerated to near lightspeed and then launched through hyperspace. And it was aimed directly at the photino birds' center of operations.

This was a weapon of war. The Qax had arrived.

After that things began to happen fast.

For days the ship had hurtled on.

Erwal knew she had no real understanding of the distances she was traveling, but she could sense how far she was being separated from the place of her birth.

And she and her companions were utterly alone. Even the Friend had withdrawn once more.

From time to time she slid her hands into the gloves and felt the continuing surge of the marvelous ship. And occasionally -- when her companions were asleep -- she would open one of the panel-windows and stare gloomily at the bright spheres which battered against the panel like vast insects, or at the distant pools of muddy light which sailed more slowly by.

Inside the ship there was, of course, no pattern of day and night by which to measure time, but Erwal counted the sleep periods that passed during the journey. Soon after the fourteenth she became aware, through the subtle touch of the gloves, of a change in the ship's motion.

Hastily, still blinking sleep from her eyes, she opened a panel-window.

The barrage of stars was visibly slowing, and the motion of the distant pools of light was almost gone. Had they arrived, then? She peered at the screen.

A wall of starlight, muddled and blue-stained, blocked off the sky. She stared, awed.

Her companions stirred in their nests of rags on the floor. Hastily she shut off the panel and sat in her chair, wondering what to do now.

The Qax assault approached its climax.

The hijacked star was mere minutes away from impact with the workplace of the dark matter photino birds, and its hellish glow brought a million dancing highlights from Bolder's Ring. Now Qax-controlled Spline ships crackled out of hyperspace in the wake of the star, their fleshy hulls sparkling with weapons fire. Paul saw how the photino birds were responding; insubstantial flocks rose from the Ring material, like steam from wet earth, to face the Qax vanguard.

One photino bird flock got too close to the star. Paul watched raging gravitational radiation tear open the flock's structure. Within seconds the birds had dispersed.