...And, just at this crucial instant, a little clump of consciousness knots popped out of hyperspace, emerging just outside the clear space around the Ring.

The humans had arrived. Paul hurried to them.

Wings outspread, the Xeelee ship hurtled through a storm of light.

The panel-window showed blue stars, hundreds of them jammed together, some so close they were joined by umbilici of fire. The villagers stood and stared, transfixed. Children clung to the legs of their parents and cried softly.

"Turn it off!" Sura buried her face in her hands. "I can't bear to look at it; turn it off!"

Erwal gripped the gloves grimly. "I can't," she said.

The Friend was in her head again, his visions a clamor that left her unable to think.

Onwards, he said. She had to go onwards, deeper into this swarm of insect-stars, using all the skills she had learned to haul the ship through this barrage of stars. Tears leaked out of her eyes, but she dared not rest. Her world narrowed to the feel of the gloves on her stiffening hands, the gritty rain of stars in her eyes.

With a soundless explosion the ship erupted into clear space.

Erwal gasped, pulled her hands out of the gloves; the ship seemed to skid to a halt.

They were in an amphitheater of light. The far wall was a bank of stars, hard and blue; it curved into a floor and ceiling also made of blue-tinged starstuff. And at the center of the vast chamber was a jewel, a Ring that turned, huge and delicate. One point of the Ring was marred by smoke; red and blue light flickered in that cloud.

Erwal felt Sura touch the crown of her head. The girl's hand seemed to be trembling, and Erwal laid her own hand over Sura's -- then realized that the trembling was her own, that her whole body was shaking uncontrollably.

Sura asked, "Are you all right?"

"...I think so."

"Where are we?" Sura pointed. "What's that? It's beautiful. Do you think it's some kind of building? Why, it must be miles wide."

But Erwal barely heard. Once more the Friend clamored in her thoughts, pressing, demanding; she longed to shut him out--

Without hesitation she shoved her hands back into the gloves. The Xeelee ship plummeted into hyperspace.

The weapon-star burned through the ranks of photino birds towards the Ring. Vast as it was the star was lost against that great tangled carcass...

Until it hit.

The battered star collapsed as if made of smoke. Sheets of hydrogen, some of it still burning at star-core temperatures, were dug out of the star's gut by writhing cosmic string. The star's mass was reduced from lightspeed to stationary in less than a minute; Paul watched huge shock waves race around the Ring's structure.

Now the Qax's Spline warships followed up the starstrike; cherry-red beams lanced from their weapon pits, and Paul recalled the Xeelee gravity-wave starbreaker cannons observed by Jim Bolder. Photino birds imploded around the beams, flocks of them turning into transient columns of smoke that shone with exotic radiations and then dispersed.