Paul, somber, reflected that the destruction of the Ring had in the end provided the key racial goal for the human race. But now that the end was close the last human -- Paul -- felt nothing but a cultured sadness, an aesthetic pain at the loss of such power and beauty.

The surviving Qax, too, were, at last, no more than impotent observers, ignored by the photino birds.

After about half a year the photino birds withdrew. The fruit of their labor was a slice through the Ring perhaps a light year thick. Around this darkling slice the substance of the Ring was crumbling, turning to sparkling threads that drifted away from the structure.

The Kerr-metric Interface wavered, dissolved; and the Universe was sealed.

Paul moved his attention foci closer to the gap. The broken threads of cosmic string shriveled from the wound, so that the gap in the Ring widened at near lightspeed.

Photino birds swooped around the wound as if in a huge triumphant dance.

The vast structure had no mechanism to recover from such a wound. Now there was only its long, slow death to play out; and the photino birds, evidently incurious, began to depart, returning their attention to their own mysterious projects.

Like sea waves from the wreck of some immense ship gravity radiation surged out of the Ring's gravitational well, and at last the vast pit in spacetime began to close.

The observers -- the Qax, the last photino bird flocks -- began to leave the scene. Paul grasped his quantum threads and slipped into the gathering darkness.

The Xeelee ship emerged from the Kerr-metric Interface. It furled its wings, slid to a halt, and sent its sensors probing into the new Universe.

Erwal stared at a screen that had become suddenly a blank pane of silver, reflecting only her own tired face.

Sura asked, "What does it mean?"

Erwal frowned. "I don't know." She tried to move the focus of the screen, but there was no response. And the gloves around her hands were like dead things, inert.

The ship no longer responded to her touch. She withdrew her hands.

"I don't understand," Sura said. "Did we pass through the Ring? What should we do?"

"How could I know?" Erwal snapped. "We wait, I suppose."

Sura stepped away, uncertain.

After some hours, Erwal climbed out of her chair and stretched painfully.

Trying to overcome her enormous sense of anticlimax she established a routine. After each of the next few sleeps she crossed to the control table and slipped her hands into the gloves. But the ship remained inert, sealed off.

Gradually her routine broke down.

She was tired, and she had had enough mystery. She tried to settle into life inside this odd ship-village and forget the strangeness outside.

The function of the Xeelee ship was to optimize the chances of survival of its human occupants.

It studied the purposeless emptiness stretching around it and considered how this might be achieved.