Dzik tried to smile; his mouth was lost in the bulk of his face. "Well, we have a problem. I'm sorry."

Poole stifled a sigh; a knot of tension settled in his stomach.

He followed Dzik into the flitter. The little ship was empty save for the pilot, a crop-haired woman who nodded briskly to Poole. Through the flitter's curving windows Poole saw Luna's ancient light, and the baby-blue tetrahedron that was the Interface to the wormhole to Baked Alaska. Poole and Dzik strapped themselves into adjacent seats, and with a ghost's touch of acceleration the flitter surged forwards. Poole watched the approach of the hundred-yard-wide Interface; planes of silver-gold, fugitive, elusive, shone over the blue framework.

Problems, always problems. You should have stuck to physics, Mike.

Dzik shifted the briefcase on his lap and made to open it with his sausage-like fingers. He hesitated. "How's the Cauchy coming on?"

You know how it's coming on; you get my briefings from the Jovian site, and the rest of my reports. Poole decided to play along, unsure of Dzik's mood. "Fine. Miriam Berg's doing a good job out there. The ship's GUTdrive is man-rated now, and the production of exotic material for the portals is underway. You know we've tapped into Io's flux tube as an energy source, and..."

Dzik was nodding, his eyes on Poole's face; but he wasn't listening to a word.

"Come on, Bill," Poole said. "I can take it. Tell me what's on your mind."

Dzik smiled. "Yeah."

The Interface's powder-blue struts slid past the flitter, obscuring the Moon.

Dzik opened the briefcase and drew out a series of photographs. "Look at these." They were coarse images of the surface of Baked Alaska. The sky was empty save for a speckling of distant stars, any of which could have been the Sun. The landscape was bare, cracked ice -- save for some odd, rooted structures rather like the stumps of felled trees.

"I'm sorry about the quality," Dzik said. "These had to be taken from long range. Very long range."

Poole riffled through the photos. "What's this about, Bill?"

Dzik ran plump fingers through short, greasy hair. "Look, Mike, I've been involved in the wormhole projects almost as long as you have. And we've faced problems before. But they've been technical, or political, or..." Dzik counted on his fingers. "Solving the fundamental problem of wormhole instability using active feedback techniques. Developing ways to produce exotic matter on an industrial scale, enough to open the throats of wormholes a mile wide. Getting agreement from governments, local and cross-System, to lace the Solar System with wormhole transit paths. And the funding. The endless battles over funding..."

Battles which weren't over yet, Poole reflected. In fact, as he made sure Dzik never forgot, the commercial success of Dzik's Baked Alaska venture was crucial for the funding of the overall goal, the Cauchy's flight into interstellar space.

"But this is different." Dzik poked a finger at the glossies, leaving a greasy smear. "Not technical, not financial, not political. We've found something which isn't even human. And I'm not sure if there is a resolution."