"What exactly are we supposed to be looking for?" asked Borlin, staring out at the infinite stars with a strangely vacant look in his eyes. He looked almost like a man who was beginning to slip into a hypnotic trance, and was only aware of this on a distantly remote level from which he was losing the struggle to stay awake.

     "A flashing light," replied Matthew who was in a similar mental condition but was trying to give the appearance of alertness for the sake of discipline. "I don't know what it is or why it's so important, Callan didn't tell me. He probably doesn't know himself. We've just got to watch out for a flashing light and report in the moment we see it."

     "Well, at least we can talk to each other," the squad leader said, returning his attention to the stars surrounding them. "This is one of Saturn's better ideas."

     He was referring to the senior wizard's idea of surrounding the entire ship with a Globe of Force that could be filled with air, allowing crewmen to float around on the railed walkway without needing to wear Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing. The Globe of Force was generated by the Orb of Skydeath Protection, an artifact that had been designed to protect the ship against a strange force, found only in space, that was lethal to living creatures. While the magics that powered it were still being researched, though, Saturn had considered the possibility that the Ship of Space might come under attack from the hostile natives of any world they visited, and he had added some magics of his own that allowed the orb to generate other kinds of defensive shields.

     In other words, he had turned it into an Orb of Proofing, similar to the ones that had helped to defend Fort Dirk and Fort Bow during the Fourth Shadowwar. Similar to the one that Matthew himself had helped obtain for Fort Battleaxe and that had been vital in holding back the Shadowhordes during the war. That orb had been used to seal the city when the Ilandians had been forced to abandon it, and the central part of the city had been left completely impenetrable for ten long years until the magics powering the orb had finally failed. Sealing a city apparently placed a much heavier burden upon the orb than its normal usage. A fact that hadn't been known at the time.

     The Jules Verne therefore boasted some quite formidable magical defences, but it wasn't until the ship was actually in flight that Saturn had realised that one particular defensive spell could be put to an unexpectedly practical use. The Jules Verne was therefore now surrounded by a shell of air about six feet deep, wide enough that Matthew couldn't have reached the edge of it even if he leaned right over the railing with his arm outstretched to its fullest extent. He wasn't entirely happy with it, though. He kept remembering Thomas telling him on several occasions that magic was essentially unpredictable and that any spell stood a chance of failing without warning at any time. Also, he kept thinking about the wizards tending the orb, and how the spells it generated could be cancelled with a single word. What if that word was spoken by accident?

     He remembered his first visit to the city of Kronosia during the war. His discovery of the park caverns that had been opened to vacuum by the impact of a comet fragment two hundred years before and that had still been filled with the corpses of the people who had died there. He remembered their twisted, agonized postures. How they had crowded around the airlocks in panicked desperation as they felt the air around them growing thin. How they had trampled over each other as the agony in their lungs stripped the veneer of civilisation from them, turning good, decent people into stampeding animals.

     He shook his head to drive the images from his mind. The air isn’t going to fail, he tried to tell himself. We’re perfectly safe. The doubts remained, though, and he hoped they’d find this flashing light, whatever it was, and get back inside while they still had air to breathe. Back to where there was a solid foot of good, Beltharan steel between him and empty space.

     Another part of him was quite happy to float out here for the rest of the day, though. Just float and stare, mouth agape, eyes wide, at the glorious spectacle that surrounded him. It wasn't his first time outside the ship. He'd had to do spacewalks to get to and from the Ring of Teleportation during his trip back in time to the Agglemonian Empire, but that time he'd been too busy to admire the view. This time, though, looking was the only thing he had to do. It was what he was supposed to be doing, and the view was glorious. Magnificent!

     The contrast with the sky as seen from the surface of Tharia was striking. Standing on the ground, all you could see were the brightest stars, and even those were hard to see if there were moons or comets in the sky, let alone the red sun. Here, though... The whole sky was ablaze! And not just with stars. One side of the sky was awash with rainbow streaks of colour. Gases expelled by The Lady’s Brooch, a nearby red giant star, over the past quarter of a million years and now forming a spherical cloud thirty light years across, heated and set aglow by Tharsol, Derro and several other nearby stars.

     No-one on or near Tharia had seen what Matthew was seeing now, but from here, now that his eyes had fully adapted to the darkness, it looked as though the Gods had gone mad with giant cosmic paintbrushes. Even this was outshone by what he was seeing right in front of him, though. The diffuse white band of the Spine of Heaven. Circling the whole sky, thicker in one direction than the other but present all around and somehow giving an impression of infinity and eternity in a way that nothing else could. Their galaxy. Its true structure also impossible to discern from inside, and vast on a scale that even the Gods Themselves would have balked at.

     A flashing light, he thought distantly. How was he supposed to see a single, tiny flashing light amidst all this glory? There was no artificial lighting on the railing. The six men were floating in almost perfect darkness to give their night vision its full effect. Even so, though, the light they were looking for would have to be considerably brighter than any of the visible stars if they were to have even a small chance of spotting it. He just hoped it wasn't important, whatever it was. If the fate of the mission depended on it, he had the strong feeling that they were going to be going home early.

     The starfield drifted slowly across the sky as the ship revolved within it, and new nebulae and constellations came into view from around the curve of the ship's hull. There was Derro, the red sun, looking pretty much the same as it did from back home, but where was Tharsol? Tom had pointed it out for him when they'd first come out here. From this distance it was just a star. Almost indistinguishable from all the others. Now that was a big thought! They were so far from home that the yellow sun, the source of light and life for their whole world, was shrunk to being a mere star! If he thought about it too much it was likely to warp his mind.

     But the red sun was unchanged! All the distance they'd travelled, the immense gulf of space they'd traversed, and Derro appeared just the same as ever! How big, how immensely vast, must the red sun be to be able to shrug off such a vast distance? Not just shrug it off but sneer at it! The size of it! The true, mind numbing scale of the universe! How small must we be in comparison? he thought. How utterly insignificant...

     He could feel a pit of despair opening up beneath him, ready to swallow him whole, and he got a hurried grip on himself. This place could get to you if you let it. Then he realised with some concern that the cheerful chatter between the men had stopped and that there was an eerie silence reigning around the railed walkway.

     He unclipped his safety line, left his post and pulled himself along the railing to where the dark, shadowy shape of Borlin was just visible in the starlight, floating and staring out at the stars with a vacant, dreamy expression. "Borl?" he said, touching him on the arm to get his attention.

     The squad leader came out of it with a jump. "Sorry, Flight. I was miles away."

     "I know what you mean. You okay?"

     "Fine, sir. Just got thinking. You know? All that, out there..."

     "Probably best to avoid thinking while we're out here. Stay alert, Okay?"

     "Yes, Flight."

     It wasn't just him, then. The others were feeling it as well. He went on, passing the other men one after another and passing a few words with each of them to make sure they were okay, until he came to young Bobby Fell. The young infantryman failed to respond to Matthew's initial enquiry, and the Flight Leader had to shake him quite hard until he snapped out of his trance. "You okay, soldier?" asked Matthew, concerned.

     Bobby Fell stared at him, afraid and confused. "What are we doing out here?" he asked, his voice fearful and hesitant. "We don't belong out here. This isn't our place. They don't want us here."

     "Who don't?" asked Matthew, watching him carefully.

     "Them," said the young soldier, waving a hand at the unblinking stars. "Look at them, staring down at us. They hate us. They want us gone. Can't you feel it? Can't you feel the hatred?"

     "That'll do, soldier," said Matthew, not unsympathetically. "Go back inside, report for guard duty. Tell Makral to relieve you out here."

     There was an airlock just a few yards away and he was able to watch as the young infantryman pulled himself over to it and cycled through. Drass! he swore to himself. That's all we need. He'd have to keep an eye on all of them from now on. Watch out for anyone else coming unstuck under the soul destroying spectacle.

     Maybe he's right, he thought. Maybe we're not supposed to be out here. The thought prompted him to examine his own feelings, wondering whether he was also going a little crazy, but so far as he could tell he was still okay. For now, he amended, but what if I do crack up? I'm watching the men, but who's watching me?

     The thought bothered him as he completed the circuit around the ship and returned to his own spot, and he hoped with all his heart that they'd find what they were looking for quickly, before they lost their souls to the stars...