On the bridge of the Jules Verne, Lirenna watched the image of the silver ship in the scrying mirror as it receded and shrank, and she mentally wished her husband a safe voyage and a safe return.

     Captain Strong rose from his chair and stretched, easing the tension out of his muscles. “Nothing’s going to happen for a while,” he said. “I leave the bridge in your capable hands. Make sure one of you is wearing a Helm of Farsensing at all times. I’m not expecting any more missiles so long as we wait here and do nothing, but best to be prepared, and keep an eye on the…”

     His voice broke off as he looked up at the object he’d been about to refer to. The Orb of Skydeath Detection, also known as the fishtank, fastened to the wall above the scrying mirror. The little silver fish that normally drifted around inside it were all drifting slowly towards one side of the spherical bowl. The side facing the planet they’d come to explore. The Captain swore. “Skydeath!” he cried. “Orbmaster, take us back through the portal at once!”

     Lirenna was shocked rigid, remembering Gunther Fugh, who'd been killed by skydeath and who might have received the fatal exposure in the very same chair she was occupying now, but then her training took over and her voice sounded almost normal as she spoke the words to activate the dormant Farspeaking spells. "Skydeath warning," she said slowly and calmly, her sweet, musical voice giving no indication of her fear. The way her heart was hammering in her chest. "Skydeath warning. Everyone report to the hanger deck for teleportation back to Tharia. Repeat, skydeath warning. All hands report to the hanger deck.”

     “That includes you,” said Strong, pointing to the door. “Everyone out! Get to the hanger deck!”

     Lirenna hesitated, though, thinking of Thomas. Was the felisian ship experiencing skydeath as well? They didn’t have a fishtank! Did the silver ship have its own way of detecting skydeath? “Tom!” she cried, desperately hoping the bridge’s permanent Farspeaking spells would let her speak to someone on another ship. “Tom! Can you hear me? There's skydeath in the ship! We're heading back to our own universe!”

     “Lenny!” came Thomas’s voice in her head. “Are you alright?”

     “Skydeath!” repeated the demi shae. “Get back here, right away! Teleport back to this ship! We have to go back!”

     She sensed Thomas repeating her warning to the others on the silver ship, but the Jules Verne was already moving and the view In the scrying mirror was suddenly tinged with crimson as they entered the portal.

     “No!” she cried. “We can’t leave them!”

     “There’s no time,” replied the Captain as the other members of the bridge crew hurried out, glancing anxiously back at her as they did so. “When skydeath hits, you’ve got seconds.”

     “They only need a couple of seconds…”

    “They’ll be fine. Their ship wasn’t attacked last time…”

     “You don’t know that!” She sensed the Farspeaking link breaking as they left the portal, though. She knew that teleporting had become impossible at the same moment, and she gave a cry of despair. She stared at the scrying mirror, where the silver ship was still visible through the portal, getting smaller as it sped away, and she gasped as she noticed something else. Something that had to be connected.

     The planet they’d come to explore, just a bright point of light at this distance, had become brighter and had changed colour, becoming a horrid, evil green. She only saw it for a moment, and then it disappeared, the starfield visible through the portal changing as it cycled on to another universe. They had passed through in the very nick of time!

     He heard me! thought the demi shae. I warned him, but now he’s trapped there until the portal opens again. Four days! The Gods protect you, my beloved! The Gods protect you! Keep yourself safe and find your way back to me.

     Then the Captain was physically pulling her from her seat and pushing her towards the door, and Lirenna tottered out into the corridor on legs that were shaking with worry and fear.

☆☆☆

     “Lenny!” cried Thomas, and everyone aboard the Bescot turned to stare at him. “Are you alright?”

     “Master Gown?” said Saturn, real anger appearing on his face. “Unauthorised communications…”

     Thomas waved at him to shut up, though, his eyes closed as he concentrated. “There’s skydeath on the Jules Verne!” he cried. “They’re going back through the portal!”

     Saturn cursed. “Get ready to teleport,” he ordered. “And be quick! We’ve only got seconds before the portal closes.”

     He gestured for the felisians to gather around him, grabbing their hands and telling them to form a chain, and Thomas did the same with the human crewmen, but before they could finish linking up the Jules Verne turned crimson as it entered the portal, and a moment later the portal vanished, leaving nothing but stars, shining impassively and uncaringly at them.

     “We’re too late,” said Saturn unnecessarily. “Captain, is there skydeath here?”

     “If skydeath is what I think it is,” replied Tager Yee, looking at an area of hull where a cluster of symbols were changing and blinking on and off, “our instruments report nothing. We are safe. I suspect your ship was attacked again, and that we are safe because whoever launched the attack recognises this ship.”

     “Lenny’s safe,” said Thomas, desperately hoping it was true. “They were only exposed for a few seconds, and the clerics can heal it now. They’ll be teleporting back to Tharia, to get themselves checked out.”

     “They were unbelievably lucky,” said Matthew. “If the attack had come just a few seconds later, the portal would have closed and they’d have had no way back. They would have been killed. The whole crew.”

     Thomas nodded, shuddering at the thought of it. “The Gods are with us,” he said. “Lenny’s safe. She’ll be fine.”

     “And in the meantime,” said Saturn, “We have a mission to perform. Nothing much has changed. We no longer have the Jules Verne to evacuate back to if something goes wrong, but if we’re careful nothing will go wrong. We’re stuck in this universe for four days anyway. We might as well do what we came here to do.”

     Thomas nodded and he settled back with the others, knowing he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking of Lirenna until he knew for sure that she was safe. It was going to be a very long four days. Saturn was right, though. There was no way home for a while. They might as well carry on with their mission.

     Matthew made his way around the curve of the hull until he was next to the wizard and put a hand on his shoulder. “She’ll be fine,” he said. “I know she will.”

     Thomas nodded gratefully and tried to put it out of his mind. There was nothing he could do to help her, so there was no point worrying about her. He laughed internally. Who am I kidding? he thought. As if I could stop worrying!

     An uncomfortable silence fell aboard the ship, no-one knowing what to say. All the expedition members were thinking of friends they had aboard the Ship of Space. As time passed, though, other, more immediate matters took their attention, such as how to get more comfortable. Jop Sonno climbed down to the very bottom of the ship where the curvature of the hull, forming a rounded end to the ship's single open space, made it possible for him to sit with his back against the bare metal. Good idea, thought Thomas and he went to join him, where he was joined in turn by Matthew, Timothy and Roj Villa. They sat facing each other, their knees crowded together in the middle, and tilted their heads back to see the rest of the ship above them.

     "Erm, maybe this isn't such a good idea after all," the wizard muttered. "If one of them falls..."

     "They won't fall," said Matthew confidently. "Cats never fall."

     "They do sometimes," said Thomas, but he was reassured nevertheless by the casual, confident way the felisians moved about above them. Even so, though, some kind of net, strung across the ship about halfway up, might have been a good idea...

     Now that he had time, Thomas looked around the ship, amazed by the simplicity of the single chamber. Apart from the handholds in the walls and the cabinets containing the hammocks, which the felisians had clearly added themselves, there was absolutely nothing resembling any kind of furniture. No fittings or appliances of any kind. Where did the crew eat? Where did they wash and perform bodily functions? The hull appeared to be a seamless shell of bare metal without panels or openings behind which such things might have been concealed. Where had the Masters slept?

     It was as though the ship had been designed only for short trips, no more than an hour or two, and indeed that would seem to be sufficient for trips to and from the portal, as their present journey to planet eighty one stroke five was proving, but what did the felisians do during the long voyages to and from Tharia? Thomas thought of asking one of them, but they all seemed to be busy at the moment. Perhaps the chance would come later in the voyage.

     "How did they manage to land a ship as big as this in Lexandria Valley without anyone noticing?" asked Matthew. "I mean, even if they'd come down at the end of one of the passes, there are retired wizards and their staff living all along them. How come nobody noticed something the size of this thing dropping out of the sky?"

     "Maybe they came and went at night," suggested Thomas. "Or maybe they can make them invisible."

     "But I thought they couldn't use magic."

     "They can drive this ship through space without magic. Maybe they can make it invisible without magic as well. You can bet these were the first questions Seskip asked the saboteurs he captured, and if they couldn't answer them, Clordus will have. Seskip's probably already taking steps to make sure it can't happen again."

     Matthew nodded. "And if it's a matter of valley security, we'll very probably never learn any more than we do now. Seskip won't want other enemies knowing how to get into the valley undetected."

     Thomas nodded his agreement.

     Saturn floated up to the top of the ship to look over the crew's shoulders as they watched the displays and operated the controls, and now and then he asked a question, the answer to which came in a voice too soft to carry to where the other Tharians were sitting. At one point Saturn tried operating a control, to satisfy himself that they would respond to his touch as well as those of the Felisians.

     He saw Tager Yee growing increasingly irritated by the wizard's interest, but he didn't dare complain, even when Saturn accidentally sent the ship into a slow tumble that the crew had to spend several minutes sorting out. After that, though, the wizard retreated a little, watching the displays showing the ringed planet as if fearing that the momentary loss of control might have attracted the attention of the planet's defenders. There was no activity from the planet, though, and after a couple of minutes the wizard relaxed, although he made no further attempt to touch the controls himself.

     "Approaching turnover point," said Tager Yee some time later. "Prepare for zero gravity."

     A moment later the Tharians felt their weight slipping away until they were floating weightless again, and Thomas took the opportunity to push himself higher up the ship. He'd discovered that he didn't like being right at the bottom, where anything dropped would land on him. This didn't apparently bother the others, all of whom remained where they were, and when weight returned they settled back down into a sitting position as before.

     Thomas was now closer to the business end of the ship, close enough to hear the crew's conversation, all of which took place in the Tharian common tongue out of consideration for their passengers.

     "We are now closer to the planet than the Jules Verne was when it was attacked the first time," one of the felisians said.

     "Any sign of activity?" asked Tager Yee.

     "Nothing. The planet is quiet."

     Thomas's attention was attracted by a panel beside him that had a small flashing circle of colour appearing and disappearing on it. He stared at it for a few moments, wondering what it was, and then, acting on an impulse, he reached out and touched it. Immediately, rows and columns of symbols appeared on the bare metal. Lines of text in some foreign language, scrolling upwards. Lines disappearing from the top and others appearing at the bottom.

     He thought about bringing it to Saturn's attention, wondering if it was the silver ship’s equivalent of a skydeath warning. He didn't think that was likely, though. If it was a warning, it would be a lot more conspicuous. There’d be lights flashing, sirens blaring... This was something else, something a lot less important.

     I should still tell him, he thought, but he felt a tremor of fear at the very thought. The older wizard had made it very clear that he didn't want to hear a word from him, and there’d been a dangerous look in his eye when Thomas had received the Farspoken message from Lirenna. As leader of the expedition, he clearly thought it should have been he who'd received the warning, as if there was any chance at all the demi shae wouldn’t have called her husband first. Thomas felt a savage satisfaction, therefore, at the thought that he was obeying his express order in keeping silent. He moved his body to hide the scrolling text from Saturn's view, therefore, and cast a Translation spell on it.

     His vision swam as the spell had its effect on his brain, and when it cleared the text made some sense to him, although much of it was still bizarrely incomprehensible. "...you require an approach vector? Repeat, do you require an approach vector? Mantric vessel, please respond. Are you experiencing communication difficulties? My scans indicate that many of your systems are inactive or damaged. Do you require repair?"

     There was a long gap between this line and the next, so that the last line of text had almost disappeared off the top before the next appeared at the bottom. "Mantric vessel, you are cleared for approach. Maintain your present course. Assistance will be waiting upon your arrival. We hope you enjoy your stay on Fechlon."

     That was the last communication, and the strange, alien words scrolled upwards until they disappeared, leaving nothing but bare metal where they'd been. Thomas was stunned, though, and horrified. There was someone, or something, waiting for them up ahead, something capable of talking to them, and he, Thomas, had deliberately concealed the fact from the others! If he told Saturn now, who knew how he'd respond? Fly into a rage most likely and blast him to atoms. He consoled himself with the thought that he hadn't really learned anything they hadn't known already. The attack upon the Jules Verne had told them that there was something alive up ahead, and Saturn was already being as cautious as he knew how to be. There were no additional precautions he knew how to take. I should still have brought it to his attention, though, he told himself. If it happens again, I will.

     He kept his eyes on that section of wall, waiting for the small circle of colour to begin flashing again, but it didn't. Not even when they began to grow close to the planet's rings. Tager Yee slowed the ship's deceleration so that they continued to drift forward at a slow rate.

     "Well, here we are," said the felisian commander. He indicated the viewscreen, where the great, angular blocks of the planet's ring drifted slowly past, many of them with dark, sharp angled windows. All of them tethered to each other by long strands of material that appeared as delicate as spiderweb. "Where do you want to go now?"

     "Take us where you went last time."

     The felisian commander looked uncomfortable. "It's not that simple," he said. "There are so many structures composing this ring, and they all look alike. There's no simple way of knowing which were the ones we visited. We left marks upon them, of course, where we forced entry, but we'd have to examine each block individually to find them."

     Saturn scowled, and looked out the viewscreen at the thousands of angular blocks drifting past; brilliant sunlit metal contrasting sharply with inky black shadow. Although they came in a variety of sizes and shapes, none of them stood out from the others. Finding anything here would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Saturn sighed and picked a block at random. A nearby one that seemed larger than most of its neighbours. "That one," he said. "Take us to that one."

     "Very good," said Tager Yee, and gave instructions to his crew. A moment later they felt the ship moving, and the block grew larger in the screen, fine details appearing on its surface as it emerged from its crowd of fellows. Panels and lines that might have been seams or welds. Struts and spars clustered about one end, pointing in the direction away from the planet.

     The silver ship moved slowly, manoeuvring carefully around the cable tethers mooring their target with its neighbours, and finally came to rest less than twelve yards from the apparently lifeless object.

     "Landing party, to the airlock," called out Saturn, and the Tharians muttered apprehensively as they pushed and pulled themselves towards the opening inner door.

☆☆☆

     The traffic control computer noted the Mantric vessel's arrival at habitation module G-10446 without emotion, and was equally unconcerned by the failure of the services coordination system to respond to its messages regarding a vessel in need of repair. Such feelings of concern were outside its programming, so it was incapable of feeling any alarm or distress at the almost total silence that had fallen across Fechlon and its ring city. It simply did its job, and if the other computerised systems that regulated the Fechlon civilisation were not doing theirs then that was their problem.

     One of the few systems that was still responding was the defence grid, though, and it had been this that had aimed the particle beam at the second ship, driving it away for the second time. The defence grid had considerably more intelligence than the traffic control system, and it noted that the mantric vessel had also come from that direction, suggesting that the two ships were in league with each other. That, and the unknown ship's impressive ability to shrug off its attack with no apparent damage, meant that the defence grid was watching the mantric ship very closely.

     With the police units inactive, the defence grid had taken it upon itself to uphold the local laws and regulations, but it couldn't make arrests or charge fines. It could only destroy. So be it. Let the Mantric ship break one single law, no matter how trivial, or if it gave any further sign of being in league with the alien ship, and it would be blasted to atoms. The defence grid had a responsibility to its creators, the beings it hadn't heard from for sixteen thousand years, and it took that responsibility very seriously. Very seriously indeed.