"Agreed, I suppose. But can we get a message through to him? Aveling told me there were problems

with the link."

"There are always problems," Skellsgard replied. "It's just got a lot worse since you arrived. Did you hear about the s.h.i.t-storm brewing back home?"

"Aveling said that the Polities are stirring up trouble."

"It's worse than that. We've got a full-scale civil war in Polity s.p.a.ce, between the moderates and the

aggressors. No one's putting any money on who's going to win that particular catfight. Meanwhile, the aggressors are moving their a.s.sets deep into the inner system, into USNE s.p.a.ce."

"Doesn't that const.i.tute a declaration of war?"

"It would if the USNE wasn't so afraid of fighting back. At the moment, our politicians are just making a lot of exasperated noises and hoping the moderates will rein in the aggressors."

"And?"

"Be nice if it happens."

"I'm worried about my kids, Maurya. I need to be back there, taking care of them. If the aggressors

move on Tanglewood-"

"It's all right. We heard from your ex just before the link went t.i.ts-up. He wanted you to know that he'll make sure your kids are safe."

"He'd better," Auger replied.

"Jesus, kid, he's only trying to rea.s.sure you. Cut the guy some slack."

Auger ignored her. "Tell me about the link. What, exactly, is the problem?"

"Problem is our friends from the Polities are a little too close to Mars for comfort. They know about link

technology, of course. They already have the sensors to detect and localise active portals. If they even have a whisper of intelligence about there being a link around Mars, they'll be looking for it. Consequently we're having to run the link as quietly as we can, and that's why it keeps going down."

"They must know about it already. How else could the children have got here?"

"But when we took Phobos off them, there was no sign that they'd ever discovered the portal."

"Maybe," Auger said, "that was just what they wanted you to think."

They had reached the heavy iron door that led to the censor chamber. It was ajar, a bright, septic yellow

light spilling through from beyond.

"It's as I left it," Skellsgard observed.

"Best not to take anything for granted, all the same. Wait here a moment." Auger propped Skellsgard up

against the wall and pulled the automatic from her waistband, praying that there was still at least one bullet inside it. She stepped over the metal lip of the door, squeezing through the gap into the room beyond, and whipped the gun from corner to corner as fast as she could.

No children: at least, none that she could see.

She helped Skellsgard into the room, then heaved shut the iron door. Together they spun the heavy-duty lock. The door could only be unlocked from the inside.

"How are you doing?" Auger asked.

"Not too good. I think I need to loosen this tourniquet."

"Let's get you through the censor first."

The bright-yellow barrier of the censor was the only source of light in the room. It flickered in Auger's

peripheral vision, but when she looked at it directly, it remained completely unwavering. Fused into the rock around it, the framework machinery looked intact, as thoroughly ancient and alien as the last time she had seen it.

"I'm going to go ahead first and check," Auger said. "I'll be back in a few seconds."

"Or not," Skellsgard said.

"If I don't come back-if there's something waiting for me on the other side-then you'll have to take your chances on E2."

Skellsgard shivered. "I'd sooner take my chances in the Stone Age."

"They're not that bad. They do have anaesthetic, plus some rudimentary knowledge of sterilisation. If you can get yourself taken to a hospital, you'll have a pretty good chance of being looked after."

"And then? When they start asking awkward questions?"

"Then you're on your own," Auger said.

"I'd rather risk the censor. Let me go first, will you? I'm already hurt, and there's no point two of us taking an unnecessary risk. If things are OK, I'll poke my head back through to let you know."

"Take this," Auger said, offering her the automatic.

"You fired this thing?"

"Yes, and I can't promise that there are any bullets left in it."

She helped Skellsgard to the censor, then stood back as the injured woman supported her weight from the overhead rail and-with a grunt of effort and discomfort-succeeded in picking up sufficient momentum to swing herself over the threshold. The bright-yellow surface puckered inward, darkening to a bruised shade of golden brown, then swallowed her completely before tw.a.n.ging back to its intact state.

Auger waited, delving into her handbag for the weapon she had taken from the war baby. It was designed for a smaller hand than hers, but she could still grip it, even if it felt uncomfortable. It was made of metal and was very light compared with the automatic. But it was still a gun. There was a trigger and a trigger guard, and a sliding b.u.t.ton that she figured was the safety catch. There was a perforated barrel with a hole in the end and a complex hinged loading mechanism that swung out from one side. The gun was machined from curved, sleekly interlocking parts, and she suspected that it could also be reconfigured for throwing or stabbing if circ.u.mstances demanded. It didn't look like something she would have expected to find in an E2 gunsmith's workshop, but neither was it twenty-third-century condensed-energy technology from the Slasher armament works in E1 s.p.a.ce. As foreign as it looked, it was something that could conceivably have been made in E2 Paris, using local technology.

Something was pushing through the yellow surface: Skellsgard's face emerged with a pop of breaking surface tension. "It's safe," she said.

Auger disabled the weapon's safety catch and followed the other woman through the tingling barrier of the censor. Just before it swallowed her, she had time to remember Skellsgard's story of the endless yellow limbo she had once experienced during the pa.s.sage through the censor; that sense of being scrutinised by minds as ancient and huge as mountains. Auger braced herself, some part of her wanting that experience, another fearing it with every atom of her existence. But the moment of transition was as brief as the first time. As before, she felt a mild elastic resistance that suddenly abated, as if she had burst through the skin of a drum. There had been no audience with G.o.d, or whatever G.o.dlike ent.i.ties had created the censor and the duplicate Earth. Nor had any part of her been refused pa.s.sage. Her clothes and the gun she carried were still with her when she entered the portal chamber. The censor's implacable logic had decided to allow those simple things through. Or perhaps it was much less concerned with artefacts escaping E2 than entering it.

"No one's come through," Skellsgard said. She was leaning against a console, her face a pallid mask of exhaustion and shock.

"No sign of any children?"

"I don't think they made it this far. f.u.c.king lucky that they didn't, or they might have done something irreversible to the link, or turned the far end into a temporary white hole. Adios, Phobos, and anything near it."

"Let's take a look at your leg."

"I've adjusted the tourniquet. It'll be OK for a while."

Auger snapped a first-aid kit from its wall mounting. She fumbled the plastic catches open and rummaged through the contents until she found a morphine jab. "Can you do this yourself?" she asked, pa.s.sing the syringe to Skellsgard. "I'm not too good with needles."

"I'll manage." Skellsgard bit the sterile wrapper from the syringe, then jammed the needle into her thigh, just above the wound but below the tourniquet. "I don't know if this is the right thing to do," she said. "Guess I'll find out sooner or later."

"We have to get the link up and running," Auger said. "Can we do it together?"

"Give me a moment." She nodded at one of the desks down on the machine floor. "In the meantime, go down to that console and throw all the switches on the top bank to their red settings. Then see if any of the dials stay in the green."

"It's that simple?"

"One step at a time, sister. We're not cooking with gas here. We're dealing with major alterations to the local s.p.a.ce-time metric."

"My will's already up to date," Auger said. She removed her shoes and made her way down the spiral access ladder as quickly as she could. She had never been down to the machine floor before, and the scale of the equipment looming around and over her was dauntingly impressive. Fortunately, it all looked intact. The transit craft was suspended overhead in the vacuum-filled recovery bubble, clutched in the bee-striped cradle, its blunt, stress-battered nose still aimed away from the mirror-lined shaft of the portal tunnel.

Once they'd turned it around, all they needed was a moment of stability from the link.

She made her way to the console Skellsgard had indicated and flipped the heavy-duty toggle switches one by one. The dials quivered, but although one or two needles continued to hover in the red for a few moments, they eventually sank back into the green.

"We're looking good," Auger said.

Skellsgard had dragged herself to the railed edge of the upper catwalk and was looking down on Auger. "All right. That's better than I expected. Now see that second bank of switches, under the hinged plastic hood?"

"Got it."

"Lift the hood and start flipping them as well, and keep an eye on the dials. If more than two of them twitch into the red and stay there, stop flipping."

"Why do I have the impression that this is the tricky bit?"

"It's all tricky," Skellsgard said.

Auger began to flip the second set of toggles: slower this time, letting the dial above each switch twitch and settle before advancing to the next. Around her, with each switch that she threw, the machinery notched up its humming presence. Red and green status lights began to blink on items of equipment halfway across the floor, and even in the recovery bubble itself.

"I'm halfway there," Auger said. "So far so good. Will the ship fly itself?"

"One step at a time. We'll prep the ship once we've established throat curvature. Getting goose pimples yet?"

"Not yet."

"You should be."

Auger threw another switch. "Whoah, wait," she said. "We're holding in the red on the fifth dial."

"That's what I was worried about. All right. Reverse the last switch you flicked, see if that helps."

Auger did as she was told. "Back in the green," she said after a few seconds.

"Try it again."

"Still in the red. Reversing and trying again." Auger waited, biting her tongue. "Sorry. No joy. What does that mean?"

"It means we have a problem. All right. Leave that be and move to the second console, the one with the toolkit next to it."

"Got it."

"Throw the red switch on the right-hand side of the monitor and tell me what kind of numbers come up in the third column of the read-out."

Auger sc.r.a.ped dust from the gla.s.s. "Fifteen point one seven three, thirteen point zero four-"

"Roughly, Auger. I don't need decimal precision here."

"They're all between ten and twenty."

"s.h.i.t. That's not good. Stability's still compromised."

"Can we get home?"