"Teachers have been known to lose patience," Exedore retorted. "In any event, keeping watch on the front doorsuch as it is-does little more than draw attention to us. I suggest to you that the Haydonites would have filled these rooms with monitoring devices if they for one moment suspected wed be foolish enough to attempt an escape."

Max glanced at the alloy partitions and ceilings. Veidt had been responsible, too, for the holo-views that adorned the long, rear walls-vistas of rolling hills crisscrossed with hedgerows and low stone walls. A sun shone in the false sky, rising and setting in breathtaking colors; if nothing else, it had at least returned the captives to a semblance of circadian normalcy. Max sometimes felt as though he were back in the SDF-1, carousing after a mission with Rick and Ben in downtown Macross under EVE'S projected cloudscape.

And there he was, the only full-blooded Terran in the room. "I'm certain of one thing," Exedore resumed. "Haydon IV has defolded."

"I guessed as much," Max told him, gratified that he could still rely on his own senses to differentiate between real time and hyperspace. "Can you find out where we are?"

"I have already established that. Although I'll confess I should have suspected it all along."

Max laid a protective hand on Aurora's shoulder; the doeeyed child looked up at him and smiled as Exedore took a deep breath.

"We are inserted in orbit around a small, carbonaceous moon that circles this system's sixth planet-an equally desolate place, I might add. The Zentraedi knew the system's dying primary as Qalliph, a word approximated by the Panglish term dread."

Max raised an eyebrow. "Go on."

"Actually, it isn't so much the star itself that inspired the name but the phenomenon to which it in turn pays gravitational obeisance. The Masters named it Raanath's Star, after an especially barbaric warlord from Tirol's pre-Transition past. Your own astrophysicists have labeled such phenomena black holes."

Max whistled lightly. "I've always wanted to get a look at one of those things."

Exedore frowned at him. "Yes, I recall from my delvings into Terran literature that your race has endowed these black holes with near-mystical importance. This was especially true among your so-called science fiction writers, I believe. A blend of romantic fascination and morbid curiosity. But I can assure you, as one who has seen an entire battle group swallowed by these sinister portals, that even the most ghoulish of your imaginings doesn't come close to detailing the horrors of the experience."

"So what are we doing here?" Max asked after a moment of nightmare reflection.

Exedore did input at the console, then studied the displayed results in silence. "The reason is twofold. First, I believe that we-Haydon IV, that is-are in pursuit of the energy pulse that originated in Earthspace with the Invid defeat. Based on the results of my previous investigations, I posited that Ranaath's Star was the terminus of that pulse.

"Second, Haydon IV is apparently making use of radiation bleeding from the collapsed star, but to what purpose I cannot fathom. The Awareness has also issued a series of commands to the planetary drives, which will soon bring us dangerously close to the cratered satellite we have been orbiting." Exedore regarded Aurora but continued to address Max. "An external view would be most helpful, but I have yet to determine whether visual data are available. The Awareness had been operating in a purely abstract mode."

Max was just beginning to reply when Dana burst upon the scene.

"You can put away the toy," she directed to Exedore. "Unless you can use it to find out whether the Awareness believes in an afterlife." Exedore cocked an eyebrow.

Miriya was only a few steps behind, wearing the worried look she reserved for her eldest child.

"The Praxians have worked out a wall-tapping commo code with the Karbarrans next door," Dana explained. "Seems one of the jailers let it slip that a Karbarran recon vessel homed in on our new address and radioed a burst transmission to Karbarra. Since then, a fleet of Local Group battleships has folded from Tirol. They're due any hour now." Max searched his wife's face.

"It's true, Max," Miriya said. "At least that's what they told us. The Karbarran prisoners claim to have discovered some way to override the threshold confinement lasers as well. They're prepared to ready a full-scale revolt as soon as the battle group arrives and the attack commences."

"But they've already lost three ships," Exedore reminded everyone. Beside him, Aurora had reached a hand over to enter a command into the console.

"They'll never learn," Max said absently, monitoring Aurora's movements peripherally.

"Yeah, well, a fleet can do a lot more damage than a single ship," Dana argued, hands on her hips. "I say we throw in with the Karbarrans. Anything's better than being cooped up in here."

"An uprising would prove a terrible mistake," Aurora interjected quietly.

It was as though an oracle had spoken. Exedore swiveled in his seat, but something on the display screen caught his attention and brought him up short.

"Figures you'd say that," Dana replied uncertainly.

"You must tell them to be patient, sister," Aurora added in the same assured tone. "The Karbarrans must wait until the Awareness is preoccupied."

"Preoccupied how?" Dana wanted to know.

"Here!" Exedore said, an unsteady index finger aimed at the monitor.

Max narrowed his eyes as a series of complex schematics flashed on-screen.

Dana got a grip on the Zentraedi's shoulder. "Don't go mute on us now, Exedore, or I'll-"

"It's changing," he said before she could complete the threat. "The entire planet. Haydon IV is reconfiguring!"

"The second star to the right?" Rick asked, wondering when he had heard the phrase before. "Why that one?" Lang's broad shoulders heaved. "It's the closest. It appears to be, I should say. Light seems to enjoy playing games with itself in this place. One moment the star lies directly along our course, the next it doesn't. One moment it's effectively beyond reach, the next at our bow." The scientist gestured to the engineering room's tablescreen. "You see! There it changes again. As if it were compensating for the deficiency of our drive system or trying to decide just where to locate itself." He shook his head. "What's the sense of trying to discover the essential mechanics of this realm where there is nothing immutable to measure against?"

Several theories had been advanced when the fog of newspace had lifted and distant stars had appeared, all of which had since been quickly overruled by updated findings: The SDF-3 had not been returned to hyperspace, nor had it manifested from fold somewhere in the intergalactic void.

According to some, however, the present darkness was but the afterlife tunnel itself, and next would come encounters with deceased relatives and shadowy presences.

Many, in fact, had already begun to review their lives. Screen-weary, Rick was massaging his eyes with his fingertips. Here was a universe to behold from the viewports, but to hear Lang tell it, the stars might as well have been insubstantial. Rem was standing behind the two of them, silently brooding.

Lang said, "We train our scopes on the farthest reaches, millions of parsecs distant, and what do we find?"

Rick waited, then realized that he was supposed to answer. "Uh, I don't know. What do we get?"

"Stars literally winking into existence." Lang punched a scancorder's playback bar. Eyes on the monitor again, Rick felt as though he were soaring over the crest of an invisible hill to watch stars appear on the horizon.

"Maybe we're inside some sort of torus," he ventured. "Our motion's a continuous curve instead of the straight line we perceive."

Lang's upper teeth were bared when he turned Rick an over-the-shoulder look.

Rick felt skewered. "It was only a suggestion."

"Of course," Lang said with unconcealed condescension. All at once Rick was aware of Rem's breath on the back of his neck. "Are you just going to stand there?" he asked, adopting Lang's curdled expression as he swung around.

"I have nothing to add," Rem told him.

Rick inclined his head to one side. "Rumor has it you blacked out when the lights hit us."

Lang twisted around in his chair. "I heard nothing of this." The Tiresian regarded them coolly. "Minmei exaggerates. We unfortunately found ourselves at a nexus point. The experience was somewhat overwhelming. I may have lost consciousness, but only for a moment."

Lang traded looks with Rick. "Why didn't you report this?" Rick pressed.

Rem shrugged. "There was nothing to report. A slight feeling of dissociation, not altogether unpleasant."

Rick regarded him for a long moment. "The next time you lend yourself at the center of something, Rem, you come to tell us about it. That's an order."

Jack gave the Alpha's thinking cap an angry toss as he combed from the cockpit. The sensitive helmet struck the forward seat with an audible thud and drew the attention of a burly flight mechanic who was standing nearby.

"You wanna watch that, sir," the man said as Jack dropped to the deck. "Next time your bird's not answerin', you know why, right?"

Jack considered making an issue of it but in the end apologized. "I'll watch it."

"That'd be smart, Cap'ain."

Everybody's a goddamn expert, Jack thought, striding away. Command when they order you not to engage, mechies when they're telling you how to care for your gear. And Sean and the rest of the 15th jockeys when they're telling you how to pilot your craft.

Captain Phillips was approaching from across the hangar bay, Dante and Marie Crystal on either side. Jack looked around for Karen, but she was nowhere in sight. So I'll go it alone.

"That was some soarin' there, hotshot," Sean began. "Where'd you think you were, in an air circus?"

"And I suppose you had the whole thing sussed, is that it, Phillips?"

"At least we knew enough to go to Battloid, Jack," Marie interjected.

Jack glared at her. "Enough to go to Battloid? That was the most asinine thing I've ever seen. Even a VT cadet knows better than to go upright when going to lasers. It's not only a waste of fuel but a wasted thought. I don't know if that kind of stunt flying cut it against the Masters-personally, I doubt it-but this is null-g, folks. I mean, you Troopers better get your exo shit together if you're gonna stay with the program."

The three ex-tankers exchanged wide-eyed looks.

"Can you believe this guy?" Sean said. "He goes in teatsup, belly lasers engaged-full retro, mind you-and he's got the nerve to rag us about stunt flying?"

Jack fumed. It was the same argument they had been having for two years. Of course there had been no missions to fly all that time, so the competition had to be saved for practice runs with green cadets outside Tirol's envelope or the occasional deep-space prototype of off the Ark Angel. Then there were the nights on leave when things got roughneck and rowdy downside in some Tiresian canteen. But what else could you expect from mechamorphs who had suddenly been plucked from combat and practically returned to school when they were not drawing watch assignments in ordnance factories or on some Karbarran-manufactured peat-cruisers?

"I'm gonna have to trim your course some, Phillips," Jack said. menacingly.

Sean motioned his teammates back and set himself in a bent-knee stance. He curled his fingers at Jack. "Come on, then, Jack. Make your move."

Jack really had not expected things to go that far but clearly realized there was no backing down. "Suit yourself, Sean," he said, about to raise his fists.

"That'll be quite enough of that," a voice said loudly enough to bring everyone around. Jack thought for a moment that Karen was coming to his six, but one look at her face told him he was flying blind.

"This is positively the most pathetic excuse for a debriefing I've ever witnessed."

"We weren't exactly debriefing, sir," Dante started to say.

"That's right," Sean said with a glowering glance at Jack. "It was more in the way of comparing styles."

Marie said, "Look, Karen, we were just-"

"Maybe you've forgotten that we lost several good pilots out there, is that it?" She shook her head in disapproval. Real heroes, all of you."

"Jeez, Karen," Jack said with a hangdog look.

"Save it," she told him.

"How are they being listed, sir?" Angelo Dante asked softly as Karen was about to walk away.

She turned to face him. "A new classification to suit our situation, Sergeant Dante. Neither killed in action nor missing and presumed dead."

"How then, sir?"

"Presumed missing, " she told him.

Elsewhere in the superdimensional fortress, retired 15th Corporal Bowie Grant was making music.

The return of the stars, the lightstuff of real space, had proved something of an inspiration for Bowie and his female lead singer. Musica and Allegra-two of the clone population Jonathan Wolff's starship had returned to Tirol-and they were trying out their gifts on a new composition when Minmei's quiet entrance into the music room startled them into silence.

"I-I didn't mean to disturb you," she said. Bowie was speechless.

"I just wanted to listen for a moment."

"C-come in, please," Bowie stammered. The two clones, poised like museum statuary on either side of his rack of Boards, regarded him with bemused expressions.

Their sister in the triumvirate, had died on Earth, Musica's mystical rapport with the Cosmic Harp-an instrument whose melodies had once given shape and effect to the telepathic power of the Robotech Masters-had died too. But Musica's voice was more alive than ever, as was Allegra's, and together their harmonies came close to recalling for Bowie the magic of his first taste of that ethereal sound.

He had been a keyboard artist then, masquerading as a tanker, just another artist caught up in the war. But he had been lucky enough to emerge from it with his creative impulses intact, and love to boot. Love for Musica: his pale and slender green-haired muse, his vocal accompaniment, his very life. Even limboed in newspace, they had each other, the separate world created and sustained by their music.

For years Bowie had tried with synthesizers and samplers to play the part of their missing third. But a rendering, an interpretation was the best that had been achieved. Oh, the harmonies might sound pleasing to an audience of untrained ears, but for those lucky enough to have experienced the triumvirate songs, the reconstructions were as far from the pure as Lang's facsimile matrix was from Zor's original creation.

Missing in both cases was some immeasurable emotional component, the true conjurer's magical touch. Lang lacked it, and Rem as well. And Bowie, for all the love that went into his work, simply could not push the compositions over the top. In the end what the trio had had to settle for was virtuosity, when the goal had been transcendence.

What they lacked was a voice: powerful, heartfelt, sublime. Minmei was possessed of the gift, and countless times the past two years Bowie had wished that she might sing again. Now, suddenly, there she was standing in the music room's curved hatchway.

"You really want to listen?" Bowie asked as the hatch hissed closed.

Minmei approached the keyboards tentatively, as though afraid of them somehow. "Well, more than listen, really." She pressed a finger down on a black key. "Is it true you've learned to play some of Octavia's vocal parts?"

Bowie looked up at her. "Yeah, I have. Sort of. I mean, I sampled her voice before she ... died." He gestured to one of the keyboards. "Electronics do most of the real work. But we can't get the harmonics Octavia's voice used to create." Minmei paused to consider that, then smiled lightly at the sister clones. "Do the three of you ever ... well, do you ever sing any of the ancient Tiresian psalms?"

"The Clonemasters' songs?" Musica asked.

Minmei bit her lower lip and shook her head. "No. I was thinking of the psalms from the early days, before the Great Transition."

Allegra looked surprised. "You know something of our ancient culture, Minmei?"

"Some," she confessed. "I read quite a bit when I was in Tiresia." In the hospital, she left unsaid. "And of course Rem talks about those times."

The sister clones eyed one another.

"So, you'd like us to sing one of the old psalms?" Bowie said uncertainly into the silence.

Minmei fingered a minor chord. "Actually, Bowie, I was wondering if you could teach me some of Octavia's parts."