The darkness felt cold even through the Rocket suit. If it reminded me of anything I'd experienced before, it reminded me of traveling through "near space," the slower layer of jump space that you could still access closer to a planet.

It wasn't a physical cold. My suit's internal temperature was a comfortable 70 degrees.

Since learning more about it, I'd suspected that Jody and Rachel had unknowingly manipulated it while using their powers. Except at this point, Rachel manipulated it knowingly.

Within the blackness were lines of light, possibly stars or something else that turned into streaks when filtered through near space.

Checking behind me, I couldn't see much more than darkness and a splash of the full spectrum of light to the sides.

I'd never gone through the portal in my life, but from the way Lee and Kee had talked about it, I had assumed that I'd end up in a pocket universe or connected pocket universes.

This, by contrast, felt like I was being yanked off the planet and dragged away.

Magnus had had time to investigate Kee's creation and learn to control some of what it could do. I'd never heard of it being used precisely like this, but I couldn't rule it out.

The other possibility that came to mind seemed equally bad. Govan, Nataw's brother (assuming alien genders worked in any way like ours), if he was anything like the rest of his species, he easily had the power to do it.

Plus, if the device kept Lee's people away from Earth, pulling me away from the Earth would be the only way Govan could talk to me in person.

Either way, it was not good news.

I checked my suit's environmental stats. I was in a vacuum. The only reason I wasn't dead was that I'd designed the suits to double as spacesuits.

I concentrated, examining everything around me through Artificer senses, hoping I'd notice something useful. Kee had taught me the rudiments of personally powered interstellar travel in a purely theoretical way. We were building a foundation that I'd eventually be able to use even if I couldn't do much right now.

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Had I known where Earth was, I might have been able to drop myself out of near space in the right direction. The fact that I saw no sign of it did not give me much hope.

I'd planned to experiment with the jet, testing what I could see with Artificer senses in the different forms of hyperspace, but hadn't had the time.

That meant that pushing myself out of near space might be a death sentence. The Rocket suit had eight hours of air. Even if I used my implant to slow my metabolism, I'd still need more time to get back to Earth.

Still, I could sense something huge and shadowy ahead. Depending on how quickly I was moving, it might be our moon, but it also might be Mars.

Maybe this was the end of the journey? If it were, I had reason to hope. I knew where to find the Artificer Mars base. It hadn't been destroyed. Bearing in mind Artificer technology, chances were decent that, despite Rook's nuke, it had dealt with the radioactivity already and rebuilt the inside.

If nothing else, it would be a beacon for a distress call. If I contacted the Xiniti base at the nearest Lagrange point, there might be a ship I could summon to pick me up. The ansible on the base opened up even more possibilities.

This was doable, assuming I was about to arrive on Mars and not, for example, Uranus.

I mean, there'd be the small matter of everyone else having to go into the portal and fight Magnus without me, but Rachel could probably handle it.

She could handle being yanked partway across the solar system better than I could, too.

The shadowy globe ahead grew larger and took on the familiar red I remembered. The barrier between near space and reality as I knew it thinned.

Then I noticed something new—ripples in the space ahead of me.

They wiped away my optimism as effectively as they obscured Mars because I recognized them for what they were. Back when we'd been on Hideaway, I'd seen Kee, disguised then as Tikki, manipulate time. This felt the same.

Back then, I hadn't been aware of my background. Now, though, I could see energy pulsing within the ripples. Based purely on what I knew about jump drive design and physics in general, it would take a lot of energy to move through time, but with Artificer senses, I felt more than I could see, as if there were layers of hidden energy waiting to be activated by the energy I could sense.

Calling on my own reserves, I tried to push myself out of near space.

I let energy flow through me and concentrated, rewarded only by the smallest wobble in a new direction as I hurtled forward.

Hitting the ripples, I felt a connection through what I'd sometimes thought of as the Artificer Superhighway—the channel through which Artificers and Ghosts communicated over interstellar distances.

It didn't feel at all like one of my sessions with Kee. I had a feeling she went out of her way not to intimidate me. Whoever was on the other end of this communication didn't worry about that at all. The presence felt massive and the voice deep. Though I didn't have direct experience with the subject matter, I'd like to imagine that the voice sounded like galaxies crashing into each other.

I could even make out words as I smashed through the ripples to who knows when…

"What? You fool!"

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