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you angry with me?”
    â€œAbout the coffee?”
    She pushed his arm a little crossly.
    â€œNo, about everything else.”
    â€œYou mean like digging around inside my head without even saying ‘please’?”
    â€œYes, that.”
    â€œJust a bit, but I’ll get over it. Anyway, if I could, I reckon I’d probably have done the same.”
    â€œYou want to look into my mind?”
    He hesitated, but only slightly. She watched him expectantly, and he saw himself reflected in the warmth of her eyes.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen do: look.”
    Syl took his hands in hers, placed his fingers against her temples, and opened herself to him.
    Their minds coiled in the greatest of intimacies, and they walked through each other’s hopes and fears, amid all that was good and all that was bad. She showed herself to him, and he to her, and when they were done there was nothing left of which to be ashamed, for everything had been revealed. In that moment, no two beings had ever been closer, and the universe shifted and was reborn.
    The contact ended, but they reached out and held on to each other, his face lost in the thick fall of her bronze hair.
    â€œDid you see?” she whispered.
    â€œYes,” he said. “I saw it all. I saw love.”
    And then the Nomad started to move.

CHAPTER 7
    T he alien ship dominated the view from the cockpit windows. Space was gone, and there was only the vessel. Now that Paul could examine it more closely, he was astonished at the smoothness of the hull, and the absence of any obvious windows or observation ports. Then again, it was entirely possible that this was some kind of automatic sentinel, dispatched to monitor the Derith wormhole and capture or destroy anything that came through it. It would be a dull posting, and an entirely automated system would probably make a better job of it than a crew, as the former was unlikely to become bored by the absence of very much to do. But how did that fit in with what Syl had told them about hearing many voices from the ship, or her belief that their conversations were being monitored by a reactive consciousness?
    But he also had a strange feeling about the vessel, one that he chose not to share with the others because it seemed so ridiculous. There was something deeply organic about the alien craft, and he returned once again to his own earlier comparison with a manta ray. It seemed to Paul that, had he reached out and touched the ship, it might have responded to the contact much as a living thing would: moving slightly beneath the weight of his hand, or perhaps darting away in alarm. He was still considering this when a bay opened in the center of the hull, ready to admit them. He saw no doors: rather, the skin of the ship simply folded back. It called to mind a mouth widening, and Paul thought: We are about to be eaten .
    They entered the body of the ship, but could see nothing before them. The lights of the Nomad seemed unable to penetrate the murk, and the scanners were no longer under their control. For the most part, they were entirely reliant on their own eyes and ears, and whatever extra powers Syl might be able to offer, although she did not speak as the ship engulfed them, for she was as overwhelmed as the rest of them.
    Now all was silence and darkness. They had not even heard the bay doors close behind them.
    And then the shadows began to retreat, like black smoke being sucked through unseen vents, and slowly the interior was revealed to them. It was huge and spherical, and the Nomad hung unsupported at its heart, like the tiny nucleus of some great atom. The surfaces around them were reddish-purple, dotted with pits. Red cables dangled, and a series of raised mounds rose at either side of them. Lights shimmered at irregular points, buried beneath thin membranes so that they shone pink instead of white.
    And the whole mass pulsed. Paul knew that his first impression had been correct all