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disappearance of the rest of the crew and a spacecraft and cargo worth two hundred million credits.’ His accent was like waving fields of American grain. ‘And I expect the Ziggurat will want you to help with enquiries but here at Newton Centre the only thing you’re charged with is survival. We’d like to know how you did it.’ His spectacles sparkled cordially as he leaned over the desk to shake my hand and the rest of me vigorously. ‘I’m Waldo Simkin, Head of Research here.’ The room smelled of paper, the floor under my feet hummed and shook a little. In the ceiling the fluorescent lights sizzled faintly: Si, Si, Simkin. Si, Si, Simkin.
    You needn’t keep repeating it, I thought. I heard you the first time.
    ‘I wasn’t repeating it,’ he said. ‘Have you got some kind of echo in your head?’
    So I must have spoken aloud; he didn’t look like a telepath. Some of the time I could see him clearly but much of the time not. I was getting ringed centres of bright emptiness in my vision, circles of nothing. They kept expanding and wiping one another out so new circles of nothing could appear. Beyond the Hawking Threshold, beyond Ereshkigal and the Anunnaki and Inanna’s Girdle the dead howled and whistled.
    ‘ “Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,”’ I said.
    ‘How’s that?’
    ‘It’s a line from the First Duino Elegy.’
    ‘I don’t think I know Duino’s work.’
    ‘He’s a dead guy. I know a lot of dead guys.’
    ‘You’re alive. Keep your eye on the doughnut and not on the hole. You’re shaking.’
    ‘Isn’t everything?’
    ‘No. Are you wearing bio?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Let’s do an AFR, OK? I want to see what kind of shape you’re in.’
    ‘OK.’ I opened my shirt and he got a biofeedback kit out of his desk. He placed the electrodes on my head and chest and slid the lancet sleeve over my thumb. I jabbed myself and we watched the numbers climbing on the gauge.
    ‘That’s an ambient-fear reading of 727.2,’ he said. He removed the thumb sleeve, replaced the lancet, opened his shirt, hooked himself up, and did his own AFR. It was 214.7.
    ‘Between 200 and 400 is what you expect from somebody in a reasonably functional state,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen one over 600 till now. What’re you afraid of?’
    ‘Everything.’
    YES! bellowed the mind in my head, SAY IT, SAY THE EVERYTHING-FEAR, THE ALL-TERROR. I TOO FEAR EVERYTHING. I FEAR MY LONG-AGO BEGINNING AND THE AWAKENING OF DREAD, I FEAR THE UNCEASING BECOMING OF ME. I FEAR THEHUGE AND THE TINY, THE FAR AND THE NEAR OF ME, AND I FEAR THE MOMENT THAT IS NOW AND NOW AND NOW WITHOUT RESPITE.
    The power of that utterance and the relief of it! With those words my fear seemed all at once a mighty fortress in which I was no longer alone. No, not a fortress – not something that stood still but a voyaging thing, a black boat rising and falling in the sea-dark, a vessel in which I could journey far. You again! I said. It’s been so long! Will you be with me from now on?
    No answer.
    Simkin was looking at me oddly, so I must have been speaking aloud again. ‘I think this might be a good time to turn you over to our head of Physio/Psycho,’ he said. I followed him down the hall to another office where I was introduced to Dr Caroline Lovecraft, a tall, handsome woman: red hair in a Psyche knot, green eyes, horn-rimmed glasses, heroic figure wonderfully enhanced by a tightly-belted green overall with many pockets. As she came towards me I think a little sigh may have escaped me.
    ‘Hi,’ she said, gripped my right hand firmly, and shot some of her voltage into me. ‘Remember me?’
    ‘No, but I will from now on.’
    ‘Well,’ said Simkin to me, ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ and vanished.
    Lovecraft sat down at her desk, motioned me to a chair, and gave me her full attention. ‘Bad night?’ she said.
    ‘I got through it.’
    ‘I can hear your teeth grinding. Have an E-ZO, have a couple of them – loosen you up a