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region creates us.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘It does.’
    ‘Do you object to us going there?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘The region is different to the rest of the Void. Why?’
    ‘It is a parturition region.’
    ‘Are they important to you?’
    ‘We come from a parturition region. We do not return. We guide those who have reached fulfilment to the Heart of the Void.’
    ‘Where is that?’
    ‘It is at the end of your fulfilment.’ The Skylord’s presence withdrew from the cabin.
    Rojas shook his head and sighed. His thoughts were showing a degree of frustration. ‘Thus ends every conversation with the Skylords,’ he concluded. ‘Enigmatic shits.’
    ‘That’s a fantastic discovery,’ Joey said. ‘The distortion trees birth them or conjure them into existence, or something. This is where they come from. Our mission is
half complete and we’ve only been going two minutes.’
    ‘If you believe it,’ Rojas said. ‘They’re slippery little swines.’ He flicked a switch to open a channel back to
Vermillion
and began reporting the
conversation.
    *
    Three hours seventeen minutes accelerating at point seven gees, then Shuttle Fourteen flipped over and decelerated at the same rate. Six and a half hours after launching from
Vermillion
, Rojas performed their final velocity match manoeuvres and the delta-shaped shuttle was left hanging in space, two and a half thousand kilometres out from the Forest.
    Laura stared at it through the shuttle’s windscreen – a huge patch of silver speckles that gleamed brightly, blocking off half of space. Her eyes fooled her into thinking each speck
was drifting about, while in fact it was just the bizarre patterns of their surfaces that flickered and shimmered. Sensors zoomed in, giving them a decent image of the distortion trees on the edge
of the Forest.
    ‘They don’t have that fog around them that the Skylords do,’ Joey slurred. His facial twitches were growing progressively worse. Now that they were in freefall, drool was
slipping out of his open lips to drift round the cabin. Laura didn’t like the way his problems were developing. Shuttle Fourteen had a medical capsule, but it wasn’t as sophisticated as
any of the ones on
Vermillion.
Not, she admitted to herself, that she’d like any medical capsule to run a procedure on her right now. Fourteen’s systems glitches were steadily
increasing.
    In tandem with Joey’s affliction?
she wondered.
    ‘Other than that, there’s not a lot of difference,’ Ayanna said. ‘These are smaller.’
    ‘Narrower,’ Rojas said. ‘And they are rotating very slowly around their long axis. Nine-hour cyclic period.’
    ‘A thermal roll?’ Laura asked.
    ‘Looks like it. That’s the easiest way to keep a stable temperature in space.’
    ‘So something’s making them roll,’ Laura said.
    ‘Nothing visible. It’s not a reaction-control system.’
    ‘Magnetic?’ Joey asked.
    ‘I’m not picking up any significant magnetic field,’ Rojas said. ‘They’re almost inert.’
    ‘What about the anomalous quantum signature?’ Laura asked.
    Ayanna studied several of the displays, a frown growing. ‘It is very strange. The temporal component of spacetime is different in there.’
    ‘Temporal?’ Ibu queried.
    ‘I think time is progressing at a reduced flow rate inside. It’s not unreasonable; our wormholes can manipulate internal time flow in a similar fashion. We can even halt temporal
flow altogether inside exotic matter cages if they’re formatted correctly.’
    ‘You mean things happen slower in there?’ Rojas asked.
    ‘Only relative to outside the Forest.’
    ‘So are the trees made out of exotic matter?’ Joey asked.
    ‘I’ve no idea. But negative energy is the only way we know of manipulating spacetime, so there’s got to be something like it in there somewhere.’
    ‘We have to go in and take physical samples,’ Laura said.
    ‘So you keep saying,’ Ayanna replied drily.
    ‘Let’s see if we can, first,’ Rojas