ver be justified. So much for Divine
intervention.

He had to start closing down his mind, as he had taught himself through
the years of emptiness. He wasn't sure how greatly distance mattered,
but he was getting close. Already the shimmering outline could be seen
on the monitor, the bright specks of racing white. From here the
blackness beyond did not seem so dark. But soon it would be Darkness
itself, enveloping the sky. It was for the heart of the blackness he
aimed. Perhaps it was their only vulnerable point, they guarded it so
well. He looked up at the wide portal, and as he expected the visions
had begun. A long chute, a cylindrical spiraling of gray and glossy
skulls.

He looked away, then remembered. Shook his head sardonically and
tightened his face. The images weren't outside, they were inside. He
stood atop a geyser of emerald fire. But they couldn't stop his
thoughts. "Central computer, phase three," he just managed. Now
unless his commands were coded and specific the ships would not
respond. He felt his own surge forward, felt the sharp jolt of
electric current as for a moment his wired throat cleared the images
away.

"Bastards!" He could see them now, closer, breaking away from the
strands and coming at him like miniature suns. He felt them probing
the mechanized brain. "One-nine three-nine!" And the unreal minds all
functioned in a different key. He managed to fire three burst from the
left wing before his fingers turned to lizards and were gone.

"AAHH!" Another shock, stronger, and he could see again. He was
closer still, the web becoming an expanding grid pocked with dark and
geometric holes. His ships crossed and interwove, fired a massive
burst. The globes hovered and sometimes blinded him with light, but
either could not or would not attack the ships. Their shields were up,
but how much that mattered.....

Then his fleet was gone, as if it had never been, and the globes
receded. A harder jolt, but somehow he knew this was no illusion. All
false images faded. He was himself, without pain, in his own vessel.
And the grid was still larger, the growing blackness like wet and
physical night behind it.
His hands were back on the console and he fired seven bursts,
at the racing globes or at the shafts themselves. But each time he
fired into nothingness: the lines of brilliance were no longer there.
Above, to the side, but not there. And this too was no illusi