A strange and terrible tension had invaded Defender's heart, and the viscous air shimmered with a vibration as eerie as it was indefinable. It wore away at tempers and fogged minds which sought to concentrate on vital tasks, and voices sounded tinny and unnatural, falling upon the ear with a peculiar brittleness-a sense of dОjИ vu, as if each sentence were an echo of something which had been said but a moment before.

She no longer tried to hide her fear. It would have been pointless, for her people all shared it, just as they shared her exhaustion. Worse, every one of them knew what she knew: the fate of the human race rested upon their shoulders ... and they were failing.

"All right, Steve," she said, "how bad is it?"

"Bad, Ma'am," Onslow said heavily. His screen image's shoulders hunched against the exhaustion and strain trying to drag him under, and his sentences were short and choppy. "No one's ever been this high in the eta band. Our scanners are packing up; they can't make the shift over the theta wall. We tried linking with Dauntless, but her scanners are in even worse shape." He drew a ragged breath and rubbed his puffy eyes. "I can't lock in a good solution, Ma'am. I'm sorry."

Santander closed her eyes under the strain of a responsibility greater than any task force or fleet commander had ever faced. One she faced with but a single dreadnought and only one heavy cruiser.

Beyond the hull, Defender's translation field was a crackling corona, a crawling sheet of icy flame no human had ever seen before. The eta band was worse than anyone had thought, and conditions in its uppermost levels were indescribable. Humanity had no business in this haunted, curdled space, in these distorted dimensions where even time felt twisted and alien. But they were here, and all of her destroyers had died, absorbing missiles meant for Defender, to get them here.