Primary Jagget took a quick survey of the room at the inn, as if he were checking to be sure he didn't leave something when he departed. "We must hurry," he said. "Are you ready to go?"

"Five minutes," Veriasse answered. "When we jump out of the gate, we will be on Dronon. Everynne should be dressed appropriately."

"A couple more minutes, then," Primary Jagget said. "But hurry. Time is of the essence."

Everyone left the room but Veriasse and Everynne. Veriasse opened his pack, unfolded Everynne's golden attire. The metallic robe was made of a flowing material that felt cool, almost watery under his touch. It had an odd sheen to it and was peculiarly heavy, as if it were actually made of microscopic ringlets of pure gold.

Veriasse let his fingers play over the robe. It seemed somehow appropriate that Everynne should wear it this day. She truly was golden, the human equivalent of the dronon's great queen. He had seen it in people's eyes a thousand times: they would look at Everynne and respond with adoration. And though there were physiological reasons for their devotion, something in his bones whispered to Veriasse that mere science could not explain Everynne's power over him. Everynne was sublime. Some said that she was perfect in figure, that the proportions of each bone in her body were designed to conform to some racial dream, an image of perfection shared by all. Others claimed that it was only a combination of scents that she exuded, a carefully selected range of pheromones that turned men into mindless creatures, willing to sacrifice themselves at her feet.

But Everynne's beauty seemed to him to be more than perfect. When she touched him, he shivered in ecstasy. When she spoke, something in her voice demanded attention, so that the softest words whispered in a noisy room would hold him riveted. Everynne transcended the hopes of the scientists who had created her, and in his weaker moments, Veriasse would have admitted that he believed she was supernatural. There was something mystical in the way she moved him, something holy in the way she could transform a man.

And so, today she would wear gold, an appropriate color for the last Tharrin alive on the conquered worlds, the sole child of a race dead in this sector of the galaxy. When all was ready, he left the room. Everynne dressed quickly in her golden robes, boots, and gloves, then put on her mantle of golden ringlets. Though she was a woman, and fully as beautiful as any of her previous incarnations, Veriasse looked at her and thought that there was something special about this incarnation of Semarritte. Perhaps it was only her youthfulness. By having been force grown in the vats, she had attained the appearance of being twenty years old by the time she was two. Perhaps that was part of it: there was an innocence, a freshness to this incarnation that had been missing in the previous generations.

When she finished dressing, she sat on her bed and smiled up at Veriasse, weakly, her face pale with fear. But for her expression, she looked the part of a queen. He said, "You look wonderful. You look radiant. Are you afraid?"

Everynne nodded. Veriasse himself had great doubts about this plan. "You will do well today, my love," Veriasse assured her. "Never has there been a woman more worthy to represent the human species in such a contest. I can only hope that I shall be as worthy.

Everynne took his hand, looked into his eyes. "I trust you," she said. "If your devotion for me can grant you power, then I know you cannot be beaten today."

Veriasse kissed her hand, then they went outside to meet the others. Gallen, Orick, Maggie, and Jagget sat in front of the inn, straddling their airbikes. Far to the south, Veriasse heard a dim concussion, the sound of heavy artillery.

"Hurry," Primary Jagget whispered. "Every minute is costing the lives of my men."

Veriasse hopped on his bike, and Everynne climbed aboard hers. She was shaking, unsettled, and Veriasse would have reassured her, but she twisted the handlebars, revving her thrusters, and the rest of the group was forced to hurry to catch her.

They roared over the highway, which was ominously devoid of traffic. Ten kilometers up the road, they came upon a magtruck that had exploded, throwing out the corpses of dead vanquishers, and two kilometers farther along, the whipped past a score of Jaggets lying dead by the roadside.

Primary Jagget held his commlink to his mouth, shouting orders in his personal battle language, a code that was thick with nasal tones and grunts.

Forty kilometers from the city, a wall of scintillating lights blossomed ahead to his right-portable shielding. Just beyond the shields, a curtain of flames and black smoke erupted.

Dronon fliers-swift, saucer-shaped craft-whipped through the air at Mach 15, dropping ordnance on some unseen front. The very ground shook and buckled under the force of the assault, and Veriasse hoped that the saucers wouldn't target them. Jagget screamed into his commlink, and a squadron of slower V-shaped fighters piloted by humans swerved from the north, perhaps forty strong. They would be no match for the dronon. They could only serve as a diversion.

Veriasse and the others continued north for five kilometers, heading toward the front until a vast pall of smoke hung over the little party. It was nearly dark as night, yet Veriasse did not turn on his airbike's headlights.

They had not gone far into the cloud when Primary Jagget shouted to them, "Our front is collapsing ahead. My men can't maintain it. Can we veer off the road?"

"Yes," Veriasse shouted. "There is a river to the right. We can follow it north."

Veriasse alone knew where the gate to Dronon lay. He wondered if he should tell the others its location. Two hundred years ago, he had ordered his men to build the gate. In trying to plant the destination markers at Dronon, he had lost three complete technical crews. Afterward, Semarritte had forbade him from trying to put more gates on Dronon, just as she had always forbade him from building a gate that would lead to her omni-mind. She said some risks were not worth taking. But unlike the gates of old, constructed in simpler times, this one was hidden. He had built it into the arch of a small bridge that spanned the river.

He pictured the location, sent the thought to his mantle, ordered it to transmit the knowledge to Gallen. Gallen suddenly turned, caught Veriasse's eye, then nodded.

Two kilometers farther, the black clouds of soot began to thin. Suddenly light flashed across the sky far behind them, brighter than the sun, followed by a second blinding flash nearby. The light continued to glow redly through the sooty sky.

"They're using atomics!" Jagget shouted, and Veriasse glanced back. Mushroom clouds were forming where the inn had been, and again at a point perhaps nine kilometers behind. "Open your speed up."

Veriasse's heart raced. They were still ten kilometers from the gate. The atomic bombs would raise a wall of dirty, swiftly moving air as the air superheated. The dust storm would rush away from the bomb site at over a hundred kilometers per hour-a speed impossible to match in such rough terrain. Yet if they did not beat that surging storm of radioactive dust, it would kill them all.

"Vanquishers ahead!" Jagget shouted. On the highway ahead, two kilometers away, a convoy topped a steep hill. Veriasse swerved from the road into a snow-filled ravine, and the others followed. The airbikes kicked up rooster tails of snow, millions of tiny motes that glittered like slivers of ruby, reflecting the atomic fires behind.

Veriasse began counting the seconds, listening for the blast, trying to discern exactly how far they were from the detonation site. Fifty seconds later, the air filled with a high-pitched shriek, indicating that the Jagget's shields had collapsed, followed by a deep booming.

The ground rumbled and rolled in waves. To the northeast, a volcano began to spit a sluggish flow of lava down its sides.

The airbikes raced over a rise, down a rock-strewn gully, then swept onto a river, skating over flattened stones and lead-gray water that reflected the winter sky and the towering mushroom clouds that filled the heavens behind them like elementals of flame.

Veriasse glanced at his speedometer. They were traveling at only seventy kilometers an hour-fast over such uneven terrain, but not fast enough. He opened his throttle. "Faster," he shouted.

The river was an old one, and canyon walls soon rose around them as they surged through a narrow gorge. Veriasse's speed hit a hundred and twenty. Everynne pulled ahead of him. She had her head low to combat wind resistance. She threw a trail of icy water in his face, and he only hoped that she could make it as she raced ahead.

Time and again she flirted with death, weaving through the rocky gorge, taking corners so fast that she was only a hair's breadth from destruction. For eight more minutes they raced, and whenever they reached a straight portion of the river, Veriasse would glance back, each time hoping anew that the others had negotiated the last turn. Maggie's bike was both slow and dangerously unstable with the bear on it. Jagget stayed at the far end of the train, bringing up the rear.

The gate to Dronon waited for them somewhere ahead at the end of a wide bend. Through his mantle, Jagget transmitted a message: "We have pursuers behind me." Veriasse glanced back, thinking the saucers would be shooting overhead. He saw no saucers-only a great black wall of dust rushing toward them, the frontal tide of the nuclear storm.

Veriasse rounded a corner. Ahead, the river stretched straight for a kilometer, its troubled waters winking in the sunlight. At the far end spanned a bridge, a simple monstrosity of gray plasteel arching over the river. Veriasse looked at it, and his heart fell. The gate was built into a bridge, but he could not remember ever having seen this one before. Was this the bridge? "Everynne," he shouted, "initiate your key."

Everynne reached into the pack behind her, fumbled for a moment, and slowed her bike as she grabbed the key.

Veriasse slowed, pulled beside her, glanced back. Gallen whizzed past them, followed by the bike with Maggie and Orick on it. Orick's eyes were wide in terror, and the bear's tongue lolled from his mouth.

Jagget held up the rear, and as he rounded the corner, he looked at Veriasse and Everynne in surprise, slowed his throttle at the mouth of the narrow bend. He whipped out his incendiary rifle with one hand, raised it in salute to Veriasse.

Everynne took the key firmly in hand, opened up her throttle, and Veriasse followed directly behind, drenched by plumes of freezing water.

Everynne thumbed the unlocking sequence. Ahead a silver light began to glow beneath the bridge. Behind them, Veriasse heard vanquishers whoop in delight as they rounded the corner. He glanced back.

Three vanquishers in aircars whipped down the river channel, negotiating the tight turn.

Primary Jagget fired his rifle, and pure white light shot down the river. A vanquisher burst into flame, and his burning car screamed toward Jagget.

Another vanquisher swerved to avoid the explosion, and his car erupted into a fireball as it smashed against the canyon walls. The last in line killed his throttle, and his car slowed and bogged down in the water.

Jagget did not have time to avoid the burning car that hurtled toward him. In less than a heartbeat, his body transformed into a swarm of butterflies that lifted above the collision.