The docking bay was on the rim of Starplex's great central disk As the podpulled farther away, Keith could see the interlocking triangularhabitat modules, four on top and four more on the bottom.

Christ, thought Keith as he looked at his ship. Jesus Christ. The windows in the four lower habitat modules were all dark. The central disk was crisscrossed with hairline laser scorches.

As his pod moved downward, he saw stars through the gaping circular hole in the disk where a cylinder ten decks thick had been carved out of it.

Hell to pay, thought Keith again. Bloody hell to pay.

He turned around and looked forward, out the curving bubble. He'd long ago given up scanning the heavens for any sign of a shortcut. They were invisible, infinitesimal points until something touched them, — he glanced at his console — as his pod was going to do in forty seconds. Then they swelled up to swallow whatever was coming through.

He'd be on Grand Central for perhaps eight hours, long enough to report to Premier Petra Kenyatta about the attack on Starplex. Then he'd pop back here. Hopefully by that time, Jag and Longbottle would have news about the other big problem they were facing.

The pod's maneuvering thrusters fired in a complex pattern. To exit the network back at Tau Ceti, he'd have to enter the local shortcut from above and behind. The stars moved as the pod modified its course to the proper angle, and then — and then it touched the point. Through the transparent hull, Keith saw the fiery purple discontinuity between the two sectors of space pass over the pod, mismatched star-fields fore and aft. To the rear, the eerie green light of the region he was leaving, and up ahead, pink nebulosity — Nebulosity?

That can't be right. Not at Tau Ceti.

But as the pod completed its passage, there could be no doubt: he'd come out at the wrong place. A beautiful rose-colored nebula, like a splayed six-fingered hand, covered four degrees of sky. Keith wheeled around, looking out in all directions. He knew well the constellations visible from Tau Ceti — slightly skewed versions of the same ones seen from Earth, including Boetes, which contained bright Arcturus and Sol itself.