Strata

deep breath as the ship rose above the edge of the Disc and plunged towards the sky.
    The Disc was a design of white and black, a silver and ebony coin floating under a sky wild with stars.
    The stars were getting nearer. The moon became a pearl hovering over the Disc, and the stars were
definitely
getting nearer.
    The hole that Jago Jalo had cut in the Vault of Heaven had been big enough for the ring ship to go through, and this one was much smaller. But it would be approaching it at a low angle.
    The Computers had told Marco that the hole would be wide enough. They had told Kin the same, but had added their estimate of the distance to spare. Kin hadn’t dared pass it on to Marco. The minimum clearance was a little less than a metre.
    She found she was staring ahead, searching the sky. The other two were doing the same. Stars were drifting overhead. While Kin watched, their silent, snowflake movement became a brisk race.
    Then they were a blur. There was the briefest impression of something around the ship as a star swelled, blazed and disappeared. A slight shudder marked the demise of one of the outrigger jets, knocked off against the edge of the sky.
    Then there were stars again, deceptively similar, and the ship was dropping into the gulf.
    She could hear Marco breathing noisily. Silver was humming a tune in a rolling baritone.
    Kin watched the stars she knew were only seventy thousand years old, marginally older than their cousins hanging from the Vault ofHeaven. Stars were just lights in the sky, but bigger skies demanded bigger stars.
    Kin thought about the second edition. The ship fell onwards, into the scenery.
    THE END