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"I'm just a bookend," he said faintly, "holding up one end of the universe. And I can't see what's happening at the other end of the shelf."

"It's all right, Professor," she said. "It's all over now."

"Ace?"

"Yes. I'm here."

"Thank you, Ace. He looked completely stunned by his ordeal. "We'd been to one extreme. We had to go to the other to balance it out."

"Yeah. All right." She hugged him and felt him relax a little. "Will the ship be okay now?"

"It'll take time to restore completely, but it's holding together just."

"No more banshees or cats?"

"Not now. They only appear in the direst need, when even the cloister bell doesn't work."

"I wondered what'd happened to that." She looked at the chaos surrounding them. "It'll take months to clean up. Do you really need all this stuff?"

He still clung to the console. "There are things I can't get into my pockets." He reached towards the flight co-ordinate keyboard.

"Professor, shouldn't we wait before we go bombing off somewhere?"

"I have business to deal with."

She grimaced. "Are you sure it's all right?"

"No, of course not."

"Where are we going?"

"Separate ways.

"What? You're not going off and leaving me?"

"Ace," he said, keying in co-ordinates, "managing everything on my own can get very exhausting. How much do you know about Persian carpets?"

"They make lousy bridges," she said wearily. "Just tell me after I've had a bath."

He frowned at something at the base of the console and crouched awkwardly. A little cluster of the light flowers was growing there. He plucked one of the blooms. "It'll be all right, Ace. Trust me."

She smiled weakly as he edged the flower behind her ear and snubbed her nose. "I do, Professor. That's where the trouble always starts."

In a corner, behind a mound of tangled bric-a-brac, the silver cat stopped washing itself and stared round with darting predatory eyes.

Table of Contents

Prologue

31: Bookends