Ah-Yin came into the office.
Zhao Chen had just then been shutting his several electronic screens, which left the office, that had looked crowded, a good deal emptier.
"How is it you thought of a sudden to come to me?"
"Did you not wish to see our mistress?
"I can take you to see her." Ah-Yin opened of a sudden.
Zhao Chen looked at Ah-Yin in astonishment, not having thought that so weighty a matter should come at the very outset.
"Has she come back?" Zhao Chen asked.
"She may be reckoned to have come back." There was some hesitation in Ah-Yin's voice; it felt as though this answer of hers were given with a kind of reluctance.
Zhao Chen stood up with a smile and spread both arms. "Then will she not come to see me herself?
"This time I have done her a great service; will she not give me some thanks for it?"
Of that super great military purchase order before, Zhao Chen is far from satisfied.
Could he but knock another sum out of that little girl, so much the better.
For no one ever finds his benefits too few.
"The mistress… she… cannot come."
At this time Zhao Chen was certain that Ah-Yin's state at this moment was very strange; he fixed his eyes upon her. "Is she… wounded?"
Ah-Yin said nothing.
"Is she living yet?" Zhao Chen asked again.
"She is living yet." That question at least she answered.
Which let Zhao Chen breathe out.
"You are willing to take me to see her?" Zhao Chen asked.
"Yes.
"If you are willing." Ah-Yin looked at Zhao Chen. "But you alone."
Which is as good as setting the choice before Zhao Chen.
For Zhao Chen to go off alone with her, a high officer of the Machine Race, is no such simple business as paying a call next door.
For strictly speaking, between the Machine Race and every interstellar civilization within this universe there stand no few gaps.
As, for instance, that in this campaign the Owl Dragon has entered Machine Race territory upon the grand scale — a thing that can no longer be hidden.
Within the three great empires there is already no little gossip and murmuring.
"I shall go.
"Wait a little while I charge some matters." Zhao Chen set his finger upon a certain place on the desk, and Lilith's holographic image sprang up outright.
"I must go abroad a while, to the mechanical royal court.
"The Owl Dragon's business, for this stretch while I am away.
"Is put wholly into your charge and Charlotte's." Zhao Chen having said it, and before the Lilith opposite, whose look had grown strained, could object, he said outright, "This is an order."
Lilith bit lightly at her red lip; knowing that a thing the Commander has determined is very hard to change, she said besides, "Then I shall arrange for the Panther-Girl and the others…"
"This time it is I alone," said Zhao Chen.
There was a look of concern in Lilith's eyes still, but she said nothing further.
Zhao Chen loosed his hand, and Lilith's holographic image vanished.
"Let us go." Zhao Chen took up the military coat from the stand beside him, and walked out of the office after Ah-Yin.
Before long the two of them came into the Dragon Emperor's hangar.
Here lay berthed the shuttle Ah-Yin had come aboard in.
Lilith was already waiting beside the shuttle.
Zhao Chen looked at Lilith with his brows drawn. "Did I not say…"
"I know; I am come only to say a few words." Lilith looked with a smile toward the Ah-Yin at Zhao Chen's side; the smile upon her face did not alter, and yet within her eyes there was something cold.
"Our Owl Dragon's interstellar warships could take one month to save the mechanical royal court.
"They could also, within one month, destroy the Machine Race."
Having said it, Lilith left the hangar without a word more.
Zhao Chen looked at Lilith's retreating figure, and then at Ah-Yin; he shrugged helplessly and said, "Forgive it; my secretary officer has that temper sometimes."
"I can understand it.
"For by ordinary diplomatic courtesy, that I should invite you to go to the Machine Race alone is indeed exceedingly unsuitable.
"That your subordinate should have her misgivings is only natural," Ah-Yin said levelly.
Thereafter the two of them boarded the shuttle.
Within the shuttle were Zhao Chen and Ah-Yin only; there was no pilot.
But once the door was shut, the shuttle began of itself the procedure of leaving the ship, and all of it very naturally.
This perhaps is the Machine Race's advantage: every course of procedure may be pared away without cease.
The shuttle sailed out of the Dragon Emperor and went tearing toward the quarter of the mechanical royal court, leaving a trace behind it like a comet's.
————
The mechanical royal court
Having come within, Zhao Chen could in the main no longer tell where he was, for about him on every side were works of steel structure.
There was no telling up from down, nor left from right, nor the four quarters of the compass.
He knew only that Ah-Yin carried him in a miniature shuttle like a dragonfly, threading without cease through this forest of steel.
At last the crowded surroundings grew all at once wide and open.
Zhao Chen looked at the prospect beyond the viewport, and was struck with wonder.
Before him was a vast space; and upon one side of that space a vast half-round stellar body, with rings about it and other such things, which from afar showed black and yellow interwoven.
Giving a man a feeling of a dazzling and exquisite beauty.
And in that instant Zhao Chen was certain.
This is that Gate of Gaia the mission spoke of.
"That is the Gate of Gaia, one of the legacies the Gaia Empire left behind," Ah-Yin answered him besides.
"Where does this Gate of Gaia lead?" Zhao Chen asked before he thought.
"To another… universe." Ah-Yin gave that answer.
Another universe?
A very blurred answer.
"And that is… a star gate?" Zhao Chen marked that at one end of this space there stood a star gate.
"The mechanical royal court's star gate," said Ah-Yin.
"You have a star gate here too?" Zhao Chen was astonished.
"Because this star gate is built within the mechanical royal court, it can be of no help whatever to the case of the war outside," Ah-Yin explained.
This is a closed space.
There is nothing here but that Gate of Gaia, and the mechanical royal court's star gate, and, facing the Gate of Gaia, a structure that seems set into the face of a cliff.
"That is the true mechanical royal court," Ah-Yin said, pointing at that mass of building.
Thereafter this dragonfly-shaped miniature shuttle berthed in a place made ready expressly within that district of building, and a long gallery joined itself directly to the shuttle's door.
Zhao Chen and Ah-Yin walked down from the shuttle, and along this gallery.
Within this mass of building very nearly no great number of mechanical lives could be seen — fewer even than the mechanical lives aboard those Machine Race warships outside.
"Only high-order mechanical lives may enter here.
"And high-order mechanical lives are exceedingly few within the Machine Race." Ah-Yin marked Zhao Chen's perplexity, and answered it for him.
Zhao Chen followed Ah-Yin to a great door; and after a curtain of light had swept over Ah-Yin's body and Zhao Chen's, this great door opened.
"Come in." Ah-Yin led the way before him.
Zhao Chen followed Ah-Yin in.
This is like some manner of dock, and no little equipment could be seen about it.
And at the last, before a vast window running to the floor, Zhao Chen saw an interstellar warship a hundred meters in length, hanging within this dock.
Upon her hull were the plain marks of fighting.