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measured both of the ships to be of almost exactly equal mass. There was a music to the separation, too, the singing of materials in harmony with themselves as they rent apart, and underneath it all the deep bass throb of the engine warping space into the gradient down which the ship slid. Even that warping was separating into two distinct bubbles of space.
    And then, a question appeared in the Stranger’s vision. The fission process paused for a moment, the two nascent bulges wavering, anchored by an indissoluble mass within the ship. The stranger looked closer and saw the two cargo holds, and in them the goods carried by the ship. Apples and colored pebbles, crystal and china, bales of paper. And the two huge wooden venumbs that occupied the large hold; pacing back and forth with prehistoric fortitude.
    The Stranger consulted the results of the Fair Exchange and noted the division of the goods between the two ships.
    Just for a moment, it could have sworn that the venumbs were gazing in its direction as it did so.
     
    Edward lay staring up at the ceiling of his new room. For the past hour everything had been blessedly still. Cold silence leaked from the vacuum of space into the walls and floors of the ship; it deadened the air and choked the hum of life from the crew. Silence was pooling in the room, drowning Edward in emptiness. Edward was terrified; he almost wished that he was back in the seemingly endless snapping, shifting maelstrom of the replication. Just when it seemed that he could take no more, a violent double wrenching had shaken the whole ship and sent Edward tumbling across the room and onto his bed.
    He tried to understand what had happened. He had seen the ship tearing itself apart, moving over and under itself and reshaping itself like a gigantic piece of origami. He had gazed awestruck as the colors and textures of the ship had separated themselves out and rationalized themselves. He had sat in his room, arms clenched tightly around his body, watching as things like jeweled beetles tore themselves free of the floor and scuttled up the walls to the ceiling. Then the Stranger’s voice had called out, telling Edward to move back out into the corridor. He had found Miss Rose already waiting there; she was watching as black-and-white tiles spilled along the floor and down the walls. They had tumbled around and about them like lines of dominoes, and Edward had suddenly needed to go to the toilet, but all the doors had vanished.
    Edward had stood there with Miss Rose, his bladder aching, for what seemed like ages, and then the Stranger had spoken again, telling them to go back to their rooms.
    Edward had stood open-mouthed as he took in the changes. It was still his room, but different. As if he had been living in a room where the walls had been great scabs, now peeled away to show smooth healthy skin beneath. It was as if all the extra bits had been stripped away to leave the real room, all picked out in black and white.
    He looked at his neatly made bed, a black cover stretched over it, his black desk with white ornaments on top, at the regular pattern of black-and-white lozenges on the walls, and then his aching bladder regained his attention and he went running into his new black-and-white bathroom.
    After that he had returned to his bed. He still lay there now, wondering if everyone else was okay.
    There was a knock on his door.
    “Craig?” Edward called. “Is that you?”
    He jumped off his bed and trotted across the new black wool carpet to see who was outside.
    His face fell as he saw the blue eyes and blond eyelashes of the man beyond the threshold.
    “Oh, hello, Maurice,” he muttered.
    “You’d better come back to the living area,” said Maurice, looking paler than usual. He had fastened his padded combat jacket up to the neck, even though it was as warm as ever on board the ship. Maurice turned on his heel and marched away down the new black-and-white corridor. Edward bent for a moment to