Pavel Mirsky had elected to go with the Geshels down the Way more than thirty years ago, after which the Way had been sealed off. It should have been impossible for him to return, but one day he quietly re-appears on Earth to deliver an urgent message. He had traveled down the Way when it was sealed off with that portion of Axis City, and he and its citizens had voyaged hundreds of years and billions of kilometers; they advanced and changed radically on the way. At the end of the Way was a finite but unbounded cauldron of space and energy - a small proto-universe. They transformed themselves into ineffable beings of energy in order to survive the transition. They became as gods to this place, and for a time their creating went well. But it began to corrode and collapse without conflict and contrast between the creators, threatening to take the would-be gods with it. But they were rescued by the Final Mind of this universe, which took pity on them and freed them from the Way. Mirsky had been reconstituted from what he had become and sent back in time to try to persuade the Hexamon to order the re-opening of the Way - and its destruction.