Stranger Suns

by George Zebrowski

  Lena sank down next to him, and gently took his hand.

  7. THE MISSING SUN

  The child of the starcrossers noted that the third star of this system had collapsed into a black hole, which would in time swallow the other two suns.

  But the web still sang, feeding the ship from distant suncores. The child of the starcrossers bypassed and pushed the ship toward the next jump.

  * * *

  As the ship accelerated, it passed under the two suns, revealing them to be at the center of a complex swirl of shared material. Curving spokes of plasma sagged for millions of kilometers around the pair and drained into the black hole.

  Lena said, “I felt that we were about to make a stop.”

  Magnus sat down on his sleeping bag. “There was a third sun here, and it may have had planets. The ship might have been coming in to one of them, which is why it seemed headed into the suns, but decided to go on when it couldn't find its destination.”

  Juan looked up. The ship was again moving starward, headlong into the light of stranger suns, compressing their waves toward the ultraviolet. In three weeks, we'll be out of food and water, he reminded himself, and the fact was a vague sickness in his stomach. Even after two ship days, he was wondering if it was better to take small, infrequent sips or to save the water up so he could indulge himself in the luxury of a full cup.

  He stood up and stretched. “One of us should always be here while the others explore.”

  “You and Lena go,” Magnus said. “You're the youngest and strongest.”

  “Speak for yourself, Rassmussen,” Malachi answered. “Good rule, though. Never go very far alone.”

  * * *

  Out in the passage, Juan stopped and looked at Lena. “You realize that we're trapped, that our lives may be over?” Before long they would be lying motionless, gazing up at the view with empty eyes as the ship went on its way.

  She touched his hand. “We might survive to live somewhere else, Juan. Isn't that possible?”

  “No way to tell. The choice might be agonizing if the ship arrives at a livable planet. If we don't stay aboard, we'll lose all chance of returning—but if we stay, we'll lose a chance to survive.”

  She gazed into his eyes and asked, “Did you leave anyone special behind?”

  He looked away. “No. There hasn't been anyone lately.”

  “Somehow I imagined you with a wife and maybe even a child or two, someone you wouldn't be quite so grim with. You never mentioned anyone, but I thought you might be one of those people who keeps his personal life walled off from his professional one.”

  He said, “I do, so you're not entirely wrong.”

  “I thought your moodiness might mean that you missed someone.”

  “No, my moods are entirely my own.”

  She smiled. “And I imagined you as this brooding man with passions you only shared with someone close to you.”

  As she spoke, the phantom of the wife he had never had became oddly real for a moment. He looked directly at her. The color rose in her cheeks, and she lowered her eyes. “I was sure,” she said, “that some woman had caught a good-looking Latin type like yourself. You probably think I'm a cold, dour Scandinavian. Well, I'm only half Norwegian, but I grew up there.”

  “Maybe I'm more like your stereotypical Scandinavian,” he said, and was silent for a moment. “Did you leave someone behind?”

  She shook her head. “I almost married a couple of years ago. It ended rather well—we decided at the same time to part, so there was no bitterness, only a shared regret that it couldn't work. Too used to our solitary habits. We've been distant friends.”

  “You did better than I did,” he said, recalling the accusations thrown at him in his younger days—that he held too much of himself back, that there was no room in his life for anyone else. His few relationships had ended badly, leaving him resentful of the disorderly emotions that got in the way of work—which only served to confirm the complaints made against him. It was easier to settle for the occasional encounter with women who made no demands.

  “Juan—” she started to say, and he felt her fear.

  “We won't give up easily,” he said, turning away. “Let's make our way up toward the outer lock.”

  * * *

  March 28, 2022. It's nearly a week since we left Earth,Juan wrote in his notebook. The pages were few and small, forcing him to scrawl in a compact, artificial hand.Ship's oxygen seems higher than normal; we've felt light-headed once in a while. It's warm enough, so we packed away our heaviest outer clothing. We've been saving our liquid waste in bags, against the day when we might have to try the water purification tablets on it. Solid wastes go down the drop tube, and seem to disappear well enough. The ship has made one jump per day, accelerating each time in preparation. Magnus thinks it's searching for something. I wonder if he's as astute as he seems, or just a good guesser. His scientific knowledge is certainly larger than he's admitted to. Food is lasting as long as expected. He paused, then added,Mal smoked his last cigarette today, looking like a condemned man about to be shot.

  Overhead, the stars were again fading toward ultraviolet. Juan closed the notebook and slipped it into his shirt pocket. He scratched his beard and looked around at the sleeping figures. Thirst, he realized, would soon replace hunger and anxiety. Sleep would cease to be an escape, and become death's ally.

  He lay back and closed his eyes, thinking that he had written about the food as if to praise it for proper behavior; perhaps it would be flattered and not dwindle away.

  * * *

  The universe was a facade of white sky and black stars. “I felt stupid,” Magnus was saying from somewhere behind it, “—as if I were taking an intelligence test.”

  Juan opened his eyes. Lena and Malachi were up, sitting with Magnus. The blue-shifted central stars in the forward view were about to disappear.

  Magnus turned to him as he sat up. “I went into that room with the cubbyholes.”

  Juan felt annoyed. “You shouldn't have risked that door again,” he said, “and you shouldn't have gone alone.”

  “It works now.”

  Juan stood up. “So what did you learn?”

  “I'll show you,” Magnus said excitedly.

  “That's a good walk,” Juan replied. “We have to save our strength.”

  “You won't have to. I found another chamber exactly like it nearby, thinking there might be one. You'll see why.”

  Single file, they followed him through the door. Out in the passageway, Magnus counted off the chambers. “This one.” He stepped forward and went through the glow. Malachi followed.

  “Go on,” Juan said as Lena glanced back at him. She smiled, then turned and slipped through.

  He stepped forward—

  —into the blue-lighted chamber.

  Magnus and the others stood before the wall of square cubbyholes, staring in silence. “This one here,” he said.

  Juan peered in. A bloody hand lay inside.

  “As if freshly cut from my arm,” Magnus said. “I put my hand in. The chamber glowed like the portals and there it was, down to the dirt under my fingernails. The principle seems an extension of the fluid doorways—direct manipulation of matter at the most basic level.”

  “Yummy,” Lena said. “We'll bring all the food and water we have left, and all the scraps.”

  Magnus chuckled and pulled the hand from the chamber. “See, there's the mark where I wore my ring.” He put the hand back. “If I take it out now, still another will appear.”

  “Did you have to use your hand?” Juan asked, feeling both relieved and repelled by the sight. “You might have lost it, for all you knew.”

  Lena nudged him. “Think what it means!”

  “You have to take chances sometimes,” Magnus said, “if you want to learn anything.”

  “If it works on our provisions,” Juan answered.

  “Let's try it,” Lena said. “I'm hungry.”

  Malachi gave them a sad lo
ok. “I should have saved one cigarette.”

  “Be happy you've quit,” Lena said.

  * * *

  When they had piled all their remaining provisions on the tablelike protuberances, Juan picked up a bar of soap and stepped up to the wall. “If it doesn't work,” he said, “we won't have lost much, since we can't wash anyway.”

  “Put it in, Obrion,” Lena said.

  Juan slipped the bar inside and waited. “Nothing. Maybe the hand was a fluke.” He glanced back and saw Lena pale.

  Magnus came up and removed the bar. The chamber glowed. A second bar appeared. Magnus removed the soap and handed it to him. Juan looked at it with relief and let out a sigh, realizing that he had been holding his breath.

  “I wonder what those larger chambers near the floor are for,” Malachi said.

  Magnus took the new soap from Juan's hand. “We can risk this.”

  He stooped and placed the bar inside. The chamber glowed as he withdrew his hand. “Gone,” he said, straightening up. “That clearly suggests a garbage toss. I'll bet this thing recycles mass. If there's not enough garbage going in down there, these upper chambers may not work.”

  “Let's do the food and water,” Lena said nervously.

  Juan helped her feed provisions into the chambers. His hand shook a little as he put his nearly empty canteen inside. The chambers glowed as Magnus and Malachi removed the originals and piled them back on the table. Juan grabbed his canteen and took a swig.

  “Wait!” Lena shouted. “Maybe we should test it.”

  “I'm the test,” he said, gulping more. “Tastes just fine.” He handed her the canteen. “Go ahead. The worst thing it could be is left-handed. Magnus's hand wasn't turned around, so I think it copies accurately.”

  Lena took a long sip and smiled. “Make some more, quick.” She passed the canteen to Magnus, who took one swallow. Malachi emptied it.

  They drank duplicated water as they filled a second table with provisions.

  “If I had even one cigarette butt,” Malachi said, “my supply would be unlimited.”

  Lena said, “You smoked them down to nearly nothing. You'd have to go down the drop to find the butts.”

  It was a tedious procedure to top off the four canteens and copy them. “We'll be able to shave,” Juan said as he started the process again.

  Magnus bit into a bar of chocolate. “I'm glad I saved this one.”

  “Let's make a proper dinner of it,” Lena said, sitting down cross-legged at one of the tables. Juan sat down next to her as the others took their places. She passed around vitamins and packets of rice, fish, and vegetables. They took out their mess kits and cutlery.

  Magnus belched. “Excuse me. Too much water.”

  “Well, we won't have to shoot ourselves after all,” Juan said, “but we're still on a wild ride to nowhere.”

  Lena looked at him sternly. “We'll worry after we've eaten and rested. Don't spoil your digestion.”

  “He's right,” Malachi said. “You've probably never seen starvation. A bullet for each of us would have been essential.” He grinned. “But now we could arm a good-sized militia in about an hour!”

  “We should copy the ammunition,” Lena said, “and maybe a weapon or two.”

  “It wouldn't hurt,” Juan said as he mixed rice, fish, and vegetables in his bowl.

  8, SUNCORE

  The ship moved through an endless fog, as if feeling its way to a hidden port through treacherous waters. A dead gray light streamed into the center pit of the drum-shaped chamber.

  Juan sensed a massive presence ahead. “Where are we?” Lena asked as they stood in a circle, looking upward.

  The ship's acceleration had again blacked out the forward stars; a burst of blue light had marked another jump, and the ship had been approaching a yellow sun; then, in the interval of a slow shutter click, the sun had disappeared and the ship had slipped into this gray oblivion, drifting forward toward a pulsing thing that would not show itself.

  As he peered upward, it seemed to Juan that the object drawing the ship to itself was passing in and out of reality with a slowing, heartlike pulse, and that his own heart was beginning to match that ponderous beat.

  * * *

  The star disappeared as the child of the starcrossers dropped the ship into otherspace and let the suncore station pull it in.

  Stations had once circled the suns of the web, sweeping outward when a star bloated into a red giant, pulling into close orbit when it contracted into a hot dwarf, drawing energy without pause and feeding it through the subcontinuum.

  Stations embedded in suncores were more efficient; from their congruent loci in otherspace, accumulators tapped a star's energy up to the moment of ultimate gravitic collapse. Each flickering core fed the arteries of power that pulsed energy into the ships of the starcrossers.

  Station minds monitored the life of a sun, and gave warning when the core-flux reached danger levels, in time for the base complex to abandon its congruent otherspace core position and relocate to another star.

  ::Suncore attainable::

  * * *

  A black globe appeared in the glowing fog. Cables snaked out into the mists, each length ending in a gnarly device.

  “It's massive,” Magnus said. “Maybe a hundred times larger than this ship.”

  The ball filled the entire view. An opening appeared at the equator, and a beam of white light stabbed into the gloom. The ship turned into the beam, washing out the viewspace.

  “We're going in,” Magnus said in a trembling voice.

  * * *

  As the docking cradle held the child of the starcrossers, station minds reached into it and began scanning and repair sequences. Power surged in and reshaped weakened structures which had too long resisted fatigue and random noise. The ship's systems became fluid, then whole again. As new information flooded the core memory, one missing item of data became a question: “Where are the starcrossers?”

  The biped life-forms on board resembled the starcrossers, but gave no commands, made no plans, and did not respond to queries.

  The station minds withdrew, leaving no answer. Alone, the child of the starcrossers waited.

  * * *

  The outer lock was open when they came to it. Juan approached warily and gazed out into a vast lighted realm.

  Magnus grunted. “Look at this place!”

  “Can we go out?” Lena asked.

  “It might not be wise,” Juan said.

  Malachi took a deep breath. “Good air.”

  Magnus said, “So we share with the builders something of the natural world from which we both sprang.”

  Malachi smiled at him. “They still might have been big slimy things that slithered up and down the spiral passage.”

  The strange light felt pleasant on Juan's face, inviting him to step outside. “It seems safe enough,” Lena said. “Doesn't this open lock suggest that the ship won't leave without us?”

  “We can't be sure,” he answered. “If we lose the ship, we break our link to Earth, not to mention our supplies.”

  “It's like an afternoon,” Lena said, taking a step outside.

  Juan looked up. The yellow-white light came from everywhere. There was no visible ceiling. A smooth amber floor surrounded the ship.

  “Maybe it won't leave unless we're inside,” Lena said. “It only left Earth when we came aboard.”

  “A regular ferry,” Malachi quipped.

  “Lena, come back,” Juan said. “I don't think we should leave the ship.”

  Magnus clapped him on the shoulder. “My feeling is that we should all go out together, or all stay.”

  “I'm as curious as you are. Let's wait a while.”

  Lena came back inside. They sat down in the open lock and gazed out into the station.

  Magnus turned to Malachi. “Big slimy things, you said. Come to think of it, this ship does remind me of a nautilus shell. The builders may have been intelligent mollusks.”

  “Spirals
are everywhere,” Lena said. “You'll find them as tail-like flagella in bacteria, in spider's webs, DNA strands, the horns of rams, and in the structure of galaxies.”

  “Figuratively speaking,” Malachi said, “human progress has been described as an ever-widening upward spiral.”

  “Sage snail, within thine own self curled,” Magnus recited.

  Juan listened to their conversation, wondering why the mollusks had abandoned their ship. “Stay here,” he said as he stood up and went out onto the amber surface, gazing down at his reflection as he walked.

  After a hundred meters he turned and looked back at the ship. Most of the sphere was below the polished floor. The uppermost section dwarfed the three human figures in the lock, but seemed small in the surrounding space.

  He motioned for them to come out; they hurried toward him. “Maybe we'll learn something to get us home,” Lena said. “I wonder where this place is.”

  Juan looked at Magnus, then at Malachi. Both men nodded at him. “We're thinking the same thing,” Magnus said.

  Juan turned to Lena. “We're inside a star.”

  9. OTHERSPACE STATION

  The amber glow warmed them. The floor seemed to soften under their feet, as if trying to please. An ocean flowed beneath the polished surface. Juan noticed yellow flashes in its depths. The floor seemed endless, without visible structures. It reminded Juan of a bare stage set, waiting to become a time and place.

  “I don't feel any ventilation,” he said.

  A gentle breeze touched his cheek, as if in answer to his comment. Malachi started at the coincidence, gave Juan a puzzled look, and said, “Inside a sun. That answers Blake's question: 'In what furnace was thy brain?'”

  “What are you talking about?” Lena asked.

  A great roar sounded overhead. “That,” Malachi replied, grinning as a giant tiger rushed toward them across the floor. “Stand your ground!”