Antares was back at his side instantly. Bandicut pushed forward to join her. “Hypernova! How does he know that? Can you find out, Antares?” Bandicut’s voice was shaking as he spoke. If they were flying into the teeth of a hypernova...
“Yessss. It-t-t will-l-l destroy-y-y my homeworld-d-d.”
Bandicut glanced back at Ed. “Yours and a lot of others, if Ik’s right.” He leaned to murmur to Antares. “It’s really important that you find out why he said that, and how he knows.”
“I will try,” she promised.
Ik was grimacing, much as before. But when Antares voiced the question, Ik turned his head to look at Bandicut with eyes so haunted they gave him an almost skeletal appearance. “The Mindaru...my stones heard...”
Shocked, Bandicut asked, “When did you hear the Mindaru?”
“In the...AI,” Ik managed, before his words were choked off by another apparent wave of pain.
Antares spoke without looking up from Ik. “He went into the AI after you did, to make sure you were okay. We couldn’t see what was happening, but he seemed to disconnect quite abruptly.” She closed her eyes and focused on Ik for a moment longer. When she raised her head, her eyes shone with fear. “John, he was in contact with the Mindaru, inside the AI. His stones were in contact. Oh, no...”
Bandicut blanched. “Are they damaged, or injured? Can you tell?”
B-dang-g-g-g. “Are they infected?” Li-Jared asked bluntly, swinging to where he could peer into Ik’s eyes.
“Damaged, yes,” Antares said. “Infected? I don’t know. I’m not sure I could tell.” Her gaze narrowed, and it seemed to Bandicut that she was trying to keep her fear to herself.
“How-w-w will-l-l you stop-p-p the star-r-r?” Ed asked in a vibrating voice that jerked Bandicut’s thoughts back to the other problem.
“I once helped make a star explode,” Jeaves said, as though in another conversation altogether. “That was another time, another place. And the circumstances were different. But perhaps my experience can be helpful in stopping an explosion, if what Ik is saying is true.”
“Listen, I don’t—”
Copernicus interrupted Bandicut to say, “Let me change the view. If there is an impending hypernova, we might be able to see the signs.”
“Someone please tell me—what is a hypernova?” Antares asked, looking from Ik to the viewspace to Bandicut. “You sound like it’s—”
“A massive stellar explosion,” Bandicut said. “You know what a supernova is, right? When a star’s core collapses and it blows itself to smithereens?”
“Sort of,” Antares said.
“A supernova produces things like neutron stars and black holes.” Bandicut swallowed hard. “A hypernova is even bigger. Jeaves, can you—?”
“An extreme release of energy,” Jeaves said, picking up smoothly. “Short of the Big Bang, there’s not much that comes close.”
“But what causes—”
“Sometimes a collision of black holes. But sometimes a very massive newborn star will collapse abruptly in a gigantic explosion. It’s called a hypernova, and also may be a gamma-ray burster, because the shock wave of gamma rays is so extreme it outshines the whole galaxy for a few seconds. Copernicus, can you show an image?”
Two windows appeared in the viewspace. One showed a star, one a galaxy. The star suddenly blossomed with intense light, and with a shock wave that billowed out into surrounding space. In the galaxy view a bright point of light erupted, and grew until it was brighter than the rest of the galaxy. After a few seconds, it faded from view.
“I assume that would be...dangerous to us?” Antares asked.
Napoleon clicked and answered. “Not just us, but every life-bearing star system within a couple thousand light-years.”
Bandicut felt as if he’d been slugged in the chest. “Earth...is fifteen hundred light-years from here.”
“Yes,” Napoleon rasped. “There is a chance that much of Earth’s ecosystem would be fried, fifteen hundred years from now, when the radiation got there.”
Bandicut had no voice to answer.
*
“If you could all please look forward for a moment,” Copernicus said. “Deep and Dark are leading us across the hollowed-out cavity of the Trapezium.”
Bandicut squinted into the luminous space, but Antares said, “I cannot see them.”
“Look about a hundred seconds of movement ahead of us, Deep to the right, and Dark to the left. Let me adjust the view.”
The viewspace zoomed in. Two dark patches became visible against the distant, glowing nebula walls. Bandicut felt an almost immediate tickle in his brain as Charli reached out to make contact. /Anything?/
/// Yes. They’re trying to hurry us along. ///
/Do we know where they’re leading us?/
/// Straight across
toward the four stars of the Trapezium.
I think our next destination
is one of them. ///
/Ah./ Bandicut cleared his throat. “Those four big stars ahead,” he said to the others, “are apparently the ones Deep and Dark want us to see next.”
“Hrah,” Ik said in a strained voice. “Is one of them *Nick*? Isn’t *Nick* the star that *Brightburn* told us to see?”
Bandicut consulted with Charli. “We’re not sure. Possibly one of them knows *Nick*.”
That produced some puzzled expressions. But Copernicus said, “Let’s adjust the frequency blend, and see what’s behind the Trapezium, beyond that cloud wall. I’m adding some radio and infrared wavelengths...”
The image darkened in some places and brightened in others, and became more saturated with color. Something new became visible through the far nebular clouds: a handful of stars, and in particular, a pulsating stellar object with flickering jets of light shooting out from top and bottom. “That appears to be a newborn star,” Copernicus reported. “Highly energetic. And highly...unstable. It may be a hypernova candidate.”
Bandicut felt his heart stutter. “Is that *Nick*?” he wondered aloud.
Antares had another question. “Am I the only one who’s afraid of all this radiation we’re flying into?”
Bwang. “You are not.”
Copernicus answered, “The levels are low inside the ship. Outside the protection of the n-space hull, of course, the bath of radiation would be quite deadly. But your fears are entirely reasonable. If that newborn star is headed toward a hypernova explosion—and it might be—I’m not sure we could survive it even within the n-space envelope.”
Bandicut looked around at his silent companions. “I think you just put a damper on the party, Coppy,” he said hollowly.
/// But the good news is,
we have time to prepare
while we make the crossing.
Of course, while we’re flying across the cavern,
our hides will be in plain sight. ///
/???/
/// You know, in case
the Mindaru come looking. ///
Bandicut shuddered, then conveyed what Charli had just said. Speaking to the robots, he asked, “If, you know, this turns out to look like a bad idea—do we have an out?”
Napoleon clicked a few times, but did not answer. Jeaves and Copernicus both seemed to have gone mute.
“That’s what I thought,” Bandicut said with a sigh.
Chapter 25
Ik’s Stones
It looked as if they might have a few days of relative calm as they crossed the cavernous interior of Starmaker, following the two black clouds. Their goal was to get across to the Trapezium as quickly as possible and learn what they could. If they were in danger from crossing the cavern in the open, there wasn’t much they could do about it. Copernicus worked on refining his control of the ship, while the others rested, helped the robots sift through the information gleaned from the derelict ships back in the Mindaru trap—and worried about Ik and his stones.
Ed remained with them much longer than he had in the past, but inte
rmittently. He kept disappearing and reappearing, breaking up, and re-forming himself. Apparently the radiation flux surrounding the ship gave him problems in tracking them, or in penetrating the folds of n-space that enveloped the hull. Eventually he more or less stabilized himself, looking like a small column of fire, floating at the front of the bridge. Bandicut liked the stability, but the column-of-fire part made him a little uneasy.
Antares asked Ed where his homeworld was. Was it in the part of the nebula they could see?
“Close to that wall of cloud. Beyond the four. Can you see?”
“Rrrm, there are very many stars,” Ik said.
Indeed, with refinements in the view, they could now see a large number of stars in the glowing cloud wall behind the four bright stars of the Trapezium. It was impossible to tell which Ed was referring to. In addition, they could now see, scattered throughout the nebula, dozens or maybe hundreds of proplyds—pre-stellar globules of condensing matter that in a few million years might become new planetary systems.
If they were not destroyed by the impending hypernova.
That monster—and increasingly they felt that they had identified it—was glowering in the fog beyond. Just now it seemed to Bandicut that it was being guarded by the four stars blazing like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
“The star...must visit...great one atop...the one that shines hottest.”
“The top one of the four?” Bandicut asked.
“Top...star...brightest...call it *Thunder*.”
And with that, the column of fire went out, and Ed was gone.
*
Ik, at some point in the last hour, had become aware with some alarm that he was feeling weirdly removed from the room around him. Everything was beginning to feel dreamlike. And not all of the dream pieces fit together in his mind.
Just now, Li-Jared was talking to him. “Rrrk-k, what do our options multiply against our chances helping Ed’s dilemma?”
Ik tilted his head, trying to follow what Li-Jared was saying. He hadn’t sounded at all like himself, just then.
Bandicut, looking as if he were about to say something, instead closed his eyes and sighed heavily. He steadied himself against the flight console. Antares noticed and reached out to him. “Band-d-d-d-ie, are you incapacitated?”
“Just depleted.”
“Shall we go to refuel? Or refurbish?”
“I would.”
That hadn’t sounded like either one of them. Was there something wrong with his—
*We are experiencing difficulty...translation difficulty.*
Ik growled softly to himself. Hrahhh.
“R-k-k-k-k,” said Li-Jared, “are you effecting cognitive—”
“My stones. Something wrong,” Ik muttered. He could hear his words coming out distorted. Groaning, he rubbed his temples, where he could feel the stones pulsing.
Li-Jared’s eyes burned bright. He was speaking to the others, and Ik’s stones didn’t even try to translate. The three gathered around Ik, and seemed to be urging him to leave the bridge with them. “Yes, all right,” he said, walking along with them. “But is it safe to move around the ship now?”
His friends looked at him uncertainly. But Copernicus/ship answered in words he could understand, “Safe...it is safe now.” Ik muttered something in reply and followed his companions off the bridge and down to the commons lounge, glad at least for the change of surroundings.
The lounge, in fact, had changed utterly from its previous appearance. It was now a place of bluish light and shadows. Tree branches arched overhead, and protruding limbs poked inward from where the walls must have been, creating almost a geodelike effect, but in wood instead of rock. It was very cozy, more shelter than light. Ik sighed through his ears in pleasure. This was a very good simulacrum of a small den on Hraachee’a; he even heard a soft undercurrent of Hraachee’an music. But how—?
The astonished voices of the others drowned out his questions. Bandicut, Antares, and Li-Jared were walking around touching the branches, peering into the little areas of seclusion, talking among themselves. Copernicus spoke from somewhere in the walls. “Welcome to a touch of Hraachee’a.” That startled Ik more than anything. The robot had spoken in his native Hraachee’an tongue, and done a pretty good job of it.
“Copernicus! Have you learned my language?”
“Some, milord. I thought everyone might enjoy a little visit home, and a visit to each other’s homes. I started with your world, using images your stones gave me a while back. Do you like it?”
“Hrrm, yes. It’s...wonderful! You can just call me Ik, though, instead of...that other.”
“As you wish. Please—all of you, make yourselves comfortable. I can adjust it any way you like. And I’ll do my best with food. Why don’t you all find a place to sit.”
Ik, dizzily trying to absorb it all, pointed the others to a table nestled among the branches. They gathered around it, on a circular bench seat that was a little odd, but in the right spirit. Soon a basket of Hraachee’an food sticks appeared on the table. Antares passed it around, and they each took one, perhaps to express solidarity with Ik. Bandicut, after munching a little, seemed to perk up. Maybe he just needed food. Maybe he would be easier to understand now.
That hope didn’t last long. “Must be essentials,” Bandicut said, “that hindrance negativity—Ik’s—”
Ik shuddered. “Copernicus, did you understand that?”
Copernicus replied in Hraachee’an. “He’s saying they want to help you with your stones.”
Ik rumbled to himself and searched inward. He thought he sensed the voice-stones searching for words. Or perhaps searching their own thoughts in the matter. Finally they said: *May require an...active...(rasp)...intervention.*
/You mean what?/
They seemed reluctant. *Another...(rasp) host...notation...potential danger.*
/Danger to them? To you and me?/
*(Rasp rasp) Both neither unknown.* There was some static in the stones’ reply, and Ik felt almost as if they were in disagreement with each other, struggling somehow. He had a feeling of something slowing his thoughts, some thickness in the air. What was that from?
But this much he understood: he was going to have to put one of his friends in danger, if they were to help him. He resisted that suggestion. He glanced from one of his companions to another, as they talked among themselves. Antares’s eyes caught his gaze; she was aware of his feelings. /What is the danger? Do we have to join stones?/
*Affirmative (rasp) may inflict...damage...*
Antares was reaching across the table now, to touch him. He saw his own arm pulling away from her, as if by its own volition. He forced it back; it was difficult, and required concentration. Antares was speaking to him. “Ik-k-k...is it...trouble...your countenance?”
Ik realized from the feeling of coolness in his face that his skin was probably turning bluer. Could she see that, or was she talking about his feelings? He tried to answer her, but he could see the deep puzzlement in her face. “Copernicus?” he whispered at last.
“Here,” said the robot, speaking out of the tabletop.
“Help me! My friends can’t understand me anymore!”
“Tell me what you want to say to them. I will translate,” Copernicus said. Ik told him what his stones had said—that they needed help from another—that they needed a joining—and that any joining would involve risk to both Ik and his friends.
Everyone began talking at once, until Ik clapped his hands to his temples in pain. Antares reached out and drew his left hand down and held it in both of hers, startling him. He had felt her touch on his shoulder and arm before, but never like this, hand to hand. It felt strangely intimate. But he had seen Antares and Bandie touch this way without harm.
The heaviness still clung to the air around him. Finally he squeezed back against Antares’s grip. He was aware of a slight tightening of Bandicut’s face, which he thought perhaps was an indication of approval. An instant later, he
felt a tingle in his arm, and an answering tingle in the voice-stones in his temples. Were his stones connecting to hers?
“Ik,” she said softly.
“Hrah.”
The words that followed seemed to come in echoing layers, as though his ears, his stones, and perhaps her stones each took a turn at trying to render her meaning. “Ik-k-k, we musst not fear-r-r. If you let me tr-r-ry, I will see if my stones can help-p-p yours-s-s.” As she spoke, he clearly sensed her fear. Fear of the contact? Or of what she might find? What was she risking, by putting her stones in contact with his? Are the Mindaru behind this?
But he was even more afraid to have to face it alone.
“Yesss,” he whispered, at last.
*
Bandicut was filled with a turbulent mixture of fear, hunger, and weariness. His initial hope that Ik would rebound, surrounded here by echoes and memories of his home, had faded as they’d gathered for conversation. His friend’s efforts to talk were growing more and more frantic, and the translation more garbled. He was pretty sure it was Ik’s stones malfunctioning and not his own; the others were having the same problem.
Then Copernicus interrupted to translate for Ik and explain what was needed. Before Bandicut could even blink, Antares had reached out to make contact—not just with their friend Ik, but with his stones. The knot in Bandicut’s stomach tightened. He could feel her fear, and also her determination. She would risk whatever it took to help Ik.
/// John, you’ve got to trust her. ///
/I do trust her. But what if Ik’s stones are infected?/ He touched her shoulder and whispered her name.
She glanced in his direction, but only for a moment. And then she focused exclusively on Ik.
Bandicut drew a deep breath, waiting, and saw Li-Jared stirring, as well. /Can you tell what’s happening?/ Ik was muttering something, and Antares moved around to sit close to him.
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