Sunborn

by Jeffrey Carver

  *Please clarify.*

  Julie wondered if John had had to talk his way around the stones. /Watch and see. I’m just going as far as that little ledge down there./ She pointed a gloved hand toward a jutting metal step on the side of what was left of the cabin. The thing she wanted to reach was supposed to be accessible from there. It took some careful maneuvering, but eventually she was perched—awkwardly—not more than a meter from the venting plasma. She peered into the shadows. There it was: a large, upside-down U, a handle that looked as if it might take both hands to pull. Tough in zero gravity.

  *Julie?*

  She centered herself in front of the handle. Bracing herself with one hand, she gripped the handle with the other, and pulled.

  *This is a manual release for the cargo pod.*

  /Right./

  *You can’t release it just by doing this, you know.*

  /I know./ The handle budged, ever so slightly. She relaxed a moment, then strained again. It moved a little more. /There are three more spaced around the cabin section. I’ll take them one at a time, and release the last one when we’re sure we’re close enough to the sun. Can you help me?/

  *We’re uncertain about this.*

  /I trusted you, now you trust me, okay? I promise not to jump the gun. Now let me get this done and move on to the next one!/ She pulled again, and this time the handle came, rotating out and away from the hull’s surface. She felt something, a slight clunk, as the latch released.

  *Julie...*

  /Just tell me when it’s safe to cut it loose, okay?/

  She felt some far corner of the stones acquiesce as she began making her way to the second release. It seemed the translator was unwilling to force her into something she didn’t want to do. It might be in charge, but it insisted on working with her rather than in spite of her. That was good. Because she had a lot to do here. The sun, she could have sworn, was swelling visibly. She wanted to have a little bit of her pride left as she plummeted to her death.

  /We are going to die, right?/ she asked matter-of-factly, as she attached her tethers in front of the second manual release lever.

  *That is a possible outcome. Just now we want to focus solely on ensuring the destruction of this object.*

  /Could flying it into the sun make it stronger?/

  *We have considered that possibility. We believe it has not yet reached a stage of being able to transform solar energy into propulsive energy. It is laboring to survive. The bursts of solar heat we have focused on it are taking a toll. It is suffering.*

  Julie considered that. /Are we suffering from the heat, too?/

  *Not as much.*

  /Good./ Gripping a handhold with her left hand and placing her right on the second release lever, Julie pulled with all her strength, and with a great gasp that echoed in her helmet, hauled the handle to the open position. /You said it might develop the ability to fly out of here on solar energy—if it sucks enough material from us to sprout wings or something, right? So aside from what I want, it might be better to boot the thing off into the sun if we can, anyway? Right? To deprive it of more of our matter?/

  *Possibly so. In its current state, we do not believe it could survive outside our threading field. You may be right.*

  I’ll be damned, she thought. I may be right. Even if I am about to become toast. Unfastening and refastening her tether lines, she began making her way across the top of the spacecraft. Beneath her, the cargo pod seemed to be vibrating. Half the releases were open. Was the sun bigger than it was ten minutes ago? Who cared? Gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight. Yeah.

  She was maybe halfway to the third release mechanism when the stones’ voice penetrated her consciousness: *Please respond!*

  /Hah—?/

  *Are you in distress?*

  /What—?/

  *Julie Stone! Are you in distress?*

  /What...distress...?/

  She blinked away sweat from her eyes, and realized that her heart was pounding, and she felt a little lightheaded. /Fine...I’m fine./ Except for a dizzy, sweltering euphoria. The sort of feeling one might get if one were spinning around. Or too hot. Or going hypo...hypox...hypoxic...

  She blinked hard and tried to focus. She was holding one end of a tether in one hand, and the other end was attached...where? To her waist. That was right, wasn’t it? One to the hand, one to the waist...? She felt herself floating...

  *Attach the tether! Now!*

  She looked at the tether in her hand, looked down at the cleat from which she was slowly drifting away. That did not seem right. She was turning slowly, coming to face the wall of the blazing sun. No...gonna float away...not even have the ol’ translator to die with. A jerk at her waist brought her back. The second tether had come to its end and stopped her escape. But she was rotating now, swinging around, out of control.

  *Pull yourself in! Do you need more oxygen?*

  Panting, she grabbed for the other tether, and nearly wrapped it around her neck as she struggled to arrest her movement and pull herself back. /Oxygen? Might be good./

  *We are trying to analyze. We think your regulator has malfunctioned. We are trying to—*

  She felt a sudden gust of wind inside her helmet. She drew greedily on it, like a deprived smoker on a cigarette. /Jesus, that’s—/ And then it stopped, and she gasped again. /Why’d you turn it off?/

  *Can you adjust it inside your suit?*

  /I—maybe—/ She pushed at her chin control and felt a little more air coming. /Is that—am I—uh!/ She slammed into the side of the cabin, and grabbed for something to hang on to. She slid downward. Toward the cargo pod. Again she grabbed. Missed. Her feet were dangling toward the cloud of disintegrating matter coming out of the ruptured cargo hull. Nothing else to grab.

  *Pull the tether in your other hand!*

  /What?/ She yanked hard with her left hand, surprised to find a tether still in her grip. With a jolt, she began to float back toward the roof of the cabin. /OK. OK. OK. What about my air?/

  *You were running low. We have set up a transfer from another tank. Hold on.*

  Like emptying my bladder, but in reverse? She tried to pull herself back to where she’d been, and finally got her second tether hooked on a cleat. The airflow started to feel okay, and her vision was clearing up. She hadn’t even noticed the tunnel vision before. She breathed in great lungfuls of air. Jesus, that was close. When she felt steadier, she resumed moving toward the far side of the cabin. /How long was I out of it?/ How much bigger was the sun?

  *Not long. Long enough. Can you pull the handle?*

  She planted herself, sucked a deep breath, and pulled. The release opened. /Got it. Is that the last?/

  *One more. Can you move more quickly?*

  She grunted. /We getting close to the dive, are we?/

  *We think we detect new organization forming in the alien object. Some of its mass is boiling off in the sun, but it’s pulling from us faster than it’s losing...*

  /Say no more./ She began moving to the last handle that would jettison the cancerous monster. It seemed to take a very long time. Then her hand was on the handle. Brace yourself. Pull.

  It didn’t move.

  She pulled harder. Still nothing. /It’s not...I don’t know why...if I can’t get this.../ Biting her lip, she put both hands on the grip and braced her feet on either side of it, so she’d be lifting from a squat. Pull!

  *Let’s try this.*

  The craft beneath her feet suddenly jolted, as if with a change in acceleration. The handle gave with a lurch, and she sprang involuntarily away from the hull with her feet, and an instant later was hanging on by the handle as her body flew out and twisted. She struggled to pull herself back and grab something solid. /Did it—did it work?/

  *Look down.*

  Something was shaking where she was holding on. She bent her head down to peer past her feet. /God damn!/ The cargo pod was sliding out of its docking adapter and separating from the service craft. Or rather, what was left of the pod
was separating from what was left of the craft. It was a hazy ball of dust and light, drifting away from a badly moth-eaten hull. It all seemed to squirm in her vision.

  *It’s trying to hold on. We’re going to make a slight change.*

  As the stones said that, something happened in the spatial threading—and the spacecraft seemed to change velocity rather abruptly. Julie had a sudden sensation of the brakes being put on, while the detached cargo pod went flying ahead of them. Flying ahead of them into the fiery heart of the sun...

  *

  The sun. It was most of the sky now, and the stones advised her that they would be making their entry over the next few minutes. She was going to have to ride it out, right where she was perched, on top of the remains of the cabin. She had moved closer to the translator. /There’s no way for me to get a message off to anyone now is there?/

  *Not really. Look.*

  She looked. The alien object had disappeared in the glare. But a point of bright light flared, dazzling even against the intense fire that dominated the sky. It blazed for about one second, then disappeared. /Was that it? Is it gone?/

  *It is gone. We monitored its disintegration. A few more hours and it might have been able to protect itself. It wasn’t complete enough to survive the intense heat.*

  Julie looked a little longer, then turned to look back at the dizzying view of the translator, where it was attached, squirming, to the skeletal remains of the spacecraft. /You sound sad./

  *We’d hoped to take it with us to study. There is much we would like to know about its creators.*

  /A shame,/ Julie said, making the most insincere statement of her life, as she tried to swallow her ballooning fear. Take it with us, right. /Where is it we think we’re going?/

  *Hold tight,* said the stones.

  With that, the ship plummeted into the heat and light and thundering inferno of the sun.

  Chapter 36

  In the Fire of a Star

  Racing to the bridge, Bandicut and Antares found Copernicus working with filters on the sensor images, and Li-Jared pacing back and forth in front of the viewspace, apparently trying to decide what he was looking at. All Bandicut could see was a blazing sun mostly hidden behind the limbs and struts of their captor. “Is that *Nick*?” he asked, thinking of Napoleon out there, somewhere, inside the star. Wouldn’t Napoleon be surprised to know they had traveled here from *Thunder*.

  “It is,” said Copernicus.

  “What—rrrm—is it doing to us?” Ik asked, arriving just behind them.

  “*Nick* is doing nothing to us,” Li-Jared answered. “But that thing out there seems to be bringing us to its parents.” Li-Jared raised his chin a little, gazing first out ahead of them and then back inside at Copernicus. The Karellian looked as if he hadn’t slept. He swayed as he asked Copernicus, “Can you replay the image we saw before?”

  The viewspace flickered, and showed them farther from the star. For just an instant, as the angles changed, something became visible past all the struts and legs, a shadowy object at the edge of the star’s atmosphere.

  “Hrah!” Ik exclaimed. “That’s it, that’s the control center! That’s what we saw through *Thunder*’s eyes!”

  Bandicut tensed; his hands balled into fists. Was that where the entire dark-matter-channeling operation was controlled—the place he and Napoleon had tried unsuccessfully to find?

  Ik turned to Antares. “That’s what you saw, isn’t it?”

  Antares cocked her head at Ik. A strange expression passed like a shadow over Ik’s face, only for an instant. “Ik, are you okay?” Bandicut asked. “Are you sure it’s the control center?” The Hraachee’an looked puzzled by his question and bobbed his head. “Good,” Bandicut said. “Then we’re going right where we need to be.”

  “Glad to hear that,” Li-Jared muttered. “What now?”

  Bandicut drew a breath. “We find a way to disable it, I guess.”

  Copernicus restored the current view, which didn’t show much. “I am still monitoring for any change in the sentinel’s grip on us,” the robot said, “but so far I have found no weaknesses.”

  “I don’t think escape is our goal right now,” Bandicut repeated. Antares touched his shoulder; he felt her thoughts, urging him to persevere. In his head, meanwhile, Charli was scanning for their allies.

  /// I feel Charlene-echo nearby. ///

  /Did they both follow us here? Deep and Dark?/

  /// I believe so.

  But I don’t know if they have a plan, either. ///

  “What?” Antares said, watching him.

  “Charli says Deep and company are out there.”

  “Can they help us?”

  “Wouldn’t we all like to know.”

  *

  An hour later the ship lurched, and Copernicus announced, “Our captor has dropped us out of n-space.”

  “Is it moving us to a dock?” Bandicut asked.

  “Not that I can tell. But we’re still being held.”

  Bandicut strode forward and pointed to the upper left of the view. A patch where the sun had been visible was now partially blocked by a shifting darkness. “Is that the Mindaru control center structure?”

  “Yes. We’re being probed, by the way.”

  Bwang. “Probed by what?”

  “Magnetic, gravitational, neutrino-beam, X-ray, gamma ray, tachyon...”

  “Is that all?” Bandicut asked.

  “No, I am also detecting AI threads trying to penetrate my system.”

  Ik’s eyes seemed to harden, and he stepped forward, growling softly. Antares, eyes narrowed, stayed close to him. Bandicut felt a twinge of her sudden concern.

  Li-Jared was bristling. “Can you shut them out?”

  “Yes, but here’s the problem—we must study them if we want to find a way to stop them,” Copernicus said. “Jeaves and I have developed a set of what we believe are robust protective protocols.”

  Bong. “Robust, you say? Strong enough to withstand an assault from that?” Li-Jared sounded doubtful.

  Jeaves answered. “Let’s just say, if the assault is strong enough to overwhelm our defenses, we will have already lost. Does that reassure you?”

  “Not much,” Bandicut said.

  “My point is that we have a pretty good defense.”

  Bandicut glanced around, noting that Jeaves’s reassurance seemed to be meeting with a mixed reaction. Ik’s eyes glinted—with worry? “What do you think its game plan is?”

  “One presumes,” Jeaves said, “that it wants to study us as well, perhaps before destroying us. It did go to the trouble of bringing us all this way. So—”

  “I am detecting a loosening of the gripping arms,” Copernicus interrupted.

  “Are you ready to break?” Li-Jared danced forward into the viewspace.

  Before Copernicus could answer, there was an abrupt change outside the ship. The sentinel arms pulled away, revealing a blinding light from the star, which the filters chopped back at once. Between the ship and the sun was a curtainlike thing of black and dazzling silver; it almost, but not quite, enveloped The Long View. Bandicut squinted, trying to decipher what he was seeing. Mindaru control station, enforcer, star destroyer—maybe all at once—it rippled like a silver-and-shadow ghost between The Long View and the roiling sun. The star’s light seemed to shine partially through it. “What is that? Physically, I mean.”

  “I cannot measure much,” Jeaves said. “But if this really is the control center—”

  “What do we do, now that we have it right where we want it?”

  /// Be very, very patient, I should think.

  Wait for a proper opening. ///

  Antares shot him a quizzical gaze. Bandicut repeated Charli’s comment.

  Bwang-g-g. “Charli’s right,” Li-Jared said, startling him.

  Copernicus tapped twice. “Actually...I had already arrived at that conclusion, and so I did not attempt a breakaway just now.”

  Li-Jared spun, eyeing the robot.
/>
  “Hrah-h-h,” Ik drawled.

  Antares touched his arm. “Is it the star? Are you in contact?” She closed her eyes. “The time-fusion is starting. I can feel it. That’s what Deep is doing...”

  *

  Ik felt at once that *Nick*’s pain was different from *Thunder*’s. *Nick* had a fierce knot in the pit of his stomach, a knot that was growing steadily harder and tighter. And it was going to kill him if it wasn’t removed soon.

  That’s life, Ik thought—and then caught himself with a jerk. Why had he thought that? He wanted to offer assurance to the star. /We are trying. Trying as hard as we can,/ he whispered. It didn’t seem like much.

  To his surprise, there came an answer:

  Trying ?

  How ?

  It grows

  gnaws

  kills

  Seeks death

  Where is hope ?

  How ?

  How can I ?

  How ?

  Which left Ik groping for an answer.

  Soon

  will end soon

  I feel-l-l

  And Ik sensed a long, reverberating sigh that seemed to carry from one eon to the next. If there was any hope in the sigh, he could not feel it. He wasn’t sure he could offer any, either.

  *

  Deeaab had an idea. It was an extreme solution, more extreme than he would have chosen.

  Deeaab and Daarooaack had entered this universe from a place far away—at least, when considered in a certain way. Viewed in another way, their universe of birth was no farther than the backside of a wave of sunlight. They had arrived through a discontinuity in the membrane that bounded this spacetime from others. The universe they had left behind was winding down toward its death, dark and chaotic and increasingly formless. It was a place, Deeaab thought, that would suit the Mindaru very well.

  Deeaab spoke to Daarooaack.

  “This entity kills and kills, and will kill everything it can reach. We must put an end to it. Do you see a way?”

  Daarooaack was moving about at a distance from the starship and the enemy object, trying to find a weakness.

  “None that does not involve great risk, and probable failure.”