Bwang. “Well, that’s just—”
“But I was going to suggest, if we can find the way there, we might look in on Ed’s homeworld. I’m very curious how Ed’s people are faring. And Ed did help us at a crucial moment.”
“Fine with me,” Bandicut said with a shrug. If we can find our way there...
*
They were about forty light-minutes out from *Nick*, and in the commons filling their plates with lunch—having by common agreement requested a Hraachee’an setting for Ik. The Hraachee’an was once more, through translation and fumbling gestures, apologizing to Bandicut for trying to strangle him, when Ed appeared—this time in the form of a shimmering entity wrapped like a sunbeam around a Hraachee’an terrace wall. “Ed!” Bandicut cried. “We’ve been hoping to see you! You can take your toe out of the stream now.”
“Wee-ee have stopp-p-ed the f-flow?”
“Yes, yes! Are you all right? Did it hurt you to stop that stream inside the other star?”
“No-o...happ-p-y...my worl-ld s-safe!”
“How can you tell, Ed?” Antares asked. “Have you traveled back to it already?”
“Of-f cour-r-s-se. Look-k-k. S-see.”
At what? Bandicut wondered. Before he could ask, Ed suddenly dilated open like a camera’s iris, revealing an image like a strange telescopic view, right through the side of the ship. The group gasped and murmured in unison.
It was like peering down a luminous channel, with sides that hinted at various kinds of landscape all down its length, but without quite revealing them. The far end, however, was zooming in rapidly on a view of the broken, convulsive surface of Ed’s world that they had seen, long ago. It was a breathtaking view: brilliant crimson rocks; jagged cliffs; glowing lava pillows; yawning crevasses. But something was different. The lava flows were hardening. The crevasses seemed to be narrowing.
Li-Jared asked, “Have the gravity waves stopped, then?”
“Yes-s-s.”
“But how could it return to normal so fast?” Bandicut asked.
/// I think we’re seeing it
as interpreted by Ed. ///
“It will-l-l look-k this way-y. Glimps-s-se forward-d. My people-le may be able to re-t-turrrn, now.”
“Return?” Antares asked. “Where are they now?”
Ed seemed to struggle to answer. Napoleon intervened with a series of incomprehensible chirrups. After a bit of that, Ed tried again. “T-trap-peez-eezium. Be-t-t-tween stars. Floating-ng. Waiting-ng.”
Bandicut stared in disbelief. “In the Trapezium? With those high-energy stars? How could they live there, if they can’t survive earthquakes and volcanoes on your homeworld?” The Trapezium was a maelstrom of radiation emanating from the four energetic stars. It hardly seemed a likely sanctuary for any lifeform.
Ed and Napoleon buzzed and chirruped some more. Finally Napoleon said, “Ed’s people can survive in gaseous clouds—even plasma clouds. But they need to nest and, I think, reproduce in complex rocky strata. If I interpret correctly, they are drawn to the specific pattern of their homeworld’s magnetic field. Rather, I believe, like certain sea creatures on your own homeworld that must return to their home grounds to spawn.”
Bandicut found that notion staggering. “Do you know—can you tell where their homeworld is?”
More buzzing. “Cap’n—they live on a proto-planet of the star we just saved. Of *Nick*.”
“Jesus,” Bandicut murmured as Antares drew a startled breath. “Then a hypernova wouldn’t have just disrupted their planet, it would have vaporized it.”
“Indeed,” said Napoleon.
“S-sa-f-f-e now. Our-r-r hom-m-e.” The hyper-being, still visible as a glowing iris around the view, shivered—and looked as if he might disappear again at any moment.
“I’m glad, Ed,” Bandicut said with a heartfelt sigh. “I really am.” And I’m glad Earth is safe, too, fifteen hundred years from now.
Chapter 39
Arrival
Julie was only half conscious through most of the passage through the sun. To the extent she had any conscious thought, it was the thought that she had died. She was occasionally surprised to realize that she had awareness, but that was inevitably burned away by the relentless inferno of gases past her face and body. It all seemed to deny any possibility of living reality.
Then something happened. A soundless thump and a low, crackling hiss, and the solar inferno blinked away. She was surrounded once more by the dark of space. Consciousness drifted away again; but eventually, it came back and she heard:
*Spatial translation complete. We’re threading space again.*
That brought her around. It was the translator. Or no—the stones.
*Look around you.*
I thought I was dead.
*We’ll be there soon.*
This doesn’t feel like Heaven.
*Open your eyes. We picked up a lot of energy diving through the sun.*
Oh yes. She remembered now. It seemed a long time ago. Finally her eyes came into focus. What she saw took her breath away. She was still looking out through a space helmet, and sitting atop the battered remnant of a spacecraft. But beneath the spacecraft, an entire galaxy stretched out like a carpet of jewels. Or like the view from an airplane, flying over a city at night. Except it wasn’t; it really was a galaxy. /Is that a close-up of—what? Andromeda?/
*Not Andromeda. Milky Way.*
Milky Way? That made no sense, not if this was supposed to be real. There was no way—from the solar system—that one could look down on the Milky Way from above the galactic disk. /You don’t mean...you aren’t saying.../ Suddenly she felt so dizzy she’d have fallen off the remains of her spaceship if she hadn’t been strapped on. Except she wasn’t strapped on, she was holding on, to the scorched beam she was straddling like a metal steed. She clutched it harder between her knees. /Stones? Where are we?/
There was no immediate answer. She looked off to one side, then the other. In the night, she saw few if any individual stars—just the galactic spiral and, dimly, close at hand, the twisted beams of her spacecraft. As her eyes became accustomed to the dark, she began to make out some small, fuzzy patches at the limits of her vision. Other galaxies? She shuddered. No. This was too vast and weird and terrifying to think about. She wasn’t really looking at her own galaxy from the outside. Was she?
Twisting farther to her left, she managed to look behind her. She was hoping, at least, for the reassuring sight of the translator. /Where is it?/ She had last seen it nestled among some reinforcing crossbeams, and it was not there now. Panic set in. /Stones! Tell me!/
*The translator is there, but is greatly reduced in size.*
/What do you—wait, is that it?/ In the dim surroundings, it was hard to see. She thought she saw a dark sphere about the size of a softball, wedged between two girders. /Is that it?/
*Yes. It was forced to collapse inward to protect itself. It sustained considerable damage protecting us in the passage through the sun. We are unable to make contact. We are unsure if it survived.*
Julie’s head reeled at the thought. The translator...dead? Not possible. It had to have survived. It was her connection to John and home and everything that had happened. She tried to hold it together until she had more facts, but against her will, she began to cry. No, no, this is stupid, you can’t afford to cry now...
*Julie! Pay attention to your surroundings! Look forward, ten o’clock, high.*
/I am paying—wait, what is that?/
What it was became clearer as it drew nearer. It was a stupendously large artificial structure. Why should there be a structure of any sort out here beyond the edge of the galaxy? And yet it was clearly artificial; it looked like a gargantuan chain, or segmented necklace. It sparkled a little here and there, but mostly it consisted of dark shapes, shadows against the gloom of extragalactic space.
/Is it inhabited?/ she whispered, hardly daring to hope. And in the back of her mind, she wondered, Did John come here?
Did he see this, too?
*Some call it Shipworld. Soon you will learn more. Very soon.*
*
The structure grew incredibly fast, mushrooming before her eyes. The overall shape became lost to view, as the nearest segment filled up the sky. Details on the surface began to become visible. Soon those lines and sketches grew to reveal still finer detail of structure. Finally those details revealed themselves to contain assemblies of bubbles, tiny windows, maybe even docking ports.
Her pitiful remnant of a ship sped straight toward the side of the massive structure. Finally, when it seemed certain they would crash, a portal irised open before them. It blossomed in size; then she and her ship glided in and floated to a stop, in the midst of blinding, crisscrossing, swiveling beams of light.
After a few seconds, the beams dimmed and went out, leaving her eyes dazzled. When she recovered from the glare, she saw...nothing much. The walls around her and her craft—if they really were walls—were a featureless blue-steel blur. They didn’t look solid, exactly, more like a fog. Julie sat bewildered on the skeleton of her ship and peered out of her helmet in every direction. /You want to give me a hint?/ she asked at last. There was, she realized suddenly, gravity under her. Gravity. /Should I get off? Is there going to be something to stand on if I get off?/
*Yes.*
/That’s all you can say?/ Gathering her nerve, she started to swing her left leg around, to climb down from her perch. /I don’t mean to bore you with conversation./ She continued her movement, as though dismounting from a very tall horse, in her very cumbersome suit. When it came time to step down off what she thought was the lowest part of the ship (hard to see, with the damned helmet blocking her sight), she hesitated. She couldn’t see a thing but fog beneath her. /How do I know this isn’t a fifty-foot drop?/ A rush of fear flooded through her, and she clung, trembling.
*It’s safe.*
/Are you sure?/
*It is safe.*
Okay, she thought. Time to show them what we Earth women are made of. She drew a deep breath and reached down with her left foot. When she didn’t find anything solid, she grunted, pushed back, and jumped feetfirst. She dropped maybe a meter, then slowed—gently, to a stop. Looking down, she saw a blue fog curling over her boots. She was standing on the same misty “ground” as the ship. She felt heavy; the gravity was at least Earth-normal. She hadn’t felt that in a long time; it was going to take some getting used to.
*Turn around.*
Disregarding a prickling of fear, she turned. She didn’t see anything until she had turned completely—and then she jumped with a startled cry. Floating toward her was a tall, oval patch of glowing air—emerald-green in color, but shimmering blue around the edges.
She took a step away from it, and felt her back pressed against the exposed girders of the ship. There was nowhere to go. Before she could protest, the oval passed over her, sparkling as it made contact with her spacesuit...
*
For a time that might have been seconds or minutes, she floated in a sapphire glow. She felt a strange sense of separation, as though something in her were being pulled apart and put back together again. She wrapped her arms fearfully around her chest—and started again.
Her spacesuit was gone. “What are you doing?” she shouted, clutching at her clothing, afraid it would be next. “I need that suit! I need it.”
*Remain calm.*
She gasped, “How am I supposed to breathe?”
Then she realized she was breathing; there was air, and it seemed fresh and good. The glow surrounding her turned pale, nearly white, and she heard the stones again, as though at a distance:
*Normalization complete.*
She stumbled out of the glow, lost her balance, and fell forward, face-first into thick grass.
*
For a while she lay still, shaking in wonder and fear. Was she losing her mind? The smell of the grass was what brought her around. Grass? She raised her head and looked around. Grass, yes. Not quite like grass as she remembered it on Earth—the blades were thinner, softer, bluer. But grass, certainly. Alien grass.
*You have been normalized.*
/Huh?/
*You will not get a rash from touching the grass.*
That made her get up in a hurry. /Uh. Right./ She brushed her hands off nervously, then suddenly realized—the gravity no longer felt oppressive. Something else occurred to her. /Does that mean I can eat the food here, too? Assuming there is any?/ Waiting for a response, she looked around. She was standing on a gently sloping, grassy hillside with a small knot of odd-looking trees clustered at the bottom. She was on an alien world. An alien world.
*You will be able to eat the food.*
/Good./ She turned around again, to make sure she knew where the spacecraft was. Not that it was of any conceivable use anymore, but it was all she had.
Or all she had had. There was no spacecraft behind her, nor any sign of the docking bay, nor any sign that there had ever been any of those things. Jesus, she whispered. What is happening to me? She felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of loss. What hadn’t been taken from her? Her life? Her world? Her solar system? They hadn’t even left her the shattered remains of the craft that brought her here? /Where is the translator? Is it gone, too? Is it dead? Please tell me what is happening to me?/
*We cannot answer all of your questions. We hope the answers will come in time.*
/In time!/ She gave up and fell to her knees, shaking her head. Finally, heedless of her surroundings, she wept uncontrollably, in quaking sobs.
After a time, when her tears were spent, she wiped her face on her sleeve and lifted her eyes to squint at the sky. /This isn’t a planet, is it? Is that an artificial sky up there?/ Of course it was; she’d passed into that enormous structure. The gravity was probably artificial, too. Had John come here? Will I see him? What lay beyond this? she wondered. All she could see was the cresting knoll, and rolling land beyond.
No, she realized suddenly—there was one more thing. A small animal had just poked its head up out of the grass, maybe thirty feet away, near the top of the knoll. It was peering in her direction. It resembled a prairie dog—or one of those African animals, a meerkat. It scurried a short distance toward her, then stopped, gazing at her with its head cocked. It chittered briefly, then cocked its head the other way. Its eyes were dark and unreadable. It chittered again, more slowly, as if trying to talk to her.
Julie’s heart thumped. The creature’s vocalizations gave her, unaccountably, a rush of bewilderment and hope—and an inconceivable grief and anger and longing for her own world—and then something that was almost a kind of joy. Why would she feel joy? Because something else was alive on this hill with her? Overcome by emotion, she gasped in a series of long, deep breaths, trying to calm herself.
Finally, she straightened her back and beckoned the creature toward her. To her astonishment, it crept forward to within a couple of meters. It sat gazing at her, and made a sound that reminded her of a hamster. Holding back tears, Julie stretched out a trembling hand and whispered, “And who, my small friend, might you be...?”
Chapter 40
Home
Ed disappeared, with a pop and a sparkle that looped around the commons, making Bandicut blink. A moment later came a much louder pop and a bright flash. Copernicus called out, “We’ve had an unexpected course deviation. The n-space slope we’re following seems to have altered toward Ed’s world!”
Bong. “Didn’t you tell us Ed’s world was in orbit around *Nick*?” Li-Jared asked, gaze shifting rapidly back and forth between the view and the holo-image of Copernicus.
“Yes, that’s—wait—wait—I’m having to recalibrate. The readings coming from ahead of us are very confusing.”
Jeaves added, “I don’t quite understand it, either. But I think Ed has done something to enable us to see something, or maybe lead us to something, that was hidden before. It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen.”
As the robot spoke,
the view of space began flickering and swimming. “I think we’d better get back to the bridge,” Bandicut said, jumping up. The others followed him, at a run. They all lurched down the passageway, as the artificial gravity fluctuated. It was like running on the deck of a small ship at sea. As they cascaded onto the bridge, Bandicut asked the robots for an update.
“I’m still uncertain,” said Copernicus. The viewspace was just stabilizing, showing Ed’s world much as they had just seen it—cliff faces and volcanic outcroppings—but with something new. The view was going through some sort of transformation, turning transparent and separating oddly, as though instead of looking down on a planetary surface, they were gazing through finely layered transparent images stacked together, each one a little different—many, many layers, shuffling and rotating and twisting like a kaleidoscope as they watched.
It made Bandicut dizzy. “Coppy, can’t you—?”
His words were interrupted by a sudden vibration in the deck. “What’s that?” Li-Jared asked. “Copernicus, are we about to fly through that—whatever it is?” Indeed, they appeared to be speeding toward the bewildering image.
“Uncertain. Our n-space readings indicate a clear passage ahead, despite what we see. Different from the usual, though. I think Ed is leading us toward an n-space regime that is...quite different...”
“And we’re just following?” Li-Jared asked. “Aren’t you supposed to ask us for instructions?”
“I am indeed, Captains. But in truth it’s the shape of n-space that is forcing us—”
Li-Jared made a loud bonging sound. “Is anyone else thinking of that Mindaru trap we fell into once already?”
“I do not believe this is the same,” Jeaves answered. “In fact, I think Ed is trying to—wait, there he is again.”
Ed had just reappeared as a column of fire at the front of the viewspace. “I will-l hel-l-p you go h-home!” he called.
“How?” Bandicut asked.
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