Superluminary

by perpetrator

  The worldlets were smooth, because land and ocean melted and reformed so frequently, that the surface was merely a level, glowing mush up from which heaps and bubbles and forked crystal-growth endlessly swelled and toppled. Burning rivers writhed like snakes, and burning mountains rose and fell like waves on the sea.

  Brother Beast used his secret technique of metanthropy to shed his damaged skin, and now he stood alone on his superjovian world, his skin pink as a baby. “How are these creatures alive? Are they vampires?”

  The glowing worldlets had not yet seen the warplanet called Saint Michael’s World, but they soon would, as the seconds turned into minutes.

  Lord Uranus was less burned than his brothers. The subjovian world under his command, being less massive, had released fewer neutrons and neutrinos. He had also placed his command throne in the subjovian’s ring system, far above the surface. He said, “They are another kind of undead. No biological cells could withstand the constant elemental changes happening here: they must have been designed for this environment.”

  It was young Lord Ganymede who then screamed. The closest of the many small worlds darting like fish and burning like torched was only four or five light minutes away from Second Jupiter. By sheer mischance, this was one of the civilian worlds, meant to be far from harm’s way. Immediately the nearer worldlets, including those not close enough to have seen the light-image from the gas giant as yet, informed by tachyon radio, now rushed inward toward the heavily populated gas giant, and the space-distorting neutron storm effect lanced out before them.

  In the periscope spy-rays, the melting and reforming creatures in their melting and reforming observatories and weapon stations could be seen dancing and exalting. They retained just enough human shape to make the image horrible.

  Brother Beast, even though his world was farthest from Ganymede’s location, was the most massive and had the greatest range. He reached out with a warpfissure, plucked up the nearest worldlet to the gas giant under Ganymede’s command, and flung it out of timespace. But his warp control circuits exploded and melted, and the armatures began to vibrate strangely and tear themselves apart.

  Lord Jupiter, at the helm of the fiery gas giant called Inferno, was stationed nearby to Ganymede. Even though his body was glowing and falling, flake by flake, into pieces, and the pains burning his every nerve were hell itself, he retained the presence of mind to command his servants to open fire on the worldlets attacking his son.

  More than half of the weaponry and mighty engines of Inferno dissolved and burned, but the other half created the interplanetary beam weapons and launched them, like bolts of lightning wider than moons reaching from globe to globe. The nearest enemy worldlets to Ganymede were incinerated, nor could the neutron storms which the glowing worlds shed block the river of electric power which flowed over them.

  Aeneas ordered the evacuation of Second Jupiter. During battle, the populations had been told, and, indeed, hypnotized, into the discipline of carrying interplanetary range contortion pearls with them at all times. It would take many moments, perhaps more than they had to spare.

  Then Aeneas called all the Lords of Creation to contort through space to the command dome on the Dyson, where Lord Deimos sat. They stopped dissolving.

  Deimos said to Aeneas, “Why are we not melting?”

  Aeneas said, “I don’t know.”

  But Lady Pallas, her flesh a mass of melting scars, could still speak through her ring. “It is an application of warpcore technology. The base mass value of fundamental particles is being changed. The Dyson is hollow, less dense than air, so there is less damage here. Any neutron storm appearing at the gravitational center of the Dyson would be inside the singularity.”

  Aeneas saw she was right. It was something even he had overlooked. In his memory was buried information about the effects of two space warps being formed in opposition to each other, but, until now, as the only man able to work a warpcore, that knowledge had never floated to the surface of his mind before. There had been no example, and no need.

  He now saw that the two giant stars were both equipped with armatures, but out of phase with each other, each interfering destructively with the other. The disharmony kept the fabric of space always perturbed. It was as if spacetime itself was in a continual state of flexing, growing, flattening, shrinking, so as to produce different mass values for neutrons and protons from moment to moment. No wonder normal matter was dissolving.

  Lady Pallas said, “The violent convection at the star cores was a clue, as was the reach of ionization throughout the nebula. These are side effects of the alternations of base neutron mass: stable elements that cannot be ionized are being ionized here.”

  The closest of the small worlds were now aware of Inferno, the Fire Giant warworld that had opened fire on them. Aeneas detected changes in nearby warpspace, and knew the creatures on the nearest world were communicating by tachyon radio to the further worlds that the lightwaves from the newly-arrived human intruders had not yet reached.

  The small worlds now turned like fish, as one, and closed in toward the Fire Giant. It was clear that they had not yet seen the Dyson and the other worlds in the Tellurian Armada: those bodies were too far away for the light to have reached them yet.

  Lord Jupiter held up his ring, but the damage to his nervous system was too great: his hand melted and dissolved before his eyes, and his ring fell to the ground, also melting. “My children! They are still on that world!”

  Lady Pallas acted before any could stop her. Her ring twinkled on her scarred, half-burned hand. She took control of one of the contortion pearls Lord Mars had arranged before him.

  She was back on the Water Giant world called Pallas, alone with the vast brain that controlled it. She spun her armatures up to speed, vanished and swelled back into timespace at a point between Inferno and the smaller worlds. The countless weapons from far below her atmosphere blazed, but she was not attempting to overwhelm the vampire warp effect with hers. Instead, she directed neuropsionic fire at the strange and ever-burning white worlds. The only thing she did with the warp core was halt the progression of gravity through space, rendering all objects on and around her planet weightless, and throwing her atmosphere out into space. It definitely slowed the neutron storm effect.

  The small worlds displayed another application of warpcore technology the humans had not hitherto seen: small cores making small warps in concert with each other, to impose slightly different fundamental physical constants on the planet Pallas. She was forced to flatten space to prevent small warps from destroying the matter-energy balances on her world. But when she did so, the small worlds erected warps out of phase with hers. Even though her world was far more massive than theirs, her attempt to flatten space accelerated the rate of disintegration of the core of her world, and dissolved her warp armature control mechanisms. She was now on a blind and uncontrolled planet, with a loose warp core consuming the center of it.

  Both Pallas and Saint Michael’s World were motionless and defenseless. The speed at which two of the fourteen battle worlds had been rendered helpless was astonishing.

  The rate of dissolution of the small worlds increased, and the small globes visibly shrank: but they soon recovered and restored themselves.

  Aeneas attempted rapidly to change the spin variable of the Dyson, trying to synchronize with the many disjoined small, attacking worlds. His hope was that if he could stop this chaotic effect, he could form a stable warp and overwhelm these tiny, annoying worlds. It should have been child’s play to overpower things of so small a mass.

  He could not do it.

  The warp armature machinery on these melting worlds also seemed to be dissolving and recreating itself, and so was doubly unsteady. There was no way to match phase with them.

  It was then the Lord Mercury spoke up. “I see what is happening. My son and I can save them!” Whereupon Lord Anubis spun up the armature of his subterrestrial world, Bald Spot, and vaulted the remaining megascale p
earl near orbit around Inferno.

  The small worlds suddenly lost their warp core controls. The Lords of Creation, through their instruments, watched in awe the buildings and people on the surfaces or the ever-changing, ever-burning worlds dissolved and did not regrow.

  In suicidal runs, the dying undead of the small worlds set their planets shooting like bullets toward the gas giants just before they died. Fast as these bodies were, across interplanetary distances, they were far too slow.

  Anubis darted Bald Spot toward Inferno, and formed a small warpchannel between them leading back to the Dyson. Contortion pearls, which had been jammed by the small and melting worlds, now operated. The children of Jupiter were moved instantly to safety.

  Lord Mercury used the megascale contortion pearl to move the helpless Water Giant, Pallas, into close orbit around the Dyson, then Inferno, then Saint Michael’s World.

  Lord Uranus said, “Sire, the other worlds of the system are now aware of us. The ringworlds show an energy spike: they are about to cast a field around the whole nebula and dissolve everything made of matter.”

  Lord Mercury said, “Time to go!”

  Deimos said, “Where to, sire?”

  Aeneas by signet ring imprinted the navigational elements into his brain. Sakurai’s Object was nearby: a slow nova, but massive enough to fuel a next leap.

  Deimos was already giving the command. The equatorial armature of the Dyson spun and tilted its own lightcone outside of timespace, and pulled the worlds of man into its wake.

  Aeneas focused a hyperspatial periscope behind then, peering back into normal space, while their own local and highly curved spacetime folded abruptly. The surrounding stars turned red and fled away like sparks.

  Aeneas smiled grimly as the twenty five worlds of vampires from Canopus emerged just at the moment when the nightmarish system of 9 Sagittarii annihilated everything made of normal matter. The vampire worlds dissolved. The small worlds dissolved. The small worlds, impossibly, like something from a bad dream, returned, burning and melting and rippling like water. The vampire worlds did not.

  Then the survivors of mankind were safe within the warp channel: a zone of timespace so small that light rays circumnavigated the entire miniature universe, and the men could see the surface of their own Dyson reflected in every direction as if in a globe surrounding. The worlds of men seemed to hang between the orb of the Dyson and the inside-out orb of its reflection, globes of gas and stone hovering like bubbles between two curving walls of metal. Unlike the escape from Canopus, there was no pursuit.

  The wounded were taken to cellular regeneration coffins. All but one. Lord Jupiter, sitting on his chair of state, would not leave the chamber and go to his own healing. His face was drawn and pale with grief, and he did not bother to wipe the tears streaming freely from his eyes.

  He spoke no word: all knew this meant his son Lord Ganymede was dead.

  Aeneas sighed. “At Sakurai’s Object, we can refuel for our next jump, lick our wounds, bury our dead, rebuild our broken jovians, and see what more nightmares await us.”

  He adjourned the council, and set them about such tasks of repair as could be done while the armada was within the closed timelike curve segment outside spacetime. Then Aeneas returned to his own chambers, brooding over his mistakes and failures, and wishing, for once, his cleverly-made and poison-resistant body could be influenced by alcohol.

  43. Sakurai’s Object

  The star V4334 Sagittarii, also called Sakurai’s Object, thought to be a slow nova, was a white dwarf that, due to a very late thermal pulse, swelled monstrously and became a red giant.

  Fortunately, there were no surviving planets in the system, hence no space vampires. The cataclysmic thermal pulse had obliterated any outer worlds, and then the rapid expansion of the star to a red giant swallowed any inner worlds, leaving the entire system swept clear of any trace of planet, planetoid, or comet.

  The Tellurian Dyson materialized in the system, emerging into the sublight continuum so as to catch the star at its center. The planets of the World Armada, broken, scarred, half-melted, were orbiting outside the Dyson hull. For them, it was night. No light touched them. None of the small artificial stars orbiting them had survived.

  The Dyson turned the hullplates of its equator transparent to light and infrared, and the worlds adjusted their orbits to let the radiance falling from these vast windows fall across them.

  The Dyson did not crush the giant star, not yet. Masses of material drawn up by counter rotating magnetic fields reaching in-system from the underside hull of the Dyson, were cooled, transmogrified, and contorted to the wounded worlds to supply what had been lost to the neutron decay at 9 Sagittarii.

  Time passed while worlds were rebuilt and trillions of dead were mourned and buried.

  The Lords of Creation met in council beneath the trees of Heaven Lake on Second Earth. In the sky, the Dyson had risen to the zenith. The curving strip of windows through which Sakurai’s Object, now their sun, blazed like a rainbow ignited to fire. The wind was fierce and blustery. Several Lords and Ladies used their rings to erect invisible fields to block the gusts and to warm themselves, wondering why Aeneas insisted on meeting out of doors. Only Mars and Aeneas ignored the weather.

  Aeneas had erected seven new seats with tall backs, shadowed beneath shining canopies, each with a sapling behind. An eighth seat, draped in black crepe and trimmed with a wreath, was also there. He watched the faces of his aunts and uncles as they contorted into view and looked, and saw the new seats.

  The worlds under repair, mottled and scarred, were visible above the horizon as large crescents or small disks. Something in the demeanor of Aeneas was also scarred, although not visibly. Grim lines had deepened like crow’s feet about his eyes or like calipers around his nostrils and mouth.

  Aeneas spoke without preamble. “I have invited the young Lords Anubis, Deimos, Kerberos, Hydra, Dionysus, Triton, and Prospero to hear our deliberations and contribute their wisdom. Since they are equally joined in knowledge of the secrets of the superluminary science, as well as in the dangers of battle, it is only right that they join us. A seat has been set aside to honor the memory of Lord Ganymede, until such time as one is found worthy to replace him.”

  He raised his hand. Contortion pearls blazed. Seven young men now stood on the grass, each with a chlamys of imperial purple thrown over his dark dress uniform. Lord Anubis was grinning; Lord Hydra was grave.

  Lord Mercury said, “Now, that is rather high-handed of you, sire! You cannot simply...”

  Aeneas by gesture invited the new lords to take their seats. He turned to Lord Mercury. “We have other matters to discuss. You have our gratitude for saving us from the nightmare star of 9 Sagittarii. How did you do it?”

  Lord Mercury’s small world had been untouched, and so he had been unburned. He smiled his irksome, childlike smile. “Trade secret!” he chirruped.

  Lord Anubis was a dark, thin, tall, sharp-faced man with a sharp smile. The family resemblance was strong, but, next to Mercury, he looked like the father, rather than the son. The subterrestrial under his command, Bald Spot, had also emerged unscathed.

  Anubis said, “Let us not be blind and heartless now, Father. The days of intrigue and fratricide are done.”

  He turned to Aeneas. “There is a strange overlap between space warp science and space contortion science. The dissolving creatures and their buildings and machines were keeping undecayed elements in nullspace and replacing each atom, one by one, as its nucleus was destroyed.”

  Lord Deimos, son of Mars, added, “Sire, they used the same technique Lord Mars uses to make duplicates of an ideal version stored in the timelessness of Schroedinger standing waves.”

  Lord Anubis nodded. “All my father, Lord Mercury, had to do was to force-collapse the uncertainty clouds with the megascale pearl.”

  Aeneas said, “And if the next star system we enter has the same defense?”

  Lord Anubis said, “It is not a
real defense, sire. It is a trick that can only work if you are caught unprepared. Using a warpcore to dissolve a warpcore can only work if you let your warpcore dissolve also. And you can only do that if you can keep a spare in nullspace, out of harm’s way.”

  Lord Mercury said, “We have manufactured more than enough pearls to move whole worlds of people. Anyone trying that trick again will dissolve before we do.”

  Lord Mars said, “Sire, we should put the less massive worlds in the vanguard. We now see that even warpcores with far less mass than a jovian can damage an enemy core using this neutron storm method, or at least make the enemy keep his head down. I think I understand the foe tactics now.”

  Aeneas said, “What do you mean?”

  Lord Mars said, “The reason why they close to hand to hand range. I thought it was just blind fury, hunger to eat life energy. No. Whoever programmed these undead so long ago knew that the warp science can shut down nearly any other weapon. Board and storm is practically the only tactic that can ever work; and that requires numbers more than anything else. And their numbers are numberless, or seem to be.”

  Aeneas said, “Tell me honestly: is there any hope of victory?”

  Lord Mars said only, “If we have no hope, we must fight without hope.”

  Brother Beast said, “Whoso hopes in merely mortal power will find that well shallow, and soon will thirst. There is deeper hope.”

  Lord Deimos now stood, evidently displeased with his father’s words. His eyes as bright as the eyes of a hawk, he said to Aeneas, “My good sire! Shall we return to 9 Sagittarii and counter attack? Let us exterminate these vermin to the last man! If we now can stop their neutron storm method...”

  Lady Pallas had been horrifically mauled, but her brain had been saved and a new and younger body grown for her. She seemed now a maiden of sixteen summers, but her gray eyes were old and cold and wise. She said, “It would be suicide, sire! Both those stars have unstable cores. I started to mention it, but you thought it insignificant. It is significant now.”