“I often lecture at the teaching center in the Himalaya Mountains. But we also have research branches on Lunar Backside, Bernal One, on Mars, and a research habitat in the Oort Cloud.” She shook her head and smiled. “Those signals. They fascinated me when I first came to the Institute, at about your age. Now more than ever they seem to me to be the conversations of adults, and we’re the children who know they’re probably being talked about, now and then, but can’t understand a word.” She looked at him, and it seemed to Max that this slim, attractive person couldn’t be very much older than he was. “You’ll get a good college-level education at the Institute, and you’ll meet people who have odd and creative ways of looking at things, as you do. You’ll see the Himalaya Mountains.”
“But will the school take me?” Max asked.
“My recommendation will be enough. Remember also that you’re one of the first interstellar explorers now. You’ve used the alien passages, and you’ve been to Centauri twice—the hard way and the quick way.”
“I wasn’t alone,” Max said.
Lissa nodded, “Lucinda has shown interest, and I think she has ability, but she and her parents can’t make any decisions until they find out about her brother.”
“I know she’d want to go,” Max said, “but I don’t know how she’ll feel if she finds out that Emil is gone.”
“I know you want her to attend,” Lissa continued, “but you should go even if it’s by yourself. I should also tell you that you’ll both be given the most thorough medical exams you’ve ever had when you stop at Bernal. I don’t think we’ll find anything, but you did travel through the passages, and we have to know if you were affected.”
“I understand,” Max said. Things were moving faster than he’d expected, leading to a new choice just as he was freeing himself of his doubts.
“I’ve looked at Emil’s school reports, too,” Lissa said. “If you’re wondering whether he would be accepted by the Institute, the answer is yes. He’s very smart, much smarter than you probably knew.”
Emil’s struggle with the alien toxin was probably long over by now, Max reminded himself. Even if he survived, he might never be himself again. For a moment Max felt as uncertain and afraid as when the habitat was approaching Sunspace. But when he looked at Lissa and saw the confidence in her face, he felt encouraged.
“I’ll come,” he said with a twinge of guilt, “no matter what happens.” Lucinda would want him to go, even if she couldn’t. He imagined her berating him for his hesitation.
“Are you sure?” Lissa asked.
“I’m sure,” Max said against his doubts.
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22
Two ships waited when Max and his parents went out across the great floor to Lissa’s vessel. A week had passed since her return. There would be at least one ship a week from now on, taking people out and bringing others in. Lucinda and her parents were already at the ship, saying their farewells. Max peered in the direction of the column and made out its vague shape rising into the bright blue glare.
Linda and Jake tried to smile as Max and his parents approached, but the strain in their faces had increased.
“Take good care of her, Max,” Linda said.
Lucinda looked at her mother. “I’ll be back in a week or two, and I won’t decide anything about the Institute before then.”
“We’d come with you if we could,” the navigator said, embracing her, and Max had the feeling that they had decided it would be better if their daughter went away for a while.
Jake and Linda would stay on until the new administration of the habitat took over. There had been rumors that they might even sign new contracts. They were still hoping that the passage might suddenly open. Max had heard that they were even willing to try the other portals in the column, on the chance of finding another route to Centauri, rather than wait four years for news of Emil to arrive by radio.
Suddenly Jake was talking to Rosalie and Joe was saying something to Linda. Captain Calder shouted down the gangway. Max stared back across the bright, solid sea of floor at the massive, half-submerged shape of the habitat. The rough outer crust seemed primitive next to the hard alien surface. The stone that Earth had thrown into the Universe had come to rest here, inside a star.
“All aboard!” Captain Calder shouted.
Lissa came out next to him. “Come on folks, time to go.”
Joe and Rosalie started up the ramp. Max looked at Lucinda, but she was staring toward the column.
“Look!” she shouted, pointing.
Two small dark shapes were moving toward the habitat. Lucinda bolted and ran toward them.
Max sprinted after her, suspecting that the figures might be only two guards returning from their watch at the column. He caught his breath, unable to see clearly at this distance. They could be two people from Centauri, bringing bad news about Emil.
“Slow down!” he shouted, straining to catch up.
The distant figures stopped. Max slowed as Lucinda raced on.
“Emil! Emil!” she shouted to the blurry shapes, as if her words would make it so.
Max halted for breath. His stomach tightened as he followed at a fast walk.
She reached the dark shapes. He stopped and turned away, unable to look, expecting to hear her cry of disappointment. After a moment, he glanced back and saw that she was embracing one of the figures.
He hurried toward them, and recognized Emil.
The boy had lost weight, which made him seem taller, but he looked well. Lucinda hugged him, stepped back, then hugged him again, laughing.
“Max!” Lucky Russell shouted, coming toward him. “The barrier let us through, but now I’m stuck here.”
“It closed up behind you?” Max asked, recovering from the welcome shock of seeing Emil.
“As soon as we came through,” he said, putting his arm around Max. “It’s great to see you. You did the right thing to go through.”
Emil was okay, Max told himself as if in a dream, and in a moment he was embracing him, holding him close, as if he might suddenly dissolve, and Emil didn’t seem to mind.
“The antitoxin stopped the alien stuff in me a day after you left,” he said, squeezing Max back. “I’m glad to see you, too. Thought you’d gotten rid of me for good, huh?” He pulled free and grinned, and Max grinned back.
“We’re leaving for Earth,” Lucinda said with tears streaming down her face.
Emil looked around. “So they found us. Where are we?”
“Inside the Sun,” Lucinda said, sniffling.
“And that’s a ship from Earth,” Max said, pointing.
Emil’s eyes grew wide as his jaw dropped. “No kidding? The ship I believe, but the Sun?”
Then both sets of parents caught up with them. Linda pounced on Emil. Jake couldn’t get close, so he embraced them both. Joe and Rosalie stood aside, their eyes glistening from relief. Max’s throat tightened. His knees felt weak. It was all over. Emil was safe. He could finally let go of the doomed feeling that he thought would be with him forever. He glanced at his mother, and saw that she knew what he was feeling. Joe went over and shook hands with Lucky.
Lissa reached them and told Emil that Max and Lucinda were leaving. “You’re part of the team,” she finished, “if you want to come. Max and Lucinda can tell you everything on the way.”
“Is he well enough to go?” his mother asked.
“He’s just fine,” Lucky said, looking around at the station. “We wouldn’t have dared let him try to get back here if he weren’t.”
Jake looked at his wife. “You go along,” he said. “I’ll run things here for you.” Linda did not object.
“I can’t wait much longer!” Captain Calder shouted from the ship.
“Don’t worry about him,” Lissa said with a touch of affection. “Our schedule isn’t that tight.” She looked at Lucky Russell. “Want to come along? We can take one more.”
“Oh, no,” he replied. “I’d much rather look around
this place first. Reminds me of an old joke about an expedition to the Sun. They were told it would be much too hot to land on, but that didn’t bother them at all.”
“That’s the joke?” Max asked.
Lucky smiled, obviously ready with the punch line.
“They landed at night,” he said.
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23
As Max watched the big screen in front of them, the black globe of the alien station grew smaller behind the ship. A ghostly image of the Sun’s otherspace echo flickered faintly, as if struggling to rekindle the full fire of reality.
“We’re at the window …” Captain Calder’s voice said over the ship-com, “… and going through.”
Suddenly the strange gray space was gone. The screen blinked and filled with stars in the forward view. The view aft stayed as an inset, showing the Sun, now restored to its fierce electric glare.
“This window,” Captain Calder announced, “lets us out three million kilometers from Earth orbit.”
“There’s Earth,” Lissa’s voice added.
It seemed just ahead on the screen magnifier—a blue-green oasis in a jet-black sea, warmed by a yellow-white sun. The Moon stood guard nearby, pockmarked from battle with cosmic debris, but still copper-bright.
Joe leaned over from the seat behind Max. “Still worried about all the billions on Earth?”
Max shot a glance at Emil and Lucinda next to him, but they were looking at the screen and had not heard his father’s question.
“I don’t see a single one of them,” Max whispered back.
His mother’s hand touched his shoulder.
“It doesn’t bother me any more,” Max said, deciding that he didn’t care if Emil and Lucinda heard.
“Hey, Max,” Emil said. “We couldn’t have just run into one of these windows by accident, you know. I think they move, and one of them found us when the habitat was coming in. The Others thought we were ready, so the suncore station reached out, dropped a window around the habitat and pulled it into the otherspace station.”
Max thought about the idea. “That’s really good, Emil. It might even be true.”
“We’ve been moving outward in small steps for over a century,” Joe said. “You three took a large one. One day we’ll turn a corner in one of those passages—”
“They’recurved , Dad,” Max said.
“—a curve in one of those passages and meet the Others. We’ll be ready for them then, even if we don’t realize it.”
How many civilizations are out there? Max wondered, looking at the ocean of stars on the screen. He wanted to be there when his kind met the Others face to face. He would know how to reach out—and he had a few questions they might not expect him to ask, like what business it was of theirs what happened in Earth’s Sunspace, even though he had a good idea of what their answer had to be … and he might even agree with it.
“Remember the way you felt about Earth,” Joe said. “We’re all in the same boat as far as the Galaxy is concerned. We’re just as alien as any aliens out there—maybe more so.”
“I know,” Max said, looking over his shoulder. Rosalie smiled at him. Next to her, the navigator relaxed with a peaceful look on her face. She seemed about to have her first good sleep in weeks.
Max looked back to the stars on the screen. How many of them, he wondered, had been harnessed to feed the net? He tried to imagine the uses to which such a vast reservoir of energy could be put.
“I feel confident about one thing,” his father said.
“What’s that?” Max asked as Lucinda took his hand.
“That maybe someone out there is hoping that our kind will make something of itself.”
Lucinda’s hand tightened around his. “We will,” Max said.
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Table of Contents
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
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The Sunspacers Trilogy Page 48