Heaven's Reach

Galaxies

THE SUPERNOVA’S PHOTON FRONT CAUGHT Streaker just short of a swirling black tunnel — the escape path promised by cryptic Transcendents.

Alarms wailed and dolphins squalled as waves of searing energy struck from behind, crushing the normal protective fields, slamming each square meter with more heat than a normal sun would over the course of its lifespan. The blast would have evaporated the Streaker of old almost instantly.

But the Earthship was like a whale whose skin was coated with hard-shell barnacles, Streaker toiled under layers of strange stuff — coatings that shimmered in the heat, as if eager for the ruinous light.

Sara held Prity and Emerson. A rumbling vibration rattled her bones and the marrow inside. Blinding turmoil swamped every outside camera, but sensors told of staggering photon and neutrino fluxes as the star passed its limits of endurance … or perhaps ecstasy. In real time, the eruption took milliseconds, but Streaker’s duration-stretched field let the crew witness successive stages, in slow motion.

“Our magic coating’s impressive,” commented Suessi. “But these’re just photons. No way it can handle what’s next. More than a solar mass of real matter … protons and heavy nuclei … leapin’ this way at a good share of lightspeed.”

Sara had learned enough practical physics to know what fist was about to smite them. Each atom of oxygen and carbon in my body passed through a convulsion like this one … cooked in a sun, then spewed into great clouds, before condensing to form planets, critters, people.

Now her own Stardust might return to the cosmic mixing bowl, perhaps joining the life cycle of a new world, yet unborn. It seemed a dry consolation. But she knew another.

Lark.

I got his message — just as that shell closed around the Polkjhy, spreading its lambent tendrils, preparing to catch waves of hyperreality, the very moment when galaxies part company forever.

By now, his ship must already be punching through, catching a great tide of recoiling metric. Outward bound on a great adventure.

Ironies made her smile. Among Nelo’s three children, Lark alone never dreamed of leaving his beloved Jijo. Yet now he would see more of the cosmos than even the great Transcendents! An avowed celibate, he and his mate could sire a whole nation of humanity in some far galaxy.

Good-bye, brother. May Ifni’s Boss keep an eye on you.

Have fun.

Their escape tunnel loomed, a cave filled with eerie, unnerving spirals. She looked up at Emerson. Moments ago, as a final hail of crushed Old Ones fell on the white dwarf’s tormented surface, he had barked a single word—

“Dross!”

— and smiled, as if watching a deadly foe collapse in failure.

Someone counted subjective seconds till the matter-wave would hit. “… fourteen … thirteen … twelve …”

Meanwhile, Akeakemai crooned. “Almost there …” The pilot’s flukes thrashed, urging Streaker along to the refuge. “Almossssst …”

The suspense was so awful, Sara’s mind reflexively fled to a domain where she had some control. Mathematics. To a problem she had discovered recently — while Gillian dickered with the Transcendents to take Polkjhy, and let Streaker go.

Amid a maze of transfinite tensors, Sara had found a renormalization quandary that simply would not go away. In fact, it seemed essential to describe the chaos waves they had seen. Yet, according to the Transcendents’ own models, it made no sense!

I thought I knew the whole truth when I foresaw the galactic breakup, arising from the expansion of the universe. But now I can tell — some added force is driving things faster than expected.

It only made sense if she made a peculiar conjecture.

Something is coming in. Something titanic.

Details were vague, but she knew one thing about the intruding presence.

It won’t be found in any gravity well. We must look elsewhere, in flat space. Far from the Embrace of—

Streaker shook suddenly. Vibrations leaped in force and volume, shuddering her spine. Someone screamed.

“Matter wave!”

For an instant, time seemed to flicker—

Then, across the span of an eyeblink, Sara was surrounded by leaping, yelling figures. Emerson squeezed her as if it were the end of the world. And briefly, she thought it was.

Then she knew Prity’s gleeful screech, the dolphins’ whistled raspberries of joy, and her lover’s gasping laughter. Amid the tumult and confusion, Sara noticed — all the ominous rumblings were gone. Vanished! Replaced by a happy roar of unleashed engines.

The view screens were back on, showing vistas of strangely distorted ylem — the walls of a weirdly beneficent tunnel, sweeping them along.

“We made it!” Suessi’s amplified voice exulted.

We … did?

Sara realized with some chagrin that her math-trance had kept her from witnessing the moment of triumph and salvation.

Well, damn me for a distracted nerd, she thought, and threw herself into kissing Emerson with all her might.