"And I wish you luck on that journey," Alessia said, quite sad when she contemplated the fact that Namba's dream was only a dream that could not come true.
* * * * *
The explorers would miss Namba, they knew, like so many other people and places they had come to know briefly in their long succession of interplanetary voyages. Namba hadn’t concerned himself with judging their past but had accepted their histories as he learned about Seynorynael; he’d found the subject of their lives interesting, even though he only really understood their present state. Even knowing very little about them, he had still been willing to call them friends.
Kiel and the others had been enthusiastic to represent Seynorynael when they recognized Namba's curiosity, but it was not until Derstan brought out holo-images and the explorers allowed their memories to leak through to Namba's mind that he saw its wonder. They would not have shown the Alliar-na scientist so much, but his interest pleased them.
She sensed that Namba had envied them, though, because he would have liked to have lived among them. After thousands of years together, the explorers had drawn together, their bond stronger than family ties.
She had almost forgotten that she’d kept anything about herself to herself until Namba asked her about her childhood.
The reminder didn’t bother her any more. The explorers had all long since moved on with their lives and present business.As time passed, Alessia became a permanent member of the terrestrial scouting parties, accompanying Lierva and Celekar on forays into many perilous environments. In time, she caught their contagious love of danger and surrendered hopelessly to it.
The three of them headed into the hive of zelathi creatures on Mardagh5 to complete Gerryls' profile on the planet's alien bio-chemistry. One of the creatures attacked Lierva and consumed her arm, but the sentient cells of her flesh became energy that Lierva controlled and reclaimed, reforming her arm as they brought their mental energies to bear on the creatures and control their movement.
Alessia and Celekar had held off the zelathi by freezing them, halting the neural impulses to their limbs, while Lierva retrieved a sample of a gestating creature's body and incubation fluids. But the zelathi posed no real threat, unlike the Eress beings the explorers encountered in galaxy group five.
The Eress were light beings, ethereal creatures composed of energy that came upon the ten explorers of the scout party in the ruins of a colonial outpost of some vanished civilization on the surface of Lariock9. The Eress swarmed about them, permeating their bodies and tempting their sentient cells to join them. The explorers stood frozen for hours, trying to resist the lure of the Eress beings.
Alessia began to sense Talden fading, about to give his essence up to join the beings and rushed to his side despite the agony pulling on her organs and limbs in all directions. She took Talden's hand and sacrificed some of her energy, flooding Talden's body with communicative waves, desperate to recall Talden's mind.
Weakened, the Eress had assaulted the creature that had foiled them, rushing around Alessia, but the other explorers found they couldn’t move to help her. Alessia felt the infinite pressure and pain as her body and being were locked into a combat of wills between two worlds. For a moment, she thought herself lost to the void around them as the pain intensified and her essence became numb. Then, from the depths of her mind, she recalled an image.
She hadn’t thought of her father since she left Seynorynael, but his smile, his eyes reassured her as a face appeared in her memory, a face of hope, of strength. She thought she felt the invisible touch of his arm fall upon her shoulder and enclose her. At once the beings swarming around her seemed to hesitate, their grip upon her fading.
Her body flooded with a new strength she had never before summoned. Alessia felt a wave of her own mind's energy enveloping them, driving away the last of the Eress who gave up their struggle with a dying wail, a wail which revived her companions who stood and shook off violent shivers, though none of them seemed exactly clear as to what had happened.
In galaxy group five, during an extended stay on Jwulam4, Derstan and Alessia went looking for Cerdko, who had threatened to remain on the planet. The explorers had lived on Jwulam4 for three centuries, a planet that had brought their trip through the galaxy group full circle, while Gerryls attempted to plot their best course back to the two centipede hole tunnels near where they had entered the first galaxy. Using the tunnels on their maps, they had thus far cut down their journey in real time by traveling back to the moment in the past shortly after the centipede hole's creation, though many more thousands of years had passed on board for the explorers.
Meanwhile on Jwulam4, Cerdko fell in love with a native woman. Upon her death, he had rejected the explorer mission and regressed into selfish and destructive behavior, but he would not be found and eluded Kiel and the others, threatening to take over the planet if the others didn’t leave him alone.
The explorers had all been shocked by Cerdko's regression in only a few hundred years of isolation. Of course they’d all lived independent lives on the worlds that they had visited, preparing for and waiting for the opportune moment to introduce the Federation's proposal and to observe and document alien behaviors, culture, science, technology, and biochemistry.
Kiel ordered the others not to antagonize Cerdko if they found him, but Alessia was convinced that Cerdko had plans to take over the Jwulam planet and redefine its society and decided to track the wayward explorer down. She contacted Lierva and Derstan, and together they set a trap for Cerdko at his Jwulam wife's grave. After a two-day mental battle, Cerdko succumbed to the invading thoughts of Derstan, Lierva, and Alessia. With their help, he was able to deal with the grief and became again the man he had been, although much less confident, and far more haunted by the memories of the darker half of his nature.
Cerdko was not the last explorer to discover the dark inner demons empowered by the serum Hinev had given them, a serum that had promised enlightenment. To know humanity so well was to know all of its secrets, and though the explorers had rejected most of the generally accepted “evil” behaviors of society, they had seen the minds of uncounted creatures, had witnessed and understood every human feeling, line of reasoning, and action, even the worst crimes of all. Hinev had not warned them how difficult it might be to forget such atrocities and embrace only the good or to keep so many philosophies from filling their minds to the point of rendering them indecisive.
In galaxy group six, Lierva's team stumbled into a conflict between two fledgling galactic civilizations, the Zartran and the Gwardichardarii. The Zartran, a green-skinned class H6yt humanoid race, had developed a centipede hole of their own, though a somewhat unstable one, and had destroyed several worlds occupied by their "neighbors". The Gwardichardarii, squat and broad tawny orange-skinned humanoids had originated in a yellow-white star system two million light years from the Zartran homeland territories, unknown to each other before the Zartan’s own centipede hole had linked the two galactic terrains.
The explorers' presence in the Zartan’s home system had brought a halt to the horrific war and slaughter as the Zartran reconsidered the threat of a far superior Federation that might have been inclined to punish their greed and side with the underdog. The telepathic link of the explorers had allowed them to discuss plans to reach a compromise on the day they had presented the issue to the Zartran.
From a glance, no outside being could ever detect the traffic of thoughts Kiel sent to Hinev's explorers and the flood of suggestions that he received, the multi-conversations of telepathy going on at the same time. Telepathy gave the explorers the ability to carry on more than a hundred different trains of thought, distinct but also comprehensive, so that at one time, any one might monitor one of their companion's conversation while still speaking to yet another. The explorers had often used this ability to create tactics to fit any particular situation they came across.
When potential hostility had developed among indigenous populations on some of the planets they had visited, the explorers often reverted to speaking telepathically with each other, to keep potential enemies from learning their proposed course of actions, sentiments, or other vital information. Telepathy had been an invaluable tool in preventing disaster as well as the usual function for which they employed it: to gather an instant knowledge and understanding of the civilizations they encountered and be able to exchange language, and thus cultures.
With the negotiations finally set out and with a treaty decisively reached, the explorers committed the Zartran to redressing their past actions before the Federation fleet arrived, following the centipede hole passages created by Selesta.
It was on a Gwardichardarii refugee vessel that Alessia healed a man who had been paralyzed in an assault on the colony on Giar, once his home. Reconnecting tissues and animating his limbs with a stream of her own electromagnetic neural energy, she reconstructed his damaged spine. His wonder and gratitude touched her, and at that moment Alessia felt that no matter what else happened, the explorers' journey had been successful, that it had been worth the sacrifices for all the good that they had done.
Yet none of them could dismiss their growing disillusionment, nor the feelings of regret that they were far from making the journey home. Alessia’s eyes traveled across the room to where Lierva was healing a man burned beyond recognition as he barely escaped a nuclear blast and met the older woman's haggard expression. An unspoken communication passed between them.
They were tired, and wanted to go home.
Chapter Eleven
After fifty thousand years had passed on board Selesta, the explorers anticipated the end of the mission with great impatience; however, they had not yet even traveled to their final destination. Already, they had found so many forms of life–the crew's minds were full of information from a million planets. They had long since begun to wonder why their own galaxy in the Great Cluster had so many bi-pedal humanoids in relation to the other galaxy groups–in fact, the galaxy groups further away in the Great Cluster contained fewer humanoid species and more unrelated sentient species, many more violent that human beings, others remarkably less aggressive than even the moderate humanoid races.
Alessia would rather have forgotten many of the creatures they had encountered, and in fact, Kiel had destroyed several centipede holes to the most horrific of all the races in order to diminish their threat to the Federation. Hinev's explorers had survived even the most unimaginable dangers of contact. When all other forms of protection that the serum had provided failed, such as the ability to shield from alien particles and repel them, the explorers could finally dissolve their mass into sentient energy and reform once they had safely escaped any obstacles, even if they were ever overwhelmed by a sudden attack.
Of course, the Seynorynaelians that would come after them wouldn’t be able to protect themselves as the explorers had.
Kiel accordingly destroyed the centipede hole passages leading to horrors best left undisturbed. At the next hospitable system, Kiel left a record of the hostile planets and the explorers' encounters for the Federation to find and add to their survey of the galaxies, so that any disastrous contact could be avoided in the future.
After six galaxy groups, the great map of the centipede hole gates had grown exponentially. After they had mapped four galaxy groups, the explorers began to think more of returning home than continuing on, and some, including Alessia, were at times momentarily distraught by the idea of returning to Seynorynael and finding that nothing existed there any more.
However, Gerryls assured them that when they returned from the galaxies using the centipede holes, they also returned nearer to the moment in time that they had left, forming a closed time-like loop. What this meant was that when they returned home, Seynorynael would still exist, with only a relatively few years having passed, though the explorers would have experienced many thousands more years of real time on board Selesta.
Gerryls was more worried about the fact that Selesta's centipede hole-monitoring devices, which kept open the mouths of the centipede holes, had been fitted with a time-check beacon in order to preserve the past; Marankeil’s technological barrier devices wouldn’t allow them to return to a time before their natural lives began, or even to any time but that range within the specific perameters of their latest mission.
Marankeil was seemingly worried about someone controlling the gates through time—but why? The explorers had no intention of risking destroying the reality they knew by trying to break the strongest laws of time-travel.
* * * * *
Finally, the explorers reached the final stage of their journey: to explore the largest galaxy of the last galaxy group, a small, remote group of two large galaxies and several smaller ones. Somewhere in the largest galaxy was Marankeil's yellow star system of nine planets, where the explorers suspected Marankeil had found a great civilization that he wished to study.
However, the mission to galaxy group seven had always bothered Kiel. At first, back on Seynorynael, they had seen no way to reach galaxy group seven through the natural centipede holes without a long necessary trip through real space. Since they had learned to make new centipede holes, this problem had been solved, but still Kiel feared to leave a permanent way for Marankeil to reach the small galaxy group. He did not know what interested Marankeil there, but Kiel felt somehow that he had to protect this galaxy; his senses compelled him to try.
Kiel had finally decided it was time to make a stand. He wouldn’t be disobeying orders, exactly, but he had a trick in mind that would make it hard for Marankeil to profit by their mission afterward.
Kiel knew that they could create a gate to galaxy group seven, and no other ship could follow them if Selesta didn’t charge the monitoring device with antimatter to keep the mouth of centipede hole open.
Then again, if the string engine created a centipede hole from their current position and left it charged with exotic matter, the centipede hole gate would be permanent, stable long enough for the Federation to reach it from the centipede hole they had just emerged from and maintain the centipede hole gate.
And from the moment any centipede hole had been created, the future Federation could return through it to any moment in the past that the centipede hole had existed–even to the moment after Selesta had first emerged. Only a few times had the explorers encountered groups from the Federation that had used the centipede holes–the vessels that followed them were part of Marankeil's Fleet, hailing them to ensure that the explorers continued on their mission. Yet strangely, the fleet wouldn’t respond to the explorers' transmitted questions, in particular whether or not the civilizations they had mapped had accepted the Federation's terms of cooperation.
The contacts did little to reassure the explorers and convinced many of them that something had happened in the Federation. But it also encouraged them to go ahead to galaxy group seven; they didn’t want to remain in galaxy group six long enough for the Federation ships to follow them.
Then, before the explorers set the course for the distant galaxy, Alessia suggested that they look for an existing centipede hole that might take them near the galaxy but far enough to make the rest of the journey unattractive to the Federation.
Yes, Kiel thought. It would not exactly be disobeying orders...
The logic of Alessia's suggestion that they find a pre-existing centipede hole had suddenly hit Kiel–the Federation would not wish to use an unstable, unmonitored natural centipede hole to follow them there–and they could explore galaxy seven freely.
Even if they had created a centipede hole and sealed it off, as they had done to those connecting dangerous systems, the very existence of an artificial centipede hole at any point in time could have been used by the Federation. An indirect natural centipede hole would make it more difficult for anyone who would follow them to reach the planet in a
n ordinary lifetime.
And if they traveled years to find the centipede hole, leaving it usable but connected only to a future outside the Federation's interest–well then, the centipede hole connecting galaxy group seven could be kept safe from Marankeil.
For the time being.
As it was, the Tiernan system they had just left was many years, even by centipede hole travel, from the heart of the Federation. No doubt Marankeil would even be pleased to learn how difficult it had been to reach the remote galaxy–it meant that nothing from there, least not whatever it was he seemed to fear, could reach him.
* * * * *
Years away from Tiernan, Hinev’s explorers passed an uninhabited greenish-grey world in a white star-system when they discovered a natural centipede hole. Creating another centipede hole gate near the mouth of the natural microscopic gate, they made the jump back to Tiernan, establishing the link from Tiernan to this world so far into the future that no Federation ship would want to come here. Then from the Tiernan centipede hole Selesta again returned to the greenish-blue planet and prepared to enlarge the natural centipede hole gate.
The passage took them to a point outside galaxy group six and the Great Cluster, just outside a small galaxy in galaxy group seven, one of two nebular clouds of stars without a definite shape. Gerryls was able to plot their course and the creation of another centipede hole gate between their present position and just within an interior spiraling arm of the largest galaxy, where they had detected a yellow-star system that fit Marankeil's description.
However, it wasn't until they reached the system, when Gerryls began to make celestial observations of the neighboring universe that he realized what had happened. He could only guess that the natural centipede hole had been the cause, for Selesta had made a great jump into an unknown point in the far-distant future.