“So? You ask sssssso?” Zub’daki sputtered, aghast. “This means the debris cloud will be effectively transparent to light pressure! As it precipitates onto the star, nothing impedes the acceleration. The whole great mass plummets all at once, with tremendous speed!”
Gillian nodded.
“So the supernova will take place quickly and smoothly.”
“And with unprecedented power!”
While she conversed with Zub’daki, her visitor seemed to be having trouble finding the right shape, as if there was something slippery about Herbie’s figure. Or else the Transcendents were too busy with other matters right now to apply much computing power for such an unimportant task.
She shook her head.
“I expect we’re just witnessing some more supercom-petent technology at work, Zub’daki. Clearly, this was all arranged. Perhaps long before we were born. Tell me, do you have a new estimate for when infall-collapse begins?”
Frustration filled the dolphin’s voice.
“You missssunderstand me, Doctor! Infall has already—”
The astronomer’s voice cut short, interrupted by a shrill clamor of alarm bells. The dolphin’s image swung around as shadowy figures rushed back and forth behind him, hurrying to emergency stations. Then Zub’daki’s image vanished completely.
It was replaced by the whirling tornado of the Niss Machine.
“What is it?” Gillian demanded. “What’s happening now?”
The Niss bent slightly, as if starting to note the presence of her visitor. Then the hologram shivered and seemed to forget all about the Transcendent.
“I … must report that we are once again under attack.”
Gillian blinked.
“Attack? By whom?”
“Who do you think? By our old nemesis, the Jophur battleship, Polkjhy. Though clearly mutated and transformed, it is approaching rapidly, and has begun emanating vibrations on D Space resonance frequencies, once more turning our hull into a receiving antenna for massive flows of heat—”
“Stop!” Gillian shouted, waving both hands in front of her. “This is crazy! Do the Jophur know what’s going on here? Or whose protection we’re under?”
The Niss gave its old, familiar shrug.
“I have no idea what the Jophur know, or do not know. Such persistence, in the face of overwhelming power, would seem to verge on madness. And yet, the fact remains. Our hull temperature has started to rise.”
Gillian turned to her visitor, whose face was coalescing into a visage of humanoid-amphibian beauty, almost luminous in its color and texture. At any other time, it would have been one of the most transfixing sights of Gillian’s life—and she barely gave it a second glance.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Well what, Dr. Buskin?” the Transcendent asked, turning toward her. There was still a tentative, uncertain quality to the reconstruction, a near resurrection of her longtime companion, the antediluvian cadaver.
“Well … are you going to protect us?”
“Do you ask for our protection?”
In amazement, she could hardly speak.
“I thought … you put so much effort into choosing and preparing us …”
The Niss Machine whirled in perplexity.
“Are you talking to me? Is someone in there with you? My sensors seem unable to—”
With an irritated hand gesture, Gillian caused her artificial assistant to vanish from sight. She gazed in wonder as the Transcendent seemed to shimmer, growing brighter by the instant.
“Such investment merits confidence, Dr. Baskin. Can wolflings survive the vast gulf between heavens? Have you the fortitude to endure all the cryptic challenges that await you? And the denizens you’ll meet, when you arrive at some distant galactic realm?”
Her guest became radiant, completing the transformation from cadaverous mummy into something truly like a god.
“It occurs to us that one final test might be called for. In the interest of verifying your mettle.”
Gillian covered her eyes, and yet the glare soon grew too bright to endure, outlining the bones of her hand. The visitor’s words pierced her skin, vibrating her soul.
“One more trial to pass … in the slim moments that remain … before our universe changes.”
Lark
DESPITE OCCASIONAL GAPS, A DISTANT VOICE came through clearly, resonating in his mind.
“… there are further matters to discuss … precautions you should take, for comfort during transition … the new coating will protect you as backlash … throws you to a hyperlevel well beyond those commonly used by starfaring races.”
Working together with Ling and other members of the Mother Consortium, he had labored hard to achieve this—sifting through the incredible complexity of the Transcendent Mesh for something simple enough for mere organic life-forms to understand. After all their efforts, this was the best result so far. An explanation, in plain Anglic, of what the great ones hoped to accomplish from all the recent violence and turmoil.
Apparently, they would take advantage of rare cosmic conditions to launch specially modified ships, sending messenger-envoys hurtling on one-way voyages across the immense gulf separating clusters of galaxies.
“By adding wolflings to the mixture, we may … prevent the failures that plagued past efforts … when we tried to … cross the vast flat deserts between our galactic nexus and the myriad spiral heavens we see floating past, tantalizingly out of reach.…”
Lark felt growing agitation in the surrounding watery medium, where he and Ling floated amid a jostling throng of symbiotic organisms. “Mother” was clearly both excited and worried by this news. He knew this, in part, because his own fretful thoughts helped shape the overall mood.
Ling’s presence made itself known. Turning around, he saw her swim toward him through the living murk, reaching out to clasp his hand. At the instant of contact, he felt her mind stroking his own, bringing dire news.
Can you feel it? The master rings have decided to assail and destroy Streaker, no matter what the repercussions!
Lark blinked in surprise. Putting out his own mental feelers to probe the data network of starship Polkjhy, he tapped the Jophur command frequencies and soon confirmed the worst.
The priest-stack and the new captain-leader were in complete accord. With stark decisiveness, they had sent Polkjhy careening on a new, deadly course. Attacking, heedless of the consequences.
What can they hope to accomplish? Interfering with the Transcendents will only invite those mighty ones to swat this ship—and all of us aboard—out of the sky like annoying insects!
Ling nodded, and Lark saw that he had just answered his own question. From the Jophur leaders’ point of view, this offered a last chance to wipe out the hybrid oxy-hydro superorganism that had taken over most of their ship. Apparently, the Jophur would rather go out in a blaze of glory than surrender.
The suicidal decision saddened Lark. If only they would simply wait for the supernova! He had a hankering to watch the run-up to that gaudy event. To feel the first hyperdense flux of neutrinos sleet through his body, heralding a crackling dawn. One that would illumine night on myriad worlds.
Of course, Mother wasn’t about to take this lying down. With approval of every sapient member, the community launched an immediate, all-out assault against the remaining vital strongholds held by unconverted Jophur. Soon Lark began sensing the fractious fury of combat, as both sides flung deadly bolts along stained corridors, further melting Polkjhy’s already tortured walls. Lark’s nerve endings responded, turning each injury or death into a pang, physically painful. Personally intense.
Mother is about to break into the engine compartment, Ling noted. But we may not be able to cut power in time to save the Earthlings … or to prevent angering the Transcendents.
Indeed, resistance was bitter as ring stacks and robots stubbornly held their ground against the costly assault. But Zang globules and other members of the Mother Consortium kept up
the pressure, storming Jophur defenses with spendthrift courage.
We’d better go help, Lark thought, and Ling nodded. They both had a sense of how drained Mother’s reserves were. This was no time to hang back.
And yet, even as they made ready to join the fray, something restrained both of them. A resistance that stopped Lark in his tracks.
Not a command, as such. More like a consensus decision—a general feeling among other components of the symbiosis. An agreement that the two humans should not be risked right now.
They would better serve the whole with their intelligence and knowledge, by probing through the Mesh, trying once more to communicate.
With some reluctance, Lark accepted the wisdom of this. Together with Ling, he went back to work, reopening the channels they had discovered before.
“It occurs to us that one final test might be called for … verifying your mettle.
“One more trial … before our universe changes.”
Lark exhaled a sigh that formed bubble trails in the frothy medium.
So. The Transcendents were still tinkering, trying to optimize their experiment till the very last moment. Or else the “gods” were amusing themselves at the expense of those poor Earthlings. Either way, they weren’t about to defend Streaker with omnipotent power. Instead, they would let Polkjhy attack, evaluating the results.
There wasn’t much time left for exploration. With one part of his mind, Lark tracked the great mass-infall of collapsing debris.
Already the white dwarf surged and boiled as the cloud’s inner fringes struck its surface at high velocity. Concentric waves of actinic blue fire crisscrossed the ancient, tormented surface, spouting gaudy flares of plasma back toward space, hinting at far greater fireworks to come.
Meanwhile, uncoded insults hurled from Polkjhy’s bridge, taunting Streaker’s crew as their hull was turned into a betraying antenna, forced to siphon heat from other folded layers of space.
At that point a familiar voice joined in.
It was Lark’s old friend, the traeki from Jijo who had once been Asx, then Ewasx, and now was a wise, multicomponent being, simply called “X.”
I have finally made full contact with the Earthship’s computer, the hybrid creature announced.
Congratulations, Lark replied. Have you transmitted the information you wanted to send?
With a sense of waxy satisfaction, X confirmed it was done. Everything that had been learned about Jophur master rings was now copied into Streaker’s onboard storage system, including the knack for growing red toruses—the kind that had proved so potent against egocentric dominance.
And yet, what good would the information do? Even if Streaker survived the present attack, and the coming stellar explosion, the Transcendents would only hurl it away from the Five Galaxies, riding a cosmic tidal wave, careening toward starscapes where no Jophur ever lived.
X showed no sign of recognizing any inconsistency.
You might be interested in something else I have learned. There is a passenger aboard the Earthship. Someone now counted among its honored leaders. A human person, familiar to us both.
Lark sensed anguished irony behind the words. Bending his will toward the indicated path, he finally gained access to Streaker’s housekeeping files and discovered the datum X referred to.
Sara!
A spasm rocked him, from sheer surprise. Eddies tugged Lark’s body, while Ling grasped his right arm, to help him get over the shock.
What is my sister doing out here … so far from Jijo? How did she wind up in such a mess!
The blow was made worse when Mother came up with an estimate of heating rates aboard Streaker. At this pace, the influx would reach critical levels in less than half a midura.
Soon after that, all the water aboard the dolphin-crewed ship would start to boil.
Emerson
THE ALARM SEEMED TO TAKE EVERYONE IN Streaker’s control center by surprise.
The others had been so intent and worried about the engorged, enraged star—and about mysterious actions of the nearby needle-gateway—that they seemed to forget about danger from mundane enemies.
But he had not.
Emerson knew better. He had dealt with Jophur before and understood their tenacity—a single-mindedness that had been grafted into their race by careless Uplift consorts, who had failed to grasp the basic value of moderation. When the assault came, he was ready.
Lacking speech or literacy, Emerson could not read the flashing monitor screens or figure out the exact nature of their weapon. Details did not matter. He understood that it somehow had to do with making Streaker hot. Already the walls and floor plates were emanating uncomfortable warmth. Large amounts of energy poured in, even though the small sun was still not ready to explode.
Sara reached for his hand, and he felt guilty putting her off with a mere loving squeeze, before dashing away. But Emerson figured that a chance of saving her life was worth more than staying by her side and roasting together.
Running down a torrid hallway, he kept shouting, in hopes that the automatic intercoms would pass on his simple message.
“Suessi!… Karkaett!… Now, now, now!”
Would they come? So much labor had gone into making his idea a reality, applying a two-hundred-year-old technology to new problems in survival. And yet, he worried. They might have simply been humoring him, working together as a way to stay busy till the end.…
Clambering through a maintenance tube, Emerson hurried till he reached the small chamber where his last, triumphant encounter with the Old Ones had taken place—and breathed relief when he saw that Hannes and a couple of dolphin engineers were already there, gathered around the big laser. They babbled to each other in the sweet dialect of engineering. Emerson could no longer parse the quick, efficient meanings, but their speech sounded like music, nevertheless.
The graceful lyrics of competence.
Hannes turned his mirrorlike dome to ask Emerson a question. One that was simple enough for his frail remaining language centers to grasp.
“Yes!” He nodded vigorously. “Do … it!”
Hannes pushed a switch and the laser abruptly bucked in its mounting brackets—hissing and straining like some great beast, snorting as it sprang into action.
Emerson shifted position in order to sight along the massive barrel, curious to see where massive amounts of energy were now pouring.
He saw nothing but stars.
Sure enough, a nearby view screen showed a red dot, representing the Jophur vessel Polkjhy, approaching Streaker’s other side.
Of course he had been lucky with the Old Ones. It would have taken extreme luck for this enemy to be within reach. Anyway, a battleship’s defenses might deflect even such a potent beam.
He shrugged. It didn’t matter. He and the others did not have to smite the Jophur in order to defeat them.
Emerson felt a chill draft. He shivered, and soon noticed a distinct fog begin to form above each dolphin’s blowhole, like individual fountains of frost. His own breath began condensing, too. In moments, the small chamber became noticeably colder, and Hannes shouted for everyone to evacuate. It was time to leave, allowing the machine to perform as planned.
Still, Emerson hung back, relishing a flow of icy air that gushed through ducts to far corners of the ship. He visualized the laser beam acting as a great pump, sucking heat as fast as other forces drew it in, then shooting it forth toward the cosmos. Grinning, he took satisfaction in the way an ancient Earthling technology thwarted Galactic foes—as it had once before, a long time ago, in the maw of a torrid sun.
I … still … have it … He pondered, glancing down at his hands.
When his grin became noisy—a chattering of clenched teeth—Emerson finally let Hannes and the others tug him back toward habitable areas.
Anyway, Sara was waiting for him.
Now at least they would have a few moments together.
Until the star exploded.
Gillian
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YOU NEVER ASKED FOR VOLUNTEERS,” SHE told her visitor accusingly.
The transcendent being returned to her office, assembling itself out of dust motes and particles of air—perhaps in order to resume their conversation, or else to congratulate Gillian for the clever trick worked out by Streaker’s engineering crew—creating a refrigeration laser, a device for dumping heat overboard, spraying it garishly skyward as fast as energy flowed into the ship from D Space.
Few Galactics had ever needed such a crude, gaudy, wolfling device. It would seem preposterously primitive, like rockets, or propeller-driven aircraft. But when humans began exploring the depths of their own sun two centuries ago—going there out of pure curiosity—the trick of laser-cooling had proved both useful and fateful, in several ways.
Shortly after reappearing, the visitor seemed to float before Gillian, an entity with lustrous gray skin and a short, powerful tail whose flukes actually stirred a breeze, kicking up midget whirlwinds, rustling the papers on her desk. Coalescing further, it started taking a resemblance to Gillian’s dearest dolphin friend, Lieutenant Hikahi, one of those who had been left behind on Kithrup, along with Tom and Charles Dart.
Before the Transcendent could speak, Gillian completed her accusation.
“You say you need wolflings, to add as ingredients for your message-probes to other galaxies. Did it ever occur to you to ask? I know my fellow Earthlings. You’d have gotten thousands, millions of volunteers for such a trip! Even knowing in advance that it would involve merging with hydros and machines and other creepy things. There have always been enough weirdos and adventurers. People who’d pay any price, just to be the first to see some far horizon.”