Sunborn (52 page)

    “Are you thinking as I am, Cap’n, that the stream directly below us must be the one Ed has stopped up?”

    “It looks like he’s slowed it, but not eliminated it.”

    In his head, the quarx was recoiling. There was recognition in his fear.

   
/// Look at all of those streams!

   
It’s coming in from stars all over.

   
We’ve barely touched the inflow.

   
It’s just like...like...///

   
Bandicut felt a powerful anxiety from Charli. /Is this...it’s not how your homeworld ended, is it?/

   
/// I think it might be.

   
I have a memory—can’t be sure—

   
but I think it happened just this way.

   
We tried, my people did, but

   
we had no idea...///

   
Bandicut shivered. To Napoleon, he said, “Charli’s homeworld...the same way. They thought they were stopping it, but...” His voice caught. “If that’s
*
Nick
*
, then we’ve hardly accomplished anything.”

    Napoleon ticked softly, not answering directly. “Do you suppose the central control for
all
those streams may be somewhere over there? Near
*
Nick
*
, where it all converges?”

    “I don’t know. You?”

    “I do suppose,” the robot said. “It’s the most central location.”

    Bandicut gazed across at the threatened star. It looked as if he could step out and float across to it. “If the control center
is
there, what the hell can we do about it?” He felt at his waist for the small cylinders, the n-space disrupter grenades. It felt pretty silly to think they’d be much help. “Could we blow it up?” /And probably us with it?/

   
/// Probably. I’m willing to try, though. ///

   
“Cap’n, if we attempt to blow anything up, we need to warn Li-Jared, so that he can get the ship out of the way. With us or without us.” Napoleon was carefully scanning every section of the view. “I think I may see a way over there.”

    “Yes?” Bandicut said cautiously.

    “It’s a little hard to see. You might have to trust me.”

    “I always trust you, Napoleon.”

    “Yes, of course. That minor untruth aside, I would like to present a possibility.”

    “I’m listening.”

    “I suspect there
is
a pathway between us and the star. I cannot precisely image it. However, I believe that this view of the star arises from an n-space connection between this point and what
may
 be a central control nexus, over there.”

    “And you think we could somehow—?”

    “Travel along the pathway, to reach the control nexus.”

    Bandicut drew a breath. “Which we would do by—”

   
Tap.
“By stepping off this ledge.”
Tap tap.
 “That’s where you’d have to trust me.”

    Bandicut suddenly felt dizzy, ill, peering out into the vertiginous gulf with the sun hanging in the middle of the darkness...and beneath them, nothing but blackness and distant stars. “You want me to...step off into...nothing.”

    “As I said, you have to trust me.”

   
/// Yes! Please. ///

   
At that moment, the comm came alive, and Li-Jared’s voice filled Bandicut’s ears.
“Bandie, are you almost out yet?”

    “Uh, we’re—” Bandicut’s voice caught “—uh, we’ve found something that may give us access to the central controls.”

    He could hear the anguish in Li-Jared’s voice.
“Bandie, I
have
to move the ship soon.”

    Tightly, Bandicut said, “I know. But this could really be it. You should take the ship and go. Circle back for us later. In case we...survive.” The words left him feeling sick.
Antares, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.

    “Bandie, I’m not sure we’ll be
able
 to come back.”

    Struggling to draw a breath, Bandicut turned to Napoleon. He thought he was going to say,
Do we really need to do this?
 But what came out was, “Can you explain to Copernicus what we’re trying to do? So he can explain it to Li-Jared?”

    “Already done, Cap’n.”

    “Then, I guess—let’s—” He stopped, then forced the words out. “How do you see this happening?”

    “I detect a curvature of n-space, Cap’n. I believe it is an indication of a pathway, and when we step off this ledge, we will find it. I hope it will carry us to...the other end.”

    “You mean, to
*
Nick
*
?”

    “Or near it. But in n-space, remember. I hope the conditions at the other end will be nonextreme.”

    “We won’t be burned to a crisp?”

    “Correct.”

    Bandicut closed his eyes, then opened them. /Crazy./ “All right. Whatthehell. Let’s go. Together?”

    “I should go first,” said Napoleon, flicking out some bread crumbs.

    “And leave me here, to try to find my way back alone? No thanks. We’ll risk it together. On three, before I lose my nerve. One...”

    “Very—”

    “Two...”

    “—well.”

   
“Three.”
 They pushed themselves off the wall into space. Bandicut felt an odd sensation of falling and being lifted at the same time, as the vista of space distorted around him. The next sensation was of an odd disjuncture, a feeling that time had slipped by unaccounted for; and then the distortion was gone. He blinked hard, looking around.

    The place where he had been poised was gone. No, there it was—way over
there,
across the blackness. It looked like an enormous, slab-sided building, dotted with lighted windows and beacons in the night. It reminded him, strangely, of that first view he’d had of Shipworld, as he’d approached it in his earthly ship,
Neptune Explorer.
He rotated, and drew a shuddering breath. His back had been to a wall of fire, a vast, glowing, undulating tapestry of fusion-fire. It looked now as if he could reach out and touch it, in all its terrifying glory. He glanced down to see what he was standing on—and he was
standing
now, not floating—and he wished he hadn’t. He and Napoleon were on a barely visible, glimmering ledge, without sides or features. He instinctively wanted to back up against a solid wall for safety, but there was no solid wall. Beside him, Napoleon was gathering information, his sensors flickering frantically.

    But they weren’t being consumed by fire. Napoleon had gotten that right.

    He swallowed, hard. “Nappy—?”

    The robot sounded distracted. “I imagine you are wondering where we are?”

    “Yeah.”

    “As near as I can tell, we’re in a pocket of n-space that’s
very
close to the sun, while protecting us from it. I think we must also be very close to the central control. I can
feel
 that it’s here somewhere.”

   
“Feel?”

   
“I don’t know how else to describe it, Cap’n. I can sense that there are...data pathways...nearby. I can hear it like faint crosstalk in a circuit. But I can’t find access.”

    Bandicut squinted at the view of the sun, where the fires of destruction were being stoked hotter with each passing second. For a terrible moment he flashed ten years into the past, to the memory of a burning apartment building, where his friend was dying, beyond reach of firefighters. He felt the wrenching pain all over again, the horror of being unable to help his friend. Nick’s death in the fire had given him nightmares for a year. He pulled himself back with an effort. “If you don’t find access to that, there’ll be no way for us to turn off the flow of dark matter.”
And we will have come all this way and failed.

    “I’m still searching, but...no. Not yet.”

    Bandicut nodded and forced himself to look away. He stared instead at the thin, ghostly streams of dark matter flowing into the sun. He felt Charli do something, and the view improved. Now he could see the streams more clearly against the darkness. He felt that he was standing in the center of a plasma globe, with a fantastic array of glowing whiskers of electricity streaming toward them, toward the central ball. They looked beautiful and harmless; they were killing the star.

    Napoleon swung to look at him. “Nothing, Cap’n.
No, amend that
—I
do
detect another pathway.
Into
 the sun.” He pointed tangentially toward the blazing body.

    Bandicut squinted. He thought he saw an extra little glimmer of light, but who could tell. “That’s it?”

    “It’s the only thing I can see.”

    Bandicut drew a breath. “Then let’s try it, shall we?”

    “Aye, Cap’n.”

    They stepped together.

    The transition was much the same as before. But this time Bandicut had a feeling of being surrounded by silent, billowing walls of flame; and when the transition ended, he was enveloped in a storm of fire, and a thunderous roar that shook him to the bone, like standing inside a rocket launch. Napoleon touched him, and must have done something to his force-field suit, because the roar decreased, until it was more like standing a hundred meters from a waterfall. The fire was undiminished, though; he was surrounded by a blowtorch, a blast furnace, a continuous hydrogen bomb explosion, pulsing, blinding. He couldn’t move.

   
/// Breathe, John—now! ///

   
He gasped, fearing he would die from inhaling the maelstrom. But he did not die. He was protected by the suit, or by n-space, or both. But he sensed something else, something that made him shiver. /Charli, do you feel that?/

   
/// A presence...///

   
/Yes./ It was a tingling sensation wrapped around his mind, a little like the feeling of his first encounter with the translator, and Charlie. But different. More...massive.

   
/// John, I think it’s the star. *Nick*. ///

   
That was what he thought, too. “Napoleon?”

    “Yes, Cap’n, we’re inside the star. I really thought we might find the control center here. But no sign.”

    Bandicut drew a deep breath. “I think I
feel
 the star.”

    Napoleon swung quickly. “Is there a problem with your protection?”

    “No—I mean, in my mind. I feel its presence.” He hesitated, shutting his eyes to focus—and suddenly felt strobe flashes going off in his skull. With each dazzling burst of light, he felt a powerful rush of
fear,
or
confusion,
or
pain.
 For a dizzying few seconds, he thought he was falling into another fugue.

   
/// It’s not fugue. It’s the star. ///

   
/I can’t make sense of it! We need Ik! Or Antares!/

   
/// Or Deep, to fuse

   
the difference in time scales. ///

   
Bandicut felt a whirlwind in his mind. The strobe flashes had given way to jets of fire, flying around like leaves in a fall wind. /Can’t you or the stones help?/ he cried.

   
/// Trying...

   
I don’t think it’s really aware of us. ///

   
Bandicut tried to focus on the thought:
We are here to help, to save you.
 But the thought seemed to just bounce around the inside of his skull like an EineySteiney ball. Finally he gazed at the star again. His eyes, or the filter, were adapting. He could see cells of turbulence churning in the nuclear fires. It was like watching the star’s heartbeat. He turned to the left a little. /My God./

   
The streamers of dark matter were visible again, only now they were rivers of shadow, not light, coursing through the sun glare. The streams dove straight down through the body of the sun. Squinting, he tried to see what was down there in the sun’s core. Charli helped, tweaking his vision slightly. Then he saw it: a shadowy sphere submerged deep in the heart of the star, and the dark matter playing down into it like streams of water in a fountain. It was beautiful, in its way. And it was deadly. “Napoleon?” he murmured.

   
“I see it, Cap’n. It’s a reservoir of dark matter, contained by an n-space field. I don’t quite understand it. I suppose when enough has accumulated to make the star collapse, it’ll implode and the Mindaru will have its hypernova.”

    “Jesus.”

    “Quite so. Captain, I cannot determine how close it is to the point of collapse. But I
can
 tell you, there’s a lot of dark matter down there. And I think we’re looking at the source of the hypergrav shock waves. I see a lot of vibration down there. I’ll bet it periodically gives a big shudder as it adjusts to the buildup.”

    Bandicut absorbed that. “Do you see anything we can do to stop it?”

    Long pause.

   
“Nappy?”

   
“Captain...”

    “What?”

    “I don’t. No. I don’t see a way. I’m sorry.”

    Stung, Bandicut was silent. /We’ve come all this way. And by now, Li-Jared has probably taken the ship out of danger. At least, I hope so. Sort of./ Charli didn’t answer. Streaming plasmas thundered in glorious chaos around him as he struggled to think it through. Finally he shouted,
“We’re in the middle of this star and we can’t get at the controls to stop that? What the hell’s this pathway for, anyway?”