Sunborn (63 page)

    All their efforts would fail unless he carried this enemy through the opening himself. He could not release it or throw it; he had to
carry
 it through, into the universe he had once fled. Maybe he could drop it there and get back before the portal closed, and maybe he couldn’t. If he didn’t, he would be marooned forever in a dying universe.

    Was that a fair exchange for the billions of lives he would save? For the universe that had given him asylum for eons? The small voices that carried something of the soul of this universe in a quarx-echo and a halo-echo seemed to agree:

     <<< If that’s what we must do...>>>

    
<<< There really is no time to waste (chime). >>>

   
Drawing his courage, Deeaab tightened his grip on the struggling Mindaru thing and called to Daarooaack:

   
“I must take it through myself!”

   
Daarooaack seemed to realize Deeaab was right. Her voice reverberated from where she spun, holding open the portal:
“Quickly, then! Release it and return!”

    Praying he could do that, Deeaab plunged down into the funnel with the enemy in his grasp. As he did, he called,
“Let it close...if you must. Save the star...”
 And then he flew through the thundering opening into darkness—through the twisting wrench of the passage.

    And suddenly all of the fire and fury were gone.

*

   
Bong.
 “Copernicus?”

   
Tap tap.
 “We’ll be out of the sun’s atmosphere soon,” answered the robot. Bandicut, sitting on the floor in stunned exhaustion, thought he could feel tremendous power surging through the deck. It was probably his imagination, but it gave him a feeling of hope—even though, deep down, he knew that if the star blew, no amount of power was going to get them far enough, fast enough. Beside him, Ik and Antares were crumpled in even greater exhaustion. Ik looked haunted, filled with pain; over and over he brought his hands to his temples, as he stared emptily into the viewspace. Antares looked stricken, but kept her head up, her eyes darting from one friend to another, and to the view of the shrinking sun. She kept murmuring under her breath—words to the star, Bandicut thought.

    In the view, the great swollen surface of
*
Nick
*
was shrinking as they retreated from it, though it still filled the view. Ghostly in the n-space view, it looked like an emissary from another dimension.
Can’t we move faster?

    “What was that?” Li-Jared pointed to where a brief spark had flared, just to the left of center of the sun’s disk. There was a momentary shimmer, as though a rock had plunked into still water.

    “Hard to interpret,” Jeaves muttered. “Wait, we’re getting something in X-ray and tachyon. Let me show you...”

    The image zoomed in, showing fiery, ghostly chaos at the star’s core. But there was something else—a tiny black pupil in the midst of the chaos. Jeaves tweaked the image, and a bright torch became visible in the center of the dark spot. “
Very
 hard to interpret, but I believe it may be just what you said, John. The dark matter appears to be draining away,” Jeaves said. “I can’t tell where it’s going.”

   
“Out of this universe,” Bandicut whispered, more to himself than anyone else. “They’re doing it, Deep and Dark.”

   
/// I feel Deep, and Charlene-echo.

   
They are in pain, something about to happen.

   
I cannot tell what...///

   
Bandicut opened and closed his mouth silently. There was another tremor in the star.

   
/// Charlene—no! ///

*

   
Whirling around the portal opening, Daarooaack understood perfectly what Deeaab meant in his final cry before vanishing. The strange matter was nearly gone from the star. But it was not
just
strange matter spewing through the portal; it was also the normal matter, the fusing matter that gave the star life. If the portal stayed open much longer, the star would die a different death; it would simply be extinguished. But it was to save the star’s life that Deeaab had taken such a risk.

    Daarooaack understood that, and hated it. If Deeaab did not make it back on his own, she could do nothing to help him. All she could do was reach out with her senses to feel the star, and judge when the portal
had
to close to save the star’s life. Once closed, she could not reopen it. If that was what it took to honor Deeaab’s purpose, then that was what she would do.

*

   
Dull red, glowing against emptiness. The strange matter, and part of the star with it, vented into the bitter cold of this dark, dying universe. The gases began at once to cool. Deeaab was dazed by the passage, and slowly came out of it to look around. There wasn’t much to see. Space was dark and starless, except for some blotches of dying galaxies receding into the ultimate distance, so far away their light could barely even reach this place.

    In Deeaab’s grasp was a dying thing. He must still be dazed; he couldn’t quite remember why he was holding the thing. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to quite work in the physics here; its solid, near-metal, near-life function was fading.

   
And then he remembered, a picture rippling back into focus. He had succeeded in exiling a terrible enemy; he had brought this thing from the other universe, to where it could do no more harm. He released it and watched it float away.

    But there was something else coming back into focus.
The portal was closing. He had to get back now—if it was not already too late.

    The trouble was, he couldn’t really see the portal. Probably it was somewhere in the center of this cloud of dully glowing gas. He searched, with growing alarm and fear. He could find nothing but the cloud, its glow fading, and surrounding it nothing but empty, expanding space for maybe a few billion light-years...

*

   
“Deeaab! Deeaab, can you make it back?”

   
Daarooaack’s calls went unanswered, as they had for the last eon of seconds. She could wait no longer; the fury of the star was changing around her, as the gravity of the other universe pulled the star toward a different kind of death, bleeding the life from it. If she closed the portal
now,
she could save
*
Nick
*
.

   
“Deeaab!”

   
No answer. No answer.

    Daarooaack spun away from the dark window and savagely pulled at the threads of spacetime to yank the window closed forever.

    The portal of darkness vanished.

    Daarooaack’s hope vanished.

    The core of the star rebounded from the collapse, sending shock waves up through the fiery layers toward the surface. But the fusion-fires continued, and the star steadied itself and did not die.

Chapter 38

Regathering

    /Charli, what happened? What happened to Charlene?/ Bandicut pushed himself to his feet and clutched the control panel to steady himself as he tried to make sense of the view. Charli was reeling from something terrible.
    “John,” Antares said in a shaky voice, “what is it? Do you need me?” She and Ik were slumped against the back wall.

    “Don’t know. No, you stay with Ik.”

    Finally Charli managed to say,

   
/// They’re gone.

   
Deep and Charlene-echo are gone. ///

   
/Where?/

   
/// Out of the universe.

   
They took the enemy and all the dark matter

   
right through that opening.

   
But they never made it back.

   
And now it’s too late. ///

   
And with that, Charli fell silent. Bandicut, in a bruised voice, conveyed that to the others, and Jeaves confirmed that it seemed to be true.

    “What about the star?” Li-Jared demanded. “Is it exploding?” He was still coiled for action, standing forward of everyone else with his fists clenched.

    “No,” Antares said. “I can feel it. The pain is gone.”

    “But there’s apt to be one hell of a shock wave rebounding from the core,” Jeaves said.

    “Indeed there is,” Copernicus announced. “We’re retreating as fast as we can, but the n-space shear is slowing us. I’m rigging for extreme turbulence. I suggest you prepare.” He went on to say something else in another language. Hraachee’an.

    “Hrahhhh,” Ik said weakly in response.

    “Good,” Copernicus said. “He seems to understand me a little.” Ik said something else, and Copernicus added, “He says he is sorry.”

    “Yes,” Bandicut said hoarsely. “I know.”
He has no stones. His stones burned up in the sun.
 Bandicut shuddered, remembering what it was like to be without stones. He had once lent his to a creature in distress, and the experience of loss had been terrifying.

   
Ik gestured helplessly with his hands and said something Bandicut couldn’t understand. Ik sighed through his ears, looked at Bandicut, then stared straight ahead.

    Bandicut stepped over and placed a hand firmly on Ik’s shoulder. “I understand.” Ik’s eyes seemed to flicker with comprehension. Bandicut nodded and turned back to the sun. “Coppy, did you see a flash, just before Deep vanished through the opening? Do you know what that was? Could it have been Napoleon?”

    “Uncertain, Cap’n. He did have disrupter grenades.”

    Jeaves interjected, “We will be overtaken by the first shock wave in about three minutes.”

    Antares looked alarmed. “Is
*
Nick
*
 going hypernova after all?”

    Jeaves turned his holographic head. “No. The core contracted, then rebounded. The star is basically ringing like a bell. But all the n-space channels have collapsed, and we can find no evidence of dark matter flowing. The entire collection system seems to have collapsed with the removal of the control center.”

    “Is
*
Nick
*
 still alive?” Bandicut asked. “Able to speak, I mean?”

   
Antares glanced at Ik, before saying, “I can feel its presence, but without Deep—”

    Ik barked something in his own language. Copernicus translated: “I feel...its relief. There is joy. And sadness.” Ik rubbed the bony ridge above his deep-set eyes and continued, with Copernicus’s help. “
*
Nick
*
is not...gone. I feel...its life. But its time...not our time. We can no longer speak.” Ik raised his hand, as though in farewell to the star.

    An alarm sounded. “Folks, we’re about to be hammered by the expanding plasma shell,” Copernicus said. “I’m going to apply a damping field to the interior of the ship. Get comfortable
now,
 because you won’t be able to move until the shock wave has passed.”

    The four scrambled to the bench sofa at the back of the bridge. Antares hooked one arm through Bandicut’s and the other through Ik’s. A moment later, the deck began to rumble, and Bandicut felt suddenly as if he were in molasses—or back in the star-spanner bubble.

   
/// That would be the damping field,

   
keeping us from being turned to mush. ///

   
Bandicut acknowledged silently, glad to hear Charli speak again. But now that he was sitting still, he was beginning, like Charli, to feel the impact of losing Deep and Charlene-echo. And Napoleon, who almost certainly was destroyed in what had just happened. Then the shock wave hit, and he had the feeling of riding a roller coaster in slow motion. The sensation lasted about a minute, then subsided.

    Copernicus called, “Dark is flying out toward us.”

    Indeed, they could now see the small dark cloud zigzagging as it sped out through the layers of the star. It veered suddenly and disappeared from view. “What’s it doing?” Li-Jared asked, his words slurred by the dampening field. “It’s not leaving us, is it?”

   
/// I don’t think it’s gone. ///

   
/Then where—
oh!
/ Bandicut looked to the left of Dark’s previous position. “There!” Bandicut said to the others, raising a finger with difficulty to point. Dark was again visible, and growing rapidly.

*

   
Napoleon was still trying to understand the last few moments of his life. He had lobbed the disrupter grenades down the n-space tube. A tremendous upheaval followed: time disturbances, n-space disturbances, Deep and Dark passing through the star. The dark-matter reservoir letting go. He thought he saw the dark matter disappearing through some kind of opening, much larger than anything he could have created.

    Then the shock wave caught him, and he knew he was going to die. Instead, protected by the n-space bubble that surrounded him, he rode the shock wave like a surfboard rider, up through the layers of the sun. He squawked all the way, trying to signal his shipmates—but that was useless, they were back at
*
Thunder
*
. It was Dark who noticed him, and Dark who
caught
him by the n-space bubble and lifted him the rest of the way out of the star, into the glorious blackness of space.