Salma felt Feathers cling closer, heard a low, caw-like moan.
After only a few seconds, their smart suit lamps lit up. They stood in their isolated splashes of light, hopelessly dim compared to the lost galaxy-birth glare.
Glancing around, Salma saw that nobody was moving, not at first. That was a drill she had learned during the long years on the Shadow: if the power failed, if the lights went out, you just stayed still, until you were sure you weren’t going to collide with something, or suffer some other harm – or, worse, cause harm to the ship.
Terminus was just hanging in the not-air, its curves rendered visible, just, by the suit lights.
When the light didn’t come back, Doria murmured, ‘Come to me. All of you. Best we stay close.’
They moved in cautiously, avoiding any stray bits of kit on the ground. They came close enough to touch each other. As Salma hung on to a very quiet Feathers, Meriel rubbed Salma’s own back. All of which Salma found hugely reassuring.
‘So,’ Vasta said, her voice admirably steady, ‘did the stars just go out? The active galaxy you showed us—’
All the stars have gone out by now, Terminus said. We are now in the very far future.
‘Nice display,’ Doria said. ‘Like a planetarium I once visited—’
This is the far future of the same cosmos. The active young galaxy I showed you has long since darkened, dispersed, even its dead stars evaporating from its gravity well. The planet you stand on was already old, as you know.
Vasta said, ‘Feathers’ planet.’
Now it is far older still. It still exists, in fact, only because it has been consciously preserved. For your convenience.
‘Thanks,’ Vasta said ironically.
You measure time in years. Very well. When you, these individuals, were born, your universe was thirteen billion years old. Your world was warm, active, illuminated by your star, and heated from within by its own store of residual formation heat, by radioactivity.
After ten billion more years your star will be a white dwarf, quietly fusing its remnant hydrogen and helium, yielding little heat. After a hundred billion years, its Sun long exhausted, your Earth will be cold, inert, like this planet.
After a thousand billion years star formation will stop, across the universe, the raw material exhausted. A hundred times longer again, and the last stars will die. Soon even the star-corpse remnants will evaporate from the Galaxy – escape from its gravity well through chance collisions and encounters.
Vasta grunted. ‘Like gas molecules crowding out of an open jar.’
The universe will be populated only by supermassive black holes and stellar remnants, the cold corpses of the stars in evaporating galaxies – and cold, inert planets like this one. But in the still longer term matter itself breaks down—
‘Proton decay,’ Vasta said. ‘Such a slow effect we aren’t even sure it exists. Matter itself falling apart, after – what, a trillion trillion trillion years? And beyond that—’
Beyond that even the most massive black holes will evaporate.
‘Hawking radiation,’ Salma guessed.
Meriel rubbed her back again, through her pressure suit, a distant sensation.
There will then be nothing but a thin mist, the relic of the decay of matter itself, in an endlessly expanding spacetime.
Vasta said, ‘They used to call it the heat death. From the Big Bang, through a few trillion years of light and life and hope, and then just endless expansion—’
You are not alone. We have contacted many others of your kind – I mean, the products of young universes. And we have found a way to save you.
Save you from the heat death of your universe.
Save you from an epoch like that of my own cold birth.
This is my promise to you …
Terminus fell silent. It just hung there, bathed in their suit lights.
And the sky exploded.