“DID YOU COMMUNICATE with the yaantel?” Rings asked, emerging from the gloom of his library.
Julie squinted at Rings-at-Need, struggling to perform a mental reset. Their meeting with the translator had left her stunned and breathless. She swung to face Ik. “What just happened back there?”
“Hrrm . . .” Ik spread his fingers in uncertainty.
“I’ve never seen the translator act afraid. If it were human, I’d say it had a panic attack when we asked if it could go along with us.”
Ik said nothing, but his deep-set eyes glinted as they met her gaze.
“Ik, that translator carried me through the sun—and then all the way here, across the galaxy. It’s the bravest, and strongest, thing I know.”
“Perhaps it was more hurt than you knew,” Ik said softly.
“Did you communicate with the yaantel?” Rings asked again, a reverberation in his voice.
Julie managed a nod. “We did. Yes.” She shut her eyes. Had the yaantel just advised them to take a trip to the center of the galaxy—and back a billion years in time? Using experimental, out-of-body technology? Yes, it had.
“And,” said Rings, “did the yaantel make clear what we hope you will do for us? For all of us?”
“Hrrm,” said Ik. “It tried. I would not say that I, at least, fully understand the proposed mission yet—or its risks.”
A soft brush-on-cymbal sound seemed to signal acknowledgment. “Possibly no one fully understands the risks. But we should go now to those who will try to answer your additional questions. Are you willing to meet the mission team?”
“Well, I—” Julie began.
“Have you been persuaded, hmm, that it is worth your attention?” Rings asked.
Julie closed her eyes again. The translator was the only being on Shipworld she knew well enough to trust with such a momentous decision—and it had basically urged them to take the job. It was terrified, yes; but didn’t that just confirm the gravity of its counsel?
She opened her eyes, glanced at Ik, who seemed to be waiting for her. “All right,” she said, and Ik hrrm’d his agreement.
Rings rotated and floated deeper into the library. Julie and Ik followed.
***
The library was a surprisingly twisty space. There came a point where Julie felt something like a passing breeze, a waft of dizziness, and then a spinning ring of light. Then they were standing in a small compartment with windows. The windows looked out into space. But near the bottom edge of the windows, Julie could see what she took to be the outside of Shipworld. It began to move past the window.
“Spacecraft?” she asked, turning to Rings. She tested her weight. They still had gravity.
“Outside shuttle,” Rings said, floating at the forward end of the cabin. “We are transiting a guidance web along the outside of Shipworld. It is quite safe. We are leaving the sector we were in, which is known as Scalapoorie, and traveling to Escaloo, at the far end of Shipworld.”
Far end of Shipworld? Julie thought. Farther and farther from where John Bandicut might have been? “Will our friends be told where we are and what we are doing?”
Rings rotated to invisibility, and then reappeared. “It appears they have joined another mission, and may be away from Shipworld. There is, at present, no way to contact them.”
Just like that? Julie felt a pressure in her forehead as she tried to think of a polite response.
Ik made a loud grumbling sound. “That is, hrah, unacceptable, that you would send them away like that, without allowing us to speak! It is disgraceful.”
Rings-at-Need made a shimmering sound. “I do not disagree. It was not I who sent them away, or those I work with. It was, rnnngg, a different group.” Ignoring their glares, Rings continued, “We can hope for their success. For them. For Shipworld. Really, for the galaxy. Maybe even beyond the galaxy.”
“Christ,” Julie muttered under her breath. She went to another window and leaned close, trying to peer ahead. They were flying dizzyingly through guide-rings, as they hurtled along on a trajectory parallel to the vast structure of Shipworld.
“Well, then,” said Ik. “What now?”
“Please take some comfort, as you can. The ride will take a little while. You may sleep, if you wish.” Rings moved his paddle-hands, and something changed in the walls of the cabin, revealing a narrow bunk on either side. A bottle of clear liquid—water?—lay on each bunk.
Fat chance of sleeping, Julie thought. She nevertheless sat on the nearer bunk, testing its firmness. It was okay. She cracked open the bottle and took a careful sip. Water. She drank a little more, and then, with a sigh, stretched out and stared at the ceiling. Finally, she rolled to look at her cabin-mates.
“Rrmm,” said Ik, from the other bunk. He pulled up his feet and sat cross-legged, then drank deeply from his own bottle. “Perhaps Rings is right,” he said finally. “It would not hurt us to rest.”
At the front of the cabin, the Tintangle floated motionless. Perhaps he had gone to sleep himself. There was nothing much to stay awake for, it seemed. Julie sighed again and closed her eyes.
***
Ik came out of his meditation, hearing a voice. It was Rings. “What did you say?” On the opposite bunk, Julie sat up, yawning.
“We are about to make a translational jump away from Shipworld proper,” Rings said. “The mission preparation center is located approximately one-tenth light-year from Shipworld.”
Ik felt a chill up from his groin to a point between his shoulders. “A tenth of a light-year from Shipworld? You did not speak of this before.”
“I apologize.” Rings’ voice became tremulous. “The energies involved in the ghoststream process are quite large, and the process is kept at some distance from Shipworld for safety.”
So if we blow up, we don’t take Shipworld with us, Ik thought. His mind lingered on the energies quite large part, and he gazed thoughtfully at Rings, while across from him Julie had come wide-eyed awake at the Tintangle’s words.
In a voice hoarse as though she’d been talking throughout her sleep, she said, “Light-year? Tenth of a light-year? What kind of energy are we talking about here?” She reached for her water bottle, her gaze never leaving Rings.
Rings seemed to vibrate side to side. “We are extracting power from a small black hole. It is quite safe.”
Julie choked on her water, and spent a few seconds coughing. “Safe,” she gasped. “A small black hole.”
“As such things go,” Rings responded.
Ik clacked his mouth in disbelief. He peered out the window. The outside of Shipworld was now a blur, drifting away to one side. “Were you going to ask us if that was all right with us?”
There was a flash, just visible in the forward direction, and another.
A structure came into view in the distance, growing rapidly. “I apologize if I have taken you aback,” Rings said. “I thought I had your implicit approval. Prepare for docking. We have completed the jump.”
***
The structure that grew before them was shaped like an enormous, broken crystal, with huge, angular facets. A brightly lit bay yawned in one of the facets, and they glided to a silent stop at its center. Rings was suddenly all business. “Are you well rested? I will show you the facilities, and then we must go to the prelaunch briefing.”
Ik stared at Rings blankly for a moment. Prelaunch? Are we that far along in the process? He tapped his fingers against his chest. “I guess I am ready enough.”
Julie looked more frightened than ready, he thought. He wondered if her appraisal of the situation wasn’t the more realistic.
Rings twanged and, with a bobbing movement, led them out through a sudden opening in the cabin wall and into the bright yellow landing area. “Follow me, please.”
***
The Tintangle didn’t fool around. The first place he took them was the launch complex for the ghoststream time-travel system. They stood gazing out together from a balcony, while Rings went to check on something. An enormous floor stretched out beneath them, broken up here and there by large transformers, coils, who knew what. It reminded Ik of the huge hangar from which they had departed the waystation near Starmaker. Just before it disintegrated.
Julie was clearly awed by the scale of the thing. “Is that what’s going to send us back in time? Ik, it’s—”
“Hrah. Yes, it is. Huge, and fragile.” Ik focused on the center of the floor. Extending from left to right across the middle of the space was a large channel—almost a riverbed—through which shifting beams of light played. The physical structure that formed the trough extended to the transparent right-hand wall, and through it into space. It looked like the barrel of an exceedingly strange gun. Perched in the center of the trough, more or less in the middle of the space, was a small, clear capsule. Was it some version of a star-spanner bubble? It flexed and changed as a crew of shadow-people and others worked on it. “The capsule looks about as substantial as the thing we rode to Astar-Neri and the waystation.”
“You, meaning you and John?” Julie asked.
“Hrrm, yes, and our friends Li-Jared and Antares.” Ik’s voice caught slightly as he said the name Antares. He had not until now thought very deeply about the matter of John Bandicut and Antares and . . . Julie. They all cared for one another, and yet on his own world, if two people were life-bonded in a certain way, it could be difficult to have a third person enter the relationship. He wondered if he should be careful how he spoke.
“Li-Jared. And Antares?” Julie tilted her head to one side. “Tell me about them. Is John with them now?”
“As far as I know, yes,” Ik said. “They are—well, Li-Jared was my first friend here on Shipworld. He is about this tall—” Ik held out a hand at chest height “—short, wiry, energetic. Smart. Impatient. Bandie once told us that Li-Jared looked something like—is this the right word, chimps?—on your world.”
Julie nodded. “And Antares?”
Ik hesitated, unsure quite how to describe her. He and Antares had become close also, during the mission to Starmaker. She had helped him several times—saved his life probably, by intervening with her empathic powers and with the power of her voice-stones—in a battle that raged between his first voice-stones and the deadly, invasive intelligence of the Mindaru. For that alone, he owed Antares a great debt. But they were also friends. There was nothing he would not do for her. But that was not the same as the kind of relationship she had with Bandicut. “She—” he began finally, “—in a way, she looks a little like you. More like a human, I think, than either I or Li-Jared.”
Julie cocked her head at that. “A ‘she’? Female?”
“Of her kind, yes. A Thespi-third female.” He considered. “Empathic, and trained as a . . . facilitator of connections, between others. Yes, she rather resembles you in general physical appearance. I think you would probably like her.” Noticing Julie’s expression, her half-closed eyes and furrowed brow, he suspected that he should tread carefully here.
“How did you—or John, at least—come to know her?”
Ik closed his eyes a moment, remembering. It wasn’t really so long ago; but so much had happened. “We met her during the boojum crisis, here on Shipworld—” and he realized, seeing the puzzlement on Julie’s face, that he had not yet explained the boojum incident to her “—though during that crisis, we hardly knew each other. But afterward, she boarded the star-spanner bubble with us, and traveled with us—hrah, we did not know where we were going, but it turned out to be the undersea world of the Astari and Neri. It was during the crisis there that we truly became friends.” He clacked his mouth shut. Julie seemed to accept what he had said, with great thoughtfulness.
After a few moments, Julie turned her attention back to the tableau in front of them. She pointed to the capsule in the middle of the channel. “It doesn’t look like much. Is that really what we’re supposed to travel in?”
“The star-spanner bubble didn’t look like much, either,” Ik said. He heard chiming voices. “Hrah. We may be about to find out.” Descending toward them from above were two halos, like Delilah, a halo who had accompanied them to Starmaker. They looked like floating, spinning, glowing circles of light, and made a sound like metal rings circling around a metal pole. “Hello,” he called. Delilah had given her life to save him and his companions, and he felt a pang at the sight of her fellows.
The halos answered in chime-voices, which his stones did not immediately translate; but Rings-at-Need reappeared from wherever he had gone and said, “These halos will assist in your briefing concerning the mission. Let’s go with them to meet the rest of the Galactic Core Mission team.”
Rings led them away from the balcony to a glassed-in meeting room overlooking the complex, where twenty or thirty folk of various species were gathered, including a few shadow-people flying overhead making whreek’ing sounds. “People!” cried Rings. “I bring two travelers, Ik and Julie Stone, Hraachee’an and human. They come with considerable experience with the Mindaru, and I ask that you greet them accordingly.”
To Ik and Julie’s discomfiture, a crowd of curious aliens immediately gathered around them: tall ones, squat ones, spidery ones, in an assortment of eye and limb configurations, and colors, and smells. A particularly heavy creature with a carapace spoke out in a trumpeting groan. Ik’s stones hesitantly rendered the words as, “They don’t look-k t-terribly f-fierce.” The creature waved its eye-stalks at Rings as Ik absorbed the words.
Rings responded, “How many Mindaru have you faced down, Cromus? These two met and prevailed against Mindaru entities capable of destroying this entire launch center.” Rings waved his paddle-hands for a moment, and then floated in a circle around the group. “Now, please—we were asked to come in urgent haste, so may I ask that you take your places? These travelers require in-depth briefing, and I believe the mission directors brought the halos here to oversee that. Am I right?”
That brought murmurs that Ik took for assent. As they all took seats, which molded at a touch to their sizes and shapes, Julie leaned over and muttered, “I wish they wouldn’t make us out to be heroes. I don’t know about you, but I think I’m likely to disappoint them.”
Ik could hardly argue. But there was no time to talk of it further, because Rings floated over to speak to them. “Cromus will be taking over now. He is in operational command of the mission. I will be here if you need me, but address your questions to Cromus when you can.” With that, Rings rotated out of sight, and reappeared against the wall to one side.
The large, carapaced creature that had expressed doubts about their ferocity shuffled to the front and called for attention by clicking his intimidating pincers together. He spoke toward Ik and Julie in a rasping groan. “I am Cromuss-s. Are you ready to begin learning the details of the mission-n?” As he spoke, the voice-stones began translating more smoothly. “The halos will now begin.”
The two halos dropped into view from somewhere overhead, and began once more making the sound of a ring whirling around a pole. Ik had forgotten how quickly a halo’s chiming voice could take him into a dream-state.
The sensation brought back memories of Delilah’s briefings, back on the waystation in preparation for the Starmaker mission. It was like falling into a bottomless emptiness . . . and as he floated in that place, the halos spoke to him of the inner galaxy and its long, long ago (what was known of it), and of the ghoststream and what he should expect, and what the mission team gathered here expected of Julie and of him.
***
As the glowing dream faded, Julie blinked away dizziness. Too much information . . . too much. Was Ik able to absorb all this? She glanced at her Hraachee’an friend and saw him squinting and rubbing the voice-stones embedded in his temples. She was suddenly aware that she was unconsciously rubbing her own wrists.
Cromus clicked his pincers and spoke again. “Did-d you r-receive c-clear information-n? We have some tim-me for discussion-n and questions, and then-n we must move along-ng to the launch-ch.”
“Hrah!” Ik roared. “Who said we are ready for any launch? Why the rush? Can’t you give us time to absorb the information? Time to plan?”
Julie breathed a sigh of gratitude at Ik’s forthrightness.
But Cromus made a staccato hissing sound. “T-time? You have r-roughly one-and-a-half billion-n years-s to think-k. Is that-t not enough?”
Is he trying to be funny? Julie wondered.
“Hrah, well, we have not yet agreed to the mission as it is presented to us. So, no, I am not sure that is enough time,” said Ik. “And, hrrm, even if we do agree, perhaps we could take time for lunch before we go.”
Cromus twitched his eye-stalks. He seemed shocked by the request. “Lunch-ch? Our concern-n is that-t Mindaru may-y already be on their way-y up the timestream-m. If that is the c-case, then our start-t time could be critical-l. Our directors are quite concerned-d that the mission be launched-d as soon-n as possible.”
“It could be critical,” Ik said, “that we go on a full stomach. If we go at all.”
Julie spoke up. “I agree!” She didn’t want to say it, but she also wished she could get a little more sleep before making a decision. This whole business—not just the time-travel mission, but this whole big support team making decisions about what she did—was too much to absorb in such a short time.
Cromus made some clicking sounds, like a malfunctioning machine. “Well-l, then-n. Food will be brought-t. Now, are there questions-s or points of discussion-n? Yes, Enwin-n?”
Julie listened as a thin, multilegged creature asked for some clarifying details about defensive strategies should the crew encounter hostile Mindaru. To her surprise, Julie realized she already knew the answer: In the event of an encounter, they could simply withdraw, or move on. The ghoststream, after all, permitted no physical contact with beings—or matter of any kind—in the past. She knew this was so because they had told her it was so.
She found herself looking around, out the windows to the complex below. She wondered where the “small” black hole was that would be powering this mission. She knew it was at some distance, bound to this station by an n-dimensional field, and that it provided the enormous energy the ghoststream required to maintain a dense beam of quantum entanglement far into the past. And that the energy would hit their launch capsule like a focused beam of light.
She also knew that sometime in the last few minutes, she had quietly decided that, yes, she really was going on this mission.
Ik clacked his mouth. “Food is here.”
And she knew that he had decided, as well.
***
It was a working lunch, with discussion swirling around them. Julie and Ik mostly stayed quiet, keeping to themselves—partly to avoid having to observe the eating habits of all those alien beings, but mostly to keep their minds focused on what they already knew and understood, instead of being dragged into side discussions that would only confuse them. There was a growing sense of urgency among the crew. It was starting to sink in that these people really were worried that if they didn’t launch soon, the Mindaru could start popping out into the present.
Julie wondered what the mission team would have done if they hadn’t found Ik and her to go on the mission. She found the answer in the information the halos had poured into her head: Another team had been training, but had quietly stepped aside upon Julie and Ik’s arrival. They had been willing, but with no experience with the Mindaru, they had felt out of their depth. Were they relieved? Julie decided not to ask.
Eventually the meeting broke up, and the crowd ebbed away as folk went off to various work stations. Enwin, the spidery, multilegged being, remained—along with Rings-at-Need, and Cromus standing behind them, his pincers quivering. Enwin spoke in a voice just above a whisper. “I will assist you in getting acquainted with the ghoststream pod. Will you come with me?”
Julie followed, with a silent prayer, alongside Ik. She wasn’t ordinarily a particularly spiritual person, but right now maybe she was. Jesus help. They made their way without fanfare down to the launch floor. Up close, the channel in the center of the floor still looked like a riverbed, with a faint haze of light sparkling where the water should be.
The bubble suspended midstream was, as they had surmised, the ghoststream pod. A simple, broad walkway arched across to it. Julie followed Enwin over the walkway, and gingerly reached out to touch the bubble. Its surface gave slightly under her hand. It was like a huge soap bubble, even to the iridescent surface. An opening yawned, and Enwin indicated that Ik should enter first and be seated on the far side, and then Julie on his right.
There was no visible seating, but as Ik slowly crouched, a force-field glimmered beneath him. He rocked into a slightly reclined position on twinkling air. Julie took a breath and followed suit. “Comfortable?” Enwin asked, leaning in over both of them as though suspended on a web. They murmured assent, as Enwin adjusted things Julie couldn’t see. “Put your hands forward slightly,” Enwin said, and when she was done, Julie felt almost as if her palms were resting on an invisible control surface.
“Who’s going to teach us how to control this thing?” she asked, feeling a surge of alarm even as she reviewed the knowledge that the halos had left with her.
Enwin patted her on the shoulder. “Your interface-stones should be getting set up right now. Do you want to confirm that with them?”
*Confirmed. We are operational with the pod,* said her stones, before she could frame the question. *External communication positive.*
/Huh./ Beside her, Ik grunted affirmatively.
Enwin whispered, “Then we’ll close up. Unless you have any last questions?”
“Wait! What do you mean, close up? I thought we were just—”
“We’re ready to send you. Unless you have further—”
“Just like that? With no training?”
“The knowledge you need should come to you as you need it,” Enwin said soothingly. “So unless you have more questions—”
A thousand of them, Julie thought. She was suddenly frightened out of her mind. How had she gotten into this? “Ik, they’re throwing us in with the sharks!”
“Hrah,” Ik murmured. “We have swum with them before.”
*You are as ready as you ever will be. And you have us, just as before.*
Julie let her breath out. If Ik could handle it . . . She shook her head at Enwin. No more questions.
The creature whispered what sounded like a blessing over them, and then withdrew. Rings appeared in the opening. “All of our hopes go with you, my friends.”
Julie blinked at him. Ik murmured something she couldn’t quite make out. “Okay,” she said. “See you later, then. Yes?”
“Yes,” said Rings. “It will not be long.”
The opening turned iridescent like the rest of the bubble, and Rings waved a paddle from beyond the bubble.
*We are receiving launch confirmation. Ghoststream energy flux is building,* reported her stones. Around her, the bubble turned clear, and light began to stream more visibly past. Rings was gone, and the platform was deserted. Then it too was gone.
“Are you all right?” Ik asked in a throaty murmur.
She turned her head to look at his bluish, bony face with those deep-set eyes. She forced a smile. “Yah. All right. A-okay.” She formed her left hand into a thumbs-up gesture.
“Hrrm. ‘A-okay’?”
“Something our spacemen used to say.”
Ik seemed to reach inward for words, or perhaps a memory. “Copernicus said something once,” he murmured at last. “He said, ‘Let’s light this candle.’”
Julie chuckled. She remembered it from her own reading. The first American in space had uttered those words just before his flight.
The light outside brightened, then turned to white-out. A beam of light shot through the pod, and her hands turned transparent before her eyes. And then she was falling into light—empty, endless light.