BANDICUT HELD HIS breath. Inward toward the stars of the galaxy? The Milky Way? His heart filled with thoughts of the immensity of space, of the galaxy he had left behind, of the intense loneliness that came over him every time he glimpsed that swirling sea of stars outside Shipworld. And he thought: it would be a totally irrational choice. The meerkat hadn't said home; it had just said into the galaxy. They might be sent anywhere. But in his heart, the decision was already made. "Back into the galaxy," he whispered.
The others too had been struck dumb. But one by one, they answered. "Into the galaxy," murmured Ik. "To the stars," said Li-Jared.
Bandicut looked at Antares. Her gold and black eyes caught his fiercely, and he felt her anguished indecision. "Would you like to come with us?"
"Indeed, you are welcome," said Ik.
Bwang. "Why not?" said Li-Jared.
Antares stared a moment longer, and her gold irises narrowed, as though she had just made a decision—out of what considerations Bandicut could not guess. She uttered a soft hissing sound. "Why not, indeed?" she said at last. She turned to the meerkats. "Back to the stars."
The creatures jumped up, scrambling around the area directly in front of the portal. Ik made a movement toward them, but the meerkats squawked, warning him away. The company stood in a half circle, watching uneasily as the ghostly emanations from the portal slowly changed colors. At last, the portal shone a deep, sparkling sapphire.
The meerkats yipped, ears twitching. "Now," said Antares.
Li-Jared and Ik stepped through the opening almost as one, and vanished. Bandicut hesitated an instant, then urged the robots forward. The light strobed around him, flashing through a dazzling rainbow of colors. He heard the rasping and tapping of the robots, and the voices of Ik and Li-Jared. And Antares—?
The light dropped to near-darkness, a pale golden glow that shone without illuminating. They were in another transition-zone, floating more than standing. He tried to turn his head, and couldn't. But he sensed something forming around them, something more of energy than matter, he thought, an egg-shaped enclosure. The light strobed out again, and he felt a shift that told him they'd been transported out of the holding area, into something different. He could just discern great, pale circles and arches stretching out in a line before him, suggesting a vast, hollow tunnel, dwindling to infinity.
The inside of a star-spanner? he wondered, heart pounding. He waited for someone or something to speak, to ask them where they wanted to go, or at least to offer choices. Surely they would be offered choices.
He felt a gentle bump, then a sharp concussion, and the golden light vanished to darkness. He had a feeling of falling . . . and then not so much falling as speeding through darkness, accelerating at an unthinkable rate. Luminous concentric rings appeared in the distance, growing with alarming speed. They flared around him like hoops, vanishing behind. More circles of light appeared, growing quickly, flashing by.
He tried once more to turn his head, and found that he could do so now, very slowly. He was encapsulated in a transparent amber bubble, and enclosed with him were Ik, Li-Jared, the two metal beings . . . and Antares.
Her eyes met his for an instant.
He could not read her expression. But they had made their choices, all of them. Wherever they were going, they were going together.
*
It became increasingly hard to focus, with the strobelike flashing of the star-spanner around him. He passed into a kind of trance, much like the time following his collision with the comet, as he was hurled out of the galaxy to Shipworld. Were they on their way back into the Milky Way? He wondered fleetingly how much power was at his back, like the wind, and how many light-years lay ahead. After a while, he stopped thinking about it.
The circles stopped coming, and for a time there was a kind of swirling darkness; it was like being inside a thundercloud, with only the most tenuous glimmers of lightning.
Then smaller, dimmer lights began to flash by: sometimes fluttering like butterflies, or falling horizontally like gentle raindrops, or drawn out in long, dazzling streaks. Sometimes it seemed more like darkness painted upon darkness.
He thought he heard voices echoing in the vastness of space, but if it was speech, he couldn't understand a word of it. Charlie was silent. Or if he spoke, his voice was another incomprehensible mutter from the void. Memories rose and floated toward him in spinning pirouettes:
His first flight in Earth orbit, his pilot's certificate fresh in his pocket, the Earth turning below him like a luminous, mystical watercolor painting.
His niece Dakota, begging him to take her into space—and his promise to do so, forever unfulfilled.
The dim blue cavern on Triton, the alien translator drawing him into the soul-wrenching realm of its awareness, while Charlie labored to keep him from dying of the experience.
Silence-fugue, full of dancing aliens, and Charlie pulling him back to reality.
Julie Stone, pulling him into a warm, heady embrace . . . and later crying to him not to do this insane thing, stealing a spaceship from Triton orbit, on a flight he could not possibly return from alive.
And a mad, fugue-punctuated dash across the solar system, threading space, to save an oblivious Earth from a planetkiller comet.
And then . . .
*Translation.*
(???) Was that a memory, or the stones explaining what was happening now?
No answers. He slept, and had no idea for how long. He dreamed that his body was being transformed, a caterpillar turning into a butterfly . . .
*
*Impending arrival . . .*
He dreamed of stars spinning around him like dancers, and a planet, blue and green and white . . . rather like Earth, but not Earth.
He dreamed of translation, transformation . . . of clouds spinning by, just out of reach . . . and a vast blue ocean rising to flank him . . .
*Arrival.*
He awoke to a crashing of waves, a thunder of bubbles, a blazing sun slanting down through crystal blue waters. He sputtered, crying out, then realized that he was surrounded by the water, but not actually touching it.
"Hraah!" "This is not—" Bwang-ng-ng! Tap tap. "John Bandicut—"
His eyes and brain finally starting working together again, and his heart nearly stopped. They were still in the pale golden egg that had carried them among the stars, but they were planetbound now, underwater. They had leapt across light-years, and fallen into a sea. Not Earth's sea, but some sea, somewhere. Were they bobbing back toward the surface? No . . . they were sinking. Far overhead was a dancing silver surface, receding. The sea was darkening perceptibly around them.
"Something's wrong! We have to get out!" he cried, but his voice was lost in the panicky babble of the others' shouts. He threw himself against the bubble, and for a terrifying instant, felt himself stretch out into the sea, as if through an invisible rubber sheet, seawater all but pressing through his pores. Below was a deep cerulean gulf, sunbeams slanting down and vanishing into a bottomless abyss.
He popped back into the bubble, gasping for breath.
As the ocean darkened, he met the terrified glances of his companions. He forced himself to look down again, and in the midnight gloom below, he glimpsed lights—what looked like luminous seaweed bubbles, a lamp-yellow glow deep in the oceanic night.
Or perhaps not seaweed at all. He rubbed his eyes and gazed down again, and realized that if he could trust his eyes, he was looking at bubble-cities, far below in the depths of the sea.