IT was when I oozed out of the Largas Swift, bloated to three times my normal mass courtesy of the Duras, that I comprehended why Ersh named our predator the Null.
To my senses, the vast sweep of space below and ahead of me was empty. Space couldn’t be empty, meaning something had to be there to erase all else. We weren’t waiting for the Null to arrive.
It was already here.
Instinct took over and my exterior solidified, an experience as novel as it was painful as my web-flesh sent out a desperate message of nothing to see here. Just another space rock.
Not helpful, I realized an instant later. Well, yes, it must have been once. We’d lived the long slow life until Ersh assimilated the first ephemeral mass and I’d no doubt hiding as a rock for an eon or so until drifting far enough from a Null for safety would have been fine by my ancestors, being all they knew and could be.
Things were different now. I was. And I’d a boom heading toward that ominously empty portion of space, along with ships and lifepods, requiring me to not be a rock because even if the Null couldn’t sense my presence, I couldn’t sense anything either.
I reanimated microscopic portions of my exterior—here a spot, there a spot—until information about my surroundings began to trickle in to me.
Rock-me was moving along the same course as the Swift’s cargo, gaining on the assorted presents and boom because I’d given myself a good push. At this rate, we’d enter Null space in about a month.
STOP!
Not that I stopped but my mental processes screeched to a gibbering halt because now I sensed the other thing about the Null.
Filaments of otherworldly energy were everywhere, insubstantial and faint as if not yet fully awake. They stretched beyond the limit of my reduced senses, busy wrapping around everything, including me. Including the ships and lifepods.
The Null’s trap. We were caught already. Its core—its mouth—would be open, waiting for an exit or entrance into translight to swallow its prey. I felt remarkably insignificant.
Stay a rock, whimpered the sensible part of me.
Another, possibly foolish but braver part? Focused on Veya Ragem.
I believed what Lesy’d uncovered. Something of Paul’s mother was in there. Had survived.
If ending the inconceivably vast and terrifying Null was as impossible for one Web-being to accomplish as it now seemed—
Maybe I should try to find a lost piece of Human.
Keeping my leading edge rockish as best I could, I freed the rest of me and sacrificed mass for energy. Sublight at first, to ram carelessly through presents and boom, drawing them along, then—
I soared from real space into the—