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Illustration by David A. Hardy
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It's a truism of science that the observer affects the thing being observed – but it works the other way, too.
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Afterward, watching the long spectacle of the debris of two star systems going their separate ways, Mike Christopher didn’t think of the stupendous forces he’d witnessed as much as he thought of the dead. Even planetary collisions, he thought, don’t affect the soul as profoundly as watching a loved one die.
A month earlier
Mike Christopher called up a holo display of the planet the starcraft Asaph Hall was orbiting. The gas giant, called Heuri, was about eight AU out from its primary, Moruteb. Mike told Rosa Sandage, the Hall’s captain, “This planet’s the Drodusarel’s first goal—it’s why they made sure to get here before us. Pretty natural for methane-breathers. It’s similar to their homeworld. And it has an extensive series of rings, again, just like their homeworld.”
Rosa spun her command chair toward Mike and asked, “Why are the rings important?”
“Primitive life—the equivalent of the first algae on Earth—arose in the Drodusarel system’s rings. They, in turn, seeded the planet, letting life form within its atmosphere.”
“How the hell did that happen?”
“No one knows. Correction—no human knows. But the Drodusarel would be drawn to that type of planet the way humans would be drawn to a terrestrial world with large oceans.”
Mike called up a more detailed holo giving the planet’s vitals—a year nearly twenty-four Earth years long, a day not quite nine hours, the typical bands of clouds, and an extensive ring system.
But as usual with such a world, the stats weren’t as impressive as the sheer power of looking at its image on the viewscreen. The cloud bands covering Heuri ranged from tan to brown to red, dotted with dozens of storm systems. Those clouds were mostly hydrogen and helium, with minor components of ammonia, methane, and water.
Heuri’s ring system wasn’t as magnificent as Saturn’s, but neither was it as tenuous as Jupiter’s. Mike could make out at least four broad segments, and the system as a whole, though it was only a few hundred meters thick, still made a magnificent sight as the Hall drew closer.
Magnificent, perhaps, but also doomed, with the rogue star Neska drawing ever closer.
But that was weeks away at the earliest. Mike looked toward the main screen. The smooth silver surface of the Drodusarel craft Dirat was easily visible against a couple of the darker bands of Heuri’s clouds. Its orbital path was a couple of hundred K lower than Asaph Hall’s. Soon it would pass below them and move ahead.
Rosa tilted her head in such a way that Mike knew she was listening to a transmission over her datalink. She said, “Codari says the Dirat’s not responding. What the hell are they doing?” Captain Codari was the commander of the Cetronen starcraft Cerenam and of their four-starcraft fleet that had spent five months traveling to the Moruteb system. That system was made up of four worlds: Jilan, a vaguely Mars-type world; Heuri, a gas giant; Itherin, a smaller gas giant; and a smaller icy world, Risula.
Mike called up small holos and other readouts in front of him. “I’ve got Drodusarel shuttles passing through Heuri’s atmosphere. I’d bet they’re taking samples, probably inserting probes.” When he looked more closely at the readouts, though, he said, “Wait a minute. Look at these life-form readings. They’ve been down to the planet. Or, I should say, in its atmosphere.”
Rosa nodded. “They got here first, and they’re bringing life-forms up from Heuri. I thought this system didn’t have any life-forms.”
Mike said, “No intelligences, as far as we knew. These life-forms may not be intelligent. But I’d bet they’re similar to the Drodusarel.”
Rosa said, “Could they be mounting a rescue effort?”
“It’s a pretty poor one if they are. They’d have brought a lot more ships to take off a significant portion of a planetary population. I’d like to take a shuttle over there. Try to find out what they’re up to.”
Rosa touched behind her ear to activate her datalink and spoke quietly. Then she said, “Codari approves. Take Cosmic Egg. And Linna. I think she can handle it.”
“We’ll be careful,” Mike said. He left the bridge to fetch Linna and make the Cosmic Egg ready to lift.
Moments later, Mike was guiding the shuttle Cosmic Egg off the Asaph Hall’s hangar deck and toward the Drodusarel craft Dirat. Linna checked sensors and said, “Dirat still has a couple of shuttles out.”
Mike opened a comm channel. “Captain Dresk, this is Mike Christopher aboard the Asaph Hall shuttle Cosmic Egg. Please respond.” No one replied. “Captain, my crew and I stand ready to help with any rescue operations.”
Dresk’s response was audio only. “Not greeting the human ones! Inappropriate curiosity. I and hive mind disapprove.” Then the connection was cut.
“That’s it,” Mike said. He boosted the Egg into a higher orbit and started working on a trajectory back toward Asaph Hall.
“Wait a minute,” Linna said. “What do you mean, ‘that’s it?’ It’s that business with the hive mind, isn’t it?”
“You bet it is,” Mike said. “And unless you want to be at the center of the biggest cluster event you’ve ever experienced, you’ll be happy we’re heading back.”
Then Mike noticed an incoming transmission. He thought it might be Rosa, but when he accepted it the green-skinned, blunt-snouted image of the captain of the fourth ship of the little Sobrenian fleet formed before him.
Captain Syradok of the Meradeus said, “Mike Christopher. Linna Maurishka. It’s unfortunate that the Drodusarel are such poor colleagues. I will state my purpose plainly. I wish to upstage them. Will you visit the Meradeus?”
Rosa’s voice arrived over Mike’s datalink. “Accept it, Mike. Maybe we can learn something useful.”
Mike understood. Despite making the five-month journey to the Moruteb system together, the motivations of the Sobrenians and Drodusarel in particular were still a mystery. Mike spoke over the channel open to Meradeus: “We came out here for one visit. We can certainly make another instead.”
“We eagerly await your arrival,” Syradok said, and his image faded.
Mike altered Cosmic Egg’s course yet again, this time toward the Meradeus.
To Mike, the interior of a Sobrenian starcraft was a familiar place—more dimly lit than most human craft, warmer, and more humid. He and Linna stepped out of the airlock into the Meradeus’s main corridor.
Syradok was there to greet them, with another Sobrenian at his side. A female, by the look of her—slightly shorter than her captain, shoulders not as broad, snout shorter.
As Mike expected, the Meradeus commander was wearing his blue robes with lines of green, red, and gold running through them. The top of Syradok’s head came about to Mike’s shoulders.
Syradok’s eyes rolled independently in their sockets as they looked down his snout at the three humans, obviously taking their measure. “Is this not a better greeting than the one from our Drodusarel friends?”
Mike said, “This is a most welcome greeting, Captain.”
Syradok raised a rough, green-skinned hand to present the other Sobrenian. “I must introduce you to my second-in-command, Govanek. She is also an explorer—a geologist.”
Mike stared at Govanek with a sudden respect. Exploration isn’t normally the Sobrenian way, he thought. For this Govanek, an explorer, to advance to being Syradok’s second, is impressive.
But she only has a single line of fabric, red, through her robes. That puts her social status at odds with her status aboard this ship.
Govanek said, “I would like to accompany you, Mike Christopher, on one of your explorations.”
Mike blinked. “Really? May I ask why?”
Syradok spoke up. “This mission was decided upon at the last moment. The Meradeus is not an exploratory vessel. I would consider it a favor to me to take Govanek with you sometime—perhaps to the Moruteb planet Jilan. It is an interest of hers.”
“I’d be honored, Captain.”
After a few more pleasantries, it was clear that no refreshments or offer to tour the Meradeus was forthcoming. We’ve taken all of about five steps out of the airlock, Mike thought. He begged the Sobrenians’ forgiveness, explaining that they had to get back to Asaph Hall. Then it was back through the airlock, and Mike undocked the Cosmic Egg and headed for home. He told Linna, “So what did you think of them?”
Linna said, “Both Syradok and Govanek seemed sincere. Govanek’s legitimately excited about the idea of exploring with us.” Linna was an empath, able to read emotions, not thoughts.
She and Mike were shipmates—a couple who remained faithful whenever they were aboard the Hall. It was a relationship more than lovers, less than spouses. In fact, because Linna was an empath, they’d never roomed together. She could not turn off her empathic resources and had to spend much of each day alone to avoid “burning out” on the constant flood of emotional radiation from Mike and everyone else on the ship. Linna continued: “I did perceive that Syradok looks upon Govanek with . . . let’s say, amusement.”
“That would fit Sobrenian culture,” Mike said. “They’re usually so focused on weaponry as an art form, and on conflict, that someone who wants to be an explorer might seem a little strange.”
Rosa spoke over the datalink again. “Hope you two are ready for your third visit of the day. Head toward the Cetronen ship. Codari wants to talk to you. In person.”
The Cetronen had made the initial discovery that the Moruteb and Neska systems would have a catastrophic encounter, and they’d named both stars and all the worlds.
Moruteb was about the same size as Sol, .98 its mass, but was older, having formed nearly seven billion years previously. By all accounts, it should’ve been halfway through its lifetime, a healthy, mature star, loyal guardian of its four planets and countless smaller worlds.
The intruder, Neska, carried along two planets, Pantor and Lasira, the only survivors among several other worlds that likely had spun away in the course of Neska’s wild journey. No one knew how it had begun; perhaps it had burst out of a star-forming nebula ages ago, or was one component of a double star that had spun apart.
What was certain was that Neska was approaching, slowly, but the two systems were already affecting one other gravitationally. The encounter was inevitable. If the two systems had been closing more swiftly, it could’ve been a glancing blow. Instead, their mutual attraction was drawing them into a potential cataclysm. Gravity is a weak force, but a patient one.
Mike docked Cosmic Egg with the mushroom-shaped Cetronen craft. A Cerenam crewmember named Natai greeted Mike and Linna.
Cetronen were paired symbionts. The larger of the two, called the major, was about two and a half meters tall, with reddish fur, and represented the pair’s physical strength. He held the smaller minor in his arms. A hump on the major’s belly served as a seat, and a thick muscular tail helped counterbalance the minor’s weight. Majors rarely initiated actions and generally followed their minors’ unspoken commands.
Minors were much smaller, thinner, and represented the pair’s brains. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Natai’s minor said. “I am also an explorer. I hope to share a journey with humans someday.”
We’re going to have to start handing out applications, Mike thought. “I’d look forward to that,” he said. He and Linna followed Natai to Codari’s quarters. Introductions all around, then Natai excused himself.
Codari’s two-and-a-half-meter-tall major carried the smaller, thinner minor in his arms. There was nowhere to sit, and the only decorations in the room were holos showing images from the Cetronen homeworld—the Plain of Itherin, which gave one of Moruteb’s worlds its name, the Sorrowful Mountains—and other landscapes.
The minor’s pointed ears waggled and the protective membranes in his nostrils were opening and closing rhythmically. Those nostrils were flat against Codari’s face; Cetronen had no noses, and their eyes were deep set beneath a jutting brow. “The Sobrenians had a proposal for you—cooperation.”
Mike asked, “How do you know that?”
“Not all of my discoveries are astronomical. Some are political. I also know that moments earlier, the Drodusarel had a very different proposal—that you boost as far away from them as you could, as quickly as you could.”
Mike smiled. “That’s a clever way of putting it.”
“Cleverness is not my goal, only understanding. This time is unique for all our species. We will observe and record an astronomical event, the nature of which none of us has seen before.”
“To witness something like this will be a time of much wonder. It’s why I became an explorer.”
“Each Galactic species has its own motivations for being here. Not all are as pure as your own. I presume Cetronen and human motives are the closest. We explore these colliding systems physically and intellectually. And the other Galactic species culturally and, perhaps, philosophically.”
“We would agree with that.”
“Four species here. We’re far from the area of the galaxy where we predominate. We’re far from our superiors. Here’s where our true natures are revealed.”
“Perhaps,” Mike suggested, “that’s our most important discovery.”
“And potentially, the most dangerous. I urge you to accept the Sobrenian invitation to take one of their crew with you. In fact, I would like all the crews to trade personnel during this mission.”
“I don’t want to be considered a spy.”
Codari said, “You’re an explorer. You see and hear things. You learn. Cetronen-Sobrenian alliances constantly shift. Currently they do not favor us.”
Linna said, “But you’d like that to change.”
“With your help, yes.”
Mike told Codari, “We’ll be honored, Captain.”
“Very good. Now, about the Drodusarel. As we speak here, they’re moving on from Heuri to the smaller gas giant, Itherin.”
“I wonder what they found at Heuri,” Mike said.
“You may never know unless you travel there yourself. I’d like you to take Natai—you just met him—to Heuri after your jaunt with the Sobrenian to Jilan.”
“I’ll be pleased to.”
“You understand the potential danger the Drodusarel represent. Always remember that, no matter how many times they ‘Greet the human ones,’ or some such phrase. They either enjoy playing the buffoon or do not realize how their translations sound. Either way, one can easily forget how different they are from oxygen breathers.”
“I’ll remember.”
“We’re finished here,” Codari’s minor said, and Natai appeared at the doorway to escort them back to the Egg. Natai’s minor said, “I assume Captain Codari asked if I may accompany you on a mission to Heuri.”
“We’ll go soon,” Mike reassured Natai. He couldn’t help noticing that the Cetronen stood at a viewport and watched the whole time as Mike eased Cosmic Egg out of Cerenam’s hangar deck.
Once back at Asaph Hall, Mike walked Linna back to her quarters. They paused at the doorway. Mike knew she was reading every subtlety of his emotions, every frustration and anxiety, every bit of his concern for her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry? Why?”
“It’s more and more difficult to be around you.” She took his hands in hers and gazed into his eyes. “Not because I care about you any less. But I feel it all. You’re worried about me right now, and that used to be reassuring, even charming.”
“But now?”
Linna said, “The way my empathy is, I can barely stand it.”
It seems humans aren’t meant to have empathic powers and remain happy, Mike thought. An empath who lived around the same people constantly found the flow of emotions becoming easier over time—like a stream eroding a deeper, straighter channel through rock. And that stream could not be slowed. The genetic engineering techniques that had made Linna and a handful of other humans into empaths or telepaths had been abandoned decades ago—too many of them had gone mad, some committing suicide.
Linna was actually one of the more stable ones. One of the luckier ones.
Linna continued: “It’s too intense. It’s not just you, it’s everyone on the ship. Outwardly, there are the smiles, the jokes, or at least some sense of being up to any task required of them. But underneath, they’re all a mass of anxieties. Feeling unloved or incompetent. I can feel them holding back anger and saying the ‘right’ thing instead. Or not daring to tell someone how they really feel about them. They ache.”
Mike said, “I don’t know what to say. Except what you’ve never allowed me to say.”
That got a smile from Linna, one Mike eagerly returned. It was an old exchange between them, that Linna never wanted Mike to tell her he loved her. “You know what I always tell you,” she said.
“Yeah. To an empath, it’s either a lie or redundant.”
“I do want to be with you, Mike. That’s always. But being able to bear it . . .” Linna’s expression was stricken. “That, I may not be able to do.”
Hearing that, it was Mike who ached now, knowing that only added to the intensity of Linna’s emotions. What must it be like, he thought, to deal with this doubling of emotions, someone else’s sorrows, someone else’s grief? I’ve been Linna’s shipmate for six years, he thought, and considered that question over and over. And never discovered a good answer.
Mike’s silent reverie ended when Linna cupped her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him close. She kissed him, her lips barely touching his, then again, more firmly this time.
Mike held Linna close and said, “I wish we could stay like this all night.”
“But we can’t,” Linna said. “At least, I can’t. It all moves on. Everything changes.”
“That’s a lesson we’ll learn all over again at the Moruteb system,” Mike said. A final kiss and he left Linna alone.
A couple of weeks later, Asaph Hall took up an orbit around Jilan, which circled 1.2 AU from Moruteb. Soon Mike was piloting the Cosmic Egg down toward the planet, with Linna next to him in the copilot’s position. The Sobrenian geologist, Govanek, sat behind Linna.
Their trajectory took them within a few thousand K of one of Jilan’s moons, Reulo. They flashed past it within a few moments, catching only a glimpse of a small world, pockmarked and barren, just a few hundred kilometers across. It would barely appear as a perceptible disk from Jilan’s surface. The planet’s other moons, Nilanu and Tyaila, just as small, orbited on the opposite side of the globe, out of sight.
Just before the Egg entered Jilan’s thin atmosphere, Mike launched a horde of nanobots designed to map and holograph the planet, take air and soil samples, and generally gather as much information as they could.
For now, though, Mike had to concentrate on getting down to Jilan safely. He could sense the first stirrings of Jilan’s atmosphere against the Egg’s skin.
Govanek had requested a landing next to deeply furrowed cliffs on the side of a mountain near Jilan’s equator. With the nanoprobes gathering as broad a picture of the planet as they could, Govanek insisted upon seeing this specific feature for herself.
Cosmic Egg broke beneath the cloud cover. Below them, mountains and low ridges alike cast broad shadows across the lightening plain—Mike had timed the Egg’s landing for local dawn. He said, “It looks as if a lot more water once existed here than does now.”
Govanek said, “You speak correctly. See those riverbanks—their waters barely fill them. Once, though, rapidly flowing waters often rushed over those banks. And those seas in the far distance once filled those mostly dry basins.”
The Cosmic Egg descended toward the foot of the mountain, which stood nine hundred meters tall. To the west, it rolled lazily down toward a plain covered with thick vegetation. Its eastern side, however, made a precipitous drop toward a dusty, barren valley.
Time to find a landing site, Mike thought. We’ve got some pretty rough terrain down there. It looks like the face of an old, grizzled man.
Mike brought the shuttle down slowly and steadily, hovering over a potential landing spot. “That looks like . . . marble,” he said.
“More evidence of water,” Govanek said. “A turbulent stream creates these channels and holes in the hard surface.”
Govanek’s enthusiasm is infectious, Mike thought. And she’s obviously knowledgeable.
Under Mike’s guidance, the Egg settled down onto the hard, rough ground. Mike cut its gravitics and inertials, and Jilan’s lighter grav of .65 Earth asserted itself.
Govanek got up and started putting on her spacesuit. Mike and Linna had an easier process—touch their palm with the left middle finger and a nanotech protocol instantly formed a lifesuit around their bodies, with a bubble helmet protecting their heads.
They cycled through the Egg’s airlock. Mike made the first step onto Jilan’s surface, easing gingerly onto the edge of one of those dark rocky ridges. Here, examining those furrows more closely, Mike thought they resembled not so much an old man’s wizened face as his gnarled hands, reaching with gray fingers across a smooth black landscape.
He checked his wrist sensor. Temperature just below freezing, but things would warm up as the day went on. The atmosphere was too thin and not nearly rich enough in oxygen to be breathable to human or Sobrenian. They stood under purple skies that would ease toward a deep blue close to noon.
Moruteb, barely over the horizon behind them, shone full upon the mountain before them. Mike looked up at the nine-hundred-meter-tall cliffside. The deep furrows running vertically down the cliff face looked almost too regular to be natural. He asked Govanek, “Just what’s so interesting about this mountain?”
The Sobrenian said, “According to detailed sensor scans I performed aboard the Meradeus before coming here—life. Small animals we call cliff dwellers.”
Not a terribly evocative name, Mike thought, but it’ll have to do.
Govanek continued: “They live about halfway up the cliff. They have marvelous abilities to climb, and they have tough shells that protect them from predators. Their young live in chambers they dig within those furrows.”
“But they don’t create the furrows?”
“They’re natural,” Govanek said. “The result of thin streams of water flowing down rock that dissolves easily.”
Linna said, “The same thing happens on Earth, in basalt and limestone formations. China, Hawaii, any number of other places.”
Great, Mike thought. Five months and hundreds of light-years for something I could see just about anywhere on Earth. All the same, I do find this place oddly affecting. I wonder why. There’s no sentient life here. No intelligences will die. It’s just rocks, vegetation, and some primitive lifeforms. Just . . .
His hand moved, without thought, to his lifesuit’s wrist sensor. Its results made his heart beat faster, gave him a shot of adrenaline.
Life was closer than he’d realized. Beneath his feet, in fact.
He knelt and started digging the loose top layer of dirt with his gloved hands, ignoring Linna’s and Govanek’s stares.
The object he sought lay only a few centimeters down. A nearly perfect sphere about nine centimeters across. He examined the thin striping of blue and gold that made the object resemble a tiny model of a planet. Kind of looks like Itherin, he thought. One of those odd synchronicities of nature.
Linna apparently couldn’t hold in her curiosity any longer. “So are you going to tell us what you’ve found?”
Mike’s mouth formed a wide grin. “It’s a fish.”
“A fish? Here? How?”
Mike laid the small creature onto the dirt and took a more detailed sensor reading. “This outer sphere is its shell. It’s made up of overlapping pieces that let it contain a reservoir of water. In fact, most of its interior is water. The creature inside’s quite small.”
Linna took her own reading. “And in hibernation?”
“Looks like. I’d bet it lives off the oxygen and nutrients in the water it’s retaining—then waits for the next flow of water off the cliffs.”
Govanek said, “That water would represent a rich chemical environment—more so than many standing bodies of water.”
“All the same,” Mike said, “they must have a high mortality rate.”
Linna looked up from another sensor scan. “They’re buried all around. Hundreds of them. They must reproduce like crazy.”
Over the next several hours, Mike and Linna took more samples of the spherical fish. Govanek concentrated on gathering up some of the cliff dwellers, since their relationship with their rocky environment particularly fascinated her as a geologist. They turned out to be six-legged creatures, mostly tan or brown, with thin, dartlike bodies and an odd bulge on their backsides.
Then daylight began to fade and it was time to leave. Moruteb descended through the deep blue skies, minutes from disappearing behind the broad cliff. Govanek walked up to Mike. One of her eyes looked toward him as the other swiveled toward the sun, Moruteb. “It’s good we’re packing up,” Govanek said.
“Why’s that?” Mike asked.
“You’ll see.”
Within a few minutes Mike, Linna, and Govanek finished stowing all their equipment and samples and sat in the Egg’s cockpit in their previous positions. Moruteb eased behind the cliff top. To the north and south, its light still illuminated the sides of distant mountains and jagged scarps, but immediately in front of the Egg, a dark translucent curtain appeared to lower over the landscape.
Mike twisted in the pilot’s seat to look back at Govanek. “What now?”
“We wait,” the Sobrenian said.
They didn’t have to wait long. The first pop from the cliffside came seconds after Govanek spoke. A small plume of dust rose from the ground several meters in front of the Egg.
“What the hell!” Mike exclaimed.
Another pop, another plume. And another, and another.
Linna said, “It looks like the cliff is shooting at us.”
“Not at us,” Govanek said. “At the fish. It’s the cliff dwellers. Their bodies build up a small amount of methane gas that propels them out of their small, narrow homes on the cliffside.”
“That was the bulge on their butts!” Mike said.
“Confirming what I suspected from the sensor scans I made while still in orbit. The cliff dwellers shoot themselves down onto their prey—the spherical fish. The fish, in turn, burrow deeper once they hear and feel the cliff dwellers striking the surface. Individuals of each species live or die. The ecology maintains its balance.”
Linna asked, “Why didn’t you tell us all this earlier?”
“Basic science. I didn’t wish to prejudice your responses, in case we discovered something open for interpretation.” She pointed a thick green finger at the cliffside. “As it turns out, this is all refreshingly straightforward.”
Two of the cliff dwellers spattered against Cosmic Egg’s forward viewport. “Damn,” Mike said. “I hate seeing that. Let’s lift.” Mike made a quick preflight check and lifted the Egg toward orbit. As the shuttle cleared cloud cover, Linna told Mike, “You look thoughtful.”
“Maybe just thinking about . . . life. We find it everywhere.”
“A tiny fish in a shell? An almost-as-tiny creature that launches itself out of a cliff by shooting methane out its ass?”
Mike said, “Not particularly dignified life, perhaps. But still marvelous in its own way.”
“They don’t have awareness. They can’t know they won’t live another month. Hell, some of them didn’t live out the day.”
“All the same, it’s something rare. And precious. Left to itself, who knows what might rise up on this world one day? Become aware? Learn . . . to love one another.”
Linna said, “I think I understand.”
Govanek spoke up. “You humans! You think the galaxy revolves around you and what you think important.”
Mike turned toward her. This was the first glimpse he’d seen of Sobrenian condescension toward him because he was human. “And Sobrenians don’t?”
“Sobrenians think it should,” Govanek said. “But we know it does not.”
Mike had nothing to say to that. He guided the Egg toward the Meradeus, where Govanek would rejoin her crew. Then it was back to the Asaph Hall, where Linna, with barely a word to Mike, retreated to her quarters.
That night, as Mike sat in his room, he opened up the detailed holos of the Moruteb system. The Asaph Hall was set to go back to Heuri in a few days, and he wanted to study the planet in more detail. Jilan had shown him how much there was to discover in this system, and he was all too aware of how little time their little fleet had.
Those thoughts flew away as Linna called on his datalink. “Mike? Am I disturbing you?”
Mike’s face broke out in a broad smile, one he hoped his voice reflected. “Never.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stay with you when we got back.”
“Are you all right?”
“Uh . . . fine.”
“Don’t bullshit me. You don’t sound fine.”
“Well . . . maybe I’m not.”
“I suppose coming up to see you would just make things worse.”
“I’m growing more sensitive every day. I’m going to have to move down farther into the ship, maybe close to engineering. There’s a room there next to the new-space regulators. . . .”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Mike, everyone on the ship is closing in on me.”
“Maybe when we get back to human space. . . .”
“I may have to be sedated before then. Or put into cold sleep.”
“Don’t talk that way.”
Linna’s voice grew somber. “Normally I’d come to you. We could talk. You could hold me. Maybe we’d make love. But all that’s closed to me now.”
“Tell me what I can do. I’ll help you if I can, Rosa will, we all will.”
Silence.
“Linna?”
More silence for a time, then: “I have faith in you, Mike. And in Rosa. But I think it’s going to take more than that to help me.”
“It’s a challenge for you, isn’t it? To talk to someone when it’s not in person.”
“Too far away to use the empathy, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s one I could do without. But I admit it is intriguing.”
“See?” Mike said. “We came here to learn about Moruteb. About the other galactic species with us. Now we’re learning more about each other.”
“And ourselves.”
“Yeah. And ourselves.”
“Good night, Mike. Don’t worry. We’ll do this in person sometime soon, I hope.”
“So do I. G’night.” After a moment, Mike opened up the holofiles on Heuri again. His thoughts, however, remained close to Linna.
* * *
Days later, as previously arranged, Asaph Hall had returned to Heuri and Mike picked up the Cetronen explorer Natai in the Cosmic Egg. Linna wasn’t along on this trip. She wanted to “save up” the time she could stand to be around others for when her empathic powers were needed. In the seat behind the copilot’s position sat Luther Kindred. He was genetically engineered for strength, with broad, solid shoulders and hands that looked as if they could crush a bulkhead. Mike trusted him every bit as much as Linna in a tough situation.
Mike was glad the Cetronen paired symbiont was smaller than their species’ norm; otherwise they’d have had a difficult time fitting into the Cosmic Egg. The red-furred Natai major, with the minor cradled in his arms, were a tough fit in the Egg’s copilot’s seat. The minor’s deep-set eyes looked out at Heuri with the same fascination Mike had seen in countless other explorers. His wide, pointed ears flicked at every sound, no doubt due to being on an unfamiliar craft.
The tough part was the major’s tail, which was curled up into what looked like a very uncomfortable position behind and beside him. If trading crewmembers among species becomes common, Mike thought, we’re going to have to make better physical accommodations for one another.
Among the tasks they’d set themselves were looking for clues as to why the Drodusarel had gathered up lifeforms from the planet, and why they’d already moved on to the planet Itherin.
Who knows what kind of beings live there? he thought. The Drodusarel certainly gathered some kind of life-forms there. Could they be intelligent? Even be related to the Drodusarel in some way? The methane breathers have been so secretive about their interests all along on this journey.
Luther said, “Look just beyond the planet—that bright star and two fainter ones next to it.”
“I see them,” Mike said. “Neska and her two planets?”
“Yes.”
Natai’s minor said, “They’ll enter this system within a month. Current projections say one of Neska’s planets could strike Heuri head on.”
The ringed gas giant Jilan and its bands of clouds dominated the shuttle’s forward screen now. Luther said, “It resembles Saturn.”
Natai’s minor asked, “Is that a planet in the human home system?”
Mike said, “Yes, a ringed world much like Heuri. And it points up something about gas giants—it’s easy to look at them and imagine they’re all alike. But they have just as much variation as any other type of world. You just have to look more closely.”
“Please explain, Mike Christopher. I’m only a beginning explorer.”
“Well, Heuri’s only about half the size of Saturn. It’s only a little larger than either Uranus or Neptune—other smaller gas giants in Earth system. But the surface of Uranus looks like a solid blue globe—very few surface features. At Neptune you can see cloud features and even storms along its surface. But it doesn’t have the cloud bands that Heuri does.”
Luther said, “Don’t forget the rings.”
“That’s right. Both Uranus and Neptune have ring systems, but nothing as extensive as Heuri. Another similarity it has with Saturn, though it’s much smaller.”
Natai’s minor said, “Then Heuri combines qualities of worlds you are already familiar with.”
“Exactly.”
“And that experience helps you interpret your findings on new worlds.”
“Or in this case,” Mike said, “into new worlds. Look, we’re coming up on the rings.”
Again Mike saw the four main sections of rings. He looked in vain for structures similar to the braiding present in parts of Saturn’s rings—that phenomenon had always fascinated him. Heuri’s rings, however, were much more “solid” looking. That was an illusion, as they were composed of chunks of ice ranging from the size of marbles to small moons.
Natai’s minor leaned forward to initiate a sensor scan, then said, “I understand those rings may have intrigued the Drodusarel—since life on their planet initially came from their own rings.”
Luther said, “Our scans from the Asaph Hall didn’t find any. Of course, there’s no reason life should exist there anymore. Although the idea could be what drew the Drodusarel to Heuri to begin with.”
“And,” Mike said, “it seems they found something.”
Natai said, “Or someone.”
“That’s right.” Mike guided the Egg past the plane of the rings and down toward Heuri itself. “Let’s see what—or who—we can find.”
Within half an hour Cosmic Egg was skirting Heuri’s upper atmosphere. Skies above were still dark enough to reveal stars, although in some areas reddish wisps of hydrogen clouds obscured both the heavens and the lower cloud layers.
Look directly overhead, and Heuri’s rings were a gigantic arch, lording over the sky so effectively that Mike felt an urge to duck, his instincts telling him that something so large yet so insubstantial had to be about to fall at any moment. The rings narrowed as they arced down toward the horizon and, along with the wisps of cloud, turned pinkish just before reaching it.
Mike took the Egg down into a lower level of clouds. With more atmosphere roiling overhead, the sky turned a dark blue, and all but the brightest stars faded out. So did most of Heuri’s dozen moons, none of which was large enough to be visible from the planet as more than a swiftly moving point of light.
He saw both Natai and Luther working on sensor scans. “Anything?”
“No,” the Cetronen minor said.
“Yes,” Luther said.
Mike asked, “Which way?”
Luther transferred some coordinates from his console to Mike’s. “There.”
Mike headed the shuttle in that direction, about two thousand K to starboard, and another few hundred deeper into Heuri’s clouds.
Natai’s minor said, “I see the readings now. They’re life-forms. And I can see why the Drodusarel would be interested in them.”
“Methane breathers?”
“Doubtful. Not enough of that in the atmosphere. But living as the Drodusarel do in a planetary atmosphere, which is a rarity, would attract them. We understand this. Cetronen, too, are a rarity. We are the only sentient species not made up of singletons.” Natai’s minor stood in the major’s lap and said, “Do not be embarrassed. I don’t share the prejudices of some Cetronen, regarding singleton species.”
Mike said, “Well. I’m glad.”
Natai’s minor sat down on the major’s hump again.
Luther worked his controls, pointed out the front viewport, and said, “There!”
Excitement welled up within Mike. This is why I’m so many hundreds of light-years from home, he thought, to make such discoveries. And again, life! Sometimes it seems there’s hardly a place in the galaxy where it isn’t present. “Can you get us a visual?” he asked.
On the center viewscreen appeared an image of a wall of dark clouds hanging before them. At first he had no sense of scale and wondered whether he should throttle back to keep the shuttle from entering that roiling wall that stretched from one horizon to the other. A quick sensor check and the cloud wall’s true distance revealed itself. Not to worry—it was nearly seventy kilometers away.
It seemed to move so quickly, though, that Mike realized the forces that wall must be wielding. It looks like the eyewall of a hurricane, he thought. A hurricane that could swallow up Earth’s moon.
And before that wall floated a series of . . . ribbons. They were flat beings of a dark purple that was nearly black, each of them about three meters long. Over a dozen strong, they undulated “sideways” across Heuri’s skies at a leisurely pace.
“I’ve seen snakes trace paths just like that across a desert,” Mike said. “How do they do that?”
Natai’s minor said, “It appears they’re not very massive. I suspect they’re gliding over layers of air currents we can barely detect.”
“Do you think these are the same beings the Drodusarel were interested in? They’re not very similar to them.”
“Only in being atmosphere-dwellers. That may be enough.”
Mike made a quick sensor check. “They’re each about four and a half meters long. I can’t tell if they’re gliding along with the prevailing winds or trying to tack against them.”
“Look at their spines,” Luther said.
Mike focused the viewscreen more closely on one of the creatures. Sure enough, a thin ridge was visible down its back. They all appeared to have barely visible segments every few centimeters. Their bodies flared out at either end before forming a rounded tip that resembled an arrowhead. “These beings are just large enough to imply others are here, too. Either something they prey on or something that preys on them.”
Luther said, “Look just ahead, at ten o’clock—another pack, or herd, or whatever you’d like to call them.”
“Well, I’d like to call this species ‘ribbons.’ So I’d say ‘herd’ is good enough. ‘Pack’ makes them sound like something that comes in a box.” He glanced back and saw Luther’s dour expression. “Okay, so ‘ribbons’ isn’t that clever. You got a better one?”
“Not just yet,” Luther said.
Natai’s minor asked, “Can we go closer?”
“Perhaps a little bit,” Mike said. “But I don’t want to take the chance of harming them.”
“Remember,” Luther said, “the Drodusarel took some of them along in the Dirat.”
“Yeah. Maybe to dissect them.”
“We could pull a maneuver I used to see on whale-watching cruises.”
“Excuse me—whale watching?”
Natai’s minor asked, “What is a whale?”
Mike said, “Earthly ocean-dwelling being. Air breather.”
“How can a being who lives in the ocean breathe air?”
“Don’t you have such beings on your world?”
“Of course not. How would they breathe?”
“They spend a lot of time on the surface.”
“That seems unlikely, not to mention inefficient.”
Mike said, “Please—just accept it for now.” He turned to Luther. “Okay—why would anyone just watch whales? Why not talk to them?”
Luther said, “Not all humans have datalinks, you know. And I saw this when I was about eleven. Humans weren’t talking to whales yet.”
“So what’s the maneuver?”
“We go ahead of the . . . ribbons . . . God, I hate that.”
Mike raised his eyebrows at Luther. “Something better?”
“Not yet. Anyway, we get ahead of them and sit right in their path.”
“So we don’t interfere with them, but we still get a good look. I like it. We’ll try it.”
Mike guided the Egg leisurely around the ribbon herd and eased the shuttle into position about half a kilometer from them, directly in their path.
And waited. The ribbons drew nearer, undulating effortlessly through Heuri’s skies. Luther said, “It looks as if some of them form subgroups within the herd.”
Mike said, “I’ll have the comp ID each individual and track them. We’ll see which ones stay together as they go around us.”
Natai’s minor said, “What if they don’t go around?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to let them get closer than a few meters. Then I’ll back off.”
The herd of ribbons approaching the Egg didn’t change course right away. When it was about twenty meters away, however, the individuals within it angled around to form a straight line, as if they were an arrow pointing directly at the Egg. At about four meters, the individual ribbons separated again, each in a slightly different path as they slid past the shuttle.
When all the ribbons were past, Mike flipped the shuttle around to get a glimpse of them as they departed. “They seem none the worse for wear,” he said. “I wonder what that maneuver was about.”
Luther said, “Maybe they have prey—or a predator—that gets confused when they do that.”
Natai’s minor rose on his major’s hump once again and stretched his arms and rolled his neck in an oddly human manner. As he sat down again, he said, “What seems clear is that these beings are not similar to the Drodusarel. If they’re searching for beings like themselves, perhaps that’s why they’ve gone ahead to Itherin.”
“I don’t know. These are just the first life-forms we’ve found. The Drodusarel were only here a matter of days. You can’t explore a planet in that short a time.”
“We’re attempting to explore an entire system in a matter of a month.”
Mike couldn’t help his bitter tone. “That’s only because of delays in getting this mission together.”
Luther muttered, “Delays that weren’t humanity’s fault.”
“Nor were they the fault of Cetronen,” Natai’s minor said. “It was . . . others . . . to blame for that.”
“The Drodusarel?” Mike asked.
“No. If anything, they were too eager to go.”
“Then . . . it must have been . . .”
“Yes. The Sobrenians.” Natai’s reluctance in saying that was apparent even across the datalink translation.
“Codari said Cetronen-Sobrenian alliances don’t favor you right now.”
“That’s something we learned only during negotiations for this exploratory mission.”
“And it meant enough to try to change that, so you delayed the mission.”
The Natai minor said, “Perhaps I’ve said more than I should. I will focus on exploration now.”
Well, that subject’s closed, Mike thought. Once a Cetronen moved his focus from one topic to another, that was it. Then he looked down at his sensor readout and his eyes went wide. “Drodusarel shuttle, ten K behind us, approaching rapidly.” He opened a comm channel. “Drodusarel ship, please identify yourself.”
No response. Mike whipped the shuttle around again, this time to face the oncoming Drodusarel craft.
“Mike,” Luther said, “maybe you want to power up weapons.”
Mike said, “Passive sensors don’t show them powering up.”
“I’d hate to be the one to shoot second.”
“I don’t want to shoot at all. These are supposed to be our colleagues.”
Natai’s minor said, “Colleagues would identify themselves when asked.”
Mike opened the channel again. “Drodusarel ship, please respond.”
Luther put the image of the Drodusarel craft on the main screen. “It’s silver, and it’s an oval. Big surprise.” Like every other Drodusarel craft humans had encountered, its form gave no hint of its function. Drodusarel military ships looked like cargo craft, which looked like passenger vessels.
Mike said, “And it’s got the Egg outclassed when it comes to its drive, weapons, shroud—you name it. They can do whatever they want to us.”
The Drodusarel craft approached to within half a kilometer, then slowed in relation to the Cosmic Egg. Ribbons eased their way around it as they had the human craft minutes earlier. “At least we get a good look at that trick from the outside,” Mike said. “It’s quite pretty, actually.”
The Drodusarel craft held its position just long enough that Mike went back to studying the ribbons—he was just starting to notice that the various herds appeared to be converging on a single point in the far distance when the Drodusarel ship rose through the upper layers of Heuri’s atmosphere until it was out of sight.
“Hmph,” Mike said. “Not even a goodbye.”
Natai’s minor said, “I wonder who they were more interested in—the ribbons or us.”
“No way of knowing. But Drodusarel shuttles don’t have stardrive. That means the Dirat has to come back from Itherin at some point to retrieve it.”
Luther said, “That gives them less time to explore there—not to mention any other worlds they might be interested in.”
“Most of the rest are ‘dirt worlds’—they couldn’t care less. But it makes me wonder what they’re doing—what they think is so interesting here that they leave that shuttle while Dirat heads for Itherin.”
Natai’s minor said, “It is a risk Cetronen would be reluctant to make.”
Mike looked up toward Heuri’s thick clouds as if he could still spot the Drodusarel craft. “Humans too. But something here must have been worth it.”
Six hours later, back aboard Asaph Hall, Mike grabbed a quick sandwich in the ship’s commons, intending to sit just a moment, then catch a nap. Then hands began rubbing his shoulders. He recognized the touch and the smell of her skin.
Linna.
He put down his sandwich and let himself relax into the chair as she worked her way across his shoulders and down his upper back. “Oh, that’s great.”
Lips brushed the back of his neck, and Linna whispered into his ear, “My quarters. Right now.”
When they got there and Mike started to speak, Linna covered his mouth with her hand. “Not yet. The time to talk is in a few minutes.” And she led him to the bedroom.
Linna was as responsive as ever as they undressed and embraced—how could she not be, when she felt Mike’s building excitement along with her own? But her lovemaking held an urgency Mike had seldom experienced with her.
When they were done, Linna turned her back to Mike and said in a tense whisper, “Hold me, while I can still stand it.”
Mike cuddled against her. “It’s getting that much worse, is it?”
“So much I wonder how much longer I can endure being on this ship.”
“It’s been home for you for eleven years.”
“That’s why I knew I should tell you as soon as I decided. I’m going to leave.”
Mike’s stomach clenched. His mouth went dry. He held Linna tighter. “What can I do? How can I make things better for you?”
“You can’t. And you can’t go with me, either. I need to be alone.”
“This goes beyond me, beyond the Asaph Hall. Will you have to . . . go into exile?”
“Maybe somewhere quiet back home near Kyoto. Somewhere I can mostly be alone. Maybe have a dog. Don’t you miss having a dog?”
“Never had one. You live in institutions, then foster homes, then you’re a spacer—never had the chance. Gosh, how long has it been since I’ve been back to Earth? Let’s see . . . twenty-two years.”
“Maybe things have changed there. Maybe they’re ready to accept an artificial human.”
Mike mulled that over a moment. “Or maybe it’s gotten worse.”
“I know it was tough . . . the foster homes. . . .”
“The beatings. Nearly getting killed more than once.”
“It is time, then. Whether it’s to see me or not. So you can see what it’s really like. Wouldn’t you like that better than just assuming things?”
“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. We’re still out here, for now. A damn good many light-years away.”
“And still together,” Linna said.
“Yeah. Still together.”
“Only . . .”
“Yeah?”
Linna rolled over, still in Mike’s grasp. A quick kiss and she said, “I’ve got to ask you to leave.”
I’m feeling that ache again, Mike thought. And passing it on to her with each second I’m here. “When can I see you again?”
“Probably when Rosa has us working together.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Like this? No way to tell you.”
Mike kissed Linna’s shoulder, her neck, her lips. Then he got out of bed and started dressing. He didn’t say anything else, didn’t even consider trying to tell her he loved her.
About a week later, Mike guided the Cosmic Egg across the icy surface of the Moruteb system’s outermost planet, Risula, at about one kilometer’s height. A flyover was all Rosa, Syradok, or Codari had authorized. This time the Sobrenian Govanek was in the right-hand seat, with Asaph Hall’s Operations Chief Alice Nicholson sitting behind her. Mike was trying to spread the joy of exploration to as many crewmembers as possible.
Mike turned his attention to Risula’s surface. The planet, he knew, was named after a mythical Cetronen being who sacrificed herself to set the seasons in place and ensure the annual renewal of the world after the depths of winter.
Either the naming was arbitrary, Mike thought, or they picked pretty damn poorly. Risula was a world that seemed literally frozen in time—dark ice covered its entire surface. And Mike saw little evidence, even through detailed scans, of enough internal heat to crack that icy surface open anywhere on the planet. Its icescape featured shallow craters and occasional ice spires that barely reached fifty meters tall and were the remnants of hills eroded away over the centuries. Risula was only three AU distant from Itherin, the planet next in to Moruteb, and was suspected to be a world that Itherin had captured and brought into the system.
Risula’s frozen surface was pitted and pockmarked with dark dust from meteor impacts. Lighter colored ice was visible in places where a particularly large meteor had struck the planet’s surface, punching through the surface ice to reveal the newer, fresher ice beneath.
The scary part, Mike thought, is looking into the sky. Neska is so close. The star and its two planetary companions still only appear to be bright stars. Knowing what they are, though, it’s easy to imagine them rushing into view and filling the viewscreens at any moment.
Govanek said, “I’d like to land.”
Mike nearly did a double take. “Land! We’re lucky that Rosa and Codari—not to mention Syradok!—approved this fly-by. Do you realize how much more work the gravitics are doing, and the nav unit? And the comp! This is a planet that’s liable to be inside Neska within a week.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Thank you.”
“I want to land.”
“Why?”
“I’m a follower of the Giver.”
Alice spoke up. “The Sobrenian moral god.”
“That’s right. As opposed to the Shaper, who created all things.”
Mike asked, “What does that have to do with landing on Risula?”
“I want to spend a moment on this world that soon will no longer exist. I don’t care about ice samples or how the planet formed or anything else. I just want to stand there for a few moments.”
“Govanek, you’re putting me in a hell of a position.”
“If you’re worried about the danger—”
“I’m more worried about the ass-chewing my captain’s going to give me!”
“Sorry? That must have been a failure to translate properly.”
Alice said, “You know, now that you mention it, I might be interested in how difficult nav is within all these conflicting gravity fields.”
“Dammit,” Mike said, “How’s that smooth plain to the west look?”
Alice made a quick sensor check. “It’s nice and stable, just like most of the planet.”
“Then here we go.”
“Shouldn’t we let Asaph Hall know what we’re doing?”
“We will—soon as we set down.”
But they didn’t even get a chance to wait that long. Even as Mike was positioning the Cosmic Egg over that smooth plain, Rosa called: “Asaph Hall to Cosmic Egg. Are you declaring an emergency?”
Mike was settling the shuttle down onto Risula’s icy surface. Alice responded, “Negative, Asaph Hall. We’ll explain in a few minutes.” When she cut the connection, Mike said, “By ‘we,’ I imagine you mean me.”
“That’s right,” Alice said, grinning.
“Fine,” Mike muttered and eased the Cosmic Egg down onto Risula’s surface.
Govanek rose from the copilot’s chair and put on her spacesuit. She stood there holding her helmet in her rough green hands. “Mike, I’d like you to come along.”
“Me? Why?”
“You were kind enough to allow this. We’re here to learn about one another as much as about this doomed system.”
Mike told Alice, “We’ll be right back. Keep the home fires burning. And I love that mock-exasperated look you’re giving me.”
“It’s not so ‘mock.’”
Time to go, Mike thought, and pressed his left middle finger into his palm to activate his lifesuit. He followed Govanek into the airlock, and they stepped out onto Risula’s dark rough surface. Mike made his first steps onto the icescape—tentative ones in the planet’s .27 grav. “Not at all slippery,” he said.
Govanek said, “This ice has been battered so many times, its surface has much rock mixed in with the ice. I’d love to know its composition, to—”
“I thought you weren’t going to concern yourself with such things.”
“Apologies. Ever the geologist, I suppose.”
“Just a minute. Alice?”
Over the datalink, Alice replied, “Yes, Mike?”
“While we’re here—”
“A few samples. I was listening. I’ll get the Egg’s protocols started up.”
Govanek said, “Thanks to you both.”
Mike had made sure to land in an area where it was just past local dawn. Looking across the dark pitted icescape to the east, Moruteb was still rising. Risula’s day was nearly thirty hours, so local noon would be some hours in arriving.
“Look just above and to the right of Moruteb,” Govanek said. She was pointing to a large star, brighter than any others.
“That can’t be Neska. It’s on the other side of the planet.”
“You’re correct. It’s Itherin.”
“Ah. Where the Drodusarel are.”
“I heard about your encounter with them at Heuri. It must have been interesting.”
“On my world,” Mike said, “‘interesting’ is sometimes used as a curse.”
“Then what is about to happen here on Risula will truly be interesting.”
Mike knew what Govanek meant. The very idea of standing on a world that soon wouldn’t exist filled him with amazement at the capabilities of the universe. I understand now why Govanek wanted to stand here at this unique moment, he thought. Neska has been pulling at Risula for months already—gently at first, but more and more as it grows closer. If Risula really is pulled into that star, it’s going to be an amazing sight. That’s the unspoken motivation for coming here, at least for us humans. Deep down, part of us craves spectacle.
About a dozen meters away was a shallow crater with rounded rims. Those were the norm here; the heat of an impact by an asteroid or meteorite would turn surface ice into water that splashed, then flowed across Risula’s surface, leveling the nearby icescape before freezing within moments. Water would partially fill the crater, making it shallow.
Mike stepped gingerly to the crater’s edge, still aware this was ice, however gritty, still aware of the .27 grav. The crater was nearly fifty meters wide, but he knew if he were so daring (so stupid!) as to jump into it, he’d still be able to jump high enough to wave to Govanek.
He thought of Govanek and turned to see what she was doing. The Sobrenian was where he’d left her, standing stock-still, both her hooded eyes staring at the stars.
No, Mike thought. Not at them. Into them. As if she’s losing herself out there.
Now’s when I need Linna here. What’s Govanek experiencing? Religious ecstasy? Is that even an emotion distinct from other forms of euphoria? Or is this another example of the Sobrenian “calm” they can turn on at will?
Mike returned to Govanek. He only approached to within about ten meters of her, not wanting to disturb her. Although, he thought, we’ve got to leave sometime soon. Rosa’s patience may be wearing thin. Not to mention Syradok’s or Codari’s.
Finally, he said, “Govanek?”
The Sobrenian’s gaze fell from the stars and both her eyes looked directly at Mike. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry, but we have to go.”
Govanek looked around at her surroundings as if becoming aware of them again. “Do you know that thoughts of the Giver fill me with an unmatched awe?”
“I . . . don’t know what to say.”
“Humans have their gods, do they not?”
“Many of us do. I’m not one of them.”
“How do you bear the sadness?”
“It doesn’t cause me sadness.”
Govanek said, “I wonder what Linna would say to that.”
“One day I’ll have to ask her.”
“You are intimate sexually, are you not?”
“Well, uh . . . yeah.”
“Then other intimacies should come naturally to you.”
Mike asked, “Are you an expert in human psychology, now?”
“I apologize. I was overly curious.”
“Not at all. I’m curious about some things, too.”
“Such as?”
“Why the Sobrenians are so interested in this system.”
Govanek’s eyes looked away again, the left one staring out toward the stars, the right one peering across the icescape. “My people do not appreciate such questions. I have not interrogated you about human motivations.”
Mike spread his hands wide. “Which are very clear. We want to learn about this system and about other galactic species.”
“Including Sobrenians.”
“Yes.”
“That’s one of two reasons we were reluctant to go on this mission.”
“What was the other reason?”
“The Cetronen would not allow us to lead it.”
Mike said, “You dislike having ‘pre-sentients’ in charge, don’t you?”
Govanek’s eyes turned toward Mike again. “I’ve never used that word to refer to you or any other human.”
“Then I apologize.”
“You caught me at an opportune time, Mike. My reaction to the stars . . . to standing on this world that will soon no longer be here . . . I perhaps spoke more freely than I should have.”
“I won’t ask anything more,” Mike said. “We should get back to the shuttle.”
Govanek led the way back inside, but Mike paused at the bottom of the ladder leading into the airlock. Everything’s transient, he thought. Nothing lasts. This world, so solid, so perfectly formed, will be random ice and dust within a week.
A week and a half later, Rosa called Mike to her quarters when the rogue star, Neska, was only about a day and a half from its closest approach to Risula, the Moruteb system’s outermost planet.
As Mike entered, Rosa was standing in the middle of her main room, but motioned Mike to the nearest chair. “Anything to drink?”
“No, I’m fine.”
Rosa was still standing silently, apparently deep in thought. Mike asked, “Everything okay?”
The Asaph Hall captain looked at Mike. “What’s that? Oh, as much as it’s going to be, I suppose. I might as well go ahead and tell you.”
“Uh oh.”
“Govanek—and more importantly, Syradok—want you aboard the Meradeus when Neska approaches Risula.”
“Oh,” Mike said. “I imagined a much worse fate.”
“Such as what?”
Mike shrugged. “It was indeterminate. But still pretty bad.”
“Don’t be complacent. That’s not all. The next encounter is at Itherin, and you can watch it here. But for the one after that, you have another invitation, from Codari himself. He wants you aboard the Cerenam for what will probably be Heuri’s destruction.” That was the world where the Drodusarel had gathered up life-forms and taken them into the Dirat, where he and Luther and the Cetronen Natai had discovered the ribbons.
Mike said, “I’m going to be a busy boy.”
“Busier than you might think. Codari also wants Linna along.”
“I hope she can handle it.”
“Do you doubt she’ll make herself handle it?”
Mike couldn’t argue with that.
“Codari told me he wanted me to keep an eye out for anything important—and let him know about it.”
“I’d have done the same thing in his place.”
Mike squirmed in his seat. “Ask a crewmember of another ship—of another species—to spy on everyone else?”
“Not spy. Keep an eye out.” Rosa paused for an instant, then went on. “Have you told him anything?”
“Not a thing. And I’ve told you everything.”
“As it should be.”
“I’m confused,” Mike said. “I thought you said you’d have done the same thing in Codari’s place.”
“I would have. To find out if I could trust that person. Anyone who would report back to me before his own captain couldn’t be trusted.”
Mike said, “So maybe I passed a test with Codari.”
“Which is why he wants you along on that trip to witness the end of Heuri. But listen—Codari’s the leader of this mission, and he’s done an excellent job. But I only trust him so far. When it comes down to it, he’ll look after his own ship and his own people first.”
Mike grinned. “He gave me similar warnings about the Sobrenians and the Drodusarel.”
“Fine advice. But guess what?”
“It applies to us, too?”
“Got it the first time,” Rosa said.
Things happened quickly once Mike guided the Cosmic Egg, with Linna aboard, to dock with the water drop-shaped Sobrenian ship Meradeus.
Govanek met them at the hangar deck, wearing her familiar robes that featured the single line of red running through their fabric. She extended a green, rough-skinned hand to each of the humans in turn, saying, “It’s an unusual custom to touch someone immediately upon meeting them. But I see that it could be comforting.”
And I’ll take whatever comfort I can get right now, Mike thought. “We’re glad to be here,” he said, not altogether lying.
Govanek said, “Captain Syradok would like you to come to our bridge immediately,” then led the way there. With Mike’s first step onto the bridge, he found himself squinting and raising his hand against blinding light in all directions.
I knew Sobrenians can withstand brighter light than most humans, he thought, but I’ve never seen an interior of one of their ships illuminated so intensely.
Then he heard Syradok speak: “Mike Christopher and Linna Maurishka! What a pleasure to see each of you again.”
As Mike’s eyes adjusted to the light, he could make out Syradok, who stood with his back to an oval table of some sort in the center of the bridge. A quick glance around and he saw viewscreens and holos in every direction, each centered on one of the ships of the fleet or one of the worlds of the Moruteb system. As many as a dozen crewmembers bustled around the various sections of the bridge.
Syradok’s blue robes rustled as he waved the humans closer to the table. Mike stared down at it, Linna taking a position immediately to his right, and he realized he was seeing a display of the dark, pitted surface of Risula. “Look closely,” Syradok said as he stood on the opposite side of the display from the humans. “This is the last glimpse any galactic intelligences will have of Risula.”
The light was harsh and bright on this display as well, but that was from the proximity of the rogue star Neska to the planet. Though the display didn’t show the star itself, its light thrust sharp shadows across Risula’s surface. The lighter portions of the icy world, indicative of meteor strikes, stood out even more now.
The display switched to another view, focusing on the side of Risula toward Neska. Already ice was vaporizing from the planet’s surface, revealing dark earth and rock beneath. Giant cracks the size and length of rivers were spreading across what remained of Risula’s icy surface.
Has any human witnessed anything like this? Mike wondered. He imagined the destruction of the landscape he and Alice and Govanek had visited on their brief trip to that world—the shallow craters splitting apart, the fifty-meter-tall ice spires crumbling or vaporizing. Alice had told him earlier that she’d already gained some insights into the interactions of bodies large and small coexisting within conflicting gravity fields. She was proud that her rationalization for landing on the icy world had actually turned out to have practical value.
Mike felt a presence to his left and realized Govanek was standing at his side. He wondered how much she’d told Captain Syradok about their brief jaunt to this doomed world. Probably not a lot, he mused. About as much as I told Rosa.
Govanek kept one eye on the display while aiming the other toward Mike. She gave him the slightest nod, then turned the other eyeball toward the display as well.
I don’t think nods are a Sobrenian expression, Mike thought. I imagine that ranks up there with the handshakes all around when we arrived. That was her way of thanking me for letting Govanek explore alongside us.
Which makes me all the more grateful that we took the chance.
As Neska drew Risula closer, Mike and the others sat and watched as the star stripped the planet of the rest of its ice cover and as the planet’s surface soil and rock tore away, revealing its center. Risula’s interior contained only a small iron core, much less than a planet such as Earth—it had never grown hot enough during its formation to separate the iron from the rock.
Then some balance of Neska’s heat and gravitational forces versus the integrity of Risula’s rocky structure tilted in favor of the star, and Risula crumbled and broke apart. It’s as if I had a dirt clod in my hand, Mike thought, and gave it a squeeze.
The fractured, continent-sized pieces of the planet also began to crumble, and in a very few minutes Risula was gone.
It had been a lifeless world, but Mike still felt a profound loss, as if something vital had just been snuffed out before him. Risula was named after the Cetronen mythological being who sacrificed herself to set the seasons in place. I’d like to know, he thought, what this Risula has sacrificed itself for.
Mike stared at the display showing the continued advance of Neska across the Moruteb system, its composition unchanged, its path undisturbed even after overwhelming a planet.
Mike turned to his left, meaning to speak some words of comfort to Govanek, but she was gone. He wondered what the Giver might be telling Govanek about this event.
A glance to his right and Linna looked to be holding up well.
Syradok spoke in much quieter tones than Mike had heard from him before. “Now, my friends,” the Sobrenian captain said, “after witnessing such an event together, after sharing this marvelous yet troubling experience, we must speak. Let us go to my quarters.”
Syradok led the way into the corridor as Mike and Linna followed.
Mike thought, What the hell are we getting ourselves into? All told, I wonder if I wouldn’t rather be somewhere having a beer.
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