you say in the presence of inhuman might and majesty? She saw his tension lessen, until at last he smiled once in a while or his fingers responded when she caught his hand.
She had taken an opportunity to draw Orichalc aside. “How is he doing?” she asked, and trembled.
“He approaches calm,” the Susaian said. “The shock was savage, like a half-healed physical wound torn open. However, he is not shattered. Given peace, inner peace, he should regain his sense of worth. It may be the stronger for this.” The long body flowed through the air and curled lightly around her. “Until then, his strength comes from you.”
She hugged him and laid her cheek against the dry, cablelike suppleness. “Thank you,” she whispered.
With detectors and optics she found the scientific vessel occupying the fluctuant point that Esker had desired. Valen beamed a greeting—“out of curiosity,” he said. How wonderful that he began again taking some interest in things. The craft turned out to be Ironbright’s
If only we’d come with more of our own, Lissa thought. Well, we’ll bring home enough knowledge that the Confederacy never will spring a surprise on the galaxy.… She grimaced. “We” in that context meant Esker. She must admit it. She need not like it.
All vessels hovered isolated. Because it would interfere with various delicate instruments, transmission through hyperspace was stopped; and what did anybody have to say over the lasers? Paradoxically, the muteness made Lissa feel closer to yonder beings. Her folk would keep their promises. So would the Susaians. As the judgment instant neared, you forgot your merely mortal quarrels.
XXVI
Shrouded in fire, the black holes sped to their destiny. Minute by minute, second by second, they swelled in sight, blazed more wildly brilliant, roared the louder throughout every spectrum of radiance. The discs were whirling storms, riven, aflare with eerie lightnings. Vast tatters broke off, exploded into flame, torrented back down or threw red spindrift across heaven before vanishing into vacuum. It was as if the stars, their light rays bent, scattered terrified from around those masses. Afloat in the captain’s globe, Lissa heard the blood thunder in her ears like the hoofs of galloping war horses. And yet this was only a shadow show. To have seen with your bare eyes would have been to be stricken blind, and afterward die.
She gripped Valen’s hand. It was cold. His breath went harsh. The sky had burned over Naia too; but not like this, not like this.
The black holes met.
Nobody in real time saw that. It was too swift. At one heartbeat they were well apart, at the next they blurred into streaks, and then light erupted. White it was at the center, raw sun-stuff; thence it became night-violet, dusk-violet, day-blue, steel-blue, gold-yellow, brass-yellow, blood-red, sunset-red. Outward and outward it bloomed. The fringes were streams, fountains, lace in a wind. They arced over and began to return in a million different, pure mathematical curves.
“I didn’t know it would be beautiful!” Lissa cried.
Force crammed her against her harness. Her head tossed. With no weight for protection, dizziness swept black across vision and mind. Another, opposite blow slammed, and another. The metal of the ship toned.
“Graviton surges,” she dimly heard Valen gasp. “Predicted-uneven—hang on—”
The waves passed. He floated. The noise and giddy dark drained from her head. He, in his chair, strained toward her. “How are you, darling?” The words quavered. “Are you hurt?”
“No. No. I… came through… intact, I think. You?”
“Yes. If you hadn’t—” He mastered himself. “But you did. It was a, a wave of force. The physicists didn’t expect it’d be this strong, with this short a wavelength. Most of it was supposed to spread out in the orbital plane— Look. Look.”
The fire geysers rained back toward what had become a single fierce, flickery star. As they fell, their lovely chaos drew together and made rivers of many-hued splendor. The flows twisted, braided, formed flat spirals that rushed inward, trailing sparks. A new accretion disc was forming. Elsewhere, though, half a dozen blobs of dancing, spitting luridness fled from them.
The light played unrestful over Valen’s face, as if he were a hunter on ancient Earth, crouched above his campfire in a night where tigers and ghosts prowled. “Report,” he said at the general intercom. “Everybody.
“All well,” the ship said. Her serenity was balm. “Minor damage, mostly due to a blast of lasered gamma rays that struck well aft. Nothing disabling or not soon repairable. Interior background count went high for half a second, but the dose was within safe limits and the count is down to a level acceptable for twenty watches.”
“We’ll be gone well before then,” Valen promised. “Uh, crew?”
The replies babbled, joyous, one (never mind whose) half hysterical. No harm sustained.
“How’d the observations go?” Valen asked tartly.
“We won’t know for weeks,” Esker answered. “That flood of input— But it seems like every system functioned. I do believe we… we have a scientific revolution at birth.”
Lissa’s attention had stayed with the mystery. “It seems to be dimming,” she ventured.
“It’s receding fast,” Esker said. “The resultant momentum. But, I’m not sure yet, but I think the tensors aren’t quite what relativity would predict. Something we don’t understand came into play. Certainly that gravitational effect exceeded my top estimate by orders of magnitude. Captain, we will follow the star. Won’t we?”
“Of course,” Valen replied. “For as long as feasible. Taking due precautions. Positioning ourselves here, we took a bigger gamble than we knew. I don’t want to push our luck further.”
“Nor I, sir.” Esker laughed like a boy. “Not with everything we’ve got to carry home!”
They’ve forgotten their feud, Lissa thought. I have too. At least, it doesn’t matter anymore. Probably it will again, when we are again among human things. But today it’s of no importance whatsoever.
Carry home.… Yes, this precious freight of knowledge. There must be more data aboard now than we could transmit back in days, maybe in tens of days. We have more in our care than just our lives.
“Those fiery clouds that got ejected,” she asked, “why weren’t they recaptured?”
“The energies released caused them to exceed escape velocity from the vicinity of the ergosphere,” Esker said. “I’m half afraid to calculate how much energy that was. However, it seems to have expended itself mostly on that escape. They’re not giving off much hard radiation. The ergospheres themselves, like the event horizons, went through contortions as they met and fused. Spacetime did. I don’t know what happened in those microseconds. Maybe we never will.” Awe shook his words. “For an instant, the gates stood open between entire universes.”
“The hints alone should reveal a new cosmos to your minds,” Orichalc murmured.
Lissa nodded, dazed more than comprehending. “But what, now, holds the clouds together? Why don’t they whiff away, evaporate?”
Esker laughed afresh. “Do you take me for an oracle, milady? At this stage, we can only guess. Magnetic bottle effects, conceivably. Or maybe each is the, the atmosphere around a new-formed mass. Yes, I think that’s a bit more likely. But we’ll find out.”
“Those masses would need to be planet-sized,” Valen said low. “That gas is incandescent hot. It’d never stay around anything less. As if… this union tried to beget worlds—”
