“Interesting,” said Ondo. “Those are the same relative dimensions as the head of our friend here.”
“Are you really saying that's significant?”
“I'm only suggesting that the same aesthetic impulses might have been involved in the design of both. Assuming Surtr's head was designed and didn't evolve like that.”
They passed across the boundary of the object and into the mouth of the cone. The walls of the device around them began to blot out the nacreous light of local space. More and more of it disappeared, the edge of the cone a hard line being drawn across it, as if something was devouring space around them. Except, of course, they were the ones being devoured as they flew deeper inside.
“Can you tell what's at the narrow end?” Ondo asked her.
“I'm getting nothing; it looks dark. This whole structure looks dead to me. It may have been dead for a long time.” She'd imagined finding another impossible tunnel at the far end; an opening leading from normal reality through to metaspace. All she could discern, the radio echo results fuzzy and indistinct from the limited resolution of her eye, was that the cone appeared to taper to a point.
Out loud, to Surtr, she said, “Does this lead into a metaspace tunnel?”
“We will land on the surface,” said Surtr, answering a completely different question in the annoying way that it had.
“Why?” asked Ondo.
“The way through must be opened,” Surtr replied. “The seals have to be unlocked. That is how communication with the Tok is to take place.”
“How exactly do we communicate?” Ondo continued. “Is the tunnel big enough for your ship to fly through, or can you simply talk to whoever is at the other end?”
“I do not know.”
“Do you even know what's at the other end?”
“I do not.”
She caught the look of anxiety on Ondo's face and spoke to him privately, trying to keep the impatience from her thoughts. Although, she'd already guessed what his problem was.
“What is it?”
“We should stop and think very carefully about what we're doing.”
“What we're doing is escaping this system.”
“You don't know that,” said Ondo. “If there is another active tunnel here, it could lead anywhere. It might deliver us right into the hands of Concordance. It also might drop us into the centre of the donor star these Tok used to feed the supernova.”
She tried to remain reasonable. “Wherever it leads, it's better than staying here, trapped in this dead system. Also, just for reference, if this thing says I do not know one more time I'm going to rip its weird, inexpressive head from its shoulders and see if that jogs its memory.”
This time she at least got a ripple of amusement from Ondo's response. “Try and resist the urge, if you can. The risk is real, though. Whatever used to be at the other end of the tunnel, there has to be a good chance that Concordance have found it at some point in the last three centuries. If the tunnel does open for us, we might fly directly into a Void Walker ambush. Or, even if they're not aware where the tunnels lead, into a system under heavy Concordance control.”
It was a fair point, but it was a risk she was willing to take. Suppressing a sigh, she tried again to extract some useful information from Surtr. “Does this ship of yours have weaponry? If you encountered a remnant of the Morn, could you fight them?”
“Any Morn encountered need to be eliminated immediately, before they spread.”
“Yes, I get it, but how? Do you have missile arrays, beam-weapons, that sort of thing?”
“We have weaponry to use against the Morn.”
That was something. “And you control these weapons?”
“Yes.”
“Could they be turned against a different enemy if needed?”
“The Morn are the Great Enemy.”
“Sure, right, but if there was another enemy, someone you don't know about right now, the weapons at your disposal could be turned on them? If, say, they had allied themselves with the Morn, or made use of their technology?”
There was another moment of hesitation. Then it said, “That is a possibility.”
“Good. Excellent.” Another question occurred to her. “Tell me this also, have you ever heard of Omn? Is that another word for the Morn, or the name of some technology they possess?”
“Omn is another word I do not understand. I have picked it up from your thought patterns, but I do not know what concept to map it onto.”
Ondo tried a different approach. “Why are you taking us into this cone and not one of the others?”
“This is the correct one to use,” Surtr replied.
“Correct why?”
“It is the one set aside for this purpose, should the need arise. Even the existence of this one is dangerous.”
“Dangerous to whom?”
“To everyone.”
“Does this tunnel have a name? Like Gamma Spinwards Tunnel?”
“I … am unaware of the tunnel's designation.”
“Then, do you know where in the galaxy it leads?”
“I know only that it is the correct one to use.”
Speaking privately to Ondo, Selene said, “We have to trust this entity, for the moment, at least. It's a creature of instinct, or it's a machine that doesn't fully understand its own programming, or something, but it has a clear survival impulse. I don't believe it's going to fly us into the middle of a star. We use it to get out of here, then we go our own way. Besides, it reminds me of you with all its spooky talk of the correct path to take. You should be pleased.”
“And I say it has no way of knowing where it's taking us,” said Ondo. “Even if it did, once, its understanding of the wider galaxy is clearly massively out of date. The path may lead us to somewhere else entirely.”
“What's your alternative? Stay here for the rest of our lives engaged in a fascinating
