“That's a hell of a lot of trouble to go to.”
“Which fits with everything we know. This is a failsafe mechanism; clearly the designers of this structure went to a great deal of trouble to stop anyone using it as a backdoor out of the system. It seems to me that they were terrified to the point of paranoia about it. Surtr said the door wouldn't open if the Morn were detected in the area. Maybe it was designed to only open if the Tok's Great Enemy weren't detected for a certain period of time. To stop someone using the gateway to flee an attack, for instance.”
“How long?” Selene asked Surtr. “Have your spooky voices told you how long we have to wait?”
“What time units would you prefer me to express the period in?”
“Don't give me this, Aetheral. Give me the number in neutron star spins like before and I'll convert.”
It gave her a number. This time, thankfully, it wasn't anywhere near so high. It equated to around a standard day.
“There's no way to short-circuit this, reduce the wait?”
“There is no way that I'm aware of,” Surtr replied.
“Sure? You haven't suddenly been struck by fresh knowledge arriving from nowhere?”
The Aetheral appeared to be utterly immune to sarcasm. “There is no way that I am aware of.”
“Fine,” she said. “Okay. Seems we have no choice. We wait out the day, then travel through the gateway into whatever distant corner of the galaxy the metaspace tunnel leads. Let's just hope Concordance don't show up while we're sitting here doing nothing.”
“Once the tunnel does open, we should send nanosensors through it,” said Ondo. “We need to find out where it leads before we traverse it.”
“Both the ship and I must remain here to watch for the Morn,” said Surtr. “That is our purpose.”
She took their objections one at a time, willing herself to remain calm. “Firstly, Ondo, no. We don't have any nanosensors, and I am not going to sit around while you cobble some together from whatever scraps of mechanism you can find lying around. We have to take our chances. Assuming we don't get incinerated once the gateway opens properly, we have to go for it. For all we know, some other failsafe mechanism is going to kick in and close the tunnel again, perhaps permanently. Agreed?”
Ondo looked amused, a definite twinkle in his eye, but he conceded with a nod of his head.
She turned to Surtr. “As for you, it's time to call a halt to your watch. You've been sitting here for a long time, millions of years if the numbers are to be believed, and precisely nothing has happened. It's time for you to move on.”
“My purpose is to remain here.”
“Then you need a new purpose. It happens.”
The entity triple-blinked a couple of times. “I cannot abandon this system. My duty is to remain here as sentinel.”
“And what if by doing so you are endangering other systems, letting your Great Enemy win battles elsewhere?”
“The Tok gave me no instructions about other systems.”
“Sure, so perhaps it's time to think for yourself. You have to consider the possibility that these Tok don't exist anymore. I'm sorry, but it's true. You have to think what they would have wanted you to do if they were here. Because it seems to me you're wasting your time in this dead system, and that, deep down, you know it.”
There was a pause, during which it seemed Surtr was processing, debating with itself. But then it said, “You can leave through the Sigma Counterspin Tunnel, but I must remain here. The danger of the Morn reappearing is too great.”
She was getting nowhere, but the plain fact was that they needed a ship. She didn't trust the entity, but she could work out no other way of making the vessel move. If the far end of the tunnel emptied out into open space, escaping the system in just their EVA suits would leave them very dead very rapidly.
She tried one more time. “Look, the very first thing you said to me was 'Is my watch to continue, or are there new commands?' Here's your answer: if you won't think for yourself, then I'm giving you new commands. It's time to leave this system. I want you to fly this ship with us through that metaspace tunnel. Take us somewhere we can continue to live, then come back here if you have to, but take us. And perhaps, while you're out there, get some perspective on your existence, decide if you really do want to spend eternity sitting here on your own.”
“The danger has not subsided. If the Morn come now, all would be lost. I see that very clearly.”
“They're not going to come. You must know that. The urge to remain is strong in you because that was your original purpose, but we all transcend what we were and become something new. Trust me on this. Do you have any idea how long a normal life is? For a being like me or Ondo, I mean?”
“I do not know.”
“Let me tell you, in terms you can understand, and then you'll grasp why we're in such a hurry.” She sent it a number, the typical length of the life of an individual from Maes Far, translated into neutron star spin units. “You see? We can't sit around for a millennium just in case some imagined calamity happens. We'll have died and turned to ancient dust before you do anything. We need to act now. For all we know, we're standing at a turning point in the fate of the galaxy, and your decision to act, or not to act, could change everything.”
“I … I cannot do as you instruct. I cannot change what I am.”
She looked to Ondo, who opened his mouth as if to make an argument of his own, but then closed it again. Unless they could somehow intervene in
