She felt fury and frustration erupting within her, but she chose not to let it consume her. She said nothing more. Instead, she turned and headed back to the ship, leaving Surtr's protective bubble. She didn't wait for them.
She strode around the exterior of the vessel, giving her rage chance to ebb away. She needed to think clearly. She consumed herself with studying the ship's hull, hoping to find an entrance, especially into the spheroid bulk of the vessel's main body. It was completely featureless so far as she could see. She picked up no energy signatures or vibrations from it. It seemed odd that such a large and apparently inert structure should even be there. Perhaps it had fulfilled a purpose during some prior configuration of the ship, but it was hard to see now what it might have been.
Eventually, the suit's oxygen supply running low, she returned to the point where the smaller observation sphere touched the surface of the cone. Surtr and Ondo had left the surface, leaving her alone out there, but Surtr, seeing her from the observation platform, came to open the way inside for her. She studied the process carefully, trying to work out what energies were involved, how it triggered the temporary transformation of the ship's voidhull, but she could make nothing of it.
She spent most of the following hours scouring the ship for some way into the large sphere. By overlaying the models of the exterior and the interior that she'd built up, she was able to identify the points in the winding passageways that were closest to it, but she found no way inside. She thumped walls, reached out with all her natural and artificial senses, but got nothing. She searched in vain for utility ducts, or for anything connecting where she was and the larger sphere.
At one point she identified a spot on one of the walls, out of reach, head-height for Surtr, where the familiar triple-circles had been etched subtly into the wall, protruding a single millimetre. She pressed and stroked and thumped the wall beneath, even jumped up to hit the circles, but none of it had any effect.
In one final attempt, she sat on the ground beneath them, closed her eyes, and tried to find a brain-to-brain control interface to talk to, a thing that had become second nature on the Radiant Dragon. There was a brief moment when she picked up a flutter of something, an intelligence bolting from her view, but it was gone as soon as she tried to pursue it. Whether it was some other AI core or simply an aspect of Surtr, she couldn't tell.
Eventually, frustrated, she burned off her excess energy by working out a circular route through the passageways and running for an hour, pushing herself hard, relishing the simple, physical pains in her tissues. She was afraid that the corridors would reconfigure themselves part way through and throw her into an unexpected dead end, but they behaved themselves. Then she ate – Surtr's ship apparently completely capable of producing nutrition suited to her biology – and rested until it was time for the metaspace tunnel to open.
Surtr stood upon the platform of the observation dome once again as she and Ondo wove their way along the winding pathways. The ship, meanwhile, had moved, although Selene had picked up no sense of motion as she'd explored the ship. They now stood a kilometre off the disc covering the cone's apex. It was a shimmering wall of energy, shades of grey flickering rapidly, like a visual representation of white noise.
Ondo's eyes were on it as they walked. “It has to be a strong defensive shield, something capable of withstanding anything these Morn could throw at it.”
“Have you been able to work out anything about where this tunnel will lead?”
“Nothing. Counterspin suggests it is going to move us around the galactic disc in the opposite direction to the galaxy's rotation, but that still leaves half the star systems as possible destinations.”
“Or no star system, and the tunnel is going to dump us into the interstellar void. Or, worse, into the interior of a star. We have no idea how these metaspace endpoints interact with gravity wells. If there's a black hole nearby, there's obviously a chance it could distort the tunnel and suck the gateway in.”
Ondo looked amused at her words. “Having doubts? You're starting to sound like me.”
“I still think we have no choice. I'm just spelling out the possibilities.”
They walked around the final bend to reach the central disc. Surtr stood there as impassive as ever, still as a pillar of rock, but he spoke unexpectedly as they neared. He didn't turn to look at them as any normal person would.
“I will take you through the Sigma Counterspin Tunnel.”
The Aetheral finally glanced down at her, and there was something hesitant in its movements, as if it wasn't sure what her reaction would be to its announcement.
“You'll take us through in the ship?” she asked.
“I will.”
She was immediately suspicious. “Why have you changed your mind?”
Another hesitation, another beat of uncertainty. “I have been thinking about what you said, and I now believe that there is a possibility you are right. Taking you out of this system might be what the Tok would want. They are benign beings, wise and compassionate.”
Yeah, right. She didn't challenge the entity, didn't tell it that everyone thought they were the good guys, no matter how evil their actions. Even Concordance, on some level, had to believe they were doing the right thing as they slaughtered and tortured their way through the stars, hurrying everyone worthy to their eternal bliss.
Instead, she said, “You will travel with us?”
“I will ensure that you survive the transition through the tunnel, that
