Where, a few months hence, along with many old friends, all would die.
The next time his vertical excursion brought him to the top of the shaft, he went through the open hatch onto the bridge deck.
From the copilot’s seat Antonio stared at the main bridge display, toward an amorphous black cloud that all but vanquished a big chunk of the star field.
The Coalsack Dark Nebula. This was the view ahead, not the view toward home.
Blake did not see any centaur among the stars, but even had their target not been straight ahead, there could be no overlooking Alpha Centauri. It was the fourth-brightest star in the sky.
“You know what just struck me?” Blake said, and Antonio turned. “Our old sun will be as bright in our new night sky.”
“Bright enough. Not as bright as we see Alpha Centauri. It’s a triple star.”
“Is Alpha Cen what you’re looking at?” Blake asked.
“Watch.” Antonio pointed into the scene.
“I see stars.”
“No, watch.” Antonio pointed again.
Nothing happened. “What am I looking for?”
“You’ll know.” Antonio leaned closer, poking a finger into the holo. “Here. Now watch.”
Nothing happened. As Blake pondered what he would have for breakfast—a star flashed.
“Did you see?” Antonio demanded.
“The flash? Yes. What was that?”
“Microlensing.”
Blake had a vague notion of a massive object bending light, gravity functioning as a lens. But what massive object could be between a star and Endeavour? “A rogue planet?” he guessed.
“Marvin, did you register…it, too?”
“I did,” the AI said.
“Show me the current data set.”
Red, blinking dots appeared in the holo, in a cluster of three.
Blake said, “You can’t make me believe you found three rogue planets.”
“I didn’t.” Antonio stretched to engage the intercom. “Captain to the bridge.”
Blake sidled to his left for another perspective on the data. Though the blinking dots did not quite fall into a line, together they suggested a direction only a few degrees off Endeavour’s course. “How long have you been watching?”
“Five days.” Antonio yawned. “I think.”
Dana appeared in the hatchway. “What’s up, guys?”
“You’re seeing…ancient history.”
Rikki, her hair sleep-tousled, opened the hatch from the crew cabin. “The blinking dots are?”
“Microlensing events,” Blake told her, sorry that their chattering had wakened her.
Rikki’s eyes went round. “A cosmic string?”
“I believe…so.”
Dana said, “Less mystery, more explanation please.”
“You’ll…explain quicker, Rikki.”
“It has to do with the very early universe,” Rikki said. “Here’s the twitter version. Big Bang fireball. Everything’s super-hot and expanding. Expansion cools things, like expanding water vapor can condense to liquid water.”
Blake thought, I love you dearly, but this is the quick version?
“Vapor to water is a phase transition,” Rikki continued. “Cool further, and the next big change is from water to ice. Ever see an ice patch form on the inside surface of a dome when the outside temperature plummets?”
Or the inside of a windowpane during a Boston cold snap. On the glass in Blake’s mind’s eye, random lines and curves crisscrossed the icy coating. But what did window frost have to do with anything?
“Picture the fracture lines in the ice,” Rikki said. “Each line is where expanding regions of spontaneous phase change, water turning to ice, collided. Where matters get hand-wavy”—and she gesticulated, illustrating—“is in likening the collisions between cooling space-time regions with ice fracture lines.” She hesitated. “Help me out here, Antonio.”
Antonio said, “Energy got trapped…in the interstices. Lots of energy. Theorists call these objects…cosmic strings.”
“Because cosmic strings remain theoretical,” Rikki said. “No one has ever seen one.”
Dana turned to study the star-field holo. “But you have, Antonio? The red dots?”
“Right.”
Rikki said, “Well, we can’t see a cosmic string, not directly. But they’re massive, so they bend light. That’s why we’re seeing microlensing events, when on our fast-changing line of sight a star drops behind the string.”
“And you’re the first person to spot one?” Dana said skeptically.
“This string points more or less straight at Sol system. The backdrop is…the Coalsack. Few stars are visible through that to be lensed. Both factors…would make this…string hard to spot.”
Rikki said, “And remember where we are: far beneath the ecliptic, about thirty times Pluto’s distance from the sun. No one has ever had this perspective.”
“You said trapped energy,” Blake said. “Isn’t it the presence of mass that bends light?”
“Energy. Mass. Same thing,” Antonio said.
Because E=mc2, Blake thought. I know that. And I need to sleep.
“This is all quite educational,” Dana said, “but how does it matter?”
Antonio shrugged. “Some things are just interesting.”
11
Angry voices roused Dana from restless slumber. A man and a woman, Dana noticed. She couldn’t make out any words.
Antonio, his mouth agape, was fast asleep across the crew cabin. He didn’t stir as Dana left her jump seat. Blake and Rikki had the bridge and with it what passed aboard for privacy. Feeling like a voyeur, Dana pressed an ear to the hatch onto the bridge. The yelling was not coming from inside.
Antonio stirred at the hinge squeak when Dana opened the deck hatch. “Go back to sleep,” she whispered and he settled down. She went into the central shaft. With one hand, she kept a grip on the ladder; with the other, she slowly let down the hatch, trying to avoid the customary clang. Her arm trembled with the effort.
From within the shaft, she recognized the quarreling voices: Li and Carlos. They were inside cargo hold three.
“…could be our last chance…you can’t tell me you don’t…,” Carlos said.
Dana let herself down closer.
“I am telling you,” Li said. “You’re better than this.”
“Don’t be such a tease. You came when I asked.”
“Not knowing the kind of ‘help’ you had in mind,” Li said. “I won’t say this again. Get away from the hatch.”
Shit! Dana thought.
She had allowed herself to believe people would act like adults. Aboard Reliance, no matter the mixed crew, people did. But those were trained professionals who expected, someday, to go home.
Li was tiny, almost a meter
