“Near the string?” Blake asked. “Not inside the string?”
Rikki shook her head. “You can’t get inside. The string itself is very thin.”
“Like a…proton.”
“How does this help?” Dana asked.
“Antonio?” Rikki said. “I know this is important, so be sure I get this right. The faster our ship goes, the more relativistic effects we experience. Before the DED, unable to keep accelerating as this ship can, these effects never mattered.”
She leaned forward to read numbers off a console. “We’ve reached about fifty thousand klicks per second, about one-sixth light speed. Marvin, what is our relativistic mass effect?”
“About a percent and a half,” the AI answered.
“Not yet dramatic,” Rikki said. “But it will be.”
“The faster we go, the more massive we get. Pushing more and more…mass, the DED is…less effective. But maybe close to a cosmic string…”
At last, Blake saw their point. “If light speed is much faster along a cosmic string, we won’t experience relativistic effects. So our mass won’t increase, and that means we’ll accelerate faster than otherwise.”
“Indeed,” Antonio said.
Dana said, “The string you found points toward the Coalsack, somewhat off our course. Maybe that’s okay. Drawing upon dark energy, we don’t spend fuel to detour. But will we gain enough extra speed to get clear of the GRB?”
Antonio murmured something.
“What’s that?” Dana said.
“Yes,” Antonio said. “Unless we don’t.”
“Meaning what?” Dana pressed. “We’re talking in circles.”
“Case A,” Rikki said. “Cosmic inflation happened. The speed of light along the string is exactly what we are accustomed to. Case B. Inflation never happened, and as we approach the string, light goes faster and faster.”
“And we can’t know…which…till we get there.”
Dana asked, “Suppose we detour and find that the speed of light hasn’t changed?”
“Then…we die.”
Dana frowned. “What are the chances either way?”
Rubbing his chin more briskly than ever, Antonio shrugged.
“So either fifty-to-one against us or we just don’t know at all?” Dana asked. “Do I have my scenarios right, Antonio?”
“Yes, Captain.”
Blake turned toward Dana. “It’s your call, Captain.”
“Life or death for the human race?” Dana said. “That’s everyone’s call, Li and Carlos included.”
When they found the other two, Carlos uncharacteristically subdued, and Dana put the ship’s course up for a vote, the decision was unanimous to steer for the cosmic string.
12
Six long, tapered tubes with their piano-hinged lids tipped back—the cold-sleep pods gaped like open coffins.
Though no one commented, Blake would have bet anything that everyone saw the resemblance.
He stood with Rikki, among the passengers, along the cargo hold’s curved, exterior wall. Rikki’s hand in his felt clammy. Dana stood opposite, at the feet of the pods.
There should be a speech, Blake thought, but after six weeks living like sardines in a can what could possibly remain to be said? Regardless, Dana was about the last person he knew to make a speech.
Death stalked the worlds of man. Billions must die. Civilization would die. Maybe, against all odds, the six of them would escape. Maybe they would survive to add a chapter to humanity’s story. Far more likely the GRB would blast this ship, too, and their riddled corpses would hurtle forever through the interstellar darkness.
In any case, I shouldn’t give a speech.
Then Dana surprised him.
“The time has come, my friends,” she said. “I know the situation is dire. I know that our prospects look bleak. But consider: we are on a mission grander and more important than anything we might ever have dared to dream of. Good people believed in us; good people gave their all to hasten us on our way. Already we have gone where no human has gone before. Endeavour is a fine ship, a proven ship, and Marvin knows what to do while we sleep.”
But did Marvin know? Blake wondered.
How complete could their modified nav software be? No one had ever approached a cosmic string. And how meaningful were the AI’s assurances that its hastily coded program extensions had not broken it?
“I’ll see you all on the other side,” Dana concluded firmly.
Antonio shuffled toward the first pod in the line. He sat, lifted his legs over the platform edge, and lay down. “On the other…side.”
Li followed, offering a brave smile, then Carlos.
In Blake’s grasp, Rikki’s hand trembled. “It’ll be all right,” he told her.
She nodded.
“Let’s do this together,” he said.
They took the few steps to two pods at the end of the row. He helped Rikki settle inside hers, trying not to think of coffins. Leaning over, he gave her a kiss. “Sweet dreams.”
She forced a smile. “Sweet dreams.”
As Blake lay down, he saw Dana had taken her place in the final pod.
“You have the conn, Marvin,” Dana called. “Close the pods.”
“I have the conn,” Marvin acknowledged. “Commencing cold sleep.”
The transparent lid pivoted down. As freezing mist billowed, Blake turned his head for a last glimpse of Rikki.
Never had he seen her so despondent.
Did her hopelessness evoke the memory, or was the sudden chill to blame? Maybe both. In proposing a ship’s name, surely Rikki had not intended to reveal the depths of her despair. After all, how likely was he to recall one particular conversation from three years ago?
Only he did.
She had once, her eyes shining, told him about the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and the race to explore Earth’s last frontier. One adventurer, too late to discover the South Pole, had set out to be the first to make a land journey across Antarctica. He had run an advertisement in the London newspapers:
“MEN WANTED: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. Sir Ernest Shackleton.”
On the way to Antarctica, Shackleton’s ship Endurance became trapped in pack ice. After almost a year in the grip of the ice floes, with its hull crushed, the vessel foundered. Its crew was cast adrift, far from any land.
And Endurance was the name Rikki had proposed for this ship.
But in search of rescue, in one epic feat after another,
