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Louise frowned. “Why?”
Mark turned to her, his face expressionless. “We’re in trouble, Louise. The cops are here.”
Spi
It isn’t so difficult… if you have the resources of a universe, and a billion years, to play with, Spi
Spi
Yes. No doubt the motion of the Ring has been designed by the Xeelee so that it does not cut itself. But all one need do is start the process, by disrupting the Ring’s periodic behavior. And that is evidently what the photino birds are endeavoring to do, by hurling galaxies — like thrown rocks at the Ring.
Spi
Poole laughed. Baryonic chauvinism, Spi
“…Spi
Spi
“Listen to me. We don’t have much time.”
“Oh, Lieserl, I was begi
“Spi
Spi
“Use the waldoes, Spi
“Lieserl, you’re scaring the pants off me. Can’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
“No time, Spi
The Universe darkened.
For a bleak, heart-stopping instant Spi
She looked up. There was something before the ship, occluding the blue-shifted galaxy fragments, hiding the Ring.
She saw night-dark wings, spread to their fullest extent, looming over the Northern.
Nightfighters.
She twisted in her seat. There were hundreds of them — impossibly many, dark lanterns hanging in the sky.
They were Xeelee. The Northern was surrounded.
Spi
The ’fighters moved through electric-blue cosmic string like birds through the branches of a forest. There were so many of them in this era. They were cool and magnificent, their nightdark forms arrayed deep into space all around her. Lieserl stared at the swooping, gliding forms, willing herself to see them more clearly. Had any humans ever been closer to Xeelee than this?
The Xeelee moved in tight formation, like bird-flocks, or schools of fish; they executed sudden changes of direction, their domain wall wings beating, in squads spa
She was struck by the contrast between this era and the age of devastation — of victory for the photino birds — to which the Northern had first brought them. Here, the Ring was complete and magnificent, and the Xeelee, in their pomp, filled space. Already, she knew, the final defeat was inevitable, and the Xeelee were, in truth, huddling inside their final redoubt. But still, her heart beat harder inside her as she looked out over this, the supremacy of baryonic life.
The overlapping lengths of string slid down, smoothly, past the lifedome, as the Northern climbed. The nightfighters swooped like starlings through the string, and around the Northern — no, Spi
“They’re using their hyperdrive,” she breathed.
Yes. Poole stared up at the nightfighters, his lined face translucent. And we’re hyperdriving too. You’re pushing it, Spi
Of course they are, Spi
These ’fighters could have stopped the Northern at any time — even destroyed it. But they hadn’t.
Why not?
The ship was rising high above the plane of the Ring. The tangle of string fell away from the foreground, and she could see easily now the million-light-year curve of the structure’s limb. And at the heart of the Ring, the singularity seemed to be unfolding toward her, almost welcoming.
The Xeelee ’fighters rose all around her, like leaves in a storm. They can’t believe we’re a threat. I guess humans never were a threat, in truth. Now, it’s almost as if the Xeelee are escorting us, she thought.
“Lieserl,” she said.
“I hear you, Spi
“Tell me what in Lethe’s name we’re doing.”
“You’re taking us out of the plane of the Ring…”
“And then?”
“Down…” Lieserl hesitated. “Look, Spi
“And this is your plan?” Spi
Mark punched his thigh. “I was right, damn it,” he said. “I was right all along.”
The tension was a painful presence, clamped around Louise’s throat. “Damn it, Mark, be specific.”
He turned to her. “About the significance of the radio energy flux. Don’t you see? The photino birds have manufactured this immense cavity, of stars and smashed-up galaxies, to imprison the Ring.” He glanced around the skydome. “Lethe. It must have taken them a billion years, but they’ve done it. They’ve built a huge mirror of star stuff, all around the Ring. It’s a feat of cosmic engineering almost on a par with the construction of the Ring itself.”
“A mirror?”
“The interstellar medium is opaque to the radio energy. So each radio photon gets reflected back into the cavity. The photon orbits the Ring — and on each pass it’s super-radiant amplified, as Lieserl described, and so sucks out a little more energy from the inertial drag of the Ring’s rotation. And then the photon heads out again… but it’s still trapped by the galaxy mirror. Back it goes again, to receive a little more amplification… Do you see? It’s a classic example of positive feedback. The trapped radio modes will grow endlessly, leaching energy from the Ring itself…”
“But the modes can’t grow indefinitely,” Morrow said.
“No,” Mark said. “The process is an inertial bomb, Morrow. All that electromagnetic pressure will build up in the cavity, until it can no longer be contained. And in the end — probably only a few tens of mille