Ring

Uvarov nodded, his head jerking. “The Attractor is an immense construction site, perhaps: the last great baryonic project. We can even guess at its nature.”

“Yes?” Louise snapped.

“We know their technology was based on the manipulation of spacetime,” Uvarov said. “We have the evidence of the starbreaker — gravity-wave weapons — and the domain wall defect drive of the nightfighter. I believe the object in Sagittarius, whatever it is, is a construct.”

“A construct of what?”

“Manipulated spacetime,” Uvarov said.

“It’s logical, Louise,” Mark said. “Think about it. Only through spacetime effects, including gravitation, can the Xeelee interact with the photino birds. So they’ve evolved weapons and artifacts based on the manipulation of spacetime: the nightfighter domain-wall drive, the starbreaker…”

“The Ring,” Lieserl breathed. “Perhaps this — the Great Attractor — is the Ring. The Xeelee’s greatest, final Project…” Is it possible? “Dr. Uvarov, have you found the Ring?”

Garry Uvarov turned to her. “Perhaps.”

Mark was nodding. “Maybe you’re right… We’ve evidence that the dark matter creatures know about the activity in Sagittarius, too.” To Lieserl he said, “We’ve seen streams of them coming and going from the Sun and heading in the direction of the Attractor… as if that is the focus of their activities, as well.”

Uvarov smiled. “It is the final battlefield.”

“How far?” Lieserl asked.

Louise grimaced, her mouth twisting. “To the Great Attractor? Three hundred million light-years… It’s no walk around the block.”

“But we could get there,” Mark said. Lieserl noticed that his tone was flat, more distant than before. “We have the nightfighter hyperdrive. We’ve no evidence that the hyper-drive is distance-limited. Spi

Lieserl saw how Spi

Louise Ye Armonk was frowning. “We’d have to find a way of transporting our people, obviously.”

Mark spread his hands. “Surely that’s possible. We may have to detach the lifedome from the Northern, fix it to the nightfighter somehow…”

Louise nodded. “We’d have to strengthen the dome internally, though… Obviously we’ll need co-operation from the Decks, Morrow — will we get it?”

Morrow leaned forward, into the light, to reply.

Lieserl folded her hands on the table and tried to stop them trembling. She let the rest of the conversation, as it delved into detail, wash over her.

The decision seemed to have been made, then, almost by default. She examined it in her own mind.

Had there been any alternative? Given Uvarov’s devastating logic, probably not.

But Uvarov’s logic implied that she — Lieserl — was going to end her own long, strange life at the center of all myths — myths which had persisted for most of mankind’s sad history.

She was going to the Ring…

PART IV

Trajectory: Spacelike

23

From the upper forest Deck to the loading bay at the base, lights blazed from the Northern’s battered lifedome. The human glow flooded over impassive Xeelee construction material, evoking no reflection.

Spi

Her hands fidgeted, plucking at the seams of her gloves; they looked like nervous, fluttering birds, she thought. She rested the hands deliberately against the material of her trousers, stilling them. The crew still weren’t ready. How much of this waiting did they think she could endure?

Behind her, the smooth lines of the nightfighter’s discontinuity-drive wings swept across space, outlined in blood-red by the bloated hulk of the Sun. The lifedome of the Great Northern — severed from its columnar spine — had been grafted crudely onto the shoulders of the nightfighter, pi

The lifedome was a mile-wide encrustation on the cool morphology of Xeelee technology; it dwarfed the Xeelee ship which carried it, looking like a grotesque parasite, she thought.

Spi

“…Spi

The voice emerged from the background lifedome babble like the clear voice of an oboe within an orchestra. (And that, she thought, was a metaphor which wouldn’t have occurred to her in the days before she’d poked her head out of the forest.)

“I hear you, Louise.”

“I think we’re ready.”

Spi

Louise sighed, clearly irritated. “Spi

“It’s a little different from your old days, Louise,” Spi

Louise grunted. “Yeah, well, I guess those days are gone. Things are a little more seat-of-the-pants now, Spi

Yes, Spi

Louise said, “We’re ready technically, anyway, according to all of Mark’s feedbacks. We’ve laid the coordinates of the flight into your waldo systems… all we can do now is see if they work.”

“Right.” Sourly, Spi

“Come on, Spi

Spi

“…Be prepared.”

Spi

On her reactions and quick thinking, she knew, could depend — not just her own life, and the lives of her friends, the safety of the forest — but the future of the species.