Ring

Then, at last, they could populate the pond, with fish and frogs.

It was a small, almost trivial project. But it had actually been Milpitas’ idea, and Morrow had been glad to offer to work on it with him, as part of what he thought of as Milpitas’ rehabilitation to zero-gee. Anything that got the Pla

“Morrow.” Louise Armonk’s voice emerged from a point in the air. It was loud, urgent in his ear. “Morrow. Can you hear me?”

Morrow looked down to the grass-coated floor of the Deck; he knew that Louise was somewhere below his floor in her old steam-ship, studying the neutron star system. “What is it, Louise?”

“Morrow, you have to get away from there.”

“But, Louise — ”

“Move, damn it. Anywhere.”

Milpitas was studying him. “Well? Is there a problem?”

“Milpitas. Come.”

Morrow grabbed the Pla

Air resistance brought them to a stop in mid-air, five yards above the Deck surface.

Morrow released the Pla

“Louise? All right, we’ve moved. Now will you tell me what’s wrong?”

“We’re in trouble.” Morrow heard panicky shouting behind Louise’s voice, and flat, even commands being issued by Mark. “We’re in the path of a section of string… If our projections are correct, it’s going to pass right through Poole Park.”

Morrow stared around at the Decks. Suddenly the metal walls of this place, coated with plants and people, seemed impossibly fragile. “But how can that be? I thought that loop was light-years away.”

“So did we, Morrow. We’re trying to confirm the string’s trajectory so we can program the discontinuity-drive waldoes, and — ”

But Louise’s voice was gone.

Lieserl and Mark stood on the surface of the neutron star planet, in Virtual mockups of environment suits. They looked at each other uncertainly.

“Something’s wrong,” Lieserl said.

“I know.” Through his sketch of a faceplate, Mark’s expression was lifeless, cold; Lieserl knew that meant he was diverting processing power to higher priorities.

The surface under Lieserl’s feet was pumice-gray and looked friable. Beside them, waiting patiently, was a ’bot, a fat wheeled trolley fitted with a few articulated arms and sensors. The dust of the planet had smeared the ’bot’s wheels with gray, Lieserl saw.

A few yards away their pod was a fat, gleaming cylinder; within the pod’s clear walls Lieserl could see Uvarov, wrapped in his blanket.

The sky was fantastic. The gas ring was a belt of smoke which encompassed the world, all the way to the horizon. The far side of the ring was a pale strip of white, bisecting the sky. She could just make out the neutron star itself, a tiny, baleful blood-pearl threaded onto the line of smoke; and its huge companion was an attenuated ball of yellow-gray mist, bleeding gas onto its malevolent twin.

The starbow was a crack across the emptiness away from the plane of the ring; high above her head, Lieserl could see the gleaming lights of the Northern’s lifedome, in the ship’s remote orbit around the planet.

The building they had detected from orbit was a tetrahedron, twenty feet tall, sitting impassively on the surface.

Lieserl felt frustrated. Had they come so far, approached this astonishing mystery, so closely, only for their comms links to fail?

She tapped her helmet. “I feel as if I’ve gone deaf,” she said.

“Me too.” Mark smiled thinly, some of the expression returning to the waxy image of his face. “Well, we’ve certainly lost the voice links from the Northern.” He looked up uneasily. “I wonder what in Lethe is happening up there.”

“Maybe they are trying to recall us.”

Mark shrugged. “Or maybe not.” He looked at her. “Lieserl, do you feel any different? As far as I can tell the links to the central processors back on the Northern are still functioning — although I’m working read-only at the moment.”

She closed her eyes and looked inwards. “Yes. It’s the same for me.” Read-only meant she couldn’t pass her impressions the new memories she was laying down back to the processors on the Northern which were now the core of her awareness. She looked up at the Northern’s steady yellow light. “Do you think we should go back?”

Mark hesitated, looking back at the pod.

Uvarov stirred, like an insect in some glass cocoon, Lieserl thought. “I’m the only one of us who’s in genuine danger here,” he rasped. “The two of you are just projections. Virtual phantasms. You are only wearing those damn suits as crutches for your psyches, in Lethe’s name. Even if this planet exploded now, all you’d lose would be a few hours of data input.” He snarled the last words like an insult.

“What’s your point, Uvarov?” Mark said.

“Get on with your search,” Uvarov snapped. “Stop wasting time. There is nothing you can do about whatever problems are occurring at the Northern. For Life’s sake, look at the bigger picture. The baryonic Universe is coming to an end. What can happen to make things worse than that?”

Mark laughed, a little grimly. “All right, Doctor. Come on, Lieserl.”

They trudged over the surface toward the structure.

The klaxon died. The sudden silence was shocking.

Morrow tapped his ear — he thought self-deprecatingly, as if that would restore the Virtual projection of Louise’s voice.

Milpitas had left his side. With surprising agility the Pla

There was a grind of metal, high above him. He heard a single scream — an unearthly sound that echoed from the walls, rattling through the silence of the Decks. And now there was another scream — but this time, Morrow realized, it was the product of no human voice; the shriek was of air escaping from a breached hull.

He peered up into the shining air, looking for the breach. There. Against one wall, mist was gathering over a straight-line gash which sliced through a field of dwarf wheat. A literacy-recovery class had been working there; now, people scrambled through the air, away from the billowing fog, screaming.

He heard Milpitas grunt. Morrow looked down.

Milpitas stared down at his midriff and clasped his hands over his belly. His scarred face was creased into an expression of disapproving surprise, and — in that final instant — Morrow was reminded of Pla

Then Milpitas folded forward, around a line just below his solar plexus. For the first fraction of a second it looked as if he were doubling over in pain — but, Morrow saw with mounting horror, Milpitas kept on folding, bending until Morrow could hear the crackle of crushed ribs, the deeper snap of vertebrae.

There was nothing visible, nobody near Milpitas; it was as if he were inflicting this unimaginable horror on himself, or as if the Pla

Then, it seemed that that same huge fist — powerful, irresistible, invisible grabbed Morrow himself and hurled him down toward the Deck.

He screamed and wrapped his arms around his head.

He smashed into the spherical pond, so lovingly constructed by himself and Milpitas. Reeds and lilies slapped at his face and arms, and brackish water forced itself into his eyes and mouth.