Transcendence

“Getting granular,” said the croaking voice from the pilot’s seat. “Easy does it.”

Easy did not do it. The ship was moving through vacuum, far from any material body, but it jerked and shuddered like a small boat on a choppy sea. Darya’s first thought — that they were flying through a sea of small space-time singularities — made no sense. Impact with a singularity of any size would destroy the Erebus totally.

She turned to Rebka, secured in the seat next to her. “What is it, Hans? I can’t see anything.”

“Planck scale change — a big one. We’re hitting the quantum level of the local continuum. If macroscopic quantum effects are common in the Anfract, we’re due for all sorts of trouble. Quantum phenomena in everyday life. Don’t know what that would do.” He was staring at the screens and shaking his head. “But how in heaven did Dulcimer know it was coming? I have to admit it, Nenda was right — that Polypheme’s the best, hot or cold. I’d hate to have to fly through this mess. And what the hell is that?”

There was a curious groaning sound. The jerking had ended and the ship was speeding up again, rotating around its main axis like a rifle bullet. The groaning continued. It was the Chism Polypheme in the pilot’s chair, singing to himself as he accelerated the Erebus — straight for the heart of a blazing blue-white star.

Closer and closer. They could never turn in time. Darya screamed and grabbed for Hans Rebka. She tightened her arms around him. Dulcimer had killed them all.

They were near enough to see the flaming hydrogen prominences and speckled faculae on the boiling surface. Nearer. One second more and they would enter the photosphere. Plunging—

The sun vanished. The Erebus was in a dark void.

Dulcimer crowed with triumph. “Multiply-co

The blue-white star had popped into existence behind them and was rapidly shrinking in size, while they went spi

There was total silence within the ship. Was it no more than a simple hiatus? Darya wondered. Suppose it went on forever? She could not help thinking about the stories of the Croquemort Time-well. The earlier twisting and spi

“And here we are,” Dulcimer a

Darya stared again at the displays. She was certainly not seeing the planet and moon that she and Kallik had proposed as Genizee, the Zardalu homeworld.

“Here we are? Then where are we?” Louis Nenda said, asking Darya’s question. He was in a seat behind her.

“At our destination.” The roller coaster through the twisted structure of the Anfract had done Dulcimer good. The Chism Polypheme sounded cheerful and proud and was no longer sagging in his seat. “There.” He pointed with his middle arm to the main display. “That’s it.”

“But that’s not where we want to go,” Darya protested.

The great slaty eye rolled in her direction. “It may not be where you want to go, but it’s the coordinates that you gave me. They lie right in the middle of that. Since I am opposed to all forms of danger, this is as close as I will take the ship.”

“But what is it?” Julian Graves asked.

“What it looks like.” Dulcimer sounded puzzled. “A set of a

It was not what anyone had been expecting. But now its existence made perfect sense.

“The Anfract is tough to enter and hard to navigate around,” Hans Rebka said. “But it has been done, many times, and ships came back to prove it. Yet not one of them reported finding a world like the sightings of Genizee made with high-powered equipment from outside the Anfract. So it stands to reason there has to be some other barrier that stops ships from finding and exploring Genizee. And a set of shielding singularities like this would do it. Enough to scare most people off.”

“Including us,” Darya said. Space travel Rule #1: avoid major singularities; Rule #2: avoid all singularities.

“No chance,” Louis Nenda said. “Not after we dragged all this way.”

Darya stared at him. It was occurring to her, at the least convenient moment, that the reason why Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda got on so badly was not that they were fundamentally different. It was that they were fundamentally the same. Cocky, and competent, and convinced of their own immortality. “But if all those other ships came here and couldn’t get in,” she said, “then why should we be any different?”

“Because we know something they didn’t know,” Rebka said. He and Nenda apparently enjoyed one other thing in common: cast-iron stomachs. The flight into the Anfract that had left Darya weak and nauseated had affected neither one of them.

“The earlier ships didn’t have a good reason to spend a lot of time here,” he went on. “They didn’t expect to find anything special inside, so they didn’t do a systematic search for a way in. But we know there’s something in there.”

“And if it’s the Zardalu cladeworld,” Louis Nenda added, “we also know there has to be a way in and a way out, and it can’t be a too difficult way. All we have to do is find it.”

All we have to do.

Sure. All we have to do is something no exploring ship ever did before. Darya added another item to the list of common characteristics of Rebka and Nenda: irrational optimism. But it made no difference what she thought — already they were getting down to details.

“Can’t take the Erebus,” Rebka was saying. “That’s our lifeline home.”

“And it can’t even land,” Nenda added. His glance at Julian Graves could not be missed.

“On the first look that’s no problem,” Rebka said. “Let’s agree to one thing, before we go any further: whatever and whoever goes, no one even thinks of landing. If there’s planets down there, you take a good look from a safe distance. Then you come back here and report. As for whether the ship we use is the Indulgence or the seedship, I vote seedship — it’s smaller and more agile.” He paused. “And more expendable.”

“And talking of lifelines,” Nenda added, “Atvar H’sial points out that even the Erebus is not much use without Dulcimer to pilot it. He ought to stay outside, too—”

“He certainly ought,” Dulcimer said. The Polypheme was rolling his eye nervously at the flickering sphere outside. He apparently did not like the look of it.

“ — so who flies the seedship and looks for a way in past the singularities?” Nenda finished.

“I do,” said Rebka.

“But I am most expendable.” J’merlia spoke for the first time since they entered the Anfract.

“Kallik and I know the Anfract internal geometry best,” Darya said.

“But I can maintain the most detailed record of events,” said E.C. Tally.

Deadlock. Everyone except Dulcimer seemed determined to be on the seedship, which held, at a squeeze, four or five. The argument went on until Julian Graves, who had so far said nothing, shouted everyone down in his hoarse, cracking bass. “Quiet! I will make the assignment. Let me remind all of you that the Erebus is my ship, and that I organized this expedition.”