Sunborn

by Jeffrey Carver

  “Damn,” Bandicut breathed. “Napoleon was right.”

  Antares murmured her puzzlement.

  “If all else fails, and Napoleon can breach the n-space field and let out the dark matter at the core of *Nick*, then the hypernova fizzles.”

  “And that would be good?”

  “Not good, exactly. *Nick* would probably blow up, and we would die, but it would be a much smaller bang.” He sat back, puffing his cheeks out in thought.

  Then he allowed himself a wistful smile, and he reached out and took Antares’s hand.

  *

  As John described what he had learned from his stones, Antares was filled with fear and wonder in equal measure. “If the Survivors are implacably hostile to all organic life...”

  Bandicut’s expression seemed grave, and yet, oddly, more at ease than she had seen him look in some time. “I don’t know if it’s because they just don’t care, or because they’re still really, really angry that organics tried to exterminate them in a war a couple of billion years ago.”

  For a moment Antares let that seep into her consciousness. “We probably can’t do much about a power that reaches across the galaxy and can do things like cause stars to blow up. Except...maybe we can, here. Now. This time. Do you suppose there are other people like us, in other parts of the galaxy, trying to stop them like we are?”

  Bandicut scratched the side of his head. “There’s a thought.”

  Antares shivered with a sudden vision of being sent to the center of the galaxy to confront the Survivors where they lived (maybe), in the enormous black hole there. She drew a breath, realized she was seeing the same worry in Bandicut’s eyes.

  He seemed to read her thoughts. He chuckled, then looked away. “So now that we know how they do it,” he said, “how does that help us stop them?” He met her gaze again. “Maybe for a little while, we shouldn’t worry.” He reached out to caress her cheek.

  She caught his hand and pressed it to her lips. “That is a sensible idea,” she whispered.

  John began running the fingers of his other hand through her hair, and she breathed with a sudden rush of pleasure and an unexpected ache for him. For a moment, she resisted; then she leaned into him with a sigh and found his lips with her own, drawing him into a most human, and prolonged, kiss. The surge of arousal took her by surprise, but she felt his own feelings rising to match hers—and without another word, they were embracing awkwardly, intimately, passionately. She was only dimly aware of the fading echoes of their fear, and the clatter of wine cups being knocked over, as the urgency of holding each other gave way to a quiet desperation as they made love.

  *

  They both slept fitfully through the night. As they lay together in the semidarkness, Antares felt Bandicut’s pain and worry gradually seep back into him. In time, it grew too strong to ignore. “Bandie John?” she whispered, reaching to him.

  He started to answer, but was interrupted by the sound of a chime. Copernicus’s voice called from somewhere in the wall. “A change in the flight dynamics, everyone. I believe we may be approaching our destination ahead of schedule.”

  “Time to worry again,” Bandicut muttered. He held her close for a dozen heartbeats, then got to his feet. He reached down, and Antares accepted his hand in rising to her own feet.

  Neither of them spoke as they pulled on clothes and stumbled toward the bridge.

  Chapter 35

  Into the Sun

  On day two, the translator reported that it was applying force-field reinforcement to the hull structure. That, Julie guessed, meant things were getting a little shaky down there in the hold.

  *Would you like to see?*

  /Not necessarily./

  The image appeared in the cockpit status screen. It was difficult to make out the image—it was a cloud of particles, shimmering and hard to look at, the way the translator was hard to look at. At its center was a small, shiny nugget. It twisted and turned like a ball of mercury, but looked solid at the same time. Cancerous, she thought. It was growing. Visibly. It seemed to have little needle points appearing around its periphery, then disappearing, like a snowflake growing in time-lapse photography. But she knew, because she sensed it from the stones, that this was not time-lapse, this was real-time growth.

  The knot in her stomach was growing, too.

  “What’s it doing?” she whispered.

  The stones shifted something, and now she could see thin tendrils spidering out from the nucleus, slipping through tiny openings in the weave of whatever was surrounding it—the translator’s force-field?—and then out to a pebbled, pitted surface beyond. Was that the wall of the cargo hold, or had it already eaten that away? She feared it was some part of the ship’s belly, where the nano-constructors that streamed out from the enemy took little bites and carried the pieces back to join the cloud of accreting particles.

  “Can’t you tighten the net?” she pleaded. “The weave? Whatever it is?”

  *Not without dropping out of spatial threading. If we do that, we can seal it off. But then we delay getting it to the sun. As soon as we thread space again, it will start all over. Remember, we’re shifting in and out of your continuum to move. It seems able to use those transitional moments—millionths of seconds—to get through, no matter how fast we go. All we can do is reinforce the ship’s fields to make it more resistant.*

  Drums pounded in Julie’s head. She was having trouble thinking straight. There had to be something she could do. She put her hands to her temples, trying to shut out the drumming feeling of inexorability. /Can’t we—there has to be—/

  But the stones had no further answer. And the cancer in the cargo hold was growing. She circled the tiny cockpit interior. Had to be something she could do. Had to be...

  *

  By the end of day two, the sun was a lot bigger, a ghostly pumpkin in the window, where the light was filtered by the threading field. The thing in the ship’s belly was still eating its way outward. It had dissolved and absorbed the cargo container. A couple of power conduits were gone, forcing the rerouting of some circuits. There was a constant buzzing in Julie’s feet, in her hands, and her head. Maybe it was the vibration of the ship being dissolved, or maybe it was her mind, trying to process what was happening to her—and, finding no way to produce understanding, her brain was shaking like a truck on an unpaved road.

  When she queried the stones on the state of the ship, she got no reply; they were too busy trying to hold things together, she supposed.

  Quite apart from her fear for her personal safety—and she was surprised how well she was able to compartmentalize that fear—she felt growing concern about whether the translator could actually deal with this threat. The translator was the closest thing she’d ever seen to an omnipotent force. Could this object the size of a grain of sand really be a match for it?

  It seemed all she could do was watch the object devour her ship while the translator tried to stop it—and transmit periodic radio reports on her condition, entirely in the blind. That, and live with the fear that she had made a terrible, unthinkable, fatal mistake in linking up with the translator on this mission.

  *Do not think that,* the stones replied, revealing at least that they were still paying attention to her. *What you are doing might cost you your life. But you are attempting to save your world.*

  /Yeah, yeah./ She thought she sensed impatience on the part of the stones. /What? Don’t I have a right to be scared and pissed and disillusioned?/

  *Perhaps you do. But consider: even if you fail and die, will you be the first to die in a cause you believed in?*

  Julie felt momentarily ashamed, but not mollified. /Maybe not. But does that mean I should want to throw my life away?/

  The stones seemed puzzled. *Would you rather have gone back to a homeworld that was on the verge of destruction, which you might have been able to save?*

  Julie knew she needed to get past this. I was okay with it yesterday, why can’t I be today? Things are just
a little harder now. And God knows, the stones are right. Is my survival the most important thing here? /All right,/ she said finally, half believing it. /But isn’t there at least something I can do? I need to be doing something./

  There was no answer. “Stones!” she yelled. “Tell me some way I can help!”

  Finally, after a silence so long she had gone back to staring out the window, the stones answered:

  *There is something we’d like you to do. It’s risky.*

  /What is it?/

  *We’d like you to suit up now.*

  /Why, is the hull getting ready to breach?/

  *Not immediately.*

  /Then what?/ On the screen display, the haze seemed to be increasing in the space where the alien object was working away at the frame surrounding the cargo hold. It looked like it was one step away from attacking the main hull.

  *There’s something we want to try, and we would rather you were outside the hull when we do.*

  That rocked her back in her seat. /Outside the hull?/ There was a very bright and growing sun outside, and they were barreling headlong toward it. I’ll be roasted, she thought.

  *No, we have a plan...*

  *

  Julie sealed the helmet and moved to the exit hatch. Her stomach was churning. She had been outside in a suit on Triton’s surface, but never outside a small craft in the middle of infinite space. /You’re sure this is safe?/

  *The word “safe” would be an exaggeration. But we’ll protect you from the radiation and heat, you’ll still be enclosed in the threading field, and you’ll be farther from what we’re about to try.*

  She waited as pressure in the cabin dropped. /You mean, you’re moving me out of the line of fire?/

  *Something like that.*

  The door slid open, and she cautiously floated out onto the doorstep, attached a safety tether, and turned to face the little craft’s cabin, a disconcertingly small enclosure mounted on the front of the craft’s ungainly arachnidlike chassis. A series of handholds led to the cabin roof and to what Julie automatically thought of, despite the lack of gravity, as the “top” of the craft. A blazing light in the edge of her visor revealed the massive disk of the sun to her right. She avoided looking that way, even though the suit had filters and the stones had promised to protect her. The edge of the disk that she glimpsed had a shimmering quality through the spatial threading.

  *Please move to the top. Carefully.*

  She took the handholds like rungs of a ladder and floated hand over hand onto the roof. Once there, she rearranged the safety lines so that two were clipped to cleats on either side of her. She bobbed slightly in a standing position on the roof of the cabin, looking around. Despite being encased in a spacesuit, she felt naked and vulnerable outside the ship. Vertigo threatened her around the edges. From here, she could see just about the entire maintenance craft except for the cargo pod hidden beneath the cabin and the service section amidships where fuel tanks were clustered. The translator was nestled between the service and rear propulsion sections, just peeking out with its revolving cascade of black and iridescent globes.

  /What do I do now?/

  As if in answer, something quivered in her peripheral vision. She looked quickly, and saw a half-silver bubble pop into existence around her, then slowly fade into transparency. /What was that?/

  *An extra measure of protection.*

  That was undoubtedly supposed to reassure her. And yet, the vacuum of space surrounded her with its diamond hardness. If anything, the bubble seemed to filter out the shimmer of the threading, making the sharp emptiness of space as stark as if she were simply floating in the void. And here she was, on the roof of her spacecraft, sunbathing under a very tropical sun in a secondhand spacesuit. /What about that thing down there that’s eating through my ship? Can this bubble keep me safe from that?/

  *Unknown. Please refrain from conversation now.*

  The translator brightened momentarily. Then, through the cabin roof, she felt a vibration. There was a flash and a jet of light, white with blue-green flares, out one side of the cargo area. Startled, she bounced up against her tethers. The flash and jet repeated—and again, four times. /What are you doing?/ she asked when she could stand it no longer.

  *Focusing bursts of solar radiation on the object, hoping to disrupt it.*

  /And did you?/

  *Unclear. It deflected some of the energy out through the side of the hull.*

  /Was that why you wanted me out of the way? Jesus, mother of—!/ She glanced back at the sun. Are we going to make it? Are we going to dump this thing in the lap of the sun? Or is it having us for toast?

  *It will be close. We’re going to lose more of the ship going in.*

  She shut her eyes. /Can I back out now? No—forget I said that. If we’re going to die, let’s make damn sure we take it out with us!/

  *That’s our intention.*

  Julie turned to face the sun. Screw the glare, she’d trust the filters. She could clearly see sunspots on the face of the sun now, like irregular black moles, and the curling turbulence of an electromagnetic storm. One day to go. /Is there any hope we can still drop it in and try to get away?/

  *Uncertain we can jettison. Our powers are being strained. Containment and speed are our sole priorities.*

  Julie closed her eyes to slits. Maybe you can’t jettison with your fancy fields, she thought. But that thing’s in a mechanical cargo pod. I just wonder... She called to her spacesuit heads-up display for information on the layout of the craft.

  *

  Time passed more quickly than she’d have thought possible. By the time she’d figured out most of what she needed to know, she was very tired, and the sun loomed large in the sky. She must have dozed off, because the sun’s disk seemed to have grown when she wasn’t looking. She remembered holding her bent arm up to the sun, and being able to span the sun’s diameter with her forearm from elbow to fingertips. That was no longer true. The sun was now swollen to cover a third of the sky.

  By this time, she thought, the skin of the ship ought to be glowing like a horseshoe in a blacksmith’s fire. It wasn’t, so she guessed the translator—or the spatial threading—was protecting it from the heat. She peered cautiously over the edge of the cabin roof to see what condition the ship was in now, and was shocked to see dancing rays of light and sparkling dust billowing steadily from below. /What’s that mean that I’m seeing?/

  The stones answered gravely, *You will not be able to return to your cabin.*

  /You mean it’s being destroyed?/

  *Unfortunately.*

  Damn. Damn. And now...just knowing that her living space with all of its amenities was gone, she felt a sudden, urgent need to pee. Forget it, kid. Hold it. That’s how you’re going out. Try not to pee in your pants when you fall into the sun.

  *Does this help?*

  The pressure in her bladder suddenly went away. She blinked, and thought for a moment she saw a glitter in the distance. /As a matter of fact, it does. What did you do with the pee?/

  *We removed it.*

  /Damn. Really? Did you dump it on that thing’s head down there?/ That would give her some satisfaction at least, pissing on the thing that was trying to kill her.

  *What an odd notion. No—we didn’t want to give it the mass, so we vented it to space.*

  Julie sighed in disappointment. She felt oppressed by the sun, vast and sullen through the filtering field. How much longer? She had a sudden vision of just the three of them left, falling in a cluster into the sun: the mass-gobbling alien object, the writhing translator, and her in her force-field bubble.

  *Not so far from the truth. Look to your right.*

  She looked. Where the translator had been nestled into the framework of the ship’s midsection, it was now far more exposed. The portion of the ship’s hull beneath it had been eaten away, and it now looked like what it was, a very strange, semi-iridescent object hitching a ride on the side of a steel framework. Its perch was disintegrating in
a soft haze. God damn it. God damn that thing!

  *Understand, the translator is not a fighting machine, and never was. It can manipulate space, but was not created to do battle against a malicious foe. If it had, the Fffff’tink might have survived.*

  The Fffff’tink? She caught a mental glimpse of a civilization self-destructing, a civilization that both the translator and something called a quarx had labored to save. And now the fight had moved...to this little craft, a battle to save her civilization.

  *We only have to hold a little longer.*

  She gulped a breath, staring down at the half-eaten hull. /Aren’t we close enough to the sun now that we could drop it like a bomb, then get away before it destroys us? Could it escape at this point?/

  *Probably not. But to release it, we would have to relax our containment fields. And we dare not risk that, not yet.*

  Julie stared thoughtfully into space for a moment, then resumed studying the diagrams in her heads-up display.

  *

  Had she dozed again? She was definitely tired. Being out in the hot sun in a threading field must do that to you. The sun now filled most of the sky. She was very thirsty. She sipped from the suit’s meager water supply and surveyed the wreckage of the ship at her feet. Perhaps it was time to put her own plan into action.

  /I need to move down toward you,/ she said.

  *Do you mean toward the translator?*

  /Yes. Can you protect me while I move?/

  *We can, but...it is less safe.*

  /I thought you said “safe” wasn’t a word that applied here./

  *What are you planning?*

  She began readjusting her tether lines and inching her way toward the back of what was left of the cabin. /I’m planning to drop a payload into the sun. The hard way. By hand./