The Shores Beyond Time

by Kevin Emerson

  “What?” said Phoebe.

  “I was just theorizing that this current state, where I am unable to perceive my future, is the normal operating condition for beings like yourself.”

  “So?”

  “We have always observed the behaviors of three-dimensional beings with a certain amount of bemusement, and yet I understand now; it’s rather terrifying.”

  “Welcome to our world,” said Liam.

  “Ships,” said Phoebe. “Come on, you guys.”

  “You’re not curious about this place?” Liam asked, feeling a surprising flash of annoyance at her. “Even a little?”

  “Of course I am, but you know what I feel even more than that? Scared. And I don’t just mean of this place: Every minute we stay here is making our families that much farther away.”

  The chronologist closed the ring of universes and returned to the control spheres. He tapped here and there, holographic rectangles of information appearing and winking out. “The hangar is twenty-four levels down,” he reported. “Captain Barrie is there.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I mapped his bioelectrical data when he was transporting me here. And—oh, very interesting: It appears that the captain is not alone. There are more bioelectrical signatures in his vicinity, possibly life-forms.”

  “Who are they?” Liam asked.

  “It is hard to characterize. The signatures are behaving strangely. It’s possible I am misidentifying some sort of Dark Star technology, but whatever it is, the signal is incredibly strong.” The chronologist closed the holographic windows and consulted his orange crystal. “I have mapped the route. This way.” He strode toward the corridor through which Barrie had left.

  The panels beneath their feet lit their way sequentially as they walked. They made a series of turns, the chronologist interpreting the glow from his crystal at each intersection, until they reached a hallway whose walls ballooned with clear cylindrical doors.

  “These appear to be elevators,” said the chronologist.

  “I don’t see any buttons or anything,” said Phoebe.

  “Perhaps they require—”

  The door closest to Liam slid open.

  “Did your friend do that?” asked Phoebe.

  “I don’t know.” Liam’s nerves ramped up, his heart beating faster.

  “It could simply be a motion detector of some sort,” said the chronologist, and yet Liam felt nearly certain that Iris had an eye on them.

  The three stepped to the threshold of the door. There was no elevator car; indeed, the walls were completely smooth, no cables, wires, or magnet tracks like an elevator on a starliner or Mars. Only a shaft dropping into bottomless darkness, lit by narrow bands of light that made semicircles around the inner circumference. As Liam peered into it, he felt an odd lightening in his head, and then his hands and feet.

  The chronologist reached out into the space with two of his feet. “The shaft appears to be gravity neutral.” He stepped out completely and floated there in midair, bouncing lightly.

  Liam held his breath and stepped out into the abyss, feeling his foot, then his leg, lightening, and then he floated out into the space. One glance past his feet, in the dim void, made his stomach lurch with fear, and yet he seemed to be suspended there safely.

  Phoebe gazed down the shaft. “If Dark Star wanted to get rid of us, this would be an easy way to do it.”

  The chronologist scanned the wall beside the shaft. “The system is analyzing our composition and compensating the gravity field accordingly.”

  “You guys better be right about this.” Phoebe stepped in, her eyes widening as the gravity lightened around her.

  They pushed off the walls and oriented themselves so that they were facing the door, as you would in a normal elevator. Nothing happened.

  “Now what?” said Phoebe.

  “We’d like to go to the hangar?” Liam said to the walls. He checked with the chronologist. “Level . . .”

  “If this is level one, we would like to go to the twenty-fourth level down from here.”

  A ring of white light lit up around them. Liam felt a tugging inside him and they began to move, not quite falling, but lowering gently down the tube. More rings lit sequentially as they descended, as if indicating each level.

  “Whoo,” said Phoebe, her arms out for balance. “Okay, this is cool.”

  They passed clear rounded doors, one after another, until finally the rings stopped illuminating, gravity lightened again, and they slowed to a hover. The door in front of them slid open and they stepped out onto the solid metal floor in a short corridor lit once again by whichever floor panels they were standing on.

  “This way,” said the chronologist. The corridor led them a short distance and then opened up into a vast room, hundreds of meters across, with a high, cavernous ceiling and curved walls. There was still only the light from the floor where they stood, but there was also a dim glow in the far distance.

  All around them were the silhouettes of ships. There were rows and rows of models like the one Kyla had piloted, hundreds of them. Their glimmering black surfaces reminded Liam of the muscovite sheets they would find in the lava tubes back on Mars: reflective, but also with an oily sheen. There were other, larger craft, made of that same material, as well as needle-shaped vessels with a cabin for a single passenger at their center.

  “Who are all these ships for?” Phoebe asked as they started down one of the rows. She stopped beside the nearest glassy ship like they’d traveled in. “One of these should work.” She pressed the panel beside the door, as she’d seen Kyla do, but nothing happened. “How do we get in?”

  “No idea,” said Liam.

  “We’d like to go in this ship!” Phoebe shouted up toward the distant ceiling. “You try,” she said to Liam. “You’re the one she likes so much.” When Liam didn’t move, Phoebe added, “No, I’m serious, ask her.”

  “She said she wasn’t going to be around for a while.”

  Phoebe frowned at him. Liam pushed back, but again Iris wasn’t there. And maybe that caused a brief flash of relief. If she has something to show me, how will she feel about me leaving? And another thought followed that: Do I really want to go?

  “Try the door, then,” Phoebe urged. “Maybe you have the magic touch.”

  Liam felt his heart beating faster. He put his hand against the round panel, held it there, but the ship didn’t respond.

  “Okay, let’s try the next one.”

  That ship didn’t open, nor did the next one in the line.

  “If you don’t mind,” said the chronologist, “I believe we should investigate that.” He pointed down the rows of ships, toward the center of the hangar. Liam could just barely make out a great structure ahead in the gloom. It seemed to have smooth metal walls: a massive cylinder, oriented vertically and extending from the ceiling high above down through the floor.

  “What is it?” Phoebe asked.

  “As best I can tell, that cylinder is where the captain is. It is also the source of the bioelectric readings.”

  “Okay, you guys take a look at that while I check more ships,” said Phoebe. She moved off to the other side of the row.

  Liam walked beside the chronologist. They passed silently down the long row, the panels lighting beneath their feet. As they approached, the cylindrical object’s full size began to sink in. It was a couple hundred meters in diameter, and its metal had a faint glow to it. A railing encircled it, and Liam saw that there was a gap between the hangar floor and the side of the cylinder. A narrow catwalk crossed the space to an oval impression of a door.

  They reached the railing and Liam peered over. The cylinder stretched down many more decks, hundreds of meters, and beneath it, far below, there seemed to be no floor, just a buzzing energy field. Beyond that was the utter darkness of the black hole beneath the ship, only visible by the streaks of light that briefly flashed around its perimeter.

  The chronologist held up his crystal, sc
anning the cylinder.

  “No luck,” said Phoebe, joining them. “I tried like twenty ships. None of them will open. Maybe there’s a control panel around or something.”

  “We can look,” said Liam. He watched the chronologist studying his crystal. “Are there people—or life-forms in there?” said Liam. “Do you think it’s the Architects?”

  “None of my additional scans can penetrate this material,” he said, motioning to the cylinder wall. “Nor can I identify the alloy. Not only is it unlike anything in our universe, but its atomic structure is also unlike anything that the physical laws of this universe should allow for.”

  “Like, it’s from somewhere else?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Does that mean it’s not even a part of Dark Star?”

  “I cannot be certain, it—”

  Just then, the door slid open. Captain Barrie emerged, walking briskly and talking into his link. “Okay, I’m in a better location. Repeat that last part—Kyla? Can you hear me?”

  Liam turned to duck out of sight but there was no cover and Barrie saw them immediately. His eyes widened in surprise, and Liam expected him to explode in anger—

  But he smiled. “Well, well, look at the three of you!” He glanced at his link. “I sent you away not even . . . thirty minutes ago, and yet here you are.” He nodded to himself as he stepped from the catwalk to the hangar floor. “I suppose this only supports why I brought you here. Find anything interesting?”

  “We, um, not really,” said Liam. He’d expected Barrie to be angry. Hadn’t he raised his voice about insubordination before? “What’s inside there?” Liam asked, pointing to the cylinder.

  “Good question,” said Barrie. “I—”

  His link flashed. “Sir, are you there?”

  Barrie held a finger up to Liam, Phoebe, and the chronologist. “I’m here. Go ahead.”

  “It’s the fuel drones, sir,” said Kyla. “They’re returning through the portal, but we’re picking up an unidentified craft with them.”

  “Unidentified?” said Barrie. “Have you scanned—”

  A great rumble reverberated through the floors, far more severe than the earlier ones from Dark Star’s systems. All of them stumbled for a moment, Liam and Phoebe grabbing the railing to steady themselves.

  “What was that?” Barrie shouted.

  “The bogey shot down one of the fuel ships!” Kyla replied. “It crashed into Dark Star!”

  “Shoot it down!” shouted Barrie.

  “Captain, the Artemis’s defense systems are offline except for the nukes, but we can’t risk detonating a warhead by Dark Star, not to mention that black hole. We have no idea what would happen.”

  Another rumble shook the floor. Somewhere above: a screech of twisting metal. Liam shared a wide-eyed glance with Phoebe.

  “Who are they?” Barrie demanded.

  “Scans of the ship are coming back inconclusive,” said Kyla. “I don’t know what that thing is, but we’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Scramble cruisers, then!”

  “The way this thing moves, sir, I don’t know if we’d stand a chance.”

  Barrie broke into a run. “I’m on my way back up to the control room. Dark Star must have some defenses.”

  Liam watched him go, stunned. “Do you know who it is?” he asked the chronologist.

  The chronologist made a sighing sort of sound through his two noses and shook his head. “As I told you, the future has been obscured for me. I can’t believe this is how you go through your existence.”

  Another explosion rumbled through the deck.

  “We should probably follow him,” said Phoebe, striding back toward the elevators. “Does Iris know what’s going on?” she said as Liam caught up beside her. “She must not like being attacked, right?”

  Liam pushed himself back, but once again, Iris was nowhere to be seen and didn’t reply when he called to her. “She’s still not responding,” he said. “Should we follow the captain, or—”

  But Phoebe had stopped suddenly. “Liam! Look!” She pointed at his chest.

  Liam saw a faint green light flashing beneath his shirt. His heart tripped over itself and he fumbled to pull the silver chain around his neck, revealing the beacon, the little green light blinking over and over. Liam pressed it, and it blinked again. He jammed his thumb against it three times and it kept blinking at him.

  He met Phoebe’s gaze. “An unidentified ship . . . ,” she said, eyes trembling.

  “They found us,” said Liam, his throat getting tight. Was it really possible?

  But Phoebe was already sprinting after the captain. “Wait!” she called. “We know who it is!”

  Barrie paused at the elevator, and he turned around. “What are you talking about?”

  “The ship!” said Liam breathlessly as they reached him. “I think my sister is on it!”

  Barrie cocked his head and made a puzzled expression. “Come with me, then.”

  Liam looked behind them. “Where’s the chronologist?”

  “I think he’s back at that cylinder,” said Phoebe. “Come on, he’ll catch up.”

  Liam and Phoebe stepped into the elevator beside Barrie, hovering in the low-gravity field.

  “Control room level,” said Barrie, and they began to rise. “Kyla, what’s the status of that ship?”

  “It’s broken off its attack and is hovering at a distance, sir. I’d guess it was scanning us, but we’re not picking up any of the usual signals.”

  Liam couldn’t remember any of the tap code sequences, so he just kept pressing his beacon, watching through wet eyes as it blinked back.

  They reached the main floor and raced back to the control room, where Barrie swiped at the spherical controls. Out across the surface of Dark Star, two different spots flashed and spiked with bolts of green energy—the crashed fuel ships. Beyond that, the rest of the fuel fleet was settling into their racks and lowering themselves out of sight. Wings were extended out of their teardrop-shaped bodies, glowing bright green with harvested energy.

  “Sir,” said Kyla, “we’re being hailed over local link.”

  And now the ship swooped over the dome so close that they could see it. Large and oblong, made of brilliant silver metal.

  “It’s them,” said Phoebe, her eyes welling up.

  “Sir, she says she’s Lana Saunders-Chang of the ISA Scorpius. They’re requesting permission to board.”

  Barrie looked at Liam and Phoebe.

  “Our parents,” said Liam, his eyes brimming, too. Phoebe’s hand slipped into his and squeezed tightly.

  Barrie’s expression remained grim. “Tell them to land here on Dark Star. And then I want you and the other officers to join us.”

  As Liam watched the sleek ship hover and begin to lower itself toward the landing area, he caught a glimmer in the corner of his eye.

  You’re welcome, said Iris.

  11

  TIME TO DARK STAR FUNCTIONALITY: 10H:26M

  As the door in the side of the Styrlax ship slid open and a set of stairs lowered, Liam thought he might explode inside. He and Phoebe and Captain Barrie stood on the landing platform. Liam kept tapping the beacon with his thumb, as if that was somehow making this real, keeping it from being a dream or a hallucination.

  It’s real, Iris said from nearby.

  It made him smile and yet somehow made the shaking inside him worse, the glare of the fireball of Centauri A still behind his eyes. Why now? It was like any feeling he had that went too far in either direction, good or bad, could set off that vision in his head. He hovered ever so slightly back from the moment, where the feeling was less intense.

  Did you know this would happen? he asked Iris.

  Once we moved the timing of the supernova to allow for your families’ survival, this became the most probable future.

  Why didn’t you tell me?

  Probable is not definite. And I know how important they are to you. I did not want to get your hop
es up. Also this way, it’s a nice surprise, yes?

  Well, yeah. Liam thought to say that he still might have liked the heads-up. He could have handled the uncertainty, couldn’t he? Then again, his nerves had been frayed enough already. Is this what you wanted to show me?

  He sensed Iris smiling. This is just the beginning.

  Liam felt a tinge of frustration. What is—

  “Phoebe!”

  The stairs had finished lowering from the side of the Styrlax ship, and Ariana had appeared first in the doorway. Her skin was Telphon lavender, her bristles darker than Phoebe’s, her hair pale pink and also in a braid. She wore charcoal-colored pants and a long-sleeved shirt that were made of a semireflective material that glinted in the light as she moved, and high boots. She strode down the steps, followed by Phoebe’s father, Paolo, who wore similar clothing. Those probably weren’t their real names, Liam realized. Ariana had that stern, tight-lipped expression Liam had always known, and yet as she neared Phoebe, who stood with her arms crossed, trembling, Ariana’s face began to crack as well, tears appearing, and she wrapped her daughter in a hug.

  “We should have listened,” Liam heard Ariana say.