The Endless Sky

by Adam P. Knave

  Mud walked, the rest of the team following, as he continued to ask the three Sweepers about their lands. “Do the large creatures ever land here?” he asked, pointing toward what seemed to be a crater.

  “They do not sit on our lands,” Sweeper Two said. “They fill the sky, mighty beasts.”

  “Mighty indeed,” Bee agreed. “They are strong, and yet seem peaceful.”

  “Unless angered,” Sweeper One said.

  “Of course,” Mud agreed. Then: “We’re still getting a tour,” he sub-vocalized so his comm would pick it up.

  “We’re stuck here while we wait,” Steelbox said. “So keep buying us time.”

  “We’ll try,” Bee told him, before nodding at something Sweeper Three had said that she hadn’t heard.

  They continued to walk, asking questions. They dug out information on the Sweepers’ habit of floating in their skyspace (unless they needed shelter or production, it calmed them, apparently), their low use of technology (they didn’t like using it but had needs), as well as their seemingly high level of the same technology (once they had tools improved, they simply stopped using the old tools—though the levels of different factions within their race would be different) and, most of all, their societal structure.

  The universe the Sweepers inhabited sat much smaller than the one the Insertion Team originated in. Still vastly large, the other universe seemed older, with far more of its matter having been converted to energy—the Sweepers and their large, whale-like creatures both capable of digesting that energy to live on. To further Bee’s thoughts along the age of the universe, diversity of species would tend to happen early on—a vastly old universe, such as (probably) the one she now walked in, had seen enough collapse that only a few species remained.

  Given the millennia upon millennia involved in such a process, it remained unlikely the current species even recalled, or had records of, prior ones. So for the Sweepers, everything stood as it always had.

  Their society seemed to be made up of different clans, varied in size, across bands of their universe. Some regions were uninhabitable for reasons Bee’s translator couldn’t get a lock on. The clans communicated, as best they could given the insanely vast distances and time to travel, but for the most part they left each other alone.

  Which presented one of the biggest problems, to Mud. They realistically didn’t have a governmental body set up to deal with a problem of this scale. They needed it dealt with, to be sure, but any one clan could agree to a solution that another would reject. This, he told himself, was why they needed to get the scientists back to their universe and hash something out that would manage to actually solve the problem.

  Far easier said than done, Mud knew, assuming that level of solution could even be achieved. Though he had seen—and heard stories of, of course—attempts that moved the needle simply by having been attempted. People could fail, but the act of trying as hard they could would, on occasion, shift the balance. It would be something to hope for and fall back on, if the time came.

  While Mud, Bee, and Chellox continued to learn about the Sweepers, Steelbox and Olivet waited nervously. When, after what seemed like hours, the Sweeper returned, it gestured wildly at them. “Come, come now, to the technicals you need,” it told them.

  “You were going to bring them here,” Steelbox said.

  “This is easier.”

  “No, we need to collect our people as well.” Steelbox looked at Olivet for support. “You said you would bring them here.”

  “We must go now,” the Sweeper said, gesturing for them to follow.

  “We’re being led to a second location,” Olivet said into his comms, “so this might get strange.”

  They followed the Sweeper out of the building and across the surface for a while, where, without warning, the Sweeper leapt and swam upward into the skyspace. Steelbox and Olivet followed, using their GravPacks, glancing back nervously.

  “Do you have a name?” Steelbox asked the Sweeper.

  “(Untranslatable),” came the reply.

  “Helpful,” Steelbox told Olivet, who shrugged. “How far are we going?” he asked the Sweeper.

  “Not far now, small land around this one.”

  Sure enough, a smaller landmass lay in the shadow of the one they had left, and the Sweeper landed there, the humans not far behind. On the springy land mass stood several small buildings like they had seen before, and from one came four Sweepers, all carrying various devices—Sweeper technology.

  “They will go with you,” the Sweeper said.

  “Yes, we will help you,” one of the Sweeper scientists said, “but we must go now.”

  “We need the rest of our team,” Steelbox insisted. “Let me arrange to meet them, up there.” He pointed toward the skyspace between the two landmasses. “Guys,” he said into comms, “we have the scientists, they have a bunch of their tech. We need to get out of here. We’re in the skyspace above the landmass now. Home in on me.”

  “So what,” Mud asked Sweeper One, “can we call you, individual names or as a race?”

  “We are the (untranslatable), and I am (untranslatable),” came the reply.

  Mud nodded, and he listened to Steelbox’s message. “Well, I guess Sweepers it is, for now. Anyway,” he looked at his teammates, “we should get back to our own universe. We will continue to find a solution.”

  “Yes,” agreed Sweeper Two, “you must solve.”

  “Unless,” Mud said, “you want to help? Let us talk to your scientists?”

  “No, you must solve,” the Sweeper insisted.

  “All right,” Mud nodded, “we will go. Our friends have already started off, so we will meet them,” he said, using his GravPack to begin to rise off the surface. Bee and Chellox followed, as did all three Sweepers.

  “We need to ditch them fast,” Bee said softly.

  “I know,” Mud told her.

  “How will you move back to the other?” Sweeper One asked. “We can assist.”

  “Oh, no, that’s all right,” Mud said, “don’t worry. You go back. We’ll be fine.”

  “We can assist you back to other,” the Sweeper repeated.

  They rose higher, and Mud could see Steelbox, Olivet, and the four Sweeper scientists. “Slave your packs,” he said softly. Bee and Chellox did as asked, and Mud linked an attracting strand to Steelbox’s own GravPack, reeling them over to the other group quickly, leaving the three Sweepers behind.

  “What did they say?” Mud asked Bee as they got to their teammates.

  “Out of range, no idea.”

  “Right, OK, fine. Steelbox, you have an exit?”

  “I have it,” Olivet said, pulling out the box the Sweeper had given them. “We were told it wouldn’t be as bad this time.”

  “Well,” Mud said, glancing behind them, “let’s hit it. Those guys have noticed us all.” He saw the three Sweepers, the leaders they’d been introduced to, coming angrily at them now. They’d spotted the scientists and probably, Mud thought, the box Olivet held, and had easily worked out the plan. From a strictly political angle, this mission had gone about as far south as it could go. Still, it would get the job done, he hoped.

  They huddled closer together, the Insertion Team and their new science quartet of Sweepers.

  “Quick,” Bee said, “Mud, throw a gravshield around them.” Mud did as told, and before he could ask why, she nodded, “Not sure what they need to breathe, but this should trap some of what’s around for a while.”

  “Good call,” Mud said. “Olivet?”

  “Right,” Olivet said, and he hit a switch on the box in his hand.

  Breach.

  CHAPTER 29

  SPACE SPAT THEM out a good distance from the wreckage of the Ratzinger. The Sweepers floundered, waving their limbs and making struggled sounds. Mud extended his shield, and Bee merged hers with his, checking on them.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, worried they’d made a giant mistake.

  “Yes,” one of the
m answered after a few seconds. “Switching to your side is not pleasant.”

  “We feel the same in reverse,” Mud said. “The feeling should ease soon.”

  While Mud and Bee talked the Sweepers back to calm, Chellox comm’d for a pickup. They’d emerged from the other universe only a few hours hard burn from where they’d entered, so the Arrow could swing around and get them sooner than later.

  While they waited, the scientist Sweepers helped feed Bee’s translator with basic words and building blocks, as well as some of their grammar, improving it far faster than it would otherwise. They seemed in good spirits once they recovered from the initial breach.

  “Won’t your people want to get you back?” Steelbox asked. “We didn’t exactly leave on good terms.”

  “(Untranslatable), who brought us to you, will calm them, and explain. They would agree eventually, but we felt no time left.”

  “We agree,” Mud said, “but what convinced you of the time concerns?”

  “The (untranslatable) events—”

  “Breaches,” Mud said, and Bee nodded, tapping something into the translator, which repeated the phrase in the Sweepers’ language.

  “Yes,” the Sweeper agreed, “the breaches, they became more dangerous with each time.”

  “A star from our universe just got pulled into one,” Bee said.

  “Yes, but also the between,” the Sweeper told her, “weakens. Too many more and both sides will become one. Neither will survive.”

  “Wait, what?!” Steelbox said loudly. “Did you just say both our universes will collapse into one?”

  One of the other Sweepers waved its limbs quickly. “And we are low on time. The between grows weaker. Your small crossings agitate.”

  “The large creatures get angry and attack the walls of the universe itself,” Bee said, “and every time it gets worse, are you sure?”

  “We would like to look at your data as well.”

  “That will be easy,” Bee told them.

  They continued to discuss matters loosely while they waited. Shifting to work out what the Sweepers could survive in, they discovered that open space would not do, nor could the Sweepers propel themselves in a void.

  Chellox bottled some of the skyspace they’d brought over with them, carefully storing it and hoping they could replicate it back at the Amalfi. Olivet just hoped that what they were floating in currently would last long enough for finding out. The team played with thin margins often, Olivet knew, but this one seemed recklessly so.

  Not that he had a better idea. Which was, historically, the problem. Not with the team itself—none of them really thought that, at this point—but more with the need for the team. The problem of the universe, Olivet supposed, remained that things broke down without warning.

  They continued to wait, and to learn about each other. Bee felt lighter working with other scientists. When a word or phrase wasn’t understood by the translator, they worked at it, finding expansion points to help overall instead of just coping in the moment.

  And then there came the problem of names. Building an alphabet proved difficult given that neither language used the same sonic frequencies, much less similar building blocks. Bee, Olivet, and the scientist Sweepers built something rough, though. Once the name ‘Sweepers’ could translate, they agreed it would do for their race, for now. Individual names, however, were transcribed as phonetically as possible.

  Traksit, Jomin, Wokha, and Pelith were as close as human languages would come to the Sweepers’ names, and both sides agreed on using them. Bee wondered how far off their own names were for the Sweepers, not that it truly mattered.

  Chellox hung back while language translation went on. He wanted to point out that Tsyfarian names didn’t quite translate properly, either, but decided it would only muddy the waters. Still, the general hubris of humanity never failed to surprise him in little ways.

  The Arrow arrived at last, and the team boarded quickly, keeping the shield around the Sweepers so they could breathe. Inside, they tested the difference for tolerance to a general air mixture and found it closer, but still not right.

  Chellox and Steelbox headed to the pilot and navigation seats and relieved the crew there. “Thanks for taking good care of her,” Steelbox said, clapping the temporary pilot, Joanna Klein, on the shoulder.

  “No problem,” Klein said, “but they should’ve warned me—those engines handle strange, I’ve never flown anything like it.”

  “We get that a lot,” Chellox said, smiling. “Tsyfarian tech. Catch me on the Amalfi sometime, I’ll give you a run down.”

  “Oh hey, thanks,” she said, moving to the back of the ship with her navigator. They both stopped dead at the sight of the Sweepers, floating in a small gravity shield. “What the—”

  “Our honored guests,” Mud said, “so let’s make sure to treat them that way, all right?”

  “Yes sir, Captain Madison,” Klein said quickly. She moved further down the ship and sat down before he could sigh, or correct her on what to call him. Bee noticed, laughing, and buckled herself in.

  “It won’t be long,” she told the Sweepers, “until we are at our base.”

  “Mills,” Mud said into comms, “what’s our status?”

  “In the Amalfi closing in on a midpoint between Claudia Seven’s last address and you. The evac is still going on, as planned. We saved the majority of a planet today.”

  Mud closed his eyes and let his head fall back. He hadn’t wanted to admit the worry to himself, but at its removal he let it wash over him and away. “Great to hear. We have our cargo. Four in number. Bee’s going to send through readings on a sample of what they breathe. Work it up for us?”

  “We’ll get on it. See you soon, Arrow.”

  Wokha and Bee worked together during the trip to start running numbers on breach probabilities, their data merging with what Bee and Steelbox had worked up so far. They discussed the long-range comms issue, Bee showing Wokha and Jomin how they worked. Adding the Sweepers’ data to their own, Bee saw a larger issue. It wasn’t just the large creatures from the other universe causing breaches. The amount of small breaches from communications itself weakened the barrier.

  “Mud,” Bee said, calling him over, “this is both bigger and worse than we thought.”

  “Isn’t it always?”

  “I want to disagree, but I can’t,” she told him. Pointing at the data on her screen, she circled some results with a finger. “But. We might have to reduce long-range comm use, across the board.”

  “That’s...what does that even look like?”

  “Not for us to decide, I think,” she replied. “I just know it’s not going to go over well.”

  “Keep looking for alternatives,” Mud said, and he sat back down heavily. He mirrored her screen and told Olivet to do the same.

  “I don’t think there are any,” Bee told him softly.

  “We look regardless. You know they’re going to ask. Hell, insist. So we show them every dead path we can.”

  The Arrow and Amalfi met and started to address the problem of breathable atmosphere for the Sweepers. Mills and his teams tried a few solutions, the Sweepers gamely trying each one, if warily, until they found something that worked. A spare GravPack went with them, creating a shield to keep the strange mix close to the Sweepers and away from everyone else who needed to breathe.

  Bee and Mud caught Mills up with the problems they faced. Mills looked at them, a twitch at the corner of his mouth as if he were about to burst out laughing.

  “This isn’t funny,” Bee said. She studied him, wondering if he’d snapped under the strain of being pulled in so many directions at once. If so, she felt she couldn’t criticize him for cracking up—she’d often wanted to give in and curl up in a dark corner herself.

  “At this point, it’s a little funny,” he said.

  “Not really,” Mud put in, “and if we have a double breach, a total collapse of both universes—”

  “Because we use
the radio too much to talk to each other,” Mills said. “And there’s the funny. There it is. Humanity, entire universes, destroyed because we played a big game of ‘No, you hang up,’ which...I guess I get to explain.”

  “Are the Brands still on board?” Mud asked suddenly.

  “Yeah, I think they...yeah, they are, we decided to rehome them in a cell here for now. Why?”

  “Let’s get them up here. They might be a help.”

  Mills called down to the brig and spoke quietly to the guards there. Mud caught Bee up with his ideas and they moved to discuss them with the Sweepers. “Oh, hey, Mills,” Mud said, as they left, “grab my parents, too, will you? We’ll meet in the lab the Sweepers are using.”

  CHAPTER 30

  BEE WAVED HER ARMS at Wokha, who waved arms back. “We can’t just stop using long-range communications,” she insisted for something north of the third time.

  “But you must,” Wokha replied.

  “Surely,” Traksit added, “your universe is more important than speaking quickly to each other.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Mud said, resting a hand on Bee’s shoulder in an attempt to tag himself into the conversation. They’d been going over the idea of reducing comm use for a while now and had gotten nowhere, despite trying to stay only technical. “We can’t just cut long-range communications. I mean, we can, obviously, but there are impacts you don’t see.”

  “So then,” Jomin said slowly, “explain.”

  “In this part of the galaxy, and frankly a bit further than that, we have what we call the Gov. It’s humanity led, though not exclusively human at all. It protects our planets. It also helps make sure trade is run smoothly, and fairly. Without the Gov, each planet fends for itself.”

  “You would not be able to remain peaceful, if not for this overseer?” Jomin asked.

  “Oh, sure, for a while,” Mud said. “Possibly years, even. But eventually, some idiot on some rock will decide he wants someone else’s stuff. Now with long-range—instant, I might add, that’s key—instant communication, that idiot starts something stupid and the Gov hears about it. There’s a ship, like the one we’re on now, hopefully close, and the problem is resolved before a major loss of life.”