The Sunspacers Trilogy

by George Zebrowski

  “Will they follow?” Emil asked, gasping for breath as they reached the exit.

  Max stepped out into a blue station. Emil and Lucinda almost knocked him over as they came out. After a few moments, he realized there was no one behind them.

  “I think,” Max said as he took a deep breath, “that they must have learned a long time ago to stay away, after a few of them probably disappeared.”

  “What were they?” Emil asked. “Animals or intelligent beings?”

  “Maybe something in between,” Max said, still seeing the strange eyes peering at him in the starry night.

  “This might be our blue station,” Emil said.

  “Or the other one we visited,” Lucinda added.

  “Or a third one,” Max said, realizing that the column might have whirled while they were outside.

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  11

  “It’s not here,” Max said as he sat down between Emil and Lucinda. Again they had explored in widening circles. “I went twice as far.” He leaned back against the column and closed his eyes. The way to the habitat’s blue station was through one of the twelve portals, he told himself again; but how long would it take to hit on the right one if the columns continued to make their random spins? His answer was always the same: keep trying one portal after another. Spin or no spin, there wasn’t much else they could do. Maybe the spins had nothing to do with fixing destinations, and the portals always stopped where they started, as part of a recharging process of some kind. But if destinations were being set, then maybe someone or something wanted them to follow a certain path.

  “Let’s get going,” Lucinda said.

  He opened his eyes and saw her standing over him. She helped him up, then looked at her brother. “Come on, we’ll only get more tired and hungry.”

  Emil struggled to his feet.

  Max hurried into the next portal. The blackness closed in around him. His neck tingled, as if he could feel the vastness of the space he was traversing, even though he knew that the passage could not be covering distance in the usual way. It was a shortcut, a way of collapsing the distance between two distant points, as one might bring together the ends of a piece of string. To make space plastic in this way required vast amounts of energy, he supposed as he peered ahead, looking for the exit.

  “What’s wrong?” Lucinda asked as he stopped.

  “This one seems longer than the others,” he replied.

  He went ahead slowly, and finally saw the exit. It glowed pale green. He approached warily.

  “This doesn’t look right either,” Emil said as they peered out into another cave exit. “Better go back.”

  Max looked at Lucinda. Her eyes were darker in the green light. She touched his hand. “Maybe we should go back.”

  Max nodded and turned around. They followed him in silence.

  Halfway through the curve, he bumped his nose against a barrier.

  “What is it?” Lucinda asked.

  “Hit something,” he said. “One side of the passage, I think.”

  “But we’re in the middle,” Lucinda objected.

  Emil said, “Can’t walk straight?”

  “I was walking straight,” Max replied as he reached out and touched the obstruction. He ran his hands across a smooth surface, following it down to his feet, and explored to his left and right, but found no seams. The barrier curved back, becoming the sides of the passage itself.

  “I don’t know what it is,” he said, “but we can’t go this way.”

  “What?” Emil shouted.

  “Touch it yourself,” Max said. He heard Lucinda tap the surface with her fingers. Emil gave it a few impatient slaps.

  “There’s no way through,” Lucinda said at last.

  “But there was,” Emil added. “What is this? Why is it here?”

  “Maybe we triggered something that closed it,” Max said. “Or something decided to close it on us.” His throat felt very dry.

  “But why?” Emil asked.

  “They don’t want us to go back this way,” Lucinda said.

  Max said, “Maybe this passage closes when the column is spinning, and opens when it stops.”

  “I’m very thirsty, Lucinda, Emil complained.

  Max sat down against the barrier. “We’ll be right here when it opens.” Lucinda slid down next to him.

  “I’m going to look out the exit,” Emil said impatiently.

  “Stay inside!” Lucinda called after him.

  Max leaned back and closed his eyes, feeling lost and useless.

  Lucinda leaned against him. “Max, what are we going to do?”

  He took a deep breath. “I don’t know. This is getting complicated. Each portal may have an exit in another column somewhere. That would make twelve columns with twelve portals each. Every one of those one hundred forty-four portals might then lead to a column with twelve more portals, and so on. The system might branch like a tree. It’s possible that only one portal leads back to the column where we started, in the first blue-white station, where the habitat is trapped. The passages work in two directions, but they can close, like this one.”

  “We may never get back.”

  “We don’t know that. If we have to depend on chance alone, it’ll take a long time. If we’re meant to get back, then maybe we’re being guided toward the right choices. We just don’t know.…”

  Emil’s shape was outlined against the square exit.

  “Maybe we should go out,” Lucinda said, “and risk drinking what water we can find.”

  “The passage may open while we’re gone.”

  They watched Emil’s silhouette in the opening. “We may have to go out and live on that world out there,” Lucinda said.

  “The passage will open, and we’ll get home,” Max replied uneasily.

  “What if it opens once in a hundred years, or twenty, or five? Even one week would be bad enough.”

  He put his arm around her. “Don’t sound like Emil. It can’t be that long.”

  “Are you getting cold?” she asked suddenly. He felt her shiver against him.

  “A little,” he said.

  “We haven’t eaten for a while. That makes you feel colder.”

  “No kidding. You sound so official.”

  “Like my mother, you mean.”

  “A little.” He held her closer. “Warmer?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  Emil’s shape sat down in the exit.

  “Lucinda,” Max began, feeling awkward.

  “What?”

  “Let’s—let’s not ever be the way we’ve been before, toward each other, I mean.”

  She touched his face gently. “I promise, Max.”

  Emil came back and sat down next to them. “Getting dark out there. I saw a few trees beyond the cave.” He seemed in a better mood. “Well, what do we do?”

  “Get some rest until the passage opens.” Max closed his eyes.

  “Fine with me,” Emil said tiredly.

  Max opened his eyes in near darkness. The barrier still pressed against his back. His throat was very dry now. Lucinda’s head lay in his lap.

  He touched her gently. She stirred and sat up.

  “The barrier’s still up,” he said. “We’ll have to go out and try to find some water.”

  He heard her stand up and stretch.

  “What is it?” Emil asked sleepily.

  “We’re going outside.” He led the way toward the faint exit. The light became brighter when he stepped through the exit into the cave tunnel. He came to the mouth and looked out.

  “It seems to be morning,” Lucinda said as she came up next to him.

  Max stepped out on the rocky ground and breathed warm, humid air. He looked up through the trees and saw a patch of blue sky. It was getting lighter, but he couldn’t see the sun.

  The exit here was also in an outcropping of rock, set high above the forest floor. The tree trunks were straight and tall. Yellow-green leaves shook on
the complex branchings. The forest was strangely quiet.

  Emil and Lucinda came out and stood next to him. He smiled at her; she smiled back uneasily. Max took her hand and they started down to the forest floor, with Emil following.

  They reached bottom. Here the forest aisles were carpeted with oddly shaped leaves. A rough red moss crept up along the massive tree trunks. Close up, many of the trees seemed deformed, as if someone had tried to make shoulders, arms, legs, and giant heads, but had failed.

  “Which way?” Emil asked meekly.

  “I hear something,” Lucinda said.

  “Running water!” Emil shouted.

  Max listened. “I hear it, too.”

  “That way,” Lucinda said, pointing straight ahead, and led the way across the carpet of alien leaves. Emil followed her, and Max brought up the rear, stepping carefully on the soft ground as he scanned left and right, trying to be ready for the unexpected. This was a very different forest from the other one they had visited.

  Sunlight cast yellow-white spears on the leaves ahead of them. “Sun’s higher,” Emil said, staring in wonder at the variety of colors brought out by the light.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Max replied. “Alien vegetation might be poisonous.”

  Emil looked left and right with suspicion.

  “Don’t get too spooked,” Max added. “Just be careful.”

  “The water’s louder,” Lucinda said.

  They marched across the dewy leaves, drawn by the murmur of the flow, and came out into a clearing of tall yellow grass. High over the trees on the other side, a white sun burned through the morning mists. A warm breeze stirred against Max’s face. He heard the stream clearly now.

  Lucinda pointed. “It must be on the far side.”

  “I’m dying for a drink,” Emil said. He pushed into the grass, then cried out as it caught on his legs and shorts. “Help me!” he called out, twisting his body to get free.

  Lucinda started after him.

  “Wait!” Max shouted, grabbing her arm.

  “Get me out!” Emil wailed.

  “Don’t move!” Max shouted to him.

  Lucinda tried to twist free.

  “Stay here,” Max said as he let her go and slowly approached Emil. Gentle motion, he noticed, prevented the briarlike hooks on the grass stalks from catching on his coveralls. He grasped one stalk between the briars; and pulled carefully.

  “It hurts!” Emil cried.

  Max glanced back at Lucinda. “Stay there. I’m better protected than you are.” He was grateful that he had put on his long coveralls over his shirt and shorts. She nodded, her eyes wide with fright, and wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold.

  Emil closed his eyes as Max worked. The hooks came out only with great difficulty. Most were caught on Emil’s shorts and were easily removed, but a few had cut deeply into his legs. Max loosened these briars; as carefully as he could, but there was no way to avoid pulling out pieces of flesh and skin. Emil gritted his teeth, then cried out. Max freed the last hook and led Emil out of the grass.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, examining the boy’s bloodied legs. Fortunately, the briars had missed major blood vessels.

  “Funny. A little dizzy.”

  Lucinda helped Max walk him back into the forest, where they sat him down against a tree. Emil leaned back and closed his eyes. “I’m very thirsty.”

  “I’ll go around the clearing and find the stream,” Max said, hurrying away.

  Slowly, with great care, he circled the clearing, moving toward the sound of the stream. The sun broke through the trees and was hot on his face. He shielded his eyes with his hands and tried to stay in shade. Unlike the countryside in the habitat, the humidity was set too high, and the alien plant life was varied and dangerous. The forest was alive with unknown things, all belonging to an ancient natural history that he couldn’t even imagine. The habitat was less than fifty years old, and had been made for human life. No enemies roamed the inner surface of the asteroid core.

  He saw the stream running out of the forest and crossed the far side of the clearing. He came to the water and saw that it ran clear, with multicolored stones on the shallow bottom, catching the sunlight. He knelt down and peered at the liquid. With the passageway closed, they were trapped on this world and would have to risk the water. Later, hunger would force them to chance eating something. He leaned down and sniffed the water. There were no odors. He touched the flow with his tongue, then drank greedily. The liquid rushed down his throat and filled his belly.

  He looked around for a way to bring some back, spotted what seemed to be a broken husk lying near a tree, and went over to examine it.

  The husk was made of a fibrous material and would hold at least three cups of water. He filled it and started back, moving quickly along the way he had come. Lucinda was kneeling over Emit, stroking his forehead, as Max approached.

  She stood up when she saw Max. He gave her the husk, and she knelt down again. Emil opened his eyes, smiled weakly, then closed them again.

  “Drink,” she pleaded. Max raised Emil’s head, and the boy took a couple of swallows.

  “Now you,” Max said.

  She looked at him with concern.

  “I drank at the stream,” he said.

  She sipped, then set the husk down. “I think he’s poisoned from the briars.” Tears ran down her face. “Max, we’ve got to do something!” What she feared most had happened, he realized; Emil was hurt and getting worse. “What should we do?” she cried, looking at him as if it was his fault, but he knew that she was blaming herself.

  Max stood up. “I’ll get some more water.” He hurried away, feeling helpless.

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  12

  The day became warm and humid. Hot breezes hurried through the forest all afternoon, carrying strange odors and small, flowery floaters. Max spotted large bladderthings drifting high up among the swaying branches, occasionally eating one of the flowers. One bladder-creature let out some air and seemed about to descend in pursuit of a floater, but a gust of wind swept them both away. Weak from lack of food, Max sat with Lucinda against a tree, dozing but unable to sleep. Emil lay on a bed of leaves.

  “He’s dead!” Lucinda cried late in the afternoon. Max roused himself and crawled over to the motionless figure. Lucinda was crying softly as she knelt at her brother’s side.

  Max leaned over and saw that the boy was breathing. “He’s alive.”

  “Maybe he’ll get better,” Lucinda whispered, as if fearful of waking him. Max crawled back to the tree and tried to find some sleep.

  Emil was still unconscious when Max awoke and saw stars appearing over the clearing as the yellow-white sun went down. He peered at his timer and saw that it had taken ten hours for the sun to set.

  Lucinda opened her eyes suddenly, turned toward her brother’s motionless body, and cried, “We’ve got to do something!”

  “Maybe he’ll be better by morning,” Max said, trying to put his arm around her.

  “You know he won’t,” she answered, pushing him away.

  Max remembered his father telling him about the senseless death of his friend when a quake had struck the mining town on Mercury. This made no sense, either, Max thought angrily as he looked at Lucinda.

  Her eyes were wide as she stared at her brother in the twilight. “I could have kept him from going into that grass,” she said.

  “It wasn’t your fault. He went ahead of us before we could notice the hooked briars, or suspect they might be deadly. Try to get some more rest, or we won’t be able to do anything.” He felt exhausted as Lucinda put her head on his shoulder.

  When he awoke again, long after the alien midnight, a dim red sun had risen over the clearing. A few minutes later it was joined by a pale white sun that stayed low over the trees, casting a sickly glow into the briar-grass. Max realized that they were probably on a planet circling the bright yellow-white sun that had set, in a system that inc
luded these two, more distant stars. He moved carefully away from Lucinda, then crawled over and listened to Emil’s labored breathing.

  “He’s worse, isn’t he?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Max admitted as he stood up. “We’re rested enough to carry him back now. Maybe the passage has opened.”

  “Moving him might hurt him even more.”

  “We have no choice. You take his feet.”

  They lifted him. He showed no sign of waking. Carrying him sideways, they moved through the forest. Max began to sweat. Emil let out a loud rasp as they began to climb the rocky incline below the outcropping. Max slipped on the wet moss but held his balance, gripping Emil more tightly as he and Lucinda staggered into the opening.

  They hurried through the cave and entered the portal. When they neared the point where the barrier had stopped them, they put Emil down, and Max went ahead, feeling for the obstacle.

  “It’s not here!” he shouted, then bumped into it. “It’s still up,” he said in despair, then slid down against it and wrapped his arms around his middle to keep from shaking. His stomach knotted as he asked himself what he was going to do. Try to keep from panicking, he supposed. Try not to let his own terrors push him and Lucinda into a panic that would destroy any chances they might have. Maybe this was what people meant when they talked about being brave— going on, staying calm, trying to survive in as reasoned a way as possible even when you were certain it would do no good.

  Lucinda’s dark shape sat down next to him and said, “He’s going to die, and we’re never going to leave this place. Why is this stupid thing here? What do they want us to do?”

  “I think we got lured into this by an automatic transport system,” he said. “I just don’t feel that anything alive is running it.”

  “It’s going to kill us,” she said tearfully.

  “If we’d been lured in for some sort of programmed purpose,” Max said, “it wouldn’t include letting us die.”

  “Then the habitat got caught by it in the same way.”

  “Probably.”

  “Where?”

  Max felt weak. “Near Earth’s Sun, maybe.”

  “But we saw the Sun disappear as we came in.”

  “Maybe it only looked that way. We were pulled into a station.…”