I sighed.
“Jess,” Amishi said, “don’t take this too lightly. Other things have been happening. I am missing nearly all of my Simu-Life Grafting Flesh. If we have any serious wounds, I will be powerless to patch any of them.”
“We’ve discovered that we’re missing a hand torch too.” Malherbe chimed in, his chimes sounding like death knolls. “A cylinder of fuel for it too.”
“Okay,” I said. “Don’t panic.” They looked to me for guidance. A cybernet is supposed to know all that happens in his ship—or at least to be able to account for it, explain it away, rationalize. Somewhere inside, the explanation did indeed stir through my vitals, but I couldn’t completely grasp it. “Let’s conduct a search with an impartial point of view—mine.”
We searched every deck. In the bottom deck, fifty robo-mechs were lined up, bent at the flexible waist as if doing toe-touches, their heads at their feet, waiting to be activated. But no monsters.
We covered the supply chamber inch by inch, opening crates, unsealing canisters. Nothing. We checked drive chambers. We investigated crew rooms. We searched the airless outer chamber. Nowhere was there a creature of horror, nowhere a warning soothsayer sent by the sun.
They were a little more cheerful when I departed into cybernet, for we had a plan. I was to watch Malherbe’s room from the walls, waiting for the approach of the beast. They were sure I would see it too. Upon sighting it, they expected me to turn the ship around and make for home. I knew I wouldn’t. I wanted the sun, for some reason.
The room was washed in shadows. It was like a crypt, one lonely bed, cold walls. Malherbe was restless. That was the last I remembered.
The thirteenth day, the sun was like a god.
The temperature was way up on the outer hull, and I checked the decks of refrigerating units that would help regulate our internal atmosphere. I examined the shells of force between each deck—shells that would repel heat to a certain degree. Everything was functioning perfectly.
The sun was like a god, all-commanding.
The fourteenth day, temperature on the outer shell rose two hundred and fourteen degrees.
I watched it through filtered hull cameras. The sun was now like the sea. A womb. A mother of life into which we were crawling, the beginning and the end. It was all and everything, and its great comforting eye stared unblinkingly.
The sixteenth day I slept.
The seventeenth I did nothing but watch the sun.
The eighteenth day I slept.
And the nineteenth.
The twentieth day, the hull was cherry red, streaking white in spots, and I flipped the frig units to full capacity.
The sun glowed: it covered the sky; it simply was.
On day twenty-two, they had a sign up. I saw it accidentally. I was drawn to look at my body. As we neared the sun, the desire to see if my body was scorched. . . .
But there was a sign. JESSIE, GOING CRAZY. THE THING WONT LET US ALONE AT NIGHT. HAVE TAKEN TO SLEEPING IN GUARDED SHIFTS. WHY HAVEN’T YOU BEEN CHECKING IN? WE WANT TO GO HOME. WE’VE BEEN PUTTING UP SIGNS FOR DAYS. IT HAS TAKEN TO DESTROYING OUR FOOD. CONSTANT TERROR HERE. WE WANT TO TO GO HOME AGAIN.
I had forgotten to check in. For how many days? The idea struck me terribly hard. I had never missed a check-in in ten years of cybernating. I zipped through the decks to make a final check of all systems before slipping into my body.
And I gasped at the sight of the sun. It was the universe. Arms reached out from its living surface and stretched like the arms of a lazy man waking. There were dark clouds on the surface, shifting and changing. It hurt my shielded eyes.
An hour passed, and I could not look away.
It was a shifting mass of liquid fire. It was all the fires of all time. It was Nero in Rome. It was Chicago. It was San Francisco after the earthquake. It was the great Moon Fire—a thousand domes filled with burning atmosphere. It was all fires of all times. And it screamed. It tortured its lungs. It was all the fires of all the times and all the victims of all those fires of all those times. It was Alpha and Omega. It was Hell living. It was Heaven dying. The fires roared. The victims screamed.