Carry home. … Yes, this precious freight of knowledge. There must be more data aboard now than we could transmit back in days, maybe in tens of days. We have more in our care than just our lives.
“Those fiery clouds that got ejected,” she asked, “why weren’t they recaptured?”
“The energies released caused them to exceed escape velocity from the vicinity of the ergosphere,” Esker said. “I’m half afraid to calculate how much energy that was. However, it seems to have expended itself mostly on that escape. They’re not giving off much hard radiation. The ergospheres themselves, like the event horizons, went through contortions as they met and fused. Spacetime did. I don’t know what happened in those microseconds. Maybe we never will.” Awe shook his words. “For an instant, the gates stood open between entire universes.”
“The hints alone should reveal a new cosmos to your minds,” Orichalc murmured.
Lissa nodded, dazed more than comprehending. “But what, [144] now, holds the clouds together? Why don’t they whiff away, evaporate?”
Esker laughed afresh. “Do you take me for an oracle, milady? At this stage, we can only guess. Magnetic bottle effects, conceivably. Or maybe each is the, the atmosphere around a new-formed mass. Yes, I think that’s a bit more likely. But we’ll find out.”
“Those masses would need to be planet-sized,” Valen said low. “That gas is incandescent hot. It’d never stay around anything less. As if … this union tried to beget worlds—”
“Signal received,” Dagmar broke in. “Audio on the fifth standard laser band. Code: ‘Distress. Please respond immediately.’ ”
A dream-hand caught Lissa around the throat.
“You know where it’s from?” she heard Valen snap.
“Yes. The Susaian ships just south of us. One of them.” If Dagmar has to correct herself, is she frightened?
“Acknowledge and translate, for God’s sake!”
Lissa had an impression that the hisses and whistles beneath the impersonal robotic voice were equally calm. “Moonhorn, commanding Supremacy, beaming to Asborgan vessel Dagmar. We request information as to your condition after the event.”
“We’re in good shape,” Valen said. “You?”
“Not so,” came after seconds of time lag. “We and Amethyst were tossed together, too fast for effective preventative action. Both ships are disabled. Casualties are severe.”
“A gravitational vortex,” Esker said raggedly. “A potential well, an abnormal local metric, expanding principally in the main inertial plane. It didn’t flatten to the ordinary curvature of space-time till it had passed you.” Lissa thought he found refuge in theory. Did he utter mere guesses? Belike he did. Who was sure of anything, here?
Her eyes tracked the dwindling star that was not a star. It gleamed exquisite, like a ringed planet seen from a distance, save that it was also like a galaxy with a single spiral arm. There passed through her: If Gerward hadn’t settled for less than we wanted, [145] Dagmar too would be drifting helpless, a wreck. I might be dead. Oh, he might be!
“We’re sorry to hear that, madam,” Valen said. “Can we help?”
“I do not know,” Moonhorn answered, “but you are our single hope. We have contacted our nearer fellows. Ordinarily we could wait for them. However, observation and calculation show we are on a collision trajectory with one of those gaseous objects spewed from the fusion. We shall enter it in approximately four hours and pass through the center. At its speed, that will go very fast. But radiometric measurements show temperatures near the core that even in so brief a passage will be lethal. No Susaian craft is close enough, with sufficient boost capability, to arrive before then.”
Stillness descended. The time felt long until Valen asked, slowly, “You have no escape? No auxiliaries, anything like that?”
“Nothing in working order,” said Moonhorn. “Else I would not have troubled you. We realize that for you, too, a rescue may well be impossible.”
“We can cross the distance between at maximum boost, ten Terran gravities, with turnover,” Dagmar said, “in approximately one hundred and fifty minutes. To escape afterward, we should accelerate orthogonally to the thing’s path, but at no more than five gravities, since you have injured persons with you and the hale will have no opportunity to prepare themselves either. This acceleration must begin no later than half an hour before predicted impact, if we are to avoid the hottest zone. Before we start, my crew must make ready; otherwise, at the end of the first boost, they will be disabled, perhaps dead. Allowing time for that also, we should have half an hour, or slightly less, for the transfer of crews from your vessels to me.”