Tully’s hands clenched in what Aille read as frustration. ” ‘Flow’ means nothing to humans. You know that.”
“We will speak more on this later,” Aille said. “If we survive what is to come, I may familiarize myself with these divisions you are so fond of. For now, I have more important things to consider.”
Tully’s eyes glittered, green and challenging. There was strength there, if only Aille could learn to tap and direct it. Terrans did not give up easily. That could be of great use in what was to come.
“Rest while you can,” he said, letting the readouts wash over him. “We have to travel beyond the innermost planet of your system. As humans gauge these matters, I think it will not be ‘soon.’ ”
* * *
Caitlin slept finally, curled up in her oversized seat, head pillowed on Kralik’s shoulder, the thrum of the engines and the murmur of human and Jao conversation lulling her until she drifted off.
Sometime later, she woke with a start, cheek pressed to the arm support, and looked up to see everyone crowded in behind Aille, staring up at a large oval viewscreen that had not been activated before. The picture displayed the yellow-orange maelstrom of the sun, swollen to fill the entire display. Her broken right arm twinged as she tried to pull herself back into a sitting position. Her cheek peeled away from the hard armrest, leaving an indentation in her flesh.
“Subcommandant?” Her voice was dry and cracked. How long had she been asleep?
“There,” Yaut said, pointing upward. “It will emerge in that sector.”
Lines appeared over the display, bracketing an area in the center. Jao numbers flickered to one side, changing rapidly.
She put a hand to her muzzy head, trying to wake up. “Is it the Ekhat ship?”
“They haven’t arrived yet,” Kralik said without turning around, “but the readings from the gate—they call it a ‘framepoint’—indicate it will come through soon.”
Slowly, a ball of flaming yellow-white plasma erupted from the surface of the sun, expanding toward them with measured grandness. “God Almighty!” Tully exclaimed.
“Is that a solar flare?” Caitlin levered herself awkwardly onto her feet and went to join them.
“No.” Aille’s experienced hands flew over the controls. His forehead wrinkled. “That is the Ekhat ship.”
“But—” She felt her jaw hanging slack, her ears ringing with shock. “—it’s inside the sun.”
“The framepoint must be formed beneath the surface,” Aille said, “in what your scientists call the ‘photosphere.’ ”
Kralik turned around and took her good arm to position her in front of him where she could see more clearly. “But that’s not possible,” she said lamely. “Inside the sun—they’d just burn up, wouldn’t they?”
“The forcefields protect the ship,” Aille explained. “For a time, at least. But, no matter what the risk, the framepoint must be created under those precise conditions. Triangulating a point locus in open space does not work. It has been tried many times, and always failed.”
The fiery ball grew larger and they could see white-hot gases roiling around its shape.
“Nothing could live through that,” Tully said. His head was bowed, but his eyes were riveted on the screen and his fingers gripped the back of Yaut’s seat so hard, they were bloodless.
“If that were true,” Yaut said, “then the Jao would never have come to this system.”
“You use the same mechanics in star travel?” Caitlin said, with a sudden sense of how truly alien the Jao were. Every Jao presently on Earth must have traveled in just this same fashion. Thinking of being down there, inside the sun, surrounded by the hellish fires of creation themselves—the floor seemed to drop out from beneath her feet. She felt giddy and afraid.
“Not exactly the same, but derived from the same technology,” Aille said. “The Frame Network was developed originally by the Ekhat. It was later modified by another one of their subject races, the Lleix, and then eventually adopted by the Jao.”
Humans had always understood the Jao must have some form of faster-than-light travel, but their conquerors had never explained its exact nature. Whenever humans had asked, the Jao had put them off in much the same fashion as an English colonialist in Africa or India would have dismissed a native bearer’s questions regarding the laws of thermodynamics.