I jolted from that place that was not a place, and felt like I’d slammed into my straps, as if I’d been thrown physically back into the cockpit. I gasped, heart racing, sweat streaming down my face.
My ship hovered, still and quiet, lights blinking out on the control panel.
“Cytonic hyperdrive offline,” M-Bot said.
“What,” I said, gasping for breath. “What was that?”
“I don’t know!” he said. “But my instruments place us at—calculating—one hundred kilometers from the point of detonation. Wow. My internal chronometer indicates no discrepancy between our time and solar time, so we experienced no time dilation—but somehow we traveled that distance virtually instantaneously. Faster than light, certainly.”
I leaned back in my seat. “Call Alta. Are they safe?”
The channel came on, and I heard whoops and screams—it took a moment to distinguish those as cheers of joy, not terror.
“Alta Base,” M-Bot said. “This is Skyward Eleven. You may commence thanking us for saving you from utter annihilation.”
“Thank you!” some voices cried. “Thank you!”
“Mushrooms are the preferred offering,” M-Bot said to them. “As many varieties as you can dig up.”
“Really?” I said, pulling off my helmet to wipe my brow. “Still on the mushroom thing?”
“I didn’t erase that part of my programming,” he said. “I’m fond of it. It gives me something to collect, like the way humans choose to accumulate useless items of sentimental and thematic value.”
I grinned, though I couldn’t shake the haunting feeling of those eyes watching me. Those . . . somethings knew what I’d done, and they didn’t like it. Perhaps there had been a reason that M-Bot’s faster-than-light capacities had been offline.
That raised a question, of course. Could we do that again? Gran-Gran said that her mother had been the engine of the Defiant. That she had made it work.
The answer is not to fear the spark, but to learn to control it.
I looked upward, toward the sky.
And there, I saw a hole. The debris shifting just right to reveal the stars. Exactly like . . . that day when I’d been with my father. My first time to the surface.
It seemed too momentous to be a coincidence.
“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “The admiral is trying to contact you, but you have your helmet off.”
I absently put my helmet back on, still staring at that hole in the debris. That pathway to infinity. Could I . . . hear something out there? Calling to me?
“Spensa,” the admiral said. “How did you survive that blast?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered truthfully.
“I suppose I’m going to need to pardon your father now,” she said.
“You just survived a lifebuster explosion by a few meters,” I said, “and still, all you can think about is that old grudge?”
The admiral fell silent.
Yes. I . . . I could hear the stars.
Come to us.
“Spensa,” she said. “You need to know something about your father. About that day. We’ve lied, but for your own good.”
“I know,” I said, flipping controls, turning my ship’s acclivity ring on its hinges so it pointed downward. My ship rotated so the nose pointed upward. Skyward.
“Return to base,” the admiral said. “Return to honors and celebration.”
“I will. Eventually.”
Their heads are heads of rock, their hearts set upon rock.
“Spensa. There is a defect inside you. Please. You need to come back. Every moment you spend in the sky is a danger to you and to everyone else.”
Be different. Set your sights on something higher.
“My ship doesn’t have destructors,” I said absently. “If I come back crazy, you should be able to shoot me down.”
“Spin,” Ironsides said, her voice pained. “Don’t do this.”
Something more grand.
“Goodbye, Admiral,” I said, flipping off the comm.
Then I hit the overburn, launching upward.
Claim the stars.
55
I knew it was stupid.
The admiral was right. I should have returned to the base.
But I couldn’t. Not only because I could hear the stars calling to me, luring me. Not only because of what had happened in that place between heartbeats.
I wasn’t being controlled by something else. At least I didn’t think I was. But I had to know. I had to confront it.
I had to see what my father had seen.
We soared higher, higher, up where the atmosphere faded and we could see the planet’s curve. Still higher, aiming for that gap through the debris field.
I drew closer than I ever had before, and this time I was struck by how deliberate it all looked. We called it a debris field, but it really wasn’t debris. There was a shape to all of this. An intent.
Enormous platforms that shined light downward. Others that looked like the shipyards. Together they formed a sequence of broken shells around our planet. And they had aligned just right to create an opening through them.
I passed into that large gap. If I veered too far to the sides, I’d likely be in range of the defensive guns that Cobb had mentioned. But here, traveling through this impromptu corridor, I was safe.
As I passed the first layer of debris, M-Bot said we’d entered space proper—though he also said the line between atmosphere and not was an “arbitrary distinction, as the exosphere doesn’t end, but instead fades.”
My breath caught in awe as we passed enormous platforms that could have held Alta a thousand times over or more. They were covered with what appeared to be buildings—each silent, dark. Millions upon millions of them.
People lived up here, once. I thought. I soared past several layers. By now we were going at incredible speeds—Mag-55—but without wind resistance, it didn’t really matter. Speed was relative in space.
I looked away from the platforms, toward the end of the corridor. Out there were still, calm lights.
“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “I’m detecting radio communication ahead. One of those specks is not a star.”
I leaned forward as we passed another layer of debris. Yes, ahead I could see a glowing spot that was much closer than the stars. A ship? No, a space station. Shaped like a spinning top, with lights on all sides.
Smaller specks moved about it. Ships. I adjusted our course, pointing toward the station. Beneath us a platform revolved in its orbit, cutting off my sight of the shrinking shape of Detritus. Could I get back? Did I even care?
I could hear them louder, the voices of the stars. Chatter that didn’t come through the radio, and didn’t form words. The call of the stars . . . it was . . . it was Krell communication. They used that place between heartbeats to talk to one another, to communicate instantly. And . . . and the minds of thinking machines somehow relied upon the same technology to process quickly.
It all required access to that not-place, that nowhere.
We drew closer to the station. “Don’t they know it’s dangerous?” I whispered. “That something lives in the nowhere? Don’t they know about the eyes?”
Maybe that’s why we only use radio. I thought. Why our ancestors abandoned this advanced communications technology. Our ancestors were frightened of what lived in the nowhere.