David Brin - Heaven's Reach

While I mused on that marvel, Streaker slowly turned. The shining skyscape flowed past our gaze — strange clusters, nebulae, and spiral arms whose light might not reach Jijo for thousands or millions of years — until at last we caught sight of our escort, the huge Zang ship-entity.

And the place where it was leading us.

A gasp shuddered through the Plotting Room, as every Earthling expressed the same emotion at once.

“Oh, no,” groaned Lieutenant Tsh’t. “It c-can’t be!”

Dr. Gillian Baskin sighed.

“I don’t believe it! All that misery … just to wind up back here?”

Before me, starting to fill the forward screen, there stretched yet another sight I could barely describe at first. A structure of some kind, nearly black as space. Only when Gillian ordered further image enhancement did it stand forth from the background, glowing a deep shade of umber.

It looked roughly spherical, but spiky all around, like one of those burr seeds that stick to your leg fur when you go tramping-through undergrowth. I thought it must be another mammoth starship, looming frightfully close.

Then I realized — we were still barreling along at great speed, but its apparent size was changing only very slowly.

It must be really huge, I realized, shifting my imagination. Even bigger than the Zang ship!

That jaundiced globule cruised alongside Streaker, shivering in a way that made me nervous. Scratchy noises assailed us again through the loudspeakers, making the glavers sway their big heads, rolling bulbous eyes and moaning.

“They say that we must follow,” translated the Niss Machine.

Lieutenant Tsh’t stuttered.

“Sh-shall we try for the t-transfer point? We could turn quickly. Dive back in. Trust Kaa to—”

Gillian shook her head.

“The Zang wouldn’t let us get two meters.”

Her shoulders hunched in a human expression of misery that no hoon could mimic. Clearly, this jagged place was a familiar sight that no one aboard Streaker would have chosen to visit again.

I caught the eye of Sara Koolhan. For the first time, my fellow Jijoan seemed just as much at a loss as I. She blinked in apparent confusion, unable to grasp the immensity of this thing ahead of us.

A strange sound came from the only male human present. The mute one who never speaks — Emerson d’Anite. He had been especially quiet during the trip from Izmunuti, silently studying the strange colors of t-space, as if they carried more meaning than the words of his own kind.

Now, staring at the huge, prickly ball, his face expressed the same astonishment as his crewmates’ faces, intense emotion twisting the dark man’s wounded features. Sara moved quickly to Emerson’s side, taking his arm and speaking gently.

I recall thinking, If this place made the Terrans desperate enough to flee to Jijo, I’m not surprised they’re upset finding themselves right back here.

A familiar voice cried out behind me, in tones of awed delight.

“Uttergloss!”

I turned in time to see Huck come wheeling into the Plotting Room, waving all four of her agile g’Kek eyes toward the big screen.

“That thing looks so cool. What is it?”

Another pal reached the open door not far behind her. An urrish head snaked through at the end of a long, sinuous neck, its single nostril flaring at the unpleasant reek of Earthling fear.

Arriving from another direction, a red qheuen lunged his armored bulk rudely past Ur-ronn while she hesitated. Pincer-Tip’s vision cupola spun and he snapped his claws in excitement.

I should have expected it, of course. They weren’t invited, but if my friends share one instinct across all species boundaries, it’s a knack for finding trouble and charging straight for it.

“Hey, furry legs!” Huck snapped, nudging my flank with two waving eyestalks while the other pair strained to peer past the crowd. “Make your overstuffed carcass useful. Clear a way through these fishy things so I can see!”

Wincing, I hoped the dolphins were too busy to note her impertinence. Rather than disturb the crew, I bent down and grabbed Huck’s axle rims, grunting as I lifted her above the crowd for a better view. (A young g’Kek doesn’t weigh much, though at the time my back was still healing. It twinged each time she squirmed and spun from excitement.)

“What is that thing?” Huck repeated, gesturing toward the huge spiky ball.

Lieutenant Tsh’t raised her glossy head from the soft platform of her mechanical walker, aiming one dark eye at my g’Kek friend.

“It’ssss a place where we fishy things suffered greatly, before coming to your world.”

Had I been human, my ears would have burned with embarrassment. Being a hoon, my throat sac puffed with apologetic umbles. But Huck barged on without noticing.

“Sheesh, it looks big!”

The dolphin emitted snorting laughter from her moist blowhole.

“You c-could say that. The shell encloses a volume of approximately thirty astrons, or a trillionth of a cubic parsec.”

Huck’s stalks expressed a blithe shrug.

“Huh! Whatever that means. I’ll tell you what it reminds me of. It looks like the spiny armor covering a desert clam!”

“Lookssss can be deceiving, young Jijoan,” Tsh’t answered. “That shell is soft enough to cut with a wooden spoon. If you approached and exhaled on it, the patch touched by your breath would boil away. Its average density is like a cloud in a snowstorm.”

That doesn’t sound too threatening, I pondered. Then I caught the startled look on Sara Koolhan’s face. Our young human sage frowned as her eyes darted back and forth, from data panels to the main screen, then to Tsh’t.

“The infrared … the reemission profiles … You’re not saying that thing actually contains—”

She stopped, unable to finish her sentence. The dolphin officer snickered.

“Indeed it does. A star resides at the heart of that soft confffection. That deceptive puff of p-poison ssssnow.

“Welcome, dear Jijoan friends. Welcome to the Fractal World.”

HE DIDN’T FEEL COLD. NOT EXACTLY. EVEN though, logically, he ought to.

A cloying mist surrounded Lark as membranes pressed against him from all sides, keeping his body bent nearly double, with knees up near his chin.

Lark felt as he imagined he might if someone crammed him back into the womb.

Soon another similarity grew apparent.

He wasn’t breathing anymore.

In fact, his mouth was sealed shut and swollen plugs filled both nostrils. The rhythmic expansion of his chest, the soft sigh of sweet air, these notable portions of life’s usual background … were gone!

With this realization, panic nearly engulfed Lark. A red haze obscured vision, narrowing to a tunnel as he struggled and thrashed. Though his body seemed reluctant at first, he obliged it to try inhaling … and achieved nothing.

He tried harder, commanding effort from his sluggish diaphragm and rib cage. Lark’s spine arched as he strained, until at last a scant trickle of gas slipped by one nose plug — perhaps only a few molecules—

— carrying an acrid stench!

Sudden paroxysms contorted Lark. Limbs churned and bowels convulsed as he tried voiding himself into the turbid surroundings.

Fortunately, his gut was empty — he had eaten little for days. A cottony feeling spread through his extremities like a drug, filling them with soothing numbness as the fit soon passed, leaving behind a lingering foul taste in his mouth.

Lark had learned a valuable lesson.

Next time you find yourself wrapped up in fetal position, crammed inside a stinking bag without an instinct to breathe, take a hint. Go with the flow.

Lark felt for a pulse and verified that his heart, at least, was still functioning. The persistent stinging in his sinuses — a noxious-familiar stench — was enough all by itself to verify that life went on, painful as it was.