Bob Shaw - The Fugitive Worlds

“I believe, I believe,” he breathed. “But—between us—nothing has changed.”

You disappoint me, Toller Maraquine. Divivvidiv stepped over his discarded suit, which had been drawn to the floor by air currents, and moved closer to Toller. Where is your curiosity? Where is your spirit of scientific enquiry? Do you not wish to know why my people embarked upon such a mammoth venture? Do you think it is a commonplace thing for the members of an intelligent species to transport their home world from one part of a galaxy to another?

“I have already told you—those things are no concern of mine.”

Oh, but they are! They are also the concern of every living creature on every planet of this system. Divivvidiv’s mouth underwent further asymmetrical changes, tugged by the invisible tides of emotion. You see, my people are fleeing for their lives. We are fugitives from the greatest catastrophe in the recent history of the universe. Does that fact not make you the least bit inquisitive?

Toller glanced at Steenameert, who appeared to have frozen halfway through the task of removing his skysuit, and for the first time in days his preoccupation with Vantara and her fate began to loosen its hold on his mind.

“Catastrophe!” he said. “But the stars are billions upon billions of miles apart! Are you talking about some manner of great explosion? If it ever happens I cannot see how—”

It has already happened, Divivvidiv cut in. And it matters little that stars are billions of miles apart — the scale of the explosion was such that upwards of a hundred galaxies will be destroyed by it!

Toller tried to conjure up a mental image to go with the alien’s words, but his imagination baulked. “What could cause such an explo… ? And if it has already happened why are we still here? How can you know about it?”

Divivvidiv was now very close to Toller, and his sweet body odor was thick in Toller’s nostrils. Again, the concepts are beyond you, but…

The slewing beam from the lighthouse was fiercer this time, and Toller’s instinct was to shrink away from it, but there was nothing he could do to protect himself. He shuddered as, within a tiny fraction of a second, his inner model of reality was torn apart and rebuilt, and he found that his newly vouchsafed vision of space as an emptiness riddled with transient wormholes of greater emptiness was a simplification. The cosmos—he now knew, or almost knew—was born in an explosion which was inconceivable in its ferocity, and within a minute its entire volume was permeated by seething masses of ropes. The ropes—comparatively ancient and decaying relics of a period of cosmic history which had spanned a length of time equal to one human breath—had a diameter approximating one millionth of that of a human hair, and were so massive that a single inch weighed as much as an average-sized planet. They writhed and twisted and oscillated, and in their blind contortions they decided nothing less than the disposition of matter throughout the universe: the patterns of galaxies, the patterns of clusters of galaxies, the patterns of sheets of clusters of galaxies.

As the universe grew older—and intelligent life made its first appearance—the ropes grew fewer in number. Their incredible stores of energy squandered by their frenzied threshings and twistings, by the propagation of gravitational waves, they became more of a cosmic rarity. As they slowly erased themselves from existence the universe became more stable, a safer place for frail biological constructs such as human beings—but it was not homogenous. There were anomalous regions in which ropes remained plentiful, so plentiful that interactions and collisions were bound to occur, with consequences beyond the descriptive powers of any system of mathematics.

At one location no less than twelve ropes had intersected and yielded up their total energy in an explosion which was destined to annihilate perhaps a hundred galaxies, and to have a profound effect on a further thousand. No living creature would ever see the explosion, so close was the speed of its fronts to that of light, but intelligent beings—using data gathered by subspace probes—could deduce its existence. And once the deduction had been made there was only one thing left to do.

Flee!

Flee far and fast…

Toller blinked vigorously, momentarily certain that a watery ripple had passed across his vision, but he realized almost at once that the effect had been subjective and illusory. His internal model of the universe had been torn asunder and rebuilt in drastically different form, and now he, too, was different. A quick glance at Steenameert’s pale face and blanked-out eyes confirmed that he also had undergone a similar chastening metamorphosis.

A voice from Toller’s distant past whispered a warning: Your defenses have been breached! Should he choose to do so, grey face could overwhelm you in this very instant!

Responding to the warning, Toller alerted himself. He triangulated his gaze on the alien’s face and saw nothing there but a growing display of relaxation and satisfaction. There was no sense of physical threat, but that in itself might have constituted another kind of menace. They were in Divivvidiv’s stronghold and there was no telling what semi-magical forces the alien might be able to summon to do his bidding without so much as having to raise a finger.

Striving to assimilate all that he had learned, Toller shook his head as though recovering from a blow. His mind had been swamped in the influx of pure knowledge—to the extent that all normal thought processes were being prorogued—but, even so, he had a dim awareness that one great question remained unanswered. What could it be? He had been told too much in too short a time, and yet he was troubled by a nagging conviction that he had been told too little. And, all the while, the hideous alien in his costume of wafting black rags gave the impression of being more and more content with the situation…

“Why do you seem so pleased with yourself, greyface?” Toller growled. “After all, nothing has changed between us.”

Oh, but it has, Divivvidiv assured him, shading his words with a kind of glee. You are not immune to reason, and therefore in this situation logic has to work for me and against you. Without admitting as much to yourself you have already begun to realize how pointless it would be for you to pit yourself against representatives of the greatest civilization in the galaxy.

“I refuse to…”

And now that you have come so far, Divivvidiv went on relentlessly, I will complete the edifice of logic which to me is an impregnable defense and to you an insurmountable barrier. You were on the verge of asking why your insignificant pair of little worlds had to become involved with Dussarra’s flight from annihilation.

The answer is that binary planets sharing a common atmosphere are extremely rare. Dussarran astronomers are aware of only three other examples in this galaxy — all of them very distant and less well matched than Land and Overland. As you already know, we can move our home world instantaneously from star to star, but energy limitations prevent us from leaping more than a few light years at a time. That fact means that the annihilation front, which even now is roiling outwards through this region of the galaxy, would always have been at our heels… unless… unless, Toller Maraquine… we found the way to make the leap to another galaxy.

Toller became aware of his own breathing, a regular and impersonal sound, like waves subsiding on a distant beach.

We designed a machine which was capable of transporting the home world across the required distance, but for its construction the machine required a very special physical environment. There had, of course, to be freedom from gravity to prevent the machine from distorting under its own weight — a factor which posed us no problems. There also had to be a limitless supply of oxygen and helium to facilitate accretive growth of the machine — and that is why we chose to position the Xa at the very center of your two worlds.