Greg Bear - Hull Zero Three

Maybe ten seconds more until I’m at the breach. My hip pirouette is infuriating. I want to stare without interruption, keep track of the cracked and warped walls, the twirling debris, and make sure I’m not being hunted by a glassy haystack blur with a red spot.

Five seconds before the breach. Desperate, I reach out and grab a chunk of flat bulkhead. I stop both my motion toward the breach and my precession. I see… nothing, of course.

A kick at the bulkhead sends me off at the wrong angle. I reach out as far as I can. Two fingers grab hold of a burned, curled edge, and after a few seconds of utterly graceless scrambling, I’ve pulled myself out of the stinking, rubble-filled void, through the breach, and into a quiet, calm blue space that seems to go on forever….

Where I stare into the biggest eye in the entire universe.

The eye looms over me, a curved, transparent wall about a hundred meters wide. I’m on one side of a space that caps the eye like a gigantic goggle. Behind the eye is liquid water—lots and lots of water, blue green and lovely, filled with an amazing array of bubbles huge and small, moving in sluggish leisure with the residual currents from the last spin-up—very slowly wobbling, jiggling, breaking up, rejoining.

Fizz in a giant’s soda bottle.

The eye has immense depth. It’s the forward end of a huge tank. This leaves me limp with awe, and after I slow my heart and breathing and realize I’m not in immediate danger, the view jogs my memory, filling in basic knowledge from Dreamtime.

Ship needs fuel and reaction mass. The dirty ice moonlet supplies both. Mining machines on the surface send up chunks of ice that get stored in the tanks. That’s where the serpent gouge comes from—machinery digging. The moonlet is mostly water, a small portion of which is deuterium; this can be used in a fusion reaction. Fusion is the process of combining the nuclei of atoms into larger nuclei. This requires lots of energy to get started but then releases enormous amounts. But that’s only the beginning. The fusion is just a starter for something even more powerful—bosonic reduction.

For hundreds of years, Ship’s drive has been pumping out broken bits of atoms and streams of high-energy light in a twisting, glowing stream. Ultimately, Ship’s velocity climbs to about twenty percent of the speed of light, .2 c—that is, sixty thousand kilometers per second. It takes something as big as the moon to fill out the requirements of the basic equations that move Ship between the stars. Just on the edge of memory—like something fading after a vivid dream—I see the moonlet being chosen from a dusty, frozen cloud far, far out from the sun. The name of the cloud is incomprehensible, Hort or Hurt —

Ice is transported up the struts to the hulls, then melted, pumped through the sluices—stored in a big tank.

Lots of water.

None for me. I’m exhausted, in pain, thirsty. I squeeze water from my own bottle into my mouth, start to choke, and spit weightless beads. Trying to draw breath and steady myself, I see the red spot from a bleary corner of my eye.

Spin-up resumes with a lurch. My hand loses its grip, and I roll around the perimeter wall of the tank’s cap. Here, at or near the core, the centrifugal force is minimal but still catches me by surprise. I roll, kick, float free for a moment, and look around. The haystack blur must have come through the breach while I was captivated by the slow blue-green roil inside the tank. I can’t find it again. There’s something outboard, to my left—movement opposite the motion of the hull. My head pivots like a bird’s. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s an illusion, and when I can wash out my eye, it will be gone.

Leave me be.

Across the cap, near the broad forward end, hatches line the perimeter wall. I try to stand, but my feet pull out from under me, and I bounce again, then drift outboard—down. Here, if I can keep up with the rotating wall, I’ll weigh a fraction of a kilogram. But I’m getting dizzy. I roll until my palms skid on the wall, thankfully smooth but for the jagged edges around the breach. I push off and let the breach roll on by. Finally, I drop and spread flat, relying on friction to gather the necessary force. I’m riding with the wall, spread-eagled and vulnerable to anything with better means of locomotion, better control in the wide spaces.

I have a good view of what’s going on inside the tank. The huge liquid volume reacts to spin-up with an amazing display of fluid dynamics. The bubbles slowly try to coalesce at the center, but currents keep breaking them up, thrusting them outward, until they rebound and gurgle in again. The tank’s contents swish into a massive, godly whirlpool. This would be a beautiful vision to go out on—waiting for the water to surround the long air pocket like a tornado….

Looking inboard, up, I again see the blur—larger now and growing, the red speck revolving on the outside of a fine maze of glassy fibers, gleaming straws flexing and pulling. The thing is a network of glistening rods tied together with tiny blue knots.

Across its surface flash narrow concentric bands of pale color, expanding and contracting, whirling blue and black and green, drawing my gaze inward, then reversing, whirling outward.

Much more fascinating than the tank.

Mesmerizing.

It’s beautiful, ghostly, and I hope quick and strong. I’m resigned. This must be one of the large Killers—not the worst way to go, according to my book.

A brilliant bronze-colored beam shoots across the chamber and spears the hypnotic mass. The beam flicks and cuts the thing in half. The two halves writhe. Its bands of color fade. Black spots appear. The beam flicks again and quarters it. The severed masses catch fire and burn with intense blue flames. I smell caramel and acid. A slow rain of corrosive droplets strikes my body, my face, stinging, hissing.

I scream—and look down. A sharp pain has shot up my right arm. A spear pierces the bicep. There’s a cord attached. I grab the cord, and it jerks through my hands as I’m yanked clockwise, out from under the burning fragments.

The last bits of the glass haystack with the red eye impact the outer wall with a series of gluey plop s. The flames intensify—the bits pop and explode.

I’m being pulled toward an open hatch—already halfway across. I use one hand to take the excruciating pressure off the spear shaft and try not to scream again. There’s a head and a torso silhouetted in the hatch’s dim orange glow. I see a face. Quizzical, large eyes.

It’s the girl. One of the girls.

She looks vexed. “Come here, you!” she grunts, and reels me in.

Through the hatch, the next figure I see is large and yellow with greenish accents, like an unripe lemon. Two muscular arms, two tree-trunk legs—human enough in this place. Except for his color and something about the texture of his skin, waxy and finely pitted, he does not remind me at all of fruit. His head is broad, set low on thick shoulders, with wide-set eyes, small nose, and narrow, almost doll-like lips. I say “he,” but of course this is just a guess.

He grabs me gently enough, then pushes the end of the spear. The barbs retract. Swiftly, he pulls the shaft from my arm, then reaches into a gray bag slung around his wrist and smears something onto the bleeding wound. His hands are huge and fast and delicate as a jeweler’s. The bleeding stops, and with it most of the pain.

“He’s Teacher,” the girl says to Big Yellow, and makes a gesture. “I grabbed him back behind the sluice.”

“You sure he’s the same?” Big Yellow asks.