Lt. Cmdr. Aponi Brightfeather, science officer on the Edgar Poe, had joined them. After dinner they settled on the back porch overlooking Lake Dyson, the warm evening air soothed their aching muscles. Coary had his usual bourbon on the rocks, Brightfeather her favorite margarita, and Samuelson a snifter of cognac. Much was discussed over dinner, but now they sat in silence, taking in the rustic ambience of Coary's lakefront house. The stars were out in full force, a completely different set of constellations than what people on Earth experience. After a time, the fatigue of the conference and the day's exertion, not to mention the cognac, having caught up with him, the professor said good-night and retired to his room. The quiet of the wooded surroundings drew him in; he welcomed its embrace.

Brightfeather had acquired a deep tan during these past two weeks of down time. Her long raven hair hung over her bare shoulders. Laying back in the lounge chair, the near-full moon--the one visible this time of year--bathed her features in soft, milky light. She stood to walk to the railing, moving in her cut-off jeans like a cat. Coary had been attracted to her since she first came onboard, the new science officer, full of excitement and enthusiasm to be on a star cruiser. He found her to not only be good-looking, but to have a first-rate mind, unafraid to step out of the limits of what she knew, to explore fresh ideas and to try the imposssible.

He joined her at the rail, asked if she'd like another drink. She nodded no and continued to stare at the stars. He could smell the scent of her sun drenched skin and the perfume of her hair. As host, he felt he should give her some space for solitude, but couldn't get his legs to work. As though reading his mind, she turned to him and kissed him lovingly; he kissed her back. They held one another for a long time, not kissing, just feeling each others warmth and tenderness. What happened next can only be imagined, but it was all good.

Breakfast on the porch was spiked with animated conversation. The sun cresting the distant mountain range on the front side of the house glinted pleasantly off the round table. Afterwards, professor Samuelson took his leave, despite Coary's invitation to spend the day. The professor smiled at that, glanced at Brightfeather, then said his good-byes and that he'd be in touch, especially if anything came up at the conference he should know about. A full transcript of the proceedings would be given to Space Fleet at its close; nonetheless, sensitive and pertinent information can sometimes be left out. At casual meetings with small groups of friends, unorthodox conjectures and theories are more likely to be expressed and explored. Things said, speculations made, that are off the books.

Coary and Brightfeather went for a walk on the beach, skipping stones across the water occasionally, competing for how many skips, laughing at bloops, feeling the cool sand under bare feet. They had planned on another day of sailing, packing a lunch, anchoring near the other side of the lake, but fate intervened and instead they spent the day listening to music and making mad passionate love, a summer breeze cooling their moist skin. The adventures they shared on Edgar Poe, the near death encounters with improbable beings, the challenges met and overcome added a depth of feeling and intensity to their intimacy. They knew each other under the skin, their frailities and strengths. They knew each other and delved ever deeper, searching for more, immersed in one another's space.

Space Fleet officially discouraged shipboard romances among crewmembers reasoning that someone experiencing emotional stress or turbulence, especially of the negative kind, might not be able to perform his job adequately and thereby endanger the entire crew. But, practical considerations of long missions in a confined space, the need to relate intimately to another was recognized and tacitly approved unoffcially. They looked the other way, in other words. As long as operations could be maintained at an optimal level, nobody cared. They were Rangers after all; the ship and the mission came first.

After a luxurious afternoon nap, they shared a dinner of fish and rice. Conversation was playful. They joked about other crew members and especially Bertha, the onboard supercomputer who had a definite personality all her own, complete with quirks. They laughed about the aborted picnic on the planet of the dancing twins. They told stories of when they were kids, trouble they'd gotten into that now seemed ludicrous. They spoke of their foolish indiscretions and painful lessons, the important people in their lives, mentors and teachers who helped shape their destinies. But although they never seemed to run out of things to talk about, the quiet moments shared, whether walking on the beach holding hands or sitting together on the porch, brought them even closer, expanding feelings of belonging to someone, a prize out here in the borderlands.

As they were about to reclaim the veranda for the evening's sunset, Coary's comm signaled an incoming call. He stopped dead in his tracks. It rang again; he hesitated. Brightfeather gave him a piercing, amused glance, then, margarita in hand, left him to his quandary. He could be sailing right now or out somewhere, in the woods, on the beach, and so the comm would ring to no one. He considered it, but it rang again with an ominous undertone, his chest tightened. He punched the speaker, "Coary here, what's up?" He was being interrupted and didn't care for it; he wanted whoever was on the other end to know that.

"Captain Coary, I'm with the Council of Scientists. We were expecting Professor Samuelson to facilitate a seminar this afternoon but he didn't show and he's not been at his hotel all day. Is he there?"

"No," replied Coary, concerned. "He left around 9AM. I don't understand; his hotel is only 25 miles from here and his car has a communicator. If it broke down, he would've called someone."

"That's another thing. He removed the locator chip from his car, said he didn't like being under surveillance, made him nervous. So there's that. I'll contact the authorities. This isn't like him, he wouldn't just go off on a personal quest without notice of some kind. Okay, if you hear from him, tell him to get in touch. He should know our number but I'll leave it on your comm anyway. If I hear anything, I'll let you know."

Coary stood stunned. His first thought was an accident, he went off the road for some reason or was hit by someone and the police had yet to inform the council. Whatever happened, he had a bad feeling about it. He informed Brightfeather who reacted with silence; she would have to process first before saying anything. The professor wasn't as close to her as he was to Coary, but she liked and admired him for many reasons. They talked about what they could do. Drive the road searching for his grav-car or some evidence of trouble, or wait for a call from the council member?

The comm rang; Coary didn't waver this time. He strode inside and pushed the speaker button; she followed him. "Coary here."

"Captain Coary," began an unfamilair voice, at once smooth and gravelly, "we have your professor. We need his help. We've explaind to him our circumstances and he has agreed to accompany us to our planet. We will return him when the matter is finished."

"What do you mean you need his help? To do what? You're kidnapping him. Let me talk to him. I insist."

A moment later, "Brian?" began Samuelson, "I've been in touch with these people for some time. A small group of other scientists, Romanov and Chen for two, are going to their homeworld with me. We waited for the conference so we'd all be together and leave at the same time. I didn't tell you about it because I didn't want to get you involved. You are a fleet officer, you'd feel compelled."

"But what for? Why do they need your help and why didn't they request aid from Space Fleet? Grabbing you off the road isn't exactly proper protocol."

"They didn't. We all met at the air field on the other side of the city, our cars are parked in a hangar. It must be kept secret, even from Space Fleet. They don't trust them, they fear word would get out." The professor coughed that way he does when scoffing at someone's excessiveness. "And besides, their planet is beyond Space Fleet's domain."

"But what is it? What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Professor?"

A long pause ensued. Coary understood that his captors, as he chose to think of them, were right there, so the professor couldn't be as forthright and informative as he might like. The character of his captors, the threat level--if there was one--the nature of his treatment could not be disclosed. Were they true believers or a band of rebels trying to overthrow some established authority and require the professor's particular knowledge and expertise to accomplish it? The fact of the pause, though, told Coary what he needed to know. Finally, Samuelson said, "All I can say is that it concerns phase interference by other, possibly negative, dimensions or a parallel universe. They believe it's being done deliberately, but why that would be, by whom, and what, exactly, is happening to their star system is beyond their grasp. Their scientists are unfamiliar with what they consider merely spatial anomaly."

Coary could hear someone talking to the professor. It was too low to make out but he inferred from the tone, however, that enough had been said. Then he came back on, "Brian. We're leaving soon. Don't worry. I'll tell you all about it when I return. Don't forget to read that book I gave you on the Thought Beings."

"Professor, wait," but it was too late, the comm went dead. Coary's first thought was to contact Space Fleet Headquarters and tell them everything that was going on. But the professor had told him the operation was secret and that they, whoever they were, didn't want them to know, for reasons of their own. Not having the complete picture, he couldn't know what trouble that might cause the professor and his colleagues. Instead, he contacted a friend who worked at that airfield's control center and asked him what ships were leaving for offworld. Three were scheduled in the next hour, two for Hawking-II, the adjacent planet in this star system, and the other had not been required to list a destination as it was traveling to a planet outside the border of the Alliance.

Brightfeather and he stared intensely into each other's eyes. They had to do something and quick before that ship gets away. He contacted the Edgar Poe, a skeleton crew would be onboard overseeing upgrades and general maintenance at one of Space Fleet's docking facilities miles above Hawking-I. Lieutenant Commander Finley, chief engineer, had just finished a recalibration of the quark drive and was about to depart for bars unknown, but he missed his chance. Coary told him there'll be a ship leaving the airfield on the north side of Stephanos within the hour; its transponder registered to a planet beyond the outer territories; track it.

Coary asked, "Who's onboard, how many crew, do we have our nav-officer, Jameson?"

"Commander Owens is in his cabin, I think, and Jameson has been working on some alignment projects, but otherwise we're a bit shorthanded for a combat mission."

"What gave you that idea?"

"Please, captain, what else? Does Fleet know about it?"

"Nobody knows. We need more people and immediately. Especially gunners and assault team personnel."

"I can contact most of the crew, those that didn't go offworld; they're staying at the same hotel. But it'll take some time. It's been awhile since they had their feet on solid ground, they might be reticent about coming in. What can I tell them?"

"Remind them they're Rangers and their captain needs help."

"How about we first find the ship and tag it with a probe. No scanning to detect and evade. That'll give us time to get organized. You will tell us what this is all about, skipper, won't you?"

"When I get there."

"What about Brightfeather? You know where she might be?"

"I have an idea," Coary said, then commed off.

Bightfeather and Coary stared at one another, soft music played, the sunset was just beginning. "He mentioned a book at the end," she said. "It sounded to me like he was trying to tell you something. Did he give you a book?"

Coary went over to a table near the porch doorway; among charts and paperwork sat a book, its glossy cover read, On the Nature of the Thought Beings by Professor Sam Samuelson. He told Brightfeather the professor had set it here when he first arrived two nights ago, but he hadn't looked at it yet. He thumbed through it, a sheet of paper was lodged in the middle pages. On it was a section of a starchart with one star circled and next to it the words third planet. Below that was an explanation:

"I might not get the chance to speak to you before we leave so I put this chart of the planet I'm going to in here. I would've told you when I was at your home, but I suspect you would've tried to talk me out of it or restrained me and informed Space Fleet. I respected their request for covertness. I suggested they talk to the government or Space Fleet, but they didn't want them to get involved. They don't want a heavy-handed presence. They seem to be unusually paranoid, but they may have a point. They first want to understand what is going on in their space and, possibly, who, if anyone, is behind it and why. Without them knowing.

"A group of us are going. I enticed some colleagues into accompanying me; it wasn't difficult. The prospect of being able to actually apply theories and increase our knowledge of the details, and, of course, the adventure couldn't be passed up. These people contacted me this spring about a problem that was threatening their planet and possibly their entire star system. They have no idea what it is or what harm it might do. It acts unnaturally, whatever they mean by that. In other words, they believe someone is doing it deliberately with some purpose in mind. They want us to assess the situation and offer advice. They seem aboveboard; nonetheless, I want you to know where I'm going just in case it turns out they want us for a very different reason. I'll try to contact you through Space Fleet when I get there. Tell the Council leaders what's going on, the short version, otherwise they'll think we've been kidnapped or worse. Take care, Brian."

"How could he do this without talking to me first?" blurted Coary.

"I think he's old enough to make his own decisions, Brian," commented Brightfeather. "What I want to know is if they're so paranoid, why did they let him make a call?"

"I'm guessing he told them what I might do if he were to suddenly turn up missing, along with a bunch of other scientists. And he was probably right on. What do you think, science officer? Should we inform Headquarters or take the matter into our own hands?"

Brightfeather took a seat, an act intended to convey a wish for calmness. Take a deep breath, quell emotions, consider options. She learned that from her captain, but she also learned to act without hesitation when lives were possibly in danger. Once a decison was made, a course of action settled on, it was put into play with all due dispatch. Her captain might make mistakes from time to time based on what he knew of a given situation, but he did so with the conviction that he was doing the right thing. And mistakes never diminished his belief in himself; he didn't waste time brooding.

"I think you already know the answer to that, captain."

The comm rang; it was Finley. "I managed to round up most of the crew, not all are in the best of shape at the moment. But we have assault personnel and gunner-mates. The communications officer is flying in from some small town south, and the braintrust is all present and accounted for. They were at the conference and were bored to death. So they're onboard settling in. We have all the bases covered though no backup."

"Okay, good work, Fin," Coary said. "I have a piece of a starchart I'm going to send you. Have Jameson hand it off to Bertha. I want to know where that star system is and how fast we can get there. I've contacted Brightfeather, we'll be onboard shortly."

He scanned the starchart and sent it to Edgar Poe. Brightfeather was busy dressing: sandals, jeans, and a teeshirt, her usual summer attire. She kissed him hard, then left to drive to the docking shuttles for a lift to the ship. Coary sat out on the porch, searching the lake and the distant western mountains, the sun just beginning to set. He had plans for a very different evening. He recalled what the gravelly voice said, "we have your professor." Have. That didn't sound like the professor had a choice, that his presence was completely voluntary. He could've said, professor Samuelson is with us, or some such. But, he could be reading too much into it; it could just be a problem with the language.

As a captain about to endanger his crew for an unsanctioned mission, he had to consider and clarify his motivation. The professor was like a father to him, a father he never had. They'd had long talks together whenever both were in town at the same time, not very often. Was he acting on emotion? he thought. Or was the fact that a group of the best scientific minds in the Alliance had just been taken away to some distant unknown planet by unknown people for questionable purposes, also unknown, sufficient reason to take action?

He finished his drink, got dressed, then drove to the shuttle dock. Whatever was going to happen, he wanted to be close to the action and the group of scientists. If he were to inform Space Fleet, they'd probably launch a flotilla to retrieve them, then, maybe, discuss the problem with the locals. But, that could backfire, the group could become hostages; it could get very ugly real fast. And if Headquarters had known, they wouldn't have let them go without protection, a couple of cruisers, at least. No, he thought, this is the best way to do this. If I'm kicked out of the Rangers afterwards, then so be it; as long as the professor and his friends are returned safely. Scientists, he muttered as he pulled his grav-car into the parking bay, wide-eyed and artless to a fault.

When he arrived onboard Edgar Poe, Finley informed him the communications officer had just arrived; everybody who was coming along was here. The rest of the crew, mostly on other planets, would be informed and sworn to secrecy. They'd probably regret missing the trip; you want to be with your comrades and friends when they go off on a dangerous mission. They're family.

Jameson, the nav-officer, informed Coary that Bertha had found the star system. In the off-bridge conference room, he brought the area up on the screen. He pointed to the star. It was on a forty-five degree angle from Hawking-I, heading to the right of the border planets, as you faced the great central hub, and too far away for any contact with the Alliance, on the near edge of the Upper Centaurus Arm. Robot survey ships had scouted that quadrant during the hey-day of colonization, looking for new prospects. Unfortunately, none had gone close enough to determine if any of the planets were populated. Now they knew.

"How fast can we get there?" asked Coary.

"Well, the probe tagged to their transponder tells us their maximum speed through quantum space is about one-third ours. At that speed they'll be home in approximately six days. We could be there before them by three or four days taking a wider trajectory."

Coary felt the need to slow everything down; he recognized the signs of rushing without purpose, when events take over with a life of their own, usually not ending well. There were other things to consider that he hadn't told the crew, only Brightfeather knew. The primary purpose, ostensibly, for the group of scientists to be going to this planet is because there's something seriously wrong with their space. If true, and he didn't see any reason not to believe it, he couldn't just charge in there and take up orbit over the planet, find out through monitoring where they were keeping the group, and then rescue them with assault teams, if indeed they needed rescuing. It was time to bring everybody into it, he didn't want to go off half-cocked, and his loyal crew deserved to know what they were getting themselves into.

He commed the shipwide speakers and asked for the crew's attention. He told them why they were going and where. He told them of the possibility of anomalous behavior in that local spacetime. Brightfeather, changed now into her ship jumpsuit and Ranger boots, had entered while he was speaking. He asked her if she recalled what the professor had said about that region of space. She explained over the comm what she could garner from the professor's brief description, the reason the group of scientists were going there.

Coary then said, "Because this is not an official Space Fleet mission, no one is required to stay. You have stood by me through thick and thin, mostly thick, so I'll have no misgivings towards anyone if you choose to stay. You still have shore leave left, you're under no obligation to go."

Commander Owens entered and sat next to the skipper and across from Brightfeather. He said, "I think you're underestimating the nature of your crew, Brian. You must know by now they'd rather be doing something off the grid than what's considered routine. Look at what we've gotten into over the past few years. No one's going to opt out."

That proved to be the case. They were Rangers, descendants of spacers and outlaws, rugged individualists who originally came together during the wild and wooly frontier days to protect people and cargos of needed goods from marauders--other outlaws. Having as predisposition the personality type seeking adventure on this scale, that spirit has been kept alive, inculcated, and honed through outlandish experiences and personal hardships, through the discovery and anticipation of the new. Ultimately, they were looking forward to kicking some ass.

Finley entered and took a seat next to Brightfeather. Discussion was in order. "Okay," began Coary, "you all know the scoop. Why didn't this group approach either the Council of Scientists or Space Fleet for help? It sounds like a matter that may have universal significance. Disturbances in space tend to spread like vibrations on a drum."

"They felt desperate," said Brightfeather. "They feared a negative response and so went directly to the source. Or, time being of the essence, they couldn't afford all the red tape and formality. And, of course, don't forget their apparent paranoia. If indeed whatever disturbance is happening, they suspect it to be deliberately caused, calculated by another race. Assuming they ever heard of Space Fleet, what would be the consequences if the perpetrators found out they were coming after them?"

"No," rebutted Finley. "Why would Fleet bother to even get involved in the doings of a planet far outside its jurisdiction? We can't go running around the galaxy protecting people we don't even know and have no treaties with just for the hell of it. And they're too distant to join the Alliance, it wouldn't be feasible to patrol traffic lanes or investigate infractions. That's why we put the brakes on colonization here, at the border planets, until we are sufficiently stabilized for the next leap. But not now."

"So you've given up on exploration for its own sake?" teased Brightfeather. "Have you grown stodgy in your old age, chief engineer? Maybe you just like to sit in your stateroom and read engineering quarterlies and sip blue wine."

"All right," interrupted Coary. "Nobody's going exploring anywhere. And we're not on an expedition to make first contact. They've already done that. Do we have any guesses as to what they may look like?"

Bertha, Edgar Poe's supercomputer, commed in, "Sir, I've accessed the security feed of the airfield from today. I'll send the pertinent clip to your screen."

They all watched as Samuelson and several other scientists were escorted to a strangely-shaped ship about half the size of Edgar Poe. It wasn't exactly symmetrical, but it was diffficult to tell the bow from the stern. Five aliens walked with them, mingling and talking. They were a good deal taller and thinner, their arms were elongated compared to humans, and their heads had that distinctive oblong shape Coary had seen before amongst other alien species. Conclusion: humanoid. They moved casually, unhurried; it all seemed perfectly aboveboard.

"Bertha," Coary said, "Can you pull in for a close-up of the professor's face?" At once the feed stopped and a static picture of Samuelson filled the screen. Coary tried to read his features. What was he thinking? Did he look stressed? Afraid? Concerned?

"Okay, Bertha, that's enough. Thank you." He turned to the nav-officer and asked, "Is the probe tracking their ship faster?"

"Yes, sir. At max speed it could run a course around their ship and reach their star system a couple of days before them."

"Okay, here's what I want. Instruct the probe to achieve max speed and scan continuously on approach. I want telemetry on that area. We have to know what's going on there, if anything." Jameson left immediately.

"Is there some way to figure out or find out why Samuelson and his gang were invited?" asked Owens. "I thought his specialty was exobiology, not the physics of spacetime."

"Studying and researching biology on other planets can't be done out of context," said Coary, an avid student and good listener. Their many lakeside conversations proved to be most instructive. "The environment influences whatever form life might take within it, of course, and reciprocally, life creates and shapes the ecosystem. It's a comprehensive field.

"He mentioned Doctor Romanov. The professor supported him and his treatise when most other colleagues were keeping their academic distance. His views and speculations seemed, at that time, to be rather eccentric and farfetched. He argued at length for the layered evolution of the universe, planes of existence interpenetrating and occupying the same space on different dimensions, yet maintaining their separate identities."

"I can see where his presence would be most helpful," said Brightfeather. "His mathematics--his homotopic transformations--established a link between one plane of existence and another and succeeded in integrating them towards ultimate unity. Based on Degrasse's transform, the layers stacked up congruently, indicating that in the primordial past they were once one."

"So the separation is only an illusion," said Finley. "Is that what you're saying?"

"No, not actually. As the universe has evolved and developed and gone through its many transitions, the planes have pulled away from one another, forged their own realities. We've met beings from other dimensions and in between dimensions. People with gifts enabling them to travel from one to the other, to control forces that to us appear as magic. They were very real."

"Possibly, then," said the captain, "if this emergency is bona fide, something might be going wrong with that delicate balance, knocking it out of kilter. At least in that local area."

"Or," began Owens, "someone is using the dimensional highway to enter uninvited right in the middle of their world."

They sat in silence. Coary knew from vast experience how important momentum was. He and his crew were ready to go; the ship was primed, all systems had been checked and double-checked. They were, after all, still on leave. They could be down on the planet right now doing whatever came naturally, but loyalty dictated they report to the ship for duty, for the captain. However, here they were, still clinging to the skyhigh dock. Sooner or later, someone from Space Fleet might find out from the dock crew what was going on and wonder why so many had reported to the ship at the same time two weeks before their vacation was up. Moreover, if they don't do something in the immediate future, that all-important momentum will likely falter and die. Getting it cranked up again wouldn't be easy; people would get aggravated. The skipper requested their help, their voluntary attendance, as soon as possible. Without complaint, that he knew of, they reported to the Edgar Poe expecting to zoom out as soon as everyone who was going to be onboard was. But now, they were being asked to wait, held up for reasons unknown, chafing at the bit. This was unacceptable. Captain Coary grew antsy, he had to make a move.

Finally, he said, "Traveling to their system just behind our probe might be a good idea. We'd get there without anyone knowing, get feedback from the probe, and make our decisions. But we'd have to cut our speed appreciably; we don't want to get ahead of it; we don't know what's going on there. So, we have time, a couple of days anyway, but we can't just sit here. We could catch up to the probe and follow it into their sysytem. I don't feel that would be a very productive strategy though. In fact, it's not only a waste of our time, but we'd have to absorb its information and come up with an understanding and a plan on short notice. And suppose someone actually is behind whatever is going on. They might notice us and there we'd be, caught out in the open at a definite disadvantage."

Owens wryly suggested, "We could use some background. We'll get telemetry from the probe, facts and figures for Bertha to digest, but an overall picture beforeheand would give us a leg up. Going in there blind, I don't like it."

"I agree," said Brightfeather. "Almost certainly Professor Samuelson was researching the problem, as he was able to grasp it, based on the alien's explanation. I'll bet if we go to his home on Hawking-II, we might find something."

"Wait a second," said Finley. "If those people don't understand what's going on to the point where they have to recruit scientists to tell them what's going on, then their explanation won't shed much light."

"True," responded the science officer, "but we don't know what questions Samuelson asked, what he deduced. We need his work, probably on his computer; although, I've noticed he likes scribbling notes on paper and leaving them everywhere; my dad use to do that. They may have had sufficient information, but not the knowledge to put it together. The context and significance of events that seem separate and disconnected to them, unrelated, might not be so to the professor. He might see a pattern, what's part of it and what isn't, cause and effect."

Coary had heard enough. He commed the nav-officer to plot a course for Hawking-II, the next planet out from the star. Accordingly, it wasn't necessary to drop into quantum space for such a short distance. The dock workers were informed they were going on a shakedown cruise to check out the new modifications on the quark drive. Within minutes, the docking clamps were released and they were free. The captain and commander Owens had visited the professor a few times after their encounter with the Thought Beings long ago. Samuelson had been interested in their personal impressions, something that can't be garnered from an official report. When available, Brightfeather had accompanied them for a more scientific assessment.

There was time for a long overdue nap; he needed to disconnect from the past few days and replenish. He didn't know when he'd get the chance again. Afterwards, coffee and a conference with the braintrust. They discussed possibilities. The star system on the segment of chart Samuelson had stuffed in his book was up on the 3-D holoscreen. It was composed of six planets, three rocky ones close in and three gas giants, surrounded by a bulbous ring of asteroids and comets. Most of the moons orbited the giants; the third from the star, where the professor and his colleagues were headed, had two moons, one twice as far away from the planet as the inner. The questions they were asking themselves concerned the overall pattern as seen from a bird's eye view. Was there anything unusual about it? When was this picture, obviously the result of a robot survey probe, taken? It wasn't current by a long stretch; it could very well date back to colonial days, hundreds of years ago. They could get little out of it except to gauge that the third planet was in the ideal habitable zone. One investigator suggested a larger picture, perhaps they were too narrowly focused.

Coary requested Bertha render the surrounding star systems on the screen. An entire cluster appeared, a grouping of some thirty systems containing varying numbers of planets, moons, and assorted hangers-on. Again, however, the mosaic was of old survey pictures. There were no updates in the archives so determining overall direction of rotation wasn't possible. But did that matter? someone asked. Could we infer it from something else? As Bertha slowly altered the view, trying to locate any symmetries and patterns in the grouping that might offer some significant information, one arrangement caught everyone's eye. Bertha was told to stop and enhance. Topologically, the configuration that revealed itself was of rings of stars--annuli--separated from one another by a thick swath of empty space. Three distinct annuli were clearly depicted and at the epicenter--the star system where the professor was heading.

Considering the entire ensemble was stitched together from what was originally robot survey snapshots, Bertha did remarkably well. Their relative positions on the two-dimensional photos made them appear to be on the same great circle. Extrapolating a 3-D replication suggested the rings could possibly be spherical, enclosing the central system. On request, based on approximate intermingling gravitational and magnetic influences as well as the interconnected morphology of dark matter in and around the cluster, Bertha simulated possible permutations of star system configurations. Collectively, the three spheres of star systems--planets and moons--enveloped the central system like gossamer shrouds. As Bertha projected the timeline from when the pictures were taken into the present, a curious tendency emerged that only she saw. Without requesting permission, she reoriented the overall picture so that the levels of star formations were concentric and inserted vector lines passing through each star of each sphere in succession, creating a vector field of forces. They intersected, roughly, at the central star, the vortex of the cone.

The chief scientist, alarmed by the potential implications, asked, "Extending from the time of the survey pictures, when approximately, was or will be this particular arrangement?"

Bertha didn't hesitate. "Now," is all she said.

The braintrust held their collective breath for a long moment, then discussion broke out in earnest over the significance, the meaning, the effect of the alignment. Some went to work crunching equations on computer consoles stationed around the expansive lab. On a lower, more private tone, the chief investigator engaged in quick conversation with Bertha. Coary left Brightfeather in her element and made his way to the bridge.

Commander Owens was busy viewing telemetry from the probe. Nothing unusual yet, it was still a long way off. As Coary took his captain's seat, the nav-officer informed him they were approaching Hawking-II. Coary ordered helm to take orbit outside their security buoys, they'd be taking a shuttle. Along with Finley and Brightfeather, the forensics team would accompany him. Not knowing what to expect on arrival, he ordered the security chief to assemble a small assault team for the trip, just in case. The very air seemed sketchy now, like mischief afoot. As far as he was concerned, and for the safety of his crew, from here on out he considered that they were on a combat mission.

They established an orbit well beyond the planet's sentinels--a network of satellites encompassing the planet in such a way as to act as an interconnected shield. As the shuttle approached a buoy, its Space Fleet registry was checked through its transponder and a mechanical voice came on the ship's comm giving them clearance to land. The professor had a chateau on the outskirts of the capital city, New Chicago. They circled it once, then set down in a field adjacent. The assault squad went first to reconnoitre and establish a security perimeter. Coary punched the keypad at the door; a voice replied, "Welcome, Captain Coary, please come in."

They entered behind three armed Rangers who quickly cleared the house. Coary and Brightfeather were familiar with the layout. They went immediately to the professor's office. His computer sat to one side of a large walnut desk; examining its contents would be the first order of business. The forensics team scoured the rest of the house, looking for anything untoward. Coary methodically examined the wall-to-wall book shelves, not the titles--most of the subjects were over his head--but for scraps of paper, notes, diagrams that might be stuffed in between books.

No password was needed to get into the computer; Samuelson had contempt for such things. But going through the available directories, Brightfeather ran into encrypted files, text docuemts that were all gibberish and pictures scrambled without the key. She turned them over to Bertha through a link established as part of ground-mission protocol. They'd found it helped immensely to have her in the loop, not only for reference material from her vast store of archived knowledge, but for analysis and conjecture based on artificial-intelligence reasoning in a DNA-gel environment. Because of her ability to hold an uncountable number of varaibles and parameters in her mind at once, she could cross-reference a set of concepts in one context with a similar arrangement in another and come up with novel insights that no human was likely to see. She was always looking for parallel idea constructions that might shed light on an existing problem. Also, she could hack into any computer system in the galaxy and break any encryption, which is what made her an honorary Ranger.

The email messages, on the other hand, were unprotected. Only recent ones remained in the inbox. They were brief and impersonal, referring to the upcoming conference and matters of it: who were the speakers, when were the times, where was the main venue, and so forth. He had one folder entitled project zero which she opened. Saved messages went back months. Discussing "the problem" with the other scientists who chose to accompany him to this faraway star system to save a planet. They sounded excited and anxious. Finley sat beside her, studying schematics and drawings embedded in the messages of what appeared to be a machine of some kind. Bertha copied and catalogued everything.

In between Theory of Hyperspatial Transference and Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Microbial Mineralogy Coary found a sheaf of papers. He spread them out on the desk. There were several drawings of corkscrew spirals from different angles and ones of what looked like components of some device. A sequence of detail was apparent indicating its development. Each spiral was increasingly subdived into smaller and smaller geometric shapes. An arrow pointed to the star at the center of it all and the words: ending in a confluence of infinitesimal bits with the obvious result. Obvious? mused Coary. He slid the pages containing parts of the device and one of all components connected in the finished prototype to Finley. Doodle pages, recognizable as the beginnings of inspiration, contained small diagrams and equations sribbled around them; he turned them over to Brightfeather.

A text page written in the professor's scrawl, which Coary had learned to decipher, spoke of a topological knot in spacetime and its potential. He spoke of tectonic forces, cracks in the universe, dark matter reshaping the surrounding space, a transformation into a new geometric relationship, the four forces altered or eliminated,..., a pebble in the pond.

Bertha commed in that she had decrypted the documents; they viewed them on Samuelson's screen. There were more text pages, readable by all, and precisely drawn and detailed diagrams of the device. Even though Bertha now had these safely stored, Finley copied them to a memory stick for later study. Bertha might be, probably would be, busy, so he didn't have to wait on her.

One text page of what looked like diary entries read: "a quantum-particle whirlpool smearing out distinctions, forming a single whole, dropping as one through the substrate continuum, bypassing the quantum realm all together--draining through cosmic pores to the void--a plane of non-existence before there was space or time. Nonlinear fluctuations creating tiny fractures at random spacetime locations. Leading to a massive "quantum-level timequake" radiating outward--resonating distance of wave propagation unknowable--directions of fractures and faults indeterminable, possibly could engulf entire region if dark matter is given momentum sufficient to surpass a critical value. Further study is necessary. All we know is their understanding of what's going on. Their science is not as advanced as ours. Professors Weingard and Sterling have been working on the possibility of quantum timequakes from a purely mathematical model. What was described to us certainly has those markings thus far. The localized spatial disturbance alone. Random, intermittent quantum spikes and troughs as though a tidal effect, a clear sign of instability like the seismic vibrations of a planetquake."

And elsewhere: "We have developed an apparatus we believe capable of countering the tearing effect on the fractal-dimension level. It generates space and time elementals oriented opposite to that of the local spacetime as we presently understand it. If aimed, or focused, on the area of the singularity--the convergence point of our vector field of forces--it should equalize those elementals that are being twisted out of existence and neutralize the shredding effect. Once the proper morphospatial field corrects for the temporary imbalance, normal spacetime should emerge. But, it demands an enormous amount of power on the order of the background radiation or the proximity of a supernova, the source material being space itself. Possibly, when we arrive on site, we'll be able to make the required refinements."

He read the part about the vector field of forces out loud to his compatriots. "How did he know about that," asked an incredulous Captain Coary. "Only someone like Bertha could've seen that."

"Not if he had current pictures of that region of space," said Brightfeather. "The alignment is about to happen or is happening right now, whatever window of time that means. Sir, I think we have everything of relevance that the professor can offer. If what they're proposing is actually transpiring, professor Samuelson and his friends are in grave danger. We should go. The probe should be near there by now."

The forensics people had found nothing of concern. Apparently, the professor left on his own accord, no message left behind saying they were being kidnapped or coerced. No sign of a struggle. Coary scanned the office/library, smelled the pipe smoke, felt the warmth of the woodwork on walls and ceiling. Old-fashioned and comfortable. Samuelson's heavy leather easy chair sat in the corner, his "thinking chair" he liked to call it. Next to it was a small circular table on which rested a canister of tobacco, a collection of pipes, and a cognac snifter, empty. Coary couldn't resist sitting in it. When he did so, the plush cushion depressed. Stuffed in between it and the generous arm was a single sheet of paper.

On it he'd written: "I don't know what we're getting ourselves into or why these people didn't contact Alliance or the Council. Surely, it concerns the Border Planets; if true, it could result in a possible extinction event well beyond the confines of their star system. Their need for secrecy seems to be part of their nature. I don't buy that someone is deliberately causing this. Who could have that much power? Were they afraid of being denied help? Perhaps when we arrive things will become clearer."

Coary folded the sheet and put it in his jumpsuit pocket, looked over at Brightfeather and said, "Yea, time to go."

On the way back to Edgar Poe, Coary ordered Jameson to plot a course that would intersect tangentially with the probe's. As soon as the shuttle was securely stowed, they dropped into quantum space. It would take two days to arrive on site, but well before then, the probe would be near enough to send information concerning any anomalous behavior or sightings. Coary dropped the sheaf of papers off at the brain center, the piece of paper he found in the chair he kept to himself. They already had the schematics of the mysterious device on the holoscreen; the spiral diagrams were on the chalk boards.

A few of the braintrust were familiar with Samuelson's work and that of the other scientists accompanying him. As Rangers, they lived and worked in the real world, and the sometimes, not so real. New ideas and theories about its nature and behavior were studied and considered. Most were strickly academic or mathematical exercises, esoteric phantasms that could play out perfectly well if and only if the universe they were confined to actually existed, suitable for science fiction. In spite of the artificial environments created for compliance purposes, a few seemed to be based on an intuition unrecognized by the author, an intuition that issued forth as practically relevant, if a bit farfetched. The farfetched they were familar with.

They were all aware that the situation might be quite different than what Samuelson's documents described. Nonetheless, they had only that to go on at present; news from the probe would seal the deal. However, based on Bertha's depiction of the current arrangement of star systems in the surrounding cluster--a fact they knew for certain and now corroborated by Samuelson's work--their own deductions and implications echoed those of the Professor's.

Fractal dimensions, topological sub-layers, understood mathematically as the refinement of simplices (simplexes) of elementals representing spacetime, existed beneath the surface. Within each macroscopic dimension, nested discontinuously by transitions of scale, passed a threshold of magnification, deeper layers of self-similar fractalized spacetime existed, underpinning all of creation. At some point, complexity of detail surpasses a limit beyond which the infinitesimal passes through the sieve of the Planck scale, space ceases, and only time, albeit in its spatial aspect, remains as the fundamental feature. Time neverending, instilling motion, an undulation giving birth and life to the cosmos.

Based on this, their present practical concern held serious consequences. As time is twisted ever more tightly by the titanic forces produced by the cluster of stars--a cyclonic funnel boring through the crust of the universe--combined with the turbulent fluctuations of the sub-quantum vacuum, it will become unstable, lose homogeneity and cohesion, disintegrate and fall to stillness, the static home of the void. The void would then enter--seep up--through the cracks in spacetime and radiate in all directions and on all dimensions, blanketing, submerging motion and hence life.

That's the theory anyway, as currently put forth by the Council of Scientists, but it had never been field tested. Moreover, only a handful of scientists grasped the inner mechanisms that could, possibly, manufacture such a result. And they were currently enroute to the affected area, ostensibly.

Theory though it be, they had all experienced the emergence of the Dark Lord from his world and were quite familar with parallel universes--the multiverse--and alternate timelines, not to mention the discovery of beings who lived in between dimensions, in interstitial space. Consequently, they needed no more convincing that the universe held secrets and surprises beyond imagining, unpredictable and outrageous occurrences sufficient to subvert anyone's complacent understanding of the way things are--the nature of reality. They had to explore all possibilities; ask the right questions: What forces keep the void at bay? Or is it a matter of dimensions separated by an inherent surface tension, each autonomous layer or outgrowth producing its own variety of astro-species with its own invariant, internal properties? Can it be stopped?

The effect of Lt. Cmdr. Finley's upgrades on the quark drive hadn't been completely anticipated by the nav-officer; Finley had said only hold onto your hat. A deeper strata of the quantum realm enwrapped Edgar Poe. Ordinarily, the quark drive generates a cloud of sub-nucleonic space-atoms that envelop a ship with quantum space, making it immune to ordinary spacetime constraints. Pure information knifing through quantum space utilizing the global property of non-locality. But with Finley's improvements, entangled units could be treated as singular. Also, he reordered the lattice structure of the callasium, creating an exponential increase in the number of interconnecting nodes, adding another level of complexity and generating a variant quark type in the process. Edgar Poe skipped from one wave-peak to another as though a flat stone on a choppy sea. The 300-foot cruiser shuddered as the organic-metal sheathing enclosing and protecting the hull adapted to the new environment. The nav-officer updated his time of arrival to almost half and informed the captain of the change.

Accordingly, Coary convened an organizational meeting in the private conference room off-bridge. Owens, Brightfeather, Finley, and the chief investigator of the braintrust sat around the long table clutching coffee cups. He had to remind himself that less than a day ago these people were all on official leave. When that ceases in mid-stride, so to speak, before you're able to ready yourself, it takes some adjusting. The mindset doesn't just turn off, it kind of fades into the distance. Having an emergency of universal proportions laid at your feet, and acting soley on your own volition, independent of backup, out of communications with the home office, has a way of dissolving pretense and opening the doors for out-of-the-box thinking and behaving. Accordingly, people seemed relaxed, but not in a frivolous way. We channel our energies and talents through the roles we play, our job description, within the bounds of appropriate protocol. But there was no time for that now; everybody had to bring everything to the table, freed to be at their best. Bertha commed in that she was ready.

Coary began, "Assuming what we're headed for is what we've been led to believe based on the information we have, possible outcomes need to be considered. Now, it could result in a local timequake, reverberating out, disturbing time displacement for a distance but not causing any serious damage to planets, moons, or life and then all returning to normal as the star systems move away from their current position. Or, on the other extreme, all matter in that sector is caught in a maelstrom, stripped down to particles, plasma, virtual vacuum energy, and then nothingness, zilch. Any thoughts?"

"Considering what we now know compared to what we knew in the beginning," said Finley, "do you think it's time to let Space Fleet in on this?"

"I've thought of that," replied Coary. "But the Professor asked for secrecy for reasons we can't guess. I don't think he expected me to come after him. If Headquarters knew of the potential danger to this quadrant, they would no doubt choose to act, somehow. And if they knew that the best people to fix whatever it is are on their way there now, unavailable for consultation, they'd put matters in overdrive, send a flotilla out there, endanger a lot of people without having a plan in place. It'd be a mess that could screw up any chance for a solution. Time is, very literally, of the essence. No, I think we'd move faster and more precisely if we continue alone, free to do whatever needs to be done."

"What of the allegation that the spatial disturbance is deliberate?" asked Brightfeather. "Like the Professor wondered, who could have that much power? And why? If true, and I think we should entertain that possibility, are these people under attack or is someone retaliating? Maybe that's the why of the secrecy."

"There are other, less dramatic, ways to retaliate conclusively," said Coary flatly. "The entire star system, all six planets and moons, wiped out of existence and the possibility of a massive timequake reverberating outward for who knows how far. Traveling through quantum space, it could blanket the Alliance systems. The void wiping out all matter, all life. That's a bit much, don't ya think? Who would want to cause such a thing? If they exist in our universe, they must be at a distance that won't be affected, maybe from another galaxy. No, I don't see it. And why pick that star system as the focal point, the location to initiate the process? What's so special about it? If it is deliberate, those people are at the crux of it. And collateral damage be damned."

"If they are that far away," said the lead scientist of the braintrust, "how could they have anything to do with these people? By Samuelson's word, they're not very advanced scientifically. What possible significance could they have in the lives of beings capable of maneuvering a cluster of stars and all their accompanying gravity sources into a complex arrangement which would then be used like a drilling tool, right through spacetime itself?"

"There's something we're not looking at," said Brightfeather, her eyes wide with the thought. A look Coary and Finley were familiar with whenever she cut loose the reins of reason and let her imagination roam free. "Suppose these people aren't what they appear to be. And suppose they know, found out, who those people most able to stop the timequake are. And suppose they formulated a plan, an excuse, to whisk them all away so they'd be of no use to the Alliance."

"Creatures of the void?" said Coary, letting his tongue roll over the words. "Capable of projection or manifestation on our plane so as to pretend to be from a planet in danger of ending along with its star? Grabbing up those most knowledgeable about the problem in order to eliminate any defense?"

"But why?" asked Finley. "I mean, if they hadn't bothered to contact Samuelson and instead just initiated the process, we probably wouldn't have time to do anything about it anyway, with or without the Professor and all the brains in the Alliance, except to escape beyond its reach, abandon our homeworlds, start all over again. As it is, it looks like he spent months researching this whole deal. We wouldn't have that much time. Which brings up another issue. The Professor's device."

He pushed his memory stick into a slot in the tabletop and a 3-D hologram of the schematics appeared above it. "My engineers have been deconstructing this apparatus. Members of the braintrust familiar with space and time elementals and how they behave, their orientation properties, are helping to understand what it's supposed to do and how it works. According to what we could garner from the Professor's papers--the concepts and math of it--it's supposed to generate anti-spacetime elementals and disperse them over a volume of space. Now, if you'll recall, we did the same thing when we were trapped by the time-eaters, out in the far wasteland. We sent a probe into the one black sphere we faced that dispersed oppositely-oriented space and time elementals, shorting out the entire network. But, even for something on that relative tiny scale, we still had to channel the quark drive through the gamma-ray cannon to drive the probe through the compressed space between. So, for what we're looking at here, Samuelson's probably right in his estimation of the power necessary to do what I think he wants to do with this thing."

After a pause, he said, "If this is a deliberate plan, whoever set up that network of time traps maybe could pull this off as well. Who knows when those traps were set?"

"What's this thing made out of," asked Coary. "How can it withstand that much power?"

"He recommends superconducting organic-titanium for a casing, enclosing a sub-nucleonic, low-frequency gluon field. The field, ostensibly, would mediate between the different species of anti-elementals. They'd be transparent to ordinary spacetime electromagnetism. But I've been giving it some thought, and based on what we learned with the time-eaters, it might be that Samuelson was going at it from the wrong direction; brilliant though he be, he's not an engineer. Instead of the strategy of covering the prospective wound in spacetime with a bandage, why not infuse the space at the vortex with a small engineered anti-spacetime bubble? It'll send out waves of anti-gravity--oppositely-oriented gravitons--in all directions, permeating space. And be self-regenerating. Like nanites building other nanites from the resources available, as it undulates outward it'll feed on the supersymmetric anti-gaviton potential latent in the ordinary fabric of spacetime, the vacuum."

He looked off to the side at no one in particular, his eyes glazed, and continued speaking as though merely channeling thoughts.

"The bubble would be the trigger, supplying the template and the energy, initiating a cascade. We can gauge it, control the flux, so it won't counter the effects of normal gravity, but act, instead, like a thermostat, to neutralize all excess locally, dampen all wavefronts. The aberrant magnetic fields should either collapse or dissipate with time.

"The bubble would cohere by the self-organizing affinity of homologous components, the changes in boundary conditions would dictate status from moment to moment. A nonlinear morphospatial field would then emerge, controlling and choreographing the intertwining elementals and supporting the interface."

He leaned forward and held out his hands, shaping a ball. He stared at this mental projection as he felt it, moving his hands as though around something real. "The spherical interface with ordinary spacetime will form a porous, fluctuating, indefinite membrane, an envelope of virtual energy, naturally, sealing it and protecting it from decaying instantaneously in ordinary spacetime--mutual annihilation. Once the bubble's in place, we can dissolve the membrane by bathing it in a stream of quarks; a quark-field burst from the drive oughta do it. When the quarks meet the anti-quarks, the contained anti-elementals will be unleashed into quantum space, covering vast ordinary distance in a heartbeat."

Coary, Brightfeather, Owens, and the lead investigator sat dumbfounded. You could hear a pin drop. The matter of factness of it. But Coary remembered the time Finley and Brightfeather had quickly fabricated a quantum-space restraining field holding the Dark Lord fixed while the shaman spoke the reversal spells. And how Finley recieved his promotion to lieutenant commander: inventing a technique for inverting the lattice-structure of the crystal in the quark drive in order to shrink the ship to two-dimensional space. At one time a serious consideration in order to escape the Thought Beings. Fortunately, however, they didn't have to use it. So, why should he be surprised?

Bertha said, "If you would give me the specifications, commander, I can configure a prototype in a magnetically sealed cocoon." Apparently, she'd followed Finley's description. The principles, she understood, anti-spacetime was nothing new to her.

Finley looked at the captain who gave the go-ahead. Everything had to be considered for possible use, everything was on the table. Heading into unknown territory, they couldn't have too many tools.

The nav-officer commed in that the probe was sending telemetry in the red zone. Coary led the team to the bridge; he assumed his command seat. Owens and Brightfeather sat on either side; Finley went to engineering, he had much to do. The probe had entered a region of empty space that was more compact than it should be considering the absence of material bodies. So, programmed to investigate anomalies, it emerged into ordinary spacetime to scan for the cause. Though still light years away, the influence of the star cluster filled all space. Virtual particles of matter and antimatter were emanating from the substrate at an accelerated rate. The combined energy of annihilations produced turbulence in space itself, making for a bumpy ride. The probe was commanded to resume trajectory; it dropped into quantum space and continued on to the cluster and the star at its heart. They'd be on top of the probe soon and find out for themselves. The alien ship with the Professor and friends onboard would be at least three days behind now, with the improvements to the quark drive, by the time Edgar Poe reached the outskirts of the cluster.

Originally, Coary had thought to hide out and let their ship arrive, get a lock on Samuelson et al from deep orbit by scanning the planet for human biological signatures, and when they were all together, shuttle in with a task force and pull them out. He didn't know then what he does now. He figured he had two options: hold back, monitor the goings-on out of sight, and be ever ready to swoop in and rescue the scientists, if necessary. In other words, let them deal with it, whatever it is, but watch out for the gang. Or, land on the planet and find out what the hell was really going on. Determine if circumstances were as dire as they were led to believe. It wasn't a hard decision to make; holding back, staying in the dark, especially in a life-threatening situation, was not his style or predilection. If it was a legitimate problem--what they've come to understand of it--the authorities shouldn't refuse to cooperate. Especially if they had the cure and the Professor didn't.

And there's the other thing. If true, if all hell is about to break loose, it's no longer a private matter, isolated in one star system and sector. It potentially affects a larger region of the galaxy, up to and including the Alliance of Border Planets. The Professor went there for further analysis, he'd written. Apparently, he felt his calculations needed more refinement that only being on site can achieve, or something was missing, something was not right. A key eigenvector, parameter, essential feature that these people weren't telling him or simply weren't aware of, though happening right in front of their face. So, what Samuelson knew of it may not actually be the case, maybe it's something relatively harmless and local. But then Coary recalled the telemetry from the probe. No, he had to conclude, it definitely didn't have the markings of a trivial event. In fact, it might even be worse than they think.

Edgar Poe soon began to feel the quantum equivalence of surface resistance. When it reached a critical threshold, the quark drive compensated by shifting phase. A tremor went through the ship. If there's this much force at this distance, wondered Coary, then what must it be like at the center of the cluster? Can we or the probe even get there through this increasing viscosity of space? Or the alien ship? Have they waited too long? Is it too late?

As Coary was about to leave the bridge for the brain center to discuss this new turn of events, he was overcome by the feeling of falling as though the floor had just dropped out from under him. The rest of the bridge crew experienced the same thing, some of those standing wobbled and fell. He asked engineering if there'd been any fluctuation with the shipboard gravitational field; no, everything was running smoothly. He shrugged it for the time being; the compression of quantum spatial elementals had to take precedence. As he and Brightfeather rose to leave, the nav-officer reported that all sensors indicated empty space, devoid of quantum particles and primal energy. Nothingness. He suggested surfacing to ordinary spacetime but Coary signaled to wait. Whatever was going on might be worse up top. No forces or virtual particles to sustain its physicality, no laws of physics as known. Assuming, of course, that they were in a position to surface; they could emerge into who knows what. They tried to contact the probe but got no response.

He turned to Brightfeather and asked himself, a habit of his when thinking out loud, "How can the ship maintain hull integrity in nothingness? What is nothing in quantum space? The absence of all precursors to forces and material particles. Then what's keeping the ship from bursting apart?"

She offered, "Perhaps it's only nothingness to us. If it's not what we, and therefore our instruments, perceive as real and significant, we define it as nothing. In any event, we are no longer where we were, that's for certain. Although it could be another unknown and anomalous feature of space we have yet to experience, I suspect it's not natural if only because we haven't bursted apart. What I mean is," she paused, "it feels ... manufactured, deliberate. A space of unknown properties but coincidentally not any we can measure."

"The sensation of falling, weightlessness, like in an elevator," he began to both Owens and Brightfeather, "is caused by gravity, acceleration. Gravity is not a fundamental force, it emerges from the action of space and time. There is no force of gravity in quantum space, just its potential once removed. So,..."

"I remember Samuelson talking," Brightfeather interrupted, "at dinner on your back porch, about multiple time dimensions co-existing, interpenetrating but separable. We're familiar with subjective time verses objective; it comes with the territory. But he was talking about something more fundamental. Time as a progenitor of space and all its dimensions. Because of that, we think of time in the singular. But in a parallel universe, its time elementals--its DNA--are peculiar to it; in fact, they define it. We've been in the universe of the Thought Beings and know of the many others that the scout ships have discovered. He used the metaphor of floating from one to the other, the sensation of weightlessness at the threshold, the transition, time momentarily suspended. It seemed like only an instant to us and the ship, but who knows? We didn't lose consciousness, perhaps that's part of the continuum of the multiverse. Time is at the crux of the problem in the cluster. The timequake. Perhaps, as offshoots, it's incipient tremors are generating openings or portals--cracks--into other universes. It's just a thought."

What Brightfeather considered just something that popped into her head was the reason she was on this ship.

According to the engineering room, Edgar Poe was continuing on the same course; the drive was working fine and all instruments measuring the effects of motion indicated they were advancing. The auto-pilot continued to trace out a trajectory. But advancing through what and where? Coary sat back in his command seat. He buzzed the brain center and asked if they'd been keeping abreast of events. They had. Any thoughts? Not enough information.

Bertha, linked to the bridge, said, "We only know where we aren't; obviously, we're somewhere or we wouldn't exist. What does it take to exist? Those properties must be present in this topological space, in spite of the quark bubble enwrapping us. The material of the ship exists. If we are in a parallel universe, it's probably one that supports the ship and life as you know it."

"Let's not jump to conclusions," said Coary emphatically. "Parallels don't stack up like cards you can tunnel through one to another. Each is inside of each ad infinitum, Samuelson once said. We call them parallel because of their independence, their self-regulation, their uniqueness. Disjoint, yet an outgrowth of the same void. Functioning on different dimensions."

"A resonance," Brightfeather whispered. "We were traveling through space that was beginning to congeal around us, as though time was being drained out of it. Perhaps a frequency of fractal displacement was reached and the entire surrounding space--some volume, say--with us in it, transferred or merged with a parallel. That's the idea behind the current research on producing wormholes through ordinary spacetime. Establish a time-resonance on the quantum level between entangled particle-clusters at locations far removed from one another, in different areas of the galaxy."

"If this is the effect of the timequake," said Owens, "then it's already spreading through the galaxy and there's nothing we can do about it. We're too late even if Finley's gadget works. But I don't think so. The solidifying of space immediately preceded our change of scenery. Like the undertow at the beach. Remember that story you told me? The force of the water around your legs? A time-tsunami. We're being drawn forward with the outgoing wave. If that's the case, we could still arrive before it exhales.

"If not that, then maybe we're just passing through a void in space, something normal for here. We're out in the wasteland between Sagittarius and Centaurus. It's never been fully charted. It's too vast."

Coary thought of the Professor and his colleagues, heading into disaster. Bertha had next to nothing in her archives concerning the effects of timequakes, what to expect, only theory, no one of the Border Planets ever having experienced one. Theory conjectured a wave of temporal displacement passing through the materiality of the cosmos. Probably followed by more waves of lesser and lesser degree. At its extreme, a cluster of cracks could appear in spacetime at the epicenter allowing the void to enter. But none of this was explained in detail in the literature, not the processes or the consequences. Maybe nobody wanted to imagine it. The relationship between time and the void was bantered about inconclusively. Understandings and interpretations varied, schools of thought emerged, squabbles over shades of meaning drowned the essence of the matter. What properties were known of each didn't include overlap, none had been found. They were treated as distinct and irreconciable entities; at most, complementary. As it was, they had only Samuelson's work to go on.

"We have yet to consider the possibility this could be illusion," said Coary. "Remember the Thought Beings? What they could do with materiality and illusion, our perceptions of reality? How they could get inside our heads and tamper with the instruments, our sensor array, altering readouts?"

"Yes, captain, but that was in their universe, a universe of thought energy," said Brightfeather. "This is ours, quite different. Besides, that would indicate a doer, somebody behind it, and we haven't yet established whether that's the case or not."

"Yea, right," said Coary. "Who could have that much power?"

As though an answer, everything abruptly returned to normal. Coary's quantum sight could once again see the dynamic fields and patterns and ensembles of quanta on the viewscreen, a gift from another event having to do with time. They contacted the probe; it responded: Strong gravitational fields blending, homogeneous, self-reinforcing. Orthogonal magnetic effects holding structure together. Field strengths increasing exponentially on approach to outer shell of stars. Holding position, monitoring situation, awaiting instructions.

Despite the radical nature of their situation, everything seemed to be as it was. Nonetheless, the hairs on Coary's neck twitched. He thought out loud again. "If what the probe is saying is the case, things are tense at target zero but the quake hasn't happened yet. So what the frell was that back there?"

The nav-officer interrupted, "Sir, I think you should take a look at this." Coary went to his station and scanned the overhead screens. "What am I looking at?" he asked. "Short-range scans of the star cluster." Jameson drew his attention to two holocharts side-by-side. They were only as old as it takes the sensor array to retrieve the image, milliseconds. On the left was quantum space and on the right, its equivalent in ordinary spacetime. On both charts the area of the star cluster was black, and no stars shone from behind in the direction of Centaurus Arm. Nothing within parsecs was visible. An entire volume of space apparently emptied of all matter and energy. A circular blackness darker than the surrounding cosmos.

Coary blanched. "Didn't we just hear from the probe? We must be practically on top of it, on the outskirts of a thirty-star conglomeration spread out over parsecs." They compared the images sent back by the probe. The same area was filled with stars and planets and light. Asteroids could be seen in the outer regions of each individual system. "How much time has passed between these images?"

Jameson checked a small screen to his left, "A subjective five minutes, sir."

Brightfeather, by Coary's side, studying the readouts said, "We can't trust that. Duration is no longer fluid. We could've been thrust into the future, and what we're seeing is the total destruction of the entire cluster of star systems. Nothing remaining, not even a hiss of radioactivity. The probe's images may have been sent days ago."

"What could possibly have destroyed thirty plus star systems so completely? That's not possible. And where could the residual radiation have gone?

"Put it on the viewscreen," he ordered as he went to stand directly in front. His quantum eyes searched. He saw a chaos of intertwining patterns of energy outside the imaginary boundary separating the deep ink from the charcoal, disorder and order fighting for dominance. Further out, order smoothly modulated the transition to regularity. "If there was to be a timequake, why does everything outside that ink drop appear normal?"

Suddenly, the blackness filled with a supremely symmetric image resembling a spider's web, the center of it was empty and black. The guylines--spokes--were spread evenly around and appeared to be massive magnetic fields arcing and spouting as they raced down the web towards the hub, twisting and twining into tight braids of ionized particles. Composed of a mixture of pure energy and some unknown factor, the strands connecting these spokes radiated across the electromagnetic spectrum, pulsing at each fractal-frequency transition. Encircling the central disc was a different design that repeated itself on increased magnification until nothing could be seen, measured or detected. Shards of fractal space falling, flowing downward into time itself.

Coary didn't know what to say. He presumed the braintrust and Bertha were seeing what he was. He waited for comment or observation, always welcome and encouraged on Edgar Poe; none came. "What the hell are we looking at? Conjecture, anyone? Is this truly what are sensors are reading?"

The nav-officer expanded the area of search as wide as the array could reach. "It is at it appears, captain," he said. He faltered a bit as he continued with, "But the space within and around the star cluster is flattened. It has no depth of its own."

Bertha commed in, "I believe what we're seeing is a two-dimensional face or edge of what used to be. The cluster no longer resides exclusively in ordinary spacetime but has evolved into a further dimension of space. A compacted dimension unfurled, perhaps."

"But how can that be," demanded the captian. "We see movement, violent activity, fluctuating plasma currents, light-year long fields of force. How can that space be flat?"

"We are looking at the within dimension," piped in Brightfeather. "It's as though looking through a window in space. A window into the fifth dimension." She was enthralled, overcome with emotion. She marvelled at the image on the holoscreen. "The beauty of it. Deeply complex yet elegantly simple in structure, a degree of order on the scale of life itself."

"Comparing wide-range sensor readings with that of the central disc," interjected Bertha, "I estimate the flattened space to be no more than one micron thick. An illusion of ordinary spacetime caused by surface tension and negative pressure outside."

Coary was stunned, he couldn't help it. "Could all those star systems, spreading across sixty light-years, all those planets, including the one at center where Samuelson and his ship are headed, be gone? All those people? We don't know about the other thirty, but with all those planets in habitable zones, there had to be more populations of people, at least life of some sort."

Finally, the chief researcher of the braintrust commed in. "Captain, we've been conferring. A few of us are familiar with Samuelson's work as well as that of Weingard and Sterling. According to currently accepted theory, they may still exist as they were, embodied in a higher plane of reality, yet unaware of its presence. What was formerly perceived as an object in three dimensions, may now be seen as the surface of something connected to its surroundings. They'll see not only what they use to in the same way, but also see the relationships. The result of time triggering the unfolding."

"What about the timequake?" asked Coary. "Wasn't that the major concern? Getting there in time to stop that from happening?"

"If it happened at all," he replied, "it may have done so in this extra dimension, undulating across this quadrant of the galaxy for as long as its energy lasts in that dimension, passing through the materiality of ordinary spacetime unnoticed."

"It must have some effect. In the rest of the galaxy, as far as we know, that dimension is curled up, yet it influences matter, energy, and forces."

"True. However, only insofar as defining the properties of those particles. A wave of temporal displacement shouldn't affect those. Perhaps it will have some determining factor on time, much like we experienced. Farther from the epicenter, I suspect its effect will dissipate rapdily."

"So the consensus is that the star systems still exists as such and in their same positions, is that correct?" asked Coary. He was frustrated and annoyed. Not with Bertha and his team of scientists, but with the fact that the Professor and his friends were heading right into this spider web. Would their ship's captain know what to do? Would the scientists understand what they were looking at? The information he was given was all theory and conjecture--guesses. But that's all they had to go on. If they were on a research mission, they'd obtain all the data they could from here, then return to base. But because of the gang of Alliance scientists in harm's way, he had to make a difficult decision, one that put his crew and ship in danger.

Brightfeather had come out of her reverie, quelled her elation, and as usual, read Coary's thoughts. "We have to go, captain."

Owens nodded in agreement. But Coary wasn't quite ready. He told the nav-officer to scan for a ship. "If we can intercept it," he said to Brightfeather, "we can take them off and return home. Let them deal with their own problems."

It was an idea she nodded to, but he could tell she didn't put much hope in. Long-range sensors were capable of covering a radius of one day's travel at Edgar Poe's top velocity through quantum space. So their small ship should be well within that vicinity by now. It wasn't.

Coary needed one final vote. "Finley, you been paying attention?"

"Yes, sir. I believe I'm up to speed."

"If we enter an embodied space of higher dimensions, what effect will that have on the quark drive?"

"The lattice structure of the callasium crystal is what we have to be concerned with. In the environment of an added dimension, the vectors associated with its edges might undergo a transformation or a transition to a meta-version of themselves. I don't see that as damaging the crystal itself but rather enhancing its capability. If I'm wrong, the drive will explode and we'll all be dead in a blink of an eye."

"Why, thank you, lieutenant commander. That's very reassuring." Coary got on the intercom and spoke to the crew. "By now, you should all have a general grasp of what we're confronting." News travelled fast on Edgar Poe; Coary liked it that way. "Based on what we know, the star cluster remains as it was beyond what appears to be a window of space, something like the surface of a soap bubble. Theoretically, when we pass through, we'll enter ordinary spacetime, contained within a space of higher dimension, a tessaract, if you will. In quantum space, as you know, we won't feel the force effects, but we'll still be able to find out if the star cluster, and especially the system at center, continues to exist on the material plane.

"That's the danger. We dare not emerge into ordinary space until we've determined that. Now, if that's the case, we'll go to the third planet of the central system, Professor Samuelson's destination, and see. Are the people still there? Has their civilization passed through this transition unscathed? That's the situation. But, it's risky; we have no way of knowing the details beforehand.

"Because this is an unsanctioned trip and all of you have volunteered, I put it to you to cast a vote. A blind vote. Those on duty can vote from their stations, everybody else, go to your quarters, think about it, link to Bertha and vote. Whatever you decide, I want to thank all of you for coming this far."

Coary sipped coffee and stared at the viewscreen, they were dead in space. He ordered the nav-officer to try to contact the probe, it should be relatively near. But again, there was no response. Perhaps it does lie in the past, thought Coary. Or we're in the future. How does that affect driving into the midst of an altered space? Will we stay in the future, unable to contact or communicate with the present?

The vote didn't take long; it was unanimous. The general comment was that they wouldn't miss it for the world. They were spacers, explorers, Rangers. They knew a chance like this would never come again.

Coary gave the order: plot a course for the central dark disc and engage. He told Finley to watch the drive, as though he had to. Brightfeather leaned forward, eyes agleam with excitement. It made Coary smile, he almost laughed.

Even at half-throttle, the spider's web increased rapidly in size, intermittently, as though a lens replaced by one stronger. Just prior to pierceing the membrane, a backwash of sub-atomic particles caused the quark drive to hic-cup, sending a tremor through the ship. It was too late to reconsider.

The window, the membrane, the face enveloped Edgar Poe in an oily film, a gel of chaotic sub-quanta elementals. It didn't slow the ship, but they were blinded, sensors were useless in the murk. The organic-metal sheathing closed its pores and stiffened. Momentarily, the fog lifted and they found themselves on the edge of the central system, whole and intact, apparently. Sensors indicated a normal spacetime, no extremes of forces jetting about. Coary elected to emerge into ordinary spacetime to make the hop to the third planet. If those people still lived, he was determined to find out what the hell happened and where Samuelson and his colleagues were. He was no longer in a diplomatic mood.

As they approached, Brightfeather studied the viewscreen, looking for any change in her perception. The stars beyond composing the three shells of the cluster appeared as stars of their varying caliber do. She was disappointed. But she continued to scan this new space. Perhaps we bring our space with us, she thought, our geometry and topology, our perceptual predispositions, and impose them no matter what? She decided to give it time, maybe when they disembark onto the planet, something will happen.

The science station reported the atmosphere was similar to Hawking-I; gravity was slightly less but manageable. They assumed a low orbit and waited, expecting security units to approach them. Sensors indicated a thriving population centered around various parts of the planet. As they circled, they scanned, looking for the appearance of a capital city. The planet itself looked to be intact, no signs of recent tectonic or volcanic activity. If anything, it appeared too calm, too quiescent.

The viewscreen was filled with the planet below. Coary sat in his command chair sipping coffee, taking it all in, looking for signs of a military, a security force of some kind. His assault teams were on alert as well as those manning the gamma-ray and proton cannons, plasma torpedoes, and quark-pumped callasium laser guns. Edgar Poe came fully loaded.

"Captain," Bertha commed, sounding surprised and curious at the same time. "Originally, we'd planned to scan for humans when we arrived, knowing the Professor would be here somewhere. Well, as a matter of procedure, I did just that. Unless these are other humans, I've found them, all of them. I'm sending the coordinates to the nav-computer." By protocol, a coordinate grid similar to latitude and longitude was superimposed on a planet under scrutiny.

Edgar Poe assumed a geosynchronous orbit over the coordinates. Captain Coary expected trouble. He felt events had taken on a life of their own and didn't much care about him and his crew. He proceded with caution; they were in an altered spacetime over an unknown planet of people who may or may not be glad to see them. He took a shuttle of half-a-dozen assault troops and Finley and Brightfeather, she insisted. They landed on the grounds outside a huge rock and stone building, on its wraparound porch tall columns of some smooth white material held a roof of wooden shingles. It reminded him of the university campus where Samuelson lectures occasionally. They were walking towards the front door with only two of his assault team, the others were on stand-by, when Coary spotted a small group of the gangly natives who inhabited this planet at the far end of the building on a walkway. They were holding something that looked like books and stared, their oblong-shaped heads accentuating their expression. He scanned the quad, no one else was around.

He told his two armed Rangers to stand by the door and to notify him immediately if any security forces showed up. He pushed the tall door open; they stood in the foyer. Coary commed the ship for a readout of Samuelson's location; momentarily, it was displayed on his hand-screen. A map of the building appeared with the Professor's position marked. In short order, they reached the second-floor room. Without knocking, Coary entered. The Professor and his colleagues were sitting around a long table in the middle. The huge, high-ceilinged room was lined from top to bottom with book shelves, a rug of indecribable design, mostly the color of deep red, covered the entire floor. A plush couch and two stuffed chairs forming a rough circle sat off to one end. Bowls of fruit and plates of assorted alien food sat on the table. The Professor had his back to him, but when he saw the looks on the faces on the other side, he turned with a start. Shock melted into wonder and then relief. He stood to greet them as did others of his party.

"I thought you might follow me," he said, and gave Coary a hug. "It took forever to get here, so we had plenty of time to work the bugs out of the device we built. I'll show it to you, it's down in the basement."

"We've seen it, professor, the schematics anyway. And Finley's been all over it." A wide-eyed Professor nodded to the chief engineer. "I went to your house and raided your computer. I had to know what was going on. Your life was in danger, I felt."

"That's fine, Brian. I know you wouldn't come out here without having some idea what you were getting into. So you have a pretty good notion why we came, what we were attempting to do?"

"I don't know; I have an overview of the situation; as it was, at least. These two understand it, I believe."

Samueslon gave Brightfeather a hug. "It's nice to see you again, my dear," he said, smiling genuine fondness. Turning to Coary, "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you what we were up to. These people insisted on secrecy, they're paranoid."

"When did you arrive?" asked Coary. "We thought you were days behind."

"Three days ago," the Professor said, matter-of-factly. "An arduous trip, not as comfortable as a Fleet ship or liner; nevertheless, just in time, pardon the pun."

The three Rangers stared at each other. The captain was about to describe the time-displacement event they'd experienced, when two aliens entered the room. Samuelson greeted them with, "Welcome, my friends," and introduced them to Coary and crew. They towered over the humans a good foot, their faces twisting strangely as they smiled. They were scientists who assisted, as well as they could, in the operation. Out of respect, seemingly, they left the humans to themselves. They all took seats around the table, Coary sat across from the Professor who was eager to explain what'd happened; the Rangers were equally eager to hear it.

Coary found himself wondering why no police or security had arrived. A shuttle craft of unknown but surely alien origins lands on the front lawn of some institution in a major city, and nobody gets alarmed? Maybe this happens all the time. A common occurrence. Or, they see no threat. The absence of people assigned with the task of protection never crossed his mind; he'd seen too much of the galaxy, every society needed some security force to maintain the peace and weed out antisocial types. Didn't they?

After describing the wild ride they experienced on entering the cluster's space under extremes of gravitational fluctuations, he got down to business. They tested the device on arrival in the lab; it worked. The main problem remained, however. Finding a sufficiently powerful energy source. He said, "Their technology is mostly borrowed from trading partners. Their version of the quark drive is rudimentary; they use a different mineral crystal and have not the refinement tools to arrange the lattice just-so. Nonetheless, we used a series of quark generators to power the anti-spacetime device. With our refinements, it proved sufficient.

"The aperture being pierced through spacetime by the incalculable combined forces of the cluster converging at the center of mass--its barycenter--stripping away elementals, was approximately 800,000 kilometers above the surface of the star, an aberration. A robot ship was sent as close as we dared, the device was operated remotely through a quantum-phase transponder. We flooded the vortex with a dense stream of anti-elementals to quell the eruption of the void, the timequake was the carrier and the trailblazer. We caught it just as the tiniest of fractalized elementals were about to be extinguished. That sealed the rift, a swirling caldera, if you will. If we'd waited much longer or arrived here later,..., it was very timely, the whole affair.

"A sampling of elementals afterwards revealed they are now three-dimensional, representing the surface, or exterior, of a higher-ordered topological space. We weren't expecting that; no one considered the possibility. But we understood its implications. We had no idea,..., I mean, the quake was diverted to this new space dimension; apparently, it would not be denied. We're not certain if it was responsible for the unfolding, or if the evolution was preordained to occur in the way it did no matter what. The purpose of the alignment. But with grave consequences for life and matter in this sector, perhaps for the whole quadrant, if it had occurred in extended space. In any event, as a result, a multidimensional timeline has been initiated for this star cluster."

"How do you know this timequake even took place?" asked Coary. On finishing the question, he recalled the temporal blip when all the lights went out. A hic-cup that propelled them into the future.

"We brought some very sensitive equipment, things they didn't have. After we plastered over the tear, our temporal seismometer detected a disturbance emanating from the sub-quanta strata at its location. Continuity was completley disrupted; it was like a glass vase crashing on the floor. Jagged pieces and fragments of time frothing about, the present jumping from past to future and back again. Coherence and integrity were lost. It was too powerful to be confined; all that energy had to go somewhere. It must've been forced down into the source of time itself, and from there outward extending a previously compacted spatial dimension."

Samuelson assumed a professorial air that was equally confidential as he continued.

"Outside this cluster, the time wave might be, could be, propagated through its curled-up version where it would be constrained, causing a dilation, but one not noticed or measureable. Any instrument of measurement would vary in the same way as the thing measured. And not reverberating very far; the brunt of its energy applied to the unfurling. In quantum space, however, events could be wildly unpredictable and have perceivable consequences."

Coary saw the opportunity to describe their temporal experience; why Samuelson's ship should've been behind them. The Professor never bothered to inquire if that meant anything, his mind obviously elsewhere. The fine points of interstellar travel were not his forte. Why wouldn't they arrive sooner, they left earlier? But he decided to forget it and let his excited mentor talk on.

"Consider this star cluster, arranged in the perfectly symmetric way it presently is, to be a separate species in the cosmos; we can say it's undergone a leap in cosmic evolution. We may presume it to be a forerunner of what is to eventually transpire for the whole universe, our universe." Samuelson and the others of his troupe beamed with pleasure at their accomplishment. To be witnesses to such a rare astonomical event is one thing, to be responsible for its redirection, to be the cause of its end result, quite another. Coary found their pride and satisfaction disturbing. What was supposed to happen, didn't. What will be the repercussions?

"But we haven't noticed any change, at least I haven't." Coary glanced at his two compatriots; they nodded no. "Everything looks as it ordinarily would in three-dimensional space."

Samuelson smiled. "Yet we reside in only a micron-thin disc of it. A slice of time. What is duration for us, without which there is no life or stars, is timeless in this extra-dimensional spacetime. A synthesis of time and timelessness throughout the entire star cluster, emanataing from this planetary system, the center of the vortex."

"Does that mean these stars and planets and people are now immortal?"

"No. Nothing like that. Nothing lasts forever. All of creation goes through the cycle of birth and death. We're not four-dimensional beings and neither are they or any of the other populated worlds in the cluster. But with time, eons of time, adaption will take place. Mutations, as the multifacted environment evokes, teases out change, creates niches previously unavailable. How will that affect the senses? The emotions? The mind? Thinking? Rationality? Conception and imagination? I don't know. Relationships will be fundamental, the surfaces of things. Planes of existence might open up to perception. Realms all around us we don't see, are not aware of. You've dealt with interstitial beings and those from other universes. You know anything is possible."

"But, shouldn't there be some immediate effects? I mean, what just happened has to have altered something. As I see it, the entire star cluster, all sixty light-years of space worth, is now contained within a thin slab of ordinary spacetime. Looking at it on edge, that flattened space is virtually invisible. Wouldn't that affect everything else around it? Other stars beyond this cluster? Like pulling the plug in a very large bathtub?"

"We see the edge because that's all there is for us to see in the third dimension, the origin and limits of our consciousness. The multiverse may exist within, or be, as some believe, a multidimensional mind, but we have yet to evolve further. Our universe, as a whole, has yet to evolve further. Perhaps this is how it happens. The presence of the cluster continues to fill the space it has for billions of years. We can't see it from outside, so to speak, and can only sense it with sophisitcated instruments designed to detect space and time elementals and, of course, gravity waves.

"These people I've come to know somewhat after months of collaborative research and a long trip and being here. For millennia they have been dedictaed to raising consciousness, to seeing into higher-ordered arrangements of thought, seeing thought in everything around them, and how they can use that to improve their lives. Their leaders believe they've brought this event about. I've always been skeptical of such things before your experience with the shaman. Magic is just science on planes of reality of which we know not. Acausal connections exist between events that fall through the cracks of what we call rationality. So it may or may not be the case."

Coary was still bothered by it all, something nagged him. Brightfeather was pumping the others with questions, details, what they'd seen. Finley only wanted to see the device. One of the scientists who played a part in its design and construction led him down to the basement to show it off and explain its workings.

He finally asked the Professor, "What would've happened if you'd done nothing? Do you know for certain or is it only conjecture, theory?" His tone was more strident than he intended; nonetheless, he tapped an annoyance that needed out.

Samuelson sat back and considered. "The timequake, followed by the eruption of the void blanketing and permeating all matter halfway across the wasteland and perhaps farther, all the way to the Border Planets, the Alliance. That was a stong contender scenario."

"You're talking an extinction event?"

"Yes, very much so."

"But then, wouldn't space and time eventually emerge from the void as it did in the beginning? How time and space in any parallel is created?"

Samuelson stared down at his hands folded on his lap. "We avoided death, Brian. We chose to do that if at all possible. Beings have a right to fight for their continued existence. I'd do it again, we'd do it again. That may be the why of the secrecy of these people. Some overwhelming authority may have doomed them by proclaiming that nature should take its course, but I don't feel the possibility that it might've destroyed the worlds and lives of those authorities would've been overlooked. Yes, we've changed the timeline of the galaxy, at least in this sector. But we also instilled--reinforced--the nature of the galaxy with the willful insistence that it be a life-giving one. Life will not go quietly into that dark night. It is our duty and responsibility."

A bottle of green wine and two glasses were placed before them by one of the aliens he'd met before. Two others had sat down. Coary needed a drink more than he needed air. He poured for himself and the Professor and passed the bottle to the aliens. They toasted each other's health. Several times. Eventually they were joined by Brightfeather and Finley and the rest of the gang. Conversation led to a departure time. They decided there was no reason to hang around. As far as they were concerned, based on density samplings, local space had stabilized; no change was anticipated. The next day the Professor, his associates, and the device were transported to Edgar Poe for the trip home. As expected between folks who've shared a life or death event of cosmic proportions, parting was rather emotional. Their alien friends thanked them profusely. Gifts were given by them, including more of that wine.

Onboard, the scientists were assigned quarters. The adrenaline and intense excitement of it all finally crashed; they slept the sleep of the dead, like children come in from play for a nap. Edgar Poe orbited the planet one last time, scanning data as they would on a regular survey mission. Procedural as it was, Coary nonetheless felt he was procrastinating. He hated it but it was a habit he often indulged; he had to get his head right; he only had one chance at this.

The star cluster enclosed them in all its dazzling magnificent glory. The Professor and Brightfeather informed him that it would be of no avail to travel through the three shells of stars, some thirty light-years in radius, to reach the horizon, the surface. Beyond the fringes of the cluster you reenter on the other side. They called it tesselated space. Unfortunately, for that reason, from within, the transition window was undetectable. And if it couldn't be found, they could wander around amongst these stars, cut off from the rest of the galaxy, forever, looking for it. They were in two-dimensional space--a window pane less than a micron thick--but they were also in the center of a star cluster thirty light years in radius.

As casually as he could muster so as not to induce nervousness, he told the helmsman to retrace the path they came in on, and don't waver. The helmsman, aware of the seriousness of the maneuver and how important it was to be absolutely precise, passed it on to the auto-pilot overseen by Bertha. It was best to let her handle it. At the outer reaches of the system, in a nondescript locale, without any prior notice, Edgar Poe abruptly came into alignment with the direction orthogonal to the surface of the lens, the threshold bridging dimensions. The sensor fog of electric greys and whites enveloped them, then within milliseconds, they were out, the starscape of the Milky Way spread before them. Looking at the viewer aimed astern, the image of the spider web shone in perfect symmetry as before; unimaginably powerful and violent gravitational and magnetic fields raced about and down into both the end and beginning of time. It was hard to believe they'd just come from the dark cloudy disc at the hub.

The wasteland stretched before them, a desert of sparsely occupied emptiness. They were a long way from home. But with the improved quark drive, it would take only a few days. Another of Finley's innovations that will no doubt spread throughout the Fleet. Coary needed the down time to process everything that'd just happened, one little piece at a time. And maybe later, much later, jigsaw it all together to one complete understanding. He expected some help with that from Samuelson--talking, fathoming, philosophizing.

But in his present emotionally strained state, that wasn't at the top of his list. After a quick snack, he lay down in his quarters to take a much needed nap. His imagination turned to cool evening summer nights sitting on the back deck of his home by Lake Dyson, sipping bourbon and coke on the rocks, the breeze off the lake gently caressing skin and sinew.

Momentarily, the captain drifted off to dreamland.

THE END

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