Captain Chandra Burtak was suspended in a crystal-lattice world, the pathways surrounding her ship defined by strings of rubylike figures that stretched in every direction, in patterns that seemed to defy order or perspective. The images were manifestations of the superluminal continuum, and they meant a good deal to Captain Burtak—but even more to her navigator, Jonathon Bect, whose job it was to interpret them. She turned in the rap-field to observe the navigator's efforts. The lines of rubies rippled and shimmered as she shifted her view. [Are you getting any good information?] she asked softly.
There was a pause before she heard Bect's voice, slightly distorted as it came from the navigational locus of the field. [It's close, Captain.]
[Give me a countdown when you can.]
It was happening, she thought. And none too soon. They were all going crazy from waiting. Waiting for the instruments to identify the specific curvature of the space-metric that would indicate an exit point. Waiting for the field-generators to wind back up with their terrible power to drop this vessel, starship Aleph, back into the sublight continuum. Waiting to find out if they would live.
It had only been done six times before, and those had been scout ships, not lumbering colony carriers. That wasn't much experience to go on. Like it or not, they were all gamblers here, gambling with their own lives and the lives of thousands of others.
Her brother Rahn would have appreciated that . . . inveterate gambler that he was. Chandra's brother had shared with her his taste for risk-taking—much to their parents' constant dismay. Who would have guessed that in the end it was Chandra who'd take the biggest gamble of all, while Rahn married and stayed home? How are you, Rahn? she thought. Still gambling?
She pushed the thought away and focused her attention back to the bridge.
First Officer Lisa Holloway and the navigator were exchanging information at a frantic rate. The landscape that surrounded the rap'd bridge crew crinkled and shifted, changing color as it passed information to the navigator. Chandra didn't interfere: when they had something to tell her, they would. A moment later, Bect said it. [It's coming together, Captain. I estimate seventeen minutes.]
[Thank you. Fleet coordination?]
Holloway answered, [Indications are still erratic, Captain.]
She could see that much herself. The points and lines that were supposed to indicate the positions of the other ships were splintered and distorted. [Your best interpretation, please.]
There was a hesitation before Holloway said, [We're going to be scattered, Chandra. Perhaps widely.]
[Can you get out a message of our intention to lightshift?]
[We can try.]
[Do so now,] Chandra said. Aleph was flagship of the fleet, but communications had been erratic throughout the FTL transit. At last word, both Endeavor and Columbia had been preparing for downshift, but whether they would come out even within a billion miles of one another was anyone's guess.
An amber glow glimmered around her.
[Beta phase, Captain,] Bect said. [It's coming sooner than I expected.]
Chandra cued the shipboard intercom. [All hands, this is the Captain. We are entering beta phase for lightshift down. Please make ready. All personnel should be in hard, soft, or sleep rap.] She switched to bridge-only. [Pilot?]
[Ready, Captain,] came the soft voice of Alexa Palmer.
The rap-field was rippling with activity. Beneath the visible changes in the field, the shipboard AI was churning through streams of input, seeking to determine the proper moment for lightshift. Bect was tightly integrated with the AI, lending human judgment to a process that, for all of its exactitude, retained a fundamental level of uncertainty. Chandra, observing the flickering interaction, said, [Navigator and Pilot, you are cleared for downshift at your discretion.]
The minutes passed in slow motion—the officers exchanging information on the altered shape of upshifted space, pinpointing the moment at which upshift became untenable—and then Chandra saw them make their judgment, and moments later she felt the blinding, sense-deadening hum of the generators, and for an instant there was a struggle to maintain clarity as the landscape around them contorted; then she was pulled free of the disruption by the rap-field and she saw the pilot guiding the starship through the transition zone as though through the eyewall of a hurricane . . .
* * *
The alarm was hooting as Antoni DeWeiler sprinted down the corridor. "All passengers should be in sleep-fields! The ship will downshift within thirty seconds! We will downshift . . ." The voice droned over the intercom, echoing eerily through the empty passageway.
Tony rounded a bend, skidding, and heard the deck officer's voice shout over the loudspeaker, "DeWeiler! Get to your cabin!"
"Yessir!" he panted as he took a second corner, hard. He paused to let himself through a bulkhead door.
"Downshift in ten seconds . . ."
He wasn't going to make it. The pressure door hissed open, then closed behind him. He flew.
The words, "Downshifting now . . ." echoed as he sprinted down the last corridor. The deck lurched and something whined in his ears, and the deck gravity fluctuated and left him floating in midstride, then brought him down again, hard. He reeled on drunkenly, his stomach clenching, vision distorting. With a stagger he pulled himself through the doorway of his quarters and hurled himself toward his bunk. The sleep-field caught him as his stomach was about to lose the struggle, and the distorting effects eased in the field's cushioning glow.
Thirty seconds later it was over, and he heard the announcement, "Downshift is complete. We are now sublight. Crew and passengers may disengage from fields if their duties so permit. If you feel dizzy or disoriented, remain where you are and signal the medical section. If you are well, check on your neighbor . . ."
Tony groaned and fell two centimeters to his bunk as the field switched off. He was still catching his breath when the intercom buzzed. "This is DeWeiler," he muttered.
"DeWeiler, this is deck operations. Explain what you were doing out of your cabin."
Tony swallowed and pushed himself half-upright. "I was securing a sample in the bioengineering lab. It took longer than I expected."
"You should have planned ahead—or let it go."
"Yes, sir. My mistake."
"Are you injured?"
"No, sir."
"Carry on, then."
Tony fell back with a sigh. After a moment, he swung his legs over the edge of his bunk and sat up. He waited until his head cleared, then punched a number on the intercom. "Mung? This is Tony. You there?" There was an answering groan. "Are you all right?" he asked anxiously.
"Yeah . . . I guess so," his friend Mung Ting said shakily.
"What's the matter? Are you out of the field?"
"Yeah. I'm just a little woozy, is all," Mung said.
"You want me to call the medics?"
"No, I'm okay. Did you get it set?"
"Just barely," Tony said. "After things quiet down, we'll put it through a test run." There was silence at the other end. "Mung?"
"Yeah. I'm a little . . . out of it. I'll be fine."
"Look, I'll stop by in a few minutes," Tony said. "You'd better just rest up, okay?"
"Okay," said Mung, and the line clicked off.
Tony sat motionless for a few moments, listening to the vibrations of the ship around him. It was just starting to hit home. They had made it. They had come out of FTL, and they were still alive, and they were presumably in the right place, because there were no alarms sounding and no urgent-sounding calls on the intercom. They had made it! And that meant . . . that this ship that had finally become a home to him was now going to become a jumping-off point, nothing but a ferry to the world that he and three thousand other people had come to inhabit. In the two years, ship-time, that they'd been in flight, all of their energy, all of their work and their study had been directed toward this moment. Two years. The ship felt like an extension of his own body now, creaking in the cold of space, its machinery pulsing through the deck, through his bones. What was it going to be like to live on an open world again, after two years in a starship?
Soon enough, he'd find out. The thought was a little frightening to him.
Was that why it was so quiet? He'd have thought that people would be racing in the corridors, cheering. Was everyone else a little stunned, too—perhaps a little frightened?
Wasn't the captain going to make a speech?
* * *
Chandra saw the input streams shift abruptly, and then the strings of rubies and diamonds that had defined her world were stripped away like a sheet of ice, and she was floating free and naked and dizzy in space, suspended in rap, surrounded once again by stars. She took a sharp breath and scanned the pertinent inputs, still streaming through the rap-field. It took her a moment to regain her equilibrium with the bridge crew. [Navigator?]
[Still working, Captain.]
[Carry on. Pilot?]
[We're sublight at .074c, all systems clear and ready.]
Chandra could feel the pilot's grin through the field. She echoed it with a silent Well done! to the bridge crew. But there was no time now for emotion. [First Officer?]
[Crew and passengers intact, thirty-two reported disabled by downshift, none in critical function.]
[Fleet coordination?]
[No contact.]
[Navigator?]
[We're within five percent of intended course, well inside Argus system. I am refining now.]
[Good. Good! Any sign of the fleet?]
[No sign. Searching. Will advise.]
[Soonest, please.]
While waiting, Chandra scanned reports of the ship's condition. The checklist was long, and even with soft enhancements, it took half a minute to ascertain that Aleph was essentially in good shape. Her own sense of excitement was beginning to bubble up. They had survived, and not only that, had achieved their destination. Preliminary mapping of the star system had begun, and the brightest and nearest planets were already being located. She cued the all-ship to make an announcement.
The navigator interrupted, before she could speak. [Three contacts. Captain—all under power.]
[Three contacts?]
[Yes, Captain. Confirmed.]
[Show me.] The tracking images filled the rap-field: the panorama of space wrapping itself back around the captain. There were indeed three points of light moving across the star field. Chandra felt an electric shock go through her. [What are they?]
[Seeking characteristics now. Leftover probes, maybe, from the scouting expeditions.]
[Let's hope two of them are Endeavor and Columbia.] Chandra's mind was already racing, trying to think of what else they might be. She waited, aware that she had not yet made the announcement, had not informed the ship's company that they had arrived.
The navigator spoke again. [None of them are ours, Captain. They're not Endeavor, not Columbia, not . . .] He hesitated.
[Not what?]
[Not any probe that we have data on,] Bect said, so softly that she could barely hear him.
Chandra gave him another moment to add something. He didn't. [Can they be new probes?]
[I don't think so . . . Captain, two of them are altering course. They're changing to parallel our heading. It's almost as though . . . they were waiting for us.]
Chandra's breath left her. [Jonathon—are they human?]
There was a delay of several seconds. [Captain . . . I don't think so. I think . . . Captain . . . that we have unscheduled company