Wai plodded after Roman as he followed a cable running down the centre of a corridor on the eighth deck.
It's got so many secondary feeds it looks like a fish-bone, he complained. They paused at a junction with five branches and he swept the block round. This way. He started off down one of the new corridors.
We're heading towards stairwell five, she told him, as the layout file scrolled through her skull.
There were more cybermice than usual on deck eight; over thirty were currently pursuing her and Roman, creating strong ripples in the composite floor and walls. Wai had noticed that the deeper she went into the ship the more of them there seemed to be. Although after her second trip she'd completely ignored them. She wasn't paying a lot of attention to the compartments leading off from the corridors, either. It wasn't that they were all the same, rather that they were all similarly empty.
They reached the stairwell, and Roman stepped inside. It's going down, he datavised.
Great, that means we've got another level to climb up when we're finished.
Not that going down these stairs was easy, she acknowledged charily. If only they could find some kind of variable gravity chute. Perhaps they'd all been positioned in the part of the ship that was destroyed.
You know, I think Marcus might have been right about the dish being an emergency beacon, she datavised. I can't think of any other reason for it being built. Believe me, I've tried.
He always is right. It's bloody annoying, but that's why I fly with him.
I was against it because of the faith gap.
Say what?
The amount of faith these xenocs must have had in themselves. It's awesome. So different from humans. Think about it. Even if their homeworld is only two thousand light-years away, that's how long the message is going to take to reach there. Yet they sent it believing someone would still be around to receive it, and more, act on it. Suppose that was us; suppose the Lady Mac had an accident a thousand light-years away. Would you think there was any point in sending a lightspeed message to the Confederation, then going into zero-tau to wait for a rescue ship?
If their technology can last that long, then I guess their civilization can, too.
No, our hardware can last for a long time. It's our culture that's fragile, at least compared to theirs. I don't think the Confederation will last a thousand years.
The Edenists will be here, I expect. So will all the planets, physically if nothing else. Some of their societies will advance, possibly even to a state similar to the Kiint; some will revert to barbarism. But there will be somebody left to hear the message and help.
You're a terrible optimist.
They arrived at the ninth deck, only to find the doorway was sealed over with composite.
Odd, Roman datavised. If there's no corridor or compartment beyond, why put a doorway here at all?
Because this was a change made after the accident.
Could be. But why would they block off an interior section?
I've no idea. You want to keep going down?
Sure. I'm optimistic enough not to believe in ghosts lurking in the basement.
I really wish you hadn't said that.
The tenth deck had been sealed off as well.
My legs can take one more level, Wai datavised. Then I'm going back.
There was a door on deck eleven. It was the first one in the ship to be closed.
Wai stuck her fingers in the dimple, and the door dilated. She edged over cautiously, and swept the focus of her collar sensors round. Holy shit. We'd better fetch Marcus.
•••
Decks nine and ten had simply been removed to make the chamber. Standing on the floor and looking up, Marcus could actually see the outline of the stairwell doorways in the wall above him. By xenoc standards it was a cathedral. There was only one altar, right in the centre. A doughnut of some dull metallic substance, eight metres in diameter with a central aperture five metres across; the air around it was emitting a faint violet glow. It stood on five sable-black arching buttresses, four metres tall.
The positioning must be significant, Wai datavised. They built it almost at the centre of the wreck. They wanted to give it as much protection as possible.
Agreed, Katherine replied. They obviously considered it important. After a ship has suffered this much damage, you don't expend resources on anything other than critical survival requirements.
Whatever it is, Schutz reported, it's using up an awful lot of power. He was walking round it, keeping a respectful distance, wiping a sensor block over the floor as he went. There's a power cable feeding each of those legs.
Is it radiating in any spectrum? Marcus asked.
Only that light you can see, which spills over into ultraviolet, too. Apart from that, it's inert. But the energy must be going somewhere.
OK. Marcus walked up to a buttress, and switched his collar focus to scan the aperture. It was veiled by a grey haze, as if a sheet of fog had solidified across it. When he took another tentative step forward the fluid in his semicircular canals was suddenly affected by a very strange tidal force. His foot began to slip forwards and upwards. He threw himself backwards, and almost stumbled. Jorge and Karl just caught him in time.
There's no artificial gravity underneath it, he datavised. But there's some kind of gravity field wrapped around it. He paused. No, that's not right. It pushed me.
Pushed? Katherine hurried to his side. Are you sure?
Yes.
My God.
What? Do you know what it is?
Possibly. Schutz, hang on to my arm, please.
The cosmonik came forward and took her left arm. Katherine edged forward until she was almost under the lambent doughnut. She stretched up her right arm, holding out a sensor block, and tried to press it against the doughnut. It was as if she was trying to make two identical magnetic poles touch. The block couldn't get to within twenty centimetres of the surface, it kept slithering and sliding through the air. She held it as steady as she could, and datavised it to run an analysis of the doughnut's molecular structure.
The results made her back away.
So? Marcus asked.
I'm not entirely sure it's even solid in any reference frame we understand. That surface could just be a boundary effect. There's no spectroscopic data at all, the sensor couldn't even detect an atomic structure in there, let alone valency bonds.
You mean it's a ring of energy?
Don't hold me to it, but I think that thing could be some kind of exotic matter.
Exotic in what sense, exactly? Jorge asked.
It has a negative energy density. And before you ask, that doesn't mean anti-gravity. Exotic matter only has one known use, to keep a wormhole open.
Jesus, that's a wormhole portal? Marcus asked.
It must be.
Any way of telling where it leads?
I can't give you an exact stellar coordinate; but I know where the other end has to emerge. The xenocs never called for a rescue ship, Marcus. They threaded a wormhole with exotic matter to stop it collapsing, and escaped down it. That is the entrance to a tunnel which leads right back to their homeworld.
•••
Schutz found Marcus in the passenger lounge in capsule C. He was floating centimetres above one of the flatchairs, with the lights down low.