Sensors in the star-orbiting missile platforms closest to the human missile caught a sudden burst of quantum field activity just as it reached the chromosphere. Then their communications links ended. Power from all the magflux extractors around the impact zone failed simultaneously, forcing MorningLightMountain to switch to emergency power reserves to maintain over a hundred fifty wormholes into the Commonwealth. Platforms farther away showed the distinctive blast crater of a superbomb starting to form within the corona. Then something else happened. Quantum signature detectors recorded activity leaping off their scale. The star’s magnetic field multiplied in strength by orders of magnitude, producing a pulse effect strong enough to shove a fifth of MorningLightMountain’s magflux extractors and missile platforms out of their orbital track. As they tumbled away with every electronic system burnt out, MorningLightMountain switched to platforms still farther away from the missile impact point to try to understand what was happening. Around the crater zone, a solid plane of brightness was swelling up and out across the chromosphere. Ultra-hard radiation poured away from it, a wavefront powerful enough to slice through the strongest force field.
More missile platforms and magflux extractors failed. MorningLightMountain didn’t have anything left that could scan the impact zone directly; its only remaining platforms were on the other side of the star. Sensors at the staging post still showed the star as it was six minutes ago, passively normal. Power reserves were now insufficient to provide an alternative supply for all the magflux extractors it had lost. It concentrated on maintaining two wormholes to each of its captured Commonwealth planets.
The first flotilla of missile platforms to slide out of the initial blast umbra showed what looked like the crescent of a blue-white giant appearing behind the staging post star. And MorningLightMountain finally realized what the humans had done.
The star was going nova.
***
Ozzie woke up as slim beams of bright sunlight slid across his face. He lay motionless for a while, eyes shut, a smile playing across his face. Let’s see. He opened his eyes and brought his hand around in front of his face. His antique wristwatch told him he’d spent nine hours asleep. “Oh, yeah?” His voice was a contented challenge to the universe.
He unzipped the sleeping bag and stretched. The cool air gusted over him, and he reached for his cord pants. Once he’d fastened the belt around his waist, he picked up his checked shirt and grinned knowingly. Very carefully, he slipped his arms into the sleeves. There was no ripping sound from any of the stitches. “Man, some progress!” Both of his large toes stuck up through holes in his socks as he shoved his feet into his boots. “Ah well, then again, maybe not.” They definitely still needed darning. He patted the pocket on his old dark gray fleece where his small needle and thread packet was stashed. “Maybe tomorrow.”
He was pressing down on a giggle as he pushed the curtain aside and stepped out of the crude shelter. “Morning,” he called out cheerfully to Orion, who was sitting beside the fire he’d just rekindled. Their metal mugs were standing on a shard of polyp above the flames, wisps of steam rising from the water inside.
“Five teacubes left,” Orion said. “Two chocolate. Which do you want?”
“Variety is the spice of life, man, so let’s go for tea today, shall we?”
“Okay.” Orion gave the little gold cubes of chocolate a wistful look.
“Fine, thanks,” Ozzie said. He sat down on one of the ebony and maroon polyp protrusions, wincing as he straightened his leg.
“Excuse me?” Orion said.
“The knee, thank you, it’s a lot better, but I’m gonna have to keep up with the exercises to loosen it up. It’s still plenty stiff after yesterday.” He gave the perplexed boy a happy look. “You remember yesterday, right? The walk down to the end spire.”
“Yes.” Orion was becoming petulant. He couldn’t figure what the joke was.
Tochee emerged from the jungle, its manipulator flesh coiled around various containers it had filled with water.
“Good morning to you, friend Ozzie,” it said through the handheld array.
“Morning.” Ozzie took the mug that Orion proffered, ignoring the boy’s scowl. “Did you find anything interesting?” he asked the big alien.
“I have detected no electrical power circuit activity with my equipment.” Tochee held up a couple of sensors. “The machinery must be very deep inside the reef.”
“Yeah, if there is any.”
“I thought you said there was,” Orion protested.
“Something generates gravity. My guess is, it’s too sophisticated to be anything like a machine. Specific quark lattice, folded quantum fields, gravitonic-molecular intersection assembled at a subatomic level, something like that. Who knows, who cares. It’s not why we’re here.”
“What are we here for, then?” Orion asked in exasperation.
“The Silfen community.”
“Well, they’re not here, are they.” The boy waved his arm around in a broad half circle to illustrate the absence of the humanoid aliens. Tea sloshed out of his mug.
“Not yet.” Ozzie picked up one of the bluish gray fruits they’d gathered and started peeling it.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Okay, think on this. Nobody here believes we crashed here on Island Two by accident, right? I mean, what are the odds, man? The gas halo is big in anyone’s language. And the old Pathfinder, face it, we’re not talking Titanic here.”
“A natural collision was unlikely,” Tochee said.
“So we’re not here by accident. And what did we find yesterday? What’s at the end of the reef?”
“Spires,” Orion said doubtfully.
“Which we all decided would make excellent landing areas for flying Silfen.” Ozzie bit into the coarse fruit, grinning at his companions.
“They’ll come to us!” Orion smiled brightly.
“That is an excellent deduction, friend Ozzie.”
“Many thanks.” Ozzie wiped some of the juice from his beard. “It’s worth a try, anyway. I can’t think of any other reason for today.”
The tiniest of frowns flickered over Orion’s face, but he let the comment go. Ozzie couldn’t quite work out if the boy and Tochee were real or not. Temporal reset was not something he believed in. There were many ways of manipulating spacetime within a wormhole so that time appeared to flow faster around the observer, but traveling back in time was a fundamental impossibility. So if this day on the reef was an artificially generated reality, it was a perfect one, which logically meant his companions would replicate their real selves down to the last nuance. Then again, they might be sharing the dream—in which case why didn’t they remember the yesterdays? Of course, maybe there was some kind of closed temporal loop subsect operating inside the gas halo, a microcontinuum operating in parallel to the universe but with different time flow laws. He wasn’t sure if such a thing was possible. Intriguing idea to try to analyze, though it was a very long time since he’d attempted math that complicated. And today, he decided, wasn’t the day to begin again.
After breakfast he made sure Orion and Tochee gathered their belongings to carry with them on the trek through the reef’s forest. Without understanding if what was happening was real or not, he couldn’t risk them losing the few essential items they still possessed if they did find a path and move on to somewhere else. So the tent and water filter pump, the few tools remaining, all came with them.
“Should we be picking fruit?” Orion asked as they wound through a section of trees that were nearly all laden with grapelike clusters of scarlet berries. “We normally pick fruit.”
“If you want to,” Ozzie said. He was concentrating on keeping his head clear of the ceiling formed by the lowest branches as he bounce-walked his way forward. The trees were large and old, producing a wide interlocking lacework of branches and twigs. Sunlight around the trunks was a gentle twilight glimmer, complemented by dry air smelling faintly of spice.