“I didn’t move the sensatron and I kept it powered. There was still an image, cycling—”
“Maybe things just got too far out of phase. After all, we don’t know where we are. We could be anyplace.”
“But we aren’t anyplace. We’re here.” As soon as I had need for it, I realized I had a perfect image of the Martian mural, stored back in my mind, where the outside world never goes. As I needed the contact I felt it reestablish, in nanoseconds, the time delay somehow measuring the distance from my mind to the Star Palace.
I jumped up. “We can do it!” I said. “We can go back!” I grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s find the others!”
We ran from the rocks out onto the sand and I saw two figures hip-deep in water up the shoreline. They waved, then started wading out as they saw us running, kicking up spurts of golden sand. We ran into each other, breathlessly. “What’s the matter?” Mike said, scanning the rocks behind us.
“We can do it,” I said, looking at Nova. “I’m linked . . . you’re linked . . . all we have to do is want to! That’s what the computer is for, to help!” They were looking at me, all touching, and I willed the push. There was a shifting . . .
The full-space-around us thinned.
We pulsed . . .
flowed . . .
Here became there, and then there was here.
“My god!” Mike gasped.
The four of us, still naked, hung in a cluster in space, millions of miles above a blazing yellow-orange sun. We were neither hot nor cold, and breathing normally. A safe environment was needed, so it was automatically provided.
With a kind of clarity beyond the senses we could all see the Solar System around us. The hot blob of rock near the sun, the mist-shrouded second planet, the blue-green-brown ball of Earth, distant Mars, then the great planets, majestic and unique, and further out the frozen balls of methane and rock. The dust, the asteroids, a comet coming into the plane, the primitive ships, debris and radiation, ions and sunwind. It was all there, every atom tagged and logged. And beyond, the most beautiful thing of all, the many-armed spiral of our galaxy, and other galaxies, the pliant fabric of space stretching around, bursting stars, glowing nebulae, life, time and non-time. This is what the Martians have left us, I said in my mind and the others heard. A tool. The tool. We will take it and use it and make it ours. Someday, we will meet them . . . and learn how science can become art, and art become science.
Nova spoke. “It could be years—centuries—since we . . . shifted.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mike said.
It happened, Madelon thought.
It’s only the beginning, I thought. Then we started toward Earth. We wanted to tell them, then we would go elsewhere. There was so much to see and do.