"Gildron—help us! Get the ones that are lit up. Slowly!" I called out. He joined in, slamming decisively at the controls with his fists.
The claxon suddenly cut off in mid-blast. The flashing ceiling lights snapped off. Now there was only that insistent buzzing.
"Hold it!" I said. "Stop! That's enough!" Everyone froze. Where the hell was that buzzer thing? I remembered the control and snapped it upwards again. The buzzer cut off, and the green light vanished. A shocked silence settled over the room.
"There. Nothing to it," I said. "Let's eat. I'm hungry."
"You may have only turned off the alarm system," Tara said. "The D-neg could still detonate."
"Check it yourself, if you're so concerned. I'm not going back in there. If it happens, it happens. We've done all we can." I collapsed and slumped against the wall. I felt terrible. "Can anybody get me some water?"
###
"Are you awake?" An angel's voice. I blinked my eyes, drifting slowly into consciousness. I was back on the bridge under a blanket and Tara knelt beside me, holding a canteen cup of steaming dox.
"Dox!" I awoke instantly, struggling to sit up, the heavenly odor teasing my nostrils. My shirt was missing.
"Where in the vac did you get that?"
Tara smiled, a dazzling phospho white smile that warmed my heart. She was totally lovely and completely relaxed, wearing a sleeveless top and litepants. "For you," she said, handing me the cup. "From Gildron's ratpak. He doesn't drink dox, so we've got plenty."
I drank slowly, savoring it. Renewal! The dox warmed my entire body. What a kick!
"Did you have a good sleep?" Tara asked.
"Wonderful," I said. "I feel like a new man. Thanks for the dox, Gildron." He showed me his teeth. He was leaning against one of the O's body chairs, still clad in his Elektra violet ship's uniform.
"Have any dreams?" Tara asked.
Dreams—I had dreamt of the O's. I had been an O, in my dream, strolling in a dark garden with someone I loved.
"No," I said, frowning. "No dreams." I went back to my dox.
"I slept a little," Tara said. "I had strange dreams. About the O's. I saw their world through their eyes. It was so sad. So far away. And lost to them forever. I'm not sure we did the right thing, Wester."
"It's done," I said. "I don't want to hear about it. Where's the kid?"
"Still sleeping—over there." He was on his back under a blanket, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, breathing deeply, his face angelic and peaceful.
"Where'd you get the blankets?"
"I've been exploring. There's a lot of Systie gear and also Uldo civilian stuff on this ship. Enough Systie rats to allow us to survive for years."
"Does this mean we're getting married?"
Another dazzling smile. Her hair was soft and silky, a rusty brown, and her skin was as smooth as satin. "You haven't asked me. But I'm hoping we won't have to use all those rations."
"So what's the sit? I see we haven't gone nova yet."
"No—when you went to sleep I suited up and went into the stardrive. Just far enough for Tess to get a reading. The situation appears to have stabilized. Pressure is back to normal. Tess says the unitium containment system no longer appears to be in danger of failing."
"You shouldn't have gone in there without me. How about the D-neg?"
"Tess had the same readings you did. She has concluded that it is a stardrive, powered by D-neg. She cannot explain the D-neg, or the containment unit. She says it is not physically possible. She also cannot explain why they need both antimat and D-neg. What do you think?"
"I think I really like the way your nipples stand out against your blouse. When do I get my reward?"
Tara laughed. "You've got a one-track mind, Wester, but I don't mind. That was brilliant, what you did in the control room."
"It wasn't brilliant, it was desperate. If I had blown us all to smithereens, it wouldn't have seemed so brilliant. But I had to do something—if I had done nothing, we'd have died. When in doubt, attack—old Legion saying."
"I've got to admit you've kept us alive so far."
"That little kid kept us alive. Thank him."
"That's true. I'm going to take very good care of him, Wester."
"Great. So tell me—where are we?"
"You're not going to believe it."
"I'm not? Why not?"
"Tess looked out at the stars, and didn't recognize anything. Then I put her on those artificial stars that keep flashing to life over the controls. And that's what they are, Wester. She was able to identify our position."
"Good! So where are we?"
"We're in the Null-Six Sector."
"The what? I've never heard of it."
"The Null-Six Sector is in the zeroes—Zone Zero Zero Two Six."
"I've never heard of that, either. Doesn't it have a name?"
"No name, Wester. You haven't heard of it because it's on the far side of the galaxy from our own neighborhood. Out beyond the Outvac and the Gassies, past the Icy Way, all the way into the core, past the Black Dog, through the nucleus and out the other side, through the Web, past the Smokescreen, through the Silky Way and beyond Doom's Drift, past the Dropoff, past the Great Deep, out in the furthest reaches of the Omega Spiral, out on the rim, on the very edge of the galaxy. The entire zone is unmapped. It's completely unknown."
I listened, taking it in. I decided I was going to be totally calm.
"Is your Persist certain about this, Tara?"
"Absolutely, Wester. She knows exactly where we are, now."
"Well, I'll be damned. I wonder how we got here. I mean, considering that the stardrive doesn't work."
"It obviously does work, Wester."
"If the damned thing was working, why didn't this ship leave the Mound when the other ships left?"
"I don't know, Wester."
"But we weren't in stardrive, Tara. We would have felt it! We were in the vac, the whole trip!"
"That's not possible, Wester. As you very well know. I'll admit it didn't seem we were on a star run. I didn't feel the pressure, either. But we were. Maybe it happened when we were unconscious. After the O's captured us."
"Just like that? We couldn't have been out that long! A star run to the far side of the galaxy, and we didn't notice it?"
"It's worth thinking about, isn't it?"
"The Omega Spiral, huh?"
"That's where we are."
"Do you think anyone's been out this far before?"
"No—nobody has."
We could see the stars out the plex. It looked terribly cold and lonely out there.
"You ever been this far from home before?" I asked.
"I don't have a home."
"Neither do I." I put an arm around her shoulders and drew her to me. I kissed her, on the forehead.
"We'll get out of this, Tara," I said. "And when we do, I'll buy you a drink."
"I don't drink," she replied, "but if we do get out of this, I may start. There's something else you should know."
"What's that?"
"Tess was able to make some exact correlations between the stars out there and the artificial display in here, along with some of the instrumentation on the control panel there. Very precise measurements. We can understand part of the display now. Come on—I'll show you!"
###
It looked like a master control panel set just below the plex, directly in front of one of the O's body chairs. This particular portion of the control panel had not been hit by our x's. A dazzling display of silver dust hung in the air just over our heads. I was cold, dressed only in my litepants.
"Look on the panel here," Tara said. "These are quantum math readouts, believe it or not. According to Tess, they are super-accurate. Watch this." She touched a flat tab with one slim finger. The stardust spun around us, hurtling past our heads.
"All right! It's moving!"
"What are they, Wester? Do you know?"
"Galaxies! Those are galaxies! That's the Great Wall!"