She expected the pain to fade. Instead, it increased. Her hand burned. Angry at herself, she jerked away from the thorn: too fast. Its tip broke off beneath her skin. She snarled a curse and put her hand to her mouth, trying to suck out the point. Her blood tasted bitter, as if it were poisoned.
Pain and shock separated Chandra from terror- Though her STARFARERS 3 3
band felt hot, the rest of her body felt as cold as if she were still in the pool. Chandra stumbled away from the gold-green plant. She had no idea which direction to move to meet the trail. If she kept going she must hit it eventually, for it made a complete circle, and she was inside. Hoping to extricate herself, she kept going as long as she could.
The thornbush disappeared behind and among a thousand tall, straight tree trunks. Chandra sank to the ground. The illusion of softness disappeared when the rotting evergreen needles poked through her clothes and scratched her skin.
She cursed again and sent a Mayday to the web.
She waited.
Pain altered Chandra's perceptions. Time stretched out to such a distance that she feared she would use up all her sensory storage. Yet when she checked the remaining volume, she had filled it only halfway.
She heard the ranger approach; she raised her head slowly.
He towered above her, scowling.
"Whatever possessed you to leave the trail?" His face wavered. When it solidified again, it carried an expression mixed of pity and horror. "Good lord! What happened to you?"
She lifted her hand. Blood obscured the swelling. He knelt down and looked carefully at the place where the thorn had penetrated.
"I got a lot of good stuff," she said, to reassure him and herself.
"You stuck yourself with a devil's club thorn," he said, both unimpressed and contemptuous. "But. . ."He touched the other swellings, the ridges of nerves tracing her fingers and palm.
"That isn't pan of it," Chandra said. Talking tired her. "I mean, it's part of me." She took a deep and frustrated breath and blew it out again. "Don't you know who I am?" Exhaustion tangled her words. "I'm supposed to be like that."
He was staring at her eyes. The biosensors covered her eyes with a film of translucent gray.
"My eyes, too," she said.
The ranger kept his expression neutral as he returned her to the lodge.
Chandra slept for a long time. When she woke, the medication had caused her hand nearly to finish healing. Only a
34 vonda N. Mcfntyre
residual swelling remained, but it was enough to squeeze the
accessory nerves and disrupt all her finer sensations. As for the pain, it had faded till the persistent ache took more of her attention.
She spun into the web. Her agent and her manager were fighting with each other, the one urging her to take care of herself, the other urging her to get back to work. Ignoring them both, she called for her schedule to look at which experiences had been arranged, which arrangements were causing problems, and what she might have to rearrange.' She resented the delay, but her results would be worth it.
She thought she would still have time for the sea-wildemess visit before catching the spaceplane to Starfarer. The starship contained no oceans, only shallow salt marshes and freshwater lakes. Chandra wanted to collect diving beneath the ocean before she left earth. Since she hated to swim, since the whole idea of diving made her claustrophobic, the coming task was a challenge. Ordinarily she preferred to go out on her own. but this once she was glad she would be accompanied by an expert-
Before her schedule appeared, the web displayed a priority message. The ranger had written her a ticket for leaving the trail. The fine was considerable. She could contest it if she wished.
She thought of staying, in order to explain about the results being worth it, but that would mean more delay. She could stay and explain and record, but lots of people made recordings of court cases. Chandra was not interested in repeats.
She signed the ticket so it could subtract the fine from her account.
It was worth it. She had a lot of good stuff.
Victoria and J.D. floated near the transparent wall of the observation room, watching the stars and the distant starship.
"I thought the sky was beautiful from the wilderness,"
J.D. said. "But this . . ."
Victoria gazed at the region of doubled images created by the local strand of cosmic string.
"Could you see the lens effect from where you were? There it is." She pointed, tracing out the line where the string bent light from the stars behind it.
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"I see it," J-D. said. "But you've been out there."
"I've been as close as anyone. Yet." Cosmic string had fascinated Victoria from the time she was a child. It drew her to astronomy, thence to physics.
Cosmic string, a remnant of creation, formed a network through the galaxy. The strings vibrated in a cycle measured in eons, a cycle now taking a strand past the solar system and within reach of earth's current technology.
The cosmic string made Starfarer possible. The starship would use the moon's gravity to catapult it toward the string. Then it would grasp the string with powerful magnetic fields, and tap the unlimited power of its strange properties. Starfarer would rotate around the strand, building up the transition energy that would squeeze it out of Einsteinian space-time and overwhelm the impossible distances between star systems. When it returned to the starting point of its rotation-
It would not return to its starting point. From the point of view of those left behind, the starship would vanish. It would reappear . . . somewhere else.
That was the theory. Victoria had spent the better part of her career working on that theory.
"It's incredible it could be so close and not affect the solar system," J.D. said.
"We're lucky," Victoria said. "If it came close enough to cut through the sun, then we'd*ve seen some effects." She touched her thumbs together, and her fingertips, forming a sphere with her hands. "The string distorts space-time so thoroughly that a circle around it is less than three hundred sixty degrees. So if the string passes through a region that's full of mass . . ." She slid the fingers of her right hand beneath the fingers of her left. "Double-density starstuff. Instant nova." She snapped open her hands. "Blooie." She grinned, "But that missing part of the circle gives us an opening out of the solar system."
"What do you think of the idea that the string is a lifeline?"
Victoria chuckled. "Thrown to us by a distant civilization?
I think it makes a great story."
J.D. smiled, a bit embarrassed. "I find the idea very attractive."
36 vonda N. Mcintyre
"I'll admit that I do, too—though I might not admit it to anyone else. I'd need some evidence before I got serious about it. And let's face it, a civilization that could directly manipulate cosmic string—they'd think we were pretty small potatoes. Or maybe small bacteria."
"Excuse me ... You are Victoria MacKenzie, aren't you?"
Victoria glanced around. The youth smiled at her hopefully.
"Yes," Victoria said- "And this is J.D. Sauvage."
"J.D. Sauvage! I'm glad to meet you, too."
"Thank you."
"And you are—?" • '
"Feral Korzybski." He offered Victoria a card.
"Really—!" She took the card and glanced at the printing: a sketch of a quill pen, his name, his numbers.
"I've seen your articles," Victoria said. "I think you do an excellent job." Victoria had not expected to encounter the public-access journalist here.
He blushed at her exclamation. "I just read your interview," he said, "and I wanted to tell you how much I admire your straightforwardness. I wonder . . . would you like to expand on what you said? I thought your comments made the beginning of a provocative piece."