But it wasn’t true, of course. They were here because they had to be. Look at the expressions on their faces. Both staring straight ahead, tense, alert, expectant. Marcia was going in search of her husband. And Larry. Larry was going in search of what he always sought, and would never find. Absolution.
Sondra turned back to the main viewscreen and watched what the others were watching—the image of the Ring of Charon. They were face-on to the Ring, its running lights a hoop of blue diamonds in the dark, the Ring itself a perfect circle in the sky. No change yet, but it would come soon.
Too soon. Why in the hell had she felt so honor-bound to go along on this ride? Why wasn’t she back on board the research station where she belonged, feeding numbers to the computers?
The Ring’s running lights dimmed, went out, and re-lit in blood red. Stand-by. Almost ready. The team would be loading the last of the command strings to the Ring. A faint patch of dimness appeared at the centerpoint of the Ring, just barely visible at first and then almost fading out. Were they having trouble getting the lock? But then the luminous spot grew brighter, larger, stronger, rippling with power. Yes, yes, it was working.
The center of the nimbus grew darker, harder, more focused—and then flared over into a strange un-blue-white and settled down, rock-hard and solid.
The Autarch’s engines fired, and the ship moved forward, straight for the hole in the sky and whatever lay beyond.
Down a wormhole, Sondra told herself. Down a human-made worm-hole. Good God. She could not even begin to sort out the emotions that washed over her. Fear, excitement, pride, astonishment, panic, and half a dozen others all mixed up together. They were going in. They were going in.
Just before they reached the wormhole, the Autocrat turned to Sondra and smiled. “I expect,” he said, “that it will be an interesting trip.”
The Windbag stared out the viewport in his office, not at the Shattered Sphere or at Solitude, but at the Ring that ran the wormhole they had come through. The wormhole was where the action was, no doubt. The Windbag was worried, and getting more so. What the hell to do? Colette and Sturgis’s objectional “object” was on a collision course with the wormhole. Leetle invisible thing was killing every SCORE in its path. Could it really kill Sphere? Sounded loony, even if their charts and graphs looked real, even if Eyeball said they were on the money.
But what to do about it even if the “object” wuz real deal? How was a hab full of headbangers scraped off the walls of every town on Earth gonna stop an invisible object that converted SCOREs to guacamole?
The Windbag was at that melancholy point in his reflections when there was a flare of un-blue-white light from the wormhole. The Windbag frowned. Another SCORE? Thought the last of them had come up. Too damn far away to get a visual at this range. Maybe the radar johnnies could tell him something. He had his hand out to punch up the codes and ask them, when the screen blanked and presented a live radar image. The caption line reported that the imagery was coming from the TN.
His intercom warbled, and the Windbag slapped at the accept switch, knowing who it had to be before he heard a word. The woman had been checking in about a million times a minute.
“Bossman, you got eyelock on screen?” Eyeball asked.
“Eyeball,” he said. “What a nice big old shock to hear your voice. Yeah, I got it up and I see it. ’Nother SCORE?”
“Nope,” Eyeball said. “ ’Nother ship.” There was something in her tone of voice, something strained under the wiseguy tone.
“Say again? What the hell other ship could Earth send to join the party? Some cargo craft they goosed through?”
“None of above, big guy. Ship from Solar Area. From Pluto. Ring o‘ Charon, if ya wanna believe their ID codes.”
Windbag stared at nothing at all for a good five seconds, trying to deal with that information, but somehow it just couldn’t get inside his head.
“Say again?”
“I say it’s a god-damned ship from Pluto with the god-damned old Autocrat himself along for the ride.”
“Autocrat? Ceres Autocrat? The Big Cold Fish himself?” None too surprisingly, the Naked Purple movement had never gotten along well with the Autocrat of Ceres.
“Stand by, Wind. Yeah, you bet. Got him on the viddy now, wriggling on the slab with his gills flapping.”
“He sick? Hurt?” Windbag asked, suddenly alarmed. No one wanted to be the guy in charge when the Autocrat keeled over. His followers might take a dim view.
“Huh? Naw, he’s okay. But he’s sure a Fish outta water. Who’s gonna do what he says here?”
“Ah. Oh. Got it.” Sometimes Purpspeak was a bit too colorful.
But a ship from Pluto, from Solar Area? How could that be? What did it mean?
Well, one thing fershure. Had to talk to these people.
Gerald MacDougal stood by the entrance to the lock, and nothing in the Universe mattered but the fact that the lock was about to open. Marcia. Here. Now. Alive.
Shattered Spheres and invisible objects that killed SCORES and wormhole transits to habs full of lunatics. None of it was of the least importance. Marcia. Here.
It was impossible, it couldn’t be true, and it was happening. Five years and more since he had last seen her, since he had touched her. Five years since the Charonians had torn them apart—and now the Autarch of Ceres and NaPurHab were bringing them together. It made no sense at all, but that didn’t matter either.
The airlock hatch swung partway open, and then paused for a moment. Gerald stepped forward, his heart slamming in his chest.
And then the hatch swung clear, and she stepped through.
Marcia. Here.
They were in each other’s arms before either of them knew it. His body remembered the feel of her close and warm against him, and some part of himself that had been lost for far too long was suddenly there again. He breathed in the smell of her hair, wrapped his arms around her and held her. Never again. Never again would they be separated.
They let go of each other just enough so that they could take that quarter step back to look in each other’s eyes, and he knew that he was seeing what she saw. An age line or two, a grey hair that had not been there before—but none of that mattered either. The last five years had not happened. They had always been together, and they always would be.
She reached her hand up and caressed the side of his face, pulled him close, and they kissed.
They drew back again, after a time, and looked at each other again. “Hello, Gerald,” Marcia said, her voice warm and low. “Did you miss me?”
Sianna Colette sat and listened, sat and watched, as the meeting lumbered on. There he was. That was him. Larry Chao, the man, the monster, the ogre who had caused the Abduction. She—or at least her subconscious— had been expecting someone nine feet tall with fangs. But not a man, a rather ordinary, shy, gentle-looking man with dark hair and a haunted look in his eyes.
But there were other matters in hand. “There is no doubt in my mind at all,” Chao was saying. “The object that Miss Colette and Mr. Sturgis have been tracking is the Adversary, the danger that terrifies the Sphere that holds Earth captive. The danger that could kill Earth and everything on it. The Multisystem Sphere will not hesitate to throw Earth at the Adversary in order to kill it.”