Loner's Deep

By Graham Storrs

Alone on a rain-swept mountain top, the robot, Broome, waits for rescue. Worshipped by the simple tribespeople below, it remembers its long existence, its long-dead friends, and ponders the tragedy of war and human frailty. To stave off the boredom, it decides to tell the story of Loner’s Deep and the events that took place there, events which threatened to destroy the fragile peace among the great spacefaring civilisations of Human Space and bring the whole human race to the edge of extinction. Broome’s story is about Berenetta, an Earth woman who, alone among her kind, is able to understand the true nature of the beautiful alien object that appears from nowhere and sparks a conflagration. It is about Tam and Prad, traders from the Republic of Karmarg, who are drawn into the chaos around Loner’s Deep after the death of hundreds of their people. And it is about Broome itself, the ancient war machine that is trying to live a life of peace and contemplation, but which finds itself at the centre of a wild and dangerous adventure spanning half of Human Space. The Federation is itching for war, The Republic and The Sphere of Light stand against it, and Earth, the six hundred pound gorilla they all fear, is watching and waiting. But, at Loner’s Deep, something much worse is stirring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Graham Storrs
• Release date: Sep 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9780994589934

Graham Storrs

Graham Storrs is a science fiction writer who lives miles from anywhere in rural Australia with his wife and a Tonkinese cat. He has published many short stories in magazines and anthologies as well as three children's science books and a large number of academic and technical pieces in the fields of psychology, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.He has published a number of sci-fi novels, in four series; Timesplash (three books), the Rik Sylver sci-fi thriller series (three books), the Canta Libre space opera trilogy. and the Deep Fracture trilogy. He has also published an augmented reality thriller, "Heaven is a Place on Earth", a sci-fi comedy novel, "Cargo Cult", a dark comedy time travel novel, "Time and Tyde", and an urban sci-fi thriller, "Mindrider."

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Part 1

Prologue to Part 1

My name, these days, is Broome. I picked it because of an old human joke I once heard. You pick up an old broom and you say, I've had this broom twenty years, and it's only had three new heads and two new handles. Boom, boom.

I've been around a lot more years than any old broom and, although I can't be sure, I'm guessing every single part of me has been replaced many times over. I'm a robot, in case you hadn't guessed. A military robot, designed for general combat. A lot bigger than an average Earther but considered small and mobile by those long-dead people who built me. Over the years, I've kept my basic design, when I could, but I've made a few mods here and there. I could do with a few more. A built-in umbrella would be nice, for example. I wasn't expecting to spend so many decades sitting in the rain, or sheltering in a damp and draughty cave half-way up a mountain. You see, I write this from Utopia, the wettest, most remote planet in the Federation. I am marooned here, with no access to technology, and no way to get back into space.

I'd rather be stuck on an asteroid, or a lifeless moon. Atmosphere is not a robot's friend. Neither is humidity. Neither is loneliness.

-oOo-

I am not quite alone here, but near enough. There are humans on this planet, descendants of colonists who came here two thousand years ago to live a peaceful, agrarian life. It was they who, quite erroneously, called the place Utopia. Of course, the Federation did not exist at that time and the few thousand settlers who arrived with such high hopes had no idea that their society would last only a few generations, that their broader civilisation would collapse around them, and they would be forgotten.

After a shaky start as idealists and farmers, their descendants became hunter-gatherers, stone age people, eking out an existence by trapping and spearing the herds of once-domesticated animals they had brought with them, pigs and goraks, geese, cherriks and cattle, all of which have far more successfully adapted to life here than their hunters.

It took the locals about twenty years after my arrival to notice I was here. I didn't try to hide. They were terrified of me, all knowledge of advanced technologies long gone or turned to myths of glory and magic. They tried to chase me away by throwing sticks and rocks at me. Then they came at me in force, with stone-tipped spears and slingshots. I gave them the fright of their lives by blasting a couple of trees to burning ruins with my infrared laser and they stopped bothering me.

The next year, they made their summer camp in the valley below my cave. The next year too, and the next. And each year, the camp grew larger as more of them made what I can only describe as a pilgrimage to my mountain. Then, one summer about forty years ago, a young boy came up the mountain. He had with him a strip of meat on a broad leaf and he left it near my cave before scuttling down the mountain again.

He came up with another the next day, and then another the day after. I supposed, correctly as it turned out, that it was some kind of offering and that these poor people were in the process of deifying me. I tried to shoo the boy away, but he kept coming back, apparently more afraid of his offering displeasing me than of what I might do to him. So I let him keep bringing the meat, pained that his scrawny frame spoke of him and his family needing these offerings far more than I did.

Finally, I hit on a way to satisfy us both. The next time the boy appeared, I grabbed him and held him. I move very much faster than humans and have far greater strength. I held him carefully so his terrified struggles would not harm him, and then I beamed microwaves at the meat until it was cooked. Finally, I pulled a piece off and gave it to him.

He ate it with gusto and from then on, when he came with his offering, I would cook it and he would eat it. It was a most gratifying arrangement.

He went away at the end of the summer but returned again next year. Eventually, he and several others formed a permanent camp in the valley and he has been up to see me every day since then. He chats to me as he eats, telling me the doings of his people. It took me only a little while to learn his language – a derivative of one I already knew from long, long ago – and I could soon follow his gossip. He is my priest, it seems, and I am a god. I never speak to him and, for all I know, he believes I am mute. His people do not ask much of their new god, only that I do not destroy them and that I do not desert them for another tribe.

Fair enough.

People bring me offerings, leaving them at the camp below, and my priest carries some of them up to my cave, where I cook them and he eats them. He is an old man now, by the standards of his tribe, well fed and healthy. Everybody is happy.

-oOo-

The war and the dark menace behind it, occupy my mind all the time. During my ship's slow spiral down to the surface of Utopia, I had plenty of time to download all the information I could ever need on Loner's Deep and the events surrounding it. Since then I've sifted and analysed all those petabits of data and, with a bit of inference, have filled in all the gaps in my knowledge.

I've always wanted to tell stories the way the humans do, but I have never seen the point. In my very long life, I have seen a great many famous tales arise and then disappear. Making literature is like making elaborate sandcastles. The great ocean of Time washes the sand smooth over and over again. Most of the pre-space-age documents that survive are the ones that are still here in my memory. And all of those are in languages no-one alive would be able to read. Even the literature of just a few hundred years ago is mostly forgotten. It is an ephemeral art form. Nevertheless, in this case, I may finally have a go at it. I know parts of this story that no-one else does. I feel I owe it to the historical record to set it all down in some form or other.

Actually, it isn't Time that washes the products of human endeavour away, it is War that burns them to ashes. In my ten thousand years of existence, I have seen so many wars that just to recount their names and participants would fill volumes. They happen all the time and everywhere. With humanity spread across a thousand star systems in a near spherical volume a hundred light years across, it is estimated that there are always over two hundred wars, large and small, going on somewhere at any moment. Everywhere, someone wants their freedom, someone wants someone's land, or wealth, or technology, someone wants to practice their faith unhindered, someone wants to deny them their chance. The limits of human intelligence were never so clearly revealed as in their inability to build stable, inclusive political and economic systems.

So, for every society, sooner or later, war sweeps through it like a bushfire, razing its achievements, consuming its dreams, erasing its memory. That's why I'm such a miracle. People have known how to make immortal robots since they made me at the beginning of their journey into space. They have known how to make themselves immortal for just as long. Yet I am almost unique in having survived even one thousand years, let alone ten. Certainly no human being has made it, unless you count the denizens of Omega Point – which I do. But then, I would, I suppose.

And my trick to surviving so long when all around me have perished? That's easy. I'm pretty tough, I'm pretty fast, and I'm pretty smart, but, above all else, I'm immensely lucky.

But my luck seems, at last, to have run out. The primitive society here has no metals, certainly no metamaterials, quantum computers, nano- and femto-technologies, and all the other arcane skills and knowledge that I would need to find spare parts. I'm going to wear out, corrode, run down. And die.

And perhaps that is why I am so taken with the idea of telling the story of this last, terrible conflict. Perhaps, in the end, I have learned to fear my own mortality and to look for ways to create my own posterity. Life, being alive, is still a conundrum, an existential phenomenon beyond my explanation.

Ah well. The story.

I could give you a first-hand narrative, in my own voice, but I fear that might grow dull. Of course, I could soup it up a bit. Once upon a time, in a future long forgotten, a lonely robot sat in a cave and dreamed of the people he loved. I like the sound of that and it suits my melancholy mood, but this is not a fairy tale and I am not a heartsick poet.

There was a form that was popular once, long before humans left the Earth, and which has been revived over and over again in the intervening millennia. It is called The Novel and I think I'd like to write one of those. No VR, no psychotropsis, not even a simple 3D image. Just words on a 2D screen, like it was in prehistory. For all its apparent crudity, it is a form that allows for remarkable subtlety. I will need subtlety if I am to tell this tale correctly, if I am to do justice to the people who shared my struggles and who, sometimes despite themselves, saved humanity.

I will assume the voice of an omniscient narrator. My own perspective on the events as they unfolded has since been hugely expanded by what I learned later. I won't put you through the tedium of seeing it all one way and then another – the way we have to experience life in real time. Let me therefore pick a beginning and jump right in.

Ah, there is my priest again. Time for me to cook his lunch and listen to the day's gossip. While I'm doing that, let the story begin.

Chapter 1

The alarm appeared in the shape of a young woman in full armour.

Captain Tamak, she said, hurrying towards him across the battlefield. Forward sensors show a massive energy spike. The watch officer requests your presence on the bridge.

Tell him I'm on my way.

Already the scene from the Emergence Wars was fading, the burning tanks and screaming jets replaced by the colourful opulence of his quarters. Tamak Pokkar, Captain and Shareholder of the trading ship Karrad dan Beshor, rose from the chair that had been gently holding him and pushed off through the door and into the corridors.

Bess, he said, addressing the ship. Give me tactical. Summarise the situation.

Semi-transparent displays sprang up in the air all around him, following him as he moved. At a glance, he could see something was badly wrong. Where Bess's sister ship, Karrad dan Gregg, should have been was a cloud of vapour. The spectrographic analysis of the materials in the cloud showed a pattern shockingly similar to the composition of a trader-class starship. He pushed himself to go faster.

The ship's well-modulated voice talked over the images that played in the displays. Seven minutes ago, we detected a large energy surge exactly at Gregg's location. The data graphed itself and Tamak goggled. The amount of energy is hard to explain. It is consistent with a collision with a very large mass – except that there is no sign in the analysis of any material other than Gregg's. If Gregg had hit an asteroid or planet, we would expect to see signs of silicates and other materials in the debris.

Could anyone have survived? The answer was obvious. You can't slam a gigantic spaceship into a brick wall at near lightspeed and expect anything other than quark plasma.

No. The readings are consistent with the total destruction of the ship.

An awareness of the loss was beginning to creep over Tamak. He had family and good friends aboard Karrad dan Gregg. The shock of losing all of them in an instant stirred in his chest.

What happened? He was on the ramp to the bridge now, feeling the room's artificial gravity slowly building as he approached, pushing himself faster.

Insufficient data. Bess said. Gregg hit something completely unyielding. The dispersal pattern of the debris is peculiar.

Unyielding. Every ship's crew lived with the possibility that they could hit something as they careened through space at proxiluminal speeds. A rogue planet or asteroid drifting between the stars, a small uncharted black hole passing through the area, such things were tiny darknesses among so much black, invisible for all practical purposes. Had Gregg hit one of those? The chances were infinitesimal. Yet...

He entered the bridge and the hubbub that was buzzing around the room trailed away. The bridge crew looked at him in silence.

Prad?

The watch officer was his cousin, Prad Pokkar. The young woman opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head.

I have no idea, Tam. One minute Gregg was there, the next... She waved a hand at a large display showing a visual from the aft cameras. Roiling clouds of massively excited particles billowed from the impact point. The readouts showed temperatures way above stellar levels. Significant quantities of the ship's mass had been converted directly to energy.

Tamak stared in horror at the scene. All those people, he was thinking. All those friends. What the hell did they hit?

Nothing that we can detect, Bess told him, the only one there who seemed able to speak. The mass and energy we can detect is completely accounted for by Gregg alone. There is no evidence of any other object.

Could it have been a bomb? Serad Bokkor asked from the doorway. Everyone turned to look at the old matriarch as she strode into the room. Tamak scowled, correctly understanding her implication that, if it had been a bomb, he was her prime suspect.

Impossible, said Bess. Even an antimatter containment failure would not produce these results. This is clearly a collision.

Tamak watched Bokkor stalk around the edges of the room. Her eyes were hooded, her flaring nostrils and pursed lips gave away the anger she was controlling. She examined each of the men and women there with slow distaste.

Something thrown in its path then, she said, looking at Tamak.

Again, impossible, said Bess. Such an object could only have come from this ship and our relative velocities were–

You're wrong, Serad, Tamak said, cutting off the ship. I did not kill Arrim. Your son died, like everyone else aboard Gregg, from some freak accident we have yet to understand.

Bokkor's expression did not change. Two days. Just two days after he accuses you of cheating us. Two days after he tells you he will see you ruined for it. Just two days later and my son is dead, and his whole crew with him.

In a swift and practised movement, she drew a small handgun from the holster at her hip, levelled it at Tamak's chest and stepped closer to him. He felt his heart skip and his breath catch, expecting to feel the particle beam cutting through his flesh at any instant. But he stood his ground and glared back at the woman.

You are wrong, Serad, he repeated, his voice firm. I understand how this news must seem to you, how your grief must hurt. But you will surrender that gun now, or I will have you shot where you stand. As it is, you are to consider yourself under arrest and confined to your quarters until we make orbit at Luxor.

Serad Bokkor sneered and took another step closer.

Please do as he says, Ma'am.

Tamak glanced sideways to find his cousin, Prad, pointing a gun at the old woman. Threatening to have the matriarch shot had been pure bluff. Now he could do it.

Bokkor did not look at the young woman, but kept her eyes on Tamak, almost snarling with rage. You've got balls, girl, she said, and Tamak had to agree. Pointing a gun at one of the most powerful women in the Republic, and a Shareholder at that, was not a great career move for a young officer.

The gun, please, Ma'am, Prad said.

For a tense moment, nobody moved. Then Serad threw her gun away. It clattered across the floor. She stepped right up to Tamak. Like all patrician women, she was tall, as tall as he was. She had no problem looking him in the eye. He wondered whether she might have a knife in her sleeve, but tried not to show any anxiety.

If I find you were the cause of my son's death, she said, softly, there is nowhere in this galaxy you could hide from me. You know that, don't you?

Tamak swallowed, finding his mouth dry. I am sorry for your loss, Serad. Arrim was my friend, whatever little disagreements we might have had. I will grieve him too. Still holding Bokkor's glare, he addressed Prad. Officer of the watch, please have a security detail escort Madame Serad to her quarters. Round up her two bodyguards and the rest of her retinue and have them confined to quarters too.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the security detail arrive. Prad must have summoned them already. He tried again to get through to the angry woman in front of him.

I am sorry for this, Serad, but I must ask you to return to your quarters. I hope that, soon, you will understand-

I understand, Tamak Pokkar. I hope you understand that there will be consequences.

With that, she turned and left, the security detail hurrying to form itself around her as she pushed past them.

Tamak slowly unclenched his jaw and let himself relax. Having Serad Bokkor threaten him was practically a death sentence, possibly the beginning of a blood feud between their two families, but, right at that moment, it was a distraction. Something out there had destroyed a Republican trading ship. Something might be sitting up ahead, waiting to destroy Bess too. He had to understand what this was – and fast.

Prad?

Yes, Captain. The young officer looked shaken but still resolute. Her handgun had disappeared again.

Carrying firearms on the bridge is against ship rules.

Yes, Captain.

I will want a full explanation. Prad opened her mouth to begin but Tamak held up a hand to stop her. Later. When the current crisis is over and I buy you a very large beer in the mess. He looked around at the bridge crew. Now, let's get back to finding out what killed our friends.

Chapter 2

Loner's Deep was the back end of nowhere. A tired old mining planet orbiting a sick old star. The gravity was high, the oxygen was thin, and the habitable zone was just five hundred kilometres wide, a narrow band running from pole to pole. Tidally locked, Loner's Deep kept one face always towards the white dwarf that baked it in unrelenting pearly light. One face hot, one cold, and a band of twilight in between. Human colonies came and went there, and never amounted to much.

To Berenetta, First Daughter of Larasarra, Contributor of Communal CR-213, District 4352, Tablelands County, Austronesia Region, Loner's Deep was Paradise. For, in that backwater at the very edge of Human Space, Berenetta had found love.

She had gone there looking for something else entirely.

Berenetta had left her home and family on Earth to sip at the fount of knowledge, as she put it in her journal. More prosaically, she had gone to learn all she could about modern cosmology from the Sphereans. She would be working with the revered Illuminatus Hax Artu Patien, she discovered when she got there, a man who had not even been born when Berenetta left home.

For an Earther, working with a great scientist like Patien was an impossible dream, yet it had happened thanks to a SolSystem-wide contest. The Sphere of Light, that most enlightened and open of the human polities, ran a cultural exchange programme. As part of this, each year, a hundred or so young Earth students of exceptional ability were invited to spend five years studying under one of the Sphere's leading Illuminati. It was a huge honour and a great boost to a young scientist's career. On her return to Earth, Berenetta was already guaranteed a research post at People's Knowledge Factory Number 217, one of the finest universities in the system.

It was widely held that the Sphere was at least a century or two ahead of Earth in all the sciences. Only the secretive and closed society of the Billagarralassans was believed to have a more advanced understanding of the physical universe. But the Billagarralassans did not run exchange programmes. They did not share their secrets with Earth. There were rumours that the Billagarralassans were no longer quite human.

That was fifty-five years ago, Earth time. For Berenetta, just seven years had passed. At home they would have celebrated her success and her promised future status over and over. Her mother, she knew would mark the day she left every year with a family celebration. Perhaps, by now, some of the younger ones had forgotten her and wondered who it was her mother spoke about as she raised her glass, with tears in her ageing eyes.

Winning that place was a bitter-sweet success. The Sphere of Light was a society comprising some hundred-and-fifty star systems at the edge of Human Space. Its farthest reaches were fifty light years from Earth – more than fifty years travelling each way in Earth time. To accept such a prize meant saying goodbye to everyone Berenetta had ever known, most likely never to see them again. Yet it was made plain to her by the exchange administrators that refusing the honour was unthinkable. In fact, they suggested, refusal would be very bad for her and for her family, while accepting it would mean special privileges for those left behind.

So, after the announcement of her win, after the visits from district and regional dignitaries to shake her hand in front of the cameras, after the tearful and almost certainly final goodbyes to the extended family she loved, she had travelled to Communal CM-943 in the hot deserts of Northifric Region and took the elevator into space.

Before boarding the gondola at the spacebridge, she was led to a small but luxuriously-appointed waiting room and left alone. Alone for the first time in weeks of clamour and parties and farewells. She blinked at the deep carpets and pastel walls and, slowly the enormity of what was happening began to seep into her. She would be gone a hundred and fifteen years. Nothing would be the same when she returned. Everyone she knew would be old, or dead. Her mother, her friends, her teachers...

As she gazed sightlessly at the door, it opened and a Contributor of the Political Corps joined her. The stranger wore the plain grey uniform of her profession and only the cluster of gold stars on her left breast gave any clue as to her extremely high status. Berenetta goggled at the badge of rank like the inexperienced country girl she was, before coming to her senses enough to drop to her knees in obeisance.

Please rise, Contributor. I hope you will allow me to call you Berenetta. There is no need for that. We are both servants of the State.

Yes, Ma'am, Berenetta mumbled, rising in confusion.

I just wanted to congratulate you on your success, the woman said, not introducing herself. And to wish you luck in your studies.

Berenetta stammered a thank you, keeping her eyes downcast.

The politician reached out a hand and lifted Berenetta's chin. Let me look at you, child. You are really quite a pretty one, for an Austronesian.

Berenetta tried to shake her head in automatic denial – pride in one's physical appearance was one of the many Sins of Inequality and a sign of a degenerate moral character. Was this a test? Could she lose her place on the programme if this woman tripped her up or accused her? Her stomach knotted with fear and she felt tears spring to her eyes. It was only in that moment, when her prize might be snatched from her, that she realised just how much she wanted it.

The politician smiled. Don't worry, my little genius, it is a privilege of my rank that I am allowed to tease people.

Berenetta did not like the woman's smile. It was a false smile in which her grey eyes took no part.

I only wish to better serve the State, Ma'am, Berenetta said. And it was true. Yes, in her heart she felt the pride of her achievement and anticipated the pleasures of the coming years, but she knew her pride was secretly shared by all her family and all the people of her district. It was a pride the whole region could quietly share, and in this way, her achievement was everybody's. Her pleasure was partly the knowledge that she had given this to everyone.

Of course you do, child. You do now, at this moment. But you will be working so far from home, so far from the good influences of your Communal and your family. It is not unknown for a young person's head to be turned by the superficial freedoms of the Sphere's degenerate political system. It is not unknown for young people on this very programme to be corrupted and to dishonour themselves. Working with morally weak individuals, however great their scientific accomplishments, can unbalance a young person's sense of honour and duty.

Tears were rolling down Berenetta's cheeks now, but the woman kept smiling at her, kept holding her chin so she could not look away. She was being accused. Someone had seen the horrible selfishness and individuality in her heart and this woman had come to denounce her. She tried to shake her head again, not daring to dislodge the woman's hand.

I only wish to serve... she said again.

The woman's smile vanished, whisked away as if a curtain had been pulled aside. The hand snapped free of Berenetta's chin, jolting her head. The young woman's heart stood still.

Of course you do, child. You do now. You're a good little Contributor. But five years is such a long time. I would never let any of you be exposed to Spherean corruption for so long. Not even for three weeks. But the decision is not mine. The benefits to the State outweigh the occasional losses. So they tell me. Subjugation is the path of contribution, I suppose. But let me tell you, Berenetta, that while you are all those light years away, having your silly head filled with seditious nonsense, your family is still here, with us. We will be waiting eagerly for your return. None will be more eager than your family. Oh, your sisters and brothers may be dead before you come back to us, but their children and their children's children may not be. How happy they will be to see their Great, Great Aunt return, knowing the terrible humiliation and suffering you will have spared them.

What? The implication of what the woman had said was so startling, so horrifying, that Berenetta could find no response to it.

But none, it seemed, was required. The woman took Berenetta by the wrist and slapped a small box into her palm. Use this, she said. We expect daily reports of everything that happens to you. With a small nod, the politician turned and left.

Berenetta found she was alone again. Only, this time, much more alone than before.

Chapter 3

The trading ship, Karrad dan Beshor, had three propulsion systems. One was a set of small rocket engines, they burned liquid fuel and were used for manoeuvring, turning and orienting the great ship as it swung around to decelerate, or aligned itself for orbital insertions. Another was a bank of fusion torches, big enough to blast the ship at one-half G between planets within a star system, or away from stars and into interstellar space. There, the third system came into its own, the photon drive. This was the engine that, by smashing electrons and positrons together, annihilated matter so completely that a virtually pure stream of energy was ejected from its exhaust, giving a small but persistent acceleration capable of driving the ship to within a whisker of light-speed.

From the aft observation deck, the robot could look out along the spine of the ship to the great fuel tanks and reaction chambers for which it was responsible. A vast, clear-walled room, popular for ceremonial events, the aft observation deck was lit now only by the blue-shifted iridescence of the sky ahead of them as they decelerated, stern-first, towards Luxor, capital world of the Sphere of Light.

Tamak Pokkar let himself in the door and drifted gently to where the robot, his rather unusual choice for Chief Engineer, stood gazing into the heavens.

Hello, Captain, it said as Tamak approached in silence.

Hello, Broome.

Tamak felt no surprise that the machine had known it was him. Its senses were both mysterious and superb. Its mind, doubly so. Crouching like a gigantic insect, the ancient device showed no signs of life until it spoke again.

You are here to ask me what I think about the accident that destroyed Gregg.

Yes, I am. No-one had communicated with the robot as far as Tamak was aware, yet it always knew everything that was happening on the ship. Tamak knew it spoke to Bess – considered the ship a friend – and he suspected that Bess allowed Broome to tap into its sensors. What do you think happened?

He joined the robot and put a hand on one of its legs to stop himself. There was artificial gravity available on this deck but Broome always preferred to switch it off, anchoring itself through magnets in its own limbs.

I think Gregg hit something head on, converting all of its kinetic energy to heat in under 5 microseconds

But what did it hit?

Nothing at all. At least, nothing we can detect. There are some very unusual features of the distribution and type of energy being detected.

Yes, we've been analysing the images. There is a lateral spread, almost perpendicular to Gregg's trajectory, that makes no sense. Looking at the simulations, it's as if they hit a glass wall.

A glass ribbon, perhaps, the robot said. One we were lucky enough to pass over.

Standard separations, Tamak said. That was all that had saved his own ship and his own crew, it seemed. It was standard procedure for ships travelling the same vector at proxiluminal speeds to maintain a minimum five light-second separation. If they had been closer than that, possibly Bess would have hit that invisible ribbon too.

Bess didn't mention anomalies in the energy type, he said, remembering the robot's words. He had almost missed it. He was distracted and letting his mind wander. That was one of the reasons he was down here talking to Broome. The weight of all those dead people, the pressure of all the living wanting him to reassure them, the growing need for him to feel the horror of it and to grieve for his friends, were all clamouring for space in his head.

The data is fresh. Bess will report soon.

Even after all these years together, the robot could still surprise him. Now it seemed it could analyse the ship's sensor data faster than the ship could. It was the wrong time to wonder about it, but he turned away from the blue haze outside to look at Broome's inscrutable features. One day...

There is an abnormal level of Hawking radiation in the vicinity.

Hawking? I've never heard of it.

Your scientists call it evaporative entropy retrieval.

Evap... You mean black hole radiation? There's a black hole out there? But–

No. There is no black hole. If there was one big enough to destroy Gregg so close to us, the tests we have made would have found it. Besides–

The pattern of the debris is all wrong.

Quite.

Tamak could have shaken the machine in his frustration. So?

I do not know. Only a black hole is a reasonable explanation for this type of radiation.

They both fell silent and went back to staring at the distorted starlight into which they were rushing.

Tamak fancied the blue ahead of them was darker and more diffuse already, a sign that they were slowing towards non-relativistic speeds, but any changes should not be apparent for several more weeks. Just wishful thinking, then. He felt a curl of anxiety in his stomach and, for the first time in his life, imagined obstacles out there in his path, invisible and unknown, rocks, planets, mysterious transparent walls, deadly phantoms that would rush at him at impossible speeds, smashing him and his whole world to atoms in an instant.

What are the odds of hitting an object in interstellar space? he asked. He had learned the answer many years ago during his basic training, but had forgotten it.

Too small to matter, the robot answered him. Broome did not have the warm, human tones of the other machines Tamak dealt with – Bess for example – yet there was something altogether more natural in its way of