The asteroid spasmed. Now they could see it breathe. Its metabolism sped, accelerating to match theirs, until its internal processes were running—and would run out—as quickly as theirs. Its surface contours turned liquid, concentrating a thousand years’ movements into seconds, and its voice, now as audible as its movements were visible, roared up at them through the throat of the crater as they dived, and entered Thahl’s Alley.
Because particle beams were recoilless, the Charles Manson broke through the asteroid’s surface without impact. There was only a soft concussion, as of a finger poking into an eyeball; and then, abruptly, a shuffle and flicker of universes. The forward screen simply shifted from one frame, where they broke orbit and dived vertically, to another, where space turned to rock and outside to inside. Cause and effect tripped over each other. The screen showed impossible events by the light of impossible colours.
Thahl’s Alley was a moving wormhole. They were the forward tip of a burrowing internal wound which opened ahead as it closed behind. Rock turned viscous, roared and fell away boiling before them where the beams ate it, but Thahl’s Alley only existed ahead. Behind them it collapsed and coagulated, its collapse chasing but never quite catching them. Ahead and Behind worked in counterpoint, like a pair of thighs, to draw them deeper inside.
“Missile still there?”
“Yes, Commander,” said Smithson, and swore. “Even through this.”
And again, the engagement turned on itself. Their orders were to engage and destroy Faith in single combat, and now those orders—even the shapes of the words—melted. Thahl had injected them into an asteroid, and they were burrowing for its core where their beams would annihilate it and (perhaps) burst them free of its explosion in a manoeuvre not even Kaang had attempted; and all of this to destroy, not Faith, but just Her third missile.
The beams ate, they moved forward, the wound closed behind them, the beams ate, they moved forward. By now Cyr was laughing aloud (“Kaang should see this! Thahl, it’s brilliant. It might even work!”) and firing continuously, and the colours were breathtaking. Ahead of them where the wound opened, the beams had made something which was almost a sun, a swirling whiteness of molten colours fracturing and recombining, but its colour never reached the Bridge screen. The dark bruise-blue of the beams filtered its glare down to polite pastels of peach and mauve and lilac: delicate, lying colours which imparted a wash of wonder to their creation of Thahl’s Alley, but drained it of its enormity. And hid its ending.
“There’s no more I can do for now, Commander,” Thahl said. “Not until we reach the core.”
Foord nodded. For the last few minutes—it felt like seconds, but the screen said minutes—he had watched Thahl as closely as the screen, because the idea that Thahl could have devised this was as bewitching as any of the roiling interior-decorator pastels ahead. He knew less of Thahl, after years, than he did of Faith, after days.
More minutes passed. The beams ate, they moved forward, the wound closed behind them, the beams ate, they moved forward. It was a simple internal-combustion cycle, driven by post-Einsteinian physics. Foord would have given a lot to see what Thahl’s instruments (roll, pitch, yaw, speed, spatial coordinates) were making of it; they were still on ninety percent ion speed, but inside an asteroid. And the missile…
“Still there, Commander,” Smithson said.
“And,” Thahl added, “we’re not on ninety percent speed. We’re on ninety percent power, but speed is down because we’re not moving through space.”
Did I think aloud? Foord asked, or thought he asked, And did I ask aloud if I was thinking aloud, or only think it? And did I—
That was when it started to change. They were slowing down, like his thoughts. Their speed had dropped when they entered the asteroid, and was dropping further. Nearer the core, matter was denser and penetration harder, the pastel illusion of an alley ahead growing darker and closing tighter. The colours themselves were slowing down and deepening. Events were suddenly gradual, slowing too fast; even sounds came more slowly.
“The one. She intend. Dead. For us.” Joser’s voice crawled around his head, trying to get in.
“Can you tell us how long before we reach the core?” Foord heard himself asking Thahl.
“No, Commander, because I can’t predict our rate of slowing. Maybe we won’t.”
“Won’t?”
“If we reach the core the beams will explode the asteroid. If we don’t we’ll be embedded. Like…”
Like the Book of Srahr in its crystal, Foord thought. Or said.
The beams ate; they edged forward; the wound closed behind them.
The air was as thick as tree-resin, trapping events like insects. It smothered light and sound, made thoughts meander, and conversations mumble to nowhere. Time inverted itself. Minutes stretched into seconds, or longer.
Foord found himself repeating his last conversation with Thahl. He walked around the words. They stood like stones in a cemetery. This time there were three voices in the conversation, not two. The third voice was a roaring which obliterated some words at random like an idiot’s finger daubing a page.
“Can you”
“Us how long before we reach the”
“Won’t?”
“Like the Book of Srahr in its”
Then the third voice reversed itself, and became the words it obliterated. Tell. Core. Crystal. The words crumbled, and the voice was wordless again. It chased its own echoes, caught them and became continuous, and Foord began to dread it, so he went away.
Back in the cemetery the words were still standing like stones, but something else was there too. Where the word Crystal should have stood was a darkness. It spread. First it put out thin tendrils, like hairline cracks in the air; then thicker tendrils, which chased and caught the thinner ones and wandered among the words, engulfing and denying them. Then it joined itself and became a black web, as large as a planet. It turned to face Foord, swivelling on him simultaneously from above and below and all around, and—suddenly intimate—it pulled aside part of itself and showed him its inner recesses. Foord dreaded it. He went away, back to his ship, but the darkness followed him there, where it became the third voice.
The third voice was the voice of the asteroid, roaring at them from above and below and all around, swelling towards explosion: the rending of rock through which a dark web of fault-lines radiated, first thin then thick, chasing each other. It was wordless but held hints of words, growing and dying inside it; and Foord, returning to his ship from wherever he had been, found himself returning to a madhouse.
“The one…” Joser began.
“Got you,” Cyr whispered, firing, and “Now hurry up and die.” The asteroid rushed to obey her.
“…She intended for us.” Joser was talking to himself, and being ignored.
“Still there!” Smithson bellowed, jabbing at the rear screen. “And it won’t ever go away!”
And Thahl, the most shocking of all, because Foord had never heard him shout before. Too early, it’s exploding too early, we haven’t reached the core yet and I’m not ready—
“Thahl?”
“Commander. I’m glad you’re back. I thought you’d gone away.”
“I thought so too.”
“Look out there, Commander. Look at what we’ve done.”
They were talking quietly together, as if nothing else existed; as if the ship wasn’t trying to collapse around them, as if the asteroid wasn’t trying to pull open the walls of Thahl’s Alley and make itself burst.