I stopped it for a moment. “He’s got a surprise coming,” I said.
“What?”
“Stay tuned.”
A light rain was falling against the windows. And I could hear birds chirping. Despite all the missions I’d been part of, I’m not sure I ever appreciated more the sounds of that morning.
Stacy thanked Cornelius for his help, then turned and faced us.
They ran ads for a detergent, for the recently released White Hawk skimmer, and for Colonial Cough Medicine. Then we were informed about upcoming programs. Finally Stacy was back. Cornelius was gone, and we could see two guys through a large window. They were at opposite ends of a long room, both talking into microphones.
“Where’s the surprise?” asked Gabe.
“It’s coming.” It had been a long time since I’d watched this. “By the way, it gets a little scary.”
Stacy smiled at us. She vanished and we watched swirling dark clouds take over the center of the office and begin to expand.
The clouds twisted and writhed. “It looks as if it’s trying to swallow us,” said Gabe. It opened and closed and churned and roiled. A large mouth. I pushed back in my chair. “What that?” he asked.
“I’d guess it’s what space looks like when it gets distorted.”
We were getting sucked inside. I hung on to my chair arms as we slipped between the lips into darkness and gas. The probe’s navigation lights came on. The gas lit up, and suddenly Stacy was back, smiling broadly. she said. The churning darkness faded and Cornelius appeared beside her. She turned toward him. she asked.
It was all gone and the ship’s lights came back to normal.
The conversation continued. I knew that the first results were still a few minutes away, so I fast-forwarded until Cornelius raised two fingers to an ear. he said.
He produced his link and spoke into it. Then, after a moment:
A bright star-filled sky appeared across the ceiling. said Stacy.
He pressed his ear again.
Gabe looked at me questioningly. Was this the surprise?
“Not yet,” I told him. “We need to fast-forward some more.” I ran past more negative results until I recognized a moment when Cornelius’s face changed. And Stacy tugged on his sleeve. the physicist said.
Gabe leaned forward in his chair, his attention riveted on Cornelius and Stacy. The picture revealed more churning space. Then it darkened and went black.
Cornelius said,
The picture stayed black.
Stacy leaned over and spoke into her partner’s link.
said Cornelius.
“Holy cats,” said Gabe. “Hard to believe. What about the other probes?”
“Most of them got to the end of the tunnel and emerged and came out near the black hole. Five others found exits along the way. Three of them led back into our universe. The other two took them out under that starless sky.”
“The same place?”
“Maybe. They have no way to tell. If they were different universes, it suggests that stars are an unusual feature.”
“Okay, Chase. That’s a good show. But it’s been a few years. We must have made some advances since then.”
“None that I know of. We’ve gone back a number of times, but the results don’t change. Some exits come out under starless skies. Two of the places that have stars have been identified as ours. There are seven or eight more with stars that we simply can’t identify. But you’d expect that. Our universe is pretty big. We haven’t seen that much of it yet.”
“I assume people were shocked when they saw the places with no stars?”
“There was a fairly strong reaction. I remember somebody on one of the networks asking what’s the point of having a universe if it doesn’t have any stars? The media went crazy.
“Every show brought in cosmologists, quantum physicists, theologians, you name it, to talk about it. The major issue surfaced immediately: Could we be sure it wasn’t our universe that the probes had blundered into, and just locked onto a part of the sky that was empty? Is there an area somewhere in which no stars exist? According to most astronomers, considering the wide angle lens the pod has, the answer is no. It had gone into a universe with no light.”
VIII.
,
.
,
,
.