— and a shock wave of gravitational radiation burst over him.
Rapidly he withdrew his attention foci from the Ring and rose to the roof of its star-walled chamber, so that it was as if he were an insect in some vast cathedral. Something monstrous had erupted into this region of space, mere light minutes away from him. He surveyed the space around the Ring, seeking the source of the gravitational radiation.
…It had burst out of hyperspace like a fist. At first Paul could make out nothing but a blaze of blue-shifted photons and gravitons. Then, gradually, he perceived its structure. It was a sphere a million miles wide. Fusion fires still burned within it, although its structure had clearly been badly damaged by its impact at near lightspeed with the debris in the Ring chamber: great gobbets of material showered from its surface, so that it left a trail like some impossible comet as it blazed, Paul saw, towards the throng of photino birds.
It looked like a ball of ice-cream thrown into a bank of live steam. But it was a star: a star that had been accelerated to near lightspeed and then launched through hyperspace. And it was aimed directly at the photino birds’ center of operations.
This was a weapon of war. The Qax had arrived.
After that things began to happen fast.
For days the ship had hurtled on.
Erwal knew she had no real understanding of the distances she was traveling, but she could sense how far she was being separated from the place of her birth.
And she and her companions were utterly alone. Even the Friend had withdrawn once more.
From time to time she slid her hands into the gloves and felt the continuing surge of the marvelous ship. And occasionally — when her companions were asleep — she would open one of the panel-windows and stare gloomily at the bright spheres which battered against the panel like vast insects, or at the distant pools of muddy light which sailed more slowly by.
Inside the ship there was, of course, no pattern of day and night by which to measure time, but Erwal counted the sleep periods that passed during the journey. Soon after the fourteenth she became aware, through the subtle touch of the gloves, of a change in the ship’s motion.
Hastily, still blinking sleep from her eyes, she opened a panel-window.
The barrage of stars was visibly slowing, and the motion of the distant pools of light was almost gone. Had they arrived, then? She peered at the screen.
A wall of starlight, muddled and blue-stained, blocked off the sky. She stared, awed.
Her companions stirred in their nests of rags on the floor. Hastily she shut off the panel and sat in her chair, wondering what to do now.
The Qax assault approached its climax.
The hijacked star was mere minutes away from impact with the workplace of the dark matter photino birds, and its hellish glow brought a million dancing highlights from Bolder’s Ring. Now Qax-controlled Spline ships crackled out of hyperspace in the wake of the star, their fleshy hulls sparkling with weapons fire. Paul saw how the photino birds were responding; insubstantial flocks rose from the Ring material, like steam from wet earth, to face the Qax vanguard.
One photino bird flock got too close to the star. Paul watched raging gravitational radiation tear open the flock’s structure. Within seconds the birds had dispersed.
…And, just at this crucial instant, a little clump of consciousness knots popped out of hyperspace, emerging just outside the clear space around the Ring.
The humans had arrived. Paul hurried to them.
Wings outspread, the Xeelee ship hurtled through a storm of light.
The panel-window showed blue stars, hundreds of them jammed together, some so close they were joined by umbilici of fire. The villagers stood and stared, transfixed. Children clung to the legs of their parents and cried softly.
“Turn it off!” Sura buried her face in her hands. “I can’t bear to look at it; turn it off!”
Erwal gripped the gloves grimly. “I can’t,” she said.
The Friend was in her head again, his visions a clamor that left her unable to think.
Onwards, he said. She had to go onwards, deeper into this swarm of insect-stars, using all the skills she had learned to haul the ship through this barrage of stars. Tears leaked out of her eyes, but she dared not rest. Her world narrowed to the feel of the gloves on her stiffening hands, the gritty rain of stars in her eyes.
With a soundless explosion the ship erupted into clear space.
Erwal gasped, pulled her hands out of the gloves; the ship seemed to skid to a halt.
They were in an amphitheater of light. The far wall was a bank of stars, hard and blue; it curved into a floor and ceiling also made of blue-tinged starstuff. And at the center of the vast chamber was a jewel, a Ring that turned, huge and delicate. One point of the Ring was marred by smoke; red and blue light flickered in that cloud.
Erwal felt Sura touch the crown of her head. The girl’s hand seemed to be trembling, and Erwal laid her own hand over Sura’s — then realized that the trembling was her own, that her whole body was shaking uncontrollably.
Sura asked, “Are you all right?”
“…I think so.”
“Where are we?” Sura pointed. “What’s that? It’s beautiful. Do you think it’s some kind of building? Why, it must be miles wide.”
But Erwal barely heard. Once more the Friend clamored in her thoughts, pressing, demanding; she longed to shut him out—
Without hesitation she shoved her hands back into the gloves. The Xeelee ship plummeted into hyperspace.
The weapon-star burned through the ranks of photino birds towards the Ring. Vast as it was the star was lost against that great tangled carcass…
Until it hit.
The battered star collapsed as if made of smoke. Sheets of hydrogen, some of it still burning at star-core temperatures, were dug out of the star’s gut by writhing cosmic string. The star’s mass was reduced from lightspeed to stationary in less than a minute; Paul watched huge shock waves race around the Ring’s structure.
Now the Qax’s Spline warships followed up the starstrike; cherry-red beams lanced from their weapon pits, and Paul recalled the Xeelee gravity-wave starbreaker cannons observed by Jim Bolder. Photino birds imploded around the beams, flocks of them turning into transient columns of smoke that shone with exotic radiations and then dispersed.
For a brief, exhilarating moment, Paul speculated on the possibility of a Qax victory, a defeat for the photino birds after this single, astonishing blitzkrieg; and he felt an unexpected surge of baryonic chauvinism.
Soundlessly he cheered on the Qax.
But, within thirty minutes, the debris of the starstrike was cooling and dispersing. The photino bird flocks began to regroup, gliding unimpeded through the glowing wreckage of the star. Grimly the Qax fought on; but now, from all around the Ring, photino birds were flicking through hyperspace to join the battle, and soon the marauding Qax were surrounded. The Spline armada, with foe in all directions, became a brief, short-blossoming flower of cherry-red light.
Soon the end was beyond question. Ghostly photino birds penetrated the Spline fleet and overlaid the battered Qax ships, and the Spline, their effective masses increased enormously, began to implode, to melt inwards one by one.
Perhaps if the Qax had taken more time, Paul mused; perhaps if they had organized a barrage of the starstrikes…
Perhaps, perhaps.
Soon it was evident that the assault had been no more than a temporary inconvenience for the photino birds, and the shadowy flocks were swooping once more into the Ring’s crumbling threads.