Heaven's Reach (Uplift) by David Brin

Author:David Brin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781857237399
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2009-10-28T04:39:37.468000+00:00

268 David Brill

minority—those who thought themselves ready to climb the next rung on the ladder of sapiency, rising out of the Retired Order to a much higher state. But we didn’t think that group could possibly concern us.

Boy, were we wrong!

So there we were, diving into the heart of the t-point —a looping, knotlike structure Kaa called a transgalac-tic nexus—that would send us out of old Galaxy Four altogether … when it happened.

Alarms blared. We swerved around another loop-de- loop, and there it was.

At first, I saw just a floating cloud of light, shapeless, without a hint of structure. But as we drew near, this changed. I got an impression of a tremendous creature with countless writhing arms! These appendages were reaching down to the converging transfer threads and plucking starships off like berries from a vine\

“Uh … is that normal?” Huck asked … unnecessarily, since we could see the looks on the faces of our Earthling friends. They’d never seen anything like it be-fore.

Pincer-Tip stammered in awe.

“Is it a go-go-go-god?”

No one answered, not even the sarcastic Niss Machine. We were heading right for the giant thing, and there wasn’t any possible route to jump away from it in time. All we could do was stare, and count the passing duras, plunging toward the brilliance till our turn came.

Light flooded the sky. A tremendous arm of light came down upon us … and suddenly things began moving v-e-r-y s-1-o-w-l-y.

Queasy sensations flowed outward from my gut while my skin felt a strange kind of spreading numbness. As Streaker was lifted bodily off the transfer thread, her roaring engines muted to an idle whisper. All view screens filled with whiteness, a glow that did not seem to carry any heat. Paralyzed with fear, I wondered if we were about to be consumed by some kind of hungry being, or a dispassionate natural phenomenon. Not that it made the slightest difference which.

The illumination was so perfect in its hue, and re—

Heaven’s Reach 269

splendent texture, that I felt suddenly sure it could be nothing other than pure and distilled death.

How long the transition lasted, I have no idea. But eventually the brilliant haze diminished and all the visceral sensations ebbed. Streaker’s engines remained damped, but time resumed its normal pace. At last we could see clearly again.

Sara was holding Emerson tightly, while the little chimp, Prity, hugged them both. Ur-ronn was huddled next to Huck and Pincer, while Huphu and Mudfoot clung with eight sets of claws to my tingling shoulders.

We all looked around, amazed to be able to do so.

The screens flickered back on, showing that we were still inside the tangled, twisted guts of the t-point … only we weren’t in contact with a thread anymore! There seemed to be a fair-sized bubble of true space surrounding Streaker.

And not only Streaker. On all sides of us, arrayed in long neat rows, were ranks of other starships! Most of them much larger. All apparently waiting in still silence for something to happen.

Belatedly, the Niss hologram finally popped back into existence among us.

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