In that moment between heartbeats, I felt myself enter someplace dark. A place not just black, a place of nothingness. Where matter did not, and could not, exist.
In that moment between heartbeats, I somehow stopped being. yet didn’t stop experiencing. A field of white appeared around me—a billion stars. Like eyes opening at once, shining upon me.
Ancient things stirred. And in that moment between heartbeats, they not only saw me, but they knew me.
I jolted from that place that was not a place, and felt like I’d slammed into my straps, as if I’d been thrown physically back into the cockpit. I gasped, heart racing, sweat streaming down my face.
My ship hovered, still and quiet, lights blinking out on the control panel.
“Cytonic hyperdrive offline,” M-Bot said.
“What,” I said, gasping for breath. “What was that?”
“I don’t know!” he said. “But my instruments place us at—calculating—one hundred kilometers from the point of detonation. Wow. My internal chronometer indicates no discrepancy between our time and solar time, so we experienced no time dilation—but somehow we traveled that distance virtually instantaneously. Faster than light, certainly.”
I leaned back in my seat. “Call Alta. Are they safe?”
The channel came on, and I heard whoops and screams—it took a moment to distinguish those as cheers of joy, not terror.
“Alta Base,” M-Bot said. “This is Skyward Eleven. You may commence thanking us for saving you from utter annihilation.”
“Thank you!” some voices cried. “Thank you!”
“Mushrooms are the preferred offering,” M-Bot said to them. “As many varieties as you can dig up.”
“Really?” I said, pulling off my helmet to wipe my brow. “Still on the mushroom thing?”
“I didn’t erase that part of my programming,” he said. “I’m fond of it. It gives me something to collect, like the way humans choose to accumulate useless items of sentimental and thematic value.”
I grinned, though I couldn’t shake the haunting feeling of those eyes watching me. Those … somethings knew what I’d done, and they didn’t like it. Perhaps there had been a reason that M-Bot’s faster-than-light capacities had been offline.
That raised a question, of course. Could we do that again? Gran-Gran said that her mother had been the engine of the Defiant. That she had made it work.
The answer is not to fear the spark, but to learn to control it.
I looked upward, toward the sky.
And there, I saw a hole. The debris shifting just right to reveal the stars. Exactly like … that day when I’d been with my father. My first time to the surface.
It seemed too momentous to be a coincidence.
“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “The admiral is trying to contact you, but you have your helmet off.”
I absently put my helmet back on, still staring at that hole in the debris. That pathway to infinity. Could I … hear something out there? Calling to me?
“Spensa,” the admiral said. “How did you survive that blast?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered truthfully.
“I suppose I’m going to need to pardon your father now,” she said.
“You just survived a lifebuster explosion by a few meters,” I said, “and still, all you can think about is that old grudge?”
The admiral fell silent.
Yes. I … I could hear the stars.
Come to us.
“Spensa,” she said. “You need to know something about your father. About that day. We’ve lied, but for your own good.”
“I know,” I said, flipping controls, turning my ship’s acclivity ring on its hinges so it pointed downward. My ship rotated so the nose pointed upward. Skyward.
“Return to base,” the admiral said. “Return to honors and celebration.”
“I will. Eventually.”
Their heads are heads of rock, their hearts set upon rock.
“Spensa. There is a defect inside you. Please. You need to come back. Every moment you spend in the sky is a danger to you and to everyone else.”
Be different. Set your sights on something higher.
“My ship doesn’t have destructors,” I said absently. “If I come back crazy, you should be able to shoot me down.”
“Spin,” Ironsides said, her voice pained. “Don’t do this.”
Something more grand.
“Goodbye, Admiral,” I said, flipping off the comm.
Then I hit the overburn, launching upward.
Claim the stars.
