Beyond the Farthest Suns Read Online Free PDF Page A

captured and orbited above the event horizons, producing two primary images and a succession of weaker images caused by anomalies in the spinning singularity. Gas falling into the holes produces hot points of high ­energy radiation, red-shifted into the visual spectrum by enormous gravitational fields. These are surrounded by rings of stars, images of stars from every angle—every visible object, including those behind the observer. There are gaps of darkness and then succeeding rings like the bands on an inter­ferometer plate, finally blending into star-images undeviated by the singularity.”
    She was reminded of electronic Christmas ornaments from her childhood. Anna knew what she saw lay only a few million miles away, so close her ship could reach out to touch it in mere minutes.
    â€œDear God,” she murmured. To fall into one of those things would be to transcend any past experience of death. They were miracles, jesters of spacetime. Her eyes filled with tears which nearly broke their tension bonds to drift away in free-fall.
    â€œWhere no such diffractions and reflections are visible, perhaps absorbed in dark nebulosities, and where no X-ray or Thrina sources give clues, naked singularities stripped of their event horizons lurk like invisible teeth. These have been charted by evidence obtained in protogeometry warps. There is no other way to know they exist.”
    The Thrina song of a nearby singularity was played to her. It sounded like the wailing of lost children, sweetly mixed with a potent bass boum, an echoing cave-sound, ghost-­sound, preternatural mind-sound. “No reason is known for the existence of the Thrina song. It is connected with sin­gularities as an unpredictable phenomenon of radiating and patterned energy, perhaps in some way directed by intel­ligence.”
    Nestor left the sphere and drifted quickly back through the extension to the crew-ball.
    Her hands shook.
    Kamon followed and waited. A ship could remain in half phase only so long before its unintentional mass loss (how easily he had spotted and avoided the ghosts!) reached a critical level.
    His shipmate meditated and fasted alone in her cabin. Kamon was left with the silent computers—it was blasphemous for an Aighor machine to have a voice­—and a few aides to see to his food and wastes. He preferred it that way.
    At one point he even ordered them to clear away the captain’s smashed body so he might be more alone.
    The Venging was close. He had had no further contact with the Council at Frain or any other Aighor agencies. He had spotted and charted the course of Anna Sigrid Nestor’s ship, and felt his own sort of appreciation at the intuition she was following him personally. She was on her own Venging.
    Such was the dominance pattern of humans.
    â€œFour minutes thirty seconds before critical point,” Graetikin said. Lady Fairchild gripped her husband’s arm tighter. For a society woman she was holding up remark­ably well, Graetikin thought.
    The worst was yet to come. Kamon would inevitably chase them down, and there was only one chance left. Graetikin’s recent equations implied they would survive if they took that chance, but how they would survive—in what condition, other than whole and alive—was unknown. It was a terrifying prospect.
    â€œWe have to leave half-phase,” Fairchild said. “And we have to outrun him. There’s no other way.” Edith nodded and turned away from the bridge consoles.
    â€œHave you ever wondered why he called a Venging?” she asked.
    â€œWhat?” Fairchild asked. He was focusing on the blank viewers, as if to strain some impossible clue from them. It was useless to look at half-phase exteriors, however. The eye interpreted them as if they weren’t there, and indeed half the time they weren’t.
    â€œKamon has to have a reason,” Edith said, louder.
    â€œI’m sure he does,”