The Last Starry Night

The hallway was lined with sandy stone, just as the room had been. The light was somewhat dimmer than in the room. Azzie looked around for the source, but could see none. The light seemed to come from the very air.

They drifted slowly forward, but Azzie’s stomach still felt like she was falling. She hoped that they could get off the ship soon, back onto solid ground. Any solid ground.

They hadn’t gone far when they saw a doorway to the left. A rippling blue-white light was coming from it, casting quivering patterns of eggshell blue on the opposite wall. Gwen handed Trocmo to Azzie and waved for them to hang back and keep quiet. She crept along the wall to the doorway, pulling herself along with her fingertips, and peeked around the corner.

For a long moment, nothing happened; the crystalline light played on Gwen’s face, and her expression was blank. Then there was a monstrous hissing screech, and a thick black bolt shot out of the doorway, missed Gwen’s head by an inch, and buried itself in the wall behind her. Gwen quickly pushed herself back. A huge Warrior appeared at the door, moving much too fast, holding some kind of yard-long rifle, black teeth bared. Each of its eyes focused on one of the girls, and it raised the rifle. Gwen hollered and fired again, sweeping a thin black line across its chest. It folded up and went limp.

“Cripes,” said Gwen. “Oh cripes, cripes, cripes. I just killed it. Oh cripes.”

It was huge -- eight feet long, easily. Its head was reptilian, bald with a stubby snout, skin covered with brown and green scales. Two eyes were near the front of the head, and one near the back. There was no sign of a tongue in its open mouth. It had two arms, oddly jointed, with four thick fingers on each hand, and two legs, with feet like a bird’s. And, as Gwen had said earlier, its scaly skin hung in great folds, as if it had crawled into a dinosaur hide by mistake. Drifting and turning slowly in the corridor, it looked almost like a carnivorous curtain blowing in the wind.

“It’s dead,” whispered Srini.

“I didn’t mean to,” said Gwen. “I didn’t want to!”

“Hey,” said Azzie. “It was self-defense, right? You didn’t have a choice. Any of us would have done the same.”

“But it’s dead,” said Gwen.

“Right,” said Azzie. “And we’re not. Thanks to you.”

“Now hold on,” said Srini. “We don’t know it was trying to kill us. If they’d wanted us dead, wouldn’t they have killed us before? It was probably only going to try to take us back to our cell.”

Gwen looked stricken. Azzie felt terrible for her. “Come on,” she said. “Who knows what it was trying to do? Gwen had to make a really quick decision, and maybe it wasn’t the best one; but things could have turned out a lot worse.”

“I don’t think it’s right to make a quick decision to kill something,” said Srini.

Azzie grabbed the gun from Gwen and threw it at Srini. “Do you want to hold it, then? You think you’re good at deciding who lives and who dies?”

Srini threw up her hands, and knocked the gun away. “No!”

Azzie said, “Look. My father was a Marine. He once told me that he had killed two people. Both times, they were attacking him, and he had to decide whether he was going to kill them instead. Sometimes you have to make that choice.”

“I can’t do that,” whispered Srini.

Azzie went and got the gun. “Can you do it, Gwen?” she said.

Gwen swallowed. “I guess so,” she said.

Azzie handed her the gun. Then, gritting her teeth, she pried the rifle away from the dead alien’s fingers. It had a fair bit of heft; the handle filled Azzie’s hand, and the barrel was as long as her forearm. It looked like she’d probably have to pull pretty hard to work the trigger. Its black surface was very easy to grip -- almost sticky. She shuddered.

“Gwen,” said Srini. “I’m sorry for what I said. I – I mean, thank you for saving our lives.”

“Hey,” said Gwen. “Anytime.”

Srini gripped Gwen’s arm, and Gwen pulled her into a hug.

“Azzie,” said Srini. “Is your father – he’s not a Marine any more?”

“He died,” said Azzie. She looked down at the rifle. “I’m not sure how. My mother never told me.” She wondered if it was still his birthday.

“I’m sorry,” said Srini.

Azzie looked over at the dead alien and suddenly wondered if it had any children. With that thought, something seemed to snap in her heart. She squeezed her eyes shut to keep from crying. No time for that now.

“All right,” she said, when she could blink the tears away. “Let’s see what’s through that doorway.”

Gwen went first; Azzie tugged on Trocmo and pulled him after her, and Srini came next. In the room beyond, a cylinder the size and color of a tin soup can floated between four huge metal wafers positioned in a tetrahedron around it. Lightning jumped between the wafers and the cylinder, filling the room with electric blue light. The stone walls seemed to be covered with multicolored climbing vines; Azzie wondered if they might be wires. But they had leaves.

“Wow,” said Gwen. “What do you suppose this room is all about?”

Srini shook her head. “Maybe it’s an engine. Or a power source. I don’t think you’d steer the ship from here; there’s nowhere to look out.”

“Right,” said Gwen. “Well, I think we should get that tin can. It’s small, it’s not doing anything, and I’ll bet my hat it’s valuable.”

“You haven’t got a hat,” said Azzie.

“True enough,” said Gwen, pushing off towards the tin can. “If I ever get one, you can have it, if it turns out this can’s filled with corned beef hash.”

Srini joined her near the tetrahedron. “There’s some kind of control panel here,” she said. “Maybe we can turn off the lightning.”

“Turning off the power might also turn off the air, right?” said Azzie. “And the engines? Do we want that?”

“Yes,” said Srini. “We want to be able to threaten whatever other aliens are on this ship. We’ll give them their power source back if they promise to take us home.”

“But how will we breathe without air?”

“The air isn’t going to just disappear,” said Srini. “It’ll go stale over the course of a few hours. Long before things get dangerous, we’ll be powered up and on our way home. This button looks good.”

Srini pushed it, and sure enough, the lightning disappeared entirely. Now the cylinder floated freely before them.

Gwen touched the can gingerly, then grabbed it firmly.

“It’s heavier than it looks,” she said.

“I doubt that,” said Srini. “It’s weightless, isn’t it?”

Gwen scowled. “You know what I mean,” she said. “It’s harder to push around than it ought to be. Like it would be heavy, on Earth.”

“You mean it’s got a lot of inertia,” said Srini.

“Sure, okay,” said Gwen. She pushed back over to them. “Let’s go. If there are more aliens on this ship, they’re bound to come here soon to see what’s happened to their electric toy.”

Gwen led the way back into the hall, pulling Trocmo again. Azzie brought up the rear, looking behind her frequently. The hall began to curve gently, so that they could not see far ahead.

Then, quite suddenly, the hall opened up into a huge room. They seemed to be coming up through the floor. Above (or ahead) of them, the ceiling of the room was a great black dome. Around them were half a dozen aliens hovering next to platforms covered with multicolored leafy vines. The walls and floor of the room were stone, like the rest of the ship.

The aliens erupted into a chorus of hisses and snarls. Some of them lifted weapons. Azzie felt cold and sweaty at the same time; she fumbled with her gun, trying to point it right. Gwen brandished her gun in her left hand and the tin can in her right. “Watch out!” she cried. “I’ve got the hash!”

The hissing continued, but none of the aliens fired. Azzie almost laughed in relief. Then she gasped in surprise.

The black dome ceiling changed. She saw that the ceiling was really a window, and the ship had somehow suddenly arrived in the center of a great hollow sphere. The inside of the sphere was covered with tall skyscrapers that reached toward them, built from the inside of the sphere towards the center where the ship was. The spires seemed to be miles high. Between the towers, on the surface of the sphere, were lakes, rivers, and parks. Networks of walkways and highways linked the towers, almost as though they were the support struts of a huge city web. It was dark: the towers glittered with windows and the parks and lakes were lit with floodlights. Airplanes -- or flying cars? -- darted here and there through the vast space inside the sphere.

“Eh,” said a mumbly voice nearby. Trocmo had woken up, and was rubbing his head. “You’re all in big trouble now. They’ll put you in prison and – ”

“Shut up,” said Gwen. “Where are we?”

“In the City of Warriors,” he said, proudly. Then he began to hiss and sputter loudly. The aliens answered him with hissing of their own.

“They’re talking,” said Srini.

“Well, they can’t do anything,” said Gwen. “I’ve still got the corned beef hash!” She shook the can, and looked surprised. “It’s getting heavier,” she said.

“What? That can’t be,” said Srini.

“Next time you tell me something can’t happen,” said Gwen, grinning, “I’ll know to watch out for it.”

“Well, things don’t just get heavier for no reason,” said Srini. “Maybe you’re getting tired.”

Gwen fixed her with a stare that would have curdled a cow. “It’s getting heavier,” she said.

“Right, yes, it’s getting heavier,” said Srini quickly.

Azzie saw now that some of the flying cars had come closer to them, and it was clear that they were black balls, like the ship Srini had described arriving at her farm. “Oh, great,” she muttered.

Then one of the aliens screeched, raised its gun, and fired at them. Azzie panicked and squeezed her trigger, sending a black bolt at a nearby console. The alien next to it leaped away hissing, and all the vines on it went colorless. Gwen also fired, hitting an alien squarely, but she lost control of the tin can, and it spun lazily up towards the ceiling. Srini screamed and hid her face. Trocmo began trying to grab his gun away from Gwen, not very successfully.

Now the remaining aliens rushed them, leaping into the air, firing. All three girls dove for cover under nearby consoles. Azzie was conscious of a dull ache in her leg. Had she bruised it?

Then, rather suddenly, the familiar falling sensation twisted around in her stomach, and she felt as though the floor were the ceiling, and the great dome was under her. Instinctively she grabbed the console to keep from falling into the city below. She lost her gun, and it fell away. The aliens screeched and flailed in the air under her, and drifted down, through the window -- was it a window? It didn’t shatter. The aliens fell right through it, down towards the city.

The pain in Azzie’s leg was sharper. She realized she was bleeding right over her knee. Bleeding a lot.

Gwen was bellowing, holding on to her console by one hand, dangling there, punching the console with the other. Srini was shouting something about being careful. And then the city was gone, wrapped up in blackness; Azzie’s stomach lurched, and she felt like she was falling again, like the whole ship was falling. They were weightless again. She gripped the console as hard as she could.

“Well,” said Gwen. “That’s done it.”

“What happened?” asked Azzie.

“The aliens all got sucked out of the ship somehow,” said Srini. “And then Gwen got us away.”

“Do you have any idea where we are?” said Trocmo.

“Oh no,” said Gwen. “You’re still here?”

“You were just punching the nulldrive at randomly,” said Trocmo. “We could be anywhere.”

“Anywhere’s better than that city,” said Gwen, defiant.

“That’s for sure,” said Srini.

The pain in Azzie’s leg was getting very bad. “I’m hurt,” she managed to say.

Srini and Gwen were next to her in a second. “Oh dear,” said Srini. She wiped away some of the blood with her hand. “They got you,” she said. “Look at that hole. A perfect circle, right through your leg. What is it that comes out of those guns?”

“It is a nullbolt,” said Trocmo, smirking. “A cylindrical hole in the fabric of space. It is a rip in the universe.”

“Ugh,” said Gwen. “That does sound nasty. Almost as nasty as your teeth. Now shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.”

“She asked me a question,” said Trocmo.

“I said shut it.”

Srini tore a strip of cloth from her dress and bound up Azzie’s leg. “At least there’s no bullet to dig out,” she said. “And weightless as we are, you won’t have to hobble around. We’ve just got to keep it clean.”

“Thank you,” said Azzie.

Srini smiled, but she looked a little worried. “Lie quiet,” she said. “Well, I mean, float quiet. You look pale.”

Azzie nodded and closed her eyes. The pain was easing a little.

“All right,” said Gwen. “Now, Taco, or whatever your name is, you never finished answering our questions. Where are our families?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You can do better than that.”

“I don’t know! The -- the captain of the ship told me that some prisoners from various places on the planet had been rounded up for questioning. I don’t think he captured your families.”

“So they captured three girls? Why not boys? Why not adults?”

“Because girls don’t fight as well as boys or adults.”

Gwen laughed, a sharp bark. “Good,” she said. “Thanks for telling me that. I don’t feel so bad about capturing his ship now.”

“On television,” said Trocmo, “the boys are always stronger...”

“The aliens were watching our TV?” cried Gwen.

“Of course,” said Trocmo, as if he were talking to an idiot. “Earth sends out radio and television signals in every direction. It’s easy to -- ”

But Gwen was just laughing. Srini said, “How can we get back to Earth?”

Trocmo didn’t answer. Azzie opened her eyes, and saw he was smirking.

“Don’t worry,” said Gwen. “We’re probably on our way back now. I bet I hit the automatic pilot or something.”

Srini looked a little worried. “Well, if you won’t answer that,” she said to Trocmo, “maybe you can explain why Azzie saw the Earth in the sky, and why the stars went out.”

“I told you, the Earth was put into a toy universe.”

“But that barely makes sense. It doesn’t explain anything.”

“The space around Earth was taken from the universe,” said Trocmo, now sounding bored. “When that happened, the light from the stars could not reach the Earth. And the sky went all dark.”

“Why did the stars get red before they went out?” asked Azzie.

“Because spacetime was stretched as the Earth was taken,” said Trocmo, as if it were the stupidest question he’d ever heard. “The stretching of spacetime spread out all the waves of the light and it shifted to red.”

“I think I understand,” said Srini, forehead furrowed.

“I’m glad that somebody does,” said Gwen. “But none of that explains the Earth in the sky, toothpick boy.”

He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t think I can make you understand.”

“Try us,” said Srini, clenching her teeth.

“The Earth is in a toy universe,” he said. “This toy universe is a hypersphere – a four-dimensional sphere. The light from the Earth goes all the way around the toy universe till it reaches the Earth again.”

“Huh?” said Gwen.

“Oh, okay,” said Srini.

“I don’t get it,” said Gwen.

“I think I understand,” said Srini. “Because the Earth is now in its own little universe, the sunlight bouncing off the Earth goes out into space, but it doesn’t go very far; it follows the curve of the little universe, goes all the way around, and falls on the other side of the Earth. So you look up, and you see the other side of the world in the sky.”

“Oh,” said Gwen. “Well, that makes sense. I guess.” She still looked confused.

“What about the sun?” asked Azzie.

“The sun is in the toy universe too,” said Trocmo, sounding bored.

“But won’t the universe heat up?” asked Srini. “The sun will keep heating up the little universe until...”

“There is a small link from the toy universe to the real universe, and the heat goes out there,” he said.

“Well,” said Gwen, “thanks for answering our questions. I’m sure there will be lots of folks with more questions for you when we get back to Earth.”

“It will be a long time before we are there again,” said Trocmo.

“Why?” demanded Gwen.

At that moment, the black window-ceiling dissolved into a blaze of blue-white stars, which immediately faded and became dim. They were not evenly scattered across the sky; they seemed to trace a delicate lace work, loops and swirls of stars with great yawning gulfs of blackness between them.

“We are a very long way from Earth,” said Srini quietly. “The stars are too dim and far apart. I don’t think we’re in a galaxy at all...”

Then from the edge of the window rose a single star, about the same brightness and size as the sun seen from Earth, but yellower. And below the star they could see a landscape: vast, crystal blue and olive green, flecked with white clouds, extending left, right, and ahead of them. The greens and blues merged into turquoise in the distance, and faded into darkness where the light of the star could not reach it. It was as if the star hovered over a tremendous tabletop painted with the colors of Earth.

“Wow,” said Gwen. “What is that?”

“It’s the sky sheet,” whispered Trocmo.