“We thought you were dead in space, killed by that enemy machine!”
Flushed and lovely with pleasure, bronze eyes glowing, Lilith came running to throw her arms around him so vigorously that he flinched with pain.
I felt a sharper pang of puzzled jealousy.
A very remarkable nurse, I thought, to be on kissing terms with Bob Star’s brother!
“Ken, we were afraid to wait,” she told him.
“There was no way of communication, to you or Nowhere Near.
We didn’t know what had happened.
We got passage out here on a chartered ship—and finally persuaded Captain Ulnar to take us aboard.”
She gave me a dazzling, half-malicious smile.
Old Habibula came lumbering after the girl.
With a hearty warmth, he wrung Ken Star’s hand—and then stepped back, his wine-colored eyes squinted fearfully.
“Where have you been?” he gasped.
“What mortal peril have you uncovered, to chase you out of Nowhere—”
The shrill whine of my lapel intercom cut him off.
“Captain Ulnar!”
Ketzler was on duty, his voice hoarse and breathless with alarm.
“We’ve just observed something I think you ought to know about.” “What is that, Ketzler?” “We don’t know what it is.”
His voice rose uncertainly.
“Something out in the middle of the anomaly.
Nothing you can see, sir— except that it’s blotting out the stars behind it.
It looks like a bubble, sir.
A bubble of darkness!” “Thank you, Ketzler.”
“Any—any orders, sir?”
“Watch it,” I said.
“Report any change.”
“It’s growing, sir.
It’s already more than one degree across.
And—” His shaken voice hesitated, and rushed on suddenly. “You know we’re drifting toward it, sir!”
“I know,” I said.
“Keep me informed.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do that, sir.”
The intercom clicked off.
Feeling more deeply shaken than I had wanted Ketzler and the station crew to know, I looked at Ken Star.
He had limped across to the table and sunk into a chair.
He sat staring up at Lilith, a gray pallor of dismay on his pinched and haggard face.
“I’m afraid I know what that bubble is,” he whispered huskily.
“I have a theory, anyhow—a theory that frightens me!”
He extended a bloodless, trembling hand to take the girl’s. “I’m glad you and Giles aren’t still waiting back at sector base.
I suspect that the Legion is going to need your special skills right here —soon and desperately!”
7 ‘Older Than the Universe“
Four of us in the drab little mess hall, we gathered at the table.
I leaned to punch the computer for our meals, but Ken Star shook his bandaged head.
“Later,” he murmured huskily.
“Let it wait.”
Old Habibula, with a generosity unusual in him, punched for four glasses and shared a bottle of his wine.
It was a pale dry vintage half a century old, but nobody commented on its bouquet—or even on the remarkable fact that the sunlight which passed old Earth on its vintage year had not yet reached Nowhere Near.
Lean and clear and lovely in her white, Lilith sat looking sometimes at Star and Habibula and me, sometimes at the dull black skull on her hand, and sometimes far away.
Again I had the sense that she was listening, as if she feared to hear the coming of something dreadful from that bubble of featureless darkness that was growing out in Nowhere.
“Tell us, Ken!” old Habibula croaked.
“What is this fearful theory that alarms you so?”