“That’s max. We could go over and look at them, I suppose. But I don’t see the point.”

“Are we sure they’re omegas?”

“Yes. We’ve got matching spectra.”

A cursor appeared behind the one in the center. It tracked backward across open space, passed through a series of clouds, and finally vanished in the general chaos. “It originated somewhere along there,” said Hutch. “It can’t go too much deeper.”

“Why not?” asked Matt.

“The numbers don’t work. Whatever we’re looking for, it’s no further than about fifty-seven light-years from the core. That’s where we are now.”

“So the source is somewhere along this arc?”

“Yes. I’d say so.”

“How long’s the arc?”

“Five and a half light-years.”

“That could take a while.”

“Not necessarily. Most of the area’s open space.”

“Okay,” said Matt. “How do we want to do this?”

“Stay together,” she said. “We simply start poking around. Look for more omegas. Or anything else out of the way.”

“How do we inspect a dust cloud?” asked Jon.

“Scanners.”

“But some of these things are millions of kilometers deep. You’re not going to be able to see very far into that.”

“It’s all we have, Jon. Other than going in with the ships to see whether we bump into something.”

“Okay. I see what you mean.”

“Look, I can’t give you any specifics about this. We’ll be hunting for anything out of the ordinary. Unusual energy signatures. Artificial radio transmissions. Too much carbon. I don’t know—”

Matt nodded. “We’ll know it when we see it.”

“That’s exactly right, Matthew.”

“Okay, Preston, let’s go look at some dust clouds.”

THEIR FIRST TARGET was about forty million klicks long, maybe a million across. The dust was less concentrated than it appeared from a distance, and the sensors were able to penetrate it quite easily. “Dust and rocks all the way through,” said Matt.

The Preston lay off at a safe distance while the McAdams went in close, within a few kilometers, and, in effect, took the cloud’s temperature. Jim reported that conditions inside, so far as the initial readings were concerned, showed results well within anticipated parameters. No anomalies.

They moved along the face of the cloud for about an hour, recharged the Locarno, jumped twelve million kilometers, and repeated the process.

“Within anticipated parameters,” said Jim.

They moved to the next cloud, this time with the Preston doing the honors while Matt and Jon watched.

JON SILVESTRI’S NOTEBOOK

The individual clouds are spectacular. Having to watch them on a display doesn’t do them justice. I wish it were possible to stick my head out the door and look at this thing, really look at it. In this close, I suspect it would appear like a wall across the universe.

—Monday, March 10

chapter 34

THEY NAMED THE clouds alphabetically as they progressed. The first one was Aggie, supposedly a morose aunt of Matt’s. The second was Bill, who had been a grouchy editor early in Antonio’s career.

They went to a round-the-clock search pattern, with one of the two pilots awake at all times. They stayed outside the clouds, one vehicle close in, the one with the functioning pilot, and the other at a respectful distance.

Hutch admitted to Antonio that she could not imagine how any directed operation could function out here. The place was indeed a cosmic cookpot, a cauldron of churning clouds and enormous jets. She suspected stellar collisions were not uncommon.

Toward the end of the second week, while they were completing their search of Charlotte, Phyl announced that she had sighted another group of omegas. Four this time.

They glittered like distant fires, flaring and dimming in the shifting light of the Cauldron.

“They track to Cloud F,” she said.

F for Frank.

Frank was a cloud of moderate size. Like all the others, it was long and narrow, aimed toward Sag A* by the relentless gravity. They passed a stellar corpse on approach. And several red stars.

“Length of the cloud,” said Phyl, “is eighty billion kilometers.” Almost seven times the diameter of the solar system. Like everything else at this range from Sag A*, it was orbiting the core at about 220 kps. Frank would need about 480,000 years to complete an orbit.

It was the Preston’s turn to go in close and look. But they changed the routine: Both pilots would remain awake during the search. At the end of the day, they’d simply call it off and start fresh in the morning.

Antonio watched nervously as Hutch took station about eighty kilometers out from the edge of the cloud. Matt retreated to six million klicks.

“We safe at this range?” asked Antonio.

“Probably not,” she said.

The cloud had become a vast, amorphous wall. It extended above and below the ship, fore and aft on the starboard side, to the limits of vision. It was alive with energy, riven near the surface by enormous lightning bolts, illuminated deep within by flashes and glimmerings.

Antonio knew the history, had read of that first encounter with an omega, when Hutchins and a few others at a place they called Delta had been attacked by lightning bolts, had tried to ride a lander to safety while directed lightning rained down out of the sky. He was impressed that she would tempt fate again.

Two red jets arced through the night, brightening the face of the cloud. “It’s probably a pulsar,” Antonio said. “This area must be littered with burned-out supernovas.”

Hutch had been unusually quiet. They were both on the bridge, belted down in case they had to leave in a hurry. She was checking something off in a notebook and simultaneously watching as the insubstantial wall rippled past. “Hutch,” he said, “answer a question.”

“If I can.”

“You’re disappointed, aren’t you? All this way, and there’s not really going to be anything we can do here. Even if this cloud really is the source, it’s just too big.”

She adjusted course, pulling a little closer. A sudden flash dazzled them. “We don’t know that yet,” she said. “To be honest, Antonio, I’m not entirely sure I want to meet whatever’s putting the omegas in play. I’m perfectly willing to let somebody else have that honor.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

Her eyes looked far away. “This feels like the start of a new phase. I mean, the Locarno Drive and the possibilities it opens.”

“And—?”

Her eyes drifted back to the screen. The wall had gone dark. “I’d like to shut them down.” She realized how unrealistic that was, and shrugged. “The truth, Antonio, is that I never believed in this part of the operation. I went along with it because it was what Rudy wanted to do. And maybe he was right. At least we’ve come out here. Now we can shake our fist at them, I guess, and go home.”

It was Antonio’s turn to fall silent. He was thinking that if he could go back and make a few changes in his life, he’d do some things differently. He wasn’t sure what. He knew he could never have done the things she had. He couldn’t seriously imagine himself at the controls of a superluminal. Wouldn’t have wanted to make some of the life-and-death decisions she’d been forced to make. He’d been Dr. Science. A pretend astrophysicist. And he’d covered scientific developments for several news organizations. It hadn’t been a bad career, really. He’d been a minor celebrity, he’d been paid reasonably well, and he liked to think he’d been responsible for turning some kids on to scientific careers.