Page 63 of Collision!
“You can’t hold onto the shadowlight by hand,” Suvan said.“If we could contain it in the capacitorus again…”
“I don’t think it’s going to last that long.”With a grimace, she tied off the distressed strands, mentally urging Felicity to hurry.“And I don’t think it can gobackanyway.”
Time was a one-way arrow, and their course was already set.
As if conjured, Felicity reached up beside her, needles brandished.“Here.And I brought…all the yarn.”
Mariah grabbed the needles and one of the heaviest fibers.“If some of you could twist the lighter weights together…”
“Got it.”The cruise director gestured, and a half dozen people jumped forward.
“Mariah, step up.”Anoushka pushed a hovercart closer.“Chief sent this.”
Grateful for the California childhood that had given her a passing familiarity with surfing, she transferred to the cart, compensating for the momentary wiggle.All the while, her hands spliced new stitches to the disappearing edges.
“Crossing another wave,” Delphine warned.
Grimly, Mariah kept knitting.And while everyone else was jolted, the cart hovered steadily.But the knotwork, which she and Felicity had strung up on temporary supports before the recital, loosened at one corner, sagging.
Caught within, the resonark’s shimmering sphere distorted too, like it was melting.The prismatic light trickled down the needles to her fingers.Stiffening, she held her breath…
But the light was like cool water, evaporating the moment it touched her skin.They definitely couldn’t carry it if any touch warped and fractured it.
“Incoming wave,” Delphine shouted.
And everything disappeared—
A vibration.Rippling through spacetime.With none to see, not a light.With none to hear, not a sound.With none to touch, nothing.Only a possibility.
A chance, dying now.
Mariah gasped as the vision released her.To her shock, her hands were still knitting, stitching through that glimpse into their cosmic mystery even as the ball of yarn shrank.
Now other hands were passing her another yarn, twisted together from multiple strands of mismatched weights, fiber type, and colors.
They’d hopscotched whimsical all the way to weird.
Somebody had even spun in strips of the IDA-branded bar napkins.Pieces of the words spiraled through her fingers: Big.Sky.Inter.Galac.Tic.Dating.Agency.Cosmic.Conn.Ections.Cruise.Love.Love.Love.
The pattern was like a prayer.
Around her, she was vaguely aware of the others debating how to help while she focused on the stitches, her fingers flying.But she couldn’t do this forever.
“Mariah.”Suvan’s voice wasn’t coming from some comm.
She dropped her gaze, struggling for a moment to refocus.He was right there at her feet.
“I can’t keep…” She swallowed, but the lump in her throat was stuck.
“Just a little longer.We’re taking the ship as close as we can to the signal source, but the disordered waves are going to keep impacting the ship.We’ll have to launch the resonark into the cloud.”
“But if I stop weaving—”
“Don’t stop.Not yet.”He wrapped his hand around her ankle as his pale eyes glinted up at her.“You’re going with me.”
Going…where?
Chapter 18
