Page 66 of Collision!
“The resonark has been reaching across spacetime,” he continued.“It’s never stopped.We can’t hold it back now because we are afraid nothing is here at the end.”
“So we’re supposed to…hope it will find its way?”
“Believe in the power of love.”
After a shocked moment, her choked laughter filled his helmet, sweeter than fresh air.“What’s happened to my grouchy, grumbly chief engineer?”
“I’m still here,” he admitted, “but also maybe…someone more than that.”
The sparkle in her eyes morphed and darkened as she gripped his hand.His reflection in her visor reminded him he was suspended in one of the most dangerous regions of space, holding his breath, hoping she would believe him because that would mean…
It would mean that, like the resonark, he still had a chance.
Finally, she rotated between him and the resonark pulsing erratically in the veil of yarn.“Mr.Evens said the resonark would prove the connections the IDA promises are possible.”
“Still a gamble, not a guarantee,” he warned.He would not lie to her, not even for love.
“So we’ll roll a resonark.Luckily it’s already round.”She grasped the weave where she’d tied a last knot.“I can’t undo this with my big gloves.”
“I have a cutter.”He patted at the suit’s utility belt and brought out the small laser blade.“Shall I?”
“Please.It’s getting so dark.”
One brief flare and the end of the thread floated free.
“It’s all coming undone,” she murmured with a quiver of sorrow.
“And I can’t wait to see what we make next.”
She reached for him, and they clasped hands.“Suvan…”
A loud crackle in both their helmets stopped her.
“—you hearing this?”
“Captain,” Suvan said.“Comms keep dropping out.We’ve released the resonark.”
“—signal lost—”
Mariah clutched his glove.“They’re losing our signal?Or the echo we followed out here?”
Compressed in the suit, his quill-scales ached—or maybe that was his heart.“Hurry.Unravel the knot so the threads spread as far as possible, like…” His vision of the questing resonark following a memory across the universe flashed behind his eyes.“Like an antenna array, or…”
“Or a goblhob’s lure times a thousand.”Her fingers plucked at the tangle of yarns.“Cut here and here.And here.”
As she loosened the outermost loops where he cut, strands of the colorful yarn began to drift in the null cloud’s strange currents.The freed ends stretched and spiraled, catching the ghostly light of the dark matter waves, each fiber a delicate line reaching out.
She’d had him cut near the napkin fragments from the Starlit Salon, and the end of each strand held a tiny flag of hope:Love.Love.Love.
As more of the knotwork came apart, the resonark’s sphere expanded as if breathing, no longer confined by the weaving.Its shadowlight flickered—nearly all shadow now but still calling into the depths.
Partly severed, partly knotted, the threads ballooned slowly outward in an intricate, tangled web around them.
Chaos, but also connection.
And impossible.He’d seen the blisters forming on Mariah’s fingers, but she hadn’t knitted this much yarn.The resonark was using the last of its energy to unravel itself at the atomic level, reaching outpastits last chance.
“Suvan.”Mariah’s voice was barely a whisper.“Am I imagining this?”
