Chapter 9

A couple of hours later, they sped into hyperspace away from Echinea with clean bodies, clean clothes, and a clean interior of the Black Fire. Conner sat comfortably in the third chair, which they had finally had installed, along with a special modem for accessing the galactic internet while in hyperspace.

“Next stop, Chronesia,” Oliver said. “Let’s see what it’s all about.” He pushed some buttons on the computer, and then his eyebrows rose sky high. “Hey, get this. Chronesia is sailing through space in the opposite direction as the galaxy!”

“Okay,” Conner said, “what does that mean?”

“Researchers think it came from Shaper’s Next,” Oliver said, looking excitedly between him and Mara, “and it’s on a course to reach Shaper’s Back in three hundred thousand years.”

“So . . .” Mara said, “it’s going backward in time?”

“Yes! What’s more, it’s moving very close to the speed of light relative to the galaxy, so time flows slowly on its surface.”

“How does that work?” Conner asked.

“It’s really complicated,” Oliver replied, “but the short answer is that space and time are two parts of the same thing, and speeding up is like changing direction. If you move faster through space, you move slower through time.”

“Uh . . .” Conner said.

“We’ll see it when we arrive,” Oliver said, waving a hand. “Anyway, the surface is covered with an artificial layer of technology, and no one knows what it is. Some people think it’s a planet-wide city, others think it is an artificial intelligence. Most people agree that it is probably Raquon.” He clicked to another page. “Oh, that’s interesting. There is an interplanetary treaty that forbids colonies on Chronesia, and dedicates the entire planet to scientific research. There are several scientific outposts, one of which is near the Time Palace, where Aepoch is supposed to be.”

While Oliver continued to read about Chronesia, Conner’s thoughts returned to the fight in the cave. To Senna, the Tarran who had fought him and taken their medallions. He found himself looking forward to meeting her again when they faced off to reclaim the medallions. It was sad that they had to be rivals. Maybe they could strike a deal with the Tarrans, and work together. Maybe he had been too hasty to turn Durgna down. Remembering how Senna had looked in her wetsuit, and how she had felt against him, he decided he was going to bring up the option with Mara and Oliver. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t say anything. What if they guessed his reason for suggesting the alliance? There was no reason he had to bring it up now, and waiting for later might make it less suspicious. Instead, he let his mind wander into daydream land, searching through exotic locations for the last two remaining medallions, Oliver and Mara, him and Senna.

A while later, they emerged from hyperspace. Conner looked around outside. “Where is the planet?” he asked.

“Coming toward us at ninety-eight percent of the speed of light,” Oliver said. He pointed. “From that direction.”

Conner looked out and saw an extra-bright star. “It seems pretty far away,” he said.

Oliver turned the Black Fire away from the star and hit the gas.

“What are you doing?” Conner said. “The planet is the other way.”

“Yes,” Oliver said, “but it’s coming toward us at the speed of light, remember? We have to spend the rest of the time speeding up to match it, or it will fly right past us.”

“Oh, I guess that makes sense.”

An image flickered onto the windshield screen. Another patch of space, surrounded by a green border so that they could tell what part they were looking at. The bright star was getting brighter and growing in size.

“Whoa,” Mara said. “You weren’t kidding. That thing’s coming toward us fast.”

“And at the rate these thrusters are firing,” Oliver said, “if we didn’t have inertial dampeners, we’d be smashed flat, our guts plastered on the walls behind us, our skeletons reduced to rubble in our chairs. Actually, our chairs would have broken off and torn holes in the back of the ship, which itself would have shredded under its own strain.”

The ensuing silence was palpable. After about thirty seconds, Mara said, “Good to know.”

The star was nearly the size of Moebius’ sun as it was seen in the sky by now, inching toward the side of the screen, and still the Black Fire kept blasting along at full power. “Hold on,” Oliver said, “we’re about to get a slingshot boost.”

Conner and his companions watched the sun crawl toward the edge of the screen, growing several times bigger than Conner had ever seen a sun appear. This, he realized, was the closest he had ever been to a star. It moved off the screen, and into the field of view of the right-hand side section of the windshield. Conner stared at the tennis ball-sized disk crawling past the stationary dots of the background stars. They had been accelerating all this time and still it outran them, a cosmic monster of immeasurable force.

“All right,” Oliver said, “time to cut back on the thrust and let gravity do the work.” He pressed some buttons, and the main engine cut out, and the secondary rockets came online. The sun was now moving into the front of the windshield, slowing down, and shrinking closer to normal size.

Oliver wasn’t looking at it, though. Instead, he stared intently out the right side window. Mara followed his gaze, and Conner did too. One of the star dots was growing, the sign of an approaching planet.

“Yes,” Oliver said, sounding relieved. “We’re going to catch it in its orbit just fine.” He clapped his hands together. “Behold, friends, we are now flying through space at nearly the speed of light, and experiencing slow time.”

The planet was a yellowish beige, with ice caps and pockets of blue ocean. Conner thought that it looked almost like the entire planet was desert, but he remembered that Oliver had said it was covered in technology. That thought brought to mind images of conveyor belts and giant boxy metallic robotic limbs moving about everywhere. He hoped that wasn’t correct.

Oliver pushed some buttons on the communications board. “Research Station Gannow, this is the Black Fire. We’re going to land near you, and we just thought we’d say hi.”

There was a moment of silence, and then a boy’s voice came over the radio. “Hello, Black Fire, and welcome to Chronesia. This is Research Station Gannow. What brings you to this lonely corner of the galaxy?”

“We want to visit the Time Palace,” Oliver said. He told the boy about their quest for the elemental medallions, the Dooku Flower, and how they had been raided by rogue Tantalians claiming to be from Tarr and probably lying about it. “Have any Tantalians come to you within the past few days?”

“No,” the boy said, “you’re the only outside contact we’ve had in months.”

“That’s a relief,” Oliver said. “All right, can you recommend a good landing spot?”

“There’s a big flat plate in front of the palace,” the boy said. “We think it was designed as a parking lot for spaceships. That’s where we always land. Oh, but you should probably come visit us before you go into the palace. That place isn’t like most places you’ve been, and you’d best know what you’re getting yourselves into.”

“Got it,” Oliver said.

After an ordinary reentry, the Black Fire coasted over what looked like a horizon-to-horizon ocean of sun-bleached beeswax. As they descended, it came to look more like an alien city, with bizarre goopy-shaped buildings and structures all over the place. Eight towers rose into the air, connected by walls, making an octagon. In the middle were symmetrical patterns that rose and fell, not quite as tall as the towers, but taller than the surrounding area. “Is that the palace?” Conner asked.

“I’d bet on it,” Oliver replied.

They circled around it, descending toward a landing. As they did, Conner gazed up at the towering walls. “That thing’s huge!”

“Are we supposed to search the whole place?” Mara asked.

“I certainly hope not,” Oliver said. “My first guess would be to head for the center. But let’s talk to Gannow Station first.”

The landing plate came into view, large, but still dwarfed by the palace. It stood on a thin pole at its center, which was about a sixth as high as the plate’s diameter. The landscape around it rose like a hill, from level with the base of the pole on the side closest to them, to twice the height of the plate on the opposite side. The volume around the plate was hollowed out in a cylindrical shape. A bridge went from the plate to the entrance of the palace, which was a giant arch of comparable size to the plate. Another bridge of yuman design ran to the hillside on the other side, luckily not made of gravitic technology, so it did not float above the ground.

Three other ships of varying design rested next to each other, near the edge, but not too close. Oliver took the Black Fire in for the landing, and parked next to them. “Here we are, on Chronesia!”

Conner squinted as he got out of the ship. Although it was midday and the sun was bright, the reflected tint from the pale gold color of everything made him feel drowsy. The ground had a hint of sponginess, but felt firm enough, like the artificial ground tennis courts were sometimes made of. It gripped his feet nicely, assuring him that slipping was not going to happen. He looked around, puzzled. “I thought this place was supposed to be covered with technology,” he said.

“I know,” Oliver replied. “We’ll have to ask the locals about it.”

They crossed the yuman bridge, looking out across a landscape of curves and swirls. The structures and buildings were very un-yuman in design, rising out of the ground, and then bulging outward, curving up and then inward again, making a bulb shape, and then more of the same were stacked on top of one another in various sizes. It was like a surrealist painting, except they could walk around in it and touch it.

They followed the path. That is, if indeed it could be called a path. It was more like a set of connected flat segments of ground, which wound through and around the hills. There was no sign of wear by feet, so they were not sure it was even leading anywhere, or would dump them off in some random sector of nonsense-land. Though looking over his shoulder, Conner reassured himself that the palace would always be there to help them find their way back.

Around a corner, they found a building with an open doorway, and artificial lighting inside of the variety that yumans liked to use. There were also yuman technology sprouting out of the ceiling and lying about in purposeful configurations.

A boy with short sandy hair and casual clothing peeked out and waved a hand. “Hey, you must be the Black Fire crew. Name’s Joe. Come on in.”

They walked into a circular room that was nine feet high at the circular light in its middle, sloping down to seven where it met the walls. On the other side was an entryway into another similar room. The place was taken over by yuman equipment and paraphernalia, like chairs and computers and a poster of a band of musicians and a mug that read “I love hot kokoas” with a picture of a small furry bear-like creature in the desert under a palm tree with sunglasses.

“Welcome to Research Station Gannow,” Joe said, “or as we call it, the House. Do you want a drink or anything? We have water and some weird orange-flavored stuff.”

“Out of coffee?” Conner said, eying the mug.

“Out of a lot of stuff,” Joe said. “The next supply shipment is due tomorrow. We can farm a kind of algae on the ground, but that’s not much in the way of taste.”

“Speaking of the ground,” Oliver said, “what is it? It’s not rock or dirt or anything you usually see on a planet’s surface.”

“That’s a difficult question to answer,” Joe said. “At the microscopic level, it’s like a hybrid between nanotech and biotech. It is made of cells of a sort, but their chemical makeup is completely different from the biology we find in the rest of the galaxy.”

“Raquon technology,” Oliver mused.

Joe shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that for sure. It could be, but maybe it’s just a form of extremely rare life that only arises once in every trillion planets. I personally don’t like the assumption people have that anything they don’t understand was caused by the Raquon. It’s like they’re using the word ‘Raquon’ to sneakily replace ‘magic.’”

“But it’s obviously not natural,” Oliver said.

“Obvious in what way?” Joe countered. “Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it is artificial. Why, way back in ancient times, in the days of the scientific founders a hundred thousand years ago, they thought that the planets were held around the stars by the many invisible arms of the Great and Holy Accounting Assistant.”

Conner looked at him, raising an eyebrow.

“It lost something in translation,” Joe said. “Anyway, the point is that when there is something we don’t understand, like the Raquon, and there is something else we don’t understand, like the biology of this planet, it does not mean that they are connected, it just means we don’t understand either of them.”

“Okay,” Oliver said.

Joe sighed. “Ah well, enough about that.”

“What can you tell us about the Time Palace?” Oliver asked.

“Time Palace,” Joe said, “well that’s an interesting place. Inside, it doesn’t seem to follow the normal laws of space, time, and gravity. You could be walking through a hallway, and all of a sudden you’re standing on the wall. Or gravity might shift, sending you plummeting to the ceiling, which can be a long fall if you’re unlucky.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Oliver remarked.

“Very,” Joe said. “So when you go, you should take one of these.” He reached and picked up a hand-sized computer-like device from a desk. “In our time doing research here, we have mapped out the distortion patterns in much of the palace. We don’t know why it happens, but it always repeats. This gravity shift might happen every four hours, and that hall’s length might stretch every eighteen minutes, and a certain time slow might happen every twelve seconds. This grav map has them on file. And you don’t have to worry about it getting thrown off by a temporal disturbance; it’s programmed to adjust its reference point accordingly.”

“So what does it do?” Conner asked.

“It tells us when to grab on to something,” Oliver said.

“Got it.”

“I don’t suppose you or one of the other researchers would be able to guide us through the palace?” Oliver asked.

“If you’re willing to wait two months,” Joe said. “The planet is about to pass into the solar wake, so we need all hands and eyes on the instruments. There’s always good science that comes out of it, and it only happens twice a year.”

“So leave it alone this one time,” Conner said. “If it happens twice a year, that’s still plenty of times.”

“No can do, for a couple of reasons,” Joe said. “First, Chronesia years are three times as long as the galactic average. And second, we have ongoing experiments that need to be tended to every time, or we would have to start the cycle over, losing decades of progress.” He scratched behind his ear. “We could help you after things wind down.”

“We’re in a bit of a rush,” Oliver said, “what, with a galactic pandemic and bad guys trying to beat us to the medallions.”

“They’re not bad guys,” Conner said. Oliver, Mara, and Joe looked at him, expecting him to say more. He felt his face start to turn red, and fought it. “They’re rivals. I don’t think they’re bad.” He thought about suggesting they try to work together with the Tarrans, but decided this was probably not the time.

“Not something I’d expect you to be the one to say,” Oliver said, “but a fair point.” He turned back to Joe, and Conner felt a wave of relief wash over him.

“Be careful in there,” Joe said. “I can’t say it enough.”

“We will,” Conner said.