Blue Shift

Blue shift!

My fragile ship hovered over the tangled complexity of the Great Attractor. From across a billion light years worlds and galaxies were tumbling into the Attractor’s monstrous gravity well, arriving so fast they were blue-shifted to the color of fine Wedgewood.

I could have stared at it all until my eyes ached. But I had a problem. Swirling round me like dark assassins’ hands were a hundred Xeelee ships. They would close on me within minutes.

My hand hovered over the control that would take me home — but I knew that the Qax, who had sent me to this fantastic place, were waiting there to kill me.

What a mess. And to think it had all come out of a sentimental journey to a breaker’s yard in Korea…

Of course I should have been looking for a job before my creditors caught up with me, not getting deeper into debt with travel costs. But there I was on the edge of that floodlit pit, watching gaunt machines peel apart the carcass of a doomed spaceship.

A wind whipped over the lip of the pit. The afternoon light started to fade; beyond the concrete horizon the recession-dimmed lights of Seoul began to glow. It was a desperate place. But I had to be there, because what they were breaking that day was the last human-built spacecraft. And my life…

A shadow moved over the pit; workmen paused and looked up as the mile-wide Spline ship drifted haughtily past the early stars. There was a Spline ship looming over every human city now, a constant reminder of the power of the Qax — the ships’ owners and our overlords.

The shadow moved on and the wrecking machines worked their way further into the ship’s corpse. Finally, after three centuries of Occupation, the Qax had shut down human space travel. The only way any human would leave the Solar System in the future was in the alien belly of a Spline. I began to think about finding a bar.

“Like watching the death of a living thing, isn’t it?”

I turned. An elegant stranger had joined me at the pit’s guard rail. Gray eyes glittered over an aquiline nose, and the voice was rich as velvet.

“Yeah,” I said, and shrugged. “Also the death of my career.”

“I know.”

“Huh?”

“You’re Jim Bolder.” The breeze stirred his ash-tinged hair and he smiled paternally. “You used to be a pilot. You flew these things.”

“I am a pilot. I don’t know you. Do I?” I studied him warily; he looked too good to be true. Did he represent a creditor?

He spread callus-free palms in a soothing gesture. “Take it easy,” he said. “I don’t want anything from you.”

“Then how do you know my name?”

“I’m here to make you an offer.”

I turned to walk away. “What offer?”

“You’ll fly again.”

I froze.

“My name’s Lipsey,” he said. “My… clients need a good pilot.”

“Your clients? Who?”

He glanced about the deserted apron. “The Qax,” he said quietly.

“Forget it.”

He exhaled sadly. “Your reaction’s predictable. But they’re not monsters, you know—”

“Who are you, Lipsey?”

“I… was… a diplomat. I worked with a man called Jasoft Parz. I helped negotiate our treaty with the Qax. Now I try to do business with them.”

I stared at him, electrified.

The Qax, during the long Occupation, had withdrawn Anti-Senescence technology. Death, illness, had returned to our worlds.

If he remembered Jasoft Parz, Lipsey must be centuries old. Unlike the rest of Occupied mankind, Lipsey was AS-preserved.

He saw the look on my face.

“I know it’s hard to sympathize, but I believe we have to be pragmatic. They’re just like us, you see. Looking out for number one, scrabbling for Xeelee artifacts—”

I jammed my hands in my pockets and turned away once more. “Maybe, but I don’t have to fly one of their damn Spline ships for them.”

“You don’t fly a Spline ship. Such strong opinions, and you don’t even know that? Spline ships fly themselves.”

“Then what’s the ship? Squeem?”

“Xeelee,” he said softly. “They want you to fly a Xeelee ship.” He smiled again, knowing he’d hooked me for sure.

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

Lipsey shrugged, turning his face from the rising breeze. “The Xeelee fighter was found derelict — a long way from here. The Qax paid well for it.”

I laughed. “I’ll bet they did.”

“And they’ll pay you well for flying it.”

“Prove it exists.”

Furtively he dug inside his coat of soft leather and produced a plastic-wrapped package. “This was found aboard,” he said. “Take a look.”

I peeled back the packaging. Inside was a delicate handgun sculpted from a marblelike material. The butt was wrapped in a hair-thin coil. Fine buttons were inlaid into the barrel, too small for human fingers.

“Xeelee construction material.” Lipsey’s gray eyes were fixed on my face. “Controls built to the Xeelee’s usual small scale.”

“What is it?”

“We don’t know. There is synchrotron radiation when the thing’s operated at its lowest power setting, so the Qax think the coil around the butt is a miniature particle accelerator. They haven’t had the courage to try the higher settings.” His face lit up briefly at that. He put away the artifact and pulled his coat tight around him. “The ship’s in orbit around the Qax home sun. The Qax will tell you the rest when you get there. I’ve a flitter waiting at Seoul spaceport; we can leave straight away.”

“Just like that?”

He studied me with a frank knowledge. “You have someone to say goodbye to?”

“…No. I guess you know that. But tell me one thing. Why don’t the Qax fly the damn ship themselves?”

He stared at me. “Have you ever seen a Qax?”

A million years ago the race we call the Spline made a strategic decision.

They were ocean-going at that time, great whalelike creatures with articulated limbs. They’d already been space travelers for millennia.

Then they rebuilt themselves.

They plated over their flesh, hardened their internal organs… and left the surface of their planet, rising like mile-wide, eye-studded balloons. Now they’re living ships, feeding patiently on the thin substance that drifts between the planets.

Since then they’ve hired themselves out to fifty races, including the Qax; but since they’re not dependent on any one world, or star, or type of environment, they’re their own masters — and always will be.

But there are drawbacks… mostly for their passengers.

Our cabin was a red-lit hole scooped out of the Spline’s gut. Our journey to the Qax home world meant three days in that stinking gloom. It was like being swallowed.

As a precondition of accepting our commission, the Spline sold us each an emergency beacon. It was a sort of limp bracelet. “It’s a quantum-inseparability beacon. You work it by squeezing its mid-portion,” Lipsey said. “The Spline guarantee your rescue, anywhere within the Galaxy. Of course, the price of the rescue’s negotiable. Higher if you don’t want the Qax to know about it.”

“I don’t want this.”

He shrugged. “Have it on credit. You might need it one day.”

“Maybe.” I wrapped the bracelet around my wrist; it nestled into place like a living thing.

Disgusting. I missed human technology.

We entered orbit around the Qax planet.

Our air and water were re-absorbed by the cabin walls, then an orifice dilated and we passed through a bloody tube to space. The stars were clean and cold. I breathed freely for the first time since we’d left Earth.

Lipsey’s two-man flitter was extruded from another sphincter, and we spiraled over the Qax world. Under the murky atmosphere I saw a planet-wide ocean. Submerged volcano mouths glowed like coals. There were no cities, no lights. “It’s a goddamn swamp,” I concluded.