THE BROKEN SPHERE

Nigel Findley

Prologue

The colors of the phlogiston were particularly chaotic in this part of the universe. They rippled and ran, curdled and swirled like oil paints boiling together in a stewpot, a million million vibrant hues most of which could only be named by the gods themselves.

In this part of the universe, the crystal spheres-each a "bubble cosmos"-clustered close together. They bobbed and shifted on the phlogiston tides, too slow to see their motion, yet frenetically rapidly as these things are usually measured, as if they were the iridescent glass net-floats used by fishermen on a thousand thousand worlds. They were like pearls of incalculable price catching and reflecting back the strange light of the Flow.

The pearls were tightly packed here, sometimes separated by less than the diameter of a single sphere, sometimes by much less.

What would happen if they collided? Many sages of many races had asked that question, yet nobody could give a good answer. Could they collide, or were they kept apart by some negative analogue of gravity? Would they bump, then bounce apart like balls in the game known as "pockets," played on several planets? And, if so, how would that affect the suns and planets-and the possible civilizations on those planets-within the spheres? Would the result be planetary catastrophe? Or would the inhabitants even notice?

Or, perhaps, would the spheres shatter on impact? Few sages supported this latter view… though many myths included some discussion of a broken sphere…

And through this crowded space, a ship moved, a dark mass against the surrealistic background of the Flow. The streamers, blebs, and rivers of phlogiston parted before it- unwillingly, it seemed-flowing back around it, yet giving it respectful berth, before closing once more behind it. The multicolored phlogiston-or, more correctly, where the phlogiston wasn't-formed a uniform, ovoid bubble of clear air around the ship. Although the ship moved smoothly, it moved almost unimaginably fast.

The ship was huge, a massive, curved thing, winged like a manta ray the size of a small world, with a long tail upswept to poise above the great ship's upper surface. Here in the chaotic light of the phlogiston, it was impossible to tell the ship's color, or even if it had a color. It was like a sharply bounded shadow, a shape of impenetrable blackness.

The Spelljammer.

That was the name originally given to the great ship by the elves-if the elves could be trusted to speak truly, on a matter as important as this-and the name subsequently given to all lesser ships that sailed the spaceways. The Spelljammer-subject of countless legends, myths, and barroom tales, most of them conflicting. It was the greatest spacefaring ship ever built-if, indeed, it was built-and the fastest, created by the gods as a test for the faithful, or a scourge for the unbeliever. Or perhaps it had been built by a mysterious race, long vanished from the universe, or created by a fiend from the Lower Planes, traded to an ambitious race in return for their collective soul. Or maybe it had been spawned in an entirely different universe, with its own array of crystal spheres. It was captained and crewed by…

Who knew? On this topic, too, the legends contradicted each other. Was it captained by a god, with lesser immortals as its crew? By a demon? By a mortal, who'd won the honor through epic feats of bravery? Or was the mighty ship without captain and crew, and with no need of them?

Serenely unconcerned by the confusion and discord centering around it, the Spelljammer cruised silently on.

The massive manta craft changed course, pointing its bow toward the nearest of the crystal spheres. As it drew closer, the scale of the scene became apparent. The Spelljammer, the largest vessel in creation and bigger than some worlds, seemed to shrink in comparison to the sphere. First it appeared like a bird next to a mighty castle, then like a fly to a mountain, finally like a gnat to a whole world. Ahead of the great ship, the surface of the crystal sphere seemed to be a flat wall of mother-of-pearl, extending to infinity in every direction, without even a hint of curvature. Here, among the tight-packed crystal spheres, the scale of mortals and the scales of the gods came into perspective.

A point of brilliance burst into life on the iridescent gray wall before the Spelljammer. Like a star, impossibly burning here in the phlogiston, it waxed in brilliance, quickly becoming intolerable. It seemed to expand, though whether that was the case or not, or whether the great ship was diving toward it, was incidental. From a dimensionless point it became a small disk of actinic light, growing instant by instant. Then, at its center, a point of blackness appeared, at first almost invisible in the heart of the radiance, but swelling rapidly. In an eye blink it became a broad annulus of scintillating light around a disk of blackness now bespecked with stars.

The Spelljammer plunged through the center of the black disk, out of the Flow and into wildspace.

Here, inside the sphere, were none of the curdled colors of the phlogiston. The darkness of the space that "planet-siders" call "real" enveloped the huge ship. At immense speed it hurtled away from the inner surface of the crystal sphere, which now appeared as endless black emptiness studded with alien stars.

In the center of the sphere-countless millions of leagues from the Spelljammer-there was a sun… or, more properly, something that had been a sun. Now it was the torn and shattered body of a star, ripped apart from within by catastrophic forces. Concentric rings of gas expanded out from where the sun had been. Even though the scale was so great that actual movement was imperceptible- would be on any time scale measured in less than centuries-the feeling of speed, of inconceivable violence, was inescapable. Lashed by radiation that sages could only guess at, the gas fluoresced in eye-piercing greens and violets.

About a quarter of the way out from the center of the nebula were two tiny white blobs, each only the smallest fraction of the size of the gas clouds. Before the star had torn itself apart and vented its fury on its children, these two blobs had been planets, the largest of thirteen. Now only the two remained-the others had vaporized almost instantly- and even they were burned to cinders, scoured of all life.

And, at the very heart of the nebula, there was something else. Detectable only by senses more precise than sight, it lurked like a ghost among the radiation-lashed gases: the tiny corpse of the destroyed star.

The Spelljammer cruised far from the fury of the crystal sphere's center, out where there was nothing but light and lingering gravity-wave echoes of the star's self-immolation. With mysterious senses, it scanned the area-searching, always searching.

Myriad thoughts flickered through what some might call the ship's mind, thoughts coupled with emotions that bore only the barest resemblance to those felt by humans. Sadness, that was the core emotion, sadness tinged by a sense of loss. There was an overtone of incompleteness, of yearning.

And a strong undercurrent of fear.