Jeddy and Tori Bena bolted across the promenade, dodging their elders and more than a few robots as they raced for the outer ring.
No one would have thought they were related, let alone twins; he was short and fair-haired, while she was noticeably taller, with deep brown locks. But twins they were – fraternal - and about to turn 11. Like most twins, they were inseparable.
Their mother had summoned them to the outer ring, which whirled majestically around the axis of the mighty Hyperion, providing something close to normal gravity. Reaching a lift, they rapidly dropped to the starship’s outermost ring, then made for the observation deck.
Their mother stood before the massive transparent portal that stretched dozens of meters along the edge of the deck, her waist already belted to the rail that extended along its full length. Several dozen other passengers, more or less evenly spaced or in pairs, were also belted to it.
“Hurry!” Mari Bena nudged her children, who dutifully grabbed belts on either side of their mother and strapped up. “We only have a few minutes.”
“Where’s Da?” Tori asked.
“On his way,” her mother answered. “He’ll get here in time.”
On cue, a deep voice echoed all around them.
“All decks, secure for Transition,” instructed Hyperion’s first officer from the starship’s bridge. “Deck officers, mind your boards. Transition in thirteen minutes... mark!”
Jeddy and Tori clapped their hands, thrilled.
“Make sure you’re paying attention,” Mari told them. “You’re about to see the stars again.”
For almost 10 weeks, the ship’s portals had glowed with the rapid, perpetual sparkle of slipspace, a realm composed of energies that pixelated through spectra both visual and supervisual at speeds tantalizing to the human nervous system. At the beginning of their journey to Arborisle, they’d belted to this deck and watched the ocean of stars through which they were sailing suddenly smear together into one big blur of light, suddenly exploding into the thrilling spectacle of slipspace. Transition, from subluminal to superluminal velocity, enabled by slippage of the vast colony vessel into a neighboring dimension.
In the first few weeks, the twins had visited the deck again and again, mesmerized by the brain-juicing panorama of slipspace. But even the most thrilling scapes in the universe can fade familiar, and after more than two months, they were longing once again for the familiar stars.
“Everyone belted in?”
“Da!”
Their father, crossing the deck along with a dozen other stragglers, took up a position by the rail on the other side of Jeddy, tossling his hair before belting up.
“Now, remember, no rowdy,” he reminded them.
“But the belts can’t break!” Tori argued.
“The belts can’t break, but when we all go floaty, you could bang your heads together,” he replied. “So just enjoy it, and don’t wiggle!”
During the Transition into slipspace, they’d been weightless for almost 4 minutes – weightless despite the continuing spin of the ship, as the normal laws of physics briefly paused.
“Transition in 60 seconds,” announced the first officer. “All decks, stand by.”
Tori counted the seconds in her head, and on cue the deck beneath them shifted as the ship let out a low moan, heard stem to stern. She felt herself go light, watched her feet lift off the deck. Her brother was already horizontal, relative to the deck, letting out a happy squeal. She remembered to turn to the port, and called out to her brother to do the same.
As she stared into the impossible colors of slipspace, her mind picked up the beginnings of the maelstrom of light’s slow-but-accelerating coalescence from smears of light to finer and finer points, and dark gaps began to break through the canvas of space. It almost hypnotized her, as the colors squeezed relentlessly down into individualities, and she was almost unaware of her feet reasserting themselves on the deck.
“Transition complete,” came the voice from the bridge. “All deck officers report in.”
Their parents exchanged a smile as Jeddy and Tori freed themselves from the rail.
“Well, that was spectacular,” Da said. “Who’s hungry?”
The family was one of dozens in the mess for lunch, huddled around their own table with a bowl of fruit and a plate of sandwiches. The day felt festive, even though there were still more than six weeks of starflight ahead.
“So,” Jeddy said as he sipped his water, “we’re in the Waves now?”
Mari nodded. “We’re in the Waves!” she smiled. “The captain and navigator have dropped us out of slipspace at this particular position because they’ve chosen a spot in the Waves where no ship has ever been.”
“The Waves are 60 light-years deep,” Tori recited, remembering the presentation they’d attended before the ship had launched. “Every colony ship that crosses through the waves stops in a new place, so that eventually we’ll have seen them all.”
“Exactly right,” said Da. “We can only stay here in normal space for a week – we have to get on with our trip to Arborisle. But the Waves are magnificent, so we all get to stop and enjoy them for a while, and capture them for others to see later.”
Jeddy pointed to a vast monitor on the far wall of the mess, which showed their position in normal space – a thick smattering of bright stars, the Milky Way glowing behind them.
“Why can’t we see them now?”
“They aren’t in our visual spectrum,” their mother replied. “The computer has to reconstruct them for us to see them. That won’t take long at all, since so many ships have already stopped to watch the Waves. We should be seeing them tonight!”
Both of the children were as excited as they’d ever been. Their parents, fully understanding the rarity of a chance to experience the Waves in space itself, were equally so.
In all of humankind’s exploration of the stars over the recent centuries, nothing had been discovered as unique and fascinating as the Waves. Sixty light-years' worth, barreling across the expanse between the stars, unlike any other phenomenon to be found in interstellar space.
Sixty light-years deep, and Hyperion had paused about a third of the way from the Waves’ leading edge. The ship would remain subluminal for almost nine days, immersing the passengers in the electromagnetic wonder, while the crew handled the scientific chores.
It wasn’t difficult, in an epoch of scientific ascendancy and triumphs of physics, to lose that sense of wonder. The sight of slipspace alone was enough to shake the human mind completely free of the ancient magnificence the universe generously laid out on the humble surface of Earth; but the Waves recaptured that magnificence in a way that took its witnesses back to who humanity had once been, reconnecting them to all that truly mattered.
The ship’s auditorium held 300, almost a fourth of the total ship’s passenger complement. The first group to see the Waves had been randomly selected; Jeddy, Tori, and their parents had made the cut. The twins managed to snag seats in the auditorium’s forward rows, close to the huge viewscreen.
The excitement was palpable as the Hyperion’s captain entered the auditorium and proceeded to the stage in front of the screen.
“Good evening!” she greeted the crowd, who enthusiastically greeted her in return. “Future citizens of Arborisle – we are in the Waves!!!”
The audience erupted in applause, none more loudly than Jeddy and Tori.
“I know most of you saw the presentation about the Waves before we set out,” she continued, “but let me stress again what a wonderful opportunity we have. We get to see a stretch of the Waves that no travelers from Earth have ever seen before – not all missions come out this far, and when we’re able to pause our journeys in the Waves, we can only stay briefly.
“There’s 60 light-years of the Waves; and we pause an average of a week at a time. So it may take as many as 3,000 missions to capture them all!”
“Now, we’ll be capturing all the incoming radiation from the Waves for the entire time we’re paused, so you’ll be able to go back later and view as much as you please, as we continue our journey. And to make sure everyone gets a chance to do some viewing in real-time, I want to encourage everyone to be thoughtful of opportunity for others.
“Are you ready?”
Again, the crowd erupted in applause. The lights in the auditorium dimmed, and the massive viewscreen glowed to life.
Tori took her brother’s hand as the ship’s computer, having reprocessed the electromagnetic radiation of the Waves into a form suitable for human eyes and ears, began to display it in light and sound:
“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip,
That started from this tropic port,
Aboard this tiny ship...”
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