Wizards At War

The second boy shook his head. “Edge of the Local Group,” he said. “Over by IC 1613.”

“How are things there?” Nita said.

The first boy looked grim. “That galaxy was always kind of thin and spread out to begin with,” he said. “But it’s a lot thinner now. You know the Katahn empire there?”

Nita and Kit both shook their heads. Filif said, “I know of it. How does it fare?”

“Badly. Its systems are being pushed away from each other so fast that the empire’s falling apart,” said the boy in the jeans. “The big crowd of blue-white stars in the middle of that galaxy is being ripped up; the whole thing could turn into a blazar.”

Nita sucked in her breath. The boy shook his head. “We’re going back to get some help. There are a few really young kids back on the Moon right now. Might be we can get together enough raw power to slow down the expansion.”

“Even if we can’t do that right away, we should be able to keep the blazar from igniting,” the girl said.

“We think,” said the Aussie-sounding boy.

All of them trailed off. They looked terrified, but determined. Nita thought, And that’s how we look to them, I’ll bet.

“Good luck,” Kit said.

“If there is such a thing,” said the girl. Her look was defiant. “But we’re not waiting to find out. Dai—”

The three of them waved and went back the way Nita’s and Kit’s group had come.

Nita turned to watch them go as Ronan came out of another of the cubicle shops over on the right and rejoined them. “So,” he said, “the big gut here finish stuffing himself?”

Ponch gave Ronan a dry look. I wouldn’t talk if I were you, he said. That greaseball hamburger you were eating was nearly strong enough to drown out the scent of what we’re tracking.

“Which you’ve finally got nailed down?” Kit said.

The scent’s faint, Ponch said, but I can find the way from here, or at least get us headed in the right direction. How do you want to go?

“Using a fixed gate would be better right now,” Ronan said.

Then I can show you the way in my head, Ponch said to Kit.

“And I can use the manual to convert those into coordinates the Crossings gating system can use,” Kit said. “But we’ll need to go talk to the station staff to get them to allocate us a gate.”

“Yeah. Let’s message Sker’ret.”

I can smell where he is, Ponch said. This way.

Ponch galloped off down the concourse toward the great intersection where the secondary concourse wing met the major one they were in. In the center of it rose an open structure of blue-green metal, looking like a cross between an office cubicle and a set of monkey bars. Around it a number of Rirhait people were gathered, making a noise like a lawn mower having an argument with a rock it had found hiding in the grass.

Sker’ret was there, the front half of him reared up off the floor as he worked at one of the subsidiary kiosk-columns that made up the body of the structure. The column had extruded a control console covered with patches of embedded light, which Sker’ret was tapping at with great speed. Three of the gathered Rirhait were looking over one or another set of his shoulders; two others were rushing around the cubicle as if they were looking for something. With a wizard’s ear, Nita could hear Sker’ret saying to one of the Rirhait looking over his shoulder, “See, this is all you need to do. It’s easier than you think. If you just make sure that the equations for the hypersphere balance have the same asymptotic expansion variables laid in—”

He looked up as Nita and Kit and Filif and Ronan stepped up to the cubicle. “Oh,” Sker’ret said.

“We’re about ready,” Kit said. “Can you finish up here?”

“I’m trying,” Sker’ret said. He cocked about three eyes each back at the two other Rirhait who were looking over his shoulders. “So are we clear about this, sibs? This is going to hold you just fine for the meantime.”

“I’m not sure exactly where to go after that, though,” said one of the Rirhait who was watching whatever he was doing at the console. She sounded nervous.

“What about the spin foam variables?” asked the other Rirhait.

Sker’ret reached out some spare legs to the column on the other side of him. It extruded another floating keyboard structure toward him, which he poked until it displayed the keying pattern he wanted, and started tapping on while still typing into the first one. “You do it like this,” he said. “Let the software handle the brane issues; it’s built for that. Ignore the zonotope and the polar sine relationships. All you have to do is intuit the way the spin foam variables are sliding, and add about a radian and a half—”

“You following this?” Kit said to Nita under his breath.