Across the Sea of Suns

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Fire boils aft, pushing the ship close to the knife edge of light speed. Its magnetic throats dimple the smooth dipolar field.

—An arrow scratching across the black—

—blue-white exhaust plume of fizzing hydrogen—

—a granite-gray asteroid riding the roaring blowtorch—

It sucks in the interstellar dust. Mixes a caldron of isotopes. And spews them out the back, an ultraviolet flare in the swallowing abyss.

Inside, Nigel Walmsley was eating oysters.

The last of the wine, he thought moodily, peering into his cup. And it was. As nearly as ship’s rumor had it, nobody else had brought more than a bottle or so, and that had been well exhausted in the last two years.

He swirled the cup and swallowed the final chilled mouthful. The Pinot Chardonnay cut the faintly metallic taste of the oysters and left only the sea flavor and the succulent texture, a memory of Earth. He drank the last cold liquid from the shells and savored it. Eight light-years from Earth, the echo of the Gulf Stream faded.

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