Thomas Gown's connection to a group of powerful wizards who lived thousands of years ago is finally revealed, and he learns that he may be able to save his world and his civilisation, along with others beyond number, from a threat that will manifest...
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This far out, space had an emptiness that was simply beyond the mortal mind to imagine.
The nearest solid objects, frozen balls of ice a few miles across, were spaced a hundred times further apart than the inner planets were from the sun they orbited, and at such a distance they couldn't be detected by any magnifying or locating device that had ever been imagined. Even the yellow sun was nothing more than just another star, lost among all the others, giving no heat and exerting no measurable influence. The red sun was larger, the most prominent object in the sky, but its immense size disguised the impossible distance at which it lay. A distance which served only to accentuate the terrible absence of anything else. It provided the only evidence for the passage of time as sunspots the size of whole solar systems drifted slowly across its surface, and an observer all the way out here would have found his attention locked upon it for all time, because there was nothing else to look at. Nothing except the stars that shone like a million unblinking eyes, sucking out and devouring the souls of the damned...
Except that one patch of empty space was different from the rest. It was several miles across, but the screaming emptiness that surrounded it mocked it and reduced it to a tiny, minuscule point, so small that it barely existed at all. It was spherical and glowed a faint transparent red like a lost and lonely ghost, doomed to wander the endless void for the rest of eternity. Stars could be seen through it, but they were different stars, the stars of other universes, for this was a portal. A hole in space connecting hundreds of adjacent realities.
The portal had company. Another spherical object floated beside it. Smaller, even more insignificant but solid. Made of metal, wood and ceramics, and inside it was a tiny, warm bubble of light and life. It was the Jules Verne. The first and, so far, the only ship of space to be built by the inhabitants of the planet Tharia, and aboard it a heated debate was taking place.
"I'm still not convinced this is a good idea," Captain Strong was saying unhappily. "Protecting the ship from danger is all very well, but not if it means placing an individual at unnecessary risk."
"I am still willing to take the risk," said Saturn, however, the one eyed wizard meeting his gaze with an implacable calm, "and I honestly don't think there will be any danger. I have floated in space many times and come to no harm. This will be no different."
"It will be completely different!" replied Strong. "You'll be on one side of the portal while the ship remains on the other. What if the portal should fail? You'd be left floating in space in an unknown universe until you starved to death, and we would have no way to reach you."
"Why should the portal fail now, after so many thousands of years? And if it does fail, wouldn't it be worse for the whole ship to be stranded instead of just one man?"
"The ship can find a safe harbour and land. We can find a place where we can live while we look for a way home, but you, on your own, would be left just floating there."
