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Authors: Gregory Benford

Furious Gulf

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If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as
“unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this
“stripped book.”

Copyright © 1994 by Abbenford Associates

Excerpt from
The Sunborn
copyright © 2004 by Abbenford Associates

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review.

Warner Books

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com

The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

ISBN: 978-0-446-55904-1

First eBook Edition: February 2005

Contents

Copyright Page

PROLOGUE: True Center

PARTICLE STORM

PART ONE: Far Antiquity

ONE: Techno-Nomads

TWO: The Sail-Snake

THREE: The Rule of Number

FOUR: Pale Immensities

FIVE: Ancient Flavors

SIX: The Song of Electrons

PART II: The Eater of All Things

ONE: Hard Pursuit

TWO: The Shredded Star

THREE: Besik Bay

FOUR: Motes Such As You

FIVE: Tiny Minds

SIX: Lightning Life

SEVEN: A Taste of the Void

EIGHT: The Aperture Moment

NINE: The Cyaneans

Photovores

PART THREE: The Time Pit

ONE: Deep Reality

TWO: Honeycomb Home

THREE: The Far Black

FOUR: A Day in Court

FIVE: Trans-History

SIX: The Charm of Commerce

SEVEN: Animal Spirits

PART FOUR: Gravity’s Gullet

ONE: The Esty Wind

TWO: Time’s Grip

THREE: The Rock of Chaos

FOUR: Unsettled Movement

FIVE: Hard Spark

SIX: Mind Surgery

PART FIVE: Malign Attentions

ONE: The Pain of Eternity

TWO: Rational Laughter

THREE: Casualties

FOUR: Salvage

FIVE: The Sea of Sand

SIX: Eating the Storm

SEVEN: Passing Currents

Timeline of Galactic Series

About the Author

A preview of “The Sunborn”

The Galactic Center Series by Gregory Benford

TIME’S GRIP

He lifted his right hand—

—and it wouldn’t budge. It lay palm-up on smooth, cool timestone. The flesh near his knuckles felt cold, stiff. He pulled
harder. A little give, not much. “Quath, I’m stuck. It’s
got
me.”

He yanked harder. The right hand came free with an awful ripping sound—and a flash of white-hot pain.

and you become part of the event.>

“What ‘event’? That stuff tried to
eat
me.”


“You mean everything here can sop us up, like sponges?”

ACCLAIM FOR GREGORY BENFORD’S CLASSIC NOVELS OF THE GALACTIC CENTER

TIDES OF LIGHT

“Benford’s most adventurous, most philosophical, and most scientifically creative novel.”

—Houston Press

“Mr. Benford is a rarity: a scientist who writes with verve and insight not only about black holes and cosmic strings but
about human desires and fears.”

—New York Times Book Review

SAILING BRIGHT ETERNITY

“As at the end of any great symphony, one can only stand and applaud.”

—Asimov’s Science Fiction

“A worthy conclusion to what now should be acknowledged as the most important and involving hard SF series yet written.”

—Publishers Weekly

ALSO BY GREGORY BENFORD

Fiction

Beyond Infinity

The Sunborn

The Martian Race

Eater

The Stars in Shroud

Jupiter Project

Shiva Descending
(with William Rostler)

Heart of the Comet
(with David Brin)

A Darker Geometry
(with Mark O. Martin)

Beyond the Fall of Night
(with Arthur C. Clarke)

Against Infinity

Cosm

Foundation’s Fear

Artifact

Timescape

The Galactic Center Series

In the Ocean of Night

Across the Sea of Suns

Great Sky River

Tides of Light

Furious Gulf

Sailing Bright Eternity

Non-fiction

Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia

For Joan, forever

PROLOGUE

True Center

 

 

T
oby watched his father walk the hull.

Killeen was a silvery figure, his suit tuned to reflect as much radiation as possible. A mirror man. Slick light slid over
him as he moved, shimmering with the phosphorescence of stars and gas. Toby could follow Killeen’s smooth, slow lope as a
rippling warp against the fiery background.

—Dad!—Toby called over his skinsuit comm band.

—What? Oh . . . —Killeen’s surprise came through the fizz of comm static.—How come you’re outside?—

—Crew’s wondering how come you’re out here so long.—

As Cap’n of the
Argo
, Killeen could do whatever he liked, of course. But Toby had felt the growing uncertainty among the officers inside. Somebody
had to act, to say something, so he had pulled on his skin-tight suit and come clumping out here. Lately Cap’n Killeen had
kept himself isolated. He came out here to hike over the fat curves of the ship’s hull, often not even leaving his suit comm
line open.

Killeen said distantly,—I’m navigating. Watching.—

The big man’s watery image flowed, liquid with light, as Killeen came toward Toby across
Argo
’s blunt prow. His suit momentarily mirrored the black depths of a nearby molecular cloud, and Toby saw him as an eerie shadow-man
against the distant burnt-orange wash of star-speckled gas.

—You can do that from the bridge,—Toby said.

—Get a better feel for it out here.—Killeen came close enough for Toby to make out his father’s stern expression through the
suit’s small vision slit.

Toby knew his father’s pinched-face, hedgehog mood, and decided to cut through it directly.—There’s near a dozen more crew
on sick report.—

Killeen’s lips thinned but he said nothing. Toby hesitated, then summoned up his courage.—Dad, we’re starving! Those gardens
we lost, they’re not gonna grow again. Face it!—

Abruptly Killeen whirled, adroitly sliding his magnetic boots in zero gravity.—I
am
facing it! We just don’t know any more techtricks. Even the specialists, the green-thumbers, they can’t get those ship gardens
sprouting again. No help there. So I’m
thinking
, got that?—

Toby stepped back involuntarily; Killeen’s flinty anger was quick and daunting. He took a breath and said hesitantly,—Shouldn’t
. . . can’t we . . . do something different?—

Killeen scowled.—Like what?—

—Approach some of those?—Toby pointed tentatively.

Far ahead of
Argo
floated faint metallic dabs of light. Not clouds or luminous dust. Artificial.

—We don’t know what they are. Could be mechwork. Probably is. Mechs have built plenty near True Center.—Killeen shrugged.

—Maybe they’re human, Dad.—

—Doubtful. It’s been a fearsome long time since humans lived in space.—

—That’s just what history says. We won’t know till we look for ourselves. We’re raiders by heritage, Dad! The Family’s itching
to get out of the ship, stretch their legs.—

Killeen gazed thoughtfully toward the blaze of Galactic Center.—One thing you learn as Cap’n is not to stick your nose into
a beehive just to smell the honey. Those things’ll probably be hostile, even if they aren’t mech. Ever’thing else here seems
to be.—

Toby let the remark ride. It had been over a year, but still Killeen had not recovered from the death of his woman, Shibo.
He kept up his duties as Cap’n but was often withdrawn, pensive, moody. That might have been acceptable for a crewman, but
not for a Cap’n. The price in morale was getting too high.

Still, Toby thought, Killeen was probably right. They were cruising directly into the center of the galaxy, where vast, indifferent
energies worked. Huge, glowering suns. Incandescent clouds of dust and gas. Powers far beyond anything mere humans could manage.
And somewhere here, intelligences to match the mad swirl of stars.

He had studied enough history to know that humans had evolved near a star two-thirds of the way out in the galactic spiral.
The galaxy was a spinning disk, like a toy—only bigger than the human mind could encompass. Out there at Old Earth, far from
the cataclysms of True Center, living had been easy, quiet.

One of his instructional drills had tried to get him to visualize a box that was a light-year on a side, the distance light
itself could travel in a whole year. Out there, near the legendary Earth, that box would hold maybe one single star, on average.

Here, at Galactic Center, such a box held a million stars.

Suns crowded the sky like glowing marbles. Stormy streamers of red gas shrouded them. Stars swarmed like angry bees around
the central axis—the blue-white brilliance of the exact center.

Toby said quietly,—We could come alongside one of ’em, just for a look.—

Killeen shook his head.—Solve one problem, maybe, but make another. A worse one.—

—We’re
starving
, Dad. We have to
do
something.—

Killeen turned and strode angrily away along the worn and pitted hull. His magnetos snapped down to the metal with a hard
clank that Toby felt through his own boots. He trotted after his father. Walking here took a strangely gaited stride, coasting
between steps, letting his boot clamp just long enough to get more momentum. Then he jerked the boot free, pushing forward,
and was off on another glide. Toby was good at it but he couldn’t keep pace with his father.

Argo
had brought them here at near-light speeds, gulping down plasma with her magnetic scoops. There was fuel aplenty, thicker
and thicker as they neared the center. Still, random chunks of rock had pocked and blistered her shiny hull. Now they were
coasting slower, and Killeen used the chance to hull-walk with some safety.
Argo
had joined the gyre of matter here, which swung about True Center at one-thousandth light speed.

Killeen reached a smooth ridge in the
Argo
’s complex bulges and stopped, as if on the brow of a real mountain, back on the planet of their birth. Their ship was a last
grand construction of their ancestors, a vessel as big as a hill. Beyond him loomed a vast dark cloud, like a smudge of ink
against the flaming stars.

Killeen turned and looked back at his son. As Toby approached he saw Killeen’s expression shift to a plaintive longing.

—If only there were planets here . . . —

—Can’t be, I heard,—Toby said flatly, hoping to jar their talk back to realities.

—Why?—Killeen asked sharply.

—Look at these stars! They’re flying past each other so close, they strip planets clean free of their parent sun.—

—Well, that sets planets drifting free, sure. So?—Killeen said stubbornly.

—Sure, free. And frozen. Too far from any sun. No plant life. No food.—

Killeen peered wistfully outward.—So in all this magnificence, there’s no place for life?—

—Yeasay. Prob’ly none for us, either.—Toby ventured this opinion mostly to snap his father out of his illusions. Maybe even
get him to rethink this foolhardy venture to True Center.

Killeen gave him a sober, almost plaintive look.—We have to go on.—

—Why? The radiation levels are so high,
Argo
can barely hold it off. Just coming outside here, you’re risking heavy exposure.—

—It’s our duty, I tell you.—

—Dad, your first duty is to
Argo
, to your crew.—

—There’s something near the Galactic Center. We have to find out what.—

Toby snorted in frustration. Killeen’s eyes narrowed at this, but Toby told himself he was speaking for a majority of the
crew. That was his duty, too. He said bitterly,—Moldy old records hint—
hint!
—at something. That’s
all
. For that we’re supposed to . . . —

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