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  He halts at the door of the cabin. He does not attempt to go in with her, nor does she invite him to.

  Softly he says, “Was it very scary?”

  “Scary and wonderful, both. I’ll go out there and do it again when I’ve had a chance to rest.”

  “I don’t want you to harm yourself, Noelle.”

  “As long as I rest enough between each attempt, I’ll be all right.”

  “And if you should make contact, real contact, and the power turns out to be too strong for you to handle — ?”

  “Semele?”

  “Semele, yes.”

  “I looked the story up, you know. It’s in the myth section of the archives, exactly the way you told it to me, except that you left out the part about Zeus hiding the baby in his thigh. But that isn’t important. Semele dies, yes. But first she gets to be the lover of a god. And the mother of another one. And she lives forever in the myth.”

  “That’s all well and good. But you mustn’t take any unnecessary risks.”

  “These are necessary risks. It has to be done.”

  “Yes,” the year-captain says. “It does have to be done, doesn’t it? I should let you rest now, Noelle.”

  She goes inside. He closes the cabin door behind her and walks slowly up the corridor to his own room.

  There is great general excitement and no little bewilderment over Noelle’s discovery outside the ship; but then a few days go by, and a few more, and she does not make a new attempt at reaching the angels. She is not ready yet, she says. She must find ways of insulating herself against the immense magnitude of the force that she will encounter.

  And so they wait, and discuss, and speculate, and wonder. What else can they do?

  During this time the ship continues to head toward Hesper’s Planet C, and Hesper continues to fill them with his usual torrent of optimistic details about their upcoming destination’s great potential as a settlement world. It is, he says, the large and impressive sixth planet of a large and impressive golden-red sun. It has, he declares, all the right properties of atmosphere and gravitation and temperature and such, and a crust that he is completely certain will yield a richly rewarding abundance of every useful element known to the universe. He believes that Planet C has oceans and rivers and lakes, and a fine-looking moon just about as large as the moon of Earth, and a great many other outstanding Features that will afford much comfort and pleasure to the lonely wanderers from Earth.

  In Hesper’s mind, it would seem, the Wotan has already reached Planet C and a successful surveillance mission has been carried out, and now they have all shuttled down to its richly rewarding surface and are busily constructing the crude but charming buildings that will house the colony in its developmental stages. No one else, though, pays much attention to Hesper’s rapturous forecasts. The minds of the others are focused almost entirely on the angels that lurk somewhere all about them in the mysterious void outside the ship. “Angels” is still what everybody calls them, for lack of any better term.

  But nothing more will be learned about the angels until Noelle is ready to make another try at speaking with them. And Noelle is not ready yet. She spends her time apart from everyone else, emerging from her cabin only for meals, saying little when she does.

  So they wait. What else, after all, can they do? They playGo and visit the baths and swim laps in the pool, and draw books and plays and music from the almost infinitely capacious resources of the ship’s archives, and indulge, as most of them always have indulged, in couplings and triplings and other sexual entertainments. And the time passes.

  She keeps her distance even from the year-captain, which he finds very painful. Now that he has broken through his ascetic forbearance, finally, he has no further interest in living a monastic life. He longs for her as intensely as he has ever longed for anyone or anything. But she has retreated into herself; and so does he. Julia lets it be known that she is still available to him, and he thanks her warmly, but he doesn’t avail himself of her availability. Time passes. Like everyone else, the year-captain waits for Noelle.

  At last she announces, with a show of outward confidence, that she is ready to try again.

  She is alone when she does, in her cabin, everything as before. Closes her eyes. Lets herself drift upward, outward.

  The grayness.

  She is in the tube. The infinite void of nospace. She extends herself across it until she has no beginning, no end; she has become infinite herself, an infinite being in a universe of infinities. A streak of pure light. Which reaches out. Reaches. Reaches.

  Angels? Are you there today, angels?

  Yes. She feels one almost at once, the immensity of it, the power. Goes toward it. Spreads her arms wide, lifts up her face to it, feels the warmth. The heat. That burning fiery furnace, roaring and hissing and sizzling and crackling.

  She thinks — hopes — that she has insulated herself this time against destruction, that she has found a way of channeling the overflow of energy so that it will run down past her and dissipate itself harmlessly. She thinks so. Hopes so.

  She is very frightened.

  But she realizes that this must be done. And she is aware that she stands at the brink of wonders.

  Now. Now. The questing mind reaches forth.

  Touches.

  Or almost touches. There is still a barrier, and Noelle is afraid to cross it. She waits there, looking outward,seeing the angel, actuallyseeing it. Its vast cosmos-filling surface. An ocean of fire. The angel’s face is awash with hurricanes of unthinkable activity. Wild tongues of flame rise from it like bristling curls. The broad face is veiled in places, but where the veil parts she is able to see coherent fountains of power climbing through the turbulence, coming up from the angel’s depths, hot cells of fiery matter bigger than entire planets swimming up out of the core of the angel and gliding back down. At the surface itself, again and again, frenzied eruptions leap out across the firmament like daggers of energy stabbing at the cosmos.

  And deeper within, behind and beyond all the turmoil of the surface, there seems to be a zone of shining stillness, like a wall separating the flamboyant forces of the angel’s face from the calm, imperturbable core of the giant being. Noelle longs to reach that quiet core. But how? How? The roaring all about her numbs her soul. She can barely think in that great tumult.

  Angel? Angel, do you hear me? This is Noelle.

  Roaring. Hissing. Crackling. Sizzling.

  Touch me, angel. But touch me only a little, touch me gently. Gently, please. Because I am so very small and you are such a giant.

  A silence, a stillness. Then searing ropes of flame reach up as though to caress her.

  Oh. Oh.

  Around her the whole universe is aflame. The fire — the fire — that burning ocean — those grasping arms of flame — Noelle recoils from them, those writhing fiery strands that are reaching for her—

  She pulls back, afraid. Still afraid. It is too much for her; she will be destroyed. She turns. Flees.

  Finds a safe place, somewhere. Halts. Draws deep breaths.

  Opens her eyes.

  All about her is darkness, as usual. There are no flames anywhere near her. Everything is perfectly still. The angel is gone. She is in her own cabin, aboard the Wotan. Alone. Trembling. She has failed again.

  I’m going to give it one more shot,” she tells the year-captain.

  “But if the risk is so great—”

  “I don’t know that it really is.”

  “You said—”

  “I said, yes. But maybe I was wrong. I’ll try one more time, and we’ll see.”

  He is silent for a long while.

  “You don’t want me to do it,” Noelle says eventually, in a completely neutral tone, nothing reproachful about it.

  “I do and I don’t,” the year-captain says. “I’ve been the one pushing you toward this all along. And pulling you back with the other hand. I’m afraid of losing you, Noelle. We need to see what these things are,
yes. But I’m afraid of losing you.” And he says, after another almost interminable pause, “You know that I love you, Noelle.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if something should happen to you—”

  “Nothing will happen to me,” she says. “Nothing bad.”

  This time as she enters the gray Intermundium she pauses before even beginning to search for the angel, and sends a shaft of thought across the light-years to Earth, to Yvonne.

  She has had no contact of the kind that she once had enjoyed with Yvonne for months, nothing on the level of message-interchange. But she knows Yvonne is still there and trying to reach her, and in some indefinable way the link between them is still open, however clouded it is by the interference caused by the proximity of the angels. It is that link that Noelle attempts to widen and strengthen now.

  Yvonne? Can you hear me? Can you feel me?

  There is the hint of a hint of an affirmative reply. Only the hint of a hint, is all, but that is better than nothing.

  Ride with me, Yvonne. When I want you to let me lean on you, be there beside me. Let me draw strength from you. I’m going to need you soon.

  Does Yvonne hear? Does she know?

  I love you, Yvonne. You are me. I am you. We are in this together.

  Noelle thinks she feels Yvonne’s silent affirmative presence. Hopes she does.

  And now. Now. Noelle moves deeper into the void beyond the ship. She can feel the force of the angel now, the vast godlike thing that waits for her out there.

  Angel? Listen to me, angel! This is Noelle!

  The angel is listening. The angel is waiting.

  I am Noelle. I come to you in love, angel. I give myself to you, angel.

  This time she holds nothing back. She yields herself completely, permitting herself no fear. Yvonne is with her. Yvonne stands beside her, lending her her strength.

  I am yours, Noelle tells the angel.

  Contact.

  optic chiasma thalamus

  sylvian fissure hypothalamus

  medulla oblongata limbic system

  pons varolii reticular system

  corpus callosum cingulate sulcus

  cuneus orbital gyri

  cingulate gyrus caudate nucleus

  — cerebrum!—

  claustrum operculum

  putamen fornix

  choroid globus medial lemniscus

  — mesencephalon!—

  dura mater

  dural sinus

  arachnoid granulation

  subarachnoid space

  pia mater

  cerebellum

  cerebellum

  cerebellum

  * * * *

  The universe splits open. The whole cosmos is burning. Bursts of wild silver light streak across the shining metal dome of the sly. Walls smolder and burst into flames. Worlds turn to ash. There is contact, yes. A sensory explosion — a dancing solar flare — a stream of liquid fire — a flood tide of brilliant radiance, irresistible, unendurable, running into her, sweeping over her, penetrating her, devouring her. Light everywhere. Fire. A great blaze in the firmament.

  Semele.

  The angel smiles and she quakes. Open to me, Noelle, cries the vast tolling voice, and she opens and the force enters fully, taking possession of every nook and cranny of her brain, sweeping resistlessly through her.

  And she and the angel are one. She lies within its bosom, resting, regaining her strength steadily, moment by moment, as its great warmth fills her and revives her.

  After a while she is strong enough to rise and move about within the angel. She discovers that she can travel freely and at will, going as she pleases into any sector of the great being. She drops down beyond the zone of outer turbulence, past the huge fiery cells of angel-stuff that come constantly floating up from the interior, and disappears into the tranquillity of the angel’s core, the cool hidden place where no firestorms rage and the deepest of wisdom resides. There she remains for a considerable while, feeling a peace that she has never known before, until at last it comes to seem to her that if she does not move along she will stay there forever; and so she moves upward again, toward the surface, entering the realm of fiery turmoil that is the angel’s outer semblance. But the fire does not harm her. She is of the angel now; the angel is of Noelle.

  Come. Let me show you things.

  They drift across the face of the cosmos together. There are angels everywhere, a vast choir of them wherever she looks — great ones, small ones, bright ones, faint ones, some massed in clusters, some burning in solitary splendor. The sound of their voices fills the heavens.

  She and her guide halt in a place of deep darkness, and there Noelle sees what she understands to be a new angel coming into being, barely glimmering as it is born. It coalesces swiftly as she watches, out of a cool, dark cloud of dust that is collapsing inward on itself to become a compact ball. As it shrinks and takes on spherical form it begins to turn, slowly and then faster and then much faster yet, and to give off heat, faintly at first, and then with increasing force, until it is glowing red-hot, white-hot. It has begun to spit matter into the void too, feverishly hurling segments of itself in every direction in what seems like a tantrum: a prodigious and prodigal outpouring of energy, ferocious and yet somehow comical.

  A playful baby. An infant angel savoring the first throes of life. They watch for a while; and then they leave it in the midst of its sport.

  Come along, now. Onward.

  Onward, yes. The sky is very bright here, full of angels, and all of them are singing as angels should sing, a wonderful celestial choir whose harmonies fill the void. There is brightness everywhere, a sea of light.

  Here Noelle sees a giant angel that burns with so steady and fierce a radiance that she does not understand why it has not already exhausted its own substance. It blazes in the firmament like an angry blue eye, unwearyingly hurling its fires outward to an immense distance. It is more like a god than an angel, this giant, an angry god, pouring itself forth in inexplicable wrath upon the fabric of the universe.

  And then here, farther away, in one of the deepest places, are angels all in a cluster, old angels, ancient ones, thousands of them, millions, each pressed up close against its neighbor so that they seem to form one huge shining wall, a single brilliant mass. But Noelle’s angel shows her that they are many, not one, and lets her reach toward them so that she can experience their great age, their inordinate wisdom. How old are they? Millions of years? Billions?

  We were old before the sky was young, one of them tells her.

  And another says — or perhaps it is the same one — We came out of the All-Engulfing and one day we will return to the All-Engulfing, but we have been here since before the before, and we will remain until after the after.

  And a third tells her, We precede and we follow, and we exist when there is no existence, and we are love when love no longer is. And we are you and you are us.

  Noelle understands perfectly, or at least thinks she does; and when they give her their blessing, she gives them hers. And moves along, for her guide has other things for her to see in other parts of the cosmos.

  And here is a very old angel, an angel that is dying.

  That surprises her. She says that she would not have believed that it was possible for angels to die, and her angel tells her calmly that it is, it is not only possible but necessary. If angels can be born, angels must also die. Everything dies, even angels; and everything is born again. The only thing that has neither a beginning nor an end, it says, is the universe itself, which was there at the beginning and before, and will be there at the end and afterward.

  Look. Here.

  They have reached the dying angel, in a region apart from the others. Its light is very dim, though there still is warmth coming from it, the midday warmth of a winter day, perhaps. There is no brilliance to this angel. Its face is dull and dark, as though it is covered by an ocean of heavy mud, or thick lava, perhaps, sultry in color, a deep purple
streaked with occasional widely separated regions of crimson and scarlet. Across the cooling surface of the dying angel there still is some sparse sign of sluggish activity, the slow, difficult movement of lumpy masses of matter sliding forward in the mud, some of them black or gray, some glowing dull red like metal ingots that have fallen from the forge but are not yet cold.

  There is no roaring here, no hissing, no crackling, no sizzling. There is only the deep muffled sound of titanic forces grinding to a halt, of colossal energies winding down. Even as Noelle watches, the painful movements of the traveling masses grow even more slow and the bright streaks of crimson and scarlet give up much of the richness of their hue. Everything here will stop, soon. There will be nothing left but cinders and ash. But when she looks up, beyond the place where the dying angel hangs in the firmament, she sees dust already coalescing in the distance, the first glimmers of brightness taking form. This angel is going; a new one will soon be arriving. And so it has been, Noelle understands, since the beginning of time. And before the beginning.

  And now see this one, Noelle’s angel tells her.

  They travel onward, and come to a golden angel, a small one in a region of the void that has very few other angels around it. It pays no heed to them, but goes on turning steadily on its axis like a child amusing itself in a playground. Noelle understands that this is a young angel, not a newborn one by any means, but not yet mature — an adolescent one, perhaps. They remain in its vicinity for a time, watching its self-absorbed antics. There is something extremely pleasant about being near this charming young angel, Noelle thinks. Watching it, she feels almost as though she has returned to her own childhood. Yvonne seems very near, closer than she has been in a long while. They are girls again together, giggling, running, colliding, giggling again as they tumble down in a heap.

  There is more to see. There is so much to see that Noelle is dazzled and dazed by it all, here in this universe of angels, this infinity of godlike beings, beings who were old when the sky was young, beings who have seen the before and will see the after. After a time she can absorb nothing more of it. Her guide seems to comprehend that; for the tour is brought to an end, and Noelle returns to the bosom of her own angel, and glides downward and inward, to that hidden zone of serenity that lies beneath the roiling tongues of fire, and there she rests, there she sleeps.