Prologue

Time flows strange, out in the big empty.

Nothing seems to move, so far from gravity, as far from anything as it is possible to be.

Nothing but the ship, and the object she set out to pursue, millennia before.

For thousands of years the pursuit had been by mathematics alone, but now she could perceive it, a tumbling cube, unreflective black.

They were close, out there in the big empty.

∞

In the visual wavelengths of the beings that made her, the galaxies were wispy spirals. In the X-ray spectrum they blazed like multicolored jewels.

Andromeda now spanned a tenth of her celestial sphere. The orange giant αAndromedae had become the brightest star in her firmament.

And still she sailed on.

It took her breath away, the austere majesty of it all.

∞

Her sails were lenticular discs, kilometers across. They required electrical energy to interact with the quantum tide. Energy she couldn’t afford to expend. Power she’d need to turn round.

She was a dense knot of circuitry with useless butterfly wings.

Sometimes she thought of just powering on, conserving her momentum, gathering her quarry in her energetic skirts as she accelerated by, but she had work to do.

Her crew agreed. A billion humans, living in her virtuality.

Time was a coin they were ready to spend.

Their destination was the future.