Free Transvergence by Charles Sheffield Page A

journey. That would suggest that near the Anfract, π = 1 (which doesn't appeal too much to the mathematicians).

I didn't make any measurements, and I hardly know how to spell multiple connectivity. All I can tell is what I saw when I got close to the Anfract, flew around it, and tried to stare inside it.

I say tried . The Anfract won't let you look at anything directly. There's planets inside there—you can sometimes see them, because now and again there's a magnifying-lens effect in space that brings you in so close you can watch the clouds move downside and on a clear day you can count the mountains on the surface. Then that same planet, while you're watching, will dwindle to a little circle of light, and then split, so you find that you're looking at a dozen or a hundred of them, swimming in space in regular formation.

You'll read about that in most books. But there's another effect, too, one that you don't often see and never read about. After you've encountered it, it burns in your mind for the rest of your life and tells you to return to the Anfract again, for one more look.

I call it God's Necklace.

You stare at the Anfract long enough, and a black spot begins to form in the center, a spot so dark that your eyes want to reject its existence. It grows as you watch, like a black cloud over the face of the Anfract (except that you know it must be inside , and part of the structure). Finally it obscures two-thirds and more of the whole area, leaving just a thin annulus of bright tendrils outside it.

And then the first bead of the Necklace appears in that dark circle. It's a planet, just as it would appear from a few planetary radii out; and it's a spectacularly beautiful world, misty and glowing. At first you think it must be one of the planets inside the Anfract—except that as the image sharpens and moves you in closer, you realize that it's familiar , a world you've seen before somewhere on your travels. You once lived there, and loved it. But before you can quite identify the place it begins to move off sideways, and another world is being pulled in, a second bead on the Necklace. You stare at that, and it's just as familiar, and even more beautiful than the first one; a luscious, fertile world whose fragrant air you'd swear you can smell from way outside its atmosphere.

While you're still savoring that planet and trying to remember its name, it, too, begins to move off, pulled out of sight along the Necklace. No matter. The world that draws in after it is even better, the world of your dreams. You once lived there, and loved there, and now you realize that you never should have left. You slaver over it, wanting to fly down to it now , and never leave.

But before you can do so, it, too, is sliding out of your field of view. And what replaces it makes the last planet seem nothing but a pale shadow world . . .

It goes on and on, as long as you can bear to watch. And at the end, you realize something dreadful. You never, in your whole life, visited any one of those paradise worlds. And surely you never will, because you have no idea where they are, or when they are.

You pull yourself together and start your ship moving. You decide that you'll go to Persephone, or Styx, or Savalle, or Pelican's Wake. You tell yourself that you'll forget all about the Anfract and God's Necklace.

Except that you won't, no matter how you try. For in the late night hours, when you lie tight in the dark prison of your own thoughts, and your heart beats slow, and all of life feels short and pointless, that's when you'll remember, and yearn for one more drink at the fountain of the Torvil Anfract.

Your worse fear is that you'll never get to make the trip; and that's when you lie sleepless forever, aching for first light and the noisy distractions of morning.

    —from Hot Rocks, Warm Beer, Cold Comfort:
Jetting Alone Around The Galaxy ; by
Captain Alonzo Wilberforce Sloane (Retired)

Chapter Six: Bridle Gap

    The Erebus was a