Beyond Algol, the  Marlow fell through dead space at
impossible velocities. Inside the metal cylinder was heat and
life. Outside was dust and gas and endless cold.
They were trying to talk Bau down, but he wasn’t having
it. Navigators were always a little weird – you had to be, just
to hold the hyperspatial math in your head – but Bau had it
worse than usual.
“It doesn’t matter. Once we’ve seen it, we’ve named it.
We’ve given it power over us now.”
“That’s nonsense,” said Malz, who fancied himself a philosopher. “We named the cat Antonio. Did that give it power?”
“Did it not? Can you think of the cat now by another
name? Can you think of it as anything but ‘cat’?”
“But we’ve none of us named the Ghost,” said Nik, who
resented every second Bau spent babbling and not computing.
She had a schedule to keep. “And besides, it isn’t real. It’s just
an optical effect, like a rainbow.”
“Are rainbows not real, then? God’s promise to keep Man
alive, that’s an illusion? Perhaps it is. But it hardly matters;
I’ve named It now. I’ve seen Its Name in the compile.”
“What, it’s math? Pythagoras will be glad to hear it.” Malz
tried to turn things into a joke, but Bau brushed off the attempt.
“Pythagoras probably did hear It. Or see It. He believed in
ghosts, after all, and he wore the pentagram for some reason.
No, It isn’t just here and now, It’s everywhere and everywhen.”
“If it were everywhen,” put in Apol, who studied history
out of boredom, “wouldn’t it have already been found? And
named? By Pythagoras, or Newton, or Einstein?”
“There is no ‘already’ with It. Time is like a sheet of water
to It. If you put your hand into water, what does it matter
which finger goes in first? It is being named, here
and now, and in Early Data-Age America, and
in medieval Bulgaria, and in the Victorian
West, and in worlds and times we can only
imagine. Its Name is coming through our
space-time like our fingers go through the
surface of the water.”
“All the more reason to get back in that navchamber,” said Nik, a little too brightly. “The
sooner we get to Omicron, the sooner you can
warn someone. Tell them your discovery.”
Bau smiled at them. “Oh, no. That’s the one
thing I can never do. If I spread Its Name, It
expands. The water – our space-time – boils
away from It, and everything never was.”
Apol got there first. “You can’t mean you . . .”
“Yes. I’ve opened the drives out. We’re well
off course, and there’s no fuel left for corrections. Its Name dies with me. With all of us.”
Beyond Algol, a metal cylinder once called
the Marlow fell through dead space, its velocity slowing, coming to match that of the dust
and gas around it. After a few spot flares, it
cooled to match its background perfectly.