//------------------------------//
// Unexpected Encounters 
// Story: Cosmic Lotus 
// by Goldfur 
//------------------------------//

Playbitz scanned the large monitor screen in front of him, just as he had done thousands of times before.  Instrument read-outs displayed on the screen’s edges were just as they should be, and the scene that they framed was virtually unchanging.  The ship had slowed down enough that the image from the forward camera no longer had to be compensated for the Dappler Effect, but only one stellar object still was within its view.  Having passed all the other stars, only their goal – the Far Star – remained in the center of its screen, with the background of dark purple, blue, and red that was the dust wall beyond it.

An intensely bright tiny ball of light suddenly shot into view and rapidly shrank into the distance.  At a precise distance from the ship, it detonated into an overwhelmingly bright and huge sphere of pure light, but the screen automatically dimmed to compensate until the light source faded.  The light bomb added another increment to the deceleration of the starship as the solar sails caught nearly half of its output.  For days, the Cosmic Lotus had been drawing mana from the miniature star that powered the ship, priming the balls of energy with a spell to make them into light bombs, and then firing them ahead of the vessel at a steady rate calculated to slow them down just before reaching the Far Star, or at least the inexplicable point from which the Far Star’s light was emanating.  It was far more gradual and less efficient than the alicorn boost that had started the journey, but it was nonetheless effective.

Playbitz swiveled around in his chair and said, “All systems nominal, Commander.  Deceleration still on schedule.”  He had said this dozens of times since they had started slowing the Cosmic Lotus, but while a little boring, it was nevertheless reassuring that everything was proceeding as planned.

Bluequill nodded.  “Acknowledged, Lieutenant.”  He gestured at the 3D display that was set up between them.  Griffin knight to level two alpha five.”  The magic game board automatically responded by moving the appropriate playing piece to the designated location.

Playbitz frowned.  His thestral scout and unicorn archer were both under threat, but if he took them out of danger, his princess would soon be imperiled.  He sighed – it looked like Bluequill was going to win another game.  He heard a chuckle come from the other chair in the room, and gave Wandering a dirty look.

The alicorn’s attention was mostly on maintaining the mass-reduction spell that was vital to the deceleration process, which was why Commander Bluequill was currently in charge.  However, a small part of his attention had been following the game between the griffon and the pegasus.  Such games had been vital for staving off boredom during the shifts on the bridge which were characterized by long periods of nothing happening, and the skills of the players had increased considerably over the years.  Defeating the wily griffon continued to be a very elusive goal though for most of his opponents.  Playbitz was not going to go down without a fight though.

“Unicorn archer to level one gamma seven.”

“You’ll be sorry,” Wandering said before leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes to return his full concentration on the spell.

“Huh?  What do you…?”

“Zebra assassin to level five epsilon two.  Royal jeopardy.”

“What the…?  Oh, ponyfeathers!  How did I miss that?”  The pegasus sighed in frustration.  “I concede.”

The griffin smiled.  “Do you wish to play again?”

Playbitz rolled his eyes.  “I prefer not to be humiliated more than once a day, Commander.”

Bluequill dismissed the game with a flick of a talon.  “Eyes back on your station then, Lieutenant.”

The pegasus turned around and scanned the instruments once more, noting nothing unusual.  Another light bomb detonated and the screen dimmed.  As it came back to full brightness, something caught Playbitz’s eyes.  He frowned and watched carefully when the next bomb went off, and then another.  His hooves tapped on the controls and the view went from normal to high magnification.  At astronomical distances, magnification was normally pointless, but this close to their goal, it finally revealed something previously unknown.  As he watched, six spheres that had been previously lost in the glare from the Far Star pulsed dimly about five seconds after the light bomb detonated.   When the screen returned to normal brightness, he could see their glow fade and leave them silhouetted against the background.  He dismissed the distracting screen read-outs from the instruments and watched in fascination as it happened again, this time noticing a tunnel-like shadow around the Far Star extending as far as the spheres.  He spun around in his chair, confusion and concern on his face.



“What in Celestia’s name is that?” he demanded.

Bluequill had already noticed the unusual sight on the big screen, but he had no more idea about it than Playbitz had.  He tapped a button on his chair’s controls and said, “Lieutenant Commander Starry Path to the bridge immediately!”

Wandering had opened his eyes at Playbitz’s words and looked at the screen, but comprehended what he was seeing no more than the others did.

Starry burst onto the bridge a minute later.  “What’s up, Comman…?”  She trailed off upon spotting what was on the screen.

“Starry – I need to know what we’re seeing and I need to know now!” Bluequill ordered.

Starry hastened over to her station and got to work.  Bringing the TESS to bear on the phenomenon, she made some quick readings and gasped.  “Sweet Celestia, no!”  She whirled around and said urgently, “Commander, we have to slow down a lot faster.  Double – no triple the light bombs.”

Bluequill did not waste time arguing with the alicorn mare.  He hit another button on the chair and squawked, “Bridge to Engineering!”

“Radiance Point here, Bridge.”

“We need an immediate increase in the rate of light bomb production to triple its current rate.”

“WHAT?!  No way, Commander.  Double is no problem, but triple is virtually impossible.”

“You have your orders, Point.  Get it done however you can!”

Something in Bluequill’s tone stifled further objections by Radiance.  “On it, Commander.”

Almost immediately, light bombs started coming out at a far faster rate.  Bluequill turned back to Starry and said, “Explanations now, please.”

All eyes were upon Starry when she nervously replied.  “Those appear to be moonlets directly in our path to the Far Star.  We are too close to avoid them now, and they are too close together for the Cosmic Lotus to pass between them with the sails extended.  We have to stop before we reach them.”

“Damn!  What’s that shadow?” the griffon demanded.

“It looks like some sort of tunnel through the dust cloud.  I’m getting some contradictory results here.  One set of data says that the Far Star lies just within this bubble inside the dust cloud, but another set seems to suggest that the star lies outside of the wall.”

“That’s impossible!”

“I know!  But there are those moonlets and there’s that tunnel.  You explain it.”

Bluequill snarled and turned back to the screen.

“Calm down, Commander” Wandering said.  “Give Starry a chance to get more data.”

“Do you wish to take over, Captain?”

“No.  Starry has to concentrate on her instruments, so I have to maintain the mass-reducing spell.  Just watch the situation carefully.”  Wandering then closed his eyes and tried to increase the effectiveness of the spell, hoping that even a tiny increase would be of benefit.

The tension on the bridge was palpable as the odd scene grew closer.  Everyone jumped as the comm suddenly came to life.

“Engineering to Bridge!  We have a misfire – one of the light bombs did not have its detonation spell set correctly.  Commander – the crew can’t keep up with the demand.  They’re starting to make mistakes.”

Bluequill looked towards Starry and she shook her head.  “We’ll be cutting it fine already,” she said.  “We must keep slowing down as quickly as possible.”

The griffon nodded.  “Engineering – we don’t have a choice.  Keep up the pace.”

There was a long moment of silence before Point replied.  “Aye, sir.”

Meanwhile the bridge crew were watching the scene unfold on the screen.  The intervals between the light bombs going off and the moonlets pulsing gradually decreased as they drew closer. As they grew closer, the visual sensors provided a much clearer view.  The light bomb that had failed to detonate continued on towards the Far Star, but at the moment that it appeared to pass between the six moonlets, it suddenly exploded.  Each of the spheres pulsed with a huge burst of light, and ropes of energy leapt between them, linking them up in a roughly hexagonal arrangement.  The shadow between the moonlets intensified and the tunnel effect became very pronounced with the Far Star gleaming at the distant end of it.  The starship suddenly shuddered.

“What was that?” demanded Bluequill, expecting Starry to answer.

Playbitz responded instead.  “Commander – we’ve stopped slowing down!  Something is pulling us in!”

Starry spoke up.  “He’s right.  That energy matrix is generating a field that is distorting space, causing us to fall into it.”

“We have to increase our braking.  Playbitz, use the forward vectoring rockets!”

“Sir – with the mass-reducing spell in effect, their contribution would be almost nothing!”

“Anything is better than nothing, Lieutenant.  Full thrust on all forward rockets!”

“Aye, sir.”

Bluequill hit the comm again.  “Engineering – is there any way to increase the output of the light bombs?”

Point’s voice came back with dread finality.  “No sir, we’ve already done that.  Commander, I’ve looked at the feed from the bridge instruments.  We’re not going to be able to overcome both our inertia and the pull of whatever that is.  We just aren’t equipped for it.”

Starry nodded.  “He’s right.  And at the speed we’ll be going when the sails hit, we may not survive.”

“Furl the sails!  If we can’t stop, we have to go through.”

“Furling sails,” Playbitz replied.  “Commander – can I stop the rockets?  Our fuel situation is getting critical.  They were never meant to be used constantly like this.”

“Yes, stop the rockets.  How long before the sails are furled?”

Starry replied, “You already know how long that it takes.  They don’t have a means of speeding up.”

“They don’t have to be fully furled – just enough to allow us to pass through safely.”

“How much is enough, Commander?  I can measure the distance those moonlets are apart, but what other forces are at play here?  A significant gravity field alone would wreak havoc as the sails pass.”

Unable to give her an answer, Bluequill resumed watching the screen in silence.  Long minutes passed before anything more was said.  Even though the sails were being furled, they were still decelerating the ship, although their effectiveness was diminishing at an ever-increasing rate.  Starry watched their progress closely, hoping for good news, but eventually she had to concede that they were taking too long.  It took a lot of time to reel in many kilometers of graphene sail despite its thinness.

“Sir, we’re not going to make it.  I estimate that about three hundred meters of sail will still be beyond the inner diameter of the circle of moonlets when we reach them.”

Wandering spoke up then.  “Detach the sails.”

Bluequill frowned.  “Without the sails, we’ll be helpless.”

“With the sails, the torque imposed by hitting the moons at our current speed could rip the ship apart.  Ditch them.  We’ll worry about the rest later.  One crisis at a time.”

“Aye, Captain.  Playbitz – prepare to detach solar sails.”

“Aye, sir.”

While the pegasus’ hooves danced over the controls, Bluequill contacted Engineering once more.  “Halt production of the light bombs,” he ordered.

“Thank Celestia!  Production halted, sir.”

Playbitz announced, “Explosive bolts primed and ready.  Safety protocols require command authorization.”

Wandering discontinued his mass-reducing spell, and there was a lurch as the pull on the ship sharply increased.  He said, “CONN – command override Omega One.”

“Command override acknowledged,” CONN replied.

Bluequill said, “CONN – command confirmation Omega Two.”

“Command confirmed,” Conn replied.  “Explosive bolts activated.”

“Detonate explosive bolts,” Bluequill ordered.

There were a series of muffled thuds as the fastenings of the solar sail booms and the tensioning cables were shattered, and the sails began to drift away from the ship.

“Explosive bolt failure in boom four,” CONN dispassionately announced.

“What!” Bluequill squawked.  “Get me a camera on that boom!”

“On it!”  Starry activated the camera nearest to boom four and put the image on the main screen.  The boom was slowly bending forward, being drawn by the force being exerted by the moonlets.  As they watched, the pressure became too great and the boom shattered in half, tearing off a large portion of the sail with it.  However, the other half stubbornly stayed attached to the ship via the tensioning cables.  Almost gracefully, hundreds of meters of graphene sail folded itself over the ship, obscuring the camera.  Starry switched the view back to the forward camera, but even then they could still see the torn sail slowly encroaching on the view.  The seven successfully detached sails could be seen accelerating towards the moonlets which were beginning to show individual features.

“Are those… runes on the moonlets?” Starry asked.

Bluequill snorted in disgust.  “I wouldn’t be surprised.  I’d say there was some strong ancient magic at work here.”

“I wish Mom or Mama Twilight was here.  Maybe they would know.”

“Have we got time to try to contact them?” Playbitz asked.

Starry shook her head regretfully.  “Whatever that is ahead of us, we’re committed to going through it now.”

“Umm… about that,” Playbitz said with a worried look on his face.

“What now?” Bluequill asked.

“The damaged sail is pulling us out of alignment.”

“Then compensate!”

“I am!  But it’s taking a lot of effort by our vectoring system, and we’ve already used a lot of our fuel.”

“Are we in any danger of being pulled into one of the moonlets?” Wandering asked.

“The ship isn’t, but the sail might,” Starry said.  “I’ve managed to get a fairly accurate measurement, and the moonlets form a circle roughly two hundred and sixty meters in internal diameter.  The sail fragment is a couple of hundred meters long, but it is being pulled forward.  The attractive force seems to be pulling us towards the center of the circle.  We may be lucky and thread the needle.”

“Have any of you noticed what’s happening inside that… tunnel?” Playbitz asked, pointing with his right hoof.

Swirls of energy were noticeably growing within the passage between the moonlets.

Wandering said, “I don’t think we want to find out what that unknown energy can do to us.  Playbitz – try to keep us centered and away from that tunnel wall.  Starry – reinforce the ship’s shields.”

“Aye, Captain!” Playbitz and Starry chorused.

Playbitz worked feverishly to keep them aligned as the moonlets drew ever closer.  The first of the detached sails reached the array and seemed to be sucked into it.  An edge struck the wall of the tunnel and there was a burst of light as the sail was ripped to shreds, the super-strong material nothing more than tissue paper in the grasp of the strange forces within.

Wandering gulped and said, “Playbitz – let me rephrase… whatever you do, don’t let us hit the wall of that tunnel. Fuel economy be damned!”

“You got it, sir!” Playbitz replied fervently.

In rapid succession, the rest of the sails met the same fate.  As the Cosmic Lotus drew closer, the watchers could finally make out the markings on the moonlets.  Each had a different one.  Starry had the TESS focus on them.  A stylized overlay was put on the screen that showed the markings for what they were.

“Those are ancient runes,” Wandering said with surprise.

“There seem to be far more, only much smaller,” Starry reported. “The big one seems to be the focus of the others.”

“Then we are dealing with really old magic,” Bluequill stated.

“That doesn’t make them safe,” Wandering replied.  “But it does mean that we were meant to find this.  It has been waiting for someone to come along and activate it, whatever it is.”

“I think we’re all going to find out in a few minutes,” Playbitz said with false cheer.  “Allowing for the acceleration that thing is imposing upon us, I estimate that we will reach it in seven and a half minutes.  Anyone want to grab a coffee while we wait?”

Wandering stared at the pegasus for a long moment before chuckling.  “I think you’ll be needing something a bit stronger if we get through this okay.  Keep up the good work.”

Playbitz never took his eyes off his board, and constantly worked to adjust their attitude and trajectory.  Nevertheless he gave a small smile and said, “I’ll take you up on that, Captain.”

Wandering managed a chuckle before touching a comm button.  “Attention all crew members!  This is the captain speaking.  We are about to encounter an unknown phenomenon which is potential extremely dangerous.  Secure equipment and then take your stations.  Use departure thrust and maneuver protocols and secure yourselves too.  You have seven minutes.  This is not a drill!”

It was a nervous wait for the bridge crew, made all the worse each time another sail struck the passageway between the moonlets and was violently torn apart.  Playbitz kept reducing the magnification of the screen until it could be reduced no further, and the passageway between the moonlets rushed up to meet them.



“All crew – brace for entry,” Wandering announced moments before they passed the threshold.

There was a flash of light, and the torn sail wrenched them to the side.  The ship bucked and shuddered as the forces within the passageway fought for dominance.  The tunnel stretched out ahead of them, their universe now bounded by the swirling energies within what seemed to be an ever-warping tunnel terminating in the bright glow of the star that they had been chasing for over a decade of ship’s time.  The sail touched the energy swirls that bounded the tunnel and parts of it disintegrated in a flare of power that shook the ship like a toy and sent them drifting towards the opposite side of the enormous tube.

“Get us back in the center!” yelled Wandering.

“I’m trying!” Playbitz yelled back, desperately manipulating the vectoring rockets to stabilize them and push them back, only to have the flapping sail remnant touch the side once again and thrust them back towards the edge of the tube.  Every loose object within the bridge was sent hurtling willy-nilly throughout the bridge, their flight sometimes terminating in worrying sounds, and Wandering wondered what it was like in the more cluttered rooms.  Then he thought of the Park and its large pond.  Oddly, the thought of having to work to clean up a flood cheered him up a bit, because the need to mop up implied that they would get through this crisis alive.  As long they could hold together until it ended, then they would have plenty of time to fix things.  Hopefully both the ship and the crew could last until then.  But how long was that?

The seconds seem to drag out forever, and then it all suddenly stopped.  On the screen, there was no longer any sign of the bizarre tunnel.  A brilliant star was nearly centered on the screen, but it was far from alone.



Starry gaped in awe.  “Oh sweet Celestia!  There’s millions of them!”  Stars of various sizes and colors filled every part of the screen, some so thickly that they seemed to be a river of milk flowing through an eerily black sky. The sea of white was obscured in places by irregular dark clouds which in turn had even more stars in front of them.

Everyone on the bridge looked at the unfamiliar scene with wonder until Playbitz had the presence of mind to turn on a rearward facing camera.  Behind them, six moonlets were rapidly losing their glow, and the arcs of energy between them had disappeared.  Only a dark purple shadow could be seen within them.  Something else was missing though.

“Umm… what’s happened to the dust wall?” Playbitz asked.

Behind the moonlets, there was no sign of the dust cloud that contained the bubble of space that they had known all their lives.

“I have a better question,” Bluequill said.  “Where in the universe are we?”

All eyes turned to Starry, and she gulped nervously.  “I’ll… get to work on that,” she said with a nervous smile.





The Chrome Changeling who had been monitoring the passive feed from the Cosmic Lotus frowned before hitting a comm switch.

“This is Helix.  We have a situation on board the Cosmic Lotus.”  He listened to the response before continuing, “The ship has encountered a possible threat.  I recommend that Princess Twilight come immediately to the control room.”  He waited for an acknowledgement before disconnecting the comm.

Twilight and the rest of the science team as well as various members of House Path had already gathered for the upcoming milestone. The Cosmic Lotus was due to stop decelerating on the verge of the Far Star system to do a thorough scan of the volume of space around it for planets.  This not only gave the crew the opportunity to choose their final course, but it also marked the official moment that they had arrived at their destination.  Naturally a special celebration had been organized at the princess’ castle for this historic occasion, and it took a while for the message to get through.  By the time Twilight frantically teleported into the control room with a number of other family members, the threat had unfolded into crisis.

“What is that?” the alicorn demanded as she stared at the still image that Helix had downloaded from the data stream.

“No one knows, ma’am,” Helix replied.  “However, it seems to be drawing the ship into it.  The crew are trying to brake, but are having no success.”

Twilight tried to comprehend the situation, and squinted at the moonlets.  “Enlarge the view on one of those spheres.”

Helix increased the size of the image as much as was practical.

“Those are runes!  What in the universe are they doing there?  Helix – contact the Lotus and try to get me more data!”

“I’ve already tried – the crew seem preoccupied at the moment.”

“Then get me more data from the stream.  I need to help!”

The changeling tried his best, but was limited to what the starship had been automatically sending back to base, and in the brief time before the Cosmic Lotus jettisoned its sails, Twilight was unable to glean any more relevant information.

“Where’s Destined?  He needs to get over to the ship!” Twilight said with a tinge of panic in her voice.

Free Agent replied, “He’s showing some VIP’s around the facilities, remember?  I’ve already got my drones looking out for him.  When they spot him, they’ll… whoops – found him.”

A moment later, the blue alicorn stallion teleported into the control room.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” he asked even as he noticed the latest image on the screen.

“You have to teleport to the ship and help them!” Twilight blurted out.

“I don’t know what I can do there, but I’ll try.”  His horn lit up, and then died down again, his expression confused.  “I can’t find either of the mana beacons!”

“What?!  How could that happen?!” Twilight screeched.

“Something must be interfering with them.”

Twilight stared at the image with the glowing runes on the moonlets.  “Oh, Tartarus!” she whispered helplessly.

Long Path said to Helix, “Can you put me on the comm?  Maybe I can get through to them?”

“Good luck with that, sir,” Helix replied even as he complied.

“Lord Path to Cosmic Lotus – are you receiving me?”

There was a long moment of silence, and then a burst of static.  Helix double-checked the instrument readings from the comm and said with shocked seriousness, “The link to the Cosmic Lotus has been lost.”

“That’s impossible!” Twilight yelled.  “The way the sympathetically-linked crystal comm systems work, there’s always some sort of signal!  They didn’t even lose their link during the time dilation!”

Helix cringed a little at the alicorn’s outburst.  “Unless one has been destroyed,” he reluctantly pointed out.

A dread silence hung over the group as the seconds dragged out into minutes without resumption of the signal.  A sob broke the hush as Twilight sunk to the floor in anguish.  Free put a comforting wing around his wife, at a loss for words.  The others looked at each other, trying to comprehend what had happened to their family and friends.

Eventually Path gave a deep sigh and said, “I’m going to inform our guests what has happened.  Let me know the moment that the situation changes.”  ‘If it changes,’ he added to himself as he departed the control room.





Commander Bluequill walked up to his Captain behind the small artificial hill in the Park that served as a stage. “Everyone is assembled, sir. The bridge crew will be viewing you on the main view screen and the engineering repair teams will be getting the audio feed.”

Wandering Star nodded. “Very good. I’ll address everyone in a moment. Go ahead and take your seat.”

Bluequill saluted and took his leave.  Wandering frowned.

Starry Path blinked and commented to her mate. “When was the last time that happened?”

Wandering looked over, then resumed his pensive stare straight ahead.  “What? Getting a salute from Bluequill? Before the mission started, I think.”  He sighed. “Starry, I’m hoping your astronomical observations have more good news than I do for the crew. Or at least more answers. Everyone is covering their fear in their own way.” He gave a vague wave towards where Bluequill had been standing.  “I’m hoping you can distract them.”

Starry nodded. “I think I can guarantee that.”

Wandering smiled briefly. “See that you do.” He then walked to the top of the hill and looked down upon his crew gathered before him.  Their conversations died out quickly.

“By now, you are all familiar with the initial data on the gateway that carried us to this portion of the universe.  I’ll summarize the current ship status.  The comm link and the two mana beacons have lost their connections to their counterparts on Equus.  There doesn’t appear to be any damage to the mana crystals, so we’re hopeful that the links can be re-established.  After critical repairs, that will be Engineering’s top priority.”

The crew started talking animatedly, only to be cut off.

“Techbird has completed removal of the damaged solar sail.  As we suspected, a dust particle had damaged the separation mechanism during our approach to the gateway.” He shifted his weight. “We have measured the velocity at which we were ejected from the gateway tunnel and compared that to our remaining chemical propellant.  We currently do not have sufficient fuel to make a direct return.  The engineering and navigation teams will explore other options.”

This time, the wave of fear he felt from the crowd was palpable as they began talking amongst themselves again.

“Starry Path will now tell us what we know and what we believe regarding this region of space.”  Wandering walked to the bottom of the hill, gratefully taking a mug of tea that Kale Robe had ready for him.

Starry trotted to the top of the hill and looked out over the expectant and worried faces. “So what’s new, everypony?” 

There was a moment of silence, followed by a round of chuckles and strained laughter.

The alicorn smiled. “Let’s get right to it then.  Not all of you have had the chance to look at the video feeds yet, so be ready for a bit of a shock.”

Using her magic, she dimmed the lights in the Park and turned on the projector unit.   She looked up at the floor to ceiling scene behind her, the pinpoints of light creating a silhouette of her form on the hill.



Starry heard the gasps behind her and turned. “Each of those tiny flecks of light is a star. Or more than one star.  Without question, we are in a region of the universe with far more stars, and probably planets, than we ever could have imagined.  It puts the few hundred that we knew back home to shame.  If you needed a reason to justify why we are here, look no further than this.”

An animated buzz carried through the crowd. Cosmic Dawn lifted a hoof and spoke up. “What is that smudge in the corner?”

Starry nodded.  “I wondered if anyone would notice that.  As many of you know, Moonlit Path and I use a version of Far Sight’s magnified optics spell to gather light for our visual sensors.  By pulling in all the light coming from that area of the sky over a circle of one hundred meters radius, we can show you that section of the sky in real time.”  

Starry’s horn lit up and the view zoomed and rotated.



The talking became louder.  “This is what Moonlit and I are tentatively calling a star whirlpool,” Starry continued.  “It appears to be one of a few standard structures for large groups of stars.”

Cosmic Dawn raised her hoof again. Starry pointed at her. “How many stars and how large?” she asked.

Starry smirked.  “To a rough order of magnitude, over a trillion stars and a hundred thousand light years across.”

Wandering frowned and swallowed his tea untasted.  He sensed less fear around him, but it was replaced by plenty of anxiety.

After waiting a minute, Starry’s horn went out and returned the background to the previous view. “It’s likely that we live in one such star whirlpool that is of similar structure. We are currently perhaps three quarters of the way to the edge. The milky light areas of this image? That’s the direction to the center where the stars are the densest. There is much less of that brightness in the opposite direction.” 

Starry looked directly at Wandering for a moment with a twinkle in her eye.  “Now since Moonlit and I are the discoverers of our home whirlpool, tradition dictates that we have the privilege of naming where we live.”  The room became quiet. “We discussed what would be an appropriate name. Something that properly expressed its grandeur and indescribable power.”  Near the back of the crowd, Moonlit cocked her head a bit and furrowed her brow, obviously confused.

She’s stalling. Why is she stalling? Wandering thought as he brought the mug to his lips. 

Starry continued. “Finally, we decided on ‘Wandering’s Flatulence’!”

The silence was broken by the sound of tea shooting out of Wandering’s nose as he broke into a hacking cough.

The room exploded with laughter.  Bluequill helpfully pounded on his captain’s back until the griffon could no longer keep upright.  The screeches, hoofstomps, and chirps rolled on and on as Wandering got his coughing under control.  He felt the tension in the Park melt away like ice in the Saddle Arabian sun, but that did not prevent him from glaring at his partner, although his smile removed any venom from it.

Starry gave a sloppy salute worthy of their brother Flix. She mouthed silently, “Just following orders.”

Wandering returned the salute. “Just you wait. Yours is coming soon.”

Starry smirked. “Looking forward to it.”

After a few minutes, the crew settled down of their own accord. Wandering was curious why Starry had not stepped down. Was there more?

She cleared her throat and got the majority of everyone’s attention, though there was still the undercurrent of a few conversations. “Moonlit and I also located a very small patch of sky with no stars. We expanded the magnified optics spell to its maximum of 450 meters and made one image of all light from that area over the course of 90 minutes, just in case there were any dim light sources there.”

The view changed again.



The room became completely silent. Not even breathing was heard.

“Every one of these structures, even the far away points, appears to be a star whirlpool.  Again, we can only give a rough estimate.  We are surrounded by at least a hundred billion star whirlpools.  That means that our home star is one of roughly one hundred sextillion others… that we can see.”

The silence stretched out.

“Any more questions?”  Starry scanned the crowd and saw no hooves or paws raised, but lots of pupils reduced to pinpricks despite the overall darkness of the Park.  ‘Weird,’ she thought before continuing aloud.  “And that’s what we know as of today.  Our universe just got a whole lot bigger.”





“I believe that I have a way for us to propel ourselves,” Radiance Point reported.

Wandering and Bluequill looked at the unicorn expectantly.  “Well, don’t keep us waiting,” the alicorn ordered.

Point nodded.  “Now that we have slowed down so much, our forward shield is not so vital to our needs.  I propose that we reconfigure it to project a cup-shaped field ahead of us.  The mana balls that we configured as light bombs can be re-spelled to produce a concussive force instead.  Because the force field would be out of the influence of your mass-reducing spell, we will be able to get a similar amount of acceleration as with the solar sails.   However, while the sails would flex to absorb the shock of the photon bombardment, the field would have to be tuned to absorb and release the impulse from the explosions in a more gradual manner so as to not treat the ship like a hammer hitting a nail, but I believe this will work.  It will be a lot rougher and less efficient than the light bombs, but it’s a whole lot better than being stuck without any form of propulsion besides a few maneuvering rockets.  Besides, we seriously need to conserve what little chemical fuel that we have left.”

Wandering brightened considerably at that news.  He looked at Bluequill.  “What do you think, Commander?  Will it work?”

Bluequill looked thoughtful.  “Off the top of my head, I can’t see why not.”

The alicorn looked back to Point.  “Go ahead with that.  What help do you need?”

“I already have started the guys working on the equipment, but I’ll need the assistance of a control systems specialist, so I want to requisition Albite Feldspar.”

“You’ve got him,” Wandering assured Point.  “How long do you think it will take to make the configuration changes?”

“About a day, give or take.”

“Keep me up to date.”

“Aye, Captain.”  Point departed Wandering’s office, and the alicorn heaved a sigh of relief.

Bluequill said, “You do realize that this method will draw a lot more heavily on our mana reserves than the light bombs did, and we have yet to figure out if we can return through the gateway and hopefully re-establish contact with Equus.”

“I know, Galen, but I choose to be optimistic.  Mere minutes ago, we were a floundering ship, but now we’ll soon be back under way again.  We have a marvelously diverse and skillful crew, and between us we’ll figure it out.”

The griffon was not quite so upbeat though.  “That assumes that nothing else goes wrong in the meantime.”

“We spent over ten years crossing the stars before we had a major problem.  I think I’ll play the odds.”  The alicorn grinned and clapped the griffon on the back.  “And if things do go wrong, you can tell me ‘I told you so’,”

“Small consolation,” Bluequill grumped.





Harry Buford looked around in surprise as an alert sounded at the Chakona Defense Force monitoring station.  He got up from his desk to go over to the status monitor, and he frowned at what the screen told him.  He tapped a few keys on the keyboard and looked at the result in confusion.

“A weak gamma ray burst only three light-days from Chakona?  That should not be possible.”  He picked up the nearby phone and dialed a number.  When it was answered, he said, “Amanda, could you turn our instruments all on these coordinates and tell me what you find.”  He then read off the coordinates from the screen and waited.  Before he got a response though, the status monitor reported another gamma ray burst, quickly followed by several more.

“What in blazes is going on out there?”

Amanda’s excited voice drew his attention back to the phone.  “Harry – I’m sending the data to your station right now.  There’s something very strange happening.”

“Thanks, Amanda.  I’ll get back to you.”  He switched the view on the screen to focus in on what concerned him most.  The information flowed, making him frown even more.  “All the bursts are too small to have been created by normal stellar phenomena,” he mumbled to himself.  “They all are coming from a single point on the plane of the ecliptic at a distance of 3.1 light-days.  Other than comets, what else is out there?”  Then he gasped as he spotted something.  He grabbed the phone again and dialed the base commander’s office.

“Sir!  Lieutenant Harry Buford here, shift supervisor for the Chakastra System Watch.  We have just detected the signature of the mysterious plasma that the Swarm utilizes in their weapons.  The invaders have been spotted at only three light days from Chakona!”


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