The Abyss Beyond Dreams Read Free

was the creepy extreme of voyeurism. Unhealthy,
to put it mildly. She had gaiamotes because it was occasionally a useful communication tool, and even more sporadically helpful for acquiring large quantities of information. But for day-to-day
use, forget it. She stuck with the good old-fashioned and reliable unisphere links.
    ‘How’s that happening?’ she grunted, frowning. Her u-shadow confirmed that her gaiamotes were inactive. Nobody could connect directly to her neural strata. And yet . . .
    Torak, the
Vermillion
’s chief xenobiology officer, gave her a lopsided grin. ‘If you think that’s weird, how about this?’ A tall plastic mug of tea floated
through the air towards him, trailing wisps of steam. Torak stared at it in concentration, holding out his hand. The mug sailed into his palm, and he closed his fingers round it with a smug
grin.
    Laura gave the bridge ceiling a puzzled look, her ever-practical mind immediately reviewing the parameters of ingrav field projector systems. Theoretically it would be possible to manipulate the
ship’s gravity field to move objects around like that, but it would be a ridiculous amount of effort and machinery for a simple conjuring trick. ‘What kind of gravity manipulation was
that?’
    ‘It’s not.’ Torak’s lips hadn’t moved. Yet the voice was clear in her head, along with enough emotional overspill to confirm it was him ‘speaking’.
    ‘How did you . . .?’
    ‘I can show you what we’ve learned, if you’ll let me,’ Torak said.
    She gave him an apprehensive nod. Then something like a memory was bubbling up into her mind like a cold fizzy liquid, a memory that wasn’t hers. So similar to a gaiafield emission, but at
the same time definitely not. She had no control over it, no way of regulating the images and voices. That scared her.
    Then the knowledge was rippling out inside her brain, settling down, becoming instinct.
    ‘Telepathy?’ she squeaked as she
knew
. And at the same time, she could sense her thoughts broadcasting the astonished question across the bridge. Several of the crew
flinched at the strength of it impinging on their own thoughts.
    ‘In the purest sense,’ Torak responded. ‘And telekinesis, too.’ He let go of the tea mug, which hung in mid-air.
    Laura stared at it in a kind of numb fascination. In her head, new insights showed her how to perform the fantasy ability. She shaped her thoughts
just so
, reaching for the mug. Somehow
feeling it; the weight impinged on her consciousness.
    Torak released his hold on it, and the mug wobbled about, dropping ten centimetres. Laura reinforced her mental grip on the physical object, and it continued to hang in mid-air. She gave a
twitchy laugh before carefully lowering it to the floor. ‘That is some serious bollocks,’ she murmured.
    ‘We have ESP, too,’ Torak said. ‘You might want to close your thoughts up. They’re kind of . . . available.’
    Laura gave him a startled glance, then blushed as she hurriedly tried to apply the knowledge of how to shield her thoughts – intimate, painfully private thoughts – from the scrutiny
of everyone on the bridge. ‘All right; enough. Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on? How are we doing this? What’s happened?’
    Captain Cornelius Brandt stood up. He wasn’t a particularly tall man, and worry made him appear stooped. Laura could tell just how worn down and anxious he was; despite his efforts to keep
his thoughts opaque and calm, alarm was leaking out of him like ethereal pheromones. ‘We believe we’re in the Void,’ he said.
    ‘That’s impossible,’ Laura said automatically. The Void was the core of the galaxy. Up until 2560, when the
Endeavour
, a ship from the Commonwealth Navy Exploration
fleet, completed the first circumnavigation of the galaxy, astronomers had assumed it was the same kind of supermassive black hole that most galaxies had at their centre. It was massive. And it did
have an event