The Darkside Of The Sun

hurry negotiations with a sundog.
    She hung above them, and her name was Gully-Triode-stroke-Pledge-Hudsons-Bay-Preferred.
    ‘The pups did reach orbit safely,’ said Dom patiently.
    Nevertheless, it was a despicable act, Man. The safety of our young is of paramount importance to us .
    Dom thought very quickly.
    ‘I carry the seed of Chatogaster,’ he intoned.
    Any friend of the lake is a friend of mine, Buster. Possibly a large payment into the sundog account would make amends for the crime which happened to be witnessed by Us alone. What is your name?
    ‘Dom Sabalos.’
    The name has a familiar ring. We have heard it recently. However. The Chain Stars are on the rim of the bubble. It will be a long time in interspace .
    ‘The robot can take it. My friend and I have our suits. My friend is nearing re-entry,’ said Dom, adopting the sundog’s clipped style.
    It was a long, long time in interspace.
    Dom told himself that he knew that they were safe inside the sundog’s field, but that didn’t stop him from holding on to the beast’s hide until his hands ached. The suit provided a strong depressive that made the naked images merely unpleasant. Hrsh-Hgn had passed out. Isaac had shut down most of his circuits.
    It was a long time.

9
    ‘They should not exist. They are theoretically possible, but so is balancing a needle on the end of a hair. Faced with something like the Chain Stars a man must either bow the knee, or else get good and worried.’
    Charles Sub-Lunar, Galactic Excursions
    Dom wondered what was so impressive. That was when the Chain was still twenty AUs away, and side on.
    Then the Creapii shuttle came in closer.
    Imagine a doughnut, three million miles across. Imagine another. Link them.
    The Chain Stars. And tumbling around them, Minos – a planet formed from thousands of asteroids, dragged across the light years and fused into a world. That was another Joker achievement, the Maze on Minos.
    The cabin was empty except for shape-adaptable seats and the screen. From outside it had appeared gigantic, several times bigger than an average cargo ship and surprisingly streamlined. Dom knew that most of the bulk must be shielding, plus an engine big enough to lift the ship up against the crushing pull of a sun. But the streamlining puzzled him.
    Until he realized. Even suns have atmospheres.
    The glowing, linked rings grew rapidly in the screen, until the outer edges slipped away. It was no comfort to know the image was just that, an image darkened and screened down until it was merely bright. Instinct said they were plunging into the heart of a star.
    ‘Born of the sun, we travel a little way towards the sun,’ misquoted Isaac, tactlessly. Dom relaxed, and laughed. He thought he could hear a muted thunder, not unlike the roar of star flames. It was impossible, of course. It was just that he thought he could hear it. Of course, it was impossible.
    Finally all definition was lost, and the screen became a painfully white rectangle. Hrsh-Hgn was trembling with a phnobe’s instinctive fear of naked sunlight. Dom pictured the ship coasting over a glowing sea, one with no horizon, and stopped his imagination resolutely when he thought of all the little mechanical things that could go wrong.
    Something was drastically wrong with the raft when it appeared.
    Artists and the eye of imagination portrayed a raft only a few steps removed from the log platforms that dagon fishers used, with perhaps a few Creapii slithering nonchalantly across the deck, and it was open to the sky, with a class of a yellow ocean a long way beneath. But even High-Degrees could not survive in the open except on near-cinders stars, and the Chains Raft was one of the first on a hot star. It was just a blank hemisphere, hovering flat side down in what appeared on the screen as a thin mist.
    The shuttle docked gently, and a section of wall slid back to reveal a circular grey tunnel. A friendly mechanical voice invited them to follow it. Dom led the way, warily.
    The sound he heard hit him like a club. He ran forward, unbelieving.
    It was the sea.
    His Furness CReegE + 690° rolled down to the beach on bright caterpillar tracks. He was big, much bigger than the low-degree Creapii that lived on Widdershins. His egg-shaped suit was golden. A fawn pranced by his side, and a small blue singing bird was perched on his tentacle. His Furness stopped at the surf line and waited patiently.
    Dom felt his toes touch the sand and waded through the