It was a long fall in-system from the warp point, so Va Sojourner had plenty of time to observe. She found a peace in her observations that was expensive or painful to scratch out anywhere else, when she had to organize herself around the demands and expectations of everyone around her. Out here, far beyond the most remote human outpost, the only thing expected of her was to study and to learn. In that way, the hull of UNEV Darcie Little Badger enclosed a little bubble of paradise.

“What do you think?” Va asked Exparte, the stuffed capybara fastened to her screen. Exparte had crossed more light-years than ninety-nine percent of humanity, and had done it all with a capybara’s unflappable tolerance. “Irritating impossible, or amazing impossible?”

Little Badger was falling toward the red dwarf star’s third planet, or what should have been the third planet, at any rate. The first scout vessel hadn’t even noticed it until it was on its way home. It had rings, just like a gas giant did, and between those and its icy moons, there shouldn’t have been anything to distinguish it. Nothing except for the conspicuous absence of a planet. The moons and rings orbited absence.

It was the closest humans had ever got to a black hole. It was why the ship had come all this way.

Days went by, and observations trickled in. Questions piled up, burning and sweet.

“I suspect this might not be natural,” Va said at a meeting of Little Badger’s science team, five professionals who’d traded what might be years back home to study something incredible up close. They gave her looks that ranged from amazement to sourness, but Va was a firm believer in considering every explanation that fit the facts. “I think we should consider the possibility that this is an example of Precursor engineering.”

The science team traded glances, and Va could read the thoughts behind them easily enough. The Precursors were known to have engineered planets, terraforming them from rocks to mirrors of Earth, but at least those could be studied and verified. Black holes didn’t give up their secrets easily.

“Natural or engineered, we’re not going to be able to get a lot of decent information until we’re in orbit,” said Iona Watanabe, dark-skinned and soft-spoken. She was Little Badger’s executive officer and a scientist herself, and juggled hats based on what was most needed at the moment. Along with Va, she made up the Martian contribution to the mission. “It’s practically a pinhole.”

“Then we won’t have to worry about keeping our distance,” Va said. “Something to keep the crew a little at ease would be good, wouldn’t it? Commander Mortimer already has so much to worry about.”

They fell for weeks, coasting and burning, until the not-planet’s rings were scintillant against the local nameless constellations. Weeks for Va to investigate, to consider, to discard some hypotheses and test others to destruction. There were so many things about the black hole that tasted bitter when paired with the usual explanations.

“Maybe I’m going about this all wrong,” she told Exparte. “Maybe, if I come from the other way—”

The next day, when Va reported to her acceleration station for Little Badger’s final orbital insertion, Watanabe strapped herself in next to her. She wore a look of barely-contained excitement.

“I’ve been going over my observations,” Watanabe said as the engine began to thrust. “So much in there, but it’s all wrong. Maybe it’s just because we’ve never been this close, maybe ones this small act differently, but . . .”

Va smiled. She recognized the exhilaration of taking a step beyond the known, the sort of step that always came with fear. She had felt that way when she’d realized who she really was.

“You’re not sure that it’s a black hole at all.”

“No,” Watanabe said. “Do you think it’s possible . . .?”

“I think it’s plausible,” Va said. There wasn’t anything at all hard to believe about the deception of appearances. How many times had people looked at her and seen a he instead of a she? “I think our black hole might really be a wormhole.”

• • • •

“A wormhole,” Commander Mortimer said. He had asked Va to his office as soon as Little Badger had entered a conservative orbit around what the science team was calling the Point. His ghost-pale skin didn’t hide his unsettled look. “So you’re saying the Fatima al-Fihri’s initial survey was wrong, that a black hole is an impossibility?”

Va kept her face level and calm as Little Badger’s commander choked on her report. Mortimer wasn’t a scientist—he’d come up through the System Guard, she knew—but there was always the hope that after so much time spent ferrying science teams around the galaxy, some ways of thinking had rubbed off on him. Then again, she also knew that al-Fihri’s commander was a friend of his. It was her first expedition aboard Little Badger, and she had no idea whether he’d take her team’s conclusions as an attack on his friend’s competence. She would have to proceed carefully.

“I know it might be hard to swallow, but we’ve ruled out plenty of other explanations,” Va said. “We would have to launch a probe to verify the absence of an event horizon, but our measurements so far have been intriguing. In fact, some of us suspect the Point may be a work of Precursor engineering.”

Mortimer stiffened at that. Even with humanity spreading across the nearby stars, the Precursors were only known by their works. Even the warp points that made that spreading-out possible could have been their artifacts. The possibility that they hadn’t just shaped planets but sculpted spacetime filled Va with a hunger for understanding.

“Precursor engineering,” Mortimer said. “And a survey ship somehow missed that possibility entirely.”

“They didn’t have a great opportunity to investigate,” Va said. “al-Fihri never got closer than 1.2 AU, and the probe they left behind malfunctioned before they could recover its telemetry. What they saw matched with, well, an extraordinary black hole.”

“So if the Point is a wormhole, and not a black hole, where does that leave us?” Mortimer undid the straps that held him to his chair and drifted over to a little succulent plant anchored to a shelf.

“The team’s well-equipped to study it,” Va said. “They know what they’re doing.”

“That’s not what I meant, Specialist Sojourner.” Mortimer poked at the succulent’s potting soil and turned to face her. “Forgive me for being flippant, but a black hole is a matter of intellectual curiosity. Fearsome in its own right, yes, but like a bear on the far side of a river. If you keep your distance, you’re in no danger. But a wormhole is a bridge across that river, and god knows what’s on the other side.”

“A very small bridge, Commander,” Va said. “It’s thirty-seven centimetres wide. Even a teddy would have to squeeze.”

“Whatever killed the Precursors could’ve been much smaller than a stuffed animal,” Mortimer said. He floated silently for a moment before pushing back to his chair. The disapproving look he fixed her with reminded her of a man she’d encountered the first time she’d found the courage to leave her room wearing a feminine dress. “Assuming the Point is a wormhole, would you be able to determine the location of its other mouth?”

“Possibly,” Va said. “If we could get a probe in a very close orbit, and the gravitational distortions aren’t too bad, we could measure starlight from the far end.”

“Then prepare one,” Mortimer said. “Consider it your top priority. Dismissed.”

“Of course, Commander.” Va nodded and pushed out of the compartment, back into the corridor, as the door closed behind her. Aside from the constant soft hum of the circulation fans, it was quiet.

“I’m not on the wrong track, am I?” Va asked.

Little Badger didn’t have an answer for her.

• • • •

Va always felt a vague sense of regret when she entered a starship’s engineering section. In another life, a scarcely different life, it could have been hers and it would have made sense. It almost had been. Engineering know-how was the lifeblood of Mars, the necessity of every society that didn’t live on a world with complimentary air. A few different choices, one or two minor course corrections, would have been enough. She dreamed about the possibilities sometimes, a fleet of what-might-have-beens that had already set sail for Andromeda.

She lingered for a moment at one heavy hatch with an inset window. On one side was a simple control pedestal built around a keyslot. On the other, well-insulated from the rest of Little Badger and the universe beyond, were the twin toruses of the warp drive. A few different choices, a different life led, could have left her in charge of them. When powered down and quiet they didn’t look like devices that could rend and flex spacetime, but so many things didn’t look like what they were. She hadn’t herself, for the longest time.

Va found Serenitatis Lu, Little Badger’s chief engineer, in the machine shop. Xe was fussing over what Va recognized as a probe deployment shell. For an instant, she felt a surge of worry—was there something wrong with it? Had it been damaged during assembly? Would they miss their launch window?—until she realized Lu’s tool was a paintbrush. Va waited until Lu stepped away from the shell to announce her presence.

“Oh! Sorry, everything’s on schedule, perfectly on schedule,” Lu said. “Nothing to worry about, not a blessed thing at all. We’re looking forward to seeing how our probe performs so close to your, well, whatever-it-is.”

“I’m sure everything will be fine.” Va pulled herself close to the shell, and found an entire panel of it filled with colour. It was stark and abstract, full of contours and angles, and put her at ease. “I’m always inspired by what you come up with.”

“Every probe’s got its own personality,” Lu said. “I’m just the conduit. This one, it knows it’s going to see things that don’t make sense, that nobody’s ever seen close up before. Hence, all this.”

“It looks compelling,” Va said. “Can I help?”

“I could use your eyes,” Lu said, wiping xyr hands on a cloth. Xyr fingers were long, thin, and graceful, much like the rest of xyr. Martians and Lunarians both came from comparatively low-gravity worlds, but compared to Lu, Va was a squat brick of meat. “Make sure I didn’t miss any bits before I put on the sealant. This’ll last for billions of years if we’re lucky, I don’t want anyone thinking I was slapdash.”

Va peered at Lu’s painting, close enough to fill her nose with the sharp, heady smell of the paint xe’d chosen. It reminded her of the murals that were everywhere back home, celebrations of brightness and colour engineered to elicit calmness, empathy, solidarity: all the drives that were needed to sustain a healthy society, and more vital than Little Badger’s warp drive was to its mission. More than that, it reminded her of the drive to understand, the only reason any of them had come so far from home.

“I’ve been wondering,” Lu said. “Going over your team’s reports, and it’s just . . . do you think the Point could be timelike?”

“It’s way too early to start wondering about things like that,” Va said, hiding her own worry beneath a careful, unflappable veneer. “At least for me. For all I know, it might turn out to be a black hole after all.”

“Yeah, but if it is, then what?” Lu said. “We’re not ready for time machines. No one is.”

“If that’s the case, maybe we’ll get lucky and the other end’s in intergalactic space,” Va said. “Or somewhere else where changing history would be way more trouble than it’s worth.”

“Still,” Lu said. “They were worried about the same thing when the warp drive was still theoretical, and they could’ve been right. If it is a time machine, don’t we have a responsibility to do something about it? To make sure it can’t be misused?”

“Build a cage around it and throw away the key, maybe?” Va said with a smile. Lu didn’t let the seriousness vanish from xyr face. “All I can say is that there’s no point getting wrapped up in maybes until we know what is and what isn’t. I mean, this painting of yours could have been slapdash, but there’s not a thing wrong with it. You’ll be the toast of whatever art gallery scoops it up, however long from now.”

“That’d be nice,” Lu said. “I guess we’ll see. Thanks for the help.”

Va pushed herself out of the machine shop and back into Little Badger’s maze of corridors. Alone, she could let her worry show. A closed timelike curve, a wormhole that connected the present with the past, was mathematically possible, but realistically disastrous. There was nothing she could do about that. She had to follow the evidence. There was no point worrying about trails that split away. She wasn’t there to chase might-have-beens.

• • • •

There was a tranquility to sorting through discoveries that Va found soothing like nothing else in her life. Out here, so far away from everything and everyone, there were no distractions. She could immerse herself in gravitational measurements, spacetime deformation studies, and all the other nuggets of telemetry coming back from the probe. There was so much to dive into. It was enough information to fill a life.

In the days since the probe’s launch, she had surrounded herself with pictures of the Point. It didn’t matter to her whether it was a black hole or a wormhole, only that it was new and waiting to be understood.

It only took one message from Commander Mortimer to shatter that tranquility.

“I’ve decided to take us in closer,” Mortimer said once Va reported to his office. The bulkheads seemed to press closer than they had last time. “I’ve been reviewing your updates, and it strikes me that the probe isn’t the best information-gathering method we have. For a finding like this, it would be lax to not focus all of our resources on it, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Of course,” Va said. Little Badger was a science ship, and its scientific equipment didn’t have to be scaled down to fit inside a probe chassis. “I’d be eager for the opportunity to confirm some of my hypotheses.”

“As long as you can do it remotely,” Mortimer said. “We’re going to establish an outpost on one of the moons, for observation and reaction mass processing. I’m planning some rather close orbits, and if anything goes wrong, I’d very much like to minimize the number of people it goes wrong for.”

Va didn’t smile. The closest moon that wasn’t a barely-coherent chunk of gravel orbited nearly a million kilometres out from the Point, so far away that the Point might as well not be there at all. After having gone so far and come so close, she couldn’t bear stepping away.

“With respect, Commander, I’d prefer to stay aboard and continue my work here if at all possible,” Va said. “It’ll take some time to get an observatory set up, and there’s no telling what we could miss out on in the meantime. If something was to go wrong, with none of the science team on site . . .”

Mortimer sucked some air between his teeth, as if he was weighing options much more massive than the establishment of an outpost. Va considered what she knew about him and tried to model his thinking, but couldn’t come up with much. Black holes and wormholes were complicated, but straightforward; people didn’t play by any rules but their own. His calmness left her ill at ease.

“Very well,” Mortimer said. “But the rest of your science team will go to the observatory. That’s non-negotiable.”

“I understand,” Va said. “I’ll make the arrangements. Thank you, Commander.”

As soon as she left Mortimer’s compartment, her mouth filled with the taste of iron. She was an astrophysicist, not a psychologist, but she had plenty of experience with people. She could tell when something was not quite right beneath the surface. In societies like Mars, where everyone depended on artificial, damageable environments to keep breathing, being able to recognize when something was not quite right with someone was critical.

She knew Commander Mortimer’s type well. There was no telling what might happen if she left him alone.

• • • •

There hadn’t been much pain when Va realized who she was. She had only been saddened by how difficult it was to observe objectively as her face and body gradually took the shapes they should have had from the start. It had been an intensely personal project, and there had been those who believed she was wasting her time. That projects like hers were better off never done.

Not many, of course. The people of Mars were kind, if only to distinguish themselves from the cold hostility of the world they lived in, but there were always a few who embraced that hostility as a goal rather than a warning. She had learned to read it on their faces, the furrowed brows and the twisted lips meant to tell her that if only they were in charge, things would be very different.

It was the same kind of look she saw flickering across Commander Mortimer’s face every once in a while, between seconds, when he thought no one could possibly notice. Perhaps no one else did. Every time she talked about the Point, every time she had tried to convince him of the value of closer study, she had seen that frown and that sneer despite his best attempts to hide them.

She could read them well enough. “I’m already in charge,” he’d said without words, “so soon enough, this won’t even matter.”

Winding up the science team’s work and helping with the shuttle loading made her feel useful, at least. They were moments she didn’t have to worry about the Point, and not just about what it was, but what would become of it. When the work was done, Little Badger felt half-abandoned.

“You’re sure you’re not coming along?” Watanabe said during the final load-out checks. “It’d be strange, not having you around. The team’s got used to your guidance.”

“I’ll still be here,” Va said. “I’m chasing some hypotheses. I’m a bit worried that if I interrupt them, they’ll go all poof. All you have to do is call and I’ll answer.”

“You won’t be able to claim the choice spots once we get the observatory built, though,” Watanabe said. “If you’re okay with that . . .”

“I didn’t sign up for this to be comfortable,” Va said. “Not when there are so many nice spas on Phobos.”

“Every once in a while I dream I’m at Limtoc Gardens,” Watanabe said. Va smiled at the memory of just-warm-enough water, air full of fragrances that put her at ease, and massages that worked all the stress out of her bones. “Maybe once we’re done.”

“Maybe.” Va couldn’t ignore what she’d read on Mortimer’s face. Couldn’t ignore that, for her, being done might be more final than Watanabe imagined. “Don’t forget about me up there, okay?”

“I’ll make sure you keep us updated,” Watanabe said with a smile. “Even if I have to fly back myself.”

Va pressed her fist against Watanabe’s, hard but warm. She didn’t want to pull back, not knowing if it would be the last.

For either of them.

• • • •

Va had learned to read secrets that were left unspoken, and she knew what Commander Mortimer was planning. It had been simple enough once she modelled his thought process. He had come up through the System Guard, after all, and had been used to dealing with problems that might have to be solved with fire. His discomfort with the Point had been evident. She’d navigated that same sense of imposed discomfort for much of her life. It was the sort of discomfort that, if left to ferment, would end with destruction.

With most of the crew seconded to the observatory project, Little Badger’s corridors were nearly empty. Va didn’t meet anyone else on her way to the engineering section. That was just as well. Not having to explain herself made things at least a little easier.

As a science ship, Little Badger wasn’t armed in the traditional sense—no lasers, no railguns, nothing built for killing—but Va knew that there were more ways to hurt and destroy than the simple tried-and-true. When she had reviewed Commander Mortimer’s orbits and come across one with a periapsis that sat a mere fifty kilometres from the Point, she had been shocked at his recklessness for a moment before realizing what it really meant. The first warp field, uncontrolled and furious, had swallowed Staten Island whole. At that distance, a properly arranged warp field could encompass the Point.

After that, who knew? Nobody had ever found a trace of Staten Island. When a warp drive was activated away from a warp point, it disappeared and never came back. It might have been an enrapturing study, if only there was any way for her to report her findings afterward.

She paused at the heavy hatch separating her from the warp drive machinery. The bag she’d filled with excuses, measurement devices meant to determine whether the close passage to the Point had any effect on the drive’s sensitive components, felt heavy despite the lack of gravity. It should have been so easy to put it down—just like it should have been so easy to ignore everything she knew about herself, to act like she wasn’t who she really was, to live the way she’d been told to live at birth and to pretend to be fine with that.

“It’ll be okay,” she told Exparte, secured to her shoulder. She couldn’t have done this without support, and she couldn’t have left the little stuffed capybara alone. “Just you see.”

Her authorizations as head of the science team were enough to open the hatch, and she glided inside a temple to machines that tore holes in the world. As soon as she was inside, she secured the hatch and the air supply. It wouldn’t do if Commander Mortimer decided the simplest solution was to vent the compartment into space. Once she was secure, she set up the monitors, secured herself to the drive, and waited. She didn’t have to wait long. She’d scheduled her visit as close to periapsis as she dared.

Despite the small window, Serenitatis Lu didn’t take long to notice her inside the compartment. Va had left the microphones and speakers working, so at least they could talk.

“Time to clear out,” Lu said. “No telling what it’s going to be like in there. If I were you, I’d strap to my bunk and take a nap. Nice and peaceful.”

Va sighed. So Lu’s ambition was to die in xyr sleep after all.

“No,” Va said. “I know what the plan is. I’m not going to make it easy for you.”

“That wormhole is dangerous!” Lu slammed xyr fist against the window, a thump that echoed long and low. “We can’t—”

“Study it?” Va hissed. “Figure out if it’s actually dangerous? Hell, if it’s actually a wormhole? No, that’d take too long, wouldn’t it? Better to let your fear run rampant instead, right? That’s what it’s there for, isn’t it?”

“The reason the Precursors disappeared could be on the other side,” Lu said. “Or our own past. We might prevent ourselves from ever existing.”

“We’re not even certain that it is a wormhole!” Va said. “You want an unfounded hypothesis? We get close, we warp away with the Point, and we create a vacuum metastability event that destroys the entire universe. How’s that?”

Lu was silent for a moment. Whatever Commander Mortimer had told xem, it obviously hadn’t included that possibility. Va wasn’t surprised. Mortimer was a decent administrator, but he was a terrible scientist.

“You need to get out of there,” Lu said. “Come on.”

“No,” Va said. She held up her wrist, the one she’d cuffed to the warp drive machinery, so Lu could see it. “I’m afraid I’m not going anywhere for now.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Lu pounded on the window again. “You’re being ridiculous!”

“I’m being scientific,” Va said. “My own little interpretation of the Milgram experiment. Any minute now, the commander’s going to ask you to turn that key at the same time he turns his up in Flight Control. When you do, the change in the local magnetic field is going to fry me to a crisp. Are you going to kill a person because someone else says you have to turn the key?”

Another moment of silence. Va savoured it.

“We might all die anyway,” Lu said. “Nobody knows what happens.”

“We might,” Va said. “But you know for sure what’ll happen to me. And it’ll happen first. Are you comfortable with the idea of killing me with your last act?”

Lu didn’t have anything to say to that, and drifted away from the window. Va checked her screen, hooked into Little Badger’s navigation systems, and found they were only minutes from periapsis. She could already hear some of the machinery coming to life around her, whirring and purring in a symphony of sounds that had never been meant to have an audience.

“It’s getting kind of loud in here,” Va said. “Is it growing on you, then, the idea of dying a murderer?”

Lu didn’t answer. Va wondered if xe was even listening as she recorded everything. If it came to the worst, everything she’d gathered would be quick-beamed to the observatory in the microseconds before she died. If destroying the Point didn’t trigger the destruction of the universe, at least people would know.

“Specialist Sojourner!” Commander Mortimer’s voice roared out of the speakers. “I can’t imagine what you’ve done down there, but you’ve done enough. Stand down or face the consequences.”

“I will not, Commander. You’re an embarrassment,” Va said. “Keep on like this, and they’ll never name a starship after you.”

“Why couldn’t you have just found a black hole?” There was anger in Mortimer’s voice, sharp and raw. “Like you were meant to find. Then there wouldn’t have been a problem.”

“I find what’s there to be found,” Va said. She had found herself that way, back before she knew herself, when all the world still told her she wasn’t herself at all. “It’s not always comfortable.”

Silence again. They were less than a minute from periapsis. It would only take two turns of two keys—only one, really. Va knew Mortimer wouldn’t hesitate. Thankfully, so had the designers of the system.

“Obedience might feel comfortable, Lu,” Va said. “But it isn’t. You’ll regret it. Well, you would, if you had any plans to live for another hour or so.”

No response. Nothing but the drive’s buzzing hum. If this was how it had to end, she was satisfied with that. At least she’d intervened. At least she’d lived.

She stroked Exparte’s soft, familiar fur. At least she wasn’t alone.

Little Badger sailed past periapsis, the moment the ship was closest to the Point, and the warp drive only kept humming. The monitors didn’t record anything unusual. After a moment Lu appeared at the window, dangling a key from xyr fingers.

“I couldn’t,” Lu said. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t.”

Va exhaled a breath she’d been holding onto ever since Lu had first pounded on the hatch. What had always disturbed her most about the Milgram experiment was how many people listened to the disembodied voice of the man in charge, all the way to the end.

• • • •

The shuttle, filled with the rest of Little Badger’s crew, rendezvoused with the ship well before its orbit took it close enough to the Point for Mortimer to try again. Va spent it secured in her own little compartment with her sleeping bag zipped tight enough to insulate her from everything outside. It was the only way she could process it all amid a torrent of sobs.

Mortimer had tried to destroy the Point, had tried to destroy her, and if she’d been just a little less aware, a little more focused on the discovery of a lifetime, the first she’d have known about it would have been when the warp drive flared and took her out of the world with all the dispatch of a bullet to the back of her head. If it wasn’t for the fans, her tears would have drowned her.

When her notification sounded, she ignored it and let it echo. It wasn’t until it sounded two, three, four times that Va unfurled her screen and paid attention.

“I thought you wanted to know we’ll be heading out soon,” Watanabe said. With Mortimer under arrest, it fell to her to get Little Badger home as quickly as possible. “But if there’s any other bits of information you need, the equipment’s yours.”

“I’d like to understand why,” Va said. “But that’s not my line of research.”

“Some people can’t take the world as it is,” Watanabe said. “They want to force it to be what they want it to be. They wouldn’t last a second back home, right?”

“Maybe,” Va said. Watanabe hadn’t grown up being told she was someone she wasn’t. She hadn’t had to learn to read frowns and sneers so well that she’d unfolded Mortimer’s plan. Martians had taught Va that skill, Martians who didn’t want their world to include her. “Maybe.”

When acceleration came, it was brief. Va watched the Point and its rings fall away, long past when she should have slept, wishing she could apologize for leaving it alone.

That she could tell it that she understood.