Pella and Toque stared open-mouthed at the Edge.       

      Pella whistled.  “It is!  It’s the edge of the Wholeness!”

      Toque nodded and turned to see more of the glowing Edge.  “It must be.  But nobody will ever believe us.”

      “Well, we’re taking lots of pictures.  And we’ll send ‘em back continuously until we get a reaction.”

      “I don’t know.”  Toque shook her head.  Pella liked that.  She had let her hair grow long and it floated around in the mini-gravity like a sensual cloud.  “That could take a while….”

      He thought a bit.  “That’d be….sixty-three months.  Hey, babe…?”

       “Yeah? Oh, you look so serious!”

      “I am.  I wanted to ask…Hon, was it worth it?”

      She smiled a melter.  “Sure.  Long as I was with you.”

      He looked back at the Edge.  “Sure is pretty.  But I thought it’d be…sharper.  Like a real Edge.”

      “Maybe it is, on the Outside…”

      “Outside?  There is no Outside.  That’s just science fiction.”

     Well, she insisted they go down to the very Edge itself and see if they could look through.  See Outside.  He argued, but she had that ultimate argument…He grumped around for a whole two days.  Finally, “Okay, babe.  But if anything happens….”

       “It won’t.  Okay, come on.”  She held out her arms.  “Come on, lover.  Rock me to sleep.”

     He decided that one spot was as good as another.

      “Hold on, baby.  I’m gonna set it down.  Along the fold, okay?”

      “Looks good to me.”

      “Toque…Look, when we’re down, don’t go running out.  This isn’t Center Galaxy, now.  It’s really the boonies.”

      She shot him a grin.  “Sure.  Wouldn’t want Granny to worry.”

      The sound was sharper.  When they set down, most places there was enough soil or dust to cushion the actual contact.  But this was like smacking an ice cube against your front teeth.  Click!  Not hard, just elastic.  She rolled back the outer lock door and let the docker instruments decide that there wasn’t anything coming in to fry them or whatever.  Nope.  Good, old, home-style vacuum.  A little background radiation.  A few percent less than at home.

      “Looks like home.  Let’s go!”

      She was already yanking her helmet over her face.  She heard her voice through the intercom now.  Like an insect.

      “Come on!”

      When she stepped onto the emerald surface her foot sailed out from under her.  She sat down hard and slid about fifteen feet away before coasting to a stop.  He would have laughed if she had killed him for it.  “Clumsy!”

      “Well, you try it!”

       She sat up carefully, her hands slipping on the glistening surface.  “But watch it!  It’s slippery as the dickens!”

      “I’ll be careful.”

      He lowered one foot to the surface, then the other.  It did feel….too late.  He was down too.  “Well!  This is almost as slick as the Kulon we use for bearings.”  He tried to get his feet under him, but it wasn’t working.  Finally, painfully, he got to his knees, then one foot, then the other, then…

      Down again.  Harder this time.  The shock made his breath come out in a “Wuff!”  Toque giggled.

     They learned to walk on it, finally, shuffling along like two old alkies.  The actual Edge seemed to be no more than a half kilometer away, and they headed to it first.  The surface they were on seemed to be slightly luminous, a yellow-green, slightly undulating mirror.  The undulations were a problem at first, until they learned to stick together and descend the slight slopes as a somewhat grotesque quadruped. 

      “Well, here it is, babe!  The Edge!”

      He half-knelt, then fell.  Sitting, he scooted closer to the line where the two glassy surfaces met.  Looking along it was like looking in a giant kaleidoscope, throwing back multiple images of their ship and the haze of the Galaxy.  The meeting edge wasn’t perfectly sharp at this scale, either, but there were flat spots and even a few jogs.  Toque ran her hand over one of them.

      “Gee, I thought it’d be smoother…”

       “Well, on the scale of Wholeness, this must be pretty smooth.”

      “Yeah.  Hey, look!” 

      She had found a bubble.  Actually, it was a circular flaw in the regularity of the Edge. 

      “Looks like the bubbles in the old glass at Corning.”

      “Yeah.  Oh, hey, look down there!”  He pointed.  “That one must be as big as our ship!”

      “Yeah.  And if it’s as smooth as this one, we ought to be able to see through it pretty good.”  She ran her hand over the plane they were sitting on.  “This is like a mirror, here.”

      “Well, okay.  Look, you go ahead.  I want to get the cameras, okay?”

      “Sure.  You can catch up.”

      “Now, be careful…”  He touched her arm.  “Don’t get lost.”

      “Silly!  You can see a hundred parks along here.  Nothing in the way.  Not even dust.”

      “Yeah.  I wonder why.”

      He got back to the ladder and went up for the cameras.  He thought it would be good to give scale if he turned on the ship’s cameras too.  Then they could be seen walking back and forth.  He waited for the raster.  Now.  He looked at the screen, then out the port.  Where was she?  Maybe she came back.  I can’t see right below the ship.

      He had extended the ladder to contact the surface.  Now I can get settled before I let go.  He got his feet planted securely.  Now, where is she?  She was gone!  But where?  He looked both ways along the Edge.  Just as the paws of fear were trotting up his back he saw her.  “Hey!  Toque!  How’d you get up there?”

      “Come on up!”

      She was high up the plane that met the one they had landed on. And strolling along almost normally.

      He put one foot up on the surface she was on.  It met the one where they had landed at about a 20 degree angle.  But when he stepped up on it, he didn’t slide back.

      She skated back to him.  “Isn’t this great!  You can skate on it!”

      He looked back down the slope to the Edge he had left.  The reflections and the slope gave him a slight vertigo.  He closed his eyes.  She touched him on the arm.  “Hey, you okay?”  He kept his eyes closed.

      “Why don’t we slide back down?”

      “THIS is down!  Hey, open your eyes.”  She pointed.  “This IS down.”

      He finally got used to it.  Down was down.  Toward your feet, wherever you were.  Strange.

      “This is strange.  So, did you see anything?”

      “Nope.  Oh, look, there’s that big bubble.  Let’s have a look.”

      “Okay.  Go ahead.  I’m not as sure-footed.”  He tottered after her to the edge of the huge circular pan.  “It doesn’t seem to penetrate the Edge.  See?”  He pointed back.  “We’re on a rise.  The bubble is inside.”

      “Yeah.  Well, hold me.  I’m going down.”

      She sat and hung her legs over the edge of the pit.

      “I don’t know if I can walk….”

      “You aren’t going in there!  At least without a rope or something.  Suppose you can’t climb out?”

      “Oh, for….look, you go get a rope.  And your mittens, and your four-leaf clover and your bunny foot and…”  She turned and let herself down the side of the pit.  “I’ll be right here!”

      He couldn’t see her without crawling to the Edge.

      “Toque!  You okay?”

      “I’m fine!  Oh, gee, this is neat!”

      Her voice sounded so distant.  Like at the end of a tunnel.  He looked down.  She was a tiny bug many, many meters below.

      “Toque?”

       “Yeah!  Ain’t it great!  It’s an optical illusion.  It must be fifty meters deep.”

      “Stay there!  I’ll get a rope.”

      “Take your time.  And bring a ladder.  You have to see this!”

     He waggled the rope.  “Got it?”

      “No.  Still not in sight.”

      He looked down.  He had let down seven hundred meters of rope.  He could see it going down, tapering in the distance, to a Toque no more than fifty meters away.  She was yelling again.  “Hey!  You’d best do something!”

      He tied the last of the rope to the part already down.  Then the ladder.  Okay, that’s it.  Eight hundred and fifty meters.  “Here we go!”

      “Got it!”  The ladder shook gently in his hand.  Then it was yanked away roughly.  She yelled, “Hey, clumsy!  You dropped it!  Pella…!”

      “You yanked on it!  Hold on!”

      “Hurry, Pella!  I’m…”  Her voice became a squeak.  “Omigod!  Help…!”

      She was gone.  No little bug at the bottom of the well.  His wife was gone, out here in the vacuum of the Edge of the Wholeness.  And it was all his fault.

     It took almost all day to strip the three thousand feet of wire off the leverator coil and get it straight enough to let down in the well.  He secured the end to a girder inside the hatch of the cargo bay.  He checked the Prusiks.  Good enough.  It’ll take awhile, but we can climb it. I can schnabb down.

      He slipped the wire into the shoes of the Schnabel and clipped it to his belt.  Well…  He went over the edge and eased carefully down the wire.  Not too fast.  Mustn’t smoke the jaws.

      Somehow he knew it would end like this.  He slowed as he saw the bright section where he had cleaned the wire to warn him of the end.  And when he stopped, there was no Toque and no bottom.  He looked up.  And no top. 

      He dangled there for awhile, trying to put all the new data away in his mind, showing it around the ticket of panicky thoughts rushing to the fore.  Then he was moving again.  He tried to tighten the jaws of the Schnabel.  Then the last of the wire went by and he didn’t think for awhile.

     “Pell? You okay?”  She was shaking him.  “Pella!”

      “Mmmmm!  Oh.  Oh, hi!  Hey, where are we?”

      She smirked.  “We’re where you said there wasn’t.  We’re outside!”

      He shook his head to get it running and answer her at the same time.  “Come on!  There IS no Outside!”

      She helped him sit up.  “Look up there!”

      He looked.  His head started to go on strike again when he focused on the sight.  There was a glowing, yellow-green crystal high above them.  She shook his arm in excitement.

      “Look, Pella!  That’s the Wholeness!  And we’re Outside!  Isn’t it exciting?”

      “Then we’re….lost!  We can’t go home?”

      “Sure we can.  Come on, stand up!”  She got behind him and heaved him up.  He was cautious, expecting to slip again.  No, the surface was stonily unyielding, but it wasn’t slippery at all.

      “Well!  Where are we?”

       “Look!”  She pointed.  And there on a pedestal right in front of him was the Wholeness.  A big, slightly luminous crystal.  “See?  That’s the Wholeness.  Pick it up!”

      He reached for it.  Then his caution made him shrink away.  She laughed and picked it up, cradling it in her two hands like a baby bird.

      “Look in here.”

      She put her eye close to the surface and peeped in.  He looked where she said.  There was a slight flaw, a bubble.  And inside there was a white cloud.  A haze, spoiling the perfect transparency of the crystal.  He looked up.  She grinned.

      “That’s the Galaxy.  That’s home!”

      “That’s impossible.  It isn’t any bigger than my little finger!”

      “It’s still as big as it always was.  I think we’re just diffracted, or something.  Like a lens?”

      “Refracted,” he said absently.  “But only light can be refracted.  Not matter.  Not people.”

      She looked smug.  “Nevertheless…”

      “Don’t give me that Rose Sayer stuff.  We’re somewhere we haven’t been before, but it isn’t outside the Wholeness.  In fact, that’s a contradiction in terms.”

      She put the crystal back on the table.  “Well, okay, then what?”

      “Well, THAT thing isn’t anything but a paperweight!”

      “It isn’t!  Look through the bubble!  You can even see your ship.  Near the Edge.”  She picked up the crystal and tried to make him see.

      “Get it away from me and let me think!”

      “Pell!  Look!  It won’t hurt you!”

      He pushed it away.  She thought he was reaching for it and let it go. “Oh, my God!”  They both made a grab, but too late.  “Oh, my!”  She looked at the ruins of the crystal at their feet.  “There goes Home!”  She burst into heaving sobs.

      “Come on!  Hey, I’m sorry.  Look, it isn’t so bad.  I’ll bet we can glue it together.”  He knelt to pick up the larger pieces.  Glue Home?  He let it drop.

 

     Samuel J.B. Hollings, director of the “Out There” project, sighed deeply and stepped back from the set. 

      “I’ve been at this too long, I guess.  Think I’m hearing something again.”

      Tommy Gaines took a seat and picked up the headphones.  “Well, until we’re sure…”

      Dr. Hollings sighed.  “I know.  We’re already the laughing stock of the scientific world.  But they’re out there.  We’ll make contact some day.”

      “Yes, Doctor.  Well, see you in the morning.”  He slipped the headphones on.  Then he yanked them off and yelled to Dr. Hollings, “Listen to this!  I have something!”

      They shared the headset.  And listened for six hours.  When the press was there later to hear their recording and interview them, most were skeptical about the source.  But all could agree on what it was. It was a lament.

      The sound of billions of sentient creatures dying in pain and fear.