“That won’t be possible, Ed.”

“Then I want to rename the ship. Can I do that?”

“Of course you can.”

Ed thought hard about his fucked-up life. “We’re the Black Cat,” he said. “We’re the Black Cat from now on.”

“Ed, it’s a fine name.”

“So ramp me up.”

The mathematics was delighted to do that. Ed went on shiptime. Ten spatial dimensions spread themselves like legs for him; four of time. Dark matter boiled and flared. Out in the last place in the ordinary world, the Black Cat rose from the surface of the asteroid. She hunted like a compass needle, then turned herself slowly until she stood on her tail. For thirty nanoseconds, which is a million years down there where things are small, nothing happened. Then fusion product burst out of her stern. She leapt forward on a line of bright white light and shortly made a hole in nowhere.

“Well the engine’s on. Let’s just point the fucker.”

“Let’s just do that, Ed.”

“Which of these switches is the music?”

The asteroid now stood empty, but for the bone dice and the dead physicist. The dice lay as they had fallen for Ed Chianese, and the dust sifted over them. Michael Kearney’s bones browned a little further. Seria Mau Genlicher returned a number of times, sometimes happy, sometimes like a living winter, and looked down, and went away again. Years passed. Centuries passed. Then the sky began to change colour, subtly and slowly at first, then faster and wilder than anyone could dream.

THE BEGINNING

Also by M. John Harrison

THE COMMITTED MEN
THE CENTAURI DEVICE
THE ICE MONKEY
VIRICONIUM
CLIMBERS
THE LUCK IN THE HEAD with Ian Miller
THE COURSE OF THE HEART
SIGNS OF LIFE
TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS

Reviews of Light

“Sentence by sentence [Harrison] is almost certainly one of the most skilled SF writers alive . . . an unusually strong and even, for all its brutality, touching example of how character and physics can illuminate each other in the best hard SF. Light is likely to be one of the most rewarding and challenging novels of the year, and goes a long way toward explaining just what it is that Harrison can do that other writers find so astonishing.”

—Locus

“Here we have ‘space opera’ that brilliantly transcends its humble pulp origins while simultaneously glorying in them. The result is a gripping, thrilling, meditative novel which can be read and enjoyed on multiple levels. . . . In direct line from Cordwainer Smith and Keith Laumer, Michael Moorcock and Norman Spinrad, Harrison has adapted the conceits of space opera until the form is big enough to hold all the marvels he jams within.”

—Sci Fi Weekly (Editor’s A+ Pick)