“That’s why the expansion is speeding up,” Cole murmured. It was one of the mysteries of cosmology, the odd fact that expansion was accelerating when gravity should be slowing it down. Now he knew why. He turned to Byrne. “We’re halfway there, aren’t we? The matter is no longer flying away from itself, it’s now coming closer together! Gravity is working the other way, speeding it along.”

Byrne nodded. “Precisely how we like to put it. We are ‘past the universal equator.’ Well past, in fact.”

Cole forgot where he was, all the trouble he’d seen, all the matters relatively inconsequential. His brain went giddy with the possibilities, scrambling to assemble them into a coherent whole.

“That also explains hyperinflation,” he said. “It explains why things are going so quick in the beginning. All that matter just finished its downward swoop, so it would be absolutely flying as it came together!” He paused, finding a problem with the theory. “But why don’t we see it coming if we’re getting closer?” he asked. “Where’s all the other stuff?”

“All that stuff is over the horizon, to extend the metaphor.”

Cole pictured that. “But not because the light fails to bend, right? Is it because of the speed everything’s traveling?” Cole held up his finger, seeing it clearly. “It’s because of the direction it’s traveling through this fourth dimension.”

Byrne smiled broadly at Cole. “You are the one, aren’t you? I can see it, now. I never could in Mollie.”

Hearing her name elicited a shiver from Cole, snapping the descent into philosophy and cosmology. He remembered where he was, felt it like an icicle stabbing through his chest. He pictured Molly strapped to the gurney in Byrne’s ship, and the vision angered him, breaking the physics lesson. It helped him see another flaw in Byrne’s theory.

“That can’t be right,” he said. “The Big Bang didn’t happen in a place, it happened everywhere. It created space. Hell, the Big Bang happened just as much in my Portugal as it did in the Andromeda galaxy!”

Byrne laughed at this, bending at the waist and uncrossing his legs. It was a jolly laugh, very Human-like. When he settled down, he turned to Cole: “Son, we aren’t talking about hypotheticals, here. I’m not discus-sing theory. This is what we know, what we’ve known for a very long time. We’ve observed it.”

“That’s impossible,” Cole spat. “How can you observe something that destroys everything?”

“Oh, but it doesn’t. Very nearly but not quite. Not everything arrives at the same time, and some of it gets deflected. Besides, the South Pole of the universe, if you like to consider it that, is a very big place. As hot as it gets—and it gets hot enough to melt down nature’s laws—there are ways to get information through. Just as a particle can escape a black hole now and then, we can make sure data survives the Great Passing.”

Cole’s jaw dropped. “You’ve done this? This isn’t the first time we’ve been here?”