“Chop the theory!”

Time to mission onset: 192.6 seconds.

The arch rushed at them, swelling. Rachel saw delicate filaments winking on and off as currents traced their fine equilibria, always seeking to balance the hot plasma within against the magnetic walls. Squeeze the magnetic fist, the plasma answers with a dazzling glow. Squeeze, glow. Squeeze, glow. Luminous slabs slipped down field lines, driven by local flaring storms where fields reconnected, dumping energy. That nature could make such an intricate marvel and send it arcing above the sun’s savagery was a miracle, but one she was not in the mood to appreciate right now. Sweat trickled around her eyes, dripped off her chin. No trick of lowering the lighting was going to make her forget the heat. She made herself breathe in and out.

Their slag shield caught the worst of the blaze. At these lowest altitudes in the parabolic orbit, though, the sun’s huge horizon rimmed white-hot in all directions. The arch was bigger than ten thousand Earths.

Our internal temperature is rising.

“No joke. Find that worm!” Claire was managing their ship systems, eyes narrow.

The excess light persists—no, wait. It is gone. Now I can see the target. Yes, yes—the wormhole.

Claire slapped the arm of her couch and let out a whoop. Fraq leaped to his feet, tumbled in the zero-g. On the wall screen loomed the very peak of the arch. They were gliding toward it, skating over the very upper edge—and there it was in yellow-white splendor.

And a tiny dark ball. A caught worm. Not like a fly, no. It settled in among the strands like a black egg nestled in blue-white straw. An ebony Easter egg.

Survey begun. Full spectrum response.

“Bravo.” Claire laughed.

Your word expresses elation but your voice does not.

“I’m jumpy,” Claire said. “Say, Fraq. Got that code logged right? Ready to send?”

Fraq chirped agreement—and then Erma broke in.

The worm image appears to be shrinking.

“Huh?” Rachel blinked. As they wheeled above the arch, the image dwindled. It rippled at its edges, light crushed and crinkled. She saw rainbows dancing around the black center. “What’s it doing?” She felt a jab of fear—that the thing was falling away from them, plunging into the sun.

I detect no relative motion. The image itself is contracting as we move nearer it.

“Impossible. Things look bigger when you get close,” Claire snapped.

Not this object.

“Is the wormhole shrinking?”

Mark!—survey run half complete.

Rachel was sweating and it wasn’t from the heat. “What’s going on?”

I have accessed reserve theory section.

Rachel had to laugh. Doing math on the sun…

Fraq joined in with a skree-chirp she had learned was a polite chuckle. “How comforting. I always feel better after swallowing a nice cool theory.”

Rachel smiled. Fraq was learning the nuances of Anglish now. He could even use irony, sarcasm, and the cruder forms of snark. Probably that told them something about the similarities between human and Ythri thought. Some sort of convergent evolution of ideas…?