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Chapters (43)
  1. Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter
  2. Foreword
  3. Eve
  4. PART 1 ERA: Expansion
  5. The Sun-People
  6. The Logic Pool
  7. Gossamer
  8. Cilia-of-Gold
  9. Lieserl
  10. PART 2 ERA: Squeem Occupation
  11. Pilot
  12. The Xeelee Flower
  13. More Than Time or Distance
  14. The Switch
  15. PART 3 ERA: Qax Occupation
  16. Blue Shift
  17. The Quagma Datum
  18. Planck Zero
  19. PART 4 ERA: Assimilation
  20. The Godel Sunflowers
  21. Vacuum Diagrams
  22. PART 5 ERA: The War to End Wars
  23. Stowaway
  24. The Tyranny of Heaven
  25. Hero
  26. PART 6 ERA: Flight
  27. Secret History
  28. PART 7 ERA: Photino Victory
  29. Shell
  30. The Eighth Room
  31. The Baryonic Lords
  32. C.A.D. 500,000,000
  33. Epilogue
  34. The Xeelee Sequence-Timeline
  35. Permissions
  36. About the Author
  37. Notes
  38. 1
  39. 2
  40. 3
  41. 4
  42. 5
  43. 6

At last, only the Xeelee themselves were more potent than mankind...

Humans railed against the Tyranny of Heaven.

More legends were written, as waves of human assaults pounded against the great Xeelee sites. It was a remote, inhuman time. I watched, repelled, terrified.

PART 5 ERA: The War to End Wars

PART 5
ERA: The War to End Wars

Fragments. Shards...

Humans even reached into the Prime Radiant of the Xeelee.

Here was a warship, its engine blazing, falling through Bolder's Ring -- and into a new Universe.

The ship imploded, and fell into a compact, glowing nebula. Crew members hurried through the corridors of their falling ship; smoke filled the passageways as lurid flames singed the air. The hull was breached; the raw air of the nebula scoured through the cabins, and through rents in the silver walls the crew saw flying trees and huge, cloudy whales, all utterly unlike anything in their experience...

Gradually they came to understand. Gravity was the key to the absurd place they were stranded in. Gravity here was a billion times as strong as in the Universe they'd come from. Here their home planet would have a surface gravity of a billion gees -- if it didn't implode in an instant.

The crew adapted, and survived. Gradually humans spread through the nebula...

Stowaway

Stowaway

A.D. 104,858

It was the end of Rees's work shift. Wearily he hauled himself through the foundry door. Cool air dried the sweat from his brow.

He pulled himself along the ropes and roofs towards his cabin, inspecting his hands and arms with some interest. When one of the older workers had dropped a ladle of iron, Rees had narrowly dodged a hail of molten metal; tiny droplets had drifted into his flesh, sizzling out little craters which--

A huge shadow flapped across the Belt. Air washed over his back. He looked up; and wonder settled at the base of his skull.

The tree was a wheel of wood and foliage fifty yards wide, magnificent against the crimson sky. Its dozen radial branches and their veil of leaves turned with a calm possession; the trunk was like a mighty wooden skull which glared around at the ocean of crimson air.

Its rotation slowing, the tree lowered itself reluctantly into the gravity well of the star kernel.