Gob's Arc

Chapter 7 of 11

Gob shone alone at the front. Every saucer left in the void now turned toward his glow. Then, deep in the dark, a shape rose that was not a saucer. Three long legs unfolded. A tall machine walked out of the black. Fluroess's voice came sharp. "A tripod. It's fixing the sky." Gob turned his cone on it. The light touched a broad round body high on three legs. Below it, a false town flickered into place. Blue sky. Houses. A whole bright world painting itself over the void, like a lid closing on a jar. The tripod was sealing them in. If it finished, no beam-door would open again. No way out to the hills. No way to the sky where his parents once flew their home. "It knows how to build," said one of Potbelly's heads. "It's almost done," said the other. Hoola gripped Gob tight. "Then we break it. We break it before it finishes." But the tripod's body was smooth. Gob's cone slid off it and found no seam, no weak spot. He felt only one gap. High on the round belly, a single dark port glowed. The place the fake sky poured from. "There," Gob said. "The light comes out there. If I fill it, maybe I choke it." PomPom hung in the black, arms crossed. "Then get above it," she said. "Hit the port straight down. No angles. Angles waste light." Hoola swung Gob up and around. She spun him once, twice, building speed like her hoop through a long summer. "Higher," she said. "Higher. I got the throw. You got the shine." On the third turn she let go. Gob flew up over the tripod's round back. He opened his mouth as wide as it went. Every spark his parents gave him poured out at once. His light dropped straight into the glowing port. The fake sky stuttered. The blue tore. Gob's brightness fought the tripod's own, and for a breath the two lights strained against each other inside the machine. Then, from the dark below, Fluroess called the last turn. "Now, Gob. All of it." Gob gave all of it. The port burst. The false town shattered into black shards. The tripod's legs buckled, and the whole machine folded down and went still. Gob drifted, dim and spent, and Potbelly's jaws caught him gently before he fell. The sealed sky was gone. But so was the fake town that had hidden them. And where the false blue had been, a real gap now showed. A jagged tear in the void, and past it, far off, the true dark sky over the hills. The way out was open again. But the light Gob spent to open it was nearly gone, and every saucer left had seen exactly where the tear had torn.