Communication with the Noi continued. The printing device connected to the Magic Net on the table kept whirring and creaking, turning voices from several light-years away into words before Gawain and Amber. This little machine seemed like a tendril extending from the FTL Communication Array; amid its crude gears, linkage rods, and rune boards, Gawain felt as if he could glimpse faint traces of light from the cold, distant depths of the stars.
When the printer's paper roller began turning once more, he suddenly had a strange feeling and association—
Between Loren and Noi, across the distant sea of stars and the vast darkness of several light-years, an intermittent FTL Communication link was the only connection between two civilizations. Two peoples who could still be called strangers, two peoples who could not even imagine what the other looked like, were reaching out to each other through this pitifully fragile "connection," trying to pull themselves free of the mire before the end came. And that unreliable connection alone was enough to make one feel that the sea of stars was not lonely.
But whether that feeling was merely a false hearthfire, no one could yet say.
A message from the Noi people appeared on the paper: "In a sense, we are each other's hope of survival."
Gawain lightly tapped the armrest with his fingertips. "But can you be certain that the path you have taken is the right one? Have your Magic Tide observations and Mind Unity Field... ever truly enabled a civilization to survive the Magic Tide?"
His words were swiftly translated by the Star Resolvers at Sorin Command Center, then automatically encoded and converted by the calculation nodes connected to the Thorin Giant Tree. The brief message became an FTL signal rippling through the underlying fabric of the world