SEVEN: Animal Spirits
PART FOUR: Gravity’s Gullet
ONE: The Esty Wind
TWO: Time’s Grip
THREE: The Rock of Chaos
FOUR: Unsettled Movement
FIVE: Hard Spark
SIX: Mind Surgery
PART FIVE: Malign Attentions
ONE: The Pain of Eternity
TWO: Rational Laughter
THREE: Casualties
FOUR: Salvage
FIVE: The Sea of Sand
SIX: Eating the Storm
SEVEN: Passing Currents
Timeline of Galactic Series
About the Author
A preview of “The Sunborn”
The Galactic Center Series by Gregory Benford
TIME’S GRIP
He lifted his right hand—
—and it wouldn’t budge. It lay palm-up on smooth, cool timestone. The flesh near his knuckles felt cold, stiff. He pulled harder. A little give, not much. “Quath, I’m stuck. It’s got me.”
He yanked harder. The right hand came free with an awful ripping sound—and a flash of white-hot pain.
<I should have realized. Timestone is not truly solid. It is compressed events, rendered as mass. Press against it long enough and you become part of the event.>
“What ‘event’? That stuff tried to eat me.”
<Do not ascribe intention to physical law. Your skin began to diffuse into the occurrence-space which this substance is.>
“You mean everything here can sop us up, like sponges?”
ACCLAIM FOR GREGORY BENFORD’S CLASSIC NOVELS OF THE GALACTIC CENTER
TIDES OF LIGHT
“Benford’s most adventurous, most philosophical, and most scientifically creative novel.”
—Houston Press
“Mr. Benford is a rarity: a scientist who writes with verve and insight not only about black holes and cosmic strings but about human desires and fears.”
—New York Times Book Review
SAILING BRIGHT ETERNITY
“As at the end of any great symphony, one can only stand and applaud.”
—Asimov’s Science Fiction
“A worthy conclusion to what now should be acknowledged as the most important and involving hard SF series yet written.”
—Publishers Weekly
ALSO BY GREGORY BENFORD
