After the Mirror Nebula, the journey grew quieter.
Aronas hardly spoke anymore.
He stood for hours at the front porthole, as if waiting for a sign no one else could see.
One morning a new object appeared on the main screen.
Ieva first thought it was a system error.
The star chart held neither a planet nor a star.
Only a circle, around which space was bent like wet paper.
Light didn’t go dark there.
It simply never returned.
“What is that?” Ieva asked.
“The Center.”
“Of what system?”
“Of all of them.”
He said it so calmly, as if speaking of a long-agreed meeting place.
From that day, the ship’s course no longer changed.
They flew straight ahead.
The closer they drew, the stranger the sky behaved.
Distant galaxies slowly bent to one side.
Starlight turned into thin arcs.
Even the silence on the ship felt heavier.
The instruments recorded only one thing.
Gravitational pull.
Growing.
Relentless.
Ieva watched the screens for a long time.
Strangely, not all objects reacted the same way.
Some asteroids suddenly changed direction and were drawn into the dark.
Others, though flying just as close to the event horizon, calmly continued on their orbits.
She recalculated the data several times.
The result didn’t change.
“Do you see the pattern?” Aronas asked.
She shook her head.
He stepped up to the screen.
“Don’t look at the distance.”
“Look at the trajectories.”
Ieva zoomed in on the image.
Then she noticed it.
Every object that had been pulled in had, until then, held no stable orbit.
They wandered.
Drifting slowly among gravitational fields, belonging to no one.
Meanwhile, the planets, moons, and even the smallest comets, moving along their own paths, held steady.
Even when they drew dangerously close.
“So…” she said quietly.
Aronas didn’t answer.
He only looked at the black hole.
As if listening to something no one else could hear.
When only a few hours remained to the event horizon, warning signals flooded the bridge.
The navigation system suggested a course change.
Aronas dismissed the warning.
“Not yet.”
He placed his hand on the main control lever.
“Beyond it, everything becomes clear.”
Ieva looked at the screen.
The black hole didn’t look angry.
It didn’t look hungry.
It simply was.
So immense that beside it, every direction seemed insignificant.
Suddenly Ieva remembered the night when her other self had asked about the star chart.
She looked at her palms.
Then — at the navigation console.
For the first time since the journey began, she didn’t ask what she should do.
She reached out her hand.
And quietly took over the controls.
Aronas didn’t resist.
He only slowly turned toward her.
Their eyes met.
There was neither anger nor surprise in them.
Only a long, hard-to-describe silence.
Ieva didn’t know whether she’d chosen correctly.
She knew only one thing.
For the first time, her own hands were holding the course.
The ship slowly banked.
Not by much.
Only a few degrees.
But that was enough.
The warning signals gradually fell silent.
The tension-filled quiet gave way to the monotonous hum of the engines.
The black hole remained beside them.
Just as immense.
Just as unknowable.
But now it was no longer directly ahead.
It had become one of many directions in the sky.
Ieva looked at the star chart.
It no longer showed a single route.
Dozens of orbits unfolded before her.
Not one of them was marked as the right one.