Virtual Poole replied, ‘Yes. Those stars don’t fit our main sequence. And their spectra are simple – few heavy elements. They’re more like the protostars of our own early universe, I think: the first generation, formed of not much more than the hydrogen and helium that came out of the Big Bang.’
‘No heavy elements,’ observed Miriam Berg. ‘No metals.’
‘I’ll send through the data I’m collecting—’
‘Getting it, son,’ came Harry Poole’s voice.
The others stayed quiet to let Virtual Poole speak. His words, the careful observations delivered by a man so far from home, or at least by a construct that felt as if it were a man, were impressive in their courage.
‘This is not our universe,’ he whispered. ‘I think that’s clear. This one is young, and small – according to the curvature of spacetime, only a few million light years across. Probably not big enough to accommodate our Local Group of galaxies.’
‘A pocket universe, maybe,’ Miriam said. ‘An appendix from our own.’
‘I can’t believe the things you have been calling “spiders” originated here,’ the Virtual said. ‘Their fabric is heavily reliant on metals. You said it, Miriam. No metals here, not in this entire cosmos. I guess that’s why they were scavenging metals from probes, meteorites.’
‘They come from somewhere else, then,’ Poole said. ‘There was nothing strange in the elemental abundance we recorded in the spider samples we studied. They come from elsewhere in our own universe. The pocket universe is just a transit interchange. Like Earthport.’
The Virtual said, ‘Yes. And maybe behind these other moons in my sky lie gateways to other Titans – other sustained ecologies, maybe with different biological bases. Other experiments, elsewhere in the universe.’
-Xeelee: Endurance, "Return to Titan"