What they were discovering was remarkable, inspiring, haunting. Vala had actually found a scrap of a log fired back by the crew of the Integrality’s Constancy of Purpose as the warship, its engine blazing, had fallen through Bolder’s Ring, an immense Xeelee artefact under assault from human fleets – fallen into a new universe . . .
The ship imploded, and fell into a compact, glowing nebula. Crew members hurried through the corridors of their failing vessel. Smoke filled the passageways as lurid flames singed the air. And then the hull was breached. The raw air of the nebula scoured through the cabins, and through rents in the silver walls the crew saw flying trees and huge, cloudy whales, all utterly unlike anything in their experience . . .
‘It’s a miracle anything survives at all,’ Vala said. ‘It’s nearly nine hundred thousand years since this ship was lost! A date, incidentally, we confirmed from the linguistic drift between Lura’s tongue and our own.’
-Xeelee: Endurance, "Gravity Dreams"