- The Control Voice: Are we affected only by our outward experience or are there other worlds that affect us? Hidden worlds — that exist in the heart and in the blood?
A spaceship enters an alternate universe that behaves like a living entity.
- The Control Voice: We are shaped by our experiences, both within and without, present and past... and we pass those experiences on in our blood, giving birth to new generations and sometimes... new worlds.
Tropes:
- Colonized Solar System: There are bases on the Martian moon Phobos and Jupiter's moon Titan.
- Genesis Effect: Dr. Callie Whitehorse Landau's sacrifice in trans-space results in the creation of a new planet in the normal universe.
- Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Explorers on a spaceship are trapped in "trans-space," a hyperspace-like dimension that turns out to be the literal bloodstream of the universe, which is actually a living being. The "scary" part comes from the universe's defense mechanisms being similar to those of humans and actively seeking to destroy foreign bodies.
- Mega-Microbes: The USAS spaceship Copernicus is exploring trans-space, a newly discovered Alternate Universe which allows for near instantaneous transport between two points in space which would otherwise take years to traverse. Almost as soon as the Copernicus enters trans-space, it is bombarded with gravitons. The astrophysicist Dr. Callie Whitehorse Landau, who has just discovered that she is pregnant, begins to experience hallucinations of her late grandmother, a member of the Navajo tribe who lived her entire life in Arizona. Callie comes to the conclusion that trans-space is part of a gigantic living organism and the gravitons act as its white blood cells. The floating rocks that it also contains are essentially its red blood cells. Her hypothesis is confirmed by Dr. Lucille Kennedy, who has detected a double helix structure in the dark stars found in trans-space. Callie speculates that trans-space was able to communicate with her because she was pregnant and it recognized that there was a new life growing inside of her. Callie and Dr. Kennedy believe that trans-space is the source of all life in the normal universe.
- Overpopulation Crisis: Earth has a population of 15 billion and USAS is hopeful that the discovery of trans-space will allow humanity to colonize planets outside of the Solar System.
- Seeker White Blood Cells: A spaceship crew punches a hole into another dimension, which they assume to be hyperspace or subspace. The main character, who is descended from Magical Native Americans, starts to believe that it is actually the bloodstream of the living universe. What they originally thought to be asteroids turn out to have a similar structure to human white blood cells, except they use gravity to kill infection.
