Floating Worlds

YEKKA

In Yekka the watch was high. Leno took her across the Koup Bridge to the Akopra House, standing in the fields of rellah vines, far from bilyobio trees and people. The city was bright and cold, the grass brilliant green like an Earthish spring. They went through the side door into the round building.

It was dark except for the lights above the stage in the middle. Tanuojin was drawing on the stage with chalk. Four dancers stood behind him. Paula went to the edge of the raised platform.

“Why am I under arrest?”

Tanuojin drew a circle on the floor. “Ketac was plotting to kill me. I think you had something to do with it.” He walked slowly around, his gaze on the stage floor, counting his steps, and sank down to make another series of marks.

“You know that isn’t true,” she said.

The dancers watched her covertly. In their black rehearsal clothes they were nearly invisible in the dark. The stage around him was scrawled with white markings. He said, “About you I never know anything for certain.” He waved to the dancers. “Try it like that.” He came down off the stage past her and went on into the back of the theater.

Leno had moved over to the door. She could hardly pick him out of the shadows. She followed Tanuojin up the aisle. He sat on the last bench, his hands between his knees, watching the stage. She sat on the end of the bench.

“Where is Ketac?”

“I haven’t caught him yet. I will.”

On the stage, one dancer lifted another, slow and smooth, their arms straight, their palms flat together. The man in the air curved bonelessly over onto the shoulders of the man who held him, who sank down in the same smooth slow dreamlike quiet onto one knee. She rubbed her eyes. She had slept on the way, in Leno’s ship, but she was still tired. Leno came down the aisle, his eyes on the dance. “They’re really good. It’s amazing, in a place like this.”

Tanuojin gave him an oblique glance. He raised his head, his voice pitched to reach the stage. “How does that feel?”

The stocky man who did all the lifting walked to the edge of the stage. “It would be easier if I started facing the other way. Then I could use my strong leg.”

“Try it,” Tanuojin said. He turned toward Leno. “Mehma went back to his ship?”

“Yes. I didn’t know whether you wanted him to go or not.”

“That suits me. Go back to Merkhiz. Let the thing burn out in Vribulo, there’s nothing we can do.”

Paula stood up. The dancers broke out of their pose and clapped each other on the shoulders, pleased. She went down to the aisle and out the door of the theater.

The path led between fields of water. Under the glassy surface of the fields, new pale rellah vines curled like worms. She had never seen the adults, strung up on stakes to be bled. She went on toward Tanuojin’s compound in the distance.

Ketac arrived unconscious, strapped into a sled. Paula unbuckled the straps and pulled the blanket back. The long rips in his stomach and chest were oozing with infection.

“Marus did that,” Tanuojin said. “He’s over-anxious.”

She laid her hand against Ketac’s cheek. His skin was harsh with fever. Tucking his arm back into the narrow sled, she covered him in the blanket. The sled lay on the floor next to her bed. Tanuojin was sitting across the little white room, in the big chair next to the desk.

“Shall I heal him?”

“No. He’ll die if he’s lucky.”

“Why are you bitter at me?” He thumbed down his mustaches. “The way Bokojin feels about you, I probably saved your life.”

She went to the window. At the far end of the yard, David and Junna were coming in the gate. She put her hand out to the warmth of the radiation, her eyes on the two young men, one short and burly, the other slim as a vine.

Tanuojin got stiffly out of the chair, stretching, and crossed the room to the sled. Looking down at Ketac, he said, “Don’t let him die. I have a use for him.” He went out to the hall and shut the door behind him.

Tanuojin spent most of his time at his Akopra. Paula considered searching his private rooms in the compound but he would have anticipated that. The rioters in Vribulo had set half the bubble on fire, and now word came from Leno that Illini had also gone dark. Bokojin’s brothers were fighting over the succession. The Uranian Patrol held most of the city. Paula stayed in Tanuojin’s library.

While she was going to her room again, after a watch reading novels, David met her in the hall. He turned to walk beside her.

“How is Ketac?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen him for eight hours,” she said.

He lagged behind her to let a man coming the other way pass by. “Tajin should have killed him.”

“Don’t encourage it. Do you like Tanuojin?” They crossed the main hall to her room. At the door she stopped and looked up at him.

“He’s taught me a lot,” David said. “Once I started listening.”

“What, for example?”

He shrugged. He was filling out through his chest and shoulders, and his upper arms packed his sleeves. He said, “I’m not going to work for him for the rest of my life, you know.”

His solemn look made her smile. “Oh, really?”

“Someday I’ll get my own ship. Junna and I. We’ve talked about it. Actually, we’ve been talking about going to Neptune. Maybe even beyond.”

She thought, He’s like me. She unlocked her door and went into the white room beyond.

The sled was empty. She looked around, startled, and saw Ketac sitting on the window sill. “Oh,” she said. “Do you feel better?”

He wore no shirt. The purpling half-healed wounds ran like a flag across his chest. David was behind her on the threshold, and he and his brother paid each other a long fierce look. She bent over the empty sled.

“Help me get this out of here.” She picked up one end of the sled.

David took the other end and they carried it out to the hall. He propped it up against the wall, out of the way, for a slave to take. He said, “Now he’s going to sleep with you, is that it?”

“That’s right.”

At the end of the hall, the outside door opened, and Junna came in. He was tall and thin, and for an instant she thought he was Tanuojin. David called to him. She went into her room again.

Ketac was still sitting on the window sill, looking out at Yekka. Paula shut the door and latched it. He said, “Why am I here?”

“Because you’re a stupid ignorant idiot.” She took the chair from her desk to sit beside him.

“You were there, weren’t you? At my house. I found your dress. How much did you hear?”

“Enough.”

He was avoiding looking at her. On his chest the puckered wounds ran from his right shoulder to his navel. She said, “You thought that was your plot, didn’t you? That was Tanuojin’s plot, Ketac, he has been waiting for this chance since before Saba died.” She leaned toward him and said into his face, “You did this.”

He shed a rising heat. His hands pressed against the window sill. Turned away from her, he said out toward Yekka, “Why didn’t he kill me?”

“He needs Ybix.”

He made a sound in his throat. She looked around the little room. The white walls made it bright. Tanuojin could hear her; he knew everything she did and thought, so there was no use trying to surprise him.

“Are you done tongue-whipping me?” Ketac said.

“Bah.”

“Will you help me escape?”

“No.”

“Come on, Paula, we’ve been friends for a long time.” He swiveled to face her and took hold of her hand. “Tell me what to do.”

With her free hand she took his fingers from her wrist and held them. “Not escape. You have to make him do what you want.” She laced her fingers with his. “I’ll help you do that.”

The Akopra was dark. She stood still a moment, blinking her eyes clear. On the round lit stage, four dancers climbed on each other. She looked around the back benches until she found Tanuojin and went along the curved wall toward him.

“Shut up,” he said. “I’m watching this.”

Obediently she watched while they moved through the third design from Capricornus: where Capricornus met his lyo. The bench was hard and she sat restlessly. A young man she had never seen before stood off to one side of the stage. When the figure was over, she said, “What are you going to do about Ketac?”

Tanuojin thumbed his mustaches down, his eyes on the stage. “Leave him to me.”

“What are you going to do?”

He raised his hand and made a gesture, and the young man at the edge of the stage went into the middle and took the place of another dancer. Tanuojin settled down again. He said, “The same thing I did with Dr. Savenia.”

“He’s not like Cam,” she said. “And you haven’t got the time to do it right. You’ll kill him.”

He made a sound in his chest. Slowly the four men on the stage began the same design over, this time with the new dancer as Capricornus. Paula watched, her attention caught by the young man’s fiery gestures.

“He’s going to be good,” Tanuojin muttered.

“He’s going too fast.”

“I’ll teach him better.”

The young man stood on his hands on the hands of the stocky dancer. She watched the muscles flex under his tight black sleeves. Tanuojin said, “What’s your idea about Ketac?”

“Do it through me,” she said. “He’ll accept it from me.”

Spinning, the young dancer flipped up onto his feet on the floor-man’s shoulders. He lost his balance for an instant and wobbled and the floor-man caught his ankles. Paula leaned back against the wall behind her. Tanuojin was watching her, his fingers entwined in his mustaches.

“In the low watch,” she said. “He’s still a little weak. He’ll be easier to handle. I’ll take him to bed with me, and when he’s asleep, you take him through me.”

He nodded. On the stage, the dancers had finished. He waved to them, and they left the stage and came toward him.

Paula said, “I’ll be there to get you out if anything goes wrong.”

Tanuojin nodded again, watching her. The dancers stood in the aisle on his far side. He turned his head. “What’s your name?”

“Kapsin,” the new dancer said.

“You can stay for fifty-one watches on trial. Don’t try that flip again until you know what you’re doing. You could have killed him.” He faced Paula again. “Do you know, Paula, I think you have a good idea.”

Paula settled back against the wall. He had jumped at it. She had expected him to. She listened to him lecture the dancers on the art of Akopra.

Ketac went to bed with her. The ruts in his chest and belly were like seams under her hands. When he was asleep, she rose from the bed and opened the door. Tanuojin came in. He left his body in the chair by the desk, and she took him to Ketac.

In his sleep, Ketac knew her kiss; he stirred, his mouth soft under hers, willing. She took his hands. He did not waken, even when she drew back, sitting beside him, her eyes on his face.

Tanuojin said, in Ketac’s voice, “Be careful. I’ll wake him up.”

She held Ketac’s hands. He stiffened, and his eyes opened, shining with terror. His mouth moved but said nothing. His chest heaved.

“Ketac,” she said. “I’m here. It’s all right, you’ll be all right.”

His hands closed painfully over her fingers. She bit her lip. “Just relax. It won’t be for long.”

Ketac’s lips moved again. His long body flexed under the blanket, and his eyes shut. She pulled her throbbing hand free of his grip and worked her fingers and gasped at the pain in her knuckle.

“Take me, Paula.”

She bent down and sucked him out of Ketac’s mouth. Ketac lay still in the bed, asleep again. Her throat was numb. She crossed the room to the chair where Tanuojin’s body slumped and breathed him coppery back into his own flesh.

Tanuojin straightened; he touched his mouth with his hand. “You’re right. He’d have died if I’d had to force him.”

Cold, she went back to the bed and sat down, pulling the blanket around her. Tanuojin came over and touched Ketac’s face.

“He’s stronger than Saba.”

“Go away and let me sleep,” she said.

He went to the door. “Now we’ll see who wins.” He left. She lay down next to Ketac again.

Ketac would not talk about what had happened. Paula walked beside him along the stream. She expected him to be angry that she had helped Tanuojin do it, but he seemed not to care. She took his hand. In the high wild grass along the stream-bank, krines sang in reedy voices.

Finally he said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You wouldn’t have believed me.”

“Have you done it?”

She nodded, her eyes on the sleek water. Stopping, she put her hand into the stream. “Will you help me against him?”

“Against him?” He stood beside her, kicking at the grass with one foot. “What can I do against him?”

“That depends on you,” she said. “You have to know what he is, but when you do, there are possibilities.” She sat down on the grass. The water rippled and went smooth again: a passing fish.

“What is he? He isn’t just a man.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“He’s more than a man. Why do you want me to help you against him—what are you trying to do to me? It’s blasphemous to defy him.”

She let her breath out, defeated again. Certainly Tanuojin was listening. Maybe she could not resist him. On the far side of the stream, the path ran down through the waste fields toward the Koup Bridge. Someone was walking along it. It was Kapsin, the young dancer, another instrument of Tanuojin’s will. She turned her face away.

In the low watch David and Ketac and Junna flew Ybicket to Ybix, in high orbit around Uranus. David would bring the little ship back alone to take her and Tanuojin. Paula could not sleep. The pillow smelled faintly of Ketac and she got up and sat by the window. The door opened, and Tanuojin said, “Ybicket is docking.”

She put on two pairs of overalls and a jacket. All she was taking with her was her flute. They went down through Yekka to the city gate, on a platform over a field of rakis beans. There was a freighter in the main loading pod. A small crowd had gathered along the glass doors to watch it unload. Paula and Tanuojin went to the next pod, where Ybicket lay in her harness.

David came along the catwalk toward them. “I have to replace a crystal. The captain of that freighter has a message for you.”

“How long will it take?” Tanuojin said.

“I’m half done. About an hour.”

Tanuojin bobbed his head once. He went out of the dock to find the freighter’s captain. Paula watched him go. David said, “Sit in here and talk to me while I do this.”

She climbed into Ybicket after him. The instrument panel in the front of the cockpit was tilted up on its hinges, showing the guts of the drive system packed into the nose. She sat in the drive seat, where she could watch. David lay on his back on the curved floor and slid under the raised panel.

“Give me that tube of glue.” He waggled his hand at her. She bent down and put the squeeze-tube of glue into his fingers.

“Why did you take him back?” he said.

“Who, Ketac?”

“I don’t see how you could go from Papa to that.”

She ran her hand over the diamond-seamed upholstered seat. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“Are you fighting with my uncle?”

“I don’t call it fighting. You know I’m a pacifist.”

The wrench slid out across the sloping floor of the ship. The handle was pierced with holes for his fingers, spaced to keep his claws out of the way. She heard him counting under his breath. Finally, he said, “Do you need help?”

That surprised her. Her face was cold and she turned up the collar of her coat and slid her hands into her sleeves. “What if it meant helping Ketac?”

“Oh, there’s no saving Ketac,” David said. “He belongs to my uncle, eyes, hooks, and paranoia. I’ll help you.”

She raised her gaze to the hatchway, where Tanuojin stood. “Come put your suit on,” he said. She stood on the seat and stepped across the ship to the hatch and up to the dock. The locker door was folded back against the wall and Tanuojin was taking out his black pressure suit. Her special suit hung in the rear of the locker. “Here,” he said.

He gave her an order medal. She looked down at it, frowning: the symbol cut into the surface was the triple star.

“Whose is it?”

“Bokojin’s, I guess.”

She put the medal on the locker shelf and took out her suit. “The whole patrol is in the star.”

“Pretty much.”

Stooping, she lifted the heavy shoes over the lip of the locker. In the ship, David called, “I’m finished.”

Tanuojin said, “There aren’t five ships in the chevron as fast as Ybicket, and they don’t know when we’re leaving.” He pulled his suit over his shoulders and sealed the front together. “Put your helmet on, we have to launch hard.” He took his helmet out of the locker and went over to Ybicket.

She clumped after him, lifting her feet high in the thick-soled shoes. Inside the cocoon of the ship, Tanuojin was bent over the radio deck in the kick-seat. He said, “You fly her. I can handle both guns from back here.” She licked her lips. Her stomach fluttered unpleasantly. She would probably be sick; she was always queasy, flying in the Planet. David took her hands and helped her into the middle of the three seats.

Paula stuffed her hands into the gloves. David went out of the ship. She pulled the straps tight around her wrists. In the seat behind her, a metallic click sounded and an electric whine undulated louder up and down. When she put the heavy dark cylinder of the helmet on, the whine was painfully loud through the speakers above her ears.

“Can’t you turn that off?” She held the helmet at arm’s length away from her ears.

David swung himself into the ship and pulled the hatch closed. “There’s nobody for miles on the scan,” Tanuojin said. The piercing noise stopped. She lowered her helmet onto her head.

The launch nearly knocked her cold. She rested her forehead against the helmet, groggy. The green glare of the holograph shone over the front of the cab. Her suit was rigid as a shell around her. Above her ears, Tanuojin’s voice came out of the helmet.

“Take her down an M.”

“There’s a reef—”

“Stoop under it. Somebody’s coming.”

The ship rolled down into a dive. Paula swallowed the sour taste in her throat. Her eyes watered. Smoothly Ybicket swung into a wide rising curve.

“Where are they?” David said, in the top of the helmet.

“I think we lost them. Take her up again to—”

A sheet of white light flashed in her face. She could not breathe. She lost consciousness.

She woke up with a start, her ears ringing, alive. The ship was streaking through the magma. Her pressure suit was flexible again. She said, “David?”

Nobody answered. Her hands slipped on the helmet, and she pulled off the gloves. The helmet was jammed. She wrenched it back and forth until the seal popped. The air of the cockpit was icy cold. In the dark, she could hardly see; opposite her seat the wall seemed to be crumpled inward. She said, loudly, “David,” and unsnapped her harness and unhooked her suit from the lifeline.

The ship hurtled along, yawing slightly from side to side. The radio chirped behind her. She scrambled out of her deep seat forward to David’s seat.

He was slumped against the side of the ship. Like many of them he had not worn his helmet. The green light of the map cube shone on the side of his face. Blood coated his face. It had burst from his eyes, from his nose and mouth. She felt along his throat for his pulse. Her head hurt as if a vise were screwing down on her temples. He had no pulse. She tore open the front of his pressure suit and his overalls underneath and thrust her hand in to his skin. His head tipped forward onto his chest.

“David.”

On the instrument panel behind her a yellow light flashed. Something hummed. She pulled David against her, stroking his hair, his head on her shoulder. He smelled of blood. Behind her the hum turned to a beep.

She let him down again, cradling his head against her arm, easing him down against the black quilted seat. When she turned around, the yellow light made her squint. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. The control deck was divided into three panels, a sheet of dials on the left, four levers in the middle, buttons and switches on the right. The levers flew the ship. She squeezed down into the seat beside David and took hold of them.

When she pulled the outside levers down, the ship turned over completely and dumped her on her head. She put one hand on the ceiling and pushed the levers up again, and Ybicket righted. The ship was tearing like a bullet through the Planet. The beep and the flashing light unsettled her. She took the inside levers and drew them down, bracing herself in case the ship pitched, and slowly Ybicket raised her nose and began to climb. The beep fell to a hum, and after a moment the hum stopped, and the light blinked off.

She let go of the levers. The ship was still going terribly fast. She glanced at the holograph; the magma around them was clear green. The foot pedals were hidden in the dark under the instrument panel. She groped down along David’s legs to the floor. His feet were jammed down on the pedals. She pulled them back and made his knees bend and put his shoes on the floor.

The ship slowed. She sat back, watching Ybicket in the map. The narrow ship was climbing. The heavy sludge of hydrogen slowed her. Now another light glowed on the console. A wave lifted the ship and threw her backward. Paula lay back on the seat and put one arm around David.

The patrol would be looking for them. She had forgotten about Tanuojin. She climbed back through the ship, one hand on the wall. At the waist, the ship’s wall bulged in, the skin rippled. She had to squeeze past into the tail of the ship.

Tanuojin was folded forward over the radio deck. Like David he wore no helmet. She pushed uselessly at him. The ship rocked over a wave. She climbed into the back of the kick-seat, slid her hands under his arms, and heaved him upright.

He had not bled. His head flopped back against her shoulder. She put her hand over his mouth. His breath grazed her fingers. He was alive, deeply unconscious, inside healing himself.

She pushed him off. Her head beat painfully hard. It was impossible to think. If she waited long enough, he would waken, do the thinking, and fly the ship. Another wave laid Ybicket over on her side and swung her stern around. Paula crawled out of the seat. His helmet was still in the clamps on the ceiling. She fitted it over his head, in case the patrol found them, and straightened his legs and pulled him upright in the seat, fastening the harness around him to keep him there.

Ybicket lay dead still in the magma. Paler green eddies lapped her hull, nudging her over sideways. Paula unsnapped David’s harness. If he had worn his helmet, he might not have died. She cranked the back of his seat down as far as it would go and dragged him over it into the middle seat.

She had to sit down. Her head was splitting. Something was wrong with her. She lay down beside David, her cheek against his cold cheek. The console was humming again, and another light burned. She put the back of the drive seat up and sat in it.

She moved the levers. The ship would not answer. She stretched her feet down toward the pedals. When she sat on the very edge of the seat she could reach them with her toes. Cautiously she pushed them down. Nothing happened. That was what the light meant: Ybicket was stalled.

She had seen Saba start the engine. She pressed the green button on the right panel and pushed down the pedals. The ship bucked violently. She moved the four levers up all the way and tried again, and this time the light went off, the hum stopped, and the ship moved slowly forward. When she stepped harder on the pedals, Ybicket gathered speed.

The radio behind her crackled. “Pan-patrol. This is H.C. All ships in sectors C-42, C-43, C-44, D-42, D-43, D-44, report in.”

She wondered where she was. Pulling down one outside lever turned the ship around. She did not want to go back, she had to keep going away from Yekka. She experimented with the other levers. When the ship dove below a certain level, the yellow light came on again. She fought off the ache behind her eyes. There was something wrong with her. Carefully she took the ship down just to the level where the yellow light flickered on and off. Maybe she could crawl under the patrol.

“Pan-patrol. This is H.C. Mark this craft. SIF-26 Ybicket, three-man scout, Matuko-built, engines IQ, two guns fore and aft. Damaged. If sighted, report, intercept, take in tow, or destroy.”

She put her arm over her aching eyes. Her face was cold.

“H.C., this is 214. Do you have a last-reported on the mark?”

A blast of static blurred the voice. She watched the dials, decided that the long thin one on the top of the panel was the speed gauge, and pumped the pedals to teach herself how to read it.

“214, this is H.C. The mark was sighted Yekka plus 160, C-43, bearing 8-8-5, axis minus 38° Yekka, speed 1500. We hit her head-on with a compression bomb, the crew must be point-operable.”

Ybicket reared up. Paula caught the seat harness with both hands, felt the ship falling over, and grabbed for the levers. The map showed a moving yellow ridge forcing the ship back on its tail. She pushed the middle levers up. Nothing happened. The pounding in her head grew louder. She stamped down on the pedals and pulled the levers down, and the ship rolled over. She fell out of the seat and climbed back into it, clinging to the harness with one hand. The reef passed overhead. Without her feet on the pedals, Ybicket was slowing, and the stall light began to flicker. Paula pushed the levers this way and that and got the ship righted.

She pulled the harness over her shoulders. The reef had turned Ybicket around. She was moving back toward Yekka. Paula pressed one lever and one pedal and swung the ship in a loop turn. She had to watch the holograph. If a reef caught her the wrong way it would wreck the ship. The harness kept slipping off her shoulders. The yellow light was blinking on and off. She wondered where she was going. The radio crackled behind her. Here and there in its random noise a word sounded, meaningless.

Daffodil-bright, a reef jutted up in the magma ahead of her, moving in the same direction as Ybicket. Paula pushed the levers around and steered the ship over it. Her damp palms slipped on the steering pins. The vise closed on her head. She slumped down into the seat. She could push the levers down and dive into the Planet, take David down into the heat and pressure that would make nothing of him and her. She ground her fist into her eyes.

The radio gave another burst of static. Ybicket bucked in a cross-current. She was getting sick to her stomach. Her eyes were sore. If she died, it would not matter that David was dead. There was Tanuojin, but he belonged in the deep Planet; it had made him and it could kill him.

That thought settled her mind. She was not finished with Tanuojin. She had not kept his secrets for so long to kill him now, with his work undone.

She turned Ybicket’s nose up and stamped on the pedals. Straining to reach, her legs ached along her calves and the backs of her knees. She held herself on the front of the seat by her grip on the levers. In a round dial on the left-hand panel, a red needle sliced across the numbers. The ship bucked, slid along a wave, and rolled back. The left lever was jerked out of her hand. She snatched for it. The ship lurched. Ybicket was falling back into the Planet. She hit a surging pale green wave and bounced up again, tail-first. Paula rammed the pedals down. She had to go faster now, flying against gravity. Her stomach rolled half a turn behind the ship. She pulled the levers and got the ship nose-up again. Ybicket raced through a clear patch of green.

“D-61, D-61, identify.”

Paula glanced back at the radio. A light flashed on it. She stepped hard into the pedals. Ybicket surged upward. The speed-gauge needle climbed steadily. Paula watched the map. A faint green cone of a wave streamed back from Ybicket’s bow.

“D-61, you’re outside the corridor. Identify or we will notify the patrol.”

She laughed, pleased to know he was not the patrol. She wondered where the corridor was. At least she was out of the traffic. Something bright yellow and long and hairy appeared in the top of the map. The image sharpened into a thick string cutting diagonally across the cube. She guessed it was a city mooring.

“D-61, D-61—”

The ship hit another wave. This time she kept hold of the levers. It was hard to judge the angle. The wave broke sharp against the ship’s hull and knocked her sliding. Now she was headed in another direction. Paula steered around a yellowish mass like a mountain floating in the magma: a lump of something frozen. She was going so fast Ybicket left a visible rippled wake.

“D-61, this is UP-115, identify and heave to. You are outside the corridor.” The voice sharpened. “Damn it, heave to or I’ll shoot!”

There was no sign of another ship in the map. Ybicket raced straight up. Paula braced herself against the edge of the seat. In the limit of the holograph another long string appeared. She wondered what city it was. They might not shoot if she kept close by the moorings. Two men shouted at her at once in the radio.

She passed the city within holograph range, a great yellow wall that went on for long miles beside her, encrusted with hairy growth. Another ship flew across her course. She headed Ybicket straight for it. She rammed the pedals down as far as she could reach. For a moment the ship hovered there ahead of her, but the city was just behind her; the craft could not shoot and reeled away. She hurtled past, going steadily faster.

The cab filled with a lemony sunlight. She glanced through the window into a fog like dirty wool. The light grew brighter. The ship answered differently to her touch on the levers, tender as an egg on a table. She was bobbing in the harness, nearly weightless. Ybicket flew up through the thinning clouds. She crossed into black space.

She put her helmet and gloves on and went back to stuff Tanuojin’s hands into his gloves. He was still sunk in sleep. She groped over the radio deck, found the light, and switched it on. In its glow she could read the tags on the buttons. The one on the left was marked ID and she turned it on. She swam back to the drive seat. Just as she reached it, a blow struck Ybicket with a flash of white light.

The shock threw Paula head-first into the seat. Someone was shooting at her. She squirmed around, reaching for the levers. The ship was streaking down toward the white Planet. When she pulled the levers, she moved herself and the controls stayed still. She had to learn all over again how to do it in free fall. The ship began to roll over as she fell. Paula thrust the pedals down and forced the levers down, clenching her teeth, and still tumbling the ship leveled off.

Another light exploded in the window overhead. There were no other ships around her. They were shooting from the cloud-white Planet in its silvery rings or from a moon. Ybicket was rolling over and over. When Paula pushed the outside lever to steady her, the spin quickened. She tried other combinations and stopped the roll but Ybicket dropped her nose again and dove toward Uranus. Far above her, there was another explosion.

“Ybicket, Ybicket, this is Ybix, answer.”

The voice roared through the helmet above her ears. She could not work the radio, so she said nothing. Ybicket was plunging down. The Planet filled the window. The levers were frozen. The ship ran into something that flung it sideways. Paula hit the wall. Her helmet banged her head. Her eyes went in circles. When she came back to herself, Ketac was shouting at her.

“Ybicket. I’m taking your controls. Let go.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Paula!”

She swam back to the drive seat. The lifeline had uncoiled after her like a white worm and snaked into its housing under the seat. Ketac said, “Push the auto button. The red button under the safety hood on the right of the instrument panel. Do you see it? What are you doing in the drive seat?”

Her head hurt unbearably. She lifted the metal hood on the right side of the console and punched the red button there. Ketac was shouting at her. She crawled into the harness and shut her eyes.

Her eyes opened. Around her the Mylar walls glistened. A stopwatch floated about a yard away from her face, rocking slightly back and forth. She was in Ybix, in Saba’s old cabin in Ybix, wrapped up in a shaggy bedrug. She unfolded herself from its warm laps.

The time meter read the middle of the low watch. Shivering, she went around the room gathering her clothes and dressing. While she was in the galley taking a protein strip and blue and white chalk tablets out of the food machine, a crewman swam into the hatch and told her that Tanuojin wanted to see her. He was in the library. She went up to the blue corridor, traveling slowly in the free fall.

Ketac was perched on a stool pulled out from the wall, between her and Tanuojin. He grabbed hold of her hand. “Have you ever flown Ybicket before? Who let you do that?”

She swung the hatch closed behind her. Inside the round room, its curved wall coated with book cells, the three were crowded together. Tanuojin said, “The vulgar belief is that Vida’s ghost flew us in.” He crooked his arms behind his head. “The fleet is here,” he said to her. “And Mehma’s Saturn Fleet.”

“They came when you called,” she said. She turned her arm, and Ketac let go of her.

Tanuojin said, “Something has to be done. The whole Empire is falling apart.”

Ketac took hold of her again. “There’s only one power in the system that can bring Styth back to order now. And that’s Tanuojin.”

“Go on,” Tanuojin said to Ketac. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Ketac went past her, spun the hatch wheel, and dove out into the corridor. In the expanded space of the room Paula let herself stretch out. Tanuojin said, “I’m calling a session of the rAkellaron in Vribulo in eleven watches. The fleet’s small craft can dominate Vribulo, no matter what the patrol does. The Chamber will elect me head of the Empire for my lifetime. Leno is my deputy in Uranus. Mehma is my deputy in Saturn. Ketac will be head of the fleet.”

She wondered how long he would live. When she was random dust, when Ketac’s grandchildren were old men, Tanuojin would rule. She said, “Congratulations.”

“You can help me.”

“I helped you. I got you here.”

“More than that.”

“What’s more than your life?”

The wall buzzed. He put one arm out, and a narrow drawer among the cells of books slid toward his fingers. “You refuse to admit that I’m right.” His voice was brittle. He took the earphones out of the side of the drawer and turned a switch. On the panel inside the drawer a red light flashed on and off. “Tanuojin,” he said, into the mouthpiece. Leno’s voice rasped in the speaker. She left.