Starship Summer

CODA

Three months later I’m sitting in the shadow of the Mantis, enjoying a beer and staring out over the silver waters of the bay. I’ve had a hundred or more offers to buy the ship, but I’ve refused them all. The Mantis is more valuable to me than anything money can buy—not so much for what it represents, but for the life it allows a certain person to lead, which I’ll come to later. I’ve given the Mantis another coat of paint, in a vain attempt to disguise it from the ship which made Expansion-wide news three months ago. Visitors still come to Magenta Bay, hoping to see the fabled starship and talk to David Conway, the Opener of the Way, about his discovery of the Yall ship and the subsequent flight into the Golden Column—but I tell them that Conway no longer lives around here, and recently the stream of sightseers has slowed to a trickle.

I spend my time contemplating the past, enjoying the occasional drink in the fighting Jackeral with my friends. Every day I make it a habit to go for a long swim across the bay—weather permitting, of course.

I’m a happy man, these days—and these nights too. The Yall ghost was as good as its word. For the past three months I’ve been spared the nightmares.

Hawk comes to visit us about once a month. He sub-let his scrapyard, bought a ship with the money he made from selling his story, and started a tour company with Kee, taking tourists through the Golden Column on a reprise of the famous Nevada run. From time to time he takes his crate further afield, and when he comes back to Magenta he regales us with tales of his exploratory flights to far, uncharted stars.

The scientists are still trying to work out how the Golden Columns work. Quite simply, any space vessel can enter a column and emerge at the destination entered into its computer core, whether that destination is within the same solar system, or thousands of light years distant. By some mysterious method—the scientists say that it is not unrelated to the physics behind the Telemass process—the ship is flung through space and brings with it the essence of the Column through which it passed, effectively establishing a gateway at its destination through which other ships can access the universe…

Some call it a miracle.

I call it the gift of the Yall.

I see Matt and Maddie almost every day.

They live in Matt’s studio on the far headland, and Matt has recently started producing work which, by his own high standards, he considers worthy of him.

This morning, as the sun climbed and the heat of the day rose with it, I was thinking of retiring to the veranda of the Fighting Jackeral for lunch, when Matt and Maddie strolled into sight along the red sands of the beach.

I sometimes wonder which is the most valuable gift of the Yall—the Golden Column, or the dermal barrier that allows Maddie a blessed week of being able to touch her fellow human beings, before she visits me at the Mantis to have the miracle renewed.

I know the answer, of course. You need only look at Maddie’s expression as she and Matt walk towards me along the beach, hand in hand.