The Sea is Full of Stars

Asswam Junction, Near the Crab Nebula

Monsters are not always so easy to spot, and when they walk among you they often do so with a smile, and when they become what they are underneath the glare, you don’t really know what’s happened. And when a monster has friends and followers and sometimes even worshipers, it can become far more than a single dark blot of evil on the fabric of time; then it has the capacity to suddenly rear off and carry even the most innocent straight to Hell, or to do even worse and take your own existence and extend Hell to that as well. This is a story of monsters and maidens and the walking dead. The fact that it begins on a starship only drives home the point…

He had the smell of death and the look of the grave in him. Everyone could sense it, almost as if he were somehow broadcasting the cold chill that those of any race who encountered him instantly felt.

He’d been handsome once, but long ago. Now his face was badly weathered, wrinkled, and pockmarked, and there was a scar on one cheek that didn’t look to be the result of a slip in some friendly fencing match. His eyes were deep, sunken, cold, and empty, his hair thick but silver, worn long and looking something like a mane.

It was eerie when he walked past the small group of passengers in the waiting lounge; they were of perhaps a half-dozen races, some inscrutable to others and tending to hold far different views of the universe and all that was in it, yet when he passed, every one of them reacted, some turning to look, some turning away, and some edging back as if the mere touch of his garment would bring instant death.

A Rithian watched him walk down the hall toward the vendor hall, its snakelike head and burning orange eyes almost hypnotized by the figure now going farther away. “I had not believed that he could draw so much more of the nether regions than he already had long ago,” it muttered, almost to itself.

The Terran woman shook off a final chill, turned and looked at the creature who’d made the comment. “You know him?” she asked.

“I knew him,” the Rithian answered, finally bringing its face back down to normal by distending its long serpentine neck and looking over at the woman instead. “At least, I have seen him before, long ago, and I know who he is. I am surprised that you do not, he being of your kind. He is certainly a legend, and, someday, he will be a part of your mythology I suspect. I hope he is not on our liner.”

She shook her head, trying to get a grip on herself. “I—I don’t think I ever felt anyone so—so evil.” She actually started to say “inhuman” but realized how inappropriate that would be in present company.

“Evil? Perhaps. It is impossible to know what he has become inside, and to what he’s sold his soul. But he is not precisely evil. In fact, he seeks an evil, and until he finds it and faces it and either kills it or it kills him, he cannot rest or ever find peace. He is Jeremiah Wong Kincaid. Does that name mean nothing to you?”

She thought hard. “Should it?”

“Then what about the scouring of Magan Triune?”

It was history to her, ancient history from the time of her parents at least, and thus the kind of thing you didn’t tend to dwell on later in life unless you liked to wallow in the sick and violent history of humanity. She only vaguely recalled it even now. “Something about igniting the atmosphere of a planet, wasn’t it? So long ago…”

“The atmosphere of a planet with six billion souls upon it, yes. Six billion souls who had been infected with a most horrible parasite by a megalomaniac would-be conqueror of the Realm, Josich the Emperor Hadun. A Ghoma, you might recall. A creature of the water, really. He’d found a way, the only known way, to conquer whole worlds composed of various races alien to him, and to even control environments he could not himself exist in without an environment suit.

Tiny little quasiorganic machines, like viruses, transmitted like viruses as well, who could remake and tailor themselves for any bioorganism, any place, anywhere, and turn whole populations into slaves. There was no way to cure them; the things were more communicable than air and water. Isolate them, and they killed the hosts, horribly. Let them go, and a whole planet would be devoted to infecting everyone and everything else. It was the greatest horror our common histories ever produced.”

She shivered, remembering now why she’d not liked that kind of history. “And this Kincaid—he was a part of this?”

“A liner was intercepted and boarded. Everyone on it was infected. It was only because of security systems that it only reached Magan Thune before being discovered and dealt with. There are such horrible distances in space for even messages and warnings to cover, and you cannot station naval ships with great firepower at every one. We—all our races—breed a bit too much for that. Kincaid was commander of a small frigate, an escort naval vessel used in frontier areas. He’d come to the sector to meet his mate and children, and have some leave on some resort world. He wasn’t supposed to come to Magan Thune at all, but went to check when the liner was late making its next port of call.”

She was suddenly appalled. “He was the one who ignited the atmosphere?”

“No. He was spared that. Much too junior for such a thing. That took a task force. All he could do, upon discovering what was taking place, was to deal with any spacefaring craft, to ensure none got away. That, of course, included the liner…”

She sat down, not wanting to think about it anymore but forced to do so anyway by the sheer magnitude of the tragedy the Rithian was relating and the knowledge that it was true.

He’d had to wipe out his whole family. Almost certainly he’d done more than give the order. He would have been human; he couldn’t have allowed anyone else to do it for him while he watched.

“Only months after, they figured out how it all worked,” the Rithian continued. “They discovered the shifting band of frequencies by which the things communicated with each other, with others in other bodies, and with the command. Block them, work out the basics of what had to be a fairly simple code to be so universal and require so little bandwidth, and then order them to turn themselves off after restoring normalcy to their hosts. There were recriminations, trials, insistence on affixing blame. Nobody blows up a liner, let alone a planet, without the highest orders, but the public wanted heads. They second-guessed from screeching journalism, demanded to know why containment wasn’t an option, and so on. Never mind that one major industry of Magan Thune was the construction of deep space engines. That’s why the Conqueror had wanted it. And a hundred planets within days of there with possibly half a trillion souls.”

She tried to put the vision out of her mind. Thank God she never had to make those kind of choices! “And he’s been like that ever since?”

“That and more.”

“I’m not sure I wouldn’t have killed myself after that,” she mused.

“He might have,” the Rithian responded, “and some say he all but did anyway. You saw him, felt him, as did I, and I do not believe we have a great deal physiologically in common, and perhaps culturally even less. There are things that are universal. But he will not die. He will not permit himself to die. I believe he has been through a rejuve or two. He has unfinished business. He cannot leave until it is completed.”

“Huh? What—What kind of business could he still have?”

“They never caught Josich the Emperor Hadun, you know. He is deposed for a great amount of time, and some say he is dead, although if Kincaid is not dead, then neither is Josich. One will not go without the other. Many say instead that Josich has become the emperor of the criminal underground, and that he is the source of much of the evil on countless worlds even now. Sixty years and Kincaid still hunts. That is why I hope he is not going on the same ship as we. If Kincaid could but guarantee the death of Josich, he would willingly take all of us with him. I would prefer he walk a different path than myself.”

But Kincaid was already returning to the departure lounge, and it was clear this was going to be an interesting trip.

The tale of the haunted man involved what the Rithian had called a “liner,” but even in those days that designation was for the rich and powerful only. Transport, then and now, was more complex than that for most travelers, and even now it was someone very rare who’d been off his or her own native world, and even fewer who had ever left their solar system. Travel was expensive, often long, and, in most people’s cases, unnecessary. And with more than forty races in the Realm and perhaps two dozen others that interacted with it, it wasn’t all that easy to support them in ecofriendly quarters for the weeks or months a trip might involve. Even with such as the Rithians and Terrans, who comfortably breathed each other’s air and could in fact eat each other’s foods, there were sufficient dramatic differences in their physical requirements to make things very complex.

The money in deep space travel was where it had been in ocean travel and river travel and rail travel in ancient times. The money was in freight. The money was always in freight. That was why ships that went between the stars resembled less the fabled passenger liners of oceanic days than trains, with powerful engine modules and an elaborate bridge that could oversee the largely automated operation, and then, forward of this, were coupled the mods of freight and then the passenger modules designed for various life-form requirements. Robotics and a central life-support computer catered to them; for a considerable fee one could have a real live concierge assigned, but this was mostly for status.

The larger races, the ones that, in the Rithian’s terms, bred fastest, almost always would have an entire dedicated module for their comfort, often with amenities and social interaction between passengers. Some were split modules, with common lounges and services, for those like the Terrans and Rithians, who could be comfortable together and didn’t have a long history of mistrust. Those who traveled pretty much alone, the one-of-a-kinds and small groups who also had special needs, had it worst of all. They were pretty well confined to their cabins, isolated save for the computer and communications links.

The ships never came to a planet. They would dock in orbit around the various worlds, and then the modules due for unloading, freight and people, would be separated and mated to specific offloading ports. Automated ferries would take the people from the floating spaceports down to various destinations on the planet below; tugs would remove the specialized containers from the modules of freight, where customs would inspect them and approve them, and then they would be taken down to where they were needed and replaced with ones from the planet’s surface.

Some spaceports weren’t around planets at all, and were in fact in deep space, floating artificial worlds, sometimes many kilometers in size, composed of similar customized modules around a central core. These were transfer points, the equivalent of the old railroad junctions and yards, where passengers would “change trains,” as it were, and freight would be redirected. These had their own centralized governing authorities, their own offices, shops, stores, hotel accommodations for all known races, emergency hospital services for all of those races as well, and much more.

The one they were now on was called Asswam Junction. It wasn’t as huge as some of the others, being a bit off the busiest shipping lanes, but it was plenty big enough, with all the services and amenities. Many in the passenger lounge had been there for days or even weeks, waiting for their connections, which might well only take them to another junction.

There were perhaps twenty in the departure lounge, of which a dozen were Terrans. This was basically a transfer point along the Terran Arm of the Milky Way, and it was only natural that they would be the majority. Another four were Rithians, who inhabited the same region; three were Mallegestors, a mottled, tan-and-white elephantine race with enormously thick skin and a series of mean looking horns, who, nonetheless, also could share the same atmosphere and general requirements of Terrans and Rithians; and one was Geldorian, a small, lithe, furry weasel-like race, that looked more like an escapee from a pet store than a sentient being, save for the fact that it tended to smoke some odd substance in what seemed to be an oversized calabash pipe, and had a bulky purse over one shoulder.

Neither the Mallegestors nor the Geldorian were anything like local; how they’d wound up over in this sector of space only they could know. Still, a single module with common areas would do for all of them.

Below, at other gates, there could be others boarding this liner as well, and they might not ever know it. At least a dozen races within the region were water breathers, and several more breathed really unpleasant stuff like methane. They might well travel the same way on the same composite ship, but they were not the sort of folks you’d ever actually meet, or, in some cases, want to meet.

There was a Terran purser at the gate with maps and instructions. The gate could have been automated, of course, and in most cases was, but it had been found over long experience that when boarding and getting off, people wanted somebody to ask questions of and talk to someone who had some expertise and authority, even if it wasn’t really necessary.

The purser, in fact, was really nothing more than a gate attendant. He would not even be going along with them, and would probably do this two or three times during the day for different departures.

Still, there he was at the boarding ramp, behind a small desk, smiling and checking out things on a computer screen. Something flashed on the board in front of him, and abruptly he was all business. They all put in what resembled little hearing aid devices, having no need to look at the cartoon graphic showing how to do it for all the races present that ran on the screen above the purser. After observing them, the purser picked up a small headset, put it on, and then punched in a code on the control board in front of him.

“Citizens of the Realm, I welcome you to Flight A3744X5. This is a nonstop to Crella Six spaceport, then on to Hasimoto Junction. The time to Crella Six is eleven days six hours, and there will be a twelve hour layover there before proceeding for sixteen days ten hours to Hasimoto Junction. Those disembarking at Crella Six should have their passports and other travel documents in order and on their person, as they must be submitted to immigration authority here before you can board. Those going on to Hasimoto Junction will require only their through ticket, as the automated systems will not permit you to disembark at Crella Six.”

The voice was pleasant, professional, friendly. It was being delivered in Asparant, the language of interstellar commerce and trade that was the standard on all the Junctions and spaceports. There it went to a computer, which translated it and sent it to each of the earpieces in the language and dialect of the individual wearer.

“Once you submit your travel documents and/or ticket, and it is validated and approved,” the purser continued, “you will receive your cabin assignments and master keys, one for each person. These keys will operate only your cabin entrance, and after being used the first time, can be used only by the bearer. A map showing where your cabin is and how to get to it will be furnished with the key. Once you are approved, please collect key, map, and documents and proceed on board and to your cabin. All luggage should have been delivered there by now, so please check, and if anything is missing report it immediately via the ship’s phone. Once you leave, there is no telling how long it might be before we could get anything left behind to you!”

The speech was stock and they’d all heard it before, but it was welcome nonetheless because it said that they were on their way.

Angel Kobe looked over at the Rithian, who was shuffling through his document pouch and checking with the rest of his party, then she looked around for Kincaid. He was there, paying no heed to the purser—he hadn’t even inserted his little earpiece—and with ticket in hand, he also appeared to have little interest in his fellow travelers. Whatever he was doing on this run, it clearly had nothing to do with anybody else here.

She couldn’t help but wonder if he thought of them at all, except as objects, perhaps. There were eight non-Terrans in the lounge, but the only really alien life-form was standing right there looking like a Terran man.

What was he doing here? What was he doing, period? Was he pensioned and spending all his time hunting this monster, who must be well-hidden and well-protected and in a biome the hunter couldn’t ever really pierce? What would be the result if this creature was discovered living the good life down deep in some planetary ocean and giving orders to its minions? Kincaid would have to go down in an environment suit just for starters, and he’d be in unfamiliar territory against a probably well-guarded foe who felt completely at home there. Blow up the whole planet, perhaps? But then how would the hunter ever really know if the quarry was dead, or sheltered and ready to depart once conditions allowed, or, worse, had already left before the attack? She considered this while waiting not two people behind him in the queue for validation and boarding, and felt both curious and a bit sorry for the man. He was hunting Moby Dick and he didn’t even have a harpoon or a ship.

She reached ticketing, inserted her documents, then placed her hand in a cavity inside the console. A slight tingling sensation resulted, and then she felt a swipe of something across her thumb as the boarding computer took some dead cells from the surface of her skin and compared the generic code to that registered on the documents. It took only a few seconds, and she received a green boarding arrow and her documents back, along with a map of the module and a small book with descriptions of the facilities available, the services, and the numbers to contact for any of her needs, with her own cabin number printed on the front.

The boarding process was more than just a validation, though; it was also the cue to the documents and terminal computer to upload all the information it had on the passenger to the local computer governing the module itself. The computer would know who was who, what their requirements and preferences were, medical needs, everything, even the language and translation routines required. She would be automatically given access to her own cabin and to the corridors and public areas; she would be prevented from entering any area that might not be good for her health or the ship’s routines. In a sense, you were back in a sort of womb, and Mama was always around whether you wanted her there or not.

For a mixed race module, it was nicely full service. You could have your meals in your room, or go to a pleasant, intimate little cafe where no race would be visible to you eating something that would make you lose your lunch. There was a bar and lounge, a small gymnasium with equipment for every physiology, and a holographic staff that couldn’t really do much but would provide company and conversation if need be.

The cabin was quite spacious. She’d arrived on a more local type of vessel where passengers weren’t always the rule, and the quarters and amenities had been extremely cramped and limited in most ways. This was almost like a luxury hotel suite, with a sitting room, bedroom, full bath and shower, in-room entertainment, a direct virtual reality link for really going where you otherwise couldn’t and experiencing things you might not otherwise experience, and all the rest. There was even an octagonal window showing the immediate complex, although the window was really a wall screen that connected to external ports. For most of the trip it would be a mirror, and more useful for it.

The bottom line was, passenger travel in the age of interstellar civilizations did what passenger services always did in times past: it provided as many ways as economy and technology permitted to kill time and give you the illusion that you weren’t just sitting around bored.

Angel looked back at the cabin door and saw a display over it. Right now it was counting down toward 00:00:00, the time of departure, after which it would reset to the days, hours, and minutes until docking at the next stop.

It was all so new to her, and so wonderful. She’d seen most of the technology, of course, but she’d never dreamed of this level of luxury travel. She only wished that some friends or family were here to enjoy it with her. That, however, couldn’t be, and was the one real drag on an otherwise wondrous journey that she nonetheless knew she’d remember the rest of her life.

There was still almost an hour until departure. She decided to shower and freshen up and put on something lightweight and comfortable, then explore the module. It was, after all, going to be home for quite a while.

She saw a glowing red light on her desk console, and, realizing it was a message alert, pressed it.

“Captain Melak Dukodny of the City of Modar speaking to all guests,” came a pleasant if slightly stiff voice. “I welcome everyone who is joining us on this leg of our journey and invite you all to a reception in the main lounge. The reception will begin fifteen minutes before departure, but you may come down at any time after that, and I will join you shortly after we make the jump into null-space. Since this is a Junction board, none of you will be experiencing this for the first time, and I anticipate nothing you haven’t seen, heard, or felt before. Dinner will be served beginning one hour after jump, although, of course, you may order anything at any time from room service. At 2200 ship’s time tonight there will be a general talk in the lounge of all of the features available in your module, as well as information in case of emergencies. All passengers who have not attended a briefing aboard this ship are required to attend. Thank you, have a pleasant trip, and I hope to greet each and every one of you later this evening.”

The red light went out.

It sounded like a full evening. Well, if she was going to shower and change and still go through it all, she’d better get started, she decided.

She was startled to see that all of her clothing and toiletries had been unpacked and placed in drawers, closets, and the like. On the Queen of Tyre they’d just dumped the bags outside the door. There was even a ship’s clothing dispenser where you could get a basic utilitarian throwaway, loosely fitted, in case you didn’t want to mess anything up, but for social nights that was unthinkable.

It hadn’t occurred to her that this module had come in with the ship from someplace else and that there might be continuing passengers. So it might well mean more people, and even more races. She wondered just how many were aboard.

The lounge was more crowded than she’d anticipated. It was a very pleasant rounded and sunken space in the center of the mod, and with a nicely done but somewhat schizophrenic layout providing comfortable seats for all the races aboard, and indented areas along the curved walls offering various hors d’oeuvres carefully selected as delicacies for various races while being inoffensive-looking to others. The latter wasn’t always possible, but this company clearly knew its business.

Likewise, there were different drinks tailored to the racial makeups, and in the correct proportions and containers. It wasn’t that hard; all food and drink aboard was actually created by small energy-to-matter converters using various authentic programs supplied by chefs of the various races. In fact, all of them were really eating and drinking the garbage, but it had been nicely reprocessed and one just didn’t think of that.

Angel Kobe had been born and raised on a vast farm that used none of this technology, and its farmers only feared the widespread discovery of cheap and easy ways to do the synthesizing on a mass scale. Fortunately, it was expensive and high maintenance, and was only possible on spacecraft as a by-product of the life support and propulsion systems.

Although she was in her fanciest evening clothes, she felt much the ugly duckling among the Terrans present. Her feeling of glamour when she’d dressed and made up in the cabin and examined herself in the mirror completely faded when she saw the competition. She would have been the belle of the ball back home, but in this company she was the rube at the prince’s ball. These people wore elegance like a comfortable pair of shoes.

Worse, she felt conspicuously… well, alone. Most of the others seemed to be in pairs or small groups. It seemed she was the only single person on the ship.

No, that wasn’t true, but the other one hadn’t shown up yet. Oddly, she almost wished that Jeremiah Kincaid would show up. Once he entered the room, nobody but nobody, would even remember that she existed.

What had begun as an exciting taste of unaccustomed luxury had already turned into a miserable and lonely time, and she knew there was a long time to go yet.

There was a countdown clock in almost every public area, and, as if tuned into her thoughts, it reached all zeros. Almost immediately a vibration ran through the entire module, and she felt momentary dizziness caused by the switch to internal power and ship’s versus station gravity. At the same time, the circular ceiling became a viewing screen showing the disengagement from the large space station. Angel took a glass of juice, sat down on one of the comfortable recliner chairs, and settled back to watch it. If she was going to be the rube anyway, she decided, she might as well do what she felt like doing.

The grand, kilometers-long space station and freight yard looked utilitarian and not at all glamorous from the outside.

It was big, though; a lot bigger than even she had thought. The freighter she’d come in on hadn’t had this kind of view. She was surprised to see, for instance, that the module was not actually part of the ship, and that the actual City of Modar wasn’t docked at all. It sat in a parking orbit off the station, along with a number of other ships, and was mostly engine and fuel containers. It looked like nothing anyone without knowledge of the system would expect; a gigantic cylindrical mass with huge ramjetlike scoops flanking it all around except right on “top,” where there was a large whale-shaped bulge and rows of lights around it. The rear area had a series of large steering jets arranged around a central yellowish core that seemed to pulse regularly. Forward, a seemingly endless row of modules almost the size of the ship itself were connected one to the other like children’s building blocks. All of them were basically contoured octagons, but the eight surfaces surrounded a cylindrical core. How long the train of modules went on, she couldn’t guess; it was longer than the vast space station she’d just left, that was for sure.

The train wasn’t yet connected to the engines, but was held there by a couple of small ships using tractor beams. They were so tiny compared to the modules that they could only be seen by their anticollision lights blinking on and off.

The tugs were basically used for maneuvering; out here, a ten-kilometer train of even the heaviest raw materials or finished goods weighed the same as a feather. The longer it was, however, the harder to manage, and there were surely other tugs well along the train to keep it in line.

Their own module was certainly being carried by one or more similar tugs, although they were not visible on the screen.

“You’d best look away if you get the least bit dizzy, until this docking is over,” a pleasant baritone voice commented.

“Huh?” She looked away reluctantly and saw a man in shining brown formal wear with what looked to be a fortune in jewelry on him.

“Sorry. I just saw you fascinated, and wanted to warn you. If you look up when they tilt the module, you’ll be disoriented. It catches many by surprise.”

She was undecided whether to follow up this obvious opening right now or look back at the docking. “Thanks. I guess I can look away if it gets me. I’ve been pretty good about balance.”

She stared back up, and almost immediately the module began to turn from camera angle, facing the gap between ship and train and the docking mechanism on the ship itself. It was slow, easy, but took up most of the field of view. Even though the gravity inside was artificial and constant, Angel suddenly felt as if she was falling off the chair onto the floor, and in an instant, that’s where she found herself.

Several people turned and chuckled, infuriating and embarrassing her. The strange man, who looked to be middle-aged, with thick black hair and a very stylish goatee, tried not to say “I told you so” and instead offered his hand to her.

“Don’t feel too badly,” he consoled. “I think we all did that the first time.”

Still, she was mortified by what had happened to her, and only to her, and also because she’d spilled half the juice on her best suit. “Thank you,” she managed as best she could, only wanting to get out of there. “I think I’ll have to run back to my cabin and change.”

Angel walked out of the lounge, but almost began running once out of sight of the crowd. She didn’t know how she could face them again. As she reached the emotional safety of her cabin, there was a shudder and an awkward jerking motion that almost dropped her to the deck. Bells and alarms were sounding somewhere, and for a moment she wondered if they’d collided with something or maybe cracked up against the ship. She almost hoped so.

There was a second thump and another jerking motion, another set of alarms, and then, abruptly, it was quiet and stable once more.

The module had docked with the ship just forward of the bridge, and then the train had been docked to it. Now, stabilizing devices, connectors, and long energy rods held it firm and straight, making the massive vessel less a collection of independent devices than a kind of mechanical organism, a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

For a while there was nothing but the vibration and a sense of being so still it felt to Angel as if she were sunk in concrete. Then, when the bridge computer contacted and networked with the computers for each module, passenger and freight, and had checked all safety and stability items and passed everything off, a kind of unanimous vote was sent to the bridge stating that the ship was ready to move. It was the one thing the vessel’s Master did on a nonemergency basis. Only he could give the order to move out.

Angel slipped out of her wet clothes and looked at herself in the mirror. She sighed, and removed the brown wig and put it back in its container, revealing a head that was perfectly shaped but now totally hairless. Lucky the wig didn’t come off, too, she reflected dourly, but though she had no problems with the way she looked, she was pleased deep down to have been spared that one little embarrassment. It was just God’s punishment, she thought, for her trying to pretend she was something that she was not.

She rinsed off, reflecting that this was the second shower she’d had in three hours, but also only the second in many months. Afterward, she wiped off what makeup remained, removed the fake gold earrings and replaced them with the simple copper alloy ones she normally wore—a cross with curved wings set upon a hexagonal base, the same design as on the medallion she always wore around her neck, which had been concealed by the suit. The simple ring, also forged with the same design, went back on her ring finger. No more pretenses, she decided. She would be herself, and if they didn’t like it, well, how much worse off socially could she be?

She took out a simple off-white cotton cassock and put it on, leaving the hood down, and looked at herself once more. The loose-fitting cassock disguised her thin figure, although it couldn’t disguise what was to her an overly-large nose and brown eyes too small for her face. She was reconciled to not being a beauty, and this felt almost normal and natural.

A speaker came to life, startling her. “Your attention, please. We have cleared the traffic yard and will be punching into null-space in one minute. It is suggested for your own safety that everyone please take a seat or become still on the floor. Anyone experiencing discomfort beyond the all clear should signal for some mild medication. Thank you.”

She shrugged and took a seat against the bulkhead. This she’d done more than once before. Even so, it wasn’t totally pleasant.

Three bells sounded, followed by a pause, after which it suddenly felt as if she wasn’t holding on to anything at all but falling without physical reference points. The first time she’d experienced this, she almost lost her lunch, but now it was no big deal. There was a roaring, and then a flash. The lighting seemed to go out and then come right back on again. And that was it. Three bells sounded once more to indicate the all clear.

For the next two weeks it would generally feel like they were standing still inside a building on the planet’s surface. From this point on, until they returned to normal space, it was all automatic.

Angel decided to reemerge as herself and perhaps get some dinner in the public dining room before the mandatory ship’s briefing. Heads turned from the still milling group of passengers in their formal wear as she reentered the lounge, but it didn’t bother her. The odds were that few if any of the Terrans, at least, would even recognize her as the same woman who’d been there before.

They weren’t snickering, anyway. The one thing about anyone wearing clerical garb in a crowd of strangers, no matter what the various religions were, was that the cleric usually left the others feeling uncomfortable.

She bypassed onlookers and made for the small cafe entrance. A man and a woman were standing just inside, looking the cafe over, and both turned and gave her the usual facial reaction she got from strangers. She returned a professional smile, and felt very much more at ease with herself. “Please relax,” she told them. “I only try to convert people during business hours. I’m Sister Angel then. Now I’m just Angel Kobe, going to dinner.”

The ice was broken. “I am Ari Martinez,” the man responded in a pleasant voice, and looked at his companion, whom his gesture indicated was not his wife, or probably paramour, either. She was, however, quite a looker, Angel thought, one of those people with all the exotic features of a dozen races and colors and no dominant single one.

“I am Ming Dawn Palavri,” she introduced herself, smiling more nervously than the darkly handsome Martinez. “Please—won’t you join us? I do not think there are many in here at the moment and we’ll be shipmates for quite some time.”

“I…” Angel looked at Martinez, who betrayed no signals. “I shouldn’t like to impose or interrupt…”

“Not a problem,” Martinez assured her at last. “Ming and I are sort of in the same business.” He turned, and Angel was startled to see a formally dressed and quite officious-looking maitre d’. “There will be three for dinner now,” he told the majordomo.

“Very well. Please come this way,” the maitre d’ said in a thin, upper-crust voice, and led them to a quiet table, pulling out the chairs for each of them and lighting the atmospheric period lamp. He then put down three old-fashioned printed menus. “Your waiter will be with you shortly,” he told them, and left.

Angel was startled. “People just to seat you in a restaurant? Am I showing how primitive I’ve been living, or is this truly unusual?”

Ming laughed. “Not really. There are a number of worlds where it’s still the norm, but most of the expensive and classy places, and pretend classy places, are more like this. It’s actually all holographic. You could walk right through him if you really wanted to. It’s kind of pretend service over the usual automation.”

“I see,” she responded, somewhat disappointed. Not that she hadn’t had a lot of human table service, but it had usually been in dumps and in backwater situations where automation of this level, when available, was usually five years out of whack and in bad need of repair. Well, much of what was fun in this life was in the imagination.

The menus certainly felt real, and looked real. Hers seemed tailor-made for her own likes, dislikes, prohibitions, and requirements. No animal matter of any kind, synthetic or not, and a wide variety of veggie, rice, and sauce-heavy dishes including curries, with juices and herbal teas. Ari Martinez’s menu, while apparently identical, appeared from his ruminations aloud to be heavy on steaks and fine wines, while Ming’s seemed to have a lot of egg and seafood dishes and elaborate salads. Out of curiosity, after all three had put down their menus, Angel reached over, picked up Ming’s menu and looked through it.

It listed the same dishes as her menu had.

“Caught them in their little trick, huh?” Ming chuckled.

So even the menus were careful illusions. “In this kind of controlled atmosphere, it’s going to be next to impossible to figure out just who and what’s really there,” she responded.

“But that’s the trick,” Ari commented. “Magic shows are far more fun when they are so well done you cannot catch them working the show. The best way is to simply take everything at face value in an environment like this and just enjoy it. We’ll be back in the real universe soon enough.”

A waiter out of a classic movie took their orders, almost certainly a hologram as well, but as Ari had said, it didn’t matter.

“I can’t help noticing the winged cross on the hexagon,” Ming said to her, curious. “I am not familiar with this symbol. Might I ask the order?”

“I am of the Tannonites,” she told them. “It is a very Old Order denomination but it is not well known. It does not go back like so many to old Earth times, but evolved on Katenea, one of the early colonies. It is basically Christian, but there are elements of many ancient faiths in it as well, including some that are from other races. Our goal is to synthesize the One Truth out of the Many, and to do that we no longer have a home, as it were.”

“Sounds like you travel as much as we do,” Ari replied. “We’re management consultants. Not, I might add, from the same company, but we do basically the same thing. We go to the various enterprises our companies run that are having problems, and we try and determine what the cause of those problems might be and to find fixes for them. Nine out of ten times it winds up that we have to discover and weed out an incompetent or nest of incompetents somewhere in management.”

“Ninety out of a hundred,” Ming added. “And all but a tiny speck of the rest turn out to be downright crookedness. It’s quite a fascinating business, really. Sort of like being a detective, only the solution may be far different than simply discovering that it was the butler with the knife in the living room.”

“I should think it would be fascinating,” Angel responded.

“And not nearly so dangerous as tracking down genuine nasties.”

“Oh, we’ve had our share of nasties,” Ari assured her. “I would say that someone’s tried to push me off a balcony or crack me up or some such, oh, maybe on the average of once a year since I started. I think Ming’s average is similar.”

“About that,” she agreed. “The thing that saves you most times is that it always has to look like the perfect accident. Otherwise you’ll just get the real cops plus a lot more people like us showing up, and they’ll find the same thing and generally run down the bad guys. But, it is true, the real challenge is that they are often quite clever and will try and lead you to the wrong person or group or around in circles. Still, it beats sitting in an office somewhere.”

Maybe it did, but they sounded to Angel like two private detectives doing their job for money and the good life rather than out of a sense of service. Still, she wasn’t going to judge them. At least what they did resulted in good; mercenaries could have their uses.

As the food started to come, the conversation turned back to her.

“You say that your denomination has no home?” Ari asked, curious.

“Not anymore,” she told them. “We grew inward on our home world over the years, and very insular, cut off from the rest of society. That was not why God caused us to exist, and it did us very little good except to breed a kind of local colony that was in danger of straying or atrophying. God had no other way to kick us in the backside and get us into action on our true mission, so He caused our sun to go nova.”

That was a meal stopper. “I beg your pardon?” Ming and Ari almost said as one.

“Oh, there were enough warning signs that we knew it was coming. The whole planet had to be evacuated. In a way, it was a shame, since it was quite rich and quite beautiful, but we would never have gone otherwise. This was long ago, you understand. Centuries. I have only seen the pictures, which are kept by the Elders. It was the Patriarch and Elders of that time who received from God the divine commission, and since then we have had no home. Wherever we are is our home, and we take with us that which we need. I was born on a far-off world inhabited by a race not unlike the Rithians, which is why I think I get along with them so well. When I was eight my birthmother sent me to the nearest convent for formal education. These are small affairs that are actually attached to space stations like the one we were just on. In fact, I just visited the Asswam sisterhood. That’s where I stayed until this ship arrived.”

“Funny. I’m in and out of space stations all the time, and I don’t remember ever seeing or hearing about one,” Ming commented.

“That is deliberate. We do not wish the convents to be known. They are primarily shut away from all other parts of the station, in strict seclusion. Only the Elder in charge and the Mother Supervisor deal with the station and maintain commerce and communication, as well as, of course, ones like me who pass through, and I cannot really interact with them, as anyone of the faith just visiting must take a vow of silence while inside to preserve the cloistered atmosphere for the students and permanent staff. I realize this must seem odd to you, but it is our way.”

“I hope you are not offended, but all religions seem odd to me,” Ming commented. “The more you see of the universe, the less you believe that there is anything but randomness out here.”

“You see no pattern? No wonder in its many forms and variations, its sheer complexities?”

“Pattern? No, I don’t think so. Galaxies spin away and crash into one another, stars go nova and wipe out whole worlds, and the range of creatures both sentient and not that could use a much better engineering design, including us, are legion. I live for the here and now, expecting nothing beyond. If I thought there was justice even, I might waver a bit, but I work for too many scoundrels as it is. Did you see that walking zombie Kincaid?”

Angel nodded. “Yes. A very tragic man. He hunts an ancient evil in the guise of a fellow creature, but because it is from vengeance, he usurps God’s role. What about you, Ari?”

The man gave a weak smile and shrugged. “I don’t know. I was raised Catholic, and, I suppose, I remain so, although not exactly in the best of graces. I keep wondering about some things, all those ancient dead worlds of long vanished civilizations we keep stumbling over. Who were they? Where did they go? Why and how did races that traveled through space millions or perhaps a billion years before anybody we know vanish so completely and so abruptly? I was talking with an archaeologist, and he said that the primary mystery civilization had been found across the entire galaxy at the least. We haven’t gone anywhere that we haven’t found their colonies, nor met a new race that didn’t already know them, if no better than we. My old Bible study teacher always was fond of noting that the book of Jeremiah, among others, talks of ancient civilizations and spacefaring angels that existed long before Adam was made. I am not so sure of the faith of my ancestors in a word-for-word fashion, I admit, but I am well aware that there are things of vast cosmic significance about which we know nothing. I lost my father a couple of years ago, and I like to think that he is still somewhere, beyond this sort of life. Call me someone reserving judgment, but with an open mind.”

The meal continued that way, quite pleasant from Angel’s point of view in spite of the lack of spirituality of her companions. There was some hope for Ari, no matter how material his life and attitudes were. Ming, well—none saw God unless they were called to do so, and like most people, Ming was spiritually deaf. Angel knew it was not her job to convert such people, only to find those who heard the call but had no clear idea which direction it was coming from. Converting the deaf ones was not only fruitless, it was, to her people, blasphemous. If God had wanted them, He would have called.

They finished dessert and got up to go to the Captain’s reception and briefing, but they continued trying to get to know one another. The fact that Angel had made no effort to thump a Bible or preach to them made her acceptable as a fellow traveler. Ari had been aboard and thus wasn’t required to attend, but he hadn’t much else to do.

“So where are you heading?” he asked the nun. “If it’s not too personal, that is. You say you have no home, and you’re far too young to have both education and lots of experience.”

“It’s not too personal, no. Actually, you are right. I’ve just come from a two year assignment assisting a mission on a rather primitive world. It was very basic stuff—digging wells, showing how to create and plant and harvest rice in the old ways, that kind of thing. Our tradition is to get right into the mud and teach by example. Of course, I was also being tutored by the Holy Sisters at the mission, and evaluated for personality, aptitude, you name it. They decided that I did have the calling to mission work and that I should be sent to university. I have decided that I have a talent for growing things that experts say can’t grow where I put them, so I will be taking a degree in plant exobiology.”

“Really? And that’s where you are heading now?”

She laughed. “Not directly. Actually, I’m on my way to be married.”

“Married! But I thought—”

“I understand. You were raised Catholic and you probably also have run into Buddhist nuns and that’s what you think when you see me. We’re not celibate. If we were, we wouldn’t last another generation. God commanded us to be fruitful and multiply, and that’s part of it. It would be unthinkable for any of us to go outside of our own people, such as to university, without first the joining of a family and the sacraments of marriage to impose discipline and also liberate us from the usual romantic tugs such places are known for.”

He frowned. “Hmm… That was the best part of going to university, frankly. Oh, well, we each follow our own paths, eh? Have you known your fiance long?”

“Actually, I’ve never met him, only seen a video of him. But I’ve met three of his other wives and they’ve given me a good idea of what he’s like.”

Ari Martinez decided to leave that part alone. He’d been around enough not to be shocked or even surprised at the various cults and cultural systems human beings had devised over the centuries, some of which made totally alien life-forms seem ordinary by comparison. Instead, he decided to keep it casual.

“I don’t remember seeing others like you, and I travel a lot,” he told her. “If your group is large enough to exist on Junctions all over the Realm, I’d think I’d have run into someone else before.”

“You probably have,” she told him. “We don’t travel in uniform, as it were. Not usually, anyway. I carry a modest wardrobe with me, including wigs and such.”

“But you’re not in disguise now.”

“I was, for a little while, but it was too embarrassing, not to say messy. I think in this case I’m better off the way I am.”

He stared. “You’re the girl who took the tumble when we docked! Well I’ll be d—” He stopped himself.

“Damned? I doubt it. That’s the kind of reason we don’t travel as ourselves. People seem to think that if you’re with a mission, you have to be sheltered from bad language and dirty jokes and all the rest. Believe me, there’s very little I haven’t heard already. It’s not what you say, it’s what you mean that counts.”

They went back to the lounge, where the newcomers and most of the rest of the passengers had gathered. Other than returning to the cabin, there really wasn’t much else to do.

There was some milling around and general impatience as the appointed time for the briefing came and went without any announcement, not even that the Captain would be late. Angel looked around and saw Jeremiah Kincaid sitting by himself, nursing a drink. He was hard to miss; everyone who walked into the lounge got an icy stare and a thorough scrutiny from head to foot from the eerie man, as if he were looking for someone who might not want to be recognized.

Ming had departed for her cabin, but apparently had done whatever she had to do and now reappeared, emerging from a passageway. She saw her two dinner companions and started over, Kincaid giving her the remote third degree.

“You know, I’d swear that bastard had X-ray eyes and was telepathic to boot,” she whispered to them. “It felt like he looked right through me! I don’t know what he thinks he’s looking for here. I mean, everybody knows that the monster he’s looking for is a water breather. He should be on the other side, with a breathing apparatus that didn’t work right.”

“You’re not that sympathetic,” Angel noted.

She shrugged. “Hey, I’m as much a bleeding heart as anybody, but it’s not my war, not my fight, and all I want is him to be somewhere I’m not. If he thinks he’s going to spot water breathers here, then he’s gone completely over the edge. Of course, considering how many decades he’s been chasing his demon without success, it’s not surprising.”

Ari seemed uncomfortable, but not with the sentiment. “What do you mean, he should be on the other side? There are water breathers aboard?”

“Sure. In this module. About a third, or two pie sections. Happens all the time. That’s why you’ll eventually hit a wall if you try a complete circuit. You can call them, or use the virtual bar and lounge to interact. I’ve got to talk to a couple of ’em here on business, in fact.” She looked at Angel. “See, it’s pretty awkward for me to go to their element, and unlikely I can do much anyway. Same goes in reverse. So we swap information, research, and such as a professional courtesy.”

Ari nodded. “Yes, it’s done all the time. I’m pretty much between assignments, but if any of them who know me rang me up in my cabin and asked me to run down something, I’d probably help if it didn’t go against somebody I’m likely to be working for or have worked for in the past.” He looked around at the gathering group. “Funny. I always know some of the people on a trip, because those of us who have to actually move from system to system are a fairly small number within a sector, but I know most of these. Not necessarily well, or as friends, but I know them.”

Ming nodded. “I noticed the same thing. The Rithians are all from the Ha’jiz Nesting, for example. And the middle-aged man with the good looks and silver hair and the woman in the sparkling scarlet are the Kharkovs. Gem cutters and master jewelers. That’s no coincidence.”

“I agree,” Ari replied. “And there are others here who are even a bit darker. That Geldorian, for example, is Tann Nakitt. He’s a go-between for various factions, whether it be companies or criminal groups or whatever. Not a bad sort, really, unless you’re opposed to him, but he’s also not cheap. I don’t know the Mallegestors, nor much about them as a race or culture, but it’s curious to see them this far afield. Assuming we can discount Mom and Dad and the two kids there, the distinguished-looking fellow with the goatee and the two overbuilt young ladies is Jules Wallinchky, a man who makes a lot of money providing goods and services to folks who want things they can’t legally have. I assume that the two with him are either recent acquisitions or kept because of their looks and attitude, although you never know.

Makes for an interesting mostly rogue’s gallery, though, doesn’t it?”

Angel recognized the man identified as the gangster as the one who had tried coming on to her until she did her ungainly spill. I sure attract the odd ones, she thought sourly, although she wondered what interest he might have in the likes of her, with two superior warm bodies like those hanging on his every word and gesture. On the other hand, maybe he was looking for a woman who wouldn’t pass a light beam in one ear and out the other. She’d never seen women like this, and only heard of them in stories and warnings; she did not understand why they would put themselves in that kind of situation, as little more than, well, property. She knew some faiths had women subordinated because of Eve’s corruption, but this had nothing to do with religion or true culture. To Angel Kobe, it was as inexplicable as the bipedal hippos over there, the Mallegestors.

“Well, I don’t care what the rules are,” Wallinchky said loud enough for all to hear. “If the Captain’s gonna stand us all up without so much as a word, he can damned well come find me when he wants to talk. I’ll give him five minutes and that’s it. Then we’re goin’ to the cabin!”

Tough guy or not, this sentiment was pretty much universal for the assembled passengers.

Jeremiah Kincaid arose, his huge form towering over the Terrans and Rithians, and made his way silently through the increasingly impatient throng to the restaurant. As soon as he stepped inside, the maitre d’ appeared.

“The Captain has allowed the passengers to wait without sending any word for more than a half hour,” Kincaid told the hologram in his deep baritone. “Please check and see if there is anything wrong.”

The maitre d’ seemed to freeze, but Kincaid’s words went through the generated character to the central module computer and from there to the master computer. Suddenly the hologram came to life once more, looking concerned. “We do not have a clear fix on Captain Dukodny. This is unprecedented. Validate that you are Jeremiah Wong Kincaid, passenger?”

“Yes, I am Kincaid.”

“Do you still hold captain’s papers?”

“Yes, although I couldn’t legally take command without going through a recertification. It has been a long time since I was master of anything large and complex, and technology has gone on.”

“Captain, you are the most qualified individual other than Captain Dukodny aboard. We would like you to go up to the bridge and see if there has been some kind of problem we cannot monitor.”

Kincaid nodded. “That is what I had in mind. What do your sensors see on the bridge?”

“Normal operation is reported, although there is some sort of weight imbalance we can not properly categorize.”

Kincaid frowned. “Weight imbalance? You mean at the bridge?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wait here a moment. Then we will go up there.”

Kincaid turned and walked back to the people in the lounge, most of whom reacted nervously or recoiled from his powerful and mysterious visage.

“Citizens of the Realm, there might be a problem here,” he announced as loudly as possible. “I would not feel bound to wait around here any longer. On the other hand, I should like a couple of volunteers to accompany me to the bridge to check on the Captain. I fear he may be ill or worse.”

That got a lot of them agitated, and he moved to calm them down. “Please! This ship runs without live intervention. The ship’s Master is the boss, but doesn’t run the day-to-day operations. I am rated as captain and could do what little is necessary in a pinch, but this ship not only can do everything by itself, it has three to five levels of redundancy. There is no danger to us from that quarter. Still, something is amiss. Would anyone like to accompany me? Anyone?”

He wasn’t exactly the kind you willingly jumped up and volunteered to go off with into the internal bowels of a strange ship. Most of them would have preferred if he sat in a different room. Still, curiosity overcame a few of the courageous.

“I’ll go up with you,” said a Rithian, perhaps the one, Angel thought, she had talked to about Kincaid. The cobra-faced quadruped was welcome, because Rithians were so supple they could twist and bend as if they had no bones and get in and out of tight places.

“Fine. And one more?”

“I’ll come with you,” Angel heard herself saying. Was she the same person who had not long before been terrified at the very sight of this man? Perhaps being herself was always best; that way she could place herself in God’s hands.

Kincaid wasn’t too thrilled with her, but he didn’t want to wait much longer. “All right. You two come with me. Everybody else, stay or go as you please. We’ll report as soon as we know anything.”

They walked back over to the restaurant. The maitre d’ was nowhere in sight. Instead they were met by a tall, tough-looking man in a utility jumpsuit. This was crewman mode, and meant that this particular hologram wasn’t from the module computer but from the City of Modar itself.

In addition to curiosity, Angel had volunteered because it looked to be a chance to see the parts of the ship otherwise barred to passengers.

They walked back along utilitarian service corridors that had no mystery in them at all except perhaps where they went, and finally the trio reached a stair that descended from the ceiling as they approached. Without the computer authorizing things, nobody could have gotten up there or even noticed that the stairway existed. This was Officer Country, even though there was only one officer on the whole massive structure.

They went up it, the holographic crewman and Kincaid in the lead, then the Rithian, with Angel bringing up the rear. They came to an airlock with its warning lights flashing red.

“That’s odd,” the crewman commented. “Our sensors indicate that the external corridor is fully pressurized.”

Kincaid looked around. “Any emergency gear here?”

“In the compartment there. Just use the floor ring and lift up.”

Inside were several safety harnesses, two environment suits, and a number of autofit breathing masks.

“There is no suit that would handle my form,” the Rithian noted. “I shall be all right with the breather and safety line.”

“That should be all right for all of us,” Kincaid replied. “If it’s a vacuum, the airlock will either refuse to open or be shut again by the pressure here. I doubt if there are any lines for toxic gases in there. Everybody get on a safety harness and hook to the railing here. Then pull up a breather and hold it. Okay, good. Check your masks.”

Angel had never had one on, but it seemed simple enough to do, and the mask over her nose and mouth fitted itself to the contours of her face and fed oxygen-rich air. The Rithian also hooked up, and the mask contoured even to its snakelike face. Kincaid nodded to the crewman and said, “Open it.”

Warning bells sounded as the airlock was opened while still in a red condition, but the rounded airlock twisted like a spiral lens and opened onto the nearly kilometer-long tunnel that linked the passenger module to the bridge on the main ship.

Water gushed out in an enormous rush and washed over them, knocking all three of them down. The harnesses, clipped to the railings, held them in place for what seemed like eternity but was actually no more than a minute or two. The water itself was salty and mineral-rich, but it wasn’t the main problem, as it was vented and recaptured by the ship’s systems and slowly went down to a trickle.

It was so unexpected that Angel had been completely bowled over, and she knew that it had been sufficient to probably cause some bruises.

“Everybody all right?” Kincaid shouted, picking himself up.

Only the crewman stood there, looking totally confused. “We are shifting the water out through vents to the main tanks,” he assured them. “Restoring normal operation should happen in a matter of minutes. It is, however, very confusing. This is impossible. It cannot happen.”

“Your sensor systems were bypassed,” Kincaid told the crewman. “It was probably done outside, while we were in station-keeping. Was any maintenance done on your overall systems?”

“Just the usual preventive maintenance and refreshing of systems. Nothing major.”

“But somebody or some maintenance robot had access to the computer memory section or comm interfaces?”

“Well, that is not unheard of, but any shutdowns or modifications would be logged.”

“Is there any way to pump this amount of water under pressure into the catwalk from either this module or the main ship’s module?”

“No. It would have to have been done externally.”

Angel managed to stand up, then removed her mask and tried to get her bearings. Her eyes hurt from the mineral salts, and her robe felt like a soaking wet blanket.

She looked around, appalled at the implications. “So where’s the Captain?” she asked them, shaking her head.

“Where indeed?” echoed Kincaid.