Between the Strokes of Night

Now they were facing another change of scale. The Ship had first appeared on the screens as a point of light, far above and ahead of them. As they slowly closed with it, and features became visible, the dimensions could be seen if not comprehended. They were looking at an irregular ovoid, a swollen ball covered with pimples, hair and scratches, like a diseased and mottled fruit. Closer approach brought more details. Each of the small nipples on the underside was a complete docking facility, capable of receiving a vessel the size of the one they rode in; the thin, hair-fine protrusions on the side were landing towers; the regular scratches were composed of a multitude of fine dots, each of them an entry port to the hull.

All conversation had ceased. They all realized the significance of the moment. They were looking at The Ship, the mystical, almost mythical structure that had carried their ancestors across the void from Earth, from a place so far away in time and space that it was beyond imagining.

“Take a good look at it,” said Gilby at last. His lecture was continuing, but his voice had a different tone. “That was the only home of your ancestors for fifteen thousand years — three times as long as we’ve lived on Pentecost. The Ship roamed from system to system, never finding anywhere that could be a new home. It visited forty-nine suns and a hundred planets, and everywhere it was frozen, dead worlds, or burning deserts. Cass was the fiftieth system, and they found Pentecost. It was right to support human life. Paradise, eh? Do you know what happened then?”

They all remained silent, overwhelmed by the swelling presence of The Ship as it filled the screen in front of them.

“They argued,” said Gilby. He paused in his fidgeting with his shoulder strap to touch his gunbelt. “They squabbled in The Ship, over whether or not they should leave it and land on Pentecost. The Ship was home, and half the people didn’t want to leave. It took two hundred years before the last transfer down took place and The Ship was left deserted. The final act was to move it to a high orbit, where it could circle Pentecost forever.”

They had approached within a couple of kilometers, and were spiralling slowly around the shining hull. There was a burred, matte finish to the surface, the evidence of eons of meteor impact and the scouring of interstellar dust. “Any chance we can all go on board?” asked Wilmer. Like a small child, he had pressed his nose to the transparent port.

Gilby smiled. “It’s a shrine. No visitors allowed. The original travellers stated only one situation in which The Ship could be opened up to use again. It’s not one we care to think about. The Ship will be reopened and refurbished if nuclear weapons are ever used on Pentecost.”

He pointed to the port. “Look out there now, and fix it in your memories. You won’t see this again.”

As he spoke they felt a steadily increasing acceleration pressing them back into the seats. The Ship moved past their spacecraft, fell behind, and dwindled rapidly in size. They were heading farther out, out to the sprawling menagerie of planets that moved around and beyond Cassay and together made up the Fifty Worlds.

* * *

Seen through the best Earth telescopes, the system of Eta Cassiopeiae had been no more than twin points of light. It appeared as a striking red-and-gold binary, a glittering topaz-and-garnet jewel less than twenty light-years away from Sol. No amount of magnification by Earth observers could give any structural detail of the stellar components. But to the multiple sensors of Eleanora, curving on a slowing trajectory toward the brighter component of Cassiopeia-A, a system of bewildering complexity had revealed itself. Cassiopeia-A is a yellow-gold star, stellar type GO V. It is a little brighter and more massive than Sol. Its companion is a red dwarf, lighter and only one twenty-fifth as luminous.

Dense, rust-red, and metal-poor, Cassiopeia-B keeps its distance from the bright partner. It never approaches closer than ten billion kilometers. Seen from the planets near Cass-A, the weak, rusted cinder of the companion appears far too feeble to have any influence. But the gravitational field is a long-range force. Gravitational effects of Cass-B had profound influence on the whole system. The planetary family that evolved around Eta Cassiopeiae is a whole zoo, with a bewildering variety of specimens.