Infinity's Shore

That might have been Vubben’s last thought. But at the final moment there comes something else. A glimmer of meaning that merges with his waning neuronic flashes. In that narrow moment, he feels a wave of overwhelming certainty.

More layers lie beneath the sleeping strata. Layers that are aware.

Layers that know.

Despair is not his final companion. Instead, there comes in rapid succession—

expectation …

satisfaction …

awareness of an ancient plan, patiently unfolding.…

Kaa

CAN’T-T YOU USE SOMEBODY ELSE?”

“Who else? There is no one.”

“What about Karkaett-t?”

“Suessi needs him to help nurse the engines. This effort will be hopeless unless they operate above capacity.”

Hopeless, Kaa used to think it such a simple word. But like the concept of infinity, it came freighted with a wide range of meanings. He slashed the water in frustration. Ifni, will you really trap me this way? Dragging me across the universe again, when all I want to do is stay?

Gillian Baskin knelt on the quay nearby, her raincoat glistening. Distant lightning flashes periodically lit up the bay, revealing that the Hikahi had already closed her clamshell doors, preparing to depart.

“Besides,” Gillian added. “You are our chief pilot. Who could be as well qualified?”

Gratifying words, but in fact Streaker used to have a better pilot, by far.

“Keepiru ought to’ve stayed with the crew, back on Kithrup-p. I should have been the one who went on the skiff with Creideiki.”

The woman shrugged. “Things happen, Kaa. I have confidence in your ability to get us off this world in one piece.”

And after that? He chuttered a doubt-filled raspberry. Everyone knew this would be little more than a suicide venture. The odds had also seemed bad on Kithrup, but at least there the eatee battle fleets chasing Streaker had been distracted, battling each other. Fleeing through that maelstrom of combat and confusion, it proved possible to fool their pursuers by wearing a disguise — the hollowed-out shell of a Thennanin dreadnought. All that ploy took was lots of skill … and luck.

Here in Jijo space there was no sheltering complexity. No concealing jumble of warfare to sneak through. Just one pursuer — giant and deadly — sought one bedraggled prey.

For the moment, Streaker was safe in Jijo’s sea, but what chance would she have once she tried to leave?

“You don’t have to worry about Peepoe,” Gillian said, reading the heart of his reluctance. “Makanee has some solid fins with her. Many are Peepoe’s friends. They’ll scan relentlessly till they find Zhaki and Mopol, and make them let her go.

“Anyway,” the blond woman went on, “isn’t Peepoe better off here? Won’t you use your skill to keep her safe?”

Kaa eyed Gillian’s silhouette, knowing the Terragens agent would use any means to get the job done. If that meant appealing to Kaa’s sense of honor … or even chivalry … Gillian Baskin was not too proud.

“Then you admit it-t,” he said.

“Admit what?”

“That we’re heading out as bait, nothing elsssse. Our aim is to sacrifice ourselves.”

The human on the quay was silent for several seconds, then lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

“It seems worthwhile, don’t you think?”

Kaa pondered. At least she was being honest — a decent way for a captain to behave with her pilot.

A whole world, seven or eight sapient races, some near extinction, and a unique culture. Can you see giving up your life for all that?

“I guesss so,” he murmured, after a pause.

Gillian had won. Kaa would abandon his heart on Jijo, and fly out to meet death with open eyes.

Then he recalled. She had made exactly the same choice, long ago. A decision that still must haunt her sleep, though it could have gone no other way.

Yet it surprised Kaa when Gillian slipped off the stone quay, entering the water next to him, and threw her arms around his head. Shivers followed her hands as she stroked him gratefully.

“You make me proud,” she said. “The crew will be glad, and not just because we have the best pilot in this whole galaxy.”

Kaa’s flustered confusion expressed itself in a sonar interrogative, casting puzzled echoes through the colonnade of a nearby pier. Gillian wove her Trinary reply through that filtered reverberation, binding his perplexity, braiding a sound fabric whose texture seemed almost like a melody.

Amid the star lanes,

Snowballs sometimes thrive near

flame.…

Don’t you feel Lucky?

Rety

THE DOLPHIN ENGINEER SHOUTED AT HER FROM the airlock of the salvaged dross ship.

“C-come on, Rety! We gotta leave now, t-to make the rendezvous!”

Chuchki had reason to be agitated. His walker unit whined and jittered, reacting to nervous signals sent down his neural tap. It was cramped in the airlock, which also held the speed sled to carry them from this ghost ship back to Streaker. Providing all went according to plan.

Only I ain’t part of the plan anymore, Rety thought.