Draco, Triton, Hell3, 3172

Some stud had taken a black crayon and scrawled “Olga” across the vane-projector face.

“Okay,” the Mouse said to the machine. “You’re Olga.”

Purr and blink, three green lights, four red ones. The Mouse began the tedious check of pressure distribution and phase readings.

To move a ship faster than light from star to star, you take advantage of the very twists in space, the actual distortions that matter creates in the continuum itself. To talk about the speed of light as the limiting velocity of an object is to talk about twelve or thirteen miles an hour as the limiting velocity of a swimmer in the sea. But as soon as one starts to employ the currents of the water itself, as well as the wind above, as with a sailboat, the limit vanishes. The starship had seven vanes of energy acting somewhat like sails. Six projectors controlled by computers sweep the vanes across the night. And each cyborg stud controls a computer. The captain controls the seventh. The vanes of energy had to be tuned to the shifting frequencies of the stasis pressures; and the ship itself was quietly hurled from this plane of space by the energy of the Illyrion in its core. That was what Olga and her cousins did. But the control of the shape and the angling of the vane was best left to a human brain. That was the Mouse’s job—under the captain’s orders. The captain also had blanket control of many of the sub-vane properties.

The cubicle’s walls were covered with graffiti from former crews. There was a contour couch. The Mouse adjusted the inductance slack in a row of seventy microfarad coil-condensers, slid the tray in to the wall, and sat.

He reached around to the small of his back beneath his vest, and felt for the socket. It had been grafted onto the base of his spinal cord back at Cooper. He picked up the first reflex cable that looped across the floor to disappear into the computer’s face, and fiddled with it till the twelve prongs slipped into his socket and caught. He took the smaller, six-prong plug and slipped it into the plug on the underside of his left wrist; then the other into his right. Both radial nerves were connected with Olga. At the back of his neck was another socket. He slipped the last plug in—the cable was heavy and tugged a little on his neck—and saw sparks. This cable could send impulses directly to his brain that could bypass hearing and sight. There was a faint hum coming through already. He reached over, adjusted a knob on Olga’s face, and the hum cleared. Ceiling, walls, and floor were covered with controls. The room was small enough so that he could reach most of them from the couch. But once the ship took off, he would touch none of them, but control the vane directly with the nervous impulses from his body.

“I always feel like I’m getting ready for the Big Return,” Katin’s voice sounded in his ear. In their cubicles throughout the ship, as they plugged themselves in, the other studs joined contact. “The base of the spine always struck me as an unnatural place from which to drag your umbilical cord. It better be an interesting marionette show. Do you really know how to work this thing?”

“If you don’t know by now,” the Mouse said, “too bad.”

Idas: “This show’s about Illyrion—”

“—Illyrion and a nova”: Lynceos.

“Say, what are you doing with your pets, Sebastian?”

“A saucer of milk them feed.”

“With tranquilizers,” Tyy’s soft voice came. “They now sleep.”

And lights dimmed.

The captain hooked in. The graffiti, the scars on the walls, vanished. There were only the red lights chasing one another on the ceiling.

“A shook up go game,” Katin said, “with iridescent stones.” The Mouse pushed his syrynx case beneath the couch with his heel and lay down. He straightened the cable under his back, beneath his neck.

“All secure?” Von Ray’s voice rang through the ship. “Open the fore vanes.”

The Mouse’s eyes began to flicker with new sight—

—the space port: lights over the field, the lavid fissures of the crust fell to dim, violet quiverings at the spectrum’s tip. But above the horizon, the ‘winds’ were brilliant.

“Pull open the side vane seven degrees.”

The Mouse flexed what would have been his left arm. And the side vane lowered like a wing of mica. “Hey, Katin,” the Mouse whispered. “Ain’t that something! Look at it--”

The Mouse shivered, crouched in a shield of light. Olga had taken over his breathing and heartbeat while the synapses of the medulla were directed to the workings of the ship.

“For Illyrion, and Prince and Ruby Red!” from one of the twins.

“Hold your vane!” the captain ordered.

“Katin look—”

“Lie back and relax, Mouse,” Katin whispered. “I shall do just that and think about my past life.”

The void roared.

“You really feel like that, Katin?”

“You can be bored with anything if you try hard enough.”

“You two, look up,” from Von Ray. They looked.

“Cut in stasis shifters.”

A moment Olga’s lights pricked his vision. And were gone; winds swept against him. And they were cartwheeling from the sun.

“Good-bye, moon,” Katin whispered.

And the moon fell into Neptune; Neptune fell into the sun. And the sun began to fall.

Night exploded before them.