The Clockwork Rocket

Yalda said, “That’s all true—though the reason we don’t see any blue in those trails is also a matter of how much power the star emits in different parts of the spectrum. The light we’d see as blue would have to leave the star as far-infrared, traveling incredibly slowly. So it can’t be carrying energy out of the star at a very high rate… which means the star itself simply won’t be shining very brightly in that color.”

Ausilia had been following the discussion closely, though Yalda wasn’t sure how much she’d understood. But then she pointed to Fatima’s chest and said, “If that star happened to be in front of us instead, its slowest light would still end up looking blue, wouldn’t it? It would just approach it from the other end of the spectrum. So its trail would start out violet, but never quite get as far as blue.”

She hesitated, then produced a diagram, echoing Fatima’s, to illustrate her point.

Yalda chirped with delight. She gestured to Ausilia to turn so that everyone else could see the picture. “That’s the last puzzle solved: why some trails above us are just violet and indigo. And that’s it: between you, you’ve unwoven the whole sky.”

In fact, not everyone had caught up with Fatima and Ausilia, but Yalda stood back and let the students help each other past their lingering puzzlement. As they looked to the stars and back, connecting the details of the color trails to the figures before them, the thrill of understanding spread.

This alien sky belonged to them, now. Its transformation would become even more extreme as the Peerless moved faster, but the new ways of seeing it that they had acquired would handle those changes with ease.

Yalda knew that only a few of these people would end up as researchers, only a few as teachers. But even if they did no more than pass their understanding on to the children of their friends, it would all be a part of strengthening the culture, ensuring that their descendants were at ease in this strange new state.

And the most beautiful thing of all, she realized—struck by it anew, because she’d almost begun taking it for granted—was that every one of these solos and runaways, every one of these partnered women and their cos, would have the chance to live out their lives without coercion, making use of their talents, untrammeled by the customs of the old world.

Forget the Hurtlers, forget the orthogonal stars. For that alone, the struggle had been worth it.

16

Strapped to her bench in the navigators’ post, Yalda counted down the pauses. It had always been Frido or Babila doing the honors before, but she’d taken the role for herself this time, knowing it would be her last chance.

“Three. Two. One.”

The anticlimax that followed was welcome; any sudden, perceptible change would have meant that something had gone horribly wrong. The clock advanced another two lapses before Yalda noticed anything at all— and even then she had her doubts; the hint of dizziness, of balance gone awry, could as easily have been nothing but anticipation. The machinists were tapering off the flow of liberator in an excruciatingly protracted manner; it would take a full chime for the engines to shut down completely.

“Can you hear that?” Frido asked.

“Hear what?” Babila raised her head to listen.

Yalda said, “The rock.” Over the hammering of the engines, she could make out a low creaking sound coming through the ceiling. The mountain had lost only a fraction of its weight, but it was already beginning to rearrange itself, stretching out beneath the diminishing load. That was not a bad sign; better that it start adjusting now than save up the changes for a sharp transition later that released all its energy at once.

Four lapses into the shutdown, Yalda could have sworn that the skin on her back was growing numb—and knowing the true reason that she was starting to register less pressure did nothing to make the illusion less compelling. At seven lapses her dwindling weight began triggering flashes of panic, in which she was convinced—for a moment or two—that the legs of the bench had given way beneath her. The engines were producing a strange, soft patter now; the rock above had fallen silent. For the first time since the launch, she could hear the ticking of the clock from across the room.

Babila turned and vomited up her last meal, thoughtfully depositing it out of sight of her companions—though the floor itself might not hold the mess down much longer. With no hope of reconciling the room’s apparent steadiness with the alarming sense that everything was slipping, Yalda closed her eyes. She found herself visualizing the Peerless from a distance, a dark cone against the color trails. But in this fanciful vision the middle third of the mountain had turned as soft as resin, and she watched in horrified fascination as it stretched out into a narrow tube, then snapped—

She braced for the impact that must have followed the same plummeting sensation for every one of her ancestors who’d had the misfortune to experience it. That the crash never came was no surprise, but nor was it a relief; the threat of impending damage refused to be dispelled.

Yalda lay on her bench humming softly, waiting for something to change. Finally, she grew sufficiently inured to the sense of dread to open her eyes and look around. Frido had removed most of his straps and was sitting up; Yalda did the same, and felt no worse for it. In fact, the actions were reassuring, proving that she still had control over her body.

Half a dozen ropes had been strung across the room at shoulder height. Frido finished unstrapping himself and reached up to take hold of the nearest of them. At first he tried to walk across the floor, using the rope as an aid, but his feet kept slipping on the stone. Then he changed his approach, curling his body up and gripping the rope with his feet as well, forming them into a second pair of hands. After a few unsteady moments, he mastered the technique and scurried along the rope, hand over hand, as far as the wall. Then he swung onto a second rope that was fastened to the stone beside him, and set off in a new direction.

Babila watched him, stupefied. “I’m not doing that for the rest of my life,” she moaned. “You can send me home right now.”

Yalda removed the strap from around her waist and took hold of the nearest rope. Following Frido’s example, she re-formed her feet and tried to raise them, but then she found herself tumbling slowly in mid-air, still clinging to the rope with a single hand but unable to seize it with any other appendage.

“Hunch up, you fool!” Babila suggested irritably; in her state of nausea even Yalda’s clumsiness was a personal affront. But it was good advice; Yalda had no control over her body’s orientation, but she could still bring all four hands together at the point where she held the rope. From there, she slid them along it, spacing them out more comfortably. She looked across the room to study Frido’s technique—he was never taking more than one hand off the rope at a time—then she began tentatively pulling herself along.

She was fine at first, until her sense of the vertical flipped and the cozy illusion that she was hanging down from a horizontal rope was replaced by the equally false conviction that she was perched above it, precariously balanced, certain to tumble over at any moment. She closed her eyes and pictured herself ascending instead: climbing up a vertical rope. When she opened her eyes and started