Floating Worlds

kill him now, with his work undone.

She turned Ybicket’s nose up and stamped on the pedals. Straining to reach, her legs ached along her calves and the backs of her knees. She held herself on the front of the seat by her grip on the levers. In a round dial on the left-hand panel, a red needle sliced across the numbers. The ship bucked, slid along a wave, and rolled back. The left lever was jerked out of her hand. She snatched for it. The ship lurched. Ybicket was falling back into the Planet. She hit a surging pale green wave and bounced up again, tail-first. Paula rammed the pedals down. She had to go faster now, flying against gravity. Her stomach rolled half a turn behind the ship. She pulled the levers and got the ship nose-up again. Ybicket raced through a clear patch of green.

“D-61, D-61, identify.”

Paula glanced back at the radio. A light flashed on it. She stepped hard into the pedals. Ybicket surged upward. The speed-gauge needle climbed steadily. Paula watched the map. A faint green cone of a wave streamed back from Ybicket’s bow.

“D-61, you’re outside the corridor. Identify or we will notify the patrol.”

She laughed, pleased to know he was not the patrol. She wondered where the corridor was. At least she was out of the traffic. Something bright yellow and long and hairy appeared in the top of the map. The image sharpened into a thick string cutting diagonally across the cube. She guessed it was a city mooring.

“D-61, D-61—”

The ship hit another wave. This time she kept hold of the levers. It was hard to judge the angle. The wave broke sharp against the ship’s hull and knocked her sliding. Now she was headed in another direction. Paula steered around a yellowish mass like a mountain floating in the magma: a lump of something frozen. She was going so fast Ybicket left a visible rippled wake.

“D-61, this is UP-115, identify and heave to. You are outside the corridor.” The voice sharpened. “Damn it, heave to or I’ll shoot!”

There was no sign of another ship in the map. Ybicket raced straight up. Paula braced herself against the edge of the seat. In the limit of the holograph another long string appeared. She wondered what city it was. They might not shoot if she kept close by the moorings. Two men shouted at her at once in the radio.

She passed the city within holograph range, a great yellow wall that went on for long miles beside her, encrusted with hairy growth. Another ship flew across her course. She headed Ybicket straight for it. She rammed the pedals down as far as she could reach. For a moment the ship hovered there ahead of her, but the city was just behind her; the craft could not shoot and reeled away. She hurtled past, going steadily faster.

The cab filled with a lemony sunlight. She glanced through the window into a fog like dirty wool. The light grew brighter. The ship answered differently to her touch on the levers, tender as an egg on a table. She was bobbing in the harness, nearly weightless. Ybicket flew up through the thinning clouds. She crossed into black space.

She put her helmet and gloves on and went back to stuff Tanuojin’s hands into his gloves. He was still sunk in sleep. She groped over the radio deck, found the light, and switched it on. In its glow she could read the tags on the buttons. The one on the left was marked ID and she turned it on. She swam back to the drive seat. Just as she reached it, a blow struck Ybicket with a flash of white light.

The shock threw Paula head-first into the seat. Someone was shooting at her. She squirmed around, reaching for the levers. The ship was streaking down toward the white Planet. When she pulled the levers, she moved herself and the controls stayed still. She had to learn all over again how to do it in free fall. The ship began to roll over as she fell. Paula thrust the pedals down and forced the levers down, clenching her teeth, and still tumbling the ship leveled off.

Another light exploded in the window overhead. There were no other ships around her. They were shooting from the cloud-white Planet in its silvery rings or from a moon. Ybicket was rolling over and over. When Paula pushed the outside lever to steady her, the spin quickened. She tried other combinations and stopped the roll but Ybicket dropped her nose again and dove toward Uranus. Far above her, there was another explosion.

“Ybicket, Ybicket, this is Ybix, answer.”

The voice roared through the helmet above her ears. She could not work the radio, so she said nothing. Ybicket was plunging down. The Planet filled the window. The levers were frozen. The ship ran into something that flung it sideways. Paula hit the wall. Her helmet banged her head. Her eyes went in circles. When she came back to herself, Ketac was shouting at her.

“Ybicket. I’m taking your controls. Let go.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Paula!”

She swam back to the drive seat. The lifeline had uncoiled after her like a white worm and snaked into its housing under the seat. Ketac said, “Push the auto button. The red button under the safety hood on the right of the instrument panel. Do you see it? What are you doing in the drive seat?”

Her head hurt unbearably. She lifted the metal hood on the right side of the console and punched the red button there. Ketac was shouting at her. She crawled into the harness and shut her eyes.

Her eyes opened. Around her the Mylar walls glistened. A stopwatch floated about a yard away from her face, rocking slightly back and forth. She was in Ybix, in Saba’s old cabin in Ybix, wrapped up in a shaggy bedrug. She unfolded herself from its warm laps.

The time meter read the middle of the low watch. Shivering, she went around the room gathering her clothes and dressing. While she was in the galley taking a protein strip and blue and white chalk tablets out of the food machine, a crewman swam into the hatch and told her that Tanuojin wanted to see her. He was in the library. She went up to the blue corridor, traveling slowly in the free fall.

Ketac was perched on a stool pulled out from the wall, between her and Tanuojin. He grabbed hold of her hand. “Have you ever flown Ybicket before? Who let you do that?”

She swung the hatch closed behind her. Inside the round room, its curved wall coated with book cells, the three were crowded together. Tanuojin said, “The vulgar belief is that Vida’s ghost flew us in.” He crooked his arms behind his head. “The fleet is here,” he said to her. “And Mehma’s Saturn Fleet.”

“They came when you called,” she said. She turned her arm, and Ketac let go of her.

Tanuojin said, “Something has to be done. The whole Empire is falling apart.”

Ketac took hold of her again. “There’s only one power in the system that can bring Styth back to order now. And that’s Tanuojin.”

“Go on,” Tanuojin said to Ketac. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Ketac went past her, spun the hatch wheel, and dove out into the corridor. In the expanded space of the room Paula let herself stretch out. Tanuojin said, “I’m calling a session of the rAkellaron in Vribulo in eleven watches. The fleet’s small craft can dominate Vribulo, no matter what the patrol does. The Chamber will elect me head of the Empire for my lifetime. Leno is my deputy in Uranus. Mehma is my deputy in Saturn. Ketac will be head of the fleet.”

She wondered how long he would live. When she was random dust, when Ketac’s grandchildren were old men, Tanuojin would rule. She said, “Congratulations.”

“You can help me.”

“I helped you. I got you here.”

“More than that.”

“What’s more than your life?”

The wall buzzed. He put one arm out, and a narrow drawer among the cells of books slid toward his fingers. “You refuse to admit that I’m right.” His voice was brittle. He took the earphones out of the side of the drawer and turned a switch. On the panel inside the drawer a red light flashed on and off. “Tanuojin,” he said, into the mouthpiece. Leno’s voice rasped in the speaker. She left.