Floating Worlds

“Reef,” Tanuojin said. “Coming fast.”

“I see it.”

A thick dark stream wound along the holograph. The ship bucked down, lurched to the left as if she were sliding down a wave, and heaved herself straight again. The suit was rigid. Paula could move her fingers inside the fat gloves but the gloves were immovable. The light was fading. They passed into a deep dusk, into a midnight darkness. The pressure suit had hardened like a shell around her. She looked up overhead. The darkness was complete. Suddenly a fragment of coherent light appeared, a long streak that melted away while she watched.

“What’s that?”

“False image,” Saba said. “Doppelganger.”

There was a scream of noise like an alarm going off. A mechanical voice said loudly, “A-39, A-39. This is Saturn-Keda, identify.”

Ybicsa bucked upward again and fell off sheer to the left. Paula gulped down the nausea in her throat. Dizzy, she fixed her eyes on the seat before her. Tanuojin was saying, “SIF 16 Ybicsa, armed scout from SIF 6 Ybix. Barkus-rating H. Check white records. Automatic clearance rAkellaron confirmed.”

Paula moved her fingers. The suit was beginning to soften. Ybicsa sailed into a long curve, and she fell against the harness. She braced herself on her arms. The ship swung around again, faster than Paula’s stomach.

“Ybicsa, this is Saturn-Keda, we read an unregistered person in your craft.”

“No registry. Female mixed blood.”

“Status.”

“No status. Saba’s property.”

“Paula,” Saba said, under his breath in her ear, “Look up.”

She raised her head. Over them, in the dark, was a vast slimy roof, festooned with scum and feathery crystalline growth. The underside of Saturn-Keda. She straightened to see the holograph. The scale had changed; Ybicsa was four times as large as before. She was flying along below a glob like an Idaho potato, trailing long strings like roots down into the magma. The bubble was too large for the map, and only a patch of it showed.

“Ybicsa, this is Saturn-Keda, we will dock you from here. At point you will lock your control system into—”

“Stop,” Saba said. “I dock my own ship.”

“We do not allow—”

“Stop. Call Melleno. This damned dumb computer.”

She looked up again at the encrusted skin above her. They were passing a root trailing down into the dark. Spidery outgrowths sprouted like hairs from it, barely visible.

“There’s a lot of radiation, Saba,” Tanuojin said. “All the dials are white.”

“It’s always hot around here this part of the spin.” Saba wheeled out of his chair. He pulled off his helmet and turned to help Paula. He stood with one foot braced on the sloping side of the ship.

“I thought you said she’s smart,” Tanuojin said. “She couldn’t reach the helmet, back at the brake. She’s too stupid to ask for help.”

The helmet lifted off her shoulders. Stiffly she said, “Thank you.”

“You stupid pig.”

She started up. Saba pushed her down into the seat again. He said, “The suits are all on one line, if one isn’t sealed, none of them seals.”

“Oh.” She glanced at Tanuojin. “Then I take it back.” She sat straight in the curved seat.

“Ybicsa,” a live voice said, in the radio speaker, “this is Saturn-Keda. You may dock under manual power. Use XM-7. Please do not race. If you stall in the tunnel, remain where you are and we will guide you in.”

Tanuojin got up. He stood in the narrow aisle beside Saba’s seat, one long arm braced on its back. She leaned to one side to see the hologram. Ybicsa floated in a green soup. The ship’s wake showed clearly in the shifting light of the map. She nosed forward into the mass of the bubble. Its skin, overgrown with rough crystalline, seemed to thicken out of the magma around it. Ybicsa’s needle- snout disappeared into it, and a new hologram wiped diagonally onto the map. Ybicsa flew into a narrow tunnel. Light flashed blinding through the window. Tanuojin raised one arm to shield his eyes.

“What was that?” she asked.

“The dock is leaking,” Saba said. “Read off the speed, will you?” His voice deepened; he was talking to his lyo.

“One-two,” Tanuojin said. “One-two. You’re going too fast. Three-four. Three-four.”

“Ybicsa,” the radio said urgently, “you’re coming in too fast. Please do not race. You’ll stall—”

“Turn that off,” Saba said, and Tanuojin leaned back and shut the volume down; she could still hear the tiny voice complaining behind her.

Ybicsa glided smoothly as a dream through the series of short jogs. Paula held herself in place, her hands on the harness. After the free fall she felt heavy and dull in the gravity.

“One-four,” Tanuojin read. “Three-sixteen. Saba, you could fly a piece of silk. One-eight, one-eight.”

She raised her heavy head like a bulb on her neck. Ybicsa crept through the utter dark. Paula blotted out Tanuojin’s voice reading their speed. They hardly seemed to move. Then light flashed on ice, and Ybicsa burst up through the surface of the water and shot through the city, and Paula jumped, startled.

Tanuojin sat down again behind her. The ship settled, turning a slow corkscrew. Saturn-Keda flew past the window, striped with bushy green foliage. It was dark, like twilight. She looked down through the window over her head into streets lined with little square buildings. She was too high above them to make out the people save as a coiling swarm in the street. Ybicsa rolled slowly over, and the city curled around her, covering the inside surface of the bubble. They passed beneath an inky river stitched over with bridges. Abruptly Ybicsa was swallowed.

Paula gave a violent start. But they had only flown into a dock. The engines roared. She was sliding forward into the harness. The ship slowed around a curve. A string of other ships was parked along the inside wall of the dock. Saba eased the ship up to an empty platform. Something thudded against the outside of the hull under her feet: maybe an anchor. She pulled off her gloves. Tanuojin climbed past her and thrust the hatch up and out. The ship rocked slightly under his step. She struggled with the clips of her harness. Saba leaned down to help her.

“Remember, no talk.” He unplugged her suit and fastened the veil across her face. She clambered after him out the hatch. The suit was heavy as chain over her shoulders. She could barely stand upright.

The platform was bare and cold. The wall was papered over with torn posters. The veil closed off her side vision. Tanuojin stood talking to a big graying man. The sleeves and front of his shirt were embroidered in metallic thread. He swung around, looking over her head.

“Saba, why do I spend a fortune training pilots?” They shook hands.

“Your pilots don’t fly my ships.”

Another man brought a board and a stylus up to him. “Akellar, I need your full engine rates—” Saba took him off to the stern of his ship.

The old man looked down at Paula. “Who is she?”

“Saba’s latest moral aberration,” Tanuojin said.

She glanced up at him, and the old man laughed. He smacked Tanuojin on the back with his open hand. “Tajin, you’ve made yet another enemy. Let’s go, it’s cold.”

They took off the black pressure suits in a locker room near the platform and went down a stair to the inner surface of the bubble. The three men talked about people she had never heard of. They walked along a street crowded with Styths. She had to trot to keep up with Saba. The buildings on either side were one and two stories, plain stone houses. Strips of green separated them: the grass that helped circulate the air. It even grew on the roofs of some houses. The buildings, the people around her, everything dwarfed her. She felt shrunk to miniature,