Starlady & Fast-Friend

wings beat, and the web rocked gently.

“Well, I want to,” he said. “And that’s just what we’re going to try to do now, angel. You must be smarter than you look.”

She hit him. “I’m awful smart,” she said, pouting.

“Yes,” he laughed. “I didn’t mean it. I thought you wanted to hear about the fast-friends?”

Suddenly she was apologetic again. “Yes.”

“All right. Remember, they have this trick, like I said. Now we know they can move matter—that’s, well, solid stuff, angel, like the ship and me and you, but it’s also gas and water, you see. Energy is different. The darks are mostly energy, with only little flakes of matter. But the fast-friends are more balanced. A lot of smart men think that if they could examine a dark they could figure out this trick, and then we could build ships that went fast too. But nobody has been able to figure how to examine a dark, since it is nearly all energy and nearly impossible to hold in one place, you see?”

“Yes,” the angel lied, looking very solemn.

“Anyway, the fast-friends not only move energy and little flakes of matter, they also move what once were the bodies of the human members of the symbiosis. You don’t understand that, do you? Hell, this is… ah, well, just listen. The fast-friends can only move themselves, and whatever else they can fit inside their energy sphere, or aura. Think of it as a baggy cloak, angel. If they can’t stuff it under their cloak, they can’t take it with them.”

She giggled, the idea of a baggy cloak evidently appealing to her.

Brand sighed. “So, the fast-friends are sort of our messengers. They fly out to the stars for us, real fast, and they tell us which suns have planets, and where we can find worlds that are good to live on. And they’ve found ships out there, too, in other systems, from other kinds of beings who aren’t men and aren’t fast-friends either, and they carry messages so that we can learn from each other. And they keep us in touch with our starships, too, by running back and forth. Our ships are still real slow, angel. We’ve launched at least twenty by now, but even the first one hasn’t gotten where it’s going yet.”

“The fast-friends caught it, didn’t they?” the angel interrupted. “You told me. I remember.”

“Yes, angel,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you how surprised those people were. A lot of them were the sons and daughters of people who’d left Earth, and when their parents left there were no fast-friends, and they hadn’t even found out about the blinkies yet, or the darks. But now the fast-friends keep all the ships in touch by running back and forth with messages and even small packages and such. Once we have colonies, they’ll link them too.”

“But they’re crippled,” angel prompted.

“For all their speed,” Brand continued, smiling, “the fast-friends are strangely crippled. They can’t land on any of the planets they sail by; the gravity wells are deadly to them. And they don’t even like to go in much further than the orbit of Saturn, or its equivalent, because of the sun. The darks and the blinkies never do, and the fast-friends have to force themselves. So that’s one drawback.

“Also, frankly, a lot of men want to travel faster than light themselves. They want to build ships and start colonies. So whoever finds a way to do what the fast-friends do, so that regular men can do it without having to merge and maybe die, well, they’ll make a lot of money. And be famous. And have stars.”

“You’ll do it, Brand,” the angel said.

“Yes,” he said. His voice was suddenly serious. “That, angel, is why we’re here.”

* * *

“No.”

The word had haunted him, its echoes rolling through his dreams. He’d thrown away his stars, and his Melissa.

He couldn’t force himself to go back to Earth. Melissa was gone, off to the stars on her first commission, but he loved her still. And the dream still gripped him tightly. Yet he would not get another chance. There were more candidates than darks, and he’d failed his final test.

He worked in Changling Station for a while, then signed on a supply run from Triton to the Jungle and learned to run a ship. In two years, he saved a substantial amount. He borrowed the rest, outfitted a derelict drifting in the Jungle, and became a trapper.

The plan was clear then. The government wouldn’t give him another chance, but he could make his own. He’d prowl until he found a dark, then trap it. Then he’d go outside and merge. And he’d join Melissa after all. Brand, fast-friend. Yes, he would have his stars.

A good trapper could support himself in fine style on four catches a year. On six he gets rich. Brand was not yet a good trapper, and there were months of fruitless, lonely search. The blackness was brightened only by the far-off lights of distant blinkie swarms, and the firmness of his vision, and Melissa.

She used to come to him, in the early days, when she wasn’t out among the stars. He’d be on his tedious prowl when suddenly his scanners would flash red, and she’d be there, floating outside the ship, smiling at him from the main viewscreen. And he’d open the airlock and cycle her in.

But even in the best days after, the very early ones, it wasn’t the same. She couldn’t drink with him, or eat. She didn’t need to; she was a fast-friend now, and she lived on stardust and blinkies and junk, converting them to energy even as a dark did.

She could survive in an atmosphere, and talk and function, but she didn’t like it. It was unpleasant. The ship was cramped, and it was a strain to keep her aura in check, to keep from converting the molecules of the air that pressed on her from every side.

The first time, when she’d come to him in Changling Station, Brand had pulled her lithe body hard against him and kissed her. She had not resisted. But her flesh was cold, her tongue a spear of ice when it touched his. Later, stubborn, he’d tried to make love to her. And failed.

Soon they gave up trying. When she came to his ship in those months of hunt, he only held her hard, slick hand, and talked to her.

“It’s just as well, Brand,” she told him once, in those early days. “I wanted to make love to you, yes, for your sake. I’m changed, Brand. You have to understand. Sex is like food, you know. It’s a human thing. I’m not really interested in that now. You’ll see, after you merge. But don’t worry. There are other things out there, things that make it all worthwhile. The stars, love. You should see the stars. I fly between them, and, and… oh, Brand, it’s glorious! How could I tell you? You have to feel it. When I fly, when I punch through, everything changes. Space isn’t black anymore, it’s a sea of color, swirling all around me, splashing against me, and I’m streaking right through it. And the feeling! It’s like… like an orgasm, Brand, but it goes on and on and on, and your whole body sings and feels it, not just one little part of you. You’re alive! And there are things out there, things only the fast-friends know. What we tell the humans, that’s only a little bit, the bit they can understand. There’s so much more. There’s music out there, Brand, only it isn’t music. And sometimes you can hear something calling, far away, from the core stars. I think the call gets stronger the more you fly. That’s where the first-merged went, you know, Adams or whatever his human name was. That’s why the older fast-friends sometimes vanish. They say it’s wearying after a while, playing messenger for the humans. Then the fast-friends go away, to the core stars. Oh, Brand, I wish you were with me. It would be the way we dreamed. Hurry, love, catch your dark for me.”

And Brand, though strange chills went through him, nodded and said he would.

And finally he did.

For the second time the fear came. Brand watched his scanners as they shrieked of dark proximity. Five times his finger paused over the button that would kill his safe-screens. Five times it moved back. He kept seeing Canada again, her legs a-spin. And he thought of the Hades I.

Finally, his mind on Melissa, he forced the button down. The dark came slowly. No need to hurry, after all. This was no light-fast blinkie swarm; just dead metal creeping through the void.

Brand, relieved, trapped it. But as he put on his spacesuit, the fear hit again.

He fought it. Oh, he fought it. For an hour he stood in the airlock, trembling, trying to put on his helmet and failing. His hands were shaking, and he threw up twice. Finally, slumped and beaten in the fouled lock, he knew the truth. He would never merge.

He took his catch back to the Changling Jungle for a bounty. The Station offered its standard fee, but there was another bidder, a middle-aged man who’d run an old supply ship out here on his own. As dozens did each year. Brand sold the dark to him, to this hopeful, unqualified, test-failing visionary. And Brand watched him die.