Floating Worlds (21 page)

“Come out and get dressed, if you want to go to Saturn-Keda.”

She crawled into the gusty warmth of the dryer and went out to the room. The cold roughened her skin. She took out a fresh pair of overalls.

“Put on something fancy. You can’t go like that.”

She got her suitcase out of the long compartment in the wall. “Why are you taking me, anyway?”

“I told you. I’m civilizing you.” He was stripping off his uniform.

It would be cold in Saturn-Keda. She put on overalls and the long black dress An Chu had made for her, which had a coat that went with it. The layers of skirts floated around her, glinting with silver threads.

“How do I look?” She turned around, and the many layers of the dress swirled around her. She put the coat on.

“You look fine. One more thing.” He floated in front of her, standing up the collar of the coat. “Decent women don’t go out in public in Styth with their faces uncovered.”

She slid back away from him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you go veiled.”

“No.”

“Do you want to go or not?”

She watched him, angry, while he opened a bin and got out a length of black cloth. He wrapped it around her head and draped it over her face, tucking the excess down under the collar of the coat.

“Good,” he said. “That will do fine.”

She turned away, humiliated.

They went through the tunnels to the docking chamber. He let her take the veil off while they flew to Saturn-Keda. Tanuojin was already in the chamber, pulling on a black pressure suit. Saba led her to the rack in the wall. He helped her put on a space suit. It was Sril’s, who overstood her by fourteen inches. She pulled the thick leggings up until her feet reached the bottom, and he tied the slack around her knees.

“I did some tuning on this suit, and we’ll launch soft. You ought to be comfortable most of the time.” He showed her the helmet, a smoky plastic cylinder. “You wear this until I say you can take it off.”

She took the helmet in her arms. He gave her a pair of gloves. “Tanuojin! Plug her in.”

Ybicso
’s hatch was wide open. Paula poked her head through into the narrow cockpit of the ship. Three tandem seats took up most of the space. Tanuojin came around the last, took the helmet away from her, and pushed her into the middle seat. He reached past her and pulled a shoulder harness around her. Floating sideways, he uncoiled a white tube from under the seat and fixed it to a socket in the suit leg behind her knee.

“Put the gloves on.”

She put her hands into the enormous gloves. Saba came into the ship, massive in his suit. He dropped into the front seat. Its high back hid him from her. Tanuojin tugged the gloves down over her wrists and strapped them tight. She looked him in the face. His yellow eyes were notched with brown. He put the helmet over her head. The smoked plastic darkened her sight.

Saba said, “I’ll take her down the A-39 chute at a 28-degree attitude, level off at minus 100M, and underfly Saturn-Keda. All right?”

“Fine,” Tanuojin said.

She floated in the huge padded seat. When she turned her face up, the helmet struck the back. There was an ax strapped to the wall beside her, and below it a long tube that looked like a gun. The cab lights went off. She sat in the dark, in the mid-air, the harness holding her six inches above the seat.

“Bridge,” Saba said.

“Yes, Akellar.” The voices came through the helmet above her ears.

“Start a count from twenty-five.”

Her seat had no arms. She put her hands under the harness and pulled herself down to make contact with the seat. In the top of the helmet an uninflected voice was counting backward. She put one hand on the wall. Even through the glove she could feel it tremble. A green light shone in front of the cab; Saba had turned on the holograph beside his knee. Leaning forward, she could see it and the side of his head.

“Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen—”

The two men talked in a litany of orders and replies. Paula slid her hand under the harness, down to the round bulge of the baby. This might hurt him. He’s a Styth, he can do anything.

“Five, four, three, two, one, point.”

There was a roar that hurt her ears. She was slammed back into the seat. Her eyes streamed. The pressure suit had failed. Her chest felt caved in. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. She lost consciousness.

“Paula.”

“Uuh.” She opened her eyes. She was floating. Something bounced off the top of her helmet, and it lifted away. The green light of the holograph shone brilliantly in her face. Saba stooped beside her, wedged between the seat and the wall.

“How do you feel?”

She put her hand up to her head. “That’s a jolt.”

He laughed. He looked beyond her, at Tanuojin, who did not laugh. Her left hand, still thrust under the harness, smarted rhythmically. She pulled her gloves off. The harness straps had imprinted the backs of her hands in deep purple welts. He took her fingers.

“Don’t do that.” He pointed up over her head and went back to his seat.

She raised her eyes. The ceiling was clear, a wide window. The stars shone in a broad swath above her. Near the edge of the window two crescent moons shone, one the size of an orange, the other the size of a pea. Her helmet was fastened to a clamp in the ceiling, obscuring the middle of the sky.

“That was a damned dead perfect launch,” Saba said, ahead of her. “We’re plus or minus one for the chute.”

She could hear the cluck of a radio in the back with Tanuojin. She leaned around her seat to look. Twisted in his seat, he was bent over a deck of instruments, earphones over his head. A red light on the panel flashed on his cheek.

“Get me some temperature readings,” Saba said. She turned straight. Enormous, splendid, Saturn was rising into the window, spilling its light into the cab. In the holograph’s green cube
Ybicsa
like a pin dropped into a thickening yellow radiance.

“About this new ship,” Saba said. “Maybe if I tuck her in a little at the waist, she won’t tail up so much at launch.”

Tanuojin said, “You have that ship half-built already, and you don’t even have the money to buy the model plastic.”

Saba reached awkwardly around the back of his seat and patted Paula on the knee. “I’ve got it right here. I just haven’t converted it yet.”

The cab was filled with the Planet’s light. At the edge of the holograph the green thickened to a yellow like cheese.
Ybicsa
shot toward it. They were passing over the rings, now resolved into a flood of particles, sparkling in the sunlight. She could see only the innermost stream. The curve of the Planet showed through it.

“Temperature readings. Rim: 300. Thermolayer 1137. Ten M, 350. Twenty M, 152.”

The Planet glared in the window. Red and yellow plumes of gas ran past them. They thickened to a light-filled cloud. The ship plunged through a yellow fog. The holograph showed
Ybicsa
nosing into a pale stream that backed and curled like a river through the Planet’s substance. Ahead, a darker loop bulged into the stream, pressing it out on either side.

“Braking,” Saba said. “Paula, put your helmet on.”

She stretched her hands up over her head toward the ceiling. The helmet was beyond her reach. She wrestled with the harness. She was heavy; she weighed enough to hold herself down in the seat, and the clamps on the harness were too stiff to open. She pulled at the straps holding her down.

Tanuojin leaned across the back of her seat, took the helmet off the ceiling, and rammed it down over her head. “Put your gloves on!” he shouted.

She found her gloves and fitted her hands into them. Her mouth was dry. The ship rocked violently and she slid forward into the harness.

“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. “Döppelganger.”

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.