"Tell me something you're proud of. I want to know what you've done with your life. I'm going to die for you; I want to know who you are. If there were a point to any of this, would you be worth dying for?"

Chee didn't answer immediately. I could hear Yarrun's breathing over the headset in my helmet. It was a little like snoring; his lip fluttered slightly when he inhaled.

I wondered why Yarrun had his transceiver turned on. Had he intended to say something too? And would he have spoken to me or to Chee?

Something to be Proud Of

"The thing I'm proudest of," Chee said at last, "is my spy network."

"Spy network?" I repeated. "What's the point? The League of Peoples enforces peace throughout the galaxy. We have no wars. We have no enemies."

"We have incompetents, Ramos," the Admiral answered. "On every planet, colony, and Fringe World, the civil administration suffers the same malaise as the Outward Fleet: the people who rise to positions of leadership are the Propes and the Harques. Administrators like Prope funnel citizens' money into glamorous projects like erecting public buildings so big they change the course of continental drift… and no one remembers to order toilet paper. Or food. Or air. Administrators like Harque spend their time in petty political maneuvering, snubbing rivals, acquiring perks, and generally feathering their own nests… but the results are the same. No toilet paper. No air. While all the tinpot tyrants backstab each other for an office with its own pressure pot, no one minds the store. Supply schedules get botched; atmosphere plants break down; water purification levels slide into the red zone.

"So on every world of the Technocracy, I put a spy. A retired Explorer, actually. Explorers are the last bastion of competence in our civilization, Ramos, and I don't mind saying it. They're the precious few of our citizens who aren't comfortable — the only ones in the whole Technocracy who work completely without safety nets. Everyone else these days has the luxury of indulging in melodrama: of pretending that they're the stars in some story where there are good guys and bad guys, winners and losers. Everyone else can pretend it's a game. The streets are safe and the government is forbidden to let people starve, so whatever non-Explorers do isn't survival… At heart, it's just amusement. Explorers are the only ones who know deep down that death isn't kept at bay by luck or posturing, but by constant attention to necessary details.

"Therefore, my Explorers finked to me when the tap water turned brown, and when the air turned to smog, and when there weren't enough oranges on the shelves to prevent scurvy. Those warnings gave the Admiralty a fighting chance to do something about the situation… because you know what the civilian authorities are like on most planets. Power-hungry vermin whose only talent is winning elections, not making good decisions. When something goes wrong, you can be damned sure those administrators would rather see their whole worlds starve than report that they'd personally fucked up."

"You talk about your spies in the past tense," Yarrun observed.

"I'm past tense now," Chee answered. "When I'm gone, who'll take over for me? A Prope? A Harque? I'm going to god-be-damned Melaquin because I finally ruffled one too many important feathers. The High Council will replace me with some VIP's unemployable nephew… and a lot of planets will start drowning in their own sewage."

Neither Yarrun nor I spoke. Explorers never asked, "What happens next?" The question was always, "What do we do now?"

The door to the transport bay slid open.

Our time in Limbo was over.

Bold Grace

Walking comfortably in a tightsuit made a person look bowlegged-the fabric was thickened on the inside of each thigh so that one leg rubbing against the other wouldn't encourage the material to fray.

Once we were planet-down, it didn't matter what we looked like; but our walk along Sterile Corr-I was different. The corridor led from our robing chambers to the transport bay, and Vacuum personnel watched us on monitors, every step of the way. Each time I walked that path, I felt the eyes following me. For personal vanity and for the pride of the Explorer Corps, I forced myself to stride along with bold grace.

Learning to walk so cleanly had taken three months of hard practice at the Academy. Resisting the force of the fabric required strength in thigh muscles which were rarely used for other purposes. (Rarely used by me, at any rate.)

I let myself stride into the corridor with consummate poise. Yarrun stepped out of his own chamber and matched my stride. I hoped Prope and Harque were watching… even though I didn't give a damn about either of them.

Chee, the Explorer

A moment later, Chee emerged from Chamber C. He moved with slow, straight-legged dignity. His suit showed no chocolate-colored fingerprints.

"So, Ramos," he said, "do I look like an Explorer?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I don't smell like one!" he snapped. "When you radioed me without warning, I fumbled my damned tube and pissed myself. Let's get down to the damned planet so I can take this helmet off."

Three abreast, we strode into the transport bay. The door closed behind us, and a metal safety hatch slid up in front of it.

With a tap, I switched my throat radio to full transmit. "Ramos to Jacaranda," I said. "Is the tail anchored?"

"Affirmative, Explorer." The voice coming over my headset was Harque's perpetual smirk. "Pressurizing now."

The ship's Sperm-tail was now in position at our chosen Landing site, establishing a tube of hyperdimensional space from here to there. In effect, here was there; no physical space separated us from the planet's surface. The Jacaranda would increase air pressure in the transport bay, just enough to exceed the pressure at the planet's surface. Then, when the Bay Mouth opened, we would be squirted forward, down the tube to the planet, making the passage in a real-space time of zero seconds.

The subjective time would not be zero seconds. Human brains are perfectly conscious of the time they spend in hyperspace, even if the outside world perceives the transit as instantaneous.

Harque's voice sounded again in my headset: "Ejection in ten seconds."

I jerked my head around to glare up at the mezzanine, where Harque loomed behind the control console. He was supposed to wait for my signal before starting our ejection countdown. Insulting to the last, the petty bastard.

Yarrun nudged my elbow, and shook his head.

Fuming, I turned back to face the huge aperture in front of us: the Aft Entry Mouth, which was irised tightly closed for the moment. From this vantage point, the Mouth seemed immense-four storeys high and ready to eat us. Yarrun, Chee, and I, stood tall, shoulder to shoulder… and that mouth could swallow all three of us in a single gulp.

I closed my eyes. I had thought that perhaps this time, this last time, I would keep my eyes open. But I didn't.

"Ejection," Harque said.

Down

Down was the pull of ship's gravity beneath my feet. There was a sharp hiss of sound as the Mouth opened.

Down was behind me. Down was back where my stomach still wanted to be. I flew forward like a straw in a hurricane.

The world squeezed as I plunged down the gullet of the Worm, the Sperm. The squeezing was gentle, but unstoppable. My body compressed obligingly.

Outside the Sperm, the compression would have killed me: bones would snap and poke splinters through internal organs; eyes would burst; muscles would be kneaded to thread. Inside, however, the laws of physics were daintily overruled. I was a thing infinitely malleable.