JUSTINE EASED HERSELF up into a sitting position, for once feeling every year of her age. Suspension over such a long time was a killer. Every muscle ached. She swore she could hear her joints creak as she moved them. Hunger pangs battled against nausea.

Secondary routines told her it was fifteen years since she’d last been out of the medical capsule for a brief inspection of the Silverbird. Exovision displays and secondary routines gave her a fast review of the starship’s current status. Most onboard systems were functioning within acceptable parameters, though the degradation over the last forty years was noticeable.

Her u-shadow ordered the culinary unit to produce a banana-based protein drink. She grabbed the plastic cup with her third hand and hauled it across the cabin. A couple of minutes after she finished the gooey stuff, she actually began to feel a bit better. Her muscles still ached, but with biononic support it was relatively easy to clamber out of the chamber. She wobbled her way over to the bathroom cubicle and ordered the cabin to extrude a shower compartment. Not a spore shower but a decent original deluge of hot water that she could stand under and feel pounding on her skin. The heat soaked into her flesh, defeating the toxic stiffness that had built up during suspension. Then she rubbed on the gel, relishing the cleansing sensation, as if she really were washing away lethargy. Her skin began to tingle pleasurably. It was only after a while that she realized she was probably broadcasting the whole soaped-up-girl-in-a-shower scene to most of the human race. Through Dad!

“Aw crap!”

A quick sluice of cold water promptly blew away any possible sense of erotica. She stepped out and picked up a thick towel. This whole sharing the body thing was going to take some getting used to. Not that she was particularly prudish, but still, every sensation …

Dried and dressed in a decent semiorganic blouse and trouser set, she settled back into her favorite chair and reviewed the external sensor images. They were still traveling at point nine lightspeed, streaking through a star system. Two light-hours ahead of them was the unnaturally vivid blue and white speck of an H-congruous world. She began to smile as the sensors found the desert planet Nikran, orbiting thirty million miles closer to the star, while Gicon’s Bracelet was almost on the opposite side of the star, showing as a bright cluster of light points. No doubt about it; the Skylord was taking her directly toward Querencia.

Across the surrounding starfield the nebulae familiar from so many of Inigo’s dreams were visible: the spectacular blue and green smear of Odin’s Sea, crowned by its scarlet reefs; Buluku, the twisting river of violet stardust beset with impossible lightning storms up to half a light-year long; and of course the glowing entwined folds of topaz and crimson that were Honious in all its dire glory.

Now that she was actually there, Justine experienced something weirdly close to deja vu. It was as if she had suddenly found out that a childhood fable was true and the colorful monsters she’d read about were finally emerging from the pages of the book. It wasn’t scary but profoundly exciting; this was true pioneering. Or maybe archaeology is closer to it.

Her longtalk reached out for the Skylord. “I thank you for bringing me to this world. My ship can fly and land by itself now.”

“I can take you closer,” it replied magnanimously.

“I would feel happier if my ship landed by itself. I am here now. I am content, for which I thank you.”

“As you wish,” the Skylord said.

Justine braced herself. Not that it did any good. The Silverbird once again was gripped by strange acceleration forces as the Skylord exerted its temporal manipulation ability. The star ahead transformed back to a yellow radiance as they slowed drastically. Redshifted stars behind grew in magnitude and intensity. Querencia’s clouds and ice caps darkened as its oceans fell to a deep sapphire. Iridescent colors swirled around the Silverbird’s fuselage as the Skylord’s vacuum wings swept past it. Then they were separating swiftly.

“Watch for my kind; they will be here soon,” Justine sent, receiving a serene flicker of acknowledgment in return.

Justine concentrated on the planet ahead. The Skylord had left her one hundred fifty thousand kilometers out and approaching fast. She ordered the smartcore to produce a vector that would put her into a twenty-degree inclination orbit a thousand kilometers out. From memory, Makkathran had been on the edge of the temperate zone. That orbit should allow her to see it visually. Somehow she couldn’t imagine it had gone. Makkathran was a constant, whatever it was, acting as a refuge for whatever race had the misfortune to stumble into the Void. It had been there for a long time before humans arrived; she was sure it would remain even today.

As soon as the Silverbird began its fifteen-gee deceleration, she switched the confluence nest back on. It wasn’t a memory she loaded in, more a belief, hopefully verging on obsession, that everything on board the starship would work. Even if it’s no more than a pathetic wish, it might be enough to keep the systems functional long enough to give me a proper landing.

With that in mind, she started thinking about practical items she might need after she arrived. The replicator was soon humming away, producing a wide range of clothes for every season. Food followed: fruit preserves and dried or cured meats, half-baked bread in sealed sheaths, basic packaged microbe-free meals that would take a long time to go moldy or putrefy, juices and the odd bottle of wine. To cook it all she had the replicator fabricate a small barbecue grill with bags of charcoal. After that she dragged up truly ancient memories of camping back in high school, when she’d been equipped with relatively simple tools such as compass and fire lighters, pots, plates, cups, cutlery. Washing-up liquid. Soap. Shampoo! Several decent pairs of boots. Knives of various sizes, including the fattest Swiss army type she could pull from the smartcore’s memory that would virtually build her another starship if she could just figure out how to work the gadgets it contained. Rope. An old-fashioned tent. It seemed an endless list, which kept her absorbed right up to the moment when the Silverbird curved around into its designated orbit. After that she sat in the chair watching high-resolution projections of the world as it rolled past below.

The smartcore had done a reasonable job of mapping the planet’s basic geography during the approach phase, capturing about two-thirds of the continental outlines. Despite that, she couldn’t really correlate what she was seeing with any of Edeard’s landscapes. The shorelines, which should have given her the greatest clues, were unfamiliar from an orbital vantage point. It was five orbits before she started to fly over mountains that could well be the Ulfsen range, which Edeard had first traversed with the Barkus caravan on his journey to Makkathran. With Salrana, she thought sadly. Their tragic, doomed romance had never meant much to her before, but now that she was here where it had played out, she felt a surprising emotional resonance stirring her. Stupid meat body, she cursed, and concentrated on the projected image.

No doubt about it, the Donsori Mountains were next. The Iguru plain swept into view, a vast lush green expanse with those strange little volcanic cones. Then there it was, straddling the coastline: Makkathran.

She stared at the big urban circle, marveling at the familiar shapes of its districts as delineated by the dark curving canals. Sunlight glimmered off the crystal wall, revealing it as a thin line encircling the city, dipping down into the sparkling Lyot Sea at the Port district with its distinctive fishtail profile.