Three: 3049 AD

The Main Sequence

BenRabi slammed his scooter through the entrance to Control Sector. Seconds later the massive shield doors rumbled shut behind him. The section was totally self-contained now. No one could come in or leave till those doors lifted.

Moyshe stopped in a long, squealing slide. He jumped off, slammed the charger plug into a socket, ran through the hatch to Contact.

"You made it," Clara said. "We didn't think you would. You live so far away. Here. Catch your breath."

"My scooter was smoking. Better have it checked, Hans." He settled onto a fitted couch.

"Ready?" Clara asked.

"No."

She smiled at him. Hans started massaging an odorless paste into his scalp. Clara slipped her fingers inside what looked like a hairnet.

"You never are. I thought you liked Chub."

BenRabi chuckled. "Chub, I like fine. He's good people. But I'd like him a lot better if he could walk in the door, stick out a hand, and say, ‘Hey, Moyshe, let's go grab a couple of beers.' "

Chub was the starfish with whom benRabi usually linked.

"Xenophobe."

"Crap. It's not him. It's that out-of-body feeling... "

"Wrong, Moyshe. You can't fool old Clara. I was babying mindtechs before you were born. And you're all alike. You don't want to go out because it hurts so much to come back."

"Yeah?"

"Ready," Hans said.

Clara slid the net onto Moyshe's head. Her fingertips were soft and warm. They lingered on his cheeks. Momentary concern clouded her smile.

"Don't push yourself, Moyshe. Get out if it gets rough. You haven't had enough rest."

"Since Stars' End there isn't any rest. For anybody."

"We won," Hans reminded.

"The cost was too high."

"It was cheaper than losing."

BenRabi shrugged. "I guess you people see things different. I never would have gone in the first place."

"You took your whippings and smiled, back in Confederation?" Hans asked. "I never heard of that."

"No. We calculated the odds. We picked the right time. Then we ganged up. We didn't just go storming around like a rogue elephant, getting hurt as much as we did hurt."

"Oriflamme," Hans countered.

"What?"

"That's what they call Payne sometimes. It's something from olden times that has to do with not taking prisoners."

"Oh. The oriflamme. It was a special pennon that belonged to the King of France. If he raised it, it meant take no prisoners. It had a way of backfiring on him."

"Hans," Clara said, "Moyshe is an Academy man. He can probably tell you how many spokes in the wheel of a Roman war chariot."

"Take Poitiers, for instance... "

"Who?"

"It's a place. In France, which is on Old Earth... "

"I know where France is, Moyshe."

"All right. One of the big battles of the Hundred Years War was fought there. And you could say that the French lost because of the oriflamme. See, they caught the English in a bad spot. Outnumbered them like ten to one. The Black Prince decided to surrender. But the French raised the oriflamme. Which pissed the English, so they proceeded to kick ass all over the countryside. When the dust settled, the French were wiped out and Louis was in chains. There's a lesson in there somewhere, if you want to look. Namely, don't ever push anybody into a corner where he can't get out."

"You see what he's doing, Hans?" Clara asked.

"You mean trying to educate us until the all-clear comes through? You're out of luck, Moyshe. Lift your head so I can put your helmet on."

BenRabi raised his head.

His scalp began tingling under the hairnet device. The helmet devoured his head, stealing the light. He fought the panic that always hit before he went under.

Hans strapped him in and adjusted the bio-monitor's pickups.

"Can you hear me, Moyshe?" Clara asked through the helmet's earphones.

He raised a hand. Then spoke: "Coming through clear."

"Got you too. Your boards look good. Blood pressure is up, but that's normal for you. Take a minute in TSD. Relax. Go when you want."

His, "I don't want," remained unspoken.

He depressed the switch beneath his right hand one click.

The only senses left him were internal. Total Sensory Deprivation left him only his aches and pains, the taste in his mouth, and the rush of blood. Once the field took hold, even those would go.

In small doses it was relaxing. But too much could drive a man insane.

He flicked his right hand again.

A universe took form around him. He was its center, its lord, its creator... There was no pain in that universe, nor much unhappiness. Too many wonders burned there, within the bounds of his mind.

It was a universe of colors both pastel and crisp. Every star was a blazing jewel, proclaiming its individual hue. The oncoming storm of the nova's solar wind was a rioting, psychedelic cloud that seemed to have as much substance as an Old Earth thunderhead. Opposite it, the pale pink glimmer of a hydrogen stream meandered off toward the heart of the galaxy. The surrounding harvest-ships were patches of iridescent gold.

A score of golden Chinese dragons drifted with the fleet, straining toward it, yet held away by the light pressure of the dying star. Starfish!

BenRabi's sourness gave way to elation. There would be contact this time.

He reached toward them with his thoughts. "Chub? Are you out there, my friend?" For a time there was nothing.

Then a warm glow enveloped him like some sudden outbreak of good cheer.

"Moyshe man-friend, hello. I see you. Coming out of the light, hello. One ship is gone."

"Jariel. They're still evacuating."

"Sad."

Chub did not seem sad. This fish, benRabi thought, is constitutionally incapable of anything but joy.

"Not so, Moyshe man-friend. I mourn with the herd the sorrows of Stars' End. Yet I must laugh with my man-friends over the joys of what was won."

"The ships-that-kill weren't all destroyed, Chub. The Sangaree carry their grudges forever."

"Ha! They are a tear in the eye of eternity. They will die. Their sun will die. And still there will be starfish to swim the rivers of the night."

"You've been puttering around in the back rooms of my mind again. You're stealing my images and shooting them back at me."

"You have an intriguing mind, Moyshe man-friend. A clouded, boxy mind, cobwebby, atticy, full of trap doors... "

"What would you know about trap doors?"

"Only what I relive through your memories, Moyshe man-friend."

Chub teased and giggled like an adolescent lover.

By starfish reckoning he was a child. He-had not yet seen his millionth year.

BenRabi simply avoided thinking about starfish time spans. A life measured in millions of years was utterly beyond his ken. He only mourned the fact that those incredible spans could never touch upon worlds where beings of a biochemical nature lived. The stories they could have told! The historical mysteries they could have illuminated!

But starfish dared not get too near major gravitational or magnetic sources. Even the gravity of the larger harvestships felt to a starfish much as rheumatism to a human being.

They were terribly fragile creatures.

While Chub teased and enthused, Moyshe turned a part of his mind to his private universe again.

Red torpedoes idled along far away, across the pink river, against the galaxy.

"Yes," Chub said. "Sharks. Survivors of Stars' End called them here. They will attack. They starve. Another feast for the scavenger things."

Smaller ghosts in a mix of colors shadowed both dragons and torpedoes. They were Chub's scavengers.

The great slow ecology of the hydrogen streams had niches for creatures of most life-functions, though their definition in human terms was seldom more than an approximation. A convenient labeling.