In the very center of the remaining sails, held in place by magnetic guylines, was a gold ring a mile across, spinning like a carousel, with parasols and antennae like filaments and anthers issuing from the hub. At the extreme edge of his superhuman vision, Montrose could catch a glimpse of the inside surface of the ring: he saw the bright green flash of grasses, gardens, and arbors and the glitter of running streams, waterfalls, and ponds. Like the head of a tambourine, parallel round bulkheads of invisible substance apparently were coating the ring to the starboard and port. Without this, there was no explanation of what was keeping the air inside the huge but frail gold ring, not to mention the darting birds.

The speed of the approach of the vessel was beyond astonishing. Montrose calculated that the vessel would take minutes, rather than months, to cross the distance between Earth and the moon, but that the vessel would be moving with too great a velocity to make orbit.

Indeed, extrapolating the path in his mind, he saw that the vessel meant to speed past Earth, her flightpath bent by Earth’s gravity well to send her sunward, and thereafter assume a long, elliptical orbit around the sun, a braking orbit; but it would be months before the rendezvous maneuver would be accomplished and Earth and the vessel would be at rest with respect to each other.

An agony of impatience seized Montrose. Having waited over seventy thousand years, to wait a day more, or an hour, was beyond what he could bear.

Rania evidently felt the same way. Before the hour was passed, the vessel payload itself, the mile-wide golden ring, changed aspect as it came into apogee of its orbit and was seen edge on. The centrifuge slung a small white object from the outer hull of the ring toward Earth like a slingstone. From Montrose’s point of vantage, it looked like the white object was shooting straight down toward him. His eye could not at first resolve the image, because he was weeping. It seemed like a white bird, stooping, or a slender figure in a veiled dress of long and trailing skirts.

It was Rania.

5. Swan Dive

Montrose cried aloud in fear, not understanding how it was she was not burned instantly to a crisp in the upper airs, moving at such speed. She wore a long silver-white garment, or himation. Bits of the himation peeled away under the reentry heat, which formed a rose-white hemisphere beneath her leading edge, where she had her elbow before her veiled face. But the aliens must have given the fabric unearthly and almost supernatural properties, for Rania dived surrounded by fire, wrapped in fire, kissed by fire, and was utterly unharmed.

Down, down, through stratosphere and troposphere she raced, bright as the morning star, bright as a new moon, a line of condensation like the tail of a comet behind her.

The himation changed shape and sprouted backswept delta wings, and then, as she slowed to below the speed of sound, grew wider, the wings of a jay, then a swan, then a butterfly.

She plunged into the waters of the sea of wine the earthly sphere had prepared to receive her, and the tree in whose top branches Montrose stood, hallooing and waving his hat, now bent in two like a sapling formed into a snare and lowered him to the ground so swiftly that the impulse to jump down was stillborn.

He ran to the edge of the cliffs, and, this time, before any helpful wonder of the latter-day Earth could aid him, he leaped headlong toward the waters where his bride was waiting.

Whether his miraculous new body suffered injury or not in that dive he did not know then nor ever later recalled, but he swam toward her, calling out her name with each third arm stroke.

She was waiting for him in the middle of the sea, with singing birds and whistling fish conjured by the world to rejoice for them circle upon circle in air and sea around her, while she stood upright, a giant clamshell which had risen from the deep to support her, and the upper shell was open and formed a crenulated pink half circle behind her. The himation was still steaming from reentry heat, but she was hale and whole and laughing. Her eyes were sparkling, and her arms reached yearningly toward him.

Lest they burn him, with no pause for thought, she threw the white and white-hot garments from her and stood clothed in the splendor of her nakedness, more regal than a queen in all her state, prouder than a lioness, more innocent than a child, more voluptuous than a pagan goddess. With her slender yet strong hands, she helped him up onto the living raft of the ventral shell.

There was not even the scent of fire in her hair. He saw that her hair and body were drenched with the wine of the sea. Little sparkles, caught in her eyelashes, glittered like gems when the planet Pyriphlegethon released the sun, as did her tears of joy, as did her teeth flashing in her smile for her lover and husband, and the whole world around them was filled with light.

The gold light from the sun and rose-pink light from the second sun reflected in the sky-vast sails sent double shadows from her feet, and touched the curves and contours of her figure and face with double highlights, and emphasized her blush of joy.

“Welcome back. Miss me?”

“Long ages have I burned for you! Never once doubted I your fidelity nor ceased to know that death itself could not keep you from me! I wish you had not gone out to fight with Blackie.”

“Well, ain’t that just like a woman? Your first words telling me I done something wrong! You gotta take me as I am. I am your man.”

“Ah! Well, then, man. Take me.”

Then they were in each other’s arms, their lips embraced and shared a breath, and when he dipped the laughing and breathless girl down to lie upon the unexpectedly soft and warm interior, the upper shell of the clam demurely closed and granted them the privacy to consummate their reunion.

PART NINE

Ancient Starships Shall Return

1

Aardwolf Star in the Constellation of the Dragon

1. Vigil of the Strangers

A.D. 71200

The moon of Torment rose at midnight and lit the town square bright as day. The cold light struck the Stranger House, and lit on Vigil Starmanson, and woke him where he lay. Confused, he rose, his eyes half-closed, stood gazing at the blazing moon and thinking it was day.

The square of softness where he slept grew firm beneath his foot, becoming floor. The zone of warm air that was his blanket popped and was no more. Nude and cold, he called for robes, but no robe came; he spoke into his finger ring, but no ghost answered to its name.

Up he looked, surprised his eyes could see the sun undazed. Iota Draconis was a young star, and the bands of her accretion disk surrounded her, not yet formed into inner planets. But now it seemed the sun had lost these many rings and that her face, no longer red gold, was swept by bands of storm cloud.

Only then Vigil saw that this was titanic Wormwood, which the common people called a moon. In truth, Wormwood was the solitary world of the system, a superjovian giant, which smaller Torment circled. The storm-clad globe was lit as if by inner fire, and around it were the nineteen sister satellites of Torment, shining crescents large as terran worlds, their horns all turned away from Wormwood’s blinding face.

Vigil looked across the wide, pale, unfurnished dormitory to where, in an ivory rack beneath the window-slits, the emergency wands hung, bright as swords.

These were antiques, from the days before the noble Errantry brought a race of Swan-Patrician hybrids from Penance, or hated Itinerancy brought hither undying ghosts and their necromantic archivists from Schattenreich; from before quarrelsome Argosy descended with its warlike tribes of graceful and feline Sinners; older even than Expatriate of the million woes, who arrived from Alpha Mensae with nine-tenths her populations dead.