He started for the bridge that arched the water.

“You won’t be too…”

“Before midnight.”

“Lorq. One more thing.”

He stopped at the crest of the bridge, leaning on the aluminum banister.

“Prince is having a party. He sent you an invitation. It’s at Earth, Paris, on the Ile St.-Louis. But it’s just three days after the Regatta. You wouldn’t be able to get there—”

“Caliban can make Earth in three days.”

“No, Lorq! You’re not going to go all the way to Earth in that tiny—”

“I’ve never been to Paris. The last time I was on Earth was the time you took me when I was fifteen and we went to Peking. It’ll be easy sailing down into Draco.” Leaving, he called back to them, “If I don’t get my crew, I won’t even get back to school next week.” He disappeared down the other side of the bridge.

His crew was two fellows who volunteered to help him unpack the ion-coupler. Neither one was from the Pleiades Federation.

Brian, a boy Lorq’s age who had taken a year off from Draco University and flown out to the Outer Colonies, was now working his way back; he had done both captaining and studding on racing yachts, but only in the co-operative yachting club sponsored by his school. Based on common interest in racing-ships, their relation was one of mutual awe. Lorq was silently agape at the way Brian had taken off to the other end of the galaxy and was beating his way without funds or forethought; while Brian had at last met, in Lorq, one of the mythically wealthy who could own his own boat and whose name had, till then, been only an abstraction on the sports tapes—Lorq Von Ray, one of the youngest and most spectacular of the new crop of racing captains.

Dan, who completed the crew of the little three-vaned racer, was a man in his forties, from Australia on Earth. They had met him in the bar where he had started a whole series of tales about his times as a commercial stud on the big transport freighters, as well as racing captains he had occasionally crewed for—though he had never captained himself. Barefoot, a rope around pants torn off at the knees, Dan was a lot more typical of the studs that hung around the heated walkways of Nea Limani. The high wind-domes broke the hurricane gusts that rolled from Tong across glittering Ark—it was the month of Iumbra when there were only three hours of daylight in the twenty-nine-hour day. The mechanics, officers, and studs drank late, talked currents and racing at the bars and the sauna baths, the registration offices and the service pits.

Brian’s reaction to continuing on after the race down to Earth: “Fine. Why not? I have to get back into Draco in time for vacation classes anyway.”

Dan’s: “Paris? That’s awful close to Australia, ain’t it? I got a kid and two wives in Melbourne, and I ain’t so anxious for them to catch hold of me. I suppose if we don’t stay too long—”

When the Regatta swept past the observation satellite circling Ark, looped the inner edge of the cluster to the Dim, Dead Sister, and returned to Ark again, it was announced that Caliban had placed second.

“All right. Let’s get out of here. To Prince’s party!”

“Be careful now…” His mother’s voice came over the speaker.

“Give our regards to Aaron. And congratulations again, son,” Father said. “If you wreck that brass butterfly on this silly trip, don’t expect me to buy a new one.”

“So long, Dad.”

The Caliban rose from among the ships clustered at the viewing station where the spectators had come to observe the Regatta’s conclusion. Fifty-foot windows flashed in starlight below them (behind one, his father and an android of his mother stood at the railing, watching the ship pull away), and in a moment they were wheeling through the Pleiades Federation, then toward Sol.

A day out, they lost six hours in a whirlpool nebula (“Now if you had a real ship instead of this here toy,” Dan complained over the intercom, “it’d be a sneeze to get out of this thing.” Lorq turned the frequency of the scanner higher on the ion-coupler. “Point two-five down, Brian. Then catch it up fast—there!”), but made up the time and then some on the Outward Tidal Drift.

A day later, and Sol was a glowing, growing light in the cosmos raging.

Shaped like the figure eight of a Mycenaean shield, De Blau Field tilted miles below the sweeping vans. Cargo shuttles left from here for the big star—port on Neptune’s second moon. The five-hundred-meter passenger liners glittered across the platforms. Caliban fell toward the inset of the yacht basin, coming down like a triple kite. Lorq sat up from the couch as the guide beams caught them. “Okay, puppets. Cut the strings.” He switched off Caliban’s humming entrails a moment after touchdown. Banked lights died around him.

Brian hopped into the control cabin, tying his left sandal. Dan, unshaven, his vest unlaced, ambled from his projection chamber. “Guess we got here, Captain.” He stooped to finger dirt between his toes. “What kind of party is this you kids are going to?”

As Lorq touched the unload button, the floor began to slant and the ribbed covering rolled back till the lower edge of the floor hit the ground. “I’m not sure,” Lorq told him. “I suppose we’ll all find out when we get there.”

“Ohhh no,” Dan drawled as they reached the bottom. “I don’t go for this society stuff.” They started from beneath the shadow of the hull. “Find me a bar, and just pick me up when you come back.”

“If you two don’t want to come,” Lorq said, looking around the field, “we’ll stop off for something to eat, and then you can stay here.”

“I… well, sort of wanted to go.” Brian looked disappointed. “This is as close as I’ll ever get to going to a party given by Prince Red.”

Lorq looked at Brian. The stocky, brown-haired boy with coffee-colored eyes had changed his scuffed leather work-vest for a clean one with iridescent flowers. Lorq was only beginning to realize how dazzled this young man, who had hitched across the universe, was before the wealth, visible and implied, that went with a nineteen-year-old who could race his own yacht and just took off to parties in Paris.

It had not occurred to Lorq to change his vest at all.

“You come on then,” Lorq said. “We’ll get Dan on the way back.”

“Just you two don’t get so drunk you can’t carry me back on board.”

Lorq and Dan laughed.

Brian was staring around at the other yachts in the basin. “Hey! Have you ever worked a tri-vaned Zephyr?” He touched Lorq’s arm, then pointed across to a graceful, golden hull. “I bet one of those would really twirl.”

“Pickup is slow on the lower frequencies.” Lorq turned back to Dan. “You make sure you get back on board by take-off time tomorrow. I’m not going to go running around looking for you.”

“With me this close to Australia? Don’t worry, Captain. By the by, you wouldn’t get upset if I should happen to bring a lady onto the ship?” He grinned at Lorq, then winked.

“Say,” Brian said. “How do those Boris-27s handle? Our club at school was trying to arrange a swap with another club that had a ten-year-old Boris. Only they wanted money too.”

“As long as she doesn’t leave the ship with anything she didn’t bring,” Lorq told Dan. He turned to Brian again. “I’ve never been on a Boris more than three years old. A friend of mine had one a couple of years back. It worked pretty well, but it wasn’t up to Caliban.”

They walked through the gate of the landing field, started down the steps to the street, and passed through the shadow from the column of the coiled snake.

Paris had remained a more or less horizontal city. The only structures interrupting the horizon to any great extent were the Eiffel Tower to their left and the spiring structure of Les Halles: seventy tiers of markets were enclosed in transparent panes, tessellated with metal scrollwork—it was the focus of food and produce for the twenty-three million inhabitants of the city.