“Look! Look, he her down has!”

“One, two—no, she away pulls—”

“No! He her has! He her has!”

On the trampoline the grinning mechanic staggered over his opponent. Half a dozen drinks had already been brought for him; by custom he had to finish as many as he could, and the loser drink the rest. More officials had come down to congratulate him and stake wagers on the next match.

“I wonder…” Lorq frowned.

“Captain, I know you can’t help it, but you shouldn’t look like that.”

“I wonder if the Alkane has any record of that trip, Dan.”

“I guess they do. Like I say, it was about ten years…

But Lorq was looking at the ceiling. The iris had shut under the wind that wracked Ark’s night. The clashing mandala completely covered the star.

Lorq raised his hands to his face. His lips fell back as he hunted at the roots of the idea pushing through his mind. Fissured flesh translated his expression to beatific torture.

Dan started to speak again. Then he moved away, his gristly face filled with puzzlement.

His name was Lorq Von Ray. He had to repeat it silently, secure it with repetition; because an idea had just split his being. As he sat, looking up, he felt totally shaken. Something central had been parted as violently as Prince’s hand had parted his face. He blinked to clear the stars. And his name

“Yes, Captain Von Ray?”

“Pull in the side vanes.”

The Mouse pulled in.

“We’re hitting the steady stream, side vanes in completely. Lynceos and Idas, stay on your vanes and take the first watch. The rest of you can break out for a while,” Lorq’s voice boomed over the sounds of space.

Turning from the vermilion rush, in which hung the charred stars, the Mouse blinked and realized the chamber once more.

Olga blinked.

The Mouse sat up on the couch to unplug.

“I’ll see you in the commons,” the captain continued. “And Mouse, bring your…”

The Mouse pulled the leather sack from under the couch and slung it over his shoulder.

“…sensory-syrynx with you.”

The door slid back and the Mouse stood at the top of three steps above the blue carpet of the Roc’s commons:

A stairway spiraled in a fall of shadows: tongues of metal twisting under the lights on the ceiling sent flashings over the wall and the leaves of the philodendrons before the mirrored mosaic.

Katin had already seated himself before the layered gaming board for three-D chess and was setting up pieces. A final rook clicked to its corner, and the bubble chair, a globe of jellied glycerin contoured to the body, bobbed, “All right, who’s going to play me first?”

Captain Von Ray stood at the head of the spiral steps. As he started down, his smashed reflection graveled down the mosaic.

“Captain?” Katin raised his chin. “Mouse? Which one of you wants the first game?”

Tyy and Sebastian came through the arched door and across the ramp that spanned the lime-banked pool filling a third of the room.

A breeze.

The water rippled.

Darknesses sailed in over their heads.

“Down!” from Sebastian.

His arm jerked in its socket, and the beasts wheeled on steel leashes. The huge pets collapsed about him like rags.

“Sebastian? Tyy? Do you play?” Katin turned to the ramp.

“It used to be a passion with me, but my game has gone off a bit.” He gazed up the steps, picked up the rook again, and examined the black-cored crystal. “Tell me, Captain, are these pieces original?”

At the bottom of the steps Von Ray raised red eyebrows.

Katin grinned. “Oh.”

“What are they?” The Mouse came across the carpet and looked over Katin’s shoulder. “I’ve never seen pieces like that before.”

“Funny style for chess pieces,” Katin observed. “Vega Republic. But you see it a lot in furniture and architecture.”

“Where’s the Vega Republic?” The Mouse took up a pawn: inside crystal, a sun system, a jewel in the center, circled a tilted plane.

“It isn’t anywhere any more. It refers to an uprising in twenty-eight hundred when Vega tried to secede from Draco. And failed. The art and architecture from that period have been taken up by our artier intellectuals. I suppose there was something heroic about the whole business. They certainly tried as hard as they could to be original-last stand for cultural autonomy and all that. But it’s become sort of a polite parlor game to trace influences.” He picked up another piece. “I still like the stuff. They did produce three gold musicians and one incredible poet. Though only one of the musicians had anything to do with the uprising. But most people don’t know that.”

“No kidding?” the Mouse said. “All right. I’ll play you a game.” He walked around the chessboard and sat on the green glycerin. “What do you want, black or yellow?”

Von Ray reached over the Mouse’s shoulder for the control panel that had surfaced on the chair arm and pressed a micro-switch.

The lights in the gaming board went out.

“Hey, why…?” The Mouse’s rough whisper halted on chagrin.

“Take your syrynx, Mouse.” Lorq walked to the sculptured rock on the yellow tiles. “If I told you to make a nova, Mouse, what would you do?” He sat on a stone outcrop.

“I don’t know. What do you mean?” The Mouse lifted his instrument from its sack. His thumb ran the finger board. His fingers walked the inductance plate; the pinky staggered on its stilted nail.

“I’m telling you now. Make a nova.”

The Mouse paused. Then, “All right,” and his hand jumped.

Sound rumbled after the flash. Colors behind the afterimage blotted vision, swirled in a diminishing sphere, were gone.

“Down!” Sebastian was saying. “Down now…

Lorq laughed. “Not bad. Come here. No, bring your hell-harp.” He shifted on the rock to make room. “Show me how it works.”

“Show you how to play the syrynx?”

“That’s right.”

There are expressions that happen on the outside of the face; there are expressions that happen on the inside, with only quivers on the lips and eyelids. “I don’t usually let people fool with my ax.” Lips and eyelids quivered.

“Show me.”

The Mouse’s mouth thinned. He said: “Give me your hand.” As he positioned the captain’s fingers across the saddle of the image-resonance board, blue light glowed before them. “Now look down here.” The Mouse pointed to the front of the syrynx. “These three pin-lenses have hologramic grids behind them. They focus where the blue light is and give you a three-dimensional image. Brightness and intensity you control here. Move your hand forward.”

The light increased—”Now back.”

—and dimmed. “How do you make an image?”

“Took me a year to learn, Captain. Now, these strings control the sound. Each one isn’t a different note; they’re different sound textures. The pitch is changed by moving your fingers closer or further away. Like this.” He drew a chord of brass and human voices that glissandoed into uncomfortable subsonics. “You want to smell up the place? Back here. This knob controls the intensity of the image. You can make the whole thing highly directional by—”

“Suppose, Mouse, there was a girl’s face that I wanted to re-create; the sound of her voice saying my name; the smell of her too. Now, I have your syrynx in my hands.” He lifted the instrument from the Mouse’s lap. “What should I do?”

“Practice. Captain, look, I really don’t like other people fooling with my ax—”

He reached for it.

Lorq lifted it out of the Mouse’s reach. Then he laughed. “Here.”

The Mouse took the syrynx and went quickly to the chessboard. He shook the sack and slipped the instrument inside.

“Practice,” repeated Lorq. “I don’t have time. Not if I’m to beat Prince Red to that Illyrion, hey?”