Perched on the railing, the Mouse looked between the images, implosions on bright implosion, and at his own brown fingers leaping on the frets, as light from the machine flowed on the backs of his hands. And his fingers fell. Images vaulted from under his palms.

Some two dozen people had gathered. They blinked, they turned their heads. Light from the illusion shook on the roofs of their eye sockets, flowed in the lines about their mouths, filled the ridges furrowing foreheads. One woman rubbed her ear and coughed. One man punched the bottom of his pockets.

Katin looked down over lots of heads.

Somebody was jostling forward. Still playing, the Mouse looked up.

Blind Dan lurched out, stopped, then staggered in the syrynx’s fire.

“Hey, come on, get out of there—”

“Come on, old man, move—”

“We can’t see what the kid’s making—”

In the middle of the Mouse’s creation, Dan swayed, head wagging.

The Mouse laughed; then his brown hand closed over the projection haft, and light and sounds and smells deflated around a single, gorgeous demon who stood before Dan, bleating, grimacing, flapping scaled wings that shifted color with each beat. It yowled like a trumpet, twisted its face to resemble Dan’s own, but with a third eye spinning.

The people began to laugh.

The spectre leaped and squatted to the Mouse’s fingers. Malevolently the gypsy grinned.

Dan staggered forward, one arm flailing through.

Shrieking, the demon turned its back, bent. There was a sound like a flutter valve and the spectators howled at the stink.

Katin, who was leaning on the rail next to the Mouse, felt embarrassment heat his neck.

The demon cavorted.

Then Katin reached down and put his palm over the visual inductance field and the image blurred.

The Mouse looked up sharply. “Hey—”

“You don’t have to do that,” Katin said, his big hand burying the Mouse’s shoulder.

“He’s blind,” the Mouse said. “He can’t hear, he can’t smell—he doesn’t know what’s going on…” Black brows lowered. But he had stopped playing.

Dan stood alone in the center of the crowd, oblivious. Suddenly he shrieked. And shrieked again. The sound clanged in his lungs. People fell back. The Mouse and Katin both looked in the direction Dan’s arm flailed.

In dark blue vest with gold disk, his scar flaming beneath the blaze, Captain Lorq Von Ray left the line of people.

Dan, through his blindness, had recognized him. He turned, staggered from the circle. Pushing a man aside, striking a woman’s shoulder with the side of his hand, he disappeared in the crowd.

Dan gone and the syrynx still, attention shifted to the captain. Von Ray slapped his thigh, making his palm on his black pants crack like a board. “Hold up! Stop yelling!”

The voice was big.

“I’m here to pick out a crew of cyborg studs for a long trip, probably along the inner arm.” So alive, his yellow eyes. The features around the ropy scar, under rust-rough hair, grinned. But it took seconds to name the expression on the distorted mouth and brow. “All right, which one of you wants a hand-hold halfway to the night’s rim? Are you sand-footed, or star steppers? You!” He pointed to the Mouse, still sitting on the rail. “You want to come along?”

The Mouse stepped down. “Me?”

“You and your infernal hurdy-gurdy! If you think you can watch where you’re going, I’d like somebody to juggle the air in front of my eyes and tickle my earlobes. Take the job.”

A grin struck the Mouse’s lips back from his teeth. “Sure,” and the grin went. “I’ll go.” The words came from the young gypsy in an old man’s whisky whisper. “Sure I’ll go, Captain.” The Mouse nodded and his gold earring flashed above the volcanic crevice. Hot wind over the rail struck down hanks of his black hair.

“Do you have a mate you want to make the run with? I need a crew.”

The Mouse, who didn’t particularly like anyone in this port, looked up at the incredibly tall young man who had stopped his harassment of Dan. “What about shorty?” He thumbed at surprised Katin. “Don’t know him, but he’s mate enough.”

“Right then. So I have…” Captain Von Ray narrowed his eyes a moment, appraising Katin’s slump shoulders, narrow chest, high cheeks and weak blue eyes floating behind contact lenses “…two.” Katin’s ears warmed.

“Who else? What’s the matter? Are you afraid to leave this little well of gravity funneling into that half-pint sun?” He jerked his chin toward the highlighted mountains. “Who’s coming with us where night means forever and morning’s a recollection?”

A man stepped forward. Skin the color of an emperor grape, he was long-headed and full-featured. “I’m for out.” When he spoke, the muscles under his jaw and high on his nappy scalp rolled.

“Have a mate?”

A second man stepped up. His flesh was translucent as soap. His hair was like white wool. It took a moment for the likeness of feature to strike. There were the same sharp cusp lines at the corner of the heavy lips, the same slant below the bell nostrils, the same break far front on the cheekbones: twins. As the second man turned his head, the Mouse saw the blinking pink eyes, veiled with silver.

The albino dropped his broad hand—a sack of knuckles and work-ruined nails cabled to his forearm by thick, livid veins—on his brother’s shoulder. “We run together.”

Their voices, slow with colonial drawl, were identical.

“Anyone else?” Captain Von Ray looked about the crowd.

“You me, Captain, want to take?”

A man pushed forward.

Something flapped on his shoulder.

His yellow hair shook with a wind not from the chasm. Moist wings crinkled, stretched again, like onyx, like isinglass. The man reached up to where black claws made an epaulet on his knotted shoulder and caressed the grappling pads with a spatulate thumb.

“Do you have any other mate than your pet?”

Her small hand in his, she stepped out, following him at the length of their two arms.

Willow bough? Bird’s wing? Wind in spring rushes? The Mouse riffled his sensory store to equal her face in gentleness. And failed.

Her eyes were the color of steel. Small breasts rose beneath the laces of her vest, steady in breath. Then steel glittered as she looked about. (She’s a strong woman, thought Katin, who could perceive such subtleties.)

Captain Von Ray folded his arms. “You two, and the beast on your shoulder?”

“We six pets, Captain, have,” she said.

“As long as they’re broken to ship, fine. But I’ll jettison the first fluttering devil I trip on.”

“Fair, Captain,” the man said. The slanted eyes in his ruddy face crinkled with a smile. With his free hand now he grasped his opposite biceps and slid his fingers down the blond hair that matted each forearm, the back of each knuckle, till he held the woman’s hand in both of his. They were the couple who had played cards in the bar, the Mouse realized. “When you us aboard want?”

“An hour before dawn. My ship goes up to meet the sun. It’s the Roc on Stage Seventeen. How do your friends call you?”

“Sebastian.” The beast beat on his golden shoulder.

“Tyy.” Its shadow crossed her face.

Captain Von Ray bent his head and stared from beneath his rusty brows with tiger’s eyes. “And your enemies?”

The man laughed. “Damned Sebastian and his flapping black gillies.”

Von Ray looked at the woman. And you?”

“Tyy.” That, softly. “Still.”

“You two” Von Ray turned to the twins. “Your names?”

“He’s Idas—” the albino said, and once more put his hand on his brother’s arm.

“—and he’s Lynceos.”

“And what would your enemies say if I asked them who you were?”

The dark twin shrugged. “Only Lynceos—”

“—and Idas.”

“You?” Von Ray nodded toward the Mouse.

“You can call me the Mouse if you’re my friend. You my enemy, and you never know my name.”