He caught it.

And it had less than human strength.

Easily he held it at arm’s length as the fingers grasped from the raging star. “Stop!” he bellowed. At the same time he willed the sensory input off all over the ship.

The screens went gray.

The sensory input had always been clamped off on all six of the ship’s cyborg studs.

The fires went out in his eyes.

“What in heaven are you trying to do, Lorq?”

“Dive into hell and fish Illyrion out with my bare hands!”

“He’s insane!” the corpse shrieked. “Ruby, he’s insane! He’s killing us, Ruby! That’s all he wants to do, kill us!”

“Yes! I’m killing you!” Lorq tossed the hand away. It grasped at the cable hanging from his wrist to jerk the plug. Lorq caught the arm again; the ship lurched.

“For God’s sake, pull us out, Lorq!” the corpse cried. “Pull us out of here!”

The ship jerked again. The artificial gravity slipped long enough for liquid to streak on the tank face, then bead the glass as gravity righted.

“It’s too late,” Lorq whispered. “We’re caught in gravity spin!”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Just to kill you, Prince.” Lorq’s face raged till laughter spilled it. “That’s all, Prince! That’s all I want to do now.”

“I don’t want to die again!” the corpse shrieked. “I don’t want to flash out like an insect burning!”

“Flash?” Lorq’s face twisted about the scar. “Oh no! It’ll be slow, slower than before. Ten, twenty minutes at least. It’s already getting warm, isn’t it? But it won’t be unbearable for another five.” Below the gold blaze Lorq’s face darkened. Spittle flecked his lips with each consonant. “You’ll boil in your jar like a fish—” He stopped to rub his stomach beneath his vest. He looked around the chamber. “What can burn in here? The drapes? Is your desk real wood? And all those papers?”

The mechanical hand yanked from Lorq’s. The arm swung across the room. The fingers seized Ruby’s hand. “No, Ruby! Stop him! Don’t let him kill us!”

“You’re in liquid, Prince, so you’ll see them afire before you go. Ruby, the places where you’re already burned won’t be able to sweat. So you’ll die first. He’ll be able to watch you a few moments before his own fluids begin to boil, the rubber runs, the plastic melts—”

“No!” The hand jerked from Ruby’s, swung across the room, and smashed into the tank face. “Criminal! Thief! Pirate! Murderer! Murderer! No—!”

The hand was weaker than it had been at Taafite.

So was the glass.

The glass broke.

Nutrient fluids splashed Lorq as he danced back on flooded sandals. The corpse crumpled in the tank, netted in tubes and wires.

The cameras swung wildly out of focus.

The hand clattered to the wet tile.

As the fingers stilled, Ruby screamed, and screamed again. She flung herself across the floor, scrambled over the ragged hem of glass, caught up the corpse, hugged it to her, kissed it, and screamed, and kissed it again, rocking back and forth. Her cloak darkened in the puddle.

Then her scream choked. She dropped the body, hurled herself back against the tank wall, and clutched her neck. Her face flushed deeply beneath burns and wrecked makeup.

She slid slowly down the wall. Her eyes were closed when she reached the bottom.

“Ruby…?” Whether or not she had cut herself climbing over the glass, it didn’t matter. The kiss would have done it. So soon after severe burns, even with what the medico could do, she must have been in a hyperallergic state. The alien proteins in Prince’s nutrient fluid had entered her system, causing a massive histamine reaction. She had succumbed in seconds to anaphylactic shock.

And Lorq laughed.

It started like a rearrangement of boulders in his chest. Then it opened to a full sound, ringing on the high walls of the flooded chamber. Triumph was laughable and terrible and his.

He took a deep breath. The ship surged at his fingertips. Still blind, he urged The Black Cockatoo into the bursting sun.

Somewhere in the ship one of the cyborg studs was crying

“The ‘star!” the Mouse cried. “She’s blown nova!”

Tyy’s voice shot through the master circuit: “Out of here we go! Now!”

“But the captain!” Katin shouted. “Look at The Black Cockatoo!”

“The Cockatoo, my God, it’s—”

“—Lord, it’s falling toward—”

“—falling into the—”

“—the sun!”

“All right, everybody, vanes spread. Katin, I your vanes spread said!”

“My God…” Katin breathed. “Oh, no…”

“It too bright is,” Tyy decided. “Off sensory we go!”

The Roc began to pull away.

“Oh my God! They—they really are, they’re really falling! It’s so bright! They’ll die! They’ll burn up like—they’re falling! Oh, Lord, stop them! Somebody do something! The captain’s on there. You’ve got to do something!”

“Katin!” the Mouse shouted. “Get the hell off sensory! Are you crazy?”

“They’re going down! No! It’s like a bright hole in the middle of everything! And they’re falling into it. Oh, they’re falling. They’re falling—”

“Katin!” the Mouse shrieked. “Katin, don’t look at it!”

“It’s growing, it’s so bright… bright… brighter! I can hardly see them!”

“Katin!” Suddenly it came to him, and the Mouse cried out: “Don’t you remember Dan? Turn your sensory input off!”

“No! No, I’ve got to see it! It’s roaring now. It’s shaking the whole night apart! You can smell it burning, burning up the darkness. I can’t see them any more—no, there they are!”

“Katin, stop it!” The Mouse twisted beneath Olga. “Tyy, cut off his input!”

“I can’t. I this ship against gravity must fly. Katin! Off sensory, I you order!”

“Down… down… I’ve lost them again! I can’t see them any more, The light’s turning all red now … I can’t—”

The Mouse felt the ship lurch as Katin’s vane suddenly flailed wild.

Then Katin screamed. “I can’t see!” The scream became a sob. “I can’t see anything!”

The Mouse balled up on the couch with his hands over his eyes, shaking.

“Mouse!” Tyy shouted. “Damn it, we one vane have lost. Down you sweep!”

The Mouse swept blindly down. Tears of terror squeezed between his lids as he listened to Katin’s sobs.

The Roc rose from and The Black Cockatoo fell into it.

And it was nova.

Sprung from pirates, reeling blind in fire, I am called pirate, murderer, thief.

I bear it.

I will gather my prizes in a moment and become the man who pushed Draco over the edge of tomorrow. That it was to save the Pleiades does not diminish such a crime. Those with the greatest power must ultimately commit the greatest felonies. Here on The Black Cockatoo I am a flame away from forever. I told her once that we had not been fit for meaning. Neither for meaningful deaths. (There is a death whose only meaning is that it was died to defend chaos. And they are dead … ) Such lives and deaths preclude significance, keep guilt from the murderer, elation from the socially beneficent hero. How do other criminals support their crimes? The hollow worlds cast up their hollow children, raised only to play or fight. Is that sufficient for winning? I have struck down one third the cosmos to raise up another and let one more go staggering; and I feel no sin on me. Then it must be that I am free and evil. Well, then, I am free, mourning her with my laughter. Mouse, Katin, you who can speak out of the net, which one of you is the blinder for not having watched me win under this sun? I can feel fire churn by me. Like you, dead Dan, I will grasp at dawn and evening, but I will win the noon.