“Captain says we got to be on board an hour before dawn,” the Mouse ventured.

“Never mind, never mind. I have a knack for this sort of extemporaneous synthesis. Now let me see. First there was the work of De Blau in France in two thousand, when he presented the first clumsy scale and his basically accurate method for measuring the psychic displacement of electrical—”

“You’re not helping.” The Mouse grunted. “I want to find out about Von Ray and Illyrion.”

Wings gentled the air. Black shapes settled. Hand in hand, Sebastian and Tyy came up the walkway. Their pets scuttled about their feet, rose. Tyy pushed one away from her arm; it soared. Two battled above Sebastian’s shoulder for perch. One gave, and the satisfied beast pulled his wings now, brushing the Oriental’s blond head.

“Hey!” the Mouse rasped. “You going back to the ship now?”

“We go.”

“Just a second. What does Von Ray mean to you? You know his name?”

Sebastian smiled, and Tyy glanced at him with gray eyes. “We from the Pleiades Federation are,” Tyy said. “I and these beasts under the Dim, Dead Sister, flock and master, born.”

“The Dim, Dead Sister?”

“The Pleiades used to be called the Seven Sisters in ancient times because only seven of them could be seen from Earth” Katin explained to the Mouse’s frown. “A few hundred B.C. or so, one of the visible stars went nova and out. There are cities now on the innermost of its charred planets. It’s still hot enough to keep things habitable, but that’s about all.”

“A nova?” the Mouse said. “What about Von Ray?”

Tyy made an inclusive gesture. “Everything. Great, good family is.”

“Do you know about this particular Captain Von Ray?” Katin asked.

Tyy shrugged.

“What about Illyrion?” the Mouse asked. “What do you know about that?”

Sebastian squatted among his pets. Wings shed from him. His hairy hand went soothingly from head to head. “Pleiades Federation none have. Draco system none either have.” He frowned.

“Von Ray a pirate some say,” Tyy ventured.

Sebastian looked up sharply. “Von Ray great and good family is! Von Ray fine is! That why we with him go.”

Tyy, more softly, her voice settling behind the gentle features: “Von Ray fine family is.”

The Mouse saw Lynceos approaching over the bridge. And ten seconds later, Idas.

“You two are from the Outer Colonies?”

The twins stopped, shoulder brushing shoulder. Pink eyes blinked more than brown.

“From Argos,” the pale twin said.

“Argos on Tubman B-12,” specified the dark.

“The Far Out Colonies,” Katin amended.

“What do you know about Illyrion?”

Idas leaned on the rail, frowned, then hoisted himself up so that he was sitting. “Illyrion?” He spread his knees and dropped his knotted hands between. “We have Illyrion in the Outer Colonies.”

Lynceos sat beside him. “Tobias,” he said. “We have a brother, Tobias.” Lynceos moved on the bar closer to dark Idas. “We have a brother in the Outer Colonies named Tobias.” He glanced at Idas, coral eyes netted with silver. “In the Outer Colonies, where there is Illyrion.” He held his wrists together, but with fingers opened, like petals on a calloused lily.

“The worlds in the Outer Colonies?” Idas said. “Balthus—with ice and mud-pits and Illyrion. Cassandra—with glass deserts big as the oceans of Earth, and jungles of uncountable plants, all blue, with frothing rivers of galenium, and Illyrion. Salinus—combed through with mile-high caves and canons, with a continent of deadly red moss, and seas with towered cities built of the tidal quartz on the ocean floor, and Illyrion—”

“—The Outer Colonies are the worlds of stars much younger than the stars here in Draco, many times younger than the Pleiades,” Lynceos put in.

“Tobias is in… one of the Illyrion mines on Tubman.” Idas said.

Their voices tensed; eyes stayed down, or leaped to one another’s faces. When black hands opened, white hands closed.

“Idas, Lynceos, and Tobias, we grew up in the dry, equatorial stones of Tubman at Argos, under three suns and a red moon—”

“-and on Argos too there is Illyrion. We were wild. They called us wild. Two black pearls and a white, bouncing and brawling through the streets of Argos—”

“—Tobias, he was black as Idas. I alone was white in the town—”

“—but no less wild than Tobias for his whiteness. And they say in wildness we, one night, out of heads on bliss—”

“—the gold powder that collects in the rock crevices and when inhaled makes the eyes flicker with unnamed colors and new harmonies reel in the ear’s hollow, and the mind dilate—”

“—on bliss, we made an effigy of the mayor of Argos, and fixed him with a clockwork flying mechanism, and set him soaring about the city square, uttering satirical verses on the leading personages of the city—”

“—for this we were banished from Argos into the wilds of Tubman—”

“—and outside the town there is only one way to live, and that is to descend beneath the sea and work off the days of disgrace in the submarine Illyrion mines—”

“—and the three of us, who had never done anything in bliss but laugh and leap, and had mocked no one—”

“—we were innocent—”

“—we went into the mines. There we worked in air masks and wet suits in the underwater mines of Argos, for a year—”

—a year on Argos is three months longer than a year on Earth, with six seasons instead of four—”

“—and at the beginning of our second, algae-tinted autumn, we made ready to leave. But Tobias would not go. His hands had taken up the rhythms of the tides, the weight of ore became a comfort on his palms—”

“—so we left our brother in the Illyrion mines, and came up among the stars, afraid—”

“—you see, we are afraid that as our brother, Tobias, found something that pulled him from us, so one of us may find something that will divide the remaining two—”

“—as we thought the three of us could never be divided.”

Idas looked at the Mouse. “And we are out of bliss.”

Lynceos blinked. “That is what Illyrion means to us.”

“Paraphrase,” Katin said from the other side of the walk. “In the Outer Colonies, comprising to date forty-two worlds and circa seven billion people, practically the entire population at one time or another has something to do with the direct acquisition of Illyrion. And I believe approximately one out of three works in some facet of its development or production his entire life.”

“Those are the statistics,” Idas said, “for the Far Outer Colonies.”

Black wings rose as Sebastian stood and took Tyy’s hand.

The Mouse scratched his head. “Well. Let’s spit in this river and get on to the ship.”

The twins climbed down from the rail. The Mouse leaned out over the hot ravine and puckered.

“What are you doing?”

“Spitting into Hell3. A gypsy’s got to spit three times in any river he crosses,” the Mouse explained to Katin. “Otherwise, bad things.”

“This is the thirty-first century we’re living in. What bad things?”

The Mouse shrugged.

“I never spit in any river.”

“Maybe it’s just for gypsies.

“I it kind of a cute idea is think,” Tyy said, and leaned across the railing beside Mouse. Sebastian loomed at her shoulder. Above them one of the beasts was caught in a hot updraft and flung into the dark.

“What that is?” Tyy frowned suddenly, pointing.

“Where?” The Mouse squinted.

She pointed past him to the canon wall.

“Hey!” Katin said. “That’s the blind man!”

“The one who busted up your playing!”

Lynceos pushed between them. “He’s sick.” He narrowed his blood-colored eyes. “That man there is sick.”

Demoned by the flickering, Dan reeled down the ledges toward the lava.

“He’ll burn up!” Katin joined them.

“But he can’t feel the heat!” the Mouse exclaimed. “He can’t see—he probably doesn’t even know!”