Gravity Dreams

'Ballentir Control, this is Mambrino, uncradled this time. Departing for Sol. Six passengers, minimum cargo.'

'Mambrino, clear to depart. No local traffic or inbounds this time. Good trip.'

'Ballentir Control, thank you.'

Once the needle was clear of the cradles and the dull composite bulk of the station, I stepped up the fusactors' draw until the ionjets were at full power, easing the Mambrino in a trajectory that would allow spreading the photon nets and bringing the configurators online as quickly as possible.

'Please make sure that you are in your couches,' Berya cautioned the passengers.

In time, we switched to photonic drive, and the clamshells began to descend.

'Minus ten for insertion.' I stepped up the acceleration and established the insertion orientation. Even with passengers, without cargo the ship felt light, and absolute velocity increased rapidly toward the maximum insertion speed possible.

'Minus five.' I made a last adjustment to the orientation.

'Minus three.' The lattices locked. The barriers between the Now and overspace continued to thin, until the lattices themselves whispered and crackled, and the fabric of real space seemed to groan.

The needle slid smoothly into the momentary silence of overspace, an overspace almost a glowing but deep green, without purple at all, except for the gap of the Trough below us and the distant but shivering thrumming sound of the singularities that were always present somewhere in overspace.

Have you thought on what we discussed, needle jockey?

The words shivered me, but I concentrated on keeping the ship on its arc over the Trough. What had we discussed? Did it matter? What mattered was that Engee stopped disrupting Web traffic. 'When will you stop plucking pilots out of the Web?' Again, my words were spoken, yet not spoken, but more than merely thought.

When I find one who will do what I cannot - one like you.

'I'm not special.' As ship-self, I continued that dash along the unseen narrow path toward the warm and comforting, pulsing lunar beacon.

You see more than the others. You can guide your tittle needle without grasping for light in the darkness. 'What do you want - of me?' Your cooperation. 'And if I don't provide it?' / will continue to seek others ... I wanted to sigh. 'You don't offer many choices.' The universe offers fewer.

That wasn't arguable, one way or another. 'Then let me exit somewhere safe for my officers and the needle.' If the Anomaly/Engee wanted to get a needle pilot, it needed to do so without jeopardizing others and the whole Rykashan interstellar transport system.

As you wish ... I could sense that swirling cloud of protostar dust and fire that was created by Engee - perhaps it was Engee.

And from outside overspace, from normspace, a smaller arm of fire reached out from the edge of that cloud and wrapped itself around the Mambrino.

The needle ship shivered, and the control center strobed black and white, and, had they registered, the gee meters would have pegged, and then I/we tumbled out of overspace and into the Now. We were in normspace, though the excitation lattices were locked - or power was being shunted from them. I depowered the insertion system, wondering what I'd let everyone in for.

'Captain ...' Berya's voice sounded hoarse. 'We were plucked right out of the Web ...'

I was silent, scanning the skies with all the Mambrino's systems.

'There's no beacon,' I whispered, 'but there's a star ...' The Anomaly ... Engee's system ... but where to? For lack of anything better to do, I spread the nets and eased the needle inward toward the protostar.

The moments ticked by in the silence, and the star drew nearer.

'Rykashan ship, this is Follower Control. Rykashan ship, this is Follower Control.'

'The Followers?' muttered Alek. 'Where are we? They've got a station?'

'Follower Control, this is Mambrino. Go ahead.'

'What do they want?' hissed Alek.

'We are at your zero-seven-one, minus forty. We have full cradling and locking facilities.'

With that, I could locate the small beacon and the energy signatures, and adjusted course.

'What do I tell the passengers?' asked Berya.

'Tell them that we've made an unanticipated stop at Felini Station.'

'Felini Station?'

'That's as good a name as any.' And much better than New City. 'We've been tendered an invitation that I decided not to refuse.' I eased the ship downward and began to accelerate, gently, mentally shaking my head. In overspace, agreeing to Engee's invitation had seemed a good idea. Now ... ? But anything that could lock and depower the excitation systems wasn't going to let us leave until I did whatever it had in mind.

The station was anything but conventional. Rather than a massive cylinder, it was more like a reinforced spiderweb. Where were the docking locks? Did it have any?

'Follower Control, this is Mambrino. Interrogative docking locks?'

A flash of green light flared from one side of the spiderweb, almost painful through the optics of the needle's system. 'Mambrino, green light indicates lock two.'

'I have it. Thank you.'

'Cradles and locks are Rykashan standard.'

'Thank you,' I repeated.

My approach was gentle, as I feared any impact might shiver the fragile-appearing station. We barely kissed into the cradles, and the cradling was so uneventful as to be frightening, down to the familiar faint clunks and the hissing as the ship and station pressures equalized. Shutdown was routine, and there were no further communications from the station.

'Now what?' asked Berya as she unstrapped.

'I go see what they want.'

'You?'

'They want me. I'm not sure why, but that energy spike was a request that I make myself available.'

'A request ... ?'

'And a threat,' I added. 'If I don't, then Engee or whoever's pretending to be Engee will keep picking off needles.'

'Are you sure that's not what hasn't happened before?' asked Berya.

'No ... but before this, none of the missing needles ever turned up in known space.' I shrugged. 'I have to go on feel here.'

Berya nodded slowly. 'I hope you're right.'

So did I, but it wasn't the time to doubt my sanity, not at all. Still, I did enter a course profile into the system. It might take subjective weeks for the needle to return to Sol, and that would be more than a decade elapsed time, but they wouldn't have to spend the rest of their lives on Follower Station - or New City, as Erelya called it.

Then, I made sure I was at the ship's lock when it opened, although what I could have done was another question.

Besides two crewmen in gray singlesuits trimmed in gold, a heavyset man in a totally gold singlesuit waited on the other side of the lock, a broad smile on his face. Something about his posture bothered me, subconsciously, but I could not explain what it was.

'Welcome, captain. We're glad to see you. I'm Bream.'

I nodded.

'We have a canteen, and an actual waiting area here.' He chuckled. 'It has been waiting a long time. We don't get many transients.'

'I imagine.'

Berya's face was grim, her eyes going from me to the Follower and back to me. 'Why are we here?'

'You will understand. It is God,' Bream said in a matter-of-fact tone.

If such a belief happened to be the impact that Engee had on rational, nano-educated demons who'd had a lifetime to adapt to high and low nanotechnology, I wasn't sure I had any interest in meeting Engee. On the other hand, I didn't seem to have much choice, not if I wanted there to be any needle jockeys left. Aren't you rating yourself highly?I shook off the self-critique.