They started toward town, leaving the sleeping troll and his car behind.
Romulus took a deep, deep breath of night air. He could smell everything, all of it, leaf, branch and tree.
Fay cleared her throat. “You’re not going to try to bite me, are you?” She sounded only half-joking.
Romulus let the air out in a relieved rush. “Oh, no! Not you.”
“Good,” she said. “That would make it tough for us to date.” She moved next to him.
They walked down the winding dirt road, hands not touching, but very close, both so full of moonish power they thought they’d burst.
THE SATURN RING BLUES
Old Jelly Roll Morton’s soulful voice fills the buglighter’s cabin.
Nothing more mournful and perfect than a good, solid dose of the blues while you’re waiting at the edge of the ring for the start of the race. That and the cloud-striped surface of Saturn turning below, the dusky-edged ridge of the rings above, catching a little of the reflected light, and between them both the sharp-eyed light of the stars. Lots of sad stringed guitar and bent-note blues harp, and his whiskey voice down deep. It’s a pool hall voice.
I met Elinor in a pool hall. She had an attractive way of blowing chalk dust off her knuckles that caught my eye. We racked up games till the bar closed. Only thing I can beat her at. I see the angles clear. “You got those angle eyes,” she said.
It’s true. I even like my hull transparent. Most of the equipment’s behind, all that stuff that shapes the forces around the buglighter, keeping me safe from danger, and, when the need arises, pushing me where I want to go. So with the hull clear, I’m sitting alone and pretty in the stars. That’s the way I feel, just like those blues songs tell me: “Lordy, I’m all by myself since my baby done left me.”
Lots of buglighters can’t do it—perch in the clear like I do—too much space around them. It’s hard on the heart. Elinor said to me, “Virgil, you’re too much of a sit down and look around kind of guy.” She would know, I guess. Of course I wasn’t paying attention at the time; we were playing pool and I said, “Shh. I’m concentrating.”
The starter’s voice interrupts the music: “Flyers, welcome to the 17th annual Greater Circumference of Saturn Ring Runners Challenge, 2,500 Kgram class. Five minutes to race time.”
A hundred meters around, dust motes spark off the bubble that contains me. Zap, zap… there go a couple more. That’s where we get the name, buglighter, little bits of ice and rock, zappin’ like firecrackers in the forces surrounding us. In five minutes the race will start, and I’ll adjust the bubble. Instead of flicking that ring sand away, it’ll suck it in, transform it in an instant, and shape the pulse into comforting thrust, rolling me around the inside of the ring on fission fire in my perfect sphere of protecting energy, sort of like a transparent cue ball bounding off the bumpers of the ring. From the start, all the way around again, about 578,000 Kmeters, or roughly 15 times the circumference of the Earth.
Over my shoulder, Elinor’s buglighter is all aglow. She’s a hot one, her. She likes to start these races fast, so she’s storing energy in the field. She’s always got a plan. Plan ahead, that’s her. She didn’t see me in her future, I guess. Cut me loose clean. She likes to fly light.
“Gotcha on my backside, Elinor G.,” I say on a private channel, figuring that it won’t hurt to assay some warmth in her direction.
“Cut the chatter, Delta Mud,” she says. That’s my ship, not me. Feel that way most the time though, just as low down as can be. So I turn up the music. Little bit of Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, “Blues from the Lowlands.” I got ’em too. Got ’em bad. Don’t know why you’re sayin’ no to me, Elinor G.
Nothing to do then except study the course ahead, sending out some high-imaging radar. It shows me what to miss—klunking into a chunk of ring matter bigger than a football or so at 50,000 kph would put a dent in my day, and, of course, it’ll send that rock flying like a cannonball in the opposite direction—but, it doesn’t show me where to go: the rich sand and pebbles I can eat up and convert to thrust. That’s the art and joy of ring running: dodging the big ones; following the fuel, shooting fast around the ring without spinning out.
My first two chords are clear, but after that, I’ll be checking as I go: thousands of kph, glimpsing ahead for widow-makers on the high wire edge of the ring. It’s only a kilometer wide, generally, at least only a kilometer of usable rock.
Ring racing is in the chords’ progression and rhythm—like the blues—cutting across the arc of the orbit’s circle. The way I fly, the shorter the chords, the faster the ship. Look and blast, look and blast. Can’t look while you’re blasting (too much interference); can’t blast without looking (otherwise you’d be sure to fetch up against some pocky chunk of rock, big as a barn and your race would be over forever). It’s a funny looking race, if you diagram it. Put two circles on a piece of paper, one inside the other, and the outside one not too much bigger than the inner. That inside circle is Saturn. The outside one is the inner edge of the ring. Now, take a ruler and draw a straight line that connects two points of the outer circle without crossing the inner circle. That’s one chord. If you keep drawing chords, you end up with a polygon that goes around the planet. That’s the race.
My angle of entry into the rings is shallow, and most of the bigger rocks are deeper in, so I minimize risk while maximizing speed. Elinor, though, she takes these long chords, building up speed on each one; each one dives her deeper into the ring. It’s scary genius at work to watch her fly.
So I keep the chords short to play those high speed blues. I take out my c-harp and blow a few chords of my own—still nothing better than a Marine Band harmonica. Well engineered instrument, the harmonica: light, compact, fits in the hand, feels cool on the lips. Good acoustics in a buglighter too. Echoes back in nice and tight, like singing in a shower. I try out a new line for my Elinor Blues. “Elinor, Elinor, you don’t be coming round anymore.” A common blue’s pattern is statement, repeat and a variation. Got the statement and repeat down pat, but don’t know a variation yet. I try one out. Five minutes is a long time for a race to start.
Can’t think of her as “baby.” She’s all hard muscle and physic’s-brain bright. Give her enough numbers and just enough fuel, and she could with one solid blow, dead-stick the rest of the way a course from the moon, Rhe, to Titan and not miss her orbit slot by a couple of meters. But every guy singing the blues calls his baby, baby.
The signal starts the race. Elinor and a couple others blast on the dot, brightness enveloping their buglighters, glowing like acetylene teardrops. My ship gathers in sand, sucks in a larger pebble or two, most of the mass converted into energy. Screen shows I’ve got a clear shot deeper into the ring. Greater chance of crashing into something, but the usable detritus is thicker. Let it go all at once. The good, solid thump of the nuclear explosion behind me pushes me into my seat. Thank god for inertia dampers, otherwise I’d be a thin jelly on the back wall of the cabin.
Right off, rocks start clattering against the bubble, lost in bright sparks. I’ve gained speed, moved up in the orbit, further into the dust.
We run the race on the inner edge of the “B” ring, the bright one you can even see from Earth with a reasonable telescope. The “C” ring below is much thinner. Hard to guarantee you’ll find rock to blast with when you need it. The “A” ring is farther out; it’s got that cool gap in it where the moon, Pan, orbits.