“Ready? Once upon a time…”
[Dragon] Sunward, the Narukis looked back for a final time on their dragon. The wings were now pulled so far forward it seemed as if the Laughing Dragon of Heaven had reshaped itself into a cavernous mouth and its breath was a rainbow of fire.
“A true dragon,” said Yushio, awestruck.
“It always has been,” his wife answered.
“Change course, change course!” Yushio shouted to their yacht’s navigation computer. “Into the dragon’s mouth!”
For a moment, Mrs. Naruki considered countermanding the order. But when she saw the exhilaration on her husband’s face, the joy of jumping into something new and exciting, she held her silence. The sun, the dragon, never mind.
She took Yushio’s hand and squeezed fondly.
[Roc] Two seats behind the Mallio family inside the maxishuttle, the prince unbuckled his safety belt, then staggered up the aisle and dragged open the hatch separating the cockpit from the passenger cabin. The female pilot shouted at him to get back and sit down, but the prince ignored the woman; he refused to die meekly, blind to what was happening and strapped into a comfortable chair.
Through the tinted cockpit port, the prince saw the pilot had angled the shuttle upward, trying to climb out of the trough made by the Organism’s wings; but the web of energy woven across the chasm was acting like a physical obstruction, tangling around the ship’s nose, dragging it down. Red lights flashed on the control panel; new ones lit every second.
There were no sounds but the cursing of the pilot and a frightened babbling back in the cabin. But beneath his feet, the prince could feel the floor beginning to vibrate.
Trying to balance against the rocking of the ship, he knelt beside the pilot and said in a low voice, “I’m a trained engineer. Tell me what I can do to help.”
“Can you cross your fingers and pray?” she asked.
“The first thing an engineer learns,” he told her.
[Lion] In the passenger cabin of the shuttle, Elizabeth Obasa hugged her children and whispered to them not to cry. “Listen,” she said, “I had a dream. When I was sleeping a little while ago. About your father.
“He was walking across a dark grassland at night, and wherever I looked there was an animal there, watching him: a bull, a bear, a swan, all kinds of animals.
“As I watched, he walked up to a goat and said, ‘I’m looking for a lion.’
“The goat said, ‘I’m a lion.’ So they walked a little distance and they talked about how beautiful their children looked when they were asleep.
“Then he walked up to a fine winged horse and said, ‘I’m looking for a lion.’
“The horse said, ‘I’m a lion.’ So they walked a little distance and they talked about how beautiful their children sounded when they laughed.
“Then he walked up to me and said, ‘I’m looking for a lion.’
“I said, ‘I’m a lion.’ So we walked a short distance to a little grove where you children were climbing trees. And your father said, ‘So many lions!’ ”
A burst of blinding blue roared out from the door to the cockpit and the cabin lights blinked out.
[Juggernaut] The cabin lay silent and dark, lit only by a faint glow coming from the cockpit. Slowly, Shanta Mukerjhee eased her grip on the arms of her seat; she’d been clinging so tightly her knuckles cracked softly as they relaxed. She desperately wanted all the trouble to go away, for this to be yet another dream sent by the Juggernaut. But she knew this was real. And the blast of light from the cockpit suggested a fire, an explosion, something like that.
Her son John would never forgive her for cowering in her seat when the pilot might be endangered.
Hesitantly, she lifted open the release on her safety belt. Her first motion sent her drifting toward the cabin roof, bumping off and heading floorward again. It was almost funny—at one time she would have been completely disoriented by being weightless, but thanks to some soybeans, she was quite accustomed to it by now.
She could easily pull herself forward by grabbing at the edge of the overhead luggage compartments. A few of her fellow travelers were beginning to make panicked noises in the darkness. “It’s all right,” she said loudly, “it’s just that the engines have shut off, so we’re all weightless. Stay where you are and I’ll check with the pilot.”
She hoped she sounded cool and confident. John would despise her forever if she couldn’t keep people calm in a crisis.
The light in the cockpit area was starshine coming through the front port: the hard sharp starshine of vacuum. The sun was not in sight, and overhead, the body of the Juggernaut was a vast blackness against the Milky Way. Its wings had once again tucked back against its body; its fireworks were over.
By the starlight, Shanta could see the pilot still belted into her chair, her face and hands black with burns. Shanta put her hand to the pilot’s neck; no pulse. Electrocution from the control panel? Shanta couldn’t imagine the size of a power surge that would kill a human being faster than fuses could blow.
But still. The pilot was dead.
On the opposite side of the cockpit, the prince’s body was drifting, nudging against the side viewing port. He too had been caught in the power surge, but his burns were less severe. Shanta could feel no pulse in his throat either, but she couldn’t just hover there staring at two dead bodies without doing something.
Shanta pushed the prince’s body down to the floor and tried to give CPR. Weightlessness made it almost impossible: when she pressed on his chest, she drifted toward the roof. She managed to prop her shoulder under the pilot’s chair to get some leverage, then began again. Patiently. Unstoppably.
[White Elephant] Margaret Verhooven floated to the door of the maxishuttle cockpit. She could see the dead pilot, and Shanta Mukerjhee trying to revive the prince. She could also see other ships outside: two minishuttles and three yachts. The shuttles were stenciled with the name of her bank, but the yachts were unfamiliar.
Verhooven scanned the sky for some indication of where she was. Against the swath of untwinkling stars, one star stood out from the rest, brighter than any planet seen from Earth. The star was yellow. It was either the sun much too far away, or another star much too close up.
The Outpost of the League of Peoples suddenly appeared below the shuttle, seeming to materialize from nowhere: a huge habitat bigger than any orbital or space-wheel, its brilliantly white skin surrounded by a milky envelope of particles agitated by its arrival. Teleportation? Verhooven asked herself silently. Or just moving so fast I didn’t see it come? And what the hell is it?
The Outpost began to ascend slowly. Looking at the stark white Outpost below and the jet-black Organism above, Verhooven had the image of being crushed between giant salt and pepper shakers. She stifled a laugh before it threatened to become hysterical.
When the Outpost nudged up against the shuttle, Verhooven heard only a soft bump. She floated downward as the Outpost continued to ascend, pushing the shuttle with it. With one hand, she grabbed the edge of the cabin door and pulled herself back up to keep a clear view out the cockpit port.
One by one, the other ships made contact with the ascending Outpost and were caught in its upward push. They were not far apart to begin with, all sucked through the same small wormhole and spat out at the same point; now gentle nudges from the Outpost clumped them closer together, until they were bumping each other lightly like rowboats tied to the same ring on a dock. (Verhooven thought about the time her father had taken her fishing. The only time. She was eight years old, and for some reason he thought she hadn’t enjoyed herself. Whenever she asked if she could go with him on another trip, he thought she was being polite. Or sarcastic. Throughout her whole life, no one had ever been able to tell when she was sincere.)