Diane Duane - Storm at Eldala

Enda shook her head. "Now, I feel foolish, for I have not thought about the Lighthouse in some time. It jumps about so. "

Gabriel chuckled softly, for Enda was understating again. Originally that massive construction, a kilometer and a half long, had been an Orlamu Theocracy space station called the Lighthouse of Faith. Now it journeyed through the Verge accompanied by several Star Force cruisers and various smaller vessels, bringing trade, news, and a semblance of armed security to the scattered worlds of the Verge. It housed the headquarters of the Concord Survey Services, which supervised and assisted independent exploration contractors through the Verge and beyond. It also carried large diplomatic and trading complements, a city's worth of permanent inhabitants, and numerous docking ports, repair stations, and cargo bays. It had a larger population than some planets, was better armed than many, and had the additional advantage of a massive stardrive that could take it fifty light-years in a single starfall. There was one aspect of the Lighthouse that bore some consideration. It had a drivespace comms relay. Infotraders flocked to it to transfer data when it came into or near their systems. "Certainly we can drop our data at either the Lighthouse or Aegis," Enda said slowly, "but after that. . Gabriel, why stop there?"

Gabriel looked at her dubiously. "You're suggesting that we might hitch a ride wherever she's going?" "The thought crossed my mind."

Gabriel considered that. The Lighthouse's provenance— originally it had belonged to the Orlamu Theocracy — meant that its status in Concord terms had become peculiar. The Orlamu had no problems with the Concord refurbishing their "great experiment" after it had almost been completely destroyed by a Solar raid into their space in 2461, but they had insisted — and so had others suddenly faced with the prospect of this behemoth turning up in their systems — that it should be considered strictly a neutral facility. The negotiations had gone on for a good while, but at last the station's neutrality had been accepted by all parties involved.

"Well. ." Gabriel said. For his own part, neutrality was all very well, but he was uncertain how it would hold if a party wanted by the Concord was suddenly to turn up inside the place. "If we wanted to pick up or drop data there, I don't think there'd be any trouble with that. Actually piggybacking Sunshine onto the thing concerns me. I wouldn't like to test the facility's neutrality too rigorously."

"And have it fail, you mean," Enda said. "You also mean that there are marines there, a permanent contingent."

She said nothing more, only wandered back toward crew quarters. A few moments later she came out again with the squeeze bottle she used for her plant.

Gabriel watched her water the small brown bulb, of which maybe a couple of centimeters stuck up from the surrounding gravel. "Is there something that plant needs that it might be missing?" he asked after a moment.

Enda glanced up. "As regards its nourishment or its normal growth cycle? Not at all. It is behaving perfectly normally."

"How long is it supposed to stay like that?"

"As long as it likes," said Enda. "Rather like you."

Gabriel put his eyebrows up in a way that was meant to look ironic.

Enda turned to go down to her quarters with the bottle again. "I understand that you might find it uncomfortable to be within range," she said from down the hall. "You would have to decide whether the discomfort would be so unbearable as to put aside a useful business opportunity. As for dropping data at Lighthouse, the 'physical ingress' rules would matter only if we had no right of egress to begin with. As infotraders, we have such a right."

She came back up the hall again and folded down her seat by the Grid access panel. "As for hitching a ride, that depends on whether we pass the usual security check when we apply for space. It also depends on where Lighthouse would be going after we visited her. Her schedule varies without warning and is much affected by local conditions and the political requirements of the moment. Myself, I would not disdain a fifty light-year hitch in a useful direction, but we would need more recent information on where she is headed next."

Gabriel nodded. There was no question but that the Lighthouse could be useful. One long starfall instead of many small ones…

"If you were serious about exploratory work," Enda said, "the Concord Survey Services are located aboard Lighthouse."

Gabriel shook his head. "Again, I'm not sure I want to just walk in there."

Enda shrugged. "It is not a decision that needs to be made now. We should deal with Aegis first." She glanced up the hallway into the cockpit. "We now have only a little over a day until we make starrise and recharge our drives for Mikoa. While doing that, we will want to discuss this with Helm and Doctor Sota, but first things first. When did you last eat anything?" "Uh," Gabriel said.

"Precisely 'uh,' " Enda said, getting up. "It is a good thing the starfall/starrise interval is no longer than it is. You become philosophical and would waste away unless you were reminded to take nourishment every now and then."

"You're just trying to get rid of those prepacks you got on Rivendale," Gabriel said, "the ones you've decided you don't like after all." Nonetheless, he got up and followed her down to the galley. The Lighthouse, he thought.

Why not?

TWO DAYS LATER, Sunshine made starrise in the endless black between Terivine and Mikoa. This jump made Gabriel nervous, for he still hated jumping to a location that didn't have a planet or a star associated with it. Such approximate destinations, defined by agreement rather than by some physical feature, struck him as a perfect place to be ambushed. "Paranoia," Enda said to him cheerfully after he had expressed this to her.

Nonetheless, when they were ready to come out of drivespace again, Gabriel had the fighting field down over him.

"Thirty seconds," Enda said. "Are you set?"

"As set as I'm going to be," Gabriel said, muffled in his darkness with the controls for the plasma cannons in his hands. They waited.

"Five seconds now," Enda said. Gabriel nodded. "Starrise," Enda said.

Gabriel saw it rendered in the field. Light washed into the cockpit, a pale gold, trickling away to one side. "Right," he said, tumbling the ship slowly and looking around him for another starrise, but there was none. "Where's Helm?"

"I do not know," Enda said. "The detectors do not see him anywhere."

"What happened? We dropped into drivespace at the same time. The last time we went into starfall together, we came out together, tight as you please."

"The last time we went into starfall together," said Enda, "Delde Sota had not been doing something unspecified to another ship down Longshot's comm circuits."

She reached into the 3D display, touched one of the indicators, and the whole thing wavered and jumped as if there had been a power surge. Gabriel swallowed, starting to feel twitchy in his gut. It reminded him too clearly of what had happened when the mass cannon had hit them. She couldn't be here, he thought. I shot her butt off. Impossible—

Then his nerves steadied down, though his stomach was still burning him, a surprising discomfort low down on his left side. Gas pain? Cramp?

Who needs this right now? Gabriel thought, squirming.

The display jumped again.

"We have lost the mass detectors," Enda said. "Gabriel, how could that happen?" She started touching other controls inside the display, one after another, and Gabriel watched them go ash-pale and nonfunctional.