Starlady & Fast-Friend

Fast-Friend

BRAND woke in darkness, trembling, and called out. His angel came to him.

She floated above him, smiling, on wings of soft gauze gold. Her face was all innocence, the face of a lovely girl-child, softness and light and wide amber eyes and honeyed hair that moved sinuously in free-fall. But her body was a woman’s, smooth and slim and perfect; a toy woman fashioned on a smaller scale.

“Brand,” she said, as she hovered above his sleep-web. “Will you show me the fast-friends today?”

He smiled up at her, his dreams fading. “Yes, angel,” he said. “Yes, today, I’m sure of it. Now come to me.”

But she moved back when he reached for her, coy, teasing. Her blush was a creeping tide of gold, and her hair danced in silken swirls. “Oh, Brand,” she said. Then, as he cursed and reached to unsnap his web, she giggled at him and pouted. “You can’t have me,” she said, in her child’s voice. “I’m too little.”

Brand laughed, grabbed a nearby handbar to pull himself free of the web, then whipped himself around it toward the angel. He was good in free-fall, Brand; he’d had ten years of practice. But the angel had wings.

They flowed and rippled as she darted to one side, just beyond his reach. He twisted around in midair, so he hit the wall with his legs. Then, immediately, he kicked off again. The angel giggled and brushed him with her wings as he flew by. Brand hit the ceiling with a thump and groaned.

“Ooo,” she said. “Brand, are you hurt?” And she was at his side, her wings beating quickly.

He grinned and put his arms around her. “No,” he said, “but I’ve got you. Since when is my angel a tease, eh?”

“Oh, Brand,” she said. “I’m sorry. I was only playing. I was gonna come to you.” She was trying to look hurt, but despite her best efforts, a tiny smile escaped the corner of her mouth.

He pulled her to him, hard, and pressed her strange coolness against his own heat. This time there was no reluctance. Her delicate hands went behind him, to hold him tight while he kissed her.

Floating, nude, they joined, and Brand felt the soft caress of wings.

When they were finished, Brand went to his locker to dress. The angel hovered nearby, her wings barely moving, her small breasts still flushed with gold.

“You’re so pretty,” she told him, as he pulled on a dull black coverall. “Why do you hide, Brand? Why can’t you stay like me, so I can see you?”

“A human thing, angel,” he said, hardly listening to her chatter. He’d heard it all before. His boots made a metallic click as they pulled him to the floor.

“You’re beautiful, Brand,” the angel murmured, but he only nodded at her. Only angels said that of him. Brand was close to thirty, but he looked older; lines on a wide forehead, thin lips set in a too-characteristic frown, dark eyes under heavy eyebrows, and hair that curled tight against his scalp in sculptured ringlets.

When he was dressed, he paused briefly, then opened a lockbox welded to the locker wall. Inside was his pendant. He took it out and stared. The disc filled his hand, a coolness of polished black crystal with a myriad of tiny silver flakes locked within. The pale silver chain it hung from curled up and away, and floated in the air like a metal snake.

He remembered then how it had been, in the old days, under gravity. The chain was heavy then, and the crystal stone had a solid heft to it. Yet he’d worn it always, as Melissa had worn its twin. And he wanted to wear it now, but it was such a nuisance in free-fall. Without weight, it refused to hang neatly around his neck; instead it bobbed about constantly.

Finally, sighing, he slipped the chain over his head, pulled the crystal tight against his neck, then twisted the chain and doubled it over again and again. When he was finished the stone was secure, now more a choker than a pendant. It was uncomfortable. But it was the best he could do.

The angel watched him in silence, trembling a little. She’d seen him handle the black crystal before. Sometimes he’d sit in his sleep-web for hours, the stone floating above him. He’d stare into its depths, at the frozen dance of the silver flecks, and his face would grow dark, his manner curt. She avoided him then, lest he scold her.

But now he was wearing it.

“Brand,” the angel said as he went toward the door panel. “Brand, can I come with you?”

He hesitated. “Later, angel,” he said. “When the fast-friends come, I’ll call you, as I promised. Right now you stay down here and rest, all right?” He forced a smile.

She pouted. “All right,” she said.

Outside was a short corridor of gray metal, brightly lit; the sealed airlock to the engine compartment capped one end, the bridge door the other. A few other closed panels broke the spartan bleakness: cargo holds, screen generators, Robi’s room, Brand ignored them, and proceeded straight to the bridge.

Robi was strapped in before the main console, studying the banks of viewscreens and scanners with a bored expression. She was a short, round woman, with high cheekbones and green eyes and brown hair cut space short. Long hair was just trouble in free-fall. The angel had long hair, of course, but she was just an angel.

Robi favored him with a wary smile as he entered. Brand did not return it. He was a solo by nature; only circumstances had forced him to take on a partner, so he could complete the conversion of his ship. Her funds had paid for the new screens he’d installed.

He moved to the second control chair and strapped himself down, his expression businesslike. “I’ll take over,” he said. Then he paused, and blinked. “The course has been altered,” he stated. He looked at her.

“A swarm of blinkies,” Robi said, trying her smile again. “I changed the program. They’re not far out of our way. A half-hour standard, maybe.”

Brand sighed. “Look, Robi,” he said, “this isn’t a trap run.” His hands moved over the controls, putting new patterns on most of the scanners. “We’re not bounty hunting, remember? We’re going to the stars, and coming back. No detours.”

Robi looked annoyed. “Brand, I sold my Unicorn to invest in this scheme of yours. A bounty or two would be nice, in case the gimmick doesn’t work, you know. And we’re going out to the Changling Jungle anyway, so we might as well bring a dark or two with us, if we can trap some. That swarm is right on top of us, nearly. A couple darks have got to be nearby. So what’s the harm?”

“No,” Brand said, as he wiped off the program she’d fed into the ship’s computer. “We’re too close to fool around.” He checked the console, reprograming, compensating for the swerve she’d fed in. The newly christened Chariot was two weeks out from the orbital docks on Triton, where she’d been overhauled. A few short hours ahead, out toward the dark, the Changling Jungle swung around the distant sun, a man-made trojan to Pluto.

“You’re being stubborn and unreasonable,” Robi told him. “What do you have against money, anyway?”

Brand didn’t look up. “Nothing. The idea will work. I’ll have all the money I need then. So will you. Why don’t you just go back to your room, and dream about how rich you’re going to be.”

She snorted, spun her chair around, unstrapped, and kicked off savagely. If it had been possible to slam a sliding panel door, she would have done that too.

Brand, alone, finished his reprogramming. He hardly thought twice about the argument. Robi and he had been arguing since they’d left Triton; about bounties, about the angel, about him. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, nothing but his idea, the Jungle ahead, and stars.

A few hours, that was all. They’d find fast-friends near the Jungle. Always there were fast-friends near the Jungle. And somehow, Brand knew he’d find Melissa.

Unconsciously, his hand had gone to his neck. Slowly, slowly, he stroked the cool dark crystal.

Once they’d dreamed of stars together.

It was a common dream. Earth was teeming, civilized, dull; time and technology had homogenized it. What romance there was left was all in space. Thousands lived under the domes of Luna now. On Mars, terraforming projects were in full swing, and new immigrants flooded Lowelltown and Bradbury and Burroughs City every day. There was a lab on Mercury, toehold colonies on Ceres, Ganymede, Titan. And out at the Komarov Wheel, the third starship was a-building. The first was twenty years gone, with a crew who knew they’d die on board so their children could walk another world.

Yes, it was a common dream.

But they were most uncommon dreamers.

And they were lucky. They were born at the right time. They were still children when the Hades Expedition, bound for Pluto, came upon the blinkies. Then the darks came upon the Hades Expedition.

Twelve men had died, but Brand felt only a child’s thrill, a delicious shiver.

Three years later, he and Melissa had followed the news avidly when the Second Hades Expedition, the lucky one, the one with the first primitive energy screens, made its astonishing discoveries. And a crewman named Chet Adams became immortal.

He remembered a night. They’d walked hand in hand, up a winding outside staircase atop one of the city’s tallest towers. The lights, the glaring ceaseless lights, were mostly below. They could see the stars, sort of. Brand, a younger, smooth-faced Brand with long curling hair, wrapped his arm around Melissa and gestured.

Up. At the sky.

“You know what this means?” he said. The news had just come back from Hades II; dreamers were everywhere. “We can have the stars now. All of them. We won’t have to die on a starship, or settle down on Mars. We’re not trapped.”

Melissa, whose hair was reddish gold, laughed and kissed him.

“You think they’ll find out how it’s done? How the darks go ftl?”

Brand just hugged her and kissed her back. “Who cares? I suppose ftl ships would be nice. But hell, we can have more now. We can be like him, like Adams, and the stars can all be ours.”

Melissa nodded. “Why fly an airplane, right? If you could be a bird?”

For five long years they loved, and dreamed of stars. While the Changling Jungle swelled, and the fast-friends sailed the void.

Robi returned to the bridge just as Brand activated the main viewscreen. Surprise flashed across her face. She looked at him and smiled. Above, the picture was alive with a million tiny lights, pinpoints of sparkling green and crimson and blue and yellow and a dozen other colors. Not stars, no; they shifted and danced mindlessly, constantly, blinking on and off like fireflies and making the scanners ping whenever they touched the ship.

She floated herself to her chair, strapped down. “You kept my course,” she said, pleased. “I’m sorry I got so angry.” She put a hand on his arm.

Brand shook it off. “Don’t give me any credit. We’re dead on. The blinkies came to us.”

“Oh,” she said. “I might have known.”

“They’re all around us,” he said. “A huge swarm. I’d guess a couple cubic miles, at least.”

Robi looked again. The viewscreen was thick with blinkies in constant motion. The stars, those white lights that stood still, could hardly be seen. “We’re going right into the swarm,” she said.

Brand shrugged. “It’s in our way.”

Robi leaned forward, spread her hands over the instruments, punched in a few quick orders. Seconds later, a line of flashing red print began to run across the face of her scanner. She looked up at Brand accusingly. “You didn’t even check,” she said. “Darks, three of them.”

“This is not a trap run,” Brand said, unemotionally.

“If they come right up to us and ask to be trapped, I suppose you’ll tell them to go away? Besides, they could eat right through us.”

“Hardly. The safe-screen is up.”

Robi shook her head without comment. The darks would avoid a ship with its safe-screen up. So, naturally, you couldn’t trap them that way. But Brand wasn’t trapping this time.

“Look,” Brand said.

The viewscreen, suddenly, was empty again; just a scattering of stars and two or three lost blinkies winking a lonely message in blue and red. The swarm was gone. Then, with equal speed, it came into sight again. Far off, growing smaller; a fast-receding fog of light.

Brand locked the viewer on it; Robi upped the scopes to max magnification. The fog expanded until it filled the screen.

The blinkies were fleeing, running from their enemies, running faster than the Chariot or any man-built ship had ever gone or could ever hope to go, unaided. They were moving at something close to light-speed; after all, they were mostly light themselves, just a single cell and a microscopic aura of energy that gave off short, intense bursts of visible radiation.

Despite the lock, despite the scopes, the viewscreen was deserted less than a second after the blinkies began to run. They’d gone too far, too fast.

Robi started to say something, then stopped. Instead she reached out and touched Brand by the elbow, squeezing sharply. Up in the viewscreen, the stars had begun to dim.

You can’t see a dark, not really, but Brand knew how they looked, and he’d seen them often enough in his imagination and his dreams. They were bigger than the blinkies, vastly bigger, almost as big as a man; pulsing globes of dark energy, seldom radiating into the visible spectrum, seen only by the drifting flakes of living matter trapped within their spheres.

But they did things to the light passing through them: they made the stars waver and dim.

As they were dimming now, up on the screen. Brand watched closely. Briefly, oh so briefly, he thought he saw a flash of silver as a flake of darkstuff caught the tired sunlight and lost it again. The old fear woke and clutched at his stomach. But the dark was keeping its distance; their safe-screens were up.

Robi looked over at Brand. “It’s begging,” she said, “it’s practically begging. Let’s drop screens and trap it. What’s the harm?”

Brand’s face was cold. Irrational terror swirled within him. “It knows,” he said, hardly thinking. “It didn’t go after the blinkies. It senses something different about us. I tell you, it knows.”

She gave him a curious stare. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “It’s only a dark. Come on. Let me trap it.”

Brand mastered himself, though the fear was alive and walking, the Hades fear, the trapper’s companion. Creatures of energy, the darks ate matter. Like the blinkies they swept clean the scattered dust and gas on the fringes of solar space. And they moved through blinkie swarms like scythes, carving tunnels of blackness in those living seas of light. And, when they found a lonely chunk of nickel-iron spinning through the void, that too was food. Matter to energy, converted in a blinding silent flash. An incandescent feast.

A hundred times Brand had faced the fear, when he sat before his computer and prepared to drop his screens. When the ship was naked, when the screens were down, then only the mindless whim of the dark said if a trapper lived or died. If the dark came slow, moving in leisurely towards its sluggish steel meal, then the trapper won. Once the dark was in range, the safe-screens would blink on again, covering the ship like a second skin. And, further out, the trapping screens would form a globe. The dark would be a prisoner.

But if the dark moved quickly….

Well, the blinkies ran at light-speed. The darks fed on the blinkies. The darks ran faster.

If the dark moved quickly, there was no way, no defense, no hope that man or woman or computer could raise the screens in time. A lot of trappers died that way. The First Hades Expedition, screenless, had been holed in a dozen places.

“Let me trap it,” Robi said again. Brand just looked at her. Like him, she was a trapper. She’d beaten the fear as often as he had, and she had luck. Still, maybe this time that luck would change.

He unstrapped, pulled himself up, and stood looking down on her. “No,” he said. “It’s not worth the risk. We’re too close. Leave the dark alone. And don’t change course, you hear, not five feet. I’m going down to angel.”

“Brand!” Robi said. “Damn you. And don’t bring that thing up here, you understand? And….” But he was gone, silently, ignoring her.

She turned back to the viewscreen and, frustrated, watched the dark.

Asleep, awake, it never mattered. The vision would come to him all the same. Call it dream, color it memory.

There were four of them, inside Changling Station, on the wheel of rebirth. It was a doughnut, the Station; brightly lit, screened. Around it, in all directions, ships—trapper ships with their catch, bait ships hauled by timid trappers, supply ships out from Triton, couriers from Earth and Mars and Luna with commissions for the fast-friends. And derelicts. Hundreds of ill-fit hulks, holed, abandoned, empty, filling up the Jungle like hunks of cold steel garbage.

Between the ships moved the fast-friends.

The airlock where they donned their spacesuits had had a window in it; it was a large, empty chamber, a good place for long looks and last thoughts. Brand and Melissa and a fat blonde girl named Canada Cooper had stood there together, looking out on the Jungle and the fast-friends. Canada had laughed. “I thought they’d be different,” she said. “They look just like people, silly naked people standing out in space.”

And they did. A few stood on the hulls of derelicts, but most of them were just floating in the void, pale against the starlight, small and stern and awesome. Melissa counted fourteen.

“Hurry up,” the government man had said. Brand hardly remembered what he looked like, but he remembered the voice, the hard flat voice that whipped them all the way out from Earth. They were the candidates, the chosen. They’d held to their dream, they’d passed all the tests, and they were twenty. That was the optimal age for a successful merger, the experts said. Some experts. Adams, the first-merged, had been nearly thirty.

He remembered Melissa as she put on her suit, slim and clean in a white coverall zipped low, with her crystal pendant hanging between her gold-tan breasts in the imitation gravity of the spinning Station. Her hair was tightly bound. She’d kept it long, her red-blonde glory, to wear between the stars.

They kissed just before they put on helmets.

“Love you,” she said. “Love you always.” And he repeated it back to her.

Then they were outside, them and Canada and the government man, walking on the skin of Changling Station, looking down into the Pit. The arena, the hole in the doughnut, the energy-screened center of the whole thing, the place where dreams came true.

Brand, young Brand, looked down at where he’d have to go, and smiled. There was nothing below but stars. He’d fall forever, but he didn’t mind. They’d share the stars together.

“You first,” the government man said to Melissa. She radioed a kiss to Brand, and kicked off toward the Pit.

She didn’t get far. There were darks in there, three of them, trapped and imprisoned. Once she was beyond the screens, one came for her. The sight was burned deep in Brand’s memory. One moment there was only Melissa, suited, floating away from him towards the far side of the Station. Then light.

Sudden, instantaneous, quick-dying. A flash, nothing more. Brand knew that. But his memory had elaborated on the moment. In his dreams, it was more prolonged; first her suit flared and was gone and she threw back her head to scream, then her clothes flamed into brilliance, and lastly, lastly, the chain and its crystal. She was naked, wreathed in fire, adrift among the stars. She no longer breathed.

But she lived.

A symbiote of man and dark, a thing of matter and energy, an alien, a changling, a reborn creature with the mind of a human and the speed of a dark. Melissa no longer.

Fast-friend.

He ached to join her. She was smiling at him, beckoning. There was a dark waiting for him, too. He would join it, merge. Then, together, he and Melissa would run, faster than the starships, faster than light, out, out. The galaxy would be theirs. The universe, perhaps.

But the government man held his arm. “Her next,” he said. Fat Canada kicked free of the place where they stood, hardly hesitating. She knew the risks, like them, but she was a dreamer too. They’d tested and traveled with her, and Brand knew her boundless optimism.

She floated towards Melissa, chunky in her oversize suit, and reached out her hand. Her radio was on. Brand remembered her voice. “Hey,” she said, “mine’s slow. A slow dark, imagine!”

She laughed. “Hey, little darkie, where are you? Hey, come to mama. Come and merge, little…”

Then, loudly, a short scream, cut off before it started.

And Canada exploded.

The flash was first, of course. But this time, afterwards, no fast-friend. She’d been rejected. Three-quarters of all candidates for merger were rejected. They were eaten instead. Except, this time, the dark hadn’t enveloped her cleanly. If it had, then, after the instant of conversion, nothing would have been left.

But this dark had just sheared her off above the waist. Her legs spun wildly after the explosion of violent depressurization. Her blood flash-froze.

It was only there for a second, less than a heartbeat, a pause between breaths. Then another flash, and emptiness. Just Melissa again, her smile suddenly gone, still waiting.

“Too bad,” the government man had said. “She did well on the tests. You’re next.”

Brand was looking across at Melissa, and the stars behind her. But his vision was gone. Instead he saw Canada.

“No,” he’d said. For the first time ever, the fear was on him.

Afterwards he went down into the Station and threw up. When he dreamt, he woke up trembling.

Brand left Robi with her dark, and sought the comfort of his angel.

She was waiting for him, as always, smiling and eager for his company, a soft-winged woman-child. She was playing in the sleep-web when he entered, singing to herself. She flew to him at once.

He kissed her, hard, and she wrapped her wings around him, and they tumbled laughing through the cabin. In her embrace, his fears all faded. She made him feel strong, confident, conquering. She worshiped him, and she was passionate, more passionate even then Melissa.

And she fit. Like the fast-friends, she was a creature of the void. Under gravity, her wings could never function, and she’d die within a month. Even in free-fall, angels were short-lived. She was his third, bred by the bio-engineers of the Jungle who knew what a trapper would pay for company. It didn’t matter.

They were clones, and all alike, more than twins in their delicate sexy inhuman angelic simplicity.

Death was not a threat to their love. Nor fights. Nor desertion. When Brand relaxed within her arms, he knew she’d always be there.

Afterwards, they lay nude and lazy in the sleep-web. The angel nibbled at his ear, and giggled, and stroked him with soft hands and softer wings. “What are you thinking, Brand?” she asked.

“Nothing, angel. Don’t worry yourself.”

“Oh, Brand.” She looked very cross.

He couldn’t help smiling. “All right then. I was thinking that we’re still alive, which means Robi left the dark alone.”

The angel shivered and hugged him. “Ooo. You’re scaring me, Brand. Don’t talk of dying.”

He played with her hair, still smiling. “I told you not to worry. I wouldn’t let you die, angel. I promised to show you the fast-friends, remember? And stars, too. We’re going to the stars today, just like the fast-friends do.”

The angel giggled, happy again. She was easy to please. “Tell me about the fast-friends,” she said.

“I’ve told you before.”

“I know. I like to hear you talk, Brand. And they sound so pretty.”

“They are, in a way. They’re cold, and they’re not human anymore, but they are pretty sometimes. They move fast. Somehow they can punch through to another kind of space, where the laws of nature are different, a fifth dimension or hyperspace or what-you-will, and…”

But the angel’s face showed no comprehension. Brand laughed, and paused. “No, you wouldn’t understand those terms, of course. Well, call it a fairyland, angel. The fast-friends have a lot of power in them, like the darks do, and they use this power, this magic, for a trick they have, so they can go faster than light. Now, there’s no way we can go faster than light without this trick, you see.”

“Why?” she asked. She smiled an innocent smile.

“Hmmm. Well, that’s a long story. There was a man named Einstein who said we couldn’t, angel, and he was a very smart man, and…”

She hugged him. “I bet you could go faster than light, Brand, if you wanted.” Her wings beat, and the web rocked gently.

“Well, I want to,” he said. “And that’s just what we’re going to try to do now, angel. You must be smarter than you look.”

She hit him. “I’m awful smart,” she said, pouting.

“Yes,” he laughed. “I didn’t mean it. I thought you wanted to hear about the fast-friends?”

Suddenly she was apologetic again. “Yes.”

“All right. Remember, they have this trick, like I said. Now we know they can move matter—that’s, well, solid stuff, angel, like the ship and me and you, but it’s also gas and water, you see. Energy is different. The darks are mostly energy, with only little flakes of matter. But the fast-friends are more balanced. A lot of smart men think that if they could examine a dark they could figure out this trick, and then we could build ships that went fast too. But nobody has been able to figure how to examine a dark, since it is nearly all energy and nearly impossible to hold in one place, you see?”

“Yes,” the angel lied, looking very solemn.

“Anyway, the fast-friends not only move energy and little flakes of matter, they also move what once were the bodies of the human members of the symbiosis. You don’t understand that, do you? Hell, this is… ah, well, just listen. The fast-friends can only move themselves, and whatever else they can fit inside their energy sphere, or aura. Think of it as a baggy cloak, angel. If they can’t stuff it under their cloak, they can’t take it with them.”

She giggled, the idea of a baggy cloak evidently appealing to her.

Brand sighed. “So, the fast-friends are sort of our messengers. They fly out to the stars for us, real fast, and they tell us which suns have planets, and where we can find worlds that are good to live on. And they’ve found ships out there, too, in other systems, from other kinds of beings who aren’t men and aren’t fast-friends either, and they carry messages so that we can learn from each other. And they keep us in touch with our starships, too, by running back and forth. Our ships are still real slow, angel. We’ve launched at least twenty by now, but even the first one hasn’t gotten where it’s going yet.”

“The fast-friends caught it, didn’t they?” the angel interrupted. “You told me. I remember.”

“Yes, angel,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you how surprised those people were. A lot of them were the sons and daughters of people who’d left Earth, and when their parents left there were no fast-friends, and they hadn’t even found out about the blinkies yet, or the darks. But now the fast-friends keep all the ships in touch by running back and forth with messages and even small packages and such. Once we have colonies, they’ll link them too.”

“But they’re crippled,” angel prompted.

“For all their speed,” Brand continued, smiling, “the fast-friends are strangely crippled. They can’t land on any of the planets they sail by; the gravity wells are deadly to them. And they don’t even like to go in much further than the orbit of Saturn, or its equivalent, because of the sun. The darks and the blinkies never do, and the fast-friends have to force themselves. So that’s one drawback.

“Also, frankly, a lot of men want to travel faster than light themselves. They want to build ships and start colonies. So whoever finds a way to do what the fast-friends do, so that regular men can do it without having to merge and maybe die, well, they’ll make a lot of money. And be famous. And have stars.”

“You’ll do it, Brand,” the angel said.

“Yes,” he said. His voice was suddenly serious. “That, angel, is why we’re here.”

“No.”

The word had haunted him, its echoes rolling through his dreams. He’d thrown away his stars, and his Melissa.

He couldn’t force himself to go back to Earth. Melissa was gone, off to the stars on her first commission, but he loved her still. And the dream still gripped him tightly. Yet he would not get another chance. There were more candidates than darks, and he’d failed his final test.

He worked in Changling Station for a while, then signed on a supply run from Triton to the Jungle and learned to run a ship. In two years, he saved a substantial amount. He borrowed the rest, outfitted a derelict drifting in the Jungle, and became a trapper.

The plan was clear then. The government wouldn’t give him another chance, but he could make his own. He’d prowl until he found a dark, then trap it. Then he’d go outside and merge. And he’d join Melissa after all. Brand, fast-friend. Yes, he would have his stars.

A good trapper could support himself in fine style on four catches a year. On six he gets rich. Brand was not yet a good trapper, and there were months of fruitless, lonely search. The blackness was brightened only by the far-off lights of distant blinkie swarms, and the firmness of his vision, and Melissa.

She used to come to him, in the early days, when she wasn’t out among the stars. He’d be on his tedious prowl when suddenly his scanners would flash red, and she’d be there, floating outside the ship, smiling at him from the main viewscreen. And he’d open the airlock and cycle her in.

But even in the best days after, the very early ones, it wasn’t the same. She couldn’t drink with him, or eat. She didn’t need to; she was a fast-friend now, and she lived on stardust and blinkies and junk, converting them to energy even as a dark did.

She could survive in an atmosphere, and talk and function, but she didn’t like it. It was unpleasant. The ship was cramped, and it was a strain to keep her aura in check, to keep from converting the molecules of the air that pressed on her from every side.

The first time, when she’d come to him in Changling Station, Brand had pulled her lithe body hard against him and kissed her. She had not resisted. But her flesh was cold, her tongue a spear of ice when it touched his. Later, stubborn, he’d tried to make love to her. And failed.

Soon they gave up trying. When she came to his ship in those months of hunt, he only held her hard, slick hand, and talked to her.

“It’s just as well, Brand,” she told him once, in those early days. “I wanted to make love to you, yes, for your sake. I’m changed, Brand. You have to understand. Sex is like food, you know. It’s a human thing. I’m not really interested in that now. You’ll see, after you merge. But don’t worry. There are other things out there, things that make it all worthwhile. The stars, love. You should see the stars. I fly between them, and, and… oh, Brand, it’s glorious! How could I tell you? You have to feel it. When I fly, when I punch through, everything changes. Space isn’t black anymore, it’s a sea of color, swirling all around me, splashing against me, and I’m streaking right through it. And the feeling! It’s like… like an orgasm, Brand, but it goes on and on and on, and your whole body sings and feels it, not just one little part of you. You’re alive! And there are things out there, things only the fast-friends know. What we tell the humans, that’s only a little bit, the bit they can understand. There’s so much more. There’s music out there, Brand, only it isn’t music. And sometimes you can hear something calling, far away, from the core stars. I think the call gets stronger the more you fly. That’s where the first-merged went, you know, Adams or whatever his human name was. That’s why the older fast-friends sometimes vanish. They say it’s wearying after a while, playing messenger for the humans. Then the fast-friends go away, to the core stars. Oh, Brand, I wish you were with me. It would be the way we dreamed. Hurry, love, catch your dark for me.”

And Brand, though strange chills went through him, nodded and said he would.

And finally he did.

For the second time the fear came. Brand watched his scanners as they shrieked of dark proximity. Five times his finger paused over the button that would kill his safe-screens. Five times it moved back. He kept seeing Canada again, her legs a-spin. And he thought of the Hades I.

Finally, his mind on Melissa, he forced the button down. The dark came slowly. No need to hurry, after all. This was no light-fast blinkie swarm; just dead metal creeping through the void.

Brand, relieved, trapped it. But as he put on his spacesuit, the fear hit again.

He fought it. Oh, he fought it. For an hour he stood in the airlock, trembling, trying to put on his helmet and failing. His hands were shaking, and he threw up twice. Finally, slumped and beaten in the fouled lock, he knew the truth. He would never merge.

He took his catch back to the Changling Jungle for a bounty. The Station offered its standard fee, but there was another bidder, a middle-aged man who’d run an old supply ship out here on his own. As dozens did each year. Brand sold the dark to him, to this hopeful, unqualified, test-failing visionary. And Brand watched him die.

Another derelict, abandoned, joined the Jungle, floating in a crowded orbit with all the other hulks, the debris of other dreams.

Brand sold his dark again, to Changling Station. A month later, when Melissa returned, he told her. He’d expected tears, a storm, a fight. But she just looked at him, strangely unmoved. Then he asked her to come back to him.

“Maybe we can go back to Earth,” he said. “We’ll stay in orbit, and the scientists can look at you. They might be able to un-merge you, or something. They’ll certainly welcome the opportunity. Maybe you can tell them how to build ftl ships. But we’ll be together.” His words were a child’s hopeful gush.

“No,” Melissa had said, simply. “You don’t understand. I’d die first.”

“You said you loved me. Stay with me.”

“Oh, Brand. I did love you. But I won’t give up the stars. They’re my love now, my life, my everything. I’m a fast-friend, Brand, and you’re only a human. Things are different now. If you can’t merge, go back to Earth. That’s the place for men, for you. The stars belong to us now.”

“No!” He shouted it to keep from weeping. “I’ll stay out here then, and trap. I love you, Melissa. I’ll stay by you.”

Very briefly, she looked sad. “I’ll visit you, I guess,” she said. “When I have time, if you want me.”

And so she did. But as the years went by, the visits came less often. Brand, more and more, hardly knew her. Her gold-tan body turned pale, though it kept the shape of a twenty-year-old while he aged. Her streaming red-blonde hair became a silvered white, and her eyes grew distant. Often, when she was with him in orbit near the Jungle, she wasn’t there at all. She talked of things he could not understand, of fast-friends he did not know, of actions beyond his comprehension. And he bored her now, with his news of Earth and men.

Finally the talk stopped. There was nothing left but memories then, for Melissa did not come at all.

Robi rang him on the intercom, and Brand dressed quickly. “Now,” the angel said eagerly. “Can I come now?”

“Yes,” he told her, smiling again his fond, indulgent smile. “I’ll show you the fast-friends now, angel. And then I’ll take you to the stars!”

She flew behind him, through the panel, up the corridor, into the bridge.

Robi looked up as they entered. She did not look happy. “You don’t listen, do you? I don’t want your pet on the bridge, Brand. Can’t you keep your perversions in your cabin?”

The angel quailed at the displeasure in Robi’s voice. “She doesn’t like me,” she said to Brand, scared.

“Don’t worry, angel, I’m here,” he replied. Then, to Robi, “You’re scaring her. Keep quiet. I promised to show her the fast-friends.”

Robi glared at him, and hit the viewscreen stud. It flared back to life. “There, then,” she said savagely.

The Chariot was in the middle of the Jungle. Brand, counting quickly, saw a good dozen derelicts nearby. Changling Station was low in one corner of the screen, surrounded by trapper ships and screens. Near the center was a larger wheel, the spoked and spinning supply station Hades IV, with its bars and pleasure havens.

Floating close to Hades, a group of fast-friends were clustered, six at least, still small and white at this distance. There were others visible, but they were closest. They were talking, even in the hard vacuum of the solar fringe; with a simple act of will, the fast-friends could force their dark aura up in the range of the visible spectrum. Their language was one of lights.

Robi already had the Chariot headed toward them. Brand nodded toward the angel, and pointed. “Fast-friends,” he said.

The angel squealed and flew to the viewscreen, pressing her nose against it. “They’re so little,” she said as she hovered there, her wings beating rapidly.

“Increase the magnification,” Brand told Robi. When she ignored him, he strapped down beside her and did it himself. The cluster of fast-friends doubled in size, and the angel beamed.

“We’ll be right on top of them in five minutes,” Brand said. Robi pretended not to hear.

“I don’t know about you, Brand,” she said in a low serious voice, so the angel would not hear. “Most of the men who buy sex toys like that are sick, or crippled, or impotent. Why you? You seem normal enough. Why do you need an angel, Brand? What’s wrong with a woman?”

“Angels are easier to live with,” Brand snapped. “And they do what they’re told. Stop prying and get on the signal lights. I want to talk to our friends out there.”

Robi scowled. “Talk? Why? Let’s just scoop them up, there’s enough of them there….”

“No. I want to find one, a special one. Her name was Melissa.”

“Hmpf,” Robi said. “Angels and fast-friends. You ought to try having a relationship with a human being once in a while, Brand. Just for a change of pace, you understand.” But she readied the signal lights as she talked.

And Brand called, out across the void. One of the fast-friends responded. Then vanished. “She’ll come,” Brand said firmly, as they waited. “Even now, she’ll come.”

Meanwhile the angel was flitting excitedly around the bridge, touching everything she could reach. Normally she was not allowed up here.

“Calm down,” Brand told her. She flew down to him, happy, and curled up in his lap.

“What are the fast-friends doing?” she asked, with her arms around him. “Are they going to tell us their trick, Brand? Are we going to the stars yet?”

“Soon, angel,” he said patiently. “Soon.”

Then Melissa was there, caught in the viewscreen. Brand felt a chill go through him.

Her skin was milk-white now, her hair a halo of streaming silver. But otherwise she was the same. She had the firm curves of a twenty-year-old, and the face that Brand remembered.

He shooed the angel from his lap, and turned to the console. He hit some buttons.

Outside, the stars began to flicker. The bright dot of the distant sun dimmed. The hulks of the Jungle, the Hades wheel, Changling Station; all darkened slightly. Only Melissa and the other fast-friends were unchanged.

Caught within the globe.

Robi smiled, and started to speak. Brand silenced her with a look. His signal lights called Melissa. When she acknowledged, he cut the safe-screens to let her through.

He met her in the corridor after the airlock had cycled her in. Robi stayed up on the bridge.

They stood ten feet apart. They did not touch or smile.

“Brand,” Melissa said at last. She studied him with ice-blue eyes, from a cold and steady face, and her voice had a husky quality he had not remembered. “You… what are you doing? We are not… not darks. To be trapped.” Her speech stumbled and halted awkwardly.

“Have you forgotten how to talk, Melissa?” Brand said. As he spoke, the bridge panel slid open behind him. The angel flew out and hovered.

“Oh,” she said to Melissa. “You’re pretty.”

The fast-friend’s eyes flicked to her quickly, then dismissed her and went back to Brand. “Some, I’ve forgotten. Ten years, Brand. With stars, the stars. Not… I’m not a human now. I’m elder now, an elder fast-friend. My… my call comes soon.” She paused. “Why have you screened us?”

“A new kind of screen, Melissa,” Brand said, smiling. “Didn’t you notice? It’s dark. A refinement, just developed back on Earth. They’ve been doing a lot of screen research, and I’ve been following it. I had an idea, love, but the old screens were no good. This kind, well, it’s more sophisticated. And I’m the first one to realize the implications.”

“Sophisticated. Implications.” The words sounded odd, foreign, alien on Melissa’s tongue. Her face looked lost.

“We’re going to the stars together, Melissa.”

“Brand,” she replied. For a moment her voice had an almost-human tremor. “Give it up, Brand. Give up… me. And stars. They… they’re old dreams, and they’ve gone sour on you. See? Can’t you see?”

The angel was swooping up and down the corridor, coming closer to Melissa each time, clearly fascinated by the fast-friend, but afraid to come too close. They both ignored her.

Brand was looking at Melissa, at the dim, far-off reflection of a girl who’d loved him once. He shook it away. She was just a fast-friend, and he’d get his stars from her.

“You can take me to the stars, Melissa, and other men after me. It’s time you fast-friends shared your universe with us poor humans.”

“A drive?” she asked.

“You might…”

But the angel interrupted him. “Oh, let me, Brand. Let me tell her. I know how. You told me. I remember. Let me talk to the fast-friend.” She’d stopped her wild circles, and was floating eager between them.

Brand grinned. “All right. Tell her.”

The angel spun in the air, smiling. Her wings beat quickly to underscore her words. “It’s like horses,” she told Melissa. “The darks are like horses, Brand said, and the fast-friends are like horses with riders. But he’s got the first chariot, and the fast-friends will pull him.” She giggled. “Brand showed me a picture of a chariot. And a horse too.”

“A star chariot,” Brand said. “I like the image. Oh, it’s a cartoon analogy, of course, but the math is sound. You can transport matter. Enough of you, locked into a dark screen, can transport a ship this size.”

Melissa floated, staring, shaking her head slowly back and forth. Her silver hair shimmered. “Stars,” she said softly. “Brand, the core… the songs. Freedom, Brand. Like we used to talk. Brand, they won’t… no running… they won’t let us go… can’t chain us.”

“I have.”

And the angel, emboldened by Melissa’s sudden stillness, flew up beside her. In a childish, tentative way, she reached out to touch, and found the phantom solid. Melissa, her eyes on Brand, put an arm around her. The angel smiled and sighed and moved closer.

Brand shook his head.

And the angel suddenly looked up, childish pique washing across her face. “You fooled me,” she said to Brand. “She’s not a horse. She’s a person.” Then, brightly, she smiled again. “And she’s so pretty.”

There was a long, long silence.

The bridge panel slid shut behind him. Robi was waiting. “Well?” she asked.

Wordlessly Brand kicked himself across the room, strapped down, and looked up at the viewscreen. Out in the darkness, in the screen-dimmed gloom, Melissa had rejoined the other fast-friends. They spoke with staccato bursts of color. Brand watched briefly, then reached up to the console and hit a button.

The stars flared cold and bright, and the flanks of Hades shone.

Before Robi had a chance to speak the fast-friends had vanished, spinning space around them, moving faster than the Chariot ever would. Only Melissa lingered, and only for a second. Then emptiness, and the derelicts around them.

“Brand!”

He smiled at her, and shrugged. “I couldn’t do it. We would never have been able to let them outside the screens. They’d be animals, draft animals, prisoners.” He looked sheepish. “I guess they’re not. Not people either, though, not anymore. Well, we always wanted to meet an alien race. How could we guess that we’d create one?”

“Brand,” Robi said. “Our investment. We have to go through with it. Maybe we can use darks?”

He shook his head. “No. We couldn’t get them to understand what we wanted. No. Fast-friends or… nothing, I guess.”

He paused, and looked at her. She was staring up at the viewscreen, with an expression that shrieked disgust and exasperation. “I’ll make it up to you,” Brand said. He took her hand, gently. “We’ll trap. We’re well equipped.”

Robi looked over. “Where’s the angel?” she asked, and her voice sounded a shade less angry.

Brand sighed. “In my cabin,” he said. “I gave her a necklace to play with.”