assistance?â
I pulled my dressing gown tighter around me andhoped she hadnât been looking at me when I didnât have anything on.
âYou can call me Alice,â I said. âWhere are we now?â
âFrom the perspective of an observer in normal space, we are occupying several points in the universe simultaneously, Alice,â said the Helen .
âUm . . . ?â
âBut on our present course, if we reentered normal space, we would have just passed through the orbit of Neptune.â
âOh,â I said, equal parts awed and disappointed. âMaybe, on the way back, could we see Neptune?â
âNeptuneâs orbit is nearly three billion miles across,â said Helen. âBesides, it is quite dark. The sun is so far away, it is little more than a bright star.â
âBut it would be amazing to see something so huge just lit by starlight,â I said.
Helen seemed to consider for a moment. âYes, I suppose you are right,â she said, sounding surprisingly wistful. âAnd apparently Neptune is a very bright blue. It would be well worth seeing. But the Captain sets the course.â
I opened the bedroom doors. No one was about. I set off down the passage, padding over theunderfloor lamps in my fluffy slippers. I still had Helen for company.
âSo heâs programmed you where to go, and you have to go that wayâbut heâs not . . . flying you right now?â
âThatâs right,â Helen agreed.
âHow can you see where youâre going? I mean, I know space is big, but what if we . . . knock into something?â
âWe are passing through objects all the time!â said Helen happily.
âOh!â I said, and shuddered.
âI know,â sighed Helen . âThe Captain is such a genius.â
I was about to remind her that it was the Morrors whoâd invented the technology, but then decided it wouldnât be tactful.
âSo long as we donât come out in the middle of a star, I guess,â I said. âOr a Vshomu swarm.â
Iâd never been in a spaceship big enough to get lost in before. I passed through a restaurant, a gym, a garden of orchids and tiger lilies. I stepped briefly into a Morror conservatory long enough to look at the strange tall spirals of the red and blue plants, and the globular tank full of rainbow swimming things with many legs, before dartingout again, yelping at the cold.
It was all so empty. We were such a small group for a ship designed for hundreds of tourists.
I stopped at a window and watched the eerie ripples of hyperspace flowing past, and remembered what Josephine had said. Traveling like this was very, very expensiveâeven traveling like this for fun . The Morrors had only ever done it for survival. It wasnât very surprising the EEC hadnât helped Rasmus Trommler very much with the Helen of Troy . They had Earth to rebuild.
I wandered into a lift and let it carry me to an upper deck.
At first it wasnât much different from downstairs; luxurious and sweet smelling and empty. But then I found a room with golden statues of mythical-looking ladies with no clothes on (except for flowing hair and seashells and the like), gathered around a slightly pointless pond. And after that there was a lounge with old-fashioned star maps hanging on the walls, along with framed copies of various magazines with Rasmus Trommler grinning on the covers.
And over the little stage area, a hologram map of a star system hung, transparent and glowing.
I hadnât spoken to Helen for a while. âIs that Aushalawa-Mo raaa ?â I asked. There were twelveplanets, swinging around their star. I tried to remember how many planets were in the Alpha Centauri system. The Morrorsâ new world wasnât really a planet; it was a moon orbiting a gas giant, and I couldnât see anything on this map that looked quite like that.
Maybe it was more branding from the Taking You
Hundreds of Years to Reform a Rake