Cables and hydraulic lines worked. Oh, they stretched and broke and leaked and sometimes froze, but for the most part they worked. And the riggers worked, the human beings who used their eyes to spot trouble and their muscles to correct it; knowing that if they misjudged they might drift into a bubble universe whose very matter was hostile to them.
The sails of the lateral antennas began to skew counterclockwise, coming slightly closer to alignment with the axis of the ship. In response to Daniel’s order, riggers moved across the Sissie’s hull to the capstan at the base of each dorsal mast. Daniel felt through his boots the vibration of pulleys turning, shifting the set of Dorsal One’s lower course as other riggers were adjusting the sails of the antennas behind his in the file.
The effect of Daniel’s order would be to rotate the corvette on her axis instead of skewing her in plane. The Princess Cecile would squeeze between unacceptable gradients instead of smashing directly into one.
Daniel eyed the heavens pressing against the very existence of the Princess Cecile. The Matrix wasn’t hostile, but it was pitiless and vastly beyond the ability of Mankind to conceive, even to the degree that Man understood the universe which had created him.
The Princess Cecile’s transition would come shortly. The astrogation computer had used Uncle Stacey’s logs to determine the course—but the Matrix changed, and a computer could predict but could not feel. Daniel, here on the leading mast-truck of a ship not very different from Commander Bergen’s, was doing what his uncle would have done. If he misjudged, they’d go off course or very possibly disintegrate.
He wasn’t as skilled as Uncle Stacey, of that he was sure. But in his heart Daniel believed his judgment was good enough.
Someone moved on the hull below him. Daniel looked down, gripping the mast with his left hand because the helmet of his heavy rigging suit distorted his peripheral vision. Yes, somebody had just emerged from the forward hatch and was handing his way along by the lubber lines which acted as guides and support for the non-riggers who were forced by circumstances to work on the hull.
Daniel smiled. The only person so clumsy who’d have come out now was Adele. She knew better than to try to climb to him; even if she’d been able to do so without drifting away, there was no room for her here at the peak which he already occupied.
She stopped at the base of the antenna and attached her safety line to an eyebolt, then bent backward to look up. She didn’t signal and he couldn’t see her features through his faceshield and hers; but she was there. She had nothing to offer but her presence nearby, so she was offering that.
Daniel looked at the heavens again. The lights surrounding him, surrounding them all, shivered and changed like the cascading images of a kaleidoscope, each linked to the one before it but utterly different.
The Princess Cecile slid between universes. Her sails blazed. Though the rippling heavens gave the impression of movement, the reality of her change in relation to the sidereal universe was beyond human understanding.
Daniel felt transitions ripple swiftly, each within safe parameters. Once a violet glare shoved against the bubble in which the corvette sailed, but only for a heartbeat; then the Princess Cecile was through the throat, the danger point, and proceeding on a course that an intrasystem scow could’ve navigated safely.
We’ll make it, Daniel thought. Of course. Together we’ll make it again.
He even had mental leisure to wonder what the oracle of New Delphi would be like. . . .
CHAPTER 21
Adele’s only warning that the Princess Cecile had reached the surface of New Delphi came when the plasma thrusters shut off. There was no jolt, no violent buffeting—just silence and an end to the juddering vibration of ions expelled at high velocity to counteract the pull of gravity.
“Ship, this is the captain,” Daniel announced over the common channel. “We’ve landed, but the surface here is sand, not water. We’ll wait ten minutes for the site to cool before opening any hatches. I repeat, ten minutes—and I mean it, Sissies, I’m not having a bubble of molten glass pop and spit through a port. Captain out.”