Cassita

"Friends are born, not made" ~Henry B. Adams

Louie woke. He was lying on a soft surface in a small room dimly lit by a red light. His mouth was very dry but otherwise he felt okay. He sat up carefully. Most of the room was in shadow, but from what he could see he was in a small cabin.

There was an open doorway and he stood up and walked over to it and then peered out into a corridor. A short way to his left he could see the room with the ramp leading outside. Opposite him was another door, and there were two more to his right. Beyond them the corridor ended in another ramp heading upwards, presumably towards the windowed blister that he had seen from the outside. Light was spilling down the incline, and he made his way towards it.

The ramp was short and he emerged into the centre of a wide round room - the bridge, Louie supposed. The room was circled by the windows he'd seen from the outside with a control panel set beneath them, studded with screens and controls. Cassita was examining one of the screens, but looked round as Louie entered.

"Are you feeling better, Louie Gage?"

"Yes thanks," replied Louie. "Although I really need a drink of water."

In reply, Cassita glided effortlessly down the ramp and returned a minute later with a beaker. Louie took it gratefully and drank deeply.

"Do you need more?" said Cassita.

"No, this is fine I think - sorry about passing out."

"There is no need to apologise. Is losing consciousness a common stress-response for your species?"

"Not really - I mean people do it, but I don't think very often," Louie said. "I mean I've never done it before."

"Ah," replied Cassita. "That is reassuring. As an evolved survival technique it would appear to have some drawbacks, Louie Gage."

Louie smiled, not entirely sure if this was a joke or not. Did robots make jokes? "You can call me Louie."

Cassita nodded. "You have learnt conlang very well, Louie."

"Thanks - it seemed quite easy to be honest."

"That is a large part of its design."

Louie looked around the room. For the bridge of a spaceship, it was not particularly impressive and had a rather utilitarian look - functional rather than sophisticated, and a bit run-down. Only one section of the control panel looked new, and the surrounding area was stained with what looked suspiciously like burn marks. "Is this where you control the ship from?"

"Indeed," said Cassita.

"And it can really go faster than light?"

"That is a reasonable approximation - but your own craft presumably has similar capabilities?"

Louie laughed. "I wish - I don't have a ship."

"But you must have arrived in one?"

"Not really," said Louie. "I just sort of appeared here I think. It's all a bit weird."

Cassita looked at Louie for a moment. "Can you clarify?"

"Well, sort of. I mean I don't know what actually happened, but I was on my planet and something went wrong - there was an accident or something - and then I was here."

"So your arrival was not a deliberate act?"

"I don't think so," said Louie, reminded of his suspicions about CERN. He looked around for somewhere to sit. There were no chairs, so he sat on the deck with his legs hanging over one of the edges above the ramp. "If it was, no one told me about it."

"I can configure a seat for you," said Cassita.

"No, this is fine," replied Louie, taking another sip of water. "The way I got here - is it something you know about? Can you do it in reverse to get me home again?"

Cassita seemed to consider the question before replying. "Your experience, as I understand it, is unique. There is no known technology that would account for it and certainly none that we have control over."

Louie considered this news, unsure of the implications. "Can you get me home at all? Can you take me on this ship?"

"This ship is designed primarily for short-range journeys, so it is unlikely to be an appropriate choice," said Cassita. "In addition, we will need to try and establish where your planet is."

"So you don't know?"

"No - your species, as far as I am aware, has not been encountered before."

Louie sighed and slumped forward. Cassita was quiet, but Louie sensed the machine watching.

"I am sorry," said Cassita, breaking the silence. "This information must be disappointing for you."

Louie roused himself and sat back up. "Well, it's not your fault."

The truth was that he felt close to tears. It would be easy just to let go and cry. Every time he thought that he might be close to getting home, it seemed that it was snatched away from him a moment later, leaving him feeling depressed and foolish.

"Perhaps," said Cassita, "if you told me more about this accident that occurred, I might have better news."

"Do you think so?"

"As I have said, what you have described is unheard of, so it is hard to quantify the likelihood of any particular outcome."

To Louie, this sounded like a polite way of saying 'No', but he didn't really see he had any option. Nevertheless, he was reluctant to start. The events on the bus were still painful - a dull bruise that he treated tenderly and with respect.

"There's not really a lot to say. I mean, I think it was to do with cronium, because... well, I've ended up here," he said, indicating the planet outside.

"That is a reasonable hypothesis," said Cassita. "Please, continue."

Louie picked up the beaker of water, but found it empty. "Sorry, could I have some more," he said, holding out the cup.

"Of course."

Cassita took it and soon returned. Louie had a drink and then did his best to recount the story of his arrival. When he had finished, Cassita asked "So you are involved with particle research?"

"Me?" said Louie, rather surprised at the idea. "No. We were just visiting CERN. It was a school trip."

Cassita visibly twitched at this. "I'm sorry. Can you clarify?"

"Well, it was an educational visit," said Louie, mimicking the phrase from the permission slip his parents had signed. "Everyone in my class went."

"How old are you, Louie?"

"Well, I'm a young adult I suppose. An adolescent."

Cassita stared hard at Louie for a moment before speaking. "Excuse me - I must reconfigure some of my protocols."

Cassita was silent and still, and Louie wondered what was going on inside that brightly-coloured metal shell. Was Cassita just another robot like the caretaker? If so, it seemed a much more sophisticated creature. Talking to Cassita was almost like talking to a real person, but that didn't mean anything, he supposed. He'd have to ask.

Without any warning, Cassita suddenly flexed and roused itself from its self-imposed immobility. "The required adjustments are complete," it said.

"Is everything okay?"

"Indeed," replied Cassita. "However, your information was unexpected and it seemed better to realign some of my priorities and interfaces to more closely match the situation. May I confirm - you are a juvenile and your race does not have inter-stellar travel. Is that correct?"

"Yes - well we got to the moon," said Louie. "And we've sent out probes and stuff."

"But your race does not know about cronium?"

"I don't think so - I mean they're always finding new particles and things, so I suppose it's possible, but I've never heard of it."

"Then this situation must be very unexpected for you," said Cassita.

Louie gave a short bitter laugh, "That's a bit of an understatement."

"Do you think you might be able to find the exact location where you appeared?"

Louie considered this. "I think so - I left some markers. The rain's probably washed some away, but even without them I should be able to recognise some of the places."

"Would you be prepared to try?" asked Cassita. "The location may be rich in cronium deposits. You are not obliged to assist of course, but both I and my employer would be grateful."

"Oh," said Louie. "No, that's fine. I'm happy to try and help - when did you want to go?"

"There are still several hours of daylight left - perhaps you would like some food first and then we could leave after that?"

"Fine."

Cassita showed Louie some aerial maps, and the pair did their best to work out the route Louie must have followed. By the time they had finished, Louie was more than ready to eat.

"Do you have your gencard?" asked Cassita.

"My what?" asked Louie. The word was new to him and it took him a moment to realise what Cassita was talking about. "Oh, the food card?"

"Yes."

"No, I left it in the sanctuary. I didn't want to lose it - it really hurt making it."

"I'm sure it did," said Cassita. "Needless to say, it is not something I've experienced myself. I will instruct the caretaker to retrieve it. The nutrimat - the food machine - on this ship is more sophisticated than the one in the shelter... There, it is done. It will bring it shortly."

Louie hadn't seen Cassita move or do anything and wondered what sort of communication had taken place.

"I'm sorry," he said. "But you're a robot like the caretaker, aren't you?"

"We are both mechanical constructs, yes," replied Cassita. "However, I am an inorganic intelligence whereas the caretaker is just an artificial one - an AI."

"What's the difference?"

"Essentially, I am sentient, but AIs are not. The caretaker is a machine, pure and simple. It has no sense of self or the ability to form subjective opinions.

"And you do?"

"Oh yes," replied Cassita. "For example, I have formed the subjective opinion that I rather like you, Louie Gage."

At that moment, the caretaker entered the room, carrying the card. It handed it to Cassita and then left. Cassita passed the card to Louie.

"Follow me, please."

They went down the ramp, Cassita leading and Louie following, and entered the first room on the right. Cassita pressed something on the wall and lights came on.

The room was fairly large but was oddly proportioned at the far end, where, Louie assumed, it accommodated the shape of the outside hull. Various storage lockers and equipment ran along the walls, and the centre of the room was taken up by a large piece of machinery, connected to the ceiling by pipes and braces, and suspended above a round table. The machine bore an obvious similarity to the nutrimat in the sanctuary, including a bowl set into the table. However, it was more elaborate in design and, as well as the bowl, there were several outlets and chambers that the other machine had lacked entirely.

"There is a slot there for your card," said Cassita, pointing to a panel. "However, the machine will have no record of your species and it will take sometime to define suitable recipes. There are of course a wide range of pre-programmed foods, but they would almost certainly poison you. With only one exception that I know of, no alien can safely eat food derived on another planet."

"Oh," said Louie, inserting the card. "So no steak today then?"

"Meat is an available option, naturally." said Cassita.

"Really?"

"Yes - you have no taboos in that respect?"

"As long as it's cooked, I'll try it," said Louie.

Cassita was busy with the machine for several minutes. Once satisfied that it was operating correctly, the robot fetched a squat cylinder from one of the storage cupboards.

"Is this an acceptable seat?" it asked.

"It looks fine," replied Louie. "So, is this one of your jobs? Picking up people who need rescuing, I mean?"

"From sanctuary shelters? No - it's not a frequent occurrence. By chance, I was in the region on unrelated business and picked up the assignment. "

"They don't get used much then - the shelters?"

"Hardly ever - they are intended for the pilots of the ships should there be an accident during collection. They are rarely used."

"Not many accidents, then?" said Louie.

"Oh, several - just not many survivors. Ah, your meat is ready."

It wasn't quite what Louie expected. The 'meat' was extruded from a tube like lumpy toothpaste, steaming and pale pink, but it tasted delicious.

"This is fantastic," said Louie enthusiastically. "How come meat is easy?"

"Well, obviously your genome encoding is held on the card, so the machine can use that to produce a synthesised sample of your muscle tissue."

Louie stopped chewing rather suddenly.

"This is human flesh? This is me?"

"Essentially, yes - is there a problem? You informed me that you had no taboos."

At this point, Louie wasn't really able to answer. He was trying to decide whether he could face swallowing the half-chewed lump that was in his mouth, or risk offending by spitting it out. In the end, rising nausea forced the issue and he discretely spat it out into his hand and slipped it back onto the plate. The taste in his mouth, which had been so delicious a few seconds before, now seemed to be an oily residue coating his teeth and tongue.

"Sorry, could I have some more water?" he whispered, "and possibly one of the containers you put in there," he added, pointing to the bowl in the centre of the nutrimat.

He pushed the pale sausages to one side while Cassita fetched some water and passed him a blue dish from a recessed rack.

Louie put the bowl in front of him, hoping he wouldn't need it, took a sip of the water and concentrated on not being sick, as well as trying not to think about what he had been eating. Unsurprisingly, it turned out to be rather hard to think of anything else, but he managed nevertheless to keep his nausea under control and the bowl went unused.

"I apologise," said Cassita. "I should have been more specific."

Louie laughed - or did his best to. "I should have been less stupid. Wow... I just ate a bit of me. Apparently I taste like pork."

"Pork is an acceptable meat?"

"Well, it was - to be honest I think I just became a vegetarian."

With the meal rather abruptly over, Cassita led Louie back through the ship to the room he had seen at the top of the entrance ramp. Along with some large and complicated-looking machines, there were several storage areas, as well as bits of equipment, large and small, lashed into place against the walls. One of them was plainly some kind of vehicle, with three large wheels and a body made up of a flat base and a tubular framework.

"Are we taking that?" asked Louie, pointing at it.

"Too dangerous. Unlike myself, it is unshielded. This area is relatively free of cronium - it's why it was chosen as a refinery site - but out in the open desert we could easily run into some and set off a storm in an unprotected vehicle. Particularly," Cassita added, "as cronium deposits are exactly what we are looking for."

Cassita began to open various storage compartments and examine their contents. It selected a series of straps and clasps and tubes and, working quickly, soon fashioned a framework that it attached to its body.

Louie laughed when he saw what the machine had done. "You want me to ride on your back?"

"Indeed."

And so they set off.

The climb down the pipe was slightly less alarming than the climb up had been. Not only did Louie have fewer concerns about what was happening, but the sight of the ground getting closer was less startling than the sight of it getting further away. Cassita climbed down backwards, mostly using its various arms with the long tail of only marginal help. One arm was spared to keep a grip on Louie, although he was fairly safe in his harness-like saddle.

"Normally," Cassita explained, "I would wind my way down head-first, but then normally I don't have any passengers."

They reached the bottom without incident and took a moment to adjust Louie's seat before setting off. Louie looked around, but could see no sign of the bag with his t-shirt that had been abandoned when he'd first arrived here.

The saddle was attached to the machine's upright torso, and they moved off at a fairly gentle pace. Louie watched intrigued as the undulating tail left behind a series of grooves in the plain. These were not S-shaped, as Louie expected, but straight and lay at right-angles to the direction they travelled. In addition, Cassita's tail did not stretch out behind them, but off to one side.

"Are you comfortable?" asked Cassita.

"Very," replied Louie.

"I will go faster - let me know if the motion becomes unpleasant for you."

Slowly, Cassita increased the pace - first to the equivalent of a fast jog, then a sprint and finally to a speed that would have left any human runner far behind. Louie, sitting high on Cassita's back, felt the wind against his face and hooted with laughter.

"When you make that sound - are you laughing?" called Cassita over his shoulder.

"Yes," Louie shouted back. "Is it common?"

Cassita, rather alarmingly, turned its entire head around so that it was looking directly at him. "Relatively, although the way it expresses differs from species to species. It would appear to be an interrupted defence mechanism."

"I honestly have no idea what that last bit meant," replied Louie, "but this ride is great."

Cassita turned its head back round to face forward and they travelled on.

"Did you paint yourself?" asked Louie after a while.

"Yes," replied the machine.

"I like it."

"Thank you. I normally choose something more formal. I'm not sure this suits me."

Louie laughed again. "Sorry, I'm not laughing at you. I just never thought I'd be riding on the back of a fashion-conscious robot."

By late afternoon, they had reached the foot of the hills and began to look for where Louie had climbed down. At first, it seemed they would have no luck, and it was with a distinct sense of relief that Louie finally spotted the two rocks and, rather bashed about by the rain, the small pile of stones higher up, marking the spot where he had found water.

Although there were still a few hours of daylight left, Cassita suggested that they stop for the night. The machine made a bivouac from a square of canvas and some telescopic poles and passed Louie some thin pads of material to serve as a mattress and blanket. Cassita spent some time taking soil samples. Louie, his appetite having finally returned, ate some food and watched.

"Find anything interesting?"

"Nothing significant. The initial surveys indicated that this region had very low concentrations of cronium, so this was not unexpected."

"Don't you mine anything else?" asked Louie.

"On isolated planets? No other material that would justify the costs involved in extracting and then transporting it," said Cassita.

"So what is cronium?" Louie asked. "You use it to travel faster than light, right?"

The machine hesitated. "That... is approximately correct."

"And correctly correct?" asked Louie.

Cassita finished taking samples, and came over to join Louie. "Does your race understand the behaviour of physical matter as it approaches the speed of light?"

"You mean relativity?" said Louie. "I think so. They showed us a program about it in school."

"So you are aware of the implications with regard to interstellar travel?" asked Cassita.

Louie did his best to recall some of the details, although his clearest memory was of a photo of Albert Einstein, hair askew with his tongue sticking out, which didn't seem particularly helpful. "I don't think you can go faster than the speed of light."

"Correct," replied Cassita. "Any attempt to do so would result in one's mass becoming infinite."

Louie nodded. He had now remembered a further detail. "And something weird happens to time as well - it slows down the faster you go."

"That is also correct, and a critical part of the cronium-shift," said Cassita. "A journey might only take a few days from the perspective of the traveller, but to a stationary observer thousands of years could pass."

"And cronium stops all that happening?" said Louie.

"Not at all."

Louie was nonplussed. "So how does it work then? Five words or less, what does cronium actually do?"

Cassita paused for a moment before answering. "Would seven words be acceptable?"

Louie laughed. "Sure."

"It lets you travel back in time," said Cassita.

And after that, a stunned Louie could think of nothing more to say.

The sun began to set a few minutes later, turning the hills to a warm and rich ochre. The sky dimmed to a deep purple and then black and, as the stars began to come out, Louie lay on his back and stared up at them. Cassita was still, but an occasional click or hum came from somewhere in the machine's torso.

"What's that noise your making?" asked Louie.

"I am running a maintenance routine - is the sound disturbing you?"

"No, it's fine - I was just curious. So which one will we go to when we leave?"

"I'm sorry?" said Cassita.

"Which star?" said Louie.

Cassita looked up and then pointed to the south-east. "Over there. It will rise in about an hour."

"What's it's name?"

"The sun is called Brecher, and our destination is a planet called Taurog."

"What sort of place is it?" asked Louie.

"The gravity, atmosphere and temperature are compatible with your biology."

"That's a relief," said Louie. "But I was thinking more about what it was like as a place."

And so Cassita did its best to answer Louie's questions. Taurog wasn't a particularly advanced planet, and was considered something of a backwater by the rest of the galaxy. However, many of the nearby systems had large deposits of cronium, and consequently it was home to many aliens as well as the local population.

"And what's this planet called," asked Louie, looking around and surprised that he hadn't thought to ask before.

"Unofficially it is referred to as Jormungand," explained Cassita. "Officially, since this system is not inhabited, it has no name and nor does its sun. Brecher is the nearest named star, so this planet's sun is designated Brecher-2, and the planet is Brecher-2-1."

"And why Jormungand," asked Louie.

"I do not know," said Cassita. "Things are named and the reasons are forgotten."

Louie felt suddenly exhausted by the day's events and yawned helplessly. "Sorry Cassita - I need to sleep."

"Then sleep, Louie. I will wake you at sunrise."

Louie watched the horizon where Cassita had pointed, wondering if each star that rose above it was his next destination. And then he slept.

In the morning, Louie ate some breakfast while he and Cassita inspected the hills.

"I do not think I can safely carry you," said Cassita. "Are you happy to climb?"

"Sure," said Louie, and so they collapsed the bivouac and packed it away, and began to make their way up.

"Are there any animals on this planet?" asked Louie as they started the ascent. "I've only seen a tiny plant."

"None," replied Cassita. "It is very rare for even the simplest life to develop on planets with any cronium deposits. The plants you saw are exceptional and probably had their origins elsewhere." Cassita hauled itself up onto a ridge and then reached out an appendage to help Louie. "If you had arrived on any other known mining planet, you would have died almost instantly from the lack of oxygen."

"Lucky me."

"Indeed," said Cassita.

After that, they didn't talk much as Louie was soon sweating from exertion and had little energy for conversation. They reached the summit after a couple of hours. Cassita scanned the eastern plain and then pointed.

"I believe I can see the place you described," it said.

Louie looked hard, but could see nothing. Cassita led the way and they began their descent.

It was an awkward climb - at least for Louie, since nothing seemed to give Cassita much trouble, who glided up and down or between the boulders and rubble like a ghost. Louie clambered and slithered and tried to avoid catching an ankle in a gap or crevice, and admired Cassita's skill. Cassita, for its part, helped Louie across some difficult patches that would otherwise have required lengthy detours, and they soon reached the base of the hills.

They reassembled the harness and attached it Cassita's back, who held out a hooked appendage for Louie's foot, and the boy swung himself up into the seat.

"I'm ready," he said, and they were off.

The ground hissed by and the wind stirred on his face. Louie settled into the rhythmic motion and tried to put his worries and questions aside. The ride to the arrival site wouldn't take long, and he wanted to enjoy it.

It was mid-afternoon when they got there. Everything seemed smaller than Louie remembered - the cairn he'd built, the rocks, the hollow on the hill. His first water-still was gone without a trace, but the note he'd written and the chalk marks were still there. He ran his fingers over the fading letters.

"Is anything the matter?" asked Cassita.

"Not really," said Louie, turning away from the rock. "Just thinking."

He showed Cassita exactly where he'd woken up, and the robot began to take samples, moving outward from the hollow in a wide spiral. Louie sat and watched, and ate some food and had a drink. It wasn't long before Cassita had found whatever it was looking for, and hurried back to Louie.

"I am afraid I have found no clue as to the nature of the accident that brought you here. However, we must leave." Cassita looked at the cairn and the chalk markings. "You left these?"

"Yes," said Louie. "We're going already?"

"There is a very high concentration of cronium in the area. The risk is unacceptable." Cassita helped Louie to mount. "We shall return to the hills - they were relatively safe."

And without further preparation, they were off. Louie looked behind, feeling that the whole visit had been rather anticlimactic. When they reached the eastern foothills, Cassita set up the bivouac. "I must thank you for your help. The deposits will be very valuable."

"That's okay," replied Louie. "How come they missed this spot before?"

"Locating cronium deposits is a very risky process. It cannot be detected by any conventional means. The only way to know whether a particular sample contains any is to try and provoke a reaction."

"Isn't that dangerous?"

"It should be fatal every time," said Cassita. "However, the very properties of cronium that make it so hazardous also provide a solution."

Louie was intrigued. "Go on."

"Cronium appears to be entangled with its own timeline and will respond to a stimulus it has not yet received. Put simply, it tends to start reacting slightly before it has anything to react to."

"You're joking?" said Louie. "You mean you threaten it and see if it puts its hands up?"

"That is a reasonable analogy," said Cassita. "The actual process is to aim an electron gun at the sample, and set it to go off via a micro-timer. The process is configured so that, if the sample reacts, the reaction will disable the gun before it has a chance to fire."

Louie laughed. "But that's ridiculous."

Cassita seemed to acknowledge this with a bob of its head. "It does violate certain principles of causality, it is true. However, the violations are on such a small physical scale that they can be accommodated as quantum artefacts."

Louie felt out of his depth again, and Cassita, perhaps sensing this, dropped the subject.

As evening fell and the stars came out again, Cassita told him more about what was waiting for him when they left Jormungand. It was confusing. There was no huge galactic civilisation - just a chaos of planets, species, cultures and civilisations, all with their own laws and practices. In some ways, thought Louie, it sounded a bit like Earth, but on a larger scale and with more tentacles.

Space travel appeared to be important, but not critical. Cargo was limited to complex or valuable items, since it was generally too expensive to ship raw materials or anything that could be easily made locally. However, travel for either business or pleasure was an important function, as was communication in general. No method had been found to send a transmission any faster than light, and so if you wanted to get a message or information to someone, it had to be physically delivered by a ship.

"And are there many like you?" asked Louie. "Inorganic intelligences, I mean."

"Relatively few - we are very expensive and difficult to make."

"And are you..." Louie was slightly nervous about his next question. "I mean, when you've been made, what happens then? "

"I do not understand what you want to know."

"Well, if you're made, do you belong to someone? Do you have to do what someone else wants?"

Cassita seemed to consider this idea. "It is complex. There are certain mandated constraints on my behaviour - against murder and other acts of unprovoked violence for example. Apart from that, I am not forced to do anything, but then I don't need to be. I am a conscious entity, but my needs and behaviour are consistent with my intended purpose - as far as I can observe that may be a perfectly adequate description of any intelligent being."

Louie laughed. "You're probably right." It was late by now, and he yawned. "G'night, Cassita."

"Goodnight, Louie Gage."

The next morning they climbed back to the top of the hills. It was still fairly early when they reached the summit. They took a short rest and were just about to start climbing down the other side when Cassita jerked to attention and pointed off to the south-east. "Cronium-storm," it said.

At first Louie couldn't see anything - the land and horizon in that direction seemed no different than elsewhere. "Where am I looking?" he asked.

"Ten degree below the horizon. Look for a blur."

Louie found it. At first glance you could have mistaken it for a sandstorm, but it glowed with an odd light, and flickered like a shoal of fish.

"Are we safe?"

"The storm is small," said Cassita. "It will die out soon. This is not a planet-wide event, although they can occur."

"What happens to all the refineries?"

"They are inevitably destroyed. A repair crew would then be sent to salvage the materials and rebuild them... Ah. It has stopped."

The blur had indeed vanished and they turned away and began the climb down the other side of the hills. Once at the bottom, Louie remounted Cassita's back and they reached the cliff a few hours later and made the ascent to the refinery.

"You should collect any belongings you wish to take with us," said Cassita.

"You mean we're leaving now?" said Louie.

"You would like to remain longer?"

"No," said Louie. "Not really." He looked around. It wasn't a home, but it was familiar, and the thought of all the unknowns waiting for him was a disorientating prospect. He took a deep breath. "I'll go and get my stuff."

There wasn't much - a few things from his pockets that he'd left on one of the boxes, including the plastic bags and the Mario key-ring, and the metal disc that the caretaker had given him after taking his flint, and that was it. He scooped them up and then went and joined Cassita in the storage area on the ship.

"Should I say goodbye to the caretaker?"

"It would be meaningless to it," replied Cassita. "But if you feel it would be appropriate, by all means. I will summon it."

The robot arrived a few minutes later. Louie held out a hand, and the caretaker - presumably under Cassita's silent order - extended an appendage and shook it.

"Goodbye," said Louie, feeling rather foolish.

The robot left and Cassita depressed a switch and there was a thump as the ramp was raised and locked into place. The machine went over to the tubes and materials that they had built the harness out of and began selecting several bits and pieces. "For a seat," it explained.

They went into the main part of the ship and Louie dropped off his few things in the cabin he had first woken up in, and then joined Cassita on the bridge. The robot had already assembled a chair for him and had secured it to the deck.

"Do I need to sit down?"

"Not yet. Turbulence is not expected and the acceleration will be mild."

Engines began to thrum and Louie felt the deck vibrate gently. A sudden burst of dust obscured his view for a moment and he felt rather than saw the first moments of their ascent. They soon rose through the cloud thrown up by their take-off and Louie watched as the refinery walls slid past and then disappeared beneath them.

Slowly, as they rose, the curve of the planet became visible and the sky darkened. Stars appeared. "Wow," said Louie. "It's just... wow."

"There will be some acceleration now," said Cassita. "It won't be too extreme at first and it will be mainly downward, but you might want to sit or hold onto something all the same."

Louie glanced down at the panel that ran along the bottom of the window. A bar ran around it, anchored at regular intervals. "Can I hold onto this?" he asked.

"Of course."

Louie gripped the bar, Cassita pushed forward on a control, and the ship shot upwards in a graceful curve. The planet disappeared from view, and, as the acceleration slowly increased, Louie carefully made his way to the seat that Cassita had made for him and fell clumsily into it, unable to take his eyes away from the view outside.

After a few minutes, Cassita finished with the controls and turned to Louie. "Our course is locked in. We will be accelerating for several days now - will you be able to move around?"

Louie tentatively stood up again, straining slightly against the extra weight. The force was downward, so at least he wasn't in danger of suddenly falling to the back of the ship. "I think so - I'm sure I'll get used to it anyway."

He made his way to the window and peered out at the stars that lay scattered across the dark swell of space. "It's beautiful."

Cassita glanced out. "I myself am indifferent to it, but it is refreshing to see it through another's eyes, so to speak." The machine reached out and touched a control, dimming the lights in the room. The stars shone brighter than ever and Louie stared and stared.

"I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight," he said, almost beneath his breath, wondering if he would ever get used to seeing something so extraordinary.

"I'm sorry?" said Cassita.

"Nothing," said Louie. "Just a poem."

And the ship fell on through the endless night.