From Small’s console came dim voices, cloaked in static, from untold miles away: “Lightfall 1 calling Cetus 7. Lightfall here. Inbound from twelve years out. Cetus 7, do you read?”
My God, I thought, another spacecraft.
Quell’s voice touched my thoughts. “Impossible. In all these billions of miles of space. What are the chances of meeting—”
“Another spaceship?” I asked aloud.
“This is Lightfall 1,” came the voice again. “Shall we hang fire, Cetus 7?”
Men were running to the main deck from every direction, crowding around monitors.
“Cetus 7, request permission to approach, link, and board.”
“Yes!” cried the crew.
“No!” thundered the captain.
“Cetus 7, please respond.”
The captain instructed Small to open a communications channel to the other ship. “Lightfall 1, this is Cetus 7. Permission denied.”
“*Cetus 7—*please confirm: permission denied? Do I read you?”
“You do,” our captain replied.
“But my men, Captain, listen to them!”
And over the open communications channel we hear a grand clamor from the other ship, a few thousand miles off.
“Damned fools at nursery games,” said our captain. “There is no time. No time!”
“Time?!” said the voice from Lightfall 1. “Why, for Christ’s sake, that’s all there is in space! God has a plentitude of time. And I? I am full of long years wandering and news of strange stars and terrible comets.”
“Comets?” our captain cried.
“The greatest comet in the universe, sir!” said the commander of Lightfall 1.
“Stand by, then,” our captain said. “Permission to come aboard.”
We watched on the viewscreens as the Lightfall 1 approached. Both ships reached out mechanical arms and grasped each other as friends. There was a dull thunk as the linkage was complete, and within the hour the Lightfall 1’s captain stepped aboard the Cetus 7 and saluted.
“Jonas Enderby here, of the Lightfall 1.”
He stepped out of the airlock, and from behind him came a dozen or so crew members of the Lightfall 1—dark, light; male and female; short, tall; human and alien—glancing about them. We smiled in welcome, eager to hear their story.
Later, in the communal mess, Commander Enderby raised a glass to our captain, with whom he sat at the center table. “To your health, sir. No, mine. My God, it’s been nine months since I’ve had an honest-to-God drink. I’m with child! And that child is thirst.”
The Lightfall commander drank.
“More!” he demanded.
“More, yes,” our captain said. “And then speak.”
“Would you like to hear of comets?” said Enderby of the Lightfall 1.
“I am tuned to that,” replied our captain, a bright light glinting in his eye.
We all inched a little closer, as close as protocol would allow, to listen.
“God sickened in my face,” said Enderby. “I am not clean yet. For it was the greatest, longest, brightest—”
Our captain cut in. “Leviathan?!”
Enderby gasped. “You know it?”
“You tracked it then?”
“Tracked it, hell, it bled me white and cracked my bones! I only just escaped with my life.”
“Ah,” the captain cried. “Do you hear, Redleigh?”
Enderby continued. “I do not mean to stretch the joke. It tried me, sir. It swallowed me, my ship, and crew in one great hungry gulp. We lived in Leviathan!”
“In! Hear that, Redleigh? In!”
The Lightfall 1 commander went on. “You do make it sound jolly, sir.”
Our captain stood, all stony silence. “I meant no offense. Of all people, I well know …”
“And jolly it was!” Enderby continued. “What else can one do when stuck deep in the belly of the beast? We danced a rigadoon in Leviathan’s gut!”
“And yet—you’re here!”
“Sir, it could not stomach us! We poisoned it with laughter. All round within it we rose, we fell, we rose again, mystified by Fate, hysterical with chance. We fired our laughs like cannons at its heart!”
The captain shook. “Laughter? Dancing?” he wondered.
And Enderby of the Lightfall 1 touched his right eye. “Yes! Though before it took us into its maw, it spoiled my sight and killed this eye. See? Pure forge-cast Irish crystal. Glass! I swear. Shall I pluck it out and play at marbles?”
“No, no. Let it be,” our captain said with a sigh. “I believe you.”
“I see you do,” Enderby replied. “Leviathan did blind me once, but completed only half the job. It would have destroyed my other eye, if it’d had the chance. But we raised such a riot that Leviathan suffered sickness and spat us out back unto the stars!”
Our captain seized Enderby’s arm. “Where?”
“Ten million miles beyond the outermost circumscape of Saturn’s transit.”
“Do you hear that, Redleigh?” our captain cried. “It is still on course!”
“Course?” The Lightfall 1 captain laughed. “What course? Do you think it knows what it is doing, where it is going? How can chaos be plotted, planned, coursed? Where is that gin? I need another drink.”
Redleigh stepped forward and doled it out.
“My charts are right and true,” said the captain, grabbing Redleigh’s arm and spilling gin in the process. “I will go to meet that ghost!”
“On my recommendation?” Enderby said, astonished. “Did I make it sound too bright? Hell.” He shook his head. “Here’s to caps and bells and rollicking tunes. Here’s to Leviathan and you, sir. May you cap its bile as it spits you out. God will that it may spit you out.”
“We must be away, and now,” the captain said, his brow glistening with sudden sweat. “All hands, on deck!”
Enderby stood and said, “But Captain, can we not stay a bit longer? My crew would do well for some more time with new faces, new friends, news of home. We are weary, and dry as sand.”
“My thirst is greater,” the captain thundered. “We must be off.”
Enderby drained his glass and slammed it on the table. “To hell with you, sir! Go on your fool’s mission, if that is what you choose.”
Enderby stood, and motioned for his crew to follow. They wound their way through the corridors to the airlock doors, donned their suits, and left.
In moments, Lightfall 1 and all its crew were gone, lost again to soundless space.