Aces High

"So vast," she whispered. "So wondrous and vast." The light in the chamber dimmed for a moment, then came back.

"No," Mai murmured. "We shall not do that. There is a sentient being in the ship. And the ship itself is also a living entity. "

The floor of the chamber shook, but the light remained on. Mai spoke again, more to herself than Bre

"To have lived so long without thought… to have wielded so much power without consequence… to have traveled so far and seen so much without realization… this shall change… all change. .."

The eye focused again upon Bre

"Don't mourn, Captain. One of us has given herself to save her planet. The other has given up her race to save… who knows what? Perhaps some day the universe. Don't be sad. Remember us when you look to the night sky; and know we are among the stars, probing, pondering, discovering, thinking i

Bre

The singularity shifter began to throw off sparks. Fortunato slung the pack off his back. He looked down at it, startled. "I'm not doing that. She… it."

They were back on the bridge of Tachyon's ship. The three men stared at each other.

"You succeeded?" Tachyon asked after a moment.

"Oh yeah, man," Fortunato said, collapsing on a nearby hassock. "Oh yeah."

"Where's Mai?"

Bre

"Let's go home," Fortunato said.

After a while, Bre

JUBE: SEVEN

There was a knock on the door. Dressed in a pair of plaid Bermuda shorts and a Brooklyn Dodgers tee shirt, Jube padded across the basement and peered through the spyhole.

Dr. Tachyon stood on the stoop, wearing a white summer suit with wide notched lapels over a kelly-green shirt. His orange ascot matched the silk handkerchief in his pocket and the foot-long feather in his white fedora. He was holding a bowling ball.

Jube pulled back the police bolt, undid the chain, lifted the hook from the eye, turned the key in the deadlock, and popped the button in the middle of the doorknob. The door swung open. Dr. Tachyon stepped jauntily into the apartment, flipping the bowling ball from hand to hand. Then he bowled it across the living-room floor. It came to rest against the leg of the tachyon transmitter. Tachyon jumped in the air and clicked the heels of his boots together.

Jube shut the door, pressed the button, turned the key, dropped the hook, latched the chain, and slid shut the police bolt before turning.

The red-haired man swept of his hat and bowed. "Dr. Tachyon, at your service," he said.

Jube made a gurgling sound of dismay. "Takisian princes are never at anyone's service," he said. "And white isn't his color. Too, uh, colorless. Did you have any trouble?"

The man sat down on the couch. "It's freezing in here," he complained. "And what's that smell? You're not trying to save that body I got you, are you?"

"No," said jube. "Just, uh, a little meat that went bad." The man's outlines began to waver and blur. In the blink of an eye, he'd grown eight inches and gained fifty pounds, the red hair had turned long and gray, the lilac eyes had gone black, and a scraggly beard had sprouted from a square-cut jaw.

He locked his hands around his knee. "No trouble at all," he reported in a voice much deeper than Tachyon's. "I came in looking like a spider with a human head, and told them I had athlete's feet. Eight of them. Nobody but Tachyon would touch a case like that, so they stuck me behind a curtain and went for him. I turned into Big Nurse and ducked into the ladies' room down from his lab. When they paged him, he went south and I went north, wearing his face. If anyone was looking at the security monitors, they saw Dr. Tachyon entering his lab, that's all." He held his hands up appraisingly, turning them up and down. "It was the strangest feeling. I mean, I could see my hands as I walked, swollen knuckles, hair on the back of my fingers, dirty nails. Obviously there wasn't any kind of physical transformation involved. But whenever I passed a mirror I saw whoever I was supposed to be, just like everyone else." He shrugged. "The bowling ball was behind a glass partition. He'd been examining it with sca

"They let you just walk out?" Jube couldn't believe it. "Well, not precisely. I thought I was home free when Troll walked past and said good afternoon as nice as you please. I even pinched a nurse and acted guilty about stuff that wasn't my fault, which I figured would cinch things for sure." He cleared his throat. "Then the elevator hit the first floor, and as I was getting off, the real Tachyon got on. Gave me quite a start. "

Jube scratched at a tusk. "What did you do?"

Croyd shrugged. "What could I do? He was right in front of me, and my power didn't fool him for an instant. I turned into Teddy Roosevelt, hoping that might throw him, and devoutly wished to be somewhere else. All of a sudden I was."

"Where?" Jube wasn't sure he really wanted to know.

"My old school," Croyd said sheepishly. "Ninth-grade algebra class. The same desk I was sitting at when Jetboy blew up over Manhattan in '46. I have to say, I don't remember any of the girls looking like that when I was in ninth grade." He sounded a little sad. "I would have stayed for the lecture, but it caused quite a commotion when Teddy Roosevelt suddenly appeared in class clutching a bowling ball. So I left, and here I am. Don't worry, I changed subways twice and bodies four times." He got to his feet, stretched. "Walrus, I've got to give it to you, it's never dull working for you."

"I don't exactly pay minimum wage either," Jube said.

"There is that," Croyd admitted. "And now that you mention it.. . have you ever met Veronica? One of Fortunato's ladies. I had a notion to take her to Aces High and see if I could talk Hiram into serving his rack of lamb."

Jube had the stones in his pocket. He counted them out into the Sleeper's hand. "You know," Jube said when Croyd's fingers closed over his wages, "you could have kept the device for yourself. Maybe gotten a lot more from someone else."

"This is plenty," Croyd said. "Besides, I don't bowl. Never learned to keep score. I think they do it with algebra." His outline shimmered briefly, and suddenly Jimmy Cagney was standing there, dressed in a snappy light-blue suit with a flower in his lapel. As he climbed the steps to the street, he began to whistle the theme song to an old musical called Never Steal Anything Small.

Jube shut the door, pressed the button, turned the key, dropped the hook, and latched the chain. As he slid the police bolt shut, he heard a soft footstep behind him, and turned.

Red was shivering in a green-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt filched from Jube's closet. He'd lost all of his own clothing in the raid on the Cloisters. The shirt was so big he looked like a deflated balloon. "That the gizmo?" he asked.

"Yeah," Jube replied. He crossed the room and lifted the black sphere with careful reverence. It was warm to the touch. Jube had watched the televised press conference when Dr. Tachyon returned from space to a