He peered around, trying to get oriented. He made out a tangle of silvery rope, a complex, multi-layered webbing that appeared to stretch around him in all directions. Everywhere he looked, Ghosts slid along the cables like droplets of mercury. And beyond and through it all, a deep glimmering light shone, a universal glow made pearl grey by the depth of the tangle.

He sure wasn’t on 51 Pegasi I-C any more.

Jack Raoul had spent his working life at the uneasy political interface between Ghost and human. In those vanishing days of more-or-less friendly rivalry, governed by more-or-less equable accords, it had been Raoul’s responsibility to ensure that humans knew what the Ghosts were doing, on their vast, remote experimental sites, just as Ghost observers were allowed to inspect human establishments. Mutual security through inspection and verification, an old principle.

But Raoul had soon learned that asking for evidence wasn’t enough. Somebody had to go out there and see for himself - and on Ghost terms. That meant a sacrifice, though, that nobody was prepared to accept.

Nobody but Raoul himself.

So his brain and spinal cord were rolled up and moved into a cleaned-out chest cavity. His circulatory system was wrapped into a complex mass around the brain pan. The Ghosts built a new metabolic system, far more efficient than the old and capable of working off direct radiative input. New eyes, capable of working in spectral regions well beyond the human range, were bolted into his skull. He was given Ghost ‘muscles’ - a tiny antigravity drive and compact actuator motors. At last he was wrapped in something that looked like sheets of mercury.

Thus he was made a Ghost.

Jack Raoul couldn’t live with people any more, outside of Virtual environments. Not that he wanted to. But he could fly in space. He could eat sunlight and survive the vacuum for days at a time, sustaining his antique human core in warmth and darkness. It was odd that he was actually more at home here in a Ghost ship than anywhere in the human Expansion.

‘. . . Jack Raoul.’ The Sink Ambassador swum before him, spinning languidly. ‘How do you feel?’

Raoul flexed his metal fingers. ‘How do you think I feel?’

‘You are as evasive as ever.’

‘Am I on a ship, Ambassador?’ If so it was bigger than any Ghost cruiser he had ever seen.

‘In a manner of speaking. For now, we must ascend.’

‘Ascend?’

‘Towards the light. Please.’ The Ghost rose, slow waves crossing its surface.

Effortlessly Raoul followed.

Soon they were passing into the tangle of silvery ropes. When he looked back, there was nothing to mark the place he had emerged from - not even a hollow in the tangle.

At home or not, he knew he shouldn’t be here.

‘Ambassador, I was under house arrest. How did you get me out of there?’

‘Have you improved your understanding of quantum physics since we last met?’