Rachel thought sourly, I never get a direct answer unless I coax. Maybe she should buy a patch into a more masculine software. But then she would have to deal with the male narrow-linear perspective, too. There were always tradeoffs.

“Very nice, but what’s that mean?”

Twist a wormhole, twist space, twist time. I suppose.

“You suppose?”

All wormholes can be made into time machines, by moving them around at high speeds. Apparently ringholes, with their angular momentum, even more so. Gödel was right.

“Um. We need more. What about that big library program I bought you?”

I use it to… browse.

“Browse what, porn? I need—”

You have been accessing my routines! And after all my tireless scientific database searchings!

Perfect Erma; primly change the subject, mix in some offended hauteur. “Show us, with color coding.”

On her wall screens the magnetic grappling strands played and rippled like luminous wheat whorls, stirred by a lazy breeze. In the station’s magnetic grasp the ringhole flexed and whirred. The grappler field config had been built out here, far beyond Luna, at the Earth-Luna Lagrange point. For safety, since nobody knew what damage a twisted spacetime knothole could do, on the loose. She watched carefully, as did Fraq, while blue lightning snarled and spat. The ringhole crushed and curdled light, stirring spacetime with a spoon.

Rachel gingerly pulsed Silver Metal Lugger, spilling more antimatter into the chambers. Claire had bought their shared ship the newest tech, and it helped. Now Rachel wished she had brought Claire, rather than Fraq, but there were “diplomatic” issues: the Ythri wanted to establish their way home first. Plus, not enough room for Claire, too, in the crammed deck. The ship kept adding upgrades. Pricey ones.

But even amid this chaos, Rachel was having fun. This was more like surfing than flying. They fought their way down the turbulent grav gradient. The vortex groped for them. Grabbed.

We are on correct curves now. Can proceed. Do remain ready to adjust, Madam Pilot Rachel.

When Erma was scared, she became polite. “In we go.”

This was lots better than hauling dreary comets, which had come to resemble delivering the milk, door to door. She had to do that to qualify to pilot a megatonnish ship around. Danger was never boring.

Then the room… rippled. Stretched. Boomed. Groaned.

She watched sinusoids flounce through the walls without ripping anything, just flapping shiny steel-like waves crossing an ocean.

Her heart pounded. A jittery hum waltzed through her acceleration couch. The couch leather dimpled and puckered as torques warped across it. She could see the rivulets of gravitational stress work across her body, too, like tornadoes a centimeter across twisting her uniform.

Ick. Awk. She reminded herself that pilots didn’t let their fear eat at them, not while there was flying to be done. And reminded herself again. It became a mantra.

She saw that Fraq had assumed his perch-stance of legs and wings. That brought him into his Yth state of aware contemplation. Something like Zen calisthenics, she had learned.