SHIP: I have taught you about the classical Pandora and her box.

PANILLE: I know how this planet got its name.

SHIP: Where would you hide when the serpents and shadows oozed out of the box?

PANILLE: Under the lid, of course.

—Kerro Panille, Shiprecords

WAELA FELT that she lived only in a dream, unable to trust any reality. She held her eyes closed, a tight seal against the world beyond her flesh. This was not enough. Part of her awareness told her that she was controlling the landing approach of a freighter. Insane! Another part recorded the moments before the suns lifted in the shadow of Black Dragon. Panille was there, too, somewhere low in the shadow. I’m hallucinating.

Hali!

Waela felt anxiety coming from Hali . . . and Hali was nearby. It was an odd anxiety—tension overlain with a deliberate effort to remain calm.

Hali is terribly afraid and even more afraid that she will show it. She wants someone to take charge.

Of course—Hali has never been off Ship before.

Waela tried to move her lips, tried to form reassuring words, but her mouth was too dry. Speech required enormous effort. She felt trapped, convinced that she lay strapped into a passenger couch in a freighter diving toward heavy surf.

A piece of Kerro’s poems floated through Waela’s awareness then, and she focused on it in both fascination and fear, having no memory of where she had heard this poem:

Your course will be true when you sight

the blue line of sunrise, at night

low in the shadow of Black Dragon.

Hali was there, too, listening to the fragment and rejecting it. A wave of emotion rushed over Waela, made her want to reach out and hold Hali close, to cry with her. She knew this emotion—love of the same man. But she saw Pandora very close now—a raging white line of surf. Waela wanted to cringe away from it. She could feel the child in her womb, another awareness whose share of life reached out and out and out and out. . . .

A cry escaped her, but the sound was lost in the abrupt roaring, metal-straining protest as the freighter made its first contact with the sea. For a few blinks, the ride smoothed; there was a gliding sensation followed by a cushioned deceleration and lifting, then a grating, grinding cacophony which ended in a thumping and stillness.

“Where are the people?” That was Hali’s voice.

Waela opened her eyes, looked upward at the ceiling of the freighter’s sparse cabin—metal beams, soft illumination, a winking red light. Somewhere there was a sound of surf. The freighter creaked and popped. Abruptly, it tipped a full degree.

“There’s someone.” That was old Ferry.