Free Nova by Samuel Delany Page B

more.
    "Have you thought of anything that you'd like to do?" This from his mother.
    "Ashton Clark will send me something. Right now I've got to go pick up my crew." He stood up from the hammock. "Mom, thanks for the stones. We'll talk about vacation when school is really over."
    He started for the bridge that arched the water.
    "You won't be too ..."
    "Before midnight."
    "Lorq. One more thing."
    He stopped at the crest of the bridge, leaning on the aluminum banister.
    "Prince is having a party. He sent you an invitation. It's at Earth, Paris, on the Ile St.-Louis. But it's just three days after the Regatta. You wouldn't be able to get there— "
    "Caliban can make Earth in three days."
    "No, Lorq! You're not going to go all the way to Earth in that tiny— "
    "I've never been to Paris. The last time I was on Earth was the time you took me when I was fifteen and we went to Peking. It'll be easy sailing down into Draco." Leaving, he called back to them, "If I don't get my crew, I won't even get back to school next week." He disappeared down the other side of the bridge.
     
     
     
    Pleiades Federation/Draco (Caliban transit), 3162
     
     
    His crew was two fellows who volunteered to help him unpack the ion-coupler. Neither one was from the Pleiades Federation.
    Brian, a boy Lorq's age who had taken a year off from Draco University and flown out to the Outer Colonies, was now working his way back; he had done both captaining and studding on racing yachts, but only in the co-operative yachting club sponsored by his school. Based on common interest in racing-ships, their relation was one of mutual awe. Lorq was silently agape at the way Brian had taken off to the other end of the galaxy and was beating his way without funds or forethought; while Brian had at last met, in Lorq, one of the mythically wealthy who could own his own boat and whose name had, till then, been only an abstraction on the sports tapes— Lorq Von Ray, one of the youngest and most spectacular of the new crop of racing captains.
    Dan, who completed the crew of the little three-vaned racer, was a man in his forties, from Australia on Earth. They had met him in the bar where he had started a whole series of tales about his times as a commercial stud on the big transport freighters, as well as racing captains he had occasionally crewed for— though he had never captained himself. Barefoot, a rope around pants torn off at the knees, Dan was a lot more typical of the studs that hung around the heated walkways of Nea Limani. The high wind-domes broke the hurricane gusts that rolled from Tong across glittering Ark— it was the month of Iumbra when there were only three hours of daylight in the twenty-nine-hour day. The mechanics, officers, and studs drank late, talked currents and racing at the bars and the sauna baths, the registration offices and the service pits.
    Brian's reaction to continuing on after the race down to Earth: "Fine. Why not? I have to get back into Draco in time for vacation classes anyway."
    Dan's: "Paris? That's awful close to Australia, ain't it? I got a kid and two wives in Melbourne, and I ain't so anxious for them to catch hold of me. I suppose if we don't stay too long— "
    When the Regatta swept past the observation satellite circling Ark, looped the inner edge of the cluster to the Dim, Dead Sister, and returned to Ark again, it was announced that Caliban had placed second.
    "All right. Let's get out of here. To Prince's party!"
    "Be careful now ..." His mother's voice came over the speaker.
    "Give our regards to Aaron. And congratulations again, son," Father said. "If you wreck that brass butterfly on this silly trip, don't expect me to buy a new one."
    "So long, Dad."
    The Caliban rose from among the ships clustered at the viewing station where the spectators had come to observe the Regatta's conclusion. Fifty-foot windows flashed in starlight below them (behind one, his father and an android of his mother stood at the railing,