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  She shook her head, her green hair sparkled with rainbow highlights. “No, I just said if it makes you feel better, you can think of it that way.”

  “Oh.” I stopped feeling better.

  Titania muttered under her breath. I caught something about “muggle-wumping mundanes”; I’d probably been insulted.

  I pulled myself together. “All right, Titania. We’ve got half the space force we had yesterday and smoking holes in the ground where Buenos Aires and Lawrence, Kansas used to be. If you’ve got something that will help us fight back, I don’t care if it’s Bigfoot, Rumplestiltskin or the Wicked Witch of the West, let’s have it.”

  “Now you’re talking, Peter.”

  I hoped she’d gotten that from the nameplate on my door. She sat down and leaned across my desk. “Okay, here’s what we’re proposing . . . .”

  * * *

  Convincing the senior command group was tough. We had to do a few more demonstrations like Titania’s, what I called her “Tinkerbell trick.” I only called it that once in her hearing; I sported donkey ears for the rest of the day.

  We made spaceships from almost any vehicle that could hold pressure—mostly aircraft, since some of the magic folk didn’t like the iron in submarine hulls. I had asked Titania why they couldn’t just create ships by magic. She’d given me a dirty look and muttered something about “pumpkins” and “midnight.” I didn’t press the point.

  They lined the ships with oak panels—a legion of dryads are owed Earth’s highest honors for what they did to ensure a sufficient supply of oak quickly enough—and loaded barrels of dirt aboard. I didn’t and still don’t understand the significance of all that, but Titania insisted. The gremlins— Titania said they were a kind of boggart, whatever that is—didn’t care, they love technology in their own mischievous way.

  “Titania, how are we going to get those ships to the Eridani?” I’d asked when she’d explained the plan.

  “Oh, that’s the easy part.”

  “Easy? Even if we could lift them all to space, we’ll need a faster than light drive to get to their homeworld. Until they showed up, all our scientists thought that was impossible. Half still do. We still don’t have any idea how to do it.”

  She grinned at me, flashed green eyes, and winked. “Magic, of course.”

  “What, you wave your—“ she didn’t have a wand, “hands and poof, the ships are there?”

  “No, silly. Fairy dust. We sprinkle it over and through the ships, and they’ll fly. And yes, magic will let you go faster than light.”

  “I thought it was called pixie dust?”

  Titania scowled. “That’s another thing Disney has to answer for. Pixies don’t fly.”

  I changed the subject.

  Later, we had two physicists trying to figure out fairy dust, investigating its quantum properties and so on. Bad idea. One ran off to live as a hermit, the other ended up in an asylum, stark raving bonkers.

  * * *

  The plan was simple. We couldn’t hope to win in a frontal assault, and if the Eridani realized we were mounting that level of defense, they’d pull out all the stops and carpet bomb Earth with dinosaur-killers. The Faerie, though, are masters of the hidden, the subtle, and the devastating. It’s fortunate for humans that they usually keep it amongst themselves.

  There’d be a two-pronged counter-attack. Our conventional space forces would put up what resistance they could, with the enemy’s gunners and navigators confused by fairy misdirection and will o’ the wisps. Then there were the gremlins.

  My first meeting with a gremlin had been in my office. Titania introduced us: “This is the head gremlin, call him Murphy.”

  “That’s a joke, right? The gremlin’s name is Murphy?”

  “No, you couldn’t pronounce his real name. I can’t even pronounce it, so call him Murphy.”

  I looked at Murphy, who already had my desktop computer half disassembled. “So what is your real name?” I asked.

  He told me. Titania was right, I couldn’t pronounce it, or even imagine how to spell it. Then Murphy grinned and stuck out his forked tongue. So that’s how he’d made that sound.

  “I’d expected someone, well, furrier,” I said.

  They both scowled at me.

  “Oh. Disney again?”

  Titania shook her head. “Spielberg.”

  We discussed battle plans while Murphy absentmindedly tinkered with my computer. The gremlins would be our behind-the-lines commandos and saboteurs. They’d wreak havoc with enemy control and communication systems. Things would go so wrong as to make our Murphy’s Law look like a rarely-honored custom, yet the damage would seem entirely accidental, unfortunate, and most certainly not the result of enemy action.

  Murphy finished with my computer and reassembled it.

  I gestured at it. “That’s been flaky lately. Did you chase your buddies out, will it work better now?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Sorry, that’s not us, that’s just Windows.”

  * * *

  The plans worked. The second Eridani fleet appeared but soon lost cohesion. Enemy ships wandered off alone to where our defenses could pick them off, some suffered spontaneous catastrophic mishaps, and many of their shots went wild. The third fleet was ragtag when it arrived; by then we already had gremlins in Eridani space. They were enjoying themselves. There was no fourth fleet.

  * * *

  Later, after Titania and I had welcomed back the last of our forces as they landed on the dry Groom Lake lakebed, we stood for a while looking up at the clear desert night sky.

  Titania looked over at me. “I never paid much attention to astronomy, where were the Eridani from?”

  “A star called 58 Eridani, about 43 light years away.”

  She looked up at the sky again. “Where?” She moved closer to me.

  I put one arm around her shoulders and waved the other toward the constellation, toward a loose row of five stars. I pointed. “Second star on the right.“

  “And straight on till morning,” she said quietly. It sounded wistful.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wish you weren’t mortal.”

  “I’ve wished that a few times myself. Mostly in combat.”

  “Oh, Peter, that’s not what I meant.”

  I knew that, but what could I do?

  She turned toward me. “This place is misnamed, you know, Neverland.”

  “Oh?”

  She shook her head. “Never mind, I have to go. Goodbye, Peter.“ Then she kissed me.

  I was still catching my breath when she faded into a cloud of sparkles and disappeared.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Author’s Introduction to “Renee”

  When I first read about the potential Eta Carinae hypernova, I knew I wanted to put it in a story. It was while I was listening to some old music, the Left Banke’s song “Walk Away Renee”, that the ending came to me. The opening scene I had already, following naturally from Jason Curtis's character and the end of his earlier adventure.

  Author Lois McMaster Bujold says she thinks of the worst thing that could happen to her characters, and then does it to them. I did the same with Jason. It was so much fun the story grew to novelette length, and I spent a couple of hours with pencil and paper making sure Jason could really survive . . . but only just. (Hard-SF writers do the math.)

  This story takes place shortly after the events of “Into the Fire”, but you don't have to have read that first (although fair warning, there are potential spoilers in this one). Let's just say that it shows Jason Curtis to be almost as good a pilot as he thinks he is. I say "almost" because he still has that impulsive streak—although that is sometimes a necessary thing.

  There are a lot of tales yet to be told about the Eta Carinae expedition, and not just about Renee.

  RENEE

  (A Jason Curtis Adventure)

  by Alastair Mayer

  The guard at the departure gate checked m
y ID and did a single take. “Jason Curtis?” He looked at me like he recognized me, or the name. Terrific.

  “That’s me.”

  “Aren’t you the guy they hauled out of the Starfire a couple of weeks ago, half frozen to death? Something about a broken climate control?”

  Sigh. “Yep, that was me.” The climate control hadn’t been broken; I’d overridden it. “It’s a long story, you can probably find it online.” I really didn’t want to tell the story yet again, the details were embarrassing. “Had to do with a close approach to a star.”

  “Really? That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

  “Any more iron and I’d be haemochromatic. Look, I’d love to chat”—like hell I would—“but there are people behind me.” Well, only two, but that legitimized the plural. “Are we done here?”

  “Oh, sorry, sure. Go on through.”

  I made my way through to the docking area where my ship, yes, the Starfire was berthed. Both the ship and I were all patched up now and I wanted to get away from Procyon. The friend I’d come here to see had already left; there really wasn’t anything to keep me here. Next stop . . . I really wasn’t sure yet. Somewhere warm, but where I could go outside without wearing SPF 250 sunblock.

  * * *

  By the time I’d cleared Procyon Station I had decided. I contacted departure control. “This is Jason Curtis on the Starfire, breaking orbit and leaving the system, heading for Alpha Centauri. No passengers, no flight plan.”

  “Roger Starfire. Have a safe trip.”

  The formalities taken care of, I themed the ship’s entertainment system to “beach”. After a bout with hypothermia and being cooped up in Procyon Station for a while, I wanted a tropical beach where I could feel the sand in my toes and go outside in short sleeves. Meanwhile I’d have to settle for a beach vid.

  The computer dredged up the expected collection of vids but also a lot of songs by an ensemble named The Beach Boys, from over a century ago. They sang a lot about cars, girls, and surfing. I didn’t get the fascination with cars, perhaps you got to drive them yourself in those days. The interest in girls was obvious. Surfing was something I’d never done. I used to fly aircraft for fun before circumstances forced me to take very early retirement. Those same circumstances left me with enough money to buy my own ship. No, nothing illegal, just a corporate buyout and a golden parachute. But surfing, well, I was willing to give it a try, especially after listening to Mike Love and Brian Wilson singing “Surfin’ Safari”, “Surfer Girl”, “Catch a Wave”, and the rest.

  There are plenty of beaches on the terraformed worlds we’ve found so far, but Kakuloa’s main spaceport was near one of the best. The big moon and long ocean reach make for some great waves. Or so it said in the guide. Kakuloa orbited Alpha Centauri B, and at a shade under four parsecs from Procyon it was just within my range.

  * * *

  I made planetfall at Kakuloa a week-and-a-half later. I didn’t want to stay aboard the Starfire at the spaceport so I checked into the Hotel InterPlanetary near the beach. Kakuloa City isn’t exactly a tourist spot, so the local InterPlan was modest by that chain’s usual standards. Oh, they get tourists, it’s only three days from Earth, but not for relaxing vacations on the beach. There are exotic fauna to hunt and archaeological sites whose builders died out millennia before humans arrived.

  After I’d settled in, I wandered down to take a look at the beach. I hadn’t heard the roar of an ocean in months; it was a nice change from the whir of ventilator fans. I stood there a while, some distance from the waterline, feeling the sand between my toes, smelling the salt air, and watching the waves roll in. There were some small animals playing on the waves, skittering back and forth across the wavefront before it broke. Then my sense of scale corrected and I realized that I was much further from the water than I’d thought. I was looking at humans out there surfing. Those waves were mountainous. I began to have second thoughts about the whole thing and turned away from the shoreline. That’s when I saw her.

  To say she was gorgeous would be to render the word useless for anything else. Perhaps I exaggerate. By the current Rubenesque Earth standards she was skinny; slim and athletic. But I like that look, and on her it looked great. She took my breath away, and I heard myself suck it back in, like Lennon’s sighs on The Beatles’ “Girl”. Tall, tanned, with long, straight, pale violet hair that told me she wasn’t afraid of bodymods for the look she wanted, not what fashion dictated. Self-confidence is sexy. And she was watching me staring at her. Oops.

  She smiled at me. “Hello,” she said, “you must be new here.”

  “Uh, yes. How did you know?”

  “Something malihini about you, and the look of someone who’s been cooped up in a ship for a while.” She extended a hand. “My name’s Renee.”

  I reached out my hand and shook hers. “Hi, Jas—, er, Jay Curtis.” Then my mouth disconnected from my brain and started rambling. “Is there something psychotropic in the atmosphere on this planet? Strange goddesses don’t just walk up to me and introduce themselves. One of us has to be hallucinating.”

  She laughed. “I’m no goddess. Should I be insulted for being called strange?”

  “We’ve been introduced, you’re no longer strange.” My brain kept trying to tell my mouth to shut up, but it wasn’t working. At least Renee was amused.

  “So, Jay, where you from and what brings you to Kakuloa?”

  “Most recently from Procyon, originally Earth.” That was dumb, most people out here were originally from Earth, we haven’t been out long enough for many native-born, at least not adult native-born. “Just visiting, exploring the galaxy, well, T-space, the nearby terraformed worlds, anyway.” Brain to mouth: she’d know what T-space meant. “What about you, do you live here?”

  “Me? No, well, not really. I’ve been on-planet for a while helping to organize an expedition, I’m here at the beach for a break before going back to work in a few days.” She looked out at the ocean. “Do you surf?”

  “I never have. I thought I’d like to try it until I saw the size of those waves.”

  She laughed again. I loved the sound. “They should be calmer tomorrow. There was a storm that passed yesterday. If you’re interested I could give you lessons. Unless you have something else planned?”

  If I’d had other plans, they were just canceled. “No, that would be great, I’ll look forward to it. I’m at the InterPlan just up the beach,” I pulled out my omniphone, “here, let me give you my info.” She keyed her molded wrist omni—all she was wearing other than a bikini—and we swapped contact data.

  “Okay then, Jay.” She smiled at me, her violet-gray eyes twinkling. “I have to run now, I’ll call you in the morning.” She turned and started to jog off down the beach.

  “Thanks Renee, talk to you then,” I called after her. I stood watching, enjoying the view, before turning back to look out at the waves. Wow.

  * * *

  Surfing the next day was a fiasco. I don’t know what the Beach Boys saw in it.

  It started out well enough. Renee had me do some drills balancing the board on a mound of sand so that I could practice getting up and staying on. I felt silly at first, standing on the board, legs apart, crouched, my arms spread. “Hey, this isn’t so bad!” I said, pleased with myself, arms waving madly.

  Renee laughed. “Yes, but the sand’s not moving. We’ll see how you do when we get out there.”

  Before we headed into the water, Renee had me put a band around my ankle, and pressed a button on the board. “That’s a beacon, when you wipe out and the board gets away—”

  “What do you mean, ‘when’?” I smiled as I said it.

  She grinned. “Okay, if the board gets away, after a minute it will guide itself back to you. Let’s go over the controls again. Handgrips here.” She pointed to the rubberized grips on either edge of the board, about a third of the way from the front. “They control the motor. Use it to get out past the breakline, and to get up to speed to c
atch the wave. At that point, release the grips, but you can hold on to the edge of the board if you need to.”

  “Got it.”

  “And then just stand up and ride the wave, I’ll be right beside you.”

  “Sounds good.” Well, that’s what I said. The waves had only died down to about three meters high, still intimidating but I wasn’t about to let Renee know that.

  We waded into the water, flopped down on our boards and started cruising out, the boards’ built-in hydrojets pushing us along. I saw a few surfers, apparently purists, paddling their boards out with their arms. With shoulders that big they could probably pull up trees.

  I wiped out on the first wave, and I’m embarrassed to say it wasn’t the first wave we chose to ride, but the first one we encountered going out. It started to break over me and I immediately forgot whatever it was Renee had told me about getting out over them. Next thing I knew I was underwater, rolling in a maelstrom of water, air, and sand, not sure which way was up. I found my way to the surface and gasped for breath, looking around wildly. My board came gliding up to me like a dutiful puppy dog. I had a strange urge to pat its nonexistent head. Renee sat on her board a few meters away. She looked like she was trying to keep from laughing.

  “Are you all right?” she called.

  “Only injured my pride,” I said, trying to ignore the salt water up my nose and the sand rash on my leg. “Let’s keep going.”

  The rest of the morning was like that. I managed to avoid being stung by a weird alien jellyfish. Renee insisted it was harmless, but I had my doubts. It looked like a Portuguese man-of-war, but three times bigger and with fluorescent green tentacles. Then I asked her if there were sharks (a possibility, the terraformed planets we’ve found seem to have been seeded with Earth life from sixty or seventy million years ago; scientists are still arguing over the who, what and why).