"You figured out how to control the ghost-particle array?"
"Not entirely. There are circuits I cannot trace till they activate. But the machine is on my ship, and it is a machine, and, well, it is on my ship, so I suppose it is just a matter of time."
Daphne smiled, sharing his emotion, and delighted to see him so happy. She pointed at the now-blank mirror that had been focused on Atkins. "You really like him, don't you?"
Phaethon looked a little surprised. She knew he did not have many friends in the Golden Oecumene, and few men he admired. He said, "Yes. Actually I like him a great deal. I'm not sure why. We're opposites. I am a builder and he is a destroyer."
"Not opposites. Two sides of the same coin. And you both wear spiffy armor."
He laughed out loud. Then he said, "My system checks are almost done. Helion has returned to his tower, and has generated a low-pressure area in the plasma below us, a whirlpool to carry us down toward the core, and he is pulling most of the energy in this magnetic hemisphere to run the force lines parallel to our line of motion, in order to minimize resistance." Two mirrors to his left and right lit up. The one on the left showed an X-ray picture of the plasma below, with . a vast swirl of darkness and relative coolness yawning beneath them, a slowly turning red-lit well of inconceivable fire.
The mirror on the right displayed an upper image. Here, like a tiny arrowhead of gold, hung the Phoenix Exultant beneath the slender bridge of the Solar Array lateral dock. Down from space loomed a titanic pillar of flame, directly above the black well, and centered on the Phoenix. This column stretched far into space, and majestically curved to the east. It was a prominence, with one foot atop the sunspot beneath the Phoenix, the other atop the sunspot's magnetic sister to the east. This prominence was created by plasma trapped in the magnetic field lines Helion had torn from the sun's huge aura and pointed down vertically here.
The sunspot below was larger than the surface area of most planets; the prominence held up an arch beneath which giant planets could have passed with room to spare. The mirror also carried a sound of sinister hissing; this was a representation of the noise of the wash of particles descending through the vertical tornado of the prominence, and ringing against the invulnerable hull.
"So," said Phaethon. "We are almost ready to cast off. See? We are just waiting for the currents creating the tornado below us to build up more energy. Shall we celebrate the launch?"
She blinked. "Did you say 'celebrate' ... ?" "Of course! It is the Night of Lords! Transcendence Eve! A time of high exploits and splendor. What shall we have . .. ?" He signaled for his servants. "Champagne ... ?"
Daphne said, "Do you think that is appropriate? We might be about to die!"
"Better to die in style, then, isn't it?" She looked at him, and narrowed her emerald eyes. "I know what it is. You're free. After three hundred years of building and dreaming and working and doing, this ship is finally ready to fly. Oh, I know that over the last day or so, she's been flying. But she was not owned by you, then, not really. And it was Atkins at the controls, not you. And you had Hortators to worry about, or missing memories, or someone trying to stop you. Well, no one is trying to stop you now, are they?"
"If you don't count the unthinkably evil and super-intelligent war machine sent out from a dead civilization for incomprehensible reasons, which I am about to descend into hell in an unarmed and completely open ship to go confront, exposing the woman I love and my whole civilization to horrid danger, why, except for that, no, I'm fine! Who would care to stop me?"
"Don't you think we should be more gloomy? I mean, considering the circumstances? The heroes in my stories always make grim and noble speeches, saluting wan sunsets with bloody swords, or blowing last defiant trumpet blasts from empty battlements when they are going off to die."
He held up his delicate glass to toast her, and the light sparkled mirthfully along the dancing bubbles in the wine. "But I am not the hero here, my dear. Ao Aoen, just before my Hortator trial, told me that. I am the villain. And I think I am going to prevail against this Nothing Machine. That hope and confidence delights me; nor do I believe that fate is more cruel to those who fret than she is to those who laugh. And so I laugh. Comic-opera villains always vaunt and gloat, do they not?"
And she laughed too, to see him in such good spirits on the brink of such deep danger. Daphne said, "Well, if you are the villain, lover, who is the hero?"
"You mean heroine. Yes. Who else? Born in ugly poverty among the primitivists, tempted by wild hedonisms in her youth, sultry Red Manorials and mysterious Warlocks; then for a moment, married, and yes, happily, to a handsome (if I may say so) prince: but then! Cruelty! Evil fairies! She wakes to discover it is all a dream. That she is no more than a doll and plaything of an evil witch, who has stolen her prince and name and life! The witch kills herself and the prince goes into exile. Who is brave and fair enough to save him? Who else but Daphne? Our heroine risks everything to save her man, embraces exile and poverty, survives being anywhere near a gun-happy Atkins, finds him, turns him back from being a toad, and voila! He gets his ship back and he, at least, lives happily ever after. I, of course, am still hoping you will share that life and happiness: but I do not seem to recall you actually answered my proposal, did you?" "Yes."
"Yes, what? Yes, you agree to wed me, or yes, you didn't answer the question?" "Yes!"
"Which yes?"
But, at that moment, the disembarking klaxon sounded, and their thrones grew up around them to embrace them in protective layers, and so he did not hear her answer.
The Phoenix Exultant closed hatches, shut valves, withdrew fuel arms and tethers, paused, and then dropped like a falling spear down from the dock into the swirling madness of the whirlpool of fire underneath.
The pressure was at once inconceivable, and the mir-rors on the bridge grew dark. No outside view was possible, by light or radar or X-ray, because the density of plasma was so great, at once turning the medium opaque.
The great ship was being pulled downward between two granule currents. The hot substances, a thousand miles to her left and right, were flowing upward, and a relative layer of coolness was pulling her irresistibly down and down.
Daphne said, "Why does it look dark? Aren't we entering the upper layers of the sun?"
Phaethon said, "We are presently passing from the photosphere to the convective zone. This is one of the cooler parts of the sun, the outer fifteen percent of the core. There are more ions in the plasma outside than occur more deeply, and they are blocking the photon radiation. Most of the nuclear heat here is being carried by convection currents. But the mirrors are dark only because the environment is homogenous. Lower, we should achieve a different ratio of gamma and X-ray radiations, we can formulate some sort of picture. Here ..."
A mirror lit to show a darkness interrupted by a vertical white line. The line trembled slightly, "What's that?" "A view from my aft cameras, an ultra-high-frequency picture. That line of fire is the discharge from the main drive. I might be able to adjust the picture to make the turbulence caused by our wake visible. The rest of the picture is black because our sun does not generate any cosmic rays at this high wavelength. My drive is hotter than our environment, which is why the plasma is not rushing backward into the drive tubes."