If he turns, he'll see a planet.

It's not a small planet, either. Kronos, the sixth planet from the sun, is one of the gas giants, and it earns the name; this close up Randolph Carter is getting a particularly good view of its famous rings. And one of its moons.

You can't hear sound in space, but if he could, there might be a crashing noise somewhere.

Cool. Cool cool cool. 

He wishes Pickman were here. Pickman would want to paint it.

As it is, it's beautiful and a pleasant distraction from the fact that he has no idea how oxygen is getting to his bloodstream. Of all the things to die looking at, this is definitely in the top hundred and fifty. (This is not an insult to Kronos. Carter has seen a lot of very beautiful things.) 

Carter would think something like "I should really spend less time floating in the middle of the void being grateful that I can somehow still breathe" but he absolutely doesn't think that. He thinks he's living his best life and, possibly, dying his best death.

He's not dying his best death! He is actually bizarrely not dying.

(Humans need Culture to survive in space, of course. For an ordinary pilot, you'd need a ship-self's tidal resonator to provide the gravity for humans and Culture to not fall apart. Randolph Carter, however, is not an ordinary pilot.)

And then he can feel-- something. It's a little bit like he's standing on a sheet of rubber, and something very, very heavy is on the rubber not too far from him. It's not pulling him towards it, not quite, it isn't nearly as big as Kronos-- but it's big.

OK, so he should probably go either towards or away from the heavy thing on the rubber. Glad to have his options narrowed down. 

He touches the silver key in his pocket. He could try to use it to go towards or possibly away from the heavy thing. Last time he did it it dropped him here, which isn't a point in favor of the plan. On the other hand, if he doesn't do something, he's going to spend the rest of eternity floating in orbit around this very pretty planet, which he doesn't particularly fancy, even though the planet is very pretty.

He squeezes it and tries to go towards the heavy thing, since it seems to want him there. 

He lands on Kronos's nearest moon. Daphnis is a small thing, hardly even worthy of the name moon; there are buildings on it, all of them abandoned. The pressure here is strong. Carter can feel it in his eyes, on the sides of his skull.

(He remembers this place feeling cramped and anxious and terrifying. No, he doesn't, he remembers how special it felt to be one of the ones chosen to come at all. No, he doesn't remember the Daphnis labs in any way in particular, he's never been here at all.)

But Daphnis has an atmosphere, still, and so Carter can hear the crash of something large through a building.

Aaaaaa!

Okay.

He is going to get AWAY from the loud crash.

[Is he? 

That's cute.

That's also weird.

What's he doing here?]

He's human-scale, and Pluto is not, and is even less so now than she's ever been before. He can try to run from the crashing buildings if he likes, but even if he doesn't, none of the debris ever seems to get close enough to hurt him.

And it feels almost like something in the lab is laughing at him.

[Hello,] says the massive thing on the rubber sheet, from everywhere and nowhere, the impression rippling through gravity.

Oh, this again.

"Greetings, Great Old One. I'm Randolph Carter."

...

......

.........

All around the Daphnis lab there's a peal of giggling. Not in a mean way! It's just, nobody's ever had that particular assumption about her, and a lot of people have assumed a lot of things.

[Gosh! Nix said the Krun Macula would feel like being a god but I didn't think it would be this fast. I'm Pluto!]

crash.

There's someone else here. Not just Pluto.

CRASH.

Oh lord there are two of them. 

Well, his life expectancy is measured in minutes anyway.

"I am a seeker after magic and forbidden lore."

Abruptly the crashing stops.

[im sorry youre a what after what now]

"I wander the universe looking for things man was not meant to know and powers man cannot comprehend?"

[what like a wandering wizard in a story from when we were kids or]

"Uh, yeah, almost exactly like that actually."

The Great Old One was a kid who read stories about wizards?

[huh. sorry pluto i know we were gonna fight but this is WAY weirder]

[I'm not offended!]

[right cool. well fight later dw im not giving up this quick]

[so seeker of magic forbidden lore secrets etc howd you get on daphnis and have you found any]

"Well, I think you guys qualify. And I got here through the Silver Key, which allows me to control time and space. Uh. In theory. In practice it mostly just drops me off in random places."

[wait we what now]

[i dont THINK im a forbidden lore]

[...i guess i am literally in a stolen prototype made in secret but come on that so doesnt count]

"Ma'am you are talking in my head without sound."

[thats not magic thats gravity]

[human projections into spacetime etc etc. physics]

[and pluto has more of it than some metropolitan areas but like so do you, thats how you can read it off the narrative in the first place]

"On my home planet, gravity doesn't make you telepathic. I think."

[i mean yeah on earth it doesnt bc theres everyone elses gravity and also like a whole planet. youd crumple. so would a ship-self]

[but were in space]

[the rules are different]

[The rules aren't different. There's just more room to breathe.]

[im not saying the MATH is any different im saying things work differently]

"On my home planet gravity doesn't cause telepathy in space either. I think."

[huh. weird.]

Through the... gravity? Whatever mechanism Carter is hearing this through, he gets a distinct sense of intellectual fascination. Like Saturn's found a REALLY cool puzzle and now she wants to poke it until it falls apart.

[what planet are you from anyway, here the only planet with people on it is earth]

[And Ares.]

[the ares-to-mars terraforming effort failed babe. anyway i was asking the wizard]

Randolph Carter is capable of feeling terror for as much as five minutes as a time before it's replaced by fascination, as it just has been. 

"My home planet is also called Earth. I imagine this is a pretty common name for one's home planet. It looks like--" He's going to try to throw them a map of Earth through the telepathy.

[We can't read minds, that isn't how it works.] Pluto has the patient air of someone who has to explain this a lot.

[Earth here is blue and green, mostly water, with seven continents and four major oceans and one moon, which was called Luna before we terraformed it.] (A swell of pride under we.) [In order the planets are Hermes, Aphrodite, Earth, Ares, Zeus, Kronos-- that's the one Daphnis is orbiting around-- Ouranos, Poseidon, and the pseudoplanet Hades marks the edge of the solar system.]

"We have seven continents, four major oceans, one moon, nine planets. No pseudoplanets as far as I know. The names your planets have been given correspond to certain deities in Greek mythology-- Greece is an ancient civilization in our culture. Our planets are named after their equivalents from Rome, another civilization. Poseidon at minimum actually exists, I've met him, but the others might also be running around." Stealing his city.

[every planet here has its greek name until its terraformed and then we use the roman one]

[the exception is earth which is earth and its hypothetical humanless version would be terra, and the moon which was luna until it was colonized]

[so i think we're from the same earth or different versions of the same earth which is SO COOL YOU HAVE TO TELL ME EVERYTHING WHAT DO YOU MEAN GODS EXIST]

[........at the celestial mechanics base probably or mercuryll be so mad]

[At the Cradle's Graces base, you mean.]

This is probably an alternate version of his earth. Unless gravity works much more weirdly than he expected, in which case it can be his earth's future. To be fair, lots of things work much more weirdly than he expected.

"Sure! You should probably take me to the base. --Uh, what's terraforming?"

[Oh, no, we're on different sides. I can't actually let Saturn do that. Sorry, I hope you'll understand <3.]

"Are you ladies going to fight over me or can we come to some kind of agreement?"

[uh i mean we are kinda at war]

[We don't have to be. We both want to keep the dream of space alive.]

[It's only your boss I can't forgive.]

"I'm kind of worried about the fighting because some debris might land on me."

[We'll be careful. I promise.]

And above the buildings rises the Krun Macula.

It's enormous, and it feels even bigger than it looks. By volume it barely fits in the Daphnis complex. By tidal mass there are moons smaller than Pluto's ship-self. It's supermassive enough to warp local spacetime, and incredibly gentle-- or she would have destroyed Saturn and Carter and the whole complex without even trying.

The String of Pearls, by contrast, is still large for a human, but it's tiny for a ship. Quick and sharp. She moves like a liquid, like a cartoon, flitting away as soon as the Krun Macula realizes where she is. Or she would, if it weren't for the wrapper gauze still clinging to her limbs. As it is the Krun Macula's grip is on her before she can twitch.

"You know, I really was surprised to see you like this!" 

"Cool, right? I've got poison now, too. Wanna see if you're still the top weirdo psychic mutant in space?" 

"I'd love to! But I'm not sure you're ready yet."

"Wanna bet?"

"Sure!"

And the String of Pearls buckles and screeches as the dust ignites and a tiny fraction of Pluto's tidal forces slams into her. The noise is like Saturn got hit in the stomach with a brick, magnified by a thousand. 

If there's any debris, it doesn't come near Carter.

"Had enough?"

"NO!" 

"Mm, okay, we can turn it up!"

She does. Saturn makes another loud gut-punched sound.

"You're the one who wanted to show off, you know," Pluto tells her, more than a little condescending. "You don't have to do that to endear yourself to me. But if you really want to impress me, you're going to have to do better than that."

Saturn doesn't answer. Not in words, anyway. But there's a flash of bright pink, searing through space, searing itself into the Krun Macula. The electrotoxin in the String of Pearls' claws seeps even through metal.

"--well, alright, I guess I am a little impressed." Another pulse of gravity. "You gonna be good now?"

Those are giant robots. 

They're giant robots fighting each other. 

They're shooting things at each other and Randolph isn't sure he knows what they are. 

What the fuck, this is awesome.

Fuck YEAH they're giant robots. Saturn has had this job for like an hour and a half and she fucking loves it. This is the most worth-it trouble she's ever caused in her life.

Her response to the pulse of gravity is a sound best transcribed as "guhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

But after a moment to recover from... all of that... the String of Pearls nods her assent.

"So why are you here anyway," Saturn says. "Because you didn't know Carter was here any more than I did, and as Cradle's Graces' glittering psychic death machine you definitely have better things to do than bully me for no reason."

"Oh, right, Iapetus and the fleet are escaping, aren't they?"

"Hope you don't mind having fallen for it."

"Silly. I know you're more important than that."

"....more important than catching the Celestial Mechanics fleet."

"I knew this'd be fun! And I wanted to see if you knew what you were even doing with that new machine of yours."

Correction: they're people in giant robots.

Randolph wants to fly a giant robot. How do you get to do that. 

"Are you gonna stop me from keeping it?"

Pause.

"...but you don't want to? Hey, stop prying into me, it's rude."

Another pause.

"If you're pitying me I'll make you regret it."

"Winning here isn't the most important thing for me to be doing. You either. And you're still not who I'm worried about."

"You know," Saturn says, and begins to prepare the String of Pearls for launch, "I might still make you regret it."

"Aw, babe, there's nothing you can make me regret!" 

And Pluto turns, and the supermassive Krun Macula offers Carter one of its enormous stigmata'd hands to climb onto.

Okay he will climb onto the giant robot's hands.

He's lifted up towards the cockpit, the entrance to which is on the Krun Macula's neck.

Pluto is sitting in the pilot's chair, which looks out through the top of Krun Macula's single veiled eye. The cockpit has fewer buttons and switches than you'd expect given piloting and mostly is done up like a room; either hanging plants and the color red bear some significance to the piloting of giant robots, or Pluto just really likes them. 

"How do I learn to pilot a giant robot?"

"Depends! I trained my whole life to be able to fly Krun Macula, Saturn stole the String of Pearls a few hours ago but she's been a candidate pilot since we were kids, and the first generation of pilots all learned as teenagers.

You'd probably want to ask Nix when we get back to Ares, she ran the original training program."

"What kind of skills make someone a good candidate pilot?"

Hopefully the answer is imagination, tactics, languages, or an immunity to making good life decisions, because Randolph only has so many skills.

"The things that bring people to space in the first place. Idealism, or not having a place on earth, or wanting a new body so bad you'd rather build it out of plastic than live in your old one."

...that sounds familiar.

"What about loving beauty so much that you'll be willing to give up anything just to see what you love again for a moment?"

"I don't know of anyone who came to space for that. But it sounds like it'd do it."

He closes his eyes and imagines that a bud on that one hanging plant over there is in bloom.

The bud doesn't bloom. Tidal force doesn't work like that, however strong your gravity might be.

"Well, it's not dreaming, but it sounds like it might require-- some of the same way of thinking."

"Dreaming?"

"On my home planet, when some people sleep, their minds travel to a land called the Dreamlands which is a land of-- archetype, imagination, beauty, myth. Some people who are particularly imaginative can shape the Dreamlands themselves."

"Oh, Doctor Nix is going to love you."

And whatever Pluto was going to say after that is interrupted.

"Hello, ma'am," Randolph Carter says.

Luna-Terra was going to open with a fired hard-light arrow. Make the first move, force Pluto to respond on her terms.

But she doesn't know this voice, and that throws her off. From Carter and Pluto's position in the Krun Macula, her ship-self looks like a plastic toy, child-scale despite the spear in its hand and the ever-bleeding wound on its chest.

"Luna-T."

"Pluto."

She sounds nothing so much as tired.

"Can we delay the combat a bit and give me more of a sense of the political situation? I'm from a different solar system."

"A different--"

She cuts herself off.

"Guess I should have known better."

(She does not clarify what she should have known better than.)

"Anyway.

The pilot program was an international effort to fight the Existential Threat, more colloquially known as aliens. We can't understand them, we can't perceive them, they barely exist, and insofar as they do exist Pluto wiped them out years ago. So the space program was decommissioned, and Earth wants us back."

[Running from your feelings won't make you stop having them, Luna-T.]

"One year ago Memorial Foundation announced the end of the space program. That they were bringing everyone back to Earth, no matter how little they fit, no matter what they'd built up here or what it would do to them to be back in Earth's gravity. So Cradle's Graces declared independence."

If Luna-Terra even hears Pluto's imprints on gravity, she doesn't respond in kind.

"Yes. We've been at a stalemate since then, except that about three hours ago it turned out the Celestial Mechanics research branch of the Foundation broke about four different treaties and looked into technology they very much shouldn't have, when one of their pilots stole their prototype and made off with it."

[Because Earth and Halimede can't abide the possibility that anyone could learn to live without them.]

"We're offering as much forgiveness as possible," Luna-Terra continues, "but they've already been classified as part of the Existential Threat, and the grace period Earth gave Memorial Foundation to get everyone back down as gently as they can is about to be over."

"Why can't people stay up here if they want to? Do-- asteroid mining or whatever."

"Earth only barely thinks we're human at all. They've already declared Celestial Mechanics a part of the Existential Threat; if we stay up here they'll decide we all are, and then we'll have a real war."

"I-- don't want to make too many assumptions about how your physics works but if it works similarly to the physics in my solar system, if you have a war between people in space and people on Earth, the people in space are going to win."

Luna-Terra laughs, sort of. It isn't funny. You couldn't hear that laugh and think that she thought it was funny.

"How much do you know about ship-self combat?"

"Absolutely nothing, it's not a thing in my solar system."

"Right. So ship-selves-- they're not designed for real combat, and they were never made with practicality in mind. 'Death defeats the purpose of conflict, which is how humans communicate and change; death and war end conflict, while the Ship-self signals the transformation of conflict from suffering to love--' Pluto can quote you the rest, I'm sure she's spent enough time around Doctor Nix.

But Nix and Europa designed ship-selves, not Earth militaries, and Earth uses autonomous weapons that don't have anything to communicate except a bullet in your brain. If Earth and space get in a real war, we all die." 

"That's only true because you've already given up."

"In my home solar system you can just drop a big rock on the Earth from space and it'll smash whatever you drop it on."

"No. Absolutely not."

"I would recommend dropping it on an uninhabited area first."

"Is there some part of no you don't understand?"

"Luna-Terra didn't say anything!"

'Stunned into silence' doesn't happen to Luna-Terra very much. It's a weird look on her.

"We're not doing that," she manages to say.

"Sorry. Just thought I'd bring it up."

"There's-- combat, in space. But not-- it isn't--"

Deep breath.

"It's more like an argument. Nobody dies."

"So... if Earth declares war on you they can just argue with you really hard?"

"If Earth declares war on us, we can make them fight with us on space terms, except that Luna-Terra has decided to be so much of a defeatist that she'll fight for a cause even she doesn't even believe in--"

"I'm being an adult."

There is some kind of subtext here he doesn't understand. 

"Adulthood is very overrated."

"Maybe it is, but someone still has to do it."

"That doesn't mean it's a good thing, or a thing you should have to do unless you have to."

"Cradle's Graces is going to love you." She's more than a little wistful.

"I guess you guys have picked my side for me."

"Oh, I didn't say I'd picked your side."

"Really? You're not just trying to scare me? We're actually, finally, for real, going to have a fight about it?" 

"I support a fight! Fights seem fun to watch."