Docking at the Samuel Enderby was more of a pain in the ass than I’d expected it to be, because the captain had singularly failed to tell them we were coming across. The crew were very nice about it anyway, allowing us to land in their hangar and even providing us with stowage for our voidsuits. And when the logistics were dealt with, they escorted us both to the captain’s quarters, where we were received cordially by a man with a biomechanical arm and a woman in medical whites.
They introduced themselves to us as Captain Statler and Dr. Waldorf. And the captain introduced herself as she always did.
“Thou said thou hadst seen the Möbius Beast.”
Captain Statler, an aging man with a Titanian accent, nodded gravely. “Oh yes.” He raised his mechanical arm. “And he gave me this to remember him by.”
“I think you’ll findIgave you that to remember him by,” replied Dr. Waldorf. “He just took the one you had originally.”
“Well, if we’re being precise,” retorted Captain Statler, “a wild harpoon line took the one I had originally.”
Dr. Waldorf looked over a pair of spectacles she wasn’t wearing. “If we’re being precise to the point of pedantry, your own poor judgment took the one you had originally.”
“That isn’t precision, that’s censure.” Captain Statler let out a long sigh. “You see what I put up with.”
Although I had been following all this with the rapt attention necessary to write it down from memory several years later, the captain was less patient. “When?” she asked. “And where? My calculations”—she didn’t saymy quasi-legal machine intelligence’s calculationsfor uncharacteristically sensible reasons—“show that your data are not consistent.”
“Not six months back,” replied Captain Statler.
“Nearer four,” the doctor corrected him.
“It’s more, I’m sure it’s more.”
“Nothing like it.”
Statler glowered. “I’ve had this arm four months. It took you two to build it—”
“Two months? What kind of—”
“But no longer,” A interrupted them, a new sense of urgency in her voice. “No longer than six and no less than four.”
Neither Captain Statler nor Dr. Waldorf were quite willing to commit to this, but the captain took their disagreement with each other as concord with her.
“And this was in the Heart?”
On that much, at least, they agreed.
“Where?”
On this much, they agreed less.
“Nine thousand spinward, and up,” said Captain Statler.
“Counterspinward,” insisted Dr. Waldorf. “And down. And twelve thousand not nine.”
I was beginning to find this vaudeville routine frustrating, and I wasn’t a monomaniac with prophecy on the line. The captain was edging towards frantic. “And you’re sure it was the Beast, not some lesser creature you took for it?”
She had been hoping, I’m sure, for a clear and honestyes. What she got was more of awell…
“I’d never evenheardof the Beast,” Captain Statler admitted. “Until after I met it and I went poking around in the ship’s archives.”
The doctor glanced indulgently in his direction. “Gossiping with the crew more like.”
“A bit of both perhaps. But from what I learned then the creature we met was the Beast for certain.”
“If it exists,” added the doctor skeptically.
Questioning the existence of the monster that had cost her a limb was not a reliable ticket to the captain’s good graces. “If?” She propped her leg on the captain’s desk, her skirts cascading about itlike blood from a slashed artery. “Is this not proof enough? Is your own captain’s arm not proof enough?”
