Thren Valis's Arc

Chapter 8 of 18

The ship hung steady above the nursery floor. Thren watched it hold and let herself breathe. The chamber gave her height. But height was not enough. In the void, her ship would climb and then drift. The magnetic pods pushed straight up against the planet's field. They could not turn. Without a way to aim, the hull would tumble away from every star. Her tubers would go dark. Her colonies would die in the cold. She cut the lift and set the ship down. Then she paced the rows of hydroponic pools, each cradling a plant she had tested. Steering was one problem: keep the ship's face toward a star so the tubers drank light. She needed something that turned toward the sun on its own. She stopped at a pool near the wall. A tall yellow flower stood there, its wide head tilted toward the window. She watched it for an hour. When she moved the light, the head followed. The bloom chased the sun without a single command. Here was a compass that pointed at warmth by itself. Thren dug up the flower and studied its stalk. Cells on the shaded side swelled and pushed the head around. The plant did not steer the ship. But it could tell the ship where the light was. That signal was the missing piece. She carried the flower to the fungal web that bound her colonies. The pale threads spread under the hull like a net, linking every root into one body. She had built that shared circulation to feed her ship. Now she would use it to carry a message. She pressed the flower's stalk into the web and waited. By morning the fungal threads had grown into the stalk. When she swung a lamp across the hull, the flower turned, and the web carried the pull to the pod ring. The pods on the lit side eased their push. The pods on the dark side pushed harder. The hull rotated, slow and sure, until its face pointed straight at the lamp. Thren lifted the ship again and moved the light around the room. The hull followed every time, keeping its face to the glow. She had joined a plant that chased the sun to a ring that could turn. The flower found the star. The web passed the word. The pods answered. Her ship could aim itself at light and hold there. She let the hull settle and sat on the cold floor, shaking. The steering worked. Her ship would not drift blind through the void now. It would find a star and face it, and the tubers would keep drinking. Then she saw the trouble. Each turn cost a burst from the chamber. The pods on one side had to fire to swing the hull. In space, a hundred small corrections would drain her acid store long before she reached home. She had a ship that could steer. She did not have one that could steer for the whole journey.