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collective mind. It would become a part of her, and a part of all their progeny to follow.
    The Mothergraves had told him – in the ritual words – that knowledge and discovery were great offerings, unique offerings. That the opportunity to interact with beings from another world was of greater import to her and her brood than organics, or metals, or substances that she could machine within her great body into the stuff of skiffs and sails and other technology. That she accepted his suit, and honoured the courage with which he had pressed it.
    And that was why the duty was a burden. Because to be available for the aliens while they made the repairs – to play liaison (their word) – meant putting off the moment of joyous union again. And again. To have been so close, and then so far, and then so close again –
    The agony of anticipation, and the fear that it would be snatched from him again, was a form of torture.
    A’lees came outside of the alien skiff in her pressure carapace and sat in its water-poisoned circle with her forelimbs wrapped around her drawn-up knees, talking comfortably to Stormchases. She said she was a female, a Mother. But that Mothers of her kind were not so physically different from the males, and that even after they Mated, males continued to go about in the world as independent entities.
    “But how do they pass their experiences on to their offspring?” Stormchases asked.
    A’lees paused for a long time.
    “We teach them,” she said. “Your children inherit your memories?”
    “Not memories,” he said. “Experiences.”
    She hesitated again. “So you become a part of the Mother. A kind of... symbiote. And your offspring with her will have all of her experiences, and yours? But... not the memories? How does that work?”
    “Is knowledge a memory?” he asked.
    “No,” she said confidently. “Memories can be destroyed while skills remain... Oh. I think... I understand.”
    They talked for a little while of the structure of the nets and the Mothers’ canopies, but Stormchases could tell A’lees was not finished thinking about memories. Finally she made a little deflating hiss sound and brought the subject up again.
    “I am sad,” A’lees said, “that when we have fixed our sampler and had time to arrange a new mission and come back, you will not be here to talk with us.”
    “I will be here,” said Stormchases, puzzled. “I will be mated to the Mothergraves.”
    “But it won’t be” – whatever A’lees had been about to say, the translator stammered on it; she continued – “the same. You won’t remember us.”
    “The Mothergraves will,” Stormchases assured her.
    She drew herself in a little smaller. “It will be a long time before we return.”
    Stormchases patted toward the edge of the burn zone. He did not let his manipulators cross it, though. Though he would soon enough lose the use of his manipulators to atrophy, he didn’t feel the need to burn them off prematurely. “It’s all right, A’lees,” he said. “We will remember you by the scar.”
    Whatever the sound she made next meant, the translator could not manage it.

 
     
    DRIVE
     
    James S. A. Corey
     
     
    A CCELERATION THROWS S OLOMON back into the captain’s chair, then presses his chest like a weight. His right hand lands on his belly, his left falls onto the upholstery beside his ear. His ankles press back against the leg rests. The shock is a blow, an assault. His brain is the product of millions of years of primate evolution, and it isn’t prepared for this. It decides that he’s being attacked, and then that he’s falling, and then that he’s had some kind of terrible dream. The yacht isn’t the product of evolution. Its alarms trigger in a strictly informational way. By the way, we’re accelerating at four gravities. Five. Six. Seven. More than seven. In the exterior camera feed, Phobos darts past, and then there is only the star field, as seemingly unchanging as a still