A clear childish voice spoke. “This is Candida Two, Candy,” it said. “Candida One, I need your confirmation.”

It was no voice F. C. Stone knew, and it seemed to come from the screen. Her eyes turned to the mug of kivay. Perhaps she was in a state of altered consciousness.

“Candida One!” the voice said impatiently. “Confirm that you are conscious. I will wait ten seconds and then begin lifesaving procedures. Ten, nine, eight …”

This sounded serious. Coffee poisoning, thought F. C. Stone. I shall change to carrot juice or cocoa.

“… seven, six, five,” counted the childish voice, “four, three …”

I’d better say something, thought F. C. Stone. How absurd. Weakly she said, “Do stop counting. It makes me nervous.”

“Are you Candida One?” demanded the voice. “The voice pattern does not quite tally. Please say something else for comparison with my records.”

Why should I? thought F. C. Stone. But it was fairly clear that if she stayed silent, the voice would start counting again and then, presumably, flood the room with the antidote for xfy.

No, no, this was ridiculous. There was no way a word processor could flood anyone’s system with anything. Come to that, there was no way it could speak either—or was there? She must ask Danny. She was just letting her awe of the machine, and her basic ignorance, get on top of her. Let us be rational here, she thought. If she was not suffering from gav poisoning, or if, alternatively, the smell of charred turmeric at present flooding the house did not prove to have hallucinogenic properties, then she had worked too long and hard imagining things and was now unable to tell fantasy from reality … unless—what a wonderful thought!—Danny had, either for a joke or by accident, connected one of the black boxes to the radio and she was at this moment receiving its Play for the Day.

Her hand shot out to the radio beside her, which she kept for aural wallpaper during the duller part of her narratives, and switched it on. Click. “During this period Beethoven was having to contend with his increasing deafness—”

The childish voice cut in across this lecture. “This voice is not correct,” it pronounced, putting paid to that theory. “It is the voice of a male. Males are forbidden access to any of my functions beyond basic navigational aids. Candida One, unless you reply confirming that you are present and conscious, I shall flood this ship with sedative gas ten seconds from now.”

Then perhaps Danny has put a cassette in the radio as a joke, thought F. C. Stone. She turned off the radio and, for good measure, shook it. No, no cassette in there.

And the childish voice was at its counting again: “… six, five, four …”

Finding that her mouth was hanging open, F. C. Stone used it. “I know this is a practical joke,” she said. “I don’t know what it is you’ve done, Danny, but my God, I’ll skin you when I get my hands on you!”

The countdown stopped. “Voice patterns are beginning to match,” came the pronouncement, “though I do not understand your statement. Are you quite well, Candy?”

Fortified by the knowledge that this had to be a joke of Danny’s, F. C. Stone snapped, “Yes, of course I am!” Very few people knew that the C. in F. C. Stone stood for Candida, and even fewer knew that she had, in her childhood, most shamingly been known as Candy. But Danny of course knew both these facts. “Stop this silly joke, Danny, and let me get back to work.”

“Apologies,” spoke the childish voice, “but who is Danny? There are only two humans on this ship. Is that statement addressed to the male servant beside you? He asks me to remind you that his name is Adny.”

The joke was getting worse. Danny was having fun with her typos now. F. C. Stone was not sure she would ever forgive him for that. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me we’ve just emerged in the Dna System and will be coming in to ladn at Nad,” she said bitterly.

“Of course,” said the voice.

F. C. Stone spent a moment in angry thought. Danny had to be using a program of some kind. She ought first to test this theory and then, if it was correct, find some way to disrupt the program and get some peace. “Give me your name,” she said, “with visual confirmation.”

“If you like,” the voice responded. Had it sounded puzzled? Then Danny had thought of this. “I am Candida Two. I am your conscious-class computer modeled on your own brain.” It sounded quite prideful, saying this. But, thought F. C. Stone, a small boy co-opted by a grand fifteen-year-old like Danny would sound prideful. “We are aboard the astroship Partlett M32/A401.”

Motorways, thought F. C. Stone, but where did he get the name?

“Visual,” said the voice. Blocks of words jumped onto the screen. They seemed to be in—Russian? Greek?—capitals.

It had to be a computer game of some kind, F. C. Stone thought. Now what would Danny least expect her to do? Easy. She plunged to the wall and turned the electricity off. Danny would not believe she would do that. He would think she was too much afraid of losing this morning’s work, and maybe she would, but she could do it over again. As the blocks of print faded from the screen, she stumped off to the kitchen and made herself a cup of xfy—no, COFFEE!—and prowled around in there amid the smell of cauterized ginger while she drank it, with some idea of letting the system cool off thoroughly. She had a vague notion that this rendered a lost program even more lost. As far as she was concerned, this joke of Danny’s couldn’t be lost enough.

The trouble was that she was accustomed so to prowl whenever she was stuck in a sentence. As her annoyance faded, habit simply took over. Halfway through the mug of quaffy, she was already wondering whether to call the taste in the Captain’s mouth merely foul or to use something more specific, like chicken shit. Five minutes later F. C. Stone mechanically made herself a second mug of chofiy—almost as mechanically noting that this seemed to be a wholly new word for the stuff and absently constructing a new kind of alien to drink it—and carried it through to her workroom to resume her day’s stint. With her mind by then wholly upon the new solar system just entered by the starship Candida—there was no need to do whatever it was the learned fan wanted; after all, neither of them had been there and she was writing this book, not he—she switched the electicity back on and sat down.

Neat blocks of Greco-Cyrillic script jumped to her screen. “Candy!” said the childish voice. “Why don’t you answer? I repeat. We are well inside the Dna System and coming up to jump.”

F. C. Stone was startled enough to swallow a mouthful of scalding c’phee and barely notice what it was called. “Nonsense, Danny,” she said, somewhat hoarsely. “Everyone knows you don’t jump inside a solar system.”

The script on the screen blinked a little. “His name is Adny,” the voice said, sounding a little helpless. “If you do not remember that, or that microjumps are possible, then I see I must attend to what he has been telling me. Candy, it is possible that you have been overtaken by senility—”

“Senility!” howled F. C. Stone. Many murderous fates for Danny crowded through her mind.

“—and your male has been imploring me to ask you to authorize his use of functions Five through Nine to preserve this ship. Will you so authorize? Some action is urgent.”

A certain curiosity emerged through F. C. Stone’s anger. How far was Danny prepared to take his joke? How many possibilities had he allowed for? “I authorize,” she said carefully, “his use of functions Five through Eight only.” And let’s see if he planned for that! she thought.

It seemed he had. A symbol of some kind now filled the screen, a complex curlicue the like of which F. C. Stone had never seen or imagined her equipment capable of producing. A wholly new voice spoke, male and vibrant. “I thank you,” it said. “Function Eight will serve for now. This justifies my faith in you, Candida Three. I am now able to bypass the computer and talk to you direct. Please do not turn your power source off again. We must talk.”