raf yawned, stretched and wiped the amnisom fluid from his eyes and nostrils. As he went through the wake up exercises that he had been taught at the Academy, the ship's computer spoke,

"Greetings, Mid-Spacer Grafingas Yorton. Would you like coffee or soda." Graf groaned at the thought of the synthetic taste of computer made coffee. Technology could cross the galaxies and terraform barren rocks into livable habitats but it still took a human touch to make a decent espresso. Graf often thought that eating the foam cup would give a better flavour. He stretched the last kinks of space sleep out of his neck and grunted,

"Soda. Lemon and lime. Extra sugar."

Having showered the remains of the amnisom slime off his body Graf pulled on his overalls with the bright, new, thin red stripe at the shoulder. Four years at the Academy and now, finally, he was going to pick up his ship. That thin red line would be traded in for two fat blue ones as soon as he was accepted by one of the great organic starships.

Graf walked through the tubular passageways of the ship to the navigation deck. The other newly qualified Spacers were arriving at about the same time. Passengers on starships were always separated towards the end of their space sleep, in order to minimise disorder when they awoke with moods ranging from pleasantly dopey to Jack Russels with ulcers.

The pilot was still in his sling, still oblivious to the young hopefuls but slowly returning from the ecstatic trance of hyperspace. The view screen before him was filled with the green and red planet Matisse. As the curve of the horizon rolled in the screen they could see the great birthing trays of the satellite ship stations glinting in the red light of Troilus, the dwarf star of this system. An expectant hum buzzed through the young Mid-Spacers. The ship's computer took over the final phase of manoeuvring the transporter into the docking bay. As they pulled alongside the station they could see the baby starships closer in to the hub of the great spiral.

The starships were the culmination of centuries of co-operation between roboticists, genetic engineers and artists. The basic problem with faster than light transport was, as Einstein pointed out, its impossibility. However, it could be imagined. If it could be imagined it could be created. The retro-artists of the late twenty third century had begun by creating sculptures of twentieth century surrealist paintings. Easels that blended into whatever landscape they were put in front of were fairly straightforward. Spiral staircases that always went up were a little more complicated. But eventually the artists managed to create them. Then came the great Specialisation Crises of the twenty fourth century. As individuals became increasingly expert in ever more specialised fields, it became apparent that each person knew more and more about less and less until eventually they knew absolutely everything about nothing. Humanity was faced with a choice -co-operate or face extinction.

The earliest co-operations had been clumsy attempts to blend such obvious companions as economics and astrology. But it quickly became clear that such tinkering would not be enough to prevent the plunge into ignorance. So it was that rocket laboratories were compelled to employ poets, genetic engineers were forced to ask the advice of classicists and nuclear physicists had to learn the cello while doing a little portraiture on the side.

Once the main problem, the superiority complex of the scientists, had been overcome, human technology once again began to expand at a phenomenal rate not seen since the invention of the internal combustion engine. New colonies were set up throughout the solar system. The asteroid belt was mined and tentative forays beyond the orbit of Pluto were attempted. However, the vastness of space defeated all efforts to expand at sub-luminal speeds. Humans needed to go faster than light in order to maintain their ability to progress.

The problem was solved eventually by creating a new form of life. Although based on the DNA of humans, the starships soon evolved beyond the expectations of the geneticists and their poetic partners. By enhancing the chromosomes for creativity and imagination, the starship creators expected to make a ship that could react intelligently to new situations. At the same time the geneticists avoided programming anything into the ships' gene pool which could cause ageing or disease, thereby giving a measure of immortality to the ships and so go around the need for faster than light travel.

What the scientists didn't realise was that by using their boosted imagination the ships were able to go faster than light. The input of the artists allowed the impossible to become real. Suspension of disbelief became a law of physics. There was only one problem, the living ships became increasingly neurotic as the prospect of eternal life stretched before them. The root of their neuroses was narrowed down to loneliness, hence the need for the pilots. The job of the pilot was not so much to steer the ship through the universe of the stars, which the ships' innate ability allowed them to do anyway, it was more to plot a course through the shoals and reefs of the emotions. The ships' human derivation required a human answer.

Graf watched the pilot as he disengaged himself from the sling. Although the flight had taken three months, even at superluminal speed, and the pilot had been awake for all that time, he still managed to look alert if a little sweaty. Taking a long draught of a soda the pilot moved to the front of the deck and addressed the assembled would-be spacers.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Matisse. This is the final part of your training. In three weeks most of you will be pilots yourselves. Provided that your psycho-profiling has been adequately performed, you will each become the partner of one of the ships you can see in the view screen. Once this partnership has been formed only death can break it. It is my duty to ask, does anyone wish to back out now?"

Seventy-five junior spacers - from an original intake of two thousand - looked at each other in silence. They all knew that this formality was necessary however unlikely it was that someone would back out now.

"Good" the pilot looked relieved. "If you will now make your way to the airlocks, the stewards will show you to the ships."

As each young spacer moved through the airlocks they were picked up by a waiting droid which identified them with a retinal scan and took them towards their assigned ship. Graf managed to hold his head high and maintain the image he had worked so hard to cultivate through the academy. Quietly confident and eminently capable, that was the way most of his peers regarded him. He'd been captain of the grav-ball team, president of his class and came third on the academic list. They would have been amazed to realise that his tongue was danger in of welding itself to the roof of his mouth for lack of saliva. Or that the muscles of his thighs were performing independent and involuntary polkas. The adrenaline was flooding his veins and Graf wondered whether there was room for any blood in them.

The droid halted before an airlock leading to one of the young ships. Graf moved alone into the lock and the door sealed itself behind him. As the internal door in front opened Graf stepped forward into the corridor and a timid, childlike voice said:

"Who's there?"

Graf took a deep breath and remembered his training:

"It's all right sweetheart, my name is Graf I'm going to stay with you for a while. We're going to learn all about each other. Do you have a favourite place to talk to people or are you OK right here?"

"Are you going to put more of those cold hard things inside me?" the voice was all around Graf with no fixed point of origin, although the voice mechanism was the same as the cold, hard computers that had recently been installed.

"No. All I have is what you can see. I will never force you to take anything you don't want. I just want to get to know you."

"Well if you're sure that you don't have anything that hurts you can come through."

Despite all the training Graf was still surprised to hear how young and frightened the voice sounded. His own nerves receded. Even in his anticipation, he couldn't be nervous of a ship that sounded like a nine year old child. He began to relax and the image he was so used to reasserted itself. He moved through the ship to the flight deck. The pilot sling was like a pink pubescent bud in the ceiling. Graf deliberately averted his eyes and sat cross-legged on the floor.

"So what's your name sweetheart?"

"Dahlia."

"What a pretty name. Have you been flying yet, Dahlia?"

"Yes. I flew all round the system last week. It was really cool. I saw asteroids and planets and went through a black hole."

"Through a black hole! That must have been difficult. Did you get hurt?" Dahlia's giggle filled the flight deck. Graf knew she was lying but he didn't want to challenge anything she said just yet.

"You're silly. I was just tricking. The first law of flying is never, never, never fly into a black hole. Don't you know that?"

Graf smiled to himself, it looked like things were going to go OK.

"I've never really learnt that much about flying" said Graf dismissing the last four years of his life with a casual shrug. "Would you like to teach me?"

"It's really easy. Just start up your engines, point your nose and go for it." Graf looked around himself as if searching for an engine.

"I must have left my engine in my other trousers. Could you take me for a ride?"

Dahlia giggled again, a sound like skinned knees and Barbie dolls.

"Course I can. I'm a really good flyer. Err… you better hold on to something. Sometimes it shakes and bumps a bit when I'm starting off."

Graf moved to one of the consoles for the navigation computer and took a firm hold of the handles. Dahlia started her engines and began to move gently away from the station. The force fields of the other ships kept her from doing any damage but the collisions of invisible forces took their toll on smoothness. Once they had moved away from the space station Dahlia aimed just to the right of the red glow of Troilus and accelerated. The dwarf star loomed in the view screen before disappearing off to the left. There was a momentary glimpse of the outer arm of the galaxy before Troilus flashed in the screen again as the sling shot effect hurled them towards the furthest reaches of the system.

Graf kept quiet and enjoyed the ride. Despite the years in the Academy this was his first conscious non-simulated space flight. Because of the ships' devotion to their pilots they would only allow passengers to be awakened just before landing. Graf looked at the view screen. The Troilus system had eight planets and four comets, the remains of the ninth unstable planet. None of them looked particularly inviting and indeed none were colonised except Matisse, and that only enough to supply the birthing stations. When testing something as potentially volatile as unpiloted ships, it made sense to be away from other traffic.

As the young ship came close to the orbit of the fourth planet, Greco, she eased off the power and went into a stationary orbit above the equator. Graf looked at the massive volcanic clouds that covered the surface and gave off a faintly purple glow. Greco would not be suitable for colonisation for at least ten million orbits but in the meantime it provided an ambient backdrop for their conversation.

Graf knew that he had to get to know Dahlia but he was concerned not to waste too much time in idle chit-chat. On the other hand what does one talk about with a child capable of speeds in excess of 300,000 kilometres a second? He played for time by fixing himself a coffee from the console.

Dahlia broke the somewhat awkward silence,

"Do you know any good songs, Graf?"

Graf thought of the songs that he and his classmates had sung, loudly and off key, in the dormitories of the Academy. The Starship Venus and the Ballard of Asteroid Alice might be just a fraction too bawdy for Dahlia's young ears. His mind went back further to his own childhood and the songs of the kindergarten where he had lived until his formal education began. He decided on the Worm-Eating song. They were into the third round of the song, Dahlia already word perfect, when the communications screen fizzed into life. The face of the Pilot General looked stern and uncompromising.

"Mid-Spacer Yorton. What do you think you are doing out there?"

"Singing, sir."

"Singing!" the head of interstellar bioengineering looked ready to explode, "And who, exactly, gave you permission to sing fifty million clicks away from where you are supposed to be, hmmm?"

"No-one did, sir. I didn't realise that I needed permission for flights below the speed of light."

"Until you are fully accepted, ALL flights must be cleared with my office. Now get back here immediately."

The comm-screen winked out. Graf sighed and took hold of the manual override controls. Dahlia eased out of orbit and headed back towards Matisse. Although they said nothing, both man and ship felt the closeness of conspiracy, the feeling that they were both in this together. In fact, this had been the intention of the Pilot General. Genetic engineering and psycho-profiling were not enough. Nature needs to be reinforced with nurture if it is to become an unthinking reaction. Unknown to them, Graf and Dahlia had passed their first compatibility test.

The next few weeks passed in learning about each other in various ways. Graf learnt that he and Dahlia shared a desire to explore uncharted regions of the galaxy rather than act as settler transport or merchant traders. He also found that Dahlia constantly surprised him with how quickly she grew up. Within a few days she had lost that little girl attitude and become a young woman, apparently his contemporary. Graf caught himself thinking of her constantly, even to the point of dreaming of her while he slept. He became protective of her and personally supervised every workman who came to install new equipment. He was quick to prevent the men from scraping and banging her bulkheads and decks, with his fists if he thought it necessary, but was equally quick to console her when she became frightened, calming and soothing her while the space sleep units for passengers were fitted.

For her part, Dahlia became fascinated with Graf's life before they had met. She wanted to know everything about him from his beginnings in the kindergarten to the friends he had made at school and the Academy. She learnt the results of his grav-ball games, the names of his teachers and what he had thought of them. She even taught the computer to make a passable espresso. And all the time her sling was growing, becoming covered with a downy fuzz as it reached towards the floor of the flight deck.

On the twentieth day of their relationship Dahlia woke Graf with the smell of freshly ground coffee and had the computer prepare his favourite breakfast of simulated eggs and chilli. She kept her internal lighting low and selected music by Mozart to enhance his alpha rhythms. When he had finished eating she said,

"Graf, would you come through to the flight deck, please?" Her voice was nervous and breathy. As Graf came onto the deck the lighting took on a pinkish hue as if the ship herself was blushing. Graf looked at the sling, now full and inviting. The bottom of the sling brushed the floor, the two supports pulsed to the ceiling with a rich vermilion he had never seen there before. Smiling, Graf removed his overalls and stepped naked up to the sling. He laid his hands gently on either side of the opening in the sling. The entire ship trembled expectantly.

"Are you sure you're ready, darling?" he murmured.

"Yes."

He stepped forward into the folds of delicate flesh. The first sensation was of warmth, then comfort, then an overwhelming feeling of right. It was right to do this. Nothing had ever been so right in his life. As the sling moulded itself to completely cover his body there came a tentative push at his mind. He relaxed and allowed the push to feel its way into the very depths of his being. His confidence melded with her timidity. His quiet, unspoken fears were washed through the gentle force of her belief in him. It became impossible to know any longer where she began and he started. Together they became one entity, with the feelings and memories of both but the strength of something far beyond the sum of their identities. Together they shared from the sub-atomic level upwards. Time became irrelevant and with that irrelevance they surveyed the universe. A star twinkled on the far side of the galactic spiral, they reached out for it. Together.