So it is.Even for heroes.Guest Song, authorship unknown,early Second Stellar Empire period Wjen Ey be dead And long forgotten, then lyt it be Syd of me that Ey dyd my duty to My People; wielding in Thyr Name thye myghtiest Engines and Weapons of destruction thyt Men hyve yyt Conceived and using thyr own Scyence that thyye have corrupted for theBanishment of all that is best and Fynest among Thye People....Oath administered to Watchers of each of the three Deaths before their departure from the Communes of Magellan.Engraving found on the bulkhead wreckage of Death Two during the early Confederate period So I came back to Gonlanburg: a naked man with the tubes of an artificial gill still jutting from my chest, aboard a cyborg ship already allotted to some other Survey pilot.The change in assignments, Ariane and I surmised, was not yet official, so there was no immediate problem about our whereabouts and whether or not we were together. Thus it was possible for her to remain quite openly at the civil spaceport while I, playing the bookish Starkahn, had a haberdasher come aboard to outfit me in a tunic and kilt of the sort worn by students at the university.
