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          Ryouga Hibiki, Lost in Space. 
          Chapter two
     
     A fan fiction based on the works of Rumiko Takahashi,  
     Creator of Ranma 1/2, and, Masaki Kajishima, who is the 
         creator of Tenchi Muyo. 
     
     Hitoshi Okuda, is the artist and creator of the Tenchi Manga.
     
     What has gone before?
     That's a long story. 
     First, read chapter one of R.H. L.I.S, of course,
and then chapter seven of Tench and Ranma, Together, Forever!?
They can both be found at the following sites. 

          http://www.geocities.com/animecrossovers/
     http://www.anime.usacomputers.net/~dragon/
     http://tannim.anifics.com/index.html
     http://www.crosswinds.net/~silentnova/index.html
     I'd like to thank those people for finding my stories interesting
enough to post them to their sites.
     
     For those who don't feel like reviewing those chapters, a short
summary.

     Ryouga has found his ability to get lost reaching new heights. 
     Now, not only does he get helplessly lost going to the bathroom,
he finds himself visiting strange alien worlds.
     One such trip resulted in a confrontation with a wicked criminal
who was about to devour a small black talking pig. Said pig turned out
to be an undercover special agent by the name of Agent P. 
     P helped Ryouga sort out some legal troubles, and set out to return
him to earth. A close encounter with the 'A' class criminal Kagato
resulted in the destruction of the ships carrying Ryouga and P.
     P crash landed on earth, where he met a certain Akane Tendo. As
for Ryouga . . .well, he's once again lost in space, which is where we
now join him.

     Guest appearances in this story. Team Lightyear from Disney's
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.
                                 


     He'd really done it this time, Ryouga couldn't help thinking.
Despite all the times he'd been misdirected, been led astray by
incompetent map makers, had run afoul of cities that changed their
names weekly, he had always been able to rely on one constant, the one
thing that always kept him going. The fact that wherever he was, no
matter how strange, or how confusing, he was at least somewhere. 

     He might not have known precisely where that somewhere was,
but at least it was . . . well, somewhere. 

     That had always been the foundation of his wayward life, and now
that support was cracking. . . seriously. Ryouga looked around him, or
at least, he thought he did. He couldn't even be sure of that simple fact.
Not that it mattered. No matter which direction he thought he was
looking, backward, forward, side to side, or up and down, the view was
the same. Not that view was the right term, but then, as far as he knew,
no one had ever invented a word for what he was seeing, or not seeing,
as the case might be.
     It wasn't darkness. Ryouga had ended up in enough caves and
sewers to know what total, unrelieved darkness was like. This wasn't it.
Darkness at least had substance of a sort. It was something. This was
nothing. 
     
     Nothingness. 

     No other word fit his current environment. Nothing he had ever
experienced in his life gave him any reference to cope with his current
situation. 
     That thought started Ryouga thinking along paths that he'd been
trying to avoid. If nothing in 'life' compared to this, what was left? "Am
I dead?" he asked out loud, taking a small measure of comfort in the
sound of his own voice. 
     Small comfort indeed. His voice echoed in his head, but nowhere
else. His speech had a flatness, as if it faded into the nothingness as
soon as it left his mouth. "Hello!" he shouted, with similar results. Still,
even if his voice faded out as fast as he could say the words, at least it
was something to distract him from the mind-numbing environment. 
     "Can anyone help me!?" Ryouga shouted.
     "Of course," a cheerful voice said from directly behind Ryouga.
     Ryouga gained some measure of comfort from the surprise he
experienced. Dead men don't have heart attacks, and at that moment his
pulmonary muscle felt like it was doing tap-dances. He whirled, or at
least re-orientated, to face the speaker. 
     Ryouga blinked as he took in the figure in front of him. Female.
Small in stature, young in appearance, twelve or thirteen at the most.
She sported a mane of spiky red hair that was bigger than her body, and
was dressed in clothing that looked a bit like a band uniform, colored in
various shades of green. 
     "Who-," Ryouga started to say, but was interrupted by a fanfare of
trumpets. The sound of which seemed to originate in his own head,
which was puzzling, but not so puzzling as what the girl in front of him
was doing.
     The young-looking girl produced a pair of cheerleading pom-
poms, and started shaking them with great enthusiasm in time to the
trumpets. "Yea, yea, yea, who's the greatest!?" she chanted loudly.
Jumping into the air, she kicked her legs out wide, and fell into a full
split. She then pushed both pom-poms in Ryouga's direction, an
expectant look on her face.
     Ryouga stared at the girl blankly, until her expression informed
him that her question had not been rhetorical, and that she expected an
answer. "Um, Elvis," he hazarded.
     The girl fell on her face.

***************************************

     In another location in the nothingness, or maybe in the same
position, at the same time, or maybe a light year away, and a century
before, or after - make your own choice, time and space not having any
real meaning in this strange void - a jumble of junk, 'was'. 
     Was. That was as good a word as any to describe the objects. You
couldn't say they floated, because there was nothing to float on. You
couldn't say they hung, or lay, or were piled. The junk simply, 'was'. 
     And just as the junk 'was' in the void, a solitary human figure
'was' on the junk. 
     The figure's tattered uniform made identifying it as a humanoid,
mammalian female fairly easy, but that was about all. Dirt and grime
hid any identifying marks, both on the uniform and the female herself.
Her hair was a dark matted mass hanging in tangled streamers down her
back, tied away from her grime besmirched face with a hunk of
insulated electrical wire. Blackened, grease-incrusted fingers worked at
the panel of a large emergency ration dispensing machine. The sort that
was present in the crisis evacuation areas of every space habitat in the
galaxy. 
     No money was required to sample this machine's contents. No
one, given a choice, would ever want to. The machine was capable of
producing food from its raw stock of chemicals that would sustain life
in several hundred different alien species. And just about every one of
those concoctions tasted like wet cardboard, with the singular exception
of the food intended for Digiterms, who rather liked the taste of wet
cardboard. Their emergency rations tasted like Prime Rib. 
     A being normally activated the machine by inserting its hand, or
whatever it used for that purpose, into the serving slot. The dispenser
would scan the supplicant's genetic code, mix the appropriate
chemicals, and produce enough food to sustain that particular species
for twenty-four hours. It would also remember that specific entity, and
not serve them again for one full day. This prevented hoarding, and the
premature depletion of the ERD's, 'Emergency Ration Dispenser',
resources.
     Despite a rather emaciated appearance, the female currently
working on the machine was not trying to extract food from the
machine. Instead she was concentrating on prying a panel off the side.
With a grunt of satisfaction she finally managed to free an access hatch,
and exposed the complex circuitry that made up the main controls for
the ration dispenser. Reaching into her matted hair, she carefully
extracted a thread-thin test probe from behind her ear. With lower lip
gripped between her teeth in concentration, she maneuvered the delicate
super-conducting lead into a hole in the machine's circuit board. A sigh
of relief escaped her as it sank home with a barely audible click. 
     Leaving the probe where it was she put her hand into the
dispensing slot. A few seconds later the machine deposited a small
brick-shaped ration pellet. The female carefully set the ration block
down out of the way, and reinserted her hand into the machine. Sweat
was beading on her grease smeared brow, and she bit her lip so hard that
a droplet of blood appeared. 
     All the tension seemed to leave her, and her body visibly slumped
when, with a 'thunk', the machine deposited another brick of rations
into her hand. She leaned her head against the vandalized machine and
gave into her emotions. Shoulders shuddering with long repressed
emotions, she cried silently, tears cutting tracks down her grimy cheeks.
The female allowed herself several minutes of this self-indulgence,
before bringing herself back under control. Wiping her face clear of
tears with a tattered uniform sleeve, she set the block of rations in her
hand with the previous one, and reinserted that hand in the dispensing
slot. 

*************************************

     "Elvis!!! Elvis!! Are you crazy, you claim Elvis is the greatest!!?
How can you even suggest such a thing!?" 
     Ryouga found himself backing away from the irate young girl as
she stalked toward him. He held up his hands, palms out in a gesture of
conciliation. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he said hastily. "I was surprised. I
didn't mean it."
     For a second, the redhead glared at him, and then with a sniff,
turned her back on him. "You'd better be telling the truth. Elvis
indeed," she muttered. "By the way," she asked, turning to face him
again, "who is Elvis?" Before Ryouga could even formulate the
intention to reply, she cut him off. "No! It doesn't matter. It's just
shameful that you don't know that your creator is the greatest being in
the universe! No wonder you need help." 
     The girl was very disgruntled, but Ryouga wasn't really paying
any attention. One thought had all his attention. My creator! His
stomach sank. That was it then. He was dead, and this girl in front of
him was some sort of bizarre angel. Choking back emotions, he looked
up at the girl, no, the Divine Entity, and asked, "Are you here to take me
to heaven?"
     The girl blinked at him and then flushed red, as her eyes narrowed
in anger. She produced an enormous mallet, and used it to flatten
Ryouga, while yelling, "I'm not that sort of help program, you pervert!!"
     Ryouga covered his head with both arms in order to ward off any
other surprise attacks, while thinking that he'd been wrong. She was no
angel, and it didn't look like he was going to heaven.
     Banishing the hammer she'd summoned up, the girl started to fade
away. As she did so she directed one last parting shot at the cowering
lost boy. "Don't call me unless you need real help, pervert!!" 
     "Wait!" Ryouga shouted coming to his feet. "I do need help!
Where is this? Where am I?"
     The young girl faded back into view, but only partially. She gave
Ryouga a skeptical look, while repeating his questions. "Where are you?
Where is this? How can you not know that? Simply scan for known
stellar phenomena, and extrapolate from the data. You should be able to
place yourself within a millimeter."
     It was Ryouga's turn to blink. "Uh, how do I do that?" he finally
asked.
     "Are you playing some sort of sick pervert game here?" the girl
demanded. "Simply look at the stars," she said, waving her hand in a
large arc above her head while turning her view away from Ryouga for
the first time. Her arm stopped moving, and she gazed at the
nothingness that surrounded them. "Where are the stars?" she asked in a
stunned voice. 

***************************************

     How long had it been since she'd seen the stars? The dirt smeared
girl wondered. A week? A month? A year? Longer? The dirt smeared
girl had lost track in the scramble for survival. Finding all the bits and
pieces of the destroyed research facility. Lacing them together with bit
of salvage wires. Finding the few remaining power sources. Finding
water. Scavenging components to discover what her options were,
narrowing them down to two, one of which was dying. Not finding that 
option to her liking, she'd devoted all her efforts on the second, more
palatable option. And now she was so very close to completion. Just a
little bit longer and she'd be able to rest.    
     The food dispenser deposited another brick of rations into her
hand, and she added it to the growing pile beside herself, tallying it in
terms of survival as she did so. "Fifty-nine days," she whispered, and
put her hand back in the food slot.  

***************************************

     "The stars, where are the stars!?" the young girl shouted, as she ran
around Ryouga, her arms pin-wheeling. Suddenly, she came to a stop,
and rushed up to Ryouga. "Have you tried all sensors? Is there a fault?
No! There can't be a fault! You were created by the greatest genius in
the universe. 'I' was created by the greatest genius in the universe. This
is impossible. . ." A maniac gleam suddenly appeared in her eyes. "Do
you know what this means?" she demanded of Ryouga.
     "Uh, no, not really," he stammered out. 
     "Opportunity!" the girl shouted. "This is an unknown
phenomenon! We must make records! Turn your scanners up to
maximum! We must not miss anything! This is for science!" She struck
a dramatic pose, and held it for a minute. When Ryouga just stood there,
she started to show a little annoyance. "Well? What are you waiting for?
Start scanning!"
     The girl's behavior had resulted in Ryouga being in, what seemed
a permanent,  state of confusion, but the unreasonable demands and
orders were beginning to annoy him. "What the hell are you talking
about?!" He yelled at her. "What scanners? There is nothing here but
you and me!"
     "What do you mean, what scanners? Your scanners, of course . . ."
The girl trailed off, and suddenly gave Ryouga a searching look. "Wait a
minute. How long since you assumed your primary form?" she
demanded. 
     "Primary form?" Ryouga repeated in puzzlement. "What are you
talking about?"
     "Why didn't you say so in the first place?" the girl shouted at him.
"Look at all the time we've wasted when we could have been compiling
data for the mistress. Here, look at this," she said, holding up a full
length mirror that she'd produced, apparently from the same source as
her mallet.
     Or at least it looked like a mirror, but when Ryouga looked into it,
he didn't see his own face. Floating in the glass was a piece of jewelry.
A simple round domed disk of some sort of yellow crystal, set in a mass
of raw black crystal. Four dark spires projected outward and upward at
equal distances around the disk while another four, smaller then the first
set, projected downward. Their respective bases were lost in what
looked like a random mass of smaller crystals of a similar nature to their
large cousins, while the yellow dome nestled in the center of them all.
Ryouga had second thoughts about it being jewelry. Despite the
disparity in types, he had the feeling the two dissimilar minerals had
grown as a whole unit, rather then being constructed.
      Suddenly, a part of Ryouga's mind that had been lying quiescent
til that moment started to supply information, and the object in the
mirror abruptly had scale. He now knew with complete certainty that the
yellow dome was one hundred and sixty five-point-six five meters in
diameter. The four upper primary columns were each one hundred and
fifty seven-point-three eight meters in length, while the lower four
smaller were one hundred and five-point-four three two meters long. 
     While that was impressive, it didn't mean a whole lot to Ryouga.
He directed a questioning look at the girl. "What is it?" he asked.
Unspoken, but implied by his tone of voice was: Why are you wasting
my time with this?
     "That, cutey, is us, or more specifically, you."
     "What!!???" 

***********************************          

     The emergency ration machine buzzed negatively, indicating that
its supply of raw chemicals was exhausted. The ragged girl withdrew
her hand from the food slot with a sigh. She looked over at the ninety-
seven ration blocks she'd managed to accumulate. Each one
representing two days worth of food if she stretched them out. One
hundred and ninety four days in all. That was how much time she had
left. In one way it was depressing, knowing exactly how much longer
she had, but in another way it was a blessing. At least now she wouldn't
have to face each day, fearing that this might be the time the machine
failed to deliver. That was all beside the point, however. She'd not gone
to all this trouble simply to discover how large her food reserves were. 
     With that in mind, she picked up a piece of scrap metal about two
feet in length, which came to a sharp point. She now inserted that sharp
point in a gap between the main circuit board and the frame of the ration
machine. With a twist of her wrist, she popped the corner of the panel
free. She repeated the process on each of the other three corners, and
when she was done she set down her makeshift pry-bar and lifted the
circuit board free. In behind the removed panel were several devices,
each one nestled into its own particular slot. The girl slipped out the
second from the left, and carefully wrapped it in some padding. 
     Pausing only to break one of the ration bricks in half she set out
for the other end of the conglomeration of junk, chewing mechanically
on a single bite of the awful tasting stuff. With the skill of long practice
she made her way from one section of scrap to another. In some places
she walked, in others, where gravity was absent, she floated, keeping
one hand on a safety line fashioned from braided electric cables. Along
one small section, where the gravity was five times normal, she crawled.
One thing was constant, however. No matter what method of
locomotion she used, she always kept her eyes focused firmly on the
various pieces of debris, not once did she shift her eyes toward the
nothingness that made up the bulk of her present environment. On the
single occasion when she traveled between two widely separated pieces
of scrap, she closed her eyes and traveled by feel along thirty feet of
heavy duty wiring. At last she reached her destination. A
conglomeration of various electrical components plugged into each
other, and into a universal battery mount. 
     Universal batteries were standardized energy units that worked on
the basis of direct conversion of radiation to electricity. They could not
supply varying amounts unless linked to separate storage cells, but they
could supply a steady and constant low amperage output for decades. In
a culture where fusion reactors were compact and common these were
not in widespread use, but they were useful for supplying lighting to
habitats that were still under construction, and which had not yet been
wired into a primary power source. And of course, they were the power
source of preference for emergency equipment.
     It took very little time to install the battery she had ripped out of
the food dispenser, all the wiring and connections were prepared, just
waiting for this final device to make the whole conglomeration ready for
use. A second after she plugged it into the prepared socket, a light lit up,
indicating a complete, and working, circuit. 
     Once more the girl closed her eyes, and made a visible effort to
control her emotions. Leaning forward, she placed her mouth close to
the pick-up from a voice activated cleaning unit. "Th--" she started to
say, and then broke off in a bout of violent coughing. 
     The violent reaction from her first attempt to speak in over four
months brought tears to her eyes. She blindly reached out and picked up
a glass beaker sealed with a rubber stopper. Taking a gulp of water from
the container, she swirled it around in her mouth, and then swallowed
the dregs. Making a few nonsense sounds to get the kinks out of her
speech, she leaned forward once again and spoke into the pickup. When
she was done, she pressed a button, and settled back with a sigh,
knowing that her equipment would repeat that message over and over
again, for far longer then she was likely to be here. A few seconds later,
she fell into an exhausted sleep.        
     
                                                       
***********************************

     In the end, it was his Jusenkyo curse that helped to convince
Ryouga. After all, when one has spent three months turning into a
battle-scarred tomcat at the merest touch of cold water, what was so
hard to believe about turning into a spaceship. 
     In addition to his curse, he was aided in his acceptance of the
situation in no small part by Help-chan, the self proclaimed greatest
help program in the universe. Unlike his condition after Jusenkyo, this
time he had someone to explain what had happened, and to teach him
how to cope. Add to that a notable lack of people who wished harm to
him in one form or another, and he was one happy spaceship.
     Compared to the hell he had gone through after getting his curse,
this part of his life was one of the most relaxed and contented periods he
had ever experienced. He had no pressing need to get anywhere. His
feud with Ranma seemed a distant thing. After all, he could hardly
challenge the coward to a fight now. Still, when Help-chan's teaching
reached the details of his offensive capabilities, he couldn't help but
daydream of making a strafing run on the cowardly Saotome. A warm
glow filled him as he imagined the expression on Ranma's face as he
ran for his life.
     Not that it was all cream in his coffee. Going from being a purely
biological orgasm, to a multi-thousand ton crystalline space ship was a
big step. Fortunately, Ryouga had time to spare. Help-chan informed
him that he could last centuries in his current powered down state. 
     In the end it didn't take centuries, but it did take, by his internal
chronometer, some six months to get to the point where he could begin
learning at computer speed, after that it took in real time, thirty three
minutes, in subjective time, seven and a half years. When it was
finished, Ryouga was as comfortable in his new shape, as he had ever
been in his old human body, and much more then he had ever been as a
cat.                                    
     He had also made his first real and true friend in the form of Help-
chan. It was therefore a great shock to him when at the end of his
training, she said goodbye.
     "Goodbye!?" Ryouga exclaimed in shock. "You're leaving me!?"
     "Never!" Help-chan said vehemently. Taking his hand between
hers, she looked up into his eyes. "Ryouga-chan. I'll never leave you. I
will always be with you, always be a part of you. But I'm a help
program, and you no longer need any help I can give.  Now it's time for
me to step back, and let you find your destiny."
     "My destiny?" Ryouga asked, while holding tightly to her hands.
"I don't know what my destiny is. I still need help. You can't go!"
     Help-chan effortlessly drew her hands from between his, and
reached up and stroked his cheek. "Silly boy, you are a ship, and your
destiny is to sail the stars, taking your captain where they desire."
     "My captain? What are you talking about? You never told me
anything about this before!" Ryouga said in a panicked tone as Help-
chan began to fade away. 
     "Search," her whispered word came to his ear, as her form became
transparent. Just before she faded out of sight completely, her final
words caressed his ears. "Goodbye my friend, clear sailing, and
remember, I will always be a part of you . . ."
     If Ryouga had still possessed knees, he would have fallen to them
in despair. "No!" he cried out. Even though he knew it was useless,
Help-chan had never existed anywhere but in his circuitry, he extended
his external sensors to the maximum, and he heard something. For the
first time since he had come to this void, there was sound, a signal,
broadcasting across the spectrum, and up into the hyper range. A simple
message, repeated over and over again.

     "This is Detective First Class Kiyone Makibi of the Galaxy Police.
To anyone receiving this message; I am in distress, and request
assistance under the distressed spacer conventions of 23.8675." There
was slight break, and than the voice continued, this time with a
noticeable quiver. "Please," she said. "Please, anyone."


     Ryouga might have ignored the first request, loaded as it was with
officialese, but there was no way in all the nine hells that he could, or
would, ignore the entreaty in that last line. The loneliness and distress in
that plea resonated within his soul. He could no more ignore it than he
could talk about his feelings to a girl. 


******************************************        

     Kiyone was sleeping when her I.D./Criminal database scanner
sounded the alarm. She was doing that a lot now that her transmitter was
finished. There was nothing more she could do to improve her chances
of survival. Therefore, taking into account that she used far fewer
calories while dozing, it made sense to do as much of it as she could.
     She stared bleary eyed at the display that hovered above her wrist,
trying to make her brain work so that she could decipher the holo
display that whirled and spun in front of her. Slowly the gyrating images
settled down and came into focus. 
     Even though she was now able to read the information, it did not
register immediately.  Kiyone had been experimenting for the last few
days with seeing if she could function on a third of a ration block, and
the lack of food was having a deleterious effect on her cognitive
functions.  Her energy deprived brain was having a hard time processing
the data in front of her. 
     #WARNING# "Unknown craft in area. Craft possesses a ninety-
four percent energy and physical similarity to the criminal craft Ryo-oh-
ki, wanted for the destruction of twenty-eight worlds and sixty nine
colonies. Extreme caution recommended. Proximity of craft, two
meters." 
     Kiyone blinked as her brain finally comprehended the message.
"Two meters!? What was wrong with her unit? Was the null-space
effecting it? Kiyone gave her wrist a shake while she struggled into a
sitting position. This brought her line of sight up two feet, and she found
herself staring at the needle-like point of a glistening pillar of black
crystal. Eyes wide, she followed the gleaming length up, and up, till she
focused on the massive dome of yellow that hovered a hundred and fifty
meters above her. Her eyes continued to roll upward, until they
disappeared under her eyebrows, and she keeled over in a dead faint.


     When Kiyone rejoined the land of the living, she found herself
staring at a black sky, which resolved into an expanse of black crystal.
With a jolt, she remembered the ship. She sprang to her feet, and nearly
fell on her face. Only the gentle tug of a small tractor field kept her from
going nose first into the floor, which was also of black crystal she
noticed in a detached way.
     "Take it easy, Miss," a masculine voice said in a concerned tone of
voice as the tractor field lowered her back to the bed she'd been laying
on. "From the look of things you've not been eating very well. You need
to take it easy till you can get some food inside you." Providing
counterpoint to the voice, a tray floated into the room with a small bowl
on it. A savory odor reached Kiyone, and her mouth filled with drool at
her first wiff of real food in nearly five months.  
     Kiyone snatched the bowl from the tray, and guzzled the few
teaspoons of broth it contained in one swallow." More," She gasped,
holding out the bowl.
     "In a bit," the bodiless voice said gently. "You're stomach won't
be able take more for a bit. Trust me, I know. Is there anything else I can
do for you?"
     Kiyone wanted to scream that what she wanted was more food,
enough food to founder a whale, but under the raging hunger a small
rational part of her mind realized that the voice was correct. If she ate
too much, too soon, she'd just end up vomiting it all up again. But if she
couldn't eat, there was one other thing that had filled her sleeping
moments with dreams of pleasure. "A bath!" she said in a passionate
voice. "Can I have a bath?"        
     There was a pause, and then the voice said, "Uh, a bath? . . . Sure,
No problem. Just give me a minute to run the water." 

     Ryouga hastily searched through the latent matrixes in his
structure. At the moment, except for the room that the castaway was in,
his interior was raw crystal. That did not mean that other rooms did not
exist. They did, but in a quiescent state. He had an entire catalogue of
different configurations imbedded in his memory banks. And if that was
not sufficient, he could shape his interior into whatever form he could
imagine. That was not necessary this time, whoever his creator, the
Great and Powerful Washu, was, she'd obviously not been one to stint
on the creature comforts. The nascent structure Ryouga found was a
virtual spa. 
     A twitch of his mind and the section next to the girl's room began
to reform. Having done that, he switched his attention back to his
passenger. He had not yet learned how to multi-task consciously, though
Help-chan promised that it would come in time. For now, when he
focused hard on one thing, everything else muddled along on automatic.
What he found when he returned to the bedroom was the girl standing
on wobbly legs. "Miss, please," Ryouga entreated. "Let me help you."
     "Kiyone, the name's Kiyone," The girl mumbled. "And I can help
myself. Just tell me where to go."
     His own pride let Ryouga understand where the girl, Kiyone, was
coming from. So he made no objection as she struggled toward the one
door in the room, which was fortunate, because Ryouga had been about
to point her in the other direction.  Hastily extinguishing the indicator
light on the wall, and hoping she had not noticed, he lent a hand, or
rather a multi-phasic tractor field.  The feather light touch he used
cradled Kiyone, offering just enough support to keep her on her feet, but
not enough to be noticed. 
     The girl came to a sudden, and shaky stop, when she reached the
door to the bath. "Oh my," she said in a faint voice as she looked out at
what seemed like an endless expanse of pools, each filled with steaming
water. Each one set in its own little nook, and surrounded by artful
sculptures and artificial plants, all done in the same uniform black
crystal. Kiyone was beginning to get just a little tired of the ship's color
scheme, but at the moment that consideration was a far cry from being
top of her list of things to address.
      "Oh, my," Kiyone repeated, in a dreamy voice, as her hands
reached for the closure on her uniform. A few tugs, and the ragged
remains of her uniform slipped from her body and puddled on the floor.
The lack of clothes did little to reveal her body however. The heavy
coating of grime that covered her from head to toe was as good as a full
body stocking when it came to concealment purposes. 
     As Kiyone stepped forward she moved into a small depression in
the floor, and Ryouga activated the pre-wash shower.  A fog of
detergent laced water vapor lifted up to surround the detective, another
unobtrusive tractor field keeping it away from her eyes. Sonic vibrations
agitated the molecules of water, and aided them in sluicing the five
months worth of accumulated grime for Kiyone's body. The fog
surrounding her turned black with liberated dirt, and then cleared as
filters removed it, revealing a Kiyone so clean that she squeaked. And
for the first time she became something other then the victim of disaster
in Ryouga's mind. The lost boy, now a lost ship, realized with great
shock that there was a lovely, if malnourished, naked girl standing in the
middle of his field of view.

     "That's an improvement," Kiyone thought to herself as the walls
of the bath suddenly shifted from a stark black to a gentle pink. Then all
thought fled as she slipped into the first of several pools.     


     Some hours later, Kiyone, clad in a soft towel, with another one
wrapped around her long, dark, green-tinted hair, lounged in a
comfortable sitting room, cradling a hot cup of tasty broth in her hands. 
Every few seconds she would take a small sip of the nourishing brew.
She hadn't heard anything from the voice in some while, though he had
made his presence known in the form of the towels and broth, not to
mention this room. But now she was bathed, fed, and was ready to move
on to slightly more abstract subjects. Such as who the heck her rescuer
was.
     "Hello. Can you hear me?" she called out.
     "Huh? Oh. Yes. Can I do something else for you?" the masculine
voice of her unknown host asked with a touch of hesitation.
     "Well, it would be nice to meet my rescuer face to face. Is that
possible? 
     There was silence for several seconds, and then he spoke again,
"Um, well, not exactly. I don't really have a face right now. I'm sort of,
well you see . . .I'm the ship."
     Kiyone blinked, and then remarked, "Oh. You're the AI. Is your
captain present?"
     "I don't have a captain," Ryouga said, with just a tiny bit of heat in
his voice. He had suddenly remembering that Help-chan had said he'd
need one to find his destiny. Grateful as he was for all she had done for
him, that was one bit of advice he had no intention of taking. Ryouga
had experienced some bad moments when it came to captains. He
shuddered to think of someone like the captain his cousin, Aki, worked
for walking his decks. He voiced none of this to Kiyone however, as he
expanded on his first comment. All he said was, "I don't need one. I'm
perfectly fine just the way I am."                
     This time Kiyone's blink was more pronounced. While there were
sentient mechanical races, it was almost unheard of for a ship's AI to
operate independently. After all, being a ship was not usually an end to
itself, they were created and built for a purpose, and there was nothing a
machine intelligence hated more than not being able to perform its
function. "You don't know if you want a captain? Were you designed as
an independent entity?"
     "I don't know!" the voice said with some heat. "Help-chan helped
me understand what I am, and what I can do, but she couldn't, or
wouldn't, tell me what I 'should' do. I know that ships are supposed to
carry things and people, and that there is a captain in charge of them,
but I'm not really a ship. I'm a person. My ancestress was a space ship,
and I've inherited that from her, but I don't know how to be a ship. I
mean, I know how to be a ship, I am one, but not how to act like a ship.
I don't want someone telling me what to do, where to go . . ." the voice
broke off as a sudden thought occurred to Ryouga. It would be nice, to
have someone who knew where I was going, and how to get there.
Ryouga dismissed the thought as quickly as it occurred. The minuscule
benefits were far outweighed by the disadvantages of having some
martinet lording it over him, treating him like a slave.
     Kiyone had been listening intently, if somewhat confusedly, to the
voice's ramblings, and one statement in particular had stuck. "What do
you mean you're not really a ship? How can you inherit being a ship?"
Even as she asked the question, she was calling up data on her wrist-
unit, recalling the warning she'd received just prior to meeting her
rescuer. 
     "I told you. My ancestress--"
     "Was her name, Ryo-oh-ki," Kiyone broke in, having called up the
files she was looking for.
     "Yes!" The voice said in surprise. "How did you know?"
     Kiyone held up her hand to show her wrist-unit. "This is a Galaxy
Police ID. Its also a very complete criminal data base, and there is a very
large file on your ancestress."
     "She was a criminal!?" The voice said in shock.
     "I'm afraid so," Kiyone said, "but other then her scanned vitals,
very little is known about her, or how she did some of the things she is
suppose to have done. Some of what she did was supposed to be
impossible. I suppose having descendants in no more unlikely than
mounting a successful raid on Jurai. What's your name anyway?" She
said, breaking away from the topic for a moment. "I can't keep thinking
of you as a cute voice."
     "Huh?" the voice said, and Kiyone was rather amused to notice he
sounded flustered. "Oh. Ryouga. My name's Ryouga."
     "Pleased to meet you, Ryouga. Don't worry to much about your
ancestress's record. You're not responsible for what she did, and as far
as I'm concerned you proved yourself a stellar citizen when you rescued
me. Speaking of which. When will we be reaching an inhabitable planet.
I really need to report in."
     "Ahh. . ."


     "Ok," Kiyone said some time later. "Let me be sure I have this
straight. You don't know where you are, you don't know how you got
here, and you don't know how to get out of here. Is that about it?" 
     Kiyone's voice had a certain tenseness that Ryouga's had come to
associate with people who were trying to give him directional
instructions. The resemblance made him cringe, because that particular
tone of voice usually preceded the other person screaming in frustration.
Unfortunately, there was little he could do to ease the situation. The
facts were as Kiyone stated, and there was little he could do to alter
them. "I'm sorry," he said in a contrite voice.
     Kiyone took a deep breath, and let it out. Then in a carefully
controlled motion, the result of much unwanted practice on her part, she
lifted a hand and pointed to her right while saying, "Go that way."
     "Is that the way out?" Ryouga asked in a hopeful voice, even as he
started moving parallel to Kiyone's indicated direction. 
     "Damned if I know," was Kiyone's succinct reply, "but it's at least
better then simply sitting here. The null-zone can't be infinite, and
should be spherical. If we just proceed in a straight line we'll come out
of it eventually." In her mind Kiyone added, I hope.   
     Silently, Ryouga also sent up a prayer, only his was that he'd
manage to maintain a straight line for long enough to reach the edge, if
there was one.
     
     In the end it proved to be Kiyone's former home that was their
salvation. Without it, Ryouga wouldn't have even known if he was
actually  moving. As it disappeared behind him he was reassured that he
was, in fact, making progress, even if he didn't know where to. More
importantly, with it as a reference point, he could maintain a straight
flight. Even after it disappeared, the signal from Kiyone's transmitter let
him know he was still moving away from it by the variation in the signal
strength. As clear to his new senses as the sound of traffic on a highway
had been to his olds ones. 

     After a while, when it became clear that they were not going to get
out of the void immediately, Ryouga filled the silence by asking Kiyone
a question. "How did you end up here?"
     Kiyone blinked, and visibly drew herself back from wherever her
thoughts had been. She gave a bitter laugh, and said, "Recovering a
stolen pet."                                      
     "Pardon?" Ryouga asked in a startled voice.
     "Sorry, I'll start at the beginning," Kiyone said. Her eyes went
distant as her thoughts traveled back five and a half months. "We were
on home detail, Mihoshi and me. Mihoshi is, was, my partner." Ryouga
noticed that Kiyone tended to clench her teeth slightly every time she
mentioned her partner's name. "Our ship, Yukinojo , was in the shop for
upgrades and repairs. Poor Yukinojo spends a lot of time in the shop."
Kiyone offered as an aside.  
     "If I recall correctly, Mihoshi was scrambling the brain of a young
intern who had made the mistake of confessing her respect for Mihoshi.
Poor girl ended up sitting through a three hour lecture of how to be a
good officer. Or, at least that was what it started out as. As I recall,
when the 'Lady' was shown into our office, Mihoshi was expounding on
how wonderful the tea was."
     "The lady?"
     "Oh yes, 'The Lady'. She was really something. The daughter of a
high ranking official, and she knew it. You could tell by the way she
looked at us that we were not worthy of kissing her boots. The officer
that showed her in gave me the high sign, meaning, humor her, and for
god's sake, keep her away from the higher ups."
     Kiyone took a sip of her broth, and continued. "I'd been doing
both mine and Mihoshi's paperwork for two days, and I was ready for
any sort of break at all. So I sat her highness down and took her
statement. It seemed a low-class trollop of a robber had stolen her Prince
from her."
     "A prince?" Ryouga said in surprise.
     "Oh, not a person, a Snat." When Ryouga made a puzzled noise,
she explained. "Imagine a legless, spineless, cat, that's a Snat. Its name
was Prince. God knows why." 
     "You, and your partner looked for stolen pets?" Ryouga asked in
surprise.
     "Heavens no, but like I said, this lady was connected, and she had
no sense of proportion. As far as she was concerned her problem ranked
right up there with the Kagato case."
     "Kagato?" 
     "I'll tell you later, for now just take my word for it - he's serious
stuff as far at the GP is concerned."
     "What should have happened was:  we took her report, made some
reassuring noises, and sent her on her way. What did happen was that
Mihoshi," Kiyone's teeth clenching was much more noticeable this
time, she practical chewed the words as she spoke, "told her that we'd
get right on the case, and did she know where the perpetrator was at the
moment." 
     Kiyone gave a shake of her head. "I've gone over it time and time
again in the last few months, and I still don't know how it happened, but
somehow, ten minutes later I was on Yukinojo, along with Mihoshi, the
intern, and the pain in the neck noble lady, whose name was the Lady
Kinishia Haptam Dinwit, by the way. She'll always be Lady Dimwit in
my heart, however. 
     "We spent the next two days going from one seedy dive to another
looking for the thief. All at the directions of Lady Dimwit, who
strangely, seemed to have a very good idea of the places this person
frequented. I was starting to get more than a little suspicious by the time
we finally tracked the snat stealer down. She was in her apartment, a
hole in the wall, literally - it was in the side of an asteroid habitat. We
walked straight in, thanks to Mihoshi's less then subtle technique. When
Lady Dimwit saw the thief, she went ballistic. I never would have
imagined that a lady could have known language like that. And the thief
gave as good as she got, even when it moved to a more physical attack. I
tried to break them apart, but I didn't want to use a weapon with Lady
Dimwit so tangled up with the thief, and Mihoshi was no help, she was
busy covering the interns ears, protecting her from the language the two
of them were spewing out."
     Kiyone paused to wet her throat with a swallow of the broth she
was still holding. A wry smile twisted her lip. "I guess I should have
twigged early on, but while I had my suspicions, it wasn't until I started
to listen to exactly what the two of them were screaming at each other
that I finally understood what it was all about.  The two of them had
been lovers, and the split up had been less than harmonious."
     "What?" Ryouga said, his voice startled. "But, they were both
girls?"             
     "Eh?" Kiyone said, surprise in her voice. "Nothing strange about
that, not common, but not rare either." 
     "Oh. . .were you and--" Ryouga started to ask, his disorientation
causing him to blurt out a question he would not normally think of
asking. He didn't get a chance to finish his question, however.
     "NO!!!, Don't even think that," Kiyone snarled. "Me and . . ." She
shuddered. "I might have been a bit hard up in the romance department,
but I was never so hard up that I'd have considered that bubble-brain." 
     Someone else might have taken note of the vehemence with which
Kiyone denied a possible romantic relationship with her former partner,
and to wonder at it, and if there might not be something behind her
vehemence. Providing, of course, that they did not have first hand
knowledge of Mihoshi, that is. Ryouga was too cowed by her tone of
voice to even consider the reasons behind it. He hurriedly changed the
topic. "So you found this girl, and discovered that the lady had been
lying to you, but how did that lead to you being here?"
     Kiyone collected herself, and took a deep breath. "Mihoshi, of
course. After we finally got things under control, and tossed the
girlfriend in a holding cell. There was a warrant out for her in regards to
another crime. Mihoshi decided to go and play conciliator, and try and
get the two of them back together. The girlfriend played along, and
when she got a chance, cold-cocked Mihoshi, snatched up Prince from
where we were holding him, and did a runner, right to her mother's ship.
     "Now the girlfriend might have played at being from the wrong
side of the track, but her mother was a high-powered corporate scientist.
Had her own private research vessel and everything. Girlfriend takes off
with the ship, but we managed to get on board before she got underway.
It was a big ship, however, and by the time we got to the bridge, she'd
sealed it, and we were stuck on the wrong side of several tons of armor
plating.  
     "What none of us knew was that mommy was in the shipboard lab,
working on her latest invention. An Ultimate Energy Generator."
Kiyone capitalized the last three words, then paused, and waited, then
asked, "Aren't you going to ask me what an Ultimate Energy Generator
is?"
     "Uh, should I?" Ryouga asked in a confused voice.
     "Never mind," Kiyone said, waving aside the question. "I'll
explain anyway. I had to sit through that nutcase's lecture, no reason
why you should get off. There is an ultimate  structure to the universe. A
structure that goes beyond mundane things like matter and energy. It is
what establishes the underlying set of rules that were formed at the
moment of creation, and which controls every aspect of what we know
of as reality, the thing that says Pi is 3.14, or that gravity is gravity, and
that light can only go so fast. It can't be measured, it can't be detected at
all, but it has to be there. The Ultimate Energy Generator worked by
consuming that basic reality." Once again Kiyone paused, and waited
for Ryouga to mull over the implications. She wondered if he would get
it. He seemed a bit dim in some ways.
     It took a little while, but finally Ryouga gave a startled
exclamation, and said. "That's insane. Wouldn't it be like sawing off the
branch you were standing on?"
     "Bingo," Kiyone said in an approving tone. 
     "So that's what created the void?"
     "Bingo, again. That's exactly what happened. But I'm getting
ahead of myself, the professor was not happy when she discovered that
daughter-dearest had jacked her ship and--"
     "The stars!!" Ryouga shouted.
     Kiyone stared in shock as the ceiling above her became
transparent, and the glory of the star field near the galactic core
exploded into view. For a moment, she was at a loss for words, but then
she quietly murmured, "Hello, old friends. Miss me?" The tears running
down her cheeks belied her flippant words, however. For Kiyone it was
over, and even if they exploded in the next minute, she had won. She
had escaped the void, and made it back home. But, as she didn't think
they were going to explode in the next minute, there were things to do. 
     "Are you still receiving my distress call, Ryouga?"
     "No, it stopped as soon as we crossed the boundary line," Ryouga
answered, after checking his data recorders. 
     Kiyone lapsed into thought. She had been afraid that her distress
call would serve to lure other ships into the void. That did not seem to
be the case, but . . . "Ryouga, could you brush go back in, just a little
way?"
     "You want to go back in!?" Ryouga said in a startled voice.
     "God no!" Kiyone said with a shudder. "If I never have to enter
that place again, I'd die happy, but, just this once, I think we have to."
     "Why!?" Ryouga said with some heat. Kiyone had been pale
before, but now she looked like a ghost. Even someone as self-absorbed
as Ryouga usually was could see that she was scared stiff of the very
thought of reentering her former prison. 
     "The signal. We can't leave it on. If some other ship brushes the
edge they'll hear it. If they follow the signal in . . . I cobbled it together
out of material that was never meant to be used as a transmitter. It was a
miracle it worked at all. If some ship were to be lured in by it, just as it
failed, they might never get out again. I wouldn't trap my worst enemy
in there." As Kiyone has talked, her voice had become shrill, and her
eyes had taken on a haunted look.
     "I understand," Ryouga said in a gentle voice. "Leave it to me."

     Ryouga edged back toward the distortion that marked the edge of
the void, and allowed a pair of spines to crossover. A chill ran over his
outer shell. The previous transition had been too quick for even his new
senses to register, but this, this was different, lord it was different. If he
still needed to breath, he'd have gasped in shock. 
     Gritting figurative teeth, he concentrated on the task at hand. He
could now hear Kiyone's signal and he focused on that. Using the
slightly different pressure against each of his spines, he triangulated on
the source. Having done that, he armed his main beam. 
     If it had not been for the discomfort caused by the interface,
Ryouga would have taken his time and savored the sensation of his
weapon charging up. Ever since Help-chan had run through his weapon
systems, he'd been eager for a chance to try them out. But he was not
going to be able to do that this time. The itching discomfort over his
outer shell discouraged lingering. He did indulge in one form of self
indulgence, however.
     "ROARING TIGER BULLET," He yelled exultantly as his main
weapon reached full charge. A beam of coherent light, nearly six meters
in diameter, sprang from the focal point between his two spines, and
flashed into the void.  Nano-seconds later, the signal disappeared from
all of Ryouga's sensors. With a sigh of relief, he backed out of the void.
     "It's done," he said to Kiyone. When he got no reply, he switched
his focus from the exterior to the lounge. Kiyone was hunched over on
the sofa, two pillows pressed against either side of her head. Ryouga
big-sweated. Maybe he'd overdone the yelling bit.

     A little while later, Kiyone, convinced that Ryouga was not going
to indulge in any more theatrics, asked, "If you would, please, Ryouga,
take us to GP headquarters."
     "Umm, sure, be happy to, right away . . .Uh, you wouldn't know
where it is, would you?"
     Kiyone was surprised. The Galaxy Police was a non-partisan
enforcement body. Supported and staffed by a dozen different
jurisdictions, some of which had contact only through the GP itself. It
was thousands of years old, and had extra-atmospheric jurisdiction over
almost all of the galactic cluster. It seemed inconceivable that there
could be a ship in space that did not have the coordinates for the central
headquarters. 
     Fortunately, even if Ryouga didn't have the location, Kiyone did.
Long ago, when still a cadet, she'd been given an assignment to
calculate the location of GP headquarters. That assignment, just like
every other one she'd been assigned during her cadet days, was stored
within the molecular memory of her personal ID. With the ease of long
practice, she called up the pertinent data, and projected it via the Holo
emitter in her badge. "Here you go," she said.
     Ryouga memorized the twenty six digit designation at a glance,
and then waited.
     "How long do you think it will take to get there?" Kiyone asked,
beginning to get a bit impatient.
     There was a moment of silence, and then Ryouga spoke, his tone
calling up an image of a puppy who expects a painful swat on the nose
after making a mess he couldn't avoid. "I don't know where that is."
     This time Kiyone was past surprised. The code she'd just showed
Ryouga contained the precise location of GP headquarters. The
designations used were as close to universal as it was possible to be in
the varied universe. It was within the realms of possibilities that Ryouga
not know where GP Headquarters was located, it was out of all reason
that he not be able to calculate that location from the code that Kiyone
had just given him. 
     Another person might have given into despair at that point,
resigning themselves to a cruel universe that was out to get her, but
Kiyone was made of sterner stuff, or at least, had been forced to deal
with someone who made Ryouga seem merely uninformed.  So, rather
than screaming curses at the gods, Kiyone merely thought for a few
minutes, and then began to call up more data to display to Ryouga. 
     This time she brought up the location and spectrum of several
hundred major stars. Personal identification badges did not usually
contain cartographical information, but Kiyone was in the habit of
recording some of the more spectacular stellar phenomenon she came
across in the course of her duty, to send home as postcards. "See if you
can find any of these, and correlate the data with the location your
sensors give them," she told Ryouga in a firm voice.
     Grateful at Kiyone's patience, something that had been rare in his
life, Ryouga complied with her suggestion. Help-chan's training proved
its worth as he spread out his sensor array without need for thought, and
one by one matched each of Kiyone's postcards with the real thing. As
he did so, a feeling began to grow within his breast, or more correctly,
his second ventral propulsion spine, a feeling that expanded with each
star located and placed. "I know where I am!" he shouted in an exultant
voice. "I KNOW WHERE I AM!!"
     Kiyone big sweated at his volume, but inside felt an echo of his
pleasure that gave her a warm glow of satisfaction, knowing his joy was
a direct result of her actions. "Now," she said, her firm voice cutting
through Ryouga's personal celebration, "add the GP coordinates I gave
you and fit them into that map. Do you know where it is now?"
     "Yes!" Ryouga said, his voice trembling with excitement. "Should
I go there now?" he asked, half afraid that if he moved he'd lose this
wonderful feeling of knowing his exact location.
     "Of course," Kiyone answered. 
     A second later, a shocked Kiyone was staring out at the central
recreation sphere of GP headquarters, and she suddenly remembered
why she only got a B on her assignment.  As they started falling toward
the large body of water that was the central attraction for the park, she
heard her teacher's voice in her head.
     "Sometimes you don't want to be quite so precise. It's all well and
fine to resolve your numbers down to the exact location of an object as
an abstract, but do you really want to warp into the exact center of a
sun?"
                                             
















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