Whatever the cause, the two grips had snapped as neatly as you could ask for. And there they were, a forty-two-year-old-going-on-twelve uncle and his eight-year-old-and-aging-rapidly nephew, in a cab not more than ten meters in any dimension, tumbling through space. The proverbially "empty" space, except this portion of the universe contained a lot of ionized particles vented from Hainuwele and swept into Ameta's magnetosphere, along with gases from Yamato's Nebula. They had no source of propulsion usable on anything except maglev tracks, and with only the meager life support systems you'd expect for an amusement park roller coaster cab which had never been designed to be occupied for longer than a few minutes at a time.

Still, they managed to eke out the air and power long enough to be rescued by the clan's grande dame, who came after them with the somehow-still-functional yacht that had been one of the many follies left behind by her husband. Fortunately, Elfride Margarete Butre had been a renowned pilot in her day, and the old lady still had the knack of flying by the proverbial seat of her pants. That was about the only way she could have managed to pull off the rescue before the cab's shielding was overwhelmed by the harsh and lethal radiation in Ameta's magnetosphere, given that the yacht's instrument systems were in the same parlous state of repair as just about everything owned by the clan of a material nature.

On the negative side, the same Elfride Margarete Butre had an acid tongue that suffered no fools gladly and suffered downright screwballs not at all. As it happened, the com systems on both the yacht and the now-adrift roller coaster cab had been among the few pieces of equipment still functioning almost perfectly. Nor, alas, could the com system in the cab be turned off by the inhabitants. It had been designed, after all, to pass on instructions to idiot tourists. So, the entire rescue was accompanied, from start to finish and with not more than four seconds of continuous silence, with what had gone down into the clan's extensive legendry as Ganny's Second-Best Skinning.

(The Very Best Skinning had been the one she bestowed upon her deceased husband, when she first learned that he'd died of a heart attack in the middle of attempting to recoup his lost fortunes in a game of chance—right at the point where he'd triumphed but before his opponents had turned over the purse. Leaving aside the expletives, the gist of it had been: "Forty years living on the edge, you put me through! And you couldn't hold on for four more seconds?")

Fortunately for Brice, his age had sheltered him from most of the ferocious diatribe. Still, even the penumbra of the vitriol poured upon Uncle Andrew by Ganny El had scarred him for life.

So he liked to think, anyway. The incident was several years in the past, and Brice was now fourteen years old. That is to say, the age when all bright and right-thinking lads come to realize that theirs is a solemn fate. Doomed, perhaps by destiny, perhaps by chance, but certainly by their exquisite sensitivity, to the tormented life of the outcast. Condemned to awkward silences and inept speech; consigned to the outer darkness of misunderstanding; sentenced to a life of loneliness.

And celibacy, of course, he'd told himself until three days earlier—whereupon his uncle Andrew piled misery onto melancholy by explaining to him the fine distinction between celibacy and chastity.

"Oh, cut it out, Brice. You're just in a funk because—"

He held up a meaty thumb. "Cousin Jennifer won't give you the time of day, and for reasons known only to boys who have been turned into hollow mindless shells by hormones—yes, I knew the reasons myself way back then, but I've long since forgotten since I stopped being a teenage cretin—your 'affections,' as they are politely called, have naturally settled on the girl in your vicinity who is probably the best-looking and certainly the most self-absorbed."

"That's not—"

"Point two." The forefinger came up to join the thumb. "You have therefore persuaded yourself that you are bound for a life of solitary splendor. If you can't have Jennifer Foley, you'll have no lass for a bride. Not that you've got any business daydreaming about brides, when you've got Tempestuous Taub riled at you for your dismal performance in trigonometry."

Brice scowled. His much older cousin Andrew Taub was the very least favorite of his cousins, at the moment. It was preposterous to expect a fourteen year old boy gripped by life's great despairs to attend to the tedious—no, leaden—dullness of sines and cosines and such. Even a teacher as anal-retentive as Andy Taub ought to realize that much.

"That's not—"

Remorselessly, the middle finger joined its fellows. "Point three. You don't care about marriage anyway. You're only telling yourself that because you're still"—he paused for a moment, his heavy features disfigured by a caricature of thought—"at least four months away, by my best estimate, from the liberating realization that you don't need to be married to get laid—which is actually what your Mongol horde of hormones has got you worked up about, when it comes to Cousin Jennifer."

"That's really not—"

But it was hard to divert Uncle Andrew once he was on a roll. The ring finger came up to join the others. To add to the unfairness of the moment, despite Andrew Artlett's anything-but-gracile appearance, he was actually very well co-ordinated. Coordinated enough to be one of those rare people who could lift his ring finger while leaving the pinkie still curled in the palm of his hand.

"Point four. Once that realization comes to you, of course, the relief will be only temporary—since it will also become obvious to you the first time you attempt to act upon your newfound knowledge that Cousin Jennifer has no more interest in humping you than wedding you." He bestowed a cheerful smile upon his nephew. "Whereupon you will suddenly realize you are condemned to a life of chastity—that means not getting laid—as well as a life of celibacy, which merely refers to remaining single."

Despite himself, Brice had been intrigued. "I didn't know there was a difference."

"Oh, hell, yes. Ask any churchman. They've been parsing the distinction for eons, the lecherous bastids. And don't try to interrupt me. Because it's at that point—"

Inexorably, the pinkie took its place. "—point five, if you've lost track—when you'll go completely off the deep end of early adolescence and start writing poetry."

Brice's protest died aborning. As it happened, he'd alreadystarted writing poetry.

"Really, really bad poetry," his uncle concluded triumphantly.

Sadly, Brice had already come to suspect as much.

Brice brought the cab to a halt at the very apex of the curve. He couldn't have done that with most of the roller coaster's cabs, of course. Even those which were functional—still more than three-quarters of them—had been originally designed for tourists. Tourists were a species of the genus imbecile. Hardly the sort of people any sane amusement park would allow to control the vehicles on the various rides.

However, despite the unfortunate results of Uncle Andrew's enthusiasm on that memorable day, Elfride Margarete Butre had not tried to impose tourist rules on her family. She had not remained the undisputed head of the clan because there was anything creaky about the old lady's brain. She knew perfectly well that preventing recklessness altogether, in a clan which had as many children as hers did—not to mention the childlike nature of some of its adult members—was impossible anyway. Far better to provide suitable channels for excessive enthusiasm.

So, although she'd rendered most of the roller coaster cabs dysfunctional, she'd seen to it that three of them were brought fully up to snuff—which included turning Uncle Andrew's jury-rigged controls into something approximating a professional design. And she'd imposed no restrictions on their use, except for the obvious rule that no one was allowed to ride the roller coaster without someone else in the control room—and not more than one cab at a time was allowed on the track. She went even further and enforced that last rule by re-engineering the track so that the power would automatically cut off if more than one cab entered it. Only the Mysterious Lord of the Universe knew how rambunctious teenagers could manage to stage races on a roller coaster, but Ganny El knew perfectly well that the youngsters in her clan would certainly give it a try if she let them.