Euphausiid

Eve

The Ghost cruiser hovered between Earth and Moon.
The ship was a rough ovoid, woven from silvered rope. Instrument clusters and energy pods were knotted to the walls. Around me, ghostd clung to the rope like grapes to a vine.
The blue of crescent Earth shimmered over their pulsating, convex surfaces.
Earth folded up and disappeared.
The first hyperspace hop was immerse, thousands of light years long. Then, in a succession of bewildering leaps, we sailed out of the Galaxy.
We fell obliquely to the plane of the disc. The core was a chanderlier of pink-white light, thouands of light years across, hanging over my head. Spiral arms— cloudy, streaming— moved serenely above me. There were blisters of gas sprinkled along the arms, I saw, bubbles of swollen colour.
Galactic light glimmered over the silvered flesh of the Ghosts, and of my own body.

                       ——「Xeelee：Vacuum Diagram」