Arrakis. Third planet in Canopus system. A most intriguing place.

Guild Navigator D’murr gazed through plaz windows from his chamber, a mere speck inside the huge Heighliner. Far beneath his vessel, beyond a dirt-brown veil of wind-whipped dust, lay Arrakis, sole source of the melange that enabled him to see along the intricate pathways of the universe.

Such pleasure the spice gives me.

A tiny shuttle burned upward through the planet’s atmosphere from the south pole, broke free, and reached the great ship in orbit. When the shuttle docked, a surveillance camera showed D’murr a group of passengers disembarking into the Heighliner’s atmospheric-controlled community areas.

Though many other Spacing Guild workers crewed the vessel, as Navigator, D’murr had to watch all things, at all times. This was his ship, his home and workplace, his responsibility.

Within his sealed chamber, the familiar hiss of orange melange gas was barely audible. In his grossly deformed body, D’murr could never walk upon the desert planet, could never, in fact, leave the security of his tank. But just being near Arrakis calmed him in a primal way. With his higher-order brain he attempted to develop a mathematical analogy for his sensation, but it would not come into clear focus.

Before entering Guild service, D’murr Pilru should have done more with his life while he was still human. But now it was too late. The Guild had taken him so quickly— so unexpectedly— after he’d passed their entrance examination. There’d been no time for saying proper goodbyes, for wrapping up his human affairs.

Human.

How wide a definition did the word encompass? The Bene Gesserit had spent generations grappling with that exact question, with all the nuances, the ranges of intellect and emotion, the exalted achievements, the dismal failures. D’murr’s physical form had altered significantly since he joined the Guild . . . but how much did that matter? Had he and all other Navigators transcended the human condition, to become something altogether different?

I am still human. I am no longer human. He listened to his own troubled, vacillating thoughts.

Through the surveillance transeye, D’murr watched the new passengers, rugged men in dark clothing, walk into the main passenger lounge. Suspensor-borne travel bags floated behind them. One of the men, ruddy-featured, with a voluminous mustache and a clean-shaven head, seemed oddly familiar. . . .

I still remember things.

Dominic Vernius. Where had he been all these years?

The Navigator uttered a command into the glittering speaker globe by his tiny V-mouth. The screen showed the names of the passengers, but none was familiar. The exiled Earl Vernius was traveling under an alias, despite the Guild’s absolute assurances of confidentiality.

He and his companions were bound for Salusa Secundus.

A buzzer sounded inside the navigation chamber. All shuttles were secured in their berths. Guild crewmen sealed the entry hatches and monitored the Holtzman engines; an army of experts prepared the Heighliner for departure from polar orbit. D’murr hardly noticed.

Instead, he thought of halcyon days on Ix, of the bucolic time he’d spent with his parents and twin brother in the Grand Palais of Earl Vernius.

Useless detritus of the mind.

As Navigator, he made higher-order calculations and reveled in dimensional mathematics. He transported Heighliners filled with passengers and cargo across vast distances. . . .

Yet suddenly he found himself blocked, distracted, unable to function. His intricate brain lost focus in the midst of precious equations. Why had his mind, the remnant of his lost self, insisted on recognizing that man? An answer surfaced, like a creature emerging from the depths of a dark sea: Dominic Vernius represented an important part of D’murr Pilru’s past. His human past . . .

I want to fold space.

Instead, images of bygone Ix rolled across his mind: scenes of splendor in the Vernius court with his brother C’tair. Pretty girls in expensive dresses smiling; even the Earl’s lovely young daughter. Kailea. His brain, large enough to enfold the universe, was a storehouse of all he had been, and all he would become.

I have not finished evolving.

The faces of the Ixian girls shifted, becoming the glowering countenances of his instructors in Navigation School on Junction. Their sealed chambers clustered around his, their tiny dark eyes piercing him for his failure.

I must fold space!

For D’murr this was the ultimate sensual experience, of his mind and body and the multiple dimensions available to him. He had given himself to the Guild, much as primitive priests and nuns once gave themselves to their God, abstaining from sexual relations.

Finally he left the tiny stall-point of human recollection and expanded to encompass the star systems, stretching to reach them and beyond. As D’murr guided the Heighliner through foldspace, the galaxy became his woman . . . and he made love to her.