No-ship
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A no-ship is a fictional type of spacecraft from the Dune science fiction series by Frank Herbert.
Essentially, a no-ship is a type of no-chamber that can be used for interstellar transportation. Like a no-chamber, anything inside a no-ship is hidden from prescient vision and other methods of detection, although it is indicated that in standby mode, it can be seen with the naked eye. A no-ship has much greater technological capability than a no-chamber; for example, it can perform the functions of a Guild Navigator. Specifically, a no-ship's computer is capable of enough limited prescience that it can successfully navigate its way through a fold in the fabric of the space-time continuum.
No-ships can also be gigantic. In Chapterhouse: Dune, Duncan Idaho and Murbella are confined to a no-ship for their own protection from prescient spying. They are capable of living within it for years without suffering many of the undue effects one would associate with such confinement, implying a very large and luxurious living space. More strikingly, a no-ship can be used to transport an adult sandworm, with enough sand for it to survive in for the duration of the trip. The Great Hold of the no-ship on Chapterhouse Planet which held this worm was said to be one kilometer in length.
In Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune it is suggested that certain characters with Atreides ancestry are capable of using their prescient powers to "see" no-ships. Miles Teg, a Bashar in Heretics who is descended from Ghanima Atreides and Farad'n Corrino, is cloned in Chapterhouse Dune — his clone is imprinted with the ability to nullify no-field invisibility after being exposed to a device called a T-Probe, an offshoot of an Ixian device.
No-ships represent the fading of both the restrictions on computing devices in the Dune universe and the power of the Spacing Guild, whose navigators were previously the only beings capable of interstellar navigation in their heighliner spacecraft.
