alif

The Irish title of the letter a or haw is alif, as also is the Arabian: the Greek alpha is either alpa or alfa.

The wheel turns ever, and no pleasure of ours but is built on the shifting sand of some one's pain, even as Alif told me.

The inner, Aditya-Alif, however, was an eight-hundred-mile sphere; it had once been the planetary ship-station and shipyard-base.

Orders to take over Aditya-Alif and begin construction of a permanent naval base.