Garamond, made sensitive to the nature of the benevolent trap, never again went far into the interior of Orbitsville.

Not even when Elizabeth Lindstrom had been deposed and removed from all contact with society; not even when the Starflight enterprise had made way for communal transport schemes as natural and all-embracing as the yearly migration of birds to warmer climes; not even when geodesic networks of commerce were stretched across the outer surface of Orbitsville.

He chose to live with his family on the edges of space, from which viewpoint he could best observe, and also forget, that time was drawing to a close for the rest of humanity.

Time is a measurement of change, evolution is a product of competition — concepts which were without meaning or relevance in the context of the Big O, Absolved of the need to fight or flee, to feel hunger or fear, to build or destroy, to hope or to dream, humanity had to cease being human - even though metamorphosis could not take place within a single season.

During Garamond’s lifetime there was a last flare-up of that special kind of organized activity which, had Man not been drawn like a wasp into the honeypot, might have enabled his descendants to straddle the universe. There was a magical period when, centred on a thousand star-pools, a thousand new nations were born. All of them felt free to develop and flower in their own separate ways, but all were destined to become as one under the influence of Orbitsville’s changeless savannahs.

In time even the flickerwing ships ceased to ply the trade lanes between the entrance portals, because there can be no reward for the traveller when departure point cannot be distinguished from destination.

The quietness of the last long Sunday fell over an entire region of space.

Orbitsville had achieved its purpose.