"The sudden proof of superiority will probably bring back a belief in God, don't you think?" Jazz asked.

"God?" Boon asked. "There's only one God on this ship, and he's already playing his role."

"I thought you said you didn't claim that title."

"I don't. But you do."

"I? I'm part of your collection, remember?"

"Playing God with your colony, Jason, can be dangerous. Especially when you aren't following a plan. Doing things for sentimental reasons will destroy you and your colony. Sentiment has no place in a man of vision."

"I'm not a man of vision," Jazz said, shrugging.

"Then you'll die as fruitlessly as your father did. In the meantime, I advise you to destroy the memory tapes you had made of Hop Noyock and Arran Handully."

Jazz chuckled. "I knew I should have paid that attendant more."

"It would have made no difference. He has instructions to accept all bribes and do everything he's bribed to do. As long as he reports it" to me. Destroy the tapes."

"I don't think it will do any harm to have two that remember their waking."

"No harm? A man with full knowledge will spread even more poison than a man with no knowledge. Hop and Arran would have you in their power. You'd have to ask their advice before you did something, and before long asking advice always turns into asking permission. It's up to you, though, Jazz. Be a fool if you like."

"Hop's my friend," Jazz said.

"And you're my friend," Doon said. "But of course, I'm a megalomaniac, as you love to remind me. A man with a eugenics program for the universe. The other ships are all gone."

"Eleven others?"

"And no, I won't tell you where the others are going. If you want to find them, you'll have to look."

"You told my colony that they were the best of the conspirators. Was that true?"

"For once, Jazz, I wasn't lying."

"Why are you giving me the best?"

"The others all have excellent colonies, too. I want the gene pool and the intellectual climate to be superb. The best start I can give my little projects."

"But why the best for me?" Jazz insisted.

"Because I love you so dearly," Doon said, reaching up to pat the starpilot's head. "But mostly, I'm afraid, because I believe that you, of all the captains I've sent, are best equipped to create what I want to have created."

"And what is that?"

"A better human race than the one we've had since men began killing each other and cooking the meat."

"And what improvement could the human race possibly make?"

"Perhaps," Doon said, "you might be able to develop a branch of the human family that could know and understand what other human beings are — and love them anyway. Hmmm?"

"Impossible. And I should know."

"You should know," Doon said. They left the storage room and went back to the pilot's cabin, where a soldier was waiting, out of breath. "Captain Worthing," the soldier said, saluting. Jazz returned the salute. "Yes?" And then the boy noticed Abner Doon, and saluted again, his face showing even more awe. "Abner Doon, sir," he said.

"I take it this means the tape has been played," Jason said.

"It has, sir, and we're waiting for orders. The fleet is with you."

"Then tell the fleet," Jazz said, "that I have done all that I can do, and am leaving on an important expedition. Tell them that Abner Doon will give them somec. Tell them to follow Abner Doon."

The soldier nodded, saluted, and then said, "Sir," looking at Doon. "Sir, will you come with me? Admiral Pushkin is waiting."

Doon smiled at Jason. "See you again." "Where?" asked Jason. "In heaven?"

"Unlikely," Doon said. "Give me three hundred years, and I'll have this Empire where it should be."

"And where is that?" Jazz asked.

"Please hurry, sir," the soldier insisted.

"In a gutter, bleeding to death," Doon said. And then he walked out of the ship. The door closed behind him, and he followed the soldier to the hall where the representatives of the Fleet were gathered.

Inside the control room, Jazz began working immediately. He didn't know his final destination — only the official destination, Siis III, was known to him. The computer would tell him where Doon wanted him to go only after he got the ship to Siis. But Jason knew enough — that the ultimate destination would be deep in the galaxy, far toward the center, far from the human pale. He knew that it would be hundreds of years of sleep, traveling all the while at many times the speed of light (using the drive that he himself had made possible in childhood). He knew that there was no record in the Empire, save in Abner Doon's head, that clearly told that Jazz Worthing and the other eleven ship captains were going anywhere but to their official destinations.

All in the hope, as Doon had often explained, that once isolated, these little colonies of humanity might actually develop something new. Something better than the decaying remnant of the Empire. "All we are," Doon had often said, "all we are is that last relic of the European civilization that was born in England with the industrial revolution. All we are is the fading shadow of the Technical Age. We're ripe for something new. Either for regeneration of the human race, or for replacement." And Jazz had cast his vote for regeneration, as had dozens of others who, though at first coerced into Doon's collection, had later been willing servants of Doon's vision.

Vision, thought Jazz, and as he settled down to maneuver the ship out of the cradle and out of Capitol's system, the idea of vision kept nagging at him. Vision of what? Do I have anything I want so badly that I'd sacrifice anything to have it? Is there anything that I am so sure is right that I would fight for it?

My own life, Jazz thought, but that isn't vision — every animal instinctively fights for that.

And then the go–ahead signal came, Jazz opened the view walls of the control pod, and the cradle slowly lifted him into the smoky sunlight of Capitol's surface. Around him the winds eddied and whirled, and from where Jazz sat in the retractable bubble at the front of the needlelike payload section of the ship, it seemed that the winds were dancing for him. Far below him, the vast doors of the ship cradle slowly closed, sliding under the massive landing gear that now bore the weight of the barrellike stardrive section of the ship.

When the door was closed, Jazz sat for a moment, waiting for clearance from the deeply buried traffic controllers, whose communications complex was called, for some nonsensical reason, the "tower." As he sat, he mentally said good–bye to Capitol. To the teeming crowds who had cheered on the exploits of Jazz Worthing, hero. To the men and women who had offered their bodies to him; to the incredible wealth and equally incredible poverty; to the oppression and the heady liberty that lived side–by–side in the corridors of Capitol. He also said good–bye to somec, and found that it was somec he would miss most of all.

"I'm a bloody hypocrite," Jazz said, laughing nastily at himself. "Out to destroy somec, when I crave it as much as anyone else."

And then the clearance came, and Jazz punched in the preset program alert, specified the route they had been cleared for, and then retracted the bubble so it wouldn't be shredded in the stresses of takeoff.

Days later, as the starship drifted lazily out of the Capitol system at a mere 1.35 gravities, and as the computers lavishly checked, double–checked, triple–checked, and then reported to Jason Worthing, Jazz realized the mistake he was making. Would Hop love him when they reached their colony, knowing he was a Swipe? Of course Hop and Arran would be grateful at first. But gratitude is the least dependable of human emotions, Jazz reminded himself. And I should know. I should know.

He confirmed the computer's verdict that the ship was ready for starflight. The readout warned him that he had thirty minutes before the ship would make its turn, putting the full thrust toward Capitol's sun, and accelerating to five, fifteen, twenty light–years per year. As always, Jazz had the whimsical thought that all the electromagnetic radiation in the universe was envious of him for the speed he could muster.