«They're manipulative bastards, Beowulf. You know that.»

«So are the ARMs. Your people have been in my face since I reached Earth. Do you know what Sharrol and I had to go through to have children?»

«The Fertility Board turned you down, of course.»

«Yeah.»

«What did you do?»

«Sharrol used to play with a Carlos Wu. Carlos had an open birthright. So we worked something out. Then I went traveling.»

He was, from the look of him, learning far more about Beowulf Shaeffer than he had ever wanted to. He tried to stick to what he knew. «Traveling. Any contact at all with Pierson's puppeteers during that period?»

«No.»

«Other aliens? Aliens the puppeteers dealt with?»

That made me smile. «I'm a celebrity among the Kdatlyno …»

GRENDEL

There were the sounds of a passenger starship.

You learn those sounds, and you don't forget, even after four years. They are never loud enough to distract, except during takeoff, and most are too low to hear anyway, but you don't forget, and you wake knowing where you are.

There were the sensations of being alone.

A sleeper field is not a straight no-gee field; there's an imbalance that keeps you more or less centered so you don't float out the edge and fall to the floor. When your field holds two, you set two imbalances for the distance you want, and somehow you feel that in your muscles. You touch from time to time, you and your love, twisting in sleep. There are rustlings and the sounds of breathing.

Nobody had touched me this night. Nothing breathed here but me. I was dead center in the sleeping field. I woke knowing I was alone, in a tiny sleeping cabin of the Argos, bound from Down to Gummidgy.

And where was Sharrol?

Sharrol was on Earth. She couldn't travel; some people can't take space. That was half our problem, but it did narrow it down, and if I wanted her, I need only go to Earth and hunt her up in a transfer-booth directory.

I didn't want to find her. Not now. Our bargain had been clear, and also inevitable; and there are advantages to sleeping alone. I'll think of them in a moment.

I found the field control switch. The sleeper field collapsed, letting me down easy. I climbed into a navy-blue falling jumper, moving carefully in the narrow sleeping cabin, started my hair, and went out.

Margo hailed me in the hall, looking refreshingly trim and lovely in a clinging pilot's uniform. Her long, dark hair streamed behind her, rippling, as if underwater or in freefall. «You're just in time. I was about to wake everyone up.»

«It's only nine-thirty. You want to get lynched?»

She laughed. «I'll tell them it was your idea. No, I'm serious, Bey. A month ago a starseed went through the Gummidgy system. I'm going to drop the ship out a light-month away and let everybody watch.»

«Oh. That'll be nice,» I said, trying for enthusiasm. «I've never seen a starseed set sail.»

«I'll give you time to grab a good seat.»

«Right. Thanks.» I waved and went on, marveling at myself. Since when have I had to work up enthusiasm? For anything?

Margo was Captain M. Tellefsen, in charge of getting the Argos to Gummidgy sometime this evening. We'd spent many of her off-duty hours talking shop, since the Argos resembled the liners I used to fly seven years ago, before my boss, Nakamura Lines, collapsed. Margo was a bright girl, as good a spacer as I'd been once. Her salary must have been good, too. That free-fall effect is the most difficult trick a hairdresser can attempt. No machine can imitate it.

Expensive tastes … I wondered why she'd left Earth. By flatlander standards she was lovely enough to make a fast fortune on tridee.

Maybe she just liked space. Many do. Their eyes hold a dreamy, distant look, a look I'd caught once in Margo's green eyes.

This early the lounge held only six passengers out of the twenty-eight. One was a big biped alien, a Kdatlyno touch sculptor named Lloobee. The chairs were too short for him. He sat on a table, with his great flat feet brushing the floor, his huge arms resting on horn-capped knees.

The other nonhumans aboard would have to stay in their rooms. Rooms 14-16-18 were joined and half-full of water, occupied by a dolphin. His name was Pszzzz, or Bra-a-ack, or some such unpolite sound. Human ears couldn't catch the ultrasonic overtones of that name, nor could a human throat pronounce it, so he answered to Moby Dick. He was on his way to Wunderland, the Argos's next stop. Then there were two sessile grogs in 22 and a flock of jumpin' jeepers in 24, with the connecting door open so the Grogs could get at the jumpin' jeepers, which were their food supply. Lloobee, the Kdatlyno touch sculptor, had room 20.

I found Emil at the bar. He raised a thumb in greeting, dialed me a Bloody Marriage, and waited in silence for my first sip. The drink tasted good, though I'd been thinking in terms of tuna and eggs.

The other four passengers, eating breakfast at a nearby table, all wore the false glow of health one carries out of an autodoc tank. Probably they'd been curing hangovers. But Emil always looked healthy, and he couldn't get drunk no matter how hard he tried. He was a Jinxian, short and wide and bull-strong, a top-flight computer programmer with an intuitive knack for asking the right questions when everyone else has been asking the wrong ones and blowing expensive circuits in their iron idiots.

«So,» he said.

«So,» I responded, «I'll do you a favor. Let's go sit by the window.»

He looked puzzled but went.

The Argos lounge had one picture window. It was turned off in hyperspace, so that it looked like part of the wall, but we found it from memory and sat down. Emil asked, «What's the favor?»

«This is it. Now we've got the best seats in the house. In a few minutes everyone will be fighting for a view because Margo's stopping the ship to show us a starseed setting sail.»

«Oh? Okay, I owe you one.»

«We're even. You bought me a drink.»

Emil looked puzzled, and I realized I'd put an edge in my voice. As if I didn't want anyone owing me favors. Which I didn't. But it was no excuse for being a boor.

I dialed a breakfast to go with the drink: tuna fillet, eggs Florentine, and double-strength tea. The kitchen had finished delivering it when Margo spoke over the intercom, as follows: «Ladies and gentlemen and other guests, we are dropping out some distance from CY Aquarii so that you may watch a starseed which set sail in the system of Gummidgy last month. I will raise the lounge screen in ten minutes.» Click.

In moments we were surrounded. The Kdatlyno sculptor squeezed in next to me, spiked knees hunched up against the lack of room, the silver tip of the horn on his elbow imperiling my eggs. Emil smiled with one side of his mouth, and I made a face. But it was justice. I'd chosen the seats myself.

The window went on. Silence fell.

Everyone who could move was crowded around the lounge window. The Kdatlyno's horned elbow pinned a fold of my sleeve to the table. I let it lie. I wasn't planning to move, and Kdatlyno are supposed to be touchy.

There were stars. Brighter than stars seen through atmosphere, but you get used to that. I looked for CY Aquarii and found a glaring white eye.

We watched it grow.

Margo was giving us a slow telescopic expansion. The bright dot grew to a disk bright enough to make your eyes water, and then no brighter. The eyes on a ship's hull won't transmit more than a certain amount of light. The disk swelled to fill the window, and now dark areas showed beneath the surface, splitting and disappearing and changing shape and size, growing darker and clearer as they rode the shock wave toward space. The core of CY Aquarii exploded every eighty-nine minutes. Each time the star grew whiter and brighter, while shock waves rode the explosion to the surface. Men and instruments watched to learn about stars.