After their third bout of lovemaking they ordered a huge room-service dinner, complete with iced champagne. The mattress was too unstable for them to eat in bed, so they sat in front of the veranda window wearing big toweling robes and tucked in.

"Those slopes are going to look beautiful after sunset," Roselyn said.

The instructor had told them that when Amethi moved into the umbra the runs were all illuminated by orange and green lamps. Skiers themselves wore red and white torches on their helmets. It was as if the whole valley side was invaded by swarms of dancing starlight.

Lawrence took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "We'll see it. Our last days here are in the conjunction night. We'll be good enough to be using the main slope ourselves by then. They say that when we're in the heart of the umbra, Nizana is like a flaming halo, as if the sun's set the edge of the atmosphere on fire."

"I can't wait."

They took the half-empty bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates back to the bed. Lawrence lay on the mattress, a flute of champagne in one hand, the box of chocolates in reach of the other, and Roselyn curled up beside him.

She squirmed around for a moment until she was perfectly comfortable, then said, "Go on then."

"Thanks." He kissed her brow, and told the room AS, "Access my personal file, entertainment section, and play Flight: Horizon, series six, episode five. Give me the standard third-person view edit."

"Happy now?" Roselyn asked.

She always watched Flight: Horizon with him, though he was pretty sure she was humoring him rather than developing any deep interest in the crew of the Ultema. "I am, thank you," he said with dignity. She snuggled in a fraction closer and took a sip from her own flute as the credits rolled and the signature tune began its fanfare.

Eighty minutes later the Ultema had managed to prevent a planetary collision that would have wiped out three sentient alien species. One of the species was furious with this interference in their glorious destiny as angels of the apocalypse and came gunning for the starship with some very nasty weapons. Three of the crew had been killed before the end, two of whom had just got engaged.

"Seven crew in three episodes," Lawrence said in dismay. "That's as many as in the whole of series four."

"Oh dear." Roselyn's lips were pressed together to hold back her giggles. She attempted to put on a grave expression. "That's not good, then?"

"It doesn't help their chances, no."

"Oh, poor baby." She wriggled around until she was on top of him and gave him a wet kiss while she giggled.

Lawrence played stubborn.

Roselyn laughed outright. "Oh, I'm sorry. It's just that you take it so seriously."

"I used to take it very seriously. They were good role models when I was younger. It meant a lot to me then. Now it's like having old friends around; I can appreciate it without adulating it. You showed me there's more to life than the i's. But I still claim it's a pretty good show."

"Oh, Lawrence." She turned back to give the big sheet screen a remorseful look. "That was nasty of me. I sometimes forget how different our backgrounds are."

"Hey." He stroked her back gently. "You couldn't be nasty if you tried."

"Except to Alan."

Lawrence sniggered. "That wasn't nasty; that was funny."

"True." She lay down beside him, their faces a couple of centimeters apart. "And you were right, Flight: Horizon isn't a bad influence for a growing boy."

"Well, I'm growing out of it now. Damn, taking an administration class at university. That's about as far away as possible from what I used to want."

"No, it's not. Command qualities are the same no matter what fancy name you stick on them. And it will be a damn good basic if you ever change your mind and go in for officer training."

"Ha! Training for what? Dad said it: we just run a passenger service. You should know, you've been on it. I wanted to be a part of exploring the galaxy, pushing back the frontiers. That's all over, now."

Roselyn propped herself up on an elbow to look at him. "This is what I can never understand about you, Lawrence. You always tell me how much you hate McArthur for shutting down its exploration program. Yet you never talk about anything else but staying here and making your contribution to Amethi, to the company. That's dichotomous to the point of schizoid, especially for you."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"If you can't do what you want here, then leave and do it somewhere else."

"There is nowhere else," he said in exasperation.

Her perplexed look was equally impatient. "Well, not apart from Earth with its half-dozen exploration fleets, no."

Despite the warmth of the room and her body, the lazy fizzing of the champagne in his blood, Lawrence was abruptly cold and terribly alert. What she'd said simply wasn't true. Because it contradicted his whole world, everything he'd known and done since that hot-tempered day when he'd ruined the fatworms. "What did you say?"

"That you should go to Earth and sign on with another company if you feel so strongly about all this."

His hands closed about her upper arms, squeezing hard. "What other fucking companies?"

"Lawrence!" She looked from his hands up to his face.

"Sorry." He let go. Tried to haul in his temper. It seemed to be as intense as his fright. "What companies? Are you telling me that someone is still running explorer fleets?"

"Of course they are. Zantiu-Braun is the biggest space-active company of all, but Alphaston, Richards-Montanna, Quatomo are all still funding missions. None of the fleets are as big as they used to be before everyone started their asset-realization atrocities, but they still send out starships to survey fresh stars. And Zantiu-Braun has its portal colonies as well."

"Somebody's still founding colonies?" His voice had dropped to an aghast whisper.

"Yes. Lawrence, didn't you know any of this?"

"No."

"Shit." She was giving him a very troubled look. "Lawrence, I..."

"I want a full datapool trawl," he told the room AS in a flat voice. "Get an askping to pull all the information you can on current interstellar exploration. Specifically, the activities of the Alphaston, Richards-Montanna, Quatomo and Zantiu-Braun companies."

"There are no files on current interstellar exploration," the AS reported. "All information pertaining to current human starflight activities concern commercial flights and asset-realization missions."