I should have stuck to rope-spinning, she thought gloomily.

She reached out toward her hyperdrive waldo. She found herself staring at her own hand and arm, becoming aware of the enormity of the action she was about to take. The light of the dying Sun flooded the cage in shades of blood-red; gaudy golden highlights glimmered from the material of her glove.

She was filled, suddenly, with a profound sense of melancholy. She stifled a cry; the mood was so powerful it was almost overwhelming…

And the flood of emotion was coming from outside her. It came from her companion, she realized; her silent, invisible companion, here in the cage…

Louise sounded tense, almost unbearably so. “Spinner? We’re waiting.”

Spinner-of-Rope looked around at the empty sky of the Solar System: at the ruin of the Sun, the glistening Jovian accretion disc. Despite the alienating devastation, it was strange to think that she would be the last human to witness this aching, echoing, cathedral of space and history. “Louise — no one’s ever going to come back here, are they?”

“To the Solar System? No,” Louise replied briskly.

“It doesn’t seem right,” she said slowly.

“What doesn’t?”

“That we should simply leave like this. Louise, we’re the last humans. Shouldn’t we — ”

Louise laughed. “What? Nail a plaque to Callisto? Make a speech? ‘Last one to leave, turn off the lights’?”

“I don’t know, Louise. But — ”

“Spinner.” It was always very obvious when Louise was forcing herself to be patient. “It’s over. Just push the damn button.”

Spinner-of-Rope closed her hand around the waldo.

Sunlight imploded.

Spinner-of-Rope was switched into darkness, into a sea of shadows which flooded the cage. She glanced down at her lap. The only illumination was a dim crimson glow — far less brilliant than Sol’s — which barely revealed the outlines of her own body.

The hyperdrive transit was as sudden and seamless as the test runs. There was no internal sense of motion at all: merely a lighting change, as if all of this were no more than some shallow Virtual stunt.

She twisted in her couch. Behind her, the lifedome still sat on the frail looking shoulders of the Xeelee craft, apparently undamaged; yellow human light, aping lost Sol, still blazed from a hundred sources, pale against the emptiness of space.

And beyond the lifedome there was a star, near enough to show a globe — as red as Sol but evidently much dimmer, cooler. The star provided the little light available. Beyond the star’s glowing limb, six distant stars — a little brighter than the average — trailed across the sky in a zigzag shape. The star at one end of the compact constellation, ruby red, shone through the tenuous outer atmosphere of the nearby star globe.

The more remote constellations were an array of crimson and yellow spread across the sky. They were unchanged, as far as she could tell. Well, that was no surprise: she knew Louise hadn’t planned to come far on this first jaunt.

“How are you, Spinner-of-Rope?”

“Fine,” Spinner said briskly. “As I’m sure you know better than I do, thanks to Mark’s telltales.”

Louise laughed. “I’ve learned never to trust these damn gadgets. How did the trip feel?”

“As good as ever. As bad as ever… I take it we all survived.”

“I’m just checking my summaries. No structural damage, as far as I can see. One case of shock — ” She snorted. “A man who fell out of your big kapok tree, Spinner-of-Rope, when the Sun disappeared. The fool floated around until he could be snagged and hauled in. As we hoped, the nightfighter’s domain-wall inertial shielding protected the whole of the lifedome from any side-effects of the jump… Spinner, I don’t think many people in the Decks have even realized we’ve jumped.”

“Good. I guess it’s better that way.” Spinner-of-Rope stared around the sky. “Louise, I thought the Solar System was depressing enough. But this system is a tomb.”

“I know, Spinner. I’m sorry. But it is in our flightpath. Spinner, we’re going to head out of the plane of the Galaxy, in the direction of the Centaurus constellation: toward the Great Attractor…”

“The Xeelee Ring.”

“If that’s what it is, yes. And this star lies in Centaurus also.”

The main stars of the Centaurus constellation were ranged over distances from four light-years to five hundred light years from the Sun. Northern, piggy-backing the Xeelee nightfighter, was going to move, in a rough straight line, out through this three-dimensional layout — and then beyond, out of the Galaxy and toward the Great Attractor itself.

“Spinner, would you believe I decided we should come here, on the first hop, for sentimental reasons?”

“Sentimental? About this place? Are you kidding?”

“Spinner, that dull globe is Proxima Centauri: the nearest star to the Sun, less than four light-years out. When I was a kid, growing up on Earth, we’d barely reached the stars with the first GUTships. Systems like Proxima were places of wild romance, full of extraordinary adventure and possibility. Superet’s somber warnings of implacably hostile alien species Out There Somewhere just added to the allure for kids like me… I felt I had to get out here and see for myself.”

The presence, in the cage with her, seemed amused at this — even satisfied, Spinner thought.

Spinner grunted and picked at the material of her suit. “Well, you made it to Proxima at last. And I’m touched by these childhood reminiscences,” she said sourly.

You’re too harsh on her, Spinner-of-Rope…

Spinner went on, “This Proxima looks like a red giant. So I guess the photino birds have already done their work here…”

“No,” Louise said. “Actually, Spinner, Proxima is a red dwarf… It’s a Main Sequence star, quite stable.”

“Really?” Spinner-of-Rope twisted in her seat and stared into the dull disc of Proxima. “You mean it’s always been like this?”

Louise laughed. “I’m afraid so, Spinner. It’s just a lot less massive than the Sun, and so has always been much dimmer — twenty thousand times less luminous than the Sun, in fact. The photino birds didn’t need to turn it cool and red, like the Sun; Proxima has always been a dwarf. Stable, and harmless — and quite useless.”

“Useless for us. For baryonic life. But maybe not for the birds.”

“No,” Louise said. “I guess a red dwarf is the ideal stellar form, for them: the model toward which they are guiding every damn star in all the galaxies. Of course Proxima has its moments: it’s quite a brilliant flare star — a UV Ceti type. It can vary in brightness by up to a magnitude…”

“It can?” For a few seconds Spinner studied the bland crimson disc. “You want we should wait around and see if it does something exciting?”

“No, Spinner. Anyway, I suspect the photino birds will have put a stop to such frivolities by now… Oh. One thing. Spinner-of-Rope, turn around.”

Loosening her restraints. Spinner twisted in her seat. “What now?”

“Spinner, do you see that constellation just to the right of Proxima’s disc?”

Louise must mean the jagged row of six stars behind Proxima, Spinner decided. “Yes. What about it?”

“From Earth, that constellation used to be called Cassiopeia: named after the queen of Cepheus, the mother of Andromeda…”

“Save the fairy tales, Louise,” Spinner growled.

“But from here, the constellation looks different. From here, the pattern’s distinctive W-shape is spoiled a bit by the addition of that bright red star at the left hand end of the row.”

Spinner stared; the star was a ruby jewel glimmering through the hazy outer layers of Proxima.

“The first colonists of Proxima — or rather, of the Alpha system, of which Proxima is a part — called the new constellation the Switchback.