Systems lamps went green. The power levels of the Hazeltines were beginning to rise. Real-space mass was showing zero.

Maggie, closeted with George and Janet in the passengers' cabin, said, "Please, God, let them be here."

Red lamp. Unsecured hatch in one of the rear storage areas. Hutch opened it, closed it again. The light went green.

Janet said, "This is going to be a terrible disappointment if Beta Pac is a radio star, and the analysts were wrong. They've been wrong before."

"Two minutes," said Hutch. The comments around her receded to background noise. Only George's voice got through. But no one really had anything new to say. They were talking to create a web of security, impose a sense of familiarity on a condition they'd experienced before but which was nevertheless potentially quite different.

They floated forward.

"One minute."

Lights dimmed.

The real-space navigational systems, which had been in a power-saving mode, activated. The fusion plant went to ready status. External sensors came on line. Shields powered up.

Someone wished her luck.

Navigation came to life.

And, with scarcely a bump, they slid out into the dark. Stars flowered in the deeps, and she felt a brief flash of vertigo, not unusual during transition. They sailed beneath an open sky.

"I'm always glad to be out of there," said Carson, releasing his restraints.

"Maybe not," said Hutch. She jabbed a finger at the main navigation screen. An enormous black disk lay dead ahead. "Everybody stay belted in, please."

Fusion was about to ignite. She stopped it.

"What's wrong?" Maggie hadn't missed the strain in Hutch's voice.

Hutch gave them the image. "Talk later. I'm going to throw on the brakes."

"What is it?" George asked.

"Not sure." She went to full mag. It looked like a world. "That can't be right. Mass detectors show zero." She reset, but nothing changed. "Don't know what it is. Hold on."

Carson stared out the forward screen. "Son of a bitch—"

"Braking," said Hutch softly, "now." She engaged the retros, didn't ease into them as she normally would, but hit them hard.

"It's just an area with no stars," said Janet. "Like the Void. Maybe it is the Void."

"If it is, it's in the wrong place."

The thing ahead reflected no light.

"Hutch?" Maggie's voice had risen a notch. "Are we going into that thing?"

"It's getting bigger," said George.

"It can't really be there." Hutch's fingers moved across keys. "Self test okay."

"It's not a sphere," said Carson. His beefy features had hardened, and the eager-to-please archeologist had been replaced by the old colonel. Military bearing front and center. In an odd way, it was reassuring.

"What else could it be?"

Carson was squinting at the images. "It looks like a football" he said.

Worried sounds were coming out of the passenger cabin.

"Hang on," said Hutch. "We're going sharp to port." She punched in a new set of values, maybe more thrust than they could stand, and hit the button. Again, they were thrown against the webbing.

A haze had risen before her eyes, and it was hard to talk against the push of the thrusters. "Collision," she said. "Imminent." The words hung in the frantic air.

Carson took time to breathe, steady his voice. "How long?"

Hutch felt cold and empty. "Seven minutes. And change."

The object filled the sky. To their eternal credit, the three in the cabin kept their heads, and did not distract her. She even heard them trying to laugh about their situation. She opened a channel. "You can see what's happening," she said, speaking as though she were describing an interesting view. "We have a problem."

"How serious?" asked Janet. "Is it as bad as it looks?"

Hutch hesitated. "Yes," she said. "I think so."

She eased off on the thrusters, and killed the course change. "What are you doing?" asked Carson.

They were in free fall again. "No point torturing everybody."

"What do you mean?" said Maggie. "We aren't going to give up, are we? Just like that?"

Hutch didn't respond. Didn't know how to.

"How about jumping back?" George suggested.

"Can't."

"Try it."

"There's no point."

"Try it. What's to lose?"

The black football was growing. Carson said, "Not good." In the passenger cabin, someone laughed. Janet.

"I'll try to reinsert when we get closer," Hutch said. "Give the engines a chance to breathe. But don't expect anything."

Maggie whimpered.

Carson, strain finally locking his voice somewhat, asked, "How fast will we be going when we hit?"

Hutch was tempted to dodge the question. Throw back some facile response like fast enough. But they deserved better. "Almost fifty thousand."

What was the damned thing? She decided they weren't quite dead-on after all. They would hit a glancing shot. Not that it mattered.

"Goddammit, Hutch," said George, "we ought to be able to do something."

"Tell me what." Hutch had become deadly calm.

No way out. The object was vast and dark and overwhelming. An impossible thing, a disk without light, a world without rock.

"No moons," said Carson.

"What?"

"It has no moons."

"Hardly seems to matter," someone said; Hutch wasn't sure who.

Four minutes.

A terrible silence took the ship as her passengers settled into their own thoughts. Janet looked subdued and frightened, but managed a resigned smile; Maggie, tougher than Hutch would have expected, caught her looking, wiped her eyes and nodded, seeming to say, not your fault. George's glance turned inward and Hutch was glad she hadn't waited. And Carson: he wore the expression of someone who had absorbed a prank, and was taking it all quite philosophically. "Bad luck," he told her. And, after a long pause: "It happens."

"Did we get a message off?" Janet asked.

"Working on it."

"How big is it?" asked Maggie. "This thing?"

Hutch checked her board. "Forty-three hundred kilometers across. Half again as wide as the Moon."

It crowded out the stars.

Hutch saw a blip on her status board. "It's putting out a signal," she said.

"Same one they got at the Tindle?" asked Maggie, breathless.

"I think so. It's fifteen-ten. That's the right frequency. Computer's doing a match now."

"That's a pretty fair piece of navigation," said Carson. "We hit it right on the button." They laughed. And in that moment Hutch loved them all.

"Transmission's away. They'll get a full set of pictures. And it is the same signal."

"What now?"

"Time to try the jump. On a count of ten." She set up, and shook her head at the energy level for the Hazeltines, which was around six percent of minimum requirements. "Okay." She hit the «Go» button.

The engines whined.

And shuddered.

Whined again.

She shut it down. "That's it."

They were beginning to see features in the thing. Ribs. The void became a surface: blue-black, polished like plastene, or an ocean. "You know what's crazy about this?" said Carson. "We're still not getting gravity readings. What is this thing? Anything that big has to have a gravity field."

"Detectors have a glitch," said George.

Under a minute. Hutch stopped watching the clocks. In the cabin, she heard the sound of a restraint opening. "Stay belted down."

"Why? Why bother?" It was Janet.

"Just do it. It's the way a well-run ship does things." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her training screamed at her to hit the retros. But she only shut down the screens, locking out the terrifying perspective.

She closed her eyes. "Damn," she said, not quite able to stop the tears. She felt oddly secure in the sealed bridge, as if the lone plunge had somehow been arrested She loved the soft leather texture of the pilot's chair, the green radiance of the gauges, the electronic murmur of Wink's systems.