Hutch had been unable to resist attending the Preston launch. Years ago, after she’d made her last flight, on the Amirault, she’d promised herself that she would not go back into space. She’d never been sure why she’d done that. Maybe the knowledge that her days in the superluminals had ended was too painful, and she’d wanted to pretend it didn’t matter. In any case, she’d kept her vow. Had even resisted a vacation aboard The Evening Star when Tor had wanted to treat her.

If I go out there, I’m not sure I’ll be able to come back.

Well, that was a bit over the top, but there was a modicum of truth to it. Still, she ached to do it again. To cruise past Canopus and touch down on Achernar II and glide through the rings at Deneb V. (Deneb, at approximately twenty-six hundred light-years, had marked the farthest she’d ever been from home. She’d loved that flight.)

And she was sorry she’d declined Jon’s offer. Wouldn’t admit it to herself, but she stood looking into Matt’s eyes, knowing she’d regret it forever if she didn’t go. Why not? Charge off for the day. Be back tonight.

She’d have to buy a change of clothes. Maybe a few other items. But why the hell not?

AN HOUR LATER, she worked her way through a mob of reporters and cameramen and well-wishers and walked onto the Preston with Matt. Jon laughed at her and said how he knew all along she’d break down and come. She put her gear away and sat down next to Antonio in the common room while Jon and Matt chatted on the bridge. That was where she really wanted to be, but she made up her mind to let them do whatever they had to do and give Matt a clear field. Last thing he’d need would be an ex-pilot hanging around. “So,” she said, looking for a topic, “what makes a good reporter, Antonio? What’s your secret?”

“Unbending intelligence and integrity.” Antonio smiled. “My mother always thought I was a natural.”

He was easy to like. Especially when he asked whether she wasn’t the woman who’d saved everybody’s ass at that Deepsix thing, when that entire world had been swallowed? She really couldn’t take credit for that, and she suspected he knew that, but it was nice to hear him say it anyhow.

Jon took her back to the engine room to look at the Locarno. It was just a pair of black boxes, much smaller than the Hazeltine enabler. He explained how it worked. She’d listened to the explanation before, hadn’t understood it then and didn’t understand it now. But the reality was she’d never figured out how the Hazeltine had worked either. You punched a button, and you slipped between the dimensions. That was about as clear as it got.

When they returned to the common room, she could hear Matt going through his preps with Phyllis, the AI. “You miss being up front?” Antonio asked.

“I’ve been away from it too long,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to ride in this thing if I were at the controls.”

Antonio grinned at her, and at Jon. “These things don’t really need pilots anyhow, do they? I mean, don’t the AI’s handle everything?”

“The AIs handle everything,” she said, “as long as there’s no problem. If something goes wrong, you’ll be glad you have Matt up there.”

“Well, yeah.” He made a face as if she were running an old story past him. “How often does something go wrong?”

He offered her a grape juice. She took it and sat back. “It happens all the time. Research missions, particularly. The physicists like to go in close. Usually as close as they can until something blows up. And there are unexplained bursts of energy in hyperspace that sometimes penetrate the shielding and knock out equipment.”

“But of course”—Jon looked in on them from the bridge—“we won’t be traveling in hyperspace anymore. Not with the Locarno.”

“Ah, yes,” she said. “The dimension we’ll be traveling through. What’s its name?”

“We haven’t given it one yet.”

“You’ll want to do that before we get home, or Antonio here will do it for you. Won’t you, Antonio?”

“I already have a name for it,” he said. “I suggest we call it Giannotti space.”

Matt announced over the allcom they were ready to go. “Priscilla,” he added, “would you like to sit up front?”

She looked at Antonio and Jon. “Anybody else want to do it?”

“Go ahead,” said Jon. “Enjoy yourself.”

She took a long pull from the grape juice and strode onto the bridge, feeling young again, feeling as if she could do anything. She took the right-hand seat, the observer’s seat, and, while Matt talked to Union Ops, she activated the harness. It slid down around her.

Matt finished and looked her way. “Welcome back,” he said.

Yes. At that moment, Hutch was in love with the world.

Matt activated the allcom. “Everybody belt down,” he said. “Phyl, start the engines.” Then to the allcom again: “We are three minutes from departure.”

She felt the familiar vibration as additional power came online. “How does the Locarno work?” she asked him. “We still need a running start, right?”

Matt was a good-looking guy, with red hair and a mischievous smile offset by intense eyes. He reminded her of Tor, but she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the innocence. Matt was a guy who still believed in things. In a decaying society, wracked by too much leisure, corruption in high places, a crippled environment, and God knew what else, there weren’t too many like that. The assumption had always been that if people are well fed, feel secure, and have decent homes, everything will be fine. But they needed something else as well. Call it self-respect or a sense of purpose. Whatever, it was missing now. Maybe spreading out through the galaxy would provide it, maybe not. But she was convinced that if the human race simply settled onto its collective front porch, as it seemed to be doing, it had no future.

She didn’t think it was a coincidence that nobody was producing great holos anymore. The ones that everyone remembered, Barcelona, Bugles at Dusk, Icelandik, and all the rest were from the previous century. The same was true of drama, the novel, architecture, sculpture. Civilization as a whole seemed to be in decline.

She had loved Tor, and missed him every day. He’d made his living as an artist, but she knew his ability was only moderate. Nobody was going to be naming museums and schools after him. That hadn’t mattered: She hadn’t loved him for his talent. But the hard truth was there weren’t any great artists anymore. She didn’t know why, and couldn’t connect it to the general malaise that had settled across the planet. Maybe somebody somewhere knew what was happening. She didn’t. Maybe life had become too easy in too many places, and too pointless in too many others. Maybe it was just that old business that you had to wait a century to sort out who was great and who wasn’t. Whatever it was, her instincts screamed that it was the same process. That humans were designed to do what they’d always done: climb into their canoes and move out across uncharted seas. Whether those seas were philosophical or physical, she thought they had to do it.

“Yes,” Matt said, “we still need a running start. Not as long as we did with the Hazeltine. Maybe twenty minutes or so to build up a charge.”

“It feels good to be back, Matt.”

He looked at her. Nodded and smiled. Union Ops broke in with information about solar activity. It wouldn’t affect them, but they shouldn’t linger insystem.

They were at two minutes. Support lines began disconnecting, withdrawing into the dock. She felt a mild jar as the magnetic locks turned them loose.

Matt eased the ship into its exit lane, adjusted the artificial gravity, took them past the series of docks, and moved out through the launch doors. “Still a nice feeling,” she said.

“Yeah, it is. Beats hustling condominiums.”

Earth, blue and white and endlessly lovely, spread out below them. A sliver of moon floated off to port. Toward the end of her piloting career, she hadn’t much noticed such things. Stars and worlds had become navigational objects, markers in the night and not much more. That was when she’d realized it was time to do something else. But seated on the bridge, as Matt increased thrust and they began to move out, she felt she’d come home at last.