But underestimate them? In his mind, the researchers often did.

And in his dream and in his memory Satin had known his name.

Satin had known all about him.

She’d not gotten that from the sky. Sun hadn’t whispered it to her. She’d talked to Melody and Patch.

And knowing everything hisa could remotely know about him, she’d sent him… not to the station. To his ship . Had she known Finity was in port? Had she known even that, Satin, sitting among the Watcher-stones, to which all information flowed, on quick downer feet?

Satin, who perhaps this moment was sitting, looking up at a clouded sky, and, in the manner of an old, old downer, dreaming her peace, her new heavens, into being.

She’d known. Yes, she’d known. As the Old Man of Finity’s End had known—things he’d never imagined as the condition of his universe.

“ All right, cousins ,” the intercom said. “ You can eat what you stowed before jump or you can venture out for a stretch. Both mess halls will be in service in ten minutes, so it’s fruit bars and nutri-packs solo or it’s one of those hurry-up dinners which your bridge crew will be very grateful to receive. Remember, there is still no laundry .”

Jeremy came out of the shower smelling of soap and bringing a puff of steam with him. It was far better air now. The fans were making a difference.

Downbelow slipped away in the immediacy of clean water and warmth and soap. Fletcher stripped clothes and went, chased through his mind by images of woods and water, the memory of air that wouldn’t come, but the shower was safe and clean and Jeremy was his talisman against nightmares and loss.

“Sir?” JR found the Old Man’s cabin dimly lighted as he brought the tray in, heard the noise of the shower, in the separate full bath Finity ’s senior crew enjoyed. He ordered the lights up, set the meal in the dining alcove, and took the moment to make the stripped bed with the sheets set by and waiting.

The Old Man did such things himself. The senior-juniors habitually ran errands, down to laundry, down to the med station, and back, for all the bridge crew, whose time was more valuable to the ship; but the senior crew usually did their own bed-making and food-getting if they were at all free to do so.

In the same way the Old Man rarely ordered a meal in his quarters. He was always fast on the recovery, always in his office before the galley could get that organized.

Not this time. Not with the stress of double-jumping in and short sleep throughout their stay at Voyager. He felt the strain himself, in aches and pains. Mineral depletion. Jeff had probably dumped supplement in the fruit juice, as much as wouldn’t hit the gut like a body blow.

The shower cut off. JR poured the coffee. In a few more moments the bath door opened and the senior captain walked out, barefoot, in trousers and turtleneck sweater, in a gust of moist, soapy air.

“Good morning, sir.” JR pulled the chair back as James Robert stepped into the scuffs he wore about his quarters, disreputable, but doubtless comfortable. A click of a remote brought the screen on the wall live, and showed them a selection of screens from the bridge.

They were at the jump-point intermediate between Voyager and Esperance, a small lump of nothing-much that radiated hardly at all. If there’d been any other mass in two lights distance, the point would have been tricky to use… dangerous. But there was nothing else out here, and it drew a ship down like a far larger mass.

Systems showed optimal. They were going to jump out on schedule. JR remarked on nothing that was ordinary: it annoyed the Old Man to listen to chatter in the morning, or after jumps. He simply stood ready to slide the chair in as the Old Man sat down.

He looked up. The captain had stopped. Cold. Staring off into nowhere with a sudden looseness in his body that said this was a man in distress.

JR moved, bumping past the chair, seized the Old Man’s flaccid arm, steered him immediately to the seat at the table.

The Old Man got a breath and laid a shaking hand on the table,

“I’ll get Charlie,” JR began.

“No!” the Old Man said, the voice that had given him orders all his life, and it was hard to disregard it.

“You should have Charlie,” JR said “Just to look—”

“Charlie has looked,” the Old Man said. “Medicine cabinet, there in the bunk edge. Pill case.”

He left the Old Man to get into the medicine compartment, hauled out a small pharmacy worth of pill bottles he’d by no means guessed, and brought them back to the table. The Old Man indicated the bottle he wanted, and JR opened it. The Old Man took the pill and washed it down with fruit juice.

“Rejuv’s going,” the Old Man said then. “Charlie knows.”

It was a death sentence. A long-postponed one. JR sank down into the other chair, feeling it like a blow to the gut.

“Does Madison know?”

“All of them.” The Old Man was still having trouble talking, and JR kept his questions quiet, just sat there. The realization hit him so suddenly he’d felt the bottom drop out from under him… this was what the Old Man had meant at dinner that night back at Voyager. This was why it disturbed Madison: that he was saying it in public, for others to hear, not the part about the peace, but the part about finishing . The captain— the captain, among all other captains Finity had known, was arranging all his priorities, the disposition of his power, the disposition of his enemy, all those things… leading in a specific direction that left his successors no problem but Mazian. That was why the Old Man had said that peculiar thing about needing Mazian.

No, the Old Man hadn’t quarreled with Mallory and then left in some decision to pursue a different direction.

The Old Man had this one, devastatingly important chance to wield the power he’d spent a protracted lifetime building.

Secure the peace. Accomplish it. And look no further into human existence. The final wall was in front of him. The point past which never.

“Shall I call Madison, sir?” he asked the Old Man.

“Why?” the Old Man challenged him sharply. And then directly to him, to his state of mind: “Worried?”

The Old Man never liked soft answers. Least of all now. JR sensed as much and looked him in the eye. “Not for the ship, sir. You’d never risk her. But Charlie’s going to be mad as hell if I don’t tell him.”

The Old Man heard that, added it up—the flick of the eyes said that much—and took a sip of coffee. “I’ll thank you to keep Charlie at bay. I’ve taken to bed for the duration of the voyage. I plan to get to Esperance.”

“I’m grateful to know that, sir.”

“Precaution,” the Old Man said.

“Yes, sir.”

“You don’t believe it for a minute, do you?”

“I’m concerned.”

“And have you been discussing this concern in mess, or what?”

“I haven’t. You put one over on me, sir. Completely. I never figured this one.”

“Smart lad,” the Old Man said. “You always were.” He lifted the lid on the breakfast. Eggs and ham. Bridge crew got the attention from the cookstaff on short time schedules. So did the captain. So did the senior-seniors, for their health’s sake.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Thank you. I try to be. I suggest you eat all of it and take the vitamins. My shoulders are popping. I’d hate to imagine yours.”

“The insufferable smugness of youth.” James Robert looked up at him. The parchment character of his skin was more pronounced. When rejuv failed, it failed rapidly, catastrophically. Skin lost its elasticity. The endocrine system began to suffer wild surges, in some cases making the emotions spiral out of control. There might be delusions. Living a heartbeat away from the succession, JR had studied the symptoms, and dreaded them, in a man on whose emotional stability, on whose sanity , so very much depended.