Thus the Gaijin upheaval had, predictably, caused poverty, even famine and war.

It was thanks to that last that Madeleine made her living, of course. But everybody had to survive.

“I wonder if you know what you’re looking at, here.” The voice had come from behind her.

A woman sat in the stand, in the row behind Madeleine. Her bony wrists stuck out of an environment-screening biocomp bodysuit. She must have been sixty. There was a man with her, at least as old, short, dark, and heavyset.

“You’re Brind.”

“And you’re Madeleine Meacher. So we meet. This is Frank Paulis. He’s the head of Bootstrap.”

“I remember your name.”

He grinned, his eyes hard.

“What am I doing here, Brind?”

For answer, Brind pointed east, to the tree line beyond the Banana River. “I used to work for NASA. Back when there was a NASA. Over there used to be the site of the two great launch complexes: Thirty-nine-B to the left, Thirty-nine-A to the right. Thirty-nine-A was the old Apollo gantry. Later they adapted it for the shuttle.” The sunlight blasted into her face, making it look flat, younger. “Well, the pads are gone now, pulled down for scrap. The base of Thirty-nine-A is still there, if you want to see it. There’s a sign the pad rats stuck there for the last launch: Go, Discovery! Kind of faded now, of course.”

“What do you want?”

“Do you know what a burster is?”

Madeleine frowned. “No kind of weapon I’ve ever heard of.”

“It’s not a weapon, Meacher. It’s a star.”

Madeleine was, briefly, electrified.

“Look, Meacher, we have a proposal for you.”

“What makes you think I’ll be interested?”

Brind’s voice was gravelly and full of menace. “I know a great deal about you.”

“How come?”

“If you must know, through the tax bureau. You have operated your—” She waved a hand dismissively. “ — enterprises in over a dozen countries over the years. But you’ve paid tax on barely ten percent of the income we can trace.”

“Never broken a law.”

Brind eyed Madeleine as if she had said something utterly naive. “The law is a weapon of government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.”

Madeleine tried to figure out Brind. Her biocomposite suit looked efficient, not expensive. Brind was a wage slave, not an entrepreneur. “You’re from the government?” she guessed.

Brind’s face hardened. “When I was young, we used to call what you do gunrunning. Although I don’t suppose that’s how you think of it yourself.”

The remark caught Madeleine off guard. “No,” she said. “I’m a pilot. All I ever wanted to do is fly; this is the best job I could get. In a different universe, I’d be—”

“An astronaut,” Frank Paulis said.

The foolish, archaic word got to Madeleine. Here, of all places.

“We know about you, you see,” Sally Brind said, almost regretfully. “All about you.”

“There are no astronauts anymore.”

“That isn’t true, Meacher,” Paulis said. “Come with us. Let us show you what we’re planning.”

Brind and Paulis took her out to Launch Complex 41, the old USASF Titan pad at the northern end of ICBM Row. Here, Brind’s people had refurbished an antique Soviet-era Proton launcher.

The booster was a slim black cylinder, fifty-three meters tall. Six flaring strap-on boosters clustered around the first stage, and Madeleine could pick out the smaller stages above. A passenger capsule and hab module would be fixed to the top, shrouded by a cone of metal.

“Our capsule isn’t much more sophisticated than an Apollo,” Brind said. “It only has to get you to orbit and keep you alive for a couple of hours, until the Gaijin come to pick you up.”

“Me?”

“Would you like to see your hab module? It’s being prepared in the old Orbiter Processing Facility…”

“Get to the point,” Madeleine said. “Where are you planning to send me? And what exactly is a burster?”

“A type of neutron star. A very interesting type. The Gaijin are sending a ship there. They’ve invited us — that is, the UN — to send a representative. An observer. It’s the first time they’ve offered this, to carry an observer beyond the Solar System. We think it’s important to respond. We can send our own science platform; we’ll train you up to use it. We can even establish our own Saddle Point gateway in the neutron star system. It’s all part of a wider trade and cultural deal, which—”

“So you represent the UN?”

“Not exactly.”

“We need somebody with the qualifications and experience to handle a journey like this,” Paulis said. “You’re about the right age, under forty. You’ve no dependents that we can trace.” He sighed. “A hundred years ago, we’d have sent John Glenn. Today, the best fit is the likes of you. You’ll be well paid.” He eyed Madeleine. “Believe me, very well paid.”

Madeleine thought it over, trying to figure the angles. “That Proton is sixty years old, the design even older. You don’t have much of a budget, do you?”

Paulis shrugged. “My pockets aren’t as deep as they used to be.”

Brind prickled. “What does the budget matter? For Christ’s sake, Meacher, don’t you have any wonder in your soul? I’m offering you, here, the chance to travel to the stars. My God — if I had your qualifications, I’d jump at the chance.”

“And you aren’t truly the first,” Paulis said. “Reid Malenfant—”

“ — is lost. Anyhow it’s not exactly being an astronaut,” Madeleine said sourly. “Is it? Being live cargo on a Gaijin flower-ship doesn’t count.”

“Actually a lot of people agree with you,” Paulis said. “That’s why we’ve struggled to assemble the funding. No one is interested in human spaceflight in these circumstances. Most people are happy just to wait for the Gaijin to parachute down more interstellar goodies from the sky…”

“Why don’t you just send along an automated instrument pallet? Why send a human at all?”

“No.” Brind shook her head firmly. “We’re deliberately designing for a human operator.”

“Why?”

“Because we want a human there. A human like you, God help us. We think it’s important to try to meet them on equal terms.”

Madeleine laughed. “Equal terms? We limp into orbit, and rendezvous with a giant alien ramjet capable of flying to the outer Solar System?”

“Symbolism, Meacher,” Paulis said darkly. “Symbols are everything.”

“How do you know the Gaijin respond to symbols?”

“Maybe they don’t. But people do. And it’s people I’m interested in. Frankly, Meacher, we’re seeking advantage. Not everybody thinks we should become so completely reliant on the Gaijin. You’ll have a lot of discretion out there. We need someone with… acumen. There may be opportunities.”

“What kind of opportunities?”

“To get humanity out from under the yoke of the Gaijin,” Paulis said. For the first time there was a trace of anger in his voice, passion.

Madeleine began to understand.

There were various shadowy groups who weren’t happy with the deals the various governments and corporations had been striking with the Gaijin. This trading relationship was not between two equals. And besides, the Gaijin must be following their own undeclared goals. What about the stuff they were keeping back? What would happen when the human economy was utterly dependent on the trickle of good stuff from the sky? And suppose the Gaijin suddenly decided to turn off the faucets — or, worse, decided to start dropping rocks?

Beyond that, the broader situation continued to evolve, year on year. More and more of the neighboring stars were lighting up with radio and other signals, out to a distance of some thirty light-years. It was evident that a ferocious wave of emigration was coming humanity’s way, scouring along the Orion-Cygnus Spiral Arm. Presumably those colonists were propagating via Saddle Point gateways, and they were finding their target systems empty — or undeveloped, like the Solar System. And as soon as they arrived they started to build, and broadcast.