A crew was already bringing the ST8 into dock. We watched from the ramp, with crewmen sunbathing about our feet. We weren't worried. The way the Outsiders handled it, our invulnerable hull might have been made of spun sugar and sunbeams. When a spiderweb of thin strands fastened the ST8 to the wall of the drive capsule, the voice of the translator spoke in our ears and invited us to step aboard. We jumped a few hundred feet upward through the trace of artificial gravity, climbed into the air lock, and got out of our suits.

«Thanks again,» said Elephant.

«Forget it again,» I said magnanimously. «I owe you plenty. You've been putting me up as a houseguest on the most expensive world in known space, acting as my guide where the cost of labor is —»

«Okay okay okay. But you saved me a million stars, and don't you forget it.» He whopped me on the shoulder and hurried into the control room to set up a million-star credit base for the next Outsider ship that came by.

«I won't,» I called at his retreating back, and wondered what the hell I meant by that.

Much later I wondered about something else. Had Elephant planned to take me to «his» world? Or did he think to go it alone, to be the first to see it and not one of the first two? After the Outsider episode it was already too late. He couldn't throw me off the ship then.

I wished I'd thought of it in time. I never wanted to be a batman. My stake in this was to gently, tactfully keep Elephant from killing himself if it became necessary. For all his vast self-confidence, vast riches, vast generosity, and vast bulk, he was still only a flatlander and thus a little bit helpless.

We were in the expansion bubble when it happened. The bubble had inflatable seats and an inflatable table and was there for exercising and killing time, but it also supplied a fine view; the surface was perfectly transparent.

Otherwise we would have missed it.

There was no pressure against the seat of the pants, no crawling sensation in the pit of the stomach, no feel of motion. But Elephant, who was talking about a Jinxian frail he'd picked up in a Chicago bar, stopped just as she was getting ready to tear the place apart because some suicidal idiot had insulted her.

Somebody heavy was sitting down on the universe.

He came down slowly, like a fat man cautiously letting his weight down on a beach ball. From inside the bubble it looked like all the stars and nebulas around us were squeezing themselves together. The Outsiders on the ribbons outside never moved, but Elephant said something profane, and I steeled myself to look up.

The stars overhead were blue-white and blazing. Around us, they were squashed together; below, they were turning red and winking out one by one. It had taken us a week to get out of the solar system, but the Outsider ship could have done it in five hours.

The radio spoke. «Sirs, our crewmen will remove your ship from ours, after which you will be on your own. It has been a pleasure to do business with you.»

A swarm of Outsider crewmen hauled us through the maze of basking ramps and left us. Presently the Outsider ship vanished like a pricked soap bubble, gone off on its own business.

In the strange starlight Elephant let out a long, shaky sigh. Some people can't take aliens. They don't find puppeteers graceful and beautiful; they find them horrifying, wrong. They see kzinti as slavering carnivores whose only love is fighting, which is the truth, but they don't see the rigid code of honor or the self-control which allows a kzinti ambassador to ride a human-city pedwalk without slashing out with his claws at the impertinent stabbing knees and elbows. Elephant was one of those people.

He said, «Okay,» in amazed relief. They were actually gone. «I'll take the first watch, Bey.»

He did not say, «Those bastards would take your heart as collateral on a tenth-star loan.» He didn't see them as that close to human.

«Fine,» I said, and went into the control bubble. The Fast Protosun was a week away. I'd been in a suit for hours, and there was a shower in the extension bubble.

If Elephant's weakness was aliens, mine was relativity.

The trip through hyperspace was routine. I could take the sight of the two small windows turning into blind spots, becoming areas of nothing, which seemed to draw together the objects around them. So could Elephant; he'd done some flying, though he preferred the comfort of a luxury liner. But even the best pilot occasionally has to drop back into the normal universe to get his bearings and to assure his subconscious that the stars are still there.

And each time it was changed, squashed flat. The crowded blue stars were all ahead; the sparse, dim red stars were all behind. Four hundred years ago men and women had lived for years with such a view of the universe, but it hadn't happened since the invention of hyperdrive. I'd never seen the universe look like this. It bothered me.

«No, it doesn't bug me,» said Elephant when I mentioned it. We were a day out from our destination. «To me, stars are stars. But I have been worried about something. Bey, you said the Outsiders are honorable.»

«They are. They've got to be. They have to be so far above suspicion that any species they deal with will remember their unimpeachable ethics a century later. You can see that, can't you? Outsiders don't show up more often than that.»

«Um. Okay. Why did they try to screw that extra two hundred kilostars out of me?»

«Uh —»

«See, the goddamn problem is, what if it was a fair price? What if we need to know what's funny about the Fast Protosun?»

«You're right. Knowing the Outsiders, it's probably information we can use. All right, we'll nose around a little before we land. We'd have done that anyway, but now we'll do it better.»

What was peculiar about the Fast Protosun?

Around lunchtime on the seventh ship's day a short green line in the sphere of the mass indicator began to extend itself. It was wide and fuzzy, just what you'd expect of a protosun. I let it reach almost to the surface of the sphere before I dropped us into normal space.

The squashed universe looked in the windows, but ahead of us was a circular darkening and blurring of the vivid blue-white stars. In the center of the circle was a dull red glow.

«Let's go into the extension bubble,» said Elephant.

«Let's not.»

«We'll get a better view in there.» He turned the dial that would make the bubble transparent. Naturally we kept it opaque in hyperspace.

«Repeat, let's not. Think about it, Elephant. What sense does it make to use an impermeable hull, then spend most of our time outside it? Until we know what's here, we ought to retract the bubble.»

He nodded his shaggy head and touched the board again. Chugging noises announced that air and water were being pulled out of the bubble. Elephant moved to a window.

«Ever see a protosun?»

«No,» I said. «I don't think there are any in human space.»

«That could be the peculiarity.»

«It could. One thing it isn't is the speed of the thing. Outsiders spend all their time moving faster than this.»

«But planets don't. Neither do stars. Bey, maybe this thing came from outside the galaxy. That would make it unusual.»

It was time we made a list. I found a pad and solemnly noted speed of star, nature of star, and possible extragalactic origin of star.

«I've found our planet,» said Elephant.

«Whereabouts?»

«Almost on the other side of the protosun. We can get there faster in hyperspace.»