"This is before any of you were born, so you may not remember the dying days of what used to be called the manned space program—how the private consortia who funded most of it decided there was a lot more money to be made in satellites and remote mining than actually putting a live human being into a ship and sending him or her somewhere. Also, the world's populations weren't very interested in the whole matter—I think the human race had begun to turn inward, in a way. But the idea of exploration and colonization didn't die completely, and one rather quiet project went forward after the rest of the better-known operations had folded. It had to get private funding, of course, but it was still nominally under United States government control, back in the days when the UN didn't even have a space program.

"Word went around that military fliers with no close family ties, willing to undertake dangerous duty, were being evaluated for something called PEREGRINE. I was bored with training and, looking back on it, a bit bored with my life, so even though I suspected I was past the optimum age—everything I heard suggested it was a very physically-based selection process, which usually meant reflexes—I thought it couldn't hurt to volunteer." Sellars smiled again, self-mockingly this time. "When I found out I was one of the first dozen selectees, I was pretty impressed with myself.

"It's tempting to tell the whole story in proper detail, because it's interesting in itself, and no one but me really knows the truth now. No books, no net documentaries, no records at all to speak of. But everyone here is tired, so I'll try to keep it brief. PEREGRINE turned out to be a novel approach to human space exploration, a program that would permit human crews not only to travel long distances—with cold sleep along the way, but with connections still to the ship—but also to be able to explore likely planets in a more robust way than the old-fashoned astronauts. There were several planets they were interested in—one in 70 Virginis is the only one I remember now. Many of the signals have since proved misleading, and humankind seems to have lost its interest in exploration—a great shame, I think—but at the time it was very exciting. In any case, even back then we had instruments that could survey planets far more elaborately than anything a live human could do, but the people in charge of the program thought that you could never get the same level of funding and public support for exploration unless you were sending a real, live, breathing human whose life was being risked on behalf of the whole human race. You can almost hear the speeches, can't you?

"So, PEREGRINE. We reported to Sand Creek, a secret base in South Dakota. . . ."

"I've heard of that," Ramsey said slowly. "Sand Creek. . . ."

"No doubt you have. It's been talked about a lot over the years. But whatever you've heard is almost certainly not true." Sellars closed his eyes. "Where was I? Ah, yes. We began undergoing a very complicated process to make us capable of all kinds of rigors—and, most importantly, to hard-interface our brains with the ship's computer systems. You almost never hear that word 'computer' anymore, do you? They're part of everything now. They used to be boxes with keyboards, you know." He shook his head, so that it looked like a dry sunflower wobbling on its stalk. "Technology wasn't very sophisticated—this was half a century ago, after all. Much of what they did was surgical—actually opened me up and applied microcircuitry directly to my skeleton, implanted various devices, you name it. People take it for granted now that they can connect to the net with a neurocannula, but then the idea that a human being could channel computer information directly into the brain was mostly considered science fiction. Except at Sand Creek, where they were actually doing it.

"So they . . . built me, as it were. Rebuilt me, certainly, strengthened my bones and shielded my skin and various organs to better resist gravitational hardships and radiation, implanted tiny chemical pumps that would add synthesized calcium and other important supplements to my body if I had to go a long time in zero gravity . . . all kinds of things. But even more profound was the way they wired me—head to toe, like a Christmas tree! They used the latest alloys and polymers—although with all the changes in molecular engineering since then, the original stuff they put in me would seem positively antique now. But at the time, we PEREGRINE volunteers were works of art. That's when I first learned to love Yeats—the line about the emperor's mechanical birds in 'Sailing to Byzantium' caught at me:

". . . Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enameling. . . ."

He paused for a moment, lost in thought. "I cannot tell you what it was like the first time I simply closed my eyes and found myself online. The net was tiny and primitive then, the early days of virtual interfaces, but still. . . ! Still. . . ! Already, without leaving Earth, we were explorers, flying where others had only crawled. We PEREGRINE volunteers began to talk about the net among ourselves as though it were a place, a universe that others could only visit, like tourists staring through a fence, but which truly belonged to us. When you can swim through information as though it were a physical medium, when access is instantaneous, you begin to see things, learn things. . . ." His voice was getting dry and thin; he stopped and inhaled from the rag. "I promised myself I would not be diverted, didn't I? I apologize. In any case, our ships were built at the same time we ourselves were built—in parallel, as it were—custom-tailored to our particular physiological needs. They were small, sophisticated, using primarily antimatter drives for the long, black distances, but able to use other sources of power as well, including solar wind. There was to be one for each of us, each named for an explorer—the Francis Drake, the Matthew Peary, I cannot remember them all now and it's too sad to try. Mine was the Sally Ride. A lovely name for a ship, and a lovely ship she would have been—my bride, you might say, on a permanent honeymoon. But it did not happen that way.

We only had a few orbital nights, practice runs, before. . . . Oh, dear, am I boring you?"

Michael Sorensen had fallen asleep sitting up on the couch, his head lolling on his wife's shoulder. "He's just exhausted," she said apologetically, as though he had nodded off at some suburban card party. "He must know all this already, doesn't he?"

"All but the fine details," Sellars told her gently. "He's looked through my file a few times since I made contact, I'm sure."

"I think it's fascinating," she assured him, although she looked quite tired herself. "I . . . I had no idea."

"Please go on," Ramsey said.

"Well, you both must know something about what happens when you work for the government, and this was in the early days of the private/public partnership, so-called. The administration in Washington changed. The UN grew snippy about a major project with so little international participation. And the corporate angels began to grumble about how much money was being spent with no returns in the foreseeable future. PEREGRINE was nearly canceled several times.

"There were nights later on, years worth of nights, when I used to wish with all my heart it had been.

"The solution was not really surprising, especially with large defense corporations involved. It was decided to streamline the operation, to get 'more bang for the buck,' I think the phrase of the day was. It would have been very difficult to make the project smaller at that fairly advanced stage, so instead they folded it together with something called HR/CS—Human Robotic Combat Systems. I think that project also had a code name—'Bright Warrior' or 'Bright Spear' or something, but the engineers started calling it HARDCASE and the name stuck. This was straight military, what was probably one of the first attempts to create biomodified soldiers—basically humans who could be plugged into extremely sophisticated combat armor, who could use these systems as extensions of their own bodies, go places even an ordinary armored soldier couldn't go. You get the idea—it was like something out of an old comic book. The military was much more intent on their timeline, so the shared resources—mostly engineers, medical personnel, and supercomputer time—began to flow in their direction. The pace of PEREGRINE slowed dramatically.