“Message,” said Bill.

She nodded, and he put it through. Audio only. “I’m almost ready,” a male voice said. It was, she thought, familiar.

“Am I speaking to Tor Kirby?” she asked.

“Yes, you are.”

She was sure she knew him. “Bill,” she said, “open the passenger packet. Let’s see if we can find a picture of this guy.”

“Coming up.”

An image blinked on. It was Vinderwahl!

She stared at it, puzzled. Why the name change? “Tor, this is Hutch.”

“Who?”

“Hutch.”

Pause. “Priscilla Hutchins? Is that really you?”

Still no visual. “Who’s Tor Kirby?”

“I am.”

“What happened to your last name? What are you doing out here?” The last time she’d seen him, he’d been working part-time as a greeter in an electronics depot. And trying to paint.

“I changed it.”

“Your name? Why?”

“Let’s talk about it when I get into the ship, okay? I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“You need help?”

“I can manage.” She heard him moving around, heard the click of a notebook snapping shut, heard the creak of fabric, presumably his pack. And finally she heard the gentle hiss of a Flickinger field forming as he activated his e-suit. The lights went off in the dome, the door opened, and he came out onto the surface. He looked up at her and waved.

Well, who would’ve thought? She’d said good-bye to him several years before and he’d shocked her by nodding, saying he was sorry she felt that way. And he’d simply withdrawn from her life. Gives up too easily, that one.

It had hurt her pride at the time, but it was just as well. Now, of course, here he was again.

She waved back. He was wearing a gray shirt with a dragon on the front, khaki shorts, and tennis shoes. He hadn’t changed.

Tor had been cautious around her to the degree she hadn’t been sure about his feelings. When, one snowy night at the Carlyle Restaurant on the Potomac (odd how she remembered the detail), she’d concluded he was in love with her, realized it was so in spite of all his efforts to hide it, it had frightened her away. Gotta go. Starhopping. Catching the next freight off the Wheel.

Now here he was. Tor Vinderwahl. Her Tor.

“Take us closer, Bill,” she said. “Put the cargo airlock on the ground.”

He was moving his equipment and his air and water tanks out of the pocket dome when the lander touched down. She activated her own suit and went outside with mixed feelings.

He looked good. He smiled at her uncertainly, and it was like the years collapsed and the giant rings overhead were swept away and they were back along the Potomac again. “It’s good to see you, Hutch,” he said. “Been a long time.” His eyes were blue, and his black hair tumbled down over his forehead. He wore it longer than she remembered.

“It’s nice to see you, too, Tor,” she said. “It’s a pleasant surprise.” Actually, something had changed, in his demeanor, in his eyes, something. She saw it in the way he approached her, hauling gear in both hands, his gaze moving between her and the lander.

She expected to be embraced. Instead he gave her a quick squeeze and kissed her cheek. The Flickinger field flashed when his lips touched it. “I didn’t expect to see you out here,” he said.

“Why the name change, Tor?”

“Who’d buy artwork from somebody named Vinderwahl?”

“I would,” she said.

He grinned. “That makes one.” She saw an easel among the equipment.

He followed her eyes to it. “It’s why I’m here,” he said. He pulled out a long tube, opened it, and extracted a canvas. Then he unrolled it and held it up for her to see. He had caught the gas giant in its glory, suspended above the moonscape. The sky was filled with rings, and a couple of satellites, both at third quarter, floated in the night sky. Silhouetted against the banded planet, she saw a superluminal.

“Lovely,” she said. He’d come a long way from the sterile landscapes he’d shown her back in Arlington.

“You like it?”

“Oh, yes, Tor. But how’d you make it work?” She looked around at the airless rock. “Did you do this from inside?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I set up right over there.” He showed her. Near a boulder that might have served as an armrest, or even a place to sit.

“Doesn’t everything freeze up?”

“The canvas is high—rag content. The pastels are reformulated. They use less volatile binders.” He smiled at his work, obviously pleased with himself, and put it away. “It works quite well, really.”

“But why?”

“Are you serious?”

“Sure. It must cost a fortune to come all the way out here. And to paint a picture?”

“Money’s no object, Hutch. Not anymore. Do you have any idea how much this will be worth when we get back?”

“None.”

He nodded as if the amount were beyond calculation. “Hard to believe that we’d meet in a place like this.” He sat down, wrapped his arms around his knees, and looked up at her. “You’re lovely as ever, Hutch.”

“Thanks. And congratulations, Tor. I’m happy for you.”

Tor looked quite dashing in the glow of the rings. He pulled a remote from a vest pocket, aimed it at the dome, and keyed it. The dome sagged, collapsed, and dwindled to a pack. They picked it up, along with the air and water tanks, and carried everything to the lander.

George and the others were waiting. They all shook hands, poured drinks, laughed, exclaimed how surprised they were that he and Hutch knew each other, said how glad they were to see him again, and talked about how they were going after the biggest prize of all.

They asked to see what he’d been doing and he showed them and they ooohed and ahhhed. What was he going to call it, Alyx asked with excitement.

It was a question Hutch should have put to him.

“Night Passage,” he said.

DURING THE FINAL week of their voyage, Tor made no attempt to reestablish their relationship on its old footing. There were no covert smiles, no oblique references, no solitary visits to areas of the ship where she happened to be.

Nevertheless, having what amounted to an old boyfriend on board changed the chemistry and created a decidedly uncomfortable situation.

For the first couple of days after Tor boarded, Hutch spent less time with her passengers and all but confined herself to the bridge. But as Tor seemed to be making every effort to avoid creating a problem, she gradually returned to her normal routines.

During the final days of their approach to 1107, she spent a fair amount of time talking with Preach. Well, maybe talking wasn’t quite the right descriptive. They were a couple of hours apart, using hypercomm, so the conversations consisted of long monologues and a lot of waiting. It wasn’t at all like sitting in the same room with someone, and even with years of practice on both sides, the experience could be frustrating.

The process had taught Hutch a long time back about the vagaries of human conversation, the things that really mattered, which were not at all the words, or even the tones, but rather the moment-to-moment reactions people had to one another, the sudden glitter of understanding in the eyes, the raised hand that accompanied a request for additional explanation, the signal of approval or dismay or affection that a given phrase might induce. What good was it to say, for example, I would like to spend more time with you to a still image and wait more than an hour for a response that came as part of a long reply.

So she said nothing of that sort, nothing personal. Nothing that she couldn’t put out there gradually, using his reactions to guide her. She liked Preach, liked him more than anyone she’d met in a long time. She enjoyed spending hours trading small talk back and forth with him, telling him what she was reading, how excited everyone was now that they were drawing close to 1107.