Drake went back to the controls and turned his attention to the general functions of the ship. It could support him and his life-system needs, apparently indefinitely. Its speed and maneuverability never ceased to amaze him. And yet it was in many ways less surprising than the civilization that had made it. A civilization that could produce such a miracle of performance and potential — and then allow it to go unused; that was the most incomprehensible mystery of all.

Was it the temporal dislocation produced by time dilatation that was psychologically unacceptable to humans? Drake was depending on it. But did others hate to leave, and upon their return find their friends in the cryowombs, or perhaps dead? But as lifespans increased, that would be less and less a factor. If that were the main reason why the ships were not more widely used, the future should see more travel to the stars.

The ship was approaching its planned maximum speed. Drake noticed that the ship’s external mass indicator showed more than 140,000 tons, up from a rest mass of 130 tons. To an outside observer, Drake himself would seem to mass eighty-eight tons, and be foreshortened to a length of less than two millimeters. The shields hid the view ahead of the

ship, but he knew that the picture he was seeing on his screen had been subjected to extreme image motion compensation. An unshielded view would reveal the universal three-degree background radiation, Doppler-shifted up to visible wavelengths. Far behind, hard X-ray sources were faded to pale red stars.

The ship was nowhere close to its performance limits. If necessary, he and Ana could fly on forever, to the end of the universe. Except that he was confident that it would not be necessary. He closed his eyes and heard a broad, calm melody, the music of the stars themselves, stirring within his brain. He lay back and allowed music to fill his mind.

For the first time in five centuries, Drake was at peace.

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves”

In the silence between the stars there were no distractions. Drake started to compose again, convinced that it would be his best work ever. It would distill all his emotions, for all the days since that ominous first morning when he had seen a red car in the drive where no car should have been; on through the darkest days, when nothing seemed possible; on all the way to the glad confident morning of the present.

The ship’s flight was fully controlled by its tiny but vastly capable computer. In her cabin aft, Ana lay safe in the cryotank. Drake had all the time that he needed. As the days went by, he allowed the new composition to mature steadily within him. If ever he felt like a break, he would go to Ana’s room, sit down by the cryotank, and reveal to her his thoughts and dreams.

He assured her that a few months of shipboard time would be enough. Almost three hundred years would speed away on Earth, before their return, and in those centuries Earth’s physicians would surely have found a safe and certain cure. If they had not, he would simply head out again, and repeat the entire cycle.

And what if, after many tries, Earth finally fails us?

He imagined Ana’s question in his mind, and he had an answer. They would go elsewhere, on beyond the stars in search of other solutions. The ship was completely self-sustaining. It had ample power and supplies for many subjective lifetimes of travel.

But Drake hoped that one trip would be enough. He told Ana that it was one of his smaller ambitions, on his return, to locate the cryocorpse of his friend Par Leon and return the favor. She would like Par Leon.

He was strangely, sublimely happy, as the ship approached Canopus. His original plan had been for a gravitational swing-by, a maneuver that would take the ship through a tight hyperbolic trajectory close to Canopus and then hurtle away again the way they had come.

But perhaps he had been enjoying himself too much to be in a hurry, or maybe he felt a simple curiosity to see what worlds might circle another sun. For whatever reason, he chose to decelerate during the last couple of weeks and put the ship into a bound orbit about four hundred million kilometers from Canopus.

He turned the ship’s imaging devices to scan the stellar system. There were planets, as he had hoped, four gas-giants each the size of Jupiter. Closer in he located a round dozen of smaller worlds. But he had ignored or forgotten the infernal power of Canopus itself. It was a fearsome sight, more than a thousand times as luminous as the Sun and spouting green flares of gas millions of kilometers long. The inner planets were mere blackened cinders, airless and arid, charred by the furnace heat of the star. The outer gas-giants were all atmosphere, except for a small compressed solid core where the pressure was millions of Earth atmospheres. No life in any form that he would recognize could exist there.

But he stayed and looked. In two days of fascinated observation, his eyes turned again and again to the fusion fire of Canopus. He wondered. Had some other human been here, when ships like the one that he was flying were new? Had any intelligence been here before, human or nonhuman? Or were his the first sentient eyes to dwell on those dark twisted striations — not sun-spots, but sun scars — that gouged the boiling surface of the star?

If others had been here, and they were anything like him, he pitied them. Canopus set up in his mind a resonance of

terror beyond reason and beyond explanation.

At last Drake could stand it no longer. Like a lost soul flying from hell’s gate he turned and ran. He needed the infinite silence of space, and beyond that the comforting shelter of the solar system. If another trip out were necessary with Ana, it would be to a smaller and less turbulent star.

As the ship began to accelerate he turned the imaging equipment for one last look at Canopus, knowing even as he did it that he was making a mistake. The lost souls were there. Unable to flee like him, they burned in dark torment within the stellar furnace. Smoky demons danced about them, in tongues of flame that gaped and gibbered in triumph. Drake shuddered, cringed, and looked away.

As the star receded to a blazing point of light, he tried to settle back into his shipboard routine. But all harmony, mental and musical, had been banished. What he saw, over and over, was that vision of the Pit. He was circling endlessly, in tight orbit around Canopus. Flaming gas prominences, bright jets of green and white and blue danced a witch’s sabbat in his mind. He could not eat, drink, or sleep. The urge to see Ana, to seek peace in her face, grew within him.

Finally Drake went aft and sat by the cryotank. It was guaranteed to soothe all worries.

But not today. His mind churned.

“What’s wrong with me, Ana? Am I going crazy?”

The usual imagined reply did not come. He stared at the cryotank. There she was, only a few feet away. If only he could see her, just for a second…

The outside of the cryotank was at room temperature. Inside, the cryocorpse was insulated by two more protective layers. Both of them were transparent. He could open the tank, take one look, and close it before there was a noticeable temperature change.

Slowly, he released the seals and lifted the tight outer cover.

She lay quiet in the tank, pale and peaceful as a Snow Goddess. He took one look at her pearly eyes and skin of milky crystal, afraid to open the cover more than a crack. An icy vapor, colder than innermost hell, breathed from within. While he watched, dew formed and froze on the inner layer. Ana’s body faded and blurred, like an image placed behind frosted glass.

Rapidly, he closed and sealed the outer lid. That one moment had been enough. He was able to control himself again and think of other things.