“It would require some twenty-five days to reach the center and an equal time to return. You can see the reasoning behind—”

“It’s perfect. You don’t need to spell it out. Why me?”

“We wish you to make the trip and then write of it. I have a list of pilots who write. Those I have approached have been reluctant. They say that writing on the ground is safer than testing unknown ships. I follow their reasoning.”

“Me, too.”

“Will you go?”

“What am I offered?”

“One hundred thousand stars for the trip. Fifty thousand to write the story, in addition to what you sell it for.”

“Sold.”

From then on my only worry was that my new boss would find out that someone had ghostwritten that neutron star article.

Oh, I wondered at first why General Products was willing to trust me. The first time I worked for them, I tried to steal their ship for reasons which seemed good at the time. But the ship I now called Long Shot really wasn’t worth stealing. Any potential buyer would know it was hot, and what good would it be to him? Long Shot could have explored a globular cluster, but her only other use was publicity.

Sending her to the Core was a masterpiece of promotion.

Look: It was twelve days from We Made It to Jinx by conventional craft, and twelve hours by Long Shot. What’s the difference? You spent twelve years saving for the trip. But the Core! Ignoring refueling and reprovisioning problems, my old ship could have reached the galaxy’s core in three hundred years. No known species had ever seen the Core! It hid behind layer on layer of tenuous gas and dust clouds. You can find libraries of literature on those central stars, but they all consist of generalities and educated guesses based on observation of other galaxies, like Andromeda.

Three centuries dropped to less than a month! There’s something anyone can grasp. And with pictures!

The lifesystem was finished in a couple of weeks. I had them leave the control-room walls transparent and paint the relaxroom solid blue, no windows. When they finished, I had entertainment tapes and everything it takes to keep a man sane for seven weeks in a room the size of a large closet.

On the last day the puppeteer and I spoke the final version of my contract. I had four months to reach the galaxy’s center and return. The outside cameras would run constantly; I was not to interfere with them. If the ship suffered a mechanical failure, I could return before reaching the center; otherwise, no. There were penalties. I took a copy of the tape to leave with a lawyer.

“There is a thing you should know,” the puppeteer said afterward. “The direction of thrust opposes the direction of hyperdrive.”

“I don’t get it.”