Put it this way: Imagine one of Earth’s freeways. You must have seen pictures of them from space, a tangle of twisting concrete ribbons, empty and abandoned but never torn down. Some lie broken; others are covered with houses. People use the later rubberized ones for horseback riding. Imagine the way one of these must have looked about six o’clock on a week night in, say, 1970. Groundcars from end to end.

Now, let’s take all those cars and remove the brakes. Further, let’s put governors on the accelerators so that the maximum speeds are between sixty and seventy miles per hour, not all the same. Let something go wrong with all the governors at once so that the maximum speed also becomes the minimum. You’ll begin to see signs of panic.

Ready? Okay. Get a radar installed in your car, paint your windshield and windows jet black, and get out on that freeway.

It was like that.

It didn’t seem so bad at first. The stars kept coming at me, and I kept dodging, and after a while it settled down to a kind of routine. From experience I could tell at a glance whether a star was heavy enough and close enough to wreck me. But in Nakamura Lines I’d only had to take that glance every six hours or so. Here I didn’t dare look away. As I grew tired, the near misses came closer and closer. After three hours of it I had to drop out.

The stars had a subtly unfamiliar look. With a sudden jar I realized that I was entirely out of known space. Sirius, Antares—I’d never recognize them from here; I wasn’t even sure they were visible. I shook it off and called home.

“Long Shot calling General Products, Long Shot calling—”

“Beowulf Shaeffer?”

“Have I ever told you what a lovely, sexy voice you have?”

“No. Is everything going well?”

“I’m afraid not. In fact, I’m not going to make it.”

A pause. “Why not?”

“I can’t keep dodging these stars forever. One of them’s going to get me if I keep on much longer. The ship’s just too goddamn fast.”

“Yes. We must design a slower ship.”

“I hate to give up that good pay, but my eyes feel like peeled onions. I ache all over. I’m turning back.”

“Shall I play your contract for you?”

“No. Why?”

“Your only legal reason for returning is a mechanical failure. Otherwise you forfeit twice your pay.”

I said, “Mechanical failure?” There was a toolbox somewhere in the ship, with a hammer in it…

“I did not mention it before, since it did not seem polite, but two of the cameras are in the lifesystem. We had thought to use films of you for purposes of publicity, but—”