“I see. Tell me one thing, just one thing. When the regional president of We Made It sent you my name, did he mention that I’d discovered your planet has no moon?”

“Yes, he did mention that matter. You accepted one million stars for your silence. He naturally has a recording of the bargain.”

“I see.” So that’s why they’d picked Beowulf Shaeffer, well-known author. “The trip’ll take longer than I thought.”

“You must pay a penalty for every extra day over four months. Two thousand stars per day late.”

“Your voice has acquired an unpleasant grating sound. Good-bye.”

I went on in. Every hour I shifted to normal space for a ten-minute coffee break. I dropped out for meals, and I dropped out for sleep. Twelve hours per ship’s day I spent traveling, and twelve trying to recover. It was a losing battle.

By the end of day two I knew I wasn’t going to make the four-month limit. I might do it in six months, forfeiting one hundred and twenty thousand stars, leaving me almost where I started. Serve me right for trusting a puppeteer!

Stars were all around me, shining through the floor and between the banked instruments. I sucked coffee, trying not to think. The Milky Way shone ghostly pale between my feet. The stars were thick now; they’d get thicker as I approached the Core, until finally one got me.

An idea! And about time, too.

The golden voice answered immediately. “Beowulf Shaeffer?”

“There’s nobody else here, honey. Look, I’ve thought of something. Would you send—”

“Is one of your instruments malfunctioning, Beowulf Shaeffer?”

“No, they all work fine, as far as they go. Look—”

“Then what could you possibly have to say that would require my attention?”

“Honey, now is the time to decide. Do you want revenge, or do you want your ship back?”

A small silence. Then, “You may speak.”

“I can reach the Core much faster if I first get into one of the spaces between the arms. Do we know enough about the galaxy to know where our arm ends?”

“I will send to the Institute of Knowledge to find out.”

“Good.”

Four hours later I was dragged from a deathlike sleep by the ringing of the hyperphone. It was not the president but some flunky. I remembered calling the puppeteer “honey” last night, tricked by my own exhaustion and that seductive voice, and wondered if I’d hurt his puppeteer feelings. “He” might be a male; a puppeteer’s sex is one of his little secrets. The flunky gave me a bearing and distance for the nearest gap between stars.