“We wrote that up together. Oh, tanj, Ander! You’re recording, aren’t you?”

He said, “Yes,” giving me an instant to object, daring me. Who was he recording for? Who was involved in hunting Beowulf Shaeffer? If it was Sigmund Ausfaller…I’d never outguessed Sigmund yet.

Ander said, “We’ll pay you a consultant’s fee. Ten per hour, Beowulf. Will you accept?”

“How many hours do you need?” It was generous, but my yes would be a verbal contract. I’d be his prisoner.

He waved it off. “Until midnight. Then we can renegotiate. I need the recording for Sigmund.”

Ouch. “Until midnight,” I said, “present time being ten to noon local.”

“Your first contact with Pierson’s puppeteers?”

Fifteen years flying passengers between the worlds. Then Nakamura Lines collapsed, and I was on the street…on We Made It, because the bankruptcy courts allowed us transport home. Two years later I was ready to accept an offer from anyone. Anyone…

✴
NEUTRON STAR

The Skydiver dropped out of hyperspace an even million miles above the neutron star. I needed a minute to place myself against the stellar background and another to find the distortion Sonya Laskin had mentioned before she died. It was to my left, an area the apparent size of the Earth’s moon. I swung the ship around to face it.

Curdled stars, muddled stars, stars that had been stirred with a spoon.

The neutron star was in the center, of course, though I couldn’t see it and hadn’t expected to. It was only eleven miles across, and cool. A billion years had passed since BVS-1 had burned by fusion fire. Millions of years, at least, since the cataclysmic two weeks during which BVS-1 was an X-ray star, burning at a temperature of five billion degrees Kelvin. Now it showed only by its mass.

The ship began to turn by itself. I felt the pressure of the fusion drive. Without help from me, my faithful metal watchdog was putting me in a hyperbolic orbit that would take me within one mile of the neutron star’s surface. Twenty-four hours to fall, twenty-four hours to rise…and during that time something would try to kill me. As something had killed the Laskins.

The same type of autopilot, with the same program, had chosen the Laskins’ orbit. It had not caused their ship to collide with the star. I could trust the autopilot. I could even change its program.

I really ought to.

How did I get myself into this hole?

The drive went off after ten minutes of maneuvering. My orbit was established in more ways than one. I knew what would happen if I tried to back out now.

All I’d done was walk into a drugstore to get a new battery for my lighter!