“This is it. Now we’ve got the best seats in the house. In a few minutes everyone will be fighting for a view because Margo’s stopping the ship to show us a starseed setting sail.”

“Oh? Okay, I owe you one.”

“We’re even. You bought me a drink.”

Emil looked puzzled, and I realized I’d put an edge in my voice. As if I didn’t want anyone owing me favors. Which I didn’t. But it was no excuse for being a boor.

I dialed a breakfast to go with the drink: tuna fillet, eggs Florentine, and double-strength tea. The kitchen had finished delivering it when Margo spoke over the intercom, as follows: “Ladies and gentlemen and other guests, we are dropping out some distance from CY Aquarii so that you may watch a starseed which set sail in the system of Gummidgy last month. I will raise the lounge screen in ten minutes.” Click.

In moments we were surrounded. The Kdatlyno sculptor squeezed in next to me, spiked knees hunched up against the lack of room, the silver tip of the horn on his elbow imperiling my eggs. Emil smiled with one side of his mouth, and I made a face. But it was justice. I’d chosen the seats myself.

The window went on. Silence fell.

Everyone who could move was crowded around the lounge window. The Kdatlyno’s horned elbow pinned a fold of my sleeve to the table. I let it lie. I wasn’t planning to move, and Kdatlyno are supposed to be touchy.

There were stars. Brighter than stars seen through atmosphere, but you get used to that. I looked for CY Aquarii and found a glaring white eye.

We watched it grow.

Margo was giving us a slow telescopic expansion. The bright dot grew to a disk bright enough to make your eyes water, and then no brighter. The eyes on a ship’s hull won’t transmit more than a certain amount of light. The disk swelled to fill the window, and now dark areas showed beneath the surface, splitting and disappearing and changing shape and size, growing darker and clearer as they rode the shock wave toward space. The core of CY Aquarii exploded every eighty-nine minutes. Each time the star grew whiter and brighter, while shock waves rode the explosion to the surface. Men and instruments watched to learn about stars.

The view swung. A curved edge of space showed, with curling hydrogen flames tracing arcs bigger than some suns. The star slid out of sight, and a dully glowing dot came into view. Still the view expanded, until we saw an egg-shaped object in dead center of the window.