Pirius had tried to stay away from Enduring Hope’s peculiar sect, who called themselves “Friends of Wigner.” Pirius thought of himself as pragmatic; he was prepared to put up with nonsense names if it kept his engineer happy. But the Friends’ cult violated Doctrinal law just by its very existence.

“You can mock,” Hope said. “But you don’t understand.”

“Then tell me,” Dans said.

“All of this”—Hope made an expansive gesture—“is a first cut. Everybody knows this. In this war of FTL ships and time travel, we stack up contingencies in the Library of Futures on Earth. History is a draft, a draft we change all the time.”

“And if history is mutable—”

“Then nothing is inevitable. Not even the past.”

“I don’t understand,” Pirius admitted.

Dans said, “If you can redraft history, everything can be fixed. He thinks that even if he dies today, then history will somehow, some day, be put right, and all such unfortunate errors removed.”

“Hope, is that right?”

“Something like it.”

Dans snapped, “Pirius, the creed is anti-Doctrine, but it’s just as much a trap as the Doctrines. A Druz junkie thinks death and defeat reinforce the strength of the Doctrines. A Friend believes defeat is irrelevant because it will all be erased some day. Either way, you don’t fight to win. You see? Why else has this damn war stalled so long?”

Pirius felt uncomfortable with such heresy—even now, even here.

With a trace of malice Hope said, “But you’re as doomed as we are, Pilot Dans.”

Cohl said, “What about you, Pirius? What do you want to achieve?”

Pirius thought it over. “I want to be remembered.”

He heard slow, ironic applause from Dans.

Cohl muttered, “That is just so anti-Doctrinal!”

Hope murmured, “Well, you might be about to get your chance, Pilot. Sag A East is dead ahead. Dropping out of FTL.”

Jumpjumpjumpjump jump—jump—jump . . .

As the FTL hops slowed, they passed through a flickering barrage of stars, and electric-blue light flared around them: the pilots called it FTL light, a by-product of the energy the ship was shedding, coalescing into exotic evanescent particles. Pirius, relieved to get back to practical matters, tested the controls of the greenship and burped its two sublight drives—including the GUTdrive. This was a backup, a venerable human design, and one you would light up only in the direst of circumstances, for fear of attracting quagmites. . . .

While Pirius worked, the others had been looking at the view. “Lethe,” Dans said softly.

Pirius glanced up.

Sagittarius A East was a bubble of shocked gas, light-years wide, said to be the remnant of an immense explosion in the heart of the Galaxy. Suddenly Pirius was at the center of a storm of light.

Dans called, “And look at that.” She downloaded coordinates.

A pinpoint of crimson light glowed directly ahead, embedded in the glowing murk. It was a neutron star, according to their first scans, a star with the mass of the sun but only twenty kilometers across.