Ed Chianese sprawled in the pilot seat with his mouth open, breathing heavily. Except that one hand rested on his genitals, he resembled The Death of Chatterton; and if he was dreaming it didn’t show. Looking down at him with an expression in her eyes both maternal and ironic, stood a small oriental woman in a gold cheongsam split to the thigh. She lit a cigarette, smoked it between shakes of the head. Her eyes never left him. You would have said, if she had been a real woman, that she was trying to work him out.

“Well, Ed. Time to get on,” she said eventually.

A few whitish motes seemed to drift out of her eyes. “You know, we should have music for this,” she said. “Something measured.” She raised her hand. Ed was lifted gently out of his seat by the gesture and propelled at a walking pace to The Perfect Low’s nearest hatch; which, when opened, evacuated the atmosphere from the entire ship. Ed, too. He seemed unaware of this event, which was perhaps to the good. A little later he lay in the air—perfectly horizontal, legs together, hands folded on his chest as if for burial—two or three feet off the surface of the asteroid.

“Nice,” said Sandra Shen. “You look nice, Ed.”

She tilted her face to the glare of the Tract, against which could dimly be seen the shape of The Perfect Low.

“I shan’t need you anymore,” she told it.

The ship manoeuvred for a second or two, the aliens in their mortsafes visible briefly in intermittent bursts of torchlight. Then they fired up the Purple Cloud again and were gone.

Sandra Shen stared after them. For a moment or two she seemed regretful, and reluctant to make decisions. “Do I want another cigarette?” she asked Ed. “No, I don’t think I do.” She was restless, edgy: not quite herself. Her shadow became briefly restless too. Her hands were busy about her clothes. Or were they? Perhaps it was more than that. For a moment, sparks seemed to pour out of everything. She sighed exasperatedly, then seemed to relax.

“Do wake up, Ed,” she said.

Ed woke standing, on the curve of a small world under the desperate illumination of the Kefahuchi Tract.