"Like a Christmas wreath," Claire Dalton breathed. The sociologist's body was that of a pretty, leggy blonde, but her corpsicle memories reached far back . . . and what was she doing on the bridge? Captain Dennis Quinn might have invited her, the way they were standing to

gether. It indicated a laxity in discipline that Kendy would have to watch.

The crew of Discipline continued to study the archaic Christmas wreath. Until Sam Goldblatt suddenly crowed, "Goldblatt's Worldl Prikazyvat Kendy, record that, Goldblatt's World! There's a planet in there."

"I'm not close enough to probe that closely, Sam."

"It has to be there. You know how a gas torus works?"

It was there in Kendy's memory. "Yes. I don't doubt you're right. I can bounce some radar off that storm complex when we pass."

"Pass, hell. We've got to stop and investigate this thing." Goldblatt looked about him for support. "Green means life! Life, and no planet!

We've got to know all about it. Claire, Dennis, you see that, don't you?" The crew included twelve citizens and eight corpsicles. The corpsicles

might argue, but they had no civil rights; and the citizens had less than they thought. For reasons of morale, Kendy maintained the fiction that they were in charge.

Goldblatt's suggestion was not worth considering. Kendy said, "Think. We've got fuel to decelerate once and once only. We'll need it when we reach Earth."

"There's water in there," Dennis Quinn said thoughtfully. "We could refuel. I bet the water's rich in deuterium and tritium. Why not, it's circling the ashes of a supernova!"

Claire Dalton was gazing at the screen, at a perfect smoke ring with a tiny hot pinpoint in its center. "The neutron star has cooled off, lost most of its rotation and most of its heat and most of that ferocious magnetic field the pulsars have. It's bright, but it's too small to be giving off much real heat. We could probably live in there ourselves." She looked around her. "Isn't this what we came for? The strangeness of the universe. If we don't stop now, we might as well be back on Earth." The contempt in her voice was unmistakable.

Kendy's memory jumped at that point. Hardly surprising. That must have been the true beginning of mutiny.

He remembered reviewing and updating his files on gas torus mechanics.

Two planets circled wide around the twin stars: Jupiter-style gas giants with no moons. The old supernova must have blasted away anything smaller.

A body did circle the neutron star. One limb of the Smoke Ring was

curdled, a distorted whirlpool of storm. Hidden within was a core of rock and metals at 2.5 Earth masses. There was s6me oxygen and some

water vapor in its thick, hot atmosphere. Goldblatt's World was tidally locked, and uninhabitable. Strip away its atmosphere and it might have harbored Earthly life-but its atmosphere was tremendous, dwindling indefinitely into the Smoke Ring itself.

The strong oxygen-water lines were coming from the gas torus.