It was one of the oldest stars in the Galaxy, a sphere of primordial matter hovering in the halo like a failed beacon. About five hundred of its contemporaries still sprinkled photons over the young-matter soup of the swirling main disc, defiant against the erosion of aeons.

But this star had failed, long since. Now it was choked with iron; carbon dusted its cooling surface.

The artifact humans called the Snowflake surrounded this dwarf star, a vast setting for an ancient, faded jewel.

Since the construction of the Snowflake, fourteen billion years had shivered across the swirling face of the Galaxy.

Now, at last, from out of the main disc, a ship was climbing up to the Snowflake.

Throughout his voyage from Earth aboard the Spline warship, Kapur remained alone. Endlessly he studied Virtuals on his destination, trying to comprehend the task that confronted him.

Kapur would be given five days to complete his task.

He was a policeman, seconded to this assignment. In the fleshy warmth of the Spline's interior, the enormity of the crime he must prevent kept Kapur awake for long hours.

The Spline ship was a mile-wide ball of hardened flesh. Buried deep in pockmarks, sensors which had once been eyes turned slowly in response to the electronic prompting of humans.

The Spline sailed to within a hundred million miles of the Snowflake, slowed, stopped. For days it hovered. A swarm of passive, powerless probes were sprinkled cautiously over the Snowflake.

The disc of the Galaxy was smoke shot through with starlight, a carpet beneath this slow tableau.

At last the flesh of the Spline puckered, split, parted. A childcraft, a cylinder of silver, wriggled out of the revealed orifice. The child spread shining sails and shook them into a parasol shape; the sails seemed to glisten, as if damp from the womb.

Ruby-red laser light seared from the Spline, lanced into the sails. Slowly, slowly, the fine material billowed in response and filled out. Like thistledown, goaded by the laser-breath of the Spline, the child-yacht descended towards the Snowflake.

The interior of the yacht was a box twenty feet long and six wide. It was too small for two men and the equipment which kept them alive.

Kapur sat before the viewport which formed much of the nose of the yacht. Through the port he could see the dwindling fist of flesh that was the Spline freighter, the perpetually startling sight of the Galaxy in plain view. But even though the yacht was now mere hours away from its rendezvous, of the Snowflake he still saw nothing; not even a rusty smudge, he thought sourly.

Mace, the yacht's other occupant, sat close to Kapur. He peered out with interest, his Eyes gleaming like an insect's. Mace was a Navy man. Kapur, dark, slim, uncomfortable in his borrowed Navy uniform, shrank from Mace's confident bulk.

Mace swiveled his turret of a head towards Kapur. "Well? What do you think of the 'Flake?"