Gage sat under (a Virtual image of) the sky, watching starlight bend itself into a bow around the ship. It was a beautiful sight; it reminded her of Saturn's rings.

Their speed was already so close to that of light that time was passing a thousand times as quickly inside Chiron as beyond it. Everyone Gage knew in the Solar System must be long dead, despite AS treatment.

She wondered if the Squeem occupation still endured. Maybe not. Maybe humans had hyperdrive ships of their own by now.

This solitary drama might be the last, meaningless act of a historical tragedy, yet to play to its conclusion.

Most of the eighty had retreated to Virtual playgrounds, sinking into their own oceanic memories, oblivious of the Universe outside, isolated even from each other.

But Gage was still out here.

New problems were looming, she thought.

She sought out Maris Mackenzie.

"We're going bloody fast," she said.

"I know." Maris Mackenzie looked lively, interested. "This is the way to travel between the stars, isn't it? Carrying live, fragile humans through normal space across interstellar distances was always a pipedream. Humans are bags of water, unreasonably fragile. A starship is nothing but plumbing. Humans crap inordinate amounts, endless mountains of--"

"Yes," said Gage patiently, "but we still can't stop. Where are we going? Tau Ceti is long behind us. And we're heading out of the plane of the ecliptic, remember; we're soon going to pass out of the Galaxy altogether."

"Um." Mackenzie looked thoughtful. "What do you suggest?"

Gage set up a simulation of her old freighter's pilot cocoon; for subjective days she reveled in the Virtual chamber, home again.

But she got impatient. Her control and speed of reaction were limited.

She dismissed the cocoon and found ways to interface directly with the sensors of Chiron, internal and external.

The GUTdrive felt like a fire in her belly; the sensor banks, fore and aft, were her eyes.

It was odd and at first she ached, over all her imaginary body; but gradually she grew accustomed to her new form. Sometimes it felt strange to return to a standard-human configuration. She found herself staring at Moro or Mackenzie, still seeing arrays of stars, the single, implacable spark of pursuing GUTlight superimposed on their faces.

Gage had been a good pilot. She was prepared to bet she was a better pilot than the Squeem missile. If she learned to pilot Chiron, maybe she could find a way to shake off the missile.

She searched ahead, through the thinning star-fields at the edge of the Galaxy. She had to find something, some opportunity to trick the Squeem missile, before they left the main disc.

The black hole and its companion star lay almost directly in the path of Chiron.

The hole was four miles across, with about the mass of the Sun. Its companion was a red giant, vast and cool, its outer layers so rarefied Gage could see stars beyond its bulk.