The secret of the hyperdrive: yes, that would be a fitting ransom. I imagined presenting it to a grateful humanity. Things would be different for us from now on.

And a little something for myself, of course. Well, I'd be a hero. Perhaps a villa, overlooking the cliffs of Miranda. I'd always liked that bust-up little moon. I thought about the interior design.

It was a sweet taste, the heady flavor of power. The Squeem would have to find a way to turn off the Xeelee flower. But there was only one way. And that was in my suit pocket.

Oh, how they'd pay. I smiled through cracked lips.

Well, you know the rest. I even got to keep the buttlebot. We drifted through space, dreaming of Uranian vineyards, waiting for the Squeem to return.

The images faded.

"I liked Jones," I said.

"Because he didn't give up. I know you, Jack."

"And he won, didn't he?"

"Yes. Jones's small victory would, indeed, prove to be the turning point in human oppression by the Squeem..."

The yoke of the Squeem was cast off. Humans were free again, able to exploit themselves and their own resources as they saw fit. Not only that, the Squeem occupation had left humans with a legacy of high technology.

The lost human colonies on the nearby stars were contacted and revitalized, and a new, explosive wave of expansion began, powered by hyperdrive. Humans spread like an infection across the Galaxy, vigorous, optimistic once more.

And everywhere, they encountered the footprints of the Xeelee...

More Than Time or Distance

More Than Time or Distance

A.D. 5024

My one-woman flitter dropped into the luminous wreckage of an old supernova. I peered into the folded-out depths of the dead star, hoarding details like coins for Timothy.

The star remnant at the heart of the wreck was a shrunken miser; its solitary planet was a ball of slag pockmarked with shallow craters. Once this must have been the core of a mighty Jovian. I landed and stepped out. Feel how the surface crackles like glass, Tim... I imagined four-year-old eyes round with wonder. Except, of course, my memory of my son was five years and a thousand light years out of date. But I felt Tim's presence, somehow -- when you get close enough to someone you're never really alone again. And maybe if my prospector's luck changed here, it wouldn't be five years before I held him again.

Above me violet sails of gas drifted through a three-dimensional sky. Around me a thousand empty light years telescoped away. And ahead of me stood a building -- plain, cuboid, a bit like a large shoe box.

But a shoe box at the center of a nebula -- and made of Xeelee construction material.

I stood stock still, the hairs at the back of my neck prickling against the lining of my pressure suit. An original Xeelee relic, the dream of prospectors from a thousand races... and intact, too.