For thousands of years among the stars, for hundreds of her own years, the ship had been great and proud. She was akin to Envoy in her general plan — seen across fifty kilometers, the unlikenesses were few, the most obvious a proportionately larger hull — but of more than twice the linear dimensions, ten times the burden. Even the wreckage of her had kept majesty; Nansen remembered Machu Picchu, Kerak des Chevaliers, the Lion Gate at Mycenae. It still belonged in the reaches she had sailed; he remembered the Gokstad ship, the Mary Rose, the Constitution, and thought that Fleetwing had found a better ending.

But maybe the ancient crews had found better deaths.

He reduced viewscreen magnification, retaining light enhancement, to survey the entirety again. Lesser wounds dwindled out of sight and he saw the forward wheel turning as before, slower than his because it was bigger but creating interior weight as of old. That meant the frictionless magnetic bearings around its hollow axle were there, which meant that the superconductors generating the fields were operative, which meant that a fusion power plant was, which meant that life within the rim might yet be possible.

The force boom, though, projecting from the hub to make and shape the radiation screen fields, was warped, a fourth of its two-kilometer length snapped off. The outer hull was rotating, oppositely to the wheel, something that should never have happened. That it had not long since grated ruinously against the inner hull was a tribute to the remnants of the bearing system — to the engineers who designed it and the honest workers who built it, dust these many centuries. The eight boats that had docked on the exterior, two sets of four spaced equally around the circumference, were gone. The magnetics that held them fast had failed, doubtless in the moment of catastrophe, and they drifted off with the debris.

The huge cylinder terminated in ripped and ragged metal. A few interior members stuck out, torn across, like bones in a compound fracture. The inner hull was hidden from view, a stump. No after wheel spun athwart the Milky Way. Its fragments were also forever lost. They might not have receded fast, but in sixteen years they would have traveled into tracklessness.

Nansen consulted a display of data his instruments had obtained and interpretations his computers had calculated. The dry figures joined with the stark sight to tell him Fleetwing's story.

Her normal-state velocity in the galactic frame of reference had been about seventy-five kilometers per second. When the substrate reclaimed the unpaid part of her debt, as much matter decelerated to zero as would carry that much energy at that speed. It occurred in a fractional second, thus with appalling force. In ship terms, the zero-zero engine immediately crashed aft, rending off its section of the inner hull. The pieces rammed into the solid hub at the end. They bore it and the plasma accelerator it supported away. Unsecured, seized by incidental forces  —  electrostatic, if nothing else — the after wheel withdrew as well. Whirling and wobbling, its axle sleeve struck the outer hull, smashed through decks, entangled structure. Its linear momentum left a hole agape in the stern of the cylinder, its angular momentum left a spin. Fleetwing pitched and yawed. That put more torque on the long, thin mast than it was meant to bear, and it gave way.

Not that it or its screen fields were needed by then, Nansen thought. This ship will never again race with light.

Incredible, that the systems up forward could save anything of her, yes, actually restore a kind of stability.

No, perhaps not really unbelievable. She was made so well that she had already endured everything else the cosmos threw at her. And likewise her Kithfolk.

He stood in Envoy's command center with Hanny Dayan and Alanndoch Egis. His second officer was youthful; all aboard from Harbor had seen less life span than he and his wife. She was fair-haired and gray-eyed, tall in her one-piece blue uniform; but starfaring ancestors had bequeathed her her face.

Consoles, meters, displays, encompassed them. The air at present bore a tinge of pine smell. Retrofits had not changed old Envoy much.

Alanndoch stared at a radio monitor. The instrument searched from end to end of that spectrum and back again, lest a message come in that the audios were not tuned for. "No answer yet," she said, uselessly and desperately. "Are they dead, then? Their broadcast goes on." She was young.

"It would," Dayan reminded her. "Automatic. Evidently the best transmitter they could rig was crude, but they built it rugged. The call will continue for decades more, till the power plant gives out."

Nansen ran a hand through his hair. It was going white at the temples. "They should have seen us," he muttered, just as pointlessly. "If nothing else, they could modulate or modify that signal. Interrupting it every few minutes would show that they're alive."

Dayan's voice Weakened. "Maybe nobody looks out any longer. Maybe they've turned off their viewscreens. Sixteen years of watching naked space —"

"That doesn't sound like what I've heard of Kithfolk," Alanndoch said.

"After all this time, under those conditions, what may they have become?"

"Dead." Alanndoch's head drooped. "We're too late."

Seven and a half years — half an Earth-day for them — to the approximate location. Zigzagging to and fro, zero-zero jumps that closed in on the goal. Laying to, straining outward with Opticals, neutrino detectors, every capability on hand. The radio signal, barely obtainable, a broadcast gone tenuous over these distances, and no more than a wave band not found in the interstellar medium; yet unmistakably a beacon, proof that somebody had survived the disaster. (Well, Fleetwing was massive, and no doubt bore a considerable tonnage of cargo. Evidently the shock had not jarred her fatally hard.) Homing in on the source. A final approach under normal-state boost. Matching velocities at a safe remove. Quest completed.

Found: a wreck and a mindlessly radiating monotone, alone amidst the stars.

Nansen's fist banged on a console panel. "No, it's not for nothing," he said. "At the very least, we'll learn the details of what happened. The future needs to know."

Dayan flung off her despair. "Good for you, Rico!" She clapped his shoulder. "Let's start."

Alanndoch likewise brightened a little. "Oh, yes, we must board." She regarded the others. "But, Captain, Scientist," she well-nigh pleaded, "you shouldn't. Please reconsider. Don't risk yourselves. You've crew who're willing, anxious to go. Beginning with me."

"Thanks," Dayan said. "But Rico and I have earned the right."

For her, he thought, the right to be not yet used up. To defy time once more, time that has devoured everything on Earth which was hers.

For me  —  He spoke in his wonted sober fashion: "We have argued this already. I well know the doctrine. The commander should stay with the ship. However, Dr. Dayan and I have more than training" — brief, though intense. "We have experience" — since before Envoy departed Sol, and at worlds unknown until she fetched up at them, and at the black hole; for a moment it felt to him like the full eleven thousand years. "We have by far the best chance of coping with anything unexpected. Stand by."

Dayan's demand rang heartening. "We'll certainly want you and the whole crew later. If we find survivors, you'll have tricky work to do."

"At worst," Nansen finished, "you shall take our ship home."