“With or without my shoes?” he’d asked the astrophysicist who’d presented him with the calculation.

Despite the outrageous characteristics of the object, there were at least a half dozen in the immediate neighborhood. The reality was that there were simply a lot of dead stars floating about. Nobody noticed them because they didn’t make any noise and they were all but invisible.

“What makes it interesting,” Ava explained to him, “is that it’s going to bump into that star over there.” She tapped her finger on the display, but Langley wasn’t sure which star she meant. “It has fourteen planets, it’s nine billion years old, but this monster is going to scatter everything. And probably disrupt the sun.”

Langley had heard that, a few days before. But he knew it wouldn’t happen during his lifetime.

Ava Eckart was one of the few on board who seemed to have a life outside her specialty. She was a black woman, attractive, methodical, congenial. Organized the shipboard parties. Liked to dance. Enjoyed talking about her work, but had the rare ability to put it in layman’s terms.

“When?” Langley asked. “When’s all this going to happen?”

“In about seventeen thousand years.”

Well, there you go. You just need a little patience. “And you can’t wait.”

Her dark eyes sparkled. “You got it,” she said. And then her internal lights faded. “That’s the problem with being out here. Everything interesting happens on an inconvenient time scale.” She picked up a couple of coffee mugs. Did he want one?

“No,” he said. “Thanks, but it keeps me awake all day.”

She smiled, poured herself one, and eased into a chair. “But yes,” she said, “I’d love to be here when it happens. To be able to see something like that.”

“Seventeen thousand years? Better eat right.”

“I guess.” She remained pensive. “Even if you lived long enough to make it, you’d need a few thousand more years to watch the process. At least.”