The hulls are delivered fully transparent, and you use paint where you feel like it. Most of this particular hull had been left transparent. Only the nose had been painted, around the lifesystem. There was no major reaction drive. A series of retractable attitude jets had been mounted in the sides, and the hull was pierced with smaller holes, square and round, for observational instruments. I could see them gleaming through the hull.

The puppeteer was moving toward the nose, but something made me turn toward the stern for a closer look at the landing shocks. They were bent. Behind the curved transparent hull panels some tremendous pressure had forced the metal to flow like warm wax, back and into the pointed stem.

«What did this?» I asked.

«We do not know. We wish strenuously to find out.»

«What do you mean?»

«Have you heard of the neutron star BVS-1?»

I had to think a moment. «First neutron star ever found, and so far the only. Someone located it two years ago by stellar displacement.»

«BVS-1 was found by the Institute of Knowledge on Jinx. We learned through a go-between that the Institute wished to explore the star. They needed a ship to do it. They had not yet sufficient money. We offered to supply them with a ship's hull, with the usual guarantees, if they would turn over to us all data they acquired through using our ship.»

«Sounds fair enough.» I didn't ask why they hadn't done their own exploring. Like most sentient vegetarians, puppeteers find discretion to be the only part of valor.

«Two humans named Peter Laskin and Sonya Laskin wished to use the ship. They intended to come within one mile of the surface in a hyperbolic orbit. At some point during their trip an unknown force apparently reached through the hull to do this to the landing shocks. The unknown force also seems to have killed the pilots.»

«But that's impossible. Isn't it?»