The clock showed that I had half an hour to wait for lunch. I thought about eating anyway, decided against it. The routine was all that kept me going. I wondered what the sky looked like, reflexively looked up so I wouldn't have to look down at the transparent floor. That big an expanse of hyperspace is hard even on trained eyes. I remembered I wasn't in hyperspace and looked down.

For a time I just stared. Then, without taking my eyes off the floor, I reached for the hyperphone.

«Beowulf Shaeffer?»

«No, this is Albert Einstein. I stowed away when the Long Shot took off, and I've decided to turn myself in for the reward.»

«Giving misinformation is an implicit violation of contract. Why have you called?»

«I can see the Core.»

«That is not a reason to call. It was implicit in your contract that you would see the Core.»

«Damn it, don't you care? Don't you want to know what it looks like?»

«If you wish to describe it now, as a precaution against accident, I will switch you to a dictaphone. However, if your mission is not totally successful, we cannot use your recording.»

I was thinking up a really searing answer when I heard the click. Great; my boss had hooked me into a dictaphone. I said one short sentence and hung up.

* * *

The Core.

Gone were the obscuring masses of dust and gas. A billion years ago they must have been swept up for fuel by the hungry, crowded stars. The Core lay before me like a great jeweled sphere. I'd expected it to be a gradual thing, a thick mass of stars thinning out into the arms. There was nothing gradual about it. A clear ball of multicolored light five or six thousand light-years across nestled in the heart of the galaxy, sharply bounded by the last of the dust clouds. I was 10,400 light-years from the center.