He hadn't quite achieved that, but he was captain of a superlu-minal. He'd been too late to capture Valeric, but he knew no woman would ever again walk away from him because he had nothing to offer.

Starships, however, had turned out to be less romantic than he'd expected. His life, even with the Academy, had devolved into hauling passengers and freight from world to world with monotonous regularity. He'd hoped to pilot the survey ships that went out beyond the bubble, that went to places no one had ever seen before, like the Taliaferro, which had come out twenty-one years ago and found Morgan. That was the kind of life he wanted. But those were compact ships, and the pilots also tended to be part of the working crew. They were astrophysicists, exobiologists, climatologists, people who could carry their weight during a mission., Marcel could run the ship and in a pinch repair the coffeemaker. He was a skilled technician, one of the few pilots who could do major repairs under way. That skill counted for a great deal, but it was one more reason why the Academy liked him on flights that carried large numbers of passengers.

Marcel had found himself living a curiously uneventful life.

Until- Morgan.

Because the collision would be a head-on, a kind of cosmic train wreck, Maleiva 111 was not yet feeling the gravitational effects of the approaching giant. Nor was it yet more than a bright star in her skies. "Nothing much will change down there," Beekman predicted, "until the last forty hours or so. Then"-he rubbed his hands with anticipation-"Katie bar the door."

They were over the night side. Filmy clouds floated below them, limned by starlight. Here and there they could see oceans or snow-covered landmasses.

The Wendy jay was moving east in low orbit. It was early morning again aboard ship, but a substantial number of the researchers were up, crowded around the screens. They ate snacks and drank an endless supply of coffee in front of the displays, watching the sky brighten as the ship approached the terminator.