Instead, when the dramatic hour arrived, he would put the Sungrazer chip into the reader and people would look through the viewports and see images taken from the satellite. It was breathtaking stuff, and if it was a trifle deceptive, who really cared? Orion did not keep the method secret. Occasionally someone asked, and Jerry always told them, yes, the view they were getting was not really what it looked like from the bridge or through the ship’s scopes. Too dangerous. This is what you would see if we could get in sufficiently close. But of course you wouldn’t want that.

Of course not, they always replied.

That would not happen, of course, until tomorrow morning, when they made their closest approach. The tour was timed so that the visual changeover happened during the night, when the passengers were — usually — asleep in their cabins. At around seven or so, when they began getting up, the first thing they saw would be the Sungrazer, and it was probably the most dramatic moment of the entire flight.

He had thirty-six passengers, a full load, including three sets of honeymooners, seven kids fourteen or under, one clergyman who had saved for a lifetime to make the trip, one contest winner, and two physicians. The contest winner was a young woman from Istanbul who had never before been outside her native country. He wasn’t clear on the precise nature of the contest, and his language skills did not allow explication. But she sat wide-eyed near the main display all during the approach.

JERRY HAD BEEN enduring sleepless nights on recent flights. He’d resisted going to see someone about it, but the condition had worsened this time out. On this last night before starting home, he hadn’t been able to sleep at all, so he’d dressed and come up to the bridge, where he sat, paging listlessly through the library. The AI was silent. The navigation screens gave him views at several magnifications of the sun and the gas giant.