As a rule, a ship’s lights are not turned on except in response to a radio call, for purposes of identification. Different ships display different kinds of lights: passenger ships are identified by one kind, freighters by another, and the same applies to high-speed ballistic rockets, patrolships, rescue ships, tankers, and so on. The lights are mounted variously, depending on the ship, and they come in every conceivable color except one—white—to make the ships distinguishable at all times from the stars. When two or more vehicles are flying in tandem, a white light on the lead ship can too easily be mistaken for a stationary light, in which case the pilot following behind runs the risk of going off course.

But the little speck floating leisurely across the screen was white as could be, and Pirx could actually feel his eyeballs coming loose from their sockets. Not once did he blink, afraid that he might lose track of it if he did—but the white dot sauntered gingerly along, undisturbed, now only a dozen or so centimeters away from the opposite side of the screen. Another minute and it would vanish from sight.

Instinctively, Pirx’s hands went straight for the controls. The reactor, which had been idling, responded with instantaneous thrust, the acceleration shoving Pirx back into the seat’s foam-rubber cushion… stars scudding across the screen… the Milky Way running downhill, very much like a road of milk… This brought the mobile speck to a standstill, with the ship’s nose following right on its tail, aiming at it like a hunting dog pointing at a pheasant in the brush. Now was that classy handling, or wasn’t it?

The whole maneuver consumed a mere ten seconds.

Now, for the first time, he had the leisure to reflect, and it slowly dawned on him that what he was seeing was a hallucination, because such things were unprecedented. This deduction did him credit. On the whole, people tend to trust too much in the evidence of their senses; if they should happen to see a deceased acquaintance in public, they would sooner believe in a resurrection than admit to their own insanity.