So Cass had traveled to Mimosa Station, half a light-yearfrom the blue subgiant for which it was named, three hundred andseventy light-years from Earth. Here, Rainzi and his colleagues hadbuilt a shield against the noise.

Cass opened her eyes. Lifting her head to peer through aportal, still strapped to the bed at the waist, she could just make outthe Quietener: a blue glint reflecting off the hull a millionkilometers away. Mimosa Station had so little room to spare that she’dhad to settle for a body two millimeters high, which rendered hervision less acute than usual. The combination of weightlessness,vacuum, and insectile dimensions did make her feel pleasantly robust,though: her mass had shrunk a thousand times more than the crosssections of her muscles and tendons, so the pressures and strainsinvolved in any collision were feather-light. Even if she chargedstraight into a ceramic wall, it felt like being stopped by a barricadeof petals.

It was a pity the same magical resilience couldn’t applyto her encounters with less tangible obstacles. She’d left Earth withno guarantee that the Mimosans would see any merit in her proposal, butit was only in the last few days that she’d begun to face up to thepossibility of a bruising rejection. She could have presented herentire case from home, stoically accepting asevenhundred-and-forty-year delay between each stage of the argument.Or she could have sent a Surrogate, well briefed but nonsentient, toplead on her behalf. But she’d succumbed to a mixture of impatience anda sense of proprietorship, and transmitted herself blind.

Now the verdict was less than two hours away.

She unstrapped herself and drifted away from the bed. Shedidn’t need to wash, or purge herself of wastes. From the moment she’d