Honestly, nobody wore these kinds of neckties anymore! In the corridor he paused to straighten his collar, stepped into the elevator, and zoomed up to the prom deck. The elevator door slid open without a sound. A sigh of relief: not a living soul in sight. One third of the vaulted ceiling, its glassed roof arching over several rows of deck chairs, resembled a gigantic eye fixed on the stars. The chairs were stacked with blankets, but were otherwise quite empty. Only one was occupied, at the very back—by an elderly eccentric, bundled to the neck, whose habit it was to dine an hour after everyone else, alone, in an empty dining room, veiling his face with a napkin if anyone so much as glanced in his direction.

Pirx settled himself in one of the chairs. Intermittently the deck was fanned by an undulating breeze that seemed to have its origin in the darkest recesses of space but was, in fact, pumped out by the ship’s invisible air-conditioning outlets. The engineers on the Transgalactic staff knew their stuff, all right. The deck chair was comfortable, more comfortable even than a pilot’s electronically designed contour couch. Pirx felt a slight chill, remembered the blankets, and bundled himself up as if making himself snug in a comforter.

Someone was coming. By way of the stairs—not the elevator. His dining-room neighbor. He tried to guess her age—no luck. She had on another dress, and he wondered whether it was the same woman. She stretched herself out, three chairs away from him, and opened a book. The artificial breeze ruffled the pages. Pirx looked straight ahead. The Southern Cross was palpably visible, as was the tail end of the Little Dipper, truncated by the window frame: a luminous speck against a black backdrop. A seven-day flight cruise. Hm. A lot could happen in a week’s time. He stirred deliberately, causing the thickish, neatly folded document in his inner pocket to crinkle softly.