The other gave on green countryside, scattered homes and groves, a distant range of hills blue against a blue sky. Alpha Centauri A spilled morning radiance across it. B was not yet visible and, currently close to maximum separation, would shine only as the brightest of the stars. A flight of rosewings passed across a snowy cloud. Kind of like wild geese, he thought vaguely, but sunrise-colored. Not that I've ever seen wild geese, except on a screen. Yes, Wunderland's still a lovely world, as alive as Earth used to be before people screwed her up.

“It would not have been a particularly profitable charter for us,” said Nordbo.

Saxtorph's burly frame swung around to confront the gray-bearded face. “No,” he admitted harshly, “but Dorcas and me, how we lusted to go! What a bodacious spectacle! And the publicity would've been worth more than the money,” to the single privately owned hyperdrive craft in known space, competing with the lines of half a dozen governments.

“That has become worse than worthless.”

“How?”

“I've had time to think this over, you know.” Saxtorph and his crew had been en route from Jinx with a load of organics cheaper to grow there and haul here than to synthesize. Centaurian industry hadn't fully recovered from the long kzin occupation. Maybe—his mind wandered again for a second—it never would, but concentrate instead on whole new kinds of enterprise. Which ought to leave room for Rover to ply her trade.

But he didn't want her always to be just a tramp freighter. She'd been more. He'd left with his head full of the wonderful discovery the astronomers had made, the fact that an expedition to go for a close look was being organized as fast as possible, and the near-promise that his ship would carry it. She'd proven she could survive pretty terrible surprises, she'd have no other commitments, and Nordbo was closing the deal. It helped that the headquarters of the Interworld Space Commission was handy, right in this same system; he'd gotten on friendly terms with key bureaucrats.