On the voyage back to Sol, Nansen often sought the command center. There was seldom any need for it. As ever, Envoy mostly conned herself, making leap after zero-zero leap so smoothly that her crew never noticed the transitions. Only when she was about to pause and orbit free, in the normal state, for the taking of observations, did captain and engineer stand by their posts, and that was more from a sense of duty than because they anticipated any problems.

But in between such times, when he wanted to be alone and felt as if his cabin were closing in on him, he would come sit among instruments and quietness, dim the interior lights, activate the great viewscreens, and lose himself in the splendor around.

Late one daywatch, about at midpassage, he heard a light footfall behind him. Turning his head, he saw Dayan enter through the dusk he had made. She wore a gray coverall and he could not make out the red of her hair, but stars and Milky Way touched it with frost. As he rose from his seat, she caught her breath. He wondered why. It did not occur to him that he stood limned against the cosmos.

"Well, welcome," he said. His pleasure was as genuine as his surprise.

"I'm . . . not sure I will be," she answered.

"You always are, Hanny."

Her gaze dropped, lifted anew toward his, and held steady. The change in her mood, from the optimism and exuberance of her projects with Yu, was like a sudden cold wind upon him. She plunged ahead: "I'm sorry to interrupt your thinking."

"I wasn't. And I wouldn't be sorry if you did."

"But  —  I suppose you can guess why I'm here."

He smiled. "Because I happen to be?"

His fragile cheerfulness broke under her words. "I thought you should hear first, privately, and I didn't want to wait till you were in your cabin. I'd have had to fend off everybody else's questions." She glanced away, at a cloudlet glimmering in the crystal blackness, a nebula where suns were coming to birth. "Besides, this place is more right, somehow."

"It's about your latest observations, isn't it?" he asked slowly. They had not been quick or easy, she alone out on the hull. Sundaram, Zeyd, and Mokoena lacked skill to help her; she had declined Nansen's and Yu's offers, declaring that, slight though the risk might be, the ship could spare neither of them.

She nodded. "Yes. I've finished reducing the data."

He folded his arms and waited. Ventilation rustled, no louder than bloodbeat in ears. At this point of its cycle the air verged on chilly, with an autumnal smell.

"No further room for doubt," Dayan said. "Starflight in the region of Sol is — has been — decreasing. Steeply. Toward extinction."

Twilight shielded faces. "It had begun to seem that way," Nansen murmured.

"We weren't sure. Statistical fluctuations  —  Now, though, the tracks I measured this time —" She swallowed. After a second she had forced dry-ness on her tone. "A total of nineteen. The maximum distance from Sol was fifty-five light-years, plus or minus three. The mean distance was about twenty."

"Down from sixty-two flights averaging fifty light-years each," he recalled. "Ten weeks ago."

"A thousand years ago, star time," she reminded him, needlessly, desperately.

"And now — no, 'now' is meaningless — these wave fronts new to us are twenty-five hundred years old," he mused. "Human starfaring peaked maybe four thousand years after we left home. Then the ebb set in."

"Figurative figures," she said, regaining prosaicism. "I'll have more exact values in my report."

Nansen stood mute for a little. The stars gleamed multitudinous in constellations that still were strange to Earth. "Do the numbers make much difference?" he replied. "What matters is what we find when we come . . . home. Or don't find."

Defiance stirred. "Or as the Yankees used to say, 'We ain't licked yet.' For all we know, enterprise has been recovering."

He looked at her. Eyes caught starlight and gave it back out of shadow. "Do you really believe that?"

The liveliness died. "I'd like to. But probably I don't."

"It does seem as if every other race that tried came at last to the end of its strength, or its desire, and gave up. Or will someday. Why should ours be different? What growth curve of any kind rises forever?"

She trod one step closer. "Don't take it so to heart, Rico," she said from low in her throat.

"I shouldn't, true. The irony of it —" His armor cracked enough for her to hear. "We can't speak of the cruel irony, can we? The universe isn't cruel or kind or anything. It simply is. It doesn't even care about its own survival."

"Your God ought to."

"Well," he sighed, "the Church taught that someday time also will have a stop."

She touched his hand. "Rico —"

"Si?" He sounded startled.

"If it is so — if Envoy is the last human starship — don't let it break you." Dayan's voice lifted. "A bitter disappointment, yes. To all of us. But we didn't fare for nothing. We had our voyage, we made our discoveries, we lived. And this won't be the end of life, either."

"No," he must agree.

"If humans aren't adventuring anymore, could they be at peace, as the Tahirians wanted to be?"

"I doubt it."

"We never really had a hardwired drive, a need or instinct, to explore. You and I heard a lot of rhetoric about that, back in those days, but the fact is, most people in most of history were content to stay put and cultivate their own gardens. Exploration, discovery, was a cultural thing."

"And an individual thing," he insisted.

She beheld him crowned with stars. "Individuals like you."

"And you, Hanny."

"But would peace be so terrible?" she pursued. "Suppose Earth is tranquil and beautiful. Suppose we can find something for ourselves like your estancia. Then I could gladly settle down."

"Do you remember the estancia?" he asked wonderingly.

"How could I forget? That short while I spent there with you was as happy a time as I've ever known."

"Hanny."

She mustered resolution. "All right, Rico. I've been meaning to say this when the chance came. Couldn't earlier, of course. But it has been more than a year for us since we lost Jean."

His machismo crumbled. "I — naturally, I've had thoughts — but —"

She smiled in the starlit gloaming. "But you're the captain and a gentleman and wouldn't let yourself notice how I've lately been waving my eyelashes at you." In a rush: "Rico, we've six months of travel left. After that — We can't guess what, after that. But we have this half year."

"To explore what we've found, yes."

"And more than that."

"To be happy in," he said, amazed.