Bart stumbled out of the cabin with relief. Safe in his own quarters, he flung himself down on his bunk, shaking all over. He'd come safely through one more nightmare, one more terror—for the moment! Had he put Meta in danger, too? Was there no end to this ceaseless fear? Not only for himself, but for others, the innocent bystanders who stumbled into plots they did not understand?

You're doing this for the stars. It's bigger than your fear. It's bigger than you are, or any of the others....

He was beginning to think it was a lot too big for him.

The green-sun Meristem lay far behind them. Karol's burns had healed; only a faint pattern on Ringg's forehead showed where six stitches had closed the ugly wound in his skull. Bart's wrist, after a few days of nightmarish pain when he tried to pick up anything heavy, had healed. Two more warp-drive shifts through space had taken theSwiftwingfar, far out to the rim of the known galaxy, and now the great crimson coal of Antares burned in their viewports.

Antares had twelve planets, the outermost of which—far away now, at the furthest point in its orbit from the point of theSwiftwing's entry into the system—was a small captive sun. No larger than the planet Earth, it revolved every ninety years around its huge primary.