No ship in the System had ever hit the speed I begged out of my ship's heaving engines. No human being had ever traveled as fast before, tracing his track across the white stars in the blue fire of his jets.
If I made it to Titan in time to get into hyperspace, I would have Pat with me. There'd be stars to look at, and the worlds that circled them. Star on star, marching past the ship, world after spinning world, fair against the stars, and a million things to see, a thousand lifetimes to live.
Out there, where other beings lived, was adventure enough for both of us, and enough of dreaming. Maybe she'd forget Thorsten, maybe some of the things she'd said had been lies, maybe the whisperings in darkness were true.
If I could get to Titan in time.
I might as well have walked. I knew there was no hope before I finished landing.
Titan was an empty moon. Where the project bubble had been was a circle of fused concrete around a mess of melted alloys. A corpse in a TSN spacesuit lay on its back and stared at Saturn.
I looked down at it, cursing, my shoulders slumping under the weight of my helmet.
And I heard the voice on the command frequency.
"Hey—you—you down by the bubble." The voice was weak, and getting weaker.