the Universe. The stars looked icily back.

At last, almost completely broken, Wyatt went to bed.

* * * * *

Beauclaire's first days passed very quickly. He spent them in combing
the ship, seeking her out in her deepest layers, watching and touching
and loving. The ship was to him like a woman; the first few days were
his honeymoon. Because there is no lonelier job that a man can have,
it was nearly always this way with men in the Command.

Wyatt and Cooper left him pretty much alone. They did not come looking
for him, and the few times that he did see them he could not help but
feel their surprise and resentment. Wyatt was always polite. Cooper
was not. Neither seemed to have anything to say to Beauclaire, and he
was wise enough to stay by himself. Most of Beauclaire's life until
now had been spent among books and dust and dead, ancient languages.
He was by nature a solitary man, and therefore it was not difficult
for him to be alone.

On a morning some weeks after the trip began, Wyatt came looking for
him. His eyes twinkling, Wyatt fished him up, grease-coated and
embarrassed, out of a shaft between the main dynamos. Together they
went up toward the astrogation dome. And under the great dome, beneath
the massive crystal sheet on the other side of which there was nothing
for ever and ever, Beauclaire saw a beauty which he was to remember as
long as he lived.

They were nearing the Hole in Cygnus. On the side which faces the
center of the Galaxy the Hole is almost flat, from top to bottom, like
a wall. They were moving in on the flat side now, floating along some
distance from the wall, which was so huge and incredible that
Beauclaire was struck dumb.

It began above him, light-years high. It came down in a black,
folding, rushing silence, fell away beneath him for millions upon
millions of miles, passed down beyond sight so far away, so
unbelievably far away and so vast, that there could be nothing as big
as this, and if he had not seen the stars still blazing on either side
he would have had to believe that the wall was just outside the glass,
so close he could touch it. From all over the wall a haze reflected
faintly, so that the wall stood out in ridges and folds from the great
black of space. Beauclaire looked up and then down, and then stood and
gazed.

After a while, Wyatt pointed silently down. Beauclaire looked in among
the folds and saw it, the tiny yellow gleam towar