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become frightened. Others, remembering that home is no more than a step away through the transmitter, become care­less and arrogant, the cosmos merely a set of meaningless numbers to them. Both attitudes are wrong, and have killed men. But if you think of yourself as being a part of everything else—integral—the same forces in you which shaped the suns

do you see?”

“The heavens declare the glory of God,” whispered Ryerson, “and the firmament showeth His handiwork . . . It is a terri­ble thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

He had not been listening, and Nakamura did not under­stand English. The pilot sighed. “I think you had best return to the observation deck,” he said. “Dr. Maclaren may have need of you.”

Ryerson nodded mutely and went back down the shaft.

I

preach a good theory, Nakamura told himself. Why can I not practice it? Because a stone fell from heaven onto Sarai, and suddenly father and mother and sister and house were not. Because Hideki died in my arms, after the universe had casu­ally tortured him. Because I shall never see Kyoto again, where every morning was full of cool bells. Because I am a slave of myself

And yet, he thought, sometimes I have achieved peace. And only in space.

Now he saw the dead sun through a viewscreen, when his ship swung so that it transitted the Milky Way. It was a tiny blackness. The next time around, it had grown. He wondered if it was indeed blacker than the sky. Nonsense. It should reflect starlight, should it not? But what color was metallic hydrogen? What gases overlay the metal? Space, especially here, was not absolutely black: there was a certain thin but measurable neb­ular cloud around the star. So conceivably the star might be blacker than the sky.

“I must ask Maclaren,” he murmured to himself. “He can measure it, very simply, and tell me. Meditation upon the concept of blacker than total blackness is not helpful, it seems.” That brought him a wry humor, which untensed his muscles. He grew aware of weariness. It should not have been;

he had only been sitting here and pressing controls. He poured a cup of scalding tea and drank noisily and gratefully.

Down and down. Nakamura fell into au almost detached state. Now the star was close, not much smaller than the Moon seen from Earth. It grew rapidly, and crawled still more rap­idly around the circle of the viewscreens. Now it was as big as Batu, at closest approach to Sarai. Now it was bigger. The rhythms entered Nakamura’s blood. Dimly, he felt himself become one with the ship, the fields, the immense interplay of forces. And this was why he went again and yet again into space. He touched the manual controls, assisting the robots, correcting, revising, in a pattern of unformulated but bodily known harmonies, a dance, a dream, yielding, controlling, un­selfness, Nirvana, peace and wholeness .

Fire!

The shock rammed Nakamura’s spine against his skull. He felt his teeth clashed together. Blood from a bitten tongue welled in his mouth. Thunder roared between the walls.

He stared into the screens, clawing for comprehension. The ship was a million or so kilometers out. The black star was not quite one degree wide, snipped out of an unnamed alien con­stellation. The far end of the ion accelerator system was white hot. Even as Nakamura watched, the framework curled up, writhed like fingers in agony, and vaporized.

“What’s going on?” Horror bawled from the engine room.

The thrust fell off and weight dropped sickeningly. Nakamura saw hell eat along the accelerators. He jerked his eyes around to the primary megameter. Its needle sank down a tale of numbers. The four outermost rings were already de­stroyed. Even as he watched, the next one shriveled.

It could not be felt, but he knew how the star’s vast hand clamped on the ship and reeled her inward.

Metal whiffed into space. Underloaded, the nuclear system howled its anger. Echoes banged between shivering decks.

“Cut!” cried Nakamura. His hand slapped the pilot’s master switch.

T

HE silence that fell, and the no-weight, were like death.

Someone’s voice gabbled from the observation deck.