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band of light?
    We're on the inner edge of the Perseus Arm, looking back toward the Orion Arm. Neither Galath nor Hotspot would be visible from here, but we might be able to find Sol in a telescope."
    He began a circumnavigation of the bridge, his black' hooves ticking against the invisible floor. "The only thing that looks bright enough to be a nearby main-sequence star is that one there." He indicated a blue-white point that was indeed brighter than all the others. "Still, it shows no sign of a visible disk, so at a minimum we are several billion kilometers from it. Of course, we can use a couple of probes to do some long-base-line parallax tests to see how close it is as soon as we go through the shortcut; I don't normally favor A-class stars for having habitable planets, but it seems as good a place as any to start looking for whoever activated this exit."
    "So you think it's safe for us to go on through?" Keith asked.
    The Waldahud turned to face him, and his left pair of eyes blinked.
    "There doesn't appear to be any immediate danger," he said. "I'll want to review the rest of the probe's data, but it looks just like, well, space."
    "Okay. In that case, let's try--"
    "Just a second," said Jag, apparently catching sight of a part of the hologram over Keith's shoulder. He walked toward the director, then continued on, past the seating gallery behind his station. "Just a second," he said again.
    "Rhombus, how much real-time hologram is left?"
    "I abase myself to admit we exhausted the real-time playback two minutes ago," said the Ib at the ExOps console. "I've been looping the playback since then."
    Jag walked over to the bridge wall--which was something like taking a few steps toward a distant mountain in hopes that doing so would improve one's view of it. He peered into the darkness. "That area there," he said, circling his upper left ann to indicate a large portion of the starfield.
    "There is something unusual . . . Rhombus, speed up the playback. Ten times normal rate, and loop it continuously."
    "Done without rancor," said Rhombus, ropes snapping.
    "That can't be," said Thor, who had turned around to look as well. He half rose from his chair at the helm console.
    "But it is," said Jag.
    "What is it?" asked Keith.
    "You see it," said Jag. "Look."
    "All I see is a bunch of stars twinkling."
    Jag lifted his upper shoulders, the Waldahud equivalent of a nod of assent. "Exactly. Just like a clear winter's night back on your wondrous Earth, no doubt. Except," he said, "that stars do not twinkle when seen from space."

    **GAMMA DRACONIS**
    You hold, the glass man had said, not only the key to the future, but also to the past. The glass man's words echoed in Keith's mind. He looked around at trees, the lake, the blue sky. All right, all right--Glass had said it was not a cage, not a zoo, that he could leave at any time. Still, his head was reeling. Maybe it was because all this was too much to take in at once, despite Glass attempt to provide familiar surroundings. Or maybe the sensation was an aftereffect of Glass's mind-probe--Keith still suspected something like that was at work here. Either way, he found himself feeling dizzy, and decided to lower his body down to the grass. At first he knelt, but then he moved into a more comfortable position, with his legs sticking out to one side. He was astonished to see he'd gotten a grass stain on the knee of his pants.
    The glass man flowed into a lotus position about two meters away from Keith. "You introduced yourself as G. K. Lansing."
    Keith nodded.
    "What does the G stand for?"
    "Gilbert."
    "Gilbert," said Glass, nodding his head as if this was significant.
    Keith was perplexed. "Actually, I go by my middle name, Keith." A self-deprecating chuckle. "You would, too, if your first name was Gilbert."
    "How old are you?" asked Glass.
    "Forty-six."
    "Forty-six? Just forty-six?" The being's tone was strange--wisful or perplexed.
    "Um, yes. Forty-six Earth years, that is."
    "So