Ashby scratched his beard and thought. What did he want it for? After he’d first left home, all those years ago, he’d sometimes wondered if he’d go back to the Fleet to raise kids, or if he’d settle down on a colony somewhere. But he was a spacer through and through, and he had the itch for drifting.

Ohan preferred to take in the sight alone, especially now. A black hole was the perfect place to contemplate death. There was nothing in the universe that could last forever. Not stars. Not matter. Nothing.

But with the last of her savings running thin and her bridges burned behind her, ther was no margin for error. The price of a fresh start was having no one to fall back on.