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Chee’s own star, Cheemah, shone with a warm yellow light, but other nearby stars equaled its fire.
    “The stars here are very dense,” Shon-dan said, “though not as dense as they are further in. The Chee system has seven stars— or maybe eight, we’re not sure— and the orbits are very complex.”
    “Do we actually know which galaxy we’re in?” Terza asked.
    “No. We’re scanning for Cepheids and other yardsticks that might give us an indication, but so far we haven’t found enough to make certain of anything. We could be anywhere in the universe, of course, and anywhere within a billion years of where we started.”
    Martinez heard footfalls enter the room, then the voice of Lord Pa. “Looking at the stars?” he said. “You’ll get tired of them soon enough. Between the galactic core and the other six stars in Chee’s system, there’s no true night on the planet, and we’ve had to install polarizing windows on all our workers’ dormitories just so our people can get some rest. I’ve just stopped looking at the sky— galactic centers are nasty violent places, and the less we have to do with them, the better.”
    “Stars are packed pretty closely here, true enough, my lord.” Shon-dan’s deference to a wealthy Peer did not quite disguise her disagreement. Clearly she was not about to tire of gazing at this sky anytime soon.
    “I’m going to sit and play a game of cinhal,” Lord Pa said. “Don’t let me disturb you.”
    Martinez returned his attention to the great, glowing galactic core while he heard Lord Pa shuffle to a table, then give it the muted commands to set up a game.
    “So far you’re only seeing the light in its visible spectrum,” Shon-dan said. “I’m going to add some other spectra in a moment. There will be some false colors. I’ll try to fix those later.” Martinez heard the Lai-own give a few muted commands, and then the galactic core shifted from a pearly color to a muted amber, and the great sphere was suddenly pierced through by an enormous lance of light, shimmering and alive, a giant pillar that seemed to stretched from the foundations of the universe to its uttermost heaven.
    Martinez gave an involuntary cry, and he heard Terza’s echo.
    “Yes.” Triumph had again entered Shon-dan’s voice. “That’s the beam of relativistic particles generated by the galaxy’s supermassive black hole. If you look closely, you’ll see it has fine structure— we didn’t expect that, and we’re working on theories of the phenomenon, but so far we don’t have an explanation.”
    In his virtual display Martinez coasted closer to the great burning pillar of energy, and he saw the pillar pulse with light, saw strands of opalescent color weave and shift as they were caught in some vast incomprehensible flow of power, a hypnotic dance of colossal force.
    For the next hour Shon-dan showed Martinez and Terza features within the galactic core, including the four giant stars now in a swift death spiral around the central black hole. “The black hole is feeding now,” he said. “Sometimes the supermassive black holes are actively involved in devouring neighboring stars and sometimes they aren’t. We don’t know why or how they shift from one state to another.”
    “Nasty, as I said,” said Lord Pa, from somewhere outside the universe that occupied Martinez’ head. “I have to say that I prefer nature a good deal less chaotic and destructive. I like games with rules. I like comfortable chairs, compound interest, and a guaranteed annual profit. I prefer not to think of some cosmic accident readying itself to jump out of hiding and suck all my comforts right out of the universe.”
    “We’re perfectly safe from the black hole, my lord,” Shon-dan said. “We’re nowhere near the danger zone.”
    Martinez quietly turned off the virtual display to take a look at Lord Pa. He sat in a Lai-own chair that cradled his breastbone, and was bent over the room’s game board. The