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square-cut at the nape of the neck. Some kind of thin tube or cable led from the instrument panel toward the man's hands or hidden chest. Hans guessed at a neural bundle, though what the man could possibly want with such a thing was anyone's guess.
    And none of Hans Rebka's business. He watched for a few more seconds, then moved on.
    The observation chamber sat at the end of a short tunnel that projected from the outer shell of the station. Hans could sit in a swivel chair, orient himself in any direction that he chose, and study every part of the heavens not obscured by the body of Upside Miranda Port station itself. Of course, in keeping with the natural cussedness of things, what most interested Hans was at the moment shielded from view.
    That could never be more than a temporary problem, because the whole structure of the Upside Miranda Port station slowly rotated. Hans faced maybe a five-minute wait.
    He occupied the inevitable delay doing what he had earlier declined to do, and examined the contents of the Shroud. The nets held ships of all sizes, shapes, origins, and ages, in dizzying variety and numbers for as far as the eye could follow. One nearby vessel caught his eye, from its strange yet familiar outline. He had seen that design, like a hammer with a head at both ends, only once before. On that occasion he had been far out in Zardalu Communion territory, where the outpost world of Bridle Gap orbited its neutron star primary, Cavesson. And Hans had at the time confirmed that the alien ship had been manufactured nowhere in the local arm: it was something built in a far-off time and place, by the species known as the Chism Polyphemes.
    What was such a ship doing here? Was it intended to provide proof of the boast made by the Miranda Port sales staff, that you could find in the Upside Shroud examples of every ship ever made?
    The slow rotation of the station was bringing what he wanted to look at into view, and that pushed consideration of the alien ship to the back of his mind. Visual inspection of the glowing band of light that was now appearing would tell him nothing, and he stared at it for only a few moments. The Milky Way shone brighter without the diffusing effects of a planetary atmosphere, but the spiral arms beyond the local arm were still shrouded by interstellar dust and gas clouds. He had known that in advance, and already selected the observation wavelengths that he wanted. He switched to them. The chamber had been designed so that a viewer need not be aware that the "windows" now displayed the readings of radiation and particle monitors in spectral and energy regions far beyond what human senses could experience directly. Suddenly, Hans could "see" through the obscuring veils of dust and gas.
    See to the edge of the local arm. See across the Gulf. See the Sag Arm, looking no different now from the way it had appeared at other times when he had done deep galactic viewing. And see, beyond the Sag Arm, the galactic center itself, with the million-star-mass black hole lurking at its hidden heart.
    Hans brought his attention back to the Gulf. It appeared empty, as it had always been empty. It offered no sign of the pinpoints of light provided by the giant display he had walked through inside the station. So those bright points did not represent stars. They were a creation of the display itself, not something visible in nature.
    But what were they? Hans had no idea. He lay back in the swivel chair and selected visible wavelengths, so that he was once more seeing by the natural light that came in through the chamber's transparent walls.
    The view was familiar and relaxing. The chair was comfortable, more comfortable than most beds that he had slept in.
    As the heavens turned slowly about him, Hans decided that although he had learned little, it was all that he was likely to get tonight.
    There was always tomorrow. Which would take care of itself.
    When you have nothing to do, sleep.
    Within seconds he was