Art had lived all his life in space but had never seen it until that terrifying leap from starship to attack craft. Then there had been no planet twirling away below him, no tiny starship hanging like a model ahead of him, no real sense of the immense emptiness surrounding him—yet it had been quite enough to almost frighten him senseless.
Now there was no doubting his own insignificance. His heart pounded in his ears—yet the unreasoning panic of his first exposure to the wider universe outside the starship did not return. He could still function, and he hadn’t screamed—or if he had, he did not remember it, and Avara had not reacted.
Even as he thought of the SSIN officer, the sleek winged shape of the scoutship flashed past to his right and below him, riding a white torch. In seconds, re
