The stellar-wind ship Flavus orbits high above the black hole's maw. Inside the ship live four people: one who likes to dance in the face of black hole gravities; one who can't recall his own name; one who wishes to be known as "the Commander," kept strapped into his bed; and the other one, Justin Morrel.
His official title is "Energy-conversion Engineer," a title that barely hints at the reservoirs of knowledge in the man; but titles have little meaning aboard the Flavus. He sits in his workroom--a room that, these days, he rarely leaves--straddling one lowered petal of his bulb chair. His favorite chair. The petal is hinged beneath the V of his crotch, with the three remaining petals folded up behind him, surrounding him like an enormous teardrop. Like a womb.
An extender lamp, the sole source of light in the room at present, hovers vulturously above him, creating a corona over his dun-colored hair, highlighting his sharp cheeks, burying his crystal blue eyes in the rough-edged shadows of his dark brows.
In the palm of his hand, Justin cradles a disembodied arm. The fingers of the arm are stiffly splayed and rest on a flat plate at the tip of the curved petal. The arm is almost alabaster, like the arm of a mythic snow princess. It is hairless and the wrist too slender and delicate to be a man's. The arm ends at the elbow--not in bloodied and shredded tissue but in braided wire and translucent tubing.
Justin fits a tiny magnifier into the hollow of his right eye, then sights down one of the translucent tubes as if seeking a parallax. His stomach sighs over the cloth belt of his jumpsuit.
In the darkness on his left, two wide transparent doors present a view of the lowest corridor of the ship--of shiny anodized walls and dim yellow light. Halfway between Justin and the doors a silhouetted figure stands motionless.
The figure is Commander Francis Vomer. He wears only form-fitting briefs over his rippling hard physique. The eyes in his square-set face are hooded, calculating and insane. He watches raptly Justin's every move, although the scene is as meaningless to him as graffiti in Aramaic. Every few minutes Vomer takes a silent swift half-step nearer the light. Justin supposes him to be sleeping under sedation, strapped onto his bed where he has been kept for months, ever since he tried to jettison the solar sails.
Unaware of the evil skulking presence, Justin continues to check each tube assiduously and lets his thoughts wander around the woman he loves: E.B. "Kitty" Strunk. ("I love you Kitty, don't you understand? Let me show you, come to bed.") He has tried to win her affections ever since they awoke from cryogenic slumber two years ago, but she has yet to respond with anything more dazzling than a passing buss on the cheek.
Right now she is outside somewhere enjoying her favorite pastime: waltzing to made-up mental tunes in the gravitational fields above event horizon. Recurring visions of her falling forever into the black hole have plagued Justin since the first time she went out. His rational side knows, however, that she is safe so long as her line remains secured to the ship. In his chair, Justin daydreams of the figure in space, an egg bobbing at the end of an umbilical. His X-ray mind slices away the suit. He pictures her naked body firm and slender. He has a fair idea how large her breasts are. She exercises each day, expressing an inflexible desire to stay fit, though for whom she is exercising is beyond him, seeing as how he never gets to touch her, and Vomer is sedated; the only other member of the crew is Clancey, who is over eighty years old and incapable of any activity more strenuous than a slow drool.
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