About one light-year away, the luxury liner Floribunda was en route in subspace from Vesper to Juno.
Sector 1444 was nothing to the Floribunda. No such ship had ever orbited round Persephone Alpha or Beta, or Scio, or Oscran. There were occasional freighters off Persephone Beta to take away cargoes of metal — seldom very big freighters, because the Tinkers concentrated on the consignments that paid most for the smallest volume. Small ships brought a few settlers to the other Sector 1444 worlds.
It would be a long time before a luxury liner called at any of the Sector 1444 settlements. Floribunda was a ship that passed in the eternal night of space.
Her commander, Captain Brixby, had never heard of Persephone Alpha or Beta or Oscran or Scio. He had heard of Shangri-La, because one day his company would ferry rich people there for vacations which would necessarily last several years … but because this would certainly not happen until long after Captain Brixby had retired, he had never troubled to find out exactly where this Shangri-La was.
His ship would spend some hours cutting through the inner edge of Sector 1444, and at a certain set point he would send a routine message to Sector Control 1444.
That was all that Sector 1444 meant to Captain Brixby and the Floribunda.
Then.