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A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
http://www.baen.com

Production by Windhaven Press
Auburn, NH

Electronic version by WebWrights
http://www.webwrights.com
Dedication:
For the next generation,
Katie, Max, Peyton & Jackson
Hannah & Owen
And, of course, for that great explorer
Grandma Vera

WHAT IS MIND WHEN THERE IS NO MATTER?
WHAT IS MATTER WHEN NO ONE KNOWS?

Though the galaxy appears to be a swirling pinwheel of light, most
of it is nothing. Emptiness. Utter black oblivion.

Or so it seems to small mortal eyes. The forms of life that arise on
planets, encased in flesh or carapace, in fur or fin, see the
universe through a narrow slit of the spectrum, light's brimming
wealth. Evolution prunes and whittles its subjects so they take
advantage of the greatest flux their parent stars can offer. Seldom
does planetary life evolve to sample the lazy, meter-long
wavelengths of the radio, or the pungent snap of X-rays.

So they do not witness the chaotic tumble of great plasma clouds
between the stars. They see nothing banging between the hard
points of incandescent light, and so falsely assume that what they
call "space" isЧjust that.

Yet stars, those brimming balls of radiance, continually spew forth
matter, which fills the void. The starwind streams out, expelled by
snarling magnetic storms.

A human hand dipped into this gale from a spacecraft would
snatch up only a few tens of molecules. By the time the thinning
gale reaches the rim of the solar system, the density drops to a
thousandth of that handful. Then this billowing wraith wind thins