Unless, of course, the ship collided with something. Then everything became very real. That was what the pact was for--to make sure they didn't collide. Every spaceship had, locked in the captain's cabin, charts of that other universe--charts which gave, in normspace terms, the coordinates of the hyperspace worlds. That way, when a ship made the Jump, there would be no danger of her materializing inside one of the alien planets and destroying both. Even touching one of the hyper-worlds could have a disastrous effect. Only the captains were ever permitted to see these charts; they would be far too dangerous in irresponsible hands. Len might have grown old in the _Perseus'_ service, if the Hesperia System hadn't been one of her stops, and if he hadn't seen Lyddy there. Hesperia was a small, rose-pink sun surrounded by four planets and the debris of what once was a fifth. Most solar systems in the Galaxy had asteroid belts like that; some time later, Len found out why. Three of Hesperia's four planets were barren rocks. The fourth, Erytheia, was mostly water, calm water, sometimes blue, sometimes--when the sun was high--violet-tinged. There was land, a small continent in the north, where it was always spring, a slightly larger continent in the south, where it was always summer, and that large island in the west which was said to have a climate better than spring and summer combined. The atmosphere of Erytheia was what they call Earth type--that is, Man could breathe on it. A very inadequate description, though, because men could breathe the atmosphere of Ziegler's Planet, too, only sometimes it almost seemed worthwhile to stop living in order to stop having to breathe Ziegler's air. Erytheia's atmosphere was gentler and purer than the air of Earth. The native fruits were edible and the local life-forms were small and amiable. But there wasn't enough land for the establishment of a self-supporting colony; it would have bred itself into poverty within a few generations. What else could be done with a small paradise in a remote sector of space but turn it into a high-class brothel and gambling casino? Only the very rich could afford to travel so far to look at scenery, and by the time they reached their destination, scenery wasn't enough. They wanted some excitement. Naturally, the _Perseus_ would stop at Hesperia. Naturally, Mattern would see Lyddy, who was one of the seven wonders of that system. She wasn't too many years out from Earth then, and he had never dreamed any woman could be that beautiful. * * * * * She was long-necked and slender, unlike the women of the Far Planets, who were mostly squat-built and bred for labor. It seemed to him he had seen her before--in a vision, a dream, who knew where? Certainly never in reality. But he could understand why men would travel light-years for her.