Edmund.

Vice Admiral Edmund Hallor is the highest rank ever to leave the solar system. Four decades in the deep-space service have worn his manner down to its essentials — quiet, formal, exact. He does not raise his voice. He chooses his words the way an engineer chooses fasteners: for the load, never for show.

He is a widower. His wife, Elaine, died before the mission, and he carries the fact the way he carries everything else — without comment. When the Pathfinder was fitted out, he turned down the flag quarters and requested a smaller cabin instead. Nobody asked him why. What he keeps in place of comfort is a kind of exhausted dignity: the bearing of a man who has signed too many orders, and read every one of them first.

Why a vice admiral rides along on a survey mission at all is a question the crew has learned not to ask. He was aboard on launch day, somewhere near the back of the frame, and he has been there ever since — courteous, unhurried, and very far from home, like everyone else.