[Ari doesn't believe it, at least not literally. A billion years is an incredibly long time. There were stars that could live and die long before a billion years was up. Even the best-designed ship couldn't last a fraction of that time. Unless of course there were temporal shenanigans involved, and the billion was a technicality, but then that was hardly so reassuring.

It doesn't matter. She isn't about to accuse someone she's just met of lying.]

You're probably right. If it's held up all this time, we're unlikely to be the ones to break it. I'll get used to it. It's only that out in my sector, everything over a couple of centuries we'd call old. [Back then, all they'd had was slow ships with cryonics, and the very beginnings of powerful enough engines to travel without them - at sub-c, with all the attendant time dilation problems. A lot had changed in a short space of time.]

I'm a spacer. Lieutenant Tayrey, with the Tradelines. [She doesn't mention her ship, as would be typical, because she doesn't have one. Why else would she be here? A spacer without a ship is a sad thing. Ari sounds positive enough, regardless, and she sticks out one hand by way of greeting.]