Dr. Gillian (Jill) Baskin

A tall, stately, pretty, dark-blonde woman in her early thirties, Gillian is both a physician and an agent of the Terragens Council, which in commissioning the mission of the exploration vessel Streaker issues to Gillian "secret orders" (pg. 228) to countermand, if necessary, neo-dolphin command. Gillian keeps a Journal, which is frequently quoted to bring the reader up to date on developments. This makes her an official source of information alongside the anonymous narrator.

Gillian's primary assignment is in the busy infirmary, but she spends whatever time she can studying a billion-year-old cadaver that Thomas (Tom) Orley rescues from the Derelict Fleet some time before the novel opens. Tom's powerful Niss computer finds nothing about such a creature—or about the Derelict Fleet itself or the water world on which they land for repairs after being chased by Galactic flotillas—in the onboard Library...