A reckless young Ceres slingshotter wagers everything on becoming the first person to race through the Ring.
Manéo Jung-Espinoza grows up on Ceres Station feeling half at home in the Belt. His father has an Earther's squat frame, and the cosmopolitan slang that comes naturally to his cousin Evita Jung feels borrowed in his own mouth. Evita introduces the truant fourteen-year-old to the illegal slingshotting underground, where dangerous ballistic races promise fame, status, and the admiration he craves. The sport gives the previously aimless boy his first ambition.
Three years later, Néo spends months building the tiny Y Que and plotting an extraordinarily narrow gravity-assist course past Europa, Jupiter, and Saturn. Starved, dehydrated, and cold after nearly three months in flight, he nevertheless broadcasts his triumph as he barrels toward The Ring at 150,000 kilometers per hour. He stalls the Martian frigate Lucien until he crosses the alien threshold. The stars vanish, his pursuers disappear, and an unseen force arrests his ship at ninety-nine g, killing him instantly before his nervous system can register what happened.
Néo is a long, thin seventeen-year-old Belter with long hair, a ratty little beard, and narrow, under-exercised shoulders. Hunger and months in microgravity leave him looking especially gaunt and unkempt.
Néo is the first human shown entering the Ring. His fatal stunt reveals that the alien structure leads somewhere governed by violently unfamiliar rules.