Demring regarded him shrewdly. “You are a young man,” he said. “Do not let your powers paralyze you.”

“No. I will do what I can for you. It may be little.”

* * *

The trail rounded a thicket and they saw a rustic bridge across the river, which ran seaward in foam and clangor. Halfway over, the party stopped, leaned on the rail and looked down. The water was thickly shadowed between its banks, and the woods were becoming a solid black mass athwart a dusking sky. The air smelled wet.

“You realize,” Laure said “it won’t be easy to retrace your route. You improvised your navigational coordinates. They can be transformed into ours on this side of the Dragon’s Head, I suppose. But once beyond the nebula, I’ll be off my own charts, except for what few listed objects are visible from either side. No one from this civilization has been there, you see, what with millions of suns closer to our settlements. And the star sights you took can’t have been too accurate.”

“You are not going to take us to Homeland, then,” Demring said tonelessly.

“Don’t you understand? Homeland, Earth, it’s so far away that I myself don’t know what it’s like anymore!”

“But you must have a nearby capital, a more developed world than this. Why do you not guide us thither that we may talk with folk wiser than these wretched Serievans?”

“Well…uh…Oh, many reasons. I’ll be honest, caution is one of them. Also, the Commonalty does not have anything like a capital, or—But yes, I could guide you to the heart of civilization. Any of numerous civilizations in this galactic arm.” Laure took a breath and slogged on. My decision, though, under the circumstances is that first I’d better see your world Kirkasant. After that…well, certainly, if everything is all right, we’ll establish regular contacts, and invite your people to visit ours and—Don’t you like the plan? Don’t you want to go home?”

“How shall we, ever?” Graydal asked low.

Laure cast her a surprised glance. She stared ahead of her and down, into the river. A fish—some kind of swimming creature—leaped. Its scales caught what light remained in a gleam that was faint but startling against those murky waters. She didn’t seem to notice, though she cocked her head instinctively toward the splash that followed.

“Have you not listened?” she said. “Did you not hear us? How long we searched in the fog, through that forest of suns, until at last we left our whole small bright universe and came into this great one that has so much blackness in it—and thrice we plunged back into our own space, and groped about, and came forth without having found trace of any star we knew—” Her voice lifted the least bit. “We are lost, I tell you, eternally lost. Take us to your home, Daven Laure, that we may try to make ours there.”

He wanted to stroke her hands, which had clenched into fists on the bridge rail. But he made himself say only: “Our science and resources are more than yours. Maybe we can find a way where you cannot. At any rate, I’m duty bound to learn as much as I can, before I make report and recommendation to my superiors.”