He should have explained then. But the strain and weariness in him snapped: “You accepted my leadership. That makes me responsible for you, and I can’t be responsible if I don’t have command. You can endure another couple of weeks. That’s all it’ll take.”

And she should have answered that she knew his motives were good and wished simply to hear his reasons. But being the descendant of hunters and soldiers, she clicked heels together and flung back at him: “Very well, Ranger. I shall convey your word to my captain.”

She left, and did not again board Jaccavrie.

* * *

Later, after a sleepless “night,” Laure said, “Put me through to Makt’s navigator.”

“I wouldn’t advise that,” said the woman-voice of his ship.

“Why not?”

“I presume you want to make amends. Do you know how she—-or her father, or her young male shipmates that must be attracted to her—how they will react? They are alien to you, and under intense strain.”

“They’re human!”

Engines pulsed. Ventilators whispered. “Well?” said Laure.

“I’m not designed to compute about emotions, except on an elementary level,” Jaccavrie said. “But please recollect the diversity of mankind. On Reith, for example, ordinary peaceful men can fall into literally murderous rages. It happens so often that violence under those circumstances is not a crime in their law. A Talatto will be patient and cheerful in adversity, up to a certain point: after which he quits striving, contemplates his God, and waits to die. You can think of other cultures. And they are within the ambience of the Commonalty. How foreign might not the Kirkasanters be?”

“Um-m-m—”

“I suggest you obtrude your presence on them as little as possible. That makes for the smallest probability of provoking some unforeseeable outburst. Once our task is completed, once we are bound home, the stress will be removed and you can safely behave toward them as you like.”

“Well…you may be right.” Laure stared dull-eyed at a bulkhead. “I don’t know. I just don’t know!”

* * *

Before long, he was too busy to fret much. Jaccavrie went at his direction, finding planetary systems that belonged to various stellar types. In each, he landed on an airless body, took analytical readings and mineral samples, and gave the larger worlds a cursory inspection from a distance.

He did not find life. Not anywhere. He had expected that. In fact, he was confirming his whole guess about the inmost part of the cluster.

Here gravitation had concentrated dust and gas till the rate of star production became unbelievable. Each time the cluster passed through the clouds around galactic center and took on a new load of material, there must have been a spate of supernovae, several per century for a million years or more. He could not visualize what fury had raged; he scarcely dared put his estimate in numbers. Probably radiation had sterilized every abode of life for fifty light-years around. Kirkasant must therefore lie farther out—which fitted in with what he had been told, that the interstellar medium was much denser in this core region than in the neighborhood of the vanished world.