I looked up from my cards. “Of course.” Most people can. Every world has its wilderness areas, and it’s not worthwhile to spread transfer booths all through a forest, especially one that doesn’t see twenty tourists in a year. When you’re tired of civilization, the only way to travel is to transfer to the edge of a planetary park and then rent a car.

“That’s good,” said Emil, “in case I get put out of action.”

“Now it’s your turn to cheer me up.”

Emil cocked his head at me. “If it’s any help, I think I know how Bellamy’s group found the Argos.”

“Go on.”

“It was the starseed. A lot of people must have known about it, including Margo. Maybe she told someone that she was stopping the ship so the passengers could get a look.”

“Not much help. She had a lot of space to stop in.”

“Did she? Think about it. First, Bellamy’d have no trouble at all figuring when she’d reach the Gummidgy system.”

“Right.” There’s only one speed in hyperdrive.

“That means Margo would have to stop on a certain spherical surface to catch the light image of the starseed setting sail. Furthermore, in order to watch it happen in an hour, she had to be right in front of the starseed. That pinpoints her exactly.”

“There’d be a margin of error.”

Emil shrugged. “Half a light-hour on a side. All Bellamy had to do was wait in the right place. He had an hour to maneuver.”

“Bravo,” I said. There were things I didn’t want him to know yet. “He could have done it that way, all right. I’d like to mention just one thing.”

“Go ahead.”

“You keep saying ‘Bellamy did this’ and ‘Bellamy did that.’ We don’t know he’s guilty yet, and I’ll thank you to remember it. Remember that he’s a friend of a friend and don’t start treating him like a criminal until you know he is one.”

“All right,” Emil said, but he didn’t like it. He knew Bellamy was a kidnapper. He was going to get us both killed if he didn’t watch his mouth.

At the last minute I got a break. It was only a bit of misinterpretation on Emil’s part, but one does not refuse a gift from the gods.

We’d crossed six or seven hundred kilometers of veldt: blue-green grass with herds grazing at wide intervals. The herds left a clear path, for the grass (or whatever, we hadn’t seen it close up) changed color when cropped. Now we were coming up on a forest, but not the gloomy green type of forest native to human space. It was a riot of color: patches of scarlet, green, magenta, yellow. The yellow patches were polka-dotted with deep purple.