Ezra was not much given to agitated gestures but he paced up and down Paul’s office, strutting and waving his arms about him like a scarecrow in a high wind. The last few days had wearied and aged him. Paul and Emily exchanged concerned glances. Kitti Ping’s death had been such a shock, following so closely on the sled collision disaster. The geneticist had seemed so indestructible, despite the fact that everyone knew of her physical frailty. She had exuded a quality of immortality, however false that had proved.

“Whose theory was it that we were being bombarded from outer space to reduce us to submission?” Ezra asked, stopping suddenly in his tracks and staring at the two leaders.

“Ah, c’mon now, Ezra!” Paul was bluntly derisive. “Think a minute, man. We’re all under a strain, but not one that makes us lose our wits. We all know that there are atmospheres that can and have melted probes. Furthermore—” He halted, not certain what would suffice to reassure Ezra, and himself.

“Furthermore, the organism attacking us,” Emily went on with superb composure, “is hydrocarbon based, and if it comes from that planet, its atmosphere is not corrosive. I favor malfunction.”

“My opinion, too,” Paul said, nodding his head vigorously. “Fardles, Ezra, let’s not talk ourselves into more problems than we’ve got.”

“We’ve got”—Ezra brought both fists down on the desk—“to probe that planet, or we won’t know enough to combat the stuff. Half the settlers want to know the source and destroy it so we can get back to our lives. Rake up the debris and forget all this.”

“What aren’t you telling us, Ezra?” Emily asked, cocking her head slightly and regarding the captain with an unflinching gaze.

Ezra stared back at her for a very long moment, then straightened from his half crouch over the desk and began to smile wryly.

“You’ve been sitting in the interface booth long hours, Ezra, and you weren’t playing tiddlywinks while the programs were running,” Emily went on.

“My calculations are frightening,” he said in a low voice, glancing over each shoulder. “If the program is in any way accurate, and I’ve run it five times now from start to finish, we have to put up with Thread for long after that red planet crosses out of the inner system.”

“How long will that be?” Paul felt his fingers gripping the arm rests and made a conscious effort to relax them while he tried to recall some reassuring facet of planetary orbits.

“I get between forty and fifty years!”

Emily grimaced, her mouth forming an O of surprise before she slowly exhaled. “Forty or fifty years, you say.”

“If,” Ezra added grimly, “the menace originated from that planet.”

Paul caught his eyes and saw the ineffably weary and discouraged look in them. “If? There is another alternative?”