The Trouble Dog’s face gazed from a window set into the main forward view. It looked amused. “As she says, I can detect no sign of the Fenrir from this distance.” The avatar looked concerned. “At least, not without deploying active sensors. However, I can confirm that none of the Objects has acquired an anomalous moon, and there is no sign of the Geest van Amsterdam in orbit around any of them. I have detected a metallic signature on the Object known as the Brain, which might represent debris from a crashed vessel. If the Fenrir is still somewhere hereabouts, she is either on the surface with that wreckage, or on the other side of the sun. Wherever she is, I fully anticipate her to be operating with extreme stealth, and therefore almost impossible to detect until she moves—or until we get a lot closer.”

I gave a grunt of assent. So far, things were proceeding as we had anticipated. Drifting into the system without power, we would be very hard to detect, and difficult to distinguish from random space debris. If the Fenrir wanted to tell whether we were more than just rock, she’d either have to sidle up close enough to make a visual confirmation, or bounce a signal off our hull. Either way, she’d be revealing her position. Unfortunately, the converse was also true, and we couldn’t detect her without announcing our arrival. We were like armed opponents circling each other in a darkened room, each afraid to turn on their flashlight for fear of giving the other a target.

“What are your orders?”

At the speed we were falling through space, it would take several months to get within striking range of the Objects. The only way to arrive within a timescale that gave us any hope of finding survivors was to jump across the intervening distance, but the acceleration needed would certainly alert any observers to our presence.

I took one final look at the distant sun, and shrugged. “We’ve come this far and had a look around. We didn’t expect to see the Carnivore, and we haven’t. But we have got a likely location for the liner, and that’s something. Now, we need to get closer and start looking for survivors.”

I reached for the intercom and opened a channel to the main hangar, where Alva Clay, Preston Menderes and Ashton Childe were standing by in one of the ship’s hardier ground-to-orbit shuttles. Alva answered the call.

“Everything looks clear so far,” I told her. “And it looks as if the liner’s on the Brain. We’re going to advance cautiously and then jump in as close to the surface as we can.”