"You know," he said, "that star's a binary."

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"I put the scanners to work. You've seen that big blue baby out--" He looked around, then grinned. "Well, I don't know which direction it is now, but it was near the planet when we first took the pictures. Anyway, it looked close, so I put the scanners on it, and they gave a proper motion I couldn't believe. It has to be binary with the primary here, and not more than half a light-year away."

"It could be a wanderer, Sam," said Ham Tayeh. "I told you that. Just a star that passes in the night."

Kahane shrugged. "Even so. It's close."

Klara put in, "Any planets?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "Wait a minute -- there it is, I think."

We all looked toward the viewscreen. There was no question which star Kahane was talking about. It was brighter than Sirius as seen from Earth, minus-two magnitude at least.

Klara said gently, "That's interesting, and I hope I don't know what you're thinking, Sam. Half a light-year is at best maybe two years' travel time at top lander speed, even if we had the fuel for it. Which we don't, boys."

"I know that," Sam insisted, "but I've been thinking. If we could just give a little nudge on the main capsule drive--"

I astounded myself by shouting, "Stop that!" I was shaking all over. I couldn't stop. Sometimes it felt like terror, and sometimes it felt like rage. I think if I had had a gun in my hand at that moment I could have shot Sam without a thought.

Klara touched me to calm me down. "Sam," she said, quite gently for her, "I know how you feel." Kahane had come up empty on five straight trips. "I bet it's possible to do that."

He looked astonished, suspicious and defensive, all at once. "You do?"

"I mean, I can imagine that if we were Heechee in this ship, instead of the human clods we really are -- why, then, we'd know what we were doing. We'd come out here and look around and say, 'Oh, hey, look, our friends here--' or, you know, whatever it was that was here when they set a course for this place -- 'our friends must've moved. They're not home anymore.' And then we'd say, 'Oh, well, what the hell, let's see if they're next door.' And we'd push this thing here and this one there, and then we'd zap right over to that big blue one--" She paused and looked at him, still holding my arm. "Only we're not Heechee, Sam."

"Christ, Klara! I know that. But there has to be a way--"

She nodded. "There sure does, but we don't know what it is. What we know, Sam, is that no ship ever has changed its course settings and come back to tell about it. Remember that? Not one."