Still, as they had time left, he drove ship and crew deeper through the Arm. Nothing ever quite satisfied Broh, no discovery sated his curiosity or sense of duty. His internal drive was one of the reasons he’d been selected to command the Zinramm when his years did not seem to merit it.

The scanner made a sign toward his captain with a foothand, the other foothand poised delicately above lower contacts and his truhands remaining on the controls.

“What is it, Uvov?”

“Object, sir. Extrasystemic, twenty squares right of our present course. Moving at moderate speed and inclined slightly up from the plane of the ecliptic.”

“Intercept course?” Broh stared over the scanner’s shoulder at quadruple colored screens.

“Three timeparts,” replied the scanner, after a moment’s calculating.

“Identification?”

“Impossible to say at this distance and velocity, sir. It’s quite small. Wandering asteroid perhaps. Cometary nucleus. Or? …” He left the always hopeful question unanswered.

Broh said nothing. Such gaps were what the journey of the Zinramm were supposed to fill. He considered. They were in no hurry to get anywhere and any object traveling this far out from a system was worth a casual inspection. Turning, he called across the disk of the room.

“Emmt.”

“Sir,” the pilot replied, swiveling slightly to look back at him.

“Maintain course for two timeparts, then drop to normal space.”

“Yes, sir.” She turned to her instrumentation and commenced programming.

“Defense?”

“Ready, sir.”

“Place ship on third-degree alert, one degree of uncertainty. Personnel, sound stations for drop to normal space.”

The bridge was a quiet maze of moving multidigited arms and legs as the command crew scrambled smoothly to comply with the sudden rush of orders. There was no confusion, no uncertainty to the preparations. Not like the first time, Broh thought ruefully. Now everyone knew precisely what was expected. They worked without hint of excitment, the thrill of such encounters having been dulled by numerous similar incidents that invariably proved to be of minor scientific utility.

Soon the computer called up the count from engineering. “Bite … one, two, three … ,” and on toward eight and the drop from Space Plus. Broh braced himself in the captain’s saddle.

There was a violent wrench, the ship shuddered like a leaf in a whirlwind, and Broh was certain his insides would spill out through his mouth. The nausea passed with merciful speed and no unseemly regurgitation. The forward observation port showed relaxed, normal stars of recognizable color and shape instead of the ghostly auras that had earlier marked their location. Nothing else was visible via the port, but the search screens were alive with information. “Scanner,” he called briskly, “do you have the object?”

“Coming up on screen one, sir.”

The large screen set on the wall to the left of the port flickered momentarily. Then the subject of their temporary drop from Space Plus became visible and the attitudes of those who could spare a moment from their assignments changed drastically. Startled clicks echoed through the bridge. The object was not an asteroid, or a comet head.