“Aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Hwo Rung-wan, Otter’s engineering officer replied. “Standing by to reconfigure.”

Talmadge nodded, watching the maneuvering plot as Senior Chief Powell gently, gently aligned Otter for transit. The ship’s icon flashed green as Powell put her flawlessly into position.

“Rig foresail for transit,” he said.

“Aye, aye, Sir. Rigging foresail—now.”

Otter’s wedge fell abruptly to half-strength as her foreword alpha nodes reconfigured to produce the circular disk of a Warshawski sail instead of contributing to her n-space drive. The sail was over six hundred kilometers in diameter, and completely useless in normal-space, but the forward end of HMS Otter was edging steadily out of n-space.

“Stand by to rig aftersail,” Talmadge said as his ship continued to creep forward under the power of her after impellers alone. A readout flickered to life in the corner of the maneuvering plot, and he watched its numerals climb steadily upward as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the terminus. Compared to the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, the Agueda Terminus was little more than a ripple in space, but that was still orders of magnitude more powerful than anything a ship’s impeller nodes could have produced. If their charts were as accurate as everyone thought they were, he had almost twenty seconds either way as a safety margin, but if they weren’t, and if Otter strayed out of the safe window before she got her aftersail rigged, they’d never even realize they were dead.

The soaring numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the tortured grav waves twisting through the terminus to provide movement, and Talmadge nodded sharply.

“Rig aftersail now,” he said crisply.

“Rigging aftersail, aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Hwo replied, and Otter twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail sprang to life at the far end of her hull.

The transition from the impeller to sail was one of the trickier moments any coxswain had to deal with, even with the full support of a terminus’ traffic control staff. If Senior Chief Powell felt any particular anxiety, however, there was no sign of it in her rock-steady hands. They moved with complete confidence, taking Otter through the conversion with scarcely a quiver, holding her dead center as she gathered way forward.

The maneuvering plot blinked again, and—for an instant no one had ever succeeded in measuring—Otter ceased to exist in Agueda and then, equally suddenly, began to exist somewhere else. She reappeared in a dazzling burst of azure brilliance as transit energy radiated from her sails, and Powell nodded in satisfaction.

“Transit complete,” she announced.

“Thank you, Helm. Well done!” Talmadge said, but most of his attention was back on the sail interface readout, watching the numbers twinkle downward even more rapidly than they’d risen. “Engineering, reconfigure to impeller.”

“Aye, aye, Sir. Reconfiguring to impeller now.”